Mann ki Baat

Never been political.

Not with Family, not with Friends, not with strangers. Never felt like taking sides.

Never felt the need.

Have always been patriotic. Dreamt of joining the army as a kid. Never had the physical requirements for it though. Still, never political.

Voted in a General Election twice, State Election twice. Was a Presiding Officer of a Polling Booth once; couldn’t vote normally. Still made sure I sent my Mail-In vote. Proud to.

Always voted Congress. Don’t blame me. I’m from Patiala. The Captain did a lot for this city when he was in Power, I saw it with my own juvenile eyes. Saw progress here. Liked it.

Selfish, yes. Always voted Congress.

Heard the accusations about the Centre when they were in Power. Believed them. Still believe them. Although young and immature, still felt disgusted and cheated. Considered Change when the time came. Re-considered. Voted the same way I always have, if only for loyalty to my city, and naught else. Although agreed that saffron felt like the right choice in the Centre.

Heard great things about Gujarat. Visited it a lot of times in the last three years. Saw good things. No lies, indeed. Solar Panels covering the canals and everything. Everything. Asked locals. Locals happy.

Reassured.

…

Subtle changes though.

Felt unnerving, but too little to register.

Subtle. Changes.

Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow.

No such shock came.

Subtle changes.

Shocks come in various forms though.

Apathy is weird. It comes as a shock when you realise you’re guilty of it.

Felt guilty one day. Don’t blame me though, I just saw a video of some guy accused by a mob of cow-slaughter being dragged naked through a rural U.P. street, happily escorted by the police.

Forgive me, I’m not used to these things, but I saw a video of some guy accused by a mob of cow-slaughter being lynched, to use the technically correct term, and then I felt conflicted. I questioned my stances and my motivations, and I felt slightly guilty.

Felt guilty because of my fucking apathy.

Never really felt like it before.

Maybe because I never had to. Maybe because not a lot like it had happened before.

Didn’t even take up a whole news cycle. Bit of an uproar but the nation doesn’t deser… want to know about it, really.

Subtle... fucking... changes.

And unnerving, now that it registers.

The News is the news as long as it doesn’t affect you. When it does affect you, it’s fucking catastrophic. For that one cattle trader, it was. It was, for his family, and for everyone like him.

Just because a piece of news isn’t shocking just because it is just a little bit of escalation in absurdity from yesterday’s news, does not mean it isn’t worth being shocked about.

It fucking is.

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked — if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course, this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

Never been political.

Not with Family, not with Friends, not with strangers. Never felt like taking sides.

Never felt the need.

Have always been patriotic.

Never took a stand at Step B, never took a stand at Step C. Don’t want to wait till Step E, and this recent Step D seemed surreal for my country.

Felt that it needed to be said.

The statements in bold italics above are from "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45" by Milton Mayer.

Viva La Vida

I have not written in... years.
Years?
It seems weird to say it, but it's true.
The last few years have been new. I have experienced the strange feeling of (finally) being a grown up. The strange feeling of the security net being withdrawn under your feet, and your flaws looming ever larger above your head.
The feeling... of this realization, both frightening and challenging that, this you, is the final you. You have metamorphosized into your final form.
You are now a person - in the real world.
No more 'try ball'.

With this change, with this growth, have come new dilemmas, have come new responsibilities.

Like money.
It is no more an endless supply (not that it ever was; nor rather, as it always seemed to be, given enough persuasion). That well is dry.
And a new well has been dug. My own. And I am responsible for it.

And with this great responsibility, comes great power. The future.

Most of my friends and I are shining examples of the second or third generation of the middle class. It's true, whichever way you look at it. I have rarely seen the people I socialize with (the only people, truth be told, who will read this) having had the privilege of tapping into a family fortune. The reason for that is simple - there is no family fortune.
Or more commonly - your family's money is not for you. It is for your children, and their children.
Not for you. You work, you slave, and you better well fucking add to it.

I am 25 years old today. I have, at the very fucking best, and if medicine basically becomes miraculous - 50 more years to live. I have already lived a third of my life. In ten more years, if I'm extremely lucky and I have settled down - I will have lived half of my life.
And so will have she who I have hopefully settled down with.

And what will we have done?
Found a mate. And reproduced.

You know, most apes achieve that. And they reproduce.

The fact that two people love each other so much, that they are willing to commit the rest of their lives to being together, merits a deeper meaning than to just reproduce.
It merits, at the very least, a partnership - a partnership to live together and experience new things together.

Lovely.

We deal with our messes together, sweetheart!
We are become one.

But then the center of a lot of lives becomes money. Yet we all end up earning it, somehow.

