How to Do Nothing

This article shares its title with a New York Times bestseller by Jenny Odell. But I haven’t read it. A reviewer said that Ms Odell’s work is "ambitious". This article’s subject is the antithesis of ambitious.

I’ve been working. I’ve been busting my ass without a break for months now. I’ve kept my nose to the grindstone working on stuff that turns your brain into an overheated, dried-up, two-stroke engine. But even when I’m not working at the stuff that brings in the bread, I’ve been dosing myself with social media, snorting newsfeed to lull my brain, distract me from matters of bread-earning.

Faith versus Religion: How to Tell Them Apart

• Faith will tell you that there is a god. Religion will tell you his name, address, contact details, food choices, fashion tastes, gender, and pet peeves.
• Faith tells you that your prayer will be answered. Religion tells you that your prayer will be answered only when you have performed a-b-c acts, donated x amount of food, clothes and money to the institution, and prologued and epilogued your prayers with these specific sounds.

On Not Knowing and Knowing Too Much

Whoever said 'ignorance is bliss' wasn't kidding.

There was a time when I didn't know much and I was happy.

My time on earth can be divided into life before internet and life with internet. The 1980s were a simple time in India. Two channels on TV; video games were monochrome, with two buttons and expensive for ordinary folks. I spent most of my time playing outside/inside or reading random non-curriculum shit.

What Will You Do?

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH YOUR LIBERTY
IF YOU’RE NOT BEING IMAGINATIVE?

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH YOUR FREEDOM
IF YOU'RE CAGED BY YOUR EGO?

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH YOUR RIGHT TO DO SOMETHING
IF YOU FAIL TO DO ANYTHING?

You Win Some, You Lose Some

In

Life.

Some grow,

Some diminish.

Some work out, some don't.

Some hang on, some move on.

Some you hold on to, some fade.

Some keep standing, some wither.

Some you adopt, some you abduct.

Some you keep, some you let go of.

Some you're born with, some you acquire.

Some you achieve, some fall by the wayside.

Some change, some become more of the same.

Some fall into your lap, some you have to snatch.

You 

win some, you lose some.

The Indian Incontinent

Almost in all major metros of the hot Indian subcontinent, a cloud cover is a welcome development with distinct foreboding overtones. Especially if it is a weekday, you know it's going to be cool outside, but you dread the traffic if it so much as drizzles. It's a good thing, but it's a bummer; you want to be happy, but you're being held back -- a schizophrenic feeling, adding to the already bipolar nature of an Indian metro, where the uber-rich live alongside the uber-poor,  where a Bentley is stuck in the same jam as a Luna. Why do they have to wait for a flood to declare a public holiday? Do it when you see the clouds in the horizon; we will telecommute. I promise I'll work! The geography of India is not weird, it's our cities -- they're just tumorous now. I can't help but crack a crude joke: "Is this the Indian subcontinent or the Indian incontinent?"

The Fastest Gun in the West (Or East)

We go through life like drunk, raving cowboys with guns blazing at our hips. With our wit, intellect, and ego we shoot down any thought, gesture, comment that moves. In the process we don’t gain anything other than a perverse sense of superiority. Many bonds die and, if we have a tiny conscience chugging in our hearts, we wake up the next day with a bad moral hangover. Restraint is one of the toughest tricks to master.

Wisdom

Zen Master to his pupil: Son, answer this question: What is wisdom?
Pupil: Master, I'm not sure...I don't know.
Zen Master: Well done my son, that neatly sums it up.

The Cynic

Cynic, n, Someone who takes a pessimistic view of human motives and actions.

It's easy to be a cynic when you're young. You believe that your motives and actions are resulting in something good for mankind. Or, at least, your motives and actions are so uncoloured by complexities of physical and psychological survival that you feel relatively purer. As you grow older, you get mired in cross-persuasions and cross-actions that mar honest efforts in real world. Unwillingly and unwittingly you may end up doing things that you are not proud of. There may be a point in your life that you are so disgusted by your own actions that you want your conscience to shut the fuck up. Eventually, to a large extent, it does. There are murmurs of dissent, a few "yikes's" and "uh oh's", but nothing that will make you sweat. Then comes the time when you enter fully into the denial mode. It is important to be in denial. Else, you will end up sabotaging your own work, your own survival. You HAVE to believe that you add value to your family members' lives, to the corporation you work for, your team members' work, to the society in general, and the environment at large.

