The Delhi Diaries

As part of the fellowship program, we were treated to a week’s retreat in the Satkhol Ashram. And so, fellows from around the country converged through trains and planes and automobiles, to wind our way up to the ashram, nestled in the hills of Uttarakhand. It seems that ashrams, like all good superheroes, are not complete without a badass origin story. The story, according to Satish Tiwari, the ashram manager, goes something like this. Chariji, the then Heartfulness Global Guide had been looking to start an ashram somewhere in the Himalayas. Many abhyasis had found land around Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh but none attracted Chariji. He was enamoured with a place called Almora, although he had never visited there. The amount of land that they were looking for was notoriously difficult to locate en bloc . However, when he came to know that there was land near Almora he became excited. Plans were drawn up and he came to visit it in the 1990s. At this time there were no roads a...

Daaji says that by the time we take our first meditation sitting, the foundations have already been laid to prepare you to embark upon the spiritual path. Had you told me a year ago that there would be a time in the future that I would be meditating daily, I would have laughed in your face. Tracing back my perceptions of meditation, I thought that it was something that only Buddha did, sitting in Lotus position with a slight grin on his face, which was later adopted by hippies. It was only in my adult years that meditation started to become more and more of a buzz word. I started to listen to Tim Ferris’ podcasts, in which he interviews top performers about their rituals and routines to try to deconstruct if there are common elements to successful people. One commonality that I could not ignore was that each person had some sort of meditation in their lives, which they attributed as their source of clarity, observations and guidance. This, coupled with my father’s hard-learned advice...

*As of 6 September 2018, the section which criminalised  certain forms of sex between consenting adults has been struck down by the Indian Supreme Court. You can read the full judgment  here .* 12 November 2017 marked the celebration of the 10 th Delhi Queer Pride festival, where thousands took to the streets to march, dance and - protest. No matter what country I am in, I always make it a point to support pride festivities. I’ve joined processions in Paris and Dublin which have grown to be huge events, usually with specially designed floats blaring music as is the case in Paris, or an entire community-activity day that takes place in Dublin. Both countries also have voted in same-sex marriage, which has been a significant development in the acceptance of LGBTQ relationships. Although the march didn’t have the same structure as prior pride events, the ambiance was no less jubilant and the excitement infectious. People of all genders, classes and creeds came together i...

As I was handed my passport containing my Indian student visa the embassy official told me that I was going to a fake university. She said that the one that I had listed was not on their register of legitimate universities. Ashoka university – the university that I am attending – is 7 years’ young in its establishment. In a country whose universities are well known and have gained veteran status, I thought that perhaps the register simply had not been updated. I had provided her with offer letters and other supporting documentation so I didn’t understand how she had arrived at this conclusion and more so, why she seemed so smug about it. As I stood there, delighted in having the visa in my hand but simultaneously trying to process this information, I wondered, could I have been hood-winked? In this age of fake news, nothing is concrete. And the real question to be asked is; why on earth had she issued the visa in the first place if she had red-flagged its authenticity? Embassy of Ind...