My childhood and adolescence were filled with visiting scientists from both India and abroad, many of whom would stay with us. A life of science struck me as being both interesting and particularly international in its character.
From early on there were two things that filled my life - music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.
What's interesting is, if you take the scientists and the theologians, the really good ones, they end up both filled with this wide-eyed sense of wonder and awe about look at this world we live in.
Both Socrates and Jesus were outstanding teachers; both of them urged and practiced great simplicity of life; both were regarded as traitors to the religion of their community; neither of them wrote anything; both of them were executed; and both have become the subject of traditions that are difficult or impossible to harmonize.
We were both very much the same. We were both very impulsive. We both loved life. We both loved shopping. We both had a love of clothes, obviously, because he was the designer that I kind of wore forever and ever.
I think both running and science reflect certain character traits. I have endurance, patience, and ambition. I'm willing to work hard toward a goal, to push myself and overcome limits. Running and science both let me express these traits.
If you think of India in the 1980s, there weren't many writers in English around. The ones that were there, Amitav Ghosh or Vikram Seth, were living abroad or publishing from abroad.
In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists from both the political left and right would not have found the idea of designer babies particularly dangerous - though, of course, they would not have used that phrase.
I think both science and art are impelled by curiosity: What's really happening? How do things really function? How can I really engage with the world around me? These are questions that artists and scientists both ask.
Just a decade after 'Living in Bondage,' Nollywood films, made in some 300 languages, were being watched in both urban and rural areas, distributed on both the streets and online, and finding their way into international festivals.
One of the greatest things that ever taught me a super lesson was when I seen a baby come out of my woman's womb. Seeing this war that could end with both lives being lost, or both lives being made, gave me an enlightenment of life itself. It sparked my whole mind to a whole other level of living. And if I never would have seen it, I never would have understood life. I never would have appreciated life.
No one is perfect and everyone is different, but everyone one is beautiful in their own way and that's what makes us special.For me, it went beyond being a beauty queen. For me, it was about being the 20-year-old girl from India on international platform and a lot of people actually would assume that I wasn`t even educated in India because of the way I'd speak.
The four of us enjoyed a most wonderful family atmosphere filled with love and reciprocal devotion. Both parents were highly cultured and instilled in us their high appreciation of intellectual pursuit. It was, however, a typical Victorian style of life, all decisions being taken by the head of the family, the husband and father.
I nearly missed the births of both of my children, and both were around international weeks.
At the time in our lives that we met, we had both made our mistakes. If chance would have had it that we would have met at an earlier stage, we might not have had the discoveries together that we did have and found those things in life together that were valuable to us at a later point in life when we were both more mature.
Someone asked me who I would be if I were a character in the 'Wizard of Oz.' I would be the curtain. I would be the one who saw both sides that nobody noticed, that was pretty and there to be used and discarded when they were done.
My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.