Handwritten Book

May 25, 2026 ·

Saw a Balaji tweet the other day saying how future books will be written in monasteries by hand and what not. He's a funny guy, Balaji. I like him and his intent is pure, but it's a bit out there and he ends up reaching conclusions I would not. I read his theses as fan fiction more so than guidance on the future. He isn't the only one making bizarre exaggerated speculations; it's a whole thing in finance. The trick is to make a crazy call but not mention when it'll happen. Eventually, when something similarly crazy does happen, people can say oh you were so right and ahead of your time. I was also thinking about Taleb's Bitcoin is worth $0 call yesterday, or Michael Burry saying the apocalypse is here every other month. In some sense that's the name of the game, so long as you continue to survive and don't get wiped out you're good. Also, there is some kernel of truth in all these predictions that act as their seed, so going too far and completely ignoring them isn't too right either.

Book-writing monasteries may or may not happen, who knows. I used to have this vision of meditating in a far east monastery in my teens but through movies like Seven Years in Tibet and The Last Samurai I realized these are mass desires that filmmakers know well. I visited Japan a few years ago and that combined with my own self-exploration of the mind and meditation and what have you, I have mostly gotten over that whole fantasy. Another one is probably to let go of the corporate career and drive off into the sunset. I did that, too. Looking back at things I have conquered some of my deepest fears and desires which feels pretty great. But since I'm in the process of publishing my first book, I saw Balaji's tweet and thought: should I be hand writing my book instead? I then grabbed my iPad and wrote some stuff on there to quickly realize how painful that would be. Instead I thought of a way to get some kind of handwritten thing in there while being able to still type something daily which was the original intent of this blog. Probably not even that, I just started writing and ended up doing it daily without having that as an explicit goal up front.

I wrote ek onkar (omkar?) and my full name Prabhchintan Randhawa in Gurmukhi that I will incorporate in the book. The other decision I must soon make in the next few days is where to get it printed, what kind of quality of paper and cover to choose, and all those logistical and administrative details. I want to have a good, high quality thing going without fussing over the details so much that it just never gets done. I guess we'll see what ends up happening. Claude is great at taking over the painful parts of this so I get to do all the fun things, like write my name on an iPad in Gurmukhi ten times over. I will drop my handwritten assets below and what the book looks like today. Also added an easter egg.

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