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2023 - The Year That Was

Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
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Happy Independence Day !


This Independence Day, remembering our visit to the Red Fort two years back, when, showing Samhith our National Flag flying high over the ramparts, I told him stories about the freedom movement. That day, he seemed least concerned, but today, studying in school about the movement, our freedom fighters, and also about naxalism and terrorism, I can see the enthusiasm that he has, rushing off to school early this morning for the flag hoisting ceremony. These days, when things look bleak for our country, the only hope lies in our children - the future. And, as long as kids rush off enthusiastically for a flag hoisting ceremony, I guess, there is still hope! There is nothing I can do better than echo the famous words of Rabindranath Tagore...
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake- 
- Rabindranath Tagore
Years have passed since Tagore wrote these memorable words..... but they are so true, even today. 

On that note, wishing you all, a very  happy Independence Day!!!
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Location: Red Fort, Netaji Subhash Marg, Lal Qila, Chandni Chowk, New Delhi, Delhi 110006, India

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