I got shot Straight in my back By my own family & friends Never thought In my wildest dreams They’d turn out like that And like any Bollywood Or Hollywood thriller packed movie Bullets in my body I ran I escaped Ran and ran and ran way And I stumbled on you
Writing, feeling, thinking, writing a poem or a prose or a story, it’s unlike any other form of creation. It’s not like the content creation of modern generation, blog or vlog or TikToks; it is an exercise of drenching the soul in the hollows of sorrows and trying to swim out of it alive. The best writers of times, the best poets of ages, were never happy people, were never logical or pragmatic, they were all hopeless romantics. Writing, poetry or prose or a story, an observation, articulating a problem or a pain, is unlike any form of articulation. It’s not logical, argumentative, it’s emotional to its core, dripping in love and care, killing the writer with each word, each sentence, each utterance. A writer can’t ignore, can’t turn a blind eye, the very process of sitting down, picking the pen, means allowing all of the world's problems and pain, each tear each outcry each mumble of each liphapless and helpless all channeled through a means requiring no technology no communication just pure divine humanity, just heart and soul, it all flows through the eyes and hearts of a billion through the spine and fingers of the writer to be poured straight on the page, Not in a blue ink, but a page bloodied red with pain. The process of writing about grief or pain has no pride or glory but a not so short visit to hell, an exorcism of a kind, the writer much like every soul she writes about, their bones much like a billion broken tired bones, their muscles much like the cold dead muscles of the corpse, the writer dies at every moment she tries to write about the dead much like the very intention with the reader, very purpose of writing, very calling of the billion souls channeled through fingers ten for the ears and eyes and minds of readers millions, the writer cries and dies at every utterance to describe the pain and helplessness of every million to bring to light the closed eyes and hearts of the guarded billions. The writer dies with every word she writes about the dead with only intentions to kill the readers with trenches of pain, sorrow, grief, guilt; for the ghosts are calling and the writer must listen, for the ghosts are shouting and the readers must hear, for the ghosts are crying, and the living must weep.
My spine had betrayed me when God has created me with a figment of my heart hidden in every corner of my back, with the pain of the world felt in every nerve of every muscle of my perfectly fine body
Isn’t it crazy, we didn’t fall in love, isn’t it crazy we didn’t kiss or hug or make out enough, isn’t it crazy that even while staring at death every day every moment every other person’s face, we guarded our ego, our pride, our over the proportioned sense of self, isn’t it crazy that right up to that final moment, right until that final breath we were so so ignorant, we thought we’d be fine, we were so sure this won’t happen to us, we were so certain of our pride and privilege, that even till the last moment we didn’t believe in the apocalypse.
So many movies has a central premise of death, death of someone close to you, whether with intent or accident, the plot starts with investigation, with grieving families and friends and usually with a grieving protagonist. Many multi-series movies, the whole John Wick Franchise, Godfather, Kill Bill, and the latest Tom Clancey without remorse, all with the central premise of transformation of protagonist as they go from a stage of freeze and ignore to the point of murder and bloodshed while seeking revenge for the death of their loved ones. Many a classic sad songs, my favorite Tum Bin discography, where the accidental death of Amar ravishes the life of his lover Pia.
Article originally written in August 2009 in 3rd year of Engineering at IIT-BHU
On June 20th, 2020, I completed my two years of return to India. Two years of struggle and success with entrepreneurship, two years of absolute bleak blatant singlehood, two years of extensive entertainment and growth at activities that I love deeply, two years of transformation of my body into a sophisticated powerful machinery, two years of thousands of meetings across the business, finance, tech and environmental community in India, two years of countless rejections and a few acceptances, two years of hiring and firing people, and at the absolute end of the day, two years of sleeping absolutely alone in my bed.
Does the free market mean that you can make transactions of human life freely? Does it mean that one can sell anything anyone wants, regardless of its implications to the world, planet, society, without any limitations? Does it mean arms can be sold and bought “freely”? And in some sense, should it mean “insecticides, pesticides” that destroy groundwater can be transacted freely? Does it mean nuclear missiles can be transacted freely? Does it mean that coal projects that endanger the sheer existence of this planet should be transacted with freedom?
In 2013, soon after the Anna Movement and right in the middle of the 2013 Delhi Assembly Election that was fought on the premise of "Anti Corruption and Honest Governance", I read the 22-page long seminal paper "Corruption" by Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 108, No. 3. in Aug 1993.
Do you ever wonder what were the regular germans living circa 1935 thinking?
All around the world, from Hollywood to South Delhi, on social media, in elite universities, the Millenials and Gen Z are increasingly more "woke" than the generation of their parents and grandparents. This can be particularly seen across in voting behavior, whereby young Americans typically tend democratic and old Americans are more staunch republicans. This statistical divide in India though is much more complex with layers of urban, semi-urban, and rural; north, south, and east, states with strong local parties vs states with national party hegemony, building a mosaic of liberal and conservative outlooks among the population.
“Don’t allow the doubts of today limit our tomorrow” — FDR
