I lost my train of thought earlier, but Iâm back now, writing this from Newark Airport, awaiting a flight back to the United Kingdomâthen onward, as they say, to the old, old world.
What Iâd begun to reflect on was social mobilityâand how drastically itâs shifted over the past few decades. In much of the Global South, the idea of a working-class avant-gardeâthose who rose through grit, communal aspiration, and sacrificeâstill retains cultural force. But in the Global North, that current has largely dissipated. Class structures have ossified. The ladder still exists, but the rungs are brittle.
Iâve been mapping that reality onto the commentariat, especially the highly educated, striving upper-middle-class Hindus who have, for the most part, embraced the systemâIITs, IIMs, Oxbridge, the Ivies. These are not just institutions; theyâre rites of passage. For many, the peak came at the point of entry. Twenty years on, what remains is not expansion, but a formulaâone track, one ceiling. Continue reading Merit, Class, and the Ossified Dream
âQureshiâ has glibly informed me that caste doesnât exist in Pakistan, and that had I not deleted his comment, I would have seen his thoughtful explanation on why his ancestors would (or wouldn’t- tough to follow) have âembraced caste.â
Letâs address both claims.
I. Denial, and the Geography of Amnesia
First: the deletion. The reason I removed Qureshiâs comment was simpleâit referred to âwhen the Hindus left Pakistan in 1947.â As if they left. As if it were a long vacation. That turn of phrase is emblematic of a deep, disturbing historical erasureâa civilizational amnesia thatâs not just inaccurate, but actively offensive.
To phrase the violent dislocation of millions as âleavingâ is a textbook case of internalized Hinduphobiaâa posture so normalized in Pakistani elite discourse that it barely registers as cruelty.
On Faizan Zaki, Spelling Bees, and Civilizational Osmosis
Another year, another Spelling Bee crown for an Indian American. But this one, the 100th Scripps tournament, Â is different.
Faizan Zakiâyoung, brilliant, and by name Muslimâjust became the latest in a long line of Indian-origin champions of Americaâs most idiosyncratic intellectual ritual. Faizan is the 32nd Indian American to winâmeaning theyâve claimed 32 out of the last 40 Spelling Bees. But he is very likely the first Muslim American to do so.
Last nightâs open thread surged past 50 commentsâmost of it orbiting the now-familiar friction between the two.
Let me be clear: Iâm inclined toward Kabir. Heâs often overwrought, sometimes hyperbolic, but heâs a known quantity. Heâs been part of this space for nearly a decade. He is a “real person.” We know how he argues, where he lands, and the limits of his provocations.
Honey is harder to read. Multiple handles. No clear background. No track record. And a rhetorical posture that feels less like engagement, more like carpet bombingâespecially when it comes to Pakistan. Thereâs a difference between critique and hatred, and itâs usually in the tone. âPakistanis under-endowedââLOL, happy to disprove that.
Vice President JD Vance recently declared that America doesnât need to âimport a foreign class of servantsâ to remain competitive. âWe did it in the â50s and â60s,â he said. âWe put a man on the moon with American talent. Some German and Jewish scientists who had come over during World War two, but mostly by American citizens.â
The line is memorableânot for its nationalism, but for its breathtaking amnesia.
The moon landing was not the product of some closed, white-bread meritocracy. It was powered by German engineers, Jewish refugees, and immigrant scientistsâmany quite literally âimported.â Wernher von Braun, the face of NASAâs rocket program, was a former Nazi, repurposed by America for its Cold War dreams.
Today, the immigrant pipeline Vance sneers at includes his own in-lawsâhis wifeâs parents, Indian-born academics. I’ve highlighted this problematic tendency before. They werenât servants. They were scholars. Like hundreds of thousands who have powered this countryâs universities, tech firms, hospitals, and labs. America doesnât run on pedigree. It runs on brains. And yes, those brains often have accents.
At the front: white staffâstylish, aesthetic, articulateâhandling (bossing sometimes but in general everyone is exceptionally lovely & calm) model minority clientele with curated ease. In the kitchen: Mexican workersâefficient, invisible, foundational. Itâs the same setup across most of Americaâs cool, clean consumer spaces: the aesthetic and the labor silently segregated by race and language.
