Was watching this scene from The Dictator where “Aladeen,” the protagonist, explains what a dictatorship looks like, and it’s hilarious!!

But honestly, so glad this is all just satire and none of it resembles the real world. We live in such a wonderful world. Everyone cares about everyone, the powerful always look out for the vulnerable, and nobody puts money over human life. Nobody exploits anyone’s fears or uses others for personal gain.

We’ve clearly evolved so much as a species. Humanity is doing great. Nothing to see here. :))

Countries across the Indian subcontinent are paying a steep and rising price for a climate crisis they did very little to cause, and the numbers are honestly hard to ignore.

India alone ranks as the ninth most climate-affected nation globally, with over 80,000 deaths and nearly $170 billion in economic losses from extreme weather between 1995 and 2024. In the first nine months of 2025, extreme weather hit India on 99% of days, claiming over 4,000 lives and destroying millions of hectares of crops. The economic damage could get even worse, with climate losses projected to cost India up to 9% of its GDP by 2050 and potentially 23% by the end of the century under current policies. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka are facing worsening heatwaves, floods, droughts and disease outbreaks too, despite their relatively small contributions to global emissions. And this is what gets me. Countries that industrialised and emitted carbon for generations have contributed disproportionately to the problem, yet countries like ours are left dealing with so much of the damage.

How long will we keep paying the price for emissions produced by first-world nations while the same economic system continues to reward endless consumption and greed? And how long will we keep calling this progress?

Hello Ladies!!

Every Navratri, we worship Devi for 9 days. We sing her praises, bow before her, call her Shakti. And then? The same society tells girls to shut up, adjust, compromise, obey their parents, get married, put family before themselves and not do anything that might bring shame to the family. A brother can roam around, make mistakes, live his life, but the daughter has to be the *good girl*. And if she questions any of this, suddenly she has become too modern, too rebellious, too difficult to handle. Like seriously, WHY? 🤦‍♀️

Enough is Enough. 😡

I came across this video which I would recommend all Women here to watch - [YouTube Link]

Acharya Prashant (An Author, a Feminist and a Philosopher) says something in this video that really hits. **“Does the Devi look like a good girl? Be like the Devi.**🔥 Ladies, why are we still so worried about being liked, approved of and called good by everyone? How many of us have held back from doing something we wanted because *log kya kahenge*? How many times have we said yes when we wanted to say NO? Maybe this Navratri, instead of just worshipping Devi, we should question the rules we have been taught to live by. Watch this and tell me what you think.

My Question for y’all - What is one stupid expectation society has from women that you’re absolutely done putting up with? 💪

Happy Navratri! 🪔

The above question from the Gita Exam is portraying one of the famous quotes of Swami Vivekananda where he stated that the world is a grand moral gymnasium in one of his lectures on Karma-Yoga, which was delivered in New York in the winter of 1896. 

The exact full text which he quoted was “The world is a grand moral gymnasium wherein we have all to take exercise so as to become stronger and stronger spiritually."

It’s a very different perspective to analyse the world when compared to the spiritual teachings of other famous spiritual teachers who were then present along with him in his era. Even now when we usually perceive spirituality, we think that the “world” is something to be ignored of.. or something to get detached from. It rarely strikes our mind that we can even use this world in a right way and still seek our spiritual learnings. Maybe true spirituality isn’t about leaving worldly stuffs.., but to actually understand and make use of it rightly. 

If we seek AP Framework’s teachings under this context then, it also does not recommend to step aside from the world. But instead, it talks about the potential possibility of a “vertical axis” - an ascension wherein one is not prescribed to leave any relationship with worldly objects.., but to ascend one’s consciousness making right relationships to those objects.

.

💡What do you think Swami Ji is trying to express through his quote? 

Did he mean “The hardship in the world is proportionate to your readiness - the more prepared you are, the more resistance you're given” as Option A suggests, or did he mean “One don’t move into a gym and live there, instead use it and leave” as Option B suggests?

