Process

Use your voter ID EPIC number to find your BLO details.

Call the BLO, visit them and get the form (It is impractical to think that the BLOs will visit you).

Read and fill the form. For the 2002 section, if you are in 2002 SIR roll, fill your details, otherwise, fill your parent/grandparent details (hoping that they are in 2002 SIR roll).

An unusual beginning

CJP as an opposition movement was very much unlike the usual in the beginning.

Millions of followers for a political campaign. What?

Publicly announcing protest and not getting arrested. How?!

Strategy of non-ideology

I agree with the approach CJP used of not articulating an ideology. They knew that their mass was not ideological. They wanted to remain accessible and acceptable to liberals and other centrists. If they started talking about class, caste, gender, etc on day 1 they would have been non-existent now.

As far as strategy goes CJP has played it reasonable. Like MK Gandhi went to Champaran on a single issue, Abhijeet Dipke went to Jantar Mantar on a single issue.

Practical politics for idealists

CJP has done well in creating momentum behind one political issue. They have dedicated time, effort, and resources to the cause. They are persisting on the issue. What CJP is doing now is the maximum that good people in India can do now.

And the results are proportional.

There is some synergy, some noise, some hope, etc. It might achieve something. A minister might resign. An exam pattern might change.

Visibility as power

If I have 22M followers on Instagram, am I powerful?

That is a question which will give us access to many layers of what’s happening in front of us.

It is now evident that 22M followers is not enough power to get a BJP minister to resign in a few weeks.

What power does follower-count / visibility have then?

In Ravikant Kisana’s out-of-context words, “it is not nothing”.

In the attention economy, having a platform where you can rise above the noise and be heard is almost a prerequisite for impact. And that platform is what CJP has.

How you accumulate power determines what you can do with it

This is where the means vs ends debate comes into practice.

Whatever little power CJP has accumulated, it has accumulated through:

• being viral
• focusing on a burning issue (of NEET)

These are fragile forms of gathering power. There’s no formula to be viral. Your luck might run out any moment.

The burning issue will stop burning.

The power that CJP started with is not a sustainable fuel. It will run out. Especially if they try to use it for anything it is not designed for.

…unless you manage to leverage what you have and gain more power

This is what AAP did. They leveraged the India Against Corruption credentials to launch a political party. I do not know all that went into that transformation, but transformation they did. And by becoming a non-joke political party in India they were able to become much more powerful than what they would have been as IAC movement.

Can CJP do such a transformation? I believe it is unlikely.

How can CJP become a political party? BJP will use Abhijeet Dipke’s past ties with AAP to discredit this new party. And having flown in from America, it will be difficult for AD to build an image of a nationalist. Sonam Wangchuk might seem like an Arvind Kejriwal, but the persona SW has built is that of an intellectual and so SW is unlikely to enter party politics. Unless someone else hijacks the control of CJP, a political party can’t come out of it.

CJP as a youth movement

A viable option is for CJP is to rebrand (with or without a rename) themselves to something more serious and continue as a socio-cultural movement/campaign/organization. In this process they can articulate their ideology more clearly.

If they go this route, Abhijeet will be forced to take an anti-caste ideology. And consequentially, some of AD’s present friends will leave. They might establish themselves as cultural observers, or join political parties.

In any case, CJP will become a shadow of its past.

What did it achieve?

I think CJP is a valuable exercise in keeping Indian democracy alive. CJP made protests cool again. CJP has given a front-row lesson to a whole generation on how a protest/campaign is organized, sustained, etc. Whatever happens at the end of the current protest, it will also teach a lot of people how activism works.

CJP also provides real world data on how much/little influence Instagram has on real world politics. As per my calculations, it is a wake-up call for those who are spending all their time doing conscientization on Instagram.

Why CJP is real now

CJP has crossed its initial euphoria now. In the euphoric stage, a lot can happen and there’s no way to predict what will or what will not. But now, after the initial enthusiasm has gone, is time for re-evaluation. For outsiders and for insiders.

Let’s hope for the best and assume that Dharmendra Pradhan will move aside. Then the protestors will be able to take a breather and reevaluate their life. Incomplete degrees, unpaid bills, pending tasks, other priorities, unfulfilled political goals, meaning of life. It is at that point that we will know how CJP will continue.

Tiring life of activists

I don’t follow CJP on Instagram. I follow Neha of AISA.

Regardless of how cheerful an activist presents themselves as, activism is tiring. It is an unpaid job with very rare rewards. One can reframe it mentally and find joy in the day-to-day. Especially when people show up in solidarity.

But fundamentally the activist is dedicating their life for the benefit of others. And it’s not very pleasurable.

In solidarity

It is in this hungry, exhausted phase of CJP that I feel affectionate towards it. There is relatability here. There is now the feeling that we are all together in this mess. There is now a sense of solidarity.

Hum Honge Kaamyaab.

It is built on the idea that the pillars of fitness are:

• diet
• exercise
• self-image
• sleep
• mental peace

Diet

I follow the habit of mindful eating.

I don’t do any kind of fasting or restrictions (I’ve done intermittent fasting and keto-diet in the past). I just eat mindfully.

