Category: Substack

Trust is a seed. What grows mirrors it.

 

This is the third in a quiet thread of reflections I’ve been following. First came this piece which traced the evolution of my practice from programs and platforms to trust.

Then this a piece on how The Matrix shifted how I think about change and revealed the layers of reality we work across.

This one returns to an earlier moment. what happens before anything begins. At the seed stage.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how change starts. Not when we name a vision or launch a plan, but earlier. Before anything becomes visible.

I keep coming back to this idea: seed conditions shape what grows.

Not metaphorically. Structurally. What you plant in the beginning shapes the form and behavior of what follows. The pattern of a thing often mirrors its origin.

When I look at the work that held up under stress, be it projects, institutions or relationships, the common thread wasn’t clever design. It was the conditions they started in. Most often, they began with trust.

Trust changed how those efforts moved. They scaled more smoothly. They bent instead of broke. When mistakes happened, the center held. People stuck around. Course correction became possible.

Trust isn’t an outcome. It’s a condition. You don’t measure it after the fact. You feel it at the beginning. It’s what sets the tone for everything else. Think of it like a seed crystal that is small, often imperfect, but powerful enough to shape the entire structure around it.

This plays out far beyond individual relationships. When trust forms the foundation of a team, a network, or a funding model, it creates a different system. One that behaves differently. One that doesn’t need as much control or oversight to function. One that can recover from shocks.

Of course, other seed conditions shape other systems.

Seed with control, and the system becomes ordered. But often brittle.

Seed with fear, and it might produce compliance. But not creativity.

Seed with scarcity, and you might drive speed. But lose depth.

Seed with shame, and you might achieve performance. But not safety.

What you seed determines how the system responds under stress. It shapes whether people show up fully or hold back. Whether collaboration comes naturally or feels forced. Whether energy flows or stalls.

You see this most clearly when designing something new: a grant, a partnership, a team. We tend to focus on the structure and the roles, process, governance. But what often shapes the outcome more than anything else is what’s seeded before that.

How did people arrive?

What assumptions sat under the surface?

Did anyone feel heard before decisions were made?

These quiet conditions decide what scales.

I’ve seen beautifully designed efforts fall apart because they seeded suspicion. And I’ve seen messy, improvised efforts hold together because they seeded trust. The architecture matters. But the conditions matter more.

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… love doesn’t end

 

Today marks a little over a month since Ella decided it was time to go and we helped her on her way. I thought I had made my peace with it. I thought I was done with the tears. But grief is sneaky. It waits for the quiet moments, for the unexpected reminders.

This morning, I was in Indiranagar, sitting in my car with a coffee, watching the world go by. Across the road, on top of a short flight of stairs, there was an old white dog. The sun was streaming through the trees, catching her just right, wrapping her in gold. She was trying to get down the stairs, hesitating, her body unwilling in the way old dogs’ bodies sometimes are.

And it hit me. That hesitation, that particular mix of determination and vulnerability, was exactly how Ella had been in her last days. When the stairs became too much. When getting onto the bed or the sofa wasn’t easy anymore. That quiet struggle, the one that makes you want to wrap them up and hold on forever, even when you know you can’t.

I was about to get out and help when a man from the restaurant next door walked over with a bowl of food. He crouched down, speaking to her gently, trying to coax her down. She wagged her tail just a little but still couldn’t do it. He tried again and again, and when it was clear that she wasn’t going to make it on her own, he picked her up, carried her down the stairs, and set the food in front of her. She sat and ate, and I just broke down.

I went over to him and told him how much that meant. He shrugged, smiling. “Bas hamara farz hai.” We just do our duty.

And maybe that’s what I needed today. A reminder that Ella is still around, still showing me what it means to care and to trust. That even in a world that feels impossibly hard and cruel some days, there are still people who choose kindness. Who instinctively reach out to lift others—human or animal—when they can’t take the steps on their own.

When I shared this with Shobitha, she reminded me of something I had said a few weeks ago. That I don’t want to get over it. And she understood that feeling. Because sometimes grief connects us to love more sharply than anything else. And oh, how we all miss her.

