The Accumulated Works of A Bored Genius

In another 20 years, I wonder if the world would have given up on trying to fight the inevitable or if we would, as a species, still be talking about “emissions reductions” and “sustainability” the way we are today. Gen Z children will have their own by then, and we (I’m a 1994 kid) will have ripened into either cynical grumps or tired zombies. The people currently alive on the planet have no idea what the world was like before industrialisation took place. There are probably very few souls alive who don’t know what petrol smells like, or what smog looks like – the remotest and least ‘globalised’ of our brethren. In another 20 years, we will have forgotten what the Earth used to be. 200 years since the dawn of “modern society” and with all the environmental degradation, wars and droughts behind us, the ones remaining will not know what needs to be restored. What will we have lost by then? Can we find our way back? Is it even a fair position to place society in, to expect that what is l...

Science and it’s ability to explain the world around us has always fascinated me. As a child I stared with awe at my science textbooks before the start of each year, excited about what I was going to learn that year. But as children, we internalise not just the facts but also the process, the narrative and the ideologies espoused. I have begun to realise the extremely overpowering and hegemonic nature of the paradigm that my “formal education” has not just imparted to me, but in a manner of speaking, propagandised. This morning, as I sat staring at a squirrel nibbling at specks of rice leftover on the wall of my balcony, I wondered what the squirrel must be thinking. Is he (I noticed the testicles on the guy) wondering if this will be enough to satiate his hunger? Is he thinking of where he can go to for his next morsel? It is a uniquely human trait to anthropomorphise (of course) an experience by projecting our thoughts onto another object.  But science has, through codified struc...

My love story is a crazy story - one that has so many coincidences, you’d think it was a scripted movie. As a scientist, I have internalised the age old adage that “In nature there are no coincidences” but the human mind assigns this label to what it considers inexplicable (or calls it God’s will, destiny, fate, the universe bringing it together, among a host of different things). I’m only documenting my side of the story here. Ask her for hers 😜 The first coincidence starts with the way we met. Rewind to December 2020 when I’ve just moved to Himachal Pradesh as part of my fellowship and am exploring my local area. I am supposed to be heavily busy with spadework, scouting for villages that can eventually be our project locations. But the Christmas weekend presented itself to me as a golden opportunity to check out the Holy Grail for noob hippies like me - Parvati Valley. And so I set out, with a plan to meet 2 friends from college at Kasol. Getting to Kasol and meeting them was an...

Found this in my archives. Posting here for posterity. Original date: 15.02.2018 I often have conversations about very random topics that get me deeply involved in what is being discussed. One such conversation I had was with an arts student at ZHdK. He gloriously proclaimed that everything is art and everyone’s profession is art, ergo, everyone was capable of art. Now this is the dilemma I was facing – I didn’t consider myself very “artsy”, so to say. So, to accept his worldview, I would have to see art in what I did as a biologist or convince him that it wasn’t really art. After all, I am quite incapable of gazing at a plain orange piece of canvas or any other expression of “modern art” and finding any meaning in it. But this conversation got me thinking – what if biology really is an art? It is indeed an erudite appreciation of all that is natural. I believe I can speak for most natural scientists when I say that it was fascination coupled with an incurable sense of curiosity that d...

Do we even need to solve poverty? Don't we need to address ambition first? Let me explain why I think so. We all know (notice I don't use the words "have read" or "have heard") by now that the planet is on fire and that our species are the sadistic chest thumpers having set it aflame. The sad realisation I have had recently is that only 30% of the species can really be assigned the blame, in the traditional sense of the word, but the brunt of the  planet's punishments are borne by the remainder 70%. That is the poor, the disenfranchised, the ones with smaller voices and smaller votes in this "equal" world. And the reason we see them as powerless against this natural ire is because we know it is possible to not  be powerless against it. It is possible to beat the system. But not everyone can do it. Because the boat only has so many seats. But once you go to a woman who has lost her land because you said she'd get better fruits if you put a b...

Today my eyes beheld, A tree falling thunderously, A thought crossed my head, One that runs repeatedly, When corals turn white, And forests burn bright, When plastics clog tight, And bombs drop with spite, When countries exploit fright, And fields lie dried, When storms surge all night, And hunger strikes with might, When children have to fight, While silences punctuate the night, With no end in sight, Of civilizations being a blight.

