Author aconfusedprimate

Being Humane

aconfusedprimate Leave a comment

Englishman in Newyork




I originally wanted to call this piece ‘Being human’. But I was afraid of a copyright infringement suite by the Bhai’s lawyers. Not the Mafia kind, the Bollywood kind. You don’t mess with a legal team that can manage to keep a person out of jail after he was found guilty for culpable homicide.

Now coming back to the matter of being humane. What is a human and what makes us humane? Humane means being benevolent or in “Non-Sasi Tharoor” language, it means being kindhearted. Are Humans so kindhearted that we can bestow the the word humane with a  meaning of benevolence? 

United Nations maintains a list of global issues. Each and every issue in the list is a result of human action. Let me be clear here. Not inaction, but human action. I’m not going to justify this statement by linking each problem on the list to present or past human actions. Anyone with common sense should be able to make the correlation. Also, I’m not writing this because my heart suddenly started to bleed for all those suffering in the world. The trigger to this post is very personal.

For the last few years, I haven’t been very happy. Well! Happy is not the correct word. I haven’t been content with my life. I couldn’t put a finger on it. My wife was having the same feeling(not similar, exactly the same). We felt like aliens in the our own country or in other words, felt like we were living among another species. So what is my definition of being a human being? or being humane? It is a very big and abstract word. 

What makes Homo sapiens unique among all the other species to have ever walked the earth? We have brains with higher cognitive capabilities or to put it simply, we have more grey cells in our head than what is required to just “Survive and Reproduce”. So what are we using this additional processing capacity for? 
I strongly believe, most of us have focused all the left over processing capacity to do only destructive things. Greed is a primary reason for this but so is selfishness. I used to think that I was a very selfish person, still think I am. But talking in relative terms, I am the David for the Golaith’s out there in comparison and unlike the biblical hero, I am not going to win.  

In fact, the way most of my fellow humans are acting embarrasses me to accept that I belong to the same race as theirs. In a way being different is not a quality appreciated by the society in general. They treat you like an alien. Perhaps this is exactly what we were feeling. But I find solace in the words (rather lyrics) of Sting.

If “Manners maketh man” as someone said
Then he’s the hero of the day
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say

I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in New York
I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in New York



Many-faced god

aconfusedprimate Leave a comment

Everyday is Halloween


“Sometimes we don’t do things we want to do 
so that others won’t know we want to do them.”

Today evening I was watching “The Village” by M Night Shyamalan for the second time in my life. I watched it once long long ago and I hated its ending. I wanted to know if my wife would agree with my opinion, so we watched it together. The female protagonist spoke these words, the words I missed when I watched it the first time and it triggered an avalanche of thoughts in my head. After a few minutes, I remembered a quote by Tim Burton.
Both the dialogue and the quote mean the exact same thing, it is just not very apparent. 

The first title I thought of this blog was ‘The masks we wear’ but it would be too obvious and kind of redundant Halloween theme. Many-Face god is someone who is worshiped by a cult of assasins in the HBO series Game of thrones. To celebrate its last season that was recently aired, I chose this title. These assassins don faces they collected from dead people as masks to hide their true appearances. In a way this is a more apt title for this blog. You’ll understand the correlation by the time you finish reading this.

Are you truly the person that others perceive you to be? I would confidently wager that you are not. If you honestly say yes to my previous question, I don’t have any words for you. You are truly a rare breed. 

If you answer the question as No, then think of how many people truly know you?
There is no shame in accepting this. Majority of us behave or try to behave in such a way that is expected of us. School, college, Work, Friends and Family. Each of these situations expect you to behave in a certain way and portray certain set of values and attitude. it is a combination of Peer pressure and Social obligations. 

If one removes all these obligations would you still make the same decisions? I know I wouldn’t. Most of our actions are a result of a thought process “What will people think of me if I don’t/do this?”. This is very good in a way. This may be the main difference between a human and an animal. Animals always do things based on their primal instincts. Humans have mastered the art of suppressing the natural instincts. I say suppress for a reason. These urges are still very much a part and parcel of everyone’s genes. The funniest thing is that humans are also self centered and give a name called ‘Conscience’ to this act.

Even for the sake of argument, I cannot ask you to tell me how you would react when there are no social obligations. Because they are ever present from birth to death. But there are 2 situations in life where one cannot and will not suppress their true nature. One is when they are alone and the other is when they are under tremendous amount of pressure.

Lets look at each of these situations. When you are truly alone and have nothing to do, what runs through your mind? What do you want to do? Is it different than what you would do if your partner/friends/family/co-workers are with you? If you answered yes to my first question and yes to this question, then you are lying to your self. Welcome to the club of ‘Many-faced Gods’. 


Now the other situation, when you are under severe pressure. Here the true self comes out without any effort. Its not in your control. the survival instincts of your brain kick in and all other cognitive functions shut down. In such a situation you do what comes to you naturally, your brain forgets all the training you have given it over all the years distinguishing each and everything as good and bad.

