Blog@GraceJunction

Imagine you were forced to parachute yourself on to the Alps with a bottle of water in your hand. As you touch ground, it starts snowing heavily and so you take cover inside a cave. Keeping down the bottle in your hand, you clean the snow off your attire and then go out to gather rest of your gear. When you return in a few minutes, you observe that the bottle of water has frozen. What was water in liquid form is now ice. You panic and frantically try to search for someone who did this act, but there’s nothing in the cave. Eureka ! you cry out, nothing can convert water in to ice, and you write a book on the theory of everything  and try to explain that God is now fully kicked out from the equation.

This is exactly what Stephen Hawking’s new book “The Grand Design” is trying to explain mankind, about how everything that is, has come in to being. Stephen’s book although has not ignited physics, as the theory proposed by him is just an old idea in a new garb. It is a simplistic approach, yet in our secular age it is one that seems to have resonance with a skeptical public. The reason the book has sparked lot of discussion is the philosophical conclusions that he is drawing from his proposed theory. (more…)

What’s happening to our planes suddenly! What’s happening to the Indian flights! There have been at least four incidents in the last fortnight in which one of the incidents resulted in the loss of 158 lives, including the crew! Again another flight almost landed into an already parked aircraft on the runway! Be it an overstressed flight crew or the ground-staff (ATC) that maybe the reason for all these, but there surely is too much appearing to be at stake in the skies for now!

I never forget to say a small prayer of thanks to God whenever my flight is about to take off and immediately before and after it lands safely too. After reading about these close shaves, I should say that every take off and landing has been a favor granted! Some of you may shirk at the thought of thanking God for everything! Why to ascribe all favours to Him! If so, then let me tell you, I am sure there maybe times in your life when you really want to thank someone for something or for some situation in your life and then suddenly you realize that you don’t know whom to thank! (more…)

The much awaited monsoon had finally descended on our city with a few continuous and long spells. I ve always looked forward towards this time thru the year, a time to be drenched by the rains. It a great time of relief as the cold drops touch you face and drip in to your soul to soothe. This time I was with my son, who equally enjoys the rains. It was fun splashing and jumping in the poodles created in the courtyard of our house. Suddenly my son stopped playing and asked me a question – Dada where does this water come from, Is there a shower tap in the skies? Does God operate them ?. Why are there bubbles in the water? Why is water flowing away, I want to play, why cant we stop it. Later he would cry when the rains would stop or when it would just drizzle and I would tell him, ask God to open the shower. However these questions lingered in my mind and put me on to do some research on this simple thing called water. And I found there is much more beyond this simple thing called water. (more…)

In my wee-wonder days of childhood, the classic debate was “Will robots replace human beings?” The person who stood “for it”, always won the debate by justifying the fact about the improved quality of life, faster production & development, maximum utilization of natural resources etc. Hearing the debate I always wondered what type of a dumb and wobbly feeling would have measured-up in the heart of the person who stood against it! 

But today it would be foolish to, not admire and be thankful for the great achievements of modern technology over the last century: advance medicines, advance energy, advance weapons, high speed communication and navigation systems. (more…)

It was sad to read the story of Chitra Parmar in the morning today. Depressed over a failed love affair, this 20-year-old student of National Institute of Fashion Design, committed suicide by hanging herself from the ceiling fan on Sunday evening. In the suicide note she said she was taking the step because she could not get over the fact she had been jilted by her lover Hiren Patel. She also named three more people as responsible for their break-up. Finally she apologised to her parents in the suicide note. (more…)

A couple of months back, I was sitting on the porch with my son. A heavy spell of rain had just come to an end. There was water all over in the parkway and both of us sat down to enjoy the freshness that the rain had ushered in.

Suddenly my son spotted some movements in the water, that had collected in the parkway. He immediately questioned me,  Dada what’s that in the water ? I realized that there were ripples and bubbles’ springing up in the water as rain was still drizzling. I replied to him, Son its rain. He immediately sprang back and replied, but Dada, there’s no rain. He was true in one sense as we really couldn’t see the rain drops. (more…)

Ten thousand years ago the agricultural revolution launched a slow wave of change. The industrial revolution, starting roughly 350 years ago, triggered a second – faster – wave of change. In the mid-1950s the United States started on the path to a completely new kind of economy – one based on knowledge rather than muscle power. This is part of a gigantic wave of technological, social and cultural change. What we’re living through now is history’s third great wave of change – one that is arriving at hyper-speed and is global in extent.

This new way of life – it’s really a new civilization or, for that matter, a “super-civilization” – is spreading out from the United States and has cells in many other parts of the world, from Japan and Singapore and China to India and Brazil.

The first phase of this current upheaval is the digital revolution and its social and cultural effects. The next phase is the fusion of the digital revolution with the genetic and biological revolution. (more…)