Year: 2020

Conversations in a Dream

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Never stand and drink water, eat food or smoke.  Some one very important from the other world entered in my psychic system last night. The beautiful aspect of it all was that i behaved as well as I should have in real life, with utmost respect.  As I had to go up to his room using a lift, I pressed one bell, but it turned out to be of somebody’s home. A lady came, like a tortoise she put her neck out of the door and kept looking for a long time in the other direction. Finally when she found me as she turned her neck slowly like a mechanical toy, her eyes started blinking faster than our heartbeats. But what i found amusing was, in her eyes she had put enormous amount of kajal, the same one that my mother puts in my eyes every night. I knew it because it was leaving a smell of mustard. There’s a lot to be said for tradition, for stability and for the foundation that the status …

Moon, Woman, and the Essence Of a Long Life

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Today is Mahashivaratri. This day and night has become the most important 24 hours of this life that I am living. I am in Kumbh as I write this. Or the ‘Mahakumbh’ as I must state. Since Makar Sankranti these days were probably the most auspicious 45 days of 2025 that had a celestial connection and are stated to have come back after 144 years. Taking a dip in the sangam in these times are said to be no less than moksha on earth. And To be here on Mahashivaratri cannot just be my planning. It has to be a blessing. I am here with Maharaji whom I am meeting after five years. He flew from France only to be here for Mahakumbh. And this time, this phase with him has brought me back towards understanding the essence of life’s elements as a Yogi again. As someone who has been accumulating all the learnings and secrets of the ancient life. Even though soon ancient will be studied as the period that was before internet, but …

The motorcycle, Dalai Lama and the Meal – I

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Few years ago, I was travelling with once upon a time a beautiful friend. And like all great friendships do, we were growing up becoming something together. And during this long period of growth had found our confidence, our speech, as we took travelling to many a distant lands and one land far; discovering treasures together that helped us earning our eyes, my outer nature and his inner, we learnt together and kept going.   The sun had set again. And unlike last night that had just blown in; we should have found something, somewhere to rest, to eat by now. But here we were still riding, and had been riding our motorcycles for last two, twelve-hour days, while living through one gruelling moonless, freezing night in between, that started late yesterday noon, when we were stopped, stunned to see a river that had come on the road. We parked and got down. One spring had broken loose. Pulling in all mud, the boulders, rocks, with an intimidating noise, and the force of the coldest water …

Food and the World on a new Yogi’s mind

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It was time. The sun had arrived when he decided going to bed again. After last night chocolate truffle, the cough had soared. The times are odd. Eversince electricity arrived people were seen forgetting the Sun. Breathe in breathe out. In the new cities, statisticians were collecting some data. It was seen that children of non-meat eating parents were picking pizzas of a particular shop called fat lulu in their dreams because they were the only ones where vegetarian was written. Stretch. For many months, the voice inside had been asking him to leave dairy, and when it is the best time to be a cow in India. He thought, milk like few other well marketed products have been projected as a necessity to humanity. So he started writing alternatives, to the unmarked ones and whenever any untested eatable came to his mind. Moon and Sun. While riding back home along the river one evening, Nara saw a beggar sitting upright. It was strange, beggars like him, more so with a summer shirt and half …

Tomorrow comes Daily

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Slowly slowly as good days passed, hardest ones arrived. Three deaths and earning a bagful of silence later, we started sleeping again, or may be not. But mind does not change as of yet. Because Ruts don’t dig themselves. Most of the time, we’re in a rut because that’s precisely where we put ourselves. Out of many, some actions become habits, and habits get repeated because they feel safe. The easiest way to make things more interesting is to simply stop repeating your habitual behavior. And that often comes from reacting to triggers. Remove the triggers and you can alter the habits. Tiny changes. Different ways to keep score. Tomorrow comes daily. But we don’t have to take the same route to get there.

Life is only breath. Every other thing a distraction.

