Pandemic days: Vaccines and war
In American history-writing we come across various attempts to the justify the use of nuclear weapons on Japan in the closing phase of WW2. We often hear the claim that by using the nukes they avoided...
View ArticleTwo exceedingly simple sums related to triangular numbers
This note records some elementary arithmetic pertaining to triangular numbers for bālabodhana. In our youth we found that having a flexible attitude was good thing while obtaining closed forms for...
View ArticleMatters of religion: Varuṇāvasiṣṇavam, Agnavasiṣṇavam and the vyahṛti-s
Like the clouds lifting after the monsoonal deluge to unveil the short-lived comforts of early autumn, the metaphorical pall over the nation cast by the engineer’s virus was lifting. Somakhya and...
View ArticleThe cicadas return
Seventeen years after we first saw them emerge, like a great horde of Cīna-s invading Tibet, the cicadas of Brood X reemerged. 17 years is a good amount of time, making one pause to reflect on what has...
View ArticleSome talks at the Indic Today portal
We had a chat with with C Surendranath, Contributing Editor and (in part with) Yogini Deshpande, Editor in Chief of Indic Today. It is divided into four parts: 1)...
View ArticleSome further notes on the old Mongol religion-2
O fire mother, whose father is flint, whose mother is pebble, whose meal is yellow feather grass, whose life is an elm tree. An incantation to the Fire Goddess Ghalun-eke; translation from the...
View ArticlePandemic days: bālabodhana
As the pandemic grinds to a close or at least to a pause in some parts of the world, there is a certain fear from new mutants threaten that threaten break current the status quo. The strain that arose...
View ArticleBhairavānanda’s wicks: a retelling
It was early in the school year and the last class for the week, the English class. The students were restless as the sea at the time of the tide from the pull of the impending weekend. For the first …...
View ArticleSelf, non-self and segregation: a very basic look at agent-based lattice models
In our college days, a part time physics teacher from an old and respected V clan used to chat with us about issues of mutual interest that were beyond that of the rest of the class (or for that matter...
View ArticleTwin Āditya-s, twin Rudra-s
This note originated as an intended appendix to the article on Rudra and the Aśvin-s we published earlier. The first offshoot from that work, which we published separately, explored the links between...
View ArticleMatters of religion: the lesson by the lake
Sharvamanyu was with his preceptors Somakhya on Lootika on the shore of a lake in the midst of the mountains on a full moon night. It was the cremation ground for a lineage of Vs, who had historically...
View ArticleThe shape of dinosaur eggs
Readers of these pages will know that we have a special interest in the geometry of ovals. One of the long-standing problems in this regard is: what is the curve that best describes the shape of a...
View ArticleAsians and Pacific Islanders: The triangle
In our youth, we read with great excitement old books on anthropology obtained from a library with considerable difficulty. The excitement was primarily from learning about the osteology of extinct...
View ArticleTuragapadādi
This note stems from a recent conversation with a friend, where he pointed out that the graph representing all possible positions the horse (knight) can take on the chessboard from a given starting...
View ArticleSome biographical reflections on visualizing irrationals
In our childhood, our father informed us that, though the school told us that , it was not valid. However, he added that for “small fractions” [Footnote 1] it was a great approximation. Moreover, the...
View ArticleThe rise of Navyonmāda, the subversion of the Mahāmleccha-s, Cīnānusāra and...
The past The dynamics of the establishment of the counter-religious unmāda-s are of some interest. The pūrvonmāda of pharaoh Akhenaten arose from the moha in his own head and was imposed on the...
View ArticleThe birth defects of Dhṛtarāṣṭra and Pāṇḍu and related matters
This note has its origin in a conversation with Sharada. We originally intended to incorporate the core of it into one of our usual fantastical stories. However, following a second conversation with...
View ArticleAgni as the divine commander in the Veda and the Purāṇa
With the Sākamedha-parvan with the oblations to Agni Anīkavat having just passed, we present a brief note on Agni as the general of the deva army. Agni is presented as the commander of the deva-s in...
View ArticleThe strange case of the Āpastamba sprite
This is the second of the two stories that arose from incidents during the visit of Yaśaśravas, Somakhya’s cousin. With the autumnal vacations, Somakhya was having a good time with his visiting cousin,...
View ArticleSneha, snowstorms, the sun and the moon in enigmatic ṛk-s
That the Indo-European homeland was a cold place with snow is evidenced by widespread survival of two hon-homologous words for snow. Recently, a discussion on one of these words, sparked by some...
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