By that I mean, I eat when I’m hungry, I eat only to satisfy the hunger, and I avoid eating too much when there’s too many nice things to eat.

I cut chappattis from three to two and found that that’s enough. I avoid snacking. I eat just like a regular day when I’m part of a feast (conference lunches, weddings, celebrations, etc).

Even if I crave a biriyani or some porotta and beef, I don’t order like in my 20s. I share a biriyani with Swathi, or order just two porottas.

And I drink a lot of water.

Exercise

I exercise 3-4 times a week. Mostly it takes the form of jogging in a nearby park. These days I run a minimum of 1.5 km, and on some days 2-3km.

It was a struggle for me earlier when I would jog only in the morning. But nowadays I allow myself to run in the evenings. And I find it much more easier to get myself to the park in the evenings. I also am able to run farther in the evening.

What’s made it the easiest for me is that I have relaxed my approach to maintaining streaks. I try to run every day. If I miss a day, I try to run the next day. If I miss two days, I try to run the day after that. Sometimes I get sick and can’t run for a whole week. I then shift to walking. And then I get back to running as soon as I can. I don’t beat myself up. So I get to run much more.

It’s also helpful that I’ve gotten a smart watch with GPS as a birthday gift this year. I have a Redmi Watch 5 Lite (referral link). I’ve connected it to my Strava account. And so every time I am doing any sort of exercise, it gets logged. And that is nice.

When it is not running, it is some or the other activity — weights, climbing, badminton. Something to keep myself active.

Oh, we also got a pull-up bar (referral link) and it is the best investment ever. I keep hanging on it whenever. And I can almost pull myself up now.

Self-image

I think of myself as an athletic person.

I don’t think of myself as lazy. I don’t think of myself as having no energy. I don’t allow myself to feel like my body is not fit for exercising.

I think of my body as an elite athlete’s body.

I also was gifted some running clothes. And running shoes.

And a phone armband.

The whole package!

I wear all of them and I walk out and already feel good about myself.

Sleep

I have to sleep before midnight. My brain needs that.

And I try to ensure that.

It’s somehow become easier to fall asleep sooner. (Maybe the exercise, etc helps).

I think what helped me the most was giving myself the freedom to have not accomplished much in the day. It is 9 o’clock, it is time for bed. Whatever needs to be done can be done tomorrow.

I also don’t do revenge procrastination now.

For many months now my sleep cycles have been sane.

Mental peace

This required a lot of work with my therapist, a lot of reflection, reading, and discussions with Swathi and others.

I think I’m a lot less anxious now about things. I am okay with doing things slowly, doing things one at a time.

I am able to stop myself in the middle of something I’m immersed in, and cook or exercise.

I am able to breathe in and think about what my body needs — water? food? burn some calories? rest? silence? connection?

I am able to sit simply.

I am able to get bored.

Results

It’s been pretty good. My HbA1c went from 5.9 (prediabetic) to 5.6 (normal). From being able to barely run a kilometer without dying, I can now comfortably run perhaps 2, sometimes even 3km. My belly is visibly smaller. I’m able to climb up the stairs of my house without having to drag myself. I don’t have random aches and pains.

I don’t think this is the greatest fitness regime on the planet. But this is working fine for me.

This was written at an IndieWebClub Bangalore meetup.

I’m glad that my reciting of how wealth is distributed in India hit (some of) the audience and provoked this response. I had said my thumb rule of knowing where you are:

The elites live in a cognitive distortion

When you live in a country with crores of people, you tend to lose the big picture. If you live amongst a particular category of people, you tend to become absorbed in the thoughts and discussions of that category.

When you live among the elites, you tend to think that most people are elites, and that poor is just a small population. At most, you see the middle class workers who run around for the elites and think that most people are at least middle class. You tend to forget that middle class life itself is a struggle. You also tend to forget that poor people exist. You completely forget that there is a very very large number of poor people.

Human beings already can’t make sense of big numbers.

And when they’re living in a capitalistic value system and have imbibed a casteist lens of looking at society, they won’t even try to make sense of big numbers.

The elite is you

The distortion works in the other direction too. When you’re in the top 1%, when you’re an engineer, doctor, government officer, entrepreneur, lawyer, etc, you think about people much richer than you as the elite. The Ambanis and Narendra Modi’s benami (Adani) becomes the only elite. In your mind there are 10 people who are elite in this country and the rest (including you) are middle class. How distorted!

The elite is you. And I’m not even adding a conditional because if you read this post till here on the internet, you’ve enough English and enough time to be in the top 20% Indians.

As my friend Subin recently posted on LinkedIn, “touch grass”.

When you see the scale of the problem, you inevitably get a sense of urgency

The elites are not just conditioned to accept the status quo, they also excel in defending it. If you say the truth you get labeled as “too radical” and “immature”. You are thrown out of places because you’re “too naive”.

But the elite will never stop sounding like they’re all for changing the system. They will keep talking about “policy engagement”, “nudging the system”, “advocacy”. They will talk about “T” shaped change. They will talk about decentralization. They will talk about intersectoral coordination.

They will even talk about poverty.