Since we're all going to be investing in "property", and since we're all dabbling in "stocks" and oh this or that "startup", and neither and naught of these things are going to make us millionaires - I say fuck...this...shit.

Unless you think you have a winning idea (remember, we all think we do...('bas time chahiye yar')), which you want to invest in and make a fortune off of - other than that, what is it all, but pointless? We will do nothing but sit on money and hope it goes somewhere.

It would be infinitely better if all that I could ever earn were used to travel.
And not to fucking Manali, or Shimla, or Goa.

You know what I want to do? And what I hope and plan my wife and I are going to do?
We are going to fucking Africa, and then South America and Machu Pichu, and Cambodia... and then? Nope... not done.
We are going to see things, Notre Dame, Angkor Wat and the Pyramids and the Sphinx, swim in the Mediterranean, go to Alaska, and... - We are going to see everything we can, before the end.
Fuck...
Yes...

Fuck yes.

Listen, I don't know what the future holds for me. Or for you.

Insignificance is inevitable. 

I just want to experience as much of this trip as I can.

For it certainly seems fleeting, life.

Viva La Vida.

Klexos: The Art of Dwelling on the Past

This is not an original anything.

I just wanted to share something beautiful.

Please play the below clip, and if you like, read the subtitles below it.

It is poetry.

"Your life is written in indelible ink. There's no going back to erase the past, tweak your mistakes, or fill in missed opportunities. When the moment's over, your fate is sealed. But if you look closer, you notice that the ink never really dries on any of our experiences. They can change their meaning, the longer you look at them. Klexos. There are ways of thinking about the past that aren't just nostalgia or regret, a kind of questioning that enriches the experience after the fact. To dwell on the past is to allow fresh context to dribble in on the years, and fill out the picture. And keep the memory alive. And not just as a caricature of itself. So you can look fairly at a painful experience, and call it by its name.
Time is the most powerful force in the universe. It can turn a giant into someone utterly human, just trying to make their way through. Or tell you how you really felt about someone, even if you couldn't at the time. It can put your childhood dreams in context with adult burdens or turn a universal consensus into an embarrassing fad. It can expose cracks in a relationship that once seemed perfect. Or keep a friendship going by thoughts alone, even if you'll never see them again.
It can flip your greatest shame into the source of our greatest power. Or turn a jolt of pride into something petty, done for the wrong reasons. Or make what felt like the end of the world look like a natural part of life.
The past is still mostly a blank page, so you may be doomed to repeat it. But it is still worth looking into, if it brings you closer to the truth.
Maybe it's not so bad to dwell on the past. And muddle in the memories. To...stem the simplification of time, and put some craft back into it. Maybe we should think of memory itself as an art form, in which the real work begins as soon as the paint hits the canvas.

And remember that a work of art is never finished, it is simply abandoned."

There are good times, and bad. And then there are the getting-better times.

This post is about football.

No, this post is about Manchester United. It won't interest anyone who doesn't have an interest in football. So there.

I often see stats thrown up by television pundits and rival fans alike, about how we seem to be doing as bad, or sometimes even worse, than last season. This seems to be a great example of how stats never really show the full story.

The season David Moyes joined us, we had just won the premier league by an unexpectedly huge margin, been robbed of a great champions league run by an unfair red card, and had just lost to retirement, the greatest manager to have ever lived.

We were on a high. And then suddenly it seemed as if a part of us died. We were un-creative, toothless in attack, spineless in defense. But most of all, after one of the most successful periods ever, we were, as a club, in a place where few of us had ever seen ourselves - desperately clawing for a direction, a vision; we seemed to be lacking our basic identity - an identity which SAF had instilled in all of our minds (not only the players, but the supporter base as a whole).

It was a downward slope. Starting from a bad transfer window, going towards a bad pre-Christmas half, and ending with one of the worst ever spells our club has ever seen.
It was, to put it mildly, heart-breaking.

So why is this season better? Why, seemingly, are we more supportive of LVG than we were of Moyes?
Well, simply it's because even though we may have roughly the same results and points as last time, there seems to be a definite uplift in the direction our club is heading. It is - a record-breaking transfer window with some really good signings, a manager who speaks his mind rather than simply acknowledging the greatness of the club he inherits, and (dare I quote him) a philosophy (hopefully).

We had a good run, the last few matches; before Southampton exposed our undoubtedly important weaknesses. LVG seems like a good, nay, great manager, but he still has to earn my respect, as I'm sure SAF had to, back in the day, when I wasn't even born. But atleast to me, things seem to be going in the right direction, overall.

We are in a bad time, yes.

But we are moving towards the good times, slowly but surely.

God I love this club.