ts. Think Responsibly

Reflections on Writing and Working

Sadhika Pant

March 11 2025 at 12:13 pm

This new year, a friend managed to wring a resolution out of me, which is something of a miracle. I don’t usually do resolutions. It isn’t that I think resolutions are futile—rather, if I want to do new things, I like to throw myself into them without the burden of a plan weighing me down. But I made one anyway. “Crawl out of your creative hole this year,” my friend said. I promised I would. It meant, in other words, that I’d finally send in some of my writing for publication, put my work out there on more platforms. But like most resolutions, this one will likely gather dust, sitting unkept in some quiet corner of my mind. When people ask how long I’ve been writing, I never know what to say. It wasn’t something I started doing so much as something I found myself doing, like stepping outside one day and realising you’d been walking for miles without noticing. If I had to put a number on it, I suppose I started taking writing seriously about five years ago. I do not write for a living. I write for sheer pleasure. But bills must be paid, and so I have a job. I never gave much thought to why I have a job until recently. Whoever asks such questions? I work for a company that helps students prepare for competitive exams. In India, exams are an industry of their own. We have them for everything—government and administrative posts, banking, insurance, railways, police, the army, engineering, management. Every other young person is studying for one, chasing that elusive thing called stability. A stable job earns you the admiration of your neighbours, the pride of your family, and better prospects in the arranged marriage market. But the catch, besides the cutthroat competition in a country bursting at the seams, is that English proficiency accounts for a quarter or a third of the marks in nearly every exam. And in a place where English is not a native language, this creates an uneasy dependence. I won’t go too deep into the old debate about English in India, about whether it is a colonial relic or a necessary standardisation tool in a country where every state has its own language, but I will say this: there is a deep, lived anxiety surrounding the language in the minds of ordinary people. In the U.S., they talk about “math anxiety,” but in India, it is English that grips people by the throat. The further one moves from the cities, the more palpable the fear becomes. Many of the aspirants of these competitive exams never studied in a school where English was the medium of instruction. Most grew up with English as something distant, something foreign, something that belonged to other people. And yet, the world tells them they need it to succeed. And because English has become a shorthand for social status—education, refinement, exposure to international media—their fear is not just about failing an exam. It is about being seen as lesser. Which brings me back to my question: why do I have a job? The answer is simple. I know English. Not just well enough to read and write it, but well enough to teach it to those whose futures depend on mastering it. And here lies my unease. Is it right to make a living off of people's anxieties? Off their fears of inadequacy? Even off their ambitions? They want what anyone wants—to move forward, to build a life, to provide for their families, to take care of their parents in old age, to pay off debts, to stand on their own two feet. These are noble aspirations, and yet here I stand, a middleman profiting off the gap between them and their goals. Do I have a job because the British made their language inescapable? Because my parents sent me to an English-medium school built by those same British? Because my parents filled the house with books? Because my childhood love of reading granted me fluency as a byproduct? Because the school education system failed its students so thoroughly that they must now come to me? Because so many lacked the means to access English-medium schools that may have done a better job? Because India reveres government jobs above all else? I could go on. But the real question is: how do I put these qualms to rest? There are ways. I have worked long enough in the private sector to understand the way the market functions. Why does a programmer earn more than a labourer? Because salaries go up when a skill is scarce AND wanted. So I can always invoke the let-the-market-handle-it dictum. Or I can tell myself that it is not just my grasp of English that makes me employable, but my understanding of these exams. English is a deceptive thing; for every rule, there are ten exceptions. Those who come from the logic of structured, Sanskrit-derived Indic languages find themselves bewildered by it. Teaching English for an exam requires precision—knowing what to teach and what can be left out. And in the end, knowing