Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator

Shaiva

  • The Goddess Meenakshi of Madurai

    The Goddess Meenakshi of Madurai

    Published on 27th November, 2016, in Mumbai Mirror. We have all heard the story of …

  • Why bother with icons? (Learn to respect your symbols)

    Why bother with icons? (Learn to respect your symbols)

    We can blame the government and the education system, but how many parents actually take their children to museums, or temples, and play the game of ‘let us identify this god’…

  • How Adi Shankaracharya united a fragmented land

    How Adi Shankaracharya united a fragmented land

    Is our current understanding of Shankara contaminated by the ambitions of his not-so-intellectual followers who relish the idea of domination?…

  • Waiting for Ram

    Waiting for Ram

    At her abode in the caves of Jammu, the Goddess manifests herself as three outcroppings of rock which represent its three forms Maha-Lakshmi, Maha-Saraswati and Maha-Kali…

  • THE LION ON THE HILL

    THE LION ON THE HILL

    Simhachalam is special for the worship of a composite image of ‘masculine’ avatars of Vishnu, Varaha and Narasimha…

  • Doesn’t Shiva take drugs?

    Doesn’t Shiva take drugs?

    To understand this mystery, we have to appreciate how Hinduism divides the world into inside and outside, the home and the wilderness, the realm of the householder and the realm of the hermit…

  • A ritual cleansing

    A ritual cleansing

    Notions of reform are often based on ‘assumptions of deformity’, which are dependent on ‘assumptions of normality’…

  • Divine domestic discords

    Divine domestic discords

    The malaise of modern scholarship on Hinduism often comes from the assumption that Hindu sacred texts, like Bible and Koran, are instructive and seek to ‘reform’ humans…

  • Rebirth of a God

    Rebirth of a God

    The rituals by which Jagannatha, the presiding deity of Puri, Odisha, will die and be reborn along with his sister Subhadra and his elder brother Balabhadra and his weapon, the Sudarshana…

  • Elder Brother of God

    Elder Brother of God

    Two brothers-yet so vastly different…

  • Talking Heads

    Talking Heads

    His laughter is not the kind we want to hear,for it mocks us and reminds us of what only we and he know…

  • The Context of the Mahabharata

    The Context of the Mahabharata

    To understand the Mahabharata we have to appreciate the Ramayana and to appreciate both we need to appreciate the Vedas…

  • Ardhanareshwara

    Ardhanareshwara

    Two halves of a complete Whole…

  • Celebrating Shiva’s Holy Night

    Celebrating Shiva’s Holy Night

    An unconventional God – an unconventional way and rituals of worship…

  • HANUMAN — an Introduction

    HANUMAN — an Introduction

    This book is an attempt to understand the imagery, ritual and philosophy associated with Hanuman worship in our time…

  • When we denounce our myths, we denounce our ancestors

    When we denounce our myths, we denounce our ancestors

    Sunday Times – Mumbai Edition, Times of India Mumbai’s architectural heritage can turn …