Justice- Class 6

Capitalism and Ideology- Thomas Piketty

Ch 8- Ternary Societies and Colonialism: The case of India

First paragraph has a reference to the caste system and its "rigid and extreme type of inequality". This is accepted knowledge now. But I want to deep dive and understand the history of Caste system- both from the historical (sociopolitical) perspective as well as the from more, for the lack of a better word, mythical perspective (Vedas, Smritis etc.). From both the left and the right, if I may. Because I'm curious to see how such a social structure came about and more interestingly, how it survived/es for as long as it did. 

Oh, well, looks like Piketty is going to give a brief tour of exactly that. 

If the British came in and sanctioned, even entrenched, the caste system within the state, then does it mean that prior rulers didn't consider caste in their dealings? 

"The course of Indian inequality was profoundly altered by its encounter with the outside world in the form of a remote foreign power."- Does it mean that 1. the British was the first foreign power which leveraged the caste system for its benefit or 2. British was the only remote foreign power because almost everyone else who came in stayed back and thereby are not foreign powers?

Fernand Bruadel argues that India and China have always had more people live in those areas than Europe because the latter are predominantly meat eaters and it takes more acres to produce animal calories than plant calories.

The same claim of India being a recent (post-1947) political entity. Contrast that with the idea of Bharatvarsha, the stories of Yogis and Sadhus who have walked across the length and breadth of the country for centuries, and what Diana L Eck refers to as India's Sacred Geography (I haven't read the book yet). The fact that Republic of India survives, and occasionally thrives, is proclaimed with admiration and it would be interesting to understand why it does. Did we come together after the British arrived because it is easy to differentiate between the whites and the browns, and coalesce as one. Or are there deeper forces at work. Is it Hinduism and its correspondent mythology, or Sanskrit, Prakrit and closely related languages, or is it cultures and customs (food, dressing, even music) that somehow tie so many of us together? Or infact is this idea of unity my retrospective superimposition on a set of disparate societies? The only parallel I can think of to India is Europe, with its seemingly common ethos, and I need to search if someone's written about this parallel.

Difference between secular and multiconfessional?

Note to self: Read Willaim Dalrymple's Anarchy to get an understanding of how a trading company managed to take over the administration of a huge kingdom(s). If I remember correctly, Niall Ferguson alludes to the immense power EIC held came from the the new inventions of capitalism in that era- limited liability and shareholders without executive power; Other developments being fractional reserve banking and promissory notes.

Piketty briefly states the relationship between Indian Hindus and Muslims from the 12th century, since the inception of the Delhi Sultanate, till the advent of the British. 

"Hinduism is more explicit in linking religion to social organisation." 

"Other religions purport to be egalitarian, atleast in theory."

Origins of the Caste System

Earliest European organisation of society- 10th and 11th century

Trifunctional- religious class, warrior class, labouring class

Vedas talk about Varnas from 2nd millennium BCE

Though the fundamental text was Manusmriti(written between 2 BCE to 2 CE): I think it was in one of the episodes of the Seen and the Unseen podcast that there is a discussion regarding the arbitrariness of putting Manusmriti on a pedestal. The speaker argues that when the British came to India, they were confronted with a bewildering medley of social groups and to make sense of it, the orientalists looked at the texts and were led by some Brahmins to the Manusmriti. Because it seemed to roughly map to what they could see on the land, they assumed that this was the primary guiding ideology and thus used it to arbitrate Indian cases. Most Indians didn't know about Manusmriti and caste was apparently a more fluid entity; There were many examples of kings from lower castes who, with the help of the right priests, could be instated to the level of the twice-borns.  This seems like an interesting argument to me, a hypothesis that could be explored further.

paused at the end of page 311

Notes from the class-

Inequality and Indian democracy

You can pick apart Piketty's chapter in many ways but it is a good summary.

Paradox in all democracies: Prior to the 19th century, one of the critiques of democracy (universal suffrage, electoral politics) has been that it will cause equality. If you give poor people the vote, the most likely thing that'll happen is that they'll appropriate property from the rich. Without stable property relationships, you can neither have freedom nor economic investments. If democracy is bad to property, ergo, approach it carefully. That's why there were no qualms of tying suffrage to property.

France of 18th century- Clergy, Bourgeoisie, Nobility

But in reality, democracy has become compatible not only with property rights but also with immense social and economic inequality.

What explains this fact? Ambedkar- Why doesn't political equality lead to social and economic equality?

Adam Przeworski- Political scientist

Elites realised that democracy not only challenges our power, it also legitimates that power.

Gregory Clark Big Data book on Sweden

Taxation is an instrument of both development and redistribution; historically Tax to GDP ratio has been low. WWII lays the foundation for the New Deal, for somewhat equal social welfare countries.

The levels of political will required for progressive taxation come only after major calamities. 

Escaping from Rome- Walter Scheidel

Land Reform- the second big instrument of some kind of Economic justice.

Atul Kohli- Comparitive Colonialism

British Colonialism relied on intermediate Zamindari class. Japanese Colonialism was suspicious of these classes, so they wiped them out. So Japanese Colonialism lead to better land reforms. And democracies are quite bad at LR too.

"Conservative parties legitimise their power by outflanking the Left"- So they end up doing more for the poor.

Piketty's chapter in a nutshell; three macro-theses:

    a. Historically, almost all societies have been divided into three classes

        i. Clergy

        ii. Nobility

        iii. Labour

    These three classes have been remarkably stable.

    India: Relationship between class and caste. Because Brahmins are not celibate like the European            clergy, they've validated endogamy (core institution of caste). Most of Indian political theory: Function of the king is to protect the order of caste, and thereby property. Contrarian examples: Shudra kings. But even if they are kings, the primary "Propertarian ideology" remains.

    You can destabilise that social order by:

    a. external shock- for India, most external shocks have worked with existing structures

    b. diffusion of human capital (Eg: education)- Ambedkar- "This is the resource that's most protected"

    c. disjunction b/w status and identity (like in Europe where there's tight coupling between social status and economic status)- in India, crudely oversimplifying, social fight between Brahmin and Kshatriya. But because of endogomy, status remains secure (Eg: poor brahmin without economic and political power is still socially powerful) 

Indian society had a deeply durable structure of inequality. Even now, rates of inter-marriage are extraordinarily low. Most class situation can be mapped to caste.

"British colonialism was called Brahmin Company Raj"

Democracies seem to be bad to inequality and India's caste structure. What do we do about justice in India?

Amit Varma's question of liberal constitution imposed on an illiberal people comes to mind.

Ambedkar, principally four mechanisms for social equality:

    a. equalisation in education (worldover public schooling is a great equaliser but not in India)

    b. John Dewey's endosmosis (inter-marriage which usually follows the previous point). Joke that most universities function for assortative mating (refer to Raghuram Rajan's Fault Lines)

    c. land reform

    d. taxation

    e. representation, affirmative action (creates a more diverse elite, changes aspiration because of promise of ability but does it produce far-reaching structural transformation)

Why are we unequal?

My hypothesis: Because people's identities are more tied to their caste and communities. What we generally celebrate about India being a thousands of years old continuing civilisation is what is hampering equality. Because we are too entrenched in our particular caste lifestyles (food, culture, dressing etc.)

Right now people vote for politicians who vote for policies. Why can't people directly vote for policies?

(referred in P Sainath's Everybody loves a good drought)

Poverty as a living experience is different from poverty as data. People who're poor are fighting with each other for the little pie instead of getting together to demand more.

Sanskritization is one of the modalities of social reform. If the lower castes are trying to aspire to a Brahminical lifestyle, then as much as it has its problems, if that assimilation is allowed, then it should break the barriers. But we don't see that happening either.

Why did we think that democracy was the right vehicle to bring about social and economic justice (Tocqueville's bittersweet take on American democracy)?

When the economy is growing so fast, people assume that they have a good chance to get rich next, so they're not willing to ruffle too many feathers in the existing structure. Also, even though real incomes have remained stagnant, the purchasing power has increased because of cheap technology.

Politicians don't have an incentive to work towards long term changes because their vision is only for the next five years.

Political mobilisation is specific to local reality. A dalit from TN won't vote similar to a dalit from UP. And a dalit and a brahmin will probably vote against a yadav. So, in that sense, the on-ground reality is different from the macroview. 

One participant: What if the caste system was meant to be horizontal with spread of specialisation, all equal, and it has somehow been 'corrupted' into this vertical structure? 

Fairly standard upper-caste view.

Prof: Paradox of India is that poor turn out in almost as equal numbers as the rich unlike other developed countries.

Mukulika Banerjee- "Elections are the only religion left to the people of India"

Why do we expect democracy to bring us justice anyway?- It is a framework with three very important characteristics:

    a. framework itself ideologically states equality. "Think of the thrill of democracy." aah! "One of its great existential charms is that even rulers rule at my suffrage". The idea was that this idea itself is a deeply destabilising thought. We believe that authority is a provisional grant.

To underestimate the degree to which that has happened is not right. There is only surface obsequiousness- cynical and instrumental.

    b. accountability incentive- you have to come seek my vote every five years, that's incentive enough to perform atleast to some level. It is a responsive framework.

Amartya Sen argues that democracy avoids famine, not at avoiding chronic problems like malnutrition.

    c. democracy's historical relation with nationalism- We now think that nationalism is a diversion from more pressing issues. But historically democracy and nationalism have a deeper bond because we are equal.

Piketty- Stronger welfare is empirically proved to happen in a more horizontally identifying population.

Prerna Singh's book on Sub-nationalism and welfare states in India: States formed with a strong sub-national identity (linguistic etc.) perform better in markers of welfare. Mutual identity between citizens. So TN and AP better than UP and Bihar.

Caste and identity: Ambedkar- "Caste was a division of labourers, not of labour". Some nationalists during the freedom movement argued about the horizontal, functional, uncorrupt view of caste (Retrieving from the past while divorcing from its odious aspects). But you can't sustain that argument as a historical thesis. Also it runs against individual rights. 

BR: The logic of caste was a form of involution. Almost everybody had someone they could dominate. You could find psychological recuperation for being dominated by dominating someone else.

Logic of fragmentation would make collective action too difficult. 

Politician incentives: India has a high anti-incumbency rate. In a low-wattage economy, no politician can make much change to an individual. Health and Education are peculiar because they involve high resources, a large number of actors and the results can be seen only in the long run. Countries where these work better is either in Communist regimes or for some exogenous reasons, elites commit to it (for instance, national pride).

Eugene Weber- Peasants as Frenchmen. You convert them by focus on education. What is it about Indian nationalism that we still don't get a take-off for common public education while all other nationalist movements focused on this.

Example of AAP- Which won on reforms in Education and Mohalla clinics.

