THE MAN WHO CLEARS THE FOG

100×.

That’s the high a cigarette gives.

200×.

Let’s say that’s sex.

250×.

Drugs.

500×.

Climbing Mount Everest.

Now imagine having to do every single one of those things twice a day, every day, for five years just to get the same high I get from meeting one person.

Sounds insane, right?

Good.

Because it is.

I won’t name him.

Let’s call him D.

And before you decide I’m exaggerating, let me tell you what happened.

At the beginning of this year, I had exactly one mission.

Pass Class 12.

And I wasn’t really worried about whether I would pass.

I knew I would.

One way or another.

I just had to figure out how.

Somehow, I made it.

Done.

Dusted.

Over.

The very next day after my board exams, I started working on what I actually consider the primary goal of my life.

My mountain.

My peak.

The thing everything else is supposed to revolve around.

Because that’s how my brain works.

I need a peak to climb.

For almost a month, I was climbing.

And I was climbing fast.

I had momentum.

Then the clouds came.

And here’s the embarrassing part:

I knew exactly what caused them.

I wasn’t lost.

I wasn’t confused.

I wasn’t searching for myself.

I was simply distracted.

For almost four months.

And those four months?

Absolute madness.

I started Salah Suchan Company, basically giving people life advice and unofficial therapy until some of them started becoming revolutionaries in their own homes.

One picked a fight with their parents.

Another had a breakup, fought with their best friend and apparently decided college needed a revolution.

Eventually, I looked at the whole thing and thought:

“Yeah. I should probably shut this shop.”

So I did.

Then came Kabadi Wala.

And let me clarify something

it wasn’t really about kabadi.

It was an initiative I started to help students get into mischief inside their institutions.

I helped them think.

Plan.

Curate.

Sometimes execute.

And things got ridiculous.

CCTV cameras.

A computer CPU.

Students doing things they probably shouldn’t have been doing.

And me, somehow, in the middle of it all.

It was fun.

It was chaotic.

It was also completely irrelevant to the mountain I was supposed to be climbing.

That’s the dangerous thing about distraction.

You don’t always stop moving.

Sometimes you move faster than ever

just in the wrong direction.

Four months passed.

The mountain was still there.

But I couldn’t see the peak anymore.

The clouds had swallowed it.

And then

D showed up.

THE WALK

Here’s the part I never forget.

The Walk wasn’t mine.

D introduced it to me.

A simple walk.

Two people.

No stage.

No audience.

No performance.

Just walking and talking about things that actually matter.

Eventually, I started taking people on The Walk too.

But yesterday, on the auspicious day of Janmashtami, something was different.

D took me on The Walk.

And somewhere during that walk, the clouds started disappearing.

He didn’t give me a new mountain.

He didn’t give me a new dream.

He didn’t magically make me ambitious.

He simply reminded me of something I had forgotten.

The peak was still there.

JAMVANT

If you’ve read the Ramayana, you know what Jamvant did for Hanuman.

He didn’t give Hanuman his strength.

He reminded him that he already had it.

That’s D for me.

He is my Jamvant.

Whenever the mountain disappears behind the clouds, he somehow appears and clears the fog.

Whenever I start wandering, he points back towards the peak.

Whenever I forget what I’m capable of, he reminds me.

And the strangest thing?

He seems to appear either after my biggest blunder—

or just before I’m about to make one.

Almost as if the universe has an emergency protocol:

“He’s getting lost again. Send D.”

Yesterday, he came.

We walked.

We talked.

He cleared my head.

He made me look at my life properly again.

And then came the harsh part.

He pushed me back towards work.

Hard.

Not with some motivational Instagram quote.

With reality.

Because dopamine fades.

The high fades.

Motivation fades.

But once you can see the mountain again, you don’t need motivation.

You just climb.

And that’s where I am now.

Four months later.

After all the distractions.

All the side quests.

All the chaos.

I’m back.

The mountain didn’t move.

I did.

The clouds are gone.

The peak is visible.

And I’ve got a long way to climb.

So

back to work.