Year: 2023
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Premalekhanam
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(Vaikkom Muhammad Basheer is my favourite author. I translated a long story of his, ‘Premalekhanam’ (Love-letter), some 25 years ago. This is how the story begins…) Dearest Saramma,In these difficult times when life is yearningly youthful and the heart brimming over with love, how do you, my dearest friend reconcile yourself to it all? As…
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Nitishatakam
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I had bought Bhartrhari’s Nitishatakam many years ago when I thought of learning Sanskrit by directly reading original texts and their translations. This project did not take off and I was going through the thin book again yesterday and thought of sharing some of the initial slokas as this weeks blog post. (I apologize in…
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Some aspects of modernity
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(Note: The following is extracted from a conversation on the ‘SIDH Discussion Forum’ WhatsApp group. Click here to join this group) आधुनिकता को सिर्फ intellectually ही नही, उसके उन पक्षों को भी समझना जरूरी है, जिनसे हम एक आम आदमी को समझा सके, सचेत कर सके। इसमें हमे स्वयं ही काम करना होगा। इसमें यानि…
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Knowing and Believing
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जानना और मानना बाइनरी नहीं है। अगर हम मानते होते हैं और हम सजग होते हैं कि हम मान रहे हैं, तो यह एक बात होती है जिसका असर दिमाग में एक प्रकार का होता है, जिसके कारण आगे की प्रोसेसिंग एक प्रकार की होती है। उदाहरण के लिए मैं मान लिजिए कोई कर्म काण्ड…
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The Ramayan Series: Part 2
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राम को वनवास हो जाने पर कौशल्या भरत पर आरोप लगाती हैं कि तुने अपने भाई को वनवास भेजने और अयोध्या का राज हथियाने की सजिश की। इस पर भरत उस काल में निषिद्ध कर्मों का वर्णन यह कहते हुए करते हैं कि यदि उन्होंने ऐसी किसी भी साजिश में हिस्सा लिया होगा तो उन्हें…
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US Hegemony and its Perils
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This was the title of a public document that was put up on the official Chinese foreign affairs website on 23th February, 2023. In the bluntness with which it lays out its case, this document is almost a challenge to the public image of the USA. The Introduction and the conclusion of the document are…
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Child-centred education
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You may be surprised that child-centred education is what the national policy documents on education advocate. Take a look at the following inspirational quotes from the National Curricular Framework (NCF), 2005, document. The fact that the government recommendations do not get implemented is probably because of the inertia of the system. “Education is not a…
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Why we homeschooled our children
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I was thinking about it recently and jotted down some reasons that may have been at the back of our minds when we decided to homeschool our children. Reason 1: I learnt a lot of complicated real-life engineering in the first six months of starting my first job as a bridge design engineer. I also…
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Sanaatan aur samayik
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भारत में न्याय और सत्य की समझ और पश्चिम से आई आधुनिकता में न्याय और सत्य की समझ में बड़ा भेद है। और चूंकि हम सभी पढ़े-लिखों पर आधुनिक शिक्षा का चश्मा कमोबेश चढ़ा हुआ है इसलिए यह भेद जब तब हम भूल से जाते हैं। चश्मा ही नहीं यह तो अब हमारे DNA का…
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Covering the earth with leather
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“Bodhicharyavatara composed in the 8th century C.E. by Shantideva is one of the most celebrated text of Mahayana Buddhism… In this masterpiece, the author, who belonged to the Madhyamika school of Nagarjuna, describes in detail the conduct of a Bodhisattva.”– From the foreword by The Dalai Lama to the English translation of Shantideva’s Bodhicharyavatara by…
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Joyless education
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“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me… I am verily persuaded that I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader…
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Taking the red pill
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The red pill and blue pill represent a choice between the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill or remaining in the contented experience of ordinary reality with the blue pill. The terms originate from the 1999 film The Matrix.– From the Wikipedia article on ‘Red pill and…