Dear reader, how are you? I hope you had an interesting January. I certainly did.

I worked out diligently the first three weeks, only to fall sick in the fourth. Half of Bengaluru seems to be down with a sore throat or cough or flu.

Over the years, I think I’ve figured out how to make my flus or viral infections more tolerable. Betadine medicated gargles at the first symptom of a sore throat (most, perhaps all my infections start there) and then lots of warm water and steam inhalation over the next three–four days (if a sore throat is where my infections start, stuffed sinuses is where they end, partly due to assistance from a deviated septum!).

My colleague Ruhi Kandhari, who leads our narrative storytelling efforts, added a new element to this mix a few years ago: Lemsip. It’s basically 1,000 mg of paracetamol and phenylephrine. As someone who hates self-medicating (I don’t think I’ve taken antibiotics in nearly a decade), I’ve made an exception for Lemsip because it just makes the first few days tolerable.

Some of us, perhaps Indians specifically, have this unstated belief that colds and flus are meant to be miserable. That they should be. Thanks, but no.

I also travelled to Mumbai and spent a day with a bunch of wonderful folks, including a few subscribers, talking about narrative storytelling and mental models. I love the warmth and connections in such settings. It makes what we do at The Ken so much more real every now and then.

I’m writing this at a Blue Tokai café in Indiranagar, waiting for my teenager to finish his guitar lessons. En route to his weekend class, we listened to a Guitar Greats playlist in the car. I remember when he was young enough that I’d tell him about the bands and artists and their idiosyncrasies and skills. This time, it was clear he is more knowledgeable. He was telling me which guitar solos “just sound complex and are played to sound cool, but are really easy to play”, or which guitarist between Stevie Ray Vaughn and Eric Clapton influenced the other.

There are few times in life when you feel silently proud about knowing less.