Thursday, February 11, 2010

My Stroke of Insight

Just finished reading this remarkable book. The author is a neuroscientist, Jill Bolte Taylor who suffered a hemorrhagic stroke when she was thirty seven and the book is the story of her recovery. If it was one of those rehab stories I would not have thought fit to write about it. It is much more than that. During the process of recovery she discovers the nature and location of human mind and the many facets of I consciousness. The intricate interplay of the right and the left cerebral hemispheres and what happens when one dominates the other are very well brought out. More than that, it gives some very valid and acceptable explanations of our relation with life, death and the larger universe that we are part of. A must read for bigots, believers, atheists and agnostics.

Those of us who have valued and enjoyed the immense beauty of our existence, this book gives a fresh evidence why it is so.


Most corrupt country

Surely, India ranks at the top. There was a news report of an Indian Administrative Service officer [these are the blue eyed boys of the government service] getting caught with a mind boggling amount of ill gotten money, 300,000,000,000 Rupees! The story found a tiny place in our newspapers. The same news papers carried full page news with photographs of the scion of our political royal family taking a train ride in the city of Mumbai. We have degenerated so much that we now accept and even appreciate the corrupt!

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