Growing up I heard stories about marriages being decided based on whether a flower dropped from the idol or not (प्रसाद पळ्ळो). This ritual as I understood was performed at a temple where the priest would place a flower on the deity and do an Aarti. The family asking whether the marriage should go ahead … Read more
I am a big fan of Bhavani Mai’s harikathas. She lectures like a stern headmistress through her powerful oratory demonstrating her proficiency in Kannada, Hindi, Marathi, Konkani and Sanskrit. Through everyday examples, she brings to the masses some of the most complex spiritual concepts from our scriptures. She goes from town to town through our … Read more
How many times have we entered a temple with complete focus on God and his form and with total concentration in conveying our love and devotion to him? Very often or shall I say almost always, we enter the temple with ten things on our mind, we add a few as we sit … Read more
Long time ago, while we were visiting a temple in Karnataka, I was sad to see that the temple exterior had been painted carelessly with bright colourful paint without paying attention to highlighting the features in the art. This seemed like murder of the art form, of the work the earlier builders would have put … Read more
As members of the GSB community we all relate to a few things – the specific cuisine, the rituals, festivals. But what also binds us together is the language in itself. Its in the songs we grew up with, the names we called and the vocabulary we heard so often. This recording I found on … Read more
These days I never seem to have enough time…I sleep late, skip meals, constantly multitask. I attribute it to raising a toddler. But the real culprit is the high speed internet. A typical evening goes like this: Kids have gone to sleep. I open my inbox and voila!! There is a clearance sale at XYZ. … Read more
Ah! The luxury of taking bath without worrying that you have to rush out for office or that the water is running out। The comfort of getting a massage without spending on exotic spas. Wish I could explain my toddler how lucky she is at her age! Growing up in Mumbai suburbs in the 1980’s … Read more