I have read Sri Aurobindo for many years, and my spiritual framework has been deeply shaped by his intellectual spirituality. From The Secret of the Veda to Savitri and The Life Divine, he produced perhaps the most profound exposition of Indian philosophical thought in the English language. Therefore, when I recently read Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, accompanied by R. J. Hollingdale’s masterly introduction, I found Sri Aurobindo resonating in the background of my reflections.

Both Nietzsche and Sri Aurobindo were dissatisfied with ordinary humanity – the ‘business as usual’ of the world. Neither regarded man as a ‘finished’ product – established in health and firm in mind. Both saw human life as a transition towards something greater and saw ‘seeking’ as a movement beyond complacency and conformity. It is, therefore, tempting to equate Nietzsche’s concept of Übermensch, or Superman, with Sri Aurobindo’s ideal of Supramental Being. Yet the resemblance is more apparent than real, for beneath it lie profoundly different understandings of human nature, consciousness, and the ultimate direction of evolution.

For Nietzsche, the Superman emerges after the ‘death of the idea of God’. Human beings can no longer rely on inherited moralities, the idea of a divine authority, or notions of cosmic guarantees – about justice, rationality, or even certainty. Nietzsche is fundamentally existential. Through courage, creativity, self-mastery, and the exercise of what he called the ‘will to power’, man rises beyond himself. His famous declaration is unequivocal: “Man is something that shall be overcome.” 

Sri Aurobindo begins from an entirely different premise. Reality, for him, is fundamentally divine. Evolution is neither accidental nor merely biological; it is the progressive unfolding of consciousness through matter, life and mind towards higher forms of awareness. Humanity is not the culmination of this process but an intermediate stage in a greater evolutionary ascent. The Supramental Being is the manifestation of a higher consciousness transforming human nature itself. Dissolution of the ego happens as a collateral development. 

What is striking, though, is that both philosophers – one Western and the other Eastern – reject passive conformity as the natural way of a human life. Nietzsche criticises herd mentality; Sri Aurobindo critiques a dulled consciousness. But thereafter, Nietzsche celebrates the highest possibilities of individual selfhood around the idea of ‘I-ness’, whereas Sri Aurobindo seeks its transformation through a consciousness beyond the ego. One might say that Nietzsche reaches an extraordinarily elevated expression of the embodied spirit—heroic, creative, fearless and life-affirming. Yet Sri Aurobindo envisages a still deeper possibility. His Supramental Being is an individuality that becomes transparent to a universal reality.

Nietzsche would likely reject such a formulation because he distrusted metaphysical and spiritual claims. Sri Aurobindo, by contrast, might regard Nietzsche’s Superman as an important yet incomplete stage—an awakening of strength without the final illumination of consciousness. Thus, while both reject the adequacy of ordinary humanity, they differ radically on what lies beyond it. Nietzsche points towards a higher human being; Sri Aurobindo towards a supramental mode of consciousness.

A useful metaphor is that of a great mountain rising before humanity.

On the western slope stands Nietzsche’s climber. He ascends by shedding dependency, inherited beliefs, resentment, fear and weakness. The ascent demands courage and self-overcoming. His declaration is, “I shall become what I am.”

On the eastern slope stands Aurobindo’s climber. He ascends through the purification of desire, the expansion of awareness, and the discovery of the divine reality concealed within. His declaration is: “I shall discover who I truly am.”

The routes appear different because the destinations are different. Nietzsche distrusts transcendence, fearing that it may become an escape from life. Sri Aurobindo embraces transcendence because he sees it as life’s fulfilment. Nietzsche exalts individuality; Sri Aurobindo seeks universality. Nietzsche’s hero stands alone; Aurobindo’s yogi becomes one with all.

Yet both reject mediocrity and insist that human life contains unrealised possibilities.

Looking to the Bhagavad Gita for an answer is rewarding. Shri Krishna first urges Arjuna to fulfil his duty as a warrior by fighting without shrinking from battle—an exhortation to wholehearted engagement in one’s role that Nietzsche might have admired. Shri Krishna then asks him to surrender the ego and become an instrument of a higher consciousness—a theme Sri Aurobindo develops with extraordinary depth.

