Right. So… I have been drawing during the afternoons and occasionally late into the night for the past few weeks trying to find a style that suits me. I really like stick figures, in part because they are easy to draw, but also because they are so easy to relate to. People don’t see them as representations of reality but as symbols that represent real life like metaphors. A straight line with a slightly-bent-back head on top of it can show pride. A slouchy bent line can depict depression. I wanted to do something like that.

But the problem with stick figures is that they have been done to death. I wanted something less common. With that in mind, I have been experimenting with a minimal cartoony style that is part Bruce Timm (the guy behind Justice League cartoon series style of drawing) and part Genndy Tartakovsky (the creator of Dexter’s Lab and Samurai Jack). In fact, this is an even more stripped down version of those styles.

Here are a few early doodles to show what I mean.

A social media baithak will happen at the Connaught Place CCD on 11th September. It’s a way for folks who want to learn more about social media to sit down with slightly more experienced people and talk about how social media can help their endeavours — both online and offline.

I am going to be one of the so-called ‘gurus’ at the event. So drop in if you want to. You can get more details about the event at the official Eventbrite page, or on Facebook.

Mumbai Mid-Day did a story on the changing face of comic book superheroes in which yours faithfully had the good fortune of being quoted. The article was about how the old superheroes fought for truth, justice and values, as opposed to how the newer ones (like Iron Man in his movie avatar) are cocky, arrogant and sarcastic.

That, psychologists in the UK believe, is good, positive reinforcement for kids getting their fill of superhero movies. Unlike the playboyish, cocky personality of millionaire Tony Stark, the real man behind alter ego Iron Man. Did the superhero just fall from grace?

Delhi-based comic book writer and blogger Vijayendra Mohanty, doesn’t think so. “If you’ve followed Iron Man’s story, you’ll know that he was actually a weapons manufacturer who converted and changed into someone who uses the same technology to do good for mankind. That’s a statement that you can change, and do good regardless of who you are and where you come from. Isn’t that a positive message?”

I think kids are way smarter than the concerned psychologists give them credit for. Besides, a goodie-goodie Superman was the ideal in the days immediately following the second world war, when “good” and “evil” were easily definable (America = Good. Commies = Evil.)

The state of affairs is far more complicated these days. “Good” and “evil” are not diametrically opposite camps. The modern superhero conveys this message. The world is not black and white the sides are not set in stone. Good isn’t just something you are, it is also something you can become. Same goes for evil as well.

Out of nowhere, an old hobby of mine has returned to haunt my afternoon hours. I have started sketching again. The last time I did this was during school, in the back pages of mathematics practice books. To be honest, there IS a lot of math in drawing. I am sharing a few sketches I made during the afternoons of these last couple of weeks.

The Huffington Post has a great opinion piece up on Hinduism and the changing face of its mythology – Mythology, Media and the Future of Hinduism.

Here’s something that struck me recently. The deities that ruled the pantheon of Hindu gods in early Vedic times were markedly different from the ones that define Hinduism today. The old gods are still well-known, but they do not find worship, or even charitable mention in the more modern texts.

Indra (god of thunder, king of gods), for example, was once a mighty hero who went up against universe-threatening monstrosities and displayed plenty of courage and strength. He had vices too, but these went into giving him the appearance of a flawed hero. As time passed, these flaws became the centre of his being and he was portrayed as a constantly fearful, irresponsible, and power-hungry keeper of the throne of heaven. Take a look at any of the current mythological TV serials and you will see what I am talking about. All he ever seems to do is enjoy the company of women, bully others, and run to the higher gods whenever faced with a threat to his power.

The same goes for other Vedic deities like Agni (god of fire), Varuna (god of the seas), and Vayu (god of the winds). These guys used to be big-time legends back then. But now they have become side characters as our focus on the pantheon has shifted. And this is what brings me to my point.

I think the shift has been in a general direction. The pantheon of India’s gods, goddesses, and other deities is a spectrum of qualities and characteristics. Each god has a personality and the state of India’s civilisation has been reflected in its choice of gods. Modern India worships Ganesha (god of knowledge, remover of obstacles), Lakshmi (goddess of prosperity), and Saraswati (goddess of wisdom and knowing).

