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Charcha

What everyone at Poorvam is writing, teaching and discussing.

Essay · 25 Sep 2026 · 48 min read

The 'New' Physics and the Return of the Questioner

The nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century fundamentally changed our understanding of the physical world with the astounding success of the “new physics”. The theories of quantum mechanics and relativity gave us a new p...

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Essay · 25 Sep 2026 · 40 min read

The Making of Modern Observer

This essay is part of a longer attempt to think about consciousness after losing my 48-year-old husband, the philosopher Anand Vaidya, in 2024. I know he is gone. Yet there remains a stubborn sense that reality is someho...

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Essay · 17 Sep 2026 · 39 min read

Not Path, but Mārga

The word “interview,” as journalists use it, is not understood in quite the same way by seekers. For them, interview — or sākṣātkāra — signifies the direct experiential realization of the essential nature of the (supreme...

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Essay · 17 Sep 2026 · 22 min read

Dance as Truth

In this interview, Lubna Marium — dancer, choreographer, and founder of Dhaka's Sadhana — discusses her new initiative Embodied Feminism, which challenges dancers to use their practice as a vehicle for social commentary ...

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Essay · 16 Sep 2026 · 11 min read

Dīkṣā

Dīkṣā, however, is not merely the transmission of knowledge. Its true purpose lies in the simultaneous attainment of pure knowledge and the dissolution of karmic tendencies. Through the grace of the Sadguru, the veil of ...

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Essay · 16 Sep 2026 · 10 min read

Yāska and the Birth of Vedic Hermeneutics (Part 2)

This companion essay follows the reception of Yāska's Nirukta across two and a half millennia, from Sāyaṇācārya's Vedic commentaries and Kumārila Bhaṭṭa's Mīmāṃsā defence of scriptural authority, through Swami Dayananda ...

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Essay · 15 Sep 2026 · 20 min read

Yāska and the Birth of Vedic Hermeneutics (Part I)

This essay introduces Yāska, the earliest known systematiser of Vedic etymology, and his foundational text, the Nirukta. It traces his place among the six Vedāṅgas, his tripartite method of reading mantras across the ādh...

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