The Mahakumbh Mela, one of the largest gatherings of people for religious purposes worldwide, has just concluded in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. The Kumbh Mela takes place every 12 years by rotation at four locations—at Haridwar, on the banks of the Ganga River; at Prayagraj, at the confluence of the Ganga, the Yamuna, and the mythical invisible Sarasvati River; at Nashik, on the banks of the Godavari River; and at Ujjain, on the banks of the Shipra River. The Kumbh Mela illustrates the significance of water in spirituality and the vibrant tapestry of Indian religious life. One grand cycle (Mahakumbh) is completed every 144 years. Six hundred fifty million people bathed over 45 days this year. Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the world. It was voluntary, done out of personal expenses, and not bound by any holy injunction—a unique feature of Sanatan Dharma.

In Hinduism, ritual performance, adherence to dharma (moral and ethical duties), and participation in festivals play crucial roles in individual and community life. While many philosophical schools within Hinduism explore different beliefs and understandings of the divine, emphasising rituals and practices is a defining feature. This means that individual interpretations of belief can vary widely, but community-level practices and rituals unify followers in their devotion. People from all strata of society, rising above sects and local identities, come together as one humanity. Performing the ritual is often considered as important as studying scriptures and meditation. Even though there have been efforts to intellectualise orthopraxy since the Enlightenment, it remains a crucial component of all religions.

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) best represented a more inclusive and philosophical approach to Hinduism. He respected traditional beliefs (orthodoxy) and emphasised that direct experience and practice (orthopraxy) were crucial for spiritual development. Spiritual practice and personal experience are fundamental to understanding the divine, and yoga and meditation serve as pathways to realisation. Before the World Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, Swami Vivekananda eloquently demonstrated that the tenets of Hinduism were all-encompassing and that the Hindu religion stood for tolerance and universal acceptance.

It was a historical moment reflecting how India rose in the modern world. What does the contemporary world need most? Free market economies have produced better living standards and an expanding middle class. This magnitude of gathering would have been impossible without rapid transportation, communication, and computer networks—the hallmarks of the 21^st-century world that India has fully embraced. The rise of Indian-origin people in multinational corporations and the availability of the best global products in India testify to the changing role of international boundaries. People coming to the Kumbh Mela from various states all over India, travelling long distances and from abroad too, marked orthopraxy, replacing orthodox mindsets.

Is an era of universal orthopraxy imminent? Is there a movement towards revitalising the practice of correct actions and rituals in various religious or philosophical traditions, emphasising practical application over mere belief systems? In an increasingly technology-driven world, many are seeking meaning and connection through practices that foster community and spirituality, highlighting the importance of how we live our values rather than merely what we believe. There is a greater appreciation for actively practising one’s beliefs. Being confident while representing your opinion is at the root of self-confidence among the youth, who thronged to the Kumbh Mela not because someone told them to but because they felt like going there. More than ten million people were provided free meals daily by various voluntary organisations, and people showed exemplary discipline and bonhomie. 

There is a growing trend towards personal experience and direct engagement with spirituality, as people seek authentic connections through practices rather than dogmatic beliefs. Advocating for an orthopraxy renaissance could reflect a desire for more integrated and actionable expressions of spirituality and ethics in today’s complex world. This movement would encourage people to focus on living out their values in practice, fostering deeper connections with themselves, their communities and the divine. Orthopraxy is palpable.

The concept of a universal orthopraxy follows next. Can an agreed-upon set of practices and rituals transcend different cultures and religions? Many traditions emphasise similar ethical principles, such as compassion, honesty and justice. A universal orthopraxy could unify practices that embody these values across various cultures. Practices centred around environmental stewardship and social responsibility may serve as a common ground that many communities could adopt, promoting a sense of global responsibility. Practices like mindfulness, meditation and other forms of holistic well-being have gained international popularity, suggesting that certain spiritual practices can transcend cultural boundaries. Acts of service and altruism can resonate across different societies and religions, promoting the idea that helping others is a universal practice.

A universal orthopraxy might emphasise cross-cultural exchanges and collaborations facilitated by the Internet and digital communication. This could lead to the blending of ideas and practices, fostering creativity and innovation across borders. With the rise of digital media, artists might explore new forms of expression through virtual reality, augmented reality and interactive installations. This movement could challenge traditional concepts of art and push boundaries in creativity.

