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...
I first started writing stories when I was in school. Of course, then, I never dreamt of being an author – it was just something I did when I was in the mood. All I was interested in at the time was physics, and all my dreams were of publishing some wonderful scientific articles in the leading journals. All those dreams came to an end when I decided to dump my Ph.D, but then my old pastimes came to my aid and I started writing again – both, travelogues as well as stories. But now the dream raised its head again – of being published, not just on the net, but in print! One part of this dream came true when my travelogue was published in the Sunday Herald (you can see the article here). But the larger dream came true this week when a collection of my stories were published in a book! I was approached a few months back by an organisation named JK Yog . They had read some of my stories for children, and wanted me to re-tell some stories from Indian mythology and folk tales for their boo...