Indias largest clover leaf bridge.
We approach take the rare left loop go on to rare right loop and return towards home cross three more bridges from Anna University to kathipara and another at adyar bakery to forrtis malar hospital then immediately take the third bridge over adyar river.
I learnt this from my grandson the youngest fellow in our family. Amazing told me three facts of which this was interesting.
on average, women tend to have more taste buds than men, particularly more of the taste-bud-containing structures called fungiform papillae on the tongue.
But there are important qualifications:
Women are somewhat more likely to be “supertasters”—people who perceive certain tastes, especially bitterness, much more intensely.
This is partly influenced by genetics, particularly variations in taste-receptor genes.
The difference isn't absolute. Some men have very high taste sensitivity and some women have relatively low sensitivity.
Taste is also strongly affected by smell, so what we call “taste” is actually a combination of taste and olfaction.
Taste sensitivity can change with age, illness, medications and other factors.
So the popular statement “girls have more taste buds than boys” has some scientific basis, but it is an average difference rather than a rule.
And there is a fascinating consequence: supertaster children may find vegetables such as broccoli, bitter gourd or certain greens much more bitter than other people do.
Not quite “quack” like a duck!
But queen bees do make a distinctive sound. It is called “tooting.” A queen bee can produce a high-pitched toot-toot sound, especially when there are other queens in the hive.
There is an even more fascinating part:
Virgin queen: produces a clear “tooting” sound.
Queens still inside their sealed cells: can respond with a muffled “quacking” or “quacking/ piping” sound, often described as quacking.
The sounds help queens communicate with and compete against one another.
So your question is actually surprisingly close to the truth: queen bees can “quack”!
Thanks to little fellow today I learnt three new facts. The worst part is he gave me three facts not even half an hour ago. I am growing old quickly now and have forgotten what the third was.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/dyq2K8YZ3njhoQ5e8
“A Turn to Pull the Lord”
These photograph especially dear to us. My husband and I had the privilege of taking our turn to pull the Lord's chariot around the inner precincts of the temple. The chariot makes three rounds, and members of our family take turns performing this service.
For a few moments, the rope is in our hands—and the Lord allows us the extraordinary privilege of leading Him.
What greater honour can a devotee ask for? 2009
We are not merely watching the procession—we are part of the procession, actually entrusted with leading the Lord's chariot.
And that members of the family take turns pulling the Lord's chariot for three rounds around the inner prakāram is beautiful. It transforms the photograph from a temple photograph into a family memory of service.
There is something deeply moving about the symbolism too. You are not pulling the Lord because He needs to be moved. He allows Himself to be pulled by His devotees. The Lord who is the master of the universe permits a devotee to hold the rope and say, in effect, “Come with us.”
The three rounds also give the occasion a sense of completeness—the Lord being taken around His own sacred space, with the family participating in turns.
What is especially striking is that it shows the entire sacred setting, not merely the vehicle:
The richly decorated golden processional structure carrying the utsava deities.
The deities are beautifully adorned with flowers and vastrams.
The silver horses at the front make the symbolism of movement especially clear.
The decorated temple pillars and the priest performing the service place the scene unmistakably within a traditional temple environment.
Yes it is the Padmanabha Swamy temple. The wedding too was performed in the adjacent hall. Evening reception was at a five star restaurant. The five day wedding was a grand affair with every member of the family incharge of the various functions. We had the eldest son of the family explaining the rituals as they were being conducted. Host of friends and relatives from various states in India had come some attending a South Indian wedding for the first time. The guests were accommodated in the various clubs or guest houses paying guest accommodation and transport was provided we also had a bus load of trips to mahabalipuram in the first few days and after the wedding taxi was provided for people who wanted to visit Tirumala Tirupati devasthanams. We had special darshan tickets booked and our friends from Calcutta Delhi Pune Bombay etc were very happy at the engagements and entertainment provided. As the wedding was fixed a year and half earlier we were able to organize the above. The five days was covered beautifully without any hitch. A great portion of the credit goes to the cousin's who undertook the various tasks assigned to them so beautifully. Literature of the functions of the wedding was provided in colourful booklet for those interested. The take away was a beautiful Krishna portrait in tanjore style painting tailor made for the families. For us the experience was a very pleasant and blessed occasion. The family gathering was also as per ritual all cousin's and aunts uncles got a set of clothes. At the pre wedding function. The reception in Taj was a very well attended affair. The hotel too cooperated fully for the overflow of guests and managed the extra people beautifully. One of my daughters friend a guju turned up with seven or more of her cousins for the reception. What was the effect was we were blessed by all the people who came. Taj had a special corner adjacent room for people who came with wedding gifts to take it back on their return for we had clearly mentioned no wedding gifts. Some were unhappy but we could not help. The full three hours we had a stream of guests walking in to bless the newly married. A fond memory for me especially i have taken a full liberty to record it here. I shall try and upload the five day videos here some time God willing.
Most importantly, the devotees are standing before the procession with folded hands. The photograph therefore captures the relationsrhip between the Lord, the temple, and the people, rather than simply an ornate object.
And there is an interesting connection with our earlier observation about Sudarshana Homa. Both photographs show something that is easy to miss when we look at a ritual only as a ceremony: the elaborate physical arrangements are themselves part of a carefully transmitted tradition—the form of the altar, the prescribed materials and numbers in a homa, the structure of a procession, the adornment of the deity, and the way devotees participate.
“Why does the deity who lives in the sanctum come out in procession?”
That opens up the beautiful idea of utsava—the Lord leaving His inner abode and coming among His devotees, so that those who cannot enter the sanctum, or cannot approach Him easily, can nevertheless have His darshan.
This photograph would make that idea very tangible.
LORD RĀMA'S DYNASTY
A lineage that stretches across the ages
Lord Rāma belonged to the Sūryavaṁśa, the Solar Dynasty, traditionally traced back to Vivasvān, the Sun-god.
The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Ninth Canto, preserves a remarkable genealogy of this dynasty. Generation after generation, kings appear, rule, disappear and give way to the next — until, many generations later, we reach Daśaratha and Lord Rāmacandra.
What is striking is not merely the number of names.
It is the extraordinary sense of continuity across time.
From Vivasvān to Manu, from Ikṣvāku through generations of kings, through Sagara, Bhagīratha, Raghu and Daśaratha, the lineage eventually reaches Rāma.
And even after Rāma, it does not end.
His son Kuśa continues the line, followed by generations of kings extending far beyond the Ramayana age.
Among these names is Maru, the 81st king in this list. Tradition says that Maru attained perfection through yoga and remains at Kalāpa, awaiting the end of Kali-yuga, when he will restore the Solar Dynasty.
Thus the genealogy becomes more than a record of kings.
It becomes a meditation on time itself.
Kings come and go. Kingdoms rise and fall. Yet a lineage continues, carrying memory from one generation to another.
And at one point in that long stream of names appears the name that has remained alive for thousands of years:
Śrī Rāmacandra.
