Why are we told that nationalism is bad?
Why are we told that India was separated on religious lines?

First things first – India was NOT separated on religious lines. India was separated on Islamic lines. There is a difference. If we had been separated based on religion, we would have had separate Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain & Christian countries. Ok, some of them would have been tiny. But that’s what would have happened if we had been separated on religious lines. Clearly it didn’t. What happened was that the country was split as Muslims did not want to live with anyone else.

Today’s Pakistanis believe that Muslims and Hindus were two separate civilizations that could not share a future.

Pakistani schoolbooks describe 1947 as a ‘liberation from Hindu domination’. The Hindu is not a neighbour, predecessor or ancestor in that telling. He is what was escaped from. That has been taught in their classrooms for over 7 decades. The generations running that Islamist terrorism-enabling military dictatorship of a country have been taught this.

The Pakistani state religion, the blasphemy laws, the systematic erasure (convert or die) of the Hindu minority are not policy failures but their founding principles in action. The Pakistani population has seen it all. And participated actively in it. One off stories to the contrary which are bandied around aren’t the norm. They’re the exception.

A vast majority of today’s Pakistanis believe that Gazwa-e-Hind will happen in their lifetime and a big number of those believe that it is their god-given duty to enact it. So much so that a global cricketer and someone with a massive fan following in India – Shoaib Akhtar – has no hesitation when talking about it in a live interview in Pakistan. It’s routine for him.

I believe that there is no way to extricate Pakistan from this mindset anymore. The two things we need to do are A) Ringfence / dehyphenate ourselves away from them and B) Do everything in our power (साम, दाम, दंड, भेद) to keep them weak in all ways possible, so badly that they don’t even think about aggression towards India.

But say any of this in an Indian newspaper or on an Indian panel show and ‘they’ will immediately label you a ‘Nationalist’. A Jingoist. Soneone trying to derail peace. The accusation will arrive before your argument is even finished.

Who is ‘they’?

They are those who have tried to control you through guilt. To make you think of yourself as morally inferior because you spoke of the reality of an Islamist terrorism-supporting military-dictatorship.

You stating Pakistan’s reality is linked to you being communal against Indian Muslims. I have never understood this. But I’ve been thinking and I belive that this linking has a function. A population that knows and accepts the reality of what Pakistan thinks/believes/says about India is a population that stops feeling guilty / morally inferior about Pakistan’s destruction. And a population that has stopped feeling guilty is hard to control.

Understanding & speaking about the reality of the ideology of Pakistan is not aggression. But In India it is treated as provocation. As an Indian Hindu, this clarity has always been made to feel like a crime to me.

And the “Nationalist” label becomes a disqualification. Once that label is applied to you, your argument is invalid and you are removed from the conversation. No rebuttal to the facts is needed.

You will be hammered with the “Aman ki Asha is the only solution” nonsense, coz they fear the moment you stop accepting the Aman-Ki-Asha rubbish.

Coz when you think for yourself you have no need for gatekeepers to approve what you are allowed to conclude. A Bharatiya who sees clearly is unmanageable and will not let herself be guilt-tripped into accepting moral subservience.

The last few years have seen a major reversal of this guilt phenomena and a refreshing embrace of nationalism. Nothing highlights it more than the public reaction to films like Dhurandhar 1 & e2, Kashmir Files & Uri. The amount of pearl-clutching I have seen emerge from film ‘critics’ & ‘intellectuals’ on the “Yeh Naya Bharat Hai. Yeh Ghar mein ghusega bhi….” line was quite mystifying to me but their rants against these films have started to give me schadenfreude now 🤭. The symbolism of a Kashmiri pandit helming India’s top 2 grossing Hindi films domestically, is also hugely satisfying to me.

As is the country’s embrace of Kantara 1 & 2, Bahubali, Mahaavatar Narsimha and the explosion of people visiting Kashi, Ayodhya and the absolute avalanche of humanity that descended at the Kumbh.

I hope this warm embrace of nationalism, our roots, culture & beliefs continues for a long long long time to come. 😇

Pro Tip:
If you start getting comments like :
– Bhakt
– Sanghi
– Bhajpaaiyee
– Hinduvtawadi

You are going in absolute right direction. 🚩🇮🇳

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The West poured $50 billion into fast breeder nuclear reactors and abandoned every single one. India put $900 million and just achieved criticality – the first commercially viable FBR outside Russia.

