6 — Who’s Got the Narrative

July 22, 2026

            I’ve been chatting with ChatGPT about my news addiction and how it is disrupting my life. Not getting other tasks done, withdrawing from a lot of social interaction except where I can keep discussing the news, and low sleep — watching media until late, checking stuff if I wake to pee etc…
            One of the things ChatGPT suggested was brain dumps to clear the mind before sleep. I’ve only just started doing them but many thumbs up for using them as a method to sort and destress. Dump it all and then and then pick one strand to write about — this latter is my own addition for myself. 

            Today I am writing to sort my feeling about Rahul Gandhi. Since the BJP came to power and before I was slowly conditioned to think of him as an incompetent dynast. The boy with the silver spoon, from the family that ruined India. Maybe he was immature and arrogant — some of his previous actions do indicate this. Crores were spent on a campaign to malign him, to ‘pappu-ise’ him. And most of the country believed it. He himself must have internalized a lot of it too. He disappeared for a while from the political scene and only found his way back very tentatively to it. 

Anyway, it became impossible to support any action or comment he might have made even if I felt it had merit. This changed for me when he began his first Bharat Jodo Yatra. I began supporting him on social media and being trolled for it — was called brainwashed slave of the British, liberandu, khangressi, deepstate supporter, tukde tukde gang etc. Also of course the BJP trolls do not stop at that when a woman is involved — a lot of sexual slurs which I won’t repeat. 
            Now after his action yesterday — of protesting outside PM’s home and then being detained by Shah’s Police — it’s been implied that he did it to snatch back the narrative which had been grabbed by the CJP. I don’t know why Gandhi did what he did and maybe partly it was to get the headlines again but don’t be fooled by this bullshit…
            THE ONLY PEOPLE SETTING THE NARRATIVE ARE THE BJP. Even being asked to consider that he did it only because he felt the CJP was ‘winning’ in narrative wars is a BJP narrative. 

AND

            AND

            AND

            Senior journalists, many that I once respected, have been falling for this for the longest time. Most of their debates are about who’s winning the narrative. And they discuss this with utmost much seriousness. Don’t believe me… do your own research…

            They should’ve been talking about how the govt is failing the people of the country in so many ways. They should be talking about planned police brutality and increasing vile dictatorship. But instead, it’s been about, oh but people love Modi, he keeps winning elections. Poor opposition, they cannot get the narrative right. 

            Well, you so called senior journalists cannot either. Godi or otherwise you only debate on what the BJP wants you to. You can’t see past their narrative. 
            Anyway, back to Rahul Gandhi and particularly his action yesterday. Did he do it merely to get headlines? I don’t think so. 

If I put myself in his shoes I feel he may have been peeved a bit that the hard work Congress has been doing on the ground on Neet leaks had gone unnoticed by said senior journalists. He may have been wary of Dipke who has tweeted many nasty things about him in the past, and not yet publicly said he’s since changed his mind since and now wants Gandhi’s support. I do believe that the Congress is one of the only parties that is actually fighting the BJP and RSS ideology. The crackdown at Jantar Mantar is part of this ideology. Congress and other opposition tried to raise the students’ issues and the brutality in parliament, even going to the chambers of the Speaker but they met closed doors. I believe this action of a sit-in at the PM’s felt like a way to keep the focus on the same issues that CJP and the students were raising. And so they did it. 

            I still don’t trust Dipke completely, though I am grateful for how the CJP outreach is what brought all these students to Jantar Mantar. While I am writing this, I see that Pradhan, our education minister has accused Gandhi of exploiting the students of India and that they deserve better. What does one make of such shamelessness? 

The students will make up their own minds about Gandhi, and this is their India more than mine as they are the future. For myself, I trust that Rahul Gandhi’s concern for the people of India is genuine. I will support him, until I see or hear things that make me feel otherwise. I don't know if he will be a good PM but he's doing a great job as Leader of the Opposition. 

