One of the first nuggets of information I remember from my time at journalism college is a professor telling us: if you think you can change the world with your work, forget about it right now. I remember that stark warning frequently and very clearly, especially when I am writing something.

Why, you may wonder. Simply because that is the only weapon left with the powerless today to put up a fight in this big bad world full of injustices. Moreover, it’s the only weapon worth wielding in today’s world, rife as it is with conflict, confrontation, and divisions demarcated along the lines of everything from wealth, caste, creed, class and religion to race, gender, politics, identity, and geography, among the various other classifications that humans have dreamt up of over the years.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me go back in time a little and give you some context of where I come from to explain why I write what I write.

I was born and brought up in a dusty little town called Jeetpur, in a country called Nepal, sandwiched between two giants, India and China. The town (now city) falls on one of the main highways between India and Nepal, called Tribhuvan Highway. My childhood was cloistered for the most part till circumstances disrupted my life and forced my family to stay apart for several years.

My grandfather had migrated from a small village in Darbhanga, Bihar, to settle here a long time ago. While he spent most of his life there, it’s also the place where he was killed in front of my eyes, while my mother was shot in her legs during a home invasion. That incident started a chain of events that completely changed the trajectory of my life.

It uprooted me from the only place I had called home till then and took me on a journey that I feel continues even today. Apart from the upheaval it wrought in my life, the incident also put me on the path of self-discovery and a journey to discover this beautiful place we call the Earth.

A profound change that this period brought in me is that it gave me the tools to satisfy my curiosity, by inculcating in me the habit of reading. From children’s books to the daily newspaper and advertisement hoardings to shampoo labels, reading opened the whole wide world for me, warts and all. But unbeknownst to me, my reading habit also sharpened my mind, and stored a treasure trove of background, but no less important information. Everything the world has to offer, the good, the bad, and the ugly, newspapers present it in a clear format and make it vividly real.

But I can not miss the point of all that I read every day. From crimes against women to scams involving government monies, businesses cutting corners to leaders making tall promises, countries going to war against each other to people killing other people for various excuses, reading the news has made me feel the problems plaguing our world very acutely. It has also revealed a world of knowledge that I could otherwise have gained only with multiple college degrees.

Moreover, the ideas and information newspapers carry are also sufficient to figure out the solutions to most of the problems plaguing our world.

What’s the relevance of this? Reading the news and understanding the world has crystalised only one fact: that the world is on fire, hurtling through time and space with little sense of control or direction, and no clue about what needs to be done next to solve the problems our world and its people are facing.

From extreme poverty, malnutrition, obesity, xenophobia, religious intolerance, racial discrimination, underdevelopment, unemployment, economic stagnation, job security, and tech’s impact on jobs, to violence against women, exploitation of women and children, abuse of power, corruption, political othering, and identity crisis, destruction of natural resources, and climate change, along with hollowing out of institutions of governance, power-hungry politicians, among the various other challenges that inflict our world; the problems that populate the pages of a newspaper daily do not ever seem to end, nor do they ever seem to have a solution.

Forget a solution, there doesn’t even seem to be any improvement in the situation. In such a situation, one is forced to ask: is this how life on Earth supposed to be? Is this the pinnacle of human existence, rife with so much exploitation, discrimination, drudgery, disenchantment, and destruction?

I have hardly seen a concerted effort by anybody to address any of these issues in a holistic manner, at any level of governance or administration, with any success. That too at a time when financial resources and technological advancements have delivered almost every tool that we need today to address today’s problems. Or, figure out solutions that address their root causes. And it starts with talking about them, consistently.

Be that as it may, my experience of observing these challenges and developments has come with the realisation that solutions abound to most, if not all of these problems. The solutions are simple, and straightforward; but they can only work with the widest possible engagement and ownership. They start at a very basic level (from communication), and require all of us to rediscover our roots as humans, figure out what it means to be human in this time of technological advancement. And this is why I write: to explore these themes in detail, and talk about these solutions. Its worth a shot to try and change the world wouldn’t you say?

But that requires some context, which we will talk about in future essays. Moreover, it needs another social experiment, which again requires some explanation. The first few steps of that experiment are to build a wide consensus and get some skin in the game from everyone.

To that end, as a first step, I want everyone who is familiar with my work to read my previous essays to tell me what you think. Some criticism or feedback would be nice. If you can take the thought forward, it would be even better.