I’m no Saint here.  I’m also a Many-faced god(human). I’m a selfish person. It comes from being the only child or may be there is some of it in my DNA too. I never had to share as a kid so it was difficult to train myself to do that. Not just ‘stuff’, I also never had to share attention so my natural instinct is to crave for it. I’m condescending, which is a derivative tendency of anyone who has had lots of attention as  kid. Like wise I’m egocentric, narcissistic, insensitive. A lot of people who know me (or think that they know me) wouldn’t associate these qualities with me. But honestly I’m all of these. I’m many more but I don’t want to reveal them and upgrade my designation from Sociopath to Psychopath.

The use of ‘I am’ instead of ‘I was’ is intentional. This is because I know what I am and I also know that I will always be that. I use these so called negative personalities in a positive way to deal with the social obligations that these behavioral traits are always in conflict with. But I have found out a way to use the conflict to my advantage. For example if I see someone not following traffic rules and they cause inconvenience to me. It hurts my ego. Instead of reacting to it I call my inner narcissist who appreciates my taking the higher road. That makes me happy and avoids a confrontation. I’m not saying everyone should  follow me and try to turn their negatives to positives.I’m also not saying that I’m the master of my senses. I’m just saying that this is what I do or at least try to as much as possible. 

In Batman begins there is a line that says 

On the contrary, what ever we do we will always be what we are underneath. It is equally important to embrace what we are. You might argue that it is wise to be a Roman when in Rome. I’d say… sure be a roman but just remember but your actually aren’t.

‘Dus’Vidaniya

aconfusedprimate 1 Comment

The Loops we live in



Do svidaniya means Good Bye in Russian, just like the 2008 Vinay Pathak movie Dasvidaniya, I have attempted a pun at this Russian greeting to mean “10 ways”.

Last week I visited Indonesia. This is the Tenth country I have set my foot in.(not counting Airports used for Transit). In these countries, I have seen a lot of different kinds of people and different cultures, different ways of life and more importantly the different set of rules people abide by.

One of the biggest curiosities of my life is to try understand why people behave the way they do. A HBO series (Westworld) that I recently started watching gave me food for thought in this perspective.



I believe both these sentences are damning critic of humans and human nature. If you strip away the makeup that everyone applies in the name of religion, race, ethnicity and culture, at its core every human is very similar to others. You can google for cultural differences between nations and you will find ample material to muse. I want to talk about similarities human beings that I saw where ever I went.

Every living thing in the world has only one primary objective and purpose. Well , not exactly one but 2 purposes. Survive and Reproduce. This is a loop we live in and are never happy to come out of. I use the word loop because it’s the exact word used to describe the pattern in West world. Some back ground in Westworld before we go further. Its a futuristic sci-fi show where a man creates a theme park kind of a place where there are robots(hosts) that look like humans. Have a little artificial intelligence to react and give improvised responses. Each host believes that they are humans. These hosts are programmed to play a role in a small plot that resembles a wild west country. This is their loop. Humans pay to play a part in this. But as human nature goes, humans go there to just whore around and kill. Now, when the customer/humans are done with their raping and pillaging of hosts, the company that runs the place simply resets the hosts back to the start of their loop.This is a very high level plot.  

Coming back to the real life, The basic human loop consists of Birth – Survival – Reproduction – Taking care of offspring – Inserting the offspring into the same loop as they live in – Die. To make it simpler to understand, the gold standard for an Male human being is to be able to earn enough to survive, ensure the blood like passes on. Now, let me rephrase it in much more simpler terms for you. Good job, beautiful wife, healthy & intelligent children, good insurance for a safety net for family, peaceful retirement and then a calm death. 

The finer details may wary based on which part of the world you are in. Eg: someone born in Somaliya would have more effort in some aspects like survival and someone born in the US may have different order of priorities. But the list is always the same. 

Now the rules might be drastically different. India provides numerous examples when you want to talk about different cultures.The regional and religious differences mash together a bunch of illogical rules that people set for their loops. Hindu’s are not supposed to eat Beef and Muslims are forbidden to eat pork. A person is considered bad if he consumes alcohol or smokes. But for Sikhs, drinking is fine but smoking is a no no. For Muslims drinking is a sin but smoking and whoring are not. 

Eating habits are not very serious thing. Lets take a much more serious matter. A suitable mate. Muslims can marry a cousin from Maternal line but not from paternal line and its vice-versa for the Hindus.If you expand the sample size. In US, it is OK to marry your step sibling. 

This is just the tip of the ice berg. There are so many permutations and combinations that would leave even a mathematics professor scratching his/her head.These restrictions were put in by some tom dick and Harry. Since humans are comfortable doing what they are told to do when in a dilemma, they are more than happy to continue living in their loops and make every effort when there is some situation that threatens to break our life out of this loop.

The Loop Breakers

Now, after this uncomfortable truth that WestWorld has exposed, I saw a very glaring similarity to another HBO series. Game of Thrones.

Just like the periodic table, everything has exceptions. There are lot of people who break away from their loop.In other words, they don’t feel the obligation to live by the rules of the land. I’m not talking about law breakers. This is a level beyond that. 

