Winter in Delhi is Nature’s gift to its residents. Unlike in hot summer when both body and mind run for cover, winter is the time when comfort is a season-long munificence in the form of a mellow morning that lasts right till evening. Luckily, unlike many other accursed cities in India, Delhi still has large parks where you can go, occupy a bench, and be amazed at how your mind begins to think of things away from the usual, such as physics and philosophy instead of politics. Why, you wonder, have the sun’s soft rays undertaken this journey from a massive fireball millions of miles of away? And who is this genius technologist who has ensured reduction of temperature from 15,000,000 degrees Celsius at the core of the inferno to 10 degrees Celsius, so that sunshine can caress your skin, nourish the grass, and make that curious squirrel dart around gaily?

It’s at such contemplative moments that you think that the entire universe has been working on a grand plan to sustain human life on Earth. If apocalyptic nuclear explosions in the sun’s interior get transformed into a benign source that creates and guarantees life on this blessed planet, there must be a purpose, a very lofty purpose indeed, behind the birth and evolution of the human species. What is it? And why don’t we adequately examine it?

“The unexamined life,” says Socrates, “is not worth living.” But we live much of our lives without asking ourselves questions that ought to be asked every day: “Why was I born? Why do I live? And if the entire universe and the whole of society have been working to keep me alive, am I doing enough for their well-being? If I die tomorrow — our holy scriptures caution us that our death always stays closer to us than our skin — will I have given an honourable account of the time I spent on this planet? Have I always been truthful and honest? If the sun can so generously transform his volcanic heat into life-protecting energy, what am I doing to control my own negative emotions?”

... contd.