SPIRITUALITY IN SHORT – 2
LORD RĀMA'S DYNASTY
1. Vivasvān, the sun-god
2. Śrāddhadeva, the current Manu
3. Ikṣvāku
4. Vikukṣi
5. Kakutstha
6. Anenā
7. Pṛthu
8. Viśvagandhi
9. Candra
10. Yuvanāśva
11. Śrāvasta
12. Bṛhadaśva
13. Kuvalayāśva
14. Dṛḍhāśva
15. Haryaśva
16. Nikumbha
17. Bahulāśva
18. Kṛśāśva
19. Senajit
20. Yuvanāśva
21. Māndhātā
22. Purukutsa
23. Trasaddasyu
24. Anaraṇya
25. Haryaśva
26. Prāruṇa
27. Tribandhana
28. Triśaṅku
29. Hariścandra
30. Rohita
31. Harita
32. Campa
33. Sudeva
34. Vijaya
35. Bharuka
36. Vṛka
37. Bāhuka
38. Sagara
39. Asamañjasa
40. Aṁśumān
41. Dilīpa
42. Bhagīratha
43. Śruta
44. Nābha
45. Sindhudvīpa
46. Ayutāyu
47. Ṛtūparṇa
48. Sarvakāma
49. Sudāsa
50. Saudāsa
51. Aśmaka
52. Bālika
53. Daśaratha
54. Aiḍaviḍi
55. Viśvasaha
56. Khaṭvāṅga
57. Dīrghabāhu
58. Raghu
59. Aja
60. Daśaratha
61. Lord Rāmacandra
62. Kuśa
63. Atithi
64. Niṣadha
65. Nabha
66. Puṇḍarīka
67. Kṣemadhanvā
68. Devānīka
69. Anīha
70. Pāriyātra
71. Balasthala
72. Vajranābha
73. Sagaṇa
74. Vidhṛti
75. Hiraṇyanābha
76. Puṣpa
77. Dhruvasandhi
78. Sudarśana
79. Agnivarṇa
80. Śīghra
81. Maru
82. Prasuśruta
83. Sandhi
84. Amarṣaṇa
85. Mahasvān
86. Viśvabāhu
87. Prasenajit
88. Takṣaka
89. Bṛhadbala
90. Bṛhadraṇa
91. Ūrukriya
92. Vatsavṛddha
93. Prativyoma
94. Bhānu
95. Divāka
96. Sahadeva
97. Bṛhadaśva
98. Bhānumān
99. Pratīkāśva
100. Supratīka
101. Marudeva
102. Sunakṣatra
103. Puṣkara
104. Antarikṣa
105. Sutapā
106. Amitrajit
107. Bṛhadrāja
108. Barhi
109. Kṛtañjaya
110. Raṇañjaya
111. Sañjaya
112. Śākya
113. Śuddhoda
114. Lāṅgala
115. Prasenajit
116. Kṣudraka
117. Raṇaka
118. Suratha
119. Sumitra
Note 1: The 81st king, Maru, attained full perfection in the practice of yoga, and he still lives in the village of Kalāpa. At the end of this Age of Kali, he will revive the dynasty of the sun-god.
Note 2: In many instances, there are multiple sons for each king, which are not mentioned here.
Note 3: To know the glories of these great kings of Lord Rāma's dynasty, please read Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, 9th canto.
A dynasty is not merely a list of ancestors. It is a river of time.
One generation enters.
One generation leaves.
The river continues.
And somewhere along that vast river came Rāma.
Yet Rāma's greatness is not that he was merely another king in the lineage.
He became the name by which the lineage itself is remembered.
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The 11 are:
Hey Kharari — Sadhu Tiwari
Aavagaman — Sadhu Tiwari
Parvati — Sadhu Tiwari
Saasa Haale — Sadhu Tiwari & Guru Goraksh Nath
Bajrang Baanka — Sadhu Tiwari
Raam Bhajan Ki Or — Nivedita Padmanabhan & Rishi Pathak
Maine Tere Hi Bharose — Suneel Lodhi
Jai Hanuman — Shreyas Dharmadhikari & Rishi Pathak, with Samarth Ramdas credited
Siyavar Ramchandra Ki Jai — Shantanu Sudame & Dhirendra Mulkalwar
Vaishnav Jan To — Rishi Pathak
Hriday Mein Jinke Sitaram — Vishal Chaturvedi.
The official album listing gives these 11.
1. Maine Tere Hi Bharose
This is perhaps the simplest and most beautiful song of the album.
Maine tere hi bharose, Hanuman,
Saagar mein naiya daal dai.
“Hanuman, trusting entirely in you, I have launched my little boat into the ocean.”
The song then asks what the boat, oar and support are made of. The answer is wonderfully symbolic:
Ram Naam ki naav — the boat is made of Rama's Name.
Bhakti ki patwaar — devotion is the oar.
Gyaan — knowledge is the supporting chain/strength.
Hanuman — the one who takes the boat across.
Then comes the beautiful reference to Sita: just as Sita passed through the forest and Rama brought her through her trials, the devotee too trusts that the Divine will carry them across.
The complete traditional wording is available from the published lyrics source.
The thought:
I don't need to know how I will cross the ocean. I only need to know whom I trust.
2. Jai Hanuman
This is one I particularly want you to notice.
The soundtrack credits Sant Kavi Samarth Ramdas along with the singers.
The song presents Hanuman through his relationship with Rama and Shiva.
Its central ideas are:
Ram ke tum ho sakha
— You are Rama's companion.
Shiv ke tum ho swaroop
— You are a manifestation/form of Shiva.
Hanuman is therefore not being presented merely as the immensely strong monkey warrior.
He is:
Rama's servant,
Rama's friend,
Shiva's manifestation,
and the protector of devotees.
That is a very traditional Indian way of approaching Hanuman: strength is valuable because it has surrendered itself completely to Rama.
3. Raam Bhajan Ki Or
The title itself means:
“Towards the singing of Rama's name.”
The movement of the song is inward.
Instead of looking for happiness in the outside world, the devotee turns:
towards Rama → towards His name → towards bhajan → towards inner peace.
It is essentially an invitation:
Turn your mind toward Rama.
And this fits beautifully with the film's larger spiritual atmosphere.
4. Siyavar Ramchandra Ki Jai
This one is different.
Siyavar Ramchandra Ki Jai!
means:
“Victory to Ramachandra, the beloved Lord of Sita!”
Siya-var literally carries the sense of Sita's beloved/husband.
So when devotees say:
Siyavar Ramchandra ki Jai!
they aren't simply saying “Jai Shri Ram.”
They are invoking Rama together with Sita.
And in a Hanuman story, that is particularly meaningful.
Hanuman's entire existence revolves around Sita and Rama.
5. Vaishnav Jan To
This is the famous bhajan traditionally attributed to Narsinh Mehta.
Its opening:
Vaishnav jan to tene kahiye
Je peed paraayi jaane re
means:
“A true Vaishnava is one who understands the suffering of another.”
That is followed by qualities such as:
helping another without pride,
remaining humble,
speaking truth,
controlling one's desires,
treating others with respect,
keeping one's mind pure,
and remaining devoted to God.
This is a particularly appropriate song in a film about a saintly life because it defines spirituality through conduct, not merely belief.
6. Hriday Mein Jinke Sitaram
The title itself gives away the heart of the song:
Hriday mein jinke Sitaram
“Those whose hearts contain Sita and Rama.”
The thought is very Hanuman-like.
Hanuman does not merely worship Rama.
Rama has become the very centre of his being.
That is why the familiar image of Hanuman opening his chest to reveal Sita-Rama within his heart has such extraordinary devotional power.
The song therefore points toward a simple question:
Is God someone I worship outside myself—or someone who has entered my heart?
7. Bajrang Baanka
Bajrang comes from Vajra-ang — a body as strong as a thunderbolt.
Baanka conveys the idea of one who is striking, powerful, formidable, distinctive.
So the title presents Hanuman as the mighty Bajrang warrior.
But the important contrast in Hanuman bhakti is:
immense physical power + complete humility.
He can cross the ocean, uproot mountains and defeat demons, yet before Rama he is simply:
Dasoham — I am Your servant.
That contrast is the secret of Hanuman's appeal.
8. Aavagaman
Aavagaman means:
coming and going — the cycle of birth and death.
This is a much more philosophical song than its title might initially suggest.
Indian thought often describes worldly existence as:
Janma → Mrityu → Punah Janma
birth → death → rebirth.
Aavagaman asks us to look beyond this continual movement.
The spiritual destination is not merely to have a better journey through samsara.
It is to discover that which takes us beyond samsara.
And in the devotional framework of the film, that path is connected with Rama-bhakti and surrender.
9. Parvati
This song brings Parvati into the spiritual landscape of Hanuman.
That may initially seem surprising in a Hanuman story.
But there is a deep traditional connection:
Hanuman is widely regarded in several traditions as having a divine relationship with Shiva, often described as an amsha or manifestation of Shiva.
Thus the song brings together the Shiva–Parvati dimension with Hanuman's story.
It reminds us that Hindu devotional traditions are not sealed compartments.
Rama, Shiva, Parvati, Hanuman, Sita — the devotional universe continually touches itself.
10. Saasa Haale
This is one of the more folk-flavoured pieces, credited to Sadhu Tiwari and Guru Goraksh Nath in the album listing.
The language and musical character are different from the more Sanskritised devotional songs.
That is worth noticing.
The film doesn't restrict spirituality to classical Sanskrit prayers.
It brings in the folk voice—the language in which ordinary people have traditionally expressed devotion.
