Anger & Peanuts

munching · demonic wisdom · reading ·

Nov 28, 2025

Article voiceover

0:00

-10:42

A gathering of goodies (and a note from evil) in this missive. Munch on a beloved snack as we stroll through worthy reads scattered across the months.

🎧 Prefer to listen? Hit play above to hear me read this to you with love and care.

1. Ravana on Anger

Toward the end of the battles in the Hindu epic Ramayana, the Lord Rama is about to vanquish the ‘demon’ king Ravana of Lanka. Rama’s learned opponent, a scholar, speaks to him on anger. This passage was narrated by the inimitable (late) Om Puri in the 1988 documentary TV series made by Shyam Benegal called Bharat ek Khoj, or ‘Discovery of India’.

Recently, it inspired one Debangshou Moulik, artist & animator, to spend 48 hours creating these hand drawn frames and bringing them to life; his visualisation of this thought-provoking extract.

2. Add To Queue

“we’re the chimpanzees trying to speculate about what the AI could or couldn’t create. I think we should come with a level of humility about this that we’re currently not coming up with.”

Tristan Harris has long been a articulate and thoughtful voice on how technology can be shaped for a better world.

On “Into the Machine”, Tobias Rose-Stockwell and Tristan have a clear-headed, critical yet positive discussion about AI- risk scenarios, what we can expect AI labs and legislators to do in the face of AGI, and what can be done right now to ensure these systems stay maximally beneficial to humanity.

Listen to it for a reasoned, reasonable and sincere discussion shorn of the intent for loud takeaways or Instagrammable quotes.

Schwep!

Timothy Chalamet, fan obsessions, KFC & Whatsapp all come together over at The Colour Bar!

That’s a shoutout to my newsletter which swirls in the collision of content, creativity, media & entertainment.

3. Masala, Peanuts

A simple dish. The best bar snack. Subtle variations. Basic principles.

The earliest conscious connection I have with masala peanuts is in the pubs of Bangalore, that once (and always?) ‘pub city’ of India. The spicy, tangy, crunchy bowl was an integral part of the table with draught beer. I say integral, though it usually disappeared pretty quick, as most of us attacked it with a rather disproportionate vigour. By no means is this fine snack ubiquitous in India. You are far more likely to find it ‘south of the vindhyas’, in the watering holes of Mumbai or Bangalore, much less so in those ‘restobars’ of Delhi. And in years to come, I would start making this at home occasionally, sometimes just for my ownsome, then for the odd cheery evening with friends, even finding it in the odd Singapore bar.

What is this very desi casual snack? Some variation of chopped onions, tomatoes, green chillies, coriander and squeezed lime with salt, tossed together with… peanuts of course. These can be pan fried/roasted (my preference), or peeled and raw, but usually the smaller Indian peanut variety. They have to be fried on a low flame for a while, so they aren’t burnt. They should be fried when they will be eaten- keeping them waiting will leave them soft or chewy. The tossing should be done just before serving, so everything doesn’t become soggy. Firm peanuts must collide with the soft juice of the tomato and the crunch of the onion.
Some add diced cucumber, I prefer not to. Some call it peanut masala, I prefer not to.

When I shaped Coffee & Conversations last year, Masala Peanuts seemed an appropriate title for my subsection of interesting things I link to. It came to mind unbidden, and stuck. As we trot (or plummet) into the last month of the year, I thought to look at some of the tidbits I have shared these last 11 months; and felt you too, dear reader, might like to meander through a selection.

I know many of these sometimes get lost in read-later lists or unread tabs. So come along for this eclectic stroll; and maybe come back to it in the coming weeks, when you might have a few more moments to catch up, as the year winds down.

them peanuts.

Abandoning A Cat: there was this memorable, absorbing read from Haruki Murakami, talking of an abandoned pet… and his explorations about his father.
Apparently, the first known written use of the word ‘creativity’ didn’t actually occur until 1875. This conversation with Samuel Franklin, author of a new book, ‘The Cult of Creativity,’ looks at the surprisingly recent history of an idea that has become an ideal.
“What do you do when you wake up with a Banksy on your wall?”. A hint or three here.
“In times like these, when vitriol comes easier than virtue, this piece is not written in protest or praise. It is written in remembrance. For the game we once loved. And the way we were once taught to love it.” This wonderful piece in The Dawn was on Virat Kohli’s retirement, but managed to say a lot more.
Meet the oldest woman in the world to practise the martial art of Kalaripayattu. At 82, Meenakshi Amma still trains and performs.
Elsewhere, a woman at the centre of Netflix documentary ‘Con Mum’ was found and charged with fraud in Singapore. “The victims only realised that they had been cheated after Hanna was featured in Con Mum, which became available on Netflix on Mar 25.”
Enjoy ‘Stranger Twins’: a photography project of strangers who are dopllegangers.
More strangers: “People seem to want to talk and very often about really important things.” In The Openness of Strangers, share some experiences of an award-winning podcaster who speaks to strangers.
“It’s not just the bots that are gaming the algorithms through mass amplification. It’s also the algorithms that are gaming us. We’re being subtly manipulated by social media.” You may or may not have heard of bot farms and how they can manipulate internet traffic and social movement. But you should definitely read this piece.
“Swap out spices and cotton for content and code, ships for servers, and you don’t have to look hard to see the historical parallels.” An excellent read from Nicholas Pickard on the parallels between the great AI race/empire-building of our time, with imperial conquests from times gone by.
Talking of empires, ‘Relooted’ was a new game unveiled by South African video game studio Nyamakop. It asks you to repatriate African artifacts by looting western museums! “Is it stealing to take back what was stolen?”
Broken online empathy: “the flood of digital content doesn’t allow room for pause – only reaction”. A short but insightful piece on how much our actions and reactions in the digital world are performative, as we leave a ‘like’ to signal mere acknowledgment of the most crushing of news & stories.
More on how social media manifests the performative. “Online, we yearn. Offline, we don’t linger long enough to actually ache.” A revealing piece on performative yearning in Gen Z. “It’s like being in on the vibe matters more than actually living it.”
While on social media, this was a thought-provoking piece titled, “From Dorm Room to Default - How Voyeurism Became a Business Model.” Christine Haskell looked through the lens of Meta’s glasses to urge leaders to take on the privacy challenges it brings. “Harms don’t need villains; they require unquestioned defaults. In a system where attention is rewarded, safety drifts into “feature,” not floor—and families, schools, and workers sit on the wrong side of the information asymmetry. In that world, relying on corporate virtue is malpractice.”
A belt for carrying skipping stones… or pouch for a wine glass… or… a bag for a watermelon?? Yes, these niche products are from Japan- ludicrous and gorgeous, at once.
“But what does it mean for a machine to create something “aesthetically pleasing”? The machine is not pleased. It does not discern. It does not suffer from bad taste or thrill at sublimity.” The march toward a world flooded with ‘content’ created by large language models and generative AI continues. What value will such creations hold? I looked at it as I read Robert Saltzman’s ‘What Cannot Be Said’, a wonderfully articulated, thought-provoking piece on how the human aesthetic experience and the approximation of it by AI, are not the same thing.
And maybe end with a little collection of ‘Where Writers Write’, like GB Shaw- “People bother me… I come here to hide from them.”