What if the stories we dismiss as myths are actually memories of how we once lived with nature? Ghosts on Peepal Trees is a tender, deeply reflective memoir that uncovers the wisdom hidden in childhood, folklore and faith—and how they can still guide our relationship with the natural world today.

***

Granny came to help my mother when I was born, but in truth, she came to command the household. A watchtower in a white Punjabi salwar kameez, she would stay with us for the next twenty years, through Dalhousie, Kolkata and Dehradun, until she finally moved to Allahabad (now Prayagraj) to live with her youngest son. Twenty years in her orbit were enough to lay the foundations of my character. As people say, the first twenty decide the next sixty. From my birth to my graduation (1966–86), I found myself in her presence.

Granny was, by herself, a thriving ecosystem. When Granny entered a home, she didn’t just take over the kitchen; she took over everything she touched. Pots obeyed her, doors stayed ajar for the breeze she approved and even the walls seemed to grow warmer in her presence. She had a way of settling the air, of turning ordinary rooms into breathing spaces. Looking back, I realize how complete she was: self-contained, inventive, infinitely patient with the world, yet impatient with disorder. She fascinated me not because she preached, but because she practised. At six, she taught me to make compost from kitchen leftovers. ‘Waste nothing,’ she’d say, handing me a bowl of vegetable peels. ‘Even what you throw away has some shame; let it find new life.’

Every morning, it was my job to carry the kitchen scraps down to the backyard where two neat pits waited like silent mouths. I’d lift the lid, a tin sheet weighed down by a stone, and empty the bowl, watching the slow alchemy begin. To me, it was magic; to her, it was routine. From refuse, she created renewal. That patch of soil was my first schooling in the environment. There I learned that the earth listens, that water has moods, that a seed is a promise that never forgets.

‘Keep the soil moist, not drowned,’ Granny would warn, tapping the edge of the watering can.

‘Yes, Amma,’ I’d answer, trying to imitate her sternness.

‘If you listen, the plants will tell you what they need.’

And indeed, they did. The beans sulked when overwatered, the spinach shimmered when pleased. I learned to watch their leaves for answers.

Our house in Dehradun backed onto a litchi orchard owned by a Nepali family, rumoured descendants of the royal line. In May, when the litchis ripened, their perfume filled the evenings. I’d climb the low branches, scrape my knees and come home sticky-fingered and proud. Granny would laugh. ‘Sweetness demands a little pain,’ she’d murmur, dabbing antiseptic on the cuts. Those words became a proverb in my life.

Our walks became lessons, too. Every Sunday, we walked to the bazar—Paltan Bazar, Chakrata Road, Rajpur Road, sometimes all the way to the foothills of Mussoorie. Granny greeted every vendor by name. She knew who sold the sweetest guavas, which sadhu had turned into a gardener and which rickshaw-puller was fasting that week. To me, she seemed to carry an invisible map of kindness. She stopped to speak to stray dogs, to bless children, to drop a handful of grain near temples. ‘Everyone must eat,’ she’d say, and that included sparrows.

It was she who introduced me to the forests of Uttarakhand, Corbett, Rajaji, Haridwar, Rishikesh, Narendra Nagar, Tehri, Uttarkashi, Nainital and Almora. We travelled in old jeeps and army buses, staying in rest houses that smelled of kerosene and monsoon. I remember bathing in the Ganga at Haridwar when its waters were still crystal clear, and walking across Lakshman Jhula when it was a bridge of silence. Saints, vendors, gardeners, ghosts— Granny knew them all. She belonged to every landscape.

Those were the days of earthen pots beneath peepal trees, of sadhus who told stories instead of sermons, of lanes where one could hear one’s own footsteps. Granny seemed to be on first-name terms with every God. ‘They listen better when you whisper,’ she’d say, lighting a lamp under the peepal.

She taught me that roots can travel, that faith can compost itself into growth and that under every peepal tree, a ghost of wisdom waits to whisper to those who listen.

Granny’s jurisdiction extended beyond human affairs: to trees, ghosts, fish and kitchen gardens. Her reign was total, and her subjects were living, breathing, growing things—soil, saplings, sunlight. By the time we reached Pune, my destiny was well under her management.

At the time, I did not realize it, but these small routines were shaping everything that would follow.

