Why is Rama Blue?
We are all aware about Yogacharya T.Krishnamacharya being a pioneer in using yoga (specifically asana and pranayama) for therapy and well-being. But little did we know that he was a great scholar of our sacred knowledge and traditions. One of his long-standing students Raghu Ananthanarayanan has put together an interesting note about Ramayana from a More...
Being with the Gods
When I was a student of Carnatic music during my childhood, I would often sing devotional songs to Lord Ayyappa, to ‘Hari Hara Suta’ as he is called, as I did to different Devis and Devatas. One of my More...
Brahman – A Poem by Rabindranath Tagore
Editor’s Note: This beautiful poem is based on the idea of varna being a matter of spiritual inclination rather than birth. It narrates the encounter between knowledge seeking Satyakam and sage Gautama contained More...
Sahadharma and Supraja
Sri. Nithin Sridhar had written an article exploring the Indic view on Adultery: Sangrahana, where he explores the dynamics of marriage from the Shastra traditions. Many points in this article reminded me of recent More...
A Ganesha Visarjan Procession in Mysore
The day saw a heavy downpour in Mysore, Karnataka. It is a rather old city in South-Western India, where the weather behaves like a capricious teenage girl. Within what seems like a matter of minutes, a sunny day More...
The Magic of Matturu
Mattūru (aka Mattur) is a unique village near Shivamogga, Karnataka on the banks of Tungā. It is notable mainly for being a rare place where one may find a pristine agrahāra still brimming with Sanskrit, Vedic More...
Critiquing the theory of 19th century Nationalist revival of Carnatic Music
Late last year, I had the unique opportunity to teach a course in Cultural Studies to students of music at a reputed university in Bangalore. Music students, who are often also performers, are unaccustomed to such More...
Temples and Treats of Assam
We landed at Guwahati in the afternoon, an hour journey from Kolkata by air. The Brahmaputra is a grand river splitting Assam roughly in the middle forming upper and lower Assam. Kamarupa, the ancient Assam kingdom, More...
Condemning neutrality is a terrible way to build consensus
If you are active on social media and broadly fall to the right of the Indian ideological spectrum, chances are that recently either you have used or know someone who has used this poem by the late Ramdhari Singh More...
Yogacharya T. Krishnamacharya: A Man Extraordinaire
Most of us find solace in simply hearing or reading stories of the lives of extraordinary people, but people like Raghu Ananthanarayanan really had the good fortune to not only know but to have studied under the More...