Hello everyone, it’s been a while since I last wrote! I’ve encountered lots of interesting things since then, so I’ve here attempted a compilation of them, as well as a summary of what I’ve been up to.
When I last wrote, I was reading Frank Dikotter’s “China After Mao,” which I have now finished. I’ve also finished Ramachandra Guha’s “India After Gandhi,” Roberto Bolaño’s “2666,” Neel Mukherjee’s “The Lives of Others,” Harriet Tytler’s “An Englishwoman in India,” William Dalrymple’s “The Anarchy,” Amitav Ghosh’s “The Shadow Lines,” Upamanyu Chatterjee’s “English, August” and “Mammaries of the Welfare State,” and Declan Walsh’s “The Nine Lives of Pakistan.” I enjoyed all of these books, and I’m in the process of writing reviews for some (all?) of them, so look forward to that. Until I find the motivation to finish book reviews, a google search will hopefully suffice for anyone curious about these books. I’m trying to get better at writing book reviews and not relegating half-finished drafts to my Documents folder, but motivation is a scarcer resource than RAM these days.
Apart from full-length books, I’ve also been reading some essays and short stories. Here are the highlights. Sorry for the link dump, but my last post was ~3 months ago so I’ve read a lot of interesting stuff since then haha. I found these links from a mix of surfing, following a select few news sites, and getting recommendations from people (yes, humans still give better recommendations than algorithms):
This is Nick Wolven’s ‘Caspar D. Luckinbill, What Are You Going to Do?’, an interesting short story that I felt is relevant to our present reality. Lots of food for thought on the role of mass media and tech billionaires in shaping society, and what our own responsibilities are towards humanity and future generations.
This is a fun article on the black market in General Ne Win’s Burma – lots of creative money-making schemes, an interesting story of individuals’ cunning helping them outsmart a poorly managed and overly restrictive socialist economic system. The website this article is from, New Mandala, is actually a very cool site with lots of other interesting articles, and I recommend checking it out if you’re interested in Southeast Asia.
Here’s another New Mandala article, this one about how corruption and a lack of public oversight hinder Indonesia’s efforts at flood prevention. When you hear the idea, it seems almost obvious, but it’s something I hadn’t thought about at all until reading this article. Very informative.
This is an amazing series of articles at theprint.in that talks about interesting parts of medieval history and how they connect to contemporary social and political issues. Two particularly interesting articles are this one about the long history of Afghans in south Asia and this one about the history of Srivijaya and why the government’s new name for Port Blair is absurd.
Tragicomic story of a UP village that started worshipping a dog – this is a story that made me laugh, even though I felt bad for doing so; bizarre case of an Uttar Pradesh village worshipping a dog after he started walking circles around a Hanuman idol, then it turns out he actually had a life-threatening infection messing with his brain. So, making a Yogi nicknamed “Bulldozer Baba” into a chief minister does make your population nuttier… who would’ve thought?
The long, inglorious history of Galgotias University – hilarious story of Galgotias University, which recently made headlines for marketing a Chinese-made robot as if it was their own at an AI fair. Turns out they have a long and inglorious history of similar mess-ups and have gained prestige partly through blind support for the BJP. Very funny – among other stories, one part is about students at a protest against INC who, when questioned by reporters, don’t know why they’re protesting and misread ‘urban naxal’ on one sign as ‘urban Maxwell.’
Here’s an inspiring story about a 14-year-old making well-informed anti-BJP content on social media (at one point there was an FIR against him before cops realized he’s 14). Super cool story, glad people like this exist
Poverty and malnutrition among West Bengal’s tribal communities, and the state government’s complete indifference – yes, in the year 2026, the Bengal government still is unable to fix issues as basic as ensuring their citizens don’t die of hunger. This article tells you all you need to know about the TMC government’s record on improving the lives of Adivasis.
Aaand, another story on West Bengal and how the TMC government avoids fixing its unemployment crisis by just throwing welfare money at people and praying nobody notices that the actual problem remains unchanged. State debt ballooned from 1.9 lakh crore in 2011 to 7 lakh crore today, and yet TMC is funding welfare schemes where the cost is rising 47% year-on-year while cutting spending on actual industrial development. I’m not an economist, but this seems like bad policy to me…
Aaaaaaand, a story on how BJP is similarly indifferent to people’s suffering in Bengal – Amit Shah visited a tribal home in Bengal in 2020, since then the family of six has been surviving on around Rs 300 per day of work (note that as day laborers, they can’t even find work every day) and are struggling to find money to buy their daughter’s insulin, eating plain rice every day because they can’t afford vegetables. They report that they weren’t able to actually talk to Amit Shah for even a minute and have found little support from the BJP, revealing that Amit Shah’s visit was just a photo-op and not the magnanimous outreach effort the BJP advetised it as. Pretty shameful – if Amit Shah was going to drive all the way out there to have his lunch, he could have devoted even 2 minutes to hearing about the family’s lives and understanding their problems. These politicians don’t care about the voters, only about their votes.
