Cynosure of our eyes

For millennia the cynosure of our eyes is the Sun whom we worshiped and considered as the light of the universe. However, heliocentrism is relatively new in the world steeped in religious dogma. Only in the 17th century Copernicus convinced everyone that earth is a planet of the Sun. If that is so, what else are we wrong about?

In the ageing, yet crisp, voice of Sir David Attenborough (1926-), we learn that the James Webb telescope orbiting the earth proved that astronomers who based their calculations on big-bang were wrong! Webb found a galaxy that had formed 200-300 million years after big-bang, which was unexpected. It's not that they were completely wrong about big-bang, but only those conclusions based on the observations of the Hubble telescope need revision. In simple terms the space is expanding so fast that the light from some galaxies will never make it to us. So what does it imply?

The Vasishta Gita in Ramayana mentions two concepts in terms of frequency of appearance: consciousness and kaakataaliyam. The latter means as a crow alights a coconut tree, a coconut drops to the ground without a cause-effect relationship. For instance if we make an amateur remark that "as astronomers peer through Webb in a particular angle, the universe is too shy to reveal itself" it will be a kaakataaliyam. Coming to consciousness we can approximate it to the visible universe or "bubble" as David Attenborough says.

The astronomers say we are at the peak of universal consciousness with so many observable parameters made possible by technological advancements. That means, one day in the future our consciousness will shrink so much that even Sage Vyasa will be naught. People in the 22nd century will have to launch a search to find out just what the group of letters v-y-a-s-a, spelled in whatever ways, mean because their consciousness would be shrunk a little bit.

Linguists for centuries had a solution for that. They made a dictionary entry expecting people to refer to it or create a stotra for daily recitation as in the case of hindus. The Oxford English Dictionary has just 21,730 pages in 20 volumes! While it is commendable that they keep adding new words, that won't do. Because in 2025, the Oxford English Dictionary has added nearly 600 new words, including terms like "alamak," "bachata," and "bed-hopper," reflecting cultural and linguistic trends. Even search engines couldn't catch up because like light from the stars is always from the past, there is a lag between updates to a dictionary and the updates by the search engine.

If astronomers were correct, from now on our consciousness will keep shrinking which is in agreement with vedas. As many know vedas had 1132 branches barely 1000 years ago based on Adi Sankara's writings and now there are only 7. So what happened to the wisdom in the 1125 branches? In simple terms it went past our visible universe, even the most powerful telescopes would be of no help.

Coming back to heliocentric theory, is there a single source of light, let's call him Aditya, who lights all of the visible universe including our Sun? Are the non-visible universes stacked like a deck of cards or the layers of earth which can be accessed by simply "digging" or "tunnelling"? Are there several Adityas among the invisible universes? Given that our Sun is 4.6 billion years old with a 10 billion year life-span, what will be the life-span of an Aditya?

A more pertinent question is who lights up all the Adityas? The vedas say it is Brahman. Because we are still conscious of vedas, we are able to answer. How about the future generations? Already those of us who didn't have the fortune to visit the Sun Temple at Konark or Arasavilli in Andhra Pradesh, think there is no such thing as a precise sundial. A century from now, the pilgrimage sites will quietly slip out of consciousness just as the galaxies are drifting away from our visible universe.

David Attenborough draws a nihilistic conclusion that as the visible universe shrinks there will be a denouement, because he, like many of us, thinks the big-bang is the beginning of reckoning of time. The skeptics can subscribe to it. But those merging their consciousness with that of our rishis who said the creation is "anaadi" wouldn't have any trouble.

As the year is coming to an end, given that the cynosure of 2025 is Maha Kumbh Mela, what will be the cynosure in 2026? Let's hope Isro will launch a telescope that will find the krishnabhila that leads us to the invisible universes, just as Bhagavata Skandha 10 says:

"Sri Krishna's chariot crossed seven mountains, seven oceans, seven islands and entered a pitch black region. The horses were unable to see anything. Then Sri Krishna released his Sudarshana disc to light the path. They reached a city studded with diamonds called Mahakala. There they saw Adisesha with thousand gem studded hoods. On the hoods was seated the paramatma. Sri Krishna and Arjuna saluted the paramatma."

