Orphic Exposure

            "A thinking man is a depraved animal" -Rousseau You know, people like to think they’re in control. Like their choices mean something. Like there’s a logic to it all, some grand design, a purpose. But if you really dig down—strip away all the niceties and illusions we’ve wrapped ourselves in—you find it’s not control. It’s just the illusion of it. We’re passengers on a ride that doesn’t care what we want. See, we all got what I call a Life Trap. Well, sometimes, I also do think that human consciousness is a tragedy, but that’s a story for another time, maybe. (And I am one of the few cursed with some) So, I’ve been thinking a lot about time. Time’s not linear, not the way we like to think it is. We build our days around the idea of moving forward—past, present, future (If you ever watch Interstellar, or Tenet, you'd have an idea of what I mean here). But that’s just how we make sense of it, like drawing lines in the dirt. Really, it’s all happeni...

गांधीजींना ' महात्मा ' म्हटले जाते . खरं तर , त्यांच्या कार्याची व्यख्या करताना त्यांना ' राष्ट्रपिता ' असे ही म्हटले जाते . पण मला प्रश्न पडतो — हे विशेषण आपण विचारपूर्वक दिले आहे का ? की तो ही एक झापडबंद दृष्टिकोन आहे ? का मी इतका गोंधळलोय ? का असं वाटतंय की आपण जितक्या श्रद्धेने त्यांना पाहतो तितक्याच कठोरतेने त्यांची तपासणी व्हायला हवी ? आज कोणी गांधींवर प्रश्न उचलला तर तो राष्ट्रद्रोही होणार हे नक्कीच . मग राष्ट्रभक्तीचा अर्थ म्हणजे प्रश्न न विचारणे , असा होतो का ? की कोणाचीही निंदा न करणे असा होतो ? नेमकी बरोबर बाजू कोणती असा देखील प्रश्न समोर येतो , आणि मग हे मायाजाल कधी संपतच नाही ... खरं म्हणायचं तर माझ्यासाठी गांधी हे महात्मा नाहीत , ते पुढारी आहेत , हे नक्कीच . पंरतु गांधी हे संत नसून ते एक राजकारणी होते हे सर्वजण नेहमीच विसरत असतात . म्हणूनच असा कोणी वक्तव्य केलं की तो माणूस हा वाईट असा ठसाच उमटवला जातो . त्यांना राष्ट्रपिता म्हणणं हे दे...

A Post-modern Feminist Demonstration Cruising through the day, I stumbled upon a rusty graffiti around South Delhi which said “Hum Pinjra tod ke aaye hain” (We came out by breaking the cage). Not knowing what it was, my curiosity made me stop listening to songs and google what it was about (I remember listening to “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen at the time. It would have been really funny if it was “I Want To Break Free” instead). And there it goes, I found another social issue, maybe political (Who knows really!), that happened a decade ago, and I had no clue about it. Fundamentally, Pinjra Tod was a feminist movement in 2015 which challenged the unnecessary impositions on students, purely based on gender, which majorly curbed any female to step out of her hostel after 8 pm. Yes, 8 pm. Well, however noble the intentions of this movement were, some activists left it into something which caused discrimination on another aspect, which is caste. Some were later charged due to...

"Shiva The Adiyogi" It was one of those mornings where everything seems to go wrong, when for some reason you don’t wake after your alarm buzzes, or when your heater doesn’t work. Later, you go and somehow get ready just to find there’s no rickshaw around you and the quickest Uber is 17 mins away. And then, this divine comedy keeps on escalating as your metro stops for more than 5 mins at Vishwavidyalaya for no apparent reason, but you persevere through and still show up, just to find out that you forgot your membership card and now have to quarrel to enter the facility. This does only happen when you are in hurry and makes me always remember Kunal Kamra who jokingly says “Agar kahi kabhi samay se pohochna ho toh jaldi mein matt rehna, because jo bhi banda maine late aate hue dekha hain wo hamesha jaldi mein raha hain!” I often find myself cursing the universe for what seemed like a series of unfortunate events or do dwell on finding solutions that do not exist. But the thing...