What the signs foretell…

Dear Padma
First of all tell me why that disclaimer was inserted in the end? This was a nice and enjoyable post right through and there was absolutely nothing that could possibly offend anyone. I am just intrigued!

Illustrated Weekly of India was a great favourite of mine too. I once won a few hundred rupees in the famous Crosswords of the weekly and it was a princely sum those days. You have rightly listed out the popular columns of the Magazine. In my days, two pages used to be allotted by the magazine to publish the photographs of newlyweds. We would sit down with a scissors in hand and rematch the couples as we always found that every couple was a mismatch! I am talking about the pre-Raman days of the Weekly. It was a sad day when the IWOI ceased publication. Busybee, the effervescent columnist of TOI wrote a nice obituary very typical of him! Our dear friend Kamal admits that he and Kushwant Singh shared a common interest but disappointingly misled us. I know better than Kamal what the special interest between them both was!

The Hindu’s astrological predictions based on both solar and lunar systems were typically a brahminical one. I guess when Ram took charge of the paper, he got rid of it being a rationalist!

I fully agree with you that it would be better if one concentrated on the signs of daily life and decoded them, it could help us in running our life smoothly. I studied in Hindu High School in Triplicane. When we observed that our class teacher had just shaved his head, we would desist from annoying him because if he was roused to fury on those days, he would go to the extent of murdering us! Similarly our Sanskrit teacher was a chronic patient of piles. Whenever we saw him sitting on one side and grimaced when he had to shift his position, we would be very careful with him!

A lovely post, Padma!

Sri