Get high on hope, a brand New Year is here

by Homayun Taba The new year is a time for an injection of hope, meant to strengthen the psychological immune system. Some of us are naturally endowed with sufficient manasic shakti, mental strength, but the...

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Men of the Year: From SRK to Internet Uncles

In 2023, the sights and sounds offered by Indian men have been dizzying. The year belonged to Shah Rukh Khan, whose fans and films offered dazzling displays of joy, love, subtext, and box-office commerce. While...

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2024 will show power and limits of Indian Americans in US politics

Authored by: Karthick Ramakrishnan As we look ahead to the 2024 presidential election in the United States, we cannot help but notice the power of Indian Americans in politics. Two of the top four candidates...

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Another new year and same old conundrum

One year ends, another begins; this is how we discipline the flow of time into manageable units. But what sort of order does a calendar impose, and what is it based on? A Brief History...

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Win over your mind if you want to win the world

Sometimes I go on a drive to nowhere. The journey seems to be more delightful than the destination. But this journey to nowhere usually ends up as a trip to somewhere. The quest for Self...

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Simple pointers for a new you in the new year

By Rajyogini Dadi Ratanmohini Simplicity promises happiness. When we are simple in our vision and attitude, we are able to remain happy, because now we are free from the complications of all that is happening....

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The Sacral In Sync With Nature

Conservation of cultural heritage has much more to it than preserving monuments and buildings of yore. In its truest sense, it would also involve protecting the intangible heritage including sustainable practices, knowledge, and skills which...

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Vedantic wisdom, ‘waiting for us’

By Mona Mehta Hidden in the lyrics of American singer Madame Gandhi’s single ‘Waiting For Us’ is bucketsful of Vedantic wisdom. Let it wash over you. ‘Waiting for us’, one of the latest songs by...

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When an elephant comes charging at the crowd

Bhartendu Sood How one looks at death depends upon his spiritual upliftment. There is an anecdote in the Hindi writer Bhagwati Charan Verma’s book: Once, there was a stampede in the Kumbh gathering in Haridwar....

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The Moonrush is crowded, India has a good start

Can it set up a space station by 2035 and put humans on the Moon by 2040? Yes, Isro has already demonstrated multiple key abilities. But don’t expect it on a shoe-string budget It’s perhaps...

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Christmas means love par excellence

By Sumit Dhanraj The incarnation of Jesus Christ is the manifestation of God’s infinite love for humankind. In order to set people free from the clutches of sin, God reveals His divine power and benevolent...

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Xmas imagination: How joy and chaos rule this day

I have so many memories of Xmas. Like when we were kids we would go to the army club and be given gifts from a Santa who would say ho ho ho. One year in...

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Takeaways from COP 28 deliberations

The COP28 meeting in Dubai, UAE held between November 30-December 12 reinforced the commitment of 197 countries and reviewed their progress under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement to mitigate the razing global warming. Serious discussions...

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Unlocking long-term career growth with strategy consulting: An MBA perspective

In the dynamic world of business, the quest for excellence is perpetual. Strategy consulting – a career where some of the world’s most talented professionals solve the world’s most complex problems – is certainly one...

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The tea board of India needs to be dismantled

Started in the first flush of socialist power by Nehru in 1953, the objective of the Tea Board of India was to “promote” tea production in India. Always chaired by officers from the IAS who...

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Brij too far: A new team takes over at WFI, will anything be different?

The year-long turmoil at the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) apparently came to an end on Thursday. Sanjay Kumar Singh, an associate of Brij Bhushan Singh, was elected president of WFI. His team captured almost...

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Bedroom story: Cameron Diaz makes us think it afresh

Many a lad and lady have taken flirtation lessons from her. As in, from her in her movies. Remember There’s Something About Mary? So when Cameron Diaz talks about how to make a relationship work,...

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Think it’s the brain? It may be the gut: Our nervous system controls a lot more than we think

Imagine our bodies are orchestras. Our brain is the conductor. The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is the string section, connected through all our senses and other inputs that keep our bodies humming. Periphery: How Your...

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Rose pilgrims’ resolve to share and care

By Narayani Ganesh The story of a bureaucrat and his erudite spouse – granddaughter of India’s former philosopher-president, S Radhakrishnan – who gave up their power-packed, upwardly mobile urban lives to become ‘rose pilgrims’ and...

