Minna Zutshi

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, November 29

A mentally upset woman, whose family had lost all hope of seeing her again, has been reunited with her kin after eight months.

It was the midnight of April 11, when a police party, led by ASI Lakhbir Singh, from Jodhan brought the woman to Guru Amar Das Apahaj Ashram for shelter. The woman was unable to provide correct information about her name and address. She told her name as Jasmeet Kaur, alias Simran Kaur, to the founder of the ashram, Dr Naurang Singh Mangat. She informed him that she was married and belonged to Gonspur village near Ludhiana. Dr Mangat made efforts to trace her family, but could not succeed as the information shared by her was incorrect.

The ashram people soon realised that the woman was under mental stress and that she needed psychiatric help. After eight months of medical treatment, her condition improved and she was able to recall her brothers phone number. Her family was then contacted. It was revealed that her name is Asha Rani, she is unmarried and belongs to Rajpura. Finally, on November 27, Asha Rani was reunited with her loved ones and sent home with her brother Sanjeev Kumar and sister Monika Rani. They said her mental health was affected when she was pursuing BA and lost both her parents in a quick succession, followed by

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Mentally upset woman reunited with kin after 8 months - The Tribune India

Aparna BanerjiTribune News Service Jalandhar, November 23

The entire staff of Gandhi Vanita Ashram was tested for Covid-19 today after two senior assistants in the office of the Child Development Project Officer (CDPO) East died from the infection.

One of the assistants died yesterday, while the other on November 20. Both were 50 years of age. The twin deaths have set alarm bells ringing at the ashram as the CDPO office is the hub of child development and protection services in Jalandhar.

The CDPO office plays a supervisory role at the ashram which houses four shelter homes Childrens Home, Childrens Home for Girls, Observation Home (with a combined strength of about 180 inmates) and the Widows Home. The offices of the Child Welfare Committee, Juvenile Justice Board and Pension Department and Government Girls High School are on the ashram premises. Officials are worried about Childrens Home (for runaway girls) which currently has 100 inmates double the sanctioned limit. Deputy Commissioner Ghanshyam Das Thori said the testing of inmates had been scheduled for tomorrow.

Three supervisors of the CDPO (East) are also currently displaying Covid symptoms. The office remained closed today. Alarmingly, no formal intimation regarding the deaths was made to any of the Gandhi Vanita homes or offices by the District Programme Officer (DPO).

CDPO (East) Amrik Singh said: Two of my junior assistants have died of Covid and three supervisors are symptomatic. We have all been tested today. There is no further instruction yet.

Amarjit Singh Anand, Senior Member of the Child Welfare Committee said, We have received no formal intimation from the DPO about Covid deaths. Childrens Home houses more inmates that its sanctioned capacity. These are basic protocols that need to be followed in the Covid times.

The entire staff at Gandhi Vanita and DPO office has been tested. They shall be in quarantine until test reports come. After that those who test positive shall be sent for 17-day quarantine. The DPO will examine the scenario and give a recommendation by tomorrow, the DC said.

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2 Covid deaths in CDPO office, Jalandhar ashram on toes - The Tribune India

MX Player's popular show Ashram has garnered a lot of interest from the audience. Moreover, it's not just the lead character of Baba, but also the other supporting characters which have been loved. Actress Anupria Goenka has a pivotal role to play in the web series, and sharing her thought on the experience calling it 'challenging and fun' and said that working on the second season ofAashram reminded on why she decided to choose acting.

Anupria portrays the character of Dr Natasha, a forensic expert, who is getting involved in the investigation of crimes in the city of Kashipur. To ensure that the character is convincing, she has to don several looks for the show. Adding more, she expressed her happiness on being a part of such a web series helmed byPrakash Jha.

"After the release of 'Aashram', all I heard of it was the question 'When is Part 2 coming out?' It's super exciting that 'Aashram Chapter 2 - The Dark Side' opened to such a phenomenal response. Imagine the thrill of getting to work with Prakash Jha and being applauded for the same character on two different occasions," she added.

Anupria will also been seen in other projects like Maya, Mere Desh Ki Dharti and Criminal Justice Season 2.

Link:

Anupria Goenka shares her experience of working in MX Player web series Ashram: Chapter 2 - Mumbai Live

Ive been teaching yoga now for almost five years. Before I started teaching, I spent four years practicing in Dublin and exploring studios around London. I covered my 200 hour teacher training, which is the standard qualification, over the course of a year with a school in London. I taught my first class in 2015 and have taught hundreds since.