Let me preface this with a disclaimer: these are the observations of a layman; feel free to criticise and disagree at will.
Back in boarding school, my roommate, a Tulu boy, used to have a picture of the gods local to his area. They were a pair of rough spheres containing gigantic eyes. He told me they are referred to as ‘Bhoot’ but were gods, definitely not ghosts. I suppose they had a connection to the Bhoot Kola made famous by the excellent movie Kantara.
The Bhoot Kola itself is a possession ritual performed by lower caste men and reminiscent of African tribal religions
Much later in life I saw these figures again – worshipped in Orissa as Lord Jagannath. The giant eyes placed in a circular setting was unmistakable. Jagannath however is wholly subsumed by the vedic/brahminical form of hinduism, surrounded by priests, bejewelled and receiving regular milk and ghee offerings.
SBI Manager Sparks Language Flashpoint in Karnataka
A now-viral video captures a moment that feels both petty and profound: an SBI bank manager, posted in Karnataka, flatly refuses to speak Kannada to a customer. When reminded that Karnataka has its own official language â and that RBI guidelines encourage local language use â the manager responds curtly:
âI will never speak Kannada.â
She then walks off.
She has since been transferred, but not before the clip set off a digital firestorm.
This incident may seem minor â another viral tiff between state pride and bureaucratic indifference â but it exposes a deeper tension in Indiaâs federal fabric. At its heart is a language question that never died: who accommodates whom in a multilingual republic? Full clip after the jump.
“It was not the best of times , it was the worst of times , it was not the season of light , it was the season of darkness , it was not the spring of hope , it was the winter of despair ” I am talking about the 2020-2021 period when the world was battling Covid.. Like the rest of the world I too was stuck in my house , hearing bad news after other and trying to put on a brave face . Cricket briefly for a few months , the great India tour of Australia ending with the great heist at Gabba gave us moments of great joy but such events were few and far in between.
It was in this background that , for my motley set of old classmates and fellow “Cricket Tragics” as we called ourselves had a blast , thanks to Bansi ( Ajay Bansiwal) one of our founding members , who took us through a masterclass of World Cinema. He is a movie buff , one of the lucky few whose day job also involves movies and he has a treasure trove of great world movies – that were non English and Non Indian Language and gave us a sampling of great movies across various languages – Korean , Scandinavian , European and such. These were not “High Brow” art movies , in the situation that we were with near and dear and friend and colleagues all suffering , all of us needed some escapist fantasy without compromising on our aesthetics. So the movies Bansi recommended were not sad or serious movies even though they took upon real and serious issues but always in a entertaining “masala” way or as a black comedy. These are all as Desi or Indian as movies can be only in languages and cultures that are vastly different from us. Sort of gives us the reaffirmation that human emotions are rather universal !
In this podcast , Bansi and I talk about 15-20 such movies in no particular order of priority – the only common theme being , we enjoyed watching all of these possibly the most. These range from hard core violent Revenge movies to Slow Burn Crime Thrillers set in Argentina to absurdist black comedies and some picture perfect French work of art movies ! We have tried not to share spoilers in most cases and hope to hook you enough to make you search for these movies and have as much fun seeing them and discussing them as we had . These prove that a good yarn well narrated is always engrossing whatever language it be in or the culture or country it is based in !
The Movies discussed are
Sympathy for Mr Vengeance –Â Korean
Oldboy –Â Korean
Lady Vengeance – Korean
Memories of murder – Korean
Barking dogs never bite – Korean
I saw the devil – Korean
Welcome to Dongmakdol –Â Korean
Secretly Greatly – Korean
In China they eat dogs – Danish
Adamâs apples – Danish
Department Q series -Danish
The Alzheimer case – Dutch – Belgian Movie
Micmacs –Â French
Welcome to the Sticks –Â French
The bandâs visit – Arabic/Hebrew – Israeli Movie
Marshland – Spanish
Nine Queens –Â Spanish – Argentinean Movie
Killing Cabos – Spanish Mexican Movie
Two rabbits – Portuguese – Brazilian Movie
The man who copied – Portuguese – Brazilian Movie
Guru Duttâs 1957 classic Pyaasa is about a disillusioned poet who is aghast at how people treat fellow humans in their pursuit of wealth, lust and power. In the iconic ending monologue, Dutt clarifies that he has no complaints against his friends, brothers and all the others who ill-treated him. His problem is with the structure of society, which peels away the humanity from humans.
