Saad Shaikh, MD

I was driving from Atlanta to Blue Ridge for my annual fall foliage trip when I noticed what looked like two men bent over the hood of an old truck, as if fixing it. I almost passed by without a second thought. Something about the scene felt ordinary, even forgettable. But then I turned around. What I had taken for two men were actually scarecrows. Their backs faced me, their posture convincing enough to pass as human at a glance. And then the detail revealed itself, almost playfully. Their pants sagged just enough to expose what looked like bare backsides, but were in fact pumpkins. A quiet joke placed in the landscape, waiting for someone to notice. I would have missed it completely if I had not chosen to look again. There is a saying often attributed to Zen: first thought, best thought. Or in another form, first look, best look. But this only holds true when there is presence. When the mind is still, not rushing ahead, not filtering the world through habit and assumption. Because mo...

I took this photo in Goa, zoomed in eight times on my iPhone, capturing a deep red sun slipping through a small opening in the branches of a banyan tree behind my hotel. In the distance, visible between the large banyan leaves, stood one of man’s temples, in this case a church. The entire scene lasted less than a minute at that magnification. You could literally watch the sun move across that narrow frame of leaves until it vanished.  I have watched sunsets in Madeira, on the plains of Africa, and outside my yoga studio in Orlando overlooking a lake. I never grow tired of it. The ritual of light appearing and disappearing has followed me across continents. But this morning in Goa was different. Because the branches of the banyan tree created a window. A small aperture through which I could literally see time passing. When the horizon is vast, the sun’s movement feels slow, almost abstract. But when you constrain it to a narrow frame — a gap in leaves — you watch it move. You watch ...

I took these photos one quiet morning in a garden near my breakfast spot on the northern coast of Madeira, in the village of Arco de São Jorge. The evening before, I’d stood on an ocean cliff under bougainvillea, watching the sun disappear into the Atlantic (the subject of another blog here ). But this morning offered something quieter, and perhaps stranger. Just outside the restaurant garden, something caught my eye — an enormous spiderweb, glistening with dew, anchored between banana leaves, shrubs, and distant trees — and silence. It wasn’t a single web but a vast, interwoven network — a silk metropolis, with its members quietly moving in its many chambers with purpose. I’m 6’1”, and this complex rose well above my head and stretched wider than my outstretched arms. I found myself standing in front of it, still, awed not just by its physical scale, but by the invisible intelligence behind it. Spiders do not consult blueprints. They do not take measurements. They simply spin. Not bec...

  I took this photo while wandering through a quiet alleyway in Yogyakarta, Java, in March 2025. I was en route to visit Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist temple, and later Prambanan, where I had planned to watch an open-air Ramayana performance under the stars. Yogyakarta offered more than just temples. I spent my days exploring local bookstores, browsing batik masks, and photographing alley murals—an interest that echoes in my living room, where canvases by El Seed hang like visual sutras. In one of those alleys, I came across this piece of street art. As a physician during the COVID pandemic, I found it uniquely striking: a figure in traditional wayang costume aims not an arrow but a vaccination syringe at the virus. The archer is Arjuna, or Arjuno in Javanese, one of the most beloved heroes in Indonesia’s shadow puppetry tradition. In Javanese wayang, the archer with the distinctive headgear, slender form, and poised longbow is almost always Arjuna, a figure culturally r...

I took this photo in 2018 in Leipzig, Germany, inside Auerbachs Keller— a restaurant made famous in Goethe’s  Faust.  Mephistopheles, emissary of the Devil, stops for dinner with Faust before leading him into the underworld on his pursuit of eternal knowledge. As you can see here, outside the entrance stands a bronze sculpture capturing one of the play’s most iconic scenes: Faust at the brink of his journey and the start of his entanglements with Mephistopheles — an emblem for humanity’s own entanglement with the seductive yet destabilizing pursuit of power and knowledge. The visit felt personally meaningful to me, not just because of the literary reference, but because I, too, had dinner there and have been on that same journey — a search for knowledge, mastery, and meaning that mirrors Faust’s own. I prefer Marlowe’s  Doctor Faustus , written nearly three hundred years earlier, maybe because it ends with Faust’s damnation — a fitting metaphor for our modern condition, w...

