Listening or reading Ramayana
Kesava Vajapeya Swamy said in a discourse that our sins act as impediments to our happiness and well-being. It is unfair to accuse God of not answering to our prayers or clearing our sufferings. Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that 'only the ignorants disregard Me, not knowing my higher stature as the supreme Lord of all beings' (chapter 9, verse 11).
In other Yugas, if people undertake only good deeds, such as going on a pilgrimage to Kasi kshetra, they would derive benefits. However, in the Kaliyuga, people can derive benefits by thinking of performing good deeds. Equally, in all other yugas, if people even think of evil deeds, they will incur sins, but in the Kaliyuga, such mere thinking will not attract any sin.
Three ways are prescribed to cleanse our sins: performing Yagnas, giving to charity, observing Tapas (penance) and reading or hearing Ramayana is a tapas. The Ramayana begins with the word 'Tapas' (Tapaswadhyayaniratham). If a person cannot read the entire Ramayana, one can recite the Sankshepa Ramayanam or the Gayatri Ramayana, which contain 24 slokas.
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From the memoir: How a boy born in a courtesan's quarters became a writer
My mother entertained the thought of killing me. A few hours before I was born. In the hierarchy of noble thoughts, I ranked second in priority. Her own life claimed the top spot – and with good reason: She had to survive before any of this, whether my story or even hers, was possible. Bachcha jaane do, mujhe bachaao, she cried. Let go of the baby, save me. To her credit, she did not use the more actionable words bachcha maar do. Kill the (damn) baby. She could not have possibly said that. Was her God testing her? Let go, as in let it slip away. Jaane do. A first-time mother – but a murderess? Oh no, she was incapable of that. No gestating mother wants to be a baby killer. But what if it involves a deliver-and-die scenario? Mujhe bachcha nahi chahiye, she frantically repeated, trying to make herself heard loud and clear to the nurses treating her. I don't want the baby. She was pleading mercy to the surgeon gods. She did not mean to kill the foetus. But in this dire situation, she did not want it, especially if saving it meant her own life would be exterminated. She was being wheeled into the operation theatre for a messy delivery. She had overheard the lady doctor Bohra confide to a nurse that they would have to do a Caesarean. Cut her stomach into two and piece her back again, like an illusionist's trick. A normal delivery was ruled out. There was a high probability of losing one of us. Her pelvis was too fragile to push the baby out, her vagina too small to yawn or regurgitate it like a food disagreeable with her sensitive stomach. I had turtled and turned my face away inside her womb, unwilling to leave the comfort of the warm amniotic fluid I was floating in. She was in great pain – a scrawny young woman who was in the hospital for six months, carrying a foetus her body could not bear the weight of. My najayaz, illegitimate, father, Rehmat Khan, used to visit her infrequently. His chamchas, sycophant friends, visited my mother, filling her ears with gossip about how he frequented the kothas of other tawaifs in her long absence. Woh Meena ke kothe pe hain. Woh Geeta ke kothe pe hain. Woh Malka ke kothe pe hain. Rehmat Khan had quite the appetite for entertainment. Mother had not married him. Khan Saab, as she called him, was her patron in the kotha where she worked as a tawaif, performing mujras. They had quarrelled about the baby. She wanted it. He agreed for her to have it. But he wanted no other responsibility. He was already a family man with a wife in purdah and three happy children. They were clueless about his secret life in the kothas, or helpless, as most Indian households are when they discover their hostile dependency on a serial adulterer. Main apna naam nahi de sakta, he said. How could he give his name to a tawaif's child? La haul bila kuat! Ironic for a man whose name, Rehmat, means compassion, kindness, mercy. His double standards aggravated her labour pain to a dirge she was singing at her own funeral. My mother had conceived a baby because she wanted to get back at the sniggering tawaifs in the kotha who mocked her, calling her baanjh, infertile – a woman who would have no legacy. So she demanded a child when my father was courting her. Mujhe bachcha chahiye, she tempestuously said to him one day. It was an order, not a request. She knew he was married. She had spent enough time in her profession to understand that no bachelor was going to arrive at her kotha with a colourful, noisily musical baraat. That is a rather early plug for the funereal but hopeful climax of Pakeezah, where Allama Iqbal's sher is aptly read aloud: Hazāroñ saal nargis apnī be-nūrī pe rotī hai Baḍī mushkil se hotā hai chaman meñ dīda-var paidā. Unadmired, the narcissus weeps a thousand years For an aesthete to cherish its inimitable beauty Miles from being an aesthete, my illegitimate father was only too happy to serve a challenge and perhaps prove his own worth. Patrons love flaunting their virility in a kotha where only a few get the opportunity of intimacy with a tawaif. It is unlike a brothel, where they can pay and have a limitless choice of sex workers to pick from. A kotha is for entertainment. And to tawaifs, sex work is not entertaining. It is never part of their performance. Their mujra of song and dance is conducted in a mehfil, a gathering of several patrons. The patrons go back home to their wife and children, after kite-flying crisp currency notes for the tawaif's special attention – where they get a thenga, a wiggly thumb, for nothing in return. The tawaif chooses a patron she likes. Flashing money will not get her attention – as they say, tawaifs see more money falling at their feet each night than they see morals in the eyes of men truly valuing them. The lucky patron she picks can be her only one for as long as she wishes him to be – for a night, a week, months, years or even a lifetime, in some cases. Who am I fooling? No patron returns the loyalty as favourably. The tawaif can choose to have a child or not with her favoured patron. She is fortunate if that child is a girl, who can carry forward her name in the trade. But what about a boy? Turn him into a tabalchi, a tabla player, or any other musician—a baajawala or a sarangiwala. What use would such a child be in the world, my mother thought, if the foetus could not have its father's name in the likely event that its mother died in childbirth? Was there a more cursed life than to be born an orphan? She knew perfectly well how difficult it would be for me. 