All posts filed under: Ancient Life and Research

Walking Through Time- Exploring Prehistoric Lakhudiyar Cave Shelter and Paintings

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On my way to Jageshwar Temple, at a curve I came across a board and behind it a big Rocky Mountain that pulled me to inspect it. Upon reading I was surprised to learn they were a Prehistoric Rock Shelter that had paintings and shapes of men and animals drawn by men of different period. It was an amazing and compelling short visit that took me by surprise. I filmed and posted it on Road To Nara YouTube channel this week. It’s my second video and slowly I shall find my rhythm to post more frequently there. Also there is a ‘caption option’ as I am creating these videos in Hindi(majorly) + English = ‘Hinglish’ as we call it, for anyone who is living anywhere outside Indian Subcontinent. If you haven’t yet come over to the channel, please find it as an invite and be kind to subscribe it. I will make sure you have as good a journey there as you have had on this blog. Sharing some images of that day and a …

10 Secrets about Maha Kumbh Mela of 2025 that Each of us Should know

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Tonight is Paush Purnima night as I right this. And it marks the start of the largest and the Oldest Congregation of Humankind ever meeting at the Sangam of India’s three ancient Rivers Ganga, Jamuna and the legendary Saraswati. The Maha Kumbh Mela of 2025 is set to take place in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, from January 13 to February 26, 2025. Kumbh literally means a kalash “Pot” or “pitcher” in Sanskrit. and has significance going back to the times unknown. It is the most remarkable gathering of ascetics from all sects, traditions and cults in India. The Kumbh Mela is believed to commemorate the legendary event of the churning of the ocean (Samudra Manthan) when the nectar of immortality (Amrit) was discovered. It is said that a drop each of this divine nectar fell into the rivers from the ‘pitcher’ the kumbh at four locations where the Mela is held, giving these places immense spiritual significance. Bathing ritual is the most significant ritual performed at Kumbh. Although taking a dip in the sacred waters on …

Narayan Kaudinya Anuradha Rudrapriya Upadhyay Gadhimai Mela Festval, Nepal

10 Years to an Insane Assignment Of Life ‘River Of Heads’ 

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It’s been 10 years of those 10 electrifying current-passing days for what brought seeing to my spirit. Even today I only think of ‘why’, was I there or was it that I was demanded by the Mother to witness it. Someone who has been away from most kind of cruelties, being born in a lineage who never tasted fish, leave meat. May be it happened to shake wake me up for all what life revolves around, some harsher realities, some withering truths. To may be learn the ways and come out of the skin of merely being a meek observer that after a decade of witnessing it eventually brought me immense strength. And learn to observe to absorb. And I absorbed;  the smell of the blood, the count of the severed big buffalo heads or peacocks, even pigs, goats, ducks and bodies of geese. And of course it were not the fallen bodies that pricked me but those dead big open eyes that were always looking at someone or the Sky but not you. And …

A Dairy of a Photographer and his Incredible Rural India Stories

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Being a Photographer myself, I have always been fascinated by the old world charm that Rural life provided to my spirit. And Its not just about India but whole of South and South-East Asia had an unexplainable charm to it, still has. There is so much in common. Culture going centuries back. And today in 2023, when the world has started sprinting at a breakneck speed; when people, younger generations have almost, already left things behind; I feel an urge and need to conserve things, documents, stories, creations and life of the past. As much as I can in my limited means. And what better there is to learn and study from someone who himself has been a conservationist in the real sense. Jyoti Bhatt’s work is a proof in itself, that had there been no him, we wouldn’t have ever known what Rural India of the past looked like. Here sharing excerpts from his travels, some never seen images and stories that only his closed ones must have known. The diary of Jyoti Bhatt …

How an Old Man Taught Me to Reach the Tower of the Eternal Bliss, the Mystery of Fire And of the Universe On the Banks of Ganga?