The focus has shifted from gods that govern the elements of nature to gods that govern abstract concepts of the mind. These are not new gods. They have always been around, but as times changed, they were given newer responsibilities and their hidden facets came into play. Saraswati is no longer simply wife to Brahma (creator of the universe), Ganesha is much more than the dutiful son to Shiva (destroyer of things) and Parvati. They have, for lack of a better word, grown up.

This brings me to the next logical point. If the gods of yesterday were elemental, and the gods of today are conceptual, what will the gods of tomorrow be like?

I think they will continue down this same road and end up being even more immaterial – like ideas, archetypes, qualities and characteristics. The whole business of having gods is about prioritising – about telling ourselves what our place in the universe is. It is about making an orderly list of important things and putting ourselves in the list somewhere. The nature of this list keeps changing as we learn more about ourselves and the world we live in.

So while once upon a time the elements of nature were things we considered to be above and beyond us, now we consider knowledge, wisdom and prosperity to be more important. We have changed our minds about what really matters to us. We were survivalists back then – people whose primary concern was to keep the forces of nature happy. Now we are less concerned with survival and more with meaning and learning.

My hypotheses is that in the future, humanity as a whole will become man’s primary concern. The list we have been maintaining will undergo a vital transformation as we realise that the universe is less of a hierarchy and more of a network – one where all things were created equal with the same energy at the core. When man begins looking at himself as just another part of the network, he will find himself at par with the highest of gods and with the lowest of life forms. That is when man will realise his divinity.

Our ideas regarding god are moving outwards. We know there is something out there, but we don’t know what exactly. So throughout history, we have continued pointing at various things in the hopes that they are divine. “Maybe the elements are divine? No? Well then, maybe our feelings are divine? Maybe the pursuit of knowledge is divine.”

We will keep at it and our conclusions will keep moving outward until the definition of God is widely understood to be “everything”.

So the gods of the future will be immaterial, practically non-existent abstractions. They will be qualities that we will ascribe to each other and everything around us. I imagine that this will entail a coming together of disciplines. The explorer of the future will be scientist, philosopher, priest, engineer, storyteller; all rolled into one.

I find that I do my best writing when I have no idea what I am doing, like right now. Taking notes, making plans, and plotting prose works when you have the luxury of time. But more often than not, that is not the case. Most of the time, all I can fall back on, is spontaneity.

The fact that pieces written on-the-go (so to speak) turn out to be better than those written with premeditation is surprising when you look at it from an outsider perspective. But it makes perfect sense when you realise that creativity is more the work of your intuition than your intellect. It springs from chaos and it happens when I least suspect it.

When I look at the end product, I sometimes wonder at its existence. Where did it come from? I did not make it. I merely sat down and wrote it down without thinking. Sure, my knowledge of language helped, but I am definitely not the one who created it.

Over the years, I have become certain that there are two kinds of ideas — the manipulated ones and the pure ones. The manipulated ones are created by working with known things and altering, juxtaposing and shifting them until they start to resemble something decent. These are market ideas. Copywriters and people in the "idea business" do this all the time. The other sort are the pure ideas. These come out of nowhere and make the writer their host. The writer merely channels them through herself/himself. He is not the creator of them.

I have also become certain that these ideas are not born in my mind. Instead, it is more a matter of being receptive to signals from the place where ideas come from, wherever that is. Bringing these ideas to life on paper (or computer screen) is like channeling a spirit. They come fully formed, with an enormous package of details and a tone of their own. The writer can only obey, nothing else.

Some time ago I came across comic book author Alan Moore’s view of this matter. He is of the opinion that the act of writing is magic — actually, literally magic. Magic is understood to the art/science of altering reality with a word, gesture or some other physical act. Writing does exactly that. The writer makes something up and the reader experiences a shift in mood, mindset, or worldview as a result of reading it. This applies to all creative modes of expression of course. Dancers alter their audience’s reality with gestures and body movements, artists do it with lines and colours. It’s all, quite literally, magic (minus the special effects).

I have come to believe that there is a place (for lack of a better word) out there where ideas "exist" independent of minds. In fact, I think minds are secondary — channeling devices and calculating machines. They are like radio sets, and ideas are the signals that make them work.

