In India, traditions are everywhere – in the lighting of a diya at dusk, in the tying of a rakhi, in the gathering of families for festivals. They weave through daily life, often so quietly that we forget how much they shape us. Yet the question lingers: do these traditions still carry the weight of meaningful bonding, or have they thinned into little more than low-cost symbols?

Our philosophical inheritance offers both reverence and caution. The Rig Veda saw ritual as a way of maintaining ṛta, the cosmic order. Tradition was not ornament but alignment – a bridge between human life and universal rhythm. The Upanishads, however, warned against mistaking ritual for its essence. They reminded seekers that it is not the act itself, but the awareness behind it, that opens the way to truth.

This tension between form and meaning recurs throughout Indian thought. Śankaracharya accepted ritual as a necessary preparation but insisted that liberation lay in self-knowledge. Kabir mocked the emptiness of mechanical practice, preferring the grinding stone that feeds the world to a stone idol worshipped without understanding. Tagore saw festivals as “a rhythmic reawakening of the human spirit,” a phrase that captures how traditions, when lived consciously, renew rather than repeat. And Gandhi, in his own way, echoed this when he spoke of tradition not as blind inheritance but as the living pursuit of truth.

If the thinkers remind us of the depth that traditions can hold, daily life reminds us of their fragility. In modern India, a WhatsApp message often replaces a personal visit; a selfie in ethnic attire may count as “celebrating” a festival; a hurried puja fits into a busy workday. The forms survive, but the bonds may not. This is what the Bhagavad Gita cautions against when it speaks of action done without awareness: the act continues, but its spirit is lost.

For Indians abroad, however, traditions often function differently. Within the diaspora, they are less about continuity of practice and more about the preservation of identity. In multicultural societies, traditions become markers of difference – visible signals of belonging to an imagined homeland. The Diwali mela in London or the Ganesh festival in New Jersey is not only a religious event but also an act of cultural assertion: a way of saying “we are here, and this is who we are.”

This dynamic also explains why NRIs sometimes cling more fiercely to traditions than families in India itself. For them, traditions serve as anchors in unfamiliar cultural landscapes, reinforcing ties to language, memory, and heritage. But this investment often collides with the generational gap. The first-generation immigrant may view rituals as vital acts of cultural survival, while the second generation, shaped by the social norms of their host country, may see them as optional or even burdensome. What the parent considers heritage, the child may interpret as nostalgia.

Scholars of diaspora studies describe this as the “selective preservation” of culture – where certain rituals and festivals are amplified because they provide visible, easily shared markers of identity, while more nuanced aspects of tradition fade away. Thus, festivals become more public, grander than they might be in India, while everyday practices may quietly erode. This creates a paradox: traditions gain visibility but lose intimacy.

And yet, even in these reconfigured forms, traditions continue to matter. They provide diaspora communities with cohesion, a sense of belonging in a foreign land. For children of immigrants, even if the rituals feel distant, they still serve as cultural reference points -threads that can be picked up later in life.

The most striking comparison lies in how traditions adapt differently in India and abroad. In India, where traditions surround us in abundance, familiarity often breeds casualness – they risk becoming hurried, low-cost gestures. In the diaspora, where traditions are scarce, they are amplified for visibility, sometimes at the cost of depth. Abundance makes them ordinary; scarcity makes them ornamental.

Traditions are only as meaningful as the consciousness we bring to them. Without that, they are what the Upanishads warned against centuries ago – wheels that turn, but carry no cart.

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There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want the spotlight, and those who are happy standing just close enough to steal some of its glow. The first are the “luminaries,” convinced the universe has been waiting breathlessly for their performance. The second are the “reflectors,” orbiting nearby like moons, thrilled to bask in borrowed wattage.

For both, life is a never-ending red carpet. They measure success in Instagram stories, speaking slots, and how often their name appears in a footnote to someone else’s achievement. As Andy Warhol promised, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

Contrast this with the joy of being a fly on the wall. No need for rehearsed humility, no need to perfect the “serious-but-visionary” pose for photographs. The fly knows the real show is not the speech, but the scramble to be in the group photo; not the idea, but the rush to claim credit for it.

