My only memories of the Red Fort are from school trips. And while India Gate, Qutub Minar and the Baha’i temple made quite an impression, I couldn’t quite remember anything about the Red Fort. Except that there was a very crowded market at the entrance that was a nightmare to get through.
The Fort looked plain, barren and empty. A mere shell, in comparison to the mighty and rich forts of Rajasthan. The only exciting part of the monument: the bazaar!
Called Chhatta chowk (translation: covered bazar), the 17th century market had the typical souvenir stalls. Glittering jewellery and carved statues, fridge magnets and stoles. Each shop full of shoppers examining the items with keen eyes.
As we moved closer towards one of the shops, a long line of school students crossed our path. Holding hands and forming a file to ensure no one gets lost. None of them was one bit interested in the wares.
As we waited for the students to cross, my thoughts went back to our school trip. It was boring and tedious for us, but it must have been a hundred times worse for our guardians—the teachers who accompanied us on those trips.
Originally posted on Instagram on 1 April 2024, this post is part of a series where I attempt to reverse social media—to reclaim my life from other platforms.
In our quest to capture virtual memories, we've built physical spaces to be Instagrammable.
How do you do it?
How do you manage to read all those tweets, post comments on YouTube, react to Instagram stories, finish the long reads on Medium and WordPress and catch up with emails? All while having a day job, socialising with friends, managing a decent workout and being up to date with current affairs and pop-culture.
I know I can’t.
I was a very, very late adopter of social media, primarily because I felt it was meant for lesser mortals, those who indulged in gossip. The narcissist that I am, I didn’t quite care about what other people did around me. I only wanted to write and share my thoughts to as wide an audience as I could.
I sceptically joined Facebook in mid 2013. And it wasn’t till 2017 that I joined Instagram. These occasions were so significant, that I wrote blog posts to confess about these mis-adventures. The only reason I have a Twitter account (I don’t care what they call it now, but I refuse to call it by any other name) is because my employer demanded I create one. Without that coercion, I would probably not have created it in 2014.
Then there’s LinkedIn, Flickr, Pinterest, YouTube, Behance… the list is far, far too long.
Over the years, I have tried to keep up with these services in patches and failed. I wonder how other people do it. And it bothers me that I am so digitally incompetent. I am everywhere, and yet, nowhere. At any given point of time, I can keep up with only one service. Everyone else is active everywhere.
When I think about all the different services that aim to ‘connect’ us in the world, all I see is this relentless barrage of information, and how miserable it makes me feel.
One More Thing
In 2019, I tried an experiment. I called it, the “Reverse Social Media.” I wanted to stop using social media, and instead focus on creating a community. I’d send out emails to people so that we could start one-on-one conversations. Needless to say, that experiment failed. I had ended up creating yet another digital footprint that I couldn’t manage. If you’re interested, you can find the archives of this experiment on Design Tuesdays.
In these first two decades of the twenty-first century, a certain Mr. Jobs made a catchphrase his own. “One more thing…” he’d say, at the end of his keynote, and announce something new. Steve Jobs’ characteristic style of delivering keynotes even has a name: Stevenote!
A side note: To me, those words will always belong to Uncle from Jackie Chan Adventures. The series aired during a time when information wasn’t as free-flowing as it is today, and when tech was only for geeks. What use was a business presentation to a teenager? So please allow me to indulge myself with TV memories from the early 2000s.
Source: Imgur
With the newsletters, I had created Uncle’s one more thing. More recently, that one more thing is Threads, from Meta. Sure, I’ve ‘created’ the ghost account, but it holds no meaning for me. To me, it’s just another username that’s gathering virtual dust.
The Digital Cobwebs
Remember the old days when we had hard disks and had backups of folders and backups of backups? Ah, those were simpler times. Those hard disks are gathering dust in a shelf somewhere.
Our digital clutter, on the other hand, is invisible, but several times worse. This digital clutter that we’ve chosen to create haunts me. Over the past few years, I’ve lost very close loved ones. But their profiles show up in recommendation feeds on social media. I don’t want to tell these behemoth companies that those are my dead relatives. The large tech companies have no business knowing this private information. But, at the same time, I don’t want their click-hungry algorithms to be so insensitive.
In my curiosity to explore the internet, I wonder how far my own footprint has landed. Who has my email address? Which database has a username attached to me?
In our quest to share virtual memories, we’ve built physical spaces to be Instagrammable. How many people would have half-squatted to “sit” on the painted chairs on this pretty yellow wall? Guilty as charged. Location: Puducherry, India
Worse still are the chains I’ve tied around myself. Those accounts that I do know about, I find it hard to let go. It was easy to delete my Facebook (now Meta) account over three years ago. But Twitter is giving me a hard time. Not because I use it. I don’t. But because once I delete the account, my username will be available for use by someone else. And I shudder to think someone else will take on my identity. So much for me championing reuse and recycle.