To the question of where this "place" is, I have no clear answer. But like always, let us fill the gaps with speculative thinking. There is a scientist called Rupert Sheldrake who has proposed the idea of ‘morphic fields’. These fields are basically information embedded in nature — information that decides the shape of the world around us. So there is a morphic field for the human form and one for the grasshopper and one for bacteria and so on.

Think of them as invisible containers into which matter falls and takes a certain shape — just like water takes the shape of the container it falls into. This is interesting because if Sheldrake is right, then information (ideas, plans etc) can exist independent of physical reality and therefore, can come to the writer as signals that he may channel.

Pretty fancy eh? Of course, all this may be wrong and we creative people may simply be mad. A recent study found that creative people share a lot of brain chemistry with schizophreniacs. Basically, the writerly quality of being able to live an imaginary life is key to what is wrong in those considered mentally unwell. Or perhaps, the unwell are merely in a high-creative state in which they actually see and hear things that most people consider imaginary. Who knows!

I myself have often found myself inside my imagination. I have cried and I have shaken with anger when writing about my characters going through those emotions. Afterwards, it appeared only slightly awkward to me. I find it most difficult to write something without believing it to be true and I am sure a lot of other writers feel that way too. Losing yourself to imagination is an occupational hazard.

This is how writing has changed me. I am either a magician, or I am a madman. And I am not even sure anymore if those are two different things.

Huffington Post has a great post up defining the Hindu way against the backdrop of what religion is commonly understood to be. The author Josh Schrei compares it to the open-source philosophy in software.

If we consider god, the concept of god, the practices that lead one to god, and the ideas, thoughts and philosophies around the nature of the human mind the source code, then India has been the place where the doors have been thrown wide open and the coders have been given free reign to craft, invent, reinvent, refine, imagine, and re-imagine to the point that literally every variety of the spiritual and cognitive experience has been explored, celebrated, and documented.

Atheists and goddess worshipers, heretics who’ve sought god through booze, sex, and meat, ash covered hermits, dualists and non-dualists, nihilists and hedonists, poets and singers, students and saints, children and outcasts … all have contributed their lines of code to the Hindu string.

via Josh Schrei: The God Project: Hinduism as Open-Source Faith.

I have a half-written article somewhere on my computer titled ‘Hinduism is an open-source religion’. I guess it is time to hunt the file down and delete it. I couldn’t have done it better myself. Schrei’s article brings the right things into focus the right way.

Someone asked me recently why Indian comics are stuck with mythology as a core theme. I gave a brief answer as it was only an email, but I think  should elaborate. There is more to this than is obvious at a first glance. Complaining aside, I think we should try and focus on ways to make this marriage work.

Comics and mythology gain from each other’s respective specialties. Both have qualities that the other can profit from. While some think Indian comics are doomed to retell tales from Indian mythology forever, I feel that in the long run, the trend will help the cause of comics becoming a popular medium in the country.

Ideas from Indian mythology are deeply ingrained in all of our daily lives. ‘Ram-Ram’ is a greeting in our villages and good brothers are called ‘Ram Lakhan ki jodi’. Family disputes are referred to as Mahabharats and mischievous babies are frequently compared to the image of Krishna when he was a baby. This awareness of mythic themes spreads across lines of region and religion, all over India. Comics are a popular medium. They tell stories to the masses, just like Bollywood does. But comics in India are not as pervasive as movies are. So comics as a medium can ride on the reach of mythology as a language that every Indian understands. Mythology as a core theme can help a lot of people overcome the initial obstacle of getting comfortable with a new medium.

On the other hand, stories and ideas from Indian mythology haven’t really had the ‘pop’ treatment until recently. One of the first things that pop into most people’s minds when the word ‘mythology’ is uttered are memories of TV serials with bad special effects and theatrical dialogue. India’s ancient tales have evolved along with India herself. The Ramayana alone has been retold more than 300 times in at least 300 different ways. Comics as a medium can be a whole new grassy field for our mythic cows to feed on and grow fat. Comics dealing with mythology, both as retellings and as reinventions, can expose people to a whole new way of looking at our thousand-year-old stories.

