tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70427711882616410502012-02-16T21:59:29.515+05:30small epiphanies of a spiritual agnosticPEOPLE, PLACES, VOICES, FACES...http://www.blogger.com/profile/09915043555307038876noreply@blogger.comBlogger351100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7042771188261641050.post-50963849431825386152011-05-16T11:41:00.002+05:302011-05-16T18:28:44.544+05:30

image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mystery_Novels_Magazine_Spring_1933.jpg I picked up this crime thriller by Mark Billingham from the British Council Library the other day. For all my love for the literary "greats," I go to sleep every day with the exploits of gory, psychotic, Dexter-esque cops and killers. In any case, something in this book I'm reading set me off on the

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For some reason, I’ve been ruminating the truth about cats and dogs today.Perhaps my canine thoughts owe their origin to Asterix (my Jack Russel Terrier, son of my heart if not my womb) who is, I know for sure, pining at home in our absence as my husband and I spend two weeks in the Andaman islands.Maybe our frequent conversations about Asterix and his antics (we're missing him too!) make my

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The mango tree in my Nani’s garden is my ultimate metaphor for life. My most blissful moments of communion with myself in total peace happened in the lap of its wide branches during the long, hot, summer-holiday afternoons when everybody else was taking their mandatory siesta.Hidden for hours amidst its rich leaves, I learnt so much about life in general and myself in particular. Alone with the

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The Telegraph recently had an interesting article on beggars who are also money lenders to small traders. Apparently, the average beggar (without special deformities etc.) earns between 8 and 10 K per month.Of course, since they can’t be seen to have any conspicuous consumption, they save most of their earnings and are tremendously cash rich. A beggar who drowned in the Hoogly recently left

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image: avsar-deeds.blogspot.comI’ve been revisiting Foucault’s History of Madness and it has started off a thought process within me that, I think, is long overdue and was just waiting for a push.As I look again the journey of what I see as alternative states of mental (st)ability, the stagnation of more than a century of rut-thought is offensive. It is, in fact, a great disservice to those of

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It must’ve been the sight of Sania Mirza’s extreme mehndi that did it: I really have no better explanation for the sudden onset of my recent henna / hina / camphire / mehndi-centred thoughts.Maybe it’s the early swelter of summer heat this year. I swear I can smell the mehndi plant in our garden. The hotter it became, the more the plant disbursed its distinctive fragrance into the dry,

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Us versus them--that is the essence of the civilized, industrialized, fractured world.It is the absolute antithesis of the pantheistic nature of spirituality and the spiritual aspiration. The pantheistic sees everything natural as “us,” indistinguishable from “us” and therefore an integral part of the Universal whole and the param-atman--The Supreme Atman—the Source, the Primordial Energy from

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I've been getting questions on religion and spirituality or religion vs. spirituality.Or the relationship between religion and spiritutality.Let me, from the very outset, say that I don't really subscribe to oppositions. I don't really believe things must be paired either. And I certainly don't think things must be associated with each other. In my considered opinion, therefore, religion and

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When I think of how my self is constructed, I envision layers that are complete in themselves but that create and affect and are affected by other layers.Each layer is not just a "container" for the one within. There is an active chemistry at work between and within and outward and inward and my body-mind-soul-spirit is an interactive construct not an exclusive one.Which brings me to another set

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Thinking more of the body versus soul debate, I am impressed by some of the writings of the upanishads.The father-teacher Aruni says to his son-disciple Svetaketu:“Sa ya eso anima, aiatat atmyam idam sarvam; Tat satyam, sa atma, tat tvam asi, Svetaketo--”(Chandogya Upanisad, VI.8.7)Loosely translated:“You are that Atman, infinite, immortal, and ever pure: that is your true nature. You are not

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As I sit at my desk on this cloudy, sullen day, feeling sorry for myself, I suddenly see three squirrels cavorting. Even as I write this, they are running, jumping, skittering up and down my window sill, chasing each other, feeling the thrill of teetering on the edge—just because they can.My Jack Russell Terrier Asterix has a frantically scampering alter-ego that my daughter has christened his

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At 11.50 am on January 28, 2009, Dr. Christopher Augur, a scientist working with the French government’s IRD in Mexico City, was shot in the head for a princely sum of four thousand eight hundred Euros. A friend was driving him after he had exchanged the money at the airport. As their car entered the viaduct, three cars blocked their way and two gunmen demanded the money from Dr. Augur. He handed

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This morning, I had breakfast at the Tollygunge Club with one old friend I see often and another I hadn't met for 26 years. The first lives and works here in Calcutta and the other teaches at MIT now but years ago, all three of us studied French at Alliance Francaise and read for our undergraduate degrees at St. Xavier's.As they sometimes do, the years in between just seemed to vanish in the

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One perfect, balmy night in a small Turkish town, I met Hulya Celek.Back home, I find myself thinking of her at odd moments. I am glad I met her. Her spirit inspires me. Her confidence uplifts me. Her kindness, warmth, hospitality and above all, her laughter as as she constantly battles the custodians of tradition make her unforgettable.It was Rubik’s 16th birthday and we were in Selcuk in Turkey

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The last 2 years have been strange. After years (decades!) of losing total touch, old school friends have been returning to my life in ones and twos. First there were a few drops, then a trickle and now that we're all on Facebook, there's a veritable deluge!I'm glad. I like the women we've become, each one of us. As Indrani put it, "I like where I'm at right now." Anjali, Promita, Indrani, Nila,

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My mother never earned a penny, but oh, she worked! We were an extended or “joint” business family of 14 members with one or more houseguests almost all days of the year and my mother managed that household and its resources so wonderfully. Individual tastes and special dietary needs were effortlessly catered to. A virtual army of drivers, vendors, part-timers and full timers were administered

