Yesterday, in her blog, my mother silently busted an age-old, dark myth of India that had denied the women the use of a sacred Hindu hymn.
The myth has to do with this five thousand year old mystical, powerful hymn from ancient India called the Gayatri mantra. The hymn is always taught in secret, mostly from father to his son, and never to a woman, or to a person considered to be of "low birth".
I am not going to get into the magical, and divine prowess of the hymn, but you can read and recite it on her blog.
I bet that most of those who chant the Gayatri mantra everyday, don't even know its meaning, and will frown upon its use in a blog. Of course, those who are sane amongst us will appreciate the succinct beauty of the hymn, and the spiritual maturity of the Indians five thousand years ago. Those reformists amongst us will admire the genius of Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883), in using this hymn to herald a social movement in India.
Like most people who read their personal email at work, I have turned of viewing of embedded images in email messages so as to not accidentally get into trouble. In fact, I have set up a message rule that flags such messages as risky-messages.
This morning I think Yahoo decided to insert rich text advertisements (you know one with pictures and animation) in the email messages people send via Yahoo mail, and a bunch of my emails were hence flagged. Not a good development.
If Yahoo! wants to charge its users, or show advertisements to its users, I have no problem, it is indeed their business. But as a recipient of an email message, I am under no obligation to view the advertisement, and my Inbox rule stays.
