Setu's Blog

A painful realization dawned on me recently: I may not be able to exercise my right to vote, for the foreseeable future. That is the life of expats who attempt to make a life in a country different from where they are born. I have spent most of my life in India; I grew up in India, I grew as a person in India. The person I am today is because of everything I saw, learnt, read, heard and observed growing up.  India instilled in me the importance of individual values, taught me that humanity is the most important religion and being considerate to our fellow human beings is the most honest act of worship. My experience of India was mostly academic, filled with idealism, honesty, freedom, optimism and respect. To me, India was synonymous with freedom and liberty. The largest democracy in the world succeeding in its effort to bring together people from different regions, religions, languages, castes and cultures. A melting pot of diversity, color, festivals, and most of all, people...

The world has changed over the last 5 years. The world today feels more polarized and divided, than it has in recent history. There are deep-seated divisions in our society, which come to the fore every day in the form of resentment, biases, abuse and hatred. But in the race to form, express and defend opinions, we have forgotten the importance of something integral that helps us form opinions: Facts. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."         - Daniel Patrick Moynihan Facts do not belong to a political party, a social position, a religious group or a country. Facts are universal, substantiated, proven with evidence, and grounded in truth. Quite simply, facts are the truth. We do not have to agree on our beliefs and opinions, but we must ascribe to the same facts. Facts form one of the tentpoles of a society. While our scientific and industrial prowess separates us from other living organisms...

I have strong opinions.  But I also have weak opinions, and at times, no opinion. These opinions have defined actions I have taken at different times of life. Some pleasant, some terrible. The beauty, though, of these actions has been that they have been mine and I have lived with them, learnt from them and course-corrected. I have abandoned beliefs I have held for decades within minutes, and I have been reaffirmed of my opinions despite days of disagreements. Our lives may be the results of our actions, but our actions are certainly a result of our opinions. These opinions stem from a variety of places. They include things we have learnt while growing up, things we fear, things we have read, things we have heard, things we have endorsed to fit in, and things that we adopt to rebel. More often than not, these things are fleeting, but the opinions that form from them, are not. What bothers me the most, though, is the reluctance w...

Until a couple of years ago, my short temper was one of my biggest regrets and an understood weakness. A lot of times when I got angry over a difference of opinion, my mother would share with me a metaphor: "When the 5 fingers on our hands are different, why do we expect others in the world to be just like us?" That, or the daily recitation of the Indian National Pledge in school that reminded me how India's diversity is its strength and pride, instilled in me the value of every person's individuality, and the respect for the same. For quite a while now, I have seen people (and Indians in particular) struggle with their identities. Especially since a single opinion you have can come to define your identity among a group of people. Support a particular political outfit, and you get branded with a name that is supposed to be an insult. Support a particular idea, and the you will be labelled with an associated leader and interrogated about their mistakes. A lot of th...

It is amusing to me how more often than not, we are more invested in the future than the present. We keep thinking about the what next, planning ahead, measuring our steps today and working steadily towards that well-defined goal. We carve out a path in our head and we try to stick to it, avoid deviating from it. Eventually, we get there. We achieve what we strove for. But, somewhere between that journey, there's this sweet spot when all the pieces fall into place and the vision that kept you captivated is within an arm's reach with no hurdle in between. And that is a beautiful feeling. The last few days have been such for me and the goals I had set for myself a couple of years back, now seem right here. It is an understated, subdued emotion of happiness and serenity. The bearing of fruit of months and years of hard-work and systematic, planned efforts, coupled with the excitement of the life that lays ahead. I keep going back to the past, and realize how it all falls into...

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too. It was the morning of 5th November, 2008 when I heard these words from the then President-Elect Barack Obama as a part of his victory speech . This was a proclamation from the man who had just been elected the most powerful man in the world, that he understood the responsibility of the office he was just elected to. They were simple words exhilarating humility and goodwill, at the same time. For the last 8 years, I have had these very lines stuck in the back of my head, and even more piercingly in the last 6-7 months, and specifically in the Indian context. When we talk about India, we talk about the diversity of the country. 'Unity in diversity' is often the one sentence definition of India cited across the world. It is a society where each person is respected for their individuality as an Indian. It ...

I have respected the need for 'Freedom of Speech' ever since I first understood what it meant, sometime during a Civics class in school. It is the necessity for a society to grow. Ideas and opinions need to flow from one side of the table to the other. As a proponent of free speech, this freedom is something I take very personally and seriously. But, today, almost 18 months after one of the most hallmark decisions taken by the Indian electorate, I wonder if such a freedom exists anymore. It does exist in the Constitution, technically, but on the ground? I'm skeptical. A democracy like ours is very complex for me to explain, but a few things that I believe are underlying to the very fabric of our country are the need for rules and laws that are common to everybody. That all people, all religions, all languages must be treated equally. Yes, the Constitution of India doesn't recognize a national religion or national language. Hinduism isn't the national religion...

