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Inflation and the Myth of Satisfaction
The really premium stores are the ones where you can’t even make out what they are actually selling. It is difficult to tell what’s on offer, the crockery, the antique toy cars or the staff’s mime act....
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Hot, Flat and Shrouded
There are 8.5 billion of us crawling the planet and sucking it dry. Each one of us brought up to think he/she/it is unique and has a destiny drafted and approved by the executive editor upstairs. It’s...
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Late Shift Blues
‘You again?’ he said. You could have said the exact same thing but you stick to the more traditional, ‘Hi.’ This must be the seventh time you have ran into the man on the last train home. You vaguely...
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Relevant Experience Junkie
In the end we are all just chasing experiences. Experiences that crystallize into memories and add to the narrative that somehow convinces you everyday that life is worth getting out of bed for....
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What Does Success Look Like?
What does success look like? Is it the first promotion after you have finally paid off your student loan? Is it a neatly framed ending to a feel-good movie? Is it taking your parents out on the first...
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Hobbies and Jobbies
Employment is an increasingly thin disguise for lives being spent on auto-pilot. Hours, years, decades spent at desks convincing yourself that this is what you were born to do. Your entire childhood,...
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Marathons and the art of Outrunning Hubris
There is nothing like a saleable product. Any product, service or idea that has margins can and will be exploited to its legal limits and beyond. And if it gathers enough steam it will itself become a...
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Unconditional Love
Unconditional is the only kind of love there is, everything else is just a transaction. A give and take that can be explained by some mixture of evolution and economics. Most of what we call love is...
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Fame and Posterity
Fame works in the same way primates choose their alpha males. We are just humoring ourselves by believing that intellect matters. It matters only to the point where it allows people to not feel guilty...
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Power and Money
Power and money have an almost inherent tendency of accumulating. Sinking. Like gravity. One can try to impede this coalescence with great effort. But the resistance is short-lived, at best. So heavy...
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Rock is Dead
I used to think a band performing live was the coolest thing in the world. Four guys creating music with their bare hands. In cosmic unison. The crowd grooving to it in whichever way they feel right....
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Burning Babies
Dark comedy; like dark chocolate, is an acquired taste. Once you learn to appreciate it, regular chocolate tastes like a conspiracy. But if all of art is subjective, what is considered dark; or not,...
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Comics are not People
Comics are not people. They are outsiders. We meet people in a pre-ordained way for half an hour a day, sometimes less. And those minutes on stage are really the only time we are truly alive. The rest...
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Is Everything Kayfabe?
If I were to ever have something as foolish as a favorite word, it would be Kayfabe, a concept I didn’t know existed till less than a year back. A word invented by professional wrestling (which is...
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Nightlife and Daydreams
How many more traffic jams before we realize that fast city life is the worst way to die slowly? Days, weeks, months and ultimately decades spent in a state of mild to moderate agitation. On constant...
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To Gym or not to Gym?
I started gymming after a friend pointed out that I was in no shape to defend my girlfriend from hooligans. It was the first year of college. I had neither abs or a girlfriend. And I had no plans. But...
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10 Years of Blogging
I started this blog in January of 2011 during my first job. As a management graduate in New India I was technically living the middle-class dream. In a city 500 KMs from home and an office 30 minutes...
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The Age of Irreverence
When I tweeted, “Looking at all the World War memes I am pretty sure the last trace of humanity will be selfies with Mushroom clouds,” someone replied with a meme precisely matching it within 5...
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The Cold Comfort of Conspiracy Theories
I used to follow all conspiracy theories when I was in school and early on in college. Everything form alien landings to the pyramids to alien landings on the pyramids. I must have been the biggest...
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Friendless in Tokyo
As related by a friend. The name was apt, almost sexy. And I was desperate. A management position in a multinational corporation in one of the biggest cities in the world. And yet hopelessly...
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