Jagat

Vrindavan summer temperatures are hitting record breaking highs as a month-long heat wave strikes the north of India. This is an annual occurrence towards the end of the hot season as everyone anxiously waits for the monsoon to come. But it appears this year that things are a bit more severe and the heat wave is getting worse with new record temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius. Global news services are taking note and counting the deaths. Global warming means extreme weather events such as this. We spend a lot of time worrying about the forlorn state of the Yamuna: More and more water has to be taken for agriculture and the teeming millions of the capital region metropolis, while the city's filth drains into the Yamuna. Water scarcity, drought, desertification -- these are among the very real dangers that accompany the warming of the planet. These effects of development and global warming are now inevitable, "locked in" as the scientists like to say. We do ...

This morning I bit the bullet and posted the following on Vrindavan Today : Dear friends, lovers and well-wishers of Vrindavan Dham, Due to lack of time and funding, it is not possible for me to continue with this project for the time being. If anyone wishes to sponsor this important endeavor so that we can get competent help and material facilities, we welcome their help. Vrindavan Dham, Braj and India as a whole, are at a crossroads. Indeed, the entire world is facing tremendous challenges in the coming century. In many ways, Vrindavan is a microcosm of those challenges. The clash between modernity, with its technological advances on the one side and its neo-liberal economic rapaciousness and consumerist ethic on the other, and spirituality, which values above all the internal evolution of the individual and one's relation to God, other human beings and the environment, is perhaps nowhere more transparently manifest than here. Vrindavan Today is meant to both chronicle ...