Lonely boy and his scribbles

Cheena vala (Chinese nets), Cheena chatti (Chinese wok), Cheena bharani (Chinese pots), Cheeni mulaku (Green chillies)...  The handshakes between the Keralites and the Chinese have a history spanning no less than two thousand years. A bustling trade hub even during the Sangam period, the Malabar coast used to boast about some of the important Sea ports on the ancient and mediaeval world maps. However, although a truly cosmopolitan series of coastal trade pockets in the beginning, the split and eventual weakening of the Roman Empire would cause these locations to be under the influence of only two major groups. The Chinese and the Arabs. This shift in character transformed the chaotic bustling of Kollam , Kozhikode (Calicut) and Kochi (Cochin) into an economic AND political theatre of trade wars, well into the period of the European reemergence.  And bustle they did. From horses and spices to silk, jewellery, precious stones and even exotic animals, there was barely anyt...

  Unlike the cosmic, aniconic beginnings of many Hindu deities whose origins are obscured by layers of mythology, Krishna, particularly as Vasudeva Krsna, stands out as perhaps the only major Hindu deity whose worship can be historically traced in identifiable, datable stages. His early connections to the Vrsni lineage, his gradual transformation from hero to deity, his adoption into a sectarian Bhakti cult, and finally his integration into the Vaishnava cosmological system offer us a rare, layered view of religious evolution within the subcontinent. In other words, Krsna, like many other subjects of apotheosis, is not merely legendary. He is partly historical, cultic, and political. A figure who inspired coinage, architecture, and cross-cultural diplomacy. Therefore, the rise of the Vrsni-Krsna cult from its tribal roots through its post-Mauryan efflorescence and eventual absorption into pan-Indian religious ideology must be analysed with an emphasis placed on archaeological, num...