There’s so much digital waste we’ve generated. All that waste is sitting on some server. Consuming electricity. Generating heat. And consuming more electricity to cool down. Every little piece of digital information I leave unattended reeks of a hypocritical sustainability advocate.
The Way Forward
I don’t have an easy answer to this mess. In this virtual chaos we’ve created, it’s a daily struggle to decide what to keep and what to discard. Which memories to hold on to, and which to let go.
A couple of months ago, out of sheer frustration, I embarked on a virtual housekeeping project. The task looked insurmountable, but I had to begin somewhere.
So, I looked for low-hanging fruits. I located those physical hard disks. I thought to myself, if I haven’t needed it in the last ten years, I won’t need it again. First, I transferred them to my Dropbox folder, so that everything was in one place, and then I began reviewing them.
So many duplicate photographs. Old portfolio files that I was once proud of, but now find ghastly. And those legacy file formats that I can neither open, nor have had the need to edit. I began hitting the delete key.
As Dropbox later informed me, I had deleted about 15000 files in the span of a week. It was a statistic I didn’t know I needed to hear. And it was so cathartic.
This was just the tip of the iceberg. There are several more files and photographs to go through. I’ve hit pause on that activity because, as I’ve now learned, I can’t focus on one thing constantly. Plus, frustration and adrenaline can fuel such binge-deleting sprees for only so long. But I hope to pick it up in patches.
My current project is to clear up the cobwebs of my blog drafts. Several of my last few posts have indeed been 3 – 4 year old drafts (this one included!) I’m still only 10% in, but seeing some virtual dust being cleaned up is helping me mentally.
I don’t know how far I’ll get. But I’m going to try. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And the only way to tackle it is to take it one thing at a time.
On an unrelated note, how would you like me to narrate these stories via a podcast?
As I was clearing up some old shelves, I discovered some notebooks with hand-written stories and amusing self-pep talks. Among those abandoned drafts was this unfinished parody of Billy Joel’s “The Piano Man.” Enjoy!
It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday, The regular crowd shuffles in. There’s a young man sitting next to me Swiping up, his face making a grin.
He says, “Alexa, can you play me a melody?” I’m not really sure how it goes. But it sounded sweet and I knew it complete, When I wore a baby’s clothes.
Sing us a ding, you’re the smart device. Sing us a ring tonight. Well, we’re all in the mood for a notification, And you’ve got us feelin’ alright.
I thought I’d complete it, adapting the rest of the song words, but as I read the lyrics of the rest of the song, it seemed eerily appropriate. It seems like Billy Joel’s bar is similar to any social media app. What do you think?
Here’s the rest of the song, with only the slightest modifications:
Now John on the app is a friend of mine He gets me my likes for free And he’s quick with a joke or to share your post But there’s some place that he’d rather be He says, “Bill, I believe this is killing me” As the smile ran away from his face “Well, I’m sure that I could be a movie star If I could get out of this place”
Now Paul is a real estate novelist Who never had time for a life And he’s talkin’ with Davy, who’s still in the story And probably will be for life And the comedian is practicing politics As the marketers slowly get drowned Yes, they’re sharing a reel they call loneliness But it’s better than scrollin’ alone
It’s a pretty good crowd for a Saturday And the Faang* gives me a smile ‘Cause he knows that it’s me they’ve been comin’ to see To forget about life for a while And the app, it sounds like a carnival And the microphone smells like a beer And they sit on the app and put bread in my cap And say, “Man, what are you doin’ here?”
* FAANG: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google
My cab driver replied, when I asked him if we were on the right route. The criss-crossed, perfectly planned, roads of Lutyens Delhi all looked the same to me. And their names — the names of kings and their ministers — that we struggled to memorise in our social studies class in school. It was a struggle then. And it continues to be a struggle, all these years later, to distinguish between the roads named after them.
But my cab driver had circled these roads for several years. And he knew them well. He also noticed something.
“You see these trees here?”
Lutyens Delhi has beautiful tree-lined roads.
“Yes, that’s what I love about this part of town,” I said.
“They’re tamarind trees. And never once, have I seen flowers or fruits on them,” said the cabbie.
And his explanation was simple. It’s because the trees are surrounded by politicians.
I try not to talk about politics with cab drivers. But that comment on the tamarind trees helped me open up about my opinions, and through the rest of the journey, we continued our conversation around modern politics, agreeing with each other’s assessment of how low Indian politics was.
