This is the fifth edition of my monthly review. May was a full month. A long-stuck thread that I’d been carrying since January finally moved. Personal training began, and wow, after 10 years of being in sports, it still changed something about how I think about my body. A new community welcomed me in. And life, in the way only life can, sent its own reminders about what actually matters.

By the end of the month, the plan I’d written on May 1st looked very different next to what actually unfolded.

The month split in two. The first three weeks were Delhi : exam season for Riya, multiple meetings around the house, the early PT sessions, and a body slowly remembering how to move daily again. The last week opened up : a quiet trip to Bangalore, an initiation to a community, and then an unexpected phone call I wasn’t ready to take. May taught me, again, that life happens when you are making plans.

Family & Relationships

This is where the month was richest, and also where the most happened off-script.

Riya wrote her JEE Advanced on May 17th and is now done with her exams. With this, her JEE prep and exam journey comes to an end. My job through all of these wais simple : drive, wait, pick up. She has carried this with a determination I am proud of.

The scores are now in and the JAC and JoSAA counselling rounds are running through June, so the actual college decision is still ahead. That’s the next thread.

Ryan was around for big chunks of the month. We coded together on Daily Athlete in the first week (the redesign is taking shape). Full Delhi summers is on, so no cycling opportunity. We did multiple visits to Cyber hub instead. His passport renewal done ; all set for Japan trip.

On friendships, May was lighter than April but still good. A Vir Das show with Riya and a friend on May 10th : the seats were terrible and the show was brilliant. A movie evening (Michael) with a friend on May 5th. long pending dinner with friend on the 22nd. The last few days of May, I spent in Bangalore : quieter than April’s friendship festival, but the kind of conversations that linger long after the trip is over.

And then on May 28th, we lost Gauri. She had been unwell. The news came through on the 27th, and she was gone by the next day. She was a big part of my childhood. Hearing the news in another city, processing it in pieces : it’s still difficult to write about. What it left me with, and what I want to hold onto, is simply this: life is short, much shorter than the plans we keep making for it.

Wellness & Fitness

The headline of May is personal training. I started one-on-one sessions at Fitness Garage with my coach Ankit in the second week of the month, and by the end of May I’d done six sessions. Something happened that I didn’t expect : I started enjoying the training in a way I hadn’t in years. The sessions are hard. Very hard. Ankit pushes me past what I would push myself to. The burpees are getting better. The technique on every Hyrox station is being rebuilt. After PT 2, I wrote in my journal, simply : “LOVING it. Trust the process and show up.” That’s been the line for the back half of May.

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The 31-day run/walk challenge I announced in April’s report : I’ll be honest, this one didn’t unfold the way I’d written it. My hips have been giving me trouble. The first ten days held, then the daily floor started slipping.

The truth is the PT sessions plus the swim plus trying to run every day was too much load to carry without something snapping.

On May 21st, I crashed. My journal entry that morning is short: high fatigue, didn’t go for the workout, just cleaned and rested. The body sent a clear signal. The lesson, taken seriously, is that I’d been planning the fitness load emotionally, not strategically. The May plan added run, swim, PT classes, and the existing gym work on top of each other without subtracting anything. Of course the body rebelled.

What I’m taking into Hyrox prep for the final stretch (race is July 24th) is a lighter, more deliberate cadence : PT twice a week, one swim, three quality runs, and one true rest day. Four hard sessions, three easier, one off. Not seven of seven.

The other small win that turned out not to be small : on May 25th, after weeks of mediocre sleep, I had what felt like a different person’s morning. I’d eaten unusually high-fiber the previous day (a small N=1 experiment after reading a study) and added Yakult in the evening. Whether it was the fiber, the timing, the diet, or pure coincidence, I’m going to run it as a formal experiment in June for fourteen nights and see if I can repeat it. Sleep is the lever I’ve been ignoring for too long.

Meditation, I have to be honest, did not happen this month. The streak broke during the April Bangalore trip and never restarted. I’m going to stop pretending it’s a streak I’m rebuilding. The annual plan I wrote in December said something I’ve been ignoring: movement is my meditation. Swim, walking, PT. That is mindfulness for the way my brain works. June isn’t about rebuilding a sit-on-the-cushion habit. It’s about honouring the practice that actually works.

Finance & Investing

May was the month a long thread finally moved.

House stuff : big progress made this month. More coming on this.

Finance study : Nope, not much progress here. Life was too much packed. Pausing this for June, will restart in July.

Learning & Writing

April’s monthly report shipped on May 1st (here), keeping the publishing streak from breaking. I started Dandapani’s The Power of Unwavering Focus in the first week of May with a strong intuition that this was the right book for me right now. Then I let it slip through the busy weeks. I’m carrying it into June with the plane and train rides of the Japan trip as the perfect reading slot.

Daily Athlete with Ryan had good momentum in the first three days of May (redesign sessions, the workout creator framework) and then went slow progress as the month accelerated. Honestly,

The bigger learning of the month was unplanned: I’ve spent the last few days of May and the first of June deep in JAC and JoSAA rankings with Riya, modelling her option tree the same way I’d model a portfolio. There’s a strange pleasure in applying the analytical lens I’ve been building for finance to a decision that actually shapes her life. The next month is going to be a lot of this.

