Suffering – The North Star of Existence
People have tried to justify their existence with happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction, service, love, hope, devotion and what not. But those who have existed in full spirit, lived it to the fullest have realized the effect of sufferings on our lives and even after overcoming them are ready to endure them again in the hope that they will become better than what they were before. These are the people who might have solved the query to…
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Feminine Side of Masculinity
Most of the times, we are forgetting that when we are promoting and asking for individual freedom, individual expression, individual identity we have ignored what it means to reserve the same rights for others. Ernest Hemingway’s short story called “In Another country” from his collection called ‘Men Without Women’ shows what men lose when they have no one of their own to open up, express, share. Hemingway’s writings although were heavily influenced by his personal…
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Men And Their Fathers
Most of the men are poor in openly expressing their emotions, love for the men they love. Fathers are an important entity in this group. In the vast ocean of unexpressed masculine love and the unexpressed emotions between father and son, James Blunt’s “Monsters” stands like a lighthouse. “Monsters” is not just about acceptance of father by his son or a love letter of a son to his beloved father; it is more than that.…
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The Lullaby of Eternal Rediscovery of Existence and Identity
Being social animals, we compare our lives with the lives of the others, we create our baselines and set our targets based on what others have achieved and done in their lives. In our current times when the life expectancy is better than ever, when we have a better cover of social safety than ever, the primitive instinct of survival from natural predators has been replaced by the modern instinct of philosophical- ideological survival which…
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A Hindsight For Better Future
Morgan Housel – the famous author of ‘The Psychology of Money’ has another important book called “Same as Ever” which gives insight into things which have never changed over the course of time. Same as Ever drives the motto of objective flexibility and subjective awareness of every event happening around us and with us. It also highlights that our mind is the first and the easiest one to fool, which leads to false sense of…
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The Body Snatcher – Weighing Intent Against Action
Robert Louis Stevenson is known for his world-famous novels ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ . His short story called “The Body Snatcher” throws light on the mentality and evolution of the dangerous psychopaths. The false sense of greater good, the ability to ‘suppress destructive thoughts’, ‘destructive actions’ to justify superiority keeps driving certain types of criminals to cross the limits of humanity, ethics, morality. It shows that even though…
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The Real Purpose of the Artistic Journey
‘A Hunger Artist’ was the last book published during Franz Kafka’s lifetime. The titled story reflects the inner turmoil and the imposter syndrome Kafka had for his writings. Even though tragic in the end Kafka successfully defined the attributes of the true artist in this story. In today’s social setup of becoming viral, influential – Franz Kafka’s story ‘A Hunger Artist’ stands like a lighthouse. It urges the readers and artists to trust their special…
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The Roadmap For A Creative & Fulfilled Life
The ten letters from an Austrian poet, novelist – Rainer Maria Rilke to a young poet undergoing the fear of mediocrity and criticism laid down a roadmap for a successful artistic and creative life. The beauty of Rilke’s letters is that they are not limited to those strictly in the creative professions; rather it is a roadmap for every person who want to live a fulfilled life involving continuous transformation of inner and outer riches.…
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Ideological Legacy of The Rock Star Scientist
The dream that Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam had for developed India is the reality in which we are living today. It wouldn’t be possible if he hadn’t devised a result-oriented action plan for the Nation. It is sad that we never celebrate such great bright minds the way we celebrate film/ TV stars or sportsmen, especially in this golden era of social media. The incorporation of e-governance, e-judiciary, Information Communication Technology (ICT), Providing Urban-amenities to…
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Joker: Folie à deux – The Dark, Twisted Fate of Internal Conflict
