• Local-First: All the data generated with this app is stored in the local file within your own mobile. It is not stored in some cloud or remote data center. It is totally up to you to decide how you want to use this data. You can just leave it there or use other apps to back up those files where you are comfortable storing them.
• Data-Portable: The data generated by this app, which includes your configuration of the app as well as meditation experience notes, are stored in a JSON file. You can export this JSON file to anywhere you feel comfortable. Then, you can import that file into some other phone’s citta app and use it, or you can build on top of that file.
• Minimalist: It has basic settings and features. The app’s only job is to help you in your meditation. How you want to meditate is up to you. It will give you tools like timer/stopwatch; help play some soothing meditation background music or a mantra/chant; provide start, end, interval bells for your meditation session; record your thoughts; or show stats. It will not ask you to log in, it will not ask you to upgrade to a pro version, it will not ask you tons of questions to personalize your experience. Your personalized experience is the meditation itself, not the app. The app is only a supporting tool.

Why Did I Build This App?

I am not a pro in meditation, but I meditate every day for 15 minutes (if you do not meditate, do try it — it is simple and nice). I used multiple apps to time it as well as track my meditation sessions. I initially started with Google Clock, then slowly tried out various apps like Sattva, Idanim, Dhyana, etc., and finally landed on Insight Timer. Google Clock is very minimalist but I had issues with the sound and the lack of customization I needed. The rest of the apps had too many features, and I did not want so many features. For many, I had to log in for the app to even start working. Meditation is my personal space and I do not want an app to intrude on that experience. Insight Timer was the closest I liked, but again it had too many options, questions, and features, and it kept asking me to become a pro member. I also practice periodic reviews — weekly, monthly, yearly. It would have been nice to capture those meditation thoughts in the app and pull them into my periodic reviews. So, ideally I want to build simple workflows on top of the data the meditation app is generating — maybe some visualization or just documenting these notes into my general Obsidian vault. So, I decided to build a minimalist, local-first and data-portable meditation helper app.

The plan to build this app was in my to-do list. As the age of LLMs started, I thought — why not build this app using LLM-assisted agentic coding. I will learn about agentic coding and build the app at the same time. (The experience of developing using LLMs — I will talk about it in a separate blog and link it here ToDo)

What are the Features of this App?

• Timer with countdown and stopwatch modes
• Configurable bell sounds (start, end, interval)
• Configurable background music during meditation session
• Post meditation session notes with tags and markdown support
• Consistency tracking (streaks, stats, calendar)
• Daily spiritual quotes (Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras, Upanishads, and more)
• Export/import config and data
• Multi Language Support (25+ languages including Sanskrit)

Home Screen

Meditation Start Page

Timing the Meditation

Capture Thoughts and Experience Of Meditation

Stats Page

Settings Page

Development

• Github link: citta repository
• Framework: Flutter (Dart) — iOS + Android single codebase
• Storage: JSON files with atomic writes + backup for crash safety

How Do I Install It?

As of now the app is not yet published in the App Store for Android or iPhone. Since the app is not yet on the Play Store, you’ll need to install the APK directly by enabling developer mode on your Android phone. (I only have an Android phone, so iPhone instructions are not covered here.)

• Enable Developer Mode on your Android Phone
  • Example, for Google Pixel, Go to “Settings > About phone > Build number”. Tap “Build Number” 7 times to enable developer mode.
• Download the latest APK from the GitHub releases page
• Open the downloaded file. This will install the app on your phone.

Future Work

• Publish this to Android Play Store
• Publish this to iOS Play Store

Support

Give it a try! If you run into any issues or have suggestions, feel free to reach out or raise an issue in the GitHub repo

As the name suggests, in this book we get a bird’s eye view of how India’s Geography shaped over the life time of Earth. The different cycles of development and destruction can be read. It is fascinating to see the continuity of things and yet have so much diversity, as if everything is culminating to bring out a picture which is still in progress. It feels proud about the earliest histories and their achievements - Sarswathi-Sindhu civilization, Mauryan empire, Guptas, Cholas, sea trades across various countries. And yet the pain it hits when the decline starts around 10th century - how things start to turn. It also feels like so many opportunities missed to revive it - some hopes were Akbars rule, Vijayanagar Empire and then it again falls off. It is also interesting to see how the British and Europeans went about in understanding the sea as well Indian Land. They continuously learnt from their mistakes and kept improving.

