I Miss Neighbourhoods

I miss neighbourhoods ... where you could just pop into a friend's house uninvited, to chit chat or eat or drink something, or just yell your friend's name from outside his house, waiting for him to come out so that you can go to play, or gossip about another friend or talk random shit,

The Social Distance

    “Stop tossing and turning, Radha. Your bangles are making hell of a racket!”

    “Sorry …”

    “Ever since the lockdown began, you’ve not been sleeping well. And neither are you letting me.”

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.

Unfamiliar Entertainment

Before Netflix and Amazon Prime, before YouTube, before even cable TV, Indians' choice in television entertainment was limited. Severely limited. To two: Doordarshan and DD Metro. And before that, just one: DD.

Why People Are the Next Big Tech

Our age is swamped with technology. 

From robotics to smartphones; from e-rickshaws to international space stations; from CRSPR-Cas9 to Solid State Drives. Human ingenuity and science are being rapidly encapsulated in complex algorithms and packaged into dense devices and executive routines. Governments and corporations are ramping up R&D budgets to create or acquire the next big technology, like with AI, Data Science, and Machine Learning.

Narendra Modi, The Iconoclast

The Modi era may give rise to a new crop of citizens who are unafraid to question the sacred.

I went looking for a silver lining, and I think I might have found one.

iconoclast (noun): a person who criticizes popular beliefs or established customs and ideas. Origin: mid 17th cent. (originally referring to someone who destroyed images used in religious worship): via medieval Latin from ecclesiastical Greek eikonoklastēs, from eikōn ‘likeness’ + klan ‘to break’.

The Liberal Fringe: In Today's India and Family WhatsApp Groups

Oh, how the times have changed!

There was an age when moderate/liberal/progressive values were so highly regarded that people with such values were looked up to. Around me they were in larger numbers than people on the right of center. Right-wingers and conservatives were usually less educated, belonged to right-wing groups or were highly religious or highly feudal. A right-winger would either mask his inclinations or completely avoid the liberal 'elite'. Usually these two groups did not overlap, so there wasn't much friction. We can even say that people were happy in their own bubbles.

It's Time to Thank God—And Make Some Changes

I guess it's time I thanked God for sending me down as an upper caste Hindu male. Now, if only I could also pretend that I hate minorities and find gau mutra delicious—that'd set me up nicely for the next quarter century or so. I hope I'm able to coz I've heard terrible things about concentration camps.

A Strange Encounter: Bin Laden and the Value of Life

Many years ago, I had an interesting encounter. At my workplace, there was this grumpy young accountant who I rarely interacted with. He wasn't very social, but was professional while being uninviting. He was a north Indian upper-caste guy who religiously performed puja every morning and came to office with a teeka on his forehead.

Nature's Wrecking Ball: Cyclone Fani and Its Aftermath

It's a Monday evening in Delhi. The ugly, white-LED lights that show you the way while you drive back home don't soothe your discomfort at being stuck in traffic. But they're comforting in their predictability; they signal that you'll be back to the cool comfort of your air-conditioned home.