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In this day and age of computers, the ability to write and under-stand programming is an invaluable skill. Computers now surround us—everything from our high-tech smartphones and laptops, to our microwaves and cars use programmes written in lines and lines of code (specialized languages that computers can understand). Marc Scott and Mick Marston do a wonderful job introducing this world—while aimed at young children, the book serves as an equally good guide for an older novice.

Dad, did you know, Kalpana Chawla was the first woman of Indian origin to go to space?’ my eight year old daughter, who is in class 3, mentioned with excitement. I was helping her with her school project on the solar system. During the course of the project, we discovered together, the truly inspiring personal journey of Kalpana Chawla from Karnal, a small town in Haryana to her joining the NASA programme in the US as an astronaut. Kalpana’s fascination for space and flying was sparked off at a very early age. On a recent trip to the US, I had the opportunity to take my daughter to the world famous Morehead Planetarium and Science Centre in North Carolina.

When I saw the title of the book I had been asked to review Death on Earth: Adventures in Evolution and Mortality I was apprehensive. I assumed that the book would be another treatise on the much flogged concept of Darwinian adaptive evolution: the superior importance of population and species survival over the death of any individual of a species. But what really got my interest was the introduction and the first chapter that discussed the concept of death as envisioned as a cessation of Life; and the rational of defining life and the misunderstanding that till now exist in our definition of ‘What is Life??’

Dear Aburva, I appreciate your reasons for writing this book. As a young person who reflects on a lot of things, you want to connect with others like yourself and like your parents so that they may understand each other. In this instance, you have focused on your passion for dance, bharatanatyam in particular, how you were briefly distracted from it owing mainly to peer pressure, and how you returned to it and performed the arangetram, your first solo public performance of bharatanatyam. Along the way you have shared your impressions of Oman, where you live; you have provided information about Chidambaram, the town your father hails from and also important for the temple dedicated to Nataraja and Govindaraja, and in Hindu thinking believed to be the venue of Shiva’s cosmic dance.

We all know of the legendary Khwaja Ahmad Abbas who was the scriptwriter of Raj Kapoor’s classic films like Awara, Shri 420, Mera Naam Joker and Bobby. He also directed award winning films like Saat Hindustani and Do Boond Paani and introduced an actor called Amitabh Bachchan. As Abbas’s niece Syeda Hameed writes ruefully in her introduction, he wrote hits for Raj Kapoor but his own films would flop at the box office. Few of us remember that Abbas was also an acclaimed writer, author of 74 books and wrote a column in the Blitz magazine for 45 years. One should thank Hameed for reviving this gem of a book where Abbas profiles five women who exemplify the Bharat Mata of his dreams. These are real women and that makes them resonate in the reader’s mind.

Imagine a time when people could ask the question, ‘What is a film?’ In 1913 a man stood yelling about a new show outside a Bombay theatre, ‘Fifty seven thousand photographs… two miles long… only three annas!’ Dadasaheb Phalke was selling a visual magic that no one had ever seen before. His film would instantly mesmerize people and within a generation lay the foundation of the film industry in Bombay. And today, within a century, we carry films in our pockets and watch them on the tiny screens of smart phones. This is the unforgettable legerdemain of moving and talking pictures. I still remember sitting in the dark at a puja pandal in Daryagunj in the 1970s, the audience around me whizzing with excitement.