I knew, of course, about some of the allegations against prominent yoga teachers, and though it didnt sit well with me I mean, how could it? I also didnt know how to deal with it. After watching Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator when it was released, I started doing more research. I dug into the histories of the men who developed, exported, and built yoga into the industry it is now and everywhere I looked, I found pain and suffering.

My bookshelves are home to many abusers in the yoga community, and to works derived from their legacies. Sri Swami Satyananda is considered an originator of modern yoga nidra through his Bihar School of Yoga. Book published by the Bihar publishing arm show up on the bookshelves of most yoga teachers, their uniform packaging and presentation a clear indicator of the breadth of his reach.

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Satyananda has been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault and rape, including an assault on a 7-year-old child. A state investigation into a Bihar-linked ashram in Australia found a culture of silence around abuse, compounded by an immense power imbalance. The report specifically noted that the Bihar School in India was more interested in protecting its own reputation than providing support for the investigation into the ashram. Satyanandas book on Yoga Nidra is a founding text of the practice. Its on my shelf. Most teachers I know have a copy. I have given copies as gifts when I didnt know better.

Satyananda is one among many. Swami Satchidananda is renowned for his translations and commentaries on the seminal Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. His translation sits on my shelf and the shelf of everyone I trained with. In the early 1990s he was accused of molesting his students, but was never charged.

Someone interested in yoga could likely avoid the yoga sutras if they needed to, and there are multiple translations to choose from. Nobody has to practice yoga nidra. But the vast majority of yoga is done on the mat, and the yoga we practice on the mat carries a burden of abuse too.

K Pattabhi Jois was the founder of Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga, a style with near-universal popularity on a global scale. If youve been to a dynamic, power, flow, vinyasa, or ashtanga class, you are practicing in Joiss lineage. He has been accused of making inappropriate adjustments to his female students and has further been accused of groping and sexual assault on a vast scale. There are photos and videos, and the number of his victim can never be known. His teachings cannot be forgotten because his students have achieved great fame, among them Kino McGregor, Instagram yoga sensation, and David Life, who went on to co-found Jivamukti Yoga. I trained as a vinyasa teacher, so Im a part of that legacy, too. And not once in my 200 hours of training did anyone tell me about Jois.

Silence is golden. This was a problem before Jois and its a problem after him. Jois trained with Krishnamacharya, the so-called grandfather of modern yoga. While Krishnamacharya hasnt been accused of sexual assault, The Path of Modern Yoga notes that he was physically cruel and abusive to his students and bad tempered with his family. Krishnamacharya died in 1989 and lived in a very different world, but physical abuse has surely never belonged in yoga, a supposed path to enlightenment free from obstacle and pain? Krishnamacharyas books are on my shelf too.

In mid-2020, Yoga for the People, a studio in New York, shut down. It had been run by Greg Gumucio and attained a huge level of success in the city with its no-frills offerings. But there was a darkness in the background, and as the world quietened due to COVID-19, anonymous posts showed up online. They talked about racism and sexual assault, body shaming, and even suicide. The posts highlighted a culture of fear and manipulation, and shined a light on a capricious and cruel leader. In addition to everything else, Gumucio has been accused of rape. What galls the most is that Gumicio was trained by the one and only Bikram Choudhury, a man accused of sexual harassment and assault, homophobia, racism, battery, and discrimination. Choudhury is, somehow, still teaching.

The apple doesnt fall far from the tree. Because yoga is sold as an all-encompassing practice, the inherent power imbalance which results from surrendering to a guru is a sucker punch to autonomy particularly when these gurus are master abusers, mercurial and unstable, gifted at manipulation. As students, we learn much from our teachers, and I often wonder how many students reproduce the errors of their gurus. There is a pattern here. We cant ignore that.

Uma Dinsmore-Tulli has recently released an updated edition of Yoni Shakti. Her new foreword tears into the yoga industry, laying out accusation after accusation, noting the broadness of complicity in the industry and demanding better. Next year, she will publish Nidra Shakti, an encyclopaedia of yoga nidra which will hopefully note the filth in the foundations of that practice, too. These things are hard to read, and though the accusation were not new to me, her approach was. The very first page of Yoni Shakti is a trigger warning and the words are stark: Nobodys daughters are safe in these places: Its not consent if youre afraid to say no. There was something oddly freeing about reading these words.

