I started this note with the idea of reviewing To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf—but as my thoughts took shape, I realized I did not intend to write about the book; my reflections gravitated, irresistibly, toward Woolf herself. Having already spent time with her essay A Room of One’s Own and the iconic Mrs. Dalloway, this felt like a natural, if unexpected, progression.

Woolf’s protagonists are often women—but in my eyes, they just happen to be. They could just as easily have been men. That is my sentiment about Woolf, too: she was a woman, but she could have been born at any time and as any gender, and it wouldn’t have made a difference to the essence of her spirit. I believe this was her pathos—that gender didn’t matter to her as much as personalities and people did.

The Human Condition

This outlook didn’t bode well for early 20th-century Europe, where roles were strictly defined by gender. She was not a conventional woman by any standard, yet she didn’t want to be a man either. Perhaps this is why she was able to love both men and women with equal intimacy; gender was secondary to love. She was, simply, an intelligent, deeply sensitive human being with a mind full of beautiful images that she poured into her words—though perhaps never deeply enough for her own satisfaction.

As one reads her books, one is moved by her attempt to pour out the beauty she feels in her heart and soul onto paper. Her words carried a depth that her writing could only hint at.

Kindred Souls: Woolf and Proust

This refusal to be categorized by the “nerves of language” found a kindred spirit in the French writer Marcel Proust, whose influence on her work is telling. She was an ardent admirer of his writing, and one wonders if their shared complexities regarding sexual orientation deepened her engagement with his work. (Proust is presumed to have been homosexual, while Woolf was bisexual, famously maintaining an intimate relationship with fellow author Vita Sackville-West while married to her devoted husband, Leonard Woolf ).

When Woolf first read Proust, she told her friend Roger Fry, “My great adventure is really Proust... How, at last, has someone solidified what has always escaped and made it too into this beautiful and perfectly enduring substance?” Upon finishing À la recherche du temps perdu, she noted that Proust so “titillates my own desire for expression” that it became an obsession. It is as if she found a soul who shared her love for the beauty of art and language, weaving his influence into her own.

The Mirror and the Weight

Woolf famously wrote in Between the Acts that “books are the mirrors of the soul”. A meditation on her writing awakens the reader to an immense vastness, as though we are seeing only the visible edge of something much larger. Though today her work is classified as feminist and was once called radical, I believe she didn’t consciously intend to be either. Her thoughts simply were. She focused on the human condition, writing exactly what she felt without trying to fit a label.

Despite a long marriage to Leonard Woolf, who loved her with utmost devotion, Virginia remained haunted by the conviction that she was an unloved wife and an unsuccessful author—neither of which was true. Her history of mental illness and her eventual suicide are deeply moving. We are told she walked into the waters of the River Ouse with her pockets filled with stones. As she once wrote in a diary entry, “I am in a mood to dissolve in the sky,” she ultimately chose to dissolve in the water.

Sometimes I wonder: did she really need the stones to drown her? Would not the pathos of unresolved thoughts, the burden of words left unsaid, and the “shadows of the universe” she carried under her skin have been an unbearable weight enough to drown her on their own?

About the Contributor

Anupa is an educator and an avid reader who brings unique insight to her explorations of the written word. With an eclectic taste in books that ranges from the classic to the contemporary, she believes that literature serves as a vital mirror for our internal worlds. Through her contributions to ruminata, Anupa seeks to understand the architecture of hope and the complexities of the human condition.

My skepticism isn’t new. Years ago, after reading his massive tome Kafka on the Shore, I wrote a “review” that was less an analysis and more a desperate attempt to catalogue the surreal absurdity I had just witnessed:

A while ago, an Oedipal Curse met a Body-Spirit Dualism at the edge of the world, on one side of which is this world, and on the other side of which is, you know, the other world. With me so far? Good. Exactly how long ago this was, nobody knows. Time is hardly of essence at that place. So, anyway, once the two of them met, they mated, quite naturally. To the background score of Beethoven's symphonies and/or the droning of pop philosophy (of the Occidental variety). It was raining that day. The skies were spouting symbols, or were they dreams? Metaphors, most likely. Metaphors are cheap, you can stock up all the metaphors you need for a few thousand yens. So, let's go with metaphors if it's all the same to you. And what do I know? I'm not too bright, you see. May be I should talk to one of the neighbourhood cats (also known as Harukists) for they know everything. Or I could find a friendly truck driver resting at a highway, and engage with him.

Anyway—to cut to the chase—on that fateful day when it was pouring down metaphors at the edge of the world, Oedipal Curse had raunchy sex with Body-Soul Dualism. As a result, eventually (how eventually, we don't know; time is not...but I repeat myself) a 600 odd page tome was born called "Kafka on the Shore".

Unfortunately, the book itself is no metaphor. It's quite real and I read it.

"Jeez Louise!"

Despite that experience, I did eventually decide to give him a second chance. I picked up his most grounded and beloved work, Norwegian Wood, hoping to find the magic I had missed. Resurfacing my notes from that reading now, I find the specific frustrations are just as vivid.

The novel is a recollection of Toru Watanabe, a man in his late 30s who, triggered by hearing the Beatles’ song “Norwegian Wood” in an airport, drifts back to his youth in 1960s Tokyo. He recounts his time torn between two women: Naoko, a childhood friend consumed by a clinical, devastating depression; and Midori, a lively, enterprising classmate representing the pulse of life.

Naoko and Midori represent two distinct poles of existence. Naoko carries a profound, irremediable sense of loss. Toru is torn: he doesn’t know if he desires to be sucked into the vortex of darkness and the past offered by Naoko, or the future—dazzling and delirious—offered by Midori. He doesn’t know what creates happiness.

The novel is set in Tokyo during the 1960s. The ‘60s witnessed revolutions all over the world, and Japan was no different. Yet, while Murakami’s novel is set against this backdrop, it possesses a certain “spaceless” and “timeless” quality. I don’t mean that in a positive way. Quite the contrary: you could transform the story effortlessly to any postmodern milieu, anywhere on the globe—the United States especially. I find this problematic.

The Butter-Stink of Nowhere

In Japan, there is a term called batakusai (“butter-stink”), referring to things that feel uncomfortably Western. Norwegian Wood reeks of it.

With Murakami, one never runs the danger of learning anything about Japan. In his drama class, Watanabe studies Racine, Ionesco, and Shakespeare. “Stuff like that.” He reads Truman Capote and Scott Fitzgerald. He has nothing to discuss with peers who read Japanese giants like Kenzaburo Oe or Yukio Mishima because he keeps returning to his Western favourites.

As the novel progressed, my marginalia became increasingly snarky. At one point, a minor character appears with a dog named Pepe—even the incidental animals require Spanish names! Later, there is a discussion about the movie The Graduate and a barrage of references to Cream’s White Room and Simon & Garfunkel. When John Coltrane dies in 1967, Murakami notes the gloom that descended. It is as if the author is curating a playlist rather than a world. One wants to ask: Did nobody important die in Japan that year?

The Vacuum of History

This cultural rootlessness bleeds into a more troubling political vacuum. The novel is set in late-1960s Tokyo, a time of violent student riots and radical social upheaval. Yet, Watanabe and his friends remain safely hermetically sealed from the action.

The dissonance is jarring. Watanabe is a liberal arts major studying drama—a field that, in the 1960s, was the very crucible of sensitive idealism and radical thought. Yet, he harbours a profound, unexplained disillusionment with revolution. It is one thing to be cynically jaded, but Murakami provides no context for why.

And it isn’t just him. No one else in the novel seems capable of thinking beyond their own gloom, ennui, or sorrows. For that specific milieu, this collective apathy is a sociological oddity.

Murakami’s characters treat revolution as background noise. In one particularly telling scene, Toru and Midori sit on a roof drinking beer, playing guitar, and singing pop songs while a nearby building burns down. It is hard to say if Murakami is being clever here or if it is symptomatic, but the image is perfect: the world burns, and the Murakami hero strums a guitar.

“In terms of everyday life,” Watanabe says, “it made no practical difference to me whether the place was right-wing or left-wing or anything else.”

Lucidity Over Complexity

This, I suspect, is the secret to his global popularity. Murakami offers a safe harbour for readers who wish to experience the aesthetic of sadness without the burden of its context. It is a “commodity loneliness”—consumable, stylish, and ultimately hollow.

His writing has a certain fluidity—he is eminently readable, with a judicious dosage of sexual encounters and pop culture references. He avoids uncomfortable topics like politics, religion, or history. The conversations in the book, often mistaken for deep philosophical ramblings on death and memory, rarely hold up to scrutiny. They are the banter of adolescents who have mistaken self-pity for profundity.

Unlike the characters of his contemporaries, who are forced to confront the friction of reality, Murakami’s characters float in a beautifully curated limbo. Norwegian Wood is a story of “nowhere”—a stylish, comfortable void that offers the aesthetic of sadness without its weight.

That brief sentence, all of six words, made me pause and think for a moment. About sand, and about such a person. About their interest in collecting sand. Of all that is collectible, why would they choose to collect sand? It’s a curious enterprise. This person travels the world, but wherever they go, they go in search of a beach, a river, or a lake bed to find a wee bit of sand. What drives them to do that?

