How Can We Matter

On this New Year's eve, Let's vow to heal the world, To make it better for our children, And our children's children, For, children are our future, and the planet's.

This may look like a Grade 10 student's exercise: In the picture, given Column A, give its meaning in Column B, and state in a single word, the quality (set of attributes, behaviors) of being Column A.

I realize that, at age 73, I have already become outdated and obsolete, especially if I were to have a conversation with my grandchildren of 18, 9, and 7 years!

Greetings sans ( without in French) contact is the most desirable method in this pandemic era. New forms of non-contact greetings are evolving in social circles. However, India's ageless ' namaste ' is the best contactless greeting ever invented by the mankind!

Health is commonly defined as the state of being free from illness or injury. However, listen to Dr B M Hegde's TEDx talk on what health really is!

Watch a superlative performance by a 9-year old boy from Himachal Pradesh in front of superstar Amitabh Bachchan!

Sometimes when I look up a particular address in Google Map, like that of a house, restaurant, shop, etc. I get that strange and creepy feeling when Google tells me about that place: 'You visited in (Month or Day)'! Especially when the visit was years ago and you have completely forgotten about it.

For those in the evenings of life, a 4-year period is a long duration with unhurried and slow changes.  But for teens, it is a period of accelerated learning on how to navigate 'change' in a fast paced world.

India's CEO, Narendra Modi, has become a super CEO among the World leaders with his demonstrated ability of successfully steering a large nation in these challenging times. 

As Fintech (financial technology) becomes more sophisticated with advances in IT, so do the related financial crimes and criminals. With huge increase in digital adoption, many consumers who lack the knowledge or experience in using Fintech based apps and solutions, which provide access to risky and complex financial products, are getting cheated.

The common man is amused to see the Opposition leaders publicly exhibiting their ignorance of what a 'metaphor' (figure of speech) is, by taking in its literal sense what Kangana stated metaphorically about 'India getting its “real” independence' in 2014 after the BJP and Narendra Modi came to power!

Good to see that, in order to support the rising trend of work-from-home culture all over the world, Portugal has taken the lead in revising the labor laws as applicable to the digital workers!

People in my age group need to know these five technical tasks to be completed before we depart from this life:

That is the type of Vision our country should have - for year 2070!

With the change of the company's name to Meta, several things are going to happen to Facebook and other products. American science fiction writer Neal Stephenson introduced the term metaverse in his science fiction novel Snow Crash, published in 1992. 

This morning I received a set of questions from my 9-year old granddaughter from Singapore, studying in Grade 3. She is interviewing her grandfather as part of her teaching assignment on the topic of ' Young Entrepreneurs '. 

Can we find the truth behind any happening today? Political and commercial pressures have led todays' journalists to reconsider the value and meaning of objectivity. Is there an objective truth? 

"That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Mark Zuckerberg changes Facebook’s parent company name to Meta. Will this change in name have any impact on the scandal-plagued social networking platform? And on the workings of other products such as WhatsApp and Instagram?   He says, "Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can't possibly represent everything that we're doing today, let alone in the future". Good luck and best wishes Mark. We are looking forward to a complete revamp of the products in the near future.  

Owner vs Tenant Mindset Let me turn this question around and make the most outrageous claim that more than 99% of us are living in rented houses! And let me explain what I mean by this.

Poor Aryan Khan caught in Narco-terrorism! Just like other forms of terrorism, I am convinced that this case has nothing to do with a religion (Islam) or a section of the society (Bollywood).

Practise Dying! Yuck! What an eerie, strange, and frightening topic! Well, read on all of you, especially my senior comrades.

Yesterday I was blessed to receive an autographed copy of Professor Visvanatha Krishnamurthy's most recent book ' A Primer of Spirituality '. This was when I took my IIT Madras colleague, Prof K V Shantha Vasudevan, Retd Mathematics Professor of Miranda House University College for Women, Delhi to his house.

What happens when two enormously talented people and popular figures in their completely disparate fields, the elder statesman 23 years older than his young interviewer, converse with each other?

Two current events: End of Afghan war / Start of Taliban rule and Conference on Dismantling Global Hindutva

As the United States commemorate the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and pay respects to the memory of nearly 3,000 people killed that day, they are also celebrating the end of the nearly two-decade-long US war in Afghanistan. Though Taliban and Al-Qaeda are two sides of the same terrorist coin, it is quite amusing to see the United States and the United Nations putting together their intellectual prowess to make a rather fine distinction between the two terrorist groups and help Taliban form a legitimate government in Afghanistan. Taliban has now announced a temporary cabinet, with many members falling on the UN designated terror list. This will put the American president and his senior colleagues in the most ignominious position of having to rub diplomatic shoulders with their counterparts in the Afghan government. It is as if the world is back to square one after 20 years!! I shudder to think of that horrendous day when I happened to be in Fort Collins, ...