Now to the other series. The Game of thrones analogy. Game of thrones has had a truck load of characters and several truck loads of interweaving plots that bring these characters together. But the most interesting thing of all is that all the Major surviving characters in the story have one thing in common. They broke their loops. Any person in the story that stuck to their loop is either irrelevant or dead. Talking about all the characters will take a lot of time, so I’ll just mention the loop the characters were supposed to be in and if you know the show, you’ll know how they broke their loop. 

Sansa Stark: A gullible girl with dreams of marrying a prince and becoming a queen, used by different people. Her loop was being innocent, suffering and becoming a tool that others can use for their gain. She broke out of her loop when she killed her sadistic husband.

Thyrion Lannister: Son of the most powerful person in the kingdom, ill fated to be born a dwarf and being hated by Father and Sister. Blamed by them for his mothers death. A person who decided to piss on the world that laughs at him, spending almost his entire life with fucking and drinking. His loop broke when he realised that his sister would goto any length to see him dead.

Arya Stark: Tom boyish daughter of a Lord who got himself killed because of his honour. Thrown into the harsh realities of the world with no one to help her out. She shattered her loop when she realised that she will always be a Stark.

Jon Snow: A bastard Son of a Lord, hated by his step mother decides to join an order of men who gaurd the seven kingdoms. This was his attempt to get away form his identity as a bastard. His loop broke when he was betrayed by his own brothers for doing what was right.

Theon Greyjoy: One of the more complex loops. A boy taken away from his family by the Starks who defeated his father. Raised as a ward. Lives in a perpetual identity crisis on where his loyalties should lie. He tries to prove himself as a worthy son and falls down a rabbit hole of one bad decision after another which leaves him with a broken body and mind, full of guilt. His loop broke when he realises that the only way to loose his guilt is to correct his mistakes and that he can be both a Stark and a GreyJoy.

Jamie Lannister:  The most complex character I have ever come across in any form of literature. If I ever meet JRR Martin, I would ask him to wait a moment, buy a hat and return to give him a Hats off. My favorite character of the show. I cannot describe his loop in a couple of lines. It may take a couple of paragraphs. 

Are you a bad person if you are willing to kill someone to protect the love of your life? Are you a bad person if that someone you try to kill is a child? Are a bad person if that someone you loved is your twin sister? 

Are you an honour less man of you kill the person who wanted to kill your family? Are you an honour less man if that person is the king? Are you an honour less man if that person is someone you vowed to guard and protect?

A hapless man who ended up being in love with someone who he was not supposed to and then ends up doing things he doesn’t like to protect that someone. He to keep enduring the insults, lack of respect and the opinions of everyone around him. His loop would have been to stand by his sister till the end. 
He broke out of it when he saw through his sisters intentions to use him for what she wants. He was able to get out of his loop when he realised that his sister was not someone who truly loved him.

I did not include Cersei and Daenerys on purpose. Because they are still living in their loops.  Cersei is in an obsession of I, Me, Myself. She wants total power at any cost. Daenerys is in a similar loop to become the queen of 7 kingdoms. Her loop is that she is the true heir to the throne and only she can bring peace to the entire world. So based on my assumption, both will die.

Luckily the people in the real world who prefer to live in their loops do not die untimely deaths. They just remain irrelevant. So, my point here is that where ever I went, the majority of the people I saw were the ones who preferred to walk in the direction their life takes them and a handful who actually take their lives in the direction they want to travel.

So even though I have observed people from 10 different nations and had interactions with people from a few others in line of my work, there are only 2 types of people I saw. So its not “Dusvidaniya”, its just “Do Vidaniya” which is 2 ways in Hindi or If I want to be obsessed with word play ‘Dos Visdaniya’ (Dos = 2 in Spanish). The loop dwellers and the loop breakers. So,Which one are you?

United Knobheads

aconfusedprimate Leave a comment

What goes around….Comes around…



The British people have been called many things. They are stereotyped to be tea drinkers, football fanatics, sophisticated, overly polite etc. But recently they showed what they actually are.. STUPID. Yes, It’s offensive to call an entire country stupid. But I’m not calling all of them stupid. 17410742 of them are. That’s roughly 37% of the electorate. Not sure if the numbers quantify me calling them stupid. If you are wondering where I got that number, It is the number of people who voted Yes for BREXIT in 2016. 

Well, you can argue that in everyone is wise in hindsight. But voting for something without knowing the complete ramifications is in one way stupid. The April 2019 deadline for BREXIT is approaching fast and it is getting more and more amusing to watch the circus unfolding in the English parliament. This is what happens if you over estimate yourself. The architects of this chaos were basically some selfish politicians looking for some mileage. 




There was a very popular propaganda by a guy called Boris Johnson. He tried to take growing nationalism in the world to his advantage and the jury is still out on whether he succeded in his plans. Below if a photograph of the bus he used for the campaign. 


This Mr Boris Johnson curiously shares a lot of things with one Mr Donald J Trump. I’m not talking of physical similarities.(Though they look like brothers to be honest) I’m referring to how they came into political power. Just like how Trump used scare mongering among white Americans that their jobs are bring taken by migrants, Migrants rape and kill white people, world is being unfair with their trades with US. Boris also used a cooked up figure that UK was paying 350 million pounds a week to EU and this can be freed up for the betterment of the country rather than helping our poor countries in EU. Both their empires have been built on Lies. 

