I’ve been living away from my parents home for almost as long as I lived with them. In these years, my weekday and weekend mornings have had varied cadences. They have mostly been purged by a sense of lethargy from the evening before and then the rush of being late for work. I have been lucky that for the most part of my student and then work life, in these 15 odd years I have been the irritating person who wakes up before most others and reads.

At the private university that I attended for five years, I was one of the three people (in a batch of 47) who would attend all classes right from the first lecture which began at 8:45am. Before class, I would ritualistically shower, say a little prayer, have breakfast in the canteen or student mess and then sit and read for at least an hour before launching myself into the world of humanoids.