- Bob Dylan, The times they are a changin’

The Gen Z protests which began in Delhi and spread to other cities around India, ostensibly started to seek accountability for a leakage of a national level exam for getting admitted to medical colleges (NEET), but as Arihant in his podcast Vaad-Samvad observed, it is/was so much more than a single issue. It was the collective voice of the stalled hopes and aspirations of the youth and the deafness of the powerful. A few months ago, a supreme court judge infamously called the unemployed youth ‘parasites’ and ‘cockroaches.’ A political activist who was studying in Boston created a parody website called ‘The Cockroach Janata Party' and the protesting youth ended up owning the epithet!

According to France 24, over 65% of the country’s total population, equal to more than 800 million people is under 35 years old, and approximately 367 million young people are within the ages 15-29, forming a vital part of the working-age base. The median age of India is 29 years old, thus making the country younger than most other major global economies.

India’s youth unemployment rate (ages 15–29) rose to 16.2% in January 2026, driven by a mismatch between formal education and available salaried work. Young job seekers face an "educated unemployment" crisis where graduate joblessness reaches nearly 40% for ages 15–25. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The average age of the union council of ministers in the Indian government is approximately 59 years, with ages spanning from the mid-30s to nearly 80 years old. [1, 2]. More than half the members of parliament are middle-aged.

The government cracked down brutally and thus made a massive mistake. Now, not only did the students in Delhi get more support - even their parents joined them - but the protests spread to other cities.

They were joyous, humorous, irreverant, sarcastic, melodious (they sang and chanted a lot) and a true expression of the creativity that funnels youth. Plus, they are more social-media aware than the old folks who are in power. Here are some examples:

This is in Delhi

This one from Mizoram.

In Mumbai

Of course, as always, established political parties and student unions will always try to usurp a grassroots movement and we saw evidence of that in Delhi. Hopefully, the students will have none of it.

I empathize with these youngsters completely. I was a victim of cheating in exams way back during my high school years. My friends and I who gave the XII board exams at a particular center got almost 30-50% fewer marks than we expected. Clearly, there was fraud going on. Later, my GRE, that I had taken in Bombay, was cancelled soon after because of a leak in Hyderabad. This systemic rot ought to be cleansed.

But the Gen Z protests across South Asia in recent times in an indication of how out of touch politicians are and how much work they have ahead of them.

Nowhere is it truer than in America where geriatric, and even hospitalized politicians are still holding on to power. Here’s hoping that the young in the US also find the courage to change the course of this great nation.

Writing in the New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat expressed the hope that the AI billionaires focus their philanthropic efforts on creating beauty

Take a lesson from your Gilded Age predecessors, and treat beauty as a central charitable pursuit. Build monuments, statues, museums, universities, cathedrals, public gardens — and yes, even mansions for yourselves. Leave a physical legacy to future generations, not just a record of programs and disbursements. Recognize that meaning inheres in architecture, art and landscape as much as in more measurable goods.

This was a great failure of the most recent philanthropic era. At its best, the infrastructure established by figures like Gates delivered effective efforts to reduce poverty and fight disease; at its worst, it threw money after fashionable political causes and education fads. But there was no real legacy when it came to physical infrastructure — no great beautification campaigns, no beloved architectural landmarks, no equivalent of the Gilded Age’s expansions of museums and libraries and concert halls, and few personal expressions of extravagance (like the Newport mansions or Hearst Castle) for future tourists to admire.

I have little optimism on there being a correlation between current generation wealth and knowledge of aesthetics. Certainly, my optimism is predicated on a contemporary example, the Tesla cybertruck, an abomination of design values that was a ghastly remake of a 1976 Lotus Esprit from a James Bond film. If that eyesore is any indicator, I will have none of the ‘beauty’ created by tech titans.

In one of those rare instances, one must reject the notion of de gustibus non est disputandum. Dispute one must.

Many tech titans - and indeed the nouveau riche in general - are incredibly incurious about art and culture, literature and design. Indeed, modern contemporary culture is driven by an exhibition of material possessions founded upon a desire to provoke envy or in the vainglorious attempt at self-validation.

Recently, some college friends and I met to attend a wedding in Chicago. We had all flown over from different cities, and during our discussions, had one complaint. That the new generation of nouveau riche Indian immigrants lacked a discerning taste. A common complaint was the building of a giant Hanuman statue in Sugarland Texas as part of a temple design. Clearly, this had little to do with spirituality, religion, worship and Hinduism. Perhaps, the temple authorities were catering to the egos of donors. Another example, is this Shiva statue in Karnataka.

For centuries, Indian temple design has been focussed on beauty. The physical structure (the temple) was filled with minute carvings. The temple tank - a pond, often filled with fish - was a central aspect of the temple. As were trees, and flower gardens. The temple also functioned as a venue for dance, music and theatre. Here are two examples; one from Ellora in Maharashtra and the other from Belur-Halebid in Karnataka. Notice how light and shadow play an important role in enhancing the beauty of the structure.

Clearly, the kings had wealth and could have build large idols/icons of dieties, but they did not. The ancient scriptures describe functioning, modern structures with little emphasis on idols.

As a somewhat orthodox Hindu, I find it appalling that the act of worship and quiet spirituality has been relegated to the background.

A country that has preserved ancient Indic traditions is Japan as Mei Time, one of my favorite YouTubers, displays in her videos. While visiting some Buddhist temples, I was reminded of the South Indian temples of my childhood. Of course, Japanese aesthetics is something else altogether and an attribute that the civilized world could emulate.

The temples blend seamlessly into their surroundings and offer a place of refuge. Like our Hindu and Buddhist mandalas, they speak of our own mortality and dependence on each other (nature and humans) and reverence to the divine.

The priests at my modest temple (Shri Krishna Vrindavana) in San Jose decorate rangoli (art made from rice flour) which is cleaned up after the rituals are completed. So elegant, such beauty.

The metaphysics behind temple architecture is complex. Sangam talks (and the associated Brhat cultural engine is my favorite go-to for knowledge about this topic.

This is why I prefer the progressive and educated royal families of yore - such as the Wodeyars, the Gaekwads, the Schindias, et al. who did so much to bring Indians, especially women, into the modern era. Moreover, they designed their cities with thought and did little to promote their own deification. This is why they are still revered by the common population despite more than three quarters of a century after Indian kingdoms were abolished and more than half a century after privy purses were illegally eliminated.

In a recent interview Zakir dropped golden words. Wealth is indeed not equal to class.

Below, a monument to Ozymandias.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.^[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Their simplicity and effortless singing reminded me of the great singer himself. In fact, I’ve been frequenting their channel to catch their latest upload.

Recently, they have uploaded this song

Despite Mehdi Hassan’s mellifluous voice rendering it, I have a touch of affection for Iqbal Bano’s version because I heard that first, when I used to meander the Muslim mohalla lanes of Jogeshwari (Mumbai/Bombay, India) to pick up pirated cassettes from Pakistan. There are many recordings of her singing the above song, but I favor this live recording, possibly by PTV, Pakistan’s official medium.

Both Mehdi Hassan and Iqbal Bano were born in pre-partition India, the former in Rajasthan and the latter in Delhi.

The story of her defiance to Zia-ul-Haq is best told by legendary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s grandson. Bano not only donned the un-Islamic (per Zia) saree, but wore a black one1.

In 1986, the concert was given by Iqbal Bano. I was there, along with all of my family. The date was February 13. The hall where she was to perform was already filled to the brim before she came on stage (there is some dispute about whether the concert was held in Alhamra’s larger Hall I with a seating capacity of 600 or the slightly smaller Hall II which held 400 people. My mother and khala disagree). What I do remember is that before the concert started, there was a commotion outside the closed doors. My mother came on stage to announce that a large number of political activists and workers had assembled outside the hall. They were demanding to be let in so they could hear Iqbal Bano. There were no more seats left in the hall but my mother told the assembled audience that she was going to open the doors and people could sit wherever they could find a seat.

Once the doors were opened, people streamed in and soon there was not an inch of space left in the hall. People were sitting on the stairs, the floors, wherever they could find some space. Iqbal Bano appeared and started singing to loud cheers. She sang many Faiz poems but the loudest cheers were reserved for ‘Hum Dekhenge’. She finished the concert but the audience refused to let her leave and begged for an encore of ‘Hum Dekhenge’. A technician in Alhamra surreptitiously recorded the encore and this is the recording that survives today. For those of us sitting in the hall, it was quite surreal. The clapping and cheers were so thunderous that it felt at times that the roof of Alhamra hall would blow off.

Iqbal Bano had to stop repeatedly to allow the cheers and loud slogans of ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ to subside before she could carry on singing. And the loudest cheers were reserved for the verse ‘Sab taj uchalay jaaengay/sab takht giraaey jaayen gaye’

But the story does not end there. It goes without saying that such gatherings (and such ‘subversive’ music) was strictly proscribed during the Zia military dictatorship. The same night, authorities raided the homes of the organisers and many of the participants looking for any audio copies of the concert, especially ‘Hum Dekhenge’. Many copies were confiscated and destroyed but my uncle Shoaib Hashmi had managed to get a hold of one copy and anticipating the crackdown handed it over to some friends who promptly smuggled it out to Dubai where it was copied and widely distributed.

It still stands as a testament to the ordinary people of Lahore and Pakistanwho, despite the most brutal military dictatorship Pakistan had ever known, retained their revolutionary fervor and their love of Faiz and all that he had stood for while he was alive.

I hope the children’s singing talents are nurtured and they have a bright future ahead of them.

Bob Dylan, Tangled up in blue

When young parents seek advice from me, I inevitably encourage them to enroll their kids in team sports - little league baseball, soccer, basketball and so on. Team sports teach kids more about life than reams of platitude. They teach you to live in the moment - you have to put a dropped catch or a bad pitch behind you and move forward. They teach you that there are days when nothing goes right and days when you have reasons to celebrate. Most importantly, sports teach you to be resilient, to act on areas that you can control and not spend time being riveted on events that are beyond your control. (see my previous posts on this larger topic here and here.)

As a father of two sons, I am often bewildered by the world that they have to cope with when they become full fledged adults. It is a world of uncertainty, instability, isolation and pessimism.

Dr. Michael Krasny (of NPR fame) has written a book titled ‘Spiritual Envy’ writes about the loss of comfort that faith had provided him since he misses it after he became an agnostic.

I am a practicing Hindu and I hope my faith rubs off on my sons. I strongly believe that spiritual practice is best when it is emulated from aspirational behavior rather than from preaching. Righteous behavior modeled well is appealing. Of course, being human, I am fallible more times than I am successful. But I do hope that the spiritual practices that are thousands of years old offer solace to them.

Montaigne wrote in one of his essays;

May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison, that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriously break up a man alive; and that it seems but reasonable that we should carry ourselves as favourably, at least, towards the use of pleasure as we do towards that of pain

How so do we pursue happiness without becoming hedonistic?

Every great philosopher from India (and thus from Persia, China, etc) have sought to look at love as the answer. (so did Viktor Frankl during his time in a German concentration camp. See my post here.)

Love is the best form of spirituality. Indeed, loving others and loving oneself is one path towards being resilient.

I had a long conversation with a friend of mine recently. He is undergoing an adversarial divorce in middle age and hasn’t seen his nearly three year old daughter for three quarters of a year. He writes a journal entry every day for her. It is a note of affirmation, of giving everything when one has nothing physical to give. This is the best form of selfless love. He and I were part of a trivia club in Bangalore/India, and like all trivia quizzers struggle with what constitutes as normie behavior. We find joy in reading esoteric books, find joy in the fine arts and seek to understand the mundane. He joked that, “People who’ve had relationships with us have managed to beat the inability to read social signals out of us!,” alluding to perhaps, some of us quizzers, at the very least, being on the spectrum.

I’m not so confident that this inability has been beaten out of me. I still falter because social signals have to be very explicit.

I have learnt to persevere largely due to my experiences running many marathons. Endurance events have a way of coaching you through life.