Then, when they did get into power, just like Trump’s promise to build a wall in the US southern border to keep out the dangerous Mexicans, promises of Boris fell flat. Trump first promised that Mexico will pay for the wall. That did not happen. Then when the house was with Republicans, they did not grant funding. Then, after mid-terms when the house went to democrats, he began saying that Democrats were blocking the wall. Mr Boris went an extra mile. When he was supposed to be helping out draft the BREXIT agreement with EU, he resigned from his position and returned to being a back bench MP. Basically both of them know how to disrupt the economy and government. Both of them don’t know how to take responsibility. 

Now that UK is heading for a potentially No-Deal BREXIT which leaves the country in economic doldrums, I’m feeling very happy. You might say that I’m deriving schadenfreude.(I have been wanting to use this word for months now, and I finally got to use it. YAY!). You are right. After what they did to the world in the name of colonization, they had to suffer. A country whose crown jewel (literally the Jewel in the crown of their queen) is stolen from a colony, A country whose meteoric rise was built on the blood and bones of the people that they colonized deserves to suffer.
Well, it is not happening in the scale of suffering they inflicted on the world but it is happening on some scale. It reminds of a saying “what goes around comes around“.

There is a popular saying during the imperialist days of the world. The sun never sets on the British empire. I hope that April 12th, 2019 will be the day it happens.

No Brainer

aconfusedprimate Leave a comment

Stop and Think!

Jellyfish. Its a fish that looks, feels like a moving jelly. So naming it a jelly fish is a No Brainer. No, I dont mean that you don’t have to use any grey matter to arrive at this name. I mean it literally. A jelly fish has no Brain. So do a lot of other organisms. But it is a well known and recognised creature, so I’ll stick with it to make my point.

Now Jelly fish has no brain but it survives. It just survives it doesn’t bother about the rest of the world. But we humans do. None of the other 8.7 million species on earth do it. Just us. So, we think that we are superior to them. We think our brains are more advanced than all the other species. This hasn’t yet been scientifically proven but just for the sake of this argument, let’s assume they are. Now are we using this brain? Or May be let me rephrase the question. Are we using our brains correctly?

There are 2 types of humans that I see. Ones who just accept what ever they are told. Ones who don’t. Now, if you just accept what ever is told to you without reasoning, technically you might as well be born as a jelly fish. In other words, you might as well not have a brain. Why carry the weight of 3 pounds that is not needed. Well may be not all of it, just the Grey part. You will still need the white part to remember what is told to you. You just don’t need the part that gives cognitive abilities.

I would like to venture a guess that while reading this blog, especially the previous paragraph, you have categorised yourself as the second kind. The Reasoning Kind. But I’d like to disagree. It might sound a arrogant statement. But I honestly believe that most people do not put their brains to good use and I wholeheartedly wish they did. May be they don’t realise the need to question the status quo. 

Now, I’ll go through a list of few things that I bet you never bothered to think twice about. You learnt them in school, stuffed them in our memory bank and left them there. For Instance, why does one stop at a red light and drive when it is green? Who decided it? Why did they choose those colours? 

But one question always drives me in circles. Well, spheres and ellipses to be honest.
Earth is a sphere and it revolves around the Sun in an elliptical orbit. So, how do we determine the starting point of a sphere or a ellipse?
Well they did do that. In 1850, people from some so called western came together and said, we need to create time zones. This started when railroad connectivity established between Canada and the US. Business men had a tough time with ‘time’. Obviously they did not invite all the countries with people who have melanin in their skin. Then everyone that were invited wanted their country to be taken as a reference point. Now who do you think won in this situation. Take a guess. It was the English. They made England the centre of Earth.
One can argue that there was a very good necessity to draw longitudes. But then they have established the so called East and West. 

Directions are pretty straight forward. The direction that sun rises from is the east. eg: For India Singapore is East. For England, France is East. But its funny that their definition was not relative. Japan is far east, even for Hawaii. And For Korea, US is West. That doesn’t make any sense.

Now lets get back to the concept of time for a moment. A calendar is also a way to keep time. Time will exist even of no one will keep track of it. Now, the best way to make a formula for anything is to find as few exceptions as possible and a unit of time has to fall under same criteria. But they did all kinds of reverse engineering and forward engineering. Its just like the non-metric system in US and UK. Its stupid. An year is defined as time it takes for earth to complete one rotation around the sun. So, where does an orbit start? Why start counting on January 1st. Again you might argue that its a problem with no solution. Some one had to start counting at some point in the orbit. Why not January? Agree.

I’ll use a final example that in completely and utterly illogical. Now. A week has 7 days. There are 5/6 work/week days and 2/1 weekend days respectively (depending on which part of the world you are in). Now why is Sunday a holiday? Why not any other 6 days of the week? This is a stupid thing that was written in bible that no one is supposed to work of Sabbath as its the day of the lord. Now that is fine, but what about the rest of the world. Its not the day of ‘their’ lord. Well except Saudi Arabia, they saw the right through this logic and declared that their holiday would be on Friday. 

