DISCOVER TIPS | Knowledge Magazine

Despite our differences, we all share a common desire to live a fulfilling life. It’s one of the things that make us humans — well, human. As social beings, we crave for meaning in everything we do. We want to get the most out of our experiences and so we intentionally seek purpose in things we go through. The question here is: what does a fulfilling life look like to you? Is it one where you’ve got a lot of money for everything you want and need? Or is it where you have the best relationships with the people you love and those around you? Or is it a life of peace, wellness, and contentment? The following are five helpful tips that will help you create a happier and more fulfilled life. 1. Live in the moment. Our physical body resides in the present, but from a mental standpoint, things don’t often go this way. Even though we are physically here at this very moment, most of our thoughts drift far away to the distant past or the imagined future. Because of this...

By Kartikeya Date Don't think be deluded into thinking Mohammad Amir was prosecuted for causing the noble game the blushes. His crime was rocking the boat for private interests in the business of cricket. Very few human beings in the history of the world have bowled as fast and as well as Mohammad Amir could by the age of 18. By then, Amir had been through multiple back injuries and a nearly fatal bout of dengue fever. The first time he met the then Pakistan coach Geoff Lawson, he was 16, attending an under-19 camp. He was delayed by three hours because the Taliban had closed the highway. An introduction to the great Wasim Akram came courtesy the former Pakistan all-rounder Mudassar Nazar, at the end of which Akram pronounced the teenager “ready to play for Pakistan”. He was duly picked and made his Test debut at Galle in 2009. Amir got a wicket in his first over. It was a classic fast bowler’s dismissal. Steep bounce and sharp inward movement cramped the opener Malinda Wa...

By Anisha Ralhan Information is a good thing, no? That's why the Internet, as an inexhaustible and inexpensive repository of knowledge, is the go-to option for many an ailing curious cat. Only, it's important to realise that it can afflict you with anxiety as easily as it can diagnose or inform you. The Internet teaches you a lot of things. How to bully a stranger. How to survive a bully a you barely know. Ten things to watch before you die. Ten ways to make a man fall in love with you. How to make your life seem more interesting than what it is because YOLO. The internet is like a cabinet of curiosity. If you open the right drawer, you could end up being popular or even smarter. But if you happen to be a hypochondriac like me, you could unleash upon yourself a world of misery — or in Web MD’s lexicon, an “Irritable Bowel Syndrome” — and things only spiral downward from there. I can’t remember when exactly I began to worry about my health. It certainly didn’t happen overnight. ...

By Sneha We live in an age where every moment is enslaved in the service of capitalism. Productivity is regarded as the highest virtue and leisure a wasteful self-indulgence. But sometimes, the best ideas and innovations are lurking mischievously in the fogs of loitering. About four years ago, a book titled  Why Loiter?  put forward an apparently simply, but effectively radical, proposition:  why not loiter?  Arguing that it is mostly almost always men of a certain class, caste, and religion who have the privilege of loitering in public without the risk of stigmatisation, dishonour, and violence, this book proposed loitering as an emancipatory political act which women and other subaltern groups might take up. The authors of the book argued that loitering out of choice means resisting codes and norms that make it acceptable for men to do so but not women. Taking this a step further, one might even add that loitering as an act in itself is an affront to capitalism wh...

By Vidya Venkat Those rallying for British nationalism and a concomitant Brexit are forgetting that 'British culture' today is a nebulous idea. If people are what they eat, then there could be nothing uniquely ‘British’ about the Brits. When the news of the Brexit vote started coming in on Friday, June 24, my mind instantly went back to an ethnographic study of the popular UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, which I had done five years ago as a student of anthropology in London. Source: Wikipedia Bronisław Malinowski, a 20th-Century anthropologist, argued that culture functioned to meet the needs of individuals rather than society as a whole. Meaning, in an age of globalisation following a history of colonial cross-assimilation, Britain can hardly have an 'authentic culture'. In the study, I had set out to decode the Malinowskian “imponderabilia of everyday life” of the average British citizen. Bronislaw Malinowski, the father figure of British social anthr...

