BOONS & CURSES


Book Description

It is said that Kunti fulfilled her desires and ambitions through her sons, the Pandavas, resulting in the bloodbath in Kurukshetra. And once the truth struck her she sought help from Krishna to get rid of her guilt. Krishna became Kunti's moral guardian, a conversation began, from which emerged fascinating tales of women in mythology. In this brilliant retelling, Kunti is placed at the central of the novel and running parallel to her universe are the stories of Aditi and diti, the primordial mothers, the rebellious soorpanakha, the independent sanjana and Tara, Trendsetters such as anusuya, intrigues of kaikeyee and ka I ka SI, the helpless Gandhi, the self-sacrificing devaki's and the selfless Yashoda. These are the stories of resolve, exploits, revenge, sacrifice and affectionate together they give us a deeper understanding of the legendary women in India.




Curses and Boons in the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa


Book Description

The two epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, have been studied in India and other countries from various angles. But the systematic study of curses and boons in Ramayana is, I think, done for the first time in Marathi by the learned author of Professor S R Bhide. He has carried on the studies in the classical Sanskrit epic series.




A Boon and a Curse


Book Description

Every karma is a seed and every action has a reaction – and sometimes, a boon or a curse. Can an action ever be completely bad or good? Why do rishis curse so much? Can the gods be cursed? Which is the most intelligent curse? Are there only two choices? Or can there be a point between good and bad, vardaan and shraap, punya and paap. Once a curse or boon has been offered, can it ever be taken back? Filled with stories of famous curses and amusing anecdotes, this explores the notion of being a good person, but also deciding the goodness or lack thereof in another. Find out about the many facets of karma and ethics in this short, sweet read from Devlok.




The Curse of Bigness


Book Description

From the man who coined the term "net neutrality" and who has made significant contributions to our understanding of antitrust policy and wireless communications, comes a call for tighter antitrust enforcement and an end to corporate bigness.




Vasiṣṭha's Yoga


Book Description

This is Swami Venkatesananda's longer Yoga Vasiṣṭha. His two volume book is here offered between two covers. Its purpose is to provide a means to eliminate psychological conditioning and to attain liberation. Containing the instructions of the sage Vasiṣṭha to Lord Rama, this scripture is full of intricately woven tales, the kind a great teacher might tell to hold the interest of a student.




Hrishikesa


Book Description

Lord Krishna is hailed as a God. In fact, he was deified during his own life time. His deeds are an integral part of Indian folklore. His crowning glory is the Bhagavad Gita. It is considered as an eternal source of wisdom and spiritual guidance. Yet, his story is riddled with controversies and logical inconsistencies. As a result, there is a progressive decline in the faith accorded to Lord Krishna and his deeds. Today, Lord Krishna is more of a myth and his teachings are believed to be beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. The author opines that this is the result of projecting Lord Krishna as a reincarnate of the supreme being. We tend to obey his diktats rather than try and emulate him. This work is a scientific examination of the life of Lord Krishna as an evolution from a gifted child to what confirms to the attributes of the supreme being. It examines the societal framework under which this evolution was made both possible and imperative. Such an approach shifts the focus from the end-result to the process of arriving at the result. Lord Krishna is the end-result of an intellectually challenging societal process that was fuelled by a galaxy of eminent individuals. A rigorous practice of Raja Yoga and Manthra Yoga could have been the catalyst. The collective failures of intellect and the corrective measures resorted to eventually shaped the mind of an individual called Lord Krishna. The author hopes that a study of this kind would lead to the restructuring of societal frameworks leading to the production of better minds.




Brahm Bodh


Book Description

Brahm Bodh uncovers some of the layers of universal secrets in order to realize God by generating the awareness of the Self. How does the universe help us? How does the never-consistent state of the mind become an ultimate state of mind, like a saint’s? These secrets, among others, are revealed by comparing the worldly traps of false happiness with the ultimate reality; thereby, building the cognizance on the positivity and the negativity. This condensed narration turns the pages of one’s life by discovering the hidden aspects of human nature and guides to correct the Self, in order to attain the godly forms. This quest, to discover the divine within and outside, reveals that a healthy body cannot hold a sick mind, but a healthy mind can always hold a sick body. Therefore, each and every illness can be prevented and eradicated just by practicing the true spirituality served by this book. So, this discourse is for everyone because of the hard reality that everyone has the same unrealized vision of life As a matter of fact, meditation, yoga, gym, etc., only soothe the physical structure and senses, and we miss on nourishing the soul (a wider synonym of mind). This text portrays the typical characteristics of a soul and explains how, because of the short-lived body, one behaves so materialistically in achieving short-lived happiness and fails to bring the everlasting pleasure to the soul. The dark side of one’s life contains sorrows, miseries, dissatisfaction, illness, etc. What if one does not feel any such thing, ever? How does a small stain of negativity keep us fetching births? Read through the book to clutch the ultimate version of spirituality, and you will come out of many of your daily problems immediately. I bet! Happy reading!