I keep on keepin’ on.

How can I be stoic in the face of the most challenging times in our lifetime; a pessimistic United States of America, the AI armageddon, the private fund apocalypse, war, pandemics, rage, the unravelling of long term relationships, the perception of not having made it, and so on ad nauseam?

The former JAG and National Review contributor, and now NY Times columnist David French wrote a fine column titled, ‘How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?’

And what about flying? To purchase a plane ticket is to open a restaurant menu. You’ve got choice after choice of seating tiers. It’s not just First Class and Coach — boarded back to front — any longer. Nope. We’ve got First Class, Main Cabin Extra, Main and Basic Economy. We’ve got ConciergeKey boarding, preboarding and nine other boarding groups.

The result can be endlessly frustrating. We’re constantly reminded that America is a multitiered society in which a high income buys you a very visible degree of prosperity, and a decent income gives you nothing special at all. There are so many high-income Americans that the entire economy is warping to accommodate the minority at the expense of the majority.

In other words, we have a Group 1 economy for a Group 9 nation, and it’s no wonder that so many Americans feel economically disadvantaged and insecure.

Well, as General Colin Powell wrote, “Perpetual optimism is a force-multiplier.”

I hope that the future of the United States rests on the younger generation who have shown extraordinary resilience in the face of a lifetime of adversity. Consider the 26 year old American today - they have lived through the dot-com crash, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, the 2008 recession, the pandemic, public and private scandals, mind-numbing levels of competition for college admissions, inflation, tariffs, Venezuela, Greenland, Iran, etc. Yet, they have not taken to the streets like the youth did around the world during the late 1960s and 1970s.

Their’s is a good generation. Their resiliency provides us hope.

But now it’s gettin’ late
And the moon is climbin’ high
I want to celebrate
See it shinin’ in your eye

Harvest Moon, Neil Young,

“Love your neighbor. Love the stranger. Hear the cry of the otherwise unheard. Liberate the poor from their poverty. Care for the dignity of all. Let those who have more than they need share their blessings with those who have less. Feed the hungry, house the homeless, and heal the sick in body and mind. Fight injustice, whoever it is done by and whoever it is done against. And do these things because, being human, we are bound by a covenant of human solidarity, whatever our color or culture, class or creed. These are moral principles, not economic or political ones. They have to do with conscience, not wealth or power. But without them, freedom will not survive. The free market and liberal democratic state together will not save liberty, because liberty can never be built by self-interest alone.” - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times

Rabbi Sacks wrote that markets are based on contracts, while the moral arena is based on covenants that are based on loyalty and love. Sacks warned us that when market values invade the community & family, the bonds that hold them together begin to fray.

When I was growing up, my father recommended many books - some written by Americans - to me that eventually turned out to influence my outlook. I recall him handing tracts by US economists which contained polemics about the ethics of making a profit. I am by influence and by conviction a free market fundamentalist.

One of the books that was popular during my high school years was ‘Lee Iacocca, an autobiography.” Most Indians of my generation had read that book. Iacocca, the son of Italian immigrants, who was responsible for the dynamism that characterized the American auto industry of the US before it lost its focus against Japan. What impressed me about him during my formative years was not just the immense possibility of America, the land of golden opportunity - the emphasis is on the word opportunity and not on the word golden - was the spirit of grassroots level connection that he had with the working class. He grew up in Pennsylvania and went to a local college. From those modest roots, he became an iconic figure revered around the world. Yet, he was empathetic enough to recognize the pain of the working class that he famously took a $1/year salary when his company was struggling. Before the soulless mammon worshipping of Jack Welch, American titans were, for the most part, guided by virtue.

Welch and his ilk, were no doubt influenced by the seminal article dated Sept 13, 1970 in the New York Times by Dr. Milton Friedman with the title, ‘A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.’ The doctrine, is quite reasonable if our corporate titans had a baseline morality predicated upon social good, and indeed make their decisions as principals with that baseline. The effective altruism movement was supposed to be about addressing the principal-agent problem. However, the Friedman doctrine has allowed the pillagers to use it as a foundation to justify their own hedonism and display a total lack of basic humanity towards their employees in particular and to the community as a whole.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Jack Dorsey, using AI as an excuse, slashed 40% of the workforce of his company Block (4000 employees) a few months after hosting a 3-day party featuring Jay-Z et al that cost his company $60 million.

Mark Zuckerberg’s companies have laid off close to 5000 people in recent months. While these employees struggle to find jobs in a tough market, he has bought up entire neighborhood in Palo Alto. He is constructing a massive complex for himself and disregarding the comfort of his neighbors. This month, he bought a mansion in Miami for a staggering $170 million. (See this Miami Herald article titled, ‘Zuckerberg buys ‘Billionaire Bunker’ home for $170M. See what it looks like.’) This behavior is not limited to him.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are also among the California tech billionaires who have relocated to South Florida in recent months, seemingly fleeing a proposed wealth tax on California’s billionaires. Page bought more than $170 million worth of property in Coconut Grove, and Brin reportedly purchased a $50 million home on Allison Island.

For comparison of the net worth of tech billionaires with ordinary Americans, I’ve created an infographic using Google Gemini/Nano Banana. I’ve included the cost of funding healthcare and college to all citizens.

I am not articulating a policy prescription here. Rather, I am pointing out the scale of wealth of these titans and the economic disparities that accompany it. Most seniors cannot afford to retire. Even Gemini seems appalled.

What makes up this $409,900?

For the typical retiring American, this net worth isn’t just cash in a bank account. It is usually divided as follows:

Home Equity: Roughly $200,000 to $250,000 of that net worth is often the value of their home (minus the remaining mortgage).

Retirement Accounts: The median 401(k) or IRA balance for this age group is actually much lower, hovering around $134,000.

Other Assets: The remainder includes vehicles, savings accounts, and personal property.

The Reality Check

While $409,900 sounds like a substantial sum, financial experts point out that if a significant portion is tied up in a home, the actual “spendable” retirement nest egg is often less than $200,000,000 (Wait—pardon the “zero” slip there, I meant $200,000).

At a standard 4% withdrawal rate, a $200,000 savings account only provides $8,000 per year in income. This is why most retiring Americans rely heavily on Social Security to bridge the gap.

The immense wealth is making these powerful people disregard norms and laws. It has led to influence peddling and systemic corruption in government.

Extreme Concentration of Wealth: The 10 richest U.S. billionaires added $698 billion to their fortunes in 2025, with wealth growth for the top 1% far outpacing the bottom 90%.

Madison warned against the oligarchy.

“The time to guard agst. this danger is at the first forming of the Constitution, and in the present state of population when the bulk of the people have a sufficient interest in possession or in prospect to be attached to the rights of property, without being insufficiently attached to the rights of persons. Liberty not less than justice pleads for the policy here recommended. If all power be suffered to slide into hands not interested in the rights of property which must be the case whenever a majority fall under that description, one of two things cannot fail to happen; either they will unite against the other description and become the dupes & instruments of ambition, or their poverty & independence will render them the mercenary instruments of wealth. In either case liberty will be subverted; in the first by a despotism growing out of anarchy, in the second, by an oligarchy founded on corruption.”

That America, the virtuous nation of my childhood imagination, will not exist anymore if this nation does not correct its course soon.

Madhuri Deshmukh, “The Unraveling Heart: Women’s Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi” (Columbia UP, 2025) (link) and Leah Lowthorp, “Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattam, Dynamic Tradition, and Globalizing Heritage in Kerala, India” (Indiana UP, 2025) (link)

Prof Deshmukh spoke about the tradition of women composing and singing songs while occupied with daily chores, chief amongst which was the grinding of grains. These songs are now preserved as part of the Grindmill project with the very apposite title सांगते बाई तुला ♪♪ I tell you woman! ♪♪.

Prof Lowthorp had a fascinating conversation about the history of the theatre form from Kerala, Kutiyattam. How it came about, the compositions (in Sanskrit, in Malayalam and also in Manipravalam (Malayalam and Tamil)), the impact of Islam, British colonialism, and the elected Communist government on the art form.

Using Notebook LM, I made a couple of presentations on the above podcasts to summarize the content. I hope to read these books and urge you to do the same. (Trying a new format for succinct information spreading.)

This is a summary of The Unraveling Heart: Women’s Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi

An example of a Grindmill song. The videos of other songs from the Grindmill song project are here.

This is a summary of ‘Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattam, Dynamic Tradition, and Globalizing Heritage in Kerala, India’

Here are two videos of Kutiyattam in practice.

I recall reading about Ammannoor Madhava Chakyar in SPIC-MACAY’s Eye magazine in the late ‘80s-early ‘90s.

Enjoy the podcasts. Tell me what you think about this format.

Inspired by Daniel Pink and recent incidents in my life, this post is a note to remind myself about the perils of giving advice and taking it.

Recently, one of my offsprings was going through an experience and I wanted to guide him. My first instinct was to be solicitous and rush with an outpouring of verbiage that would have made me perceive myself as having done the appropriate paternal duty. Fortunately, I took my time to reflect. I wondered whether the forty year age gap between us, as well as the difference in cultures (I grew up Indian, he has grown up American) had made the parenting tools in my possession completely irrelevant by not being relatable. Consequently, I prompted a couple of the popular AI models with the exact scenario and solicited responses. The resulting output was remarkable not so much due to what it prescribed, but due to the process it recommended. My objective was one of curiosity and concern, providing a platform of emotional safety which would make the son ready to perhaps, receive my wisdom well.

Giving advice

What is the best way to give advice?

Don’t.

Really,

Often times, unsolicited pontificating is the means by which, advice-dispensers perpetrate their own insecurities or to project their viewpoints onto the reluctant recipients. The giver, frequently older than the recipient, tries to “fix” the person. They talk more than they listen and feel offended when challenged. They use broad generalities, and project their own experiences and fears as the truth rather than their truth.

The wise person waits to be asked. Even Lord Krishna waited until Arjuna asked him (in the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2.7)

शिष्यस्तेऽहं शाधि मां त्वां प्रपन्नम्

śhiṣhyaste ’haṁ śhādhi māṁ tvāṁ prapannam

I am your disciple, surrendering myself to you, please instruct me.1

In Hindu philosophy, उपदेश (Upadesha) is wisdom transmitted by an authoritative source to a deserving recipient. The giver has to be detached and pure of intent. The recipient has to be ready.

The concept of desha-kala-patra (Time, place, vessel/readiness of the recipient) is illustrated by Lord Rama in the Ramayana when he offers advice from a standpoint of compassion, with the goal of aiding self-discovery, in the right context, and from a sense of detachment of the outcome. Moreover, the advice given by Rama to Bharata is couched as a series of gentle questions. See here.

I have to remind myself to listen.

In Hinduism, a recipient practices a method from विनय (Vinaya) i.e. humility, modesty and indulges in परिप्रश्न (Pariprashna) i.e. deep and earnest inquiry.

तद्विद्धि प्रणिपातेन परिप्रश्न‍ेन सेवया ।
उपदेक्ष्यन्ति ते ज्ञानं ज्ञानिनस्तत्त्वदर्शिनः ॥ ३४ ॥

tad viddhi praṇipātena paripraśhnena sevayā
upadekṣhyanti te jñānaṁ jñāninas tattva-darśhinaḥ

Approach a knowledgeable teacher, inquire from him with humility and offer service unto them. The wise seers of truth will impart that knowledge unto you because they have realized the truth.

As an elder, I have to ask curiosity questions of the advice seeker as well..To help the recipient resolve vexing problems on their own. 2

अनुद्वेगकरं वाक्यं सत्यं प्रियहितं च यत् ।
स्वाध्यायाभ्यसनं चैव वाङ्‍मयं तप उच्यते ॥ १५ ॥

anudvega-karaṁ vākyaṁ satyaṁ priya-hitaṁ cha yat
svādhyāyābhyasanaṁ chaiva vāṅ-mayaṁ tapa uchyate

Austerity of speech involves using words that do not cause agitation in others, are truthful, spoken with kindness and in goodwill; and also in reciting and studying scriptures.3

The Zen master Zhaozhao (Joju) was famous for answering any inquiry, including about the Buddhist way, with the words, “Go drink tea!”4

In other words, slow down, breathe, be mindful, and contemplate.

