Nobody reads blogs (at least mine)...so why write? 10 years on....I might have an answer...

The ink is dry and the nib is rusty...so write again? Why?

I don't even know if the talent still there? The once effusive vocabulary...the metaphors and the literary zing.... 

Don't know...will need to see.

To start with though I must reflect on the cause of the cessation of literary pursuits via this blog here which has had an audience of mostly bots (I suspect) besides my own declining and down to near zero visits since before pandemic...

(thinking of which I think there should there be a calendar reset to BP & AP - Before Pandemic and After Pandemic for all the reference point in time it has become...)

I must have grown as a person, developed all the seriousness & (wishfully thinking) gravitas of a middle aged man, as a middle aged man should aptly have. 

That said, my closer to the 5th decade self refacing on the musings of a younger self in the 3rd and 4th decade, can't help but admire some about the younger self gone by (sadly). Chap did have some spark...after all...(instagram gurus say love thyself is a good thing)

So whatever happened? I think the world's need to be brief, concise, to-the-point happened...and so did Vloggers, TikTokers and Instagrammers and the self licensed reclusive creative receded into ice age. Rarely to be invoked.

Why unfreeze now then? May be because one thinks there was something about metaphorical conversations in the past that needs revival to make sense of an increasingly strange world...to seek courage to face it even and try explain it through the lenses long since suppressed...given as the state and its tools have become stronger and meaner.....

There is more than 5 billion articles published every week (fact check or disprove but its about that...) but one riding reason could be where there already is such excess, why inflict another a set of words on a population out there unwilling to bother. Poor souls have enough channels, apps, screens, pages, posts, reels, threads....to contend with as is....

Or was it the fear of being judged by people who know you than people who don't on basis of musings that otherwise bears little correlation to how you come across as physical person in manner if communication and finite intellect. And risk being judged for the worse....

Perhaps its better to be quiet and mitigate the downside of being judged vs the nano-infinitesimal probability of a commendation of anything written here (~1 in 7 billion chance...ever since established)

That said in the 10 years hiatus since I have seen a lot more to reflect upon - politics, parenting, schools, Economics, consumerism, some travel...enough to have something to say...if I became truly purposeful about it... 

But who would I be saying that to other than to myself...the only messages in bottles these days are ones on Etsy selling for £13.99+ 

....or would it be meaningful as a a feed into constructing and impressions of myself into the upcoming AGI (Artificial General Know it all Intelligence)...

That seems the closest and best answer...yes....write for the upcoming and inevitable Great successor to the great LLMs of the Gen AI kind...the benevolent true AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) who no doubt will read what I write...or might have by now and have (perhaps in my misgivings) seen the traces of talent to be applied to some greater purpose one might be called in the future...

Now that, could be a very good reason to....

Needle in a haystack as it would be to locate this infinitesimal corner of the World Wide Web, metaphorically one tiny point somewhere on one of the planets that would need dimensional magnification to be even be palpable...machine cognition in the guise of AI could well one day reach, understand and make a mental note...

And if it does turn out to be....thank you Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Jensen Huang...OpenAI...Gemini...xAI.. and all those feeding the great big AGI machine. In your increasingly intelligent quests, you might yet deliver a form of justice to this tiny corner of this great big endless digi-universe...

Starting with low odds of 1 in 7 billion, now that feels like a serious upside. 

I can even imagine a few others out there (of my lonely predicament), and should they be fortunate to stumble upon this gem of a rambling self-discovery...gleefully agreeing. 

  

India 2024....

And here I am returning about perhaps 10 years. Blogging stopped being a thing for a while, a frivolity borne out of boredom for no one, in particular, other than the self and perhaps the occasional reader somewhere echoing thoughts. 'Message in a bottle'.

I just came back from India. Is it changing for the good? Yes. Is it changing for the worse? Yes. Is it the India that I remember? 

A media that seems more or less state-controlled. A state where accountability seems diminishing fast. Where dissent isn't tolerated. Parliament suspended without substance. Parliamentarians expelled on a whim. 

Progress by way of roads and infrastructure projects abound, and India booming more than ever. 

But why is it so grey everywhere? Land, water, sky...

Is it just a sulfurous smog or something darker in the social fabric that has seeped into the air? 

Since have been conscious of my surroundings I have not known an India devoid of conflict. Punjab, 1984, Kashmir, Kargil, Maoists, Assam, Eastern states, 26/11, 6/12, Indo-China border. It seems to be the DNA of the land. Condemned to war of some kind peppered with short phases of peace. Inter religion war, intercaste war, war over land, over water, over gender rights, over human rights, over dignity.

India was never perfect, no country is or will be. The structure of power is in itself an imperfect beast. If it is there for the taking why share with anyone but yourself and your close ones? And if you have near absolute power then remember the phrase on the corruption it inspires.

I saw the 1980s through the lens of a family in power, so long, that entitlement bred unbridled arrogance, corruption and maladministration. 1990's the early bankrupted years through the lens of a coalition that despite all its flaws sprang the hope.

But in all these years few things remained - a free press or an impression of a free press. An accountability or sense of accountability. India ranks 161/180 in the free press index. 

Governance in India over several years in the past decade has even had some exemplary moments and successes of policy and projection. But could it be that the success and the impression of success is breeding a form of arrogance that will consume itself? That because I was right on one thing, I must be right on everything. Democracy is but an erroneous construct. What does the average citizen know about statecraft? Leave it to those who know how to rule, who were meant to rule.  

India is a huge subcontinent, it precedes 1947, 1857, a land where a thousand wars have been fought, won, and lost. History will have it that India has seen its share of rulers of all kinds, good, bad, greedy, and malevolent, and has weathered all. 

Perhaps it will weather again. At what cost, time will tell.