The Shiva Temple on Delhi’s Lodhi Road had an almost all-woman crowd on Maha Shivaratri morning. There were only two male exceptions – one was the temple’s priest himself and the other Shashi Tharoor.
Yes, the first engagement of the Minister of State for External Affairs on the day of Maha Shivaratri was a visit to the temple – of course after his routine tryst with treadmill.
And the minister did not forget to tweet about his visit to the shrine. “(I) began (the) day with treadmill and temple – the Lodhi Rd (Road) Shiv Mandir, (a) small, intimate space for worship. (It was) thronged w (with) women. (I) was the only man aprt (apart) frm (from) Pndt (pandit),” he posted in the social networking site, Twitter.
Tharoor made public that it also happened to be his “Nakshatram Birthday”, although he was born on March 9, 1956 according to the Gregorian calendar. Tharoor, however, did not fast on Maha Shivratri, as many of the devotees did. A few hours after visiting the shrine, he attended a lunch hosted by the External Affairs Minister S M Krishna for Foreign Minister of Bahrain – Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Bin Mohamed Al Khalifa. “No fasting on Shivratri, or any other day! Prefer self-restraint to self-denial,” he wrote.
Coincidentally, Tharoor’s tryst with Lord Shiva came just a few days after he took on Shiv Sena and backed Shah Rukh Khan over the controversy on the actor’s new film “My Name is Khan”.
Name of Source: Deccan Herald