I am sitting at the same corner seat at Starbucks in Bengaluru airport, as I always do. The only difference is that this time around I’ve ordered a Java chip coffee. Bad decision.

With time I’ve realised how much of a creature of habit I am. One of my flatmates observed this about me recently. That I have a set menu whenever I go out, and that I go out to the same places.

For the past four days when I was in luru’, I ordered breakfast from the same place I always do - Bengaluru cafe, ate biryani from the same place I always do - Meghna Biryani, went to have dinner at the same place I always do - Arbor’s/ Dolphins (unfortunately not Bob’s/ Salt mango tree this time around).

A friend asked me a few hours ago to think of what I’d like to do in Bengaluru next time. It has to be something outside of my comfort zone.

And I’m drawing a blank.

Not because everything is in my comfort zone, but I am so comfortable in my comfort zone, what else could I even be doing!

A few friends and I were having a long conversation (at Arbor’s) about professional life, coping with personal goals, and excelling at work. And one of the things most of us said in unison was - “Only if I could get over my fear of embarrassment!”

The fear of failure and embarrassment is holding back so much of my life/ hindering me from unlocking so many experiences. I even know that I will regret not doing more and shedding this un-necessary feeling while on my death bed. And I still can’t get myself to get out of this hole.

My short answer is that it’s all linked to self image. The day you fix your self image. You start to tell yourself that it is okay to receive non optimal outcomes. Because your life and image isn’t based on a few failures (however you define them). But I suppose if self image and validation is scarce, there is only so much negative feedback you can handle. You want to preserve the little self confidence you have.

Self image is such a funny thing. It rules your entire life. With you or without you knowing. Every insecurity you have stems from this. Every insecurity you have in turn dictates how you behave. Your self confidence comes from your self image. The way you treat others stems from your self image. It was very later in life when I realised this fact. I wish I knew it sooner. But more than that I wish that I could fix it in my childhood.

As anyone of you who has been to therapy would know - all your issues start from your childhood. I wish I could tell 14 year old Divyanshu that it is okay to get 86 marks out of 90 in the maths test and not to score full marks. I wish I could tell 12 year old Divyanshu that your physical appearance is not all that you are. I wish I could tell 17 year old Divyanshu that your self worth isn’t contingent on making it to the NDA.

I wish all of this because here I am. 27. And having to build my self image from the ground up. In therapy speak, this is called ‘Self Parenting’. It sucks by the way.

I asked my friends (at Arbor’s) what’s one emotions that you want to maximise in your life. The answers were (loosely) contentment, curiosity, sense of awe, playfulness, sense of figuring it out. All great answers. My answer was contentment. I wrote in an earlier piece about how I am increasingly failing to distinguish between my desire to have a stable life from my inability to get myself out of my comfort zone and try risky things.

50 year olds chase contentment.

I suppose I am 50 indeed.

Okay - I am getting late for my flight. Until next time, so long.

Introduction

Some innovations rupture spacetime. They force us to look at the world in a binary; a world “pre” and “post” the innovation. Some argue that the invention of the wheel was “the” innovation, others argue it was the steam engine. The internet comes close as a modern equivalent. And now, in an almost unanimous voice, people have crowned Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the single most important innovation by humanity.

Since November 2022, when OpenAI released its first Generative AI (GenAI) model ChatGPT to the world - there have been fervent calls to regulate AI, in all its shapes and forms. The fundamental fear underlying all calls for regulation is that we’re dealing with a technology whose implications we don’t yet fully understand. The reasons to regulate AI range from existential threats, to discrimination concerns and unintended economic consequences.

It is widely accepted that regulating emerging technologies is a race against time, given that they change the playing field way quicker than many governments can call for a meeting to discuss the issue itself. This fear around regulating AI has also arrived at the gates of competition law.

Increasingly, both competition authorities and stakeholders are calling for further and increased competition law enforcement around emerging AI technologies. This is evidenced by the fact that in the last few years, there have been at least 10+ research papers/ market studies/ guidance papers released by competition authorities worldwide.1 Various heads of competition authorities globally have endorsed the need to regulate AI technologies due to “novel competition harms”.2 A rapid consensus has emerged around the need for specialised competition regulation of AI.

But it is without much basis.

I structure my argument around three points: (i) the underlying technology behind AI in itself, does not present any ‘novel’ competition harms, (ii) all competition harms that may occur are linked to the nature of the AI industry and the market dynamics only, and (iii) the present toolkit of competition regulation is sufficiently equipped to address any competition law harms posed by AI.

Argument 1: The underlying technology behind AI in itself, does not present any ‘novel’ competition harms

AI is an unprecedented technology. But it is not novel in terms of the competition issues that it brings up. The central question that we must ask ourselves is, “Does the underlying technology behind AI go against our established assumptions and principles of competition law enforcement?”. I argue that the answer is no.

Let’s look at history to give us some guidance. The last time we had to rethink the foundational principles of competition law enforcement was due the rise of “digital markets”. And there were cogent reasons for us to do so. Digital markets belied the very core of how we understood competition economics and enforcement. Digital markets introduced the concepts of zero price, platform economics, network effects, ecosystem effects etc.3 These were new economic concepts that necessitated a renewed understanding of how competition harm occurs in digital markets. This led to enactment of specialised legislations such as the Digital Markets Act in Europe; Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, in UK; and introduction of the Digital Competition Bill in India.

From the training data to software systems used to train foundational models, to the semiconductor chips which power these foundational models, to wrapper on top of these foundational models, and deployment of Gen AI models - there is arguably nothing new in how competition occurs at each layer of the AI stack. To me, it all boils down to a two-fold test to understand whether any emerging technology requires a novel approach to competition regulation:

My responses to these two questions are: (i) there is insufficient evidence to suggest that use of AI is more likely to lead to competition harm than status quo, and (ii) all alleged competition harms arising out of use of AI can be mapped onto well-stablished theories of harm.

Argument 2: All potential competition harms arising out of AI technologies are rooted in the nature of the industry, and not of the technology itself.

Even though stakeholders have flagged multiple potential competition harms arising out of the AI industry4, they all boil down to two major conclusions. First, the AI industry, in each layer of the value chain, has high entry barriers, and second, GenAI models (or other deployment forms) are likely to lead to collusive outcomes.

Architecture of barrier to entry concerns.

The principle claim here is that only certain “big” technology players have the pre-existing capabilities to enter into, and operate in the AI stack across layers of (i) data, (ii) compute architecture, (iii) training software, (iv) foundational models, and (iii) AI applications. Therefore, potential market players have a “barrier to entry” to enter into any of the markets in the AI stack. This barrier of entry can either be structural i.e. lack of access to another asset or technology (such as data, or compute architecture), or monetary i.e. lack of access to capital needed to build a new technology or ecosystem from the ground up.

We must be careful to note that having entry barriers, is not in itself a competition harm. At best, it is a structural issue that is likely to give rise to other competition harms such as exclusionary or exploitative conduct. Certain industries have natural high barriers to entry. Examples include (i) oil and gas, (ii) semiconductors, (iii) telecommunications, (iv) pharmaceuticals etc. The entry barriers in the AI industry are not due to any anti-competitive conduct of the existing players, but due to the natural demand and supply conditions of this industry and the two ought not to be confused. At best this may call for more vigilance from competition authorities, and not merit a rethink of how we apply well established competition law principles to this market.

Architecture of collusion claims.

The principal claim here seems to be that, AI technologies - whether in the form of a platform, or agents, or software etc., are (i) predisposed to collusion due to operating autonomously or with little supervision, and (ii) make it incrementally difficult to pin liability for competition harms due to lack of human involvement.

I argue that not only is there insufficient evidence to prove that use of AI in itself is likely to lead to collusive outcomes - but that most proponents of regulation confuse the efficiency with which AI can achieve collusive outcomes (if engineered that way) with the fact that it inherently is more likely to collusive outcomes.

On the question of establishing “meeting of minds” and liability when AI algorithms collude - I argue that a question of “who to blame for when and if AI algorithms collude?”, is a very distinct question from “are AI algorithms more likely to collude than their machine learning predecessors?” Even if we concede that use of AI makes it more difficult to pin liability - the answer lies in how we understand liability, and not in whether we need new competition regulation tools to regulate AI.5

Argument 3: The present toolkit of competition regulation is sufficient to regulate any potential competition harms related to Artificial Intelligence.

In previous paragraphs I’ve argued that the two major areas where most of the alleged competition harms arise in the context of the AI industry are: (i) barriers to entry, and (ii) algorithmic collusion. Neither of these theories of harm/ market conditions are either new, or present novel questions. I therefore argue that the existing competition enforcement toolkit is sufficient to address any potential competition harms arising out of the AI industry.

As argued above, the high entry barrier in the AI industry is a market condition which at best may require a closer scrutiny and nothing more. A semiconductor giant increasing the prices of its chips by 200% is a classic exploitative conduct. A messaging platform giant banning use of competing AI agent from its messaging platform in favour of its own AI agent is a classic self-preferencing/ refusal to deal conduct. A search engine giant refusing its competitors in the foundational model market access to its search result to train their GenAI models is a classic refusal to deal/ exclusionary conduct. Therefore, no competition harm that may arise due to the high entry barriers in the AI industry require us rethink competition regulation.

As far as algorithmic collusion concerns are concerned - these concerns rest on the argument that “because AI is superior to machine learning models, it can collude with other AI models in a better and more sophisticated manner and thus requires specialised regulation”. For this claim to succeed, it will have to satisfy either one of the two-fold test proposed earlier - which I’ve argued earlier that it does not.

Conclusion.

The movement to regulate AI technologies has its roots in fear, rather than logic; and that claims of regulation must not be thrown around lightly. Regulation has costs. And regulation which is not based on evidence, or cogent arguments, is likely to be exorbitantly costly - to the industry, and most importantly to the consumers.

Author’s Note: If you feel that this piece does not explore deeply a few of the arguments I’ve made above - you and I would be on the same page. In the coming weeks and months I will follow this piece with more extensive pieces which go deeper into each of the arguments. Till then, see you!

P.S.: All views are personal.

To fill in the immense intellectual vortex caused by this mis-step, I am happy to present to you; the invaluable rambling of my mind, once again.

Sit back and relax (kidding, when have any of my posts been relaxing to read)

All experiences are not equal

One of the most grounding things somebody passed on to me is that the value of an experience is not in whether it is good or bad; it is that it occurred and now you’re better off having gone through it.

It works great because you stop judging experiences as good or bad, and stop regretting your decisions.

For example, you date someone. You date them for a year. It doesn’t work out. After the breakup, you are likely to criticise yourself. You’ll probably regret your decision to date them in the first place.

But this is all a waste of time and emotions. Even if it was a bad relationship - having gone through it, you are more aware of yourself and your style of relationship. This is useful information that you couldn’t have gathered elsewhere.

No experience is good or bad. It is just an experience. And all experiences are useful.

I’ve begun to dispute this.

First, is it really necessary to go through a minimum amount of bad experiences to develop good judgment? Is there no alternate way where you learn more about yourself, without having to screw up your life? I am not convinced that we must go through the archetypical heartbreaks of various kinds to develop “character”. I’ve seen numerous people go through the worst experiences and yet still find themselves in another version of the same old problem, so I don’t know who are these wonderful individuals who develop judgement from bad experiences. And I’ve also seen people who thankfully haven’t been screwed in life and still have a sound way of life.

Second, I think all this narrative of the necessity to go through bad experiences in life is our desperate attempt to justify the banality of life. Life doesn’t make sense. At all. The most pure people will go through the most evil experiences. The worst people we know will somehow have a good life. There is really no way to justify most of life. We, poor humans develop heuristics to make things simpler for us. But, sometimes, these heuristics are more about alleviating the existential symptoms of life than answering the pertinent questions. I think this narrative is one of them.

So what now?

I’m still figuring that out and will report to you once I develop a better ideology!

I am 27.

I am 27. And honestly that’s about it. No grand revelations were achieved. 27 is a decent age. As one of my friends asked me, “How does it feel to be properly in late twenties?” I quipped that I am not yet running marathons so still consider myself young.

Having said that, having turned 27, I would like to prioritise the same trifecta: health, career, relationships. In whatever ways I can. I’m experimenting with some systems of life, and will report back if something sticks and helps.

Potentially the only difference between Divyanshu at 27 and younger Divyanshu is that I commit the same mistakes, just better than last time. There is still a wide gap between realising something and implementing that into practice. Perhaps the years ahead are meant to close that gap. I (hopefully) have a bunch of years more left to live. There are things to look forward to. (wink wink)

The only thing I’d like to point out about this birthday would be that it made me realise (even more prominently) how important friendships are to me. Seeing so many kind people wish me birthday and even going to the extent of sending me gifts made me very grateful. I am grateful to have such wonderful friends around me. If you’re reading this, you know who you are. Thank you for your service.

Aaj Kuch toofani karte hain

One of the most common themes in my conversation with my sister is the fact that both of us get irritated with the monotony of life. We need to do something bhhannat1 from time to time.

I’ve previously written about how the upper middle class corporate lifestyle puts you in a quiet lull which is very hard to get out of (see here, here and here). I’ve been experiencing the symptoms for three years now.

As a measure to do something bhhannat - I’m trying to figure out how to hold a young professional informal convention at home. The idea is to get people under 35 from law, economics, and policy who would like to discuss/ present their work. The “work” can be some project they’re doing professionally, or some academic paper that they’re developing. I’d like to encourage people to present their work for either pure discussion, or even feedback.

The idea is to get young people together and create new surface areas of serendipity. Of course, the selection of law, policy and economics is purely because of my own profession and interests. And of course, the main motivation is selfish. I would like to meet new people and learn more things. Anything else that comes out of it, is bonus!

If you fit the description, and would like to participate in something like this - hit me up with some suggestions! I’d really like to make this work and would appreciate any help along the way :)

Miscellaneous reading

To cover up the intellectual negative aura the preceding paragraphs have created, below is a list of content that I consumed recently and really enjoyed.

1. Why UK’s political future rest(ed) on one small constituency: Makerfield

2. An Indian strategy for AI

3. Antitrust and market concentation

4. Rahul Ahluwalia in conversation with Amit varma (you can listen my episode with Rahul here)

5. Why are you reading fewer books?

6. Supreme Court of the United State’s decision in Trump v Slaughter

7. Ashish Kulkarni on learning camps, education and much more

8. Nithin Kamath on how Zerodha didn’t just become a nice place to work

9. Zack Shapiro: The Two Clocks

10. The Ken’s long form podcast on Airtel (yet to listen, but self recommending)

11. I owe the libertarians an apology

As I said above - I’m trying to meet new people in the city. I live in Delhi. So if you have some time to kill and would want to grab a cup of coffee - reach out to me! I’m on divyanshu3504@gmail.com

Also, I am currently accepting suggestions for guests on my podcast. If you think I should speak to somebody who you think is an interesting thinker - reach out :)

So long. Cheers!

This is a story about the law that protects us; the consumers, from the excesses of corporations.

This is a story about Antitrust law, or sometimes known as Competition law.

In this post we will explore the why behind antitrust law - tracing the early history of the law, the socio-political circumstances that gave birth to it, and why it matters to all of us. For this post, we will exclusively focus how this Antitrust Law has evolved over the years in its birthplace1, the United States of America.

Note: These writings are my own and do not reflect my employer’s opinions.

We, The Consumers

I want you to do a little exercise. From the moment you wake up - make a note of all the products or services you use.

Most of us will wake up after having slept on a mattress, wear slippers, make our way into the loo and do our business. We will then wash our hands in a wash basin, go on to brush our teeth using toothbrush and toothpaste. We will then turn the shower tap on, use a body wash and loofah (hands > loofah), and dry ourselves with a towel. Then you’ll dress yourselves in some variation of formal clothes and book a cab/ drive a car to office.

To do any of these events mentioned above, we need products and services.

A toothbrush, body-wash, towel are all products; whereas an Uber cab is a service.

All the products and services mentioned above are manufactured and sold by corporate entities called ‘Companies’ - a legal innovation so revolutionary that without it, we wouldn’t have had almost any modern amenities around us.2

We, the consumers buy the products and services offered by these companies for a monetary price (for the most part). And we buy these products and services because well… we need them to live.

For example, most of us need a mattress for our beds.

Imagine now, if a really popular mattress company (Company A) with a high market share3 one day decides to raise the price of its products by 500%. Two things can follow. One, people may stop buying Company A’s products because it has become unaffordable. For these people, Company A rising its pricing is the same as Company A exiting the market - because in both cases, Company A is not a real option for them. As a result of the price increase, these people have reduced choices. Second, the ultra loyal customers of Company A will purchase the mattresses regardless - albeit with much reluctance. These people will now have to pay much more than can be commercially justified.

But remember - I said that this mattress company is very popular in India (i.e. has high market shares). Let’s assume that this mattress company has 70% market share in the “market for mattresses in India” i.e. for every 10 mattresses manufactured and sold in India, 7 are manufactured and sold by this company.

For the first set of people above, this means that they don’t actually have a lot of choices left. Not just in terms of the fact that there are not a lot of companies which manufacture mattresses in India, but also in terms of the fact that it is likely that their products are unlikely to be as widely available in the market as Company A’s. So, Company A’s decision to increase their price by 500% results in restriction of options available to the first set of consumers.

For the second set of consumers, even though they still choose to buy the same product, even at a 500% increase - you could argue that they are being exploited by Company A. Forcing customers to pay arbitrary costs just because the CEO woke up with a mood is well…not fair to say the least.

It is important to realise that Company A’s decision to arbitrarily increase it’s prices by 500% is enabled by the fact that they do not face much competition in the market. They know that consumers don’t have many choices. One way or other, they will purchase their mattresses.

Now, this is a tricky situation. If all big companies could price their products in any manner they wished to, and do whatever they’d like to; we, the consumers, would suffer as a result.

But wait a minute. Why don’t companies do this already? What’s stopping them from extracting the last pound from us, the poor consumers? Why hasn’t each company already exploited us in whatever way that they can?

The reason why companies do not engage in any exclusionary, or exploitative conduct which harms consumers is because they are prohibited from doing so by Antitrust Law. And that’s exactly why you should care about it.

It is the bulwark against unfair and unreasonable conduct by companies, not just against consumers, but against other companies in the market. Antitrust law/ Competition law ensures that all companies function within the boundaries of market competitiveness and for the welfare of the consumers. It is a law which ensures living does not become unfeasible, by promoting competition in the market and protecting consumers against unreasonable conduct by big companies.

A Conceptual Wrinkle

Antitrust law has one job. To ensure existence of free markets. When we say ‘free’ markets, we mean that no company should be allowed to compete on, anything, other than merits. So no bailouts, no protectionism, no tariff controls, no preferential treatment by state - nothing. Pure competition guided by the market’s famous invisible hand.4

Some of you who are familiar with the theoretical foundations of free market theory would know that in the most ideal conception of free markets, the markets need to be free of any state intervention - even by way of regulation, wholly relying on the forces of the free market to regulate prices and participating companies’ conduct.

Therefore naturally, many people argue that antitrust law, in its conception is contradictory. The argument is that in an ideal free market, the market, based on supply and demand signals, decides on optimal prices and efficiently allocates the goods and services - and any state intervention (through any law or regulation) is not required, nor desirable.