"In North India caste is more cynically used. South India takes it more seriously." 

Notes- Justice Class 5

The readings for class 5 are: Excerpts from The Myth of Ownership (Murphy & Nagel) and from Justice as Fairness (Rawls). 

Previously, we covered Meritocracy and used those learnings to understand Universal Basic Income.

The Myth of Ownership: 

Ch 5- The Tax Base

Income, defined in one way, is Consumption plus Increase in Wealth.

Q: Is Consumption Tax better than Income Tax?

Q:What is the point of a Tax system?

    1. To raise revenue for public provision

    2. Secure economic justice

    3. Provide desirable behavioural incentives

The assumption of people being rational actors is not misplaced but, in my opinion, incomplete because definitions of rationality change both from perspective and scale. As much as I agree that people respond to incentives, they do not always act in ways an institution or a group of people might find rational. It is because I think some individuals, by doing the opposite of what might seem safe, send a different albeit stronger signal. Evolutionary Psychology might give me a framework to better understand that phenomenon. On a related note, the podcaster Amit Varma endorses Public Choice Theory a lot; I need to get some reading done on that.

Tax system should be simpler to reduce the cost of operations as well to give people less options to game the system for their benefit.

Why is it morally irrelevant as to whether a tax scheme imposes equal, or proportional, or any other pattern? If I do not take the libertarian view that all tax is theft, then I think I tax people based on their "ability to pay". As much as I understand that there is a certain arbitrariness to that mechanism, and as always there will be few exceptions, for the most part isn't it fair? I can see how people would game the system and show that they have less they really do (black money) but that's more of an operational issue than an ethical one. Need to read the previous chapter.

Outcomes are more important than intentions- As much as I want to, I can't think of a reason to refute that.

I don't understand Hall & Rabushka's Flat Tax Proposal- If the VAT is not 'flat' but is proportional to an individual's income, how is it different from the regular tiered income tax? Quick detour to Wikipedia doesn't help.

Cash Flow Tax- Individuals pay tax on all their earnings but deduct any amounts saved in the tax year. This seems like a more natural consumption tax.

I'm beginning to think that this reading is a wrong idea for a liveblog pilot. The subject is very tough and the authors' writing is not very easy to follow. So more than a summary of my thoughts at the end of the chapter, this seems like a litany of confusing concepts.

The Kurt example clarifies some of the above concepts. 

The authors argue that a tax system should encourage savings because investment is good for economic growth. From my understanding, that means that most members of a society should earn money but since they do not have the necessary expertise to invest (read delay gratification) and would rather consume (read immediate gratification), a much smaller section of professionals can use the money 'rightly', for increasing the wealth of society as a whole. I can't speak for everyone else but I admit that I am probably worse than an average professional investor (I'm not completely sure of it, though, because I'm convinced by most of Nassim Taleb's arguments in Fooled by Randomness). That doesn't give me solace from the fact that I'm probably just another specialised worker bee. 

I'm pausing this reading at the end of sub-section III for now.

Justice as Fairness (pages 134-140):

Ch 3- The Original Position

"..the balance of reasons itself rests on judgment, though judgment informed and guided by reasoning."- I have always thought about how imposition of a liberal framework is i. arbitrary ii. an imposition. I think this is a wonderfully succinct summary of the liberal ideology. Another explanation that I absolutely adore comes up in a conversation between Kapil Komireddi and Amit Varma when, if I remember correctly, Amit asks his regular question of if our liberal constitution is itself an imposition on a largely illiberal society. While Madhav Khosla, again I hope I'm not misattributing, contests the argument that we are an illiberal society, talking about India's bottom-up liberalism honed by millennia of co-existence, Kapil references Sunil Khilnani's, and as an extension Nehru's, Idea of India by telling us that that's the idea of India which is expansive and accepting enough to accommodate and celebrate all other conceptions of India. This is what is at the heart of what I call the Liberal Disequilibrium- That an illiberal person can ask for the ouster of a liberal from society but a liberal person, by definition, cannot do that. A liberal is not a hyper-rationalist devoid of all opinions and judgements, but someone who's opinions are more learned, deduced than accepted, and at which he is able to look at as objectively as possible. Therefore, liberalism is not a religion but more of a framework akin to scientific thinking.

Rawls' elaborates on how political philosophy is a very social affair and it would be very hard to come up with almost mathematically precise and complete theories.

Ch 4- Institutions of a Just Basic Structure

Property owning democracy vs a capitalist welfare state

I like how Rawls qualifies his statements by clearly stating that they are not conclusive, expansive claims but illustrative thoughts. Not only does this increase my respect in the writer but it also leads me to think, and apply those theories and see if they work, instead of just accepting them as laws.

A liberal democracy tries to create a fair system of cooperation between free and equal citizens, as well as between generations.

5 kinds of regimes with political, economic and social institutions:

    a. laissez-faire capitalism

    b. welfare-state capitalism

    c. state socialism with a command economy

    d. property owning democracy

    e. liberal (democratic) socialism

4 questions regarding any regime:

    a. question of right- whether its institutions are right and just

    b. question of design- whether a regime's institutions can be effectively designed to realise its declared aims and objectives

    c. question of compliance- whether the citizens who's interests and ends are shaped by the regime's basic structure, can be relied on to comply with the 'just' rules. Corruption is a part of this

    d. question of competence- whether the tasks assigned to offices and positions are simply too difficult to those who hold them

This is riveting elucidation, almost a mathematical blueprint of how our societies are organised. I have noticed this aspect of almost mathematical abstraction even in Prof. Mehta's talks; It seems like as much as political theorists understand and consider unpredictable human behaviour, mathematical thinking, like when deducing conclusions from axioms, is the most conducive way to think of and explain politics and society.

I wonder how these concepts have been updated since the ascendance of Behavioural Economics (Eg: Nudge Theory). 

The importance of above questions is roughly in descending order.

Paused at the end of page 136

Notes from the class-

How do we think of property rights? 

Normatively speaking, we agree that everyone should have a share in the economy. 

What is property? What is the right to property? Indian constitution had such a right that was later removed.

Approaches to private property:

    a. Natural rights approach- I own my labour. If I mix my labour with something, by the virtue of my labour enhancing that thing, it becomes mine. Reservations: I might gain right to use, but why right to own; If labour grants a right to property, then what about latecomers (an extension of previous week's discussion)?

    b. Some right to property is an extension of our freedom and self-expression. It is very important to concretising our freedom (Hegel). 

    c. Hayek- Rules of private property allocation produce an efficient economy. (Hayek said something similar when talking about meritocracy. He agrees that the link between work and material reward is tenuous at best but it is necessary).

Relationship between property and sovereignty- If property is a good thing, shouldn't it be distributed widely?

Accepting property is good but :

    a. People's starting places are arbitrary

    b. And won't trade then increase inequality

How do we solve this?

We are embodied beings. We need property to be able to do many things including something as quotidian as to have the right to privacy you need a room you can call your own. Without property, what is taken away from you is the basic right of self-expression.

Q: What if you move from scarce forms of property, like land, to almost infinite forms, like data? 

    Growing the property pie instead of distributing it, even if some inequality will persist. Distribution need not be zero-sum. 

    Challenges to above idea: a. As economies get more complex, with other forms of property than land getting institutionalised, how do questions of ownership get determined? [I don't understand this]

    b. Nagel & Murphy- The patterns of accumulation that you see in any society are actually the constructs of property rules we've decided. They exist because we allow certain allocations to exist. They are not the basis of property rights but consequence of allocation in a certain way. Eg: If you take away my accumulated capital, then you're taking away my property. But it is your property in the first place because there are certain rules that allow you to have it in the first place- Inheritance. 

    We think: We have property, it is being taxed. Then we question why and how of it. N & M reverse that. The property that you have is a product of prior taxation rules. It doesn't exist independent of them. The question, then, is what is the justification of those rules? 

Forest Rights debates in India- Historically, communities had rights to use products of the forests which is different from right to dispose it or something. 

"The only guys who didn't have a free market right in their property were farmers"- Links to a SeenUnseen episode.

Paradox of India- We thought it was okay to restrict property rights in land for agriculture sector (the entire mantle of redistribution fell on them) but why does it not apply to other forms of property or capital?

Q: Why should distribution of property be an act of justice? Why can't it be a means through which enough money is raised to spend on more welfare-ish schemes?

Q: Conflict between different types of justice: Individual rights vs Environmental rights etc. 

You can't ask specific questions to know if something is just. It has to be turned into a more generic, big question. Something that Balagopal said as well. 

Yes, the economic usage of an asset is important. But the converse is also true: Dynamics of inequality that is produced by taxation can be measured by those calibrations. [Er..]

Inheritance

What is the moral basis for saying someone can inherit property?

    One argument for: Property continuity (wanting to leave my grandchildren something) is a form of expression of freedom.

Two problematic aspects:

    a. Somebody in society seems to be getting an undue share of unearned income- Granting moral legitimacy for something unearned

    b. It seems to be most obvious location at which social concerns about inequality and wide distribution of property can be easily located- Because of the nature of its compounding cumulative power

US till 70s had a steep inheritance tax

Is it possible to have a cut-off and then the state takes the rest- I'm thinking what are the second-order consequences of such an act. How will people find ways to subvert the system?

The person who has the money has the moral right to use it as she pleases. But if we're saying that we ought to use to money for social welfare, then there's no point quibbling over moral questions and we should concentrate on the efficiency of tax collection. 

Fundamental Right vs Legal Right

Countervailing considerations: 

    a. Consider a Land-only Economy: The small set of people who're getting land by virtue of their birth are enjoying freedoms that I don't. The same applies to cases where capital is very unequally distributed.  

    Could it be that the giver has the right to give but the received doesn't have the right to take.

    "Inheritance is, arguably, the most stable method of perpetuating inequality"

    Free transfer can only be free when all people have atleast a basic, adequate freedom/ power to be capable of doing a free transfer

    b. From the point of view of Well-being and Freedom: Yes, people can accumulate wealth through free exchange. By allowing high levels of accumulation, especially that is not earned (without consideration of marginal utility), society as a whole is signalling the fact that wealth is the most important social value.  You could utilize something like scientific esteem as an incentive.

Adam Smith- "Wealth is unnecessary to well-being and happiness beyond a certain point".

Q: If we have a problem with inter-generational transfer of wealth that's arbitrary, then are all arbitrary transfers wrong? 

Chicago Economists- I inherit property worth 5 million from my parents. You come and say I can wring out a value of 10 million from this. So the argument goes, auction off inheritance and increase turnover of property. All the time.

Efficiency (of usage) is not always the right way to answer questions of justice. 

