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Asafoetida, called Heeng in Hindi, is the dried gum secreted by tap root of several species of a carrot family plant called Ferula. These plants grow naturally in Karakum Desert spread over Eastern Iran, Turkmenistan, and mountains of Afghanistan…

I consider meeting Dr. Sunkavalli Chinnababu as a gift that the new year 2023 brought me.
Not even 50 yet, Dr. Chinnababu is a rising star in cancer surgery and is considered among
the best in performing robotic-assisted surgeries in the country…

Life has its own way of cheering you up. As you grow older, age shows up on your energy levels, the futility of striving for good things stares at you, a feeling of resignation looms large, and then something surprising happens to cheer you up, as if a ‘gift’ has been delivered without any occasion…

Impermanence is the mark of existence, declared Buddha. Nothing remains forever. People born in different times live in a world that is different from what their ancestors were living in. The signs of this change can be felt during one human lifetime itself. The world where I am living in my sixties is not what it was in my childhood…

There is an interesting piece of history, not about kings and empires, but about land and life itself. Much before human life started on planet Earth, all the land on the globe was a single, giant landmass called Pangaea. In the age of dinosaurs, about 180 million years ago..

The utility of sleep is undeniable and of late, there have been excellent books emphasizing it. Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has published in his 2017 book…

The sense of “I” is the greatest deception that mankind is condemned to. Talk to anyone and you hear the story of obsession with money, power, name, fame, attachments, achievements, love, and dependency. We live a life driven by our likes and dislikes. Every moment we are moving “towards what we like and love” and “away from what we dislike and fear…

I have immensely enjoyed reading Full Catastrophe Living by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn (b. 1944), a very readable and practical book on mindfulness, published in 1990. I have read the 25th anniversary issue, published in 2013. The more than 600-page book presents the details of an 8-week course known as Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction…

The Australian writer and broadcaster, Clive James (1939–2019), curtly defined modern times when he said, “It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.” While we are all amused living in an internet-connected world..

On October 15, 2022, the nation observed the 91st birth anniversary of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam (1931-2015). I was invited by BharatTech Foundation, primarily a group of overseas engineers of Indian origin, but also with a good base within the country, to give the keynote address…