The Silent Daru: Faith, Power, and the Walls We Build Around God!!

 Distance has a strange way of making bad news hurt even more. Sitting far away from my home state, my heart completely sank when I read a recent news headline: a Dalit woman was stopped from entering a temple by its priest.

A wave of pure anger rushed through me. Every part of me wanted to scream, “Is this really 2026? Are we still doing this?”

In the heat of that anger, some very blunt, harsh questions popped into my head. Why do Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities even want to enter these temples? If a place insults your basic human dignity, why go there? Even scripture says to stay away from places that humiliate you. So, why not just walk away? Let the priests and their specific community have the temple to themselves. Let’s see how long they can run the grand show if the rest of society just stops showing up.

Of course, once I calmed down, a quieter, sadder thought took over. This isn't a new problem. These are the exact same priestly lines that once banned a King of Puri because he married a Muslim princess to save his kingdom. If they didn't even spare royalty, why do we expect them to treat ordinary people any better today? The priest of today is just following the age-old footsteps of the priests before him.

But then my logical mind goes even deeper. Take the beautiful legend of Patitapaban—the form of Lord Jagannath placed at the temple gate so that the people who were banned could still get a glimpse of Him. Was that truly a divine dream granted to the head priest? Or was it a clever political move by the King to keep the peace?

Money and power can do anything. It is hard to admit, but history shows that even the concept of God is often controlled by the powerful. Our folklore beautifully tells us how much Jagannath loved ordinary, marginalized devotees like Manika, Salabega, and Dasia Bauri. But folklore doesn't fund grand monuments. Without money and political power, you cannot build massive temples or carve giant statues.

This brings me to a deeper question about Jagannath himself. Long before He became the wooden idol (Daru) locked inside a massive temple, He was Nila Madhab—a simple deity worshipped by tribal people in the quiet secrecy of the forest. He wasn't trapped in stone or wood until the King and the priests took Him and rebuilt Him.

Today, grand rituals like Nabakalebara and the annual Ratha Yatra require cutting down hundreds of ancient trees every year. Is this environmental sacrifice truly what a loving, universal God wants? Or is it a grand show kept alive by those in power to maintain blind faith, ensuring no one asks questions and their own selfish interests are protected?

Asking these questions feels highly controversial. I usually avoid writing about things like this because I ask myself: What good will it actually do? But when I see such deep injustice happening in the name of faith, I cannot stop my mind from thinking otherwise.

We have to ask ourselves: are we actually worshipping God, or are we just worshipping the walls built to keep people out?

To the Deeply Feeling Soul Who Feels "Behind" in Life!!

 If you are reading this, chances are you are sitting in a quiet room, finally taking a breath after a long day of wearing a dozen different hats. Maybe you just closed your laptop after studying a chart, or maybe you just finished prepping a lesson plan, or tucked your child into bed. And now, in the silence, that familiar, heavy question starts knocking on your door again: Is this it? Am I doing enough?

​I am writing this for you. Because lately, I’ve been thinking about how brutally unfair we are to our own journeys.

​It is so easy for the world—or even the people closest to us—to look at our lives and carelessly say, "You could have done better than this." When you hear that, it hits you like a physical blow. It stings because it treats the gap between where you are and where you wanted to be as a failure of will. It implies you were just lazy.

​But they don’t see the invisible heavy lifting. They don't see the courage it took to navigate deep personal challenges, only to face the massive, overwhelming identity shift that comes with motherhood. They don't see the sheer discipline it takes to show up every single day, trying to master a completely new skill from scratch, or pouring your soul into creating books and resources, even when the immediate response from the world is just silence.

​When you possess a deeply sensitive, emotional, and reflective nature, you don’t move through life mechanically. You feel every bump in the road. And when life doesn't give you what you know you deserved, your mind naturally pauses to grieve that loss.

​That isn’t laziness. That is the heavy tax of being a deeply feeling person in a world that only values superficial speed.

​If you are trying to build an empire of meaning with scattered blocks—teaching, learning, parenting, creating—please stop punishing yourself for the delays. You are not running a race against anyone else. You are meticulously managing a complex, beautiful life with all its unique constraints.

​To the soul who feels the pain of not being "there" yet: You are working incredibly hard. The fact that you are still trying, still learning, and still looking for meaning despite the silence is proof of your absolute resilience.

​Take a deep breath. You don't have to carry the entire sky on your shoulders tomorrow. Just do your one small thing, protect your peace, and trust that when two flawed, struggling humans manage to build a meaningful life against the odds, it isn't human strategy at work anyway. It’s just pure, quiet grace.

