Do you enjoy reading? Or do you enjoy reading a lot? I’ve started mulling about such things lately. Maybe because I am dangerously close(r) to 40 now although my skin betrays my age. Consciously staying away from alcohol and drugs truly helped. Yet, deep down, the musty aroma of mortality lingers. Dreadful thoughts. Which brings back the biggest allure of life: what do you really want to spend your (limited) time on? As impossible as it may sound, it’s completely up to you. You are a freaking grownup. Despite your circumstances, you make your decisions for yourself. If you’re keen on building a slower but more fulfilling existence, you can. You just need to work towards achieving tiny goals. Let’s say, you enjoy reading books but aren’t able to find time for yourself. What do you do about it? If you ask me—which you shouldn’t, obviously—just rephrase the situation. Do you enjoy reading? Or do you find joy in reading many books? Is it a number game for you? I know people who savour a book so slowly that they are worried that the pages will end and kick them back to their existential crisis. I also know people who read like a machine and are proud to post listicles on Substack about what they read and why you should read them too. Whatever you choose, just (try to) be happy. Easy.
My readers tend to reach out to me for “career advice” and it’s funny because I am the last person to comment on this topic. My trajectory has been so wayward that I have no right whatsoever to tell you what to do for sure. That said, I can certainly ask you what NOT to do. If you are looking for a job, don’t waste too much time telling your employer what you did in the past. Rather spend more quality time on letting them know what you plan to do for them in the future. In that spirit, don’t have hang ups about archaic practices like titles and designations—ego massage at its best. In the same vein, project yourself as a problem-solver. Not a copywriter or a salesperson or an accountant—remind them that you are there to make their lives better. You note a problem, you solve it earnestly. That’s it.
While interviewing Dhanush for Raanjhanaa (2013), he told my team at Mid-day that The Secret by Rhonda Bryne changed his life. He didn’t blink even once while recommending this book; that’s how passionate he was about it. No act. I immediately read the book and my life didn’t change at all. Or maybe it did but I am not certain whether for good or worse. Later, I came across several individuals who actually believed in the power of manifestation. Basically reminding the universe—through prayers, chants, self-pep talk, etc.—how you want your life to be. I’ve come to accept now that if you don’t have a vision, you won’t go very far. That’s the power of thought. If you aim for the stars, you will land somewhere near Pali Hill.
Most people nowadays have a lot to be thankful for but they don’t know how to be grateful. They are well-acquainted with the concept of gratitude but they simply don’t know how to give back. It's a weird denouement (my all-time favourite pretentious French word), no? You’ve reached that stage in life where things have started making sense to you. You’ve finally realized that the world at large wasn’t scheming against you. You were just a stupid person who made wrong choices and then looked for others to blame. The only way you could course-correct your journey is by stepping back, not accelerating in, and once you master it, you have everything to be thankful for.
I often read messages on LinkedIn and Instagram where young(er) folks reveal that they are in a bad job or an unhappy relationship. Again, I am not the perfect sage to show others the way; I am barely finding my own footing thanks to my migraine. However, this is a philosophy that has worked for a lot of them. Turns out not wanting what you currently have (Point A) is not a strong enough force. Intensely wanting the next opportunity (Point B) is the force to reckon with. Makes sense? Constantly hating and cribbing about your current job is a weak move. Dedicate yourself to working towards getting the job you like becomes the differentiating factor. The lesson here is basic: aim for the stronger force in nature. All those around you who have something today know that they have it because they wanted it badly in the first place. Your desire to move to Point B should be stronger than your disdain for Point A.
I’ve been actively writing on this blog since 2007 and if there is one thing that I am genuinely proud of, then that’s coining new (meaningless) words and phrases. The latest addition to my vocabulary is “cry like a squid” and I’ve tried dropping it in my countless WhatsApp groups. Why cry like a squid, you ask? Well, my dear readers, squids have the largest eye in the animal kingdom. It’s only fair that they get the highest honour of idiom as far as crying is concerned. And I don’t care that they live in water. Thank you for attending my sed talk.
Have you heard of KL Saigal? If you haven’t, you’d love to know about him. He was the first major actor in Indian cinema and had a massive fan following. His fame was unparalleled but he passed away at the age of 42. Apparently, he was a very generous person too and used to hand out money to needy people. According to one anecdote, he once made the driver stop his car and gave away a thick wad of cash to a beggar on the roadside. His manager asked him why he keeps doing this. To which, he responded, “The one who is giving me doesn't count either.” I don’t know how true this apocryphal story is but I’d like to believe that it truly happened.
