Left Foot Forward, Right Foot Back

Many of us have pursued knowledge, engaged in rigorous and constructive dialogue, and arrived at our positions in society through perseverance and earned accomplishment.

The essence of democracy lies in the exchange of ideas through reasoned dialogue, not in the degradation of discourse through abuse or the erosion of a family’s dignity by ignorant and virulent voices, whose diabolical tongues lash like a scorpion’s tail or strike with the venom of a viper.

It is both arduous and agonising to witness envious individuals pass the most contemptuous assertions about others without any understanding of their livelihoods, character, or circumstances. They rely instead on cinematic portrayals or the opinions of uninformed commentators who have neither examined the facts nor pursued the truth.

These individuals rarely reveal the full measure of their own character, yet readily assume the mantle of cultural arbiters. Driven by voyeuristic impulses, they remain intensely inquisitive about the private lives of others, only to transform that knowledge into corridor talk and spectacle through sensationalist magazines and podcasts. The most disquieting aspect is that such intrusion is not merely tolerated but monetised — rewarding those who turn personal lives into entertainment and, at times, appear to derive satisfaction from the very act of diminishing others.

The contradiction inherent in democratic expression is that one is criticised when one speaks and questioned when one chooses silence. In a democratic society, every individual has the right to express themselves, participate in public discourse, and advocate for causes they believe in. If we are entrusted to advise a country or contribute to shaping public thought through speeches and dialogue, by what authority does anyone dictate the manner in which we should engage in collective action? It is a contradiction to resist being instructed by others while simultaneously attempting to impose one’s own expectations upon them.

The reality is that those who render their assessments, draw their conclusions, pronounce their opinions, and deliver their verdicts have never walked in our shoes. They see only the footprints left behind, but not the soles those shoes have surrendered; not the hardships that have shaped them, the tears that have marked their fabric, or the indelible impressions left by the countless miles of struggle.

One must look beyond the adversity and recognise the sense of solidarity that emerged from a recent protest held in Delhi: for nearly a month, citizens were united in a shared experience, extending assistance to one another even as circumstances evoked the unsettling feeling of living under a totalitarian reality without any communalism.

When society abandons the discipline of listening and chooses only to break its own boundaries, what begins as a pursuit of change can descend into a cycle of repetition. Like a serpent consuming its own tail, unresolved patterns return endlessly; what remains untransformed is often what we continue to permit.

Amid India’s social stratifications, moments of shared humanity continue to transcend inherited divisions. A differently abled Dalit, carrying the wounds of social humiliation, arrived on a hand-powered tricycle yet stood with dignity among others; an underprivileged Hindu street-food vendor, serving modest fare wrapped in newspaper, offered it without expectation; and a displaced Muslim fanned those around him, holding a flag that rested against rain-soaked earth and mire. A transgender acrobat served cutting chai—a sweet, spiced brew for a bitter era defined by cuts: salaries diminished, and the human spirit carved by the unseen wounds of economic despair.

The glass is half full, but the price of filling it keeps rising. Individuals took turns caring for one another, and the physical presence of “privileged” influencers using their platforms for solidarity offered a glimpse of collective responsibility. Meanwhile, an elderly Sikh provided indisposed women with a safe, private space to change their sanitary napkins, shielding them from vulnerability in a crowded and hostile environment. By confronting those accused of physically, sexually, and verbally harassing women, strangers demonstrated a brotherhood that transcends blood—proving that solidarity is not inherited through shared ancestry but revealed through values. Nearby, a Christian teacher and her 10 -year-old held a placard showing how an entire generation stood up and fought for her daughters' future.

A curious confluence of artistic endeavour: canvases became repositories of artistic expression, cameras arrested transient moments, and elaborately costumed figures—reminiscent of Comic-Con protagonists—imbued the occasion with a carnivalesque spirit. Choral renditions of songs celebrating unity and collective purpose drifted through the air, lending the gathering an almost ceremonial cadence.

In a gesture of quiet civic generosity, places of worship opened their doors to all, offering spaces for repose, nourishment, and hydration transcending denominational boundaries in service of the common good. Meanwhile, uniformed personnel and plainclothesmen, equipped with AI-enhanced spectacles, maintained an unobtrusive yet exhaustive visual chronicle of the proceedings, while the city’s subterranean arteries were closed, severing the usual flow of movement.

Perhaps history has rarely witnessed complete unity. Yet such moments reveal that solidarity is not the erasure of difference, but the transcendence of it. The sight of students nurturing those on opposing sides, individuals arriving from distant regions, and communities uniting across belief and identity offers a rare glimpse of democracy’s deepest potential.

Hyderabad’s political loyalists remained absorbed in defending their party representative, their allegiance eclipsing their understanding of the wider student movement obscuring the intentions behind the politician’s actions.

Yet what remained troubling was the extent to which a generation could descend into verbal hostility. While indignation and anguish may be legitimate expressions of grievance, the use of crude and demeaning language diminished the dignity of the very causes being defended. A democracy is measured not only by the freedom to dissent, but also by the civility with which that freedom is carried forward.

