He said "I like my toys. I like my room. I like my school. I like my friends. I like the things outside my house." Both me and wife smiled broadly. What would adults give to always be in this state of life as often as they could. We are so caught up with our lives that we often don't stop to appreciate everything that contributes to make our life likable.
One of our primary responsibilities as parents is to teach our kids the lessons that will help them live their best lives. Sometimes though they have their own valuable lessons to teach us. Lessons we forgot as we grew into adulthood. The lesson that day was perhaps the most important one. Acknowledging everything that brings a smile to our faces.
]]>Boys only or girls only convent schools were some of the most common and popular choices for most parents residing in urban areas of a large city. I grew up in Pune then also considered one of the finest cities in India from an educational perspective. I also went to one of these boys only convent schools. I think about my own son now and I certainly would not send him to a boys only school by choice.
Still, having secured admission to that particular school was considered a matter of prestige. Of course being in a boys only school did not mean we never thought about the opposite sex. As a matter of fact I think we thought even more about them than the coed school boys probably did. They were like forbidden fruit. It did not help that there was a girls only convent right across the street from our own school.
However this talk about school is only to serve as a context to some of what I experienced over the years from my parents. Now this generation was not overly orthodox when it came to their kid’s attitudes towards love but you could easily find parents on both ends of the spectrum. In urban areas at least I can say that arranged matches though continuing to happen are becoming more optional than they have been in the last generation.
My own phase navigating through this was mostly comical. There was time around the later years of school when my Mom took me aside and gave me a mini lecture because someone told her that I had been seen somewhere with a girl. Proceeded by something about how she could not believe this, as she hadn't raised me this way. This was both hilarious and frustrating in equal measure. Hilarious because it was so untrue and I felt utterly ridiculous trying to deny this.
The frustration was because of two reasons. Firstly I was trying to defend myself against something that could not have occurred in my wildest dreams. I felt a genuine anguish in trying to convince my mother that this was not true. The real frustration was that I was telling the truth. I so wished at the time that I was capable of something like that. Then I would have taken immense pleasure in telling the exact same lie.
Many years passed since that day and somehow I found myself of marriageable age as collectively defined by my parent's generation. The inevitable onslaught of recommendations from relatives to meet girls began in earnest. What started out as amusing escapades quickly turned into frustration for mostly my Mom. She eventually told me one day. This is ridiculous. Can't you make up your mind. It's silly that you can't find someone by yourself. I controlled both temper and laughter at the same time. Two emotions that were competing with each other as equals. I thought back to that incident from high school.
It would be easy to blame my mom's attitude then for the situation that I was facing years later. But there is little point to those things. My Mom was not an authoritarian by any means. If I had the will for it I could have defied her in these matters. In the end it mattered little. Through a match that was kind of arranged, I found and met someone I wholeheartedly fell in love with before I got married to her. That however is a story for another time.
]]>He stepped outside to see the overhead Skydome appear clear and bright. A few minutes of brisk walking brought him to the station just in time to hear the pleasant female voice announce that the next Skyship to Chennaiki was about to depart. Several hundred people were milling about in the cavernous main hall of the station. He went to the familiar North – East corner where his food shop was located.
🦜 Several thousand years after the cavemen had arrived the one constant that defined humanity was its insatiable appetite. He looked into the security panel that scanned his iris to disable the physical barrier that secured his tiny shop. He thought to himself that when he could afford it he would upgrade his security to the DNA enhanced one. He activated the automated cleaner and sat down to do business. Ruski his parrot flapped her wings and flew out of his shop as she was want to on a slow day.
The day dragged on until it was time for lunch. Even though he sold food he always ate home cooked food as a custom. It was also time for Ruski to feed on her corn. It had been an unusually long while since she had flown away. He flicked on his electronic display to ascertain where Ruski was with the help of her radio tracker. It indicated that she was just outside the entrance to the station. He would have to go fetch her. He set the shop to Away mode. It faded from view with the message "WILL BE RIGHT BACK" projected into the air in front of it.
He made his way through densely populated station towards its entrance. He could see Ruski perched on a branch of the ancient oak that he always imagined to be a solemn & somber guardian of the station. He called out her name hoping to avoid stepping through the giant security frame which he had never grown comfortable with. However she seemed oblivious to any sound whatsoever and remained focused on pecking at something too small for him to perceive from where he stood. He took out his World Identity card which he would have to swipe at the entrance on reentering the station. He walked out of the station, hunger signals plaguing his brain at every step.
He heard a sparking sound followed by a distant boom. He looked up towards Ruski again and the Skydome began fading to black extinguishing all light with it. The world around him was plunged into darkness. All worldly sounds stopped. He could only hear himself breathe. He closed his eyes unable to process this abrupt change. Was it real? It would surely go away when he opened his eyes. He heard someone calling out his name. He opened his eyes to brilliant sunlight filtering through the oak tree. It took a few moments to adjust to the light and to subsequently realize that it was Ruski who had been calling out his name.
For the better part of a decade he had been trying to make her talk and yet only at this inexplicable moment of his life she chose to speak. He called out her name. She responded by saying "How are you doing, ‘Omar’?" and proceeding to settle on his shoulder. He looked around him. He saw two horses tied to a strange contraption with wheels arriving towards him. He had seen one of these animals as a child in the animatronic center several years ago. They seemed like noble and majestic creatures then. Now they just seemed aggressive and unruly and he moved away from their path. He turned around to see the entrance to the station. At first glance it appeared as it usually did with the exception of the giant security frame that usually adorned its entrance.
He stepped into the station unhindered by human being or machine. People in strange attire strolled about leisurely. It was strange to see so few people at this hour at Grand Central and moving at such a slow pace too. Didn’t they realize how much they would have to struggle to avoid standing in the Skyships. He headed towards the North East corner of the main hall hoping that getting back to his shop would put every thing back in perspective. When he reached there however, he saw that where his shop should have been there was nothing but a stranger sitting with a sizable quantity of footwear spread on a piece of cloth. He appeared to be beckoning prospective customers as they passed by bellowing loudly the price of a pair. To Omar it seemed he was insulting them and yet almost none took any heed of him. He went up to him and asked "Where did my food shop go?" .The man looked at him with a quizzical expression before simply saying "Where in the world do they dress like you do? I would love to sell that stuff here".
Omar looked at himself. He was wearing a regular all weather one piece suit. It was the most popular attire among the commoners. Omar shrugged and walked away comforted by the fact that the people here spoke the same language. He heard a female voice announce "The train to Chenna will arrive on platform No 8 in 15 minutes”. Fifteen Minutes he thought. Skyships arriving at the station were only announced a few seconds before their arrival. The people here seemed to have a lot of time on their hands. He tried to spot this machine that was called a train by walking further into the station. He noticed that there were several sets of strange metallic lines that ran along the ground. They stretched on endlessly as far as the eye could see. He made up his mind to follow these lines hoping that they would lead to some familiar place. He set off at a steady pace trying to remain oblivious to all the out of the ordinary objects that were spread throughout this world.
He didn’t realize that Ruski had flown off his shoulder. His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a loud continuous whistling sound. It seemed to get closer to him with every step he took. Unmindful of it however he pressed on. A few moments later he could no longer ignore it and started to turn around. Before he could he found himself bodily pushed sideways with considerable force. He lost his footing and fell face first onto the adjacent set of metallic lines just as a gigantic metal machine rolled by with considerable speed on the same set of lines he had been walking along. The wind generated by the machine as it passed by caused his neatly coiffed hair to lose structure instantly. He lay on the ground paralyzed as he just watched the worm like machine for the few seconds it took to completely pass him by.
It took him a few moments to regain his bearings and sit up. It was only then that he noticed a girl his age standing next to him. Unlike the other people at the station she looked at him with a sense of familiarity. Ruski hovered into view and perched on her shoulder saying "Careless Omar! Careless Omar!" Ruski failing to learn talking until now was probably a good thing he thought. She offered him a hand but he stood himself up with some effort. She moved sideways off the lines and onto some regular ground. He found himself following her on his still unsteady legs. He decided that he had to talk to her. The metallic lines were getting him nowhere & she seemed familiar though he couldn’t quite place her. Before he could ask her anything she said "So were you going to take the Skybus to Chennaiki before you came here?" He was taken aback. A normal question in an unfamiliar place. The answer was simple yet he replied after considerable pause. "No I own the fast food stall at the corner of Grand Central". "Oh that shop which always seems to be on Away mode".
He felt indignation welling up inside. But he stymied his words. She was the only one who would probably be able to explain his current predicament. How did you end up here she asked. To this he had no answer. He explained vaguely the events of the morning. She nodded her head when he spoke and at the conclusion of his tale let out a sigh. This reaction disappointed him immensely. He finally burst out. "Tell me, tell me everything you know and tell me how I can get back. Lunch hour is the best time for business”. She looked at him with a bleak expression. "Why are you so eager to get back? Aren’t you curious about this place?"
He said "Sure I am. My first few minutes here and I almost get run over by a metallic worm. I’d love to come back some other time. But right now my livelihood is at stake". "OK, Follow me" she said. "Wait, what’s your name?" he asked. "It’s Romana, and I know a little something about you too. Your parrot told me." He followed her as she led him across a nearby field until she stopped in front of a little door. Romana had abundant hair that bounced of her shoulders as she ran. When she stopped he noticed that a part of her hair was moving by itself. He stood staring at the back of her head with a vacant expression until he saw a little chameleon pop it’s tiny head out.
He was about to warn Romana when her hand reached out behind her head and the chameleon jumped onto it. "Don’t be alarmed. That’s my pet Hector". He heard a tiny squeaking voice say "where’d you find this one?" It wasn’t Ruski, it wasn’t the girl. "Your chameleon can talk?" "Sure here every animal can talk" she said. "Oh, so Ruski is still a failure". "Hey I heard that!!" Ruski squawked. The door before them seemed to lead into a room that was below the ground. She opened the door. "It’s dark in here. I don’t wanna take another tumble here again" he said. "The darkness is important. Hold my hand if you are afraid" she said as she closed the door behind them. She led him down deeper until the darkness was absolute.
"Now close your eyes, tell your parrot where you want to go and count to three”. He heard her also say "Grand Central Aerostation". He opened his eyes to familiar sight of the oak tree and the sound of Ruski’s squawking. He was still holding Romana’s hand. He let go and raced forward into the station. It was still lunch time. The station seemed more chaotic than usual. He heard someone say "They are saying electrical problems caused the Skydome to go down for an entire minute". Romana had caught up with him. He turned to her and asked "Now tell me where we just came from. Did we go into the past or something?" Romana smiled and said "I don’t know for sure if it’s the past or another world that runs parallel to ours. The only thing I do know is that it only reveals itself when our world is in darkness and only an animal you are connected to can lead you there".
To be continued...
]]>When my mom asked me what happened, I was either dumbstruck or extremely creative with my excuses. A beautiful combo of a water bottle and lunch box was lost on the first day of it's use. When asked about it I said that the bottle flew away.
Since we started living in Prague we have lost our fair share of things as well. A jacket that our son took off in a crowded garden was the first thing we lost. In vain I walked many steps back. Though it seems unlikely anyone took it with them I could not trace it's exact location again. We lost another couple of bottles on our travels both inside and outside the city. It was my fault once and once it was the wife. The Patil family is perhaps cursed when it comes to bottle retention. I left an umbrella behind in a bus as well.
These losses came in a rather short period of time. We had to acknowledge that we had a problem. So we had become extra vigilant with bottles and umbrellas since then.
It was a chilly Saturday. We had been invited by one of my son's friends parents to their newly occupied house a little outside the city. It involved a short train ride so we decide to pick up some reading material. Me, my kindle while my wife was reading the book Same as Ever.
We had a few minutes until the train departed so we settled down on a bench to wait. Time caught up with us and we suddenly realized we only had a couple of mins to board the train nearby. So we picked up our stuff and got in. The train began to move and my wife realized she didn't have the book with her. We checked the coach in which we were seated, and my backpack for the book. She soon realized that she hadn't brought the book with her.
For a few minutes we speculated about where it might have been left behind before settling down. I had already begun to search on the internet to find a replacement because we had got this one from our recent trip to India.
But we soon put the ordeal out of our mind and spent the next few hours having a grand time with the kids. In the evening we boarded the train back. As we got nearer to Prague I started thinking about the book again. As the train pulled into the station I exited quickly. I was thinking of all the places I would look for the book. It did not feel entirely rational but I thought let's do it anyway.
It was quite dark by this time and the lights in the station were muted. I honed in on the bench we were sitting at before we left. From the distance I saw what felt like a white book lying next to the support handle of the bench. My initial thought was, my eyes were playing tricks on me. I was being irrational in my hope that I would find the book in the same crowded place, seven hours after it was left behind.
My pace quickened as I approached the bench. And there it was Same As Ever. Not a mark on it. Untarnished and waiting for us to resume reading it. My wife reached me just as I picked it up and turned around. Her face lit up.
It's the simplest things that can give you the most profound sense of joy. It's so rare that the things we give up on as entirely lost are found again. That book was easily replaceable. But finding it again was the highlight of our little trip. I sometimes wonder what my eight year old self would have felt if I returned to school the day after I lost my pens, compass boxes, bottles and the things I cannot even recall today.
The joy would have been a hundred times more than when I found the book again. It's because losing something like that back then, in my family was a lesson to be learnt. It would never be replaced by the same nice thing again. It's strange how as adults we can take so much for granted just because the power to replace a loss lies entirely in our hands.
Do I think now, that my family was cruel in how they dealt with the losses? Not at all. They had to frugal and wise with their money while imparting life lessons to me at the same time. Did I learn my lesson. Partially yes, because at least we feel guilty about our carelessness. Followed by the usual. It's alright, we can get a new one 😀
]]>Killa which means fort in Marathi dosen't play an outsized role in the movie but it serves as the location of one of the pivotal points in the movie. Even though the plot is simple enough to not really have anything that could be deemed a spoiler it's best to experience the scenes with you own eyes.
What impressed me was how much mileage the film gets from just a handful of basic elements. A young school going boy experiencing the struggles of moving to a new town. Making friends and discovering himself along the way. A single mother dealing with corruption at the lowest levels of a government job and dealing with the fallout of trying to do the right thing. At the same time giving her son the support to acclimatize to the new environment while filling the void of his father's absence in his life.
The other star is really the town of Ratnagiri itself shown off in all it's rustic beauty thanks to some excellent cinematography. The subtle understated music cues punch every scene with weight that let's you appreciate those slow lingering shots of everything even more. The actors feel like everyday people going through their lives while you stand back and observe.
When the credits role there is nothing to really resolve but the mother and the son have all gone through and evolution of sorts. Friends are made and lost quickly. But every facial expression spoke so much to me. I was happy and connected with the protagonist in a way that I don't usually feel. It's why every time I think of the movie I can remember individual scenes unlike most movies I watch.
Times when I feel the world and my own life has become chaotic and complex thinking about Killa calms me down and makes me realise how the simplest things in life can bring you the most joy.
]]>In between scenes I scroll through social media. Seeing all the posts about the match it's hard not to get caught up in the fervor. But the feeling is momentary. I ask my wife if she watched cricket in her younger days. And we realize that we both watched with much enthusiasm back then. What changed over the years?
Cricket can be an exceptionally long game punctuated by a lot of filler in between the exciting moments. Over the years I just got less patient with everything. The other factor that we realized was common to both of us though was the people we watched it with. For both of us it was our grandfathers.
While I cannot comment on her individual experience, my memories of it are mostly clear. After retirement was the phase of his life around which I was born. And other than the copious amount of time spent reading the newspaper, the rest was spent watching various kinds of sports. Primarily cricket, tennis, football and Formula 1 racing.
The way he watched was with a kind of detached calm. Focused on every minute of the match but without a single sound no matter what was happening in the game. I watched while sitting beside him with a similarly tepid display of emotions. But I was always in awe of him. He kept sharing with me facts from the yesteryear of the game. When they didn’t even have televisions in the house.
That for me was why I watched more than anything else. In the absence of the internet and social media the matches were certainly a major talking point. But it really was a bonding experience. Those days were some of the most memorable moments I have had with him. After he was gone the experience of watching sports was never the same for me.
]]>We sacrificed the sunshine to visit the museum that is house in this building. For me it was an eye-opening experience of a kind of style I had neither read nor seen properly before. Here are some images and comments from the experience.
When you enter the building the first thing that will catch your eye is the quirky shape of the staircase that when you look at it from below resembles the form of a bulb. The next surprise is the shape of the elevator which is also all angles. The photo below unfortunately fails to do it justice, but I tried anyway.
The museum is spread across 3 floors but in a small space. This means you should be able to see everything that there is to offer in less than an hour. There was a mixture of furniture, crockery, posters, paintings, and general art pieces. I am sharing just a few of the things that caught my eye
Ther were some beautiful poster designs from that decade advertising exhibitions also following the cubist style. Below is also what is called a Lithograph.
Angular furniture like this is not something that you would typically imagine but this collection of chairs was quite stunning without a curve in sight.
The pieces are sometimes beautifully augmented with coordinated backdrops
Some of them are sets of furniture that are meant to fit together.
This set was the most eye catching one for me. The larger-than-life sofa. A bookshelf with a design I could never have imagined. And the most stunning aspect of the set is that chandelier which you can also see casting a monster spider kind of shadow on the wall.
There were some beautiful crockery sets that I unfortunately didn't capture but this brush and pan set was the most memorable object from the collection for me.
Being a small museum with plenty of opportunities to sit down, the museum is suitable for kids to accompany you without tiring out. One nice detail I loved was that the text font used throughout the museum has the letter O in the shape of a hexagon that instantly evokes cubism.
We ended our visit with some coffee at The Grand Cafe Orient that has interiors that are designed in perfect harmony with the theme of the house.
]]>But I can't help but think. What is the thought process that drives people to do such things. Isn't peace one of the most joyous aspects of life. To wake up everyday to experience the incredible things that nature and by essence humanity has managed to create over centuries. I look at little children and their expressions and what is the feeling they most often evoke. You smile and marvel at their innocence. As we grow up with greater understanding also comes the loss of our ability to simply enjoy the little things. But do we truly understand better. If we did, would these things happen?
