What is “mad words”? Why are “mad words”? What is “mad”, and what are “words”?
Here are some words: Mad means insane, enthusiastic, foolish, angry, frenzied, exciting, and great and remarkable. It sums up the range of life itself, how I arrive at my point of view, and the effects of consuming it.
You must be mad to still be reading this. Read more and send rave reviews.
Right now I'm delivering an especially hot variety of mad words. They're about the making of my first book, a collection of narrative non-fiction essays about how crazy life is in modern Indian society. Think navigating extreme differences within families and generations and a fraught society, whose political environment is so overwhelming that most practical action feels futile, while mostly swallowing all thoughts, moral or otherwise, with Instagram Reels and making ends meet and managing the mental health fallout of these mundane, privileged activities. Exciting, right?
Before I tell you more about it, a quick digression into my past. Nothing to worry about. I just want to make sure you’re a fan of my writing. And, if not, to give you reasons to be one, so you can look like this in front of your screen: 😍.
I go by @ramachandranesk on the internet and write essays—long, short, medium, but always rare—on everything culture, biz, sci-tech, media, aspiration, selfhood, identity, the self, etc.
My work appears in The Caravan, ThePrint, VICE, Fifty Two, New Lines Mag, Rest of World, Raiot, and other leading publications, such as my website. (Look at it! It’s a visual treat! But do not eat.)
These are amazing achievements because I do not have a background in writing. I studied engineering at BITS Pilani, Goa, and then taught myself programming so I could be a “real coder” at Amazon, before doing well in CAT 2016 and getting an MBA at IIM Calcutta, after which began my Don Draper era, which saw me work on detergent brands like Tide and Ariel (I helped launch Tide Pods in India! Buy a pack!), but also on subscription growth for media outlets like The Ken and The Caravan, which kept me close to writing, which would’ve been exclusively about my bizarre life and times, but, instead, it’s now got it all.
Really: My writing brings a bodymind steeped in STEM, business and the arts to the yard, and they’re like it’s better than yours, damn right, it’s better than yours… Ahem, just read my pieces here. There’s stuff on AI and Hindu supremacy, aspiration and baby names, game theory and Netflix originals, caste, media, gender, the traffic in Bengaluru, conversations with my father, how I buy my earpods, you name it.
Readers have described my work as “funny, informative, completely gripping”; “serious, hilarious, and factual at the same time”; analytical and irreverent; smart and witty; “extremely well-researched”; “copious with perspectives”; “unafraid to say something possibly ludicrous”; “playing with formats”; “original”, “sharp”, even “brilliant”. I like all of this.
The book was accepted to the South Asia Speaks fellowship for outstanding emerging writers, with author and journalist Sanam Maher mentoring me. It is being repped by Kanishka Gupta, who works with some of South Asia’s biggest literary talents, including the 2022 Booker Prize winners. Readers of early chapters see the book as a “definitive take on the Indian millennial experience”, with its “immensely identifiable” and relatable themes echoing Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. (The New Yorker staff writer’s book of essays wrangled with the question of arriving at an organic self in the internet age, and was praised for its “astute analysis” of the “unliveable hell” that is contemporary society, offering penetrating insights on “feminism, identity, the internet”, and the “sources of millennial anxiety”.)
In India, this question of arriving at an organic self amidst our variety of peak capitalism, technology, and fascism implies several sub-questions, such as:
How do we perform our (many) identities online?
How they contradict each other!
What the psychological toll of adorning them is!
How to be a decent and competent person today?
What do Indian family dynamics and trauma have in common with celebrity culture, caste, gender, age, narcissism, consumerism, capitalism, our history, and our very sense of self?
What about drugs, and all the mystical experiences I’ve had without them?
What’s for lunch?
And is it okay to ask that?
Until the book’s release, mad words will help you stay in touch with me, Sanjana Ramachandran, aka @ramachandranesk, as I try to answer these difficult questions.
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