You may think that I’m crazy to say that such kind of things are worth thinking about. But I’d argue that these are the exact kind of things that one should ponder about. If we silently follow what we are told, what’s the difference between a sheep(or Jellyfish) and us. 



Poor preferences

aconfusedprimate Leave a comment

Supply vs Demand



Today, My wife and I were watching a rerun of Top Gear. It was a 2018 episode being telecast in 2019. Yes, in India a lot of foreign shows are not that popular. We’ll get to that later. It was Season 25 Episode 6. They were test driving 3 SUV’s on a rugged course and each of the SUV had to tow a horse box or a horse caravan. In this trailer was a horse shaped piñata. After each SUV ran the course, they were checking the state of the piñata. After the second SUV, a new range rover, had finished its run, they opened the horse box and found that the piñatas’ head broke off. One of the host commented that it was a ‘Sicilian Stallion’. On hearing this, both my wife and me broke into a hysterical laughter. It was a very clever joke. Now if you do not understand why it is funny, you are the exact kind of person that inspired me to write this blog post.

After the laughter settled, I told my wife that we cannot share this joke with anyone we know. We again giggled for a while. Well not everyone, but almost everyone. Now, we were not insulting almost everyone of our friends. It was actually an ironic laughter on the poor preferences most our friends have. See, to get the joke, you should have read The God Father by Mario Puzo or should have watched Francis Coppola’s movie adaptation of the book. The joke is actually a reference to one of the most epic scenes in the history of cinema. 

A lot of good humor has references to pop culture. Not just humor, pop culture gives you insights into a lot of things. For example, there is a small but busy branch of culture studies known as “Buffy studies”; it’s even part of a Masters program at Brunel University, London. Topics include moral philosophy, gender constructs, textual analysis, and linguistic culture, all of which are explored using examples from “Buffy” and its spinoff “Angel.” The delighted show creator Joss Whedon said,

“If it’s successful or made a dent in culture, then it is worthy of study to find out why. Buffy, on the other hand is, I hope, not idiotic. We think very carefully about what we’re trying to say emotionally, politically, and even philosophically while we’re writing it… it really is, apart from being a pop-culture phenomenon, something that is deeply layered textually episode by episode.”

Now, traditionally TV and comics have been considered a low art. But in the 21st century, this is the art that most people are exposed to, thus it the most popular art. Any popular art form that becomes a part of culture and thus pop culture is very important. There are a multitude of reasons to study it. It’s not just entertainment, it also gives you a glimpse of culture of that period. 

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m no all pro western art and pop culture. If someone from India after an exam says, that question was more difficult than the question “Why kattappa killed bahubali”. It is pop culture and I respect that. One could argue that no one outside India would understand the reference to bahubali and kattappa. That’s true. But that’s because it is not popular there.  There are a lot of film makers and writers pouring good content in Indian screens too. But this good content  is too less and too infrequent. Let’s take Bahubali, the most expensive Indian movie ever made, broke all records in terms of money it made. If you have watched the 2 part saga, answer a couple of my questions. 
What was the plot? Did this plot if it existed require 329 minutes of running time and such a huge budget? 
There are a few very iconic scenes in the movie but did the wafer thin plot and need less emotional drama warrant an outlay of 430 crores? 

But when it comes to TV, Films or even cartoons in India, There is a generalization by the makers for each genre. 
1) Daily soaps – are for women, only melodrama sells
2) News is for men. Needs no fact checking only as much controversy as possible.
3) Cartoons are not entertainment, they need to be addictive, should be able to sell merchandise, content need not be filtered for children.




Media industry like all businesses caters to demand. So, if the demand for quality content increases, the supply will automatically start. In a way internet streaming services have already started a phase.It will take time to bring up the quality but until then we have alternatives.One of the side effects of British colonization of India was that most of the educated Indian’s know English. This is a blessing in a way because this gives us an opportunity to tap into books, TV, Cinema and comics in English. The internet now has erased all boundaries, you can find subtitles for most of the popular TV and Film content in any language. So, it’s not the old days of doordarshan where you had only one option, Now you have lots of options.

You just have reach out and grab it. 

Coincidence

aconfusedprimate Leave a comment

I’m feeling lucky

Luck seems to top the list of things people want and that start with L. It kind of corrected a misconception. I expected the top result to be ‘How to get laid’. That being the most primal and basic instinct of humans. May be people already know that or may be they thought luck would get them laid anyway. But Luck seems to be one every ones wish list.

Google even has an I’m feeling lucky button if you just in case have previously googled and already got the luck from that place where they give away luck. It sounds sarcastic but there are oodles of places where you can get luck. To be more accurate, where you can ‘Buy’ luck. Just to see what the worlds best search engine would suggest if I asked it this question. It took me to a page where there was a list of things ranging from most silly to most obvious (Lucky charms to Working Hard).

Now, one can be impatient to make their own luck. It might take some time and effort to make it, so they just buy it. They buy charms, stones, gold or some even buy blessings. That’s a story for another day. But most people are not rich enough to keep buying their luck so they make their own.

