We love stories, and even in the age of Netflix-and-chill, there's nothing like a good book that promises a couple of hours of absorption whether curled up in bed, in your favourite coffeehouse, or that long (and tiresome) commute to work. Every Sunday, we'll have a succinct pick of books, across diverse genres, that have been newly made available for your reading pleasure. Get them wherever you get your books the friendly neighbourhood bookseller, e-retail website, chain store and in whatever form you prefer. Happy reading!

For more of our weekly book recommendations, click here.

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FICTION

A Drop of Blood By Joginder Paul; translated by Snehal ShingaviPenguin Random House India | Rs 399 | 184 pages

Author and associate professor of English at University of Texas Snehal Shingavi translates award-winning Urdu writer Joginder Pauls debut novel Ek Boond Lahoo Ki. It follows Mohan Karan, blessed with good looks and a rare blood type. While his degree in English literature makes him little money, he discovers that selling his blood to a private blood bank has promising returns. While unexpected possibilities open up, little does he realise the personal cost these come at.

Read more about the book here.

POETRY

Open Your Eyes: An Anthology on Climate Change Edited by Vinita Agrawal Hawakal Publishers | Rs 500 | 202 pages

Award-winning poet Vinita Agrawals anthology investigates the relationship between human beings and the natural world, and aims to bring to readers attention the threat that is climate change. Each contributor has interpreted the theme differently, looking at climate change through physical, emotional, and spiritual lenses. The book also includes a foreword by poet Ranjit Hoskote.

Read more about the book here.

MEMOIRS and BIOGRAPHIES

Nothing to Lose: The Authorized Biography of Ma Anand Sheela By Manbeena Sandhu HarperCollins India | Rs 599 | 272 pages

Writer Manbeena Sandhu followed the Osho movement for two decades before finally meeting Sheela. In this book, she outlines Sheelas life, from her intense relationship with Bhagwan to heading an ashram at Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, in the 1980s. The book also discusses her alleged spearheading of the largest bio-terror attack in American history, and the 39 months she spent in jail.

Read more about the book here. Read an excerpt from the book here.

NON-FICTION

The City-Makers: How Women are Building a Sustainable Future for Urban India By Renana Jhabvala and Bijal Brahmbhatt Hachette India | Rs 399 | 208 pages

Social workers Renana Jhabvala and Bijal Brahmbhatt tell the story of the Mahila Housing SEWA Trust (MHT), established in 1994 with the aim of mobilising and empowering the urban poor women, who are living in slums and bearing the burdens of housework, childcare, and earning a livelihood. Over 25 years, MHT has affected the lives of over 1.7 million individuals. The book records this journey, sharing accounts of courageous women who have taken steps to bring change at the personal and community level.

Read more about the book here.

Fractured Forest, Quartzite City: A History of Delhi and it's Ridge By Thomas Crowley SAGE Publications India and Yoda Press | Rs 795 | 368 pages

Researcher Thomas Crowley tells the history of Delhi, placing its environment at the centre of the narrative, focusing especially on the Ridge, referred to as Delhis green lung. Even as the city has been a hub of politics, warfare, trade, and religion, the Ridges trees cant be separated from the stones below them, nor the cities that rose and fell around them. Through an ecological vantage point, Crowley offers a new light in which to understand the citys historical and geographical interconnections.

Read more about the book here.

COVID-19

And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again: Writers from Around the World on the COVID-19 Pandemic Edited by Ilan Stavans Penguin Random House India | Rs 799 | 400 pages

As COVID-19 has become a defining global experience, writers, artists, and translators from over 30 countries including translator Arshia Sattar from India come together to offer a portrait of the time, and be an antidote to the confines of isolation. Edited by writer Ilan Stavans, the book takes its name from the last line of Dantes Inferno, when the poet and his guide emerge from hell to observe the beauty of heaven once again. The stories, essays, poems, and artwork follow in that spirit, pointing toward a more connected future.

Read more about the book here.

A Crown of Thorns: The Coronavirus and Us By Kalpish Ratna Context | Rs 399 | 264 pages

Surgeons Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan write together as Kalpish Ratna. They assess the current narrative of COVID-19, which has so far focused primarily on the virus. But instead of just the novel coronavirus, the book considers the relation between the virus and humanity. We have coexisted with viruses since the dawn of evolution. So, what has changed? Have we disrupted something crucial in nature? The book combines science, history and the human story, offering the long view of the pandemic.

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Books of the week: From An Anthology on Climate Change to Kalpish Ratnas A Crown of Thorns, our picks - Firstpost

New Delhi | October 11, 2020 11:04:50 am

Is coding a must-have life skill of the future?

