Thinking Out Loud...

The more I know about things, the more illiterate I feel. You know the feeling…that there’s so much to know about in this world, that you feel one lifetime is inadequate. I guess everyone has felt this at some point in their life. Physics, chemistry, biology, politics, geography, you name it, the subjects are endless. There’s so much of knowledge in this world that it makes me wonder if it’s ever possible to know everything about everything? And the funny part is, as a child, I felt school teaches us everything…naivety, thy name is childhood! Age teaches us how clueless we really are… Whenever I read something about physics, I wish I had taken it up as a vocation…then I go and read something else and it makes me want to be in that profession…Till now I have wanted to be a doctor, physicist, philosopher, writer, song writer, DJ, musician, chef, veterinarian, biologist, environmental engineer, journalist, dog psychologist, zoo keeper, teacher (of what I don’t know), an honest politic...

I remember as a child, getting this pamphlet at our home once, urging people to buy swadeshi stuff. I laughed at the prospect, dismissing swadeshi stuff as substandard…Imported was always better. I also remember the time when Chinese goods started to trickle into the Indian market…it started with Chinese made Diwali decorations…strands of musical lights that we proudly displayed at our home…then came the flood of Chinese toys, furniture… and now almost every thing you wear, use or eat is made in China. It’s true that the world has shifted its polluting manufacturing industry to China , which is good for the rest of us. But is it really? Not only the job losses, but also the toxic imports from China are becoming lethal in some cases. The toy recall, then the pet food recall, the baby food recall…you name it, and you will see a China link…At least the United States has a way to monitor and recall the products deemed harmful for their people, but I wonder if any body really cares in Indi...

I have been reading Jared Diamond’s book ‘Collapse’ for quite some time now. There are a few books that you breeze through and there are some that take for ever. Collapse took a while to get through, but I must say it has left an imprint on my mind. The author of the Pulitzer Prize winner ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ presents a theory backed by years of research on ‘how societies choose to fail or succeed’. Starting with the inconspicuous Easter Islands to bigger countries like Greenland and China , he takes the readers through a tour of civilizations and how its people made choices and how those choices shaped their fate. It’s amazing to read that the ancient world had huge cities with millions of people living together for hundreds and thousands of years. And it’s scary to read how communal mentality or irrational practices cost them their downfall. The book touches on various sensitive issues like population control, environmental damage, free trade, religious practices, climate ...

There are a few songs that seep deeper into your soul and make your heart sing…Adele does that for me. The British singer with two Grammy’s to her credit has such an amazing voice that it tugs at my heart strings. There’s a magic in her voice that makes every song of her's special to listen to. Chasing Pavements is one of her better known songs but I adore all of her songs. Here’s a link to one of Adele’s number 'Right as rain'…check out her live performances/unplugged versions on Youtube as well…they are awesome! Adele rocks…or rather Adele makes my heart sing!

Original posting date: July 15, 2009 Going home is a highpoint for me. The moment the airplane lands at Mumbai airport, the stench in the air declares… “Welcome home!” I must say, it’s the sweetest smell for me, especially when I visit home like once in two years. The moment I leave the quiet enclosure of the aircraft, it seems like I am being sucked into a parallel universe…the sound, the smell, the hubbub of life and people is just overwhelming. My brain just explodes, trying to keep up with and comprehend the shock of stepping into a world of intense activity. Living in the US robs you of all the stimuli that life in India comes with. I cannot even begin to narrate what a regular day in India may come with. The ‘morning raagas’ consist of shrieks and shouts of children going to school; the vegetable vendors shouting on the top of their voices, trying to get a good start to a business day; the milkman delivering the milk so fast that you wonder how many houses he serves ...

--> Original posting date: July 10, 2009 I have been debating whether to write about my dog in a blog. I know I will go overboard when I write about her, its difficult not to. Every dog owner feels that their dog is the most intelligent, most beautiful creature that was ever born. So do I! I know I have to write about her, because I want to do this for myself. I cannot stop talking about her once I get started…some people have already had a first hand experience with this…I usually recount every little trick that she has ever performed and I don’t stop until I go through her eating habits, bathing habits, human habits, her doctor visits, her blood line, her friends… I guess you get the point. But I feel there’s no better way than to write this down so that not only my friends but I get a chuckle out of it every time I read it. I recently got a big scare about her health and I cannot describe how heartbreaking and helpless it feels when someone you love so dearly is i...

Original date of posting: July 6, 2009. This came up in a conversation yesterday…Is it possible to measure the capacity of the human brain? To be precise, can we know how many KB, MB, GB, or TB (terabytes) of memory we can store in our brain? The human brain can be compared to a computer, I feel. We have the working memory, i.e., the random access memory (RAM), that has the information to control the basic body functions, i.e., breathing, digestion, blood circulation, hormone production, cell multiplication, etc, so our conscious brain does not have to work overtime to remember to breathe every time. Maybe our DNA is also a part of the RAM since it contains our genetic information, and the conscious brain is the hard disk, where we store the information we acquire, from our first ABCs and spellings to grocery lists, thesis reports, and current affairs. Is there a limit to how much information we can store? Is it the case that when we exceed the limited quota, we tend to l...

