Avaktavyam

eBags’ price matching policy really works! I posted a few days ago an item in which I was venting my frustration with eBags. For details you should read that post but basically I felt eBags was not honoring its price matching policy as posted on its web site. After publishing my post, I sent an email to Jon Nordmark, CEO of eBags. His email address is published right there on eBags’ web site and I figured that if he publishes it, he must want people to contact him if they have problems. So I sent him an email detailing my troubles. I did mention that I had published a post on my blog about it and that I was going to contact The Consumerist about my experience. He replied by email almost immediately and was quite apologetic. He said he would take care of the situation.

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One of my projects this summer was to start memorizing the verses of Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. At cruising speed, I’m able to learn about one verse a day… which is not too shabby considering that in the AIIS program last summer the memorization rate was 2 verses a week. It is an unfortunate fact that during the most part of my Sanskrit studies, memorization was not a priority for me or my teachers. I’m not saying that my teachers did not ever have us memorize anything. I did memorize some vocabulary and some declension tables in my classes in Western universities. However, in the Western setting especially, memorization was a fairly limited and artificial affair. After my experience this summer, I am convinced that the memorization of actual texts is a desirable element of learning Sanskrit and should be present from the earliest stages of learning.

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