The US spent $15 billion. Gave up. Japan spent $12 billion. Their Monju prototype had one sodium fire in 1995 and never recovered. The UK spent $8 billion. Germany spent $6 billion. France, Italy, all walked away. Six of the richest nations on Earth concluded this technology was too hard and too expensive to pursue.

India started building in 2004 with an initial budget of $420 million. Twenty-two years, a dozen missed deadlines, and a cost doubling later, the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam just sustained a controlled fission chain reaction. The reactor is now alive.

The reason India never quit is a constraint most people have never thought about. India has only 1-2% of the world’s uranium reserves. For a country of 1.4 billion people trying to build energy independence, that’s a death sentence if you’re running conventional nuclear.

But India has 25% of the world’s thorium. The single largest national reserve on Earth.

The problem: you can’t just burn thorium the way you burn uranium.

Homi Bhabha designed a three-stage nuclear program in the 1950s specifically to solve this.

Stage 1: burn natural uranium in heavy water reactors, collect plutonium as a byproduct.
Reactor: Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs)
Fuel: Natural Uranium
Mechanism: Uses PHWRs to produce electricity and converts into Plutonium as a byproduct.
Status: Operational and mature technology.

Stage 2: feed that plutonium into fast breeder reactors, where it breeds MORE plutonium while interacting with Thorium… So in a way, it converts thorium into fissile uranium-233.
Reactor: Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs)
Fuel: Plutonium from Stage 1 + Uranium
Mechanism: FBRs are designed to breed more fissile material more than they consume.
Status: A 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam is key, marking the transition to this stage.

Stage 3: burn thorium directly at scale.
Reactor: Thorium-Based Reactors (Advanced Systems)
Fuel: Thorium-232 + Uranium-233.
Mechanism: FBRs (Stage 2) convert Thorium-232 into Uranium-233, which powers the third stage.
Goal: The Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) is designed to use this thorium cycle for virtually inexhaustible, clean energy.

India just entered Stage 2. Seventy years after Bhabha drew it up on paper.

The math on the thorium endgame is wild. At current energy consumption rates, India’s thorium reserves could power the country for over 700 years. Most nuclear nations are playing a uranium game with maybe 80-100 years of runway. India is playing a completely different game with a 7x longer fuel supply.

The West quit because uranium stayed cheap and sodium coolant is terrifying. It catches fire on contact with air. It explodes on contact with water. Russia’s BN-600 had 27 sodium leaks and 14 sodium fires between 1980 and 1997. And Russia kept going anyway because Russia doesn’t quit nuclear projects. India watched all of that and kept going too.

When you have 1% of the uranium but 25% of the thorium, the engineering difficulty stops being a reason to quit. It becomes the price of admission to a 700-year energy supply that nobody else can access.

The FBR going critical is a MASSIVE leap towards our goal of a ‘Viksit Bharat’ ⚛️ 🇮🇳 ☢️

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P.S. The mechanics of a FBR

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This is Kunal, Haryana. The river-bed of the Saraswati.

Carbon14 dated at ~6000 BCE. Over 8000 years old.

Look at what emerged.

Three occupation phases. Pit dwellings evolved into planned rectangular mud-brick houses with organized layouts.

Then workshops appeared. Copper smelting. Bead manufacturing. Systematic craft production.

Then the gold.

Gold necklaces. Armlets. Bangles. Silver ornaments. Copper furnaces. Steatite bead workshops. Fired kilns. A complete hoard. Necklace beads. An armlet. Bangle fragments. Semi-precious stones.

Archaeologists call this “the earliest remains of pre-Harappan culture in India.” Call the gold regalia “first of its kind.”

Now notice what this proves.
• Planned architecture: older than 6000 BCE
• Copper metallurgy: older than 6000 BCE
• Craft specialization: older than 6000 BCE
• Ornamental culture: older than 6000 BCE

Mohenjo-daro reaches its peak around 2500 BCE.

That’s a 3,500-year gap.

Three & a half millennia of developed settlement culture before what textbooks call “the Indus Valley Civilization.” existed on the Saraswati – a river colonial ‘scholarship’ dismissed as mythological.

This isn’t pre-civilization. This is early-phase civilization. The timeline we inherited cut off 3,000 years of continuity. Kunal hasn’t rewritten history. It has extended it.

Bharat’s history & past greatness is still to be entirely discovered. 🚩🇮🇳

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Matt and Ross Duffer were 31 years old. Twin brothers from North Carolina. Two struggling screenwriters got rejected 15 times. Their show generated over $1 billion a year for Netflix.