Calvino uses this sandy opening to launch into the first section of the book, which focuses on his visits to eccentric exhibitions in Paris. He wanders through collections of cowbells, gas masks, terracotta whistles, bottle tops, toilet paper packaging, and so forth. He then asks a question about the nature of collecting:

The fascination of a collection lies just as much in what it reveals as in what it conceals of the secret urge that led to its creation.

Ah! And is there an inherent politics to it?

In some sense, a collection is also like a diary, each item in the collection being a diary entry: “[…] a diary of travels, of course, but also of feelings, states of mind, moods […]”

He ends the essay with a touching note reflecting on his own work of decades—that of collecting and putting together words. What has been the purpose of it all?

“So, deciphering the diary of the melancholic (or happy?) collector, I have finally come round to asking myself what is expressed in that sand of written words which I have strung together throughout my life, that sand that now seems to me to be so far away from the beaches and deserts of living. Perhaps by staring at the sand as sand, words as words, we can come close to understanding how and to what extent the world that has been ground down and eroded can still find in sand a foundation and model.”

The Observer

The first part of this collection (which shares the title “Collection of Sand”) focuses on reflections based on visits to different exhibitions in Paris. The second deals with a variety of visual aspects of observation; the third with the fantastical and the imaginary. The fourth part contains reflections from his travels in three countries: Japan, Mexico, and Iran.

This is what Calvino himself had to say about his work, in an “anonymous” note he penned for the back cover of the first edition:

“From Paris Italo Calvino periodically sends an article on an unusual exhibition to the newspaper he collaborates with... This allows him to tell a story through a series of objects: ancient maps or globes, wax manikins, clay tablets with cuneiform writing, the popular press, traces of tribal cultures and so on.

Some traits of the author’s physiognomy come through in these ‘occasional’ pieces: an omnivorous, encyclopedic curiosity, and a desire to distance himself discreetly from any form of specialism... These pieces start from ‘things observed’ and open out to offer glimpses of other dimensions of the mind.”

All in all, the writings here are about “things observed” by an inexhaustibly curious onlooker.

In 1983, Calvino wrote Mr. Palomar, consisting of 27 fictional sketches or vignettes in which Mr. Palomar meditates deeply on questions of the cosmos, existence, and culture. He makes observations in search of meaning in things. Mr. Palomar does nothing but observe and live an intellectual life essentially in his head. In this collection, we see that Calvino is Mr. Palomar.

Knotty Communications

The book moves from collections to the visual aspects of observation, and here Calvino’s obsession with signs—semiotics—takes center stage. He writes beautifully about the symbolism behind knots, for instance.

“In New Caledonia messages of war and peace were transmitted by means of a rudimentary rope made from banyan bark knotted in various ways. […] A knot around a small firebrand - extinguished, but with traces of burning on it - was a declaration of war... […] The art of making knots, which is the peak of both mental abstraction and manual work, could be seen as the human characteristic par excellence, just as much and perhaps even more than language...”

Knotty communications? Or perhaps the rich language of knots.

The Emergence of Writing

He also writes about the other—perhaps the most important—form of semiotics: writing. This arrested my attention given my own interest in the topic. In an essay called “Before the Alphabet,” Calvino traces the emergence of writing to Lower Mesopotamia (Uruk, c. 3300 BC), the land of clay. He notes how the the material dictated the form: because curves didn’t hold well in clay, pictograms became stylized, triangular, and cuneiform.

“Writing first emerges in Lower Mesopotamia... This was the country of clay: administrative documents, bills of sale, religious texts or those glorifying kings were engraved with the triangular point of a reed or quill on clay tablets which were then dried in the sun or baked. […]

In general these signs had a triangular apex that then prolonged itself into a line forming a kind of nail shape, or forking into two lines like a wedge: this was cuneiform writing... writing that transmitted an impression of rapidity, movement, elegance and compositional regularity.”

He reasons about why this might have happened in Mesopotamia. Writing, unlike speech, is not natural. Most of the languages humans have spoken do not have writing systems. Perhaps it is external social, political, or cultural pressures that are responsible for writing being invented. For instance, in Lower Mesopotamia, the development of irrigation and agriculture resulted in a demographic explosion leading to a complex social hierarchy. Writing here began as a receipt; it was a technology born of the boring necessity of accounting.

As I read these passages, I started thinking about the emergence of writing. How did it emerge in Mesopotamia and not somewhere else? There were many intellectually advanced civilizations in the ancient world: the Greeks, the Harappans, and so forth. Why was there no writing among the Aryans despite the huge intellectual achievement of the Vedas? Perhaps their focus was not on the permanent record of clay, but on the eternal sound of Śruti—that which is heard and preserved through precise oral recitation.

And in general, why did certain technologies in the ancient world develop at certain specific places and not others? Sometimes even the spreading of those took time. The Greeks perhaps took up writing very soon and evolved their own system. Probably not others. I wondered how technology can be a function of the terrain, vegetation, and other geographical or ecological factors.

Also, weren’t societies like the Harappans fairly complex and well-organized, with a lot of long-distance trade relations? While the Harappan “script” is yet to be deciphered, there are arguments (like the controversial “Farmer-Sproat-Witzel” hypothesis) that suggest it might not even be a script. If those pictograms are merely isolated concepts—devoid of the grammatical glue of verbs and connectors—then they may not be a language at all. Even statistical analysis fails us here; unlike the trilingual Rosetta Stone that unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphs, we have found no such parallel corpus to crack the code of the Indus.

Why does certain technologies take root in certain terrains and not others? Calvino doesn’t answer this for us, but he provides the framework to ask the question: How much of our “intellectual” history is actually a history of our geography?

The Cost of Beauty

In the final sections, Calvino travels to Japan, Mexico, and Iran. In Japan, he is entranced by the gardens of Kyoto. He observes that everything seems spontaneous only because everything has been calculated.

“[…] There is one thing I seem to be starting to understand here in Kyoto... The construction of a nature that can be mastered by the mind so that the mind can in turn receive a sense of rhythm and proportion from nature...”

But Calvino refuses to let us simply admire the view, because there is a dark side to it, as there is always to what we call “high culture”. It is often built on top of the sacrifices of the poor and the downtrodden for the sake of the rich. There is an unseen or forgotten violence behind it. One of his students asks him, “Do you like all this? I cannot help thinking that this perfection and harmony cost so much misery to millions of people over the centuries.”

“But isn’t the cost of culture always this?” Calvino objects.

“Creating a space and time for reflection and imagination and study presupposes an accumulation of wealth, and behind every accumulation of wealth there are obscure lives subject to labour and sacrifices and oppression without any hope...”

This struck a chord with me. Whenever I visit historical monuments—be it the intricate carvings of Belur and Halebidu, the soaring heights of the Qutb Minar, or the marble perfection of the Taj Mahal—my admiration is always shadowed by this very thought. I wonder about the sacrifice of the countless lives that propped up these stones, spanning multiple generations. How many were struck down by the harsh sun? How many fell to their deaths from makeshift scaffolding? How many were crushed beneath the accidental slip of a massive slab?

I remember the first time this thought stopped me in my tracks. It was at the Kailasa temple in Ellora, carved out of a single rock face. Standing before that monolithic achievement, the sheer scale of the human toll felt heavy in the air. Since then, it is a thought that recurs wherever I go.

The essay ends with this haunting image:

“The group has reached a bed of smoothed, round stones... ‘These stones,’ the guide was explaining, ‘were brought here three centuries ago from every part of Japan. The Emperor rewarded whoever brought him a bag of stones with a bag of rice.’

The student shakes his head and looks bitter. We seem to see the queue of peasants conjured up by those words bent double under their bags of stones... Meanwhile the attendants busy themselves round the scales: on one dish there are the stones, on the other rice…”

Imagine the human cost of a bag of rice!

The Sword and the Leaves

Despite the weight of history, Calvino remains a master of lightness. In the essay “The Sword and the Leaves,” he recounts a Zen story that perfectly encapsulates his worldview.

“[…] the perfect Samurai must never concentrate his attention on his enemy’s blade, nor on his own, nor on striking his opponent, nor on defending himself, but must only annihilate his own ego; that it is not with the sword but with the non-sword that victory is won...

[…] Looking at the yellow leaves falling into the water, I remember a Zen story which only now do I think I understand.

The pupil of a great sword-maker claimed to have outdone his master. To prove how sharp his sword-blades were he immersed a sword in a stream. The dead leaves carried down by the current were neatly sliced in two as they went across the blade’s edge. The master plunged into the stream a sword that he had fashioned. The leaves flowed on, slipping right past the blade.”

Collection of Sand is a delightful, dizzying anthology. The best thing about Calvino is that he never truly stays on topic; he meanders. And it is in those meanderings—between the sand, the knots, the swords, and the leaves—that we find the joy of reading.

The first thing that strikes you is the rhythm. The text is constructed primarily of short, clipped sentences—often just three or four words—that flow with a relentless, staccato pace. The language is deceptively simple and sparse. Yet, as you are drawn in, you realize how dense the construction truly is; there is an immense amount of history and heartbreak compressed into so few pages.

