Of the disappointing Love affair that is Indian webcomics

Bhujwasis (and other junta) still recovering from the bought of loud fervor of Ganesh-utsav will totally relate to this webcomic:

Permalink: crocodileinwatertigeronland.tumblr.com

crocodileinwatertigeronland.tumblr.com

Can I just say I'm in Love with a capital L. I found this really awesome, super sarcastic and super meta webcomic that updates every Monday (the minuscule regular readership will know how I struggle with Monday mornings). Introducing Crocodile in Water Tiger on Land. I love everything about them including their introduction:

Crocodile in water tiger on land is a non-profit equal opportunity collection of below-the-belt cheap shots in comic form. Look for updates every Monday morning, the best time of the week for insults.

as well as their interview in Helter Skelter (which is where I discovered them)

flyyoufools.com

Not that I've not been in love before. There was Fly You Fools back in the day when Google Reader was a thing. [I have no idea who I have to thank for sharing this one but I definitely know who I have to curse for taking that beautiful community away from me. (Google, you are quite evil).] FYF had awesome pop-arty graphics and the foul-mouthed sarcasm that made it very relatable for me.  But it didn't last; not a peep from them since Feb 2011. 

mantaraycomics.tumblr.com/thesmallpicture

Then I discovered Manta Ray Comics and I used to look forward to their weekly comic, The Small Picture. It had so many things going for it: it had great art (Prabha Mallya, you're awesome!) and it was political and subtly sarcastic. It even had syndication; it used appear in the Live Mint. 

My favorite was this comic titled Toasted because it referenced Mad Men and when it came out, I was having a Don Draper moment. Needless to say I was floored (I loved the idea of Don Draper having to wrestle with advertising in the smartphone era.). However, all good things come an end and just like that, they went quite. But it was good while it lasted and it wasn't me, it was YOU. 

Any-the-who, one mustn't let past disappointments color one's judgement about future dalliances. Here's looking forward to Monday Mornings. 

On Confessing, Hoping, and Connecting

Last week has been mad: in the past three weeks I've been in five states and have been massively sleep deprived for the past 4 - 5 days. Its also been a bit of an emotional roller coaster because I was meeting some friends after 3 - 4 years and that has its attendant realizations about how people/things change and how they remain the same.

Yesterday I finally had sometime to catch up on the reading and I read this brilliant article by the Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis. This article was directed to me by the redoubtable Ritwik Agarwal whose own thoughts can be found here. Varoufakis about how Marxist thought shaped his understanding of political economy and how Marx's prime contribution to political thought was that to highlight the conflict that labor cannot be cannot be completely defined in commodity terms and hence can never be completely reduced to a commodity and while the capitalist system constantly tries to do that, the moment it achieves it, the whole system will collapse.

One of the things the kinda tangential things that got stuck in my head from the article is when towards the end of the article Varoufakis talked about how it is easy to fall into a sense of complacency and "how easy it was for my mind to be infected with the sense...that nothing succeeds in reproducing itself better than a false sense of entitlement" He completed the article with the humble suggestion that "Radical confessions, like the one I have attempted here, are perhaps the only programmatic antidote to ideological slippage that threatens to turn us into cogs of the machine."

This last thought reminded me of this TEDxDelhi talk by Shabnam Virmani where she talks about her journey exploring Kabir across the subcontinent and in the end she shares this song that tells this tale about a tiny bird that is trying to save the tree she perched on from a forest fire. In the face of the face of the enormity and the hopelessness of the whole enterprise the tiny bird had only this to offer "I'm doing what I can" and I think that is such a powerful message and it fills you with hope for possibilities. 

I could go on and keep talking about half a dozen thoughts buzzing in my head right now but I'll sign off and get back to the real world because as the poet, Robert Frost put it:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.