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I had a quick two-day tour to Haridwar with parents. A meeting with a Guru was arranged and they were excited about it. I, as was the deal had only one plan; to walk as far and as close to the mother river Ganga, as much she allows. 4 a.m. When we reached Parents took to the ashram and I to the mother river. But this time without impressions. Past months have seen a difference in the way I am doing things and one thing that I am particularly peaceful about is leaving the camera first and then leaving this want, to make the most beautiful, meaningful looking photographs. I am not. I am not doing it. I am letting the days pass by without making any digital memory out of it. I feel no desire anymore to keep making memories. As of now I imagine I have done my quota of “always looking like a crow” to do something all the time. I am walking without me institutionally looking to make images or even …

One Deep Journey to the Indian South : A Visual Study of Thiruvegappura Ambala Observing the Culture and Music of God’s Own Country

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There is one advice I must give. Travel; at least once in your lifetime get yourself a one way ticket to any place that has ever called you. Solo is better, just like Fear of the unknown is good. I would say, rather pounce on it and do it all the way. And even do it, as you doubt your self; setting aside gloom, prepare yourself to become aware of every breath that is going to come to you. Travel. Ever since February and March graced me to undertake an odyssey to the Indian South, it opened grand doors to a time and space that weren’t only old but preserved for centuries the fragrance of its tradition, from corruption that we have become accustomed to. Ceremonies, rituals, chants and most importantly the discipline of the two magic hours; to become conscious of the rise and the setting of the sun, and it being celebrated like a reserved festival for the soul with utmost attention, precision while guiding oneself to flow in following the cycle of …

A Celebration for the Sun: A Brief History of Chhath in Paintings and Images

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I had not decided to celebrate today. But nature pulled me in. For last few months I had been parallel-y working on a project in New Delhi. Rather it is my expression on Climate Change living in a region which in itself is an extension of extremism in most ways. For one it is making our lives vulnerable to diseases here, viruses, climate catastrophes in terms of pollution and per square population density, in the National Capital Region. Working on a project such as this has taken my breath, my life in a way that I sometimes remunerate myself a quote that Andrei Tarkovsky used to say on ‘Cinema requiring sacrificing of yourself. That You should belong to it, it shouldn’t belong to you. Cinema uses your life, not vice versa. In all ways, i have proved him right, without making much progress. On a whim last night I and team decided to visit the Yamuna river early morning as mist has started to settle over the flowing water. We walked till noon to film the …

The Curse of A Tale: And Why each mother should make her child first, a storyteller?

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Sound is important. Anyone who takes on a story takes on the responsibility of passing it on. A.K Ramanujan, an Indian Poet and Folklorist wrote in the preface to his book Folktales from India, “Stories and words not only have weight; they also have wills and rages, and they can take different shapes and exact revenge against a person who doesn’t tell them and release them into the world. They are there before any particular teller tells them; stories hate it when they are not passed on to others, for they can come into being again and again only in that act of translation. If you know a tale, any tale; you owe it not only to others but to the tale itself to tell it; otherwise it suffocates. Traditions have to be kept in good repair, transmitted, or else, beware, such tales seem to say, things will happen to you. You can’t hoard them.” He then tells of a Kondh tribal who possessed four stories which he was too lazy to repeat. One night, …

Lore of the Light: A Brief History of Nine Planets in India- ४

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It was a short journey and my first to Ujjain in Central India. The city of time itself. I was almost strolling when on the ghats of Shipra river I met a sage sitting alone but not alone. He looked strangely wild and attractive, focused. He was arranging his stones, picking them carefully as if they were beings and putting them in an unusual order, only after looking for many a seconds towards the sky. Curious, i had many questions to ask. And i did. This conversation was recorded thus and is presented like every story must. Also read: Turiya and Ramakrishna: Who are you? Q. What is your name?A. Narayan. Waah, Narayan! okay Narayan, Listen carefully. I will start from the start. Vedas, India’s four ancient sacred book-length accumulations of living wisdom. The oldest literature in the history of mankind. Since the last standardisation of the vedas, dozens of centuries ago, these hymns have been flawlessly preserved, syllable for syllable and word for word, by their priestly keepers. The hymns of the vedas were …

