Aham Brahmasmi

“ I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself. I think that Peeta was onto something about us destroying one another and lettng some decent species take over. Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences. You can spin it any way you like. Snow thought the Hunger Games were an efficient means of control. Coin thought the parachutes would expedite the war. But in the end, who does it benefit? No one. The truth is, it benefits no one to live in a world where these things happen. ” This paragraph sums up The Hunger Games (and its fallout) so beautifully, that it almost takes your breath away. Essentially, it’s not anything new that Collins tells us – this thing that the world is like a venomous snake that has bitten into its own tail and refuses to let go – but the way she goes about in her narration. Mostly lucid, and almost always sticking to a central...

“ ...in the pages of history, as always, it is the version told by the victors, that lives on. The voice of the vanquished remains lost in silence. But what if Ravana and his people had a different story to tell? The story of the Ravanayana has never been told. ” What is the first thing that you do when you pick up a book pertaining to a genre that appeals to you, but by an author that you haven’t even heard of before (let alone read any of his/her works)? Indeed, what is the first thing that you do when you pick up any book by an author that you haven’t even heard of before? If, like me, you also have the tendency to go straight to the back page in the search of a summarized version of what to expect in the pages of said book, the quoted lines stated above are what would have drawn you in. It definitely drew me in. Yes, Anand Neelakantan, in his Asura: Tale of the Vanquished – The story of Ravana and His People begins with this promise. The statement is made, and you can...

You . Yes, you, the girl on the platform at Dadar station. In the white button-down shirt & Prussian blue pair of trousers, with your untied, windblown hair framing that lovely face. And the eyes, still laced with the last fragments of sleep, looking out at the multitude of people pushing & clawing their way in & out of the train. You made my morning.