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The Stories We Inherit: How Much of Who We Are Belongs to Those Who Came Before Us?

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  The Stories We Inherit: How Much of Who We Are Belongs to Those Who Came Before Us?   All families have tales to tell. Many are retold over and over they find a place in childhood. Some show up out of the blue in a discussion, a family reunion or trip to a family estate. There are family tales of grandparents traveling for forays, parents sacrificing time with grandchildren to work, childhood exploits, disagreements, the missed opportunities, and dreams that never came true. Usually without realizing, we develop hearing to hear and remember these fragments of the past, and the ensuing changes that is, they shape our understandings of ourselves. Prior to forming our own memory, we take on the memories of others. A grandmother who tells of a Village that doesn't exist anymore, a grandfather who recounts the miles he walked to school and a mother sharing her memories of opportunities unavailable to her generation. The stories are more than vintage memories. They contain...
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Traditions That Refuse to Die: Are We Preserving Our Culture or Simply Repeating Our Past?

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  Traditions That Refuse to Die: Are We Preserving Our Culture or Simply Repeating Our Past?   As Bathukamma flowers decorate the streets and neighborhoods of Telangana, each year, the streets and neighborhoods turn into an array of color, songs, laughter and celebration. Women come together and arrange seasonal flowers, sing traditional songs and are involved in a cultural activity handed down from generation to generation. But during a happy time, there's one question that remains, is there anyone who really knows the stories behind the flowers they create, the songs they sing or the rituals they follow. From the community, we still carry out a myriad of traditions in a devoted manner, sometimes without an understanding of their history or even knowing what they mean. This may be the paradox of tradition: they pass us on traditions before we can ask questions about them. Traditions live on because they give us something that is very human: a sense of ' belonging'....
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  Whose Stories Become History? Preserving Marginalized Voices in the Digital Age   All the communities have their own stories. Some are celebrated in books, documented in official records and are part of classroom instruction. Others live on as songs, mythology, rituals, memories and talk from one generation to the next. An older woman recalls some songs from a village festival. In this type of story, a traditional narrator gives an account of the beginnings of a local custom. A community elder shares his/her knowledge on the changes in land use, livelihood and migration and their impact on the daily lives. These are what might seem normal recollections. But there are histories, identities, cultural knowledge, experiences, within them, which formal records may never make a record of. It does seem a pertinent question, however: Whereas do we choose to save the stories of some and destroy the others?   Is there more than is in the written page? Written documents, o...
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  The Stories We Tell in the Age of AI: Will Technology Make Us Better Thinkers or Just Faster Writers? We are in a time of life when one prompt can create an essay, a poem, a summary of a book and/or research proposal. Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing the art of writing, learning, teaching, and communication. Tasks that used to take hours to do, now take minutes. In this techno-hype, though, here is a question we need to consider: What is the value of human thinking, when machines can make words?   Writing is not simply a matter of putting words together to make sentences. It's about challenging the way we think and look, exploring our experiences with meaning, brokering dialogue and discussing new ways of thinking that we may not have known we had. The purpose of writing is not merely its product, but the process that leads to it as well. Imagine a student is seeking to understand a complex concept and asks AI for an explanation. Answer can be correct, organi...
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Mallanna Patnalu: Walking Faith, Bodily Devotion, and the Language of Vows

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  Mallanna Patnalu: Walking Faith, Bodily Devotion, and the Language of Vows     Devotion is not a form that is often silent or motionless in the Telangana religious landscape of the folks. It dances, stands, sings, pain and pain. Of all the expressive forms of belief on Mallanna worship, Mallanna Patnalu is one of the strongest and most embodied forms of worship. It does not become seen as a practice but is done through the body and its character is characterized by discipline, pain, faith and promise. The simplest way to know Mallanna Patnalu is to realize the way that the Buddha of folk traditions has its mark not written in script but defiled in the flesh and foot and in the memory. What Are Mallanna Patnalu?   In this respect patnam or patnalu is what is called a vow-bound ritual trip by Mallanna-devotees. It is the fulfilment that is done when a wish has been fulfilled or in anticipation that the divine intervention can happen. In contrast to the sy...
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Sammakka Saralamma Jatara: A Living Testament of Tribal Faith and Resistance

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  Sammakka Saralamma Jatara: A Living Testament of Tribal Faith and Resistance       In the depths of the Medaram forest in Telangana transpires something which cannot be defined within the frames of the religion, festival or pilgrimage. Sammakka Saralamma Jatara is neither about high temples nor modelled idols; it has neither the hierarchical priests. Instead, it is based on the soil, the remembrance and shared souls of the Koya tribal people. Every two years, millions of people come to this woodland to commemorate Sammakka and her daughter Saralamma- personalities that are not only remembered as goddesses, but as beacons of fearlessness, defiance as well as righteousness. Medaram: The Forest of the Holy Land Medaram is not just sacred owing to chance, it is deliberately sacred. The spiritual structure of the jatara is made up of the thick forest, streams and open clearings. It has no stone shrines to which there are idols. Rather, it is the manifestat...
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Ainavolu Mallanna: Faith, Folklore, and the Living Pulse of Telangana

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  Ainavolu Mallanna: Faith, Folklore, and the Living Pulse of Telangana   The tradition is in the very heart of the Telangana culture, distant of the lure polished stone avenues of the classical temples, the tradition breathes the breathing of the soil and of the seasons and of the people. Ainavolu Mallanna is not just a God who is worshipped in a village; this is a thing that unites the community recollection, rural existence, and folk faith into one continuous story. The Mallanna is a rounded off version of a spirituality that is quite intimate, ground-level, and deeply human, rooted in the village of Ainavolu (or Inavolu) near Warangal. Its Sacred Geography and The Village Ainavolu is located in an area that was historically influenced by Kakatiya dynasty but the worship of Mallanna came to being before monumental architecture and writings. The divine area that surrounds Mallanna is not grand in any disarming way. Rather it beckons the devotees with simplicity, ...
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