Dregs of Yore

In the long corridors of epic memory, dissent slips in quietly, wearing the robes of a sage. One such voice rises in the Ramayana . Not in the battlefield, nor in the court glittering with intrigue, but in a forest clearing heavy with exile. There, as Rama prepares to honour a promise that has cost him a kingdom, the sage Jabali offers something startling: an argument against dharma itself. Jabali’s speech is among the most philosophically subversive moments in Sanskrit literature. He does not tempt Rama with pleasure or power. He tempts him with reason. He begins with a blunt summation of the human condition: “एको हि जायते जन्तुरेको हि विनश्यति । एकोऽनुभुङ्क्ते सुखदुःखं नास्ति कश्चित् सहायवान् ॥” “Alone a being is born; alone he perishes.   Alone he experiences joy and sorrow; there is no companion.” This is the language of existential solitude. Jabali reduces the human condition to biological arrival and departure. The scaffolding of lineage, obligation and ritual continuity is s...

Indian mythology has an amusing habit of refusing neat moral categories. Its villains pray well, its gods make mistakes, and power, when earned through discipline, is distributed with a troubling fairness. Few figures reveal this better than the Asuras . To reduce them to “demons” is not merely inaccurate; it is intellectually lazy. The Asuras are something far more unsettling: they are seekers who succeed. In the Vedic imagination, the line between Deva and Asura was not originally moral but metaphysical. In the Rig Veda, the word asura is used with reverence, meaning “lord” or “one who possesses vital power ( asu )”. In the Rig Veda, Varuna himself is praised using this title: “King Varuna, the Asura, who knows the paths of birds flying in the sky, who knows the ships upon the ocean” (Rig Veda) Here, Asura signifies sovereignty, cosmic intelligence, and authority, not malevolence. It is only later (particularly in the Puranic crystallisation of cosmology) that the Asuras become antag...

 A s far back as my memory reaches, my father’s comings and goings belonged to an old scooter, the sort that carried middle-class men to and from work in the early years of this century. It belonged to a time when machines were allowed to age alongside men, when usefulness was a stronger virtue than appearance. It stood in the aangan of my house like a loyal pet, patient, uncomplaining, its metal body dulled by years of sun and dust. It had learned the shape of my father’s hand on the handle, the precise pressure of his foot on the kick-start, and the rhythm of his mornings. Together they formed a small economy of trust. It was a dull, indifferent colour—neither proudly black nor whimsically blue—bearing the soft dents of a life lived fully. The paint had faded unevenly, lighter where the sun struck hardest, darker in places my father’s knees brushed against daily. Rust gathered near the footrest like moss, reminding you that nothing remains untouched by weather. The headlamp flick...