Ego boosters called "followers" on social media!

Raju Korti
There is a tantalising and deceptive undertone to the word "follower". The advent of social media and its inanities have produced this species which in simple words refers to people who chase someone's thoughts. The word "leader" is implicit in the word "follower". Followers exist because there are leaders. There is a breed on social media that arrogates to itself the status of a leader because everyone in their list is a "follower" and not a "friend".

I find it less amusing and more irritating that people who have added you to their "friend list" of their own sweet will show in their profiles as YOU who is following them. So you are a follower and not a friend because the choice of words brings this distinction to the fore. Adding someone as a friend and then showing him/her as your follower is a cheap trick to corner some self glorification. 

For the record, I do not follow anyone and I have zero interest in having such bloated egos in my fold. Follower? Really? They can keep their self-assumed importance to themselves and live lives of delusional grandeur. They are narcissists in the guise of leaders of public opinion.

Followers are the faithful minions, loyal subjects of one's digital kingdom (fiefdom if you prefer). They hang on your tweets/posts, eagerly awaiting your next 280-character stroke of genius and share it like it is the gospel truth. They are like the sidekicks in our digital superhero saga, cheering their "leaders" from the sidelines with emojis and some wisecracks.

In contrast, "friends" have almost become mythical creatures you encounter even outside the realm of social media. In a dopamine rush of notifications, they will also dislike your tweets and posts as much as they like them to keep your egos in check. On the other hand, "followers", to me, lurk in the depths of one's list , adding a touch of intrigue to someone's social media escapades.

To the self-proclaimed leaders of public opinion (euphemistically calling themselves as digital creators), followers are like Wi-Fi to their Netflix binge. They serve their purpose of validating their existence in the vast digital wilderness, reminding us that even in the age of algorithms and cat videos, there are people out there who actually care about your two cents. Or at least who care enough to hit that much sought-after blue button.

So here is a salute to faithful followers without whom the social media empire would be just a lonely desert island in the sea of cyberspace.

To all my followers, near and far
You click and tap, you like and share
Your support for me beyond compare.

Through memes and tweets we march on,
In this digital world where we all belong,
You boost my ego, make me feel grand,
With every follow(er), I fist-pump and stand.
The more in my fold, bigger my bandwagon.

From sunrise to sunset, you're always there,
Reading the rambles of my digital flight.
Through ups and downs, you remain true
My dear followers, you are my alternate ego.

So here's to you my loyal online crew,
With every click you help me renew,
My faith in the power of virtual bonds.

You compose my online journey,
make it a savoury virtual toast,
My followers, you are the ones I boast. 

PS: I do not have any followers. Just "friends".

Rhetoric is fine, but getting POK back will be a headache!

Raju Korti
The talk about India getting Pakistan Occupied Kashmir back in its fold is a red herring. All the national sentiment whipped up on the issue in the last three or four years do not seem to be disposed towards any consideration of why or how it can be done. The international community's view of POK being a "disputed territory" apart, the bottom line remains that it comprises two ethnically and linguistically different regions: What Pakistan feels is the Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan which is the northern most tip of Kashmir and covers parts of Ladakh. The latter makes for an overwhelming area of POK and seems to have found little mention in the strategic discourses and debate on the future of Kashmir.

Defence Minister Rajnath's Singh's optimism of getting back POK is based on the assumption that India will not be required to do anything (by which he means the use of military might) as the people of POK are themselves in favour of a merger and the ground situation in Kashmir much better than what it was in the earlier years. He, of course, did not deviate from the professed Indian line that "POK was, is and will remain ours".

While reports indeed say that there is an increasing unrest in POK and people wanting to become a part of India, it is not so simple as buying a chocolate on a counter. There are over 5 million people in POK. What does India do with them? Give them citizenship? Since the Partition they have been systematically brainwashed into believing that India is a sworn enemy. Can India ask them to go to Pakistan, and if they don't want to, as is most likely, will India use force? The ferment is fundamentally because of the fact that its inhabitants are staring at utter poverty, unable to make ends meet and in comparison to the bankrupt Pakistan, India appears to be the rising Sun. The new-found love for India by the people of POK is driven by expediency and the need for survival, not because of any change in religious or territorial priorities.

There is and will be a serious question mark on how these five million plus people will conduct themselves as law abiding citizens of India and whether we can afford to expend a substantial military might to hold on to them in the times to come should there by any eventuality. Are we willing to risk our soldiers on people who have been for decades armed by the Pakistanis? How do we feed them? They all use the Pakistani currency which is not legal tender in India. So, do they exist as refugees surviving on Indian largesse until they become part of the country's mainstream? The noise to become part of India should be seen more as the futility of living with a broke Pakistan than any affinity for India. 

