In a world of strange viruses, survival Is the real marvel

Raju Korti
I have been thinking a great deal about the Washington case where an elderly resident became the first human to die of an H5N5 bird flu strain that had never before crossed into people. It is a chilling reminder of how easily the microscopic world can ambush us. The patient lived far from the bustle of Seattle, kept a backyard flock of domestic birds, and by all accounts had no reason to imagine that a virus unknown to medicine would slip silently from his poultry into his bloodstream. He arrived at the hospital with a blazing fever, confusion and laboured breathing. Tests revealed the strain had jumped from birds into him, but thankfully it has shown no inclination to spread among humans. His isolated tragedy is a stark illustration of how little we truly control in the biological universe that swirls around us.

When I first read a deeply researched Time Magazine piece on viruses sometime in the late seventies, immunology and virology were still finding their feet. Even then, scientists warned us that humanity lives on a razor’s edge, surrounded by a cosmos of invisible particles. Today we know the scale far better. Earth is home to an estimated ten nonillion virus particles. That is a number so absurdly large that it makes the stars in the universe look sparse. Fewer than seven thousand viruses have been studied in any meaningful detail and millions more continue to exist in forms we have not catalogued. The astonishing part is that most of these do not harm humans and never will. They float in the air we breathe, drift through oceans and soil, ride on insects and animals and even infect bacteria, yet our bodies repel their advances without us even knowing.

(Pic representational)

That, to me, is the real marvel. The human immune system is a fiercely intelligent protector that learns, adapts and remembers. It keeps guard from the moment we are born until the moment we die. Every second of our lives it is intercepting invaders, neutralising threats and outsmarting organisms that would overwhelm us if not for our internal vigilance. It is almost miraculous that we survive at all in an atmosphere saturated with viruses that exist only to replicate. Their behaviour is strange. They have no cellular structure, no heartbeat, no metabolism. They are obligate parasites that do nothing until they enter a host cell. Once inside they hijack the cell’s machinery, forcing it to produce viral copies instead of doing its usual work. Some viruses behave so cleverly that they seem to bend the rules of life itself. There are giant viruses whose genomes are so complex that they mimic cellular organisms. Others display behaviours that almost feel sentient, as if they network with fellow viruses or borrow protective coats from other viruses to survive. It is a world that sits right at the edge of what we define as living.

Every now and then one of these organisms mutates or leaps across species and reminds us how vulnerable we are. The recent resurgence of chikungunya in several countries is one such reminder. Anyone who has experienced it knows the misery of its joint pains and fever. There is no cure and the fever eventually ebbs, but the pain can linger stubbornly and make even daily chores a challenge. Viral illnesses are mostly like this. A small number can be cured, but most are managed. The Hepatitis C virus is a rare triumph because modern antivirals can eliminate it in more than ninety five percent of cases. Ebola too can be cleared fully with specific treatments. But chronic infections like HIV and Hepatitis B can only be held in check. Antibiotics are useless because they work on bacteria, not viruses. For most viral diseases we treat the symptoms and wait for the body’s defences to push the invader out.

When scientists warn us about the unpredictability of bird flu strains like H5N5, they are really reminding us of the delicate interaction between humanity and the viral world. From what I can gather, viruses shape evolution. They alter genes. They influence ecosystems. A world without viruses would collapse because they keep entire biological cycles functioning. They infect plants, animals, fungi and even bacteria. They are a necessary evil in the grand design of life. Total victory over them is neither possible nor desirable. The real achievement is our ability to coexist with them without being destroyed.

As I reflect on the Washington case, I realise that fear should not be the dominant emotion. Awareness is essential, vigilance matters, and responding with science instead of panic is what keeps us safe. The miracle is not that there are outbreaks. The miracle is that outbreaks are so rare when the world is saturated with trillions upon trillions of viral particles. Our survival is a quiet daily triumph of biology over chaos. Viruses were here long before us and will be here long after us, yet we continue to flourish in a world teeming with them. In the end, coexistence is the only equilibrium nature offers and the one we must continue to respect.

The leopard question: Crisis or overreach?

