Good Fortune

Every few days, I am reminded of how lucky I have been in my PhD life so far. I see friends struggling with problems in their personal or family lives or struggling with indifferent or incompetent supervisors. I have none of those problems. My PhD was off to a rocky start, but I managed to get back on my feet with the support of family, friends and teachers. Anything can happen at any time, but I do feel my stars have been aligned so far.
But, along with my good fortune, I am also reminded of how easy it is to lose one's way in the final stages of the PhD. It is not a place I want to be, and having been blessed with aforementioned luck, there is no reason for me to end up in such a place. If I do end up in such a place, I will have only myself to blame. But, there is a difference between a sense of urgency and desperation. I don't feel desperate, I feel super-focused and super-motivated. Maybe this state of mind won't last, but until it does I plan to make the most of it. 

Last Night in Brighton

Tomorrow morning, I return to Bristol after the Christmas break to face the most crucial six months of my PhD. As I was walking along the seafront in Brighton this evening, it occurred to me that the next six months will be the longest stint in Bristol at a stretch since I moved there more than three years ago. Every other stint has been punctuated with breaks to Brighton, my sister's place in Madrid, or India where I spent almost five months this year. Ideally, I would like to get more comfortable in Bristol. While I am fond of the city, I still feel like I haven't put roots down there. But, there seems to be little point in doing so now. In the next 6-9 months, I will know whether I will be staying on in Bristol or moving away.
But, this post is about Britain. On this trip, I preferred to go for my daily seafront walks in the evening, when it is much less crowded. It weather has not been too cold by December standards and the wind has not been very brisk either. My walk on Christmas eve was the most enjoyable I have been on in months. I tried to recreate that experience, and managed to partially do so today. Having the sea so close by is a blessing, although it is still not comparable to the year and half I spent in Holland at a stone's throw away from Scheveningen beach. That is where I discovered the pleasure of nightly walks on the beach. The beach was sandy too, so I could go right up to the water.
I am  just rambling now. Time to put this one to bed.

Poetry and Resistance

In times such as these, prose feels like an ineffectual tool. The language of reason, of facts, of well-laid arguements seems no match for the flames of fascism. Fascism brings to life its own vocabulary of hate, of stark binaries, of outright lies. It invokes a mythic past and promises a magical future. Mad hate cannot be conquered by reason, or sarcasm, or education, it must be conquered by love.
The resistance must find its own language of love and hope. Its not enough for its words to illuminate, they must uplift. The writers must cede ground to the poets, or become poets themselves. Words of prose are ingested, digested and assimilated or forgotten. Words of  poetry keep ringing in the readers' heads. They come from a deeper place and hence travel further. Shorn of intellectual affectation, they speak to the human spirit. And, the language of resistance must speak to the human spirit, to hearts not to heads. It is challenging to do that without relying on the language of hate, of blind anger, of machismo. Which is why the poets of the resistance are infinitely better than the poets of fascism. 

Guns and Roses

This was going to be a post about how protests are a fascinating terrain for sociological study. But, that seems flippant and self-involved, given what is at stake in the current protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in India. The incident I was going to write about was the photo of a cute and coquettish well-heeled protestor in Delhi giving a rose to a policeman, while his colleagues grin as he blushes. Only the privileged would dream about giving a rose to a policeman, who is someone to be feared and avoided by the poor. If you are poor and from a low caste, an interaction with a policeman often starts with him slapping you in the face. But, what would the point of such a post be beyond pointing out the obvious caste privilege and coming across as  being churlish and judgemental from the safety of an armchair in another country?
Protest and popular movements may reflect social hierarchies but they also  have the potential to test social hierarchies, build unnatural alliances and reimagine one's status in society. 

Attractiveness and Racial Envy

I have discovered that I am deeply interested in the topic of attractiveness. Just yesterday, I read an interesting take on the furore caused by a famous black rapper saying Britain was racist. The take was that a  lot of the anger at the rapper was driven by white men's sexual envy towards the rapper, who is smart, exceptionally talented, good-looking and unapologetically black. The take went on to say that victims of  police brutality tend to be quite good-looking black men. Of course, attraction is in the eye of the beholder, but not completely. Some people are generally perceived to be more attractive than others and that is the harsh truth. But, I am also interested in the racial dimension of envy. I have noticed that there are no bad-looking hippies of colour. If you are a hippy of colour, then to be socially accepted, chances are you have to be gorgeous. The same doesn't apply to white hippiesTo feel secure in an alternative lifestyle, if you lack the privilege of whiteness, you need to rely on the advantage of your attractiveness. White people get more leeway to pursue alternative lifestyles, and so do attractive people. Few people possess the self-confidence to be completely immune to the jdugement of the wider society, as well as the judgement of their peers in the alternative lifestyle. A plain-looking hippy of colour is an object of pity or derision, a good-looking one is a subject of curiosity or amusement. People have also pointed out that average-looking white men attract much more attention on dating websites than  average-looking Asian men. 

My First Time Being Trolled Online

I always knew I could never be active on Twitter, because I couldn't stomach the abuse. Maybe it is my INFJ personality, but personal criticism really gets to me. Today, I got trolled online for the first time. It was in response to a comment I left on a friend's timeline who is on the other side of the political divide but who I know to be a decent person. The troll was facebook's friends with this friend. I always knew right-wing trolls were angry, rabid and incoherent, but it is still an experience to be at the receiving end of their ire. The one thing I know is that I shouldn't try to out-troll a troll. I don't have the wit to do it and the emmotional resilience to fend off a pile-up, and I really admire people who do. Maybe, I am underestimating myself. Maybe one need not be born resilient to become resilient. Yes, the first brush with trolls leaves one feeling hairy. But the first reaction need not be the last reaction. 

Long Night in India

Its 4:00am in India but Indian twitter is still buzzing. The protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act are continuing, and the police have taken to brutalizing ostensibly Muslim protestors and being more tolerant towards non-Muslims. Police in plain-clothes make trouble, which gives the paid-news media footage of "violent protestors" which gives the police an excuse to charge them with batons. The Muslim protestors are battered and terrified, the Hindu protestors  are put off by the 'violent' Muslim protestors, or simply lose interest and the country can go back to being a fascist dictatorship. An absence of morals or kindness is a superpower.
I feel the bloodshed is just starting in India. If fascism has one weakness, it is it cannot back down from a major action. Losing face with their rabid supporters is political suicide. It doesn't matter how much the New York Times or The Guardian condemns them. Fascism stops for nothing or noone once it has grown beyond a point. The state's violent repression will be brutal but is expected (easy for me to say from an armchair in the UK). What is more terrifying is how the rabid masses, fed on a drip diet of fake news and hate news, will react. At  the moment, the protestors are those opposed to the state. What will happen when the tens of millions of Indians who voted for Modi take to the streets in his defence. The Indian state is used to being the organizer of violence. I shudder to think what will happen if there is actual riot, like there was during the partition of India. 
But,resistance is the only path forward. There is no going back to willing blindless and complicity through inaction. What will  be, will be. Fascism will either burn the world down or will burn out in the process.