“You must show them music.”
We were visiting my aunt in Bengaluru. She has a lovely garden, filled with bonsais and orchids. And her betel-leaf plant, has no rival anywhere on this planet — in its appearance, and taste!
She was sharing the secrets to her green thumb. They are very sensitive, she said. And they love music. Don’t play them the same music every time. Mix it up, rock music, Bollywood, bhajans… Keep them happy, she said.
I love pine cones.
Ever since I first saw them as a little kid, when my father took us for a vacation, I have been fascinated by them. We’d picked up a couple that we found on the ground during that vacation, and I hadn’t had the joy of picking up another.
So when I saw a pine tree in the college, I was excited. But during the three years I spent there, it never bloomed.
I continued to visit the college, as part of the Alumni Association, for the next several years. Every time I visited the college, I’d look up, only to find needles. No cones.
And then, one day, I saw them. Several of them.
“This pine tree has cones in it!”
I jumped for joy, as a teacher and a couple of students looked at me. I can’t say for sure, but it’s likely, that they were amused by my childlike behaviour and my explanation. I told them:
This tree is happy! This tree is responding to the energy around it. Truth be told, when we were in college, this place was dead. No energy, and a lot of negativity. But now, it is so lively. There is so much energy around here. And now this tree has cones in it!
“This tree was planted when I joined this college,” replied the amused teacher. “It’s twenty-five years old. Back then, I didn’t think it would even survive this weather,” he added.
“Well, if we didn’t kill it, maybe our lot wasn’t that bad, then?”
Back in college, I went with a friend of mine, to a debate being held in another campus.
We located the room in which the debate was to be conducted, and then waited, as the participants trickled in. The room was large, the ceilings high. Perhaps, it could have comfortably seated a hundred people. Multiple doors and large windows on either side ensured there was good ventilation and ample natural light. On one side of the room, was an open passage, that overlooked a beautiful, large lawn. The other side, also had an open passage, that overlooked an atrium.
The room began filling up, one by one. There were, perhaps, thirty students, in all, when I began to feel a little uneasy.
It was early winter. There was that wonderful Delhi-winter sunshine around us. The room was large, and people, fewer than half capacity. And yet, I felt suffocated. I couldn’t understand why.
“Oh, we’re not participating. We’re just here to see,” I don’t recall which one of us replied to the participant’s question.
“Oh, no wonder you look so relaxed!” she replied.
And that’s when it struck me. That uneasy feeling wasn’t within me. It was in the air.
The collective tension was being spread by the participants, that, being an objective observer, I had experienced externally, as opposed to internally.
The deluge – pencil sketch drawn many years ago
They say, that man’s best friend is a dog. I believe, that humanity’s best friend is practically everything under the sun, except another human being.
Plants and animals can understand human energy, better than other humans. And that’s because humans have that one ability — no, handicap — that other creatures don’t have — telling lies. We lie to others. And we lie to ourselves. And we spend a lifetime on this planet just trying to figure out the truth about ourselves. For some, that truth comes through reading, or speaking with close family and friends. For others, it comes through art. Humans invented psychology to help figure out the human mind. And science, to explain energy. And for anything that couldn’t be explained by either, there was religion.
While we are still figuring out ourselves, plants and animals can see right through us. They don’t speak our language. They don’t need to. They just sense.
We are all bundles of energy. We reflect light, and produce sound. We feed off energy. And we disseminate energy.
Vitamin D is known as the sunshine vitamin, because it is produced by the body with the help of sunlight. Sunshine, is also associated with happiness. Perhaps that is why tropical countries tend to be depicted by photographers through smiling portraits. Because even in poverty, the sunlight makes people happy. Sunlight is energy — quite literally.
I once read that looking at flowers, first thing in the morning, makes us feel good. Plants that get ample sunlight, convert the light energy into beautiful flowers. Those flowers are a manifestation of energy.
Those flowers are happy, and we feed off their energy.
And when we feel happy, we spread that energy.
All these disjointed memories, and energy that binds them, came to me after I shared a painting “A Ray of Hope”.
We’re all bundles of energy. We helped create the current pandemic. And we can all feel the after-effects of it. Perhaps for the first time in history, the entire world, is sensing the same type of energy — fear, helplessness, uncertainty, and hope.
Let’s turn this pandemic into an opportunity. To spread positivity. And treat nature — plants and animals with respect. We feed off their energy. We disseminate energy back to them. And the cycle repeats.
I took out the sketchbook from my cupboard, and began drawing. I don’t quite remember, why. I didn’t set out to draw anything in particular. Perhaps, I had just wanted to rediscover what it felt like, to put pencil on paper.