I remember the first time I woke up in the middle of the night shivering from the cold – it was after a party I was at in Switzerland. The C 2 H 5 OH had reached threshold concentration and my brain had shut down on a sofa next to the fireplace. The confusion of where I was and why it was so cold when I woke up led to a singular objective – find the nearest heated room. Much later I found out that someone had turned off the mains to the cabin and everyone had had the same horrendously cold night. I was thinking of this incident the first time I woke up shivering here in the Himalayas. In all the excitement of spending a year in the mountains, I’d forgotten how brutal the elements actually are. And the first stretch of my year was one of the most brutal environments my body had ever experienced. City-comforted, seaside, cushion baby suddenly at the Third Pole of the world, no fancy ambient heating either. In the time from November, for 4 months, I have woken up shivering way too many ti...

I went to the place, Where land meets cloud, And stood there with my face, Enveloped in that shroud. My ears too cold, My beard too moist, Not even a mold, Could survive this hoist. But got here I did, To look down at my home, The way the trees hid, Behind the marquee of foam. I saw a peak above my spot, And thought of her age, The mountains paused not, Their all-pervading gaze. She was here before we came, She'll be here after we're gone, My visit to her bosom, Holds awe only with this one. I sat down to behold, As far as my eyes let me, My lids grew heavy with cold, But I knew what it meant to be.

Amidst the dying flames of a fire, Sat three men discussing the weather, A farmer, a taxi driver and a stoner. One bemoaned dry lands, praying for rain, One wiped the frost off his mane, One twiddled absently with his cane. Then came a flash of lightning, With it fell the heavens freezing, And seeing this the flame died crackling. The farmer danced joyously, The driver groaned angrily, And the stoner hid his pipe hurriedly.

I have a confession to make. I threw, nay dumped, the styrofoam plate that I had prasadam from last night on the temple grounds. No dustbin, no waste disposal. I contributed to land pollution. But I had no choice. And this is why. I started the weekend with elaborate plans, but no expectations. We (Shubham and I) had planned to meet up with another friend, Ann, who was travelling down from Ramnagar to meet us, at Almora, and travel to a traditional Kumaoni ceremony called "Jaagar" that night. After getting to Almora, which is much closer to us than it is for her, and locating the place where she'd be alighting at after roaming the bazaar for nearly 1.5 hours, we finally met up post-noon. A quick lunch and a ₹200 fine for pulling my mask down during a phone call later, we headed to the most serene temple I've been to in the recent past - the Kasar Devi. In my altered state, I hiked up the hill atop which the temple rests, not expecting anything at all but enjoying the ...

 This is a story of why I call myself a nomad. And it starts in 2016 when I finished college and was about to leave for Zürich to start my postgrad course. A very close friend of mine met up with me a few weeks before my departure and told me he was going to spend the next year of his life on his bike exploring India. I found it amazing and something I was not capable of. So I left and finished 2 years of partying, travelling, meeting different people, learning languages and most of all - living life - the same things my friend did back home in India. A few days before my departure from Switzerland, the department chair at UZH where I did my thesis asked me what I was going to do and where I would go. I told him I was going back home but that I had no idea what I was going to do there. "Wherever life takes me," is what I told him. He laughed and said, "You're choosing the nomad's life I see". Now of course, I oversimplified an entire luncheon's worth of ...

"I remember those days. We used to go to the park nearby and feed the birds while people were strolling or chatting at benches and eating at the roadside stalls," said thatha, re-tying his lungi as he stared out at the empty skies. He had gotten into one of his reminiscent moods again. I guess age does that - pining for a past that was supposedly better and happier. "Kids these days don't even know what a sparrow is. It's very unfortunate." "Yes thatha sparrows were awesome we all miss those birds," I said sardonically as I shrugged and walked away, leaving his coffee at the foot of his chair. I'd heard this story too many times and my friends were waiting for me to start another game of Overwatch. I could hear thatha get into another one of his coughing fits as I shut my bedroom door and put my headphones on. He'd had a bad cold and fever for a few days now. Some people from the corporation came and did some tests. He didn't test po...

