Thinking Out Loud...

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...