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Mundane distortions in the Divine discourse of Bhagvad-Gita

by BS Murthy William von Humboldt who wrote seven-hundred verses in praise of the Bhagvad-Gita averred that it is the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue. All the same, the boon of an oral tradition that kept the divine discourse of yore alive for millennia became the bane of the Gita going by the seemingly mundane distortions it had to endure. Strangely it was Sir Edwin Arnold the Englishman who sought to separate the divine wheat from the mundane chaff by branding s23-s27 of ch8 as the ranting of some vedanti in his century old ‘Song Celestial’. While interpreting the Gita in English verse an attempt was made by the author to identify the interpolations in it and codify the same for the benefit of the modern reader. One way to scent the nature of these, if not zero in on every one of them, is to subject the text to the twin tests of sequential conformity and structural economy. Sequential conformity is all about un...

Delhi Metro

I ain't a man who is very fond of technology and stuff like that, neither am I expert on engineering marvels. But Delhi Metro, a mass rail transport project is something that not only awes but inspires. A perfect example of how good technology and nice business brains can merge up to create a very convenient public utility. as it speaks of the fact how minimum government interference and maximum of its support can create marvels such as these.Its quite sad enough that we are not learning quite many lessons from this success.

IPL - A simple story of power and revenge

Everyone around here must have heard or read or seen on TV about the mess surrounding the Indian Premier League. A league where money, power and entertainment was glossed and embossed up on the game of cricket making it a nice cash cow of an enterprise. So what is this new mess all about? Well, India is a land of jungles, and it is the law of the Jungles that rules our lands. (The judiciary is too piled up with work as always and legislature well, is another story as always). So, we have this envious rich man, called Lalit Modi, who is running IPL like his very own private business. He sells teams and contracts at high rates. To cut the long story short, he comes across a minister of the ruling congress party who wishes his best for a close female friend. Wishing best implies, shares in one of the new formed IPL teams. As it always happens in the jungles, rabbit is eaten by wolf, Lion eats the wolf and the grasshopper was what the rabbit had in breakfast. So Mr. Modi, slightly missing ...

Vedanta

Vedanta (Devanagari: वेदान्त, Vedānta) was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a sandhied form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedas". Well, when I was browsing through the TV channels today, I was brought to a halt when one of the Spiritual Gurus were talking about Vedanta and in that 20 minutes of the program, he told a few things about the differences or rather the transformation of Vedas to Vedanta. The most important thing that I liked was the order of facts. In Vedas, he said, the faith is imposed on. As in, “You need to do that this way and this way alone” the tone in the four Vedas were more orthodox – where the Slokas or the chants instructs one to follow whatever is written/told and not to question. This is similar in other religions, like Christians and Islam, where questioning God or the faith is prohibited in some forms. This looks autocratic o...

What happened to the other sports?

Hi All, Let’s be honest...we are primarily a one sport nation. We virtually eat, sleep and breathe cricket. [And many other un mentionable actions...:)] It seems that if you are born Indian then your default sport is cricket. Your sports icon is Tendulkar and sports entertainment means watching cricket in channels dedicated for cricket! So where did all the other sports go? Just offhand any one of us can probably count 5 other sports which are so popular globally but are barely included even in small talk in India. So why is cricket so disproportionately popular? Who is to blame for this anomaly? And more importantly how can we rectify this lopsidedness? As for apportioning blame, I guess it has to be shared among various sections. The administrators of various sports who haven’t really been aggressive in promoting their respective sports, the viewers who simply refuse to even temporarily shift loyalties to other sports and even to some extent history! The British Raj left a long la...

I TOO HAD A LOVE STORY

A book by ravinder singh,26 years old,a software engineer hailing from burla,orissa...this book clearly relates to the reality magically. it asks us a question which people normally dont even think about. DO LOVE STORIES EVER DIE??? Although in this 21st century love may start differently..rather completely diffrently...but may end in a way no one may ever even dream of..and when it ends..it shatters all.feel the pain of love and then seperation,in I TOO HAD A LOVE STORY.