An emphasis on sustainable practices and environmental consciousness could shift the focus to humanism. This might involve innovations in sustainable agriculture, green technology and conservation efforts. Though every religion promotes humanism, it is traditionally viewed as a philosophical and ethical stance emphasising human values, reason and individual agency. However, religious doctrines overshadow it. Promoting dialogues and collaborations regarding practices that emphasise shared values might be more feasible than establishing a singular set of practices everyone must follow. Can social media and online platforms lead to the creation of networks where individuals can share their practices, experiences and insights on ethical living?

Why not host celebrations or events highlighting diverse customs and practices while focusing on compassion, community and kindness as themes? The need is to integrate humanity around commonalities, not divide it along the dissimilarities. Victor Hugo (1802–1885), the legendary French writer, in his novel Les Misérables, made one of his characters say, “An army cannot stop an idea whose time has come”. This powerful statement expresses that once a concept or idea gains momentum and widespread acceptance, it becomes unstoppable, regardless of the forces against it, including political or military power.

Historical events like the Kumbh Mela, which have been ongoing since time immemorial, testify that when people recognise the importance and validity of an idea, it can lead to significant societal changes, even in the face of oppression or resistance. It answers how the Hindu society survived a thousand years of foreign rule and experienced a resurgence.

Multitudes are the most potent force on Earth. Is it too much to ask whether some steps can aim to build connections and highlight commonalities between different religions for the good of humanity? Or, why ask? It will happen anyway. When the multitude realises that an environmentally sound, equitable world and sustainable living are good for it and the future generations, the way the world moves will be different. It will happen, whether we call it orthopraxy or even choose to ignore it.

Nestled in a family and career, it may appear a little unsettling to consider oneself part of a cosmos, primarily unknown. But when this realisation dawns that not only one but everyone else around, and indeed everything, are a mere part of a larger drama that is rolling out of itself, it starts appearing lifelike, and a sense of peace and tranquillity arises from inside when one spends some quiet time alone, doing nothing and thinking nothing. 

Let us look at the most fundamental truth of being alive. How do I exist? I exist because I was born to my parents. My parents were born of their parents. As life is transferred from parents to children through the process of procreation, it is a fact that each of us carries our ancestors within as our DNA. It is a precise, unaltered, unhindered flow from time immemorial. Patches of DNA are like maps of people’s past.

We hardly know about ancestors beyond grandparents. Ancestors before grandparents are often hidden in the distant past and exist only as stories. As families turn nuclear, even these are forgotten. My grandfather died even before my birth or my father’s marriage. However, these aspects are dealt with in detail in the Hindu religion. The Garuda Purana explains what happens to a soul after leaving the mortal body. The tradition is to recite a portion of it at every death. Ancient Indians knew that life continues beyond the body after it dies and is disposed of.

One of the ceremonies prescribed in Garuda Purana is Narayan Bali Puja. In case any of the ancestors died an unnatural death – which means accidents and other untimely deaths – or did not receive a proper funeral and last rites for any reason, someone in the lineage can invoke that ancestor by offering specially made rice balls with sesame seeds and give them a respectful goodbye. I performed this rite recently at the Godavari River, some 200 km north of Hyderabad, at Kandakurti, in Nizamabad District, in the presence of my wife Anjana and son Amol.

The ritual starts with a head-drowning bath in the river – connecting the present existence with the eternal stream. Then, you wear a fresh two-piece cotton sheet covering your body. The first part of the ceremony is to purify the place, your mind, and body by chanting Vedic Mantras. In the second part of the ceremony, the Trinity of gods – Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra – is invoked with the ancestor souls around a sanctified water vessel. Ten guarding spirits of directions (eight horizontal ones and two vertical ones) accompany them as soldiers escort kings. In the third part, rice and sesame balls are made and worshipped. These balls are then immersed in the river, along with the dress worn in the ritual and a bath is taken.

The four priests who performed the ceremony were young, well-versed in the ritual, and did good work using a book. The atmosphere was solemn and free of material trappings, and I felt like I was floating above the world’s trappings for a while. Making balls with hot, freshly cooked rice at the spot after mixing it with black sesame seeds was very satisfying, as was the experience of immersing them later in the river. I could see fish rushing to consume them. I could feel the presence of my ancestors within me, accompanied by a surge of emotion and tears welling up. Our biggest tormentor is our mind, and it was silenced for a while, I must say.