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Doctors & rest of us: New criminal code gives medical practitioners lighter punishment for acts of negligence

The second iteration of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which will replace IPC, was passed by the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. Rajya Sabha passed it on Thursday. The bill was introduced in the House on December 12....

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Well done, class: Falling dropout ratios at secondary level are a big positive. Kids will stay in school if job market improves

Educationists believe the age group 15-16 is the one that is most at risk of dropping out of school. Therefore, the trend in the dropout ratio after Class X in India, or secondary level, is...

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Their Trump, our house: Plenty of fireworks in the two largest democracies. The question for both is the effectiveness of institutions

Every great thinker of democracy worth the salt has understoodit as a process of striving, its imperfections writ large for all to see and debate. Lamenting the passing of some golden age of democracy is...

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Desi AI: Bring home the new biz

America’s policy on making AI safe, reliable and useful for everyone is a golden opportunity for Indian AI developers and companies to become globally competitive For the first time, financial regulators in the US have...

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Brain’s evolutionary ballet of Neuroplasticity

by Ajaykumar Parasu Brain, as a physical organ, is very peculiar in one aspect when compared to other organs. It has an awareness of itself. There is no way this awareness can be measured, but...

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Lose nine Antarayas, Gain ever-lasting success

By Hansaji Yogendra In Yog Sutras 1 : 30, Patanjali delineates nine antarayas, impediments, that we encounter in life: illness, mental laziness, doubt, misplaced priorities, inattention, excessive craving, confusion about the ethical, the tendency to...

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Bhagwad Gita’s golden rules to perfect dhyan

By Anup Taneja The Bhagwad Gita is the golden path which presents to its reader a variety of yogic systems that enable him to experience the Ultimate Beatitude. The conspicuous feature of this path is...

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Delhi Air Pollution Part 2: Composition, Causes, Legal Interventions, and Remedial Measures

Legal intervention The Supreme Court intervened in 2017 by banning the use of cheaper alternatives like petroleum coke and furnace oil in the NCR. It recommended similar measures for other states. However, these fuels continue...

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Intersection of classroom discourse and Artificial Intelligence

The use of technology in teaching-learning processes has been prevalent for long. However, the interventions of fast-pervading artificial intelligence are likely to bring a paradigm shift in the classroom discourse. The growing popularity of natural...

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She’s on good wicket

Women’s cricket is turning the corner, talent & money-wise Good news keeps piling up for Indian women’s cricket. In the ongoing Test match against England in Navi Mumbai, India scored a massive 410 runs on...

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Great balls of fire

Meteorites are part of our greatest fascinations & fears Archaeological remains of the Indus Valley Civilisation, with its street grids and drainage system, are the envy of contemporary urban India. Excavations, however, haven’t provided conclusive...

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Master the art of being self-aware

By KV Raghupathi Consciousness is often used as a synonym for awareness. It can be comprehended on two levels: the human level and cosmic level. Cosmic consciousness is ubiquitous, the underlying principle of creation; it...

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Let not your words expose you

There is a famous story about Albert Einstein and his driver.  This happened during the era when the scientist Einstein was passionately invested in his research work on the theory of relativity. He was frequently...

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Facts & factoids: The distinction between truth and falsehood has long been blurred

Much before the advent of Artificial Intelligence, and the buzz about deepfakes, the border between the true and the untrue has been a porous boundary, allowing for migration from one to the other. In his...

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Move from plastic smiles to authentic healing

By Swami Sukhabodhananda Hurt operates like a fishing rod, with the hook at one end for fishing and blaming others, and a fool at the other end. Its reward is unnecessary suffering. It is harder...

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Billing problems: Amended criminal bills do well to maintain status quo on adultery but miss out on other reform measures

GOI on Tuesday reintroduced three bills in Lok Sabha to replace two colonial-era codes, IPC and Evidence Act, and also the Code of Criminal Procedure. Earlier, in August, it had introduced the three bills, Bharatiya...

