Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
Dharma and the Dharma-sankat Of Ram
Ram is obliged to his people’s needs. That is the dharma of a king (raja). Ram is also obliged to his wife’s needs. That is the dharma of a husband. Which obligation takes priority?…
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Articles
Insulting Ravan, Bollywood Style
Bollywood has been trying hard to outdo Valmiki’s genius. However, Valmiki was a great sage who aimed to communicate profound truths through the Ramayana, often referred to as the fifth Veda…
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Articles
A Bow Made of Bones
Those who depict Rama holding a bow, and insist he ate a plant-based diet in the forest, often reject the idea of the composite bow…
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Articles
Recognising Hanuman
Stories use metaphors. Concepts become plots. Ideas become characters, even landscapes. …
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Articles
Secularising Ramayana and Mahabharata
When we study Buddhist and Jain lore, we realise many stories there are quite similar to stories found in Ramayana and Mahabharata…
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Articles
Desire and Restraint In the Ramayana
The first major Sanskrit work to speak of love, especially marital and extramarital love, is Valmiki’s Ramayana…
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Articles
Kingdom Is Responsibility, Not Property
Dharmic Leadership (is) different from Conventional Leadership. Dharmic Leadership is not prescriptive. It is introspective…
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Articles
The Yugas Came Later
The four yugas of Hindu mythology (Krita, Treta, Dvapara, Kali) are based on the numbers on traditional four-sided dice: four, three, two, one. They refer to the four legs of the bull of dharma…
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Articles
No Dharma Without Dharma-sankat
Yagna is the primal ritual of the Veda. Mistranslated as sacrifice, it is a ritual of exchange and reciprocity. …
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Articles
LGBTQIA+ Tales in Temples
For a long time, gatekeepers of Indian culture insisted that all things queer were Western. Then, people started reading the scriptures and realised, that was not quite the case…
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Articles
Gold Effigy of Sita and a Half-golden Mongoose
For all the violence depicted in the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, they carried a profoundly human message for the heart. It is told through the two curious often overlooked moments, one in the Ramayana, featuring a golden effigy of Sita, and one in the Mahabharata with a half-golden mongoose…
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Articles
Dharmic Leader in Modern Times
Western leadership models are military in nature. Command and control. It’s about tracking tasks and achieving targets. Indian leadership models were about people – reminding them that the purpose of life is not to eat, but to feed. To feed is dharma. He who enables feeding is the Dharmic Leader…
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Articles
What Makes Ramayana “Curiously Modern”?
Ramayana is a curiously modern book, because it deals with CONSENT. Both male and female…
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Articles
How Ramayana and Mahabharata Spread the Idea of Dharma
The earliest Ramayana retellings do not refer to the Lakshman rekha. The earliest Mahabharata retellings do not refer to Draupadi’s vastra-haran. …
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Articles
Rama Beyond the Hindi Belt
There are several hundred Ramayanas beyond the Hindi belt, composed in the last 2,000 years, that deserve equal respect…