People will tolerate a cynic only so much. Not only because he's a pessimist, also because, sooner or later, he begins questioning the intents and productivity of everyone around him, and that too without actually doing anything himself. If you continue to remain a cynic while being gainfully employed, it won't be long before you're expelled from the 'circle of trust'. If you were born a cynic, then it behoves you to make the transition from a cynic to 'management' as soon as possible. Your income, expenditure, and conjugal life might depend on it. It is important to plan, even if you do not have the resources to execute it. It is important to talk of quality, even if you cannot afford it. It is important to appear employee-friendly, even if you can’t do anything to retain them. You see, as a society, an individual is weak, but as an 'individual', an individual is strong. And if, by god's grace, an individual-individual decides to execute that plan (which actually happens once in a while), cynics, non-cynics, we all benefit.

But let's not digress from the natural course of a cynic. You're surrounded by outstretched arms, grotesque heads chanting guttural grunts in strange harmony, awkwardly marching toward you, and it just takes one strategic bite—sooner or later, every cynic is taken into the fold of the other side. And it is crucial that you remain in denial till your dying day. God help you if you realise your 'real' self a day before you die. You will die a horribly restless death and roam the earth till eternity as a cynic ghost, taking a pessimistic view of the motives and actions of humans and spirits alike.

Man and the Megacity

It's middle of the night...half past one. As I drive down the wide, open roads of the megalithic city, I feel intimidated by its cold vastness. These unwavering, unrelenting sodium vapour lamps cast an orange, shadowless blanket on the roads. The concrete buildings on both sides stand at attention like grim medieval knights dressed in burnt orange armour. But beyond the afterglow lies a vast darkness of the unending urban sprawl.

I am not alone, yet I feel helpless.
I am all alone, yet I feel afraid of someone.

The car feels like a refuge...an escape pod with some semblance of deflector shields..an apparition of safety. The world outside stares me down with its dark, invisible eyes. I can feel them all around me. I try to hide from their gaze by focusing on the trailing brake lights of the stately trailer trucks in front of me. The tyres of my car hungrily gulp down the black tarmac of the toll bridge. They understand how I feel. The river below is a limitless chasm that doesn't seem to end. There is a eerie calm under the star-spangled night sky. They're watching you... (I hope they're watching over me.)

I want these roads to end. I dont want to be a castaway in the middle of civilization anymore. I want to reach my destination. I want to be home -- a place where the space is of my comprehension, the habitat befits my courage; a place where the indifferent city does not creep in -- my oasis in the midst of a mortar desert, my atoll in the middle of a dark, electric ocean.

Creatio ex nihilo

Perhaps...perhaps I had a bit too much to drink. Perhaps I needed the courage. Lying on some horizontal surface, in a drunken haze, with eyes wide open, I'm numb, yet aware. I cant feel anything, I cant move a limb. I am acutely aware that if wolves came and chewed on my toes, I wouldn't be able to shoo them away. I feel like a heavy mountain that is made of grey puffy clouds. I wish to pass out, but cant. In this cloud-like floating state, I'm afforded an immense clarity, and I wonder. What is this? Where am I? Where did I come from? Where did all this come from?

Relax. Let the dust inside my head settle down. Or the dizzying heights of extra-cosmic time travel will make me puke.

But wandering is the natural state of a mind - drunk or sober. And I flowed towards flashes of Shyam Benegal's Bharat Ek Khoj...hymns of Rig Veda...there was no existence, nor non-existence, no air, no water, no space, neither life nor death. Where was it? What covered it? There was nothing but formless void.

Creatio ex nihilo.

The simplest explanation that man could conjure up was God -- that God created everything. Even my drunk mind asks a simple question to take the air out of creationism -- Who created God? Kaput.

Alien spores, interplanetary relocation, evolution...nothing really answers the fundamental question -- Where from?

Maya... It's a thought-cloud floating around, engulfing the entire creation. It's a snapshot of nobody's dream. A billion light years in a nanosecond. Its existence is no proof of its existence. It's no one's vision, yet it's visible. It grows from nowhere. It reaches to no end. Perhaps it began where it ends. Perhaps life is a freak of nature. Perhaps nature is a freak of time. Perhaps time is a freak accident. Perhaps there is no perhaps. And I'm none the wiser.

Maybe it's our conception of time that is the root cause of all our enquiry-driven angst. But kya karen? My creaking joints have a metaphysics of their own.

Sleep glorious sleep...

