We live in an age of dwindling attention spans. The rise of Instagram and the clickbaity nature of the links that we encounter each day is proof of this. The advice given to every aspiring writer is to catch the readers attention before they wander away and to cleverly deploy images to mold their opinions. … Continue reading Beyond the Lamp: Florence Nightingale’s Statistical Legacy
Lepidopterology. What a beautiful word. In case you don't know, it refers to the study of butterflies. Earlier today, I chanced upon the philosopher Nigel Warburton’s piece on the aesthetic case for butterfly preservation – a quirky short piece that got me thinking of the most famous lepidopterologist of all time – Nabokov. I began … Continue reading Butterfly connections
Over the past decade, I’ve managed to read 80-100 books every year. Being someone who always felt that reading was just an interesting way of wasting time, I never felt the pull to write, share, discuss, explain or debate the content that I came across. During the pandemic, I discovered the geeky world of digital … Continue reading One Year of Blogging
2023 New Year’s Eve began with me rushing my little one to the Emergency department after she was scratched by a stray cat at home. Snowy, the culprit, has been a regular at our home in Kozhikode since the pandemic and has been very pally with my girls. I’ve never been fond of cats. For … Continue reading Feline Encounters of 2023
I started collecting comics sometime in 2018, got slightly serious in 2019 and then got stonewalled by the pandemic. Thankfully, in 2023, I managed to be more disciplined. (The plan is to begin a lending library dedicated to comics. So if you’re in Delhi and interested in exploring comics and graphic novels , do get … Continue reading Best Comics of 2023
Some of the best Non-Fiction (in no particular order) I read this year: The Moral Case of Fossil Fuels (blogged earlier) A Conflict of Visions- Thomas Sowell (blogged earlier) The Untethered Soul - Michael Singer. I've read a lot of books on zen/spirituality/meditation/CBT. But Singer's book still made me nod my head in agreement. The … Continue reading Best Non Fiction of 2023
I haven’t been reading much fiction since the pandemic and this is something that I should remedy in 2024. Most of what I picked this year was good. The ones that stood out for me (in no particular order): Age of Vice by - Deepti Kapur (blogged earlier) I'm a Fan - Sheena Patel (blogged … Continue reading Best fiction books of 2023
During the Peloponnesian War, the strategy adopted by Pericles was to barricade the city of Athens and the route to the port of Piraeus behind walls. The belief was that while the Spartans would ravage the hinterland, the Athenians would win the war from the sea. (Piraeus is today the Shipping capital of the world … Continue reading Diogenes the Cynic
During this era Singapore Airlines, a government company, ran a centerfold advertisement that featured an Asian woman of somewhat vague ethnicity. She could have been Chinese, Indian, or Malay. She stood in a misty, impressionistic setting, looking out at the reader demurely, holding a single water lily. There was no information about the airline’s fare … Continue reading Bananas, Beaches and Bases
Image Source My daughters are ten and seven. In other words, they have just under a decade of their childhood remaining. As a parent, I have so far inculcated no noteworthy skill nor nurtured any particular talent in them. Not that I haven’t tried. The basketball coach lost his job, Bharatnatyam was ‘boring’, the art … Continue reading Helicopter Parenting
