Ganesha's Broken Tusk
Plus! A Daily Writing Experiment for a Mandala of 48 days.
Dear Friends,
Greetings from Hyderabad! Over the past few weeks, ever since I have been warming up with the mask that calls itself ‘writer’, I have been thinking a lot about Ganesha, or to be precise, his broken tusk.
The story must be familiar.
If you go by Mahabharata, Ganesha broke his left tusk to write Mahabharata when Ved Vyasa imposed the condition that the meaning must be understood before he commits the act of scribing.
It has taken me years to understand the import of meaning. Athough I am aware that I am human, at the deepest recesses of my heart, I know how it feels to break your own tusk to write something.
I write “Dharma and Dharmasankata” to offer my life story as an “aahuti” and attempt to be the stenographic witness as I figure out the question of my lifetime: What is Dharma?
I will never write about anything indic unless it resonates with the truth of my human condition.
At this point, I must also make this clear, if it weren’t been obvious so far. The words I write here are what I have received from participating in a yagna facilitated by the Ritambhara sangha that I am part of.
I write under my name here because this is what I have received, offering my life to the yagna.
I was digging up old files and came across this old pic.
Around 2017, I got an invitation from my dear Yoga mentor Raghu Ananthanarayanan to join "Ritambhara", a small community of people who are serious about experimenting with a life design that was anchored in the practice of Yoga.
I was working full-time as a product manager in an agritech startup, and I jumped at the opportunity. It was also around that time when I started discovering the beauty of Mahabharata, the “pancham veda”. My partner Ramya and I travelled to Kothagiri and met the group. We soon started to meet regularly and started to bond deeply with the sangha.
Little did we know from thereon that our lives would undergo a complete transformation.
In 2018, along with my friend Maggie, I started Mandram, a non-profit organization that works on bringing back native languages into modern discourse.
In 2018 I became a parent.
In 2019, I quit my agritech startup job and became a free agent, to pursue my interests in culture and agriculture.
Looking back in the aftermath of the pandemic, I cannot imagine how I would have fared through this period without the loving emotional safety net of the community. And that's perhaps the core ingredient missing in most of our life designs. We live in a techno-capitalist world that wants to atomize us. That wants to make every problem MY problem. That wants us to outsource schooling, parenting, cooking and other essential things that are best done in-house.
Although the socio-economic conditions today have made it difficult to live in a joint group, to live as a community, I think all of us would immensely benefit from the loving support of a community that lives together, although we may be physically housed in different places.
A community where you can discover that what you think is YOUR problem is also someone else's problem is a great feeling. It changes and rewires our understanding to approach life designs in a new light.
A sangha that doesn’t outsource your victimisation outside (read as religion), or to a guru/authority (read as spirituality-as-is-often-understood), that nudges you to work with yourself, that lovingly holds the “sannadhi” while you walk the path of Yoga is a blessing.
And I consider it my privilege to share the posse of flowers that have stimulated my senses through this newsletter.
Are you part of a living community? What have you discovered about your life design?
P.S. And so begins to write for the next 48 days mandala. If you don't want to receive my emails every day for the next 48 days, you can unsubscribe below. I don’t check subscriber/unsubscriber alerts and so wouldn’t know:)
So, what do you think?
How do you feel about today’s edition? I would love to get your candid feedback. Your feedback will be anonymous. Two questions. 1 Minute. Thanks.🙏
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