New Delhi, Aug. 30 -- "Oh! You are an arts student!" Neighbours and relatives would wrinkle their noses as if the very idea of humanities threw up a stink. At a time when my cousins were charting out a future as engineers or doctors, I was the odd one out who wanted to pursue history or journalism. Many decades since, this perception persists. Recently, I was trying to discuss plate tectonic theory in the context of the recent earthquakes in Venezuela and Colombia with a friend's son, who is in class VII. He was simply not interested. "My future lies in robotics. My parents say all this geography-wography is of no use to me," he said.

Half an hour later, this very geography-wography decided to assert its importance. While our part of the...