Definitely a nice read to give the overview of how India of today exists.

I am currently using Claude Code and I have Pro subscription. I am right now trying to build a mobile app for tracking my dhyana sessions. Here are my learnings from this session.

• Learnt that we have a planning mode in the Claude Code. I can go into it by using shift + tab. I learned about it primarily from inverted passion blog post and also I had read from other x posts & blogs. In this mode, you are basically trying to discuss with a colleague to better understand your idea, expand the thoughts, finally iron out the requirements, come up with the milestones and finally generate list of simple actionable tasks to achieve those milestones.
• As I interacted with the Claude, I felt things that used to take a lot of time in research and decision making has reduced a lot. If LLM was not there and I am starting it out alone, the amount of research I had to make as well as number of choices I have to go through to finalize on some approach is significant and many times it would have led to decision paralysis. I would not have moved further. With LLM, this completely collapses. LLM gives you finite options with simple pros and cons. It also helps me to drive down to understand better about the choices.
  • There was one thought that lingered on. While making decision, we used to talk to multiple people to get varying point of view. And then finally we used to make a decision or choice. With the LLM, it felt like I am only talking to just one person. As a result, less confidence on the choice to take. If there is some experimental offering which exactly suits my use-case but not well known, LLM might not know about it, and chances are it won’t even mention it. I guess even for human interaction same may apply. Just that, I felt this.
• As I chatted with LLM, clearer ideas started coming in. So, this discussion is forcing me to think through more or make a conscious effort to understand my own thoughts. It’s like writing to some extent where I am trying to clarify my own requirements and understanding.
• Once it generated the milestones and individual tasks, I reviewed it. I had to explicitly state that put it in a doc for reference for me and also had to ask it to put it in some tracking mechanism like github issues. It chose github issues but I don’t see that it has actually added them yet. But, it is saying it has already completed implementation. So, probably it is best to give this instruction as requirement of the project setup itself to handle it via github issues. As it completes individual task/milestone, update github issues to see the progress.
  • So, I need to prompt in such a way that I can actually go through one by one atomic tasks. Ask it to complete one atomic task, review it with me and then go ahead with next one. Otherwise lot of work would have been done and it would be difficult to follow through.
• It was about to push the code to git repo and then I asked what kind of validation has been done. It reported nothing is done on validation. This was a red light for me. I had to ask it to validate it and then it had some issues.
  • So, probably I should make a mechanism such that these need to be done by default when writing code unless explicitly stated not to do. We should reverse it. Like without tests written, executed and validated, do not push to github repo. When trying to install some software, ASK the user to do it rather than try it yourself.
  • There is a fine balance as well, we need to give some freedom for faster development but we also need control on what is being done to better judge. Example, asking permissions to read from web or executing some of the python commands or tasks could be done without asking for permission as long as it is only touching its current working directory. But it needs to ask permission for going to new milestone or task, for installing apps, etc.
• It has produced a lot of code. In fact, my daily limit got breached and had to stop it. But, I do not understand the code yet. I need to read through the code, understand it and then only allow it to push to the github.

The use my personal laptop for few things at home

• Personal Home Management Tool - Keeping track of tasks, accounting, preparing documents, investigating about various chores, etc.
• Personal Home Entertainment System - We do not have a separate T.V. at home. Any entertainment we want to view is via this personal compute and a big monitor.
• Development Machine - Used for our personal tech projects. Both me and my wife has our own login and we code and build stuff.

OS installation

I use Ubuntu as the operating system. During the installation go for advanced option in-order to select the preferred partition. Here is the partitions I use in Ubuntu.