So then, why do we have antitrust law in the first place? Why can’t we just trust the markets to figure it out? It is so because of two reasons. First, antitrust law is part of the minimal state apparatus that is arguably needed to ensure the existence of the free market in the first place, and second, you need state regulation to fix market failures. A market failure occurs when the free market cannot correct itself and a company, or a group of companies start to, and continue to, compete unfairly, and not on merits.5

Whether states need Antirtust law to ensure competition, and whether market failures occur only where free markets are not perfectly implemented - are parts of an ongoing open debate around the nature of modern markets.

I am not convinced of either sides of the argument. But introduction of these concepts is vital for the journey we are about to undertake now.

Necessity is the Mother of All Inventions

Let’s rewind the clock and place ourselves in the United States of America. Imagine, it is the late 19th century. A lot is happening around. There are rampant technological advancements happening around you - telephone, AC power, light bulbs, X ray etc. It’s a mad scene. Concomitant with these advancements, railroad and telegraph networks are booming , completely transforming the economy.

These innovations enabled companies to manufacture and sell products and services more efficiently, thereby unlocking hitherto unrealised market gains. And what does efficiency lead to? More products and services. The formal term for when a company becomes big and manufactures products/ offers services at a large scale is “economies of scale.” Imagine all the big companies around you - Tata, Adani, Apple, Meta, Google, Maruti Suzuki etc., they all have achieved economies of scale and can operate much more efficiently than your neighbourhood small enterprise.

But back to the late 19th century USA.

Interestingly, the story of Antitrust law starts with one company - Standard Oil. You see, back in the day, Standard Oil controlled roughly 90% of the USA’s oil refining capacity, but through various oil refineries scattered throughout the country.

During those times, the state laws forbade a company based out of one state to own any share stock in a company which was based out in another state. For Rockefeller, the owner of Standard Oil, this presented a ownership, co-ordination and efficiency problem. He had numerous companies (refineries) in multiple states, but each one of them had different governing bodies, different ownership structures, and different obligations as per the specific state law. Rockefeller wanted common control over all his refineries. But that was one thing that money wasn’t able to solve for him.

Until his lawyer, S.C.T. Dodd - came up with a solution.

A Trust.

The concept of a Trust was borrowed from the realm of personal and property laws. It had a simple construct.

• Transfer of voting rights. Shareholders in each of the constituent Standard Oil companies (Standard Oil of Ohio, Standard Oil of New York, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Atlantic Refining, and dozens of others) transferred their shares to a board of nine trustees, headed by Rockefeller.

• Revenue share. In exchange, shareholders received “trust certificates” - a beneficial interest in the income stream of the combined enterprise; rather than direct shares in any single operating company.

• Control vests with the Trustees. The trustees held legal title to a controlling block of stock in every constituent company, and could vote those shares as one bloc to elect directors, set prices, allocate production, and control output across the entire combine.

This construct allowed Rockefeller (and his trustees) to control all the constituent companies (as they now held all the voting shares of all the constituent companies), and also did not flout any state law which prevented one state corporation to hold shares in another state’s corporation. Given that a trust was not a corporation, it could go around the inter-state shareholding prohibition, and was also almost legally invisible to any state regulation. This meant states could not regulate them, could not collect taxes from them, and could not require them to undertake other obligations.

What what did the trustees do with this common control? Price coordination, output setting, optimising across refineries to realise efficiency gains (e.g. running what refinery at what capacity would yield the most profits etc.), negotiation as a single block.6

Following the genius of Standard Oil. Trusts became a staple of every industry. Sugar, Whiskey trust, Lead etc. - all industries consolidated into trusts.

Of course the states were not happy with this workaround. But their current legal apparatus was insufficient to regulate this new legal innovation. But the state never rests.

The states started to use quo warranto suits against these trusts. Quo warranto roughly translates to “by what authority”. States were dragging Trusts to courts arguing that Trusts were operating in a legal vacuum and without any legal basis. The states argued that the trusts were ulta vires the states’ charters which allowed corporations to be only based out of one state and to not coordinate, through control or common voting shares, with any other corporation, in any other state.

And the states won. At least for some time. From 1889 - 1895, the states were able to bust a lot of trusts (i.e. dissolve the trust thereby reverting the corporate structure to how it was before the trust came into being).

But then New Jersey changes the game.

In 1889, New Jersey legalised corporations based in New Jersey to own share stocks in corporations out of the state. And as you’d imagine, the companies leapt to New Jersey. It had basically eliminated the biggest hindrance in corporate consolidation and made it all kosher. Now there could be a “holding company” in New Jersey which could control all other companies across the states, and there was nothing that those other states could do about it.

The States had to do something. So they came up with a new law.

Putting the Trust in Antitrust

In 1890, the federal government passed the first American antitrust legislation, known as the Sherman Act.

And Sherman Act blew it out of the park.

Section 1 made all “contracts, combination in form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among several states, or with foreign nations” illegal.

Section 2 made monopolising, or attempts to monopolise any market as illegal.

This was sweeping. Section 1 made “every restraint of trade” illegal. No qualifications, no exceptions.

Imagine you’re a manufacturer of door hinges and you’re appointing distributors across the country - it is very likely that you’d require your distributors to contractually agree to not selling your competitor’s products. Makes full commercial sense as you’re protecting your commercial interests and ensuring that your competitors don’t free ride off off your distribution network. But it a restraint of trade at the end of the day. And therefore illegal under the Sherman Act.

Houston had a big problem.

Robert Bork, a renowned antitrust lawyer, was bothered by this illogical interpretation of the law. He dived deep into the archives, trying to understand what the legislature meant when they prohibited “every contract in restraint of trade”. In his book, “The Antitrust Paradox”, he came to the conclusion that (i) Congress never meant to outlaw every contract in restraint of trade, (ii) Sherman Act does not protect inefficient companies from being outcompeted by other more efficient companies, and (iii) the central thesis of Sherman Act was to ensure the welfare of the consumers. This standard, came to be later known as the “consumer welfare standard”, which has dictated most of the discourse around Antitrust law.

Bork also notes that Standard Oil has done nothing wrong. It was producing oil at a cheaper price than its competition due to its scale and consolidation, and passing down these cost savings down to the consumers. There was no reason for the government to go after Standard Oil and break it apart.

But Bork was writing this in the 70s. To understand how Bork became such vehement opponent of the state’s antitrust enforcement policy, we need to go right back to the last 19th century and early 20th century.

One of the earliest antitrust decisions passed by the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) was United States v. E. C. Knight Company (more details here). Tl;Dr - SCOTUS held that a sugar trust which controlled 90% of USA’s sugar supply, was not monopolising the sugar market because its conduct i.e. manufacturing of sugar, happened inside a state’s borders, was not covered by the Sherman Act - which applied only to interstate commerce. Mind-bogglingly conservative right? Not really, I would argue. Courts often resort to hyper technical and conservative reading of a new law. SCOTUS was just interpreting a new law it had never laid its eyes on.

But of course, SCOTUS realised that they needed to develop a real antitrust jurisprudence.

For example, in a case pertaining to price fixing by competing railroad infrastructure companies, the SCOTUS came up with the per-se illegality rule for price fixing agreements/ cartels. The per se illegality rule stated that all agreements between competitors for fixing prices were illegal. To me, this is an interesting decision because of two reasons: (i) the court realised that it could not even entertain a notion of a “reasonable cartel price” because that would turn courts into a price fixing regulator, which it was not, and (ii) courts recognised that there can be some legitimate commercial partnerships/ agreements which involve restraints but were not anticompetitive (although the court did not develop a standard for assessing such agreements).

But it was not just SCOTUS which was evolving the antitrust jurisprudence.

The sixth circuit court of appeals in United States v. Addyston Pipe while ruling on the legality of bid rigging7 evolved the Antitrust jurisprudence by differentiating between a “naked restraint” and an “ancillary restraint”. A naked restraint was an agreement which had no other reason but to manipulate the market (by price fixing, bid rigging etc.). An ancillary restraint, on the other hand, was a restraint which was a necessary precondition to achieve a commercially justifiable objective.

But then came the date. The date.

May 15, 1911

SCOTUS delivered decisions in Standard Oil, and American Tobacco. SCOTUS ordered breakup of both these companies. Through these decisions, SCOTUS introduced a concept known as “rule of reason”. Rule of reason was a three part analytical framework to understand whether an agreement was inherently anticompetitive or not. Courts were supposed to look at (i) inherent nature of the practice, (ii) inherent effect of the practice, and (iii) underlying purpose of the practice.

In Standard Oil, SCOTUS held that although the inherent nature and effect of Standard Oil’s consolidation and practices were beneficial to consumers (lower prices, more options etc.), the intent of its actions was to gain a monopoly not through genuine market competition but through multiple exploitative and exclusionary practices.

Bork obliterated the Standard Oil decision to smithereens in his book where he argued that the SCOTUS was wrong in placing the intent of Standard Oil at the centre of its enquiry and not looking at the effect of Standard Oil’s conduct, which admittedly, was pro consumers.

Continuing with his string of disagreements, Bork also did not agree with the SCOTUs’ decision in Dr. Miles, where it held that an agreement between a manufacturer and a distributor by which the manufacturer ensures that the distributor does not sell its products below a certain price (resale price maintenance/ RPM) is per se illegal. The first thing you’ll note about this commercial arrangement is that unlike all commercial arrangements which have been the subject of court’s attention, this one is not between competitors (horizontal agreement) but between different entities in the same supply chain (i.e. a vertical agreement).

In Dr. Miles, SCOTUS held that because the effect of resale price maintenance is the same as of a price fixing cartel - it was per se illegal.8

Let’s now delve a little deeper into the various judicial philosophies that have shaped Antitrust law in USA (and globally).

Who Knows, Who Can Swear - How Antitrust Law Came About, When and Where

Brandeisian Interpretation

The 1912 USA elections were pivotal in shaping the future of not just Antitrust Law, but of American capitalism. American people had four options in the 1912 presidential elections. One, Howard Taft - the incumbent; second, Teddy Roosevelt who believed that huge monopolies are inevitable and that the governments should regulate them heavily; third, Eugene Debbs who was a socialist and believed that the state should outright own everything, and fourth; the democrat Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson won the elections.

Wilson’s economic agenda is heavily influenced by none other than the lawyer, Louis Brandeis. Brandeis was later appointed to SCOTUS by Wilson, and became, perhaps, the most influential voice in antitrust across the globe (along with Bork, I would say).

Have you ever heard this phrase “The curse of Bigness” (also the title of Tim Wu’s book)? This came from Brandeis. This phrase also gives us an insight into his worldview. He believed that the central inquiry of antitrust law is not limited to consumer welfare, but is centred around consolidation and manifestation of economic power. He believed that an economic monopoly, even if never even came close to violating antitrust rules, was inherently, in all its being and nature, antithetical to the principles of a liberal democracy.

One example of J. Brandeis’ judicial activism comes out in Chicago Board of Trade case. The court was dealing with a policy which fixed the price of trading grains at the price they were selling at the time markets closed for the day. The traders would have to sell the grains at the same price for the rest of the day until markets opened the next day. From whatever we’ve discussed above, you would agree that this is nothing else but traders agreeing to fix prices, thereby eliminating price competition, even if for a short period. Such price fixing, which has no other reason but to stifle competition was known as [you know the answer readers]. But J. Brandies held this as perfectly legal. He re-wrote the rule of reason approach. He held that the true test of legality is if the conduct regulates and promotes competition, or if it suppresses and destroys competition. He held that the Judge is supposed to look at multiple factors such as history of industry, history of restraint, the competition harm etc.

His reasoning in Chicago Board of Trade was unfortunate, to say the least. He argues that the rules is legal because (i) shortens workers’ working hours, (ii) distributes grain business amongst all commission agents rather than only to a handful of night-time grain dealers. (Although maybe the bit about shortening the working hours of workers is not all that bad!)

To me, the Brandeisian philosophy comes out most clearly in J. Douglas’ opinion in the Columbia Steel decision.

Big is Bad

The Great Depression (not to be confused by what you feel after an exhausting day at work which makes you existential) hit USA some time around 1929. Economy collapses, unemployment skyrockets.

And what did USA do? It suspended Antitrust Law, believing that ruthless competition between companies is one of the reasons for economic recession. Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) - which suspended all federal antitrust legislations and policy; and allowed the President to approve "codes of fair competition" for various industries which would carry the force of federal law and could regulate wages, hours, prices, and trade practices within that industry.9

The Roosevelt administration, as part of its second new deal, brought in Thurman Arnold as the head of antitrust division of the Department of Justice. Under Arnold, antitrust enforcement was on the rise.

This period of enforcement culminated in the famous Aluminium Company of America decision by the second circuit court court of appeals. The question before the court was simple. Did AlCoA monopolise, or attempt to monopolise the Aluminium ingots market where it held around 90% market shares? AlCoA argued that it had gained the dominant position in the market by competing on merits, and outcompeting its competitors by being more efficient and making better products. The court disagreed. J. Hand ruled that AlCoA’s practice of expanding its capacity to cater to increasing Aluminium demand was in itself exclusionary, as it effectively deterred new competitors from entering the market (sigh). The court penalised a company for being good at predicting demand, responding to it efficiently by building more manufacturing capacity, and manufacturing good products that consumers wanted. (Sigh…)

The court held that holding a 90% market share in a market is illegal per se. Big is bad.

Courts were not shaping the antitrust jurisprudence in isolation. In fact, the roots of the Big is Bad school of Antitrust philosophy lay in academia. During the 50s, and 60s, the Harvard School believed that economic concentration, in itself was anti-competitive. They believed that the aim of Antitrust law is not to ensure consumer welfare, but to ensure against economic concentration.10

One important policy outcome of this school of thought was the enactment of Celler-Kefauver Act which amended the Clayton Act (sister legislation to the Sherman Act which regulated mergers and acquisitions) to make corporate mergers and acquisitions mode difficult.11

After the enactment of the Celler-Kefauver Act, SCOTUS amped up its enforcement against now illegal M&A activity as per the amended Clayton Act. An example of this enforcement is the Brown Shoe decision in 1962 in which SCOTUS blocked Brown Shoe company’s merger with a shoe retailer, Kinney. The government had sued to block the merger on the grounds that it violated the Clayton Act by substantially lessening competition in the shoe manufacturing and sales market. What is surprising, is that post combination, the merged entity had high market share in very few, narrowly defined markets and had low market shares in most markets, however narrowly defined. SCOTUS’s decision was centred on concerns around the adverse impact this combination could have caused to the poor small shoe retailer.

This was the zenith of the Brandeisian philosophy of Antitrust. Protecting inefficient competitors at the cost of consumer welfare.

Will the real Antirust Law please stand up?

A group of Academics in University of Chicago, who had been observing the development of antitrust jurisprudence decided that enough is enough, and proclaimed that all conventional antitrust wisdom was wrong.

And so, the Chicago school of antirust philosophy was born.

Chicago school’s main thesis was that Antitrust law was being used to protect inefficient competitors (remember the small retailers that SCOTUS was protecting in Brown Shoe, or the outcompeted companies SCOTUS protected in AlcoA) and to rob the consumers from price saving and other benefits which can come about from competition on merits.

Influenced by this new philosophy, the courts started to dismantle decades of the Brandeisian understanding of antitrust.

Take for example, the GTE Sylvania decision, in which SCOTUS held that a vertical non-price restraint, such as a manufacturer telling a retailer exactly where they are allowed to sell their products (and where not) is not automatically illegal. You’d agree that under the Harvard School of thought, this wold very likely, if not definitely, be held as illegal. But the SCOTUS in GTE Sylvania actually looked at the economic evidence and reasoning behind the vertical restraint and held that it was commercially legitimate and could even have pro competitive effects.

Perhaps the most befitting example of SCOTUS wholly ecoricing the ghost of Brandeis came by way of the Leegin decision; in which SCOTUS overturned decades of antitrust jurisprudence which held that resale price maintenance was per se illegal.

Arguably the Chicago school altered the course of Antitrust Law from being a largely socio-political law which only aims to protect the small guy, from a law which is based on hard economic evidence and only care about consumer welfare.

But Chicago school was not to have the final word in this saga.

Post Chicago & Neo Brandeisians

During the 90s, economists began to realise that although the Chicago school’s economic models and reasoning made sense on paper, the real world was a bit different.

Markets did not always self correct. Pure competition was not always the default. Market failures were real (can you identify if this ‘market failure’ is in the room with us right now?). Dominant companies could use market conduct to both unfairly exclude its competitors from competition in the market, and exploit the consumers by imposing unfair prices and/ or competition.

Case in point, the SCOTUS’s analysis in the famous Kodak case. Kodak had a strong market position in the photocopier market. Kodak was also selling ‘genuine’ spare parts for these photocopiers. If a Kodak photocopier went kaput, they had to necessarily go back to Kodak for genuine spare parts. They could not get these spare parts anywhere else. Third party repairers sued Kodak arguing that it was using its dominance in the primary market for photocopiers to illegaly monopolise the secondary repairs market. Now, as per Chicago school - a customer would be intelligent enough to factor in all the costs (in this case, the cost of repairing a photocopier and the fact that only Kodak sold the genuine spare parts) and undertake what we call as a “full life costing analysis” before buying a photocopier. This ideal intelligent consumer would calculate and compare the full life costs of buying a Kodak photocopier against the cost of buying other competing photocopiers such as Canon. Therefore, if Kodak was overcharging for spare parts, consumers would factor those costs in beforehand, and switch to competing products.

But SCOTUS disagreed.

It held that consumers suffer from asymmetrical information, and do not undertake this “whole life costing analysis” while buying products. Once you buy an expensive Kodak photocopier machine, the consumer is locked-in. It has no other choice but to pay for the expensive spare parts. The court held that even if a company was not a monopoly in the primary market (in this case, the photocopier market) it could still illegally monopolise the secondary market (market for spare parts for Kodak photocopiers).

Indian antitrust lawyers - you’ll see clear parallels between the Kodak decision and our very own famous Shamsher Kataria decision (which is currently under challenge before the Supreme court in two separate proceedings).

This is also the same philosophy that lead the DC circuit court of appeals to hold that Microsoft illegally monopolised the web browser market by leveraging its dominance in the desktop operating systems market. Microsoft bundled its own web browser (Internet Explorer) with its desktop operating systems and entered into exclusive agreements with desktop manufacturers to pre install Internet Explorer. Microsoft relied on the staple Chicago school defence i.e. its conduct of pre installing its own browser was nothing but innovation and giving customers a free web browser which lowered costs and improved efficiencies. The circuit court held that Microsoft was using its dominance in one market (desktop operating systems) to strategically crush an emerging competitor (Netscape) by denying it access to the desktop web browsers market.

Since the last decade or so, a new movement has emerged.

Neo Brandeisians.

Without going into too much detail, this school of thought argues that Antitrust law, in its present form, is wholly incapable to deal with the novel competition law harms that the new digital platform economy has given rise to, and relies on inaccurate and over-utilised analysis techniques.

Proponents of this school of thought include people such as Lina Khan, who became famous after her paper alleged Amazon was violating antitrust laws by engaging in predatory pricing, preferential treatment, among other practices (She later went on to become the FTC chair under the Biden administration).