Regards

Swecha Bharat

For many hindus Panchatantra is no stranger. But how many know many of the surviving historical manuscripts of Panchatantra are found in Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran; Oxford library, Indian Office Library, London (UK); Tibet and Japan, etc.? Its author Vishnu Sarma (200 BCE-300 CE) was blessed with most translations of any Bharatiya vignaan among the Indo-European and Indo-Persian language families.

As many know, "pancha" in Sanskrit means five and "tantra" is an "upaya" or a stratagem. The five being Mitra-bheda (The Loss of Friends), Mitra-lābha (The Acquisition of Friends), Kākolūkīyam (The Crows and the Owls), Labdhapraṇāśam (The Loss of Gains), Aparīkṣitakārakaṃ (The Rash Deeds).

Preceding Panchatantra was Chanakya's (350 BCE) 5 upayas: sama (persuasion), dana (offering), danda (punishment), bheda (isolation) in the art of governance that were largely superseded by the later Panchatantra because of the harshness involved in them. But you still find them among the fraternity of nations. For instance Bharat is in the last two legs vis-a-vis neighbors.

Also, there is a difference between Vishnu Sarma's mitra-bheda that means doing the opposite of Dale Carnegie's advice in his book "How to Win Friends And Influence People", and Chanakya's bheda which means isolation such as the "sanctions regime".

After independence, Bharat used Panchsheel: respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence that were called "non-alignment", later "non-aligned movement" by including more nations. In reality, Bharat favored the former USSR over the USA, the two nations engaged in cold-war.

The "Global South", "BRICS", etc. are later refinements to primarily counter the US Dollar's supremacy. So when the talk of Tariffs was going on, Bharat fell back to Mitra-Labha and the EAM went around scouting for new markets and trading partners. The foreign jaunts of nouveau riche on Bharat's Air Force 1 are reminiscent of American tycoon Carnegie's diplomacy on his yacht to engage primarily China and Bharat. While China acceded to open up trade relations and prospered, Bharat lagged behind.

If there is a stark difference between these two neighbors, it is the lingua franca induced lack of orderliness. Bharat, while proud of its English, had subscribed to sloganeering under the guise of 5-year plans such as "Garibi Hathao" (remove poverty), "Beti Bachao" (save the girl child), etc. neglecting infrastructure and overall hygiene. While the former made leaps and bounds in the recent past despite fiascos like Indigo grounding its planes, the latter never sunk deep into the citizens as they were offered more slogans like "Swacha Bharat", "Vikshit Bharat", "Atma Nirbhar Bharat", etc. instead of investment in practical tools to raise the standards of living.

For instance, whenever the world leaders visited the capital, the likes of Madanpur Khadar and Kathputli Colony, that are collectively called slums, were kept out of sight with make-shift pardahs along the surface routes. At the same time humanitarians like Mother Teresa and Mira Nair were heckled for not providing bathroom tissue to the slum dwellers instead of seeking fame and prizes.

So how to fix? While trickle-down economics by handing over public institutions to the oligarchs might work in the short-term, like Russia the GoI will bog down in unending border skirmishes throwing more "Agni Veers" in harm's way, for which the largely unemployed youth, who are enamored with government jobs that are synonymous with corruption, are to be blamed . The self-employed shouldn't be subsisting on "Pakora Stalls" without knowing nutritional value and basic hygiene, both of which can be fixed, like in China or Singapore, with incentives and repercussions rather than saddling with a GST. In other words, use Chanakya's precepts for internal affairs rather than making speeches in the General Assembly or informal press conferences by the select coterie to show "Swecha Bharat" or an utopian land of freebies from the leaders.