In Once Elephants Lived Here, International Booker Prize-winning author Geetanjali Shree transforms the familiar into the uncanny, using language that is lyrical, satirical, and deeply political to challenge everything we expect from a short story.

***

The riots made this city famous. Well, not the riots themselves but the glitter and glamour that most definitely resulted from the riots. Had the city not been so jammed and jumbled, chaos would not have broken out. And if chaos hadn’t broken out, there would never have been such a clean-up. The factions were divided so neatly the city shone. One faction this side of the river, one that side, and each clearly recognizable in its place. As though factories had been built on either side to manufacture each faction’s particular costumes and masks, and absolutely everyone appeared only in their respective attire. Everyone wore their assigned uniform, and everyone wore the same mask. This side wore theirs, that side wore theirs.

The outcome of this clear division was that you found yourself well protected in this city, surrounded for a great distance by your own kind. The sort of protection you feel in your own home, amongst your own pots and pans, your own familiar things. You’re pleased as you look around and see your own trees, your own fruits and vegetables, your own shit. And why wouldn’t you be? Your eyes ears nose are familiar with their fragrance and appearance, they go down easy, they slip softly over your skin.

It is certainly the case that if, due to error, or clueless bravado, or a moment of sleepwalking, you set out towards the other side, then oh my God and mercy me, this city will surely show you how tangible the feeling of vulnerability can be—how complete and how pure! Nothing penetrates it, no cloud looms over it, no smoke obscures it. Clean, pure, blank, complete, this amazing feeling of vulnerability, which will befall any traveller who might stray, changing his state and form in such a way that he’ll get goosebumps all over, his hair will jump in terror towards the sky, his eyes will roll back until they see not ahead but behind, and his gait will be divided in two as though by a knife: the upper half, a father, frightened and running; the lower half, a child, lethargic, dangling from the father’s finger, limping backwards.

But you’d only stray like this if you had a habit of sleepwalking. Generally, this city has never been afflicted with that ailment, its people crisply brisk. Yes, some foreigners do indeed visit both here and there, but their case is unique.

Unique, and linked to another of the city’s specialties. That is, the great haste with which this city has not only adopted the look of Shanghai but gone on to give it a run for its money.

What this run consists of is that all the old Sultanate and Mughal-era buildings, as well as all types of domestic-style and foreign-style vine-carved buildings are being demolished, and from their ruins have arisen blue glass-walled buildings, taller and taller still, that contain homes, offices, shopping malls, computers, escalators, fountains, hamburgers and trees that aren’t really trees. And there are roofs that slice the sky into match-thin slivers and quantities of foreigners both domestic and imported. Confounding the clean division of the city, just a bit.

This in itself is a wonder. Since it does seem that these foreign people have descended from the sky to climb down into these blue buildings, and the people below have burst from the earth, and that these, too, are two distinct streams, through which the city is becoming new-old. But it’s as though a no man’s land surrounds them, so there’s no infiltration either from here or from there, and the two streams never collide, nor tangle, nor tussle. As though they too have a joint agreement to exist separately.

So, one crop with roots in the ground, another whose soil is the sky. Each in its own way is making the city a bazaar with its respective products, and Shanghai, peering over the malls and the multinationals and this and that side of the river, and taking in everything all together, is alarmed: Until now, there was only me! Who is this surpassing me? My God, woe is me, will their name be in the Guinness Book now? And then all the foreigners will want to go to them instead of coming to me?

There was already talk that this city would now be counted among the most beautiful in the world; global estimates were projecting such outcomes.

How could it be that foreigners would not flock to such a city? Sightseers came, businesspeople came. Foreign foreigners came and desi foreigners as well. In corporate, ironed uniforms. The foreign foreigners had: pale eyes, pale hair, pale skin; the desi foreigners had: hybrid dress, hybrid diets, hybrid lifestyles, hybrid languages.

In What Happened to Me? vs What’s Wrong with Me?, Gunjan Y. Trivedi, Riri G. Trivedi, and Hemalatha Ramani explore how childhood experiences silently shape adult mental health, relationships, and our sense of self—urging us to replace self-blame with self-understanding.

