I had written this around 18 months back. About building my books collection, from scratch. Well, one wall-to-wall cabinet has been completed, that’s around 600 books give and take a few. So, a bit more than 10% of the target. Isn’t that more than most people read in a lifetime? Doesn’t matter. I read somewhere …
Is learning ever wasted? Someone asked me this question the other day. She wanted to go for a course – short-term, around 2 weeks, and an introduction to something completely different from what she had done till now. The apprehension was – what if I don’t learn anything and it all goes to waste? What …
It’s funny how much our surroundings influence our emotions. Our joys and sorrows, likes and dislikes are colored by our environment so much that often we just let our surroundings dictate our course. We go along with “public” feelings until we no longer even know our own true aspirations. We become a stranger to ourselves, …
Did you know that photons of light have no color, sound waves have no sound, olfactory molecules have no odors, and food molecules have no taste? The greenness of the trees, the blueness of the sky, the smell of that freshly baked pastry and the taste of that homemade pie are all created inside your …
What costs US$ 168 to build? The human body, by some accounts. Actually, an episode in Nova, a science show on PBS, came up with this figure for the value of there fundamental components of the human body. Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry, in 2013, performed a similar exercise and came up with a figure …
Next time you pass by a big tree, stop and observe it a bit. It probably has been standing there for many years, silent, leaves waving in the wind, steadfast, observing us all pass by, grow older, while the tree itself continues to take in poison and give us life. A tree is always in …
Four years back, on the 13th of February, we conducted Keshav’s Namakarana Samskara. A milestone in a child’s life, perhaps the first major one, a lot of thought went into it. Here is what I had written then… Namakarana is a very important samskara in Sanatana Dharma. A person’s personality is seen through the eyes, …
अमन्त्रमक्षरं नास्ति नास्ति मूलमनौषधम् ।अयोग्यः पुरुषो नास्ति योजकस्तत्र दुर्लभः ॥ amantramakṣaraṃ nāsti nāsti mūlamanauṣadham ।ayogyaḥ puruṣo nāsti yojakastatra durlabhaḥ ॥ Samayocitapadyamālikā There is not a syllable which is not a mantra; there is not a root that is not a medicine. There is no person who is not able, but rare is the person who knows how to apply …
I started this blog not by design – it just happened. So did the Sadhana series of theory and exercises – one article led to another and it became a series. The first planned series that I undertook was the Panchatantra, spread over six months, with each shloka represented in over 165 posts, English translations …
A bit of a see-saw day actually. Just when I thought that I would be in near full working condition by tomorrow, I ran a fever once again. Started in the morning, and continued till early afternoon…but then within 15 minutes, I sweat it all away. Now I think I’m nearly out of the woods, …
