As Kerala faces one of its worst-ever calamities due to torrential rain and floods, claiming at least 114 lives, film celebrities from across India have urged people to come forward and help people in the state.

A stalwart, a poet, a writer, an enlightened mind and a compassionate being leaves this world -- that's how megastar Amitabh Bachchan began his tribute to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose demise has left the nation mourning.

Not many know that BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his father Krishna Bihari Vajpayee had enrolled in for a course in law at the same college in Kanpur. Vajpayee and his father were not only classmates, but also shared room no. 104 in DAV hostel.  “Vajpayee was a very obedient son. He stayed together with his father in the boys’ hostel of the college,” said Vajpayee’s college friend, Ram Mohan Singh, who completed his master’s degree in Political Science with the former Prime Minister.

Hundreds of people queued up this morning outside the residence of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Delhi, to pay their last respects to the departed leader.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that he discussed the flood situation in Kerala with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

An army soldier was killed on Friday in a brief gunfight between the security forces and militants in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district, police said.

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's mortal remains, wrapped in the tricolour, were taken to the BJP headquarters here on Friday for the people to pay their last respects to the departed leader.

As if to indicate the path of extremism the current Hindutva politics is taking, from that of liberal nationalism, veteran politician and statesman, RSS ideologue former PM Atal Bihari Vajapayee breathed his last on Thursday. It had been more than a decade since Vajpayee moved away from active politics and public life. As a mark of liberal politics he stood for, Vajpayee spent almost his last few years in the ICU. But the most troubling fact is, all the contemporaries that had joined hands with him during his heydays, weren’t facing any better time in the party either.