tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74487409536099044302024-03-19T14:17:31.498+05:30Blissful NirvanaNirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.comBlogger677125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-2992682349704412822023-10-10T14:45:00.003+05:302023-10-10T14:45:25.751+05:30From ‘Henna for the Broken-Hearted. When the search for meaning takes you all the way to India’ by Sharell Cook<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Indians can be extremely adjustable or extremely stubborn, depending
on the perception of power. Rules are created or bent at will to suit
situations. Definitions of right and wrong are never absolute, and instead
depend on the context and the desired outcome.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In India, it was hard to get the most straightforward tasks
done, amid systems that were confusing to learn.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………beauty of India is that there’s always a positive to the
negative, if you take the time to notice it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was another common Indian trait to always find an excuse
and never admit liability.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Indian culture lacked not only privacy, but also equality.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I soon discovered that southern Indians were particularly
enthusiastic head-wobblers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Poverty-stricken, overburdened and uncivilised, most of Uttar
Pradesh isn’t welcoming to visitors. The state is home to the Taj Mahal and
Varanasi, two of the most popular tourist destinations in India. Yet, most of
it consists of rural farming land that is unable to support the largest population,
of almost 200 million inhabitants, in India. Crime, lack of education,
unemployment and ‘eve teasing’ (sexual harassment of women) plagues the state. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……..after taking another bus from the border, we arrived in
Kathmandu………. The atmosphere was noticeably different in Nepal. Despite being a
very poor country, a certain dignity was apparent. People greeted me with a ‘Namaste’.
Staring was minimal. And there were no rude comments ………<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why was it so impossible for anything to go to plan in
India?<o:p></o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-44597222851297943942023-10-10T14:24:00.003+05:302023-10-10T14:24:58.994+05:30From ‘….and then you're dead ! 47 reasons to start living your life’ by Jim Rai<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Take good care of your knees<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our greatest danger in life, is not that our aim is too
high, and we miss it but that it is too low and we reach it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Michelangelo<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Look after your gums<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dear Optimist, Pessimist and Realist, While you were busy
arguing about the glass of water, I drank it!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sincerely, The Opportunist.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you don’t ask, then the answer is always “no!”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Andre Gide ………….”Man cannot discover new oceans unless he
has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Two important things in life; never compromise on the
quality of a good mattress and good shoes, because if you’re not in one, you’re
always in the other.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Listen to sit properly, keep your posture upright – look
after your back.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do not continually use and breathe in cleaning products and
detergents<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Capture your grandparents’ history on tape as it will be
lost once they have gone.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Stretch for five minutes every morning.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Taking lemon and probiotics daily is great for the digestive
system.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Cut out the white bread and white sugar.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Use almond or mustard oil and give yourself a body massage
twice a month.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Einstein once defined insanity as “Doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting different results.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you are in a hard water area, install a water softener –
the difference is amazing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose
shade you don’t expect to sit.” – <b>A Greek proverb.</b><o:p></o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-16118278375403382182023-08-10T17:58:00.002+05:302023-08-10T17:58:56.015+05:30From ‘Delhi. Mostly Harmless. One women's vision of the city’ by Elizabeth Chatterjee<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It is a truth universally acknowledged that nobody who lives
there, nobody at all, has much good to say about Delhi. ……it is one of the
world’s great unloved destinations. Its inhabitants, Dilliwallas, take a
perverse pride in complaining about it. At best they tolerate it. At worse,
some despise it with the fire of a thousand June suns. In his novel <i>Delhi</i>
(1990), the irascible Khushwant Singh describes how the city appears to a
stranger:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">a gangrenous accretion of noisy
bazaars and mean-looking hovels growing round a few tumble-down forts and
mosques along a dead river … [T]he stench of raw sewage may bring vomit to his
throat.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">- and he’s a fan.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sure, there have been writers who praise the city’s
magnificent imperial past as the heart of Mughal civilization. But they lament
its subsequent decline into Punjabi aggression and consumerist bling. Others
damn it with faint praise …………..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Delhi’s inhabitants are scarcely more popular…..According to
stereotype….New Yorkers are foulmouthed, over-caffeinated snobs. Parisians are
viciously rude and dipsomaniacal sexual deviants (if exquisitely dressed).
Londoners are famously grumpy, as territorial and hostile to eye contact as
feral dogs ………Other Indians are just as brutal in stereotyping Dilliwallas. In
this bitchy vision……it is a city of touts, thugs, gluttons, brats, voyeurs,
hustlers, crooked politicians, suits, pencil-pushers, pimps, perverts – every
kind of sinner. Khushwant Singh again:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">They spit….; they urinate and
defecate whenever and wherever the urge overtakes them; they are loud-mouthed,
express familiarity with incestuous abuse and scratch their privates while they
talk.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Many migrants……can become more Indian than the Indians,
militantly committed to a very particular idea of India. And ordinarily, no
community is more militant about this cultural preservation than the Bengalis.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In India, the ‘Bongs’ are stereotyped as braining dweebs……Bengalis
are bespectacled, soft-handed and sweet-toothed intellectuals, most often to be
found spouting leftwing political philosophy late into the night. The only
thing they love more than fish is arguing, and the only thing they don’t argue
about is Bengali culture: they are utterly convinced that their language,
literature and brains are the greatest in all world history.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But in London my grandfather’s plucky Bengali spermatozoa
encountered my grandmother. In this formidable Finnish ice-hockey player with a
taste for bespectacled brown men half her height, he met his match. The two
nationalities could not be more different. Bengal is muggy, filled with
mangrove swamps at one end and the hilly tea plantations of Darjeeling at the
other; Finland is flat and icy. The population of the Kolkata metropolitan area
alone is almost three times the entire population of Finland; its population
density is a thousand times greater. The Bengalis chatter and eat sweets and
dodge sport; the Finns ski in grumpy silence. The two share only a depressing
handful of things: the aforementioned love of fish, the ability to survive
sauna conditions, and a disproportionate propensity to commit suicide.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But we never visited India. My father had been, and assured
us it wasn’t worth it. He told tales of despotic relatives, diarrhoea and
magpie-sized cockroaches………<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….there is a lot of money in Delhi – and I mean a <i>lot</i>.
You can almost smell it in the air: the warm and faintly sweaty vegetable smell
of old paper money.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….its frontier town reputation: that beneath the veneer of
universities and galleries lurks a semi-wilderness of casual violence,
opportunism, machismo, and enormous self-made fortunes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The upshot of this moneyed ferment is that house prices, and
increasingly rents, are becoming more and more expensively bubbly, hitting
Manhattan or even Moscow levels.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………..Aravind Adiga’s <i>The White Tiger</i> (2008) advises,
China leads India on all metrics,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0cm;">except that you don’t have
entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity,
sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy or
punctuality, does have entrepreneurs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……….a 2011 Credit Suisse survey suggested Indians typically
spend 7.5 percent of their income on education, ahead of the Chinese, Russians
and Brazilians.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……….India has only 1 percent of the world cars, and 10
percent of the world’s road deaths.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The toilets of the French, Britain’s historical enemy, are
mere holes in the ground, which emit a terrible stench of cheese and surrender.