Graduated from Chapman film school in 2007. Moved to Los Angeles with nothing. Spent years writing scripts nobody wanted.

Made one indie horror film called “Hidden” that went straight to VOD. Hardly anybody watched it. Worked on a show called “Wayward Pines” that got canceled. Did punch-up work on scripts. Took whatever paid.

For nearly a decade, they were the guys who almost made it. Almost sold the pitch. Almost got the greenlight.

Then in 2013, they wrote a show called “Montauk.” Kids in the 1980s. Psychic powers. Secret government experiments. Monsters from another dimension. Everyone said it was career suicide.

“Spielberg already did the kids-on-bikes thing in the 80s. E.T. and The Goonies owned that.”

“Streaming audiences want prestige dramas, not children’s horror shows.”

“You’re asking for $6 million per episode to cast unknown children. That’s insane.”

“The 80s nostalgia moment already passed.”

“This is too weird for mainstream audiences.”

They didn’t listen. So they kept pitching. Started in 2013. Took the script everywhere. HBO passed. Didn’t fit their brand. AMC passed. Too expensive. NBC passed. Too violent for network TV. Fox passed. Wanted to own the IP. The Duffers refused. Showtime, FX, TNT, History Channel, WGN America all said no. CBS passed. Said kids can’t carry an hour-long drama. Fifteen networks and streaming services. Fifteen rejections. Two years of hearing no.

Most writers would have shelved it. Moved on. Written something safer.

The Duffers were broke. Living in a tiny apartment. Taking whatever writing work paid rent. But they believed in those kids. Believed in the monsters. Believed people were desperate for something strange.

In April 2015, they pitched Netflix. Netflix had just launched original programming. Looking for their next big swing after House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. The meeting lasted 20 minutes. Netflix Vice President Cindy Holland greenlit it on the spot. Eight episodes. $6 million per episode budget.

But here’s what nobody talks about.

The Duffers had never run a TV show before. Never managed a big budget. Never directed at this scale. Netflix gave them complete creative control anyway. That much freedom usually destroys first-time showrunners.

They cast four unknown kids. Winona Ryder, who hadn’t starred in anything major since 2002. David Harbour, a character actor nobody knew. Shot it in Atlanta to keep costs down.

The Duffers wrote all eight episodes themselves. Directed four of them. Fought Netflix on every detail executives wanted to change. Netflix wanted to age up the characters to teenagers. The Duffers said no. Kids on bikes or nothing. Netflix wanted more action sequences. The Duffers insisted on slow-burn tension. Netflix wanted to cut the budget on the monster design. The Duffers fought for practical effects over cheap CGI. Every decision was a battle. Every choice was a risk.

July 15, 2016. Stranger Things Season One dropped on Netflix. No marketing budget. No promotional tour. Just eight episodes released at midnight.

Week one: decent reviews. Some social media buzz.

Week two: word of mouth exploded.

Within three weeks, Stranger Things was the most-watched Netflix original series ever made at that time.

Barb became a cultural phenomenon. “Upside Down” entered everyday vocabulary. Kids dressed as Eleven for Halloween before Halloween even arrived. Eggo waffle sales spiked 14% in the quarter after release. First increase in five years.

But the Duffers kept pushing.

Season two, 2017. 427 million hours viewed in the first month.

Season three, 2019. Broke every Netflix viewing record. The mall set alone cost $8 million to build.

Season four, 2022. $30 million per episode. More than most Hollywood blockbusters.

140.7 million hours viewed in the first three days.

Episode four used a Kate Bush song from 1985. “Running Up That Hill.” Within two days, it was number one on iTunes. Globally. Kate Bush was 63. The song was 37 years old. The season four finale got 301 million viewing hours in its first 28 days.

Then came the final season. Netflix bet everything. $480 million production budget $60 million per episode, up 10 times from the first season.

The 2023 Hollywood strikes delayed filming by seven months. The cast aged up. Writers had to add a time jump. Most showrunners would have cracked under that pressure. The Duffers used it. Made the aging part of the story.

They released Season Five as a three-part event.

Volume One: Thanksgiving 2025. Four episodes.

Volume Two: Christmas Day 2025. Three episodes.

The series finale: New Year’s Eve 2025. Two hours and eight minutes. Called “The Rightside Up.”

28.7 million hours viewed in the first three days. 141 million hours in the first week. Biggest debut week for an English-language series in Netflix history. 102.6 million global viewings in the first 28 days. Just Volume One.

