A Journey through Modern Historical Non-Fiction: Four Perspectives on India and the World. In the past four months, my intellectual journey has been profoundly enriched by four seminal works of historical non-fiction. Each book, in its own distinctive way, engages with the long arc of India’s history, culture, politics, and place in the global order. Though they differ in style, scope, and sensibility, together they form a powerful mosaic of India’s past, present, and future. Here is a reflection on each. 1 . The Golden Road by William Dalrymple William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road is an exemplary work of historical non-fiction, combining the rigour of archival research with the narrative elegance of a master storyteller. To borrow Maya Jasanoff’s apt description: Dalrymple researches like a historian, thinks like an anthropologist, and writes like a novelist. In The Golden Road, Dalrymple explores the intricate web of connections that linked India to the wider world...
MIYAZAKI, SATIRE, AND THE DEATH OF THE ARTIST. Congratulations, humanity! we have finally outdone ourselves. progress! That magnificent locomotive of human ingenuity, now barrelling toward a future where art is no longer a labor of love, but a neatly arranged sequence of algorithmic probabilities. What a relief! No more agonizing over composition, no more excruciating brushstrokes just cold, unfeeling computation assembling pixels in a manner that pleases the untrained eye . The very essence of efficiency, some might say. But efficiency has never been the bedfellow of beauty. For centuries, art was a dialogue between the creator and the medium, between the work and the world, between the audience and the ineffable. It was an act of defiance against time itself, a refusal to let fleeting moments slip into oblivion without first being rendered in pigment or prose. And now? Now it is a product of mathematical convenience, a lifeless simulacrum that mimics aesthetic grandeur while posses...
I’m 20. The Algorithm is Still Loading. I am 20. Suspended between past and future, a half-formed hypothesis waiting for proof. In another decade, I might be a father—wild, isn’t it? The idea that in ten years, I might be the one answering questions instead of asking them. But what do I know? I still haven’t figured out whether I want to be the father or the child. At 10, I had no such existential dilemmas. I was reckless in the best way possible—curious, honest, mischievous. I wasn’t weighed down by overanalysis, responsibility, or the slow realization that time is running out. Fear, then, was simple: the dark corner of my room, the possibility of losing a Pokémon battle, or the thought that the ice cream truck might run out before I got there. Now, fear is abstract, omnipresent. It’s the economy, it’s the job market, it’s am I making the right choices? At 10, I used to sit with my father, running my fingers over geography maps, lost in the wonder of places I had never seen. We t...
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