ten days of silence
The silence pressed in, thick and unyielding, almost deafening. The hand pump groaned with each pull, as icy groundwater hit the sweltering cement floor, sizzling and evaporating as fast as my resolve. Yet there I was, quiet, isolated, and questioning why I had signed up for this 10-day Vipassana course. As I stared at the cracked walls that seemed to close in with each passing second, the promise of calm felt like a distant mirage, overshadowed by the unrelenting hum of my thoughts that I had unknowingly brought with me. By evening, the temptation to quit was overwhelming. My mind raced with excuses, each one more convincing than the last: Why stay? Why endure this?. But somewhere beneath the noise, a quiet, stubborn voice urged me on. I hadn’t traveled this far, only to walk away.
The guidelines of the course were harsh: no books, no writing, no talking—not even eye contact. Reluctantly, I surrendered my copy of The Inside Story, its frayed pages testament to how often I relied on it during such moments. That night, stripped of every comforting distraction, I was introduced to Anapana—a meditation technique so simple it felt deceptively easy: just observe the breath. No controlling, no forcing, just awareness. I closed my eyes and for a fleeting moment, I felt a faint, rhythmic rise and fall. But then, like a whisper lost to the wind, it was gone. My thoughts, sharp and restless, circled like vultures, picking apart my determination piece by piece. The effort was exhausting, and as I sat there fighting a battle I hadn’t known I signed up for, it dawned on me: this wasn’t just meditation—it was confrontation.
Memories surfaced vividly: an argument with teammates during a robotics competition, the sting of failure after hours spent perfecting a drone that malfunctioned mid-flight, and quieter moments from home— visiting the flower market twice a week at 5 a.m., finding satisfaction in the neatly arranged flowers on the dining table, or spending Saturday afternoons packing meals with my father for our weekly food drives. And then there was my grandfather. It was his memory that lingered the longest. Despite having lived with Parkinson’s, he never mourned what he had lost but chose to cherish what remained. His voice rose above the noise in my mind, a lighthouse guiding me out of my chaos. In his resilience, I found my strength..
The silence no longer felt oppressive. It became a space to reflect, to sift and uncover the person I was and the person I wanted to be. As the days unfolded, I noticed parallels between my internal struggles and my approach to engineering. In robotics, I often tackled problems impulsively, driven by the urge to fix things. This tendency to focus on quick fixes often left the deeper issues unaddressed. However, this experience with Vipassana taught me to pause, observe, and step back before stepping in. This translated to my role as Vice President of Roboknights, my school’s esteemed robotics club. Designing battle bots evolved from a purely technical task into an exercise in thoughtful problem-solving and troubleshooting. And guiding peers was now about fostering collaboration, listening with patience, and guiding with presence, not just answers.
By the final day, the constant chatter in my mind was replaced by immense gratitude—for the caretaker who brought me extra lemonade each noon, for the chance to endure, and most of all, for the learning that every breath, every pause, and every failure was another piece of a larger design, a blueprint of growth I had only begun to understand. In engineering, we call this iteration. Life, I realized, is no different. I’m no longer just solving problems or constructing robots; I’m iterating on myself, shaping a version that’s patient, curious, and unafraid to begin again. I'm no longer seeking peace, I’m seeking progress, one breath at a time.