Sreehari was a friend of mine from high school. He was in fact, very good at studies. But he seemed to lack…..well- something. He had some favourite clothes that he wore repeatedly. He always ordered urud vada and coffee whenever we went out for a break. One thing he was really interested in was becoming […]
The terrifying Ascendance of Cancer
I had a grand aunt, an unmarried lady. She was an amazingly healthy old woman. At the age of fifty, she had an ultrasound of the neck done, as part of a work up for a sore throat. The throat cleared after a few days. It was some minor infection. But the ultrasound scan picked […]
The Pursuit of Happiness- Why is it like running on a treadmill.
Sunny was a classmate from school. He had two passions- travelling and vehicles. He gazed at cars and sleek bicycles. He trekked to the local parks and boarded buses to attend science exhibitions in schools miles way, and I always declined his invitations. He had two pet grouses, a principal source of dissatisfaction in his […]
The importance of knowing what we don’t know
We speak of the hegemony of the west. After the British left us, there is the cultural tsunami that cannot be eradicated. We wear western clothes. We drive modern vehicles that are the cultural relic of a process that started with the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, James Watt and Nicolai Tesla. We talk […]
What we learn- and teach
When I moved my razor blade across the expanse above my upper lip today morning, my mind flew, as minds occasionally do, to a time when this procedure was not needed. I used to apply an oil to make my moustache grow. That was the time I became a voluntary prisoner in a concentration camp- […]