ragasvara
It is easy to believe that Raga Svara is a “business” and that it is different from Northstar or RKU, which are our learning institutions. But that would be an error. If anything, Raga is an even more potent form of learning. Raga is about bringing back the prime mover
hospitality
With Raga Svara, and with Northstar as well, but more acutely at Raga, I come to the question of étranger or xenos. I am unable to take on the role of a subservient host. Hospitality is an act of giving and receiving, a game if you will. The rules and
borges
Sometimes I wonder how I stumbled upon Borges. I remember one passage that shattered my mind. The opening paragraph of Michel Foucault's The Order of Things had these lines: This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read
This is Andromeda Galaxy. Photographing this one was really hard for me. Many many hours to get this image. Astronomy and astrophotography is a humbling experience. What we are seeing is 2.5 million light years away. And it is still the closest galaxy to ours. I still have a
This week I led a close reading of Jorge Luis Borges's short story The Babylon Lottery. It is one of my favourite short stories.
education
I wrote this sometime back. Resharing on the occasion of Teachers' Day in India. What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem
The greatest writer of the 20th century, if not all time, for me, is Jorge Luis Borges. And if one reads Borges, he must also read Roberto Bolaño. I haven't read Bolaño before and I am starting with 2666. A serendipitous start with this quote in the book&
As an educator, one of the key ideas that I explore is *thinking*. One of the goals to start Noesis, my philosophy class at The Northstar School, was to learn and teach the process of thinking with students and educators. I used to say that learning the *process of thinking*
philosophy
कबीरा कुआँ एक है, पानी भरे अनेक भांडे ही में भेद है, पानी सब में एक -Kabir O Kabir, there is but one well And many who draw Difference is the vessel Water stays the same. (my poor translation) Hermann Hesse, like Kabir,
As we go through the greatest humanitarian crisis of modern times, it is hard to maintain a semblance of sanity. So much suffering, so much pain all around. What can words do to those who have lost the ones they love? All the pent-up anger and pain, where will it
Thoughts
Imagine you are in a thick forest. The old trees stand guard. The winding river gently invites you deeper. A half-penetrable mist settles over the water. No sound. No birds. Just the gentle trickle of water dropping from the oars. A maddening shriek tears the sky. A primeval scream. Silence.
education
Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, Today I want to talk about a concept, an idea that is abstract but at the same time can be applied to the concrete. It is at the intersection of education, philosophy and architecture. I will start with something general, apply to the concrete by