The story is set in a German-speaking Romanian village under the totalitarian regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. During this period, the German-speaking minority—the “Swabians”—were systematically oppressed and subject to the profound ills of ethnic cleansing. Their livestock, crops, and properties were routinely confiscated by the militiamen of the communist state. The Romanians do not want the Swabians there, and in this environment, women are treated as little more than currency by both the militia and the church. The village is a portrait of depravity and disillusionment—a place where the failed promise of communism has been replaced by a desperate, shimmering illusion of liberty in the West. Everyone is waiting for the single instrument of their salvation: the passport.

To provide some historical context—the Banat Swabians were ethnic Germans who settled in the Banat region during the 18th century, maintaining a distinct linguistic and cultural identity for over two hundred years. Under the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu, they faced systematic oppression in an effort to homogenize the Romanian state. This created the desperate, corrupt environment captured in The Passport, where the West German government eventually began “buying” the freedom of these citizens through cash payments to the Romanian state.

The plot of The Passport itself is straightforward. Windisch is a miller waiting for passports for himself, his wife, and his daughter, Amalie. He has bribed the mayor with sacks of flour, but in a town fueled by corruption, flour is not enough. His wife knows it, and eventually, Windisch must confront the reality he has tried to ignore: that the priest and the militiamen require a more personal bribe from his daughter. She, ultimately, holds the key to their exit.

Müller’s approach to this seemingly simple story is anything but. She moves in elliptical arcs, blending stark reality with elements of magic realism and superstition. She uses a nonlinear structure to weave historical trauma into the present with such economy that the prose frequently ascends to poetry. The book is composed of short episodes with obscure, intriguing titles, each functioning like a poetic fragment that advances the plot ever so slightly.

Herta Müller herself was born into this very community in Nițchidorf, Romania, in 1953. As a Banat Swabian, she experienced firsthand the persecution she describes—her mother was deported to a Soviet labor camp, and Müller herself was later harassed and fired from her job for refusing to cooperate with the Securitate (the secret police). Her work is recognized for the ability to depict the “landscape of the dispossessed.”

While The Passport is undeniably a political novel, there is hardly a mention of overt politics or the mechanics of the regime. Instead, Müller uses imagery and a wry, dark sense of humour to communicate the absolute bleakness of the situation.

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Scientific theories are inherently falsifiable. That is to say, they are amenable to refutation. No amount of evidence confirming a scientific theory proves its validity; on the contrary, repeated and verified observations that don’t confirm the theory can take it back to the proverbial drawing board. Theories are not accepted because they are “True” in an absolute sense, but because the predictions they make haven’t been falsified thus far.

Scientists make specific predictions based on their theory, and in doing so, they provide the world with the exact tools needed to dismantle their work. They run the risk of losing face and intellectual credibility at any point. (On the other hand, the more specific and riskier the predictions, and the longer they remain unfalsified—the glory of unravelling something truly remarkable!)

Pseudoscience, on the other hand, seeks only confirming evidence. Think of stuff like astrology, certain conspiracy theories, or diatribes against modern medicine. They almost always sound plausible because they are designed to be “watertight.” However, proponents of these don’t provide anything falsifiable. There’s loads of contrary evidence, of course! But in the absence of well-defined falsifiability criteria, such evidence is simply “absorbed” or argued away:

“The data doesn’t show it because the liberal elites are suppressing the ‘real’ results,”

“the entire study regarding the efficacy of vaccines is a plant by Big Pharma to protect their profits,”

“Homeopathy works, but you don’t trust the results only because it’s not approved by the West,” and so forth.

Because these claims never specify what would count as a “failure,” they run no risk. They conveniently seize every feeble corroboration only to gloat. And, to be clear, the question here is not one of truth, but that of logic—indeed, liberal elites might have their political biases just as Big Pharma is primarily motivated by commercial gains. But those do not automatically validate these claims. They have to stand the test of falsifiability independently.

This is where the logic meets temperament. Falsifiability is, at its heart, an act of humility. To be scientific is to admit, “I could be wrong, and here is exactly how you can prove it.” It is full of doubt, caveats, and accountability. Does science—and more than science, the industry that is built on the foundation of science and technology—always show intellectual humility and accountability? Of course not. But that is at least part of its philosophy. While individual actors or corporations may fail, the scientific process—rooted in peer review and the constant threat of refutation—provides a level of scrutiny that pseudoscience avoids by design. Pseudoscience is defined by arrogance; it starts with the conclusion and works backward, ensuring it is never vulnerable to reality.

Beyond the realm of formal science, this “scientific temper” is a powerful tool for our civic and cultural discourse—whether on social media or in the real world. Logic ought to trump emotion, or at the very least, provide a necessary check on it. In policy-related discussions, we often see positions taken based on one’s political alignments rather than the substance of a proposal. A policy is labeled “pro-people” or “anti-people” based on who proposed it, rather than a rigorous analysis of its mechanics.

Similarly, in the debates around history and linguistics, we encounter claims of “primacy,” “antiquity,” or “superiority” of certain cultures or languages. Such claims frequently function as social paradigms—mental models so central to our identity that we would rather explain away a mountain of evidence than admit the model has entered a state of crisis. These claims are frequently patently unfalsifiable, if not already proven false by existing evidence.

Why do we gravitate toward these “watertight” claims in history or politics? Why do we often take a black-and-white position or remain obsessed with our antiquity and a purported “glory of the past”? It is often because they provide an identity-based safety net. Logic and scientific temper, on the other hand, are discomfiting; they induce doubt and offer no consolation or comfort.

In an echo chamber, you are embraced for toeing the group’s line and pounced upon if you find errors or even ask questions. On the other hand, in a critical peer review, you are rewarded for finding weak points, but also subject to criticism for illogical claims—however emotionally appealing they might sound.

There is a profound ethical dimension to this. Illogic not only leads to bad science; it can breed a society that is intellectually dishonest. That, in turn, hurts democracy and any hope for social justice. Language has a critical role to play here: if our language of discourse is designed to be unfalsifiable—playing on emotions and using loaded, ambiguous terms that lack clear definitions—the quality of our discourse suffers. When our engagement shrinks to fragments and social media polls, we lose the vocabulary of doubt that is essential for progress.

What’s the antidote? There are no silver bullets. But scientific temper is not a silo reserved for those who work in the field of science or technology; it must be a part of every discipline and every conversation. Understanding concepts like: thinking from first principles, falsifiability, statistical evidence, repeatability, cognitive biases, and logical fallacies aids all of us in this endeavour.

In an age where social media algorithms act as a “protective shield”, filtering out the "black swans" that might challenge our worldview, maintaining a scientific temper is a revolutionary act and an important contribution to society. It requires us to consciously break out of our inertia and seek evidence we have been conditioned to ignore. It moves us away from pre-packaged certainties and toward a more honest, accountable engagement with the world.

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I had written about it shortly after my first encounter with her masterpiece, The Door. Revisiting it today, I find that the questions it raised about trust, agency, and the “burden” of friendship feel more relevant than ever. It remains a story that haunts the periphery of my thoughts—a secret I feel compelled to share once again, with some minor editorial refinements.

There are novels with vast canvases, ambitious in scope and set against the backdrop of seismic historical events. There are others that are wildly imaginative, challenging our very conceptions of reality. But then there are those that affect us not through grand scale, but through the methodical sculpting of character. They shine a light—or rather, cause it to disperse—upon the commonplace, allowing us to see the world in numerous new, manifest colours. Magda Szabó’s 1987 novel, The Door (translated with precision by Len Rix), belongs firmly to this latter category.

The canvas here is decidedly intimate. Set in a quiet neighbourhood on the outskirts of Budapest, it chronicles the tectonic shifts in the relationship between two women: the narrator, a fictionalized version of Szabó herself, and her domestic help, Emerence. A third, silent witness to their lives is a dog named Viola; inadvertently, the animal’s fate becomes inextricably entangled with those of the two women.

From its brief, absorbing first chapter, the reader is drawn into a world that feels immediately intriguing, dark, and mysterious. With a pithy, peculiar laying out of the plot—one that hides far more than it reveals—one finds themselves in the midst of the story before they realize it has begun. What follows is essentially a confession: a narrative of betrayal. Well-intentioned, perhaps, but a betrayal nonetheless. The narrator, deeply religious and burdened by conscience, feels she must confess.

We meet the narrator at a professional crossroads. A writer living with her husband (also an author), her career is on the verge of a revival after a decade-long “political freeze”—a mirror to the real-world banning of Szabó’s books in Hungary. They require domestic help to reclaim their creative lives, and a friend recommends an older woman named Emerence.

Emerence, however, is not looking for a master. She possesses impeccable professional qualities, yet she is neither easily amused nor easily pleased. In a sharp reversal of power, it is Emerence who interviews and evaluates her potential employers. “I don’t wash just anyone’s dirty laundry,” she declares during their first meeting—notably held in her home. Eventually, she decides to take them in.

Emerence is a force of nature: old, strong-willed, fiercely private, and caustic beyond belief. She is the neighbourhood’s silent pivot, helping everyone and knowing everything, from local gossip to national shifts. Yet, she remains an enigma. The door to her house is barred; no one—not even her closest kin—is permitted to cross the threshold.

Over the course of twenty years, the relationship between the writer and Emerence evolves into a rollercoaster of mutual spite, long-held grudges, and closely guarded secrets. Yet, as trust is slowly bricked into place, they become as close as mother and daughter—an intimacy that is almost painful in its intensity. Their lives become intertwined in that way where love and hurt are no longer separable.

