Broken Bangles: Life, Stories, Thoughts

You are a farmer with a tract of land where you cultivate your crops. You spend a lot of money buying fertilisers. The farm is full of weeds, but the labour required to remove them is above your means. Here is an alternate path for you to enrich your soil with nutrients and have the weeds removed free of cost.  Invite a poultry, goat, or dairy farmer to graze his animals inside your farm after you harvest your crop. These animals spend their lives on your farm f or a month or two . The animals eat the weeds, solving a problem you will have in the next cultivation. Their excreta falls upon your farmland and provides it with free fertiliser. Once they leave, you can start ploughing your land. The manure is mixed with the soil homogeneously. And now, you can plant a new crop.  One simple plan like the above represents the term circular economy or circularity in an eye-opening way. Circularity is not limited to this modest example. Its implications are huge. It is a virtuous circ...

  (St Basil Church, Moscow; Image source: flickr.com) Hi Traveller,  Magnificent, breathtaking, incredible, fabulous- no adjective can fully do justice to the marvel of the Orthodox churches of Russia. If you are a traveller searching for sublimated sights of history frozen in time, you must stand in front of Saint Basil’s Basilica in Moscow at least once. You will see the evening sky acquiring an added glow from the church's colourful spires and domes. No other experience can give you the authentic taste of ancient Rus than visiting the orthodox churches.  As Winston Churchill once defined, Russia is "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Welcome to the marvellous enigma of Russia and its magnificent churches, of which many became communist party offices and administrative offices during the Soviet regime and were handed back to the folks of faith when that era passed. These buildings thus represent, above all, the passing of time.  The gorgeous Saint Bas...

(image source: Pixabay) A cancer vaccine has always remained elusive for medicine and science. Is this situation changing? Is hope rising over the horizon? The Ovarian Cancer Vaccine According to the latest news , Oxford University scientists have developed a vaccine for ovarian cancer . This vaccine, OvarianVax, when available for use, will be able to teach the immune cells in our body to detect and attack ovarian cancer cells in the early stages of this disease. Prof. Ahmed Ahmed is the leading scientist behind this research.  The trial for this vaccine has started. The importance of this development is that when it is ready, this vaccine might wipe out ovarian cancer. Yet, this vaccine is still years away.  Why Is a Cancer Vaccine Still a Mirage? What is Happening on the Research Front? Catherine J Wu, a cancer scientist, was awarded the prestigious Sjöberg Prize for her contribution to cancer research  in February 2024 . She is a professor of medicine at Harvard...

  The growing perception is that the world is not a safe place anymore. Why bring children to a world torn apart by many wars and under the shadow of climate doom? This question is too familiar and relatable to the Gen Z generation.    In the US, the population projections reveal that the birth-over-death ratio will be in the negative zone by around 2040. Millennials and Gen Z are less inclined towards having children than their preceding generations.  The immigrants are expected to compensate for this population decline. Even the Covid 19 failed to bring about an increase in babies being born. It was expected, and signals even showed such a trend, but it was short-lived.  In 2020, BBC reported that 23 countries would see their population reduced to half of what it is currently by 2100.  In the 1950s, the planet had 4.7 children per woman; in 2021, the corresponding figure is 2.4 . The world population will start declining when the fertility rate fall...

 (Pellworm Island; image source: de.wikipedia.org) Hello Traveller, You are someone eager to walk unbeaten tracks. You wonder how people live in remote corners of the world where time seems to stand still, and life flows forever without much change. This is why you must visit Pellworm and Suderoog in Germany. These places might teach you an entirely new philosophy of life if you are the listening type.    Suderoog Island can be described in two phrases- one, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the North Frisian Wadden Sea, and two, called by many a floating dream. This island is on the mudflats of Germany. To benefit those uninitiated in geography and its weird diversity, I must explain that a mudflat is a tidal flat, a slob, as the Irish call it. It amounts to a coastal wetland formed by silt deposits in an intertidal area.  They are similar to bays, estuaries, lagoons, and bayous. The mudflats are alternatively submerged and exposed. Even when submerged, the water...