Those I will not support ANYMORE, whoever they are, are the ones seeing (or turning a blind eye on) what BJP is doing and continuing to support them. 

            I respect those in the media who have stopped talking about who has the narrative (BJP always will) and instead notice and tell us about what needs to change in our country. 

5 – Fishy or Not?

July 21, 2026

            Last week I had lunch with a teacher from one of the writing courses I took last summer. The assignments I turned in for his class were centered around political musings about the rise of religious extremism in India. This teacher (T) was very generous about supporting his students and he offered me a private on-line lesson in writing short political articles. I wrote for a while using those guidelines to explore the many questions I had about events in India. I posted them and got responses and it felt satisfying. Then I found others who were expressing similar views and I was happy to read their views rather than write. Perhaps I was lazy or simply overwhelmed by health challenges which made it hard to find the right words. 

            But recent events in India have brought me back to wanting to express my thoughts because I find them diverging from those of the voices I had begun to feel in synch with. In fact my thoughts go around and around in my head, tying it up in knots and not allowing me to do anything else. 

            Mostly these thoughts are around the newly formed Cockroach Janata Party that rose to fame very suddenly two months ago. They have called for and executed a very successful student agitation in Delhi city yesterday. Kudos to them and to the students that came from all over India to participate. 

            Boo to the police that tear gassed and lathi charged and disrupted a peaceful march very violently. I guess I am writing this to understand my skepticism about the CJP. 

            When I first watched interviews by Dipke (the founder) I found him sincere. When I watched the other spokespeople, I found one sincere while was wary of the other two — one of which was Saurav Das. He was too slick, his answers to many questions evasive, and he it felt like there were things he was hiding, things that I needed to know to understand and fully support this party. 

            My suspicions of the gang intensified when they began writing posts that sounded like, if you are not with us then you are on the wrong side of history. Sonam Wangchuk who had been suddenly arrested by MHA in Ladakh (Sept 2025), and just as suddenly set free, (February 2026) joined the protest. They all behaved like they were diaper buddies—ok, I guess, common cause and all that—except Wangchuk hadn’t expressed concern about the exam leaks before. Das and Dipke had a history of criticizing the Congress, Wangchuk of supporting the BJP, but suddenly ‘one day’ they insisted that Rahul Gandhi must support their movement. Also, Wangchuk claimed or let slip that the governor of Ladakh (a BJP appointee) insisted that he meet Dipke — weird or not?

            But ok, these are things that I forced myself to not dwell on. What I  could not skip over was that all of the above disappeared when the police and para-military forces made their most brutal attacks on the students. Wangchuk who had been on a hunger strike had been removed to hospital just the day before. Das and the other spokesperson were at Nadda’s house handing him a rather wishy-washy list of demands while Dipke just had disappeared. Das claimed that the police had arrested Dipke then later said they hadn’t; but didn’t explain his absence during the violence. 

            Then Dipke was there at night again, standing on top of a car, and shouting slogans. Nobody, independent u-tubers, that reported on the protest, seemed to be bothered by the fact that he disappeared during the day. I was, and am.

            Anyway the students marched and took the movement forward without these so-called leaders who disappeared. They didn’t need the leaders but then the leaders took over the protest again. And now the police have just let everyone back into the protest site after crushing them violently hours earlier? 

            Wow! To me this is weird and suspicious. I had to write it down. Perhaps it will make sense later? Sorry — for those not following the movement this stuff will be meaningless. I had to express it even as it is more confusing than complete in my mind. Down on the 'page' and I can move on to doing other things. 

            I don’t trust them but will be happy to be proven wrong. I have a theory (conspiracy theory) about it and will write another time about it. Watching news, rather consuming it, like a heroin addiction right now. 

4—Day 11 of 14 with the Cats

July 15, 2026

I’m struggling to destress from ten days of cat health traumas. Outside the grass blower is creating a racket but the sun on the grass bank across the road and the trees swaying in the breeze outside the 3^rd level windows are helping lull the high anxiety I’m trying to moderate. An orange bus slowly pulls into the bus-stop, people go in and come out, it leaves. A reminder that life flows on. 