After about an hour, I felt happy with what I had drawn. I wrote down the date and time below the drawing, 27 November 2019, 9:30 PM – 10:30 PM. And then I went to sleep.
Setting the mind and body free
For several years, my sketchbook has been gathering dust in our cupboard. Why? Because I was afraid. Afraid that I would ruin a perfectly clean sheet of A3 drawing paper. That I’d draw something that was not worth showing to anyone.
That November night, I felt that I had achieved something. I had drawn something that looked half decent, and not ruined the sheet. And I slept soundly.
What I didn’t realise then, was that I slept happy, because I had let myself loose and enjoyed the process. I just wanted to draw. And the outcome, just happened to look nice to me.
This realisation hit me earlier this month, when I enrolled for an online sketching class.
For five days, I studied one-point perspective, drawing lines that vanished into the horizon. I spent several hours a day, trying to complete each of the assignments in time. Initially, I fretted over getting each of the lines neat and straight. By the time I had completed my twenty-fifth drawing assignment, I began worrying less about what the final outcome looked like. Completing the assignment, was far more important, than making it look perfect. And so, I just began enjoying the process by drawing freehand. I traced over the pencil lines with my pen, without using a scale.
I had removed the weight of expectation off my shoulder, and that left me feeling deeply relaxed.
With this newfound realisation, I reopened my sketchbook over the weekend, flipped over to that November sketch, and then did something I have never done in my life. I began erasing my drawing.
I erased the dark lines and the shading in between. But I left the faint outlines of the original in place.
I chose colour pencils from my kit — colours to represent nature: sun, fire, trees, wind and water. Then I slid open the blade of the cutter, and began shaving away the wood at the edges of my colour pencils. Each stroke peeling away years of dirt, negligence, and guilt.
And then, I let my hand run free. I ran a damp brush over the coloured areas of the drawing. A pastel shade drenched parts of the paper. A few blobs of water dried in place without blending in. I dipped the pencil tips in water, and let them run deep and dark, revealing each stroke. With each dip, the colour ran for a centimetre or two. In no time, the pencil tips shrunk. Another round under the cutter, and more of the colour lay exposed.
A few hours late into the night, and then a few more the next morning, and my drawing was complete.
I shared this picture on social media, and asked friends to provide a caption. Here’s a list of all the suggestions I received.
Sukriti (beautiful creation)
There is a rainbow of hope, life, vitality on our way…
Vapusa (nature, beauty)
Emerging path
Jeevan chakra (circle of life)
Ray of hope (suggested twice!)
The happy sun
Break the cycle
Circuit breaker
Liberation at any step
What surprised me, was that each of the suggestions revolved around nature, beauty, life, and hope.
These are the themes that we are collectively experiencing these days.
For perhaps the first time in our lives, we are living in uncertainty. All these years, we have been taking our lives for granted. We have tortured and exploited nature past its limits.
Now that large section of people are forced indoors, I am happy that nature has got a break from us. It had barely been a few days into the lockdown, that we all breathed clean air, saw blue skies, and even saw stars at night.
Clear blue skies and clean air, that prompted some stories on Instagram on 28 March 2020
Earlier today, a weaver bird began building a nest in the balcony of my parents’ apartment! And what a day for this to happen.
Today is the 50th anniversary of World Earth Day.
Yes, our planet is a mess right now. Scientists have been ringing the alarm bells on climate change for years now, predicting that we are already too late to turn things around and make amends.
But, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the past few weeks, is that we have hope. Given a chance, nature can recover (and perhaps forgive us).
Here’s hoping you are safe and healthy.
Here’s hoping our planet remains safe and healthy.
More stories from other publications
Here are some stories I’ve written for different publications over the past few weeks, all related to the current Covid-19 Pandemic, how it’s impacted our life, and what we can learn about how to live sustainably in the future.
I’ve been looking at this scenario as an opportunity for companies to go fully remote. Most freelancers, including me, have not had to change our lifestyles much, as we’re used to working remotely. We’re already using technology all around us. If we could reduce our commute to work, we’d significantly reduce the fuel emissions from transportation…
In our hyper connected world, and the ease with which we can now travel, it seems difficult to be confined to a small area. Yet, it is some of the technology behind this hyper connectedness, that makes it possible to remain connected, while being distant…
So here we are, in 2020. Quarantined due to a pandemic. Travel, as we knew it for the last few years, and to a large extent, took for granted, has come to a grinding halt.
I can’t help but think that this is some grand cosmic conspiracy, to put us in our place — literally. To slow us down.
Musings of an eccentric mind 