The digital native that she is, eight-year-old Hirranya Rajani, with her experience of building an app and multiple skirmishes with pesky bugs, takes no time to break it down. Coding is like, say, your friend comes home and asks for a glass of water. You are busy. She doesnt know your house, and you have to tell her how to go about it, step by step. Tell her where the glass of water is kept, which way to turn till she gets there . . . Coding is like that, communicating with your computer and telling it what to do, and how to do it, she says. For over a year, Hirranya has been learning the elements of the language on the ed-tech coding platform, WhiteHat Jr, that helps her do just that.

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How UK-born Barry John turned generations of Indians into theatre professionals

In 1968, 22-year-old Barry John from centralEnglands Black Country, an area cloaked in soot and smoke from factories and mines, arrived in India and began to create theatre that would free the minds of children. People were not used to the idea that children have voices and opinions. I was working from my heart, rather than my head, in fighting for the right of children to make their own choices instead of being told what to do, when to do or how to do, he says over phone from Dharamshala, where he has been living in retirement since 2015.

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How social media kills information by overproducing it

What do you do with dead information? Not information that is no longer valid. Not information that is no longer relevant. Not information that has fallen out of fashion. But the information that has become truly and profoundly dead scrambled in an irreversible glitch, corrupt on fickle storage devices, residing in formats that nobody reads, written in machine languages that are long since forgotten. What do you do with information that is inaccessible, illegible, and not intelligible?

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Why animals fear us more than we could ever fear them

When faced with danger, every living creature responds in two ways, only one of which can be used at a time fight or flight. Usually, when the threat is smaller and weaker, the creature will fight and vanquish it. At times, the threat is on a par with it and the animal has to decide whether its worth getting injured in a do-or-die fight or to simply retreat and live to fight (a weaker enemy) another day. Sometimes, of course, tempers short-circuit and a fight to the death commences: usually, no one comes off a clear winner. The loser may lose its life and the winner limp away, ready to be taken on by another challenger, which it is, now, in no condition to do.

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The essential Louise Glck reading list

After its controversial selection of Peter Handke for the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy returned on course this year with a Laureate who met with all-round approval: Louise Glcks mastery at laying bare the inner life of the individual has long been acknowledged. Heres a list of four collections that give a glimpse of Glcks poetic genius:

The House on Marshland (1975)

Glcks second book of poetry, which came seven years after her debut volume, Firstborn, is considered to be the one that announced the arrival of a powerful new voice in American poetry. One of the poems in the collection, Gretel In Darkness, in particular, drew both censure and acclaim for its exploration of the theme of familial and cultural trauma, told from the perspective of Gretel, one of the protagonists from the Grimm Brotherss fairytale.

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Did the First Amendment to the Constitution lay the foundation for an authoritarian state?

The story of Indian politics is one of continuities more than ruptures contrary to the popular imagination, bolstered by arguments by several mainstream political analysts that the period since 2014 has paved the way for a new regime that has jeopardised democracy and tarnished the idea of India. Singhs book, which narrates the story of the passage of the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution by theJawaharlal Nehrugovernment in June 1951, provides an important interruption to this narrative.

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Manbeena Sandhu: Ma Anand Sheela is still the queen of her kingdom

She was 16 when she accompanied her father to meet godman Rajneesh in Baroda, the beginning of a complex relationship that endured until she fled his ashram in the US in 1985. From setting up a commune in a wild outpost of Oregon and unsettling a conservative local community along the way, the flamboyant Ma Anand Sheela (born Sheela Ambalal Patel) was personal secretary to Osho, as Rajneesh later came to be called, and the face of the movement till her falling out with him, which ended in a 39-month prison spell for a series of charges, including immigration fraud, wiretapping and poisoning. In this interview, Manbeena Sandhu speaks on what led her to document the story of an unconventional life and the inner world of a controversial cult.

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How Gandhis assassination left one family not only shocked, but also politicised

I like to call myself and those of us who were young adults in India in the 1950s, the before midnights children. Unlike Salman Rushdies protagonists who were born at the very midnight hour of August 15, 1947, the moment that India was declared free from British rule, I was born in 1933 and was a teenager at the time of Independence, and a young adult as we threw ourselves into the work of a new and free India. I would say that we experienced an India which we still fantasize about, and which also shaped our politics profoundly. I would go further and suggest that we got deeply attached to some ideas, ideologies and aspirations that were born of that experience that we are not able to shed, even today, in our eighties.

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Sunday Long Reads: Of coding, Gandhis assassination, Louise Glcks best books, and more - The Indian Express

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. In 1879, at the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education and lived there for fourteen years. Brought up at first in an English family at Manchester, he joined St. Pauls School in London in 1884 and in 1890 went from it with a senior classical scholarship to Kings College, Cambridge, where he studied for two years.

