I always prefer to start a story from the end. That’s what I did when I first wrote my story of my lifelong struggle with Bipolar Disorder about a decade ago. But then the end was a happy one-victory over Bipolar Disorder. But this time the end is bitter. And if it’s bitter, it can’t be the real end of any story I write. So I take it as a mid-journey accident. A halt. Alright, let’s start. After victory over […] Read More

I entered 2018 with the same energy and zeal. Bipolar was completely in control -or more precisely, it was working for me rather than against me, which is a different thing entirely. It felt as if I was in a continuous, mild hypomanic phase with short periods of mild depression. The mild hypomanic phase does wonders for me. Productivity and creativity reach their optimum level. The brain fires cleanly. The ideas connect. The mornings have purpose. Combined with the almost […] Read More

I continued to feel high and continued to accomplish things. The hypomanic stability of 2018 had carried over cleanly into the new year; one of those rare stretches where the bipolar engine runs at the right temperature and you almost forget it is an engine at all. One very important event of this year was that somehow my son Alex agreed to come to India and live with me for some time. I was overjoyed. Ten years. I was going […] Read More

The morning of February 2020 saw a beaming me alighting from a plane at the international airport of Ho Chi Minh City-Saigon. I had taken a week’s stopover in Vietnam for preliminary preparations to establish an offshore development centre to replace the one in India. A technical visit. Routine, purposeful, time-bound. I would be back on a plane within the week. Though I could never quite understand myself why I was so keen to cut even professional ties with my […] Read More

The bipolar stability I had gained in 2016 started evaporating. It had held for five years – longer than I had any right to expect, longer than most people in my condition manage without a serious episode. But evaporation is the right word. Not a crash. Not a sudden break. A slow, almost imperceptible thinning. But this time it was mania-dominated. The longer periods of mild hypomania slowly started turning into erratic mania. The engine that had hummed productively in […] Read More

2022 was a larger version of 2021. Which is to say: 2021, but more so. Louder. Faster. More expensive. The number of startups increased. It went to a level where if I found some talent, the next day I’d start actions to turn them into an entrepreneur. Within 30 days, we’d have a London-registered Ltd with a mastercrafted brand identity, a shining website, and a newly converted founder -wide-eyed, freshly baptised into the church of impact entrepreneurship, not entirely sure […] Read More

By now I was already in a deep depression phase. A massive one. The kind from the pre-2016 era. The ones I had spent seven years convincing myself I had left behind forever. I hadn’t. And it is in the depressive phase that one needs emotional support the most. Not professional support ; human support. Someone who knows your name and asks how you are and means it. Here I was, all alone in a high-rise apartment in a country […] Read More

The farmhouse environment and peace had a wonderful impact on my mental health. I started gaining my senses back ; slowly, then less slowly, like a machine restarting after a long power cut. The past year’s vagabond life had deteriorated my physical health too. Farmhouse food, nutritious and organic, put me back into shape. The body, at least, is relatively straightforward to repair. By the end of August 2024, I was fairly recovered and decided to move back to the […] Read More

A rapid cycling and deteriorating bipolar disorder, combined with acute financial struggle, didn’t even make me realise that a new year had started. In any other year since 2016, the first day of January was a ritual – the Life Roadmap review, the goal-setting, the energy of a fresh column on the ledger. In 2025, January 1st arrived and departed like any other forgettable Tuesday. There was no year-end review. No yearly goal settings. Goals of arranging money to pay […] Read More

I entered 2026 with some hope. It seemed that my supply line from the estate would be restored, at least partially. It indeed was, and I was relieved. I immediately turned my focus to my nonprofit initiatives ; which I had not been able to do for the last few months, and which, I now realised, I had missed with a fervour that surprised even me. Since 2023, my main focus had been on my two nonprofits – 4IR 4ALL […] Read More