How many of you are comfortable inheriting a large amount of money? There seems to be queasiness with the unearned nature of that income. But on the other hand, being born into money is not very different from being born beautiful or athletic etc. and the only reason we're debating this is because we can measure money. Although, large inheritance visibly channels social power and so is worth debating. 

liveblogging

Sometimes, when I realise that I haven't blogged in months, it feels like those months have slipped past without leaving a trace. Other times, when I read some of my posts, I think, this is crap, you're embarrassing yourself by posting online. Only rarely do I feel good at reading some of the stuff I've written. Anyway, I was reading Venkat's post today and I thought I should liveblog, in the hope that it's going to do four things:

1. Get me back into writing more involved and, hopefully, better prose.

2. Ensure my random jottings are consolidated in a single place.

3. I've been feeling cut-off from the mainstream world since a long time now. I listen to podcasts and follow essays/ blogs on more current topics, but possibly because I don't contribute to the discussion, it seems like I'm not part of a larger community. By posting my thoughts more frequently on the internet, I hope to engage some readers and maybe get into a more active discussion.

4. I'd become a better reader/ listener because I would approach it with the intent of writing about it; And also think about the topic more deeply while reading

The more I thought of it though, I came up with four reasons why it's a bad idea:

1. I'd be more obsessed with posting and so would actively engage with the content. I like that idea less than letting information come and envelop me. The first method seems too pushy.

2. The blog would turn into a less 'serious' space. So instead of letting ideas brew in my mind for weeks or months, I'd be responding to them with immediate effect. I know that the more ideal place for something like this would be Twitter but I don't think I have the energy or, more honestly, the mental capacity anymore to swim through such a forceful data stream.

3. This is in direct contradiction to my romantic idea of a writer, someone who jots in notebooks and lets ideas simmer for years before putting anything out, but there are people I admire, like Venkat Rao and Cory Doctorow, who have turned this sort of writing into a new artform. So I have conflicting feelings about this.

4. I'm sure I'm going to abandon this soon. And I don't want it to be another reminder of my incompetence. 

So, yeah, those two sets of ideas are wrestling inside my head right now but I'm tilting towards doing it primarily because:

1. I want to write more and I think my writing is really sloppy when I'm not writing for the internet. The romantic inside my finds that deplorable but the pragmatist says, meh, it is what it is.

2. This going away into the woods and coming back to the society only when I have all the answers doesn't seem to be working really. While the sceptic inside me genuinely believes that I don't really know what I'm talking about and there's no way anyone would be convinced by any of my thoughts, the egoist persists and says that the only way to get deeply involved in something is by having skin in the game.

So, yes, I guess I'm going to start liveblogging after all. For now. 

I'm currently doing Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta's Ashoka X course called Justice: Selected topics and controversies, and I'm going to start readings for class 5 in a while. And I'm going to post my thoughts through that.

 

for the pleasure of living

I've spent the last few months in a deep struggle. What I realised today could be a false dawn but right now I feel I've reached some shore. Some place where I'm not afraid that I'm lost in the open seas. The struggle has not been material, emotional and only, even if, intellectual. It has been, for lack of a better word, spiritual. What to do? How to live? I've obsessed over this question, worryingly so, flailing my arms, trying to swim now in this direction, now in that, afraid of sinking, of being eaten, of staying like this for a long time, surrounded by infinite water but unable to gulp a mouthful. It has been a horrendous time, and despite the regularity of other things, love, friendship, joys, new trials, it has gnawed at me, bit by bit, in the background, like a nightmare that resumes every night. I have even placated myself by telling that this pain, confusion, fear is a good thing because it still means I've not become numb to feeling, that I'm still sensitive enough to worry about 'great' things.

So what exactly has bothered me: It is, like I said, the question of what do I do with my life. I'm thirty now, so many people I idolised had already done something noteworthy by the time they were thirty. So either I'm a late bloomer or I'm going to live out my life not having done something that I value, something I take pride in, find something doing which I can repeatedly find joy while gaining mastery. I can find only two ways to think of it: Either there is something called destiny, that each of us find out what we're supposed to do, not because it's dictated by society or circumstance, but because we find that voice deep in our hearts, or we transcend circumstance and the dictates of our immediate society to do something that makes us respect ourselves, that makes us feel we've made a sizeable dent in the world we were born into. And no matter which worldview I took as my axiom, I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was doing the wrong thing with my life. Neither does the voice inside me tell me nor do I want to be a middling data analyst in a bank. Then why do I do it? Because of circumstance? Not entirely because some of the decisions I took lead me here. It's not even necessity because I don't have a debt to pay-off, or am in some other desperate need of this money. So why? I don't know. And this uncertainty gave me the chills. This is not good uncertainty, like the time your brain is trying to fathom why it appreciates a film but can't get to love it. This is uncertainty that tells you you're doing something wrong but refuses to give you an explanation or an alternative.

Let me say the word out; I searched for a goal. What is my goal? To what destination am I walking? Writer, filmmaker, teacher, public intellectual, for that matter even Indian or Australian? Once I had that goal, it would help me decide the route, what equipment I'd need to pick up, people I'd need to read, watch, meet. Everything hinged on that single answer. But the answer was never forthcoming. When I was younger, the answer was temporary but atleast as long as it was there, it seemed set. The change-of-mind was frequent but correspondingly, the period of indecisiveness or confusion was shorter. The epiphanies were bright and short-lived but they came in a thick stream. This time around, it seemed to have completely dried up. And for a human surviving, rightly or wrongly, on dopamine inducing epiphanies, the starvation was painful. The withdrawal symptoms were acute. 

I really, really tried to find a solution to this. A rational understanding of myself that would help me design my life for efficiency of some sort (I still don't know what parameter to improve). I thought incessantly, scouring knowledge nuggets in that hope that I'd find an answer somewhere. I even tried tricking my mind into believing that I'd given up, watching mindless entertainment, in the hope that it would unblock some sort of a subconscious volcano. I felt guilty all the time, unable to read or watch anything with full involvement, convinced that I was living in some wrong way. Not that I was miserable all the time, I still functioned normally, to a certain extent, and genuinely had fun in conversations and events. But I would soon be overcome by this nagging feeling and the more I worried about it, the more I felt like crap because I have never wanted to be a calculative person trying to find the optimum solution. My archetype of myself has been that of a wanderer, someone who travels not because he is in search of a treasure but because the journey is the treasure. Somewhere along this path, I guess I wanted to wring out as much out of the journey, instead of letting it come to me, because I started believing that I needed to get the value of this treasure. To extend the metaphor further, I started second-guessing every stray path or every plant that piqued my curiosity to ensure that I was getting as much worth, forgetting that I didn't want to seek a treasure in the first place precisely because I wanted to wander to places where my curiosity led me.

I wanted to know my place in the world, maybe a part of me still does. I wanted to be someone, known for something, easy to remember. I wanted to be some type despite some essential part of me wanting to transcend all types. I wanted to be a good son, a good husband, a good human, a great artist despite not knowing what it really meant, despite trying to know what it meant. I looked at myself through the eyes of what I thought the world is like and see someone successful, polished and and sparkling. It seems ridiculous thinking of it like that now but as long as I craved that sort of an impossible validation, I became calculative in everything I did and got irritable when things didn't pan out in ways I thought. I've never been smart but the desperate need to crack the algorithm of life placed an uncarriable burden that made the journey seem not worth it. I read with trepidation, in an attempt to impress and afraid that I'd be identified as a fraud, instead of letting the material absorb me and knowledge give me pleasure.

I've removed the burden atleast for now. As long as this realisation lasts, I will happily read what finds my fancy, watch great film, enjoy music and poetry, and have long, meandering conversations without worrying what I'll find at the end of it. This seems zen, yogic. I don't know if it is, and if it is, if it is coming from a shallow place. It seems to come deep from inside and the only thing I can really do is trust and take the leap. I don't want this meandering, carefree-ness to again turn into a quest and become miserable for not being carefree enough. It's probably more ridiculous than it sounds. I've been obsessing over finding my place in the world without realising that the only fixed place is the tomb. I hope to enjoy the surroundings and keep walking wherever my curiosity leads me.

earthbound

I wanted to expand on the following essay and send it to one of the Telugu webzines. But after writing it, I realized that the thematic thread is not as strong as I thought it was and I was overreaching by the way of advocating that they shared a certain worldview. So I decided not to polish it and send it for publication, and am therefore archiving it here. This is more or less the first draft of the essay I set out to write and I'm only abstaining from publishing the title because I think it's a good one and I might find a more appropriate place for it sometime in the future.

Also, I don't think I mentioned it in the essay but some of the ideas also come from Rick Roderick's illuminating essay Masters of Suspicion.

--

కిందటేడాది నేను నాలుగు మంచి తెలుగు సినిమాలు చూసాను- c/o కంచెరపాలెం, ఫలక్నుమా దాస్, ఏజెంట్ సాయి శ్రీనివాస్ ఆత్రేయ, బ్రోచేవారెవరురా. వీటి మధ్య నాకొక కామన్ థ్రెడ్ కనిపించింది. నాలుగు సినిమాలూ వేరు జానర్లకు సంబంధించినవి, aesthetics వేరు, టోన్ వెరు. అయినా కూడా నాకొక common ethos కనబడింది. ఇది నా చూపు వల్ల, నా మైండ్సెట్ వల్ల అలా కనబడిందో లేక if 'there’s something in the air' ఓ నాకు తెలిదు. ఆ worldview కొత్తది, గొప్పది ఏం కాదు కానీ ఈ మధ్య వచ్చిన మంచి తెలుగు సినిమలలో తటస్తించటం నాకు చాలా ఆసక్తిని కలిగించింది.

అది ఏంటంటే- ఈ సినిమలు నాలుగింటిలో దైవత్వ ప్రస్తావన అధికంగా ఉంది. సాధారణంగా mainstream తెలుగు సినిమాల్లో మన హీరోలకి god complex ఉంటుంది. వాడు omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. వాడికి సంకోచం ఉండదు. వాడు ఏమన్నా చేయగలుగుతాడు. ఎందరినన్నా కొడతాడు, ఎలాంటి అమ్మాయినైనా ఇట్టే పడేస్తాడు, పెద్దా చిన్నా భేదం లేకుండా అందరికీ క్లాసులు పీకేస్తాడు.

మన కథానాయకుడు అవతార పురుషుడు. వాడు వేరే వాళ్ళని ఉద్ధరించటానికే వస్తాడు. వాడు జన్మతహ జ్ఞాని, బలాశాలి, చమత్కారి. సినిమా మొదట్లో ఎలా ఉంటాడో చివర్లోనూ అలానే ఉంటాడు. కానీ వాడి చుట్టు ఉన్న ప్రపంచం మారుతుంది, వాడి చర్యల వల్ల మారుతుంది. విలన్లు నశిస్తారు, చెడ్డ గుణాలున్నవారు పరివర్తన చెందుతారు.

