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The world is in a churn, geologically, intellectually, economically. Three forces we are told are converging on the horizon like the fabled polar vortex: record capital deployment, widespread job displacement and unsustainable government debts that can not be controlled by old governmental levers of regulations, taxes or rate cuts.

Amid the predictions the biggies in the tech world, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are set to blow USD 560 billion on developing artificial intelligence. Asked if tech is a bubble ready to burst, Bill Gates’s answer was, tech is not the bubble, it is human “frenzy” moving faster than business models. 

The Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei deepens the fears by remarking the world is not ready for what is coming. And the mercurial Open AI CEO Sam Altman is already telling students in their twenties that if they want to navigate through the churn and survive into their forties, they must not make the “big mistake” of listening to old people. 

We have always passed through mediating structures that have existed to give us answers we seek. But if all of the above was true, children born today would all be growing up with an autonomous AI which, unlike us, would not need to learn to code or Google, but simply direct their queries to an agent. 

The internet was meant to free us from all pre-packaged simplified narratives. But as you look around in metros, buses, trains or planes, people are surrounded by the sickly bluish light that spells 100% capture of minds by forces of capital that despise common shared spaces.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

Usually one associates the creation of art forms with such periods as an impossibility. But looking at great writing and art that emerged during previous chaotic periods in world history, that does not seem entirely true. Going back into our own history, one realises, in this context, that we have not quite grasped the heart of the mysterious history of the past three centuries of colonisation and decolonisation. 

Take late 18th century India – it was an age of chaos, great and sick at the same time. The old India was dying and the new one still too vague to see. The once great Mughal Durbar was now a hot bed of political intrigue and fratricidal murders. Marathas and the British, the Portuguese and French were struggling to take command of the markets and minds. The longest running Moghul sovereign, Muhammad Shah, also known as ‘Rangila’ (the dandy), was a figure at once imperious and comically self indulgent. 

In portraits done by the court painters, he appears dressed in silks embellished with pearls and loads of precious stones, looking relaxed and smoking hookah, listening to music, watching partridge and elephant fights, and nautch girls dancing. 

The fact is that the same Muhammad Shah also penned some tender thumris and sonorous bandishes for khayals under the nom de plume of  ’Rangiley Piya’ (the colourful lover). His court was a true melting pot of cultures. It had the likes of celebrated painters of Moghul Qalam: Nidha Mal, Fakirullah and Chitarman, scholars, theologians, mystics from various communities and castes and of course, the great duo of composers Adarang and Nemat Khan ‘Sadarang’, friends to the famed Braj Bhasha poet Ghananand who later migrated to Vrindavan and was killed by Nadir Shah’s soldiers hunting for gold.  

But culture requires more than a production and consumption of ideas. And artistic activities need money, advanced training, special working conditions and a relaxed and sophisticated audience. Already, around 1,670 musicians, poets and painters of the Moghul court had begun to look for other safe spaces and patrons who may not be as sophisticated and discerning, but would protect them and their families and apprentices from greedy invaders swirling in the skies like vultures. 

The 1739 invasion of Delhi by Nadir Shah proved their worst fears right and led to the ultimate breakdown of the imperial court as a workshop for high art.

As the courtly art forms perfected in Delhi moved away, Braj, Awadhi, Bundeli and regional myths and lore they carried within, produced  forms combining realism with fancy, romance with nostalgia, lacing divine devotion with eroticism. A genealogy of Rajas of Guler (Dilip Ranjani) introduces one to this talented family. Pt Siu, the father of Manaku and his younger painter sibling Nainsukh was among the migrant artists who had imbibed in Delhi Durbar – what was the best in both Moghul and Rajput traditions – but was driven to seeking a safe haven elsewhere. He was originally a Kashmiri Brahmin and ultimately chose to set up a base in the Himalayan region in the isolated but cool and pleasant Riyasat of Guler in Himachal located on the side of the river Ban Ganga. 

Of Pt Siu’s sons, Manaku and Nainsukh stayed on after the passing away of their father. Nainsukh later moved out and settled in Jammu, whereas the reclusive older brother, Manaku (from Sanskrit Manik, meaning a ruby), is believed to have stayed on and under the Krishna worshipper and Vaishnava ruler Sansar Chand Katoch (1765-1823) created awesome series of illustrations based on the Siege of Lanka, (left half finished by the father, Pt Siu), the Bhagwat Purana, and the immortal 12th century Sanskrit poems of Geet Govind by poet Jaidev of Bengal. The Khakas or sketches left by Pt Siu, who is believed to have created an amazing series on Ramayana, may also have come in handy for reference.

The first insurgent outburst of love in Bhakti poetry of 14th century, Khusro’s verses and Jayasi’s lyrical epic Padmavat used love as Prem Rasayan, the liquefaction of grace, that melts anger and rejoins hearts. There is no greater Yoga than love, and there is no greater source of knowledge than love (Prem barabar Jog na, Prem barabar Gyan)says a low caste poet Paltu Das. A lively, colorful and witty world is reflected in the Riti literature of the times. 

Great painters and poets of the age do not bring order into chaos, displacement, love and ultimate loss, but help us reorder our understanding and ideas. That is not just artistic surreal thinking, it is our mutating history as it really was and artists revealing a whole new way of surviving the churn . 

The core truth of the new empire of AI, that India recently stood face to face is, as the biggies are predicting, going to cause huge uncertainties and disruptions in global supply chains in our lifetime. It also does not help that most ‘big tech’ innovations are rooted in the Western hemisphere with China fast emerging as their Asian challenger in satisfying this beast with a massive hunger for data – a vast disruptive compute power driven by high end chips as its weapons. 

The world faces a future in need of a new infrastructure for everything: energy, land use, chips and data centres. When that happens, how do we survive this chaotic dismemberment of a way of life, thinking and human relationships?

Four-hundred-year-old lines of poet Ghanand, the poet friend of musician Sadarang come to mind: 

Ujarin basey hai hamaari Ankhiyan dekho,/Subah sudes jahan Bhavtey basat ho.

(Look through my eyes and you too shall see, many new human Bustees  coming up even as old ones are turned into wastelands.)

Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.

Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.

© The Wire