Raju Korti
I write this as someone who has been a wildlife enthusiast from very early in life and who lives tantalisingly close to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, a region where leopards routinely stray into human spaces. During the COVID period one leopard slipped into our residential complex in the dead of night and on another occasion two cubs were spotted very close to the SGNP fringes, indicating the continued presence of an adult pair and reminding us that this is a living, overlapping habitat where the boundaries between human and wild are porous. Against this lived reality, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis recently directed officials to declare leopard attacks on humans as a state disaster and prepare a proposal for the next cabinet meeting that seeks to remove leopards from Schedule I and reclassify them under Schedule II so that officials have greater flexibility in dealing with confirmed man-eaters.

The announcement came after a high-level meeting attended by Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, Forest Minister Ganesh Naik and senior officials in the wake of rising leopard attacks, especially in Pune district’s Shirur tehsil under the Junnar forest division where three persons were killed in just over a month, triggering public outrage and even arson in which a forest department vehicle was torched. A man-eating leopard in this very tehsil was ultimately shot dead by sharpshooters in early November after repeated attempts to capture it failed.

(Pic representational)

The state has responded with a mix of immediate and structural directions: deploying cages in vulnerable areas, using drones to track leopards near villages and urban settlements, increasing patrols by police and forest personnel, expanding rescue teams and vehicles, enhancing the capacity of existing rescue centres like Gorewada in Nagpur, setting up two new rescue centres in Pune district within the next two to three months, and securing the Centre’s permission to sterilise man-eating leopards. District planning committees have been asked to fund cages, manpower and vehicles to intensify capture operations. These measures reflect the administration’s argument that Schedule I protection often creates operational challenges, particularly when officials have to deal with repeat offenders. The government says reclassification under Schedule II will streamline permissions and enable swift action, including sedation, capture, sterilisation or controlled removal of confirmed man-eaters.

The broader context makes the debate more urgent and more complicated. Maharashtra is home to one of the largest leopard populations in the country, with national and state estimates placing the number in the approximate range of 1,600 to 2,000 individuals depending on survey year and method. Yet an RTI-based report recently revealed that between January 2022 and September 2025, some 537 leopards died in the state from causes including road accidents, electrocution and poaching. At the same time localised attacks like those in Shirur overwhelm the administrative capacity of field officers and lead to sudden law-and-order flashpoints that the state struggles to contain.

As a Disaster Management Consultant, I feel that whether these incidents justify classifying leopard attacks as a “state disaster” demands a careful reading of disaster law. The Disaster Management Act allows states to notify calamities to unlock funds and coordinate responses, but typically disasters are large-scale events such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, radiation leaks or cyclones that exceed the coping capacity of local authorities.

Leopard attacks, although serious and tragic, are spatially concentrated and usually addressed through wildlife and forest management mechanisms. Declaring a state-wide disaster invites criticism as an administrative overreach unless supported by clearly documented evidence that the frequency, spatial spread and socio-economic consequences of attacks have grown beyond local handling. For a few tehsils where fatalities cluster, the “disaster” logic may hold; for a whole state it requires careful justification so that precedent does not dilute the very meaning of disaster classification.

Reclassifying leopards from Schedule I to Schedule II is an even more sensitive proposal. Schedule I confers the highest protection under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, imposing stringent penalties and permitting intervention only under narrow, well-regulated circumstances. Moving to Schedule II relaxes these constraints and allows more administrative discretion for capture, handling and lethal control. The state argues this is essential for quick and decisive action in conflict zones. The conservation community worries that the shift weakens deterrence against poaching, emboldens illegal killings and creates a permissive environment where the line between a confirmed man-eater and a merely sighted leopard becomes dangerously thin. The Shirur case, where a leopard was shot dead by sharpshooters, illustrates the slippery slope: when pressure mounts, lethal force becomes the path of least resistance.

Understanding why leopards enter human spaces is crucial to assessing the wisdom of such policy shifts. The primary drivers are habitat loss, fragmentation and decline in natural prey, all of which compel leopards to seek food near human habitation. In many landscapes, the prey base within forests is depleted due to habitat degradation and human pressure while stray dogs, cats, calves and goats near villages and city fringes provide easy pickings. Some leopards are old or injured and no longer capable of hunting wild prey; others become habituated to scavenging near human settlements, and in rare but documented cases, access to human corpses in cremation grounds or desolate areas can initiate dangerous behavioural changes. These ecological stresses, coupled with human encroachment into forested land and expansion of urban infrastructure, mean that leopards are often not invading human spaces but navigating a shrinking habitat mosaic in which humans have already advanced deep into their former ranges.