త్రివిక్రం మహేష్ ఖలేజా ఈ కాన్సెప్ట్ మీద ఒక మంచి రిఫ్- ఆ సినిమాలో ఊరి వాళ్ళు హీరోని దేవుడంటారు, వాళ్ళని కాపాడమని వేడుకుంటారు; వాడేమో నేను మామూలు మనిషిని నన్నొదిలేయండి అని పారిపోతూంటాడు. Ofcourse, చివర్లో వాడిలోని దైవత్వాన్ని గుర్తించి ఆబాలగోపాలాన్ని రక్షిస్తాడు. ఈ సినిమాలో ఒక గమనించ దగ్గ విషయం ఏంటంటే వాళ్ళకి కష్టం వస్తే ఊళ్ళోవాళ్ళు ఒక్కటై దానిని ఎదురించరు. జ్యోత్స్యం చెప్పేవాడి మాటలి బట్టి వాళ్ళ redeemer ని వెతికి తెచ్చుకుంటారు.

ఈ ఆలోచనా విధానం మన పురాణాల నుండి, మన mythologies నుండి వచ్చిందంటారు దేవ్ దత్ పట్నాయిక్. రాముడు మారడు, కృష్ణుడు మారడు. ఇది మన collective unconsciousness లో ఎంతగా ఇంకిపోయిందంటే మనం హీరో హీరోయిన్లకు గుళ్ళు కడతాం, పాలాభిషేకాలు చేస్తాం. రాజకీయ నాయకులని సేవికులగా కాకుండా రాజుల్లాగా చూస్తాం.

చిరంజీవి మెగస్టార్ అయిన తరుణం నుండి ఇది మన స్టాండర్డ్ ఫార్ములా. మినహాయింపులు లేకపోలేదు- క్రిష్ జాగర్లమూడి గమ్యం ఒక మంచి ఉదహరణ. దాంట్లో కథానాయకుడు పరివర్తన చెందుతాడు. వాడి మారుపే కథ. కానీ అది ఇమడ్చిన ఫార్ములా సీత కోసం రాముడు చేసిన ప్రయాణం. బుద్ధుడి transformation లా కూడా ఉంటుంది. (అందుకేనా కథలో ఒక మేజర్ పొర్షన్ అమరావతిలో సెట్ చేసాడు?)

అయితే పాప్యులర్ సినిమా ఈ ఫార్ములా మీదనె నడిచింది- మెగాస్టార్ చిరంజీవి నుండి ఇప్పటి సూపర్‌స్టార్ మహేష్ దాక. ఫాన్స్ భక్తులుగా మారారు, హీరోలు వాళ్ళ మిథాలజీస్‌ని వాళ్ళే నమ్మడం మొదలెట్టారు, దీనితో గాడ్ కాంప్లెక్స్ వచ్చింది. హీరొని ఏ పాత్ర ఒక్క మాటనటానికి వీల్లేదు, హీరో కోసం వెంపర్లాడుతుంది హీరోయిన్, వాడికి పెద్ద చిన్న మంచి మర్యాద సొషల్ సైన్స్ దేనితో సంబంధం లేడు. వందల మందిని కొడతాడు, ఆడబడుచులని కాపాడతాడు, రైతులకు న్యాయం చేస్తాడు, ఫారెన్‌లో స్టెప్పులు వేస్తాడు.

ఈ తీరు సినిమా ఇంకా చాలానే ఉంది. అయితే నేను పైన పేర్కొన్న నాలుగ్ సినిమాల్లో వేరే రకమైన worldview కనబడుతోంది. దీంట్లో జొసెఫ్ కాంప్బెల్ వ్యాప్తిలోకి తెచ్చిన hero's journey కనబడుతుండి. ఈ మార్పు ఈ తరం బాలీవుడ్ హీరోల్లో రన్‌బీర్ కపూర్ తో మొదలైంది.

హీరో ఒకలా ఉంటాడు. ఒక సమస్య లోకి నెట్టేయబడ్తాడు. కొందరిని కలుస్తాడు, కొన్ని జీవిత సత్యాలు నేర్చుకుంటాడు, స్నేహాలు చేసుకుంటాడు, పడ్తాడు లేస్తాడు, మంచి చేసే ప్రయత్నంలో హాని చేస్తాడు, ఏడుస్తాడు, ఎదుగుతాడు, పాప ప్రక్షాళన చేసుకొని ఒక కొత్త మెచ్యూరిటీ తో ఇల్లు చేరుకుంటాడు. అయితే ఈ కొత్త రచయితలు దర్శకులు దీనికి social consciousness ని జోడిస్తున్నారు. ఒక రకంగా చెప్పాలంటే ఇది dialectical materialism. తమిళ్ సినిమాల్లోనూ deification తగ్గింది.

ఈ కథలు కేవలం హీరో జర్నీ గురించే కాదు. సమాజం ఎలా ఉంది, కథలో కీలక పాత్రలు ఎలా ఉంటారు, ఎందుకలా ఉంటారు, వాళ్ళ కట్టు బొట్టు ఆహారం వ్యయహార శైలి కులం వర్గం, వారి ఆలోచనల చర్యల పర్యావసానం సమాజం పైన ఎలా ఉంటుంది.

ఈ నాలుగు సినిమాల్లో ఈ లక్షణాలను సంక్షిప్తంగా చెప్పాలంటే (spoilers ahead)-

c/o కంచరపాలెం- ఈ సినిమాలో explicit గా దెవుడి గురించి ప్రస్తావన ఉంటుంది, కుల మతాల గురించి, కుల మతాల పేర్లమీద గుంపులు చేసే అరాచకాల గురించి. కానీ అన్నిటికీ మించి ఈ సినిమా దేవుడి నిశ్శబ్దం గురించి (the silence of god). ప్రపంచ సినిమాలో ఈ ఐడియా మీద ఎంతో మంది గొప్ప దర్శకులు సినిమాలు తీసారు- ఇంగ్మార్ బెర్గ్మన్, వుడీ అలెన్, మార్టిన్ స్కొర్సేసే. భారతీయ సినిమాల్లో ఉండే ఉంటుంది, నాకు తెలియదు. మీకు తెలిస్తే దయచేసి తెలియగలరు. ఈ సినిమాలో హీరో దేవుణ్ణి ప్రార్థిస్తాడు, దేవుడు అటకాయిస్తాడు. ఇంకో దేవుణ్ణి ప్రాధేయపడ్తాడు. అక్కడా అదే పరిస్థితి. మళ్ళీ మళ్ళీ అదే అయ్యే సరికి ఏడుస్తాడు, చిరాకు పడ్తాడు, అర్థం చేసుకునే ప్రయత్నం చేస్తాడు, ఆఖరికి ఆ ప్రయత్నాలు వదిలేసి వాడికి చేతనైన పని చేసుకుంటాడు. ఊరిని ఉద్ధరించటం దేవుడెరుగు, వాడి జీవితంలో కోరుకున్నది ఏది సొంతంగ సాధించుకోలేడు. ఇలాంటి కథానాయకుడు తెలుగులో అసాధారణం. ఇలాంటి కథ నూతనం.

ఫలక్నుమా దాస్- నిజం ఒప్పుకోవాలంటే ఈ సినిమాలో హీరో పెద్దగా మారడు- కమర్షియల్ హీరోలా మొదట్లో ఎలా ప్రవర్తిస్తాడో చివర్లోనూ అదే ఆటిట్యూడ్‌తో ఉంటాడు. అయితే ఈ సినిమాలో నాకు నచ్చిన విషయం ఏంటంటే హీరో మనం నార్మల్గా హీరో చేయకూడని విధంగా ప్రవర్తించినా, కమర్షియల్ హీరో చేసినప్పుడు చుట్టూ ఉన్న పాత్రలు వెనకేసుకొచ్చినట్టు దీంట్లో ఆ చర్యలకి greater good ముసుగ వేయరు, వాడు ఏ విధంగానూ పశ్చాతాప పడినట్లు ఉండదు. 'వాడి పాపాన వాడు పోయాడు' అని చెప్పలేము. కర్మ వాడిని శిక్షించదు. అవును కొన్ని కష్టాలు పడ్తాడు కానీ అది రాండెం గానే ఉంటుంది, ఆ కాంప్లికేటెడ్ నెట్వర్క్‌లో ఈవెంట్స్ గానే చూపెడ్తారు కానీ ఏదో overarching teleology ఉండదు. మనుషులు వాళ్ళ గొడవల్లో, అలవాట్లలో లక్షణాలతో వాళ్ళకి కావల్సిన వాటి గురించి ఉబలాట పడ్తారు. వాళ్ళ పాటికి వాళ్ళు ఉంటున్నారు. దేవుడి అవసరం లేదు.

ఏజెంట్ సాయి శ్రీనివాస్ ఆత్రేయ- ఈ సినిమా explicit గా మతానికి, నమ్మకాలకి సంభంధించిన నేరాల గురించి మాట్లాడుతుంది. Modern, rational detective against superstitious belief and the business of faith. నేను చాలా మంది కోరికలు కోరే భక్తులని అడిగే ప్రశ్న- దేవుడు గొప్పవాడు మంచి వాడు అయితే అడిగే దాకా ఎందుకు తీర్చడని. (it’s a different issue that that question leads to so many other questions). అయినా దేవుడెందుకు "చెడు" ని సృష్టించాడని. దేవుడు నీ మంచి చెడు తెలిసే చేస్తున్నాడు కదా. మరి మధ్యలో నువ్వు అడిగేసి కెలికెయటం ఏంటని. వాళ్ళేదో చెప్తారు. అయితే ఈ సినిమాలో నమ్మని వాళ్ళకి అడగని వాళ్ళకే కాదు, నమ్మి ప్రాధేయపడుతున్న వాళ్ళకీ అన్యాయం జరుగుతున్నట్టు, అదీ డబ్బు కోసం అని చూస్తాము. ఈ సినిమా కి ఇంత మంచి పేరు రావటానికి కారణం ఇదేదో అజెండాలా కాక వార్తల్లో రోజు చూస్తున్న విషయాలను తీసుకొని ఇలా చూపించటం. చివర్లో విలన్లకి శిక్ష పడుతుంది కానీ అది హీరోకి respite ఇవ్వదు.

