Will the stars stare back at us?

A couple of years ago, I wrote something around sit-down tragedy (the exact opposite of stand-up comedy) and the goal was to accept our collective desire to laugh at ourselves while offending ourselves. The only reason it doesn’t work is, we are not very comfortable with the idea of being seen or heard. We bask in reflections and still beholden to bias. We don’t enjoy criticizing ourselves but given a chance, we would criticize everything else, from the systems in place to the weather in space. It’s not that we take ourselves too seriously. No, that is just an excuse. Every living creature takes itself seriously. That is the foundation of survival, deeply encoded in our ability to exist. The issue here is a bit more complex: we presume on other’s behalf, as if to show that we are all connected the way roots of tall trees in a forgotten forest are. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We sit down and contemplate our tragedies—thanks to the modern act of doomscrolling—simply because it keeps us at a safe distance.

Speaking of endless scrolling, isn’t it fascinating that our species has finally found an activity that cuts through every conceivable class, caste, creed, religion and race? Everyone is glued to their phone screens for different reasons. We assumed that death is the great equalizer. Turns out the internet is. We are scrolling as if we are bound to find the meaning of life somewhere at the bottom. I’ve seen oldies hunched over their smartphones, with earphones neatly pushed into their wrinkled flappy ears, busy watching god-knows-what all the time. They are least interested in talking, let alone, sharing pearls of wisdom with the younger lot. The youngsters are anyway (over)smart for their own good. Maybe this is the price we will have to pay for a little bit of silence.

They say that there is a global epidemic of male loneliness. I believe this is a misguided conclusion. In my observation (not opinion) so far, everyone has come to be lonelier than they are fully capable of. From earnest single folks to bored married couples to weary grandparents (with screens, obviously) to restless children (without screen, obviously) are lonely. If anything, we are a weird bunch of creatures. We are at the peak of our technological advancements and yet, the amount of loneliness that we are collectively producing must beat our carbon footprint. I prefer non-AC trains only to observe that passengers are sincerely talking to each other, despite being complete strangers, hoping to overcome the loneliness that is a byproduct of breathing.

I’ve been actively producing content on social media for close to two decades now and in my pursuit to entertain (myself, primarily), I ended up creating a persona of know-it-all. In reality, I have no idea what’s going on. I just try to connect dots; dots that don’t even exist. Even in my professional space, I look for areas that others are not paying attention to. I am least interested in trends. I genuinely don’t care about templates. Yet, I know for a fact that I am shallow. In fact, the only thing shallower than me is my breathing.

The facts continue to change. The truth remains the same.

25 years ago, Pluto was a planet. It was a fact back then. Today, Pluto is not a planet. It is a fact now.

The truth is, Pluto personally doesn’t give a fuck whether it’s a planet or not.

Lastly, be like Pluto.

Whenever I go for a walk, there are birds either waking up the trees at sunrise or birds returning to their nest at sunset. Either way, there is an elegant cacophony in nature. Perfect to the beat. One can’t help but cherish the non-human species for their adherence to the laws of nature. Be it morning or evening, the clockwork remains. The kingfisher won’t overstep its limits and avoid taking a dip in the pond after sun goes down. The grazing cows will return to their resting spots too. No more bees or butterflies to deal with. Time for mosquitoes to play their malarial tune. There is a balance by order. Humans can try to disrupt it, not for long though. We might pat our backs for drilling oil out of the deepest shale but it’s a momentary blip on the great canvas of time. Which is also why you can’t deny the majesty of the new moon sky because when you finally stare at the stars, some of the stars do stare back at you.

Only two questions matter in the end. Are you wasting your life? Have you wasted your life? Everything else is a filler. A long pregnant pause of misery. Nobody else truly can tell you what to do and where to go and when to reach. It’s your journey. Every choice you make, even if influenced by your elders or friends or family, is yours. Others can claim anything significant. You go through your ups and downs on your own. No parachutes here. It’s a free fall of will. Poets often muse that it’s harder to die than live. Not true at all. There are shortcuts to death but there aren’t any shortcuts to life.

Those who are easily happy can be easily sad too. The ones who rise above both these emotions are rare. Buddha was correct when he pointed out that all suffering is derived from attachments. What he wasn’t very accurate about was the extent to which we are willing to pay for those attachments. Our baggage, emotional or otherwise, is entrusted upon us by us. We pretend to blame it on others but deep down, we know it’s just who we are. Each one of us, irrespective of our IQ and EQ, are wise enough to acknowledge we are perfectly prone to drama. Very few of us are vying for enlightenment. It is not the sort of aura farming we are after. Understandably so.

