Life is an illusion

 I have written about Doris Lessing's book The four gated city number of times. May be because that is the only cerebral thing I have read for past several months.  Now some of her books are semi-autobiographical. And in this book, her boss and her friend Mark is slightly communist because he has a brother - a communist scientist. Who unable to bear the probes, gossips and intimidation flees to Russia, leaving behind a young son and a wife.  In the wikipedia page, it is written Lessing herself was in British surveillance for 20 years because of her affinity to communism and her anti-racism stand.  So the governments all over the world - or government officials are wary of writers who have ideologies. Why? What can an old lady/man sitting in one corner of the house and writing do? Cause a mutiny? A war?   Now with advance in technologies, they use digital war against these writers or any one who they perceive is a threat.  Yesterday, I was searching for...

 Don't let my appearance or my attire or my age fool you. My dil is not at all Hindustani and never has been.  I never watch Indian movies or serials in Netflix, I never watch Indian news channels. I used to watch CNN and BBC often - until Trump era.  But I do read Indian newspaper. Used to. Until the pandemic showed its ghastly face and I realized that I can not wash the newspaper like other things from outside. Then newspapers stopped entering our house. Instead I installed prajavani and deccanherald apps. But of late, I am searching for news from my home town - a remote town in a  malnad district, frantically. Deccan herald has very few stories from there. Prajavani has a section for our district. But that has nothing new about the post severe lockdown and sealdown situation there. Then I got hold of local newspaper Janamadhyam. OK, better. But news there wasn't comforting enough. Stricter measures, people breaking lockdown rules. Then there was an article about a...

 When I read the current state of affairs  my blood starts to boil. I want to scream. But in the next moment I am completely terrified. What is happening to us, our country? How and why did we end up here? Is there no solution at all? No respite from virus and more importantly cruelty of the rulers and devotion of their supporters? How did these people succeed in brainwashing our country?  And more importantly are we ever going to overcome coronavirus? Will there be a third wave, followed by fourth wave and so on, each one deadlier than the previous?  Do we want to overcome the pandemic at all? Or we just keep blaming one another until all of us are dead? Are we all subconsciously suicidal ?  I remember  a science fiction  ‘iq 83’ by Arthur Herzog where all the men and women start losing their intelligence because of some DNA experiments. The protagonist is realising this but is completely helpless. Is that actually happening - by the courtesy of socia...

 This  fine line between good and bad -  that line is politics Says Gurupal who is henchman of the future head of the state in the web series Tandav. May be henchman is the not the right word - politically incorrect :). May be man friday? So all the right ingredients are there in the series - a politician who can any go to any lengths to save his power - including patricide, a savvier female politician who uses this fact to blackmail and snatch the power, a student leader - from Bihar, who supports the farmers' protest and police attacking students in their campus. Multiple "mysterious" deaths of student leaders, student body election and their "presidential" debate! I think the version I saw had all the scenes which "hurt" the sentiments removed.  And come on, how many recent events do you want to put in one web series - students in VNU? Their students belonging to SAI? Arrest of a student belonging to minority community using some terrorist clause? A...