When asked, the key is to ask about options that are available rather than stand on a pedestal and give a speech about what needs to be done. I can help by sharing what has worked for me. In fact, one of the finest books on leadership that I’ve read is by General Colin Powell and it was, unsurprisingly, called. “It worked for me.” It was full of anecdotes from the general’s life and included the lessons he had learned from his superiors.

Here are some suggestions from Google Gemini

Using the right tone is essential to ensuring your advice is well-received.

• Gentle Suggestions: “Have you considered...?”, “How about trying...?”, or “I wonder if...”.

• Empathetic Framing: “It’s understandable you feel that way. One thing that helped me was...”.

• Collaborative Tone: “I don’t have all the answers, but I’d love to help you figure out what’s right for you”.

Giving advice is not equal to mentoring which is very different. A mentor empowers the protege with specific tools that helps them succeed in their field due to their own experience in that field.

I have to also remind myself to say, “To be honest, I do not have experience or expertise in that area, but I can connect you with the right person who may be able to help. you.”

Rejecting advice

I also have to learn to reject unsolicited advice. If my interlocutors begin their pontificating with the words, “You may not like what I am about to say,” I have to learn to fearlessly say, “Ah, then do not say it!” Reject cruelty masked as caring.

In the book, ‘Asserting yourself’ by Stanford University’s Sharon and Gordon Bower, propose the DESC script to handle these put-downs.

D - Describe
What to say: “When you commented on my child’s decision and suggested that my parenting choices are why they made it...”
The strategy: State the comment objectively. Avoid saying “You insulted me.” Simply report what was said.

E - Express
What to say: “...I feel disrespected and criticized as a parent. It makes me feel like our time together is an evaluation rather than a visit.”
The strategy: Focus on the impact on the relationship. This makes it about your feelings, which they cannot technically “disprove.”

S - Specify
What to say: “I’d like you to keep your thoughts on my parenting style to yourself unless I specifically ask you for your input.”
The strategy: This is a direct request for a behavioral change. You are reclaiming your role as the primary decision-maker.

C - Consequences
What to say: “That way, I can feel more relaxed when we’re together, and we can focus on enjoying each other’s company.”
The strategy: This offers a positive incentive: a better, less tense relationship.

On empowering wisdom

Finally, note how wise men, such as the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu are so optimistic about future generations while also mentioning about how flawed their own had been.

The great Dr. Bannanje Govindacharya’s discourse is in Kannada.

Have a wonderful holiday season!

However, what struck me was that he was treated by Dr. Shenoy. The kind doctor treated my father later in 1988 when he was suffering from heart disease. Dr. Shenoy’s son Narendra, was my senior in the engineering college that we both went to. So, I wrote to him and attached this image.

Narendra Shenoy wrote this wonderfully poetic response to the entry.

Thanks so much for sharing this, Arun! It’s so amazing that your parents used to maintain a diary and that it’s there with you. Handwritten notes are such powerful windows into the past. If you think about it, we’re just living inside our heads, like Descartes said. It’s a billion thoughts, most of them illegible due to the passage of time, yet all strung together in a big, tangled mess of a story. This story is a mess for literally everyone else other than ourselves, but for us, the owner of the head in which this story resides, that is, it not only makes perfect sense regardless of where you pick up a thread, it’s also smoothly connected with the past and future of that moment. A bit like those functions we used to have in calculus - “continuous and differentiable at all points” - And then, you get evidence like this beautiful little diary entry, and the thread stops being just something that exists in that tangled mess. It becomes real. A real person -your mother- wrote it. She picked up a pen, sat deliberately, opened the diary, possibly sitting at the dining table, and carefully wrote down that entry.. She wrote down “Dr. Baliga”, then scratched it out and rewrote “Dr. Shenoy”, and that he visited at 9.15 am. That morning became real for me too, just like it did, for you. I can imagine your father lying in bed, his pulse and blood pressure likely being taken. Your mother, standing there, asking my father what he thought was the severity of the infection and when he might be discharged. My father came alive for me. I could imagine him telling her it wasn’t anything serious, just have plenty of fluids and avoid oily food or something along those lines. She would have packed your tiffin box and sent you to school before coming here. She probably left a little later to prepare lunch and get it to the hospital. And would have to hurry back to be there when you returned from school. My father, I know, would hurry off to his clinic in Malad, after doing his rounds at Baliga. He would probably return in the evening and have another look. “Everything ok?” he would ask the on-duty sister and having gotten an affirmative answer, moved on to the next patient. A small diary entry that connects the two of us, forty eight years after it was written.

All this adds itself to the big pile already inside my head. It settles in, like powdered sugar sprinkled on to a moist buttered toast, visible for a while, and then dissolving into invisibility. But its there, I know, because the toast is sweeter.

which reminded me of my idol Jane Hirshfield’s poem about a bucket of water. I’ve written about Hirshfield before in Love and Fire. This excerpt is from Emergence Magazine.

JH And that is in some way comforting to all of us who feel like, why aren’t I walking in total openness to the mystery all of the time? When you see that every single great mystic—you know, St. John the Divine, Hildegard of Bingen, Mirabai—every tradition, the dark nights of the soul come after the great experience of opening as well as before it. And this is because the leash is strong. And I have a theory. I can’t justify the theory, you know, I’m a poet, not a scientist. And I doubt that even scientists will ever quite be able to say, oh yeah, that’s right, or that’s wrong. But I think that one reason it is so difficult for human beings to step outside ego and fear and self-concern is because evolution built us to be self-concerned. If you want to survive the dangerous world where you might be eaten by a tiger, maybe it’s a good idea to have some sense of self-protection. And so in a way, the great mystics are transcending evolution itself and how much our brains and bodies have been attuned to survival, just pure survival—not wanting to be hungry, not wanting to be the one who is eaten. That’s evolution. And so slipping the leash is recognizing that in many, many circumstances we can set that down.

I think, to go to a different explanation system yet, I have always loved the psychologist Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in which he says: First, people need safety, shelter, food. And then there is this pyramid of, what do you need before you will be able to feel free to engage in art, to feel free to engage in generosity, to feel free to not put your own self-preservation as the glasses you look at the world through. And so the great mystics—the truly great mystics—they are able to do this even when they are cold, hungry, and in peril. And maybe that’s one of the things that meditation or prayer or long abiding, in the sense of the divine or the large—whatever language one wants to put onto this experience—it shows you that you are always safe and the world is always abundant if your own next meal is not the most important thing.

EV: Can I ask you to read your poem from Ledger, “A Bucket Forgets Water”?

JH: Yes.

A Bucket Forgets Its Water

A bucket forgets its water,

its milk, its paint.

Washed out, re-used, it can be washed again.

I admire the amnesia of buckets.

How they are forthright and infinite inside it,

simple of purpose,

how their single seam is as thin of rib as a donkey’s.

A bucket upside down

is almost as useful as upright—

step stool, tool shelf, drum stand, small table for lunch.

A bucket receives and returns all it is given,

holds no grudges, fears,

or regret.

A bucket striking the mop sink rings clearest when empty.

But not one can bray.

For what binds us

By Jane Hirshfield

There are names for what binds us:

strong forces, weak forces.

Look around, you can see them:

the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,

nails rusting into the places they join,

joints dovetailed on their own weight.

The way things stay so solidly

wherever they’ve been set down—

and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back

across a wound, with a great vehemence,

more strong

than the simple, untested surface before.

There’s a name for it on horses,

when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,

is proud of its wounds, wears them

as honors given out after battle,

small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other

see how it is like a

scar between their bodies,

stronger, darker, and proud;

how the black cord makes of them a single fabric

that nothing can tear or mend.

My previous posts on music; Music of the Indian indentured labor & slave diaspora, the girmitiyas, Music in December, When the muse hits you, The gorgeous singing women, Justifying our choices, The Storytellers, Music, making it your own, 60 years of the Rolling Stones, Smt. Malini Rajurkar, Lessons from the Professor (Neil Peart), and so on.

I grew up listening to the great Pandit D. V. Paluskar’s singing, both classical as well as semi-classical pieces (bhajans). A conversation with a dear friend brought to mind this Tulsidas composition.

And I was pointed to the interpretation of the same by the great exponent of (India’s classical dance form) Bharatanatyam Madam Priyadarshini Govind. Check out from the 7.01 mark and experience bliss.

ठुमक चलत रामचंद्र बाजत पैंजनियाँ॥
किलकि किलकि उठत धाय गिरत भूमि लटपटाय।
धाय मात गोद लेत दशरथ की रनियाँ॥
अंचल रज अंग झारि विविध भांति सो दुलारि।
तन मन धन वारि वारि कहत मृदु बचनियाँ॥
विद्रुम से अरुण अधर बोलत मुख मधुर मधुर।
सुभग नासिका में चारु लटकत लटकनियाँ॥
तुलसीदास अति आनंद देखके मुखारविंद।
रघुवर छबि के समान रघुवर छबि बनियाँ॥ 1

Here is a translation by ChatGPT

ठुमक चलत रामचंद्र बाजत पैंजनियाँ॥

Thumak chalat Ramchandra bajat painjaniyan

As little Ramchandra toddles with a gentle, swaying gait,

The tiny anklets on His feet jingle sweetly.

किलकि किलकि उठत धाय गिरत भूमि लटपटाय।

Kilaki kilaki uthata dhaay, girata bhoomi latapataay

With cheerful giggles He gets up and runs,

Then stumbles and falls to the ground, unsteady on His little feet.

धाय मात गोद लेत दशरथ की रनियाँ॥

Dhaay maat god let, Dasharath ki raniya

His mother, Queen Kaushalya — consort of King Dasharatha —

Rushes to lift Him lovingly into her arms.

अंचल रज अंग झारि विविध भांति सो दुलारि।

Anchal raj ang jhaari, vividha bhaanti so dulaari

With the edge of her sari she brushes the dust from His limbs,

Then caresses and soothes Him in many tender ways.

तन मन धन वारि वारि कहत मृदु बचनियाँ॥

Tan man dhan waari waari, kahat mridu bachaniyaan

“I give my body, mind, and all my wealth to You,” she whispers softly,

Repeating the words with overflowing affection.

विद्रुम से अरुण अधर बोलत मुख मधुर मधुर।

Vidruma se arun adhar, bolat mukh madhur madhur

His coral-red lips murmur sweet, indistinct baby words,

Each sound from His mouth full of charm and delight.

सुभग नासिका में चारु लटकत लटकनियाँ॥

Subhag nasika mein chaaru latakat latakaniyaan

From His lovely little nose hang delicate ornaments,

Swinging gently as He moves about.

तुलसीदास अति आनंद देखके मुखारविंद।

Tulsidas ati aanand, dekh ke mukhaaravind

Tulsidas is filled with supreme joy

As he beholds the lotus-like face of the Lord.

रघुवर छबि के समान रघुवर छबि बनियाँ॥

Raghubar chhabi ke samaan, Raghubar chhabi baniyaan

None can compare with the beauty of Lord Rama —

His own splendor is beyond even its own likeness.

Tulsidas paints a tender vision of **baby Rama taking his first steps** — stumbling, smiling, babbling — while his mother Kaushalya overflows with love and devotion. The divine becomes human, and every moment of this childhood radiates sweetness and sacred joy.

==

The legendary Kumar Gandharva’s (Shivputra Siddharamayya Komakalimath) pathos cannot be beat in this Surdas composition.

अहो पति सो उपाइ कछु कीजै।

जिहिं उपाइ अपनौ यह बालक, राखि कंस सौं लीजै॥

मनसा, बाचा, कहत कर्मना, नृप कबहूँ न पतीजै॥

बुधि, बल, छल, कल कैसेंहु करिकै, काढ़ि अनतहीं दीजै॥

नाहिं न इतनौ भाग जो यह रस, नित लोचन-पुट पीजै॥

सूरदास ऐेसे सुत कौ जस, स्रवननि सुनि-सुनि जीजै॥

Translation by ChatGPT

Ah! O Lord, do something to save this child,
Whom Kansa desires to seize and destroy.

