Month: July 2021

With the recent disaster of MV Express Pearl and the earlier incident of MT New Diamond, your attention would have likely been drawn to an industry that is mostly invisible to us. However, cargo ships are the hidden backbone of international trade and almost everything you consume. Their unparalleled status as the most cost-effective mode of transportation remains to this day. A large container vessel carrying 13,100 containers (yes, you read that right) if transported by road would require 6,550 lorries, 6,550 drivers, and… (well, you know what I mean) while at sea, it's only achieved with 20 odd crew members. Numbers aside, your father happens to be a captain in the merchant navy. Lucky you, just the chance to…

Read more

2020 was a roller-coaster ride for most of us, but at the time, we thought 2021 would be better. However, if your definition of “better” in this scenario is similar to mine, then you too would know that things are definitely far away from being "better". The COVID-19 pandemic changed our lifestyles, economies, society and gave rise to a series of issues we never thought existed in the first place. We are now studying, shopping, and even partying via online platforms. Parents and teachers who were constantly lecturing children to avoid being constantly active on the internet before the pandemic are now encouraging them to do the very thing they once advised their kids against. Zoom Video Communications Inc., the…

Read more

This year, I will be turning 21 and have made the stark realization that I've lived almost half my life carefree, in oblivion to many of the questions that I look for answers to today. I realized that my carefree days had come to an end once I started to question the many things in life. ‘What is the purpose of my life?’ happens to be one such question that still manages to frequently keep me up at night. To be very honest, I wasn’t a person that thought too deeply about such things. I used to live life just going about my usual day to day activities; attend school, eat, sleep, study, and maybe have an outing with my…

Read more

A song about a man entangled in despair and misery due to his inability to love himself. "Kim Namjoon, Kim Seokjin, Min Yoongi, Jung Hoseok, Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung, Jeon Jungkook: BTS", you'll hear this chant in a chorus of voices, cheering on BTS as they stand on stage to perform their songs that have taken the world by storm. The seven members of BTS stand at the center of a legacy like no other, and it all started with a dream, hard work, endurance, and persistence out of sheer love. Trying to explain BTS, their story, and their successes in just a few sentences would be like trying to capture the ocean and its treasures in a vial due…

Read more

“A man goes out to work, he earns a wage, he comes back home, he eats, he sleeps. That's what he does. Our men think earning money and ordering around others is where power lies. They don't think power is in the hands of the woman who takes care of everyone all day long, and gives birth to their children...” - Malala Yousafzai Can we ever measure power? Technically speaking, there may be all sorts of formulas and equations to measure power. However, I'm not talking about that kind of power here. I'm talking about the notion that makes people think they have some sort of superiority over others. Over centuries a certain image has been built up in peoples'…

Read more

Netflix! Yes, that wonderful content streaming platform and production company that aired a series of popular shows like Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why, House of Cards, Narcos, The Crown, Money Heist, and many more. It is not surprising that Netflix currently has over 200 million paid subscribers worldwide especially with the COVID-19 pandemic turning 2020 into a “Stay Home Year”. However, there are many more reasons for Netflix to remain the top choice among the general viewership; being able to watch on-the-go, its affordability, being commercial-free, the availability of multilingual content, and most importantly, the new young actors and actresses who often make their mainstream debut through different Netflix shows has constantly kept younger audiences in particular attracted to the platform.…

Read more

It's a serene Thursday morning and I am sitting in front of my laptop tapping on the keys. I was wondering what to write in my article 'A story to inspire'? 'A social commentary'? or better yet 'A potential alien apocalypse'? Ugh, indecisive moments; a common foible of human life. I once came across an article that said, an average person makes 35,000 choices per day. Deciding what to write? That definitely is one of the 35,000 choices I'm making today. We stumble upon countless occasions to make decisions yet no matter the circumstance, there's one thing we must always keep choosing: Happiness. I was scrolling through my Instagram feed one fine day, when I came across this America's Got…

Read more

Haven’t we all been obsessed with the idea of going to a boarding school in New England and getting up to like mischief with our friends and learning all about poetry and literature? Without a doubt, this might have reminded you of the Harry Potter series and the film ‘The Dead Poets Society’. Even though it went unnoticed, all these are a part of a particular aesthetic. Aesthetics is generally understood as a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of nature and beauty.  Under this diversified branch of aesthetics, a list of thematical academics exists, for example, light academia, dark academia, pastel academia, etc. can be seen. The tag "Dark Academia" originated sometime around 2015 on Tumblr and had a…

Read more

For a democracy to fully fledge in any nation, the existence of free and fair elections, participation of people in everyday politics, media freedom, and the existence of civil societies is vital. History tells us that such mechanisms have worked even though the path to it was arduous by nature. Social injustices such as the lack of universal franchise was transformed by the suffragette movement when women received their right to vote, which later on spread to other parts of the world. Such historic movements weren’t able to absolutely redeem societies of the gender inequality, but it was able to change the course of the governing process of almost all countries globally which had a snowballing effect on rest of…

Read more