Sunday Posts

The world took time to build. It's not obvious to everyone, particularly those who want to destroy it.  I am always caught between the enthusiasm for revolution and allegiance to tradition. I have been lucky to have been born in a time and place where revolutions came mostly peacefully. The greatest of those I personally experienced was the Internet Revolution, which changed lives and ended things but was bloodless. Therefore, I could worship revolution with relative calm.  It took me time to discover the revolutionaries. I met them and their victims mostly in books. There was some significant absences in my life too, people who disappeared in the midst of a revolution just slightly before my time. But these presences and absences were still romantic, an invitation to escape boredom, as I lived in a largely stable world. But eventually, I met real revolutionaries. These first-hand meetings were different. These people were not trying to fight against phantom power, Tsars and w...

Double life is a bad thing - synonymous of being duplicitous! If one has another self, one can't be trusted - as we won't know what their real intentions are.  I find this logic problematic. Having a double life, for me, could be living two lives, both equally real. This is the opposite of being duplicitous, as that assumes only one 'real' self is possible.  But, I argue, that in the modern life, either no real self is possible, or an infinite number of equally real selves are possible. As we live inside stories scripted by others, it will all come down to how we define 'real'. If this means authentic, as one is, this may not be possible: Put my phone in my hand, and I am already different from who I am! If 'real' means enduring, one could say that they have many enduring selves, which manifest when circumstances for them emerge. Nothing dies in the digital realm, if we come to think of it, and those selves may endure even after our physical selves have ...

It was fascinating to watch the very public breakdown of US-Ukraine relationship yesterday. It was realpolitik in real time. There are many explanations on offer, but I shall reject both the extremes. Trump was not standing up for the American people, and neither is he a 'Russian asset'. In this season of conspiracy theories, I have one to offer: That he pushed for a minerals deal, putting American business interests ahead of anything, and his administration realised that either such a deal is not on offer (without security guarantees) or not practical, and perhaps both. In that sense, US-Ukraine relationship did not break down in that extraordinary press meet at the White House, it had broken down much earlier when this quid pro quo was established. There is obvious moral outrage in Europe about Putin winning. But there is a practical side of it too: For too long, Europeans, and particularly Western Europeans, have enjoyed a lifestyle whose burdens were borne by other people. ...

Are we witnessing the end of an imperial era? Usually, these periods are fraught with violence and uncertainty. Empires are power structures, which crumbles from inside, and everything that stood on its edifice, values, ideas and systems, go down with them. Empires are stable - that's their raison d'etre! Even those who are disadvantaged by the empire support its existence because people would rather tolerate tyranny than anarchy. The end of any empire is therefore accompanied by instability. I know it is odd for me to think this is the end of an empire. The second Trump Presidency is as imperial as it gets. The United States, the world's overlord, is throwing its power around, threatening other countries with tariff and even invasion. It has approached major world issues unilaterally, pulling out of multilateral institutions or conventions, sitting down with Russia without other parties around and proposed to turn Gaza, in defiance of the all norms and wishes of everyone...

Grow up. Don't fall for an American trope.  For my generation - I would be Gen X by label - United States of America, its style, its messages and what it passed on as its values, provided the model. Older now, I see the deception. It is not subjective view of a post-colonial - the Americans themselves have elected Donald Trump and let us know that they don't believe in what they preached.  I am not just a Gen Xer, but one that grew up in a post-colonial nation. So, United States was not our first disappointment. We already knew the trajectory with Soviet Union. Claims of universal values that come to nothing. I know this bitter disappointment and learnt its lesson - universal values don't work! Don't import the ideas about how life should be from a dominant culture, look deeper and look wider, look inside and challenge everything! Therefore, do not fall for the infantalised version of yourself. Be attentive - there is no glory in being scatter-brained and attention is, ...