Tag: Amit Varma

  • Designing my desires

    A world of transactional efficiency

    It was a little over 4 years ago that I first brought up the increasingly transactional nature of our interactions and even existence in general. I was reminded of it while listening to Amit Varma’s podcast with Nirupama Rao. Interestingly, they brought up contexts similar to what I had used – mails and rails. I had used birthday greetings going from long mails/cards to a ‘Like’ on someone else wishing the person a birthday. Travel was the other context, and I liked Amit’s example of train journeys being a unique experience. In contrast to say, the flight from point A to B.

    Last year, around the same time, I had framed it as An Efficient Existence, and used the example of Taylor Pearson’s 4 minute songs – the timeframe he had mentioned for songs in the context of  certain rules that creators need to follow if they want their work to be consumed and appreciated. I had brought up an earlier era of Floyd, Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac etc whose songs didn’t follow that template. Demand or supply, what happened first, I asked. Does it have to do with the abundance of choice now, and the demands of instant gratification? While templated packages for all sorts of consumption are increasingly the norm, people also want to finish and move on to the next thing on their list. Transactions. (Generalising), there seems to be very less desire to have an immersive experience. Outside the screen, that is. As the Spotify ads show (unintentionally and literally) we’re usually in a bubble, oblivious to our surroundings.

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  • The crowd in my head

    Two wonderful posts I read a while back – one which I could completely identify with, and the other, such a complete antithesis of what I do that it was almost like a mirror I was forced to look into- but something I could utterly understand.

    Amit Varma’s ‘Society, You Crazy Breed‘, which is about many inter-related things -the need to escape the clutter, even of our own thoughts, the want of validation and acceptance, the human interaction that will take us away from “the terror of [our] own singular thoughts.” (from) It also talks about debate on the internet, but while that makes a large part of the ‘clutter’, especially the micro-debates, the ‘must comment’ social obligation is something I’ve written about earlier, so I was more interested in the first part.

    I used to absolutely love solitude earlier, and it was easier to access too. But now what’s easily more accessible is a crowd. It slowly becomes a sort of addiction, despite me wanting to stay away. Its no longer easy to be objective enough to separate a want from a need, and its quite easy to fool the self. When one has never been the particularly confident type and has barely gotten out of a constant validation requirement, its particularly difficult. An RT on Twitter is easy validation, and as I’ve said before, the vicarious ‘living’ is easy and fun. Its good to be connected, and be a carefully moulded version of ourselves that is acceptable to those we would like to be connected to. The trick, of course, is to be a version  true to our own selves, something we are comfortable with, in solitude, or in a crowd. But that’s not easy.

    That brings me to the second post, “One for the time capsule” wonderfully written by The Restless Quill, about living life on one’s own terms, fighting the battles inside, the arguments outside, and ‘inhabiting a life’, which can create a ‘light-band of memories’. Chances are, choices such as those, would be made with minimum validation. Its also, I think, a lot to do with confidence and an understanding that perhaps comes from listening to oneself, in solitude.

    Its easy to guess which post I could identify with, and which one is the anti-thesis. There are times when my destiny stared at me in the face, and I looked away furtively, as though looking would mean acknowledging, and then accepting. I can dimly sense these. The ability to make those ‘difficult’ choices and keep walking, joyous in the consciousness of what one has learned and the comfortable understanding of what one has lost out on, it must be liberating. I have a feeling, and unfortunately, a feeling only, that it must really be wonderful.

    until next time, a crowdsourced time capsule

  • My Friend Sancho

    Amit Varma

    ‘My friend Sancho’ is the debut novel of Amit Varma, made famous by the blog ‘India Uncut’, which incidentally, is given quite a few plugs in the book. A blogger’s work – that explains why i picked it up. 🙂
    The book revolves around Abir, a journalist on the crime beat, who happens to be around during a police shootout, when he was only expecting to cover a routine arrest. It gets more complicated when he is asked to do a story on the victim, which leads to his friendship with Muneeza (Sancho), the victim’s daughter, who is sure that her father was innocent, and is unaware that Abir was present at the scene.
    Whether the book delivers or not depends on what you expect out of it. If you are looking for profundity that would make you contemplate the vagaries of the universe, you’d be better off looking elsewhere. But if you’re just looking for a light read, and a protagonist whom you’d find easy to relate to (net surfing, wise cracking guy who is still not sure what to do with his life) then you wouldn’t mind this book.
    I did expect the humour quotient to be higher than delivered, but it’s still not bad. The lizard, though it only has a ‘special appearance’ is entertaining. I also quite liked the way the story ended.