The year was 1290 . A crowd had gathered around a clearing, where broken down pillars marked the presence of an ancient temple, now long gone. A young boy, just 14 years old, leaned against one of those pillars, deep in thought. Then, he began speaking, and the crowd fell silent, listening to his every word. He spoke without any notes, translating the Bhagavat Gita, from Sanskrit, which only the pundits knew, to the language everyone in the village knew and spoke – a variety of Prakrit which developed into the Marathi language. Even as he spoke, one of the men in the audience realized how momentous this event was, and how important this composition would be. He began writing down the words the young boy spoke, and this composition was named by its author and composer, the Bhavartha Deepika – the enlightening meaning (of the Bhagavat Gita). Now, the ancient, holy text, was no longer restricted to the pundits, but accessible to all, understood easily by them, composed as it was, in their...
I began this blog almost a year and a half ago – to be precise, on the 17th of November, 2007. Over the years, I have traveled quite a lot, and during the last year and a half, have written about my experiences too. It has been a wonderful journey, meeting like minded people and learning about new places too, discovering much about myself too. Thanks, Sandhya, for encouraging me to blog! As a celebration, here is a post about two places I have visited recently, or rather, to be accurate, a trailer of what is to come soon, within the next week. …. and Two Travelogues Coming Up!!!! Travel, they say, broadens the mind – be it a short trip just to a place you haven’t been before, or to a place you have visited a number of times. So it has been with me too. Over the last two weeks, I have visited two places – one right in my backyard, so to speak, and the other more than a thousand kilometers away, to a city I have visited often, and where I went to the same places I have been to...