Neither by intention, nor by speech, nor by action
Can the king ever succeed in harming Him.

By wisdom, strength, trickery, or any craft,
He cannot overcome the infinite power of the child.

There is not enough fortune in the world
To consume the essence of this divine nectar,
Which is savored daily by the eyes and heart.

Surdas says: Hearing and listening to the glory of this child,
One’s life is filled with bliss.

Here’s another wonderful composition by Surdas by the singer Bombay Jayashri.

So many Carnatic classical compositions about Krishna and Rama as children form the canon. This one is my favorite, although I love Vidyabhushana’s version more.

So much more to share, but I’ll spare you all from a longer post. :-)

OUR BROWN SAHEBS - By BACHI N. KANGA
Sketches by Mario Miranda

The Executors and Beneficiaries named in the Last Will and Testament of the British Raj are the Brown Sahebs. More than the Administrative Service, more than the Railways, more even than the much maligned educational system, they are the truest evidence that Queen Victoria reigned here. The Brown Saheb is the Deputy left behind to keep the Union Jack flying, to remind a forgetful world that Britannia once ruled the waves. And how! The Deputy Sah’b lives in an island of colonialism, as stolid as the Rock of Gibraltar, untouched by the lashing wavelets of petty democracy.

In the “propah” tradition of the British upper classes. the Wogs (Westernized Oriental Gentlemen) have turned to politics or the I.A.S Or they are the Sandhurst-trained army types, with walrus moustachios ready to defend the motherland. (God Save the Gracious Queen).

After Independence, this bulldog breed from the Raj kennels had to get about barking in the native language. It wasn’t easy. To wit, the speech ascribed to a very “seniah general” delivered to the jawans on August 15, 1947: “Aaj hum sab muft ho gaya.” Or again, the Brown Saheb who tried his Hindustani on his black batman. “Kitna baja?”(What is the time?), he asked. The man replied, “Nau (nine) baja sah’b.” Unfamiliar with the naunces, the BS flared up, “It can’t be no baja, it must be some bloody baja!“

To recuperate from such ordeals and escape from the sweltering heat of “these Indian summers” the Wog goes on a Grand Tour of the Continent or back “home”. Unfortunately, finances, and the Reserve bank deprive many of such a “furlough” and England has become a “Nevah Nevah Land”.

In the good old days of the Raj, the Brown Saheb, Black Knight and Off-white Blimp had done very well for themselves. The Ceylonese journalist, Tarzie Vittachi, shows what a good job the British had done of turning them into made-over Englishmen. “They spoke English - some of them impeccably; they behaved as they thought a well bred Englishman should behave. They ate like the English - bacon and eggs if they could afford it, and a “course” for dinner. A few of them went so far as dressing for dinner, even in the wilderness, like a pucca Saheb. Their values were borrowed from English public schools (vitae lampada and all that sort of thing), their tastes and habits were English and it was quite possible that even their dreams had English sub-titles”. Even today, to quote Mr Vittachi again, “Eve’s Weekly Society (Eve’s Weekly is the Indian counter-part of the Tattler) in Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi still regards an Oxford or Cambridge degree as the peak of civilised education for the sons of Free India.”

In a crowd, the Brown Saheb stands out like a bandaged nose. You can’t miss him. He will be wearing a three-piece suit - the last button of the waistcoat undone, naturally - and proclaiming in almost Oxbridgian accents, “’Ponky’ Banerjea and I were chummy at Cambridge” . Pardon me, sir, your desi slip is showing. But the chances are, you won’t find him in a “sticky, sweaty native crowd”. He dwells in the rarefied atmosphere of The Club. In Calcutta’s Bengal Club or Delhi’s Gymkhana, you can quite forget that India gained independence 23 years ago. Into this bastion of feudalism the BS steps every vening. For a “spot of billiards” or a chhota peg. “Make it a very small choter, will you please, James? No bigga than a Lal Bahadur.” Nouveau riche Indians may strut about acting as though they owned the world. The Brown Saheb act as though he couldn’t care who owned it.

The sad fact is that the Brown Saheb has the mental calibre and the educational background to change Indian conditions for the better. Instead of doing so, he spends his hours criticising all things Indian and detaching himself from the country’s realities and problems. From his position - and it is a position of power - he will demand that others strive to be Indian all the way. He’ll insist that Clive street be called Netaji Subhas Road. Yet, he will buy, at any price, a British public school education for his children. Since it can’t be Eton or Harrow, ersatz sah’blings have to make do with Doon, Rajkumar, Lawrence or Bishop Cotton. There are less hypocritical brown sahebs, too, who are British in public and in private. Brown Sahebs, who think, feel, swear, dream and buy British. Picture him now sitting in his smoking jacket, mulling over his brandy reading the Times (of London) or grunting over what he has heard appeared in the Times (of India). “I tell you, B. N., old chap, what these bloody dhotiwallahs need is some buckshot in their backsides. What?”

Buckshot reminds me of another club in Delhi, this one solely devoted to maintaining the hoary British tradition - the Fox Hunt. “Where to get a fox, dammit all? Jackal ko chase karenge.” So there are all these gentlemen, chiefly bearded and turbaned Sardarji’s, in crimson jackets and baggy pantaloons, spurring their horses onwards and crying “Tali-Ho!” Ranjit Singh never led his men to battle with greater fervour! Post-hunt traditions are strictly observed. Right down to drinking Bristol Cream sherry and sticking a piece of the “brush” (the fox’s , sorry, jackal’s tail) into the folds of the turban.

Typical Hunt Club conversation goes something like this:

Harry Singh: “I’m engaged”
Billy Singh: “To a girl?”
H.S : “ To be sure”
B.S : “What’s her name?”
H.S : “Lolly Singh-Roy.”
B.S : “Does she hunt?”
H.S : “To be sure.”

etc. etc.

Bird watching is as much an adopted and adapted pastime. However, unlike his white mentor, the Brown Saheb cannot write a letter to the Times, when he spots the first cuckoo which heralds the coming of Spring. He has to make do with the Monsoon Bird. At seven in the evening the Brown Saheb goes upstairs. The Khidmatgar has laid out his clothes. He bathes, dresses for dinner and as the gong echoes, through the halls, the BS descends the carpeted stairs in an aura of Old Spice (not the locally made one).

Holy Cow!

In food his tastes are studiously cultivated. He eats roast beef and two ve. with great relish. His concience is unruffled since it is not the flesh of your holy cow. It is Australian beef which does not really come in the forbidden category. But oft betimes the craving for our chatpatta
delicacies overpowers him. He then drives down to the kabawalla and exorcises his guilt by saying, “It’s mahvellous to go slumming, what?” At traditional public dinners which he occasionally graces with his prescence , he and his memsahib will insist on using a fork and a knife, slicing through the banana leaf and - greatly to their chagrin - leaving rivulets of gravy on the tablecloth.

The Brown Saheb and and more than him his mem, will brook only an equally Anglophile “household staff” (including maid, mashalchi and chokra). Only those who have served under the angrez need apply. The first question is whether he can make western food - soup, sucklings and and that white, gooey gastronomical understatement which the English dare to call a sauce”. In this “castle” only the butler may answer the door or the telephone. Peter was one such family retainer, the quintessence of obsequiousness “ yes madam, I shall tell madam, you called madam. Is there any message for madam? Thank you, madam. Goodbye, madam.” In our younger days we telephoned Uncle Jimmy’s house just for the pleasure of listening to Peter.

Peter, John, Solomon, or Sammy (he was Swamy when he played among the palm fronds and the backwaters) is less Jeeves than Uncle Tom. Tucked away in his black heart is a special corner for the Saheb, Memsaheb and most of all for the little Missybaba. As he serves her stiffly from the left, and watches her throw down her bread and butter “putten” in a tantrum, a loving gleam brightens his dimming eye. “What a marvelously temperamental, deliciously fastidious, mistress she will make to some other lucky, lucky table ‘boy”, he muses with envy.

One more thing. The servant speaks perfectly good Hindustani (unless he’s the Alphonso Gama type), the master speaks perfectly good Hindustani, but no exchange of conversation between them can dare to be in that “heathen” lingo. If such a slip were made at table, oh! horror of horrors, the French fries would crumble to ashes and digestive tracts curl up and die.

The Brown Sahebs babalog go to public schools where they wear caps and striped ties ( the tie is Very important, it is the bond of a lifetime), learn latin, play cricket and eat Irish stew. They get their facts of Indian history from S.Reed Brett. Esq., who dwells in great and gory detailover, the Black Hole of Calcutta. Jalianwalla Bagh? Never heard of it.

The Mind of the BS

A colonel in the army was exchanging banter over a drink with Tarzie Vittachi at a Club. Suddenly he switched off the banter and asked him to explain why he had criticised, in his newspaper column, a statement which had been made by the Governor-General. Vittachi replied that if the Governor-General made public statements on public policy he must expect public reaction and criticism.

“Nonsense” replied the colonel. “H.E., is the H.M’s representative here. The Sovereign is sacrosanct, old boy, sacrosanct. Can’t possibly do wrong. Must nevah be criticised. Nevah..”

The journalist retaliated, “Ever heard what Cromwell did to King Charles? “Cromwell?” bawled the Colonel, “Cromwell? The common feller! Don’t evah mention his name to me again!”

Was the Colonel serious or was this tongue in cheek badinage? In either case it gives a clue to the mental processes of the Brown Sahebs, and shows the uncanny way in which people whom live in borrowed culture often go extremes that their models and mentors had never intended.

Another illustration. Among the first families of old Lucknow there lived a Chocolate Cream Saheb. When his fellow Muslims came to wish him Id Mubarak one year, he replied with gracious charm, “Aaj tum sab Mussalman log ka bara din hai!”

Bara din (Christmas) and New Year are the Wog’s only festivals. But try as he might the Brown Saheb - and the Off- white Blimp - cannot abandon himself to rollicking gaiety. Blood will out and his inhibitions will not leave him alone. it is pathetic to see him desperately trying to let himself go - dancing in the ballroom, drinking champagne, singing Auld Lang Syne, wearing a paper hat, horsing around - and all the while really, feeling very very silly. Such is the schizophrenia of the Brown Saheb.

Whether the climate favors it or not, the Wog must have his two pegs a little after sundown every evening, the faithful Rover dozing at his feet. Without the scotch the evening would languish and wit decay. But there is a difference. our friend cannot say, “Bottoms Up” without blushing ‘neath his beard. So he toasts with a “God bless ji“ or even “Sat Sri Akal”.

The Brown Saheb can be distinguished as much by his Hobson Jobson speech and name as by his interior decor. His drawing room must have Victorian geegaws, overstuffed armchairs, and brass-potted money plants. He’d rather have prints of European masters than Indian originals, and the most oriental will be a Gaugin reproduction. He prides himself on the fact that he has bathroom for every bedroom and his status symbol is the bidet thunderbox”) in every bathroom.
For him the essence of syntax are, By Jingo! What ho! Tickety boo! and as a magnanimous concession to his nativity, he says, “Tik ai” (not theek hai) and “cuppa cha”. A Brown Saheb never goes to bed, he goes “charpoy bashing”; he never looks at anything, he has a “dekko”. His name may have been Ananda, he’s now Andy: Shri Kapur has translated himself to Mr Camphor. A Ganpat of my acquaintance is known only as Pat; Shri Krishna Rao went onto Chris and thence to Christopher. And Madhusudhan returned from vilayat as Mr Marsden.

I Hate Indians!