I have distant relatives among journalists, ambassadors, and MPs, both nationally and internationally—individuals who are not only committed democrats but also embody civility, dignity, and an abiding sense of public responsibility. One of them, who is of a different race, faith, and gender, was, in my view, a worthy candidate for the presidency of the United States. Although she did not prevail in the election, she had the courage to step forward and participate in the democratic process.

We often speak of India as a land of unity in diversity—a civilisation enriched by countless cultures, faiths, and traditions—yet we continue to confront divisions based on the colour of one’s skin. The messages conveyed through Michael Jackson’s Black or White and They Don’t Care About Us remain deeply relevant, reminding us of the gap between the ideals we celebrate and the prejudices we still struggle to overcome.

My family traces its roots from the Caribbean, through the Straits of Malacca, and onward to the Coromandel, yet we still find ourselves uncertain of our own identities despite possessing extensive documentation—records to which few may have access and which may remain preserved within private or institutional archives while, considerable effort appears to be devoted by some to creating pseudonymous Jane or Joe accounts, adopting fabricated identities, or compromising others’ accounts in order to allege transgression and malfeasance, level accusations, and impute culpability to them.

Society frequently attributes institutional failure to systemic corruption while simultaneously seeking privileged access and preferential provisions when such advantages serve individual interests. The dichotomy is evident in the disparity between the allocation of public resources, including collective tax contributions, and their intended purpose of fostering equitable advancement for those most dependent on essential necessities, leaving vulnerable communities underserved.

Gemma Correll’s cartoon in The Economist imagines an “Anxiety Land” amusement park: a surreal theme park devoted to the rituals and absurdities of modern neurosis. Its attractions include the “Worry-Go-Round,” a carousel of endlessly revolving fears; the “House of Social Anxiety Nightmares,” a hall of distorted reflections where self-consciousness becomes the ultimate funhouse mirror; and exhibits such as “The People Pleaser” and “The Emotional Swallower,” the latter depicting the familiar act of suppressing one’s feelings until they erupt in an impossible performance of internal combustion. The satire lies in transforming private psychological burdens into public amusements—turning the architecture of anxiety into a meticulously designed carnival of contemporary emotional life.

Mad comics offer a provocative gesture of defiance toward artificial intelligence—two raised middle fingers, perhaps—while issuing a reminder that creativity is inseparable from human labour and that artists deserve recognition and compensation for the worlds they create. It also points toward a broader truth: it is often the working classes who physically build the infrastructure and communities that define modern civilisation, while many of us merely sit with a blueprint of existence—an inheritance of knowledge, imagination, and possibility that feels as though it has been handed to us by the cosmos itself.

Beneath the satire lies a darker meditation on a society strained by conflict and psychological deterioration: a world in which mental health suffers in the aftermath of war, while institutions that once embodied ideals of social responsibility risk being reduced to spectacle or private gratification. Religious traditions, at their most compassionate, were meant to serve as instruments of care—communities that protected widows, embraced orphans, and restored dignity to the vulnerable—not merely as symbols of voyeurism, conquest, or self-indulgence.

Some, profiting handsomely through arrangements with dubious, unscrupulous, and anonymous intermediaries to manufacture allegations or purchase silence, only to be exposed through covert inquiries while remaining conspicuously absent from formal scrutiny, represent a curious economy of accountability—where accusations become currency, but responsibility remains bankrupt.

The New Yorker cartoon reimagines Alice in Wonderland as a meditation on responsibility in an age of endless choices. The familiar commands—“Eat Me” and “Drink Me”—become more than invitations to transformation; they become symbols of the consequences hidden within every decision. Wonderland’s absurdity reflects the modern condition, where one is constantly asked to consume, adapt, and redefine oneself while still being held accountable for the person one becomes.

Jiří Trnka’s The Hand is a philosophical Czech fable based on the powerful emblem of resistance. Beneath its deceptively simple stop-motion puppetry lies an examination of power, conformity, and the struggle between artistic integrity and imposed utility. The hand becomes an almost metaphysical presence—a symbol of authority that seeks to appropriate imagination, transforming creation from an act of inner necessity into an instrument of external command. The film endures as a meditation on the struggle to preserve imagination from forces that seek to possess it.

Mental health is affecting the entire fabric of society; it is not merely one man holding us by strings like marionettes. Like layers of paint upon a doll, these are layers of inherited roles, expectations, and identities—the accumulation of different figures playing their assigned parts across generations.

In A King in New York, Charlie Chaplin uses the encounter between the exiled monarch and a young boy to examine the fragility of truth under ideological pressure. Like Modern Times and The Great Dictator, the film explores the individual’s struggle against systems that demand conformity, turning citizens into instruments of larger political forces. Its enduring message is a defence of democratic conscience—the right to question authority and preserve human dignity amid the machinery of power. The film resonates in societies where majoritarian impulses can overshadow individual voices, or where dissent is viewed as disloyalty rather than as a vital part of democracy. His satire reminds us that democracy is not merely the rule of the majority, but the protection of conscience, dialogue, and the dignity of those who question power.

