Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

WASHINGTON, USA, February 1, 2010: Hindu Gods have made their way into U.S. mail, with an Atlanta based company headed by an Indian American launching a series of legally valid custom-made postage stamps.

The first of these 44 cent stamps featuring Sri Krishna, Shiva-Parvathi, Lakshmi, Lord Venkateshwara, Murugan, Vinayaka and Sai Baba were issued by usa-postage.com last month.

The company made use of a six-year-old U.S. Postal Service (USPS) rule that permits issue of customized postages to launch the series. “These postages have not been issued by the U.S. Postal Service, but these are as good as stamps and are legally valid. We do not call them stamps. We call them postages. But these can be used as any other normal stamp,” a USPS spokesman said.

Source: epaper.mailtoday.in

HARIDWAR, INDIA, February 1, 2020: Time came to a standstill in Haridwar on Saturday. Devotees waited for hours to witness the royal procession of sadhus, including ash-smeared Naga sanyasins. The peshwai, as the procession is called, began from Pandeywala area of the holy town at noon and concluded at Mayadevi temple of the Juna akhara around 9 pm.

For nine hours, the roads of Haridwar witnessed the saints passing through on elephants, ponies, chariots and tractor- pulled gold and silver thrones. Many holy men travelled on foot, while others took cars.

The peshwai marks the arrival of sadhus of a particular camp at the venue of the Maha Kumbh mela. On Saturday, the Juna and Agni Akharas took out the processions. Many more will take out their rallies in the days to come.

The procession wound through 5 miles with locals taking part in festivities by offering the sadhus flowers, water and food.

Source: www.lemonde.fr

SOUTH AFRICA, February 1, 2010: Every tenth month of the Tamil lunar calendar (around January-February) during the full moon, the Tamil Hindus in Malaysia, South Africa and Mauritius, celebrate the festival of Thaipusam. As an offering, participants will pierce the skin of the back or face. By providing their physical suffering to the god Murugan, the faithful seek to expiate their sins and purify their minds. A one and a half minute video of the ceremony held Sunday, January 31 at Chatsworth, near Durban, South Africa can be seen at source.

Source: tamil.galatta.com

INDIA, February 2, 2010: Sundaram Rajam, a multifaceted artist that embodied South Indian culture in many forms, has passed away on January 29.

His story began many decades ago. During the dawn of the 1930s, Papanasam Sivan, the classical Carnatic Music maestro and Thamizh Thyagaiah, then virtually unknown, relocated in search of greener pastures in Madras, the cultural capital of south India then and now. Here he taught Sivan taught music to a friend’s children, the eldest son, a handsome artistic teenager, and his sister Jayalakshmi.

This handsome lad, hardly 16 and stunningly charismatic with a wide array of inborn talents and acquired skills was Sundaram Rajam, who became the first disciple of Papanasam Sivan in Madras. The guru boarded with the affluent amiable lawyer during his early days in Madras.

Rajam learnt classical Carnatic music under the soon-to-be-famous teacher and quickly acquired a high degree of proficiency and professional skills. Being a lawyer’s son, his education was not neglected either. He studied at the famous P.S. High School, then on North Mada Street, Mylapore.

He had a flair for drawing and painting, and to encourage such artistic traits, his father had him admitted into the famous Madras School of Arts in Park Town.

Music… Painting… and acting, too.

Rajam lived a full life of achievements in many a field of creative activity and shall be ever remembered as a shining example of Mylapore culture.

Source: HPI

KAPAA, HI, USA, February 2, 2010: (By Hinduism Today’s Editor-in-Chief) We first met S. Rajam back in 1995 in Chennai, South India, having seen his amazing illustrations in a book, Periya Puranam. The art looked so elegant, but also so ancient and traditional. It was the only authentic South Indian art form we had ever seen. Perhaps it was done a century ago? Two? We inquired and, to our delight, found the artist was not only alive but just a few miles away. Thus began fifteen years of collaboration.

S. Rajam, though in his 80s, painted for us tirelessly, producing hundreds of works that appear on the covers of all of Sivaya Subramuniyaswami’s books and many of our Hinduism Today covers and articles (see pages 66 and 70 of this issue). He once told us that in his youth he was talented, and full of callow ego, an ego that suffered when he could not equal the great masters of yore in his artistic achievements. The budding master thought to travel to the origins of spiritual art — Sigiriya Caves in Sri Lanka, Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra, India and more. His goal: to learn how these monastics had achieved their rare skills. His finding: it was their consciousness, not their technique that made them great. Learning this, he set out to change his consciousness, and that ultimately informed his art. As good as his art was, and it was the best, he was more widely known as a composer and musician who promoted vivadhi ragas and popularized kshetra kirthans. He also acted in three films. We honor his life and his work, and are thankful that we have, here at our editorial offices, over 600 of his original canvases, spanning the decades from the 1940s onward. S. Rajam was 91 when he passed on January 29th.