The smell of spice was everywhere on this hot and humid Delhi morning: golden turmeric, deep-red chili, warm cardamom, and smoky cumin — an intoxicating blend that floated and settled on your skin. Everywhere, color danced and pulsed: saffron saris, indigo turbans, piles of chili powder bursting like embers, and sandstone buildings washed in teal and faded rose. All the while, the market buzzed with vendors calling out prices, bicycle bells ringing, and the rhythmic clatter of rickshaw wheels over stone. Color saturated the scene. Women’s saris glowed in shades of saffron, fuchsia, and peacock blue. Fresh powders were piled high in brilliant reds and golden yellows. The old buildings wore coats of time-softened paint, cracked but vivid: teal shutters, faded rose facades, bright laundry strung like prayer flags between balconies. Our guide had begun explaining the various spices, but my attention drifted — transfixed by something else. As you can see here, a young woman passed in front ...

It was a summer afternoon back in 2023 — a sweltering Rajasthani one, the kind where the heat wraps around you like a heavy cloak. Temperatures soared above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The sun didn’t just shine — it beat down on you, relentlessly. The ancient stone beneath our feet radiated stored heat, turning the climb into something elemental. We had stopped at Ranthambore Fort on our way from Jaipur to Ranthambore National Park, where we were headed for a tiger safari. It was just my two boys and I. My younger son looked up at the long, seemingly endless staircase and groaned. “Stairs,” he muttered — a tired echo of Po from  Kung Fu Panda , staring up at his greatest foe. I smiled. “Cheer up. This is an experience. Life is one big experience — and if you understand that, you understand the meaning of it all.” As we began our slow ascent, monkeys peered at us from the ramparts, clearly eyeing our water bottles. Then I noticed something unusual: a man guiding his donkeys up the same ...

  Stop. A breath rests between inhale and exhale. A heart waits between beats. But the truest stillness is between thoughts. Here, stress dissolves. Here, life begins again. ----------- The word  “stop”  is universal — instantly recognized in its bold red octagon almost anywhere in the world. But what does it truly mean to stop, not just in traffic, but in life? I captured this image in front of a hotel in Siem Reap on New Year’s Eve 2023. At its center, the flowing curves of the local script add a quiet elegance, like a visual pause within the sign itself. It invites us to look past the literal message and into the subtle stops that exist in our breath, our heartbeat, and even our thoughts. Your breath, for instance, seems continuous, yet hidden within it are tiny pauses — brief moments of stillness. After an inhale, there’s a subtle, often unconscious hold before the body releases into the exhale. After the exhale, there’s typically a slightly longer pause before the ne...

The sun beat down on the dusty road as we left the magnificent Chand Baori stepwell in Abhaneri, heading towards Jaipur. The ancient structure, a testament to human ingenuity, had left me awestruck. But the journey itself was about to reveal another facet of India's resourceful spirit. As we traversed a small, impoverished village, the sight of camel-drawn carts was quickly overshadowed by something truly unique – a contraption that stopped me in my tracks. Captured in this photograph I took in 2018 is what can only be described as a testament to practical brilliance. A rudimentary truck, cobbled together from a basic metal pull cart frame, clunky wheels, and a simple tractor engine, stood before us. The wooden cargo bed, weathered and worn, hinted at countless journeys and heavy loads. It was a far cry from any vehicle I'd seen before, yet it was clearly fulfilling a vital purpose. My driver, Banti, sensing my curiosity, pulled the car to a halt. "Jugaad (जुगाड़),...

