Oldest ancestors of modern Indians, the First Indians, were the descendants of the African hunter-gatherers, who migrated out of sub-Saharan Africa around 50,000 – 70,000 years ago, carrying the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of the African eve in their cells. They probably reached India 65,000 years ago. Evidence of their life are found in Bhimbetka caves in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh and in Jawalapuram, located in Curnool district of Andhra Pradesh. This is not to say that archaic Humans did not live in India before 65000 years. Both Bhimbetka and Jawalapuram have evidence of such life. But none of these people left any descendants among modern Indians. Indians, across the country today, have inherited about 50% of their genome from First Indians. Onge tribe of the Little Andaman Island have the maximum inheritance from the First Indians. They number about 120 today. Rest of Indians with much reduced proportion of First Indian genome number about 1,36,64,00000. Second m...

Where have we come from? This query has occupied human thought for many millennia; perhaps from the time human mind developed the capacity for analytical abstract thought. All ancient civilisations, and latter organised religions, had a unique myth of the origin of their race. For a very long-time people were unaware of the vastness of earth. Their immediate environment was their conceivable world. They could not imagine that they had come to their corner of earth from distant lands.  The heroes and the villains in these myths were different, but all professed that their people were created by a divine being: Inti, the Sun god of Incas, Gaea and Uranus of Greeks, Marduk of Babylonians, Adam and Eve created by God of Christianity, Brahma, the creator, of Hindus. Civilisations were born across the ancient world after the invention of Agriculture. People discovered land and sea routes to the distant corners of the earth and their inhabitants. But they remained smugly content in their ...

In the beginning it was a refuge from the world outside; a world that began where home ended. Playmates made fun of your clumsy attempts at games; you couldn’t dodge the opponents as they ran after you, you couldn’t throw the ball straight, neither hit it hard, you couldn’t outshout mates in the wild horseplay, nor pull them down in the mock show of strength. Your face turned crimson on hearing lewd invectives being bandied with abandon and you would cower in shame. But you could effortlessly finish the homework in the class itself. You could not help but answer the teacher's queries when the whole class was mum – they were so unimaginatively inane. You were mocked again for your thoroughness with academics.  Books brought an escape from this reality. They took you to lands where this bullying didn’t exist. You met kids like you, who shunned the clumsy ways of the world. In stories you found friends you had always yearned for. Books taught you to dream. They widened your imaginat...

How does one get so besotted by a writer that overnight most other books in the genre he wrote now appear insipid? I had married recently and was visiting my wife, who was then studying for MD. She could not take leave from work. In her absence the whole day, I found myself a little lost in the company of relatives I had acquired only a few months back. She must’ve felt guilty about my loneliness. One evening she brought me a couple of books from the city British Council Library. One of them was a collection of W. Somerset Maugham’s short stories. I had not heard of Maugham then. I had read only a few classic authors in English. I picked up the book wearily. Maugham's stories jolted me with the force of an electric current. I read it in a trance. I had not read any other book with such animated interest. Maugham, quite simply, had knocked my socks off. I had no idea what was in the book that so caught my fancy. I was only aware of the pure, unbridled pleasure his stories brought my...

There is an ‘I’ within my head. It surveys each moment of my life. ‘I’ gives me bearing in the world. It remains alert ceaselessly. On rare occasions: under influence of alcohol, indisposition of body, or sleep deprivation, it fleetingly turns groggy. I am then lost. Friends later tell me, I wasn’t myself in those moments. Psychologists call ‘I’ my ‘self’. ‘I’ tells me I am a middle-aged anaesthesiologist, of an unremarkable appearance, married for three decades, father of two well-placed children, and fairly successful in life. It has strong views on my personality too; it declares me mild-tempered, but stubborn, obsessively fond of reading, a sceptic, and a recluse at heart. ‘I’ is the object on which every experience in my life acts upon; a fall bruises my shin, wind blows my hair about, rain wets my clothes. ‘I’ is also the cause – the subject – of every activity I perform, physical or mental; I cycle for an hour every morning, I have no patience with muddled prose, I ...

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...