***

‘I Am Still Hiding Behind the Sofa’

As a child, Anant remembers hiding behind the sofa and covering his ears to block out his parents’ shouting. To him, as a little boy, the fights were terrifying. He watched his father hit his mother, smash plates and constantly threaten to leave. He sat frozen, afraid his father might turn on him next. When things were supposedly ‘calm’, the cold silent treatment would last for days, filling the whole house with heavy tension.

Unfortunately, the violence wasn’t limited to only between his parents. Anant’s mother often hit him too, sometimes for small mistakes, sometimes for no clear reason at all. He remembers feeling confused and hurt, never knowing or understanding what would set her off. Alongside the fear, there was neglect. He often felt invisible; his needs and feelings didn’t seem to matter to anyone.

One memory continued to haunt him even in adulthood. He remembered his mother locking herself in a room and threatening to kill herself. He could hear her crying and shouting from behind the door, while his father banged on it, pleading with her not to do anything. Even as a child, Anant felt a sickening mix of fear, anger and helplessness, always left wondering if he was somehow to blame.

That fear and confusion never really left him. As he grew up, Anant became anxious and hyper-alert, always on edge about upsetting people. In relationships, one moment he would hold on tightly and the next, he would be dismissive and push them away.

His fear of abandonment triggered anger at anyone who got too close. Arguments could turn into explosive outbursts he felt he had no control over, leaving him drowning in guilt and shame afterwards.

Inside, he felt empty, as if something were broken or missing within him. His moods swung between deep sadness, anger and numbness. Even small setbacks felt overwhelming. He struggled with trusting anyone, convinced they’d eventually hurt or leave him.

When he finally sought psychiatric help, he poured out these confusing, intermeshed, painful memories. The psychiatrist listened carefully and explained that he was living with major depressive disorder and borderline personality disorder. The labels stung, but they helped him make sense of the constant low feelings, fear of abandonment, emotional mood swings and the deep ache he’d carried since he was that little boy, waiting for the next fight to start. He was convinced that there was something wrong with him and the labels also confirmed this belief.

Anant’s story is not rare. Every day, at Wellness Space, we hear stories like his. They highlight to us the normalization in many families of childhood traumas, of abuse, violence.

The question we, parents, family and adults, need to ask ourselves, is: Are we okay with our behaviour towards our children? Or do we need to understand the long-term implications and ramifications of our behaviour?

Types of Childhood Trauma—Indian Perspective These painful experiences that children go through from birth to eighteen years are known as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Witnessing domestic violence, like Anant did, seems more common than what we would have liked to believe. Other more commonly seen ACEs include being directly abused or neglected. Decades of global research show these early experiences can shape us for life, leading to mental health struggles, chronic illnesses and difficulties in forming healthy relationships.

But in India, there’s very little research on ACEs and even less awareness or sensitivity. Unfortunately, as a culture, we’ve often accepted beatings and harsh punishments as an essential part of disciplining, even praising that style of parenting. Many parents genuinely believe they cannot raise good children without hitting or threatening them, because that is how they themselves were raised and they believe they have turned out just fine!

Ironically, even parents who realize how much they have been impacted by such harsh disciplining methods, often struggle to break the cycle. They want to do better but when they’re stressed or triggered, their old wounds take over. Their trauma hijacks their good intentions and they end up repeating the very behaviours they once hated in their own parents.

Dr Vincent Felitti’s landmark ACE study highlighted earlier opened our eyes to how ten types of childhood trauma can have lifelong mental and physical health effects. As we talked to hundreds of individuals, we realized the original ten categories used by Felitti to measure ACEs needed to be modified to be applicable in the Indian cultural context. For example, the global questionnaire has ‘Parental Divorce or Separation’ as a trauma element, but in India, parents often stay together despite constant conflict, due to social pressures, or for the sake of the children, which is equally or more damaging than divorce or separation. Keeping this context in mind, we added four further categories—parents fighting, peer bullying, peer rejection and socio-economic position—to the original Felitti questionnaire, making it fourteen categories. This addition was made only after the required validation process and was later published in year 2025 in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry.

What transforms a child born in the quiet hills of Meghalaya into the voice of an entire region? Zubeen Garg: The Voice That Bridged Worlds by Prosenjit Nath traces that extraordinary journey, revealing how a boy named Jibon Borthakur grew into one of Northeast India’s most celebrated cultural icons.

