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 yo…

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…

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 …

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…

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 differen…

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 …

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 s…

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 m…

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) geogr…

‘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 do…

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 thi…

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 anot…

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…

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 deviation…

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 Go…

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 r…

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? C…

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 India…

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 be…

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 understo…

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 y…

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 pr…

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 …

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 tr…

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 …

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 t…

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 …

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 pass…

One of the central theses underlying the phenomenology of body is that of bodily subjectivity. It might appear as though by speaking of “bodily subjectivity” one is in effect assimilating “body” into “consciousness,” so that instead of the real body one is talking about thought or the idea of the body. Nothing could be farther removed from our inte…

Frankfurt, 1797: at twenty-seven, Hegel plunged into a profound crisis. He no longer knew what he thought; he no longer knew what to think. The republic and the revolution had collapsed under the repeated blows of German history. Several years later, Hegel would speak of this episode as an attack of “hypochondria”. Hypochondria: literally, under th…

Defarge closed the door carefully, and spoke in a subdued voice: “Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three! This is the witness encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four. He will tell you all. Speak, Jacques Five!” The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead with it, and said, “Where shall I commence, monsieur?” “Commence…

“What do you do at his place? What do you and he talk about?” asked Stolz. “You know, it’s so proper and cozy at his place. The rooms are small and the sofas are so deep, you sink so far down no one can see you. The windows are quite covered with ivy and cactus, and he has more than a dozen canaries and three dogs, such good ones! He always has som…

Are you able to realize your potential? Is your country under-developed? Is development a kind of gradual unfurling? Could it then be an infinite, deliberate, process? Is urbanization industrialization? Is industrialization development? Is development, only, economic growth? Does urbanization ‘cause’ development? Did the moral values of ‘improvemen…

How do you like your Matcha? Why do fine and coarse materials behave very differently? Is surface texture usually a sign of sub-structures? How does rock become clay? Is dry clay enough to understand wet clay? Could tea be smoked? Is it simple to keep every spoonful of your morning cereal mix similar? Do pure dry solids ‘flow’ in layers and parts? …

How old are passports? Are you a resident citizen? Are nations primeval or modern? Were the colonizers, such as England, the first nations? Are all countries multi-ethnic/multi-religious? Are there phases, then, in the process of the abstract negotiating with ground realities? How do nations reproduce, as some are born, some emerge, some mimic, & s…

Should Aristotle have also cooked? Would you eat dog meat? What does your food say about your conception of Reality? How is our gut first colonized? What are you allergic to? How/why do cultures select what to eat? Where are taboos found? Are you a non-believer? Who does your cooking? What are the techniques? How is identity produced? Does culture …

How quiet is the sea? Do you want to mine manganese? What makes certain interactions reactions? Are there reactions happening in your room? How is heat different from light? What does new Law come from? Can oceans ‘retain’ certain information for centuries? When do we say that a bond has broken? Can radio frequencies ionize molecules? Is your water…

Have we over-adapted? How fit are you? Are our adaptive responses often too private? Is any fitness measure also always about the environment? How efficiently do you communicate with the changing environment? Are cultures always born on the boundaries? Can the First World, alone, help the world adapt? Are languages naturally selected? Are more freq…

Do you aspire to write good English? What was Ranjit Singh’s official language? Where do your narratives come from? Is it possible to think rationally while living in a village and practicing caste? Was India (only) a land of static isolated villages? What does colonialism do to social and political formations? Are tribes expected to evolve into ca…

Are you a part of the underworld? Would you like the society to applaud you? Do you gamble? Or, consume illicit liquor? Is the disorderly the underbelly? Will you inherit property? How has dowry existed in many societies for centuries? What changes the valuation of grooms? Are the values of criminals and police often very similar? Is there somethin…

Are words valuable things? When did you last search for a word? Is the seed of language also the seed of the world? How does art work? Is direct (unmediated) observation possible? Does language have a (biological) organ that works with other cognitive faculties? What is a ‘word’? Does it have an internal structure? Do speakers find various affixes …

How difficult is it to pick berries from a tree? Do green flowers exist? Is blue still blue if it is not being known? ‘Where’ are your eyes? ‘Who’ needs colour vision? Is colour an elemental, physical, measure of the world? Is colour also mind- (or, sensor-) dependent? Do name-ability and know-ability go together? Is lustre similar to colour? Why i…

Are wars entertaining? Who is responsible for your security? What is the role of military force in life? Is history violent? Do all cultures have a historical consciousness? Are all orders political orders? Are in-group solidarity and out-group hostility built into human civilizations? However, are we neither violent nor non-violent? Are human natu…

Do ‘birds that fly instinctively swim’? Are self-evident truths easy to prove? When is ‘want to’ not ‘wanna’? Is verification easier than proof? Are proofs explanations? Is that why proofs are supposed to be elegant? Is reasoning algorithmic? Is there one Method to all reasoning? Are all ungrammatical sentences also unacceptable? When do sentences …

Do cheaters survive? Do you find joy in competing (& cooperating)? Are teams mechanisms or organisms? How do teams coordinate layers of emotions, energies, and purposes to acquire a coherent ‘personality’? What, then, keeps teams together? Is there scarcity of common purposes in the world? Is teaming essential for bacteria? Might teams, across scal…

Is counting just a special case of measuring? Is any kind of measuring, & scaling, dimension dependent? Do lungs ‘have’ a non-integer dimension between 2 and 3? Can you list all the numbers between 0 and 1? Do both the size and number of cells/organelles change with biological growth? Is Euclidean geometry sufficient to describe things in nature? W…

Is there a rhinoceros in the room? Is the quantum world aesthetically weird? Are quantum systems only small? What is macroscopicness? Is there quantum behavior, but no quantum objects? Why is (?) there randomness, but not superposition (say), in the manifest world? Is the World one unified physical system? Are there local hidden variables? Can real…

Are only boring people bored? How standard are your windows? How did the trivial, marginal, & everyday come to the foreground in literature, architecture, language, & ‘living’? Does space emerge ‘from’ living? Has your built environment been handed down to you? Must tragedy only be about high-born individuals? Are you ‘free’ to be bored? Has modern…

Do you talk to the Divine? Are feelings facts? Do you accept things as they are? What are you feeling at the moment? Are you agitated? Is sound the earliest primordial? However, do (say) colours, gestures, & silence also speak? Do emotions, fundamentally, emerge in cinema with the arrival of sound? How do we learn to say that we are not feeling wel…

Are you neutral? Is neutral inert? Do you practice hypocrisy? What does it mean to be (an) opposite? Are capitalism and socialism always incompatible? Do opposites always attract (even in natural systems) – why not? How might opposites be brought together? Are (certain) paradoxes culturally contingent? Can the cultural be told apart from the religi…