Sri Aurobindo passed thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906, in the Baroda Service, first in the Revenue Department and in secretariat work for the Maharaja, afterwards as Professor of English and, finally, Vice-Principal in the Baroda College. [. . .] A great part of the last years of this period was spent on leave in silent political activity, for he was debarred from public action by his position at Baroda. The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly in the political movement. He left Baroda in 1906 and went to Calcutta as Principal of the newly-founded Bengal National College.

The political action of Sri Aurobindo covered eight years, from 1902 to 1910. During the first half of this period he worked behind the scenes, preparing with other co-workers the beginnings of the Swadeshi (Indian Sinn Fein) movement, till the agitation in Bengal furnished an opening for the public initiation of a more forward and direct political action than the moderate reformism which had till then been the creed of the Indian National Congress. [. . .] Sri Aurobindo hoped to capture the Congress and make it the directing centre of an organised national action, an informal State within the State, which would carry on the struggle for freedom till it was won.

Sri Aurobindo was prosecuted for sedition in 1907 and acquitted. Up till now an organiser and writer, he was obliged by this event and by the imprisonment or disappearance of other leaders to come forward as the acknowledged head of the party in Bengal and to appear on the platform for the first time as a speaker. He presided over the Nationalist Conference at Surat in 1907 where in the forceful clash of two equal parties the Congress was broken to pieces. In May, 1908, he was arrested in the Alipur Conspiracy Case as implicated in the doings of the revolutionary group led by his brother Barindra; but no evidence of any value could be established against him and in this case too he was acquitted. After a detention of one year as undertrial prisoner in the Alipur Jail, he came out in May, 1909, to find the party organisation broken, its leaders scattered by imprisonment, deportation or self-imposed exile and the party itself still existent but dumb and dispirited and incapable of any strenuous action. For almost a year he strove single-handed as the sole remaining leader of the Nationalists in India to revive the movement. He published at this time to aid his effort a weekly English paper, theKarmayogin, and a Bengali weekly, theDharma. But at last he was compelled to recognise that the nation was not yet sufficiently trained to carry out his policy and programme. [. . .] Moreover, since his twelve months detention in the Alipur Jail, which had been spent entirely in the practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusive concentration. He resolved therefore to withdraw from the political field, at least for a time.

In February, 1910, he withdrew to a secret retirement at Chandernagore and in the beginning of April sailed for Pondicherry in French India. [. . .]

During all his stay at Pondicherry from 1910 [until his passing in 1950 he] remained more and more exclusively devoted to his spiritual work and his sadhana. In 1914 after four years of silent Yoga he began the publication of a philosophical monthly, theArya. Most of his more important works [. . .] appeared serially in theArya. These works embodied much of the inner knowledge that had come to him in his practice of Yoga. [. . .] TheAryaceased publication in 1921 after six years and a half of uninterrupted appearance.

Sri Aurobindo lived at first in retirement at Pondicherry with four or five disciples. Afterwards more and yet more began to come to him to follow his spiritual path and the number became so large that a community of sadhaks had to be formed for the maintenance and collective guidance of those who had left everything behind for the sake of a higher life. This was the foundation of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram which has less been created than grown around him as its centre.

Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1905. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation followed till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobindos rises to the Spirit to redescend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. [. . .] It is possible by opening to a greater divine consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover ones true self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the supramental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realise this possibility has been the dynamic aim ofSri Aurobindos Yoga.

Written by Sri Aurobindo. Edited material marked by brackets. From the booklet,Sri Aurobindo and his Ashram, pp. 2-6, published in 1983 by theSri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry.

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Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Sadhana Peetham

In a special introduction to mark the 20th anniversary of her iconic book The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (1998), author Urvashi Butalia wrote, All the questions that remain alive today how citizenship is defined, how the State relates to its citizens, what a relationship of trust means, how refugees are defined and understood, how many of our cities have developed, the lands they took in, the settlements that were built and so much more find resonance in that violent founding moment.

These questions cannot be dismissed as the idle preoccupations of scholars raking up the past to problematise what is done and dusted. They are intimately connected to questions of survival. Delhi-based photographer Anuj Arora (27) realised this when he began working on a photography project to document the lives of Rohingya muslims, one of the most persecuted communities in the world, living in refugee camps in and around Delhi-NCR. It struck a personal chord because his grandparents were Partition refugees who fled Lahore in 1947.

Having grown up on his grandparents stories, Arora could readily empathise with the experiences of the Rohingyas. They were forced to leave behind their homes in the Rakhine state of Myanmar and find shelter wherever they could. Many of them escaped genocide and came to Delhi. During his research for a diploma project on documentary photography at the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication, Arora learnt that they reside in four main areas Shaheen Bagh, Madanpur Khadar, Okhla and Vikaspuri. Titled Unsettled Identities, his series of photographs is now being showcased on a digital platform curated by the Prameya Art Foundation. It is an intimate record of their everyday experiences.

