Since I got back from my last trip in late August, there have been many changes in the lives of my housemates in Pune. Bhavesh got married in November--the wedding took place in Chandigarh all the way up north in the state of Punjab. They went on a really nice honeymoon afterwards to an island resort (maybe the Maldives...not sure). Vaibhav moved to Delhi for work and hasn’t been back to the flat since October. I believe he is living with his relatives and he doesn’t mind that at all. As a matter of fact, I think he enjoys it! The last time I talked to Vikas, he was getting very excited about his upcoming trip to London for work. Bhavesh also moved to New Zealand for work. His contract will be six months to one year.
Of all the people I have met on my trip, I have kept in touch with Neel Kulkarni, who taught me Sanskrit in the last nine months via Skype. Neel is a yoga teacher in Pune and I met him through Aradhana, whom I took Sanskrit lessons from when I was in Pune. She referred me to Neel when I was complaining to her that I needed someone who can help me with my lower back pain. Neel not only has fixed the pain in my lower back, he has been a really good friend and my guru. I have learned so much Sanskrit from him. Much of what I learn from him is not grammar per se but being able to read simple Sanskrit stories. In the last nine months we have read many simple stories to help me improve on my syntax and increase my vocabulary. Despite four years of studies, my vocabulary still is quite insufficient. Sanskrit is truly a difficult language for any westerner to master because there are hardly any words that are cognates to our western languages. For Indians, however, Sanskrit is not so hard because they can draw many relevant connections from their language i.e., Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, etc. It’s not farfetched to say that Sanskrit is three times harder for a westerner than it is for Indian people. If it takes Indian people ten years to master this language, it probably will take a westerner thirty years. I came to this conclusion because of my experience of how it took me three months to be familiar with the devanagari (hindi) script alone, while most of my indian classmates at that time already had some familiarity with it.
And to address a further point whether Sanskrit is a living or dead language. I am always puzzled when previous Sanskrit teachers asked me what exactly do I want to do with this language. Do I want to read, write, or speak in this language? How can anyone write or speak if it's already a dead language? All I can tell them was that I want to be able to read texts or any texts for that matter and be able to understand what is being written whether it’s philosophy or literature. But for an Indian who is studying Sanskrit, reading dead texts alone is not the only goal, one must also be able to compose and converse in Sanskrit. Neel himself can speak Sanskrit to me and he’s been training me in the past several months to at least learn how to listen to fairly simple conversations. Even then it is still hella hard! There are many scholars who are still writing novels in Sanskrit! So I’ll let you decide whether you think Sanskrit is a living or dead language.
Of all the people I have met on my trip, I have kept in touch with Neel Kulkarni, who taught me Sanskrit in the last nine months via Skype. Neel is a yoga teacher in Pune and I met him through Aradhana, whom I took Sanskrit lessons from when I was in Pune. She referred me to Neel when I was complaining to her that I needed someone who can help me with my lower back pain. Neel not only has fixed the pain in my lower back, he has been a really good friend and my guru. I have learned so much Sanskrit from him. Much of what I learn from him is not grammar per se but being able to read simple Sanskrit stories. In the last nine months we have read many simple stories to help me improve on my syntax and increase my vocabulary. Despite four years of studies, my vocabulary still is quite insufficient. Sanskrit is truly a difficult language for any westerner to master because there are hardly any words that are cognates to our western languages. For Indians, however, Sanskrit is not so hard because they can draw many relevant connections from their language i.e., Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, etc. It’s not farfetched to say that Sanskrit is three times harder for a westerner than it is for Indian people. If it takes Indian people ten years to master this language, it probably will take a westerner thirty years. I came to this conclusion because of my experience of how it took me three months to be familiar with the devanagari (hindi) script alone, while most of my indian classmates at that time already had some familiarity with it.
And to address a further point whether Sanskrit is a living or dead language. I am always puzzled when previous Sanskrit teachers asked me what exactly do I want to do with this language. Do I want to read, write, or speak in this language? How can anyone write or speak if it's already a dead language? All I can tell them was that I want to be able to read texts or any texts for that matter and be able to understand what is being written whether it’s philosophy or literature. But for an Indian who is studying Sanskrit, reading dead texts alone is not the only goal, one must also be able to compose and converse in Sanskrit. Neel himself can speak Sanskrit to me and he’s been training me in the past several months to at least learn how to listen to fairly simple conversations. Even then it is still hella hard! There are many scholars who are still writing novels in Sanskrit! So I’ll let you decide whether you think Sanskrit is a living or dead language.
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