The ethics of everyday choices

You have likely already encountered this statistic: Half the world’s population will go to the polls this year. More than four billion people across 60 countries, including India, will cast their votes and elect national leaders.

Whether you vote will be one of the biggest decisions you make in 2024. How you vote will be another.

It is inevitable that citizens will ask: What difference does it make? Leaders that are larger-than-life loom on the horizon. Events often feel beyond our control. But when it comes to questions such as “Does my voice matter?”, may I submit that the answer is always “Yes”.

Not just because single voices add up to form a clamour. But because the decisions we make, large and small, singly and in groups, are also the true litmus tests of our character.

It is a theme we don’t contemplate enough: the ethics of everyday choices. I’ve often pondered the invisible threads that connect our daily choices to our ethical stances. How does one’s preference to shop at a chain of stores, or the decision to ignore an unhoused person, contribute to the larger ethical portrait of our lives?

These questions aren’t merely rhetorical; they form the weave of our societal fabric.

It is easy to stand in judgment over grand scandals and overt acts of moral failure. But when thought about deeply, the real measure of an ethical framework is not taken during high-stakes moments. Rather, it resides in the mundane, quiet decisions we make when no one’s looking. This is where our true self reveals itself, in the quiet alleyways of our day-to-day existence.

Consider the simple act of purchasing a cup of coffee. Where do the beans come from? Are the farmers paid a fair wage? What is the environmental impact of its production and transportation? Each choice might be a drop in the ocean. But collectively, they can create a storm.

Similarly, our engagements with strangers reflect deep truths. How we treat waiters, interact with taxi drivers, respond to a street vendor, all offer clues to where our moral compass points. This is why I find brand-consciousness so disturbing. Why should I choose coffee from South America, simply because it is advertised widely and forced into my line of vision, when beans from south India have a far lower carbon footprint?

In an age of rampant consumerism and individualism, there is a tendency to reduce life to a series of transactions, devoid of ethical implications. But this is a narrow and impoverished view of existence. Our lives are not just about exchanges; they are about connections. And every connection carries with it the weight of moral consequence.

It is imperative, then, that we reflect on daily choices. They shape not just our lives but the world around us. The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the products we consume, are all silent testimony to our values and ethics. They are votes cast for the kind of world we wish to live in and leave behind.

How do we navigate this complex landscape? It begins with the awareness that every choice has a moral dimension. This means developing a habit of reflective consideration, taking the time to frame the right questions, and seeking answers that align with one’s deepest values.

In this way, ethics become a profoundly social affair too. They are the channel by which we see beyond ourselves, consider the impacts of our choices, and make that vital shift from a mindset of consumption to one of contribution.

Of course, navigating this path has its challenges. There are often no easy answers. Where there are answers, ethical living involves trade-offs and compromises. One must part with a measure of vanity, self-indulgence, comfort. Even then one will necessarily make missteps.

But the pursuit of an ethical life is not about perfection. It is about direction, and about making choices that are more deliberate, compassionate and coherent.

If nothing else, start with the decision to vote. Think about the world you want to inhabit, and leave behind. Do you want it to be kinder, more wholesome and more balanced? Or do you want to end up with demagogues in power, and no one to blame but yourself.

This article was originally published in Hindustan Times. All copyrights vest with the publishers and this may not be reproduced without permission.

Hope is the thing with feathers...

by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

Dear younger self...

Dear 16-year old self,

At 47, I have no pretensions of being a wise man. Because as Hunter S. Thompson, that godfather of gonzo journalism, whom I worship, wrote so eloquently: “To give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal—to point with a trembling finger in the right direction—is something only a fool would take upon himself."

That said, I couldn’t help but think of what my friend Dr. Rajat Chauhan keeps articulating in so many different ways. The other day, for instance, he tweeted, “Failure is inevitable. It’s about having the persistence to beat the pulp out of failure."

It got my attention and I asked him to make a signed poster out of it that I may frame and keep in my room.

That is why I know what you feel right now. With the kind of scores you have managed in Class XII, you will never make it to medical school. I know you want to go there real bad. So, it’s okay to cry. And feel those tears running down your face. I want you to hurt. Not just hurt, but hurt real bad. I want you to embrace failure, make it your best friend, and learn from it.

That said, there are three instances I want you to particularly fail in as you grow up—love, friendships and work.

I understand I may sound ridiculous to you right now. But let’s face it.

