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Showing posts from April, 2011

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Newasa - Encountering an unique form of Vishnu, and Sant Jnaneshwar

The year was 1290 . A crowd had gathered around a clearing, where broken down pillars marked the presence of an ancient temple, now long gone. A young boy, just 14 years old, leaned against one of those pillars, deep in thought. Then, he began speaking, and the crowd fell silent, listening to his every word. He spoke without any notes, translating the Bhagavat Gita, from Sanskrit, which only the pundits knew, to the language everyone in the village knew and spoke – a variety of Prakrit which developed into the Marathi language. Even as he spoke, one of the men in the audience realized how momentous this event was, and how important this composition would be. He began writing down the words the young boy spoke, and this composition was named by its author and composer, the Bhavartha Deepika – the enlightening meaning (of the Bhagavat Gita). Now, the ancient, holy text, was no longer restricted to the pundits, but accessible to all, understood easily by them, composed as it was, in their...

Collaborative Posts

My blog seems to continue on the 'silent mode' while I am busy with so many things...... On one hand, as I mentioned earlier, I have been travelling quite a lot, on the other hand, I have also been busy writing about things other than travel...... Most interestingly, for the first time, I have been part of two collaborative posts on two different sites.....

An occasion to celebrate

Last week when I returned from Delhi, the foremost thing on my mind was to update my blog. There are reams of things I want to write, but I found myself unable to write anything at all. The only thing I wanted to share was about the function I attended at Delhi, but then again, it wasn’t easy, since I haven’t really written much about my family. So, after a lot of thinking, here I go…. To give you people a brief background, I grew up with my mom’s side of the family, since my dad passed on when I was five. I have 3 mamas (maternal uncles) and one chitti (maternal aunt). The use of the traditional Tamil names is simply because each one of them has an important place in my heart, and to call them by the universally used name of uncle/aunt somehow doesn’t ever fit.

Sky Watch Friday - Qutub Minar

The whole of last year, I complained that I was unable to travel, and thus couldn't think of anything to write. Someone up there seems to have heard my complaint, because this year, the situation has reversed. I am travelling almost every month, sometimes even twice a month, and have tons to write, but no time at all to sit down and pen down my thoughts. Those of you who are wondering where I disappeared to, I was at Delhi, attending a family celebration, meeting relatives aged between 6 months and 97 years! It was a wonderful experience, besides which, it was a wonderful trip also because I managed to get in a bit of sightseeing with all the catching up with my cousins! Here is one of the images from my trip - the Qutub Minar. We visited the place in the afternoon, in the searing heat, and wandered about for an hour, realizing that I remembered practically nothing of the place from my earlier visit, which was sometime when I was at school. One thing was certain, though -...