MASOOMA SAKRIWALA My uncle always tells me that I have ‘very different’ feet. Not the beautiful, pretty and fragile kind of different, but the crooked, ugly and disfigured kind. He tells me that if I don’t do anything about this, people would start doubting my beauty after looking at my feet. And, every time he […]
SANDIP ZINE We are all up against a dangerous wall today. The coronavirus [Covid-19] storm has changed everyone’s life across the globe, so much so the ‘world’ that we all knew till the other day, will not be the same again. It will take a long time for the ‘now normal’ to return to its […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN Meat, fish and fowl are food for a vast majority of Homo sapiens. They are also embellishments on the table. They trace their origins back upstream to poultry farms, pig-pens, marine and freshwater ecosystems and cattle-sheds. They are also well-entrenched components of the primary [animal husbandry and fishing] and secondary [food processing] sectors […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN She died fighting, gasping for breath, in front of my eyes, a little after midnight on January 10, 2020. A dark night in the northern hemisphere, literally for everyone, and metaphorically for me. In fact, the darkest my life has ever seen or will see. Varshita died fighting, yes. But, that is how […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN If charity begins at home, sustainability begins with Self. This, in essence, crystallises the tangibly wonderful analogy between holistic individual human development and sustainable progress of nations, or humanity as a whole. Holistic human individual development entails the three chakra synthesis — physical, mental-emotional-psychological, and the spiritual — or, body, mind and soul. This […]
GAYATRI PAGDI An acquaintance was being described, the other day, as follows. “His values are too rigidly in place. The man’s so moral; he’s almost holy!” This wasn’t exactly a compliment, of course. It’s more of a censure, but it set us thinking. How different are morality and holiness in their characteristics? Could an essentially […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN Science has been characterised by paradigm shifts – some welcome, some questionable, yet all of them contributing to knowledge, more knowledge and expanded knowledge; or, learning, re-learning and unlearning. From being one with Nature, or spirituality at its best, we have toggled one way to dominating Nature — the mechanistic view — and, […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN Professor Giuseppe Genon. Politecnico di Torino. Turin, Italy. I remember having received an E-mail from him in 2012. I also recall not having acknowledged it. Of course, I did not know him at that time. I met him when he visited the Norwegian University of Science and Technology [NTNU], in Trondheim, where I […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN While preparing my presentation slides for lectures I had to give in a thermodynamics class at the University in Sweden, where I currently work, I tended to get lost [or, rather find myself] in the realm of metaphysics and philosophy. This was a subject, which, to me, as a budding engineering student in India, in the […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN My wife contracted breast cancer. She went through a tough time emotionally, physically and psychologically. She is slowly on the mend now. And, I know that I need to be strong in all respects to hasten the healing, to expedite her regaining of strength. I wish to be a good husband to her, […]