That object of your affection whose hand you hold right now exists only in fairy tales. Even as she consoles you and tells you the both of you can carve a life out in some pretty corner of the world, don’t forget you are only 16, much like she is. Don’t hate me for saying this. What you are experiencing right now is puppy love. I am not suggesting here you ought not to experience it. Everybody ought to. But it won’t last. You know why?

Because right now you are in love with the idea of love. I wish I could explain that as eloquently as John Steinbeck, one of my favourite writers, did in a letter to his son:  “There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egoistical thing, which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.”

It is a rare set of individuals who find the second kind of love when they are as young as you are.

So, I want you to go out there and get your heart broken a few times, until you find that somebody who can extract goodness out of you—of your own free will. Trust me, the road to finding this kind of love is a painful one. It is inevitable the one whose hand you are clinging to now will move on as will you. It is also inevitable you will find true love. But brace yourself for heartbreak on the way to it.

Because, as David Whyte writes in Consolations, “Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream… But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way…. There is almost no path a human being can follow that does not lead to heartbreak.”

And when you do find love, respect it and cling to it.

Much the same can be said of friendships. It is a myth that deep and meaningful relationships are forged in your formative years. The fact is, over time, you outgrow them. The friends you have in your teens are very different from the ones you have in your 20s, 30s and 40s. As you search for meaning, with every decade, you will morph into a different animal and will seek bonds that fit the animal you are then.

By way of example, I can think of this gentleman I met the other day, now in his 60s. There was nostalgia and tears in his eyes as he reminisced about his friend from 40 years ago who sought him out for counsel every other day. Time changed things between them. His friend has gone on to larger things and doesn’t need his counsel any more. His attention has turned instead to others with a larger perspective whom he looks upon with awe and seeks out.

I understand the tears and the nostalgia. But they are rooted in the past. You swear now by friends who roar to Metallica and Guns N’ Roses. But trust me . When you discover the pleasures of Paul Simon, the serenity of Beethoven and the comfort good single malts offers over Old Monk rum, you will wonder how you air-guitared at alcohol-soaked, pot-filled concerts all night long.

And while I am at that, another word of advice from a now world-weary man—never, never touch a cigarette a friend offers. It may seem cool and you may look like a wimp if you decline. But the real wimps are the ones who smoke. I know. I’m still paying the price for having indulged in it.

When it comes to work, there is this tussle you will be engaged in. Allow me to assure you once again, like most people, you are destined to fail if you don’t give yourself the room to think through and introspect. Who do you want to be? What is your calling? What are your priorities?

But the exigencies, such as money, that life imposes will push you towards a path often trod by most people. Like I did when looking for a job. Entrepreneurship wasn’t my calling. It was an accident. That it turned out to be a lucky accident and eventually my calling is an altogether different matter. It is entirely possible, though, that you may not get as lucky. That is why I want you to dwell on this passage from The Road to Character by David Brooks.

“I’ve been thinking about the difference between the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the ones you list on your résumé, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being—whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed.

“Most of us would say that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé virtues, but I confess that for long stretches of my life I’ve spent more time thinking about the latter than the former. Our education system is certainly oriented around the résumé virtues more than the eulogy ones. Public conversation is, too—the self-help tips in magazines, the non-fiction bestsellers. Most of us have clearer strategies for how to achieve career success than we do for how to develop a profound character."

My final submission to you is, the earlier you can think of a eulogy to yourself, distanced from the exigencies of life I spoke of earlier, the better off you will be for it.

Much love,

Your 47-year-old future self

The ethics of lying

A little before I sat down to write this piece, I saw a headline that screamed: “I never lie”. It featured someone from the advertising business. I couldn’t help but snigger. What’s wrong with a lie, I wondered.

Indeed. It is a question that has resided in our collective human conscience forever. So much so that it resides as one among the central themes of that philosophical tour de force the Mahabharata is—an epic narrative of the Kurukshetra war and the fates of its protagonists that comprise two warring clans, the Kauravas and the Pandavas.

In the epic, there is this part where one of the greatest warriors of all time, Drona, is on a rampage through the Pandava ranks. Related to both sides as an uncle, for various reasons, he chose to align himself with the Kauravas in this battle. If he isn’t stopped, the Pandavas fear it is only a matter of time before their army is in shreds. The oldest of the five Pandava brothers, Yudhisthira, then turns to their spiritual and philosophical mentor Krishna for counsel.

Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu, the supreme god, tells Yudhisthira this is a war that must be won. And that if a lie ought to be told to win it, then the lie must be told. In this instance, Krishna knows Drona’s only weakness is his son Ashwathama. So, he asks Yudhisthira to spread the word that Ashwathama is dead. But Yudhisthira has a problem with that. His morality and reputation do not permit him to lie. He despises it as dishonest.

But even as Yudhisthira is thinking through Krishna’s proposition and its implications, Bhima, one of the Pandava brothers, kills an elephant named Ashwathama and screams: “Ashwathama is dead”. Word reaches Drona. The man thinks it is his son Bhima is talking of. Stunned, he refuses to believe the news until he hears it from Yudhisthira and summons him.

Krishna’s words still ringing in his ears, Yudhisthira goes over to his uncle’s camp.

“Is it true,” Drona asks him, “that Ashwathama is dead?”

“Yes,” Yudhisthira says. And then trails off inaudibly, “Ashwathama the elephant.”

Technically, Yudhisthira did not lie. But Drona doesn’t catch the words, lays down his weapons and bows his head in grief. In that very instant, on Krishna’s instructions, Dhrishtadyumna, Yudhisthira’s brother-in-law, chops his head off.

In Vedic society, this is the worst possible crime. The Pandavas killed an unarmed Brahmin on the back of subterfuge who in their younger years was a teacher to them as well. But it had to be done for the sake of “dharma”, argues Krishna.

When looked at from Krishna’s perspective, it makes sense. All of the brothers are killing each other, too many people are dying and the war has to end in everybody’s interest. To that extent, morality demands that Yudhisthira lie. The end, in this case, argues Krishna, justifies the means. Psychology has it that Krishna makes this call without compunction because he is emotionally more evolved.

This argument though has always been under scrutiny with much being written and debated around it. The founding fathers of the Christian church like St Augustine make it abundantly clear that a lie is a lie, no matter what the intent is. Western philosophical thought led Immanuel Kant and closer home Mahatma Gandhi find their moorings in this school of thought. They leave no room for a lie in any shade. And that is what we are taught to live by.

As Michael Sandel, who teaches philosophy at Harvard University, points out, Kant believed that telling a lie, even a white lie, is a violation of one’s own dignity. But do exceptions to the rule exist? When is ambiguity possible? For instance, if your friend were hiding inside your home, and a person intent on killing your friend came to your door and asked you where he was, would it be wrong to tell a lie? If so, would it be moral to try to mislead the murderer without actually lying?

This question has implications in modern-day business as well. In a paper published last year titled Are Liars Ethical, Maurice Schweitzer, a professor of operations and information management at Wharton University, and co-author Emma Levine veer philosophically to Krishna’s side.

The video of a conversation with them can be viewed here. The sum and substance of their argument is this: “We look at deception that sometimes can be helpful to other people. We typically think about deception as selfish deception: I lie to gain some advantage at the expense of somebody else. And we typically think of honesty as something that might be costly to me, but helpful to others.”

“In our research, we actually disentangle those two things. We think about deception that can help other people, and honesty that might be helpful to myself and maybe costly to somebody else. When we separate honesty and deception from pro-social and pro-self-interests, we find that people actually don’t care that much about deception. We find that the aversion to lying, when people say ‘Don’t lie to me’, what they really mean is, ‘Don’t be really selfish’.”

To that extent, they argue that in the kind of world we live in, it is time to revisit the dictum: Honesty is the best policy. Instead, we ought to understand when we should lie. “When does honesty actually harm trust and seem immoral? And when can deception actually breed trust be seen as moral?”

The reason this is pertinent is because in business, managers have to balance between benevolence and honesty, where benevolence is about being kind and providing supportive feedback. Honesty, on the other hand, can be critical and harsh. Not everybody is built to handle honesty. To that extent, it makes sense to err on the side of benevolence in the longer-term interests of building trust and relationships.

Schweitzer and Levine studied the tension between honesty and benevolence under controlled conditions that it may be applied in business. Their findings make for a compelling read.

“There are a lot of domains in which individuals face this conflict between honesty and benevolence very, very intensely. One example is in healthcare. Doctors frequently have to deliver very negative news to patients. And actually, prior research has found that oftentimes, doctors do lie. They inflate the positivity of these prognoses. We seem to think this is bad, and I think doctors feel a lot of tension and conflict around how to handle the situation.