Then the finale dropped on New Year’s Eve.

#StrangerThings5 trended number one on Twitter for 72 consecutive hours.

5.75 billion earned social impressions. Diana Ross’s “Upside Down” spiked 1,250% on Spotify overnight. Nike released Stranger Things Dunks. Sold out in four minutes. Chips Ahoy generated 11 billion impressions from their themed campaign.

Season Five drove over 2 million new Netflix subscriptions in Q4 2025 alone. For the first time in Netflix history, all five seasons of one show occupied the Global Top 10 simultaneously. The show hit number one in 90 countries.

Today, Stranger Things has generated over 1.2 billion total views across all five seasons. Analysts estimate the franchise has created over $1.4 billion in total value for Netflix.

The Duffer Brothers signed an exclusive multi-year deal with Paramount in August 2025 – $50 to $70 million each.

All because two broke twin brothers who couldn’t sell a script for ten years refused to believe that 15 rejections meant their weird idea was wrong. They turned Hollywood’s fear of risky into 1.2 billion views and a cultural phenomenon that ended on the biggest night of the year.

They proved that the networks who passed weren’t wrong about the show. They were wrong about what audiences were starving for. They fought Netflix on every creative decision executives wanted to change.

Because they understood something most people don’t – The thing everyone calls too weird is often the exact thing nobody else is making. Your rejections aren’t proof you’re wrong. It’s proof you’re making something original. Stop listening to people who think safe and proven is the only path to success. Sometimes the billion-dollar shows come from the scripts everyone called too risky.

So, don’t quit. 💪🏼

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P.S.: this post has been put together from multiple posts, articles and interviews about Stranger Things on sm.

P.P.S.: Here’s the original pitch deck they had prepared for Montauk – the one that she pitched to Netflix which was greenlit by Cindy Holland.

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There exist 3 bodies (or manifestations of a human being’s existence), not just one.

Sthula sharira – the physical body
Made of the five elements. It is born… it grows… it decays… and it returns to the elements.
This is what the world calls death.

Sukshma sharira – the subtle body
Carries prana, mind, senses, dreams, vasanas, and karma. Does not die with the physical body.

Sukshma sharira is identified with antakarana and it’s four sub-divisions, mana (mind), buddhi (intellect), ahankara (ego, sense of individuality) and chitta (remembering/memory).

It travels beyond the Sthula Sharira and can be reborn.

Karana sharira – the causal body
The seed state of ignorance / the stem cell of humanity. It seeks the ‘why’.

‘Karana’ means ‘cause’. This body does not die until moksha.

It is the unmanifested condition, which is neither sat, nor asat. It is unborn. It is not created due to sat karmas.

It is of the nature of avidya or agyana (ignorance) and is the cause of the Sthula and Sukshma sharira.

In other words, it is due to ignorance of one’s true nature that one takes rebirth and is trapped in the cycle of birth and death. In order to enjoy or suffer the merits of karma and to get a chance to know one’s true nature, Sthula and Sukshma shariras are created. After Self Realisation, there is no rebirth and there is no cause of creating Sthula and Sukshma sharira.

All these 3 bodies are enveloped within the Atman – the self.

It is never born… never modified… never destroyed. It is universal.

Moksha (Liberation) is not taking the subtle body to a higher world. It is freedom from identification with all three bodies and being in an Atman state of existence.

What appears as life and death is only the movement of the bodies. the Self remains untouched.

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On the 129th anniversary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s birth, let’s celebrate & marvel at Bose!!!

A man goes from Calcutta to Afghanistan to Russia to Germany. Pretty much alone. Makes the famed British ‘intelligence’ look like jokers.

Raises an army in Germany. Travels to Singapore over a 3-month journey, first in a German submarine, transferring somewhere near the southern tip of Africa into a Japanese submarine. Builds up the INA. Takes it to 60,000 strong. Raises funds of many many lakhs.

Takes the Andaman Islands. Raises the Azad Hind Government’s flag there. Sets up the framework of the Azad Hind Government. Sets up a Azad Hind Currency & a Azad Hind Bank. Issues the Azad Hind government’s first sovereign bonds. Issues stamps. Creates a Azad Hind Government’s Worker’s league. Secures official diplomatic recognition of India’s first Independent government from over a dozen countries. Officially declares war on the British.

Moves toward Delhi to uproot the British. Loses 30,000 soldiers in battle. Never surrenders. Goes underground to build another army.

