Category: Uncategorized

Dotted Stories

Post author By krutant
Post date April 24, 2021

Dotted Stories

24th April 2021

We are so tiny. Like dots that do not even matter. I mean we literally live on a dot that’s floating in the middle of nowhere. On that dot we have all kinds of people, friends we love, strangers we hate, friends who are selfish, strangers who are helpful. They may be just a nobody on this remote island we dwell on, but these people are our world. These people, matter to us.

I clock almost 9 hours on Instagram everyday, even close to 10 in this lockdown. Spending my life watching the lives of actors and influencers and content creators and sometimes even trying to be one. It’s been a different ride this last couple of months, I tell you. All I see is dotted stories. DMs gasping for oxygen, a family’s distress wanting to be amplified and documents full of important resources as precious as votes to the government. Oh these actors and influencers and content creators are saving lives.

These dotted stories are assisting humanity. And let me get this straight. No newspaper is going to be printing this, no news channel is going to be telecasting this, they are anyways busy pleasing our king. No one’s getting paid to amplify, no one will be remembered very soon. But we still stand by the people, all of them. These stories may just be dots floating in the middle of nowhere. And these people needing help, just nobodies. Yet these people, matter to us. These dots, matter to us.

It’s been a different ride this last couple of months, I tell you. All I see is dotted stories…

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Metro

Post author By krutant
Post date April 14, 2021

Metro

14th April 2021

The under-construction Mumbai Metro is actually an art installation. It’s there to stay forever, for Mumbaikars to get stuck in traffic and get a golden opportunity to gaze at it. This is not a rant, I am not being sarcastic either, I get this golden opportunity quite often and here’s why I call it an art installation.

Those mega structures, though still under construction, you can make out how those big blocks, bigger than the entire city, stand tall between the two skylines. Between the constant wasteful honking, you notice the men, the men at work, most of them working on minimum wages, they come from the poorest of backgrounds, hardly any education, yet their hands are soon to be trusted by billions of families as their kin rides the metro. Now I know, civil engineers, hopefully well read, are the brains behind the metro, but I tell you this is an art installation because it’s those poor hands that get it done.

It’s art and artists need no degrees. So never tell me a formal degree is above all, especially if you meet me on a metro.

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Important Questions

Post author By krutant
Post date April 12, 2021

Important Questions

12th April 2021

There is this child somewhere in some corner of this country right now as you read this, nervously sitting on his bed in the middle of an exam, writing an informal letter congratulating a friend, copying the format from a smartphone he hid under the desk, while an invigilator monitors over him and his classmates over the Zoom app from the opposite corner of the city. For marks.

I don’t know if you can see the irony in the previous statements or if I need to point out the keywords to you with a yellow highlighter, but that is just the cover of an age old rusted textbook called the Indian Education System.

You see we think we are preparing ourselves to become the next Elon Musk but I can bet you with my life that Mr. Real Life Tony Stark does not write answers on a Sundaram supplement that he mugged up on his way to the Tesla HQ, what he does is ask questions. Questions, that would get you thrown out of class or get a “not in syllabus” response at best, dare you ask them. Reusable rockets was never on the syllabus, you see.

This is a manufacturing unit that mass produces robots and rewards with marks like a little pet while killing the only asset that guarantees real life progress – Curiosity. A battered down system that thinks accumulation of data is equivalent of intelligence.

You remember that child sitting on his bed right now? Yeah he is just in grade 6 and he is being trained to gradually stop questioning the system, he will be rewarded with good grades from school and an iPhone from dad for not questioning but he is soon going to be beaten down by a machine with a better storage capacity. If you fear robots taking over jobs, it is because you value human intelligence as something that can be programmed. But the human mind is far more capable, something that cannot be simplified into bullet points for marks. The human genius is made to ask questions. Questions that have the power to change this system. I maybe completely off here or maybe even dramatic, but I just wish googling “important questions” would’ve thrown me into a spiral of unending curiosity and not given me this…

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Religiously F*cked

Post author By krutant
Post date May 10, 2018

Religiously F*cked

10th May 2018

I just tried to write a really long rant about religion and how politicians use that as their allies to fulfil their thirst for power. But all of is short for one thing. Let me tell you.

Democracy is Dead.

We are all blackout drunk at the moment and we think we know what we are doing, we think we are in control, but you know how that works.

Everyday what you talk about what you consume, what direction you think in is being controlled by these random people who are so drenched in the pool of power that their eyes can’t foresee the future.

I feel powerless, I feel weak in front of these absolutely brilliant minds. I can see through every trick of theirs. Read between every headline, House of Cards certainly helps. But then what? I see people around, my own family members voting under influence. What am I supposed to do? Absolutely frustrating.

These guys have changed the narrative of everything. I cannot live with the fact that tomorrow morning the first thing my friends will talk about, the first thing we will consume on social media will be decided by one brain behind a computer in a political party’s IT Cell. That too utter bullshit, something not even worth opinionating about. It is inconceivable and practically impossible to explain you what is happening in this country because not a a single soul has any clue about it.

Politics is driving conversation and mindsets.

Conversations and ideas SHOULD drive politics.

Here’s what we can do though.

Ideally I’d suggest to stop Twitter for month or two, BUT.

Question everything. Do not accept headlines. Go behind the stories. Hear both sides. Otherwise just don’t consume the news. Seriously, if you can’t go one step further and just consume what’s presented to you, you don’t deserve it.

Ask the right questions.

Question EVERYTHING. Why Mandir? Why no press confernce? Why hike in fuel rates? They do not know answers to Why? Can’t believe I am saying this but, question Journalists. Yep.

Honestly this is all we can do. But if all of us do it, it’s the only thing we need to.