***

On 18 November 1972, in the hill town of Tura, Meghalaya, a child was born who would one day become the voice of an entire culture. The town, nestled in the Garo Hills, was far from the cultural centres of India, yet it possessed a quietude and natural beauty that would shape the artistic sensibility of the boy who entered the world that day.

His parents named him Jibon, a Bengali word meaning ‘life’, but destiny had other plans for his name. His father, Mohini Mohan Borthakur, better known by his pen name Kapil Thakur, was a magistrate with the soul of a poet. His mother, Ily Borthakur, possessed a voice that could make household chores feel like prayer. In this household, where law met literature and administration met art, young Jibon’s fate was being quietly scripted.

The boy’s name would soon change to Zubeen, a transformation that carried its own poetry. The rechristening was a tribute to the legendary conductor Zubin Mehta, whose mastery of orchestral music had captivated Kapil Thakur. The alteration of spelling from Zubin to Zubeen was not merely whimsical; it reflected the Assamese phonetic sensibility, the way the language shaped sound into something uniquely its own. In this small act of naming lay a prophecy: this child would take influences from the wider world and transform them through the alchemy of his native culture.

The surname he chose—Garg—rather than his ancestral Borthakur also carried significance. In Hindu tradition, gotra represents one’s ancestral lineage and Garg was his gotra name. By choosing it, Zubeen was making a statement about identity that would characterize his entire life: a willingness to honour tradition while exercising personal choice, a balance between inheritance and self-determination.

The Borthakur family’s ancestral roots reached back to Tamulichiga in Jorhat district, the cultural heartland of Assam. Yet, young Zubeen’s childhood was marked by constant movement. Kapil Thakur’s position as a magistrate meant frequent transfers across the region and the family followed the demands of government service. For most children, such instability might have been disruptive. For Zubeen, it became an education in diversity. Each new town brought new dialects, new folk traditions, new musical forms. The boy was absorbing the rich tapestry of Northeast India’s cultural mosaic, collecting sounds and rhythms that would later emerge in his music.

His father was no ordinary bureaucrat. Kapil Thakur wrote poetry that resonated with the intellectual circles of Assam and his administrative duties never dulled his artistic sensibilities. He understood that governance without culture was mere management, that law without literature was sterile power. In his household, recitation of verse was as common as discussion of legal cases. The young Zubeen listened, absorbing the rhythm of language, learning how words could be arranged to create emotion, how meter and meaning could dance together.

But it was his mother Ily who became his first and most influential teacher. Her voice was not trained in any formal academy, yet it carried the distilled wisdom of generations of folk singers. She sang while cooking, while working, while putting her three children—Zubeen and his sisters, Palme and Jongki—to sleep. These were not performances but expressions of being, music as natural as breathing. For young Zubeen, melody was not something learnt but something lived. He began singing before he could articulate why he sang, his voice emerging as instinctively as a bird’s call at dawn.

By the age of three, Zubeen was already attempting to mimic the songs his mother sang. Family members noticed something unusual in the child’s voice, not just in pitch or tone, but an emotional quality that seemed beyond his years. There was a depth to his singing that suggested he was not merely reproducing sounds but channelling something fundamental, tapping into a reservoir of feeling that most children his age had not yet discovered.

The household was one of modest means but infinite richness. Books lined the walls, music filled the air and conversation ranged from politics to poetry, from social justice to spiritual philosophy. In this environment, young Zubeen was learning that art was not separate from life but woven into its very fabric. Creativity was not a career option to be considered later but a way of engaging with existence itself.

The 1970s and early 1980s in Assam were years of significant cultural and political ferment. The Assam Movement, demanding protection of indigenous identity and resources, was gathering momentum. The air was thick with questions about language, culture and belonging. In this charged atmosphere, the preservation and promotion of Assamese culture took on urgent significance. Without knowing it, young Zubeen was being prepared for a role he would later embrace not just as an entertainer but as a custodian of cultural memory.

His father’s transfers meant that Zubeen attended multiple schools, each with its own character and challenges. Where other children might have struggled with the constant upheaval, Zubeen found opportunity. Each new school meant new friends, new teachers, new exposure. He was developing an adaptability that would serve him well in later life, learning to read different social contexts, to find his place in diverse environments and gain an understanding of regional variations within Assamese and Northeastern culture.

