Ideas & Reflections

“Professor,” I asked, “how often should one meet close friends?” He looked at me as if I had asked him how often one should service a vintage car. “That depends,” he said. “Are you asking as a sentimentalist, a busy professional, or a man who has suddenly discovered that WhatsApp is not friendship?” “I mean close friends,” I said. “The kind with whom you do…

Last evening I met my Professor friend at our usual café. Before saying anything, Professor lit his cigar. It was a signal that a serious discussion was about to begin “Tell me Dr Modak,” he began, “how many crises can the world manage at the same time before dropping the planet?” “That depends,” I said. “Are we counting political crises or ecological ones?” “Both,” he…

Last week at VNIT, Nagpur, after my lecture on Understanding Sustainability: Systems and Silos, many students stayed back. One of them asked: “Sir, why does sustainability always look so complicated? Isn’t it just about solving pollution and climate?” I told him we would not begin with climate. We would begin with traffic. The Flyover That Failed Suppose a city builds a flyover. Congestion reduces briefly.…

I found my Professor friend unusually animated that morning. He waved a journal at me before I could sit down. “Gene manipulation,” he declared. “Apparently, a consortium of scientists now believes the human lifespan could be extended to 200 years.” “Tell me Dr  Modak, if you expected to breathe the air of 2250, would sustainability still feel optional?” I studied his face carefully. “Think about…

These days, nobody really wants to read a full report. They want the summary. The executive summary. The key highlights. The one-pager. The slide with three bullets and a reassuring graphic. Entire reports are commissioned, debated, edited, peer-reviewed, and proudly released, only to be skimmed until someone reaches the section titled Summary and stops there. The rest of the document remains pristine, like an unread…

We often imagine surveillance as something imposed by distant powers such as governments, intelligence agencies, technology giants. It sounds abstract, political and dramatic. But surveillance today is no longer exceptional. It is the background condition of ordinary life. Cameras watch streets, offices, airports, lifts, and apartment corridors. They no longer merely record crimes; they record life. They observe how long you hesitate before entering a…

A growing body of research shows that the environment shapes the subconscious particularly through its influence on sleep and dreams. Studies in oneirology demonstrate that external sensory inputs such as sound and smell continue to influence the sleeping brain, altering dream emotion and content and the REM sleep. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement sleep. It is one of the main stages of sleep and…

Lies surround us so completely that we often stop noticing them. They sit quietly in conversations, smile through advertisements, travel with us to work, and even tuck us into bed with the evening news. They are not always malicious; sometimes they are kind, sometimes habitual, sometimes simply convenient. But taken together, a single day’s worth of lies is enough to fill a small theatre. My…

We live in a world not ruled by kings, queens, or parliaments, but by buttons—tiny rectangles of persuasion and control that blink on our screens, demanding obedience. The simple act of living online has become a choreography of clicks. And as if that weren’t enough, a new digital language has taken over: emojis. Smiling faces, flames, and hearts now stand in for entire conversations, shaping…

I was desperately looking for a “decent" ESG expert. Definitions of “decent” can be several e.g. candidate under 3 million Indian Rs as annual CTC. Several applied to my advertisement and my inbox was overflowing with applications. I thought of taking help from my Professor Friend. I had shortlisted few for in person interview to save everybody’s  time. Candidate One beamed. “I’ve disclosed Scope 3…