How do you look at women? Do Goddesses follow Gods? Is the ultimate Reality an ‘It’? What’s the relationship between matter and energy? Are dualities necessarily conflictual? Is Eve inferior to Adam? Where do the Cosmos and the Body intersect? How did the sacred geography of the subcontinent evolve? Do Goddesses have an influence on the lives of men (& kings) & women? Where/how did patriarchy exist? How did Ramabai become Pandita Ramabai? What did the colonial encounter do to the archety...
Jan 04, 2025•1 hr 17 min
Do you have neanderthal DNA? Is your body your identity? What makes the knowledge of death possible when no one alive has experienced it first hand? How does dying feel? What are your schemas for understanding death? Is death the default, & it is life that happens occasionally? Does a cell know when it ought to die? When is an organism dead? When can we not dream? Can (certain) tissues and organs regenerate? What are the biochemical reactions a response to? What does oxygen do? Does the conc...
Oct 26, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Are you a lobby strategist? Do you negotiate with yourself? Which taste group do you belong to? What are you allowed to see? Do you pay to publish? Do the algorithms that serve you change with you? How are counterpublics generated? Is society constantly transforming itself? What role does capital play? Does media influence human rationality? Are you able to tell real discourse and propaganda apart? Was there ‘public opinion’ (say) a 1000 years ago? Does public sphere have capitalistic roots? Wha...
Oct 05, 2024•1 hr 13 min
What do you expect to see on windy islands? Can you soar? Are there a finite number of ways of flying? Did we glide before flying? Do birds & insects fly like planes, & vice versa? How are the lift-off forces and moments generated? Was the Wright Flyer I (which made the first sustained manned flight in 1903) actually a very bad design? Do flies fly merely by seeing? Are wings thermo-regulatory devices? Why has flying evolved several times across different species? How many times of its o...
Sep 28, 2024•1 hr 3 min
How do the disposable get marked out? Which institutions have cognitive control over you? How do you develop railways in Argentina? Who changes institutions? Is it always from ‘within’? Do institutions help us with the ‘higher order’ decisions? Are military, markets, prisons, families, religions, borders, languages, & villages coercive in the same way? Are prisons (in reality) chaotic? What’s the price of joining an institution? Is there conformity of opinion around you? Do religions evolve?...
Jun 29, 2024•1 hr 26 min
How ‘deep’ would a 1,000 years be? Is all space place? How do use, identity, value, law, power, or (‘imaginative’) memory hold them together? Do we live in layers? Are all human beings historical? Are all places relational? How do ‘material’ cultures of the past enable excavation sites to be dated? Where do ghosts and Gods live? Do all humans think of a place the same way? Can power structures lead to discursive spaces becoming material ‘reality’? What is the wilderness for you? Do you follow of...
May 25, 2024•1 hr 17 min
What happened in the 6th century BCE? Can a non-human (robot? dog?) have a soul? Does God’s time move from the past to the future? Is the present, in a sense, always avant-garde? How are bureaucratic orders made to perpetuate in time? How does a common person today understand the yugas? Who has the ‘need’ to think about the future? How are different time periods squeezed into a single register in art? Why do we invoke ramrajya? Do ideal types constrain how far (& ‘how’) one can think of the ...
May 18, 2024•1 hr 17 min
Who does the kidnapping and raping? Are you a parasite? Is your politics in the service of capital? Do the lumpen form one group/class, or is it a general disposition? Are the punk ‘anti-social’ disruptors? Was Namdeo Dhasal punk? Was Kabir? Why write obscene poetry? How (& by whom) are the boundaries policed? What leads to the various underground anti-aesthetic movements (such as punk music, & anti-poetry) across cultures? How was Sex Pistols born? Does the notion of (unemployed, & ...
May 08, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Is pencil complex? Is computationally hard complex? Is ‘i’ a weird number? Why wasn’t Hamilton able to multiply triples? Are we just a bunch of neurons and connections? Is our ability to think (& do mathematics) an emergent phenomenon? Is mathematical thinking core to understanding the world? Is complexity always a subjective feature? Do opinions spread in complex random graph-like patterns? How is alternating current complex? How do quaternions help with (3D rotations) in computer graphics?...
Mar 23, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Are you a master of your emotions? How do banks learn to loan better? Is king less queen = boy less girl in the word2vec world? Does your ‘body’ sometimes feel inferior even when you do not think so? Do humans learn only cognitively? How do you learn to have self respect? Are models a result of learning? What can be learnt by trial and error? Can mere prompts sometimes be enough to learn vast new things? Are there unthought knowns? Can you have the thought of going to dinner without thinking in ...