By theRead Desk We rely on colours — external appearances, second-hand information — to understand our world, in most cases. Yet, they can be very misleading. Here's a selection of lucid images to help explain how to deal with this... Colour. It's what defines an object. Colour is literally what differentiates an edible melon from a poisonous one... ^  A Hello Kitty face is embossed on a melon, grown specially in Hokkaido, Japan. The melons are harvested after the design is etched onto them. Once they ripen, they will go on sale for 5,400 Yen ($53 approx.), pictured here at the Sanrio Co headquarters in Tokyo, on June 23, 2016. Yet, colour is only a property — not the essence — of the melon. And here's the really cool thing about colour. You notice it only when light reflects off of the melon. Until light informs you of its external surface, you really don't know anything about the melon. But even then, light can only give you information about the melon's surfa...

By Kartikeya Date Does Anil Kumble's appointment as the top man in Indian cricket by a panel of his former teammates indicate the BCCI's desire to tackle the court's recent scrutiny and repackage itself behind a modern and homegrown mascot? Anil Kumble has been appointed Head Coach of the BCCI’s senior men’s team by a three member cricket advisory committee comprised by Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman. Depending on your point of view, this is either a truly great decision, or just yet another addition to the incestuous web of conflicts-of-interest that animates the Indian cricketing firmament. Kumble has been appointed by a committee constituted by three former players, two of whom captained Kumble. All three also played under Kumble’s captaincy. Kumble, Laxman, Tendulkar and Ganguly played 65 Tests together for India. Three of them picked the fourth as India’s head coach from among 21 other candidates even though Kumble did not meet the very first paramet...

By Tishani Doshi As the author engages with the late Bhupen Khakhar's art, she finds a clear and strident message serving as a warning for those being peddled nostalgia into supporting Britain's estrangement from Europe Some days ago I visited the Tate Modern in London to see the Bhupen Khakhar retrospective “You Can’t Please All”. I went with an agenda: to love the show. My friend and teacher, the choreographer Chandralekha, had shared many stories with me about Bhupen. When I began dancing with her in 2001 she told me about his incomparable wit. She said that he was a homosexual with a toothy smile, that they were always laughing together and that his paintings were marvellous and playful and ribald. She must have said more, but this is what I remember. When he died in August 2003, after a battle with prostate cancer, I found Chandra sitting outside her house in Madras, staring into space. “They’re all going,” she said. She was 74 then, losing friends steadily. I had only ...

If all Indians spoke just the one language, you might need to designate it official status. But the nation is too diverse and decentralised to suggest that embracing one language will improve employment prospects. Roughly a week ago, Union minister Jitendra Singh made an  announcement that the government was going to undertake measures to popularise Hindi in the Southern and North-Eastern States of India, a move, according to the minister, which would make the language a common medium of communication for the whole country, and improve young people’s chances of landing better corporate jobs. As expected, the news drew varied and mixed reactions, from flak to favour. The first thing that came to my mind when I read the news, though, was a very specific scene from the 80s tamil film, Indru Poi Naalai Vaa . One of the main characters, in a bid to get closer to the girl of his dreams, decides to learn Hindi from her father, a Hindi teacher with a short fuse. The closer he gets ...

By Shruti Radhakrishnan/Shubhashree Desikan The notion of Time travel has always fired up our imagination. There is something about being able to navigate and interact with events — before or after they happen. Is it theoretically possible though? What does it even mean? Who doesn’t dream of time travel at some point or the other. Everyone has regrets in their life that they want to go back and change, or go into the future and change things there too. Ask Ronald Mallett, a famous proponent of the possibility of time travel, who latched on to the obsession of going back in time because he wanted to save his father, whom he lost at age 10, from dying. While the invention of time travel has to be the coolest Fathers' Day gift ever, it's worth pondering if this is at all possible. Mallett, backed by the science of no less than Albert Einstein, thinks so. And what if it is possible? Many ideas, in film and fiction, have explored the possibility of time travel and how play...

By Suhasini Haider Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are two sides of the Israel coin — one the seat of Ultra-Orthodox traditionality and the other a haven for modernists and innovators. The contrast is stark, yet bespeaks the same Jewish identity. Israel, we are told, is a tale of two cities: Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. As much as Jerusalem is steeped in thousands of years of history and conflict, Tel Aviv is young, hip, bright-lights-big-city. Tel Aviv, built right by the ancient port town of Jaffa (Yafo), is only about a hundred years old, settled on sand dunes by a group of European Jewish immigrants. With the most gorgeous waterfront and continuous beach, Tel Aviv is the city that doesn’t sleep, the party city and the gay capital of the Middle East. When we land in Tel Aviv, the city is awash in rainbow colours because of an upcoming gay pride parade that is amongst the world’s biggest. On our first night, we walk into a club on Tel Aviv’s iconic Dizengoff Street (named after its first mayor) w...