A Novel God
American novelist Norman Mailer who died five years back had an interesting take on God. In an article in Esquire magazine called ‘Cosmic Ventures’ he wrote, “God is a general trying to win a war...
View ArticleDo Two Wrongs Make A Rite?
Can a wrong perpetrated in order to right another wrong ever be justified? The philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that if something supposedly held up as a moral standard or common social rule is...
View ArticleEnlightening The Master
The novitiate was in charge of the temple garden because he loved flowers and plants. One day when some special guests were expected he took extra care in tending the garden — pulling out weeds,...
View ArticleWhen Does A Shadow End?
The problem of positing an afterlife as most religions do in the form of rebirth, eternal life or things like becoming one with the One, is that it has to assume a prior-life — without which there can...
View ArticleOf Selective Compassion
A recent news report informed us about how the Dalai Lama brought the house down during the launch of World Compassion Day where he was the chief guest. Apparently the spiritual leader who’s known for...
View ArticleCosmic Egg Or Chicken?
One of the biggest problems facing modern cosmology — and modern physics too for that matter (though most physicists tend to keep quiet about it) — is where the laws governing the Big Bang of creation...
View ArticleA Creator By Any Other Name . . .
The fact that our reality — the universe which we take for granted — may be just a computer simulation, is not a new idea. Back in 2003 the British philosopher Nick Bostrom had set the academic world...
View ArticleThe Art of Ungiving
The art of giving has been mastered by a lot of people for a lot of reasons. For example, some do it as a form of studied ritual, others because they genuinely feel bad for those not as privileged or...
View ArticleRise of the Faithless Flock
For a long time it was taken for granted that with the rise of science we should expect to see religion getting increasingly marginalised till belief and superstition gets replaced by a modern and...
View ArticleMobius Trips
“Psst” Misha looked up from the card house she was building to see her nine-year-old brother Bobo peek around the playroom door. “What?” she asked, immediately interested. “Want to see a trick?” “Yes,...
View ArticleA Prayer’s Chance
Earlier this year a US government official asked a NASA Administrator Charles Bolden what the space agency would do if a large civilisation destroying asteroid was three weeks away from striking Earth....
View ArticleThe Prop That Wasn’t
“Man cannot exist without belief in God,” said Adolf Hitler in conversation with Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Bavaria in November 1936. “The soldier who for three and four days lies under intense...
View ArticleHappy Endings
The Exorcist is easily one of the scariest films ever made. It’s a harrowing horror narrative about the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her...
View ArticleBonolata Sen
(This is a free prose translation of the Bengali poet Jibanananda Das’s celebrated poem of the same name.) Yet, as always alone, I remain, wandering into strange centuries again and again with the same...
View ArticleOut Of This World
Mars One is a non-profit organisation that has publicised its plans for sending people to the red planet in batches of four to establish a permanent colony there. Thus, the organisers asked for...
View ArticleMachine In The Ghost
A US judge has ordered a Texas hospital to stop giving life support to a brain dead woman who had collapsed after a lung embolism. Not only does she meet all the clinical criteria for brain death but...
View ArticleNow You See Me
There was a young man who said, “God! I find it exceedingly odd That the tree that I see Should just cease to be When there’s no-one about in the quad.” The underlying presumption in the famously...
View ArticleSuperhero Blues
Tired of Superman, Batman and the Hulk? Weary of their much vaunted super powers which constantly save the world? Then meet 12-year-old Liam McKenzie, who patrols his suburban neighbourhood as the...
View ArticlePretty Little Criminals
How much persuasion does it take to make a person commit a minor misdemeanour not amounting to something to make the cops take notice? Say for instance like telling a lie to avoid coming to work, or...
View ArticleA Critical Analysis Of This Poem
This poem is actually very gimmicky. It is an attempted attempt at fusion. Cause and result have been made to occupy a common plane; enough to drive me insane. The author has tried to analyse some not...
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