Comics dealing with Indian mythology in any way can be a great tool for Indian soft power the world over. I have often marveled at the magic that the Bruce Lee worked for the popular perception of Chinese culture. Nowadays, whenever I see a grim looking actor with Chinese features on the screen, I expect him to break into Kung-Fu and destroy everything and everyone around him. Granted, it is a stereotype, but it is an empowering and positive stereotype — way better than the bumbling and clueless chinaman image early Hollywood perpetrated.

Imagine retold mythology doing the same for India. Our stories are the most powerful export we can give to the global market in this age. India has always been a land where fantasies flourished. Mythology can help strengthen that image in modern times.

Right from the time when the average Joe sitting in his living room became capable of letting the world know what he thinks of it, a debate has raged about whether he should be allowed to do so or not. This debate keeps raising its head in India from time to time. First it was blogging, then Twitter, and in the middle, for some time I think, even Youtube was under the media’s scornful gaze.

The thing about these tools is that they are just tools. It is the average Indian who is behind them. If a lot of people started calling up the media with criticism of their work, would the media condemn the "telephoning elite"? I don’t think so.

But blogging isn’t telephoning, is it? What hurts the media into making such sweeping condemnation of bloggers and tweeters is the fact that it all happens out in the open. The average blogger or tweeter is opinionated and the thought of pretending otherwise never crosses his mind. He simply sees no reason to do so. The phenomenon of web publishing using easy and affordable tools has spawned an entire generation of commentators free from the constraints of format, policy, codes, and sometimes even propriety. This is the age of the writing mob.

Interestingly, when the writing mob comes into areas that were previously exclusively populated by the writing elite, that is, journalists; the problem simply becomes one of authority. Who decides what the format is? Where do you draw the line between what is proper and acceptable and what is not? Is it even right to make such rules?

The simplest way around this problem is through some obvious questions. Why does the media exist? What is its purpose? And most importantly; how does the media know it is fulfilling its purpose?

The TRP system is a numerical indicator of how popular something on a news channel is. It indicates how many people are tuned into what is currently being shown on a channel. Through TRP ratings, news people reach conclusions about how much people like something and try to do more of it.

This is of course fine and dandy as far as a purely mechanistic way of "measuring" popularity is concerned. But then where do all the ideas about doing what is good for the society go? Even a circus gives people what they want. The media is supposed to be different, right? It’s supposed to show us things we need to watch. People may like what is being shown to them for various reasons. But is what they like always what needs to be on TV?

The media is in the business of answering that question. I know they are supposed to be objective and all, but everyone knows they are not. The media is in the decision-making business. They are the ones that decide what direction society takes. Thay decide what should worry us. They decide what we should get angry about.

I don’t think anybody believes the media is objective. Curiously enough, nobody even seems to care about the media’s objectivity. Most watchers of mainstream TV news have elaborate mental lists of news channels and their respective ideological slants. Everyone knows their bias and everyone has accepted them as they are.

Why then, do bloggers often end up criticising what news channels do?

The answer is obvious. Any blogger who pays any amount of attention to what news channels show, and then takes the time to blog what he thinks about it, is obviously a fan! The blogger is part of the news channel’s target audience. But he is also part of the small minority of the target audience who talks back at the broadcasters. He tells them, like the average Joe he is, what he "loves" and what he thinks "stinks".

The media has this tendency to see itself as "The Media" and to see everyone else as "Them". These classifications are somewhat ancient now, seeing as how every Ram, Rahim, and Harry these days thinks himself capable of doing what the media does — pass judgment. It’s the flavour of the season and is likely to remain so for quite some time. The media keeps getting sour at the idea of being in the same compartment as "them". But I don’t think that is going to help.

I think a better way for the media to look at the matter is to start considering blogging voices a complement to what TRPs tell them. So here is my advice to the Indian media:

On one side you have this numerical indicator to tell you how many people are tuned in to what your channel is showing, and then here comes an actual human voice with opinions on how it was. Don’t push the opinion away because you don’t like it. Don’t let the numbers trap you into thinking you have it all measured out.

You have fans because you do a certain service to society. They pay you attention because they think you are worth it. It is a kind of irreverent respect. There is nothing inherently respectable about you. Your worth is defined by what you do. And the people who decide your worth happen to be the exact same ones you keep blaming for criticising you. Sure there is a lot of vulgar noise out there, I won’t deny it. But you can’t let that blind you to the fact that there are sane voices out there too. Look for them, you guys are supposed to be good at this sort of thing. Don’t push the criticism away. Listen to it.