Exactly 5 years ago, almost around the same time, I wrote ' The Dream Called 'India'... ', my understanding of the dream that those who fought for the freedom of our nation must've seen, 69 years ago. Today, I am at the crossroads that has me turning cynical to the very same dreams that I believed were real and obvious. And that, not because I've lost the faith, not because I am any less determined to be a part of the change; but because I'm instigate and angry seeing otherwise happen all around me. All the time. Over the past few weeks, I've been struggling with many things that I see around me, and trying to get to the literal 'root' of the problem, and maybe I'm seeing things, but it takes me to a common conclusion about the country we have become: We love our freedom, but we love skirting the responsibilities tagged along with it, even more. And, there, we forget that the freedom comes with responsibilities. The burden of responsibil...

Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. and no good thing ever dies. I don't remember how many times and to how many people I've recited these lines, in the 6+ years since I watched 'The Shawshank Redemption' for the first time. And yet, much as I keep convincing people to believe in these words, I sometimes find it hard to trust in them for myself, shaking in the belief about the sanctity of these words. For longer than I can remember, I had been certain about my life and the way it'd go on. I knew what was going on, and where I wanted to see it, for whatever time-frame was asked of me. And then, 6 months back, things changed drastically, dramatically. All throughout these 6 months, up until the last few weeks when I found some peace of mind and stability, I had been wondering what is it that kept me going. What is it, that even after the tables had turned, made me want to believe in a better tomorrow than the yesterday? And each time, there was a si...

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about my desire to do my bit for this country, and this world, to make it a better place. Considering how huge and important the impending elections in the world's largest democracy, and my dear nation, India, are, it is befitting that I express my views about the state of it. I'm not a member of any political party (not that I know of, at least). And I have strong reasons to admire and hate every party. Seriously. I have enough reasons on both side that it comes down to a very illogical, but personal choice for who I'll end up voting for, during the " biggest festival of democracy ". Festivals, from what I understand about the meaning of the word, are about celebration and for spreading joy and happiness. And since the day the longest elections in the history of India were announced (and much before) I doubt anyone has seen anything but. Not a single cheerful, hopeful emotion has been demonstrated by any candidate from any...

It was 6:17 p.m. on the 11th of November, and I had just woken up. The tickets for Sachin Tendulkar's last test match in Wankhede had gone on sale at 11a.m. that morning. I had been trying to get to the tickets page and buy them on the KyaZoonga website until 3:30 that afternoon, but the website kept crashing and the page failed to open. I was diagnosed with dengue 4 days ago. I was recuperating well until the morning of the 11th. That's when the high fever returned. Regardless of my condition, I sat in front of my desk during all my wake hours. And thus, at 3:30 I had to stop my efforts to get the tickets and sleep. I needed rest. But I wanted those tickets. When I woke up, I had lost all hope to be able to get those tickets. I figured they'd have all been sold out, I was late. I made my way to my desk where the browser window had the KyaZoonga Twitter tab opened. I read their reply to someone saying the tickets were still available. And so, the mad frenzy, the sc...

Disclaimer: This post doesn't have much to do with the Bollywood movie Bombay Talkies (except the few references cited), and is neither a review. It's a much broader take at the lack of acceptance of Bollywood movies and their preachings in the lifestyle of India. I don't watch many Bollywood movies, and that's for a simple reason. They are simply not good enough for me to want to waste my time on them. They are boring, pointless, excruciatingly painful to sit through (I was forced to watch Ready, twice , during my Mumbai-Pune bus journeys, so I know). Most of them are the same lovey-dovey romantic flicks, or action movies inspired from Rajnikanth, or just some dumb story with a big banner actor. In the last couple of years, I've come to enjoy movies that have a good story, or that teach me something or the other. And as I kept exploring more Hollywood classics, I realized, no Indian movie comes even close to how the movie is made, what it portrays, or how it ...

It's been days since I've been watching, hearing and reading about this horrendous incident that took place in New Delhi, our beloved (yes, pun intended) capital, sometime last week. Honestly, I don't care about when, where, what, why etc. details of the same. I'd rather leave that on those news channels to judge, who make me believe that there's nothing else happening in the whole country except this mad, senseless struggle which is trying to hold the whole country at a ransom. The ransom being, the death of the rapist. Before you jump to any conclusions about the incredibly absurd and probably hurtful, even, statements that I just made, take a few deep breaths and read on. The Beginning I have been watching the TV series Rome these past couple of days. It's a biopic (as far as I know) about the ancient Rome and its fall as an empire. Although, the details of the series are irrelevant here, there's one thing that I noticed there, that started with or...

As those who regularly read my blogposts would know, I don't hesitate to express my displeasure over my experiences with corporate firms. It's simple, they sucked, and they have to face my written wrath. In the recent past, I've been subjected to more frequent and more disgusted forms of torture from such companies, which made me ask myself, am I not the customer? And, isn't the customer the king? It's with utmost sadness that I inform you that through my experiences, I have been enlightened enough to inform you that a customer, a consumer, was the king. He isn't anymore. (And no, the customer isn't the queen anymore. Stop trolling.) It's one of the saddest realizations for someone who has always believed that companies actually care about their customers. I am also the one who pretended to smug when everytime I was told, 'Make a company so big, that you have call centers answer for you.' For good or bad, now, that's a thing of the pas...