• 128 Gb for root(/)
• 1 Gb for /boot
• 32 Gb for swap (equal to the RAM size - can be less if need be)
• Rest is reserved for /home

Software Installations

• Register the OS installation in the UbuntuPro
• Install Vivaldi web browser
  • Install it via App Center.
  • Make Vivaldi default browser - Settings > Apps > Default Apps > Web (set to Vivaldi)
  • Login to Vivaldi - in-order to carry forward the configurations, setting, recover tabs if needed
  • I use Crystal Blue as light theme
  • I use Western Ghats as dark theme
  • Install following extensions
    • Obsidian Web Clipper
    • Instapaper
    • Zoho Notebook
• Install ghostty terminal
  • Install it via App Center
  • Copy the config and place it in the directory as mentioned in README file.
    • Install the fonts as mentioned in the README file.
• Set zsh as the default shell
  • Install zsh shell if it is not already installed. Here is a reference for steps
    • Verify if present which zsh
    • echo $0 should output /usr/bin/zsh
    • Install zsh sudo apt install zsh
    • change to zsh shell - chsh -s $(which zsh)
• Install build essentials
  • Essentials for other packages - sudo apt install build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev libyaml-dev libffi-dev
  • Install Rust Language - https://rust-lang.org/tools/install/
  • Install Go Language from the App Center
  • Install Mise(mise-en-place) from App Center to manage - node, npm, node, python and ruby
    • add eval "$(mise activate zsh)" to ~/zshrc file if not added automatically
    • Install node - mise use -g node
    • Install npm - mise use -g npm
    • Install pnpm - mise use -g pnpm
    • Install ruby - mise use -g ruby
    • Install python -mise use -g python
  • Install curl - sudo apt-get install curl. Do not use snap for this as it has some issues for later zellij and rust installation.
• Install Git and configure Github
  • Git Installation - sudo apt install git-all
  • Setup up git global parameters
    • git config --global user.email "harsha.kadekar@gmail.com"
    • git config --global user.name "Harsha Kadekar"
  • Configure Github to operated with the current laptop ssh keys.
    • Generate new ssh keys - ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "harsha.kadekar@gmail.com"
    • Add the key to the Github profile
• Install Terminal enhancers
  • Install oh-my-zsh
  • Install plug-ins of oh-my-zsh
    • zsh-autosuggestions install via oh-my-zsh (git cloning)
    • zsh-syntax-highlighting install via oh-my-zsh (git cloning)
  • Install Zellij
    • Install via cargo - cargo install --locked zellij
    • Copy the configuration as mentioned in README file.
    • Add alias zellij="zellij -l welcome" to ~/.zshrc file
  • Install htop - enhanced top
    • Install via App Center.
  • Install Yazi - terminal file manager
    • Install via App Center.
• Install editors and IDE
  • Install helix terminal editor
    • Install via App Center
  • Install NeoVim
    • Install via App Center
    • Install vim-plug plugin-manager
    • Copy the nvim config as mentioned in the README file.
    • Install plug-ins by opening nvim and run command :PlugInstall
  • Install Zed editor
    • Add export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH to ~/.zshrc file
  • Install Jetbrains IDE
    • Install toolbox via .tar.gz file. Extract and run the script (follow readme inside).
    • Install following IDEs
      • Idea
      • RustRover
      • Pycharm
      • Getway
• Create a folder workspace folder
  • mkdir $HOME/workspace
• Install Obsidian
  • Install by downloading the .deb file (do not install via snap/App center - it has issues with the Obsidian Web Clipper browser extension)
  • Clone the Obsidian Vault from Github Repository at location $HOME/workspace
  • Setup Obsidian as mentioned in this blog post (ToDo://add obsidian setup post link)
• Install KeePassXC
  • Install via App Center
• Install Claude Code
  • Login
  • Set-up claude (ToDo:// add personal claude code setup post link)
• Pull In Fusion Rss Feed Reader
  • ./scripts.sh build
  • Copy over the fusion db and env config file from the cloud drive to build folder
• Install Spotify
  • Install via App Center
• Install Arattai
• Add ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada) Language Support in Ubuntu
  • In Language Support add ಕನ್ನಡ
  • In Settings > Keyboard > Input Sources add Kannada (KaGaPa, phonetic)
• Some Repositories I use often
  • My blog - https://github.com/harsha-kadekar/harsha-kadekar.github.io
    • Git clone the repository at location $HOME/workspace
    • In the repository folder, execute bundle install
    • Add this alias alias dry-run-blog="bundle exec jekyll serve" in ~/.zshrc file.
    • In the repository folder, execute dry-run-blog to verify the blog gets hosted in localhost
  • Obsidian To Github Pages Converter - https://github.com/harsha-kadekar/ObsidianToGithubPages
    • Git clone the repository at location $HOME/workspace
    • Install dependencies as mentioned in the README file
    • Add this alias alias transform-to-blog='/home/harsha/workspace/ObsidianToGithubPages/obsidian_to_githubpages.py --obsidian_local_vault "/home/harsha/workspace/pusthaka" --github_pages_repo_local "/home/harsha/workspace/harsha-kadekar.github.io" --blog_folder "Blog"' in ~/.zshrc file
    • Execute tranform-to-blog command to verify it is working
• Install StayFree
  • Install StayFree in linux
    • Connect to the App
  • Install StayFree web browser extension
    • Connect to the App
• Install Secondary Softwares (Optional)
  • Install alacritty terminal
    • Install via App Center
  • Install ullaa web browser