But maybe that is the point. Maybe love doesn’t end. Maybe it just changes form, showing up in unexpected places. In an old white dog bathed in sunlight. In the hands of a stranger lifting her down the stairs. In the quiet ache that reminds us of everything we never want to forget.

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Originally published on Substack on 9 March 2025. Read on Substack →

Because sometimes it takes a movie to see reality more clearly

 

I was staring at an email from an old colleague: “I am now a consultant with a global consulting firm focused on implementing system-level changes across energy, nature and food, materials, urban areas, and finance.”

I had to smile. System-level changes. We throw that phrase around a lot in my field. But what does it really mean? I was mulling this over in yet another meeting about “systemic transformation” when something clicked. Not about consulting frameworks or theory of change models, but about The Matrix. Not the surface-level “we’re living in a simulation” part, but something deeper.

Remember that scene where Neo first “wakes up”? He thinks that’s the whole story – escape the fake world, find the real one. But it turns out that’s just the beginning. The real journey is learning to work with both realities at once.

That’s when it clicked for me. In my years of working on social change, we keep trying to find the “real” problem to solve. Is it poverty? Education? Healthcare? Systems? Individual choices? But what if, like Neo, we’re asking the wrong question?

A Different Way of Seeing

Here’s what I’ve come to understand: Reality works on multiple levels at once. The Matrix shows this beautifully – there’s the physical world of Zion, the constructed reality of the Matrix, and the deeper realm where consciousness and technology merge. Each is real in its own way. Each matters.

Last year, I was working with a community group tackling food insecurity. We started with the obvious – getting food to people who need it. That’s the Zion level – immediate, physical, crucial. But then we had to deal with the “Matrix” level – the policies, systems, and structures that create food deserts in the first place. And beneath that was something even deeper – the beliefs and assumptions we all hold about food, community, and responsibility.

Beyond Either/Or

“What I’m seeing now isn’t the Matrix – it’s the way into it,” Neo says at one point. That line keeps coming back to me. Because every time I think I’ve figured out “the real problem,” I realise it’s just one layer of something bigger.

Take the project I’m working on now. We started out thinking we had to choose between supporting individual families and changing policy. But that’s like choosing between Zion and the Matrix – it misses the point entirely. The magic happens when we work across all these levels at once.

What Actually Works

The other day, someone asked me what I’ve learned about creating real change. I told them to imagine they’re Neo learning to fly. At first, he has to consciously break all the rules he thinks are real. But eventually, he sees the truth – there were never any rules to break. Just different levels of reality to work with.

That’s what effective change work feels like now. Sometimes I’m dealing with immediate needs – that’s essential, like the resistance fighting to protect Zion. Sometimes I’m working to change systems – like hacking the Matrix. And sometimes I’m pushing for deeper transformation – like Neo negotiating with the machines.

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What I’ve Learned About How Change Really Happens

 

I used to think change happened to me. When I first started this work, everything felt reactive. Systems were broken, resources were scarce, and problems seemed external. Like many of us, I tried to make sense of it all by creating structure.

So we designed programs. You know the kind – structured, measurable, outcome-driven. They looked good in presentations. They made great grant applications. But something was always missing. The programs helped people, sure, but they rarely touched the deeper conditions that made them necessary in the first place.

That led me to projects. More flexible, easier to adapt. We could experiment, try new things, respond to what we were learning. But no matter how well they worked, scaling felt like pushing a boulder uphill. Each success stayed small, isolated, contained.

I remember sitting in a meeting, surrounded by data showing how well our latest project was working, and feeling this nagging sense that we were missing something bigger. That’s when we started exploring partnerships. If individual projects struggled to grow, maybe working together with aligned organizations could create greater impact. We shared learning, pooled resources, built on each other’s strengths.

But partnerships had their own limits. They depended heavily on existing relationships and often got stuck in institutional constraints. We were working alongside each other, but not really transforming how we worked.

