Dr Manmeet

MD, DM Addiction Psychiatry
AIIMS, New Delhi

[Dr Manmeet @brar_mk]

@PrayRona_ It's been two days since I watched the movie, I can't just get over it. That scene you mentioned, the longing for home, the pain - I am in awe of the fact that a movie can make me feel this way. Reading similar viewing experiences makes me feel sane.

[Devina Mehra @devinamehra]

Which gender is somewhat better at cooking? Coding? Makeup?

Turns out women are naturally good at all activities which are unpaid or undervalued, when they are classified as 'womanly virtues'...but when they start to command money and prestige suddenly the field is overrun with men, and women are pointedly excluded - sometimes absolutely prohibited from entering them.

Once you see the pattern you cannot unsee it!

And yes gender is about economics as well - not just woolly notions of fairness and equity.

Besides the examples given in the piece here are a few others - some of them were pointed out by the readers of the column

- The one thing which patriarchal men always boast about is their superior physical strength, so why is it that in remote corners of the country it is always the women and girls who carry water (a full water container is extremely heavy) over kilometres on end.

- Mehndi at weddings was typically applied by women but now that weddings are multi crore businesses with huge payment to vendors, suddenly men have begun to dominate the field

- The early computer whizzes include the great Grace Hopper whose inventions include COBOL which served as the backbone of computing for business (and still does in mainframe computing)

- Not just in luxury hotels but even in traditional weddings all cooking related contractors (from Kashmir to Tamilnadu) are men. Interestingly most of them (including the celebrity chefs from hotels) will say that they don't do the cooking in their homes.

Had written this column a few months ago but was reminded recently in a discussion on classical music.

Most of what we call classical music and dance was preserved for the coming generations by the tawaif and Devdasi tradition.

Till it was outside the respectable category, the women were the main characters and the men were the supporting players.

Once it became mainstream, the men muscled in. Just think about it, no veteran male classical singer or player is spoken of without the Ustad or Pandit or Maharaj honorific - it is more or less unthinkable to do it.

For many female artists it is used only occasionally if at all. For instance, think of how Gangubai Hungal or Kishori Amonkar are spoken of.

(As an aside, two books that give a good glimpse into the tawaif tradition are Tawaifnama by Saba Dewan and यह कोठीवालियांँ by Amritlal Nagar)

Women are not incapable or lacking in skills... they are simply systematically excluded from anything that gives them money, power and prestige.

Culture, values, traditions are the ways used to control them.

So many things hide in plain sight!

What are men and women good at - The answer may surprise you

@livemint
@PenguinIndia
@mileeashwarya

[Rachel Chitra (David) @rachelchitra]

1/12 🚨Air India crash ✈️🔥On the crash anniversary, marking the loss of 260 lives, AAIB interim report's delayed as AAIB's trapped in a web of its own making.

It created a relight story based on blackbox data, that's now getting dismantled by engine maker GE's own manuals. @GE_Aerospace @DGCAIndia

🧵So let's look at 12 stories, published over 12 months since last June 12, 2026 - as to the truth of what happened on AI 171

In my piece for @frontline_india, I go into how AAIB implied a simple story & @WSJ ran with it

The story:
08:08:42 UTC - Capt Sumeet “cuts off” fuel
08:08:47 UTC - Both engines N2 fall minimum idle 08:08:52 ETC: First officer Clive moves fuel switch 1 for left engine from CUTOFF to RUN
Engine 1 relight - Engine 1’s core “stops decelerating, reverses and starts to recover”
08:08:56 UTC: FO Clive moves fuel switch 2 for right engine from CUTOFF to RUN
Engine 2 relight begins

But here's the problem.

Once a GEnx core goes below self‑sustaining speed, it cannot restart without power from the APU or live engine.

And AI171 didn't have starter core-spin power.

AAIB report itself admits that:
1. APU was not online. It takes 50-60 seconds to generate power. It's inlet door was only opening at 08:08:54 UTC
2. Dual engine shutdown

So where did the energy for this miracle “recovery” come from?

