One of the greatest superpowers of our generation is taking offence. Anybody can do at any given moment and assume a higher moral ground solely on the basis of their sentiments. It’s a ridiculous concept, especially when it has nothing to do with one’s lived experience. For instance, you taking offence on somebody else’s behalf, as if you have the agency for somebody else’s experience. This surrogacy of offence is quite rampant on the internet as there is a strong urge amongst online folks to put others down and feel better about themselves. Instant notification. Instanter gratification. Happens everyday and we tend to assume it to be the new normal. Of course, you have all the rights under the sky to take offence but you taking offence on somebody else’s behalf would be giving yourself too much credit. Trust me, you are not that important. Nobody is.
It’s been over a year since the Taliban regained Afghanistan and it’s tragic how things turned out out there. Those sans amnesia would remember how the Left and the Right both ensured that the citizens, particularly women, are systematically forsaken. I remember the hopeful tune the narrators (read: apologists) sang about the new government: how they will turn over a new leaf, how they will allow girls to pursue education, how they will seek international trade, how the minorities will be protected, etc. Well, some things don’t change. Taliban is as far from reform as most of the narrators were from common sense last year. Girls continue to be denied entry to schools and colleges. Several ‘conferences’ took place but opium remains the most valuable commodity to come out of that region. A land that was once beloved to Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs is now ethnically cleansed of any such historic remnants. I wonder what the apologists have to say about all these developments today.
Did you know that Drake is of Jewish origins? Me neither. I recently learned and was quite mindblown. The thing about some trivia is you least expect them to exist. A seemingly black artist from Canada, not to mention the most streamed singer on Spotify, would have anything to do with religion, let alone Judaism, is intriguing. Most origin stories are, well, baffling, to say the least. Keanu Reeves is another such personality: he is a Canadian but was born in Beirut and is of Hawaiian descent and practises Buddhism. An extraordinary mix there. Periyar had an interesting backdrop too. He is considered to be a Kannadiga but enjoyed a massive following in Tamil politics, even though his mother tongue was Telugu. Vallabhacharya was a Telugu too but he was born in today’s Chhattisgarh, grew up in Kashi, and his legacy is rooted in western UP, Gujarat and Rajasthan. I am deeply interested in such interspersing identities. They remind us that places and stories can be universal indeed.
Somebody from the world of academics recently created some noise when she claimed that no Hindu god is a Brahmin. If anything, this statement should have been celebrated on all fronts – orthodox and progressives alike. The foundation of Indian civilization rests on unity of distinct identities, people who worship different elements of nature and yet carry the scope of respecting each other’s belief systems. Casteism, arguably the oldest running system in the world, is so vast in its intricacies that it's a small wonder that it’s difficult to fully grasp it. When you mix our caste system with our so-called mythologies, things get super-interesting. Krishna belonged to the milkman’s caste while Rama belonged to the boatman’s caste. Even those who wrote the two greatest epics of all time, Mahabharata and Ramayana—just like the man who helmed the Indian constitution—belonged to the lower castes. The only logical conclusion one can gauge here is, gods don’t have to be Brahmin.
What happens when an artist is disgraced (by himself) and outcast (by others)? They turn radioactive. Nobody wants to be associated with them and they are expected to maintain a quiet presence or a loud absence. Like Pablo Escobar almost did in Narcos. Away from his burdening ambitions and conflicts, safe and sound in the bucolic lap of his father’s farm. But no, he had to leave that serenity and walk away towards his early death. Of course, Escobar was no artist. Louis CK is. Five years ago, he found himself in the storm of some very weird sexual allegations. He didn’t refuse any of those stories and put forth a half-assed apology letter. His detractors wanted him to disappear from the face of entertainment. And he did stay oblivious for a while. Not anymore. He recently appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and it felt like the man had completed his unwritten sentence. In April, he even won a Grammy although he is a persona non grata on any of the popular media establishments. Don’t expect interviews or long fabled features by Variety, Vanity Fair or NYT. He is a pariah, by every possible definition. All his work is hosted on his own site and he recently got active on YouTube as well. I guess he is learning to be a strong, independent man. A far cry from 2012 when Mel Brooks praised Louis CK’s “business acumen” in an episode on Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars. How a man falls and how times change.