People make their own luck by doing things at a lucky time or on a lucky day or wearing a lucky color or wearing a lucky shirt. You name it they have a it. May be there is a lucky under wear too. So, how can a time/day/color be lucky? It doesn’t make sense.

It is a great insult to associate success to luck. This happens especially if one has an inferiority complex and a lack of self belief. Suppose a student prepares for only 2 of the 5 chapters in syllabus for the test and looks at the test paper to find most of the questions are form the the 2 chapters he/she prepared for. They associate this with the deity they prayed to that day, the mode of transport they took, the breakfast they had, the seat they took, the first face they looked after they woke up, the pen they brought, the shirt they wore, the shop where they bought the text book, the song that they heard on the way, the girl they saw before the exam. You name it, they have it. They have a self documented scientific proof of the event that made those questions appear in the test.  The poor guy/girl who prepared for the other 3 chapters will be cursing all the things I mentioned above. Clearly he/she did not put in the total effort logically required to take the test. They just did part of it and so now, they have to associate their success to some external element because they know that they are not the reason for it. 

People do not believe in coincidence.Yet, they buy lottery tickets. Do one of their lucky things and think they got lucky if they win. But ignore their lucky charm if they don’t win. That’s very hypocritical and also being lazy. But they are still justified as they don’t know the reason for their success, so they are trying to associate.

I’m no saint here. I was part of the brigade, my thing was color. It first started with fear. As a kid I was involved in 3 minor accidents through no fault of mine. All 3 times, I was wearing a black shirt. So, I associated it with bad luck. Then, I gave an exam where I was not very confident about. I aced it and I was wearing a white shirt that day. So, it was established. Black is bad, white is good. Then I was involved in a potentially fatal accident and again  through no fault of mine. I was wearing… no.. not black. It was white this time. See, It happened on the way to another exam. How could I be not wearing white to exams? No, I escaped this potentially fatal accident with minor injuries. Luckily. No. Due to a couple of coincidences. Guess what I did now? I thought I was saved because I was wearing white.

Subconsciously, I have already trained my brain to associate black with bad and white with good. Now even if something bad happens white, I search for a bright side. That is still acceptable, makes me a more optimistic person. But the other side of the coin is bad. I was scared to wear black, predetermined that no matter what I do, black will cause problems. This is bad. very bad. It wasn’t until a lot of years later that my brain started to realize the nonsensical nature of my black and white logic. I turned the corner with one logic, put in 100% effort, do not expect 100% success. There are too many variables in the equation for each and every thing you do. So, trying to control the outcome is a futile exercise. All you can do is try with all your heart. If it doesn’t happen it’s not just because of you, its not because of you or something you wore or saw that day. There are a hundred things that can happen. Always look at future as one with infinite possibilities being influenced by infinite events.

What infuriates me the most is that most of the people who are armed with sufficient will skills and talent to execute something get bogged down by some stupid concepts that guarantee 100% success with no logical sense.

Above is one of my all time favorite scenes in Movies. It basically explains how the universe works and also the point I’m trying to make in this post. 

So, I will not be wishing you best of luck. I’m wish you all the very best.

Dystopian destiny

aconfusedprimate Leave a comment

Civilization or C-Evil-ization?



What is common between the movies in the above collage? Take a guess. May be the title will give a clue! Not the movie title, I’m talking about the title of blog.

Before I tell you what I meant, lets look at some more movies. Have you seen “You’ve got mail?”, a nice romantic movie, very popular no doubt, you wouldn’t bat an eye lid on the plot. Its very genuine. But it wasn’t when the movie was made. Movies main plot is something that you would call Online dating today. It was completely unheard of in 1998.

So, this movie predicted something that we see today. It predicted future. Now let me rush through a list of movies that spoke of concepts that were total fiction when they were made.
Jim carrey’s The cable guy talks about Online gaming and Smart TVs. Air plane part II shows full body scanners in air ports, Minority report shows personalized advertising, Total recall shows TV’s on public transport & self driving cars/ Back to the future features flat screen TVs, Video conferencing and wearable technology. War games introduced us to cyber war fare. Blade runner said digital bill boards are possible. The true man show is about reality television (the writers can sue the Kardashian’s for copy wright infringement). The running man is about a reality show where contestants had to do dangerous tasks. 2001 A space oddessy gave us the first glimpse of virtual assistants. Smart phones, Virtual reality, Robots, Digital snooping, Identity theft, Smart homes, Face transplants, Nuclear meltdowns were all part of movies even before we had a name for such a thing.

You might write it off saying its all about technology and technological advances were bound to happen. You can also strike me down that there is a whole bunch of stuff that did not become a reality. But that’s exactly what a prediction means. It may happen. It’s not a guess. A prediction is an educated guess. Sort of the one you make at half time of a game. 

Now getting back to the photo collage at the top.At the heart of every plot is the message, Human species is on path to self-destruct. They are not the dystopian dreams of a writer, they are the the result of a prediction that some people made looking at where the human race is heading. The central theme of every movie is problems that arise out of over population of Humans.


Also, there has been an increasing trend where the villain is a guy meaning good. He takes the decision that the only way to save earth is by eliminating significant amount of human beings. So, he is actually trying to be the hero for future generations but we brand him as a bad guy just because we don’t like his modus operandi.

