“And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.” - Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

In the midst of a beautiful spring in Kraków, I find myself nestled beneath the branches of a tree, embraced by grasses and dandelions that adorn the banks of river Wisła. Here, I am immersed into the pages of a profound literary masterpiece "Siddhartha," penned by a German philosopher, Hermann Hesse.

It is one of those books that made its way to me, arriving precisely when I was ready for it. It is a narrative of deceptive simplicity, and yet is potently powerful. It is a tale of an austere yogi, an ascetic and a seeker to the core, who falls in love with a beautiful prostitute. The courtesan teaches him the art of physical love and brings him to 'samsara'.

There is an subtle feeling that resonates with you and it makes you ask the fundamental of all the questions. Who am I? Am I my countless identities— a son, a grandson, a brother, a boyfriend, a friend, an atheist, an Indian, a computer programmer, a risk analyst, a striving monkey with a plan. Who am I? Or am I an aggregation of all I did, all that happened to me and choices I made in life? Or am I my goals and my desires?

All of this together, the handful of experiences I have sampled from this vastness is my world. I am all of my fragmented identities, a stream of events in the music of life.