Whatever: Musings of a Bored Soul

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What we learn from the Krogans? - Not the ones from Mass Effect

All praise Ninny of the Nonny! I have watched a considerable number of superhero movies, and received much criticism from the 14th Lords of Grammar who constantly tell me its "lay-miz-eh-RAH-bluh"! Well, unlike them I've actually read the book. So they can take their large coffee mugs and do something with it. Ah! Yes... the superhero movies - chicken soup for the lonely souls (make it daal ka paani for us bimar vegetarians). Behind the capes, armours and impossible powers (married to ridiculous physics), they operate on the shared ground of human suffering. All of them attempt to explore what it actually means to give oneself up for others. Their premise is rooted in philosophical ideas of suffering, pain, empathy, love and sacrifice. It seems to me that the capacity for true sacrifice is rooted in the capacity to endure pain. A soul that endures a certain amount of suffering expands beyond its ego. It creates space to absorb an immense amount of agony, instilling the...

No attraction without intellectual intimidation

So what is it that makes someone attractive? I mean, it is only a fleeting biological urge that turns a head – a spark that flashes and fades in a moment. But then there is another kind of attraction — the kind where a single set of eyes become the only reality in an ocean of people. They have a pull so magnetic that the sense of self willingly surrenders, eager to submerge itself entirely. This is not mere infatuation; this is nothing like the experience of romantic love. Unlike the usual relationship urges – which are controlling, obsessive and largely selfish – this is complete and utter devotion. What makes someone ‘ that ’ attractive? How does a person become so vital to your being that they become impervious to the doctrine of severability —where to remove them from your memory would be to strike down the very foundation of who you have become? I mean to say that even when they are not with you, they move with you constantly like a physical absence in your being. I suppo...

Standardized Lobotomy: How Education Perfected the Begging Bowl

In the old days, tyranny was so... obvious. It wore spiked helmets, had dragons, or was just named Joffrey (probably have watched too much Game of Thrones). The modern architects of soul-crushing compliance know that if you want people to stay in their place, you don’t chain their ankles or put their heads on spikes. You simply ensure that most brains have a smooth, frictionless surface where no "dangerous" thought can catch traction. Contemporary education offers a grand lobotomy. Now, the diplomas are printed on expensive parchment and the thinking skills (critical to duur ki baat h) are buried in an unmarked grave beneath the accreditation boards. The education system is no longer a forge for the mind; it is a factory for The Katora. We spend considerable years and hard earned money (money gained from corruption automatically upgrades the quality of your katora) to decide what material our personal begging bowl will be crafted from. In the name of degree or diploma, we hav...

अब क्या ही कर सकते हैं

It is a quiet suffocation to sit in warmth while the rest of the world shivers. There are people sitting at polished tables, who might not be cruel, but who are devastatingly cushioned. They are wrapped in a protective insulation woven from safety, inheritance, and the lucky accident of their birth. They wear their privilege not like a weapon, but like a pair of noise-canceling headphones; the screams of the world are reduced to a hum that is easily ignored. When you speak of injustice—of the laws that break bodies, of the poverty that erodes souls, of the systems designed to crush—they listen with a polite detachment. They nod. They might even offer a sigh of performative sympathy. But their pulses don't jump. Their appetite does not wane. To them, the tragedy is theoretical, a philosophical puzzle to be debated over a cup of tea, rather than a reality that demands reckoning. One might say that they have taken Rawls’ noble "Veil of Ignorance" and repurposed it into a set...

The Currency of Dust

A silence sits at the heart of logic; a quiet gap that David Hume famously identified and which philosophy has never quite managed to close. It is the chasm between the world as it is—the cold, hard facts—and the world as it ought to be—the realm of morals, duties, and worth. Hume argued that no matter how long you stare at a description of the physical world, you cannot squeeze a single drop of moral obligation from it. You can describe a man holding a knife, but the atoms of the steel and the physics of the hand will never whisper the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” The “ought” is a ghost which does not appear in the machinery of the “is.” Mark 8:36 poses a question hauntingly similar to Hume’s problem: “For what shall it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his own soul?” If we view this ancient question through Hume’s modern lens, we see a collision between two different kinds of reality. On one side lies the “Is” of the materialist. This is the gaining of t...

Meaning or Nothing

The self finds itself languishing in a room in one of those human buildings. A room full of empty noises: the clink of a glass, a burst of manufactured laughter, the drone of a story about a terrible commute, and such and such. Just humdrum conversations like paper boats, floating on the surface, terrified of the depths. Someone approaches. Their name is… something I was told a while back. They smile, a perfect practiced curve drawn on their face. "How's it going?" they ask; a question that requires no real answer. And then it starts: the mental fracas. The self splits into two. One half, the diplomat, smiles back. It finds the expected response and the mouth utters it. It performs the dance, the careful two-step of pleasantries that mean nothing and cost everything. But the other half, the true half, starts screaming. It rattles the bars of my ribs, struggling to escape; be anywhere but there. This isn't connection; it is a transaction. The treasure of my attention, ...