Random Thoughts

Cycling, considered to be one of the most boring sport by many and especially in countries like India where cycles are looked down upon by most people. I have always been a fan of cycling but never did I watched it as a sport. I always loved taking rides on my bicycle, whenever I felt sad, agitated, or depressed, cycling always helped me in clearing my mind. I don't know why Indians society looks at the cycle as a poor men's mode of transport. If you go to any place on a bicycle, all the eyes on the road will be at you as if you are an inconsequential person. A car driver will try to dominate a biker and a biker will try to dominate a person on a cycle. The bigger your vehicle is more you will try to dominate and this is especially true on Indian roads. Back in college, I expressed my love for cycling and said that if I get a job near my house, I will try to go via bicycle, that person laughed at me and said, dude, these things are only good for saying, no one actually does it....

Everyone knows that life is precious, but there is one thing more precious than life: freedom. If freedom hadn't been the most important human desire, people wouldn't have fought for independence from tyrants and dictators. Humans are biologically programmed to live in a hierarchical structure, but that doesn't mean they can't be free. Freedom exists in different forms: physical freedom, freedom of thought, relations, or something else. When I think about freedom, the only name that comes to mind is Bhagat Singh. Just think for a moment: this guy who had everything in his life, a good education, a loving family, and a ton of wealth, decides to go on a path of martyrdom, but why? He was as free as anyone could have been in that period, but still, this burning desire didn't let him sleep. There was no benefit or reward to be enjoyed at the end of his path of being a freedom fighter; he had no hope of reward in the next life, too, because he was an atheist, so he decid...

Truth, the single most entity about which our life revolves, but often it is shrouded in mystery. Everyone wants to be right, not only for others but to keep themselves sane. Being right gives you dominance and power over others. You feel good whenever someone else's corroborates whatever you were saying. Your mind rewards you for the positive confirmation. Most people don't like being proved wrong, but have you ever thought about why that's the case? Why it is so necessary for our minds to feel right about everything. Just imagine, you wake up tomorrow morning and find that whatever you knew about the world and yourself was a lie, your mind will stop working properly, you will go into extreme anxiety. To keep yourself sane, your mind needs to think that whatever it is thinking is right and from here arises what we call conformational bias. Conformational bias is a term in psychology that tells us that we will consume the information which corroborates our already learned b...

I often see a lot of my friends discussing the stories from a TV series or a movie. Almost every one of us has spent countless hours discussing the lives of our favorite movie stars. From what they say on Twitter to whom they are dating in their lives, I completely agree that it seems very exciting to many of us. We have entire channels and magazines dedicated to the lives of celebs. I don't know why, but there is something that keeps the masses so attracted to their beloved celebrities that they start worshiping these people like gods. This can be seen everywhere in the world, but this goes to a whole different level when we talk about India. Just go outside Shahrukh's house in Mumbai, every second there will be someone or the other getting their photos clicked right outside his house. Even those who have no interest in becoming actors will also line up to get a photo clicked with the famous bungalow of Shahrukh (Mannat). As I grow old, I find that most of us are totally confu...

All of us in India have built our notion of the west just by seeing the Hollywood TV series and movies, but only after coming to Belgium, I realized that the west also carries a lot of diversity just like the different states of India. I would even go on to say that in many terms Americans are much closer to Indians than Europeans. To give you the big picture, in terms of society, Europe is rather on the conservative side while America is on the exact opposite, and somewhere in between lies UK. You will find a lot many Indians settled in the USA or Canada, even in the UK as compared to Europe. Most of the European countries don't provide any post-study visa to international students which in itself suggests that these countries don't want people from other places to settle here.  Before I move on to explain my personal struggle let me tell you a bit about how different Europeans are from Americans. Europeans prefer bicycles over the motored vehicle and also they tend to buy sma...

No society is perfect, but I believe that Japan is the closest possible thing we have to an ideal society. Before we dwell on what makes it stands out of all the other society of the world, let's take a look into a few of their negatives. Japanese people work too much, there is a term in Japanese called  Karoshi  which translates into death by overwork. On average people work more than 10 hours a day and for some, it even extends to 15-16hrs a day and that too without any extra pay. Coming an hour before the official time and leaving 1-2 hours late after office hours is the norm. They have too many over-generalizations and stereotypes against the foreigners thus making friends for an outsider may be a bit tough, but for Japanese people, it's fine because they do everything together. Unlike the west, Japanese adults tend to stay with their parents and families thus building a deeper sense of community and family. Generally, people don't switch jobs because every employer hir...

I was a very quiet and reserved child back in school, I know most of my college friends won't believe it, but it is true. I was hardly aware of anything going on between people, what was happening in the world, how society operated, I was happy in my simple little world. Back then, I had no knowledge of different fields except for my interest in physics. I just used to study and play, nothing else mattered to me, but then, college happened, everything was changed in a few weeks, there was so much new information to be grasped and I was all set to capture as much as possible. Over the period of time, I started turning into a so-called 'intellectual guy', I know that this word has lost its real connotation in recent times, thanks to the current political climate of our country, but once you have observed and read sufficiently about people and society, there is nothing that can stop you from seeing the world with the lens of intellect. You start questioning everything, you sto...