“When you report from war fronts, no matter how hard you try, there are experiences and intensities that journalism cannot fully capture. There is an existential alienation — a vague but persistent sense of not belonging — that afflicts modern civilisation,” Pandita observed. Pandita argued that modern society reduces complex human realities into binaries, which he described as “an insult to conscious thinking”. “A house is a sharp, physical idea. But attention is the highest form of love, and love is the greatest form of attention,” he said.