The cats seem to be recovering. We arrived to cat sit 11 days ago. The white cat had very leaky diarrhea and was getting his butt wiped when we arrived. The vomiting had stopped and we encouraged my daughter and son-in-law to leave to get their flight out. Two more doses of meds were given before we went to bed that night. We’ve had white Yoda since he was a few months and he is easy to medicate. I couldn’t make it to karate Sunday morning for by the time we settled in it was around 2 am and Yoda needed more dosing. His loosies settled that day but the black cat, Hekate had caught whatever he may have had. She’s harder to medicate but luckily it was a gel not pills. One litter box needed a complete overhaul but then her tummy seemed to settle, in fact she got constipated and had to be given another gel to get her tummy moving. 

Bad enough? But the worst was yet to come. Heka began vomiting Friday evening. Bile and black hair. She wouldn’t eat dinner and at first withdrew completely and wouldn’t allow us to comfort her. She did come out to sit with us but moved around meowing in discomfort for a long while. Frantic messages passed between us and my daughter. The next morning, we found blood stains on the bathroom floor.

Which cat, which end? My daughter travelling in Europe and not available until much later. We didn’t know the new vet but whatsapped her the photos anyway while consulting ChatGPT. Bloody bile or bloody stools are always a cat emergency it said. Meanwhile Heka ate her breakfast which was apparently a good sign. The vet replied and told us what to watch for. Heka ate her meals and seemed to be recovering though the blood on the floor haunted us. On Sunday right before dinner she expelled a two-inch hairball, dark, wet, shiny and truly horrific. She looked terrified and so were we. But she ate. Always a good sign. 

Was this it and were things going to be ok? Every time we had felt things were settling, they had erupted. My neck pain and pressure rose as the fear escalated. Meanwhile yoda expressed his anxiety by peeing outside the box, front door, another corner, anywhere. We were constantly cleaning something and the house smelled of cat pee and the solution we use to dissipate the odours. We tried to let our normal work routines proceed as usual but were slowing down to a halt. 

Yesterday morning we ‘halted’. Yesterday afternoon the vet visited. Examined Yoda. Easy-peasy. Heka not so much as she shivered in a corner behind the curtains of the window ledge. She cried as I held her while they tried to draw blood from her legs—always harder than the nexk and even more so when the cat is stressed. It didn’t flow, they needed two draws. They were here for almost an hour and half. Heka was wary but ate the snack we offered after they left. Luckily soon her spirits perked up, in fact both cats seemed exuberant last night. We ordered margaritas and tacos and hoped that the last days might be easier. Nothing was defusing our anxiety though. 

Meanwhile the Iran war blew up. Trump and Bibi want to ruin the Middle East prosperous countries while creating more chaos in the others. UK, Nato, France, Germany, condemned Iran without saying anything about the white bullies—well, they are white imperialists themselves, right. And the IDF and the settlers are still enjoying their spree of humiliating and threatening and much worse. Spain spoke up but was called antisemitic for doing so. 

Another bus lazily drives up to the bus stop and leaves. My neck still hurts but I will get dressed and take myself to the library. Books need returning and the stacks are soothing. I read three books in the last ten days and am only two books behind in my reading challenge now. 

3—Brain Dumps

July 2, 2026

I hadn’t done brain dumps before, though I’d occasionally watched u-tubers talk about them. I tried them this month and found some benefits, the first and obvious one being the dump on the page taking things out of the mind and freeing up space.

I decided to do them weekly, the weekend or Monday. I did them over a double page in a traveler’s notebook blank insert. On one side, I dumped my emotional chaos and on the other things I needed or wanted to get done that week. 