Configure Wife User

We want to have separate users but also a shared folder to exchange date between us. Claude helped me to come up with these steps

• Create user sudo adduser anu
• Add anu to sudo group sudo usermod -aG sudo harsha
  • Log In to anu user and change to zsh shell
  • Log Off & Log In to harsha user
• Create kadekar group - sudo groupadd kadekar
• Add users to the kadekar group
  • sudo usermod -aG kadekar harsha
  • sudo usermod -aG kadekar anu
• Create a shared folder in /home
  • sudo mkdir /home/shared
  • sudo chown root:kadekar /home/shared
  • sudo chmod 2770 /home/shared
• Set unmask in shell profiles to make sure both of us create files having permission for kadekar group.
  • echo "umask 002" | sudo tee -a /home/harsha/.zshrc
  • echo "umask 002" | sudo tee -a /home/anu/.zshrc
• Create symlinks for the shared folder within our home directories
  • ln -s /home/shared ~/shared
  • sudo -u anu ln -s /home/shared /home/anu/shared

We have planned for Japan trip in few months. Anu got this book to understand about the places we are visiting and Tokyo city in general. This is a first time that I saw a tour guide in comic style. It was great. It gave so many useful information about the places, culture, language and people. It provided many useful sentences in Japanese that any non Japanese speaking tourist can use during the travel. It also explained cultural things that one needs to keep in mind.

I so wish that we have similar books in India for different states/cities to better understand the people, the culture, the language and the places.

• what are the achievements/celebrations I had in that year?
• what are the habit related improvements I saw Or any behavioural improvements in me?
• what needs improvement?
• what are my wish-list/goals?

What are the accomplishments/Celebrations?

• I was able to meet my goal of reading minimum 12 books in a year and publishing 12 blog posts in the year. (list of books I read in 2025)
• This is also the year when AI/LLM became a thing for me. I feel like there are rapid growths in that field which will have an impact on the Software Engineering field. I tried a couple of things with the help of LLM to test out the LLM skills
  • Created a chrome extension using LLM for helping with bookmarking web pages - github link
  • Created a chrome extension to help with avoiding doom scrolling websites like X, Youtube and Reddit.
• I created an Arattai Channel & an WhatsApp Channel where I share relevant blog posts/articles that helps Software Engineers grow their career.
• I learned about DNS and how it works by going through - https://wizardzines.com/zines/dns/
  • Though, I may want to refresh it again this year.
• I wanted to learn Rust Programming language. I read the book - https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/
  • Though, I do not have much depth in Rust yet but its a start.
• Before beginning of the year, my wife and I had planned to visit a few places in 2025. This is the first time, we planned our vacations for the whole year at the start of the year. We were able to cover most of them -
  • Long Beach & Cape Disappointment, Washington, USA
  • Spokane & Palouse Falls, Washington, USA
  • Hiked to Big Four Ice Caves, Washington, USA -> Akshara’s First Hike
  • Deception Pass, Washington, USA
  • Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park, Fresno, California, USA
  • North Cascades National Park, Diablo Lake & Diablo Dam, Washington, USA
  • Alaska - Anchorage, Kenai Fjords National Park, Knik Glacier, Portage Glacier, Seward, USA
  • Detroit & Chicago
  • Phoenix & Sedona
• On the financial side, it is trending in the right direction. Retirement corpus has increased, index funds portion has increased, emergency funds are sufficiently stocked up.
• We started preparing our own ತುಪ್ಪ (Ghee) at home. I cooked a whole lot of recipes, some notable ones are
  • Babycorn Soup
  • ಶಾವಿಗೆ ಚಿತ್ರನ್ನ (Shavige Chitranna)
  • ಗೊಜ್ಜು ಅವಲಕ್ಕಿ (Gojju Avalakki)
  • ಕೋಸಂಬರಿ (Kosambari)
  • ಬಿಸಿಬೇಳೆ ಬಾತ್ (Bisibele Bath)
  • ಗೋಬಿ 65 (Gobi 65)
  • ಆಲು ಪರಾಠ (Aloo Paratha)
  • ಸಾಂಬರ್ (Saambar)
  • ಪಾಲಕ್ ಪನ್ನೀರ್ (Paallak Paneer)

