Fueling Thoughts

Between faded horoscopes and "Ballsbridge University" degrees: On Lady Luck, a builder, fake PhDs, and a Chief Minister who chose to sprint away.   The only thing feminine in “luck” is its fickle nature. The down-on-his-luck (so he said) builder came to me through a mutual friend, clutching his tattered horoscope. My reputation as a seer was not built on the “says what you want to hear” charm of Asterix’s soothsayer, nor on the absurd serendipity of that old Persian tale where everything a false prophet uttered came true, a story recycled across countless Asian folklore. It exists only because of yarns spread by people like the friend who brought him, who himself earlier laughed and told me that the builder had already consulted at least 5,000 astrologers and tantrics . “So what’s your bloody problem?” I growled, looking at his smudged, dog-eared, cello-tape-stitched astro roadmap. “You have more than enough money, your family is healthy, your children are doing fine, and th...

I almost stepped on a rake again the other day, driven by the urge to jump into a field that is, in theory, indispensable, yet in practice sits squarely in the paradox of "high need with zero demand". The subject: Low-energy water pumping. I have spent years obsessing over designs that use a river’s kinetic energy to pump water into fields - pontoon-mounted Darrieus or Gorlov turbines driving pumps, to more esoteric ideas like the Hydrautomat water staircase. The wake-up jolt came when my own shadow asked : fine, you build a working prototype, then what? Who, exactly, will use it or buy it? A sobering question. Experience and data both show that most community-scale alternative energy or WASH projects collapse the moment they are no longer underwritten or subsidized by governments or NGOs. While riding through the upper reaches of Arunachal Pradesh, I was initially awed, and eventually irritated, by the number of water-driven prayer wheels lining the roadsides....

I got introduced to Billy Bob Thornton’s acting prowess through Landman. Next, I binged through Goliath, then Fargo, and now am back to season two of Landman. From what I’ve read, he lived a hard, working man’s life before his screen breakthrough. And it shows. His onscreen presence, is not something any acting school can teach. He is essentially always himself, a ronin, a rogue inside the system, playing by his own rules, alone, and never hesitant about speaking his mind. Plus, in real life, he is dyslexic and struggled in his education - things I can strongly relate to. It is in episode two of Landman season two  (word of warning - if you have watched the 2nd season, don't bother. Its rank bad),  where his character tells his son about his own frustrated, physically abusive father and says: “Just know this: however you raise your son is how he’s gonna raise his son.”  That line resonated. Not that I was physically abused growing up, but a binary system of n...

    L ast   week ended with two rejections, both international and each at the final stage. If Indian gatekeepers demand revenues or at least projections of billions of dollars in profit, the Europeans probably needed someone younger with a PhD and a series of postdoctoral theses behind their name, maybe a female of colour,  with STEM qualifications  as a co-founder thrown in… But frankly, I have no idea why we weren't selected. Both were met with nonchalance, and I went back to laying tiles around the “Fountain of Youth,” the replacement of the cracked 50-year-old wash basin in my mother’s bathroom. “The Toilet of Doom” has been completed for a month now, with everything from sewage lines to plumbing, installing the potty and floor tiles, done by own hands, and is since in regular use - thank you! The only thing these two rejection love letters, as I call them, achieved, was that I am no longer planning to participate in the third European event to wh...

I can't speak for the kids today, but   children of my generation were exposed to a myriad of stupid, inconsiderate questions. When young – who do you love more, your father or your mother – usually asked right in front of your parents. Seriously, what’s your fucking business? You do not care beyond the cheap thrill of making a child squirm. A little older, it became the self-righteous – what rank do you hold in class? “First from the last,” I often replied without blinking, my shadow giving them the middle finger. Sometimes I would ask back – with the sweetest of smiles – what rank they held in school or college. They usually changed the subject or lied. Once, I witnessed how an ageing Oriya IAS officer was competing with a fellow Oriya ex–uncle-in-law (a retiring professor) about always being the topper. When the latter said he was first in everything except handwriting and drawing, the officer solemnly declared he was always first in those subjects too… Two old coo...

