After finishing Conclave (the book, not the movie!), I picked up Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq, who recently won the 2025 International Booker Prize. In the second story, Fire Rain, the protagonist rallies his community around a cause, believing their religion is under threat.
While Conclave centers around the Catholic Church and Fire Rain around a Muslim community, both authors don’t shy away from portraying how religion can bring out deeply human impulses—both noble and destructive. What struck me most, though, was how central religion remains to many people’s lives. In Conclave, the plot revolves around selecting a spiritual leader for over a billion people; in Fire Rain, it’s about a community uniting to defend what they perceive as a threat to their faith. In both, religion gives meaning to the lives of ordinary individuals, which has not been the case for me.
I grew up with a healthy scepticism toward organized religion. I loved celebrating festivals of all faiths but never felt drawn to daily prayers or rituals. This scepticism meant I never fully committed to any religion—missing both its benefits and its burdens.
Strangely, CrossFit reintroduced me to the idea of religion—just not in the way I expected. I discovered it while researching open-source fitness models in the early days of CoolCoach. Since my aim was to make fitness accessible to poor families, I needed something free and scalable. This was back in 2015, and I was blown away by what I found.
I fell into a rabbit hole of articles, books, and videos on CrossFit. As luck would have it, I found a CrossFit “box” (their term for a gym) in Pune. For the uninitiated, CrossFit workouts—or WODs (Workouts of the Day)—are high-intensity, constantly varied, and brutally challenging. After each session, the coach high-fives you. If you survive the first few WODs, you're likely to stick around.
Those who stick around quickly learn the lingo—WODs with names, EMOMs (Every Minute On the Minute), AMRAPs (As Many Rounds As Possible), PRs (Personal Records), Rx (As Prescribed). There’s a leaderboard to compare scores—with others and your past self. Soon, you’re comparing gear, sharing strategies, and sounding like you’ve joined a cult.
To me, CrossFit offered a great workout, and a lot of learning that I was hoping to leverage as I designed CoolCoach. The cult-like aspect felt strange to me. I also noticed that for many CrossFit members, other members became their social circle, and I was surprised to find it was often their only one. Over time, I noticed that while many members didn’t show major physical changes, their social ties had deepened dramatically. In some ways, they became more committed to the community than when they first joined. As an observer, this was fascinating to watch in real time.
Observing wasn’t enough—I wanted to understand what I was seeing. I had a feeling there was something deeper going on. A bit of Googling led me to How We Gather, a report by two Harvard Divinity School students. They argued that as people increasingly move away from organized religion, they seek community, purpose, and ritual in secular spaces—many of which mirror the structure and benefits of traditional faith communities.
I found the report absolutely on point and it explained everything I had witnessed firsthand as a member of my CrossFit box. I won’t summarise the report here—just hope to intrigue you enough to check it out. It's a short read, and I highly recommend it. It’s a chance to explore the rise of new communities—and to reflect on why you might reject or wholeheartedly embrace religion.
More than anything, Conclave, Heart Lamp, and the How We Gather report reminded me that we are social creatures. We thrive in community. Whether it’s through faith, fitness, or friendship, we’re all searching for the same things: meaning, connection, and a sense of belonging.