Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash Tripura Rahasya has the story of King Susena, who went on an Ashwamedha yagya. The royal horse was let loose, and the royal entourage followed. Eventually, the horse reached the ashram of rishi Gana, who was deep in meditation. The soldiers set camp without paying any respects to the rishi and started drinking and making noise. This upset the rishi’s son, who shouted at the soldiers. The irritated soldiers decided to arrest him. Using his powers, the rishi’s son turned them into ashes. The rishi’s son took the royal horse and walked into the nearby mountain. So ..read more

The boy goes to school from his mother’s home with a friend at 8 am to study. In Ted Chiang’s short story, Story of Your Life, a few alien ships appear and orbit around the Earth. The aliens (called heptapods, because they have seven lidless eyes that ring all the way around the top of their bodies) send communication devices called looking glasses to communicate with the humans. Louise Banks, a linguist, is called by the military to assist in decoding the alien language. She soon finds that the alien sentence possesses several distinctive qualities that set it apart from English: Instea ..read more

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash On a date that would one day be marked by future tragedy, history quietly marked its own significant encounter. On the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, just near the bustling port of Surat, two vessels came perilously close. One was a majestic Mughal ship, her hull filled with treasures. This vessel had evaded many pirates lurking in these waters. The other was an English pirate ship, and its target was the Mughal galleon, which had eluded the snares of many pirates lurking in these waters. The Mughal ship was just a few days from home, but an e ..read more

In 1132 CE, in Mangalore,  the Tunisian Jewish merchant Abraham bin Yiju married Ashu Nair, a local Malayali woman. They lived together for less than two decades in great prosperity and raised a family. Eventually, their story ended in a heartbreaking tragedy.  Fortunately, we can reconstruct the lives of these two people with a fair amount of accuracy because letters written by Abraham still exist. Historical accounts typically concern kings, warriors, philosophers, or world travelers. Rarely do you get the stories of people like Abraham bin Yiju, who was one of the many traders al ..read more

While we all have heard of Rome, Jerusalem, and Nazareth, most of us have not heard of Eleusis. This Greek harbor town was the spiritual capital of the Western world. Plato visited Eleusis and wrote about the “blessed sight and vision” he witnessed “in a state of perfection” by sipping a drink called kykeon. Those who drank kykeon transcended the division between humankind and nature. They also realized that death was not the end of the human journey, and underneath this mortal clothing, we are immortals. After the Greeks, the Romans continued the tradition. Cicero and Marcus Aurelius were in ..read more

Photo by Neeta Gulati on Unsplash Conflict and discontinuity in Indian history is an obsession with Marxist historians writing Indian history. Any fresh development in India is seen as a revolt against the past; the new is considered as an improvement over the old. Few narratives that pop out from this camp are (1) Gangetic civilization which arose after the decline of the Harappan civilization had no connection to the latter (2) Buddhism was a revolt against Hinduism (3) The India born in 1947 was an artificial entity created by the British and had no connection to ancient Bharat. All these a ..read more

Samskritam Varṇamālā The above picture shows the organization of Samskritam varṇamālā in Devanagari script. First, there are the swaras at the top, followed by the vyañjanas. This sequence is the same in all Indian languages. But why so? Why not in some other sequence? Why is क the first vyañjana or अ the first swara? In this article, we will look at the reason for such an organization of the aksharas. We will also see how the effects of the points of articulation were understood by Samskritam grammarians. Finally, we will also see what makes Om such a unique sound and how this ties to mantra ..read more

Sardar Udham Movie Poster (fair use) Sardar Udham, one of the most heartbreaking movies made on Jallianwala Bagh, was not sent to the Oscars. Explaining why Sardar Udham was not selected, Indraadip Dasgupta, one of the jury members, told Times Of India, “Sardar Udham is a little lengthy and harps on the Jallianwala Bagh incident. It is an honest effort to make a lavish film on an unsung hero of the Indian freedom struggle. But in the process, it again projects our hatred towards the British. In this era of globalization, it is not fair to hold on to this hatred.” Sardar Udham shows hatred tow ..read more

By Image: http://collections.lacma.org/sites/default/files/remote_images/piction/ma-31973398-O3.jpg Gallery: http://collections.lacma.org/node/171573 archive copy, Public Domain, Link What’s common between the first verse of Mahabharata and the last verse of Mēlputtūr Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭatiri’s Narayaneeyam written in 1586 CE.? The first verse of adi parva reads नारायणं नमस्कृत्य नरं चैव नरॊत्तमम देवीं सरस्वतीं चैव ततॊ जयम उदीरयेत (” Om ! Having bowed to Narãyana and Nara, the most exalted male being, and also to the Goddess Saraswati, must the word Jaya be uttered) Mēlputtūr Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭatiri’s ..read more

Book: Calling Sehmat by Harinder S. Sikka Calling Sehmat In 1971, as the tensions between India and Pakistan were rising, the college girl Sehmat Khan agrees to marry a Pakistani Army officer to spy for India. It was a career chosen out of necessity, but she ends up being so good at it that she saved INS Vikrant from destruction. This is not fiction, but the story of a real life patriotic Indian, whose life was so extraordinary, that you would think it’s all made up. As she goes through her journey from a simple college girl to a spy who lived with the sole purpose of safeguarding India, you w ..read more