Proof that Ayan thinks.Proof that Ayan thinks.

Sometimes I worry if I should have chosen dev over design. The allure is real - my analytical bent of mind often lures me in, but I also love to notice deep patterns in human behaviour, actions, history and politics — all things that eventually govern the decisions that run the world.

The golden goose fumble

The Golden goose story is a part of common human psyche. It serves to inform the mind that the path of greed — the path of wanting everything — sooner or later causes one to lose it all.
Now, commonly due to it's material analogue, a golden egg would mean a million dollar idea, business, or a title but at a macro scale, it seems like humanity has fumbled on this egg and ignored it's own reflection in it.

The declining birth rates around the world — specially in first world countries are an indicator that the golden goose is dying. The worse problem is that there's no easy/ quick or AI powered solution to this.
Quite the opposite, AI or those who wield the narrative have aggravated this [1]problem.

The narrative disconnect

Whenever someone is fed the narrative that you're replaceable, it propagates a culture of dehumanisation. Dehumanisation of value and of labour. A person's life's struggles and wins are invalidated in exchange of a mere metric. And when pushed too far, people either revolt or worse,retreat into nihilism.

Jim Prosser in his blog AI, "Humanity", and Dr. Manhattan Syndrome uses the character of Dr. Manhattan from the graphic novel Watchmen as a metaphor. Dr. Manhattan is a godlike being who can perceive quantum physics and the entire arc of time. While he cares about humanity's survival in a detached cosmic sense, he completely loses the ability to empathize with or care about individual humans. Prosser asserts that executives have adopted this exact mindset—they love the theoretical concept of Humanity because it is easy to model and optimize, but they find real people (who sue, protest, and worry about their livelihoods) to be a nuisance.

The way ahead

The outcome – hence is before us. but the thing about humans is we are resilient and we have a strong thing working for us. Our hope. The power to create virtue in the face of adversity and inherent meaninglessness.

But it's nothing new; history demonstrates a recurring, spiral pattern where periods of intense socioeconomic hardship ultimately generate the collective energy required to fuel major cultural and progressive eras. This societal shift is visible in the transition from the corporate monopolies of the Gilded Age into the worker protections of the Progressive Era, as well as the traumatized "Lost Generation" of the 1910s catalyzing the artistic explosion of the Roaring Twenties.

Today, the severe psychological and economic pressures facing Gen Z—driven by algorithmic isolation, wealth inequality, and rapid technological disruption—closely mirror these historical inflection points. While currently characterized by high rates of anxiety and nihilism, populations historically reach a critical threshold where prolonged systemic distress triggers active resistance rather than numbness.

The emerging popularity of community-focused volunteering, indie media, and optimistic "hopecore" aesthetics indicates a structural shift away from digital complacency toward a new era of human-centric art, social reform, and cultural rebuilding. Whether we are able to save the golden goose, is

Appendix

Tragedy of commons

A database responses to multiple micro service queries works only when microservices treat the database as a shared resource and limit the number of queries preventing the collapse of the db entirely. A tragedy of the commons. This problem doesn't save itself.

Dominant Strategy

A dominant strategy – is the trap that most companies fall into causing a prisoner's dilemma.

1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20617↩︎

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.