I Am God

The Christians say that it took me seven days to build this world. Actually it was so long back that I don’t remember any more. No, I’m lying. I do remember. But if I reveal it and if it’s more than what humans thought, my workmanship would be suspect. Humans will say, “He took so many days and still he produced such an inferior product!” Or, if it’s less, they will say, “He was in a hurry and he made a mess of it all.” The fact is, the only inferior product I ever produced is the human race. Ok, I’m being judgmental. But hey, being God has its own privileges!

I can build this mess all over again within the blink of a human eye. I am an incessant creator, a restless potter, an untiring sculptor. The cosmos is one of my smaller creations, but a cute one. I like the ‘Earthy’ patch on it. Quite interesting! I didn’t actually plan it that way but it’s nice the way it has come out. Though if you look at it closely, you may be disappointed by its apparent ugliness. Is life on earth really ugly? Do all earthlings really think that way? Do they think I can be blamed for their misfortunes?

I have created billions of life forms all over the universe. That’s my garden patch. Full of life! But these humans think that they are somehow special. Of course, every life form in every galaxy has that right. The special thing about the humans is that I have given them the power to judge. It was an experiment that went haywire and the humans were born—my ‘Frankensteins’. I don’t complain coz they can hardly harm me. But they have reasons to complain against each other and they are doing so. Their intelligence and their judgment allow them to take decisions that are not necessarily for their own good. I created all other animals in a way that they control their numbers automatically. There is a delicate balance in nature. But who the hell told the humans that they could go for an expansion? Must have been what they call the ‘Devil’. But believe me, I’m all alone. There’s no one called the Devil. It’s the humans’ excuse for their own frailties and mistakes.

To tell you the truth, I have absolutely no control over the humans. Maybe over their surroundings, but not on them. I can change their environment, but I can’t change the way they think. I am all-powerful, but not powerful enough to control their minds. That’s what went wrong with the experiment.

[2004]

The Woman across the Street

I leaned on the lamppost with a leisurely bend. I languidly placed the cigarette between my lips and inhaled lightly. And that’s when I saw them—those two perfectly sculpted, beautiful feet. Hugged by extremely feminine, strappy shoes, and leading from slim churidar-clad legs. It took me some time and a lot of curiosity to peel my eyes off those masterpieces and look up to see whom they belonged to. I saw the essence of femininity.

[originally written on 28/06/2004]

Murders on Camera

The nausea is palpable. It has always been - whenever I read about the barbarity of Gujarat riots - of ripped foetuses and ravished little girls. I cant take it anymore. I cant rationalise my/our existence along with what we do anymore. I dont think the human race deserves to survive after the evil we do and have done. What game is this? If this is how we are supposed to be, then let me not have the ability to feel the pain, to remorse, to shed tears on the mutilated genitals of an innocent man. Thinkers, citizens, sages and worldly-wise politicians - all suggest not to be sad because there is enough goodness still remaining in this world to justify our continuance as a race and to salvage us out of our misery. But tell that to the man whose children were chased around before being hacked, piece by piece, in front of his eyes. Aren't we somehow a part of that brutal melodrama? Aren't we related to those children in that faraway part of this country? Aren't we responsible somehow? I can see the salvaging goodness in me, my friends, my family and several general people all around me. But somehow, all that goodness does not aggregate in a way to compensate for all the evil in us and for all the vile, ugly things we have done. It's just not fair! And I can't take it any more. I wish an asteroid would hit us and wipe out the human race. I wish an earthquake would flatten us all. I wish a black plague would make us extinct. We all deserve to die. Either that, or just me.

Deprivation

Only few things in this world make it worth living - beauty of nature, music, and the love of your child. And the irony is that we're stuck within walls, inside cubicles without being able to enjoy any of the three - nature, music or your child's company - trying to eke out a living that does not leave life worth living. We're living in just thoughts of these beautiful things: company of child in the evening, smell of a flower someday and FM radio in the car. We try to snatch 'quality time' from our 'scheduled automaton' of a life. We feel guilty both ways - at home and in the office, and along the way too. We look forward to the next weekend from this weekend. The weekend seems to be the sanctuary where all our troubles and all our fears will be resolved. The weekend is the place where we will be reunited with our loves and loved ones. But weekend is the only time when you get to pay your bills, fix your car, do your accounts, fix the broken stuff around the home. And then there's just enough time left for you to catch up on some sleep to compensate for the entire week's deprivation.

