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. For me, the construction of Ram Mandir is historically significant. My idea of modern India was articulated when I read India: A Wounded Civilization, written by Sir V. S. Naipaul and published in 1977.  How can a wounded civilisation grow? Should it not heal first?

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001, the grandparents of Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, from both his mother’s and father’s sides, went to Trinidad to work as indentured labourers in sugarcane plantations set up there by the British. Landless brahmins from eastern Uttar Pradesh, blighted after the Great Famine of 1876-78, saw no prospects for their future generations in India. Who brought that famine? Invaders and traders turned rulers who were more interested in creating monuments and growing commodities like opium and indigo for export instead of food for the people.   

Naipaul came to India for the first time in the early sixties and found it a terrible place to live. He later published An Area of Darkness, conveying his disillusionment with the country of his forefathers, marked with poverty, people defecating in the open, all sorts of compromises, and corruption. The wise man could see the reason for this decadence in the failure of the society’s higher sections to defend their country and traditions. 

Of all its squalor and human decay, its eruptions of butchery, India produced so many people of grace and beauty, ruled by elaborate courtesy. Producing too much life denied the value of life, yet it permitted a unique human development for so many. Nowhere were people so heightened, rounded and individualistic; nowhere did they offer themselves so thoroughly and with such assurance. . . The colonial mimicry is an exceptional mimicry of an old country without a native aristocracy for a thousand years who have learned to make room for outsiders, but only at the top. The mimicry changes and the inner world remains constant: this is the secret of survival. 

I made this inner world my constant mantra in life. Later, when Dr APJ Abdul Kalam picked me to work with him, I became an author by helping him write his speeches and his autobiography Wings of Fire and five other books. One of these books was Guiding Souls: Dialogue on the Purpose of Life, published in 2005. My publisher, Piyush Kumar, took me to Sir Naipaul on a visit to Delhi. I was stunned by his persona – tall, handsome, erudite. It was the first time I met a Nobel Laureate. I was overwhelmed. 

He wrote a message for the book: “This book demonstrates a wise and much loved President, two attributes which do not always go together.” He said that what is good for you is not usually liked. And this is the biggest problem with people: they dislike being told about their faults. Sir Naipaul affectionately held my hand and said, “Keep writing, young man. Like music, writing comes with practice.” I took his advice to heart. This year, I published my 25^th book. When the grandchild of indentured labourers forced to flee their motherland to survive became a world-renowned English author, why must I not write?  

India stands tall in the international community in the second decade of the 21st century.  Persons of Indian origin are leading some of the world’s best companies – Microsoft, Alphabet, IBM, Adobe – and are also in prominent positions like the chief of the World Bank, the Vice President of the United States, and the Prime Minister of the UK. This signifies three facts – 

1. Indians have emerged from the mimicry they played for survival and are now proud of themselves. 
2. India is a robust democracy, and people change governments without disruption and chaos. 
3. Most importantly, the world has recognised the quality of the Indian mind. 

I am most fortunate to have survived my health issues to see a grand Ram Mandir coming up. And a grand mosque, perhaps the biggest in the world, will also be there soon. When I visited Ayodhya, ironically a mofussil little town in district Faizabad, in 2018, I could see the helplessness of a wounded civilisation. In extolled Varanasi, the narrow passage to the Kashi Vishwanath temple was encroached upon by petty shopkeepers and littered. There were no invaders or traders now, so who kept the pilgrim places in such a deplorable state? Those ruling after independence had a different agenda, which did not give value to the revival of the culture that suffered 1000 years of onslaught.

Undoubtedly, India has begun reclaiming its lost glory by introducing Vedic studies in education, bringing back stolen artefacts, re-erecting destroyed monuments, and creating roads and infrastructure around long-neglected pilgrim centres of great history behind them. The state of sports is a reliable indicator of the people of any country. Indian athletes are now bagging their best-ever tally of medals. Indian girls making their mark over their competitors from other nations are tell-tale signs of the rise of Indian people. It is no wonder the Olympic Games will come to India in the 2030s! 