Szabó’s mastery of the novel form is most evident in how she simultaneously constructs and unravels her protagonist. As the pieces of Emerence’s past fall into place, the “door” begins to open in more than one sense. When the narrator finally learns what lies on the other side, the gesture of trust becomes a profound burden—a test of loyalty that eventually cracks under the strain.

The novel poses questions with no satisfactory answers. What is the “right” thing to do when faced with a moral dilemma? Is friendship an act of unwavering loyalty regardless of consequence, or does it take a looser, more convenient, conscientious form? To what extent should we be allowed the agency to lead our lives—and face our ends—in our own chosen manner?

I discovered Magda Szabó only recently while researching Central European literature. Born in 1917, she was a versatile talent—a novelist, poet, and dramatist—and is now recognized as one of Hungary’s foremost and most translated writers. Having lived through the tumultuous shifts of the 20th century, her work often reflects the intricate layers of human relationships and the weight of historical memory. While much of her extensive bibliography remains untranslated into English, The Door serves as a staggering introduction to her mastery. This is due in no small part to the work of Len Rix, whose award-winning translation captures the rhythmic precision and unsettling atmosphere of Szabó’s original prose. Rix’s ability to render the caustic, enigmatic voice of Emerence ensures that the power of this story remains undiluted for readers who read the work in English.

The novel traces the lives of two sisters in Seoul. In Hye, the elder, is a pragmatist—an entrepreneur running her own cosmetic store, married to a self-absorbed artist, and raising a three-year-old son. The younger sister, Yeong Hye, is a freelance graphic designer married to a man who describes himself as a “corporate slave.”

What is most striking initially is the sheer ordinariness of the premise. We see an unremarkable corporate employee married to a self-employed woman, both from ordinary families living ordinary lives. It is a portrait of a family defined by its commonality.

But the narrative fractures when Yeong Hye has a dream. It is a dream that compels her to turn vegetarian—an act of non-conformity that slowly transforms their domestic life into a living nightmare. What begins as a seemingly isolated incident spurred by a dream reveals a deeper, darker background that unfurls with haunting precision.

The story is told through three distinct voices, none of which belong to our protagonist. The first narration comes from her husband, Mr. Cheong, a man content to be married to a “disinterested” woman so long as she keeps his home running and provides adequate company in bed. Her strange habits do not disturb him until the day she stops storing meat in the house. This “behavioural kink” soon escalates into a series of disruptions that unravel his orderly life.

The second voice belongs to In Hye’s husband, a mediocre artist chasing an elusive masterpiece. His quest for “genius” becomes hopelessly entangled with his own sensuous and erotic desires. His fixation leads him into a troubling entanglement with Yeong Hye, who is by then descending into what the world labels mental instability.

The third voice is that of In Hye herself. As an elder daughter, wife, and mother in a South Korean family, she carries the collective burden and guilt of her household. Despite her success as a businesswoman, In Hye is tethered to her roles—until circumstances force a choice. Ultimately, she chooses to be a sister above all else.

Through these three lenses, the reader walks alongside Yeong Hye, witnessing her pain, her confusion, and her resolute, non-conformist silence. Han Kang’s writing is physically gut-wrenching, exploring themes of childhood trauma, the weight of a patriarchal society, and the boundaries of mental health. In under 200 pages, she avoids detailed ramblings, instead leaving a vast, evocative space for the reader to inhabit.

Mental Health Alert: The Vegetarian is an extremely disturbing read. I would suggest holding off if you are already feeling low or emotionally unsettled.

About the Contributor

Anupa is an educator and an avid reader who brings unique insight to her explorations of the written word. With an eclectic taste in books that ranges from the classic to the contemporary, she believes that literature serves as a vital mirror for our internal worlds. Through her contributions to ruminata, Anupa seeks to understand the architecture of hope and the complexities of the human condition.

The book is structured in two (or three) distinct parts. The first is a memoir in which Frankl recounts his experiences as an inmate in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. While he describes the harrowing conditions of camp life in clinical detail, he does so with a profound sense of objectivity and dignity. He intersperses the narrative with observations on the prisoner’s psyche and the various psychological phases they endure. It is a powerful testament to the human capacity to find meaning and purpose under even the most extreme circumstances.

The latter part of the book focuses on logotherapy as a clinical approach (derived from the Greek logos, or “meaning”). This is a forward-looking therapeutic framework centered on the human search for purpose. This stands in stark contrast to his predecessors:

• Where Freud saw a “will to pleasure,”

• And Adler saw a “will to power,”

• Frankl identified the “will to meaning” as the primary human drive.

For instance, a classical Freudian approach often focuses on reconciling past conflicts or childhood traumas. Frankl, however, suggests that internal turmoil and tension are not necessarily symptoms of neurosis; they are often the natural byproduct of a thinking person striving for a reason to live.

In fact, Frankl welcomes conflict and frustration as potential signs of mental health. He even urges us to derive meaning from suffering—provided, of course, that the suffering is unavoidable. Drawing from both his survival and decades of clinical practice, Frankl argues that happiness and pleasure are not worthwhile ends in themselves. As he famously puts it, “happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” In Frankl’s view, happiness is an emergent property—a byproduct of a life lived with purpose rather than a target to be chased.

Man’s Search for Meaning is a profound work that offers a vital lens through which to view our own lives. In an age often distracted by the pursuit of happiness, Frankl’s work remains an essential text for understanding the enduring power of purpose.

In the novel 'On the Banks of the Pampa', celebrated Telugu writer Volga (P. Lalita Kumari) makes us confront this timeless violence of the state through the reimagining of Sabari’s story and her encounter with Rama. She discusses the problems of modern notions of development and the displacement of Adivasis and forest dwellers by retelling an ancient tale from a leftist feminist perspective. Through the course of the narrative, she also challenges our anthropocentric worldview and presents a broader, more inclusive ecocentric worldview.

That Volga chooses to tell her story in an unadorned, straightforward manner reminiscent of the pre-modernist period is interesting and courageous. Perhaps it hints at a writer who feels secure, one who is confident in her craft. How well her conviction and vision have blended with the form and content of her novel is a question worth pondering. I found the narrative a tad simplistic, one-dimensional, and not very convincing. However, this is not the space for a detailed review of the novel.

Whatever the strengths or shortcomings of the novel, the translator Purnima Tammireddy has done a commendable job. She has ably translated the novel from Telugu to English. It flows quite naturally in English while retaining the essence of the original.

At the end of the book, a conversation between Volga and Purnima is included, and it is worth reading. It helps the uninitiated -- such as yours truly -- to get a glimpse into Volga's politics and writing. It is also instructive, offering insight into both Volga and Purnima's approach to creative writing, translation, and their interplay. Volga's creative vision shines through more clearly in this conversation — even more than in the novel itself.

This is Arundhati Roy’s most intimate memoir, written in the wake of her mother’s passing. Mary Roy—an eminent educationist and a forceful advocate for women’s rights—emerges as a woman of extremes. She is a complex and forceful presence throughout. As you turn the pages, it’s hard not to be struck by her many contradictions: you see her as a mad genius: sharply intelligent, determined, and enterprising, yet also capable of astonishing cruelty. She could be painstakingly meticulous yet impulsive, generous to a fault to strangers but cruel to her own children. To the young students of her school, she was a nurturing figure, Mother Mary herself; to her own family, she could be almost the opposite. It sometimes feels as though, in order for her life’s mission to succeed, her children had to carry the burden of her failures and follies.

One of the recurring realities of this memoir is Mary Roy’s severe asthma. It wasn’t just a background illness—it was tied up with the emotional climate at home. If she became angry with her children, or felt they had crossed a line, her asthma could flare up. This naturally left her children anxious and careful, always alert and suppressing themselves to avoid triggering an attack. It is as if her asthma not only suffocated her, but also stifled them, holding everyone in its grip.

For readers who know The God of Small Things, the echoes here are unmistakable. Familiar characters, narrative loops, and thematic arcs resurface and overlap, demonstrating how Roy’s fiction is intricately entwined with her lived experience.

Roy also charts her own course: a journey from remote Assam, to Ooty and Ayenmenem, and finally running away from home to Delhi, where she gradually comes into her own. Along the way are the struggles of leaving home, life as a lone woman in a big city, and the financial challenges she faces—and, just as importantly, the privileges: a strong education (thanks to Mrs. Roy!), a network of talented friends, and a certain kind of access that helped her along.

While Mary Roy is the heart of the memoir, the book ultimately traces Arundhati Roy’s own path: her childhood in Assam and Ooty, her coming-of-age in Ayenmenem and Delhi, and her later forays into architecture, film writing, and acting—right up to the breakthrough moment with The God of Small Things. And what a breakthrough that proved to be!

Woven through it all are candid glimpses of Roy’s activist life—her critiques of popular culture, her engagement with various movements, and her willingness to stand apart even at personal cost. The memoir goes beyond broad references and recounts concrete moments—she calls out the filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (director of Bandit Queen, though never named directly in the book) with her critique, “The Great Indian Rape Trick.” She narrates her journey as a co-traveller in the Naxalite movement and her involvement with the Narmada Bachao Andolan, giving spirited accounts of participating in struggles around land, justice, and rights. These stories, vivid and specific, show her fighting spirit and willingness to confront power and take unpopular public stands.