Do what makes you happy. Buy that latest gadget if you need to. Walk in nature. Fall in love. Raise a child. Help the less privileged. Watch a movie. Sing and dance your heart out. Work 4 hours a week, work 40 hrs or a 100. Whatever works for you. Or simply stop and smell the roses. Do what you need to do to evoke joy within yourself. Spread the joy if you can. But don't do it at the expense of your own humanity. Think of the consequences of what you do. If one person can convince just one other person to do the right thing. The world would automatically become a better place.
Humanity can be fixed one broken human being at a time.
]]>It's the year 2023. Global warming has raised temperatures to unprecedented levels.
The effects of climate change are becoming more apparent with each passing day. The once lush forests are now replaced by barren lands, and the oceans have risen to dangerous levels, swallowing entire cities. Natural disasters like hurricanes, tsunamis, and droughts have become more frequent and intense, causing widespread destruction and loss of life.
People are struggling to adapt to the changing climate. The heatwaves are unbearable, making it difficult to work outside. Water scarcity is a daily reality for many, forcing them to walk long distances to collect water. Food shortages are common as crops fail due to extreme weather and water scarcity.
You decide that living in this world is not worth it. You are not considering suicide. You have another choice. Put yourself in cryostasis. You will reappear in a century or several centuries at a time of your choosing.
You fear the unknown more than the current dire state of affairs. You will live to fight another day. You are both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. You think things will only get worse whether it's a hundred or a thousand years from now. In essence you would be ready to go down with the flames.
There are no problems that cannot be solved with the proper passage of time. You knowingly put yourself to sleep. But you need to decide beforehand how many years later you would wish to be woken up. Your years in cryostasis will pass by in the blink of an eye.
I have spent roughly 4 decades on this earth. It is easy to jump to the conclusion that everything was better in your youth. I was also of the same belief. While it may be true for some individual things on the whole things are probably much better now.
I thoroughly enjoy reading science fiction. Exploring the vast number of possibilities that the future of humanity could go on is fascinating. But considering everything that I have today in my life I would probably chose to stay present in the moment. The future seems too far removed from the natural order of things.
If we are to be ruled by AI overlords in artificially constructed biospheres I would probably lose my mind. Also if I did chose to go into cryostasis what would happen to dreams. Would I still have those? As I have written before on this blog, I find dreams to be one of the fascinating aspects of human existence.
All I really hope is that within my lifetime we are never faced with such a choice at all. It sounds selfish in some sense that we don't care about what happens to the future generations. Do we really owe them if we know that our current actions could have far reaching consequences for them. I think we do. Collective responsibility is something we cannot shirk. I for one am happy to let science fiction stay as fiction.
]]>One day I came across an article recommending this massive tome. The illustrated edition of The Books of Earthsea. I was much more into fantasy back then and immediately looked it up on Amazon. This was in 2018. I balked at the price of the book and for the first time ever used the Amazon wish-list feature. The hope was that someday I could afford to place that order. Years passed by. I since added many books to the wish-list and this one got pushed to the bottom. It was still beautiful and desirable so I never forgot about it.
Roughly 5 years have passed since then and I was looking at other stuff on a different kind of wishlist. Places to visit in Prague. There was place called The Electric Sheep Book Bar that was due to reopen soon and looked like the perfect place for a book lover to visit. It was a late Sunday evening and I stepped to this quaint little basement place.
There was a wall with books for sale and as I sat down at a bar stool and settled down, the first book I noticed was The Book of Earthsea sitting in it’s own little cove with a little spotlight above. I nearly jumped off the bar stool and went over to it, like somebody might snatch it away before I did. Somehow I knew that the place to buy the book was there and then.
Those who don’t love books as much as I do would never understand this feeling. I kept thinking of the circumstances and the events it took for me to finally find this book here. Not just some faceless corporation delivering it to me back home but in a place that calls itself a book bar in a different continent altogether.
To sweeten the whole situation was the fact that the price of the book was lesser than what I would have paid on Amazon. But in that moment it would not have mattered. I would have paid any price. What mattered was that a place like this exists. That people forever remember the pleasures that only books can offer.
]]>I moved there with my family and the only effect we personally felt was the housing shortage that was exacerbated by the many refugees coming over from Ukraine. Many homeowners were even offering housing as a compassionate gesture. The country was even offering them a special rapid visa to allow them to settle in. At the time I never realized what it truly means to leave a country by choice and being forced to.
It has been a year since all this started. I took my son to the play area in our apartment block a couple of days ago. There was another younger kid who was having a great time there and eventually he and my son started playing together. His father was around as well and while we watched our kids play, we got talking for a bit. I had wrongly assumed that he was a local but soon learnt that he was from Ukraine and that they had arrived after the war. We stay in a nice residential area and in my head my assumption was that after staying here they would have been reasonably okay. His English was limited but enough to convey and understand each other well enough.
When I asked him how he finds it here he replied quite sadly that he wants to go back home desperately but still cannot due to the war situation. He proceeded to elaborate through words and gestures that while he was in Ukraine, he had a white-collar office job and here is reduced to some kind of manual labor that involves shoveling. Then he shrugged sadly indicating how much they really had to give up. At the end of the day, while it is true that they escaped mortal danger, it came at the cost of accepting the change in the very nature of their existence.
Up until this time I had never encountered anyone directly affected by a war in this way. I chose to come here, and I always have the freedom to go back when home tugs at your heart. Freedom is ultimately, not a singular all-encompassing word. Sometimes you don't realize what it means until it is taken away from you.
]]>To truly have lived and breathed and felt the beating pulse of a new city I would say a year is a reasonable time limit. It has been more than half a year since I moved with my wife and son to Prague. I have colleagues who moved to places in Europe much earlier in their life journeys than I did, and my impressions of Europe would have differed quite a bit if I had experienced life here a decade ago.
Prague is terms of size is smaller than the city where I spent most of my life. Yet it seems so much more breath-taking in terms of what the city can offer you. Being the capital of a country comes with its perks for sure. The best experiences that the country can offer you in terms of the past, present and future are sure to be found in the capital.
I originally wanted to write a single post encompassing all the distinct aspects of living here but that would mean this post not seeing the light of day for several months. So, I decided to structure it broadly across these primary categories. The city, the people, the food and the expat experience.
More posts related to this coming soon
]]>I began to think a little about this and realized that it was not the snow itself that made me feel this way but the fact of seeing the familiar everyday places around me transformed in a way that feels a little magical. Granted that for many who live in these parts of the world this is not the most noteworthy thing.
Back in India where I have lived almost the entirety of my life so far what we experience weather wise can vary hugely depending on which part of the country you call home. We had distinct summers, monsoons, and winters but the city Pune where I used to stay didn't really transform visually from one season to the other in any dramatic fashion. The road became much worse to drive on in the monsoon but that is a topic too tiring to touch upon.
However, if we had been staying up north in a place like Kashmir, I would have experienced a lot of what I experience here. Snow is not a regular thing when the winters begin but for me those days are much more pleasant than the normal winter days even if snowy days mean lower temperatures. The one thing people in tropical countries take for granted is the abundance of sunshine and the stable day lengths.
Because we arrived in Prague in the month of April last year, we hadn't yet experienced a true European winter. It was still cold, but the days were as normal as back home. The months of May and June were absolutely the best. If there was such a thing as perfect weather this would be the time that I felt this. Temperatures hovering in between the 15 -20 degree Celsius range all the time.
The real surprise was in the summers, which are primarily the months of July and August, when the sun sometimes began to set at 9PM. Though pleasant to experience, if you come from a tropical country, it can be hard to fully accept something like this. The world you know can begin to feel a little bit warped. Also, because the houses here do not feature ceiling fans, it was a challenge on the days when it hit 38 C. Even though I only used it for a few days I had to scramble to get a standing fan, something I thought I would never need here.
September and October cover the fall season where it has begun to get colder but still pleasant enough to be outdoors if you wished. The nicest part of fall was the leaves of many trees turning red which is another magical visual switch that unfortunately lasted much less than I wished.
Alas all good things must end. That end began with the month of November where the transition to days where the sun begins to set at 4PM came to a despairingly quick start. Combined with the chilly weather, dark, cloudy skies these days were the worst we felt in terms of the mood. We missed home for the food, friends and family but in those months also for the year-round sunshine we almost take for granted.
Luckily, we had a trip planned for back home for a couple of months, so we escaped the worst of the winter and by the time we were back we were ready to escape the heat from back home. I think back about an ideal living situation, and this could be it. The travel can take a toll on you but if we got the beam me up technology from Star Trek this is the way I would love to have it.
Weather is such a core element of people's lives and it's easy to curse or remark about fine weather no matter where most people live. The world was built upon balance. You choose and make peace with where you were born, or you move and make peace with your new home. It is the only thing we can control. The weather will be what it wants to be.
]]>I decided to skip the charade this year and take time to reflect on why the notion of making a new year resolution exists. It’s mostly people trying to give up bad habits or create good habits or finally reach the finish line on some project they may have initiated in the past.
Firstly, the fact that January is the beginning of the year is an arbitrary construct. We just as easily could have had the year start somewhere in May or June when most places come alive with the possibility of something fresh. Those musings aside, a better way to make some use of this artificial division of time is to reflect on everything you can remember from the year past.
Some occurrences brought us immense joy, some brought us pain. My only real strategy for the year is to double down on what affected my life in a positive way. Moving to a new country last year brought with it many new challenges. This was offset by the sheer joy of the discovery of a new place and its culture.
If you ask people about the most important change, they want to affect in their lives it would be some form of exercise. Not having any form of private transport in Prague meant using public transport and then walking a little bit to get to your destination. It’s amazing how this involuntary form of walking can add up. The point is that when even something light like walking is built into your routine it’s the best way kickstart your fitness goals.
Other non-physical habits can be even harder to form and keep going. The way I decided to deal with this is to think about the memory of something that made me feel good after the deed. If something drained my energy because of my analysis of it, I will be conscious of the time that I wasted on it. Bit by bit as you begin to eliminate the energy drains from your life and can focus on what gives you energy you are automatically a better version of the person you were last year.
]]>I spent a lot of time traveling on buses to and from work which also meant that I consumed more audiobooks than I did last year. As far as discovering new books goes Prague has an extensive network of libraries that are practically free. While most of the books are in Czech the collection of English language books is large enough to keep me satisfied for a long while.
?️ Please note these books did not necessarily come out in 2022
A beautiful coffee table book that talks about a unique form of art from the Pardhan Gond community.
A blend of art, photography, and social commentary. I found this in a bookstore in Pondicherry. A more detailed post about this book here
This was a delightful read from start to finish. Since the events that took place are from several decades ago there is only so much depth that the authors could delve into. At the end of it, all I was left wishing for was to go back in time and converse with these daredevils who set out on journeys unlike anything I have known, sitting on one of the most remarkable inventions of our time. The humble and everlasting bicycle.
A more detailed post I wrote about this book here. I got this book directly from the author via India post
This was a tough one to read. Not because of the way it was written or the contents of the book. There was a constant sense of foreboding with every new chapter that I went through. A book like this is an insight into someone's soul.
The fact that a life like this eventually led to what now everyone knows about Anthony Bourdain was heartbreaking. There is one specific chapter in the book that is too eerie in its foreshadowing of the things that happened later. But in the spirit that it is written it doesn't feel that way at all.
While he often says that this book would appeal more to chefs and others from that world, it's an equally fascinating read for regular folks as well. He never shies away from laying the dark secrets of the industry bare and does it in the most entertaining way possible.
The dystopian vision outlined in this book is absolutely chilling. I never saw the recent TV version of this, so I went into this one completely blind. It was hard to believe that this book was first written in 1985. Found this one in the Prague library.
There are many start your own thing playbooks out there. Somehow this one felt almost relaxed and calming. Instead of making the idea of starting something on your own feel like a sometimes-insurmountable challenge, for the first time I began to feel like it is something achievable
I always felt I lacked the right mindset to start something of my own. This book won't make me start anything but reassured me in its simple messages that is a viable reality.
At this point if you try and read about the saga of this man you will come across various reports of fake or exaggerated claims. By the time I was done hearing this audiobook it didn't really matter. It was simply an entertaining account of how one man gamed the system for years before he was finally caught. Fact or fiction? You won't care.
The best travel writers make you feel like you were with them on every step of the journey. Dervla is certainly this and more. Her descriptions of places and people are unfettered and honest. This journey was undertaken with her six-year-old daughter in tow. Simply remarkable.
It's hard to describe what Greenlights the memoir of Matthew McConaughey is about. It's part autobiography, part wisdom guide and just the soul of its author laid bare. Not just written in a style where you can hear his voice come through to you but also extremely playful in its visual presentation, by the end of it I could really feel what the man went through up to that point in his life.
This was the first novel I read by Andy Weir. It's funny, fast paced and doesn't itself too seriously. The primary protagonist is female and is surprisingly unabashed about its portrayal of her as an attractive one not averse to using her charms to get what she wants. While I initially felt it was cliched in the end it worked because of its commitment to this particular personality of the character.
Found this in the Prague Public Library
The title of the book really should give it all away. This quote from the book should tell you why you need to think about this topic.
Look, if all you want is to have a pile of money at the end, well, I guess that’s your choice. But bear in mind that I have never seen somebody’s total net worth posted on their tombstone.
This large tome is a lovely fable connecting characters across space and time. It's quite different from the author's previous novel "All the Light We Cannot See". It is hopeful and wondrous and mostly a joy to read.
Found this in the Prague Public Library
Hilarious and profound at the same. Reading this truly made me happy ?
A period piece that revolves around words and women's empowerment told from a unique perspective.
It's like a Murakami book written by another author. Something about Japanese settings and relationships between the unlikeliest of characters makes for a delightful read.
I picked it up for the setting. A detective story set in British India. While the central mystery lost a bit of its steam by the end what mattered was the primary character playing detective. A bit unconventional but also sometimes succumbing to cliches, it was still a wonderful start to a potential series.
A nice set of essays set in the 80s and 90s of India. Easy read that gave some much needed insights into a different Indian era. The selection is diverse, and the viewpoints of the author are reasonably open.
I bought this book India but waited to read it until I moved to Prague. I'm not specifically into the vampire genre but the novel sets up its atmosphere perfectly and it was joy to read about parts of the city that I had by then become familiar with.
I had attempted and given up on the Eragon series many years ago. So, I wasn't sure what to expect from the author's first adult book. The best way to describe my experience reading this was that I remained motivated enough to make it to the end. And it took a while to get to the end of this 880 page monster.
Dutifully researched and beautifully written, this was an incredible personal story about the lives of the people of this community.
]]>I decided to look her up again a few days ago and saw that she passed away in May 2022. At that age I knew this was bound to happen sooner or later but reading about this left me with a profound sense of loss. Like I had lost a travel companion whom I had accompanied on many adventures.
That is the incredible power of a book and its words. The conversation may be one way but a skilled writer like Dervla makes it feel like a dialog with the reader. Conversations that feel deeper and more intimate than the ones we can have with even family and friends sometimes.
Dervla’s life was probably wilder than the most adventurous travels writers. A single woman with a daughter born out of wedlock. Traveling alone with only her bicycle as a companion. Sometimes making journeys with her five-year-old daughter at the time in some of the most inhospitable regions of the world. Decades before our time.
I read through her entire Wiki entry in its entirety after learning of her death. By the end of it all I could think of saying was. “What an incredible life. What a huge loss” May she rest in peace. God knows she had enough action in her lifetime. It seems a strange thing to feel but I will miss her more than most people I have met in real life.
]]>Interestingly while the artist is from the village of Patangarh that the book is set in, the photographer is Japanese. It’s fascinating to think that a village that even I had never heard of before could catch the interest of someone from a culture so far removed from our own.
While the book is a wonderful insight into the birth of the artistic style of the village it is also tinged with melancholy. The books don’t cover just visual art but also performance art, something that is waning in popularity. While the ones who perform this art still exist their sustenance is defined by their patrons. When the audience goes away the artists fade away with them.
I only comment on this fact. It would be hypocritical of me to claim that we should do something about this. In today’s age of not just movies in the cinemas but streaming services and other short form content we are spoilt for choice in how to spend our leisure time. Given this situation would we ever spend hours and money watching a folk-art performance from a bygone era?
I wouldn’t unless it were part of some novelty experience on a vacation. Anyone reading this I am curious to know. Is there any way to really save these art forms or just chalk them up as another unfortunate victim of the relentless march of progress?
You can buy this book from the link below. The least we can do way to support alternate artistic endeavors.
]]>The person who told me this had heard it from someone else from India, who happened to visit the main headquarters of Volvo in Sweden for a few days in order to collaborate onsite. A Swedish co-worker offered to one day pick him up from his hotel on the way to the office. Based on the timing they agree upon they would have arrived much earlier than when most of the other workers made it to the office.
When they finally reached the office and entered the massive parking lot there were only a few spots occupied. The office building was quite far away from the parking entrance. The guy with the car parked in slot close to the entrance of the parking lot and together they began the not so insignificant walk towards the office buildings.
The Indian guy wasn't sure why he chose to park the car so far away from the office building when there were plenty of slots close by. Both time and energy could have been saved if they had parked closer. However since he had only been working with the Swedes for a couple of days he chose to stay quiet about it. He still couldn't come up with a good reason to satisfactorily explain this occurrence.
A couple of days he ran into the same colleague who had dropped him and his curiosity finally got the better of him. He asked him flat out about the other day. He said "Why did you chose to park your car so far away the other day when you dropped me and spent all the extra time and effort to walk to the office" Luckily he didn't take any offence to the question and very simply proceeded to explain.
He replied “I was lucky to be able to make it the office well before time and had plenty of time to make the clock. However there might be many others who for whatever reasons might not have been able to make it as early. For them having parking spaces available to them much closer to the office would be a big relief and they would still be able to make it on time.”
This was a revelation to the Indian guy. It's a way of thinking that I think for most Indians is rather alien in nature. Selfishness pervades our culture and manifests itself in so many ways. It is one of the saddest facets of our lives here. Indian culture itself is an extremely influential one when it comes to the positive sides like the arts, entertainment, spirituality and it's culinary delights.
But everything gets overshadowed by the disease of selfishness. It's what drives down the value of human life in general. The person who drives on the wrong side of the road or breaks a signal cares only about themselves and their desire to get to their own destination faster. The one who drives drunk is trying to prove his own capacity to function under the influence. Countless innocents become a victim of this menace.