Look at V for vendetta, its based on a book, it is about futuristic Britain. A politician uses fear mongering and comes into power, then systematically establishes an authoritarian regime. Then there is a revolution to over throw him. I think we are seeing the first phases of this movie plot already in action. 

Before humans walked the earth, the only way there could be destruction was through Nature. Humans call them natural disasters. But there is an important thing to note here. They are not disasters to nature. They are occurrences in nature that prove disastrous to Humans. Well, Flora and Fauna also perish. But what ever happened in Nature was for the greater good. You might call it suffering short time loss for a long term gain. Even when a global scale extinction events like the an asteroid struck to wipe out the dinosaurs or an ice age or magnetic reversal of poles occurred, Earth and Nature have always found a way to restore balance and make Earth a hospitable place. But this took a lot of time. I mean a lots & lots of time. 



But since Humans have become so called ‘Civilized’, the magnitude of destruction we have caused is unreal. Its even more unsettling that majority was done in the last 100 years. Earth is been in a non-molten state since at least 3.8 billion years. At least that is oldest rock ever found till date. Fossil records state that life has been on earth for at least 3.5 billion years. Humans have existed for about 200,000 years. The first vaccine was invented in 1796 and now we are in 2018. Humans couldn’t disturb the harmony of the eco system for 199778 years that is until we found a way to cheat Nature’s fix for everything. Nature always balances the scale by allowing only the strongest to survive, even the population strongest of the species was controlled using disease. Once humans found a way to bypass this, the population exploded. 



Now, in any eco-system if the population of a particular species explodes, then the species in the lower level get decimated, then this over populated species starves to death. This way in some time, the natural order is restored. No Humans are different, we don’t just feed on what is available, we grow our own food. Including the live stock used for meat consumption. We not only just eat when required, we store for future needs. This means the rate at which we consume natural resources is faster than at the rate they are replenished. For eg: it takes more millions of years for nature to create crude oil, we now process in days and consume it in minutes. If you look at the relative time taken to produce and consume hydrocarbons, the model we follow is not at all sustainable. So is the carbon foot print we add to earth.

Just at some of the statistics below on deforestation and CO2 emissions 



All this data points to only one result. There are more movie predictions that are about to come true. We may not be alive to see it, but I’m sure someone in future will look at movies like 2012 & Day after tomorrow and think. Man, they said that this would happen decades ago. Wish someone cared.




Les Misérables

aconfusedprimate Leave a comment

The Perennially Pained

Les Misérables is one of the greatest work of literature in 19th century. I’m not going to argure, review or critique Victor Hugo here. Nor will I attempt to comment on the performance of Russel Crowe, High Jackman and Anne Hathaway in the Tom Hooper’s adaptation of this master piece. Though its worth mentioning that I was stunned by the theater skills of the actors once cast as a Gladiator, a Wolverine and a princess. Man they can act. Well lets keep it aside for another day.

What I wanted to convey with the title is my observation of majority of the human population in 21st century. Internet was invented in late 20th century. It made the world a small place, it brought people together. But another thing that was the by product of Internet has started pulling people apart. Internet brought information/misinformation to peoples finger tips. Social media then took both this information and misinformation to every tom dick and harry. 

The result of this is very evident. Not every one can separate music from noise. Not everyone can think and process information objectively. Not every one can accept that it is alright if some people have an alternate view on things. This results is anger and frustration. Which inevitably results in misery. 

Seeing someone post a picture of themselves on a nice holiday or with a brand new sports car will result you in liking, up-voting, commenting or further sharing the post. It depends on which social media platform you prefer, your relationship with that someone and most importantly your mood at that point of time.

Now, Can seeing someone doing things that you cannot do (what ever the reason for it may be) make you jealous? Can it make you regret your past decisions? Can it make you feel that life has dealt you a bad hand? Can it make you feel that your life is inferior? Well it can, you may not realize it, but it can mess up a lot of things in your head – sub consciously. 

You may not agree with it, that is OK. It is a very personal thing on how you feel about others success. So, lets make it less personal.

Suppose you are an animal lover and you see a post in your feed depicting animal cruelty. Would that piss you off? Would that make you feel like screaming on top of your lungs? 

Well, now reacting to anything and everything that you see or hear is just self inflicting misery. This is the primary reason that you see so much hatred and anger everywhere. That’s the only reason that has driven me to make my blog unavailable in search results. I don’t want to be the target of some random persons illogical hate.

This anger and hatred has always been there but it was localized. You would whine and complain about stuff to your barber, friends or family. Once you have vented out your frustration, you are done and you go back to your life. Most people also did not publicly express such feelings as they were afraid of repercussions. But Internet has now provided a perfect platform of anonymity and that combined with continuous flow of information from the websites (that are design to show the content related to or similar to the content you have preferred to read/watch) gives your mind no time to get distract itself from anything you dislike. This will result in adding fuel to fire.

It is human nature to look at information that you do not like with equal interest as the content that you like. Using this nature, lot of people are making money out of your misery.

