Anirban Chowdhury

“Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before

“Should you go on, you will surely be disappointed, perhaps even heartbroken. I have one key left on my belt, but all it opens is that final door, the one marked. What's behind it won't improve your love-life, grow hair on your bald spot, or add five years to your natural span (not even five minutes). There is no such thing as a happy ending. I never met a single one to equal "Once upon a time."
Endings are heartless.
Ending is just another word for goodbye.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“In a psychological experiment that deserves to be far better known outside the trade, Bruner and Postman asked experimental subjects to identify on short and controlled exposure a series of playing cards. Many of the cards were normal, but some were made anomalous, e.g., a red six of spades and a black four of hearts. Each experimental run was constituted by the display of a single card to a single subject in a series of gradually increased exposures. After each exposure the subject was asked what he had seen, and the run was terminated by two successive correct identifications.12 Even on the shortest exposures many subjects identified most of the cards, and after a small increase all the subjects identified them all. For the normal cards these identifications were usually correct, but the anomalous cards were almost always identified, without apparent hesitation or puzzlement, as normal. The black four of hearts might, for example, be identified as the four of either spades or hearts. Without any awareness of trouble, it was immediately fitted to one of the conceptual categories prepared by prior experience. One would not even like to say that the subjects had seen something different from what they identified. With a further increase of exposure to the anomalous cards, subjects did begin to hesitate and to display awareness of anomaly. Exposed, for example, to the red six of spades, some would say: That’s the six of spades, but there’s something wrong with it—the black has a red border. Further increase of exposure resulted in still more hesitation and confusion until finally, and sometimes quite suddenly, most subjects would produce the correct identification without hesitation. Moreover, after doing this with two or three of the anomalous cards, they would have little further difficulty with the others. A few subjects, however, were never able to make the requisite adjustment of their categories. Even at forty times the average exposure required to recognize normal cards for what they were, more than 10 per cent of the anomalous cards were not correctly identified. And the subjects who then failed often experienced acute personal distress. One of them exclaimed: “I can’t make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn’t even look like a card that time. I don’t know what color it is now or whether it’s a spade or a heart. I’m not even sure now what a spade looks like. My God!”13 In the next section we shall occasionally”
― Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

“They destroyed all the equipment, all the medicines. The Harijans – the people we used to call Untouchables – used to come a hundred miles for treatment.’ ‘But I thought Untouchability was outlawed at independence,’ I said. ‘Technically it was,’ replied Tyagi. ‘But do you know the saying “Dilli door ast”? It means “Delhi is far away.” The laws they pass in the Lok Sabha [Indian parliament] make little difference in these villages. Out here it will take much more than a change in the law to alleviate the lot of the Dalits [the oppressed castes, i.e. the former Untouchables].’ ‘But I still don’t understand why the Rajputs did this. What difference does it make to them if you educate the Untouchables?’ ‘The lower castes have always been the slaves of the higher castes,’ replied Tyagi. ‘They work in their fields for low wages, they sweep their streets, clean their clothes. If we educate them, who will do these dirty jobs?’ Dr Tyagi waved his hands at me in sudden exasperation: ‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘The Rajputs hate this place because it frees their slaves.’ ‘And what did you do,’ I asked, ‘while the Rajputs were beating the place up?’ Dr Tyagi made a slight gesture with his open palm: ‘I was just sitting,’ he said. ‘What could I do? I was thinking of Gandhiji. He was also beaten up – many times. He said you must welcome such attacks because it is only through confrontation that you can go forward. An institution like ours needs such incidents if it is to regenerate itself. It highlights the injustice the Harijans are facing.’ He paused, and smiled. ‘You yourself would not have come here if this had not happened to us.’ ‘What will you do now?’ I asked. ‘We will start again. The poor of this desert still need us.’ ‘And if the higher castes come for you again?’ ‘Then we will welcome them. They are also victims of their culture.”
― William Dalrymple, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters