Musings of a White Haired Teenager

On a recent warm summer evening, I had the opportunity to sit with a bondhu (friend) and ruminate on the currents of life. We talked of many things, as friends often do, but eventually our conversation turned toward the writings of the Jewish philosopher and theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972). Heschel had suggested, with characteristic clarity, that one of the deepest yearnings of the human condition is the need to be needed. My wise bondhu expanded on this deceptively simple idea with a precision that was at once philosophical and painfully practical. His words left us both in a silence that was not empty, but heavy with recognition. Later, as I drove back through the dusky warmth of the summer night, Heschel’s claim began to throb within me. The yearning to be needed seemed not merely a distant insight from a philosopher’s pen, but a reality woven into my own life — and into the lives of all of us. Often, we are reminded that we are not needed. Sometimes this comes bluntl...

It was famously told in the cult classic about hitchhiking across the galaxy ( The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams written in 1981) that when an inter-galactic highway was about to wipe out the planet, and especially the main person’s home, he should never panic and always have his towel ready. Setting aside the panic part for a moment, I dwelled on the towel a lot. It signifies a regular need in most cultures, it also defines an identity, and it is a signifier of the culture itself. From the traditional “gamcha” of rural Bengal to the unique “peshtamal” in the hammams of Istanbul, towels define a place and culture. At the same time, it could also be something quite personal to some people, which is why sharing a towel could become the sign of things that go far beyond the towel itself. In some ways, to me, who is continuously on a journey, the towel segments life into manageable pieces because the towel defines the space I am in at any moment in time. Even when all ...

  Living the Post-Modernity: In a recent conversation, the name of Baudrillard came up, followed by a discussion of how in the 1980s and 1990s there was an interest in genuine scholarship, research, debate as compared to the frenzy of the discourse-driven post modern montage of images and sensations that pass by – never sticking – because they are not supposed to stick. If it stuck, and if there was a fixity and authenticity of meaning, then we would still be in the modernity and not graduated to post-modernity. Not too long ago, “post modernity”  was the theoretical future – and people like me who were studying the oncoming phenomenon hypothesized that we would someday live in a World where all things stable will be destabilized, all meanings will become meaningless, reality will be completely constructed, and unscrupulous “thought leaders” will try to create passing fads that the numbed and stunned population will believe to be true; in most parts, this was a fictional futur...

How to Lose Friends and Disregard People is an obvious take off from the famous book by one of the most read authors in the World who opined about how to make friends and influence people. Yesterday, walking down Park Street, I saw the book still being sold among the wares of the iconic street bookshops, and I started to wonder if there was a need to, nowadays, write something about how to ensure that people can be disregarded and got rid of. There was much demand for Dale’s book because making friends requires work and dedication while influencing people is much more than what sensation-creating "influencers" do on various digital platforms. Dale Carnegie was motivated to author the book because he saw the hunger and the need in people to find empathy and curiosity to learn about others. That was then, but now, I see the carcasses of slaughtered friendships and people yearning to get “out” because friendships are merely opportunities, and when a new person offers the opportu...

Home Alone: There is something charming about the dual life that some of us live, and simultaneously there is something acutely melancholic. The confusion about the place is continuously evocative. A lovely evening with the dog, walking down a street that many would consider a "holiday getaway" with the constant reminder that the other place is alive with the sounds of the evening, the cars driving by, or the imminent arrival of the groom at the marriage hall across the street. The comfort of refusing the tea at 5:30 in the evening at the local market and driving off with people who will never judge you to another market to get the better tea and the samosa fried in front of you while the taste of the succulent Easter ham hangs at the back of your tongue. That is the dual life. Where each moment reminds us of the other, and the joy of the moment is interrupted by the melancholy of what could have been - opportunity cost. The banter over tea about the neighborhood girl who non...

The two lives I suggested in my last post take on meaning in many different ways as life switches between one and the other. One of the key points of this switch is language, in the way Bernard Shaw once famously said, "England and America are two countries separated by the same language." Many who experience the two lives could relate well to the way the lives are governed by the language that surrounds each life. And that is not just about different languages, but it is the language that I thought I knew, but suddenly I realize, either the language I knew exists no more, or I have completely lost touch with the language, while I was flirting with the two lives. This especially happens when one is caught in two lives and each demand adjusting to two different lives. And at those moments the experience begs the question of authenticity and also perhaps power. Which life is authentic and which takes on privilege? And that moment sometimes happens over mostly banal linguistic m...

In about 24 hours I witnessed a temperature drop of about 25 Celsius degrees, I saw a radical improvement in air quality and noise pollution disappeared. The cars on the road changed, and they all drove on the "wrong" side of the road. A key driving strategy changed - honking at cars at red lights when they take more than a nano second to move when the red light starts blinking - and life, as I knew it, radically changed. For 50 days. And after that it will flip again. Living one life while finding peace in another is a tough act. Life moves from one boarding pass to another, and the key anxiety is whether the complimentary upgrade to a "lie-flat-seat" will happen or not. Drifting from one business-class lounge to the next, checking out the best single malt available, and scoping out the smoking areas in airports all over the World becomes a way of life. And all this because there are work demands, but more importantly because of a strong belief that "statis is...