An excerpt from her paper reveals a fair bit into the central tenets of this movement.

Of course, there is ample critique to this Back to the Future philosophy in antitrust on grounds that Neo Brandeisians are attempting to replace objective, rigorous economic analysis with subjective anti-BigTech feelings, and penalising companies for being successful.

Epilogue

But this is where we find ourselves now.

Antitrust law started as a socio-political law. Its roots lay in the deep seated suspicion of economic concentration. And after 125 years, through multiple eras, debates, schools of thoughts, we have come full circle. In the present zeitgeist, Antitrust law has once again become a law at the centre of socio political debates around fundamental questions of economic power, wealth concentration, fair trade practices and whatnot. Although I believe that Antitrust law must remain deeply rooted in evidence, and only economic evidence, the scio-political currents will always bring it where it is today. And it is a good thing in fact. No law exists only for dry application of lawyers. Law is a tool to structure society and bargain the fundamental ways by which we organise this world. Antitrust law, like any other law, must be debated, argued, praised, rejected, scrutinised and amended - as and when the need arises.

For it is the law, that stands as a bulwark against all things unfair and unjust, against us, the consumers.

My main reason to write this piece was to tell you, gentle reader, about how this niche field of law has an outsized impact on how you, I, us live our lives. I am not sure if I was able to get to the non lawyers, but if nothing - I hope that this becomes the starting point for your inquiry around this amazing filed of law.

I would love to receive any and all feedback. You can reach out to me at divyanshu3504@gmail.com.

But this time, I wanted to go somewhere new. I don’t quite like the mountains, so the north was out (And no, I am not a pahadi!). The south is very hot during this time of the year. Yet, I wanted to be near water. The initial choices were either hitting the hill station circuit in Karnataka or Kerala. But a combination of lack of knowledge, and costs pushed me to co-opt into being a cliched traveller.

Goa, in no senses, is new. Either to me, or to anyone. I’ve been to goa 3/4 times before, albeit only on work retreats. Just last year, around 10.8 million tourists visited Goa.

And so I packed my bags for a week long vacation in Goa.

This is a quick snapshot of my time in Goa, a few revelations that came to me (because what is even the point of travelling if you don’t do some thinking), and some solid recommendations.

Logistixxx

There is a simple rule to follow while planning a trip to Goa. If you’re looking to party, stay in the north. If you’re looking for peace, quiet and solitude - stay in the South. All the top rated bars and restaurants are up in north. Most of the nice and quiet beaches are down south.

If you’re thinking of doing both north and south - then first plan the trip dates and then book the tickets (from either GOI, or GOX depending on your trip). I did the mistake of booking both sides’ tickets from south without realising that I’d be spending a lot of time in North.

There are plenty of amazing bnbs around. I stayed at four locations. One was a medium rated hotel in Dabolim, one was a 1 BHK apartment in Candolim, one was a beach side cottage in Majorda, and one was a quiet one room set in Cansaulim. The trade off, as I mentioned earlier is that you’re likely to find better deals on places down south, but then will have to pay a bomb in hiring a driver to drive you up north (if you don’t drive).

Of course, it is best to hire a rental car. Apparently, Vailankanni cabs is the best in town. I also used them. The most important thing is to ensure that you take note of all the damage already done to the car, because unless you’ve spotted it and send a photo or video to the guys already - they will try to pin it on you (as it happened with me). Thankfully my friend and I, both lawyers were able to talk some sense into them and well, play the lawyer card.

Avoid all the traditionally mainstream places. Don’t go to Baga beach. Don’t go to Thalassa or Tito’s. The crowd is suffocating and these place attract most of the tourist scams.

If possible - create an itinerary first and then book a place to stay around the places you want to visit. For example, if you want to visit three restaurants in a day which are all in Siolim, book a stay in Siolim for that day. it is a difficult to plan your trip once you’re constrained by your location. For example, I had booked my stay in Candolim, and all the nice bars and restaurants up north were 30/45 mins via car. Manageable - but with this knowledge, next time I will probably reserve a place in Siolim, and not farther.

Okay, now that we have set the travel dates, figured out the itineraries, and planned where to stay, let’s discuss some recommendations!

Recccoosss

1. Great places to eat.

   • Mickey’s place, Candolim

   • Lazy Goose, Nerul

   • Burger Factory, multiple outlets.

   • Slow Tide, Anjuna

   • Martin’s corner, Betalbatim

   • Pentagon, Majorda.

2. Great Restaurants/ bars.

   • Bar Outrigger, Panaji (limited but good food menu, on the beach!)

   • Boilermaker, Siolim (the best lively vibe in town)

   • Hideaway, Anjuna (pulls a younger crowd but vibes were great)

   • Slow Tide, Anjuna (beach front, and very cozy)

   • Juna, Anjuna (their sound room hosts some great gigs. but if you’re ‘stags’, entry is an issue)

   • Bar 1240, Anjuna (if you’re into ‘secret bars’)

   • Darlings, Chapora lane (college crowd comes here to riot till early morning. Vibes are electric if you have the energy in you - also has maggi and momo stalls all around!)

3. Cultural places to visit.

   • Aguada fort.

   • Museum of Goa.

   • Reis Magos fort.

Thotsss

Time off = clarity?

The main motivation to take a break was to take a pause from work, and well do some thinking about life. I’d been getting bogged down by some pertinent questions - “what am i doing in life?”, “Is this what I want to do?”, “what do I care about?”, “Am I taking enough risks?”, “Am I becoming a robot?”, “Am I being true to myself and my interests?”

I don’t think I was able to get answers to most of these questions, but one thing became very clear. A vacation is not as effective as you’d think when it comes to offering you clarity. Vacation, unless you’ve decided to sit idle and ponder, has its own rigours. Planning, thinking, exploring will take its own time and leave you with not much time to do the actual thinking you wanted to do.

It is also very easy to think of a vacation as an escape from life. Noob thinking.

Life and all the pressing questions don’t care about whether you’re working or on a vacation. You won’t automatically get ‘peace of mind’ just because you’re on vacation. At best, it might free your time from work commitments and then you can re-allocate that time to do some solid thinking. But you can also do that by sitting at home, instead of burning a hole in your pocket hehe.

All trips aren’t created equally

Spending 7 nights, and 8 days in Goa made me realise that the ideal trip size is somewhere around 3 night, 4 days. Less than this might not offer you time to even be present at the place, and time more than this may lead to boredom.

I’d started to get a bit bored around the half-way mark. Although we were hitting the best spots and eating great food, but I suppose there is something to be said about over-simulation. After some time, I wanted to be back home and into my regular routine. It could also be because I quite like routine, and doing things the way I usually do.

Not surprisingly, my father calls me a “Status quoist”.

It is also stupid to think that the place decides the experience you’re going to have. It is the people. You can two very different experiences of the same places depending on who you go with. It usually helps to either discuss and plan the vacation with your co-vacationers before you head to the trip so that there is minimal conflict. I would assume it is best to go with somebody of the same temperament. If you’re a chill, stay at home kinda person - best to go with someone like that so ya’ll just chill around. If you go with someone who is hyper extroverted and loves to be out and party - it would probably lead to some conflict, or expectation mis-management; which is the one thing you should avoid on a vacation.

Gratefulness

Growing up, vacationing by myself in Goa was not even a part of my imaginosphere. In college, you’d hear about your friends going there but were unable to ever either convince your parents to allow you to go, and also knew that you just didn’t have the money to afford anything. (Not to say that there is not a way to afford a goa trip even if you’re on a budget. You just have to plan smart)

Even though it cost me way more than I would’ve been comfortable with - but the feeling of being able to decide by myself to go to Goa, stay at nice places, eat at the best bars, and pretty much do whatever I wanted to do (of course there is always an outer limit!), was liberating. It made me immensely grateful for my job (which I was taking a break from haha) and the fact that it allowed me to experience and enjoy this trip.

I was grateful for the fact that life took the turns it did and put me where I am. Of course, I’ve worked hard at times in life. But I have also been immensely lucky.

I’ll leave you with some photos I clicked on this trip.

Until next time, so long.

At the end of the day, I am not sure how much fun I could maximise, but it lead me to some nice reflections. Don’t worry, I am not breaking my vow of not writing about my personal life (see my last post here). But I want to engage in some stochastic thinking and this blog happens to be the dumping ground for some goblins in my head.

goblins

I don’t think there is any timeline where I thought I would read a headline from OpenAI which reads,

“Where the goblins came from”

You can read the blogpost here. Although I highly recommend reading this post, the Tl;Dr of the post is that due to some (explainable) reasons, certain model(s) of OpenAI were incentivised to use ‘goblins’ in their responses. And then OpenAI had to slay the goblins and kill that specific OpenAI model. #freethegoblins

Other than the fact that I liked reading something after a long time - it was exemplary of how complex systems are; and yet still how explaining complex things to normal people is an art.

To me, goblins, became the embodiment of mischievous, fun and interesting things one does in their life. Often as part of their work.

I recently wrote about a tiny goblin I made for myself - an email agent which summarises my inbox and calendar and acts like my chief of staff agent, organising my day for me.

I’ve wanted to vibecode for the longest time. So once I made this, nor only was I very surprised with myself - I also finally boarded the bandwagon of “everybody should code”. It was also affirming of the fact that anyone can code. I encourage you to slay some of your curiosity goblins.

I’m currently thinking of use cases of this newfound low hanging skill. Although I must say I am nowhere, nowhere, nowhere around the real power users. My friend Akhilesh is building one legaltech startup (Paperbook360,) which revolutionises filings before all courts in India. The product is in beta and yet to be released fully, but if you’re a litigator, or have a regulatory practice anywhere in India - definitely check this out. But this is not his coolest trick.

If you’re a lawyer, you know the struggle of finding a house anywhere in this country. Non lawyers are very circumspect of lawyers. They are afraid of their lawyer tenant using some mythical loophole in law to snatch their property from them. Until now - all lawyers have had to start from scratch every time they set to find a house.

Not anymore. My brilliant friend Akhilesh has made PaperSpaces. It allows lawyers to find other lawyers to live with, and more importantly, find lawyer friendly houses to live in. Existing lawyer tenants who are moving out make money by recommending other lawyers who are looking to move into lawyer friendly houses. PaperSpaces is going live pan India very soon.

All in all, Akhilesh is slaying some major goblins. And there are many more like him. Who managed to turn their work into fun. I aspire to be like that.

mischief managed

Going back to fun-maxxing. I am quite keen on figuring out how to do it at work. My boss often says that the idea is to do the job damn well, and have a good time while at it. The best way to have fun while working (to me, at least) is to play around stochastically. some drunkard’s walk simulations.

By the way, many moons ago I used to work on stochastic modelling of DNA replication. This was 7 years ago during my physics degree in University of Delhi. Although I didn’t pursue physics later, I did have a lot fun in that degree (in the little amount I spent in classes hahaha). It was fun because I could watch videos and videos on complicated physics concepts and then also try to figure them out by myself in class. Mind you, I have studied advanced quantum mechanics, and real analysis at one point!

One needs to have some fun in whatever is their craft. Often, a lot of fun comes from the people around. But it is unmatched with the fun that comes from work. so, an open question I aim to ask myself everyday is “How do I make this fun?”.

Do you have any specific things you do to make your work fun? I’d love to hear from you. Some things that have worked for me include:

1. Working with a colleague who is also a friend on a common project.

2. Talk about business of law with colleagues.

3. Think about moonshots within the paradigm of your workplace.

But there’s a ton of work left to be done! Or should I say, ton of fun left to be had!

Some examples of people who (seem) to be having a lot of fund doing their job are Ashish Kulkarni, Pranay Kotasthane, Ajay Shah, Shruti Rajagopalan, Amit Varma (Amit - do you agree?) etc. etc. The common trait is either their skill to tinker around with the newest toy on the block (AI presently) to make fun projects, or, being genuinely spirited about the work they do.

Somebody who is recently having a LOT of fun is ex-Latham associate Will Chen who apparently built an open source competitor to Harvey and Legora in two weeks.

time to slay some goblins hopefully. muahhahahaha.

And i realised that, this…is life. There is no grand narrative. There is no grand mission. There is (fortunately/ unfortunately) no grand struggle.

The Schopenhauer I read many moons ago swept across my brain. It is all pointless. And then the underpinnings of Camus arose from many years of slumber. The two tides started a great war. No winner has been announced yet.

<->

When I look back at the last few years of my life, the journey from early to late twenties - I find it supremely fascinating. Intellectualising my suffering is my niche, and the last few years have been nothing short of a delightful case study. I thought that self development was a linear graph. Maybe even exponential on days I felt invincible. But now I have sufficient evidence to know that at best, it is a sine wave. But with a condition. The trough is guaranteed, the crest is not. And you need to put in more effort with each passing cycle of the wave to ensure that the crests don’t stop coming.

This is not a sad post. Is this a sad post? This is not a sad post.

This could well be an entry in my journal. I’m just choosing to put it on my substack. Which is interesting because I recently told my friend that my public writing may be damaging my public image than improve it. I told my friends I don’t care for my image. But I do. Especially because I believe this blog may be putting me in a precarious position, professionally. But I don’t think that I would want to live in a world where I self-censor for a “better job”.

To conclude this stream of consciousness, I am reminded of the conversation I had with economist Matt Clancy a few days back. He recalled that one of the most pivotal things he did for his career was to write and tweet about his work and interests publicly. So there is evidence that writing publicly is a net good. But perhaps I need to pivot from writing “relatable content” to “intellectual content”.

There are times when I have the urge to delete all my public writing. I don’t know anymore what is the point of doing this type of writing. The point has been to write on things that every young adult goes through, to create a passive community where people see that their struggles and emotions are common. But I am at a point where, that does not seem to be a goal I want to chase. I am not a writer. I don’t aspire to be a writer. I don’t know why I should write about my personal life anymore.

<->

Nobody really wants to grow up. We’re all forced to. Increasingly I believe that everyone makes it up as they go. Nobody is a real adult. People are either bad actors or great actors.

I’ve mostly really liked growing up. And I still do. The only externality that I am dealing with is the uncertainty of life. The density of curveballs that life is throws at you becomes increasingly high with age. And the funniest part is that I am only responsible for myself right now. I don’t have a partner, I am not married, I do not have children. My parents don’t entirely depend on me. And kabhi kabhi meri toh issi mein bass ho jaati hai.

But don’t be mistaken one bit. I have a handle on everything in life. I do good work professionally. I have an active lifestyle - play multiple sports, go to gym fairly often, and am in decent shape. I take time out for my hobbies. I am fairly friendly, and know how to talk to most people in the world. As much as I dislike any credit given to me, I would be disingenuous to the years of effort I’ve put into myself to not admit that I am not in a bad shape in life.

And I still feel lost. And that is what is scary.

<->

A lot of seniors have told me that there is not much benefit to being ‘serious’ all the time. At multiple times, I’ve been instructed to not have a ‘long face’, and ‘enjoy more in life’. One of my friends told me, screw “an unexamined life is not worth living”, but “an overly examined life is also not worth living”.

And I agree.

And as a part of that, I am taking a break from writing personal posts for some time. I want to pivot my focus on writing about the work I do, and the things I am interested in.

And if I have sufficient courage, I also hope to detach myself from social media. It is time to turn inwards. And hopefully I will find a few answers. And if not answers, at least know how to ask better questions.

So long. Cheers.

It is 2026, and I have completed three years of being a working professional. I thought maybe it is a good time to review what I’ve already written, and whether I have changed my mind about certain things since then. I’ll keep this short. In Section I, we will review whether my reflections back then have stood the test of time, or not. In Section II, I will write about incremental insights.

Section I

1. It is supremely difficult being good at something you don’t care about deeply. Still true. More so than before. I say this because everybody starts off almost the same when they start work. But with time, the people who don’t really care for what they’re doing start to fall off the average. I’ve seen this with many peers, and sometimes myself. However, the corollary of this is not entirely true i.e. you cannot be good at something you don’t care about. Because you may not care about the substance of your work, but you can still care about your work product. And that’s one way to do ‘good’ in the normative sense. A lot of my motivation is tied to my work products and not necessarily the field of law I practice, or my sense of self as a lawyer. But it is, in the end, a hack. And a hack can only take you as much far.

2. Only way to create leverage at work is to be competent. Arguably the central tenet of being a professional. It is the only legitimate immunity you can have at a workplace. But what does being ‘competent’ mean anyway? Does it mean knowing most of everything? If yes, this is a little hard to come by since it can only come with experience, or obsession. Or does being competent mean being earnest and hardworking? I am not sure that this combination of traits is considered as ‘competence’ because you could be earnest and hardworking but still make mistakes, and that is more often than not, a huge issue at workplaces. I haven’t been able to crack that even as I start my fourth year of being a working professional. And I am getting the sense that….everybody is making it up as they go. Maybe I will also realise the secret of pretend competence one day.

3. If you’re young and taking risk won’t substantially worsen your life, take the plunge and iterate. I still agree with this in principle. However, I have not been bold enough to follow this advice myself. It is primarily because I don’t think my days of being a corporate lawyer are over just yet. I have a few more deliverables left in me before I hang up my boots.

4. Draw boundaries at your workplace. I will always be the biggest proponent of this principle. I am sure a lot of you would agree with me that Indian workplaces suffer from this vice i.e. they love casually crossing professional boundaries and believe that they have access to you all the time.

   Again, there is a some nuance to be drawn here. I still don’t have a clear answer or practice of how to draw boundaries when it to work (both quantity, and the timing). I don’t know if my inability to tell my colleagues that I won’t work over the weekend, or won’t be able to work till 3 am, is my failure to draw boundaries or me merely being realistic about the industry I work in. I do believe there is a way to get into a good space, most of the time, but I fear that is a function of your experience/ seniority. Unfortunately, we don’t have a time travel machine just yet.

Section II

The biggest and perhaps the only change between the first post and this post is the fact that I switched my jobs last year. I used to work with the antitrust practice of an Indian Biglaw firm, and now I work with a boutique firm which only does antitrust law.

If I could describe each year I’ve spent in the profession - it would be as below:

Year I: Everything is new and shiny. I love money. Oh shit, this is some real work. Oh shit, why is my work not getting over? Oh wait, am I going to get fired?

Year II: Ok we can relax, I don’t think I am going to get fired. Right? Right? Okay, I think I don’t actually fully suck at this. Why is the work not getting over?

~ From Biglaw to a boutique firm~

Year III: What is going on? I know I wanted responsibility but am I qualified to be making these decisions? Oh wow, I get to drive this entire file. I love responsibility. I HATE responsibility. Why is my work not getting over?

After some jox, let’s get onto some incremental insights.

1. Work will take up all your time if you let it. Exactly what it says - if you don’t demarcate specific time for your other activities, it WILL take up all your time. And that is because you can always spend a little more time perfecting your research, or draft. You will practically relinquish everything else in your life if you let your work creep up to you. And it will. Ever so softly, every so violently. A practice I’ve been told which works, although I haven’t been able to implement is, is called time blocking. Every weekend, block time for the things you want to do and make it non negotiable. Oh also - you need to be the kind of person who is comfortable with the consequences of pushing back and not being the ‘ideal employee’ for this to work.

