Hardik Rajgor

A re you happy? It’s a burdensome question. If “happy” is your constant state of mind, hop on aboard, you’ve made it, you’re a champ, pass the  joint  and please remember that sharing is caring. But if you are not, you should be ashamed of yourself. If you don’t shit sparkle and radiate glee, you are “doing life wrong”. Welcome aboard the  North Korea  of Happiness, where the ultimate goal to everything you do is a nuclear explosion of joy. I would call myself a fairly cheerful person, who loves to laugh as much as the next guy. I am  happy  in certain moments, but then also sad, hopeful, anxious, disappointed, fearful in others. I live in the polluted hyper-city of  Mumbai , last went on a date when  LK Advani  ran for Prime Minister, and have to travel in jam-packed  trains  every day, so there’s only that many things I can be happy about. At times, I’m neither happy nor unhappy, in a fairly even state of mind, especially ...

I grew up in simpler times, in the town of Mira Road, a place that merely existed as a banter point on whether it was a part of Thane or  Mumbai . Mira Road received water at the same frequency I got a beating from my mom, i.e., once every three days. Plus, my forefathers came from Kutch. Clearly, my  family  was attracted to places with water problems the same way United States foreign policy is attracted to places with oil. Water was so precious to us, that our minds went into  Marwari  mode when it came to spending it. Showers were alien to us, and the only accessories in our 4×4 bathroom were a red bucket and a blue mug. In Mira Road, water was heated by my mom on a stove. In Kutch, on a chulha. Most kids my age received  pocket money . I, instead, received half a bucket of water and could use it any way I wanted. And my only friend was a green Medimix bar. Medmix was the superhero of the soap world. It was all the  Avengers  rolled into...

E arlier this year, over one lakh farmers from across India reached Delhi in March, demanding a special session of Parliament to address the agrarian crisis. The protesting farmers, showing incredible grace and dignity, spent the night at Ramlila Maidan before marching towards Parliament on Friday. Describing it as  “ one of the largest congregation of farmers ”  in the capital in recent times, the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) pressed on its demands for loan waiver and remunerative prices for their produce.  Waivers are par for the course in our country. The Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath, after winning a hotly contested election, announced loan waivers in his state. We give them more often than  Duterte  hands out the death penalty. In the last year alone,  Uttar Pradesh  announced a debt waiver of ₹36,400 crore,  Punjab  of ₹10,000 crore,  Maharashtra of ₹30,500 crore,  Rajasthan  of ₹8,000...

A rtificial Intelligence  will soon be out there to take our jobs. But as the popular Internet  meme  goes, machines can’t take our jobs… if we become machines. And so,  working crazy  is primed and stress has become a currency to flaunt. Taking a breather is for losers, real men take a paracetamol and email the project file at 3 am on a Saturday night. The gulag-like slavery and peanut-sized paychecks are so mainstream that if you leave office at 6 pm, people ask you if you’ve taken a half day. And do you dare ever ask for leave? Going on leave is so demonised in  Indian office culture , that employees feel guilt and shame even asking for a few days off — about as stressful a question as asking your boss for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He looks at you with the same level of love  Arvind Kejriwal  reserves for  Narendra Modi ; the tension could be cut with a knife. Every leave application turns into a leave negotiation that would...