Digging for Meaning

I am a salmon. It's been a decade away from my hometown, and yet my dreams refuse to relocate along with me. When sleep hasn't claimed me yet, but neither am I awake, you may find me in Nasik. My senses fall back into their default states of Nasik when in-between. The space is of my home in Nasik, the sight is of the things around it. I might be hungry and thinking of eating a laddoo and my hands reach out for the steel dabba stacked on an elevated wooden cupboard stuck on the left wall of kitchen. In my mind's eye, I grope for the dabba momentarily as the search yields nothing - poof. the image disintegrates. I am snapped back to reality with a mild jolt. My mind reminds me of the layout in my own kitchen. There is no airborne shelf, there is no steel container, there is no laddoo. It says, go back to sleep. and I do. _____ I shifted 3.5k km for a less polluted and less dangerous city a year ago. And all was good. I get to walk and how I love to walk. I am truly ...

  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...

The vent So.. I watched the new 'Independence Day' movie. First off - what an amazing combo of  terrible film making and thrilling sfx. I can't believe someone gets paid gazillions to write such shitty scripts. The disaster is really not in the movie but in the making of the movie - the end of intellect and start of idiotopia. I think they should have edited out all the dialogs. It would then have been a better movie. A 'disaster movie' porn of sorts. With just the sfx to get thrilled with and no jarring and stupid dialogs and no non-sense attempts at building emotional arcs and no lame character building. Anyways, here's some more venting about current lack of imagination -  Tired trope 1: The kill switch - Aliens with a death wish Independence day, Star wars, 10 Cloverfield Lane... So to defeat a highly advanced aggressor civilisation that has apparently destroyed many civilisations before us, all you need to do is find and kill 'ONE...

How many among us are sure about our 'careers'? Doesn't it seem odd that in modern times, where we think we have answers to most problems, we are most clueless about our selves? Never in the history of human civilisation have we been so privileged to be confused about our 'purpose'. If you look at it from a certain high enough vantage, humanity looks like a drunk colony of ants. tittering around in uncertain directions - bumping into each other, getting lost even when around other people. 20th century would be seen as the time when these infant species won a lottery of hydrocarbons with which it fueled mindless orgy of consumption. 21st century would be the time when the species would be forced to 'grow up': To wake up with a hangover.   In that sense, 21st century humanity is really an 'early growth stage' civilisation. (borrowing from marketing jargon). We are far from maturity as a civilisation. We have no clue what humanity want...

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...