Oscar Wilde observed, “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” The fly nods in agreement, safely plastered to the wallpaper, watching people elbow for visibility in rooms where no one is looking.

While the limelight-hunters exhaust themselves, the fly acquires the one thing they never will: perspective. It sees the hunger in the eyes of those who crave to be noticed, and the faint desperation of those who cannot risk being forgotten. The fly doesn’t need followers, likes, or panel invitations. Its reward is the sweetest of human entertainments -,unfiltered truth.

So, let the stars and their satellites chase the glow. The fly on the wall sits back and savours the spectacle. After all, someone has to enjoy the comedy — and the best seat is always just out of sight.

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The English word “God” carries heavy baggage. It often conjures the image of an all-powerful being, usually male, sitting above creation and watching over human affairs. The word “religion” too carries its own weight – evoking sects, boundaries, and institutions rather than lived experience.

Yet many of the world’s greatest sages and teachers spoke of realities that cannot be reduced to either “God” or “religion.” The Upanishads described Brahman – not a deity, but the boundless essence of existence. Guru Nanak proclaimed Ik Onkar – the One Reality, timeless and formless, both immanent in creation and beyond it. Islamic mystics invoked Al-Haqq, the Truth that underlies all. Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart spoke of a Godhead beyond God – pure Being itself.

The poet-saint Kabir stripped away ritual and dogma with uncompromising clarity. “Between the seeker and the sought,” he said, “there is no ‘two’.” For him, the Divine was neither Hindu Ram nor Muslim Rahim, but the living truth pulsing within all – the breath inside the breath. Similarly, the great Sufi teachers like Rumi and Ibn Arabi spoke of a Beloved beyond names, a Reality that can only be tasted through love and annihilation of the ego.

These visions point not to a being but to Being itself. They are not about dogma or ritual but about direct experience – of unity, truth, and transcendence. They cannot be neatly contained within categories of religion, nor can they be fully translated into the limited word “God.”

In losing this depth of language, we risk reducing profound truths to sectarian labels. What these traditions actually reveal is the timeless, formless source of all that is – a reality that unites rather than divides, liberates rather than confines.

Perhaps our task today is to recover this deeper understanding: to look beyond words and boundaries, and to hear once again the wisdom that points us to our shared origin and our shared humanity.

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When I was young, playtime meant freedom. It was time spent with friends, far from the gaze of adults. We invented games out of nothing, turned ordinary places into kingdoms, and resolved quarrels in our own clumsy ways. Mischief was inevitable, sometimes fights too, but it was our world, and adults were politely shut out.

Even when our children grew up, the essence of play remained unchanged. They too experienced the thrill of unsupervised afternoons – the joy of conspiracies whispered in corners, the independence of choosing how to spend their time, the responsibility of handling the consequences of their adventures. That freedom was messy, imperfect, but deeply formative.

Today, I see a stark difference. What passes for “playtime” is often scheduled on calendars, confined to organised activities, and closely supervised by adults. Football of Tennis practice, music lessons, coding workshops – all under watchful eyes, with goals and outcomes attached. Even leisure has become a performance.

This change troubles me. For if children no longer learn to negotiate on their own, how will they build resilience? If every conflict is mediated by adults, how will they develop empathy or fairness? If every game is structured, when will they learn the beauty of chaos and imagination?

Play has always been more than fun. It is training for life – a rehearsal space where children test boundaries, experiment with leadership, face failure, and stumble toward self-discovery. When adults intrude, they may believe they are guiding, but too often they are only curating childhood, turning it into a hollow experience.

The irony is that in our attempt to protect children, we may be robbing them of the very skills they will need to stand on their own. Perhaps the most loving thing adults can do is to let go – to allow children the gift of unsupervised play, with all its risks and rewards.

After all, childhood is not something to be managed. It is something to be lived.

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