But they won’t talk about “class”. They won’t talk about “elites”. They won’t mention “caste”. If they are women elites, they will talk about patriarchy, but not about brahmaniacal patriarchy or capitalist patriarchy.

When you see how generations after generations people are being made to wait (for a better life), how the rhetoric of the elite is always against revolutionary/radical change, then your body sends a signal of urgency to your brain.

And that’s how a radical is born.

That’s when people start demanding radical transformation of the system. That’s when they reject the system altogether and fight from outside. That’s when they call out the performativity of “bold statements”. That’s when they get irritated with the moderate elites. That’s when they start getting nausea in elite campuses and the bullshit that gets discussed to death in their auditoriums. That’s when they become unlikable in the elite circles.

If you are someone who can’t stand criticism of the elite circlejerk around you, then probably you have to ask yourself — “Whose side are you on?”

*I learned after writing this blog that the comment was made by Tarun Seem, someone who knows how the system needs radical transformation and have been doing their bit for bringing that change in. No wonder!

Silence inside, not outside.

Earlier I used to write to get clarity. Now my fingers aren’t able to keep up with my thoughts.

I wrote a poem the other day.

Can you believe it? I. Wrote. A. Poem.

I was like, aren’t poets supposed to be the tortured souls? Don’t they write when the agony hits the roof?

I took the “Notes” app on my phone and just wrote:

Anger
First you're angry at the world
Then you're angry at the people who are not angry at the world
Then you're angry at yourself that you're not able to do anything about your anger
So you bottle up all your anger and swallow the bottle
The bottle will try to stay at the bottom of your chest
But you push it down further, somewhere deeper inside, near your rectum
As far away from your mind as you can
And then you start to think
Think about what you can do
And that's when you realise you're all spent now
There's nothing left to do but weep
Weep at what we could have done if only more people were angry enough
Weep at the irony of it
The people who need you don't need you
And you are here figuring out where you took the wrong turn
Maybe you should have never woken up from the dream
Stay in a 9-5 job and excuse yourself from everything
At least then your mind will be protected
It'll be frozen in a corporate refrigerator
Far away from anger
Maybe you need sleep
Eternal blissful sleep
Go back to sleep, mind
Anger is everywhere
But not the anger you wanted.

Impossible jigsaw puzzles

What is clear by now is that I’m living too far from the present. Nobody’s fault. Not my fault that I thought that everything would be obvious to everyone and that all it needs is a moment of collective articulation. Not their fault that they don’t open things and look inside to see the “obvious”.

I feel like Rancho in 3 idiots. Opening up everything and learning. But unlike machines, society doesn’t move forward without collective work. (Or does it?). Just me learning is not enough. Others have to learn. And my impatience helps nobody. But how patient can one be?

Imagine you’re in a burning house. And you run out. And you see others sitting inside and saying “oooh, it’s getting hot in here”. How many expletives are you allowed to call them?

Is it hypocritic to call out hypocrisy when you don’t have the alternative?

What hurts is the hypocrisy.

Siddhesh (popularly known as @bakeryprasad) wrote that in this blog called: “Loneliness in the Left-wing politics“.

I’ve been too afraid to say this in public.

Not exactly. I’ve said this in public and gotten reprimanded several times. And so I’ve stopped saying this in public.

The so-called “progressive” or “left” spaces are dominated by people who are too happy to continue “questioning” the status quo without changing it.

Things that are completely in their control, they refuse to change.

Things that are not in their control, they’re happy to criticize.

All problems are outside them.

And when you call this out, they play the reverse Uno card.

They’re like “Oh, what have you done so radical that you’re speaking to us with condescension?”

I wonder if nobody has put Siddhesh on that spot. Maybe Siddhesh can claim their whole family has been resisting. Maybe Siddhesh will say “I’ve been producing art”.

And then they will ask/say, “Oh, but how many people can do what you’re doing? We’re all trying to do what we can!”

So then you’re suddenly put in a position where you have to demonstrate to them how you might do what they do, in a better (more radical) way.

And you can never be in another person’s shoe. You will always do things your own way. Your constraints and capacities will be different. And so it can never be a blueprint for them.

So it becomes an impossible jigsaw puzzle.

You want people to be radical. When you demand it from them, they show their (self-imposed) shackles. And you’re then left looking like an arrogant person who don’t understand where people are and what difficulties they face.

What to do with panel discussions?

I’ve been invited to a panel discussion next month.

How do I tell people that the problem is that we do too many panel discussions and people end up thinking that panel discussions are themselves radical change?

I’ve said “no” to many discussions in the past.

I’ve said “yes” to many “movements” that turned out to be just discussions.

I’m now confused what to say.

Whose responsibility is it to organize change?

Whose responsibility is it to compensate for other people not taking up their responsibilities?

Whose responsibility is to break the cycle first?

Paradox of humility

You’ve heard of the paradox of tolerance, right?

The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. ~Wikipedia

Well, let me introduce you to paradox of humility.

If you want people to have humility to listen, you’re gonna have to have the arrogance/hubris to tell them that they don’t have the humility to listen. And they’re going to use that as an excuse to say that you’re the one without humility to listen to their issues.

