The Queen who cursed a God: An excerpt from an upcoming book
Gandhari screwed her eyes shut behind her blindfold. She shrunk her eyes into their sockets, withdrawing as far into herself as she could. If she could, she would have squeezed her ears shut. She shrank into More...
Rechurning Turbulent Waters of Mahabharata Studies: Removing Poison, Revealing Nectar
[contextly_sidebar id=”6C2ft0dboWfVALCadsOgL5mdBA37Uztt”] Two weeks back, I received several quizzical looks when people found out that I had traveled from New York to Delhi for a 4-day workshop on the More...
Rediscovering Rama (Part-II)
[contextly_sidebar id=”BQzPyGmN5Q8HcvPd5atWwDe3IPqepls3″] Even if, for the sake of argument, we do take into account the interpolation of the Uttara Kanda as part of the Ramayana, the story of Sita’s More...
Rediscovering Rama (Part-I)
Rama is one of the most exalted figures in all of Hinduism, yet we find him very much maligned today. Scholars like Wendy Doniger accuse Rama of abandoning Sita because he was afraid of becoming a ‘sex addict’. More...
Search for Sita: An Adaptation of Select Passages from Kishkindha & Sundarakanda
One of the saddest things about our society today is how few of us go back to the original sources to read about Rama, Krishna and our other devatas from our Itihaasa (our civilization’s history) and the Puranas. More...
Catching Glimpses of Mahadeva
For years, Amarnath had a special pull over me. The allure of that remote cave in the snowy depths of Kashmir was irresistible. But obstacle after obstacle kept me from my destination – either the route was More...
Tibet – Land of Lamas & Lament
Some lands live more in imagination and fabled lore than on the physical planes of Earth, have more reality in their legends and mystical mysteries than in the dry pages of history and geography, exude such great More...
How to Celebrate Navaratri
There is an endless variety of modes of worship and observance for Navaratri, the nine nights of Devi. During these nine days and nine nights, Ma Durga is worshiped for the first three days, then Ma Lakshmi for More...
The Sweetness of Radharani: An Offering for Sri Radha Ashtami (the Appearance Day of Sri Radha)
Once, Radharani, the foremost and Krishna’s favorite of the gopis (wives of the cowherds in Vrndavana, where Krishna grew up), came to visit Krishna in Dwaraka, where he had established his kingdom. All of Krishna’s More...
The Battle for Sanskrit: A Battle We Cannot Afford to Lose
Rajiv Malhotra’s new book, “The Battle for Sanskrit” (www.thebattleforsanskrit.com), is a must-read book that exposes efforts underway by Sheldon Pollock and other Indologists to essentially de-sanctify Sanskrit More...