The polarizing reception of Joker: Folie à deux shows how deeply we are attached to certain fictional characters. Whatever might be the reception of this film, the character design and writing of Arthur Fleck in Folie à deux will go down as one of the best representations of the psychotic villain in the history of cinema. Even though the film doesn’t cater to the fan service, it will definitely become one of the best depictions…
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A Modern Prayer to Perceive ‘The Silver Linings’
The acceptance of our dark side is the only way to start a new journey to the real happiness, fulfillment. Achieving real fulfillment becomes way easier and manageable once we start acknowledging our dark emotions, feelings of sadness and sorrow. Running away from such “low” lying emotions actually intensifies them in the abyss. Actually, such emotions have great contribution in the refinement of our character. Empire of the Sun’s new song called ‘Happy Like You’…
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The Boy and the Heron (君たちはどう生きるか) – Bittersweet Reality of the Artistic Legacy
Studio Ghibli’s masterpiece The Boy and the Heron (君たちはどう生きるか, How do you live?) tries to answer one complicated question on artistic legacy. On surface, it is a story of boy coming out of the melancholy of his mother’s death and his new beginnings. Deep down it is a love letter from a creative father on his creative legacy to his son who wants to go on his own journey. It shows how difficult it is…
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Losing the ‘Grip’ on Escapism
Escapism creates a void in our perception of reality so that new ideas, creative ideas would populate this void for living life with a new perspective, new approach. The healthy escapism is the most important tool, a therapy for many successful creative people our world has ever seen. Once this escapism takes extreme side it may lead to addiction, procrastination and delusion. Freud’s ‘desire to destruction’ and René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire help us…
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Alienation and Creativity
Creation for capitalism, consumerism and pleasure maligns its true purpose which actually is to create joy and a sense of belonging, comfort and safety. Alienation is the end effect of such capitalist processes where people have isolated their humans side for the rat races and FOMOs. Pure creativity, empathy, connect with nature and self can help use to preserve that human core and come out of the alienation.
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Undone – the hymn of Sisyphus for modern times
There are certain moments in life where everything seems meaningless while we take a look at the final fate of all things and nihilism takes over, especially in the times of great unexpected failure. A crystal-clear philosophy of absurdism can come to rescue in such unsettling moments of existential confusion. When such complicated ideas reveal themselves through a simple, soulful yet philosophical song spanning few minutes, the impact is immense. ODESZA & Yellow House’s song…
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Appreciation For the Flow of Life
We, the population of billions round the globe are always trying to create our own version perfect life. What is perfect is purely subjective and thereby has infinite interpretations but there is something very fundamental – common which flows through all of us. It can help us to find the real perfect life. Wim Wender’s masterpiece “Perfect Days” shows how we can appreciate the inherent imperfections that life has and how to appreciate the life…
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Dune: Psychology in Science Fiction
Our identity is heavily influenced by the surroundings we live in. A healthy understanding of the gap between ‘labels given to us by our surrounding’ and ‘what we consider ourselves at core’ defines how we perform, how we behave in given situations. Frank Herbert effectively used these ideas of human psyche in his Dune Saga. The antihero story of Paul Atreides indicates psychological ideas of cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and Pygmalion effect. It is interesting…
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Dune: Philosophy in Science Fiction
The focus of Dune saga is on the ill-effects of hero worship. Frank Herbert warned his readers about the life altering consequences of granting too much power in the hands of a person who refrains to be questioned by his followers. The character arc of Paul Atreides depicts a moral dilemma. It also shows how power and aesthetics play a vital role when one is justifying actions, character and intent.
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The Model Millionaire – Attributes of True Wealth
Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Model Millionaire” is a story depicting the boomerang of kindness. It also tries to fuse the importance of tangible assets like money and intangible/ non-physical assets like kindness/ love/ art in our lives. It shows how the balance between these separate attributes can create a true rich life.