As a reading experience, it’s brisk and engaging. Roy’s prose, as always, is exquisite; and the emotions come across as raw and honest. Yet, for all its elegance, the memoir sometimes feels a shade less intense than expected; for all its honesty, there remains something just out of reach, leaving an aftertaste of underwhelm that is difficult to name.

Picture a conversation about politics at home or among friends. What begins casually heats up fast. The situation pressures you to take a clear for-or-against position on some issue or policy; and on that basis, you’re instantly classified—as a supporter or opponent of Modi or Siddaramaiah (or Rahul Gandhi). The debate curdles into a quarrel.

That moment captures a snapshot of a larger malaise pervading our society. Our compulsion to oversimplify—to see only two opposing choices in everything—reveals a flaw in our reasoning. By ignoring complexity and papering over nuance, this habit blocks a fuller understanding and dictates how we respond to, and engage with, out immediate political, cultural, social, and even global conflicts.

Consider the farmers’ protests of 2020–21. What unfolded was not merely a policy dispute but a profound illustration of a societal schism. The establishment, with help from supporters and media, framed the movement as an illegitimate insurgency, branding farmers “Khalistanis” or “andolan-jivis” (professional agitators). The narrative hardened into patriots versus traitors. In response, protesters cast it as a grassroots struggle against corporate overreach. It became a collision of two irreconcilable worlds, with no space for accommodation. The eventual repeal was not a dialogue-driven consensus but a strategic political retreat, highlighting a failure of the argumentative process.

This is a local face of a global phenomenon. We are trapped in an argumentation crisis. This is not a mere decline in civility but a systemic consequence of a deeply rooted human cognitive preference for binaries. This innate tendency is now dangerously supercharged by political ideologies and social technologies.

There is no logical or ideological inconsistency in condemning the barbaric killings in Pahalgam as acts of Islamic terrorism while simultaneously condemning the regime’s warmongering that exploits such atrocities. One can recognize that war can sometimes become unavoidable and still worry about it and oppose it. It is possible to raise one’s voice against both Israel’s Zionist government and Hamas, while maintaining real empathy for ordinary people on both sides. Our “progressive” credentials are not diminished if we share Palestinian poems alongside the stories of Israelis dragged into a war they did not want, or if we condemn the oppression faced by countless women like Ahu Daryaei in Iran.

And yet, we pick a side and cling to it. We posture to impress our peers, to avoid their ire.

This tendency to force everything into our preferred ideological frames and binary-based thinking is growing in our discussions on society, economics, culture, and literature. For example: individual vs community, Dalit vs Savarna, oppressed vs oppressor, capitalism vs socialism. These lenses aren’t wrong; in many contexts, they are right and necessary. They’re just not sufficient. They can’t explain or resolve everything.

Look at food debates—the vegetarian vs. meat eater (popularly known as, “non-vegetarian”) squabbles. Or education—where a shallow understanding of “medium of instruction” keeps the Kannada vs English false dichotomy alive even today. It is not unnatural to support a right to food and simultaneously worry about the ecological impact of rising meat consumption; or to fight for equality and social justice while remaining open to the benefits of globalization and free markets. It is the mark of an educated mind, as the saying goes, to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. We can hold apparently conflicting ideas in view and reconcile them. Seduced by simplistic narratives, we seem to be losing that ability.

This problem isn’t new. Gustave Le Bon, a French physician and polymath, understood this long before many others. His book, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, was a foundational work in social psychology, first published in 1895. Perhaps what he observed during the French Revolution—and the ‘Reign of Terror’ that led to the republic’s collapse and the rise of Napoleon—helped him crystallize his theory.

The essence of his work is captured in the line: “Alone, we think. In a crowd, we react.”

In a mob, he argued, individuality dissolves and reason yields to emotion. People are swept up by a collective mind—easily led, impulsive, and prone to extremes. Our primal nature takes over. We lose restraint, because responsibility now belongs not to any individual, but to the mob. A hypnotic frenzy spreads like a contagion. A “crowd” need not even share a physical space; we see lynch mobs and troll armies on social media all the time. (To be clear, the consequences are not always destructive; crowds can be mobilized for positive, heroic outcomes, though that is harder).

In any era, those who grasp a subject comprehensively and think deeply are few. But unlike in the past, information has become radically accessible in the last two decades. It is true that the internet and social networks are part of a global democratization process. It is just as true that they are part of a systematic weaponization process. (Whether platforms controlled by a few giant corporations are truly “democratic” is another question entirely).

In an age where algorithms select fragments of information—many of them half-baked and bias-confirming—to build us comfortable echo chambers; when a complex problem becomes fodder for a social media poll; when “activism” shrinks to endorsing and sharing online petitions; when an entire field of study can be distilled into a few ‘Shorts’—what we face is not just a political or cultural crisis. This is a generational epistemic crisis. We must ask the fundamental questions: Do we truly know what we claim to know? What is the source of that knowledge? By what methods did we acquire it?

To identify and correct the flaws in our thinking, we need to use the first principles, concepts, and tools from various fields like psychology, logic, economics, and game theory. They provide many useful mental models.

As mentioned, the symptom of binary classification that has now worsened is also a primitive survival strategy evolved for survival. When faced with a complex problem or danger, the brain evolved shortcuts and simple heuristics to process available information and make quick decisions. While these work effectively in many situations, in others they lead to our logical fallacies and prejudices, unconsciously shaping a black-and-white worldview.

Various cognitive biases work together to strengthen this kind of thinking.

• One is confirmation bias: the tendency to search for, select, and remember only that information, argument, or data that strengthens our existing beliefs, while ignoring what contradicts them.

• Another is negativity bias: giving far more weight to bad or unpleasant experiences than to good ones.

• A third is the availability heuristic: making universal judgments based on events that easily come to mind (often linked to recency bias). For example, one recent incident of an assault on a migrant (or an act of oppression by a migrant) can instantly overshadow countless instances of long-term, peaceful coexistence.

• Another such bias is the anchoring effect: an excessive reliance on the first piece of information offered (for example, the first set of leaked reports about the caste census) when making decisions.

There are dozens more such biases. Understanding them helps us identify the problems in our own thinking.

f cognitive biases and prejudices shape the structure of our limited thinking, Game Theory provides the terminology for it. Concepts like “zero-sum thinking,” “groupthink,” and “preference falsification” show how individual prejudices can aggregate to create collective paralysis.

A zero-sum game is a mathematical model of a situation (which could be a social relationship or an economic transaction) where the total sum of gains and losses of the participants remains zero. In such a case, one person’s gain comes at an equal loss for another. While this fits some situations, the real danger arises when this principle is unconsciously applied to most real-world problems. In most contexts, zero-sum thinking is a myth: a false perception that conflict is inherent in social relations and that one party’s victory is only possible through another’s defeat. This is deeply rooted in us.

This mindset denies the possibility of positive-sum outcomes—where greater value can be created for everyone when more people get opportunities. Instead of a mindset of cooperation and collaboration, it spreads bitterness, leading to unnecessary conflicts. This is glaringly visible in the debate on reservations. Even when there is strong evidence for the argument that true progress is possible only by including all sections of society and that this benefits everyone, the benefits received by lower classes are portrayed as opportunities directly snatched from the upper classes. We must instead realize that when more and more historically disadvantaged people get opportunities, it is possible, over time, to create more value for everyone. We must believe this can create a virtuous cycle. Along with this, we must also continue to think about how to increase the total quantum of opportunities, not just argue over dividing the current ones. Otherwise, we will only end up drowning in the for-and-against debate.

There is a direct and strong link between the socio-psychological concept of groupthink and zero-sum thinking. When a group’s desire for internal harmony and conformity becomes extreme, it begins to reject obvious truths and wisdom, becoming irrational and inert. When the world is perceived as a “us” vs “them” zero-sum war, group unity becomes the highest priority. There is no room for logic or factual assessment. The group turns inward, obsessed with its own purity and incapable of tolerating any dissent. This is accompanied by the demonization of opponents. Individuals belonging to the group will not express their doubts publicly, to avoid being “canceled” or ostracized.

The Turkish-American economist Timur Kuran, in a 1987 paper, put forward the concept of preference falsification. This refers to an individual hiding their true likes, dislikes, and opinions due to group or social pressure; or, performing a manufactured preference that is favorable to the group. For example, individuals who might privately hold a nuanced opinion—such as believing that the majority of Muslims in India are, like themselves, ordinary people with common aspirations who just want to live in peace—may suddenly sound like extremists on platforms like Twitter. Similarly, those who oppose a government policy stay silent, fearing the “anti-national” label. This silence of the majority, in turn, deepens political polarization.

Amartya Sen’s important work, The Argumentative Indian, begins with a reference to Krishna engaging in a detailed and lengthy philosophical discussion in the Bhagavad Gita. He then examines the questions raised by Gargi and Maitreyi and discusses the heterodoxy that has been embedded as a value in Indian civilizations since ancient times.

Even if dissent, pluralism, and heresy existed in our heritage, the reality is that they have been under assault for the last few decades. Not just dialogue, but the very possibility of it is diminishing, and we have become a “tongue-tied nation” (“ಮಾತು ಸೋತ ಭಾರತ”). Simplified perceptions and the zero-sum contest of easy binaries have taken hold.

