Category: Humor
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Namit Arora featured on Cyrus Says
I’m the sort who dreads even the thought of appearing on live broadcasts with AMA style audience Qs, but I quite enjoyed my conversation on Indians with Cyrus Broacha, the smart, funny, inimitable host of the podcast Cyrus Says. Do listen! (Apple, Google, Spotify, Adori, etc.)
Category: Anthropology & Archaeology, Books & Authors, Culture, History, Humor, Politics, Religion, Travel, Video -
Notes from the SV Underground
During my 20+ years in Silicon Valley and since, I’ve often pondered the impact of the Internet on social life. As an exploration of this for a broad audience, I think The Social Dilemma is excellent. It captures, if a bit luridly, the largely amoral nature of the hyper-capitalist creativity of Silicon Valley—and its bad consequences. Watch it!Technology, says the film, ought to be a tool that serves us. But interactive social media works differently from its earlier “broadcast” counterparts. It streams 24×7 personalized news, opinion, gossip, ads, propaganda, pop culture—all competing for our attention. The film shows how we pay for it, how it spies and uses algorithmic wizardry to mine our tastes and behaviors without our consent, how it hacks our attention span and exploits our psychology to benefit private and state interests, how it further polarizes and divides us. It artfully manipulates us with dopamine hits and facilitates the spread of fake news like never before. All this, argues the film, harms mental health and raises social strife. We’ve ceded too much privacy and power to a few tech corporations that are de facto monopolies, whose understanding of us is “the product” that’s monetized—as part of “surveillance capitalism”. It’s a Faustian bargain, the film suggests, and calls for sensible regulation before things get much worse. You may not agree with all of the opinions in the film but it’ll make you think.
Anyhow, today is one year since my first novel appeared in the world. Among its themes is the culture and inner life of Silicon Valley, revealed via office events and interactions between the protagonist, Ved, and his coworkers. The Social Dilemma reminded me of those parts, so to mark its first anniversary, I’ve published below one such excerpt from my novel. Go buy it for juicier bits about a 36-year-old who, in an era after the dot-com crash and 9/11, stumbles and ripens through messy experiences in sex, love, work, family, friendship, and cultural belonging. I should add that the novel is a story drawn from life, not a story of my life. Full disclosure: it has dopamine hits galore!
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Happy Childfree Day!
Today, August 1, is International Childfree Day, one of my favorite marked days of the year. Today I celebrate my early decision to never have children—one of the greatest decisions of my life—among my surest, bestest, zero-regret life choices. I feel like I dodged a bullet!I like kids as people, but on the rare occasion I’ve tried to imagine life with my own kids, it has felt like a horror movie that might leave me screaming and panting. Ok, I exaggerate, but only a little. 😊 Perhaps I simply had a weak instinct for fatherhood. I can’t remember ever wanting it; it seemed like a bad deal. Were I religious, I’d thank god every day for saving me from a life of far more angst, suffering, and prayers—and, I reckon, not enough compensatory joy. I’m thankful for life’s countless miracles of non-birth and its precious unbundled love. 😀 And I’m lucky to have an amazing life partner whose beliefs and values align with mine—a rare gift, without which the trials of parenthood, too, are far worse.
To younger folk in two minds about having children, especially in the nauseatingly baby-obsessed culture of India, I assure you that going childfree can be a perfectly wonderful, fulfilling and wholesome way of life. Don’t let social pressure—led by unimaginative family and friends lost in the quicksand of conformity—risk ruining your life. Don’t make babies because you’re expected to, or out of boredom, or to mask marital problems. Don’t live someone else’s dream for you. Unlike many other decisions, entering parenthood is non-reversible and could well be your one-way ticket to far more misery than joy—witness the legions of parents mired in toxic spousal relationships, shrunken horizons and mindless drudgery. But if it’s then fair to say that parenthood is not right for everyone, the flip side holds too: being childfree is not for everyone either. So think hard, very hard!
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Satire by Pushpa Jijji
I recently discovered Pushpa Jijji (Cheshta Saxena in real life), a talented satirist who performs mostly in Bundeli. I was especially charmed by her use of Bundeli language that I often heard growing up in Gwalior (Hindi speakers should get most of it). She has been putting out short videos on YouTube in which she pokes fun at Indian patriarchy, politics, and, lately, their interface with the pandemic (no subtitles). As with most good satire, the laughs lie uncomfortably close to a substrate of grim realities.
If you like the episode below, check out a few others I liked: one, two, three, four, or visit her YouTube Channel.
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Please Vote for Me
Here is a fascinating documentary film from China. Among other things, it reveals how democracy works in real life and the sort of political animals we tend to become under it, age notwithstanding. Below is the abridged version (34 mins) of the full-length version (52 mins, 2007).
‘What kind of thing is “Democracy”?’
