Impatiently Curious

NOTE: We don't inhabit a fragmented reality. Nothing around us can be isolated from the catastrophic effects of the pandemic we're witnessing. All further posts on this blog will carry this caveat until there is some reasonable accountability established and substantial actions taken against the state's criminal abdication of responsibility. 

NOTE: We don't inhabit a fragmented reality. Nothing around us can be isolated from the catastrophic effects of the pandemic we're witnessing. All further posts on this blog will carry this caveat until there is some reasonable accountability established and substantial actions taken against the state's criminal abdication of responsibility. 

NOTE: We don't inhabit a fragmented reality. Nothing around us can be isolated from the catastrophic effects of the pandemic we're witnessing. All further posts on this blog will carry this caveat until there is some reasonable accountability established and substantial actions taken against the state's criminal abdication of responsibility. To understand if the government's handling of covid crisis can be called a 'crime against humanity' see here . I was talking to a dear friend the other day about writing. He had started writing a blog sometime back, but had stopped now. When I asked him about this, he told me that the main reason he stopped was because the blog didn't have scale i.e. not many people read it. His mantra was ' Build a brand first and then start writing to achieve scale '. There are a couple of things to be understood here.  First , writing is not a monolith in terms of what it means to writers themselves. Between individuals who wr...

Opening concerns  The government yesterday decided to allow anyone above 18 to get vaccinated. There are a few caveats here. First, is that the government has decided to divide all of India's vaccine stock including Covishield and covaxin (produced and manufactured in India) and all other vaccines that the government cleared on an emergency usage basis (such as Pfizer, Moderna and J&J) into two parts. First half will be utilised for vaccinating the frontline workers, and anyone above 45 free of cost. The other half will not be bought or subsidized by the central government in any manner and will be open for purchase by the state and other entities in an 'open market'. There are a couple of things to be noted here. First, by announcing that states are free to purchase the vaccine from the open market according to their own requirements and needs, the center has simply shifted the burden of providing healthcare and finances from the center to the states. Shrouded in thi...

A few days back I had written a post in which I outlined five pieces of advice I would like to give to my 18 year old self. In the post I had urged readers to comment with their advice to their 18 y/o selves. Riddhi, a dear friend of mine (and now an ex classmate sadly) was kind enough to write this post outlining what she'd like to tell her 18 year old self. It is filled with deep insights and profound reflections. Beside that I'm also excited because it is the first guest post on the blog! Here's what she wrote - An older, but similar-enough, looking version of myself coming back in time to tell a younger me about the keys to success in all the relevant spheres, would be exactly the kind of fantasy I would entertain and enjoy thoroughly as a Freshman. Of course, the laws of time and space were bent solely so that my older self could come and help me save myself and, in turn, the world. I have a fundamental problem with using the lens that I have procured at this stage in ...

I've always struggled with the idea of how to best utilize my time. What activities to pursue, and which books to read, which professors to talk to, and which classes to attend. The protagonist in the German mini series DARK said that a choice for something is a choice against something, pointing out the inherent trade off nature of all our actions. Do one thing, and you won't be able to do another. No matter how much you race against time, you cannot catch up with your own ambitions and curiosity.  I'm doing my second undergraduate degree as of now. And sometimes I reflect back on the time I spent during my first. Although I don't regret much of the choices I made, there are surely things I would have tweaked here and there given the chance. Of course these suggestions for my past self suffer from hindsight bias - I still think I would have achieved more optimal outcomes if I adopted these suggestions in a better and efficient way. And of course for anyone reading this...

'You know, you don't know enough right?'  A voice lingered in my head as I was strolling on my terrace on an evening. Me : "I know. We've never disagreed on this. I don't know why you keep bringing this up every time I'm trying to think about something deeply"  The voice : "Perhaps you don't understand why I keep parroting this to you. I thought you'd have become wiser all these years later" Me : "I suppose we'll always have some blind-spots. Anyhow, why do you keep on saying this?" TV: "First you need to understand something fundamental about your brain, which is that it is a master trickster. It makes you believe things that are untrue, distorts reality to suit your insecurities and molds perception to tailor-fit your preconceived ideas. This is a relic from the time when knowledge and information wasn't as abundant and freely available as it is now - a prehistoric relic if you like. But the world has changed...