gm-reflection

  If we ever want a softer future, maybe it starts in smaller places, not with policies, movements, or big ideas, but quietly, in the ways we relate to each other. Maybe it begins with noticing how easily we take from someone else’s life, even when we believe we’re giving. I started noticing this a few months ago. Someone who’s been helping me with many personal things -someone I trust - asked me to start tracking my daily routine. We had been talking about my habit of going to sleep late, and he seemed convinced he could help me manage my day better so I'd sleep earlier. His intention wasn’t just to observe but to improve, to guide me toward better habits. I know he meant well, but I felt a quiet pressure in his request. It wasn’t harsh, but it was steady. I felt it in my body before I understood it clearly. I didn’t want to comply. Initially, I didn’t question it; I just noticed the resistance. Still, out of respect, I tracked my routine for two days and sent it to him, even th...

I was talking to Tatai, my nephew, today. He is a PhD student at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics in Pune, India . He’s close to finalizing his thesis proposal and preparing to defend it. We were talking about his study pattern. For him, big ideas come easily, but the details are challenging to concentrate on. It’s a familiar place for me. Midway through, almost casually, he asked if he might have autism . I didn't respond immediately. I'm not a psychologist. Instead, I said something simpler: maybe what you're calling autism is just you. That shifted things. Soon we were discussing neurodivergence —not as a diagnosis, but as a way of acknowledging different ways of thinking. Tatai struggles with details unless they're clearly part of something bigger. He doesn’t fit the picture of someone who sits crunching numbers all day at a keyboard; neither do I. I'm the same way. Whether that's ADHD or something else wasn’t the point. The point was realizing ...

  “Integrity is not measured by the noise of virtue, but by the quiet insistence of effort.”  A lbert Camus (?) What do we do when doing the right thing costs too much? Not in theory—but in the messy, human ways that shake our lives. This is a reflection on those quiet, everyday negotiations we make with our conscience, and what it means to hold a line in a system that continually pushes us to let go. Recently, in a WhatsApp group of old friends, veterinarians, mostly retired, we drifted into one of those painful conversations that reveal more than intended. It began with a few practical comments about retirement paperwork, legal battles, and the many steps required to receive pensions from public institutions in India . And then someone said plainly, "I had to pay ₹25,000 to get what I had already earned." Another friend added, "In India, nothing moves without bribes." Someone else spoke of fighting a legal battle for over two decades, spending lakhs on fees and ...

                Comments of a Demented, Out-of-Clue, Naive Person?        I did a double take. Was Pope Leo okay? What on earth is he talking about? After all, the numbers are brutal. According to Lawrence Keeley in War Before Civilization , 90–95% of societies have engaged in war at some point in history. Hard to argue with those numbers. But Raymond C. Kelly, in Warless Societies and the Origin of War , challenges that view. He suggests war isn’t universal. Many early societies thrived on peaceful relationships — trade, intermarriage, and shared work. War came later, he argues, once wealth accumulated and fences were built. So, which is it? Are we born to war, or are we just stuck in the current story? At first, I dismissed Pope Leo’s sentiment as naïve. “War is not inevitable?” Come on. But the more I sat with it, the more it gnawed at me. Maybe he’s not entirely wrong. Maybe he's saying something we've forgo...

  “They say I’m the poorest president. No, I’m not. Poor are those who want more... because they’re in an endless race.” — José Mujica In my previous post, I looked into the “black mirror”: power almost always wins. The revolution becomes the regime. The wheel spins back to hierarchy.  But what if… not everyone played that game? What if—amidst the palace walls and propaganda machines—there were a few who remembered what power was meant to be? A burden, a service, a duty! A good man recently passed away. His life gave me hope. His example inspired me to look for many others—well-known and lesser-known—who held power but chose to be servants of the people. We’re talking about José Mujica , President of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. He walked into the office as a poor man. He walked away a poor man. Mujica lived on a small farm, drove a beat-up VW Beetle, and donated most of his salary. He governed with quiet resolve—legalizing marijuana, investing in the poor—not from a palace, bu...

  “If there is no transformation inside of us, all the structural change in the world will have no impact on our institutions.” -  Peter Block We’ve believed for centuries that once power falls and the oppressed rise, all will be made right. We imagine a world where everyone sings campfire songs and roasts marshmallows. But that’s not the reality. Let’s look back at recent history - these examples are still fresh. Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot... they all rose on the backs of the oppressed, only to become the very tyrants they once fought. Mussolini rose as a revolutionary socialist, a man of the people, before morphing into the architect of Italian fascism. Stalin took the Soviet dream of worker emancipation and turned it into a machinery of purges, show trials, gulags, and fear. Pol Pot promised power to the peasants but ended up emptying the cities, banning books, and murdering nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population in pursuit of a purified agrarian utopia. Anyone r...

 Power believes itself invincible. It evolves, adapts, absorbs criticism, and neutralizes rebellion. It manipulates fear, manufactures consent, and numbs critical thought. And yet—every empire, every system, every gleaming juggernaut eventually cracks. Not because the rulers plan it. Not because the oppressed suddenly become perfectly organized. But because power always carries within it the seeds of its own destruction . The Anatomy of Fracture 1. Internal Contradictions: Power’s Fatal Flaw As Walt Whitman wrote: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." Humans are built for plurality—for conflict, for paradox. No system has ever existed without its own contradictions, because no human being is a pure, single idea. Every system that survives by stifling imagination and dissent eventually becomes too stupid to evolve—and too rigid to survive. But the deeper flaw isn't just in the rulers; it’s in human n...