Leaves from a Jungle: The Life of Verrier Elwin living with the Gonds in Central India – I/II

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My co-travellers here on the Road to Nara, must already know and have experienced by now how much there is to absorb in India that is Bharat. Every state works like an organ. Each region in contrast to the other in food, language yet somehow bonded by sense and tradition. In my brief career as a traveller, I have desired not just to travel as much, but also to learn, research and document life of other travellers who once walked and measured this nation in a different light, time and dimension. The ones who somehow recorded the flow that once was; those happenings which can only be dreamt of today but can never again be touched. Also Read: How Jyoti Bhatt inspired the new age Travellers and Documentarians with his life? I was an NCC(National Cadet Corps, youth wing of Indian Armed Forces) Cadet during my university years and had a brief opportunity to rigorously walk throughout the Central Indian State of India, Madhya Pradesh for over a month. During one such walk on a …

Jyoti Bhatt : A Tribute to a Living Legend : A Photographic Essay on Rural Gujarati Indian Life(1971-1987)

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Today, he is 87 and I will only wish that somehow a film compiling his works, his life, no matter however directed, should come out before we lose all of it. His experiences of that time and era must be recorded.

Turiya and RamaKrishna: Who Are You?- ११

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Nara commentates … First called is Svante, alittle five year old sannyas aspirant, and subodhi, his mother. Ramakrishna tells him to shut his eyes which he does, instantly, with full obedience, tight and very still, the little pouches strainingto do just right. His knees are held bytwo chubby-small intentful hands. We all lookwith breathless stillnesssurrounding an open rose as the little swami emerges, Love, Little Anando.  : ँ :Last seven days were work but nights kept leading me to the milk mountains. Full moon i.e the sharad purnima of October, kept revealing magic on one condition. That I must not close my eyes.  If I observe a graph of my inner self, it has been nothing less than hydrogen working its way towards the biggest star. Slowly but so intense, that being a writer becomes a curse because I cannot explain it.  : ँ : In Omkareshwar, a few years ago, on the banks of the river Narmada. A register found me; a life of a french yogi documented in images glued on its thin white pages. It was a real treat. Because they were not mere photographs, but codes, Sri Yantras, …

Knowing Gandhi and Learning from Mahatma

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Today is Lal Bahadur Shastri’s birthday. The second Prime Minister of India, who was rather killed/poisoned on his visit to Tashkent in 1966. He had gone to sign a peace deal organised by the US and the USSR seminaries, UN security members with Pakistan’s Military Leader Ayub Khan after the war of 1965. The deal was signed in the evening as the Peace Pact failed. The next morning, he was found dead in his room. For days, months and years that commenced and kept passing by; it was less strange, rather maddening that no one ever asked for an inquiry, no one protested, no body looked for proofs or questioned the circumstances of his death. Death of the head of a nation state was accepted as mere fate. He was a sincere and a firm leader. He did not shy away from going into war with Pakistan in 1965, that was pushed on him merely a year later he took office; and only three years later, after Nehru’s historical blunder when China opened fire and …

Truth, Evil and the Sun

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When we reached Gopeshwar that night, Gana seemed speechless. But Neel looked at him with satisfaction giving an expression like then he has seen. We sat around fire, while waiting for the food to arrive. Open your ears said Neel 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. And those in the north like ourselves, who cried out while they ate other men, were the waters. When the collective sound started filling 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 be carried out by those who inflict it. Pouring milk into the fire- every morning, every evening- …

How i found my Will? And sooner my health. The Kushti world of Ancient Indian Wrestling: A Photographic Essay -II

