Random prose and broken paragraphs
If there is one thing we must teach our kids, it’s the compounding power of kindness. There is too much noise on raising children who are well-acquainted with technology, can speak English fluently, have names with the letter A dominant throughout, are walking around with an invisible bubble wrap surrounding them, and have little to zero interest in knowing about the life of their maid who visits daily. No society can prosper when only a small section do well. A major part of the blame falls on our collective callousness towards the supposed “others” and that can be fixed only by doubling down on kindness. It seems like a natural trait but it’s not. In practice, it’s more of an acquired skill than a virtue. You can’t be kind on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and then stop being kind the rest of the week. It’s a continuous process. Which is why we can reset our society by getting it right with our children this time around. We had almost eight decades of independence and somewhere, we messed up. We ended up building a society devoid of empathy. In other words, we had a chance and we blew it. Maybe the next generation shall get it right.
I’ve often written about the richness of India—both in literal and metaphorical terms—and every latest news of corruption proves me correct about my assertions. India is a wealthy nation, rotted out by a tiny minority for its personal benefit. We are blessed by nature and yet, we behave as if we are poor. Our streets are claustrophobic and our cities are filthy, not because there is no other option, but because we have somehow convinced ourselves that we are poor. It’s a mental game portaled against ourselves, puppetted by our masters who run the show in the background. Whenever a scam crop up, we tend to say generic stuff like “politicians are corrupt, babus are thieves…” and so on. But we miss out the most intriguing aspect here: the politicians are you and me, the babus are you and me, the conniving cop is you and me. They are not from another planet. They are just you and me, portraying their respective roles, because their upbringing missed out on some of the most crucial human values.
It’s 2025 and potholes are still one of the greatest conspiracies against Indians. How is it possible that we can launch missiles and rockets and come up with innovative technological solutions but we draw a line at building quality roads? Particularly when nations with far lesser muscle have got it right already. Just youtube roads in Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and even Syria, and you’d be blown away. Of course, South Delhi has fabulous roads, with massive trees on the sides, as the powers-to-be stay there. Why no potholes there? Anyway, let’s not even get into the statistics of road fatality. It’s criminally unsound of us to be perfectly alright with monsoon craters on main roads and national highways. Maybe once we figure out how to build long-lasting good roads, we’ll outsmart China for a change.
As far as I can remember, I’ve been chasing the idea of home. A home is created by how people are, not where people are. All my life, I wanted a house where people sit together and chat and pass food around and eat and laugh. The problem with chasing anything is it maintains a healthy distance. And by the end of your learning curve, you realize that you were chasing it not because it meant something but because you found meaning in it. It’s a delusion of the highest order. Not sure how beneficial it is to have mirages while roaming in the desert, but it does keep you aware of the oasis. Otherwise, you can easily forget what an oasis looks like.
Just because a tragedy occurred to you doesn’t really mean that your life is tragic. The beauty of tragedy is, it often sleeps in the past. It’s up to you whether you want to wake it up. That’s just how it is. If you are going to stay stuck, then it’s a conscious choice. Bad things happen all the time. Just like good things happen all the time. However, it’s very, very difficult for us to stay with the good moments. In fact, more often than not, a loved one has to die for us to relive those good moments. That’s the power of negative forces in our lives. We let them dictate the terms when we own the table.
Once you know exactly what took place and how you reacted to a situation, the next step is to un-spiral your mind. Whenever your mind is playing you up, start writing down the future you envision for yourself (and your loved ones). This is a trick my friend and mentor shared with me recently. This little mind-shift is supposed to pay you huge dividends in the near future. You can’t control anything in this world. Absolutely nothing. Except your mind. And once you do that, you control everything. There is a lovely line in Natya Shastra (probably, the first ever book on dance) and it goes something like: “Those who controlled their mind understood pretty soon that it’s futile to control others.” Word.
