Mindful

Be present in the moment. Appreciate what you have. An attitude of gratitude. Truisms with a history of overuse and abuse are a dime or anna a dozen and if anything, their usage seems to be only rising. There is comfort in the familiar and to criticize cliché is to risk facing reverse snobbery. We must be mindful of the hurt sentiments of those who feel excluded by any subversion of what is expected. In an age of public performance, pandering to the watching crowds is not selling out, it is the only path to engagement.

21st July, 2025

Larger Than Life

Before heading out to South Korea, I had made cursory attempts to familiarize myself with the Korean wave of pop-culture, Hallyu. I had been largely insulated from it as part of the generation that had had a few years of pre-liberalized India experience, just enough to keep us domesticated in our tastes. In that flimsy preparation, I had heard about the South Korean government's visionary plan to use the soft power of popular entertainment initiated in the early 1990s which had eventually led to this current domination of the arena in the 2020s. The most fascinating bit about that story was how the tremendous success of Steven Spielberg's first Jurassic Park movie was the inspiration for this government policy.

5th July 2025, Jeju Island, Republic of Korea

When I did land up in Jeju Island, this prehistoric origin story had submerged itself under a deluge of new experiences that overran my mind once there. Food, colours, landscapes and oranges of that island in the sea were keeping me busy enough. Until I started talking to the Korean geologist seated next to me at the training I was at. Turns out that he himself had become a geologist only because of the movie. Not only that, he was the proud third-hand owner of a Jeep Wrangler of 1990 vintage, maintenance costs not withstanding, because of the vehicle's prime role in the 1993 story. Like the T-Rex rampaging through the museum at the end of the movie, the Jurassic Park connection came roaring back.

Unsung

Among the various ways that language preserves bits of our past is through turns of phrase that jump centuries and classes. That art has long been supported by the privileged is no secret and without the largesse of the nobility, many a poet, painter and the occasional philosopher would not have had the time to produce what they did. Naturally, much of their art acknowledged the greatness of their patrons often overlooking their sordid realities. Songs composed in their honour therefore were the norm, not anomalies. Carried through in that spirit, 'unsung' continues to be used for overlooked contributors whose efforts were never appreciated in a manner or time period which could have helped them find success or acclaim.

In that league of extraordinary people fall the group of people locally called 'tihadi' in Uttarakhand. Daily wage earners ready to be recruited on a daily basis for whatever odd jobs that a neighbourhood required. Here in the outskirts of Dehradun too, you would see milling around in the dozens near a designated location at 08:00 AM looking for employment in this rapidly urbanizing part of town. In a quest to clean up invasive vegetation from our campus lake, it is this pool of readily available handymen that we drew from to eventually accomplish the herculean task of ridding ourselves of our Central American overstaying guests. The so-called water lettuce or Pistia had gorged itself on the nutrients of our lake and taken up residence covering every patch of water available. Our office softened backs were more than ready to give up after the first few buckets of removal. It was due to and only due to the engagement of these relentless extractors that the tons of green goblins could be dumped out of the water.

11th December 2022, Dehradun

Wintering ducks and itinerant birdwatchers have them to thank for getting their favourite haunt back. They, on the other hand, are back again at the designated location at 08:00 AM hoping that the next day or days will put some money in their hands, some to feed themselves and the remainder to send on to their families back home in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar or Bengal. Problems get fixed, buildings go up and gates get hinged by these very hands but the luxury of choosing to not do anything may never be in their fate.

Air Like

There was a time when shouting out to the universe was not compulsory. After painstakingly liking and disliking songs for years on Amazon Prime, I have decided to go the other way. This brings back the randomness in the algorithm and opens paths to unknown destinations. A classical cover, purely instrumental, of Linkin Park's "Numb" has my Like finger itching again, partly a responsibility to fulfill, partly a boast of my eclectic tastes in music. I resist but I am not sure if the world cares. I chose to Air Like, keeping the algorithm at bay.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2025/12/air-like.html]

বাড়ি a.k.a House

অনেক মাস ধরে পিছিয়ে পিছিয়ে শেষমেশ কলকাতা যেতেই হলো। মার্চ মাসে বাবা চলে যাওয়ার পর কলকাতার প্রতি মোহ তা কেটে গেছে বলা যায়। ২০২১-এ মা যাবার পরও কলকাতার বাড়িতে বাবা থাকতে দুজনকে-ই একটু খুঁজে পাওয়া যেত। আলাদা হয়ে গেলেও, দুজনকে একসাথে ভাবা যেত। এইবার যখন বাড়ি ফিরলাম, সেই কৃষ্ণচূড়া গাছের তলায় পাতলা গলিতে, মনে হলো সব কিছু আগের মতোই আছে—কিন্তু তবুও একটা অচেনা জায়গা। বিদেশ-বিভুঁয়ে, কাজের চাপে পড়লে কিংবা মন খারাপের সময়, "বাড়ি যাবো" বলে যে কাল্পনিক আশা ছিল, সেটা বাকি জীবনের জন্য অকেজো হয়ে দাঁড়ালো।

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2025/12/baari-aka-house.html]