In this sense, the Gita appears as a bridge between Nietzsche and Sri Aurobindo: first become fully human, then discover what lies beyond humanity. Yet this is not merely an abstract philosophical debate. It speaks directly to the predicament of our age. Why should I write this and expect you to read it? Because I believe it addresses the deepest philosophical questions of the modern age. Despite their education and affluence, many young people experience midlife loss-of-meaning crises. Many find solace in addictions; some merely dabble in them, while the rest suffer profound agony.

Nietzsche feared that appeals to the Absolute, the Universal, or the Divine often diminished the individual. History had shown him religions, ideologies and collective moralities demanding that exceptional individuals sacrifice themselves for abstractions. His response was a cry of rebellion: protect the individual flame; do not let it be swallowed by the blaze of the collective. For Nietzsche, the purpose of human development is to produce singular peaks—Beethoven, Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci and Shakespeare. Humanity justifies itself through the creation of greatness.

Sri Aurobindo begins from the opposite premise. Individuality is precious, but what we ordinarily call individuality is only a provisional form. The ego is not the true Self; it is merely a temporary scaffolding. The genuine individual does not disappear in higher consciousness but becomes more fully itself. The drop does not vanish upon reaching the ocean; it discovers that it was never merely a drop. In much of Indian philosophy, liberation is not annihilation but expansion. The fear of dissolution arises because the ego mistakes itself for the whole person.

Nietzsche climbs until every support falls away and he stands upon a magnificent ridge overlooking the plains of conformity. The more I reflect upon Nietzsche’s writings, the more I see him as the great physician of a civilisation weakened by guilt, dependency and inherited certainties. He teaches humanity to stand upright. He strips away comforting illusions and demands courage. But his ‘individual’ is prone to fall into the abyss of despair. 

Sri Aurobindo begins where Nietzsche leaves off. Once man has learned to stand upright, he asks a further question: Is strength the destination, or merely the preparation? Nietzsche teaches freedom from servility, and Sri Aurobindo teaches freedom from limitation itself. Their differences lie in what they believe evolution is moving towards. Nietzsche’s horizon is greatness. Sri Aurobindo’s horizon is consciousness. The Gita’s horizon is wisdom in action.

What strikes me most is their shared conviction that humanity is not a finished product but a transitional being. The Upanishadic sages, the Bhagavad Gita, Nietzsche, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, and even modern evolutionary thinkers all reject the notion that present-day humanity represents the final chapter of existence. Each, in a different language, points towards growth, self-transcendence, and the unfolding of higher possibilities within human life. Even contemporary thinkers such as David Deutsch see the expansion of knowledge as the driving force behind human progress and evolution.

Perhaps that is why these conversations remain alive across the centuries. Each captures something essential about the human journey. Humanity needs Nietzsche’s courage and Sri Aurobindo’s vision. 

Perhaps my mentor, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, sensed this synthesis intuitively. He constantly urged young people to cultivate courage: “the courage to think differently, the courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, to discover the impossible, to combat problems and succeed.” For him, courage was not merely a personal virtue but the engine of human advancement.

Yet the human task is not simply to be courageous, nor merely to be wise, but to hold both qualities in creative tension. Courage enables us to face the world; wisdom helps us understand it; while vision gives direction to the journey. When any one of these stands alone, something essential is lost. As the years pass, I find that the most interesting question is no longer, “Who was right?” but rather, “What did each one see from the height he reached?” That question allows us to view philosophical traditions not as competing dogmas but as different windows onto a reality larger than any single system can fully contain.

The second edition of the International Conference on AI in Healthcare was held at Yashoda Hospital in Hyderabad on 13-14 June 2026. Robotic cancer surgeon Dr. Sunkavalli Chinnababu led the event, which attracted 2,000 delegates, 375+ speakers, policymakers, innovators, healthcare leaders and media partners across six parallel halls. Covering precision medicine, AI in radiology and pathology, innovation, discovery, policy, and startup challenges, the conference showcased the culture of a technologically enthusiastic society. 

The 45-minute panel discussion, Peering Into the Future: The Autonomous Hospital AI Era, as the final session, proved to be the conference’s crowning event. The panel brought together a distinguished group of experts: Dr. Mona Duggal, Director, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi; Dr. Amrut Kadam, Professor and Head of Radiation Oncology, Victoria Hospital, Bengaluru; Dr. H. Narendra, Professor and Head of Surgical Oncology, Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences (SVIMS), Tirupati; and Dr. Bhaskar Rajakumar, CEO of Charaka MedTech. I was invited to moderate and lead the discussion.

