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...
Whenever I think of Khajuraho, it is Dr. Devangana Desai that I first remember. I am transported back to the end of October 2015, when I listened, spellbound, to Dr. Desai, as she spoke about the Religious Imagery of Khajuraho, as part of the Indian Aesthetics course I was pursuing, at Jnanapravaha Mumbai . By the end of the lecture, I was so fascinated by the temples and their iconography, that the first thing I did when I got back home, was to check trains to Khajuraho! When I finally stood at the Kandariya Mahadev Temple two months later, craning my neck up to see as much as I could of the 84 mini- Shikaras, seeing the resemblance to the cave at Kailasa, the sense of awe was only heightened. Yet, there was an odd sense of fulfillment, seeing the same sense of awe in the eyes of my 12 year old son who accompanied me.