Good judgement

It’s very easy to figure out who are the bad people in this society — those people who believe in patriarchy, caste, religion, and/or capitalism and make it obvious.

We call them right wing for short.

But where judgement is required is to judge those who are not clearly in the right wing, but could as well be.

Those are the people who talk about revolution and change and never once asks “But how?”

If you are an honest left-wing person, you’re bound to be confused:

• What to do with savarna feminism?
• Is identity politics doing good or bad? How to even measure that?
• How do we make people stop needing god (and all of god’s conditions on them)?
• How much criticism of capitalism is possible in today’s society? Where to get bread from while criticizing capitalism?

Let me make it more concrete:

• Algorithmic feeds are screwing up democracy. Do we continue to use Instagram for “reach”?
• Do we give up perfectionism and settle for the good?
• Do we take money from billionaires/millionaires?
• How do we pay people well without taking money from rich people?
• Is volunteerism exploitation?
• Do we work with toxic people if the output may be good for the world?
• What if those toxic people then get visibility and keep doing more toxic things?
• What to do when nobody seems to know the answers?

And so many more questions!

So, when you see people talking about change without asking these questions, can we consider them part of the problem?

Pardon the differences arising from uncertainty

When things are certain and people choose to do things differently — that’s their politics. That’s unpardonable.

But when things are uncertain, unclear, confusing, and then people choose to do things differently (because of the uncertainties), then that’s a matter of randomness. That’s pardonable. That needs to be pardoned.

We can’t cancel people just because they are doing something different from us. If they share our values, and they share our uncertainties, and they choose a different path simply because there’s no telling which path is better, then they have to be considered community.

If I draw the line such that the only person on the good side is me, then I’ve over-fitted the criteria.

I need to draw the line slightly looser. To allow for differences in personalities and preferences and skills and capacity.

When we do that we end up with slightly more people. Maybe not millions, maybe not thousands. Maybe tens. Maybe a handful.

That is where I find companionship.

What about differences arising from ignorance, what about people’s potential to change?

Who remains ignorant? Whom do we allow to remain ignorant?

I have a simple rule. If someone is 25 or more years old, have been using internet since 5 years, can read/write English, and has had some sort of formal education, then no matter what identity they carry, I don’t afford them the excuse of ignorance.

People have the potential to change. Yes. It’s always possible, at whatever age. People can always learn. They can have life-altering experiences. All that’s true.

But the chances of such change is very rare. If there’s a chance, it’ll show up as green flags. And then you can make an exception for those individuals.

Akshay, you are probably going to fail the criteria of other people

I’m not afraid. I know exactly the measure of my humility-arrogance ratio, my praxis, my privileges. (Except my blindspots).

But none of that matters! Because it is not about me!

The problems of the world are so huge that it doesn’t matter if I get qualified as “bad” by someone else. I’m happy as long as people are making these judgements and move forward with their politics.

The task before the left

The to-do list for the left is rather straightforward to list down, and perhaps slightly difficult to do.

1. Call out the hypocrisies. Debate on what being “left” or “progressive” truly means.
2. Draw the line more strictly. Do not lower your standards simply because things appear too difficult.
3. Realize that things are difficult, especially because the alternatives have to be created (unlike status quo which needs to merely be sustained).
4. Give space for slack. Revolutionaries need rest too.
5. Don’t let perpetual slackers claim that they’re revolutionaries taking rest. Notice patterns. Rest of the restless looks different from comfort of the status quo.
6. Continue building the alternative without fear of failure.
   • Organizations that don’t exploit.
   • Platforms that don’t exclude.
   • Power that doesn’t get corrupted.
   • Ideology that doesn’t lose its vision.
   • Smash brahminism. Dismantle capitalism. Fuck patriarchy. (And religion will disappear automatically then).

I know a couple of relatives in my extended family who still do this job (along with other jobs), but my grandparents were mostly teachers in government schools. My mother is also a government school teacher, and my father just retired from being a doctor in government service a couple of months ago.

I have vague memory of one of my grandfathers wearing a janeu. I have not seen my father wearing it (ever?), but I think he had done the upanayanam ritual (the one where you start wearing the janeu) in his childhood. When I was about 15, my extended relatives were forcing me to do upanayanam. I didn’t particularly like my extended relatives. They were nosy and had ugly opinions about things. So, one could say that it was predetermined that I would refuse whatever they told me to do. I do not remember if I was already an atheist.

In any case, I refused steadfastly. They did try all kinds of tricks like “You don’t have to wear it forever, just during the ritual”, “You don’t have to follow any daily rituals afterwards”, “Just get it done along with everyone else”, etc. I managed to escape. And my brother who must have been 10 then also managed to escape by pointing at me.

I remember that my father would be on my side. He would, after all, not care much about these rituals. He would give us (me and my brother) non-vegetarian food whenever we went out. He was also the one who infused a healthy (unhealthy?) dose of irreverence towards authorities by then.

But I was also open-minded. I would join the meetings of these caste welfare groups, listen to their boring speeches, engage in cultural events, serve food, and generally participate in such programs. I was even the Kannur district (or north Kerala) convenor of their youth group, and one of the early blogs I had built on blogger.com was for the Mattanur division of SPSS (a welfare group for these pushpaka caste communities).

