Welcome to mayukhi.com

India… snake-charmers, Taj Mahal, elephants, cows, ghats of Varnasi, slums, poverty, corruption, pollution, stagnant, illiterates…

The fascination one has with India often begins and is associated with these terms. More often than not she also holds attention in the broader sense with the generic terms like rich culture, bright colors, spicy curry, IT professionals, cheap labor, cricket and Bollywood.

Is this all India has to offer?

We are talking about a country that boasts one of the oldest civilizations known to mankind – yet today her civilization is identified as the land of snake-charmers. A country that established the first University in the world and yet today she dons the mantle of an illiterate. The richest country ever in the face of the earth until she was philandered by the countless invasions and colonial rulers; yet in her known existence of over 10,000 years she has never set foot in another soil with the intention of invasion. She hides in her folds untold miseries of invasion, hurt, despair yet she glitters like a diamond that has been cut and polished only to sparkle more brilliant than ever. In the words of Swami Vivekananda: “Civilizations have arisen in other parts of the world. In ancient and modern times, wonderful ideas have been carried forward from one race to another…But mark you, my friends; it has been always with the blast of war trumpets and the march of embattled cohorts. Each idea had to be soaked in a deluge of blood….. Each word of power had to be followed by the groans of millions, by the wails of orphans, by the tears of widows. This, many other nations have taught; but India for thousands of years peacefully existed. Here activity prevailed when even Greece did not exist… Even earlier, when history has no record, and tradition dares not peer into the gloom of that intense past, even from until now, ideas after ideas have marched out from her, but every word has been spoken with a blessing behind it and peace before it. We, of all nations of the world, have never been a conquering race, and that blessing is on our head, and therefore we live…”

The truth is India is an enigma even today; what her infinite folds hold is a mystery even to her. Her charm is perennial; her beauty lies in all she has to offer; she inspires and instills a contradictory array of fascinating and mesmerizing emotions. She has the best and the worst; it is perhaps her legacy for surviving and celebrating of more than 10,000 years of civilization; of giving the world her best and asking very little in return.

“This is India! The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the moldering antiquities of the rest of the nations – the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien persons, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined” said Mark Twain. And how very true are the words that try to describe India, her glory and her paucity; her heritage and culture; her legacy and her traditions.

INDIA… she spells it all – the magic and the mystique, the allure and the grandeur, the vastness and the unknown, the opulence and the mediocrity, the insight and the absurdity, the unity within the diversity – a true celebration of life in every sense; a spectrum of rainbow that spills myriad colors. As such it is not possible to easily understand and realize her centuries old civilization, her infinite heritage, and her present.

Mayukhi.com is our humble attempt to bring forth the varied dimension of India – a land for centuries perceived as the land of fabulous riches, wisdom, mystique and fascinating heritage. It is a stage on which we endeavor to bring to you the rich heritage and capture the magic, allure and grandeur of her bygone era; try to bring the flavor of her as she is today. We hope to set this platform via two means to portray the diversity of her flavor.

1)  Series of Websites
A series of related web sites like Indian Dances, Indian Divinity etc. portraying the spectrum of the glorious heritage and tradition and the rich cultural and natural wealth of India will be a part of this endeavor.

2) Mayukhi Blog
A discussion platform concentrating on India, with topics related to her current situation, her up’s and down’s, her positives and negatives, and a myriad of other issues and subjects.

We hope you will give us your valuable input, support us and encourage us in trying to explore and discover India, her past, her present, and her future.