In my opening remarks, I invoked what I called the Empire Analogy. Throughout history, empires have swept over kingdoms and societies. The defeated often adopted the language, institutions and knowledge systems of the new order. India under British rule is one example. Over time, Indians mastered the English language, absorbed Western education, and participated in the institutions of the Empire so fully that a person of Indian origin, Rishi Sunak, eventually became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, serving for nearly twenty months before his party’s electoral defeat in 2024.

The analogy was intended neither as praise nor as criticism, but as a reminder that transformative systems cannot be ignored. Artificial Intelligence is emerging as a new global force—an empire of knowledge, computation and data. Nations that merely resist it may be left behind; nations that understand it, internalise it, and adapt it to their own strengths can use it as a powerful instrument of growth and leadership. India must, therefore, learn to engage with AI not as a passive consumer, but as an active participant and creator.

The metaphor lightened the atmosphere and encouraged the panellists, all highly accomplished professionals, to speak with candour. The discussion soon converged on the Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA), which many regarded as the first serious step towards creating a digital health infrastructure for India. ABHA provides individuals with a unique digital health identifier, enabling them to link and manage their medical records across participating hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and other healthcare providers. Just as UPI created a common digital infrastructure for financial transactions, ABHA has the potential to become a foundational layer for the secure exchange of healthcare data, treatment histories, insurance-related information, and continuity of care.

The second major concern was the quality of healthcare data itself. The panel noted that India suffers not from a scarcity of data but from an abundance of fragmented, inconsistent and poorly curated data. Information collected in screening camps without recording the type of equipment used, calibration standards, operator competency, or measurement protocols often has limited scientific value. Worse, such data can produce misleading conclusions, such as proclaiming a city to be a ‘diabetes capital’ based on non-standardised surveys, estimating hypertension prevalence using inconsistent measurement techniques, or assessing oral and cervical cancers through purely visual examination without rigorous diagnostic confirmation. Artificial intelligence can only be as reliable as the data on which it is trained. Poor data creates poor intelligence.

The discussion then turned to the idea of the autonomous hospital itself—a hospital where AI manages and optimises many clinical, operational and administrative processes in real time, augmenting rather than replacing human professionals. Here, the panel was both optimistic and cautious. Three lessons and a cautionary point emerged.

The first lesson is about architecture. In mission-critical aerospace and defence systems, autonomy is never treated as magic. It is painstakingly built on redundancy, graceful degradation, fail-safe modes, continuous telemetry, rigorous verification protocols, and clear chains of accountability. Autonomous hospitals must be designed in the same spirit. Every AI recommendation must be explainable and traceable: what data entered the system, what inference was drawn, what action was suggested, what degree of uncertainty existed, and at what point human intervention became mandatory. Trust cannot be demanded; it must be engineered.

The second lesson is real-time situational awareness. In aerospace systems, sensor fusion is fundamental because no single sensor is trusted blindly. Multiple streams of information are continuously integrated to produce an accurate understanding of reality. Healthcare requires a similar approach. AI must synthesise vital signs, laboratory results, imaging studies, medication histories, nursing observations, bedside device data and clinical context. A single abnormal reading should not trigger blind action; the system must recognise patterns, trends, trajectories and risk profiles.

Nursing observation is an equally important sensor in this ecosystem. Experienced nurses often detect subtle deterioration in a patient’s condition before it becomes visible in laboratory reports or monitoring systems. Their judgment is built upon continuous observation, intuition developed through experience, and familiarity with the patient. Yet the indispensable contribution of nursing vigilance to patient safety remains underappreciated in many discussions on healthcare transformation. Any vision of autonomous hospitals that overlooks nurses is fundamentally incomplete.

The third lesson is independent auditability. In defence systems, telemetry is not ornamental; it is the memory of the mission. Every decision, event, anomaly, and response is recorded for later analysis. Hospitals require a comparable telemetry architecture—not only for clinical safety but also for ethical governance. AI can help create transparent and auditable trails that show why tests were ordered, which medications were prescribed, which consumables were used, whether treatment protocols were followed, and whether billing accurately reflected the care delivered. Such transparency protects patients, doctors, nurses, administrators, insurers and healthcare institutions alike.

