I’ve spent the better part of November catching up on my reading, ensconced in the setting-in winter, and pondering over the purpose of my life. It has been a good, cozy, reflective month. Among other things, some highlights of this month were:
- Used AI to generate some writing for a friend and that night, I felt my soul shiver in my body (no kidding). The next morning, I re-wrote everything by hand.
- Had the recurring feeling that we’ve all been imprisoned in a world of celebrated mediocrity and internet subscriptions
- Ate some very good dosas (special mention to: mysore masala and ragi cheese sada dosa)
- Wondered if I will have more readers if I move to Substack (which I will never do)
- Went down the Wobbly Theorem rabbit hole; missed the 2000’s internet era
I am convinced that so much of our world would be changed if we changed the way we live and function as economic and social societies.
(I am also convinced that I am sick of social media, yet unable to tear away, but that’s a separate post.)
We can do so much good work in our societies if only we put at the fore front everything that is needed to be human: air, food, water, and shelter.
I follow very interesting architecture accounts online and see beautiful constructions done in brick, bamboo, and other local materials in Nigeria and Iran. These architects weave in so much of bouncing light, free flowing air, and lush greenery in their constructions, it makes me giddily happy. Imagine living a life in which your surroundings bring you closer to the Earth and not take you away from it. Imagine that? It makes me so happy to just think about it. Just yesterday, I saw pictures of metro stations in Tashkent, and seeing them made my heart soar simply because there are humans on this planet, who decided to make public transit spectacular. They added miracles to the mundane. It is wondrous what we are capable of.
And then, I saw a wild pistachio tree growing inside a huge rock in Iran. It wasn’t unbelievable to me, but I had to Google it to be sure that it exists. And it does! The rock is so huge, size almost that of a small building, and a wild, burgeoning pistachio tree grows out of it. I can’t even add an inspirational sentence here because that would be disservice to this brave, unbothered tree of pistachios.
I also read about how Finland built apartment blocks for the homeless providing them with stability and a case worker to get their life back on track; and this made me feel so human, because isn’t this what we are here on this planet for? To help our fellow humans? There is so much beauty in this world, and it makes me want to be a a part of it.
(Except in Indian society. Right now, there isn’t garbage and debris in India. There is India in garbage and debris. The less I write about it, the better.)
I want to build beautiful things during my days. I day dream that my municipality will put me in charge of making a footpath, and I will make the best foot path possible. Or that I will take on a dilapidated area and bring it back to bustling life. Or that I will upscale a classroom to be so beautiful with bricks, and air, and light that children will enjoy studying there.
And then?
I will write about it. I will make small punctures into the fabric of the Internet with stories about why we make beautiful things, thus having written beautifully about it. This is what I want to do with my days as I grow (older?).
A couple of days ago, I read a piece I had written six years ago and I was ashamed by how much hope and passion it had. I felt crushed by my past self who believed that the coming years would bring opportunities to knit days into beautiful tapestries of life. I look around now and so much of it has been falsified. I am surrounded by all kinds of sycophancy, sub-standard quality of work and living, authoritarian gaslighting. Yada yada. It is the only time I have felt ashamed of my writing. Of course, I’ve been embarrassed just like every writer who has grown with their craft. But this was different. I felt a sense of despair, at how my younger self had so much wide-eyed hope that has come to naught. Then I did what I could — I washed away this feeling by binge-watching a TV series called Shrinking.
As I process these feelings I think about a scene from Sartre’s play The Flies where Zeus says that human beings are free and have complete freedom to do as they please; they just do not know it. Zeus also says that once a human knows it is free, even the Gods cannot intervene. What the human does is up to it, and between humans only. I found this profoundly wise and moving. It feels connected to what Dostoevsky says about human free will; that our biggest sin is that we have betrayed ourselves for nothing.
These days, my only prayer is want of courage, and to intentionally put myself in the way of beauty. We live in bleak times, but there is so much evidence that we don’t have to do it this way. 🌺
Quotes:
ZEUS: You may hate me, but we are akin; I made you in my image. A king is a god on earth,
glorious and terrifying as a god.
AEGISTHEUS: You, terrifying?
ZEUS: Look at me. [A long silence.] I told you you were made in my image. Each keeps order; you in Argos, I in heaven and on earth—and you and I harbor the same dark secret in our hearts.
AEGISTHEUS: I have no secret.
ZEUS: You have. The same as mine. The bane of gods and kings. The bitterness of knowing men are free. Yes, Aegistheus they are free. But your subjects do not know it, and you do.
AEGISTHEUS: Why, yes. If they knew it, they’d send my palace up in flames. For fifteen years I’ve been playing a part to mask their power from them.…
ZEUS Aegistheus, my creature and my mortal brother, in the name of this good order that we serve, both you and I, I as you—nay, I command you—to lay hands on Orestes and his sister.
The Flies, Jean Paul Sartre
AEGISTHEUS: Are they so dangerous?
ZEUS: Orestes knows that the is free.
AEGISTHEUS [eagerly]: He knows he’s free? Then, to lay hands on him, to put him in irons, is not enough. A free man in a city, acts like a plague-spot. He will infect my whole kingdom and bring my work to nothing. Almighty Zeus, why stay your hand? Why not fell him with a thunderbolt?
ZEUS [slowly]: Fell him with a thunderbolt? [A pause. Then, in a muffled voice] Aegistheus, the gods have another secret.
AEGISTHEUS: Yes?
ZEUS: Once freedom lights its beacon in a man’s heart, the Gods are powerless against him. It’s a matter between man and man, and it is for other men, and for them only, to let him go his gait, or to throttle him
Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
Links:
Existential Freedom in Sartre’s The Flies
amarllyis 
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