Kolkata

Scrolling through the News Feed on Facebook, I found a video of Pokemon Season 1’s theme song rendered by the same guy who first sang it 20 years back. This was after midnight and I was trying to get back to sleep after being awakened by my cellphone ringing, but seeing this video set my heart beating. It sent my pulse racing, adrenaline flowing, hormones crazy and caused practically every biological event associated with nostalgic excitement. Suddenly I was transported back 13 years to class 6, waking up in the morning to “I’ll be the very best, that no one ever was… Ta ta ta ta… To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause”. It is incredible how a mere cartoon had assumed such larger than life importance. However, this article is not about Pokemon. It is about the place where I used to stay when all this was happening. The place where I grew up, went to school, made the best friends, and then left more than 6 years back to only come back to sporadically for a few days every year. It’s, perhaps ironically, referred to as the ‘City of Joy’. That place is Kolkata.

It’s a dying city. Everyone with a sensible head on their shoulders is leaving. Soon it will become a relic of the past, a mere shadow of its vibrant self during British India. Disasters happen every now and then. It’s too hot. Way too humid. Bengalis are lazy. They do nothing but have cha-adda sessions, eat roshogollas and discuss politics. The government is fucked up. Industry is decaying. There is too much traffic. Rallies and roadblocks every day. No one has any ambition. It’s dirty. It’s disorganized. It’s overlooked during national development. Kichu hobe na Kolkatar. Kichhhu hobe na!

Are we done? Good. Now that we have got the mandatory negatives out of the way, let’s come to Kolkata. Not the ‘Kolkata’ which people in their final year of college refer to as the last place they want to get placed at, but the real Kolkata. What exactly is Kolkata?

It might seem weird that I, someone who hasn’t lived in Kolkata for a long while, should try to answer this question. But I have lived long enough in the city to try to characterize it. Kolkata is a place which thinks. It acts less. It thinks more. People use their brains. That, fortunately or unfortunately, is not the key to development the way we know it today. Development is about action. At some point you have to stop thinking and go for it. Build something and see how it turned out. Chances are it won’t be the perfect thing. But then, people don’t generally look for the perfect thing. Much as I may love math, the world is based on engineering, not math. Engineering is based on being ‘correct enough’, not perfect. As a simple example, think of a video you’re playing on your computer screen. Is it really a fluidly moving picture, the way things move in real life? The answer is no. A video is a collection of images which are displayed at a rate of 50 every second. So one image stays on the screen for about 20 milliseconds before being replaced by its next. Now, when the human eye sees an image, it stays in the brain for up to 100 milliseconds (this phenomenon is called persistence of vision). So if the image gets replaced by another within 20 milliseconds, the human eye won’t be able to distinguish between them and call them separate images. The result is that the video appears to exactly mimic real life where something moves continuously.

How did human beings come to realize this? Engineering. Engineers realized that by showing 50 images per second, they were being good enough for human eye purposes. If an ant was being shown a video, it might experience ‘framing’ or ‘buffering’ effects if its persistence of vision happens to be less than 20 milliseconds. In that case, ant engineers would simply increase the frame rate to a number such that it appears to be smooth to ant eyes. That’s all you need, being ‘good enough’. Don’t strive for perfection because that’s an ideal concept to be dreamed about, not to be attempted in reality.

And it’s here where Kolkata is being naive. Kolkatans like to dream. They are idealists. Hopeless and helpless romantics. They believe in emotions and beauty instead of trying to build something which works. Other people build things that are ‘good enough’. And when it ceases to be ‘good enough’, they build a better version. And then a better one. Always strive for something which gets the job done. Where is the need to do extra stuff and try to be too good? You might have heard people telling you to go the extra mile and do things not asked for, because hey, extra goodness never hurts right? You know what? It does. Extra goodness does hurt. I have learnt this thing in the US. People appear to be so good and efficient at what they do, but that’s because they only do what’s needed to be done without worrying about doing extra. You don’t have to be a hero, it will come back to haunt you later. That extra thing you do will eat into your leisure time, which will leave you dissatisfied with your leisure, which will leave you craving more leisure, which, ultimately, will eat up into the time in which you were supposed to be doing your job. So don’t go the extra mile. Do as much as is needed, but do that very well.