The logic of casteist thinking

As an atheist, the scripture based explanations of caste superiority didn’t make any sense to me. But that didn’t prevent my family members from giving me other explanations like “the superiority comes from waking up early and saying mantras, eating only food with good qualities, and other such superior lifestyle”. My maternal grandmother is an expert at such “logic” in that whenever she’s questioned on her casteist hatred for other people, she comes back with such reasons.

Fortunately, I had, by then, also developed a sense of rationalism which prevented these pseudo-scientific explanations from having an effect on me. But I have seen plenty of “smart” individuals fall for these.

Regardless of whether one starts believing in caste because of religious scriptures (karma and similar non-sense) or a “modern” rationalization like a superior lifestyle, the result is a sense of superiority. (Or vice versa for those who believe they are in the “lower” castes).

Atheism is Not Enough

Many anti-caste activists think that religion is the basis for caste and that annihilation of religion is important for annihilation of caste. I agree with them. But I also think that it is not just religion that needs to go, but also irrationality.

Rationalism is distinct from atheism. Atheism is only concerned with opposing god and religion. Being an atheist doesn’t make one a rationalist by default. Rationalism requires the adoption of a scientific mindset. It requires that one be aware of cognitive biases and develop meta-cognition. It requires one to think hard and long about every topic and be aware of knowledge gaps. If atheism is skepticism towards religion, rationalism is skepticism towards everything, including one’s own capacity to know the truth.

How caste prejudices operate

As I would learn to observe later, casteist activities operate in two (three) interconnected levels in these families:

• The cultural level which includes rituals, vegetarianism, application of chandanam (sandalwood), organizing on the basis of caste, marriages within the caste, etc.
• The conscious psychological level which includes thinking lowly of others, sense of superiority, purity, and other “good qualities”.
• The unconscious psychological level which includes unconscious patterns of behavior, including some developed by mirroring other people’s casteist behavior, like the desire to be flawless, the confidence/arrogance of being right and needing to teach others, savior complex, righteous aggression, automatically giving respect and reverence to people who look/speak/write a certain way, domination/authoritarianism, self-centering, self-victimization. (Do note that some of these could be conscious as well).

While it is the cultural stuff which are more obvious, it is the psychological stuff which show up as prejudices. It is well documented today how casteist thinking is at the root of different kinds of violence seen in “sophisticated” spaces like academia, healthcare, policy making, and other urban elite spaces.

The cultural stuff form the conscious/unconscious rationalization for the psychological stuff. And in turn, those who are psychologically hooked on caste propagate the culture further in caste communities.

Some examples of these prejudices I have heard in my childhood

• those who recite gayatri mantra every day morning has a distinct sheen on their face
• brahmins are extremely intelligent
• those people are not good because they eat meat/have different culture (especially during conversations around inter-caste marriage)
• eating sattvaguna food makes one smart / eating tamoguna food makes one not smart
• waking up at 4am and doing prayers increases one’s concentration and consequently intelligence
• brahmins inherit great genes
• reservation takes away chances for “forward caste” students

Social pressure

Till I was 8 or so my parents and I lived away from any of my other family members. I used to spend a lot of time with neighbors from different religions and castes.

After that we moved to a neighborhood which was populated by my extended family, including my grandmother. And that’s when/where the pressure to adopt the caste and religious identity really started.

The pre-teen me could simply remain playing and not hearing the instructions given to me. When I became a teenager, I could “talk back” and maintain distance.

But I was also lucky in that my father was on my side. Even when my mom would ask me to go to temple or light the lamp, I could refuse easily. And thanks to patriarchy, my mother’s wishes could be easily overridden by my father.

This extended to my grandmother too. There was no undue pressure on me to show fake respect to my grandmother. And consequently whenever she made a fuss about non-vegetarian food at home, etc I could simply tease her and ignore her.

In some ways, it was the extended family which had more power. It wasn’t as easy to be rude with them. But the times where it was required was very few too.

Erasures

As I write this post, I have come to a realization. Perhaps, more than what was taught, it was what was missed that made my family casteist. The erasure speaks more loudly.

Topics that I never heard about from my family (except rarely my dad) includes:

• social justice, anti-caste movement
• politics beyond party politics
• Dr BR Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Periyar, Narayana Guru, Sahodaran Ayyappan, and other anti-caste scholars
• rationalism, liberty, fraternity, equality, constitutional morality
• privilege

Parting words

In this post, I’ve tried to remember as much relevant pieces of information as I can within the time limits I set myself. If I find things I missed, I’ll make another post. I have written about my privileges in a separate post and therefore it needn’t be repeated here.

It goes without saying that regardless of how much of the cultural and conscious casteism I get rid of, the unconscious parts would still be lurking in me, until I discover them (through help from my friends or others) and work for years unlearning them. Feel free to send me a message if you find something!

I also wish to say that I do not claim that my experience is generalizable. There maybe parts of it which are applicable to others (or not). The way I have analyzed/categorized things maybe useful to you (or not). Use it merely as ethnographic material for your own critical thinking.

