Sunday Posts

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

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

Dear me Is this the slow march to the end of the world?  Joe Biden, the forgettable 46th, was right when he said that whatever happens in the next 2 to 3 years may shape the next 50 to 60 years. He may have meant different things, including the coming of Agentic AI, the convergence of biotech with it, ascendancy of Trump, the reconfiguration of geopolitics or a final destruction of the global monetary system of the post-war variety! Perhaps all of it, all at once!  History is usually invisible, buried deep in everyday life. Until such moments when we completely forget about it and our 'death instincts' get better of us, we don't get it to see it. But we see it then, in its terrible flourish! The only metaphor that I can think of is of a flash flood, which turns a gentle and friendly stream into a sudden death trap, carrying all before it, but then the force vanishes and the tranquility returns as if nothing ever happened. Those who know of such terrible possibilities live i...

Dear M Bitter cold - Arctic freeze has arrived in Britain! While Toronto is warmer, I am told. I would love to think that this is caused by climate change, but this is perhaps no such thing, just an English winter as it should be. This cold is, therefore, raising my hopes for a white Christmas. The last Christmas snowfall I remember was in 2010. That was a special Christmas season for me, which started with me getting pickpocketed in Covent Garden and ended with my brother passing away on the 3rd January! This also included a very special Christmas evening to remember forever. Yet it is the snow that came to my mind, first! This cold and the customary darkness are making me feel lazy too. I didn't do much today and fell asleep in the evening, which is unusual. It has been one of those years that tested me, and I can't wait for it to get over. And yet this psychology of imaginary ends and beginnings - what would really get over -  fascinates me. Why wait for the end of the year?...

Dear M Do you believe in dragons?  I know many people who doesn't. Because they are grown-ups, and it is not fashionable for grown-ups to think about dragons. But I would like to believe that they are real. At least as real as the things we believe in. For that matter, we call investors dragons in some countries - in Britain, start-ups go to the Dragons' Den - while the other countries have Sharks (India) or Tigers (Bangladesh) for that. The investors changing the world for better as real a story as my having a dragon which can fly me from one country to another, coming to my rescue when bad guys really corner me. You would say that is literally not possible. I would say - cliché but true - that literal is a metaphor. Language creates the world we live in, in our minds: That indeed the only world which matters to us, the only one we can ever know. In reality, there could be other worlds - one where dragons fly around, for example - but we live in our own literal bubbles, where ...

Dear Me, I write because there is nothing else I can do. Someone said that before, but I am not quoting - I am speaking for myself. I write not because I have something special to say. But I feel that I am inside an endless stream of words and ideas, and I live to explore them. Through me, then, they find expression. Perhaps that is imprecise and I don't have the right language to say what really happens. What I want to say - the Word exists. With or without me, it exists. I write them not because I want to, but they find me to become. So, I see writing not as a craft. Rather, I surrender to writing. I realised this when I started writing poetry. I wrote it once, when I was young and in love. I don't remember how I wrote it then. But much later in life, when another moment came, I wrote not to impress anyone, but because I couldn't do anything else. It was not to tell anything to anyone, but just to surrender myself to the feelings which took hold of me.  Reading those poem...

It is almost over and it is starting.  I am finishing 2024 wiser. This has been one of those pivotal years of my life, comparable only to 1993 when I started working or 2004 when I migrated to the UK and started my life again. In the sense that those two years taught me a lot and made me a different person: 2024 did that too. I am also wiser because my optimism is tempered. I have finally gotten rid of my youthful assumption that it is possible to change people or systems (in other words, I have now, finally, become old). I am not cynical - at least not yet - but far more conservative than I was. I know things change only very slowly, and only organically, and forcing the change, however desireable, is beyond the powers of human beings. We seem to think that we are at the centre of the universe, and therefore the changes are really brought about human action. I can wake up one morning and command the Sun to rise, and when it rises, can claim my supernatural powers, but ...

Trump Rex!  Okay, I wrote I did not care, but I do. In a different way!  I don't think I should still be concerned who Americans vote as their President. There is no such thing as the 'free world'. If there ever was an iron curtain, it was over a long time ago.  However, even if I haven't voted for Trump, I can't ignore that a large number of people in a very educated and technologically advanced country did. I am also painfully aware that someone like me could have written a similar sentence back in 1932, and perhaps many of them, like me, decided that it didn't really matter. The least I could do is to try and understand why such things happen. To be clear, I don't see these things as strange. There are a number of reasons why such things happen. After all, there is a cognitive bias named after Warren Harding (see ' Warren Harding error '). I have been labouring on Will Durant's Story of Civilisation since the beginning of 2024 (and have now re...

I am not following the US election news. It seems Facebook knows this. I have seen very few news items about the trends, and even posts by people I am connected to have vanished from my timeline. I am sure there are plenty of people following it and talking about it. But the contrast that is most consequential to me is that with my former self. I would have obsessively followed it, and can still remember where I was in every election night since 1988. Every time, I thought it mattered. But this time, it is different. Of course, it matters a lot to the world. There are two major wars underway right now. The next US President would have significant impact on what happens next. These wars can spill out to become global conflicts, or in the least, the world may settle more rigidly into two different camps - and the choice the American voters make today is significant from that standpoint. My liberal friends may be quite disappointed if Trump wins.  My indifference, however, comes from ...