However, the panel also issued a point of caution. AI must not become another instrument for accelerating the commercialisation of healthcare. Modern hospitals operate under increasing pressures from investors, expensive technologies, branded consumables, diagnostics-driven revenue models and expectations of financial returns. In such an environment, there is a risk that nurses and paramedics may be viewed merely as cost variables and patients as revenue events. Healthcare is fundamentally different from manufacturing or retail. Its purpose is not production but healing. Patients are not products, prototypes, or transactions; they are human beings whose dignity, trust, vulnerability and well-being must remain at the centre of every clinical decision. AI should strengthen this human-centred mission, not undermine it.

The real question, therefore, is not whether hospitals can become autonomous. The real question is: autonomous for what purpose? If autonomy simply means faster billing, higher throughput, more diagnostic testing, and greater revenue generation, it will erode trust. If autonomy delivers safer care, fewer errors, greater transparency in decision-making, reduced administrative burdens, fairer audits, earlier interventions and better patient outcomes, then AI can become a transformative force in healthcare—one in which treatments are transparent and transactions fair, accountable and traceable. 

The panel concluded with a clear consensus that the truly autonomous hospital remains at least five years away, and perhaps considerably longer in many settings. Automation should not be confused with artificial intelligence. Digitising a workflow is not the same as creating an intelligent system. Genuine AI depends on high-quality, real-time data acquired without manual delays, validated through redundancy, analysed systematically, and refined through continuous feedback. Above all, AI must never be allowed to compromise compassion, accountability, professional judgement, or human dignity.

How then do we progress?

The first requirement is education. AI literacy must be integrated into the curricula of nurses, paramedics, administrators and medical students. AI should be taught not merely as a technology but as a clinical and managerial tool.

The second requirement is transparency. Billing systems, procurement practices, diagnostic recommendations and treatment pathways should become auditable through AI-enabled oversight.

The third requirement is the creation of a national health data architecture built around the fully digital ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Health Account) framework and the broader Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM). Just as UPI transformed digital payments by creating a common interoperable stack, India requires a healthcare ‘stack’ that enables secure, patient-consented exchange of health information across institutions. Such a platform could eventually support preventive healthcare, personalised medicine, clinical research, public health surveillance, and AI-assisted decision support at a national scale.

Only when these foundations are firmly in place can the autonomous hospital evolve from a technological aspiration into a trusted institution that unites the precision of machines with the compassion and wisdom of human caregivers. Until then, talk of fully autonomous hospitals remains an alluring vision—but visions unsupported by strong foundations are no more than castles built on sand.

I am enjoying re-reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In Part I, in the chapter Of the Tree on the Mountainside“, he uses the image of a lonely tree growing high on a mountain to describe the fate of those who strive to rise above the ordinary. This simple symbol expresses a profound truth. After all, in any group of a hundred people, only a small fraction excel, while the majority drift through life without ever realising their potential

The modern education system, especially since its increasing commercialisation over the past few decades, has often produced shallow thinkers while cultivating an attitude of entitlement. I recently asked several young people—including professionally educated ones—a simple question: Where does a tree get its mass? The response was usually a puzzled stare, as if I had posed a metaphysical riddle.

Before I proceed further into philosophy, let me pause to consider a simple scientific phenomenon that unfolds before our eyes every day. It is the story of how the invisible becomes visible. Most of us remain oblivious to it, enthusiastically consuming endless public chatter about elections, celebrity fortunes, cricket auctions and currency fluctuations. At times, it seems as if a virus of triviality has infected our minds and eaten away at common sense.

One of the most surprising facts in biology is that most of a plant’s dry mass comes not from the soil but from the atmosphere. A tree may weigh several tons, and it is natural to assume that all that wood came from the ground. In reality, the bulk of the carbon in the wood was once carbon dioxide floating in the air.

Photosynthesis makes this possible. Using sunlight, plants take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, water from the soil, and small amounts of minerals such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The carbon atoms from carbon dioxide are assembled into sugars, cellulose, lignin, starches, oils and all the organic compounds that make up leaves, stems, roots, fruits and wood.

Modern measurements show that about 95 per cent of a plant’s dry mass comes from carbon, oxygen and hydrogen obtained from carbon dioxide and water. Only a small fraction comes from mineral nutrients absorbed from the soil. To put it differently, a wooden table is largely solidified air. The carbon in that wood was once present in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

The soil remains indispensable because it supplies nitrogen for proteins and DNA, phosphorus for energy transfer and genetic material, potassium for cellular regulation, and trace elements such as iron, zinc, copper and molybdenum. Without these minerals, plants cannot thrive. Yet, they contribute only a small fraction of the plant’s total mass.

