Small thoughts

Train

Mid Day reports:

Talk about catching a lucky break. A 60-year-old woman at Ghatkopar station yesterday sauntered onto the platform, got down on the tracks and lay down on them just as a local train arrived.

At least two bogies passed over her before the driver applied the brakes. She came out almost unscathed, with just an injury on a toe on the left foot.

One moment she is lying down on the railway tracks, a train heading towards her, and she feels this terrible, unspeakable sadness. A few seconds later, the train has gone over her, and she’s still alive. What do you think she feels then?

There’s no similarity in the plot, but I thought of Jean-Paul Sartre’s great short story, ‘The Wall’ (pdf link) when I read this.

How Not To Get Trolled

The Times of India has an amusing report on how Ashish Nehra was trolled on social media after he revealed that he owned an old Nokia phone and wasn’t even on social media. Which leads one to the question, how was he trolled then? You can write whatever you want on Twitter and Facebook, but the guy’s not on either of those. You don’t have his phone number. So what, you’re going to go stand outside his house and shout snarky one-liners?

There is a deep truth here about how not to get trolled. And there is a deeper truth here that, hard as it may be to believe, predates social media. It is this: people can only get to you if you let them get to you. Your peace of mind is in your hands.

I never thought I’d say this, but I’m beginning to like Nehra, and I’m feeling nostalgic towards Nokia phones. Be still, my beating heart!

Have an Omelette

Does it make any sense for a government to apologize for wrongs committed decades, even centuries, earlier? Don Boudreaux thinks not:

Imagine if we conducted our personal affairs as governments conduct their affairs: even the most atrocious and grievous wrongs that we commit would be apologized for, not by those of us who commit the offenses, but only by our grandchildren or great-grandchildren – people who had no hand at all in the commission of the now-formally-apologized-for wrong.  Who would take such apologies seriously?  “Great-great-grandchildren of armed robber apologizes for their ancestors’ wrongful acts.”  How meaningless can an apology be?

I like that way of thinking, actually. Let’s continue down that road of what would happen if you conducted your personal affairs as governments conduct theirs. Say you forcibly took 30% of the earnings of every person in your housing society, offering in return your notional protection. You set down norms of behaviour, including who can visit them and if they themselves are allowed to leave the premises. Maybe you don’t allow them to drink alcohol; or eat beef; or speak their mind freely. You regulate what they may or may not buy from the market, and you get a piece of whatever they purchase. If they buy 12 eggs, two come to you. Have an omelette.

I could go on forever, but here’s the thing: If you actually behaved the way a government does, you’d be treated as a thug by society, and locked up by the government, which would consider you competition, and would naturally like to have a monopoly on that kind of behaviour. Ah, but you now protest, I am stretching it too far. All of us signed a social contract. And it is legitimate for the government to behave in this way.

Well, I didn’t sign any contract. And why is it legitimate?

Taken at the Flood

This is class:

Sex workers from Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district dipped into their savings and survived on just one meal a day to collect Rs 1 lakh as a donation towards relief work in rain-ravaged Chennai. […]

Of the around 3,000 sex workers in the district in western Maharashtra, almost 2,000 contributed to the relief fund, Snehalaya founder Girish Kulkarni said.

“These women were restless when they came to know of the deluge in Chennai. They decided that they should do something to help residents there… We are in touch with Delhi-based NGO Goonj for ensuring further relief to the people of Chennai,” he added.

And this is crass:

There is something terribly unfair about this world. That is fine, the dice drops where it does, this is how it is. But if you, reading, this, are a believer, tell me this: where the fuck is your god?

Your Father Too

So Anupam Kher gets booed at a literary event and calls the audience a “paid audience.” He follows it up by saying that “people have an agenda and cannot handle a chaiwala becoming a PM.”

This is the precise problem with our discourse. Anytime people disagree with you or oppose you, you attack them instead of their argument or their viewpoint. So they are a “paid audience” or they “have an agenda” or they are “ISI/CIA agents” or they are “sickulars” or “bhakts” or “libtards” or aaptards”. And they say, “your father too,” and we all get caught in an endless cycle of abuse and snark, egged on by the echo chambers we build around us. Messy.

As for Kher, he lost his credibility the day he accepted the chairmanship of the censor board all these years ago. If you’re against free expression, you’re against art. Shame on him.

Sickness and Health

The Economist begins a piece on Alzheimer’s disease with these two sentences:

Like cancers and heart disease, Alzheimer’s is a sickness of the wealthy.That is because it is a sickness of the old.

Reflect on that a bit, and consider the irony of how bad news can be good news. The proliferation of these diseases stands testament to much our species has advanced. That is awesome—but only till it’s my turn.

The Fine Art of Being Besides the Point

Arun Shourie says that the current government is “Congress plus a cow.” The BJP responds by saying that Shourie is no longer a member of the BJP because apparently his membership expired and he forgot to renew it.

That’s the best you can come up with, BJP?

*

Aside: I think if Rahul Gandhi joined the BJP, the average IQ in the party might actually go up. Narendra Modi has an HR problem, not a media problem.

‘Too Good’

Viswanathan Anand just drew his round one game against Anish Giri at the Bilbao Masters despite having an overwhelmingly superior position. Why couldn’t he win it? Here’s what Giri had to say:

I think the problem for my opponent was that his position was too good. He could afford to make absolutely any move, and he abused this fact.

I read that quote, and I immediately thought of the BJP and their comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha.