I will dust myself off…
I will keep swinging…
You are going to have to kill me.
Why?
Naa Kaliamman Paiyan…Bhoomiamman Asuran.
When you come from a land that faces death with sociopathic courage and bitter love…
Fear is scared to stalk you.
Dear reader, please note that I am always seeking paid remote work. I try to work from home as much as possible as it allows me to fulfil my domestic responsibilities in a more efficient manner. Plus, as I’ve mentioned before, I love being a homebody and stay-at-home parent.
If you would like to hire me for any research/writing projects, please feel free to contact me by email at sriram.writing@gmail.com or via my cell at six-one-two-six-three-six-nine-eight-nine-five. I’m also on FB (joint acct with my partner) as “Susanne Waldorf Shree Varuna”
Apart from my blog, which you are welcome to peruse, pasted below is a more “professional” resume that includes my paid jobs (the ones that allow me to pursue blogging, geopolitics, and mma as amateur hobbies.)
Shree Varuna
PROFILE
EDUCATION
Degrees:
Masters in Public Health & Human Geography, Johns Hopkins University.
Bachelors Degree in Engineering, Bangalore University.
Certifications:
DV/SA Advocacy Training, Refugee Mental Health, Crisis Intervention & De-Escalation, First Aid & CPR, Techniques in Anxiety & Depression Management, New Approaches to Treating Traumatic Memory, Professional Practice and Jurisprudence in Psychotherapy, Post Partum Depression and Healing, Addressing Violence and Aggressive Behaviour in Primary Care Settings, Trauma-Informed Counselling and Therapy for Front-Line Workers, CBT Treatment of Anxiety and Depression, Mindfulness and Affect Regulation Approaches to Trauma Therapy, Understanding and Managing Aggressive Behaviour (UMAB), HIV & Substance Use Training, Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), Fitness, Health & Nutrition, and De-Escalation Techniques.
Post Graduate Coursework:
Geography, Environment, and Society, University of Minnesota.
PROFESSIONAL WORK EXPERIENCE
June 2021 – Present K-12 Reserve Teacher Minneapolis Public Schools
Sept 2020 – May 2021 Public Health Specialist MDH/Rose Intl.
Sept 2017 – March 2020 K-12 Reserve Teacher Minneapolis Public Schools
Dec 2016 – Feb 2017 Program Coordinator Sexual Violence Center
Dec 2012 – Dec 2016 Trauma Therapist Parkdale Community Health Center
Sept 2011 – Dec 2012 Community Health Worker Loft Community Services
June 2011 – Sept 2011 Community Development Worker Parkdale Community Health Center
Sept 2008 – May 2011 Lecturer and Teaching Fellow University of Minnesota
Jan 2007 – Aug 2008 Program Director Jan Manthan Service Trust
June 2004 – Dec 2006 Outreach Coordinator Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence
May 2003 – May 2004 Curriculum Developer Johns Hopkins University
April 2002 – Dec 2002 Emergency Aid Worker Action Aid
Sept 1997 – March 2002 Student Organizer VISIONS Bangalore
RESEARCH/WRITING/AWARDS
Past Published Papers, Articles, Short Stories:
Conceptualizing Solidarity and Realizing Struggle, Interface Journal (Open-Access); The Politics of the BDS movement, Socialism and Democracy (Routledge); Scheduled Tribe Status for Adivasis in Assam, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies (Taylor and Francis); SEZs: New Mechanisms for Imperialism in India, Socialism and Democracy (Routledge).
Over a dozen articles on healing, mental wellbeing, and political economy published in various journals and magazines, including LifeHack, Actions Speak Louder, ZNet, ZMag, Himal South Asian, India New England, India Together, Samar, and The South Asian.
Sci-Fi Short story – The Liberated Zones of Mother Dravidia – published in Rigorous Mag
Awards:
References available upon request.
You cannot win if you are afraid to lose.
That’s what I hear Prashant Kishor trying to tell the Gandhi clan of the grand old party in his incisive interviews with NDTV and Mojo Story.
Soniaji, Rahulji, and Priyankaji, with all due respect, you would do well to listen to this guy. He wants your party to continue being a strong, viable democratic alternative to the obscurantism of the BJP.
PK correctly identified BJP’s tripartite, winning formula as the rhetoric of Hindutva and Nationalism, matched on the ground with Welfarism.
The Congress needs to fight that with its own formula; utilizing the rhetoric of India and Federalism, matched on the ground with Employment and Growth.
That’s your message. Hone it down and regionalize as you deem fit. But stop playing this foolhardy game of 100% defense. Own your goddamn legacy, you guilded cage progressives, and don’t be afraid to throw some fucking punches. There are many of us who’ve been fighting these fascists for decades without any of your feudal backup or old wealth; You owe those of us who’ve kept punching up at the BJP (even as we wait patiently for you to adjust your fighting stance).
As far as the party’s Prime Ministerial face? One who can fight good fights as the face of the party for multiple election cycles? An electioneering face who can also be the face of governance?
It has to be someone with Hindi as their native tongue. I say this as a South Indian, mind you; But there is no way anyone from the east or south can be that face right now (unless they’re chosen post-coalition-making, a la Deve Gowda). If the Congress is going with an electioneering face, they would do well with a person from the Hindi heartland, preferably Dalit or OBC but with a very generically Hindu last name. Preferably from central India because the political parties of the south and east will always, by and large, resist the BJP in their regions but can’t challenge them in the north. Only a native Hindi speaker from the Congress party can do that. So someone, say, of Bihari origin, but educated in Delhi. Someone who’s also a gifted orator, with salt-of-the-earth roots, possessing a razor sharp intellect. Someone who’s guaranteed to bring in the votes left of the Congress, but also someone who can be a strong opposition voice to a weakened BJP central government in 2024, thus creating the foundation to win electoral battles beyond 2024.
Yeah, the Congress ain’t winning in 2024. But it can do better than 2019. Much better in fact (if the trends of the recent mood of the nation survey are anything to go by).
To do that however, the party bosses have to listen to the Prashant Kishors of the world. And they need to realize that their political candidates are the Kanhaiya Kumars of the world. The only Gandhi with even half a chance is Priyanka, not Rahul. She is absolutely doing the right thing focusing on galvanizing the women’s vote, and it’s perhaps first viable for her to look at getting the CM’s chair in Uttar Pradesh before making a push for Delhi.
But not yet. Maybe after at least one more non-Gandhi gets a chance to be PM. There are a lot of people who distrust the Gandhis and the BJP alike; And the Congress can still win many over with the right moves and adequate ego adjustments by the party bosses.
Until then, take full reigns of the party and foster candidates who capture the imaginations of India’s diverse masses. Don’t forget the words below:
Karmanye Vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana
To put it more succinctly…
Fight.
Some women in India are breathing a sigh of relief.
Experimenting with a new format to produce an abridged geopolitical post with hypotheses and verifiable secondary sources for the reader to explore should they desire to do so.
My method of pop culture and geopolitical research, which has generally been the case for past pieces of such a nature, is as follows: When I take breaks from my daily responsibilities I watch/listen to either geopolitical podcasts, or mma videos, and occasionally will listen to a philosophy or popular science podcast (mostly to sound pretentious). I follow this up by looking up articles and papers when I have a moment to do so on the topics that interest me the most (usually when I have bouts of insomnia or when I’m on the crapper). I use these secondary sources as a way of bolstering the general hypotheses (written in bold, El-Cucuy style #champshitonly) that I dare to have about these issues.
Onward…
Drones Are Levelling The Asymmetric Warfare Playing Field In A Once In A Generation Way
Not unlike the bow & arrow or hand-held rifle, weaponized drones are a gamechanger for significantly disempowered geopolitical actors waging asymmetric warfare against vastly more powerful ones. Take groups like Yemen’s Houthi rebels fighting against a vastly more powerful Saudi-led coalition, or Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighting against the ridiculous military might of Israel. Drones even the playing field in a big way. They provide relatively inexpensive ways for the less powerful nation or group to bleed the wealthier, more powerful nation. This way they can accelerate ceasefire negotiations as equals across a diplomatic table.
There are other ways in which weaponized drones are changing the military game. Take two small, somewhat evenly matched states fighting over a swathe of territory like the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Drones were an absolute game changer for Azerbaijan smashing Armenia. Or take two mismatched regional powers, like Israel and Iran, with Israel having far greater military power and geopolitical heft than Iran. Iran has nonetheless been able to challenge Israel, often toe-to-toe in proxy battle theaters, with its own drone warfare adding heft to their traditional proxies (and this despite Israel being the world leader in drone technology). Drones can be engineered or reverse-engineered by anyone. Like the Enfield bolt-action in the 19th century, or the AK-47 in the 20th century, there’s no question about it – drones are evening the asymmetric warfare playing field.