English may get a person a job, but keeping that job depends on discipline, experience, reliability, success rate, market feedback and a thousand other things. I have yet to rise above the accident of my birth and education, having followed in my parents’ footsteps in more ways than one. Like my mother, I earn my keep in education. Like my father, I sit with words in the quiet hours, shaping them, letting them shape me. And like both of them, I have learned the trick of splitting myself in two—one half working, the other dreaming. I am only as devoted to writing as a full stomach allows, and only as faithful to my profession as it grants me time enough to wander in my thoughts. I have carved out a place for myself. And each morning, I wake knowing that my work matters just enough to someone. How do I know this? Because they are willing to pay me their hard-earned money for it. Of course, working the way I do, where I do, has its perks. I get to work from home. I get to read scholarly articles (to mine them for teaching material, but still). And I get the comfort of seeing people change the course of their life, and being a small part of it. But then there are the frustrations—deadlines, team conflicts, disappointed customers and occasional unpleasant debates over politically correct grammar. I think of all this, and then I think of Firoz bhai. He is my tailor. Not a blood relative, but I call him bhai (brother) out of respect. Every few months, I go to him with fabric in hand, asking him to stitch a sari blouse or a salwar suit. Here, most people still prefer tailored Indian clothes over store-bought ones. The fit is better. The craftsmanship shows. And Firoz bhai is a master of his craft. I hardly have to give instructions anymore. I show him a picture from Pinterest, leave him the fabric, and in a couple of weeks, he hands me something perfect. Firoz bhai does not lose sleep over the necessity of his work. He does not sit hunched at his sewing machine, squinting at the fabric, and wonder whether the world still needs tailors. He does not pause with a half-cut sleeve in hand and agonize over whether he is complicit in an economy that prizes appearance over essence. He measures, he cuts, he stitches. The cloth comes together where it must, and when he is done, there is proof of his labour — a garment where before there was only fabric. A customer leaves satisfied, and the world has one more well-made thing in it than it did before. I do not have that pleasure. My work is not something you can fold and pack away, nor can it be draped over a body to see how well it fits. I do not see the moment when a student’s tongue stops tripping over English, when they no longer grope for words but find them waiting, ready to be used. I like to think it happens, but I have no proof. There are no straight seams, just a slow and invisible accumulation—of language, of competence, of confidence. Perhaps that is the fate of those of us whose work is not tangible, whose efforts do not leave behind something to touch or admire. We are doomed to wonder whether the work we do has any value at all, to second-guess the money we earn. And maybe that is why we envy people like Firoz bhai, who can hold their craft in their hands and say, ‘Here. Here is what I have done.’ Firoz bhai works at his own pace. More than once, I’ve gone to pick up my clothes only for him to ask for another day because he wanted to perfect the detailing. That’s how it is with men who take pride in their work. There’s no use showing up unannounced at his shop. He comes in when he pleases, and some days, he prefers to work from home, where the light is better and the distractions fewer. Once, I waited nearly an hour for him. “The evening azaan has started,” he explained over the phone. “Prayer cannot be rushed, you know,” he said matter of factly. There was no apology in his voice, no excuse, just the quiet certainty of a man whose time is his own. I didn’t mind the wait. But I did wonder what my boss might say if I ever missed a meeting and, when asked, replied with the same quiet finality—Prayer cannot be rushed. In a corporate job, punctuality is a virtue, and professionalism is currency. In a trade, all that matters is the work itself, and the reputation of the man who does it. When he finally turned up, he handed me my finished garments with a wide grin. I marveled, as I always did, at the magic in his hands. And for a moment, I envied him—the slow pace of his days, the hum of his sewing machine, the freedom to close up shop to attend the evening prayer, the satisfaction of creating something tangible and beautiful. But if I told him about my job, about my ability to work from home, about the books I get to read, the security of a paycheck that arrived on time no matter how fast or slow I worked, perhaps he would find the grass on my turf greener. Indeed, one must imagine Sisyphus happy.