Japanese toilets sing and vibrate and spurt unexpected jets of water; German
toilets contain a sinister tray to catch and inspect turds; all Australian
toilets are rusty outside dunnies full of poisonous animals.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">‘………It’s a formality. Paperwork. Just like a buffalo needs
grass, the government needs paper.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> - </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Tarun J. Tejpal, <i>The Story of My Assassins</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…………transfer of the capital from Calcutta to New Delhi,
during the spectacular imperial coronation durbar of 1911…………. Delhi was in the
boondocks, deprived of water and full of fever. Former viceroy Lord Curzon, a
Calcutta fan, felt moved to condemn it in London’s House of Lords as ‘a mass of
deserted ruins and graves.’………..Delhi presented to visitors ‘the most sorrowful
picture you can conceive of the mutability of human fortunes.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Like the elephant India is, in the words of a longstanding
foreign correspondent on his way out, ‘a country easier to describe than to
explain, and easier to explain than to understand.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Travel is glamorous only in retrospect<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> - </span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Paul Theroux<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….there’s a venerable tradition of not doing a whole lot in
India. Its no accident that one of India’s most famous exports, meditation, is
basically about boredom. It means taking that grey husk of frustration and
tedium and repetition, and enclosing yourself in it, exploring its corners,
until its something like bliss.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Clumps of bored young men – they are almost always men – are
ubiquitous. They ‘hang out’, smoke bidis, snack, drink tea, drink booze, piss
on walls, do odd jobs, wander around, mutter and whistle and sing to one
another. At college they are loud and lascivious and obnoxious. In the parks
they blast cellphone love songs and hold hands and lie in each other’s laps (macho
Indian behavior is more overtly homoerotic than its English equivalent). They
stand around watching their friends work, lounging against walls, sprawled over
the city.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I watch them sidelong, they stare at me. These sleazy and
occasionally aggressive young men, purveyors of sexual harassment, are
flippantly termed ‘roadside Romeos.’ They are everywhere and they are threatening.
Often they leer and catcall at passers-by………Everywhere they seek to dominate
space. Boredom, anger, fear. It shapes the city’s psychogeography.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……….as in so many countries, is a dangerously large and
disaffected group who are really, really bored with the status quo. And prices
are rising. There are considerably more young men than women around. Cities
everywhere tend to attract more men, and in North India’s patriarchal rural
regions women are scarcer still. And all the time, Delhi’s wealth is in their
face……….India’s population may be surprisingly unrevolutionary – but as <i>The
Economist</i> wrote recently, perhaps the country’s rich ‘might want to pay
their security guards a little more, though. Just in case.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Be afraid. Be very afraid.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the same way that Spain has a handy way with bulls and
America with portion sizes, Indians excel at festivals.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Admittedly in my Indian travels around I have encountered a
crocodile, cobras (twice), giant venomous spiders, moonshine, wild dogs, a
scorpion, a convicted stalker, homemade guns, angry monkeys, angry bulls, angry
camels, a Mach 6 earthquake, and a short circuit that exploded a lightbulb and
sent fan blades whirling at my head. I have been escorted by the military
through an armed uprising, and drunk tea with a group of opium-addled
headhunters – skull-collectors rather than especially extreme corporate
recruiters – who had facial tattoos to show they’d succeeded in carrying off a
head or two. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(They were friendly enough,
but their children threw rocks at me.) I’ve also been given warnings of varying
degrees of plausibility about the dangers presented by to me personally by
black bears, Islamist terrorists, tigers, fake gurus, wildfires, striking
transport workers, leopards, bandits, corrupt policemen, bull sharks, wild
elephants, Maoists, tsunamis, Pakistan, disgruntled cricket fans, and the
metre-long flesh-eating turtles released into the Ganges to help dispose of
half-burned corpses.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have encountered precisely one of these in Delhi: the
earthquake.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….murder. Other countries challenging India as new emergent
powers on the global scene include Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and Nigeria.
Big cities in all four of these are far more dangerous than Delhi. Latin
American cities are in an entirely different league of violence. A widely
covered study published in early 2013 showed that five of the ten cities with
the world’s highest murder rates are Mexican, and fourteen of the fifty worst
are in Brazil. Four cities in South Africa and the United States also feature
in the top fifty, but not a single Indian city. In 2011, the homicide rate per 100,000
residents in Delhi was 2.7, versus 20.7 in Philadelphia and 58 in New Orleans.
That’s a rate not so different to London. Reassuring conclusion: you’re <i>extremely</i>
unlikely to be murdered.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Indian men – and, dare I say it, especially Delhi men – are
notorious for their stalkerish tendencies. Rare is the woman, Western or
Indian, who has not been pestered far, far beyond the point of flattery.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..estimated 23,000 rape cases are stuck in the judicial
system. In 2011 its chief justice reported that of the Delhi High Court was
lagging 466 years behind schedule, despite the fact that it considers each case
for an average of only four minutes and 55 seconds. ‘It’s a completely
collapsed system,’ the prominent advocate Prashant Bhushan was quoted as
saying. ‘This country only lives under the illusion that there is a judicial
system.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">‘Hinduism respects women,’ one of my interviewees said, in
yet another of those answers that seems puzzling in retrospect, given our
interview was about pylons.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….Indians do not distribute pleases and thank-yous with the
same wantonness (and insincerity) as the British.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……..Mark Twain, I ‘never did succeed in making those idiots
understand their own language.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….visually India is a graffiti wall. Across the country
different languages have different alphabets. Gujarati is crimped and hatless,
Bengali has gnarled runes, while the east coast’s Oriya (Odia) appears to made
up of cartoon Cubist faces…………Southern scripts have more curves ………Tamil is all
jalebi whorls, Kannada whorls with eyebrows, Malayalam McDonalds logos……..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">India might just be the one big place where the internet has
yet to vanquish the power of print.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nizamuddin is one of the Delhi’s more schizophrenic
neighbourhoods. It is named after the great Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya, and
simultaneously manages to host a urine-tinged railway station, a rather
covetable residential area, and a series of grubby chattering alleys of staring
eyes and pirate DVDs………at the end of these alleys is the saint’s shrine, and a
host of other tombs – including that of Inayat Khan, bearer of Sufism to London
and the father of a glamorous British spy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sufism is a mystical, ascetic brand of Islam, which over the
centuries fused bits and bobs of magic and other devotional traditions with Quranic
meditation ………..It welcomes all faiths; people of all religions visit to pray
for favours……The <i>dargah</i> is an oddly welcoming mausoleum, an onion-domed
and pillared shelter for the coloured tomb inside.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At a conference in Delhi I met a Nigerian who was studying
in Pune (near Mumbai – even more famous for its intolerance to migrants). She
spoke of insults in the street, of strangers touching her hair uninvited, and
how no Indian student would be seen hanging out with her. Nepalis are
stereotyped; Tibetan refugees are put in preventive detention……Nor is racism
confined to foreigners. Migrants from Bihar are mocked as crude, alien and
endlessly breeding……….Poor Muslims are accused of being ‘Bangladeshi
infiltrators,’ Kashmiris suspected of being terrorists, and everyone is judged
by how dark they are. All this is complicated by caste……Northeasterners face
particular discrimination, the beautiful Nagamese wife of a rugby player told
me: constantly asked for ID, called ‘chinki’ – an insult recently made
punishable with imprisonment – and treated as outsiders. In 2007, the Delhi
police produced the infamous <i>Security Tips for Northeast Students/Visitors
in Delhi</i>. ‘Dress code: When in rooms do as Roman does,’ it instructs, cryptically.
