Odd News

I've only known comfort and security all my life... I've not walked the less-travelled and forgotten paths... I keep to the sunlit, paved roads carefully marked with directions and warnings.

Varun Badola is not a happy guy these days. The actor who plays one of the leads in Star Plus' Aek Chabhi Hai Padoss Mein (yes, it's still on air) claims the channel isn't doing much to promote the weekly soap. He adds that the time-slot (7 to 8 pm) is a 'dead slot' despite which Aek Chabhi... has managed to garner TRPs.

High oil prices have made us all miserable. Optimists expect them to fuel alternative lifestyles, especially in oil-dependent United States. The New York Times just reported an increase in use of mass transit systems, for example. Currently, two of the three US presidential candidates suggest a three-month holiday from gas taxes for the summer.

I am not an exemplary parent but I do think often of how I will bring up my child. I offer these thoughts, not to teach parents more capable than I, but just to share the impulses of an ordinary, everyday sort of father.

On Thursday night, Zee News announced that it was going back to 'real news.' The slightly surly but honest answer to that would be: 'About time.

With bad governance and civic distress making us distraught and thoughts on Buddha Purnima (May 19) arriving already for Inner Voice, do let us recall Buddha's famous follower, Emperor Ashoka, whose Dharma Chakra pulls our hard-won flag together.

Like her name, she exudes light. Not literally, but The Palace School, a Montessori started by princess Diya Kumari in April 2001, is surely spreading the light of education. The royal family of Jaipur has been relentless in their effort to provide quality educational facilities to the students of Jaipur.

By now everyone knows that the rising global food prices are the result of the burgeoning Indian middle class. Don't believe us? Ask Mr George W Bush, President of the United States of America, who says, '...when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.

She predicts Bollywood's reigning superstar Shah Rukh Khan to make a shift to politics soon. The Indian Premier League is 'cricket on cocaine', she thinks. As for the controversy surrounding cheerleaders, her answer is short and simple - 'Fans are not complaining, only the politicians.

It is welcome news that a Ramakrishna Math bookstall, with its wealth of peace-building, harmonious reading, was just inaugurated at New Delhi railway station. It recalls my feelings two years ago when my guru Swami Ranganathananda of the Ramakrishna Math attained Mahasamadhi on Monday, April 25, 2005 at 3.51 p.m. in Kolkata.

Every tradition has terrible stories about the consequences of anger and this one from Indian mythology haunts me. King Kartavirya Arjuna (aka 'Sahasrarjuna', he of the thousand arms) and his army visited Sage Jamadagni, who fed his guest and all those soldiers by the magic of his divine cow, Surabhi.

Wrestling fans in the city were an excited lot, as Khali, the first Indian champ at WWE, landed in the Capital after three years. But little did the 7-foot-3-inch giant know that fans would swarm him the moment he landed in Delhi.

What happens when two shows come up with the same name? And the shows are to be telecast on channels that belong to the same franchise? In this case it's Sony and Sab TV... both their shows are named Krazy Kiya Re.

The father of the 'problem child' has left for a trip to the other world. Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann who invented lysergic acid diethylamide, a drug better known as LSD, and who later wrote an autobiography titled LSD, My Problem Child died of heart attack this week at his hilltop home in Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.

IPL has lost its glamour. The Delhi IPL team has replaced its mini-skirted cheerleaders with a Bhangra troupe of 30 hearty, well-covered men. The men in skirts, albeit ankle-length, had their first outing against the Bangalore IPL team recently, leading to both sighs of relief and disappointment from viewers.

With antiquity being the rage of the day, one often wonders what qualifies as 'antique'. Our search for an answer led us to a website called Antiquesindian.com .

She's the London-based heiress and philanthropist who paid Bill Clinton a whopping $4,50,000 to speak at the fund-raiser of her Fortune Forum in London. Renu Mehta, who has been described by the Brit press as the 'reformed' socialite, talks exclusively to HT City about life, India and having a diary full of the world's most important people.

At around four in the afternoon on April 26, Erik Kurzweil, counsellor in the German embassy, witnessed an incredible sight in the first-floor guestroom of his Malcha Marg bungalow - a huge bird sitting on the bed and flapping its giant wings.

This week, I'm listening. No, I'm not being lazy, taking a short cut. In the last fortnight, readers have send in thoughts about changing our ecological footprint. Most of these are thought-provoking, worth sharing.