Muddle of Thoughts

The world has forgotten Jaspal Bhatti. Full Tension is an incredible commentary on the status quo. Stand-up comedians are barely scraping to fill that gap, but none with audiences as large as primetime TV.

How does one develop healthy narcissism?

If you want to see Two Indias, take the window seat on Vande Bharat Express from Delhi.

I have a new found respect for rituals. By appealing to authority, they convey expectations and quash disagreements.

As we grow older, life becomes less about oneself and more about people around. A relentless force coming at you hard.

Introductory paragraphs of some research papers start with starry-eyed vision for a world where the proposed method would be useful. In practice, however, the problems a method solves for turn out to be largely irrelevant. This is the angel dust of research.

Much of my PhD was driven by being married to a single tool. I want to be driven by problems and goals.

There’s no speed limit. You can just do what you want and get what you want.

I think all good barbers are good conversationalists.

Science, unlike art, does not require public validation and would still be valid in a vacuum. But, scientists are humans and the penchant for recognition cannot be separated.

The three stages of learning- I) there is so much to learn, II) everything has been done already, and III) there is so much beauty in details.

Asking for advice from an artist is as good as asking a writer what dictionary they refer to.

There is only one kind of mindset that moves society forward - the one of an artist.

Actors, musicians, writers, and all the like, quite obviously qualify. But good scientists play the same way. Good businessmen have all at one point been artful.

What entails this mindset is the drive to follow through on their ideas with bravado.

The boring movie disclaimer,

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

can be traced back to Rasputin.

What is the phenomenon of people wanting something but then not showing up called?

For instance, movie studios after all the cry of dying theaters just eventually end up releasing movies on streaming platforms instead. We are stuck in a vicious cycle - studios don’t release in theaters because people don’t go; people don’t go to theaters because studios release on streaming.

Indian pedagogy is culturally submissive. The Guru-Shishya dynamic has such a strong grip on headspace. In the West, I’ve always sensed that students operate with a far more sense of agency whereas I have operated with a sense of submissive confidence.

Cricket is probably the only sport which has a formalized lunch break.