Unless of course, you want to be in the same league as a circus, in which case, carry on.

I think Facebook photo albums are cumbersome. There is no easy way to arrange photos into albums and there is no clear album-management system. Albums created long ago, just disappear under a pile of new ones and one never sees them again. Besides, if Facebook is serious about its mobile user base, it should definitely do something to ease the album-making process. As it is, Facebook’s official mobile application posts photos to an album called ‘Mobile Uploads’ by default.

The simplest solution that occurs to me is tagging. Have users tag their photos with keywords before they upload them and end the entire albums mess in one go. This will bring the focus to individual images, make for easier navigation through photos relating to the same topic, and it will also keep photos in circulation for longer. Every time I upload a photo tagged car, my older photos tagged with car turn up on the side as related items. How does that sound?

Tags are any day a better way to organise things than albums (or categories) are. If you are like me and have hundreds of albums, then you may like nothing better than to ditch the whole lot of them in favour of something simpler.

Biologist Bruce Lipton recounts a startling revelation that the scientific world encountered soon after the mapping of the human genome. Turns out, what we are isn’t solely determined by our genes.

The results of the Genome project reveal that there are only about 34,000 genes in the human genome. Two thirds of the anticipated genes do not exist! How can we account for the complexity of a genetically-controlled human when there are not even enough genes to code just for the proteins?

More humiliating to the dogma of our belief in genetic determinacy is the fact that there is not much difference in the total number of genes found in humans and those found in primitive organisms populating the planet.

via Bruce Lipton : Biology Of Belief : The Human Genome Project.

Researchers hypothesised that because human beings are so incredibly complex, they must at least have a 100,000 genes to make it all work. What they found was a number closer to 34,000. In addition to being a serious blow to genetic determinacy, it once again threw into darkness the question of what makes us tick. Genes do play a major role in deciding who we are, but the idea of them being all there is to us is now old hat.

What I find funny about this is what Lipton does. Every single time we imagine we have the universe all figured out, it comes from behind and renders a well-placed kick in our collective nuts. It happened when quantum physics toppled traditional mechanistic physics and now it is happening to biology. What fun!

The New Scientist magazine has an interesting report on the ongoing research on human consciousness and how dreams play a large role in unfolding its many mysteries.

The mental life of your common or garden human, however, is a lot more complicated. That’s because we are “aware of being aware”. This allows us to reflect upon ourselves and our feelings and, in an ideal world, make insightful decisions and judgements. This state, dubbed secondary consciousness, is thought to be unique to humans.

“When you’re awake, you have both primary and secondary consciousness. Secondary consciousness is that reflective awareness that determines a great part of waking consciousness,” says Voss.

Pinning down how our brain produces these two, subjective, states of consciousness is a tough challenge, because it’s difficult to isolate the different aspects of consciousness in fully awake subjects from other neural processes unrelated to awareness.

via Want to find your mind? Learn to direct your dreams – life – 15 June 2010 – New Scientist.

The field of dreams has been acknowledged as being worth study ever since Sigmund Freud. Later, when Carl Jung established links between dreams and myths, it became even more interesting. My personal interest in dreams roots from the fact that they have often been described as ways to other worlds.

Consciousness is a huge mystery, especially since old-school neurology has started appearing less and less capable of explaining it away as an epiphenomenon of the brain. The school of thought that postulates the brain as being secondary to consciousness (as opposed to consciousness being a byproduct of chemical processes in the brain) has been gaining in prominence in recent years.

So my fingers are crossed and I’m betting on dreams.

Cosmologist Brian Swimme, in an interview he gave to EnlightenNext magazine a few years ago, posited the idea of kindness and compassion being far more than biological characteristics. He implied that what we know as compassion is some sort of universal constant that manifests as love and kindness in biological organisms.

Well, when we use words like compassion, we tend to limit them to the human world. And part of this goes back to what I said before, that we think of the rest of the universe as being stuff, and we don’t use words that are spiritual or warm or emotional concerning them. The scientific tradition has always called that “projection”—projecting your own qualities upon the universe as a whole or upon nature. And that’s supposed to be a terrible thing to do. But I think that’s breaking down as we begin to realize that it’s all one energy event. It’s one journey, one story, so that the qualities that are true of the human are in some way or another true of other parts of the universe. So I talk about compassion as a multilevel reality. It’s not just something that’s true of humans.