Why do nations rise and fall? From a civilisational perspective, whenever and wherever vested interests grab power, they must eventually lose it. The more those who rule are against the spirit of the people, the more misery people suffer, but the rulers are ultimately destroyed. India’s rise as a world power coincides with the downturn of China and the United States. Alienation of the governments with their people is the reason in both cases. All this makes India’s further rise inevitable and necessary for world stability. This was indeed foreseen by Sri Aurobindo, who said on India gaining independence in 1947, “We do not belong to past dawns but to the noons of the future.” (CWSA, Vol. 19, p. 10).

Sir Naipaul died in 2018 at the age of 85. My short meeting with him remains one of the rare, fond moments like those we all carry in our hearts – insignificant for others but very precious to the soul. From that day, I took Sir Naipaul as my writing guru, as you always need someone great to emulate. Sir Naipaul’s books are remarkable for their instant readability. He created distinct, intelligible sentences and organised them into coherent paragraphs. Only through the mastery of language and clarity of expression can an author convince readers to believe in the narrative.

Venerated as a ‘literary eye’, Sir Naipaul could see during his travels not only the past of the people but also their future wherever he went. So, what do I see now? The unequal world as it stands is based on falsehood and deceit. What is now seen is a transition from a bad past based on military power, oil, and unfair trade and finance by those in power to an era of peace and an equitable world. AI is rising as an ‘invisible hand’ once seen by Adam Smith in his famous work, The Wealth of Nations. AI will take the falsehood and fraud out of the system, and abundance will be the order of the day. Everyone will eventually receive the actual value of their labour. 

Environmental concerns will encourage new livelihoods and digital money opportunities for new businesses. India must patiently wait and prepare its younger generation to reap the rewards. Ensure nutrition, education, and safety for children, and they will grow to take the world forward. In A Bend in the River, Sir Naipaul writes, “After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities.” Why not have a good idea about ourselves and live with the mind without fear and heads held high, as Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore wished for us? 

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 visit our home out of curiosity and of course, for the prasad, that would be distributed by my mother after the half hour ceremony, during the nine-day period in October-November every year.  

I come from the Gaur Brahmana community in Western Uttar Pradesh. My ancestors are believed to come from the Gaur Pradesh of Bengal, an ancient kingdom in the modern-day Malda district, and were said to have been invited by King Parikshit, the son of Abhimanyu and Uttara, and the grandson of Arjuna. He was the successor of Yudhishthira to the throne of Hastinapur and was to perform a particular yajna, which would not be considered complete without these exalted Brahmanas. 

After the yajna was concluded, the king requested them to settle and granted them land. Millennia have passed but Gaur Brahmanas continue to worship Mother Durga as they were doing in Bengal. My father would fast during Navratri and recite the Devi Mahatmya every day. On the eighth day, he would perform a yajna officiated by a priest. The next morning, children from the neighborhood were fed by my mother and grandmother. My brother Salil Tiwari continues this tradition.  

As a child, although I sat through the recitation of Durga Saptashati, I could never capture the content. When I read it later, I found the account of Mother Durga and Kali killing demons rather gory and wondered what merit reciting all this violence would incur. Aware of the fact that mine is perhaps the last generation who is aware of our traditions and scriptures in their original forms, I have decided to dive deep into the Devi Mahatmyam, part of the Markandeya Purana. The 700 shlokas in the chapters 81-93 give this text the name Durga Saptashati.

Two unlucky men, a dispossessed king Surath and a destitute merchant Samadhi, meet in a forest. They are deeply disappointed, but not disillusioned. They approach a sage for help. Both are highly egoistical, brimming with self-pity. The sage sees that their hurt sense of I-ness and my-ness was tormenting them. Their misery would end if they were turned towards the Divine. So, the sage engages them by telling the three charitras, episodes of the exploits of the Supreme Shakti and her emanations.

In the first episode of chapter one, Devi is in her Maha Maya form. Demonic twins Madhu-Kaitabh are obstructing Lord Brahma during the creation of the cosmos. Lord Brahma prays to Vishnu who is in deep sleep. Maha Maya emerges out of Vishnu and kills the demons.  

The second episode of the three chapters presents the creation of a great effulgence, as Devi, the feminine form of all the gods. The world was under attack by the shape-shifting Mahishasura, a demon who uses deception to disarm his opponents. Devi, in the form of Chandika, riding a lion, slayed the demon hiding in the form of a buffalo.

