climate transition, public policy, etc. at @Harvard argumentative citizen, hence arguing.
Delhi - Boston
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A more optimistic account (as conscience demanded), with Bayesian updating. And a little commentary on my favorite bird. Also appreciating the shape of the beast that is hope in Indian democracy
bhatotia.substack.com/p/we-a…
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For 13 years, Pakistani lecturer and poet Junaid Hafeez has endured imprisonment, prolonged isolation and a death sentence while his appeal remains pending. His case exposes the devastating human cost of blasphemy laws & justice delayed.
@dawn_com: buff.ly/Ipf2tWJ
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After reading Annie Dillard’s 1982 essay collection, “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” Robert P. Baird sent her a fan letter. A few months later, she responded kindly and at length. The two struck up a fast friendship, lasting through the final quarter century of Dillard’s life. “It is simple enough, and true enough, to say that Annie was unlike anyone I’d ever met, then or since,” Baird writes.
Dillard, who died last week, at 81, catapulted to literary stardom after a chapter from what would be her first book, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” was discovered in a Harper’s slush pile. A year later, Harper’s Magazine Press published the book, and, a year after that, it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Her work wrestled with the questions of existence, pain, beauty, and suffering. She was generous to a stupefying degree, quick to crack a joke, and loved to play Anagrams. Baird remembers Annie Dillard—the writer and his friend—who took as her subject the entire world: newyorker.com/culture/postsc…
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Whatever book you pick up, it’s likely to make you feel better—maybe even a whole lot better. “In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks,” Ceridwen Dovey writes, in “Can Reading Make You Happier?,” which was published in 2015. Dive into the research behind the therapeutic effect of books: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/Wv…
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In an age of AI-generated text, handwriting may matter less because it is faster and matter more because it preserves friction in the act of thinking.
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Paul Scott’s novel, Staying On, won the Booker Prize in 1977. It’s a follow up to his Raj Quartet, and about an English couple who stayed on after the end of the Raj.
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Not only did India not do that, but all British civil servants in India were allowed to retain their jobs on their original expatriate terms, including a promise of promotion prospects. The last British Indian Civil Service member didn't leave Indian service until 1968.
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I hate how all the worst kinds of people on this website feel entitled to speak on Indian history all of the sudden.
The worst thing the British Empire did to its colonies was probably unifying India.
They governed it fine but their centralization of bureaucratic power entrenched enormous poverty ever since (c.f. the Permit Raj).
India would have done much better as 5-10 separate countries.
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In light of AI panic have been thinking about this great David Graeber essay, on the controversy among evolutionary biologists over whether animals can play, and whether humans evolved consciousness in order to lie
thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-…
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Unnamed literary agent in @thedrift_mag's anonymous AI confessional. (Love this format.)
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Annie Dillard has died, aged 81: nytimes.com/2026/09/16/books…
There are writers who change what you see. Dillard changed how closely you look, and how long you are willing to stay with something you don't quite understand.
Her writings have deeply influenced both @AratiKumarRao and me, and underpins the thinking behind much of the work Arati does with Marginlands. “We are here to witness,” Dillard wrote -- five words that sum up what we try to do with our From The Marginlands podcast and field work: pay attention, resist the easy explanation, stay long enough for the world to shift what we thought we knew. +
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RIP to the author of one of the greatest essays of all time: theatlantic.com/science/arch…
Breaking News: Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the modern classic “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” has died at 81. nyti.ms/4hrp9BD
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I am very happy to see this wide ranging review from Jacobin. The review does a good job of summarizing my arguments, and its criticisms are serious and thoughtful. This is the kind of engagement I was hoping for. Thank you.
Economist Daron Acemoglu wants liberal democracy to connect with working people’s material interests and political power.
His case for institutional renewal should be taken seriously, but it needs a fuller account of class, war, and worker organization. jacobin.com/2026/09/review-a…
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The very reality of India is to grapple with images of modernity while a footloose citizenry is dwelling on the streets. This is hardly a problem in any real aesthetic sense except it deflates ideological assertions. You don’t have to be insecure about it and very well claim it.
#EditorSPeak: While a large section of the Western media used pictures of men riding bicycles and sleeping at bus stops for their coverage of the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, here are facts about India that these deep-rooted stereotypes miss year after year
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Whatever one thinks of Manu Joseph, his writing has an elemental surprise which makes good writing good. You’re right, this rant seems derivative and isn't remotely teeth-gritting. Elbowing out of dhakka-mukki doesn't mean you get anointed; these are not big frustrating problems!
Ever since childhood - one thing has not changed. There are too many of us (Indians).
Line up for ration, dhakka mukki in public bus, cram for engineering/medical for 0.1% selection rate, and even after getting in, compete for GPA against other god-tier maggus.
Then you go to the US and things are good for a while. You feel you are done with that shit for sometime.
But then too many Indians land up there as well. 5 IIT grads in your team all working weekends and nights eyeing the same manager promotion. You go to Costco and every one of those God-tier maggus is also getting the same damned deal - wtf - there's no coming out ahead.
All of your kids are competing to be top 5% in their class so they can get default admission into U of T at state tuition rates. Unfortunately you all live in the same suburbs built for new immigrants 20 years back. And 100% of kids cannot be 5%.
Yo - wasn't the whole point of mugging that your kids didn't have to?
You even bought a nice watch for yourself with your Faang gains, but then the famous Desi watch collector on X said it was overpriced crap and now you are looking at his collection and once again you feel like a 6.0 GPA in IIT.
The white racists notice too. And now they are complaining there are too many of you too. Yes Darling - we know. No one's more aware of this than us.
Even as you write this, you realize Manu Joseph - another Desi never mind the pseudo Anglican name - has probably written something like this. So you will even be the 107856th Indian to note in mildly clever prose that there are too many Indians.
You keep running all your life, but the Desi competition doesn't change. It's a constant - like Speed of Light. Fucking same in every reference frame.
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