16 February 2015

Sanskrit

I promised myself that I will not enter this debate again. My experience has been that the debate on 'Sanskrit' is hard to win because the other party never responds to your evidence. When you tell them that learning Sanskrit has X benefits, they think your claims are ill founded and are coming from a sense of patriotism and not from a sense of pragmatism. They don't doubt scientific inquiry as a process, they doubt the end results of your scientific inquiry.

Today, I came across an interesting piece on the 'Relevance of Sanskrit in Contemporary Society' by B. Mahadevan. Mahadevan is a professor at the IIM-B. The write up is the most honest piece I have ever read on the subject. I just had to share it. Take out sometime and read it :

http://www.iimb.ernet.in/~mahadev/samskrit_why.pdf

Here are some excerpts :

- So what I am trying to say is that this business of saying, ‘you can translate what ever is in Sanskrit into some other language and solve the problem’, will not solve the problem. It can actually create a whole set of problems which we may have to solve.

- A bee makes a lot of noise as long as it sits on the flower and begins to suck the honey. Once it starts eating honey; there is no noise. The same way, without tasting this nectar of Sanskrit in its entirety, we are making a lot of noise. It is only required that we spend our time drawing from this great source, which we have never attempted.

- So what is dead? Our entire sanskriti is in Sanskrit only. Our entire tradition is in Sanskrit only – whether you like it or not, that is a fact.

-There is a German firm, which has patented the Gayathri Mantra – what it means is that everyday when I do the Sandhya Vandanam, I should pay them – fortunately I think India is excluded from that. Just as Gayathri Mantra the term ‘Veda’ has also been patented.

I would appreciate that you don't ad-hominem the professor by tracing his political connections or schooling or other ideological leanings. If you have a problem with the arguments, respond to those. There is no need to get personal.

Hope you like it.

14 February 2015

Mughal Gardens

Today, I visited the Mughal Gardens at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. Each year, the Gardens are thrown open to the public for about a month in Feb-March. Today happened to be the first day of the annual festival. The gardens are simply amazing! Super pretty. Any admirer of nature would have a great time and should visit the Gardens at least once. I owe my visit to the insistence of a dear friend. Thank you :)

Here are some snippets.

The entrance to the North Block. The writing reads :

Liberty will not descend to a people. A people must raise themselves to Liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed

Apparently, the Colonial British government put this up when they were constructing this side of Delhi. Make what you want of what they were trying to imply.



On the other side of the North Block, we found monkeys sifting through the garbage. We need to do a lot more to get a Swachh Bharat :



Now to the gardens! Here are some flower pictures :











The wonderful flower carpet. Soon there will be articles describing the carpet as communal and anti-secular. Not to forget, environmentally damaging :



The closest I will ever get to the Rashtrapati Bhawan without getting arrested :




Some interesting flower names. Very designer :


Rose Christian Dior (apologies for the bad photograph)


Rose Okla Homa


Rose Eiffel Tower


Rose Just Joey


Rose Scentimantal


Ice plant meets China Man


Happiness



Queen Elizabeth 


Just in case the barricade got lost :



In that spirit, just in case President Mukherjee forgets what he inaugurated after completing a year in office :


Pranab Mukherjee Public Library

And finally, the customary “I was here” picture. Appropriately dressed for the day- check:


Happy Valentines Day