In the final episode of nine chapters, the demons, Shumbha and Nishumbha conquer heaven. On the request of the expelled gods, Devi Parvati takes the form of Ambika. In the battle with Dhumralochan, Chanda, Munda and Raktabeej, the lieutenants of demon kings, the seven mothers, appear including Kali. In the iconic battle with Raktabeej, who is reborn every time Durga kills him and his blood falls on the ground, Kali sucks the spilled blood to ensure his end. Nishumbha and his army are defeated by the seven Mothers.

In the final battle against Shumbha, Devi absorbs Kali and the seven mothers and slays the demon as Ambika of eight arms. Devi is venerated as the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe in a hymn, Narayani Stuti. 

Devi gives the merchant and the king her vision after they both perform austerities directed by the sage. The king asks Devi for his lost kingdom, the merchant asks for wisdom, and both are granted. With a promise that she will always destroy the demons and bring peace on Earth, Devi disappears.

Coming to the coded secrets, Surath and Samadhi are the dual nature of the Jivatma – seeking pleasures in the material world, as well as curious to find and return to the Source. Our life on earth is a battle. Each one of us is carrying inside us a battlefield full of helpers and hunters, friends, and enemies. The help will come only from the Creator behind the phenomenon. There are two ways to invoke the Creator – approach the heavenly Father, the spirit Purusha. Another is to approach the mother, Prakriti, right here as the cosmos and the life. Seeking help from the Mother right here is easier and more effective.

Madhu and Kaitabh, honey, and the bee represent our tendency to extract. Mahishasura, the mighty buffalo is our ego. Dhumralochan, smoky eyes, is the illusion of worldly forms. Chanda and Munda are the tendencies of attraction and aversion. Raktabeej represents never-ending desires, like new bodies growing from every drop of blood that falls on the ground. Kali is an emanation of the Devi, and she must wage a relentless war to kill Nishumbha. When I read Devi Mahatmyam with these insights, every shloka made perfect sense.  I can now see the kindest and the most loving Mother in the seemingly terrible form of Kali, protecting my soul in this world from the demonic forces inside and around me. 

Her sword of knowledge severs the head of pride and prejudices, the fearlessness of riding a lion, her long and black hair for nature’s supremacy over any civilizational arrangements, the protruding red tongue, her rajasic nature being conquered by the sattvic nature of the white teeth, unclothed as beyond the covering of Maya, dark as the Unmanifest origin of the manifested creation, continues to exist even when the universe ends. She stands with her foot over Shiva, conveying immortality that dismantles life and puts it back again. The more you mediate on Mother Kali, the deeper goes the meaning of every feature. Of course, Mother as Durga is most splendorous. Her multiple hands giving all that is needed and above all protection. 

Know that beneath this pomp and show, beauty and pleasures, dresses, ornaments, and possessions, you are a helpless body – skull and limbs – aging to eventually die. Slay your ego (I-ness) and attachments (mine-ness) with the knowledge of your and others’ divine origin. Stand before Kali. She is not angry; she is calm. Feel assured of the divine vigilance over human affairs on earth. It is not only during a crisis that the world would be under the complete control of demonic forces; it can happen every day, every living moment. But we can overcome this right here, right now, by slaying our “I-ness” and “mine-ness” and enjoy the bliss of “immortality.”

I recently met Mr. Chandu Thota, Vice President at Google, when he was here in Hyderabad, where he studied at Osmania Engineering College. Chandu played a pioneering role in the development of digital mapping. He worked at Microsoft from 2002 to 2007 on maps and later established his own company Dealmap, which was acquired by Google in 2011. Since then, Chandu has been at Google.

Born and brought up in coastal Andhra Pradesh, Chandu comes from a traditional family where dogmas and rituals are integral parts of life. While we were discussing how the modern generation is becoming superficial about religion and lacks conviction about timeless traditional wisdom, Chandu brought up the example of a map. Moving a stylus from one place to another is so easy on a map. Thousands of miles can be crossed–oceans, mountains, and deserts—in a moment—without even getting up from your chair. Even the thrill of going to faraway locations can be felt, if only on a map. 

So, this is exactly what is happening with the younger generation in the realm of religion. When we spend hours discussing scriptures, theories, enlightenment, and spiritual gurus and their miracles—the Internet is flooded with them—we may not realize it, but it is just like moving the stylus on the map. The confidence with which “gurus” narrate morally superior concepts often deludes the “chelas” into thinking that they have arrived, even though none of them have even started.

