Wednesday, September 23, 2026
A truly great audience
My Sanskrit teacher, Dr. Sowmya Krishnapur, cited this shloka while teaching the Mritasanjivanam Natakam. The Sutradhara praises the learned and appreciative audience for their magnanimity in overlooking defects and praising the merits of the dramatic performance.
This shloka pretty much defines a great rasika, by taking the example of Lord Shiva.
गुणदोषौ बुधो गृह्णन्निन्दुक्ष्वेडाविवेश्वरः ।
शिरसः श्लाघते पूर्वं परं कण्ठे नियच्छति ॥
The learned man, who clearly comprehends the good and bad aspects of any performance or work, is like Lord Shiva who accepted both the crescent moon and the poison during the churning of the ocean. The wise Rasika openly appreciates the good aspects, like Lord Shiva displayed the moon prominently on his crest, while the defects are held back, like Shiva did with the poison in his throat.
Monday, September 14, 2026
AI for dummies
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14puVgyZw28/
Here is the transcript for the video:
This is the number one question landing in my DMs every single day. "How do I learn AI for free?" And I get it. Every job posting now wants AI fluency. Every recruiter is asking about your AI workflow, and nobody's telling you where to actually start without dropping $1,000 on a bootcamp. So save this video. I'm giving you the exact list I send my own coaching clients.
AI fluency in 2026 is what Excel fluency was in 2002. You don't need to be technical; you need to be functional. And every single one of these resources is free.
Google's AI Essentials Course: It's on Coursera. Google built it. It's free to audit. Covers prompting, workflow integration, and real business use cases. Put it on your LinkedIn the day you finish.
OpenAI Academy: Launched this year, free courses from the company that built ChatGPT. They walk you through real prompting techniques, custom GPT creation, and how to use AI for actual work tasks.
Anthropic's Prompt Engineering Course: The team behind Claude built a free interactive tutorial. If you want to learn how to actually talk to AI instead of just typing into a chat box, this is the one.
Microsoft's AI Skills Navigator and their AI Fundamentals Path on Microsoft Learn: Completely free, and you get badges you can put on your LinkedIn profile. Hiring managers see these.
elementsofai.com: It's a free university-level intro to AI built by the University of Helsinki. Over a million people have taken it, and it looks great on the resume.
YouTube: Specifically Matt Wolfe and AI Explained. Two of the smartest free creators teaching this in plain English—no fluff, just what actually works.
This is the one that nobody talks about: Use the AI itself to teach you. Open ChatGPT or Claude and say, "I'm a marketing director with no technical background. Build me a 30-day curriculum to become AI fluent for my role." It will hand you a personalized course on the spot for free.
Here's what most people get wrong: they watch the videos, they take the courses, they never actually use it. Pick one task you do every week, rebuild it with AI. Get faster than your coworkers. That's the entire game.
And my corporate truth? The people getting promoted in 2026 aren't the ones who took the most courses. They're the ones who shipped one thing faster than everyone else and made sure leadership saw it.
Comment "ELITE" and I'll send you my free weekly newsletter where I drop new AI tools and workflows every week. I'm Deepali Vyas, your Elite Recruiter, doing the research for you so you don't have to.
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Reviving an old image of devotion
My mother's handwork from 80+ years ago, clicked with Vivo.
Adjusted with Snapseed.
My final touch.
Sunday, September 6, 2026
How did Ravana carry off Sita?
How did Ravana carry off Sita? Many narratives say that he took her in the Pushpaka Vimana. This is patently wrong, since the Pushpaka Vimana was a sacred vehicle gifted by Brahma to Kubera, which Ravana usurped. Ravana had his own aerial vehicles as a rakshasa and used one of them. Jatayu destroyed that vehicle, and Ravana then carried off Sita physically, using his magical powers of flying.
The original shlokas in Valmiki read as follows
अभिगम्य सुदुष्टात्मा राक्षसः काममोहितः।
जग्राह रावणः सीतां बुधः खे रोहिणीमिव॥ १६॥
वामेन सीतां पद्माक्षीं मूर्धजेषु करेण सः।
ऊर्वोस्तु दक्षिणेनैव परिजग्राह पाणिना॥ १७॥
Translation: Approaching her, the evil demon Ravana, besotted by lust, grabbed Sita like Budha holding Rohini in the sky. He caught the lotus-eyed Sita by her hair with his left hand and her thighs with his right hand.