Regards

Are you being served?

Skill can be defined as the ability to create and use tools to gain advantage over natural resources even though it was reduced to "ability to do something well" by the linguists ignoring that language itself is a tool granted by Vakdevi, with Agni as the adhisthana devata. While humans are blessed by the Goddesses like Gayatri Devi, Saraswati Devi for learning and communication, the animal kingdom is not far behind. A crow dropping pebbles into a jar of water, a fable taught in my kindergarten, causes the water level to rise for its use. In the modern times, Jane Goodall raised the awareness about Chimpanzees that have the ability to use sticks to ferret out ants and such from the ground. A South American Parakeet was shown to remember 1700 words through training and interaction. A Golden Retriever has the skill to retrieve something like a frisbee and a Beaver can build dams across waterways.

Our Puranas mention several weapons which are tools to defend oneself made from other tools by the smithies. A skilful archer, such as Arjuna or Ekalavya, was pivotal for winning in a war. Balarama had a plough as the weapon of choice which has been repurposed from an agricultural tool. Parasurama wielded an axe or parasu in front of Lord Rama after he dismantled the Shiv Dhanus in Sita Devi svayamvara.

Even going back, the Indus Civilization was shown to be very advanced in making and using tools. The tool makers or craftsmen made ploughs, sickles, chakras, maces, spears, bows, arrows and what not. And there were early metallurgists who knew how to make iron in blast furnaces and annealing them for strength and longevity. It is believed that the iron pillars built during Chandra Gupta Maurya era didn't rust to this day!

In recent times, the jewelers of Bharat were recognized for their skill in cutting, polishing and setting stones in gold and silver ornaments around the world elevating them to artisans. Lest we forget the weavers of silk saris, such as Kanchipuram, who are considered the ultimate artists.

Where am I going with this? In the USA, there are broadly two types of schools: colleges that impart skills and universities that train scholars for speciality occupations. Of much interest are the former that apply to plumbers, electricians, mechanics, etc. The so called Polytechnics and ITIs in Bharat pretty much do the same but with different degrees of sophistication. The foremost skilful tool makers and operators are the Chinese making China an industrial powerhouse and a vendor or supplier to the world. I think there is not much to say about Bharat other than upskilling, something I lamented earlier as lacking in the present environment that wants technology transfers and a production line ready for turning out widgets. For a country trying to right the wrongs committed by earlier generations there is no loss of pride.

For an American skilled worker to give up his place for an immigrant is a hard bargain. So companies want to shift entire manufacturing overseas when the goal is to make more profit. Once the automobile assembly lines were transplanted in Japan out of guilt. Later entire clean rooms used for making electronics were shipped from America's heartland to countries like China for profit. The locals quickly acquired the skills to operate the machinery and now they are at the cusp of making advanced machinery using tools they made while the Americans watch them in dismay. For instance, the electronic lithography machines that can make nano circuits were the forte of the Netherlands. Not necessarily in the coming years, if Chinese had their way.

Strangely enough a skilled scholar is a rare combination in the American landscape making the local scholars vulnerable for replacement by an immigrant for various reasons. This is where Bharat's reputation as a supplier of IT degree holders increased. There is a twist. When Cloud service providers replaced on-premise servers and their administrators, the "admins" moved on to other "jobs" like programming numerically controlled machines and operating server farms for making bitcoins and such. By the way, the influencers like Anton Kobyakov claiming the US wants to reset its debt by converting to crypto is not as simple as it sounds for the block-chain behind crypto envisaged by an anonymous Japanese tech worker was based on prime numbers that are critical for encrypted communication.