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The night before was dedicated to red Hibiscus flowers. They ended inside the fire place while praying for the solar chord, our right nostril, symbolising river Ganga; and in yogic texts known as pingala. It was also mauni amavasya, i.e the quiet moonless night, as advised for centuries, this day must be observed in silence. Women who could not restrain themselves from speaking, fasted in exchange for words. And the ones who spoke nothing from mouths were seen talking cautiously from eyes. There was nothing satvic about the day even though I tried to make it. And above all It ended without a moral, not that it had to. But without a story as if either it wasn’t needed or we weren’t important. In the evening the walk became unending. It didn’t feel long but the sun had set. We went around the circular home to find more wood but instead found two calves loving like statues. Somehow they got excited and started running like jumping deers. The once desired magic when attained, when passed over, …

One Time at a Rural School In India: A Photographic Essay For Bharti Airtel Schools in Rural India

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It was a time of purity. I wasn’t affected by socially suited media still. I loved being away and explored possibilities, more than even my liking to reading. I had only recently started thinking about teaching as i had left my job as a researcher then, at a publishing house and of course without any extensive hope, I wanted to travel. Good friends are the keys to the future doors. Juin called me one day at her office, and introduced me to her lady boss, in another publishing house. I went prepared and had an absolutely beautiful experience meeting her. She shared her travel stories and laughed well at mine. I could feel she loved hearing few things about what i had planned and while doing so she put forth an idea that she had been thinking. Her organisation had been providing free education and meals to primary school children in some north Indian states and had no documentation of it. She wanted someone to travel to these remote villages and document children studying in …

Learning from Mahatma, knowing Gandhi

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There were many things i never liked about my school. And the foremost was that it unintentionally took my freedom away or so i think. I was never introduced to any ancient Indian texts, neither I learnt anything about Yoga or even Sanskrit till i was 13. A child like me who only wanted to see and know of the world was made to sit and learn answers to the question for examinations after every three months more like a parrot. So much so my unlearning started before i could wake up my interest for higher learning. And soon it started effecting my results in higher classes or that is what i think of it now probably because i couldn’t pursue anything apart from five subjects at school. I feel liberated at the thought that I am not in school. And more so there is no more need to answer questions about Gandhi’s contribution to India’s freedom struggle. School history curriculum was also one reason i did not take Modern History of India as my …

When a wedding found me travelling in Mumbai

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It was then my first visit to Mumbai. And hence everything i was laying my eyes on went deeper than only seeing. I was hearing, more. Walking more. A place that promises light to your dreams ever since you earned consciousness, a place known for many a rags to riches story. Famous or infamous for world’s second largest Film Industry. I was there looking at every action, motion, observing how people move, react, are. Yet, I hadn’t been able to go out much then in Mumbai. One thing that i had loved walking in mumbai were the dairy shops where you would get Chai from the fresh milk. So one day while having malai/cream chai at a milk dairy I had started having a liking for, only because there was a beautiful big peepal tree I could sit under. And secondly. unlike in north India where there is milk a plenty but there is no way you can sit and enjoy different variations of milk in a dairy shop. Mumbai seemed to be bathing in …

The Play of Tendencies

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There are many layers under our skin. Cells that live with us and leave us without even letting us know, doing their work quietly. Taking all the time of their own in becoming and unbecoming, as they slowly settle into a tendency. We become our tendencies. Repetition of gestures become life long habits. As simple as acquiring the taste of sugar. For some, Coffee in the morning is a habit. Like buying bottled(plastic) water, but it wasn’t used to be. Making a habit is a lot easier than breaking one (ask a smoker), you can live on old habits for a while, but the future seemingly depends on finding and building some new ones with (and for) your people. Or your family. Or yourself. As soon as something useless starts becoming a norm for the body; this mind should be taught a lesson. Every becoming habit should be tested in its phase of tendency. One must shock it, confront it. We should oppose ourselves, resist our actions, question and be strict with ourselves. Because, undoubtedly …

In Life’s darkness. Mother is light.

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In these ongoing paralysing times of helplessness, while doing nothing; close your eyes. Think of water, a river. And if possible become it. Shiva was eyes wide open in all directions. Yet the destructive eye had to open, and took him inwards. Ujjain arrived in the morning. We went to pataloka to touch the equator in dim light and later ate potato spice. Darkness is the birth place of all creations. A child becomes in the dark. The lights glows the most in the dark. It is not that the darkness is wrong. It’s a part of life, a backdrop for the stars at night, the space between what you know. Darkness has a way of reminding you of the light. ExistING side by side. Sometimes overlapping, one explaining the other. And Mangla, the beautiful brown cow here in the village is pregnant. One big similarity, between a cow and a human mother is that both take nine months for their child to come out playing in the wild. Also one of many reasons, the oldest living civilisation …