Not sure about you but I do believe in energies. Places have it (you instantly feel calm in a temple, mosque, church, gurudwara for a reason). People have it. Animals and birds, too. Sticking to our species, some humans reflect good energy (positive, warm, vibrant, welcoming) and some people do have vicious energy (negative, tormented, sullen, malicious). For example, if you spend your time mostly with good energy, you are bound to feel better and optimistic about your future. If you spend your time mostly with bad energy, you are set up to feel disappointed and harassed by the world. That said, it’s difficult to pinpoint the root cause of an event or even an incident. In other words, things occur. When good things are happening to you, you don’t go around looking for its root cause. Why? Because you are programmed to believe that you deserve them. When bad things happen to you, it’s human curiosity to look for its root cause. Most likely, things happened because they were supposed to happen. And all you need to do is learn something from them and become stronger and wiser. That is life.
Overthinking is a huge problem and there are various theories around how to control it. There was hardly any buzz around it before we took the second shot of Covaxin. Thanks to pandemic, the discourse on mental health picked up steam. That said, the Vedic concept of controlling your nothingness/shunyata sounds like a lot of work. A common denominator to these Eastern philosophies is dhyana (even the Chinese word for concentration is derived from the same), but it takes a lot of meditation to reach that stage of calmness. If it took us years to become the emotional wreck that we have become today, it’s ONLY fair that it will take us time (years?) to course-correct our mind. I don’t know how long and I don’t wish to overthink on this topic.
We keep mentioning female emancipation without mentioning financial literacy among women. Particularly in a country like India where even men are (mostly) financially illiterate. They have no idea how the system works. We walk around acting as if inflation isn’t going to catch up. Even basics like the difference between PPF and NPS is lost on people. To make things worse, the market is designed in such a manner that women are bound to not only spend more but also pay more for the same products as compared to men. This level of consumerism is not at all addressed, even by ig paglus, and this is how things are for the so-called educated lot. Imagine how bad it must be for those women who never held a job, never had a bank account to her name, has no retirement plans, and worse.
I’ve often addressed the Great Hollowness that our generation (millennnials, sorry) tend to feel every now and then, if not every morning. The solution is broad-ranged, depending on where you are in your lifecycle. Yet, I can safely assume that that emptiness is a result of constant focus on yourself. Instead of working on you, you stay distracted by things connected to you. Me. My. Mine. Maybe the correct approach is to zoom out a bit and take life for what it really is: an opportunity to give/share.
I recently learned that Saddam Hussein held pro-India policies during his brutal regime. He was a pragmatic leader/dictator and stayed true to his foreign relationships. Just like the Soviet, he nodded at India through many critical junctures. When the Kashmir issue started boiling in the late 80s, he supported India at international forums. Conversely, during the Persian War, India refused to condemn his actions. In fact, during the war, the largest ever evacuation by a civil airliner (Air India, of course) was conducted and his government ensured passenger safety. Later, during the 90s, there were several instances of infra-related collaborations between India and Iraq. In the early 2000s, when USA declared war on Iraq under the false premise of WMD, India remained vocal against it and didn’t send army troops. Until a few days ago, I had no idea about these developments from the past. All I knew was that he was a ruthless persona, who, being a Stalin fanboy, styled himself after his hero (moustache and camouflage uniform). Every time, we read a bit of history, the present makes a lot more sense.
Speaking of charismatic despots, is it fair to suggest that Gaddafi was a feminist? Well, the straightforward answer is “Well, well”. He openly championed for women’s participation in public and even built a women-only security squad but it’d be insincere to conclude that he envisioned a gender parity society in Libya. If anything, he projected a modern image in an otherwise regressive Arab geopolitics but did very little to push forward the equality agenda. This is also where the conflict of value systems enter the scene: the West holds different standards for feminism. It’s optical and provides you a safe illusion of sorts. The stats aren’t impressive, be it violence against women or the paycheck. Worst, it even celebrates utterly sexist songs by the likes of Cardi B and Nicki Minaj. On the surface, things look better but when you look at the glass ceiling, there aren’t many cracks there. Gaddafi understood this irony and pretended to be pro-women. Of course, he had his disagreements with Bill Clinton as the latter internalized feminism the way he could only mock.