According to ancient Indian philosophy, there are five dimensions of the mind, a four-plus-one structure. Manas, Chitta, Buddhi, Ahamkara and Atman. Manas is the lower mind, which collects sensory impressions. Chitta holds impressions, memories, and experiences. Buddhi is the decision-making part of the mind. Ahamkara is the sense of ‘I-ness’. It gives rise to ‘personal’ experiences by linking the senses to an internal, subjective centre. Together, these four mental organs are called Antahkarna. It is very common not to understand each function individually. The Atman is the most fundamental part of awareness, enveloped by Antahkarna.

We live primarily in the material world, driven mainly by Ahamkara. Atman, though the primary source and owner of the body, is hardly noticed. We flood our lives with desires. We condition our lives to be busy and live in the company of other people, and what-ifs are useless. People spend most of their waking hours on TV and the Internet, indulging in trivia and passively flowing with how the world is moving on – politics, games and sports, films, etc. A willingness to transcend into more advanced forms rarely arises. However, once it does, there is no turning back. A constant yearning to understand what lies beyond this material existence does not fade away.

Another crucial Indian concept is the multiverse. Every moment contains multiple universes, and the one in which we are living through our bodies and senses is just one. Each universe has a different time-space scale; an hour here can be a year or a second in another universe and even more stretched or contracted depending on how distant or proximal it is in space-time. Thus, one can connect to all one’s ancestors and future progeny as a consciousness. Or, more accurately, one can become aware of these connections, as they are already present here and now. So, as I invoked my ancestors that day, they were watching. It was their present moment in some other universe, and so it was for my great-grandchildren, who were not even born yet in my present reality.

In the last few decades, Quantum mechanics has thrown up many paradoxes that cannot be understood in the framework of reductionist physics. For example, non-local effects can propagate instantaneously over enormous distances. An impromptu choice on Earth regarding the observation of a photon, whether a wave or a particle, changes a scenario set up millions of years ago somewhere in space from where it is travelling. According to a thought experiment popularised by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler (1911 –2008), our choices today can change the distant past. These effects establish that the idea of an objective reality, visualised in terms of material objects, is insufficient, if not invalid. Had not science concluded that colours, tastes, and smells exist only in consciousness?

The Theory of Everything, which comprehensively incorporates the subjective and the objective, is elusive. But we know that a lot is yet to be known, and more than what we know is what we are ignorant of, even collectively as humanity. Of the thousand things we do for amusement – travel, partying, and whatnot – remembering our ancestors is worth doing, even if we don’t know if it works. The tears I momentarily had while making the balls of cooked rice and sesame seeds for my ancestors testified that it was valid. Finally, I felt like a yarn woven into the fabric of the universe. I wish I could better appreciate the embroidery and know my motifs and colours.

I have always believed in the mystery surrounding this world. As a child, I believed in mythological stories, the stories in my textbooks, and the ones I heard on the radio (Television was not avaiable in homes until the 1970s). Then, when I entered the realm of books, I related to the stories there. Only after enrolling in GB Pant University and living surrounded by scientific institutions did rationality dawn on my consciousness. There was a great library there, and I used to spend hours reading books on humanities, driven by an irrational curiosity.

After coming to Hyderabad, the work pressure at the Defence Research & Development Laboratory (DRDL) took me away from books for a while. In 1987, I developed life-threatening ventricular tachycardia and was rushed to hospital in an emergency. When I thought about why I had that medical emergency and how was I treated in an ICU, which included medicines accessed from the U.K. through government channels, my enchantment with the mysterious returned. I met Dr B. Soma Raju in the hospital. Colonel R. Swaminathan, Chief of Management Services at DRDL, emerged as excellent support. In hindsight, that crisis propelled me to a higher orbit.

 Dr APJ Abdul Kalam had chosen me to pilot ‘Civilian Spinoffs of the Defence Technologies’, a programme aimed at developing affordable indigenous medical devices. He created the Society for Biomedical Technology as an interministerial initiative of the Government of India. But as the Indian economy opened up and globalisation swept in, this initiative turned redundant. Dr Soma Raju, by this time a good friend-cum-mentor, established the CARE Foundation and Hospital,and I took a leap of faith, quitting my government job to work there. Dr Kalam was a steadfast pillar, offering constant guidance and support.

