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Rohan is an amateur photographer, an open water scuba diver, a mountaineer, an obsessive bibliophile, an intrepid traveller and a highly successful mutilator of the Spanish and French languages (often at the same time), a consultant in the fields of market research, client partnerships and Artificial Intelligence, an author, and more recently, a dad. Among other hobbies, he can also lay claim to half-baked cooking attempts (no pun intended), chess, computer gaming, badminton, swimming,board gaming, indoor wall climbing, poker, adventure sports, reading fantasy novels, and a string of other very forgettable endeavours. His first novel Keep Calm and Go Crazy - a true story of how he met his wife, was published by Harper Collins India in 2016. His second published piece was a short horror story The School that featured in the Best Asian Speculative Fiction of 2018 anthology. Curse of the Yaksha is his latest novel which is an Urban Fantasy series set in modern day Mumbai. Roha...

COTY -From the Cutting Floor #1 The difference between mythology and history

  This is the 1st in a series of posts written originally as part of 'Shadows Rising' but that were dropped from the final version. This piece was written after reading an article about including certain myths as part of the Indian history syllabus. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MYTHOLOGY AND HISTORY? This was a question I felt I would like to pen down some thoughts on   At the time of writing this, The NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) in India has recommended that the Ramayana and Mahabharata be included in History. It is unclear if this is ignorance or simple stupidity, but the point stands – there are enough and more examples of people being unable to distinguish between the two. History is written by the victors but based on objective fact. The propaganda that creeps into a historical narrative when written by the victors rarely becomes fantastical. Mythology, on the other hand, is an oral tradition that evolved. It isn't meant to remai...

Shadows Rising #3 -From the Cutting Floor - The Caste System

    This is the 3rd  in a series of posts written originally as part of 'Curse of the Yaksha' aka 'Shadows Rising' but that were dropped from the final version. This piece is about the caste system in India. The Caste system is a social hierarchy that has been prevalent in India since ancient times (2500 -3000 years), according to some sources . For context, particularly non-Hindu readers, there were four broad categories in the caste system:  o Brahmans - Scholars /Sages o Kshatriyas - Warriors o Vaishyas - Farmers, Traders, Merchants o Shudras - Manual Labour Although there are four main castes, thousands of sub-castes further divide India's people. Additionally, there is a separate caste who aren't considered part of the system at all – the Untouchables or Dalits. They are shunned by society and forbidden to live amongst those of high castes. They handle the jobs the rest of the castes refuse to do, such as cleaning latrines, manual scavenging, prostitution, ...