That is very much part of India's spiritual history:
Sanskrit in the temple,
vernacular poetry in the village,
folk song in the courtyard,
and bhajan on the lips of the ordinary devotee.
11. Hey Kharari
This is another Sadhu Tiwari composition and is one of the more earthy pieces in the soundtrack.
Kharari is a regional/folk expression, and the song belongs to the same world of Bundeli/Braj-flavoured devotional expression that gives Hanuman Ansh its distinctive atmosphere.
That is important because the film isn't presenting spirituality as something belonging only to scholars.
It is spirituality as lived by people.
What I find most interesting about the whole album
After looking at all 11 together, I think there is a pattern.
The songs move through three layers of devotion:
Hanuman the power
Bajrang Baanka
Hey Kharari
Jai Hanuman
The mighty Hanuman.
Hanuman the devotee
Maine Tere Hi Bharose
Ram Bhajan Ki Or
Hriday Mein Jinke Sitaram
Siyavar Ramchandra Ki Jai
The Hanuman whose entire being is surrendered to Rama.
The deeper spiritual journey
Aavagaman
Vaishnav Jan To
Parvati
Saasa Haale
Here the story becomes larger than Hanuman himself—life, death, compassion, Shiva, devotion, and the search for what carries us across.
And perhaps that is why the soundtrack feels different from an ordinary film album.
It is not simply songs about Hanuman.
It is almost a journey through different ways Indians have approached the Divine—folk song, bhajan, Vaishnava devotion, Shaiva imagery, Rama-nama, surrender and finally the question of crossing the ocean of life.
The official album is only 36 minutes 48 seconds, so it is quite possible to listen to the entire thing as one continuous devotional experience.
The Space Between Two Breaths
Why Śiva Looked for the Infinite in a Moment We Never Notice
We breathe without thinking about it.
From the moment we are born, the breath begins its silent work.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Again.
Again.
Thousands of times a day, the breath moves in and out of us without asking for our attention.
We notice it only when something goes wrong.
But the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra asks us to do something very different.
Notice it when nothing is wrong.
Watch the breath.
Not to control it.
Not to change it.
Simply to see it.
And then notice something extraordinarily small.
The breath goes out.
The outgoing breath ends.
Before the next breath begins, there is a tiny transition.
A pause.
Then the incoming breath begins.
And again, when the incoming breath is complete, there is another transition before the outgoing breath starts.
We usually rush straight across these tiny spaces.
Śiva asks us to look there.
Why look at a pause?
Because the pause is different from the movement.
The breath is movement.
Inhalation is movement.
Exhalation is movement.
But between them there can be a moment of stillness.
And stillness is something our constantly moving minds rarely encounter.
We are always going somewhere.
One thought follows another.
One task follows another.
One desire produces another.
Even when the body is sitting still, the mind may be travelling everywhere.
But the breath keeps returning us to the present.
It does not live in yesterday.
It does not live in tomorrow.
It is always now.
The remarkable instruction
The Vijñāna Bhairava contains several contemplations involving the breath and the spaces associated with it.
The important point is that this is not simply a breathing exercise.
The seeker is not being asked to take deeper breaths or hold the breath forcefully.
The attention is directed toward the natural movement of breathing and particularly toward the subtle transitions in it.
This distinction matters.
The practice is one of awareness.
Not performance.
One watches.
And gradually, something ordinary becomes extraordinarily subtle.
The disappearing breath
Imagine watching an outgoing breath.
It begins.
It moves outward.
It becomes softer.
It gradually disappears.
For a fleeting instant, there is no outgoing movement.
And then—
the incoming breath arrives.
That instant between the two movements is so small that we normally overlook it completely.
But what if we do not?
What if attention remains there?
There is no breath to follow for that brief moment.
No movement.
No task.
No destination.
Just stillness.
And in that stillness, the mind may also become quiet.
It is like watching a wave disappear
Think of a wave reaching the shore.
It rises.
It travels.
It breaks.
Then, for a moment, the water seems to settle before another wave arrives.
The pause does not look important.
Yet without the pause, we would not clearly perceive the rhythm.
The breath has the same mystery.
It is a rhythm of coming and going.
Life itself seems to move through this rhythm.
Arrival.
Departure.
Arrival.
Departure.
And between them—
silence.
The breath is also a teacher of impermanence
Every breath comes.
Every breath goes.
No breath stays.
We cannot keep the breath we have just taken.
We cannot make the previous breath return.
Each one is new.
This is something we intellectually know but rarely experience consciously.
The breath quietly teaches:
What comes must go.
And yet the process continues.
One breath disappears.
Another appears.
The individual breath is impermanent, but the breathing continues.
Could this simple fact have been one of the reasons ancient seekers paid such extraordinary attention to it?
And then comes the deeper question
If the breath is constantly changing, who is watching it?
The breath changes.
The body changes.
Thoughts change.
Emotions change.
Memories change.
Our opinions change.
Even our sense of who we are changes over the course of life.
Yet we can observe all these changes.
The Vijñāna Bhairava repeatedly turns our attention toward that mysterious fact.
What is the awareness in which change is being observed?
Perhaps this is why the space between breaths becomes so significant.
It is not that the tiny pause is magically infinite.
Rather, it becomes an opportunity to turn attention away from the changing object and toward the awareness that knows the change.
The smallest doorway
We tend to search for the infinite in enormous things.
The Himalayas.
The ocean.
The stars.
The vastness of the universe.
But Śiva directs Pārvatī toward something almost ridiculously small.
The space between two breaths.
What could be smaller?
And yet the teaching is beautiful precisely because of this contrast.
The doorway need not be enormous.
The doorway only needs to lead inward.
Try not to chase the pause
There is another subtle point.
If we become determined to catch the pause, we may actually lose it.
We start controlling the breath.
We wait anxiously.
We try to make the pause longer.
We turn meditation into another task.
But the instruction is much gentler.
Let the breath breathe.
Let the body breathe.
Let the pause appear naturally.
Your task is only to notice.
Like watching a bird land on a branch.
If you rush toward it, it may fly away.
If you remain still, you may see it.
We live between breaths without knowing it
There is something almost poetic about this.
Every human life is made of breaths.
We think of life as years.
But biologically and experientially, it is also a succession of tiny moments:
one breath,
another breath,
another.
We never know which breath will be our last.
And yet we rarely think about death while breathing.
The Vijñāna Bhairava does not necessarily ask us to become frightened by that fact.
Instead, it asks us to become more awake to the breath we have now.
Perhaps this changes the question about death
Pārvatī's deeper question was about ultimate reality.
What happens when the body ends?
What remains?
Śiva's response does something remarkable.
Instead of asking the seeker to imagine death, he asks the seeker to investigate the spaces within life itself.
Every breath ends.
Another begins.
Every thought ends.
Another begins.
Every experience appears.
Then disappears.
We are surrounded by endings and beginnings every moment.
Yet something is present to witness them.
The seeker is invited to discover that for herself.
A meditation hidden in an ordinary day
No special place is necessary to appreciate the principle.
You may be sitting quietly.
Walking.
Waiting.
Looking out of a window.
Before sleep.
After waking.
Whenever you remember, simply notice:
breathing in...
breathing out...
and the tiny transition between them.
Do not force anything.
Do not expect visions.
Do not demand an experience.
Just notice.
Perhaps nothing happens.
That too is perfectly all right.
The practice is not about producing something spectacular.
It is about learning to see what was already there.
The infinite may not announce itself
Perhaps this is what makes the teaching so beautiful.
We expect profound things to arrive dramatically.
A revelation.
A vision.
A thunderbolt.
A great mystical experience.
But Śiva points toward something much quieter.
A breath ends.
For a moment, there is stillness.
Then another breath begins.
And in that tiny interval, the mind is invited to stop chasing the world.
Just for a moment.
Nothing spectacular happens.
And yet everything has changed.
Because we noticed.
The ancient invitation
Thousands of years ago, Śiva is imagined sitting with Pārvatī and answering her questions about the deepest mystery of existence.
He could have sent her searching through the universe.
Instead, one of his doors opens into something that is always with her.
Her own breath.
And perhaps that is the most beautiful part of the teaching.
We do not have to travel far to begin.
We do not have to wait for a special day.
We do not even have to wait for silence.
The next breath is already coming.
And somewhere between the breath that has just left us and the breath that is about to arrive—
there is a moment we normally never notice.
