Kitaabi

Reading books is one of my most favourite hobbies. Earlier I used to read books and emulate them, now as I became aware of the political reality of this country and the world, I read them to understand perspectives. My interest in mental health pushed me towards the study of psychology and while I became somewhat competent in therapeutic psychology I realised that there are various other types of psychology including exploitation and dark psychology which the deep state of this nation applies on people and with impunity just that it appears as one's own fault or fate. The first realisation for me was that all art is political including literature and the second realisation was that all life is political, the third realisation was that religion was political, however I ended up realising that faith and especially personal faith is not political unless you decide it to be. Reading helps with improving knowledge and it also helps in gaining new perspectives in mental health issues and reading, both fiction and non-fiction, helps, as I have seen, in auto-immune disorders. I have kind of a huge library both of professional books and of books of personal interest which include both fiction and non-fiction. I have in my experience realised that writers for the most part are one of the most trustworthy of professionals, though I would like to discount propagandists, journalists and Indian writers from this statement. Life is a lot about the metaphysical model of your mind and consciousness, it's similar to how a village person sees a direct connection between the food eaten and it's excretion, like there is a direct pipe, and a doctor who knows the complex organs and processes the food eaten passes through. Anyone who has been aware in the past decade knows that the collective IQ of this nation has deteriorated in the past decade. I have always maintained that I don't think that it is because of BJP but I know that it is also BJP. I ended up realising that behind the two party or multi-party system in this country there is a multi-level feudal-corporate-mafia setup riddled with patronage and criminal networks that hide behind welfare and religion that is permanent and in the past decade due to my personal and political experiences I realised that this country is actually a regionally and culturally divided kleptocratic oligarchy posing as a democracy. Good books are hard to come by in this country and at most you'd get cheap or campy romances or poverty porn written by quite privileged individuals, good adventure or sci-fi novels don't really seem possible due to invasive political reality and the political climate and hence one has to depend on foreign authors in which again there is socioeconomic class based invasive gatekeeping. I personally like J.K. Rowling and Stephen King in modern western authors and I appreciate Neil Gaiman's writing style though I don't like his stories for the most part. I prefer European and American literature written in the 19th century and early 20th century because I personally think, and that's my personal opinion, that it is the most authentic literature and same goes for literature written in early to mid 20th century if Indian literature is concerned. Anything after that requires a discerning eye to separate it from propaganda. Reading at least two books a month is a doable goal and I try that I am able to do it. 

Avocado Toast

You end up seeing the world in a different light once you have understood oppressive environments and tyranny. The fun part about oppression and tyranny in the modern times is that it can be individualised, customised and sporadically distributed. So here, Buddha's "life is suffering" doesn't work, life is suffering but not for all. The real enlightenment is not the realisation that "life is suffering", it's that individuals drenched in excesses and habituated of impunity deprive people of mere basics and when one is deprived of basics and has to push a boulder up and down a mountain for basics and even then they fail to achieve the basics life would in fact be suffering. I have had luck of seeing individuals who wouldn't even give a dying person water having power and my belief in the world and its betterment collpased. I realised that all that matters is the present, and for the most people there is no family legacy to be left behind because when you understand the true design of the country we live in, and I do not know about the world, you end up knowing that all family legacies have been defiled and I'm talking about every single one of them and then they will be held up to a standard that is impossible to achieve mostly because the conditions around it are impossible to achieve. In this country growth only happens through cronyism, nepotism and patronage. And as far as deep state of this nation goes I have identified three characteristics, scamming, thievery and rape and people are being governed by scamming, thievery and rape wrapped in religion which is mostly practiced through victim blaming and betraying people's genuine faith in their Gods. I neither know the greater design nor am I interested in knowing it after seeing the basics because when basics itself are shit, greater design doesn't really matter. The work of making each person into a lonely island is going on and I think it will be complete in a decade or so. Good people will have to prove that their intent was not wrong to assholes when they victim blame them after exploiting them. This is what happens when hyperreality engulfs the actual reality and when conspiracy and propaganda machine consists of more people than the workforce that does the actual work that runs a nation. I know of Purvanchal and I realise that deep state of Purvanchal runs on the principle that I first witnessed in the Bobby Deol's movie Soldier, "kaam khatam, aadmi khatam". So, what does one have when their family legacy has been defiled and the core of system they live in is rape? It's the present. Once you understand the system, everything will boil down to a very few things, family or people you love, your work, your art, and your genuine interests and hobbies, and the only authentic things in the world, the nature and the night sky. But the most important thing and it won't be a surprise to anyone is the thing that ensures physical survival, money. Future only belongs to those who are the part of this entrenched setup of cronyism, nepotism and patronage, for people who like to work for what they want to deserve only thing that remains is the present. Not everyone would feel this way, and this is not a generalized observation but this is the absolute bottom line of existence when all illusions are lifted. 