The contradiction at the heart of the government’s approach becomes clear here. On one hand it plans to ease legal protection, making removal easier; on the other hand, it promises to rehabilitate, treat and house leopards in newly constructed centres. Rehabilitation relies on strong legal safeguards because without them, capture can quickly slide into disappearance, and treatment into mere holding before euthanasia or unofficial disposal. If protections are diluted, the incentive to invest in long-term rehabilitation diminishes and the risk of leopards being killed under vague justifications rises. Poaching, already a documented threat, could exploit the relaxed schedule to mask illegal trade and killings under the guise of conflict control. This risk grows in landscapes already stressed by reported leopard mortality in the hundreds over just a few years.

The way forward lies not in blunt reclassification but in calibrated, evidence-led policy. Immediate measures such as cages, drones, increased patrolling and rapid-response teams are necessary to protect human lives and calm public anger. Long-term solutions must focus on habitat restoration, prey-base strengthening, secure wildlife corridors, strict action on encroachments, transparent protocols for defining and handling man-eaters, improved training of forest staff, rapid compensation for livestock loss, and community involvement in coexistence strategies. Scientific monitoring through camera traps, telemetry and GIS mapping should guide interventions. If any legal reclassification is pursued, it should be narrow, time-bound and limited to specific circumstances with independent oversight to prevent misuse.

Human safety is non-negotiable but conservation cannot be an afterthought. Treating leopard attacks as a “state disaster” and lowering their protection may produce short-term administrative convenience but could, if not tightly regulated, erode long-term ecological stability and legal safeguards. The real challenge is ensuring that compassion, science and law work together rather than at cross-purposes. Maharashtra’s response must rise to this complexity rather than simplify it, for if we reduce the debate to an administrative binary, both people and leopards will remain trapped in a cycle of conflict that neither emergency declarations nor legal downgrades can solve.

No EMI, No GST, just bliss: The joy of daydreaming

Raju Korti
I confess, with no remorse whatsoever, that my favourite entertainment involves neither OTT platforms nor blockbuster movies nor five-star vacations. I simply lean back and… drift. Yes, daydreaming. The finest pastime ever invented, and the best part is it costs nothing, not even small change from the pocket of your kurta. There are no rules, no regulations, no committees hovering over your imagination with red files. In this private universe of mine, the mind has a free run like a child in an empty maidan, picking characters, locations, conversations and rewards at will. These are dreams without the inconvenience of sleeping. And unlike my waking life, no one cross-questions my motives. My daydreams remain my closely guarded secrets, a kind of agreeable split personality that stays blissfully distant from the jarring cacophony outside.

Science, in its earnest way, is still debating how mind-wandering works. Theories come and theories go, but frankly, I daydream too happily to worry about their technicalities. Freud, with all his seriousness, believed daydreaming was the polite version of suppressed instincts, made more lucid by a “secondary revision.” Others say it’s a liminal state, standing halfway between logic and lullaby. To me, the heartening truth is simpler: the mind is not idle even when the world thinks it is. During these wanderings, we sift through memories, tinker with future goals, polish our psychological selves and still manage to keep one ear on the cooker whistle. It is multitasking of the most graceful kind.

Of course, even this delightful habit comes with disclaimers. Too much daydreaming and you may find yourself staring blankly at your laptop while the world assumes you are deciphering national budgets. It can become maladaptive if it starts interrupting daily life. And yes, escaping into fantasy may soothe you but it won’t fix your rising electricity bill or that colleague who specialises in stress distribution. Like all good things in India, from pickles to politics, moderation is key.

What truly excites me is that science now suggests wandering into comforting, playful thoughts lifts the mood and sparks creativity. If someone ever conducts brain-mapping on utopian daydreamers, I volunteer as a sample with unmentionable sections safely censored. Perhaps my own blogs are children of these mental excursions, though I won’t reveal the rest of the “benefits.” They might scandalise those who pretend they never daydream, the saints.

