Pitru Paksha, or the fortnight for ancestors, has just gone by. It’s a time when thousands of Hindus, the world over, as we know, remember their forefathers and perform sacred rituals for their souls to rest in peace.

Man swats flies and brings down painstakingly-woven cobwebs mercilessly — two measures taken to sustain good health and cleanliness… I was facing a moral dilemma.

Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of peace, who’s born 140 years ago — and, destined to “live” forever — recognised the chaos that follows when we deny our responsibility and proceed in pursuit of self-interest.

There can never be a better analogy of the “One as Many,” which many religious texts propound than the refracting prism. Physicists would go the whole hog to study the phenomenon of refraction and explain how and why a rainbow is formed, while measuring refractive indices of violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red light, and relating each of these to that of white light. But, how many look beyond physics and attempt to understand the associated metaphysics?

Paradise and Utopia are fictitious, figments of imagination which an idealist would use in his/her novel to depict and stimulate the goodness that lies inherent in each of us. Paradise and Utopia are like two perfectly-meshing gears, taking turns at being the driver and the driven.