One of the greatest pleasures in life stays hidden in the unknown. Let’s call it the element of surprise. For instance, you didn’t know that you’ll bump into your childhood friend – whom you haven’t seen in over two decades – on a Metro. But you did and it made your day. For the next few days, you’ll be soaking on the gushiness that only your past can offer. Had somebody hinted to you about your chance encounter in advance, you wouldn’t have been able to extricate so much happiness out of it. That’s life. A major part of its design remains oblivious to us and nobody can explain how it really works. Some of us use vague words like ‘luck’, ‘coincidence’, ‘universe’, etc. to bucket such events. Probability, a subject studied deeply in economics throws light on this topic but it fails to tell us why things happen the way they do because it’s too focused on explaining how it works. Of course, not all chance encounters on a lazy afternoon lead to good memories. Sometimes, people find themselves in the middle of accidents too. That’s life, again
I often been asked about the method I follow in coming up with a steady stream of content. They clearly don’t see the crippling writer’s block I face from time to time. They only notice the output presented periodically, be it on Twitter, Instagram, Medium or LinkedIn, and assume that I must be an eternal fountain. Can’t blame them for their benign misunderstanding. The trick lies in being present on a platform more than presenting on that platform. Which means, your content doesn’t have to be a standalone entity. In 2010, I used to write and post 10–12 humorous (not hilarious) tweets in a day, but as of today, I post barely 1–2 tweets daily whereas retweets barely in weeks or months, but now I am more enjoy reading the tweets from others. So, in a way, I spend more time on consuming content than creating it. However, to a reader, it doesn’t matter. Similarly, on Instagram, apart from religiously posting on my feed, I post a lot of stories that are more about curation and less about creation. In the same spirit, there was a phase when I used to put out 4–5 blog posts a month. As of today, if I manage one blog in months, I’d be elated. My recent learning is, there is no rush to impress anyone anymore. This approach provides me ample breathing space to moan to myself about my writer’s block.
Aren’t we all mad? Only the design of our madness differs. Which is also why two people understanding something at the same time is one of the most beautiful occurrences about our species. When we don’t understand each other, we dismiss each other and resort to crazy accusations. One look at history and you’ll acknowledge that the builders of tomorrow were called mad yesterday. Humans weren’t supposed to travel far and wide without dying. Humans weren’t supposed to fly 40,000 feet up in the sky either. Humans weren’t supposed to fight invisible viruses with two drops of vaccines. Humans weren’t supposed to do any of these and much more. But we continue to push the realm of possibilities because fortunately, some of us are truly mad.
Not everything you present to your audience is going to dazzle them. Sometimes, in fact, a lot of the time, it won’t have the intended effect. Earlier, I didn’t care much what people thought about my writings. I still don’t but for entertainment’s sake, I go through my feedback and I notice the damage I’ve unleashed. Somebody is not happy with a joke while somebody else is not OK with my neutrality, and somebody has problem with my sentence formation. Either way, I am not communicating with them to learn on how I can improve myself to their set standards. That’s not happening. I consider my content to be a floating raft in a faraway ocean of attention. It’s not my plan to dock anytime soon. That said, my favourites amongst the complaining lot are the ones who sound angry and agitated for no reason. They bring the pinkish glow back to my face. The possibility that my words annoyed someone somewhere gives me immense pleasure. Imagine a sunlit smile on the face of a man sitting on the edge of a raft that isn’t drowning anytime soon.
Merely 100 years ago, people believed electricity to be the work of the devil and running water being absolute magic. The world was changing back then just like it’s always changing. World, at no given point of time, was stagnant. It kept changing because without change, there is no way forward. To survive, adoption (of values) and adaption (to environment) is primal. As of now, we can see how vulnerable we are in front of a biological threat and by the time we figure out the situation, the world would have transformed into something else. And then, we’ll sit on our couches with our potato chips and reminisce about the good ol’ days when we could hug each other without any worry. Whenever an event of this magnitude – this corona thing is the single greatest event of your life – takes place, it leaves an impression large enough to cover a generation or two. So, if you’re assuming that you’ll be done with it when the lockdown eases, you are in for a huge shift in paradigms.
