Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
-
Articles
Maritime Culture of Jambu-Dvipa
India’s long coastline experiences monsoon winds that create a highway over the seas, connecting the Middle East (Shveta-dvipa, white island) to Southeast Asia (Suvarna-dvipa, golden island) via India (Jambu-dvipa, land of Indian black plum). …
-
Articles
Bollywood Wives and Brothels
Bollywood encourages housewives to dance in public and courtesans to pine for lovers. This conflation now has made its way to wedding altars…
-
Articles
The Mysterious Temple Texts Called Agama
Agamas are essentially manuals that were produced to manage temples. It is mainly, though not exclusively, a South Indian phenomenon, where there were vast temple complexes controlled by the Brahmins…
-
Articles
Pursuit of Justice in Time
Everybody is seeking to reach the future by erasing the past. But time as a concept is the very opposite of justice…
-
Articles
How Story-telling Became a Vedic Tool
Stories transmitted over generations serve as the glue of a community…
-
Articles
Attack of the Intoxicated Elephant
In India, mada refers to temporin, a tar-like liquid that oozes out of the temples of a bull elephant in a state of ‘musth’ or sexual arousal. Such an elephant is dangerous, unstoppable and violent. It fights and kills rivals, it can even kill non-receptive females, and calms down only after it has mated…
-
Articles
Does Your God Approve Homophobia?
Which message of God is true? There is no way to confirm any of this. They are matters of faith, based on myth i.e. cultural truths…
-
Articles
From Shiva’s Knot to Ram’s Chanda Mama – Our Stories of the Moon
As Chandrayaan-3 lands on the moon, it just so happens that the name of the current Chief Justice of India, D Y Chandrachud, means “on whose brow the moon takes refuge” – a title for Shiva…
-
Articles
Which Game Are You Playing Today?
Increasingly, modern society is trying to turn every game into a competitive game, where someone has to be defeated to win. The dopamine rush comes only when you triumph over others. This is the value that we are giving people. …