My dear grandson - you have turned eighteen! Today is the first day of a new chapter in your life. You only have one more year as a teenager, when your age number ends with ' teen'.  You have turned 18 but always remember that your parents will never stop nagging and telling you what to do!

The continuously evolving international political landscape is presenting India with numerous challenges. There is no time to look back and criticize the US or its NATO allies in what they did or did not do.

It is a major milestone in the life of our family. Our minor grandson, just a month shy of his eighteenth birthday, took wings and flew away to the United States from Dubai for his college studies.

In any society there are timeless customs such as respect for the elders and teachers. Religion serves as a strong influence on our traditions and customs. 

Today, the Supreme Court is to hear several pleas for probe into Pegasus row. Here is may take on the subject.

In 1943, Ayn Rand in her philosophical work ' The Fountainhead ' postulated:  "The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."  

History Professor Yuval Noah Harari in his epoch making book “ Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind ” states that the truly unique trait of humans is our ability to create and believe in myth, fiction, and stories.

Thought of sharing my experience of a cataract surgery that my wife Vasantha had recently.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia has laid out a new grand vision to usher in dramatic changes in the education system of the nation by introducing teaching of Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata in his country's school curriculum. https://youtu.be/-VWH-ocvHAc As part of the Vision 2030 of the Saudi Crown Prince, other significant elements of Indian culture like Yoga and Ayurveda will also form part of the daily life of its citizens, according to media reports. Other major reforms that the Prince has already introduced include: officially allowing women to drive cars officially approving the teaching of Yoga as a sports activity practicing naturopathy as a holistic approach to health and well-being stopping of funding mosques in foreign countries restricting volume of loudspeakers at mosques and using it only for call to prayer and not for broadcasting sermons More than six years back, Khalaf Al-Harbi, a liberal columnist and a thinker from Saudi Arabia, has descr...

New York Times is openly and unashamedly, without any guilt or embarrassment, admitting that it is indeed misusing its talents and sacrificing its self-respect for the sake of selfish financial gains, befitting the portmanteau term of press and prostitute - Presstitute .

The injection that one gets on the first day of existence to prove that we are now an official entity by assigning a unique ID. It was 4 years ago that I wrote about implanting a microchip in newborns just under the skin. 

Referring to one of the greatest philosophical debate of ancient India between the young Shankaracharya and the elderly Mandana Misra , PM Modi talks about the importance of dialogue, without anger and conflict, for the resolution of today’s problems.

Mrs. Singh is a 63-year-old, who doesn’t speak English and doesn’t own a smartphone, and is a line worker handling chicken parts at one of the meat-packing plants in USA. She had tested positive for the coronavirus, but she continues to go for work, where she might spread the infection to others.

The words by a white American mother on Indian parenting set me thinking... What the American mother described as special qualities she observed in the children of Indian descent like being humble, intelligent, ambitious, focused, ... are fundamental characteristics of the Indian culture. 

Thanks a million Dubai for the timely gesture! Emirates Airline has setup a humanitarian air-bridge to transport urgent Covid-19 relief items to nine destinations in India. 

If you believe in reincarnation or past life you know that your soul is immortal and that the only thing that is perishable is your body! Naturally, you might be curious to know who you might have been in the past lives. 

It is indeed scary to hear various types of horror stories in connection with the second wave of COVID19 pandemic sweeping the country. We read about people desperately running from pillar to post in search of hospitals equipped with oxygen cylinders and ventilators. The purpose of this post is to make people aware that they can use a simple technique to increase their oxygen saturation levels while at home.  

What would you call this gentleman? Ananias ! In Shashi Tharoor style, if you want to call someone a teller of untruths, but would like to do so with a bit more emphasis and flair, than may be found in the word liar, then this is the word you are looking for - Ananias !

Eliminating brokers, intermediaries, touts, and middlemen from many of the services offered by the Government to the public has been the hallmark of this Administration, ever since Modi came to power. We have middlemen of various types operating in the country. 

If you can resonate with terms like blackhole, universe, multiverse, white-hole, final theory of everything, string theory, the mind of God, etc. then this video by Prof Michio Kaku on The Future of Humanity is for you. 

Rephrasing Delhi court's intriguing question, "If I approach a dacoit for temple donation, how do you say I'm privy to dacoity?", during Disha Ravi's bail hearing, here is a question that begs an answer: "If I approach a Khalistani terrorist for supporting farmers' agitation, how do you say I'm privy to terrorism against the country's elected government and the people of India?"

POCSO stands for Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. A learned judge, Justice Pushpa Ganediwala, of the Bombay HC has pontificated that groping a minor’s breast without “skin-to-skin contact” does not constitute as sexual assault under POCSO! 

Farmers' protest in India vs Trump supporters' protest in USA! 

Leonhard Euler, one of the most ingenious mathematicians of the 18th century came up with a puzzle in 1782 which an Indian mathematician solved 177 years later in 1959! The puzzle goes like this: