Hoorray!

अगजानन पद्मार्कम् गजाननम् अहर्निशम्। अनेकदन्तम् भक्तानाम् एकदन्तम् उपास्महे॥ agajānana padmārkam gajānanam aharniśam| anekadantam bhaktānām ekadantam upāsmahe||   What a beautiful verse to behold and listen! I heard it first when this verse was suggested as an invocation for our magazine Yuva Bharati by my brother a couple of years ago. (Yup! I promptly posted it on facebook - even social networks have been permeated by spirituality :-D) A couple of months back, I had the good fortune to sit at the feet of Swami Dayananda Saraswati and learn this same verse - how to say it and its meaning. Recollecting that experience from memory, I'll try to share the beauty and the brilliance of this verse here. ānana means face. Gajānana is the Lord who has the face of an elephant or gaja . On seeing the face of Gajānana , the face of Agaja , daughter of the king among mountains ( aga) , Himavan or Parvata , one who is called Himavati or Parvati , lightens up. This is so natura

The Secret of the Nagas is the part two of the Shiva Trilogy and continues exactly where the first book The Immortals of Meluha stops. The book begins with a small, but intense skirmish between the mysterious Naga warrior and the Shiva-Sati couple. The couple underestimate the Naga and end up injured. But what puzzles them is the apparent lack of viciousness on part of the Naga, who, although he had many chances to kill either of them, leaves Shiva and Sati alive with only minor wounds. From this point the story thrillingly unfolds further. A lot of new characters are introduced, and identities and backgrounds of quite a few old characters are revealed - many of them quite shocking. But nothing is as shocking as the revelation on the very last page of the book! Like in the first part, in this part too, Amish, through his protagonist, continues to raise the question - if something is apparently evil, is it actually evil? What is good and what is evil? Through Shiva's dis