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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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Best Regards,

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I sat on the email for several seconds impatiently, for I was finding the right way to end it.  I had taken less than a few seconds to compose the body of the message.  When you are doing something, you don't realize how fast time takes you through, but when you are sitting and staring at the screen as though waiting for a miracle, even the seconds hand of the clock ceases to move, and it is as though the whole world has come to a standstill.  Notice that in both the cases, the action lasts only for a few seconds, and the effect is different in both the cases, mainly due to the streak of impatience and restlessness attributed to my behavior.  Signing off an email is definitely an arduous task.  If you are writing to close friends, there will obviously be no addressing and signing.  Many a time, the subject line will convey the intended message (which I do very often), and so, there is never a problem with the body or signature of the message.  To sig...
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The fr(l)ight journey

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First of all, I would like to thank my friend, M Arun Kumar (MAK), a very important member of the G gang , for having agreed to do an illustration for this blog post.  We have known each other for close to ten years (right from our undergraduate days), and knowing his penchant for line drawings, I had no hesitation when I was thinking of an illustration for this post.  Thanks for your time, MAK! Driving on Indian roads can be quite a challenge, and if you are sitting in a crammed up small car, the effort required to sit in the car can be Herculean. Irrespective of the type of roads, be it good or bad, broad or narrow, smooth or rough, sitting in the car is one of the most difficult tasks, if you consider the minuscule leg movement space. The driver is driving the car at a brake neck speed, and the oncoming traffic whizzes past you, and in the meanwhile, if you miraculously fall asleep, you have no choice but to get disturbed. The worst part is, you have nobody to blame. ...
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