Who do you really think you are? Long before you formed an opinion of your own, samskara, ancestry, environment, and a guru you may never have named had already shaped you. This Teachers Day, a reflection on the true meaning of the guru — from Adiyogi Shiva and Krishna to Vivekananda — plus quotes to mark the day, and the pledge we owe the generations still to come.

Today, at midnight, a lamp will flicker before a cradle, just as it has for thousands of years. This is a devotee's ode to Krishna — the God who danced before he philosophised, whose counsel to a psychologically paralysed warrior on an ancient battlefield reads like a manual for our anxious, notification-addicted age. Woven through with key verses from the Bhagavad Gita — on action without attachment, the eternal self, and surrender — alongside Meera's reckless love and Osho's vision of wholeness, this is a small offering of love on the eve of Janmashtami.

Political freedom lowered one flag and raised another. But Samkhya and the Gita point to a deeper liberation — the soul remembering it was never bound. A meditation on swaraj for Bharat's Independence Day.

This long-form educational piece explores how pranayama prepares the vital energy, allowing mantra sadhana to enter and reorganize the deeper mental body. Drawing on traditional texts and Gurukul training, it maps the precise architectural shift from outer breathwork to inner concentration. Ultimately, it reveals that masterfully regulating the breath is what allows a practitioner to finally hear the sacred sound it has been carrying all along.

Modern yoga culture has quietly settled on a shorthand: yoga equals movement. Breath is present in most classes — but it is present the way we mention the weather. Acknowledged, and then set aside. The classical tradition I was trained in places it somewhere else entirely. Not at the edge of practice. At its very beginning.

Yoga is far more than a workout. Rooted in Patanjali's ancient Yoga Sutras, the 8 limbs form a complete roadmap for human flourishing — and pranayama is one of its most powerful, science-backed pillars. Here's everything you need to know.