Some Wogs, don’t stop at silver fish knives, French wines, kissing ladies hands and loathing Indians. They even pose for magazine covers dressed up more like Noyes’ Highwayman than Goldsmith’s English Squire... Newest of the breed and therefore lowest in the heirarchy is the boxwalla - the Company executive. The army type and the I.A.S. man look down their collective noses at him because he is in the trades, no more than a glorified saleman. This specimen is easily identifiable. He never wears his coat. His jacket as he prefers to call it, is slung with careful carelessness over his arm or, even more nonchalantly, over his terrene clad shoulder. Also, he is impressed by America: Note his shirt-sleeves which your true blue Brown Saheb “wouldn’t be seen dead in”. One such boxwalla was Chingleput Kuppuswamy Vaidyalingam. In his small town “native place” we called him Veedy. Then he moved out and learnt a little more of the world and its wicked wicked ways. I heard he’s abandoned his earlier diminutive is now called Kim. Another “buddy” of ours was Harikesanullur Anantsubhramanyan Parameshwaran. He is “Parry” to his friends. His accent is cultivated haw-haw interspersed with Yankee slang.

When he interrupts in conversation, he never says, “Excuse me”.
He says, “Just a mo, old boy, I beg to diffah.” His office ends at 5.30. He never comes home before 7, and always with his collar undone and his tie askew: “ I was with the G.M.” When you ask for him on the phone, his secretary will purr, “Mr Parameshwaran is at a conference”, even if he’s just gone “round the corner”. A phone call at home in the same circumstances evokes a different if more honest response, “He’s in the bathroom.”

The boxwalla, is only the first generation Saheb, you must remember. You cannot expect his family to have all his fancy airs. For this reason too his life has many incongruities. He refers to his father as the “Guvnor”, even though appa wears a dhoti, a sacred thread and a kudumi atop his head.

Most contemptous of the boxwallah and more errant than the Brown Saheb is the Black Knight. He is royallar than the royals, more “puccah” than the ruddiest British Major. He may have become an anachronism, but he has lost none of his arrogance. To watch Sir Hiren in action is the sight to delight the most fastidious Chief of Protocol. Mark the delicate lift of the eyebrow, that aristocratic sneer and now that faintest suggestion of a smile of recognition. See the untitled bow an scrape and fawn.

The drapes are drawn and darkness has begun to descend on the already twilight world of the brown saheb. He has lost his zamindary and the sun has set on his empire as well. Now, all he has to cling on to is his snobbery, his chhota hazri, his old school tie and a yellowing souvenir of Swan Lake at Covent Gardens.

Concluded

I recently stumbled upon a WhatsApp forward that caught my attention. It made a fascinating claim that the iconic Amul-girl mascot was supposedly based on Shobha Tharoor, Shashi Tharoor's sister.

This reel and articles on this topic have now gone viral prompting a reaction from Shobha Tharoor herself.

https://x.com/ShobhaTharoor/status/1958324659419766882

As is my wont, I tried to confirm the story and found the source article in The Hindu Business line, circa 2023.

I empathized with journalist Parvathi Benu, who interviewed Tharoor for an obituary on Da Cunha. It was a shame that she wasn't credited in the reels and later media reports. This mirrors a troubling trend I've noticed: content creators produce short clips on a variety of topics, from food to history, using primary research without properly citing their sources.

In addition to the lack of attribution, a key danger of all is the Malcolm Gladwell-ization of nuanced academic articles. Andrew Ferguson critiqued in the Atlantic that Gladwell reduced nuance to pop science. Remember the 10,000 hours ‘rule’? Anecdotes, critics argue, are not empirical evidence.

Gladwell’s many critics often accuse him of oversimplification. Just as often, though, he acts as a great mystifier, imposing complexity on the everyday stuff of life, elevating minor wrinkles into profound conundrums. This, not coincidentally, is the method of pop social science, on whose rickety findings Gladwell has built his reputation as a public intellectual.

Years ago, I used to go out of my way to debunk TikTok and Instagram reels related to health, from diet to disease and cures, but I've since given up. The sheer volume of these forwards is just too exhausting.

This issue involves two distinct problems. First, content creators must act ethically and properly cite their source material. Second, social media platforms have a responsibility to hold these creators accountable.

Whenever social media companies are confronted about hate speech and misinformation, they claim they are merely platforms with no control over content. This argument, however, is undermined by the sophisticated nature of their own algorithms. These same systems are capable of removing spam, child pornography, and graphic violence, while also being used to target consumers with highly relevant ads. Surely, if they can accomplish all of that, they can also identify and remove those who spread falsehoods and malicious content.

But now we’ve hit upon the famous Platform vs Publisher conundrum. See articles in the EFF and Time. A problem way above my pay-grade.

Alas at best, as consumers, we can pause before forwarding reels and thus curb their spread. If you are a creator, here’s how it should be done.

You can read e. e. cummings’s poem here.

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

Last month, during a vacation in Japan, my son suggested that we rent bikes and go cycling around Kyoto. It was so much fun to ride in a city that has been re-designed around people and bikes, not cars. The order of precedence is pedestrians over bicyclists over cars over trucks.

This trail was beside the river that runs through the city. You would not imagine that this is part of the old city and beside each side of then river are bicycle/pedestrian lanes, benches, trees and walls beyond which are the traffic-filled streets. But even on the streets, bicyclists outnumber motor driven vehicles.

Japan has also invested in innovating bicycle design and technology to make it easier for women, parents, and shoppers to use the vehicle for various purposes. For decades, the bicycle has liberated women. Plus, policemen and women find it convenient to police neighborhoods whilst on bikes. These bikes are called Mamacharis. See youtube video here

There are subtleties to Tokyo as one of my favorite channels, ‘Life where I am from - Japan’ elaborates.

London has transformed itself too.

and so has Paris.

Of course, the mother of all bicycle friendly cities is Amsterdam.

In my country, the United States, Portland is very bicycle friendly.

And the country I grew up in, India was very bicycle friendly due to the lack of affordability of cars (caused by the licensing/tax policies of the socialist. era) . Pune was famously known for its bicycle traffic.

This photograph of Delhi in 1945 went viral earlier this year. It shows a group of government official commuting to their homes after work. Oh, the suits, hats and turbans! (Clearly, there was petrol rationing during the second world war, but still, such joy!) Contrast that to this article in the Hindustan Times dated Sept 2018 titled, ‘The daily life of a cyclist in Delhi: Tough and tortuous.’

Image of K. G. Road in Bangalore (1973) from the Deccan Herald archives.

Finally, a how-to for designing bicycle friendly cities.

Tokyo’s parking structures for bikes are legendary.

Bicycles limit air-pollution, make their riders healthy, keep citizens safe, and enable good human interaction. Moreover, the enclosed spaces of cars flare tempers (‘my fort’) while cyclist-commuters are rarely ever angry. Mayors of cities should focus re-designing cities around pedestrians and bicycles.

He writes:

Perhaps. But to that I would add impatience, nervousness, and above all, a lack of trust. If the vehicle coming around the bend sticks to its side of the road, and I to mine, neither of us need to announce our presence. Whether the road is empty or not, each of us will slither smoothly around the curve, without fear of collision. Without blowing the horns that drove me out of my home yesterday.

But that requires trust that every other driver, without exception, will be doing the right thing, steering the right path. If that trust is lacking, then blowing my horn is the logical thing to do. Not blowing my horn could literally put my life on the line. And so, the drivers who course our hill road every summer weekend blow their horns as if their lives depend on it.

I’ve just returned from a holiday in Japan. It was my first time there, but I have been familiar with the culture via books, movies and documentaries. Certainly, the Japanese aesthetic has inspired my own quest to be mindful of light, sound and shadow. (Especially, Tanizaki Junichiro on Japanese Aesthetics. See the NHK documentary about his book here.)

It struck me that Japan is an introvert’s paradise. It is a high trust, highly disciplined, orderly nation whose people prefer to be withdrawn in public spaces. Japan operates on evolved principles that are deeply ingrained in culture, education and via enforcement. The New Yorker article titled, ‘The Long History of Japan’s Tidying Up, ’ elaborates on these shared principles.

Pico Iyer has written books about Japanese culture and its unspoken rules and norms that are seemingly baffling to foreigners. (But weirdly enough, my very brahminical upbringing with its focus on ritual purity made me relate to many of its aspects.) Here he is explaining the very idea of Japanese manners; that the Japanese roll their luggage outside their home, but carry them within it. At Hakone, the very ancient keeper or our very ancient ryokan, insisted on taking a wet wipe and cleaning all the four wheels of my suitcase hinting to me very gently that I was not supposed to let it touch the tatami mats, but to carry it straight to the closet.

Of course, every Japanese hotel offers slippers so that you leave the footwear that you wear outdoors near the front door.

Japanese trains are incredibly silent - the only people talking are European, Indian or Chinese tourists and the staccato announcements by the bot containing information about the next station coupled with the music that accompanies the opening and closing of doors. Everyone is riveted to their phones. Even in extremely crowded trains, it is interesting how one’s stress levels devolve due to the silence.

Japanese queues are legendary. I never once saw anyone, including the handicapped or the very elderly not standing in line. There was also respect for personal space within a queue.

True, in abundant societies, people can afford to form queues and India/China are in a process of transition where the old mindsets of scarcity still exists. In Singapore, the Chinese have a term for the behavior that has arisen from scarcity: Kiasu, “It is commonly defined as “the fear of losing,” and is directed at a person who behaves competitively to either attain their goal or to get ahead of others” (Source: Wikipedia)

The term covers a whole host of attitudes that are familiar to Indians.

Lee Kwan Yew certainly believed that strong institutional discipline embodied in the personal lives of Singaporeans made the state harmonious, clean and orderly.

The iron hand worked in Singapore, but stronger laws are not the solution in India. Laws just lead to more rent-seeking by the enforcers without changing much of the ground reality.

How then does one create a trust based and harmonious society?

My hypothesis is that the admirable qualities of Japan and the north-western European states (and many parts of the US), are created by the temperance, the self-restraint of its populations. People can, but prefer not to. There’s a certain understanding that Nash equilibrium is achieved by everyone complying to a shared set of guidelines, norms and manners that keeps a civilization orderly and happy.

Why is Japan, a nation so crowded, a friendly place for bikers? My son and I biked in Kyoto and found that not only did I trust bikers, car drivers and pedestrians to obey laws, but also believed that our own good manners and compliance would benefit us.

I grew up in ‘70s/’80s India and during a time of scarcity, roads were largely silent, traffic was mostly orderly, and cities, at least in Maharashtra and Karnataka were clean.

The widespread use of two and three wheelers caused chaos in India. Then the increasing middle-class affluence without the accompanying expansion of infrastructure caused people to double down on Kiasu culture - see a gap, fill it, regardless of how much it slows the traffic down. There’s an almost instinctive urge to take advantage and in intended and unintended ways cause others anguish.

Note that the three largest Indian cities; Bombay (Mumbai), Calcutta (Kolkata) and Delhi were also recipients of large numbers of refugees fleeing the area that became Pakistan. Then came the waves of economic refugees fleeing the chaos of UP, Bihar and Haryana. Illegal housing/construction chaos has also contributed to disastrous urban growth.

But still, all this can explain much, but it does not explain the behavior of car-honkers. Yes, as Mohit posits, there is a lack of trust. However, people do not always honk for a reason. People honk because they have access to the instrument and they can make noise (express their frustration) without consequence. Just as they can play loud music for dandiya that goes for 9 days, or block streets and perform namaz, or take processions on streets & block traffic.

India, like China, is a country in transition, with all the pains of a population getting richer without absorbing the norms that go along with having access. (An example is of mass Indian and Chinese tourists that are both wanted and disliked in S.E. Asia and elsewhere due to their behaviors. See this NDTV article on a reddit post or this BBC article on Chinese tourists.)

The best solution for honking in India? Force vehicle manufacturers from installing horns in vehicles, ban the sale of horns, run a free program to disconnect horns in existing vehicles.

Since the honking does not serve any purpose - even in dire situations, people have become to immune to the sounds that they just ignore them as white noise - why have the horns in the first place?