Tokenism is the trend. Wearing a mala, tying a thread on the wrist, and even applying a tilak, can never make a difference unless it represents a change in attitude. But merely done as a fashion, this comforting illusion of having “arrived” bleeds out the reasons, motivation, and energy from our ambition to undertake the journey. Some of us may get addicted to the “high” we get from moving the stylus on the map and consequently fritter away a significant part of our lives doing just that—and many may never undertake the actual journey. Chandu casually called it “spiritual turnpikes” but it drove me into reflection and to write this blog.

I was introduced to the word “Turnpike” by Bhooshan Sawant. He lives in North Brunswick, New Jersey. In 2011, I spent a week at his home. Many times, he drove me to New York City and took a toll road to bypass the perennial traffic on the Garden State Parkway. Bhooshan told me that the Turnpike originated in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries when the Parliament allowed the formation of Turnpike trusts to build roads and bridges and collect tolls from the users. Basically, the turnpike is the horizontal bar lowered to block your way and lifted when the tax is paid. 

This later became a practice for the governments to collect taxes from travellers and in India, almost all new roads are created as turnpikes. Similarly, spirituality is taken over by religion and we are conditioned to believe that one must follow some religion to attain spiritual enlightenment. There are organized events, “paid” services, ritualistic performances, and obnoxiously collected subscription models selling spirituality. This is on the supply side. Even more problematic is the demand side.

Hordes of young people are turning into spiritual addicts. Like parrots, they talk indefatigably about how yogis can leave their physical bodies and travel to distant planets or what happens after death. They perceive themselves as spiritually evolved people but their behaviors could not be further off. They are arrogant, absent-minded, irresponsible, undisciplined, and unethical. No wonder the roads are full of rage and people in crowds and on social media are impolite and rude.

What is spirituality? Understanding the basic fact that we are an immortal spirit living in “this body” that grows, decays and eventually dies, is spirituality. The purpose of life is the evolution of this spirit, which means sorting out the bad embedded in us, like dust on a mirror. Each one of us has our demons, the shadow selves. The art of living is about going by our values and bravely confronting these shadows; acknowledging, feeling, and transcending our inconvenient emotions.

All this holds a purpose. By discarding all that is not good, building mutually empathetic and rewarding relationships; resolving problems; and shouldering our responsibilities we not only lead a good life but also create conditions where others can better theirs. However, most of us unconsciously use religion and rituals to distract ourselves from the feelings of guilt, frustration, and inadequacy we do not want to experience, the responsibilities of life we do not want to bear, and the hard work required to resolve the issues we want to escape from.

We pick up phrases like, “Life is suffering”; “Suffering is the nectar that cleanses the soul”; “God tests and strengthens our faith through suffering,” and so on. These are in essence our vain attempts to avoid facing the mirror – to see our faults and fix them. It is a pity and a waste of human life to miss the chance of expanding consciousness and using it to create sensory pleasures and conveniences – no less ludicrous than an astronaut riding a horse. 

My 33 years of tutelage under Dr APJ Abdul Kalam helped me immensely to discern between religion and spirituality. Not that they are exclusive but that they are different and must be understood and practised that way. Armed with this awareness, I keep coming across people who are not seeking but escaping their true selves, and I could recognize myself as one of them, and see this game of using spiritual discussions and practices as a substitute for our transformation instead of a means to support it. 

During my first visit to San Francisco with Dr Kalam in 2007, after he relinquished the presidency, I was given a book by John Welwood entitled, Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships, published at that time. Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, Welwood coined the term “Spiritual Bypassing” in the early 1980s and I enjoyed discussing it with Dr Kalam on our flight back home. The tendency to use spiritual ideas, discussions, and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks has always been there. Welwood articulated it well now using the familiar term “bypassing.” 

The spiritual journey begins with the realisation that our reality is the immortal spirit present inside our body and not the body itself. It is like “grounding” to our basic existential fact.  Opposite to adorning artefacts – lockets, bracelets, particular dresses – and undertaking retreats, pilgrimages, and attending congregations we can brag about, discovering who we are at our deepest core is a very quiet affair. 