బ్రోచేవారెవరురా- ఈ సినిమా అయితే టైటల్ నుండే godless universeని invoke చేస్తుంది. "నిను బ్రోచేవారే లేరులే". నీ చర్యలకు ప్రతిఫలం ఉంటుంది. కానీ అది equal and symmetric గా ఉండదు. అది random గా ఉంటుంది, హింస కానీ ఊరట కానీ కేవలం మన చర్యల వల్ల రాదు. ‘అదృష్టం’ బాగుంటే సమస్య నుండి గట్టెక్కుతావ్ లెదంటే మునిగిపోతావ్. పారాహుషార్. నిజానికి పారాహుషార్ అన్నా ఉపయోగం లేదు. ఏది ఎందుకు ఎలా ఎప్పుడు అవుతుందో చెప్పలేవు. నీ అదృష్టం బగుంటే దానిని ఎదురుకొనే శక్తి దొరుకుతుంది. Again a non-teleological, opaque universe. (పూర్వ జన్మ కార్యాలకు ఇపుడు ప్రతిఫలం అనుభవిస్తున్నామేమొ. కాని నా current experience లో అది ఎందుకు ఎలా జరుగుతొందో తెలియనపుడు అది ఈ జన్మ అస్తిత్వం వరకు random)

హీరోలు వద్దు అంటే నా ఉద్దేషం extraordinary humans ఉండరని కాదు. అలాంటి వారు ఉంటారేమో, who by the sheer force of their will, personality or strength వాళ్ళ ఐడియాస్‌ని ప్రపంచం మీద impose చేసేవాళ్ళు- మంచికో చెడుకో. కానీ అలాంటి వారు vacuumలో ఉద్భవించరు, ప్రపంచం తో react అవుతు మారుతు మార్చుకుంటు వస్తూంటారు. సినిమా, for that matter any story, primary idea అదే కదా. నా లాంటి ఒక మనిషి moral, emotional or physical quandry లో ఉంటే వాడు ఏం చేస్తాడు, ఏం ఆలోచిస్తాడు, ఎలా ఉంటాడు.

దేవుడు లాంటి హీరో వచ్చి రక్షిస్తాడు అనే సాంప్రదాయం నుండి మనలోనే దేవుడున్నాడు అనే భావజాలం నుండి ఇపుడు దైవత్వం లేదు, ఎవడూ ఉధ్ధరించలేడు, మానవత్వం ఏ మన దగ్గర ఉన్నది అన్న చోటికి వచ్చాయి కథలు. ఇది సరియైన పరిణామమా కాదా అన్నది నేను ప్రస్తావించలేదు. నాకు కనబడిన evolution ని మీకు ప్రెసెంట్ చెస్తున్నాను.

entertainment for the easily contented

I will set aside the many structural and creative problems with Ala Vaikunthapuramulo. Honestly, they are the more forgivable issues. I have, and did have even while watching the film last night, two major problems with its philosophy.

1. OGLING IS NOT ROMANCE. Maybe women who enjoy it exist but I have never known any woman who would want to be with any man who creeps her out. Maybe Pooja Hegde enjoys it or she thinks the character Amulya is the type who finds it flirtatious. Many women won't. Trivikram has always written crappy heroines, usually bimbos, who don't need any reasons to fall in love with his heroes. Infact the one strong woman I can think of in his oeuvre is the Parvathi Melton character in Jalsa who expresses her interest in the hero but is turned down because he accuses her of being intelligent. One argument I can see coming is that these are just characters and he does it to bring out the humour but if he keeps doing it and if it's the only thing he seems to be capable of, it gives an indication that he doesn't see anything beyond it. Even the ostensibly progressive strong heroine in Ala, who built up her own business, needs the hero to help her refuse offers she does not want to accept, cannot tell her father that she does not want to marry the person he chooses, and falls head over heels with one of her new employees who introduces himself by salivating at the sight of her uncovered legs. Telugu film heroes and heroines don't need to talk to her each, don't need to share interests or spar ideas, don't need to bond emotionally to fall in love. Their bonding is expedited by the need for a duet.

2. A person's birth deciding his fate is what we call Casteism. We call a society modern if it tries to negate what we believe is the accident of birth by giving every individual an opportunity to realise their fullest potential. I understand Valmiki who is so filled with jealousy that he wants to torture the kid who is his boss's son. What I don't understand is the pride with which Ramachandra claims Bantu. He is overjoyed to realize and take credit for begetting the hero. What he does not realize that he has failed as a father. To be a father is not to complete the biological requirement but raise the kid to be the person you are proud of. And in that respect Ramachandra is a colossal failure because he is repulsed by the person he raised, his true son. This argument holds if you believe that kids are who we raise them to be, atleast to a large extent. By that account both Ramachandra and his wife have failed and Valmiki, despite his best efforts, and his wife have succeeded.

But if you think that we are who we are born as, choosing nature over nurture, then Ramachandra has a reason to be proud, Bantu is the ordained king and Raj will never be anything but a servant. This is what we call caste. Trivikram could have this viewpoint, and I have no problems with that but that raises the question of why did ARK pick Ramachandra from his 'lowly' state and hand him over the kingship?

I've been told many times earlier that I overthink these things, that a 'commercial' film does not have to or need to get into any discussion of competing ideas, that a large section of the audience comes to a theatre not to think but to 'not think' about their problems. Maybe, but no cultural artefact is created in vacuum. It is, consciously or otherwise, a certain way and those thoughts follow structures. And many things we find problematic, inconsistent or unacceptable also come from those structures. And it is those structures that I want to understand and question.

--

In this wonderful interview with Kunal Karma, Anubhav Sinha compares two different riffs on the concept of societal hierarchy. There is a line in Super 30 that goes, "Raja ka beta raja nahin banega. Raja wohi banega jo haqdaar hain." In Article 15, one character questions the other by asking, "Agar sab log samaan hojayega, toh raja kaun banega" to which the other character replies, "Raja ki zaroorat hi kya hain?".

"Middle class predominant గా తయారవ్వటం అంటే అది భయంకరమైన situation. Middle class is dangerous.. for many things" -కె. శివారెడ్డి గారు

religion by other names

Sravani and I went to see professional sport, A-league football and ATP Cup tennis, in the last few days and I've been thinking about a few things. Broadly:

1. How have we let corporations take over communities? In one of the essays in The Blizzard, I read about how in it's initial days Bundesliga brought people together. Players and supporters belonged, generally, to the same villages/ towns and often knew each other. What motivated the players to give their best was not money, because they hardly made any and were happy with free beer, but pride in representing their people. Fans literally built the stadiums, by providing both money and voluntary work, and treated the players as their own. Yes, it sounds too Utopian now, as if they were waiting for money to come in and pollute everything, but that idealism seems like a natural part of every human being as much as I guess the temptation of power that makes them give up on their ideals is. A lot of teenagers are idealistic until they're told repeatedly by the grownups that that won't work because the world is a harsh, cruel place. And I guess the human tragedy is that it is true but to give up on even trying to imagine a better alternative is accepting easy defeat.

These days, the stadiums are named after corporations, the jerseys are filled with logos of sponsors, players are bought and sold in a marketplace to the highest bidder as if the only parameter is money. Despite that, people go to stadiums to support their teams and I find it embarrassingly funny. Your only participation with the team is as a consumer and their only allegiance to you is to justify the money you've paid for them. And what's worse is that even this relationship is not direct, it is mediated by corporations- A group of people who's only motivation to come together and build things is money. How did we let this happen? How did we let money become the blood of the social organism? It is not sufficient to detest it and wish for an alternative. It is important to learn how we came to live in this world, why we wish we lived in a different world and how we can start walking towards that.

Also we have created players into these hyper specialised beings, which I think is as true for all the workers in this society, that they seem to have lost other essential aspects of their personality and have turned into automatons. Which is why we find it so refreshing to find celebrities who are vocally political because so many of them are uninterested or scared for the impact opinions might have on their primary identity.

2.  This is a banal observation, voiced since the era of McLuhan and Postman, but TV indeed does turn everything into a decontextualised spectacle of sights and sounds. In the stadium, its just a bunch of guys playing a game. Yes, their athleticism is rare and beautiful, but it still stays in its human context. In TV, it turns into a hyperdramatic event, egged on by the commentators with their hyperbolic language trying to make the audience feel that what they're watching is a life-changing event, the slow motion replays giving every move unnecessary importance, the flipping of channels from sitcoms and music videos raising sport, or even news, to a realm of artificial emotionality.

3. It is so hard to watch sport without picking a side. I've always claimed that I watch it for the beauty, as if I'm placing myself above the hoards of people with their more baser instincts of the modern practice of transplanting deities with their favourite players, but jaw-dropping beauty is as rare in sport as it is in life, which is probably why we turn to art, and it becomes imperative to support one side to participate in the game.

The fervour involved in supporting a team got me thinking if its possible to function in a world devoid of religion. It doesn't have to deal specifically with gods; atheism, agnostism, capitalism, communism, nationalism,for that matter, Pawanism, are also religions. By religion I mean the basic set of assumptions we have about the world on top of which we can stack everything. I would call myself a Western style liberal which basically means I believe in the religion of individual rights and pray at the altar of the human mind. I don't claim it has the capacity to be any less evil that what other religions have done, and it might not solve all the problems of the world, but in my experience it is better for me to hold an individual responsible for his or her actions than transfer that burden to a god, a book or an ideology. Tomorrow, something could come up which would be more evolved than this and I might embrace that.

But the more interesting question is, what are these axioms standing on? How is my belief in this nouveau religion any different from that of an Islamic or Hindu Fundamentalist, or a proud Capitalist, who is so convinced by the Truth in his ideology that he wants to impose that on the world? Postmodernism taught me this. If modernism said yours is a stupid belief system and mine is thought through rationality, postmodernism said what if your rationality is also just a religion. Then instead of having to carry the white man's burden, you are paralysed by self-doubt in the quagmire of trying to understand your motivation. Is that also one of the reasons religion has made an unexpected comeback in public life in the last few years because constantly having to reassess our basic assumptions can be so exhausting. Better to use the one tool you hold and use it for everything from trying to understand why you didn't get the promotion you so deserve to who's to be held responsible for deaths of people.

At this point I'm not concerned with spirituality as much as religion as a way of organising society. And that's the topic these questions are trying to explore.

కవి, అంతే

అర్థరాత్రి, శ్రీశైలం అడవుల్లోంచి పాకుతున్న రోడ్డు. సప్తమి చంద్రుడు, మెల్లిగా వీస్తున్న గాలి. ఖాళీ రోడ్డు మీద నెమ్మదిగా వెళుతున్న ఒక లారీ.  నిద్రతో తూలుతున్న క్లీనర్ కుర్రాడు, గదమాయిస్తున్న డ్రైవర్.