To this, we must add a crucial counter-point. As Dr. B.R. Ambedkar argued, this celebrated “argumentative” tradition often co-existed with the oppressive hierarchy of caste—a rigid binary of “graded inequality”. The high-minded debate was largely the domain of a privileged elite, while the vast majority were systematically denied the right to even be heard.

This reframes our modern crisis completely. The challenge is not simply to revive Sen’s argumentative ideal, but to truly realize it for the first time by infusing it with Ambedkar’s non-negotiable demand for structural equality. The goal, then, is to build a genuinely pluralistic and inclusive public square, one that honors the supposed civilizational values that both Sen and Ambedkar, in their different ways, championed.

To overcome our “tongue-tied” state and achieve this requires a two-fold path:

1. Individual Cognitive Labor: We must actively resist our mental shortcuts, slow down, and seek out the dissenting perspectives we have been conditioned to ignore.

2. Collective and Institutional Change: We must demand and build a public square—from our social media algorithms to our public institutions—that rewards nuance and protects inclusivity, rather than profiting from outrage.

The goal is not to end disagreement, but to elevate its quality by ensuring its inclusivity—to dismantle the false binaries and finally build a public square where the complex, truthful spectrum of all voices can be heard.

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If a book on the history of the islands were to be written, to paraphrase Pankaj Sekhsaria from memory, the entire history of British colonization would merit a page, while India’s administration would get a single paragraph. India, itself a victim of colonization, suffers from a cognitive dissonance—a denial of sorts—in not acknowledging its own role as a colonizer.

The post-independence era saw a period of fast-track colonization orchestrated by the Indian state. It all began with the plan of peopling the islands in the 1960s. Official government documents from the 1960s, as Sekhsaria points out, explicitly called them ‘Colonisation Schemes’. Indian colonization of the islands was a continuation of the cold chain as it were. It is hard to imagine the islands being part of Indian dominion had British not colonized it first. It was a gift from them in that sense. To encourage settlement, families from the mainland were offered a package that typically included 5 acres of paddy land, 5 acres of hilly land for cultivation, and a loan to procure cattle, in addition to the rights to timber for constructing a house.

This process continues today through the act of renaming. Today Port Blair is Sri Vijaya Puram. Havelock Island is now officially Swaraj Dweep, Neil Island is Shaheed Dweep, and so on. We must, of course, erase relics of our colonial past. Mustn’t we? But what about our colonial present? Do we, for instance, stop to think what the original inhabitants think of these strange names? Did they, by chance, have their own names for these islands?

Of course, they did. Havelock Island, for instance, was Thi-tar-siro, ‘the land near the open sea’. Port Blair is Lao-tara Nyo to the Great Andamanese, which translates to the ‘house of evils or foreigners’. Just as well.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been home to some of the first migrants out of Africa. These communities have a long history of living in isolation. In the 19th century, there were about 5,000 indigenous people—the Onge, Great Andamanese, Sentinelese, Jarawa, Nicobarese, and Shompen. Today, their numbers have dwindled to under 500, with some groups, like several of the Great Andamanese tribes, having vanished completely, and their languages, like Pujjukar, becoming extinct. Once spread throughout the archipelago, they are now restricted to a few reservations while mainland settlers occupy the rest of their homelands.

The story of tribal communities is the same the world over, whether in South America, Central India, or the Andamans. Contact with the ‘civilized’ world brings an onslaught of infectious diseases; poachers and illegal mafias introduce alcohol and tobacco, leading to addiction and sexual exploitation. Then the state enters the picture—seemingly to help—and introduces another form of dependency by providing rations and supplies. Yes, there is access to healthcare, but one wonders if that need was created in the first place by the forced contact imposed on them.

The Great Andaman Trunk Road, cutting through the Jarawa Tribal Reserve, is a testament to this imposition. It connects Port Blair with northern towns like Baratang, Mayabunder, and Diglipur. This road was constructed despite numerous protests from activist organizations and resistance from the Jarawa themselves. Despite multiple orders from the Supreme Court to limit or close the road, it continues to be operational. The construction of roads and bridges continues unabated.

The name ‘Jarawa’ is an interesting one. It’s not a word in the language spoken by the people we call Jarawa. In fact, it’s a word in the language of the Great Andamanese, a neighbouring group, that meant ‘stranger’ or ‘the other’. What do the ‘Jarawa’ call themselves? Or do they? There’s a word in their language—Aong—which connotes ‘we’ or ‘us’ or ‘our people’. Now, is that a word used as an identity for the tribe, or is it just that, a word? I ask because, do you really need to identify and differentiate yourself when you are living by yourself? Isn’t identity more often than not a manifestation of external forces? Doesn’t it get asserted under conflict?

But I digress.

We were told that the travel through the Jarawa reserve (yes, I am a hypocrite, no question) is a great experience—you will travel through dense and beautiful rainforests. We were also told that the vehicles move in a convoy and are not allowed to stop; if we happen to come across the Jarawa people, we just move on, or else they might shoot us with arrows—absolutely no contact.

I asked our driver as we were entering the reserve if we might see the Jarawa. (Yes, I did want to see what our earliest ancestors, the first humans of India still extant, might have looked like. I’m sorry.) “If you are lucky,” he remarked coolly. Well, yes. Recent estimates say they are all of 400-odd individuals. Could we really ‘spot’ them in these thick rainforests? As it turned out, by the end of our round trip, we had seen the whole range—so much so that I remarked, ‘Looks like we have met most of the clan.’ I was trying to make a joke of it, but I felt a strange sensation of guilt and shame. A sadness. What have we done here? Until a few decades ago, the Jarawa did fiercely resist intrusion. But since the late ‘90s, they have—especially the younger generation—been coming out. Today, they come to the road, wait there, and can be seen asking for food. Biscuit packets get thrown at kids who scramble for them and jump with joy.

This stands in stark contrast to their profound indigenous knowledge. As described in Sekhsaria’s book, the Onge have a method of extracting honey from the hives of the giant rock bee. To ward off the bees, they don’t use fire or smoke but simply chew the leaves of a specific plant, tonjoghe, and smear the greenish pulp over their bodies. This repels the bees without harming them, allowing for a sustainable harvest. And famously, no one from these tribes died when the 2004 Tsunami hit; their acute environmental awareness and traditional warnings passed down through generations helped them move inland and to higher ground. What have we done to people who possess this kind of ecological wisdom?

Travelling, apart from being an enjoyable and relaxing experience, widens your horizons and gives you a better understanding of the world; but it also often leaves you with an acute sense of guilt. I suddenly remembered a brief note I had written a few years ago during a trip to Meghalaya. I remembered it as we were travelling on the bumpy and often non-existent road towards Diglipur. The feeling was familiar.

“Selfie Danger Zone and Landslide Ahead”

As we move gently along the curving roads carved on the East Khasi hills en route to Mawlynnong, there’s fog everywhere, slowing us down further. The fog set in quite early yesterday, much before sunset, as we headed out of Sohra (Cherrapunji). It’s a heavenly sight all around, with boundless valleys and streams flowing every which way one looks. From time to time, at a location where you get a panoramic, unobstructed view of the valley, one finds signage that says, “Selfie Danger Zone”. Pretty soon you start seeing the ugly profile of mined hills and mining trucks everywhere. Signage warning of potential “Landslide Ahead” follows soon after. Gorgeous valleys on one side with their selfie danger zones; butchered hills on the other with their landslide alerts.

I’m looking out the window of my cab trying to process all this. At first, man discovers these bounties of nature and settles down. Eventually, he invents something called tourism that helps people from distant lands partake in this joyous experience. People start flocking, needing more and bigger roads, homestays, resorts, restaurants, plastic, more everything—including more landslides. In a parallel thread, man invents photography, invents social media, puts tiny yet highly powerful cameras inside smartphones. Someone discovers the idea of a “selfie”. It spreads like a virus, eventually leading to selfie danger zones.

I know I’m rambling as I’m still trying to process all this. Selfies, social networks, tourism, landslides, plastic, and a myriad of other things are inexorably intertwined in my mind. I’m struggling to disentangle them so I can get some clarity. To see through the fog, as it were.

And the irony of I, a tourist, making these observations is not lost on me.

That same paradox was playing out on this Andaman road. The same dumper trucks, concrete mixers; dug up hills, reinforcement bars sticking out like sore thumbs. A thumbs up to development.

The government of India wants to increase tourism here tenfold. One can only imagine the consequences. What might that mean for the ecology of the place? What would that mean for the tribal communities?

Pankaj Sekhsaria has been fighting for the cause of the islands. He has been documenting this for decades, his writing often carrying the exhaustion of fighting a losing battle. You can sense a feeling of one step forward, two steps back in many of his essays.

As I read his book intermittently during my travel, I couldn’t help but think: had I read this before I embarked on that long journey on the Great Andaman Trunk Road, would I still have done it? I’m not completely sure. But that’s no longer the most important question.

Islands in Flux is a niche book. It’s extremely unlikely that I would have come across it or read it had I not travelled to the Andamans. But I’m glad I did. It’s an eye-opener. Not only in regard to these islands but in general to the destruction we are causing in the name of development and tourism.

