Stop cluttering Dasara to make money IN BLACK AND WHITE BY VIKRAM MUTHANNA Every few years, just before Dasara, someone gets a bright idea, which is, “Ah, let’s add one more event to Mysuru Dasara.” This year, it is Kambala, the spectacular buffalo race of Coastal Karnataka. The Kambala is undoubtedly a magnificent tradition and deserves to be celebrated, but… not in Mysuru Dasara. The…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist In the Upanishads, the word brahmin is about inner realisation. In Dharma-shastra, the word brahmin is about birth status and purity. The early Upanishads were composed between 600 BC and 200 BC, while the early Dharma-shastra were composed between 200 BC and 500 AD. The former is more spiritual. The latter is more legal. Strict…
The Lighter Side By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam There is a peculiar affliction sweeping through humanity with a virulence that would have alarmed even the most seasoned epidemiologist and I speak not of any virus that a laboratory has yet catalogued. I speak of Chronic Busyness Syndrome, a condition in which the sufferer is perpetually occupied, permanently rushed and constitutionally unavailable,…
Three days ago, news broke of an Enforcement Directorate (ED) raid on the residence of an Additional Excise Commissioner. Almost at the same time, a bureaucrat’s wife on her Instagram page posted her pics carrying a designer handbag that probably cost half of her husband’s annual salary. For a fleeting moment, I was envious and muttered, “I wish I were a bureaucrat…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The historical Buddha is largely an artefact of 19th-century European scholarship rather than a recovered fact, as per scholars like Bernard Faure. He argues that virtually nothing is known about the figure known as the Buddha and historical reconstructions are just as pious and imaginative as the myths and legends they claim to supplant. Far from…
By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam There is a particular variety of human being that the great Indian experiment has produced with remarkable consistency over the last several decades and I have the dubious honour of being a specimen in reasonably good working condition. We are the middle-class Indians, a tribe so distinct in our habits that anthropologists, had they…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The Ramayana and the Mahabharata reached their final written form around 2000 years ago, exactly when the Dharma-shastra was being coded. There is a Ramayana inside the Mahabharata, known as the Ramopakhyana, narrated by Markandeya Rishi to the Pandavas. In this telling, the role of Brahmin…
By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam There is something deeply philosophical about an Indian railway platform. It is, if you think about it carefully enough, the only place in the country where everyone, regardless of caste, class, conviction or confusion, arrives at exactly the same level of anxiety. I must have been around eight years old the first time my father took…
India seems to have developed a peculiar relationship with humour. We are confused about what comedy actually is. Every offensive remark is treated as either a national crisis or a Constitutional issue. This confusion is becoming increasingly visible as stand-up comedy explodes across the country. Particularly popular is the newer ‘crowd work’ format, where comedians…
This morning, I took part in a panel discussion on media and tourism at Mysore Travel Mart-2026, organised by the Mysore Travels Association. GRS Fantasy Park was the principal sponsor and NOT the Karnataka Tourism Department. The Department sponsored nothing. That absence said a great deal. It seems the task of promoting Mysuru appears to…
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