Forests are gigantic atmospheric carbon-capture systems. Every trunk, branch, and leaf is a record of carbon removed from the air and stored in living tissue. Yet most of this labour remains invisible to us. It sustains life itself, especially human beings, who inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide roughly 12 to 20 times per minute, every day of their lives.

The next time you sit with a friend over a cup of coffee, ask a simple question: Where does the wood used to make this table and chair come from? Most people will confidently answer, “From wood.” Press a little further, and they may say, “From trees.” But ask the next question—how is wood made?—and a curious silence often follows.

And, by the way, a coffee bean is itself a marvel. It contains more than a thousand chemical compounds, of which a few dozen are chiefly responsible for its aroma, flavour and stimulating effect. Every sip is a small chemical symphony, yet most of us drink it without ever wondering what lies within.

The same happens with countless things that surround us every day. Where does salt come from? Why are spices added to food? Why are fruits essential to our health? How does a seed become a tree, and a tree, a table? These are not difficult questions. They are small doors that open into a larger understanding of reality. However, many educated people pass through life without ever pausing to ask them.We have become skilled consumers of information but poor observers of reality. The wonder is not that the answers are difficult; the wonder is that we have stopped asking the questions. Science is born not in laboratories but in curiosity. Civilisation advances not because people know everything, but because someone asks “Why?” and refuses to stop until an answer emerges.

Why is such awareness—essential knowledge about our own lives and environment—so often missing from our education?Part of the answer lies in the way we have come to define education itself. We increasingly mistake information for knowledge, credentials for understanding, and employability for wisdom. Students are trained to pass examinations, but not always encouraged to ask simple questions. The child who asks, “Why am I me and not someone else?” has already begun a philosophical journey that has occupied humanity’s greatest minds. Yet such questions rarely find a place in the classroom. Instead of cultivating wonder, we often reward memorisation. Slowly, the habit of inquiry withers.

Yet, I do not share the fashionable pessimism that everything is lost. Every generation inherits its limitations, but every generation also receives new tools. Ironically, at the very moment when attention is under assault from television noise, social media chatter, and endless streams of trivial information, humanity has acquired one of the greatest instruments for self-education ever created.

Today, any curious individual can ask a question and, within seconds, explore ideas that once required access to great libraries and learned scholars. One can discuss science, philosophy, history, literature and public affairs at any hour of the day. Yet the greatest obstacles to learning have never been technological. They are indifference, complacency, and the habit of letting others think for us. No individual can reform the education system single-handedly. Institutions change slowly. Bureaucracies move reluctantly. But no one can prevent a person from learning. No one can stop a family from discussing ideas over dinner. No one can stop friends from exchanging books, debating questions, or exploring knowledge together. The republic of learning has always been built from such everyday conversations. 

The real question, therefore, is not whether knowledge is available. It has never been more available. The question is whether we desire it. Why do so many of us willingly surrender our waking hours to idle television, endless scrolling, celebrity gossip, political shouting matches, and the commerce of outrage? Why do we spend precious years consuming noise when we could be cultivating understanding?

Nietzsche’s image of the tree on the mountainside offers a powerful metaphor. The higher a tree rises towards the light, the deeper its roots must penetrate the darkness below. Growth demands effort. It is easier to remain in the valley than to climb. It is easier to repeat opinions than to examine them. It is easier to seek distraction than to pursue self-transformation. Yet, every civilisation advances because a few individuals choose the harder path. They ask questions. They seek understanding. They refuse to be satisfied with appearances.Perhaps the task before us is not to complain about ignorance but to become examples of curiosity. A thoughtful conversation can inspire a child. A shared book can open a mind. A simple question—such as where a tree gets its mass—can awaken scientific wonder. Knowledge, like photosynthesis itself, transforms the invisible into the visible. An unseen idea becomes understanding; understanding becomes action; and action, sustained over time, becomes civilisation.

Nietzsche’s tree still stands on the mountainside. The tools for learning are now in our hands as never before in human history. The question is whether we are willing to trade distraction for discovery, noise for understanding, and idle opinion for the lifelong adventure of asking, “Why?”

Tanya Seth is the quiet architect behind my blog and, in many ways, one of the unseen custodians of my intellectual journey. She created my website in May 2019 and has selflessly nurtured and maintained it ever since—not merely as a technical administrator, but as a thoughtful curator of ideas, memories and expression. More than preserving my writings, she has continually encouraged me to keep writing, refining and sharing my thoughts with the world.

