The Cup…

Image via Wikipedia There is a famous anecdote about a wise master and a tea cup. This story is one of my favourite zen stories. The short version goes something like this: Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured … Read more

The Interview…

All through the interview her pretty eyes had this sense of awe in them.  Her entire evening had simply slipped by as she sat in apt attention listening him.  Him, a man whom she hadnt even heard of till about a week ago.

For the seventy year old man, it was somewhat disagreeable to sit and talk on a day as fine as this.  After the first few questions he stood up abruptly and said that he would only continue the interview if they could walk down the lake while he answered the questions.  The condition was posed in such a charming way that she couldnt find any reason to object.

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Adi Parva

mahabharata

I just finished reading Volume 1 of the Mahābhārata known as the “Adi Parva“. Mahābhārata is one of the two greatest epics of India, the other being Ramayana. The epic has Eighteen Volumes, each of about 300 pages of Sanskrit Poetry. The english translation I am reading is about 850 pages in length.

As most of my friends I have spent a lot of my childhood listening, reading and watching stories from the Mahābhārata. I remember waking up early on Sundays when I was a kid to watch an hour of the TV adaptation of the book (That TV show apparently holds the record for the most watched show ever!). The characters from the book, let it be the famous Arjuna or the divine Krishna or the giving Karna or the brave Abhimanyu or even the cunning Shakuni, were characters we knew even as kids. We grew up hearing their stories and understanding their greatness. In every sense, Mahābhārata has been and will always be a huge part of me.

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Conversations With Her – Stories of Love…

Me: I wanted to ask this question to you…
Her: Yeah, go ahead
Me: I asked the same question to a few of my friends and got some interesting responses. I wanted to hear what you would say?
Her: Ok, so are you simply building the suspense?

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Petting Tigers…

As a young boy, I had the privilege of listening to a lot of stories from my grandmother. There were a couple of stories that stood out for me, for the simple reason that I listened them the most.

One was the story of Chandrahasa. The special liking to this story wasn’t coz it was my namesake but for a fact that it had all the amazing ingredients that make a great period story. I do have to give the story credit as it gave me a lot of ideas and concepts that slowly built into my persona.

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