Anyhow, it is important that Bharatiya leaders shamelessly clamouring, nay begging, over American work-visas understand that a wholesome tech visa must include a fallback skill such as the aforementioned admins, something the present American system doesn't insist for whatever reasons. Back in the days when I studied on a scholarship, some students worked in cafeterias, libraries and computer labs on campus, none of which required a skill other than hand-eye coordination. Nor imparted new skills. These days the so-called OPT mills allow students to go off campus and pump gas or bag groceries, for instance, which are nothing but mind numbing tasks for a student aspiring for a tech visa. This is where they rub with the locals, such as teens and seniors, looking for "jobs" running into so-called students.

I don't think NASSCOM, the self-appointed guardian of Bharatiya IT, will ever understand the distinction between a tech worker and a skilled worker. They obfuscate and warn the Americans of ominous consequences if Bharatiya IT workers are not "sponsored" which the big tech companies buy into. Perhaps they all read Fridman's "World Is Flat" (2005; see wiki). They are purveyors of misinformation and experts at disinformation, thus maligning the credibility of all NRIs. The tech company captains, what with many of them having availed themselves of work visas early in their careers, are abettors with some foot dragging. Time to wake up and smell the coffee that just came off tariffs.

Regards

Midwife's Children

The saga of Bharat's partition in 1947 has been dealt ad infinitum by various historians and novelists. Our history books mention a Lord Mountbatten as the Viceroy and Governor-General of India who oversaw the dismemberment of the vision of Akhand Bharat with intricate borders that stupefy high schoolers and adults alike. When the dust settled, the late Queen, in 1960, made a long declaration that ends as:

"I declare My Will and Pleasure that, while I and My Children shall continue to be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, My descendants other than descendants enjoying the style, title or attribute of Royal Highness and the titular dignity of Prince or Princess and female descendants who marry and their descendants shall bear the name of Mountbatten-Windsor"

It could be noble or inbreeding depending on which side of the pond you are dwelling on. No matter whose side you are on, you have to agree that the royal descendants were delivered in a hush-hush manner and some of the descendants bearing the aforementioned surname grew up to do hush-hush things. If one is a fusion artist like the Bengali author Nirad Chowdhuri, one sheds crocodile tears for the way the midwife's children are popping in the daily news grinder.

We all feel a thing or two for the noble Queen, but considering how she treated the betrothals as persona non grata before and after the nuptials, makes me wonder if there had been a grand plan behind all of this. Something Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes alone could figure out.

Coming back to Akhand Bharat, we are enlightened by the powers that be that LAC and LOC are not royal seals or padlocks, but something the global border police, such as the UN, take seriously. That is until they were evicted during the latest border skirmish. So what now? May be Jesus will make his second appearance in Kashmir this Christmas to enlighten us.

Meanwhile the influencers in the social media are relishing the military build up at the "Chicken's Neck" which is an euphemism for "we don't know why Bengali's die for imported Hilsa fish curry". One can put two and two together and arrive at the awareness that Bharat's border issues are actually due to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) that has not inducted the Chicken Tikka Masala into the Culinary Hall of Fame over the objections of Boston Brahmins.

Before breaking into a personal appeal about the benefits of vegetarian diet, and cruelty towards animals that deserve time and space to evolve, I would like to share the highlights of today's "History Detectives" show on public television. Apparently during WWII American military experimented with canines that could sniff out non-caucasians at the enemy lines and attack them rather ferociously. Guess what, they used the enlisted non-caucasians in the military as bait to train the canines on not-so-funny Cat Island near Mississippi!

Baghavata tells us that there are 8400000 species on earth. But they all fall into 4 broad categories: ‘Udbhija’ (sprouted from Earth like grass, vegetables etc.), ‘Swedaja’ (Krimi, Keeta and Flies that seem to appear from sweat), ‘Andaja’ (Birds, Fish etc. born out of eggs) and ‘Jarayuja’ (Animals, human beings etc. born out of physical bodies). Each of them has a soul, no matter how small or big, that deserves to evolve and achieve moksha. So we, as the most evolved, need to be aware of this.

All this tells me that one needs to travel far and wide to appreciate God's creation. I am waiting for the Akhand Bharat Passport before boarding a flight to nowhere.

