Yantrakaal

Followers of the Sanatan Dharma, or "Hindus", in general and those who believe in the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, as propounded by Sankaracharya, see the world as illusion ("Maya") that hides an underlying unity of universal consciousness or Brahman. This concept has been explored in greater detail in The Road to pSingularity but one of the key ideas is that there exists a central consciousness and all individual sentient entities ( or people) are a part of this central consciousness. The linkage between the central ("Brahman") and the individual ("Atman") is something that gets lost because of the illusion of "Maya" and only the true adept, after significant effort, realises the existence of the link and in doing so, succeeds in uniting his individual Atman with the universal Brahman through the process of Yoga or union. This post is not about trying to establish the authenticity of this point of view. Instead we explore how t...

India celebrates Saraswati on Basant Panchami through the worship and adoration of the Goddess of Learning and the Patron of the Creative arts but few care to remember the river, the so-called mythical river, that serves as a critical bridge of between the India of today and the ancient civilisation that serves as the foundation of the modern nation. This link is very clearly established in Michel Danino's seminal book, The Lost River - On the Trail of the Saraswati , and also explained quite well in his lecture delivered to the students of IIT Madras in 1999. Many more scholarly references to the existence of this river are given in the book but unfortunately the politics of contemporary historical studies continues to deny this important link to India's past. If you think for a minute about a very serious problem in the popular, and politically correct, narrative of Indian history, then the acceptability of the solution offered by the presence of the Saraswati River is ...

A Doll's House is a play by the famous Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen that talks of women's empowerment.  The Durga Puja, that is celebrated with extreme enthusiasm in Bengal and Calcutta, is also a grand tribute to the Mother Goddess that is rooted in the cult of Shakti worship in India. Traditionally, the Durga idols that are built every year during the festival are immersed in the Ganges, or the nearest waterbody, to symbolise the transience of the material world. However, environmental concerns have prompted many puja organisers to avoid this immersion and cut down on riverine pollution. This year, the Calcutta Municipal Corporation has preserved the ten best idols in a makeshift museum that has been set up in a disused warehouse in the city. You can now see the idols without having to fight through the massive crowds that throng the pandals , or temporary temples that are created to house these idols, during the celebrations. Question is with more than 1000 id...

The singing of the national anthem along with the hoisting of the national flag is principal activity in any Republic Day event. On the occasion of the 64th Republic Day, I have tried to track down some unusual renditions of this very interesting song. The anthem as we know it today, in the words and tunes of Rabindranath Tagore is not the first official version of the anthem even though it was unveiled for the first time at the 1911 convention of the Indian National Congress. Many of us recognise the  Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind or the Provisional Government of Free India, set up by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in Singapore on October 21, 1943 as the first post-colonial Indian government with its own currency, courts of law and civil code. Subhas Bose recognized Tagore's song as the anthem but because he wanted to give it a national flavour he had the sanskritized Bengali transcreated by  Col Abid Hassan as "Sabh Sukh Chain" and set to tune by Capt Ram Mohan. This was p...

Moyna Garh is a very unusual tourist spot that we discovered near Tamluk in East Midnapur. It was a fort with two moats surrounding it and it looks like an island inside an island. The fort has now been swallowed up by time but there are two ancient and very beautiful temples that are still there. These are some of the pictures that we took there the few boats that are available to ferry people had stopped plying by the time we reached around noon. However we managed to motivate on boatman to allow us the use of this rickety boat to reach the inner island This is a very ancient Radha Krishna temple. It comes alive during the Ras Festival in October-November This is the deity that is taken out in a beautiful, illuminated boat on the occasion of the Ras Festival This is the Noukeshwar Shiva temple. The Noukeshwar ( Lord of the Boats ) shivalinga is deep underground and the place gets flooded during the monsoon floods In celebration of Lord ...

Navigating through a government office is a nightmare in India and it is doubly so when you are student and you are looking for your first passport. I went through this wringer twenty eight years ago and I was disappointed to see that even today, my son -- and many other students like him, whom we met at the passport office -- have to go through the same inordinate difficulty to get something that should come to them, literally, as a birthright. In fact, had it not been for a friendly senior police officer who introduced us to senior officers in the passport office, my son and I would still be running from pillar to post. The number of hours waiting in the passport office gave me ample time to understand the process and I am sure that there is a better way to address the matter. That will be the subject of a different post. Here, let me suggest a simple mechanism that will benefit hundreds of students who are applying for passport for the first time. The crux of the matter lies...