Categories
God

Kantara, Baba and Divine Comedy

Shiva in Kantara begins as a man deeply rooted in the physical world—he’s impulsive, indulgent, and disconnected from the spiritual legacy of his ancestors. His life revolves around thrill-seeking, village politics, and resisting authority. Though he’s part of a community that reveres the forest and its deities, Shiva distances himself from these beliefs, especially after the mysterious disappearance of his father during a sacred ritual.

But everything shifts when Shiva is pulled into a divine encounter during the ritual of Bhoota Kola. Possessed by Panjurli Daiva, a guardian spirit of the forest, Shiva becomes a vessel for justice and ancestral truth. The experience is not just spiritual—it’s transformative. He begins to see the forest not as a battleground, but as a sacred entity that demands reverence and protection. This awakening leads him to confront corruption, reclaim stolen land, and restore balance to his community. His personal redemption becomes a collective healing.

Cut to out second story in lens, Baba, the setting is starkly different. Baba is an atheist, a man who scoffs at spirituality and lives by his own rules. He’s rebellious, brash, and uninterested in the divine. Yet, his life takes a dramatic turn when he encounters Mahavatar Babaji, a mystical sage who reveals Baba’s true identity as a reincarnated saint. Granted seven wishes, Baba is thrust into a journey of self-discovery, where each wish tests his character and detachment.

Unlike Shiva’s explosive transformation in the forest, Baba’s evolution is gradual and introspective. The city becomes a mirror for his internal battles—temptation, ego, and loss. As he begins to understand the weight of his spiritual inheritance, Baba sheds his worldly desires and embraces a higher calling. His final ascent to the Himalayas symbolizes his complete surrender to the divine, leaving behind the noise of the city for the silence of enlightenment.

Shiva and Baba are not just protagonists, they’re instruments. Their stories suggest that the divine doesn’t concern itself with the mundane churn of politics, ego, or material chaos. It watches, waits, and when necessary, intervenes, not to fix the world directly, but to test a chosen soul. The transformation of that soul becomes the spark that shifts everything around it. In Kantara, Shiva’s possession by Panjurli Daiva isn’t a reward, it’s a reckoning. The deity doesn’t descend to negotiate with corrupt landlords or argue with forest officers. Instead, it chooses Shiva, a flawed man, to carry its fury and justice. The divine tests him through pain, loss, and revelation. And once Shiva surrenders, the forest breathes again. The land is reclaimed, the rituals restored, and the community healed, not because the divine fixed it, but because Shiva did, under its influence.

Similarly, in Baba, Mahavatar Babaji doesn’t intervene in Chennai’s chaos. He doesn’t stop politicians or cleanse the city of greed. He simply grants Baba seven wishes, a spiritual test disguised as a gift. Baba’s journey through those wishes is riddled with temptation and heartbreak. But as he evolves, shedding his ego and embracing detachment, the world around him begins to shift. His resistance to corruption, his protection of the innocent, and his final surrender to the Himalayas leave behind a ripple of change.

If you want to read more of my posts on Indian Cinema,

Man up..Tamil Cinema!
Categories
God

“Bhaja Govindam” – Bridge to the Divine

Putting music in words is something extremely difficult, especially song like Bhaja Govindam which dances around very intricate and beautiful ragams from Yamuna Kalyani to the fantastic Sindhu Bhairavi. As you read this article, a carnatic lover’s minds waves to the mellifluous voice of MS Subbalakshmi singing it. This song was composed by the Sri Adi Shankaracharya. His genius lies in composing a brilliant song on the top for a listener, for a person who went deeper, it is the ultimate spritual knowledge. The composition talks about people whose sole purpose of life is the desire to earn money. “mUDHa jahIhi dhanAgamatRshNAm“, he even went to extent of calling these people fools. With this line, song breaks to BrindavanaSaranga is highly divine raagam used to bring out pensive nature, it is not coincidence this raagam is used for this particular stanza. If you have been temples or Kacheris, this first verse one is done with chorus. It is beautiful that Yamuna Kalyani can produce in a chorus.

On the surface, the song is devotional. But each verse is a philosophical dagger, cutting through illusions of permanence, ego, and materialism. It’s a spiritual wake-up call disguised as a lullaby. Shankaracharya uses the word mūḍha (fool) deliberately, not to insult, but to jolt the listener out of spiritual slumber. The repetition emphasizes urgency: time is fleeting, and the pursuit of truth cannot wait.

Before reading more about the song and its beauty. Lets take a step back and see the bigger philosophy of Advaita Vedanta.

Advaita Vedanta teaches that Brahman alone is real, and the world is Maya—a transient illusion. The individual self (jiva) is none other than Brahman, but due to ignorance (avidya), it identifies with the body and mind.

