अणुभ्यश्च महद्भ्यश्च शास्त्रेभ्यः कुशलो नरः।सर्वतः सारमादद्यात् पुष्पेभ्य इव षट्पदः।। – Skilled people learn from every source, be it big or small, much like honey bees, who collect nectar from all types of flowers.
Writing about the Panchatantra opened a whole new world to me, one what stayed with me for over half a year, and 165 posts. I had to research a lot, reading over the Sanskrit original, multiple English translations and Hindi translations as well (since English sounded pretty ridiculous in many places), comparing interpretations and coming up with my own, correcting transliterations and editing a few parts that were aberrations in an otherwise complete piece of work.
And then, all of a sudden, an abrupt end.
Fun fact – I never made corrections when writing – I just wrote. No backtracking, no review. Write, publish with the mistakes, and then go read it to my wife. That’s where I would spot the mistakes (I have an eye of a copywriter), and then go back and correct them. A few may have given me the slip, and so a task (among many) that remains, is the detailed review, copywriting, and then publishing (yes, this will go to book form, and FREE) – hence the beginning, and not the end.
But more importantly, it enriched me. As a person, as a writer, as a reader, and as a lover of tradition. What a rich tradition they left back for us…one that we are currently reducing to tick-tock videos and tacky You Tube. We even managed to take out the very essence of the Panchatantra, by skipping the Sanskrit padās, editing the core of the stories (the story-within-a-story format), and presenting a vastly underwhelming result – that does not contain anything but a hollow shell of nothingness.
In my own words, that will only be understood by a relevant few – सारा रस निकाल गया, रह गया सिर्फ़ गुल्ला!
So this was the beginning. Started with the Panchatantra, but I will try to bring forth many such stories, and concepts, that were given to us, but have been forgotten in the cacophony of Halloween and Instagram filters. Not saying that one should not embrace the new, but surely not at the cost of the old.
This is as true for relationships, as it is for life itself.