Digging for Meaning

1. Food as love "Jevan zala?  Kay khallas? " (Did you eat? What did you eat for dinner?) Phone lines across the world are clogged with concerns of lovely people. In absence of real intimacy,  families and lovers resort to questionnaire of food intake and bowel movements. In absence of touch they want to ensure the mortal vessels of the their loved ones are well taken care of.  The questions are  not an exercise in inanity. They are expressions of love.  2. Food fetish Idle chat at office lunch tables,  conversations with acquaintances... Across the world, (perhaps the upper middle class world that is not currently being destroyed by wars and proxy wars) people are filling the space between burps and bites with conversations of food and restaurants.  Incessantly.  The virus of foodieitis is spreading faster than Ebola. Everybody see themselves as foodies. A virus that hollows out the brain of thoughts about anything but indulgen...

Marketer's assault on our Language = MAOL What do you do to wash your behind in the washroom? Do you trust your hands to do the job with water, or do you use paper? One day in college, a Chinese professor talked about this pertinent question when talking about cultural differences. She talked about how people see tissue paper as an essential solution, while there is an ecologically better solution 'at hand!'. The students were surprised with her point of view. Most of the students hailing from Indian metros, saw the tissue as a better alternative, a logical next step to the 'primitive' practice of washing with hands. That was one of the easy ways to differentiate oneself from the lower classes. The upper class is the one that has access to western lifestyle, which in Indian imagination is a 'step up', a logical next step . But this was different. This was a Chinese lifestyle too. (which is fairly absent from Indian imagination and hence exotic). ...

I have 3 shoes. One formal, One sport shoe and another a mix of the two. The last one is particularly awesome, cause of its uniqueness. It looks like a formal shoe, but is as comfortable and flexible as a sport shoe. I bought it for my first job in Mumbai. I was newly rich and was expected to behave like one. I found this gem of pure black leather in a Colaba Causeway showroom. Quite a find. But its been almost two years now and the shoe shows its age. For all its awesomeness, its quite a weak shoe, to give out so early. I have stitched it, got new laces, and strengthened its sole. It doesn't look shiny anymore cause the leather has suffered from a few hostile trespasses. I think, like a man, things too should be allowed to carry their scars. Shiny scar-less men are just so... irrelevant.  Since childhood, I have been used to using things for long times. Clothes, equipments, shoes etc. I can't just throw things away cause they don't look as good anymore or they don't ...

I am against hyper efficiencies sought in these days in everything. These hyper efficiencies are being sought without an understanding of the implications thereof. Take the case of energy systems. May it be the invention of the nuclear weapons, which has made extinction of human race a possibility in immediate future. Or see how this need for efficiency is fueling our irrational want for everything. There is a chasm of understanding between how things get made and how they get consumed. The hyper efficiencies are created by specialization of work. Vocations are getting more and more specialized. As such, human is getting distanced from the understanding of mechanisms of production of things that one consumes. This is harmful, because one then doesn’t understand the cost that natural resources, human life and flora and fauna is paying in producing something that may be totally superfluous. This drives irrational wants and creates a maddening consumerist race towards annihilation of wo...