And you dickhead Kolkata, you won’t realize this. Kolkatans are too bothered about others, about trying to do more than necessary and finally ending up doing less of what is necessary. There’s one more thing. Presentation. Kolkata isn’t bothered about presentation. It doesn’t fit in with their mode of idealism and with their intelligence. Let’s face it, Kolkata people are intelligent. Call me proud, but I will say this, in terms of pure intelligence, Kolkatans rank very high. Some of the best scientists and researchers in the country come from Kolkata. But, and this is a big ‘but’, in terms of useful intelligence, Kolkata either falls woefully short or just decides not to use it. You see, presentation is important because the world has a lot of people and communication between different individuals and groups is a key way to success and development. There’s only so much that can be done alone. 2 non-Kolkata heads, each having 60% of the intelligence of a single Kolkata head, still has more combined intelligence. And no matter how much you pride your individuality, at some point you have to rely on other humans. I am guessing Einstein probably didn’t cook too often, he relied on someone to do it for him. You need presentation and communication to get yourself in the spotlight and get resources to develop further. There’s another name for it, it’s called advertising. Kolkata sucks at it.

There’s a flip side to this. It’s that when something is ‘bad enough’, you should not do it. This is where the dirty side of Kolkata comes into play. I read an article years back that it’s becoming a red city thanks to the alarming frequency at which betel leaf (paan) chewers spit in every place and direction imaginable. Now here’s the thing, spitting betel juice is something ‘bad enough’ for people to refrain from doing. In other words, it shouldn’t be done. These are cases where you should go the extra mile in keeping the juice inside your mouth till you get to a appropriate place to spit it out. In fact, I shouldn’t be calling it ‘going the extra mile’. This is going the regular mile, it’s part of your duty. It’s something taxi drivers in Kolkata should be worried about. And having measures in place to attempt to curb this menace (and usher in increased hygiene in general) is something the government should be doing, it’s part of their job, not part of the extra mile. But like I said, Kolkata isn’t really bothered about presentation. People are gonna keep living in Kolkata anyway, who cares if I bless this particular square inch of Tollygunge Circular Road with my prized red spit? Except that people are not continuing to keep on living in Kolkata, many are leaving. It’s not directly due to a single gob of spit, but the overall tarnish and lack of presentation and shine in a city where people don’t seem to care about such things.

Politics. I won’t pretend to know much about it because I don’t. I do know communist guys ruled the city for 34 years and evidently did more bull shit than good, then were replaced by a lady who epitomizes the reason why I don’t want to marry, because I don’t want to stand the tantrums of a physically and vocally gigantic female. Anyway, Mamata Banerjee, a good friend of mine tells me, is not very educated. Period.

Sports. Yay, let’s talk sports. This is one of the brightest points to life in Kolkata. The city loves football. Apart from having a rich history in the sport, Kolkatans are extremely passionate about the game. India has never played in the football world cup and hasn’t come close to qualifying in recent memory (and never will, even if 100 nations contested the world cup), yet inexplicably Kolkata celebrates events like the World Cup as if it’s happening in its own backyard. Look at the Brazil and Argentina flags in nondescript Kolkata bylanes and you would be forgiven for thinking the actual teams were staying in a hotel a mile away. This ridiculous fanaticism aside, Kolkatans understand their football. They can talk about it. Talk knowledgeably, that is. Much too knowledgeably for your liking. They ardently support clubs in Europe and follow the game regularly. This is in contrast to most other parts of India, which follow the behemoth known as cricket. I used to follow cricket till recently, then somehow I lost interest to the extent that now choosing to watch cricket while a football game is on would be as absurd as eating green vegetables when there’s chicken in the fridge. (Although now that I am getting older, I will admit that I have begun to see the benefits of green vegetables and might actually opt for them even when there’s chicken in the fridge. But I will never opt for cricket when football is on.)

Now let’s come to the general idea of Kolkata and its perceived decay. Is Kolkata really decaying? That depends on how you define decay. It is not as glitzy and job-creating and youth-attracting as Delhi or Bangalore or Mumbai, but it’s not decaying. The city retains its charm, its unique pulse, its own throbbing existence. People care. They feel things from deep down. They speak from their heart. They are not hypocrites. They know their stuff and impart their knowledge freely, even when no one asked for it. Kolkatans are kind. They are not generous, they are probably more cheap than their counterparts in other cities, but Kolkatans are nice. They really is no other word for it. Kolkatans are nice. Modern society rewards hard work, efficiency and minding your own business. I am not debating whether this is good or bad, but that’s the way it is. Kolkata is not hardworking, it’s inefficient and constantly pokes its nose elsewhere. Modern society rewards presentation and professionalism, not romanticism. Kolkata is romantic and unprofessional. Do you see where I am going? A hospital in Kolkata will have some of the best doctors in the country, but its exterior will be so dilapidated, you would much rather fly to a different city to get yourself treated rather than enter that building. Kolkata is just different from what the average person perceives as appropriate. That doesn’t mean its bad. Is it bad to be different? You tell me.

