Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
Goddess of “X” factor
Published on 29th December, 2019, in Mid-day In temples like Jagannath Puri and in many …
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Articles
Shakti within, Durga without: Different aspects of power
Published on 29th November, 2019, in The Economic Times Shakti and Durga are two words …
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Shakti or Shaktiman?
Published on 13th October, 2019, in Mid-day I was recently trolled by a group of …
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Welcoming Lakshmi through service, yagna
Published on 18th August, 2019, in Mumbai Mirror. Arthashastra, or economics, is today linked with …
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Articles
The sage who witnessed all
Published on 10th February, 2019, in Mid-day. In Hinduism, the Markandeya Purana is one of the oldest puranas, roughly 1,700 years old. It is special because it contains the earliest reference to the Devi Bhagavata story…
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The sacred form of Kashi
In Kashi, the river Ganga, which normally runs from the Himalayas to the sea in the south, takes a turn and moves northwards. This reverse flow of the Ganga is considered spiritually significant because it is believed that one can manifest certain tantric ideas in such places…
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The gallery of female rogues
Women can be dangerous forces of nature, or hypersexual beings, who take away the power of men, chain them to the material world and prevent them from walking the spiritual path…
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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
Land of body parts
The Buddhists and the Hindus share the idea of the land becoming sacred, when it is connected with the body of a holy being…
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Articles
Men and women in Hindu mythology
God cannot exist without Goddess. Goddess cannot exist without God. Indian author Devdutt Pattanaik sheds light on Hindu mythology…
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Who is a Hindu? Understanding Hindu stories
A typical Durga image, established collectively, represents the collective power of the village which helps in defeating calamities. This then becomes an anthropological approach in the study of Hindu mythology…
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Articles
Metaphors of the Goddess
It is a mystery for many why Hindus, for whom divinity is both male and female, treat women so badly…
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Articles
Who is a Hindu? The politics of bodily fluids
By using body physiology to create a spiritual hierarchy, some Hindu orders have placed men above women…
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Who is a Hindu? Why do intellectuals scorn Hindu deities?
Hindus as it doesn’t comply with their preconceived notions of what god and religion should be…
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Articles
Who is a Hindu? – Saraswati: Once she was a river
Historians are fairly confident that at one time a river called Saraswati flowed in the north-west part of India, near or around the river Indus, and it is here that the early Vedic civilisation thrived…
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Articles
The rise of Durga
Amongst the earliest images we know today are one from Ajanta and Ellora caves in Maharashtra, and from Mammalapuram dated before 7th century…
