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Well wishers

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Foxes in sheep’s clothing

The Wolf has been one of the most maligned animal in an idiomatic sense. Some one who is cunning and deceives is commonly referred to as a Wolf in sheep’s clothing. But, in reality wolf is a very ethical animal. It never hides its intent. From an evolutionary perspective-it doesn’t need to. It has the physical strength to survive, it always lives in a pack. So, anything that it does to undermine the integrity of the pack will not be tolerated and this fact is genetically embedded. 

On a side note, this idiom has biblical origins. According to new testament this was quoted by none other than Jesus. No, I don’t attend mass. I just googled the idiom and Wikipedia told me this fact. Which means., 1) Wikipedia is wrong or  2) The guys who wrote new testament lied or 3) Jesus didn’t know the nature of wolves (which is highly unlikely coz his dad created everything. Right?)

Coming back to the poor misunderstood wolves, The actual culprit here is another canine. Foxes – They are always deceitful. Their slender size demands that they be cunning. Else, they wouldn’t survive. This is evolution, the survival of the fittest. The word fit here is misleading, it doesn’t just mean physical fitness. It is the fitness demanded by the surroundings and environment. Now that my mini-crusade for Wolves has concluded. I would like to get into the actual context. 

The image and the title might not make a good correlation on first glance. Now read well wishers as the people who wish that they can at least push you into a well or in a best case scenario wish they could push you off the cliff. Now, can you make the connection between the foxes, the well wishers and the stick version of “This is Sparta“?

Since, the gentlemen in the figure are wearing ties,Can I also assume that you made the correlation to an office environment? Okay, you might have missed that. But no worries. 

Lets look at the employees in an office in conjunction with the Darwin’s theory of natural selection and evolution. 

In nature, all species have developed different tactics to attract mates. 
In offices, the managers become these mates. But eventually most mates ehm…. managers turn into praying mantis (they f*ck their mate and they eat them – wow this my first ever expletive ridden post). In nature the female always prefers a partner which would pass on the best genetic code to its offspring. The particular quality that is preferred depends on the type of species. But in offices, different mates look at different qualities. Some good for the offspring (organization) some just good for them. This is where offices deviate from Darwin. 



Now that we have discussed the metaphorical mating rituals, lets look at the competition. In animal kingdom there are different types of competition among peers (Other than competing for a mate). Social animals fight for control or power over the group. But this mostly results in finding the right leader. But in most organisations the oldest animal becomes the King. These Kings in the organisation do not opt for a long term partners. So, they don’t choose a queen. They instead pick a bitch* from time to time. This would be their most loyal employees. Then there is another position up for grabs. The one of a minister to seek advice. This is where again the there is a deviation from evolution. Here its not the survival of the fittest. The person most capable of doing his job well would be the fittest guy, some Kings do choose their counsel wisely. There by becoming successful even if they are incompetent. But some others choose poorly and ultimately perish.

The poor choice of counsel happens because of not having visibility. This generally happens in large organisations. But in smaller/medium organisations, the foxes come-to-the-fore. Since, they don’t cut the bill, they resort to all sort of tactics to get the competition out of the way. Gossiping, bullying, back stabbing, undermining others, taking credit for others work. They use all the code in their cheat book. Their skill here is to do it subtly. They make every effort not to get exposed. 

So, long story short. The foxes in offices have defied the laws of evolution. If you want to be successful, please be on a look out for foxes. They can be lurking next to you, masquerading as a Sheep, waiting for the right opportunity.

* not trying to insult any dogs here

Ignorance is a bliss!!!

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The ignorant are ignorant of their ignorance

This is the image of the planet we live on. This is the image of earth. This is not a depiction of a millenniums’ old idea. This is the depiction of a 21st century idea. Just google flat earth if you don’t trust me. There is something called ‘The flat earth society’. No, they do not belong to some tribe with no contact with outside world. Also, its not that their families have been home schooled for hundreds of years. It was established in 20th century. They are based out of the US of A and have followers from all around the world. They hold annual conferences to discuss and debunk the conspiracy theory called a round earth. The below animation is from their official website explaining the answer to the question, of how night and day occur on earth


So, how do you feel having known this mind blowing phenomenon? You must be thinking that these these are just a bunch of morons without any work. But that’s not true either. They have members from all walks of life. I saw the interview of a person attending this conference. He flew from New Zealand to the US. He was asked, couldn’t you see the curvature of earth from the window in the Aeroplane? He said that he never looks out of a plane window.

There is a medical condition called Psychological myopia. It refers to the tendency in decision makers to focus on information immediately related to their judgment and to ignore other, less prominent, pieces of information. Because we, as human beings, often ignore pieces of information in decision-making processes, it makes us think short-sightedly. The flat earth society is a case of extreme psychological myopia. In this age of information, believing such things might be called ignorance. It’s not that these people don’t have access to information. They just choose to ignore the facts that they don’t. So, for them facts become opinions. 

So, this proves that ignorance is sometimes a choice. Right? I say sometimes, because I give a benefit of doubt to all those people who do not have access information. Now that you know what Psychological myopia, tell me, Do you suffer from this condition? Well, the answer is ‘you wouldn’t know’. I am not saying that you also believe that the earth is flat, I mean how would an ignorant know of his ignorance? Ignorance doesn’t just mean not knowing things, its also thinking that you know all that there is to know. 