Let me share some of the harmless, uplifting scenes from my internal cinema: perfect weather, soulful vacations, politicians who are honest, officials with integrity, colleagues who are benign, neighbours who are helpful, and good Samaritans everywhere. Meals that are healthy, trains that are on time, medical treatment that is free, money that flows generously to the needy, recognition that arrives in heaps, and the humility to stay grounded while the world showers praise. A world where everything is hunky dory and no one steals your peace of mind. Now tell me, which multiplex offers this?

My two cents: daydreaming is a glorious escape, a personal amusement park where you can be king, wanderer, poet or philanthropist on the same day. It is a creative intermission, a mental vacation with you as architect, director and hero rolled into one. Enjoy it, indulge in it, but don’t let it hijack your schedule. After all, even fantasy tastes sweeter when savoured at the end of a long, honest day’s work.

When death becomes clickbait!

Raju Korti
I began the day reading that Dharmendra, the original macho man of Hindi cinema, had passed away. Within minutes, social media was flooded with “RIP” messages, mournful tributes, and pictures of him in his heyday. As I write this, Dharmendra thankfully remains alive, hopefully for many more years. Yet, a section of both social and mainstream media seems content to send him on a premature heavenly journey. No one really knows the truth, but that hardly matters in the viral economy of grief.

Parallelly, Jackie Chan too became a trending topic worldwide after Facebook lit up with news of his “tragic death.” A photo showing him on a hospital bed did the rounds, along with fake claims that his family had confirmed the news. It was all fabricated. Fans panicked, the media speculated, and for a few hours, the virtual world buried him alive.

What intrigues me is this perverse obsession with celebrity deaths. Why are people, especially those on social media who fancy themselves as journalists, so eager to write epitaphs before their time? Is it the thrill of “breaking news,” the hunger for attention, or the morbid delight that fame brings even in death? Many celebrities have died multiple times before they actually died. Lata Mangeshkar, Dilip Kumar, and Amitabh Bachchan have all been victims of such premature digital funerals.

The anatomy of a rumour is simple yet sinister. It feeds on fear, curiosity, and the herd mentality that governs our online interactions. It spreads through anxiety and thrives on our need to feel informed or relevant. Once unleashed, it mutates, gathering new details, false confirmations, and emotional hooks. Until it becomes indistinguishable from fact.

But rumours are not harmless chatter. They can wound reputations, distress families, and corrode public trust. When falsehoods are circulated about public institutions or leaders, they can even shake faith in governance and democracy itself. A society that thrives on fake information eventually forgets how to think critically.

India does have laws against rumour-mongering, Various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Disaster Management Act, and the Information Technology Act prohibit spreading false information. Yet convictions remain few and far between. The lack of strict enforcement makes rumour-mongering seem like a trivial offence when in fact, it eats away at our moral fibre.

We all must die someday, but death should not become a matter of speculation and spectacle. Let us not make mortality a trending topic just because it fetches likes, clicks, and fleeting visibility. If we cannot honour life, the least we can do is respect death.

Facebook’s ‘Digital Royalty’: "Digital Creators" and their "followers"

Raju Korti
There was a time when Facebook was a cheerful adda for long-lost friends, old classmates, ex-colleagues, and that uncle who sends ‘Good Morning’ messages before sunrise. You could share photos, poke fun, disagree, even argue; and yet remain friends. The unwritten rule was simple: friendship meant affection, not algorithmic hierarchy.

But now, as I scroll through my feed, I realise that Facebook has been quietly colonised by a new tribe: the Digital Creators. These self-styled geniuses are convinced that everyone else exists only to “follow” them. Their profiles proudly declare, “1.8K followers, 123 following”. As if the fewer they follow, the more divine their existence.

My notifications keep telling me: “So-and-so has highlighted a post for you.” Really? Highlighted? As if it is some royal proclamation. And when I open the post, I find that I have been automatically demoted from friend to follower. In other words, a humble spectator whose sacred duty is to clap, like, and share.

