“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts….” -Act II, Scene VII, As You Like It, William Shakespeare, We are defined not as a set of characteristics or traits, not as a sealed package by others. Instead, everyone sees us for the discrete, granular roles that we play in their lives. The ‘package’ that we see in our own heads is our own perspective of all the roles we play in the lives of all the people we know. You may be a caring child, a sincere student, a loyal friend, a passionate lover, a dedicated employee, a pleasant boss, a doting father and a responsible citizen: each of these roles call for a set of characteristics and need you to act in a manner that suits the roles you choose to play. Ain't that why someone we hate from the guts is liked by some others, why some fall in love with people that just don’t care, why some people buy goods t...
A recent end-of-year retrospection showed me that as years go by, my activity on this blog here is turning sparser than ever, and so is the site traffic to my posts. This was only expected since people have moved on to alternate content formats - picture sharing on instagram, short format videos on tiktok or reels, and micro-blogs on substack, conversations in the form of podcasts (cringe!) or god forbid, revolting wisdom spewed on LinkedIn. What's more, blogging platforms themselves may be shut down sooner rather than later, as companies are caught between a dwindling audience and increasing costs to keep the tech running. While the world may have moved on to shinier new stuff, I find myself in an alien world - where folks don't have the attention span to read or listen to what I have to say. And yet, the written word is something I can't break ties with. I have recently found myself with a little too much time on my hands- more than I know what to productively do wit...
“Who smokes beedis these days!?” said my friend. “Quite a lot of people that can’t afford cigarettes…” I replied automatically. We were in a corner booth at a quaint, charming place called Koshy’s early this morning. This place is quite popular with the locals for its English breakfast, but I noticed how much the place looked like your typical eatery scene from the pages of an a British novel. It was quite early in the morning and we barely beat the church-crowd by just a few minutes to get a seat in this deli. On this occasion, that strong beedi smell that intruded our senses came from a few night watchmen we just passed, catching up during their morning tea breaks. As we made a quick arithmetic, we realized that those watchmen must be making no more than 4000 bucks a month and probably had quite a large family to fend for. A simple pack of cigarettes (at 200 bucks) is almost 5% of their monthly wage and it was obviously a luxury they can’t afford. Now, I could go on givin...
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