Keepers of the Kalachakra

by Ashwin Sanghi

‘You are convinced that it is history, not mythology?’ asked the lady in red again. ‘Do you know the difference between mythology and history?’ asked Brahmananda. The lady expressed herself in a shrug. ‘Mythology is a set of lies that people rarely believe,’ Brahmananda said and paused. ‘And history?’ ‘A set of lies that people have agreed to believe.’ The audience laughed.

The novelist, George Santayana, had famously said that history is a pack of lies about events that never happened, told by people who weren’t there. So where lies the ultimate truth?