Śiva asks us to notice it.
And perhaps, in learning to notice that tiny space,
we begin to discover that the search for the infinite was never really a search outward at all.
The 112 Doors of Śiva
How the Vijñāna Bhairava Turns Ordinary Life into Meditation
Imagine being given 112 doors and being told:
“Behind any one of them, you may discover the same reality.”
You do not need to open all 112.
You do not even need to know which one is the best.
You only need to enter one.
This is the extraordinary invitation of the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, the ancient dialogue between Śiva and Pārvatī.
Pārvatī asks Śiva to reveal the ultimate reality.
Śiva's answer is not a long philosophical argument.
Instead, he gives her a remarkable collection of contemplative methods—traditionally counted as 112 dhāraṇās, or ways of directing awareness.
And what makes them so fascinating is this:
They do not all require a cave, a temple, a rosary or a complicated ritual.
Many begin with things we are already doing every day.
Breathing.
Listening.
Looking.
Walking.
Sleeping.
Feeling.
Thinking.
Even being startled.
Śiva takes the ordinary and shows how it can become extraordinary.
The first door: the breath
We breathe thousands of times every day without giving the process a second thought.
But Śiva asks us to notice it.
The incoming breath.
The outgoing breath.
And, most intriguingly, the tiny transition between them.
There is a moment when one movement has ended and the next has not quite begun.
A pause.
A gap.
Instead of rushing through it, one can become aware of it.
The breath has become a doorway.
Nothing external has changed.
Only attention has changed.
The second door: the space between thoughts
We normally identify ourselves with our thoughts.
“I think, therefore I am.”
But Śiva asks us to look more carefully.
A thought arises.
It remains for a while.
Then it disappears.
Another thought follows.
But what happens in between?
There may be a tiny interval in which there is no particular thought.
Ordinarily, we rush past it.
The practice is simply to notice.
The silence between two thoughts becomes another doorway.
The third door: sound becoming silence
Listen to a sound.
A bell.
A mantra.
Music.
A bird.
Even a single spoken word.
Normally we pay attention to the sound itself.
But every sound eventually fades.
What happens at the precise moment when sound disappears?
Śiva directs attention towards that transition.
Sound has ended.
Silence has begun.
And instead of immediately searching for the next sound, remain with the silence.
Again, nothing extraordinary has been introduced.
Something ordinary has simply been observed completely.
The fourth door: the sky
Look at the open sky.
There is no obvious boundary.
No wall.
No corner.
No object to hold on to.
The mind usually looks for something—a cloud, a bird, the moon, a star.
But what if, for a moment, one simply rests awareness in the vastness itself?
The sky becomes a teacher.
It offers no object to possess.
Only space.
And the mind, which is accustomed to holding things, encounters something it cannot grasp.
The fifth door: the moment of waking
There is a fascinating moment every morning that we usually miss.
We are asleep.
Then, gradually, we become aware.
Before we remember our name, our responsibilities, our appointments and our problems, there may be a brief moment of simple awareness.
I am.
Nothing more is required.
Śiva asks the seeker to notice such transitions.
The moment between sleep and waking becomes a doorway.
The sixth door: falling asleep
The reverse transition is equally mysterious.
At night, thoughts begin to lose their grip.
The day's activities disappear.
The body relaxes.
The world recedes.
Eventually, we fall asleep.
Could one observe this transition without trying to interfere with it?
To watch the mind becoming quiet is itself a meditation.
Sleep, something we normally surrender to unconsciously, becomes an object of awareness.
The seventh door: emotion
The Vijñāna Bhairava does something particularly interesting with intense emotions.
Fear.
Joy.
Wonder.
Desire.
Shock.
Instead of immediately suppressing an intense experience or becoming completely carried away by it, the seeker is invited to observe the energy of the experience itself.
An emotion can be enormous.
But if we stop adding our story to it for a moment, something changes.
Instead of:
“I am angry.”
there can be:
“Anger is arising in awareness.”
The observer and the experience begin to be seen differently.
Even emotion can become a doorway.
The eighth door: the sudden shock
There are moments when the mind stops.
A sudden unexpected sound.
A startling event.
A moment of astonishment.
For an instant, the usual stream of thought can disappear.
Before the mind explains what happened, there may be pure awareness.
Śiva draws attention to such moments.
The gap created by surprise becomes another doorway.
It is almost as though life itself occasionally presses the meditation button for us.
The ninth door: wonder
Have you ever looked at something so beautiful that, for a few seconds, you simply stopped thinking?
A sunrise.
The ocean.
A mountain.
A child's face.
A temple.
Music that unexpectedly touches something deep within you.
There is a moment when we do not analyse the experience.
We simply are there.
The Vijñāna Bhairava recognises the spiritual possibility hidden in such moments.
Wonder can quiet the mind.
And when the mind becomes quiet, awareness becomes easier to notice.
The tenth door: the body
The body is another field of meditation.
Instead of thinking of the body merely as something we possess, we can experience it directly.
The movement of the breath.
The sensation of walking.
The feeling of touch.
The pulse.
Warmth.
Coolness.
Stillness.
The body is constantly giving us information.
Usually we live inside it without actually experiencing it consciously.
Śiva asks us to return to the immediate experience.
The body becomes a doorway into awareness.
The eleventh door: walking
Meditation does not necessarily mean sitting still.
Walking can itself become meditation.
Feel the movement.
Notice the contact of the feet with the earth.
Observe the rhythm.
Let attention remain with the movement rather than wandering endlessly into thought.
The destination temporarily becomes less important than the experience of each step.
Walking becomes awareness in motion.
The twelfth door: simply stopping
Perhaps one of the simplest doors is also one of the hardest.
Stop.
Not merely physically.
Stop the constant reaching for the next thing.
The next message.
The next task.
The next thought.
The next desire.
For a moment, do nothing.
There is an unfamiliar quality to such a moment because modern life has trained us to fill every empty space.
But the Vijñāna Bhairava repeatedly points towards these spaces.
The doorway may already be open.
We are simply too busy to notice it.
Why 112?
The number itself is less important than the principle behind it.
Human beings have different temperaments.
One person may naturally become absorbed in sound.
Another in devotion.
Another in the breath.
Another in nature.
Another in contemplation.
Another may discover stillness through a sudden emotional experience.
Śiva does not seem to insist:
“There is only one correct door.”
Instead, he offers many possibilities.
This is one of the most generous features of the teaching.
Find the door through which you can enter.
Meditation is not necessarily something added to life
This may be the deepest lesson.
We often imagine meditation as something separate from ordinary existence.
We must create a special room.
Set aside a special time.
Sit in a special posture.
Close our eyes.
And then begin meditation.
The Vijñāna Bhairava offers another possibility.
Perhaps meditation is not something we add to life.
Perhaps it is a different way of experiencing life.
Breathing can be meditation.
Listening can be meditation.
Walking can be meditation.
Looking can be meditation.
Silence can be meditation.
Even a moment of astonishment can be meditation.
The ordinary world is full of doors.
And what lies behind the doors?
This is where the teaching becomes profound.
The 112 practices are not 112 different destinations.
They are different approaches to the same fundamental reality.
Śiva calls the ultimate state Bhairava.
The methods are not meant merely to produce relaxation.
They are intended to lead the seeker beyond the ordinary identification with body, thought and ego, toward direct recognition of consciousness itself.
And therefore the real instruction is not:
“Believe what Śiva says.”
It is closer to:
“Look for yourself.”
Perhaps Pārvatī's question was never really about death
This takes us back to the beginning.
Pārvatī wanted to know the ultimate truth.
What is reality?
What is consciousness?
What happens to the individual?
What remains?
Śiva could have given her an answer to memorise.
Instead, he gave her 112 doors to investigate existence directly.
And that is why the teaching remains so intriguing after centuries.
It does not merely tell us what to think.
It teaches us where to look.
Between two breaths.
Between two thoughts.
At the disappearance of a sound.
In the stillness before sleep.
In the instant of waking.
In wonder.
In fear.
In silence.
In the sky.
In the body.
In movement.
In stillness.
In the countless unnoticed moments through which an ordinary day passes.
Perhaps that is the great secret hidden in the Vijñāna Bhairava:
The door to the extraordinary may not be somewhere far away.
