Kala-astami strikes out its hot tongue at LavanyaDeepak ...

Astami itself is considered way bit inauspicious and my late grandfather used to comment "அஷ்டமி நவமி என்ன பண்ணும்?" if some one underestimated its prowess.  And for the most, Kala-Astami (short name of Kalabhairavastami) is considered to have an unparalleled hegemony and unrivaled leadership amongst other Astami's. A few big attacks on Astami on LavanyaDeepak were:

1. Virus Bomb. Neither did the fr***ing AVG nor Inbox.com able halted it and it came right into the Inbox. Interestingly since it was a screensaver application and I don't trust such apps I got VirusTotal to do a scan for it which let the cat out of the bomb. The sender had included around 500 recipients in the same message besides sending one more spam. I have been ransacking my brains and its archived repositories tremendously to see if I could not recall the sender and if I know him/her but to no avail.  So in a good samaritan gesture I chose to 'Reply All' to the disribution regarding the necessity of Scanning proactively with Cloud security systems like VirusTotal, Jotti and Panda Cloud besides resident antivirus systems like AVG, Kaspersky, McAfee etc.
2. Solicitation. One of the recipient involved in the interesting incident outlined (1) was soliciting personal assistance regarding a hacking. Both my Inbox and the relaying Google Mail terms of service prohibited the same. Hence chose to do the following on that solicitation, as a gesture of my good netizenship gesture:
3. 
   
   1. Reported the email to Inbox.com and Google Mail along with my advise to the recipient list. 
   2. Advised regarding forum posting guidelines. Not sure whether the direct recipient would be able to understand it but at least it would be useful for others.
4. Catastrophic showers of disgusting words on me and my sister. In such incidents my normal gesture and advise would be to put sugar in the mouth of the person who scolds that way because in scolding that way the person's tongue would have got bitter.  Neither of us are bothered about such bad showers. We have come all along covering a lot of such similar trials and tribulations of life. But I would just like to share a small story from the life of Gautama Buddha for the benefit of everyone:
   
   
   When I don't accept your offering ...

   
   
   Once Buddha set out to seek alms. He was approaching a village where there were a number of devotees of Buddha. At that time, some wicked persons confronted him on the way and abused Buddha in various ways. Buddha sat on a rock nearby without proceeding with his journey. He addressed his traducers: "Dear children, what is the pleasure you derive from abusing me?" Without giving the reasons, they continued abusing him in worse terms. Buddha sat down saying, "If abusing me gives you pleasure, enjoy yourselves." Exhausted by their abuse, they were preparing to leave. At that time, Buddha told them, "I stayed here all the time because if I had gone to the village, my devotees there would not have spared you, if you had indulged in all this abuse before them. It is to save you from this calamity that I had put up with all your abuse, given you a free rein and stayed here."
   
   "If we want to please others, we have to do many things and even spend a lot of money. I am happy that today without incurring any expense or taking any trouble I could give so much pleasure to all of you! What a fine day for me!" exclaimed Buddha. "You have derived joy from abusing me. So, I am the cause of your joy. I have given you satisfaction thereby. To bring comfort and happiness to people, many build choultries, dig wells, or do other charitable acts. But without undertaking any of these acts, I have been able to give great satisfaction to these evil-minded men. This is a great achievement, indeed," observed Buddha.
   
   Buddha also brought home to them another lesson. He asked one of them: "Child! A beggar comes to your house asking for alms: 'Blessed mother, give me food!' You bring some food. If the beggar says, 'This is not the alms I asked for, and I will not accept it,' what will you do?" The man replied: "I will keep back the offering." Buddha said: "In the same manner, you attempted to offer me the alms (biksha) of your abuse. I did not accept it. To whom does it belong? It remains with you. So, you have only abused yourself, not me," said Buddha.
   
   If a registered letter is addressed to some one, who declines to receive it, the postal department will deliver it back to the sender. Similarly, if you criticise someone or hate somebody, if the other person remains unaffected and unperturbed, your criticism and hatred come back to you. Jealousy and hatred do more harm to those who entertain these feeling than to those towards whom these are expressed.

Just thought I would share these experiences of Kala-astami. I have once seen another moral in Shozhinganallur Pratyankara Devi temple. When some one scolds or abuses you, allow them to do it without any let or hindrance for they partake and offer to shoulder your sins giving you in return the result of their good deeds if any.