Daily sketches of a quote or a curious link that make one pause. Collected one by one, they eventually line up to reveal the grand, messy picture of life.Daily sketches of a quote or a curious link that make one pause. Collected one by one, they eventually line up to reveal the grand, messy picture of life.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have chosen engineering over design. The allure is real. My analytical bent of mind often draws me towards understanding how things work, how systems interact and how seemingly unrelated variables influence one another.

But I also love noticing deeper patterns in human behaviour, history, politics and culture. The things that, eventually, govern the decisions that run the world.

Perhaps that's why I've been thinking about a rather old fable.

1. The golden goose fumble

The story of the golden goose is deeply embedded in the human psyche. It serves as a cautionary tale: the pursuit of more, driven by greed and impatience, can eventually destroy the very source of abundance.

In its material interpretation, a golden goose might represent a million-dollar idea, a successful business or a coveted title. Except this time, we've failed to recognise our own reflection in the goose's eyes, let alone protect it.

Consider the declining fertility rates across the world, particularly in developed economies. The global fertility rate stood at approximately 2.2 births per woman in 2024, with more than half of all countries and territories already below the replacement level of 2.1¹ Across OECD countries, the average has fallen further, to around 1.46.²

These numbers represent more than a demographic challenge. They raise a rather uncomfortable question about the future we are collectively building.

For decades, we've optimised for productivity, economic growth, consumption and individual convenience. Yet the conditions required to sustain the next generation, affordable housing, economic security, stable employment and the time to raise a family, have become increasingly difficult to secure. Even the OECD recognises these everyday constraints as important factors influencing fertility decisions.²

The golden goose, in this interpretation, is humanity's capacity to sustain its own future.

And the troubling part is that there is no quick fix. No technological breakthrough, government incentive or AI-powered intervention can independently solve a problem rooted in the way we've organised society.

If anything, the competitive incentives surrounding AI risk aggravating some of these pressures. As explored in The AI Layoff Trap by Brett Hemenway Falk and Gerry Tsoukalas, individual companies can be incentivised to automate beyond what is collectively beneficial. Their research demonstrates how competing firms can end up in an automation arms race, displacing workers beyond what would be economically optimal for the collective.³

We may be getting exceptionally good at extracting value from the present while undermining the conditions that make a future possible.

2. The narrative disconnect; Dr. Manhattan

There's another, perhaps more immediate, consequence of this way of thinking.

Whenever people are repeatedly told that they are replaceable, a culture of dehumanisation begins to take shape. The value of labour, experience and individual contribution gets reduced to a metric. A person's struggles, ambitions and accomplishments become secondary to their economic utility.

And when pushed too far, people either retreat into nihilism or revolt.

Jim Prosser, in his essay AI, "Humanity", and Dr. Manhattan Syndrome, uses the character of Dr. Manhattan from the graphic novel Watchmen as a metaphor for this phenomenon.⁴

Dr. Manhattan is a godlike being who perceives the world through an almost incomprehensible understanding of quantum physics and time. He can comprehend humanity's existence on a cosmic scale, but gradually loses his ability to empathise with individual human beings.

He cares about humanity as an abstract concept, but struggles to care about actual humans.

Prosser draws a parallel with corporate leadership and the people building increasingly powerful technologies. There's an unsettling tendency to celebrate Humanity as an abstract beneficiary of technological progress while treating actual people, with their grievances, livelihoods and anxieties, as inconvenient variables in the equation.

The distinction matters.

It's entirely possible to optimise a system for humanity while making life worse for the humans living inside it.

Perhaps the problem isn't that we've become too analytical. It's that we've become comfortable defining success without adequately accounting for the people who are supposed to benefit from it.

3. The way ahead; what our past indicates

The outcome isn't predetermined. And perhaps that's the one thing working in our favour.

Humans are remarkably resilient. More importantly, we possess something that doesn't always lend itself to rational explanation: hope. The ability to create meaning, cultivate virtue and find purpose even in the face of adversity and inherent uncertainty.

History offers some interesting precedents.

The concentration of corporate power and wealth during America's Gilded Age eventually fuelled movements that helped shape the Progressive Era. Organised labour, investigative journalism and political reform challenged the excesses of industrial capitalism, contributing to stronger worker protections, antitrust measures and consumer rights.⁵

Similarly, the disillusionment that followed the First World War became part of the cultural backdrop against which an extraordinary period of artistic experimentation and social change unfolded during the 1920s.

Of course, history doesn't move in neat circles. Hardship doesn't automatically produce progress. It can just as easily produce apathy, authoritarianism and further fragmentation.

But it can also create the conditions for people to question the systems they've inherited.

Today, Gen Z finds itself navigating a peculiar contradiction. It is perhaps the most digitally connected generation in history, yet increasingly confronted with algorithmic isolation, wealth inequality, economic uncertainty and the prospect of rapid technological displacement.

There are early signs of a countercurrent. The growing visibility of community-focused volunteering, independent media and more optimistic cultural expressions suggests that not everyone is willing to accept digital isolation and economic productivity as the defining features of modern life.

Perhaps we're beginning to rediscover the value of things that don't scale particularly well: friendships, communities, art, belonging and shared experiences.

And maybe that's where the answer lies.

Saving the golden goose hence, is recognising that progress has very little meaning if it gradually erodes the human conditions that make progress worthwhile.

Whether we're able to save the golden goose might ultimately depend on how much we're willing to believe in a future beyond ourselves.

Appendix

Tragedy of the Commons

Consider a shared database serving multiple microservices. Each service independently queries the database whenever it needs information. From the perspective of an individual service, making more requests is perfectly rational: it gets the data it needs, when it needs it.

