Is this 2020?

Bikram Sutar

Is this 2020? Because I am back. I am back as the beast. I am a beast. 

I want to say this so much - I have sold my soul back to the devil. It is somewhat of a known phrase. Somehow, I came up with it, and I had been using it for a few years until I discovered GPT and asked it. Yes, I had sold my soul to the devil, maybe from 2017 to 2019. Then something happened in 2019. 

My family, a big group of 13 people, was visiting Bangalore. For a ritual retreat. The plan was to spend 20 days there, visiting temples and a few other places. We did the trip, and COVID happened. Everything was stopped. They ended up spending 2 months. I was working from home. It was a 1BHK. I had gotten used to staying alone, even in physical presence; I had learnt to do that. I was out and away from 2011. I was never a social person from the inside. Even now (maybe we will come to this).

Now the backstory is set, let's come back. Why do I have to start with a backstory? Almost every 2nd story of mine starts with a backstory. 😅. When I say I had sold my soul to the devil, I meant to say I was so within myself, with myself, and so dedicated to what I was doing, and wanted to do it so well, as if I were fighting a battle, I wouldn't have been able to take rest even after conquering the entire world. At that point, I wasn't about the results. It was the fight, the pain, the suffering - that's what the devil offered, and the fun of it was what I loved the most. I went places. I re-found the best of my fighting abilities. But I lost connections in return, not that I ever missed. 

In 2019, COVID times freed my soul from the devil. I wanted to come back home, be with my parents and my siblings. I had stayed away from them for so long. I broke the pact. I got my soul back. I thought there was no payback. I wasn't losing something. Now, I look back at things in 2025, and I had looked back in 2024. I did lose the "forever on" beast mode. I still go back to the shadows, but that beast, He was so good, so relentless. I miss that consistency. 

Did the devil take its power away? Or were the powers always within me? It is good that I made the pact and realised my powers. My powers, within me. No, the Devil never gave me those; those powers were mine always. My soul can be out in the world, and I can still be the best. I am a beast who has a fire within, but calm and as peaceful as it can look. My mom used to say, Look at the sea, it looks so calm, but within it holds so much power. She realized it doesn't look that calm when she saw the sea 😅. Be the sea, powerful, tsunami inside, calm, soothing outside. And if I am that, without me needing to be, why not? - And how can I end a story without giving my Mom references? Let me tell you, this isn't a story, and this isn't ending here. Let's move to the next paragraph, shall we?

It feels like 2020, I had gotten back my soul, but I was still a beast. Took 2021, 2022 easily. 2022 very lazily, took me 2023 just recovering. 2024 was so much uncertainty. I could have done better in 2022, even with the rest. But I had reasons, and choices. I can't judge myself now, since things have gone well. 2025 feels so much like 2020. I have started to feel the pump, I have started to wake up and do morning runs. ⚡ ⚡

Lately, I have come to a realization: pay me a leadership course fee if you want 😅. Good leaders make things very clear. They say I am gonna change the world, but they don't just stop there. Changing the world is so ambitious; it can mean so many things. So they go ahead and define what it is. They go ahead and define actions that can lead us there. I say a lot of these abstract, meta, ambitious statements. In the last two months, I have started practicing breaking them into reality, small actions, and I have been seeing results. I had realised this, and a conversation with Divyansh really helped. Thanks to him. At work, in life, I have been practicing them everywhere. I am no self-help expert; before I write an entire article on this, this needs maturing in my mind. I didn't promise it, so if it is found useful, it is the prize of sticking along. There should always be a prize, and there is always. 

Example

Previous me -  You should lead people. You should lead a team. (You also want it, and why/how it will help you). - I would usually leave the "how" part of leading, or doing anything. I used to leave it blank for people to figure out. 

How I say this now - You should lead people. And there are opportunities to do the same. Do x with y. It will help both of you for "this" reason. And there are another 5 gaps I can see clearly you can fill in. What do you think? (Listen & narrow down). Great, let's try this one or these 2 things then. (It is their idea now. Instead of leaving them with a blank page, I started giving them fill-in-the-blank and let them take care of the most important gaps. 

***

Since I just spoke about this new framework, what does it mean to be a beast in action? What does it mean to be a best and still not sell the soul to the devil? Maybe, now, I have sold my soul to the brightest of the light, or calmest of the Infinity there is. 

 

Beast

  1. Someone who does all of his actions without thinking even for a second. 
  2. He isn't motivated; he doesn't need it. If anything, he inspires himself. 
  3. He does all this just for the sake of doing it. He does get fun out of it, but he doesn't even care about the fun. For him, it is a relentless pursuit of the fight that feels eternal, that he feels like fighting for eternity.  
  4. People stare into his eyes and might feel restless, but kids would still be inspired. 
  5. He wakes up early, not out of habit, but he just wakes up. 
  6. He lives so much in the present; he is so much in the present, he doesn't waste time. All time wasted is the time that isn't spent on the present, that isn't spent on what you are supposed to do now. Beast knows at each second what he is supposed to know. If not, he is restless and figures it out. 
  7. He has no fear of failing. He is indifferent to parries, people throwing stones at him. 
  8. He feels unstoppable. He can walk any path; he can make any path. 

 

Selling soul to the devil

  1. He isn't touched, he isn't motivated, he doesn't need emotional stability. Even when he realises this, the devil pulls him in and asks him to get comfort without a soul. 
  2. For the fight of eternity, the beast feels the void sometimes; the pact with the devil makes him care less about the void, and get comfort in it. 
  3. So, sure, he won't have a social life. He won't let people in.
  4. People would be restless, people would be scared, some would be worried. But the devil won't let him see this.
  5. The devil will teach mediation as the suppression of emotions. 
  6. It is the comfort that the devil provides for the soul, so the beast doesn't have to look into his own soul. And the beast would like this, because - Ignorance, comfort from the pain of it. 

Selling soul to the bright, or the calmest Infinity

  1. One who has everything, who has experienced every light and every darkness, selling soul to him, is still an exchange for the comfort. But his comfort is in accepting the light as it is, bright, dark - all are just variations. 
  2. He makes the beast feel pain, for the beast, even in pain, can keep moving. But interestingly, he would wait to check on others. 
  3. He makes the beast realise it isn't a race. He gives the beast time. He makes it apparent to the beast, it isn't a fight of eternity, but the beast himself isn't alone fighting. 
  4. Kids will still be inspired by the beast, soul with infinity will give others hope in the beast's eyes. He isn't scary anomre but equally potent. 
  5. And when the beast is alone, he sits beside him, he walks the roads with him. 
  6. Meditation, he teaches, is letting all emotions flow. 
  7. Acceptance - peace, calmness. This is what infinity would return for the soul. And once he realizes the beast is fully into the pact, He would just give the soul back.

 I made a few things abstract again. I am just learning to practice this. This is the first time I am writing about the above 3 entities and their relationships. I have a plan for the year, already written out somewhere. I have refined that to be more actionable and trackable. We will come back to evaluate and discuss them in an article of its own, maybe by the year's end 🤞

It isn't 2020, it is 2025, and I have come a long way. ✌