In Limbo 2

Being one of the few Indians at the last frontier of Fairbanks, Alaska, it was quite natural that I should have been invited to the local high school to make an hour and a half long presentation on Hinduism for a group of 11th graders which I accepted, albeit hesitantly. Having never identified myself with any one particular religion, it was bound to be a herculean task, especially since we didn't own smartphones and chose not to have an internet service at home. This meant that I needed to pick my own brains and rely on what I had learnt in my social studies classes some two decades ago.  From its Vedic origins to its pantheonic Puranic manifestations, my objective was to  touch upon  the whole gamut of beliefs which constituted Hinduism. Not surprisingly, the students were particularly interested in the caste system: its origins and its devolution. I tried to explain it in the light of the German theorist Lamprecht's principles of the four stages that a civilization or any hu

Lo, i lean back into myself,   into a dense  communion lush and flowing into the ocean blue of this throbbing which soothes,  holds, uplifts... spirit paused in the cadence of timelessness drifts into   imbroglio herded into golden glens above the starless space  of a  full moon night, lo, I lean back into myself like a cat

feathers dipped in sky lie by the side of a sandy road, clouds slathered in red mud tread across the twilight  hour, in the glass  window of a parked  car, there is a stir of  flight as a jungle crow  swoops down over a  dead mouse; a young  girl smelling of scented flowers passes by, soft like the rains last night