A Journal of Animal Stories In The Last Ancient Fair Of Nepal

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“There is no other no other culture on earth that worships a woman as a goddess. And has gone to lengths, to make her happy, satisfy her with whatever means a man could imagine. Honouring her, doing little things, like this fair to keep her happy, may be to create another excuse to celebrate, however irrational it may be. Because you see, someone told me on this journey, that if in a family, a woman is happy everything will be favourable. Our goddess needs to happy, at any cost possible” GADHIMAI FAIR : A Journey through the culture of Nepal A sparrow woke us up. After travelling for three days overland, from Delhi to Kathmandu; changing buses including sharing a seat for seven hours with a goat. Through the night, travelling in a time travel bus I was transported from a civil society to a town living thirty years back. A town darkened by the moonless night, wearing a layer of fog only dissected by the headlight of a second world war Mercedes truck. Few …

Being the Light

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People in general have been generous with us through the years. A doctor who took the time to understand our pain. A server who didn’t hesitate and brought to us what we needed before we even knew we needed it. A client who gave us a project at just the right time. Gifts create connection and possibility, but not all gifts have monetary value. In fact, some of the most important gifts involve time, effort and care instead. Money was invented long after humans arrived on the scene, and commerce, as we have seen- cannot solve all problems. In this moment when we are disconnected and afraid, uncertain of the future, not only of us but of humanity altogether, the answer might not be a freebie. That might simply push us further apart. The answer might be showing and standing up to do the difficult work of smiling, connecting, of caring, of telling the other, I am and of extending ourselves where it’s not expected.

SINGSONG : Finding the King With a Golden Voice of Cambodia – A Photographic Film

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In December 2018, I rented a bicycle and started recording songs of the people I would meet in my travels around in Cambodia. Through the sound filled in my ears I slowly started seeing. But few days later I realised listening, sitting in a room that all the songs that people sang were of the same singer. Sinn Sisamouth, the father with the golden voice of Cambodia. I started researching on this singer and soon learnt that Sinn Sisamouth was the most revered singer of Cambodia and South-east Asia then. He had gone missing under mysterious circumstances and was most likely killed in 1976 by the Khmer Rouge regime. And his songs were banned for the next four years to come. Khmer rouge was in power from 1975-79. It is estimated that the brutal regime claimed the lives of more than 1.9 million people. That was around 28 percent of the total population of Cambodia, eliminated. The regime tried to control and take the country back to the Middle ages, forcing millions of people from …

Are you Blinking ?

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It happens only while blinking. Sages and meditators who have closed there eyes for the longest time in there lifetimes, know when to blink. How much later to blink, because blinking comes with a count. And whosoever blinks is certain, to die. And that is how gods were differentiated from humans. because gods do not blink. In our lives, we live through a series of decisions that we make daily, weekly, monthly: but those decisions that subconsciously occur, the quiet ones which get shared with no one. The ones which come with horse power velocity leading us to our destinies are the which cry in silence. Because the only way you will ever awaken is through silence, not through analyzation of facts, not by sorting out good and bad, but through simple silence. By focusing towards the light in the dark, and to particularly stand in that invisible line trying to reveal ones true potential by letting every thought be, by surrendering to all the possibilities, Possibilities. By just showing up day after day after …

Towards Peace

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Peace might not mean getting everyone else to do what you want them to do. Instead, it may involve understanding that people don’t always want what we want and don’t often believe in what we believe. Everyone has their own narrative and is struggling with their own fears. We can begin there. Most of the time, people want to be seen, understood and appreciated. And if we can offer someone  dignity with respect, we give them a gift that is difficult to find. In these dire times when people are forced to push every other, further away, Share, Give; each day, some way. As there lies that one eternal way, to Peace.

Happy Birthday Incredible India

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Your place is not only on the map but also in the heart Freedom and power brings responsibility. That responsibility rests upon each one of us. Before the birth of freedom we endured all the pain of labour, even divided with heavy hearts; that echoing memory of division. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless the past is over and it is the future that must be directed. The future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we might fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today, one more time. The service of India, of Bharat means the service of the millions who suffer. It means not only ending poverty but ignorance, unawareness, diseases and above all, inequality of opportunities, understanding the importance of this ancient land, this oldest active and growing civilization. And so we have to labour and to work and work hard to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for …

Man’s Search for Meaning

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When I returned to Ishbar that night, Shiban seemed speechless. But Dr Kaul looked at him with satisfaction giving an expression like “then he has seen.” And soon the moment came to explain to him what he had seen. We sat around fire, while waiting for the food to arrive. Open your ears, said Dr Kaul and he began speaking like reciting an over practised hymn. “The men in the east, he said, are trees; those in the south are flocks of animals; those in the west are wild plants. Last, those in the north like ourselves, who cried out while they ate other men, were the waters. When the collective sound of chewing filled the air, he started explaining about eating. The act of eating is a violence that causes what is living, in its many forms, to disappear. Whether grass, plants, trees, animals, or human beings, the process is the same. There is always a fire that devours and a substance that is devoured. This violence, bringing misery and torment, will one day …

