Tag Advice
Poor preferences
Supply vs Demand
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
I’m feeling lucky
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.
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
Civilization or C-Evil-ization?
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
Les Misérables
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.
Frogs in the well

Have you seen the 2014 Sci-Fi film Maze runner or read the Maze runner series James Dashner? If you have’t i’ll walk you through. If you have watched it, please skip to the next paragraph. This movie starts with an unconscious boy, his memory erased, deposited in a community of boys living in a place called Glade. The glade is surrounded by very high walls. Outside the walls is the Maze, a labyrinth of high concrete walls covered in ivy that changes every day. The Maze houses strange, lethal creatures known as Grievers. Grievers are described as amorphous monsters of metal and flesh. The Gladers are trying to stay alive as well as “solve” the Maze by running through it as fast as they can while tracking movements of the walls and trying to find an exit to escape.They only do the running in the day and return to the glade by sun set.
I consider this film as a Scorn/Homage the human civilization (please decide which one after you are done reading this entire thing). The small group of boys represents almost all types of persons that have ever walked the earth. Well don’t look for holes in my plot yet. Its only 2 sentences til now. I know the claim that a group of people can represent every human ever is a tall statement. Let me try to justify my claim.
In the Glade, there are 2 types of people.
1) The ones that abide by the rules set by previous inhabitants.
2) The protagonist who challenges the rules and tries to explore beyond.
The the 1st category again has certain sub categories. One set of people are very happy with the status quo they are happy with the things as they are.They fear anything new. Then there are others who not only follow rules but go super crazy if one doesn’t.
Finally there are some, who after looking at protagonist, think he makes sense, shift sides and start following him out of the Glade.
This is how humans started out. Early men/women lived in groups, defined rules for based on their experiences. They feared any thing new and anything they did not understand. Then someone like the hero of Maze runner comes around and started exploring. So they started moving beyond the metaphorical ‘Glade’ that was their immediate surroundings. Then lots and lots of years later, we reached the level that we had a map of most of the earth. But still we thought we were the centre of Universe and Sun went around the earth (Such arrogance and self-centric). We thought that the earth was flat. Then lots of years later, we reached moon, can now see beyond our galaxy. So, when we started out as cave men. The comparative sample size of our known to unknown might be same as our current known to unknown. The ratio might even be larger, but lets for the sake of argument say its about the same.
Hunting & Gathering : Hubble telescope = Hubble telescope : All that there is to know.
That way we are still Frog’s in a well. Well, not frogs exactly, Frog wouldn’t be presumptuous for one thing. Because we are human’s in a well, we have come up with a lot of stuff and thus my point finally arrives. The thing I have a feud with – Faith.
Almost all religions are human-centric. For all the years human mind had to evolve to its current state, this is very Naive. Most religions even depict god very human like. As per May 2016, earth is home to an estimated One Trillion species. Of one trillion species on earth, God is like human and has set rules for humans, doesn’t care for the other 999,999,999,999 species?
he heaven, hell, rebirth, ledger of good vs bad, what is good, what is bad, what to eat, where to eat, when to eat,what to say, what not to say, what to wear, what to do, when to do, when to fuck, how many to fuck. I say What the Fuck?
It really makes no sense to me. Like Maze runner, some people chose to remain where they are and came up with a couple of theories. Each theory was ‘a theory of everything’. They are against people who want to explore and see definitive proof before they buy into a theory. I mean why the fuck would so many people be so gullible?
It still amazes me that the guys making up stuff without moving their asses have more subscribers than the other lot. I guess that’s why Big boss has better TRP’s than than Discovery channel. They believe they are house mates in a show run by their “Big boss”. He is always watching them, giving them a purpose, rating them, ranking them, eliminating them and if you have been a good boy, giving you a reentry wild card.
I believe though we are humans, we have been thinking and behaving like Frog’s in a well.Just like the story, many would like to hear from a Frog that has seen stuff that’s outside our well.
May be that’s why we have been fascinated by Aliens.
Karma ain’t a Bitch
What makes you you?
Karma is word that a lot of people throw around, not just in India, but world wide. But I believe 99.99% of the ones using it have no clue of what it means.