Lambu Motu

One has to be wise enough to never make a choice between truth and fantasy. Truth and fantasy can go side by side and if at all fantasy can be the future version of truth. The choice is between truth and delusion and this choice is arises for people when power is wielded with cynicism. When absolute power is wielded with cynicism then people end up becoming homeless, destitute and dispossessed, although once power has been cemented forever it doesn't matter to it if people end up becoming homeless, destitute or dispossessed. Early 2010s my fantasy had depth. I was always a pop culture guy and I liked stylish stuff and for quite a while I dabbled in psychological thrillers, noir and transgressive fiction until the reality dawned on me that base reality at the core of the nation that I live in is in itself transgressive and my life in late 2010s removed the remaining illusions that I had in my mind. Pop culture matters. I am not a big AI fan except its use for the mentally handicapped, but I find myself going to ChatGPT and discussing with it what if Miles Teller's Reed Richards becomes The Maker or if a Midnight Sons movie is in the works. Why? Because except a few, I don't have people to discuss pop culture with. For many AI is their girlfriend or boyfriend. Why is it so? India from its population doesn't have a dearth of people and then you realise that it's not people but the politics and economics and especially socioeconomics. I used to read comics, the indigenous ones and sometimes foreign ones, in my childhood and I graduated to new age Indian comics as they were being launched in late 2000s and early 2010s, there was Virgin Comics now rebranded as Liquid Comics, Level 10 Comics, Yali Dream Creations, Holy Cow, Indusverse. There were, other than older characters like Chacha Chaudhary, Fauladi Singh, Nagraj, Doga and Dhruv, new characters like The Sadhu, Devi, Odayan, Rakshak, Shaitan Singh. The latest addition in these characters is of Alpha Comics' characters like Bhujang, Bawarchi and quite a few others. It is in mid 2010s that I realised that the soul of this nation has been defiled so much that pop culture artifacts like comics have become useless unless and until a person intentionally wants to delude himself because unlike the MCU the Indian comics do not automatically transport you into their world especially if you are acquainted to the base reality of this country like me. My delusion was great while it lasted and I felt the depth in the characters like The Sadhu, Devi and Odayan. Here is the basic truth, pop culture comes way after food, clothing and shelter, that is if we are taking air and water for granted and we know that even water is not free. Also, I ended up realising that finer sources of entertainment like pop culture especially comics come last as a source of entertainment as the primary source of entertainment of this nation, and it wouldn't look like it on the surface, is sex. 