I sound cynical because I am a hardcore optimist. I believe in the inherent goodness of being. I genuinely want the best for others, even strangers who are bona fide assholes. My ultimate aim in life is to destroy the wall of otherness. How about creating a world where people are noted for their actions and not what their preconceived identity bestowed on them by elites? Yes, sounds dreamy but it’s still better than the world modern idiots are busy building where the idea of ‘other’ is perpetuated in the name of wokeness. I prefer to be hopeful about the future. Perhaps a world where women finally get their rightful place to lead us. A world where kids familiarize with practical knowledge instead of unachievable ideals. A world where words are given only as much importance they deserve. A world where intelligent actions matter more than intelligent discourse. A world with little to no patience for religious and political bullshit. Wouldn’t that be something? I am quite certain that in the not-so-distant future, we’ll witness a lot of such changes. Maybe we’ll finally watch a black James Bond in 007 franchise. We might even have a brown prime minister in the UK. And while we are it, why not a Muslim prime minister of India? Female pope, anyone? That’s stretching too much? Alrighty. How about a female POTUS then? Would be nice to read Murakami’s equivalent from northeast India, no?
Since we are on the topic of change, let me shed some thoughts on the difference between change and eventuality. Change happens over time while eventuality is a masterstroke of an event. Change is diligently working out for 3 months whereas eventuality is standing on the scale and noticing the drastic drop in weight. When Salah scores a goal, the sound of jubilation is so loud that we forget the contribution of Robertson barely a minute ago. Salah embodies eventuality whereas Robertson manifests the never-ending cycle of change. Similarly, the agents of change who are celebrated today for the new dawns they ushered in were actually agents of eventuality – be it Gandhiji, Dr. King or Mandela – are reminders to our history that you are noted only if you succeed at eventuality. If not, you are merely part of the change.
It fascinates me no end that somebody gets to decide the name of a disease. Think about it. Those sitting in the medical chairs-to-be coined coronavirus because the edge of this microorganism resembles the corona of the sun’s surface. Good observation. Better wordplay. Hats off to whoever went ahead with it. But before we give too much credit, it’s pretty sad to learn that the virus’s official name is SARS-CoV-2. Spoilsports will be spoilsports, won’t they?
I’ve taken a week-long break from online classes course so that I could be able to cover some grounds on binge-watching. I haven’t done that in a while. My latest victim was Modern Love (2019) on Amazon Prime Video. Eight separate stories about people in love, or at least people who want to be in love, with almost equal footing. It’s strange that after finishing this anthology, I couldn’t point to any one story as my favourite. Maybe because it was intended as a love letter to New York City with no postage stamp. You either get the whole mail or you don’t get any.
Being a Liverpool faithful, I want my club to be handed the title whether this season comes to a respectful end or not. In no other league do you see a gaping 25 points lead. Barcelona is barely two points ahead of Real Madrid whereas Juventus has eked out a 1-point lead over Lazio. Bayern has 4 points lead over Dortmund and French Ligue 1 doesn’t matter. It’d be gross injustice to club football, and not just Liverpool fans, if they are deprived of an incredible season. 30 years is already a long time to wait for such an eventuality.
Cristiano Ronaldo is 35 and no matter how hard he flexes his thigh muscles, age is not on his side. Similarly, Lionel Messi turns 33 in 3 months. So, in all fairness, time is running out for both these footballing geniuses. On top of it, COVID-19 has made things worse by keeping them off the ground for months on end for sure. What a tragedy! This is the sort of loss that you can’t put a number to. Yes, someday, the situation might change and people will start filling up stadiums but we don’t know how and when will that be.
BR Chopra’s Mahabharat (1988) means a lot to my childhood. Besides introducing me to the significance of Hindu mythology, it also instilled in me a lifelong thirst for storytelling. For its era, it was a remarkable feat – regardless of the viral memes floating on social media – for the makers to take on such a giant project and then execute it through 94 episodes. So, during lockdown, when Doordarshan announced that it’s bringing this epic – let’s not forget that Mahabharata, originally titled Jaya, is also the world’s longest written epic – show back to our television, I was happy. Not for myself but for the kids who would have otherwise grown not knowing about this production. But then, with this news came the bigoted narrow-minded critics who equated this show with soft Hindutva (whatever that means). This despite the broad information that several shows from the ’80s and ‘90s – including unforgettable titles like Buniyaad (1986), Byomkesh Bakshi (1993) and Alif Laila (1993) – were being revived by the I&B ministry. If only the aforementioned critics did a bit of homework before spreading poison and learned that the script for BR Chopra’s Mahabharat was written by Dr. Rahi Masoom Raza. Without him, there would have been no “Main samay hoon…” at the start of every episode and without him, probably, we wouldn’t be talking about it now. And that says a lot about his open-minded writing as well as the diversity of our country.
