Brahmins, especially Marathi brahmins, love the idea of a dictator. Mein kampf is one of the favourites of marathi brahmins, and they, very casually say "a few years" of dictatorship will fix india. Brahmanism thrives on indirect power over the dispossessed. +++ Invariably, the brahmins saying such things are well to do. They think nothing will affect them, because they think a dictatorship will treat them specially. They've this elevated idea of their inherent worth to the country +++

I have said this before, but, I come from a family that was a staunch RSS family, with my grandfather being one of the post holders for local shakha. We had a subscription for a biweekly called Sobat, run by an editor called Behere. This is in the late 80s. 1/ Since I've the habit of reading everything that's in my vicinity (at least cursory reading) I used to go through it. Even back then - this is almost 35 years back - the three things that constituted most of the agenda of RSS parivar were:

1. Article 370
2. UCC
3. Ram Mandir

2/

This came out of some tweets recently that casually seem to blame bad behavior on alcohol. Not that I'm an expert here, but alcohol just plays with your risk assessment, making you do riskier things. I'm reminded of an incident during my engineering days. 🧵 A bunch of us friends, boys and girls, had gone to a nearby fort for a day's picnic. While we were walking, we could hear someone hooting and eve-teasing from a bridge at a distance, not too far to get a good look at the boys who were engaging in it. #1

A 🧵 on #caste #privilege, mainly for those born/raised in the so-called "upper caste" communities (like me). I was born a Brahmin, and having grown up on a steady diet of implicit/explicit casteism that took a couple of decades to even partially cleanse myself of means I know most of the arguments that UCs use regarding caste. I've used them in the past. I know how hollow they are. 1/

A brief🧵about how patriarchy hurts men too, especially men who don't fit its stereotypes.

#feminism #genderequity #genderbiases #partiarchy Most people (both men/women) don't seem to get it that some men are more at peace with the rhythms of everyday domestic life. We need to stop looking at it as an emasculation of a man, just as we shouldn't look at a woman prioritizing career as missing a "womanly" instinct. 1/

Please sit? It take 5 minutes for a delivery agent to come from main gate of most complexes to the door. One signal can add 2 mins. I've had delivery partners call up and ask me if they can mark a delivery, because they are stuck and will miss delivery window by a few mins.

https://twitter.com/AZenGuy/status/1505906599226793984

I tell them it's okay and to slow down, rather than rush. The power equations are so skewed, and these "expectations" of 10 mins delivery, with all the hyper-local bullcrap, will just make it more and more difficult, and irrespective of the distances, it will make it riskier.

As someone raised in a Brahmnical (not just Brahmin) family, I relate so much with this thread. I came to Ambedkar through a long and torturous route -- having internalized many of the casteist prejudices very common in this community. 1/

https://twitter.com/gauravsabnis/status/1500797827227734016

Apart from the usual anti-reservation indoctrination, dismissal of mass conversions out of Hindu fold as "nav-buddha phenomenon", quite pejoratively, one of the most ironic things about this community is the belief in their own "modernism". I'm not even kidding. 2/

My kid was less than a year old then. I sometimes feel many men miss out on these early moments of absolute bliss because they assume child-rearing is a predominantly mother's job. Yes, the bigger problem with it is the asymmetric burden that it places on the new mothers, but I'm going to talk to the men about what some of *them* are missing out on. I want to share a tiring but rewarding period of my life, as a hands-on father.

In the recent past, I've learned from two extremely independent, and mentally strong women, that they have this inferiority complex/imposter's syndrome thanks to the people around them -- family and friends, well-meaning, and good people. 1/ Our society doesn't validate achievements of women as much as it validates achievements of men -- even close friends/relatives, who, sometimes unconsciously, end up creating this sense of "I'm not good enough" (even for the partners who love them) or "I don't belong here" 2/

Warning: A long, rambling🧵.

Back in my teens, I read Sunita Deshpande's (Marathi) book Aahe Manohar Tari

Loosely translated as: it's all pleasant but) from a line of a poem that end with "gamate udaas" (feels sad).

It was an important book in many ways.

1/ Sunita Deshpande was the wife of P. L. Deshpande -- Maharasthra's much loved writer, and a multi-talented person. He was primarily a humorist, but an astute observer of human traits and frailties. The book, an autobiography, generated a lot of controversy (more later).

2/

"[O]ften inquisitors create heretics. [...] Inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven, to share in it, in their hatred for the judges."

-Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose. I dearly miss #UmbertoEco with his clinical insights on everything, from religion/belief to fascism. The quote above also reminded me of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, and in turn the Stalinist purges it was based on. A must read book for our times, I you ask me.

TW: #sucide #mentalhealth #depression

This is going to be the most difficult thread I've ever written. But I know I have to. For my own sanity, catharsis.

1/ In 2019, I lost a friend. He died of suicide. He was a classmate, and a colleague. We worked alongside each other for 8 years. We had lunches together. He was a gem of a person. Extremely intelligent, a 10x engineer (if there is such a thing). Soft-spoken. Without malice.

2/

Another Sunday. Another thread. #caste #privilege #merit #prejudice

My primary school was a govt. aided vernacular medium school run by an ed. institute (one of the better ones in my home city). My first recall of #caste is from when I was in 2nd/3rd.

1/ One of our teachers that year was NOT upper-caste (unlike most teachers in the school), and the predominantly upper-caste parents (including mine) weren't happy with the "quota" teacher. The general mood was "our education system is going to collapse due to quota"

2/

#Caste a thread.

Long back, when I had just passed my 10th exam with decent marks, a distant relative who was an office bearer for "karhade brahmin sanghatana", or some such organization representing my born caste, visited our house to hand me a "prize"

1/ Incidentally, we were invited to attend a program to felicitate "bright" students from the community but hadn't turned up, so he had come home to deliver my cash prize. "I don't accept prizes that are caste-based", I said. He tried to convince me, but I was adamant.

2/

To follow up on a thread I RTed earlier on about "introverts", a common Marathi word thrown at introverts is "manus-ghana" (literally someone "repulsed by human beings"). Even in English, where we have anti-social and asocial, the former is used frequently for introverts.

1/ These implicit judgements in our language tend to strongly bias us, because, after all, they're just tokens of the social attitudes, passed on generations after generations -- just like caste names being used derogatively, thus making a group feel bad about themselves.

2/

One of my earliest jobs was at a startup. It was a toxic work culture. And over years, I've seen much better workplaces, and now culture is key criteria for me for work. But what I've observed is, people tend to discount the toxicity because "work is challenging" 1/

https://twitter.com/AnantBhan/status/1397881785619464194

In the early years, when you want to learn a lot, sure, it does help to be in those sort of "cutting edge" (self-certified) workplaces, on purely the work axis. But given a chance to start fresh again, I'd not want to be in such setups. It does invisible damage. 2/

The right-wing misogyny on Twitter during Eid reminded me of an interaction I witnessed when I was about 10. Buckle up for an "insider" RSS story, kids ...

1/ I come from a family that had (I say had because my dad was too lazy to be associated with anything) a strong RSS connection. My grandfather was a shakha man. Most of his friends -- orthodox Maharashtrian brahmins -- were associated with RSS.

2/

People seem to have this vague notion of special scientific knowledge that's somehow a monopoly of a certain class/group of people. I suspect this comes from our centuries of religion centric outlook. We're so used to those structures, that we bring them to scientific inquiry. 1/ What is "scientific knowledge" is just what is independently verifiable knowledge based on current data. It can change. It can be partially or totally wrong. It presumes falsifiability -- it's a requirement. Anyone can add to it by following the rigorous methodology. 2/

A thread about #Grief.

Disclaimer: I've no formal training in psychology/psychiatry. This is my very personal take. So feel free to take whatever you want, and leave whatever you don't want. 1/2 Earlier this month I faced grief for the first time in a very personal sense when I lost my father to #COVID19. I was close to my grandparents, but it was different with them. And all other deaths I've had to mourn were not as directly impacting as my father's. 2/

A younger colleague's husband (38yo, healthy, active, with no medical history, non-smoker/non-drinker) passed away of COVID. She had called up yesterday to check with doctors in my circle about his prognosis. In the morning, he had a cardiac arrest after his BP went down. 1/ I feel helpless, sad, and insanely angry -- not even sure at who anymore. Does it even matter? We're failing as a society because we, as a group, don't care enough. When this ends, and those of us who make it through, would we even change? Would we start caring? 2/

Sad Update: After fighting COVID and other complications, my dad passed away peacefully yesterday afternoon. A man who loved people had to die with strangers, away from his loved ones. The last we talked to him was when he was taken to COVID ward.
#COVID19 #pune

1/

https://twitter.com/asuph/status/1376765428022665224

He had never stayed in the hospital and never been alone his whole life. And we were worried how he will feel. But his condition was such that he didn't really understand it (and I hope he never did). The last time we "saw" him alive was when he was sleeping in the ICU ...

2/