Digging for Meaning

"Surgical strikes" of Mr. Modi Mr. Modi loves the metaphor of surgical strike - precise, effective, absolute. If surgeries are for flesh-and-bones bodies of living beings, the surgical strikes that Mr. Modi likes to unleash on are bodies of 'terrorism', 'corruption','poverty' etc. In a physical body, a 'surgical strike' can be contained. The target and the weapon is definite and known. The cause-effect are immediately visible. The metaphor loses its meaning when you try to use it on conceptually elastic exchanges such as terrorism and corruption. What I mean by conceptually elastic is - terrorism or corruption are fairly fluid in their meaning and depends on who is defining whom as being a terrorist or corrupt. 'Corruption' or 'Terrorism' is not a thing or a person that we can see, smell, touch. It exists between people as an exchange. Take for example the concept of "Terrorism" State sponsored terrorism is cal...

Today, UK decided to leave EU. EU itself has now far more ‘far right’ xenophobic  parties in the European parliament than ever before in its history. On the back of very virulent xenophobia, Trump, otherwise a sideshow freak in the branding/entertainment industry, is now a presidential contender in USA – His promise of the ‘wall’ between mexico and USA garnering him followers among republican US citizens. India recently elected a right wing government with an unprecedented majority – putting majoritarian fictions in the central consciousness of the nation, instead of actual issues that need public debate. From Netherlands to Australia to Nigeria to Philippines… people everywhere are electing xenophobic parties and leaders. Are we collectively getting dumber? Or is their something beneath our collective psyches that needs recognition? The fear of loss of control If the last century was about opening the world with fast rails, conco...

JNU students are not stealing money from public banks. The powerful but immoral business men and their cronies in the nation's bureaucracy are. Beef eaters are not stealing your food; subsidizing for the politicians and driving farmers to kill themselves. The culprit are the flawed policies of the apathetic government shaped in no small measure by lobbying corporate and business-politician nexus. The 'Muslims'/ 'Hindus'/ 'Flying Spaghetti Monster worshippers' are not attacking your dignity as a human being. It is the capitalist power centers who would not let you organise and rise as equals. It perpetuates inequality and dreams of 'making it big', a lottery rigged from the start. The 'Anti-nationals' are only really anti-stupor . They are not endangering your survival. Your existence is being endangered by blind corporates and corrupt bureaucrats who subvert moral responsibilities , and who prioritise profit over human life. Jats/ Dali...

Just saw this campaign from Unicef done by JWT. It is called Poo2Loo. Apparently its been running for more than a year now with major focus on digital media. Who is it aimed at? It is in English. the styling in international. The setting is urban. probably Mumbai. The nearly 3 minute long video does not tell you anything new - why is it still a problem? why do people defecate in open? How can one help? All it does in those three entertaining minutes is elicit a nod from the upper class Indian who feels disgusted living in Indian cities. It reinforces disgust, without telling what is to be done about it. ' take the poo to the loo ' doesn't count because it doesn't mean anything. It does not feature the people who defecate at all. Leave alone empathy, there is no recognition of the other class. It is from a point of view of a class which does not see the other class of people, only their shit. The video merely bolsters cynicism towards India. It talks to the g...

  Why be slaves? Why willingly restrict your blood circulation? Why bear a silly symbol around your neck which typically signifies you as an owned subject - the very replaceable non-individuating member of the docile serving class? Why wear suit in a hot place like India? Its a fucking environmental crime to wear a suit and then turn up the air conditioning of the mammoth offices to suit your sartorial compulsions.  Wear a lungi while in Chennai. Wear shorts while in Mumbai. Businesses should adapt to regions.  Not the other way round.

3 reasons why democracy as we know today is a waste of intentions, time, money and opportunity. It is a costly mistake that needs to be corrected. 1. Rule of the elite The word Democracy is an antonym of Aristocracy - the rule of an elite. Yet, the elected representative turn into elite the day he/she gets elected. For a true representative democracy, the representative must remain a representative of the constituency - socially, morally, financially... What is the point of this charade if the representative goes and sits in the capital and leads an entirely alien life to that of the constituency he represents. For a representative to be a 'representative' - he /she should share enough common traits, concerns, social condition with his/her constituency. There must be rules regarding the validity of candidature and his class & geographical mobility. For eg. if the candidate becomes x-times richer than the average enrichment of his constituency, his candidature must auto...