OSCAR WILDE:

Omar Zaid, M.D.

March 20 2025 at 06:00 pm

the trouble with dukes of infidelity __________ an excerpt from sexology for the wise: essays on marriage, queers, and occult governance Pedestrians were once convinced of Oscar Wilde’s sterling character until he took up moral superiority as a rook on the hill of verity. His fabrication(s) soon vanished during a private war against society as he completely bungled his own defense in a court of law. (i) Imprisoned, officially for "indecency". public records proved he was a sainted pederast who baptized numerous boys with ablutions that literally left “feces on hotel sheets” all over Europa. His sterling reputation soon caved because it was as fictional as his reliance on the Greek Pederast Mythos.(ii ) This splendid pathos is typical of queer personality profiles and cults. LGBT demagogues simply ignore the morbidity of his gallant pretense. Aside from being an exceptional intellectual, Wilde’s reliable descriptors include ‘compulsive infidelity’, ‘palatial promiscuity’, ‘exceptional debauchery’, ‘flagrant irresponsibility,’ ‘creative pseudo-reality’, and ‘polished casuistry for sheet staining with minors’; not to mention criminal inclinations, drug addictions, affective disorders, and obsessive narcissistic celebrity. Wilde’s fool-hardiness ironically validated the virtues of cardinal heterosexual hegemony, which, on its own, is sufficiently challenging without debauched complications or neurosis and lies. Moreover, relations based on contrived premises are none at all. Despite his role as mentor to a splendidly appointed brat (Lord Douglas), Wilde disguised his masochistic fear of abandonment with the bravado of Zorro, even as his spoiled catamite abused him. While Oscar’s wife and children waited for the giant to tend his garden, he nailed himself to a cross of apologetic idealism as the martyred hero of his own tall tale. Similar drama everywhere anoints stages that host sexual ambiguity and gay dukes of infidelity like him or even Leonard Bernstein. Fidelity is what the LGBT rank and file desperately need but never actualize due to several incompetencies.(1) Insufficient personal and social integration of wobbly gender identities insults gold-standard sexual congress. With notable exceptions, most gays addict society to the ephemeral pleasure of fleeting amusements, vain intellectualism, and inebriating celebrity. The sad truth is that LGBT minorities languish like neighborless monuments of futility in neglected garden alcoves; bereft of the vibrant quanta that is drawn from the tender loving care and companionship of a qualified spouse who complements divinely designed proportions or fermion-imbued plasma from legitimate flesh pressing. Not being qualified for such a dyad, these forgotten grottos are carpeted by the moss of mournful apologetics for a life never lived because it is unattainable. All properly Victorian but no fit place for human habitat. Queerdom manifests this failed dynamic as default concretions; which is to say 'precipitants of conflict(s) that require the superior management skills of heterosexual gardeners' ... specifically, qualified professionals like JP who administer the best of remedies: scientifically established verity. Harder truths and stern compassion are on offer by advanced graduate studies in non-fictional Sexology. (2) The next essay attempts to explain why humanity must adhere to the dao of monotheist arcana rather than Extracts of Dali sieved through Rothschildian filters and or Dukes of Infidelity like J & RFK, or the Madonna-tripe of Trinitarians that saps essential femininity by discounting sacral heterosexual eros by removing masculinity as father of the child. And plea take note: there can be no legitimate sacralized LGBT conjugation. The new physics of noetic science makes this very clear in Sexology ... It is simply not possible. 