Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
The Jain Monk and His Saka Saviours
Published on 25th March, 2022, in The Hindu About two thousand years ago incidents took …
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Articles
Neither Mythological Fiction Nor History
Published on 12th December, 2021, in Mid-day. People often confuse mythology with mythological fiction. Mythology …
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Articles
Rivalry of Sants and Naths
Published on 10th October, 2021, in Mid-day. In 13th Century Maharashtra, Dyaneshwar translated the Bhagavad …
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Articles
Tombs of Holy Men
Published on 19th September, 2021, in Mid-day. Since the time of the Buddha, when a …
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Articles
Are Brahmins a Single, Homogenous Group?
Who is a Hindu? Are Brahmins a single, homogenous group? Published on 25th April, 2021, …
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Articles
Holi for Shiva, Holi for Vishnu
Published on 28th March, 2021, in Mid-day. Why do we celebrate Holi? The standard answers …
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Articles
Is Goddess Saraswati Connected to Love and Longing?
Published on 14th February, 2021, in Mumbai Mirror. Valentine’s Day upsets Hindutva, that valorises men …
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Articles
Not quite division of labour
Published on 14th April, 2019, in Mumbai Mirror. Many assert that the caste system (jati …
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Articles
On Diwali, understanding the nature of wealth through the mythology connected with goddess Lakshmi
Editor’s note: “The living (sajiva, in Sanskrit) seek food, the lifeless (ajiva) and the dead (nirjiva) don’t. This makes food the fundamental target (laksh) of life. From laksh comes Lakshmi. Lakshmi is food (anna) in nature and wealth (dhana) in culture,” writes Devdutt Pattanaik in his book 7 Secrets of the Goddess (published by Westland).…
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Articles
Acknowledging Islam’s Diversity
At the time of the World Wars, beyond the traditional Shia-Sunni divide, Islam had many regional forms: there was an Arabic form, there was a Persian form, there was the Indian form, there was an Indonesian form…
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Articles
Who is a Hindu? The temple as saviour
Our monumental temples, such as Puri’s Jagannatha temple, were a reaction to the arrival of a foreign faith, and a sign of resistance to it…
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Articles
Both Rahul Gandhi & Narendra Modi subscribe to a western, Christian reading of Mahabharata
The villain in Hindu narratives is not evil but is just someone frightened and clinging to wealth, power and throne…
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Interviews
Maya and Myth
First City Magazine, New Delhi, July 2001. “Sex and violence are fundamentals of life. They …
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Articles
Why is Holi celebrated more in north India than south India?
Holi is indeed celebrated mostly in north India, not south India. No one knows the reason why…
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Articles
Descendants of Chitragupta
In one story, popular in the Gangetic plains, the god of death, Yama, wanted a scribe to help him keep a record of people’s karma. And so Brahma created Chitragupta (he who knows the secrets of diagrams i.e. scripts), who held in his hand a pen and inkpot…
