I’m waking up with nausea. My back is flaring up. A fifteen minute walk is leaving me in agony. I’ve had to cancel on three social events this week.
I’ve regressed to the point that leaving the house seems like a risky endeavour. The nausea leaves my appetite in confusion. I know that I need to eat, but my sense of appetite is totally suppressed.
Such is the world of recovery. One week is good, another three weeks are difficult.
Last year, I stopped going to the gym. I had been going around two to three times a week. I had a personal trainer, who set me different strength exercises and increasing weight goals. On paper, I was doing everything I should have been.
Just before stopping, I got a blood test. Generally my health was good, but my cholesterol was particularly high. Most notably, my HDLs (the ‘good’ cholesterol) was quite a lot lower than they should have been.
If conventional wisdom were to be followed, my health should have gotten worse. I was no longer exercising, I stopped paying too much attention to diet and I returned to a very sedentary lifestyle.
A few weeks ago, I decided to start exercising more. I thought swimming would be a good, low impact activity that my body could metabolise.
Instead, I ended up doing less exercise, rather than more. I started randomly having ankle pain. It’s got to the point where the awkward pain has kept me from falling asleep.
These seemingly small issues can start having a large impact. My lack of sleep has meant other issues started emerging. I am now getting pain on my side, and my digestion problems have re-awoken. Now that my feet are somewhat better, it’s these stomach pains that are keeping me awake at night. I haven’t had a proper night sleep in the last week.
I’ve come to the conclusion that my happiest days will be my final ones. I think I will live a long life, and I think I will be fortunate to retain relatively good health up until the end.
In those final few years, I will be at peace. I will, perhaps finally, feel free. No pressures from society. Enough financial security to live out my last days. And, most importantly, my internal pressures to serve others finally satiated.
It’s probably odd for me to talk about the end of my life. Indeed, I think it’s actually somewhat taboo. Going past our ‘prime’ years in the big cities is some frightening thought. The idea of even mentioning death brings up such discomfort that people avoid it at all costs.
Yesterday, Bangladesh had its national elections. But this was no ordinary elections, it was the first that was broadly fair and free in nearly two decades.
In the West, the idea of a free and fair election is taken for granted. So is the idea of general state stability. Post-colonial South Asian politics has no such luxury. Bangladesh has been mirred with in-fighting, coups and counter-coups throughout its young history. A descent into military rule has very much been on the cards over the last few years.
As such, these elections were historic. Nonetheless, the slight irony is that the results themselves feel somewhat anticlimactic to me. Although broadly peaceful and open elections are to be celebrated, reforms and genuine positive change will take a lot more hard, earnest work.
I went to a tango class this week. For one reason or another, I found myself feeling far more stable and grounded.
On the surface, nothing had particularly changed I had been to a class only a week before, and although I did feel a bit better that day, there was not an obvious reason for such a sudden improvement.
But in the context of my bodily recovery, this shift actually makes quite a lot of sense. For the first time in my life, I am focussing on keeping my body relaxed. I feel like I have reached the tipping point where I am actually guided by my body, rather than constantly pushing it along.
Although I’ve learnt the game of ‘celebrating my successes’, it’s always been one that I’ve done because I’m meant to, rather than because I feel naturally inclined.
In my previous management roles, I used to talk to my staff about the importance of ‘cashing the cheque’ – when a good piece of work had been done, it was important to sing about it from the rooftops. Otherwise, all that hard graft would most likely go unnoticed. I accepted this as part of the game, even if I had a personal distaste for it.
Yet there is a fundamental issue when our value comes from the showing rather than the doing. The laborious, harder graft has become devalued.
I don’t think I’ve seen as much pessimism at the start of the year than I have in 2026. We’ve got to the point where we openly speak about how tumultuous things are right now.
The political watershed moment of the week came from Mark Carney, Canadian Prime Minister. Speaking at Davos, he openly talked about the ‘illusion’ of the rules-based international order. He went as far as to say ‘the system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true’.
The problem is that the illusion is slipping. It has been for a while now.
The subject of duty has been deeply imprinted in my mind this week. It relates to the idea of expectations and roles, passed down by family and society.
I went back to see my parents in London, where I also reconnected with the works of my grandfather, Delwar Hussain Chowdhury. Before his death in 1977, he wrote many poems that my father compiled after his death.
When I hear the word bubble these days, it’s often used in a somewhat pejorative sense. In fact, I’m probably the one using it in a critical manner. I often lament people living too much in their own comfortable bubble, or indeed the Brussels infamous ‘EU bubble’.
Yet this week I reflected that there is some value in having a sense of bubble around us. For me specifically, I’ve started imagining the idea of having a protective bubble whenever I am in social situations. This helps me stay grounded and give a sense of safety, wherever I might be.