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Rajasthan

We had a great vacation at Rajasthan last week. I will not be writing in detail about the places, since wikitravel does a better job at that. I will just jot down some of my experiences/thoughts during this trip. *** The first thing that strikes you once you are in Rajasthan is the "color". Blood red, dark pink, bright yellow, vibrant hues of blue and green - you feel as though they finished playing holi just before you arrived. It seems the people here, with their dressing sense, art and music, more than compensate for the arid, barren, vast spaces of nothingness. It is one place in the world where you can wear the gaudiest Govinda dress without the fear of a fashion faux pas. *** Color is very important to a Rajasthani. They have different colors for different occasions - the birth of a child, the mourning of a death, the ending of a mourning, for holi, for diwali. Innumerable types of turbans are worn, each distinctly representing the wearer's caste, sub caste, the reg

Lingua Franca

Can you remember the first French word you had learnt? I can. Let me take a guess about you, was it "Bonjour", "Monsieur", "Mademoiselle", "Au Revoir"? If you say yes, I can safely assume that you were the novel-reading types and you must have read these in a dozen fiction novels where the protagonist travels all over Europe trying to escape from KGB, MI6, CIA or trying to uncover some deadly conspiracy against all odds. I am equally sure that you would have pronounced them in your mind like how you would pronounce an English word. Only later, you would have known that "Mademoiselle" sounds like "memmozee" or "au revoir" sounds like "avva". If you were not the novel-reading types, in the post-cable-tv-pre-Internet era, there was only one way to get your basic French education - Fashion TV. You had to tolerate horrendously dressed zombies to catch a rare episode of Rio Carnival. I need not say that most of

UML Series - Vishishtadvaita Explained

I always find it amusing to imagine Shankaracharya, Madhvacharya and Ramanujacharya standing forming a triangle inside a circular ground. Ennio Morricone score in the background. Slow long shots of each one, followed by close up of each of their eyes. Then, Ramanujacharya mutters to Madhvacharya - "Seems like you are one entity short" (followed by guffaws from Ramanujacharya's followers in the background) Silence for 30 secs. And Shankaracharya slowly tells Ramanujacharya - "Looks like you got two too many" (followed by eerie silence and then heavy duty music from Morricone) So here it is, the last one in the series...

UML Series: Dvaita Explained

A colleague of mine used to ask other colleagues whether they are "smart" or "mad". In case you have not guessed, it was her short form for Smartas and Madhvas! Okay, Madhvas need not feel bad. Smartas have a bigger problem. Anyone returning from abroad with a fake accent will ask them "Are you smartas?" and it is an interesting way to stop people from acting oversmart ;) So presenting the next one in the series: Dvaita...

UML Series: Advaita Explained

I admit that my knowledge of UML as well as Hindu philosophy is very basic. So any discrepancy in terms of UML or philosophical concepts will not be totally unexpected. I am planning to do this series for different schools, here I am starting off with Advaita first.

Sibling Rivalry

Sanathkumara once asked the revered sage Sutha Mahamuni - “Oh knower of all knowledge, oh teller of great stories, can you please explain me in less than 4000 words as to when this ‘Sibling Rivalry’ started”. Sutha Mahamuni cleared his throat, as he usually did before giving lengthy answers, a habit he had acquired by insisting on additional answer sheets during his exams in Gurukul. “Oh Sanathkumar, the man who comes up with more questions than Siddarth Basu, the one who takes listening skills to different levels, listen. This sibling rivalry is existent from time immemorial. When Narada was telling Krishna the story, in which Samba Sadashiva answered a similar query from Nandi, this story was not told. Because I am making this story up for you. So please listen.” Ganapathi and his brother Subrahmanya once had a dispute as to who was the elder of the two. The matter was referred to God Shiva for final decision. Shiva decided that whoever would make a tour of the wh

Plogging

I am really surprised why no one has coined the term "Plogging" till now. In case you are wondering what the hell that is, it just means P arent-B logging . I am always surprised that, in my grandparents' generation having a dozen kids was the norm, that too when many had hand-to-mouth existence. My father jokingly tells that its because that was the only form of entertainment in those days. Some experts strongly believe that the late emergence of Plogging is the main reason for population explosion at that time. Imagine if a person had to blog about his half a dozen kids, he surely would not have the bandwidth (not the internet one!) to reach the dozen mark! *** Since blogging itself is around a decade old, the average age of Momma/Pappa blogs would be around 5 years at the most. Many parent bloggers right now will be blogging about their first kid. Will they be as enthusiastic to blog about their second kid? More importantly,will the parents at some point stop writing p

Complicated Affiliations

I saw this at the MG Road - Brigade Road Junction. He is the president of "Karnataka Tamil Bhasha Kannadigara Sangha". Can it get any complicated than this? P.S: For some weird reason, the image is not displayed in blog, but is appearing properly in RSS Reader and Email. Here is the link to the image : Nobody commented that they are not able to see the image.   It means no one is visiting my blog now or everyone has switched to RSS / Email subscription!