#Bibliofiles : 2023 favourites

In many ways, the books I read are my mind’s zeitgeist, and naturally the favourites reflect this. This year, the list is along broad lines of History & Culture, Mind & Philosophy, Systems of the World, and Fiction. And with that little prologue, as per tradition – from 20192020, and 2021, and 2022 – we have this year’s list of ten (plus a few 🙈). From the 65 books I read in 2023…

Favourite Reads 2023
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Malaga feat. Granada and Ronda

The original plan was Portugal, but at some point in the research, we turned right into Spain. BLS (not VFS for a change!) was not as bad as it looked online, and we got the visa ahead of the promised time. We travelled in the first half of October, and the weather was pleasant (our winter jackets, which we decided to carry thanks to a 13 degrees we saw somewhere, weren’t touched). Best to book flight tickets at least 4 months in advance.

We chose Malaga as the first port of call because it seemed like a good base for Andalusia in general, at least given the places we wanted to see. So here goes – where to stay, what to eat, and what to see and do in Malaga, Granada and Ronda.

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Karma meets an iceberg

A recent event reminded me of a post about karma I had written half a dozen years ago. The idea of the post was thanks to Umair Haque, who had a definition of karma that was different from the garden variety ‘consequences of your actions’.

Karma isn’t what you “have” or something you “do”. It’s what you are….. Karma is all the concepts and notions you hold in that tiny little head. All those concepts are stitched together by the idea of “you”, right? So karma is all those concepts, together, which determine your intentions, actions, behavior, all of it.

Umair Haque
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Tokyo

Japan was always the plan, it was only a matter of when. 🙂 We planned well in advance, but even then, thanks to it being Sakura season, a lot of hotels were sold out. The visa took less than a week to get processed. Bangalore has a direct flight to Tokyo. So all you have to do is, to quote Amrita Rao, ‘JAL lijiye’. Interestingly, the pilot took off immediately after we landed, confusing all of us! We finally landed again after about 20 minutes. Tokyo was our first stop. We began, and ended, our 11-day Japan trip in Tokyo. This is our list of where to stay, what to see, and where and what to eat.

D shot while I snored.
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Isle of Skye

What’s a visit to Scotland without a trip to the Highlands! Thanks to the Rabbie’s Tours itinerary, we were able to cover a decent bit of ground in 3 days.

Stay

Our base technically was Portree, where we stayed for two nights at the Pier Hotel, run by a very homely Effie and family. The place is right next to the water, and less than 5 minutes walk from the town square. The building, Effie told us while making us breakfast, was more than 200 years old. But for a small stay, it’ll do just fine.

The one on the top left was our room. That meant a good view of the water.
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Designing my desires

A world of transactional efficiency

It was a little over 4 years ago that I first brought up the increasingly transactional nature of our interactions and even existence in general. I was reminded of it while listening to Amit Varma’s podcast with Nirupama Rao. Interestingly, they brought up contexts similar to what I had used – mails and rails. I had used birthday greetings going from long mails/cards to a ‘Like’ on someone else wishing the person a birthday. Travel was the other context, and I liked Amit’s example of train journeys being a unique experience. In contrast to say, the flight from point A to B.

Last year, around the same time, I had framed it as An Efficient Existence, and used the example of Taylor Pearson’s 4 minute songs – the timeframe he had mentioned for songs in the context of  certain rules that creators need to follow if they want their work to be consumed and appreciated. I had brought up an earlier era of Floyd, Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac etc whose songs didn’t follow that template. Demand or supply, what happened first, I asked. Does it have to do with the abundance of choice now, and the demands of instant gratification? While templated packages for all sorts of consumption are increasingly the norm, people also want to finish and move on to the next thing on their list. Transactions. (Generalising), there seems to be very less desire to have an immersive experience. Outside the screen, that is. As the Spotify ads show (unintentionally and literally) we’re usually in a bubble, oblivious to our surroundings.

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Subjective Objectification

D and I watched Crime Stories: India Detectives on Netflix a few days after it was released. The episode that saddened both of us was “Dying for Protection”, which was based on the murder of a sex worker. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be the subject of discussion on a Saturday late evening, which these days are spent on the balcony, in the company of spirits, watching the sun and the world part ways. Yes, that is privilege.

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Default in our stars

The thought first occurred to me a couple of years ago, when I realised that thanks to outsourcing and automation, we would struggle today to do many things that were once life skills. We also lost a little more than that – learning.

Sometimes directly, and sometimes, through the interactions with the world, they facilitated a learning experience that taught one how to navigate the world and the different kinds of folks that made up its systems. 

Regression Planning

It was continued with a bit more specificity in a subsequent post.

Instagram, Facebook, Tinder, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon – everything is a feed of recommendations, whether it be social interactions, music, content or shopping! Once upon a time, these were conscious choices we made. These choices, new discoveries, their outcomes, the feedback loop, and the memories we store of them, all worked towards developing intuition. 

Intelligence, intuition and instincts. The journeys in the first two are what have gotten the third hardwired into our biology and chemistry. When we cut off the pipeline to the first two, what happens to the third, and where does it leave our species?

AI: Artificial Instincts
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Atrophy, or not.

An excellent coincidence that I finished reading James P Carse’ “Finite and Infinite Games” the same day I wrote this post. The book helped me frame thoughts to my satisfaction. 

There was an age when accumulating possessions – from apparel brands to places visited to career designations to property ownership and anything that signals prosperity – was the game I played. Or games, because a milestone was a victory in that finite game, and I quickly moved on to another. Trophies that the world dictatedContinue reading