Uttar Pradesh Election 2022 Trends Suggest A Wounded But Victorious BJP (With A Likely Modi Victory In 2024)
It pains me to say this, but it seems that, while the BJP is going to be wounded by their attempts to sell out India’s farmers to the highest bidders, UP is not Punjab. Their Hindutva-Welfarism still holds currency among a sizeable chunk of the electorate, including their upper-caste Savarna base, and portions of the OBC and SC communities. The BJP is likely going to be the single biggest party, thought not with the 312 out of 403 seats they have now, but more likely in the early to mid 200s. The Samajwadi Party will come in second for damn sure, the question is whether they can run the BJP close, and this could well be possible with India’s age-old protections against fascism – chaos and competition – potentially affecting the BJP in India’s largest state. This might be the best case scenario for the parties trying to uproot the BJP; With the SP leading the anti-BJP coalition, and the RLD, BSP, and Congress as the three likely players in distant third, fourth, and fifth positions, but with potentially enough seats to put an SP-led coalition over the mark (with enough sops that is). This remains the less likely outcome, but really the only route for an opposition coalition to come to power. The likelier outcome is, as I mentioned, a wounded BJP government in Lucknow.
Funnily enough, a weaker Yogi government in UP might be a blessing in disguise for Modi and Shah to retain their thrones in Delhi come 2024. Modi does not want a powerful Yogi in UP; a powerful chief minister now nursing potential prime ministerial ambitions. I doubt Shah wants that either because with Yogi challenging Modi, Shah might never realize his own ambitions at the PMO – with a newly empowered Yogi doing to Shah, what a rising Modi did to Advani during the end of the Vajpayee-Advani era of the BJP. Right now, Shah is a clear second-in-command (and some would say he holds the real strings over Modi, though I think those speculations are exaggerated). Modi and Shah want to rule India for as long as they possibly can. They have a great working relationship, built on garnering power and no small amount of ideological unity points. Some might even say, it would be in their interests for a wounded Yogi to limp into power on a regional NDAesque coalition in UP. They are already cutting Yogi down to size (the party’s publicity images have Modi basically big-brothering a petulant Yogi in the staged photo-ops). The Modi acolytes can claim Modi did all he could to save Yogi from embarrassment (and they would be partially right), Modi and Shah can launch a concerted bid for 2024 having successfully played defense in 2022. It is a sobering thought, but it is important, as someone who’s trying to adhere to reason and rationality, to remain true to facts. It’s quite possible that the BJP have to drive India further down the toilet than they already have for them to lose power at the center. They are well capable of that as their hubris and megalomania seems to have few limits. It will eventually lead to their downfall, but I think they still have a few more years in them. The Savarna middle classes of North India, and some other parts of the country, have also expressed a bafflingly undying loyalty for the BJP that can be classified as nothing other than a sociopathic mass delusion. I would be thrilled beyond belief if they got smashed, but I just don’t see that happening…yet.
And Finally, Chaos – Of The Caste And Regional Kind – Will Always Resist Hindutva
I have said it before. The caste, clan, linguistic, and regional identities of India will always be resistant to any homogenizing Hindu nationalist project. They will be bought over and will be negotiated with, but they will never give in to the homogenization. Not because of some higher morality. Far from it. It’s because there is too much entrenched power, cultural and political, behind these identities. There are too many vested socioeconomic interests preventing people and communities from being homogenized into some shallow fascist project (in a country where even the fascists can’t stop themselves from developing a crabs-in-a-bucket mentality). This doesn’t mean mini pogroms or mini projects of cultural genocide and ethnic persecution won’t keep happening. They will. But I think there is far more rational, organic resistance to Hindutva than your average, bratty English-speaking, progressive might give credence to.
(I’m trying to do better.)
Roundup over.
References:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/18/houthi-drone-attack-exposes-uae-vulnerabilities-in-region
I recently watched Don’t Look Up and it was great. The biggest takeaway for me (beyond realizing that I, unlike my partner, grew up in a trench-humor culture) was this query – if you had just 6 months of existence, how would you go about living your life?
I realized without a shadow of a doubt that I would want it no different than what I’m doing right now (with probably just more takeout and booze than we currently allow ourselves).
Validated a lot of life choices I’ve made.
Choices that might classify me as an underachieving beta male.
(Btw if you think or believe in alpha male nonsense, no offense but you’re an idiot and very likely a dangerous one who thinks too highly of themselves. Please consider getting help.)
I don’t understand careerism culture. I don’t understand alpha male culture. I don’t understand aspirations for wealth, power, fame, or status that ultimately sacrifices one’s people.
I love having my family around me. And it’s not like I necessarily want to be doing stuff with them all the time, or really any of the time. I love my me time. But I need to be within a few feet of them or else I start feeling sad and depressed. And I don’t really like feeling sad and depressed, so I try to be around them as much as I can.
I love cooking for them. I love them enough to clean for them. And they love me enough to allow me to be me while being all I can for then. My daughter is the only person on earth I love more than myself. My partner and my dog are the only people on earth I love as much as myself. And our extended family of loved ones (including the cats) can call on me and my services whenever they need me.