My interpretation is this. I think that gravitational attraction is an early form of compassion or care. If there weren’t that kind of care at the foundation of the universe, there would be no formation of galaxies—and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. This care or compassion begins to show up in the organic form when you have a bond developing between a mother and her offspring. You know, for a long time, there’s no bond. There’s no care—at least no visible way of seeing care—for instance, with bacteria. They replicate. There could be care there, but we haven’t recognized it yet. But by the time you get to mammals, two hundred and twenty million years ago, you have this bond between the mother and the child. That arrives as a genetic mutation. But because of that, the offspring have a higher chance of surviving. So that mutation then spreads and starts to characterize the entire population. That’s just the bond between a mother and an infant. Then other bonds develop between siblings, and they have a higher chance of survival. All of what I’m saying fits into Darwinian biology. This isn’t outside of mainstream science. What it says is that the dynamics of Darwinian biology favor the appearance of compassion. It shows up between mother and child. It shows up between siblings, and it even develops between kin groups. And it starts to spread.

via Brian Swimme: Awakening to the Universe Story.

This is the closest anyone (in my readings) has come to giving a scientific colour to the idea of love being a characteristic of God. The idea, simply put, is that “love” is something all-pervading. The force that keeps you living with your partner is the same force that keeps planetoids in orbit around each other. Think about it. What a grand idea!

Yours faithfully got quoted in a DNA After Hrs article on graphic content in graphic novels. Graphic content as in sex and violence of course.

Graphic novelist Vijayendra Mohanty of Level 10 comics believes that it’s a wrong notion that graphic novels are meant for children.“Most graphic novels are meant only for adults. Even if a graphic novel is dealing with some explicit content, it doesn’t mean it becomes bad. Frank Miller’s cult novel, Sin City has everything, from violence to sex. Yet is an astounding piece of art and storytelling.”

via How graphic really is graphic? – dnaindia.com.

In case the quote above is not clear enough, I meant to say that comics are not just for kids. In addition, I am opposed to the idea of a “governing body” of any kind deciding what is suitable for people and what is not. I believe most people are capable of making up their own minds about their reading. As for children, they have parents. Nothing pisses me off more than parents who would rather blame publishers for putting out adult content than be good parents and guide their children’s reading habits.

Comics are a medium, just like novels, movies, sitcoms etc. Different people have different tastes, and it does not become a civil society to treat its people like mindless fools who can’t make their own decisions.

The NPR has a yummy summary of current research on the relation between brain activity and various instances of spiritual experience. There is a bunch of podcasts thrown in as well.

More than half of adult Americans report they have had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. Now, scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered in this controversial field, as the science of spirituality continues to evolve.

via Is This Your Brain On God? : NPR.

I believe much of what passes for religious experience can be traced back to the brain. But to say that it originated there doesn’t seem convincing to me. That is like opening up a radio, pointing at the speaker and saying this is where the sound comes from. Of course the sound comes from the radio. But that isn’t the source, is it?

Human beings are animals, but that is not all they are. I think spiritual experiences are a sign of something much larger (God, for lack of a better word) channeling itself through the human animal. Our interpretations of it are feeble and weak of course, but that is why research like this makes me happy. We are getting there.

Isaac Asimov has this to say about writing for the young adult audience. This is from his autobiography I, ASIMOV.

It is not very difficult to write for teenagers if you avoid thinking of them as children. I do not simplify my vocabulary for them, though I often add the pronunciations of the technical terms, merely to reduce the terror they inspire visually. I do avoid sentences that are too long and complex and I do not indulge in obscure allusions. What is lacking in a teenager is not intelligence or reasoning ability, but merely experience.

Trust the good doctor to put things in perspective. That last line deserves to be printed out and taped to the wall of any aspiring teen fiction writer.

I came across this refreshing defence of myths as stories in an article on mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik’s site. Even an immortal story can use a good defence every now and then.

I have often been asked if the war at Kurukshetra actually took place a few thousand years ago. History is real. Is the Mahabharata a document of facts? Historical? Real? I say: no. No, it is not real. It is not historical.

