Digging for Meaning

We, the people, are gullible idiots. C'mon, admit it. We have all been bullied into bad deals by powerful charlatans at some point or another. Governments are no different. The current one is getting away with our personal data and going about distributing our public resources and monies to its favourite cronies.This is no exceptional government. This happens all the time, in all the countries - to varying degrees. The varying part is important. I would much rather be in Norway where the leeway for such giveaways against the interest of public is small, compared to Angola and Nigeria where the oil bonanza instead has become oil curse. One of the important ways for moving towards Norway and away from Nigeria is for the public to become aware and educated about power. Education is a bad word now - what India creates in not educated people, it creates literate minions. By educated, i mean people who can reason, who can think critically, who can see the world from different perspect...

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...

I am gravely worried for the fate of India’s cultural empire. More than the Indian army or its embassies and aid packages, it’s the movie machine of Mumbai that has helped India raise its cultural flag beyond India. From Afghanistan to Japan, from Russia to south east Asia, Bollywood has found devout followers everywhere. This cultural advocacy helps corporate bodies when they march their imperialist marches into these countries. Hey, a dancing, overtly emotional Indian is better than a Kung-fu fighting Chinese.   But, Bollywood is losing its hold here at home. Its becoming a caricature of it's imagined self. The ‘desi’ moviegoer is increasingly being subjected to only Punjabi and Gujarati London/Canada dreams. The mainstream movies are rarely even shot in India at all. Since the moneyed few rules what is to be made, the available palette is primarily composed of galling stories of people falling in love in some white suburb of NY or some such world of big white people, where surpr...

[upon re reading this, i realised that the thoughts i put here are half baked and not conclusive enough to make a strong argument.. nevertheless.... ] Every time i hear the national anthem, i have goosebumps. the patriotic feeling that strong. I don't quite understand this, cause I feel the notion of nation to be quite artificial. Physical borders really don't make much sense where physical resources alone no longer are the only things of consequence. Distances have been dissolved in this electronic age. I might be friends to people anywhere in the world, and we might bond over music and hatred than over national patriotism. (hmm.. so is nationalism just another vehicle for channeling hatred (accelerated competitiveness).. cuz being humans, we need to hate something..don't we?) We are global citizens, all our actions affect each other. As such, besides sports and some strategic geographical areas, there is no other avenue where notion of nation makes sense. Elsewhere somewh...