The Year that was 2025

The year 2025 has been a decent year personally. I got to focus on and spend time with family, friends, and on personal growth. The work has been decent. I am still able to explore, learn, and apply new things. It helped that I am mostly off popular social media, spend very little time on WhatsApp, and choose to live in a very slow news cycle.

• We continue to live in two cities, but this year’s visits to Thrissur have been limited to Uma’s school holidays, so there have been considerably fewer days in Thrissur than last year.
• I wrote 52 weekly notes this year, and almost all of them on time. It is going well. I also reached the 100 blog posts a year milestone. There are still many blog posts in draft. I hope to publish more in 2026.
• I tried two 30-day challenges in 2025. I failed at the first one very badly. The second one is  #30DaysOfWatercoloring, it’s almost three weeks old now. It’s been going well. I hope to do more 30-day challenges in 2026.
• Except for the cervical radiculopathy related pain in the first half of 2025. My health is doing okay. In the second half, I focused on building strength and fitness. I plan to continue that. I also want to play more with friends. It’s the best way to spend time with friends.
• Due to cervical radiculopathy, I couldn’t ride most of the year. But I did ride to Kuppalli with friends and also did a small ride to Manju’s farm. Sandeep joined us for Kuppalli’s ride; we were riding together after a decade. It’s always fun to ride with school and college friends. It allowed us to have many interesting conversations over the intercom and in the evenings. I hope to be in better physical condition in 2026 to ride more and have more conversations, at least two or three.
• We went to Lankhavi to celebrate Uma’s birthday. We all loved it. There is nothing much to do other than beaches, but beaches, people, and food make it one of the best locations. I turned 45 this year, and we went to Kumarkom and spent some time there doing nothing. But I did post lots of postcards. Work took me to Chennai, Mumbai, and Jaipur this year. I spent time finding coffee in Jaipur. Earlier this year, I could take a break from work and go to Kumbha Mela. This is my second full Kumbha Mela and third in total. I didn’t take many pictures, but I did enjoy traveling with friends and just roaming around Varanasi. Another memorable trip was a weekend drive to Mysore Zoo with Uma’s cousins. She loved the zoo and company. I want to do that more.
• I continue to map surveillance in Bangalore and update IDVC prices. I restarted the #OpenPostboxIndia project. I continue to contribute to OSM and other community projects. This year, I also became a supporting member of the Python Software Foundation, along with OSM and FSF.
• I also got to work on lots of interesting projects this year, some at Peppo, some at IITM. It’s been a hectic but productive year overall.
• We had the highest NMG grant this year, about 4.3 + 1 (EDU) Lakhs in total, thanks to all friends. I also made the education grant a separate item. We are sponsoring a kid from the neighborhood, so no calls for the edu grant yet, and there won’t be until she graduates. We have completed eight years and are entering the ninth. It feels like yesterday.
• Finally, I got a powerful laptop for my work. It’s a Thinkpad T14, It’s a good companion to my trusty LC230.
• I have been listening to more music this year. I also subscribed to YT Premium this year, primarily for ad-free YT, but I also use it to listen to music. I continue to use my home Navidrome setup as my primary source for music. I have become active on ListenBrainz, and I have started scrobling to and maintaining my public playlists there. I plan to publish the top songs in my weekly notes sourced from ListenBrainz.
• It’s been a great year as a parent to Uma, Pathu, and Echo. Uma started going to school this year, and she loves it. I enjoy routine jobs like dropping her off and picking her up. Pathu is an adult now, and she behaves like one. Uma and Pathu share a sisterly relationship, which means sometimes they fight and other times you can’t separate them. Echo is an elderly gentleman. He is getting a bit old and tired, which is why our road trips now need quite a few breaks.
• I couldn’t have done many things without a partner like Anju. Also, I can’t be thankful enough for the number of amazing and generous friends that I have. Some of them live in the same city and the same neighborhood, how lucky am I?  
• I did my only blood donation this year at IMA, Thrissur. I missed the whole of 2024. I was very active in donating in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Hopefully, I get to do it at least twice in 2026. Anyway, now I am officially into double digits.
• I have been writing these yearly posts since 2007, making this the 18th in the series. Now I feel old :)

The world still hasn’t recovered from the events of late 2010 and early 2020s. It might take a long time for it to heal. All I can do is build and support a better space around me and hope it scales, or like the last lines of my favorite song of 2025, ಹೋರಾಟ says “ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಕಡೆ ಕೊಳಕಿದೆ, ಆದರೂ ನಾ ಬದುಕಿದೆ”. “There is mess everywhere, yet I live”, and sometimes just living is enough.

Even so, be generous, be kind, and keep doing whatever you are doing. Happy New Year to you all, and wishing us all the very best in 2026.