A stretch of arrogance
Life in general is a lousy teacher but the lessons rendered are invaluable. Even if you are sitting on your ass and doing nothing at all, there is a takeaway for you there: you are good at sitting on your ass and doing nothing at all. Ask a workaholic to try that; she will fail monumentally. This so-called short life loves to leave behind long stories. Yet, to condense all these learnings into two brackets of success and defeats is, in my view, a myopic exercise. A cleaner way to do go about it would be to accept how we don’t really win and we don’t really lose. In our defeats are our successes hidden and in our successes, our defeats. Yet, I am not OK with people who play chess online and refuse to resign at the right time. Instead of gracefully accepting their loss by offering a handshake, they drag on the dead game for too long. Why? Because their guru told them that we should fight it out till the end. For what? To elongate the pain of an impending loss? Cute. Why not cut your losses by resigning and starting a new game as soon as possible?
Whether you’re part of a democracy or not, journalism matters. Granted the standards are scraping the bottom of a pitless barrel, it’s important to encourage those who are willing to go against the grain of self-interest. Journalism doesn’t need journalists as much as it needs bravehearts. The unprecedented spread of the internet and the unregulated rise of social media proved that the vanguards of journalism weren’t prepared for the change; they didn’t even realize what hit them. A blow so swift that it shook the foundations of truth itself. If you think fake news didn’t exist in the 19th and the 20th century, you deserve to be in the 21st century.
Sensationalism is good for your entertainment but it is carcinogenic for your enlightenment. Apps like InShorts keep you connected with the happenings of the world, yes. However, it compromises your ability to wrap your head around complex subjects. When you read something on the line of “Al Pacino’s girlfriend dumps him for being stingy”, it discounts so many elements of the reportage that it’s appalling how little the news-makers think of a daily app user. For starters, this screen legend was going around with a woman almost four decades younger than him. Secondly, he has been commitment-phobic all his life. Thirdly, it’s none of our business why two adults couldn’t work out their relationship.
Moving the media needle to India, isn’t it fascinating that the S-word is thrown around every second week. If Gandhiji were alive today — hypothetically speaking, of course — nobody deserves to suffer for 150 years on this planet — he’d be surprised to observe the meaninglessness of sedition. During his time, you had to earn that word from the British Raj. And even they were privy to so many levels of disruption to declare somebody seditious. When Lokmanya Tilak was accused of sedition and Mohammed Ali Jinnah showed up as his lawyer, the first route of defence was on the usage of the S-word. How does a person raise himself against a system in the most decent way possible? Such was the situation more than a hundred years ago. Today, every fifth person is anti-national and every ninth person, seditious. A part of the blame could be placed on our knee-jerky media. After all, in its unquenchable thirst for TRP and CTR, it remains interested in sedition. It’s not interested in the consequences of sedition.
Famous people can’t have enough. A commoner may secretly harbour the crown of fame but somewhere in her stays the respite of anonymity. The original magical three words — “Leave me alone!” — doesn’t apply to her. Once you cross a stage of familiarity, you become a part of public so intrinsically that you become accountable on ways you didn’t sign up for. For instance, criticism is yours to take. You didn’t ask for it but you take it and go. Being criticized by people you don’t know has to be the SI unit of bittersweetness. People care about you but maybe not in the way you’d prefer. We perceive the famous lot as a consortium of bullies who got more than they deserved. Not their fault. Not your fault either. Sore winners. Sore losers. If somebody feels that Timothée Chalamet is the most overrated mass of skeleton in the whole of Hollywood, that person has every conceivable right to make his view known. Whether Timothée ever gets to read what a 23-year-old nobody from Faridabad thinks about him is a different story altogether. However, his lame comment also opens up the pandora’s box of why we enjoy when bullies are bullied.
February might be the shortest month but it turned out to be the most fruitful for me. This is the month I not only decided to change a lot of stuff but also succeeded on many fronts. First thing first, I started to learn how to drive. From being an asshole who looked down upon those who bought cars (carbon footprint bothers me), I metamorphosed into a person who wanted to add a new skill. I am still in the L phase and everyday is insightful; Gurgaon roads and people on the roads are tough tutors. Secondly, I got myself into ukulele. Although I could be tone-deaf but I’ve scored some chords and can strum a bit. It’s a slow process and my fingertips hurt all the time. Overall, it’s similar to unlocking a world I wasn’t familiar with earlier. Being word-obsessed, I mainly focused on lyrics. Now, I am checking out rhythm, beat, tempo and related vocabulary. YouTube tutorials are godsent in this field. Thirdly, I am keen on learning how to sketch. I have too many ideas but they don’t drop down to frame. So, trying to correct this gap through Figma. Again, it’s a slow process as I am quite thick with new stuff. Next month, along with these “projects”, I am planning to add dancing and cooking to the list. Let’s see what happens.