Or do you think “The world should be treated as one's home once a person learns to use it correctly” as Option C suggests?

Even Option D “The world only serves those who consciously choose to treat it as training rather than as reality” is sounding to make sense..

Or maybe the last Option E “The world is full of friction, obstacles and people who oppose you. That friction isn’t malicious; it is precisely what builds strength” is correct?

Even multiple options can also be correct!

.

👉🏻 Do select and write your assumed answers in the comment section below!

*Note: I will soon write the correct answers via my comment after getting sufficient responses. 

.

Source:  The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1

I’ve been reading this book on rediscovering the Hanuman Chalisa through a Vedantic lens, and it’s been interesting to look at something so familiar from a completely different perspective. The author (Acharya Prashant, also a famous Indian philosopher) goes beyond the usual understanding of Hanuman Ji as someone we pray to for strength and protection, exploring the deeper meaning of the verses and their connection to self-inquiry, clarity and Truth. It’s a good reminder that we often inherit prayers and traditions without really questioning what they mean. I’ve only just started reading it properly, but I think it’s worth exploring if you’re interested in understanding the Hanuman Chalisa beyond its conventional religious interpretation.

Worth a a read.

Is She Into You? Or Are You Just Very Creative? 😅

This video is a bit funny and painfully accurate because it captures exactly same thing most of us have done at some point. Don’t lie, I know you’ve been through this too.

Ps: Using the pronoun “she” for convenience.

___________________________
She replied in 11 seconds. She likes me. She replied with “haha.” She definitely likes me. She looked at me for 2.7 seconds. There is something between us. She said, “See you tomorrow.” She wants to see me tomorrow. Meanwhile, she has also said absolutely nothing that would qualify as evidence. But the mind has already opened a full investigation. Every small thing becomes a clue. A smile is a clue. A delayed reply is a clue. An emoji is a clue. A change in punctuation is a clue. And if she doesn’t reply? Even that becomes a clue.

She is probably playing hard to get. 😂
__________________________

👉 The funniest part is that we don’t actually want to know whether she likes us. We want the answer to be yes. And once we want a particular answer, confirmation bias kicks in. We start noticing and giving more importance to information that supports what we already believe, while overlooking information that challenges it. If you already think she likes you, a smile feels significant, a quick reply becomes evidence, and an ordinary conversation suddenly looks like chemistry. At the same time, everything that doesn’t fit the story gets explained away. The more you expect something to be true, the easier it becomes to find things that confirm it. The mind takes incomplete information, fills in the gaps, and then presents the finished story as if it came from reality.

And that tendency doesn’t stop with dating. The mind rarely receives an event in isolation. It immediately compares it with memory, expectation, desire and prior beliefs, and then assigns meaning to it. So the raw event may be very small, but the psychological interpretation can become enormous. A smile is an observable event; attraction is an interpretation. A message is an observable event; the intention we assign to it is an interpretation. The problem begins when the mind forgets the difference between the two and treats its interpretation as fact. This is how observation gets mixed with projection, and how a few neutral events can become an entire story in our head.

Anyway back to the video…Not gonna ask for a show of hands on who’s faced this. 😬 But I want to hear from you. Drop in, in the comments box. Have you noticed this in similar situations, or in completely different areas of life? What does it say about our mindset?

Most people know the name. Fewer know what “Aryabhatta” actually did. A mathematician and astronomer from 5th-century India, he wrote the Aryabhatiya at a very young age and made major contributions to mathematics and astronomy. He proposed that the Earth rotates on its axis, explained eclipses through shadows rather than the popular Rahu-Ketu explanation, calculated the length of the year with striking accuracy, approximated pi, and worked on trigonometry and equations. His work on place value and zero also became an important part of the development of Indian mathematics. His work didn’t stay confined to India either. The Aryabhatiya was translated into Arabic around the 9th century and influenced Islamic astronomers and mathematicians, with Indian mathematical ideas eventually reaching medieval Europe through Arabic and Latin scholarship. He wasn’t just repeating what people already believed. He was looking at the sky, doing the calculations and trying to understand what was actually happening.