See these ads -> Bisleri500 Angry bride , Bisleri500 Casanova , Bisleri500 Superhero Tell me you didn't find them disturbing. If you did, stop drinking this irresponsible brand, and if it can be helped, bottled water altogether .   Story of the bottled water If not, let me shepherd out the outrage. What do you think is the brand trying to do through these ads? Its a classic advertising attack on your current behavior. Not all behavior change objectives are bad, but they always have a big responsibility - In your quest for increased usage/ preference, you don't want to bring harm to a culture or people. I believe Bisleri has been tremendously irresponsible in multiple ways. The behavior shift sought here is that from shared drinking to individualistic drinking. While traveling you would often see us Indians sharing a bottle, sharing food. Sharing is a big part of how Indians define themselves. However, sharing is perhaps a newer value that India tried to ...

Its Holi time. :) The best time (for some) to be in India. It is a global party to prepare ourselves of the terrible weather that will soon turn us into homebodies - scared of stepping out in the day time 45 degree dust bowls. One last day of being out and enjoying it - beat the heat with style. Social media, the zeitgeist barometer, though indicates a different Holi to me this year. On the one hand, there are people talking about the HoliCow party - stripping holi to its most basic ritual, and turning it into a modern dance banality. And on the other, there's concerned city folks who are advocating abstention from the whole thing - save water/ "Think of the poor" - droughts across India/ natural herbal colors as replacement for the more energetic color+water combination. (Should we blame this on ACs? I have a hypothesis - Holi will be played more vigorously in towns where there is low penetration of Air-Condition machines. There is a correlation between 'for...

"Look at that. A girl smoking! A girl should not be smoking cigarettes." After watching a play at the Kamani Auditorium in Delhi, I was leaving on an auto rickshaw towards CP. It is the heart of the capital region - fashion, cultural, business & political nerve center. And the navigators of this nerve center - the auto wallahs, the cabbies - are largely migrants, who bring with them the medieval India's twisted ideas of morality. Its amazing how far apart the worlds of the navigator and his customers are.  (though not necessarily from different moral molds.) On the way to CP, we crossed a couple of college students and among them was a girl who was smoking a cigarette. Upon seeing her, a spontaneous statement came out loudly from my auto driver's mouth. The first statement uttered in the journey so far. He sees a girl smoking and out pops a strong moral statement that he felt strongly about. "A girl should not be smoking cigarettes." I asked him i...

Do you think you are an aam aadmi? you are a voyeur in the great playground of this nation. You are outside the playground. You are a consumer. you earn your white collar dollars and spend it on processed snacks and shiny things. and that's the only thing that excites you or the people high up. They are concerned with nothing else about you. Sadly, neither are you. The only things that hold your gaze are TV and your ever expanding belly. The shining rectangles are narrowing your minds and squeezing out all empathy you've got . You whine for a while when shit happens. But won't try to affect any change. At this moment you pick up the placards in the name of aam aadmi and walk in circles in your living room. But there's nothing 'aam' about how you see yourself. You are world unto you. That world is small but richly invested with your emotions. That narrow world doesn't entertain logic or differing opinions. Once painted with a favorite color, the personal b...

Tunisia woke up after a young man driven with frustration doused himself in fire . He cared for his dignity . People in Tunisia recognized that systematic stripping of dignity that the government was subjecting them to. Out of the flames arose the call for dignity so loud that it toppled several dictators. The pre-shocks of the Tsunami were felt at a town square where a shopkeeper could not take the abuse from the police anymore. He took up a fight on street. Quickly the whole town was baying for blood of police. Dignity had been earned back. However, Indians have given up on the very idea of dignity long back. Crimes against humanity get internalized by families as rules of the world. ('Its like that only') The idea of right and wrong is very unstable. For example, if a young couple gets hacked to death for daring to love even though being from different castes, the society will turn it into a tamasha where moral eyebrows would be raised about the character of the young cou...

Outrage is a favourite emotion with the middle class. Its an easy emotion that lends beautifully as an excuse to all the violence that our position and privilege necessitates. Its an easy veil we wear to hide all our insecurities. And its an easy weapon to annihilate any opposition to our moral hegemony. So, an Indian colonist in Andaman would be outraged with the nakedness of the jarawa tribal and feel within his rights to annihilate their land, their culture, their person. So, an Indian citizen would be outraged at Kalmadi's deeds that put the 'nation to shame', while feeling proud of the 70KCrore tamasha on the screen.Like a commentor on facebook commented, 'The CWG games have made India proud. the 70K Crore bill is worth it'. how screwed up is the sense of their worth? he probably earns 70K in two months. It will take many lifetimes worth of his earning to earn that money. then how did he arrive at its worth, which is clearly not within his grasp of imaginatio...