(Pic representational)

Let me confess: I hate this word follower. It reeks of servitude. I joined Facebook to make friends, not to become part of some digital durbar. It is very rare that I send a friend request, yet, when I do, I find myself converted into a “follower”. A faceless minion expected to hang on to every selfie, quote, and “motivational” post my new monarch uploads.

Now, I am told that a digital creator is someone who “produces and distributes original, engaging, and valuable content.” Beautiful words, but quite meaningless when you look around. What exactly are they creating? Ninety percent of what passes for “original content” today is a recycled meme, a borrowed quote, or a dance reel set to someone else’s song. If this is creativity, then the world’s WhatsApp groups are full of creative geniuses.

And please, don’t tell me there was no creativity before the digital age. By that logic, the likes of Shakespeare, Tagore, R.K. Laxman and Sahir – to name a few -- must have been mere amateurs because they never monetized their content through reels. What unmitigated nonsense!

What irritates me even more is how these digital creators hardly ever acknowledge others’ posts. They live in a world of one-way admiration. You comment on their post, and silence follows. The royal silence of someone too elevated to notice the commoners. Yet their “followers” dutifully shower likes and emojis as though attending a daily darshan.

To me, friendship is about equality. I don’t want to lead, and I certainly don’t want to follow. I want to connect. Genuinely, without hashtags or hierarchies.

If this obsession with followers continues, perhaps Mr. Zuckerberg should consider rebranding Facebook altogether. Maybe call it Followbook or Feudalbook. At least then we’ll know where we stand, kneeling at the feet of “digital creators,” proudly part of an utterly stupid algorithm.

Some might take offence to this post. That’s fine. After all, Facebook still asks me, “What’s on your mind?” I only hope it doesn’t soon change that to, “What’s on your leader’s mind?”

Aliens are human too. They're entitled to boredom!

Raju Korti
It all began when I stumbled upon this rather delightful theory by Dr Robin Corbet of NASA. He calls it radical mundanity, which, in plain language, means that aliens might be as ordinary as us, only with slightly shinier gadgets. For years, we have imagined them cruising around in shimmering spaceships, manipulating gravity and sipping quantum cocktails. But Corbet suggests they might be no more exciting than a cosmic neighbour who once bought a telescope, got tired of stargazing, and decided to stick to their version of afternoon tea.

Pic as imagined by me, Who ese?

The more I thought about it, the funnier it seemed. Imagine an alien research council somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy holding an emergency meeting: “Operation Contact Earth: Status?” And one sleepy alien saying, “We sent them a signal 3 million years ago. Still buffering.” At some point, even the most patient civilisation would give up and reach for a plate of samosas instead.

It turns out that sending messages across galaxies is not like sending a WhatsApp text. It takes colossal amounts of energy and time. Possibly millions of years just to get a ‘hello’ back. So, after a few cosmic centuries, our alien friends might have realised it was not worth the trouble. You can almost picture them sighing, “These humans can’t even agree on the taste of chai. Let’s move on.”Dr Corbet’s theory also punctures the grand myth of aliens being godlike. He suggests they might just have slightly better tech. An iPhone 42 instead of an iPhone 17. Which means, instead of building galaxy-sized marvels or bending space-time, they could be stuck dealing with their own version of power cuts, software crashes, and interplanetary traffic snarls.

In fact, this makes the universe feel oddly familiar. The Fermi Paradox, the question of why we haven’t heard from anyone yet, might just have the most human answer imaginable: they got bored. Picture the aliens tuning into Earth’s broadcasts, watching endless election debates on television, and deciding that advanced communication with us was a bad idea.

But on a serious note, there is something oddly comforting in this mundanity. If they are indeed out there, maybe they are not perfect, not terrifying, just as flawed and easily distracted as we are. Maybe their greatest invention wasn’t some interstellar engine but a better version of the pressure cooker.So yes, the universe might be full of intelligent life, but it could also be full of civilisations that simply lost interest halfway. In the end, perhaps we are all, humans and aliens alike, victims of the same cosmic condition: short attention spans and the irresistible lure of comfort over curiosity.

After all, even in the grand theatre of the cosmos, it seems boredom truly is universal.