However keeping all these morbid examples aside would we ever think about the parking situation if it ever applied to us in the same way. To think of others less fortunate before ourselves even in the simplest situations of life
I know I wouldn't because I was never taught to think that way. This story has stuck in my head since more than a decade now. I don't even know if I could ever apply in my life. Would the people around me consider me more foolish than social. The only thing we can do is tell our coming generations more of these stories and sow the seeds of change. Philanthropy is not the domain of millionaires or billionaires alone and neither is it correlated to wealth.
It can start just by thinking beyond only our own needs and desires in the simplest facets of life.
]]>Many days later I received both the original and the extra copy. Though I am an amateur cyclist at best I regularly cycled around the town where I live. I never attempted exceedingly long distances even though cycling as an activity has picked up greatly in India in the last few years. Avid riders are spoilt for choice when it comes to the selection of bikes available for purchase.
Unfortunately, as far as road safety is concerned cyclists are never a priority and riding around the city is a risky endeavour. I often thought about the time that my grandfather spoke about using his cycle to drop off my uncles to various places. For the common man it was the most reliable and economical way to get to places. It was also environmentally friendly, a notion that has risen to prominence over the last decades. In some sense the humble bicycle was ahead of its time.
This book is intriguing not just in its subject matter but in the story of the authors themselves. They are an older couple that moved to Goa a few years ago and took up cycling in their sixties. Their passion for cycling really shows on every page of the book.
It was a revelation to know that twelve cyclists from pre-independence India took multi-year rides across the globe. They were driven by pure passion and the goodwill of those they met along the way. Every one of them sought out to do this purely as a personal challenge and an intense desire to explore the world in a way that would be rare for anyone let alone Indians living in a tumultuous time.
The accounts of their travels are painstakingly reconstructed and wonderfully narrated with the help of photographs, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia that came about as a result of their journeys. The sheer determination and will power of these young men to attempt such an endeavor can really be felt with every word that I read about it.
We are in the age of electric cycles, yet I cannot imagine pulling of a journey of such breath-taking scope. Given the resources and conveniences we have today in terms of mobility and connectivity this would still seem like a foolhardy endeavor. To think they did this on ordinary gearless bicycles traversing terrains as diverse as deserts, mountains, and rainforests, living through blizzards, sandstorm, and wildlife scares, makes it feel like a miracle that they managed to complete the journeys that they set out for. It wasn’t just nature but even political situations that tested their mental states.
This was a delightful read from start to finish. Since the events that took place are from several decades ago there is only so much depth that the authors could delve into. At the end of it, all I was left wishing for was to go back in time and converse with these daredevils who set out on journeys unlike anything I have known, sitting on one of the most remarkable inventions of our time. The humble and everlasting bicycle.
]]>There was a golden period of adventure games for me. The Longest Journey, the first two Syberia games hold precious memories. Still Life and Heavy Rain were also special experiences. Narrative in games meant so much more to us back then. The worlds these adventure games created were fascinating to learn about and play through. A world away from the continuous live service games of today.
Though I don't have data to back it up I have a strong conviction that the number of gamers playing these games is far less than two decades ago. There is just too much to compete for our attention these days. Do we just not care about stories in games anymore? Considering how many games are multiplayer live service type games it’s a miracle that games like Syberia even get made these days.
A product with a singular driving force, in this case the late Benoit Sokal who unfortunately passed away before this latest iteration could see the light of day. It was brought to light by the fantastic team at Microids who spared no expense to bring the latest adventures of protagonist Kate Walker to life.
The locations that the game takes place are beautifully moody and were a joy to traverse. The voice acting was top notch as it always was in the series and really helps you feel the emotional journey that she was going through. It also lets you switch between characters and time periods to great effect without ever losing track of the epic scope of the journey.
I have extremely fond memories of the Syberia games and playing this one felt like I met a friend after a long time, and she was just catching me up on everything that happened since I last saw her. Completing the game left me with immense joy. It’s a shame these kinds of games don’t compete with the mainstream like they used to a long time ago.
I know many are happy to spend hours binge watching a streaming series but when it comes to gaming most gravitate to the Battle Royale giants for thousands of hours. This is obviously great for the studios making these games, but they come at the expense of shunting out people’s time for trying anything else. I only hope that there will be enough of us left to play games like these, so they remain viable creations for the studios that choose to do them.
]]>The hotel where I was staying unfortunately did not offer free Wi-Fi. So, while I was in the hotel my only option for entertainment was the hotel TV. Something I almost never switch on these days in any hotel. The twist of course was that everything aired in German. This trivial thing caused me some initial despair. And to think that people stayed in hotels without TV and internet for decades.
As compared to now I was also woefully out of my reading habit. So, I spent time mindlessly flipping through every channel hoping to stumble upon something I could understand. The second day of doing this and I stumbled upon what initially seemed like some obscure British comedy called My Family. I had discovered comic gold. It's been a long time since I watched the series and ironically, it's almost impossible to get your hands on it unless you are in the UK.
I wouldn't even be able to say that I would find it as great as I found it back then. But, for those 15 days they were a salve to my lonely soul. What I realize now when I think about how we discover shows these days is that most of the joy of serendipitously discovering something that you might enjoy is on the decline.
Everything is algorithmically driven and fed to you via your streaming app's home feed. Or something is going viral, and you absolutely must watch it to be of the cultural zeitgeist. Or we have put a premium over our time spent browsing to discover something and would rather let the machine take over for us. I am part of this for sure but thinking back to this incident sparks something in me.
Sometimes the joy is not because of what you discover but in the journey of discovery itself. Ask me how I discovered my favorite TV shows in the last few years and my answers will be insipid. But this one had its own little story and one I will never forget.
]]>Growing up without a dad shaped my childhood in a different way but Amma grew up as an orphan raised by her own grandmother's sister. Married at 14, she was thrust into another life altogether. For my generation 14 would be the age when we have just begun to discover ourselves and forge our identities. Her subsequent years were all about child rearing and cooking for a family of five.
Amma was a very different personality from my rather strict grandfather. She was sent into this new life with no one to guide her on how to navigate its waters. Neither did she have any drive of her own. She did it all without complaints and accepted her fate as is. Which is opposed to the kind of life advice we get these days. Take control of your fate if you want to make the most of this life.
I sometimes wonder if this new notion about life is truly supposed to be the thing that makes it more fulfilling. Because Amma in my eyes was always a picture of content. She found the joy in every experience that her family provided for her. Financially dependent on everyone else in her family she really had no real desires of her own. Everywhere she went, everything she experienced was from the backseat. She just went along for the ride.
Amma’s superpower was her smile. The thing that endeared her and touched the lives of everyone who ever had the good fortune of knowing her. It was something we as family took for granted. But ask anyone from the family and they will tell you the warmth and genuineness of her smile could never be matched by us.
But there was also something else that the maids we employed over the years mentioned to me. They often said that she made them feel like family in a way that none of their employers ever did.
It’s so strange for me to think that all she could give to others was her love and care. She didn’t make material gestures or leave a mark on the world at large. Her legacy was her capacity to derive joy from the simple things and spread that joy with others, with nothing more than her kind words and a radiant smile.
There are many lessons we can learn from world’s greatest thinkers and philosophers. Our true lessons however come from those closest to us. Amma’s lesson for me was that you don’t go out seeking bliss. It is a state of mind that you only find within yourself. When you find it don’t horde. Happiness is real only when it is shared.
]]>While there was no doubt as to how good the game looked before it was released, we had to wait a long time to understand how it would actually feel. I am no cat lover but it's clear the developers were. My apartment complex in India was home to many stray cats. While I mostly found them an annoyance, their presence also meant I noticed how special the cats are in the way they move and react to everything around them.
The attention to details in the game world is phenomenal. The way the humanoid robots stumble or lose balance when the cat comes in between their feet. The way the cat jumps back when alarmed by something. Since real world cat movement is so fluid and dynamic the system the developers chose to adopt, where you can only jump to another point if the game world prompts you, is a smart choice. You won't get the free running of something like Assassin's Creed but considering this is a small developer they went with something that works for them.
I won't say much about the game play of Stray. Its main purpose is really to drive the story forward and enhance the feeling of exploration. So, it is a mix of simple platforming and some smaller sequences that can cause you to lose your life. They are usually quite simple but a few of them can be slightly frustrating because of the placement of checkpoints.
All this is, however, secondary to how the game actually looks in motion. There is a level called Midtown later in the game. The first time I entered the area my jaw dropped. I haven't felt this way when playing a game for a long time. The lighting, the texture and sense of place that it evokes when it all comes together here is a phenomenal achievement for any developer let alone an indie.
A special mention must go to the publisher Annapurna Interactive who have published some of the most incredible indie titles of the last decade. Stray is a short 6 - 8 hours experience that is sweet and memorable in a way that I rarely ever feel about games these days. A must try.
]]>The other most important thing that stood out for me in the Guardians games was how incredibly funny it was. Every new situation I encountered in the game was a delight just to hear the banter between all the members of the gang. The writers absolutely nailed this aspect of the story. The humor emerged not from funny isolated jokes but from the actual personalities of the characters delivering their lines with absolute conviction by the wonderfully cast voice actors.
While the overall tone of the story gets much more serious by the end, by closing time you will still remember the games as a class above when it comes to funny.
This got me thinking about how few games I remember for their humor specifically. I tend to have a weaker memory for modern games but when I tried to recollect games, I consider the funniest, two games came to my mind. Not surprisingly they were made by the same studio.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Armed and Dangerous were both made by the long defunct Planet Moon Studios. When I thought about these games, I opened up metacritic to see if it was just me that held this view. I was not wrong.
Dig into the reviews and while the gameplay may not get the best marks you will see many of them mention something like "One of the funniest games I have ever played" Having played both back in the day I can attest to this fact. It's a shame we never got to see anything more out of the studio before they shut down.
I highly recommend getting your hands on them and playing them just to experience humor the likes of which we rarely see in games these days.
]]>She strolled towards me. I got straight to the point. "Hey, I um was wondering if you could maybe show me around town. I felt like you have been attending this class longer than I have so you've been here longer as well". If she was taken aback by this direct approach, she certainly didn't show it. Instead, she just smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and said "Sure, why not".
The muted lights of the city and the effects of surprisingly potent beer combined to make it feel like we were walking through a dream scape. She stopped outside a book themed restaurant. I followed her inside. Our second stop for food that evening.
Her diminutive frame belied the fact that she could consume that much in a single sitting. It would have been the natural thing to say as I sat across her, watching her devour the burger. She tipped her head back every time her bangs drifted towards her eyes, never once keeping the burger back in the plate.
Her sandals clattered against the cobblestone streets as we kept walking on. At what point her hand clasped mine, I did not realize. The warmth of her body kept at bay the growing chill of the night. But it was the warmth in my heart that began to take precedence.
The lights swirled as the cab made its way through the wet streets. We stopped and got out in front of the church. The incandescent lights adorning the ends of the gate felt like they were beginning to bore into my eyes. I closed them tight hoping the effect would have dampened by the time I opened them again. But I couldn't validate because she dragged me inside the church compound before I opened my eyes again.
The silence of the church enveloped me. Side by side we sat and simply looked around the interiors of the church with my gaze lingering on the stained-glass windows. The headlights of a passing car passing through lit them up like a kaleidoscope. It added to the surreal feel of the evening.
At some point she left me there, but it took some time for me to realize this. I panicked, imagining that my night with her had ended abruptly.
I tip toed out as fast as I could and felt relieved as I saw her sitting on the steps of the church. A chilly wind had begun to take hold of the town. I sat down next to her. She laid her head to rest on my shoulder and snuggled closer to me.
All my senses were engaged at the same time. The glow of the church lights on the wet ground in front of the steps. The smell of her strawberry scented hair. The warmth of her head against my shoulder. The wind cooling my face and the rustling of the leaves. I put my arms around her. I felt the smoothness of her shoulder and gently stroked it. She turned around and planted a kiss on my lips. I tasted the remnants of the beer from earlier in the night. I closed my eyes.
At that moment there was no other place that I wished to be, no other feeling I wanted to feel. My only wish was to bottle up that moment in time and to uncork it whenever I needed it again.
]]>Lasting just a handful of hours you make your way through desolate landscapes that tell a story without a single word. It’s interpretative and the games pacing lets you take your time absorbing the little details of the world.
The core mechanics of the game will evoke memories of Limbo and Inside by Playdead. The key difference being that there it’s just a boy against the unknown while here it is a boy and his transportation machine against the unknown.
The almost symbiotic bond between human and machine plays out in the game itself as you push, repair, and upgrade your machine to be able to continue your progress through the world. One thing to clarify is that this is not a frequent activity or something that involves micromanaging your vehicle. With every creak, groan, and sputtering sound of the engine you begin to feel responsibility towards it.
Though not every game can do it, games like Limbo, Inside and the Far series are the very best examples of games that tell you nothing beyond the basic button functions. Everything else that you can do with them must be conveyed through level design.
While there were occasions where I felt stuck for a bit, most scenarios were designed in a way that with a little bit of exploration you can discover the keys to unlock your progress.
A lot of your time is also just spent moving forward. The wind in your sails, the gentle waves and just you and your machine bobbing along. Accompanied by a beautiful score these moments were what I referred to as meditative.
The end was an incredibly sweet surprise for those who have played the first game. A perfect gaming experience to cap my weekend.
]]>🌏 I was pondering how our lives in this pandemic would be different if we didn’t have this thing called the internet. It felt like we would have things much harder, but we would have managed. Might certain things have been better? Which got me thinking of all the ways my own life was so vastly different in my childhood and adulthood. I began to remember the strangest of things.
💵 Paying bills. This is the thing we most take for granted. I remember the time when I was sent with a cheque from home every other month to the local electricity office. People often queued up well before the billing window was scheduled to open. Arrive close to opening time and you were in for a long wait. The funniest memory I have of this whole exercise is individuals trying to cut into the line under some pretext or the other and the ensuing arguments with the most vocal people in the line. I saw this at-least every other time I went there. Having to sometimes wait for over an hour in the sweltering heat was bound to make people cranky.
☎️ The charming old PCO booth. The struggle to convey a long message before you ran out of coins. The most remarkable thing about the landline was the commitment you made if you arranged to meet someone somewhere at the time and place you agreed upon on the call. There could be no excuses. If you didn’t turn up that, was it. No last-minute messages to excuse yourself for being late. It almost seems to me the fact that you can now convey messages in real-time means humans have developed a proclivity for tardiness.
📱Smart devices. My 3-year-old can simply ask Alexa to play a song he wants or turn on or turn off the lights. Music on demand. The 3-year-old me would think this is science fiction. I can never forget the joys of buying cassettes, then CDs, the Napster era and all the pain that came with that. The rewinding of cassettes to play the song you wanted and God forbid if the tape loop got stuck and you had to use the humble pencil to get things back in order. The ridiculous prices of CDs and having to buy entire albums just for one song and the brief tryst with Napster trying to find a proper version of the song we desired were unforgettable ordeals.
Despite my reminiscing, I can say with conviction that I would never want to go back to those ways of doing some things. Yet, I only look back with fondness on my experiences. They defined our lives in that era and keeps reinforcing to me the fact that no matter what period we live in, one should never rue the past because emotions are timeless.
Even if we have changed the way we do the most basic things everything culminates in evoking a feeling. Whether it is joy, sadness, anger, frustration, and everything else on the spectrum, the capacity of a human being to experience this across timelines is what defines our humanity.
]]>I have never played the League of Legends game before: the universe in which this show is set. That didn't diminish my enjoyment of this stellar show with a unique artistic style. The action is gritty and raw and the story which started a little slow and confounding finally took it to some interesting places by the end of the season. A great setup that I eagerly look forward to explore more of.
Squid Game was not just the most hyped show of the year. It was genuinely good. Once you accept the premise it really manages to suck you in. The twists and turns and character development are brought together with a stellar cast. When you begin to root for characters you know they have done it well. Also probably the most meme worthy show of the year.
Proving that the first season of this comedy was no fluke, this sitcom revolving around the travails of an immigrant teen girl navigating her life in a modern America works on so many levels. It's a premise that goes deeper than it initially sounds. The other awesome thing about the show is their choice of songs. A great sophomore season.
This one is for all the podcast lovers out there. A true crime has occurred and an unlikely trio of true-crime podcast lovers get thrown together in circumstances that quickly begin to spiral out of their control. I never thought the generationally different cast of veterans like Steve Martin and Martin Short would work together well with Selena Gomez. But they managed to pull of a show that is equal parts satire and true crime with a lot of laughs along the way.
It had been a while since I saw a series revolving around small town murders. This limited series starring Kate Winslet in a career defining performance stands out because of it's incredible plotting, characters and a sense of place. The central mystery has so many layers that start getting peeled away in manner that will keep you hooked right until the end. Everytime I thought that there was nothing more to learn about it's characters a bombshell dropped and I felt a sense of awe like I haven't felt in a long time.
As with Squid Game, Hellbound another South Korean series is based of an absurd premise. An individual recieves a summons of sorts that tells them they are going to die. Then a trio of supernatural monsters from another realm burn you to a crisp and dissappear into the void. What I have realised now about South Korean filmkaking ever since I saw Oldboy is that they have learned to turn these seemingly weird premises into absolute gold. They are merely anchors to reveal the deep seated issues of society like class, poverty and fine line between what we consider good and evil.
]]>This one was a unique insight into both: the corporate culture inside a behemoth like Disney and one man's ride to the top. It almost read like a thriller to me. So fascinating was his journey that I finished the book in a single day.
Say what you will about Shashi Tharoor but he is a master orator. This book was written after his viral speech at Oxford in 2015. In this book, he expands upon some of the arguments he put forth there. Being born in the 80s there was little impact of any colonial-era matters on our generation. All I had ever thought about was the fact that the British gave us the English language.
While Tharoor is of course biased, his account of the intellectual and economic plunder of India during the British reign is succinct and oftentimes humorous. There were so many questions I had about that whole period in our history that were answered for me. It's his perspective of course but I was glad to know it through this book.
A wonderfully written account of the lives of children from the lesser privileged regions of our country. It is expectedly tragic in many ways but the way these things have been described let me experience their lives at the ground level. There is a central mystery that anchors everything but it was the sense of place that the book evoked that kept me hooked.