But when every service behaves this way without accounting for the collective load, the database becomes overwhelmed and eventually collapses.

What is individually rational becomes collectively destructive.

This is an analogy for the tragedy of the commons: a shared resource is depleted when individuals optimise for their own interests without accounting for the consequences imposed on everyone else.

The problem doesn't solve itself. It requires coordination, shared responsibility or mechanisms that change the incentives.

Dominant Strategy

A dominant strategy is one that produces the best outcome for an individual player, regardless of what the other players choose.

A prisoner's dilemma is a particular game-theoretic situation in which individually rational decisions lead to a collectively worse outcome.

In competitive markets, this creates an interesting parallel. Every company may have an incentive to automate, cut costs and move faster than its competitors, even when the collective outcome is detrimental to everyone.

The AI automation race is an interesting example. The incentives of individual companies can push the entire industry towards an outcome that none of them would necessarily choose if they could coordinate.

References

1. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Fertility Report 2024. ↩
2. OECD, Pensions at a Glance 2025: Fertility. ↩
3. Brett Hemenway Falk and Gerry Tsoukalas, The AI Layoff Trap, 2026. ↩
4. Jim Prosser, AI, "Humanity", and Dr. Manhattan Syndrome. ↩
5. Library of Congress, The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. ↩

Until a decade ago. Until cold ever-burning incandescent LEDs, villages had a strange power to bring out contrasts; not the obvious, boring kind between a quiet village and a bustling city. A different kind of contrast. One that appears on quiet nights under the frequent load-shedding-black.

These odd hours lit only by the moon, flickering oil lamps, and glowing fireflies were when the familiar turned strange. The mind became a top-tier horror director, projecting something straight out of The Conjuring.

With everything bathed in the pale ivory light of the full moon, blonde hay on rooftops turn into morbid gray straws with cobwebs. Stuff that reminds you of death, witches and dementors. 

That mango grove where you took a peaceful afternoon nap? By 9:00 PM, it’s a jagged silhouette, the kind of place where a brohmodoitto — one of those old-country Brahmin ghosts — sits in the branches, waiting for a boy to look up.

A few square feet of concrete in the courtyard - a noisy cricket pitch during the day, chaos and busybeing quietly submerges under the moon. Many homes have an extra washroom across the courtyard and you'd rather hold your pee till tomorrow than cross at night.

And yet, my dad and I had a ritual. After a heavy dinner, we’d go for a walk. We’d push past the hamlet of sleeping houses, right to the edge of the world where the paddy fields met the nearest lake.

That’s when you feel a gentle summer breeze. A sudden chill runs down your spine and it had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the realization that you were utterly, completely alone. Far off, a dog would start to howl. 

You wonder: Does it see something people can't?

Your pulse would kick up a notch. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

You'd stare across the lake. Moonlight shimmered over the water like a million silver needles. And then you'd see it.

On the far bank, something white flutters against a patch of dark shrubs.

Your rational mind—the civilized part that went to school and watched Discovery Channel—told you it was just a saree left out to dry.

But the younger child within you had already started whispering.

Is she standing there? Is it her?

Look away, the voice said. Don't look back.

Because if you looked back, there were only two possibilities, and both were terrifying.

What if the white cloth was gone?

Or worse...

What if it was right in front of you?

Eyes squeezed shut, you'd scramble to remember the defensive spells and rituals your grandmother had mentioned years ago, in stories that had once frightened you, but now felt strangely comforting.

"Babu" my father called.

His voice broke the spell. Thick, warm, and unmistakably real.

He reached out, and his hand — big, rough as rocks from years of honest work — wrapped around mine.

The monsters slipped quietly back into the weeds.

The funny thing is, I grew up to become a complete horror junkie. And looking back, I think this was the beginning.

A common phrase in recent conversations has been "the third place" a sanctuary outside work and home (or a lack thereof) in our city lives. A recent weekend-afternoon naptime spent in meandering thoughts took me back to a familiar place. A place introduced to me at childhood. A place that's been a third place for generations in my family without being labelled so.

Kalna Gate is a humble railway crossing. Not as well known outside the equally humble town of Barddhaman in Bengal. My close paternal family – brother, uncle and grand parents have all lived near this unmarked landmark, within earshot of the tracks, so I grew up in the rhythm of the crossing.

​A third place is supposed to be a "social surroundings" spot, but Kalna Gate was more honest than that. Honest enough to make distant neighbors drift there after a tiring summer day. My late grand father was one of them. Sitting at their usual spot between two cold parallel steel tracks, he and his group would chat over warmer topics unknown to me. The passing trains ushered in the twilight.

​When I was a kid, that crossing was my world. I didn’t go there for the "community"; I went there because the earth shook—the tracks rattled in a familiar rhythmic tune. I’d sit on the cold and heavy iron fence with my father, watching the powerfully graceful locomotives tear past. I remember the frantic counting of coaches—always losing track—and the way the overhead wires would throw blue sparks into the purple dusk. It was noisy; between train horns, cycle rickshaw bells and vehicles beeping yet the conversations resonated louder. Sometimes my father and I would talk, but mostly we just sat in the breeze and be.

That gravity hasn't let go of me. Even after I got married, I had to take M there. I needed her to feel the air of that place. Recently, I painted it—the cover image—an impressionist piece from memory, all blurred lines and twilight colors. She recognized it instantly. Not because of the geography, but perhaps because she recognized the feeling.

​Kalna Gate isn't "supposed" to be a third place; it's no fancy cafe, pub or even nor even a formal tea stall where one might expect the traditional Bengali adda. It’s just a gap in the fence, a vibration in the soil, a ton of honesty and the right mix of the mundane that just keeps calling me back.