Regards

The Lotus Effect

In the vast Sanskrit literature one finds this maxim " utpala-shata-patra-vyatibhéda-vat" which translates to " "Like the simultaneous piercing of a bundle of hundred lotus-leaves." Lotus leaves are very soft. Hence a stack of hundred such leaves can be pierced with a sharp needle in no time, almost instantaneously, and yet the actual process is linear or one leaf at a time.

A complete description as to why or how the maxim came into existence requires an inordinate amount of time, so much so that Kaala Bhairava, the embodiment of time, alone can determine and grant. For all practical purposes it means less than a "truti" which could be anywhere from a millionth to a billionth of a second.

Shlokavārtika says, "You say the example of lamp and light as an instance of simultaneity of cause and effect, but still there is a finite little time, just like piercing hundred lotus leaves." So we can surmise there was knowledge that light has a finite speed, just as it was known that sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach the Earth.

For comparison sake in modern computers, including smart phones, the smallest time unit is called the "clock speed" which measures the number of cycles the Central Processing Unit (CPU) executes per second, measured in GHz (gigahertz) which translates to a billionth of a second.

If you thought science beat the rishis, what if the rishi tells us the stack of leaves can be of any size? Then the smallest time to pierce is based on the method used, which ranges from a needle to a laser beam. Applying quantum tunneling, this simple thought experiment becomes intractable or mind boggling.

On the macro scale, buddhists thought completely swapping two stacks of rings around two poles, using a third pole, by transferring one ring per day means the end of time. Our rishis went beyond with larger scales of time comprising yuga, mahayuga, kalpa, brahma kaala, etc.

What about the physics lesson time is relative? The physicists subscribing to the relativity theory inspired a hollywood movie called Interstellar where they used the axiom that clocks slow down near massive objects such as black holes due to gravity. Some physicists took atomic clocks atop the tallest building then, Burg Khalifa, and concluded that clocks slowed down. Did our rishis miss this fundamental aspect? Not really. Because they were talking about time whereas the physicists are talking about clocks, both biological and physics, that are subject to quantum effects.

Of much interest to everyone: "How long will I live?" or "When will XYZ pass away?". The rishis wrestled with these never-wracking questions and incorporated them in treatises that comprised siddhanta, jyotish and samhita. Most people think the aayush calculated by vedic astrologers, say using Parasara Sutras, variously called Pinda, Amsa, Nisarga, etc. is the answer to the perplexing questions where sampurna aayush means a 120 year long life span. For illustration, the oldest human, a French woman called Jeanne Louise Calment, lived to be 122 years. So Sage Parasara who made his Sutras 5000 years ago remains credible.

A more common time related question in democracies is "How long before the ruling party collapses prematurely?" For this there are Tarot Readers, Oracles, Palmists, etc. as jyotish pertained to Kingdoms where the ruling party was an individual that could be the king, queen, prince, etc. So bobbing heads on TVs during elections claiming to be jyotish are, in a sense, doing a disservice to their audience.

Therefore, the rishis like Parasara, Jaimini and Aryabhatta based their predictions on calculations made out of observation. Did they use telescopes? One vedic scholar found evidence in a Hampi temple built before Kepler (circa 1500 AD) in the form of stone carvings showing rishis peering through "tubular" objects. Many a time our rishis predicting that there are other Suns associated with various lokas and earth has a third degree of motion, besides rotation and revolution, in the form of axis tilt, had a darshan of the terrestrial and celestial worlds in tapas. Hence they are collectively called "drashtas" in vedas.

I find no need to mock the frailty of astronomy in predicting anything credibly, even with the help of the powerful Jame Webb Telescope orbiting the earth because they dish out excellent photographs of what's happening in the universe via NASA website. There are also the "influencers" in various social media platforms who monetize such fodder, not to mention the main-stream-media tooting their horns.