The removal of horns might actually cause people to behave more harmoniously and thus increase trust. If people can’t honk and drive on in four-way streets, maybe they will treat the intersections as stop signs and slow down and stop.

Honking though is only one example of the lack of community harmony in India. For many other aspects of the civilization to be better; respect for privacy, the right to silence, the right to personal space etc will have to come in via a massive change in culture as well as incentivized measures by the government.

Then build cities around people, not around vehicles!

I found this gem today.

and wondered what would a sommelier make of the tastes of the wines grown in the regions which host the Tour de France. As a lark, I asked ChatGPT":

Tour de France participants pee in wine country during races. Write a sommelier’s description of a wine that has developed a unique taste due to this phenomenon.

It came back with a series of posts and suggestions. I never thought Gen AI would get sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek, double entendre’, puns, and so on. Scary, eh?

Here’s the series

Certainly! Here's a sommelier’s tongue-in-cheek tasting note for such a unique *vintage*:

---

**2024 Château Vélo Jaune – Appellation d’Origine Pipi Contrôlée**

*Region: Côte de Pisse-sur-Vigne, Burgundy*

**Tasting Notes:**

A daringly unconventional vintage, this wine exhibits a bold and rustic terroir, unmistakably shaped by its proximity to the Tour de France route during the summer of '24. On the nose, there’s a surprising waft of damp Lycra, crushed chamomile, and hints of sun-warmed asphalt. The mid-palate opens with a burst of unripe banana and warm electrolytes, transitioning gracefully into a complex finish of trampled grass, isotonic saline, and the subtle minerality of roadside gravel.

**Mouthfeel:**

Light-bodied but assertive, with a saline tang and a faint carbonic prickle — possibly from post-fermentation exertion. The tannins are lean and sinewy, not unlike the cyclists themselves.

**Pairing Suggestions:**

Pairs best with energy gels, protein bars, or a crisp baguette smuggled in a musette bag. Best enjoyed after a 90-kilometer ride or while shouting “Allez!” on a sun-drenched hillside.

**Drinking Window:**

Now through 2029, though early consumption is recommended before the urea-driven esters fade.

**Critic's Note:**

A rebellious wine that truly captures the... *spirit* of the peloton. Not for the faint of heart — or nose.

---

Would you like a label design or fake reviews from elite sommeliers too?

Here are some delightfully absurd “expert” reviews for *2024 Château Vélo Jaune*:

---

**Jean-Claude Rincebouche**, *Le Guide du Vin Naturel*

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

*"A wine that evokes the raw athleticism of man and nature in harmony—well, proximity. There’s a certain wild abandon to its bouquet, like a bidon flung at a roadside fan. Briny, brash, and brilliant."*

---

**Gwyneth Palate**, *Sommelier & the Moon*

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

*"An experimental triumph. The terroir speaks—perhaps too loudly—but once you push past the initial nose of poly-blend shorts and chain grease, you’ll find a transcendent salinity rarely achieved outside of tears or the sea."*

---

**Sir Malcolm Noseworthy**, *Decanter (UK)*

⭐️⭐️⭐️

*"Opens with top notes of warmed chamois and wild thyme, followed by an unmistakable hint of damp musette. The finish is long and unrelenting, like Stage 17 in a headwind. It tastes… like effort. I respect it more than I like it."*

---

**Simone Fermente**, *Le Revue de l’Urinoir Vinicole*

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

*"Finally! A wine that acknowledges the contributions of hydration breaks to viticulture. Forget minerality—we’re talking *miner-urinality*. Vive le goût de la sueur!"*

---

**Pascal d’Urine**, *Tour Tannins Monthly*

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

*"A pungent echo of cyclist camaraderie and roadside rebellion. Nose of asparagus, palate of yellow apple, and finish of collective exhaustion. Best served chilled… and with nose clips."*

---

Would you like faux social media posts or a satirical wine club mailer next?

Absolutely. Here's a set of **faux social media posts** and a **satirical wine club mailer** featuring *2024 Château Vélo Jaune*:

---

### 🍷 **Social Media Buzz**

---

**@PelotonPourOver (X / Twitter)**

> Just cracked open a bottle of Château Vélo Jaune. Tastes like regret and victory. Pairs beautifully with saddle sores. #TourDeFrance #NaturalWine #Urin-Terroir

---

**@VinoVeritasVegan (Instagram Story)**

> Day 12 of my no-sulfite challenge and this wild Burgundy just *pissed* all over my expectations 🍇🚴‍♂️

> 💛 Notes: golden raisins, bike grease, and electrolytes.

> 🌱Technically still vegan. I think.

---

**@SommelierOnTheRun (TikTok)**

🎥 *\[video opens with a cyclist uncorking the bottle at the top of Mont Ventoux]*

> “I rode 85km for this. It's earthy. It’s salty. It’s... sweaty. Honestly? It slaps harder than a sidewind on Stage 10. 💦🍷🚴”

> *#VéloJauneChallenge #DecantOrDraft*

---

**@ChateauSnob (Threads)**

> If you're not drinking wine aged in the ambiance of roadside urination, are you *really* into terroir? #bikefunk #chardonnayé

---

### 🍇 **Wine Club Mailer: “From the Saddle to the Cellar”**

---

**Dear Valued Member of Les Vins Sauvages**,

This July, we invite you to join us on a journey through **sweat, grit, and vineyard-side bladder relief** with our *most controversial pour yet*:

## **2024 Château Vélo Jaune – Côte de Pisse-sur-Vigne**

Harvested at the *exact* altitude where the peloton paused for relief near Saint-Romain, this vintage absorbs not only the rich mineral soils of Burgundy but also the *essence of human perseverance*.

---

### This Month’s Box Includes:

* **1 bottle** of Vélo Jaune (with a Tour de France commemorative cap)

* A **crumpled race bib** from Stage 12 (wine-stained, of course)

* A sachet of **hydration salts** for pairing or marinating

* **Tasting notes** in scratch-and-sniff format (Warning: Side B is not for everyone)

---

> *“You’ve tasted the terroir. Now experience the tinkle of tradition.”*

> – Jacques “Bladderoak” Merlot, Club Curator

---

Would you like a satirical podcast episode intro or mock wine critic feud next?

Fantastic. Here’s a **satirical podcast intro** and a **mock wine critic feud** over *2024 Château Vélo Jaune*:

---

## 🎙️ **Podcast Intro: "Corked & Unfiltered – Ep. 146: 'Urine for a Treat'"**

\[**Theme music fades in: a jazzy accordion riff with the clink of wine glasses**]

**HOST 1 (Alain):**

“Bonjour, fellow fermentation fanatics, and welcome to *Corked & Unfiltered*—the only wine podcast banned by three Burgundy appellations and one French mayor.”

**HOST 2 (Sasha):**

“And today’s episode is... *full-bodied*, if you know what I mean. We’re swirling our glasses around a bottle that’s causing quite the splash—literally.”

**HOST 1:**

“That’s right. *2024 Château Vélo Jaune*—the Tour de France vintage that’s as controversial as it is… pungent.”

**HOST 2:**

“Was it influenced by terroir or… Tour-oir? Can you decant a wine that smells like determination and damp spandex?”

**HOST 1:**

“We'll be uncorking the scandal, sniffing out the truth, and talking to the only sommelier who’s ever tasted it mid-race: Pascal d’Urine.”

**HOST 2:**

“Plus: our segment *Cork or Corked* returns, where we decide if Vélo Jaune is revolutionary… or just riding downhill without brakes.”

\[**Accordion theme plays again**]

**TOGETHER:**

“Stick around. It’s gonna be a wild ride—no training wheels.”

---

## 🍷💥 **Mock Wine Critic Feud: Pascal d’Urine vs. Clarisse de Pinot**

**Clarisse de Pinot**, *author of “Wine Without Weirdness”*, wrote in *La Revue Élégante*:

> “*Vélo Jaune* is a disgrace to viniculture. I don’t care how biodynamic it claims to be—any wine that pairs better with chafing cream than Camembert is not worth cellaring.”

**Pascal d’Urine**, in response, posted on his Substack *"The Tannin Tantrum"*:

> “Clarisse once rated a wine fermented with yak milk a 94. Her palate is about as reliable as a wheelie in a headwind. Vélo Jaune is a sensory triumph! It’s not wine for sipping—it’s wine for surviving.”

**Clarisse replied on Threads:**

> “Pascal, darling, just because something makes your nose run and your eyes sting doesn't mean it’s ‘edgy.’ Sometimes it's just ammonia.”

**Pascal’s Instagram story the next day:**

> *\[Photo of him drinking Vélo Jaune straight from a bidon, shirtless]*

> “Clarisse couldn't handle this if it were served on a silver tasting spoon. Stay soft, Burgundy.”

---

Want a fake ad jingle, a scandalous exposé headline, or a parody Michelin star chef review next?

Here’s when I stopped.

I’m gobsmacked!

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music,” - Aldous Huxley.

I came to Nina Simone through Richard Linklater’s masterpieces, ‘Before Sunrise’, ‘Before Sunset’, and ‘After Midnight.’ The movies introduced me to her music via a lifelong crush of Julie Delphy & Ethan Hawke because of scenes like this one:

These classics have been adapted in India too, via 'the superb ‘Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai'.’

At any rate, Nina Simone is always wonderful listening. That brings me to the other musical genius in Mehfil’s post; Billie Holliday. I have been a fan of the woman greats of jazz and blues since my engineering days. Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald (my favorite), Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, Etta James et al have stayed with me.

Who can forget Ella forgeting the lyrics of ‘Mac the knife’ from Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Threepenny Opera’ and riffing to a legendary composition in Berlin?

But those meanderings have led me to another crush, Rana Farhan of Iran, who now lives in exile in the United States. I encountered her through the superb film, ‘No one knows about Persian cats.’ back when Netflix used to be a CD service. The music from the film was far out. The movie itself was a loose plot centered around a theme that was meant to promote the underground music scene of Iran.

The movie has superb music, but the appearance of Rana Farhan blew my mind. How was this demure woman, a fan of Billie Holliday, able to churn out jazz interpretations of Omar Khayyam, Sa’adi, Hafez and Rumi? How mesmerizing was her voice?

I became such a fan that I went to her concert at Yoshi’s at Oakland a few years ago. I was the only non Persian in the audience.

Here is her interpretation of a Rumi poem. The translation is in the youtube description.

My lover became intoxicated, look at his eyes,

His stories are drunken, his speech is slurred,

Sometimes he falls this way, sometimes he falls that way,

These are the signs of one who is drunk,

His eyes drive everyone mad, but don’t try to make me fear him,

Because I’m drunk and I fear no one, not even the nightstick,

Oh love, Allah, Allah, The king of kings has gotten drunk,

Get up, grab his locks and pull him near,

My thoughts are all about the lover,

I’ll put my life before him, I want to kiss him, fill his mouth with gold,

A face like a flower, his voice like a nightingale,

I want to learn all his desires,

This face of his is just a mask, in fact he is a light from the universe,

Look past his beauty, the joy comes from his soul,

It will make the winter change to spring, make the night change to day,

This world is dead without the light from beyond,

This world is dead without the light from beyond.

Here’s her interpretation of Khayyam.

But the film also had radical music. Such as this hip hop piece by Hichkas.

One can despise the regime and still feel empathy for the people.

Sure Joe Sacco is one-sided and does not turn his vitriol towards Hamas, but there is still a truth evident here, no?

Reminds me of ‘Sarah’ by the late Rim Banna. This innocent kid was shot by Israeli forces who might or might not have aimed their weapons at her deliberately.

We are a complicated world in which Israeli orthodox citizens can sing an Arabic song from an Algerian musical group.

Hamas committed untold atrocities on Israelis and they deserve being brought to justice. But did every Palestinian support Hamas? Having read so many books from that region, I am not so sure.

Can we stop the bombs already?

….and listen to music?