It goes on to warn Northeasterners against ‘creating ruckus’ by cooking their
‘smelly dishes.’ Boy does Delhi know how to win over the already disenchanted
margins…… The Nagas have become justly famous for their linguistic skills – ‘the
air is full of them!’ a middle-aged man told me, glaring at the plane’s
stewardesses – and all spoke four or five languages. But in the village there
was little employment, crap roads, no electricity …………<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That India smells is a motif almost as classic as its
spirituality………..Blogs burst with horrified ramblings of travellers who have
forgotten their nose pegs. They complain about the smell of urine-soaked walls
and beaches covered in (human) turds. They complain about garlicky body odour
on public transport and rotting garbage in the heat. They complain about the
smell of cow dung, rivers of raw sewage, and offal around the Old Delhi
butchers………… But I think India’s stinkiness is seriously overplayed………the first
condition of understanding a foreign place is to smell it……….The problem is
that modernity is anti-smell. It might even be anti-nose entirely………’Civilisation’
means freeing us from streams of shit in the street, oniony dinner-table burps,
flatulent beasts……..Instead the world is scrubbed clean and neutered. Our workspaces
are chilled, food wrapped, flowers scentless, armpits deodorized, sewage safely
sealed on the other side of the U-bend. Noses dormant, retired like old
hound-dogs………..our noses are ignored, except perhaps at mealtimes, and when
they choose to dribble in the winter.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In India the nose is restored to its queenly place.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………..The glorious flat burnt smell of rain on hot dry earth
called <i>manvasanai</i> in Tamil, in English its little-known but evocative
name is ‘petrichor’ ………..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On one hand, bad smells play a potent role in upper-caste,
prejudice: traditional ‘untouchable’ work often involved ‘unclean’ substances
with unpleasant smells, like blood, corpses, leatherwork or human waste. Once
again, smell, disgust and bigotry appear closely linked. ………Pleasant or
auspicious smells are offered up to the gods…..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Journalist and professional sociopath A.A.Gill wrote, ‘If
New York is a wise guy, Paris a coquette, Rome a gigolo and Berlin a wicked
uncle, then London is an old lady who mutters and has the second sight. She is
slightly deaf, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.’ Delhi, then, might be an
ageing tsarina: ruthless, capricious, avaricious, paranoid – and fond of bright
colours, pretty trinkets, and sex scandals. Like all grandes dames, she’s
showy, cash-splurging, hard to love, easy to photograph. Or perhaps, given her
recent reinvention, she’s more like a nouveau riche socialite – exactly as
above but on Twitter. The whole city jangles with theatricality, bling and the
so-bad-its-good.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-17191841552316742172023-07-31T16:28:00.000+05:302023-07-31T16:28:15.061+05:30From ‘With Cyclists around the world’ by Adi B Hakim, Jal P Bapasola, Rustom B Bhumgara<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal">(circumnavigating the world on bicycles from 15 October 1923
to 18 March 1928)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is a saying current about Multan ……Dust, heat, beggars
and cemeteries are the four specialities of Multan.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……….mountainous territory of British Baluchistan. It is
bounded on the north by Afghanistan and by Persia on the west. The whole
country is rocky and barren as if condemned to eternal sterility. The mountains
in the district provide unique fastnesses to the tribes of dacoits and
marauders who infest them with impunity. With insecurity of life and property,
it is not surprising that this district is economically poor and otherwise
backward. Pax Britannica is almost unknown beyond a radius of 20 miles from
Quetta, the capital. Civilization has scarcely encroached upon this region. Law
is honoured more in breach than in obedience. The sturdy race in this territory
is a race of born-fighters. Accustomed to fight for life at every moment of
their existence, the law of survival of the fittest seems to have asserted
itself here completely…….We had three enemies to contend within the course of
our travel through Baluchistan – mountains, marauders, and intense cold.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……….every inspection bungalow throughout the wild
Baluchistan has some tale of its own to tell. Almost all of them were scenes of
murder some time or the other. Inspection bungalows furnished little security
against the ferocity of the Baluchi dacoits….. Cattle-lifting – horses included
– was an art in which the Baluchi thief, through continuous practice, had
acquired singular perfection. Horse stables, therefore, were a standing
invitation to the Baluchi brigand to try his technique and passing a night in
this stable was simply inviting otherwise avoidable trouble.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Flesh and blood indeed seems very cheap in this
semi-barbarous region of Baluchistan. Curious customs and beliefs that cause us
to shudder prevail in this country. Even the sacred institution of marriage is
reduced to a form of trafficking in women. The average price of a bride varies
from Rs 500 to Rs 2000, according to the beauty of the bride. Divorce is easy
and cheap, if not free. The husband who feels ‘fed up’ with his wife has only
to leave her again at her father’s place. Nor does her father look upon this as
a necessary evil. The divorce is a source of income to him. The divorced
daughter is put up for auction. The suitor who bids the highest gets the girl.
