HINDsight - 7

Shivaji, son of a noble from Bijapur, was Aurangazeb's 'PITA'... He killed one of Aurangazeb's generals with a bear hug... talk about killing with love ... :-) ... another one of those things that originated in India... So.., Aurangazeb held Shivaji under house arrest... Shivaji used to send baskets of fruit and sweets everyday to a temple... one fine day, he hid himself and escaped... Centuries later, Bollywood was inspired by Shivaji's escape route and copied it in movies to show the likes of Amitabh Bachchan and Pran escape from prisons using the aid of garbage carriers or prison transportation systems... It shouldn't be forgotten though that Shivaji after escaping founded the Maratha Kingdom... Shivaji was an animal lover and a prospective PETA activist... He loved his horse and none of his statues are erected without the horse... The bad part though is that he lived only for 53 years...

The people in general were fed up with destruction, bloodshed and started questioning their existence... They turned to religion for answers to questions such as, Where shall i go after death ? , Is there any God ? , etc.. Religions try to answer some of these questions, but the result as more often than not, is more confusion... Anyway, this was the start of the Bhakti Movement... and also the origin to the 'Tamil Veda' and the 'Bhagvata Purana'...

Kabir, lived in the same time zone... He was a Hindu brought up by a Muslim family... When he died, there was dispute whether his body should be cremated or buried... When they took the sheets of his body, they found a handful of flowers... which were divided among the two communities and each of 'em disposed them off according to customs.... Nobody however sensed or suspected that some smart arse pulled off a smooth trick...

I was quite surprised by this piece of trivia... It is said that one of Kabir's disciples was Nanak, who became the first of the ten Gurus of Sikhs... So, a half Hindu and half Muslim scholar, inspires Sikhism eh ???

To end it all with a quote, Colton, an English clergyman and writer, said, "men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; anything but live for it".