Thought Lantern

   In the month of September we got our winners of essay writing competition of Lessons they learnt from the epic Ramayana and they have beautifully displayed this through their essays and today we will display them in front of you.  2nd Place Winner -  Bala Saraswathy DS  Our country is famous for its two epics: The ‘Mahabharat’ and the ‘Ramayana’. While  both the epics stick on to the precious gem of dharma, the ‘Ramayana’ holds significant  importance in the life of ordinary people. Many citizens have not understood this concept; but  actually the ‘Ramayana’ holds the basic rights and laws which should be followed by the  people. Compared to the ‘Mahabharat’, the ‘Ramayana’ is short and quickly palatable. Also  being Rama’s ‘ayan’ or Rama’s story, it also emphasizes the essence of Bhakti or Devotion. In the epic, not only Lord Rama, but also his devotees are depicted. The main characters  include Hanumanji, Vibhishana, Sugriva, S...

  In the month of September we got our winners of essay writing competition of Lessons they learnt from the epic Ramayana and they have beautifully displayed this through their essays and today we will display them in front of you.  1st Place Winner -  Writa Bhattacharjee  My first encounter with the Ramayana was as a child listening to the audiocassette for Chhotoder Ramayan (Ramayana for Children), which tells the whole story of the Ramayana through songs. So many of the songs stayed with me as I grew up, though the songs were not the only elements of the epic that stuck. Over the last few decades, I have read several other versions of the Ramayana in more than one language—from a portion of Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsham in Sanskrit to Devdutt Patnaik’s Story of Ram in English. With every book and every read, I have found something new to admire and learn from this epic tale of dharma vs adharma . Here are a few of those lessons. The first lesson, to put it in modern...

 In the month of September we got our winners of essay writing competition of Lessons they learnt from the epic Ramayana and they have beautifully displayed this through their essays and today we will display them in front of you.  1st Place Winner - Shikha Gupta  Winning Essay -   Title - The Lessons I Learnt from the Ramayana  "Never think your enemy is small or powerless." A very stark lesson clearly taught by the demon king Ravana in the epic Ramayana. In today's world of competitions and abductions, fights, and captures, epic Ramayana 'teaches us sacrifice to its extreme.'  We learn to respect our parents, elders and gurus as weightier than earth and heaven. "Attachment leads to desire and from desire arises anger" - lesson learnt by the activities of Ravana throughout the epic.  We can learn nothing from anywhere be it our life or Ramayana if we think that we are the right ones.  Lord Ram says, "I am with you always. I am the supreme an...

  Meet Sarah Tabin -  A 22 years old author who runs on coffee, daydreams, and the belief that love always finds its way. She chose to write 22 poems because 22 feels like a magical age where you are old enough to believe in love its like it's a Bollywood climax. Let's see what the author has to say in this interview.  Q1. What was the exact moment or thought that inspired the title What Love Could Be ? Ans 1 -  Honestly, the title came to me on my drunk birthday-night party. I was thinking about all the different ways I imagined love could exist, and suddenly What Love Could Be just felt right. It became the question behind the entire book. Q2. You write about love being “gentle without being fragile.” What does that distinction look like in real life? Ans 2 - To me, it means being soft without losing your strength. Real love can be tender, patient and vulnerable while still having boundaries, honesty and the courage to stay through difficult moments. Q3. The blur...

  1st Winner -  Ashima Syal  Title - Reading - The Lost Joy  In a day and age which is so rooted in operating mechanically that the value of what it feels to read people, places, books, seem to have completely vanished. The art of reading now is lost, the libraries just don't seem to have enough visitors in the age of social media. Social media has diversified the way reading is received. Initially people use to read books, but now they have shifted to audio books, because they find it convenient to listen, since the lifestyle of people nowadays makes them travel, the ones like reading, purchase a kindle, for they find it easy, to read while sipping coffee, or they perhaps know can pass their time on the flight while being lost in their kindle.  Social media has not only blended the reading culture with technology, it has also set a new trend of reading. People now prefer to sit in book cafes, and read. The concept of book cafes became very popular because of so...

  We organized an article writing competition to understand the views of writers on how social media has impacted the reading habits and we received some of the best articles voicing the opinion on the same topic so we present to you these articles which will change your perspective too.  1st Place Winner -  Babla Munshi  How Has Social Media Impacted Reading Habits? Social media has reshaped nearly every aspect of modern life, and reading is no exception.  Platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube  have altered not only what people read but also how, when, and why they engage with text.  The shift is profound: traditional long-form reading—novels, newspapers, academic  papers, and books—has competed with a constant stream of short, visually driven,  algorithmically curated content. The result is a complex transformation of reading habits  that includes both erosion of deep attention and une...