I asked them what rice items they had. They told fried rice, jeera rice, puliogre, and some other items. I heard “fried rice” and couldn’t imagine eating a vegetarian fried rice. After knocking over and repositioning the uddin vada plate on display, I left Panjuruli. As I stepped out, I walked unconsciously towards 404 Nectar, the salads and pasta place that Swathi and I frequent. But by then the idea of eating some chicken had taken hold of my brain. I decided to move to Arbn Food shawarma place and headed back to the road with JCBs.

My first step onto the road, some liquid fell on my left hand. It didn’t smell or look like crow shit. Maybe just some water from the metro station. And then there were many drops falling all around. It rained yesterday too. Must be a drizzle. I decided to brave it and reach Arbn Food before it started becoming heavier.

It did become quite windy very quickly. Arbn Food had its lights off. I was afraid that they were affected by the LPG crisis. But they were open. As I ordered a ₹140 jumbo shawarma roll, the rain had become quite thick. Arbn Food has a few seats on the roadside for people to sit and eat. I was standing under the retractable awning that extended just a couple of feet off the building. There’s no space inside. But the person making shawarma asked me to come inside and sit as it was raining. I said chalega and stood outside looking at the rain.

The rain had become quite heavy when the shawarma reached my hands. Two people who were waiting for grilled chicken on the seats outside ran to a nearby shop as the large umbrella couldn’t stop the rain drops that were carried horizontally by the wind. Intermittently, the wind brought some rain drops to me and my shawarma too. But I was eating it so quickly that there was no time for the drops to settle in on my shawarma. As I finished spreading mayonnaise all over my fingers and making the butter paper and tissue paper become one, the shawarma came to an end. I washed my hands with the water falling from the awning. Then I walked into the rain to throw the paper waste into the dustbin.

Apsara ice-creams was right around the corner. I walked on the footsteps of shops and reached there. As I turned the corner I could hear loud sounds on tin sheets. I thought some building under construction was falling down. But on the synthetic green carpet in front of Apsara, I saw that there was ice falling. Not snow. Ice. There were many pieces of ice falling. They were round and smaller than the CR2032 coin battery that we bought today morning from MK Retail, for our weighing machine, along with a tawa that supported induction stove, grated coconut, bread, eggs, kadala, avalakki, and goodday milk.

I went inside and there were three friends having ice cream. I ordered a small cup of strawberry cheesecake. And I finished it while watching the three friends get up and order another round of ice creams. They got jackfruit and chickoo. I thought about getting a second cup. Maybe tender coconut? No. I could instead have juice from Kundapura juice center.

I paid ₹90 and sat on one of the chairs outside waiting for the rain to stop. I sent a video of the ice — which was still falling — to Shan Geoites. That’s the Telegram group with Savi, Akash, Swathi, and I. The group is named after the YouTuber who taught us how to make kadala curry.

Once the rain stopped enough, I reached Kundapura, carefully protecting my foot from stepping in the rivers on both sides of the road. The person there cheerily greeted me. I returned the greeting and started looking at the menu plastered from top to bottom of the two pillars of the shop. I decided to have an apple milk shake. The people staffing Kundapura were scrambling around and I gave my order to another person now.

As I turned around I could see the scrambling was related to draining the water on the roadside. One of the staff had gone with a long pipe to the road trying to re-open the entrance to the stormwater drain. Another person came with a cement shaping trowel and started giving instructions to the person with the pipe. After lot of shoveling with the pipe, they succeeded in getting some movement. By then I had finished my apple milk shake, paid ₹65 and started moving towards home.

As I reached the bakery adjacent to Kundapura, the one where we always have egg puffs, some commotion developed there too. A lizard jumped from the shop front onto two people who stood eating something. They jumped and the lizard ran to the nearest pole. Turns out the pole was another person’s pants. I had seen the lizard moving towards this person who was calmly eating what I imagine was a samosa. I took a couple of quick steps to reach the other side of this person and pointed my finger straight at the lizard which had now reached their knee.

They asked me, “What’s it?”

I said, “There!”

“What?”

“Lizard!”

And they jumped too. And the lizard got off. And I walked away. A local dog with a pitbull’s face that was split evenly into grey (green?) and white looked at me from in front of the insurance company’s door.

After managing to not step into any puddles till then I planted my left foot firmly into the puddle that presented to myself as a firm piece of land at the corner between Old Madras Road and Double Road. Maybe I wouldn’t have made that mistake if I wasn’t looking at all the people waiting for catching long distance buses at the petrol pump there and then looking at my watch to confirm if it was indeed Wednesday or it had become a Friday already.

Emboldened by that misstep I decided to walk on the pavement to the side of Old Madras Road towards my home. Halfway into that, I had the opportunity to play Takeshi’s Castle as the pavement was filled with water and the road was filled with water and the only dry space was the edge of the pavement where the bricks were laid vertically. I tested my balance twice on this segment and when I saw that the buses were throwing water to the side on the road ahead, I decided to cross half the road and walk on the median. The median was wider but it ended into tall dividers soon. At that point I could cross the rest of the half of the road, reach the dry-er pavement on the other side, and finally reach the path to home where I would be writing this post.