Advaita Vedanta is not just a philosophy—it’s a radical shift in how Vedas and Upanishads were interpretted. One of the key philosophy is ‘Tat Tvam Asi’, in english, it roughly translates to “You are that”. That here is Brahman.

Let’s break it down:

  • Tat = That (referring to the ultimate reality or Brahman)
  • Tvam = You
  • Asi = Are

Now hold on. You might be thinking, “But I’m Aakash. You’re you. How can I be something called Brahman?” Fair question. Let’s walk through it together.

Start here: Are you aware of your own existence right now? Can you sense that awareness? Now ask—what is aware of your existence?

Is it your body? No, because your body has changed—from childhood to youth to wherever you are now. Is it your thoughts or emotions? Those change too, sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly.

So what remains constant? There’s something that observes all these changes—your body, your thoughts, your feelings. That observer, that awareness, never changes. It’s always present, quietly witnessing everything. Advaita Vedanta says: That awareness is Brahman. It’s not a concept or a deity—it’s the very essence of reality. And it’s what you truly are. Still with me? Let’s try a thought experiment.

Imagine awareness as a person sitting in a movie theatre. He doesn’t remember how he got there or anything before the film started. All he knows is the movie playing in front of him. He watches the story unfold—characters appear, fight, fall in love, die. Now imagine this person suddenly believes he is one of the characters on screen. That’s ignorance. But when the film cuts to intermission, he snaps out of it. He realizes: “Wait—I’m not the movie. I’m the one watching it.”

That’s the shift Advaita points to. You’re not the body, not the mind, not the story playing out. You’re the awareness watching it all. And that awareness? Aham Brahmasmi—I am Brahman.

Okay Aakash, I hear you. I might even agree with you. Then how come we see so many deities and gods in this culture. Okay, Cut to Bhaja Govindam now. Being your awareness requires tremendous mental resilience and mental clarity. There is seperate book which Shankara wrote on this called “Viveka Chudamani”. Book talks what it takes to be realized person. For the interested, please have a stab at the book. It could change your outlook of the word “determination”. Shankara and his disciples know its not everyone. He knows that, to be realized person it takes letting go of ones identity. Identity of nation, gender, friends & family and other complex constructs which helps us survive. You are ready to do anything for your loved ones because you identify with them. You identify yourself as their partner, father, mother, son, daughter etc. Sense of self disappears with them. You are suddenly a wonderful human being with them vs others. That’s fine and its helps us live in perceived peace. Its a survival tactic us the Homo Sapiens have figured helps us live and thrive. Shankara felt instead of identifying with just kith kin and loved ones, one can identify with a deity or “God” as their father, mother, or even partner. Thats how Bhakti Yoga enters the chat. Bhakti leads to the Jnana, knowledge of the supreme. Worship becomes a gateway to Jnana (knowledge), leading to the realization that the worshipper and the worshipped are one. Shankara being a staunch proponent of Jnana Yoga, recognized the value of Bhakti as a prepartory path. Bhaja Govindam is just the bridge – He knew it begins with devotion and that always leads to the ultimate.

Categories
Art Music

Raaja Paarvai

As I write this article, I’m listening to “Yennule Yennule”, wondering how do I describe the legend’s music. Should I start with the musical technicality or more on the conveyed emotion.  Although I know, by the time I was born, Rahman had already superseded Raja with his western touch of Hip hop, Rap and brilliant sound design. It can be surprising for us, the younger listeners, to understand the complexity of Ilayaraja’s compositions, even with a western music sensibility. And how he managed to effortlessly create thousands of them. It is not at all an exaggeration to call him the Mozart, Beethoven or Bach’s counterpart in India. 

Ilayaraja composing

Solace, resurgence and hope. Can you think of any other art form which can convey all these dissonant emotions together? Well, Raja did. In the song, Nalam Vaazha Ennalum from the movie Marubadiyum, directed by Balu Mahendra. Pardon some technicality here, perception of the scale is seemingly B minor…Or wait..is it? Music now taunts you with some D major(relative major) and even G major. Now you are clueless because it makes perfect sense to ears.  It conveys the mess the protagonist finds herself in. His music is as closest as we can get to ourselves. We are all those, complex, dissonant and paradoxically simple 🙂

I do see one reason Ilayaraja’s music doesn’t reach across to younger listeners as much as we’d like it to. The videos. Every time I tell someone to look a song up, they’ll go to YouTube, and end up watching terrible film footage of a couple in eye-blinding clothes executing weird dance steps. Once you’ve seen those images, it’s hard to take the song seriously. 