I wasn't sure what to expect from this when I picked it up. Yes, it is primarily about running, but it goes deeper into the origins and the stories of incredible runners from the tribal to the modern that make it such a cracking read. You can feel the sheer joy emanating from every sentence that describes the whole experience of something as pure as running. If there was ever a book to inspire you to run this would be it.
This was quite a fun listen. I wish I had read something like this in my younger days. It takes perhaps the most pragmatic and liberal view of relationships as possible. The icing on the cake is that everything is prescribed in an utterly hilarious manner.
However, because the audiobook is narrated by the author himself and the fact that the material is of a conversational nature, I strongly suspect the paper version would not have had the same impact.
I read a lot of travelogues this year and multiple ones set specifically set in Tibet. I would almost consider this essential reading if you are curious about the region, its traditions and the mythos of the Dalai Lama.
It's a classic for a good reason. The journey the author went through and his subsequent residence in a Tibet of a very different era, is written in a wonderfully restrained manner. You can feel the pulse of the place as if you were sitting on his shoulder.
I usually don't have the best experience with Audiobook versions of some books, but this one being read in Obama's magnetic voice made all the difference. It truly felt like he was relating his life before and during his first term as president to me.
Though the American political system differs from ours in vastly diverse ways this was a riveting insight into what goes into the decision making as president of one of the most influential nations on earth.
You will see some divided opinions on this book on Goodreads. I personally loved it. Don't be put off by its title. It is much more profound than the title suggests. While the first chapter might be difficult to get through because of the swearing, do stick with it. Before I started reading it the impression I got from it was that this was probably something about the author trying to project his attitude onto the pages of a book and I would probably not be able to identify with it too much.
By the end, I realised that no matter where you live or what you do, what we sometimes perceive as our personal problems are actually experienced in some form or the other by millions all over the world. And we can always learn from their experiences. Books can't change your life just by reading them. But I got enough from this to actually make me question enough about the choices I make about what we truly need to give a f**k about
2021 is the year I fell in love with travelogues and this one is the most unique one yet. It's set in a time before I was born and in a place, I might never probably reach. It's also raw and does not shy away from describing both the ugliness and beauty of a place in equal measure.
I had heard a lot about Amitav Ghosh but never gotten around to reading any of his books. This was the first one I read and it was as strange as it was riveting. But I love strange if it can be easily absorbed.
This tale about an old book collector, climate change and old legends was a perfectly concocted dish that was easy to consume and I certainly look forward to reading more of his books next year.
I am still listening to this one but it has been a blast so far and I would recommend that you specifically experience the audiobook. Narrated in the powerful and instantly recognisable voice of Will Smith himself, learn about the origins of one of today's biggest African-American stars.
This is a coffee table book so I have been reading it over the course of the year. Even if you are not specifically a Wes Anderson fan or even know who he is, this beautiful book with photos and descriptions of things inspired by the director's aesthetic is sure to bring a wistful smile to your face.
]]>This post has nothing to do with dreams. But a dream was the trigger for these thoughts. We make friends and lose friends across our lifetime. Depending on your personality the degree to which this happens can vary. But the making of friends seems to happen far more commonly at our younger age.
The reason I started thinking about this whole thing is that I had a perfectly normal and positive interaction with a friend in one of my dreams. Nothing out of the ordinary about that. On waking up though reality hit me. I had not interacted with that friend for an inexplicably lengthy period.
I thought about this for a bit. Was there any reason that we hadn’t interacted? I concluded that there was no specific reason. Time, geographical distance, professional and personal changes slowly wedged us apart. This happens to everyone I would assume. Some connections grow stronger and weaker with time.
The tragic part is the best memories that we share with a person never fade away even though they are no longer a major part of your life. Thinking about incidents, conversations, shared jokes, endless discussions, and agreements over a movie, show or book. Opinions about a particular other culture or person. These little exchanges of thoughts, the baring of our souls, were moments of intense joy.
What I would give to have those kinds of conversations again. On the other hand, it’s also worth thinking if I was the only one deriving the pleasure from it. Seems unlikely but one can never be sure. Perhaps it’s best not to think about these things at all. This is probably how the game of life plays out for most people.
Maybe most natural friendships are transitory by default. To expect anything more is foolhardy. Or maybe I was the one who changed. Ultimately it was the words that were said that mattered. The thing that this teaches me is that you must revel in a conversation that gives you pleasure. But leave it at that. Expect nothing more.
If fate, has it in store, from the dying embers of a friendship the sparks of an unforgettable conversation may kindle the flames of your comradeship again.]]>
🧑🤝🧑It affects everyone they know and many of the people that those people know and many of the people that those people in turn know.
👋 If you make a positive change in your life it actually ripples through the social fabric and comes to benefit many other people.
🧬 This recognition that we are all connected and that in our connectedness we affect each other’s lives I think is a very fundamental and moving observation of our humanity.
]]>Another man who was traveling to the same village came up to the same farmer somewhat later and asked him what the people in the next village were like. Again, the farmer asked, "What were the people like in the last village you visited?" The second man responded, "They were kind, friendly, generous, great people." "You'll find the people in the next village are the same," said the farmer.
]]>I was trying to make the most of a long weekend and because I hadn't done a trek for 2 years, I thought I would choose a modest hike. Being a Monday I also had the entire trail to myself. I only saw a few people on the way back. The fort of Karnala lies within the confines of the Karnala bird sanctuary. It's a 2-hour hike to the top if you maintain a modest pace. There are parts that are deceptively steep, and I had to lie down a couple of times to catch my breath.
This was the first trek I have been to where the path had crabs to keep me company most of the way. Until at least the halfway point there were crabs appearing every five to six meters. Any time something rustled in the plants beside the path it turned out to be crabs that were slinking away on seeing me approach. They appeared frequently on the main path itself. Whenever I got near, they raised their claws while backing away into the nearest crevice.
While there are steep areas initially, after you get closer to the fort it levels out a bit and is easy going for most of the way after that.
These mini temples in inaccessible places always catch my attention. Though I am not religious, religious structures always add character to any places and things would always feel different without them.
Like most forts in Maharashtra there is little remaining in terms of actuals foundations of the fort itself. A few retaining walls and the occassional viewing window is all that you will find. The rest is upto your imagination
The path closer to the fort opens up to some spectacular views on either side. The forest is as dense as they come in this part of the state.
Trekking solo was a wonderful experience. I prefer to hear my favourite music while I contemplate the history of the the fort and the future as well
A reddish tree that was standing out against the lush green all around
While Karnala is a bird sanctuary the month that I visited (September) is not the time for its birds to actually be seen. They arrive after October. But in lieu of this, I saw many beautiful butterflies and moths. Though I am not entirely sure what this one is.
Spotted this beautiful beetle or that appeared alive but from the looks of it if those ants had their way, maybe it wasn't long for this world
I generally fear most monkeys that appears close to human habitation but the ones I encountered on the trail thankfully ignored me and I was more than happy to reciprocate.
The only way I can describe this is nature with a twist.
Karnala is an approximately 2 hour drive from both Pune and Mumbai. Since this is via the expressway it's easy to get there. Currently, the sanctuary is open from 7 am to 4 pm on all days. There is enough space to park your vehicles near the entrance.
I paid INR 235 that included the entrance fee and a charge for using my camera.
All photos shot on Fujifilm XT-200
]]>Something about this movement hits me. It has been more than two decades since I went on a long-distance train journey. I try to think why I ended up avoiding them for so long. Was it simply too inconvenient to ride by a train compared to hopping on a flight? Or was it the seedy reputation that trains sometimes acquire. You could be robbed at any point during the night so hold onto your luggage for dear life. Watching colleagues attempt to book a ticket seemed like an ordeal that I would never want to go through.
However, the sight of trains always evokes a wonderful feeling in me. Waiting at a railway crossing, I feel the power of the train as it whizzes by. Riding over a railway over bridge I always stop to watch a train pass. When watching a something on the TV those gorgeous overhead shots of trains passing through beautiful and desolate landscapes always brings a smile to my face. When I think of how much I derive from just watching trains without even getting on one, I can only imagine what pleasures lie in riding them.
And just when I steel myself to attempt a journey like this the pandemic has taken hold. As I make my way back to my table I ruefully think. Will it be another decade before I ride on one again? Until then I can bide my time reliving the experiences of others through books like this one.
]]>Yet there is one sport I can still occasionally watch and whoop and cheer like I never usually do. That game is tennis. Every moment of a tennis match can be absolutely thrilling because there is so much depth and possibility with every stroke of the racket. There are so many equally exciting aspects to the way things can play out.
The aces or unreturnable serves. The perfect return. Extended rallies that have the players scampering all over the court while you follow the movement of the ball waiting for the winner. The audacity that brings a player near to the net the split moment decision to try a drop shot.
You could be a single point away from loss or victory. The incredible mental resilience it can take to make it work or lose it all can be nerve wracking even for a fan. The physical prowess required to play multi hour five setters. Every moment even the ones that don't work for the winner are a joy to watch. There are no second chances in a tennis tournament. If you lose a match, you are out.
Current tennis in the men's arena also has three incredible players with Novak, Rafal and Federer all tied for the Grand Slam wins. There has never been a better time to be a fan of this incredible game.
]]>Bidi is the local version of a cigarette. It was interesting to see an establishment like this have such a cool traditional facade. The blues really made it stand out from the surroundings. And from the looks of it, it seemed to have been repainted not too long. It could also mean it is a still-thriving institution.
I am not sure when mobiles proliferated our lives to an extent that local phone booths became obsolete. I sure feel nostalgic about them though. At the time if we ever went out and needed to let our folks back home know about a delay, we had to seek out one of these quaint places. The phone booth vendor would usually exchange your money for the right kind of coins. Economy of words was of utmost importance. You couldn't really sit around for hours occupying the phone. Though I am sure young lovers of the generation may have done this with a sack of coins in tow.
In a land where most new constructions are freeform with no heed paid to the surrounding architecture every under construction place is a painful reminder of the chaos and defacing of the cityscape.
Mother's Recipe is an old established brand that sells pickles, spices and other assorted masalas used by many. I never expected to see an office in this dilapidated office complex. Notice the old woman walking barefoot, another one of our traditions.
Cattle on the footpath shouldn't come to anyone as a surprise to anyone in this country but it still managed to stand out in this case. I preferred to skip the footpath in this case.
Being a highly diverse country it is not uncommon to see multiple structures of different religions and political affiliations both temporary and permanent sometimes coexisting in the vicinity of each other. And they don't shy away from bright colours.
Open world games need to pull several aspects together into a neat package. Often though, the quality of these aspects can vary, and a few areas tend to stand out more than the rest. Of course, Horizon Zero Dawn will not be that mythical open world that just nails everything. Nor did it have to be. For me it did incredible things in all the ways that mattered.
Presentation in open world games matters a lot as you will spend hours traversing through its worlds whether it is making your way through its main story beats or just marveling at the world running of its own volition. My rig turned out to be good enough to run the game with all it is bells and whistles turned on. This is not a game filled to the brim with people, but what it has is beautiful landscapes, beautiful central town areas and the ace up its sleeve, those incredible creature designs.
The way the story of the game unravels both through the characters as well as the world that begins to unveil itself kept me engaged throughout. The cast includes some A list talent and the lead character of Aloy was brilliantly voiced by Ashly Burch, who I now see regularly on the wonderful Mythic Quest TV series. I love the forgotten civilization tropes and the game blends it’s sci fi and contemporary themes extremely well. Many games use environmental elements like audio logs and notes to supplement their stories and I often end up ignoring them after the initial set. Here I ended up listening to most of them because they just felt so compelling. I genuinely wanted to know the fate of these humans from the past.
In open world games world building and story take precedence over game play for me personally. However, this does not mean that I can make my way through them if the game play is not up to par. Horizon Zero Dawn does well enough in this regard. It is responsive and most creatures were a joy to take down given the arsenal I had at my disposal. Tactics did not particularly vary after a particular point in time. The user interface itself functioned well in most areas. The minor disappointment for me was the requirement to acquire a skill to remove various gems that enhanced my weapons. By the time I ended up looking into it in the skill tree it was too late, and I was riddled with excessive gems that sounded interesting in their descriptions, but ultimately lay wasted. Others who may have played this will probably say it was my fault for not focusing on it first. But anything that prevents you from experimenting with your weapons at any time in game like these counts as a miss for me.
I have been to America a handful of times, but these short visits only ever showed me one side of America. The side that took me to super sized malls, glitzy conferences, iconic landmarks and relatively affluent neighbourhoods.
I saw glimpses of homeless folks in between the sparkling blocks of San Francisco but that was the extent to which I saw the not so shiny part of America. What I also sorely missed experiencing was anything close to an iconic American road trip.
Nomadland is not a road trip movie by any measure. It is about a way of life that few of us will ever understand. The motivations, the trials and the tribulations that make up a life choice like this.
Nomadland is a subtle movie. There is no moment that tries top another. Conversations are scarce, but the ones that make up the movie are hard hitting in their simplicity. Every sentence says so much more than what might appear on the surface.
All of this is held together by Francis Mcdormand in a wonderfully understated performance. Her eyes speak volumes as she makes her way from one town to the next, keeping her personal grief at bay while lending her ear to others. Special mention must also go to David Strathairn who is the supporting actor with the most screen time. They share a brief, but alluring chemistry.
It's hard to describe what makes Nomadland so compelling. It's has a dream like quality that kept me hooked until the credits rolled. I was surprised to learn that the score is all previously released material by Ludovico Einaudi. It plays such a huge part in the feel of the film.
Ultimately I won't claim that movie gave me some extraordinary understanding of the nomadic life. It is about the feeling of belonging to a community and a window to peek into moments of their lives. These are sometimes tragic, sometimes hopeful, and everything in between. It’s a movie that stirs your heart with every frame, whether it’s a lonely drive across the extensive landscape, the travails of living pay check to pay check, the tolls this life can take on the strings that once tethered you to your family or the candid conversations with strangers who can turn into friends.
My takeaway was the only thing that is immutable, is that no place is a permanent home. You can stay as long as you like until you move on. It doesn't matter if it's the road that takes you to the next town or the road that takes you to the place where we will all get together again, no matter where we all began.]]>
Fast forward to 32 years later. I have a son of my own just shy of age 3. A couple of years ago when we first brought Alexa into our home, she was frequently called upon to pacify him with endless renditions of Baby Shark. His first attempts to talk to her usually sounded like “Ashee”. As the months went by and his words got clearer much to our delight, he managed to activate her by himself a couple of times. He wasn’t speaking full sentences then, so the net effect was Alexa was left hanging or anything she was playing ended up getting interrupted. Still the pulsing ring of light delighted him.
A few more months went by. He knew that Alexa was capable of so much more. He just didn’t possess the skills to get her to do his bidding yet. He tried anyway and in what was a proud moment for any parent in 2020 he managed get her to play Baby Shark without any intervention by us. This was the beginning of a new adventure.
The months flew by. Along with a rapid expansion in his linguistic abilities he also began to develop a taste for the same 5 - 6 songs. The combination of these two meant that we often found him sneaking into the room, asking Alexa to play the song he wanted and proceeding to dance like no one was watching. And when the song was over, promptly commanding her to play the same song again. It was cute the first time. But delight was quickly beginning to give way to irritation.
Thankfully, Alexa came with her version of a deaf switch. Pressing a little button disabled her from accepting voice commands and she expressed her displeasure with a red ring of light. When the song repetitions got too much for us to bear, we disabled her when he wasn’t looking and gave him some long-winded explanations about how “Alexa was angry with him and so she wasn’t going to listen to him for a while”. Bless Amazon for this killer feature.
Kids as we know have senses that are far sharper than we realize. It didn’t take long for him to notice that our hands were hovering over Alexa far too often before she got angry with him. It wasn’t long before he was pressing the button himself before talking to her. Lacking any kind of biometrics to disable her we realized that we just had to accept the situation as it stood. Short of shutting her off and not being able to use it ourselves, this pretty much meant he could do as he pleased whenever he pleased. But it couldn’t really get worse, right?
The link between pressing the button if Alexa was red and then commanding her was now a well-established pattern. But a new interest began to emerge for him. He started loving that red ring of light. So, watching the light go on and off by pressing the button was a new game. Yet there was one more level of control that we hadn’t envisioned yet. He had now decided that if he wasn’t the one commanding Alexa, she must always remain in her red state. I imagine, she looked better to him with her red halo that her usually dull grey self.
This meant that we couldn’t give her voice commands from any distance away either. If we wanted to use Alexa the way she was designed, we had to walk all the way over, command her and disable her promptly to avoid him overriding our command. Which is the most inconvenient way to use it. So, we don't talk much to her these days. She has a new master.
And that is the story of how our toddler took control over Alexa.
]]>Mention AC today and you would elicit a groan from more than an insignificant minority. As a fan of the series, I don’t try to argue my still burning love for it. No one can take that away.
The groans from a certain perspective are valid. The formula hasn’t veered significantly from one instalment to the next. For a series that began 14 years ago with almost 10 major titles to its name, its fundamental mechanics largely remain the same. And yet every new instalment manages to keep pace or outsell previous instalments. All valid criticism aside, no one can deny, that with Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft had created something special.
I remember watching that awe inspiring CG trailer from E3 2006 unsure of what to expect from the actual game. That first game was rough around the edges, but it was unlike anything I had experienced before. Assassin’s Creed 2 is what many consider a deliverance on the initial promise. Players loved the lead character of Ezio and the many improvements over the first game. Jesper Kyd’s unforgettable score elevated the game to a whole new level and signalled the beginning of a major franchise.
After finishing Valhalla, I began to think about why I have really stuck with the series for as long as I have.
There is the narrative foundation of it all. The ever fascinating assassin's vs templar saga continues to drive things forward while allowing for each game's individual character arcs. The modern underpinnings of the story were never very interesting and have been de-emphasised over the years. But it has allowed Ubisoft to vary the geographical and historical settings across its instalments to great effect.
The history brings with it a host of interesting characters from their timelines and I mostly loved Ubisoft's way of tying them together with the story and the protagonist. As the franchise has grown to encompass multiple studios working on it, the attention to detail lavished is probably rivalled only by the likes of someone like Rockstar. And they do this every couple of years. I am glad they moved away from the yearly cycle as the number of hours I needed to see them through began to get overwhelming.
