doublethink

Thoughts are something like boiled red kidney beans – if overcooked they crumble down; pieces and fragments float in the curry which perhaps is on its way to become a broth. Well, there could be another perspective: since they are crumbled, they mix-up well with whatever you add to them. Dissolved and assimilated, they take a new shape and get re-shaped in turn. I remember reading recently a comment made in the aftermath of attack on girls in a Bangalore pub: “A republic without pub is a relic.” Funny, witty and thought -provoking. A pub, a café, a bar – history has shown us – have always remained the sites of thought-formation in the West (French cafes in particular where wine, cubism and talks about mistresses flowed seamlessly over the rim of the goblets); in fact quite very much akin to what an adda or paada is in Bengal and mehfil , gosthi and majlis are in other cultural zones spreading from Iran to Indonesia. You drink and you think, sometimes you also think that why does on...