While underground, manoeuvres the messaging using the badly biased and unfair INA trial, to engineer multiple mini-mutinies among the British-Indian armed forces, just at the time when World War II is affecting the British the most. Has a large role to play in crippling the British Empire in India.

As has been observed in many of the writings and official cables of the Empire, the big fear that Bose will be back with a massive, rejuvenated INA was one of the primary reasons for the British to agree to leave India.

BOSE – What a leader!

Without doubt, One of India’s greatest freedom fighters!!!

Here are some less-seen images / pics of & about Netaji…

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As 2025 ended, India’s video games industry stood resilient amid turbulence, boasting a massive user base and ambitious growth trajectory despite a seismic regulatory shock. With approximately 517-600 million gamers – over 90% of which are mobile-first, the sector’s market size hovers around USD 4.38 billion this year.

Online gaming revenues had remained largely flat in 2024 due to GST hikes but are rebounding in 2025 at a projected 10.8% CAGR, fuelled by cheap data, 5G rollout, and varied content.

The October real-money gaming (RMG) ban, enacted via the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, triggered mass layoffs and shutdowns at giants like Dream11, WinZO, MPL, and Gameskraft, erasing over $840 million in assets and displacing thousands. Yet, from these ashes rises a pivot to sustainable models: esports, casual games, and skill-based titles, backed by state policies and global investments.

A Turbulent Yet Transformative 2025

India’s gaming ecosystem, the world’s second-largest by users, grappled with RMG’s fallout, which once dominated 50-83% of revenues (INR 16,000 crore in 2023). The ban, challenged in courts with hearings delayed to January 2026, stemmed from anti-gambling concerns but distinguished “real games” from betting, legitimizing esports at events like Khelo India 2025.

Casual and esports segments grew 20% and 5% respectively in 2024, with esports seeing 2 million tournament participants, 36 pro teams, and 7,400 broadcast hours.
Mobile reigned supreme (55.88% share), with 8.45 billion downloads in 2024, led by battle-royale (BGMI’s return boosted engagement) and hyper-casual genres.
In-app purchases (41% revenue) and ads thrived via UPI micro-transactions.
Indies and mid-core titles gained traction, with studios like Nodwin and global backers (Krafton, Bitkraft) funding early-stage ventures led by ex-RMG talent.
PC/console niches expanded modestly, supported by esports infrastructure.

Government momentum accelerated via AVGC-XR (Animation, VFX, Gaming, Comics, XR) policies.
Maharashtra’s 2025 policy targets Rs 65,000 crore sector value (25% national share), Rs 50,000 crore investments, and 500,000 jobs through incentives for IP, exports, parks, and skilling in Mumbai-Pune hubs.
Karnataka and others followed, positioning India as a “gaming back-office” exporter ($3.75B annually by 2028).

Dominant Trends Reshaping Play

Mobile-First Explosion: 560M+ smartphones and 5G (980M subs by 2030) drive vernacular hits, with female gamers rising at 15.8% CAGR.

Esports Ascendancy: From INR 67 crore (2023) to INR 179 crore by 2028 (21.8% CAGR), fueled by corporate leagues and non-metro traction.

Cloud and Emerging Tech: 5G enables low-latency streaming; cloud gaming to double by 2027.

Resilience: Small teams thrive amid franchise fatigue, though publishing gaps persist.

Challenges linger: illegal offshore apps siphon users, high acquisition costs stifle devs, and RMG’s 28% GST lingers as a cautionary tale.

Outlook for 2026-2028

Explosive Rebound
Gamers could hit 724M by 2028 December.
Projections paint a bullish picture, with the market doubling to USD 8.74B by 2030 (14.8% CAGR) or INR 39,583 crore for online/esports by 2028 (19.2% CAGR).
Lumikai forecasts $9.2B by 2029, driven by in-app purchases and casual/social gaming (INR 36,600 crore by 2028).

Watch out For
Cloud/subscription surges (25% CAGR), global acquisitions of Indian studios, esports mainstreaming (to $120M by 2030), and AI/XR integrations via AVGC hubs.
Exports and job creation (30L direct by 2030) will amplify via policies.

In Conclusion
2025 tested India’s gaming sector’s mettle, purging RMG excesses while catalysing a “real games” renaissance. With 20% of global gamers but just 1% revenue, the next 2-3 years beckon a $7-9B powerhouse – blending mobile might, esports energy, and policy propulsion. Stakeholders eyeing sustainable IP, cloud innovation, and global tie-ups will lead this charge.

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