I don’t need a career. I need my people. I just make money as and when I need to, while being a homemaker the rest of the time.
I come from a community where a man like that would be looked down upon.
And the common element in all those people looking down on me tends to be that they are way more miserable than I ever thought possible.
You can take your captains of industry, your natural leaders, your manifest destinies…and you can shove ’em where the sun don’t shine.
There is beauty in insignificance. There is endless wonder in any journey.
***
Post Script Dedication:
The inspiration for this post came from a YouTube video by content creator, Salari, entitled “Why Are Right Wing Men So Sad? – Feasting on Misery | Salari” released on Jun 21, 2021.
This is a video that works just as well to answer the converse question – “Why Are Sad Men So Right Wing?”
You should watch the video and make your own call. It was very healing for me personally. Equally so the comment threads. It meant enough to me for me to make the following comment: “Stay-at-home-dad here, one who cries, gets all in his moody-ass feels, and is totally in love with his family. Your video validates many life choices… despite a lot of pop culture telling my otherwise… Thank you.” which resulted in a further wave of organic and nurturing validation for, well, being organically nurturing as a human being.
Thus this post, and its dedication to creator Salari and to commenters Chloe Winters, Samkarro, Marcel Robinson, Blah Girl, and others, who made for such a lovely video and comment thread. Thank you all.
I’m of the opinion that no one is illegal and all human beings have the inalienable right to migrate anywhere they damn well please in order to build a better life for themselves.
Internationally or intra-nationally. You wanna voyage to nicer lands with greater freedoms and choices?
Well then, rumble young one rumble…
You have the right to migrate and settle anywhere on this fucking planet. Make no mistake about it.
However, regardless of documentation or lack thereof, you’d be a damn fool to ignore the laws and legal structures surrounding your precarious-ass existence.
Whether it be as an immigrant student, migrant worker, or wandering self-employed proprietor, there are many steps, trials, and tribulations towards getting those cherished settler privileges in the form of residency and ultimately citizenship. (If that’s what you’re looking for that is.)
The first step is of course getting your butt out of wherever the hell it is that you want to get out of.
I don’t know how that goes where you are, the different privileges, documents, and resources you can muster, and thus the different risks you can mitigate. The less shit you got, the more risk you’re likely going to have to take.
If the level of risk is too high, then wait and strengthen your position before leaving (maybe you’ll even find that you’re better off with your improved station in life in your home country and just stay rooted there).
If you do want to leave, and are successful in doing so, then you obviously need to figure out skills and hustle to find work in the country you’ve landed in (and if possible, having a job be the pathway to getting to said country is always better than not). You will often have to fake it till you make it; Learn on the job quickly; And take opportunities in sectors, industries, and jobs you never thought you would even venture into.
Ultimately the only way I can think of to settle in a wealthier country is working. Hustling. Apart from rich folk in poor countries who can just buy documentation to settle in a wealthy country, everyone else has to work in jobs where there are labor shortages. All done with the hopes of achieving a couple of things, usually in that order: (1) saving a chunk of money to send back to peeps in the home country, possibly even buying a house or apartment there, and/or (2) ultimately getting settler documentation in the wealthier country for the long haul.
It’s lengthy and frustrating, often dehumanizing, occasionally even abusive. Capitalism has done shitty, weird things to people in rich and poor societies alike (like, for instance, creating rich and poor societies).
But there are ways to make those initial tough months and years feel easier.
Future dreams and little victories along the journey. Seeing a little nugget of money grow little by little every paycheck. Thinking more like a wanderer for a few years in order to gather resources, experience, and documentation; Before gaining greater settlement privileges in the years and decades to come.
As I’ve said before, I’m not saying it’s a fair world, I’m just saying it’s the one we’ve got.
You are a citizen of this world. Only you can fight for and claim that fundamental right for yourself.
Just be smart about it.
If you’re looking to get out of your current geographic location and try a different one, now might be a good time to find a route through the labor market.
A recent New York Times piece (link above in caption) described how wealthier nations were competing with each other for migrant labor to fill major shortfalls.
Fun fact about humans, the more privileged we get the more we want to exercise choices around our daily activities…like work.
Thus we need people with less choices in their lives to do those jobs we don’t want to do. Because those jobs still need to get done. We all need to eat, have a home, stay safe, enjoy ourselves, get educated, and be healthy in our social universes. And we rely on a lot of outsourced labor for that. Labor generally done by people with less choices than us.
That labor route is the oldest and surest path to immigrating (and eventually settling if need be) in a wealthier country that needs workers. Has been since civilizations and nation states started forming.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect world. I’m just saying this is the world we’re in.
love liberation struggle 