1. Bailey JM (1999). Homosexuality & Mental Illness. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 56 (10):883–884. 2. SEXOLOGY FOR THE WISE; essays on marriage, queers, and occult governance https://forum.alginkgo.com/go/7TS4H9SyH3 _____ i. He sued for slander against the charge of pederast sodomy for which he was guilty. ii. Greek Pederast Mythos: The Myth: Ancient Greeks regarded homosexuality as equal or superior to heterosexuality. At no time, and in no place, was this practice considered normal behavior, or were those engaged in it allowed to go unpunished. To remove any doubt whatsoever, read Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Diodorus Seculus, Euripides, Homer, Lysias, Plato, Plutarch, and Xenophon, all of whom have left a written record as to what the prevailing norms were concerning this behavior. There were at least fifty different city-states in what we know as Greece, and the idea that homosexuality was important in the culture is based on only a minority of these. In many of the Greek city-states, homosexuality was never accepted or tolerated. In the broader ancient Greek culture, heterosexuality held its natural dominant position. The worldview of the ancient Greeks is best understood through its gods and its mythology. In Greek mythology, sexuality is represented by Aphrodite, a female goddess, beautiful and desirable to men, who feel reciprocal desire for the male Ares (Mars). The king of the gods, Zeus, is a lustful philanderer who pursues many females and is only once attracted to a boy, Ganymede. The myth says that Zeus made Ganymede his cup-bearer, not his lover or catamite. Any homosexual interpretation is optional. Ares, and Poseidon are all hetero- sexual. [Originally, I mentioned Phoebus the sun-god here, but it has been pointed out to me that he is really androgynous, so he does not count.] There is no homosexual god. So homosexuality is classified as an aberration, a minor exception to the heterosexual rule, and identified with pederasty. In the greatest of the Greek epic poems, the Iliad, the story revolves around the love of Paris for Helen, a beautiful woman. In its successor, the Odyssey, Ulysses is a heterosexual who returns home after twenty years to find his wife, Penelope. These great stories, interwoven with innumerable lesser stories, dominated the culture and reflected its fundamental assumptions. In the surviving Greek drama, heterosexuality is also the prevailing norm. The comedies portray domestic life in which households consist of a man and his wife. The tragedies concern families with a mother, father, sons, and daughters. There are no Greek dramas about homosexual love or relationships. In the myths about homosexual relationships, the outcome is often tragic. Even the celebrated female poet, Sappho of Lesbos, most of whose works are tragically lost, was bisexual. She fell in love with a young man called Phaon and is supposed to have committed suicide because of this. This would be typical of the pattern commonly seen today. Exclusive lesbians are very rare. Most women classified as lesbian are bisexual and avoid men because of some negative experience. ~ Girandola, Hub Pages, Ten Gay Myths That Need To Go, Online (13Feb18).

