Author: Akshat Rathi

Akshat Rathi is a senior reporter for Bloomberg News. He has previously worked at Quartz, The Economist and The Conversation. His writing has appeared in Nature, The Guardian and The Hindu. He has a PhD in chemistry from Oxford University and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai.

What is the point of literature?

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There are many. I found this compelling, from the writer Karl Ove Knausgaard:

Saying what is self-evident is repetitive; the repeated is the already-known, and the already-known is the enemy of literature, its nemesis and true opposite. The self-evident confirms; literature challenges the confirmed. It is easy to describe what I see; it is easy to describe what I think. But why do I see what I see? Why do I think what I think? That is harder to grasp. For what I see is the world; what I think is me. What literature can do is establish an outside.

Source: The Reenchanted World: On finding mystery in the digital age, Harper’s Magazine, June 2025

In praise of the Persian melon

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Once in a while, life presents you with a perfect. That is the story of the Persian melon for me.

It’s perfect from the moment you see it. It’s unmissable, even as it sits among seven different types of melons at our local Eastern European grocery in north London. The Persian melon is shaped like a rugby ball, with light orange skin that has ridges. Even though it’s large (weighing about three kilos), it’s easy to hold and drop into the tote bag.

It’s nothing like the smooth, round and all-too-heavy watermelon. You don’t have to clench your stomach and tighten your sphincter before you lift one. You don’t have to worry that it will accidentally slide out and splatter on the shop floor, splaying its insides in places hard to reach.

And the Persian melon smells good: sweet and summery. You can be sure it’s ripe and soft enough. Just give it a firm squeeze and a satisfying sniff. Unlike most other melons, you don’t have to wait to cut it open to find a mistake. You can be assured that the Persian melon will be worth the slightly awkward stares you get as you walk back home lugging around one of the heaviest fruits that you can buy at the grocers.

Now let’s face it: how many melons have you ended up spoiling because you could not bring yourself to cutting them? You picked one up at the shop because you wanted a tasty and healthy treat. But when it’s time to cut it (often days after you bought it), you don’t have the same enthusiasm.

I’m not blaming you. The undoing of a melon is a messy affair. Melons are nothing but balls of water held together by some thin biofilms and wrapped in a seemingly bullet-proof jacket. It’s never going to be as easy to cut into pieces as an apple.

The easiest melons to cut are cantaloupes. And, fortunately, the Persian melon is just like a large cantaloupe. The green rind is thick, but not too firm to cut out. That means there’s little risk of applying unnecessary force on the rind and cutting your hand instead. All the seeds are in the middle and thus there’s no need to spit out seeds when you eat the melon.

Once served in a big bowl, it’s a pleasure to eat. You can push in the fork without effort, and yet when you lift it the piece holds perfectly firm. There’s no drip and no risk of accidental spillage. So far so cantaloupe, except its color: a lovely white with a yellow tinge.

The best part is the magic in the mouth. This is where the Persian melon one-ups the cantaloupe (and the others). All melons are watery, but the Persian melon lets you taste the sweet water for as long as you’d like to taste it. The taste is subtle and refreshing. It hydrates the body and pampers the tongue. It’s sweet, but not too sweet. Once you stop eating, the sweetness stays with you for at least 15 minutes and the memory forever.

20 health lessons from “Trust me, I’m a Doctor”

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The BBC ran an excellent third series of three episodes of “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor”. You can dig into all their conclusions here. Here are the take away lessons from it:

  1. Marinating meat in beer (or wine) can help reduce the formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons—known are known to be cancer-causing agents—during barbecuing.
  2. Cramps are only caused by exhausted muscles, not because of lack of salt or water. Best way to relieve it is to stretch the muscle that is cramping. To prevent more cramps from happening, try putting a pillow under the muscle, which will gently stretch it.
  3. More than one in four health supplements don’t contain what they claim to contain. Don’t think high price indicates high quality. In the UK, look for the THR certification mark.
  4. Ear buds don’t remove ear wax. If anything, they make it worse. We should leave ear wax where it is.
  5. Rosemary aroma can improve memory by about 10%, because of the way the aromatic chemicals interact with our brain. Lavender smell, on the other hand, can make us feel sleepy.
  6. The claims that overweight people may be protected against dementia doesn’t stand up, because researchers used the flawed metric of BMI. The best way to protect against dementia remains getting fit by keeping active and cutting belly fat. Socializing and learning a new skill are definitively helpful.
  7. The use of soap, shower gel, and shampoo is best minimized. These “detergents” remove the beneficial oils that our body secretes. Using moisturizers to replace some of these healthy oils is only a cycle of illogicality.
  8. To stop snoring: 1. avoid alcohol 2. lie on your side 3. try a nasal strip or a mouth piece. The best solution, however, is a simple set of exercises. Done 2 mins at a time at least 3 times a day. Roll your tongue on to the top and bottom palate (once each) and hold. Open your mouth as wide as possible and say “AAAAA.”
  9. A lot of shoes are too high, too flat and too small. Wearing such shoes affects are posture, putting us at greater risk of osteoarthritis, knee pain and back pain. The solution is to get shoes of the right size, use cushion on heels, and avoid using high heels altogether. Some foot exercises using a tennis or a golf ball to massage the foot or picking marbles with the foot can go a long way to keep your feet healthy.
  10. How to stop a hiccup? Try to get your attention on something else (hold lemon wedge in your mouth, drink lots of water slowly, breathe slowly). Try exercising the diaphragm by holding your knee to your chest.
  11. How to prevent lyme disease? If you are outdoors, check your body for ticks. If you are bit by a tick, look out for symptoms such as a bad rash, headache, fever, and muscle pain.
  12. Fecal transplants work, at least in the case of those with Clostridium difficile infections. Other uses are under trials, and the initial results seem promising.
  13. Could a DNA-test mediated diet help us to lose weight better? Probably not. We just don’t know enough. Trials are on and may tell us more soon.
  14. How can you prevent heart disease? Lowering cholesterol, lowering blood pressure, and stop smoking. Try lowering salt intake. Doing exercise. Taking statins works. Aspiring should be used only if you have had a heart disease or stroke.
  15. The best way to lowering cholesterol by altering your diet: Cut animal fat (red meat, cheese). Increase fibre (oats, aubergines, nuts). The “portfolio” diet can work.
  16. To reduce cravings, imagine the situation of satisfying your craving. Your overall consumption should reduce.
  17. You can lose warts with duct tape. Stick it on, keep it for six days. When you remove it, try rid yourself of the dead cells. Repeat three or four times.
  18. For cooking and frying, use oil with more monounsaturated than polyunsaturates. So olive oil, groundnut oil and rapeseed oil. But not sunflower oil, corn oil and vegetable oil.
  19. Don’t waste your money on Manuka honey. There is no evidence that it is beneficial.
  20. Non-organic food in the UK contains only trace levels of pesticide and thus are no more harmful than organic food. And surprisingly frozen food can be as good as fresh food.

Here are links to lessons I learnt from the 2014 series and the 2013 series of “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor”.

Image by grasper. Published under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.