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It was a week later, since that night of inner churning, when I met Sangram Singh again, and for the first time at his one room flat in Delhi. And most interestingly, he was already drinking, since sunrise. His whole house smelled of tobacco. Lights not brighter than the ones we sat under, in his auto. The green wall behind him wore a Hanuman calendar of the previous year. His eyes swollen, pointed, looking towards me, followed my gaze from the wall to the glass that was kept at the low table beside his bed, rum still left in it. “It’s not good for a wrestler, you know”. He picked up the glass and emptied it in one gulp. When I was young even the smell of this bothered me, but now it’s my nectar. It is this, which makes me feel alive. But Narayan, you look different today, Sangram suddenly getting aware of my presence. You seem all ready? He said looking at my camera. You wanted to see the wrestling place, right? I …

9 Ancient Yogic Ways to fight Corona Pandemic

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When flood comes, the fish eat ants. But when water dries, the ants eat fish.  – Theory of Life, Virus will be defeated ! Humans started moving away from the natural ways when we began to wear clothes, started eating for pleasure and embraced temporarily practised norms over instinctive urges. And over the years this is what blind development has done. Among the “civilised”, right and wrong is determined by cultural conventions and rules, he continued, “There were times when polygamy was considered a solution when there was a shortage of men due to war”, instead it continued for centuries ever after. I was remembering my Guru Maharaj ji, who two years ago had initiated me towards divine love. For last few days as i was going through my diaries of the times when we both had found time to speak at length about life and laws, and how can discipline determine the direction and intensity of one’s journey. I found something that he had given me, a potion that i found useful in these times of isolation …

5 Ancient Secrets of Yogic Wellness – III

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A long time friend and astrologer, who works as an Engineer in California has cautioned that the next 10-15 years is going to be very tumultuous for the world. Many regional fights, wars, cyber, economic and military are going to take place in different parts of the world. Ever-since his predictions came out to be true to each word he spoke on Trump, i am more aware and taking his predictions seriously. He said that the world is going to see an unprecedented, rapid change in the next decade and half.  And today in 2021, as the world cautiously tries to stand up again from the pandemic, it might need more than just the ideas for wellness. It needs ideals and it needs ancient wisdom to lead us through this complex maze that our whole world becomes such that it never succumbs to any inner or outer infections.  There is no doubt that we have to bring our wandering mind back to breath, and take responsibility for our body, like we do with our tastes. Our …

The cost of Life?-II

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“Conserve”, because No, nature does not need us instead we need nature to stay relevant as life on earth.” By the end of 2020, the year had dented many a egos; almost all brands; Fashion, went out of fashion. Food, nobody trusted nobody’s hand. People afraid to touch, and our homes turned into new day Jails. Even as i write this, humans throughout the globe are still afraid, vulnerable to come out of homes, economies hanging, and many a countres are going into yet another Lockdown. All this while, in last one year, few things got cleared and were prayed for. We found ourselves back to an age where nothing more than the most required was needed. Nature took her stand. She wanted to breathe or rather more crudely wanted us to show her version of mirror, where only; AirWaterFoodShelterA relaxed and a calm mindA healthy body, were required. Everything else is a want, she said. These are your true needs. : ँ : There are many systems on our planet. Many various cycles, quietly …

A brief history of life on Earth and the origin of Yoga-I

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It has been many centuries since humans have stopped moving from one place to another. Almost the majority of people today grow up in long settled societies. This new year 2021 AD, has arrived with a sense of responsibility in me to become a change what i feel should change. This ongoing virus is being lived on many levels together. Pandemics had happened before but it became unreal because we lived with it even though we didn’t contact it, in real circumstances and digitally there after all the more. What went wrong? What is it that we as people are overseeing what is coming? Whom have we been fooling? But before we go the factors i wanted to know and learn with you all, this mystery of Who actually we all are, all of us? And How did we became what we have become? Lets start from the start   Earth started a very long time ago. To figure out exactly how long, lets just figure out how much a billion is? A billion is …

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 …

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 …

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 …