Peacock

Not all genocides are active, some are passive and some are passively active. Bengal famine was a passively active genocide of people. There is a misconception that genocides don't happen now and especially in countries that appear stable. They do, it's just that they happen simultaneous to existence, cultural genocides, genocides of family and family cultures for the most part these genocides are passively active. You live for quite a while and then if you are intelligent you realise that in modern times we are not living in cultures but in a hyperreality. The baffling thing for me to realise was that while the privileged live in a global hyperreality, the unprivileged and especially from third world countries and backward regions of those countries who on the outlook seems to be living in a proper culture are also living in hyperrealities, albeit of a local or regional nature. Life even in a third world country and even in the backward regions of third world countries is not authentic. If we are talking India, past twenty years have seen the dismantling and collapse of highly refined local cultures into mongrel cultures easier to manage and shame. The process had been initiated long back it's just people who were born in the early 1900s were still alive and thus carried the cultural authenticity within them. What is culture if not alignment to love and nature, and if you are a 90s kid you know it existed back then and you have seen it deteriorating in real-time since then as the exploitation increased and older generation gradually died. It's not that exploitation and rape were not present earlier, it's just that culture too was present which has been dismantled. The past decade taught me, which I found quite unbelievable for some time, that those who hold power actually want to delete refinement and aesthetics from the local cultures, retaining them just as tokens to show when someone outside the culture comes and also weaponising local cultural expressions as objects of shame. The cultural genocide is complete by now, all that remains is a hierarchy at the top of which resides individuals with total disconnect to their cultures and roots in the name of cosmopolitanism and this cosmopolitanism requires them to desert their own culture in the name of modernity. Anyway the news is that highly refined local cultures of this land have collpased and what remains is a mongrel hyperreality and now we can all shove pizza slices in our assholes from the pointy side and become the national bird of this country.

Gulistaan

I was lucky to grow up in a time when people who wrote children's literature and made children's media had good intent. They really wanted to inculcate good values in children. The editor of Balhans in the 90s, Anant Kushwaha is one of my personal heroes and I loved the Chitrakatha Visheshank that Balhans got out twice or thrice in an year. I remember each magazine, each comic book had a distinct vibe back then. I had a huge comics collection till highschool and each comic book had a distinct vibe to it. If you are into the job of reading and writing you ultimately realise that reading and writing is actual magic and those who read and write are actually magicians. Professionally my domain is of a healer too and I find myself adequate at my job, not too good but not bad either. I'm an average healer, but my professional domain deals with magic too. And then I write, so I deal with two types of magic. In the past decade I realised that children's media in this country in contemporary times is made by individuals who are complete scum, they do not have good intent, either that or they made bogus animation on YouTube and parents put those animations on for their children or worse, children grow up watching instagram reels. Five or six years ago I was travelling by train and a mom was playing Monopoly with his 9 or 10 year old kid with extremely fat glasses. I'm just glad that I grew up with Meena, even though it was government propaganda and matured with Courage The Cowardly Dog who did the right thing despite being scared witless. If you read comics and if you have the privilege to maintain your savviness you would end up graduating to graphic novels. The journey is from Cartoonist Pran to Alan Moore. And it is when you reach Alan Moore you realise what a shitshow the world we live in is. Cartoonist Pran just used to soften the blows and, to instill hope and values, showed the good winning, Alan Moore writing for a mature audience has no such compulsion. I have seen Hindi literature collapsing, I have seen Hindi literary magazines deteriorating and I am talking about magazines for adults. Literature is the mirror of society and the mirror was removed because all it would show is exploitation and rape just in a civil language because people who are in literature are civil people and not like the rapists who rule over people in this country. I would thank my foray into transgressive fiction in my early 20s that I don't give a fuck about any such obligation. The news is that feudal slavery is back and this time in the form of fate. While a few kids will study in schools that will take them to Japan for picnic, majority of kids would get salt and rice in midday meals and will grow up throwing stones at passing trains and hitting the copulatory tie of dogs with a stick. 