There are, of course advantages. It is a strategic terrain for India's national security advantage and gives access to Afghanistan and Tazikistan for trade benefits. If India takes back POK or POK merges with (I make a subtle distinction between the two) India, Pakistan's geographical importance will diminish and give India better connection with Central Asia, Russia and Europe. It will not be altogether surprising that Pakistan will oppose this tooth and nail even if it means being blacklisted by the FATF.

In the midst of this talk, it is not sure how much conquest and diplomacy would work. There is at the moment there is nothing to indicate that this so called merger will be unequivocal; especially given the ruling dispensation in India. Also do not forget that India could not take back POK after three wars with Pakistan. A referendum in POK? Too early to even talk about it. What happens to the Radcliffe Line? Will the borders with Pakistan be remapped, and how? Winning battles on the front is one thing and winning them on the negotiating table is quite another. On that front, the record has been rather dismal.

Pakistan will never nod for any legal or political solution, and a war among the nuclear states could be catastrophic. The non-state actors are always onto the bandwagon. Besides, there is the China factor. As I see it, if a referendum is held in POK today and the only option of Pakistan and India is presented to the people, majority might choose India. But if we talk about the political opinion of the people of "Azad Kashmir/POK", then majority would back the independent state of Jammu and Kashmir which means reverting it back to its earlier status. Hence out of question.

I see zero reason for India to waste money and resources on a piece of land that has little to offer  beyond some patriotic rhetoric. Getting POK back would mean precious little else than an ego booster of rubbing dust on Pakistan's nose. It makes horse sense to keep such emotions aside and think sensibly. A prosperous India is far better than a bigger India with a chunk of land that will bring more headache. The cons far outweigh the pros.

To say that POK is a "disputed territory" is being over-simplistic. POK's merger with India has complex and sensitive ramifications with historical, political and cultural roots. The discussions about the status of POK are often deeply intertwined with the larger geopolitical dynamics and historical context of the region. It is not easy to find consensus on the solutions to these complexities.

India should not be taken in by the popular sentiment in POK which stems from their desperation of living in a country struggling for survival and at a point of no return. At the end of the day, people of POK are Pakistanis and don't deserve to become a part of India even if they wish so. There also are rumblings in Pakistan where a section believes that the Partition was a monumental mistake -- a realisation born out of the same consideration. 

Imagine a (hypothetical) scenario where Pakistan again becomes what was erstwhile India. There are many in India and Pakistan who visualise this and claim that together, they will be a global force on all fronts. In that case, history will record the Partition, the subsequent bloodshed and pre-Partition leaders presiding over the political manoeuvrings as a poor joke.

Rhetoric should remain what it is. A poor substitute for action and none whatsoever if it is fuelled for some brownie points. 

Gandhi experimented with Truth. I experiment with Kitchen!

Raju Korti
Necessity, as the wise old proverb goes, is the mother of invention. I have extended this rationale to "...and inventions happen out of experiments." Long before I came to this Mother Earth, there was Mahatma Gandhi who experimented with truth. Decades later, here I am experimenting with the kitchen. This is no comparison because there isn't any. Yet, I will have the audacity to say that at an experimental stage and as experimenters, all stand on an even keel. You just need to sauté your instincts with passion. 

Cooking Paav Bhaji for my one and only wife!

Please note the use of preposition when I said "my experiments with the kitchen and not in the kitchen. That, to me, would mean dumbing down the love of my labour. The rationale is as basic as it can get: No matter how beautiful your theory is; if it doesn't agree with your experiment, it's wrong. In my chequered existence that is more of a jigsaw puzzle, I have been experimenting with this, that and the sundry in a laboratory called life. The one that has given me tangible results is the kitchen where my restless curiosity finds an outlet and feeds my own satisfaction.

My experiments both with and in the kitchen started some 30 years ago, much after I had started my experiments with words. I find parallels in both, stimulating and creative in similar measure. As a writer, on my type-pad I use Teflon-coated words. In the kitchen I use Teflon-coated pans. To quote another maxim, nothing succeeds like success. So one successful experiment after the other tell me that even as a man, the kitchen is a creative place to be -- a fact already established by the mushrooming number males you see hosting cookery shows round the clock. Note the use of word mushrooming! It is the product of my nutritive imagination.