Yesterday I saw a few eye-opening posts on Instagram.

In one Ahmad Abdallah was saying how we need to ask people for help to be able to build community. How we need to inconvenience each other so that we could become connected to each other like in a village.

In the second one Christabel Mintah-Galloway says how not everyone might be in a position to build a deep relationship and how that is okay. And how we shouldn’t confuse shared politics with genuine relationships.

In the third one Niké Aurea says how we shouldn’t expect people to guess what we need and get hurt when we don’t get it, about how we need to communicate and create clarity.

In the fourth one Avi Gill says how making it obvious to people how much you love them is amazing.

In the past week I was feeling very sad about my friendships. I felt like I had made friends who had little reason to like me as a friend. I felt like I had friends who didn’t give much space for me — to express myself, to talk about things I cared about, or to give me what I needed to feel loved.

But it was also true that I had never communicated to these friends with clarity what I wanted. I had been enjoying getting hurt.

It was overwhelming.

But it was also an opportunity for me to grow.

The reason I hadn’t had lunch today is that I had gone to Freedom Park for the protest against The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026. Swathi and I had left together from home. We took the metro from Indiranagar and I got down at Central College metro station while Swathi continued to Jayanagar. She was giving a talk about research and activism at the Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru.

I was supposed to eat something near the protest site. But by the time I reached it was 2:50. And a lot of people had come. And the protest started without much delay.

I met and greeted 18 friends there including Shubhangani and Zayan.

Vaishali put me in the speakers list for the protest. I prepared something while listening to others speak. It was something like this (jotted down from memory, could be totally exaggerated):

As a doctor, it is ironic that I’m standing in this venue to speak. The medical and healthcare system has been the most violent to many of the people assembled here. On behalf of the healthcare system, I apologize to everyone here who has faced violence or are scared to approach healthcare.
Even among that violent medical field, there are rays of progressive elements who have come together to develop a correct understanding of gender identity, sexual orientation, and all of that. The WPATH guidelines state that “An individual’s gender identity is an internal identification and experience”. So even science has learned and corrected itself. But none of that has reached our political class.

Now they’re talking about medical board. But let me ask, is there any test to determine a person’s gender identity? There’s none. Doctors have to eventually ask the person about their gender identity. There’s absolutely no role for doctors in this bill.

I do not understand why doctors are not standing up against this bill. Why are the medical associations not releasing statements?

All of the progressive public health groups in Karnataka and India are opposed to this bill. Saravatrika Arogya Andolana, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, everyone is opposed to it.

This bill is unscientific. It makes no sense. It is anti-public health. It is anti-social justice. And that is what makes it a manuvadi bill.

Oppose this bill.

In school I had no problem giving speeches. But of late, I shake when speaking. The politically correct streak of activism has made me less confident about speaking, especially about social justice. Who am I to speak? Do I have lived experience? Shouldn’t I be passing the mic? Also what words do I use? Can I say “jai bhim”? Too many questions come when I take the mic.

But I tell myself “it is not about me”. If I can speak from a medical perspective or a public health perspective, that has some effect. Indeed, today, after I spoke, it became like “lawyers have spoken, doctors have spoken, everyone is against the bill”. So I felt I did the right thing by just straight up saying “ok” and speaking when called up.

The moment Zayan saw me afterwards, he said I spoke well. That’s when I stopped shaking. Later Apeksha too told me that I spoke well.

Although the permission was till 5, the protest went on till 6. And that’s when I took the metro to Indiranagar.

Around noon today, I broke the rule I set up for my own safety and entered a debate in a WhatsApp group. It was again modern medicine vs traditional medicine. Since I spent weeks discussing this in mfc e-group, I feel responsible to share a summary of my findings whenever this topic comes up anywhere. It’s another of the self-inflicted torture I take on.

As if by karma, when I got out of the underground metro station at Central College and reached network coverage, my WhatsApp crashed with all the messages. The database got corrupted. I could restore history from a backup from February 26. It cleanly erased all messages between then and today. Amazing.

I wanted to put a status telling people about this. I thought of writing “I can’t hold you accountable for things you’ve messaged me because I lost my whatsapp history”.

But then I put “Lost my whatsapp chat history. So feel free to resend all the “I love you” messages.”

Love requires space. Love requires space for mistakes. Love requires space for alternative truths. Love requires space for growth. Love requires space for negative emotions. Love requires space for difficult conversations. Love requires space for inconveniences.

Almost four years after I started exploring the framework of love, I’m finally beginning to understand the basics of love.

Not everyone is blessed with the curse of the search. It might be related to one’s privileges, exposures, childhood, or other factors. In any case, if you are someone who’s affected by the search, you might try the following:

• reading more books
• talking to and asking questions to more people
• working in various different groups and careers

The method

People doing the search may start from different places, but they converge on one method — the action-reflection cycle. Here’s what an action reflection-cycle looks like:

1. You may have done something.
2. You think about it and evaluate whether you have what you wanted.
3. You do something differently based on your thoughts above.
4. Go to step 1.

Depending on who you are there are two outcomes possible.