In 2004, I suffered a cardiac arrest. Thankfully, as I was working at CARE Hospital (a career path that seemed nearly impossible for a mechanical engineer), I could be resuscitated in time. On the eve of my bypass surgery, Mr Madhu Reddy, CEO of University Press and publisher of ‘Wings of Fire’, visited me and gifted me a copy of ‘Glass Palace’, a novel by Amitav Ghosh about the King of Burma. Later, I visited Myanmar, the new name of Burma, with Dr. P. Krishnam Raju, Cardiologist and Chairman of CARE Foundation. We visited the real ‘Glass Palace’. Our visit paved the way for the training of Burmese doctors in India, which led to the beginning of the healthcare revolution there, similar to the onein India in the 1980s.

After Dr Kalam departed in 2015, I took up reading scriptures and decoding them for young people by writing in simple English. Dr Soma Raju gifted me ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ by Joseph Campbell (1904–1987), which explores how mystery reveals itself in the world of sight and sound to whoever is open to transformation. On my own, I have read, over two years, the collected works of the Swiss psychiatristCarl Jung (1875–1961), published in twenty volumes. Volume 14 is ‘Mysterium Coniunctionis’; he wrote it at the age of 81. He metaphorically said that peace descends only after the ego is discarded, just as the moon rises after sunset.

And then, suddenly, the Shaligram appeared.

The use of the Shaligram Shila in the worship of Lord Vishnu is a well-known Hindu practice. I remember Shaligram Shila as a part of our ‘Thakur Ji’ collection, miniaturised metal idols handed over by our ancestors. When I asked my younger brother Salil, who lives in Meerut, about it, he told me that it had accidentally fallen while children were playing with it, causing it to crack. Therefore, it was immersed in the river Ganga.

Shaligram Shila is a fossilised stone collected from the bed or banks of the Kali Gandaki River in the Himalayas, famous for its course that runs between deep gorges. The hallmark of a Shaligram Shila is its black colour and distinctive fossil marks, representing an ancient creature preserved in stoneover millions of years. Obtaining an authentic Shaligram Shila is not easy, as they are primarily circulated through exchangesamong devoted believers. Of course, fake stones are available in the market.

While studying the Shiva Purana to write my next book, ‘The Lord of Innocents’, I came across the story of Shaligram Shila. Lord Vishnu had to impersonate Tulsi’s husband to take away her chastity so that her husband, Shankhachuda, who was protected by that force, could be killed. WhenShankhachuda died in battle with Lord Shiva, Tulsi discovered that she had been deceived. She cursed Lord Vishnu to live as a stone on Earth. The innocent lady who was wronged, ended her life. Impressed with her, Goddess Parvati, took the body of Tulsi and transformed it into the Gandaki River, and from her hair emerged the Tulsi shrub.  

Lord Vishnu assumed the form of a large rocky mountain,known as Shaligram, rolling over in the Gandaki river. To complete the punishment, worms with teeth as strong as the ‘vajra’ (the thunderbolt, Lord Indra’s weapon) carved out various markings on His stone body. So, whoever worships a Shaligram Shila with a Tulsi leaf bridges the ancient past and connects with the eternal strife between good and evil. Itreflects the complexities of discerning the right course of action in challenging situations, where even God may be required to take decisions that are neither straightforward nor conventional.

I usually share my learnings and interesting readings with Amol, my younger son, as a daily morning ritual, when chai (tea) meets coffee on our balcony. One day, I shared the  story of Tulsi and Shaligram with Amol. Coincidentally, some of Amol’s friends were in Varanasi (Kashi) for a spiritual New Year celebration. He shared this story with them over the phone. The coincidence turned serendipitous as his friends were visiting the Bindu Madhav temple. The three presiding deities of Kashi are Lord Vishwanath, Lord Kala Bhairava and Lord Bindu Madhav, a Shaligram idol of Lord Vishnu. When Amol’s friends expressed the request for a Shaligram before the chief priest of the Bindu Madhav Mandir, he graciously gave away a Shaligram stone that had been housed in the temple for several hundred years. He refused to accept money for the favour and said, “It is going where it belongs.” Ever since I have received it, I daily offer it water and a tulsi leaf and experience a strange peace in performing this little ritual.