While some say that nothing much has changed over the years I think everything that has changed has been more than enough for it to feel fresh every time. If I really think about it, Ubisoft can't be faulted for trying enough to switch things up. The location, characters and historical narrative, changes with every single instalment. I also find the characters to be consistently well written.
They gave us flying apparatus through Da Vinci and wonderful naval combat in Black Flag. Combat became meatier for better or worse and we even got light settlement building. They tugged back and forth on layering RPG style systems into the game. We got guns in one instalment and your own little squad in another. They've given us multiple main characters and a whole host of tiny changes over the years.
While some might not find this enough, a lot of players today also feel that these changes are too many. That all this takes away from what it means to be an Assassin's Creed game. This is probably true but can you really sustain a series of this frequency for as long as they have without any real changes. I know FIFA sells by the truckloads every single year but I don't think that could work here.
For me, just knowing the fact the I will get to see a brand new location and immerse myself in a whole new narrative when the next game comes out is enough to keep me easily satisfied for a couple of decades more. Or at least until I become physically and mentally incapable of playing games of this magnitude. To reproduce the oft quoted words. "It is more than the sum of it's parts"
]]>This was the first time my 2.5-year-old would attempt a climb of any significant height and I was dreading an outcome where I would have to carry him from time to time. He aced his first attempt and in what was a bit of an embarrassment for us my senior mom and son together made their way to the top without pause, while me and my wife had to take a few breaks as we huffed and puffed our way to the top.
There is something about those simple Buddhist structures that exude waves of peace. There were not too many visitors, so we were afforded some measure of silence as I pondered how so many centuries ago craftsmen managed to carve out these expansive spaces and intricate patterns out of monolithic rocks.
Amidst all these beautiful forms, function was never forgotten. The caves are designed to maximize the utility of natural light while remaining cool on the inside. There was even a hole which provided access to drinking water.
Whenever I stand among places like this, I begin to imagine what it would feel like to have breathed and lived in an age like that.]]>
More than half of the languages spoken by India’s 1.3 billion people may die out over the next 50 years, scholars said on Thursday, calling for a concerted effort to preserve the tongues spoken by the nation’s endangered tribal communities.
This got me thinking about how inherently multilingual Indians are compared to most other countries in the world. Again, I am not referring to the total number of languages which is still an overwhelming number in the hundreds. I am referring to how our circumstances easily let us learn multiple languages.
The other revelation when I was thinking about is that despite Hindi being the national language for most practical intents and purposes, we are an English first country.
Perhaps, this is all a legacy of colonial rule and the heavy industrialization that began during the British reign. Whatever the reason may be, we still might be the only ones who so freely mix multiple languages in the scope of a single conversation.
]]>As is the case with most people including me, when we say that we are a fan of a series we end up getting attached in some way to the characters. As the seasons progress, we begin to choose our favorites. We give ourselves over to the created reality of the show and start rooting for characters like we know them in real life.
Spoilers Ahead for those who have not watched the Season 5 finale
Canadian actor Cas Anvar who plays Alex the pilot of the Rocinante was a valuable part of this ensemble cast. The Expanse is also a show that makes a multiracial crew of characters work so well together. While Amos is my personal favorite, Alex with his raspy voice and endearing way of talking to the ship was also a fan favorite.
When news of an investigation into the actor, for sexual misconduct and assault became known and the subsequent news, that he would not be part of the final season, many fans including me wondered how they would write him out. As the season was shot before the decision of his outing was taken, most of the season’s storyline gives no hints about his exit. And for the very first time every time I saw him onscreen, I could not help also seeing the person behind the character and the painful reasons why I would never see this character again.
At the end they decided to take him out with a simple stroke. No pun intended. They did in the best way that circumstances could afford them, and it did provide fans and the other crew members with some sense of closure.
It really made me think about how much adoration actors earn from fans and how often we equate their personalities with the roles they play on screen. When they perform derogatory acts that tarnish the image we have of them I always wonder if one can keep the reel and real-life version of the person separate. Can we ever see, a once heralded performance that made you a fan, in the same light again?
]]>Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing video games characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, and permanent death of the player character. Most roguelikes are based on a high fantasy narrative, reflecting their influence from tabletop role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.
Wikipedia
That’s the Wikipedia definition of Roguelike. A genre of games that I had traditionally stayed away from. I prefer my linear narratives and forgiving checkpoints. When Hades was announced as Roguelike in early access, I promptly forgot about it, despite the pedigree of Supergiant Games. Then it came out of early access to rave reviews. I pondered for a bit if this was the time, I should try it out. Indie game pricing eventually made it an easy decision.
I didn’t know what to expect going in. I was ready to write it off, if everything I felt about the genre turned out to be true. I am now 30 hours into it and it easily managed to subvert all my expectations. It is confounding to me how I was able to devote this much time to playing the same gameplay play loop endless number of times and yet find it all so fresh. Tied to this is something Supergiant have always done well. A wonderfully wrought narrative brought to life by great writing and a wonderful cast of voice actors.
As I kept playing it, I realized that even if I dissociated the word Roguelike from the game, it’s a brilliant feat of game design to make playing the same sequence of encounters interesting for so long as I did. If this is an example of what the genre can do, I think I am ready to open up my horizons to more roguelikes.
]]>I never paid much attention to game remakes, because I felt that it had become a prevailing trend among publishers to extract dollars from older properties. However, when Hangar 13 announced the remake of what I consider a personal favorite, since I got into gaming, I paid attention.
They released a couple of stunning screenshots with their initial announcement and I thought, if the game really looked like that, it might be worth playing for the graphics alone. The thing about older games, especially one that is almost 2 decades old, is that no matter how well you may have loved it in its time, they don’t usually hold up well.
The original game came out around the time of the far more popular GTA 3 which featured a proper open world filled with interesting things to do. Mafia had an open world but it mainly existed to support its story. A memorable story that took you through the life of a cab driver turned gangster. In my experience it was also a tough game, with beautiful set pieces and terrible checkpoints.
The announced remake was to be faithful to the story but with updated combat, a revised script and a complete visual overhaul. Almost like making a whole new game. Open world games have gone big these days. Games like The Witcher, Assassin’s Creed, GTA and Red Dead Redemption have open worlds filled to the brim with quests and activities, easily stretching out to 100s of hours of game play for completionists. In most respects this is considered a good thing. More game time per dollar.
Mafia Definitive Edition stays true to the original. It’s open world is the set dressing for its story. There is a separate mode called Free Ride, that lets you drive freely around in the city. Otherwise, there is no attempt to pander to the expectations of modern open world games. And frankly, I was rather glad for it.
I am a much older gamer than when I first played Mafia. Leisure time these days, is at a premium. Even though game play is important to me, I’m equally invested in the stories that are told through games. As much as I loved to play The Witcher 3 and experience it’s well written stories, making it to the end of its narrative was exhausting. Though I played several side missions and did enjoy them they often waylaid me on the way to my main objective. All that time lost was also in some way, at the expense of other games.
That’s not to say that this new Mafia doesn’t pay attention to it’s open world. Hangar 13 lavished an astonishing amount of detail on the architecture and the cars moving about the city. The lighting is phenomenal, and whatever solution they used to render building reflections on glass panes and water puddles on the road are something to write home about. The cars handle just they way cars of the era might be expected to and there is great attention to paid to the cutscenes as well.
There are modern game play updates like the cover based shooting, but by and large everything else remains the same. There is a more forgiving checkpoint system and what might be considered, as rather simple gun play. It all worked perfectly fine for me. I loved just driving around from one mission to the next marveling at the architecture and enjoying the set pieces. And everything took just enough time for me to feel a sense of joy on completion.
While some twists don’t have the same impact because its essentially the same story, everything else felt just as glorious as when I played this 18 years ago. A remake that stays true to its roots. Some who may never have played the game before, might be disappointed by its sparse take on an open world, but I am glad they stuck to this. Sometimes we just need to stop and stare, to soak in the beauty of a game’s world. We needn’t always be drawn to do the bidding of its citizens.
]]>Dreams are one of life’s most important biological phenomenon. I am here, not referring to the metaphorical dreams like “I want to be a millionaire someday”. I am talking about the ones that come to you only in your sleep. Though they may sometimes be influenced by your state of mind they are often quite nonsensical, sometimes scary, sometimes erotic, sometimes causing boundless happiness and sometimes an incredible mashup of all the above.
The characters in these dreams, often but not always are familiar to us. They are picked from our own lives. The fun part though is the selection makes no favors to who gets chosen for us. They are sometimes those we have not met for years. I find it remarkable that the dream generator chooses to pick people from oldest recesses of our memory. Its like being forced to go on adventure with a person whether you wanted to or not.
I was thinking about this because we are no longer actually free to meet up with people. Not because some law forbids us. Because we are afraid to catch the virus or unwittingly give it to someone else.
Dream guests are the perfect kind of guests in these times. They are welcome not matter how long we have been out of touch, they do not overstay their welcome, and they present no risk of viral transmission. They only exist in your very own dream quarantine bubble.
]]>I first stumbled upon the work of Mario Miranda at the beautiful Reis Magos fort in Goa. At the art gallery I found myself in awe of the complicated and funny stories that emerged from his painting or caricature style sketches as some might call them. I came to know more about him on a subsequent visit to the Houses of Goa museum. Adjacent to the gallery was a shop selling some merchandise that Featured his artwork. That was where I purchased his first diary The Life of Mario 1951. Once I went back to Pune, I never really got around to reading it.
So, I started reading a few pages of the diary only this year and they were really something special. For some reason I stopped midway and I thought about checking if there were more books by him, like other years in the series. As it turned out there were two diaries 1949 and 1950 that were published after the 1951 diary. This was finally a chance to read them all in the order that they should be read.
They are vignettes of daily life with his friends in the village of Loutolim, with wry observations of people and activities in the 1950s. The sketches are masterfully done with some bitingly funny commentary on regular occurrences like a church mass or even eating out with his friends. Caricature is a tough form of art to master and Mario’s caricatures are incredible for someone who never had any formal education in art.
Going through all three of his diaries makes you yearn for simpler times when the pace of life was slow and there was incredible joy in the little things. Most of his days were spent meeting up with friends and relatives, eating and drinking at their favourite restaurants, playing cards and charades, and doing activities that most 25s years olds would not be doing in modern times. There is no doubt that being born into an aristocratic family afforded him a life that may have been more luxurious and easier going than most.
However, that is not what is reflected in his books. I simply felt that I was one among his group of friends that were a part of three years of his diaries making the most of their youth not by trying to achieve the extraordinary but merely making the most of every day.
]]>Journalist Rajat Ubhaykar’s book describing his journey to the extremes of India via trucks is one of the best books I read this year. Even the thought of attempting such an audacious journey is one that would never cross our minds. The author here spent months doing just that.
When we think of trucks, it is not typically an image that is associated with anything positive. Those hulking machines that annoy us when we drive down highways, or the disreputable nature of the human beings that drive them are the primary associations most people make with trucks.
Rajat’s book does not attempt to sway your mind with too much of his own commentary on the state of these things. The book is above all a driver adjacent account of his entire experience written with honesty and care.
Ecommerce has changed so much about the way we shop in the last decade. Trucks are at the heart of this change and yet we have so little respect for the humans who drive them.
The book let me see so many things in a new light. Truck drivers everyday face innumerable odds in getting from one destination to the next. Dealing with corruption, the threat of robbery and owners who are trying to extract the most value per mile from their trucks are just some of the issues they face. They are cogs in a vast and complex machinery of the road transport system of India.
Adding to their woes are the months they spend away from their families to be able to earn a decent living in this profession. Through the drivers and their journeys across distinctive regions of India it also showed me how deeply, different cultures can affect humans who are in the same profession.
This is a book that does not just relate the lives of the truckers but takes you on a unique cultural journey as experienced through their eyes.
]]>Even the most optimistic of optimists would agree it has been a terrible year. Considering what others have gone through I have come through this relatively unscathed. A trip to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference and another week that I was to spend in New York with my cousins. That was the extent to which some plans did not work out for me. I was lucky to secure a new job in the middle of the pandemic, where so many are losing jobs or facing pay cuts My family and me have been relatively safe through the ordeal so far. Relative to the circumstances of so many others I would say it has been as good as it can possibly be. However, with nothing much to do outside, I have been reflecting on the past and when I think about the last decade it has been pretty great.
It is funny that a thing like a visa can be taken for granted by so many. Yet towards the tail end of the year, I got a visitor’s visa to the US for the next 10 years. It would enable me to make 4 trips there over the next decade. Trips that were the highlights of my decade.
In February of this year I took my first trip to the US for my uncle’s second wedding. The wedding was on a cruise ship which was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. 7 days of lounging around, eating excessive food and just watching the ocean go by. Considering how precarious a cruise ship vacation will be considered in the future I am glad to have had this experience.
This was the year I left my job at Ubisoft to join an indie studio that was to be my workplace for the next 8 years. I learnt so many amazing things, met some incredible people and had so many of my life altering experiences in the entire time that I spent there.
If I had to choose one year as the best of the decade, this would be the one. It was the year that I had one of the best trips of my life. It started with the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco which itself was an incredible experience. However, I also had a chance to walk across the iconic Golden Gate bridge have a ton of fun with friends and also manage to spend a weekend with my cousin who just happened to move to Newport Beach in California around the time. That was not all. I spent 9 days in Peru before heading back home. My dream of visiting Machu Pichu that had begun almost 13 years ago when I first read about it had finally come true.
However, the most important thing to happen that year was that I first met the girl who was to become my wife.
I got married this year. Without doubt a significant event in anyone’s life. But everything about it was magical. The time before the wedding, a mini bachelor party and the honeymoon trip after.
Another conference to the US and while this was a much shorter trip with not many people accompanying me, it was still a fun trip and I met some nice people. I love amusement parks and this one let me go to California’s Great America.
I had seen those videos of baby turtles coming out of the sand and making their way towards the ocean. This was the first time I experienced it at Velas beach in Maharashtra.
In keeping with the tradition of trying to do a longer trip around the time of our wedding anniversary we went to Bhutan. A magical little country so close to our borders, it was a refreshing trip in every possible sense. The incredible natural beauty, the warmth of its people and its commitment to keep things that way were an important lesson how a small country has made conscious choices to maintain their heritage.
I only used to give a passing glance to news about unrest and other goings on in Kashmir until I decided that I must go there for a trip. I was still unsure, and it seemed like I was reading regular articles about trouble in the state right up until I was scheduled to leave.
I am so thankful I decided to go. It is without doubt one of India’s most beautiful places. A place with wars fought over it. I not only felt safe there we had a great time talking to and socializing with the people of the region, a tourism dependent region that has been devastated by the continual unrest.
It is also the year we knew we were going to have a baby
A long due family trip to Uttarakhand with Mom and Grandmom was special because it was the only trip we had done, with just the 3 of us. It is home to one of my favourite writers Ruskin Bond. We missed seeing him at a bookstore visit by all of 20 minutes. Still I consoled myself by buying a bunch of his signed books.
The other highlight of the year, the decade and perhaps future decades as well was the birth of my son. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Another year. Another trip. This was our craziest one yet. My cousin’s destination wedding on a small island named Isla Mujeres off the coast of Mexico. Making it all the way there with an 8-month-old kid in tow was an adventure by itself.
Somehow it all worked out. A sunset wedding on a beach is a magical sight and the baby was on his best behaviour throughout 😋
]]>I see so many videos of toddlers watching content on the TV or the phone. They don’t just watch the said content with rapt attention but are also able to manipulate the phone screen to do things like watch the next video. Our son who is almost 2 does not possess this ability. He may occasionally say things like “Put a song on the TV” but because we never let him use a phone or use it as something to distract him he isn’t particularly attracted to devices. I don’t write about this to indicate that we are a holier than thou kind of parents.
However making this choice has important consequences. It means that to a certain extent his eyes aren’t exposed to screens for longer than necessary. I have seen other kids his age throw fits of rage when the device is attempted to be taken away from them. Though my son sometimes gets a hold of the phone and attempts to use the touchscreen, he never protests when I snatch it away from him.
The other most important consequence is that because we have decided that no matter how cranky he gets the phone will not be used as end all to appease him, it forces us to get creative with how we chose to distract him and get him to eat his food or go to sleep. I find myself asking him questions, making up ridiculous stories, playing some songs on Alexa, dancing like a clown or simply encouraging him to keep doing things that make him light up with happiness. It’s demanding of our time and requires an infinite amount of patience but some of my most joyful moments have come from these interactions with him.
He is growing fast and will get more opinionated as time moves on. One day we may not be able to keep him away from the gadgets, but until then I will continue to enjoy these precious moments and for parents who still haven’t given in to the phone it’s not too late. These memories are forever.
]]>This post might seem strange coming from the father of a kid who is barely two. But I don’t have to wait for my son to grow up in order to predict what is to come. He is at an incredibly adorable age when even his tantrums can seem endearing. For better or worse he is completely dependent on his parents for everything. At this age this is what we crave for. The fact that you can be there for them no matter what. When he says something new or performs a new kind of activity, you are there to appreciate and cheer him on.
You are also the one he runs to when lightning and thunder scare him and he just needs to bury his face in your chest to assuage his fears. It’s an incredible feeling that only a parent will ever experience and understand. The love one has for a child is matched by nothing else. Neither your spouse nor your own parents. We constantly strive to protect them from the ugliness of the world.
At the same time we also have long term goals for them. While some may have specific dreams for their children, it all boils down to a few basic things. They must evolve into independent and honest human beings. Everything else that happens in life is determined by them.
As much pride as I feel when he says something new or does something significant, some part of my heart also sinks. I realize that he is taking baby steps towards becoming an adult with independent thoughts. A day will come when he will no more be dependent on me. I won’t be the one he will turns to when he is afraid.
But accepting the current reality and what is to come is best way to be a parent. All I hope for is to build a relationship with him that makes him feel comfortable enough to talk to me when he needs someone to talk to in adulthood.
]]>As the lockdown stretches on interminably I have tried to stay sane through all of this. It’s been tough but one of the ways me and my wife have been reliving our travels is remembering the small moments that made those trips so special.
When we travel to a particular destination our primary purpose is to go see those landmarks for which we chose that particular place. While we enjoy seeing those landmarks, when we reminisce about the trip it’s often the small moments that evoke the strongest feelings. The things that often bring a smile to our faces were completely unexpected occurrences.