Yet amid all this movement, there was one constant: music. No matter where the family relocated, no matter how unfamiliar the surroundings, music remained the thread that connected past to present, home to the unknown. It was the language that required no translation, the comfort that needed no explanation.

What if the real reason startups fail isn’t a lack of funding, talent or product-market fit? In Made in Fire, Rajnish Kumar makes a compelling case that culture – the invisible force behind every company—is often the deciding factor between survival and collapse.

***

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room that nobody sees: culture.

It’s the invisible force that can make or break your start-up faster than any funding round or product launch.

You can have a killer idea, a rockstar team and investors lining up to back you. Still, I’ve seen start-ups with all the right ingredients collapse. Not because the product failed, but because the culture did.

Here’s the truth:

Culture isn’t what you put on posters or perks. It’s how decisions are made when you’re not in the room.

It’s not your ping-pong table or casual Fridays. It’s the DNA of your company. It’s how people behave under pressure. It’s the difference between ‘that’s not my job’ and ‘how can I help?’

And here’s the kicker: as a founder, you’re shaping your culture, whether you realize it or not. Every hiring, every decision, every crisis sets a precedent. The only question is whether you’re doing it intentionally.

Culture isn’t something you design in a boardroom. It happens when you’re real, when you’re authentic.

At ixigo, we didn’t sit down to write a culture playbook. Our culture emerged in the fire of two crises: the 2008 financial meltdown and the COVID-19 pandemic. Those trials, when survival itself was in doubt, became the forge that defined who we are. They taught us empathy, resilience and the power of staying true to our values, even when the world felt like it was falling apart.

Culture is not a nice-to-have. It is your secret weapon.

It’s what keeps your best people from leaving when times get brutal. It’s what sparks the 2 a.m. breakthroughs that change your trajectory.

So here’s your wake-up call. Treat culture with the same obsession you treat your product. Because in the end, your culture is your company.

And like every story, it starts with the first few people you let in.

Culture Starts with Your First Believers

Culture doesn’t begin with posters on the wall or values written in a handbook. It begins with people: the very first ones you bring on board. Before founders can shape a culture, they need the right believers to shape it with.

Your earliest hires don’t just execute your vision; they cocreate your company’s DNA. If they’re missionaries, driven by belief and purpose, culture compounds. If they’re mercenaries, driven by pay cheque and title, culture corrodes.

The maths is brutal. In a five-person start-up where everyone is aligned and passionate, the energy feels like sixteen people working. Add just one person who’s misaligned, and that same team suddenly feels like two. That’s how fragile culture is at the start.

This is why choosing your first believers is the most important cultural decision you’ll ever make.

Skills can be taught. Belief cannot be faked.

I understood how real that was only when our own belief was tested for the first time.

The Day the Music Died: The 2008 Financial Crisis

It was supposed to be our big break. We had just signed a term sheet with a marquee investor. The beers were flowing, the office buzzing with anticipation. In 24 hours, we would finally have the wings to compete in the big leagues.

Then the phone rang.

‘Guys, Lehman Brothers just collapsed in the US,’ the investor’s voice crackled over the line.

My stomach dropped. I didn’t need to hear more. The deal was gone. The global financial crisis, which had felt like a storm far offshore, had just made landfall on our doorstep.

‘Okay, fuck,’ I muttered to Aloke Bajpai, my co-founder. ‘What do we do now?’

That night, we slammed the brakes on every expense. The grand plans we’d been dreaming of evaporated in an instant. But the real dilemma came as dawn broke: Do we keep this from the team and buy time? Or do we tell them the truth and risk panic?

By morning, we decided there was no point sugarcoating it. We gathered everyone in the office. Our hearts pounded as we spoke.

‘Guys . . . we don’t have the money to pay salaries for everyone. We may have to let go of half the team.’

The silence that followed was suffocating. You could hear a pin drop. In that moment, the room was suspended between disbelief and fear, every face staring back, waiting for what would come next.

In The Girl in Chains, the newest Simone Singh thriller from Devashish Sardana, a young woman pulls the trigger at a crowded political rally—but uncovering why may prove even more deadly than the crime itself.

***

‘Keep moving.’ 