Every year, some think tank would come up with a map showing countries and those countries that they presumably hate the most. 10 years ago, Pakistan used to be the most hated country in India. Now, that honour is bestowed upon China. For Pakistan, India is, was and will always remain enemy numero uno. Without a centrifugal hatred for their eastern neighbour, Pakistanis might experience an acute case of existential crisis. At least that’s the narrative. Irrespective of these nagging geopolitics, the world is fast changing. The recent hate map tells you everything you need to know about the role time plays in people’s memories. There are 54 countries in Africa and more than half of them apparently hate Israel. Similarly, the most disdained nation in Europe is Russia for obvious reasons. One country that did the most damage in recent history is conspicuously not to be found anywhere on the map: United Kingdom. The lesson to be learnt here is, when you fuck everyone up equally, people tend to forget your past.
There aren’t addictions that can match the love of chess. Once you are into it, there is no real escape. Even if you stop playing altogether, you’d still be lurking around, following tournaments, tallying records, and related news. When I quit cricket after school, I was done with it completely. Zero interest, whatsoever. Which explains why I so wholeheartedly embraced football and started reading more and more about football clubs, choosing Liverpool to be my favourite. During engineering days, I stopped practising free kicks but I continue to closely follow the sport to this day. But none of these resulting sensations can match the adrenaline of a supposedly slow sport like chess. Those who know what blitz chess is all about would attest to the heart attacks we fans get on a normal basis.
A housing society in Vashi recently decided to get rid of an old blind street dog in the cruelest way possible. They apparently instructed their watchman to leave him in a gutter. As infuriating as this incident is, what is more disheartening is the defiant nature of the people who conducted this heinous crime. A woman (who happens to be a doctor) in a viral video featuring these residents claims that it was a joint decision because that dog was a nuisance. Agreed that an old blind dog could be a problem but aren’t there more humane ways to do things? Can’t the educated lot just google and find someone from the local animal care to take away the dog? What sort of civilization condones leaving a helpless creature in a gutter of all places? Sometimes, I think about that gorgeous place called hell and who all get to reside there.
If you ever feel like you are the unluckiest person in the world and all the bad things happen to you while everybody else is living it up with too many blessings under their belt, then let me tell you something: you are so so wrong. Also, you know nothing about the balance of life. It’s human nature to suffer unnecessarily. Not one person alive is sorted, or like they say, got their shit together. Nope. Each one of us is broken in our own little ways. Even the one with a genius brain is sad about something and so are the ones with perfect jawlines. The athletes might have the sharpest features but that doesn’t stop them from screwing it up. And the same is true for those with visibly perfect lifestyles. Both the accomplished men with partners without gag reflexes and successful women with partners with endless stamina might be feeling unfulfilled in other ways. There is no singular antidote to emptiness. In fact, the only factor common to all human beings is our ability to feel incomplete. How we deal with it is what sets us apart from the crowd.
After spending close to two years in Mangalore, I’ve finally arrived at the conclusion that there is no point in staying lingually handicapped. This city is too diverse to stick to one language (Tulu) and has a common denominator in its state language (Kannada). It doesn’t make sense for me to feel deprived anymore. As a result, I’ve started learning this language my amma once tried teaching us (my brother and me) to write/read when we were very young. It’s a foreign tongue to me and yet not entirely foreign. I feel closer to Tamil thanks to the neighbourhood I grew up in. Everybody behaved like Tamil-karai and all of us enjoyed watching Sun TV Tamil-malai. Kannada, on the contrary, is like stepping into a house I knew from outside but never bothered to peek in. Anyhow, one of the fastest ways to learn a new language is to practise it with kids. They don’t judge you if you fumble and your ego remains safe. And I am doing exactly that with the many children in our building. Kannada gothu namage.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve written so much about dark circles that I can easily churn out a thin book on them. To my discredit, since my engineering days, I’ve had trouble sleeping. It got worse during my first job, and the story of decline continued. To this day, I can’t sleep late as normal people are supposed to. Even if I fall asleep by 2, I have to get up by 6.30. Body clock is jacked already. After returning from Vipassana in 2018, I slept very well for consecutive nights and almost thought I’ve cracked the sleep code. But that phase didn’t last long. Well, I’ve got friends who can sleep for upwards of 8 hours without interruptions and I know someone who can sleep despite having coffee, and these people reinstate faith in me. Anything is possible. Maybe, just maybe, one night, I too would sleep really long and wake up feeling so fresh that I might just go for a run. Or what if it’s the other way around? Maybe I need to go for a run so that I can sleep really well?
Beautifully written.