Suggesting readings to patients is a well-known tool utilized in psychotherapy to help an individual gain understanding, insight, empathy and move towards self-growth.

Mint asked three psychotherapists to share recommended reading for those who are interested in knowing more about psychology; interestingly, they recommended not just the best of non-fiction writing from the field but works of fiction as well, including the Harry Potter books! Put these on the to-read list if youre curious about the life of the mind.

DR NOUFAL HAMEED, Clinical Psychologist, IIM Kozhikode

Many of my clients report existential issues, and the book Mans Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is one that I have suggested very often. A couple of times, I have suggested the Harry Potter novels ! In fact, compared to many books that claim to be therapeutic, I find the Harry Potter books really useful and therapeutic. A few other top picks:

Social Psychology by Robert Baron: Provides immense insight into the functioning of the human mind, and a book I think must be taught in higher education, irrespective of the field of study.

Mans Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl: The author, an Austrian neurologist and psychotherapist, writes a memoir of his experiences in Nazi concentration camps as he builds his own deeper understanding of psychotherapy.

Radical Compassion by Tara Brach: This book talks in-depth about the RAIN meditation technique (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) and how it can help one deal with feelings of loss, overwhelm, self-aversion and painful relationships.

The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga: The authors look at how self-acceptance, freeing oneself from the past, doubts and others expectations can help us carve the path towards the future on our own terms.

Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: The book talks about optimal experience, a state of consciousness where people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. Mihaly talks about how this state can be unlocked and controlled to discover true happiness and unlock our potential.

DIVYA SRIVASTAVA, Counselling Psychologist and Founder of Silver Lining Wellness Centre, Mumbai

When I was in class 10, I read Tell Me Your Dreams by Sidney Sheldon. While it was a murder mystery, the book motivated me to study psychology, for it was in this book that I first grasped the extent to which trauma can impact an individual and learnt about dissociative identity disorder. So, I definitely believe that books can help spread mental health awareness, and this includes novels as well. Here are some books that are a must-read if you are interested in human psychology:

Loves Executioner And Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin Yalom: Yalom provides a wonderful insight into the relationship between the therapist and the client as the latter shares their stories and therapists balance their all-too-human responses and sensibilities as a therapist.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides: A psychological thriller that through its fast-paced plot subtly portrays the impact of childhood trauma and insecure attachment patterns on relationships and the ways in which we process and filter information about ourselves, others, and the world.

Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman: Simply for readers to understand that we never know whats going on in a persons internal world, and why we should not make snap judgments just because someone seems peculiar and different. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman is another popular novel that illustrates these themes beautifully.

The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind and Body In The Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk: The author compassionately talks about trauma, how it can shape every aspect of our psychology as well as physiology (the mind-body connection that Western medicine does not talk about adequately), and how it is important to combine talk therapies with other strategies like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) to break trauma cycles. (Trigger warning: Includes themes of trauma, abuse and violence).

DR NIVEDITA CHALLIL, Founder, ARTH Counselling Center, Mumbai

Media influences society and society influences the media. Books can be entertaining, informative, and when they are well-written and engaging, the stories some books contain have the power to elicit empathy and make people more aware of new worlds and new ideas, mental health being one of them. These well-written books do create that window of understanding:

In Love With The World: A Monks Journey Through The Bardos Of Living And Dying by Helen Tworkov and Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche: This book highlights the near-death experience of a monk and how that life-changing experience helps him gain wisdom. It talks about the death of both the ego and the body.

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Laurie Gottlieb: This is a unique book as it provides insight into the mind of a therapist who is a patient herself and is in therapy. Laurie Gottlieb has her own trauma that hasnt healed yet and the book has accounts of her own counselling sessions interspersed with anecdotes and insights from sessions with her clients as well.

When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chdrn: This book is a classic, especially for the times we are in. Chdrn talks about how spiritual practices linked to Buddhism can help one achieve personal growth even in the most difficult times in our lives. She throws light on how we can embrace pain, and at the same time, cultivate wisdom, courage and compassion.

Daring Greatly by Bren Brown: Thought-leader Bren Brown offers a refreshing perspective to vulnerability in this book by reminding us that vulnerability is not a weakness and can be used to fuel courage.

Beyond Religion by His Holiness, The Dalai Lama: This book is a timeless manual for living, and offers a roadmap for dealing with disruptive emotions.

