Meditation Improves Life Skills, Says Kartikeya Vajpai

Hyderabad: At the age of 11, while playing in national-level cricket, Kartikeya Vajpai developed an early interest in meditation. He said his coach introduced him to Trataka — a candle-gazing technique — to improve concentration, which later influenced both his professional life and writing.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle on Thursday during the launch of his book ‘The Unbecoming’, Vajpai said meditation improved his focus and performance. “My attention span increased, and at times I could anticipate what was coming. It was not deliberate — it just happened when I was deeply focused,” he said.

He added that spiritual practices like transcendental meditation, encouraged by his mother, stayed with him over the years. Since 2014, he has regularly attended meditation retreats. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he began compiling his reflections, which eventually led to the book.

“This made me take a fictional route. As I played cricket, my characters were around it. One is excellent in his craft of cricket, which is the path of a paramyog and the other is a victim of failure in the life story of Gyanyoga and how they discover perfectionist roles in life.”

The difference between spirituality and religion is that the goal of religion is to make people spiritual, believe in oneness and spread love, but these days religion has become an entity that stands on its own.

One takeaway for readers from the book is to understand that constantly being engaged in thinking drains all productivity. Then slowly everything becomes mundane. So the basic takeaway is to learn the journey from intellect to wisdom and start experiencing things in life.