Chapter 1. The order This is a story about a maverick government officer who was unlike any. He was driven with passion for his pledge not pennies. A pledge that all took, but few followed At the feet of powerful did most find grounds hallowed. The pledge was a looking glass that made everyone seem equal. And justice was a given, not a mirage of ‘coming soon’ sequel. But alas, the real world was none too congruent. And the supposed builders of bridges of equality were playing truant. When the majority abdicates its duties and a few uphold the ideal, the mirror of the truth is sought to be sabotaged and its shard are used to kill. Normality is enforced and differences are annihilated. Opinions are agreed upon and beamed down into gullible brains emaciated. The hero of our story was no idealistic zealot he was just a human, and felt for his lot. His conscience was not squeaky clean but questioning that conscience was his daily scene. It was just one such day, when his boss asked him to g...

The age is hierarchy-less. First names have lost suffixes. Its a glorious time to be working young. Until you notice the square footage of one's office, you can never tell if the person is CEO or one 'amongst us'. :P well, the grey hair theory mostly holds true but you never know if the chappie you were talking to jovially and sharing jokes was heading an entire division somewhere. you just thank god that you weren't your usual idiotic and made fun of your superiors.  Hence was born 'mission big cat' whose aim was to quickly identify big people (yes.. there is no equality and you better know it. there are big people and then there are super big people, who willingly/unwillingly maintain the smallness of the little people who in-turn maintain the smallness of even smaller micro relevant people.. whose food even is not as important as the semi-big boss's daughter's big nails.) It was squarely aimed for the purpose of being aware and not making fool of my...

Free time is like a crack in the door of life. With the walls of education and qualifications, we build a career-led life and push out emotion-led life. We fill the life at hand with busyness. you see, busyness adds that gilt to the walls that shine off the fluorescent light onto yourself and you feel that much happier for the moment. The sun wastes away outside, and you crank up that AC and sit inside under the flickering flouroscent magnificence. But sometimes Time plays games with you. it doesn't supply that busy dead buzz. It just hangs there steadfast and resolute. It wants some undevided attention perhaps. Busyness is the opium of the cubicle-dwellers. Can't let go of it. try to live without your cell phone for a few days. What you gonna do, when time stays and stares at you? Through that crack, melancholy starts sipping in. The magnificence, you realise has an un-agreeable stench of loneliness to it. To sit in that gilded chair of importance of some abstraction, you ...

1. on the way from prithvi theatre to home in an autorickshaw, we stopped at a place for a moment to buy some ice-cream. the place had families and kids thronging the area. A group of men -seemingly upper middle class young office goers - passed by, cursing jovially. The autowallah guy got furious. He started saying, 'ye bolteh hain toh ganda nahin hain. garib koi gaali de toh pakad ke peetenge, bolenge kaha se aa gaya gandagi karne..' (If they curse then its not bad, is it? if a poor man would have cursed in public, he would have been beaten up and scolded saying that where have you come from to spread the filth.) 2.* a cabbie had this to say about the recent case where a drunk woman mowed down a few people under her car. "Hindustan ka niyam toh ameeron ke liye nahin hai.. jab tak mamla garam hai, andar rahenge, fir bahar nikal aayenge. 4 logo pe gaadi chadane ke baad bhi salman khan ab ghum raha hai nanga. darna bas hum logonko chahiye." *Source: Gaurav ...

Indian middle class is many things. one of it is being insanely twisted in its logic and morality. let me give you a few examples. 1. a friend was telling me how a relative of hers questioned her staying in andheri saying 'all the girls in andheri smoke.. u want to smoke that's why you want to stay in andheri.' :P hilarious, yes. but i cannot begin to fathom the way we micro-stereotype everything, especially about women and 'behavior'. 2. while in a group, we were discussing how Urdu had evolved in India and its rich heritage.then the discussion veered to, how urdu is not the native language of Kashmir, with ladakhis, dogris and kashmiri being the most spoken.(this was in context of compulsory education of Urdu to ladakhi kids whose mother tounge is not Urdu.) all of a sudden, a apparently well educated engineer amongst us says 'they should ban urdu'.. asked why, he said 'because this is hindustan. why advocate a muslim language' i was left speechle...

just saw this talk on TED. Its the usual evangelical white man's talk to other white men about the need for understanding a people as a people rather than a 'problem' or a 'situation'. its about the 'shadow city' as he calls the slums in developing world. its an interesting talk and an earnest attempt in the right direction. However, in their politics to humanize, they tend to absolve the other forces at work. earlier in his talk, he talks how these shadow cities are expanding and more and more people are trooping in, without questioning why is that the case. he talks of how the shadow cities lack basic amenities of life but all these cities are built on hope and freedom. true, but what is making the people uproot themselves culturally, socially, materially and move to inhuman filth-holes in hope of what? while everyone should be able to enjoy his rights, at the same time he need not be elsewhere, far from his home to enjoy those rights and freedom. compou...