During her recent visit to Hyderabad with her husband, Gopi Krishna Reddy—one of my most dedicated associates—she spent long hours with me reviewing our collaborative work and reflecting on how it could evolve further. Our conversations went far beyond matters of design or technology; they revolved around a deeper purpose: how ideas must travel across minds and generations, and how they must grow, adapt and remain alive in the consciousness of society.

Tanya’s own life explains why she understands journeys so deeply.

Born in New Delhi and educated at Ramjas School, Tanya entered the travel and tourism world not through corporate corridors, but through entrepreneurial instinct. From a modest corner of her father’s customs-clearing office at Bhikaji Cama Place, a prominent commercial and business hub in South Delhi, she launched Go Explore Travels. Armed with travel magazines, customer reviews and a remarkable ability to imagine experiences before living them, she curated journeys for clients long before digital algorithms dominated tourism.

It was there that she met Gopi Krishna Reddy, a young entrepreneur from Hyderabad seeking his own path beyond inherited business structures. Together, they chose not merely to travel, but to embody its spirit. Tanya reminisces, “We designed and curated one-of-a-kind travel experiences—journeys meticulously tailored to the tastes, aspirations and personalities of each customer. Gopi was never deeply involved in the business itself, but he often accompanied me on some of my work trips. From the very beginning, we shared a profound desire to explore the world, and I believe that spirit of discovery became an important part of our bond, our story, and continues to shape us even today.”

Tanya’s philosophy of travel, however, transcends business.

Her own travel record is astonishing—she has traversed every continent, even reaching Vanuatu, an independent, volcanic archipelago nation in the South Pacific Ocean, located some 2000 km east of Australia—far beyond the predictable routes of mainstream tourism.

Through these experiences, Tanya came to see many tourist destinations as carefully manufactured bubbles of comfort—designed more for consumption than authentic discovery. For her, real travel is not about curated luxury or packaged itineraries, but about the expansion of consciousness. It is often in solitude, uncertainty and immersion beyond the familiar that travel becomes truly transformative.

This philosophy was tested profoundly in post-pandemic Mexico, where Tanya spent over a fortnight alone in Playa del Carmen. There, stripped of familiar structures, travel became an existential trial. Cycling solo down an isolated, sandy road in Tulum, misdirected by Google Maps, stalked by an unknown car, and later surviving a terrifying tornado alone in a powerless Airbnb room, as windows threatened to collapse, she encountered not destinations, but herself.

The storm was Hurricane Grace. There was something strangely poetic about the name Grace, as though nature, even in its fury, wished to preserve a trace of elegance. Yet the storm itself was anything but gentle. It became the strongest tropical cyclone to strike the Mexican state of Veracruz, where it made landfall on 19 August 2021. By then, it had intensified into a Category 3 hurricane as it swept past Tulum in Quintana Roo, carrying with it violent winds, torrential rain, and an unsettling sense of nature’s immense and indifferent power.

The skies had darkened long before the storm arrived. Palm trees bent like frightened pilgrims before the wind, the sea turned iron-grey, and the air itself seemed charged with a strange expectancy. In those hours, one could sense how fragile human certainties truly are. Luxurious resorts, carefully planned itineraries, and the ordinary rhythms of modern life suddenly appeared insignificant before the primal forces of wind and water. Hurricane Grace was not merely a meteorological event; it felt like an elemental reminder that, beneath the sophistication of civilisation, humanity still lives at the mercy of the earth’s volatile moods.

During that night of storm and shuddering glass, when the sky seemed determined to unmake the fragile architecture of certainty, Tanya turned not outward for rescue, but inward for refuge. Alone on the fifth floor, with darkness pressing against the walls, wind clawing at the windows, and the raw violence of nature reducing human constructs to trembling insignificance, she began to speak—to herself.

Her voice, recorded in that suspended theatre between fear and endurance, was more than mere speech. It was an invocation. A steadying hand extended from one layer of consciousness to another. She reasoned with terror, negotiated with panic, and whispered courage into the chambers of her own trembling spirit.

“Stay. Breathe. This fear is real, but it is not final. The storm may rage outside, but you must not let it become the storm within. You have crossed too many worlds to be undone here. Hold your ground. Let the winds test the walls, but not the soul. Morning has always followed every darkness you have known.”

