Category: Rants
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In Search Of…
Something I wrote in my journal…I still feel it expresses things better than I can express them now. Maybe I am just not that angry anymore. 25th November 2007 I am so far from paradise. It feels strange, for my soul had begun to be convinced that bliss was a natural state of life. But […]
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Running to Stand Still
Capitalism continues to amaze me. When I started blogging, I wrote an idealistic piece in praise of blogging and how it lets you be, to write what and how you want, and to hell with the rest. But the more I see of it nowadays, the more I know I was wrong. First of all […]
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Against Stupid Tautologies
I have been trying not to write this post for a while now. I don’t want to be fascist about my world view. But Google’s neutral keyword searches make it very difficult to ignore the vast number of ridiculous ‘arguments’ there. For example, here and here. Saying you are against the notion of an absolute […]
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Nation
Democracy. It is something we live and breathe everyday. Something which fills me up with emotions I cannot really explain, emotions of kinship and solidarity of the same kind I feel everytime I stand up and sing the national anthem. It took me a long time to understand that my notion of the Indian Freedom […]
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A Million Concentration Camps
“Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.” Hannah Arendt (German born American Philosopher and Political scientist. 1906-1975) White fluff flies everywhere, and it feels like I am in […]
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Language
This is a passage from Chapter 4 of Orwell’s “1984”: ‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, […]
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The Commanding Heights
When I was growing up, I never gave any thought to how much importance people gave to the kind of houses they lived in or aspired to. It was a significant part of the GIMD (Great Indian Middle Class Dream). I remember a kitty party I once attended hosted by the MD of my father’s […]
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The Word ‘Mahatma’
“In the journey from the dirt to the high citadels of power, one sometimes does not have the luxury of being a mahatma.” Rajdeep Sardesai, Chief Editor, CNN-IBN (April 27th 2007) Is this sentence, written in defense of Mayawati’s political methods, seen by Mr. Sardesai as no different from any other in the “arena”, just […]
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Is The Narrative Relevant Anymore?
The open society for the privileged in India has been restored. And so, the prodigal returns. This break has been about an attempt to explore the relationships between some concepts and ideas that have been thrown about during our film appreciation class. This post will therefore be a narration of those chaotic sessions & the […]
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Upon Giving ‘Munich’ A Second Chance
Violence begets greater violence & we all bleed red. Ever since the First World War, the modern chroniclers and story-tellers of the world have been trying to drill this into public conciousness. Since the dawn of History, War and Conflict have always inspired and driven Man to be more than himself. Technology and literature have […]
Between 2 Sips 