Speaking of cinema, Gandhiji was strongly against it. He saw it as a waste of time and more importantly, a tool of propaganda. In fact, in his entire life, he watched only one movie called Ram Rajya (1943), directed by Vijay Bhatt (Vikram Bhatt’s grandfather) and starring Shobhana Samarth (Kajol’s grandmother). If anything, Hollywood validates Gandhiji’s apprehension. If you are a fan of Hollywood, you must admire how the Americans tend to project themselves as the good guys even in stories where they are invading sovereign nations. 12 years ago, a beautiful propaganda movie named Zero Dark Thirty subtly showed how Obama did perfectly fine by dropping bombs on helpless nations just after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s OK to violate international boundaries as long as cinema can back it up with a gorgeous script.
In the last 100 years, Indian cinema has maintained a strange bond with the cold notion of propaganda. When Nargis folded hands in Mother India (1957) and begged her fellow villagers to not abandon their farms, she was toeing the apparent success of the First Five Year (1951-56), where the focus was on boosting agriculture. A decade later, Manoj Kumar launched the ultra-patriotic Upkar (1967) at the behest of PM Shastri, who passed away the previous year. This trend continued from decade to decade, and didn’t stop even at the turn of the century/millenium. Rang De Basanti (2006) is celebrated as an anti-establishment film but the only reason it received a green flag is because it was highlighting the previous government’s failures. And then, in the 2010s, Akshay Kumar took it upon himself to humbly glorify all the possible successes of the incumbent government. In more ways than one, Indians are immune to propaganda as they don’t get swayed by art deeply. We sing songs all our lives without knowing the meaning of their lyrics. Say what you may about our culture, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise.
I recently watched a touching movie called A Real Pain (2024) and it does a brilliant job of dragging your attention to the Jewish experience. Basically all the horrible things that happened to this tiny community of less than 1% in the world. This film is a mature take on recorded historical facts; such a convincing piece of storytelling. Now, if you ask yourself why there is no cinematic equivalent of this particular prism for Hindus, you’d be grasping for theories. Forget the vague medieval past, just in the last one century, there have been heartwrenching events—from British-enabled Mopla massacres to Bengali famine to Left’s slaughter of lower caste Hindus to Kashmiri cleansing and so on. Yet, there is not one Indian movie that could encapsulate this collective agony. Not one. Forget creating something in the lane of Schindler's List (1993), there is not even one decent attempt at scratching the surface of suffering. Even the so-called auteurs of Indian cinema conveniently stayed away from exploring these pain points. Satyajit Ray was so invested in parallel cinema that he probably lived in a parallel universe too: what else can explain the utter lack of reference to the mindless butchering of Hindus in East Pakistan that happened in his background? Isn’t cinema a letter to the timelessness of current events? Maybe not. A decade later, Kashmiri Pandits were cleansed from the valley and the best Bollywood could do was show us how the militants, not their victims, sang aspirational songs together. To make things worse, the vacuum created by lack of empathy for the victims ended up providing extra space to polarising movies like The Kashmir Files (2022) and The Kerala Story (2023). Storytelling at its worst.
I joined Twitter early early on in 2008 and I’ve seen firsthand what all happened and how everything changed. None of the political changes took place overnight as some people would like you to believe. Eventually, when Elon Musk took over Twitter and monetized blue tick, he was simply playing to the gallery. He already knew that the Left won't pay $8 while the Right definitely will. That's just how it works: the Right is known to spend money (out of convenience) whereas the Left is known to be thrifty (out of principle). Now, here's the catch: had the Left also paid and made their presence felt—the Twitter algorithm basically skews to whoever pays more, that's textbook capitalism — the Left could have maintained rhetoric control over Twitter as it did during the Jack Dorsey era.
My ultimate goal in life is to make people laugh, not happy. Happiness is their personal problem. Which is also why I take the art of comedy very seriously—as ironic as this sounds. In my book, a good standup gig should have the audience in the dark and the performance firmly under the spotlight. What this does is, the focus remains on the content shared by the comedian and not on who laughed at what jokes. Because of the privacy guaranteed by darkness, people can safely laugh at whatever jokes they feel like, instead of worrying about what others are going to think about them for laughing at inappropriate jokes. Dark is politically incorrect but damn funny.
How can we have a blogpost and not mention my adorably cranky dad? So, let me share a conversation in Tulu between him and his beloved wife.
Pappa: "Sukha da dina kammi, dukha da dina jaasti." [In life, you get a few happy days and a lot of sad days.]
Amma: "Sukha gaali lakka, marayre." [In life, happiness is like a breeze; it happens when it has to happen.]
Lastly, whenever you have to study greatness, you must dig deeper to study the hardship behind it. For example, to understand Messi's greatness, you will have to go through his first season at Barcelona where he managed to score only one goal. Yes, you read that right. He went on to set a calendar-best record of 91 goals but that’s a different story altogether. In other words, his early struggle was real. If you look closely, you’d notice that his breakout didn’t happen at Camp Nou. It happened during the summer break in 2005 where he played an influential role in Argentina lifting the U-20 World Cup. That tournament put Messi on the map and people started talking about him.
I truly enjoyed it. It became a part of the things which I enjoy with my morning coffee and trust me, I’m very selective about it. :)