Pivoting away from Bengal, Reporters’ Collective reveals probable corruption in Assam electricity contract with Adani Power – well-researched article with disturbing implications. Assam state government is paying Adani Power for 6000 MW of more electricity by 2035 despite the Power Ministry saying only 3483 MW is needed by that time. Assam government also rejected, without explanation, reasonable proposals for getting the electricity at a lower cost, e.g. the idea of not building a new power plant and instead buying non-contractually-bound electricity sold on a kind of spot market at lower prices. Lots of unanswered questions and inconsistencies in the government’s explanation, which makes me inclined to believe this is deliberate corruption rather than simple incompetence. On a related note, also see RK Singh’s accusations that Adani is over-charging the Bihar state government for electricity that could cost the state Rs 62,000 crore over the span of 25 years – his claims have credibility due to his record of integrity and experience as Union Power Minister. It’s even more suspicious because Ananda Bazar Patrika has surreptitiously deleted all their content related to RK Singh’s claims. Claims of corruption, followed by self-censorship by a prominent newspaper, hmm… Neither case has conclusive evidence yet, but given Adani’s past record, there’s reasonable grounds to believe these accusations have merit. We all vaguely know “BJP and Adani are looting,” but I found these concrete examples interesting.
Inspiring story on Bengal Gazette of how a Bangladeshi woman was inspired by her country’s history to become a war zone doctor in Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, Sierra Leone, and Rohingya refugee camps. Her grandfather was murdered by the Pakistani army during the 1971 Liberation War, when he stayed at his hospital to continue treating patients instead of evacuating. Now the granddaughter, who has followed in his footsteps, reflects on how her family and her country’s history have inspired her to risk her life to deliver life-saving aid in war zones. An amazing story of courage and individuals’ commitment to doing good. I’m grateful that people like this exist.
On the topic of inspiring people, the Wikipedia page for Jacobo Timerman is one of the most inspiring stories I’ve read. Timerman ran newspapers in 1960s and 70s Argentina that reported on both left-wing and right-wing terrorism, despite him facing multiple death threats and assassination attempts for his work. His commitment to reporting the truth resulted in him being arrested and tortured under the Videla dictatorship; after being released and exiled to Israel, he continued to fight for the truth even after his traumatic experience. Timerman was a self-described Zionist for most of his life, but after seeing the atrocities being committed in the 1982 Lebanon War, he wrote a book critical of Israeli policy in Lebanon and Gaza – this is incredible intellectual integrity, the ability to criticize a country you so strongly love, and to risk alienation from your entire community as a result of your views. Timerman also motivated one of his sons to suffer a jail sentence rather than be complicit in Israeli atrocities through military service in Lebanon. He later returned to Argentina and continued to criticize the government’s authoritarianism and refusal to prosecute human rights violations committed during the Dirty War. An incredible human being, I was very inspired by his story.
This is an interesting article by Siddharta Deb about the many struggles he faced in getting from Calcutta to Columbia University, how he slowly became disillusioned with the university’s administration and campus culture, and various reflections on his intellectual journey. Incredible story with lots of interesting thoughts on campus cultures, intellectual freedom, and the allure that distant places can hold in our imagination.
Link-dump finished, hurrah! Outside of the aforementioned books and links, I’ve also been reading “The Disinherited State: A Study of West Bengal 1967-70” by Shankar Ghosh, an amazing book that I’m learning a lot of history from. After getting through ~100 pages, I’m impressed by how badly the first United Front government bungled everything: chaotic coalition politics with lots of defections, a labor minister who let gheraos run wild, and communist parties just barely reining in their zealots who wanted armed revolution. The book offers a very informative and entertaining account of these pivotal years in West Bengal’s history, and I’m enjoying it. I’m impressed by how many obscure details there are that you’d have a hard time discovering online: how the preventive detention of Muslims during the 1965 India-Pakistan War contributed to Congress losing the Muslim vote in 1967, how a gherao by women of the Home Minister Kiran Shankar Roy led to the establishment of the Kolkata women’s police division, and many more interesting factoids. Fascinating book with lots of niche information and powerful analysis of some of the most important years in Bengal’s history.
I’ve also been reading more Bengali poetry by Sukanta Bhattacharya and am greatly enjoying his work. I particularly liked “Ekti Moroger Kahini,” a darkly funny poem about a starving rooster searching for food in a palace who instead ends up as food, and “Kolom,” a poem where even Sukanta’s pen is imagined as a victim of exploitation and he calls on the pen to join all the oppressed in a revolution, where history is written in blood rather than ink. All of Sukanta’s work is amazing – he had so much anger at the world’s injustice, and this despairing vision of death and famine all around, yet at the same time he expressed an incredible amount of hope that these evils can be overcome through courage, class consciousness, and hope for a better world. I’m inspired by the fact that someone can see so much darkness all around the world (even pens and chickens are imagined as sufferers of oppression!) and still believe that humans have the power to fix things. He uses language beautifully, constructing images of deserts, palaces, and revolutions that are vivid in your imagination as you read, and all his poems have a lyrical quality that makes them fun to read out loud.
