By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam Ah, the literature festival circuit — where authors go to be celebrated, debated, occasionally mistaken for someone else, and ultimately left questioning their life choices. When you first get an invitation, the excitement is real. You imagine engaging conversations, adoring readers and intellectual stimulation. You now feel like you’ve ‘officially’ arrived….

By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam We all know them. We’ve seen them. In fact, we can’t not see them. They are everywhere — on TV panels, YouTube debates, podcasts, social media threads and increasingly, in your uncle’s forwarded WhatsApp videos. They are the modern-day philosophers of our fractured democracies: the Armchair Political Commentators. Armed with a…

By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam Aging is a wonderful journey —one that comes with wisdom, experience and, most importantly, the ability to completely forget someone’s name the second they walk away. It’s not that I don’t care. I do. It’s just that my brain, once a powerful machine of recall, now behaves more like a distracted…

By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam They say rituals bring order to life. Some meditate, some drink herbal tea, some do yoga. Me? I begin every day with a frantic, borderline hysterical search for my glasses. Now, you might assume I would put them in the same place every night, like a responsible, organised adult. That would…