Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
No Hymns for the Donkey
Published on 21st April, 2023, in The Hindu. In the past 30 years, the donkey population of India has dropped by 90%. It’s sad, considering large donkey fairs have been held annually for centuries in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. We rarely think of donkeys as cultural icons. Yet, they are. The wild…
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Articles
The Meaning of Contentment
Published on 30th December, 2022, in The Hindu. At the start of anything new, like New Year, Hindus look towards Ganesha. We want him to remove obstacles from our lives, and usher in prosperity. We have been conditioned to see his big belly or lambodara as a symbol of wealth. We have forgotten that this…
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Articles
What You Need to Know About Buddhist Capitalism
Published on 6th August, 2022, in Economic Times. We have always been taught that capitalism was invented in Europe. But the capitalism that we see today is the outcome of the Industrial Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution, capitalism thrived in trading routes controlled by the Arabs. These routes extended from Southeast Asia, right up to…
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Articles
Purva Paksha and the Art of Winning Arguments
Published on 23rd July, 2022, in Economic Times. The New Testament was finalised about 1500 years ago. About the time when Puranas started being composed in India. But what was new about it? The Church said that the old testament was the Jewish Bible. All that was prophesied there had been fulfilled in the body…
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Articles
Shiva from Tibet?
Published on 19th June, 2022, in Mid-day. The idea that Tibet was the homeland of Aryas came from Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who in the late 19th century, founded the famous Arya Samaj. He valued the Vedas as the original source of Hinduism, but saw Puranas including worship of Shiva-linga as a degeneration of Arya-dharma, a…
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Articles
Modern Management Is Essentially Violent As It Is Based on Consumption
Published on 16th April, 2022, in Economic Times. Consumption is violence. Bhoga (food) demands bali (sacrifice). Something has to be destroyed to produce the food that you consume. This is natural law. So the elements are consumed by trees. Trees are consumed by animals. Animals are consumed by animals. Nature is designed around consumption that…
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Articles
How Trade Blossomed an Exchange of Ideas Between India and Arabia.
Published on 26th February, 2022, in Times of India. Indians had been trading with Arabs for a long time. About 4000 years ago, trade happened with Harappans by ships that travelled along the sea-coast. Birds were used to identify the direction of the shore if the ship went too far into the sea and lost…
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Articles
The Body and House of God
Published on 20th February, 2022, in Mid-day. Now-a-days, we do not see the Mediterranean world as a unit. We see the northern shores as European and Christian, and the southern shores as African and Muslim. But for hundreds of years, the entire Mediterranean was a unit controlled by the Roman Empire. Wealth from these regions…
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Articles
Unfaithful Wives Across Seas
Published on 13th February, 2022, in Mid-day. For nearly 2,000 years, Arab traders used the monsoon winds to travel across the sea to India. Along the Western coasts, in Kerala, Karnataka and Goa, they met people who allowed them to marry their daughters, but did not let them take these wives back home. These were…
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Articles
In China, Gods, Spirits and Ancestors Thrive, But Leave the Affairs of Humans to Humans
Published on 29th January, 2022, in The Hindu. China today seems mysterious with its very own version of Communism, Capitalism and Democracy. But the mystery vanishes when we see it through a mythic lens and realise that China functions as it always has, magnificence from behind an expressionless face — the wall. Chinese culture does…
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Articles
Don’t Blame The God Particle
Nature was self-sufficient. It contained both platitude and violence. Humans begat God as a symbol, to derive meaning, to forge identity. Not God’s fault…
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Articles
God of Sunday
Why was the first day of the week associated with the Sun, no one knows. It is one of those mysteries of history that remain unresolved…
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Articles
The Infidelities of Zeus
The stories of Zeus’ infidelities and his wife Hera’s reactions and efforts to curb his liecentious moves…
