Author: manuscrypts

  • Coromandel

    Charles Allen

    For once, I’d judge the book by its cover, because the multiple themes, the detailing and the overall quaint, charming imagery are a good representation of what the book will deliver. While the title of the book is an indication of its focus, it actually does more in terms of coverage, and provides a fantastic narrative of South India – historical, social, societal, cultural and political facets. 

    Over a period of time, history becomes stories, then legend, and finally myths. This is the journey that Charles Allen undertakes, and while he smartly calls it a “personal history” to avoid religious minefields, it is a comprehensive and erudite discussion. 

    He begins at the end of the subcontinent – Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari) and traces the tectonic shifts that created the Indian Plate, which we know as the Deccan, and its rock walls on one side – the Western Ghats, with Palakkad providing the only gap until the railways were built in the nineteenth century. The rest of the first chapter provides a good summary of the hunter-gatherer populations that resided in this part of the world in the Mesolithic era. 

    There’s then a detour – to the North and the Harappans. It also contains a clear, scientifically backed commentary of the Aryans, the location of the Saraswati and the connection to the Zoroastrians, the historical account of the Vedas, and the epics – Mahabharata and Ramayana. 

    We then return to “Agastya’s country”, early Tamil literature and the sage himself, who is credited with bringing Sanskrit to the South. The chapter clarifies and rebuts the paradox of him (also) being the person who brought Tamil to the South! This chapter is also interesting because it touches upon the origins of Vishnu and Shiva in mythology. The next few chapters were quite an eye opener for me, because it showed how both Jainism and Buddhism were dominant in the south, including Kerala. To the extent, where even Sabarimala, Ayyappa’s abode, has its origins in Buddhist shrine. Dharmashasta’s devotees chanting Swamiye Saranam Ayyappa seen side by side with Buddham saranam gacchami. Fascinating! It also captures the reasons behind the migration of Jains to the South, whose ranks include the first great emperor of India – Chandragupta Maurya. Speaking of empires, the Chola, Chera and Pandya dynasties were the result of a three way split between brothers who didn’t want to share power. 

    A following chapter throws light on one of the most under-acknowledged dynasties in India, who ruled for almost five centuries – the Satavahanas. Muziris finds a mention too, as the primary trading port for Romans. In other international voyages, we find Bodhidharma, the South Indian monk who exported Mahayana Buddhism to China – which became Chan and finally in Japan, Zen. But contrary to pop culture, Shaolin kung fu wasn’t something he introduced to China. 

    “Juggernaut” covers the origins of Vishnu (including the avatars) and Shiva in greater detail, and is made even more interesting by the suggestion that the lord of Puri was (again) originally a Buddhist shrine. Apparently ‘palli’ was the original term for ‘vihara’ and in Kerala, it became the common term for any non-Hindu place of worship. This section also covers Adi Shankara and his role in resurrecting Hinduism. Chapter 8 finally gets us to the title, which is appropriate from a historical perspective too – its first appearance was only in 16th century maps. That also brings us to Vasco Da Gama’s terrorism, and the slow but steady entry of European powers in the Deccan. The next chapter is a deep dive into Malabar and Kerala in general, and I learned a lot – the origin of the Nambudiris and Kerala’s caste order, the context of Vivekananda calling Kerala an asylum, and that Narayana Guru had a quarrel with Gandhi during the Vaikom satyagraha. The final chapter is named after Tipu, and it also covers the rise of Islam in the South. 
    The endnote is a must read, and shows how nationalist forces have been trying to reshape historical narratives for a while now. It also contains a good perspective on how the cleansing of textbooks in the early 80s and their glossing over of communal clashes actually provided ammunition to those who reverse engineer history to meet their interests. 

    What I really loved is the systematic deconstruction of mythology into its historic components, with an amazing amount of detail. As a person who loves both mythology and history, it was an absolute treat!I am quite miffed at myself for not having read Charles Allen earlier, but plan to rectify that for sure! If you’re interested in history, this is a book I cannot recommend enough.

  • No kidding!

    In my long-running Twitter thread on Malayalam movies, I posted this after I watched Sara’s.

    It also reminded me of a post I had in drafts. I had left it unfinished because I wondered if it was too preachy. But hey, what’s a blog for?

    Every now and then, I find myself in conversations with women in their late 20s and early 30s on the subject of parenthood. Stop! Rein in your imagination! These only happen because I am in my early 40s and they see me as someone who seems to have survived a couple of decades of being one half of a DINK couple. And no, I obviously don’t initiate the conversation! So I thought a little primer would be a good way for me to structure my experiences and perspectives.

