Witspeak Podcasts
Log in Start a podcast
Gita on the Commute artwork
Gita on the CommuteS1 · E20:5122 plays Preview: first 60 seconds

When two duties collide: dharma with a retired judge

0:00 / 0:51

Sample the first 60 seconds free. Sign up free or log in to hear the whole episode.

RSS
Show notes

Arjuna in the dock

The Gita opens with a man who cannot decide, because every option betrays a duty: to family, to justice, to his own conscience. Aditi reads the first chapter with Justice Ramesh Phadke, who spent 31 years in Maharashtra courts facing choices with no clean answer.

  • Dharma as a word with no single English translation
  • Svadharma: your own duty versus someone else's done well
  • Justice Phadke on a custody case that still keeps him awake
  • Why Krishna does not simply tell Arjuna what to do

Aditi closes with a short reading from chapter 3 and a question for listeners: which duty did you choose this week, and what did it cost.

Transcript
Namaste, welcome back to Gita on the Commute, I am Aditi Kulkarni. The Bhagavad Gita begins not with wisdom but with a breakdown. Arjuna, the greatest warrior of his age, sits down in his chariot and says he cannot fight, because the people on the other side are his teachers and his cousins. Every choice in front of him breaks a duty. That is the question of this episode: what does dharma mean when two of them collide? I could not think of a better guest than Justice Ramesh Phadke, who spent 31 years in Maharashtra courts making exactly that kind of decision, and who still thinks about one custody case from 1998. We read chapter 1 together, slowly, and he tells us what Arjuna got right. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
Open as text

More from Gita on the Commute