A mother combs a childs hair. Children huddle together and read. Family photographs and identity documents are tightly held on to. A bonfire provides warmth on a cold night. Youngsters play with abandon. A father looks lovingly at his child. Some are immersed in their cellphones; others rest on the ground and stare at the sky above. Arora says,Delhi has been a place of shelter for migrant communities from Sindh, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Jamaica, Myanmar, Bangladesh and many other parts of the world. I wanted to focus on Rohingya Muslims because they have lived amidst us for decades, but we know so little. They face linguistic and cultural barriers and problems related to education, housing and employment.

Earning trust

Just being curious was not enough. Arora had to earn the trust of the community leaders. They wanted to understand why he was interested in their lives. It occurred to him that the Rohingyas in these refugee camps live in a state of constant fear, so it was natural for them to be on their guard. Arora says,They wake up each morning and check on what is happening in Myanmar. They migrated because of ethnic cleansing, but there is a lot of sentimental value attached to their memories. They are not only worried about themselves, but also about relatives in Myanmar since the verification forms used in India ask them to mention addresses and contact details of those people.

Building a relationship was important. Once they warmed up to Arora, he was invited to meals and became a regular recipient of their hospitality. While interacting with them, he found a lot of tender moments to capture. Soon, he decided to shoot the entire series in black and white and shades of grey, in order to reflect the mood in the refugee camps most accurately. The children who gathered around him wanted to learn how to use the camera, so he also conducted some informal photography workshops and encouraged them to practise the craft.

Bearing witness

Arora believes that official documents and school history textbooks usually focus on the hard facts. They do not reflect the feelings of refugees and the hardship they go through. Each person, and every family, has numerous stories to tell. Nobody can predict when the wounds will heal, if they do so at all, but what artists can do is bear witness. We cannot take away the pain that they have gone through, but we can sit there and listen as they speak, remarks Arora.

Spending time with them brought up questions about what his own grandparents must have encountered when the carnage in 1947 made them pack up their bags and migrate to the Indian side of Punjab, from where they moved to refugee camps in Delhi. Arora wonders whether they too felt out of place all their lives, while trying to adjust to a new homeland and feels grateful that they survived despite everything that they lost. His photographs are also, in a sense, a tribute to their resilient spirit.

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Portraits of the persecuted - Deccan Herald

File photo: Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, on September 27, 2019. (REUTERS/Brendan Mcdermid)

Narendra Modi has completed 19 years as a top administrator and his journey from being a chief minister to a prime minister has entered its 20th year, making him a rare personality in Indian politics. After spending around a little less than 13 years in Gujarat as CM, he has been the PM of the country since May 2014. The question is, from whom does Modi who has inspired many world leaders draw inspiration? The list is long.

On October 7, 2001, Modi entered the world of administration. Before that, he was a Pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since 1971. After spending three decades in the Sangh as a Pracharak, also serving as the BJP's central organisational secretary, Modi became the chief minister of Gujarat after Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani seconded his name.

Modi had no administrative experience before he took over as the CM of Gujarat. The only expertise that he had was the organisational skills which he had in abundance and he used them in bringing people together, to strengthen the party and making new experiments in politics. When Modi became the chief minister, he did not even have the experience of running a panchayat. At that time, he had not even fought an assembly election. It is another matter though that he had played a major role in getting the BJP to power in 1995 in Gujarat. He had also headed the BJP campaign committee in the 1998 Gujarat assembly elections to pave the way for the party's victory. Apart from this, he had already impressed his party with his work in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and other states.

But till then he had no hands-on administrative experience and he accepted this while chairing a meeting with top officials of Gujarat after he became CM. Modi had his task cut out for him. In post-earthquake Gujarat, relief and rehabilitation was a major challenge and the administration was facing a slew of criticism. His predecessor Keshubhai Patel had to leave the post for this reason. Before this, the BJP had lost crucial panchayat, assembly and Lok Sabha polls.

Narendra Modi took the reins of the administration and responded with the speed of someone attempting to win a one-day match that turned into a marathon test innings which has lasted 19 years and is entering the 20th. Nobody knows when this innings is going to end neither his supporters nor his opponents, who have been outwitted by him on numerous occasions in poll battles.

Over the past 19 years, much has been written all over the world about his administrative style. As chief minister, he had developed the 'Gujarat model of development' and popularised it across the country; it got him elected to Parliament and helped him become the Prime Minister. His was the first non-Congress government in 2014 to have full majority. After that, he led his party to victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls as well and was rewarded by the electorate with an even greater majority. His government is going to last till 2024, and, be it the public or pundits, no one is giving the opposition a chance before 2029. So how long Modi's administrative period lasts will be either decided by the man himself or the people of this country.

