Human being is the only animal that thinks about future. Some other animals too, appear to care for the time ahead. Squirrels store food before winter, rats dig burrows for cold season. But these are instinctive behaviours triggered by the changing hours of daylight or temperature as seasons change. No animal looks at its dying progeny and sees a bleak future for itself. No animal cares for old members of the pack because such practice will ensure its own survival in dotage. This unique endowment of human mind, capacity to run ahead of time, is both a blessing and a curse. We plan and try to ensure a comfortable future – a major share of our savings goes in this kitty. But this singular capacity of the mind is also responsible for much human suffering. We continuously speculate on the time to come. And we ceaselessly fret and fear a future that forebodes ill. I have practiced medicine for three decades. In medical school we were taught that the cornerstone of the management of a ...

  Time is ubiquitous, felt by all, yet unfathomably mysterious. In an earlier post I wrote of its enigmatic nature. Not only its nature, even its scale is beyond the grasp of human mind.  Smallest quantity of time measurable theoretically is 10 –43 seond, i.e., one part of a second divided into 10 43 parts (ten followed by 42 zeroes). This scale does not pertain only to the realm of theoretical physics. Our universe changed immensely within these time intervals at its inception. 10 –32 second after Big Bang, universe had increased by a factor of 10 78 . This increase in volume is like the expansion of half a molecule of DNA into a space of 10.6 light years. One light year is the distance light travels in a year, which is 9 trillion kilometres. That is a 9 with 12 zeroes behind it. At the other end of its scale time is equally baffling. Life on earth began about 3.8 billion years ago. For us, billion is just a figure, one followed by nine zeroes. To picture the vastness bi...

Time is inevitable. It is the essence without which reality has no meaning. It is inseparably woven in the fabric of universe, chronicling its history every moment: inflation of universe since beginning, formation of galaxies from cosmic dust, creation of elements in the nuclear furnace of stars, origin of organic life from these elements on a miniscule planet, evolution of complex organisms which ruminate on the nature of the phenomenon of time. Movement of cosmic bodies in our vicinity give us the measure of time: rotation of Earth on its axis, its revolution around Sun, Moon’s revolution around earth. We are born with a biological clock which is aligned to this astronomical clock. It regulates physiological processes and behavioural patterns. Though these two clocks are synchronized, biological clock keeps ticking independently of the external clock. This explains the jet-lag after a long intercontinental flight across many longitudes. Plants and animals too, it would seem, have...

I must assure you, before you begin, that what follows is not an exegesis on consciousness – a task for which I’m abysmally ill-equipped. I only want to draw your attention to a gripping story I read this month. If prelude to my notes on the book seem like a tail that’s wagging the dog, blame is mine, novice in this art as I am.   One overarching feature of our species is consciousness. If asked to define it, most of us will flounder. But we know instinctively what is being conscious. We know consciousness is not merely ‘not being unconscious’. Every living organism is conscious in this sense; even single-celled amoebae respond to external stimulus in some way. Consciousness is being able to think of self as an aware, living entity; the ‘I’ surveying the world. It is the ability to form an opinion on the world and self. It is possessing a theory of mind, which enables us to impute reason as to why people behave in a fashion. It is the capacity to confabulate in our mind’s eye, ...

  Where Have We Come From? History of the species is written on the genes of its each individual. Genome is a palimpsest. Eons scribble on it – in a simple language comprising four alphabets and twenty odd, three-lettered words – as the organism evolves over geological ages.   Life originated on earth nearly three thousand five hundred million years ago. Humans have been around for about 0.4 million years. Thus, a major portion of the book of our genome was written when we were not humans; if the book had one page for each million years, human story would occupy less than half a page in the three thousand five-hundred-page book.   Modern humans originated in Africa. Story of our African parentage is indelibly etched in each cell of our body, numbering trillions. These etchings tell us a singularly fascinating tale of our ancestors as they travelled out of Africa and established home in the wider world. They were then, hunter-gatherers. Civilisations were born many...

Ibtida-The Prelude     Station was situated amidst paddy fields which stretched till horizon in all directions. We arrived here in the month of May. Sun baked the plains of Punjab with a ruthless malice. Sowing of paddy had begun and fields lay inundated with water the whole day. An unbearable hot-vapour seemed to rise from the ground relentlessly. Stifling heat was not the only stuff fields generated. Snakes abandoned the watery graves and took shelter in the sprawling grounds surrounding officers’ bungalows. Archana was mortally scared to move into the house we were allotted. A narrow road and a barbed-wire fence separated it from the fields. I had to resort to minor trickeries, embarrassing all the same, to claim a first-floor flat.   Civilian neighbourhood abutting the station was an urbanised village. It had two central schools; both appeared the refuge of rowdies. On my first day at hospital, a boy seemingly in late teens but studying in ninth, was brought...