Those who become celebrities these days are men from many fields and of strangest variety, not the rags to riches variety only of earlier decades. A failed student becomes a super star of films, an ex-convict becomes a powerful politician, a womaniser becomes the editor of a national newspaper because he had 'helped someone at some stage. Like the west, everywhere in the world celebrities are manufactured by the media and one celebrity is replaced by another. If we apply moral standards and norms, very few of these celebrities can be accepted as honourable but they dominate the media and enter puritanical homes through television. The evils of capitalism, with its consumerist societies which are in the grip of commercialism and advertisement have become the accepted way of life with no resistance from the former communist countries which have collapsed. At the heart of this commercial culture is advertisement and in the centre of the advertisement of US multinationals now invading India, is a half nude women used to promote the sale of products. It has influenced English journalism to such an extent as to make it embroider pages after pages with the pictures of shameless female models. In this atmosphere, no one should search greatness or great men. It is the era of big men, big men only, the CEO-hero of the American variety in the stories of cascading corporate corruption. As commented in a newspaper, ""The United States of America has long preached corporate governance to the rest of the world and it is somewhat ironic that this corporate Watergate should be unleashed there. Cons are not the exclusive preserve of developing countries."" (Telegraph, Kolkara 9 June 2002).

We can only look at it all with impotent helplessness. The fashions, trends and business ethics (or lack of it) set into motion by USA with the explosively immoral celebrities, have come to stay. in India, a land of culture and spirituality. India is in a ferocious mood to imitate USA, particularly the Indian media, the private television channels and newspapers, mainly the English ones in their brand of sub-standard journalism. All this has created that contraceptively confident female who must wreck social, family, conjugal and her own peace and everyone else's. It is said that when USA sneezes, Europe catches pneumonia. What now is obvious is that India also gets caught in a viral fever of immorality.

Permisiveness and greed of gain predominating, we have no choice except to select for our portraits, excluding Guruji and Mahatma Gandhi and a good man like Gulzarilal Nanda, only big men not great men. The stuffed men, the hollow men T.S. Eliot spoke of, is the starkest reality of our lives.

Astrological analysis must be objective and not dictated by any preconceived norms. Various reasons can be seen for the fame and money earned by those whom we would have condemned as immoral in earlier times. If we forget these moral considerations and concentrate only on those crucial points in their horoscopes showing that concentrated energy of planetary combinations which takes them big men with better talents, abilities and genius the explanation will be clear only astrologically, not otherwise.

Great men are very few in human history and all or most of them are not famous men. In a world without idealism, so much angst, terrorism, aggressive commercialism and elevation of sex to a level of perversion and worship to the exclusion of finer values of human life, one should not search genuine greatness in the most talked of men and women of our age which will be dominated by Bill Clintons and Monica Lewinskys mostly.

Under the impact of the USA and west we live in a consumerist society, where ""I"" and body-centred existence is the accepted reality of human life. Individual and collective indebtedness of a society as in US must be a high percentage, nearly seventy, of its GDP. Simple living and spiritual ideals must vanish from the scene in the vulgarity of consumerism and viagra menace. Why search greatness then? There is bigness of famous men, not known for any greatness which is built up on self abnegation and simplicity.

Big men are too many in contemporary world and they are famous men. By choosing the title ""Famous Men"" we can enlarge the canvas of this book to include the portraits of even notorious criminals like Jaffrey Dahmer or someone who is a terrorist for the world but a hero for some members of his own religion like Osama bin Laden.A sub mediocrity like Khushwant Singh is better known in India than a great man in a country side now in the noxious world of glaring publicity and syndicated columns. The fact to be remembered is that all through human history as it is recorded, mighty men relegate great man to the obscurities of unchronicled histories or folklore and legends...

After producing ""Famous Women"" by only women astrologers released on October 28, 2001 during our astrological convocation by Shrimati Sushma Swaraj, Minister for Information and Broadcasting. Central Government, we had planned two books, entitled ""Famous

Men"" by only male astrologers and ""Famous People which would include famous persons of both sexes to be written by both male and female astrologers.

""Famous Women"" has been described as an ""adhbhut pustak (or a wonderful book) by Smt. Swaraj who is familiar with astrology and has expressed her happiness at the fulfilment of our plan of producing such a book in the International Year of the Empowerment of Women"" in 2000-2001.

The proposed triology of astro-portraits, one on ""Famous Women"" and the second on ""Famous Men"" and the third on ""Famous People"" is part of an overall project of ushering in a new genre of astrological writing in which the horoscopes are analysed deeply and the known authentic facts of the famous men's lives explained through astrological discussion. In doing it, it is necessary to avoid the typical obsession many astrologers have of sticking to the bare facts of a famous life and diving shallowly into an astrological analysis. Compared to what have appeared as astro portraits for many decades, the portraits presented here offer a refreshing difference. To a historian or a serious speaker who wants to know authentic details of the life of a famous man, here he will find some useful facts, all authentic. An astrologer will feel rewarded with the astrological explanation and analysis in these portraits. We have already seen the success of this technique in the book ""Famous Women"". The approach in this book is the same.

The same difficulties, as were faced by the women astrologer writers when they were collecting material for Famous Women came up in collecting right birth details for the horoscopes of these famous men. Astrologers know that it is never easy to get the right horoscopes of famous men for various reasons which can be explained briefly here. But before that a warning about possible plagiarism.

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