   Somebody I was speaking to recently brought up this great point that the issue with hectic jobs is not that you don’t get any free time - it is the unpredictability of the free time. And if you don’t know when you’re actually going to be free, it is difficult to block time and plan things.

2. Don’t let your work become your life/ personality. I think a lot of us are guilty of this. Of course there are levels to this shit. Some people are really far gone off where they take pride in their lack of sleep because of work and try to keep inserting the clients they work for in every conversation. Some people (like me) have work at the back of their mind no matter where they are. This stuff is really cancerous.

   One, because it makes you stress about the work all the time, which is the most pointless thing in the world if you think about it. Because taking stress is not going to get the work done and also increase cortisol in your body (which has a bunch of harmful effects). My face swells up whenever I’ve been under stress. Second, it will foreclose your hobbies, interests and things that make life worth living. The Divyanshu of today is quite uninteresting and uninterested in most things. The Divyanshu from three years ago was exuberant, interested in many things, passionate about achieving lofty things, and so forth. To be clear, it is not the job which is evil and stops you from doing other things. It is you who have to be smart to be able to manage it, and also continue doing other things. The onus is on you.

3. Being good at your work is not limited to being good at execution. I used to think that being ‘good’ at your work entailed knowing your field inside out and being able to deliver good work products. But the more years I spend in this profession, the more I realise the importance of other skills which go into building a successful lawyer (I am taking the example of a lawyer, but I am sure it applies to other professions as well). Not only are you supposed to know the law, you are also supposed to explain the law, in simple terms, to your clients. You also have to be there for your client and counsel them through good and bad times. And if this was not enough, you are also supposed to being in new business. You also need to be good at organising the matters you’re working on, be good at delegating the work to juniors and helping your seniors through difficult times.

4. It is easy to be a good junior. It is difficult to be a good senior. And that is precisely why you must be a good senior. Being a good junior only entails doing work that is not bad, being earnest and diligent and being able to help with the grunt work. But being a good senior is a whole different ball game. You need to be a good mentor to your juniors. You need to be patient with them. And most importantly, you need to be able to regulate your emotions, no matter how bad you’re feeling, and treat them with respect and dignity. It is very difficult, and that is exactly why you must do it. I have disliked every time a senior gave me grief and it de-motivated me immensely. And on the other hand, whenever I work with a good senior, I am incentivised to put in my 110%. Although due to the nature of my workplace I do not have juniors working under me, I try to do as much as I can with the interns, and tried to do as much as I could at my previous workplace.

5. Detach your self worth from your workplace. Maybe if you’re a genius, this can work out for you. But chances are, like me, you’re okay at what you do. And if by chance you’re someone with high expectations, and in a job you’re not exactly passionate about - this is going to ruin your mental peace and self worth. Try to dis-associate the professional version of you and the version of you that exists outside of it. Judge yourself more on the outie, rather than the innie.

And in the end. I think a lot of us forget, that having a job which pays our bills, takes care of our family (at times), and allows us to live a better life is a privilege. We forget how desperate we were for these very jobs that we treat as a burden now. And anyway, if you don’t come from money - one way or the other you will have to work a job and earn money - everything else is just permutation and combination.

The idea (at least to me) is to figure out how we can be okay - mentally and physically while also doing good at our work and keep moving forward, both professionally and personally.

Do write to me if this resonated with you, or if you’d like to add a few more things! Criticism, as usual, is welcome.

Jurisdictions of regulators are not very different from the example above. Each regulator has its own jurisdiction i.e. questions of law which only it is empowered to adjudicate. In an ideal world, the line denoting the start and end of regulators’ jurisdictions would be a straight line carved beautifully into the landscape of regulatory law.

However, India’s regulatory landscape, much like a real-world no man’s land, is not without its disputed territories. Real world problems are messy. They contain multitudes. And as you would have guessed - they often lie at the intersection of multiple regulators’ jurisdiction. In such a situation, a common problem arises: both (or more) regulators sometimes assert their claim to adjudicate the very same question. But wouldn’t this amount to double jeopardy, or parallel proceedings - with neither regulator bound by the decisions of the other. Such a regulatory environment could lead to different regulators giving out varying or even contradictory decisions. What are the regulated to do in such a situation? How do we resolve this conflict?

Let me tell you the story behind one of India’s most fought out regulatory tussle - one between the Competition Act, and Patents Act; that has been playing out since decades in various regulatory forums, and various courts of India. This is a story of regulatory competence, judicial over-reach(?), interpretation of statutes, and of the inherent struggle between the monopoly granted by Intellectual Property (IP) laws and an Act made to counter monopolies.

Setting the context

The story starts in 2013. Just two years after India’s competition regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) came into its full enforcement capacity. A then upcoming Indian mobile phone manufacturer - Micromax had filed an information1 against the Swedish technology giant Ericsson; alleging that Ericsson had acted unfairly against it and contravened provisions of the Competition Act, 2002 (Competition Act). Specifically, Micromax alleged that Ericsson was engaging in unfair and arbitrary licensing of its Standard Essential Patent (SEP)2 related to GSM/ CDMA technologies.3 Shortly after - Intex (2014), and iBall (2015) also filed almost identical information(s) against Ericsson before the CCI.

But wait. Let’s take a step back. How is a competition regulator supposed to decide on whether conduct of a patent holder is legitimate or not? Don’t we have a separate legislation for granting and regulating use of patents? Something along the lines of…Patent Act of 1970?

This is precisely the question which lies at the heart of this debate. You see, the CCI was set up as the national competition regulator, with almost no fetters on its powers in terms of what and who it could regulate, as long as it was satisfied that the conduct was anti-competitive and caused harm to competition in India.4

But it does not exist in a regulatory vacuum.

The Patent Act, 1970 (Patent Act) is the specialised legislation which lays down the universe of laws related to grant and governance of patents in India. Given this information. you would naturally think - shouldn’t all issues related to Patents be decided under the Patent Act, and therefore the Controller of Patents? Because it is a special law created to do precisely this?Where does Competition Act come in?

To get a better sense of the statutory construct of both the Competition Act, and Patent Act - let’s quickly go through the relevant provisions of the Competition Act5, and the Patents Act.

Diving into the basics

The Preamble of the Competition Act states:

“An Act to provide, keeping in view of the economic development of the country, for the establishment of a Commission to prevent practices having adverse effect on competition, to promote and sustain competition in markets, to protect the interests of consumers and to ensure freedom of trade carried on by other participants in markets, in India, and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.”

Section 60 of the Competition Act states:

“The provisions of this Act shall have effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent therewith contained in any other law for the time being in force.”

Section 62 of the Competition Act states:

“The provisions of this Act shall be in addition to, and not in derogation of, the provisions of any other law for the time being in force.”

As you can clearly tell from a plain reading of these provisions - there is an inherent tension within the provisions of the Competition Act themselves. On one hand Section 60 states that Competition Act will override any other law in force, but on the other hand Section 62 states that the Competition Act is only additive to the existing regulatory framework and not in derogation of it. So if there is a conflict between regulatory provisions contained in statute of one regulator and the provisions contained in Competition Act - will we use Section 60 to argue that Competition Act is supreme? Or will we use Section 62 to try to manoeuvre a harmonious construction of the two or more laws?

Okay sorry. I’m making this too messy to begin with. You all are smart and get what I’m trying to hint here. Let’s continue the story I started this piece with.

In the information filed by Micromax against Ericsson before the CCI; Micromax argued that CCI had jurisdiction over unfair licensing issues, irrespective of whether it related to a SEP or not - given that it related to harm to competition in India, specifically an alleged abuse of the dominant position by Ericsson in the GSM/ CDMA market. The CCI agreed and passed an order initiating investigation against Ericsson to decide whether it had in fact violated the Competition Act, or not.

At that moment, I am sure, the CCI felt like Bilbo holding the One Ring:

The procedural battle

Ericsson was not having any of this. It filed writ challenge(s) before the Delhi High Court (DHC)6 against all the three orders passed by the CCI based on the three separate informations submitted by Micromax, Intex, and iBall. Ericsson argued that the CCI has no jurisdiction to adjudicate on issues related to Patent law. Its main argument was that this dispute comes under the purview of the Controller of Patents and therefore the initiation orders passed by the CCI were not tenable for lack of jurisdiction, and should be quashed by the DHC.

Let’s dive into how this battle was fought in the court rooms of the Delhi High Court, and the Supreme Court of India spanning over a decade.

The ball is in whose court?

During the pendency of the iBall writ petition, Ericsson and iBall entered into a private settlement and settled the cause of the dispute. The terms of the settlement were confidential and could not be revealed in open court. But Ericsson and iBall argued before the court that since the substratum of the information filed by iBall before the CCI no longer exists, the court should quash the initiation order passed by the CCI. The CCI argued against it - saying that the informant’s role is only to make the CCI aware of the alleged anti-competitive conduct of any enterprise, or person. After the CCI initiates an inquiry, it is for the CCI to inquire into and decide whether there is a contravention of the Competition Act, or not. The informant has no role to play in what the CCI decides to do. Remember - competition issues are not private disputes (in personam), but relate to market harms which affect the market at large (in rem).

The court, unfortunately did not agree with the CCI’s arguments. The DHC set aside the initiation order (2015 DHC Decision) only on the grounds that a settlement had been arrived at between the parties and therefore there was nothing for the CCI to inquire into anymore. However, it allowed the CCI to initiate a fresh inquiry into this matter if it felt so, either by itself, or after receiving an information - subject to the settlement terms between the parties. In this case - the question of jurisdiction evolved from whether CCI could inquire into patent disputes, to whether CCI is barred from continuing its inquiry, which is in rem, if the parties come to a settlement. Naturally, the CCI was not happy with the court’s ousting its jurisdiction and filed a Letters Patent Appeal (LPA)7 before a division bench of DHC.8

Happy, together?

On the side, the DHC had clubbed the two writ challenges filed by Ericsson against CCI’s initiation order based on information filed by Micromax, and Intex due to similarity in facts. The DHC (J. Vibhu Bakhru) went on to uphold CCI’s jurisdiction to inquire into issues arising out of patents. The court’s decision was based on the fact that there was no irreconcilability between the Competition Act and the Patent Act because the remedies offered under the two Acts were not destructive of each other. (2016 DHC Decision) And thus, CCI’s jurisdiction was retained. Ericsson went on to file a LPA against this decision before a division bench of DHC.

Saamne ye kaun aaya, dil mein hui halchal?

Around the same time as the the DHC was gearing up to decide the fate of Ericsson’s challenge to CCI’s jurisdiction; the CCI received a reference from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, along with separate information filed by seed manufacturers in relation to alleged unfair licensing practices employed by Monsanto, which held the patent for the Bt Cotton technology in India. The allegations included unfair sub-licensing conditions including the fixing of royalty without economic justification, and attempts to protect the Monsanto Group’s own downstream entities through restrictive termination clauses with its downstream competitors.

The CCI, consistent with how it had handled information(s) against Ericsson, passed an order initiating an inquiry against Monsanto’s alleged abuse of its patent related to Bt Cotton technology. This order was passed roughly one month prior to the DHC’s clubbed decision in Ericsson, which arguably suggests that the CCI was confident of the outcome of those proceedings. Monsanto, on the other hand, did not wait much and challenged CCI’s initiation order before the DHC within two and a half weeks of the CCI’s order. Monsanto had filed its writ petition roughly one month before DHC decided on CCI’s jurisdiction to inquire into patent issues, so its optimism was not without cause.

After going through a change of roster three times, the Monsanto writ petition landed up before none other than J. Bakhru. J. Bakhru quite naturally referred to his earlier judgment in Ericsson to come to the same conclusion - CCI has jurisdiction over inquiring into alleged anti-competitive practices arising out of abuse of patents and dismissed Monsanto’s writ petition. (2020 DHC Decision) Monsanto probably predicted this outcome the moment its writ petition landed before J. Bakhru. So it geared up to challenge the decision and filed a LPA against J. Bakhru’s decision.

The final showdown

With ample congratulations to you for following along this exhilarating battle in courts until now, you’d remembers that at this point - there are four separate LPAs that have been filed before the DHC. One, by CCI against the 2015 DHC decision, second and third by Ericsson against the 2016 DHC Decision, and fourth by Monsanto against the 2020 DHC decision.

All of these LPAs (and one writ challenge9) were clubbed together and decided by a division bench (comprising of two Justices) of the DHC in 2023.

Much to a lot of people’s surprise (or lack thereof), the division bench overturned the 2016 DHC decision, 2020 DHC decision10 and upheld the 2015 DHC decision - by stating that CCI has no jurisdiction over alleged anti-competitive issues arising out of a patent. The court’s conclusion was centred around the observations that (i) Patent Act is the special law which deals with issues arising out of patents, (ii) the Patent Act’s provisions which deal with abuse of patents (Chapter XVI) were enacted after the Competition Act was enacted, (iii) provisions of Chapter XVI of the Patent Act empower the Controller to inquire and address patent abuse in a similar manner as provisions of the Competition act do. The court held that Patent Act is the special law which deals with all things related to patents and therefore the CCI has no jurisdiction to inquire into alleged anti-competitive conduct arising out of patents. (2023 DHC Decision)

The CCI, quite surprised with this change of heart, challenged this decision before the Supreme Court. Last year, in September, the Supreme Court decided on this issue, but in an interesting manner. The Supreme Court did not interfere with the High Court’s 2023 decision but said one very interesting line.

The Supreme Court, by not choosing to definitively resolve the jurisdictional question of law between Patent Act and Competition Act, effectively reverted the legal position to the 2023 Delhi High Court’s view in 2023 DHC Decision.

But that’s hardly the end of this long drawn saga.

You see, in 2022 the CCI had refused to initiate an inquiry into an information filed by one Swapan Dey against Vifor International on allegations of unfair vertical restraints (Section 3(4) of the Competition Act), and abuse of dominant position (Section 4 of the Competition Act). Mind you, the CCI declined to initiate an inquiry into Vifor’s practices not because it related to a patented product and it doesn’t have the jurisdiction to do so, but because it was not confident that the evidence revealed any prima facie contravention of the Competition Act. Swapan Dey appealed the CCI’s closure order before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT). The NCLAT, in 2025 dismissed the appeal taking note of the 2023 DHC decision, and the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision - holding that a combined reading of these two decisions imply that CCI has no jurisdiction over issues arising out of Patent law.

Swapan Dey was not happy with this outcome. He appealed the NCLAT’s order before the Supreme Court.

And lo and behold. On 2 February 2026, the Supreme Court stayed the operation of paras 8 - 10 of the NCLAT decision, which observed that the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision can be read to imply that CCI has no jurisdiction to inquire into allegations of anti-competitive conduct arising out of patents. The Supreme Court also noted that it shall be hearing parties on the issue of jurisdiction of CCI over issues arising out of patents.

Finally.

What remains now?

After all these informations, appeals, counter appeals, LPAs, SLPs - what remains of our original question? Does the CCI have the power to inquire into alleged anti-competitive conduct arising out of Patents?

Speaking for myself, if you asked me this question before 2nd February 2026 - I’d have told you that the answer was no. But after the Supreme Court’s 2nd February order - I am not too sure.

Either ways - it is going to be a fun way ahead and I do hope that the court gets into the weed of things and decides this decades long battle, even if not once and for all. The 2025 SC order was a tease, and I hope that we get to see the full picture now.

P.S.: All opinions expressed here are my own, and not my employer’s.

I’d just entered the auto and told the driver bhaiya the OTP. As is my ritual, I plugged in my earphones and started listening to the same 10 songs on repeat.

We’d just exited the society I live in, when I saw the auto bhaiya’s hand point to the houses around us. I removed one of my earphones. I leaned in to hear what he was saying.

“All of these intelligent people, they’re so educated and rich; yet no one is raising the issue about pollution. It’s such a big issue for us Delhi-ites; and these people despite having the means to have their voice heard do not say anything. Who will listen to people like us anyway?”

I probed him further. I asked him about the other problems that plague Delhi. I also asked him if he’s managed to convey any of his problems to his MLA.

“I’ve tried. My MLA is never present at his residence. I’ve never been able to meet him whenever I’ve tried. They keep asking me to put in an application. I am illiterate. How do they expect me to write a formal application?”

I asked him if there was anyone educated around who could write the application instead.

“What’s the point of that anyway. Nobody will do anything. I’ve been driving autos for the past 30 years. I’ve seen so many regimes in Delhi.”

We then spoke about the current and past government - the contents of which I’d refrain from sharing here for obvious reasons.

He dropped me to my destination and I thanked him. I left thinking about policy, politics and polity. The only thing I could feel was the sense of helplessness, for both myself and for the auto bhaiya. One can’t solve his own problems, and other doesn’t have it in him to work on real problems like these.

Chapter II

The next day, I met one of my friends who is doing her phD in Econ. She’s been an econ student for a long time, and invariably some of our conversation is around her work and larger policy questions. Some of her focus is on south east asian/ African economies. One of the things we discussed about was how modern public policy design, or at least a lot of it, especially in India, suffers from lack of first principle economics thinking.

I know, it sounds very fancy and jargon-y.

But it essentially means that while designing a public policy - one should keep the basics of economics in mind. These ‘basics’ are (i) aligning the incentives of various stakeholders, (ii) recognising the trade-offs, (iii) optimum utilisation of public money, (iv) balancing the fetters on freedom (if any) with the intended goal etc.

I do not pretend to know either economics, or public policy. I do not have degrees in either of them. I know a little bit of economics because of my profession, and a little bit of public policy because of my friends and mentors.

But from the little I know, and have been able to understand - it is obvious to me that the public policy problem is one of the most important problems to solve in India. But what do we even mean when we say ‘Policy Problem’?

Chapter III

I was introduced to what Public Policy with a capital P means when I was in law school. But law school didn’t have much to do with it. My public policy education was shaped by Amit Varma’s podcast “The Seen and the Unseen” (website here), and the countless tangential journeys that I went on from the various episodes he’s recorded with some of the world’s greatest thinkers.

From Amit’s podcast, I gained two other educators - Shruti Rajagopalan, and Ajay Shah, both pf whom have had an outsized impact on my public policy and economics thinking. If you’ve been reading this blog for some time - you would know these dramatis personae. But for those who don’t know but are interested, I’d definitely recommend checking out these exceptional thinkers, and their various bodies of work. Especially; Shruti’s podcast Ideas of India, and her blog Get down and Shruti, and Ajay’s podcast (which he co hosted with Amit) Everything is Everything, and LEAP blog.

Back when was I introduced to what Public Policy means - I had developed a perimeter of important problems that I would like to work on, in any shape of form in the future. This list has not changed much in the last few years. Parly because of how foundational they are. These problems were:

1. Education, specifically primary school education.

2. Last mile healthcare.

3. Public goods distribution.

4. Poverty alleviation.

5. Job Market.

6. Legal Policy.

If you’re a public policy professional, please excuse my ignorance for dropping other equally, or more important facets of public policy-making. I’ve specifically not included macro finance policies, partly because I do not understand them comprehensively. But overall, for me - what mattered (and matters) is to work on the fundamental building blocks of society - health, education, and poverty alleviation. I think this trifecta is a self progressing combination where each one plays into the other and leads to other better outcomes.

