Prismatic Dispersions

Along with a few score of other bloggers, I’m accepting the A2Z Challenge of Blogchatter. This entails the writing of 26 blogposts in the month of April with each successive topic corresponding to a letter in the alphabet. This is the fourth time I’m accepting this challenge. I found it fun particularly in the last two years though quite exacting especially if you are hard up for time. But something productive emerges out of the exercise. What I wrote for this challenge in the last 2 years is available in book form in the public domain. Below are the links.

1. Great Books for Great Thoughts

2. Life: 24 Essays

This time my theme is Prismatic Dispersions.

A prism disperses light into its various components. We all learnt in junior school about the enchanting VIBGYOR. It was amazing to know as a little child that the ordinary white light that we took for granted consisted of so many sparkling colours. Later I thought of VIBGYOR as a metaphor for life itself. For life’s truths, more precisely.

Truth is never monochromatic. We are actually living now in what is called a post-truth world. Facts have ceased to matter anymore. Opinions matter. Perspectives matter. Whose opinion and whose perspective matters even more. Entire histories can be erased and whole new histories can be fabricated using the various state machineries and agencies. The media becomes the ruler’s lapdog. The judiciary becomes a mere scarecrow in the playfield of political hooligans who are ironically the legislators. Arthur Koestler’s Yogi and Commissar – opposite poles of the ascetic and the materialist – merge into a metamorphosed incarnation of Amrish Puri without facial expressions.

Prismatic Dispersions will present to you the multifarious colours of post-truth. No, it’s not going to be a political discourse. Not entirely, at least. It will be as apolitical as a metaphorical prism can be. It will start with A for Prayagraj and end with Zeitgeist. Prayagraj which killed one of the choicest celestial enemies of India’s history-lovers (or is it history-sheeters?) is our steppingstone to our ruling zeitgeist. In between there are even more interesting, possibly apolitical, things to look at like: Bhatti Mines as a symbol, Eclecticism, Loneliness can kill, Nationalism is a drug, Oceans are restless…

I assure the 500-odd readers who come to my blog every day that they will have much more in the month of April.