When he in his turn finds that the charm of novelty has vanished, he divorces
her; once again the poor wife is auctioned. Each additional divorce enhances
the price of the poor creature.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The ties of filial affection are scarcely visible here. Just
as the father without compunction auctions the daughter, so is the son anxious
to hear about the death of his father. No sooner his ‘old man’ dies than the
son, the heir and legal representative , inherits everything, including his
mother. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At Kachhar we find the Pathans of the Kachhar tribes who are
a ferocious race with devilish features. Some of these Kachhar tribes are
religious fanatics. They believe in the attainment of heaven through the murder
of kafirs or infidels, all persons not professing their faith are considered
infidels……..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..Ziarat, a summer resort for well-to-do and nothing-to-do
inhabitants of Quetta.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……mode of life in Baluchistan…..a man according to the
Mohammedan law is entitled to marry four wives, but many of the important
preliminaries of the marriage are gone through by proxy…….the bridegroom…..a
pawn in the game. The bridegroom is neither consulted in the choice of the
bride nor as a rule does he see his bride before the betrothal ceremony…….the
father of the bride is always careful to receive half the portion of the
selling price of the bride strictly in advance before the betrothal. After the
ceremony, the bridegroom is permitted to visit his fiancée; as a rule he does
not wait for his marriage for the enjoyment of marital privileges. It is a
peculiar custom in these regions and is not regarded as immorality. Only on
payment of the full price, or whatever you may choose to call it, is the date
for the marriage fixed……. In the event of the death of the bride before the
marriage or nikah, half the price paid is refunded to the bridegroom.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The main tribes in Baluchistan are Kakars, Khetrans, Musa
Khels, Dumars, Tarins, Saiyads, and Lunis. The masses live in villages of usual
Pathan style – mud houses piled up in clusters without the remotest thought to
plans and architectural designs. There is prevalent amongst the masses another
curious custom relating to hospitality, which fortunately now is fast
disappearing. The members of the Sazar Khels, Zakhphels, Dumars, and Pachis
tribes consider it an obligation of hospitality to permit a grown-up girl of
the family to associate with their guests for the satisfaction of his grosser
self. The pernicious conservatism in this respect is so deep-rooted that in the
absence of a suitable girl or woman in the family the host procures a girl from
his relatives or friends by way of a loan……we may mention here that from the
information we derived from various sources we found this crude notion of
hospitality was confined to a few tribes only, though many of them have now
begun to realize the perverted mentality underlying this custom………….the way in
which …..food is prepared is equally remarkable. There is a proverb amongst the
Persians something to the effect that it would be wise for a man not to see the
place where his food is cooked……We had a peep at the cuisine of a host of
ours………..usual procedure is to kindle a fire using the dried excreta of goats
and other animals. The dough is then spread out on a hot stone and without much
precaution the stone is shoved into the fire; thus particles of the excretion
stick to the bread …..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Quetta is in many respects a pleasant city. Situated at an
altitude of 5,500 ft above the sea level, it has a salubrious climate except
perhaps in winter, when the barometer often registers a fall below the freezing
point………it has a pleasant summer and a picturesque springtime. The winter is at
times exceptionally severe.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Generally the roads in Persia are as safe as roads in any country
in the West.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Persians are a very polite nation and very well known
for their hospitality………The Persians have a high opinion about the Parsi
community in India. They imagine that every Parsi who comes to Persia comes for
floating a company or undertaking some other commercial enterprise…….. women in
Persia very seldom move out without their purdah or veil. This dates back to
the times of lawlessness and disorder once prevalent in Persia, when men
carried both their lives and their wives in hand. Nobody’s pretty sister or
wife was ever safe from the rapacious attention of the highway marauder or what
was as bad as that being, the licentious officials of the town. Though the
causes that led to the adoption of the purdah system have largely disappeared,
the purdah still remains. With certain orthodox Persians the system of purdah
is so rigidly observed that none, save the husband, is permitted to lift the
veil off the face of the woman.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..Baghdad…..A large number of Hindus and Mohammedans are
seen here engaged in government or railway services though now a days the
Indian is ousted and way made for the local inhabitants.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Cairo, the Egyptian metropolis was humming with throng and
activities. The honk of the cars, the hum of the tramcars, the creeking of the
cart wheels, the none too polite language of the hack-victoria driver when he
finds his progress impeded, the brawls at toddy shops – all vest Cairo with a
marked resemblance to Bombay.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our journey from Brindisi to Naples………it totally destroyed
the high opinion we held about European countries in general. The roads were
bad, houses awful and the people dirty. Little urchins ran about streets as if
they were nobody’s children. They wore tattered clothes that bore blots and
patches of grease, dirt, soot, mud and everything, and wherefrom a stench of
the most unbearable type ensued. No doubt the poverty of the Italian peasants
is one reason for the wretched state of existence and social backwardness they
are found in. But every allowance being made for economic backwardness one
feels a conclusion would hardly be inevitable that the people of Southern Italy
as a rule prefer to wear unclean attires to decent ones….. The hotels [<i>in
Italy</i>] were little better than the serais of Persia. Both harboured teeming
colonies of all imaginable types of vermin; both were receptacles for filth,
ire, refuse and all that nobody in the town seemed to need.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The less we refer to the costumes of the Southern Italian
peasants the better for your appetite. …..the necktie, which always seemed to
have served more than one owner and which invariably was the dirtiest piece in
their dirty attire…….The manners of the Italian peasant are none too winning.
At times while we were seated at our meals, some rustic would occupy a chair at
the same table, pushing our chairs aside without the least courtesy of politely
asking us to make room for him. Some other rustic, not content with such rude
intrusion, would seek to converse with us – not politely asking permission to
introduce himself, but rudely knocking the toes of his feet against ours. Then
he would ask us from what country we came and without waiting for a reply ask
us if we were Americans or Belgians, Germans, Austrians, or inhabitants of any
country which found a place within his limited geography……We were much pestered
by the idly curious people. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When we used to talk French we were mistaken for the
Frenchmen. When we corrected the error saying we came from India, we could
perceive a vacant gaze on their faces. Evidently the peasant of Italy does not
know where India is or whether India is an island or a lake or a small town or
a continent!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The houses tenanted by such a people could not be very
attractive. The streets were narrow, dirty and ill-drained. The rows of houses
were not regular, some houses starting forward, others receding backward, some
tottering, some leaning against a neighbourhood tenement as if for support,
some damaged, many lacking repairs and all dirt. Many streets were nothing
short of a maze of dirty squalid buildings, with unwholesome smell steaming
from the surface, swarming with half-nude urchins and ‘whole worlds of dirty
people.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the first day of our journey from Brindisi we covered 60
miles. There was not a signboard or a milestone to tell us the distance.
…..with the roads getting worse and worse.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is a proverb ‘see Naples and die.’ We have seen Naples
and we do not understand what the proverb means. There is not much to be seen
in the city itself though the environments are interesting, historically.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As George-Stillman Hillard says, ‘By day the Coliseum is an
impressive fact; by night it is a stately vision. By day it is a lifeless form;
by night a vital thought.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">‘The Swiss people,’ says an author, ‘are the Dutch of the
mountains, the same cold, unimaginative, money-seeking, yet vigorous,
determined, energetic people.’ While we came across many with a canine
intelligence, always eager to knock a little dough out of the tourist, on the
whole they were more cleanly, mannerly and kind than the Italians. The Swiss
people follow mainly agricultural vocations and still retain their rustic
simplicity.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The rude attire of the villagers and the poverty-striken
appearance of the towns bore testimony to Austria’s departed prosperity.
Austria had evidently not recovered from the setback she received in the World
War and one doesn’t know how long it will take her to attain to her pre-war
eminence…..Lax morality is perhaps but a necessary concomitant of dire poverty.
Due to stark poverty, one finds a number of women and girls in streets, soliciting
at times with a persistence that rouses at once our pity and anger. Vienna with
a population of 2000,000 people ranks fourth in the list of largest cities in
the continent. Vienna has all the attractions that go with the large cities…….<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungary is less densely populated than Austria, as the
comparatively larger distance between the villages indicates. The cultivation
of the land is rude and the population poor.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Various writers have spoken of Holland discouragingly.
