Cranberry Sauce

Life is as random as can be. Ubuntu is good, but the grass is always greener on the other side. Web horcruxes means that my life isn’t really my own, even in the individualist west. I’m so well connected, like everyone else, that life doesn’t really require human intervention to run. It runs almost in autopilot mode, just like the myriad tech gadgets that we now use. Sometimes, it proceeds without an administrator password, making it appear that my life isn’t my own after all, but a coordinate in a haphazard conglomeration of entities incapable of self existence, adding up to a complex dynamic system called society. I wish I could use the word robust or systematic, if only I could make sense of it. Maybe, just like ant colonies, we're not meant to comprehend the role of an individual in the bigger picture and yet contribute to it. However, a human ostensibly possesses consciousness, and hence is constantly aware of most of the things s/he does. This is the perfect recipe for que...

I am sad. But I am not quite sure about the origin of my sadness, nor its magnitude. I wonder if I’m sad or depressed, or very sad or very depressed. It has a sense of finality about it – like the end of an era, or the end of all hope. The only thing that comes to my mind when I think of nostalgia now is nitesh jain. To say my life has spiraled downward into apathetic degeneration would be just too dramatic and quite unreal. I can feel the life slip out of my hands, but to make things better (or worse) it’s as if I’ve been administered an overdose of tranquilizers to ease the pain. What I have then, is the sight of my slow, methodical amputation by my own hands, before my own eyes, while the rest of my useful faculties lie gagged and anesthetized so that I can see my own pain, but yet not feel it. Anticlimactic culmination is again too strong a phrase to use, this feeling is soft, innocuous, numb… brutally agonizingly incapacitating, but comfortable in its execution. Like a painless de...

…..And there's nothing wrong with me This is how I'm supposed to be In a land of make believe That don't believe in me….. “Malls: Where people make believe, where escape from reality is cool, where individual identities are conveniently camouflaged in social swarms” – this is what I texted a dear friend last evening. I was at a mall with my family. It was a Sunday evening. I wondered whether the place was reminiscent more of a Virar local at peak rush or a toddler fancy dress competition. There seemed to be an odd, unspoken mutual need for all those people to be there – maybe to reassure each other of their existence. By themselves, they felt like lost strangers, but together they represented the majority of purposeful rationalism. We went to the furniture and lifestyle store(y), then to the apparels outlet – a shame-inducing collection of what the definition of fashion (and hence society) is today, inspired of course by our own dons and divas of the film “industry”, ...

An excerpt from the book “Experiments with People” An interesting feature of the psychological immune system is that to operate effectively it must operate discreetly. This raises an interesting question: Is psychological well-being associated with the accurate perception of reality or with a distorted perception of it? The traditional view is that contact with reality is essential for mental health. As the old one-liner goes, neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them, and psychotherapists collect the rent. The alternative view is that, given how inhospitable reality is, human beings cannot bear too much of it. They must therefore endorse comforting illusions in order to function effectively. In an influential article, Taylor and Brown proposed that three classes of positive illusion promote mental health: holding overly flattering views of oneself, overestimating one's personal control, and being unreasonably optimistic about the future. The fact that most...

Individuality is no less than a definitive feature of Independence , ensuing growth and prosperity; and identity is the basis of individuality. Without an identity, there can be no Individuality, no Independence and no progress. The identity of our beloved campus has been seeded, nurtured and cocooned by our mother campus BITS Pilani, to whom we shall be forever indebted hence grateful. We have been bosomed with bountiful love and patronizing care. The dutiful, condescending restriction, in the name of brand preservation has inevitably taken its toll on our freedom of expression. More than one of us feels stifled under this throttling protection called the “ BITS Pilani brand name.” We feel the need to establish ourselves as an individual, self sufficient and robust institute, a sovereign vital entity, not an ailing, dwarfed sidekick of an antecedently established University. Bottom-line: We need to be proud of our campus, for what it is. Stunted, slipshod, maligned or vulner...