Chitragupta

Published on 18th March, 2018, in Mumbai Mirror. When a young Adi Shankaracharya asked permission to become a monk 1,200 years ago, his widowed mother gave her assent reluctantly, but with one caveat, that he would perform her funeral rituals. As a Hindu monk, one is technically dead. The ritual of becoming a Hindu monk involves performing funeral rites of the living person who then gives up all ties to the former life, takes on a new name and is born as a sanyasi, with his guru as his new parent. So technically, Adi Shankaracharya’s mother was asking him to come back from the dead. ..

Published on 18th February, 2018, in Mid-day. As an Odia child raised in Mumbai, I am often asked about my roots. My parents told me we belong to the 'karana' caste. No one in Mumbai had heard of this caste. Later, I learned that karana caste is what is known as karanam in Andhra Pradesh, kayastha in the Gangetic plains and Bengal, and as prabhu in Maharashtra. This is a jati of people who served kings as scribes, bureaucrats and accountants, who went on to become influential courtiers and landowners. While Pattanaik and Mohanty are common karana surnames in Odisha, in the Gangetic plains there ..