Now the question is who inspired Modi to become such an efficient administrator? Who are those people from whom he learnt the tricks of the trade? Hundreds of books have been written on Modi but no one has dealt with this issue at length.

Modi has given ample indication about this on several occasions. The first glimpse was in 2014, when he was filing his nomination from Vadodara for the general elections. That year, he had filed his nomination first from Vadodara before doing so from Varanasi. At that time, on April 9, 2014, when he was speaking to the media in Vadodara, it offered an insight into his inspiration as an administrator.

Vadodara, once a model of development and administrative acumen, was ruled by Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, in whose name the city is also called Sayaji Nagari. Modi remembered Sayajirao that day, heaping praise on him, and not just as a mere formality.

Modi said that to know about Sayajirao's skills in administration and self-governance, one should read the book Minor Hints. It surprised not just the media persons but also millions of people watching and listening to him on TV at the time. They wanted to know what was this 'Minor Hints' and why was Modi waxing eloquent about Sayajirao?

'Minor Hints' is a collection of speeches which was given to a 12-year-old boy Gopal, born on March 11, 1863, in Kavlana village of Maharashtra, in his preparation to become the ruler of the kingdom of Baroda. Gopal was adopted by the ruler of this kingdom, Maharaja Khanderao Gaekwad, from a distant relative, Kashiram Gaekwad. After the death of Khanderao, his widow, Maharani Jamnabai, adopted the boy on May 27, 1875.

Gopal was taught the royal ways before he could be placed on the throne and about 150 speeches delivered by experts and senior officials were part of that education process. Of these, 46 speeches were delivered by the-then diwan T Madhava Rao, which formed the book 'Minor Hints'. This book is famous as Shasan Sutra in Gujarati and is revered like the Gita in the administration and is gifted to officials at the beginning of their career.

T Madhava Rao had trained Sayajirao Gaekwad and had taught him all the practical aspects of the administration which included how an administrator should behave, how he should keep himself away from sycophants and how to spend day and night thinking about ones subjects. Madhava Rao himself was a very talented man and was rightly given the title of Raja. He told Sayajirao that flatterers try to surround every administrator and they tell the king that the nation is made for him and not that he is made for the nation. In that situation, a king immediately thinks that administration is his paternal right and he considers his subjects as nothing. Madhava Rao had warned Sayajirao about this and told him not to behave irresponsibly as his responsibilities were immense. He also told him that the ultimate aim of an administrator was to keep his subjects happy.

With such education and training, Gopal was made the ruler of the kingdom when he was 18 years old and he was given the royal name of Sayajirao Gaekwad III. He ruled for 58 years and died in 1939. In his lengthy career as an administrator, he was known for caring about his subjects, and promoting reforms, scientific thinking, development of basic infrastructure, empowerment of women, education, etc. There are many famous stories about his patriotism. In 1911, he did not bow before the King of England who presided as the Emperor of India in the Delhi darbar and helped Sri Aurobindo and other revolutionaries and freedom fighters, risking British displeasure.

That Sayajirao Gaekwad has been an inspiration for Modi was apparent on several other occasions. During his first tenure as PM, when Modi was taking part in a discussion in the Rajya Sabha on women's education, he had mentioned Sayaji. Modi had said that in the reign of Sayajirao Gaekwad, not a single woman was illiterate, though some instances could be found after his rule. That's how much emphasis Sayajirao put on women's education.

Even Narendra Modi knew this from experience. His native place Vadnagar, where he was born, was previously in Mehsana which was under the Gaekwad kingdom. The school and its library where Modi read innumerable books were opened during the reign of Sayajirao Gaekwad III. Modi was born just 11 years after Gaekwad's death and it was but natural that people still talked about Sayaji. When Modi grew up, he came to know about the many talents of the king.

Modi also praised Sayajirao Gaekwad when he participated in his 150th birth anniversary celebrations in 2012 in Vadodara. In his speech, Modi had said that he comes from a place which has been part of the Gaekwad administration and even today every auspicious work is started in Sayajirao's name. Modi said that after being born in an ordinary family, brought up in a royal household and taking charge of the kingdom of Baroda at 18, Sayaji's work in administrative reforms continues to find resonance among the people 70 years after his death.

Obviously, Modi has not only read 'Minor Hints' very minutely but has also been inspired by Sayajiraos life and regime which he has adopted in his own life. After his early days as a Pracharak in Vadodara to becoming the CM in 2001 and as PM of the country for the past 6 years, he has always given the impression that his sole aim is to serve the people of this country. And that is why he has presented himself not as the Prime Minister but as the Pradhan Sevak of the citizens.

In his run as CM and PM over 19 years, Modi has ensured that benefits of government schemes reach the lowest strata of the society. His policies have been framed keeping in mind the situation of the disadvantaged people. That is why, in Gujarat, after taking over as CM, he kept tribal people, fishermen, Dalits and backward communities at the centre of his planning. After he became PM, he ensured that policies are framed to help women, farmers and the poorest of the poor in the country, and that is why today he is the darling of the masses.

