India, March 15 -- For years, whenever someone asked about my political tilt, the response was automatic: "liberal". It felt right. The term denoted a belief in openness, tolerance and free speech, which are all things that I hold dear.

Then, during a casual conversation, a friend mentioned a way to avoid intellectual complacency: pick a stance at odds with your own and live it for a set period.

This sounded intriguing. What might it be like to undertake a month-long "contradiction practice", and attempt to immerse myself on the opposite side of all that I hold true?

What I learnt by the end of the month-long trial was surprising: There's a conservative streak that runs through me.

The initial plan was to adopt an extreme right-wing s...