Fossil stones are found everywhere in the world. They vary in size from microscopic bacteria to fossils of birds, fish, trees and even dinosaurs, some weighing many tons. As for the Himalayas, they were created when the floating Gondwana landmass collided with another, causing the terrain to lift up. Several forests and animals were buried under the mass and their remains were etched on stones as time passed. When I worship the Shaligram, I feel connected to that distant past and the power of time over which water flowing over millions of years transforms rocks into smooth, rounded stones. Life is as ephemeral as it is eternal.

It is no wonder that life’s enigma attracts truth-seekers, from monks and philosophers to explorers and scientists. The best minds seek to unveil the mystery that governs these phenomena. My belief has grown that the universe is nothing more than a mystery, a benign enigma turned terrifying by our irrational pursuit of understanding it. Let us live purposefully, attending to our duties, and let the rest unfold. Some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved and why I exist is one such mystery.

Two people played a crucial role in my professional life—Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, under whom I worked first from 1982 at the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and later as his pupil till he departed in 2015, and Dr B Soma Raju, Cardiologist, who I met in 1986 as a patient, then quit my government service to establish the Cardiac Research and Education (CARE) Foundation in 1997 and worked with him for over two decades. I received valuable insights from him, primarily through some of the rare books he gave me.

Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by James Carse is a book he gave me recently. Published in 1987, it is considered a popular book and discussed extensively. A profound book, it offers a different perspective on life. The book is brief and written in simple and direct language. It opens with, “There are at least two kinds of games. One should be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played to win, an infinite game to continue the play. If a finite game is to be won by someone, it must come to a definite end. It will come to an end when someone has won.” (p. 1)

As you read the book, the idea becomes more apparent. The format is clear to both sides and those watching whenever a finite game is played—for example, a test match, a one-day international, and a T-20 in cricket. Then there is a football match, which is different. And so on. Even chess is a game, and so are cards. The match ends with one side winning and the other losing. But infinite games continue forever. Take, for example, a marriage, a teacher-pupil relationship, an industry, etc. Generation after generation plays these games, and the idea is not to win or lose but to keep playing. Whether or not we realise it, we are already playing both games. It helps to understand that we don’t go in for ‘win or lose’ in Infinite games and keep playing.

What is this world but an infinite game? There is a social game within which various other games are embedded, like the family game, community game, religion game, political game, and above all, the economic game. Resources must be harnessed and shifted across the globe, goods manufactured, food grown, and trained and able people are needed to do all these activities. So, children must be born, raised and employed. There must be masters, supervisors, sellers, buyers and middlemen. Then, there are the service providers—maids, cooks, barbers, entertainers—depending on who needs what. We are born into a game and live trying to adjust to what is happening rather than living joyously.

An example of a finite game that’s essential to the infinite game of maintaining a healthy life is making sure you walk for 30 minutes every day. An infinite game includes finite games like employee compensation and recognition of short-term performance targets to ensure employees understand their duties and how they contribute to the organisation’s success. A partnership based on mutual respect and duty is like a series of finite games: getting household tasks done daily, having a proper livelihood, and having no addictions.

In the 1980s, I was introduced to a larger world after coming to Hyderabad. There was no internet facility then, and one had to buy books from shops. There was hardly any spare cash, and I found the second-hand book market in the Abids area, held on the footpaths on Sunday when the main market was closed, to be the most heavenly place. I picked up a 1964 book, Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships, by Eric Berne, from there. It was a ‘bestseller’ in popular psychology (pop psychology), a book that simplifies the concepts and theories about human mental life and behaviour, supposedly based on psychology and widely considered credible and accepted by the populace.

Berne presents his idea of transactional analysis in the book’s first part as a framework for understanding social interactions. He suggests that people permanently inhabit three distinct selves—the child, the adult, and the parent—and keep shuffling between them. His main argument is that most interactions between adults are benign. When people engage in out-of-character roles like ‘Parent-and-Child’ or ‘Child-and-Adult’ in what are adult-to-adult dealings, they can lead to problematic interactions. How can a spouse be dealt with as a ‘baby’?