లారీ వెనకాల భాగంలో, గడ్డివాము మీద వెల్లకిలా పడుకొని గుబారైన కొమ్మల సందుల్లోంచి వెన్నెలని చూస్తూ,  సిగరెట్టు కాల్చుకుంటున్న ఇరవై-ఇరవై రెండేళ్ళ కుర్రాడు.

లారీ ఆగింది, చిన్నగా మాటలు వినబడుతున్నాయి. ఒక మనిషి అడుగులు దగ్గరవుతున్న శబ్దం. ఇంతలో ఒక టోపీ తల ప్రత్యక్షమైంది.

"దిగు దిగు.."

కుర్రాడు దిగాడు. ముడతల లాల్చీ, చింపిరి గెడ్డం, ఎర్రటి కళ్ళు. ఎస్.ఐ దెగ్గరికి వెళ్ళాడు. చెరగని క్రాఫు, గుబురు మీసం.

"ఏరా నక్సలైట్ వా?"
"కాదు సార్"
"మరి?"
"కవిని సార్"
"కవివా? ఏది ఓ కవిత చదువు"
".."
"ఏంటి? కవివైతే ఓ కవిత చెప్పరా"

ఎస్.ఐ, ఇద్దరు కాన్స్టెబుల్లూ, డ్రైవరూ, క్లీనరూ అందరూ తననే చూస్తున్నారు. పై పెదవి మీద చమట తుడిచాడు.

ఓ కవిత చదివాడు. తను రాసినది. మట్టి వాసన గురించి, రైతు చేసే సేద్యంలో కళ గురించి, తొలకరి ఝల్లు గురించి, పసిపిల్లల నవ్వుల గురించి. గంగడోలు నిమురుతున్నప్పుడు ఆవు కళ్ళళ్ళో తన్మయత్వం గురించి.

అయిపోయింది. నిశబ్దం.

ఎస్.ఐ ఓ అడుగు ముందుకేసాడు. చొక్కా జేబులోంచి సరిగ్గా మడిచిన పది రూపాయల నోటు తీసి కుర్రాడి లాల్చీ జేబులో పెట్టాడు.

"వెళ్ళండి", అన్నాడు

-Based on an anecdote narrated by Tanikella Bharani garu

--

I wrote this poem for the Creative Writing class I took with the poet Mark Tredinnick. He said this was too descriptive, straightforward to be called a poem.  I think he's right.

when life does us 'part

the sun is dragging back the shadows
and the house is sinking into darkness

the birds have quietened
the tv is not on yet

she lies on the bed, mouth slightly parted
whirling slowly on the soft grass of shallow sleep

a motorbike whooshes past outside
and she is snapped out of the vestiges of hard-earned darkness

she gets up and wipes the saliva off her mouth
rearranges her sari and comprehends the oncoming night

she switches on the tv and for a few seconds
the deathly metallic neon light illuminates her face

the small eyes with their cataract eyeballs,
the sharp nose that had once left young men enthralled
the glittering nosering and the saggy earlobes

the teeth browned with thousands of paans
and the face once full and radiant
now gaunt, wrinkled, the corollary
of a lifetime of suffering and a lost son

she walks from room to room
slicing through the amorphous barrenness
a moribund apparition in a ghost town

she switches on the lights and joins her palms
in a namaste to the pictures of gods in every room
not asking, not praying, not beseeching anymore

once she is done with the last room
she starts switching off the lights
retracing her parikrama, snubbing any memories
from the books and photos, mementos and clothes
before they get a chance to leap onto her

now back in her room, alone infront of the tv,
she is slowly ensconced into her lonely delirium

she and i were best friends once, my grandmother and i
she was my partner, protector, guardian angel, mother earth

then life beckoned and i
flew away from the nest like the rest

i want to go back, but do i really?
to that house and her flickering life
to the past that i know will someday destroy me
like it did to her and everyone else

trailer talk

Few things, in my experience, are more euphoric than a well cut trailer. An average film is about 2 hours long. A good filmmaker concentrates years of thought and craft into those 2 hours, which is probably why walking out of a good film can be so impactful. It feels like we've lived a long time in those two hours. But imagine the power of those two hours packed further into a 2-3 minute trailer. Do it well and it gives a high like no other¹.

I grew up on Web 2.0 and had the fortune of accessing film, books and music from across the world, mostly via peer-to-peer networks, for free. The flipside of having access to those enormous mountains of information is that there's the constant background feeling of missing out on something more awesome while doing what I want to do now. As the pile of 'acclaimed' films in my hard disk kept mounting, I felt more and more conflicted between wanting to start watching what I already had and keep looking for more awesome stuff. The method I discovered to ease this anxiety was to watch trailers and read reviews of undiscovered films as a substitute for watching the film. And as I got more addicted to trailers, the less entertaining films themselves seemed. Although as a consequence of all that trailer-watching, I got really good at appreciating well-made trailers and conjecturing the quality of the films²

.
The reason for this discussion right now are a couple of recent trailers that I really liked. So I thought I'd jot down a list of some of my favourite trailers, with explanations of why I like them and what I think of the film, in no particular order. I also hope to keep adding to the list occasionally.

• The two popes
• Top Gun: Maverick
• La Grande Bellezza
• Arjun Reddy
• Haider
• Mukkabaaz
• Skyfall
• Falaknuma Das
• Isle of Dogs
• Marriage Story
• Call my by your name
• The Meyerowitz Stories (New & Updated)
• The King (2019 Netflix)
• Once upon a time in Hollywood
• Vice
• Haraamkhor

I picked these from my YouTube Liked Videos list and looks like the number of films is too long, and just listing them out is quite boring. 

Abandonus indefinitus.

¹ Two quotes come to mind, and I will paraphrase here, when I come across a well made trailer. Ofcourse the quotes themselves maybe imaginary but I remember reading/ hearing something like from the attributed sources: 1. "A novel is to be structured like a musical piece." -Milan Kundera; 2. "Don't make a habit of cutting with the beat, that's boring. Keep it out of sync for as long as you can." -Quentin Tarantino
2 On the other end of the spectrum are people like my friend Ram who, when he knows a film of a favourite director is coming up, refuses to see the poster or trailer of the film lest it be adulterated by the expectation

semaphores to live by1

The purpose of education is to help us understand, and subsequently question, our own intuitions and desires, and be able to articulate them to other beings. We read, write, watch, discuss to be able to create/ update models of the world that we carry in our head. From a Biological perspective, I assume we do this to navigate the world better and increase chances of life and comfort. But I also think humans sometimes do things that cannot be explained by simple self-interest and that is fascinating. For instance, how does a soldier negate the urge of every cell in his body and give up his life for a cause he believes in? We regularly fight for something we believe in even if it means making ourselves more vulnerable in the process. This is because of a faith in something more powerful than physical existence- traditionally a god, more recently a more secular religion like maatrubhoomi or justice.

I once read somewhere that "for Marx, everything was money; for Freud, everything was sexuality; for Foucault, everything was power. You can take any powerful motivator and replace God with it to explain human behaviour". In similar lines, these days I'm thinking that the fundamental atom of a human society is justice². As much as I understand the problems caused by such reductivism, I think it actually is a core component of what makes otherwise competitive humans cooperate. Karma is the highest form of justice, able to quantify and balance actions across lifetimes³. Liberalism is about justice; It argues that you have as many rights as anyone else and because we live in a just society, if your autonomy is being snatched away from you, we will come and ensure you will be given it back.

Ofcourse, this is mostly just promise because as (I've been told) Marx points out, there can be no real freedom as long as a person is driven by economic necessity. As Pankaj Mishra, who's Age of Anger I absolutely enjoyed reading, points out, powerlessness, usually economic, is the root of the conflict most nations are facing right now. Modern nation states promised equality and liberty to all its citizens. But in a society where there is such income inequality, any promises of social equality cannot be fulfilled. And pulling a thread from Vivek Chibber, what right now across the world seem like communal differences is essentially economic dissatisfaction forced to transmogrify into other shapes. Actually this is also the central argument of Rana Dasgupta's essay in the Guardian on the future of the Nation State. He argues that the Nation State, which promises equality and justice on the basis of birth in a certain region cannot hold its own when facing the promise by global Capital of economic equality.

The reason for the exploration of these concepts is that Sravani follows a lot of Indian journalists and politicians on Twitter and we discuss major actions by the government frequently. From what she tells me, and from the general perception of Twitter, we seem to have given up all pretensions of finding compromises for differing viewpoints and fight tooth and nail for beliefs we espouse. I can understand this behaviour. As much as I know that it is imperative for me to keep updating my models to stay relevant, probably because of how intellectually and emotionally exacting it is, I find it easier to stick to them and convince myself that the new data points are aberrations until I absolutely have to retire the old models and install the new ones. So this is not unusual behaviour. But it got me to thinking then why do we have this belief that we should always strive to be objective, rational and try to see the world from the other's point of view. I like the philosophy of liberalism because, fundamentally, it says that you are free to do as you please as long as you don't trespass on others' rights. Yes, there are many problems with some of its aspects but it is a good starting place. Many people subscribe to it in principle. The problem comes in application. Because as much as its easy to espouse such ideas, it becomes incredibly hard to practice it because we as many people must learn to co-exist and share limited resources.

In his brilliant Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, Pankaj Mishra writes, and decades later Yogendra Yadav too mentions the mentality, of the noeveau rich, and their desperate need to gain self-esteem, after becoming unexpectedly rich in India's privatization (falsely called liberalization) project, by reaching back to old traditions and religious practices. Evidently the next step in Maslow's Hierarchy. I have also been thinking about what Dr. Velcheru Narayana Rao garu must have meant when he said, "What we call modernity is the separation of a man from the society" and the sense of alienation that it creates and which religion can soothe temporarily.

This has been a muddled, meandering post, more of an unburdening of thoughts and concepts that have been swirling in my mind of late and less of a point to make. Now that I read what I've written, it makes me happy to see the esteemed company I've been keeping and as much as the roaring river of information that I've been scooping from intimidates me, it also rejuvenates me.