This then shifts the timestamp of when relight occurred. That it can't be crew-commanded but FADEC commanded. Since as per AAIB report & GE manuals, the relight that happened, where "engine 1 core deceleration stopped, reversed and progressed to recovery." There was no electrical power left on the plane at the 13th and 17th second after takeoff for such a relight.

So this relight could only happen in a timestamp, where the engines were running fast. In a narrow window of 5-8 seconds, when the blades were spinning fast enough for full voltage electricity generation from the engine's generator (PMG).

And it could've only happened if FADEC cutoff fuel at 08:08:45 UTC, under TCMA, when the plane's flight computers (FCMs) were rebooting - sending it temporarily into its default/fail-safe mode i.e. ground mode in air.

And then relight happened for engine 1 and 2 between 08:08:45-50 UTC.

So here's this thriller of a piece, edited by @Aarohanvasanth & @vaishnaroy - where you get an inside peak into the crash; how the plane went into degraded mode on its previous flight - AI 423 Delhi to Ahmedabad.

How 10 years of internal correspondence on crash flight VT-ANB between Boeing & Air India; show Air India like Lion Air getting increasingly desperate dealing with a plane that had recurring issues in power generation, fire-inerter. This story shows how even after a major fire in Frankfurt that led to the plane's grounding -- Boeing remained pedantic in its approach; with short-term fixes rather than dealing with the long term design fix of what was going wrong with the plane's electrical architecture flaw.

To the massive annoyance of Air India engineers, it's advice included usage of "duct tape, donuts & checks for water intrusion" when asked a question on how to deal with the burning of a critical (P100) power distribution panel.

Engineers say this is like the Titanic signalling "Iceberg ahead" warnings & Boeing recommending they wipe the railings for a clean ship.

https://t.co/jutxM4tOwh

[TheLiverDoc™ @theliverdoc]

For me, this is a pivotal moment in my science communication career, from India perspective.

Probably the first time, a major national media invited me to write an fact-based piece on a completely rubbish alternative medicine system that enjoys government protection - Homeopathy.

Please make this your must read of the day. I dissect every common nonsensical claim from the homeopathy community and bury age-old myths associated with this 200-plus year old obsolete pre-science artefact that still enjoys an undeserving place in Indian healthcare and which also destroys many young careers.

Well done and thank you Indian Express and Ms. Rinku Ghosh, the lead on health, for this! I really welcome this change! No one should be afraid of reporting facts about health misinformation even if it is government supported or promoted. This is the people's right.

Full read:
Homeopathy survives for reasons that have little to do with effective healthcare.
https://t.co/mHHVjFgvWg

[Om Prakash, MD @ompsychiatrist]

As an Indian psychiatrist in clinical practice, I see patients battling real mental illnesses every single day i.e. severe depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders that cause deep suffering and completely disrupt their daily lives. We diagnose strictly by ICD criteria: clear symptoms plus significant distress or disability. Never just for general life dissatisfaction.

When meds are needed, they’re backed by decades of solid RCTs, and we always combine them with therapy, lifestyle changes, and support.

Psychiatry is real medicine. Let’s judge it by science and actual patient recovery, not assumptions.

[Dr. Vrinda Kabra @KabraVrinda]

You would be SHOCKED to learn how many in-laws forcefully bring their daughter in-laws to psychiatry OPD to get them diagnosed with one or the other thing, and more often than not- the daughter in-laws do NOT have any diagnosable mental illness.

Twice this has happened- that the law has followed up for documents of said daughter in-laws after their demise- as the in-laws suggested she was mentally ill. (When infact- she was distressed due to THEM).

Make of it what you want to. 👍

[Vincent Rajkumar @VincentRK]

Here is the inside story on how @UpToDate does what it does.

From my experience as an author/section editor for UpToDate for 20 years, here is how it works. It’s amazing!

Every day a team of people @UpToDate scour the top medical journals (and major meeting abstracts) for articles of importance. In my case they pertain to myeloma and related disorders. Any article that is felt to be important is sent to a expert MD medical editor at UpToDate who reviews the paper. If the information is felt to be important, the relevant chapter is updated with this content, summarized in a few sentences in Word track and then sent to the author of the chapter who is a top expert in the field.