Uncomplicated

Have you ever heard the wind blow through the leaves of a Peepal tree on a sunny spring afternoon? The patter-tapper of thousands of green hearts beating against each other? It sounds more like a buzz, a hum, a constant exhortation, a celebration of freedom; or maybe of love of the leaves with the wind. The afternoon sun, with its weak yellow, almost amber light, filtering through those leaves and playing with their shadows, making it look like a carnival is on in broad daylight. Go closer, push your face into the forest of innocent vibes that have no meaning and no purpose. Do you feel the peace, the calm, and yes, the joy? Don't you wish your life was as uncomplicated? Think about it, empty your mind. Yes, you ARE like that. You were born like that. Go back. Deep and far back. You will see the wind of sensations blow nonchalantly through the leaves of your mind. Oh yes, you are OK. Yeah, I'm OK. I'm good.

P2P 2 Networked Brains

Nicole Kidman's latest movie "Invasion" is a little low on the scare quotient. Or so I thought. But fear is not what I wish to talk about here. There were other such movies in the past. We call them Zombie movies. Like "Night of the Living Dead". Expressionless, man-subjugating, blood-sucking part-human and past-human creatures that strangely move in a regimented fashion. A friend found it interesting that so many people could share a common thought and a common purpose. So, doesn't that make zombies better than us? Interesting thought. No wonder that in 'Invasion' all world problems seemed to get resolved by the common cause alien zombies. Can we ever develop brains like zombies?

Just a thought. Peer-to-peer file sharing - millions of computers worldwide networked through instantaneous connections, hosting games, music, movies, porn and God knows what else. Isn't this the precursor of a singular entity-like humongous hard disk cum operating system? Sun Microsystems proudly says that "The Network is the Computer." Sun sees a future where your digital work, play and identity are all 'online'. Google is already cashing in on this convergence phenomenon (Google knows everything about you). Predicting this future was never difficult. One look at the Zombie movies and you can predict even farther. Internet is already a sort of common cause, a universal transport bus. When computers are networked, they 'talk'. Soon P2P networks will evolve into machines with shared operating systems and hard disks; machines that share infrastructure (processors), defence (anti-virus and firewalls), money (credits and bandwidth), tools (applications) and finally the most zombiesque of all qualities - a common cause (seen I, Robot!?).

All that leads to here. Let me bend the space-time continuum and take a quantum leap into the future of digits without shifting any paradigms. I see what? I see Matrix-like brains that can be plugged into your reigning digital machine using a wireless technology (called 'Yellowtooth'??). I shift the slider on the time scale a little and it gets more interesting. I see Person-to-Person networking by connecting the minds of all humans on this planet (and elsewhere). At the thought of a click, you are connected to the brain of a man relieving himself in the loo of a crater-side cafe on Jupitor's moon Titan. Implications and possibilities - Sahil can scrap Sagarika from a beach and Sagarika can text Sahil from the middle of the ocean - different galaxies, if you want. John can check out Jenny's lesbian memories and Jenny can check out John's SuperPowerPoint slides. No need to download anything at all! Just browse! The next step? A common cause. When our survival depends on a resource that itself depends on we all holding it up together, then a common cause emerges (think, the Earth). Here comes the scary thought - could we turn into zombies in the future? Could we become so much like each other that we're indistinguishable? Could we agree so much that all dissent is banned? Finally, could we invade planets using our seamlessly communicating minds? Maybe fear is what I want to talk about!

But thank God for the double helix that humans are neither a common cause nor a common thought life form. We humans crave to retain our genetic identity by compromising our consciousness induced standards. Somehow our survival not only depends on having variety in physical characteristics, but also in thoughts. Still waters stagnate. For growth, it is important to question established thoughts as well as the establishment. To disagree on the way to an agreement is the best form of decision making. That is why Democracy rocks!

Last request - with the future in mind, could we at least agree on a common cause? Or two? One - saving the Earth. And two - not checking out Jenny's memories.

Fate and Defeat of the Individual

Its not easy being an atheist. Who do you complain to when things don't go right? To yourself? To the earth? To space? Or to a book on probability?

What is the probability of things screwing up for you? If you believe in probability, then the probability is a rational number. What do you call it when it feels like there are other-worldly forces conspiring against you? Spooky! You don't believe in destiny, but can you call this even destiny? A bad phase even? Is there a fate machine that some alien keeps tweaking for his own enjoyment?

Do you believe in fate? Doomed if you do, doomed if you don't. We human beings don't want the truth! We just want a simple explanation. Like God, for instance. It is such a defeat of the individual to fall on his knees and plead for deliverance. Sick! Sicker even, if it works.

His legs are bent and he may be on his knees soon. So what if his spirit is crushed under some mighty cosmic thumb, at least the rest of him will survive! What ego shall he nurture? We all live a pretense anyway.