Mind & Meditation

I covered most of this in the Wellness section, but the underlying shift is worth naming on its own: I’m letting go of the meditation streak as a target. Not because the practice doesn’t matter, but because the streak framing has now failed for me consistently across three months. The annual plan, which I read again this month, was already pointing me to the answer. Movement is the meditation. Swim sessions, walking long distances in Bangalore, PT pushing me into a state of total focus : these are mindfulness for me.

And then there was Gauri. The day after the news, I sat for a long time on the hotel terrace in Bangalore. The reflection that came was simple. Life is so transient, enjoy each moment. I wrote that down in the journal. I’m carrying it forward.

Joy

May had two new dimensions.

The first was community initiation on May 24th. I’m deliberately not naming the community for my reasons, but it is a very significant event for me. I’ll keep the specifics off this post out of respect for the tradition. What I can say is that the room held people from genuinely different walks of life and that the conversations afterwards were unusually warm. There are seniors who have taken me on this new path and I am extremely grateful for that. The next meeting is in July. I’m curious to see how this thread unfolds across the year.

The second was personal training showing up as a joy source. I didn’t expect this. Three times a week, getting pushed past what I’d push myself to, watching my own technique improve session over session : it scratches the same itch that triathlon training used to. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be coached.

Other joy moments worth marking: the Vir Das show with Riya and a friend (worth every overpriced ticket), the Michael movie with a friend, an evening at a cafe in Indiranagar with sourdough pizza and the kind of conversation you can’t engineer. And the simple, real joy of Ryan finally getting his tres leches at Cyber Hub after weeks of asking :-D

The micro-adventure goal : pottery, woodwork, coffee roasting, flying lesson : has now been carried for five months without happening. I’m formally taking it off the May/June board. If it shows up later in Q3, great. If not, I’ll honestly acknowledge it isn’t actually something I want enough to do.

Travel

Kids’ passports are sorted : appointment May 18th, police verification May 19th, the whole cycle closed. This was the gating step for the Japan trip with Riya and Ryan, which is now happening June 11th to June 23rd. Tickets are booked, visa work was active across the second half of May with Jimeet, and most logistics will be locked in the first ten days of June.

Bihar with Mom : the trip I’ve been writing about every single month since January : did not happen in May. Gauri’s loss has reframed it for me. The trip stops being a calendar puzzle and becomes the thing it always was : time with my mother while we both have it. We are locking dates for the first week of July. No more “lock dates this week” language. The trip happens in the first month of Q3.

Office

The re-org I’ve been working on quietly across April and May is now close to agreed at the leadership level. I’m keeping specifics off the public posts but it’s been the most intellectually demanding work of the year so far : the kind where the relational work in Bangalore in April and the structural work in May come together. I’ll write about how I think about org design at some point, but not yet.

The Honest Scorecard

Pillar How It Went
Family & Relationships Strong. Showed up for Riya’s exams. Real time with Ryan. Gauri’s loss reframed everything.
Wellness & Fitness Mixed. PT became identity-level. Hyrox training real. Body sent a clear load signal on May 21st. Run/walk floor slipped due to hips. Sleep N=1 promising.
Finance & Investing Breakthrough. House stuff moved from stuck to active. Discipline finance goals continued to slip, being consolidated into July.
Learning & Writing Light. April report shipped. Dandapani book started, not finished. Daily Athlete momentum slowed.
Mind & Meditation Reframed. Meditation streak honestly dropped. Movement as meditation acknowledged. Journal evening floor is the new target.
Joy Two new dimensions. Initiation. PT as a joy source. Micro-adventure goal formally off the board.
Travel Active. Passports done. Japan locked for June. Bihar with Mom moved to July with new conviction.
Office Key Focus. Re-org close to agreed.

Looking Ahead to June

June restructures around a single anchor : the Japan trip with Riya and Ryan from June 11th to June 23rd. Thirteen days of the month are on the trip, which means June is really three windows : ten days before, the trip itself, and a week after.

The ten days before are for closing : the re-org, the house stuff, the car decisions (Mobilio out, Kushaq in), the overdue admin, locking Japan logistics, and mapping Riya’s college options with her before I’m out of country. The trip is for being present in Japan with the kids while staying reachable for the JoSAA decision rounds that will likely run during the trip. The week after is for landing the Riya college call and a soft Q2 close-out.

Finance work is consolidated into July. Time with friends is moved to later. Bihar with Mom moves to early July. That’s three things deliberately taken off June so the two things that actually matter : Japan with the kids and Riya’s college decision : get the room they need.

Hyrox is six weeks out at the end of June. The lighter, more deliberate training cadence will get me to the start line fresh instead of fried.

The May 28th lesson from Gauri runs through all of this : life is transient. Be there with the people you love, while you can.

I am a warrior monk.

This is part of a monthly series where I review my life across the pillars that matter to me. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s awareness. If you know where you are, you can choose where to go.