In the second part, we get a rundown of many ‘mind games’, wherein participants engage in predictable and structured ‘transactions’ based on their ill-suited roles. These exchanges may appear natural at first, but they are a cover for concealed agendas with predetermined results. “See What You Made Me Do”, “Why Don’t You”, “Yes, but” and “Ain’t It Awful?” are a few examples of the funny and informal expressions that describe the games in the book. The first person to return to their Adult ego-state is the ‘winner’ of these mental games.

Religion emerges as the most apparent infinite game. Its ultimate purpose is often the ongoing search for meaning, connection and understanding of the Divine. The practices, community involvement and personal growth associated with faith can foster a sense of continuity and exploration. Religions have evolved, responding to cultural changes and new interpretations. This dynamism is characteristic of infinite games, where the goal is to keep the play alive rather than adhering strictly to unchanging rules.

On the other hand, some aspects of religion can resemble finite games, such as dogmatic belief systems, rituals, or positions of authority that may create divisions or a sense of competition among followers. While not all elements of religion may perfectly align with the concept of an infinite game, many facets—particularly those focused on growth, love, and community—reflect an endless approach to life and spirituality. Ultimately, interpretation can vary based on individual experiences and beliefs.

“No one can play a game alone. One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in relation to others. Simultaneously, the others with whom we are in relation are themselves in relation. We cannot relate to anyone who is not also relating to us. Our social existence has, therefore, an inescapably fluid character… this ceaseless change does not mean discontinuity; rather, change is itself the very basis of our continuity as persons.” (p. 37)

Like games, people set personal and/or professional goals and work towards them. Life has its own rules and challenges, and, like a game, it requires strategies to navigate through them. Just as games often involve collaboration or competition with others, life requires social interactions and relationships. Games usually include learning from failures and successes, a principle that can be applied to personal development. We can approach life with the same strategies and mindset we use in gaming. Ultimately, viewing life as a game encourages us to embrace its challenges with curiosity, playfulness, and a focus on growth rather than just winning.

Certain words and phrases gain prominence at different times, and this is becoming a fashion in the Internet media world. “Deep State” is currently circulating about the mysterious powers that run the world. When Khoa Hoang, my Vietnamese–Australian friend and Chairman of Amphibian Aerospace Industries (AAI), visited me, we naturally discussed the geopolitical dynamics, how swiftly governments in Bangladesh and Syria were changed, and how Asia and Europe will be affected by government change in the United States next month.

Khoa explained that whatever word and term one uses, business interests have always run the world, and nothing will ever change this arrangement. Europe was a miserable place to live until the early second millennium. The Gaul (French), Lombard (Germans), Latins (Italians), Hispania (Spanish), Dutch and Norse (Scandinavian) people fought wars against each other until ships were invented. They tasted wealth by occupying territories of countries where people did not have guns. They initially looted diamonds, gold and ivory and brought in slaves to work for them.

After the Industrial Revolution, raw materials were needed, leading to large-scale colonisation. Using guns, Europeans became masters of the entire planet. They kept sending material back to their factories and later sold the mass-produced items back in the markets, killing indigenous enterprises. This business was hidden behind terms like Imperialism, Commonwealth, etc. After the Second World War ended in a “drawn match,” the world was divided into two blocs. Those who preferred to float independently were called the “third world.”

Then, around 1990, Germany first reunited, and then Soviet Russia collapsed. For a while, it looked as if the United States was the only power on the planet, but soon, its corporations, out of their greed for profits, evolved a new form of imperialism called “globalisation.” Without armies, they entered every country to take their resources—both material and people—and, in the name of intellectual property and tariffs, converted the world into a giant profit machine for the businesspeople.

China gained the maximum out of globalisation. It became the “factory of the world” and amassed enormous wealth by manufacturing “American and European products” for global markets. The Communist Party of China, perhaps the most powerful organisation in the modern world, invested this unprecedented wealth back into the United States. China captured rights over almost the entire African continent for material resources. However, attitudes changed when Americans and Europeans realised their good lives were fading. The economic slowdown since the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns forced a course correction.