T aking a sabbatical hasn’t reduced my workload in the slightest. Sure, emails now get curt one-liners or no reply at all. Most work-related calls go unanswered. Then again, calling it work was already a stretch. If earlier all the “liftoffs,” “jump starts,” went straight to my spam folder, now their calls are also being ignored. The few I do pick up, they wish I hadn’t. And as always, someone remarks, “You’re so blunt!” A few times, I asked back, “Have you ever met a polite fireman?” The question is usually asked with a wry smile and the mental image of that #metoo era cartoon – a fireman climbing through a window to save a woman in a burning house, only for her to sniff, “I don’t consent to being touched.” He shrugs and leaves her to roast. People fall silent. Most have never met a fireman – especially one at work. The truth is, firemen don’t have time for courtesy, consensus, or consent. Their work is dangerous – saving lives and property, not debating pronouns or k...

I don't know how many enjoy watching those "oddly satisfying" category of clips where people wash carpets, where a grimy brown-black rectangle reemerges into its original bright colours with floral or geometric patterns. A practical example of resurgence and rebirth, though more likely it feeds the same voyeuristic mechanism that makes people watch Dr. Pimple Popper drain pus, extract giant blackheads, marvel at giant boogers, or savour the stench of a just coughed-out tonsil stone. Let me assure you, in reality, washing carpets is oddly dissatisfying. I found that out yesterday. I hauled out a mysterious, grey-tinged, cardboard-like carpet, long folded up, with no recollection of how it ever got into the house. My mother said it was natural wool and that my father had bought it while I was still in school. It took a boutique blend of cleaners and about four hours of pressure washing to restore it to its original white and cream. My back ached for the rest of the day, an...

At an age when most rockers had burned out, overdosed, or taken permanent residency in rehab, the undisputed King of Heavy Metal burst in with his first solo mega-hit, “Holy Diver,” well into his mid-40s. I had been yelling along, with the starting demonic howl and all, since my teens without the faintest idea what Ronnie James Dio was singing about. Recently, I looked it up. Apparently, it’s about some transdimensional, chain swinging Batmanesque masked messianic figure taking a dive to save an ungrateful humanity. Sounds familiar. Now on a personal level, “Holy Diver” has lately come to mean something else. One, call her the manifestation of my Jungian Anima , the female archetype lurking in a man’s psyche, or simply the temptress, a Sky Dakini in the flesh luring me to take the plunge. This Diver, a Skydiver actually, is no fantasy. She is the latest YouTube demigoddess I stumbled upon. A striking, brown-haired, yet a decidedly unglamorous young woman who sits on a chai...

My father had a deeply irritating habit. Any subject I picked up, he had to follow. But first, he would patronize me - Astrology, Buddhism, tantra, Jung or whatever I was reading. Suddenly my books became his, and soon he the “expert.” The only things he didn’t chase me into were Taoism, motorcycle repair, and boat building. Our approaches differed. I collected books, skimmed, dropped them when bored, filing fragments away in the chaotic, multithreaded system of a dyslexic ADD brain. He, on the other hand, would first criticize the author, then read cover to cover, make notes, study further, and inevitably write an article—say, on Tibetan Buddhism’s effect on Shankardeva’s Vaishnav tradition. We rarely agreed: his pedantic stance was dogmatic, while I followed Lao Tzu—“the further one goes, the less one knows.” Still, one explanation of his stayed with me: the difference between a Bodhisattva and an Arhat - both are realized masters in their respective Buddhist traditions. A Bodhisatt...

I’ve found myself on an unplanned sabbatical due to factors completely beyond my control. Sudden caregiving responsibilities, and the absolute apathy toward my work from all quarters in my region (international interest and multiple media coverage be damned), have forced me to step back. Not to think or replan or reevaluate, but simply to flatline the monitor. Time now drifts by in household chores, repairs, and errands. Fixing a 50-year-old bungalow, a 20-year-old car, and then there’s the “Toilet of Doom.”  I’ll come to that later. First, a revelation made by myself to myself, in a dream last night. I was seated in  a large glassed office or a conference room when a smart, pretty young lady, purportedly a CA, who asked me, “What do you think is wrong with the startup sector?” I took out my notepad and drew a cross-section of a volcano. “Everyone,” I said, “wants a startup to grow into a massive volcano, impressive and loud, great for the optics and valuation. But no one ...