Phillip II defined it as ‘the country nearest to hell.’ But out of that
uninhabitable tract, the patience and perseverance of the Hollanders created a
beautiful country, though artificial. Nature has denied to this land most of
her blessings. Holland had miles of sand and clay and barren soil. The Hollanders
imported fertile soil and made her plains smile with abundant harvest. Holland
was denied iron and coal; Hollanders imported these and constructed a beautiful
country. The unfavourable position of the country costs her very much. A huge
army of engineers and labourers continually stand sentinel over the dikes to
see that no breach is made by the enemy……<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..London is not the capital of England alone; it is the
most important city in the world, with perhaps a rival only in New York…….display
of wealth and display of poverty, display of the brilliance side by side with
display of drabness. Wherever we turned out gaze we saw men, women and children……
Here west is mingled with the east, falsifying Kipling’s prophecy ‘East is East
and West is West. And never the twain shall meet.’ There is the Englishman who
is all silk and starch; the factory operative all black and grease; the
Chinaman with his peering almond eyes; the Japanese with his high cheek bones;
the Lascer with his weather-beaten face; the Arab in long robes; the Hindu
Westernized but Easterner; the Persian beautiful and white; the African with
curly hair and white teeth; Princes, Dukes, Earls, Counts, Lords and Knights;
Chinese coffee houses, Jewish synagogues; tourists chatting; foreigners
enjoying; endless miles of buses, taxis, Rolls Royces and Fords, headlamp to
tail-lamp, tail-lamp to head-lamp, one undending line…….streets and miles of
streets<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In England one can be sure of anything but the weather. One does
not know when the brief spell of bright weather will yield place to rains. In fact
the whimsical weather is given first preference in all dialogues.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Iowa’s Lake District stands favourably in comparison with
lake districts of Switzerland and England. In some districts there are
thousands of lakes many of which make a landscape off enchanting beauty at all
hours of the day. Sunsets in these regions are glorious. They reveal nature in
one of her most sublime and dazzling aspects, but alas, with so few of God’s
creatures to admire her.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……..we were promenading about some unfrequented quarter of
the ship watching the billows as one bigger than the rest swept across the
deck, we found several Japanese girls taking their bath in the open with not an
inch of clothing. What was more, on seeing us as they exhibited neither
discernment nor surprise, regarding us with total indifference. In fact, they
stood enjoying their bath. Experience in Japan later on, showed us that the Japanese
regards his bath as a function to be performed open to the public gaze and
whether there be crowds or none, it does not make material difference to him.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Japan like China is a topsey-turvy land, at least as the
foreigner sees it. The Japanese appear to do things in an upside-down manner.
Babies are carried slung across the back and not in front in arms as we do; the
baby is considered a year old on the day it is born, so that the child born on
the last day of the year is reckoned two years old, the next day; their books
are read commencing at the back in lines running vertical; footnotes are placed
at the top and not at the bottom of the page; they build the roofs of the house
first and then construct the sides; they shudder at the immodesty of the scanty
dress of Miss America, but enjoy a mixed bathing with men without clothes in
the same hot spring; their theatres are without seats; their drawing rooms are
without chairs; their dining rooms without forks, spoons, table cloths and
tumblers; belching while dining is height of good manners; the houses have
paper walls; they call bed, and rest their head on a pillow of wood; their
cherries have no stones; oranges no pips, and the bells have no tongues; their
screws work in reverse way, their locks open the reverse way and their ships
are beached stern foremost; women blacken their teeth instead of whitening them;
the babies are solemn like men; and the men are like babies, simple. The
Japanese are born grown-up and remain children all their lives; their cab-men
are cab-horses too; and common horses are quite uncommon; the Japanese baby
never washes with soap and never gets kisses; Japanese have buttons three
inches long; but no button-holes; their domestic servants are honoured, and
merchants are regarded as outcasts; on entering your room you take off your
boots and not your hat; and if it is hot, your host removes the front of the
house for your benefit; the Japanese sells his goods to pay his debts as all
debts must be paid of before New Year Day so that he can start contracting
debts afresh; some of their temples are more famous for the beautiful groves of
cherry-trees than their Gods. The Japanese wife gives precedence to her
husband; it is place <i>aux</i> homes for place <i>aux</i> dames in Japan; the
Japanese on receiving a guest bows several times instead of one; and the call
of a visitor extends anything from 5 to 10 hours.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The love of flowers is the most predominating sentiment in
the Japanese race.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Though the Japanese house is scantily furnished it
invariably bears evidence of tender loving care bestowed upon it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But ‘Japan is a man’s country where women are regarded as
conveniences.’ In this respect Japan is antipodes of America which is a woman’s
country where men are regarded as conveniences either carrying women’s poodles
or furnishing defendants in divorce suits. But in Japan the woman is an
obedient slave. Ever since she was tiny mite playing shuttlecock with her next
brother-baby slung across her back, she is taught obedience to father while a
child, obedience to husband while a wife and obedience to a grown-up son while
a mother.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Japanese trader has unfortunately an evil repute. Deception
is his monopoly mainly, though the rickshaw boy has made encroachments upon it.………..His
vocation has endowed him with a sturdy physique. No ordinary man can draw a
rickshaw for miles like a horse and yet bear a smile on his face at the end of
the journey.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He does not take his religion very seriously. Often Japanese
is both a Shintoist and a Buddhist. Buddhism has found favour in Japan as it
did not preach any dogma conflicting with any principle of the Shinto religion.
It is supplementary in character. The gods are common; the temples of both
faiths are often found side by side and often managed by the same priests. There
are very few pure Shintoists or pure Buddhists in Japan…….Broadly speaking,
writes an author ‘the peasantry are rather Shintoist than Buddhist, the Samurai
and town people rather Buddhist than Shintoist in their faith; while the
literature are mostly indifferentists.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Koreans though in such proximity of China and Japan do
not resemble either the Chinese or the Japanese in their attire or mode of life…The
Koreans fume and fret at Japanese domination, not without good cause.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Strange as it may seem, the inhabitants of the Hermit
Kingdom as a rule are exceedingly courteous to foreigners though their land has
been brought into contact with the outside world in very recent times…..Koreans
are a gay people when they are out to enjoy life, and if the thermometer
indicated 7 degrees below the freezing point, to them it mattered little……The
Koreans are courteous and realize the language difficulty of the foreigners,
hence they are always eager to learn from gestures and facial expressions of
their guests of honour what they desire to convey……the unfailing courtesy of
the Koreans manifest itself towards the foreigner in many ways…….the average
Korean is habituated to talk loudly. Talking loudly is height of good manners
in Korea; Koreans have good lungs………a trait of the Korean character, which
strikes even a casual observer, and that is filial devotion……….most curious in
Korea is perhaps an incomprehensible tradition that sons of the noble families
or the Yangban as they are called must not work for livelihood. A nobleman may
beg, but working, bah, that would be below his dignity………..we felt sorry for leaving
a quaint nation behind us, which displayed, in spite of all its quaintness, an
innate good nature.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….Manchus differ physignomically much from the Chinese of
the south, being also taller and better built than the people whom they
subjugated.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……some of the natives take pride in partaking of a special
dish. This consists of little mice dipped alive in honey and eaten while yet life
is not extinct from the poor creatures. If Japanese eat live fish, it is no surprise
the Chinaman should go one better and take a delight in devouring live mice.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Though Manchuria passes off usually as a limb of mighty
China, in fact it is but a separate country with a race of people essentially
different from the Chinaman of the south.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….The blazing sun began scorching even our sheltered heads.
Village after village were passed. We could not procure food anywhere. The superstitious
Chinamen regarded us with considerable suspicion. Though often the villager had
enough and to spare and though we exhibited our willingness to pay cash for
whatever we took, we were denied any help or food. The ‘Foreign Devil’ is not a
harmonious figure in the Chinese landscape…….Often we rested at places which
reminded us of the Persian caravansrai. It would be difficult not to assign
them a place below that of the Persian inns. White lice and mosquitoes were in
abundance. At every halt quite a colony of the former would creep into our
packages and would venture out in the heat of the sun and overrun our bodies……….The
further southward we went, we encountered increasing resistance from the natives.