It is a process of gradually removing “onion-like” layers of anything that is neither factually true nor who we are at our core in order to inch closer to the truth or our true selves. Being cognizant of our haughtiness ought to humble us a little, but if we act as though we are pursuing and carrying out all righteous deeds, we are subconsciously creating an alibi to do what is not right. In addition, there are no speed breakers on this slick slope. In the shadow of the light we believe we are heading towards, it is hard to perceive or assess how much misery we might be causing to ourselves and others once we start to believe we are holy, pure, and one with God, and therefore already nearly flawless. Dr Kalam used to caution me before planning out a project that man is indeed a formidable rationalizing machine capable of making even the most irrational things accepted.

Meeting people gives meaning to life. I consider myself profusely blessed to have met some of the finest people and learned from them. Chandu Thota, Vice President and Head of Engineering at Google Headquarters in Silicon Valley, is one such person whom I met rather late, but except for a wish that we could have met earlier and worked together, I have no other remorse, only a deep sense of contentment.  

Chandu was introduced to me by Dr. Sunkavalli Chinnababu, a robotic cancer surgeon, who has been his childhood friend. We started with an introductory video call in early 2023 and instantly clicked with each other. Soon, we shared an idea of putting together how the world has been transformed by Internet technologies, especially the mobility of people, materials and financial transactions. After all, some people must have had these ideas in their minds and struggled to put them into action.

Amazon, for example, which changed the way trading is done in the world, was an idea of Jeff Bezos. Frustration at not being able to find a taxi made Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick think of creating Uber. How did the idea of GPS take seed in the mind of Jack Dangermond? Mukesh Ambani decided to offer free data to the entire India, and ended the era of STD calls forever. When Vijay Shekhar Sharma started Paytm, he was laughed at; vested political interests resistedthe idea of Aadhaar, and so on.

Victor Hugo, the French novelist, captured brilliantly the lives of some ordinary people in the French Revolution. He famously wrote in Les Misérables, “No army can stop an idea whose time has come.” There seems to be a system in place where certain ideas find people, who implement them and change the world from what it is to what it should become. So, what next? ChatGPT, which started as an amusement – people asking it to solve exam papers, for example – is now going to affect the way work is done, and in that process,affect the livelihood of millions of people who offer consultancy services, make presentations, write briefs, and run coaching classes. 

So, I started exchanging these thoughts with Chandu, every Sunday evening for him in San Francisco, which was Monday morning for me in Hyderabad. Every meeting scheduled for an hour lasted much longer and soon, Chandu took me into the Silicon Valley world, no lesser a Wonderland than that of Alice created by Lewis Carroll. Chandu introduced me to some people who are not celebrities of the likes of Satya Nadella or Sundar Pichai but who created the basic platforms for Internet Search, Uber, Maps, Netflix, YouTube, and so on. My happiness knew no bounds when I learned that all these people were of Indian origin, had made their way to the United States as strugglers, and turned stars there.

These people have changed the way the world works, through their own work. Each of their stories is worth sharing, offering lessons to youngsters. But then, it is not easy to separate milk from water. Mundane life – personalities, professional affiliations, preferences, pride and prejudices – is no less difficult to separate from the real substance. Someone must set curd, churn it and separate out the butter. Only then will it float on water. I don’t recall whether Chandu or I suggested this first, but we decided to do this work of setting the curd and churning it to offer butter to youngsters.

Finally, when Chandu came to India for his official work in Bengaluru, he came to Hyderabad and we met in person. Maintaining a high standard of fitness, he carried no extra fat on his body; his eyes were clear and beamed his radiant soul, and his handshake was warm and strong, showing his compassion and willpower. We participated in the opening ceremony of the Cancer Awareness Run organized by Dr.Chinnababu in its VI Edition and then sat down to look into the future.

There is absolutely no doubt that the era of ignorance is ending. Whether it takes three years or eight years or a decade, it will be impossible to conduct frauds, speak lies, and profiteer from falsehood. Even now, blockchain technology can make all business contracts and sale deeds irrevocably tamper–proof, elections can be made free from malpractices, and the market cleaned up from wild speculations, but those who are currently in power are unwilling to let this happeneasily. However, this scenario will not last much longer and soon, the sunshine of transparency will rule the world.  

