How Can We Matter

This is yet another episode of my health saga; the previous ones are: Surgery On My Second Heart!   dated June 09, 2023 The Sky Gets Dark, SLOWLY!  dated May 14, 2023 On Wed 14-06-2023 I suddenly got pain in the left side of my chest at around 11pm. I was coming out of the toilet to go to bed. I started rubbing the chest aggressively in a rotating motion and simultaneously woke up Vasantha, who was sleeping in the adjacent bed room. I couldn't decide whether I should go to the MSMC hospital immediately, and if so, how? Vasantha immediately called our ever-helpful neighbor Nikhil. In the meantime, recalling a social media post on Cough CPR I forced myself to cough vigorously several times.   Since the chest pain seems to have subsided, I decided not to rush to the hospital. Nikhil told Vasantha to call him anytime if I got chest pain again and had to be rushed to the hospital. However, I wanted to know where exactly I should go to in the Narayana Health City, since i...

A woman in USA sued her parents for giving birth to her " without her permission! " They are charged with the serious crime that they contributed to conceiving her and giving birth to her, without getting her consent to "being here! " Image Courtesy: YouTube TikToker Sued Parents for Being Born - and Won? They didn’t try to contact her in any way before she was born to see if she actually wanted to be here! What a horrendous thing to do! Poor thing. She was completely unaware that she was going to have to face in her life journey the arduous task of having to grow up, go to school and then to university, get a job to support herself, find a partner of her liking, get married, and... ! In the light of her valuable experiences gained from the lessons of her life so far, she has now advised all the expecting mothers, who have not yet given birth, to hire a psychic medium and ask "if they actually want to be here." Aapne mujhe paida kyu kiya? According to my ...

We all know that no human is born with two hearts! So, where is the question of a second heart? We also know that our heart pumps blood to take it to all parts of our body, right? The point is that our body has a second blood pump, which is our calf muscles! The calf muscle is often considered the second heart because it plays a significant role within the circulatory system that is similar to the heart.  Calf blood circulation diagram (veinatlanta.com) The heart pumps oxygen-rich blood through arteries to reach every part of the body, providing oxygen and nourishment. The calf muscle pumps the oxygen-depleted blood back through the veins to reach the heart. Once we learn how the calf muscle assists the heart in circulating blood throughout our body, we’ll understand why keeping our calves strong is just as important as protecting our heart through good nutrition, exercise, and other healthy lifestyle choices. What happened to my legs and why an urgent surgery is required is explai...

Let me start with a simple pragmatic question - when do we cease to exist? The simple answer is, we cease to exist with our death. But, hang on, it is not that simple! I am not talking about the several theories and beliefs about whether death is the end of life. This is more about an alternative experience that the new artificial-intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, provides. Copyright Stock image Most of us are part of some social media groups like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, etc. These groups have helped us establish contacts with our long-lost school, college, and office mates. Though most members just forward texts, pictures, video messages, many are also active members commenting on others' posts, enriching the discussion...  But often, the members don't meet each other physically because the people are spread across different towns, cities, or even countries. This means we are basically interacting with our friends online using our devices, rarely meeting them in person....

In his book released in 2020 with the above title, on the pitfalls of ageing, Chinese author Zhou Daxin - the Mao Dun Literary Prize winner - provides a sensitive exploration of old age and the complex, hidden emotional worlds of the elderly.   Some Valuable Words of Wisdom from Daxin’s Latest Novel . He warns that, once you move to the other side of 60, the sky gets darker, and the light begins to wane until, one day, you are back to lying in bed like the baby you were born as. In the book he writes, …Many elderlies speak as though they know everything, but of old age they are in fact as ignorant as children. Many elderly people are in fact completely unprepared for what they are to face when it comes to getting old and the road that lies ahead of them.  My dream of leading a medicine-free life came crashing down with a silent thud when it stopped me dead on my track the other day during my regular evening walk. Suddenly, without any warning sign, there was excruciating ...

Deep fake images, videos, and news are creating zero-trust societies, using the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools. Today, we just can't distinguish between true and false news. Consequently, we can't take trust for granted, we can't trust anyone, forcing us to assume that everyone and everything on the Internet is out to get us! AI-generated image (Eliot Higgins/Twitter)   Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative group Bellingcat , used an AI tool called Midjourney to imagine in pictures what the former president might look like being arrested. These pictures have been viewed millions of times. View this report .  On top of it, a new study by three MIT scholars has found that falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude. From communication and transport to healthcare and connectivity to blockchain and gene-editing t...

I am presently attending an online program of 40 days entitled Atma Chalisa Parayanam , conducted by Shri Vikas Varma. It is a spiritual practice for self-realization - a way of knowing ourselves and our life in a much better manner. Presently it is half way through and we, the program participants, are required to share our experiences in the group.  The learning process of this program involves three basic steps - Sravana, Manana and Nididhyāsana . Sravana is listening to what the teacher says very carefully. Manana is reflecting on what we heard in the class by trying to understand not only the superficial meaning but also the deeper meaning by reading in between the lines. Nididhyāsana is an extensive understanding of what we heard and reflected, probably by applying them in our life to reinforce the ideas and concepts and digesting them thoroughly. The final phase of this spiritual education, namely  Sakshatkara   (experiencing or realization) is when the contemplate...