Reflections View More

The bird is capable of reaching speeds of over 300 km per hour, with the highest recorded speed of 389 km per hour.

All religions aim to make us better human beings: to teach us to be kinder, gentler, more like the deities we worship

The biggest lesson from tragedies such as in Georgia is that generators should never be kept indoors

Education is more attuned to encourage learning by axioms and laws. The spaces for questioning and debating have been receding

The resilience of the big cats is a testament to nature’s ability to adapt, even in the face of human encroachment and environmental change

Humans endowed with the power of speech must also weigh in their capacity to be quiet

If businesses are genuinely interested in consumer response to their queries, there ought to be respect for the negative feedback and acknowledgement of suggestions for improvement

I am an eternal optimist and hope that just as our sports arena is now increasingly looking at merit, our political parties too will follow suit

In my village, Bijwasan in New Delhi, the fields were once rich with generations of stories woven into each harvest. My uncle, like so many other farmers, would rise before dawn, guiding his oxen through the soil as he ploughed...

If I could pray, the gist of my Demanding would be simply this: Quietude. The ordered mind. Erasure of the inner lie, And only love in every kiss. (From ‘Prayer 1’ by Nissim Ezekiel) The year 2024 is the birth...

A year after the armed forces began appointing women officers to command positions in line with the Supreme Court directives, a letter by a top Army commander flagging several functional issues involving women officers has kicked up a debate in...

Sometime in the early 1980s, we had taken cycle rickshaws while returning from a late night movie in Chandigarh’s Sector 17. When we reached Madhya Marg, the central avenue, en route to the university campus, someone called out: “Let’s have...

Walking along the banks of Falachan river deep in the Kullu valley in Himachal Pradesh on a cold winter morning, a dash of brown in the middle of the river caught my eye, just for an instant. It disappeared into...

Guru Nanak’s profound message, ‘Ek Onkar’, is simple to understand. It is the assertion of the oneness of God, which underscores the unity of all creation and reminds us of our shared existence beyond divisions of race, religion, caste, creed,...

The Nilgai is found only in the Indian subcontinent, and is the largest antelope outside of Africa

If I were asked which of the 17 homes we lived in after I was married I loved the most, I’d pick the one we had in Rouse Avenue any day. In the course of my husband’s life in the...

After a deadly fire tragically cut short the lives of more than six newborn children at a private neonatal intensive care facility in East Delhi in May, the National Neonatology Forum, a national body dedicated to neonatal care, issued a...

In the mid-1980s, we were stationed at the Binnaguri Cantonment, where my father, then a Major, was posted. Sometime in December 1987, we went on a trip to Sikkim, not very far from Binnaguri. During the three-day outing, we enjoyed...

In the pre-Independence era, Sengodan, the great-grandfather of my colleague Kayal Kanni, saved a majestic tamarind tree from doom in Kokkalai village, Salem (Tamil Nadu). The unique way this gentleman safeguarded the tree from the axe reads like a scene...

He spared no effort to further the glory of 4th Gorkha Rifles, and become a historical fiction novelist, with bestsellers like ‘Bhowani Junction’ and ‘Bugles and a Tiger’

It is still too early to tell if this was a mistake or not. A few days back, after a gap of almost 50 years, I went inside a house that we had lived in when I was a child....

Nesting is one of the most intriguing facets of a bird’s life and is, perhaps, as diversified as the creatures themselves. From a scrape in the ground lined with straw (quail) to a hole drilled into a tree (woodpecker) to...

In many ancient cultures, mythology and nature are deeply entwined. Ancient people followed what is today known as Paganism. They worshipped the elements which were strange and inexplicable to them to calm natural occurrences beyond their understanding. In Indian mythology,...

Military courier flights serve as an air bridge between the operational areas and the communication centres or administrative bases located in the hinterland for transportation of personnel and stores. The reduction in travel time also affords an opportunity to troops...