It’s International Human Rights Day, and it’s not just a hashtag.

A lot has been going through my mind today. These are stormy times, with the wind blowing first one way and then the other. A sudden rogue wave appears and nearly knocks you off your feet. 2021 has been strangely – and perhaps surprisingly – complex; it’s as if one needed eyes in the back of one’s head, to make sure nothing was creeping up on you. Even so, we got caught out many times. It has been a long, hard year. And we still have three weeks to go.

I am thinking about the state of the world, and it’s as if human rights have been shoved aside to make way for greed, ego, anger, power, hunger. Yes, hunger and desperation.

One word that comes to mind is inequality. Orwell was particularly brutal on this topic:

“It was…

by Vũ Trọng Quang, translation by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

DEVASTATING – OPTIMISM

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The evil poisoning the world

Blatant engorgement and excess escaping

The entire world in the heat rising

Poetry is trapped in his stead

Thrown in some corner of the house

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Without a confession impotent

Not even half of the truth

Banh mi Saigon week after week hot and fresh

Wedges of The Laughing Cow resonating

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Still living eating breathing

The sad air settling in our lungs

Two ears but stubborn as a mule

Insecurity harbouring security

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Quietly the people in white sacrifice

Desperately watching their wives and children through a pane of glass

Screaming louder than words

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Prayers in sorrowful tones in verses of joy

Guitars strumming from windows of isolation echoing to the pit(of despair)

Bells ringing evocation obscuring bells of marriage

An infant cry for joy in its mother’s womb

Strolling down the Mahatma Gandhi Road from the College Street end towards Howrah Tram Depot in the vibrance of the Kolkata metropolis, one can spot a unique world of orchestral cacophony. Little shops from the colonial days of the British showcase a wide array of musical instruments and jazzy uniforms of starking colours with gilded studs and Zari strips. Lining the bustling pavements on both sides of the busy street, they stand testament to a vanishing era of classical music. While snoozing old owners and staff doze on rickety wooden stools, impoverished young Indian musicians of a gasping profession practice on various musical instruments honing their skills.

At one corner of this hustling sea of tussling humanity and chocking traffic stands a hundred-and-twenty-one-year-old orchestral shop featuring a crumbling hoarding with bevelled wooden alphabets spelling out “Manna Band Party.” Forty-one-year-old Muslim bandmaster Arman Ali stood inside the eight by ten feet…

Here are the four steps, Duhigg mentioned to transform our addictions;

Note: I will use my example to explain how can we work on the given four steps.

1. Identify the Routine

Routine is the main element of the loop. The part we want to change, so it’s easy to identify it. In my case, what I wanted to change was my habit of sugar and junk consumption, leading to my weight gain drastically. But every situation is different, so that it can be anything like excessive drinking or smoking.

1. Experiment the Rewards

Now comes the tricky part, which is experimenting with the reward, as we have to find the primary reason here for the craving, which has created a vital bridge between cue and reward. It is always challenging to find out which reward satisfies the primitive part to this extent. For this, we have to experiment with different prizes…