    It’s that time of life: Evolution has programmed the gene to make sure it transfers itself to the next generation. And the gene, through the body and the chemicals within, has some amazing ways to get aggressive and passive aggressive when it senses that it’s time for you to do its bidding. Its fingerprints can even been seen in societal architecture but we’ll get to that in a bit. A book I can recommend to get an understanding of the gene’s machinations is Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal. The phase, I think, lasts from the late 20s to the mid-late 30s, and is definitely a crossroads.

    This is also the time when you will be interrogated by everyone who thinks they’re either family, or an employee of the Census Commission. I initially got irritated, and then started using everything from lack of knowledge to erectile dysfunction to traumatise people. That finally stopped all questions. Giving different reasons to different people at the same time is a nice side-game too. But seriously, “reproduction as a way of validating one’s existence” has been around so long that most people don’t even realise there is an option!

    It takes two and has to be talked through: These days, three is also common, but I’ll stick to basics. If I have to be honest, I was always sure about this but didn’t have that conversation with D early enough. To this day, I think I did wrong by her. I just kept kicking the can down the road until our early 30s. She is most definitely happy with the decision now, but I could have probably saved her some heartache if I had been proactive. I believe it’s better if it is a conscious decision by both parties. A discussion that includes the reasons. It could lead to a postponement and not a complete cancellation. And probably a review of the decision every couple of years to see if you still feel the same way.

    I know that makes it sound like a business review, but it probably comes from the original reason for my decision – having kids has zero ROI. Yes, I acknowledge that there might be intangible and probably tangible emotional benefits, but I was (and continue to be) skeptical. Even about the unconditional love of motherhood. It is the nature of the mind to have expectations, and parenthood is not exempt from this. I wouldn’t want myself or another human being to go through this. My other big reason is a potential loss of my perceived freedom. I didn’t like the trade-off.  Most importantly, I am conscious that there really is no undo button once you embark.

    It is important to think through implications: Over a period of time, civilisation has created a life script that includes a family unit with kids as one of society’s principal pillars. This is the societal architecture I mentioned earlier. When you step out of the script, you will notice a difference in the structuring of groups you were once part of. People change with life stages – after getting married and most definitely after becoming parents. Their social circle changes too, as they become parts of communities that have similar routines and schedules. The conversations will shift too, to include kids’ education, and extra curricular activities. Travel tends to get planned around school vacations, and the residence is adjusted to be near the school. And yes, there will be birthday parties. From experience, being adults without kids at a kid’s birthday party is a reasonably good torture method. Thankfully, if you behave appropriately, the invites will stop. But seriously, there is a definite impact on your social life, though I think that might become less of a problem now with the increasing number of couples delaying or choosing not to have kids.

    An apprehension I keep hearing of is the “who will take care of us when we are old?” Usually this is a quick conversation when I point out how they (we) are taking care of our parents. I am also reasonably confident of retirement communities becoming a norm in the next couple of decades as a generational cohort with money retires, and also understand that their children have their own lives. Yes, you do have to plan your retirement well, and if your plan involves being dependent on your child, well…

    No, you won’t automatically get bored in your 40s if you don’t have kids. And no, you don’t even have to be a pet parent, although that is something I increasingly see. But yes, it’s good to cultivate interests.

    A last point, and it’s actually a couple of hypotheses. Becoming a parent, I think, makes one more empathetic, because of the daily challenges. These daily challenges also provides the confidence to handle unpredictability. No, you don’t have to become a parent for either, it’s just an observation.

    It’s personal and not a crusade: Back in 2016, Indigo’s “quiet zones“, where children under the age of 12 were not permitted to sit, made several parents fume. Having been at the receiving end of several kicks mid-flight, and jolted out of sleep/reading by kids who thought I was part of the airport “playground”, I was quite happy about this. I do understand parents might be under a lot of stress, but there are limits on how much consideration they should expect from others for a decision they made!

    Having said that, if you opt not to have kids, you don’t need to crusade for making this everyone’s choice. After all, remember how irritating it was to be at the receiving end of the opposite crusade? It’s a decision like any other – marriage/single/live-in, invest in FD/MF/land/stocks/crypto, buy/rent a home – and different people choose different things. So long as one is happy, understands the implications, and does not inconvenience others, all’s good.

    In essence, it is an important decision1 and though that it’s near impossible to predict happiness later in life, you might want to put a regret minimisation2 lens on it too.

    1 How People Decide Whether to Have Children

    2 7 Reasons Not to Fear Regret About Not Having Kids

    Further Reading

    Voluntary Childlessness

  • The Mind is Flat

    Nick Chater

    I think the name of the book is a meta play, because the book convinces you of just that -“the mind is flat”. It is also the most convincing case I have read against AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), even while showing why we have had successes in narrow AI. Before you think it’s an AI book, it’s not, it’s about the human mind. We think of our mind having depths that we cannot fathom at this point, consisting of inner motives, beliefs and desires, many of which are unfathomable to us, and that behaviour is just a superficial aspect of it. This book argues that no such depths exist. The mind is flat.

