Author: Arun Elassery
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Convergent and Divergent Problems
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(Note: The following is a long extract from E.F. Schumacher’s ‘A Guide for the Perplexed’ relevant to this blog’s discussion on education.) Take a design problem—say, how to make a two-wheeled, man-powered means of transportation. Various solutions are offered, which gradually and increasingly converge until, finally, a design emerges which is simply ‘the answer’—a bicycle.…
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The Myth of Disenchantment
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‘The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences’ is a 2017 book by Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, a professor of religion at Williams college. The book argues that even in the West, the epicentre of the project of modernity, evidence does not support that magic and enchantment have been banished.…
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Svaraj In Ideas
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Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya (1875–1949), the author of the essay titled ‘Svaraj In Ideas’ written in 1928, is perhaps the best-known academic philosopher of the colonial period. He held the King George V Chair (now the B. N. Seal Chair) in Philosophy at the University of Calcutta and trained many of the eminent philosophers of the…
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Triprangode Shiva Temple
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Yesterday I went to two very old temples in Kerala. First to the Navamukunda temple at Tirunavaya and then to the Triprangode temple a few kilometers from Thirunavaya. At Triprangode I discovered, to my surprise, that these two old temples are connected together by an old story. You may know the story but not its…
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Fewer Talks
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FEWER TALKS.MORE BREATHE! …said the byline to a large nice-looking hoarding I saw recently. The hoarding was for a real estate company selling apartments. The message that the copywriter wanted to convey, I thought, was that in this apartment complex there was a lot of fresh air so one could ‘More Breathe!’ and at the…
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People Like Us!
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There is this need that alternative-type people have of looking for a community of ‘People Like Us’. Maybe this is a need that everyone has but it is more noticeable in the alternative crowd because they are a small minority. Me and my wife were on this search when we, long ago, took our three…
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Illuminations: Passages for contemplation
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I thought of collecting together some of the short passages that are given in the Illuminations book and creating a blog post around them. If you go through these stand-alone passages, some of them may strike you as meaningful or intriguing. If you have a discussion with another person (or persons) about the meaning of…
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Illuminations Workshop at Bangalore
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Last week I was part of a workshop for parents and teachers of Udhbhavaha school in Bangalore. The methodology (based on A.K. Saran’s ‘Illuminations’) was to read through some short passages, discuss them in small groups and then present it to the other participants. The passages are taken from the works of authors like Ananda…
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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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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…