It may be hidden inside the most ordinary moment of our lives.
And Śiva gives Pārvatī 112 ways of noticing it.
The Space Between Two Breaths
Why Śiva Looked for the Infinite in a Moment We Never Notice
We breathe without thinking about it.
From the moment we are born, the breath begins its silent work.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Again.
Again.
Thousands of times a day, the breath moves in and out of us without asking for our attention.
We notice it only when something goes wrong.
But the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra asks us to do something very different.
Notice it when nothing is wrong.
Watch the breath.
Not to control it.
Not to change it.
Simply to see it.
And then notice something extraordinarily small.
The breath goes out.
The outgoing breath ends.
Before the next breath begins, there is a tiny transition.
A pause.
Then the incoming breath begins.
And again, when the incoming breath is complete, there is another transition before the outgoing breath starts.
We usually rush straight across these tiny spaces.
Śiva asks us to look there.
Why look at a pause?
Because the pause is different from the movement.
The breath is movement.
Inhalation is movement.
Exhalation is movement.
But between them there can be a moment of stillness.
And stillness is something our constantly moving minds rarely encounter.
We are always going somewhere.
One thought follows another.
One task follows another.
One desire produces another.
Even when the body is sitting still, the mind may be travelling everywhere.
But the breath keeps returning us to the present.
It does not live in yesterday.
It does not live in tomorrow.
It is always now.
The remarkable instruction
The Vijñāna Bhairava contains several contemplations involving the breath and the spaces associated with it.
The important point is that this is not simply a breathing exercise.
The seeker is not being asked to take deeper breaths or hold the breath forcefully.
The attention is directed toward the natural movement of breathing and particularly toward the subtle transitions in it.
This distinction matters.
The practice is one of awareness.
Not performance.
One watches.
And gradually, something ordinary becomes extraordinarily subtle.
The disappearing breath
Imagine watching an outgoing breath.
It begins.
It moves outward.
It becomes softer.
It gradually disappears.
For a fleeting instant, there is no outgoing movement.
And then—
the incoming breath arrives.
That instant between the two movements is so small that we normally overlook it completely.
But what if we do not?
What if attention remains there?
There is no breath to follow for that brief moment.
No movement.
No task.
No destination.
Just stillness.
And in that stillness, the mind may also become quiet.
It is like watching a wave disappear
Think of a wave reaching the shore.
It rises.
It travels.
It breaks.
Then, for a moment, the water seems to settle before another wave arrives.
The pause does not look important.
Yet without the pause, we would not clearly perceive the rhythm.
The breath has the same mystery.
It is a rhythm of coming and going.
Life itself seems to move through this rhythm.
Arrival.
Departure.
Arrival.
Departure.
And between them—
silence.
The breath is also a teacher of impermanence
Every breath comes.
Every breath goes.
No breath stays.
We cannot keep the breath we have just taken.
We cannot make the previous breath return.
Each one is new.
This is something we intellectually know but rarely experience consciously.
The breath quietly teaches:
What comes must go.
And yet the process continues.
One breath disappears.
Another appears.
The individual breath is impermanent, but the breathing continues.
Could this simple fact have been one of the reasons ancient seekers paid such extraordinary attention to it?
And then comes the deeper question
If the breath is constantly changing, who is watching it?
The breath changes.
The body changes.
Thoughts change.
Emotions change.
Memories change.
Our opinions change.
Even our sense of who we are changes over the course of life.
Yet we can observe all these changes.
The Vijñāna Bhairava repeatedly turns our attention toward that mysterious fact.
What is the awareness in which change is being observed?
Perhaps this is why the space between breaths becomes so significant.
It is not that the tiny pause is magically infinite.
Rather, it becomes an opportunity to turn attention away from the changing object and toward the awareness that knows the change.
The smallest doorway
We tend to search for the infinite in enormous things.
The Himalayas.
The ocean.
The stars.
The vastness of the universe.
But Śiva directs Pārvatī toward something almost ridiculously small.
The space between two breaths.
What could be smaller?
And yet the teaching is beautiful precisely because of this contrast.
The doorway need not be enormous.
The doorway only needs to lead inward.
Try not to chase the pause
There is another subtle point.
If we become determined to catch the pause, we may actually lose it.
We start controlling the breath.
We wait anxiously.
We try to make the pause longer.
We turn meditation into another task.
But the instruction is much gentler.
Let the breath breathe.
Let the body breathe.
Let the pause appear naturally.
Your task is only to notice.
Like watching a bird land on a branch.
If you rush toward it, it may fly away.
If you remain still, you may see it.
We live between breaths without knowing it
There is something almost poetic about this.
Every human life is made of breaths.
We think of life as years.
But biologically and experientially, it is also a succession of tiny moments:
one breath,
another breath,
another.
We never know which breath will be our last.
And yet we rarely think about death while breathing.
The Vijñāna Bhairava does not necessarily ask us to become frightened by that fact.
Instead, it asks us to become more awake to the breath we have now.
Perhaps this changes the question about death
Pārvatī's deeper question was about ultimate reality.
What happens when the body ends?
What remains?
Śiva's response does something remarkable.
Instead of asking the seeker to imagine death, he asks the seeker to investigate the spaces within life itself.
Every breath ends.
Another begins.
Every thought ends.
Another begins.
Every experience appears.
Then disappears.
We are surrounded by endings and beginnings every moment.
Yet something is present to witness them.
The seeker is invited to discover that for herself.
A meditation hidden in an ordinary day
No special place is necessary to appreciate the principle.
You may be sitting quietly.
Walking.
Waiting.
Looking out of a window.
Before sleep.
After waking.
Whenever you remember, simply notice:
breathing in...
breathing out...
and the tiny transition between them.
Do not force anything.
Do not expect visions.
Do not demand an experience.
Just notice.
Perhaps nothing happens.
That too is perfectly all right.
The practice is not about producing something spectacular.
It is about learning to see what was already there.
The infinite may not announce itself
Perhaps this is what makes the teaching so beautiful.
We expect profound things to arrive dramatically.
A revelation.
A vision.
A thunderbolt.
A great mystical experience.
But Śiva points toward something much quieter.
A breath ends.
For a moment, there is stillness.
Then another breath begins.
And in that tiny interval, the mind is invited to stop chasing the world.
Just for a moment.
Nothing spectacular happens.
And yet everything has changed.
Because we noticed.
The ancient invitation
Thousands of years ago, Śiva is imagined sitting with Pārvatī and answering her questions about the deepest mystery of existence.
He could have sent her searching through the universe.
Instead, one of his doors opens into something that is always with her.
Her own breath.
And perhaps that is the most beautiful part of the teaching.
We do not have to travel far to begin.
We do not have to wait for a special day.
We do not even have to wait for silence.
The next breath is already coming.
And somewhere between the breath that has just left us and the breath that is about to arrive—
there is a moment we normally never notice.
Śiva asks us to notice it.
And perhaps, in learning to notice that tiny space,
we begin to discover that the search for the infinite was never really a search outward at all.
When Pārvatī Asked Śiva: “What Happens When I Die?”
The Question That Opened the Door to 112 Ways of Knowing Reality
There are questions that seek information.
And then there are questions that change the person who asks them.
In the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, Pārvatī asks Śiva one such question.
She does not ask him how to become wealthy, powerful or successful. She asks about the very nature of existence—about consciousness, life and death, and what lies beyond all the descriptions by which human beings try to understand the ultimate reality.
At the heart of her questioning is a concern that has visited almost every human being:
What happens when I die?
What happens to me?
Does everything end when the body ends?
Does consciousness continue?
Where does it go?
What is the relationship between the individual self and the supreme reality?
These are questions for which books can provide theories, scriptures can provide teachings, and philosophers can provide arguments.
But Śiva does something quite unexpected.
He does not merely give Pārvatī an answer.
He gives her ways to experience the answer.
And thus begins one of the most remarkable spiritual dialogues in the Indian tradition.
Pārvatī asks; Śiva does not preach
The Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra is presented as a dialogue between Śiva and Pārvatī.
Pārvatī asks Śiva to reveal the supreme reality—the Bhairava state—and to explain the many different teachings and paths that people speak about.
Her questions are not casual philosophical curiosity.
She wants to know the essence behind all these doctrines.
What is the real nature of Bhairava?
How can it be known?