What could be the three hallmarks of the new world? Our take is: Abundance, which we see as food and a basic pay for everyone on the planet; a world free from nutritional hunger which produces as much as half of the disease burden, by using biotechnology to fortify food grains with nutrients; and a purposeful education provided by professionals, with a guaranteed livelihood and a goodbye to the factories of unemployment that our universities have mostly turned into. And this is not our personal opinion – we both have been timid to make any opinion in our lives – but reading the signs of the way things are changing.

We discard and debunk all fears about Artificial Intelligence(AI) and propose it to give a better name – Integrated Intelligence. There is nothing artificial about AI; it is a collection of the truth as it is happening and then deciphering it. An AI-driven stock market is the most honest, an AI-driven education is perfect, and an AI-driven election is a true representation of people’s voices. The world is poor because of ignorance, meaning a lack of intelligence. The world as it is has allowed useless medicines to be developed and sold, andmeaningless diagnostics to be done while allowing environments to turn unhealthy; land continues to be hoarded by the rich and powerful; there are organized tax invasions by corporations that have become bigger than governments; and banks are being manipulated as a captive source of capital by businesses.

The question is not who will allow the world to be changed. The question is, who can stop it from changing?

I met Dr Dilip Pawar by chance. But what a good chance it turned out to be. He is an oncologist turned clinical pharmacologist and a leading figure in the discovery of cancer drugs. A sagacious person of calm temperament, Dr Pawar worked with cancer patients throughout his career, especially the poor, and has seen suffering from very close quarters. I was surprised when he said that one out of every three cancer deaths in India is caused by poor diet, lack of awareness and failure to use cancer screening tests for early detection. All these factors are linked to poverty, which is also a barrier to accessing effective cancer therapies.

Dr Pawar comes from the poorest of the poor strata of society and grew up in Mumbai slums. His mother ensured that despite all odds he received a good education and he lived up to the challenge. A medical graduate from Grant Government Medical College and Sir JJ Group of Hospitals, Mumbai, Dr Pawar did his post-graduation from Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College, Sion, Mumbai, in Oncology. He later pursued a PhD, Fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology from the University of California, and Global Clinical Research training from the prestigious Harvard Medical School, and it was the plight of the poor not getting good cancer medicines that drove him into Cancer research.

After working for some time in the industry, basically, to understand the dynamics of the global pharmaceutical industry where a few corporations hold the most patents, he did an MBA in Pharmaceutical Marketing at Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, USA, and later worked at Nicholas Piramal India Limited, Dr Reddy’s, and Unichem. He is considered the final word in Clinical Research and Pharmacovigilance, dealing with the understanding and prevention of adverse effects of any medicine.

Our discussions, held over tea in my house, meandered from the treatment of cancer to the end stage of life. Cancer is inherently a chronic disease with well-understood risk factors. If it is diagnosed early, surviving it is not much of an issue anymore. Early-stage cancer that hasn’t spread and isn’t too big is more likely to respond well to treatment. The problem is early detection, and it is not a small problem. Tests used by doctors to identify and treat cancer are different from those used for cancer screening. When it comes to your body, you know it best. If you notice anything that isn’t normal for you, or if something doesn’t feel quite right, speak up. If colon cancer is detected at an early stage, more than 90% of patients survive the disease for 5 years or longer.

Our hospitals are overcrowded, doctors are overworked, and the poor have no means to go to a private medical practitioner. So, early diagnosis of cancer remains a buzz word and unless people are approached at the community level, it is impossible to have any early cancer diagnosis. Increasing the reach of life-saving healthcare initiatives is crucial, and mobile screening vans that offer cancer screening to individuals where they live and work is one important method to do this. 

Working with Dr Chinnababu Sunkavalli and his Grace Cancer Foundation, Dr Pawar mobilized support for organizations donating buses and other equipment and what was once considered impossible happened.  The fact that there is no end to medical research and there is always more to learn is one of its great advantages. Their work has shown that if you find cancer early, the treatment went from something complicated, expensive, and terrible to something that was relatively simple—simple meaning we were already in the minimally invasive world of surgery.

But what moved Dr Pawar most was the plight of the end-stage cancer treatment, which is basically no treatment but pain management and nutritional support. It is common for cancer hospitals to discharge such patients saying let them be at home, but the idea of a home is indeed grossly misunderstood. Dr Pawar remembers living his early childhood in Goregaon in Mumbai where 16 people were living in a 100 sq.ft. room. We must roll out a system of affordable palliative care. This would need social awareness, voluntary work, and above all, committed nursing professionals. 