In all humility, as I see scientists are trying very hard to disprove vedas which have only 7-12 extant branches left on the last count, down from 1132 during Sage Vyasa's time, possibly because of invasions on Bharat,, and many more branches that missed the Sage's edits. In sum, during Bharat's indentured period the invaders usurped the vedic knowledge and claimed it as their own by touting the observe-theorize-predict-experiment paradigm without due credit to vedas that did all the work.

Regards

Geometry of AI

When we look at Sree Chakra, without its religious symbolism, our initial impression is "rich!" which is the meaning of Sree. Within it there are triangles or two-dimensional projections of pyramids, such as the wonders of the world that are believed to be gateways to the nether world for the rich who can afford. The Chakra in Sanskrit means a "wheel" that connotes circular motion or cyclical nature of the world.

Economists, meteorologists, astrologers, statisticians et al. predict many future events based on the cycles of market indexes, weather conditions, planetary orbits, and so on. A favorable planetary transit, for instance in Hora Astrology, is indicated by a sine curve with increasing amplitude on the positive side of the horizontal axis. Whereas the same sine curve trending below the horizontal axis is considered as misfortune. The famous bell curve that segregates highly intelligent people from the rest in any given environment is a snapshot of a much larger cyclical pattern.

The geometric shapes of hindu temples have been depicted in the agama sastra. Applied to domestic conditions the same is vaastu. The idea of concentric circles has been around for ages in all cultures but recursion is its relatively new vintage that is demonstrated in the Mandelbrot fractal geometry that leads one to believe god exists in symmetry such as Artha-naareswara in a macroscale and pairs of opposite charges or spin in the subatomic scale. The endless universes traversed in Leelopakhyana of Vasishta Yoga in Ramayana could be the symmetry associated with Russian dolls or the familiar paper weights made of glass depicting snow fall on a house with a similar paper weight that could be an endless recursion. Come to that the snow flake itself is made of repetitive hexagonal patterns.

How about the current buzz in the town AI? First off, the perspicuous market watchers announced the AI companies are trading in a circular fashion feeding into each other from investment into production and back to investment. This is unlike the last century's brilliant tax incentive given to American companies that invest into their own R&D so that the time it takes to train competent people who can earn patents be compensated adequately. AI is anything but. Websites and authors clinging on to copyrights are held up high and dry by the heartless web crawlers and scrapers. The expected digital dividend never came through. In his book Metamagical Themas the author Hofstadter showed a picture of snakes swallowing tails in endless fashion which is AI as of now.

To understand this, one has to explore human nature called lobha. It is one of the arishadvargas which are: kama, krodha, mada, matsara, lobha and moha. As children we have seen adults play a game called "bracket" with their hard-earned money in the hope that a phone message from the "headquarters" would pick them to avail themselves of loans in preference over others. A member requiring an immediate surgery would be overlooked if his neighbor trying to add an extra room to his house was picked. It later morphed into "chit funds" which were regulated by the government much like banks.

In the American context extreme lobha was demonstrated by Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme. The dedicated wiki page defines the Ponzi schemes as: "fraudulent investment operations that pay out returns to investors from money paid in by subsequent investors rather than from any actual profit earned from the operation of a business". Pyramid schemes are a variation where "a business structure that pays more for recruiting new members or distributors than it does for selling actual product. Each of these new members usually pay an entrance fee, which is used to pay the people above them." A prominent example with many NRI's involved is Amway.

The list goes on with more sophisticated hawala, money laundering, insider trading, etc. We humans have perfected these so much so that it will be a miracle if AI can figure out the symmetry, specifically geometry in them. So far AI is at best hierarchical like a tree. The chain of reasoning is transferred down all the way from one's terminal to the datacenter and the response is moved up to the top. Chances are if you ask an AI what its geometrical shape is, it wouldn't know.