19-year-old Abraham Biggs from Florida, USA was a regular on messaging board BodyBuilding.com. Apart from threads dedicated to diet, exercise, powerlifting, etc., there was a miscellaneous section on the site for random discussions not particularly related to bodybuilding. Predictably, this became the light-hearted section of the site- memes, jokes and banter flowed freely.
At 2:35 AM on November 19, 2008, Biggs posted a thread- he was going to commit suicide while livestreaming on Justin.tv, a streaming site and a precursor to Twitch. This was not the first time Biggs was talking about his mental health â he had started another thread in December 2007 about feeling down and how he had attempted to take his life earlier.
Biggs had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had been taking prescription medication for it. His plan was to overdose on the meds.
Disgustingly, the comments on his stream were goading him on, or calling the whole thing a hoax.
A 17-year-old regular of the site (username: âBulkerâ) chanced upon the thread, and clicked through to the livestream. Bulker was alarmed to see what was happening. He had interacted with Abraham on the site before, and felt compelled to act. The problem was, he was at the other end of the world- in India. He did some quick online sleuthing and found Abrahamâs name, number, approximate address and pictures. He posted these details, and even updated Miami police contact details on the thread, begging US folks to do something. But no one did.
This was the bystander effect at play. Like people gawk at traffic accidents but donât do anything about it if there are other people around. They just assume that someone from the crowd mustâve already taken action, like alerting the authorities. This effect was first identified in the murder of Kitty Genovese.
Bulker realised no one was going to act. He tried emailing Miami police but the mail bounced. Â He snuck into his parentsâ bedroom and accessed his motherâs phone. After activating the exorbitantly expensive international calling plan, he called Miami police and tried to explain the situation. He kept getting transferred around and he had to explain over and over again. The clock was ticking, his calling minutes were running out and he couldnât make any headway, except to locate Abrahamâs exact jurisdiction and which sheriff to contact. He posted this information too on the forum. Someone finally realised the seriousness of the matter, and called the sheriff. Minutes later, Bulker too got in touch with him- he had now activated international minutes on his fatherâs phone. The sheriff reassured him that they had already received multiple calls and help was on the way.
Police arrived at the scene about 15 minutes later. It was 3 PM in Florida and 1:30 AM in India. On the livestream, they were first seen throwing something towards Abraham, and when he didnât respond, they entered the room, checked his body and then covered the camera. Abraham Biggs had already passed.
This incident affected Bulker deeply. He got involved in social work, first in Gujarat and then Bengaluru, where he moved to in 2016. He volunteered during the COVID pandemic, and was able to get acquainted with the city police commissioner, who encouraged him to get more involved in public issues and act as an interface with authorities.
And thus we arrive at December 11, 2021. Bulker, whose real name is Dushyant Dubey, started a new thread on the r/bangalore subreddit:
Bangaluru is a city in flux, with a large number of young people moving here to work at the IT companies and startups that make it Indiaâs Silicon Valley. Many of these kids are away from home for the first time, and do not have a local âcontactâ that protects their interests from landlords, PG owners, cops, rowdies (slang for street thugs), MLAâs, <insert goon group here>. An immigrant himself, Dubey understood these problems intimately.
He offered to be of help, to anyone and for anything. The requests started coming in, small and big, with many users tagging him in relevant threads using his delightfully named handle – u/St_Broseph.
Someone needed help filing a police complaint. Another user needed therapy but couldnât afford it. Broseph happily paid out of his own pocket. One young woman had been sexually harassed by a policeman, and broseph helped escalate the issue and make sure the complaint was registered and acted upon. He even maintains a safehouse for people in distressed situations.
Between representing common folks in disputes with politicians, and (I kid you not) rescuing kittens, broseph has done it all. Following the suicide of Aditya Prabhu, he organised a protest to spur the investigation and formed a student support group. The r/bangalore community loves him- many people volunteer time and money towards his efforts. They call themselves the St.Broseph Army, and have a HQ and everything.