Mar 05, 2024•1 hr 9 min
Do you have the courage of a Spartan? Are we all partly anarchists? What are we truly? What do we value? Are Reason and Nature entangled? Is there a hierarchy of beings above/below human beings? What do Gods have that humans don’t have? Does Nature offer us moral guidance? How do plants imitate Gods? How much does human nature vary with (say) geography, culture, language, & time? Are we more (or, less?) diverse at birth? Do you want to transcend your body? Is matter evil? Does social evoluti...
Feb 03, 2024•1 hr 4 min
‘How’ are you hearing what you are hearing? Is hearing decoding? Do you already know what’s next? Would it have helped to have an accompanying video? Do we ’need’ to be able to differentiate at the level of sound to be able to ascribe different meanings? Why do a few hear Yanni, & a few Laurel? Do frogs need to see each other when croaking? When does the ear begin to form? Is the ear also a vestibular organ? Are you aware of the coordinated movement of your articulators? Are these articulato...
Dec 09, 2023•1 hr 13 min
Does randomness lie in the eye of the beholder? ‘What’ is music? Why is ordering often a consequence of scaling? Is there such a thing as non-repetitive music? Do there need to be ‘types’ for there to be repetitions? Are there patterns out there independent of us? What would a Kantian say? Are fundamental algorithms at the heart of Nature? Does this conflict with fundamental laws of physics? Why can’t finite state machines count? Are Turing machines able to recognize repetitions? How? Why isn’t ...
Nov 25, 2023•1 hr 15 min
Are your attachments secure? Are you disabled? Have you ever lost your mind? Is there a link between Being, becoming, experience, & location? Are all spaces places? Could one be at ‘home’, & yet ‘out of place’? Does your place give you too much identity? Must actors be models? Is your help a part of your family? Are you able to put yourself in another’s shoes? How do actors / writers / psychotherapists do this? Are you comfortable as yourself in an artificial situation – i.e., can you pl...
Nov 04, 2023•1 hr 18 min
Are humans statistical systems with random biases? Is the world fundamentally discrete, & the continuum an emergent property? Or, is the quantum world foamy? Should black holes be a part of the Standard Model? Does the Standard Model (surely) undergird the periodic table? Is space-time merely a causal ordering of events? Where does physics end, and chemistry begin? Can the shape of water molecule be inferred from macroscopic water? How is the whole different from the sum of its parts? Can ha...
Sep 30, 2023•1 hr 16 min
Do you talk to your toaster? Do you think of ‘your’ bacteria as yourself? What self-replicates? Do organisms age during hibernation? Does the hybrid presuppose the pure? Can artefacts be made without thinking about their environments? Are our bodies at least somewhat mechanistic? Will we always live with the categories of the 1600s? Which deviations are aberrational? Do life and non-life lie on a continuum? Are only the animate living? Should doctors be haunted by the realization that their whol...
Sep 23, 2023•1 hr 10 min
Do you live with animals? Are your summers busy? Could a 1000 metres apart be several hours apart in the hills? How does that define culture? Could there be multiple places in one hill? Do you have a simple dream of having a kitchen with a granite sink? Are hill people traditionally more cohesive? What do hills do to States? How do/did sovereign Godlings rule their territories in the mountains? Have these Godlings (& their people) also been at war? What brought them together? Where did the c...
Aug 29, 2023•1 hr 25 min
Were there thoughts >80,000 years ago? Can you say what you feel? How is your Broca’s area? ‘Where’ is the mind? Is it individuated? &, insulated? When did our ancestors first create art? Are human beings incorrigibly abstract? Are social minds more emotional? Are single cell bacteria social? Who is accountable for a mob? How do social values get revised or (sometimes) resisted? Is the mapping between brain states and mental states (largely) mysterious? Does language change the brain? Is ...
Aug 22, 2023•1 hr 20 min
Can you meta point? Do you celebrate objectivity? Is there a lot happening that is ‘undocumentable’? Are facts and values entangled? Are several valuable things tangible but not measurable? Are we ourselves instruments? Can ‘fact’ have variations? How is truth different from truism? Must Truth be recognizable? Does mathematics ‘change’ over time? Can experience invalidate mathematical statements? Is the metaphysical always mystical? Is the artistic metaphorical? Are the three (Penrose) worlds – ...
Jun 10, 2023•1 hr 18 min
Can one become English? What does this have to do with the Suez Canal? Are you white? Are we free? Is it good to be obedient? Is the Other always an enemy? Or, could it be a reference group? Did everyday defiance (say, by the peasants) play a role in India’s struggle against the British Empire? Is nationalism necessarily anti colonial? How is Indianness linked to the Aryan Invasion Theory? Was the British conquest of India always partial? Are Gandhi, Gandhism, & Gandhi-ites the same thing? H...