It’s been a fun and pleasurable exercise for us thinking about all of those moments from our trips. These memories are not triggered by seeing a photo from the trip, they just come to us spontaneously.
It’s sometimes a tiny little place where we ate something special. A place where we stood together and enjoyed the silence. An unforgettable conversation with someone new. Sometimes it’s the hustle of travel as well, when we were trying to get somewhere on time. Sometimes it’s when we lost the way and discovered the unexpected.
]]>Tales From The Loop is an 8 part sci fi series based on the art books by artist Simon Stålenhag. It’s hard to explain the genre of his artwork. It’s certainly sci fi but so utterly unique that whenever I come across his images on the internet they are instantly recognizable as his.
The TV series is a great evolution of that work. It’s a sci fi show at heart but the sci fi is just used as a device to explore human emotions and relationships. At this it does an incredible job. There are a couple of veteran actors who bring a great amount of nuance to their performances. The youngsters are great as well. The show is a slow burn. It is beautiful to look at with shots that linger for long stretches without dialog, just focusing on the characters and their emotions.
Each episode tells it’s own story with the focus on one central character. However they all exist within the same world, one where a machine called The Loop produces mysterious and unexpected effects when people interact with various objects in the town. The episodes are however connected thanks to the appearance of characters that sometimes get their own standalone episode.
This was a very interesting series that kept us captivated throughout. Every frame begs to be studied while watching. It’s pace is much slower than many would be used to. As such it might not work for everyone, but for me that was something that worked in it’s favor. For the kind of intimate human stories the show is trying to tell it’s pacing felt exactly right. And it also manages to have enough surprises up it’s sleeve as well. Most stories are on the melancholic side and might make it a difficult watch during these times. However they are all ultimately infused with hope and teach us that acceptance of loss is sometimes the best way forward.
]]>The quietness on the street outside my window is incredible. This is exactly the way I felt the first time that I visited Switzerland. I truly learnt what the phrase pin drop silence means. It’s the kind of silence many people outside of our country take for granted. This image is from my trip to Switzerland more than a decade ago
Wildlife is venturing out into urban areas. I saw a video of deer spotted on the streets somewhere in North India and felt truly surreal. While I didn’t experience something quite so dramatic the cries of the birds have amplified. Parrots have begun to appear quite frequently in the trees near my balcony
My son who demanded to go out of the house at least thrice a day somehow adjusted to this new reality of the house being his only playground within just a day. I was genuinely surprised to see this. I have been crankier than him about not being able to go out.
]]>Sep 3rd, 2002
Dear Arpita,
I know I keep asking you the same question, but doesn’t every mail start this way anyways? How’ve you been? It’s been a while since I last heard from you. I don’t know when we went from an email at the end of every day, to a weekly thing, then a fortnightly thing. I was still ok with the monthly mail. The quarterly updates feel like the last straw though. It seems like I will only hear from you at the beginning of a new season. The monsoon this year shows no signs of ending, and as I sit here writing you this email the windowpanes reflect the lightning and the sound of the torrential rain overpowers the music from my headphones.
How eagerly we waited for the rains to give us respite from forty-degree centigrade summer days. Now the farmers weep as the rains wash away the produce that was ready for harvesting. The rain gods pay no heed to their cries. Instead they send more rain to wash away their tears. I too have grown more melancholic with each passing day. It’s not because of the rain. Its because I haven’t heard from you in over three months now.
The worst part is that your last email completely ignored the fact that there was anything wrong between us. You spoke about work and your life and how well things were going for you but said nothing about the reduced frequency of your mails. I don’t think I have it in me to send you an email of this length again. I would prefer that you make it clear to me and sever our connection once and for all.
Regards
Yash
Sep 4th, 2002
Dear Yash,
Life is great here. I went to the store today after shopping for the last three months through an online delivery service. It was a very refreshing experience. Just watching something as mundane as people queuing up at the checkout counter brought me joy. I missed people. I also miss you. This may come as surprise to you, me replying to your email so soon.
It’s not that I didn’t wish to reply sooner. Every time my hands hover over the keys I freeze up. You may be lamenting the extended monsoon, but here it feels like there are no seasons. Only an endless, unrelenting winter. Yet I continue to endure it because the answers I seek can only be found here. The reasons I never mentioned anything about our relationship was because I was afraid to breach that topic at all. I didn’t have it in my heart to end it. I never had a good enough reason to. I still don’t.
I had hoped that you would be the one to dump me for any reason of your choosing. I rather have you think of me as a cruel, cold hearted bitch and kick me out of your life. You deserve better than me. Your understanding and patience over the last few months have really let me know how profound your love truly is. That’s why I feel that there is someone out there more worthy of your love than me. If this was the last time that you were going to email me I hope that this email helps you understand things better.
Love
Arpita
Sep 4rd, 2002
Dear Arpita,
When I saw your email in my inbox I checked twice to see if an older email had somehow resurfaced to the top of the list. I haven’t been this happy in a long time. Everything you said somehow makes sense to me, and yet nothing makes sense. You put the onus of ending this relationship on me. You make it sound like you are cruel person. You know I can’t end it this way and neither can you. We love each other too much to take this kind of an action.
I know I’ve asked you a million times but you can still try telling me why you had to leave. To a place so far away that seasons cease to exist. If you want me to end this I deserve a better explanation than, you aren’t worthy for me. This has nothing to do with love. I need logical answers now.
Regards
Yash
Oct 3rd 2002
Dear Arpita,
The silent treatment again. I had some hope that I would finally get some answers after your last email. As much as it pains me to do this, this truly is the last time I contact you.
Thanks for all the memories.
Love
Yash
January 2nd, 2003
Dear Yash,
I am happy to share with you that I may have finally found what I came here for. If this is something that matters to you, you can continue reading. Before that I wanted to let you know that it breaks my heart that all this had to come at the cost of our relationship and I will feel the pain of it for the rest of my life.
Do you remember when we first met. You summoned the courage to ask me or should I say had the audacity to ask me if I was seeing someone before you could ask me anything else. It was only the third time I had seen you. Well it just wasn’t you that was noticing someone at the medical store. Remembering the moment when it all began for us always fills me with joy.
My father who passed away a few months after I met you was a man full of secrets. He never revealed too many of them until two years after his death. He could have gone the old way of leaving me a letter to discover among his belongings. He somehow found a way to send me an email that was scheduled for exactly two years after his death.
As if seeing it any sooner would have terrible consequences. He was right and he went to great lengths to make sure this happened exactly at the time he wished. Now is the time for you to suspend your beliefs.
Father and mother came here thirty years ago. They told me they had lived here since three generations, but they were from a place far away from here. They were refugees. They were found helpless by a researcher at a facility near the North Pole. He took them in promising to tell no one of their presence.
That was the normal part of the story. After that my father’s mail took a turn for the truly bizarre. It was strange enough that they ended up at the North Pole, but what my father meant by refugees was they were refugees from another planet. A planet like ours that was several generations ahead of us.
The aurora borealis that occurs at the North Pole obscured their ships movements so that they could escape undetected from the planet. They had to because pregnancy was a crime punishable by death. A planet where population was regulated because it could not sustain any more humans. As hard as this was to believe I still wasn’t sure why he had waited two years after his death to tell me this. I was old enough to understand.
He told me the name of the researcher who had found them. I knew I had to go there if I wanted to ascertain if this wasn’t an elaborate hoax played by someone who wasn’t my father. I have been staying here in Greenland trying to track down this man for the past year. I finally got in touch with him and made a plan to meet him tomorrow.
You must now realize that if I had told you the true purpose of my trip, you would never have let me go. A fool’s errand you would have called it. You know me better than most. I can’t let things go. Just like I couldn’t let you go.
Its late and I must prepare for my meeting with the man tomorrow. The only lie I told you was that I was going on a work trip from which I would be back soon. I just stretched the definition of soon until it broke your heart. Sorry.
Love
Arpita
Twenty years since I last came here. When the cost of a haircut was in the single digits. The salon had been uprooted from its original corner and made it’s way across to the other end, with 2 stops in between. After this, there would be nowhere left to go. The capacity of the salon had since grown from one to two. I wondered if the staff count had doubled as well.
I was without a means of transport for the day and had to go somewhere close for a trim. What I considered a decent saloon all those years ago, now appeared shady and rundown. I entered with a little trepidation. I was the only customer and as soon as I entered the barber smiled with recognition. He was the same barber from two decades ago. His signature limp left me with no doubt as to his identity. How could he possibly have recognized me from all that time ago? He must have served thousands of different customers since I last went there.
“How have you been sir? It’s been a while hasn’t it,” he said. Luckily the conversation did not proceed into uncomfortable territory like where had I been cutting my hair all these years. I sat down to get my hair cut. He sprayed my hair with water and I began to settle in when a burly gentleman sat down in the vacant chair next to me. He was bald but possessed a substantial beard. The kind of beard I would never achieve even if I went two decades without shaving.
“The other guy isn’t in yet, so I’ll be right with you after I’m done with him.” the barber said to him. He replied with a grunt in acknowledgement. He pulled out a bulky phone, the kind you only saw two decades ago and began to talk.
“Hey,” he said. “I just called to confirm if you took care of yesterday’s thing”. “Our clients are getting desperate as the date is getting closer. You and I both know that this whole thing has just been blown out of proportion. But our window of opportunity is closing and we need to make as much as we can from these suckers before they realize the truth.” This conversation caught my attention. While it didn’t sound like an illegal enterprise I sensed there was something shady going on. He also didn’t seem to care about strangers overhearing his conversation.
He continued “Remember, we only have a month left. We need at least five more clients to be able to hit our targets. Make up something if you need to.”
I wasn’t exactly focusing on what the barber was doing and he had cut my hair much shorter than I had wanted. It was better to wrap this up before things got worse. I looked at myself in the mirror. I said to the barber “I think I will get a shave as well” The other guy glanced towards me, but he was still in the middle of his conversation and started talking once more.
“Yeah I’m at the barber.” he said. “The other guy isn’t in yet so I’m waiting till he finishes with another customer. I don’t mind waiting. We found so many of our clients right here anyway.”
My curiosity began to get the better of me. Directly asking him what this business was that he was engaged in was out of the question.
“Hold on” he said to his partner. “Let me step outside for a minute. This was my chance to get some info on him from the barber.
“Hey, who is that guy? And what kind of work is he involved in, that lets him find clients in a hair salon.” I said
The barber replied “Oh, that guy. He and his buddy run a software business.”
“OK” I said. “But how does he find his clients in your salon?” The barber said “People, often come here not to just get some styling done. They also share life’s joys and worries with me. These days, as the end of the decade approaches all these businesses that depend on computers are worried about this thing called Y2K”
“What?” I said. I was well aware of that problem from the year 2000. Because of the way computer systems had been coded there were major problems anticipated to occur when the clock hit January 1st 2000. Ultimately very few major issues ended up happening.
I snapped back to the present and said to the barber “That was a problem from 20 years ago. I never heard of anything like this anticipated for this year.”
“What do you mean sir?” he said. “Isn’t it supposed to be an urgent matter before the year 2000 arrives.” I looked at him with a quizzical expression. I had never known him to be the kind of guy who would fool around with a customer. He continued “These guys who are worried about their systems failing, I connect them with the guy you just saw step outside. If they end up making a deal I get a nice commission. Works out well for both of us.”
“But its the year 2019” I said. “The Y2K problem was blown out proportion.” He looked at me now with a strange expression. He pulled out a newspaper and handed it to me. It was dated Dec 2nd 1999. Was somebody pulling an elaborate prank on me? The bald guy came back in. I peered closely at his phone. It looked like a classic Nokia phone with a monochrome display. I whipped out my phone to check the date. The same date as the newspaper 2nd Dec 1999. A sense of panic began to rise within me. I asked the barber to finish up. I paid him and stepped outside.
Everything looked just like it always did. I pulled out my cellphone and looked at the date again. 2nd Dec 2019. I ran back into the salon. The bald guy had settled in for his shave. The barber asked me “Did you leave anything behind sir?”
“No” I said. “Can you show me the newspaper again?” He handed it over and it was the same date as before. I checked my cellphone again. 2nd December 1999. I looked at the other guy and said to him “That’s a nice looking phone. Which model is that?” He said “It’s a Nokia 5110. It just launched earlier this year. Super compact” I searched for it on my phone browser. It had indeed launched in 1999. This could no longer be a prank.
I exited and looked up at the board showing the Salon’s name. The paint had almost fallen away. It was covered with grime and dust but I managed to make out its name “A Cut in Time”
]]>She missed the motor pools, she shared on the way back from work, until just a decade ago. Ever since personal pods had become the preferred means of transport, she wondered if she was the only one who had ever enjoyed them. She pressed her face to the fiberglass that covered her pod, to try and catch the eyes of others travelling on parallel lines. The pods however, whizzed by too fast for her to make any real contact. It was at the interchanges where she had the only real chance to make out a face. As the years went by and the system had evolved the pod’s speed was adjusted dynamically to minimize the slowdowns or stops required at interchanges. Despite these advances, her pod still stopped at least once or twice a week at the interchange.
It was a Wednesday. She had already stopped twice this week, so she did not expect to stop today. As she got closer to the interchange, she felt her pod begin to slow down. Three days in a row. If she stopped now something was certainly off. Were the computers working correctly? Her pod came to a halt at the interchange. She looked to her right at the other pod that had also come to a halt. A man looked back at her. He waved back to her frantically. Her heart sank. Was something wrong with the pods? Was she in danger? He looked down like he was rummaging through something and held up a sign saying HEY I’M JAY. She just found herself waving back. Before she could decide what to do next, her pod began to gather speed and she was on her way back home.
This fleeting encounter was all she could think about. Was this Jay some kind of weirdo who displayed his name to anyone whose pod stopped around him? When she thought about those brief moments, she felt like his movements had been measured. Like he had planned for it. How was that possible? She went off to sleep with conflicting thoughts running through her head. The rest of her week went just the way it always did with no delays on her way to work and back. The stranger Jay continued to invade her thoughts. Monday was still the worst day of the week. The trip back as lonely and dreary as it always felt. Interchange 571 was close. She began to slow down again. Was last week’s pattern going to repeat itself? She looked around intently for any other pods that had slowed down at the interchange. She saw a pod arriving from the right. In it was a woman who looked as bored as herself. She crossed quickly. Another pod began to arrive. Before it got close enough for her to see who was in it, her pod began to move forward and cross the interchange. She looked back to try and catch a glimpse of the second pod, but she had already moved too far ahead.
Tuesday played out the same as Monday. There was no second pod. Wednesday. Exactly a week since she had seen the man named Jay. Interchange 571 again. Her pod slowed down. A pod was arriving from the right. Her pod didn’t wait for the other one to cross. It picked up speed as she crossed the interchange and proceeded home. She looked back. The pod that had arrived at interchange took a right and followed right behind her. However, she couldn’t make out much about its occupant. Privacy rules restricted the minimum distance between 2 pods. She was nearing home and the pod soon arrived at her stop. It moved downwards through the shaft and when it reached the ground, its doors opened to let her out. She stepped out and waited as the pod went back up before letting the pod that was behind her move again. It too stopped at her stop. It reached the ground and opened to let the man she knew as Jay step out. “Hi,” he said. “Please do not be alarmed.”
“How is this happening? How did we reach this point after that brief interaction from the other day?” she said.
He started with his story. “As the years have gone on privacy became the primary pillar of every new technology that ever came to be a part of our lives. There were so many that advocated for this for so many years. That is why the pod network functions the way that it does now. It is fast and efficient. Perfectly tuned to get you to your destination in the shortest time possible. Any human interaction has been eliminated from the process. I used to yearn for the days when I could see passengers on the buses or pools that I took to work. The privacy that we yearn for also comes at the cost of social interaction. A chance encounter with a stranger is a memory that can outlive the countless conversations that we have with familiars.”
“What does this have to do with me?” she said.
“I’m a security researcher at the pod tech company. Part of my job was to monitor the pod activity at interchanges on the pod network. Interchange 571 was one that was under my jurisdiction. There is a camera at the interchange that is the second layer of safety to ensure that the pod movement is safe, despite all the intelligently controlled movement that takes place. It also allows me to get a brief glimpse into the inside of moving pods when they have slowed down. You eventually began to stand out, because your face was so often pressed against the glass of the pod whenever you had stopped at an interchange. It seemed to me that you were so eagerly seeking to make contact with anyone you could at the interchange. It felt like you were maybe trying to seek out the same experience that I have begun to miss as the years have gone on. That’s when I thought I could try to somehow connect with you. I knew the time frames within which you made your journey every day. Since the network is managed by technology, the best I could do was try to plan my journey in a way that ensured I crossed the interchange at around the same time that you did. I have been trying this for the past weeks. In case you were wondering, that is why you experienced more than the usual slowdowns.”
She stepped back. She was unsure if she should be afraid or impressed with this story. The truth was despite her misgivings Jay was really the first stranger she had spoken to in a long time. He looked at her with lowered eyes and said “I can surely understand if this has begun to freak you out. I only did this with the off chance that there was somebody who felt the way that I have begun to over the years. Just say the word and I will take the next pod up. You won’t ever hear from me again.”
She looked up at a pod whizzing by, took a step forward and held out her hand. “Hi, Jay,” she said. “I’m Risa”
]]>I had heard a little bit about 1917. It was a war movie and on the technical side created to appear like one continuous shot. That was the thing I was most curious about. We don’t watch too many movies at the theater but this sounded like something best experienced on the large screen. Going in I had two questions on my mind. Could the movie pull of this technical feat and if it did manage to pull it off would it end up being a case of all style and no substance?
They did pull it off, and how? It is truly an outstanding achievement. Because I knew this about the movie going in I was scrutinizing every frame of the movie, waiting for the illusion to break. It didn’t. Not just that, everything else about the movie works just as well. The rousing score, the spectacular set pieces, the cast and direction. To tell this story they did not necessarily need do the one shot take. The very fact that they set this direction from the beginning and were ready to commit to making this audacious objective come true, blew my mind.
Not everyone who goes to the movies pays attention to elements like cinematography. The wizard behind the camera here is Roger Deakins of Blade Runner 2049 fame. The amount of advance preparation that would have gone into some of it’s sequences is difficult to comprehend. It reminded me so much of what I felt after watching Mad Max: Fury Road. A true artistic achievement the likes of which may never be attempted again.