And this is where the way we talk about him today feels a bit strange. Our chests swell up when we proudly say, “Look how advanced ancient India was,” while at the same time forwarding claims about ancient India having airplanes, the internet, nuclear weapons or modern science already hidden in the Vedas, without even checking them. A man who questioned accepted explanations is now often reduced to a symbol of pride. We remember that he was Indian, but forget what made his work worth remembering. These exaggerated claims don’t add to his legacy. They actually distract from it. His actual achievements were more than enough. His work was good enough to travel across cultures without anyone needing to invent anything about it.

And that’s what we should learn from Aryabhatta. Not just to feel proud that someone from India did great things, but to develop the habit of “checking” for ourselves. The interesting part is that this habit of questioning can extend much further than astronomy. Once you get used to asking, “How do I know this is true?”, that question starts showing up in other parts of life too, including the beliefs, fears and assumptions we rarely stop to examine. We are quite willing to question what we see outside, but how often do we question the ideas through which we are looking at our own lives? The same honesty that made Aryabhatta look beyond the accepted explanation can be applied much closer to home.

Hi, Welcome to your life!

You have everything already figured out.

Study hard → so you can get the job. Get the job → so you can make the money. Make money → so you can buy things. Buy things → so you can upgrade. Upgrade → so you can get promoted. Get promoted → so you can buy better things. Feel good for five minutes. Get bored. Want more. Then more. Some more. MOREEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

Repeat until retirement. Or burnout. Whichever files first. hehe

And somewhere along the way, convince yourself this is what happiness looks like. Bonus points if you put it on a vision board.

The funniest part? We never ask where we’re running to. We just assume arriving will explain everything.

On this day, for honouring Gandhi Ji, let’s remember he did not descend from the sky; he rose from the earth. He undertook a laborious and long journey from “Man” to “Mahatma”. And he rightly said that his life is his message - what was possible for him is possible for all. When someone devotedly moves forward, challenging their past, their tendencies, and their limitations, their presence infuses a unique consciousness into the entire world.

Read more on this from famous Author and Philosopher Acharya Prashant -

https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/gandhi-an-earthly-journey-not-a-divine-destination-acharya-prashant-on-the-sunday-guardian-1_048a399

I think I have been dealing with death for quite some years now, without even knowing that I was. I still am. It didn't begin with any funeral or a sudden loss. It began with watching my parents grow older. Its easy to see...A task takes longer. Familiar strength fades. Someone who has always seemed capable suddenly needs help with things, they once did effortlessly. And you realize that the people you have known in one form all your life are changing right in front of you.

Their ageing has become a mirror. So..while I watch them grow older, I am also being forced to look at my own mortality. At how much I want to hold on to people, memories, time and certainty. At how often I behave as though things should remain the way I know them, and how uncomfortable I become when life refuses to cooperate.

It was somewhere in this journey and my battle of dealing with questions around death, that the book “Mrityu” (Death), by Acharya Prashant came into my life.

I didn't read it as a book about death in the usual sense. It made me look at what I was actually afraid of. I remember coming across this amazing excerpt:

>“आये हैं तो जाना है; कुछ-न-कुछ वजह हो जाती है, कुछ-न-कुछ बहाना है।”
(Those who have come must go; some reason or another becomes the reason, some random excuse or another.)

I could relate to the mind's desperate need to find a reason or logic, whenever something painful happens. Why did this happen? Who was responsible? Could it have been prevented? As though finding the right explanation could somehow make peace with what happened. It doesn't work like that,right?

But the book takes this question much much further.

>“जन्म-मरण का चक्र क्यों है? इसका अर्थ यही नहीं है कि शिष्य बस इतना ही पूछना चाहता है कि वे क्यों जन्मता है, क्यों मरता है। वो वास्तव में सबकुछ पूछ रहा है, सबकुछ।”
(Why does the cycle of birth and death exist? This does not mean that the student/listener is merely asking why one is born and why one dies. In reality, he is asking about everything, everything.)

