“Churning the Ocean Within: Unlearning at the Kumbh of Life”

New Delhi [India], January 16 (ANI): The waves murmured their age-old secrets as they caressed the shore, their soft hiss mingling with the hum of distant laughter. The Goan night stretched endlessly, stars scattered like spilled sugar across a velvet sky. Jolene, our restaurant perched on Anjuna Beach, shimmered under the night’s glow, alive with whispered conversations and clinking glasses. It was here, under the stars’ watchful gaze, that Trupti Dave stood across from me. Her presence was magnetic, luminous, as though she carried the ocean’s mystery within her. Her daughters flanked her, radiant and strong, each an embodiment of the quiet defiance that comes from living freely.

“Do you paint?” she asked, her voice as soft as the tide, yet carrying the weight of an invitation.

“Yes,” I said, a single word laden with history.

“What do you paint?”

I paused, considering. “I began abstract, but now I’m figurative.”

Her lips curved into a smile, one that seemed to know the tides of change. “I began figurative and became abstract,” she said, her eyes glinting like embers. “I’m unlearning what I’ve done for fifty years.”

Her words landed softly between us, yet their meaning rippled outward, filling the night with quiet reverence. Unlearning. It echoed like the ocean’s refrain, a reminder of the inevitable churning of life. I carried her words home that night, letting them settle into the fertile soil of my thoughts.

As I reflected, I remembered my grandmother, her wisdom wrapped in ritual. Her puja room was a sacred cosmos, dim and intimate, filled with idols and pictures from every faith. Jesus and Guru Nanak stood beside Krishna and Parvati; even Osho had a place among them because of me. Each morning, she bathed the deities in sandalwood, adorned them, fed them, and lit incense that spiraled into the air like unspoken prayers.

“Why do we give food to the birds, Dadi?” I once asked, holding the small plate she had handed me.

“They take it to the gods,” she said, her voice steady as the tide. “To our ancestors, to those who’ve left this world. It’s our love they carry, our gratitude. And in return, the gods bless us. Look at the stars, Baba. They’re our loved ones watching over us.”

Her words transformed the night sky into something alive–a canvas of care, a map of connection. To a child, they were magic. To an adult, they became a metaphor: unlearning is much like her rituals. It asks us to strip away the rote, to move beyond the surface, and find reverence in the rhythm of reflection.

Yet life, as it does, began its slow work of binding me. Society’s lessons are not shouted; they are whispered, slipping into the fabric of our thoughts until they feel like our own. We absorb these lessons without question, learning to fear without naming fear, to conform without realizing we’ve surrendered.

I was reminded of this recently, during a call with a friend. He was traveling through southern India, sharing a video of vibrant temples drenched in gold, landscapes bursting with life, and people moving like threads in an intricate tapestry. “You know,” he said, his grin audible, “there’s something about these people.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, unsure of where he was leading me.

He paused, letting the silence stretch before answering. “Their skin, their features–it’s so stark, isn’t it?”

Before I could object, he laughed, his tone shifting. “It’s funny, isn’t it? How conditioned we are to think that way?”

And suddenly, I understood. He wasn’t speaking from belief but exposing the quiet conditioning that lingers in all of us. “When you see them,” he continued, “you feel it, don’t you? That whisper at the back of your mind, telling you they’re different, they’re other. It’s not real, but it’s there. It’s buried so deep we don’t even notice it anymore.”

His words held up a mirror–not to who he was, but to who we all are when left unexamined. Bias is the shadow we carry, and unlearning is the only way to step into the light. It is the act of peeling back the layers we didn’t choose, unmaking the walls that keep us apart, dismantling the silent scripts we’ve followed for so long.

I thought then of Kabir, the Bhakti saint, whose words have echoed across centuries, written into the Guru Granth Sahib, sung at the thresholds of life and death. Kabir, who said, Bhala hua meri matki phboot gayi, mujhe paani bharan se choot mili. Good that it broke, my urn, my water pitcher. I’ve been freed from the burden of filling it again and again. What a profound metaphor–freedom found in the breaking, liberation in the shattering. To unlearn is to break the urn of our conditioning, to pour out the stagnant water of what we’ve been told, and be freed from the ceaseless labor of carrying what no longer serves us.

And now, we find ourselves at the Kumbh Mela, the largest gathering of humanity, a confluence that occurs once every 144 years. Here, mythology and meditation intertwine, as the ocean is churned to bring forth amrit, the nectar of immortality. This churning mirrors our own. To unlearn is to churn the waters of the self, to bring forth the nectar of liberation, the elixir of a soul freed from illusion.

The Hindus call it Maya–the veil of illusion that binds us to fear, to materialism, to the smallness of what we think we are. Unlearning is the meditation that pierces that veil. It asks us to break, to shatter, to churn, so we can find within ourselves the vastness that leads to Moksha–freedom, Nirvana, ultimate release.

Trupti’s words returned to me, their weight a gift. Unlearning is not a passive act; it is excavation. It is the breaking of stone to uncover the river beneath. She had unlearned fifty years of artistry, shedding the safety of form to embrace the chaos of abstraction. My grandmother had unlearned rigidity, turning ritual into rhythm, devotion into dialogue. And I, too, was learning to unlearn–my biases, my fears, my need to know everything before I could accept anything.

It is not easy. To unlearn is to confront the ghosts of who we’ve been. It is to sit with the discomfort of realizing how much of ourselves is borrowed, inherited, imposed. It is to stand in the ruins of certainty and find the courage to rebuild–not with what we were given, but with what we’ve discovered.

Unlearning is not destruction; it is transformation. It is the caterpillar dissolving into chaos so it can emerge with wings. It is the ocean’s tide, retreating not to disappear but to gather strength for its return.

That night, under the Goan stars, I thought of Trupti’s daughters, women forged in freedom, bold and unafraid, their confidence a quiet defiance of a world that tries to diminish. They reminded me of the ocean–restless, expansive, impossible to contain.

I thought of my grandmother, who had unlearned the fear of gods distant and punishing, and instead taught me to see divinity in the stars, in the birds, in the love that transcends life and death.

And I thought of myself–my own journey of shedding skins, of unbecoming what the world told me to be. I thought of the times I had failed, the times I had fallen, the times I had stood again. Each moment of despair, each act of defiance, was a step toward freedom.

To unlearn is to reclaim. It is to see the world not as it is but as it could be. It is to strip away the lenses of prejudice and habit, to look at others not as strangers but as mirrors. It is to find beauty not in perfection but in imperfection–in the cracks that let the light in, in the chaos that births creation.

And when we unlearn, we begin to live. We live with open eyes, seeing gifts in every moment. We live with open hearts, loving not despite differences but because of them. We live with open minds, embracing the unknown with the same reverence we once reserved for the known. And in living, we love.

As the night deepened, the stars seemed to draw closer, their light soft and steady. I thought of Kabir’s broken urn, of the ocean’s churning at the Kumbh, of Trupti’s quiet declaration of unlearning. The path is not linear; it is a spiral, a dance, a tide. It asks us to let go so we can hold more, to break so we can mend stronger, to lose so we can find. Beneath the Goan stars, I felt it. A warmth, a quiet, a hope. And as the waves whispered their secrets, I wondered: What else can I unlearn? (ANI/Suvir Saran)

Disclaimer: Suvir Saran is a Masterchef, Author, Hospitality Consultant And Educator. The views expressed in this article are his own.