Why a person does something or says something is a very complex thing to deduce. We are not Sigmund Freud s, so it would be next to impossible to psycho analyse someone and then react.  I can list out a 5 point formula on how to stay happy but that would be of zero help to anyone.

Instead it would be rather helpful to understand the reason for the hatred first. If you are exposed to some information or content that you disagree with or do not like, first try to understand why it happened. If you research for 5 minutes you will understand that the situation is a result of mistakes by numerous people over a very long period of time. There is very little you can do about it and no matter what you feel about it, there are a lot of things in the world that cannot be undone.


When ever I’m exposed to things that I do not like, I just ask myself a question – “Would it help?”. This is a line I heard in the movie Bridge of spies and I was amazed how useful it is to everyone. This question if answered honestly will 99.99% of the times result in the same answer – “NO”. So, you are getting all riled up for no reason apparently. There are a lot of things wrong with the world and there is hardly anything you can do about it. Accept it and focus an things that really matter. Be happy.

Wrong packaging

aconfusedprimate Leave a comment

Expected vs Actual


Ever seen a wrongly packaged item? At least one of the toy in the below image is wrongly packaged. Right? What if the package was opaque? You wouldn’t know the mistake until you go home an unpack. What if you ordered online?

My wife once ordered a shampoo online, they sent conditioner. I requested an exchange citing wrong product. There was a guy to collect the old item and 2 days later, got a new package. Again a conditioner. Now I was really pissed, I called customer care and gave them an ear full (we all know that the customer care executive doesn’t give a rats ass about our problem and is just going to read out pre-scripted responses, but venting out anger is very satisfying). After a lot of apologies and another exchange request. I finally for a new package the next day… Voila… another Conditioner. I was laughing because I didn’t know what else to do. My wife said let it be and I accepted the delivery. It then turned from funny to hysterical. Next day, i even got an email asking me to review the product.  

Now here I was not happy because we sort of had a contract when I made the purchase.I agreed to buy a specific item. Actual item was different from the expected item.
  1. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
  2. Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
  3. Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal
These are the official names of North Korea, Sri Lanka and Nepal respectively. Now, the official names carry a lot of prefixes. I know you wouldn’t mind calling Sri Lanka a democratic country or Nepal a federal republic. But I know its ironic to call a dictatorship in North Korea a democracy. This is wrong packaging. Right? I mean the name on the package is different from the product that is inside. 

Now, let me get to my country. India. India is just referred to as India. But it’s a also called Republic of India. So that’s setting low expectations than the above countries. But there is a catch here. 
Here is the preamble of Indian Constitution:

 WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens
 JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
 LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
 EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all
 FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
 IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this  26th day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

In the preamble of the constitution, India is called  
a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC.
Yes, that’s all the words from your civics book. I mean literally all the words that can be put in front of a country name and that sets the bar very high. I can kind of understand the folks who wrote these words. They wanted India to be the good boy of the class. But these are not just words, these are the principles on which they wanted India to run. 

So have been able to uphold these principles we set for ourselves?

I’m not going to list the dictionary definitions of each of these words. I’m just going to use layman’s language to do a fact check.

Theoretically India became a Sovereign on 15th August 1947. The British left for good and that meant that we were our own bosses. But have the governments acted with authority of their own? Every government for the fear of loosing votes and also due to greed gets influenced by not just internal forces but also to multi national conglomerates. So, that’s principle flushed down the drain.

Now, do all the citizens get an equal share of resources in India. No, so we are not socialist.
Then is India secular? India has been melting pot of world religions. In a true secular country Government doesn’t interfere with religion and Religion doesn’t interfere with governance. Now we all know that it’s not the case in India.

In a democracy, government gets elected by the people and all people have equal say in the election. But if you look at it in simple words, this also directly means that if a 100 people vote and at least 51 people want a thing, the rest of the 49 should suck it up and shut the fuck up till the next election. Looking at the number of protests, PIL’s, law suits and agitations – It is any thing but a democracy in India. 

So what are we left with now? Yes, Is India a republic? For this I do have to go back to a Wikipedia definition. Its easier that way.
A republic (Latin: res publica) is a form of government in which the country is considered a “public matter”, not the private concern or property of the rulers. The primary positions of power within a republic are not inherited. It is a form of government under which the head of state is not a monarch.

Now, In India rulers behave like the country is their private property. Most positions of power are definitely inherited. Politics in India are a family business and finally, though our head of state is not a monarch. There has been more than one Monarch like figure who was directly head of the state or worse, held no position of power but made all the decisions. So, I’m going to flush that down the drain too.

Just like my wife gave up on the shampoo and adjusted with the conditioner. Indians have turned a blind eye to what we aspired to be and what we turned out to be.

Well, its good that we do not call our selves SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC of India or SSSDRI.  It sounds silly,awkward, ironic and would be lying through our teeth. Lets continue calling our country just India. But for the sake of sanity, lets amend the preamble to the below text.

 WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN* SOCIALIST* SECULAR* DEMOCRATIC* REPUBLIC* and to secure to all its citizens
 JUSTICE*, social, economic and political;
 LIBERTY* of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
 EQUALITY* of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all
 FRATERNITY* assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
 IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this  26th day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

*SUBJECT TO CHANGES