Apr 29, 2023•1 hr 23 min
Who are you? Would you like to have a new name? Were there many Kalidasas? Have you ever been with a mountain? Does your family have recorded history? Why are authors often anonymous in ancient Indian texts? Is the desire to be known akin to the desire for immortality? What is the name for India in Sanskrit? When do names of specific individuals begin to emerge in archaeological artefacts? Did the devadasis lead creative lives? Do (only) dominant elites name and judge the anonymous non-elites? W...
Apr 08, 2023•1 hr 18 min
Why do we reify? When are you able to read others' minds? Is this a pedestrian? Are sensation and perception tied together? How are new mental templates formed? Are priors 'necessary' for categorization? How do we know, in a badly lit place, if something is a wire or a snake? Are mental images ‘sharp’? Should stochastic processes (also) be understood via their higher-order moments? How are interiors of opaque objects (metal spheres to stars) pictured? Do you internally ‘model’ various parts of y...
Apr 01, 2023•1 hr 18 min
Are you a romantic genius? Are artists incapable of understanding their own creations? Where does inspiration come from? Is Nature divine? Can art divide? When/why does a creation become property? Are you the owner of your own Self? When does one have the right to copy? Do you copy yourself? Did print technology create the individuated author? Do you know what an author is? Which language do you create in? Is listening/reading re-creating? Does repetition create difference? What is the differenc...
Mar 11, 2023•1 hr 30 min
Are you expected to reproduce? Where is hell? Should patriarchy be ‘smashed’? Are brains masculine or feminine? Are biological and social factors deeply enmeshed, & is the body also socialized? Is Nature mutable? Is sex different from gender? What does this distinction have to do with the colonial encounter? Is the personal realm both public and private? Can there be non-binaries without binaries? What can we be besides what we are? Can gender be merely agentive? Isn’t everything outside of ...
Feb 04, 2023•1 hr 11 min
Do you respect the bones of your forefathers? Are your hands free? Were the hunter gatherers happier? Are nomads now likely to be criminals? Are you a willful nomad? Why don’t we live on trees anymore? How did ‘I-ness’ emerge? What is ‘I’? Is our thinking capacity more unconstrained than our bodily capacities? Does the Mind have an upper hand over the Body? Is the Self always embodied? Or, can there be a Self without an ‘I’ or a body? Are biology and culture mutually dependent on each other? Did...
Jan 21, 2023•1 hr 12 min
Is the past ‘all over the place’? Is it the stories that keep buildings and communities alive? Are stories mental artefacts of the past? Did H.M. have expectations? Is understanding the past a process of comparing the unknown and the known? Is the surprising, strange, & non-normative, therefore, informative? How do archaeological artefacts carry traces of human behaviour? Are there patterns in culture? What gets demolished? Can lost languages be revitalized? Is the past always changing? Is t...
Dec 05, 2022•1 hr 17 min
Are you a middle-roader? Is Jai Santoshi Maa a mainstream film? Are you exposed to world cinema? ‘What’ is popular? Are dialects non-standard? Does writing / scripting / printing legitimize the process of standardization? Are scripts discrete, but language continuous? Can sociopolitics ever be subtracted from language? How is time tapped? Are film scenes cut ‘in’ time (i.e., temporally, rather than visually)? Is the notion of mainstream always market driven? Where does power emerge from? Do the ...
Nov 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Many sorts of things don't happen. Plans are made and deferred. Films are left undeveloped. Subjects are avoided. Dreams are un-dreamt. Planes take off empty. Priests are marked absent. Building floors get skipped, and boats go missing. Turn Seven is just one of them. And #TATS (The Absent Turn Seven) pretends like nothing ever happened. You hear the voices, in order of disappearance. But order does not matter. Birds and brooks sing in no order. The middle never ends for those that remain.
Jul 12, 2021•1 hr 30 min
The Antakshari Scene: The antakshari scene located mid-film is a prime example of the intertextuality found in MPK and the originality that comes in part from the film’s recontextualization of various fragments from pop culture. Even though the song sequence does not contain original music but rather a medley of songs from previous Hindi films, it still functions as an important vehicle for plot development and the articulation of feelings that cannot easily be expressed through dialogue (see Ga...
Jul 11, 2020•30 min
The intensity of celestial sources passing over the fixed field of radio receivers was recorded on strip charts and had to be analyzed by visual inspection. This task fell naturally to the graduate student of the group, Jocelyn Bell. On August 6, 1967, she first noticed a peculiar train of radio signals when the sky at right ascension 19h19min passed through the field of view. What could have caused such a transient periodic signal? The first suspicion was of course interference from some electr...
Jul 11, 2020•30 min
