"A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow India analysed is such a conversation between two wise men, Ramin Jahanbegloo, acclaimed Iranian philosopher and Sudhir Kakar, the renowned Indian psychoanalyst and writer. Kakar takes Jahanbegloo and the readers on a…
The Politics of the family
“Sometimes family weirdos just get a bad rap.” — Mirabel, Disney's Encanto (2021) "But between the impossible and the trivial, there may be a way that is both feasible and significant..." writes R.D.Laing, the daring explorer of human mind in his collection of thought provoking essays, The Politics of the Family, as he navigates through…
The Gift of Therapy
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. Carl Gustav Jung In spite of being a very tough choice for most of us, therapy can turn out to be a gift. It can enrich a person's life with many gifts of understanding. But it…
Liberating Losses: When Death Brings Relief
Death is an awakening.Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace There are few things that is as life affirming as death. But this is often confounded by the confusing cocktail of emotions surrounding death. We are expected to be sad in the face of death for there is a loss. We are allowed to progress through the…
Maybe you should talk to someone
The more you welcome your vulnerability, the less afraid you'll feel.Wendell in Maybe you should talk to someone by Lori Gottlieb. Talking to someone is one of the most daring things that we all do on a regular basis. As we utter words, we lay our thoughts bare in front of another. It gets all…
The Second Kind of Loneliness
Where do we draw the line between solitude and loneliness? George R. R. Martin's The Second Kind of Loneliness meditates on the conflicting subjectivity that attempts to answer this question. Martin makes the distant vantage point intimate enough to be intimidating. https://youtu.be/GO5FwsblpT8 The story is a few diary entries from a lonely astronaut at the…
Book 3, Kamasutra
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory. Abraham Lincoln Book 3 is a detailed section on marriage and courtship. It shifts its focus from romanticizing marriage and instead emphasizes on its strategic nature. Kamasutra encourages the union of equals through marriage. It recommends the family as well as acquaintances to prepare and…
A Christmas Carol
If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, its social and charitable observances, were ever in danger of decay, this is the book that would give them a new lease.Thomas Hood on A Christmas Carol. In one of the most beloved Christmas tales of all time, Charles Dickens beautifully captures the mood and humanity of…
The Little Matchstick Girl
A human life is a story told by GodHans Christian Andersen Illustration by Rachel Isadora Most fairy tales usually end with the phrase, they lived happily ever after. But some fairy tales, end in darker dead ends, in a dreadful balance act between the narrative of a fairy tale and the reality, where ultimately the…
The Nutcracker
E.T.A.Hoffman, "the unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature", as Freud calls him, wrote a dark and grim fairy tale about a young girl and her Nutcracker prince in 1816. The story was adapted famously, by Alexander Dumas and later to stage by Tchaikovsky. The allure of the story is still resplendent, yet the darkness…
AK reads 