Who or what is an individual? Am I a sum of my parts or are we jigsaw puzzle pieces of a larger whole? As a species we have often battled between individualistic and communal ways of life - which is better? Or rather, which is more suitable? Are individual needs more important or must importance be accorded to the larger scheme of things, of which we are all a part? This can mean different things in different contexts and despite the inclination towards the individualistic school of thought for many of us, the current pandemic purportedly caused by the novel (thus far) coronavirus COVID-19 has got me to thinking that we are prone to switching between the two, picking and choosing when to place the interests of what we consider "ours" over the rest, or vice versa. The question of self has bothered humans for as long as sentience has been a thing. The "I" of it being distinct from the externalities, "us vs. them", this is mine, that is yours. But we h...

I have flown a lot. I've been flying since I was a babe in my mother's arms. I do not revel in the sights and sounds at airports anymore. The ordeal is as mundane as wiping my butt after a shit. It's part of the process. But flying in itself - soaring above civilization, closeted in an aluminium can, separated from the frigid low-pressure air outside by 3 to 4 inches of ice-crusted windows - is always awe-inspiring! This is why I always prefer to sit at the window. I especially enjoy watching the sunlight skid and bounce off shifting clouds and distant buildings. Dots of reflecting light competing for space in the horizon against the overbearing sun. Leaving civilization behind is quite momentous. The captain(s) inform you of their agenda (or whatever they deem fit to convey to us mortals merely sharing this aerial vehicle with them) and within seconds, you are hurtling down a roadway at an acceleration hitherto unexperienced by terrestrial beings and suddenly you cann...

I chanced upon this poem quite by accident while searching for some other e-mail in my inbox. Cheers :) Written on Feb 10, 2016: Cheek on palm, eyes just ajar, He dreams in class, travelling afar, To a wonderful place where the ailment of boredom, Plagues the human mind seldom. A utopian landscape with friends and fun, Where you needn't go back with the set of the sun, 24/7 they may do as they please, Drinking from rivers, living in trees. Yet as he readies himself to sleep, Eyes close fully and a smile begins to creep, In on his visage, he is awoken with a start, It seems he had in slumber, let out a fart!

Another one from the writing sessions :D I walked lazily into the room. Another day, another human to catch off guard. As the door shut behind me, she turned around and a silent gasp escaped her mouth. When you've been doing the same job for centuries on end, you lose any interest in pranking these misled fools. "Who are you and what the fuck are you doing in my room?" Okay. That was new. Usually, humans prayed or ran for their leather books. How they find solace in leather only they know. "Really? Red skin, horns longer than your arm and you don't know?" "Are you the devil?" Okay, that does it. I'm sick of these humans imagining there's one devil out there and that the same one always comes to them. Like what the actual fuck?! We're not that inefficient! "I'm A devil, not THE devil. Please!" "Whatever man just do what you gotta do and get the fuck out of my room. I'm Skyping my boyfriend and I have...

We seem to be aware of so many conspiracy theories in the world - the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, the moon landing was fake, Tupac was killed by the government and lately, the earth is flat and that NASA is an organisation whose sole intent is to keep the world brainwashed. I’ve been doing quite some reading into the whole conspiracy theory phenomenon and I think what’s interesting in all of these is a common denominator of mistrust and speculation. Also, funnily enough, most of these theories are based on the affairs and politics of USA. I am unsure of whether I see it this way because: a. A lot of what happens on the internet tends to be what happens in USA b. The conspiracy theorists in this country are louder than the others and hence, drown out the theories arising from other places c. Theirs is the only evil government d. They are the only ones who aren’t misled by the powers operating above them and controlling their lives and beliefs e. Any other explanation tha...

Paris. The city has many flavours they say. I had dreamed of visiting this place ever since I read (more like studied) about it in my French classes. 10 years of studying French and 7 years of forgetting it later, I finally managed to visit la ville d'amour (mais pas avec une amour). The spectrum of opinions about the city varied from "wondrous" to "filthy" but one thing remained constant - it was always touted as a 'must-visit' city. And so when my brother decided he was coming to Europe, I used this as an excuse to throw Paris into the itinerary. When I told my friends (French and otherwise) that I was visiting Paris, I heard, "the people are not nice", "they won't speak to you in English even if they know English", "there's filth, dirt and beggars everywhere", "you can't go there unless you speak French" and the crown jewel of all comments, "any Frenchie not from Paris pretty much hates Paris....