Meltdown

Bubbles don't have seams. Seamless Social media time line is a bubble or they represent one? A Time line exists irrespective of and beyond social media time lines. Time lines interact, intersect, overlap and occasionally assert their independence with each other. Print and electronic medium were expected to represent time lines, offer some answers to the question : what is happening now. Within the four walls of the immediate, interest, relevance and power; the time lines were presented and represented in media for information, consumption and for action. Pandemic and State of Economy The media managers and opinion makers have been presenting strikes in terms of cost to exchequer; as the standard to tabulate productivity and its loss and pandemic induced lockdown arrived. The acknowledgement of labour and its relation to productivity in the mainstream does not go beyond it. The hinges that under-grid common sense had parted ways long back. Lockdowns were presented without factori...

No physical occupation and military presence of foreign powers and yes no puppet government either. No meddling in our affairs by outside powers through foisted governments and structures. Yes I was dreaming; a dream that has been dreamt thousand times over in the colonised world. The reality took over in Afghanistan before the dream could unfold. Afghan and Afghanistan are nationalist terms and following the   logic of nationalism they discount the ethnic, regional and religious composition of the people that make a nation. The Hazara, Baloch, Pashtuns, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Tajiks are some of the communities who consider Afghanistan their home. A list of communities cannot describe Afghanistan better. Can a religion define Afghanistan, when various communities individually and collectively hasn't? Afghanistan’s history and recent episodes suggest otherwise. Afghanistan history is no longer its own history but a history of cold war, I suspect it is also true about its future. It be...

In the cyclic Hindu calendar Kanwar Yatra  governed by rainfall  occurs twice in the modern year. The first and more widely known is when the monsoon season sets in and second one is scheduled when the summer season begins. In terms of participation of people, the first season gathers more followers. I thought that gradually kanwar yatra would decline and fade away but opposite is the experience. Kanwar yatra is not an useful, productive activity. It cannot be grasped and understood in functional terms. Rise of instrumental reasoning and materially rewarding activity would diminish its appeal fueled the expectation of its decline? Unlike most hunches and vague expectations kanwar yatra warrants attention and seeks more exploration. What could be so meaningful and expressive for participants in the kanwar yarta that over the years it is attracting more and more people--especially the youth? How is routine, ceremonial, symbolic and significant related and articulated in Hindu so...