We brought up our sons to ‘eat everything’, but their mixed genetic inheritance prevailed: one twin took to meat-eating with relish, while the other,… - Shashi Tharoor

The East India Company ensured that both growing opium and selling it were to be British government monopolies. The facts were laid out in an 1838 account: Throughout all the territories within the Company’s jurisdiction, the cultivation of the poppy, the preparation of the drug, and the traffic in it, […] are under a strict monopoly…the growing of opium is compulsory on the part of the ryot. Advances are made by Government through its native servants, and if a ryot refuses the advance, ‘the simple plan of throwing the rupees into his house is adopted; should he attempt to abscond, the peons seize him, tie the advance up in his clothes, and push him into his house. The business being now settled, and there being no remedy, he applies himself, as he may, to the fulfilment of his contract…’14 The evils which the cultivation of opium entails upon our fellow-subjects in India, arise partly from the ryots in the opium districts of Patna and Benares being compelled to give up fixed portions of their lands for the production of the poppy.

"It was as if he had heard what I wanted," she said. But a skilled magician can do that, and it would be wrong to see Sai Baba as a conjurer. He has channeled the hopes and energies of his followers into constructive directions, both spiritual and philanthropic.

हरि स्तुति’ में एक स्त्रोत है, जिसका अर्थ है — “तीनों लोकों के स्वामी विष्णु, जिन्हें शैव शिव के रूप में, वेदान्ती ब्रह्म के रूप में, बौद्ध बुद्ध के रूप में, नैयायिक प्रधान के रूप में, जैन महावीर के रूप में और कर्मकाण्डवादी धर्म-सिद्धान्त के रूप में पूजते हैं, हमारी कामना पूरी करें।