Our Story

I grew up in Chennai, a city with a rich cultural heritage in the southern part of India. My days followed a disciplined routine that we all embraced willingly. The mornings began with devotional songs that uplifted the mind, followed by a bath before sunrise and a prayer. In the evenings, lamps and lights illuminated the entire house.

Fridays, in particular, radiated positivity, as they were traditionally regarded as especially auspicious days. Thursday nights marked the beginning of our cleaning ritual. We would declutter the house and polish the brass lamps. When Friday arrived, we would wake up early for a ceremonial head bath, decorate the home altar with fresh flowers, and burn camphor, benzoin resin (loban or sambrani) throughout the house. This practice symbolically dispelled negative energy while filling the home with divine fragrances.

Thanks to the close alignment of seasonal and spiritual cycles, our culture kept us engaged with one festival or another throughout the year. Friends and family would exchange greetings and festive snacks, each customised to the occasion being celebrated.

During the Tamil month of Margazhi, women displayed their artistic talents by creating vibrant kolams using rice flour and red powder to decorate streets and the entrances of their homes. During Navaratri, families who arranged the traditional stepped displays of divine figurines would welcome visitors and offer a variety of nutritious snacks, including millet-based preparations and steamed millet dishes. These treats amusingly lured every child in the neighbourhood into their homes, and remembering those moments still brings a smile to my face.

As life moved forward and the world has become a global village, I gradually drifted away from many of these simple traditions. I was merely adapting to the realities of my living situation and making the necessary adjustments, but my heart continued to yearn for the cherished practices of my childhood to find a place in my present life.

I am sure I am not alone in feeling this way. Many of you may share similar desires to reconnect with childhood traditions and incorporate them into your current way of life, simply to keep those customs and values alive.

Given that each of us lives under different circumstances, addressing these quiet yearnings is not always easy. Simply relying on the internet often makes the search more difficult. Today, it has become infamous for many of the wrong reasons and frequently contributes more anxiety than well-being. It was this realisation that inspired me to build a small platform for people who share these emotions and aspirations, people who wish to preserve their traditions and stay connected to them.

OneBhakthi is our attempt to create that alternative.

It is a place where you can rediscover that sense of belonging and connect with others who share similar values, without having to navigate through the noise of the modern internet. Our promise is simple: this space is designed to be informative, non-political, and completely free from the clickbait that often distracts people from their true purpose.

We built it this way because we believe in a simple idea: plurality. Plurality means there can be many right answers. There is no single judge and jury deciding that your way of practising a tradition is wrong. Different paths can coexist, and each deserves respect.