Development practitioner interested in labor rights, migration, gender, technology & society | nature, arts & literature | published poet
🌐 New York City
Part 1 of my long-ish conversation with Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee. I used the occasion of his third major book 'The Song of the Cell' to talk about his writings, India, the Self, and more. I think many of you might find his words & thoughts of interest.
#cancer #gene #cellular #india #columbiauniversity
https://scroll.in/article/1040661/the-siddhartha-mukherjee-interview-even-mental-diseases-have-an-impact-on-cellular-behaviour
Wishing you all a splendid New Year!
Recently, I came across the idea of "lantern consciousness": on how, like a lantern that sprays its light all around, children take in the wonders of the world around them with awe.
To a year filled with such moments & discoveries ✨
"Think of things that linger: leaves,
cartons and napkins, the damp smell of mold.
Think of things that disappear.
Think of what you love best,
what brings tears into your eyes."
-- from "Adios" by Naomi Shihab Nye
via Quotomania ~ @holdengraber
https://quotomania.simplecast.com/episodes/quotomania-364-naomi-shihab-nye
#poemsofmastodon #mastopoetry
"I watch
my mother’s fingers
enveloped
in the giddiness
of creativity
in a game
of memory
Seventy some years
falling away
the pain of
rheumatoid
held at bay
for now
she is a young girl
writing
her life
into meaning."
~ from "Kolam: the Art of Remembering" by Pushpa Naidu Parekh
#verseoftheday #poetrycommunity #poemsofmastodon #myphoto #kolam
"We read in the Chuang-tzu: [..] Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man."
~ from "Zen and Japanese Culture" by Daisetz T. Suzuki
In this updated series of graphics, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation uses a participatory & human-centered design approach to visualize "Equality vs. Equity."
More here: https://www.rwjf.org/en/blog/2022/11/we-used-your-insights-to-update-our-graphic-on-equity.html
At the farmers' market, learnt about Lithops - because of their stone-like appearance, they are called the "Living Stone" plants.
In years marred by wars & pandemics, I slowly learn that the only way to perhaps feel "alive" is to be curious about little wonders like these.
[photo from March, 2022]
I can’t stop thinking about the Afghan girls Robotic team knows as Afghan Dreamers. The girls with minimal resources were able to design and build low cost ventilators and their expertise were used during Covid crisis. Roya, a member of Afghan dreamers was ranked among Time’s 100 most influential people for her work in building internet classrooms in Afghan high schools.
#afghangirls
In Pico Iyer's The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto’, a love story b/w an Indian journalist & a married Japanese woman called Sachiko. In it, Iyer writes about a Japanese word ‘hidamari’: a small patch of sunlight along the otherwise cold stone of a nearby shrine. He writes: “In the dark of the Kyoto winter, Sachiko was my ‘hidamari’”. While thinking of that line, I asked an AI bot to paint me Sachiko - a young Japanese woman, worn out but still hopeful, as it were done by Caravaggio.
@pritvee That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing, Prithvi 🙏🏾 will listen to it.
@ardram a lovely excerpt from the letter. I once made a longish radio program for the Australian public, featuring readings of Tagore's verse in (self) translation & an interview with Amit Chaudhuri, who's written perceptively on Tagore. the podcast is here if you're curious: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/poetica/tagore/5121796
from Rabindranath Tagore's letter to the Argentinian poet Victoria Ocampo [whom he fondly called Vijaya]. Tagore's poetry collection "Puravi" (1925) was dedicated to her.
The Taliban’s ban on women and girls attending universities is an unconscionable violation of their fundamental rights. #Afghanistan
When the Oxford children's dictionary discarded dozens of nature-words—"dandelion," "fern," "starling"—as irrelevant to children's imagination and replaced them with words like "broadband" and "cut-and-paste," this inspired act of resistance was born: https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/06/17/the-lost-words-macfarlane-morris
"Wallpapering" by Sue Ellen Thompson
"The Bhakti poets quarrel with their gods, swear at them, make love to them, and dispense with them. Nothing is taboo, nothing sacrilegious, because the underlying premise is simple: The self and the other cannot be kept apart." -- Arundhathi Subramaniam
A statue honoring Henrietta Lacks whose whose cells resulted in countless medical breakthroughs will be built in her birthplace Roanoke #Virginia
The statue replaces Gen Robert E Lee
"But what a path it has been! I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment & sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew."
-- Siddhartha, Herman Hesse [translated by Hilda Rosner]