]]>One of the things I wanted to do in the new year was write a little bit about every game that I manage to complete this year. I bought a bunch of games at the end of last year in the Steam summer sale. A Plague Tale: Innocence was the first one I completed this year. I had a very brief notion of what the game was about but seeing it nominated for the Outstanding Story Rich Steam award was what piqued my interest.
Before I began playing I was expecting something along the lines of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Narrative driven with an equal dose of combat. This game is equal parts stealth with a dose of simplified combat. Crafting is integral to the game. It’s simple to perform and core to the gameplay. The game has you moving along the predetermined story thread while solving a few puzzles along the way. Combat is via a sling and a rock. A bunch powers get added to that as you progress through the game. What I loved about the combat was that it managed to do so much with just a simple mechanic. Over the course of my 13 hr play through I felt a real sense of progression in the combat. There were enough set piece and tense moments that were all built around the sling mechanic. I wasn’t sure how they would do a boss battle but the grand finale was pretty amazing in it’s execution both from a mechanical and its sheer beauty.
The beauty in this game comes from the environmental details and other aspects. A ruined yet beautiful countryside. Fires amidst the darkness. But the most striking aspect of its visuals is its rendering of rat hordes. Reading about the custom engine that the game uses I learnt that they designed to be able render 5000 rats on screen at the same time. This is crucial to the game experience and they have done an incredible job of it. The aforementioned boss battle is a sight to behold thanks to what I can only describe as rat rendering technology.
On the story front the voice actors have done a credible job. However the actual plot itself didn’t make the greatest impact on me. Sometimes the gameplay aspect of a narrative game like this is what elevates the experience and for me that was what actually took me through to the end.
]]>When I came back home I got me thinking about the last time I actually went to the post office. My memory failed me. I could say for sure that it was the time before internet and email had proliferated our lives. I remember sending a letter to the USA meant going to the post office getting it weighed and affixing it with the right postage before sending it off. The stamps were just as interesting as the whole process.
These days I never send mail and the only letters filling the letter box are credit card statements and utility bills. So I was truly delighted twice in the last few months to have received 2 items that were not any of the above.
One was a thank you letter from my cousin in New York thanking me and my family for attending her wedding that happened all the way in the Mexico. It was an amazing experience to sit and read through it. When I told my cousin about it she was surprised about how long it actually took to get to us. Turns out that it was posted more than a month ago. It was certainly worth the wait. It made me miss the written letter so much. What’s worse it made me realise that I don’t even write personal emails. They took the effort to write and mail a personal letter to all their guests.
The other surprise was when I had signed up for a very cool concept by author Jenna Matecki. She is a nomadic writer who lives in different cities for a few months at a time. She ties up with local artists to send an illustrated postcard to anyone who signs up for it. It’s free and you can sign up no matter where in the world you are from. I had signed up and totally forgotten about it. So it was a nice surprise to find a postcard from Mexico in my mailbox. It was beautifully illustrated and such a pleasure to read. When I messaged the author about it she said that postcards have arrived in India even before they arrived in the US. It’s a real mystery how the global postal network actually works.
]]>I’m returning from a weekend trip out of the city. The air has begun to lose it’s freshness. I begin to wonder. When we think of heading out of the city, what we are looking to do is escape the limits of the city. As the years have gone on however, I realize that we need to travel farther and farther to escape the city. As even more years pass us by I wonder if the limits of city will ever end. Will we ever be able to escape it’s confines.
What is the reason for this? Am I the only one who feels this way?
Is our burgeoning population finding it harder to secure a place to live within the city. Is there truly no place left in our city? The vast number of homes lying vacant in the city would indicate otherwise. Is the average family being priced out of the city?
Or is it the desire to have a house to call your own, no matter how much it burdens us for the rest of our lives. Is this collective fever dream actually turning the city into a nightmare?
]]>Having Switzerland be the first destination outside the country that I went to was a scary proposition. It was the year 2008. I was less than 2 years out of college and I was travelling alone. I had only heard about how expensive Switzerland was in general. So when I first landed there for a short work stint, I was handed my spending money upfront. I had to ration that out over the 15 days. My stay was covered separately, so I didn’t have to worry about that.
My hotel stay had breakfast included. I was initially regaled by the wide array of breads and cheeses on offer.
I spent the next five days saving money on food by buying bread and cheese at the local supermarkets. Sixth day onwards I started feeling nausea whenever I thought about food and the bread and cheese I was going to have to eat. One day it got so bad that I decided I would go out and just eat whatever I wanted (that wasn’t insanely expensive). I discovered a local resto that served some decent margarita pizzas. The first time I ordered it I had a hard time even trying to understand what were my options as a vegetarian thanks to my non-existent German language skills. But it was good inexpensive food and I had the same thing several times thereafter. There may have been other vegetarian options but procuring that information was too arduous an exercise so I just settled for the Margarita.
On another day that I went exploring I came across a McDonalds. Again just one vegetarian burger. This again tasted blissfully good. I decided from then on that the few days I had remaining I would have McDonald’s every day if I needed to. It was also when I stopped converting every price in Swiss Francs to Indian Rupees.
Over my stay there I came across several eateries that looked very interesting, that I stupidly refused to try thanks to my fear of running out of my allotment of Swiss Francs. A lifelong regret.
]]>It was a strange world she was in. A world imbued with the strangest hues and flora of the strangest design. Yet there was a strange sense of familiarity about it. The tree under which she sat and pondered about this world’s intricacies was short and stout. It had the most slender of branches, branches that could almost be passed off as leaves. Set upon these branches were scores of thick pointed leaves the weight of which caused the branches to bend towards the ground and even touch the ground at places. Like the braided hair of a woman she thought they were. The entire sky was suffused with a dull yellow color that gave the illusion of warmth but in this world the color of the sky did not affect things the way they did in her world. A perpetual fog permeated the world around her. None of the objects in this world cast any shadows. Besides the sound of her measured breathing not a single sound could she hear from anywhere in this world. There was no wind. Nothing moved unless she touched it. The framed door through which she had entered this world stood before her. She only had to proceed through it to escape this dream world and grasp reality. But it was also the door through which she had chosen to escape reality and enter a world that challenged every notion of reality she had built up over the years.
It was cold, she was alone yet she felt calm and unafraid. It was a fantastical realm yet everything had parallels with reality. She walked on through the haze the sound of her footsteps and the sound of the grass crushing under her feet magnified by the silence of everything else. The braided branch trees she saw every where. No bird nested among its branches no fruits hung of them. Where had all the birds flown away to she wondered. The sun gave life to every living thing she had been told. Yet there was no light that gave life here only the light that kept away the darkness. She walked on for a while. The grass beneath her feet grew sparser and the trees she could see became fewer. It began to brighten and the ground began to grow translucent. A few more steps and there was nothing more on the ground. It was like standing on glass floor. She was enveloped by a brilliant yellow light. That was when she realized that the light had always been coming from below the ground. That was why nothing cast shadows like she expected. After her eyes had adjusted to the brightness she began to perceive shapes and movement beneath the surface. She lay face down on the ground pressing her face as close as possible to the ground. She saw what appeared to be the same trees she had seen before moving gently this way and that their slender branches waving like tentacles of a jellyfish. One of the creatures was moving upwards heading to where she was lying down. It’s movements were so graceful she wished she could reach through the ground and touch it. The creature was now so close that only the ground separated her from it. The tree like structure formed only the upper part of its body. Below that it had a heart shaped head with hundred’s of blinking eyes set upon it. They all blinked at the same time when it looked her. The creature began to come even closer. It began to pass through the ground and came so close that the top of it brushed against her face. She tried to push her hand through the ground to touch it but the ground remained solid. The creature shrank away at this gesture and floated downwards gracefully until she could see it no more.
There was nothing more she could discover here. The door to reality called to her. She headed back through the door. She looked back one last time at this world and thought of the world that lied beneath it. A world she could only see but not touch.
]]>The Office was one of those shows that I heard a lot of my colleagues talking about over the years, but one that I never got around to watching for one reason or the other. Starting a show that has 9 seasons is a monumental task. It caught my attention again in recent months when I read an article, about how The Office and Friends are still some of Netflix’s most-watched shows. For those in India, The Office airs on Amazon Prime. 3 months and 200 episodes later I’m finally done with the series.
One thing I felt right off the bat is that the first 7 seasons with Steve Carell and the final 2 without him feel like different shows to me. That is not to say that the last 2 seasons are bad. It all comes down to how much of a show-stealer his character was. His absence in the last 2 allowed the others to shine a bit more. When I think about the show this is what felt like the essence of the show was to me.
Did I miss out on what can be considered a legitimate cultural phenomenon all these years. Oh Yeah
“That’s what she said” 😉
For all those of you who are getting nostalgic about the series there is a new podcast airing by the actresses who played Pam and Angela called The Office Ladies. Check it out. It’s a great fix if you have been missing the show
]]>When I visit a city for the first time, I always make sure to visit at least one museum. It was the last day of a short 4 day trip to Baroda and I took a solo trip to the Sayaji garden that houses both a zoo and the Baroda Museum and Picture gallery.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect on the inside but the building housing the museum with its brick facade was an inviting sight. Its size on the outside seemed normal but actually browsing through entire collection can take quite a while. It is housed on both the ground and first floors with an unexpected surprise in the basement.
For the minuscule sum of Rs 10, I wasn’t really expecting much but at the end of my 2-hour visit I was genuinely impressed by what the museum had to offer. The collection of artefacts, paintings, geological and biological specimens was vast and spanned several different cultures and time periods.
The only unfortunate aspect of it was the poor lighting that was maintained throughout the museum. It prevented me from seeing its most exquisite artefacts and paintings in detail. I found myself squinting often when I stood in front of so many of its displays. Whether this was intentional to prevent damage to the elements or a budgetary issue remains unknown to me. It was a shame nonetheless because they had some truly outstanding items on display.
This includes not just genuine items that have been acquired over the years, but reproductions based on original items as well. In the reproductions, a special mention must go the European section which had a reproduction of statues by the great Italian masters.
The most incredible sight for me though was in the Egyptian section which houses a real mummy. It was extremely well preserved and fascinating to study up close. When I looked up on it later, I learnt that Sayajirao Gaekwad III, the ruler of the city of Gujarat, bought this mummy from a museum in New York in 1895.
There was one more surprise waiting for me just before the exit. A small set of stairs leads you to a dimly lit basement area that houses a 72 feet long skeleton of a blue whale. A slow walk around it gave me genuine chills. The bones have been mounted next to those of a giraffe as well just to give you a better sense of scale. It was a perfect way to end my museum visit and it changed my perception of how good a museum in India can be.
If you are a fan of museums this one is a must-visit. Excusing the poor upkeep, its collection is one of the best I have seen even compared to museums outside of the country
Photography is not permitted inside the museum
]]>Seadregor Mageblood. The name drew puzzled expressions from strangers everywhere he travelled. Yet his face remained impassive never betraying any emotions. The cold calculating stare he perpetually maintained caused even the most inquisitive to swallow any words they might have directed towards him. A cold winter morning found Seadregor walking on the cool sand, the scent of the sea overcoming him at every step. He felt invigorated and purposeful and it also brought forth a memory from his past.
A hundred years before this day when he was only an elf of five years, he was hobbling along the path from the spring to his dwelling in the trees, carrying with him a water-filled urn. It was time to water his Cedar sapling and his pheasant who accompanied him everywhere sat calmly on his shoulder. His forest homeland of Mirkwood was a lonely place and he had little companionship to speak off in his younger years. For as long as he had known it was only him, his birth parents and the wilderness. He had been outside the forest occasionally and seen creatures of different races. They meant nothing to him. The wildlife and the forest they inhabited were all that he cared for.
The seed of the cedar was a gift to him from his parents. He nurtured it like a child making sure to caress and water it over time. On this particular day, he was alone as his parents were away on one of their frequent excursions beyond the borders of Mirkwood. A butterfly fluttered away as he began pouring the water gently over the cedar. He heard a few parakeets shrieking in the distance. A few moments later they emerged through the foliage, the resulting cacophony causing his ears to perk up. Something had disturbed the calm of the forest. Wild horses running through the forest sometimes caused this. He listened intently and made out presently the sound of several sets of hooves racing through the forest. Something was different though. Their distinctive sound told him that these were domesticated horses with shoes fitted onto them which meant humans were riding them.
The horses were getting closer but he heard a different sound now, that of branches cracking along with a rhythmic thudding sound that seemed to be heading straight towards him. A few moments later through the fog, a troll emerged. Seadregor heart began racing but he remained rooted to his spot looking up at the creature with a mixture of awe and trepidation as it continued moving in his direction. A few moments later as he continued watching it the troll simply passed over him leaving a trail of dust and a fetid odour in its wake. The horses he could tell now were only a few paces behind. He snapped out of his reverie and moved instinctively to the front of the sapling. He would never let anything happen to his cedar.
As he waited with bated breath, a dozen or so humans came riding through with spears and javelins clearly intent on taking down the troll. The presence of Seadregor distracted them but they showed no signs of slowing down. He closed his eyes and braced himself. Just when he thought his world was about to end he felt pulled sideways violently, through a short distance before he landed hard on the ground. Everything went dark. He awoke to feel water on his face and the sight of a wizened wizard looking down on him. He stood himself up trying to get his bearings. Dust hovered in the air around him. He ran back towards his sapling only to find its trampled remains. His pheasant lay on the ground feet upwards struggling to turn upright. He picked her up and caressed her gently until she let out her last breath. He felt the wizards bony hands gently grasp his shoulder as tears streamed down his face.
In a few fleeting moments of inter-racial conflict, Seadregor had lost the things that were dearest to him. For Seadregor the age of innocence had ended. For Mirkwood, it was the beginning of the end. Humans had discovered this virgin paradise and there would be no place for him in it anymore. The wizard had led him away and cared for him in his younger years. Till the end of his days, he trained Seadregor in both the skills of weaponry and the arcane. He adopted the second name of Mageblood in honour of the wizard who had saved his life. Seadregor never saw his parents again and was not to return to Mirkwood for many years. This incident from his childhood had only led him to follow one purpose in life. With the divine Melora as his witness and guide, he vowed to silently and swiftly eliminate anything that tried to harm the elements of nature again.
]]>While it might fall under the purview of invasion of privacy, I wish my phone could read my mind or at the very least understand my intent. Tapping the screen incessantly for even basic interactions feels too wasteful for me to do, all of the time. If it could just detect where my eyes were glancing and tap with the blink of my eye that would be just perfect
]]>Name one thing you wish your cell phone did for you that it currently does not.
When Dark Season 1 first came out on Netflix in 2017 I was expecting it to be a slightly darker version of Stranger Things.
What it actually turned out to be was something certainly not for kids. There were no monsters besides people themselves. Everything wrapped around the central conceit of time travel. But what made it extraordinary was how far the show was willing to push things.
It juggled time-lines and a vast number of characters with the assured confidence that viewers would be able to cope up. The twists and turns kept coming and by the end of the season I was a fan. Dark was actually far stranger than I could have imagined. It was also a lavishly mounted production with the highlight being the choice of music and tracks that were used throughout the season.
This Season introduces more characters, more revelations, weaving a more complex web this time around. Once again it manages to go even further with the time travel tropes and paradoxes. Only the soundtrack choices felt a little disappointing this time around. Peter Gabriel’s My Body Is A Cage was a powerful song for any finale. It worked well here but that amazing song has been used too much before which lessened it’s impact for me here. Still this one of the best shows on Netflix right now. Also as a suggestion for anyone planning to watch this. Keep the original German audio. The English voice somehow detracted from the mood of the show for me.
]]>In the end, she was the only one,
Because before her there were none,
The first time I laid my eyes on her,
Even the colour of her dress I failed to remember,
Many days passed by and I heard nothing,
Then she called and I knew there was something,
As our conversations got longer and longer,
I knew a year later, she was to be my forever
Based on the writing prompt
]]>If you wrote a song about your love life, what would the title be? Write the first verse
The first time I became familiar with the Chernobyl incident was the year 2007, the much-anticipated game Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl came out. At the time, however, just having started working and as a single guy with a lot of free time on his hands all I cared about was playing the game. Soaking up the atmosphere and completing its missions. Beyond that, I have no memory of me ever researching up on Chernobyl. In the years after the game came out, I never played games of the nature much. While the atmosphere it generated was extremely good, it also meant it was bleak and lonely as hell.
Enter June 2019 and I see HBO’s Chernobyl being mentioned everywhere. The thing was I never really lost interest in finding out more about what happened at Chernobyl. I just hadn’t chosen the right medium to understand it. Also, the game I was playing came out in 2007. I am more than a decade older. Perhaps I am more receptive of this kind of subject matter.
This 5 part mini-series is a must-watch for several reasons. It feels extremely authentic and well researched. From the very first episode right until its last it is relentlessly grim and uncompromising. It tries to tell its story sticking as close to what they could have established as fact. It never tries to take sides. I have never had a series show me so clearly as many aspects of a catastrophe as they have managed to do here in just 5 hours.
By the end of it, I actually understood the basics of how a nuclear reactor works. The incredible sacrifices that scientists can make to ensure that the truth can emerge. The lengths that a state and its government can go to preserve their image in the eyes of the world. All of the efforts that went into ensuring that the nuclear accident did not escalate. The lateral effects of the disaster, not just those who died but all of those who had to leave their homes at short notice, to never return. To say any more would spoil what is actually a gripping tale full of unease and tension that never lets up.
]]>The first episode “Striking Vipers” did not disappoint. Its a bold and unexpected exploration of what infidelity could actually mean in the future. Its also a great example of how deep the divide between emotional love and physical lust can be. This episode felt like classic Black Mirror, which means it gives you plenty to think about once the credits have rolled.
This was a somewhat middling episode that started out interesting. The presence of a star cast that includes Topher Grace and Andrew Scott of Sherlock fame lends some weight to the episode. By the end of it all however the end episode goes nowhere interesting and the motivation of the central character seems weak at best. An episode that never says anything meaningful. So while the performances are quite good, it leads to a very ordinary end.
The presence of Miley Cyrus added nothing of value to this episode for me. I felt like I was watching a teen pop star comedy movie of some kind. What should have at least been a strong end to the season instead left me with the feeling that shows creators have finally begun to run out of ideas.