Naina hears the words. Urgent and sharp. An order from Daayan. 

She nods. A fresh stream of sweat trickles down from behind her ear to her neck, igniting a fleeting tingle as it dissolves into the warmth of her skin. She keeps moving her head up and down like a bobble head. She doesn’t want to displease, doesn’t want to disappoint Daayan. But her feet remain rooted to the ground. Stuck. Unmoving. She knows why she is here. Somewhat. But she also doesn’t. As if her mind is fractured, thoughts disjointed, like someone has scrambled her insides and left her with pieces that don’t fit. 

A finger pokes her in the spine. ‘Keep moving.’ 

‘Okay, okay.’ She takes a breath. Deep and steady. 

Then steps into the crowd. 

The line snakes forward, bodies pressed together, restless, buzzing with energy. Up ahead, Delhi’s Ramlila Ground churns with movement. The crowd sways, alive with anticipation. Cheers and chants rise, bouncing off the colourful banners of the political party they are here to support for the upcoming Delhi State elections. Bright yellow. Bold blue. Everywhere. This is ‘Democracy Bachao,’ a political rally led by the sitting government in Delhi, with the Deputy Chief Minister, Manish Sengupta, set to address the gathering. 

As she stands in the queue, the Delhi heat hits Naina like a wall, bodies pressing close, damp and restless. She feels it then. The weight. Not the crowd. Something else. Solid. Heavy. It’s there, hidden in the weave of her wig, snug against her scalp, carefully secured with hair pins and perfectly concealed. 

The revolver. Loaded. Ready. Cold, like a secret with a trigger. 

Her right hand had shaken when she first held the gun at home—cold metal, heavy with intent—but Daayan had steadied her. She didn’t know where the gun had come from. It wasn’t important. A trivial detail. What was important, Daayan had said, was the purpose she must fulfil with the revolver. Or else . . . he didn’t have to finish the sentence. She knew the consequences. 

Now, standing in the searing heat, the gun pressing against her head, Naina shifts her weight from one foot to the other, uncertain and disoriented. She swallows back the sour taste of dread. ‘You sure about this?’ she whispers, her eyes darting across the faces of the crowd. 

No response. 

She doesn’t need one. She knows what Daayan wants. He brought her here for one purpose only. She feels sick thinking about it. Her heart pounds in her chest. Every nerve in her body buzzes with tension. She wants to turn around, walk away, but she can’t. Daayan won’t let her. He has been planning this for weeks; controlling and blackmailing her for even longer. She wants to turn around. Just once. Look at his face. But she doesn’t dare. 

‘Move.’ 

‘Yes, yes. I’m moving,’ she says, her tone tinged with frustration, and moves along in the queue, closer to the entrance of Ramlila Ground. 

She notices the tight security at the entrance—metal detectors and police personnel with stern eyes scanning the crowd. She gulps and unconsciously touches the wig on her head. 

Daayan slaps her hand away. 

‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbles as sudden pain erupts at the back of her hand. 

At home, Daayan had told her not to attract attention to the wig. Keep it natural, he had said. ‘Blend in or bleed,’ he’d whispered. She feels anything but natural right now. She is out of place. And completely out of her depth. 

‘Keep moving.’ 

Naina gulps and trudges towards the security gate. The line inches forward, and Naina’s gaze locks on the two metal detectors at the entrance. They stand like sentinels, humming faintly as people pass through. Beyond them, uniformed police methodically pat down attendees, their hands brisk and impersonal. Her stomach twists into a knot. Every step forward feels heavier than the last. She shifts her weight, her palms slick with sweat. 

A woman ahead of her sets off the detector. The sharp beep pierces the air. Two constables close in, their eyes cold and unyielding. A brief scuffle, then they let her through. Naina’s breath quickens. What if that happens to her? What if they find it? 

She feels Daayan’s presence, heavy and oppressive. She doesn’t dare turn, but she knows he’s there. Watching. Waiting. 

Her turn. 

The metal detector beeps—loud, jarring, unyielding. Her chest tightens as panic surges. Her heart thunders. Her vision blurs for a moment, her body frozen in place. 

A woman constable steps forward, her expression unreadable. ‘Step aside, please,’ the constable says, motioning to a curtained area. 

