By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist If you only consume today’s festival talk, you would think India’s calendar is a relay race between Ram and Krishna. That is a late narrowing. The older seasonal spine is goddess-centred and nature-driven. It was about paying attention to the weather, to the vegetation, to the…
By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam I attended a function the other day where the chief guest arrived twenty minutes late and the entire hall rose as though a great wind had passed through it. What struck me was not the man himself but the small army that preceded him. There was someone to carry his folder,…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist Kambaramayanam is one of the most celebrated works of Tamil literature. Composed by the poet Kamban around the ninth century in Tamil Nadu, in the time of Chola kings, it is a lyrical retelling of the Ramayana filled with rich poetry, elaborate metaphors and deep moral…
By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam There was a time when the very mention of a flight filled me with a quiet thrill. As a young man, the idea of being lifted into the sky felt like a small miracle granted to ordinary mortals. I would reach the airport hours in advance, not out of anxiety but…
India’s officialdom has a curious talent. It never solves problems. It merely fixes symptoms. Every few months, footpaths are cleared, flex boards are removed and illegal vendors are evicted. A few weeks later, everyone is back. Our Governments perform what doctors would call ‘symptomatic treatment.’ They prescribe painkillers instead of curing the disease. Which is…
Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist The goddess we call Saraswati today begins as Vagdevi, the Goddess of Speech, identified primarily with the Vedic deity Vac. Her earliest stories foreground the immense power and sometimes the deceptive nature, of the spoken word. These are found in ritual Vedic texts known as the Brahmanas….
By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam There is a peculiar arrangement in my neighbour’s home that everyone there calls dog ownership. They believe they own a dog. The dog, a portly fellow named Bruno, believes something quite different and on the evidence, I would say the dog is the better judge. Bruno arrived as a small bundle…
By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik – Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist Over 2,200 years ago, two rulers on opposite ends of Asia confronted a similar problem: how to hold together vast, diverse territories emerging from long periods of conflict. Qin Shi Huang in China and Ashoka in India both inherited States forged through conquest. Yet the solutions…
The Lighter Side By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam There is a wooden board hanging in almost every drawing room of our country these days and it carries three words painted in a cheerful font. Live, Laugh, Love. Nobody is quite sure who started this trend, but it has spread faster than any government scheme ever has. The board hangs above the…
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…
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