]]>I don’t eat fish. It’s just the way I always thought of the ideal European village.
I will admit that when I first read about this podcast on The Verge article what caught my attention was Rami Malek’s association with it. The setup might seem familiar. A power blackout that begins to affect the inhabitants of a small town. The production quality is top notch and the cast of characters engaging as well. Rami does give a fine performance as the main protagonist who is also a father to two children. It took a little time to get used to this role because he plays a much younger character on his TV show Mr Robot and that was how I was visualizing him every time that I heard his voice. Learn more about the show here
]]>Once the credits for Avengers: End Game had begun to roll by, my primary feeling was one of exhaustion. As good as Marvel’s superhero movies have been I felt like I couldn’t take another one of these for a long time to come.
It also reminded me of one of my all-time favourite superhero movies. The first Spiderman starring Tobey Maguire. I very rarely watch movies twice in the theatre. The original Spiderman and Return of the King are the only ones.
Spiderman may very well be considered a product of its time but for me, it’s one of the few which holds up even today. It had the awesome visuals and the requisite set pieces that we have come to expect of all superhero movies today. It was also full of a heart and soul. A hero that looked very different from the ones that you see today.
When it comes to movies I have a rather weak memory when it comes to its individual scenes. When it comes to Spiderman despite having last watched it more than a decade ago I vividly remember so many of its specific scenes.
]]>If you fell down a rabbit hole, what do you think you’d find?
I found myself falling further and further until I landed with a thud on a bed. I looked up to see a little boy staring at me with a blank expression. I looked up. I had fallen through some kind of chimney. Why was it above a bed?
Far beneath the earth’s surface, further than we have ever tried to go, there seems to exist an underground version of our world. How do they manage to survive here? Do they get their air via the rabbit holes extending all the way to the earth’s surface? Do rabbits and underhumans as I have chosen to call them, co-operate to ensure each other’s survival?
The rabbits bring them air via their tunnels while the underhumans ensure that they have a steady supply of carrots.
]]>If you have found this message and bothered to read it in its entirety, then you and I both believe in serendipity. This message does not reveal an extraordinary secret from the past or a clue to the future. All it is is a message in a bottle. An ordinary message. It’s the fact that you found it, that is extraordinary. All I ask of you is to write your own message and pass it on to the one who will find this same bottle. We may have passed on by then. We will always, however, be connected by our words until the very end of time.
]]>It was the year 2008. It was my first time ever outside of my own country. There were many wonderful things that I saw and experienced in my 15 days there. However, this is one experience I have often told people about so I thought that I should put it down in words.
People had warned me about how expensive Switzerland was, so I didn’t venture out of the city of Basel where I was working at. Most of my free time was spent hopping onto trams or buses and exploring the city by foot. It was during one of the walks that I stumbled upon a strange looking shop. I couldn’t at first figure out what they were selling. Looking through the shop window only showed me what appeared to be strange cylindrical shaped objects of a multitude of colours and designs. It took me a few moments to register that the shape I was seeing was that of a condom. When my eyes drifted next to the name of the shop “Condomeria” I realised that what I thought I was seeing was what I was seeing.
The me from 10 years ago was not a well-travelled person. I was just a kid in 2nd year of his career at his first company. I certainly wasn’t world wise. As the photo below shows I quickly tried snapping a picture from outside and moved on. If I had come across this today, I would have at the very least entered the shop and checked out the goods. Unfortunately, I have now learned that this shop in Basel has closed permanently. I guess it was too high concept even for the Swiss.
The Swiss Tropical institute with whom I was working had set me up with a small desk within somebody else’s office. When I came to work every day, I noticed these things under my desk. Various flavour names were mentioned on the packing. I initially figured them out to be confectioneries. It’s not that they didn’t look suspiciously like a packet of condoms. I just never thought someone would simply have scores of them lying around under a desk.
A few days later I finally had a talk with my co-worker about this. He had a good laugh when I told him about what I had thought they were. He explained to me that the Swiss Tropical Institute worked with women in Africa to help produce these condoms. The proceeds of the sale would contribute to their livelihood while also promoting their use in a continent with the highest prevalence of AIDS in the world. These were to be sold at the local university festival that was being held a couple of days later.
These things made me realise how open a culture could be about their attitudes towards sex and safety. It has gotten better in India over the years no doubt but there is still a stigma associated with it.
]]>I have always loved Ruskin Bond’s stories ever since I read his very first one that had appeared in one of my school books. His love for nature always came through. At the same time I was always intrigued about what he was as person. The magic of Ruskin’s writing for me was always its simplicity, charm and ability to transport you to the very time and place he is talking about. A British man who gave up his easy chance of settling down in a first world country yet choosing to come back to India intentionally is a real revelation. Reading his autobiography felt like I was sitting across from him while he regaled me with tales of his entire life.
]]>I’m a self-confessed dinosaur nerd so any movie with dinosaurs in them is essentially review proof. It’s been 25 years since the first Jurassic Park was released and one thing we can agree upon is that there will never be a dinosaur movie as spectacular, wondrous and unforgettable as that one. Not even Steven Spielberg could top that one if he tried.
When the first Jurassic World was released in 2015 no one expected that it would break the all-time box office record. It showed us how much pent up demand there was for a Jurassic movie. It also meant fun dinosaur movies could still attracted a sizeable audience other than dinosaur fans like me.
The one time, I was looking forward to watching a movie in 3D, I couldn’t because only the 2D version was released here in India, owing to some issues between the distributors and the multiplex owners. Curse them.
That aside the movie has some decently mounted set pieces. The dinosaurs are awesome as ever with the humans taking away their screen time for not very interesting reasons. The most disappointing aspect of the movie was the ratio of dinosaur deaths to human deaths. Far too many of these magnificent creatures were lost. That aside it also surprised me with the ending and the direction that the trilogy was going to take for its final movie. I thought it was a great setup and I am very much looking forward where they go from here.
]]>While this post is written from an Indian perspective some of it applies irrespective of where in the world you are. I was recently in a conversation with someone, let’s call him Mr M who asked me “So, from where do you download music?” “I subscribe to a music streaming service” I said. He looked at me with an incredulous expression on his face. He also proceeded to admonish me, for paying for it, because I could have easily got a hacked APK of the service, that would let me use it for free.
What he was actually asking me was, which site do you download your free music from. Now, I am no saint or rich man who subscribes to a music streaming service because I feel entitled to do so. I do it because it’s simple, convenient and incredible value for money. In India subscribing to a music streaming service costs Rs 100 or for global reference ($1.56) a month. For less than what a coffee costs at Starbucks, I have access to 40 million songs. Even if we put the coffee aside for a second, I know people who drop upwards of Rs 50000 ($800) for a phone almost every year but will refuse to spend even Rs 10 or 1/5000th of that on an app.
Now the thing about the Starbucks or phone analogy is, drinking that coffee with that fancy phone in the other hand maybe a matter of pride. Most importantly however the coffee is a physical object. Unless you managed to somehow steal a Starbucks coffee, your not getting one without paying for it. You can’t watch a movie in the theater without paying for a ticket. Some of you may have managed to accomplish that in the nineties, but I’m pretty sure it’s next to impossible these days. So a physical object like a coffee or a physical experience like a theater movie that requires you to be present in a physical location will inherently have some value associated with it. Try as hard as you can. If you want it, you, or somebody else is paying for it.
Since the advent of the internet and the mp3 format a whole new generation of listeners at least here in India grew up believing that music is free. To even think of paying for it is considered foolish. The generation I grew up in is sort of a bridge between the two. We experienced the joys and sorrows of cassettes, CDs, Napster and dial up internet. What also happened is that I got into the creative field of video games. Also a form of digital entertainment. Equally hard to put to a price on.
When your livelihood depends on people paying for something digital that you create, it also makes you conscious of what you consume. When I go out to eat I could easily spend Rs 500 for a single person’s meal. So to spend Rs 500 for a game that I will easily enjoy for at least 10 hrs seems like a bargain in comparison. Just as a cook worked hard to prepare that meal for you, a bunch of hard working folks toiled away for years to make the game that you enjoy.
People assume sometimes that when it comes to the entertainment industry, most of them, whether singers, musicians, movie actors or video game developers lead an exotic lifestyle as visualized on TV or in magazines. The truth is very few earn the kind of money to support that kind of lifestyle. Even a media conglomerate like Disney earns a substantial amount of it’s revenues from it’s theme parks and resorts.
Sometimes people ask me how we earn money from the games that we release for free. I smile and say nothing. It wouldn’t be worthwhile to explain to every person who asked me that, the concepts of Free to Play game design. If I feel like the person deserves an answer I simply say “For every 100 people who play our game, there are 99 who believe that they deserve the game for free, there is that 100th person who gives us enough to compensate for the first 99”
]]>It truly saddens me that we don’t do enough to support the creators of this world. Unlike food maybe, we can live without arts and entertainment. The question is would we want to live like that? So the next time you hesitate to spend money on something digital take a pause. Try to put it in perspective. Whether it lasted for a few minutes or hours, for those brief moments made your life a little bit better. Give a little back to the creators. All they really want to do is create something more for you.
I don’t read any particular comics regularly, aside from a very special one called Dilbert. Creator Scott Adams insight into the workplace culture and all of his characters biting social commentary on everything is incredible. How he has managed to come up with something unique and fresh every single day for the past so many years is astonishing.
Though it does require some familiarity with tech company culture it’s still enjoyable by others too. While the comic is often laugh out loud funny what sticks with you it’s scathing commentary about what are often ridiculous but true workplace practices.
It’s not always easy to say something meaningful in a single strip but besides a few rare occasions, most of the daily comics are self-contained.
This is one of my favourites.
]]>Despite what many people feel about The Big Bang Theory, it still has the highest viewership among sitcoms even today. Young Sheldon is a spin-off series that I had heard about sometime back. I initially assumed that it was simply a series that was trying to bank off the popularity of its parent show.
I came across an article talking about the most-watched shows of 2017 and I wasn’t surprised to see Young Sheldon ranking high. I decided to give it a shot when I saw that it was available on Amazon Prime Video.
The show is about the life of Sheldon from the original show when he was a child living in Texas with his parents and siblings. Meemaw his grandmother who gets mentioned often in the Big Bang Theory is a primary cast member here. Jim Parsons the adult Sheldon serves as the narrator for the show.
I expected the show to be very much like The Big Bang Theory with Sheldon being a snarky, sarcastic and obsessive-compulsive child as well. While some aspects of his adult personality are present here, overall Young Sheldon is a show that feels very different from The Big Bang Theory.
9 year old Sheldon is still a genius and he can be sarcastic but he is also rather sweet and innocent at the same time. Every facet of his behaviour whether a portrayal of his intelligence or his sarcasm is encompassed by the innocence with which he speaks his words. That is why the show feels so different from The Big Bang Theory. At the heart of it, its a show about family and the trials and tribulations of growing up as a boy genius in a very traditional family. Every other member of his family is equally well cast. Especially his mother who feels very different from the character she plays as his adult mother. The only common thread is their deep religious beliefs. Meemaw the grandmother is one of the best characters in the show. She is very different from the rest of the family and turned out very different from the overly sweet sounding Meemaw that the adult Sheldon always mentions.
The biggest change fans might notice going in though is that unlike The Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon does not have a laugh track accompanying it. It’s hard to describe what kind of show it really is. To put it a bit obliquely it’s a relaxing, family-friendly show for everyone. If you have grown to hate the adult Sheldon you just might end up feeling the complete opposite about him in this one.
]]>Each character is not just interesting on their own, the chemistry between all of the leads is incredible. There was a point when the lead characters Jack and Rebecca played by fairly well known actors Milo Ventimiglia (Of Heroes and Gilmore Girls fame) and Mandy Moore (the singer) became just the characters of Jack and Rebecca. It began to feel like I was watching real life documentary of a family. Every other cast member that comprises the family in the show is great in their own right. The other part about it is how many surprises it manages to throw your way on a regular basis.
There are times when This is Us will bring you to tears. But it earns those tears through genuine, intense and raw moments that could happen in anyone’s life. The dialogs are also stellar. They leave you hanging onto every word and make you wish you could express your most complex thoughts with such impact and clarity.
This Is Us is currently midway through its second season and it remains as fresh and engaging as it was in its first season. It’s also one of the highest watched dramas on television right now. Which bodes well for its future. As it currently stands I could watch the lives of these characters for a long time to come.
]]>]]>
My situation was the opposite. As the only child of divorced parents I moved when I was only two ,back to my Mom’s parents house. At that tender age it was both innocent obliviousness and my Mom’s tireless sacrifices that kept me shielded from the worst aspects of the separation. From that point on the only father figure in my house was my grandfather.
This was never truer than when my Mom told me about a little incident from my childhood. In kindergarten a teacher once asked me ‘What does your father do?’. I promptly replied “He sits at home and reads the newspaper”.
Ajja as we used to call him in Kannada was a voracious reader and a big tennis fan. He spent hours poring over every page of The Times of India and I spent hours watching tennis matches with him in front of the television. He was a pretty big history buff too regaling me with stories of a different time. It always fascinated me to think that my grandfather was born 25 years before our country gained independence. We only read about that time in our history books while he actually lived through that time.
He was also a rather straight forward man. Discipline and integrity were of utmost importance to him. When my Mom and uncles were younger, grandfather was an extremely strict father. As the years went by and the responsibility of taking care of part of my life also fell to him, his demeanor towards people had changed almost completely.
He never denied me anything in life. From books to my very first computer he never said no to anything. While computers are a part of every child’s life right from school it wasn’t the case back then. In the year 2000 when I got my first computer, Rs 50000 was a huge sum. He got me a spanking new Pentium 3 no questions asked. All because he thought it would help me. While the educational aspects of owning a computer quickly fell by the wayside it’s what got me into video games something I am lucky to now call a career.
Somebody once called my grandfather a very stoic man. Since he was from a time before gyms became fashionable, his secret to good health was a combination of good genes and regular physical activity. That meant, him running at least 5 km every morning for as long as his age permitted him to. He was also headstrong when it came to anything that required even thinking about a doctor. I remember him, once coming home from his morning jog with a bleeding leg from a dog bite. No matter how hard we insisted that he get an injection from a doctor he simply refused to go.
The only time he finally relented was towards the end of his life. Nothing on earth could bring him down. He was the strongest man I ever knew. A habit that he had quit 10 years previously had come back to haunt him. It was painful to watch a man who had never known weakness all his life, wither away from the inside. He weathered the sessions of radiotherapy without exhibiting any outwards signs of discomfort. It was only when the cancer had progressed to a point where he was unable to speak and bear the pain, did I see any signs of him having given up on life.
He passed away at the age of 82 silently into the night. I always believe, how one leaves this earth is of little consequence as compared to how one lives when he is on earth.
Grandfather was honest to a fault, stubborn as hell, well read like no one else I knew, disciplined but fair, strong as an ox, gentle as a lamb, more caring towards me than his own children and the closest I ever had to a father in my life.]]>
The game starts with a lovely text based intro where you make some basic life choices before you emerge into the wilderness, which is the setting for Firewatch. You come here for the job of a fire lookout to get away from your complicated life. What follows is at once a lonely, thrilling and gripping experience all at the same time.
This is not a review of the game but an exploration of the emotions and feelings that the game evokes as you get further into it. The world of Firewatch is a lonely one. Your only human interaction is with your supervisor over a radio walkie talkie. Now you might think that this would make for a boring game. What holds everything together however is the forest, the central story line and the incredible voice acting by both the main characters of the game.
Firewatch is a relatively short experience lasting around 4 hrs. Any longer and it would have probably drawn out the experience unnecessarily. Firewatch can best be described as a exploration narrative. It’s why the game dosen’t offer much of a challenge in the game play area. So players looking for something more, won’t find it here.
What it does have is an incredibly strong sense of place. The unique art style really draws you in. A sense of loneliness pervades throughout the game. Yet the world around you and your simple objectives continually drive you forward. There is a central mystery that kind of strings you along across the world of Firewatch. Your mostly navigating across the world from point to point with the help of a map and compass.
Your only companion on this journey is your supervisor Delilah. Your conversational relationship with her is the central driving force of the game. Every conversation has a set of choices that must be selected within a few moments of them being offered to you. While these choices don’t determine the final denouement what they do is shape the your ongoing relationship with Delilah. It was a very rewarding experience to see how these small but frequent choices affected her responses towards you.
Firewatch takes place over the course of only a few months and during that time you actually experience a relationship over a walkie talkie mature and grow in a way that actually feels real. The most important thing I realised was the game never puts a hard label on the kind of relationship that develops.
In the end it’s all about the connection you as the player make with this place, and the people that traversed it before you. It’s about reconciling a past relationship while exploring the possibility of a new one. It’s about discovering things about oneself in moments of intense solitude.
Go play Firewatch. Or rather go experience Firewatch. It’s a prime example of the magic of video game storytelling.]]>
Dreams are a writer’s best plot generators. While dreams or nightmares are often influenced by our waking activities like our jobs or hobbies, it’s the ones that aren’t that are truly memorable.
If you thought that only the likes of Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton possessed the talent to conjure up truly absurd and fantastic worlds you would be dead wrong. Our maker has given all of us that ability. It’s just that we happen to be asleep when our imagination goes wild. I often wished for a machine that could simply render our dreams onto a movie reel. It would make for some fantastic viewing. Or perhaps only your friends and family might find the humor in it. The rest of the world, would probably throw up.
So there was this time one of my friends had a dream that I was being devoured by a crocodile. Of course he doesn’t remember what happened after that. Or, like he would have done in real life, he made no attempt whatsoever, to save me. Everyone knows how awesome it is to watch a crocodile attack it’s prey and drag it struggling into the water to it’s final resting place: inside it’s belly. Truth be told I would have preferred being the meal of something more awesome like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Everyone who is close to me knows, that it is my preferred way to leave this world.
When it comes to my own dreams, I consider myself to be a prolific dreamer. Ever so often I wake up in the morning and try and relate to my wife the night’s awesome events as they occurred in my mind. She usually just gives me a look that says, “Your just plain weird. Who dreams that much. Especially stuff as weird as you are telling me”. She claims that she never gets dreams. Scientifically speaking everyone dreams every single night. It’s just the chosen few who are capable of remembering the details.
]]>So while dreamers like me see something like this everyday