Prabha Shares

Diwali is one festival that brings the utmost joy to the people of India because even if we want to stay away from it, the sound of crackers will definitely reach our ears and create a sense of celebration mood automatically. It gives pleasure to people celebrating it and also to those who are witnessing these celebrations. In the North, it is celebrated in the memory of the return of Lord Ram and Sita to Ayodhya after winning over Raavan, in the south it is celebrated to mark the victory of Lord Krishna and Sathya Bama over Narakasura, thus depicting a moral of victory of good over the bad. Source: Medium My father, as I registered in earlier articles, is an ardent Periyar follower, so he clings to the point that Narakasura is a Dravidian who was killed by Lord Krishna who is supposed to be an Aryan. With this funny sarcasm, he always marks Diwali as a ‘Black day’ to the Dravida people. But already I have registered that he was not a blind pseudo-Periyarist, so keeping away his sarca

Dronacharya, the great teacher of Kuru dynasty princes - Pandavas and Kauravas got mentally shattered into pieces after the declaration of Krishna that he is undoubtedly a great teacher but can never attain the status of excellence as a Guru. This life lesson to Drona by Krishna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra provides us the valuable protocol of how an excellent Guru should be. Also, clearly explains the difference between a teacher and a Guru where the teacher attains prestige while Guru attains divinity. Source: Ramayan Krishna explains that a teacher is a mere instructor imparting knowledge of a pre-defined set of information to his pupils and guides them to attain par excellence as an individual. He gets a return back for this effort in terms of fees or favor. But a Guru is something beyond a teacher where he imparts all wisdom he possesses to his disciples thus turning them to be beneficial to the welfare of the entire society. He never expects anything in return and this quali

In one of my previous articles Spreading smiles to strangers is real happiness I have shared an incident where our gang’s happiness was able to spread a smile in the face of a stranger and helped him in coming out from the agony of losing his kid. At times the vice versa too happens wherein the strangers spread a smile on your face by a very small act but it means a lot for you and makes you very happy. I am going to share such an incident in this blog.                                               Last year I got an opportunity to mentor the civil service students of a charity academy established by a college in Perambur, Chennai, especially for the female candidates. It included 20 - 25 minutes of traveling from my place. I always have a habit of taking either bar chocolates or choco drinks after every session which is of 2 hours of exhaustive talking. Usually, I use to buy them from nearby shops. Since this academy and its location are new I did not have any clue regarding the sho

Earlier I wrote an article comparing the characterizations of Draupadi, Sita, and Kannagi ( My choice is Draupadi rather than Sita or Kannagi ), on reading this one of my juniors asked me why Shikandi without whom the Pandavas would have not succeeded in the Kurukshetra battle is not so popular. So in this article, I would like to share my inferences from the great epic Mahabharata and the character Shikandi. Source: Quora Shikandi, the daughter of King Dhrupad of Panchala Kingdom, was no lesser than the great warriors of her time and showed heroic valor in battlegrounds standing as the support pillar of her father. That is why she was made the commander-in-chief of the great army of Panchala in spite of being a woman. The major reason was her birth secret that she was born with a boon to cause the end of Pitamah Bhishma. But when she fails to defeat the attack of Pandavas over Panchala as a revenge to their Guru Dhronacharya’s insult by the King Dhrupad, she loses her importance and

The very title “Joothan” meaning ‘left-out food’ itself made me pause for a second and sit back with the thought of giving it a try. The subtitle goes like ‘A Dalit’s life’ is an autobiography of Omprakash Valmiki translated in English by Arun Prabha Mukherjee, describing the worst clutches of casteism. There is a saying that “People can’t understand certain things until they undergo them’ and I found it true on reading this book. We have heard about the worst forms of casteism but after heavy manual labor just receiving the ‘left-out food’ as the payment is really sickening. Source: Stree-Samya books The most interesting part of the book is the ‘Pitaji’, that is the father of the author who showed a denial against the system of caste. He believed that literacy and a high professional position can only help a person to come out of the iron fist of casteism. This very thought is the seed behind the growth of the author as a person not surrendering himself to the ugly frame of casteism.