Sycophants have not been able to surround him and he has kept himself connected with the people. That is why, Modi, today, is available to everyone. He always knows what is happening on the ground. Out of Delhi, he visits the hinterland, stays in touch with the people and their problems, and solves these issues. Not a single day goes by without him meeting the common people.

During Parliament sessions, people from all over the country come to meet him: from poor fishermen to ordinary farmers. He finds time for everyone but does not waste even a second. He is punctual and understands the value of time. He never takes leaves and works for 18-19 hours every day. It is obvious that his opponents today can neither match his energy nor his willpower. Rivals appear like stray clouds. After a bit of thunder and lightning, they quickly disappear to Thailand, Europe or America .

Modi is still a mystery for his political rivals. When he came into the administration, he did not have practical knowledge to run it. He was taught the intricacies of administration by IAS officer PK Mishra. Modi had appointed him his principal secretary in 2001 just after he took oath as CM. Modi himself has talked about how Mishra helped him in administration, and taught him the pros and cons.

Modi had so much faith in Mishra that after he retired as agriculture secretary during the UPA administration, Modi appointed him as chairman of the Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission and then made him chairman of Gujarat Institute of Disaster Management. From there, he came straight to Delhi when Modi became PM in 2014. Mishra was made his additional principal secretary. Since then, PK Mishra has continuously been with him and now in Modi's second term, he occupies the post of principal secretary and helps the PM formulate important policy decisions.

Modi has always tried to learn new things in the past two decades, from teachers at IIM Ahmedabad to eminent jurist VR Krishna Iyer whom he met by visiting Kerala. He has always been a learner which has helped him in becoming an efficient administrator. That is precisely why leaders from across the country and the world are trying to pick up tips from him on how to be a good administrator, have a finger on the pulse of the people and try innovations in governance for public welfare.

From CM to PM, the list of his experiments is long and they are part of hundreds of books and lakhs of articles. Yet Modi, who once learnt from Sayajirao Gaekwad, is still learning and trying new things. With his newly grown beard, some people see a glimpse of Shivaji in him. After all, Modi is constantly striving to realise the dream to implement the Hindavi Swarajya philosophy of this great patriot. Modi has a special fondness for the mega play based on Shivaji's life called Janata Raja and had seen it many decades ago and ensured its public enactment in every part of Gujarat when he was CM there. Modi has not stopped learning and that too when other world leaders are vying to learn the intricacies of administration from him.

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Modi Has Learnt Art of Good Governance from Shivaji & Sayaji, and Now World Leaders are Learning from... - News18

The term quantum computing gained momentum in the late 20thcentury. These systems aim to utilize these capabilities to become highly-efficient. They use quantum bits or qubits instead of the simple manipulation of ones and zeros in existing binary-based computers. These qubits also have a third state called superposition that simultaneously represents a one or a zero. Instead of analyzing a one or a zero sequentially, superposition allows two qubits in superposition to represent four scenarios at the same time. So we are at the cusp of a computing revolution where future systems have capability beyond mathematical calculations and algorithms.

Quantum computers also follow the principle of entanglement, which Albert Einstein had referred to as spooky action at a distance. Entanglement refers to the observation that the state of particles from the same quantum system cannot be described independently of each other. Even when they are separated by great distances, they are still part of the same system.

Several nations, giant tech firms, universities, and startups are currently exploring quantum computing and its range of potential applications. IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and other companies are investing heavilyin developing large-scale quantum computing hardware and software. Google and UCSB have a partnership to develop a 50 qubits computer, as it would represent 10,000,000,000,000,000 numbers that would take a modern computer petabyte-scale memory to store. A petabyte is the unit above a terabyte and represents 1,024 terabytes. It is also equivalent to 4,000 digital photos taken every day. Meanwhile, names like Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Systems, 1Qbit Information Technologies, Inc., Quantum Circuits, Inc., QC Ware, Zapata Computing, Inc. are emerging as bigger players in quantum computing.

IEEE Standards Association Quantum Computing Working Group is developing two technical standards for quantum computing. One is for quantum computing definitions and nomenclature, so we can all speak the same language. The other addresses performance metrics and performance benchmarking to measure quantum computers performance against classical computers and, ultimately, each other. If required, new standards will also be added with time.