The above picture is more or less an accurate depiction of how Karma is perceived in the west. I might have mentioned it before but every time I use the word west to describe Europe and Americas, I get this thought again. Isn’t it funny that we define the start and end of a spherical object? Well we didn’t define it, some idiot did and rest of us accepted. That in a way makes us all idiots. Another funny thing is that Africa and South America are not categorised as west. So, West is a name given to Caucasians by Caucasians. In simple words White people. Coming back to Karma, The above image depicts what White people think Karma is. What goes around, comes around. This is too simplistic, In India, the definition is more complex. There is a endless cycle of birth and death, path to Moksha/emancipation and how Karma influences it. So, more or less the same What goes around comes around but spread across multiple life times. Again a random thought, food for thought everyone. Why do we think we humans are superior beings and come up with all these ideas? Why is all this stuff not applicable to other living organisms?
This is the thought that triggered me to implore another interpretation of the term. Karma basically says, good things happen to people who do good and bad things happen to people who do bad. But what is good and what is bad? Its again something we defined our selves. What was good say a hundred years ago is not good now. There are a lot of social practices that are perceived as superstitions, old school and BAD now. This entire discussion on Karma is centred around what is Good and what is Bad. In my opinion, there is no good and bad. There is only good for me and bad for me. People use concepts like Karma to try persuade me do something that’s bad for me and good for them. Sounds pretty selfish? May be, but its sounds very logical to me. A donation is not good for me, world runs on money and having more of it is good for me. So, they call it a good karma and ask for it. Again sounds selfish. I disagree. It applies to you also. You just don’t realise it. Got a job? Good for you, bad for all the other applicants. Had a good meal? Good for you, bad for a plant or an animal that ended up in your stomach. Oh yeah. Plants are also living things. We don’t know how they feel, so you can’t assume its happy to be your lunch.
Take the example of a social carnivore.No not humans, I’m talking about a Wolf. A Wolf is a carnivore by birth, so it has to Kill. But killing is a bad thing. Not if you kill for self preservation? What if its done for the preservation of your kin? Self protection? So in all these cases its OK to kill. Some times Animals fight over a mate. The most powerful one in the pack gets the prettiest mate, so they fight. sometimes end up gravely wounding or even killing an opponent. So is this bad? Does the animal in next life gets born as a lobster and ends up on a rich man’s plate? Its not fair isn’t it?
So I see Karma in a different way. Hear my pitch and see if it makes more sense.
I believe Karma is what makes you you and not the way everyone else thinks.
From an organisms birth to death, there are a lot of things that influence it. The longer the life, the longer the learning curve. There are some major influences and there are some minor influences. Lets take the Human example here. (This explanation involves a human because I don’t remember my past life as some other organism)
For me Karma constitutes of multiple things, but the major things are
Parents and family: The first place we learn things is at home. We imitate our parents and other family members. We think what they do is the right thing to do. We decide what they say is BAD is BAD. This is our first distinction of Good from Bad.
Neighbours & friends:
The next big influence is the people who we spend more time around as kids. Friends and their parents who mostly are our neighbours. Here again we start to make associations of good and bad things.
Daily experiences: As kids most of our time is sent at Home and School. At home the family and neighbours form our perception of good and bad, at school our Teachers define whats good and bad. Anything you are punished for is a bad thing, right? These are our first daily interactions and experiences. Here again there is a hierarchy. Parents supersede any thing that teachers say. This is because we trust our parents more than our teachers.
Next interactions as you grow older come in college, travels, work and all places you go, all people you meet. When ever you do something and something bad happens to you, you mark it as a bad thing and avoid doing that and vice-versa.
Now that I have established how you accumulate Karma, Lets see how it makes you you and how it effect others around you. If you get a chance to travel with me and I drive, You will see that I do two things for sure. Honk when I overtake someone and stop at an intersection even when there are about 5 seconds left for the red light to switch on. This is because, I once got hit by another car while overtaking as the driver changed lanes without looking into the mirror and also I got a traffic fine for passing through a red light. These two bad experiences, lead me to change my driving style. So, this changes when I reach my destination and also influences when everyone else behind be reach their destination. In turn it causes a ripple effect on what happens in lives of a LOT of people.
If a simple thing like a decision to stop or go at an orange light can influence so many things. Imagine what Karma can do.
My point is that Karma is nothing but things that happen to you and around you. You get influenced by them, your brain gets conditioned to doing or not doing things based on what you perceive from things that happen around you. This is why you behave the way you do and this is what makes you you. Well that and the primal instincts we have. And that’s a discussion for another day!!