The sexiest thing in the world is knowledge. The unsexiest thing in the world lies somewhere between ignorance and arrogance. I’ve written extensively on this blog on why we fail to overcome this challenge. It’s not a mere coincidence that the educated lot tend to be more ignorant (and categorically arrogant) in our country. Unless we address this behaviour—through long-reaching efforts like curriculum and policymaking—I don’t see any improvement in our society. Our travesty doesn’t show in our rot. It sparkles in our denial.

Why don’t we have a nickname for development yet? Let me suggest one. Plastic. The moment development reaches our smaller towns and villages, plastic bags follow uninvited. And nobody there knows how to deal with this menace. The wrappers and the bags are liberally strewn, piling up unaccounted on the street sides, merging in with the foliage like a not-so-hidden secret. It’s only a matter of time before we realize that we got our priorities wrong. Perhaps there should be ground-breaking scientific advancements in the field of waste disposal—how about a chemical solution that makes plastic evaporate when gently sprinkled upon?—instead of magical weight-loss pills.

I can totally understand men hating on street dogs but I don’t get how women can’t stand strays. They are natural allies. Street dogs tend to be protective of womenfolk and there is a clear correlation between good street behaviour (male) and the prevalence of street dogs (both genders). Streets with strays seldom report violence against women, particularly at night. Having spent the last 20 years of my life around street dogs, I can tell from experience that street dogs are more likely to bark at male strangers than female strangers. Women somehow calm them down. Turns out the opposite is not true.

There is so much noise around Dhurandhar (2025) that I almost forgot that it’s a movie, not a documentary. I haven’t watched it yet but most probably, I would enjoy it. Saying this based on my understanding of Animal (2023) amid all those online controversies back then. Insofar, it’s a dangerous mix of cute and naive to see Dhurandhar’s detractors constantly criticizing it. They seem to overlook the fact that we live in an attention economy. If you don’t approve of something, the most effective thing you could do is ignore it completely. When you talk about it extensively, you are falling into a trap: you are foolishly contributing to its (over)reach and commercial success.

During my Gurgaon (Zomato) days, my friend Ashwin introduced me to the concept of vision boards. I found it very useful as I went through phases where I managed to achieve several of my goals. I remember writing down my fitness goals (500 skips at once/50 pushups at once/30K steps daily), financial goals (cross 1L in-hand salary), content goals (4 blogposts per week/10 one-liners per day/5 jokes per week), etc. Of course, it was not a coherent process. There were wins and flops and wins and flops again. After moving to Mangalore, I stopped maintaining a vision board and switched to penning down pointers of to-do (daily) and goals (annual). To be fair, the vision board provided me with quicker results. Writing down stuff on pages feels noble but you tend to get distracted more.

When I was younger, I wanted to go see the world, experience new cultures, taste different food items, embody better values, so on and so forth. Cut short to today, I have little to no interest in traveling or visiting or staying outside of India, for that matter. I have barely witnessed the marvels of this country anyway. If anything, I want to eventually buy a piece of land and start farming in tandem with an animal shelter. And while I am at it, I want to move my family away from the deep clutches of a big city and move them back to our roots. It’s going to be a massive project. Almost like witnessing many worlds at once.

There are days when I imagine Krishna showing up and telling us, lesser mortals, what to do. And then, just when my hopes get up, I realize that even if Krishna himself shows us the way, we won’t be making the right choices. Our mind seeks perfection and for some reason, we want wisdom to be perfect too. Hence we want absolute answers to vague questions like “What is my purpose?” and “Why was I born as a person who identifies as a lazy cat?” Fortunately, wisdom has very little to do with being perfect in our answers. Wisdom is not at all chasing perfection. Wisdom is knowing intimately that perfection doesn’t even matter. That’s just 6D chess played by our brilliant minds.

The legendary newscaster Salma Sultan joined All India Radio in 1967 and stayed with them until 1997. Her first salary was ₹1,200 (equivalent to ₹68,000 in 2025). But here’s where things get interesting: inflation and purchasing power are two different things. In 1967, Salma could buy 10 grams of gold at ₹120 (equivalent to ₹6,800 in 2025) whereas the same amount of gold would cost ₹130,000 in 2025. We forget this simple math while calculating our salary, savings, earnings, expenses, etc. The future is ALWAYS more expensive than your present. The prices of gold, land, fuel, rent, services, products/commodities (except maybe balloons and zippers) are never going to fall. Be scared, yes, but more importantly, be prepared.