DIGITAL VANDALISM

Temperature is relative. The hot gusts of wind berating the grass are life-threatening to pines and conifers. It's the time of year when one prefers staying inside the house to coming out and greeting the sky. The sun shines like an omnipresent sink of energy and source of sweat. It wouldn't be on my bucket list to spend the days of my life getting tanned under the Delhi sun, but I like the feeling of burning its leaves.  When I look up at the sky, I can challenge the yellow (almost white) ball of fire to have a duel with me. It's an intense challenge to see who can last longer, which we both lose at the sight of the moon. I retire to my tiny room that I share with my roommate, and I think we all have a good idea of what happens to the sun. The routine is monotonous, yet every other morning we are back to our shenanigans, which might seem more pathetic on my part as I have more say in the matter than my competitor.                  ...

The cause is more relevant than the act. The story is more intriguing than the conclusion. When confronted by a choice of entertainment versus rationality, we often choose to slide with the former. I recall reading the stories of Panchtantra, Akbar Birbal, Tenali Rama, and Vikram Betal with much fascination as a child. Several of these tales revolved around solving crimes, punishing the culprit, and providing justice to the innocent. Often reminding us that in an ideal kingdom, the scales of justice are always kept in balance. Fast forward to contemporary times, and the crime rates are much higher than anyone in these stories could have ever contemplated. The issues of public inconvenience today aren’t merely one farmer taking the land of another or a potter trying to dupe a customer through a fake pot, we have an assortment of ideas conquering the minds of the bourgeoisie. We do not view crime through the black-and-white filters that our ancestors so eagerly used.  We are gullible...

Like all stories, let's start this one backwards. The earliest known writing was invented in 3400 BC, in an area called Sumer in the Persian Gulf. Humans have since then manoeuvred virtually every possible medium to express their ideas to the world. When we learnt that sound travels faster in water, we set up drums near water bodies to transmit messages faster. I always like talking about how our modes of communication evolved over time but maybe we don't need to go that far back to understand my motivations of having a blog.  I think I made this blog page back when I was in 5th grade. I vaguely remember the chapter in our IT textbook trying to explain this concept of putting your thoughts out there on the internet. It seemed really cool back in 2012. Now, it's just a bunch of emails from blogspot informing about deprecated features in my inbox. The point is, if any, that this website is filled with a bunch of poems and some essays that I wrote under the influence of my tee...