    But what the mind is, is an excellent and immediate improvisor of actions, and beliefs and desires to explain the actions. My mental (re)action was “no way”, even though a part of this was familiar to me thanks to “How Emotions are made”. The author divides his case into two parts – the first part dismantles the perceptions created by classic psychology about beliefs, desires, hopes, and aims to prove that there is no “inner world”, and the second part provides an alternate theory – memory traces of previous momentary thoughts and experiences. 

    What really works is the accessibility of the narrative and how it is structured. It’s never a “believe me because I told you so”. Instead, we are led through a series of visual and thought exercises that question our understanding of reality. Slowly, a shallow world of improvisations are revealed to us. The mind works on “precedents, not principles”, and our emotions are creative acts made by a superb interpreter – our mind. With multiple examples, he shows our capacity to create “meaning” from nothing. Our inventiveness is brought out by the metaphors we live by, which are not always bound by “cold logic”. And that’s why we are able to create AI in areas where solutions are precisely defined. A general AI would require imaginative interpretations, something humans are very good at, but not really able to explain how!

    This does lead to my favourite “free will vs determinism” debate, and once again, the answer is that at any point, despite the determinism that has happened because nature and nurture, we have the freedom to change our mind. But then again, if it is flat, what’s there to change? Or does it contain a coda of traditions and precedents in the form of genes? While we create meaning from nothing, our quest for the depths of the mind is also perhaps a need to find “meaning”. I’ll leave it at that.

  • The Rise & Fall of Communism

    Archie Brown

    Geopolitics after the second world war was practically defined by the Cold War between two superpowers that were a contrast to each in terms of their world view. At a fundamental level, they differed on how the state and society should be organised. As a late 70s kid brought up in middle class India, I remember being mesmerised both by the radiant power of communist USSR and the lure of the gadgets and toys made by the capitalist US! Decades later, it is fascinating to read what was happening behind the “Iron Curtain”, and its impact on geopolitics. 

    Archie Brown starts from the roots of the idea of socialism and communism, even before Marx and Engels. The origins lie in medieval times, when the enemy was not the state, but organised religion in the form of the Church. Later, the French Revolution was more radical form of direct action, and Marx and Engels paid close attention to it as it was deemed an epochal event that would transform politics and society. Étienne Cabet, in 1840 is credited with using the word ‘communism’ for the first time. 

    The first few chapters expand on the origins, and use the early years of socialism in Russia (and the Soviet Union) and some international examples to provide a framework of what a communist system is. The monopoly of power of the Communist party, democratic centralism, the non-capitalist ownership of the means of production, the dominance of a command economy (as opposed to a market economy), the declared aim of building communism as a goal, and the existence, and a sense of belonging to, an international Communist movement were the six political, economic, and ideological foundations. 

    Part 2 of the book follows how the idea took over Eastern Europe around the period of World War 2, and how even among them, there were differences. In that era, while Hungary, Bulgaria, East Germany, Albania Romania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia toed the USSR line, Yugoslavia, under Tito, was an exception. The extremities that Stalin took it to is also covered in this section. 

    Khrushchev’ reign, and his revisionism, its impact on Eastern Europe, the rise of Castro in Cuba are documented in Part 3. This part also contains Mao Zedong’s ascendancy in China, his “Hundred Flowers” and “Cultural Revolution”, and the beginning of the ideological rift with USSR. Also notable is the Prague Spring, a prequel of what was to happen in the USSR a few decades later. Though the spread was relatively insignificant in Africa, this was also the time that Communism took roots in many East Asian countries – Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Korea. As he said when he was ousted, the biggest difference that Khrushchev made was that “…they were able to get rid of me simply by voting. Stalin would have had all of them arrested.” The 18 years of Brezhnev that followed Khrushchev brought some level of political stability and overtures in foreign policy, but it was also a period of economic stagnation, and towards the end (late 70s), the technology gap with the West began to widen.

    In the meanwhile, as noted in Part 4, Deng Xiaoping set about reforming China from the damage Mao had done. Under his leadership, China took an economic direction quite different from the collectivism in Russia. “Red hat”, in which private enterprise can function under the protection of state authority, led to material rewards for both. This also resulted in social changes, and much of what China is today, can be seen as the result of these reforms. In Europe, the ascendancy of Pope John Paul II, a Polish national, was a blow to the socialist credentials of the ruling party, and coupled with the influence of Czechoslovakia (the Prague Spring) from a few years ago, there was an uprising by students and workers. Though Solidarity (as it was called) had its moments, the regime managed to crush it. 