Death Note – An Analysis

Chances are, you watch Japanese anime. Chances are, you were a fan of Pokemon a decade back. Chances are, you find Japanese animation style somewhat kitsch at times. Whatever the chances, Death Note is an anime worthy of being eulogized, having its own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and being discussed and dissected for decades. It is intense, it is gripping and the overall mixture of animation, dialogue and music is exceedingly well done. But over and above everything, it makes you think about various issues of morality, righteousness and character in human beings (and perhaps supernatural beings as well). In this article, I’ll examine some of its themes.

Quick facts: Death Note was originally published as a Japanese manga in 2003 and then aired as a 37-episode series in 2006-07. This article deals with the anime series, as shown in its English dub. The story starts when Light Yagami, a high school student with a brilliant mind, finds a notebook lying around. This is a Death Note, with the property that whoever’s name is written on it will die. Light’s original plan is to use the notebook to kill all criminals and create a ‘new world’ of which he is the god, but things start to become interesting when L, an eccentric genius of a sleuth, decides to track down the owner of the Death Note and stop him from killing.

Note: This article is intended for those who have watched the series. There are spoilers to follow, so don’t read if you’re intending to watch. The episodes are 22 minutes long on average and most of them are available on YouTube.

Creation of a New World

Light’s primary purpose for the Death Note is to create a world free from criminals and wrongdoers. This is what he does in the first few episodes and later what Mikami attempts to do overzealously. It’s quite obvious that Mikami is a fanatic. He wanted to kill his own mother because she told her son that things won’t always happen the way he wants. What exactly did Mikami want? He wanted an end to murder, rape, theft, assault and everything else that keeps the police busy. To achieve this, he wanted to kill all the bad guys responsible for these acts. Is this a bad thing to want? Let’s ignore the fact that Mikami also wanted to kill bullies in his school and people who might have been simply ogling the breasts of a female standing next to them in bus. Let’s just focus on the fact that Mikami and Light both wanted to end the lives of criminals. Or, as Mikami puts it fittingly, delete them. Delete them from the face of the globe by ending their lives. This is wrong, isn’t it? After all, who is someone like Light to take law into his own hands? That’s what you would ordinarily think. But, let’s say you are a female who is walking alone along a dark alley when you are surrounded by a couple of goons and forced to do stuff against your will. Let’s make this clear. Let’s say you are coerced into having sex with them, after which they leave you bleeding and half-dead. Now let’s say you also know that these goons will be later found out, captured and punished. Will the knowledge of this fact save you at that instant of time or lessen the impact this encounter will have on your mind? Will this fact in any way manage to undo the instillment of a certain amount of fear in the hearts of other girls like you? Will it empower them to walk alone at night, knowing that even if they are raped, the rapists will be caught and punished? The point which I am trying to make here is that the punishment doesn’t generally fit the crime. A crime such as rape or even assault and burglary can’t only be measured in terms of what happens in those five minutes. The impact it leaves on the victim and her loved ones is so deep it may never heal. People get scarred for life, the lasting impression of a malicious grin as someone clubs you on the head or forces you into submission on a dark night under the glow of owl’s eyes is something which haunts you every waking moment and changes you forever as a person.

I study in Los Angeles where there’s a big brouhaha at the start of a new school year about staying safe because crimes happen a lot around the campus. There are a myriad of security measures in place, but thefts and sexual assaults still keep happening at the rate of roughly one every fortnight. Assuming half of them go unreported, that’s one every week – quite a staggering number. People take extra precautions and lead their lives differently because they don’t feel safe. Given all this, what would you say to deleting all wrongdoers from the face of the earth? You snatch an iPhone from someone. How dare you? It’s his iPhone. Who gave you the right to take it away? You are the scum of the earth, not fitting to leave your footprints in this world. So die, bastard, die. Makes sense? This is what Light Yagami must have been thinking as he wrote on the pages of his Death Note. Some guy John is a criminal, will be jailed for one year, then will walk out as a free man with his crime forgotten or perhaps serving as encouragement for others like him who think it’s ok to do whatever they want. No, that just won’t do. Delete him and make the world a better place. Free it from all such Johns and Dicks (pun intended) and establish order. No crime, no wrongdoing. A perfect world. Is that a bad thing to ask for? And when L stands in his way, is it bad to want L to die? It will be sacrificing a pawn in a chess game to checkmate the opponent’s king. Remove those who stand in the way of establishing a flawless world and let perfectly ordered peace and safety prevail. Pretty neat, huh?