In this excerpt, the singer of the Dadra addresses the river Ganga directly and speaks about her soiled चुनरी (chunari, a garment worn by women) at her mother’s place and pleads with the goddess to bless her with a clean chunari to enable her to meet her beloved. Here, the chunari refers to her body which, through mortal existence has been blemished. Her mother’s home is the material world while the beloved’s abode is the unity with brahman. See the excerpt below. The clip starts in darkness with a narration and then pivots to the dance - so do not adjust your laptop or TV set. :-)

You can listen to Begum Akhtar’s masterly rendition of this dadra.

सुंदर सारी मोरी मईके मा मैल भई
का लइके जईबे गवनवाँ ,

हाय राम गंगा नहा ल्यूं सूरज पैयां लागूं
रह ल्यूं बरती कुअरवा हो राम

गंगा माई तोहे चुनरी चढ़ईबे
कर दे पिया से मिलनवा, हाय राम...

ना मोरे गुरुजन ना मोरे गहना
ना मोरे कर्मवा
करबे कौन बहनवा हाय राम
कर दे पिया से मिलनवा हाय राम

Translation by ChatGPT

Wearing a beautiful saree,
I came to my parents' home, but I’ve been sullied—
How can I go back to my in-laws' house now?
Oh Lord Ram!

Let me bathe in the Ganga,
Let me offer myself to the Sun,
Let me stay in fast and prayer,
O Kuvarwa (young prince),
O Mother Ganga,
I will offer you a scarf (choonari),
Please unite me with my beloved,
Oh Lord Ram...

I have neither elders nor ornaments,
Nor the merit of good deeds—
Who will stand as my sister?
Oh Lord Ram,
Please unite me with my beloved,
Oh Lord Ram..."**

which might make you reflect on the similarity with this popular Hindi film song.

which has the big reveal

कोरी चुनरिया आत्मा मोरी
मैल है माया जाल
कोरी चुनरिया आत्मा मोरी
मैल है माया जाल
वो दुनिया मोरे बाबुल का घर
ये दुनिया ससुराल
हन जाके, बाबुल से, नज़रें मिलओन कैसे
घर जौन कैसे
लागा, चुनरी में दाग
च्छुपऔन कैसे
लागा, चुनरी में दाग

Translation by ChatGPT

"My pure white scarf is my soul,
But it's stained by the web of illusion (maya).
My pure white scarf is my soul,
But it's stained by the web of illusion.

That world was my father's home—
This world is my in-laws' house (a metaphor for earthly life).
How will I go and face my father now?
How will I return home?

There’s a stain on my scarf,
How can I hide it?
There’s a stain on my scarf,
How can I hide it?"

Of course, the above concepts are nirguni. For a starting point refer to the wikipedia article on Pratibimbavada about the concept of illusion. Here’s an interesting Kannada dasavani that offers a different aspect of this philosophical quest.

"ಮಾಯಪಾಶದ ಬಲೆಗೊಳು ಸಿಕ್ಕಿ ತೊಳಲುವ
ಕಾಯ ಪಂಚೇದ್ರಿಯದ ಗತಿ ನಿನ್ನದು

(This body, caught in the net of illusion,
And the five sense organs—all are Yours)

(I’ve written about the Jewish concept of Ein Sof before. in my old blog on the naked gay Persian Jewish mystic Sarmad who has a dargah in Delhi. Quote from it:

Kamenetz narrates a wonderful story of an Armenian Jewish naked sufi saint called Sarmad who collaborated with Dara Shikoh to write the Jewish chapter of his interfaith book. Sarmad was deeply in love with a Hindu (male) called Abhi Chand and when the authorities forced them to part, Sarmad shed all his clothes and lived naked from then on. Some believe that he converted to Islam while others believe that he did not [1]. After Aurangzeb murdered his brother, he began rounding up his associates and sure enough, Sarmad was one of them. He was called before Aurangzeb and asked to recite the shahadah (la ilaha illa-lahu - There is no God, but God) and Sarmad recited the first half (There is no God). When Aurangzeb asked him to continue, Sarmad said, "Forgive me, but I am so caught up in the negative, that I cant not yet come up to the positive.I cannot tell a lie." Of course, he was invoking the kabbalistic conception of God, Ain Sof. He was beheaded. Later, the Jama Masjid coopted him after Aurangzeb's contemporaries embellished the story with incredible stories about Sarmad's severed head narrating the remaining part of the shahadah.

There are oceans to learn and entire universes to discover in the field of culture. So tragic that I have but one life to even sample a drop.

I’m always fascinated by the classic American dream stories of innovation. My favorite one is of Almon Stronger. Strowger was an undertaker who kept losing his business to a rival in his town. (i.e. relatives of dead people were finding alternatives.). A digression to explain old technology for the younger generation here. During the late 1800s - and you must have seen this in black and white movies - a person who wanted to speak to anyone on the telephone had to dial a number (say 0), talk to the operator and ask her (usually a woman) to connect to the person. The operator had a directory and a switchboard which she used to physically link a cable to the right contact to enable the connection.

Before the days of the telephone directory, relatives of dead persons would call the operator and ask them to connect them to an undertaker. In Strowger’s case, it is believed that the operator was the wife of a rival undertaker and she always connected the potential clients to her husband.

So, what did Strowger, a Civil War veteran and undertaker do? He invented the automatic telephone exchange which through a series of innovations is still the concept that we used until recently!

This is a 1982 documentary on the topic.

I’ve believed that rationality, cultural openness to new ideas, and contrarianism were foundational to innovation. Ergo, it follows that Indian innovation ceased or at least slowed down, when Indian cultural belief systems that forced the pursuit of inquiry were replaced by a combination of defensiveness and submission due to Arabic/Mughal/British colonialism.

Not that I agree with every one of Max Weber’s classic thesis, but I do think that a system that incentivizes creativity and commerce is far more open to innovation than ones that oppress it.

As America retreats from Protestant Capitalism and focuses on the worshipping of mammon, it remains to be seen how optimistic we can be about its capability to inquire and innovate.

I am less optimistic about China due to Mao’s lasting influence. A society unmoored from spirituality coupled with submission to authoritarianism cannot sustain its innovative capabilities. Human beings cannot be ‘bi-polar’ if a large aspect of their questioning self is suppressed.

In that respect, I have no idea how India will fare, since the foreign concepts of fate, destiny, sin, salvation etc are so entrenched in Indian minds. It will take a Protestant like reformation of Hinduism to revert back to the first principles. Many attempts have been made, but Vox Populi Vox Dei.

The Pakistani army leadership has never behaved rationally

• Rational strategists would never have launched a series of misadventures in the manner that successive Pakistani generals have launched since the time of the nation’s founding.

• Pahalgam was a miscalculation, encouraged largely by India behaving rationally by launching very limited incursions and refraining from launching outright hostilies in the wake of successive terrorist acts such as Mumbai 2008, Uri, Pathankot, Phulwama and so on. Their leadership did not anticipate that the Indian government had no choice but to counter it in full measure by aiming at the terrorist apparatus.

Kashmir’s financial and cultural integration into India is a threat to Pakistan’s existence

• More than 2 million tourists visited Kashmir last year bringing in $2 - $2.5 billion1 in revenue, thus contributing to about 7% of the state’s GDP.

• The Indian government’s budget for Kashmir in fiscal 2025-26 is approximately $4.8 billion2. Pakistan’s entire budget during the same period is $67 billion, out of which $6.3 billion is allocated to states (see image below)3.

• Kashmiri youth have been traveling to various parts of India for employment as well as for education

• Pakistan occupied Kashmir has violent unrest over economic development4. “There’s a strong sense of anger and frustration among the Kashmiri youth, driven by political disappointment, high inflation and severe unemployment,” Mr. Naqvi said”

• The imminent launch of the Vande Bharat express (delayed prior to Pahalgam) was a source of pride for the region. See video below. There are scores of vlogs on the modernization of the railway infrastructure on youtube.

• The success of Kashmir (Indian side of LOC) is a contrast to the narrative of ‘Azad Kashmir’ on the other side of the line of control and therefore, an existential threat to Pakistan. (Not even considering the extremely violent unrest in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakthunkhwa which has caused Pakistan to use massive force, including heavy machine guns and helicopter gunships.)

Pakistan moved up the escalation ladder quickly

It was interesting to observe the rapid move up the escalation ladder by Pakistan’s leaders. See Kahn’s 16-step and 44-step escalation ladder5. Again, their disproportionate wide responses to India’s directed at terrorist targets escalated hostilities to more dangerous levels. Note that India has called their nuclear bluff and likely will do so in future.

Pakistani narratives dominate US media

I was surprised by the number of Pakistani-origin journalists in mainstream US publications and their spreading of Pakistani narratives instead of focussing on neutral reporting. While I don’t find the NY Times and Washington Post credible to begin with when it comes to policy related reporting on other countries, the outright hostile reporting surprised me.

Washington Post

The New York Times

Salman Masood of the NY Times has been biased for years now. His twitter account has spread disinformation in the past and continues to do so. Here’s the latest example.

The Hindu-loathing of the left continues

As always, the Indian left continued to maintain its Hindu-phobic/loathing visage throughout the crisis. Consider an article titled ‘The Symbolism Behind India’s ‘Operation Sindoor6’’ in the New York Times by Pragati K.B and Anupreeta Das which repeats classic tropes.

“Operation Sindoor” also signals to right-wing Hindu groups — many of which favor more traditionally defined gender roles — that the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is listening to their demands for vengeance.

and

But some feminists have criticized the use of the word sindoor.

Hindu nationalism is predominantly driven by a male view of the world, said V. Geetha, a feminist historian who writes about gender, caste and class. “Women figure in it as objects to be protected or as mother figures goading their men to prove their heroism,” Ms. Geetha said.

This is surely a kind of sickness to discover Hindu-phobic narratives in everything. Outside of the narrow confines of the portals inhabited by these Khan market types, lies the real world. Here’s the reaction of the widow of one of the victims of the Pahalgam massacre on finding out the name of the operation.

Another example, this lazy analysis by Sushant Singh in Foreign Affairs7 bear little relation to current reality in Kashmir.

Today, however, the conditions are not as conducive to de-escalation. The situation in Kashmir is more volatile than before. India’s hard-line policies under Modi and the imposition of direct central rule on Kashmir have fueled deep alienation in the Muslim-majority region.

This is frankly not true. The state has had successful elections most recently and as mentioned above, is benefiting from the abrogation of Article 370.

China re-engineers everything!

Manufacturing deals with China puts national security at risk. Cooperation between Israel and China likely resulted in the development of its J-10 fighter.

However, in 2008, Jane’s reported that in extended interviews with several visiting Russian engineers that Chengdu “benefited from significant, direct input from Israel’s Lavi programme – including access to the Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) Lavi aircraft itself . . . This has included extensive design and performance modeling, wind-tunnel testing and advanced aerodynamic design input . . . Jane’s was told how Chengdu officials of the highest level stated how they had one of the IAI Lavi prototypes in their facilities.”8

China has also purchased S-300 from Russia and likely sought inspiration for its HQ-9 from it. India procured the S-400 from Russia.

Pakistani education needs to be overhauled.

Zia’s Islamization policy culminated in a mockery of real history. It has caused an entire generation of misinformed citizenry whose hatred of India beggars belief. For more information, read the book ‘The murder of history’ by K. K. Aziz which, despite its errors offers a good insight into the indoctrination of Pakistani minds. (Amazon link, Internet Archive link.). Quick summary in this podcast.

Social media and technology have radically changed war coverage

It was great to use http://www.flightradar24.com and https://www.vesselfinder.com to track airborne and maritime traffic. TikTok and Instagram has led to citizen journalism, most of them bad, but some good (e.g. raw footage).

Lastly, the videos of AITelly were instructive, though caveat emptor to account for the fog of war.

More to come as developments take place and more information is released.

When I was a child, I knew lunch or dinner was ready when the fragrance of asafetida (hing) filled my house. My mother used to temper the huLi (sambar) and saaru (rasam with dal) with ghee & mustard with a small fragment of hing cut from a small-rock hard piece.

