The Mystic Mountain Range and Doctor Strange

Before Doctor Strange released in early November, I was already hearing quiet complaints of stereotypes and overuse of the “Mystic Near East” trope. Certainly this isn't the first time Nepal (and often India) had been reduced to gurus and isolated mountain-top monasteries. And while I enjoyed Doctor Strange, I was curious about the use of this trope in the comics and film.

6 Tips On Learning Culture Without Visiting The Country

What should you know, before you travel?

Learning a language is incomplete without culture study. You may get hints from grammar - honorifics, for example - or idioms. But the right words are only the first step towards approaching the wealth of culture packed within a language.
The best part? You don't need to travel to your target country to get started.


So, for the purpose of this post, what is culture? It's really an umbrella term for varied thoughts, actions, histories and other unique identifiers of a certain group of people. A culture can be at a a national level (Germany), regional (Bavarian), social (high-class) and familial (your family vs. mine).

So how can we learn about other cultures, especially at a more intimate level?

3 Amazing Instances of Cultural Exchange

An Arabic translation of a Greek text.

One of the most underrated joys, at least for me, is noticing the vast amount of cross-cultural sharing that exists in society. Modern views of "Globalism" that resound in the media tend to portray the topic as some mystical development springing from the advent of advanced communication. It's true that the internet has widened the scope of the world for the ordinary man, but cultural exchange has been around since the beginning of time.

Now, some may point out that cultural sharing can be the byproduct of violent colonialism. And that's true. But much of it also developed through other means, such as trade agreements or scholarship. Here are some of my favorite examples of successful cultural exchange.

Faux Feminism? An Ad In India

Feminism and women’s empowerment – two concepts that seem to be taking the West by storm. You can find these terms in various debates in the US – from the right birth control to the right to wear/or not wear clothing. But how does it fair in India? What do people associate with feminism? What are the variants?

Well, that question is far too complicated to answer now. But that doesn't mean there aren't brief slivers of information. A more recent one I've noticed is a frequent ad for OLX – the Craigslist of India.

Why You Should Read The Mahabharata

Arjuna requests instruction from Krishna,
from Wellcome Images via Wikimedia Commons

"Poets have told it before, poets are telling it now, other poets shall tell this history on earth in the future."- Volume 1 Book 1 from the J.A.B. van Buitenen translation.

Readers of religious texts may remember reading or hearing about The Bhagavad Gita . What most people don’t realize, is that the Gita is one book of 18 – on section of one of the longest epics.