​Why Emotions Matter (Even When the World Tells You They Don't)!!

 From the time we are children, we are handed an unspoken script by the world around us: Emotions are a liability. Keep them in check. Be practical.

We are taught that logic, data, and a stoic poker face are the ultimate currencies of success. But have you ever stopped to look at what happens when you actually succeed at switching your feelings off?

Everything loses its edge. The world goes flat. Without emotions, life appears in stark black and white. Emotions are the exact mechanism that adds color, texture, and vitality to everything we experience—yet so many of us were raised to believe our internal world never truly mattered.

I will never forget a specific moment from my past. I was leaving my home, and my father looked at me and said there was simply no need for "emotional reactions." The irony? I hadn’t even shown my emotions yet.

But that was the environment. The collective behavior of the people around me quietly hammered home a painful lesson: Your emotions don’t matter to anyone else.

And in a practical sense, maybe they don’t. Our feelings belong to us, and we are ultimately responsible for handling them alone. But there is a massive difference between taking responsibility for your emotions and being taught to completely erase them.

Because of this conditioning, I was taught never to break down in front of anyone. It is likely the core reason why I don't cry easily today, and why I instinctively refuse to shed tears where others can see. I wanted to be vulnerable. I wanted to drop the armor. But life, experiences, and people taught me a colder lesson.

I’m not here to judge whether that conditioning was "good" or "bad"—it was simply a survival mechanism. But it brought me to a profound realization: We are teaching people to suppress the very thing that gives their lives meaning.

Let's be completely honest: when we are deeply hurt, handling that emotional fallout is easily the ugliest, heaviest phase of being human.

In those dark moments, feelings feel like a massive defect. You look around at this hyper-practical world and realize that money, career, power, and status carry all the weight. Society rewards what you produce, not what you feel. When you are drowning in sorrow or anxiety, it is incredibly tempting to wish for a master switch to just turn it all off.

You can possess absolutely everything—the peak of your career, financial abundance, influence, and power—yet still wake up feeling entirely hollow, lonely, and unsatisfied.

Why? Because you cannot selectively numb emotion. When you turn down the volume on your sadness and vulnerability to protect yourself, you accidentally turn down the volume on your joy, your creativity, your capacity to connect, and your inner peace.

Emotions are incredibly messy. They don’t follow a spreadsheet, and they don't care about your daily schedule. But they are also the exact thing that makes us human.

Logic can tell you how to build a beautiful life, but only your emotions allow you to actually enjoy living it. Your feelings are not a liability to be managed out of existence; they are the music of your life. Even when the song is heavy, slow, and sorrowful, it is infinitely better than living in absolute silence.

The next time the world tells you to be less emotional, remember this: the world has enough machines. What it desperately needs is more humans who are brave enough to feel.

What We Look For vs. What We Have to Live With!!

 I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we choose the people we are supposed to spend our lives with, and there is this incredibly strange pattern I keep noticing. Even looking at my own family, my brothers, like so many men have this strict, unyielding checklist. They want someone tall, close to their own height, someone who looks a certain way. It’s funny because even when men grow up with a mother or a sister who is short, it doesn’t change their criteria at all when it's time to find a wife. They want good looks, and they expect everything else to just magically fall into place.

But the whole arranged marriage system is such a massive gamble.

In those first few minutes of meeting someone, what can you actually see? You can see if they are tall, if they are slim, and if they speak sweetly. You can judge the cover of the book. But you have absolutely no clue who that person really is or how they will handle the actual friction of real life. A good soul, a kind heart, and real emotional maturity aren't things you can measure in a brief, polite conversation. We end up making the biggest decision of our lives based almost entirely on the things that matter the least.

The real problem starts later, when life actually begins to unfold.

The charm of a pretty face or a sweet smile evaporates the very second you have to start living with a toxic attitude. When you are trapped in a house with someone whose behavior, thinking, and ego clash with yours every single day, you hit a very harsh realization: looks have absolutely zero value when the character underneath is bankrupt. But by then, the damage is done. It was simply beyond your scope to assess their true nature during those few minutes at the beginning.

When you really sit back and look at it, surviving a life together with all of our own flaws, heartbreaks, and shortcomings isn't something you can plan out with a checklist. You can’t strategize your way into a happy ending.

Honestly, when two flawed people manage to find real peace and build a meaningful life together despite the odds, it isn't human intelligence at work. It’s just pure, quiet grace.

The Architecture of Grief and Contentment!!

