I'm finally home and as a consequence am feeling more peaceful and comfortable than I have in a long, long time. With peace and comfort comes a strangely easy and wonderfully pleasant lucidity. Take away physical discomfort and let a chap feel removed from the turbulence, the trauma and the wild moods and extreme views brought on by the skewed perceptions, lonely unfamiliarity, unnecessary discomfort and exaggerated pressures that seem to go with hostel life and what you are left with is the only healthy kind of philosopher - the kind who finds philosophy stuffy and redundant. Take away the emotional biases and duress - mental as well as physical - that cause opinions to crystallize into sharp weapons causing injury to oneself as well as others, and it becomes remarkably difficult to decide one way or the other about most issues of note. The clarity bestowed by peace makes it possible to perceive just how astoundingly complex and subtle the world is. People turn out to be multi layered and faceted, geographies more intricate and histories more interesting, the past difficult to judge and the future a lot more varied and promising.

Thus, everything having become an object of infinite wonder, it becomes next to impossible to write about anything.

I'm still around - struggling, thinking, searching, happy, miserable, ill, worried, looking for peace, for reassurance form a world that's built to disappoint, getting things done, keeping it afloat, excited sometimes, bored mostly, appalled that the universe is unkind enough to exploit every weakness, every anomaly, every mistake one ever made and extract the market price. That is the only universal law I've experienced. No one gets away with anything. You been a bad boy ? Whether you knew it or not, whether you accept it or not, you will suffer. So will I.

We pay for the things we defile and degrade - including ourselves - and we pay for believing too much and we pay for believing too little. A price is extracted for every happy moment experienced, every good day, every piece of fortune, every favour taken, every minute spent wallowing in self pity, every dark thought, every task postponed and every promise broken.

To appreciate beauty in peace and languor without losing vigour and valour, to feel free without having to rebel, to be happy without self deceit, to face a just universe and see oneself reflected in it with a steady, unflinching, critical and honest gaze . . . . . . . .