Now, I heard a Hindi poet on YouTube tell his audience that Ravana indeed did not take Sita lustfully, but respectfully! Then he quoted, "as Budha would hold his mother, Rohini", quoting the second line of verse 16.
That made me curious. Who does not know Ravana's lustful nature? So I delved deep.
The commentary by Govindaraja on the Valmiki Ramayana is treated with great respect. So here is the page from there:
Indeed, Govindaraja avers that Ravana had incurred a curse from Vedavati (whom he molested and who cursed him before committing self-immolation) that if he ever forced himself on an unwilling woman, his head would splinter into a thousand pieces. So he curtailed his lust, and used his demonic magical powers of catching someone by their very shadows - छायाग्राह - holding by their shadows, Sita's hair and her thighs. Ravana thus honoured Sita like Budha would honour his mother, Rohini.
By the way, Budha was born to Chandra and Tara (a complicated story), and Rohini is Chandra's official queen, so one of Budha's mothers.
I was not convinced. Grabbing Sita and carrying her off to Lanka was a routine act for Ravana, infamous for abducting women. He did not force himself on Sita sexually, as confirmed even by Valmiki, because of the Vedavati curse. But his carrying her off was a physical act.
I then checked with the famous Ranganatha Sharma translation in Kannada of the Valmiki Ramayana. What he writes is here:
Vid. Sharma writes,
Translation: This is called Abhutopama (a simile implying impossibility). Budha's father is Chandra. Chandra's wife is Rohini. Thus, Rohini is like a mother to Budha. The act of tormenting one's mother is generally an impossibility, as it is a most heinous sin - that is the implication here as regards Ravana's carrying off Sita.
So, I aver that Vid. Ranganatha Sharma has the same interpretation as I do - Valmiki is describing Ravana's heinous act without sugar-coating it as an act of filial respect.
Saturday, September 5, 2026
Teacher's Day
This Teacher's Day, my thoughts hover around the various ideas about the guru-shishya relationship in our Sanatana Dharma.
We all know that during the stage of Brahmacharya, the student used to stay with the guru in the Gurukula, away from the student's parents, without the comforts of home, completely dedicated to the duty of learning from the guru.
Indeed, the guru is supposed to open our eyes to the light of knowledge. The guru shows us the way.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Bhagavan says,
तद्विद्धि प्रणिपातेन परिप्रश्नेन सेवया ।
उपदेक्ष्यन्ति ते ज्ञानं ज्ञानिनस्तत्त्वदर्शिनः ॥ ४-३४॥
This famous shloka, which comes in the fourth chapter after Krishna has described what is ज्ञान, what is कर्म, what is धर्म, etc., indicates that we can progress on our path only through the grace and guidance of the guru, to which we must dedicate ourselves with humility.
We have to:
- bow down to the guru
- serve the guru
- ask questions of the guru
- clarify our doubts
- take in the knowledge that the guru gives.
The key duty for a student is to take in the knowledge, so it is, actually, a process of learning. Teaching is nothing but enabling learning. There is really no teaching without learning.
Let's look at the concept of antahkarana. Antahkarana consists of manas, buddhi, ahankara, and chitta. Buddhi is the learning faculty. If the student suppresses the other elements of antahkarana and predominantly employs buddhi, he will be a good learner, and therefore the teaching will be successful.
The other three dimensions:
- Chitta represents accumulated memories and samskaras, which dilute our perception of reality. For one to have vishuddhi buddhi = the pure intellect, which Bhagavan says in the Bhagavad Gita is the key to understanding, it is important that we do not have any premeditated notions or colouring of information based on our own propensities = Chitta.
- Manas, the second element of antahkarana, is the one that takes our mind outward towards the sensory objects, sensory experiences and distractions. It's equivalent to social media surfing, doomscrolling. That should not be there.
- The last one is Ahankara, the ego. Ahankara is an insider terrorist. Ahankara brings in the ego every time I bow down to the teacher. Sometimes I may feel I'm better than the teacher. Sometimes I may feel, " This teacher is not saying the right thing. The correct thing is something else." All such thoughts usually stem from the ego. In the process of learning, this can only cause sabotage.
In order to learn perfectly from the guru, I must use my clean, clear intellect, uncontaminated by ego or propensities or distractions. Then, learning happens well. Then, a teacher is successful. Then, we can say we are really offering our tribute to the teacher. The best tribute to the teacher is to learn well and put that learning into practice.
Happy Teacher's Day!
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