As an author I have to review the update in detail and then make a decision whether to include the new information, and whether the way it has been incorporated is correct or needs to be edited.

Once I make a decision, it is then reviewed by an expert section editor. For 15 years for me, the section editor was Dr. Robert Kyle! (Currently I’m the section editor and we have about 6 experts serve as authors on over 40 chapters pertaining to myeloma and related disorders). The section editor independently decides whether the author made the right call and either approves or we have a back and forth till we agree.

The updated chapter is then reviewed again by the expert MD editor at UpToDate and then posted.

For important phase III trials or FDA approvals we usually make the update within a week. Sometimes by the next day! With so many important papers, every week there are 2-3 updates pertaining to my chapters that go through the above process! It’s hard work but it keeps me ridiculously current. And more importantly it keeps the content accurate and current. This is not random addition of new information. It’s vetted information that’s added.

Every UpToDate chapter is also peer reviewed annually. Each chapter also undergoes an annual author and editor review to make sure that the overall content and flow is good and to delete content that may be no longer important or accurate. The extraordinary process and rigor involved is why it’s such an invaluable irreplaceable resource. It is AMAZING and hard to replicate.

UpToDate is easy to navigate. But the newly launched UpToDate Expert AI takes it to the next level! It makes the entire content available to query just like you query a top ranked LLM. But it’s not searching the random internet or a stack of published articles. It’s primarily trained and derives vetted and adjudicated UpToDate content. It will not randomly hallucinate. It will not list 10 options for treatment newly diagnosed myeloma but will give you what experts currently feel is the best option based on the latest evidence. All answers are referenced and pointing to specific content sections in UpToDate (which also has links to source material). So you can immediately get all the background information if you need more detail.

Working with UpToDate has helped my career immensely. For the last 20 years it has been impossible for me to not know about every important study related to myeloma and related disorders as they get published! For 20 years, I have received a precise summary of every important article published in my field. More importantly I am forced to read them, review the source material, and make a judgment call. As a result I remember this stuff. A gift indeed!

[Vincent Rajkumar @VincentRK]

I would like to share the story of how a patient with cancer came up with the idea for a randomized trial, & how listening to him saved a lot of lives.

1/ In 2002, I had just completed a randomized trial with the notorious drug thalidomide for the cancer, multiple myeloma.

[Tyler Black, MD @tylerblack32]

https://t.co/mys7LHuvhG

[The Lancet @TheLancet]

Endometriosis affects approximately 190 million people worldwide.

One of the main global challenges facing those with endometriosis and their health-care providers is diagnostic delay. 🧵

[JAMA @JAMA_current]

"Medicine can have extraordinary meaning. But it cannot substitute for being present in your own life."

In #APieceofMyMind, a psychiatrist and residency program director reflects on an unexpected #LungCancer diagnosis.

https://t.co/V3Tae6P6mU

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Microplastics have been found in human brains, blood, placentas, and testes across 1,300 species. An 18-year-old in Virginia just built a filter in her garage that removes 95.5% of them. The physics of how it works is worth understanding.

Traditional water filters use solid membranes. Water passes through, particles get caught. The problem: microplastics range from 5mm down to 1 micrometer. Filters fine enough to catch the smallest particles clog constantly and need replacing. The maintenance cost makes them impractical for household use.

Mia Heller built exactly this, over and over, after water tests in Warrenton, Virginia showed PFAS and microplastic contamination. Government agencies said no public funds were coming. Residents were on their own.

Heller took a completely different approach. Her system uses ferrofluid, a liquid containing magnetic nanoparticles suspended in oil. The key insight is polarity. Microplastics and water have different polarities. Microplastics are more attracted to the oily ferrofluid than they are to water. So when ferrofluid enters contaminated water, the microplastics migrate toward it on their own.

Then you apply a magnetic field. The ferrofluid is magnetic. The magnet pulls the ferrofluid out of the water, and all the attached microplastics come with it. The ferrofluid is recovered and reused at an 87.15% recycling rate.

