TAMIL NADU, INDIA, February 11, 2018 ( Scroll.in): On Friday night, a major fire broke out in the famed Meenakshi Amman temple in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, destroying 36 shops located in the 400-year-old Veera Vasantharayar Mandapam, a hall in the temple’s East Wing. The 7,000 sq ft mandapam, which housed more than 100 shops selling everything from puja items like flowers and coconuts to plastic toys, was badly damaged. Parts of the hall’s stone roof and a few intricately-carved stone pillars have collapsed, reported The Hindu. There were no casualties. The fire is suspected to have been caused by a short-circuit in a shop. The district administration has reportedly sought the help of experts from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, to ascertain the extent of the damage caused to the structures in the complex.
The architect explained that stone pillars were not impervious to fire. ”Stone also can take heat only to an extent,” said Madhusudhanan. ”When that limit is crossed, stone sculptures can be defaced or the entire structure can be weakened.” He added that the stones used to construct the temple were affixed with lime mortar, which weakens and collapses when charred. ”That is exactly what has happened with the roof of the hall,” he said. A February 5 report in The Times of India quoted an unidentified senior official of the Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services as saying that the department had warned temple authorities several times to take fire safety precautions, such as streamlining electrical wires and avoiding storing plastic items in shops. But these warnings went unheeded. When asked to confirm this, Saravanakumar said: ”We have to verify the records.” He added that for the last five years, the fire services had kept a fire engine on standby in the temple complex.
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FIJI, February 5, 2018 ( by Waisea Nasokia Nadi, Fiji Sun): Rain in Nadi failed to dampen the spirit of local and international Hindu devotees at the 92nd Vaarshika Thaipoosam Thirunaal Festival in Nadi yesterday. The 10-day annual event, mostly for those with South Indian ancestry, ends today at the Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Thiru Kovil temple in Nadi – the largest Hindu temple in the southern hemisphere. Temple acting manageress Sandhiya Krishna said: ”This is the second last day of the festival and Suva Sangam brought their devotees to perform the ritual. We had over 4,000 in the crowd including locals and those from abroad having links to Fiji.”
Ms Krishna said the festival was a celebration of the victory of good over evil. Devotees offer prayers to Lord Murugan to ensure that the year 2018 gives them prosperity, health and protection from evil. She said the original temple near the Nadi Bridge opened in 1926. It was at the old temple building that the Then India Sanmarga Ikya Sangam (TISI Sangam), the parent body was formed. She added that the Mahakumbhabisekam Pooja Festival that took place every 12 years would take centre stage from June 14-17. The other big event devotees look forward to is the Panguin Uthiram Pooja [Kavadi Pooja] scheduled for March 28 – 30.
HARTSDALE, NEW YORK, February 9, 2018 ( by Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, Lohud.com ): At 8:30 a.m. on a recent monday morning, Tao Porchon-Lynch, recognized in 2012 by the Guinness World Records as the ”World’s Oldest Yoga Teacher,” waltzed into the Fred Astaire Studio in Hartsdale for a yoga class wearing a fur coat and black stilettos. A few months shy of turning 100 years old, Porchon-Lynch is the founder of the Westchester Institute of Yoga. She took up ballroom dancing at age 87 and has won more than 750 first-place awards as a competitive dancer. At age 96, she appeared on NBC’s ”America’s Got Talent,” receiving a standing ovation from the judges. In addition to teaching eight classes a week, she hosts yoga retreats and speaks at conferences at more than 20 destinations a year. In 2016, Porchon-Lynch was recognized on Women’s Entrepreneurship Day at the United Nations.
Born in 1918 , she talks about her upbringing in Pondicherry, a coastal city in southern India which was a French colony until 1954. It was there that she first got a glimpse of yoga, she was eight years old. ”To me yoga is in every animal, every blade of grass and it’s alive with the energy of life,” Porchon-Lynch said as she taught a class at the Fred Astaire Studio. ”If I can feel it within me, then I’m in touch with everyone in this room.”
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Enquire: ’Who am I?’ and you will find the answer. Look at a tree: from one seed arises a huge tree; from it comes numerous seeds, each one of which in its turn grows into a tree. No two fruits are alike. Yet it is one life that throbs in every particle of the tree. So, it is the same atman everywhere.
— Sri Anandamayi Ma (1896-1982), Bengali mystic