To understand the geopolitics of the modern world and how it will unfold in the New Year 2025, a close look at history will give a clearer picture instead of indulging in the fanciful imagination of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Biotechnology. As technology matured, the definition of resources changed. What started with mining diamonds and gold, later oil, iron ore, copper and coal, became electronic materials such as silicon, lithium, tantalum and cobalt. With unique magnetic, optical and catalytic properties, rare earth elements—a group of 17 metals—elevate electronic device performance, functionality, and miniaturisation. China currently controls much of the global critical mineral marketplace. It is also rewriting the rules of the world economy.

Let us take a different look at the development of electric cars. The idea is to break free from European dominance and excellence in making internal combustion engines. So, if you can’t make good automobile engines, why not make a car that does not need an engine but runs on batteries? More significantly, China has already secured dominance over the material that would make the batteries that would run such vehicles. China will undo a century of European dominance over the automobile industry in this process. Even being a second mover has its benefits!

No one must make the mistake of ignoring the rise of China, which is as much a wounded civilisation as India is. Powerful countries like France, Russia, Japan, Britain, and Germany tried to control China by dividing it like the African continent and the infamous term “Cutting of the Chinese Melon” gained popularity. Japan extracted hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom, and European nations grabbed vast Chinese territories. Worse still, China was flooded with opium for profits by the British. The British grabbing of Hong Kong in 1841 was a thuggery of the most blatant type.

So, what next? The answer to this question leads to another question: Where are the resources? Russia holds the world’s largest proven natural gas reserves, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the global total. The European economy can’t survive without the Russian gas supply, and for China, Russia is the next-door energy supplier. At the root of the Ukraine War is its potential as a significant global supplier of critical raw materials vital for high-tech sectors, aerospace, and green energy, competed for by Russia and Western European countries. India—the country with the most significant number of young people and a vibrant economy—will be the pivot on which the 21st–century world hinges. All economies will need the Indian market and Indian people.

Khoa shared an interesting concept that no single power on Earth can control the seven seas—the Arctic, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, Indian, and Southern Oceans. The future of humanity rests on how oceans are harnessed and kept free for the movement of goods. His mission of reviving the Albatross seaplanes is based on this premise. Khoa’s company is the Type Certificate holder for the Albatross family of aircraft and is updating and improving this exceptional platform with modern technology to achieve the lowest per seat per kilometre cost.

Khoa is in India for two reasons—need and ability. He sees India, with a coastline of approximately 27,000 kilometres, spanning nine coastal states and four Union Territories and comprising twelve major ports and two hundred smaller ports, as the ideal economy to benefit from seaplanes. The Indian blue economy, which accounts for around 4 per cent of its GDP, can easily be made 10 per cent with the deployment of seaplanes. The Indian aeronautical industry has the maturity of becoming the global hub for manufacturing Albatross 2.0 seaplanes.

It is a pleasure to meet young visionaries like Khoa, who have staked their lives pursuing their dreams. It is the passion of people like Khoa, which I consider the most potent force on Earth; the rest is an old story that keeps repeating itself, with or without the intervention of people. And why do I say this? Projects like seaplanes can transform India’s blue economy, create jobs, and protect its vast marine ecosystems. More important than what you do is how your work affects the lives of others. When people discuss how AI and robots will lead to the loss of jobs, Khoa talks about how the blue economy can generate millions of jobs, particularly in coastal and rural areas, providing livelihoods in fisheries, tourism, and renewable energy.

David Deutsch (b. 1953), a British physicist at the University of Oxford, is among the world’s foremost philosopher-scientists alive. He has worked on fundamental issues in physics, particularly quantum computing, quantum information and constructor theory. I learned about him through his books The Fabric of Reality (1997) and The Beginning of Infinity (2011). Though not popular books, they reached me through the invisible hand that keeps people connected in a bizarre and wired manner, if not by design.

Why should an ordinary person bother with questions like reality? My friend and cancer surgeon, Dr Chinnababu Sunkavalli, is also a philosopher-doctor. The other day, he narrated an interesting anecdote. A young TV journalist interviewed people at a busy railway station in a typical global metropolis (which could be Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, or Mumbai), asking what the most absurd fact of the modern world is. People gave different answers – income inequality, urban slums, climate change, crime, cryptocurrencies, etc. When the question was put to a Buddhist monk, he posed a counterquestion instead of answering it.

He asked the interviewer, “Who are you?”