Foreigners are evidently disliked by every Chinaman ……….The conflicting news of
strifes and warfare had instilled in them a fear for everything that was not
Chinese. At times we were mistaken for robbers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Most of the railway stations along this route have been
built by Germans. In fact, wherever roads have been built by them they are found
to be in much better condition than those built by the British. The latter
always degenerate into mule tracks.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In many places in China, we were mistaken on account of our
clean shaven faces for Russians……….We turned to villagers for food, but they
would have nothing to do with us as we were mistaken for Russians.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….Shanghai …….The city has a population of over a million
and a half and is composed of International Settlement, French Town and the
Chinese City. Wherever the tourist goes, his eyes rest upon a serging mass of
humanity that flows into tortuous and sticky streets or lies nestling in narrow
dingy lanes, like caterpillars. Everywhere the vast mass of humanity seems to
be moving, pale-faced, bare-breasted, eager, pressing, heedless of everything
else save their own little affairs, evidently taking a grim part in the
struggle for existence ……..The delicacies which the shopkeepers expose with pride
and by way of advertisement, consists among other things, of varnished ducks,
dogs with skins flayed, lacquered rats, decayed eggs and decomposing fruits.
Hygiene does not seem to have made much progress even in a centre of civilization,
like Shanghai……….There is observable in the Chinese quarter of Shanghai a
civilisation quite different from that observable elsewhere, degenerating at
times into monotony. As one moves from street to street, he sees the same
shops, same sellers, same bloodless faces, same eager looks, same dilapidated
houses, same temples and same goods. One section of the city is but a faithful
duplication of the other.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are many dialects in China and a Chinese of the north
is as much at sea in southern China as any Englishman or Tartar.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Generally speaking it is futile to expect hospitality in
China. But all deserts have their oasis. It seems absence of hospitality is
more attributable to their superstition, ignorance, and suspicion of the
foreigners than an innately bad human nature. There would seem some
justification for the Chinamen taking to the foreigner with a strong aversion. In
fairness to the Chinamen it should be acknowledged he never was fairly treated
by the foreigner and he is a little to blame if impelled by an instinct of
self-preservation, he displays hostility towards those whom he looks upon as
his born enemies.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….we had a duck cooked. This was not the type of varnished
duck left hanging for sale, in dirt and filth at a Chinese stall; but live duck
slaughtered for the occasion.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Chinese are industrious, gentle and pleasant people,
with a philosophy of life very different from that of the West. …….is a curious
mixture of child-like simplicity and cunning; of fetishes and wisdom; of
superstition and commonsense……..In China everything seems topsy-turvy though
the Chinese have good reasons for behaving in what seems to us an eccentric
manner. You find Chinamen putting on skirts and women wearing trousers; men
carry umbrellas but women carry walking-sticks; men fly kites and children just
look on; the pupil says his lessons with his back turned towards the master,
and not his face; it is height of bad manners to take off one’s cap in the
presence of superiors or even to wear spectacles; the years are reckoned not
backwards and forwards from Christian era, but with every emperor’s reign they
are computed……..the Chinaman writes from bottom to top and from right to left;
his novels run into scores of volumes; his alphabet has 40,000 letters or
pictures which he paints with a brush; his theatres are least artistic; his
dramas seem to be without beginning or end, lasting over a year at times; he eats
with chopsticks; his delicacies are our emetics; men must be served first and
not ladies; he shakes his own hands when he meets you and not yours; the place
of honour at the dining table is on the left; his boats are towed with horses;
but his field wheel-barrows may have sails; coffin is the commonest article of
domestic furniture and his greatest ambition is to be buried in a ‘swell’
coffin; though monogamy is the rule, there is no shame in taking as many
additional concubines as he can support; husband and wife will not sit at the
same table nor can the wife be audacious enough to hang her clothes on her
husband’s peg; boys of seven will be served with food separately from their sisters
and women will not be reckoned often in counting the members of the family; the
Chinaman takes delight in extremely long nails, and women, till recently, were
made small-footed; the Chinaman carries a visiting card nine inches long; he has
a ‘milk’ name, a ‘school’ name, a ‘trade’ name and a ‘degree’ name; anyone can
contract a debt on the guarantee of a son; for the grandson is liable to pay
his grandfather’s debts; until recently the Chinese warring armies used to stop
fighting on all holidays; if it rained hard, fighting might be carried on, the
soldiers holding umbrella in one hand; at night there would be no fighting………..his
mourning colour is white and not black; he wails near the coffin for seven days
and removes the corpse not on hygienic grounds, but on a lucky day, at the
dictation of an augur; beggars like trades people have powerful guilds;
Chinaman’s music is ear-splitting, the actors like barbers are regarded as
social outcasts………..the honour conferred by an emperor does not descend to a
Chinaman’s descendants, but ascends to as many dead ancestors as the Imperial
will may dictate; the Chinaman will create noise when an eclipse occurs beating
a drum to frighten away the ‘Heavenly dog’ from swallowing up the moon…….The
houses of the masses are poorly built and present little idea of comfort. Usually
these are mat-shed houses made of coarse woven or plaited bamboo leaves, shoved
upon bamboo framework and secured rudely by fibre……… The rooms are often
over-heated and always under-ventilated. There is usually a courtyard at the
entrance of which we find painted monstrosities of wood or stone, designed to
frighten away evil spirits. But consistently with the sense of contrariness,
these horrid figures are regarded by the Chinaman as ornaments…… Wall
decorations are conspicuous by their absence. Usually there is a courtyard attached
to a house, but unlike the Japanese courtyard it may contain a dunghill instead
of a pretty little garden. The house of upper classes of mandarins or wealthy
Manchus contain numerous articles of luxury and are well-built where even a
Westerner may feel quite comfortable……… sampan dwellers. China has an immense
floating population, literally floating. The Yangtze, the Hoang-ho, the Canton
River and many others hold millions of junks and sampans, very inconvenient
little crafts, in which men and women lie huddled up in intimate proximity……..On
these little sampans births, death, marriages and all important domestic events
take place……. Their lot is miserable, but still they seem to be cheery and
contented, and not unoften quite merry.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Chinese have very curious social customs……..Tight-fitting
clothes, which reveal the outlines of the body, are considered indecorous. The higher
classes of women cover their heads with beautiful headgears; the poorer ones go
bareheaded……. The wife is a household drudge, under the iron-rule of the
mother-in-law. Her inferior status is symbolized by her prostration at her
husband’s feet at the time of her marriage. The husband is far above the wife
to eat together with her……..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Foot-binding though gradually dying is yet in evidence. As a
rule the Chinaman takes to babies kindly, but at places a baby-tower is seen,
where the unwanted baby girls are left to exposure to die. A rude, windowless
and roofless structure is seen in some solitary part, with an aperture in a wall
some five to six feet above the ground. Here the unfortunate offspring is
placed. The next comer pushes the infant into the tower – the fall probably
completing the work if not done by the exposure and starvation – and places his
child there. This system has the redeeming feature of no parent being compelled
to kill his own child……..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The most notorious is the Beggar’s Guild. This guild levies
a rate upon every shopkeeper. The rate duly paid, no beggar will approach the
shop. Any inclination on the part of the trader to resist the demand of the
guild would be instantly visited with punishment. Horribly disfigured and diseased
beggars would be let loose upon him, who will soon pester him, into submission.