That somewhat changed the way I was looking at death. The question was no longer only, “Why do people have to die?” It became a question about the way I am living right now. Why do I cling? Why do I keep looking for security in things that are changing? Why do I postpone what matters as though I have been promised more time?

And then there was another thought provoking point:

>“जितना रिश्ते ग़लत बना रहे हो, मौत से उतना डर रहे हो। तो ग़लत रिश्तों से हटो।”
(The more wrongly - or from wrong centre, you make relations, the more you fear death. Therefore, step away from wrong relationships.)

I didn't understand this as being told to abandon people or become emotionally distant. For me, it pointed to something much closer. How much of what I call love is actually my need to hold on? How much of my fear of losing someone comes from wanting them to remain a source of security for me?

And the chapter that helped me most was the one that asks.."Do you want to remove fear completely?" It challenged something very basic in me. I had been thinking of death as the terrible thing that happens at the end of life. The book made me question the life I am so desperately trying to preserve. If birth itself brings us into this cycle of fear, attachment, suffering and death, then i guess, the question isn't simply how to make death less frightening. The more apt question is whether I want to keep living unconsciously within the same cycle?

That was a very uncomfortable thing to see. I am still processing this. Because I don't think I am afraid of death only because I love life. Sometimes I am afraid because I am deeply attached to what life gives me: people, relationships, memories, identity, plans, the feeling that tomorrow will 'still' be available to me.

The book Mrityu gave me an answer I did not have before. It showed me that the fear of death cannot be separated from the way I am living. If I want freedom from that fear, I cannot simply wait for death to teach me. I have to look at the chains while I am still alive.

I am still watching my parents grow older. I still get disturbed by their dependence. I still feel the fear of separation. So I am not writing this as someone who has conquered death or become fearless.

I am writing this because the book "Mrityu" helped me see something I hadn't seen before...that death is not merely something waiting for me at the end of my life. It is pointing me towards a much more uncomfortable question like.. what am I doing with this life while I have it???? One more interesting thing AP says is that we should start each day as if it were our last, then live it fully thinking it is our last....because who knows it could be. This is not a pessimism, it is a way of refusing to take tomorrow for granted.

Before I wrap up, there’s one thing I especially want to honor the book "Mrityu" for - It didn't teach me how to escape death. It showed me what I need to be free from while I am alive.

Today I came back to “Earth Song” by MJ after a long long time, and it hits differently now. It’s not subtle at all. It’s angry, sad, and almost pleading. The song makes you sit with things we usually scroll past, like dying forests, polluted water, animals being treated like products, and people suffering because someone somewhere wanted more money or convenience.

What gets me is that none of this is really “out there.” It comes back to ordinary choices, like what we buy, what we eat, what we waste, and how easily we ignore the cost of it all. We keep talking about saving the planet, but maybe we first need to be honest about the way we live on it. This song feels less like a message from the past and more like a question we still don’t want to answer.

How many more warnings, disasters, and losses will it take before we stop asking the world to change and finally look at what needs to change within us?

I recently watched the documentary, “How to Live on Earth”, presented and narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch. The documentary asks a pertinent question like - where we go from here if we genuinely want a planet that remains alive and thriving.

It’s worth a watch, visually striking and some stories are really inspiring. Restoring damaged ecosystems, rethinking how we grow food, and bringing nature back into cities. The idea of working with nature instead of simply extracting from it resonated with me. The thread running through the whole documentary is basically, that we have become very good at being smart without necessarily becoming any wiser. Which is fair. Please read on.

How we see nature

The film’s idea of working with nature made me think about how we usually see it. A forest becomes timber plank. A river becomes a resource. Land becomes something to develop. We look at a living thing and mostly notice what we can use from it. After a while, we stop seeing the thing itself.