Honestly ask yourself, do you treat each and every information in an equal and unbiased manner? If you answer No, it means that you are ignorant of your ignorance. If you answer Yes, then again you are ignorant. You might find this argument unreasonable. Let’s say you read/watch news everyday. It doesn’t mean you are well informed. Mark twain famously said this:

I would prefer being uninformed. In this information age, most people are misinformed. This is because either they have a single source of information which is biased or you have multiple sources of information which are again biased. Due to capitalism and greed, the world is now a place where everyone is trying to put forward their opinions as facts. 

This makes it vital that you know which information to discard. The world is full of people who read their news from Whatsapp and Facebook. This is causing a great deal of harm to us as a society. From web sites like like Infowars to the companies that create false and misleading content to be circulated on the in internet. From the conspiracy theories such as Neil Armstrong’s moon landing was filmed in a hollywood set to the the theories that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor. The corporations and politicians are taking advantage of gullible people by constantly brain washing them with false information. 

In a way the burden of truth is too difficult to carry, so people take solace in living in small boxes they built around themselves to block out all the uncomfortable facts. This enables them to live a happy life. But are such lives meaningful?
A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to a report from the National Science Foundation. There was a conversation between a scholar and his pupil that went something like this:
                    Scholar: Why did you think that the sun revolved around the earth?
                    Pupil: Because it looked like that 
                    Scholar: What would earth revolving around the sun look like?

Each one of us suffer from this tunnel vision where we block out all the things that we don’t like. The only difference between individual is the width of the tunnel. 
So,how wide is your vision?


Day dreaming!!!

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Ground control to Major Tom


Do you dream? 
May be it is a stupid question. Every one dreams. In fact, studies show that even animals dream. Now don’t confuse dreams with aspirations. Though the words are used interchangeably, there is a ton of difference. I’m talking about dreams where you see things and do stuff. Kind of hallucinations. 

Now, do you Day dream? Do you phase out often, even when in the company of people and when you are wide awake?

For the record, I think i’m one of the most qualified person to talk on this subject. I have day dreams in the middle of day dreaming. Not like the plot of Inception.My day dreams are sometimes interrupted by other day dreams. May be that is one reason why I almost never get bored. If you leave me alone for a couple of minutes or for that matter, if you talk to me about something that I’m not interested it, I my brain will jettison you and will wander off to my dreamland. It might sound weird and also dangerous but I can even drive while day dreaming. 

Now, I haven’t paid much attention to this phenomenon my entire life. I just assumed that there is some faulty wiring in my brain and there is nothing I can do about it. That was until I saw a movie. This movie has become my favourite. Actually favourite is not a word that would do justice to describe my liking to this movie. Its called “Secret life of Walter Mitty”. Its a remake of a 1947 movie with same title which in turn is an adaptation of a short story published in 1939. The story and the earlier adaptations are gentle comedies about a guy who ends up in awkward situations because of his habit of day dreaming.

But in my opinion, Ben stiller’s modern take on this short story was not only mind blowing experience for me but also something that is very up close and personal to me. No, I don’t stalk my female colleagues on online dating platforms. I also day dream a lot. Now there are 2 phases of life to Walter Mitty in this movie. One is the person who is lot in dreams and the other is where he eventually comes of of this phase. This transition is what amazed me. 

If you haven’t watched the movie, I’d suggest you do before you read my take on the movie. Its always good to get your own perspective because once you read mine, you”ll not be able you form your own unbiased opinion. 

The story socially awkward boy who dreamed to travel the world with a Mohawk, skate board and a backpack is thrown into the daily churn of life because of his father’s untimely demise and has to take the responsibility of the entire family. The boy who grows up to be a man who has come to a acceptance that there is nothing he can do but get along with a boring life and a boring job. How does one get a release from such situation? Day dreaming. Just like most ‘night’ dreams are related to things that we want to do and be. He dreams about cracking a wise ass joke on his boss. He dreams about flooring his office crush with an cool romantic avatar. He dreams about having a super hero style fight with the people who make fun of him. He dreams about anything and everything. Now, what else could he do? 

But due to circumstances, he has to start off on a journey that turns out to be a crazy wild ride. He travels to Greenland, Iceland and Afghanistan. He gets to jump of a helicopter into freezing water and fights off sharks. Slowly during this journey, the frequency of his day dreaming decreases to finally vanish one day. His innermost, most important desire for travel and adventure fulfilled accidentally, now he has no need to dream. He was a self content man. Anyone who gets to do the stuff he truly craves for doesn’t need to imagine himself doing this same stuff. Right?

After this I realised why I day dream so much. In this politically correct world with the social obligations and status quo, I have no way to be myself. So, I resort to day dreaming where I can murder the asshole who cuts me off on the road, slap the coworker who takes credit for others work, have a conversation that I actually wanted to have rather than the one I just had but couldn’t truly express my feeling in, flirt with the girl I like.

The problem I have now is that almost all of these dreams I have can never come true. This is because I can associate my brain activity with another movie also. Its called Split.
There a guy has a multiple personality disorder. He has 23 different personalities. Thankfully, I don’t have this condition (as far as I know). But I sure do have so many personalities in my dreams.


Being Humane

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.