Cooking is easy for those who are patient and pay attention to details. I am sure about this because I am very impatient and my attention to details is limited to verbal/textual entities. Inside a kitchen, I am like a clone of the government: we both don’t know what we are doing. Regardless, I want to master this art under the guidance of my blessed wife. Obviously, I am not aiming to reach her stage of expertise. I just want to be more than self-sufficient — I can already boil rice, cook dal, sabzi, burji, etc. — and learn a bit more than usual. The reason I’m keen on accomplishing this goal has something to do with the connection between free love and free food. I’ve observed how people genuinely love who can cook and bake. My missus is a prime example: once you feed someone good food, they love you for life. And I plan to be loved for eternity.
Speaking of love, doesn’t it intrigue you how little we understand the concept of being there for each other? It’s not that you don’t love your mother but at the same time, you don’t think it’s possible for you to accompany her to some ashram on the outskirts of Bangalore. Let’s call it the tests of affection. Doing more and saying less by letting silence become an operative word of strength, not void. I believe if we manage to achieve this with one person at least, we can be truly fulfilled. What happens next is a question of your psychological construct. Perhaps you’ll be light as a bird or you may develop pride. During my interview with Shah Rukh Khan in 2012, he referred to what he called ‘arrogance of love’. According to him, when a person is loved and is 100% certain about it, they could start behaving in an arrogant manner. Imagine a person who won an Olympic medal in 2000 and is still wearing the same to the supermarket. In his mind, he is not doing anything out of the place; he has worked for it. Similarly, when people find love in its purest form, they might start acting like it will last forever. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Our objects of love leave and things are left behind. Like a stupid medal.
Nature connects us in mysterious ways, doesn’t it? If you have a fur allergy, it’s nature’s way of asking you to adopt a street dog. In other words, nature is saying — “Prove me wrong!” Over a period of time, you’ll realize that the so-called animal adds more value to your time than the medicines that help you deal with rashes. Those who live on the edge don’t necessarily dig mountaineering. They can very well be normal people like you and me, with a little more appetite for challenges.
11 years ago, you rode a motorbike for the last time. Now, if you were to try your hand at it, you may or may not remember the clutch-race combo. What is it going to be? During your childhood, you used to have a specific dream featuring a specific scenario with specific characters. You stopped watching that show for years and now, all of a sudden, one night you go through that dream. How are you going to react? Similarly, as a kid, you used to have hiccups all the time and your grandma used to say that somebody is talking about you somewhere. For reasons mystical, the two events are supposed to be connected. Yet, you stopped having hiccups 15 years ago and yet, you had hiccups for a change on a weekend. So, you are wondering what happened. You had your suspect but they didn’t admit to the crime of talking about you. These are the moments when your grandma can’t be wrong.
Last year, my goal was to read 50 books and I completed 14. My 2020 goal was to read at least 30 books. As of now, I am on my second book: Classical Philosophy by Peter Adamson. If you are interested in European wisdom, do go for this detailed take on Greco-Mediterranean intellectualism. That said, don’t fall for the ‘Classical’ in the title of the book. Nothing esoteric about it. When the whites think of classic, they see white; just like when they think of culture, they see snow. So, don’t expect to read about the philosophical giants from the East. Sorry, no place reserved for Chinese and Indian thinkers from the BC era.
At any given point of a debate, it’s always better to be underrated. And in the world of cinema, very few films come close to embodying this word as Troy (2004). Filled with excellent dialogues and riding on a high production value (close to $200 million back then), the movie was a scenic masterpiece. Although it dealt with Achillles and his insurmountable desire for immortality, so many great characters from Iliad were respectfully showcased. On top of it, the onscreen performances by the likes of Brad Pitt, Peter O’Toole, Eric Bana, Brian Cox, etc. were noteworthy too. It’s a pity this film isn’t discussed in the realm of entertainment, if not filmmaking per se. By the end of this movie, you’ll be prepared to read Classical Philosophy by Peter Adamson.