Dinsmore-Tulli may be the first in what I hope is a long line of straight talkers in this industry, but she is not the only hope, either. In recent years, yoga books like Jessamyn Stanleys Every Body Yoga have hit shelves to great acclaim, commanding that attention to be given to yogis of colour and to multiple body types and shapes. In Going Om, essayists from a range of backgrounds bring yoga into a clear focus as a thing that helps when nothing else can, and the historical badness cant drown that out. Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma is perhaps a portent of things to come, and a harbinger of a practice that can move away from its murk. As years pass, we get better at accountability, at transparency. Part of my advanced 300 hour training was about the responsibility of a teacher, and the power I hold when I direct from a mat. I have hope.

What I dont have, is answers. This is a struggle every time I climb on my mat to teach or practice for myself. I push back against my adoration of yoga because these men who built it, tainted it too. With so many #MeToos, theres a lot of chat about separating an artist from his art, and enjoying work despite the people who created it. For a book or a series of them, I can come to terms with that sometimes. But yoga was vital to my mental health when I first laid my feet on a mat a decade ago, and its hard not to feel a deeper and more vehement resentment for its difficult history. Can we separate the yoga from its creator? I just dont know.

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Separating the Art From the Artist: Yoga Edition - Book Riot

Mysore/Mysuru: Cleaning of the premises of historic Khadi Gramodyog Mandali at Badanavalu village in Nanjangud taluk of Mysuru district and garlanding Gandhijis bust marked World Tourism Day on Sept. 27.

The staff of Tourism Department cleared the weeds in the entire area. This time, the Tourism Day was celebrated at the Khadi Mandali to coincide with special impetus being given to promotion of Rural Tourism in Karnataka Tourism Policy 2020-25.

The Department has taken up the project at a cost of Rs. 100 crore to develop the Khadi Gramodyog Mandali on the lines of Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat.

This centre has a rich history too. Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi had visited Badanavalu village in 1927 and 1932 to promote cottage industries as well as rural development during pre-independence period.

He wanted manufacturing of indigenously produced goods to promote the sale of Swadeshi items in Indian market. The Khadi Mandali was established in 1927 as per Gandhijis wishes and started manufacturing Khadi products.

With the Khadi Centre in shambles, noted theatre personality Prasanna and a group of volunteers stayed in the village and rebuilt the sheds besides holding meetings, workshops, street performances and visual arts. Padayatras were held from various parts of the State and culminated at Badanavalu for National Convention for Sustainable Living.

Artistes, activists and leaders of various peoples movement had camped with Prasanna and joined hands in temporarily resurrecting the centre. Noted Bollywood actor, late Irrfan Khan had visited the Centre to extend support to the cause of Prasanna.

READ ALSO Half exhumed body creates panic in Nanjangud

Presently, 50-60 employees are working in this Khadi Centre, according to Tourism Department Deputy Director.

Continued here:

Promoting Rural Tourism: Badanavalu Khadi Centre to be developed on the lines of Sabarmati Ashram - Star of Mysore

Ramgarh: Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis asserted on Tuesday that the BJP alliance was "far ahead" of the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar and will win the assembly election with a thumping majority.

Fadnavis, who visited the Chhinnamastika Devi temple in Ramgarh, about 70 km from Ranchi, refused to elaborate and only added that he was on a spiritual visit.

He reached Ranchi in a plane from Bihar after completing a day-long visit to the state and then travelled to Ramgarh by road to offer prayers at the temple. But the temple was closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the senior BJP leader had to offer prayers from outside the temple gate, said the priest Subashish Panda.

Fadnavis also visited the saint Boriya Baba at his ashram near the confluence of the holy Damodar and Bhairavi rivers. He spent one and half hours there, said another priest, Jayant Panda, who accompanied him during the visit to the ashram.

Sandeep Singh, the deputy commissioner of Ramgarh, told PTI that Fadnavis left Jharkhand within 72 hours of his arrival and as per the COVID-19 protocol if someone leaves the state within 72 hours, he could skip the mandatory 14-day quarantine.

The assembly election in Bihar is scheduled in three phases on October 28, November 3 and 7. The counting of votes will take place on November 10.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.

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Bihar elections: BJP alliance will win with thumping majority, says Fadnavis - Mint

Compiled by CHOW HOW BAN, RAHIMY RAHIM and R. ARAVINTHAN

INDIAN youth with IT and computer knowledge should help people fill up the 2020 e-Census to ensure the community is fully represented, Makkal Osai reported community leaders as saying.

