Deep Adhya, PhD

INT. OFFICE LOBBY Office social in the evening, with lots of booze around, and many people talking to each other. A I am doing a PhD because ... You know ... I was doing my Master's and I really got interested in neuro. B Ya, me too! C Same here. (They both get a drink and start mingling in the crowd.) D Wow! I am here because I couldn't get into med school.

INT. LAB OFFICE Four guys taking an afternoon break from work, meeting in the kitchen making some coffee. D What are you guys doing in the evening? A Oh, I have to clone some cells, and do some transfection, might be quite late before I go home. B I have a ton of confocal images that need analysis. I have to submit to X by tomorrow. C I have actually almost finished for the day, but I will be going to a talk from here, in an hour. D Okay! I am going home and cooking dinner. EXIT.

INT. PUB Four friends gather for drinks. A God made us in his image, but gave us cancer to deal with. I am working on a gene, if you delete it, cancer will be cured. B God made us in his image, but gave us mental disorders to deal with. I am working on a program able to detect abnormalities in the genome of patients suffering from complex mental disorders. C God made us in his image, but gave us mortality to deal with. I am working on a mouse model that presents the symptoms of aging, and I am very close to making a breakthrough that will make us immortal. D (Confused, and a bit uncertain, anxiously flitting through his mobile) ...

Tapasvi Maharaj: Many ages ago, the whole universe used to speak the same language. Everybody was friendly and understood each other. But soon they became so well acquainted with each other that they did little else other than talk. This habit of talking, which used to be perceived as a very healthy exercise, soon became a problem. The collective power of human beings rose to such level because of this that all creatures of the planet were being wiped out, and soon there were very little wildlife left on earth. As centuries passed, humans evolved to talk louder and louder, and soon they were talking so loud that the din of the voices was proving to be a distraction for Lord Shiva, who enjoyed nothing better than meditating in peace. He was soon aroused from his meditation and quickly developed a temper. He had to come down to earth as an avatar and mingle among the humans to see what was going on. His peregrinations astounded him. Humans were talking so much that they were soon...

I woke up early on Christmas day, jumped out of bed and ran over to my Christmas tree. There it was, the Christmas present! It was a charming pink and white box with blue ribbons flowing down its corners. I gently tore open the ribbons, with nimble fingers. But I was nervous because I never believed in Santa Claus before this day. I opened the box with trepidation although I knew that it was a Christmas present. Who was it really from? Santa Claus? Really? The top opened to reveal a cake! It looked heavenly, a vanilla cake finished with a buttercream frosting and decorated with icing, strawberries and dragées. My right index finger proceeded towards the buttercream as if it had a mind of its own. I resisted at the very last moment, my mind screaming for closure. Who was it from? I threw myself onto a sofa, dejected. I decided to wait for a little while, so that whoever had put the cake at the tree would definitely want to know whether it had reached its intended recip...

Chapter 1 What I am going to write about is a subject which has been done to death, because it involves the internet and how it has played mischief with the aspirations and expectations of ordinary human beings. I will start my mockumentary by introducing an average joe, Sam. Sam is a typically developing, healthy individual with no known mental or physical disabilities. He is born to a middle-class family, is quite talented, and a potential leader of the future. He has scored good grades at school, excelled at college and has been vastly regarded as a success story by all people around him. He is not too adventurous, and likes friends. He hopes to give back to society what he got from it, get married, and raise the ideal family. He is starry eyed, and buoyed by the confidence vested on him by his immediate society. He steps into the world to leave his mark on it. Chapter 2 There is a huge debate these days between those born into the age of the internet ...

Moses was born in the Land of Goshen, destiny’s child, who would grow up to save his people. Well, not really! This is not the story of the Moses born in 14th century BC, but rather of a namesake born in a more modern world closer to the 21st century AD. Act I Moses is 10 years old, and he is very happy. He has his whole life ahead of him. He can be anything he wants to be. Act II Moses is 20 years old. He is an adult. He can take decisions for himself. He is going to set everything right. He will be all that his predecessors could not. He has the potential and believes in the science of the cultural evolution of man. He believes in how one generation always learns from the mistakes of the last. He knows that he will avoid the pits in which his ancestors fell trying to shed light on the unknown. Act III Moses is 30 years old. He feels naked. He feels like he is out of control. He feels like he is not being able to restrain himself anymore, and that by some unkno...

Jim was special. He was his father’s son. His father was a famous industrialist. He was very industrious. He believed in true human capabilities, the kind of philosophy that the Western world was built on. Jim was special. Everybody told him so. Funny thing was he never felt special. He never felt like he had the ability to work miracles. His expectation was that if wise people around him thought he was special, he must really have some special powers to make things happen. For a long time, he kept asking this question to himself. He tried to magically obtain good grades at school, which never came. He tried to solve social problems, which were never solved. The more he took on these challenges, the more he was convinced that he was not special. But he was special. The fact was that the people around him were too myopic to understand his talents. What Jim needed was experience. He needed to go out into the world and see it through his own eyes, hear it through his own ear...

In science, nothing also means something. It can be something that has been missed, or something that has appeared at a different point than expected. How can then one write about nothing and get away with filling up a page with words? _ The sweat poured down the back on a winter’s day with slow impatience. Obnoxious odours emanated from the indefatigable obese, giving goose bumps. The underwear stuck in discomfort inside the trousers of the tourist in the dilapidated building while he debated whether the house was haunted or he was having a dehydration-induced hallucination. The legs cramped up and the heart was in tachycardia. The long hair stood on its end, as the hands touched something, sending out a spray of sweat which was slowly running down his hair. The man in the mauve suit had the sniffles. In a sudden epiphany, he discovered that his suit was made of linen which was not at all suited to his physique. A train passed by and the headlamps shone through two o...