 ​We often look back at our younger selves with a mix of tenderness and frustration. After graduation, I didn't move forward with strict timelines, concrete goals, or strategic objectives. I was naive, moving through the world with an open heart rather than a blueprint. Like so many others, as life unfolded, I began to desire certain milestones—not out of a grand ambition, but simply because I saw the people around me experiencing them. I just wanted those human experiences for myself.

​But life rarely respects our schedules.

​Every milestone I ever imagined arrived late. By the time the destination was reached, the long delays, the hurdles, and the exhausting obstacles had stripped the achievement of its magic. The charm was gone. We are told that patience is a virtue, but no one talks about the emotional tax of waiting. When you are forced to maintain a tight grip on patience while desperately wanting a result, the eventual arrival brings very little joy. It feels less like a victory and more like an ending.

​At one major crossroads, I made a profound choice based entirely on a single motivation: to see everyone else happy. And they were. But the price of their comfort was my own internal numbness. I stepped forward into a life devoid of excitement or enthusiasm. Looking back, I realize this lack of inner fire might be the very reason for the delays that followed. Energy follows focus, and when you pursue a path with a numb heart, the universe moves slowly.

​It reminds me of that brutally sharp observation by Oscar Wilde: "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

​The first type of grief is simple to understand; it is the pain of the empty hand. But the second type is far more haunting. When we dream, our imagination creates a flawless, pristine version of reality. But reality is messy, heavy, and complicated. It can never compete with the perfection of our minds. Achieving a desire, only to find that it does not fill the void inside you, creates a deep, confusing sorrow.

​True contentment belongs to the saints; the rest of us are left navigating some version of this grief.

​So, how do we survive it? How do we tackle the gap between what we imagined and what we have?

​For me, the answer lives in the hands. Grief is managed best when we are deeply occupied. Meaningful work acts as a release valve, pulling the trapped, stagnant pain out of our hearts and channeling it into something tangible. That is the true sanctity of labor, and it is the biggest reason I miss the rhythm of my working days. When we create, we don't erase the past—but we finally give our minds a place to heal.

Patitapaban Jagannath: Why Jagannath Stands at the Entrance !!

 Last Wednesday, when I visited the Puri Jagannath Temple after a few years, I found the entire landscape completely transformed. While I had previously seen images of the extensive heritage renovation and the beautification of the outer walls, experiencing it in person was nothing short of breathtaking.

Hoping to bypass the usual crowds and enter the temple premises with ease, we deliberately timed our arrival for around 10:30 PM. However, a shorter line proved to be a distant dream. Despite the intense summer heatwaves and the lingering effects of the El Niño weather, long, dense queues of devoted pilgrims stretched out, waiting patiently for their turn. Realizing the wait inside would be too much, we moved toward the Arunastamba (the monolithic sun pillar), content to catch a glimpse of our beloved Jaga Kalia as my son fondly calls Him—from a distance.

As we stood there, I overheard a young boy standing next to me. Looking toward the entrance, he asked in confusion, "Is this a screen? Why can we see Jagannath from here? He must be inside the main sanctum of the temple, right?"

I instantly wished to turn to him and explain that he wasn't looking at a projection, but rather at the sacred image of Patitapaban Jagannath. By the time I finished my own prayers, the boy had already disappeared into the crowd. His innocent question stayed with me, and it is the reason I want to share this story with you today.

Why does a form of Lord Jagannath reside right next to the main entrance, the Singhadwar? Why is He positioned so perfectly that anyone standing on the Badadanda (the Grand Road) can view Him clearly without ever stepping inside?

To understand this, we have to dive into a beautiful, heartbreaking tale of supreme sacrifice, a king's love, and a deity who refused to leave His devotee behind.

Our story takes us back to the early 18th century, a turbulent time when Odisha was under the heavy hand of Mughal rule. The regional Subedar of Cuttack, a fierce governor named Taki Khan, had set his sights on Puri. His ultimate objective was to plunder the immense wealth of the Sri Jagannath Temple and crush the spiritual backbone of the region.

Knowing an attack was imminent, the ruler of Puri, Gajapati Ramachandra Deva II, acted swiftly. To protect the sacred idols of Jagannath, Balabhadra, and Subhadra from desecration, he had them secretly smuggled out of the temple and hidden in a remote location near Chilika Lake.

However, Taki Khan’s forces eventually launched a massive military assault. Despite a brave defense, the King was captured and imprisoned inside the Barabati Fort in Cuttack.

While in captivity, the King was presented with an unexpected ultimatum. Taki Khan’s sister, Rizia Bibi, had fallen deeply in love with the captured monarch. Taki Khan offered a peace treaty: if Ramachandra Deva II married his sister and formally embraced Islam, the war against his kingdom would cease, the Jagannath Temple would be left untouched, and the hidden deities could return safely to their home.

