Dregs of Yore

There is something deeply comforting, one might almost say delicious, in despising the rich. They make, after all, the perfect villains in so many narratives: the champagne-swillers, art-collectors, the degenerates whose very existence serves as an affront to our collective sense of virtue. The stage for this indignation is not some bleak Dickensian street corner, but the gaping maw of social media. This is where hatred finds its fullest expression.  A casual scroll through the comments on social media posts of celebrities, public figures, or otherwise rich people in our own lives reveals a great deal of outrage. This contempt, however, is rarely self-reflective. People in my own circle, most of whom would be in the top 5% in the country — a fact they often overlook — are the loudest in condemning those richer than themselves. Indeed, to judge the rich, one need not be poor; one need only be sufficiently hypocritical. This is quite funny to someone who periodically zones out of suc...

We are told that man is freer than ever before. Free from the constraints of tradition, from the exacting expectations of church and community, even from the obligations of family responsibilities. To a large extent, that is. He is now the master of his own destiny. He stands, or so he believes, a triumphant individual, unshackled and self-made. Yet, is this purported individualism is largely illusory? We are drowning in individualism, and still, true individuality has never been rarer. This is not merely a contradiction; it is a triumph of superficiality. The great promise of individualism—the cultivation of a rich, distinctive self—has been reduced to an empty performance, a parade of interchangeable personas cobbled together from mass-produced cultural fragments.  Take the contemporary obsession with self-expression. Never before have we had so many tools to broadcast our identities to the world, and never before have these identities been so depressingly alike. The modern indiv...

In the culture I grew up in, children were seen as blessings, not burdens. My grandmother would often remark that a full house—however chaotic—was a happy house. It’s a mindset that feels increasingly foreign in today’s world, where we trade the fullness of life for the sterile comforts of control. Among the social circles in which I find myself, a new fad has caught on with surprising fervour — the DINK lifestyle. Dual Income, No Kids. The acronym alone carries an air of smugness, a badge of honour that suggests its practitioners have outwitted the drudgery of parenthood. These are  typically  people employed in white collar professions that, while demanding are not unreasonably so, granting them both a respectable income and a lifestyle of conspicuous ease within India's most developed and cosmopolitan enclaves. In an era that genuflects at the altar of self-fulfillment, this trend is seen by its acolytes as a mark of contemporary enlightenment and a rebellion against the ty...

One often hears of the virtues of moderation, that golden mean Aristotle so elegantly extolled and which common sense appears to confirm. To be neither excessive nor deficient, neither too daring nor too timid, seems to promise a harmonious existence—a life guided by reason rather than passion, by balance rather than frenzy. Yet, as is often the case with principles so universally praised, the closer one scrutinises this idea of “the middle,” the more elusive it becomes. An even stranger can of worms is opened when we attempt to elevate the middle as the ideal. For what is an ideal, if not an extreme? And if the middle is the highest goal, does it not cease to be the middle? If one were to strive for moderation with all one’s might, would one even be striving for moderation?  Can one fanatically strive to be moderate? The question then becomes: Is there a middle way to being in the middle? This conundrum reveals much about the human condition. We are drawn to simplicity, to princip...

Grace Slick, the iconic lead singer of Jefferson Airplane, a band that gave the 1960s some of its most emblematic anthems, once made a strikingly honest observation: "All rock-and-rollers over the age of 50 look stupid and should retire. You can do jazz, classical, blues, opera, country until you're 150, but rap and rock-and-roll are really a way for young people to get that anger out, that sexual energy. It's silly to perform a song that has a sexual thrust to it when you're 75." Slick, who left rock music behind decades ago, chose to walk away from the stage and embrace the realities of aging rather than cling to the energy and image of her youth. Her statement is not merely about music; it calls for an acknowledgment of life's different seasons, an acceptance that is both liberating and dignified. Grace Slick, as an artist, captured the spirit of her generation. Songs like Somebody to Love and White Rabbit reflected the psychedelic counterculture, with its...

In my conversations with peers of similar age—those between 28 and 35—I have noticed an interesting shift in attitudes toward appearance and professionalism. Just a few years back, in the more carefree days of youth, many of us dismissed the importance of attire as a mere distraction from the real work of the mind. This was a time when our uniforms, if one could call them that, consisted of ill-fitting t-shirts and the kind of casual sloppiness that accompanies youthful indifference. A certain pride was taken in the nonchalance with which we approached our outward appearance, as though it were an act of defiance against the narrowness of social expectations. These were the years in which formal attire—constricting ties, crisp shirts, shoes that were polished until they gleamed—seemed not only uncomfortable but an affront to the freedom we felt in our work. Many of my peers, having worked in startups or under the leadership of younger, perhaps more visionary entrepreneurs, were accustom...