Except the question begs to be answered, who the hell is Light Yagami to decide all this and become the ‘god of the new world’? Well, to begin with, he is exceedingly intelligent. The god of the new world really cannot be someone like Misa Amane who doesn’t have a holistic sense of greater good in mind. Most people are like Misa, they seek out a niche for themselves to be happy in and stay happy. A little, starving boy in Somalia gets a job which pays for regular food and becomes happy. A girl in Budapest does not feel the need to learn any other language, just Hungarian is sufficient to find a lover and be happy forever in Hungary. A Maori tribal can just count up to 5, but that’s all he needs to be happy. Basically people only go that many furlongs as is necessary to make themselves happy. Why bother about the rest of the world? BUT, and this is a big but, that’s not how Light Yagami’s mind works. You may call him ambitious and that’s probably a bad thing in this context, but he does have the foresight and mental resources to care about the whole world and strive to make it a better place. Even though his methodology may not be commendable, it is very effective. Almost every endeavour in this world becomes more difficult in implementation than in theory because of practical difficulties. Even a proven murderer can’t be sentenced to death straightaway because he can bring a lawyer, there will be protracted court proceedings and finally there’s a chance he may walk scot free, which in turn leads to the chance that he may commit more murders and heap more misery upon others’ lives. In Light’s world, as soon as the man was caught and his name and face shown on TV, he would be dead. Quick, efficient solution. Is that a bad thing?

L

L, for most watchers, is the hero of the series. He’s definitely the most charismatic character, with his sitting style, food habits and way of speaking. You can almost feel the gears churning in his head and the brain cells brimming with energy when he speaks. It’s raw clarity of thought spouting from his forehead like an arrow. Now put L’s tragic death out of your mind and think of his modus operandi. L was willing to torture interrogate Misa in a straitjacket for days even after it became clear that she had no knowledge of being the second Kira (achieved by relinquishing ownership of her Death Note). He kept Light and Soichiro locked up for 43 extra days after Light declared he was not Kira, a statement corroborated by the fact that criminals were still dying without Light possibly being able to kill them. But these are nothing compared to L’s treatment of human lives for his own benefit. Remember Lind L. Tailor dying in Episode 2 Confrontation? L later said ‘I had my guy up there’. He had his guy go up on stage and die to get L one step closer to Kira. Later, L was going to test the Death Note the way a student might test for a chemical in a lab. Test a Death Note? Seriously? For a guy who is supposed to be on the good side? What does this say about L? Is he any different from Light? In L’s defence, he was doing his duty. He had taken it upon himself to find and stop Kira and people like Lind L. Tailor were mere sacrificial pawns in achieving his ends. If L would not have been willing to play with a few lives, Kira would have been that much harder to catch and there would have been more criminal deaths. One might say L decided to sacrifice one or two people to prevent the deaths of thousands in the hands of Kira. Well, Light decided to sacrifice a thousand criminals in order to make the world a better place for the billions that remain. Isn’t the principle the same? L does not care about human lives when they stand in his way to achieving his goal. Light does not care about human lives when they stand in his way to achieving his goal. What Light does on a bigger scale, L does on a smaller scale. But he still does it. If the question is of morality and not of scale, then shouldn’t Light be pardoned for doing short-term bad to achieve long-term good? L is sympathized with and glorified for the way he tracked down Kira. Why not glorify Light for his lofty ideals? How many people would even dare to use a terrifying device such as a Death Note in such an enormously purgatory way as Light attempted?

Near

It was fascinating (and perhaps a bit tiresome) to watch how similar Near’s mannerisms were to L’s. The obsession with childish things for example. L loved cakes. He treated sugar cubes like Lego. He had no dress sense. Near had a set of train tracks. He built matchstick castles. And his smile is the most babyish thing I have seen in the whole series. Yes, this one on the left. Eccentric geniuses is a cliched concept, but it never ceases to amuse me. It’s nature’s way of saying to the world ‘Hey look, these guys have been born with far greater intelligence than most others. They can see through things which you can’t. So pardon them for not exactly being stereotypical people.’ Do real people in the world behave differently and become weird when they start using more brain cells?