The film also includes Indigenous perspectives. In those views, nature is not separate from us. It is a relationship, not something we own. I liked that part and fair to say I agree with it to a certain degree.

The question it skips

But I kept wondering why we are like this in the first place. The documentary does not really go there.
Maybe we believe that having more will finally make us feel okay. More stuff, more comfort, more security, more of everything. Sure, we can redesign food systems, cities and economies. We can even put a value on a wetland. But what about the part of us that always wants more? The film does not really touch that.

Have we ever wondered, what if the ecological crisis is not only about how we built the world. Maybe it is also about the kind of mind that built it this way?

What are we actually hungry for?

The film ends with the idea of becoming global gardeners. I liked that. But I kept thinking we also need to understand what made us so extractive in the first place. Isn’t that important? Rather of utmost importance?

I feel, we do not really want things. We want relief from ourselves. The mind is restless and afraid, so it keeps looking outside: more stuff, more comfort, more security, more control. Nothing satisfies for long, so the demand keeps growing. But our planet is paying for a hunger it did not create. Until we see what we are actually hungry for, we will keep taking from the world whatever looks like an answer.

I would like to know what others think, whether you have seen the film or not. Do we mainly need better systems, policies, or do we also need to understand why we keep wanting more? Why we’re okay to damage this beautiful home we call Earth at the cost of fulfilling our selfish desires. Why?

Today is Bhagat Singh Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh.

This quote by Indian Philosopher, Acharya Prashant..feels particularly meaningful today. Courage is not about never feeling afraid. It is about not allowing fear to decide who we are or what we stand for.

Bhagat Singh’s life was a powerful example of this. At just twenty-three, he chose conviction over comfort and purpose over self-preservation. His courage came from being rooted in something larger than personal fear.

On his birth anniversary, perhaps the real question is not whether we can do something extraordinary. It is whether, in our own lives, we can stand by what we know is right even when it is inconvenient or difficult.

Heartfelt gratitude to Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh Ji….🙏

What is one fear you would not let stop you from doing what is right? Is the Bhagat Singh in your heart alive???

I watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" years ago, and there's this one part I never really forgot...and it also happens to be the main plot of it. Joel and Clementine decide to erase their memories of each other, painful parts and all. At the time, I remember thinking it made complete sense. If something hurts this much, why not just get rid of it? Easy!

That thought came back to me recently while I was reading Acharya Prashant's book, "Fear". There's a passage in it that goes something like this:

>"Past is good. There is nothing wrong with the past. It is helpful, it is useful. Without the past there can be no knowledge, no science, no technology, no language, and no arts. But that same past becomes a living hell for you if you do not understand what is going on; then you become a captive to the past."

And a bit further down:

>"Freedom from the past does not mean erasing of memories. It is understanding Past as Past , and not become a captive of it, not being taken hostage by it."

These lines made me rethink the whole movie. Because honestly, the memory itself is never really the problem. It is always about understanding of it, not getting rid of it. Let me break it down a bit. A memory is just a memory, until it starts making decisions for you. What you're scared of, what you expect from people, how you see yourself, a lot of that is still running off something that happened years ago. And most of the time, we don't even notice it.

And that's really where "fear" comes into it. Most of what we're afraid of isn't happening right now, it's the past showing up dressed as a present threat. Got hurt in a relationship once, now every new one gets tested against that old wound before it's even had a chance. Failed at something years back, now the fear of failing again quietly decides what you attempt and what you don't. The past isn't just sitting there as memory, it's actively running the fear, and the fear is running you.

That's the captivity Acharya Prashant is pointing at. Not the past itself, but living from a place where the past gets to decide what's safe, what's threatening, who's trustworthy, before you've even looked at what's actually in front of you.

Freedom from the past isn't about forgetting it. It's about seeing it clearly enough that it stops operating in the dark. Once you actually understand a memory, really look at it instead of just reacting to it, it loses its grip. It becomes information instead of instruction.

