It is often said that birth does not matter; however, in my case, I was fortunate to have born in an orthodox Brahmana family. It enabled me to understand Vedic Hinduism in its true ambience. At the same time, the mere context of birth could have left me like a frog in a well; that was avoided by exposure to Western style education and a career in the academic world in the area of social sciences.
As I look back from the vantage point of eighty plus, I feel that the first sixty years were spent in a mundane academic environment in which earning the respect of peers was more important than the pursuit of true scholarship. When I retired at sixty years, I changed course and pursued my own interests, uninhibited by peer influence. I mastered Sanskrit and read Hindu scriptures in original Sanskrit, formed my own opinions and gained new insights on my own. It was the independent pursuit of knowledge that helped me to write two ‘original’ works on Hinduism, of which I am now really proud. I have expressed my views not to please anyone nor intentionally offend anyone. For an author/scholar truthfulness alone matters.