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A friend pointed me out to this fantastic poem that said..(and I excerpt):"When I am an old woman I shall wear purpleWith a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me......I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tiredAnd gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bellsAnd run my stick along the public railingsAnd make up for the sobriety of my youth.I shall go out in my slippers in the

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In 1854, when “the great White Chief in Washington” offered to buy the land from the Indians, Chief Seattle, leader of the Suquamish and other Indian tribes around Washington's Puget Sound, delivered what is considered to be one of the most beautiful and profound environmental statements ever made. The city of Seattle is named for the chief, whose speech was in response to a proposed treaty

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In the late 1980s, when I was a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Georgia Comparative Literature Department, I would often complain to my colleagues about the abysmal English written my most of my students. “They know only one language, and they can’t even handle writing a correct sentence in it. I can’t believe they’re college students!” I could often be heard complaining on

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It has been heard from time immemorial in every culture, every nation, every corner of the world.Call it what you will—Om.The music of the spheres.The harmony of the universes.The rhythms that make the stars burn and the planets turn.The tunes that make nature dance.The primal vibrations that guide the indomitable life-force in the flowing of rivers, in the salmon swimming against the currents;

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OK, Vipul, taking a page from your blog, here!While I was writing my post, my son who just turned 16 was writing his own version, just for fun. Now that the contest is over, I present his thoughts on the subject.I must emphatically add that this is pure, unadulterated Arjan Banerjee--not a word has been changed; not a punctuation mark has been altered; not a thought has been injected or edited.I

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This post has been published by me on the occasion of the Teachers' Day as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 2; the second edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.Kal, aaj or kal, I take great pride in my “noble” profession as an educationist.“Noble?” you ask.Well, there’s noble and there’s noble.You can

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All over the news today. Who knew what about Kandahar. Who covered whose a**-hem, political persona, shall we say? Who shrugged? Who covered? Who recovered?All is being revealed--and reviled--in a "Sitting-down-for-thinking" session of a certiain poll-itically down-trodden party that isn't thinking too much but is certainly not standing up proudly for itself nowadays!Well with the "immovable"

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Biji, my grandmother, like a lot of our grandparents, was a very political being.Growing up in those heady days when young people agitated not for their own small freedoms, but for the big “Independence” for their country, Biji joined Bapu in satyagraha and non-cooperation, took her 4 year old son to shoo Simon away and cried bitterly as two pieces of her heart were ripped away from her by the

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Way back in the 1980s, Roger von Oech’s A Whack on the Side of the Head became a cult book for advertising and marketing professionals. As a fresh-out-of-college Trainee Copywriter in one of India’s best-known advertising agencies (the one where the legendary Satyajit Ray worked once upon a time), I was introduced to this book by my Creative Directors Rema and Pranab and for a while, I took it

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I beg to differ with you this time, Mr. Shakespeare! What’s in a name? Ask an Indian student with a name other than Christian, who has been to study abroad in the Western World (and especially in the US of A.) (cartoon courtesy http://www.toonpool.com/)After they’ve “so not got your name” and asked you to spell it (and still mispronounced it), commented on your colour (“like, you’ve got gold

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This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 1, the first edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.Scum and cream both surface, slimily climbing the fluid staircase of their liquid wombs, sucking life from the amniotic juice that gives them their existence.Gaining texture,

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Let me be an instrument that plays in harmony with the music of the Universes that are and that will be and that have the potential of becoming.When I die, let me become the spectrum.I will be black and absorb all coloursI will be white and reflect all coloursI will be red and glow with the energies that fuel the UniversesI will be blue in agreement between the oceans and the skies in all the

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Assume Earth is the womb of an organism we have named “Universe.”Each living, breathing creature, every natural phenomenon, then, is a cell within this organ of the larger organism that is our Universe.Each cell, of every colour, shape, size, capacity and talent, has a very specific and vital part to play in the grand scheme of the birth of new generations of Universes.When the cells perform

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I have no fixed and codified self; no identity that has a permanent design.I am a kaleidoscope of multiple identities; a shifting composite of little, fragmented, brilliantly coloured pieces of all my experiences, all the cities I have inhabited; all the diverse lives I have lived.I believe there is a precision intelligence behind and beyond the universe. I believe all forms of being, however

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I sat down and thought about it, and in the 365 and a-quarter days of every year, there are basically 3 types of days that we “observe.”There are those days that are supposed to be unequivocally happy—birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Id, Gurpurab, Diwali—and we celebrate those with gathering, gift giving and feasting. There are those days that are supposed to be unequivocally sad—9/11, death

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There is absolutely no denying or disputing the fact that our Indian society still wants women to follow their men.The wife, by her very definition in our culture, plays supporting role to her husband who is the hero:She is अर्धांगिनी (ardhangani), one half of her husband.She is सहधर्मिणी (sahadharmini), an associate in the fulfillment of his human and divine goals;She is सहकर्मिनी (sahakarmini),

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The above pictures appeared in various newspapers and on-line news reports today. Need I say more about the relationship between "faith" and "science"?

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In religion and politics, fatwas are issued, tankhaiyyas made, idols broken, ancient mosques razed, missionaries burnt alive by mobs.In real life, however, individuals interact with other individuals. Priyanka’s rich father will react one way to his daughter marrying poor Rizwanur. Anju’s father may react entirely differently.In real life, Anju marries Husien and they both retain their religions

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Once again that same old same old."Why do you write what you do?"According to some of my anonymous readers, my poems are weird and incomprehensible; my stories are twisted; my descriptive pieces are too detailed; my ramblings about life are really eccentric and in general my stuff is too complicated to read.The experts, on the other hand, find my writing "really interesting" and advise that my

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