बाहरवाला a.k.a The Outsider

देहरादून में आए हुए मुझे भी अब 8 साल हो गए और मैं उस मुकाम पे पहुंच चुका हूं कि मेरे आने के बाद कितने बदलाव आए हैं, उन पर अपने विचार रख सकूं। यहां के जंगल, पास के पहाड़ और लुभावना मौसम इसे खास बनाते हैं और मेरे रहते-रहते ही इनमें मैंने काफी बदलाव देखे हैं। जो पहले से ही देहरादून में हैं, उन्होंने तो और भी ज्यादा फर्क देखा होगा। बाकी स्थानीय लोगों के बातचीत में अक्सर इस अनचाहे परिवर्तन की सारा जिम्मेदारी "बाहरवालों" पे ठोप दी जाती है और इस पर कुछ हद तक सहमति भी की जा सकती है। लेकिन जरा और सोचूं तो ख्याल आता है कि मैं भी तो बाहरवाला ही हूं। पर्यावरण से जुड़ा काम जरूर करता हूं पर इस दोषारोपण के खेल में मैं भी दोषियों के कटघरे में ही खड़ा हूं।

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2025/12/aka-outsider.html]

Supporting and Unsporting

In the joint Indian military press briefings that were held to update the media on the progress of Operation Sindoor, a stark moment of contrast between real warriors and keyboard wannabe warriors was on display. An overexcited, headline seeking, warmonger of a journalist asked the panel something to the effect of when would they proceed to an all-out war against Pakistan. The answer from the Navy representative was sharp and clear. He said “Madam, our job is not to go to war. Our job is to end it.”

For the professionals who put their colleagues’ or their own lives at risk on the front, war is necessarily focused, measured and non-escalatory in the pursuit of peace. For the kind of lowlifes who abused even the widow of Navy officer Lieutenant Vinay Narwal murdered in Pahalgam, for asking Indians not to fall for Pakistan’s divisive strategies, war is just another occasion for fake patriotism, political agendas and public display of their ignorant biases, safe in the knowledge that they are hundreds of miles away from any flying bullets or shrapnel.

Which is most likely the reason why my landlord needed to ask me the question “India-Pakistan match ho rahaa hai. Dekhoge nahin?” [India-Pakistan cricket is on. Won’t you watch?] and in a first for the 41 years of my existence, my answer has been No twice in the past week and a half. As a dyed in blue devotee of the Indian cricket team and of cricket, it was a question that would never need to be asked of me as I would be already watching. Experiencing the nation v/s nation narrative of international cricket and the intense play-by-play pressure of squaring off with our neighbour was an opportunity I had never passed on no matter where in the world I was.

Now, this is not the first time that India and Pakistan are playing in the aftermath of a violent act of terrorism supported by Islamabad. While hundreds of millions watch this contest for the intense cricket it produces, India-Pakistan also draws the worst type whose only interaction with cricket is for India-Pakistan matches. Such has been our volatile geopolitical reality for decades. Yet in this Asia Cup’s no handshake environment, where that basic courtesy to each other was shelved, fuelled further by simulations of planes being shot down and machine guns being fired, multiple sanctities have been violated.

War is a failure of humanity. Sport, on the other hand, is a celebration of it. War, very aptly described as old men sending out young men to die, is an all-around tragedy where both the victor and the vanquished are traumatized for life despite all the sugarcoating of glory put around it. Sport, in contrast, allows for the most intense competitiveness to be exercised but within a framework that recognizes and respects the slim margins of fate scripted into it. To club war and sport together is a travesty and confusing a soldier with a sportsperson is disrespectful to both.

If the atmosphere was not normalized enough for a team to acknowledge a fellow team’s efforts in a sport that both teams clearly love as do billions of their countrymen, then why play each other at all? Play is the key word. Despite all the emotions we invest into cricketers fiddling with a small sphere, a plank of wood, and physics, cricket is play. If the 25 lives so horrifically taken by terrorists in Pahalgam and the lives put on the line by our military to defend our security were to be really respected, is not shaking hands really an appropriate response?

Weirdly for a sub-continent brutalized and intentionally destabilized by British planning, an originally British sport manages to bring it together somewhat – cricket unites gullies, roads and maidaans with its simple tales of flashy batsmen seeking immortality as toiling bowlers with flying fieldsmen deny them the same. But it is patently unfair to expect this beautiful game of angles and flair to bear the burden of politically motivated conflicts that flare in cruel ignorance of the daily needs of their citizens. Cricket’s poetic script of ups and downs, edges and sixes should not be a proxy for nasty war but an escape from it.

What then of this Sunday’s India-Pakistan final, you ask? I feel that when even the two militaries which had engaged in a vicious short-lived conflict of Operation Sindoor reached terms for a ceasefire, are pampered billionaire cricketers or extremist fans claiming to be more soldier than them? The Pakistan government had to spin their military defeat into alternative realities for their citizens but that need not intrude into the field of play. The war is over. An India-Pakistan cricket game should be just that, an epic contest in and of itself, but I do sincerely hope that the two teams are sporting enough to shake on it.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2025/09/supporting-and-unsporting.html]