The story of Situational Gita

A situational take on the Bhagavad Gita

At antarjaal we have a focus on creating apps based on age old wisdom. A friend asked —

“Is there something you can do around the Bhagavad Gita?”

Of course we could!

We could digitize, illustrate, index and create an app that conforms to every stereotype about the Bhagavad Gita

But we didn’t. If we had, we would have created an app that was similar to 90 other apps.

So we had to do something that wasn’t the norm, but still familiar enough to not find resistance. Meaning, we had taken on something more than what our just-over-adoloscent-suddenly-reaching-midlife mind could comprehend.

Luckily, things are never as bad as they seem and the answer was staring at us from every poster of the Bhagavad Gita we had the patience to look at. What did we see?

Arjuna (yes, we saw Arjuna first, just one of those days) who seems to be in some sort of dilemma on how/whether to proceed and Krishna giving gyaan (advice) in the middle of a battle field.

Then magic happened.

Nah, simply put we realized we were as clueless as Arjuna on how/whether to proceed with the task at hand, and just like the onlookers at the battlefield, we also had near and dear ones looking expectantly at what we will create. One big difference — Krishna was in the poster, he wasn’t with us. With a noisy flicker, the bulb in the head turned on.

In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna is answering Arjuna’s questions. (Duh!)

It is said, the Bhagavad Gita has answers to all questions about the struggles of life!

This realization lead us to define the app “Situational Gita” an app that -

“Presents the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita
in a manner that it applies to day-to-day situations”

We created categories and subcategories of everyday situations related to work, relations, growing old and soul. We took help of experts to identify the verses (shlokas) from the Bhagavad Gita that could provide a perspective in those situations.

We were able to curate over a 100 verses (the Bhagavad Gita has about 700) categorized into about 20 categories. Each verse also has hints on situations where it can provide food for thought. You can download the app here for iOS and here for android

This approach we feel has created an entry point for a wide audience to engage with the Bhagavad Gita, one from where audience with further interest can advance to the study of the Bhagavad Gita in its original form.

Our friends at DEF who host the mBillionth award recognized our efforts and Situational Gita was selected as a finalist under the Culture and Heritage category for the mBillionth award