As expected the debate on Ram - Ravan has erupted in Tamilnadu, on the sidelines of the Bhumi puja of Ram mandir at Ayodhya. I was at my 5th standard I found two big books named Ramayanam and Mahabharatam lying on our bookshelf and as I had developed reading habits, I was interested to complete those two books, which I executed too. Thus how I came to know about Ram, Ravan, Krishna, Pandavas, and Kauravas. I found Ramayanam to be very plain compared to Mahabharatam because Ram was so good and Ravan was so bad, no more interesting masalas as in Mahabharatam. As I entered my civil services preparation, our Geography sir explained an unheard concept about the Aryan-Dravidian divide. He said that Ram and his associates were all Aryans who were generally fair, tall, sharp-nosed, and had brownish hair. The Sukriva and his associates who were portrayed as apes are in real were Dravidians featured with dark skin, stout physique, short, and had black hair. This is how the northern literature ho

During my childhood, I came across a quote that ‘Smile is contagious, so keep spreading’. Don’t know why but I got an instant belief on that quote and even have tested it many times of late and found it to be true. Usually, such incidents make me feel excited but the recent experience of its kind made me feel so touching and emotional. I would like to share that experience in this blog. It was on last July, I and my junior besties planned for a continuous four days hangout in Chennai and on the last day of that exciting trip we visited the heritage village Dakshina Chitra, situated in the East Coast Road, 25 km away from Chennai. After cherishing the Dravidian lifestyles, we decided to leave a bit earlier fearing the evening traffic of Chennai. We sat for our snacks and coffee in a nearby restaurant and as we searched for the cab we realized that there are no cabs available at that time. We tried for autos but they were expensive but as time passed on we decided to take a running auto

Happened to see few titbits of the vulgar narration of Kandha Shashti Kavasam by Surendhar in Karupar Kootam youtube channel. This blog is not about theism or atheism because that is a personal affair of any individual which no one can or actually should not interfere with. I was just concerned about the interpretation, to be prompt, the misinterpretation of certain verses of the Kavasam. What the person quotes as vulgar is nothing but certain body organs that are less discussed generally while he has no problem with other verses on other body organs that are considered common. But the intentional misinterpretation backfired on him as he was booked for defamation and got arrested. On seeing this perspective I remembered a Bollywood movie called ‘Aitraaz’ in which a court scene includes hero Akshay Kumar who actually files a sexual harassment case against his Boss’s wife Priyanka Chopra. Paresh Rawal is the advocate of Priyanka and to win the argument he tries to assassinate the charac

In the previous article “My encounters with the system called Caste” ( https://bit.ly/3gGDDva ) I have concluded that change in mindset from both the dominant and subordinate castes should change to eradicate the discrimination. The feedback I received from many demanded an explanation about what change should happen in the mindset of the oppressed ones. So this article is regarding that in which I would like to add a sociological theory and a few life incidents as examples. The effective continuation of the system called Caste is mainly because of the blind belief and inferiority complex of the oppressed ones. Knowingly or without knowing they tend to agree that forward castes are superior and try to follow them and identify themselves with the upper strata people. There is a popular theory profounded by Sociologist and Professor M.N.Srinivas called “ Sanskritization ” in his famous work Religion and society among the Coorgs of South India where he explains how the subordinate cas

First of all, I would like to clarify that this article is not to prescribe anyone about the woes of casteism and how to overcome it because I am not the first one to talk about it and nothing is changed yet and I know very well that I am not the last one too because this is not going to end in near future. I am from the Scheduled Caste community and my father’s brought up and his position as a DSP has always kept me out of this to that extent that I was in a utopia that the so-called advanced society is out of this evil. The recent happenings where the people representatives made a small boy from the scheduled caste to set right his slipper in one case and made a person to carry his slipper in another case shows how this evil has rooted so deeply in the society. Here am sharing my countable experiences with the system. It was in my childhood when I was not at all aware that such a system exists. I and my family visited our village deity where we rarely go. As usual, I went near the sa