Holi in India:

---

Holi is considered to be a pious most festival in India. In certain places in the country it continues for several days starting from Holika Dahan to Holi Milan. The festival relates to the story of a boy named Prahlad, a great devotee of the God whom Hirnakashyap, a demon, wanted to do away with as he didn’t like him to worship the Lord whom he considered a foe. He took the help of his sister Holika who had the bliss of never to get harmed by fire. She hatched a plan to take the child Prahlad in to her lap as a dodge and plunge to the flames of fire with the belief that she would come out of it as per the bliss she had but Prahlad would perish in the process. What happened was just the reverse. Holika was burnt to ashes and Prahlad was rescued by the grace of God a great devotee of the Lord as he was. To religiously commemorate the event Holika Dahan takes place every year culminating in to Holi Milan a day later.The clear message this festival directs is that of love and communal harmony and even the people opposed and inimical to each other meet heart to heart with an affectionate embrace. This year it is due the next month on 17th of March. Let us wish that the message gets flourished and flashed to the nook and corner of the country, nay the world as a whole.

Technorati Tags: holi,holikadahan,love,affection,embrace,communalharmony,foe,inimical,flame,fire,prahlad,hirnakashyap

She was an angel incarnate !

A serious doubt started lurking in the minds of the people including brother of Lord Buddha himself about his credentials and bonafides as a saint Divine after he returned on attaining enlightenment –the reason being his soft corner for a woman –none else but Amrapalli, the one who had no parallel in beauty but was forced by the then elder men in the society to lead the life of a prostitute.Her request to Lord Buddha to visit her palatial house was affirmatively nodded by him and this caused all hue and cry.Buddha,the Enlightened, addressed them and storm of suspicion was visible no where after he,who was by then recognized by everyone as the one capable of seeing the past,the present,the future,narrated about what Amrapalli was in her earlier birth as a bird and that she was the serenemost a person with noblest soul on earth.This was the bird that got perished trying to save others.Her physical apparel could be any thing but in her actions and thoughts she is the one thoroughly chaste and pure concerned always for others.
A miniatured version of the story runs like this:
One of the creatures in a dense forest with a river flowing in the midst of it was a tiny bird.Drought occurred with famine of high magnitude.Fire brokeout engulfing all. Total inhabitation was at a collapsing point with dwellers running helter skelter to save their children against fire which nearly engulfed them leaving no time gap for them to escape.Nothing was there and the fire was assuming aggressively aggravating proportions set to devour the entire forest. The bird started dropping herself into water in the river flying back fully drenched to the top of the trees fluttering her wings and squeezing water therefrom to soften the flames. The God of rains Lord Indra laughted at her calling her action as ridiculous pointing out how silly it was on her part to show audacity against mighty flames. Reply of the bird was ‘you and the other Gods have the capacity to play any havoc or if it so pleases you you can equally remedy it by causing rains but since you care damn for others on earth you would’nt do it. I as one have to continue my efforts to do whatever little I can till the last breath of my life’. In the process the poor bird accepted being reduced to ashes.