“But our research suggests that perhaps doctors, and maybe teachers and parents, should be explicitly acknowledging this tension and this trade-off, and thinking about and talking about how to navigate it. When might benevolence and kindness, and maybe a little dishonesty, be right or be appreciated, and how could that enhance the delivery of medicine?

“Another case where we manage this balance between being completely honest and managing being benevolent is when we interact with children. This is true as parents, and it’s also true as educators. So, teachers will need to give feedback to students. And they have to balance this tension between being completely candid, and being benevolent and kind—demonstrating kindness and concern for the child.

“As parents, we frequently tell our kids, ‘Never lie’. But that’s not at all what we mean. For example, before we go over to grandma’s house, we might tell them, say, ‘Remember, thank grandma for that sweater, and tell her how much you like it, even though we both know you never wear it’.”

This is the kind of ambiguity and tension Krishna nailed with precision almost 3,000 years BCE when the Mahabharata was written.

But who’s to tell that to the man in advertising who claims he never lies?

Trust is just a metric

For all practical purposes I was the oddball on the table the other evening at a plush city hotel. To start with, I was the only Indian citizen. Everybody else was a foreign citizen of Indian origin. 

Everyone was sipping on single malt and looked superbly fit. I looked sloppy in my ill-fitting jeans with a potbelly struggling to peek out. Then there was the fact that everybody else had earned their degree from an Ivy league college in the US. Following which all of them had put in at least a decade at a hedge fund or large private equity firm of global consequence in either New York City or Silicon Valley. To my native eyes, all of them looked well-read, well-travelled, well-versed and well-off.

I’m not entirely sure if I was of any consequence to them. Because when asked what is it I do and when told I expend most of my time writing to earn a living—in the silent pauses that followed—I could hear them hold on to pregnant thoughts. But they were the polite kinds who bit their tongue. 

The more forthright ones have told me in the past what they really think of the likes of me. That in their scheme of things, I am among those who got disrupted by businesses people like them have funded. Anybody in the world now with a story or an opinion can voice it on places like Facebook and Twitter among other social media platforms. And that I have no reason to exist. I ought to reinvent myself. I don’t argue anymore, but have learnt to meet these silences with silence.

But this much I must say. My silences are arrogant too. Because their “coming back to India" spiels now sound like clichéd and regurgitated tripe to veterans like me. I’ve heard that one often. 

The story is a familiar one. Been there, done that (either on Wall Street or Silicon Valley), back packed through Europe, and in a moment of epiphany decided it is now time to “give back" to society. What better place to start from than the ones our parents originated from after having left it decades ago in search for a better tomorrow for themselves and their children? 

To be fair to them though, their parents earned their success the hard way. And to be fair to everyone on the table, they had worked their backsides off to get into premier organizations and positions. There is nothing I can say that can take away from that this was an incredibly intelligent bunch of people I was with.

But that said, the irony was difficult to miss as well. How can you possibly sit at one of the fanciest hotels in India, sip all night on the most expensive single malts, nibble at exquisite finger food, talk of doing something for the deprived, and not as much as cast an eye at the waiter on the table? 

I didn’t stay until everyone wound up for the night. But I suspect whatever was run up by way expenses on food and beverages may perhaps have fed two waiters and their families for at least a month. What may have been playing on their minds? Would they have thought of this as an orgy of obscene consumption? 

The thought lingered for a few days until I finally felt compelled to call Haresh Chawla, who is a partner at private equity firm True North and an active angel investor. I have known him from his earlier avatar as group CEO at Network18, a media firm he helped create, and a place I used to work in the past. There were a few reasons I called him. 

The first was that he graduated in management and engineering. But unlike those at that table, his degrees were rooted from institutions in India. The second was that before turning into an investor, he was moulded as an entrepreneur who had first-hand experience at building an enterprise in India out of India. The third is that he is now an active investor. 

What is his investing philosophy? What was I missing out from on the conversation? Why was my voice both unheard and dissed on the table? Why are the two decades I spent documenting first-hand how India operates not of any consequence to the others who have parachuted from elsewhere? Are their experiences superior to mine?