Summer rain was beautiful. Kevin stood still in his tracks, and let the umbrella fall from his hand. The umbrella flew away, snatched by the wind and propelled by the torrent of rain. It landed ten feet away, but Kevin didn’t notice. He worked all week with the efficiency of a mule and the loyalty of a dog. It was Friday, and it was time for him to go home for the weekend. He sat on the grass. He was having a splitting headache from all the thinking he had had to do all month. Although, he was very diligent at his work, he was like a working ant making one section of one tunnel over and over again because every time he finished it, the rain would come and destroy it again. It was a perpetual cycle of creation and destruction which made him question the basic foundations of life. In this state of mind, the cold grey clouds were like a kind nurse, and the raindrops were like cotton pads dabbing his bleeding wounds and cleaning off the grime from the joints of his body. But Ke...

Leslie was born out of wedlock. Her father was the King of Murberg, and no one really knows who her mother was. She was tired of the politics in her father’s court, and did not want to be married to his treasurer. The King said it was customary for him to decide upon the affairs of his children, and that their destiny was as much entwined with that of Murberg, as his own. Leslie wouldn’t hear any of that, and decided she was going to escape. 1. The Escape The kingdom of Murberg wasn’t very big. It was more the size of modern day Monaco, without the money and wealthy people in it. One could walk out of Murberg in one day if all the roads were fine. But that was where the hurdle lied, and it was precisely that enigmatic hurdle that helped maintain the sovereignty of Murberg against all fear of invasion. The beautiful castle of Murberg was surrounded by an inpenetrable moor, and a legend that no one could cross that moor alive. How the Murbergians managed to live without tra...

Grace Are you done washing up?  Jim Almost! Just one more dish left.  Grace You could have done the dishes later. We are in the middle of a movie.  Jim There! I am done.  Grace Well?! Come on now!  Jim My hands feel rough and uneven like the surface of the moon, and dry. Let me just apply some cream, and I will be right there.  Grace You know, I think you are showing symptoms of OCD.  Jim This is no OCD. This is necessary. I have dry skin. If I don’t keep it moisturized it will soon start cracking, then bleeding, then God knows what.  Grace Then it is your dry skin that is giving you OCD? Case in point, you don’t get dry skin if you do not wash your dishes. In fact, you will get dry skin if you do. How about that?  Jim Then who will do my dishes? I will have to do my dishes anyway, if not now, two hours later, or tomorrow. By then the crumbs will have proudly ...

Jim  I can’t believe I am stuck in this project. I am giving it all the intellectual contribution any human can possibly give, yet I feel like I am the only one who cares about fixing the sinking ship. This is awful. While I tug at the various strings to tune up my project my boss seems to be only interested in cutting them without taking a glimpse at the problem. Can matters get any worse?  Grace But, you are not as unlucky as I am. My boss is only interested in improving her relations with people. By people I don’t mean just colleagues, but the whole lot of people including cab drivers. You should look at her display of pity for the cab drivers. Any human being in his position would do anything to appease and get the hell out.  Jim Don’t be so sure! My boss doesn’t go to the extent of praising cab drivers, but that may be because you don’t see too many females in that profession. My boss is a spider at the middle of his web, and we, his subjects are ...

Grace I have recently noticed that there are more lesbian couples than gay couples. I have always thought it should be the other way round.  Jim Well, and why do you think that is so?   Grace Maybe women have the womb, so it is easier for them to have babies if they want even if they have come out of the closet. But it is probably difficult for men to come out in the open with their sexuality, as they are more likely to be worried about finding a woman, to have kids.  Jim That’s a point, but men can get surrogate mothers if they want.  Grace Yes, but it is not the same. It is more difficult for a woman to give her womb as a surrogate and not complicate matters.  Jim A little trivia. We know that testosterone is the primary male hormone and estrogen the primary female hormone which are known to be involved in the sexual dimorphism of the human brain, right? Funny thing is research shows that the hormone responsibl...

In the upmarket locality of Hauz Khas, Delhi, there is a palatial residence with a front lawn, large balconies and air-conditioning in every room. Behind it lived Phil Terry in an unventilated ground floor apartment.  Phil Terry was born in South Africa, of rich parents running a very successful toothpaste company. Disillusioned with the ways of businessmen, he robbed his dad of half a million rands to study photography in India. At his son’s breaking away with the money, old Terry had a minor heart attack. The half a million rands was stashed away in cash to install a new ultra-high tech artificial pacemaker for his heart. He had recently searched it out on the internet and had decided to buy it on the black market. The pacemaker had the ability to dynamically control heart rate during intense excitement such as during sexual arousal, in order to improve performance. His heart’s native pacemaker had always been lagging behind from a very young age. It was a setback for t...

It has been more that forty years since the first mission on moon. Since then, moon has been invaded many times, by man or unman. But all of these missions have needed rigorous planning and plenty of Government money. And, now Richard Branson aims at sending tourists to space and someday even to the moon.  But all that is besides the point. Mandi House is a seven-point crossing at the heart of New Delhi. It is located close to the famous Connaught Place and it is the cultural hub of the city. Other than the National School of Drama, it is home to several auditoriums and museums. But what is its relationship with Manesar?  Manesar is a little village in Haryana about 50km away from Mandi House. Other than the silly village folk who live here, it is home to the headquarters of the National Security Guard or the NSG. NSG serves the obvious purpose of protecting our vulnerable nation against evil-doers. It is also a seat of national intelligence (or so run the rumor m...