Odisha is a state I have visited twice . The first time was a sponsored trip, visiting a resort to write about them, as well as some of the more popular places to visit. I wrote the required content, but never got around to writing about the trip on the blog. This May, I visited Odisha for the second time, this time with family. The timing wasn’t great – it was either raining or it was terribly hot; besides, I wasn’t in the best of health and I couldn’t quite do as much as I liked. Despite all the challenges, it was a pleasure to explore the beautiful heritage of this state, and do things I couldn’t, the first time around. There is much I want to write about – the gorgeous temples, the sculptures, the museums, the natural beauty….. and yet, as I sit down and think about where to begin, there is only one place that I want to start with – the place we stayed at, for one part of our visit – Svanir . The story begins long before our trip actually happened. As Samhith and I went back and fo...
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...