Is it something that can be reached through rituals, mantras, meditation, knowledge or particular forms of worship?
And, ultimately, what is this consciousness that seems to live through us?
The beauty of Pārvatī's questioning is that she asks what many of us silently ask.
Who am I beneath the body, thoughts, memories and personality?
And if all these change—and eventually disappear—what remains?
Śiva's answer is astonishing
One might expect Śiva to say:
“After death, the soul goes here.”
Or:
“The liberated soul becomes one with the Supreme.”
Instead, the Tantra takes another direction.
Śiva begins describing dhāraṇās—ways of concentrating, observing and entering directly into consciousness.
Traditionally, the text is associated with 112 methods.
They are astonishingly varied.
Some begin with the breath.
Some with sound.
Some with the space between two thoughts.
Some with intense emotions.
Some with the moment of waking.
Some with sleep.
Some with looking at the sky.
Some with observing the body.
Some with stillness.
Some with the sudden gap between inhalation and exhalation.
The ordinary experiences of life themselves become doors.
Śiva seems to be saying:
You do not have to wait until death to investigate what lies beyond the ordinary identity of “I”.
Look deeply into consciousness while you are alive.
The breath becomes a doorway
One of the most famous ideas in the text concerns the breath.
We normally breathe without noticing it.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
But Śiva asks Pārvatī to notice something hidden in this simple movement.
There is a tiny transition between the outgoing breath and the incoming breath.
And another between the incoming breath and the outgoing breath.
For an instant, there is neither inhalation nor exhalation.
There is simply stillness.
The instruction is not to force the breath or perform some complicated exercise.
It is to become deeply attentive to that moment.
The breath continues its natural rhythm.
But the mind begins to notice something it ordinarily misses.
A gap.
And in that gap, the usual movement of thought may momentarily become quiet.
This is characteristic of the Vijñāna Bhairava.
It keeps pointing toward the spaces we normally overlook.
The gap between two thoughts
Here is another astonishing possibility.
We imagine that our mind is continuously thinking.
But is it?
Watch carefully.
One thought arises.
Then another.
But sometimes there is a tiny interval in which the previous thought has disappeared and the next has not yet appeared.
Usually we don't notice it.
Śiva turns attention toward precisely such moments.
The gap.
The silence.
The space before the next thought.
Why?
Because if the mind temporarily stops producing its familiar stream of thoughts, what remains?
The question about death suddenly becomes a question about consciousness itself.
Perhaps this is the real genius of the teaching
Pārvatī asks:
“What happens when I die?”
Śiva's response can be understood as:
“First discover what happens when the ordinary ‘I’ becomes silent—even for a moment.”
That changes the entire investigation.
Death is no longer merely an event somewhere at the end of life.
The seeker can investigate the nature of the self now.
Every night, something similar happens.
We fall asleep.
The waking personality disappears from our immediate experience.
Our name disappears.
Our responsibilities disappear.
Our possessions disappear.
The world we were interacting with disappears from conscious awareness.
Yet we do not ordinarily ask:
What is present when all these are absent?
The Vijñāna Bhairava repeatedly directs attention toward such transitions.
It is not a philosophy book in the ordinary sense
This is perhaps what makes the text so unusual.
It does not simply construct an elaborate intellectual system and ask us to believe it.
It says, in effect:
Look.
Watch your breath.
Watch your thoughts.
Watch the instant between movements.
Watch sound disappear into silence.
Watch the moment of waking.
Watch the moment before sleep.
Observe intense emotion.
Observe stillness.
Observe space.
Observe consciousness itself.
The world becomes a laboratory.
And the experimenter is the seeker.
112 doors—but one reality
The 112 methods can initially seem almost bewilderingly different.
Why so many?
Perhaps because human beings are so different.
One person naturally finds stillness through the breath.
Another through sound.
Another through devotion.
Another through intense concentration.
Another through observing nature.
Another through an emotional experience.
Another through complete silence.
The teaching does not insist that everyone enter through the same door.
It offers many doors to the same room.
And that room is Bhairava—the vast, undivided awareness that the tradition presents as the deepest reality.
And what about death?
This brings us back to Pārvatī's original concern.
The text does not turn death into a frightening subject.
Instead, it quietly shifts the question.
Rather than endlessly asking:
“What will happen to me after I die?”
it asks us to investigate:
“Who is this ‘me’ that I am so certain will die?”
The body changes.
Our thoughts change.
Our opinions change.
Our relationships change.
Even our sense of identity changes.
The child we once were has disappeared.
The young person we once were has disappeared.
Yet there is a strange continuity—we say:
“That was me.”
What is that continuity?
What is the awareness in which all these changing identities have appeared?
That is where the Vijñāna Bhairava turns our attention.
Pārvatī's question becomes our question
Perhaps that is why this ancient dialogue remains so striking.
Pārvatī's question is not really an ancient question.
It is ours.
Every generation asks it.
What happens when I die?
But Śiva's answer suggests that perhaps the more fundamental question is:
What am I before I die?
And even more radically:
Can I experience that reality directly, rather than merely believing an answer given by someone else?
That is why the dialogue does not end with a definition.
It opens into 112 possibilities of discovery.
The seeker is not merely told what reality is.
The seeker is invited to look.
To breathe.
To listen.
To become still.
To notice.
To enter the gaps.
And perhaps, in one of those unnoticed spaces between breath and breath, thought and thought, waking and sleep—
to glimpse what Pārvatī was really asking about.
The question began with death.
But Śiva turned it into an invitation to know life itself.
Devi Asked Shiva What Happens After Death — His Answer Is Hauntingly Beautiful
What if death is not the end of love, but the moment when all distance disappears?
Devi asks Shiva the question almost every human heart secretly carries: “What happens if I die?” Shiva does not answer with heaven, rebirth, punishment, reward, or belief. He answers through the mystery of breath and silence:
“If you die, Devi, I will find you between your last two breaths. I will wait where sound becomes silence. There, nothing can separate us.”
This is not meant as a literal quotation from an ancient scripture. It is a poetic meditation inspired by the spirit of Shiva–Devi dialogue in the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, where breath, the gap between breaths, silence, dissolution, and direct awareness become doorways into what lies beyond the ordinary mind.
The deepest intimacy in Tantra is not merely between two bodies. Shiva and Devi can be understood as consciousness and its living energy—apparently two, yet never truly separate. When thought becomes silent, when identity loosens its grip, and when even the breath disappears for a moment, Tantra points toward a presence untouched by coming and going.
Perhaps the mystery is not whether love survives death. Perhaps the deeper question is: Was there ever really a separation to begin with?
Source: Original poetic dialogue, inspired by the contemplative spirit of the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, especially its meditations on breath, the spaces between breaths, silence, and dissolution. Not a verbatim scriptural quotation.
After 9/11, a small Maasai village called Enoosaen in southern Kenya made one of the most extraordinary gestures of solidarity ever offered to the United States. The Maasai, an Indigenous pastoralist people for whom cattle are the center of life, wealth, spirituality, and identity, heard about the attacks through a young Maasai man named Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, who had been studying in New York and returned home shaken by what he had witnessed. When he told the elders about the tragedy, they felt a deep, communal grief. In Maasai culture, when words are not enough, you give what is most precious. And nothing is more sacred than a cow.
In 2002, the community gathered for a formal ceremony and offered 14 sacred cows to the United States as a gift of mourning and compassion. This was not symbolic in a casual sense, it was a profound spiritual act. A cow in Maasai belief is life itself: nourishment, status, blessing, and continuity. To give away a cow is to give away a piece of your soul. The U.S. ambassador to Kenya, William Brencick, traveled to the village, where elders wrapped him in traditional cloth and performed blessings as they presented the cattle. The ambassador understood the gravity of the gesture and accepted the gift on behalf of the American people.
Because the U.S. cannot practically take possession of cattle, the cows were entrusted to the village and became part of a protected herd known as the “American Cows.” They symbolize a bridge between two worlds, one of skyscrapers and one of savannahs, connected by shared grief and human empathy. Over time, the herd grew, and the story became a powerful reminder that compassion can come from unexpected places, and that even communities far removed from global politics can respond to tragedy with extraordinary generosity and heart.