¹ Semaphores are variables which Operating Systems use to allocate common resources to multiple competing programs. Our rulebooks, a clear example of which is the Constitution, are designed to perform the same function. On another note, I highly recommend Ian Cheng's Worldling Raga on Ribbonfarm to anyone interested in how new 'worlds' are created and how we access so many of them almost simultaneously.
² "..in order to read Ambedkar as a thinker is to go with him on a journey of force, is to understand what really force is. Not what power is, not what violence is, not what non-violence is, not what inequality is, not what equality is, but rather what force is and this ability to comprehend equality in terms of force is radical equality." - Aishwary Kumar
³ Obviously, from what I see, all beings are not the same. Some are more compassionate than others, some more productive etc. Maybe by imposing justice, we try to shave off their edges. 

planned cities and poetry

We loved Canberra. Well, it was a great holiday- the drive was pleasant, we took a guided tour of the Parliament, stayed and took long walks in the beautiful suburb of Narrabundah, accidentally stumbled into the delightful, archaic National Film & Sound Archive, visited the National Museum and the War Memorial. More than that, I loved Canberra because of it's design, because of the township feel that I so adore, because of the wide roads and low-rise buildings. Until I saw the place, I couldn't imagine that a city could be built like that. Infact my only mental images of townships came from having spent a little time in Srirampur and the ITC Guest House in Sarapaka. I started reading about the design and construction of Canberra, came upon the Garden City Movement, Howard Ebenezer and incidentally stumbled across the same name again in Rana Dasgupta's astonishingly poetic Capital. There seems to be a part of me, and I'm conjecturing many people have similar feelings being slightly wary of my own exceptionalism, that craves for order, discipline, planning, geometric figures, that claims that continuous progress is essential and is possible only after we map the co-ordinates and set the direction. Ofcourse, contrary to that is the other part that abhors finality, which I'm sure you'll find multiple instances of in this blog, and seeks the momentary flips of the soul when it comes in contact with something transcendental and that craves for surprise, and since that cannot be designed, tries to give it a little more chance by keeping discipline at bay. The reason for this slight excursion, and Swageetam, is that these feelings seem to be universal. Dasgupta writes about how Delhi has been repeatedly razed down and years later is again the site for a new set of grandiose ambitions. He writes about how Delhi's story is less a continuous cycle of deaths and rebirths, and more of a low burning flame into which lives are almost fatalistically tempted to enter and be destroyed, creating a fabulous show while the burning happens until only ashes remain, hiding beneath them the fires refusing to die, waiting patiently until more dreamers and poets pass by.

Speaking of poets, I've had the pleasure of reading excellent poetry since the last few days. The catalyst has been Dr. Mrunalini gari interviews with writers and poets called Akshara Yatra, especially the one with K. Siva Reddy garu. I loved the way he read his poems, at the end of the interview, and that led me to reading out loud some his poems from పక్కకి ఒత్తిగిలితే- Of the ones I've read till now, my favourites are- పక్కకి ఒత్తిగిలితే, ఒక కొత్త ఊహ, పొద్దున్నే, సాయంత్రానికి, మూసీనది ఒడ్డున, వీడు, రోడ్డున పడ్డాడతను, వీధులే, అతని కల. ఏం కళాకారుడండి. ఆయనెదురు పడితే కాళ్ళమీదడిపోతా. ఆ ఊహ, ఆ శిల్పం, ఆ తత్వం. Which also lead me to start reading aloud other, for some reason Hindi and Urdu poems, I've always liked- Piyush Mishra's Husna, Aarambh, Duniya, Gulzar saab's Hindi translations of Tagore, Amitabh Bhattacharya's poems in Udaan, Irshad Kamil's poetry in Rockstar and Tamasha, and Javed Akhtar saab's poems in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Life's been a song. I can't recommend Dr. Mrunalini gari interviews enough; There are so many accomplished Telugu writers and scholars who's work I'd been absolutely unaware of. I particularly enjoyed Janaki Bala gari and Prof. Velcheru Narayana Rao gari interviews. 

in the business of making movies

I should've known this before I went. Maybe I did know but didn't want to acknowledge it. Because acknowledging it would've punctured the romance of the thing that's held my fascination for a very long time. Mainstream filmmaking is a business and like any business it is motivated by money. That is its primary consideration, sometimes the only consideration. That doesn't mean the industry is filled with people who're in it only for the money. Compared to other industries, and I'm conjecturing based on my experiences in only a few industries, it probably has a disproportionately large percentage of people wanting to do great work but rules of economics state that where there is an opportunity, albeit very thin, to get rich and famous, a very large number of people with only those motivations will be attracted to it.

Again, it's important for me not to forget the fact that I only spent about a month in one production house in the industry, and hadn't even stepped onto a film set, and that raises a very interesting epistemological question. I know that my assumptions and opinions are based on very limited experience¹ and yet I must make them to function in the world and make decisions. If 'one month and one production house and partial pre-production and maybe ten long conversations on the nature of the business' is too less to pass non-definitive statements on the industry as a whole, how much is enough? I worked with people there who spent 12, 16 and 22 years in the industry respectively and are still waiting for their first break. I heard stories of filmmakers who got an opportunity within 6 months and are now making their third or seventh mediocre movie. I'm not saying this is how it is. I'm just saying this is what I saw and heard and learnt and imagined².

-Filmmaking is hard work. You might say what isn't but this seems harder than average. To make even a fuckall film, a lot of people have to be brought on board and made to do their part. And because the per day cost of production and the chance of losing it all are so high, tempers run high. Mind you I've seen instances of this even in pre-prod which is supposed to be the rosiest phase
-Logistics is 80% of the work³. I don't know how hard it is to act and shoot a scene but the behind-the-scenes work that needs to happen for a team to reach that stage is so much. I spent days just creating Google sheets for locations, actors, properties and then when there's a change in the script, all this has to be verified and edited manually. I was surprised with the amount of manual work of copying and reorganizing data people were doing when a basic web app could've made the organization easier but if the ulterior motive ("Wax on, wax off") is for the assistants to get very comfortable with the script, it works.
-Movies are made for an audience; A paying audience. And the producer never lets anyone forget that. This seems obvious especially if you ask, "Why are so many movies crap?" Over the years, I've been asking a few writer friends if they write for an audience. The answer is an unequivocal no. Maybe there are more mainstream writers (those who live off their publications) who consciously write for an audience but the few people I know write because they enjoy reading and writing, and publishing is almost like sharing with friends. Movies are stories specifically made for an audience. Which is probably why so many filmmakers and producers get it catastrophically wrong yet they continue doing it. Yes, you can't spend crores of rupees (on second thoughts, aren't you already?) making something you want to watch and hope the audience will pay money to watch it but who really knows what the audience wants especially if the audience doesn't know it until she sees it. I'm not saying artists must be elitist snobs who act as tastemakers (though a few do that) but isn't it also arrogance to assume you know what the "audience" wants?
-I write because I like the unspooling of my thoughts. Some write because they are enamoured by their imagination, by their ability to chart character journeys. After the first draft is over, it becomes hard to revisit it not just because of the loss of sheen⁴ but because now something more flashy has caught your attention. To make a film, and maybe to write a novel, demands perseverance and an almost pedantic ability to keep hanging onto and ironing the creass it until it's over. Maybe there is fulfillment in that and there are people who enjoy the process⁵ but it seemed like too much of a rote to me
-At some point, anyone who is serious about his work must sit by himself and face the blank screen. I've been trying to evade this all my life, jumping across boats in the hope that one of them will take me to the place where inspiration will use me as a scribe and I'll find fulfillment but it has been proved to be a vain hope again. Yes, I know that the journey is the reward and art is formed when perspiration meets inspiration and all that. Doesn't make it easier to be reminded once again that you can't run away from yourself⁶.

So yeah, how was my one month working in Tollywood? Now for the facts.

We were setup in First Frame Entertainments office- Krish's company. I saw Krish garu a few times, smiled and greeted and at one point even replied to his question by saying, "లేదు సర్, ఈరోజు శ్రీనీ సర్ రాలేదు". I had brief conversations with Srinivas Avasarala garu, who is quite funny and surprisingly approachable, a few times. I also met the actor Amit Tiwari and other lesser known actors who'd come to the office to meet with other teams. I also shook hands with Sweekar Agasthi but couldn't tell him that I thought C/o Kancharapalem's music was incredible because it seemed inappropriate then. I also lobbied hard (unsucessfully) to cast Abhinav Gomatam in a role and proposed Maanvi Gagroo⁸ when we were discussing prospective heroines and was given horrified looks after quick Google searches. I laughed uncontrollably at some of the production fiascoes when I spent hours listening to stories from the finance manager and assistant directors. Yes, film crew episodes make for phenomenal anecdotes by their nature though the effect is still amplified by the narrative talent and the personas of celebrities we have in our heads. I was aghast on learning of Balakrishna's behaviour during the shoot of Gautamiputra Shatakarni and asked why the industry still cast him if he was that difficult to manage on set. "He has a big market", was the answer. Sagar garu, the director, and I had a few conversations on foreign cinema and he gave me a long list of filmmakers he loves- Rohmer, Fellini, Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Billy Wilder are the ones I can recall now. I listened to a one and half hour narration of the script Mahesh Anna has been trying to get produced and had a firsthand experience of how powerful movie narrations can be⁹.

I also saw firsthand how fast time flies when you're trying to get your break and how hard it becomes to go back to normal jobs after you've spent a few years in the industry. I heard a phenomenal short-film story by a Nanda Kishore Emani which he proposed for (sneak peak) Lust Stories in Telugu but  was rejected because it was deemed too scandalous for the Telugu audience. I also met a multi-hyphenate artist, Gautham Bhavaraju, who spent years in the US working on, wait for it, SAP Fiori, which apparently his brother created, and is now writing for a web series. Mealtimes, where quite tasty curry point made full meals was lunch, were a great time to listen to different conversations and make acquaintances. Seemingly, a surprisingly large amount of crew is selected based on reputations, and I was part of a couple of funny scenarios where we threw around names of films which had good 'art direction' and then tried to find the contact number of the art director/ production designer and could not.

It's been a good experience and I had a lot of fun listening to people talk. The work was monotonous especially since they thought I was good with 'Telugu DTP' but I'm also grateful for the fact that I had access to the work that I did, thanks to Bujjimama, because otherwise it'dve taken five years of scrapping around to be sitting where I was. Did I leave too early? Yes, I would've liked to stay till the end of the project but it was getting postponed indefinitely (which seems like the norm in the industry) and I wanted to be back with Sravani. The one month stint has calmed the demons in my head, the romance around the industry is gone and I've realised that even if I want to be making films, I would like to do it on my own terms. That would mean writing stories I wish made and finding a producer who is willing to take the risk. The only positive of working in/ around the industry is access to the network of cast and crew. Given a choice though, I wouldn't spend too much time there because of the nature of the work environment that is erratic, hierarchical and atrociously low-paying probably because the workforce supply to so high. More than that, spending too much time there would mean losing the ability to take outside influences to the stories we tell and the maps of reality we share. Unless you are staggeringly original, it is very easy to be bastardized by the rotating cast of a limited number of worldviews. I think this is true of any industry, just more visible here because they are in the business of creating art and entertainment. 