Bateshwar Temples from the eyes of the legendary Archaeologist KK Muhammad: A Photo Essay and FILM

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My earliest memory of meeting KK Muhammad was in his white room, filled with books to the brim, touching the tall old roof of the Red Fort Complex, his newly ancient home. Astounded, I asked him if he would ever finish reading all these books! Smiling, he said, “Narayan an age comes when you don’t keep books to read them, they read me daily instead. I only use them for references”. Somehow I carried this memory for long, and since then had no guilt for keeping as many books myself, thinking either way of someday reading or at least being read by them. I also remember him today as he came out to be one of the most important person who was behind the archaeological excavations at Ayodhya, that according to him clearly indicated the presence of a temple below the mosque. Father of one of my filmmaker friend, with whom i was fortunate to work together in the making of this film, that became a tribute, a testimony for his commendable and courageous work …

The Paradox

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Who is observing the observer? Are you in front of the camera or behind it ? Or are you it ? Do you realize the change Changing? We walked up to the oldest virgin man. The sevak of shiva sitting on a hill, under a bright summer sun. His skin had earned blocks of pentagon, shaped into numerous lines criss-crossing his whole body. Once wrinkles turned into scales, crafted like on a snake’s skin. For a moment when he stood, I moved and touched that skin. But it felt nothing like it instead it was soft as wool. We walked seven steps together and then he sat in the shadow, near few men who had come from the nearby village, singing. He was humorous. He looked at Maharaj ji and told him that you look older than me! abhi bhi dum lagate ho? Do you still smoke Chillum? And started laughing at his own prank. But when he did, i could see through his mouth till his almost neck, bereft of any bone. wide, narrow, dry and …

Growing together at 500 : A Return Gift

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Big hello, To each one of you, fellow bloggers. It’s not even two complete months since i am writing continuously on ROAD TO NARA; and to see, to touch this milestone of having 500 close knit friends, comes as the most fulfilling feeling. Probably one of the happiest decisions i made to make it all public in these serious Covid Times. Each and every day has been overwhelming with the amount of comments, likes, stories that you expressed and poured out your love on the blog, through various questions, views, queries, praises, some beautiful surprises in mails that i have got and few friends that i have found on this journey. I am not only thankful but owe this day to you all. Knowing that it is only a start. And that the family should only grow. Few friends here suggested that ROAD TO NARA must have a Facebook presence outside of WordPress dedicated to the blog. So, here i thought of a declaration. Whomsoever reads this, you are heartily welcome to join on this …

The Lovers Of Aurangabad

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Where are the lovers? The ones who roamed and flew kisses at each passing nightingale; that one who promised me the movies and photographs on the Valentines. I haven’t seen none and I don’t think one would come, instead i called him last night, in my sleep. His year began with a cold shower last valentines morning, of course it was February, of course it was cold. For many years he dismissed the day of love by saying saint valentines’s mother was a pagan and did not believe in Christ herself, rather was in love with a tree outside her home. So he, my boyfriend decided to love a tree that stood outside their home. You know trees have gender right! Also because his mother would rebel of even thinking about going outside, once she was walking on a street, and just when she reached at the centre of a four way crossing, she yelled out loud saying I detest this urban theatre,  Every one is a clone of the other. Look a likes, inside …

Sunshine Blogger Award – I : Q and A

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Well, this happened, my first award, and I thank dear KrishnaPriya, for forwarding this space and allowing me to take all my time. As many people know that it has only been very little time that i am here but this community, her people, the communication, appreciation and lifting everyone up is overwhelming here. So we are all shining like sun together, this is for all of us. Bur first of all, I request everyone to visit Krishnapriya’s quaint blog, the one who nominated me here – Krishnapriya. She has studied Sanskrit and writes about all the little happiness’s that life presents us. THE SUNSHINE BLOGGER AWARD IS GIVEN TO THE BLOGGERS WHO INSPIRE POSITIVENESS AND CREATIVITY IN THE BLOGGING COMMUNITY. I am happy to accept my first blogger award in exchange for the questions she designed for me to answer. Here we go – Which is your favorite book/movie? One of the two I would say; my all time favourite book has been Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse How are you spending your leisure time?  Well, …