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Showing posts from December, 2008

Ākāśāt Patitaṃ: Many Forms, One Reality

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Adi Shankara: The image that's stayed with me forever Sanskrit and shlokas have always fascinated me. The sheer vastness of Sanskrit literature is humbling. There are enough verses, texts, commentaries and traditions to occupy many lifetimes, and still leave one feeling that one has barely scratched the surface. But I didn't think much about any of this when I was growing up. I would recite shlokas in the morning and evening without fail. They were simply part of life. The words were there, the rituals were there, the temples were there—but much of it happened in the background. I was busy with academics. There was no time for Sanskrit or Vedanta. At least, that is what I used to tell myself. Of course, time was never really the problem. I could spend five days watching a Test match from morning to evening and somehow consider that perfectly legitimate use of my time! The truth was simpler: Sanskrit and Vedanta had not yet become priorities. Gr...
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-25C

It was the mid nineties, and as I was creeping up from meekness to hit the point of I know everything , my mind was seduced by one of the most romantic tunes of the decade, churned out by AR Rahman. The heroine draped in a beautiful saree, in typical South Indian style, coupled with the beautiful Kashmir background, all in glittering white snow, lent a sensuous touch to the whole romantic moment. The song and the settings went on to become a rage. Every young lad wanted to be the hero, and obviously, the lasses yearned to be loved in such an environment. It was all beautiful, and life was certainly more so. My heart and mind were reverberating with When will I experience such a moment in the snow? Fast forward the situation by fifteen years, and I can only think of one thing, What the hell are they doing dancing around in that snow . She is just draped in a saree, and the hero is wearing a sweater; the clothes, no way sufficient by any means. Forget the romance, forget the song ...
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What a victory!

What a victory! What a victory!!! I not only could see the excitement in his voice, but also in his whole body language. He was running around as though India had just won the world cup (Cricket, of course, not soccer!). For a second, I was confused and had to check up whether I was on the right website. This, neither was entertainment news and neither did it have anything to do with sports. Anyway, I was watching the Assembly election results in six states held across different parts of India. After watching election news all these years,, I can still safely say, without any presumptions, that Prannoy Roy was simply the best in business - calm, composed, and perfect to the point, with a good team of political analysts. Now, with the advent of time, and with the advancement in technology, there is so much access to statistics online, that anything and everything is just a click of a button away. But, those days, to compile everything methodically from different sources, was mor...
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