The origins of life and its early evolution

A fundamental question in Astrobiology deals with delineating how life came about on our planet. The story is really ancient, intriguing, complex and continues to be one of the most fascinating scientific mysteries. It involves understanding how the transition from chemistry to biology would have occurred on the early Earth, way before any life as we know and now appreciate even resulted. This is a non-trivial puzzle that is still missing several pieces!  Nonetheless, I will attempt to give a broad overview of some of the current understanding prevalent in the field, while highlighting a few of the contributions from our COoL lab in IISER Pune, India, towards delineating this fascinating mystery.