The Kerian district Malaysia Hindu Sangam chairman said it was important that Malaysian Indians participate in the census-taking.

Those familiar with IT should help the elderly or those unfamiliar with computers to do so, the report said.

It added that the low number of Indians pre-registered in the e-Census system indicated that most were likely not computer-literate.

> A Hindu priest in Seremban helped rescue more than a dozen homeless and abandoned people and gave them shelter in his ashram, Makkal Osai reported.

Sivasri Dr AL Ananda Gobi, who heads the Hindu priests association of Negri Sembilan and Melaka, said he was touched by the plight of those who were left homeless.

Some of them fell victim to drug addiction and alcoholism and ended up on the streets while others are abandoned by their families.

Seeing them begging on the streets and depending on handouts to survive was painful, so I decided to do something, Ananda said.

The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.

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IT-savvy Indian youth urged to help elderly with e-Census - The Star Online

Azim Khan Ronnie has taken out the overall first prize in the 2020 Better Photography Magazine Photo of the Year competition and also won the Exotic Travel Category.

Azim Khan Ronnie. The winning entry in this years Photography Magazine Photo of the Year competition was taken at a religious festival in Narayanganj, Bangladesh in front of Shri Shri Lokenath Brahmachari Ashram temple.

His prize was a cash purse of AU$2000 for the major award, plus $750 as winner of the Exotic Travel category; a total of $2750. There were 799 entries to this years competition, which was judged by Peter Eastway, David Oliver and Tony Hewitt, all AIPP Grand Masters of Photography. Individual category winners were as follows: 2020 Emotive Portrait Category Winner: Zay Lar Yin 2020 Exotic Travel Category Winner: Azim Khan Ronnie 2020 Classic Landscape Category Winner: Grant Galbraith 2020 Revealing Nature Category Winner: Charles Jones

Click here to view the winners and top 20 (or so) entries in each category.

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Winners announced for 2020 Better Photography Magazine Photo of the Year competition - PhotoReview.com.au

The ancient Indian protocol for social distancing is embedded in the lines my yoga guru, from the famous ashram in Monghyr, Bihar, taught me: Chaar miley, chausath khiley, Miley bees ek saath. Harjan se harijan miley, Bihsain bahattar hazar (When two plus two i.e. four eyes meet each other; 32 plus 32, 64 teeth smile together 10 fingers of both palms, greet 10 of the other, a total of 20. Then a person, blessed by the Lord, is in union with another without physical contact. This results in 36,000 vital points in one human body and 36,000 in the other, sending ripples of joy through 72,000 points in the two beings.)

The current etiquette of social distancing possibly has precedent in past practice. Arrival of outsiders may well have wrenched us away. With Freudian prescience, Akbar Allahabadi put his finger on the nub of the matter: Tifl mein bu aaye kya ma baap ke atwar ki, Doodh to dibbe ka hai taaleem hai Sarkar ki. (How should an infant inherit characteristics of his/her parents on a diet of powdered milk and government education?)

The lockdown outlawed any toing and froing, conditions which Ghalib had described with great simplicity about Delhi during 1857: Koi vaan se na aa sake yaan tak, Aadmi vaan na ja sake yaan ka (No one from there can come here; Likewise, no one from here can go there)

This limitation on visiting each other soon began to reveal our instinctive comfort level with social separation. We were quite comfortable within the Lakshman rekhas we sketched around ourselves. More revealing were telephone conversations with neighbours, and members of the Residents Welfare Association. What they expressed was indifference to the migrants who had walked away from the suddenly imposed penury, joblessness, no roof over their heads in the torrid heat and now it seems, the approaching winter. Were these millions condemned by their karma, to be judged for suitable slots only in the next life?

When I visited South Africa to cover Mandelas release what struck me was not the exclusive white enclaves. I had expected them. After all that is what Apartheid was all about. What astonished me was Lenasia, the Indian colony outside Johannesburg. Sprawling mansions with two swimming pools was the lot of many Indians. Unlike the joyous Black South Africa, much the overwhelming majority, Lenasia was uneasy at the end of White rule. It was possible to meet Manek Patel in his bungalow who thought apartheid helped keep bloodline pure.