Temples in top ten states
10. Bihar 29,738 temples.
9. Orrisa 30,000 temples.
8. U. P. 37,518 temples.
7. Rajasthan 39,392 temples.
6. A. P. 47,152 temples.
5. Gujarat 49,905 temples.
4. West Bengal 53,658 temples.
3. Karnataka 61,232 temples.
2. Maharashtra 77,283 temples.
1. T. N 89,154 temples
Total. 5,15,032 temples
When Opportunity Comes Through the Roof
When Destiny Suddenly Becomes Bigger Than the Life We Had Planned
We often say that opportunity comes knocking at the door.
We prepare ourselves, wait for the right moment and hope that one day somebody will notice our ability and give us a chance.
But sometimes life behaves very differently.
The opportunity does not knock.
It does not even wait outside.
It comes through the roof.
It arrives suddenly, unexpectedly and with such force that there is no comfortable way of ignoring it.
And when it does, something remarkable can happen. A person who was living an ordinary life suddenly finds himself carrying something far larger than anything he had planned for.
This is one way of looking at the extraordinary response to Hanuman Ansh. Whatever one's view of the film or its success, the story raises a much larger question:
What happens when life gives us something we never went looking for?
Perhaps we call it grace
Indian thought has a beautiful word for something that comes to us beyond our calculations:
Anugraha — grace.
Grace is not necessarily a miracle that removes every difficulty.
Sometimes grace comes disguised as an opportunity.
Sometimes it comes as a meeting with the right person.
Sometimes it comes as a responsibility we never expected.
Sometimes it comes through a crisis that forces us to discover a strength we did not know we possessed.
And sometimes it arrives so suddenly that our carefully constructed plans become irrelevant.
We had planned a small journey.
Life had planned a much larger one.
The strange thing about grace
Grace does not always choose the person who appears most prepared.
That is what makes it so difficult to understand.
The world looks at qualifications, experience, money, connections and reputation.
Grace seems to ask a different question:
“What can this person become if given the opportunity?”
A person may possess a talent for years without knowing its full extent. Then one particular circumstance arrives, and suddenly everything falls into place.
The ability was already there.
The moment merely revealed it.
Hanumān gives us perhaps the greatest metaphor
Hanumān did not suddenly acquire his strength when the ocean had to be crossed.
His strength was already within him.
What was missing was remembrance.
Jāmbavān reminded him of what he had forgotten.
And once Hanumān understood who he really was, the impossible became possible.
That is a profound way of looking at human potential.
Perhaps some opportunities do not create our abilities.
They reveal them.
The opportunity becomes the mirror in which we finally see ourselves.
But grace also brings responsibility
This is where the idea becomes deeper.
If something extraordinary suddenly comes into our lives, the response cannot merely be excitement.
It must be responsibility.
A person who receives an unexpected opportunity has to grow quickly enough to carry it.
The roof may have opened unexpectedly.
But now one has to build something worthy beneath it.
This is why anugraha should not be confused with luck.
Luck may give us an opening.
Grace may give us an opening and a purpose.
What we do with it is still our responsibility.
Why do some people recognise it and others don't?
Perhaps because opportunity can be frightening.
We are comfortable with what we know.
When something much larger suddenly appears, our first reaction may be:
"Surely this cannot be meant for me."
We look for reasons to retreat.
We think we are not ready.
We compare ourselves with people who have been doing it for years.
We forget that some journeys begin precisely because we are given an opportunity before we feel ready for it.
Hanumān could have looked at the ocean and said, "I am not prepared."
Instead, he remembered.
And he leapt.
The greatest opportunities may not look like opportunities
A promotion obviously looks like an opportunity.
So does a business proposition.
But what about meeting someone unexpectedly?
What about being asked to take responsibility for something nobody else wants?
What about a problem that forces us to discover an ability we never used?
What about an apparently insignificant decision that changes the direction of an entire life?
We usually recognise grace only in retrospect.
While living through it, it may look like confusion.
Years later we may look back and say:
"That was the moment everything changed."
Perhaps that is why we should not ask only, "What do I want?"
We should also ask:
"What is life asking of me now?"
The first question is about ambition.
The second is about readiness.
There are moments when our personal plans and the larger movement of life unexpectedly meet.
When that happens, perhaps the wisest thing is not to cling desperately to the old plan.
Perhaps it is to recognise the opening.
To step forward.
To give one's best.
And to allow the journey to become larger than the person who began it.
Because sometimes opportunity comes through the door.
Sometimes it comes through the window.
And once in a while—
it comes crashing through the roof.
When that happens, perhaps it is not time to ask,
"Why me?"
Perhaps it is time to ask,
"What am I being asked to become?"
That may be one of the most beautiful meanings of anugraha.
Grace does not merely give us something.
Grace sometimes gives us the chance to discover who we were capable of becoming all along.
A reflection on grace, destiny, preparedness and the mysterious way a life can suddenly become larger than its own plans.
Two articles in one combined.
When Music Becomes a Performance
What India Can Learn from the West, and What the West Can Learn from India
There is something astounding about watching a well-trained Western musician walk onto a concert stage.
The instrument is ready. The musicians know exactly where to stand. The lighting, acoustics, programme, timing and movement of the performers seem to have been thought through. The first note arrives almost as if the entire hall has been waiting for it.
What we witness is not simply music.
It is music presented as a complete performance.
And that made me wonder: why does Indian classical music, with its extraordinary depth and centuries-old tradition, not always receive the same degree of concert presentation?
The answer is not that Indian musicians lack dedication. Far from it.
Our traditional musical training can demand a lifetime of immersion. A student may spend years learning a rāga, absorbing its nuances, mastering gamakas, understanding tāla and listening endlessly to a guru before even beginning to feel that the music has truly entered him.
Indian music has traditionally been less about performing music and more about becoming immersed in music.
That is perhaps its greatest strength.
But there is another dimension to music: the ability to take what has been learnt in private and transform it into a compelling public experience.
And here the West has much to teach us.
The Western approach: professionalism from the beginning
In much of Western classical music, the student is introduced quite early to the idea of performance.
One learns the instrument, certainly. But one also learns how to perform with others, follow a conductor, maintain tempo, read an ensemble, enter and exit correctly, rehearse systematically, respond to an audience and ultimately present oneself on a stage.
The concert itself becomes part of the education.
A young musician learns not merely:
"Can you play this piece?"
but also:
"Can you perform this piece?"
There is an important difference.
The music may have been composed centuries ago, yet every performance is treated as a carefully constructed event.
The musicians rehearse together.
The programme has an architecture.
The transitions matter.
The stage matters.
The sound matters.
The audience experience matters.
Even the silence before the first note can become part of the performance.
It is this extraordinary attention to the total presentation that can sometimes make a Western concert feel almost effortless.
Of course, it isn't effortless.
Behind that apparent ease lies years of discipline.
India: the extraordinary power of immersion
India comes from another direction.
Our guru–śiṣya tradition was never primarily designed to manufacture performers.
It sought to create musicians who had absorbed the music deeply enough for it to become almost instinctive.
The student listened.
Repeated.
Imitated.
Practised.
Made mistakes.
Was corrected.
Listened again.
And gradually the rāga stopped being something outside the student and became something within.
This is a very different educational philosophy.
Indian music has enormous emphasis on śruti, svara, rāga, bhāva and improvisation.
A great Carnatic or Hindustani musician does not merely reproduce notes written on paper. The musician enters a musical universe and discovers what can happen within it.
That requires something difficult to teach through a conventional curriculum:
deep-rooted dedication and immersion.
Perhaps this is why a truly great Indian musician can make a rāga feel less like a composition and more like a living presence.
But then comes the stage
And this is where the two traditions can meet.
India has produced musicians of extraordinary calibre.
But sometimes the concert presentation does not reflect the greatness of the music itself.
The artist may possess decades of learning, but the programme may lack structure.
The sound may not do justice to the instruments.
The accompanying musicians may not always be integrated into the presentation.
The audience may not understand what it is about to hear.
A magnificent piece may be followed by another magnificent piece without sufficient thought about the journey between them.
None of this diminishes the music.
But it can diminish the experience of the music.
And that is an important distinction.
A concert is not merely a collection of good music
A great concert has a beginning, a middle and an emotional destination.
The audience should feel that it has been taken somewhere.
This is something Western concert culture has understood remarkably well.
The programme is curated.
The musicians rehearse not merely individually but collectively.