Even to an untrained eye like mine, it is apparent that good policy making in India is still an uphill battle. Primarily because there are cracks in the entire pyramid of the policy-making ecosystem, from which important considerations fall through.

1. Often times, the need for public policy does not come from addressing a real ‘market failure’, but arises from socio-political currents/ considerations. For example, the Indian government’s ban on online real money gaming did not arise because it was ‘illegal’ or harmed the public, but from paternalistic notions of certain types of behaviours as ‘bad’.1

2. A lot of the first drafts of policies come from technocrats, who although are likely to be accomplished and very smart people - may miss out on either the ground level behavioural trends, or lack the crucial know-how on drafting a public policy. An often cited examples of technocrat led solution-ism is the Aadhar project which faced a lot of criticism due to its technology first approach to solve the public distribution system problem.

3. And even if we were to assume that the public policy was made to address a legitimate market failure, and has been drafted by a highly competent team of drafters - at the end it must pass the test of politics i.e. if it is part of the present government’s priorities. Such priorities may not always fully coincide with what is the ‘better’ policy choice as per evidence and economics thinking.

Chapter IV

Even though Public Policy is spoken about as a mythical, over-arching concept, it is at the end of the day nothing other than the manifestation of the underlying fundamental principles that the ‘state’ believes in. I say this only because, despite my own belief that there are certain policy choices which have been proven to bring good/ better outcomes in societies and should be implemented regardless of other competing political priorities - policy making by states often reveal the ideological preferences and priorities of the people running the government. And that’s one flaw of the decision making being handed to politicians - because their incentive is to be in power, not to do what is the best for the net good of the people.

However, that runs us against an even trickier counterfactual - would you rather have un-elected technocrats make widely influential policy decisions for the country? I believe most of you will answer negatively - even if you believe that such technocrats are relatively better and more capable of drafting and implementing policy. Most of you (including me) would say no because such a scenario would undermine the sovereignty of the people and their ability to choose the people who get to have a say in running of the nation.

I think the most important bit of public policy making that most people forget, including myself, is to understand that:

1. The state has finite state capacity (and finite money to spend) i.e. it can only choose to do a limited number of things at one time;

2. The state always has equally important priorities to execute at all times;

3. Investment into one area is taking money away from other area - all decisions by the state are trade-offs;

To me - this is the most difficult decision matrix that most people ever have to operate within. And this is why public policy making is one of the hardest things to do in this world. And not only because it is difficult to decide what the state chooses to do, but also equally because unintended effects take over, and there is no guarantee that the policy will achieve the intended outcome.

Chapter V

As a lot of you would know, I host a podcast where I invite guests, who are experts in their fields to discuss interesting and important things in the field of law, policy, culture etc. I use the podcast as a means to explore my own interest in understanding policy, and policy-making. I’m listing a few episodes where I’ve spoken to experts in public policy about various issues. If you listen to my podcast, you’d know that I tend to cover a wide ground and not drill on one specific aspect of the guest’s work/ thinking. Which is why, although the titles of the episodes may seem vague; it is named so by design. If you like longer, relaxed conversations - you may like these episodes to start with!

• With Shruti Rajagopalan on law, state power & economics

• With Ajay Shah on state capacity, governance, and institutions

• With Bhargavi Zhaveri on being a lifer in public policy

• Renuka Sane and Bhavin Patel on Trustbridge and improving the rule of law for businesses in India

• With Ajay Shah on {x}kdr forum and why knowledge cannot be produced on contract

• With Alok Prasanna Kumar on building Vidhi, state of governance, law & legal education

• With Apar Gupta on building Internet Freedom Foundation, and a vision for a democratic society

I’m also listing a few books on (Indian) public policy which I read, and found very insightful.

• Accelerating India’s Development by Karthik Muralidharan

• Breaking The Mould by Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba

• Missing in Action by Raghu Jaitley and Pranay Kotasthane

• In Service of The Republic by Ajay Shah and Vijay Kelkar

• Whole Number and Half Truths by Rukmini S

I’ll end this blog by narrating an anecdote from one of my meetings with Ajay Shah one very calm, serene afternoon in Karjat. I asked him, wide eyed, “What do you think I should do as a young person who cares about India and wants to work on its problems?”

Ajay looked straight into my eyes and said -

“As a young person you should focus on equipping yourself with all the knowledge and experience and make yourself competent, so that when the Indian state calls on you to serve - you are equipped to contribute to the Indian growth story.”

I’d forgotten this anchor sometime along the way. This is my reminder to myself to what actually matters.

So long.

These are some of the questions that I am asking myself lately. My answer to all of these questions is a yes, and I am sure most of you would also respond in the affirmative. Life’s strange in many ways. And in as many ways it is simple. We, on the contrary are not. And so we spend 10, 20, 30, 40 years resolving the conflict. In the process, we graduate, we get a job, marry someone, have kids, have grandkids, retire and expire.1 And yet, overwhelmingly, as I’ve seen in myself, and others - life must be lived, and not merely spent. I remember once hearing the phrase “Waqt guzarta hai aur hum kharch hote hai” which loosely translates to “Time moves on, and we get spent”. And thus, we must look deep inside ourselves, into our Zuv (Kashmiri for soul) to understand what is the life we’re building for ourselves, and if in the process we are delaying living.

Here are some of the recent ramblings from my zuv

insert feeling of your choice

I’ve been spending a lot of time around people, or doing things - all of which is great but has slightly distanced me from my core. I believe that to in still stability into yourself, you must spend considerable time by yourself. It might be a personality thing, but I do experience it. I’m sure a lot of you do too. This is especially true if you’ve recently started something new - this could be a new job, a new relationship, a new city, or a new project. You get busy getting busy and forget to think. We’re great at being on autopilot. Occupational hazard.

But the flip side is that this works well when you are escaping something and don’t want to think about it. Keep yourself busy and move on. Surely, eventually I’ll get over it. You may, or may not. However, I can say, with some confidence that the purest way for you to go through whatever it is you’re going through, is to feel it - to the fullest. Let it burn you. Not completely. Don’t fall of the rails. But let is affect you. Cry if you must. Let it go through you. As somebody once said, emotions are temporary residents in your body, they don’t define you. Let them come, and they shall leave in due time. Hide from them, and they will haunt you.

side quests

I think a lot of joy comes from side quests. How do you define a side quest? It could be something that is not planned, little random for you to do, but the returns on fun are potentially high. It may be one of the key things to live a good life. Side quests can turn into projects. Side quests increase your surface area of serendipity.

i recently asked law students to send me their published and un-published writing pieces on competition law - the field of law I practice in India. Although I have not been able to read through them all; but I thought it to be an important side quest. This increases my surface area of reading, and the students may benefit from my comments (if you’ve sent in stuff to me and I haven’t responded - sorry, I’ve been very busy lately. How am I writing this then? Well, I don’t have only one side quest!).

Are side quests just hobbies? Potentially yes. But I think side quests are low commitment activities. If the side quest becomes more intense, it turns into a hobby, and if a hobby becomes more intense - it turns into a project. Welcome to the typology of human activity. Random hang outs can be a side quest. Going to places you weren’t planning on going are side quests. Crashing some friend’s friend’s friend’s birthday part is a side quest. It’s all about connecting with other people. We’re all just people in the end. Something will speak to us.

universe is grand, but life is grander

I recently was told by one of my friends that he has lied umpteen times to his parents while staying out by saying he’s staying with me. It made me joyous to know the level of comfort he has with me. Not a long while ago, one of my dear friends whose office was nearby from where I live, would come and crash unannounced with me after a long night of work. Thankfully it never lead to an awkward moment. But I found a lot of joy in his confidence that my house is always open for him. Which it was, and is. Another one of my friends is at my house so much so that he doesn’t even tell me when he’s at home when I’m out. I find a lot of joy in it. I remember envisioning my place to be a place for all my friends. Even though some of them have moved out of the city, and others have become busy with their lives, the memories will be with me forever. I’ve always said it - friends are the cogs that run the wheel of your life.

I spent the first day of this year at my friends’ place in Bangalore. My 3 friends, 2 out of which I only met for the first time last year. And yet, there we were. Friendships are amazing. One of my top reasons to be alive. Only after basketball.

work

As i spend more time working (and yes, I am still in my early stage of career, don’t come at me for thinkmaxxing), I’ve realised a few things:

• Work can be a great escape. The benefit is that you’ll subside the wreck from which you’re running from, and in the process become good at what you do.

• Being great at what you do is a worthwhile goal to chase. But hopefully you will do it by choice, and not my compulsion.

• Thinking about work and stressing out is way worse than actually just doing the work. The latter just takes time, but the former will drain your life.

• Being good at what you is a great feeling to feel (I’m yet to feel it, but I firmly believe this).

• It is worthwhile to distance yourself from your work outcomes. Work is worship. But you’re not an ascetic.

• Having a community at workplace does wonders.

My aim for this year is to submit myself to my work. I’ve never done it and am keen to try it. Also my late twenties might be the only time I may be able to do this. Which doesn’t seem to be true from the looks of it. But I will try to do it nonetheless.

miscellaneous

I’ve recently gotten to liking ‘house music’ so here are a few songs i’ve been listening to: Here, here, and here.

Here are a few videos I recently saw from one of my favourite Youtuber exurba: Here, here and here.

I also enjoyed listening to Bhargavi Zhaveri Shah speak on ‘Misaligned incentives behind courts’, Amit Varma and Mohit Satyanand on ‘Why India needs to defend freedom’.

Perhaps what I enjoyed the most was this remix of Brown Rang here.

If you’ve somehow made it till here, congratulations. You’ve read something that I would never post if I was not in a writer’s block. Pat yourself on the back and if you fancy getting a cup of coffee (on me), drop me an email on divyanshu3504@gmail.com.

Cheers. So long.

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There is ample anger, outrage and resentment towards the airline. Some have missed their own wedding reception, others have missed crucial meetings etc.. I, thankfully, was able to cancel my ticket and book on an alternative airline for only a slight delta.

There are many opinions flying around. Some say that airlines should be nationalised, others are highlighting the greed of corporations. Interestingly, some of my fellow antitrust lawyers have highlighted why it is important to have ample competition in a market to allow consumers to switch to other services. The state is also facing significant criticism for its inability to ensure compliance (if it was possible to do so in the first place).

I won’t be going into the reasons for why the fiasco happened in the first place as that would take a series of blog posts to explore the nature of regulatory compliance, rationality within firms, and the regulatory state itself. Through this blogpost, I wanted to explore the reasons, reactions and law around Surge Pricing and why people are looking at the Indian competition regulator to solve this problem.

What is Surge Pricing?

Let’s understand this concept using one of India’s obsessions - tea.

Imagine there are 3 organised competitors in the market for supply of black tea in India. The biggest competitor, Metly, has a market share of 60%. The second biggest competitor, Laj, has a market share of 30%, and the third biggest competitor, Magh Makhri, has a 6% market share.1 The remaining market share is distributed amongst various unorganised players.

Now imagine that due to some operational mishap, operations of Metley came to a grinding halt. It no longer could manufacture and sell tea in India. Although Metley cannot manufacture and sell tea, the consumers comprising 60% of the Indian tea market, which Metley used to service, still wants tea. We all will agree that it is not a good decision to separate Indians from their tea. Many of our parents and friends won’t start their day without their cuppa of tea.

Now, back to tea time. The 60% of Indian tea consumers, which Metley used to service, have been abandoned. These consumers have no other choice but to turn to the other two remaining organised tea manufacturers to service their demand. But remember that collectively, Laj and Magh Makhri only used to service 36% of the Indian tea market i.e., they only manufactured enough to service the 36% of the total number of tea consumers in India. Maybe they kept a bit of surplus to service unexpected spikes in demand, but not significantly more than that.

Now, assume that 5 million units of tea were sufficient to service 36% of the Indian tea market. This number represents the combined units of tea manufactured and sold by Laj and Magh Makhri. Now suddenly, due to Metley’s operational issues, overnight 64% of Indian tea consumers, which run into crores, are all vying to buy the limited 5 million stocks of tea.

In such a situation, the demand is high and the supply is limited. Tzche chui pata vayn kya gazchye (We all know what is going to happen). The same thing which happens on ride hailing platforms when it rains. The same thing which happens tomatoes and onions when there is a bad crop due to the monsoon.

“When prices of goods go exorbitantly high due to limited supply and high demand - it is called surge pricing.”

This is exactly what we all saw happen when Indigo delayed their flights by extensive timelines, or straight out cancelled thousands of their flights. The people who had booked their tickets still had to go where they had booked the tickets for. They had their own weddings, interviews, meetings, occasions to attend. Naturally they turned to the other airlines to book their tickets. The airlines knew that there was an immense demand for flight tickets (similar to the 60% tea consumers in our example who HAD to buy the tea) and that these consumers, being pushed in a corner, would over-pay by many times to buy these tickets. The airlines, accordingly, raised their prices by several times to benefit from the supply demand mis-match.

Many argue that surge pricing should be illegal. Many called it immoral. Somebody also called this legalized loot.

I disagree.

In want to be clear. I don’t find any joy in spending more than I usually do. In fact I am disagreeing with the position above despite having had to pay much more for a service, for no fault of my own. I disagree with this because I don’t agree with the counter-factual of the argument which opposes surge pricing. And by the end of this blog, we’ll also cover by the competition regulator of India, who has the authority to intervene when companies levy unfairly high prices, also disagrees with surge pricing being inherently bad, or straight up illegal.

Understanding the discomfort with Surge Pricing.

Is there any existing law which outlaws surge pricing? No. Is surge pricing a new phenomenon? No. It is worth wondering if the fact that surge pricing has not been outlawed means that there must be a cogent reason behind it. Because if surge pricing was a bad socio political outcome, it should’ve been outlawed by now. But we must not fall for this survivalist logic. By that logic we would have never have had universal adult suffrage, abolishment of slavery, women’s rights etc. Just because something has been going on for a long time is not a testament to its legitimacy.

So if we can’t rely on history, we must turn to first principles. At its core, the issue here is “whether companies have the ability and right to set the prices of their products and services.” The simple answer is yes. The nuanced answer, which a lawyer like me, is accustomed to giving is, “well it depends”.

If an enterprise with a high market share prices its products ‘unfairly’ high, India’s competition regulator Competition Commission of India (CCI) - has the jurisdiction to intervene and direct the company to reduce its prices. It is important to note that CCI, by its own admission, recognises that it’s not in the business of deciding what constitutes ‘right price’ for any product or service. However, the CCI notes that it can intervene if “dominant player engages in pricing practices that harm consumers or stifle competition.” Therefore, CCI has the jurisdiction to intervene across the spectrum of pricing by a dominant enterprise2 i.e. CCI can scrutinise extremely high prices, and extremely low prices imposed imposed by a dominant enterprise. The latter is also known as predatory pricing (i.e. when a dominant enterprise prices its products or services very low to acquire more market share and to exclude its competitors from the market).

You’d naturally ask the question - why can’t the CCI intervene into such instances of surge pricing? Surely, we all could agree that pricing an airline ticket 4 - 5 times its usual price is unfair pricing. And you’d be right in asking this fundamental question.

Interestingly, in 2022, the CCI released market study on “Competition and regulatory issues in the cab aggregator industry with special reference to surge pricing”. The CCI found that surge pricing is not illegal under the Indian competition law construct as it is not a per se competition concern, and that surge pricing may be better addressed by sectoral regulators (in our case, the DGCA). However, the report highlights a few important points that I think are worth thinking about as they point to more fundamental concept surrounding this issue. The report concludes:

• Surge pricing is a response of an efficient market which allocates resources to consumers based on the supply and demand of the products as available in the market.

• Consumers are not averse to paying surge prices in exchange for convenience, and thus surge pricing is not necessarily a ‘rent seeking’ behavior/ exploitative behavior.

• Banning surge pricing, while may offer a short-term consumer relief, might have negative long-run effects. Regulations shouldn’t unintentionally limit beneficial technologies that boost economic productivity.

Based on the above factors, the report argues why competition regulators, including the CCI “generally refrain from intervening with the pricing decisions of independent economic actors in a competitive market”. This is a very important line as it answers the question we’d asked above i.e. “whether companies have the ability and right to set the prices of their products and services?”. The answer when it comes to surge pricing is, yes.

Enterprises can legally engage in surge pricing.

Why Surge Pricing is not only legal, but may be a sign of a healthy market

Before I leave you, gentle readers, I want to conclude my argument on why, despite having to pay significantly more in surge pricing, I am opposed to the counterfactual. It brings us to the core of what makes a free market, ‘free’ i.e. the ability of market players to price their products and services according to the demand and supply, and other market forces, without the intervention of the state. Arguably, the only true price that exists is a price decided by the invisible hand of the market.

In the counterfactual, the only way to ‘solve’ surge pricing is if the state intervenes in the process of pricing the products or services, and decides that the price of a product or service must be an arbitrarily set number. The issue here is that, there is no rational and correct process by which the state can arrive at this magical number. You’d naturally ask how is anyone able to come up with the price of anything then, and how does this so called ‘free market’ set prices?

Simply, the market sets the prices based on the forces of supply and demand and not because somebody, high and mighty, decided that X is the right price of that product or service. For example, consider a safety pin which is currently being sold at INR 10. It is being sold at INR 10 because people believe that INR 10 is a legitimate price to pay for a safety pin. If the same safety pins is sold at INR 25 by one seller - people will stop purchasing from that seller and purchase it from others. In this situation, the market, through reduced demand for a INR 25 safety pin, sent a signal to the seller that his price of safety pins was too high. After sufficient time, the seller will naturally realise that nobody will buy his safety pin for INR 25 and will likely scale te price back to around INR 10. This is an example of how the demand and supply forces decide the price of any product or service.

No one individual, or even a group of individuals in the state have the oversight of the “market” to decide what is the right price of a product or service. In the same example above, if the state decides that the ‘right price’ of a safety pin should be INR 8 and mandates that all safety pins must be sold at INR 8 across India. Such a move is likely to disincentivise manufacture and sale of safety pin in the first place, as fixing the price at INR 8 would either result in the manufactures and sellers incurring a loss, or barely being able to make any profit at all. In such a situation, rational actors are likely to step away from ventures which are either loss making or un-sustainable. And thus, it could be possible that although the state had noble intentions of reducing the prices of safety pins, ultimately lead to the collapse of the entire industry. All actions have the seen and the unseen effects, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

You get the idea for why state entering in the business for price setting is a bad idea.3

Hayek’s knowledge problem addresses this issue. In his essay, ‘The use of knowledge in society’ Hayek points out the fact that no one individual, or group of people holds the complete knowledge about anything, and that knowledge exists as “dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess”. Applied to the present context, it means that the reason why we should not argue for out-lawing surge pricing is because it opens the window for the state to set prices, or set thresholds within which independent economic actors must price their products; as opposed to the market forces deciding the prices. And that is an outcome that not only disincentivizes economic actors from operating in the first place, but also gives a pass to the state to flex its muscles and exceed its jurisdictions, leading to unseen effects as highlighted above.

