Road to Self-Awareness   I read Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene about two decades ago. Fiction was my staple reading then. I had come to acknowledge vagaries of fate – unfathomable misery of many and unbridled joys of some, through fiction. - John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Samuel Butler’s The Way Of All Flesh, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Sharat Chandra Chatterjee’s Shrikant, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, were some of the literary masterpieces that chronicled life in face of a whimsical fate.   But acceptance of chance in human condition gave birth to many queries. It appeared that being human was not just possessing an upright posture, a reasoning mind, ability of language, culture, and social behaviour. These made us all similar. What made us different? Why everyone behaves in a unique fashion? Why are we here? Our existence must justify our fickle fates. Seeds of doubts had been sown but answers were not in sight. ...

I have had holidays that were relaxing but the holidays were not relaxed. I plan each vacation meticulously and squeeze as many   experience in a day as appear feasible. I have stayed at some exotic locales in these vacations: in a sprawling house on a hill overlooking the cerulean Mediterranean, in a house, every window of which opened to mesmerizing views of Hauraki gulf on   Waiheke Island, in an apartment that faced Pacific in Wellington. But I did not sit amid this surreal scenery, unhurriedly drinking its beauty. I would leave soon after breakfast chasing my itinerary and drive back in the late   evening; to begin another schedule of touring the next day. I know people who go on holidays only to relax. They drive to the destination in a hired cab, stay put in the place for weeks, then hire another cab on return. I envy their poise, their equanimity, and their single-minded pursuit of a goal. But I am unable to follow their example. Perhaps, it is a restless natu...