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Saturday,
February 8, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Zimbabwe bowls a googly Final countdown? Monitoring Central schemes |
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Preparing for the elections
Cop at large!!
How violence claims 1.6 million lives in one year
Men who don’t shave have
less sex, more strokes
Cricket at fever pitch
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Zimbabwe bowls a googly The game of cricket ceased to be the white man’s monopoly after England lost the right to stage the fourth Cricket World Cup in 1987 to India and Pakistan. The current posturing by teams from Australia, England and New Zealand over playing their 2003 World Cup games in Zimbabwe and Kenya is the white man’s way of sulking. They are sulking over having lost the unquestioned control over the game that was born in England and flourished in Australia. With the curtain about to go up both Australia and England have upped the ante as it were to browbeat the organisers into shifting the venue of the games to be played in Zimbabwe. They want the games to be played in South Africa. Zimbabwe has hit right back by stating that it would refuse to play if the venues are changed. Indeed it takes two to play. The Zimbabwe Cricket Union has done the right thing by bowling a googly hours before the ICC was to give its ruling. The white teams have raised the bogey of the security of their players to make the unreasonable demand of venue-change. New Zealand have already indicated their willingness to forfeit the game it was to play in Kenya. Security of players is indeed a serious issue. Ask Stephen Fleming about the close shave the New Zealanders had when a bomb exploded in the hotel in which the team was staying during the tour of Pakistan some years ago. The players packed their bags and left without completing the series and no one blamed them for it. But why is the issue of players’ safety raised by the white teams when the World Cup is played on coloured soil? It happened in 1996 when Australia refused to play in Sri Lanka. It is a mystery why the West Indies did the same. However, the only time the players were exposed to genuine risk was during the 1999 World Cup in England. The crowd invasions made the players extremely nervous. But the authorities refused to intervene saying that it was part of their glorious tradition. Tradition be damned. No player from another country is at greater risk of being harmed than Saurav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar. Dawood Ibrahim’s dreaded D-Company wants them as do some terrorist outfits. Yet India has rarely made an issue of players’ safety. The Indian team has refused to play in Pakistan or allow the neighbours to play here not on the direction of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The decision to snap sporting ties with Pakistan was taken by the government and there is nothing the BCCI could do except plead for lifting the ban. But the governments of Australia, England and New Zealand have refused to get involved. Instead they are encouraging their teams to take the political decision of not playing in Kenya and Zimbabwe. If they feel so strongly about their players’ safety they should intervene directly. What is being done is neither going to promote the cause of cricket nor of politics being kept away from sports. |
Final countdown? Before his widely publicised UN Security Council address, US Secretary of State Colin Powell had private sessions with most of the 15 council members. But he could not really convert anyone to the American cause of attacking Iraq, come hale or shine (figuratively speaking). Except for Britain, Spain, Chile and Bulgaria the world continues to be skeptical about the need for rushing to war. More important, France, China and Russia are firmly and vociferously opposed to the American line. Mr Powell’s was a dramatic presentation nevertheless, backed by detailed documents and graphics which he cited as evidence of the Iraqi guilt. But these did not go much beyond suspicions. As France said categorically “we cannot base our analysis on only suspicions. We need facts and that is very important”. Iraq rubbished these as “cartoon films” with its UN Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri pointing out that weapons of mass destruction are not like aspirin which can be easily hidden. Instead, these require huge production facilities. The rest of the world is neither willing to give it a clean chit nor is it convinced that Iraq is already in breach of UN resolutions. But the USA is. And that matters a lot. Recent ominous statements of President Bush and Mr Powell give rise to the suspicion that the final countdown to war has already begun. The UN weapons inspectors’ weekend mission to secure full compliance of Iraq is going to be crucial. They are to submit their report on February 14 and that might every well be the US deadline for an attack. The Security Council Resolution 1441 does not impose any time limit on the inspectors’ work but the USA is unlikely to go along with the general mood. From all indications, it is already in the war mode. Its patience is running out because the time schedule for the skirmish is of utmost importance. It is keen to wrap up the hostilities before March 15 because the desert becomes too hot after that. Even those who are not alarmist by nature know that this is the eleventh hour and if the clock is to be turned back, the time to do so is now. One impact of Mr Powell’s presentation has been that the Security Council members are demanding more forcefully that Baghdad should quickly provide evidence about its weapons programme. Mr Saddam Hussein has pulled back from the brink many a time in the past. The world will watch with trepidation how he fares this time. Be as it may, there is another school of thought which is convinced that even if he bends over backwards, it will be insufficient for the USA to change its mind. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s lament at the lack of proper monitoring of the various Centrally sponsored schemes in states has not come a day too soon. Addressing the conference of ministers and secretaries of rural development of all states and Union Territories in New Delhi recently, he stressed the need to tighten the monitoring mechanism so that the fruits of development would be able to reach the needy. This would also help fix accountability on those officials responsible for irregularities. Conceptually, there is nothing wrong with these schemes aimed at uplifting the condition of the rural masses. But there are so many of them that there are schemes within schemes, creating administrative confusion and the overlapping of authority. This has, in turn, led to a situation where it has become difficult for the authorities to fix responsibility on the officials concerned, especially at the grassroots level. Corruption,
bureaucratisation, diversion of funds meant for a specific programme to another scheme on political considerations, and the lackadaisical attitude of the officials in following the guidelines laid down by the Centre have made a mess of these programmes. The overlapping of authority between the civil officials like the Sub-Divisional Officer or Assistant Commissioner and the Zila Panchayat in some states is also responsible for the tardy implementation of most schemes. The Comptroller and Auditor-General
(CAG) has indicted both the Centre and the states for the mess. Clearly, schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana
(PMGSY), the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojna (SGRY), the Drought Prone Area Programme
(DPAP), the Desert Area Programme (DAP) and the Integrated Wastelands Development Programme
(IWDP) can be implemented effectively if both the Centre and the states followed the guidelines in letter and spirit and the monitoring mechanism is streamlined. The Planning Commission’s proposal to appoint a high-powered task force to examine some of these problems is welcome. But its success will depend upon the extent to which the states cooperate with New Delhi’s Yojana Bhavan. Doubts are bound to be raised on the mission of the proposed task force because states, in principle, seem to be in no mood to endorse the Planning Commission’s plan to reduce the number of over 200 Centrally sponsored schemes to, say, 30 or 40. The main idea behind this proposal is to strengthen the monitoring mechanism and ensure smooth and effective implementation of the programmes. It is being suggested that no Ministry should be allowed to run more than three or four Centrally sponsored schemes and that the outlay for each scheme should not be less than Rs 100 crore a year. At present, less than 20 per cent of these schemes have an outlay of more than Rs 100 crore a year. Yojana Bhavan has suggested that weeding out smaller schemes will consequently reduce the total number of these schemes and make the task of the monitoring and implementation machinery easy. Though the Centre is in favour of this, the states are against the proposal, fearing reduction in the allocation of funds due to pruning of the schemes. Against this background, the proposed task force has a challenging role to play in resolving the vexed issues of evolving the modalities of fund release and their transfer to states. |
Preparing for the elections India has just entered the year when the largest number of states are to go to the polls to bring ahead the parliamentary election which will in 2004 decide who will rule the country for the next term. This is the time for all variables to be brought forward to decide upon the winning equation. Have the parties done it? Yes, for the BJP. Not yet, for the Congress. To provide guidance close at hand has been the Gujarat election in which the country’s two strongest parties, the BJP and the Congress, were the main antagonists. They had the equal desire and stake to win but followed different paths. But Gujarat was a somewhat different state from anyone which are to go to the polls now. It had gone through a traumatic period first with the earthquake, a natural catastrophe, and later gruesome riots, a man-made catastrophe. Other states have had a more natural background. Gujarat has disturbed party managers and upset their calculations. The BJP sprung a new path and won a thundering victory. Will it have to traverse the same road to win? Where does it leave others? The BJP has upset them and they are wondering how they must trace their paths. The victory of the BJP has been so mind-boggling that the other parties are wondering how they should counter it. They have not yet recovered. The BJP, under Mr Narendra Modi, gave a winning formula. It was stark away from the formulae the other parties had adopted in the past. He had decided that he must rouse the Hindu vote and all that he had to do in this was to unshackle the Hindu feeling. The personalities who came to him to help hardly mattered. In fact, many kept away because they would interfere with the way he was going to spread his message. In this he launched straightway at what he thought troubled the Hindu mind. The carnage at Godhra came just in time to rouse the mind in the way he had wanted. He used it to the maximum while the others wanted to forget it so