To call Mahabharata a story based on historical war is to strip it of its magic, its power, its sheer magnificence. To make Mahabharata historical is to confine it to one period of history. If one does that, it holds little relevance in modern times. To be relevant, it cannot be confined to one period in history. It must be a-historical, timeless, free of geographical and historical moorings, independent of space and time. To me, that is what Mahabharata is.

To me Mahabharata is a symbolic narration that reflects the thoughts and feelings, concerns and commentaries of the Indian people over centuries. That is why it is an epic. That is why it is sacred. It continues to enchant and enthrall us just as it enchanted and enthralled audiences a hundred years go. Through the story of the Pandavas and the Kauravas, it discusses the nature of human society.

via The Clothes of Draupadi | Devdutt.

To see people debating over the accuracy of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat is not a problem in itself — it is good sport and keeps us on our toes. But it becomes worrisome when it is assumed that the validity of an entire epic depends on its historical accuracy.

Hinduism, to use a machine phrase, is a religion with plenty of redundancy built in. That is to say that its value as a way of life will not suffer even one bit even if all events in the Ramayan and the Mahabharat are proved to be fantasies. India has survived as a civilisation by focusing on the reality behind these stories, not just the events that demonstrate them.

Jug Suraiya talks about how the black and white question about whether God exists or not is alien to all-inclusive India.

The God anti-God controversy is largely foreign to Indian thought which, traditionally, has been equally comfortable with 330 million deities and none at all. The loftiest conjecture in Hindu philosophy is an expression of ultimate scepticism: “How was the world made, and how will it end? Only the gods know. Or perhaps even they know not.”

Further down in the same article, the author speaks of the ideal Indian way out of the issue:

In its highest form, what might be called Indic thought teaches that ultimately there is no difference between science and spirituality: they are parallel paths to the same goal of enlightenment. Or as a scientist might put it, a scientist is nothing but a means by which atoms seek to explain themselves to themselves.

via An unGodly debate : Living : Jug Suraiya : TOI Blogs.

I couldn’t have said it better. I feel a large part of the western new atheist movement is based on black and white thinking and overly simplistic interpretations. Western thought has always obsessed over “right and wrong” but such dualistic thinking has never found roots in India. Here, it has always been about the wonder of diversity and about multiple world-views co-existing with each other.

Times of India, that most maligned of mainstream media outlets has a redeemer in Crest, the lifestyle supplement. This Saturday’s issue screams “Does God Exist?” on the main page. The insides are full of lip-smacking delights in the form of eminently readable pieces by renowned believers and unbelievers. One particular piece called “The gods came afterwards…” was right up my alley as it throws some much needed light on the materialist aspect of India’s past.

One of the most abiding perceptions about India is that it is a land of uncritical beliefs steeped in monolithic ancient wisdom cemented by unchanging social practices. Westerners, mainly British colonialists, have largely contributed to this image though some nationalists added to it, seizing upon a fabled past to fight the intruders. Modern-day revivalists, too, have used this image for theocratic ambitions. But the truth – confirmed by historical evidence – is that since the time of the Vedas there has been a strong tradition of philosophic speculation, scepticism and even rejection of dominant philosophies in favour of heterodox thought. India has for long been the philosophical equivalent of a bazaar – with its noise and chaos, heated arguments and hair-splitting – of shifting moods and tempers. And among them was the first-ever materialist philosophical system that the world has known.

via The gods came afterwards… – Self Help – Spirituality – Life & Style – The Times of India.

As someone who finds himself under attack from both fundamentalist atheists and religious fundamentalists a number of times, I can totally appreciate the spirit of openness Vedic India had regarding these matters. Back then, nothing was wrong or right. Instead, it was all part of a great big all-inclusive debate. I keep trying to avoid putting myself in a narrow pre-defined category, but if I had to, I would side in favour of the mystery — the unnamed source of all things real and unreal that the Rig Veda speaks of.

Here are a few more articles I liked from the aforementioned issue of ToI Crest:

• Love me, love my belief (on couples living with each others’ beliefs)
• An ungodly debate (Jug Suraiya on modern anti-theists)
• Can you quantify or measure love? (a primer on Advaita philosophy)