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Lifelong freedom for an hour
The societal construct, the men and even the women in society have created certain conditions where other women receive false freedom. This false freedom facilitates women to deliver benefits to society but somehow the society is not liable to return the favor back to these women. That is exactly where feminism becomes important. Kate Chopin’s short story called “The Story of an Hour” gives us a glimpse into what sacrifice and freedom means for a…
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A Story of the Fly and the Grieving Men
Katherine Mansfield’s short story called ‘The Fly’ shows how the loss of loved ones, especially young men in World War created a deep feeling of grief and loss among the surviving people. On surface the story may portray the melancholy of the loss of young generation but deep down it is the story of how ‘manly’ men always bypass the stage of crying out loud to express that grief. This grief brewing inside men is…
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A Bet Called Life
Anton Chekhov through his short story called ‘the Bet’ establishes important gifts life grants us. The real freedom is to neither let go of life with an escapism/nihilism nor degrade it through materialistic exploitation. The real freedom is the harmony between time, resources, practical curiosity and most importantly people around us. Life has possibilities to offer, it is up to us to live our lives on the spectrum rather than polarizing them to an ideology.…
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Time in a Bottle – Making The Finite Life Last Forever
The moment we realize that we are in a possession of something truly valuable is the moment when we start fearing for its loss, even the idea of losing it haunts us. The urgency created by the finiteness of our lives is the reason why we could and should truly appreciate the people and things around us, it is the same urgency which pushes us to dare to live the life we want. Jim Croce’s…
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Bedshaped by Keane – On Yearning, Melancholia and Intimacy
We are really great at understanding our happy, feel-good emotions and we are masters of enjoying such emotions but when it comes to the negative, grievous, melancholic emotions we fail to acknowledge them. Sad moments involving the loss of loved ones are incomparable to anything, anyone in the world. But awareness, acknowledgement, acceptance of such emotions can surely help one to justify meanings to their lives in newer ways.
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Suzume no Tojimari (すずめの戸締まり)- The Net Worth of Our Memories
Suzume no Tojimari (すずめの戸締まり) is a story carefully woven with the tales of memories and loss of loved ones, sacrifices, unconditional, selfless love and realistic optimism. Our memories – good and bad carry equal potential to cause either loss or profit.
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Mr. Toot by Ylvis – What makes an art and its creator successful?
Even though “the best” art creations in the world are better than the average creations as in they stand out of the rest creations thereby making them highlighted, it is also very difficult to point out or to predict what makes these things stand out. It is some sort of paradox. But that is what also reveals what an art really is. This paradox actually restores the uniqueness of every creation. That is why you…
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Hometown by French 79 – The song of evolving patterns penetrating through chaos
Patterns and their awareness are one integral part of our daily activities and are deeply rooted in our personality too. Most of the time their influence goes unnoticed. What could be a better example than a good song to highlight the significance of patterns in our life. This is about a special song which may highlight the significance of creating new patterns in every instance of life that we live. This is about a song…
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The American Scholar – Man as a University
Part-3 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous speech called “The American Scholar” was delivered in 1837 in front of the American youth. Emerson wanted the youth of that time to understand what it takes to create new knowledge and breakthroughs. The origin and legacy of knowledge, importance of past knowledge through books, importance of bringing and testing ideas into the reality to find the absolute…
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The American Scholar – The Books, The Actions, Intellectual Humility and The Dictionary of Life
Part-2 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay called “The American Scholar” made an attempt to move people out of their immediate achievements of separation from the English Government and inspired them to create something new, create and value the processes for building strong future generations and deep knowledge of nature. Even though this essay was more relevant for the American generation which was largely dependent…
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The American Scholar – The Scholar, the Nature, the Origins and the Legacy of Knowledge
Part-1 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ideas of a True Scholar for the Modern World The success of any society can be easily attributed to the success of its young generation thereby the institutions that develop them. There will be some moments in everyone’s life where we might have questioned the failure of the education systems from where we “passed out”. We realize at these moments how mechanical the systems have become. Even after realizing this fact,…
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The Last Lecture – How to break the cycle of birth and death?
