What do you think Yudhishthira felt in that moment, seeing his four brothers lying lifeless before him, yet somehow keeping his mind calm enough to face the Yaksha’s questions? Could anyone else have remained so composed in such a moment?
I’ve been wondering about this for a while, if Bharata refused to take the throne, how did Ayodhya actually function during those 14 years? Who governed the kingdom, and what was Bharata’s role in it?
Last year I went to Goa in the monsoons and trust me it is considered as off season but it is the best time to visit coz there are no people, beaches are empty and you can just enjoy with your friends there (ofc you are not allowed to go into the water but still it's good), the second image is of a chappel and we went there at 2 am and it was pretty spooky
The third image is of Dudhsagar trek.
just curious that if someone is planning to keep 16 somwar vrat or 4 somwar of shravan
been thinking about this a lot. for literally thousands of years puja has been this one on one thing, you sit there, you see the fire, you smell the dhoop, the pandit corrects your hand position, your family is physically present, sankalp is taken with your own name and gotra out loud in that moment. it feels rooted because you're rooted, physically, in the ritual.
now with online puja getting popular (temples doing it, priests doing it over video call, even some doing it without you even watching live) i genuinely don't know what to think. like is the shraddha still there if you're not physically there? does the sankalp even carry the same weight if it's done by someone else on your behalf while you're just... watching a screen, or not even that.
i'm not trying to say it's fake or a scam, i actually think for people who cant travel back home, or are abroad, or are too unwell to sit through a 2 hour puja, it might genuinely be their only option. so i'm not against it. i just want to hear from people who've actually done it.
did it feel like something happened? did you feel a difference before and after? or did it feel more like paying someone to do your homework spiritually speaking. curious what others think, especially if you've done both the traditional way and the online way and can compare.
i see this photo and i still cant process it. that tiny red and yellow chariot in the middle of what looks like an endless ocean of people. its the Jagannath Rath Yatra in Puri and it genuinely is one of the most extraordinary sights on this planet.
the yatra goes back over 2000 years. lord jagannath (a form of vishnu, specifically associated with Krishna in his most universal, non-caste-bound avatar) is taken out of the temple once a year on these massive wooden chariots called raths. the main chariot, Nandighosh, stands around 45 feet tall and is built fresh every single year from specific trees. thousands of devotees pull it with thick ropes. no engine, no machinery. just people.
the really fascinating part is WHY he comes out. jagannath's temple in Puri has very strict entry rules, only Hindus can enter. but during rath yatra lord jagannath comes to everyone. he rides through the streets so people who cant enter the temple, people of every background, can have darshan right there on the road. the whole theology of the festival is basically that the lord belongs to everyone, not just those who can walk through that gate.
theres also this quiet detail i love. the king of Puri, even today, comes and sweeps the road in front of the chariot with a golden broom. doesnt matter who you are, you sweep the path for the lord.
the scale of the crowd in this photo is roughly 10 to 15 lakh people in person. and the temples worldwide celebrate it simultaneously which is why you might have seen smaller versions of this in cities across the world.
honestly just a sight that makes you feel small in the best possible way.
when lakshman decided to follow ram and mata sita into the forest, urmila also wanted to come. lakshman stopped her. he told her he needed to stay awake every single night to guard ram and sita and that he couldn't do that if she was there. so she stayed back, alone in the palace of ayodhya while everyone she loved walked into the forest.
what most people don't know is the story of nidra devi, the goddess of sleep. lakshman asked her to transfer his entire 14 years of sleep onto urmila so he could stay awake and protect ram and sita. and urmila accepted it. she slept for 14 years so her husband could fulfil his duty. but here's what makes it genuinly heartbreaking - ram and sita went through the exile together, they had each other through every hardship. lakshman had his purpose and his devotion keeping him going. urmila had nothing except an empty room and the weight of a sacrifice nobody asked her to make out loud. she is perhaps the quietest and most overlooked form of devotion in the entire ramayana and she deserves to be talked about way more than she is
bhishma refused to let karna fight under his command and one of the reasons behind it was that he knew karna was actually kunti's firstborn, which made him the eldest pandava. his whole reasoning was he didn't want brothers killing each other on the battlefield. okay fair enough, that's actually a noble thought.
but what never made sense to me was that if bhishma knew this and cared so deeply about it, why did he just sit on that information his entire life? he had the authority, the respect, and the ear of literally everyone in hastinapur. one conversation with kunti, one private word to yudhishthira, and the entire Mahabhrat war could have taken a completley different turn. karna himself might have chosen differently if he knew earlier. instead bhishma carried that knowledge to the battlefield and said nothing while 18 days of destruction was thee. its one of those silences in the mahabharata that honestly hurts more than anything said out loud