Avi Chand

  Like billions of people around the world, I have been working from home for the past year and a half, unable to go to work because of the pandemic-wrought citywide restrictions. While the pandemic itself has been scary, working from home has been a pleasant experience. No commute, no need to wake up too early, being able to have a relaxed morning coffee, and other such conveniences. One of the best perks has been working at my desk surrounded by my three dogs. A neighbor’s kid, no more than 8–9, sees me standing outside my house in the morning, having a relaxed after-breakfast smoke. He is also stuck at home as schools are shut. Yesterday, he finally got curious enough to ask me why I wasn’t going to work. I didn’t go to school, I went to work, so surely I didn’t have a time-off. I explained to him that I wasn’t going to work because of the same reason he wasn’t going to school — the pandemic and the restrictions. He then asked me if I wasn’t working, was I getting pa

  The fundamental and general nature of knowledge and knowing is ‘abstract’. And that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? When we know for a reason, we are policy-makers, politicians, businessmen, or activists. But it’s fun to know just to know. There isn’t a specific reason to know the poetry of Ghalib or Goethe. Yet we know it. Intellectualism is a very real pursuit unto itself. Now, high technology, on the other hand, is making everything concrete, tangible, explicit, and crystallized. Personally, too much technology has started putting me off. I think it’s dumbing us down. Return to a world of imagination, ideas, and intellectualism. Put your phone down and read more, write more. Appreciate art, music, and culture. Do it not for a reason, do it because it’s human nature to love the abstract.