LO PHIR BASANT AAE...

Basant

We have been brain washed into giving importance to Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Mother-in-Law’s Day etc. In the process we are beginning to loose the importance of our own festivals. Today being Basant Panchami, I decided to note down all that I know about this festival. I am sorry to say not much. Even the Wikipedia was of limited help.

Well, Basant Panchami is celebrated on the fifth day of Shukla Paksha of Magh month. So this year, the festival is being celebrated on 28 January 2012. This festival is a harbinger of spring. It is also said to be the birth day of Goddess Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning and speech. Yellow is the colour celeberated on Basant day- ladies wear yellow coloured clothes and yellow sweets are prepared.

In Panjab the common phrase used is ayee basant paala urrunt meaning that with the coming of Basant, cold disappears. In the Guru Granth Sahib, there are a total of 31 raga compositions and raga Vasant is the twenty-fifth to appear in the ragmala. The Ragmala calls Basant as a putra (son) of Hindol, which too is a spring raga.

This day is also special for kite lovers as kites are specially flown. What is the connection- I dont really know!

Please do add all that I have missed out on....

Castrate the offender

"A young girl from Manipur was raped in New Delhi four days back" ....News.

One hopes that the offender is caught at once and punished as per law.
In fact just imprisonment as punishment is not enough.

Why shouldnt such offenders be castrated? Let the Indian Penal Code be
suitably amended.

Lets forget about cricket (or outsource the team)

With the Tendulkars, Dravids and Laxmans proving that the ruthless process of aging does not spare any one, let us think of the alternatives.....Firstly we must thank these senior players for their past perormances and wish them happy retired lives.

Now to the alternatives....

When the Americans outsource their work to India, we feel that there is nothing wrong in outsourcing. So let us be consistent and outsource our cricket team, to, say the West Indies....

In fact as a first step, we should latch up the gracious offer of Chris Gayle to play in our team....

"Gram sabhas above Parliament"... Hazare

This man is really amazing... ...

Google doodle ... ...

I bet the Election Commission of India is going to find the elephants in today's Google doodle to be insufficiently covered ... ...

Greetings Telegram 19

When I was young, and it was a long, long time ago, one used to send greeting messages by telegrams. You do remember telegrams, dont you? There used to be a list of standard phrases for the greeting telegrams, each given a code or a number. For example the code for the message "A Happy New Year to You" was '4'. So instead of sending the message which consisted of 6 words one could send the same message by writing '4' as the message and specifying the category of telegram as 'Greetings'. This way one was charged only for one word, of course the words for the adressee and the sender being extra.

Comiing to today- the Republic Day, the standard message was "Sincere greetings for the Republic Day. Long live the Republic" and its code was '19'.

So may I say Greetings telegram-19 to you all!

PS....Though I have used the past tense in the narrative, I understand that this facility is still available accross tthe post offices in the country, albeit rearely used.