4th Dimension

Last time when I wrote a blog post on Non- Brahmanical Goddesses, my friends asked questions about Non-Brahmanical gods. When I started looking around, I figured out many local Pir, Veer, Dev, Maharaj… these Deities are worshipped by people on the margins. their rituals, legends, and lores are really intriguing… You've probably encountered a shrine that felt a little too real. Not the polished marble kind with donation counters and security guards, but a heap of stones under a neem tree, a red flag fluttering nearby, maybe a clay horse or a garlanded sword. You might pause and think: is this also a god? The answer is yes; but not the kind who sits quietly in a textbook. These are the folk deities of India: untempled, uncanonised, and utterly indispensable. They don’t descend from Sanskrit verses. They emerge from oral memory, bone-deep loyalty, and local justice. They live where myth meets mud. Headless Heroes and Snakebite Promises Let’s begin with Bhathiji Maharaj; or as some tr...

It all began, as many profound sociological inquiries do, with a toddler, a cartoon, and an unintended insult. I overheard an Indian mother scolding her three-year-old son for calling his father "Papa Pig." The horror in her voice was matched only by the child's innocent grin. Now, calling someone a pig in India isn’t just cheeky, it’s bordering on blasphemous. Yet here was a child, clearly influenced by Peppa Pig, nonchalantly dropping farm-animal epithets. Intrigued, and slightly amused, I began to dig deeper. After all, cartoons aren’t just moving pictures. They’re miniature empires of soft power. Me, who grew up with Mowgli’s jungle wisdom, Uncle Scrooge’s capitalist acumen, Dexter’s lab-coat logic, and the Powerpuff Girls’ sugar-spice-chemical-X formula for justice, I hold a certain reverence for cartoons. But today, as a father and a sociologist, I find myself questioning: what are these cartoons really teaching our children? And who, exactly, is doing the teaching?...

It began with an earnest LinkedIn post; a student sharing reflections on his coursework, unaware of the quiet storm he would stir. His sincerity was disarming, even moving. But more than that, it was revealing. It laid bare a systemic fissure so wide and deep that it forced a confrontation with one of India’s most uncomfortable truths: we are creating workers, not citizens. This isn’t a new phenomenon. The colonial British administration designed Indian education to produce a subservient workforce—literate, skilled, but obedient. Their ideal subject was efficient but unquestioning, trained to execute rather than inquire. This colonial residue, far from dissipating in post-independence India, has been inherited and adapted—by corporations, by governments, and, most insidiously, by our educational institutions. Today, India finds itself in a paradox. We aspire to be a Vishwaguru, a global teacher, a beacon of civilisational knowledge, while systematically undercutting the very foundation...

This week, I came across an intriguing series titled "adolescence" . full of drama and excellent subject matter that made me think about the plight of young “adolescent" India. India has 253 million adolescents, the largest in the world, teeming with potential energy. One might believe this generation stands on the cusp of greatness, poised to lead India into a luminous future. And yet, the harshness of reality intervenes: India’s adolescents are dying in tens of thousands, not through war or famine, but through a systematic betrayal perpetrated by social media, unhelpful educational institutions, and an insidious consumerist culture. Let me share why I am saying so… between 1995 and 2021, 134,735 adolescents aged 10–19 years died by suicide,  an average of over 5,180 per year. In 2021 alone, 10,730 adolescents under 18 ended their own lives — marking a 42% increase compared to the year 2000. Suicides are rising not only among 15–19-year-olds but also among younger ado...

I came across an intriguing article by Duvvuri Subbarao titled "Has IAS Failed The Nation?” made me reflect on the most interesting subject, bureaucracy in India, something very close to the heart of Indian governance and yet so far from its brain: the Civil Services. More specifically, why they began with the promise of nation-building and somehow evolved into glorified WhatsApp forwarding departments with fancy stationery and painfully slow Wi-Fi. Post-Independence, we had dreams. Big ones. Dams, democracy, development. Nehru spoke like a poet, Patel acted like a surgeon, and somewhere in between, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) was born, our very own homegrown bureaucracy. It was supposed to be the steel frame of India. Spoiler alert: today, it’s more mild steel—looks shiny but bends under pressure. Let’s rewind and see how we got here. When the British left, they bequeathed to us three things: tea addiction, cricket obsession, and the Indian Civil Service-an institutio...

Yesterday, I met my ex-neighbour at a temple. Not just any temple. The Umiya Devi temple—the unofficial parliament for a certain caste’s community matters. He was beaming. Turns out, his caste group is organising a National Business Summit. Not a business summit. A caste-based business summit. For businesspersons of their caste only, thank you very much. Proudly, he informed me that he’s on the executive organising team. Big deal. Big pride. Big caste. And then it hit me. Again. My city just hosted a Global Patidar Business Summit. Before that, a Global Brahmin Summit. Add a couple of Yadav Yatras and Vaishya Ventures, and we’ve basically got an unofficial caste-based G20 happening every few months. Now, as someone who eats, sleeps and occasionally overthinks sociology, caste always felt like that stubborn stain on your white shirt. It fades, sure. But it never disappears. And yesterday, I saw why. Caste survives because it accommodates. It makes room for people who are left out by the...

Recently, I got an opportunity to visit the famous Bahucharaji temple with Limbach mā temples at Unva and Patan. At the same time, I also paid a visit to Ambaji temple in Gujarat. What stuck in my mind was the socio -cultural dimensions of these temples, rituals and goddesses which remained divorced from Brahminical and puranic frameworks. let me ask you something, if you ever find yourself in a dusty corner of North Gujarat or Saurashtra, or deep inside the rice belts of central Gujarat, and someone points you towards a neem tree wrapped in red threads or a stone smeared with vermilion near a dried-up well, don’t be deceived by the simplicity. You are not looking at folk superstition. You are staring at the living remnants of a subaltern theology—what the villagers might call Meldi no Maṇḍ, Momai na sthān, or Bahucharā no dero. These are not minor goddesses. They are the pulsing, breathing soul of local religiosity—sovereign, sensory, and disruptive. Before Temples, There Was Earth Th...

I was having lunch with my faculty colleagues, just trying to survive the afternoon, when the topic of parenting popped up. Again. Except this time, it wasn’t just casual griping about screen time or school fees. It turned into something oddly philosophical. My colleagues, all seasoned parents, started discussing “how we were raised” versus “how we are raising.” And there I was—a new dad, wide-eyed, mildly confused, and deeply conflicted. I’m a 90s kid. Grew up on a healthy diet of cartoon violence, weekend Doordarshan movies, and the constant fear of being shouted at for no reason. Our parents didn’t negotiate. They didn’t ask how we felt. They didn't even ask why  and what happened in the class. You didn’t get time-outs. You got “the look”—you know, the one that made your soul shiver. Now, here I am, trying to parent in an age where I’m supposed to gently narrate my toddler’s emotions back to him while she’s screaming because the spoon is the wrong colour. Honestly, it's enou...