Digging for Meaning

[This is a  ridiculous diagnosis] Beware! A ghastly disease is on rise these days. It turns a perfectly capable adult into a challenged toddler who needs assistance. Who is at risk? It is sweeping across glass towers, big cars and countless cabins in city offices across India. Specifically, perfectly capable adults who start earning 7 figure salaries tend to be at high risk of turning into a differently-abled toddler. So the initial observations allude to it being a classist disease. Recent studies have revealed that, being wealthy is not the only determinant - it affects people who tend to make irrational choices - such as purchase of INR 35,000 for a laptop bag when one can buy another that is just as good for around INR 1,000. The irrationality alludes to it being a mental disease rather than a physical disability. Symptoms   They seem perfectly capable, healthy even, but are unable to do the most basic human action ever - of carrying one's own ...

When man colonises Mars in movies, he/she/it wears those bulky astronaut suits and smothers our ears with the sound of it breathing. It steps heavily into vacuum sealed building. The doors shut tight behind it, a tad bit menacingly. There is a finality to that sound of door shutting. No going out any time soon now. And when it opens the helmet, a sweaty head emerges, happy with its contact to  air-conditioned air. Back in the living again. There is death outside - One breath of outside air or exposure to harsh sun and its your end. No wonder, the astronauts spend almost all of their time inside man made buildings. They aren't out 'enjoying the nature' or exploring new things always. They are instead preserving themselves everyday. Just like us Delhites (or broadly speaking NCRites). It is the first year in my life that I have an AC in my house. And every time I rush into the bedroom from the kitchen, I feel like I am Matthew McConaughey from Interstellar. The killer h...

A beautiful yellow and white butterfly is hovering outside the window of the metro. Outside, the summer has begun to sting. Inside, the air-conditioning makes the outside look pleasant. The wide rectangles of metro windows frame the Qutub Minar well. The Minar rises and wanes in greenery. Solace for dry eyes, beauty in embrace of a wide expanse of greenery. And yet the solitary little butterfly has chosen to be here, besides a thundering metal and glass caterpillar. The giant caterpillar runs along a hundred times faster in a straight line. The butterfly hovers, flies and staggers undecidedly at its own pace.   It hovers and staggers, two paces ahead, a few flaps of wings to stay put, then sideways and ahead again. It is as if it is searching something down below. Hovering and examining the world below. Maybe it's wallet fell down or a ring. Do butterflies get married? The metro is guarded with rolling barbed wires. The butterfly is hopping from one segment of wire to the ...

[This is a ridiculous news story] Delhi: The complaining voices are getting shriller. Cars are increasingly annoyed by the usurpers called humans who are encroaching their territory. It is a bad time to be a car, many say. They look back to a time when a car could go 10 feet without having to break (legs of pedestrian humans and dogs). A visibly upset old Ambassador was shouting "Get off our roads" picketing in front of the gate that separated the largely parking lot city that belonged to cars and the small ramshackle settlement earmarked for humans and dogs. "The mindless humans keep on throwing themselves onto us" barked a young Swift Dzire, eying an opportunity to be in the limelight of my esteemed journalistic magnificence. "They very well know that roads are for cars... along with any open space, footpaths, potholes, alley ways and the first few steps to any house. Yet they keep on treading on our territory." The weaker section of humans have...

Scene 1. At the grocery store. The cashier is finalizing my purchase. busy tallying my bill. A woman enters, puts a bunch of bananas on the scale and orders to give some 'sooji'. Insistently. The cashier is an experienced guy. curt. efficient. grey hair. he ignores her. another woman enters and questions 'dalchini hai kya?'. in another 3 seconds, 'jaldi batao dalchini hai kya?' Cashier asks her to wait. he gets flustered and pauses before resuming to tally my purchases. The second woman impatiently starts looking here and there, murmuring something. leaves. The first woman can see that after my bill is made, it will be her turn very soon. But it seems that she is incapable of waiting. she pushes ahead and again says 'woh sooji bhi dena'. Its amazing how she tries to reframe the reality with she being at the center . she is assuming that its her purchase that is being entertained. Scene 2. Traffic light. (any NCR traffic light.) Red light. Cars s...

I attended a pecha kucha event recently where a few entrepreneurs came to share their experiences.  The experience was illuminating in a whole different way. Hence this post. What I am writing here, is less of criticism, and more of a reminder to self of what not to do. Especially because, people tend to congratulate for even wrong things as long as you have a podium. So while I am in audience, and have my faculties unencumbered by reality-distorting-praise and encouragement, I will write down the pitfalls that I should avoid.  About entrepreneurship 1. "Indian people don't understand"/ "Indians haven't evolved."/ "Its so tough to teach Indians" My jaws dropped with horror as 3 entrepreneurs made such comments at the event .  I really felt like helping their poor souls. But then I caught myself in the irony of my wish - I wanted to 'teach' them, as they wanted to teach 'me' (an Indian). But how can any entrepreneurs succee...

Recently I saw a documentary called ' Superheroes '. Its about a bunch of people who wear costumes and patrol their city streets to fight crime. To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive about watching it; I felt that it would make me cringe. (I cringe seeing people being made fun of. Can't help it. I hate it when people do that to others. I cannot see those TV shows where we are supposed to laugh at someone else's misery/ embarrassment. I hate it when TV shows trivialize real feeling of people or glorify the emotions to turn it into a farce. Just can't stand it.) But it turned out to be a very human story of genuine people who are fed up with the apathy of people around them. Often they were victims first and vigilante as a result of it. It was an act in empathy and escape combined that propelled them to wear mask and attempt at creating a change for the better. It was inspiring to me. Not for the caped crusading (well, not going to happen), but for the beautiful...

"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...

Except for the 2 days of the event, my stay @ delhi was utterly kickass. met up with a friend, roamed around delhi a lot, got to know so many new things. it was good. :D and out of this trip was born this video. on the gates of the North Block in Delhi are inscripted these words "Liberty will not descend to a people. A people must raise themselves to liberty. It is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed. " You go around the city of delhi, the capital of the biggest democracy in the world and you come accross stark polarities. On one side there's Janpath and then there's lanes of chandi chowk. am trying to make a statement here about liberty and our role in achieving it. Like the video @ chandni chowk is interspersed with pics of fire.. essentially telling of our civic responsibility towards a safer place for ourselves. The common man's apathy who walks by but does not act. The helpless people at the bottom of the pyramid who can only afford to wat...