What are the habit related improvements I saw or any behavioural improvements in me?

This year was consistency towards my habits. Reviews like daily, weekly, monthly and yearly became regular. Based on these reviews, I did many important changes. I start my day at 5:30 AM in the morning, do Sooryanamaskara, do pranayama and Dhyana. I am regularly tracking core habits. Core Habits are some of the tasks that I need to do in regular interval to keep me sane. Some of the core habits are daily Yoga, daily Dhyana, daily walking, daily spending time with wife and daughter, daily focused work, reading book, coding, reviews, etc. This I developed after reading Backpack Personal unit tests. I am giving dedicated time for family. With wife & daughter, I like to spend time doing regular walking, cooking, watching videos or playing or even just talking.

What needs improvement?

• “Deliver Results” - In 2025, I started 4 projects, but none of them got completed. For 2026, the target is to complete one project.
• Regarding health, I need to reduce my body weight to bring my BMI to the green band. As of now, it is at yellow. I also want to get more sleep. This year I did regular ಏಕಾದಶಿ ಉಪವಾಸ (Ekadeshi fasting). After seeing these videos Lecture on ‘Successful Ageing: Ayurvedic Perspective - Part 1 , Lecture on ‘Successful Ageing: Ayurvedic Perspectives’ - Part 2, I want to change the way I do fasting to be more effective. To be precise, I want to achieve 24 hour fasting.
• The other aspect, I want to improve is the extended family and friends interactions. I want to make it more consistent/regular calls.
• “Front Load Heavy Work “ - Even though reviews are super helpful, they take a lot of time. Hence, I want to optimize it. From next year, I want to front load heavy stuff of the reviews. To explain, it is okay to spend little bit more time in daily reviews so that weekly reviews can be little bit lighter. Spend more time on weekly reviews to make the monthly reviews lighter. Spend little bit more time on monthly reviews to make the yearly reviews lighter. I think this is because, I cannot get a big chunk of dedicated time to do the reviews, hence it is okay to expand small chunks of daily, weekly or monthly reviews.

What are my wish-list/goals?

So, here are the things I would want to achieve in 2026.

• Build personal blog in Rust and deploy in a cloud service.
• Read Head First Design Patterns
• Read 12 books and publish book summary or opinions for each of them
• Publish 12 non summary blog posts

