Digging for Meaning

China's vision is to dominate the world's economy with its strategic investments and past currency manipulations : It is foxily forcing indebtedness on smaller countries like Pakistan & Sri Lanka; It is retaining and leveraging technology that it gets exposed to in trade (even as India spends billions in technological purchase but doesn't insist on comparable transfer of technology. Idiots) It is is doing everything possible to remain the factory of the world - either with currency manipulation in the past or by taking control over strategic global resources (read about what it is doing to corner global supply of strategic mineral resources - lithium in australia, canada & africa ; cobalt in Congo ,etc)  ... Essentially, CHINA has a vision. However repressive and terrible for others or its own people, it has a vision to win in the new zero-sum game of global power. (It need not have been a zero-sum game. But right wing assholes across the world are hell bent...

I live these days in a coastal city where property prices are only going up. I live in an island country where, the debt it owes is several times bigger than its revenues. And my mental reaction is to look at exit doors - be ready to flee, for the oceans are going to claim the land and capitalist vultures are going to claim natural resources - don't know which one will swoop in first, but to me, it seems inevitable. And yet, I see optimism around me. Maybe others know something that I don't know. Or maybe, I know something that they do know but don't want to acknowledge? I tried to understand their source of optimism. Maybe, I was wrong. People are buying real estate at insanely inflated rates, expensive cars and so on. At first I thought that not everyone is an idiot like me who doesn't have too much into savings. Perhaps these are people who have some form of savings - either from inheritance or perhaps they can negotiate better salaries than I do. Something's...

  21st century Weather report The world is reeling under the hate wave of right wing xenophobia, binaries of ' us v/s them '. The hate wave is projected to continue and expand as people turn their back on ideals of liberty and fraternity which had yielded unequal fruits for the majority in the globalised world of 20th Century. While the globalisation of 20th century opened up the barriers for free flow of money across the world, the flow of people has been artificially impeded creating great pressures at the arbitrary borders. The potential energy arising from the stalled flow is bound to turn into kinetic energy, overpowering the borders - sooner or later. And that possibility of bursting of dam obviously scares people on either side. Uncertain times, Uncertain times. In times of uncertainty, people obviously seek certainty - Certainty of 'walls ' to save their way of life. These hate filled winds have given wings to proponents of wall builders everywher...

Law intends to govern behavior of a people. Yet, the people seldom know the laws that they are going to be judged by. How could they? If Tesla had sex with lady Madam Curie. and their children were Einstein and Hawkins and so on.. Even then, only the 10th generation of this magnificent gene pool would probably have brain large enough to comprehend the constitution in its entirety and to be able to keep in in mind at all times to actually be able to behave in accordance with the laws and by laws and in laws and exceptions. One assumes, that the laws are based on universally understood moral principles. They probably started with simple understandings such as 'killing is bad', 'don't steal'. But the principles have mutated into a gargantuan puzzle which requires professional parselmouths (lawyers) to decode and game the puzzle. Essentially, what two lawyers and a judge engage is in a queer game in triad of meaning making. Each employs specialised words and chose...

26th June is apparently the international day against drug addiction. It was also the day we decided to see a manipuri dance show . It was after reaching the venue that we realised that the Manipuri dance show owed its existence to the ministry of culture/ anti drug body of Indian govt. So as is wont to happen in such a circumstance, there was less of dance and more singing of paeans for the officials who 'made it possible'. The dance recital that was to start at 7 30, started at around 8:45. and yet, none of the audience members left the hall before the end of the show.. presumably because besides us (we are extremely patient people), almost every body else (all 30 of them) were in some way related to the performers. Firstly, the purported purpose. The government spent the money it did on this show for the purpose of spreading awareness about the harms of drugs. According to officials who bored us with 1990's slides presentation, the main Target audience for the commu...