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Of late, echoes of a certain something called "Art Therapy" has been resonating throughout our land. More specifically, there has been an increase in the number of self-proclaimed "Art Therapists" strutting around with claims that they can cure a wide variety of diseases using music, dance, painting and poetry. They occupy the line already populated by that class of people who've anointed themselves as Sanyasis-Babas and Gurujis.

There was a certain amount of misrule and evil during the reign of the Nandas. A powerful force awoke that would destroy all that evil from the past. That was Chandragupta Maurya. What we know from our written history – and commonly agreed upon – is that Chandragupta was a great example for the brilliance of kshaatra. There are many accounts of this in Jaina, Bauddha, and Hindu – Sanatana Dharmic – literature.

Bhaja Govindam is a popular poem attributed to the scholar-saint Adi Shankara, one of the foremost advocates of the Advaita Vedanta School of philosophy. A short work, of 31 verses, it urges us to pray to Govinda (‘the herder of cows,’ another name for Krishna).

In 1972, Satyajit Ray made a documentary film on Benode Behari Mukherjee, a painter who became blind in his fifties. The documentary features the life and works of the great painter, traversing the journey from his childhood till his affliction and life after his handicap.

Mukherjee famously said, "Blindness is a new feeling, a new experience, a new state of being."