I am so and so, the journalist answered.

“That is your name; who are you?” the monk repeated.

“I am a TV journalist.”

“That is your occupation; who are you?”

“I am a human being,” the journalist answered, a little frustrated at the way the conversation was going. 

“So are 8 billion people on the planet.”

“I don’t know what you are asking,” the journalist finally answered, giving up.

The monk smiled and said, “That is the most absurd fact in the world. You don’t know who you are.”

The yaksha asked a similar question to Yudhisthira in the famous Mahabharata story: What is the strangest fact in the world? Yudhisthira answered that everyone knows that he will die, as whoever is born must die, yet he conducts his affairs as if he is immortal, acquiring possessions that must be left behind.

Adi Shankaracharya declared in the 8^th century, ‘ब्रह्म सत्यं जगत् मिथ्या जीवो ब्रह्मैव नापरः’ This profound statement conveyed three principles – (1) The Ultimate Reality, be it cosmos or even beyond that, is truth, (2) Not this phenomenal mortal world, and  (3) Humans, though mortals, contain Ultimate Reality within them.

Let us consider this profound but strange idea in the context of an AI bot that is given the task of learning from human intelligence. These bots interact with human activity through the ‘senses’ given to them and find patterns using evidence-based reasoning. Taking the purpose of human life as sensory pleasures and worldly acquisitions – name and fame, and fussing about likes and dislikes, hatred and attachments is living a bot’s life. 

But what is bot learning? What does ‘reality’ mean for it? Indeed, a bot does not know why it is doing what it is doing. A bot is created to carry out its assigned purpose. The purpose of human life is to imagine and decipher the significance of human life in the cosmos. The universe is silent in terms of conscious signals and the cosmos outside our biosphere is sterile and depressing. To the Cosmic intelligence, people being born, growing up, ageing, and dying must be meaningless. Mithya is not ‘false’; it means ‘meaningless’.

David Deutsch’s books, mentioned here, are, therefore, essential for addressing these existential questions. The gist of The Fabric of Reality is a rational, scientific approach to understanding reality, emphasising the interconnectedness of knowledge and the universe. It confirms Adi Shankaracharya’s assertion astonishingly. Quantum mechanics leads to a cohesive theory that explains the universe as one ground of the entire cosmos and life on Earth (Advaita).

Deutsch emphasises the importance of knowledge as the basis for understanding and problem-solving, viewing it as a creative force that shapes our reality. The questions that emerge in the mind and the explanations generated in the quest for answers define the role of human beings in the cosmos. There may be many planets like Earth and many creatures like humans in the cosmos about whose size and extent we have yet to learn, driving us to expand our consciousness by asking questions and seeking answers.

In The Beginning of Infinity, Deutsch argues that pursuing knowledge is limitless and that our understanding of the universe can continually expand. There are no ultimate limits to what can be understood or achieved. Deutsch highlights humanity’s capacity to solve problems and overcome challenges through creativity and critical thinking. He suggests that every problem has the potential for a solution, reinforcing an optimistic view of the future. Mankind will continue to evolve as it has been.

Just as no one in 1900 could have foreseen the consequences of innovations made during the twentieth century – including whole new fields such as nuclear physics, computer science and biotechnology – so our own future will be shaped by knowledge that we do not yet have. We cannot even predict most of the problems we shall encounter or most of the opportunities to solve them, let alone the solutions and attempted solutions and how they will affect events. (p. 197)

Dr Sunkavalli did not leave the monk’s answer to the TV journalist’s question open-ended. He showed me his iPhone and said, “This is ‘my iPhone’ by all means; it connects me to all my contacts. Anyone can reach me through this, and I can search for whatever knowledge I seek and store gigabytes of information I choose. But I don’t have the faintest idea of how an iPhone works, both as a device and the network that backs it, and yet I enjoy it.” This is the reality of a human being, a mere device in the world, with its unique ownership, contact details and information loaded but connected to the One Source. Human life aims to find explanations for the world’s mysteries not from the outside but from within, like Newton’s imagining of gravity, Einstein’s relativity and Kekule’s benzene ring. They did not observe them; they imagined. Their knowledge did not come from outside – how could Einstein have seen space-time bending or Kekule, the six carbon atoms of benzene making a ring? Their knowledge had come from within.