The giant sequoia ( Sequoiadendron giganteum ) stands as a testament to nature's grandeur. I recently encountered this magnificent species in two distinct settings: Sequoia National Park in California, during the summer of 2024, and at the Mata-Jardim José do Canto in the Azores, a few months later. The Azorean sequoia, one of the few on the islands, originated from seeds brought from California. While both trees share the characteristic towering trunk, reddish-brown bark, and overall form of a giant sequoia, subtle differences are apparent. The Azorean tree, though healthy and thriving in the humid, temperate climate, is not as tall as its California counterpart, and its bark possesses a distinct quality. These variations highlight the profound influence of environment on even the most genetically predisposed organisms. It's a reminder that while the seed holds the potential, its unfolding is intricately woven into the tapestry of its surroun...

  Twenty years ago today, this  article  was published about a surgery I performed on a two-year-old girl named Alaa, a child blinded by war. Shrapnel from an American tank shell—fired on a children’s birthday party mistaken for an insurgent gathering—killed most of her cousins and family members. It left Alaa with a torn abdomen and filled her eyes with metal fragments that would rust and poison her ocular tissue. At the time, a local law student, Ashley Severance, contacted me at my private practice, asking if I could help. The surgeon originally scheduled to remove Alaa’s eyes had backed out—fearful, in that post-9/11 era, that saving this child might be seen as aiding the enemy rather than helping a fellow human being. I knew I had to try. If it were my child, I would want someone to do everything possible. father told me, “It’s not fair that a young child will never get to see her mother again.” He was told to let her die—her...

That morning, deep in the Serengeti, as I ventured out on a walking safari to witness the great wildebeest migration, I joked with my guide that I felt the urge to "mark my territory," so that lions knew who’s king of the jungle, or in this case savannah. He laughed, and we wandered, stepping into the vast wilderness on foot. As we walked, we spotted a male lion resting with two females in the distance. My guide nudged me, saying, “Let’s go, it’s getting late.” But I had a feeling something was about to happen. “No, let’s wait a bit longer,” I said, keeping my eyes on the scene. The lions stirred. I noticed them gazing intently toward the bush in the distance, where I could see rustling through my binoculars. The male and his lead lioness got up, walking in the direction of the movement. Then, from afar, another lioness approached—likely a new member of the pride. The male without hesitation left his mate behind and lay down, waiting. And then, ...

Elon  Musk’s AI startup, announced in July 2023, claims to seek “to understand the true nature of the universe,” according to its website. While this ambition is intriguing, it mirrors a timeless quest—one that sages and philosophers, have embarked on long before Musk. Case in point, the Buddha. The paradox, however, is that the true nature of the universe cannot be understood by “trying” to understand it. The act of understanding depends on a matrix of symbols, concepts, and language—constructs of the human mind, or what is referred to in eastern metaphysics as Maya. Any search for meaning within these frameworks is inherently limited by them. Kurt Gödel demonstrated in his incompleteness theorems that no system can explain itself entirely; it can only be understood by stepping beyond it. The same applies to our conceptual descriptions and models of reality. In much the same way, to truly grasp the universe, we must transcend the conceptual systems we use to describe it. This deep...

Petrichor , the enchanting earthly aroma of freshly fallen rain on dry soil ( from Ancient Greek πέτρα 'rock' or πέτρος 'stone' and ἰχώρ, the ethereal fluid that is the blood of the gods in Greek mythology ) , is a complex phenomenon. Produced by a chemical called geosmin, secreted by Streptomyces bacteria, this scent serves a fascinating purpose: attracting small arthropods. These creatures, in turn, consume the bacteria and disperse its spores, aiding in reproduction. Remarkably, humans possess an acute sensitivity to geosmin, despite our relatively weak olfactory sense. We can detect this compound in concentrations as low as 100 parts per trillion. The Japanese Buddhist concept of jijimuge , meaning "the unimpeded interpenetration of all phenomena," offers a profound lens through which to view this ephemeral experience. It encapsulates the idea of a universe interconnected without barriers, where all beings and things are inhe...