Krishna Kiran's

Rath Yatra (Chariot Journey) Rath Yatra (Chariot Journey) of Lord Jagannath is celebrated today at Puri in Odisha. This is a very special day for all devotees of Lord Krishna and ISKCON too organizes Rath Yatra all across their temples in the world. I had the opportunity to participate in Rath Yatra on a few occasions. It is a wonderful experience participating with others, chanting and pulling the Rath in unison with them.  Leaving aside the fact this is a grand Hindu religious event, there is a great message involved in this magnificent event that happens once in a year. This is an attempt to try and decipher the same in this column as looking at Rath Yatra just as an event does no good to people, whatever religion one followed. The Rath – is the chariot in which the deities are taken in a procession. They are made every year from wood and are massive in size. They are beautifully painted by the temple artists and painters. The Ratha signifies our body and mind . It i...

The lone mango tree near my office is on the border abutting the race course in Mahalaxmi. Nobody knew which great soul planted it and when. It has grown big enough to take care of itself and give shelter to people. It neither belonged to anyone nor does anyone belong to it. It stands there tall as ever facing the brunt of all three seasons. Nobody cared to either look at it or think about it even for a second except at times of 'need'. People took shelter in its shade when the sun is fierce on them. There are some who nailed it mercilessly to put up their sign board. There are some others who plucked its leaves to ornate their homes on auspicious occasions at times breaking its branches mercilessly in the process. There were car owners who vied to park their high-end cars in its shade.  The tree never spoke a word or expressed its pain or sorrow or happiness on any of the above occasions. It just stood still bearing everything and observing all in silence. It had no one to...

Muthu(left) and Spy(right) in action This is the story of how two non-comprising, creative, enterprising minds and loving hearts made a normal re-union meeting of college batch mates into a super grandiose event that will be remembered forever thereby setting a new benchmark for anyone else to emulate. A small group of ‘85 Batch mates 18 in number from BITS, Pilani (including this author) decided to have a mini re-union in Mumbai as a precursor to the actual Silver Jubilee Meet(SJM) happening in October 2014 . Under normal circumstances all of them had the option to gather at a restaurant, have a bash and bid bye-bye. But that would have been another run-of-the-mill meet with least scope for the event to be remembered, thought my two friends Muthuram Natarajan(aka Muthu) and Milind Joshi( aka SPY). Mind you, both of them have their own things to do in the busy and fast life of Mumbai where every minute counts. While Muthu works as General Manager – India and Middle East ...

Dynasty politics in India The recent swearing-in ceremony of Chandra Babu Naidu (CBN), whom I admire for his prowess as an able administrator and a political leader, as the first CM of residual AP left me with more thoughts on the path of democracy than the prospects of AP’s growth under the leadership of the new CM. Given his vast experience as CM of united AP, we can be sure that he will take divided AP to the next level. The bigger question would be, is he prone to encouraging dynasty politics on the lines of Telangana CM K Chandra Sekhar Rao?  We have witnessed the swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi as PM on 26 th May in which none of his family members were present. In contrast to this was the swearing-in of Chandra Babu Naidu on 8 th June as well as that of K Chandra Sekhar Rao (KCR) on 2 nd June when the latter took oath as the first CM of the newly formed 29 th state Telangana. The son and nephew of KCR were also sworn-in as Ministers in his cabinet. Luckil...

The recent general elections results seem to have weakened the ‘forces’ in Aam Aadmi Party. Some prominent personalities like Shazia Ilmi and G.R.Gopinath have left the party soon after the general election debacle and Yogendra Yadav resigned from the party’s Political Affairs Committee (PAC). These exits are creating an impression that the party is disintegrating and also throwing bad light on Arvind Kejriwal and AAP which is not actually the case. The fact that AAP won four seats in Punjab in its maiden 2014 Lok Sabha elections after a remarkable performance in Delhi Assembly elections is by itself no mean an achievement.  The same is getting projected badly because AAP in a hurry to ‘change’ India and ‘fight’ corruption unnecessarily contested in 434 Lok Sabha seats. It is surprising though that the highly educated team at AAP failed to understand the basic principle of preparation. Didn’t they know that only a well prepared student can crack the exams and only a well-train...

It is very painful and torturous to read or hear news about rapes that seem to happen unabated in spite of stricter laws in force post the nationwide protests over the brutal rape of “Nirbhaya”, the 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012. The recent gang-raping and killing by hanging of two cousins aged 13 and 15 in Uttar Pradesh is the most ghastly incident.  Another gruesome incident is reported today from Bareilly in UP in which a 22-year old woman was gang-raped, reportedly made to drink acid and strangulated to death. Every time we hear of a rape incident the blood boils but we feel so helpless. There is nothing more excruciating pain than being in a state of helplessness. While it doesn't make any sense in trying and understanding why some so-called ‘men’ rape, it would definitely be in our country’s best interests to send a strong message to all those men with ‘animal’ instincts. It appears that some state governments are too tol...