K'Scope

At a protest about a leaked medical exam, I watched a man scream himself hoarse about Virat Kohli living in London. And weirdly, that one guy explained the whole thing to me. Because he wasn’t even the odd one out. Scroll the protest reels and it’s a full of such stuff. The leak, fine. But also corruption. Also religion. Also unemployment. Also “this government hates us.” One leaked question paper, and suddenly we’re relitigating the entire Republic of India. I used to think these people were just dumb. They’re not. It’s something way older, and honestly way more fun to pull apart. Last post I blamed your phone. Today let’s climb into the crowd itself. Mind the stones :) The Anger Was Already There Small secret. Everyone is a little bit furious all the time. Not screaming-furious. Just that low background buzz of “this system is rigged and I’m getting played.” You feel it in the RTO queue. In the rent. In watching some rich kid glide into a seat you bled three years for. You sw...

I got Inception’d last week. Not by a person. Not by a party. By Instagram. In about ten minutes, while I genuinely thought I was just killing time. I’d opened the app and suddenly stuck on posts about the protests, Students crying. Lathi charge by police. A boy holding a torn answer sheet. A 59-year-old man from Ladakh starving himself. Reel after reel after reel, all saying the same thing. The system crushed these kids and nobody cares. By the end of it I was properly angry. Ready to argue with anyone who disagreed. Then I called a friend who’d been watching the same protest, on the same app. And his feed had shown him the exact opposite. Crowds shoving barricades. Stones flying at police. “Anti-national” this, “paid protest” that. He was furious too. Just at the other side. Same event. Same week. Same app. Two completely opposite truths. And that’s when it hit me. Neither of us chose our side. Something else did. The Feed Picks First, You Feel Second Here’s the stupid little secret ...