The King faced an agonizing dilemma. Refusal meant his death, the inevitable destruction of the temple, and the permanent loss of the deities. To save his beloved Lord and protect his people, he chose to sacrifice his own identity, faith, and royal status. He married Rizia Bibi and accepted Islam, taking the name Hafiz Qadir Yar Jung. Because of this strategic alliance, the Mughal forces backed down, and the temple was saved.

When Ramachandra Deva II returned to Puri, the relief of saving the temple was immediately met with devastating personal heartbreak.

According to the rigid orthodox customs of the era, because the King had converted to Islam, the temple priests declared him ritually impure. He was stripped of his divine title as the Gajapati—the first servant of the Lord—and was strictly barred from ever entering the Jagannath Temple again. He could no longer perform Chhera Pahanra, the highly cherished ritual of sweeping the chariots during the Rath Yatra. Even his own family and society distanced themselves from him.

The King was shattered, but his devotion to Jagannath never wavered. Stories say that under the cover of night, he would ride his horse to Puri, stand outside the massive Singhadwara (Lion's Gate), and weep, praying to his Lord from the dusty streets outside.

The agony of such a dedicated devotee did not go unnoticed by the Divine. Legend has it that Lord Jagannath appeared in a dream to the temple ministers, commanding them to ensure that His beloved devotee could see Him.

As a result, a specific idol of Lord Jagannath was consecrated and installed just inside the Singhadwara, on the right-hand side before the famous 22 holy steps (Baisapahacha).

This form was named Patitapabana, which literally translates to "The Purifier of the Fallen."

Because of this strategic placement, King Ramachandra Deva II could stand out on the Grand Road and have a direct, unobstructed line of sight to his Lord, without ever crossing the threshold.

The sacrifice of King Ramachandra Deva II inadvertently opened a door for humanity. Because the inner sanctum of the Puri temple remains restricted to orthodox Hindus, Patitapaban Jagannath stands at the gate to bless absolutely everyone—regardless of religion, race, caste, or background.

So, to the little boy who wondered if he was looking at a screen last Wednesday night: you were looking at a monument to unconditional love. Patitapaban stands there precisely so that anyone standing on the Badadanda, unable to go inside, never has to go home without seeing the eyes of the Lord.

The Quality of Our Sleep: Redefining Love in My Forties!!

 What do you mean by love? It is a question we find ourselves asking, answering, and redefining throughout our entire lives.

In my opinion, true love is the genuine desire for the highest good of another person, completely detached from self-interest. This is why we often label parental love as the purest version of it. It exists simply to nurture, expecting nothing in return.

But what about the other kinds of love? The ones we are taught to chase?

Recently, while waiting at the airport, I watched a girl board my flight. Upon our arrival, a young man was waiting for her with a beautiful bouquet of flowers. The sight was undeniably lovely. For a fleeting second, it made me wistfully think, I wish I could experience that.

But as the moment passed, my mind wandered. Is that truly what love is? Is love measured by how constantly we say "I love you," by the gifts we give, or the expensive luxuries we wrap around each other? To me, those things speak of desire, of romance, and of comfort—but not necessarily love. They feel good, yes, but they are easy.

My mother used to tell me that we shouldn't measure a partner by these superficial gestures. It is cheap and simple to buy gifts. What truly matters is someone who protects you, someone who actively helps you become the best version of yourself. True love isn't a showcase; it is the willingness to lift someone up.

Now, looking at life from the vantage point of my forties, I realize just how rare and difficult it is to find that kind of partner. Long before anyone looks at your soul, you are filtered through the checklists of the world: looks, education, family status, and background. By the time those boxes are checked, the chances of finding someone truly precious to grow up and evolve with feel incredibly slim.

It is easy to find someone who can pretend, who can put on a show of love for a season. But can they sustain it for a lifetime? And if they can't, what are we actually searching for?

Perhaps this is why ancient scriptures urge us to focus on the happiness within. When we cannot find that ultimate anchor in another person, we are forced to look inward.

If my experience has taught me anything, it is that the best match in life isn't about grand, cinematic gestures. It is about companionship. It is about finding someone you can talk to for long hours without ever getting bored. The words spoken to us by the person closest to us determine the very quality of our sleep.

Sometimes, I look back and genuinely wish I had the chance to find that specific vibe for myself. But perhaps the ultimate realization of maturity is learning to create that peace within our own hearts, even when the world outside forgets to bring us flowers.