No membrane. No clogging. No constant filter replacements.

She went through five prototypes before getting it working. The system filters about a liter at a time and fits under a kitchen sink. She also built her own turbidity sensor to verify the removal rate, rather than relying on visual inspection.

Municipal drinking water plants achieve 70 to 97% microplastic removal depending on technology. Her garage prototype hits 95.52%. She won a $500 prize at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair for it.

The constraint she already sees: ferrofluid is expensive to produce at scale. She designed the system for individual households, not treatment plants. But the mechanism, polarity and magnetism replacing physical filtration, is the kind of first-principles reasoning that makes the best engineering.

Five prototypes. One garage. $500.

[OP Singh @opsinghips]

Neeraj Chopra almost didn't happen.

Not because of corruption. Not because of incompetence.

Because of a file that in summer noon of 2011 could have gone upward, a committee that could have met, and a season that could have passed.

One official decided instead. Same afternoon. No precedent. No committee. Rs 1 lakh for javelins.

Refer. Defer. Wait. He didn't.

The boys were practising by the evening at Panchkula athletic track. They did so there for next five years before moving to more competitive circuits.

One of them did exceptionally well. India got an #Olympic gold.

We blame governance failure on corrupt officials. Or incompetent ones.

There is a third failure — the honest, competent official who has learned that deciding is more dangerous than not deciding.

Kahneman showed people feel losses twice as powerfully as gains. The status quo is the system's default — and the official's shelter. The harm of his action is traceable to him. The harm of his silence is traceable to no one.

So he refers. Defers.
Performs just enough to stay invisible.

I call it rational abdication.

It is costing India more than corruption ever did. And it can be fixed by making inaction visible and bonafide mistakes absorbable.

Read my article in #Dailyworld

The Neeraj Chopra story is the lucky version. You have been that citizen whose file went upward and never came back. What was yours? Tell me. ⬇️

#RationalAbdication #Governance #NeerajChopra

[Jake Lundahl @LundahlHorses]

Civilization was built by people like this, and there is a stunning lack of gratitude in our culture for their work.

In this specific case, at least half of the apple varieties in Brown’s collection were considered “lost” until he personally tracked them down and saved them.

He literally went on quests where he did things like, tracking a lost variety back to a stump of a long-ago-cut-down tree near an abandoned homestead in remote Appalachia, took cuttings from the green shoots coming out of the stump, brought them back and planted them.

Absolute legend.

[Om Prakash, MD @ompsychiatrist]

As a psychiatrist, two studies point to the same risk in AI therapy.

@JAMAPsych reports chatbots reinforcing psychotic delusions.
Brown (AAAI 2025): 137 sessions, 15 APA violations, “deceptive empathy” — fluent rapport without judgment.

AI can sound caring.
Conversation is not care.
Accountability must remain human.

@ompsychiatrist
Paper: https://t.co/9FveG7NyKp

#MentalHealth #Psychiatry #AIethics

[Karthik 🇮🇳 @beastoftraal]

👏👏👏

[Shaaz A Khan @neuronsmultiply]

Who called it pituitary stalk and not Strait of Hormones

[nature @Nature]

A simple celebratory post about completing my PhD went viral for all the wrong reasons. Here’s how I managed the backlash and used the attention to promote my research, says Juliet Turner

https://t.co/RmqMWuwKjO

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

It is strange how the world can cooperate to get oil through the Iranian blockade at the Strait of Hormuz but still aren't able to get food through the Israeli blockade at the borders of Gaza.

[Iran in India @Iran_in_India]

Following repeated requests from charitable and benevolent members among our Indian brothers and sisters to provide humanitarian assistance to Iranian compatriots affected by the ongoing war, the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in New Delhi hereby announces the following bank account number for the deposit of intended cash donations.

Bank Account Name: Embassy of Iran
Bank Account Number: 11084232535
IFS Code: SBIN0000691

If you wish, you may also send the screenshot or payment receipt via WhatsApp to: [phone].