Life's Blueprint: Anatomy of the Human Experience

Brent R Antonson

March 29 2025 at 03:38 am

Some things are, within reason, ubiquitous to us all. We’re human beings. We all have belly buttons. We all eat, blink, and shit. Everyone breathes, grows, and digests. The cells in our body all die and are replaced. The body's cells largely replace themselves every 7 to 10 years. In other words, old cells mostly die and are replaced by new ones during this time span. So, who are you really? You are a wholly unique human being born into, and a product of, the fundamental influencing factors listed. Even though they may seem limiting, you are ‘this’ generation's iteration of a person with the criteria listed here. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. Medical News Today says there are about 72 genders to identify with. There exist 41 musical genres to explore and 28 styles of dancing. There are 136 narcotics one can introduce to the body and four types of alcoholic beverages: beer, wine, spirits, and liqueurs. There are over 12,000 jobs or careers to choose from. We all have a memory bank inside our brain, and the average adult human brain can store the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes of digital memory. We speak one or more of the 7,100 languages in the world and participate in 3,800 cultures. There are 250,000 to 300,000 species of edible plants. There are 65,000 living species of fish, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and birds, and we can hunt, trap, or fish and then eat them. An international research effort called the Human Genome Project, which worked to determine the sequence of the human genome and identify the genes that it contains, estimated that humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. There are 86 billion neurons inside your head, connecting memories, positing thoughts, and weighing decisions. According to science, there are 27 human emotions, and we live within a web of tangled bits of them. They are: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire, and surprise. There are some 14 reactive ingredients like mental impairments, drunkenness, drugs, tiredness, neural capacities, time limits, illnesses, general disbelief, disbelief due to previous influences, harmony, meditation, and sicknesses that will inflate or constrict a wider sense of these emotions. There are seven ways of thinking about things: Critical Thinking, Analytical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Abstract Thinking, Concrete Thinking, Convergent Thinking, and Divergent Thinking. We have 43 facial muscles that can display over 10,000 different expressions. There are 143 different skin tones and 12 types of hair, which can be modified into over 1,200 styles. Blondes have about 120,000 hairs on their heads, brunettes 150,000, and redheads about 90,000. In our experiences of life, there are six categories of experiences: Physical experienceMental experienceEmotional experienceSpiritual experienceSocial experienceVirtual experience These fall into 47 types of human experiences: Adulthood, Aesthetics, Aging, Belief, Birth, Change, Childhood, Community, Competition, Conflict, Constraint, Creativity, Culture, Destruction, Emotion, Empathy, Failure, Family, Fear, Freedom, Friendship, Happiness, Hate, Imagination, Joy, Learning, Logic, Mortality, Motivation, Nature, Physical, Play, Privacy, Problems, Rational thought, Rest, Self-fulfillment, Sense, Sickness, Society, Space, Spirituality, Spontaneity, Success, Time, Virtual experience, and Work. Where we move our body and how we move it are done in our country—one of the 195 that currently exist—and often how much freedom you have is due to the political environment you live in. We can live in one (or more) of ten political types: Democracy, Communism, Socialism, Oligarchy, Aristocracy, Monarchy, Theocracy, Colonialism, Totalitarianism, and Military Dictatorship. In conjunction with our country or nationality, it may be congruent with a belief system like religion. The 12 major religions include Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Taoism, Judaism, Confucianism, Bahá'í, Shinto, Jainism, and Zoroastrianism. But there are also over 4,000 recognized religions in the world today, consisting of churches, congregations, faith groups, tribes, healing centers, cultures, and movements. Other people, self-seekers who are confused over being organized or limited by any of these, often believe in elements of two or more, often conflicting, religions. There are varying shades of agnostics. There are 10 classifications of disabilities. They are: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Learning Disabilities, Mobility Disabilities, Medical Disabilities, Psychiatric Disabilities, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Visual Impairments, Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Concussion, and Autism Spectrum Disorders. These form the 21 types of disabilities. They are Blindness, Low-vision, Leprosy Cured persons, Hearing Impairment (deaf and hard of hearing), Locomotor Disability, Dwarfism, Intellectual Disability, Mental Illness, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Cerebral Palsy, Muscular Dystrophy, Chronic Neurological conditions, Specific Learning Disabilities, Multiple Sclerosis, Speech and Language disability, Thalassemia, Hemophilia, Sickle Cell disease, Multiple Disabilities including deaf/blindness, Acid Attack victim, and Parkinson's disease. There are also 16 different attributes that make you unique. They are genetics, physical characteristics, personality, attitude, perspective, habits, intellect, goals, experience, relationships, creativity, passion, communication, humor, taste, and travel. Which brings me back to our everyman/everywoman wishing to be seen as captain of our own ship: we stand at the helm with good intentions overruled by the above factors; we wish to be the Zen master of our own dojo, yet the times we contemplate exactly that are compromised/enhanced/influenced by physical changes beyond our control; we wish to be seen as the director in our own movie, but are actually bit players. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chordatehttps://nationaldaycalendar.com/world-religion-day-third-sunday-in-januaryhttps://www.amazon.com/Major-World-Religions-TraditionsInfluential/dp/1623156920https://ca.edubirdie.com/blog/common-forms-of-government-study-startershttps://simplicable.com/new/human-experiencehttps://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-the-types-of-emotionshttps://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_many_different_human_emotions_are_therehttps://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/biodiversityhttps://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/types-of-gender-identityhttps://www.cnsnevada.com/what-is-the-memory-capacity-of-a-human-brainhttps://blog.busuu.com/most-spoken-languages-in-the-worldhttps://isaccurate.com/blog/cultures-around-the-worldhttps://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/basics/genehttps://audiophilereview.com/audiophile/how-many-music-genres-do-we-needhttps://www.careerplanner.com/ListOfCareers.cfmhttps://www.ancestry.com/lp/traits/skinpigmentatiohttp://samagrashiksha.hp.gov.in/Application//content/disabilities.pdfhttps://www.minimalismmadesimple.com/home/unique-personhttps://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/does-body-really-replace-seven-years.htm

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