As 2025 slips quietly into history, it leaves behind another satisfying year of relentless typing, enthusiastic pondering, and happily overworked fingers. It’s been a super year of writing, sprinting across territories as varied as politics, social issues, religion, environment, entertainment, sports, health, humour—and the occasional philosophical detour where answers are optional but questions are mandatory.

This writing spree is fuelled by an almost athletic reading routine—something like consuming a book a day, though never cover to cover. More like grazing through chapters, ideas, arguments, footnotes, and moments of history. The result? A sprawling mosaic of essays and articles, along with compact two- or three-line quotes born of instinctive impulses that refuse to wait for a full paragraph.

My pen (or rather, keyboard) wandered far and wide, wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and other global hot spots; hunger and humanity; nostalgia and travel; humour and satire; and the quirky oddities of everyday life that quietly demand attention.

I dip my fingers into the vast pool of information, knowledge, and ideas, and then let them splash freely across the keyboard.

Philosophy pulled me in with its timeless charm. I explored ego, consciousness, self-authenticity, appreciation, and the moral shortcuts we all occasionally take with justification, sometimes with a shrug. I even nudged divinity a bit, asking whether God’s concern is more about virtuous living than being imagined as a celestial CCTV camera watching us from above.

Religion, rituals, and customs run like a strong vein through my writing. I critiqued the divisive currents of Hindutva, questioned why pundits, priests, and mullahs dress so differently from us common mortals, reflected on Ambedkar’s challenge to caste, and celebrated the universal spirit of Guru Nanak’s Aarti.

In the science (and theatre) of politics, I asked uncomfortable questions like, Do political parties really need ideology to grab power? I penned an essay ambitiously titled “The World Needs a Political System of Evolving Rationalism Based on Humanism” and took on divisive nationalism, chest-thumping patriotism, and the ever-widening Left–Right trench warfare, political, religious, and social.

Health, humour, and satire also found generous space, from reflections on mental and physical well-being to lighter takes on some rather laughable campaigns, including the hunt for temples beneath mosques and even under iconic monuments like the Taj Mahal.

Sports didn’t escape either. I dared to question cricket’s near-monopoly in India and argued that football (yes, soccer) deserves a fairer hearing.

On the gentler, nostalgic side, I wrote about my mother’s cake baked in reused Amul cheese tins, the golden magic of ghee, Peepewale biscuits, the uncertain fate of pumpkins on Halloween, and jalebi, the undisputed queen of Indian sweets. One piece even declared, with conviction, that Indians abroad often get more of India than Indians in India.

My smorgasbord also included utopian ideas, often stamped “weird” or “impractical”—like dismantling Canada’s Department of Defence, imagining a world without armed forces, wondering what would happen if no one joined an army for peace’s sake, or advocating for a planet without borders. “We belong to Earth, not a country,” I argued, fully aware it sounds delightfully pie-in-the-sky.

At the end of the day, I see myself as a humble mason, using words as bricks, cementing them carefully to build a dwelling of ideas, thoughts, questions, and opinions. It’s a door-less co-op: everyone is welcome to walk in, disagree politely, exchange ideas, start a dialogue, and maybe even leave with a new perspective.

My sincere thanks to all of you who read, respond with thoughtful (and witty) comments, and generously hit the “Like” key.

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and peaceful New Year.

Promod Puri
promodpuri.com
progressivehindudialogue.com🌟