Walking is a gift to me. Always. It’s always been a gift to me.
I vividly remember my evening walks with my friends when I was in a hostel during my school days. We used to just roam around for hours on our campus. Those days, little did we know that something so simple as just going for a walk with your friend in the evening would someday feel like a luxury. And honestly, today I feel that this luxury has gotten really expensive.
That’s life. A timepass evening with your friend every day becomes the occasional video calls, and we realise what we had was a lot more precious than whatever we can earn and buy now.
After finishing my school, I came back to Delhi for further studies and started living with my parents there. I think those were the days when I started solo walks. It started slowly. I stuck to it. It helped me. It became my companion many times. Walking on my terrace became my everyday thing. Most of the times, me, my earphones plugged in and my walk – It continued like that for some time. Then I started going to parks for my morning and evening walks. This time, shoes were put on, but earphones were not always in. And this phase also continued for a good time.
Time passed. I got married. And I moved from Delhi to my current residence. But my walk continued. Evening walk on my terrace. Shoes put on, headphones on, and my smart watch perfectly counting my steps.
Today, I have a treadmill in my hall for having a good cardio, and I walk on my treadmill most of the days.
Today, I feel walking has saved me from many things. Maybe many, many things. Many times, many, many times, when I feel lost till day, those few minutes or hours of walking bring me back to my roots, to my values, to my aspirations, and, most importantly, to my love for this beautiful life.
Whenever I have felt lost, I have found myself. Whenever I have been overwhelmed, I have emptied myself. Whenever I feel stuck, it frees me up. It has been my remedy since the time I didn’t know it was the remedy I would need in my life.
Today, I walk to pause. I walk to rest. I walk to exhaust myself. I walk to start afresh. I walk to finish what I have started.
I walk to choose me, to choose faith, to choose faith in life, and to choose life every time.
So it is 21st Feb 2026, and I have just completed my fourth book read of the year. And yes, I could have done more, but that’s not the point here. Right now, I am enjoying this journey and excited to see what all I can, and will read and reread this year.
Reading has its own joy. And that joy is very different from the one we get through screens. Very different. Screens may enchant you with the beautiful screenplay and mind-blowing visuals, but the intimacy you get as a reader of a book is a thing of a different world. That intimacy, those pauses, those smiles, tears, sadness, restlessness, and relief you feel between the lines is only there. You take your time, you wait before turning those pages, and you literally live in the author’s world for a while. I love this affair between me and my books. Absolutely love it. It’s the best!
This year, my intention is to explore myself, to explore life, and many things in life I am curious about through books. Still have not set any TBR, and just going with the flow. Picking up the books my heart is saying yes to and just reading, listening, and talking to them.
This time it’s not for escape. This time it’s not for becoming intelligent. This time, it’s just for the soul. To feed the soul. To nourish the mind and soul. To let curiosity take me wherever it takes me. The intention is exploration. The intention is to discover. What exactly? Maybe myself. Maybe!
Dil se thanks, to the one who invented books for the first time. Thank you so much. You didn’t know what a priceless possession you were making for us.
Looking forward and really excited to read more, to learn more, and to live more this year.
Yeah, it was a lengthy read. A good, lengthy, complex, complicated, interesting, boring, and academic read.
I had the PDF version with me and had started reading it many times before, but I guess the most I could read was 5-6 pages. It was there, in my drive, to be read some day properly. Little did I know that I would read this book like I have never read any book before.
It is just about a few months back, in the last few days of November 2025, that we decided to read this book. And that too, together!
Abhinav (my partner and hubby) had already started reading before bedtime, and because I used to be on a video call with him at that time, he would read the book to me as well. And I enjoyed listening to that. And then it continued like that. This way, we read together and completed the first reading of our first book, “Don’t believe everything you think”.
We used to get on our video call, chit chat, talk, and everything used to happen like every day, and then, Abhi would take out that book and read a few pages, a few paragraphs to me, depending on our reading and listening capacity that day.
Nothing was set prior. No fixed number of pages were decided.No fixed time per se. It was all organically happening, and we just kind of got the hang of it. That time, Abhi used to read that book, and I was the attentive listener. Although I don’t remember the nitty-gritties of that book today, it was a good read, and I liked it.
Towards the end of that book, we understood that we had actually developed this cute little new thing between us, and both of us want to read more, so why not continue this intentionally? And, we continued.
Somewhere in the second half of November 2025, or in the last few days of that month, I don’t remember actually, we started reading Sapiens. Abhi bought the paperback edition, and I had the pdf in my iPad. Most of the times Abhi used to read, and I used to listen, this time with my iPad there.
Again, no fixed number of pages, hours, time, or paragraphs. The condition was that as long as it makes sense and we can understand it, we will read, and then it will be continued the next day. And, we kept it like that.
After several reading sessions of ours, we successfully completed our first read of Sapiens on 31st December,2025, as we had the plans to start a new book with the beginning of the New Year. We missed a few days in between. Abhi’s work, my health, and other things did come in between, but we made sure to take that one or two hours somehow, or more if we could, to give that book a complete first read properly.
Sapiens is a vast book. It will tell you stories about the past in such a manner that you will feel awe for your present. Sapiens tells us our stories. It is about our ancestors. It is about us. It is the story of how our existence came into reality and how our current reality is reshaping our existence in this world. It is a story of many eras.
Yuval Noah Harari has tried his best to paint the picture of our journey, right from the ape ancestors to the 21st century us, homo sapiens. He has touched on many subjects in the book ranging from the multiple theories regarding the origin and evolution of homo sapiens and their ancestors, the hunter gatherer era of humanity, beginning of agriculture, begining of language and scripts, origin and evolution of trade in different parts of the globe, the concept of money and how it has phenomenonally transformed the economy for us, the emergengence and collapse of civilisations, marriage, family, and individuality, along with today’s liberal western values, global conflicts, human’s ambition to eradicate natural death, and plethora of scientific advancements in the field of biotectnology – in short, it’s a story of the very complex yet interesting journey from the time of our first ape uncle and aunt to our today’s gen alpha nephew and nieces with their much advanced cognitive traits inside.
I do need a second read for sure. This time may be with underlining, highlighting, note-making, and a bit of those nerdy things. And I am telling you, I am looking forward to reading it again. This time, on my own, and with a bit different approach. The goal is definitely not to memorise or remember something to show off my intelligence, but to read this beautiful work as a reader whose curiosity will get the treat between those pages.
For me, this is Sapiens. A book I read with my hubby over our more than a month-long video calls. I enjoyed it, got bored, hated a few pages, got to know eye-opening truths, appreciated the author’s work, felt like a school kid again, admired history a bit more this time, finished the first read, and knew it then only that this book is for my extensive 2nd read.
Yeah, that was a short recall of sapiens for me.
I hope you will also read and look forward to rereading this book with the same enthusiasm and patience (very important for a 400-something-page book) I have cultivated so far.
Srishti Kumari 