Pivoting to music, I’ve recently been enjoying the songs of this Indonesian rock group Efek Rumah Kaca (‘greenhouse effect’) – very good instrumentals and vocals, and they have some of the best lyrics I’ve seen in rock. Lots of political and social commentary, which is the type of thing that I love. I really liked their eponymous album Efek Kaca Rumah; I’m going slowly through their music because their songs have a lot of new Indonesian vocabulary, but this one album already has me hooked. Their songs “Di Udara” and “Efek Rumah Kaca” are especially powerful. “Di Udara” is dedicated to Munir Said Thalib, a human rights activist who was assassinated by the Indonesian intelligence agency (very inspiring man, I suggest reading his wikipedia page) – powerful lyrics and a moving song. The name “Di Udara” means “in the air”, a reference to Munir having been poisoned while on an airplane. “Efek Rumah Kaca” (‘greenhouse effect’) is about climate change and the apocalyptic world we’re leaving behind for the next generation, again very good. I love this rock group, hope you guys will like it too.
This is another really good Efek Rumah Kaca song, “Seperti Rahim Ibu” (‘like a mother’s womb’)– it expresses the wish that one’s country could be ‘like a mother’s womb’ and actually nurture and protect its people, rather than being a place of horror and bloodshed. Uplifting song with a lot of hope in it, I liked it. It’s doubly interesting because the lyrics for this one were a joint effort between Cholil Mahmud, the lead singer of the group, and Najwa Shihab, an Indonesian journalist with a reputation for tough interviews and intellectual rigor. Funny story about Najwa Shihab that I found on her wikipedia page– she once interviewed an empty chair during COVID after the country’s health minister did not show up and was ignoring widespread criticism of his handling of the pandemic. The health minister in question was stripped of his medical license in 2022 for employing pseudo-scientific stroke treatments and being, in general, a really stupid guy. Indonesian RFK Jr…
Moving from rock to kpop, the group Fifty Fifty did a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”– great vocals re-interpreting one of the best rock songs ever, I liked this version a lot. I’ve recently started liking Fifty Fifty’s live vocals and also enjoyed this live version of their song “Tell Me”, performed by the original group line-up (unfortunately fractured by a messy legal battle with the company, but at least they’re back to making music now, albeit with new members).
I also discovered an awesome Bangla rock/folk/comedy-performance group called Hooligaanism. My introduction to the group was this hilarious, intelligent, and well-performed satirical song about West Bengal politics, “Tumi Mosti Korbe Jani”. It makes fun of Bengal’s most absurd phenomena such as the voter roll SIR and the AI craze, and it also criticizes all the main parties (TMC, CPIM, and BJP) with funny references to their most infamous scandals in Bengal. I also liked that it captured a broader sense of exasperation with the status quo in Bengal: college graduates who can’t get jobs in a broken economy, while our politicians yammer on and on about the Bangladeshi ‘ghuspaithiya’ conspiracy theory and renaming the state (which is sure to create jobs, of course). I liked the energetic feeling of the music and the sense of humor, which is derived not just from clever lyrics but also from the members’ acting abilities and how they perform some of the more conversational parts of the song. The lyrics are impressive for squeezing in so much wit and humor, with references as diverse as the patriotic song “Bolo Bolo Bolo Sobe,” political controversies surrounding three Ghosh’s in three different parties (very funny), the pseudo-archaeology behind the Babri Masjid demolition’s justification, and the Supreme Court’s wishy-washy stance on free speech. A fun song with a powerful message – I’m glad some musicians are discussing people’s real issues with their work rather than only regurgitating the same decades-old clichés of love songs. I also liked this song “Prithibita Bhalo Lokeder Noy”, which laments how the easygoing and carefree lifestyle of youth is sadly snatched away from people by the financial obligations of marriage and simply just growing up – very funny song although the lyrics are a bit sad.
And then, possibly the biggest music-related news I have from the last several months – I went to NMIXX’s concert a few days ago!! It was an awesome night, they played all my favorite songs and performed spectacularly – great vocals and dancing, I was very hyped up the whole time. I had lots of fun, this is probably my best 2026 experience so far. I’m planning to write something a bit longer about the concert in the future, so I won’t ramble too much about it now, but I just wanted to mention it here for the purpose of completeness.
Anyway, that concludes everything I wanted to pack into this post. I hope some of this is interesting – not sure if people like this format of post, since it’s not an original contribution so much as an aggregation of others’ work, but I like the idea of helping people find interesting content through posts like this. Cheers, hope everyone is doing well.