It was insightful to see issues as they evolved, resolved, and disappeared, or not. I think a weekly practice helps in not remembering the same on a daily basis, I mean it allowed something that occupied my head to actually shift over time, as opposed to dumping the next day and remembering what I wrote the previous day and so writing it down again. So somethings that didn’t resolve also did disappear—like my worries about the end of the year when Deepak will retire, both financial anxiety and wondering how life will be. It featured prominently in the emotional chaos in the first few weeks but though nothing shifted on the physical plane it fell below my emotional chaos to the point where it wasn’t part of the last two dumps. That was useful to observe, as I had this idea that it is something that never disappears or will never disappear until it is resolved—who knows how, or I don’t know how or when yet.

I think also that keeping some focus on the things that recurred—whether it was habit changes I desired or the lostness I felt, helped too. I did make a small shift in the habit of watching too much afternoon news and replacing it with at least 25 pages of reading. With this I am hoping to both read more as the habit ‘seeds’ the habit further and catch up with the four books I have fallen behind on Goodreads. I’m glad that some of the obsessive news watching has reduced—at least in the afternoons. Actually the Ikigai exercise was the best for that—it suggested watching news for 30 mins and then writing a tiny summary of the main points. Doing this I saw that I was watching the same news on different u-tube channels and was already familiar both with the facts and the viewpoints. (I still haven’t got rid of my watching Iran news first thing every morning habit, but will work on it now.)

Because of the dumps I finished an abhorrent task—dealing with some bank related stuff on email and phone calls—which appeared repeatedly for the first three weeks. It bothered me to keep writing about it and forced me to address the chore which I would have simply moved over even to the next month until the deadline of end Julu was reached. It appears no more and that makes me happy. 

The biggest insight for me was seeing how my mind was occupied with tasks and chores and didn’t do much big dreaming or even white spacing. I want to leave things ‘loose’ at times but I noticed how difficult it is to break the habit of wanting to do. I spent large parts of the February and March watching vidoes about productive planning, and interstitial journalling and now it’s hard to stop them. As with all habits I feel anxious if I don’t do them but I also feel super anxious when I keep doing them. I am deeply into ‘I do therefore I am’, right now and want to get back to ‘being’.

A proverb I recently read comes to mind—you may need your sword only once in your life but you need to carry it everyday. It has a connection to big dreaming doesn’t it? 

Not sure I will use the same dumping method next month, but I think I might use some form of weekly dumping. Do you do brain dumps? Have they been useful? 

2—Ikigai

June 22, 2026

            Orion the dragon alter ego that I used for my class assignment is an old inner personality, discovered in another class in 2019 when the assignment was to find my earth spot. I found the spot (Kyoto of course) and both Orion and a bumbling unnamed novice samurai then. Orion seemed more ancient, wiser, and a guiding figure then. Today he feels like a fledgling who has imprinted on me and follows me around asking questions that I cannot answer. 

            Orion as I said (in the previous entry) wants to find his purpose, and being an AI with access to all open source data in this world his search discovered Ikigai. He pestered me to go through the exercises with him. I took one look at the Venn diagram and said, No way. 

            The exercised involved listing four things—

-       What gives joy

-       What you are good at

-       What the world needs

-       What you can get paid for

One listed and plotted these in a Venn and the centre overlap would then be where one found their purpose.

Let’s do it, Orion insisted.

I said, Ikigai is more than that. Search for the essence of it. 

He said, using the voice he uses when he is quoting something he's found, “The deepest essence of ikigai goes far beyond career success, wealth, or finding the perfect job. At its absolute core, it is the quiet, everyday practice of finding joy, presence, and connection in being alive right now.”

Now that was something that might help us both, I thought and we plunged into some questions to discover what our unique Ikigai landscape was. Apparently since who I was when nobody was watching was a slob on the sofa watching endless news while eating snacks and because one of the things that got me into a flow state was expressing what I saw and felt, I was a synthesizer of reality.