According to Dr Pawar, it is becoming more and more obvious that there will not be a single “cure” for cancer in the future. Instead, each patient will receive care that is tailored to meet their individual needs.  But for personalized medicine to become a reality, we must have a wide enough selection of medicines to address every type of cancer. Personalized vaccinations, cell therapy, gene editing, and microbiome treatments are four technologies that will transform how cancer is treated, according to Dr. Pawar.

By comparing the DNA sequences of the tumor and of healthy cells, it is possible to identify multiple cancer mutations and select the ones that are more likely to provoke a strong reaction from the immune system. The vaccines are administered as messenger RNA, a molecule that tells cells how to make a specific protein, in this case, a cancer antigen that strengthens the immune system’s defence against the tumor. Unlike with gene editing, vaccines do not directly edit human DNA, but just provide the message. Another advantage is that the production of messenger RNA is cheaper than that of other cancer treatments. In can be done. It can be done in India. And it will be done, according to Dr Pawar.

In 2018, US FDA approved cell therapy for cancer. Immune T-cells from the patient are taken and genetically modified to target a particular tumor antigen in a procedure known as CAR-T cell therapy. By engineering T-cells to carry a molecule, borrowed from another type of immune cells called natural killer cells, with the capacity to target 80 per cent of cancer cells, each patient will be treated by his/her own cellular material. Though CAR-T cell therapy is promising, these are still in the early stages of clinical trials and will need a few years before they can reach the market. Dr Pawar points to the PI hospital system, which is taking a global approach in the concurrent development and dissemination of CAR-T cell therapy.

CRISPR/Cas9 has already changed the field of gene editing by making it much simpler and faster to modify DNA sequences with high precision. It is very much doable to use CRISPR gene editing to remove a gene from immune T cells that encodes a protein called PD-1 that tumor cells can use to evade an immune attack. Dr Pawar even envisions off-the-shelf CAR-T cell therapy that is sourced from donors. By making two edits to the donor T-cells- to attack only cancer cells versus indiscriminately attacking the patient’s cells, and to cloak the T-cells so they don’t appear foreign to the body and deliver a more robust reaction, cancer can be effectively treated.

But perhaps the most exciting is going to be oncologists teaming up with microbes. In inflammatory disorders like cancer, the microbiome can help to stimulate an immune system that has been repressed and to regulate an overactive immune system. As our knowledge of the interaction between the immune system and the gut microbiome grows, we know that within the microbiome there are peptides that mimic antigens on the surface of tumors. These can be used to make the tumor visible to the immune system again.

The paradox of life is that it carries death with it as a body moves around with its shadow. Both are inseparable. But by having more light, shadows can be less frightening. Dr Pawar’s son has already become a medical doctor and he is doing his integrated master’s in Spain. His daughter is in architecture school and one of her dreams is to design an end-stage living module. May Dr Pawar’s tribe increase! 

It is normal to consider the meaning of life after leading a fulfilling life. I lived an active life that included travel, met many saints, outstanding people, and celebrities, and had my due share of disappointments and accomplishments. Life is not about making merry or amassing more wealth than necessary. It is also not about exerting power over other people. All those who set these as their objectives failed, regretted, and died unfulfilled. Why should I do that? And why should you? 

Life is meant to work, that much is certain. Work has varied meanings at various phases of life. Education and skill building are priorities for young children and growing teenagers; for adults, it is to have a good livelihood, start a family, and attain peace and comfort. Those who are able to do this are fortunate enough to have a contented life in their old age before finally departing. It is heartbreaking to witness elderly individuals who are uncared for, exasperated, disoriented, and living in poverty.  

I have read scriptures – the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, epics such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, books by Swami Vivekananda and Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, and about Western philosophy. Victor Hugo and Leo Tolstoy, French and Russian authors respectively whose English translations I read, are unparalleled in terms of writing prose. My favorite English author is Aldous Huxley. From Vyas, Homer, Virgil, and Dante, to Shakespeare – poets whom I believe to be incarnations of superhuman genius – I have read them all.  