The irony, I realize now, is not just that I was a tourist observing a tragedy; it’s that by participating, I was a part of it. Reading the book didn’t provide a solution, but it clarified the problem. It turns the question from a simple ‘Would I still have gone?’ to the far more unsettling ‘Now that I know, how do I carry this knowledge?’

However, if one really wants to understand Kafka the person, one should look at his short pieces. It’s these small fragmented thoughts — tiny pieces of wisdom — unfiltered lines resembling diary entries — outlines of half formed ideas — that often reveal a lot more about a person than a polished long form piece. In Kafka, you can see this mind that is constantly thinking, constantly observing, being sensitive to everything. We often talk about Kafka as being this dark and gloomy person. We talk incessantly of his anxiety and alienation. But in reality he was full of life. (At least, that’s the impression I get.) Any thoughtful person has dark and gloomy thoughts. We all feel anxious. We’re all alienated in some sense. Most people cope with it as a matter of course. The more sensitive and creative ones try to find an expression for it. Some choose to express them with colours, some with abstract poetry, realistic prose, some with fantasy, some with imagery, and so forth. The genius of Kafka found his own unique language and grammar to express the absurdity of life that a lot of people acutely perceive.

When you read his shorter pieces, you see his day to day struggles — just like ours — to fit in, to find a place. But he’s not given up. He’s not morose. He’s trying to figure it out. He’s this philosopher who hangs out with clamorous children curious to understand just the smallest detail. He totters like all of us as if under the influence of a clumsy whip. And yet he goes on out whenever he sees a boy with a spinning top.

That’s a celebration of life according to me. Kafka was full of joy and humour. There’s a lot more to the term “kafkaesque” than what’s purported.

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“Come Back Home”

Make your feet come back the way they went,

make your legs come back the way they went,

plant your feet and your legs below,

in the village which belongs to us.

In the first half of the 18th century, European colonizers noticed that each tribe of Sub-Saharan Africa had worked out long distance communication a long time ago and used it effectively. On the other hand, in Europe, they were still figuring out reliable long-distance communication that works faster than any traveler on foot or horseback. They had tried flags, horns, intermittent smoke signals, flashing mirrors even!

How did they do it? The “primitives” of sub-Saharan Africa had figured it all out! They communicated not just simple transactional messages, but jokes, stories, and poetry. How did they make speech and communication work?

Language is an interesting and a formidable beast. Tribes in Africa had tamed it to suit their purposes. Of course, Europeans did come up with Morse Code soon. But Morse Code is not language, it’s code. (Well, duh!) Codes are efficient, whereas languages are not. Languages are full of redundancies.

Claude Shannon was the first to think mathematically about this, which led to its formalization as Information Theory. This is how he opens his seminal paper of 1948 “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”

“The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning.”

For some reason I’ve always found the above profound and amusing in equal measure — especially the last sentence.

There have been numerous advances in information theory, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) since then.

In the third talk of the Representations series, Language Models or “Oh fork you, autocorrect!” I’ll discuss Language models (LMs). LMs capture the statistical nature that’s inherent to languages. What’s really cool about LMs is that they can be trained in an unsupervised manner. And yet they are the staple for almost any NLP task starting from something as basic as spell checkers to the holy grail of machine translation.

Language Models aren’t a new tool. But their importance has grown with time. In fact, some of the research work in the last few years has been so pivotal, there are claims that the “ImageNet moment for NLP has arrived” (I’ll explain what this means and its importance during the talk.)

I’ll have more to say about LMs later. But let’s start with the basics. Let’s start by discussing a basic type of LMs called n-gram language models, and work through building a simple spell corrector.

If this sounds interesting to you, feel free to attend my talk tomorrow. Check the event details and indicate your interest here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/talkseries-representations-lang6760975829481746432/

It is said that a reader lives a thousand lives. Storytellers too perhaps live on, if they are lucky, in a thousand rich and varied stories created for themselves by their readers.

Indeed, in “Invisible Cities” Calvino’s Marco Polo says, “It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.”

That is to say, a storyteller can only tell a story using words that they have managed to put together, whereas it is the listener really (or the reader) who brings it to life in their mind. That is when a story is created. Numerous stories indeed because each reader creates their own story.

What if the telling and the listening are removed out of the equation? What if there is neither voice nor ear to command a story as it were? Where then does a story reside?

That is exactly the situation we are thrown into in “The Castle of Crossed Destinies”. A bunch of travellers arrive at an ancient castle (or is it a tavern?) through their own distinct untold paths. Once they are there, they realize they have lost the power of speech! Each one is gasping to tell their stories to others, but they can’t. That is until they find an old deck of tarot cards. They seize the opportunity to use the rich imagery of the tarot cards to tell their stories. Constrained within the universe of a deck of tarot cards, how well are they able to construct their stories for their listeners (well, watchers)? To what extent is the audience following the story being told visually, and to what extent are they trying to relive their own experiences? As each one starts telling their stories by adding more cards or replacing them, they all find themselves intertwined in a complex tapestry of images.

Calvino’s experiments with form are truly unparalleled (at least on the basis of my admittedly limited reading). This book has actual images of tarot cards next to the stories. So, as a reader you too can construct your own story if you will! Conceptually this is as fascinating as it can get. However, I was left a bit underwhelmed by the execution. I’m used to reading beautiful passages in his works woven effortlessly. (Lightness and precision are among the qualities he not only highly values in his writing, but practices almost immaculately in most of his own writings.) In this book though I struggled a fair amount as a reader. Perhaps it’s because the writer himself went through a struggle? Calvino has written a detailed note at the end of the book about how this idea caught hold of him, how he started with the tarot cards first and then tried to construct stories around them. He used templates from well known legends and folk tales, as well as created new stories of his own. He apparently obsessed over each one for weeks and months.

While I wouldn’t consider this among the best of Calvino’s works, I can’t help but continue to be amazed by the range of this prolific writer.

A scientist makes specific predictions based on their theory, and constantly runs the risk of someone refuting it at any point in time in the future. If that happens during their lifetime, it could (potentially) result in loss of credibility, reputation, and even their career. On the other hand, the more specific and riskier the predictions, and the longer they remains unfalsified, they can bask in the glory of unravelling something truly remarkable!

Pseudoscience on the other hand seeks only confirming evidence. Think of stuff like astrology, some forms of psychoanalyses, or — and this happens a great deal these days — diatribes against modern medicine presented as theories. They almost always sound plausible, and you can find some form of evidence that confirm these claims, regardless of how absurd they might be. The trouble however is, the proponents of these don’t provide anything falsifiable. Any reasonable person with some common sense can provide loads of contrary evidence to refute their claims of course. But in the absence of well defined falsifiability criteria, such evidence can be argued away. So much so that any reasonable person who indulges them gets exhausted and gives up.

In fact, that is the most important ploy used by the champions of pseudoscience: “All this mumbo jumbo about the theory of evolution is fine, but who placed the fossils there in the first place? Have you actually seen a primate turn into a man?” or “Just because you haven’t seen a ghost doesn’t mean they’re not there. Do you see air? How many atoms have you seen?” and so on. Their argumentation is full of non sequiturs and when they can’t make a logical point any longer, they indulge in ad hominem: “But the funding for this research came from a pharma company! How can you trust these results?” They confuse coincidence or even correlation with causation: “A dozen children have died after they were administered a certain vaccine.” And they conveniently leave out the strong evidence about tens of millions of lives saved because of vaccines.

Pseudoscientists hardly make any specific predictions the refutation of which will invalidate their claims. They run no risk of losing face. Instead they conveniently seize every feeble corroboration only to gloat, while at the same time accusing science of being arrogant. On the contrary, science has intellectual humility; it’s full of doubt, places enough caveats when making a claim — even a tiny one. Science is accountable, willing to accept a mistake and change. Pseudoscience is arrogant, is almost always certain, and has zero accountability.

This was a year you will never forget no matter at what stage of life or career you are in or which part of the world you call your home. It has affected you whether you dwell in a large metropolis, a small town, or a scenic village. It did not affect everyone uniformly of course. A lot of us not only became more acutely aware of our own privilege, but understood at a deeper level than before how something like a pandemic can impact the less privileged disproportionately. This has hopefully made us more empathetic than before.

We are at a stage now where we have a much better understanding of the virus. We also are better prepared to face such situations in the future, which by the way are inevitable. The virus acted as a “forcing function” to bring about some positive changes such as a better implementation of personal hygiene and appreciation of personal space. Reduced human activity meant lesser emission of greenhouse gases. (But on the flip side usage of water shot up and there’s lot more medical waste.)

Vaccines are not a matter of speculation any longer. It is a matter of time before all of us are going to be vaccinated. As an aside, I must however admit my discomfort with some of the euphoric proclamations. Specifically, statements such as “we are winning this war against the virus” and so on. Here’s the thing: the success of the virus lies precisely in the fact that it does not care about winning or losing any war. (It does not even care about “caring”. And ad infinitum, but I digress.)

While some of the above could very well be short term/temporary changes, there is definitely a lot of serious debate happening around topics like the future of cities and more interestingly, the future of work. I have thought a lot especially about the latter. I’m convinced that insofar as knowledge work is concerned, we will never go back to the way things were before — and it’s a good thing! Tens of millions of people world over commuting to work every single day never made much sense to me.