Original posting date: June 30, 2009 A freaky thing has been happening to me lately…as my husband says, “it seems like every new person you meet is connected to you”. I end up invariably finding someone in common with random people these days. This has been happening since I moved here to the States five years ago. Back home, I never really cared who was related to whom or who we knew in common. My parents on the other hand found it as a great conversation piece when someone new came over…try to find out relatives and friends in common…and I couldn’t even keep a track of who’s husband’s aunt’s sister-in-law’s daughter they were talking about!! There’s a theory to explain this phenomenon and it’s called ‘six degrees of separation’. The theory is that everybody in the world is connected to every other person through five other people (at the max.) in common, i.e. six links…Hence the six degrees of separation! Here’s the Wikipedia page if you want to learn more http://en.wiki...

Original posting date: June 25, 2009 Have you ever wondered why we humans have to buy land? We should get it as a birthright by virtue of being born on this earth, I say! I haven’t seen a deer paying up for a piece of land for grazing…doesn’t make sense, right? I know market economics are very complex and land regulation is very important…but, I am sure somebody has worked out the habitable land area to population ratio for our planet. I think this exercise might give us a good idea of the optimum human population that the Earth can support based on available land, so that we don’t have to go apartment hunting on Mars! We do have to make provisions for uninhabitable places, like extreme climatic zones (the north and south poles for example), extreme terrain, places of great biological importance (like rainforests and several critical ecosystems), so that we leave some land for our fellow species…and we also have to account for transportation, public spaces, agricultur...

Original posting date: June 19, 2007 I wonder where we humans as a race are heading. We have the largest brain size to body ratio of all living organisms in the world. We have managed to conquer and adapt to extreme environmental conditions with our technology. We understand the consequences of our actions on other living organisms and are trying to combat the negative effects. We have developed complex languages, writing systems, social systems; our research in the medical field has enabled us to stall death and prolong life to never before imagined life spans; with our explorations into space we are trying to uncover the mysteries of the universe and at the same time reach out to distant life forms…if they exist. And a few years down the line, we might be able to permanently eliminate death with cloning and genetic engineering… We have evolved into the perfect machine…nature’s greatest creation! You can almost say the most complex and most intelligent creature nature has ever ...

Original posting date: June 16, 2009 This article is not going to end in… “So this is who God really is.” Let me state this out right at the beginning. This is not a scientific or religious exploration of the biggest mystery of life…nor am I an expert in the psychological, spiritual, or physical fields. I am just another human being, making an attempt to question my purpose on this earth. I am not a very religious person, but I am spiritual. I recently got to see the PBS documentary ‘The Elegant Universe’. I had always harbored an interest in the philosophy of life…Although my understanding is limited to - 'God' not necessarily as a person, but as an energy that controls our lives, and this universe as the cradle of everything we consider “life”. The String theory blew all my prior concepts away. It opened my eyes to the idea of parallel universes, 11 dimensions, and energy strings as the control system of everything in this universe. I won’t say I understood everythin...

Original posting date: February 2007 Every day is a new day of discovery, discovery about myself, about this world, about people, about life, about the truth.... Truth eh? Does that really exist? Things true for me may not be for someone else. My reality is my own; nobody else perceives it as I do. I am what I see myself to be ...I dare to dream, I am confident and friendly, love adventure and nature, love to discover new things, love creativity, art, innovation, people, and love animals. For someone else though I might come off as shy or outgoing, arrogant or modest, indifferent or friendly and loving....my image relies on the reality of the person who is judging me... "I am what I see myself to be"...is that the reality though? ‘Who am I?' is the question I have been asking myself for quite some time now. Will I ever find out? I get so tied up in everyday mundane things like appearance, beauty, relationships, work, ego...that I forget to nurture myself, celeb...

Original posting date: April 22, 2007 The clock keeps ticking relentlessly. A second, a minute, an hour… days become months, and years pass by. It feels like yesterday, I was a student... Cincinnati , graduate school, assignments, Indian festivals, game nights, job… but thinking about it now, a year has passed by since I finished school. I hated every moment of graduate school, but now it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside…if it was not for Cincinnati …I wonder how I would have met my wonderful hubby. I remember the days I spent crying, missing home…and the other days when work and studies took over and I forgot every worry. It feels like yesterday, when I decided to come to the US for higher studies. In the excitement, I did not care to think twice about leaving so many people and so many relations behind. I did not think about what life would be without all those people. I remember when I waved goodbye to Mom and Dad at Mumbai airport…I did not look back because...