Author: Arun Elassery
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Who Am I?
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Sri Ramana Maharshi, in 1902, wrote out the answers to some questions asked by a disciple seeking spiritual guidance. These questions and answers, collected together as ‘Nan Yaar?’ or ”Who Am I?’, give a short introduction to self-enquiry as a path to liberation. The 8 page PDF of ‘Who Am I?’ is available here. The…
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Learning to learn – Part 2
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Part 1 of this post talks about the first of the two books on ‘Learning to learn’. Here are some excerpts from the second book, ‘Learning to learn – Ideas on implementation’. Excerpt 1: The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) established in 2008 has been giving data driven insights into our education system. The…
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North and South
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My wife and I prefer to travel sleeper class and not in the AC coaches on the many 12+ hour train journeys we do. We have a simple rule – when we travel anywhere in South India, we buy sleeper class tickets but on North Indian routes we travel by AC. This is because the…
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Announcing a two week break
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The first post on this blog was written on 23rd November 2020, just over three years ago. The blog has 158 posts that broadly cover the areas of education and modernity. The next post here will appear on 25th December after a two week break. With many thanks, Arun, SIDH
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Why China Survived Its Dark Ages
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In his last week’s blog post, John Michael Greer talked about the reasons for China’s culture continuing more or less intact after repeated collapses, while so many other civilizations rose, fell, and vanished. I thought that the insights in the post were useful for looking at our Indian context. Here are some excerpts to encourage…
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Under-evaluation and Over-evaluation
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There is a wonderful short story by Anton Chekhov called ‘Overdoing it’. Here is an extract. . . . It was dusk by the time the cart drove out of the station. On the surveyor’s right hand stretched a dark, endless, frozen plain. On the horizon, where it vanished and melted into the sky, there…
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Keeping Our Cities Clean
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My daughter stays on the first floor of an independent house in Bangalore. When she first moved into this house she tried to figure out how to get her garbage disposed. The landlady downstairs has her daily help take the garbage away and keep it in a place from where the BBMP van collects it.…
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On Toxic Relationships
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I was talking to a friend about his toxic relationship with an elderly relative and thought that the controversial insight that came up is worth recording in a post here. Friend: I talked to my old aunt last night and couldn’t sleep after that because of all the random accusations that she threw at me.…
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On Pointless Jobs
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In August, 2013, the American anthropologist David Graeber wrote a tentative essay about the pointlessness of most modern jobs. The essay, that went viral, was later expanded into a book published in 2018, ‘Bullshit Jobs – A Theory’. The book used poll data from UK, where 37% of the people polled identified their jobs as…
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Livelihood Vs Life
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There is a story that when the British wanted the weavers of Bengal to produce more cloth, the first response of the weavers was to refuse. The British who had assumed that more money would be an incentive to produce more cloth were told by the weavers that they could work only a few hours…
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SIDH Samvaad at Varanasi
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The 4-day SIDH samvaad centred around reading and discussing Dharampalji’s Bharatiya Chitta Manas Aur Kaal has just concluded. The samvaad was held at the Krishnamurti Study Centre set in the 100-year-old, 300-acre, wooded campus that also has the Rajghat Besant School and Vasanta College for Women. The campus is situated at the confluence of the…
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A Film Review
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Recently I saw a wonderful Malayalam movie, ‘Nanpakal nerathu mayakkam’ (titled ‘Like an afternoon dream’ in English). The movie, directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery with Mammootty in the lead role, tells a simple but strange story. A Christian group from Kerala that has gone to Tamilnadu for a pilgrimage is on the way back home…