Make no mistake — I’m not suggesting complete remote set ups. That might be too radical at this stage. Moreover, remote work has its inefficiencies. Meeting people in person or discussing ideas and working together for periods of time are valuable even beyond efficiency. It is not either this or that. In fact, a spectrum of models has opened up. (Well, if you think about it, it was always there, but the present situation made us see it much more clearly.) Teams can meet at work once every few days or weeks for long form intense discussions, planning sessions, and/or socializing. Smaller groups can meet at coworking spaces or cafes if that makes it easier logistically. People can work from their hometowns part of the time or take up “workations”. From a hiring point of view location of a company or a candidate is no longer a big constraint. The possibilities are fascinating.

On the last day of 2020, a year that also flew by like no other before, when I started reflecting on the last twelve months, personally for me there were more positives than negatives. I feel more energized and hopeful. So, on the first day of 2021 I noted down a bunch of positive things that happened to me. But first I must acknowledge the negatives.

Two of my friends who were around my age passed on this year. One of them was suffering from cancer and we knew it would happen sometime soon. But that knowledge doesn’t make it any easy. The other was an absolute shocker that has left me reeling. Then there were many people who I knew and/or admired who went away one by one in quick succession due to a variety of causes. There was some amount of COVID-19 related scare in my extended family although there was no serious problem thankfully. Some of my closest friends had to undergo a lot of trauma directly or indirectly due to the pandemic situation.

I consider myself fortunate that I have crossed this year with my job and health intact. I’m grateful that my family hasn’t gone through any major troubles. In fact, this year has been particularly good for me. I’ve been more productive professionally as well as personally. I have been much less stressed out despite working a lot. I have also been more clearheaded and less distracted.

Some of the positives that happened:

Family

I was able to spend quality time with my family much more regularly than before. I was present and not preoccupied by the goings on at work! Not having to commute helped a great deal. I played with my kids, took long walks with them spotting birds, taught my daughter a few things, and cooked something they like once in a while. (I need to do this a lot more.)

Work

I don’t want to talk a lot about work in this post — I do a fair bit of it otherwise. DataWeave did quite well even through the global slowdown. For me it was more of a mixed bag despite working with great intensity and intent. But I believe I have done enough ground work and a lot of things will come to fruition over the next several months. This year among other things I’m looking forward to a lot more vibrance. I hope to work with engaged and energetic people.

Tech and Product Mentoring

At the beginning of June, I started an experiment through which I wanted to share some of my learning and experiences with research, product building, and data science. It has been an engaging and learning experience for me. Some of the people I met through this continue to interact with me on a regular basis. I intend to continue with this in 2021 as well.

Talk Series

I have done it before at my workplaces. I thought let’s take advantage of the fact that everyone is working remotely to start a public talk series recently. It’s early days but I’m excited about this new form of engagement. I intend to give one talk every month.

Birding

Over the last few years I’ve started birding. It’s been relaxing and rewarding in equal measures. I started a small project: observing and recording the birds around my house. I was amazed by the number of species I could sight! I’m not much of a photographer but here are a couple of samples.

Podcasts

As always I was late into getting to podcasts. I think they’re a great medium for information dissemination and engagement. I started listening to podcasts regularly during my long walks — each acted as an incentive for the other. So, it’s been a huge positive. My favorite ones are: Radiolab, The Knowledge Project, The Seen and the Unseen.

Reading

I’ve always read a healthy dose of books. This year it was a bit more special because not only did I read but also spent a lot more time thinking about and discussing the books I read. I also made it a point to write at least a small note about most if not all the books I read. If there’s one book I particularly want to recommend to everybody, it’s: Man’s Search for Meaning. You can read my book reviews on my blog.

Writing

I also wrote a lot more compared to previous years. I’ve been updating my blog fairly regularly. I want to write at least one review/essay per week. This outside of my primary writing project of course.

My most ambitious project

Which brings me to the most important item, the most ambitious project I’ve taken up: writing my first novel. The seed for the idea of this story/novel entered me probably 15–20 years ago. I’ve had several false starts over the years. Writing for me is an excruciatingly slow process, but I’ve done enough groundwork in 2020 to feel confident that I’m finally going to write a novel, and a good one at that! I have thought about it deeply and realized — and this is a positive thing — that if there’s one thing that I’m going to regret not doing it is not writing the novels and stories that only I can write.

Self Awareness

During the later part of 2019 I went through a period of self doubt, and chronic stress, and anxiety. I had this constant feeling of not fulfilling my potential which added to the stress. I finally took a conscious decision to address this, and take professional help even if required. I worked with a coach (Sahana from Antaryan) who helped me face head on many of these questions that had been bothering me. I worked a fair bit trying to be more self aware. I thought deeply about what my passions, my purpose (my “ikigai” as it were), and my aspirations. I still have a long way to go but I must say I have a lot more clarity on what I values drive me, what I care about, and how I would want to lead my life.

With that let me end this long note. Have a great 2021. I know what I want to accomplish this year. What are you going to accomplish? How are going to kick butt?

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies, in a twinkling.

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.

Sullivan, Louis H. (1896). “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered”

Vitruvius who was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BCE asserted that any structure we build must exhibit three qualities: firmitas (robust), utilitas (useful), and venustas (beautiful). The American architect Louis Sullivan coined the phrase “form ever follows function”, to capture the idea that how something looks (form) is governed by what it is supposed to do.

Both Vitruvius and Sullivan made their observations about the structures of buildings primarily. But it should be obvious that they are true universally — whether they are structures of nature or those created by humans. The amazingly colorful and complex patterns of mollusc shells exemplify the qualities Vitruvius proclaimed. Consider the swarming of locusts, schooling of fish, flocking of starlings; food webs, protein interaction networks, ant colonies, and so on. There’s an interplay between form and function in each of these.

This carries over to virtual structures as well: structures that are used to store, retrieve, and transport information. Designs of data structures and network topologies are a result of optimizing for different objective functions.

In this talk (and the next two), we’ll start our journey towards understanding the interplay of form and function. Let’s look at different geometric representations that are at the core of Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs). Let’s examine what kind of trade offs they lead to in terms of functionality. We’ll look at trees, hypercubes, butterflies, multidimensional tori (torus singular, tori plural), and circular graphs. We’ll understand their graph theoretic properties and limitations.

DHTs form the underpinnings of most real world distributed systems. They enable efficient caching and routing. They are used by distributed data stores as well. Therefore, all of the previous discussion is going to be motivated by real applications in distributed systems.

Prerequisites: Basics of analytical geometry and graph theory will help, but not essential. We’ll develop the necessary math as part of the talk.

You can register yourself for the talk through this event link.

I’ll post the talk slides later.

https://www2.slideshare.net/SanketPatil25/talk0-representations

The next talk will be on December 20th. I’m pushing the time slot to afternoon, around 3:30 PM IST, to make it convenient to some more people who want to attend this. I’m going to pick up from where I had left — sort of. The topic of the next session is “The Geometry of Distributed Hash Tables”. We will look at DHTs and their underlying geometrical structures. We will discuss the interplay of metric spaces, geometry, and graph theoretic representations as applied to DHTs, which form underpinnings of most distributed systems.

I’ll publish more details closer to the event. Feel free to share feedback and observations.

I completed my PhD from International Institute of Information Technology — Bangalore (IIIT-B) under the supervision of Prof. Srinath Srinivasa. My PhD thesis entitled “Designing optimal network topologies under multiple efficiency and robustness constraints” was published in 2011. You can access it here through the Shodhganga portal. You can find more of our work on Google Scholar.

Today, while working on something I had to look up some old research work that I had done a long time ago. That’s when I came across these cases of plagiarism. With a quick search I found two such instances. There might be more.

One of the papers published in International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering (IJITEE) in 2019 is entitled “Designing Optimal Network Topologies with Numerous Robustness and Efficiency Constraints” (The “authors” have replaced “under multiple” with “with numerous”). You can access the paper by clicking this link. Other details: ISSN: 2278–3075, Volume-8 Issue-7, May, 2019. The first author is a research student and the second author is apparently an Assistant Professor at a university, who is likely the supervisor of the former.

This is a screenshot of some of the figures from the above paper. I remember spending tens of hours painstakingly creating these.

You can find the original work in Chapter 5 of my thesis. A term I had used was “Symmetric Multi-hubs”. They have changed it to “cruciform multi-hubs”. But that cleverness does not always come in handy it seems. They call the other classes of topologies as “purposeless hubs and spokes” and “purposeless CSL”. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.

The same authors have published another paper with plagiarized content in a journal called International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE). It’s called “Designing Optimal Network Topology Based on Genetic Algorithm Framework”. Other details: ISSN: 2277–3878, Volume-8, Issue-1, May 2019. You can access it by clicking this link. This features parts of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 of my PhD thesis. Interestingly, the authors do cite three of my papers, but that doesn’t absolve them of blatant plagiarism.

While I figure out the next steps I have to take to deal with this strange and counterproductive scenario, I can’t help but feel extremely sad about the state of affairs in Indian academia. We need high quality universities with students and professors conducting research with passion and integrity. This kind of behaviour is the antithesis to those ideals.