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I love hearing war stories. But what’s even more inspiring and deep are the little stories which are often untold and hidden by the stories of heroic victories and defeats. My favourite ones include the story of Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician who invents a machine to crack Nazi codes and solves the impossible Enigma machine during the WWII, only to be classified and revealed decades after the war; the story of Leisel Meminger escaping her war-ridden life through the solace of books; and the story of Desmond Doss, who refuses to bear arms, but fights the war with compassion and saves almost a hundred men in the battlefield, and many more. Adding to this list, Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See is a beautiful story I could read over and over again. It portrays two parallel lives of Marie Laurie and Werner, set in two different countries, France and Germany respectively, during the WWII.   Marie Laurie loses her vision at the age of six and the war leads her

I tagged along with my cousin and a team of taxonomists, Life Science students, plant enthusiasts and basically people who knew about plants to Dochula last Sunday. And as you might have guessed already, I was the black sheep. My plant knowledge is as good as zero and if you ask, I can barely name ten plants. I didn’t study biology in High school because I wanted to concentrate on maths and also, I wanted free periods. I don’t regret about this decision but sometimes I just wish for a better connection with plants. Stuck a Taraxacum behind my ears My cousin Dechen, had told her friends that I am a “nature lover” in the idea of creating a bond with the team and when one of them asked me how I got my interest in plants, I quite humored myself. I told them that I came across various plants while studying Landscape Architecture which is in reality, just few shrubs and trees I’d gone through the internet. But I got them all nodding in agreement, so everyone was good. The actual