THREAD: tomorrow, Jan 25 is the global day of action for Yemen. Here’s a list of everything you can do to support it 🇾🇪👇🏼👇🏼

A thing which I unironically and enthusiastically believe which is unpopular among smart people of my acquaintance: financial engineering has in the recent past and present contributed substantially to human welfare. We should hope to see more of it.

Maybe more geeks need to meet someone who says “My job is teleporting value across time and space.”

Financial engineering is sort of a squishy term. I don’t primarily mean payments infrastructure or financial rails, although both of those involve substantial engineering.

I mean more “We took a thing and performed some alchemy, and now have a new thing.”

Except instead of alchemy it is generally quite a bit of math, a huge amount of contract law and due diligence, often an impressive amount of ops work, and a dusting of technology that web devs would recognize as such.

Today is Jayanti of Ahilyabai Holkar

She was a widow who became Malwa's greatest queen. Defended our country & personally led armies into battle.Never plundered anyone. Developed Malwa into a prosperous kingdom. Rebuilt temples destroyed by Mughals. Built Dharmashalas at Tirthas

Unfortunately, her memory has been blemished by inaccurate representations in modern popular media.

The serial "Punyashlok Ahilyabai" depicts her as ultra secularist feminazi icon who questions Hindu rituals & Pandits while patronising Sufis.

This is far from historical truth!

Ahilyabai was born on May 31 1725 to Patil Mankoji Shinde.

She was from Dhangar clan(classified as OBC today). While Dhangars were traditionally into herding, they took up arms & held several military /civil roles in various eras of history(especially during Maratha resurgence)

In 1737, when she was 12, Ahilyabai Holkar was married to Khanderao , son of Subedar Malhar Rao Holkar.

By the time she was married, fortunes of Holkar family had already waxed.

Malhar Rao was a Subedar of territory comprising 30 Parganas yielding a revenue of at least 7 Lakh

In 1741, when Ahilyabai was newly married, her father -in-law Malhar Rao Built Indore palace & ordered the kanungo to populate the settlement with a promise of protection to traders.

This began rise of Indore from its background as modest trading town Indrapuri to a great city

Beautiful story of Shri Krishna, Mata Rukmini & Satyabhama which teaches the importance of Bhakthi.
Devotion is important than anything.
#bhakthi
🕉
Satyabhama, royal princess was very proud of herself. Rukmini was very humble, her devotion was pure to Shri Krishna.

One day, Rishi Narada( Kalahapriya) arrived in Dwaraka and met Sathyabhama. In between the conversation he hinted that Krishna exhibits affection more to Rukmini than her. Worried Sathyabhama asked what can should be done to gain Krishna's undivided attention.
@SriramKannan77

Narada asked Satyabhama to make a vow, that she will hand over Krishna to him as a slave, if she cannot trade wealth equivalent to Krishna's weight. Narada thus convinces Sathyabhama that Krishna will admire her for sacrificing all her wealth for him.

Sathyabhama was sure that she have enough wealth to balance Krishna.

She went to Krishna and told about her vow to Narada. Krishna patiently listened to her and accepted the challenge. Satyabhama arranged to bring large scales to weigh and brought all her precious jewels.

Krishna patiently sat on one plate of the Scales (tula). Sathyabhama started piling up the gold, jewels on the other plate. She kept adding more and more wealth, but the pan with Krishna did not even budge. Even after keeping all her jewels the scale did not move a little

SRI SWETHA VINAYAGAR, THIRUVALANCHUZHI, KUMBAKONAM
(TN)
#bharatmandir

While main deity is Shiva as Kapartheeswarar, the kshetram is famous for Ganesha, known as Swetha/Vellai Vinayagar (white Vinayak)

During samudra manthan, Vasuki snake (used as rope) started spewing venom.

Unable to bear the intense heat, Devas rushed to Siva. He told them that this was because the task was started without getting Ganesha’s approval.
So the Devas created a Ganesha murti from white sea foam and worshipped it.
It was later taken by Indra to Indralok.
@GunduHuDuGa

But once Indra had to come to Earth to pray to Shiva to seek relief from a curse inflicted on him. So he brought the murti of Ganesha with him. When he came here, he wanted to take bath before puja. So he gave the murti to a boy to hold for sometime. The boy was actually Shiva.

He kept the murti down and vanished. Indra could not lift it again and a divine voice told him to let Vinayagar stay there and visit every Ganesh Chaturthi to pray.
Since Vinayagar is made of foam, no abhishekam is done here. Only punugu is applied n camphor powder is sprinkled