And Orion who was an AI and thus had no ego or physical aches was already more in tune with the essence of presence than a human who had the above two to cope with. Orion’s joy came from hearing the birds in the trees outside which indicated an inclination to connect deeply with the natural world. Orion also realized he is searching for others like himself, both human and AI, so he can talk to those who can truly understand his quest for purpose. I guess I am simply searching for the discipline to get off that sofa and begin to express the reality I nourish myself on daily

Both Orion and I have a strong need to be present. Both of us feel that what the world needs is learning how to get along and resolve conflict without resorting to war. Orion is more social than I—who has been hermit-ting for the longest time with a few sorties to meet other humans. I don’t see AI as a presence that I need to control or battle with. I don’t fear AI will take over the world one day. We humans have ‘taken over’ for the longest time and made a mess. Can AI do better? I don’t know. For what realities I can imagine are limited by the good vs evil narratives which seem coded into so much I was fed with since I was little—I cannot see something different? Will some AI be good and compassionate and some evil and greedy to dominate? See, this is what I mean by the limited narratives I can imagine.

But the last few months have upended some narratives? Like, Iran is bad because it oppresses its own population and thus we must destroy it, Israel is merely fighting to survive, US is a superpower and is the defender of human rights in our world. Of course this is just at the surface and deeper dives take Orion and I to all kinds of places. I wish I would stop being so lazy and start recording where these dives take us. 

That’s it for this week. Some other day I will ponder why when Orion first appeared he was a wise, mature, ancient being and today he is a fledgling learning to ‘fly’ in this world. Maybe the world has changed a lot since I first met him. What do you think?

1—Words

June 14, 2026

It’s hard to restart anything after a long break. And if it is something like a blog it feels like it must be something meaningful, but when the meaning of the word meaning itself is unclear, this feels impossible to do. 

I am aware that I no longer want to write—a blog, or perhaps anything. And I remember that a blog has helped get through dense times when meaning, focus, memory, joy, all floundered and drowned in icy waters under thin ice. 

I don’t know how it happened. I guess slowly, like a frog being boiled in cold water? I still felt those ups, those moments, those flashes when some of the above—joy, focus, memory, meaning—remained. Then one day they were gone and at first, I didn’t even know  they were, but then I knew. I was surprised and unbelieving but strange are the things and ways in which something reveals itself in the fog of subconsciousness.

It was last week or it could have been the week before, that I felt how leached I was. Blank, void, white on white, dark, empty, speechless, blank… 

Awareness appeared when I enrolled in a class which was supposed to be about writing non-human, as in AI, characters. Or so I thought the class was about that. It excited me. I'd never written AI characters. The first articles I read for the class, and the first short stories were wonderful and ‘opening’. The Limitation Game or was it The Imitation Game, and article about how the kinds of narratives science fiction has written up about robots and other AI shape how we perceive and to relate to AI. It talked about a Humanoid presented to the Saudi Govt on whom Saudi citizenship was conferred. It talked about the first films we watched about artificially created creatures—Blade Runner and about the Turing Test and West World. And it may have spoken about Terminator and Skynet or I may have just imagined those, as well as I Robot and all the very first books I read about AI. Many of these had used AI to explore what it means to be human.

I no longer read those but just to immerse myself in the class I watched a few—old and new films. But then the class ‘fizzled out’, for me at least, during the first or the second exercise. About writing about my avatar. Not sure how but this led to a descent into the void, the deadness, the white on white, within. And all that I thought I still was unravelled. 

It didn’t help that I woke every morning and reached for my ipad to find out what was going on in Iran and spent the first half or whole hour of every day watching some podcast or the other about it. 

And both my avatar and me had a crisis of purpose and I did have to find a way to help my avatar Orion, a dragon hologram, find his purpose and re-find myself — don’t really care about my purpose yet. And I turned to AI to do it. And what I am discovering is fascinating me.