‘Born into an authoritarian state that professes to value the greater good over individual expression, many Chinese children have little familiarity with Western ideals of democracy. Nevertheless, they prove themselves quick studies in Please Vote For Me, which chronicles China’s first ever modern classroom election, held among third-graders in the city of Wuhan. After the students learn the basic tenets of democracy, a campaign for the position of class monitor swiftly descends into an all too familiar jumble of campaign promises, back-room deals and dirty tricks. Funny, touching and full of small surprises, the Chinese director Weijun Chen’s documentary is a wry look at the democratic process and all its chaotic, imperfect promise.’
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Fillmore & Castle: Political Ascendency and the Mirrored Ceiling
by Rajeev Alexander, cross-posted from Praxis Ghost
The seventh of January is the birthday in 1800 of Millard Fillmore, who in 1850 became the thirteenth President of the United States of America. Fillmore ascended to the Presidency upon the untimely death1 of President Zachary Taylor, the erstwhile Major General “Old Rough and Ready.”A Whig and an anti-slavery moderate, Fillmore nonetheless signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act2 which lost him the party’s nomination when he pursued a second term3 and led to the disintegration of the Whig Party altogether4. Fillmore is often ranked among the ten worst American Presidents, batting at roughly the Mendoza Line5, just above George W Bush.
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The Boxer on the Flight
Amitava Kumar relates a simultaneously amusing and sad encounter that took place on a flight to India:
The India boxer was returning from the London Olympics. He was standing in the aisle of the plane I was on, coming from London to Delhi, and he was going to sit next to me. He had an attractive face, vaguely slanting eyes, and a moustache over pouty lips. The person who was with him was wearing an India blazer with an Olympic logo — I thought he was a wrestler whose picture I had seen in the newspapers. I was wrong, he was only the coach. The boxer had a slightly swollen eye, not dark enough to qualify as a black eye. When he sat down next to me, the boxer asked the flight attendant if he could be moved to business class. On the way to London, he told her, the captain had “adjusted” them. I thought it good to inform the attendant that the man had represented India in the Olympics. She asked, in a good natured way, “Oh yeah! How was London for you?” He shrugged and then said, “Thank you for seating me next to a pretty girl.”He didn’t mean me, of course. It was a young German woman on the other side, who had a seat next to the window.
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Ecce Homo of Zaragoza
Ecce Homo, a fresco painting on a wall of a Roman Catholic church in Zaragoza, Spain, is in the news lately. It is being called “the worst art restoration projects of all time”, done by an elderly woman of the flock (the “restored” version is on the right). I have to disagree though! I mean, think about what Ecce Homo means. It means “behold the man”. Had you visited the church, you would have walked right past the peeling fresco of Jesus. The “restored” version however captures your attention; you behold the man indeed, even if it is accompanied by a shaking of the head and the thought, “What happened?! How can someone screw it up so badly?” The bottom line though is that she was super successful in making the painting live up to its name. We are compelled to behold the man!
The “restored” image also prompted this thought for me: what if Jesus did actually look like that? Would anyone have listened to him? 🙂
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The “Busy” Trap
Here is a perceptive essay by Tim Kreider on an aspect of modern life and work: being “busy”.
If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.
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“Like this only India will progress”
Satire may well be the best way of dealing with this latest absurdity in a culture obsessed with fair skin. This piece by Suchi Govindarajan in Himal is brilliantly funny!
I am very much connected to Internetworks these days. My friends are sending me every day new new links, and I am expanding my world too much. But yesterday one shocking video I saw. One married girl is thinking about those shame-shame areas of her body, that too while having coffee with her husband! Some animation is coming when she is bathing, showing all brown parts shining and becoming like snow-white, and then she is gallivanting like anything with the husband wearing chaddis. I was shocked. But my friend Kiccha is saying, “So what, there are so many fairness creams these days, and that too for different-different parts of your body: underarms, ears, elbows, teeth, brain, etc.” See, I am very much in favour of fairness and just society. Fairness is very much important even to break caste, creed and religion. You are knowing Ramaswamy’s daughter? She went off and married American Christian boy. Aiyyo, it was big scandal, and parents completely cut her off. They didn’t even say that she is married. But within one year, the couple were blessed with fair-skinned issue. Seeing such a white baby (blue eyes also), their hearts and all melted. Now they are even wheeling the baby in a pram on famous Besantnagar beach in Madras. All are envying them now. This is the real power of fairness.
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Tyler Cowen on Stories
In this amusing TED talk, Tyler Cowen explores how stories work in our lives—how we receive them, how we tell them to ourselves and to others, and what we should be wary of—even as he is conscious that what he is talking about is also just a story!
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56 Worst Similes
Ok, having revisited the Bhagavad Gita, it’s time for some comic relief. Check out these similes:
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Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center. - He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
- Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
- From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
- John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
- She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
- The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
- He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
- Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
- She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
Category: Humor -
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Arthur Benjamin’s Mathemagic
Many Indians surely remember Shakuntala Devi from their school years, whose books their parents bought in the hope that she would inspire in their progeny a love of mathematics. How often it did so, or had the opposite effect, is hard to say. But there is no doubt that some people are born with a freakish capacity for rapid calculation. For instance, Shakuntala Devi is on record for multiplying in a mere 28 seconds two 13-digit numbers (7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779) picked at random. I can’t even enter the two numbers in a spreadsheet that fast! And I say this as an Indian, which, as we all know, means that I am a naturally gifted mathematician.