I like to think of it this way. Let’s say you’re working on a problem. It could be any problem which is substantially bothering you. To use my own example, since I am a PhD student, the problem could be that I am trying to make sense of seemingly nonsensical data which I got from an experiment. After trying for several days, an epiphany suddenly hits me and I discover a theory which exactly fits the data and explains everything. Yes, everything! It’s a Eureka moment. It must happen to you as well, that sudden flash of ‘Aah, of course! How could I be so blind?’. Now think of your actions immediately following the epiphany. Don’t you behave a bit differently than your normal self? You become oblivious to the world around and the weight of your entire focus falls on the problem, slicing through it like a knife edge and taming the beast. Once that’s done, you go back to your usual self and become aware of the surroundings once again. Now, imagine that instead of solving a single problem, you are confronted with a series of never-ending problems and your mind is constantly experiencing epiphanies which tackle one problem after another. In such a situation, will you be living normally and stopping to do things like saying ‘Hi’ to your office colleagues every time you see them or shopping for groceries? Not likely. Your entire demeanour will take on a different form and you’ll be lost in a world of your own where problems arise like tigers in a jungle licking their lips and you, the hunter, spear them one after the other. Your reality becomes alternating states of frustration, vigilance and ‘Eureka’. You aren’t the same, casual, banal person any more. In those rare moments when there isn’t a tiger in front of you, you imagine tigers appearing and keep wielding your spears – this state of omnipresent alertness and challenge is something that’s part and parcel of you, it defines you as a person and you can’t snap out of it. Now does L’s arrangement of sugar cubes to make a tower in his leisure time make sense? His brain cells need to feed on something, otherwise they start rusting. It’s like the movie Crank, the guy needs to keep adrenaline coursing through his body continuously to prevent himself from dropping dead. The same thing, just replace adrenaline with grey matter. That’s a genius. The world is enriched by their presence.

More stuff

There’s more stuff I want to talk about, but I’ll refrain since they haven’t formed concretely in my head. Such as the characters of Rem and Ryuk. Ryuk didn’t just play the role of comic relief, some of his dialogues were, just like he characterized humans, so interesting. Speaking of comic relief, the degradation of Misa’s role into nothing but that in the latter half of the series didn’t go down too well with me. And there are several individual episodes I want to discuss, the most prominent being Ep 7 Overcast. I might do another article on Death Note some time, the series is just too good to watch once and dismiss.

The Present Pia

This is part 1 of an x-part series.

---

Utopia is a word commonly used to describe a perfect society, where everyone’s desires are supposedly met and no heartburn exists. The opposite is dystopia, a society where everything is bad, there is no happiness and there are overwhelming reasons for humans to complain about the status quo. In this article, I’ll address the question of what our present society is. The next article is about an imagined utopia.

The best answer to which ‘pia’ this world currently is would be neither. Neither is it one where everything is hunky-dory, nor one where everything is horrible. A pessimistic realistic point of view would be that it is closer to a dystopia than a utopia. Think about it, how much of our happiness can we actually control? How many times have you heard the phrase ‘Ok, there’s nothing you can do about it, so just be happy and move on’? Quite a lot, I’m guessing. Humans are forced to manufacture short bursts of happiness because there simply isn’t enough true and unadulterated happiness in our lives. From the time we emerge from the womb, it feels like getting plunged into a world of turmoil. As a baby, you may be suffering from something which you have no way to alleviate or communicate to the ones who can alleviate, because you cannot talk. Memories of the first year or so of our lives are not retained because long term memory doesn’t develop at that time, but if it were retained, I believe the memories would be mostly frustration about the inability to communicate and the serious limitations in our potential to do anything. We were babies after all!

As you grow up, ever since the time you step in a school (yes, even pre-school) or start interacting with other peers, there’s a sense of competition and trying to one-up others. Since everybody’s brought up that way, it seems natural and elders look upon it condescendingly as something that’s bound to happen. The 4-year old who lives next door beat you in a game. Of course, that’s the way we grow up, tasting both victory and defeat. Someone performs better than you at school and gets lauded for it. That’s meant to happen, you should try harder. All this makes sense, doesn’t it?