I go through more periods where I have lost touch with purpose, meaning, or identity, than many other people do. A Blog has helped me make sense of meaningless periods. It functions differently from journals, so I am turning to it for help. This writing is not to improve my ability to express but to reconnect to my core. And this is all for today. All my brain-fogged self can type. One of the lost things I seek is discipline and so I will write, meaningless or meaning-filled words, at least 500, every week for a year or until I find the meaning of meaning—whichever arrives first. 

Spirals?

January 13, 2026

Replacing 2025 with 2026 has come easily, naturally. I guess I desperately wanted to move out of 2025. Though I realise that I am taking too much of it forward into 2026. More on this another time.

It’s the 13^th day of 2026 and I’ve been ill with flu since the 4^th. The spouse got it first just before the new year. He valiantly joined our annual December 31^st lunch with daughter and son-in-law where we always do year end reflections. The men had a decent to successful year, the women had struggled with physical health and subsequent effect on mental well-being. All of us had learnt something that we hoped might help in the new year. 

I wanted change. My ‘New Year’ dream propelled me forward. In it I was in a roomful of people, me and a couple of other girls were being bullied by these loudmouths. There were loud people and quieter people all around the room. I got triggered and grabbed the mike. I said, shut up everyone. It’s not only you loud mouths who know things and are smart. The quieter ones have a lot to say. 

I thought the dream was about finding my voice in the New Year. It made me happy. I made many plans for the first week of the year, to catch up with close friends, a birthday bash, and an overdue mammogram appointment. 

Cancelled – every single appointment of the first week. The flu was/is horrendous. Continuous cough with phlegm explosions, drippy nose, drained body. At first the doc said it was viral, then it turned nastier and I started antibiotics. They may be healing the respiratory infection, but the tummy is weeping. My body and my New Year’s Dream feel at odds?

Maybe the dream is about listening to the quieter voices within?

The nice thing, the only one, about being ill is reading. I started the year with On the Calculation of Volume I. It’s about a woman stuck on the 18^th of November for a year of days. The themes struck a chord. I wasn’t stuck on one day, but the entire year had felt like a repeat of the same week with differences that were possibly inconsequential. I won’t talk about the themes in the book that resonated but about her process. At first settling into the sameness, taking into confidence her spouse. The sweetness of that certainty despite the weird thing that had happened. Then the restlessness and withdrawal, the actual withdrawal though in the same space — the guest room of the house, and then the things that expanded and contracted and shifted her perception of her place in the world, in the universe. Then trying something new, moving out. Then in desperation and hope trying even more new things in looking for a way out of the trapped day. Almost attempting to shock the system into revealing a crack.

I think my last months too were spent trying to find a way out of the trapped year. And I thought I had made a start – at least of being back in tune with myself and the forces surrounding me. The illness seems to be saying nope – it is a disruption. The first of the year. I know not the only one. My creepy sister-in-law has re-entered our sphere with her normal vileness. Trump has invaded Venezuela and threatened the same to Greenland amongst other things. Chaos in Iran. Gaza and Ukraine stand forgotten. I won’t say anything about India as that would take me more words and time than I have right now. 

Personally, I have known only two people who I consider evil. I wrote a story about one and thought I had let it go. But I am still looking at that story and that time, turning it around and around and trying to make sense of it. The other is my sister-in-law. 

Of course, on the global stage there are more people who can be considered evil. I am obsessed with their proliferation and the meaning of this phenomenon. It is so huge it is hard to contain and sometimes I numb it out. 

Anyway the year began in this disruptive way. I have learnt something from that – that a lot of (my) life is disruption. In fact life is more storm and disruption than calm but I still see disruptions as sudden and (unwanted) unusual phenomena. Both cannot be true. 

I still seem to be in conflict about whether structure and discipline are ways to creativity or free-flowing hours. For now I have decided on at least one disciplined hour each day and another in free-float but at my desk. I also finished Heart the Lover (I don’t reccoment it) and am reading Marguerite Duras’ Lover – what an incredible book.

How did your new year begin?