that it did not rouse the rest of the population. The Congress was too shy of it as Mr Modi threw everything into it. He invented a “Mian Musharraf” and cleverly linked it to Mrs Sonia Gandhi, her foreign origin and the insults which he said the Congress had hurdled at the Gujaratis. In this he himself hurled insults at the Gujaratis’ self-honour by asking them to believe that if they voted for Mrs Sonia Gandhi there would next day be illuminations in Pakistan. This is something that sensitive, intelligent Gujaratis should not have believed, but Mr Modi’s speech-making was so compelling that they believed him and voted for him. The Congress did not follow this route. It decided that after the earthquake and the riot the Gujaratis were more concerned with development, roads, schools and hospitals. This was the Congress line but Mr Modi had already made up the Gujarati mind. He was relentless and brilliant in this. Mrs Sonia Gandhi infused a great deal of passion but Mr Modi had taken away the power of the Gujarati analysis. Full marks to him for that. In talking about the issues it raised, the Congress used a different medium, Mr Shankarsinh Vaghela, but he was not made to flaunt questions. He should have been used only to debunk Mr Modi. He is the one who should have been made to go after the Modi invective. The medium was unsuited to the issues involved. The Congress made another mistake. Its critics have stated that it had in reply adopted “soft Hindutva”. In this is included Mrs Sonia Gandhi inaugurating the campaign from the Ambaji temple. Perhaps, she should also have paid homage to the 60-odd people who had been killed most mercilessly at Godhra. The Congress fought shy of it lest it raise passions again, while the BJP went ahead to hammer the point that the riots had taken place because of the train tragedy. Mr Modi even “took away” Sardar Patel from the Congress, although it created the amusing situation of the BJP thinking that it had two sardars within its fold, Mr Advani and Mr Modi. Finally, Mr Modi outsitted Mr Advani and presented himself as the true and genuine Sardar. The Congress was left wondering what had happened to its heroes, which goes to prove that personalities do not matter if you have an ideology, right or wrong, which you can sell to the people and the people will accept it. Now the BJP had known that in a Hindu majority country it is Hindutva or variations of it, which it must foster. If it is able to sell this ideology to the masses, it would not need the minority vote, be it Muslim or Christian, which it would use to tarnish the Congress and the Leftists. In the coming elections the Congress is in a difficult position. It has concentrated itself too much on personalities and not on what it wants to achieve. Since it cannot have an ideology like Hindutva it must set out to say what is the aim of the Congress through the elections. The BJP has said that it wants Hindutva. Mr Advani has given an inkling: “If the Opposition raises Hindutva we will certainly make that an issue.” The party’s former general secretary, Mr Arun Jaitley said: “The Opposition has been criticising us for making Gujarat a laboratory for Hindutva. We must take that as a challenge to prove to the country it was indeed a laboratory.” To this Mr Vajpayee has
added: “Gujarat has created a good atmosphere for us and has shown us the way. It is for the partymen to keep up the tempo and strengthen it to enable us to go to the people.” Mr Vajpayee was the last hope of the secular and the liberal. Has he walked away too? The Congress has not yet said what it wants to achieve. If the Congress is planning to say it through its election manifesto (pity its way of issuing two manifestoes, in English and Gujarati in the Gujarat election), it will be too late. And then who reads the manifestoes? Its electors must know now what does the party stand for. Changing ministers alone will not do. Those who have fared badly must indeed go and new blood and new efficiency must come in. But there must be a higher ideal. The Congress has not yet spelt out an ideal which can be put forth in a single slogan. For its own sake it must be done now. Indira Gandhi did it brilliantly in 1971 when she launched the “Gharibi Hatao” movement. That went to the heart of every Indian and brought about a spectacular victory. The Congress has not set forth any such aim yet. All that it has been saying is that it wants to remove the BJP government. That is not what should engage the people. They want to know what a government will do for them. Sure, the Congress must look at local and regional issues as should be done in all assembly and local body elections, but what is the big aim of the party for the country just as the BJP says in Mr Advani’s words that it wants to have Hindutva. To fight Hindutva is of extreme importance now, but that only gives a negative impact. Fight Hindutva and then do what for the country? The Congress must spell that out now. It is getting late for a battle to be right royal. |
