Inner Metamorphosis

The concept of Dharma is not adequately understood by Hindus themselves, not to mention others. Dharma is not a set of do’s and don’t’s or a simplistic evaluation of good and bad. It requires considerable intellectual exertion to even begin understanding Dharma, let alone mastering its use. Is Dharma Translatable? Few words of a language cannot be faithfully translated into another without injuring its meaning, context & spirit. English translations of Dharma are blurred and yield words like religion, sense of righteousness, discrimination between good and bad, morals and ethics or that which is lawful. All these fall short of fully grasping the essence of Dharma. Every language has an ecosystem of words, categories and grammar which allow a user to stitch words together to maximum effect such that meaning permeates the text without necessarily being explicitly explained at each point. Sanskrit words such dharma, karma, sloka, mantra, guru etc., now incorporated in Eng...

Julayi  (telugu movie) released last year had an interesting premise and fantastic dialogues (trademark Trivikram style), though its retains all the commercial elements that are a norm in mass-entertainers. As the plot unfolds we find that our intelligent hero doesn’t believe in hard work and in an effort to make a quick buck falls prey to a series of events eventually culminating in his sister’s kidnap and his father getting seriously injured. In the only emotional scene of the movie, the father recovering from his injuries in hospital explains the value of steady growth and hard work to his son. Few routine action sequences later “all ends well” and our hero, now wiser, is on the way to attend an interview for a salary he once considered a pittance. Many of us, thanks to success-stories bombarded on us by media, think that our achieving our goals is simply a matter of charting a strategy and executing it. If only it were that easy – events as they say has its own way of u...

What do communists, evangelican Christians and Islamists have in common? Notwithstanding the irreconcilable differences between themselves, which group invokes hatred among all the three? Yes, as the title indicates, it is Hindu-hatred or Hinduphobia. This is my attempt to understand the core ideas that inform the perspective of  evangelican right  and  academic left  and am thankful to  Rajiv Malhotra  whose work forms the basis that I build upon. Abrahamic perception of Hinduism To the more devout sections of Christians and Muslims the fact that India is still majorly populated by  heathens  despite their best "efforts" [a millennium of Islamic aggression and two centuries of Western imperialism ] is an eyesore. The differences between Judaism, Christianity and Islam is mostly about how the latest ideology supercedes the earlier ones, rendering the earlier belief obsolete because the newer one is more complete/ t...

I was introduced to Ayn Rand 's ideas during the last year of   my engineering by a close friend who seemed   floored by her philosophy. I read Capitalism – The Unknown Ideal and The New Intellectual – both smaller books explaining her philosophy which she named Objectivism . These two books kindled my interest to read her two main works of fiction with strong philosophical undercurrent : The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged later. The enduring influence of Rand's philosophy on college-goers can hardly be exaggerated. You get those " What on earth do you read " looks when you betray your ignorance about her. What's it about her that endears her to most college-goers (OK, among the serious type at college)? Throughout her works she advocates free-market capitalism, individualism, rationalism and decries every strand of socialist thinking. Beginning to write around 1930s, she hails the unbridled capitalism as practised in US in 19 th century and op...

Projecting the past based on present, some opine that ancient India was replete with bigotry, superstitions and lacked an intellectual culture. Britishers purposefully created a system which was designed to make Indians ashamed of themselves and look up to West for cultural refinry and intellectual imports. Nothing can be farther to truth. In this post I seek to outline the philosophical schools of India. Pre-Islamic India was one thriving with lively debates between [philosophical] experts of different persuasions in royal courts, temples and other places. The Vedas [themselves peer-reviewed over several centuries] were constantly reinterpreted, discussed and debated. I endeavor to briefly outline the major philosophies here. Two primary categories exist : Orthodox [which accept testimony of Vedas] and Heterodox [don't accept Vedas]. Consequently, the original words are astika (for orthodox) and nastika (for heterodox) which we translate these days as believers and non-...

Three words are sufficient to sum up Ramgopal Varma's The Attacks of 26/11 : Brutal, Barbaric & Brilliant. But I'll prattle along. What transpired on that fateful day when 10 men terrorized a metropolis populated by more than 20 million? How did commoners react? How did the security forces respond? What inspired these men to perform such an heinous homocide in which even children, woman and elderly weren't spared? RGV answers these best within the cinematic constraints and leaves us thoroughly disturbed by the end. The mood is however uplifted as we recollect the exceptional bravery exhibited by our police-forces and the humanity displayed by Mumbai-people amid such a crises. The gruesome cold-blooded murder of the captain of the fishing trawler [which was hijacked in sea and used subsequently to enter Mumbai] sets the tone for the movie. The clinical precision with which the plan is executed leaves us spellbound. The machine-like mentality o...

This blog by my friend Balasanjeevi makes a hilarious read. As a fellow co-traveller, I largely agree with his observations and feel compelled to share my own, although I must admit that I cannot replicate his humorous effect. The current marriage market is a textbook case-study on how excessive domination could end up becoming hugely counterproductive and one begins to appreciate moderation as an essential even in domination. Traditional marriage market RK Narayan writes in an essay in " The Next Sunday " which although laced with humor makes grim observations about the then prevailing marriage markets. A father of a prospective bridegroom apparently declares that next to an investment in land whose values never comes below a point, having an unmarried son is the next best investment. Taking a cue from the discount/ combo offers during festive seasons, dowry demands were innovatively designed too – a car/bike/cycle (my son has to maintain his st...