…………a Chinaman has no religion, three hold the field. Confucianism is really
nothing more than a theory of applied ethics. Taoism is more philosophy than
religion; but there is Buddhism with all its elaborate paraphernalia and four
million gods. …..There are numerous joss houses, or small idol temples to which
the devotee turns for prayer or relief from his worries. The devotee rings
gongs and bells, and in answer a priest comes with a few papyrus rolls of which
the devotee selects one at random. This roll contains the answer to the devotee’s
petition to his god; the answer may be uncertain, equivocal or irrelevant. If the
devotee is not satisfied with the divine reply, he pays another coin and tries
his luck again, until either his purse is exhausted or he gets a reply he likes
to have.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……when we crossed over into Indo-China we did not feel very
sorry for having finished with China and the Chinese. In no country in the
world we were pestered so much or ill treated to such an extent as in China. Yet
we firmly believe this is more due to ignorance, illiteracy and superstition than
innate evil nature; that given the light of knowledge and culture, the Chinaman
may prove as good as any other human being in the world.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The rude savage Arab has a better ethical code than what
prevails in Indo-China, a land over which the tri-coloured flag of France
flies, and where liberty, equality and fraternity, mean just a regime of sham
liberty, sham equality, and sham fraternity……….Indians in Indo-China are made
to labour under humiliating disabilities the like of which no civilized government
seeks to impose even upon a conquered race. The immigration rules are designed
with a devilish ingenuity to keep Indo-China free from Indian and Chinese
immigrants. Directly the Indian enters the Saigon port, his passport is
confiscated and he is marched into a lock-up. If he can furnish a security,
well and good. Otherwise detention is inevitable. Then follows the terrible
ordeal of filling up ‘forms’ wherein the Indian immigrant is subjected to a
searching cross-examination. The immigrant, no matter what his social status
and position are, is asked to furnish fingerprints of all his fingers. As if
this were not enough a heavy poll tax is levied for the terrible offence the
Indian has committed of having been born an Indian.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In some places in America there are exhibited sign-boards, ‘Japs,
Indians, Chinese, dogs and cats not allowed.’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………..entered Cambodia. When we arrived at Phnom Penh we found
we had once gain to put up with humiliating Immigration rules. Fingerprints had
to be given again.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the jungles of Siam you do not find men to appreciate an
undertaking like ours……We could not deliver lectures; there did not seem enough
intelligent men worth talking to.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Burmese as a race are essentially different from any of
the Indian communities, showing nearer resemblance to the Chinese with the
prominent flat physiognomy. Around 85 per cent of the people are Buddhists
though most of them retain primitive beliefs in the Nats or spirits of forests
and mountains. Burma is full of pagodas and monasteries.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………….Naga Hills form a sort of natural boundary between the
state of Manipur and Assam.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……Madras Presidency. The caste system is extremely rigid and
untouchability, in its most inhuman forms is common here……In matters of caste system
they are extremely rigid and orthodox.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Mysore Palace of the maharaja is the outstanding feature
of this old capital. Silver doors give you entrance to the main building. There
is an armoury in the palace which is particularly interesting……It contains the
sword of Sultan Tipu, and the wag-nakh or tiger’s claws alleged to have been used
by Shivaji.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-45783759676305387422023-07-22T18:01:00.001+05:302023-07-22T18:01:28.425+05:30From ‘Strangers in my Sleeper. Rail journeys and encounters on the Indian subcontinent’ by Peter Riordan <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Indians have a penchant for bureaucratic obfuscation and
flowery titles, and at Chennai Central Station, as at all the country’s main
stations, this bent is given full expression.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">‘How do you like Sri Lanka?’ I was repeatedly asked and I
found myself saying, ‘The people are friendly.’ I did like Sri Lanka, but
something about it left me feeling faintly irritated. An apathy clung in the
air, and a trace of anger. Perhaps the twenty-year civil war had left them
spent and lethargic and resentful. Or perhaps nature was too bountiful for
their own good: fruit fell from the trees and any seed tossed on the ground
soon sprouted and flourished…………..Villagers seemed to move without purpose or
industry. In fact, I’d seen no one really exerting themselves. The most
industrious worker seemed to be nature itself, which was forever germinating
and regenerating and leaping upwards and outwards.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">First-class train travel suggests sumptuous comfort, but in
Sri Lanka it means no such thing…..upholstery that is not tattered, a passable
toilet……a compartment that is not grubby and ceiling fans that work. But
nothing more. No porters dancing at your attendance, no plush compartments, no
catering service, just the rudiments of train travel, the absence of
unpleasantness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For some unaccountable reason, trains in Sri Lanka did not
dilly-dally at stations, pausing only long enough to provoke a mad
push-and-shove contest between those disembarking and those hastening aboard. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Trivandrum is, for India, an oddity; an unspoilt capital
city. ‘This is the loveliest city in India,’ I said…….<o:p></o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-57202982611218962872023-07-22T17:58:00.004+05:302023-07-22T17:58:50.672+05:30From ‘My Mercedes is not for sale’ by Jeroen van Bergeijk<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Of the more than seven million cars driving around on Dutch
roads in 2005, more than a quarter million had been exported by the end of the
year. All the wealthy Western European countries export their old automobiles,
millions in total. Nowadays most go to Eastern Europe, but a considerable
minority, estimated 500,000 per year, wind up in Africa. ……Most of the old
automobiles that leave Europe for Africa are shipped by boat, but a small number
are driven there. In fact, since the 1970s, driving a used car to West Africa
has become a popular pastime among French, Belgian, German, and Dutch adventurers.
……Every winter they flock to West Africa, selling their castoffs at a tidy
profit in countries like Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. To get there
they have to bribe customs officials, befriend corrupt cops, and – above all –
drive straight through the Sahara.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….how to drive an ordinary automobile through loose sand……..lets
the air escape [<i>from the tire</i>]……a tire deflated……..like that provides
greater contact surface between tire and sand. The tire grips better and slips
less. A fully inflated tire offers little contact surface. In loose sand, a
full tire begins to slip, digs itself in, and – voila – the car is stuck.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The ship is packed; there’s not a seat to be found. Moroccan
children dance on the tables, tug at their mothers’ skirts, and scream
themselves hoarse. White tourists look up, annoyed; the Moroccan parents don’t see
anything wrong. We, the whites, want quiet and privacy; they, the Africans,
bustle and conviviality.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Things in Africa come in two forms: broken or almost broken.