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Guard the house: This December 13 Parliament was far luckier than in 2001. But security lessons remain worryingly unlearnt

It’s a building but much more importantly, it’s also an idea. India’s Parliament is deeply intertwined with India’s democracy. Children see its picture in their schoolbooks and the luckiest of them get to visit it...

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Dances of our democracy

When politicians shake a leg, they get it in the neck Last week, Giriraj Singh slammed Mamata Banerjee for matching steps with Salman, Sonakshi, and Shatrughan at the Kolkata International Film Festival. But the Union...

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Sit in silence, still the body and mind

By Sant Rajinder Singh At some point in life, we feel the sting of loneliness. During these times, we find there is no one to support us, and we become despondent, succumbing to worry and...

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Academia must compulsorily teach about ‘mind’ that controls our outer persona

1. Reflections to know our mind, that governs our behaviour! I am what my Inner nature, the quality of my mind is, based on my past thoughts-actions. And I ‘see’, judge, label the external world...

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Kashmir in poll position: SC bench right in its unanimous call J&K special status was stopgap. Statehood, elections are next steps

Parliament had passed the bill scrapping J&K’s special status under Article 370 in August 2019. Yesterday, a 5-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court, through three separate but concurring judgments, put a legal seal on...

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What Sikh/Akali sources tell about Nehru’s release from Nabha jail

Recently there was a controversy on the claim about Jawahar Lal Nehru’s alleged Mafinama for his release from Nabha prison in 1924 and this generated a lot of heat on social media. When Nehru’s autobiography,...

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End both wars: Creative diplomacy can end Gaza, Ukraine conflicts. Bad options better than terrible ones

Conflict grinds on in Ukraine and Gaza. Israel’s attacks have intensified after a temporary truce. The war in Ukraine is shuttling between relative calm and bursts of military aggression. Both conflicts are geopolitical and geoeconomics...

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Barbie, roos and ta: Notes on the language of a land down under

English travels the world in many accents. A language that sounds different in every part of India itself, it tends to act trickier abroad. Despite the long ‘aaanh’ between Chinese sentences, the lilting Irish brogue,...

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The new man is coming through you!

Osho A New Man is emerging. And this is of tremendous importance because since the monkey became man, man has remained the same. A great revolution is on the way. It will be far more...

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Will Congress introspect at least now?

Immediately after the elections to five states, intellectuals, political analysts and journalists began comparing the journeys of the Congress, the oldest political party in the country and the BJP that had started as the Jana...

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Comparing the number and relevance of false activations between 2 artificial intelligence computer-aided detection systems: the NOISE study

Evaluating artificial intelligence (AI) systems for finding polyps during colonoscopy is important. This study looked at two different AI systems (CADe A and CADe B) used in Humanitas Research Hospital to detect false-positive (FP) alerts,...

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Factors associated with poor outcomes among patients with SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus infection and Gastrointestinal symptoms

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was observed that around 20% of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus experienced gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms alongside other common symptoms. This study aimed to understand how these GI symptoms...

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50 shades older: Time to gin and bear it, babumoshai

At the start of my 50th year on this watery planet, I grew weary of women my age talking about ageing gracefully. ‘Grace counts in ballet, and ageing is a battle! But…thanks to the ageing...

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The ‘I’ in India: Why individual rights get trumped by communities so often

An individual’s right to exercise freedom of choice is at the heart of the Constitution. This aim hasn’t always been achieved because communities continue to exercise vice-like grips, especially on women. Consider two recent incidents....

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Are You Steering Your Ship Or Letting It Drift?

Jaya Row As the curtain falls on another year, it is time to pause and reflect. Does your life have a purpose? Are you merely drifting with the tide, or are you steering the ship?...

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Mate in India: The PM’s travel advisory against ‘destination weddings’ has created a buzz in some jet-set circles

Two Desh Ka Netas discussing the PM’s message urging people to forgo destination weddings in exotic locales and get hitched in India instead. DKN1: As part of his Vocal for Local campaign the PM is asking...

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From mortal prince to the immortal Buddha

By Ashok Vohra What transformed mortal prince Siddharth into immortal enlightened Buddha was the dawning of the doctrine of dependent origination – Pratityasamutpada – when he was meditating under the Bodhi tree in Gaya. It...

