Here is a fantastic, nearly implausible story about how climate change in the early 1800s lead to one of the most iconic horror stories in history. The year 1816, was known throughout Europe as "the Year Without a Summer". There was snow in June and July and massive food shortages. Overall, there were drastic weather … Continue reading Climate change and a horror story →

A peculiarity of the Washington D.C. area is that many of taxi-drivers are South Asian immigrants, mostly of Pakistani origin. I don’t know if it is the shared first-generation immigrant experience or the sense that you can tell another brown person in a language you share, things you wouldn’t otherwise share with complete strangers, but … Continue reading Urdu is Greek to me →

I had to pause before I turned the key for the last time. Nearly every day over the past five years, I had been at this very door. For this was the place we called “home”. Inside those walls, was the room that our newborn son slept in the day we brought him home from … Continue reading On moving →

Is the world becoming a more intolerant place? Of course, I can’t answer that question objectively, but it certainly feels that way these days. What seem to me to be in short supply are empathy and humility. So many people I come across seem to have all the right answers, so much that they are … Continue reading Listen. →

When does childhood end? Is there a specific predetermined age? Or is there a vague defining moment in life when the essence of childhood is lost forever? I think one hallmark of reaching adulthood is coming to a stage in life when problems genuinely don't go away by themselves, you can't pass on your own … Continue reading The end of childhood. →

It may come as a surprise that I love to cook. Since I left the laboratory environment nearly a decade ago, cooking has been an outlet for me to experiment with materials and methods in a small way. It is cause and effect in a contained environment. It is chemistry at the interface of biology … Continue reading On cooking →

My son is no stranger to flying. Added up, he's racked up miles close to half the distance from the earth to the moon. Of course, the longest of his many flights, in terms of distance, have been the ones taken during his four visits to India. Each time it has progressively been harder for … Continue reading For the trip back →

When we moved, the walls were a blank canvas of white. We had them painted over so we could add a touch of our own warmth. A house is never a home until it reminds you of who you were with and where you had been. Adding images of life to virtual walls on social … Continue reading Walls are never finished →

The miracle of life isn’t only that we are born, but that we live for any appreciable time after that, given the frailty of existence. Each of us is a highly-porous container in which thermodynamically unfavorable reactions are coupled with ATP hydrolysis to keep us “alive". Life is not meaningless because it is a chain … Continue reading Life, or some approximations of it. →

For as long as I can remember, I've been a forgetful person. I’ve forgotten names of people I’ve met, birthdays, important deadlines, overdue library books, and bills that I should’ve paid. Sometimes, I’ve even forgotten to eat meals.  In my life, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time searching for things like my glasses, wallet, … Continue reading On forgetting →