Simplified

There are two approaches to life, simple and complex and it is not really easy to have a simple approach to life as life has a habit of complicating things. The most important thing then comes down to accepting consequences of one's choices which in itself is complex in collapsed socio-political realities because only a responsible man would accept consequences of one's choices and in collpased sociopolitical realities the most responsible person is blamed the most even for the the impunity and mindless actions of others and if you are aware of deeper realities of existence, one more unfortunate dimension arises, lack of autonomy of people over their selves and this arrangement is in place so that selected individuals can live their lives with impunity. In extremely optimised cases of persecution or exploitation people end up having zero percent autonomy, unless they salvage a little through their efforts, and more than hundred percent responsibility and accountability. Still, experience is the teacher and once one is experienced enough and has mapped the terrain of their existence, taking responsibility for one's actions becomes easier. Mindfulness and making one's decision and doing one's job with intention helps. Mindfulness when one is doing something, and mindfulness about the thoughts that are in mind are important in the current sociopolitical climate. A good person takes responsibility for their actions but we live in times when one's actions might not be necessarily theirs and so a good person ends up taking responsibilities of actions that are not even theirs. This is the downside of choosing goodness as a way of life. The concepts of Nietzsche's slave morality and master morality do not apply to a man who is truly good, being good is a way of life for him not because being good would take him anywhere but because he knows that proper flourishing of humankind depends on choosing good over evil. However the practical truth is that evil always wins, one, because it always uses opportunism, hypocrisy, deception and force and domination and use of these tools, which are not tools for the evil but deeply entrenched in them due to inherent weakness, means that they would have to continuously apply these tools and approaches for the lust of power and the lust of power translates to power over lives and bodies of people, right to rape people and wealth and resources. Power is not inherently corrupting, it's just that it attracts the already corrupt or those who are prone to corruption. A good man or woman must know how to simplify things. Hell and heaven doesn't matter to a man or woman who has lived on their principles. 

Luracell

In the first Matrix movie, the machines farm humans for electricity and keep them subdued by a program, a false world where they are living their lives, doing their jobs, called the Matrix. In real world the entity that farms people as human resource farms them for data, their thoughts, feelings, sensations and most importantly vibes. People are essentially vibe and data factory, full of thought and emotion complexes. In a practical sense, by manipulating thoughts and sensations a person can be played with like a chess piece by induction of fear, desire and other emotions. It's nothing more than Pavlovian psychology, you ring the bell and the dog salivates. You show the donkey the carrot and the donkey moves forward and you can do that to the donkey as long as he is alive. A thought in your head is about something, commonly about an object, a person, place or a thing. To make sense of what is happening to you, you have to find out what is the carrot in your case. Deep administration of this carrot chiefly depends on the desire for mate for young people, and for older people the desire for sex. The other equivalent thing is money and status. Happiness in families has deteriorated since the 90s and it is because the less the happy memories, the more a person incapable of self-regulation as he has nothing concrete to fall back on, no stable personality of himself or herself to depend on. As I was able to see, at least in case of Purvanchal, the deep administration is composed of rapists of tyrannical and genocidal intent and this how the individuals in the deep administration are groomed, with genocidal intent, it doesn't mean that they will commit genocides but they don't really bother when genocides happen, even the lowest level functionary of this establishment has a tyrannical and genocidal intent minus the intelligence and that means if they end up getting power, which is impossible given the criminal syndicate like extremely optimised hierarchy based solely on fear of life or ruin of self or family. It is however possible to employ these individuals on singular people or families. This how God tests a normal law abiding individual or family in this nation. Love for the family is the ultimate blackmail to the human resource that ends up waking up to this existential blackmail, plus there is the carrot for others who have still not seen through the design. Everyone is wearing a VR goggle of their fears and desires, if you are lucky you get to chase your desires and if you are not then you end up with Pavlovian control through fear. People spend whole of their lives doing activism for something, because people need a purpose, a doctor can spend her whole life doing activism on false marketing of something which is labelled as something it is not and their whole life is spent on that running for court hearings while their practice suffers and they fail to make as much money as their competence deserved. Less the money more is the chance of future dispossession and more the control. You go somewhere, you meet someone, the first thing you experience is the vibe and that vibe is translated to you first by your sensory system and then by your own experiences and yet the vibe in itself has an essence. Just like a person with bad odour can wear a perfume, a person with bad vibes can wear good vibes. In a setting like this acceptance that nothing can be done is essential and then comes prioritising. Prioritise what actually matters to you.