My first statistical inference told me I must learn about the vegetables I need to cook and the spices required to embellish. Garnishing follows. As I have already borne in a random post on my Facebook wall, my limited wisdom acquired from donkey's years have enlightened me that self-help is the best help and being self-taught is the best education. It shaped my culinary instincts and fuelled the experiments that I conducted regularly thereafter. Experiments were driving me to a precision where practice meets the kind of finesse that women across the world already bring to the craft.

My experiments have been highly satisfying, both as a performing cook and then as a consumer. Testimonials from friends, relatives, and most importantly, my better half, show that my trajectory in the kitchen has been exemplary. Starting from cooking vegetables, pulses, lentils, and dishes made from chickpea flour (besan), rawa, maida, noodles, pasta and what have you, I believe I have honed my skills over the years. It has reached a stage where in your comic smug satisfaction, you start laughing at your own joke.

One of my most significant findings is understanding the spices and their potency. Trust me, it is an ocean out there. To say that variety is the spice of life is unfair to the spices. They provide variety to life! That this vast variety and their myriad permutations and combinations can be limitless experimentation is a thought that excites and intrigues me no end. An occasional flop show would only convince me that absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism.

One does not have to be a philosopher to find out that satisfaction is the ultimate reward for any creativity. Whatever I have been experimenting in my little kitchen has been good enough for the kind of money one pays for dishes with fancy names in the hotels. Food cooked in home might be no-frills, simple spread but it has the biggest ingredient -- your instinctive temper(ing) and seasoning. As for me, having earned so many rave reviews on the Facebook post, all I can say is: The proof of the pudding lies in its eating. So come, savour and give me a testimonial. It is love's labour.

It is not as if everything that I cook can be pompously described as scrumptious. In the complex cooking algorithm that is defined by the ingenuity of the ingredients you deploy, a little measure here and there has the potential to upset your apple pie. But intuitiveness keeps me going and the experiments leave me more the wiser. It is a universally accepted logic that applies as much to a scientist working in a laboratory to a tenderfoot, half-baked like me dabbling in the kitchen. The findings matter!         

I reiterate that kitchen is the best place for a man to be. All those men served good, wholesome food on a platter every day, must try it. It is creative, inventive, entertaining and, ultimately, rewarding Hats off to the women who do it day in day out and whom men probably take for granted by default than design. Undoubtedly, the biggest and the oldest theft in the history of mankind will be caught the day women start demanding compensation for their labour. And I am no feminist!

Nuclear deterrence a joke, nuclear blackmail a reality!

Raju Korti
Intolerance is a transgression that seems to work only within a country's national borders but when it crosses national shores, it acquires a different dimension and hue altogether. Like the proverbial one nation's poison becoming another nation's meat. As tensions escalate between Israel and Iran once again after a brief but direct conflict -- unlike the proxy conflict it was earlier -- Iran has sounded the all familiar bugle of changing its nuclear doctrine "if its existence is threatened by Israel."

Iran's Supreme Leader Kamal Kharrazi's response was calibrated: "We have no decision to build a nuclear bomb, but should Iran's existence be threatened, there will be no choice but to change our military doctrine," Kharrazi was quoted as saying, with Tehran already signalling that it has the potential to build such weapons. The country has desisted from having nuclear weapons after the earlier Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei banned their development on the premise that building and stockpiling nuclear bombs is 'haraam' (religiously forbidden). That went for a toss a couple of years later when one of its ministers said the Western pressure could push Tehran to seek nuclear weapons.

That the Nuclear deterrence is fickle, volatile and a double-edged weapon is a no-brainer. Nations possessing nuclear weapons have been trumpeting it guised as national security bogey as also to threaten rival nations. Remember, Pakistani establishment's periodic threats of nuking India, the Chinese nuclear threats against Japan in the past, Trump's "fire and fury" threats to North Korea, itself ruled by a whimsical lunatic, and now Vladimir Putin's saber-rattling machismo about the use of nuclear weapons if pushed to corner by the US and NATO. The world has been constantly sitting on powder keg right from the days of Cuban missile crisis.

Security experts around the globe attributing the stability and world peace to the Nuclear Deterrence Doctrine is specious and is good only in theory but non-sensical in practice. The argument that the possibility of a nuclear war died a natural death with the Cold War stands demolished. Technological and geopolitical expediencies raise a question mark over the efficacy of a Nuclear Deterrence Doctrine. 

