CURRENT MISSION

To figure out how to prioritise what's most important: synergising between love, the senses, the elements and THE Environment.

ABOUT ME

I'm a curious, somewhat-stubborn, quite opinionated and adventurous-- my borders keep on expanding, especially in this wild trans-dimensional space!-- academic-wannabe and "Kulturhund", who seems to've got shelter, for now, in Berlin, the millennial home of numerous "lost" causes; after having taught in India, Russia and Finland, for varying periods of time, I now research and teach in Berlin... or try to! I work on early-modern European drama and "Literature, Culture, Society and Politics in the Cold War" and am also interested in Indic Studies, Jewish cultural history and Ethnomusicology; I'm, outside academics, avidly interested in issues of ecological and animal and human (STRICTLY in that order) rights' awareness and "individual" freedom worldwide. I have also broadcast live in English from All India Radio, Calcutta, dabbled in knowledge-based TV-programming, translated from and between three languages, contested unsuccessfully in students'-union elections in India, cooperated actively with the researchers and activists working for a free Tibet and looked after the web-services for "The Indic Consolidation", http://indivar.wordpress.com/... er, that's the way the cookie crumbles!

PHILOSOPHY

Hindu, eclectic, interested in the other Indic and Jewish and Christian traditions. A Science-respecting Green-fellow-traveller, hence "turquoise" and "mild saffron" are my colours:"Vihreät/die Grünen" in Suomi/Deutschland; Liberal Inter/Nationalist, but distrusting shrewd posers and hypocrites, everywhere! I try to live my life on my own turns but, and this "but" IS very important, without causing hurt to others, as much as is possible...

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

visited 21 states (9.33%)Create your own visited map of The World

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've'd a great CS-experience/s, till date, and've met folks that've enriched my bag of experiences and human relationships with kindness, generosity, excitement and serendipity; what eggs me on to couchsurf more and more is the sense that there's ALWAYS a new soul to discover, a fresh "Weltanschauung" to explore, a passionate heart to cheer on ahead and a vibrant friendship to begin...

Interests

Different cultural trajectories, manifesting themselves in varied cuisines, socio-cultural "given"-s, pastimes and music; life-stories that touch and/or inspire; "one equal temper of heroic hearts" (do you know where that's from? :-P); discussions during spontaneous night-walks; R/romantic moods and adventurous temperaments; myriad kinds of classical, semi-classical and other instrumental music but also ANY good track that catches my fancy; cooking together with friends; H/history/ies, both personal and public; Art and the arts; films of ALL sorts, with a special emphasis on documentaries; political in-correctness, occasionally; SERENDIPITY; Europe; learning foreign languages; mind-sports; this list could, honestly, go on...

• animals
• cats
• arts
• culture
• literature
• documentaries
• causes
• environment
• cooking
• politics
• movies
• tv
• music
• instrumental music
• hinduism
• sports
• track and field
• history
• languages
• science
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

I'm deeply-interested in almost all kinds of music, though partial to classical-- both Indian and western, vocal and instrumental-- jazz, techno, trance, New Age, chants and cantata-s, especially in the so-called "dead languages", klezmer "et al"; love to hear exotic instruments like the Armenian "duduk" and Australian "didgeridoo", among others. If you've foot-tapping, lively music of ANY kind, I won't fail to swing to it... and that's a promise; love Richard Wagner, Jean Sibelius, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Dmitri Shostakovitch, Georgy Sviridov, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Kumar Gandharva, Kesarbai Kerkar, Rajan & Sajan Mishra, Ustad Rashid Khan, Safam, Ofra Haza, Paul Kalkbrenner, Armin van Buuren, Sven Weisemann, Kraftwerk, Yanni, some Michael Bolton, some Madonna... some of lotsa others!
Arthouse cinema, documentaries, mockumentaries, docu-dramas, intelligent thrillers-- political, crime-, espionage-, war-, mystical-- horror MINUS the blood and gore, of the more abstract sort, historical films, sci-fi MINUS too-weird-looking aliens, with the exception of "Star Trek" and "Star Wars", of course, vintage and black-and-white films, black comedies and, sometimes, the "white" ones, too; love reading books on similar lines, apart from the ones I need to and wanna read for my research, of course...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Managed to cure the almost-severed left ear of a stray ginger-cat by luring him to twice-daily medication, by making milk-rice-pudding for him for a week-plus; NOTHING, from spending some VERY cold winter days north of the Artic Circle to trekking in Himalayan mountains comes anywhere close to that "achievement"...

Teach, Learn, Share

This, my hopefully-would-be-friend, you need to talk with me to find out, as I don't really wanna share "esoteric knowledge" here and "practical skills" aren't really my forté, though I DO've some...

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland

Countries I’ve Lived In

Finland, Germany, India, Russian Federation

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