Mental Excursions

The Great Holi Spuddle It was Holi, the grand festival of colours, yesterday. Being a proud member of the exclusive (and unofficial) no-colour-no-water club, I spent the morning avoiding the efforts of the over-enthusiastic well-wishers armed with powders, water guns and balloons to cajole or drag me into their super-noisy colour party. I had ample time on my hands. Safely ensconced inside, I started with a list of jobs to finish alone quietly. What did I actually do? Nothing! Well, not exactly nothing. I was seriously occupied in this and that. You know, those critically important, life-altering tasks like rearranging books on the shelf, contemplating the future with my fourth cup of chai , and scrolling through ‘happy Holi’ messages that added immense value to my day (or so I convinced myself). Around dinner time, I counted my achievements, and there was this grand total -zero. An intense brain-racking exercise followed and finally, my one achievement for the day was findi...

International Women’s Day: Celebrating the Unseen, the Unheard I am an ordinary woman who has spent a few decades on this planet- yet I am acutely aware that there is so much, rather infinite amount, to learn. When I first watched Hidden Figures, a film based on the true story of three African American mathematicians who played key roles in NACA (later NASA), what struck me was how little I knew about women trailblazers in different fields. On International Women’s Day today, people in every country and city would organize events to sing the praises of the fairer sex, clap for their contributions, declare on microphones how they plan to fight for their rights etc., my humble effort is to bring to light just about a dozen women who were groundbreakers in fields known to be dom inated by men. Shouldn’t we be telling their and similar stories every day? Abbye Stockton (weightlifter) lifting 135 lbs. sometime in the 1940s.  Doesn’t she make it seem so easy? Dr Anandibai Joshi (lef...