Another hurdle could be the sound design. Sounding seems fine for the speakers of 1970-80’s cinema theatres and halls. But with today’s headphones and post-Rahman-era, one can see that Ilayaraja’s sound engineers let him down on several occasions. I sometimes wish someone — perhaps Ilayaraja himself — would remove the rough edges from his songs and re-record them to make, say, the trumpets sound less strident, the tabla less metallic, and bring some high-low balance between instruments so that they don’t all sound like they’re crouched in the same decibel range.

 

With this post, I’m sharing my closer to the heart songs and compositions of Ilayaraja. Here is the Youtube playlist.

 

Categories
Motivational

“You must Act Big..” – Socrates

Someone shared this amazing story about Socrates. The message was so powerful I want to share it with you guys.

Just in case, if you didn’t know him, Socrates is a Greek moral philosopher who lived 2500 years back. He is regarded as the first person to influence the current Western philosophy.

Portrait of Socrates

The story goes like this…

A young man asked Socrates “What is the secret to becoming successful?”. To which Socrates didn’t reply anything and asked to come to the river next day. The young man was so excited about what the great Socrates is going to teach him. Next day happened, as said he went to the river and Socrates was waiting there for him. Socrates asked, “If he wishes to walk with him to the river” to which the young man readily agreed. They walked towards the centre of the river and suddenly Socrates took the young man to surprise, he dunked him into the water. The boy struggled to get out but Socrates was strong and held him until he started to turn blue. When the boy thought all was lost and he is certainly going to die, Socrates pulled his head out of the water. The young man sputtered water and coughed. He gasped for a deep breath of air. Socrates then asked him “What did you want the most when you were there?”. The boy replied “Air” as he was panting.

Socrates then said ” When you want success as badly as you want the air, then you will get it. There is no other secret.”

With that, the story ends. Now, What an enchanting way of looking at success. Secret really is how much we want it. I can share many instances in my life where I felt I was successful in some particular task only because I really needed that victory. I failed numerous times and my confidence that I would ever succeed was deteriorating. I wanted that success badly, to prove myself. Now looking back on those moments I really am happy those failures happened. Those failures boosted my “want” and kept me going through the tough times, where I would have mostly given up if not for those failures. Bigger “want” reflects in my planning and attitude which is very difficult to achieve otherwise.

Are failures the only way to increase the “want”? That’s a very interesting question to which I have a very vague answer.

I have been trying to simulate failures to increase my want for success. How? I really publicly declare even my smallest of failure with shame. That internal shame helps me increase my “want”. This might not work for everybody because it matters how the person values other people’s opinion of him/her. Successful personalities like Cristiano Ronaldo, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have worked the similar way.

Above is just a way I increase my want. I will be more than happy to hear your personal opinions. Have a great day.

Categories
Art General

Man up..Tamil Cinema!

A beautiful girl walks the street, you look at her,  and you instantly “fall” in love with her. As some might call it, love at first sight. Now, what do you do next is the real question here.

If you were a normal guy from a decent background, you would go up to her and confess your love respectfully and in a dignified way and walk away from her if she says NO, and if you weren’t and your Instagram bio reads “cinema paithiyam” or “xyz veriyan””, then you’re going to probably do everything within your reach to “make” her fall in love with you. I dedicate this post to you, my friend. You think I’m typifying you? You’re thinking who is this guy blogging from some corner of the world? What does he know about love?

I’ll let you in on a little secret, I know you a little too well than you think I do! You’re in for a ride. First off, you are a movie freak and an ambassador of Hero Worship. You take movies way too seriously in life and you manipulate yourself into believing that incidents in your life are also loosely based on cinema. You listen to a lot of “Senjitaley” and strongly feel that “tholla pani alyaama theriyaama kedaikura kaadhaley venam venam”.  Well, definitely you have a Facebook account (psst) where you add strangers and send them inappropriate messages until they have no choice but to reply. You’re a non-believer of this lame concept of “consent” that everybody seems to be talking about. Your idea of love is a type of conquest and if you loose, your fragile ego is going to be oh so butthurt. Poor thing!  Portrayal of unrealistic women characters who do give a nod after continuous harassment and stalking has etched into your subconscious memory and asserted your insecurities with ” Yenna maari pasangala paaka paaka dhan pudikum”. I worry you will die single, if you don’t do these stunts. Hello, nice to meet you. Aforementioned actor has also confessed his bad dialogue/movie selection, he has also told he won’t do any more. But he failed to tell you that.

I wouldn’t blame the entire Tamil cinema.  In fact, we do have great personalities like  Ajith, AR Rahman, Maniratnam, Vikram, Suriya, Selvaraghavan who have gone on public record to say how badly Tamil cinema is taking shape these days and how fans need to be educated. Actor Ajith had gone to an extent wherein a scene in Vedalam he advices “Ponungala Vaazha vidunga” to a guy following his sister.