In that moment, she became both the frightened traveller and the wiser guardian within, the vulnerable self and the enduring witness.

Travel has always been Tanya’s greatest teacher. Few people in her life, she feels, have left a deeply positive or lasting influence upon her. Much of what she understands about life—its uncertainties, its beauty, its harshness, and its quiet revelations—has come through travel. Those journeys have shaped her profoundly and continue to do so even today.

 Tanya told me, “That night alone in Playa del Carmen is a lesson from life I will never forget. For the first time, I came face to face with fear for my own survival, and the overwhelming realisation of how powerless, small and insignificant we are before the force of nature. Two very different emotions ran through me throughout the night: fear and gratitude. Fear for survival, of course—but also deep gratitude for having a roof over my head during that storm, and gratitude for all the wonderful things life had already given me. In fact, the feeling of gratitude was far stronger than the fear itself.”

“I remember asking myself why I was there, so far away from home, from family, from anything familiar or comforting. But when I look back now, I would not change that experience for anything. It gave me the confidence to trust myself, to stand alone when needed, and to face whatever uncertainties life may place before me.”

Blessed are young spirits like Tanya. In them, I see the evolving frontier of humanity itself—resilient, exploratory, unwilling to mistake comfort for meaning. She embodies the very qualities that Aldous Huxley feared might disappear in Brave New World: an independent mind, a willingness to embrace uncertainty, and the courage to choose authentic experience over passive conformity.

Tanya’s journey—from a teenage entrepreneur in Delhi to a global traveller, from tourism curator to a seeker of consciousness—reflects a timeless truth: the deepest journeys are not measured in miles, but in transformation. As Marcel Proust observed, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” The outer journey may take us across continents; the inner journey expands the boundaries of awareness itself. Perhaps that is why we are here.

Her travels were never merely across continents or cultures; they became an inward expedition into courage, solitude and self-discovery. Each outward border mirrored an inner frontier crossed within. Her story ultimately affirms that the farthest distance one can travel is the distance between who one is and who one is capable of becoming.

have long been an admirer of V. S. Naipaul, whose writings—especially his celebrated Indian Trilogy: An Area of Darkness (1964), India: A Wounded Civilisation (1977), and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990)—have deepened my understanding of India beyond the comforting simplifications of nationalism or ideology. Much of what circulates in the media is crafted to flatter pride, reinforce prejudices or sustain political narratives. Great literature, however, compels us to confront societies as they are: layered, wounded, contradictory and profoundly human.

When I began reading, rather late, Midnight’s Children, published in 1981, I carried with me the exacting standards shaped by a Nobel Laureate’s gaze upon India. Yet Salman Rushdie’s achievement astonished me in an entirely different way. His extraordinary ability to capture how ordinary men and women experience history—not as abstract events in textbooks, but as disruptions that enter kitchens, refugee camps, railway compartments, marketplaces, military barracks and crowded city lanes—left me mesmerised and deeply shaken.

It is through great novels that one often encounters the deepest reality of an age. Historians may record events, statistics, treaties and political transitions, but novelists illuminate how those transformations are lived by people. Victor Hugo revealed the moral and social undercurrents of post-revolutionary France through the suffering and redemption of ordinary lives in Les Misérables. Leo Tolstoy captured the vast emotional and philosophical landscape of Imperial Russia in War and Peace, where history moves not only through emperors and generals but also through families, doubts, fears and private longings. Charles Dickens exposed the human cost of industrial England—the child labour, urban misery, debtors’ prisons and the emotional loneliness hidden beneath the triumphalism of progress. In the same way, Rushdie’s novel allows us to feel the subcontinent from within: its chaos, absurdity, beauty, violence, resilience and tragic inheritances. Great fiction does not merely narrate events; it restores texture to history and reminds us that civilisation is ultimately experienced not in slogans or statecraft, but in the fragile interior worlds of human beings. 

Beneath the spectacle of history—its wars, revolutions, elections and ideological battles—there persists an older and more enduring pattern: the ordinary masses are repeatedly mobilised, sacrificed and rearranged by forces far larger than themselves. Whether one calls them Janata, the proletariat, the working class, the peasantry or simply the multitudes, they remain the human material upon which history is most violently enacted. Empires are defended by their blood, economies are sustained by their labour and political narratives are legitimised in their name. Yet the rewards of power rarely flow proportionately towards them. Those who command capital, weapons, institutions and information continue to shape the direction of societies, while the masses often inherit the consequences.