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The ultimate reading list if you love to delve into the mind - Livemint

When thinking of technology, one cannot go without talking about deep learning. Needless to say, deep learning has become one of the most critical aspects of technology. Gone are the days when organizations alone used to show interest in technologies like AI, deep learning, machine learning, etc. Today, even individuals are inclined towards the very aspect of technology, deep learning in particular. One of the many reasons why deep learning draws all the attention is because of its ability to enable improved data-drivendecisions and also improve the accuracy of the predictions made.

In a nutshell, companies are in a position to reap out various financial and operational benefits by virtue of deep learning. With many deep learning innovations proliferating with time, it makes every possible sense to have a clear picture as to how does the future of deep learning looks like. In line with what we have seen over the past few years, this is what we could expect in the coming days as far as deep learning is concerned

What everything boils down to is the fact that as a result of the growing popularity of deep learning and with the advancement in technology, by the end of this decade, the deep learning industry will simplify its offerings considerably so that theyre comprehensible and useful to the average developer.

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Photo: Allison Robicelli, Graphic: Natalie Peeples

Ive developed a fair number of crazy recipes for The Takeout, such as potato skins made from bagel dough, egg rolls stuffed with noodle kugel, pig-shaped cookies made with bacon and ham, Thanksgiving-themed nachos, and a pizza made entirely out of stuffed crust. The idea for Nashville Hot Hot Dogs, though, I cannot take credit for. This unholy marriage of hot dogs and Nashville hot chicken sandwiches comes from the mind of my friend Damian Higgins, aka Dieselboy: drum and bass legend, accredited sandwich auteur, and author of the best late-night text messages.

The moment I read this text, I knew I had to make Nashville Hot Hot Dogs for myself. Its not the sort of idea that will fade quietly into the recesses of your mind to be forgotten or ignored; it will scream and flail until you let it loose upon the world. Would a deep-fried hot dog slathered in spicy oil be too much? Probably. Still, I knew I had to have it.

I asked Damian to explain every minute aspect of this hot dog in excruciating detail, which is the closest I have ever come to cheating on my husband. He told me the idea had come to him in a fever dream: spiralize the hot dogs for maximum surface area, prep and fry them like Nashville hot chicken, eat until cayenne pours down your cheeks.

Damian had planned to collaborate with some friends at Hattie Bs Hot Chicken for a hot dog pop-up at NYCs PDT, but sadly, it hasnt happened. Fortunately for the rest of the world, he is friends with someone who believes in the power of crazy ideas, and is always down for a fever-dream-inspired recipe.

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Makes 8 hot dogs

Pour enough oil into a large saucepan or Dutch oven to measure at least 3" deep; clip on a frying thermometer and set over high heat until it comes to 325 degrees.

Set up a breading station with a baking sheet and two large, shallow bowls or containers. In the first, whisk together the buttermilk, pickle brine, egg, and hot sauce until smooth. In the other container, mix the cayenne pepper, hot paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt until combined, then add the flour, cornstarch, and baking powder and stir well.

Working one hot dog at a time, gently tug the ends of each spiralized hot dog to open it up a bit and dredge lightly in flour. Dunk the hot dog into the buttermilk mixture, then return to the flour for a second dredge, gently shaking off the excess. Set aside on the baking sheet, then repeat with the remaining hot dogs.

When the oil reaches 325 degrees, fry two or three hot dogs at a time, being sure not to overcrowd the pan. Cook for 3-5 minutes, rotating every so often with long-handled tongs, until golden brown on all sides. Move to a cooling rack or sheet pan lined with paper towels, and repeat until all the hot dogs have been fried.

Next, make the spicy oil coating: Put the butter, honey/brown sugar, and all the spices into a small bowl. Use a heatproof ladle to take about 1/2 cup of the hot frying oil (no need to be precisesafety first!) and carefully pour it into the bowl. Let everything sit for about 30 seconds so the butter can melt, then gently stir everything together with a fork until combined.

Brush the fried hot dogs on all sides with the spicy oil, making sure you get into every cranny. Serve on hot dog buns or white bread with pickles and, if you wish, a bit of shredded lettuce, mayo, and hot sauce.

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Follow your fever dreams with Nashville Hot Hot Dogs - The Takeout

We are a group of former civil servants of the All India and Central Services who have worked for decades with the Central and State Governments. As a group, we have no affiliation with any political party but are committed to the Constitution of India.

We write today to convey to the Government of India and the Government of Uttar Pradesh (UP), as also to the people of India, our deep anguish at what we see happening in UP.

We note with mounting alarm that the present ruling regime in UP has ushered in a model of governance which swerves further and further away from the values of the Constitution and the rule of law with each passing day.

It seems clear that all branches of the administration, including the executive magistrates and the police, have collapsed.

