Gods and Goddesses of Nainital

Currently it seems that a debate is on in USA if yoga is something religious or not. May I contribute my two cents to the debate seeing that there are articles by me on the net on yoga and for yoga teachers e.g. what is yoga, Entropy yoga and in this blog on Kriya Yoga? The simple and clear answer is that there are many different types of yoga. Some are religious and some are not. The one being advocated in the USA presently and by the Lady Obama and President Obama is not religious. It is a yoga that involves primarily physical exercises and/or breathing exercises and such yogas that may go by the name of hatha yoga, pranayama as well as numerous modern names are not religious. However a yoga that involves physical exercises that includes a posture called Surya Namaskar involves worshipping the sun and it is a religious yoga. The kriya yoga described in another post in this blog is a religious yoga but it is ecumenical and universal and does not belong to any specifi...

Ashok  Malhotra on a Boat in Nainital I changed my blogger profile image today to this one. It is me on a boat on Nainital Lake. What a wonderful place ( except in the midst of winter). The central cover image of this blog shows a much larger view of the lake snapped from top of a mountain that I reached by a rope way from near this lake.The boats show as tiny dots in that photo. I used to climb up this hill by foot even at the age of four as my mother used to say, our home was half way up, but now past sixty I run out of breath in doing that. I came down the hill on foot so as to enjoy the beautiful hill side full of pine and oak but even that was not fully comfortable because although one does not run out of breath down a hill the legs, lower calf muscles,  got jittery. On the way down a much- much older person was merrily walking down with the help of a stick . I guess he was in practice whereas I am not - spent far too long on the plains I am afraid, far more than nece...

Secret Nainital -The Jewel of Jewels in the Crown The author standing in front of Raj Bhavan, Nainital Here is a piece of the secret history of Nainital that is known only to a few Nainital insiders and is probably not published elsewhere ( except some of it in my novel - Nude besides the Lake ). During the British Colonial period, as the British Empire grew and expanded across the world, other European powers, especially Germany looked on with Jealousy at the increasing clout and prosperity of Great Britain and Ireland. Germany could never hope to duplicate the performance but there was something else it could do. It could win a war with Great Britain in Europe and thereby also become the ruler of the vast British Empire spread across the world. They felt they had a special right to it, especially since the British Royal family was of German origin beginning with Queen Victoria. Thus began secret plans and preparations in Germany for such a takeover but as with many...

    Simplicity Babaji, the famous mystical appearance of Nainital who spoke very little did speak of simplicity. This picture attempts to explain simplicity

Gifts of Love

I t was early eighties. I was then an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Delhi. I had rented an apartment a few kilometers away from IIT, at a place known as Masjid Moth (DDA Flats). There was accommodation on campus but with two infant daughters and a live in full time Nanny to boot, available accommodation on campus was a bit too compact for our needs. I lived in this apartment from approximately the middle of 1981 to the middle of 1984.  During this period I had an unusual spiritual encounter. I do not recall the exact date when the encounter took place but the incident itself is crystal clear in my mind. Babaji: Message from the Himalayas , by  Maria Gabriele Wosien , G. Reichel Verlag ( 1990), https://www.amazon.com/Babaji-Himalayas-Maria-Gabriele-Wosien/dp/3926388145/ At the time my wife with nanny and children were away. I was alone at home. It was morning, some time after breakfast ...

Image from Munnar Munnar Mountains Just as Nainital is an example of the beauty of Mother Earth in North India, it appears that Munnar is an example of how beautiful mother earth can be in Kerala, South India. Both places were highly appreciated by the British when they ruled India and were developed as summer capitals in North and South respectively. Unfortunately we Indians have not yet got around to contributing enough attention and effort towards preserving and enhancing the beauty of our Mother the Earth yet and have permitted unscruplous developments in places like Nainital. Perhaps we have been much too busy with fighting our poverty or our petty caste squabbles or too seeped in human greed to appreciate beauty as it should be. If we do not rectify, Mother earth will just move away elsewhere, like any loving mother who is not given the respect she deserves,  for she has many homes in our endless universe. Beauty is a representation of the divine just as much as Lov...