"Cogito Ergo Sum"- A Philosophical Quest

"Some people search for Truth. I think I am searching for something far more dangerous." I am in search of truth. Not the kind of truth that prehistoric philosophers searched for while staring at the stars and wondering why lightning exists. Not the truth that medieval philosophers defended with books thicker than their patience. Not the truth that modern philosophers dissected into theories, systems, arguments, and counterarguments. Not even the truth that contemporary philosophers continue to debate in conferences where everyone speaks for twenty minutes and nobody changes their mind. No. I am searching for a different kind of truth. Truth, which is personal, relational, alive, experiential and that which is the destination which admires the uniqueness of each individual and respects the plurality in the world. Now, some of you may already be preparing your philosophical weapons. "Rohan, truth is truth. How many kinds of truth can there be?" Fair question. But the...

You know, recently during my retreat at St. Xavier's Villa , I was standing on the edge of the mountain after dinner. Retreat time is usually a time of silence, prayer, reflection, and trying to act holy while internally your mind is running like Mumbai local trains during rush hour. But somehow, that cliff became my favorite place. That place is beautiful. Truly beautiful. When you stand there and look at the world from above, everything changes. The lights below look peaceful. The air touches differently. The wind speaks in a language only silence understands. The whole world appears calm, meaningful, almost divine. Honestly, I wish I could give you my eyes for just five minutes so you could see what I saw that night. And then suddenly, while standing there, one realization hit me very hard. From far away, the world looks beautiful and peaceful. But when you enter the world, when you actually live inside it, it is full of struggles, confusion, pressure, expectations, disappoi...

Soooo… Easter Hai, Par Sabke Liye Same Nahi Hai I know we are in the Easter season. The season where everyone wants to be happy, go out, meet family, eat good food, click photos, and post captions like “He is Risen, so am I.” Nice. But let me tell you something very honestly— everywhere, it is not the same. Reality is different for everyone. When someone is laughing loudly in one room, someone else in another room is quietly breaking. And the truth is—no one can fully understand that pain. Not even the people who love you the most. Because everything… is interpretation. We live by predictions. Even when we talk about meaning, we are predicting meaning. So when you say, “He looks happy,” you actually don’t know whether he is happy. You are just guessing. Congratulations. Humanity runs on guesswork. Hospital Scene: When Humanity Becomes a Process Recently, I experienced something that shook me. I went to admit one of my beloved uncles. We were in a hurry—panic, confusion, fear. And o...

When Faith, Philosophy, AI, and Exams All Attack at Once There are two kinds of people in this world. One who start Lent with discipline. And one who start Lent with determination… and end it by giving up absolutely nothing. Guess which one I am. Lent has begun. The season of purification. The season of sacrifice. The season where people heroically give up chocolate, Instagram, or chai — and I sit there thinking: “Can I at least give up giving up?” Inside, there is this sincere urge to purify myself. Outside, there is gajar ka halwa. And somewhere in between stands my vocation, my existential crisis, and Friedrich Nietzsche laughing sarcastically in the background. Nietzsche Enters the Chat Let us talk about Friedrich Nietzsche . Ah, Nietzsche. The man who looked at Christianity and said, “God is dead,” and then watched Christians panic for 200 years. His criticism of Christianity was brutal, sharp, almost poetic in its cruelty. He saw it as a religion of weakness — morality built f...

A Sick Student Reads Heidegger and Cries for hskdjfhkajhaftaaaraaaakjhfkfh - so many things Soooo… here we are. If Martin Heidegger were alive and saw me right now—half-sick, half-starving, fully confused—he would probably nod gravely and say: “Being-toward-death.” And I would reply: “Sir, right now I am Being-toward-chapati.” Because honestly, when you have fever, existentialism hits differently. You don’t think about ontology. You think about warm chapati with ghee. You think about your mother’s kitchen. You think about a place—where my aunty used to feed me G ajar ka halwa, biryani, and kheer like salvation itself. My God. If the gods hear this menu, even they will descend. Heidegger: Death Is the Only Certainty (Or Uncertainty?) Heidegger said death is the most personal possibility. No one can die for you. No one can outsource it. It individualizes you. Comforting. He calls it the ultimate certainty—yet the timing is uncertain. That tension creates anxiety. And anxiety, he say...

  Hermeneutics, Headaches, Hope, and My Mother’s Food Some days feel like footnotes. Not chapters. Not even paragraphs. Just footnotes at the bottom of an already exhausting page of life. These are those days. Exams on the head. Philosophy in the veins. Coffee pretending to be hope. And time—time doing what it does best: passing painfully slowly . I am overburdened, not just with syllabi but with meaning itself . Because once you study hermeneutics, nothing remains innocent—not texts, not people, not even your own silence. Hermeneutics: Or, How Understanding Became a Burden Let’s begin where the headache begins. Schleiermacher politely told us: “To understand a text is to understand the author better than he understood himself.” Great. As if understanding myself wasn’t already difficult. Now I’m supposed to emotionally stalk dead authors too? Then came Dilthey , who said life must be understood from within lived experience . Suddenly philosophy stopped being abstract and star...