Today, being the sacred occasion of Sri Balarama Purnima, coincides with my next installment of the Markandeya Purana series, which, fortuitously enough, is also about Sri Balarama! The third of Jaimini Rishi’s four questions about the Mahabharata is — why did Sri Balarama, Sri Krishna’s elder brother, choose to go…

The answer to this question starts with the story of Indra. Indra & The Slaying of Vritra Every great civilization has a good dragon-slaying story. In Hinduism, one of the most ancient and primal archetypal pieces of lore is the story of Indra and the slaying of Vritra. The story appears in varied forms across the…

Introduction: This is the third of a new series compiling and retelling stories from the Puranas, simply and without distortion or substantive embellishment. This episode comes from the beginning of the Markandeya Purana. The quotes cited are from Bibek Debroy’s excellent translation of the Markandeya Purana. Last time, we learned…

Introduction: This is the second of a new series compiling and retelling stories from the Puranas, simply and without distortion or substantive embellishment. This episode comes from the beginning of the Markandeya Purana. The quotes cited are from Bibek Debroy’s excellent translation of the Markandeya Purana. Jaimini Rishi Has Doubts About The Mahabharata The Markandeya Purana begins…

Introduction: This is the start of a new series compiling and retelling stories from the Puranas, simply and without distortion or substantive embellishment. This episode comes from the beginning of the Markandeya Purana. The quotes cited are from Bibek Debroy’s excellent translation of the Markandeya Purana. The Pregnant Bird Witnesses the Great Battles at Kuruskhetra Once upon a time…

Grief in the Abstract I’ve been down this past week without understanding why. Then, someone asked me how I was doing with the situation in India, if I had any affected family members. I didn’t know how to respond. No one close to me was in imminent danger, yet above…

Or — why I think about death on my birthday — Writing our life story backward It is a recommended writing technique — one on which I’m taking a class at present: write backward. Write from the ending to the beginning. What is the happily-ever-after scene you want to conclude your story on? And then figure out how to get there. What works for writing a…

Baba, my father, was — is — my absolute favorite person in the world. He was — is — my kindred spirit. We were wallflowers who hung back at dinner parties, often chatting only with each other. We were bookworms who cried too easily. We hated shopping at the mall…

No question has vexed me more than this one. It tormented me as I took my first toddling steps on the path of bhakti. Sri Radha-Krishna is my ishta devata, the form of the Divine I personally favor and worship over all others. And yet, this doubt plagued me — …