Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
Krishna’s Sister and the Varying Interpretations Of Her Image
One of the oldest caves (number 27) in Ellora in Maharashtra, has the image of a goddess holding a lotus flower, flanked by two gods…
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Articles
Cholas In Focus
Published on 16th October, 2022, in The Hindu. Cholas in focus: 12th century war poem …
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Articles
Radha Tantra
Published on 15th November, 2020, in Mid-day. About 400 years ago, a Shakta text was …
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Articles
Raising Hindu kids in America
Published on 21st July, 2019, in Mumbai Mirror How do you teach a child about …
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Articles
Northeastern love for Krishna
Published on 3rd February, 2019. When one speaks of Krishna, one usually speaks of North Indian traditions of Surdas and Mirabai, or South Indian traditions of Andal and the Alwars…
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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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Interviews
Meet the characters who appear in both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana (and find out why)
From Parashurama and Jambuvan to Shiva and even Sita/Draupadi…
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Articles
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?…
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Articles
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…
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Articles
The faces of Mahalakshmi
While the word Mahalakshmi evokes images of the Hindu goddess of wealth seated on a lotus, the deity in Kolhapur, referred to as Amba-bai by locals, evokes Durga, the goddess of war…
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Articles
Worshipping the womb
At a time when any public discussion of genitalia evokes shame, goddess Kamakhya celebrates a woman’s fertility and desire…
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Articles
A ritual cleansing
Notions of reform are often based on ‘assumptions of deformity’, which are dependent on ‘assumptions of normality’…
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Articles
The glory of Odisha’s Gosani jatra
Delving into history takes us to the festival’s Odia roots…
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Articles
On Durga Puja, let’s not forget the glory of Odisha’s Gosani jatra
Delving into history takes us to the festival’s Odia roots…
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Articles
The tantrik sow-Goddess
Varahi is a goddess described as having the head of a sow and pendulous breasts and pot belly and anywhere from two to six arms bearing many weapons, which includes a trident, a noose, a mace, a discus, who sometimes holds a child in her arms, and is often shown riding a buffalo…
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Articles
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…
