Arvind Swarup

Four months after George Orwell published 1984, his former teacher sent him a letter. Aldous Huxley had one message: you described the wrong dystopia. 🧵

His name is Raju Narayana Swamy. In 1991 he secured AIR 1 in UPSC. The best rank in the country that year. He had a computer science degree from IIT Madras. MIT offered him a scholarship. He turned it down. He said the poorest Indians had paid for his IIT education through their taxes. He owed them something back. So he joined IAS. His first posting: a real estate developer wanted to fill a paddy field. Sixty poor families said they would flood. He refused permission. He was transferred. He exposed illegal land deals by the children of Kerala’s Public Works Minister. The minister resigned. He was transferred. He uncovered corruption at the Coconut Development Board. Officers were suspended. He was transferred. He fought corruption in civil supplies. He was removed before he could finish. 32 transfers in 34 years. He once wrote formally asking why he was being paid a salary for work that was never assigned to him. In 2025 the Supreme Court dismissed his plea for promotion to Chief Secretary. Despite AIR 1. Despite 30 years of service. He also wrote 34 books. Won the Sahitya Akademi Award. Holds a PhD in law. MIT offered him America. He chose the people. India’s system sent him one message for 34 years. Honesty will cost you everything. He paid it every time. Follow for real stories India never makes headlines about.

My fave Chuck Norris joke: Chuck doesn't flush the toilet, he scares the shit out of it.

Dennis Ritchie created C in the early 1970s without Google, Stack Overflow, GitHub, or any AI ( Claude, Cursor, Codex) assistant. - No VC funding. - No viral launch. - No TED talk. - Just two engineers at Bell Labs. A terminal. And a problem to solve. He built a language that fit in kilobytes. 50 years later, it runs everything. Linux kernel. Windows. macOS. Every iPhone. Every Android. NASA’s deep space probes. The International Space Station. > Python borrowed from it. > Java borrowed from it. > JavaScript borrowed from it. If you have ever written a single line of code in any language, you did it in Dennis Ritchie’s shadow. He died in 2011. The same week as Steve Jobs. Jobs got the front pages. Ritchie got silence. This Legend deserves to be celebrated.

A powerful scene in the Odyssey happens when Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca after twenty years of war and wandering. You would expect the story to end with celebration, with the hero coming home, the family reunited, and order restored. Homer does something far stranger. Odysseus arrives disguised as a beggar, because Athena warns him that the palace has been taken over by more than a hundred suitors who have been living there for years, eating his food, drinking his wine, and pressuring his wife Penelope to marry one of them. They believe Odysseus is dead and in their minds the kingdom is already theirs. So the king of Ithaca walks through his own halls dressed in rags while the men stealing his house sit comfortably at his tables. They mock him, throw scraps at him, and one of them even strikes him, and Odysseus takes it. That is the remarkable part, because the same man who blinded the Cyclops and survived twenty years of disasters now stands quietly while strangers insult him in his own home. Homer tells us his heart burns inside his chest and that he wants to attack them immediately, yet he restrains himself and waits. Instead of striking, Odysseus studies the room carefully. He counts the men, watches their habits, and quietly observes which servants remain loyal and which have betrayed him. The hero of the Odyssey does something most people cannot do, which is delay revenge until the moment is right. Eventually Penelope announces a contest and brings out Odysseus’ great bow, declaring that she will marry the man who can string it and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads lined up in a row. One by one the suitors try and fail, because none of them can even bend the bow. Then the beggar asks for a turn. The suitors laugh at first, but the bow is eventually handed to him. Odysseus takes it in his hands and strings it effortlessly. Homer says the sound of the bowstring tightening rings through the hall like the note of a swallow. Then he places an arrow on the string and sends it cleanly through all twelve axe heads. In that moment the beggar disappears. Odysseus turns the bow toward the suitors and reveals who he is. What follows is one of the most brutal scenes in Greek literature. The doors are sealed and the suitors realize too late that they are trapped inside the hall. Odysseus, his son Telemachus, and two loyal servants begin killing them one by one. There is no escape, no mercy, and no negotiation. The men who spent years consuming another man’s house die inside it. It is a violent ending, but Homer wants you to understand something important. The real danger to Odysseus was never just the monsters and storms on the long journey home. It was the possibility that someone else might take his place while he was gone. When Odysseus finally returns, he reminds everyone in Ithaca of a simple truth: a man’s home is not truly his unless he is willing to fight for it.

