Hi Folks,

Firstly,I wish you all a very happy and eventful new year.

I was watching the Indian Premier League (IPL) auctions this past weekend and was stupefied by the proceedings. The battle between some of the richest Indian homes began by auctioning of various players and soon reached astronomical heights. In my view, the money spent on buying these players can take care of a poor nation's woes for at least an year.

It has been my thinking for sometime that money is indeed the most important and influential thing on earth right now. It is mightier than anything on earth and the one who possesses it is the most powerful person. Money has control over most aspects of human existence. The dichotomy with money is people who horde it have no real use of it and people who don't have it get into debt and end up becoming the biggest spenders. In short , irrespective of whether we have money or not, we are all slaves of money.

This reminds me of a beautiful scene from the movie "Jesus of Nazareth".
Jesus is busy preaching among his disciples. There comes a rich man with lot of slaves to him. He calls him Master and says that he would do anything for him. Jesus stands still and asks him if he would do anything for him. The rich man again asserts that he would do anything for his Master. Jesus tells him to distribute all his wealth among the poor. The rich man is startled and argues that he had spent his whole life making the wealth and he just could not throw all of it in a jiffy. Then Jesus says " You can have only one Master" and walks away.

This is one of my favorite scenes and I just keep reminding myself about it. Let us all think and ponder about the message in the story and ask ourselves about our attitude towards money.

Anyways, hope all of us will have sufficient money to keep us happy.

Signing off for now,
Krishna.