Let Me Summarise - Our Love of the Gist

I took this pop-quiz that rates your life. Even while you're answering the really straightforward questions, you can make out how you're doing. But then there's the joy of watching all that in the form of bar graphs and decimals.

We human beings have a strong attraction for summaries. We love the fact that our birth chart can predict when we're going to 'drop out'. We love the thing that the lines on our palm can tell others how screwed we really are. Isn't it great that your percentile score in CAT or GMAT can almost accurately predict your pay package in 3 years time and yet reveal nothing about your ethical character?

Corporate honchos have a special love for charts, graphs and figures. They can see their popularity, commission and wife's love rise and fall with the revenue and profits graph. I would say that one look at the faces of your employees early Wednesday morning can tell you more about your company's performance than all the stats churned out by your overpaid accountants.

'Screaming Headlines' Do headlines really scream? Yes, they do. They scream out the entire story in a few words. Its supposed to attract your attention to the story but what it really does for me is that it tells me whether the story is worth reading. The louder the scream, the more suspect the content. But I too fall into the trap of sensationalism sometimes. News these days is more entertainment than news; more advertisement than information, even if it is about rape, murder and elections. I guess we still read and watch news just because we want a pre-packaged, easily digestible, least involving, distance maintaining, hygienic way of interacting with society at large. Its a hard-to-resist summary of the world around you.

Every religious leader worth his donations account and every prophet worth his sombre look has tried to summarise life for us. Some such aphorisms come to my mind - Love thy neighbour (but don't get caught); God is Great (but Devil comes close); Take the Middle Path (but don't get crushed). [The words in brackets are not mine but additional notes by charlatans and realists down the ages] Don't we just love these lines? Sometimes they inspire, sometimes they simplify and some other times, they rectify. Religion is nothing but spiritual fast food. Pre-packaged, quickly delivered, easily eatable and quite filling. On top of that, inexpensive. Just imagine how much more difficult life would be if each one of us were to develop his or her own personal religion. (But some of us like to rough it out.)

I guess we love summaries because life is too complex to be understood in bits and pieces.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	6.5
Mind:	7.5
Body:	7.3
Spirit:	7.5
Friends/Family:	4.9
Love:	1.4
Finance:	4.7
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Lions and Paper Tigers

The way poachers killed 3 lions in Gir reminds me of the days when my mom or grandmother used to pick out lice from my head. I was in school in Calcutta and lice infestation was common. But finding lice and catching them needs careful technique and some practice. Something poachers have but forest officials dont.

You take a tourist to Ranthambhore or Sariska, you wont see a tiger. But of course for some extra fee, the really determined kinds can have a dekko. How so? It seems people know where the tigers are when commerce knocks on their doors.

Only poachers see commerce in tigers, lions, rhinos and tuskers. Not the government and definitely not the rest of the public. Who goes to Ranthambhore or Corbett because they want to save the tiger? Honeymoon maybe, vacation yes, post safari booze party most definitely! Poor wildlife activists try hard to enlighten the public. The same public that doesnt hesitate to lynch a scared leopard that 'mistakenly wanders' into territory that was his to begin with. But then he doesnt have the voting rights. Even if his species had, we'd make sure that their numbers are so less that they cant make any meaningful changes to the existing laws. We might even have to set up a minority commission just for them.

Minority commissions are set up for wild life. But those are there to give a patient hearing to activists really. Who cares about wild life? About trees? You think city dwellers? All they care about is that the trees in their avenue should not be cut. Not because of the shade or the oxygen or the fruits, but because it looks beautiful and increases the value of their real estate. Hell, a small shopping mall in Delhi would get more footfalls during a regular weekend than Gir receives in an entire year. You think villagers care? All they want is that elephants dont trample their crop, leopards dont carry away their cattle and that there is more land to give away as dowry. What about the government? You know, in some ways, the government is the keeper of public conscience. Yes, government is active in that area. It is busy making sure that people below 25 can vote, copulate, raise kids, gamble on stocks, but cant drink alcohol. It is making sure that kids who get raped and molested by their own relatives are not exposed to any suggestive sexuality on television. Government can only do so much. After all we are the government. Government does what we want and what we want is a facade of propriety.

And a facade is what we shall get. A few years down the line, your kids and mine, lugging 'artificial oxygen' cans on their backs will go on a weekend trip to the local zoo to see something called Wild Life. The only problem is that it no longer exists in the wild.

I feel like watching 'Planet of Apes' once again.