Naina trudges after her, her legs barely holding her up. Inside the small enclosure, the constable gestures for her to raise her arms. Naina obeys, the revolver’s weight pressing harder against her scalp. 

The constable’s hands move swiftly, patting down her sides, her back, her legs. Naina clenches her fists, waiting for the inevitable. Waiting for the constable to touch the wig and find the weapon hidden there. 

Nothing. 

In Strategy for Life by Surya Ramkumar, a simple yet powerful idea takes centre stage: the biggest obstacle to success is often not a lack of solutions, but a failure to identify the real problem worth solving.

***

‘Is my career about to disappear?’

This question haunts professionals across countless industries today. Samir, a thirty-two-year-old radiologist with ten years of experience and multiple responsibilities that include a mortgage, school fees and recurring family health expenses, is sitting at his workstation reviewing chest X-rays when he receives an article forwarded by a colleague: ‘AI System Outperforms Radiologists in Tumor Detection’.

He feels a knot in his stomach.

The mixed messages he has been receiving from the hospital management, the radiology webinars he attends and his lived experience create an unsettling dissonance he is unable to resolve. On the one hand, he is looking forward to the technological advances that would make his job easier, ‘take out the routine tasks, leaving the human to inject creativity and unique value,’ as one webinar host put it. On the other hand, he is swamped with more work than ever, the productivity increases that the new technology promised never quite kicking in. While the ambient threat of redundancy looms in the background, he tries to focus on the things that he can control on any given day.

‘How do I compete with AI?’ he asks himself, spending nights learning about machine learning algorithms and wondering if he should change specialties. But his attempts to solve this ill-defined problem leave him more anxious and confused.

Is his problem really about competing with AI in its current form? Is that something he can reasonably solve, and even if he were to solve it, wouldn’t the next technological advance be just around the corner? Will it materially change his life? And is it even a path that aligns with his skills and capabilities?

Samir’s situation illustrates a common challenge: when facing uncertainty about our futures, whether from technological disruption, economic shifts or personal transitions, we often rush to address symptoms rather than root causes or jump to narrow solutions without understanding the true nature of our challenges.

Trying to ‘master AI’ gives Samir the illusion of progress. But in the long run, he is running on a treadmill where technological advances are always one step ahead, and the latent anxiety remains ever present.

In a world where the horizons appear hazier than ever, we need a new approach, one that considers the ambiguity and uncertainty of our times yet utilizes our unprecedented agency in setting our own path. The first step of that approach starts with accurately identifying and defining the problem in a systematic way.

The Promise of a Problem

Every strategy starts with a problem. An invading king that you want to defend against. An opposing team with more talented players than yours. A competitor with more resources than you. All examples of problems that could lead to strategies, and thus to success. Yet even those who know the utility of a well-defined problem often struggle to get the first steps of a strategy right.

Based on a recent survey of venture capitalists and unicorns, McKinsey summarized the main factors that differentiated a successful unicorn from the other start-ups. One of these factors, very simply, was, solve something. Too often, the report went on to say, founders start with an idea or a product and then try to find a market. But the really successful ones are able to identify and solve a problem that matters. The same is true for each one of us.

In a world of positive thinking, we don’t always like to think of problems. Euphemistically, we may call them challenges or opportunities, but in my opinion, the best way to figure out what to do is to figure out the most vexing problem that you need solved and attack it head-on.

What is unique about a problem versus an opportunity, a passion or a purpose? A problem is a pain point that is hard to ignore. It cannot be described as a role or a job opening. It addresses something that matters to you, which is not easily solved.

Let’s say you have been working for several years, and you know your job inside out. You feel that you have trained and helped many new employees, but somehow that elusive promotion to a managerial role keeps slipping between your fingers. It may be tempting to fixate on getting yourself a job as a manager. But getting a job as a manager is not a problem. Being in a job where you don’t feel fully utilized and recognized is a problem. This reframing helps you articulate a wider range of solutions, rather than the narrowly defined possibility of getting promoted to a specific role.

The other wonderful thing about problems is that they have an uncanny ability to focus resources. People like opportunities, of course, but the human brain responds much better to an urgent and pressing problem. If you have observed teams at play or at work, crises often have a way of bringing them together in ways a new growth opportunity cannot. In the throes of crises, people forget their differences, debates abate and we are more willing to get into action mode. And deliberate action is exactly what we are after.