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She had a vision in her dream. The Sufi saint of Ajmer, Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, and Goddess Kali instructed her to take her child away, or Yamraj, the God of Death, would do so. Yep, that sounds like the dance-off of the thunder-clapping gods. Apparently, according to my mother, the morning I was born, there was a violent hurricane in Calcutta. Bahut badaa toofan aaya tha, she said with astounded eyes. As it so happens in every thunder and lightning oral story, which sounds as hokey as a Hindi-film flashback. Achanak se kaale badal hatey aur tu subah ki pehli kiran jaise nikla. You shot out like the first ray of dawn as the sun emerged from the dark clouds. Her ignoble thoughts may have been those nebulous clouds. Her sentiments, however, sweeten the comical. Mother fought with the hospital staff, signed a patient's risk form and dashed out of the compound, hailing a taxi to take me home. She was an emotional heroine on the run from her well-wishers. The hospital staff was almost certain she was going to kill her baby. Her mother, Gullo, the tobacco-chewing hard nut of a woman who carried a sarota, a nutcracker, in her ghagra, which doubled as a self-defence weapon, was waiting for her at the kotha. The staff had informed Gullo that Rekha would recover soon, but that the child's future was uncertain. Rekha would now have to dodge and survive the weaponised sarota flying through the kotha doors, risking even the newborn. She pressed her infant tightly to her chest. Both of us breathless. A Tawaif Smothers Her Newborn with Love. Killer headline in The Telegraph. I can rewrite my beginning as my end. As thrilling as all of this sounds, I would have preferred to remain incubated in the hospital. She acted rashly in blind faith – no, actually, blinded by faith. I could have died. She almost killed me. Twice. But she gave me life instead. Twice as much. Hers and mine. Our resilient lives. How did she intuit? Probably grasped from her own early experiences when life pushed her off the cliff. She found the courage and the derring-do to endure its twists and turns, like a fledgling songbird falling from its nest learns to soar before it touches the ground. No training, no practice, just killer instinct.
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This country has the most dogs in the world, China stands third, Russia fifth, the country is..., India's numbers will surprise you...
This country has the most dogs in the world, China stands third, Russia fifth, the country is..., India's numbers will surprise you… Dogs are considered God's best gift to humans. These furry angels always stand by your side when you feel blue. They will do some cute antics that will make you laugh, and guess what, your tension will be gone. If you are a dog lover then this news can be very interesting for you. Have you ever wondered which country has the most dogs (Dog Population Statistics)? Or can we say the most dog-loving country on earth? Here is the ranking of countries with the most dogs. 10) Romania Romania is known for its natural beauty. It is also a dog loving country. The number of dogs in Romania is around 41 lakhs. In 1980s, when people started moving to big cities from villages, they left their dogs behind. Gradually, the number of dogs increased in the villages. To curb the population of the dogs, the administration adopted the method of killing them. However, after massive protests from animal rights organisation, this had stopped. 9) France France is home of about 7.4 million dogs. Almost every canine is microchipped and vaccinated. Because of this rabies cases are very low in the country. Sadly, millions of dogs abandoned here every year. 8) Argentina About 9.2 million dogs live in Argentina and people here love to keep pets even when they are living in small apartments. Government here run campaign of vaccination and sterilisation to control their numbers. 7) Philippines Philippines has approx 11.6 million dogs. Rabies, which is a major cause of several deaths, is a big challenge for the government. Now the government is resorting to vaccination and sterilization instead of killing the dogs. 6) Japan There are approximately 12 million dogs in Japan. People here love dogs and many consider these furry friends as part of the family. This is the reason that Japan's pet industry is worth over USD10 billion. 5) Russia One of the largest country, Russia is home of 1.5 crore dogs. Here, stray dogs are also known as 'Metro dogs?'. These strays have surprisingly learnt to travel in trains and buses. The government and common people together take care of them. 4) India India has approx 1.53 crore stray dogs. It is a big challenge for the country. The government has set a target to vaccinate and sterilise 70 percent dogs. The move has been taken so that their numbers can be controlled and people's safety can also be ensured. 3) China There are 2.74 crore dogs in China. Earlier, the Chinese government has imposed a ban on keeping pet dogs in some cities. But now people love to keep dogs as pet. As a result, China's pet market has also grown rapidly. 2) Brazil Brazil has approx 35.7 million dogs. Interestingly, almost half of the households have at least one pet dog. The government here also made special arrangements for vaccination and care. 1) America America is at the top, with about 75.8 million dogs. Here, special dog parks, grooming centers, and strict animal protection laws are present for the care of pets. Strict action is taken on cases of animal cruelty.
