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I have been fascinated by Shakespeare, as most of those fancy English phrases and words that enchanted me were created by this one man who lived in England during 1564–1616. I was always intrigued by how one individual could produce such a great body of work that continues to charm billions of English-speaking people over centuries. Then, a...

In an era where our minds scroll faster than our hearts can feel, where information pours in like a relentless monsoon yet wisdom dries up like parched earth—the Bhagavad Gita stands not as an ancient relic, but as a future-ready operating system for the human spirit. Today, we wrestle with dilemmas Krishna did not name, but fully...

I watched Christopher Nolan’s Inception when it was released in 2010, back when going to the theatre still felt like an event. The film is centred around the idea of entering and manipulating dreams, slipping into layers of the mind as easily as walking through doors. In that world, the only reliable test for what is real is a small spinning top:...

When Hari Atkuri visited me with his niece, Krishna, I felt an immediate shift in the air—as if a gentle breeze had entered the room carrying the fragrance of an unseen, far-off garden. Warm, curious, and quietly luminous, their presence brought a rare ease, the kind that arrives only when good intent and pure purpose walk in together. Hari, who...

It was a mild noon, neither summer nor winter, when Venkat Kumar Tangirala came to see me. The sun, hidden behind clouds that held back its heat, allowed only a soft light, as if words were holding their breath between two thoughts, unsure whether to be expressed or remain silent. He arrived with his twenty-one-year-old son, Medhansh Tangirala,...

It was a quiet forenoon when they arrived — father and son, two physicians bound by a lineage of service and an unspoken continuity between action and thought. The air outside was still, save for the occasional chirping of birds on my 14th-floor east-facing balcony. By noon, the sun had moved overhead, leaving the balcony in shade and pleasantly...

My name found its place in the world through Wings of Fire, the autobiography of Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who invited me to walk beside him as co-author. When it was first published in December 1999 by Universities Press, the book did not immediately take flight. I still remember those early months—more than a year, in fact—when it lingered quietly...

For as long as I can remember, a quiet thought has drifted through my mind in the still hours between dusk and sleep: what if life itself is a simulation—an elaborate stage play in which we, vivid though we seem, may yet be characters animated by some higher intelligence? Even facial expressions change, as if we are possessed by some external...

The phrase ‘unboiling the egg’ evokes the impossible: once heat has transformed the contents of an egg, there is no turning back, no means of returning the yolk and white to their original, separate, fluid states. This commonly used analogy has helped convey the futility of attempting to reverse certain processes—whether physical, emotional, or...

Hyderabad was settled 500 years ago amid the vast expanse of stones and dust, a plateau beneath a hot sky. A part of it now bursts with high-rise glass towers, where the sun is mirrored when rising and setting. This new part is called Cyberabad, as though Hyderabad—rooted in time immemorial, bazaars and minarets—has reincarnated without dying....