Blog
The Secret of Life
Who I am? Why was I born? Why are people born in different conditions – some in poor families, some in rich, some in developed countries, some in conflict-prone areas and amidst astute poverty and depravity?…
The Promise of a Blue Economy
Every age brings its own flavour. As a university student, I have seen computers arriving and much later, the smartphone revolution. Talk of AI and Robotics marks the present times, but what is most promising and potentially transformative is the access to millions of small islands in the oceans that cover over three-quarters of the earth’s surface…
Do we see a spiritual redux in the new millennium?
All the great scientists have been deeply spiritual, and I consider Albert Einstein to be the last of that lot. He imagined time and space sitting in his 1 BHK flat in Bern, Switzerland. After him, science became a big enterprise and was also declared secular…
The Darkness Within
I learned about Joseph Conrad in the context of Nobel Laureate author Sir V.S. Naipaul, who is said to have written in his style. As I loved reading Sir Naipaul’s novels and tried vainly to make him my role model as a writer, I was naturally intrigued by how Conrad would have written…
Look far ahead
Since last month, I have been reading a rather scholarly book, The Book of Why, written by Israeli-American computer scientist Judea Pearl with Dana Mackenzie. The book deals with the often elusive relationship between cause and effect…
The Mystical Language of Numbers
Is there an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events? In ancient Greece, Pythagoras propagated the idea that reality at the deepest level is essentially mathematical. He and many after him believed that a system of principles existed behind numbers…
A Moment of Civilisational Pride
I was born in 1955 in independent India. When I look back today, without hesitation, the best moment in public life I witnessed is the construction of a grand temple and the consecration of the idol of Shri Rama Lalla in Ayodhya on January 22, 2024…
Heaven, Not Up There, But Right Here
The Tower of Babel is mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 11:1-9). The prideful ancient Babylonians wanted to build a mighty city and a tower with its top in the heavens. The work remained incomplete after they were cursed to speak different languages…
Seer of the Past and the Future in the Present
The New Year 2024 begins on a positive note. The Indian economy is doing well, and people generally enjoy good times, if not great. There is no distress or despair in the air except for some intransigent pessimists who are perhaps blind to everything good…
The Mother Code
One of my cherished childhood memories is singing before the image of Mother Durga created on the wall using cow dung, called Sanjhi, in our home every year during Navratri. This was not done in every house in our locality and many children would…