Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

Former South Africa opener Gary Kirsten is set to take over as India's next coach later this winter, over seven months after Greg Chappell left the post. Kirsten, who secretly met top BCCI officials, the coach selection panel (comprising former cap tains Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and S. Venkataraghavan) and Test skipper Anil Kumble on Monday night in New Delhi, has been offered a two year contract. The former South African opener has played 101 Tests and 185 ODIs. He made his debut against Australia in Melbourne in 1993. He has a Test average of 45.27 and an aggregate of 7,289 runs. He was South Africa's batting coach after his retirement in 2004.

In Hindu mythology, Radha is the principal love of Krishna's life. In the Srimad Bhagavatam, and the Gita Govinda, for example, she is depicted as his paramour but in other Vaishnava traditions of Hinduism, Radha is, in fact, regarded as a primary deity. She is often worshipped as an avatar of Goddess Lakshmi. Radha is almost always depicted alongside Krishna who spent a great deal of time and his youth in the company of cow-herd girls called gopis. As they frolicked in the village of Vrindavan, Radha is said to be one of the gopis with whom Krishna played during his childhood. For many, her importance exceeds that of even Krishna as she is considered to be his original Shakti. The other gopis, it is believed, are her maidservants. In the Padma Purana it is said that there were a total of 18,000 gopis amongst whom 108 were the most prominent. Out of these 108, eight were considered still more important and amongst these eight, two had special positions - Chandravali and Radhara

Kuala Lumpur: Rising oil wealth is lifting Islamic banking - which adheres to the laws of the Koran and its prohibition against charging interest into the financial mainstream. Big banks, including Citigroup, HSBC and Deutsche Bank , as well as financial capitals like London, Tokyo and Hong Kong, are all going into the Islamic banking business. An estimated 300 Islamic financial institutions hold at least $500 billion in assets, an amount that is increasing more than 10 per cent a year. In addition to Islamic loans, there are Islamic bonds, Islamic credit cards and even Islamic derivatives. Loans and bonds that conform to the Koran are already available in the US. And Britain, Japan and Thailand are contemplating issuing Islamic bonds of their own. "This is an industry on its way from a niche industry to becoming a truly global industry," said Mr Khawaja Mohammad Salman Younis, the managing director for operations in Malaysia for Kuwait Finance House, the world's se

An Indian film-maker has captured the sordid and hazardous journey of illiterate villagers from Punjab in India, who are trafficked by smugglers into western Europe particularly countries such as Britain and into cities like London and Leicester. The hour long film, titled Shores Far Away by Delhi based film maker Savyasaachi Jain, was broadcast at a neighborhood centre in Rothley street in Leicester late on Friday evening at an event attended by Leicester East MP Keith Vaz and the UK government's borders and immigration agency (BIA) deputy director (Midlands and East of England Region) Simon Excell. "Illegal immigrants are trafficked by these smugglers from India via Russia, the Ukraine, Turkey and then on to Calais (France) from where they reach the United Kingdom and cities like London and Leicester," Mr Vaz said. Another route for the illegal immigration is through Russia, the Ukraine, Slovakia and then into Austria, the gateway to western Europe. The film was

Malaysian police on Sunday fired tear gas and water cannon to prevent thousands of ethnic Indians from taking part in a rally, declared "illegal" by the government, outside the British High Commission here. The demonstrators, who had gathered outside the Petronas Twin Towers, the second largest building in the world, were beaten and dragged into trucks by the police, witnesses said. The rally call had been given by Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), a non-governmental agency, which has held the British Government responsible for bringing Indians to the then Malaya as "indentured labourers and exploiting them". It has claimed a compensation of $4 trillion. Kuala Lumpur: Thousands of ethnic Indians, a few carrying photos of Mahatma Gandhi had assembled before dawn near the Petronas towers. Several hundreds more had gathered in Batu Caves, a limestone cave Murugan temple on the city's outskirts. The Government had warned

Moms to be, please note if you don't want to risk miscarriage, just quit smoking. A team of international researchers has carried out a study and found that chemicals in cigarettes change a pregnant woman's body chemistry and distort the results of screening for disability in the foetus, the Daily Mail reported on Saturday. This puts women at high risk of miscarriage as they then have to undergo a further screening test for abnormality, according to the researchers. According to Imperial College-based Prof. Philip Steer, the Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology which has published the study, "The findings were further proof of damaging effects of smoking during pregnancy". "Babies of mothers who smoke during pregnancy are small for gestational age and tend also to deliver earlier. This research indicates smoking may also cause over estimation of the risk of Down's (Syndrome), thus exposing the mother to a higher risk

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