Insights and Some Learnings

• Make LLM/AI your tool and don’t become a tool of AI/LLM - The relationship with LLM and why I need to use them has evolved over time in this year. I kind of understand that it’s a tool that needs to be mastered to be effective in the future. Rather than fearing that tool, look at it as an opportunity and learn to utilize it. I have some predictions or opinions
  • I feel with the advent of AI, a good developer’s value increases
  • More custom software will be built
  • It removes the barrier for entering into a new programming language or new project. Or basically, it shortens the research phase of the project.
  • AI can do research, it can produce what is told to be done but it cannot think on its own or direct its thought to generate new ideas. I, as a human, have to be there to direct LLMs energy in the right direction. As a human, my plus points are thinking of new ideas. Understanding in depth and creativity (coming up with new ideas) will triumph in this new world.
  • I should use the AI as my pair programmer. It helps in learning. I can ask something to look for or explain some concept. It can also do tasks but I will not learn from it. I need to constantly remind myself that it is there to teach me and not necessarily to do all the tasks. It helps to automate stuff that I do not want to invest time to dive deep on.
  • As I read more on AI, more people are saying it is an art and it needs time and effort investment to get good at it. It is a new necessary tool that needs to be learnt to be better at Software Development.
  • I have now started Claude Subscription.
• Complete What You Start - Reading the Rust book was very time consuming with minimal effect. It dragged on. As it took more time, I lost interest and also I forgot what I learnt in the earlier chapters. Multiple times I questioned why not just stop reading this and move on to another project. But I reminded myself that I start things and leave them halfway too often. So, I stuck with it and completed it.
  • For reading the technical books, I need to do 2 pass technique. 1st pass - just read but fast. This is to get adjusted to the topic. Then 2nd pass go depth which I feel are needed.
• Do not remain in indecision - Indecision will fester and become even more problematic. Decide something and many of the choices will disappear, which will optimize you for one path. You will be more lean and adaptable for future changes.
• Commit Less and Deliver More - I want to do many things. Desire to do things is easy. Hence, I start a lot. Slowly, I will realize, I have too much on my plate. Then, we start eliminating them. Rather than doing this, commit less. Finish what I committed and then pick up new things.
  • In a day, I can have max one goal
  • In a week, max 2 goals
  • In a month, max 3 goals
  • In a year, max 4 goals.

• You should keep a developer’s journal
• How to Make Your Code Reviewer Fall in Love with You
• How I ship projects at big tech companies
• How do you decide what to work on?
• The Art of Delegating
• The DECIDE Algorithm — A Simple Step-by-Step Method for Converting Idle Time into Productive Action
• Good Engineer/Bad Engineer
• Why Good Programmers Use Bad AI
• AI Changes Everything
• The Framework Desktop is a beast
• Don’t delegate understanding
• Deconstructing the “Shishupal Syndrome”
• Manage For Success, Not Comfort
• My weekly review habit
• Why LLMs Can’t Really Build Software
• College advice for people who are exactly like me
• The Absurdity of Modern Tools
• Committing At Least One Line Each Day for Five Years
• Career Leverage as a Developer
• AI Coding
• Writing Code Was Never The Bottleneck
• you are a good person
• Self Discovery and Career Growth to Principal Engineering
• The 6 Words That Almost Got an NVIDIA Exec Fired
• Code coverage goal: 80% and no less!
• Making Sense of a Noisy World
• On the Edge of Competence
• What I’d do as a College Freshman in 2025
• Pay yourself first
• Introducing “Moments”
• Say Goodbye
• Availability Numbers Every Programmer Should Know
• The Best Developer I Have Ever Met Was the Worst
• Gambling is Bad
• How to go through a layoff
• Why backlogs are harmful, why they never shrink, and what to do instead
• More People ≠ Faster Delivery
• Expect Less, Get More?
• Why your retrospectives don’t work and how to fix them
• Getting Big Things Done
• Focus on the Good Parts
• How Do You Spend Your Time?
• The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise
• Why your daily stand-ups don’t work and how to fix them
• Exorcise the Ghost of Mediocrity
• Writing For Somebody
• Switching from Synchronous to Asynchronous Mode of Coding
• Trust is everything
• AI and Home-Cooked Software
• The Kāśyapa Syndrome: When Personal Greed Betrays Collective Good
• 90%
• The Fallacy of Passion
• Why I Want to Write (Again)
• What Actually Makes You Senior
• Ideas Arise Through Action
• To get better at technical writing, lower your expectations
• Lecture on ‘Successful Ageing: Ayurvedic Perspective - Part 1 , Lecture on ‘Successful Ageing: Ayurvedic Perspectives’ - Part 2
• Vibe Coding Is Creating Braindead Coders
• How I provide technical clarity to non-technical leaders
• Pushovers Finish Last — Learn to Say No
• Performance and efficiency
• Am I RICH or POOR? Who decides this – Me or Society?
• A Year Of Vibes
• How to review your retirement portfolio?
• Is it better for a young family to rent than to buy a home?
• The Poverty Myth - Why Most People Stay Broke (By Choice)

