Convergent Lines

Once in a while, you read a book that you don’t want to end. Quite often, such grieving is reserved for beautifully crafted novels with intricate characters who linger in your imagination long after you turn the last page. Seldom does this happen for a non-fiction book, let alone one on a seemingly morbid topic. In this regard, “The Emperor of all Maladies”, by Siddhartha Mukherjee is truly an exception. A “biography of cancer”, a history of humankind’s tryst with this ancient disease, is as human as it is technical, as ornate with literary beauty as it is with scientific insight. As a cancer researcher myself, this book was an eye opener. It illuminated a gaping hole in my attempts to understand this disease—one that is epitomized by its history. Having read the book, now I find it frankly embarrassing that scientists like myself (and I know for a fact that this is true for a vast majority of my peers) are largely ignorant of the diverse and storied history of ca...

New year, new blog? Partially, yes. I started blogging in my early 20s and now several years later I find my perspectives have changed and seminal experiences since have shaped my worldview. A change in voice, texture and content was perhaps inevitable. For those who liked and followed my previous posts, there will be occasional creative pieces, but this re-imagination is a reflection of where my thoughts and creative energies are distributed at present. In my very first post, I had written about poetry and its power to engender a complex feeling or an unprecedented insight about life. Great art and great science both tend to reveal novel truths about our existence. Perhaps these two complementary forms can converge along the lines that adorn this page to deliver deeper insights to reality. 2019 is upon us and it is the time for new year resolutions. I have never been one to make up and adhere to these, but we can use this time to remind ourselves to be mindful of the littl...

Recently, I finished a 10-day Vipassana course, which is in short, an intense, immersive course in the ancient meditation practice that has supposedly been passed down from the Buddha himself. To appreciate how intense and immersive the 10-day retreat was, let me tell you that it involved giving up all the “distractions” of modern life including cell phones, reading and writing instruments and even all kinds of communication with fellow meditators. It aims to simulate a few days in absolute solitude, practicing meditation and spending all your waking minutes with your own thoughts and consciousness. This mental exploration was quite grueling and extremely difficult at times, but it also came with its share of revelations and realizations and finally, a sense of discovery into an omnipresent yet vast, unexplored realm of one’s own existence, the realm of the mind. One of the remarkable realizations for me was the level of learning I could attain while following a disciplined trai...