Hands Up!

Mahabharata the epic is a forbidden text in Indian households. I did not know the story completely till I read it on my own at the age of 24.

But my friend Prajukta Pradhan has a deep knowledge of the text as her father cut off the cable connection and fed his children with Mahabharata serial CDs.

Prajukta's deep knowledge of the text and the details that she remembers kept me hooked for almost three hours.

I finished an entire p...

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." ~ Jane Austen.

In this episode with Dr Angana Moitra, professor at Jindal Global University I discuss the classic 'Pride and Prejudice', its characters, the nuances and its relevance for modern day readers. We also discuss aunties, the institution of marriage and choosing to enter it without jeop...

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“Notes from Underground” is a powerful and intense social commentary and monologue of a very frustrated former government servant.

The book is written in a certain social and political environment where “determinism” was presented as an ideal.

In this conversation with Deeksha I explore the nuances of the work a...

Adolescence is a short but incisive TV series about a child who has turned into a murderer due to his own insecurities and the social media activities of a girl he was interested in. The show articulates the nature of factors that shape children, adolescents and men of today.

I discuss the show, its characters, the implications of show on society and several related themes with Debasmita Sasmal, an analyst with Khan Academy.

"Don’t be afraid to love someone. When you fall in love, I want you to fall in love all the way. Even if it ends in heartache, please don’t live a lonely life without love." ~ Satoshi Yagisawa in 'Days at Morisaki Bookshop'.

'Days at the Morisaki Bookshop' by Satoshi Yagisawa is a wonderful book in the “slice-of-life” genre.

I talk about this book with Diwyani Vajpayee who loves this genre. She was also qu...

"How are we writing the future of humanity? We're not writing anything, it's writing us. We're windblown leaves. We think we're the wind, but we're just the leaf." ~ Samantha Harvey in Orbital

In this episode, Nikita and I discuss how the book 'Orbital' impacted both of us. We debate the relevance of space exploration when the same ingenuity and resources can be used to make earth a more liveabl...

“But how could you live and have no story to tell?” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky in White Nights.

“White Nights” was a story that healed me in a way. It told me that stories that happen to an individual are not entirely new. Human nature has not changed a lot over centuries.

In this episode I discuss Dostoevsky’s famous novella with Deeksha Sharma. Deeksha works as a marketer and SEO expert at a startup in NCR. She is also a passion...

A description of ‘Chaos Theory’ by Grok is as below.

“Chaos Theory studies complex systems where small changes in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes, often called the "butterfly” effect. It explores unpredictable, non-linear behavior in deterministic systems like weather, fluid dynamics, or populations. Though seemingly random, chaotic systems follow underlying patterns and rules, sensitive to tiny perturbatio...

In this episode of Hands Up! I discuss the book “Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh” by Shrayana Bhattacharya with Bency Ramakrishnan and Nikita Pathak.

Bency Ramakrishnan is a policy professional and a lawyer. She confesses that she was a closet Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) fan until recently. Nikita Pathak is a development professional who admires SRK and his work, but doesn’t claim to be a SRK fan.

Both of them bring in their unique viewpoin...

Ramayana has fascinated me as an adult even more than it did during my childhood. As I navigate through knotty personal dilemmas it serves as source of inspiration and guidance.

I had heard a liberal take on the epic before this episode. To a large extent I felt that it was just a story and treated it as such in spite of my devotion towards Rama.

My friend Yash Sampat whom I met at the Enthu Book Club had a different view. ...

Ramayana has inspired people in the subcontinent and several nations of south east Asia for centuries. It’s one of the greatest myths of humanity. Yet, it is also controversial in many ways.

The treatment of women, especially Sita has sparked many debates. Chitra Banerjee Divakurani’s book “Forest of Enchantments” adds to this conversation. As part of Enthu Book Club, Nikita and I read this book and had lots of opinions about it.

H...

“How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.” ~ Julian Barnes in The Sense of an Ending.

Dr Angana Moitra, Faculty at Jindal School of Language and Literature, OP Jindal Globa...