'Aki'lles

While aimlessly surfing channels over the weekend I happened to notice an announcement in a evangelist channel regarding a certain '24 hour prayer helpline'. What exactly is a 24 hour prayer helpline? Do you call up and listen to some religious sermons/hymns being played? Or is it a means by which you explain your problem and ask others to pray for you? I am not quite sure. Nonetheless, there must be someone on the other end who has to attend your call, uhmm... a call center to handle this too? Was watching with rapt attention when non-Indian evangelists were preaching, just to see if the telephone numbers listed were Indian, curious to see if outsourcing happens in this holy area too...

The meaningless surfing did finally run into some worthwhile information in one of the channels which happened to be showing the life of Dalai Lama. Apparently, he is one of the few leading religious heads who honestly believes that people of other faiths and practices too can have their place in heaven (if such a place did exist) i.e. they don't have to be necessarily Buddhist to get there. The feature also provided some insight about the great man, his sense of humour and his fascination for science and scientific breakthroughs, unlike other religious heads who are skeptical about science in general.