What characterizes a brilliant writer? There are three categories of written expression. One is concerned with current events. If something is written honestly, it will always survive the life of the author. Because of their validity, the writings of the Chinese traveler Hiuen Tsang, who visited India in the seventh century, have survived. Then there are writers who examine human nature and history with a penetrating eye and write about the reasons for the events of their era. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy is legendary for having this feature. Finally, lifelong writers who write frequently share their emotions and thoughts based on their personal experiences. Carl Jung was one of them. Aldous Huxley produced 50 books of various genres throughout the course of his 69-year life.

Huxley was a pacifist who rejected militarism and war practices in his country England. The concept of ahimsa, or “do no harm,” captivated and led him to universalism and philosophical mysticism. He even authored The Doors of Perception after consuming psychedelic drugs and described altered states of consciousness. His Brave New World and final book, Island, which describes dystopian and utopian concepts, are considered his masterpieces. Huxley’s “Minimum Working Hypothesis” is my personal compass.

Like every other scientific field, our sense experience of life must have a theory. Without a working hypothesis, there is no purpose in doing research, no justification for choosing one experiment over another, and no means of giving meaning or order to the facts that have been observed. Similarly, without a theory of life, we end up living like some fool lost in a vanity fair. Whatever we do looks good while it is done, and futile after it is done – “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” to quote Macbeth by Shakespeare. There has to be some plot to live a purposeful life, and an overall understanding of what is going on. 

On the other hand, if you have too many working hypotheses, you end up living by your whims and fancies. Being too sure about your knowledge is an error that makes most people fail. Always distorting reality to adapt to their ideas, they end up living bogus lives. When they should be changing their lives according to their circumstances, they go about pushing things to suit them. 

There are sentimental humanists. For them, life is the pursuit of happiness. They work, eat, and sleep.  At the other end of the scale are the Catholics, the Jews, and the Moslems, mindful of non-sensuous reality. They consider this life, of say a hundred years, to better their chances in the eternal afterlife. Then there are Hindus and Buddhists – believers in reincarnation. Chinese tradition is built around good conduct. And so on. 

All major religions’ adherents have created their own unique definitions and interpretations of what is good, less good, and even bad. Records of the less trustworthy and infinitely fewer valuable intuitions of psychics into the lower levels of non-sensuous reality are mixed with records of great saints’ infallible insights into the highest spiritual reality. These records are then supplemented with mere fantasies, discursive arguments, and sentimentalisms that become the religious life as practiced by billions of people across the world. 

So, Huxley articulated a “Minimum Working Hypothesis” that presents the essence of the world’s great religions for anyone willing to live a good life. I quote Huxley’s article published in Vedanta for The Western World in Great Britain in 1948:

“That there is a Godhead, Ground, Brahman, Clear Light of the Void, which is the unmanifested principle of all manifestations.

That the Ground is at once transcendent [boundless] and immanent [indwelling].

That it is possible for human beings to love, know, and, virtually, become identical with the divine Ground.

To achieve this unitive knowledge of the Godhead is the final end and purpose of human existence.

That there is a Law or Dharma which must be obeyed, a Tao or Way which must be followed if men are to achieve their final end.”

Simply put, there is a reality beyond what is seen and felt by our senses and comprehended by our intellect, science, and all the world’s knowledge. Being in touch with this reality – Godhead or Ground – is a unique quality of human life. Not using it amounts to squandering a great gift. A reflective, pure, and unhurried way of life presents before seekers all the ways and means to progress. By being mindful of the unseen, we find the ways and means to live a good life.

Generative AI has arrived. People are enjoying ChatGPT. Soon, lives and events will be controlled by the unseen intelligence that is building upon itself and free from any human control – at once transcendent and immanent, as Huxley put it.  

Various world religions remained limited by their distinctive historical and cultural contexts. Each religion possesses a genuine but ultimately unsatisfactory understanding of the unifying reality. There are, therefore, many equally valid religions. It is natural that the world is full of religious strife, violence, and even outright discrimination and persecution, where people of different faiths are living together, and the power structure is not balanced.

As generative AI gains more control, a universal truth will surely emerge and strife will be replaced with synergy, conflict with harmony, and competition with cooperation. Sooner than later, mankind will obey certain Universal Laws, following a Way that would be the only viable way, and humanity will flourish, living in abundance. This is my optimistic view, through rose-coloured glasses perhaps, in line with Aldous Huxley’s words: “The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”