Photos

See my photo albums here.

Hiking and Traveling

More to come later.

Languages

I enjoying learning new languages and find etymology to be a fascinating subject. I am currently able to speak five languages relatively well: English, French, Hindi, Konkani (my mother tongue), and Marathi. Currently, I am trying to learn German and Swedish. Some links:

• This guy is a polyglot who is fluent in 11 languages. Quite incredible!
• bab.la, a multilingual online dictionary which supports 22 languages. The nice thing about this one is that it also gives example sentences for the various usages of a word.
• Tex's French grammar. This is an excellent link for learning French grammar, and I used it myself while learning French during high school!
• A Door Into Hindi, a good series of lessons for those wishing to learn Hindi.
• Dictionary for Sanskrit. Unlike many Sanskrit dictionaries, this one is aimed at spoken Sanskrit and is designed to have common words for daily communication.

Music

I am an aficionado of Indian classical music, particularly the Hindustani style, and also enjoy Marathi natyasangeet (music from Marathi musical dramas). I have been trained in classical harmonium since age 4. I also play tabla, having most recently studied under the tutelage of Shri Rohit Mujumdar and Shri Aditya Kalyanpur. Here are some good links:

• Wikipedia has a pretty good description of Indian classical music. See also the individual pages for the North Indian Hindustani style as well as the South Indian Carnatic style.
• Ustad Zakir Hussain has a nice 4-part demonstration of tabla and taal (rhythm) here (in Hindi).
• Some good tabla resources are found here.
• Here is a great database of various Hindustani compositions.
• An excellent database of Marathi compositions can be found here (in Marathi).

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