The other day, on our way back after an evening with Seshu Venkata, Chief of Wipro Intelligence and Location Head in Hyderabad, at his home, while sitting beside my son Amol in his car at a traffic junction, I noticed a lanky teenage boy slowly pushing an ice cream cart towards a nearby cinema hall. The evening show was about to end, and the boy was positioning himself for the brief rush that would follow when crowds spilt out onto the street. There was something quietly tragic about the scene: the effort with which he pushed the cart, the uncertainty of the sales ahead, and the fragile economics of an entire evening resting upon melting ice cream and passing appetites. Almost instinctively, I wondered aloud where he would keep the cart at night and what would happen to the unsold stock.

Amol smiled at my naïveté and gently corrected me. “The cart is not his,” he said. “Nor is the ice cream.” He explained that the boy was merely a daily-wage worker employed by a larger company. At the end of the day, the carts—numbering in hundreds—would be returned to the company yard, where they would be cleaned, recharged and readied for the following day’s trade. The boy owned nothing except his labour for the day. Somehow, that reality saddened me even more. The little romanticism I had unconsciously attached to the image of a struggling but independent vendor dissolved instantly. This was not entrepreneurship in any meaningful sense. It was dependency disguised as informal freedom.

Sensing my discomfort, Amol expanded the point with a clarity characteristic of his generation. “Why only the ice cream cart?” he said. “Look around. The auto-rickshaw driver often doesn’t own his vehicle. The fruit seller may be working on borrowed money. Even many shops you see are financed entirely through loans and hypothecation. The goods inside do not truly belong to them until the debt is cleared.” Then he added a sentence that stayed with me long after the traffic light turned green: “These people are not even cogs in the machine anymore. They are merely the lubricating oil.”

That remark captured, with unsettling precision, the condition of much of modern humanity. Earlier industrial metaphors at least imagined workers as “cogs” within a larger system—visible, functional components essential to the machine’s movement. But today, vast numbers of people exist in an even more precarious state: interchangeable, invisible and perpetually replaceable. They facilitate systems they neither control nor meaningfully benefit from. The delivery rider carrying food through midnight traffic, the warehouse worker directed by algorithmic schedules, the app-based driver monitored through ratings, the street vendor dependent upon digital payment platforms, the migrant labourer whose existence vanishes from policy discussions once a crisis fades—all inhabit structures of dependency increasingly mediated not only by capital, but by technology. 

This is perhaps the defining paradox of the modern age. Humanity has produced unprecedented wealth, technological sophistication and material abundance, yet insecurity has deepened for millions. Ownership itself is becoming increasingly concentrated at the top, while risk is pushed downward. The platforms, data,  logistics networks, financial systems and algorithms belong to distant corporations or institutional capital. The individual worker merely interfaces with them temporarily, often without protection, permanence or bargaining power. The language of freedom remains, but the architecture of dependence intensifies.

And this is where the anxieties evoked by great literature become inseparable from the realities of our century. In Midnight’s Children, ordinary people are repeatedly swept aside by political and historical forces beyond their comprehension. Today, history rolls forward through technological systems that are no less overwhelming simply because they appear efficient, convenient or invisible. The modern citizen may no longer fear only the visible tyrant—the dictator, the censor or the law enforcer. Increasingly, he confronts impersonal systems that shape opportunity, mobility, visibility and even thought itself through data and computation. 

The unsettling question is not whether technology is inherently evil. It is whether human beings possess sufficient ethical and democratic wisdom to prevent technological power from becoming tyrannical. Unlike older forms of domination, technological authority often arrives clothed in the guise of convenience. People surrender data for ease, privacy for connectivity, autonomy for efficiency and, eventually, perhaps even judgment itself for algorithmic guidance. The transition is gradual, almost imperceptible. One day, a man owns his tools; the next, the tools define the conditions of his survival.

This is why the image of the teenage boy pushing the ice cream cart lingered in my mind. He was not merely a poor vendor on an Indian street. He was a quiet symbol of the age to come: labour without ownership, effort without security, movement without destination and existence suspended within systems too vast to see clearly. In him, one glimpses the future anxieties of a civilisation where wealth, information and technological power accumulate upward, while ordinary human beings continue to bear the weight of history below.