My mom showed me a photo from when I started college two years ago, and I clearly remembered how, at the time it was clicked, I didn’t like it at all. I thought I looked weird, the dress looked weird, and the photo itself just felt bad to me. But when I saw it today, the dress looked so pretty on me, and I was so much slimmer back then. Now, I’ve gained weight mostly because I’ve spent a long time at home. I’m currently overweight and honestly struggling with it a bit. I’m trying to return to a healthier lifestyle, but I’m still very conscious of how I look these days. This has been a struggle for as long as I can remember, but it feels even stronger now because I’m aware that I used to be more in shape. Seeing that old photo made me think will the photos I dislike now also look completely different to me a few years from now? Will I realise how silly it was to hate them? Even the dress I disliked back then looks beautiful to me now. At that time, I preferred more modest clothing, but I also tried to keep it fashionable. Sometimes I wonder if I look like those wealthy, Indian-origin women who are caught between being modern and being traditional ending up fitting into neither, and looking awkward in the process. I know it sounds judgmental, but come on, you can forgive me for this I am a woman in this society, after all. Anyway, I was watching Lessons in Chemistry, and there was a mention of Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations. If you haven’t read Great Expectations, you might not notice how it connects to the series but I felt happy to catch that link because I had read it. At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder how many little cues and details I must have missed in other shows I’ve watched before, simply because I didn’t know enough to catch them. I’ve been reading a lot of Indian philosophy lately, and now I feel like I can spot it everywhere I look. But that’s a conversation for another day. Today, I want to focus on something else how so much of philosophy revolves around the nature of reality and God, endless debates on His perfection, His omnipresence, and whether the beauty of the world is even possible without a creator. Now, this particular train of thought happened to coincide with the first day of my period, when I was already in pain. And I couldn’t help but think there are practically no female philosophers in history, for obvious reasons. Honestly, if the Buddha had been a woman, she would have been killed. Imagine a woman leaving her family to sit under a tree it’s nearly impossible even today. Anyway, I realised that if female philosophers had existed in equal numbers, they probably wouldn’t have wasted a second debating God’s supposed perfection. Because we know He isn’t. How could He be perfect if He created a system where 50% of the population is in pain every month, bleeding in real, physical agony? Come on. Obviously, He’s not perfect. What are we even debating here? I don’t know if this is pure logic or just my period talking but I said what I said.
I was listening to the song Kabira, and the detachment of Bunny as a whole spoke to me, because I am extremely detached as a person myself. Now, people interpret this differently, obviously since as individuals we are perceived in different ways. Some people think I am cold, some think I am cool, and others perceive me as warm. But for me, acting warm often feels like a performance. I’m very bubbly and excited when I speak, so my coldness isn’t that evident anyway. That’s that. But I think this is not the point I was just trying to tell you the trigger. This was the trigger that led me to think about my detachment as a whole, and I genuinely take it very seriously. I’ll tell you an incident. Usually, I’m already extremely detached without any effort, but even if I’m not, I try to come back to that state of detachment. And I do it in weird ways. For example, after watching a movie, I come out of it soon enough, but I like to be more efficient and reduce the time it takes me to return to “normal,” where I’m not thinking about the movie or its characters. I go on Google and search for negative reviews of that movie. When those negative reviews make sense, my rational brain tells me, “Obviously there are so many flaws in it, it doesn’t make sense to be attached to it.” It’s a weird thing I do, but I do it. I don’t know this detachment is something I’ve talked about with many people, and a lot of them don’t relate to it. It’s both my biggest strength and my worst weakness. And when I say it’s a weakness, most people don’t fully understand it. That’s not entirely their fault firstly, they don’t have the firsthand access to this feeling, and secondly, I just cannot verbalise it vulnerably. I’m both free because of my coolness, and restricted because of my detachment which is such an interesting phrase: to be restricted because of your detachment. The idea of being attached to anything feels weird. So I think it’s okay that I’m not able, even right now, to coherently talk about it. I can obviously think of root causes where it’s coming from, etc. but I think as I live this life, I will learn more about myself, and by extension, about this thing. I wouldn’t call it an issue, but an interesting mental exercise in discovering myself. I love how I’ve taken a detached stance even in the way I approach this thing at large.Imma stop yapping, but I’d like to talk a little more about cinema. I’ve been obsessed lately and have been watching these “boring” movies I love them. I really want to write a novel myself on miscommunication at large. Let’s see where it goes. I was watching That Girl in Yellow Boots, and I was able to see Lolita in that movie, even though it wasn’t inspired by Lolita. This was fascinating to me, because one part of the storyline is exactly similar to Lolita. I don’t know was it a coincidence? Maybe. But yeah, it was an interesting thing for me.
I found myself, once again, inevitably thinking about Karl Marx, this time through the lens of cinema. I was reflecting on how Anurag Kashyap’s No Smoking was essentially a slap in the face to the censor board, or how Manoj Bajpayee poured himself into Gali Guleiyan. Both films failed commercially when they were released, yet over time, as stories about their making began to circulate, they acquired a sort of cult status. It fascinated me: the films didn’t change, but the public’s knowledge of their backstories transformed how they were valued.
That connection reminded me of what happens in small businesses when you see the behind-the-scenes process. Watching a product being made, especially in a personal, labor-intensive setting, often makes people more willing to buy it, even at a higher price. There is an emotional pull in knowing the story behind an object, a sense of connection to the people who created it.
And here’s the irony: Marx’s theory of alienation of labour is meant as a critique of capitalism, showing how workers are separated from the products of their work. But in practice, when capitalism reintroduces that connection by marketing the process, showing the craft, and highlighting the makers, it can actually strengthen consumer desire. Far from undermining the market, it becomes a selling point.
Ultimately, when two commodities are priced the same, it is these intangible elements, the story, the process, the human touch, that tip the scales in a consumer’s mind. In other words, capitalism can, and often does, benefit from selectively reversing the very alienation Marx critiqued. That is the funny, almost paradoxical loop I kept thinking about: how telling the story of production does not dismantle the system, but can, in fact, make it stronger.