Pseudo Writer

When I was little, my father (I call him 'Papa') often used to tell me stories from his childhood. They are, after all, his precious memories. And one of these stories that stand out for me is the one with the Television . Papa belonged to the poor strata of the society, in a remote village in Bihar. His father i.e. my Dadaji, earned just enough to make sure that no one in their family sleeps empty stomach. Anything over that, including clothes, entertainment etc, was a luxury. So when a Television set came into one of the houses in the village (yeah it's old times and a rather backwards village), it was nothing less than a miracle . This is much older times, where programs often came at fixed times.  Papa tells me that when a show or a movie would be telecasted, it was almost like a mini-festival in the village. People used to come together and watch it, with extreme focus and curiosity. They would finish their work earlier in the day, and prepare snacks etc to eventually...

"If someone succumbs to pressure, does it make them weak or does it make them human?" This is one of those questions, that in their essence seem quite pointless. You know right, that kind of questions? The 'what does this mean for humanity as a whole', the 'subjectivity of rights and wrongs', the 'kindness a strength or weakness", etc kind? The questions that very few of us actually care about? Yes, this is one of those. Do you remember what it's like to be in the 9th standard? You are in your mid-teens, trying to adjust to your physical and psychological changes from the puberty hit, people around you are also going through the same, the validation from your classmates/friends/almost anyone becomes a lot more important to you etc. Yes, this is a story from that time. When I entered the 9th standard, there was a lot of buzz that accompanied the event. And if you are not aware of the Indian CBSE education system, all you need to know is 9th and 11t...

This has been repeated time and time again, and it probably doesn’t matter what I am going to talk about because you already know it. But still, I am going to talk about it. Because I want to. This may be about songs. Their beauty. How much they can mean to someone, how much they can hide behind them. The depth of the lyrics, the soothing rhythms, and the anxiously calming silences that follow. All of it. But no. I will not keep it that general. This is a very specific quality that I want to discuss. The way songs hide memories inside them. So it's been about 6 months since I came back from college to home. To be honest, I was missing it a little but not really thinking about it much. But now, after listening to a 6 songs long playlist, everything is fresh in my memory. Everything. Every walk I took with these songs in my ears. Every place I visited for the first time. The people who suggested me these songs, how I met these people for the first time, the bus journeys on which I he...

"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race….It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded." -Stephen Hawking Meanwhile... "Robot passport checker rejects Asian man’s application because 'eyes are closed'." -New York Post Ah well... I don't think this is what he had in his mind when one of the most brilliant and admired minds of our century made his statement (Or maybe he did. Sir Stephen Hawking had a weirdly cool sense of humour). Since the very inception of the concept of AI, science fiction has, with all due credit and respect, created a rather extravagant image of AI in the minds of common people. This has come to a point where thinking of an AI that is, in any parameter, inferior to a Chitti or a Terminator seems dull to them. Since the incidents that are going to be n...

There are a lot of things that you lose along the way of your life. People, important objects and memories too. But Jojo Rabbit is something that will be etched in my mind forever. It deserves every single strand of brand value that accompanies the Oscar that it received. Through the medium of an innocence that not only survived, but blossomed into something beautiful during the times of war; the fragility and gullibility of a child's mind has been depicted beautifully in this masterpiece. In the times of rising intolerance for differences, maybe what we really need is to regress back into a child-like state of mind, and decide for ourselves who deserves what, rather than believing what the like-minded people around us have to say. When Elsa is introduced in the narrative, and Jojo asks her whether she is a ghost, she replies, "no, you wish. I am something much worse. And you already know it.". With time, the exploration of the so-called mind controlling 'Jews'...

Do you crave for the sun too, when cold is seeping through your body, and you can neither run from it nor hide from it? When every part of your body has started going numb, and you aren't even aware of the battle that your inner biology is going through to prevent that, do you crave for the ray of light that brings warmth along with it? Well, we sure did. And boy, did our wish come true; rather someone went a little too overboard with our wish. It was a few decades ago, when scientists realised that the extent of global warming has taken an exponential rate of growth, and warned the world administration about it, suggesting safety measures. But while most of the countries were not able to successfully execute the safety measures, some spent their time in denying that global warming exists (no jokes there). And finally everything went really well. By the way, did I mention that the world population is below ten thousands now? No? Well did I mention that all of us, champs of our ci...