Zombies, Frat Boys, Monster Flash Mobs


Book Description

Liam Reilly is an unattached, occasionally delinquent, teenage ward of the state. He lives in a university workshop. He rides a bike made of bamboo. His best friend is an AI named Eiann.Oh, he’s a genius too.Liam is content with his life, until a demon named Narvicous Scalegrim Gorgonzola Grimmold Maximus the Terrible (Gerald for short) appears in his workshop eating Cheez-Its and twerking to Cardi B. When a bunch of frat boys open a gate to hell in their basement foosball lounge, it falls on Liam, Eiann, and Gerald to stop the demon army waiting on the other side. Liam—an avowed loner—is stuck working with a bunch of other social outcasts: Jeanie, a T-shirt entrepreneur; her excessively “woke” cousin Mitchell; their androgynous friend Jax a.k.a. Jax Vader a.k.a. DJ Max Spinz; and a mysterious, wise-cracking, East African ninja-assassin, Esmeralda—who also happens to be blind—except when she visits other dimensions; that’s a different story. Thrown together with a busload of Latin children trying to escape a migrant detention facility and an underworld demigod, Liam and his lab partners—Eww, please don’t call them friends—basically have to save the world.If they can manage to save each other first.Zombies, Frat Boys, Monster Flash Mobs is what you get when you take the supernatural capers of Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Sequence, add in the unabashed nerdiness of Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, followed by a helping of the irreverent edginess of an Angie Thomas novel. Zombies, Frat Boys, Monster Flash Mobs is current. It is socially relevant. Don’t call it a sequel! It’s not. But it is a part of an interconnected world, the Snog Team Six Series, with some returning characters, reoccurring themes, not to mention some running jokes—if you are hip enough to get them, wink wink, nudge nudge. Challenge accepted?




Political Violence in Ancient India


Book Description

Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru helped create the myth of a nonviolent ancient India while building a modern independence movement on the principle of nonviolence (ahimsa). But this myth obscures a troubled and complex heritage: a long struggle to reconcile the ethics of nonviolence with the need to use violence to rule. Upinder Singh documents the dynamic tension between violence and nonviolence in ancient Indian political thought and practice over twelve hundred years. Political Violence in Ancient India looks at representations of kingship and political violence in epics, religious texts, political treatises, plays, poems, inscriptions, and art from 600 BCE to 600 CE. As kings controlled their realms, fought battles, and meted out justice, intellectuals debated the boundary between the force required to sustain power and the excess that led to tyranny and oppression. Duty (dharma) and renunciation were important in this discussion, as were punishment, war, forest tribes, and the royal hunt. Singh reveals a range of perspectives that defy rigid religious categorization. Buddhists, Jainas, and even the pacifist Maurya emperor Ashoka recognized that absolute nonviolence was impossible for kings. By 600 CE religious thinkers, political theorists, and poets had justified and aestheticized political violence to a great extent. Nevertheless, questions, doubt, and dissent remained. These debates are as important for understanding political ideas in the ancient world as for thinking about the problem of political violence in our own time.




Digitalization of Higher Education


Book Description

Digital transformation of education is happening at a rapid pace, especially with the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet the transformation is not yet complete because it was implemented in a willy-nilly way. This volume examines the current status of digitalization in higher education, with emphasis on lessons to be learned for the ongoing transformation—what it bodes for the future and how we may shape the direction and scope of the change. Digitalization in Higher Education: Opportunities and Threats examines the policies of governments, higher education institution management, leadership styles to aid digitalization, the use of online teaching tools, changes in educational pedagogy, the impact of educational technology on the attitudes of students and educators to learning, and more. Topics include: opportunities in higher education that were made available by a digitalization process digital management leadership of the HEIs governmental initiatives introduced in conjunction with new education policy how digitalization makes the process of learning more efficient and effective students and teachers’ acceptance of digitalization psychological constructs of model cognitive, behavioral, and affective effects of e-learning open educational resources and learning management systems positive and negative aspects of moving to an online platform marginalization of the individual due to inadequate resources The role of capitalism and neo-liberalism in the digitalization process of HEIs This book will be of value to educators and public policy officials as it provides important updates to what is happening in the field of higher education and also make several policy recommendations that may be of interest to administrators and leaders in public policy areas.