The rapid growth in the quantum tech sector over the past five years has been exciting. This is because quantum computing presents immense potential. For instance, a quantum system can be useful for scientists for conducting virtual experiments and sifting through vast amounts of data. Quantum algorithms like quantum parallelism can perform a large number of computations simultaneously. In contrast, quantum interference will combine their results into something meaningful and can be measured according to quantum mechanics laws. Even Chinese scientists are looking to developquantum internet, which shall be a more secure communication system in which information is stored and transmitted withadvanced cryptography.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University used quantum algorithms to transform MRI scans for cancer, allowing the scans to be performed three times faster and to improve their quality by 30%. In practice, this can mean patients wont need to be sedated to stay still for the length of an MRI, and physicians could track the success of chemotherapy at the earliest stages of treatment.

Laboratoire de Photonique Numrique et Nanosciences of France has built a hybrid device that pairs a quantum accelerometer with a classical one and uses a high-pass filter to subtract the classical data from the quantum data. This has the potential to offer an highly precise quantum compass that would eliminate the bias and scale factor drifts commonly associated with gyroscopic components. Meanwhile, the University of Bristolhas founded a quantum solution for increasing security threats. Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine are working to uncover the potential quantum computers hold to help understand genetic diseases.Scientists are also using quantum computing to find a vaccine for COVID and other life-threatening diseases.

In July 2017, in collaboration with commercial photonics tools providerM Squared, QuantIC demonstrated how a quantum gravimeter detects the presence of deeply hidden objects by measuring disturbances in the gravitational field. If such a device becomes practical and portable, the team believes it could become invaluable in an early warning system for predicting seismic events and tsunamis.

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Quantum computing is a rapidly developing field, with everyone trying to build the perfect hardware, find new applications for current algorithms, or even develop new algorithms. Because of that, the near-future demand for quantum programmers and researchers will increase shortly.

Many governmental and industrial institutions have set aside substantial funds to develop quantum technologies. The Quantum Daily (TQD) estimated the current market for quantum computing to be around $235 million. This number is predicted to grow substantially to $6.25 billion by 2025.

This incredible amount of funds leads to an increase in the number of academia, government, and industry positions. Almost all technology companies are changing their business model to adapt to when quantum technology makes an impact.

TQD also adds that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that in 2020 so far, there are around 1.4 million more quantum software development jobs than applicants who can fill them.

In 2019, MIT published an article called Q&A: The talent shortage in quantum computing that addressed the different challenges the field faces right now. Afterward, it developed MIT xPRO, a group addressing the reality that students arent the only people interested in learning about the different aspects of quantum information.

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Kiran Raj, Principal Disruptive Tech Analyst at GlobalData, comments: Qubits can allow to create algorithms for the completion of a task with reduced computational complexity that cannot be achieved with traditional bits. Given such advantages, quantum computers can solve some of the intractable problems in cybersecurity, drug research, financial modelling, traffic optimization and batteries to name a few.

An analysis of GlobalDatas Disruptor Intelligence Center reveals various companies in the race to monetize quantum computing as an everyday tool for business.

IBM's latest quantum computer, accessible via cloud, boasts a 65-qubit Hummingbird chip. It is an advanced version of System Q, its first commercial quantum computer launched in 2019 that has 20 qubits. IBM plans to launch a 1,000-qubit system by the end of 2023.

Alphabet has built a 54-qubit processor Sycamore and demonstrated its quantum supremacy by performing a task of generating a random number in 200 seconds, which it claims would take the most advanced supercomputer 10,000 years to finish the task. The company also unveiled its newest 72-qubit quantum computer Bristlecone.

Alibabas cloud service subsidiary Aliyun and the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly launched an 11-qubit quantum computing service, which is available to the public on its quantum computing cloud platform. Alibaba is the second enterprise to offer the service to public after IBM.

Not just big technology companies, well-funded startups have also targeted the quantum computing space to develop hardware, algorithms and security applications. Some of them are Rigetti, Xanadu, 1Qbit, IonQ, ISARA, Q-CTRL and QxBranch.

Amazon, unlike the tech companies competing to launch quantum computers, is making quantum products of other companies available to users via Braket. It currently supports quantum computing services from D-Wave, IonQ and Rigetti.

Mr Raj concludes: Albeit a far cry from the large-scale mainstream use, quantum computers are gearing up to be a transformative reality. They are highly expensive to build and it is hard to maintain the delicate state of superposition and entanglement of qubits. Despite such challenges, quantum computers will continue to progress into the future where companies may rent them to solve everyday problems the way they currently rent cloud services. It may not come as a surprise that quantum computing one day replaces artificial intelligence as the mainstream technology to help industries tackle problems they never would have attempted to solve before.

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Race for quantum supremacy gathers momentum with several companies joining bandwagon, says GlobalData - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

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In some quarters - our condo, for example, on Orange Street attacks of mental numbness and weariness have been verified.

There is much, to be sure, that my wife Suzanne and I are grateful for, including that, though as seniors we qualify as high-risk Covid-19 candidates, we are at this moment still breathing. This, I know, is much more in the way of upbeat news than can be said in the abodes of so many other households near and far.