Which makes me think Joel and Clementine had it backwards. Erasing each other didn't free them, if anything, the movie ends with them circling back into the same relationship, memories gone but nothing actually understood. Maybe the more honest ending would've been keeping the memories and finally seeing what they were made of.

Curious what others think, if you could erase a painful memory completely, would you actually do it? Or does something in you already know it wouldn't really solve anything?

And on the book's point, do you think it's actually possible to understand a painful memory well enough that it stops controlling you? Or does the past always keep some kind of hold, no matter how clearly you see it?

Just watched this scene again. For the Nth time. Tyler Durden. The one everyone quotes but nobody actually hears. Nah, not even me.

For those who don’t know, this monologue is from the movie Fight Club. Tyler says we have no great war, no great depression. Our war is SPIRITUAL. And every time I hear it, it cuts deeper ,, cos it's not about some guy in a movie. It's about us. Yeah you & me. Right now.

Look at our day. Alarm, commute, desk, screens, deadlines, doomscroll, sleep. Repeat. Nobody put a gun to our head. No draft, no famine, no enemy at the border. We chose it. Then we built a hundred escapes…Netflix, shopping, food, gossip, ambition, "settling down”.. so we'd never have to sit with what we chose.

The job isn't the problem. The money isn't the problem. The noise isn't the problem either. The problem is we've never once sat alone in silence and looked at our own life straight. Not because we can't. Because we won't. That's not being lost. That's hiding. That’s utter dishonesty.

And we know it.

I visited Las Vegas a few years back and, because I like walking around a city rather than just seeing the usual touristy spots, I took a kinda detour and wandered into some dark, unfamiliar alleys away from the Strip. I remember speaking to a local there and hearing bits and pieces about another side of Las Vegas that tourists rarely see. I recently came across this again and started looking up info about it.

But well.. let me say first that Las Vegas is actually quite a fascinating place. There is something almost surreal about the energy of the Strip, the lights, the architecture, the sheer amount of entertainment packed into one place. It is beautiful. But what I find paradoxical lies just a few feet below all that light and spectacle.

There are hundreds of people who live inside a network of flood tunnels (Wiki says they’re called “mole people”). These pictures (scroll below for link) highlight the stark reality of that life.. you’ll see darkness, old mattresses, a few belongings and endless drudgery. Some news articles also mention drugs and crimes in these flood tunnels. It’s crazy! A whole human life somehow reduced to surviving inside a maze!!

Phew! And the more I read, the more unsettling the contrast became. Above the tunnels, people are chasing money, gambling, pleasure, entertainment, one more experience. Below, people are escaping through drugs, darkness, or simply disappearing from the world. Different lives, completely different circumstances, but is the underlying movement really so different?

It reminded me of something I'd heard from the philosopher Acharya Prashant a while back, that lives that look completely different can be driven by the same thing underneath. He often speaks about the sense of "Incompleteness" and "Restlessness" we all carry inside, and how we spend our lives trying to fill it, some through more pleasure and more experience, others through numbness and escape. Chasing and escaping may be two ways of avoiding the same question… what am I really running from?!!! I'm not sure it fully applies here, but i kept coming back to this thought,, while I was looking at these pictures.

The city seemed to give me this strange, almost dystopian picture of “two labyrinths”, one glowing above the ground and one disappearing beneath it. But the more I thought about it, the less certain I became that they were really two.

I want to hear your thoughts. LV is built around chasing the next thrill, while people beneath it are trying to escape their reality. How different are these two kinds of seeking?

Sharing the relevant articles here:

On the Mole people of Las Vegas (with pictures)-

>> https://www.spadepoker.com/en/news/photo-the-dark-side-of-las-vegas-life-in-the-tunnels-beneath-sin-city/

>> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/14/las-vegas-homeless-tunnel-dwellers-gambling-addiction

On Philosophical Insight:

>> https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/peace-is-not-happiness-it-is-freedom-from-both-happiness-and-sadness-1_5871922

>> https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/how-do-i-get-rid-of-my-restlessness-1_df3dc84