A Spot on the Kalachakra

December 1, 2025

A Spot on the Kalachakra

On Sitting Still as the Year Turns — Notes on Light, Karma, and Quiet Beginnings

This morning feels like a small bookmark on the great wheel of time — a quiet notch on the kalachakra. I’m curled up in my recliner, facing my dew-kissed windows. The winter sun, still following its soft south-east path, pours in like honey at 9 AM. Half the rays land on my tall sojne tree — where the squirrels are probably already plotting their mischief — and the other half spill gently over the dense bael tree, its leaves glossy despite the smog.

And there is smog. Delhi’s AQI blinks a stubborn 308 — very poor, almost mocking the gold of the morning. A reminder that beauty and burden coexist here, always. The city coughs; the birds adjust; and yet the sunlight insists on being hopeful.

As I sit here, wrapped in a shawl, I feel today as one of those strange in-between days that December often brings. Not fully ending, not quite beginning. Just a resting point on the curve of karma — a moment where prārabdha feels unusually visible. The consequences of old choices, old actions, old seasons… all arriving at my window in the form of light and haze.

There is something about the year’s closing chapter that forces us into slow reflection. We think of the roads we didn’t take, the calls we postponed, the leaps we hesitated at. These untaken paths have their own quiet presence, like shadow companions walking beside us. They don’t haunt me today; they sit politely on a bench in my mind, waiting to be acknowledged. Some were lost; some were avoided; some will perhaps return in another season of courage.

And here we are — 1st December — standing at the edge of endings and beginnings.

Perhaps this is what the kalachakra teaches: that every day folds into another, every sunrise is a rehearsal for renewal. Even the bael and sojne seem to understand this rhythm, swaying lightly as if to say, “Time is circular; keep going.”

Hope, I realise, isn’t a dramatic burst of inspiration. Sometimes it is just a thin beam of winter sunlight falling through heavy AQI readings. Sometimes it’s a quiet inner nudge that maybe — just maybe — the coming year will be softer, kinder, and more aligned with our truest selves.

So today, I breathe as deeply as Delhi will allow, and I let this moment settle. I’m only a small dot on the kalachakra, but a conscious one. And that feels like a beginning already.