    The last section covers the fall of Communism, when Gorbachev ended up systematically dismantling the political, ideological and economic system that held the communist regime together. To be noted though, that splitting the USSR was definitely not his intent. But as education improved, and information began flowing freely (on a relative note) – glasnost, and his own perspective shifted from democratic centralism to social pluralism to political pluralism, the perestroika he envisioned ended up with him ceding political, military and ideological ground to his opponents within and outside the party. In the near-term, Yeltsin capitalised on it, even as Gorbachev tried his best to prevent the splintering of the USSR. Impossible not to feel for him, especially considering the blame which gets heaped on him by many. Meanwhile, Communism’s collapse in Eastern Europe can be mainly attributed to the combined effects of nationalism, and the weakening resolve of the USSR to bring in its military might. 

    There are pockets of Communism left in the world, and it’s interesting to note that from Cuba to N.Korea, the villain is still the US! China is a special case, as it is hardly a Communist state, at least by the definition mentioned earlier. It has forged its own path and it remains to be seen whether its economic success can counterbalance the rise of education and the spread of information (though controlled to a large extent), and thus retain the power of the centralist state machinery. 

    Archie Brown does a fantastic job of not just making the narrative accessible, but framing it in ways that enable the reader to understand the various contexts linked to it. It is hugely interesting to read about an alternative ideology that survived for more than five decades, but having said that, this is obviously not a book you should try if you’re not very interested in the subject.

  • The illegibility of freedom

    I often blame evolution for my compulsive planning. “Blame” is probably the wrong word, since I think of it as one of only two factors that gave our species an edge. The ability to project – think about the future and come up with ideas on how to navigate it had, and continues to play, a role in survival. (The second is language, which gives us the ability to communicate and organise people around ideas). Projection leads to some level of planning that does at least two things. One, by charting out the knowns and unknowns, make the entire journey more efficient and predictable. And two, by seemingly knowing the path ahead, one can create a narrative, that makes the past, present, and future legible.1

    I also console myself that both of these are phenomena in the world at large. An earlier era was complicated but offered opportunities for planning to increase efficiency. Starting from agriculture to the printing press to the first and second industrial revolution, we have progressed and systematically improved human lives with increasingly efficient systems and processes. That is probably what led to our techno-capitalist hubris that we could know and solve everything. But we now live in a far more complex world. We can project, but the variables in planning have exponentially increased. That doesn’t stop us from expecting though, and we use everything from astrology to machine learning to rid us of uncertainty. It manifests in everything from company projections to predictions & trends to even daily apps. We trust Amazon, Uber and any of the food delivery apps, because they are predictable.

    But in our efforts to maximise predictability and make the system of the world legible, we have created increasingly connected and correlated structures, so that the risk of one epoch-changing event is now magnified. It has also led to an attitude of zero-wastage, in terms of time, thoughts, processes etc. That, in turn, has reduced our exposure to unknowns and the potential to create low-risk scenarios from which we could learn how to handle larger crises. There are other side effects too.2

    And these themes also reflect in individual lives. In my own life, I have relied on planning to make life as risk-free as possible and craft a legible self-narrative for ourselves by focusing on income and investments. Correlated. This also means that there is a desire for predictability, and an urge for efficiency. Which further means that the exposure to anything that doesn’t provide this is reduced. All of this, to achieve the freedom I seek. In The Impulsive Path to Freedom, I wrote about how I was trying to move beyond efficiency and into an abundance mindset by creating money and time slack. In If it makes me happy…, I pointed out the realisation that more than a narrative and meaning, what I probably seek is the feeling of “being alive”. The idea is that the slack will enable me to have a more visceral experience of life as opposed to one that is mechanised and optimised for efficiency. Time, for the mind to play.

    Intuitively, one would think that it’s the control (predictability, efficiency) that would automatically provide the freedom, but to me, that control is a never-ending quest. In fact, it’s the opposite – giving up the need for control – that allows me to free. But this also brings in unpredictability and the possibility of things not being planned or going according to plan. Not a comfort zone for me at this point. I now realise that I won’t be able to approach it in a binary fashion. It’s a continuum I have started on, and I have no idea where it will take me. And that, is the illegibility of freedom.

    1 A big little idea called legibility

    2 The loss of life skills and memory that I brought up in Regression Planning, the increasing inability to have an informed opinion – In Other Fake News, what gets lost in the race for efficiency – An efficient existence, and the attempted conversion of whatever agency/free will we have into predictable behaviour, as I wrote in Default in our stars.