I had lofty plans for my first post here; I was going to explain the name of the blog. Here it goes: Facts and randomness stands for my fascination with perception and bias so this would probably be a more accurate name, but I am biased towards the first one.

A fact is an undeniable occurrence. Undeniable is something that most of adequately alive, fed, educated, reasonable and conscious humans would not argue about. A good example of a fact is that we are all going to die. The assumptions of my definition might make it work only for a very narrow sample of humans hence there would be very few real facts out there, but I’ll continue using that definition anyway, because I’m not planning on writing an encyclopaedia. Randomness is what we try to conquer by applying patterns to it. Patterns then become a logic (hopefully) and that logic can be used for showing off, mostly insecurities.

That’s it for the plans. As for what life – or work – does to plans is that it brought me to India, for the first time. I only had half a day to see something else than a hotel and an office. Through a mixture of blackmail and bribery I went to Mahabalipurum. Went is not the best word. Without knowing how to call a taxi or even having to speak to a taxi driver I was taken there in that taxi. I got a guide and I got taken to see the temples, the butterball stone and a shop for westerners and then I was taken back to the hotel.

I don’t yet understand what was it about that experience that took me off balance so profoundly; it’s unlikely it was just the sterility of it. Yes, on my very first trip not even paid for by myself I was not prepared to take any risks and it turns out that taking no risks is borderline depressing. And in the centre of that sterile experience were all the people I neither knew or understood. What’s that deal with those cows in the middle of the road? Why is it so horribly dirty and messy, the Chinese can keep it clean, why can’t you? What does it mean, this young woman with barely any hair and a dirty child and a bowl – literally a dog’s bowl out of which they were eating – and her face that I don’t know how to describe, maybe exhausted, I can only think of deeply sad words – and I thought – is she a dalit, an untouchable? Where is the father and what will happen to her son? Why do you, as a society agree that there are people who are untouchable? What is the difference between me and my child and her and her child? I don’t mean the things I have and she does not, that is not what describes a human, right, so it can’t be that difference? It is so random that we both are where we are.

I was coming back, feeling around the edges of that raw experience – still through the window of a cab. So is it more real, more of an undeniable occurrence, not having food or shelter for one’s child – or being depressed because of a manicured existence that does not make enough difference? If I transferred half of what I own to that dalit woman, perhaps she she would buy a house and food – but we all know you can’t simply fix neurotransmitters, that’s much more complex, right? How would the dalit woman know what to do with that money to improve her life? It’s all in her head, the society taught her to think this way, she could have taken her life in her hands and now stand next to me, we’re both humans, there is no difference between us. How can I help and why would I, if all that difference is imaginary? Let’s stop calling her a dalit, how about if her name was Jessica? Surely, the physiological imbalance of neurotransmitters is more undeniable.

In reality I wasn’t thinking any of that crap in the last paragraph. I was numbing it down asking the taxi driver all sorts of questions to try to understand through his life story what I saw, because I am better at understanding than at feeling. I wanted to explain to myself what is it that I care about, really, honestly and without lying to myself and is it that mother and her child or something else? And to try and find – and if I can’t find it – construct a logic in what I saw, because that logic would be the way to contain it.

So, the purpose of this blog is to have a structure and a record for me learning how to stop producing and consuming my own bullshit. And the purpose of this entry is to remember her and her child, and how easy it is to produce bullshit and how hard to really understand.