In conclusion, although it is counter intuitive to argue that surge pricing is not a result of evil companies exploiting innocent consumers, but thats what first principles economics thinking tells us. It is important to point out that surge pricing is not a ‘market failure’ but a regular response to a natural event in the market; and therefore requires no state intervention.

Hi, I’m Divyanshu. I’m from Kashmir but I live in Jammu.

Hidden in the but is decades of history. History of my people. History of a peaceful land, of a genocide, and the eternal struggle to call foreign lands home, ever since. The history of the Kashmiri Pandits (KPs).

It feels strange to call KPs “my people” and lay a claim over them in form of kinship. I’ve never lived with, or around other KPs. The only KPs I know are my family, and a few happenstance acquaintances.

I’ve never known community. And maybe because of this, have never longed for it either. Other than the stray instances where I wake up in my bed and don’t feel Kashmiri enough. Having lived outside of my home since I was 18, and without any Kashmiris around me - I’ve become less Kashmiri with every year. With every year, I incrementally forget my customs, my traditions, my folklore, and my idioms.

Hi, I’m Divyanshu. I’m from Kashmir, but I know nothing about being a Kashmiri.

Hu kus Bae kus Tayl Wann Tcze Kus

I’m sure many of you gentle readers may have heard this phrase. It has been made popular by many Bollywood songs, albeit with a little butchered spelling and pronunciation (which is why you should listen to this version by Abha Hanjura, a kashmiri herself). It translates to “Who is that, who am I, now tell me who are you?”

To give you a little back story, my parents are from Kashmir. They were born and brought up there. My father is from this place called Rainawari in Srinagar, and my mother is from Handwara, a town in Kashmir. They both went to school and university in Kashmir. All of their lives were in Kashmir - family, friends and education.

They lived all their lives in Kashmir until the insurgency and unrest started.

I don’t know much about the genesis of the insurgency movement in Kashmir which culminated in the genocide1 of Kashmiri Pandits in the early 90s - but I roughly know what happened through stories that I’ve heard over the years. For my generation, that’s passed down trauma, which we were lucky enough to only hear and not live.

To capture decades of trauma and irreversible mental trauma in one line: my parents, and all of their families, and extended families had to flee Kashmir overnight without knowing they’ll never be able to return.

When the insurgency was at its peak, the insurgents had started to openly hold rallies against KPs. Slogans were raised about how KPs must either convert or die. One notorious slogan was:

“Aes gayzch kashir, batan waraye, tae bataniyan saeth”

This translates to “We want Kashmir, without the KP men, but with their women.”

It was not just the slogans. There was brutal violence against KPs. Many KPs were killed. Other were fatally injured.

KPs had no other option but to leave behind their homes, their belongings, their education, their jobs, their life in a split second. My mother’s house was burnt down, and my father’s house was abandoned and sold to a neighbour who bought it for peanuts. My mother couldn’t complete her MA (Education). She had to flee Kashmir before she could give her last exam. Most of the KPs, who had nowhere to go, ended up in Jammu, which was a bus ride away.

As per estimates available online, more than 1 lakh KPs suddenly relocated to Jammu with nowhere to live. Makeshift tents were put up by the government and given to KPs. These tents were hotbeds for violence, disease and unrest. And why would it not be. It is all but natural. Many KPs, who had always lived in the valley, died because of heat stroke.

My mother lived in a cramped matchbox apartment in Jammu with her family and all other extended family members. There was no where to go. My father, on the other hand, lived in Jammu with his brother, who before the genocide, already had a job in Jammu. My father, left Jammu in search of a job and went to Delhi. One night, he had nowhere to sleep and managed to convince someone to let him sleep in their balcony.

I won’t dwell on the injustices that families like mine have had to endure. Multiple families have gone through unspeakable horrors.

But it is important to tell you why I won’t dwell on these injustices. It’s got to do with my parents, and how they stopped the cycle of hate from perpetuating.

Bae’tana doourey zaarey madano

(translates to “I can’t bear the distance between us”, taken from Vibha Saraf’s rendition of the popular Kashmiri folk song ‘Harmokh Bartal’)

I believe it is a tall ask to ask victims of a communal genocide to not feel resentment towards the people who committed the genocide. It is an ask, that I have never asked of my parents.

You’d assume that they would hate the people who destroyed and changed their lives irreversibly from the bottom of their heart. That they can’t stand them. That they tell their children to be wary of such people. That they never forget and never let their children forget what happened to them.

But surprisingly, my parents, did none of this.

Growing up, neither of my parents ever villainised the people who were responsible for the genocide. They’ve never told me and my sister that, that community or that religion is bad. They’ve never asked us to discriminate. They’ve never told us to be suspicious.

The best thing that my parents ever did for me and my sister was to also never impression us about anything. They’ve always allowed me and my sister to grow as individuals and form our own opinions. Even when it came to the genocide itself. They’ve always been there to tell us stories, to discuss concepts and to engage. But they’ve never stopped us from having an opinion. And I think that’s the single most important things that they’ve done for us, which in many senses, made sure that the cycle of hatred was never started.

I think it helped that both of them are academicians and inhabitants of the land of ideas. They’re educated, intellectual people whose worlds are not only limited to the world they see. Maybe it allowed them to rise above their experience and see beyond it. Maybe they are extremely courageous individuals who were able to bear this burden by themselves and not transfer it onto us. It is not surprising that the rates of depression in KPs are high. Living with the pain of having lost your home, and your homeland, has made KPs into a community of sad people - something you’ll find traces of even in our music (see here, here, here, here, and here). My sister has explored this tangent in her writings here:

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All said and done, in no version of my life, would I ever want to trade places with my parents. What happened to them, and their families, is horrific. Although my parents have empowered me to never define my identity with their trauma - that’s the history I carry with myself whenever I qualify my introduction with a but.

Hi, I’m Divyanshu, and I’ve never seen Kashmir but once.

Walaye Kosturiye, Dur May Traav Neereiye; Choun Pakuniye Praznov Mai Ha Duuriye

(This comes form a Kashmiri song which translates to “Come hither deer, don’t put your foot far from me, be near, I recognised you from your stride from afar”)

In 2017, when I had moved out of my house for the first time to attend the University of Delhi, is when I realised that most people were unaware of the KPs genocide. It was surprising to me but I quickly got used to it. I introduced people to this lesson in history and moved on. I also observed that many people would not treat this issue with as much seriousness or even empathy as it arguably warranted. If not in remedial action, but in remembrance to what has happened. I think it was because to most Indians, KPs are mythical creatures that they’ve only heard about. And I would assume it is difficult to empathise with someone you don’t know, and for an event that happened decades ago, which most people don’t remember. Regardless, I never got sentimental about it because as I said earlier, I’ve never felt that I belonged to Kashmir so strongly as to fight with others over it.

And that brings us to Baramulla - the brilliant Netflix movie, which is also the reason behind why I am writing this blogpost in the first place. Without going much into the movie itself, and I’m cautious as to not spoil the movie for others, I want to slightly graze past the political reactions that the movie has elicited.

There is some commentary surrounding the movie which has flagged the movie has problematic because it has the possibility to ruffle some communal feathers. I am by no means an expert on media, or sociology, but I believe one question may help us understand the inherent goodness or badness of this movie.

Does it showcase a fact, or is it exaggerated/ intended to be a propaganda?

The film clearly does not engage in theatrics, or exaggeration. Whatever is depicted is backed up by anecdotal and recorded evidence.

[Potential Spoiler Ahead]

This is where I draw a slight line between a film like Baramulla and The Kashmir Files. As a disclosure - I’ve never seen the latter and do not plan to, in the near future. My reason for not watching the later is that, although the movie is based on true events, to me it seems that the movie uses the KP issue as a conduit to tap into a wider and more pervasive sense of communal divide. And this is my biggest grouse with movies/ content such as Kashmir Files. They sensationalise the KP issue but to achieve no ends, no reform. All victims of the genocide who had to flee Kashmir are still away from their homeland. No KP has been able to return home. All the dead people are still dead.

Of course - one can argue that the one good thing that The Kashmir Files has done, is to create awareness about the past. About the genocide. And that’s true. I know of a few people, who got to know about the genocide only because of the movie. And I suppose you can’t have it all. You can’t create a non-sensational piece of media along with the benefits of reaching the masses and creating awareness around the issue.

But it leads me to a conundrum. To me, awareness solves nothing. The genocide was an event in the past that is sadly irreversible. It irreversibly changed all of our lives. The ones, like my parents, who had to flee Kashmir can’t get all these years or their home back. The other ones, like me, have no remaining connection with Kashmir, and therefore have no incentive to re-settle there.

The larger question is how does one do justice to KPs? What would qualify as supporting the community and meting out restorative justice to them? Although re-settling projects in Jammu have had some success, all efforts of re-settling KPs in Kashmir have failed. The state and the central government have been running welfare initiatives to support KPs such as free ration, pension and reservation for KP kids in a few central universities. I can attest to the fact that some of this does work, given that I attended a good University of Delhi college due to the Kashmiri Migrant quota myself. So, it is not as if nothing was ever done to remedy the issue in whatever ways is possible. Which brings me to the question - what now? What do we do with this, with us? Where do we go from where we are?

Are we frantically looking for a solution to a problem that has become moot?

Mae Hyu na Kahn, Zan Bae Koshur Haangul

(translates to “There is nobody like me, I’m like a Kashmiri Stag”2)

Gentle reader, maybe this piece gives you a window into why do I ask so many questions in life. I believe it is so, because I have so many questions about my identity, the past and future of it. Questions about where do I/ we go from here, and what do I/ we call a home.

If you have any KP friends, it is very likely that they are, or have been good at studies and fairly above average achievers in life. The reason behind it is simple, and was explained very well by my uncle to my sister’s college authorities, during the time of her admission.3 KPs didn’t have anything left after the genocide. They’d lost all material possessions and comfort in life. The only thing, which could help them rebuild their lives, was education. Which is why they focused on their own education, and the education of their children. Education is extremely important to KPs, for it was the only remaining tool of social mobility left for us.

Thankfully, by education, and support from the government and our own community - we’re back on our feet. At least my generation.

But the KPs stand at a defining moment. Most of my generation, myself included, don’t know the language well enough to teach the future generation much of anything. Not just the language, same goes for our customs, traditions and practices. We’re at the brink of cultural extinction. I’ve never given this a thought, mostly because I seldom think of whether my (fictional) children were be sufficiently Kashmiri or not. But when I do think of it - I arrive at frightening conclusions. If the culture dies with me and I am not able to transfer any culture to my children, they’ll be Kashmiri but with no markers of what it means to be one. They’ll be culture-less, language-less, and custom-less. Even for someone like me, who does not care about these things much, such a life is bereft of identity. It is saddening to think that later KP generations will proclaim of themselves as Kashmiri but with nothing to prove it for.

However, not all hope is lost. Many youngsters are contributing whatever they can to keep the culture alive. For example, you have the instagram page lallaspeaks which is “a digital archive of Kashmir’s literature, culture and history”. And it’s not just the youngsters, perhaps one of the biggest contributor to keeping Kashmiriyat in KPs alive is M. K. Raina, who also happens to be a relative. He has worked on countless language and writing preservation initiatives, and produced multiple original written and A/V content (including books). You can look at his work here.

I’ve been looking for a community in Delhi for sometime now. However to not much avail. If you are a KP, or know of KP communities/ initiatives which I could contribute to - do let me know!

Baaya, wayn vonn mae varya. Bae dyim vayn zae trae truis kaaemes, tae taem patt khyam mein batt. Tohye tae roozyiv salaamat. Aes myelaev jald.

I’ve been told that Omit Varma (Sorry Amit, but IYKYK) says that there is nothing such as a writer’s block. He may be right because I don’t think I am in a writer’s block. I am in a writer’s Möbius loop - an endless continuous loop where you feel like you’re moving forward and experiencing new things, but in the end, you get back to where you started (Learn more about Möbius strips and Klein bottles here.) In some sense, Möbius living is worse than a Sisyphean life. Even though Sisyphus could never get to the top with his boulder, at least he know as a fact of life that there was, indeed a peak. There was something to work towards. But if you’re Möbius living, you know that there is no peak, and all new experiences are mere versions of the past that trick you into the illusion of moving ahead.

Okay, I think I should stop my Schopenhauerian analysis of life now.

But all said and done, I do feel like I am wandering around endlessly, without an end. I am chasing something but I don’t know what yet. Most days I end up chasing the feeling of chasing something.

I want to be a Liverr.

I was on the lunch table with my senior colleague, who is very fit for his age and profession. He eats the same lunch every day (I’ve tried to steal his lunch idea but have largely failed). A few days back I asked him if he has an air fryer at home, further suggesting him to buy it because it will fit into his healthy lifestyle. His response to this was, “Jeena bhi toh hai, I want to eat normal food also. As Orry said - In want to be a liverr. That’s a state of mindfulness I want to reach”.

Moving past how surprising it was to hear those words come out of someone who is more than 40 years of age and a senior lawyer; it really got me thinking of life. I’m obsessed with optimising various things in life. It is a different matter that all of it remains in my thoughts and never gets to execution. But as it remains - I, at least spend a lot of time thinking about optimising my life and chasing the ‘ideal life’. When my colleague said what he said, it reminded me - the whole point of optimising whatever you are optimising for, is so that you can live a better life. I’d stopped thinking about the living part of well, life. I think sometimes one must let go of the vision of what one wants to be, and be in the present, enjoying what is meant to be enjoyed. I must be clear that I am not propagating some version of all is well, life is great, everybody is happy bs. In fact and as I am sure, most of you will agree - life mostly sucks. But one must remember to find joy in whatever little pockets it can be found.

Perspective is the name of the game.

A test I often employ when I have to make a decision is an extreme version of the regret minimisation framework. I ask myself, how would I feel about this on my death bed? (I recently recommended this framework to a friend of mine, hearing which she said, “We need to talk about how often you talk about death”) In answering this question, I am able to zoom out of the current trouble I am in, and look at larger things in life.

How do you gain perspective? Do you only gain perspective after having lived through the situations, made the mistakes you do, and hurt the people you have? Is there a way to develop perspective which does not involve having to go through the sheer brutality of life? I would assume one way is to talk to other people and learn from their experiences. But that also does not work perfectly because

Perspective is nothing but a balancing act of the trade off that an individual is willing to make in their life.

I think the only authentic perspective, sadly, that you can develop is to go through it. To go through the heart break and the hardship, and then know what is it that you value, and what is it that you’re willing to let go.

The reason why I am talking about perspective is that I find myself in a situation where multiple very important anchors of my life have come off, largely pertaining to my career and personal life. And I find myself in a sea of uncertainty. Of course, I know that with time, everything will be fine - either the causes of the uncertainty will cease to exist, or I will develop the perspective to deal with them in due time. But what about now?

In a recent conversation with my sister, she pointed out to the fact that we often forget that things in our life don’t and can’t get better without our efforts to improve it. It is normative to put in a lot of effort into your career because you know that unless you put in the work, you won’t be successful. Similarly, if you want to improve your mental health - you need to go to therapy, listen to podcasts on mindfulness, read books on becoming calmer etc. If you want to have a companion - you’ll need to think of it in the same way as you think of your job. You need to give yourself deliverables and deadlines of meeting new people, re-connecting with old friends, and going to places. I know it sounds ridiculous (and I would be caught dead actually doing this), but I have a strong sense that this would work.

So the perspective I’ve been thinking of lately is that nothing will improve by itself in my life. I will have to put in the effort for everything - my peace, health, prosperity, love, career and what not. And to not moan about not getting what I want without putting in the work I need to, in order to get what I want. I aspire to reach a level of mindfulness where I have the wisdom to execute what I know is good for me, and to not live in misery when I don’t.

‘Mid’ Life Crisis.

In a previous post, I’d written about the melancholy of a upper middle class corporate lifestyle i.e. that after a point when the dust settles into the novelty of acquiring means of earning, and spending it to your heart’s content - the life settles into a (sub) optimal level of getting things done. And as I said above - it takes a lot of effort to get yourself excited about, well, anything.

I am sure that most people would agree that there isn’t much to look forward to in life, other than a few events every year - a friend’s marriage, a long planned trip, meeting your sibling after long etc. etc. One thing I am having a hard time figuring out is how to make my life more exciting; so that I have things to look forward to. Most days I merely wait for the weekend, and on weekend there is nothing much to do other than playing sports and wasting the whole day in the bed. Of course, one way to counter that is to make plans in advance and keep your weekends busy with activities you want to do. But also life takes over on week days and you rarely get to this level of operational efficiency as you’d like to. The other way is to be spontaneous. I am the opposite of spontaneous. I like to plan my day in advance and don’t like to change my day unless it is something I want to do in that moment (which is rare). But I have sufficient evidence around me to know that that’s one big way by which people keep their lives moving and exciting.

But all said and done, I can admit that I am in a mid life crisis. Not only because I am 26 but also because my life has become mid. I have become the very thing I hated. But I am also in a weird phase because I am not sure exactly what to do, which will effectively make my life more exciting. Sometimes I wonder if I should even chase excitement anymore, or if my remaining twenties are meant as a training for my melancholic life to come. But then I think of myself being on the death bed and looking back on my years. I will be caught dead (literally) thinking that I lived a mid life on my death bed.

So I am raging against the mid life. I don’t exactly know how to, but I will figure it out soon. For now the things I am looking forward to are: (i) attending a colleague’s wedding in Lucknow, (ii) attending the Emergent Ventures Unconference in Bengaluru, (iii) attending xkdr forum’s conference in Mumbai, (iv) meeting my sister after a year etc.

Questions I’ve been thinking about.

This should ideally be a separate segment of blogposts, but for now I’m including this here.

1. What does innovation mean in law? We live in a age where we are surrounded by innovations in Technology and Science - breakthroughs in AI, medicine, physics and whatnot. That got me thinking of whether innovation is possible in law, if at all. Legal services is categorised as a service industry. People come to lawyers with their legal problems and lawyers either advice them on how to resolve them against what the law states is permissible, or, represent such people before various judicial forums. On a macro level, one would argue that law is what it is, and the only job of a lawyer is to give effective representation to their clients and argue how they’re on the right side of the law. There isn’t much innovation involved with interpreting the law, which once a friend had said, is nothing more than sentences and words. Although there is a strong argument of how interpretation of the law itself is a site of legal innovation which leads to developments in how we understand the law, especially in a common law system such as India (Common law systems allow for judges to interpret and set the law as opposed to Civil law systems where the law is only made by the legislative and the courts have a very narrow scope of interpretation, with no allowance to lay down a new law). What I think of a more normative innovation in law is something such as coming up with the idea of a company, which is separate legal person and separate liability which is different from the liability of people who run the company. At the time when this idea was floated - it was revolutionary. There is a great book on the history of the concept of a company by the authors John Micklethwait & Adrain Wooldridge. I’m currently thinking of what other facets of innovation are possible in legal services which can revolutionise or change the way things are done. I’d love to have a chat with you, gentle reader, if you have any thoughts on this aspect.