Hierarchies and class are inescapable. A revolutionary like Ho Chi Minh did live in a modest, two room, oak cottage but it had the nicest view of the lake. The rare visa which enabled me to cover the 1979 China-Vietnam war was arranged by a member of the Bao Dai family, an old Vietnamese aristocracy.

The Indian hierarchy, based on caste, is unique. Unlike racism, it is not based on prejudice: it is simply a time honoured practice which draws red lines, not to be crossed, between occupation based caste groups arranged in a vertical hierarchy. Egalitarianism disrupts these red lines. The unease with the Constitution is deep seated for this reason with the present regime which harks back to a pre Islamic golden past.

As we enter the seventh month of the lockdown, it may be worthwhile taking stock. My wife and I (and a live-in help) have been moderately cautious: we have entertained, keeping social distancing and never having more than four guests. Likewise, we have visited friends for meals, and taken the masks off, once seated.

My daily three kilometer walk in the park adjacent to our apartment (I take off the mask; it suffocates me) has been sacrosanct as has been my yoga. The clan in hundreds spread across north India, has so far reported no expiry. But there have been three positive cases in Lucknow including an 85 year old with co morbidities. They recovered within three days and three children in the same apartment remained untouched by the virus.

The bleakness that I see ahead cannot be extrapolated from our experience in the health arena. It is the economic sphere, joblessness, abysmal drop in resources, redesigned kitchen budgets, even within cousins where darkness is catching up.

A visit to South Delhis Select City Mall was scary. Hanuman Chalisa was being chanted in the biggest food mart. The lobby of the five star hotel was as eerie as the empty road in Hitchcocks North by Northwest, where a biplane swoops down on a terrified Cary Grant. A five star restaurant without a customer abutting a bar, stocked to the ceiling, but without a soul. Trust Ghalib to invade my mind: Bhar hain jis qadar jaam o subu, maikhana khali hai. (Goblets and cups are full to the brim, but the tavern is totally empty)

How long will Indian capitalism survive such tightly sealed goblets? Corona, I suspect, will wipe out lifestyles boosted by 30 years of reform. The new middle class will revert to their first car, the Maruti and mothers vegetarian recipes.

This middle class may adjust without too much fuss to the pre reform austerities, a mood that will dovetail nicely in the march towards Hindu Rashtra. A fly in the ointment may well be mass anger. After all, those who walked, their ranks swelled by the jobless and the hungry, will ask questions.

Will bread trump faith? To forestall any trouble on that count, the regime has already unfurled a range of draconian measures to put away anyone with a talent to mobilize public anger. As a backup there is also the scary virus as a deterrent against public anger bursting onto the streets. This scarecrow can be made scarier. But that might accelerate velocity of the economys nosedive.

Which economy? What better way to stop the leak than to sink the ship? Salvation shimmers over the sands as silhouettes of the Rashtra appear.

Continued here:

'Goblets Are Full to the Brim But the Tavern is Empty' - The Citizen

The BJP leader took to Twitter and informed that she had been shifted to AIIMS on Monday morning from Vande Mataram Kunj in Pauri Garhwal district.(ANI PHOTO.)

Two days after testing positive for Covid-19, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Uma Bharti was shifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Rishikesh.

The BJP leader took to Twitter and informed that she had been shifted to AIIMS on Monday morning from Vande Mataram Kunj in Pauri Garhwal district where she was under home-isolation.

Bharti tweeted, I have been admitted to AIIMS Rishikesh. There are three reasons for this; firstly Harsh Vardhan (Union health minister) was worried about my health condition. Secondly my fever spiked last night and if I get good response from doctors at AIIMS after observation then I want to appear in the CBI court in Lucknow day after tomorrow. Bharti is supposed to appear in court in connection with the Babri Masjid demolition case.

Harish Mohan Thapliyal, public relations officer of AIIMS Rishikesh said that Bharti was admitted to the hospital around 11 am on Monday.

She has been admitted to our hospital and has been kept under observation. As per protocol, we have sent her sample for an RT-PCR test. Till then, the doctors are taking care of her and she is being treated. The further course of action will be decided after we get her test results, Thapliyal said.

Bharti tested Covid-19 positive on Saturday night after which she had isolated herself at an ashram in Pauri Garhwal district. She tested positive after visiting the Kedarnath shrine on September 21, where she offered prayers following all safety norms. She had visited the Badrinath shrine in Chamoli district on September 24.

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BJPs Uma Bharti, Covid-19 positive, admitted to AIIMS Rishikesh. She gives 3 reasons - Hindustan Times