We fear that, unless checked now, the damage to the polity and institutions in the state will result in the decay and destruction of democracy itself.

1. Detentions, criminal charges, and recoveries to suppress dissent have become common instruments to be employed against all those who exercise their right of democratic protest. Even as peaceful protests broke out countrywide against CAA, NRC and NPR, the UP government stood out by responding almost immediately with an armoury of repression, including

a) police attacks on peacefully protesting students in Aligarh Muslim University, including using stun grenades, normally deployed against terrorists, and tear gas shells;

b) filing 10,900 FIRs against protestors;

c) resort to police firing killing 22 people;

d) arrest of 705 people on charges of rioting, property destruction and attempt to murder;

e) investigating 13000 social media posts and filing 63 FIRs with arrests of 103 netizens;

f) detention and torture of 41 minors;

g) serving over 500 notices for alleged damage to property, and notices served for recovery to 57 persons;

h) erecting hoardings in Lucknow displaying photographs of activists and civil society members accused of instigating violence and damaging public property (The Allahabad High Court declared this to be undemocratic and admonished the state government);

i) passage of the Recovery of Damages to Public and Private Property Ordinance, 2020 which empowers the state to set up a claims tribunal to recover compensation from citizens, not requiring the presence of the accused before passing final orders. (The Allahabad High Court observed the ordinance is arbitrary, designed only to frustrate the law and stayed orders in several cases of recovery. However, the UP legislature approved the conversion of the Ordinance into an Act without removing the flaw of arbitrariness.)

One particularly egregious example is the arrest of Kerala journalist Siddique Kappan, on his way to the UP town of Hathras to report on the brutal gang-rape of a 19-year-old Dalit girl and the complicity of the administration in the hurried overnight cremation of her body that had caused national outrage.

Kappan has so far spent more than 200 days in prison. More recently, these repressive measures have taken the form of punitive actions against those highlighting lethal shortcomings in UPs healthcare system.

2. Encounter injuries and killings as official hate targeting

From 2017 to 2020, 124 alleged criminals were shot dead in 6,476 encounters, according to data compiled and released by the UP police to the media. The word encounters has been used to also include the infliction of serious injuries caused, for example, by shooting a person in both knees and leaving him disabled for life. This means a police encounter every five hours every day during the first three years of CM Adityanath's tenure.

In a January 2019 letter to district magistrates, the Chief Secretary listed these encounters including extra-judicial killings to be among the prominent achievements of the Adityanath administration. The encounter campaign led by Adityanath crosses new lines, because data shows that most of those killed in these encounters are either petty criminals or innocents,against whom no charge has been proven. They are also predominantly Muslims, Dalits and other backward castes. .

The fact that a significantly disproportionate percentage of those killed till August 2020 were Muslims carries its own message.

3. Institutionalization and legitimization of vigilantism with the phenomenon of 'police mitr' etc.

UP has seen a systematic blurring of the lines between actions of the state, particularly its police force, and that of vigilante groups such as the Hindu Yuva Vahini and other cow vigilante groups that have enjoyed immunity for their violent actions.

Members of these groups are appointed as police mitr or friends of the police, endowing them with authority and legitimacy, and enabling the police to work openly with vigilante groups. Recent administrative orders further institutionalise vigilantism under the garb of community policing through the Prantiya Rakshak Dal and the S10.

4. The law on what is termed as love jihad, and biased investigations and arrests

On 24 November 2020, the Uttar Pradesh cabinet passed an ordinance Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance. On 25 February 2021, this was passed in the legislature by a voice vote. The SIT set up by the state government to look into the cases of love jihad could find no evidence of foreign funding or organised conspiracy. On another occasion, the Union home ministry in February told Parliament that love jihad was not defined under the current laws of the country. The bogey of love jihad, thus has no empirical, legal or official standing.

Euphemistically against forceful conversion, the law prohibits conversion from one religion to another by what it calls the use of misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement, fraud or marriage. These are defined ambiguously leaving ample space for the police and administration to misuse the law against minorities; for the police to file arbitrary cases; and for vigilante groups to threaten families, assault minorities, organise mobs and create conditions for minority exodus.

This law has been used by the state to frame innocent Muslim men who have friendly or romantic relations, or enter into marriage, with Hindu women. In just a month after the Ordinance, 86 people were booked in 16 cases alleging conversion for love or marriage among Hindu women and Muslim men. 54 people were arrested, including friends and family members of the main accused. The key accused in all the cases are Muslim men.