2. Watching The Huberman Lab Podcast might elevate your life significantly. This is currently only a hypothesis, as I have not executed all the helpful suggestions that are discussed in the Huberman Lab Podcast. One of the aspirations I have is to diligently go through as many of his podcasts and write down all the invaluable suggestions discussed in the podcast. Given that he is a scientist and discusses concepts alongside the evidence of the effectiveness of his suggestions, it is nothing short of a ready made guide on how to make your life better.

3. Is self actualisation an individual project? For the most part of my adult life, I’ve been a big believer of the fact that you grow the most when you have as few constraints as possible. On one side is my lived experience of getting more out of myself, in terms of interesting side projects, better thinking, more reading etc. whenever I am by myself for most of the time with little accountability to other people. On the other side I have ample evidence that successful people, successful by any measurable means, are more often than not people with partners, and a family. So it is not that your partner, or family puts so much constraints onto you that you cannot self actualise and reach your potential. However we must be very careful to not fall prey to the survivorship bias i.e. concluding that constraints of a partner and family do not hinder self actualisation because we’re only looking at people who have done it despite these constraints, who might as well be the outliers. We will never know the counterfactual i.e. how many people could not do what they wanted to do, or to the full extant of it, because of constraints imposed by a partner, and a family.

I will leave you with a few pieces of content I enjoyed consuming over the past few weeks.

1. Patrick and John Collison (CEOs of Stripe) in conversation with CEO of Eli Lilly on the ‘let him cook’ method of pharmaceutical innovation.

2. Ali Abdal on how to change your life.

3. What Genes and Phones tell us - Amit Varma and Ajay Shah on Everything is Everything.

4. Sam Altman in conversation with Tyler Cowen on future of intelligence.

5. Hank Green on why the state of the AI industry is freaking him out.

6. Chess is microdosing infinity.

7. Art of reading - Amit Varma and Ajay Shah on Everything is Everything.

8. Bombay Bar Association’s podcast featuring conversations with imminent lawyers of the Bombay bar.

9. Teen safety, freedom, and privacy by Sam Altman

10. India’s economic strategy in the new globalisation by Ajay Shah and Vijay Kelkar

11. Trump’s unjust and illegal killing of 11 Venezualans by Ilya Somin

12. Where Indian regulation went wrong - Amit Varma and Ajay Shah on Everything is Everything.

See you soon! Write to me if you’d like to offer your two cents on anything discussed in this blogpost!

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Part I

‘Closer to thirty than to twenty’ is what I said to myself as the clock struck 12:00 am on 17 July 2025. I was (am) in Mumbai, visiting a friend whose mother is my birthday twin. I would’ve told myself that I can take solace in the fact that my friend’s mother was in fact turning 56, and at least I am only turning 26. But aunty is way cooler, suave and charming than me - so the comparison wasn’t exactly a pleasant one.

Twenty six. It’s a strange age. Twenty five feels monumental. You seem to have come of age. Life is a stage, and all is a performance. The expectations are high, and the adults start to consider that maybe you are, too, an adult.

Twenty six. It’s a strange age. The expectations get normalised. And the expectation is for you to have done everything yesterday. These are all internal expectations mind you. I’m not even on the topic of societal ones. Internal expectations burden you. But thankfully I don’t care much for societal ones.

Twenty six. It’s a strange age. I don’t know what to expect of myself. I can’t anchor myself to anything. At once I feel too old to be youthful and adventurous. But at the same time I feel too young to start doing things that ‘Thirty year olds’ do.1 And then I am reminded of a beautiful line by Jeff Buckley from ‘Lover, you should’ve come over’.

Twenty six. It’s a strange age. And I’m in Mumbai. The mistress of cities. My friend, Shlok - whose home I am staying at is from Mumbai, but currently stays in Delhi for work. Both of us were at the 34th floor of a building, gazing into the Mumbai skyline as the night set in. And there was Mumbai. Provocatively calling out to us. Sultry.

He said, “That’s Mumbai for you. She’s calling out to us. She’s saying that I am yours for the taking.” And I wholeheartedly agreed, living in Delhi yearning for a different city. So twenty six was strange. I was in Mumbai, the city I’ve always wanted to be in but cannot bring myself to.

Part II

My sister has this tradition where she writes a letter to me on my birthday, every year. I would’ve loved to share the whole letter with all of you because of how lovely it is, but then I must feel special and gatekeep her love and wisdom. However, I’d like to share on excerpt from the letter.

I think the part i liked the most in this letter is what she wished me for my life. She said,

“So here’s my wish for you- more balance. More quiet courage. More calm curiosity. In silence, gather strength. In balance, spark the next rebellion.”

Quiet courage. Calm curiosity. In silence, gather strength. In balance, spark the next rebellion. What beautiful words. Dear sister, I will try to live up to them as much as I can.

As I turn twenty six I find myself at a strange place. It’s not good or bad. At one hand I have pretty much achieved all that I wanted out of life as a twenty year old. But at the same time I have not achieved anything that I really want to. With age I’ve realised that all the things I really aspire towards are internal and not material. But with age I have also realised that you need to sort out the material aspects of your life before you pursue the higher non material aspects of life. You cannot think of purpose, aim and peace without having figured out groceries, utilities and other things.

So what is twenty six? Honestly, I don’t know. And I couldn’t know. I am typing out these words sitting by myself in Doolaly (my favourite brewery if I can say), and contemplating what life is all about. Every year I grow wiser, and every year I look inwards and realise how little I have experienced life, and how little I know of everything. I’ve said it enough time, I love getting older. There is something about the ticking of clock that I enjoy. And experiencing that in Mumbai is all I could’ve asked for.

I took a break from writing this piece to chat with my dear friend Karan (who writes on films on his wonderful blog here) to talk about films, life and dating. He recently turned thirty so the conversation benefitted from his experience and wisdom. He said one thing that really hit me. He said,

“Whenever making a decision, go in the future and think if your future self would want you to take the decision or not.

This is quite an effective decision making framework, and very similar to Jeff Bezos regret minimisation framework.

The ‘life lessons’ skip me and I don’t have much to offer on the elusive wisdom that my years have bestowed on me. Doolaly is calling to me so I must attend to her as well. So what’s the vibe at twenty six?

Taking a leaf from my friend Kamya (who writes her wonderful substack here) I would like to condense my thoughts in a list here (which is a letter to myself)

1. Have breakfast.

2. Please go all in for whatever it is that you decide. Don’t half ass anything.

3. Love freely. You can’t protect your heart from being hurt. It’s inevitable. So at least try to do the things that tug at you.

4. Take time out to think and journal. Never live your life on auto pilot unless you consciously decide to do so.

5. Eat better. Limit bad foods.

6. Go to therapy occasionally.

7. Insure yourself against becoming a NPC.

8. Try to build a cool life. See if you can do it while being with someone. If you need space to do this, please create it.

9. Listen to elders. Place a premium on their wisdom.

10. Sam Altman was right when he said:

    

Overall, I’m disappointed in myself and think I haven’t achieved half of what I am capable of. But at the same time I am excited for all that the future has to offer. I am more confident on betting on myself, and cannot wait for all the things I will do.

Jai Mata Di, let’s rock.

Adios amigos, it is time for me to return to my duties at Doolaly. Until next time, so long.2

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The treasures of thinking

I do not wish to lead an unexamined life. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you would know that I am obsessed with being mindful and measured about everything that I do. Ideally, I do not want to do anything without thought and/ or cogent reason. Sometimes, I fail. But with every day I get better. I’ve realised, it is nothing but a habit and you build a habit over time.

I am turning 26 in a month. My older friends tell me that I am in the peak of my youth. Of course - I feel different. I won’t say I feel old, but my body has started to rebel against my youthful ventures.1 Leaving the flesh aside - the most growth for me has come from change in perspective and decision making. I still am miles and miles away from who I want to be, but I also have come a long distance from the Divyanshu with a monkey brain. You may ask, what changed?

It all boils down to the fact that I am now more careful about calibrating my actions with the outcomes I want. If an action does not lead to, or actively goes against, an outcome I desire - I try to not go through with it.

Of course, I fail horribly both in frequency and impact of my decisions. But for me there is consolation in the fact that it is becoming second nature for me to be thoughtful about my actions.

The downside of leading an overly examined life is that you constantly assess every little action and thought. Nothing is permitted to exist for its own sake. Actions and thoughts are either optimal, or illegal. There is no silliness or goofing around. You constantly murder the small aberrations and desires for the safe and optimal outcome. You become risk averse - since any risk could lead to an uncertain and potentially unfavourable outcome. You take the heart from your sleeve and push it deep into the back pocket.

Perhaps the most pernicious of my habits is to be stuck in the space between knowing something is bad for me, and not being able to do anything about it. So I go on, making the same mistakes and hating myself more with time. So here I am, in the midst of the great battle in my head. Should I live the risk-free, ideal life or should I toss my inhibitions and do what I feel? Is is better to live a safe life where you control each aspect of your life, or is it better to do what you want to do, even if it comes at the cost of your time, energy and feelings?

As an aside, I always like to remind myself that most of one’s troubles arise from not knowing oneself deeply. It is imperative that we know who we are, what we stand for, what we want etc. Life’s problems often find their udgham2 in the struggle between what we want to do vs. what we want to be. One of my life’s aims is to know myself well enough before I die. I don’t want to die in a stranger’s body.

The monotony of a upper middle class corporate lifestyle

I’ve been working for around two years now. I have a good job. I am paid decently. I am not shy to spend my money. I have been able to solve most financial constraints for myself and lead a upper middle class lifestyle. I go to good restaurants, clubs, concerts, visit my friends in different cities, buy my family and friends gifts, hire house help to make my life easy etc. It is a comfortable lifestyle. And unfortunately, I’ve gotten too comfortable.

Every week, I go through the motions of work, dining out, ordering in, watching movies, meeting friends at food joints, hanging out at friends houses and doing nothing. This is exactly the life I wanted for myself. And yet it seems artificial. Superficial. One of my biggest fears is that I will lose myself in the mediocrity of the masses. And I can say that it is becoming true for the most part.

I heard a phrase in a random Instagram reel about having a more happening life which has since then been my bedrock.

Nothing happens to regular dudes.

I have become a regular dude. To the extant that I feel that you could replace my face with some one else and no would notice any difference. It is as if I’m losing my fingerprints. Morphing into the quintessential corporate young Indian male. I hate it and I hope to change it soon. I don’t want to one day wake up at 50, with a wife and kids, with a deep desire to run away and abandon everything.

The question then is - what constitutes an interesting life. For me, what would count as interesting is if I read a lot of things (so I have knowledge about many things), continue my podcast (which has been in coma since last year), write more (this is an attempt to get back in the game), and pick up some new hobbies. Interestingly, you could do all that you think is interesting and still not be considered an interesting person. Why? Because your qualities have value if they are valued so by other people. This bring us to a conundrum i.e. does true value come from within, or externally. Is there any actual value in something if nobody else recognises it so? But I will leave this thread for sometime else, and for you, the gentle reader, to ponder upon.

Knick Knacks

A friend recently used the term ‘Knick Knack’ recently and I’ve been amused by it since then. However the knick knacks that I have to offer are pieces of media and reading that i have consumed recently and appreciated.

Reading

I’m technically in between Anirudh Kanisetti’s book Lords Of The Deccan. I say technically because I started it a month back and haven’t gotten back to it since. I enjoyed reading Being Oblique (musings on life), What’s The Matter With India (on India’s judicial system’s failure), and Find your People (a commencement speech at Bucknell University by Jessica Livingston)

Movie/ OTT

I thorougly enjoyed watching the Marathi movie Me, Vasantrao on the life of Vasantrao Deshpande - a renowned Hindustani classical musician from Maharashtra. I also enjoyed watching Malayalam movies Sookshmadarshini, and Ela Veezha Poonchira. Honourable mention to the brain-rot movies White Chicks, and Aiyya.

Music

I’ve been listening to a few Tamil and Malayalam songs recently. My favourites are: Munbe Vaa, Unakkul Naane, Merke Merke, Snehidhane, Nee Kavithaigala, Nishani. Otherwise I’ve been revising some songs from The Strokes, and Radiohead such as Alone, Together; Is This It; Last Night; Life In A GlassHouse; No Surprises; Pyramid Song etc.

Sketches

I am very happy that I have picked up sketching again. Sharing a few sketches I drew recently here.

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Yen macha! hegidiya?

If you’ve been on Indian twitter for some time, you also probably think that Bengaluru is the coolest city in India. It is where it is at. It being anything. It seems that Bengaluru has the best weather, best people, best bars, and best opportunities. Scrolling my twitter feed, sometimes I used to think that if I shifted to Bengaluru, my life would be fixed.

I was finally in the city for 10 days and here is my limited review of the city in the little amount of time I spent there.

ಸಂದರ್ಭವನ್ನು ಹೊಂದಿಸುವುದು/ Setting The Context

After doing some calibration, and strategising1 the stars finally aligned and I somehow found a window to go to Bangalore. So here I was, at Kempegowda international airport at 10:30 pm on 23rd February 2025. I had set foot on Karnataka’s soil after almost 7 years - the first time being back in 2017 for my army interview (my write up for that experience is here).

I had set foot in the promised land. The land of technology, policy, entrepreneurship, and the cool bros who carry three screens with them to cafes. I was elated to be here. Excited for all the meetings I had lined up and the interesting people I was about to meet.

Until, I found out that the cab fare from the airport to where I would be staying was 1600 rupees. I quietly crossed the road and waited for a bus to drop me to the Shanthi Nagar bus station.

Funnily, my Bangalore friends (who live in Delhi) drilled in me the idea that I could not speak Hindi to whoever I wanted here; and that there is always an active threat of getting beaten up for imposing my Hindi on them. So, naturally I, a fair Kashmiri, was a little nervous when I came here. But of course they were also half joking (hopefully), and I had no such bad experience here.2 In fact people were warm, approachable and open to conversations.

I was staying at my friends’ Sandesh, Nirmal and Krishnan’s house for around 10 days, in Richmond Town . An interesting piece of information is that I have known Sandesh and Nirmal for about 5 years now, but mostly online. I got in touch with both of them in 2020 because of twitter and our shared interests. I did not meet either of them for the first 4 years of our friendship. I met Nirmal in 2024 January, four years after knowing him and even recording a podcast episode with him. I met Sandesh for the first time during this trip. I remember laying down on the sofa-cum-bed on the first night and being in absolute wonder and thinking:

I happened to meet these folks online 5 years ago. Now we’re all friends and here I am in their house. All because of the internet.

ವಿಮರ್ಶೆ ಸಮಯ/ Review Time

ಹವಾಮಾನ/ The weather

The first thing I would like to share with everyone is that, much to my surprise, the weather was actually really nice. I did not think all the talk about the weather was true, but as it turns out - the cool breeze does heal all your worries (most of them at least). My friend’s house has a very nice balcony where you can sit on the sofa and just chill. I would sit there and drink my tea/ coffee in the morning and end my day sitting there in the night. I do think my happiness index was at least 5% better off because of that. The weather somehow made me calmer and more quaint. The weather is also, not surprisingly, one of the biggest selling points for the city.

ಜನರು/ The people

I am writing this portion of this post right after my conversation with Pranay Kotasthane of the Takshishila Institution. When asked about Bengaluru’s cool image and why it is considered such a hip place, he replied by saying that it is one of those places where interesting people come, and find interesting things to do. The shared consensus is that Bengaluru attracts good firms, which attract good people, which attract the best capital and therefore it all culminates into Bengaluru being a hotspot of all things. Once a renowned public policy professional had told me that he chose Mumbai to work because of how far it is from power i.e. Delhi. His argument was that power distorts the world around you, corrupts incentives and makes pursuit of truth difficult. Using his metric, Bengaluru is very very far from power and therefore, one of the remaining safe spaces for honest intellectual interaction.

A lot of friends I made online live in Bengaluru, which I think is a sufficient proxy for the claim that interesting people live here. If the people you find interesting (on a platform that anyone could be a part of) come disproportionately from a particular region - something right must be going on there. A lot of times, my stay felt more like a business trip than a vacation given how many people I had to meet! But I am very grateful for everybody who agreed to spend their precious time with me. I had some very interesting conversations here which made me feel (even if for a second) that I must consider Bengaluru for relocation. This is particularly funny, because I have already written a post about how I am trying to find a home between Mumbai and Delhi. And now Bengaluru has self added itself to the list. It will be an interesting year to say the least.

I use excel to organise a lot of my life, and my usage of Excel/ Google Sheets is only second to Google Docs. So naturally, I organised my trip on excel (if you’re for some reason curious to see my itinerary, it is here) and found it surprising that a lot of people were surprised at the fact. In fact, I am surprised that most people do not organise and plan on Excel/ Google Sheets - it is a god sent software!

I met some very interesting people here, and there are many more who I could not meet this time around so I would like to make another trip sometime soon. I would especially like to mention Deepak V.S. here. He’s one of the most interesting and curious fellows I’ve come across in sometime. He’s hell bent on finding the first principles behind philosophies, and a conversation with him is bound to be interesting. He forced me to go back to first principles about my professional practice i.e. antitrust law - something I hadn’t done ever in my limited career by myself or in discussion with my colleagues. He hosts a podcast called Deepak Disagrees where he invites people who hold a strong position on anything and tries to explore their beliefs by disagreeing with them.

ಆಹಾರ/ The food

I anyway had high expectations from Bengaluru. But the food here exceeded my expectations. Right from the beautiful Darshinis serving the most delicious dosas and idlis i’ve ever had to the most flavourful biryani i’ve ever had - Bengaluru food scene had me sending it. Here are some photos of the food I had while at Bengaluru (thanks to suggestions by my friends).

ವಿಭಜಿಸುವ ಆಲೋಚನೆಗಳು/ Parting Thoughts

The city has its own problems as well. The urban infrastructure is woefully inadequate, the traffic is very bad, it can become an echo chamber of eliteness etc. All things considered, I am departing from Bengaluru with a stronger conviction that it is the place to be for bright, young people. I am yet to figure out the premium I would place on it/ the tradeoff I would be willing to undertake to shift here. Especially as a north Indian, another part of the trade off is the fact that this city has often times get very isolating unless you have friends here.

I am leaving this city with the open question of what would it take for me to shift here. But it is a question worth considering, and a question that is in fact not a new one. Almost a year or two back I had made up my mind that I want to work in three cities in India at the least. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. So this has always been part of the plan. The question is when.

And most importantly, this trip was a much needed distortion in the set routine that I’ve fallen into that made me question some of my choices and made me reconsider the goals I have for myself, and the kind of life I want to lead. I think it is worth visiting Bengaluru if you are in your 20s, I would highly recommend it, even if you have to live in a hostel or explore the city without any friends, just go. As far as I am concerned, maybe one day you will find me with my laptop in Toit. Till then, keep sending it!

It would be a sin to end this post without mentioning the city’s hero, people’s favourite - Appu :)

Time is running out

This is exactly what I thought to myself this weekend while attending my alma matter’s alumni meet. I looked around. There weren’t many people attending the meet - the only two people I knew were the two friends I had gone with. But even in that limited pool, I felt insignificant. I had come back, without having done anything to distinguish me from the others, and worse, unhealthier than before.1 If I had looks and a brain earlier, I felt I had neither now. For a second I froze. I thought to myself, time is running out to do something decent with my life.

Time is running out.