I came across this video in which another mathemagician, Arthur Benjamin, does a few tricks before a TED audience.
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Who is an Asshole?
I recently attended a lecture at Stanford CASBS by philosopher Aaron James in which he ably demonstrated the philosophical method by applying it to the following pressing question: what is it for someone to be an asshole?James began with a working definition of an asshole, its differences with definitions of other related but distinct personality types (like jerk, bully), exemplars, nature of one’s experience with an asshole, some necessary but not sufficient characteristics, cross-cultural and gender specific variations (he proposed that nearly all assholes are men), whether assholes are born or made (if the former, are they responsible for their condition?), their impact on society, how to deal with them, and even whether it is possible to love an asshole. I didn’t agree with him on every front but I was impressed with his overall approach to the question.
The talk is hard for me to summarize and the questions from the audience were fascinating. But James is writing a book on the topic, so wait for it! I will provide below only his working definition of an asshole (from a handout) and some of the exemplars he proposed (feel free to add your own exemplars!). The second major bullet is the first bullet broken down into sub-components.
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Status Anxiety
Last night I saw Status Anxiety, an intelligent and entertaining two-hour British documentary (2004) written by Swiss author Alain de Botton. It looks at our ideas of success and failure, the anxiety we feel over our careers, the envy our peers evoke in us, and why it’s harder now to feel calm than ever before. Is success always earned? Is failure? What role does snobbery and envy play in our lives? What is the flip side of equality, individualism, and meritocracy? Where do our goals and ambitions really come from? And finally, how to get beyond all this. It’s based on the book by Botton with the same name, Status Anxiety. If you only have time for a condensed TED talk, see it here.
Category: Art & Cinema, Books & Authors, Culture, Economics, Humor, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Video -
An Arab Bearing Gifts?
Here are two interesting articles about Steve Jobs. The first introduces his biological father who is from Syria, and the circumstances that led his biological parents to put him up for adoption in the U.S. (via 3QD).
Steve Jobs, arguably the most influential CEO in the world, is the biological son of an Arab American who was born in Homs, Syria, and studied [in] Beirut. … Abdul Fattah “John” Jandali emigrated to the United States in the early 1950s to pursue his university studies. Most media outlets have published little about Jandali, other than to say he was an outstanding professor of political science, that he married his girlfriend (Steve’s mother) and by whom he also had a daughter, and that he slipped from view following his separation from his wife … The 79-year-old Jandali has deliberately kept his distance from the media [until now].The second is a view into the mind of the amazing inventor he later became. It comes from an ex-colleague and the former CEO of Apple, John Sculley. Below is a random excerpt:
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Marketing the Military
Check out these military recruitment ads from around the world: Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Estonia, Japan, Sweden, France, Australia, England, Lebanon, Singpore, and the US. They pack in so many clues to national character and the state of society.
Consider, for instance, the ad below from India, where recruits largely come from the lower middle class — from, say, the 40% of the population beneath the top 20%. In a society riven by class, how does the Indian military market itself? — as a ticket to a higher class, where people follow “the best traditions”, strive to “be the best”, dress smartly, speak Hinglish, attend garden parties, sail, play golf, ride horses, and frequent swimming pools. Indeed, borrowing a page from Bollywood fantasies, it almost makes the military seem like an exciting vacation package! Be sure to check out the other ads, no less fascinating! (Via Leanne Ogasawara)
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Rajiv Nema Learns Chatting
It’s time for a comedy break with Rajiv Nema, an actor and comedian originally from Indore, MP, the state I grew up in as well. I’ve seen him in a couple of Naatak productions in the SF Bay Area. In this video, Nema plays a provincial chap from Indore explaining to his wife the power of the computer, or should I say Kumpootar? Watch it, it’s quite hilarious (Hindi comprehension required).
He has many more on his youtube
channel but here are six to check out next: a
typical conversation in Indore, Indori GPS, gift
planning, Indore style, asking for directions
in Indore, a shopping experience
in Indore, and Nema goes to
the Oscars. -
Corporations Are People Too!
Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court pronounced that corporate speech was no different from human speech and so deserved First Amendment protection for free speech. And since political spending, as we all know, is a form of free speech, the government had no business regulating corporate spending in support of political candidates. In effect, “the Supreme Court threw out regulations that prohibited corporations from buying campaign commercials that explicitly advocate the election or defeat of candidates.” I am inclined to see this as a fundamentalist interpretation of the constitution, not an allegorical one attuned to the realities of our age. A victory of Word over telos. Thankfully, we have satire to leaven this stupidity. A corporation called Murray Hill Inc. is taking the logical next step in the evolution of the oldest democracy: it is fighting for the right to run for Congress. Why? Because in legal terms, a corporation is a person too! It can finally bypass the pesky individual politician who is a mere middleman. Watch their campaign ad below and listen to this funny interview on NPR.
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