In The Skincare Guide That Will Save Your Life, dermatologist Dr Deepali Bhardwaj explores the fascinating science of probiotic skincare and explains how nurturing your skin’s microbiome could be the key to a stronger, calmer and more resilient complexion.

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(Some) Bacteria Are Our Friends

How probiotic beauty products are the way forward

‘I started taking the probiotic Dr Deepali suggested, and within three weeks my skin allergies reduced drastically. The irritation on my skin subsided too. My gut feels lighter and my skin looks calmer than it has in years. No other doctor had suggested this to me. Thank you so much!’ —N.P.

‘You want me to put kimchi on my face? Like a beauty mask?!’

If my reaction to this statement had been recorded, it would have become a viral meme by now.

I was talking to Neeta, a patient, about changing her skincare routine and introducing some probiotic products to it, and this is what she asked incredulously. After I got a hold on myself, I realized she wasn’t wrong in asking that question. We all associate the word ‘probiotic’ with the foods we need to eat to ensure we always have a healthy gut. But probiotic products are not just limited to foods. There is now a whole range of beauty products that contain probiotic ingredients, which are great for your skin.

But what exactly do we mean by ‘probiotic’?

The Good Bacteria

Our skin is home to millions of bacteria, fungi and viruses. Altogether they are called the skin flora or skin microbiota. One type of skin microbiota are probiotics. Human bodies are home to millions of microorganisms. Not all microorganisms are helpful to us; some types like germs are, in fact, harmful. But probiotics—live microorganisms—are beneficial to us.

Probiotics are found naturally within and on the body, and they greatly impact our skin’s health and overall appearance.

The concept of probiotics dates back to 1900, when French chemist and pharmacist Louis Pasteur studied fermentation microbes in the 1800s. However, the first probiotic product was introduced to the world in 1907–08 when scientist Élie Metchnikoff created ‘Lactobacilline’ consisting of Lactobacillus bulgaricus bacteria, a true forerunner of modern probiotics. The term ‘probiotic’ was first used in 1965 by Daniel Lilly and Rosalie Stillwell. In the human body, probiotics make up part of the microbiome, which is a collection of microorganisms that are naturally found in the digestive tract, skin and other parts of the body.

Like the gastrointestinal tract, the skin’s microbiome helps keep the skin barrier healthy and strong. It is estimated that around 1 million bacteria are present per square centimetre of the skin. Probiotics are part of this microflora. Their main job is to help the skin’s microbiome stay in balance. They do so by keeping harmful bacteria in check and preventing them from over-proliferating. This, in turn, helps to boost skin barrier health, control inflammation and prevent water loss in your skin.

Inversely, a dysfunctional microbiome results in inflammatory skin conditions such as acne, eczema and rosacea. Simply put, the good bacteria are constantly putting up a fight against the bad ones—the ones that can cause several skin diseases.

There are three main components in your skin microbiota—probiotics (the good microbes), prebiotics (the food on which the good microbes feed on) and postbiotics (the chemicals released by the microbes). These chemicals, like anti-bacterial peptides, are of immense benefit to us as they eliminate harmful bacteria.

What Is Probiotic Skincare?

Products that promote the skin microbiome are a part of the probiotic skincare routine. Probiotic skincare incorporates ingredients derived from beneficial bacteria or their byproducts. They are designed to nurture your skin’s natural ecosystem. These products work to maintain the microbiome’s balance, promoting a strong, more resilient skin barrier.

Probiotic-based skincare products contain ingredients like inulin, alpha-glucan oligosaccharide and thermal spring water. Sulphate-free cleansers, pH-balanced face washes (around 5–5.5) and barrier-repair moisturizers with ceramides are some of these products. If you’re already using a gentle cleanser, a ceramide-based moisturizer or a serum with fermented extracts, you’re likely supporting your skin microbiome without even realizing it.

A large part of understanding probiotic skincare is learning that bacteria are not always bad. They play a vital role in the human body and that billions of microorganisms work together on the skin’s surface to protect and reinforce its strength.

Probiotic foods contain live bacteria that improve your gut health. But that is not the case in probiotic skincare. Here, the bacteria are stabilized and formulated to allow the product to remain well-preserved.