So to all those calling AI a bubble, one has to say they are like fish unaware of bait and switch. Once humanity is sufficiently addicted to AI, there will be hue and cry about "cartels" dispersing modicums at a speed and rate the internet allows while NIMBY people put up with data centers in their backyards.

Thus, what goes around, comes around is not only just a fancy toy but also a slap on the AI's cheek for not learning or understanding the geometric patterns given down to us from the cosmos starting with Om, Hindu Swastika, Sree Chakra, Chinmudra, Abhayahasta, Devanagari....

Regards

The tattva of Lord Siva as seen through my occult eyes

If you have to defend a lawyer married to a law firm, better start with a resignation. If it sounds silly, so is the soap opera about the Vice President (VP) of the USA who has been subject to a range of accusations from flirting with a widow in public to proselytizing the Second Lady whose roots happen to be from the same town I live in. I don't see nosy reporters or neighbors but have a feeling that as a spouse, mother and a lawyer she knows her rights better than any Juris Doctorate.

I however want to mention a few things from our scripture as seen through my occult glasses. It's quite simple if you can answer: Did Sati Devi marry Lord Siva for his good looks or tattva? It is well known that Lord Siva's tattva in few words is: "not to leave the last child behind". When Bharat was inundated with Vedic chants around the blazing fires of yagnas, who had time for the sanyasis, sadhus, digambaras, and handlers of crematoriums? Yagnas employed various priests, viz. rutvik, adhvaryu, udgata, brahma, hota, etc. Each of them had several assistants to sing, pour ghee into the holy fire, keep the fire from spreading outside the yagna platform, etc. There were others like somayaji where soma means the elixir extracted from a soma plant for the edification of gods led by Indra who was called a Subrahmanya because originally Subrahmanya meant the protector of holy vedas.

The Yagna-Economy flourished with the top of the varna system enjoying the benefits from their holy actions resulting in timely rains, bountiful harvest and overall prosperity. Then came the nagging feeling that all is not as rosy and peachy with those unemployed because vedas were not their cup of tea. A ganapaati might be a great title to possess with thousands of hours of practice reciting vedas, but it won't suit those who want to explore nature, swim in the oceans, gaze at the stars, and so on. Then there are social misfits who steal, pillage, plunder, etc. under intoxication and don't want to do an honest day's work. Some of them could actually be spreading the loot among the deserving poor.

Thus, the vedic period under the leadership of Prajapati had all of the key facets of modern agrarian economy and the concomitant problems. Therefore, it was Lord Siva who provided the last resort for the non-vedics who need someone to take them under the bosom when their atma leaves the mortal realm. There were at least two ways Lord Siva could rescue their souls: one way is to make them join his ganas or security force that protects the righteous and weak; the other way is to make them renounce everything and meditate on the Brahman. The latter are the aforementioned sanyasis, sadhus, digambaras, etc.

Coming back to the previous question, it is obvious to me that Sati Devi understood the tattva behind Lord Siva and considered him on par with or may be more than any vedic god whom her father Daksha Prajapati disapproved of. So in the swayamvaram, even though Lord Siva was not invited by Daksha, she showed her true love by laying the garland on Lord Siva's statue.

I surmise the VP has a similar tattva which is called MAGA or whatever the latest sound-byte is. He wants to change the course of the US loaded with a huge external debt, unregulated border crossings, and unbridled substance abuse to mention a few. His marriage to a telugu brahmin and the resulting progeny, though not exactly MAGA's cover page, provide the guiding star about the multi-polar world we are entering into. The discourse on the Second Lady in social media and elsewhere using epithets like "jeet" (that originated from the slang expression "Did you eat?") could do better.

A couple of closing remarks on "jeet" which means "to win" in Hindi. We have names like "Satrujeet" (conqueror of enemies), "Abhijeet", etc. So why does a Dravidian cohort think "jeet" is offensive? I think it is all posturing, a big-brotherly protective embrace, and the inherent disdain for the Indian national language.

Regards