Dr Shilpi Sarkar received her MS and PhD from Purdue University, USA, her MA from Calcutta University, and Bachelor’s in Sociology from Presidency College, Calcutta. Across two decades, she studied the comparative states of mysticism and madness, Buddhism, environmental values and scientists, creativity, and in her dissertation she focused on how a teacher could be a creative, atypical deviant. She thoroughly enjoys teaching undergraduates. She finds teaching Introductory courses, which explore questions related to freedom and determinism with examples drawn from popular literature (whether PG Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry or Tagore), music (whether U2, a piece by Beethoven or Ravi Shankar) and films (whether My Cousin Vinny, Billy Eliot or Saving Private Ryan) as especially enjoyable. At one point in her professional career, she left the sunny pastures of academia to venture into other fields. She has worked as a career consultant, a workshop facilitator, a researcher at a non-profit – and most recently, as an Editor of children’s books at Katha. After a hiatus thus from academia, Shilpi has returned to teaching undergraduates at Krea University with enthusiasm and hope.