The intention of this post is to not to reprimand you, our Tamil Cinema movie makers, or anything, it is just to tell that these directors and actors are just playing their role in the movies. Their motivation is to make money and cinema is business. It is not a story with moral,  and cinema isn’t meant to teach what’s right and what’s wrong, your upbringing should. So the point is my friend when a girl doesn’t comply with you, kids cry, adults pursue, and legends respect her emotion and walk away.

Have a great day. Peace.

 

Categories
General

Ideal decision making! The meritocratic way.

Let’s say you have decision to make about your career or business or relationship. Importance lies in making the decision with right balance of assertiveness and open mindedness.

We are intuitively wired up to disagree with the opinions which we think are right. That is great barrier for self growth. Isn’t it?.. Imagine we are struck up with our own blizzard of information and ideology. Although it doesn’t make sense to be submissive to any opinion or be aggressive too. Both are wrong. What makes sense is to strike a balance, knowing that you can be wrong, and be bit open minded. That is not as easy as we think, as greatly pointed out by Ray Dalio,Founder of a world’s successful hedge funding company, we have two sides of us inside us. One is intellectual, our thirst to learn and know things. Second is emotional, which is millions of years evolution. The point we have to understand is we are all bounded by our own thoughts and ideologies. Belief that we are always right about it. Spiritually speaking that is what I believe as “Karma” . That may totally affect the way we live and the decisions we make. Especially for a person like me who wishes to be a successful entrepreneur,that’s a huge tip. The decisions you are about to make will save you a lot of resources.

Ideal meritocratic decisions are what going to help us make the ideal decisions. On an interview, Barrack Obama has mentioned the same thing. During his presidential regime, when he is bound to make decisions he is not proficient at or expert at, he calls experts in those topics, potentially people who disagree with each other. He observes the argument and disagreements and make the final decisions. Do not confuse this with democratic way. Democratic is never ideal too. What makes sense in giving all the members equal vote to give their opinions? There can be teachers,students and peers in the same room. It makes no sense to give the teacher and the student the veto power.

What are the internal qualities that we need to adapt to being open minded,receptive and be assertive at the same time? That is the ability to be intellectually inquisitive, that is what will make your journey. After the discussion, one person gets enlightened and other confirms his opinion. It is continuum for both the players. Once you have crossed the tunnel, you are never the same person again. Just like any good habit, you will never be willing to go back. Quality requires humility too, of course. So before making a decision next time thinking you are right, ask yourself, why do you think you are right?

 

Happy new year friends.

Categories
God

To a prosperous 2017..

Sow a thought, reap an action;Sow an action, reap a habit; Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. This brings out the need for a very concrete understanding of habit.

I see habit as a intersection of knowledge,skill and desire. Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm, the what to do and why. Skill is how to do. And desire is the motivation, the want to do. These three factors are the major ingredients for developing a great habit.

In his book “The 7 habits of highly effective people”,Stephen Covey has brilliantly stated three phases to being a highly proactive person. In his words “Life is,by nature, highly interdependent”.

He emphasised on being a independent person first,which provides a smooth transition to highest state of interdependence. Because you see, interdependence is a choice only independent people can make.

Here we are in the concluding phase, talking about solutions to be more proactive.

Self awareness is the key. Project yourself , and analyze how better you could have reacted to the situations you face. Many situations in life needs introspection so that we don’t repeat that mistakes again. Allot time in your day for self introspection.

Secondly, languages of reactive people absolves them from responsibility. Avoid the usage of languages such as “He makes me mad”,“I can’t handle this environment”,“There is nothing I can do about it”.

Lastly, remember there are two circles : Circle of influence and Circle of concern.Circle of concern revolves around the things over which we have no real control. Circle of influence are things which we can do something about. Find out your circle of concern and react to that situation using your circle of influence.

Personal leadership is not a singular experience.Journey of thousand miles must begin with a single step. New year, new start and way to go. Happy new year  😀

Categories
God

With a bright but slow start..Here we go!

December has already begun and I haven’t done anything worth sharing yet. I know it is late, been busy my exams and project lately. Good. Here we go, This is my first blog post.

“If you aren’t failing you are not innovating enough” said the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, Elon Musk. Think for yourself, how many opportunities have you missed just afraid to face the failure? Just not wanting to test the waters ? Because that would be total disarray in our very simple life and we don’t want that. Innovating something tangible is only possible if we are ready to come out of our little comfort zone and get ready to fail. But wait, If you think that we are taught our whole life not to fail and suddenly this guy blurts asking us to fail??Boy Oh boy..This book I am going to read now is also meant for you.

“How the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and tesla is shaping our future” authored by Ashlee Vance. My friend gifted me this book.Man! I should thank her for that.

I am already motivated by Musk’s vision and work. Can’t wait to share it with you guys.Stay tuned to read my thoughts on this book. Peace.