I had shared this with friends on August 15th.

On India's independence day, a tribute to a naked gay Jewish Iranian mystic who has a dargah in Delhi. Let us celebrate the independence of thought. 

In "The Jew in the Lotus', Rodger Kamenetz accompanies various hues of Jewish rabbis to India where they discuss deep religious concepts with many Buddhist teachers, including the Dalai Lama. This experience transforms him from being an agnostic to being an agnostic who is proud of his Jewish identity. 

Kamenetz narrates a wonderful story of an Armenian Jewish naked sufi saint called Sarmad who collaborated with Dara Shikoh to write the Jewish chapter of his interfaith book.

Two of Maithili Sharan Gupt's popular poems 'साकेत' and 'सखि वे..' retell historical events from the perspective of women who were left behind by their husbands. While 'साकेत' views the Ramayana from Urmila's eyes, 'सखि वे.' speaks of Siddhartha's abandonment of Yashodhara.

A birth anniversary we missed this month was that of Mr. Shiyalli Ramamrita Ranganathan (born August 9, 1892), known as the father of library sciences in India. [1] [2]

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "Ranganathan’s chief technical contributions to library science were in classification and indexing theory.

Let me weep

My cruel fate,

And that I 

should have freedom.

The duel infringes

within these twisted places,

in my sufferings

I pray for mercy.

Philippe Jarousssky singing Handel's Lascia ch'io pianga from Rinaldo. Back in the day, the falsetto range was the domain of castratos but as NPR put it, M. Jaroussky is "still intact". His voice is not for everyone and you may recoil after hearing this for the first time.

I was reading the biography of James Herriot this morning. While describing his childhood, author Graham Lord quotes from 'Murder, Murder, Polis', a collection of Glasgow street songs compiled by Maureen Sinclair. Kids often sang songs to eliminate (or choose) the 'it' in a hide-and-seek game during the turn of the previous century.

‘Instant City, Life and death in Karachi’ is a non-fiction work by Steve Inskeep, the host of NPR’s All Things Considered. It offers great insights into how this Hindu majority trading port of 400,000 became a bustling Muslim metropolis of 13m and how its transformation offers lessons to other cities around the globe.

Inskeep begins by exploring the secular nature of the city. At the time of Pakistan’s independence, Karachi’s population was 51% Hindu.

I liked 'Fire in Babylon', the documentary on the great West Indian cricket team of the 1980s. It seems to have been made for an audience that comprises of cricket lovers from generations that did not get to see that team first hand. My generation developed an appreciation of the struggles of WI cricketers during the pre 1960 era from C. L. R. James' 'Beyond a boundary'.

Sing to the tune of "For he is an Englishman" - Gilbert and Sullivan, HMS Pinafore. The doggerel is based on the current Shashi Tharoor-Twitter brouhaha. For the humour impaired, this is supposed to be sarcastic and is based on this classic quote.

Morbid quiz fact of the day: Nike's slogan "Just do it" comes from murderer Gary Gilmore's statement "Let's do it" to the firing squad that executed him. Wow. Here's the creator Dan Wieden talking about it.

Fill in the 5 blanks. Film related hint below the poem

Sailing to Byzantium

- William Butler Yeats

THAT is __ _____ ____ _____ ____. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

- Those dying generations - at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.