Aravindan Neelakandan

Archer died on 5 October, a day before his last novel appeared. For a generation of Indian readers who bought him off railway platform bookstalls, he was the one Western novelist who made ambition respectable.

Serfoji II (1777–1832), the Maratha ruler of Thanjavur, stood at a remarkable crossroads of Indian history. His reign unfolded during the transition from indigenous sovereignty to British colonial domination, as Maratha political authority in southern India steadily receded.

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008), one of the twentieth century's most visionary theoretical physicists, helped reshape modern science. From foundational work on nuclear fission alongside Niels Bohr and the mid-century renaissance of General Relativity, to penetrating inquiries into the quantum foundations of reality, Wheeler continually probed the limits of nature.

What is the relationship of the Vedas and Vedic rituals to the Goddess? Do they help a seeker? Are the Vedas to Hindus what revealed scriptures are to the religions of the Book?

Inside Tamil Nadu's grand temple corridors, the indignity of inequality plays out every day in the commercialised darshan queue.

In 2018, cognitive scientist Norman D. Cook from Kansai University published an influential paper in Frontiers in Psychology titled ‘ The Triadic Roots of Human Cognition: ‘Mind' is the ability to go beyond dyadic associations

The Divine Feet of the Mother are flawless in their beauty. The insteps of Her Holy Feet arch gracefully, like the back of a tortoise.

There is a worldview of eternal recurrence: everything is cyclic.

What is beauty? From where does it arise? What is its purpose? Should it have a purpose?

Where Sri Lalita Sahasranama dwells on the Mother's beauty, Abhirami Bhattar turns to Her nourishing grace, the milk of wisdom that fed the child-saint Sambandar.