I've realised that not everyone there is a mad genius teeming with original ideas and like any other work, the percentage of pioneers and originals is little. I think I can be in the business in some capacity thanks to my English skills and non-Telugu Cinema references. I don't think I want to be in the business though. I want to write what interests me and when I am in the mood to write. Is it my loss? Probably is but from what little I've seen, the Telugu film industry is not where I want to work and so the search resumes.

¹ What's funny is that my knowledge of my limited knowledge is also an assumption based on projecting the unknown unknowns based on the known unknowns
² Why then should you listen to me if my stories are neither authoritative nor qualified? I've been posing this question to myself, and a few others who've been asking me to write more often, over the years. I don't have an answer yet and maybe I should not share my thoughts until I find the answer but what if I never find it, or an answer to those questions doesn't exist, or if I'll never escape those questions. Or maybe if I stopped writing now and thought about it, I'll get the answer. But how will I prove, to myself, its veracity. Which brings us back to the main discussion
³ "80% of success is showing-up"
⁴ "No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound" -William Goldman
⁵ "[Hitchcock] was often bored or distracted during the actual shooting of a film, because in his mind everything had already been done beforehand" - Jai Arjun Singh
⁶ "Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you"^7
7 Voila! Yet another faux coming-of-age blogpost with a quasi-insightful Rumi quote
⁸ Biswa's writing of the character and Gagroo's portrayal of Shreya have left such an indelible mark on me
⁹ Fun fact: Two people have remarked to me that, "బోయపాటి శ్రీనుగారి నరేషన్ మామూల్గా ఉండదు. నాలుగ్గంటలు చెప్తాడు. అది అయ్యే టయానికి  నీక్కూడా అనిపిస్తది, నీ అమ్మ ఫది కోట్లు అప్పు తెచ్చన్నా ఈనతో సినిమా తీయాలని" 

An agreement between the now-self and the future-self

I just realized I didn't publish the last column I wrote for AZIndiaTimes.

--

Submission for the August 2018 edition.

An agreement between the now-self and the future-self

Yes, I’m convinced that Discipline equals Freedom. Yes, I have a terrible track record doing anything with discipline. Two contradictory aspects of my being that are driving me mad. I know Yoga is very good for me, I know I ought to write with more regularity, I know when I take up something (a change in habit, a field of study to pursue, a behavioural change etc.) I ought to see it to the end. But I never do. I’ve tried so many ways- Eating that Frog, Pomodoro, Not Breaking the Chain, Chit Shakti Meditation. Paid a lot of money upfront to see if the fear of losing that money will prod me to keep at the class. Even tried tying Abhaya Sutra for a full Mandala to see if that’s going to have an effect. No effect whatsoever. Zilch.

Forget the “good” things, I even tried sticking to the guilty pleasures themselves, the ones that usually tempt me from breaking the discipline, for a set duration of time. Damn, even that didn’t work. I can’t even play videogames or Netflix or eat junk food or read blogs with any discipline. This begs two questions: 1. Why do I think discipline is good for me? 2. If it is good for me, what am I not able to stick to it?

What is discipline? It is a part of me telling the entire being to do something over and over again to gain mastery over that aspect of my being. This could be physical, mental, emotional or energy wise. For example, I have experientially learned that exercise is good for me and that means to keep repeating certain postures. Similarly, I can see that to learn something and not just cursorily read it to name-drop, I should pursue it with discipline and dedication. I don’t know psychology but I know I contain multitudes with each fragment of the self voicing its own opinion based on what it wants. Yet, I, the being deeply rooted in this interlocking grid but also larger than the sum of all the part, is autonomous. From society, various gurus and my own experience, I have created a rough hierarchy of these voices filled with wishes and desires. To be disciplined, then, is to let the best part of you tell you what is to be done and then be able to control the other factions to ensure the entire being progresses.

Obviously, questions of what is progress and the validity of the “best” thing and how can a decision that we’ve taken in the past be applicable when we’ve changed in the interim etc crop up incessantly, especially when all parts of my being are screaming against not doing what is to be done because it’s so damn hard. Despite being tempted to give in, I must still stick to why I must. For me to be able to do that, I must trust the voice that told me, “This is the right thing and you must do it”. With faith, we are moving away from cold rationality to the realm of feeling and intuition. The question then crops up, how can I trust something that I can’t prove with empirical means? I can’t put up a logical argument against that.

Dharma is one way of externalizing discipline. People with immense belief in Sanatana Dharma, a set of guidelines that teach us how to live and which have been given to us by the sages based on studying the Vedas, bestow sanctity on those laws because they have immense respect and belief in those who’ve told them thus. And because they consider those principles sacred, they will never violate them. It’s a strange loop- We confer sanctity onto a set of ideas and rituals because we believe in their power and never want to violate them. Subsequently we do not violate them when even when every atom in our body urges us to because they are sacred.

The second question branches from the nature of the first. I know I ought to be doing the right thing and still I procrastinate. In other words, I procrastinate precisely when I ought to be doing something better. Procrastination is bad for the future anyway but it’s also bad for the present because I can’t enjoy the free time that is now tainted with guilt. I used to defend by habit of procrastination by convincing myself that my mind, not wanting to be constrained by an average idea of the past, is waiting to latch onto a brilliant idea. And once it surfaces, it will then spur me to act on this wild epiphany and succeed marvelously. I’ve been living in this state of denial, this suspension of disbelief for atleast two decades now and I’m still awaiting that one flash of insight to rule them all.

“I have a brilliant idea; To wait for a brilliant idea. And then I will be rich. That’s all it takes.” -Flavors

If past experience is anything to go by, there is not going to be a sudden bout of inspiration that’s going to set everything right. True, black swan events happen but it is unintelligent to drift along in the half hearted belief that the universe means the best for me and there is a grander pattern to my haphazard movements.

Yet, what fun is there in doing what you are supposed to do when you are supposed to do it? Where is the accidental discovery, the unexpected connection, the stumbling across a gem on the road less taken? I must have learned some wonderful things, both about myself and the world, simply by refusing to do what I was supposed to. Again, I can’t shake off the feeling that living like this is living a life of denial. There must be a reason why so many “accomplished” people live lives of utmost discipline and devotion. Life is probably an Open World game but after a point in time it’s more of the same thing with trivial changes. Eventually though, I’m going to have to complete the mission to progress to the next level and that will demand working on the objective at hand.

There’s only one way to know if discipline works. To try and live it. For that, I must find an activity that I have been meaning to do for long and then do it for a stipulated period of time no matter what. Neither the To-Do nor the Timeline will be up for negotiation once the contract has been signed between the now-self and the future-self. Let me take up such an activity and then report my studies in a future edition.

of morality and mortality

Some people advice me to have kids. Here I am, confused about purpose, worried about climate change, unable to make up my mind if Hobbes or Monboit is right, flitting regularly between self-love and self-loathing, angry, weak, bitter, absent-minded, easily susceptible to vices, appalled at my easy susceptibility to vices, jotting beautiful sentences in the hope that they'd salvage me some day, preaching a high moral standard and personally failing to uphold it every single time, googling synonyms for unable, having a hard time socializing, waking up into the voracious maw of  inconsequentiality, using all the little knowledge I have to negate action¹, judging people, judging myself for judging people, with no inclination to find a job, fantasizing about making a film like Apocalypse Now set in the Naxalite zones to share my notions of morality, justice, development, motivation and greed, ecology, and that wet question of film festival favourites, "What does it mean to be human?", and people, following, I believe, their own misunderstood convictions, want me, someone who can't even recite one Urdu couplet, to bring about a being, that I'm going to be responsible for, into this bizarre, beautiful, cruel, indifferent world that seems to be racing towards annihilation.

The higher I tilt my head to catch a glimpse of the summit of knowledge, the bright sunlight reflecting off its magnificent surface forcing me to squint and making it impossible to see the actual surface, the higher the cliff seems to get, disappearing into the clouds, inducing a strange combination of reverence and sadness, leading to vertigo and disillusionment. Are the cliff, the sunlight, me, the seer, all maya, all illusions created by my (illusory?) mind?²

One part of me seems to strive for greatness, create art that is honest and beautiful, another questions the point of the craving, stopping me from putting in the effort, because really how does it matter?, while another, and I'm guessing this is the part that's half-digested midway-abandoned magazine articles on Vedanta and Zen, says that the effort is the reward. It is so hard to write, incredibly harder to well. To regurgitate demands focus, discipline and a willingness to defend positions. To write well is to brush aside the frivolous, temporary facts and feelings, to refuse to be lulled by their woolly warmth, to walk past the shallow certainties of the mob and be prepared to wade into deep waters, and try to find solid ground on which you can slowly start building the delicate house of your morality instead of meandering through, as per convenience, the dilapidated, Kafkaesque edifice of  'popular morality'.

I really want to make the Apocalypse like film I mentioned earlier. I think our popular culture is too shy to talk about important things. For that, I must read, travel, listen and watch a lot of art and real life. But it is something I'm serious about. Our popular culture seems to think that talking about mob lynchings, rural population's sufferings, the scary news about climate change and it's predicted effects etc. would take it away from the realm of pop as well, since anyhow the idea of culture has already been ravaged. Telugu movies exist in a strange spacetime, and I'm sure some enterprising kid is going to grow up and write a thesis on the sociological reasons for its gaping distance from normal life, that any self-respecting, serious thinker is going to be appalled and, diving into the muck, be repulsed by³.

Maybe, like Bujjimama says, I shouldn't think about this too much, especially when I can't seem to help it by brooding about it⁴. You just do your own exploring, read poetry that captivates you, observe people whose way you appreciate and make the film you want to/ can make.

Self-help gurus exclaim that it's the struggle that turns the prickly caterpillar into beautiful butterfly, that the struggle is necessary, desirable even. I don't know the biological desires behind the transformation. But if I was a caterpillar, I wouldn't find myself prickly and I might want to take the option of staying safe and warm in the cocoon than develop delicate, attention-grabbing wings that would attract young boys into catching and hurting me. How does the self-identity of a caterpillar change after it transforms? Would it keep struggling for the rest of it's life, convinced that the struggle is good and if it struggles, it could become something more beautiful than a butterfly?

¹ I'm done with thinking questions like, "Is inaction an action too?"
² No wonder sadhus seem to want to get high; this is all so gorgeously trippy
³ Ofcourse, my brain being my brain is already questioning on the cyclical relationship between cause and effect, and if the public, whoever that is, deserves anything better (has someone defined a Maslow like hierarchy for ranking cultural produce) because they seem to have made peace with this atrocious junk
⁴ But how to we decide how much is too much. How do you know while living it, if the break you are taking is going to fire you up and the empty meandering is going to light your imagination, and that's going to be a good thing, or if it's going to turn you into a lazy, complaining, 'raped by psychic Bedouins' self-conscious person who can never integrate with society again