“We didn’t need to read the puranas or epics, we just grew up listening to the stories narrated by our grandmothers. It caught our fancy, it fired and enriched our imagination, gave ideas and metaphors, and colour to our language! It is sad that the oral tradition kept alive by grandmothers is slowly dying! Though there are exceptions! I was pleasantly surprised when I heard my daughter-in-law sing Krishna songs in her mother tongue Gujarati, and Ashtapati while bathing her babies or when putting them to sleep!”
― Vergal: A Memoir
― Vergal: A Memoir
“harke
n. a painful memory that you look back upon with unexpected fondness, even though you remember having dreaded it at the time; a tough experience that has since been overridden by the pride of having endured it, the camaraderie of those you shared it with, or the satisfaction of having a good story to tell.
From hark back, a command spoken to hunting dogs to retrace their course so they can pick up a lost scent. Pronounced "hahrk.”
― The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
n. a painful memory that you look back upon with unexpected fondness, even though you remember having dreaded it at the time; a tough experience that has since been overridden by the pride of having endured it, the camaraderie of those you shared it with, or the satisfaction of having a good story to tell.
From hark back, a command spoken to hunting dogs to retrace their course so they can pick up a lost scent. Pronounced "hahrk.”
― The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
“Mr. Jha was learning that in this neighborhood, your guard was a direct representation of how much was worth guarding in your home. Guards with guns meant bricks of gold somewhere in the house. Maybe he would also get a guard with a gun, Mr. Jha thought; it would be cheaper than buying bricks of gold.”
― The Windfall
― The Windfall
“The diameters of nuclei range from 0.8 femtometers for hydrogen to 15 femtometers for uranium, where 1 femtometer equals 10-15 meter. The diameter of the hydrogen atom is about 0.11 nanometer, while that of the uranium atom is 0.35 nanometer, where 1 nanometer equals 10-9 meter. So, roughly speaking, the nucleus of the atom is a million times smaller than the atom itself. Matter is, indeed, mostly empty space.”
― God and the Atom
― God and the Atom
“While the philosophy of Advaita, and Ramana’s own words, may tend to support a metaphysical reading of teachings of this kind, their validity is not metaphysical. Rather, it is experiential. The whole of Advaita reduces to a series of very simple and testable assertions: Consciousness is the prior condition of every experience; the self or ego is an illusory appearance within it; look closely for what you are calling “I,” and the feeling of being a separate self will disappear; what remains, as a matter of experience, is a field of consciousness—free, undivided, and intrinsically uncontaminated by its ever-changing contents.”
― Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
― Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
Narayanamurthy’s 2025 Year in Books
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