Realization of the limitations of life Here is a quick question- “What will you do when you realize that you are going to die within few weeks, months?” The question is really difficult to answer for everyone but the most basic answer would be to live the moments you have to the fullest. I have realized through the experiences and examples around me that the awareness, the realization of death itself is a new birth.…
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Music of a painting and portrait of a song
Can we extend our experiences beyond the limitations of our senses? A picture is worth thousand words, they say. You try to explain something to your friends and they get confused then you show them the photo/ video of the same thing and the need to explain things disappears. Visual media is literally ruling over all other types of media. This also highlights our dominant way of consuming information, any information. Hence, we can definitely…
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Kantara – Breaking The Illusion of Materialistic Possession
Almost everyone is aware of the impact created by Rishabh Shetty’s blockbuster “Kantara”. The movie is an epitome of the huge power that cinema holds. Not only content/ story-line but the whole ensemble Kantara carries is a lifetime dream of every true movie maker. The movie stands out on cast, characters, cinematography, music, action, emotions, the balance between fact and fiction and what not. Not only as a great entertainer but also as a conveyor…
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The Afterlife of Love
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” – Aldous Huxley Everyone carries their own treasure while being alive. Interestingly, this treasure is not filled with things, materialistic objects (and far from gold, diamonds, platinum) rather this treasure contains the feelings which you think are totally exclusive. These are the feelings and experiences which you think that they belong only to you. You don’t want anybody or everybody to discover it.…
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The Green Knight – A Story of Killing the Boy
Many people who have had a near-death experience tell that their whole life flashed before their eyes. Although, it is difficult to try out and experience the reality of it, experience shared by such people is interesting and indicates what it means to be a conscious human being rather a living thing. Many of us would have also seen drastic behavioral changes in people after they have gone through a difficult disease or after…
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The Cost of An Apology
I recently watched a movie by R Madhavan called ‘Rocketry- The Nambi Effect’. The movie is about the ambitions and the hardships of an Indian Aerospace Engineer to put his nation in the front-seat of rocket competition and the struggles faced by him due the false accusation of espionage and defamation caused after that. The movie has made a successful attempt to develop the feeling of proud for Nambi Narayanan in the first half and…
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“If-” A Stoic Poetry by Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling is famously known for the creation of ‘The Jungle Book’. He is the youngest British Nobel Laureate (at the age of 41) till date. Today we will be deep diving into Rudyard Kipling’s all time famous and many people’s favorite poem ‘If-‘. This poem written in 1895 was published in his famous historical fantasy book called ‘Rewards and Fairies’ in 1910. This poem is all about a set of recommendations from poet to…
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How to fail? – Ankur Warikoo’s Failure résumé
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan Recently, I came across a book called ‘Do Epic Shit’ by Ankur Warikoo. I actually bought the book for my younger brother so that he will get exposed…
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KGF and Plato’s ‘The Republic’
“There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.” – Plato, The Republic KGF Chapter 2 was one of the most anticipated movies by Indian audience. The movie is filled with some great moments, a good performance from the whole cast especially the superstar Yash and most importantly the story line and characters have created significant impact. Obviously, the…
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The Batman- The superhero who ‘unlearned’
Journey of a person through cognitive dissonance The Batman by Matt Reeves is one of the most important and influential movies. It is important not because some profit expecting comic book franchise is trying to reboot their most valuable asset in order to establish the character so as to drive the future narratives of the stories which will be getting introduced in the near future but it stands important because of the fact that it…
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Metamorphosis- Anatomy of mental illness
Metamorphosis is about ‘Valuing a person for who they are’. The goal is not to understand him/her, the goal is to accept them for who they are. Metamorphosis shows what will go wrong when we lessen the value of everyone as an individual person for their motivations, drives, ambitions, expectations in any structure. It can be social, financial or personal. As a reader you will hate Gregor’s Family. This will also happen with every system…
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Everything at once
The anthem of innocence and ambition Songs and long roads is the match made in heaven. This pair is like boat with a sail to reach to destinations of new experiences, discoveries and revelations. There is a reason why some very deep meaning songs from movies are shot while our protagonist(s) are traveling. I experienced such moment once while traveling by bus. The bus was obediently tracing the road lines. I had this playlist going…
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Parts Per Billion 