After having heard me out, Chawla reminded me of some thoughts he had articulated earlier last year and over which we have had multiple conversations. He had then suggested that it is naive to think of India as one country. Instead, he argued it is the aggregation of three countries — each of which has its own complexities and dynamics. He called these countries India One, India Two and India Three

Of this, India One comprises anywhere between 150 million and 180 million people and on average, each of its citizens earn Rs30,000 a month. Now, you have to look at those numbers in perspective because this is an average. 

I am a citizen of Indian One. But I earn a lot more than Rs.30,000 a month. It allows me the luxury to afford domestic help at home and a driver to ferry me around. But the conflict I was staring at, Chawla suggested, was because when looked at from the eyes of those who were with me on the table, I appeared to them as part of the so-called great Indian “middle-class". 

I have only one driver and a domestic help. They have multiple helps and multiple drivers and multiple cars to cater to their every need. In the country called India One that they live in, the poor to them are those whose incomes are closer to the average of Rs.30,000. 

Now that is a rather ridiculous way of looking at the entity that is India because there is no taking away from that 30%, or 400-odd million Indians, earn on average of Rs7,000 a month. This is India Two—that part of the population where the waiters tending to the table come from. They offer all the services that India One needs. But for some reason, those who live in India One cannot see the people who live in the country that is India Two. 

Just to get a sense of what those numbers mean, imagine this: If we were to add all the people in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, they would be about 400 million. But we aren’t done with the math yet. India has 1.3 billion people. 

India One and India Two account for only 580 million people. What about the 700 million others? Where are they? Who are they? Why is it that their stories don’t get told? Why are they completely invisible and don’t even make it as waiters who tend to the tables of India One? 

Why do the superbly intelligent people who want to do good and live in India One not see those who live the countries that are India Two and India Three? Is it for a lack of conscience? 

It was inevitable then that my mind go back to a well-documented phenomenon called Wilful Blindness. It formed the theme of a much-acclaimed book and a talk by Margaret Hefernan.

Maria Popova, the curator of a lovely blog called Brain Pickings, summarized the idea beautifully: 

“The concept of Wilful Blindness, Heffernan explains, comes from the law and originates from legislature passed in the 19th century—it’s the somewhat counterintuitive idea that you’re responsible if you could have known, and should have known, something that instead you strove not to see. What’s most uneasy-making about the concept is the implication that it doesn’t matter whether the avoidance of truth is conscious. This basic mechanism of keeping ourselves in the dark, Heffernan argues, plays out in just about every aspect of life, but there are things we can do — as individuals, organizations, and nations—to lift our blinders before we walk into perilous situations that later produce the inevitable exclamation: How could I have been so blind?"

This is a school of thought Chawla subscribes to as well. That is why, as a thumb rule, he said, he consciously tries to stay away from those who are like him. Instead, he tries to seek out those who may hold views different from his and have their ears to the ground. 

“I like people like you in the media business," he said, “because you talk to multiple sets of people and have your ears to the ground." 

I didn’t quite get what he meant then and we hung up. In any case, it was getting late and the both of us thought we’d get into angst-ridden territory.

The next morning, it was inevitable my eyes peer again at voices on social media platforms. It sounded much the same again like it was on the table. Every voice suggested people in politics and media ought to be worried. Because they are no longer the arbitrators of power. 

In the past, they wielded it because there was information asymmetry. But because that asymmetry has since been demolished, I ought to rethink my future. And so, by the only metric we know how to measure the worth of a man—money—I am staring at a bankrupt future. Unless I reinvent myself.

Even as I was thinking around the import of all that, news trickled in that the British philosopher Onora O’Neill has been conferred the prestigious Berguren Prize. It is awarded annually to a thinker whose ideas have shaped self-understanding and advancement in a rapidly changing world. 

It was as good a time as any to revisit a talk by O’Neill on what we don’t understand about trust. This is a theme she has spent a good part of her 76-year-long life thinking and writing about. Allow me to quote some excerpts from her lovely 10-minute talk.

“Why do people think trust has declined? ... But, of course, I can look at the opinion polls, and the opinion polls are supposedly the source of a belief that trust has declined. When you look at opinion polls across time, there’s not much evidence for that. That’s to say, the people who were mistrusted 20 years ago, principally journalists and politicians, are still mistrusted...

“But is that good evidence? What opinion polls record is, of course, opinions. What else can they record? So, they’re looking at the generic attitudes that people report when you ask them certain questions."