Indians are the largest consumer of asafetida (hing) in the world and yet, most Indians younger than Gen X have only had rare tastings of the genuine product. India imports over $100 million of the pungent spice from Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, India got a trickle of the product from these countries. Manufacturers adulterated the product with besan to add volume. Recently, India has planted hing plants in the high Himalayas and it is hoped that the yield might being the era of making India less reliant on other countries.

Many countries have trade deficits. Richer nations often buy raw material or cheap goods from poorer countries. The latter cannot afford to buy luxury goods from the former. Consider Madagascar, the largest and quite possibly the only grower of vanilla in the world.1

The country also exports textiles. President Trump slammed Madagascar with a 47% tariff. This will make them lose tens of thousands of jobs and already make the low-income country poorer due to diminished exports.

Policy makers focussing on trade deficits are wrong. Economists are bewildered by the fixation on them by Trump and his advisers, since the trade deficit is around 3% of the GDP even through the $1.3 trillion number seems scary.

There was and is no plan, or method in the rollouts of the tariffs.

As a believer in free, but fair trade, I would, in fact, love to have all barriers of trade come down. I would also love the see a world with little or no currency manipulation by China, disregard for intellectual property & IP theft, However, these could be dealt with via negotiations with China and incentives for US manufacturers via the WTO framework.

The smartest analysis of the current imbroglio was articulated by the current Singaporean Prime Minister Mr. Lawrence Wong. He was likely bewildered because Singapore imports more from the US than it exports.

There is fear and loathing of China in the United States. We are underestimating China and are being hostile to it at our own peril.

Singapore’s brilliant Public Policy Professor, former Ambassador to the UN, former head of the UN Security Council, Mr. Kishore Mahbubani argued that the US should partner with China. China, for example, did almost a trillion dollars worth of trade with ASEAN in 2024 (US $962.98 billion), and the USA does half of that amount (US $476 billion). ASEAN and Asia with large populations, growing markets and a burgeoning middle class should be the area of focus for the US. (You can download his book ‘The Asian 21st century’ for free at his publishers website)

Mr. Mahbubani also unpacks the strategic mistakes made by the US in recent times.

In his memoir ‘Living the Asian Century’, he writes that when he was a diplomat, he would try to avoid Chinese diplomats during the ‘70s and early ‘80s, since they used to brandish Mao’s red book and were rather humorless and unsophisticated. However, he considers them to be some of the most sophisticated diplomats in current times. Contrast this with the United States. They had some of the most sophisticated diplomats until the ‘80s. During the late ‘80s and thereafter, prestigious ambassadorships went to wealthy political donors rather than career diplomats. As a consequence, many foreign service diplomats have left the Dept of State since they see a cap to their growth. The ones who remain are demoralized due to shrinking budgets and limited growth opportunities.

Remarkably, the Chinese system might be more ruthlessly meritocratic.

Here he is elaborating on this topic.

Which ultimately brings us to his four year old question; Has China won? It is increasingly looking like it is going to do so, if it hasn’t won already.

I hope for the sake of my children’s future, the United States, ASEAN and India can partner and course-correct. There is still a narrow sliver of time left before these countries are left behind.

The future of the world depends on whether rational players inhabit the White House. From my current vantage point, the chances of that happening looks bleak.

When first generation migrants to the West converse in the English language, they tend to code-switch according to whom they are engaging with. For example, a recent migrant to the US might take on a regional American accent while interacting with other Americans, but might switch to the accent of their mother country when speaking with their fellow natives. There are many academic papers written on this topic which, discuss both the perils & pitfalls, as well as the benefits of this code-switching.

Here are Christiana and Chimamanda code-switching in Nigerian English, as well as upper class English from England, and American. Trevor does this too, but you can only get a hint now and then.

This is one heck of a conversation and I beg you to make time to listen to it, as well as his previous conversation with Oscar winning actress Lupita Nyogo’o (a Kenyan-American). Note that all these Africans are upper-class/privileged, so they possess a clipped accent that many of us who grew up in India are familiar with. (The podcasts are also available in the usual outlets such as iTunes, etc)

Code-switching has a long history in India. In the Hindu epic Ramayana, Lord Hanuman, who has entered Lanka, on behalf of his king Lord Rama, is in search of the abducted Queen/Goddess Sita. When he finally finds her in a grove, he hears the women/demons of the palace teasing her, harassing her and pleading with her to be the consort of Ravana, the king who has abducted her.

However, Hanuman realizes that Sita does not know him and if he approaches her, she might be suspicious of him. Ravana is a learned brahmin and speaks upper-class Sanskrit. So do the ladies of his palace who are teasing Goddess Sita. What does one do? Here are the passages from Valmiki’s Ramayana that explains what happens next from the Gita Press1. (Also from the IIT-K website)2

अन्तरं त्वहमासाद्य राक्षसीनामिह स्थितः।
शनैराश्वासयिष्यामि सन्तापबहुळामिमाम्।।5.30.16।।

Therefore, snatching some suitable opportunity when the ogresses are inattentive, even though stationed in the midst of the ogresses, I shall this very day slowly console S∂tå, who is full of agony.

अहं त्वतितनुश्चैव वानरश्च विशेषतः।
वाचं चोदाहरिष्यामि मानुषीमिह संस्कृताम्।।5.30.17।।

I am indeed not only exceedingly small in size but am a monkey to boot. I shall, however, speak on this occasion the Sanskrit language as spoken by humans.

यदि वाचं प्रदास्यामि द्विजातिरिव संस्कृताम्।
रावणं मन्यमाना मां सीता भीता भविष्यति।।5.30.18।।
वानरस्य विशेषेण कथं स्यादभिभाषणम्।

But If I utter the Sanskrit language like a Bråhmana, Sitå will get frightened thinking me to be Råvana.

अवश्यमेव वक्तव्यं मानुषं वाक्यमर्थवत्।।5.30.19।।
मया सान्त्वयितुं शक्या नान्यथेयमनिन्दिता।

“The human language alone as spoken near about Ayodhyå, which will convey my meaning to her, needs must be used by me. This irreproachable lady cannot otherwise be restored to confidence.”

//and so on… until…//

असत्यानि च युद्धानि संशयो मे न रोचते।।5.30.35।।
कश्च निस्संशयं कार्यं कुर्यात्प्राज्ञः ससंशयम्।

Conflicts are always dubious and uncertainty does not find favour with me. And what wise man would embark on a dubious undertaking without demur?

प्राणत्यागश्च वैदेह्या भवेदनभिभाषणे।।5.30.36।।
एष दोषो महान्हि स्यान्मम सीताभिभाषणे।

Indeed this will constitute a great error on my part if I openly talk with Sitå. And the death by her own self of Sitå, a princess of the Videha territory, will follow if I do not talk to her.

भूताश्चार्था विनश्यन्ति देशकालविरोधिताः।।5.30.37।।
विक्लबं दूतमासाद्य तमः सूर्योदये यथा।

Even as darkness disappears at sunrise, objects which are all but accomplished are completely lost at the hands of a timid or thoughtless messenger when they are set in opposition to time and place.

अर्थानर्थान्तरे बुद्धिनिश्चितापि न शोभते।।5.30.38।।
घातयन्ति हि कार्याणि दूताः पण्डितमानिनः।

Even a decision duly arrived at by a ruler in consultation with his ministers regarding what should be done and what should be refrained from, does not yield good results when implemented by a thoughtless messenger. Indeed messengers fancying themselves clever but really not so, bring to nought all undertakings on such occasions.

न विनश्येत्कथं कार्यं वैक्लब्यं न कथं भवेत्।।5.30.39।।
लङ्घनं च समुद्रस्य कथं नु न वृथा भवेत्।

How should I act to ensure that the purpose may not be frustrated? How should I guard against thoughtlessness? And how, I wonder, should I ensure that my leaping across the sea does not go in vain?

कथं नु खलु वाक्यं मे शृणुयान्नोद्विजेत वा।
इति सञ्चिन्त्य हनुमांश्चकार मतिमान्मतिम्।।5.30.40।।

How indeed should I ensure that Sitå listens to my speech and does not get perturbed?íPondering thus, the wise Hanumån made the following resolve:

राममक्लिष्टकर्माणं सुबन्धुमनुकीर्तयन्।।5.30.41।।
नैनामुद्वेजयिष्यामि तद्बन्धुगतमानसाम्।

Singing the praises of her praiseworthy spouse, Råma of unwearied action, I shall take care not to frighten her, her mind being absorbed in her aforesaid lord.

इक्ष्वाकूणां वरिष्ठस्य रामस्य विदितात्मनः।।5.30.42।।
शुभानि धर्मयुक्तानि वचनानि समर्पयन्।
श्रावयिष्यामि सर्वाणि मधुरां प्रब्रुवन् गिरम्।।5.30.43।।
श्रद्धास्यति यथाहीयं तथा सर्वं समादधे।

Delivering to her the beautiful message, conformable to righteousness, of Råma, the foremost of the Iskwåkus and a knower of the Self, I shall convey it fully, uttering sweet words, and shall make everything so intelligible that Sitå will give credence to it.

—

and then code-switching to the language spoken by the common people of Ayodhya, Hanuman, sitting atop a Simshapa tree, began narrating the story of Rama.

—

Code-swiching all right!

However, the lessons offered by Hanuman are a more instructive exposition on how to behave as a messenger and approach conversations in a thoughtful manner. In fact, as the scholar Dr. Bannanje Govindacharya explains, Hanuman expresses his message through art (intonation & tone which, in fact is music).

But there is even more. Hanuman’s conversation with Sita is a textbook example of offering the four types of support described by academics.3

• Emotional Support:

  This involves expressing empathy, love, trust, and care, often through listening and understanding.

• Instrumental Support:

  This type of support involves providing tangible aid and resources, such as helping someone with a task or offering financial assistance.

• Informational Support:

  This focuses on providing knowledge, advice, and guidance to help someone navigate a situation or make decisions.

• Appraisal Support:

  This involves offering encouragement, feedback, or validation to help someone feel confident and valued

He offers comforting words, an object (ring), information about Rama, and helps Sita get over her despair.

The role of messenger is very important in Hinduism. Even in the Mahabharata, emissaries play a vital role. Their ability to lower the temperature, offer comfort, provide a pathway towards negotiation, and focus on unity.

In fact, in the Yuddhakanda chapter, Sita compliments Lord Hanuman on being endowed with many qualities:

श्लाघनीयोऽनिलस्यत्वंसुतःपरमधार्मिकः ।।6.113.27।।
बलंशौर्यंश्रुतंसत्त्वंविक्रमोदाक्ष्यमुत्तमम् ।
तेजःक्षमाधृतिस्स्थैर्यंविनीतत्वं न संशयः ।।6.113.28।।
एतेचान्ये च बहवोगुणास्त्वय्येवशोभनाः ।

You are a praiseworthy and supremely pious son of the wind-god. Nay, physical strength, valour, knowledge of scriptures, vigour, prowess, superlative skill in action, spirit, forbearance, firmness, stability and humility: these and numerous other brilliant qualities exist in you alone.

[ परमधार्मिकः very righteous, बलम् strength, शौर्यम् valour, श्रुतम् vigour, सत्त्वम् prowess, विक्रमः skill, उत्तमम् excellent, तेजः energy, क्षमा tolerance, धृतिः forbearance, स्थैर्यम् firmness, विनीतत्वम् humility, ]

Circling back to the start of this post, I realize that Trevor, Christiana and Chimamanda are such ambassadors to their respective cultures. In talking about Africa and their experiences as immigrants to the United States, they possess an insider-outsider view of the culture and the code-switching allows them to develop intimacy with a broader set of people. They are skilled, possess immense fortitude and tolerance.

But those qualities comes only, when you pause, contemplate, and then prepare, as Hanuman did, and therefore, be successful in your mission.

If you’re interested in a philosophical explanation of Sundarakanda by the great Sanskrit scholar Dr. Bannanje Govindacharya in Kannada, please listen here.

Listen to Trevor Noah’s conversation with Lupita Nyong’o. It is riveting as well.