@virsanghvi @Dior @ScentidoIndia Whenever I feel awkward and out of place in an upmarket store, my mind goes back to this touching scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and fills with the hope of the kindness of store employees. youtu.be/HzT89jyi56s?si…

Always shocked by how snobbish sales people at so called designer stores in Delhi malls are . At @dior at Promenade Vasant Kunj, the salesman was obnoxious & rude. At nearby @ScentidoIndia they were aggressive & patronising. What makes Indians who work for foreign brands feel so superior to ordinary people? It disgraces the brands themselves & suggests that this is how they feel about Indians.

My tribute: Why we must not mourn the great Robert Duvall. livemint.com/mint-lounge/ar… @Mint_Lounge

Why I Don't Vote By Manu Joseph One way or another, the central message of all annoying people is ‘why can’t you be like me?’ I cannot think of a more foolish use of human speech. Like the taunts some people make against those who don’t vote. Every now and then, I hear radio jockeys, actors, comedians and others who had to check Wikipedia for the meaning of ‘Republic Day’ give a lecture on why everyone should go and vote. On voting day, there would be thousands of Instagram pictures of Indians showing their forefingers with the stated or unspoken claim that they have done something noble. Also, there will certainly be one viral photograph of a very old bent woman who had traveled a great distance to vote. * Read free on my Substack. Link is in the comments.

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Dear families, gone are the days where you don't pre-book your seats, come late to the airport and expect to get all of you seated together in the flight. If not, then undertake master negotiations with fellow passengers for seat exchanges. I always pre-select and pay for my seat (front rows, aisle) or seats together when traveling with my family of four. This week too, fell for another guilt tripped request to give up my pre-paid seat for another family. These negotiations start with "Are you travelling alone?". Was requested to exchange seats and go to a rear row seat for a family with a child and an infant. Multiple exchanges to get those 3 seats together. Next time, please pre-select your seats together and pay for it too. If you can afford to fly together, you might be able to afford to pay for seat selection as well.

Why I love PG Wodehouse: youtube.com/watch?v=bYwemD…

@virsanghvi I do get the larger point; but even during the golden age of Indian cinema, NTR — a ravenous meat eater — would abstain from non-vegetarian food while he played Rama or Krishna or for that matter (and for the sake of rhyme), Ravana. Finally, it should be a personal choice.

Sharp Edge: Does it matter if Ranbir Kapoor ate meat on a TV show? Why do busybodies sit in judgement on other people’s eating habits? It’s a new development. Nobody cared what Dharmendra or Amitabh Bachchan ate.

@RichardDawkins I neither understand the joke nor history of this topic — what I am fascinated with is that the person who invented the word uses it like it always existed 🙏🏽🙏🏽

Duke of Uxbridge, at the Battle of Waterloo: “By God, sir, I‘ve lost my leg.” Duke of Wellington, at his side: “By God, sir, so you have.” A meme as repeatable as this is automatically suspect.

Reposting(from Sept 1, 2023)

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“I could buy any house in the world, and I don’t want any other house than the one I’m in.” — Warren Buffett That single line captures a kind of wealth that money can’t measure. As Naval Ravikant once said, “It’s your unlimited desires that are clouding your peace and happiness. Desire is suffering. Every desire you have is an access where you will suffer. Don’t focus on more than one desire at a time.” Buffett’s peace comes from mastering what Naval describes, the art of wanting less. When your happiness stops depending on what’s next, you finally become free. True wealth isn’t the ability to buy more; it’s the wisdom to realize you already have enough.