It is unsettling to witness those who advocate for justice descend into the very forms of hostility they claim to oppose. I have encountered deeply personal and uninformed remarks about my father, who served as a media adviser and speech writer to the Prime Minister during UPA-I, often from those unfamiliar with the reality of his work or character. When knowledge is absent, restraint should prevail; understanding requires reading, listening, and understanding individuals beyond the distortions of public narratives.

Providing care, maintaining a household, and tending to the emotional needs of others from an early age—not through entitlement or expectation, but through duty, compassion, consistency, courage, and dignity, even in the face of assumptions, accusations, mistreatment, exclusion, and misrepresentation—was simply a way of life. Assistance was always rooted in mutual respect and gratitude, never in anything unethical or unlawful. We never sought to support those who were capable of standing on their own, and such help was rarely measured in financial terms or reduced to a transaction.

To disregard someone’s pathos while judging them solely through a book they have written or through an assumption of vindictiveness is to overlook the complexity of human experience. What about the other side—the weight of unfulfilled promises, the inability to confront uncomfortable truths, or the silence maintained when personal and political loyalties are tested?

Perhaps this reflects a deeper tension within society: the desire among sections of the elite and aspirational classes to project authority while diminishing those whose knowledge and lived experience challenge their assumptions. Disagreement is natural; contempt is not. To dismiss an individual’s depth without understanding their contribution is not intellectual criticism, but a failure of empathy.

Strength is not the absence of pain; even the strongest endure moments of vulnerability. Toxic positivity often conflates resilience with denial, overlooking the complexity of human experience. True courage lies not in suppressing pain, but in acknowledging it with dignity and compassion.

We rarely encounter a person in their entirety; we inherit only the excerpts that are placed before us. The missing pages are often filled by our own assumptions, interpretations, and imagined conclusions. Like a manuscript judged before its final chapter is written, a human life is too often reduced to a passage taken out of context, its true title and underlying narrative overlooked.

The mind, both reader and editor, has a tendency to revise reality according to its own expectations, mistaking a single paragraph for the whole novel. Yet every individual carries unwritten chapters—quiet sacrifices and complexities that remain beyond the reach of public narration. Perhaps the greatest injustice is not merely misreading a book, but believing we understand the author after reading only one page while never searching for the subtitle hidden beneath the surface.

Satrapi’s Persepolis demonstrates that even a hand-drawn image can become an act of resistance—proving that ink and imagination can confront ideological power more effectively than force. It stands as a reminder that when authority seeks to control expression, art becomes a refuge for feminist consciousness, personal memory, and political freedom. Its resonance extends beyond Iran, finding relevance in any society where citizens feel constrained by political power, where dissent is challenged, and where the struggle to preserve individual expression remains a defining challenge of our times.

A thought rooted in my family’s Buddhist philosophy returns to me: the image of a pure white lotus blooming from the depths of a muddy pond, symbolising how human life can retain and preserve its luminosity, dignity, and nobility even through hostility, misunderstanding, and adversity. To us, the lotus is spiritual, not political.

Franz Kafka and Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky remain among the most profound chroniclers of individuals confronting overwhelming systems. The Trial reveals the terror of an unreachable authority, while Crime and Punishment explores the moral collapse born of alienation and despair. Their visions resonate with contemporary India, where social stratification, unequal access to resources, institutional failures, and corruption can leave individuals feeling powerless before larger structures. Like a figure trapped within an opaque system or a soul wrestling with conscience, many confront the enduring conflict between social forces and the dignity of the individual.

I have never understood the impulse toward vindictiveness—the desire to balance the scales through retaliation rather than understanding. Like the weighing scales of a street vendor, justice may seek equilibrium, yet human beings are not measured by identical weights; our histories, ideologies, and perspectives inevitably differ. Equality cannot be imposed through coercion. Systems of governance require time to observe, deliberate, and respond; the erosion of dialogue with those responsible for decision-making can create unintended consequences. Ultimately, justice must remain rooted in humanity, for no society is strengthened by the suffering or destruction of its own citizens.

If we had invested this magnitude of time, energy, and collective emotion in the struggles that preceded us, perhaps the contours of our present would have been different. The irony is that we often fight over the weight of the scales while neglecting the foundations that determine what is placed upon them.

The contrasting trajectories of Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam reveal an unsettling reality of political dissent: while some raise the banner of a cause, others are left to face the hammer of its consequences.

Abhijeet Dipke and his colony of committed cockroaches have shown that when a system is left unattended, even pests can crawl their way to the table and demand a seat. After all, infestations rarely happen overnight — they thrive when accountability is left unchecked. The question remains: how many of us are prepared to stay, participate, and undertake the arduous work of restructuring the systems we have inherited, rather than simply securing a future for our children elsewhere?

Yet, as Doris Day reminds us, Que Sera, Sera—“whatever will be, will be”—the future is not merely an inheritance bestowed upon us; it is an evolving consequence of the choices, convictions, and responsibilities we embrace in the present.