Since coming to power, the bias of the present government of UP against Muslims has been open and uninhibited. The recent instance of the destruction of a building allegedly housing a mosque in Barabanki, in contravention of a high court stay order, is a flagrant display of disregard for law and procedures. Further, keeping in mind the forthcoming elections, we apprehend that such actions by the UP government, if not controlled, may cause communal polarisation and disturbances.

5. Misuse of NSA in the name of cow slaughter and against dissenters

The National Security Act, 1980 (NSA) is a draconian preventive detention law under which the government can pre-emptively detain, up to one year, anyone it thinks is a threat to the security of the country or state, public order or maintenance of supplies and services essential to the community.

However, officials under the UP government have been using the law openly against mainly Muslims, Dalits and dissenters, for alleged offences that cannot be seen as a threat to national security. As per reports, of the 139 people booked under the law the year 2020, 76 are for alleged cow slaughter, 13 for anti-CAA protests and 37 for alleged heinous crimes.

In 2017, the Director General of Police directed SPs and SSPs of all districts to book people accused of cow slaughter or transportation of cows for slaughter under NSA and the Gangster Act. In April 2020,the government said that whoever attacks police personnel during the COVID-19 lockdown will be booked under NSA. These blanket orders to apply NSA defeat the purpose of letting District Magistrates, who understand the ground situation, to judiciously apply their judgment to each case.

6. Handling of the Covid crisis

The hubris customary with the UP government, is also in full display in its handling of the Covid crisis. The Allahabad High Court scathingly observed that medical services in UP are running at gods mercy. (Ram Bharose). The doctors trying to meet the Chief Minister to explain the ground situation and to present a set of demands were instead detained. A news article on health services in rural UP was titled, People are Dropping Dead like Flies in Uttar Pradesh Villages.

As a case in point,Dhanoli village in Gorakhpur District did not have a single house without a Covid patient. Many of the PHCs in villages are shut or do not have any medical personnel. The people are left to fend for themselves. There are no testing centres available. Reports of patients dying due to non-availability of oxygen have been frequent in UP.

The Chief Minister however claimed that not only was there no such shortage, but those alleging this on public forums would be arrested for spreading false information, and their properties seized. The police proceeded to frame charges against hospitals which claimed oxygen shortage.

People faced massive difficulties in getting tested for Covid. Reports emerged that unofficial orders had been issued to private labs to stop testing.

The most damning illustration of the governments failure to provide healthcare to Covid patients was the gruesome spectacle of several thousand dead bodies floating in the Ganga river and buried in shallow graves in the sands along its banks. The world bore witness to the catastrophe that the people of UP had to endure owing to the failure of the government to act in time. Reports from crematoria show that across districts, deaths are being massively undercounted in Uttar Pradesh.

A call to restore constitutional norms

We demand that:

- Arbitrary detentions and torture of and police attacks on peacefully protesting students, minorities, dissenters and others be stopped forthwith and recoveries for alleged damage to property under an arbitrary law be discontinued.

- There have been more than 6000 encounters including both serious injuries and extra-judicial killings, which are eulogized as achievements by top bureaucrats, their main targets being Muslims, Dalits and other backward castes. This illegal and unconstitutional practice must stop.

- The institutionalization and legitimization of vigilantism by appointing police mitras and giving immunity to cow protectors for the violence they inflict dissolve the distinction between the State and private armies. These policies must end.

- Targeting Muslim men for alleged forced conversion of Hindu women with whom they have a friendly or romantic relationship continues apace under a vaguely worded law that allows the police and administration to misuse it. This idea of love jihad without legal empirical or official basis must be jettisoned.

- The draconian preventive detention law, the National Security Act (NSA), has been mainly used against Muslims, Dalits and dissenters for alleged offences like cow slaughter, protests against the CAA and attacks on the police, that cannot be seen as a threat to national security.This misuse of law must stop and normal penal provisions invoked, if at all justified.

- Finally, the Covid crisis has been wholly mismanaged and thousands have lost their lives for want of health facilities like trained staff, hospitals, ICUs, oxygen and medicines. But the administration has denied any crisis and has slapped charges against those who write objectively or complain of the situation on the ground. The crisis needs urgent handling and the practice of harassing or penalizing media or persons who report on inadequacies in the health system or voice their grievances in that regard cannot be allowed to continue. The invidious tendency to shoot the messenger must stop.

Names of CCG signatories

The following persons have endorsed the letter written by the retired civil servants

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Former Bureaucrats, Civil Society Express Deep Anguish On Violations and Breakdown of Governance in UP - The Citizen