Figuring Things Out

What is the Sanskrit word for Python? - Ajagar While the English word for the snake has its origins in the Greek word Puthōn, the name of a ...

Arrival The visa-on-arrival section was packed with folks from the Netherlands. "The Dutch have a special place in their hearts for Ind...

 It is now one year since the Russia-Ukraine war began. All through the murder and mayhem, the wanton destruction of cities and displacement...

  What is the difference between Tibetan and Bhutanese practice of Buddhism? Most of the sights , sounds and smells of Bhutan are familiar t...

 A man goes looking for the oldest living trees on the planet. He finds them in Chilean Patagonia and gradually buys up the area around thes...

  What is the world made up of?  We all remember something about this from our school days: All matter is made up of atoms, which in turn ar...

  I have often wondered - if global warming and climate change is really a ticking time-bomb, why does it not bother most of us? A part the ...

  My first book for 2023 is a book Haruki Murakami wrote a few years ago - "Killing Commendatore" ( ( Japanese :  騎士団長殺し ,  Hepbur...

  Phobjika Valley is quite unlike the Himalayan Valleys I had seen so far. Located almost on the same latitude as Kathmandu and a lot lower...

In the age of digital payments it feels strange to carry around wads of currency notes.  This is exactly what happened to me last week in Bh...

  I was struck by this chart which appeared in a report published last week, titled, "The New India", by Morgan Stanley Research. ...

The stock market in USA tanked a few days ago after Elon Musk finally decided to take over Twitter.  While it is the dharma of markets to s...

Is there anything in common between Dutch doors and English windows? One interesting thing I learnt last week was the way in which taxation ...

I was listening to this news-video on my way to work, and it had me laughing out loud. Here was a fine sample of the Western media being exp...

  I have been trying to figure out the relationship between booze and state revenues for a while now.   States in India seem to have a whole...

 There is an insect called the False Codling Moth - true or false? True! An insect that goes by this name is now at the centre of an an inte...

The word " calculus ", I discovered last month, has two meanings. The first is of course what we learn at school - a branch of mat...

I thought I knew a thing or two about Indian epics and classics.  Over the past months, two books and a podcast have undermined this notion,...

A couple of days ago Delhi consumed more power in a single day than ever before.  According to reports from the State Load Dispatch Centre ...

  I like books that breathe life into familiar streets. "Kokoro" by Natsume Sōseki begins with a brief description of the street...