No time to lose

I told myself,

“Divyanshu! You have no time to lose! You cannot waste any more time living life like every other 25 year old. You also should have no time to lose i.e. make yourself so busy that you have no time to lose - or to do anything else”.

I patted myself on the back for that clever pun, which probably only seems clever to me, but I will give myself that. I was in my alma matter for less than 20 hours but it was enough to shake me and make me question my choices, behaviours and attitude. Thankfully I was attending the meet with my two very dear friends and the overthinking did not get the better of me. Now that I think about it, it did in some sense, get me - which is why I am sitting in this cafe writing this blog after a gap of almost four months.

It got me.

And then I asked myself, what happened?

How did you completely lose the plot on health? How did you lose most of your interests? Why did you stop playing sports? Why did you pick up bad habits and gradually shed the good ones? When did the line between having fun and harming your life blur? And most importantly, when did you become a clone of a clone of a clone of the quintessential corporate worker in India?

And then this chain of pernicious thought got broken by my friend who asked me, “Ice cream ek scoop khayega ya do?” and I instantly broke into a smile. Thank god for friends, I thought to myself and then proceeded to demolish two scoops of chocolate ice cream.

But coming back to the question - how did I lose the plot?

For starters I think it is very hard to draw the line between ‘you’ve earned this, go all out and enjoy’ and ‘you’ve enjoyed enough, it is time to lock in’. When I started working, I had told myself that I will give myself a couple of months to splurge on myself and not hold back. I had every right to enjoy the hard work I had put in in life until now to get to where I am now (which isn’t much but is honest work). And boy I did. But I did not stop at the imaginary couple of months mark. The months transformed to half a year, then to a year, and then to year and a half now.

When you decide to enjoy life you want to do all the things you wanted to do earlier but could not, and also try new things. And so began the era of ordering whenever, sleeping late watching new shows on subscriptions that you bought at a whim, attending concerts and overpaying for entry to clubs2, dining out in expensive restaurants where the only item below 500 is chai. And it felt so good! Endorphins hijack your system. Not only do you enjoy the activity, you also enjoy the fact that you can afford to do it now. The very act of consumption becomes an act of accomplishment. The more money you spend, the more accomplished you feel - of course, subconsciously. And consumption is one sweet drug, a habit I am still trying to kick. Once you achieve a certain level of lifestyle - dining at certain places, consuming only certain kinds of products - it becomes almost impossible to go back to a frugal and minimalistic lifestyle. Reducing your consumption seems like you are loosing currency in this capitalist world. Khair, I went on a slightly different tangent here but the point is that it is very difficult to expose yourself to a new world of new types of joy and highs and then tell yourself to cut it and go back to a life without any of that.

I also realised of something I have ample examples around me i.e. once you become comfortable in the rhythms of corporate job, it becomes almost impossible to do anything you truly want. Years go by, and you wake up one day having achieved much of nothing other than a lot of money. And then you convince yourself that it is too late to start anything new. You also have to take care of your old parents, and in cases your partner and/or your child.

Everybody talks fondly of how they were when they were young, but you can feel their souls eroding away when they talk about themselves as they are now. Much to mine and others surprise, I saw it happen to me in a span of less than two years. It took a friend to jolt me into realising that all my happy stories and moments were in the past and I talk about my present as a punishment I am serving. Thankfully I have started working on it and things have gotten better. But the fact remains that it is probably the easiest thing in the world to become comfortable in a corporate job and then lose 30 years of your life in a blink. It is also malignant because the optimal solution to such a long term resource intensive problem is to find out a state where you (i) work the least, (ii) earn the most, (iii) develop the best relationships, (iv) ensure least entropy, and (v) maintain your influence over the workplace. You need not imagine what the combination of these incentives would do to the person and the workplace. Nothing good would ever come out of such incentives.

It may not be your fault but it is your responsibility

One of the most difficult things to do is to admit one’s fault. For a really long time I blamed my job for all the bad things in my life. It felt natural since that was the only major change that has happened. It also felt relieving since it meant I was not to blame. It took me a year and a half to realise that nobody but I am to blame for everything that happens to me. This is much like the practical application of the quote which goes something like “You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it”. And I only realised it when I closely observed that I was able to do all those things I had convinced myself my job made impossible.

1. I had stopped playing sports, until I found a bunch of folks and started to play in the morning. Now I am able to play at least 2-3 times every week and take out time for sports. The time was right there, I just never utilised it optimally.

2. I had stopped reading, until I realised that it was because I constantly chose to spend it on my phone and not reading and not because I don’t have the time. A colleague was also instrumental in making my realise this as she consistently reads before she goes to sleep. No matter at what time I sleep, I scroll my phone for 15-20 minutes before I go to sleep. I only have to replace it with a book. I still haven’t perfected this but I will.

3. I blamed my unhealthy eating habits on my erratic timings until I cooked for myself (briefly - it is quite difficult to cook for yourself but it is easier than it is made to seem - my sister did this for almost three years while working a corporate job) and realised that the main source of my bad health is the absolutely un-necessary junk food I order from Blinkit/ Instamart. A dear friend recently did exactly this - cut out all the bad food items from his diet and minimised sugar and processed food. The results were instantaneous. You could also see his face glow (but maybe it also had to do something with the fact that he had recently quit his job).

Disclaimer - I am probably the most self aware person I know. I am also the least disciplined person I know. It creates a uniquely frustrating situation where I exactly know what to do, but end up doing the opposite of it anyway, because it is comfortable. My Dad calls me a status-quoist for good reasons. So most of these insights are very clear to me, and I also know exactly what to do to fix my life, but I lack the discipline to commit to it (for now). But discipline is a muscle you build over time, and I am working on it. Petit-à-petit.

But back to the feelings going to my alma matter invoked. It was also interesting because I, yet again realised how much of my identity is built on my perception by others. I believe this is how insecurity works. When you are insecure about something, you base your whole identity on something you perceive as a flaw. You begin to construct an alternate reality where you assume that everybody is judging you. Most of the times it is not even a real flaw but none of that matters, because as long as you believe it, it exists as real as the sun, and the moon. It was interesting to feel that I had to be acknowledged and recognised by people (in this case my alma matter) in order for me to feel important and worthwhile. For a second, I almost promised to myself, in quite bollywood-esque fashion to come back only after I made something of myself. But I realised, thankfully sooner than later that it shouldn’t matter - what people think of me, and my work. Not only because my work is not my worth but also because the measure of someone’s worth is measured within the four boundaries of the normative values of society. You could be doing something really exciting and important but unless it is one of the four things society deems worth respecting - you would still be one of the many faceless people. And it lead me to the same conclusion that I believe in - the only measure of what you do, and spend your time on, is how you feel about it.

The trip also made me realise that I love academic spaces - the promise of teaching and learning is one that sits very close to my heart. While walking around the academic building I came across the class that I used to sit in as a teaching assistant. The course was titled Competition Law In Digital Markets, and it was taught by Professor Shilpi Bhattacharya - possibly one of the handful competition law professors in this country. I loved being a TA as I got to teach! It was so exciting to introduce students to new concepts and take them through the concepts that had fascinated me not long ago. Taking tutorials was my favourite part and I will forever be indebted to the students who showed up to those classes because they carried no attendance, or marks. If anyone of you is reading this, thank you! Some of my favourite moments on the campus were spent in that classroom.

Coming back to present times, I caught this studious pigeon in the newly renovated library!

By the end of the trip, I realised I did not have much time to be nostalgic - other than the brief moments in which my friends and I reminisced the absolute gold of a life we had in that campus - unlimited food, the best sports infrastructure, the best faculty and the best residence. I consider myself extremely lucky to be privileged enough to have been able to attend an institution such as Jindal and continue to recommend Jindal to everyone to study law in India. But the point remains (this post is nothing but a collection of tangential thoughts) - it is never late to live the life you want to live! Regret should motivate to change your life and not fester as a disease to further push you down the spiral. It is easy to blame external factors for your lack of progress, but you grow up the day you realise that you have the power to change almost all the things about yourself.

It is time to build!

I will leave you with a snapshot of my college’s famous ‘Flagpole’.

Willingly, or unwillingly, I am classified as a Gen Z. Like many others, most times I refuse to accept this tag, but with time, like others, I have given up this fight.

One of the more interesting commentaries on Gen Z as a generation is the narrative on their attitude at the workplace. Now is the first time the world is seeing Gen Z entering and making up the workforce, and they come with their own quirks, and generation defining characteristics. The older generations are clashing with Gen Z at the workplace. And it is giving rise to some interesting discourse on Gen Z’s attitude towards work. As with most debates, it's heavily polarised where either they're poor workers who want 'balance' or hailed as heroes for pushing against an unreasonable work culture. Truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle.

I’ve been working for a year and a half now. I have been part of some of this discourse and it has always intrigued me. Both, the older generation’s disdain for Gen Z, and Gen Z’s disdain of the workplace. So I jotted down some of my thoughts, and observations down.

Eight points on Gen Z and the workplace

1. Every generation thinks the generations after them are bad, in almost all aspects. so, it's fair to make that adjustment in the narrative from the generations above.

2. I think it is beneficial for all of us that narratives around work culture are being challenged. some practices will sustain the criticism, and others, rightly so, will collapse. we need this dialectic for the optimum system to emerge.

3. It is true that Gen Z has developed the capacity to think of themselves as beyond work. Ironically, all the generations above have fought hard to give us this future. It's a good byproduct of progress - where humans have a better capability to actualise themselves. Maybe it is jealousy, or a normative understanding of the world, where the generations above cannot fathom how Gen Z treat work and its important in their life, and it is likely that Gen Zs rejection of work as the center of their life is hard for older people to digest.

4. It is also true that we grew up with technology (proxy for things to be and come easy to us). It is true that we have grown up as people for whom things have been easy. Searching for work, and doing work - both are easier for us than generations above. e.g.: as a lawyer, I now have the benefit of internet, access to case laws on fingertips, research tools, organisation tools that generations above did not have. They had to work twice as hard for everything. And it may also be true that a necessary consequence of this upbringing - Gen Z assumes that most things will be easy, and not difficult. That their choices and preferences will be respected. And perhaps this is the single biggest tension point between generations.

5. I do not think that Gen Z is less hardworking, or more stupid than generations above. at worst, they're equal to those above. But I firmly believe this generation has more drive and imagination due to the sheer luck of being born in the most advanced times in history.

6. Like every generation Gen Z has bad workers and great workers. I think there is an oversized tendency to use the non-normative instances (oversimplified - 'bad' instances) by Gen Z that is repurposed to comment on the work ethic of the entire generation. These 'bad' instances are - a one liner intimation of leave, or quitting on the second day because they thought the boss was toxic, or logging off early because they want to pursue other things in life. It's 'bad' because this challenges our accepted notions of work

7. People will always be bad workers when they're working on something they're not interested/passionate about. that's been and will always be the case. Nothing new or unique to Gen Z here. driven Gen Z folks, are as good as, if not better than all those before them. It's a simple sorting algorithm. Older generations had more 'grit' because most of them didn't have an option other than those presented to them. Today, after centuries of progress, and on the shoulder of past generations, Gen Z finally can choose the life they want to live. Gen Z’s willingness to be more moody, or flippant with what they do is not a sign of being a bad worker. It is a sign of a developing society which has been able to offset the risk. This is a win for humanity. Humanity benefits when the sorting algorithm works optimally.

8. Gen Z will get older and perpetuate this same narrative for the generations after them. I am sure I will think the generation after me is lazy and beyond saving. That's just the way the world works. Despite this, we progress as a civilization and that's what's important.

   All in all - I think this debate is pointless (other than studying the changes in terms of an anthropological study to understand the evolution of society) and not worth the chasm it creates between generations. We all are in this together. for progress :)

I promise this is the one of the last coming of age writing I do, because I have come (of age), and as our beloved Indian elders say, ‘yeh sab ab mujhe shobha nahi deta’. But I have been thinking about what does it mean to be with someone, what changes? Why is it such a big thing?1

The decision

Despite what we are made to believe, the default state of humans is being single.2 Thus, you must like someone enough to get out of your stable state and open yourself up to unpredictability. Of course this post assumes that you, like most people don’t like uncertainty. If you like unpredictability, then please be unpredictable and stop reading. Mental parkour. The rest of us, old uncles and aunties, can read on below.

Entropy, is a concept in physics which basically measures the randomness/ disorder in a system (not to be confused with system in system pe system). When you are with yourself, to a very large extent, you can control the entropy of your system i.e. your life. But when you open your arms and life to someone else, you take on their problems, issues, circumstances into your life and increase the entropy of your life.

Now you’ve gone from a one body problem to a two body problem. You would assume that two bodies have more entropy than one body. E2 > E1.

So the argument is that in a cost benefit analysis, you need to love someone enough to bear with all the troubles and issues that they bring into your life. That is what we see around us. All of us, and our friends in toxic relationships say, ‘But I love them. I have never felt like this, and will never feel like this. No matter how many times we fight, we always come back together’. I will not go into the larger argument for why this is symptom of a toxic relationship, but you get the point. We accept that the other person will bring instability and issues into our life, and justify it by the magnanimity of our feelings to them. That is the natural line of thought.

And it’s the wrong line of thought.

Jaane kyu (jaane kyu) dil jaanta hai, tu hai toh I’ll be alright

Apparently with the right person, most things are not an ‘issue’. Nothing feels like an obligation, nothing feels like a chore, you don’t have to do what you don’t want to do. Apparently, with the right person, as a two body problem, your entropy goes down instead of up. Crazy right?

Every happy couple that I have met (and mind you, most couples are not happy couples - they’re couples because of the thousand other reasons or justifications) says that their life has improved since their partner has come into their lives. And by improvement, they do not mean the generic metrics of improvement such as (i) there is someone for you in moments of weakness, (ii) you have someone to cuddle with, (iii) it seems ‘fun’ to hang out with them etc.3 None of these are benefits which are exclusive to a partner (although now that I think of it, there isn’t much redline difference between what one gets out of a good partner vs. what one gets out of a good friend other than physical intimacy). All of this can be achieved in one shape or another through other sources.

For you to choose a partner, a life partner, deeper thinking is required. Also I realised, i should have caveated this article by saying that these meditations are only for people who want to find a life partner. If you are not, none of this matters, go ahead and have fun and experiment. If i may say, you may need to go through the ‘no thinking, having fun’ phase to realise the importance of ‘sit down, and please think I beg you’ way of choosing a partner.

The most important thing I have realised (which like other important things you realise is more of a non answer than an answer) is that when it comes to choosing people, you need to think of (i) the chemistry i.e. are they generally a chill person that you enjoy spending time with?, and (ii) do they have the qualities of a person you want to have as a partner?4 Only if both first and second are fulfilled, should you ideally, date them. Step one and two ideally work chronologically. But sometimes step one is so overwhelming, you skip step two. I would assume sometimes it works in your favour, because the magnetic attraction existed for a reason, and maybe other times you get royally screwed, haha.

Love (pardon me for the comparison) is much like regulation law.

If you do not pay adequate attention, you run the risk of under regulation (in this case, only following your initial feeling of attraction will lead you to the ultimate oh shit moment when you realise you never stopped to check your compatibility and dived in head first) - this is a type one error. If you regulate too much, you run the risk of stifling the regulated entities (in this case, if you overthink everything and remain undecided because you cannot arrive at an answer, you let the love go because of inaction) - this is a type two error. I’d heard trial and error, but it feels like we are all living our lives between errors. And we love in between errors, the times love itself is not the error.

The big thin(g/k)

All this mental gymnastics reminds me of this meme.

But jokes aside, when did it become THIS hard to be with someone? I myself remember the previous times when I decided to be my ex partners - it was not as difficult as it seems now. But then, I also wonder are they my ex partners also for this very reason?

I know this will sound quite contrary to some of what I have written above, but I also recently wrote a thread on twitter on why modern love is hard. And I conjectured it is because:

“We’re all mathematicians in search for love, slicing and dicing every emotion for a predictable outcome of love. And that never works. Love was never meant to be a game of exactness. Go out. Meet people. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Experience emotions. Confess your feelings. Get your heart broken. Love again. And again. And again. It's better to have loved, and lost it than to never have tried to find it.”

Here I am advocating for less thinking, and more action. Mostly because it is what feels right to me, at least. It is a tussle between what I want to do, what I am drawn to do, versus my rational sense which asks me to do everything only after carefully thinking through it. If I do the latter, I am more likely to be less screwed in life, and live a more stable life. If I do the prior, as I have previous times, i can get incredibly happy but also supremely screwed as well. This reminds me of this one cute sketch (which i cannot find, so I am drawing it from my memory below)

I was recently in an intense conversation with my friends on love, and life. It was surprising (and not surprisingly at all, because it is the most common trope of people my age) how much we all struggle with love. One friend confessed their anxiety of liking someone too much in the eventuality that their feelings are not reciprocated. The other friend confessed how they often wonder if something is wrong with them because they often find themselves rejecting the prospect of love because of the effort it demands.

Your truly rose to the occasion as the soothsayer. I had a simple premise.

1. Your gut will always tell you what to do.

2. You must always follow your gut.

3. Your gut will be right more often than not.

So I told my first friend to worry not, because no love worth having will come with no risk. A ‘safe’ relationship is one in which you are already so emotionally insulated from the other person, it is a shame to call it a relationship. A relationship worth having always comes with the risk that if it doesn’t work out, you will incur significant emotional losses. So what? We have done it in the past, and survived quite well until now, and so will we hence forth as well. Be giddy, seek the love. If it works out, it works out, if it does not, it does not. Life is large and we are young.

To my second friend I said, when the right person comes along (at least in terms of your analysis of who is right for you), all the ‘effort’ will not look like effort to you. You would want to speak to them, you would want to see them all the time, you would want to stay up for them, you would want to go to sleep on the phone with them (or whatever else the youth are doing these days). The right person makes it easy for you. And if it easy for you, is how you know you’re really attracted to someone. And so if you do not feel like making efforts for someone, that’s completely alright. You never were attracted enough to them.

The gist of the conversation was that you must (i) not self disqualify yourself from potentially fruitful experiences by making up hypothetical bad outcomes, and (ii) whenever there is enough evidence in front of you, you will invariably make the decisions you want to make, so go ahead and live your life. The game is to generate enough evidence.

Love is harder than the seven millennium problems

Only one out of the seven millennium problems have been solved. These mathematical problems are so hard to solve that if you solve one of them, you get a million dollars and lifetime fame. And in enough time, all of them will be solved. But love cannot be. Love is harder than the hardest mathematical problems on this planet.

So I have spent so much of my time writing this, and you have spent so much of your time reading this (thank you for making it till here), we are faced with the disheartening conclusion that, despite much meditations, we don’t know much about what love is, and which love to pursue. We have some heuristics, and I think that that is about as best we come to solving love.

One thing I would definitely want to change in myself, and others is to be optimist about love. It could definitely happen that every time you open yourself to love, you are left worse off and more hurt than before. But if I was asked before I was born if I would choose between a life in which my heart was never broken and I would never feel love vs. a life where I would feel love many times but never find true love - I would choose the latter. I would rather feel the full spectrum of emotions than to be an automaton.

I leave you all with this poem that somebody dear recently shared with me.

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