Cop at large!! Last month we were blessed with a daughter. Our little bundle of joy brought loads of happiness, hundreds of congratulatory messages and phone calls and many visitors — friends, relatives and well-wishers. They showered her with blessings and good wishes. Among the many visitors was the tailor of our District Police Lines. He brought along a gift for the little one that symbolised his affection and devotion — a pair of neatly stitched Khaki nappies!! Well folks, I am a cop, I have been one for more than eight years now. A person outside the khaki world would see my kind as humourless, stick-wielding brutes. But believe me, every single day in khaki uniform is replete with incidents that are tough on the funny bone. For us policemen, Janmashtami is a major festival. We celebrate it with a lot of fervour, singing bhajans all night long. Lord Krishna was born in a prison. Moments after his birth the guards fell off to sleep and the shackles broke, enabling Vasudevji to carry the precious basket and the Lord to safety across the Yamuna which was in spate. The rest is history. Bhagwan Krishna delivered the world from the evil raj of Kansa. The men in khaki do not celebrate all jail breaks. But this was a special one. In the modern world if someone were to escape from a cop’s custody, all that he gets is a suspension order faster than the speed of light and cruel reporters baying for his blood. I am sure Kansa was more “merciful” towards his guards after the discovery of Krishna’s first Leela. On a particular Janmashtami in a district, the Range DIG decided to participate in the late evening celebration in the Police Lines with the men and their families. Now a DIG is a real big shot and his visits to a District Police Lines is a real big event. DIGs never come unannounced. Several days and hundreds of man-hours are spent preparing for such visits which thankfully are rare. This was a visit without a forewarning and at that late hour the men were all taken by surprise. Torn between Bhagwan and Balaatar Afsaraan there was confusion for a while. Something had to be done. The Line Officer came up with an idea. Amidst loud chanting of bhajans and kirtans and rounds of tea and passing of sweets a plan of action was hurriedly drawn. True to the age-old tradition of uniformed services, 20 seconds to midnight, the Line Officer smartly marched up to the worthy DIG. He stopped clicking his heels, a crisp salute followed by a loud request: “Baarah bajne mein 15 second shesh hain. Krishan Bhagwan ko janam lene ki anumati pradaan karen Shrimaan!!” The worthy DIG was stumped. What followed is not on record. The Line Officer got away with a Commendation Certificate and life in khaki went on as ever. |
How violence claims 1.6 million lives in one year The World Health Organisation has recently prepared a “World report on violence and health” (WRVH), perhaps the first of its kind which documents in detail the many-sided impact of violence on public health. In his foreword, Nelson Mandela says that this report makes a major contribution to our understanding of violence and its impact on societies. “It advances our analysis of the factors that lead to violence, and the possible responses of different sectors of society.” In the preface to this report, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of WHO, calls this report, “the first comprehensive summary of the problem (of violence) on a global scale.” She adds, “This report will contribute to shaping the global response to violence and making the world a safer and healthier place for all.” In the year 2000, 1.6 million persons died due to violence-related causes. This included 8,15,000 suicides, 5,20,000 homicides and 3,10,000 war/ civil strife related deaths. Over 90 per cent of these deaths took place in developing countries. Overall for the world, the age-adjusted rate of mortality from violence was 28.8 per 1,00,000 population. If one violent death causes distress to at least 20 family members and close friends, then every year 32 million are distressed, 320 million in a decade. What is more, according to WRVH, deaths represent only the “tip of the iceberg” as far as violence is concerned. According to studies quoted by WRVH, between 46 and 80 per cent of victims of violence received medical treatment without reporting the cause to the police. In addition, many violence victims do not suffer injuries that require medical treatment, yet cause a lot of stress and distress. According to WRVH, studies of non-fatal violence reveal that for every youth homicide there are 20 to 40 victims of non-fatal youth violence receiving hospital treatment. According to several experts, there are at least 20 suicide attempts for every completed suicide. Similarly, the number of injured, distressed and displaced people as a result of war and civil strife is likely to be much higher — in most cases — than the mortality figure. Keeping in view these factors, it may be reasonably estimated that against the mortality estimates of 1.6 million, the number of other victims of violence is likely to be around 30 to 40 million, about 20 to 25 times the mortality estimates. Although 90 per cent of violence-related deaths take place in developed countries, some of the most developed, richest countries also record high levels of violence. For example, in the case of youth-related violence in the USA this report says:
In the case of women victims of violence in the USA estimates of abuse of women during pregnancy by partners range for 3 per cent to 11 per cent among adult women and up to 38 per cent among low-income teenage mothers. Being killed by a partner has been identified as an important cause of maternal death in this country. Nearly 22 per cent of women in the USA reported having been physically assaulted by an intimate partner or beaten at least once. In a national survey 14.8 per cent of women over 17 years of age reported having been raped in their lifetime (with an additional 2.8 per cent having experienced attempted rape). At least 10 per cent of sexual assaults involve multiple perpetrators. About 45,000 to 50,000 women and children are trafficked annually to the USA, says a study by the CIA. It is also instructive to find that some societies involved in external aggression also face high rates of internal violence.
