Letters

In Indian families there is one common pattern of not recognising the emotional pain that any individual goes through. We only feel for someone when we see them physically hurt like they can't move properly, having ache in body parts etc. These things are clearly visible. Anyone can feel them, they can view it's consequences. Mental and emotional feelings are not visible to anyone. Only the person dealing with it, can feel it. It may take a long time even for the closest of family members to notice it. Indian families are special and unique in their own way. They expect you to be happy always.  I am privileged in every way one can imagine but I too feel the hesitation when speaking about these issues to my family. Mental health denial is extremely prevalent in Indian families. Especially woman face these denial  mercilessly. Young girl especially when they weren't properly educated about their own body would feel like the world has ended when suddenly they discover in schoo...

I live in a middle class indian family. We are not encouraged to take big risks, forget taking big risks, we are not even conditioned to think big. If you don't think big than how would you act big, if you won't act big than how would you get big I suggest that every parent should try to develop his child's interest in atleast one more area other than academics.  There must be equal amount of money spent in learning a new craft as you would spend in educating a child.  Things change when money gets involved, especially when you don't have enough of it. This is important. The craft could be any sport like Volleyball, Football, swimming. It could be music composition, learning a new instrument, joining new clubs that connects a community of diverse backgrounds. If the child enjoys both he is good to go in life. If he doesn't enjoy studies as much, he could do something else along with working on the other skill or from those community meetups he could become curious i...

CRISPR is a biological tool that in future will be as impactful as the microchip if not more. Cas-9 protein is used to delete or insert DNA into cells at a specific site. It may allow us to detect viruses, cure cancer cells and genetic diseases like Sickle cell anemia.  Infact a Chinese researcher actually edited the babies in vitro to be HIV resistant. He is behind the bars right now. The idea is that molecules can be programmed. You can edit the genome of embryo. Some are worried that playing with nature will have disastrous consequences at some point in the future. This is true, it is not as straight-forward as you delete one gene for any ailment and get rid of that. The promise of this technology only becomes reality if we form a common standard in which precise situation should we use CRISPR. The advantages would be plenty if we manage to do just that. RNA is what hold the promise. The vaccines for COVID19 are based on the mRNA technology. There is messenger RNA and transcript...

A week back US government denied the export of raw material that is required for vaccine manufacturing, here in India for India's own vaccination drive. The official statement was that it is in best interest for the world to first vaccinate all the American people. They said it despite the fact that India supplied them HCQ when they requested. People here in india started criticizing the statement. I don't have any reaction to that statement.       America is a great nation today           because it has always put                     americans first.      Unfortunately India failed to do           just that. India's vaccine maitri costed thousands of lives, black marketing of Remdisivir injection, lack of oxygen, extreme depression to the doctor's treating patients. All this could have been prevented if we would have vaccinated our own populat...

China has started a pilot of its digital yuan. Many are optimistic that digital money is the future. But the question is " is it as good as it sounds " Well China started a major experiment to install CCTVs at all major locations in their country as well. The digital money could be used to spy on people of their country, couple that with facial recognition and you have a perfect government surveillance system working at every moment and keeping track of money, identity of people in and out of the country as well. It goes against the very ethos of DIGITAL MONEY that is cryptocurrency provide psedonimity some even provide complete anonymity and is widely accepted as it prevent surveillance and tracking. India is also working on digital rupee, by doing that government want to ensure that the whole monetry activity within the country comes under their watch.  That raises some serious questions, by doing that they are providing an alternative to cryptocurrency and probably want to...

The notion that certain group of people could ask the government to separate themselves from the existing state to create a new one considering special status or special needs of them is not new. There are many states in India that have been reorganised on basis on ethnicity, linguistic etc, like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat. Though the process was painful, but there are examples of that happening. 1. We can start a new country without anyone's permission or atleast conceive the idea of it now at fraction of the effort and very efficiently via Internet. 2. It certainly don't need recognition from United Nations or from anyone because there is no need for it. We all can be part of the country which we were born in and still become part of what we will idealize as a new country. 3. Internet communities are already doing that, but still you need permission from someone to join a group that you like , you can't be just part of any community you want. 4. This will change, 2021 and o...