That insight led us to collaboratives – not just working near each other, but truly integrating our efforts. Bringing organizations and leaders together in ways that went beyond coordination. The work became more responsive, more adaptive. But even then, we were still operating within structures that weren’t designed for long-term systems change.

Then I started thinking about platforms. Instead of pushing change from the center, what if we could create spaces where change could emerge from anywhere? Platforms opened up participation, letting more people contribute instead of just receiving. But here’s what I learned the hard way: platforms can scale access, but they can’t scale trust. And trust, I was beginning to see, was everything.

That realization shifted my focus to trust-based funding. Moving away from short-term grants with rigid deliverables to investing in people, relationships, and movements over time. Letting communities lead their own change. It felt scary at first – harder to measure, harder to control. But the results went deeper than anything we’d seen before.

Which brought me, finally, to understanding systems change as fundamentally relational work. Systems don’t shift through interventions alone. They shift through trust that lets people imagine new possibilities together. Through networks that make action possible at scale. Through the slow, patient work of changing norms, behaviors, and culture.

Looking back, I see this wasn’t just about trying different methods – it was about fundamentally shifting how I understood my own role in change. I moved from reacting (things happening to me) to taking ownership (creating change by me). From designing solutions alone to co-creating them with others. And finally, to understanding that my job isn’t to control change but to hold space for it to emerge through me.

Each stage felt necessary at the time. I had to build programs to see their limits. I had to design platforms to understand their gaps. I had to learn to trust before I could truly let go.

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Lady Sniffs A Lot

 

Ella had been sniffing around the flower pots again, her nose buried in the damp soil, inhaling deeply before scooping up a mouthful of mud and chewing with quiet determination.

I knelt beside her, brushing the dirt off her muzzle. “Ella,” I sighed, half amused, half concerned. “We have actual food, you know.”

She looked up at me, unbothered, her tail thumping weakly against the floor. But something about the way she held herself—the stiffness in her limbs, the slow blink of her eyes—told me this wasn’t just a quirk. It was something deeper.

For thirteen years, she had been our shadow, our constant, our Lady Sniffs A Lot. Now, at almost fourteen, her body was telling us what she couldn’t.

The vet confirmed what I already feared. Her platelet count was dangerously low, her haemoglobin was dropping, and her liver—long a source of unpredictable readings—was likely destroying more than it was helping. Supplements weren’t making a dent. Maybe, the vet suggested, a blood transfusion or a hormone injection to stimulate blood production.

I sat with this, turning the options over in my head. Would a transfusion buy us time? A few days? A week? And even if it did—for what? The broader trajectory was clear. The kind thing might not be to fight but to listen.

And yet.

Yet, when you love someone, even in their twilight, you grasp at the things that could bring them comfort, even fleetingly. So we tried the hormone injections, the iron supplements. And for a while, she held on.

Until the evening when her back legs gave out beneath her.

She tried to stand, paws slipping on the floor, her body refusing to follow her will. I caught her before she fully collapsed, her breath warm against my hand.

She was tired.

We had thought we would know when it was time. That there would be a moment of certainty, a clear line between “not yet” and “now.” But instead, it felt like wading through fog, each step heavy with doubt.

The vet could try a transfusion. It might give her a few more days. But at what cost to her? Were we keeping her here for her, or were we holding on for us?

We thought about how she had lived—not just the years, but the way she had filled them. She had run, chased, sniffed, explored. She had slept in the sun, demanded belly rubs, stolen food from unattended plates. She had lived fully, without hesitation.

It wasn’t just about how much time she had left. It was about the kind of time.

So we let her go.

At home, in her space, with Sparky lying beside her—her best friend, her companion for thirteen years. There was no fear in her eyes, only quiet trust. She had always known how to be present in a way we humans struggle to master. Even at the end, she was teaching us.

It was peaceful.

She was gone.

In the days after, the house felt impossibly empty. And yet, her absence was loud—the missing rhythm of her paws, the space where she used to curl up, the way Sparky sniffed the air as if searching for her.

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