High levels of violence are reported from several countries despite the fact that most cases of violence are never reported or recorded. According to a study (quoted by WRVH) conducted in the USA, 46 per cent of victims who sought emergency did not make a report to the police. Another household survey in South Africa revealed that 50 per cent to 80 per cent of victims of violence received medical treatment for a violence-related injury without reporting the incident to the police. This report also draws attention to an important aspect of our distressed world — in year 2000 the number of suicides was equal to the combined total of all deaths by murders, riots, wars and civil strife. In the year 2000 an estimated 8,15,000 people died from suicide around the world. This represents as annual global mortality rate of about 14.5 per 1,00,000 population, or one death about every 40 seconds. Among those aged 15-44, self-inflicted injuries are the fourth leading case of death and the sixth leading cause of disability and ill-health. The reported cases are only the tip of the iceberg, and the large majority of suicidal people remain unnoticed. It is often said, for want of precise estimates, that for every case of completed suicide there are about 20 suicide attempts. In the European Union, an estimated 3 million workers have been subjected to physical violence at work. In the UK 53 per cent have suffered bullying at work. In Sweden workplace violence has been a factor in 10 to 15 per cent of suicides. According to WRVH, drunkenness is an important immediate situational factor that can precipitate violence. In a Swedish study, about three quarters of violent offenders and around half the victims of violence were intoxicated at the time of the incident. Apart from documenting various significant aspects of violence, this report makes detailed recommendations about the prevention and reduction of various distressing forms of this crime. |
Men who don’t shave have less sex, more strokes Men who don’t shave every day enjoy less sex and are 70 per cent more likely to suffer a stroke than daily shavers, a new study shows. A team at Bristol University who examined the link between shaving, coronary heart disease and stroke in 2,438 middle-aged Welsh men, said that men who did not shave every day were more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke. Over the course of the 20-year study, there were 835 deaths, they reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology. In all, 45 per cent of the men who shaved less than daily died, compared with 31per cent of those who shaved at least daily. Many of the excess deaths were due to higher rates of smoking and the poorer lifestyles of men who did not shave daily but the scientists said this did not explain their substantially raised risk of strokes. The findings show that men who don’t shave every day are less likely to be married and are more likely to be blue-collar workers. They also have fewer orgasms, tend to be shorter, and to suffer from angina. “The association between infrequent shaving and death is probably due to underlying smoking and social factors, but a small hormonal effect may also exist,’’ Prof Shah Ebrahim of the Department of Social Medicine, said in a statement. He said the association with stroke did not fall away after discounting lifestyle factors and remained unexplained. Ebrahim told Reuters the link between circulating sex hormones and beard growth was first established when a man on a remote island in the Hebrides noticed that his beard grew vigorously when he was about to rejoin his girlfriend on the Scottish mainland. He said the low frequency of orgasm in men who did not shave regularly might be because they had low levels of testosterone or might simply reflect the fact that they were unmarried and had less opportunity for sex. One possible explanation for the raised risk of stroke was that levels of circulating sex hormones in the body might influence the atheroma process in which fatty deposits build up in the arteries.
Reuters
For them toothbrush most valuable
They might love their cars, computers, televisions, cell phones and microwaves, but according to a poll, Americans have chosen the humble, 500-year-old toothbrush as their favourite invention. The findings were contained in a survey by the Lemelson-MIT Invention Index at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which asked which of five inventions Americans could not live without. The toothbrush emerged the undisputed champ, beating out the car, the personal computer, the cell phone and the microwave — in that order.