The search that ends

After a bit of exploring you will find some work that fits your hole perfectly. You will enjoy doing it, you will find meaning, you will get satisfaction, you will probably be able to make money too.

Some people call this ikigai.

The search that never ends

When you have finished reading all the bestsellers and the most obscure book that you found a dusty copy of in an old library, when you have finished talking to the last person on earth, and when you have said no to all the groups that you could easily have made a career in, if you are in this unlucky group, you’ll eventually come to the conclusion that there is no end to the search.

Because your search can only end when all of the world’s problems are solved. And they never can be.

So you’ll keep going through the action-reflection cycle (probably doing better and better each time). And then one day you die.

This post was written inspired by a discussion with Avani and Gayatri on a similar topic.

It is easy to find people frustrated with progressive spaces. But there are two kinds. One has the not doing the right way frustration. The other has the not doing the right thing frustration.

Not doing the right way

These are frustrations related to procedure and process. It is related to interpersonal interactions.

How do we organize? How do we make decisions?

Are we hypocrites? Do we speak one thing and do another thing? Do we talk about empathy and act mean? Do we talk about care and love and actively exclude people?

Are we going too fast? Too slow? Are there too many meetings? Too little?

Are we creating a safe space? Do we disagree productively? Are we on point? Do we have integrity? Do we care about the cause?

Not doing the right thing

This is a frustration with the whole space and the work itself. There is some fundamental disagreement with the cause or the proposed path.

Should we focus on action or discussion?

Should we focus on patriarchy? Caste? Class? Everything?

Should we have a narrower focus or a broader focus?

Should we focus on the problem? Or the cause of the problem? Or the cause of the cause? Or the cause of the cause of the cause?

Should we mobilize large political movements? Or should we strategically engage as a small group?

Should we be online? Or on the streets? Or both?

The overlap

There is some overlap at the edges. For example, questions of governance are tied both to what gets done and how it gets done.

There are also inter-dependency. How the work is done affects what gets done. And what needs to get done can create ripples in how it is done.

The implication for frustration

If you are frustrated about the way things are done, your frustration is about individuals and their ways of working. You might get insights from psychology (individual and organizational), culture, or just by peeking deep inside yourself. If you can’t find answers in one progressive space, you might be able to find/build a different space with the same goals. A different community that have figured out the how.

But if you are frustrated about what things are done, your frustration is about institutions and the paradigm of what counts as meaningful work. Your insights will come from fields like politics and social development. And your alternatives will be in a totally different paradigm of work.

This post was written inspired by a discussion with Gayatri and Avani on a similar topic.

While traditions like gender roles and stereotypes have been critically recognized for decades, there are some traditions which have been problematized very little and consequently go on unquestioned. These include:

• Universities are assumed to be the only spaces for thought and only the work of people affiliated to universities are deemed to be scholarship.
• Rich folks who donate to charity are given gratitude.
• Founders of organizations are regarded as crucial and the sole cause for everything and everyone that comes out of the organization (or even movements related to the organization).
• Taking advantage of one’s social capital is done without thinking twice.
• Famous people are assumed to be smart, fame is considered as proof of one’s ideas.
• Doing jobs inside capitalistic systems, perpetuating oppression, without attempting to find alternatives is considered acceptable.

How Irreverence Works

Irreverence is a thumb rule that works against many traditions.

Irreverence to elders in the family helps you fight patriarchy, caste, communalism.

Irreverence to the rich helps you fight capitalism, charity mindset, and savior complex.

Irreverence to the cultural elites helps you fight caste.

Irreverence helps you break toxic patterns of traditionalism, pause, reflect, and come up with alternative ways of doing things.

Without irreverence, you end up doing the same shit that others have been doing forever. Without irreverence, you end up being traditional.

Traditional forces in progressive spaces

In this reel Ravikant Kisana tries to explain how RK wants to disrupt the legacy of prestige by not talking about famous alma maters.

RK is fighting what’s called “name-dropping”. Name-dropping is an incredibly effective tool for influencing traditionalist mindset. You talk about how you’re friends with the rich-and-powerful, or connected to powerful institutions, and the traditionalist reverence will shower you with high esteem.

On the other hand, RK is accumulating another kind of traditionalist source of power in terms of algorithmic visibility. This is what prompts this tweeter to ask why Anand Teltumbde doesn’t get the kind of visibility RK or Suraj Yengde gets.

The traditionalist forces are nauseatingly obvious once you start seeing it, and it is also depressing to have majority of the population not see it. For example, in this widely shared post by Janaki Nair about Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid, all I could read was “JNU so great. Scholarship and debate so great in JNU. I’m teacher, SI and UK are simple students. Just recognize how great academics is and release them from prison.” One line stood out:

I was often irritated by their style of learning, which bordered on the irreverent.

The traditionalist thoughts that JN wrote throughout the post becomes explicit in this line. Irreverence is seen as an undesirable annoyance.

Develop Irreverence

Just like you say “fuck you” to 19th century notions of gender and Before-Christ notions of caste, start saying “fuck you” to things like:

• Money power
• Authority power
• Degree power
• Pedigree power
• Fame power

Re-evaluate things that you’ve been doing without questioning. And start operating on your own, based on your rationality and care.