Writing a blog, or learning to write, has been my practice since 2010.

It began when the late Ranjan Acharya, Head of Wipro HR, asked me to. He said one learns to write by writing. So I started.

At first I shared my writing with a handful of mentors. A safe harbour. Then came sundaysambar.blogspot.com, then thewayiseethat.blogspot.com, and now kokorozendo.life.

After moving to the Zendo, I started sharing my blogs with Fr. AMA.

One day, after I shared a blog titled "Mountain, Desert and Metaphors for Change!", he summoned me to his room.

It was late afternoon. He was seated at his desk, papers and books scattered around him in their own mysterious order. Beside his study chair was that old wooden chair, the one meant for his guests. He would point out that chair and beckon his guests to sit down, if he was intending a long talk. He pointed to that chair. I sat down, wondering what trouble I had gotten myself into.

Then  he told me, “You write OK. Interesting to read.”

Six words.

I have received bouquets of appreciation before from family and friends,  team members, bosses, by clients. But this one was worth its weight in gold.

But he was not finished.

He said he would introduce me to Cyrus Mistry and Jill Mistry. Cyrus is a Sahitya Akademi award-winning author. He and Jill have a residence in Kodaikanal. Cyrus’s brother is Rohinton Mistry, a well-known author nominated three times for the Booker Prize, who once even appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show. A student who had just been told he writes OK was suddenly being handed a door into that family.

Then he asked me to read Natalie Goldberg’s book and, if possible, attend one of her writing courses. He knew her. But he could not trace her email address. That door he could only point at.

Fr. AMA was one of those who suggested that I gather the blogs and compile them into a book. The other was Komal Jain, a good friend.

When I asked Fr. AMA to write the foreword for my first book, Fallen Flower, Fragrant Grass, I thought it was a formality. Teachers write these things. Students ask. A paragraph arrives, a signature at the bottom, and the book looks a little more respectable.

I did not expect more than that.

He did.

He insisted that I share the draft. Not a title, not a summary. The draft. Even though he had already read most of it as blog posts.

I sent it.

Then nothing.

A week went by. More than a week. No message, no word. I decided he had forgotten, and I did not hold it against him. He had a hundred things heavier than a student’s book.

Then one day he sent for me.

And then he shared his foreword.

He wrote that he liked very much my experience in the “Arabian desert in the moonlight under the starry sky, pregnant with unspeakable silence.” Of everything in the book, that was the passage he singled out.

That was his way of doing things.

He read the blogs. He spoke to me face to face. He opened doors. He asked for the manuscript. Then came the foreword.

Absolutely complete, like an Enso circle.

Nothing left hanging. Nothing taken back.

Of all the acknowledgement and appreciation I have received in my life, that short foreword is the one I treasure most.

And in it, one sentence has stayed with me more than anything else.

The Latin poet Terence expressed it as: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.

I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.

Looking back, I think that sentence explained him better than any spiritual title ever could.

He met scholars and labourers, saints and scoundrels, earnest seekers and impossible students with the same spacious humanity.

Nothing human seemed alien to him.

In a way, that is the core of all spiritual teaching.

Spiritual seeking is not a mindless attempt to transcend human life. It is an attempt to become a humane human.

Nothing more exotic than that. Nothing less difficult either.

He taught it in one-liners.

Many of his emails arrived in the very early morning, as if some encounter from the previous day had settled overnight and emerged as a sentence or two.

On 23 August 2025, one such email arrived:

“Vishy, others may be mean, bad; let us not be mean or bad. Let us be always humble, grateful, kind and compassionate.

Ama Samy”

He did not say who the others were. I was the one at the other end of their malicious stick. And I had  given back more than I received from them. Yet he did not talk down to me. He wrote "Let us"—as if he were part of me and I of him. As his uchi-deshi, his live-in student, I felt he was taking responsibility for my response too.

But to me it was a reminder of the teaching from that foreword: Nothing human is alien to me.

Others may be mean or bad. That too is part of the human condition.

The task is not to become mean or bad in return, but to remain humble, grateful, kind and compassionate.

In June I requested him to write a foreword for my second book, Zendo Chronicles: Where Air Becomes Breath.

This time he said he had already read the blogs. He did not need a manuscript.

He would write one after his trip to Europe.  The trip was in September.

Now and then I would wonder about it.

Then I would smile. He had made me wait more than a week for the first foreword.

Perhaps he was making me wait again.

On 7 November, Fr. AMA passed away peacefully.

The foreword never came.

And yet, as I look back, I realise he had already written it.

Not for the book. For the life.

He wrote it when he read the blogs. He wrote it when he told me, “You write OK. Interesting to read.” He wrote it when he opened doors to writers and teachers. He wrote it in those early-morning emails. And he wrote it in the sentence he borrowed from Terence and embodied every day:

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.

For a man who carried many titles, that may be the one he lived most completely.

The foreword to Zendo Chronicles never arrived.

But the blessing on the way had arrived long ago.