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Cricket at fever pitch What struck one most about the reactions to the tragedy was the absence of jumping to conclusions, of fixing the blame on human error on the part of the crew or sabotage, which is the instant official Indian reaction to rail or plane mishaps. The NASA top brass also came under instant strict scrutiny, including mention of those of its staff who had resigned earlier after they voiced reservations about the launching of Columbia. Respect was shown to the privacy of the nearest relatives of the victims. Both in the USA and to a lesser extent in India, one did not see interviews with them until one or two days had elapsed. This is how such mishaps should be covered, with dignity and restraint and one is glad that Indian TV also rose to the occasion. Had it not been for the space tragedy, there would have been nothing but cricket on our small screens. In the event, the mishap to Columbia was covered with dignity, compassion and admirable professionalism by everyone. Except, of course for CNN, the all-American channel which, instead of following it up as a human tragedy for all those concerned ,blew it up into the usual mega-Israeli event, not mentioning the Indian angle until the next day and giving far fewer personal details about the American astronauts involved. The BBC picked up the Indian angle after the Indian media gave handsome coverage to Kalpana Chawla and then stayed on course. This column is being written four days before the World Cup starts and one has had a foretaste of the shape of coverage to come. The advertising blitz is overwhelming enough, the flood of special programmes by different channels is already a deluge. I have also lost count of how many times on how many channels I have seen the 1983 World Cup, Kapil Dev holding the cup aloft and the team dousing themselves with champagne. All available members of the Indian team and from the West Indies team have been interviewed. We have already had close-ups, both visual and verbal of our present team and other teams. It shows the extent of competition that the BBC flew down Sanjay Manjrekar to the Capital to give us a preview of his personal coverage on the BBC which, at the time of going to press, has featured interesting interviews with the three Young Turks of the Indian, Pakistan and Sri Lanka teams. Manjrekar is a relaxed and articulate anchor and the BBC is reinforcing this with devoting all its 10 pm programmes to cricket, including Question Time India, Face to Face (including an interview with Navjot Singh Sidhu by Karan Thapar) and Business India for the business angle. If the 1983 World Cup has been flogged to death so has Harsh Bhogale’s programme which has brought in both Sidhu and Naseeruddin Shah as previewers. Naseer is assured and witty and has even roped in Ghalib and Faiz Ahmad Faiz to prove his theory that India will win. On this programme I have liked most the mini interviews with Sehwag’s unpretentious but proud mother, Yuvraj’s Mom and brother, Bangar’s wife and little baby and father, Harbhajan Singh’s mother and sister speaking in rustic Punjabi, Parthiv Patel’s father and sister and Nehra’s mother. Then we have India Glorius on ESPN which seems to echo the British national anthem of which the second line is “Send him victorious,” interesting to find anchors channel surfing, with Rajdeep Sardesai of NDTV anchoring a chat show on Sony Max. I have enjoyed tremendously the comments of children and young students on the World Cup on many channels. Most refreshing. Their deep knowledge and intense interest in the game. Of the recurring programmes, I have enjoyed most TWI’s Beyond the Boundary on Sundays on the BBC, which makes use of off-the-cuff footage not shown before, shot during matches. All very exciting for cricket fans, but I do have my reservations about some of the coverage. My knowledge of the game may be poor ,but is certainly better than Ruby Bhatia’s. I squirm and so do most viewers, every time I see Tendulkar, Ganguly and our young top players chanting the Sahara mantra, as disturbing as our most beautiful actresses putting on the ugliest uniform Sahara saris for the same. Too big a price for a brand. I am sick and tired of the giggling Masala Girls, not half as exciting as the Spice Girls, being brought in for silly gossip about a serious game. If girls must be brought in, what about former captain of the Indian women’s cricket team, Diana Eduljee, who has already written highly professional articles in the press? The most niggling throught is: What about lakhs of viewers not interested in cricket for whom there is no escape? And the worst doubt of all. What if India, in spite of all that goodwill advertising bonanza and patriotic hype, does not do well? Too horrible to contemplate, isn’t it?
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The freedom that you experience in the presence of the great light makes you soar without wings. Your heart becomes unimaginably buoyant, so full of love, that an inner door opens. Through this doorway you realise the glory of God in your own heart. —Swami Chidvilasananda, Gems from the Magic of the Heart.
*** The saint baptised sinners: Today sinners baptise the innocent. Infant Baptism — the vaccination of the new born against the New Birth. The baptism of water extinguishes the baptism of the spirit. There is a hypocrisy in cleansing the body more often than the soul. Let each ablution be a baptism, Each meal a communion. —Paul Richard, “The Gospel of the Desert”
*** The glory of the Name is infinitely greater than that of the Absolute... The Name is superior even to Sri Rama. —Sriramacharitamansa, 1.24. |
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