Its Joshi

  This post was started ,because of a Recent comment from a Stalwart from the IT Industry implying Karna was his favorite character in the Mahabharatha ( MB) because of his Generous nature. It seems l made a mistake by venturing into this subject for the simple fact that, MB is by any standards the Longest Epic in the world. Nearly 1,00,000 slokas amounting to nearly 2 million words. There are at least 1000 versions about this Epic. Just the task of determining the most authentic and unabridged ve rsion in English took some time. After some basic online search, we can narrow down to two versions known for thier authenticity. One is the MB by Kisari Mohan Ganguli ( KMG ) published in 1896 which has more of the older English words and the other is Bibek Debroy's translation of the Critical Unabridged edition( meaning checked by a group of scholars) published by the Bhandarkar Institute of Oriental Research BORI ( took them nearly 50 years ). Then I made another mistake, I went and ...

  Caste/Jaati/Varna   : My Point of View Part 1: You have often heard these three words used as meaning the ‘same’ in different contexts. However ,if you look closely, they do not mean the same....infact, they hold different positions .... check around...look at the daily conversations around you....If you hear about any “intercaste’ marriage, people will ask “ vovu jaathi ge?”....not which ‘caste’....its in thier subconsciuos.....Caste is . Most of you rightly figured it out is divided into 4 categories: Brahmin, Kshatriya.vaishya and Shudra..... .where as, jaathi meant ‘Community”....If someone in Mangalore asks you “Vovu Jaathi?( which Jaathi)”, you usually say- I am a Bunt, a Billava, a Mogaveera, a amchigele( slang for GSB) etc...you would never reply as “ Brahmin, Kshatriya etc”....simply because you dont identify as such.... ‘ Caste’ in India came into existence perhaps in Late 18 th century( through the British), whereas ‘jaathi’ system existed in India more...

                                                       When Kashi Called us. Frankly speaking, I am not the Teertha yatra types Guy. Nothing against it as such. Just that, my Interests lay somewhere else. So I myself was surprised, when we started planning a Trip to Kashi.It all happened by chance. We were supposed to go on a Vacation to some other place. That didn't happen due to some reason-then the word ‘Kashi’ popped up, and Lo, we were chalking out details for a Trip to Kashi. The day we arrived in Kashi, I casually mentioned it to our Guide( Tip: Pre-Book the Guide) that we didn't plan this trip as such. He Replied back “ Only if Mahadev calls you, you can come to Kashi”. Day One : We arrived in Varanasi late afternoon. Weather was pleasant ( Tip: Period between Mid Feb to Mid March is most suitable for Mangloreans. Neither too cold nor too ho...