She goes on then to suggest that searching for trust is futile. Instead, we ought to search for the trustworthy. Because while somebody have the right intent, it is entirely possible that individual may be incompetent to perform the task on hand. 

By way of example, while you may trust a schoolteacher with your child, it would be rather stupid to trust her with tending to a garden. She may be incompetent to deal with the task in much the same way that a gardener may be unable to teach a child. 

Therefore, she argues, “… I think that judgement requires us to look at three things. Are they competent? Are they honest? Are they reliable? And if we find that a person is competent in the relevant matters, and reliable and honest, we’ll have a pretty good reason to trust them, because they’ll be trustworthy... Trust is the response. Trustworthiness is what we have to judge. And, of course, it’s difficult."

I expended much time thinking about the import of what she said and exchanged some more notes with Haresh Chawla. As things are, this is where I stand.

• While everybody has an opinion and access to a platform, are their voices trustworthy? I’ve expended more than two decades in this business talking to people, honing my craft and trying to keep pace with technology as it evolves. So yes, everybody can voice their opinion. But ceterius paribus, I think my voice, much like that of others who are credible in the business, will continue to resonate. I also know that in keeping with the natural order of the universe, at some point in time, I will have to concede ground to those who are younger, smarter and hungrier than me. But I will not have to concede ground to uninformed voices and opinions. To that extent, my daily bread is protected.

• Pardon my language here. But spending as much time in the business has honed my bullshit detector as well. That is why I did not articulate my opinion in exasperation. Instead, it chose to distance itself from the voices on the table and seek perspective.

  Chawla tells me I did that because I live at an intersection that seeks to listen to multiple voices as opposed to listen in to what resides in an echo chamber. If I were to go by the opinions of those on the table and if I were tuned in only to popular trends on social media, I may have imagined I am out of sync with what is the consensus opinion. 

  But after having listened in to multiple voices and seeking out the trustworthy, I am now convinced of what Bertrand Russell once said: “The fact that an opinion is widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd."

  So, for whatever it is worth, folks like me aren’t going to fade into obscurity. Unless we do something stupid to erode trust built over the years. 

  On the contrary, we will continue to shape the narrative. Because trust is worked upon and earned every day. And it grows, like compound interest. It is something money cannot buy, but is earned by the sweat of the brow, not through trading opportunities, arbitrages hedging on futures, commodities, currencies or passing ridiculous opinions on social media that sound good in echo chambers. 

This article was first published in Mint on Sunday

If Google were a prophet...

If Google be imagined as a new prophet, the “auto-complete” feature it possess offer glimpses into the minds of people in a geography. That is why, often times, I tinker around with it to figure what are people in my part of the world be thinking of.

 By way example:

 On typing, “What does my”, the search engine offers to complete the sentence with options such as

1. name mean

2. dream mean

3. g mean

4. day look like

5. kundalini say about me

 I had to look up Google to figure “g” is short in texting lingo for “Gangsta” and is used much in urban India. But who asks a search engine what does their day look like or what does their kundalini mean? 

 On attempting “Why am I”, auto-complete offeres insights into the many kinds of angst.

1. still single

2. always sleepy

3. a Hindu

4. not losing weight

   &

5. gaining weight

… emerge as questions playing the minds of most people.

Indian men sound dim-witted. Perhaps that explains their questions such as “Why do women”;

1. Get period

2. Wear bras

3. Wear panties

4. Have periods

5. Show cleavage

 If men are dim-witted, the women sound floozy as well. Perspective comes by way the questions they ask. Such as, “Why do men” 

1.  Marry

2. Get angry

3. Have beards

4. Snore

I never imagined “snoring” could be be cause for marital discord or sexual incompatibility.

Having impregenated a woman, married men sound incompetent. Why else may they look up Google to find out “Is my wife” 

1. pregnant

2. cheating on me test

3. interested in another man

4. a narcissist

 As for women, they sound either angry or lonely. Perhaps, that puts into perspective questions such as “Is my husband”

1. nephew my mahram

2. attracted to me

3. having an affair

4. asexual

 Mahram, incidentally, is Urdu for a close friend with whom a woman can move and talk closely with like she would with her husband, father or brother.

 It has become the go-to place for most people to ask questions of all kinds that they not ask of other humans. Perhaps, it has much to do with that us humans are afraid of being perceived of as frail and seek refuge in anonymity — an illusion Google confers conveniently. 

 What I suspect is on display, is heart breaking human naivete.