Except that it doesn’t in a world which wants to push for utopia. In a perfect society where everyone is happy, the concept of coming second best and getting beaten by someone shouldn’t exist. The very concept of competition is meaningless, because everyone’s equal, has a right to happiness and exercises it. Isn’t competition simply a way to make someone more happy at the expense of someone else? In a utopian society, would there be any space for tennis, for example, where there’s always a guy winning and the guy on the other side of the net losing. There should be no losses in utopia. The very concept of striving to be better and learning from your mistakes shouldn’t be there because hey, there are no mistakes and everyone’s contented. After all, how do you define a mistake? Something that’s not acceptable by the general human consensus. Hitting the ball out of court is not acceptable because it makes you lose the rally, and so that’s a mistake. In utopia, even if you hit the ball outside, there would be no problem of any conceivable type and you and everyone else would still merrily go about your and everyone else’s lives.

As you reach the final years of school, you need to study and get into a good college. Again, why? The answer would be that getting into a good college would give you a better quality of education and would make you happier. And how is this ‘quality of education’ thing defined? Firstly, the curriculum is good. It teaches you what you need to fit nicely into industry or higher studies or whatever you want to do. Secondly, classes follow a regular schedule and a student can expect to get a complete body of knowledge by the end of a semester. Thirdly, the knowledge is imparted by people who are experts in that field of knowledge, and, experts in the field of imparting knowledge. This is what a good college should have. But are these really always true?

Firstly, the knowledge that you get, is it really a perfect fit for the life that’s about to come up? For the readers who have completed college, how much do you feel that some course which you took in your third year first semester is helping you in what you’re doing now? How connected are the skills which you need and use now with the skills which college trained (or attempted to train) you in? Even for those who are doing higher studies, what fraction of your undergraduate knowledge do you feel has been very relevant to what you’re working on? I dare you to say a third. Let’s face it, the knowledge gained in high school and undergrad is riddled with the bullet holes of useless and additionally burdensome stuff which you won’t be needing. Secondly, classes may follow a regular schedule, but how much of a regular schedule did you follow? At the end of the semester, for how many courses did you feel that you truly learnt something great and your knowledge has reached a nice benchmark for you to store away and perhaps build on later. It doesn’t work that way, the majority struggle to just pass the exams. I am not going to talk about the third point, you are free to draw your own inferences.

After college comes professional life, marriage, retirement, old age and all that stuff. Where are you being truly happy? Do you ever feel that…
…you have a job where you perfectly fit in, love doing and do for an optimum amount of time which leaves you satisfied and refreshed, and
…a spouse who is perfect in every way, understands you through and through, is a great friend and companion, never gets boring, always puts up with you but without sacrificing his/her own personality, is great in bed, and
…kids who adore you and lead wonderful lives, never coming to you crying and always being contented, and
…enough money to get exactly what you want and an internal regulation mechanism which optimally balances your work and leisure, and
…no diseases, aches or bodily or mental shortcomings, and…
…a perfect life in old age, where you’re always smiling, doing meaningful stuff which you like and finally dying without any suffering at an ideal time, and
…so on ?

You don’t feel any of these things. And yet, all that I mentioned should be there in a perfect society where everyone’s always happy and in perfect harmony with everyone else. What’s so difficult about that?

Except that it doesn’t happen! We hate our jobs. Don’t get along with so-called loved ones. Suffer from debilitating diseases. Struggle before dying. In general, make a whole goddamn mess of life without anything to truly and deeply smile from within about. And that’s why people like to crack jokes and have fun, it helps them to lose themselves in moments of happiness in a world and society where you can never be completely and unconditionally happy.

Taking a cue from Pink Floyd’s Goodbye Blue Sky, here’s what I’d like to ask you:
Di-di-di-did you feel you’re satisfied?
Di-di-di-did you feel your happiness?
Di-di-di-did you ever wonder why you can’t be truly happy when the promise of a nice, better world unfurled beneath the clear blue sky?

I would now like to return to the definitions for utopia and dystopia. Is everyone’s desires met in this world of ours? Not by the wildest and most uncivil and barbarous stretch of imagination. People crave for more, get envious of others, feel pain and sadness and often feel they are underachieving. People get frustrated and disgusted and go about their lives with tense and disturbed minds. And then there are the small matters of Africa being poor, India being overpopulated, the ISIS spreading its tentacles and weather patterns changing for the worse. Which brings me to the definition of dystopia. Won’t you now say that all the happiness out there is only evanescent and there are lots of reasons to complain to the guardian angel of the world about. Wouldn’t you say that we live in more of a dystopia than a utopia?

To be continued…