The conductor, where applicable, becomes the bridge between dozens of musicians.
The stage becomes an instrument in itself.
Everything is designed so that the audience can surrender to the music without being distracted by what is happening around it.
There is a lesson here for India.
Not to imitate the West.
To professionalise the presentation of what we already possess.
And what can the West learn from India?
The exchange cannot be one-sided.
Western classical music has magnificent discipline, structure and performance culture.
But Indian music possesses something equally precious:
the art of musical discovery.
A rāga can unfold differently every evening.
A musician can respond to the moment.
The audience can become part of that moment.
There is space for silence, exploration, improvisation and spiritual emotion.
Indian music does not always ask:
"What is the exact piece we are going to reproduce?"
It can ask:
"What is waiting to emerge tonight?"
That is a profound musical philosophy.
Perhaps Western musicians could learn from India's willingness to allow music to breathe beyond the written score.
Two traditions, two kinds of excellence
The difference might therefore be expressed very simply.
The West has perfected the art of presenting music.
India has perfected the art of inhabiting music.
One gives extraordinary attention to the performance.
The other gives extraordinary attention to the inner life of the musician.
But the greatest possibility lies where the two meet.
Imagine an Indian musician who has spent decades absorbing a rāga from a guru, possesses extraordinary improvisational freedom, understands the spiritual dimensions of the music—and is equally trained in stagecraft, ensemble rehearsal, acoustics, programme design and communication with an audience.
Imagine an Indian classical concert presented with the precision of a great Western concert while retaining the soul of an Indian musical tradition.
That would not be Westernising Indian music.
It would be honouring Indian music enough to present it at its fullest potential.
Music needs both tapasya and presentation
Perhaps this is the lesson of our changing musical world.
Music begins with dedication.
It grows through discipline.
It acquires depth through immersion.
But eventually it must cross the invisible boundary between the musician and the listener.
And when it does, presentation matters.
The musician has spent years preparing for the moment.
The audience has given the musician its time.
That meeting deserves the best possible setting.
India does not need to abandon its ancient musical soul.
It needs to add another layer to it.
Deep learning.
Immense dedication.
Professional preparation.
And a presentation worthy of the music.
Perhaps the future Indian concert will combine the two great traditions:
the Western mastery of performance
with the Indian mastery of immersion.
Then music will not merely be heard.
It will be experienced.
This is actually the missing companion piece The fascinating point is that the guru–śiṣya tradition can look almost inefficient by modern educational standards—yet it has produced musicians of astonishing depth.
Why the Guru–Śiṣya Tradition Produces Extraordinary Musicians
An Ancient Way of Learning That Modern Education Still Struggles to Explain
How does one produce an extraordinary musician?
Modern education has an impressive answer.
Find a good teacher.
Follow a syllabus.
Learn technique.
Practise regularly.
Take examinations.
Attend workshops.
Perform.
Earn qualifications.
It is systematic, measurable and efficient.
And yet, India developed a very different system.
The guru–śiṣya tradition did not necessarily have a syllabus, examinations or a fixed timetable.
There was no promise that one would "complete" music in three years.
Sometimes the student spent decades with the guru.
And somehow, this apparently unstructured system produced musicians of extraordinary depth.
Why?
The guru did not merely teach music
The greatest difference is this.
A modern teacher generally teaches the subject.
A traditional guru sought to shape the musician.
The student did not simply learn how to sing a rāga or play an instrument.
The student watched how the guru listened.
How the guru breathed.
How a phrase was begun.
How a note was approached.
When silence was allowed.
How the musician responded when something went wrong.
How music was treated—not merely as entertainment, but as something worthy of reverence.
Much of this could never be written in a textbook.
It had to be absorbed.
Learning by listening
The guru–śiṣya system placed extraordinary importance on listening.
A student could hear the same phrase hundreds of times.
At first, it was merely sound.
Then came imitation.
Then recognition.
Then refinement.
Eventually the student could reproduce the phrase without consciously thinking about every movement.
This is one reason traditional musicians often developed an astonishing sensitivity to tiny differences in pitch, tone and expression.
The ear was being trained continuously.
Before the musician learned to produce sound, the musician learned to hear.
That may be one of the secrets.
Repetition without boredom
Modern education often worries about repetition.
The traditional system embraced it.
The same exercise.
The same phrase.
The same svara.
The same rāga.
Again.
And again.
And again.
But repetition was not simply mechanical.
Each repetition was an opportunity to make something more precise.
The first time the student might reproduce the notes.
Later, the intonation became cleaner.
Then the movement became smoother.
Then the emotional character appeared.
Eventually, technique disappeared into expression.
This is how mastery develops in many traditional arts.
The beginner thinks about the technique.
The master no longer has to.
The guru corrected what the student did not know was wrong
A book can tell you what a note is.
A recording can let you hear it.
But an experienced guru can hear something subtle and say:
"No. That is not how this phrase should breathe."
Perhaps the student cannot even explain what is wrong.
But the guru can.
Years of accumulated experience become a kind of musical instinct.
This is why traditional teaching was so dependent upon proximity.
You had to be there.
You had to hear the correction.
You had to try again.
The student learned the invisible things
Music has many things that can be measured.
Pitch.
Rhythm.
Speed.
Technique.
But some of the most important qualities cannot easily be measured.
When should a phrase end?
How long should a note be held?
Where should silence occur?
How much emotion is too much?
When should improvisation stop?
How does one create anticipation?
When does a rāga truly come alive?
These are not merely rules.
They are judgements.
And judgement is difficult to teach through a syllabus.
It develops through prolonged exposure to someone who possesses it.
The guru became the student's musical world
There was another extraordinary feature.
The student was not exposed to ten different methods simultaneously.
The student immersed himself in one tradition.
One guru.
One lineage.
One way of understanding the music.
This created tremendous depth.
Modern students have access to thousands of recordings and countless teachers. That is a wonderful advantage.
But abundance can also create confusion.
The traditional student had fewer voices—but listened to one voice very deeply.
Only after establishing a foundation could the musician develop an individual voice.
Music became part of life
Perhaps this is the greatest difference.
For the guru–śiṣya student, music was not necessarily a one-hour lesson between other activities.
It could become the environment in which life itself unfolded.
Practice.
Listening.
Observation.
Conversation.
Performance.
Correction.
Rest.
Then practice again.
The boundary between learning music and living music gradually disappeared.
And that is difficult to replicate in a classroom.
The extraordinary patience of the tradition
The guru–śiṣya system also understood something modern education sometimes forgets:
mastery takes time.
There was little obsession with completing a course.
A student might spend years learning the foundation before being allowed greater freedom.
The tradition did not ask:
"How quickly can we finish teaching this?"
It asked:
"Has the student absorbed it?"
That is a very different question.
But it was not perfect
We should not romanticise the past.
The traditional system could be inaccessible.
It depended heavily upon finding the right guru.
Teaching standards varied.
The relationship could sometimes become excessively hierarchical.
Opportunities were not equally available to everyone.
And modern education has brought enormous advantages: accessibility, documentation, scientific understanding of pedagogy, technology and the ability to learn from teachers across the world.
So the answer is not to return blindly to the past.
It is to understand what the past got remarkably right.
The secret may be immersion
Perhaps the guru–śiṣya tradition succeeded because it understood a fundamental truth about mastery:
You cannot become extraordinary at something merely by studying it. You have to live inside it.
A student who spends years surrounded by great music develops something deeper than knowledge.
The music begins to shape instinct.
And once instinct is shaped, technique becomes effortless.
That is why some great Indian musicians seem to do something almost mysterious on stage.
They are not calculating every note.
They are responding.
The years of training have moved from conscious effort into intuition.
And perhaps this is where the two systems can meet
The West has developed remarkable systems for producing professional performers.
India developed remarkable systems for producing deeply immersed musicians.
Why should we choose?
Perhaps the musician of the future can have both.
The rigour of modern music education.
The depth of guru–śiṣya learning.
The professionalism of the Western concert tradition.
The improvisational freedom of Indian classical music.
That combination could be extraordinary.
Because ultimately, the purpose of music education is not to produce someone who merely knows music.
It is to produce someone through whom music can speak.
And perhaps that is what the old gurus understood better than anyone.
**They were not merely teaching students to make music.
They were teaching them to become musicians.**
