AI for commerce, sure… but for creativity—I’m AI— Angry and Incensed. In 2024 all the chat was about ChatGPT. Will we sink further into fake-hood?
Illustration/Uday Mohite
And so, as 2024 came to a close, and we rang in 2025… five things stood out for me these last 365 days.
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AQI was as much of a concern for me as was AI. Air Quality in our city was appalling.. no no, that was always a Delhi problem, not us. Mumbaikars/Bombayites have a way of believing that there’s always something rotten in the state of Delhi— well now, we share a common “rotten”—a smorgasbord of smog. If the skies were polluted, with the AQI out of control, the airwaves are “polluted” with AI—Artificial Intelligence as the term suggests isn’t a fallacy anymore, it’s the replacement of real. And worst of all its rushed, seeking to eschew risks, individual thought is somehow replaced by robots, the easy way out. Sure, I’m cynical, but when aesthetics are sacrificed at the altar of artificiality, I’m out. AI for commerce, sure… but for creativity—I’m AI— Angry and Incensed. In 2024 all the chat was about ChatGPT. Will we sink further into fake-hood?
The world continued its fascination with the Iron Gloved men in power, absolute power—starting with our own backyard—modern man is obsessed with tyranny and totalitarianism, the bad boys seem like a better option than the “good intentioned”. Russia, Israel, the US, all re-elected Iron Gloves, true the oppositions in these lands were, well some in disarray… Some were destroyed, some had disappeared, others deported, or dissolved. Syria showed some resolve, they stood up to their dictator and banished him after many decades of despotic rule, as did Bangladesh, but Democracy floundered worldwide at the feet of dictators. The world seemed to sink deeper into a quicksand of toxicity and terror.
Unfortunately, on the Indian cricket field, we were loathed and hesitant to banish our “iron gloves”—gloves that were once iron in their solidity, now rusted a tad, not as dependable, but as is our way, the Indian way, we remain manacled to them. True, one of them “stepped down” or “was rested”. Australia showed us up for what we are, a one-man team, it was pretty much the Aussies vs one Indian fast bowler. Our cricket is in some disarray. Much needs to be fixed.
Many good men, gentlemen, passed on this year, especially the second half of the year, these were gentlemen—in a world driven by war and the worst of what mankind does to each other, we bade goodbye to a corporate humanitarian, a lover of dogs and a hater of dogma. We lost the king of rhythm, a percussionist par excellence, a tabla player, who in his illustrious career, fused the East with the West in sound. We bid farewell to a trailblazer film director, thinker—he challenged the status quo on the silver screen, gave us a rural alternative to razzmatazz, a gritty option to glamour, he presented sweat, toil and suffering. He took us from “escapist cinema” to “you can’t escape this” cinema. We buried a former Prime Minister of India, a financial mind that turned the early 90s on their head, he was silent and didn’t show off, maybe even a little overshadowed by dynastic rule, but he liberalised us. And as the year changed hands, we mourned a former US president—a man equally devoted to peace as he was to peanut farming. All these men were gentlemen in a not so gentle universe.
South cinema ruled the roost, once considered with some cynicism as “hmmmm regional cinema”, they invaded us— they didn’t just stream in, they strode in. Pushpa pulled audiences in like no Hindi film could. The Bollywood bastion was ripped open, South protagonists vs South antagonists, sandalwood smugglers vs superintendent of police, we couldn’t get enough of these men.
I’d like to suggest to Webster, Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries, a word for 2025 —Instareal—a return to the unhurried, a return to all that is real. Also a word of advice for Gen Beta… be better.
Happy New Year, dear reader.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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