We do our best to keep spirits up, relishing the life around us. For it is only in the New Haven version of Connecticut where one can spot a pedestrian walking while reading a book, and occasionally looking over the printed page to check for any sidewalk peril: an unruly puppy straining on its leash, a sleep deprived new mom pushing her pram or simply a seriously uneven sidewalk. It is here at the outside tables of East Rock Coffee where a patrons stop for a cappuccino can be enhanced by chewy tidbits from nearby conversations about Carl Jung or the history of U.S. and China trade relations. We also know, though, that for all of the differences, there is one matter that has been universal in America: We have been infected by a pandemic of artlessness.

Physiologically speaking, no doctor would diagnose a disease caused by the closing of theaters, art galleries, concert halls, and the like. But there certainly is one. George Bernard Shaw was speaking in a conditional tense when he said, Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. The question is no longer one of the conditional. We are there. Unbearability is the daily norm. We hate the news, but we are addicted to it, slurping up every morsel. This results in a cycle of heartlessness and even fear, with no art to restore us.

Our tickets, or our intent to purchase them, for Long Wharf, Yale Rep, the Shubert are now just fantasy. Nor do we need to shell out the token entry fee to high school musicals in which, though several members of the cast stumble around the stage, one or two teen prodigies steal the spotlight and remind us of the human miracle of natural talent. Yes, its the standing ovation at curtain call that I miss, when so many tears of joy the most wonderful tears run down my cheeks. Where is there a moment like that compare in the routine of life?

A couple of summers ago, at The Place, the outdoor rustic restaurant in Guilford, I saw at the next table a face I had never forgotten one that brought me tears of joy as a young man. It was the tiny Hollywood and stage performer Jane Powell, whose oversized blue eyes I saw decades ago even from the cheap seats in summer stock, as she played the female lead in Frank Loessers musical, The Most Happy Fella.

Youre not going to interrupt her dinner? Sue asked, guessing the worst, but she hadnt finished the sentence before Id jumped up from the tree stump that served as a chair and gone over to properly gush. Miss Powell, though by then in her advanced 80s, looked youthful, and those eyes were still luminous.

She seemed thrilled to be recognized. I told her that I remembered her performance in the Loesser musical, and she started talking about what a delight it was, and for a moment she and I were in that other world, far away from lobsters and grilled corn, somewhere, if not over the rainbow, at least in the vineyards of an Italian immigrant in the Napa Valley, trying to master English, singing, Happy to make you acquaintance, thank you so much Im a feel fine.

On reflection, our recent and seemingly giant abyss as lovers of art, theater and music is nothing, or course, compared to the suffering of those young and middle age people, who havent yet had the success of Miss Powell, and have few if any prospects for stage work, or even to make do on waitstaffs. There is a ton of muffled talent out there. And, as they suffer, so do we, because we dont have a chance to introduce ourselves to new and powerful art.

In lieu of doing anything else, Sue and I have sent donations to the institutions we love. But even these fall short of helping the neediest. In many cases, large operations are still delivering huge paychecks to the executives who run them, even while actors and musicians have lost wages and, in many cases, health care coverage. The gig economy, on which many industries including the arts depend, has become almost gigless.

Its true, and a good sign, that Thursday, Gov. Ned Lamont put into play Phase 3 of reopening which loosens crowd restrictions on performing arts venues, And some museums, including the prominent Yale Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art, have once again opened their doors, but only for limited hours and limited crowds.

The one art form that has thrived in this pandemic is that of the written word. More people are reading than ever before, and this supports both authors and book stores (including, so sorry to add) the behemoth company run by Jeff Bezos.

During the summer I read or listened to more books than in any season previously, and as a result was often enriched and delighted. Works by Erik Larson, Henry Miller (finally), Stephen Fry, Lee Child, Amity Shlaes, and others. But even reading books, as important as they are, is a process we do alone.

We cant stuff ourselves into RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, as we did so often in years past, to hear readings by the likes of many of the countrys finest authors. We cant even gather to hear a reading by Yales new Nobel Laureate, the poet Louise Gluck. (Though you can watch her above.)

Much of the conversation with friends has been about the comfort of home and access to compelling television series, the kind of writing and acting that threatens the movie theater release, now moot. But these excellent shows give us little chance for communion because we watch them from our respective couches.

I want to finish here with a Hollywood ending. Something uplifting. The best I can do at this point, though, is to point out that when this all ends, we will never again take another night of artful presentation for granted. We will recognize and treasure the way art nourishes us, and gives us the strength and inspiration to carry on.

Lary Blooms biography, Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas, is a finalist in nonfiction for the 2020 Connecticut Book Awards. The winners will be announced Oct. 15.

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Life Without Art In A Pandemic - New Haven Independent