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Only those who inquire are able to acquire

By- Sumit Paul “Do you train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?” Noam Chomsky’s one of the most famous quotes is pregnant with profundity. Elsewhere, Chomsky elaborates that education sans any...

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Orgasmic over fakes

That’s why ‘authentic’ is Merriam Webster’s Word of the Year ‘Rizz’, GenZ term for style/charm/sexual magnetism, has just been anointed OUP’s Word of the Year. But, I’ll go with ‘authentic’, picked by the Merriam Webster...

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Varanasi: Where divinity meets humanity

Five rows of lamps arranged in a pyramid pattern glow with an engulfing luminence as they rise up and down majestically in a circular motion. On the loudspeaker, sonorous hymns and odes seem to charge...

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Chronicles Of Death: Suicide is a rising trend in India, including among the young

National crime data for 2022 is grim reading. Among the grimmest statistics is that the national daily average of suicides was nearly 500. What does this say? Chronic levels of stress remain unaddressed. The three...

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A Man who made everyone laugh

6th December 2023 marks my father, Gautam Naik’s 50th birth anniversary. My mother and I take this opportunity to celebrate his legacy through his column at TOI. I would like to express my gratitude to...

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Privilege travels a lot: Star kids are full of it but so are you

Suhana Khan, daughter of Shah Rukh Khan, recently, at a public event, praised Alia Bhatt, daughter of Mahesh Bhatt, for being a role model for environmental sustainability by destigmatising wearing the same ensemble multiple times...

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Wisdom that funnels through Silkyara tunnel

By- Uma Ram and KS Ram Forty-one workers, trapped for 17 days in an under-construction tunnel that collapsed due to a landslide in Silkyara, could at last be rescued. It should be appropriate at this...

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Healthcare resource utilization and costs among patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease, barrett’s esophagus, and barrett’s esophagus-Related neoplasia in the United States

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a condition where stomach acid backs up into the food pipe, causing heartburn and discomfort. Over time, GERD can lead to a more serious condition called Barrett’s esophagus (BE). BE...

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Bharatiya Janata’s Party?

The road to a third Modi Sarkar in 2024 clearer after Sunday. Brand Modi undimmed. OBC/upper caste consolidation for BJP. South not enough for heartland-less Congress Several conclusions, some strongly and others tentatively, can be...

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Will this result bring an end to enmity and toxicity?

Rahul Gandhi and the pro-Congress ideologues were on cloud nine after the victory in Karnataka elections. They began daydreaming that now there is no stopping for them in the 2024 elections. Seeing their confidence which...

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Five pointers to 2024 from 2023’s four polls: Congress troubles mount despite Telangana win

North India is Modified in a BJP sweep. The Modi factor is key to the party consolidating its hold here after tightly contested assembly polls. The PM campaigned relentlessly and showed that he is still...

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Panacea for grief: Realise the eternity within

As long as we are in a state of transience, grief and countless other afflictions will always be waiting outside our door. Every time someone or something inside our orbit is snatched away from us,...

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Kitchener’s Wildflower Hall was just a cottage

From the start, viceroys had a soft corner for Wildflower Hall. In his 1904 book ‘Simla Past And Present’, Edward J Buck says it was a “favourite retreat” of Lord Ripon (1880-1884). The wife of...

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Myanmar escalation: India should think long-term and recalibrate

I describe Burma as a ‘tragic nation’ because despite its strategic location and rich human and natural resources, it has been subjected to long cycles of violence and suffering at the hands of a predatory...

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Musk the FUcrat: Elon’s right. Sometimes cuss words say it best

The man has a penchant for grabbing a hellish number of headlines. This time Elon Musk did this by saying in an interview that the advertisers fleeing X could go f*** themselves. A hypersmart technologist...

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Lead me from reality to the truth

Sometimes, three short lines can pack quite a punch, as in the Brihadaranyak Upanishad 1:3:28: ‘Asatoma sadgamaya; Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya; Mrtyor ma amrtam gamaya’ – Lead me from reality to the truth;/ Lead me from...

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Why superheroes stride the Earth’s screens: Secret history of cinematic juggernaut Marvel Studios

MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards tells the story of the cinematic franchise that has conquered Hollywood and the world’s imagination for the last 15 years. It...

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