Logo

Synopsis This book comprises almost all the articles of the author published in various journals and periodicals, covering a period of four decades. Every book ought to have a title, and I knew it like everybody else. What I did not know was that finding a title would turn out to be a stupendous job. How insuperbly difficult the seemingly simple task of thinking up the title of a book would be, I realized first when I had just finished making a list of my hitherto published articles. The topics of these articles seemed, to my dismay, to defy any attempt of a rational arrangement. These include great names in the world of Letters and in the realm of Spirit-great writers and thinkers on the one hand, and great sages and saints on the other. I mention a few to illustrate this somewhat bewildering range and variety of subjects: The Bhagavadgita and T S Eliot, Sri Ramakrishna and Bertrand Russell, Swami Vivekananda and Arnold Toynbee, Anandamayee Ma and Marcel Proust, Vedanta and Romain Rolland. I have put these names in pairs not to suggest any possible relation but to bring out the embarrassing absence of any.