August Rush (Literally!)

I thought I will name this blog as August Rush - on one of my all time favourite American musical drama. If you haven’t watched, you should go for it. It is a story of an orphaned kid who happens to be a musical prodigy finds his parents - who had been after birth - through the different sounds and rhythms that he hears which at the end of it all adds to be an August’s rhapsody. While his mother is searching for him, and his father searching for her - all 3 meets at the end when he does his instrumental composition in the open field. What s story! Ok, I am not here to document any of it or such a story but my intention is much more literal for ‘August’ rush.

I wanted to document what I read in the last 30 odd days, as part of daily ritual. It has been one of a kind experience to read various subjects from the best minds and probably finest writing too. There were overlapping in couple of books, but all in all it was on subjects very different with each other and somehow interlinked as well. I will explain at the end how some of what I read is interlinked to the each other and hence, to the current world of ours. But first, a brief about every one of them.

1. Twilight of Democracy: The failure of Politics and the parting of friends by Anne Applebaum: - Anne Applebaum is a staff writer with The Atlantic, and she documents the failure of democracy post the fall of Soviet Union. The fall of Soviet Union was the win for an American led world order post WW II, but how the same fell upon seductive lure of authoritarian jingoism sometimes borne out of simplistic solutions to complex problems or just about blaming a specific group of individuals to establish a non-existing narrative or problem and thereby taking down a free and just society towards social in-cohesion. Her documentation of Poland and Hungary as one example which - to be fair - had the rooted impulse as they were satellite soviet states, but the dark barrel down is so deep that now it is affecting both sides of the Atlantic. It is an important read to study the most disturbing uprising of our era and our times to come - Rightwing Authoritarianism in the world.
2. My Vanishing Country by Bakari Sellers: What JD Vance did for Appalachian region in the upper midwest in the book Hilbilly Elegy (There is a Netflix movie by the same name on the book) documenting the struggles of the post globalisation world when jobs went out of US to Chinese factories - in part giving rise to populist sentiment and the election of Donald Trump in 2016, in My vanishing country - Bakari Sellers does for the rural south through it’s past, present and probably what the future holds. Bakari rose to become one of the youngest state legislatures in the state and now he is the voice of social injustice on media networks. I am personally fascinated by American history especially it’s struggles in racial years and how it continues to shape their body politic till today, and reading Sellers’ memoir gives an important understanding for it because he takes the subject of Systemic racism head on and confronts with much clarity as to what it means now after more than 160 years of abolition of Slavery. The meaning of democracy is to give voice to the voiceless, hearing the unheard and this book is for those minority, poor part of the country who had suffered brutally over centuries.
3. The Art of Conjuring alternate Realities by Shivam Shankar Singh and Anand Venkatanarayanan - This is a must read of our times! Hard to come across any book which is so important to read right now. We are living through epistemological crisis. The world is suffering from disinformation across the digital world and it’s after effects in our societal relationship and thereby impacting how we see each other who do not hold common view. This s a primer of our times and a stellar examination of how the powerful manages perception, create narratives, and makes the society follow the pied piper when we lose the ability to disambiguate what is meant to divide us is what is uniting us. Information warfare concepts like reflexive control, cybercriminal psychology, and how authoritarians or in India’s case elected autocrat exploit the information environment to solidify power. You are allowed to believe in your form of reality or so called alternate reality, but you are not allowed to divorce it from the truth or basics because deeper you go down the hole worse it keeps becoming. As the authors write “an alternate reality resembles the ponzi scheme, in which more and more resources are put into expanding, without it would collapse. A natural ending point for a conjurer is inevitably using the might of nation state to maintain their reality” It will be THE most important battle of the century ahead to own the cognitive forces of people’s minds, and the victor will be the one who can conjure a reality people want to believe in, real or not.If you want to understand today’s India and larger world, and how messed we are and the path forward if this sort of information environment runs deep, this book is a critical evaluation and significantly important.
4. Has China Won by Kishore Mahubani - The greatest contest of 21st century is between America and China, and that should be put out without any doubt. Written in 2019, at the height of the Trade war initiated by Donald Trump, Kishore Mahubani traces the origins of this contest and - I feel most significantly - civilizational or cultural aspect of how both the countries sees the world. I found it really interesting when the book documents how America always believed and still does believe in it’s superior form of government and how it exports it’s teaching to the far away lands while China does not want others to (forcefully) emulate it’s style but believes in it’s capacity to be the superpower and thereby ticking away to become the 2nd largest economically in just 3 decades. Mahubani’s book is an excellent study of thinking behind how both the countries are run and how they see the world through different lens. There will be transition of power - may be by 2050 but will it without bloodshed and peaceful, and who wins the great game - only time will tell.
5. India and the Asian Geopolitics by Shiv Shankar Menon - This book was a class on India’s Foreign relations since Independence till today, through the lens of all of major global events. From India’s Non-Aligned movement at the height of Cold War, to it’s battles in the sub-continent with China and Pakistan and how that has shaped our foreign policy and how has India impacted on the world stage. With the journey through independence till today, it maps the India’s present day challenges with subtle prescriptions on how to approach the grey matter issues world poses onto India. This book is not just historical in perspective but also incisive in how India should project it’s place in future. Menon ends with “We should accept no less, no simulacrum of leadership, no prejudices masquerading as ideas. Some of us have lost the ambition of think big of ourselves, of India’s role in the world. Dread and hate replace treason thought, leading to destructive social conflict in and around India. We are offered two pictures of our national destiny. One vision is born of fear and polarisation and the other of national self-confidence and ambition. The former excludes many Indians and is based on a narrow, intolerant and false sense of nationalism. The latter is a proudly patriotic, tolerant, modern, progressive, and secular vision of a confident nation that respects all its citizens. The former is inward looking and diminishes India in the world. The latter is a confident India that stands for something with universal appeal. It is time we rejected the former and rededicated ourselves unambiguously to make the latter real” Yet to read a more incisive commentary on the current state of our country.
6. The Rude Life by Vir Sanghvi - This was a wonderful book to understand the construct of modern India from the person who had the front row seats to major events of the country through the 80s till now. The book rich with anecdotes raises a lot of what ifs question to India’s recent political past. Vir’s reach to the height of political power explains how the corridors of government took various decisions and how Prime Minister’s thought from the Rajiv Gandhi era to Manmohan Singh. He explains the role of Journalists in this world, where governments are working extra time to arm twist what reaches the public and how Media - supposedly the 4th pillar of democracy is complicit in it. Vir’s writing style should be envy of many, clarity of thought, simplicity of language and hammering home the point without the use of flashy words more a skill than it is art. Vir’s view of the country and the world with the most excellent seat in the world is simply outstanding read.

All of the above are different in it’s own right but when I tried to find a link any two books, combination of 1-3 and 4-5 came closest. For the purposes of the blog I will only highlight 1-3. Matter of 4-5 for some other day.

The world of information is so democratic that it has left the body politic of the countries bordering the near end of democracy. Supreme Court judge Mr. Chandrachud as recently as yesterday highlighted the importance of the role citizens play in the functioning of democracy. Democracy does not only mean right to vote, but more than that it means the right to be heard. There are basic sets of facts and truth which cannot be contested or twisted to suit the narrative of the state. State will try to arm twist in a kind of ours ‘elected autocracy’ but if we do not speak the truth, we are sure to be doomed because as Mr. Chandrachud said “Democracy and truth go hand in hand. Democracy needs truth to survive”