• The Rust Programming Language by Steve Klabnik
• Kindergarten Is Too Late! by Masaru Ibuka
• Folk Tales From Japan - Fables, Myths And Fairy Tales For Children by Florence Sakade
• What Do You Do With an Idea? by Kobi Yamada
• What Do You Do With a Problem? by Kobi Yamada
• What Do You Do With a Chance? by Kobi Yamada
• Ramayana Unravelled: Lesser Known Facets of Rishi Vālmiki’s Epic by Ami Ganatra (Here is my summary of this book)
• Being Mortal: Medicine and What matters in the End by Atul Gawande (Here is my summary of this book)
• Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by L. David Marquet (Here is my summary of this book)
• Stepping Beyond Khaki: Revelations of a Real-Life Singham by K. Annamalai
• ಕನಕ ಮುಸುಕು - Kanaka Musuku by K. N. Ganeshaiah
• The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli
• The Financial Diet by Chelsea Fagan
• ತಿಮ್ಮನ ತಲೆ - Thimmanna Thale by Beechi
• Stories for the Innocent by C. Rajagopalachari

I learnt about the retirement goals and how to find the target corpus for the first time in Monika Halan’s podcast - Lets Talk Money (episode, episode). Based on that, I calculated my target retirement corpus. After the call, I went back to my notes on finding my target retirement amount. Here are the steps -

First step, is identifying the monthly expense that we will be having when we retire. This is tricky to calculate, especially when we are away from the city where we plan to retire. There are multiple factors to consider. Here are some things to consider

• are we planning to have an own house or are we going live in rented house?
• what would be our recurring Medical and Health costs?
• House Maintenance Cost
• Travel expenses like vehicle maintenance, travel tickets, etc
• Eating out expense and other luxury cost
• Child Care cost There will be other factors as well that need to be considered. Based on all my needs, let’s assume that I would need ₹1,00,000 per month as expenses. Then, for an year, it would be ₹12,00,000.

Second step is determining the age when we want to retire. We would need this to calculate the inflation-adjusted annual expense. This is also very subjective. Some like to continue till the late years like 75 and some wants to retire as soon as possible like 50. Let’s assume, it would be at 60 years of age is when I am retiring and lets assume my age now is 37 years. Hence, I need to calculate the amount which is equal to ₹12,00,000 after 23 years.

Third step is finding the inflation-adjusted annual expense at the year of retirement. Use an inflation calculator to find that value. Here are some of the example online calculators - SBI, SEBI, Groww that we can use. If we consider the data since 1960, India has seen an average inflation of 7.37% (source: 1, 2, 3). If we consider recent trend, inflation in India is trending to be around 6-7%. In our example, the value of current expenses would be ₹12,00,000 rupees and let’s take our annual inflation rate as 7% and time period would be 23 years. This would give a result of ₹56,88,636 (if 6% is considered then it would be ₹45,83,700). This means, we would need ₹56,88,636 at the age of 60 to meet the same expenses that we used to handle with ₹12,00,000 in the current year.

Fourth step is finding the retirement corpus. One option is multiply the inflated annual expense by 30 magic number. Why 30? you may ask. It derives from 2 things - what would be our yearly Safe Withdrawal Rate during retirement and how is our retirement fund constituted (debt vs equity ratio) in-order to keep growing the corpus. SWR - the percentage you can withdraw annually without depleting your retirement corpus. In the USA, the usual SWR is 4% with the corpus typically split 60-40 between equity and debt ( which is re-balanced towards debt as we age). If we use 4%, then 25 is the multiplier (multiplier = 100/SWR). In India, the recommended SWR is around 3 - 3.5% which roughly translates to 28-33 multiplier. I am taking that middle ground of 30 multiplier which translates to SWR as 3.33%. In our example, we had calculated the inflation-adjusted annual expense as ₹56,88,636, hence the target retirement corpus would be 30x56,88,636 = ₹17,06,59,080. This is just the goal value we should be targeting. Remember money also grows continuously as we save and invest towards this corpus.