A friend of mine lives in an affluent neighbourhood in Gurgaon. Two months ago, their WhatsApp group started buzzing with a debate around getting rid of street dogs. The common excuses were thrown: “dogs are eyesore”, “they are dangerous”, “they spread garbage”, etc. This started a mini ideological war between the dog lovers and the dog haters. The cute irony here being, some of those in the dog haters camp had pedigree pet dogs at home. Anyway, as democracy generally functions, the majority voted against the street dogs and within a week or so, the neighbourhood was cleared off. No more furry friends. Only sanitized wealthy folks. Just last week, a theft happened there for the first time in ages. I wonder which camp the robbed house belonged to.
I am the undisputed king of trivia as I’ve been collecting tiny bits of information for years now. Throw any topic at me and I will have something interesting to share about it. In fact, for over a decade, I posted something on my Instagram account under the title ‘Useless Trivia of the Day’. I finally stopped it in 2024, to much relief. As I am getting older (and tired), I am realising that I’ve wasted a lot of time on collecting utterly useless pieces of knowledge. As a school boy, I used to place tiny leaves inside my books. Now, when I think about it, trivia is like that: drying leaves that are best left forgotten. Nobody cares.
I currently reside in Mangalore and visit my parents in Dronagiri every now and then. However, until late 2014, I’d lived entirely in Mumbai/Navi Mumbai. It was only after staying in Gurgaon I realized that we Mumbaikars have a weird kink for suffering on a daily basis. Instead of demanding better roads, drainage system, transportation network, sanitation, completion of pending infra projects, etc. from the richest municipal corporation in Asia, most of us selfishly hang onto the edge of a train footboard. It’s sad and funny how desensitized we’ve become to our own fate. We sometimes celebrate our dehumanization without realizing it. It’s impossible to think of any other country in the world where the richest city has such little ambition for itself.
I am not done ranting yet.
Wait.
Every day, upwards of 35,000 people move into this island city. God knows where they disappear into the crowd but the truth is, it’s an unsustainable model for two reasons:
there is a limit to every city’s ability to decay (meaning you can’t grow vertically fast enough when a majority of your land area is covered with slums)
a city is only as good as it gets to the second or third generation (meaning once you’ve made enough for yourself, you are supposed to leave the city and move to a smaller place so that others can make the most of this blistering city; yes, think of it like sulabh sauchalya: use and move on, don’t stay inside)
I personally have very little hopes from Mumbaikars or the politicians who line their pockets. Without Mumbai, India’s growth story crumbles, but Mumbaikars are too busy dealing with the humidity that they don’t seem to mind this piece of truth.
If you keep telling yourself that you are a moron, you will end up becoming a moron. If you keep telling yourself that you are going to improve, you are destined to get better. That’s just how our mind functions. I call it the Arjuna mode. You just need to be clear about the following:
What you are
Where you want to be
When do you wish to reach
How do you plan to get there
That beautiful, beautiful thing called clarity will push you forward. Or else, you will stay stagnant, stuck in a loop of your own making. Arjuna made it, not because he had Krishna as his mentor, but because he understood the difference between knowing and doing.
PS. Thank you attending my sed talk. I haven’t been able to write as regularly as I’d prefer to. Barely one blogpost per month, now. Just did the math and it’s disheartening. I started blogging in 2007 and I’ve published 4500+ blogposts so far. Which means, on an average, I’ve written 4-5 blogposts per week in the past. Perhaps, I just need to activate my Arjuna mode and go back to being a prolific writer.
Your presence is a blessing...a blessing to the readers.
what a comeback. how much i missed reading this!