There are days, when you can feel blood flowing through your veins, creating a special kind of rush. This rush is accompanied by a sense of excitement, which sets off a game of domino with pieces falling right into the productive spaces. And then there are days, when you are enclosed by a bubble of soothing calmness, with nothing but a quest for stillness between the noise of velocities. Troy had a special kind of love for both of these. But unfortunately, he was getting neither of them for a few months. As a student who had taken an year off for the preparation of a few entrance exams, Troy had days in a monotonous rhythm with minor to no variations. Waking up, freshening, eating, studying, eating, studying, ea........, sleeping; was all he was doing these days. He couldn't help but wonder about the decisions he took in his past, that had confined him into his own little room with a set of course books, willingly. Actually that's a lie. He knew exactly what those decisions we...

People fought a lot of battles, as our history progressed. Lives laid down in the name of country, religion or sometimes even a neighborhood. But these battles were just small fronts of a war; a never-ending war that has been going on for centuries, a war that has seen delays, but never once seen the end. Our people never experienced the oblivion that the end of this war could induce. You might think that every war that broke out had its own reasons, so what could possibly be common? Spare a few moments out of your busy day, and open some history text books or use internet, and search for the reasons of any war that ever broke out. You will find something common. It's never a war between good and evil, because whoever wins the war, claims to be the victim. It's not a war between someone who has the throne and someone who doesn't, as lengths one can go is just a compensation for the feeling that there is a lack of parameters to find who is more suitable for the throne. There...

So it's the independence day. I guess there is a beautiful motive to its existence; To appreciate the fact that our history has been a tennis ball, in a match between the opressors and the opressed and there were people who rose up against the opressors thus making our country free. What we forget is that they did not win this war overnight. It took around one and a half century before they won. Also when I say 'they', I am not even close to aware of how many people this word is referring to here. When the blood of these people mixed into the soil of our country, only then it became free. We think that by celebrating this day, we are honouring those people. But I don't believe that if any of those martyrs, if given a chance to see the present country, would worry about how the independence day is celebrated. All they would care about is what we have done to the country that they won for us at the cost of their lives. And as much as I would like to say that we have prog...

The broken bell will be seen again, the world shall hear its chime. Possibilities define the infinities, shall one travel in time. Time ; one of the most intriguing mysteries that physics has encountered during its development. It's one of the most fascinating features is that it is different for each observer (as explained by the Theory of Relativity ). Now this brings the possibility of a very popular concept of time travel in future . But travelling back to the past is too much to handle. As far as the modern physics has reached, which is an exponentially large amount as compared to a couple of centuries ago, time travel is nothing but an idea that came to someone's mind, which was not of much use, but science fiction adapted it, making it one of the most successful plots for any Sci-Fi movie. Now the reason for success was very simple. All the people have one thing common which they constantly carry with them; regrets . So the idea of going back in past, correcti...

So a couple of days ago, I found the last episode of one of my favorite animated series, Transformers : Beast Hunters. It's plot is based on a long going war between two major groups, Autobots and Decepticons on their planet, which destroyed most of the lives on their planet. Autobots were the ones who supported liberty and democracy , while Decepticons were the ones who believed in oppression and monarchy . When I saw it the last time, I saw cars transforming into robots and fighting each other; the action that I enjoyed. But today I looked past it. I saw a reflection of the human history in it. I did not see autobots vs decepticons, but rather I saw the oppressors vs the opressed . I did not see the cars transforming into robots, I saw the truth transforming itself into something strong enough to face the injustice. Now that we think of this, all of the history of human civilization has been like this. It has been a continuous fight between the ones who want to see the sun shi...

Look around you. Everyone is in a race. A race with themselves, trying to be better, even when the frame of reference is arbitrary. But one thing is common, every person shares this, the cause of race, the reason why it exists. What are your guesses? Hope for a better future? If you think so, then you are mistaken. Hope is the kind of positivity, that has long been lost from the minds around us, including us . What has now overtaken is Fear .  All of us are afraid, whether we admit or not is another point. Most of our decisions are fear-driven. We do not work hard to succeed, but we rather work hard because we are afraid of failure. The former statement might not seem sensible, but it actually carries a lot of weight, which precisely is the difference between one who wants to succeed and one who is afraid of failure. The later one has to struggle the same amount as the former one, but at the same time, the later one has to carry the weight of responsibilities.  He not only h...