If you want to dive deeper into the research behind these numbers, here are some excellent resources: (Claude helped me in doing this research) -

• Balancing Acts: Safe Withdrawal Rates in the Indian Context - SSRN
• Safe Withdrawal Rates in India (1992-2024) - SSRN
• Does the 4% Rule Work in India? - Arthgyaan
• Safe Withdrawal Rate India - Basunivesh
• US related - Bengen (1994) - Determining Withdrawal Rates Using Historical Data
• US related - Trinity Study (1998) - Retirement Savings: Choosing a Withdrawal Rate That Is Sustainable

So, to conclude, there are lot of variables that need to be considered in-order to come to the comfortable retirement corpus that suits individual family. The simple formula is

7% inflation-adjusted target annual expense to the retirement age x 30.

Think through the scenarios and consider what applies to you and what does not. In all these calculations, I feel there are 2 things which are under our control - annual expense and periodic saving/investments.

• I see annual expense is the key as you are directly responsible for it. So, Optimize it. Optimize does not mean being stringent and starve your desires. Rather, analyze and think what are those unnecessary things you are spending on that are not for your or your families satisfaction but for the societal pressure and fear of missing out feelings. Then, eliminate them.
• Based on your circumstances, think of regularly saving and investing the money for retirement. It can be small and slowly grow as you bring more financial discipline. Think of tracking your expenses, total worth, creating Systematic Investment Plans (SIP) for regular grow-able investments.

To end with, here is a table with variations in different parameters to get the sense of the retirement corpus targeted for 2048 (23 years from now).

Ramayana Unravelled, book by Ami Ganatra is a fascinating read. It had lot of “ah! I had not thought it like this” moments as I read through the book. There were many things which I thought to belonged to actual Ramayana but aren’t. I realized Rishi Valmiki’s Ramayana is eternal and relevant to the current age. This has given me another boost shot to spend sometime weekly to read Ramayana from its source.

I have not read the Ramayana written by Rishi Valmiki. I knew about the overall story of Ramayana. I have read or listened to different versions of Ramayana stories which are like re-written or condensed versions from the source. Due to the very nature of these stories and the way it is communicated, I had developed a not so favorable opinion of the entire story. I felt that it may not be relevant in the current times. The values prescribed in the book might be too idealistic and not applicable in the current time frame.

This book was an eye opener. It explains popular sub stories/incidents of the Ramayana in a very clear way. It is explained in such a way that the values, the situations and the decision process during these incidents feels so relevant to current times. Each characters action and thinking is very pragmatic. Many of the popular stories associated to Ramayana is actually not present in the Rishi Valmiki’s Ramayana. They were from later rewritten versions and had lot of extra stories introduced to appeal to the people of that era.

I feel that anyone in India should read Valmiki’s Ramayana from an young age in Sanskrit. This not only teaches our culture but also gives a practical framework for handling any situation in a Dharmic way. There is so much to learn from each characters whether it is Rama, Lakshmana, Seeta, Hanumantha, Bharatha, Sugreeva and many more. Here is an example - “Rishi Valmiki explains that for a person to achieve success in life, following characteristics are important - “

• Dhriti - strong willpower that keeps one firm in one’s resolve
• Dhrishti - Vision or wisdom to see long term consequences
• Mathi - Intellect for objective reasoning
• Dakshya - Skill/capability in implementation

The book also gives the historical perspective of how our ancestors lived. The other aspect I realized, is that a person who knows Sanskrit would enjoy Ramayana even more with the way Valmiki has written it. The information is condensed and yet communicated to the fullest. This is based on the few Sanskrit shlokas quoted in the book. Example, to describe Rama he explains “रामो विग्रहवान् धर्मः (Ramo Vigrahavan Dharmah - Rama is dharma incarnate)”

Overall, a must read book! Even if you have read Ramayana from source, I feel Ami Ganatra’s narration blends in her management lessons expressed via Ramayana adhering to Valmiki’s content, gives a new perspective.