For long, direct or indirect nuclear threats have been the default position of states possessing nuclear weapons. Such threats believed to be the essence of deterrence have been laid to rest as nuclear threats are no long only historical curiosities. We have entered an age where the risk of nuclear use -- deliberately or by accident or, worse still, miscalculation -- is rising. The international community is justifiably concerned that in unstable Pakistan, its nuclear armoury could fall into the hands of whom Islamabad is known to dismiss as "non state actors"; is as much serious as an eccentric dictator of the rogue North Korea issuing nuclear threats at the drop of a hat in his bluster and bravado. Also recall how the US in its self-arrogated wisdom spread the canard of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction and used it as a ruse to attack it.      

Regional tensions, proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials to make them -- along with terrorism and new technologies like cyber -- mean the risk of a nuclear weapon or device being used is rising. On the flip side the inability of the governments to manage the increasingly complex global security is also eroding. The self-righteous US bandied the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and tried to ram it down India's throat but India refused to budge on the premise of it being discriminatory. Security concerns are peculiar to a nation and there are no fixed guidelines that can address these concerns. 

Do not go by the so called progress in the reduction of nuclear weapons since the Cold war. The world's combined inventory of nuclear warheads remains at a very high with nine countries possessing roughly 12,000 warheads as early as beginning of 2024. A stockpile enough to destroy the universe many ties over.! US and Russia together alone have close to 88% of the world's total inventory. A state that swears by the Nuclear Deterrence Doctrine needs no more than a few hundred nuclear weapons for national security, if at all there is a justification. On the contrary, many states are increasing their nuclear stockpiles. In a world polarized on political ideologies and territorial disputes, a global conflict always looms large even if it could be just two nations at war.

There is only a thin line that divides nuclear deterrence and nuclear blackmail. And a momentary impulse that decides a sane leader from a maniac overcome by misplaced authority and convictions!

Don't over-rate Happiness. Don't avoid Sadness!

Raju Korti
To all those oblivious of the social media algorithm of  someone like me generating ideas from what good friends write, this blog is one. My US-based friend Vinod Sujan is a food for thought and always packs a robust wisdom punch in his posts. This one particularly appealed to me:
"The amount of energy, love and happiness you are willing to trade to acquire wealth is the cost of wealth. The idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness is a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in our society which is fear of sadness. Are we teaching our kids that happiness is the default position? Isn't wholeness what we ought to be striving for? And part of wholeness is sadness and disappointment, frustration and failure; happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don't teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say, 'Quick! Move on! Cheer Up!" 

As someone whose life has been a proved and corroborated template of sadness, happiness has been a rather alien and a tangential feeling. One song from the 1964 film Dosti sums it up for me. It makes a virtue of sadness:
Raahi manwa dukh ki chinta kyun sataati hai, dukh to apna saathi hai
Sukh hai ek chhaon dhalti, aati hai, jaati hai, dukh to apna saathi hai.
Dukh ho koyi tab jalte hain path ke deep nigaaho me...   

Conventional wisdom says happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin but life can be lopsided in all its bias. I have always been like a captain who loses the toss, and therefore the plot, most of the times. Happiness and sadness are two emotions often conceptualized as being diametrically opposite ends of the same continuum. In my naivette, happiness is simply the absence of sadness and vice versa, and it has been more of an exception than a rule that the two have been separate, independent emotions that can co-exist in a person's emotional seasoning as research puts it.

I have been reading a lot on the issue but the more I delve, the more I discern that there is a desperate attempt on the part of many to institutionalize happiness as a default position, a thought that Vinodbhai puts across so evocatively. Happiness and sadness are measured and evaluated across a spectrum of parameters but the human compass seems to veer around to happiness as a course correction, no matter what or from where your sadness stems. We are programmed to think that way, and as Vinodbhai says, it is a dangerous idea.

As someone who has grown up to be a sad person -- and even more sadly, being a cynical that obtains from my profession -- sadness has helped me acknowledge and process my emotions. I am no philosopher, nor do believe that I have the power to preside over other people's destiny, but in my considered limited wisdom, this is something that many people consciously avoid. You supress sadness at your own peril -- that of building emotional resilience and developing empathy and compassion. Sadness and happiness should at best be only lost-and-found brothers. Having said that, sadness is not a disease to be cured of, nor is a happiness a gift.

Do not over-rate happiness. Let sadness give your persona that much needed balance. I will quote another song lyrics to buttress this:
Na milta gham to barbaadi ke afsaane kahaan jaate
Agar duniya chaman hoti to veeraane kahaan jaate.

So all those who believe that happiness is a choice and sadness is not a preference, take some heart, if not inspiration from the sadness that I perennially wallow in.