Whether it’s the power plant or the water supply, the Internet café’s computers
or the city buses, the sewage system or the airport runway – seldom does
anything in Africa work like its supposed to work.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..the African state must choose between food for its
citizens and investment in the future………..the African state expects free help
from the wealthy West ……….<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On account of the combination of high temperature and dry
air, a person loses fluid at an alarming rate in the Sahara. If you sit in the
full sun – and remain perfectly motionless – at a temperature of a hundred
degrees……….In five hours, you’re seriously dehydrated; in two days, dead. <i>Sahara
Overland</i> recommends drinking more than five quarts of water a day in the
winter and more than two and a half gallons in the summer…….. [<i>dehydration</i>]
begins with innocent symptoms like dry lips, loss of appetite, and headache. But
after that, with a fluid loss of about 10 percent, the symptoms rapidly
progress to dizziness, trouble breathing, sunken eyes, a lack of saliva, and a
tendency to babble. At that point, you can still stem the tide by getting out
of the sun and especially by drinking lots of water. Its another matter when serious
dehydration sets in. With a loss of 20 percent of body fluid ……….there’s no
chance of survival without admission to the hospital; the tongue and throat are
so swollen that you can no longer drink on your own. You go deaf, your lips
turn blue, your skin shrivels up and loses feeling. The body manufactures large
quantities of endorphins, which produce a sense of euphoria. Finally delirium
sets in ………..During the terminal phase of dehydration, the body extracts so
much fluid from the blood that the blood thickens and the body’s heat can no
longer be released through the skin. The body temperature rises dramatically,
one or more of the vital organs (the heart, brain, and lungs) fail, and death
follows.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, is a city with no
cinemas, department stores, theaters, bookshops, discos, concert halls, or bars.
Everything that makes a city fun is missing here. Everything that makes a city
unpleasant – people, cars, filth – can be found here in spades. ……….the entrance
to the city is a garbage dump. Coming from the north, you drive for miles
through an apocalyptic landscape of piles of stinking refuse, smoldering fires,
flapping plastic bags, and the rusting hulks of junked cars.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A few highways are paved, but most of the “streets” are
sandy trails where your car gets stuck just as bad as in the barren, lifeless
desert……….Nouakchott is the Sahara’s largest metropolis. In 1963 it was a sleepy
little fishing village. But after the country gained its independence from France,
there had to be a capital. Nouakchott was designed for fifteen thousand people;
nearly a million live here now.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Still, Nouakchott does <i>try</i> to be a capital. There’s a
TV station, a stadium, a presidential palace – and a museum. The Musee National
is the only museum in Mauritania. It takes fifteen minutes to find somebody who
can sell me a ticket. The building consists of two galleries. One contains a collection
of potsherds and arrowheads; the other is devoted to the local costume. I’m the
only visitor.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nouakchott is hit by sandstorms two hundred days a year……..If
you want to go out in such a storm, you better make sure your whole body is
covered. The sand gets in everything: in your bag, in your food, even in your
underwear. But a storm like this has more consequences than just physical
discomfort. For one thing, you cant drive your car in a sandstorm. Not so much
because of the poor visibility, as because your car is literally sandblasted. The
finish dulls; the windshield and headlight glass turns matte. The glass in some
Mauritanian cars has turned almost milky white.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A country’s traffic is a metaphor for its culture. In the Netherlands,
the cars gleam, the roads are well maintained, and rules and warnings……encourage
motorists to drive safely and courteously. At the same time, if there are no
cops in sight, everyone drives over the speed limit. The Dutchman likes to
think of his country that way: clean and orderly but with a touch of antiauthoritarianism.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In Mauritania, the drivers fear neither God nor man. In the
week I’m here, I see a collision per day. The traffic in Nouakchott is a
disorderly mess, a jumble, a free-for-all in which everyone does whatever he
wants. The cars here – the overwhelming majority of which are Benzes, by the
way – are like the bicycles Dutch students ride: rusty wrecks with no lights. In
the West, these cars couldn’t even be sold for parts: everything of value has
already been removed. Brakes, headlights, the upholstery on the seats, let alone
chrome mirrors or a working CD player – everything is missing. ………Cars have to
share the road with donkey and horse carts. …..so people always pass on the
shoulder or over the median strip. No one waits for the stoplight (there are
only three stoplights in all of Nouakchott anyhow), and everyone drives into
oncoming traffic……. Whoever’s the most aggressive has the right-of-way. …….A
city with no culture or diversion, where you cant see any farther than twenty
yards during the sandstorms…….<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“A Moor looks down on physical labor,”….. Mauritania is a
segregated society: Moors and blacks live in separate worlds. Slavery was only
officially abolished here in 1981……..the Moorish minority still calls the
shots, and blacks do the dirty work……..what do the Moors do?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“All a Moor cares about,”………… “is <i>chep-chep</i>”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Chep-chep</i> is something like finagling. <i>Chep-chep</i>
means trying to gain an advantage from everything. <i>Chep-chep </i>means doing
business with a wink and a nod. <i>Chep-chep</i> means playing a game where
dirty tricks are allowed…… <i>Chep-chep</i> is the plumber who comes to fix …..broken
toilet but manages to “repair” it in such a way that is breaks again in two
weeks and [<i>you</i>] have to call him again.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rosso is known as the most notorious border crossing in West
Africa, some say in all of Africa. The border is supposedly occupied not only
by a small army of corrupt customs agents but also by dozens of hustlers who
try every trick in the book to rob travelers blind………The message: whatever you
do, avoid Rosso………Rosso is the most important border crossing between
Mauritania and Senegal<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Until recently, Saint-Louis, Senegal, was the end of the road
for Europeans with used cars to sell. Senegal was a great place to sell your
car. The prices were good, and ……..you could take a nice vacation here. You never
have a problem finding a decent hotel or restaurant in Senegal. ……….Little of
that remains.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In 2003 the Senegalese government prohibited the importation
of automobiles more than five years old. The official reason for the
prohibition was that so many junky old cars were entering the country that they
constituted a threat to the environment and traffic safety. The real reason,
they think in Saint-Louis, was that the government wanted to stamp out the
booming car trade, which was happening almost completely without state supervision
and thus taxation. ……..the used-car market here has totally collapsed since
then.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Downtown Dakar seems trapped in a time warp. Practically all
the buildings date to the 1970s – nothing earlier, nothing later. ………Dakar is
busy, full of aggressive hustlers. It is, thank God, no Nouakchott. There are
sewers here, and cars stop for stoplights. There are patisseries, expensive restaurants,
nice hotels…..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Gambia is an insignificant little country. It’s the smallest
country in Africa, consisting of a strip of land on either side of the Gambia
River. With a total area of 4,363 square miles, its about a quarter the size of
the Netherlands. Of all the West African countries, Gambia may be the most
attuned to traditional tourism. You’ll find dozens of luxury beach hotels there
whose clientele is primarily British and Dutch.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dusk doesn’t exist in Africa. Its either light or dark. Night
falls in Africa as if God in heaven flipped a light switch.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Suame Magazine – Suame for short – is Ghana’s scorched
industrial underbelly. It’s the country’s largest automotive repair center –
many say the largest in all West Africa. Here, in this suburb of Kumasi, ten
thousand mechanics work at keeping the decrepit West African auto fleet on the
road………may seem chaotic, but if you walk around a little longer, you notice how
efficiently the area is actually organized. There’s a corner for each
speciality: here are the sheet metal workers; there, the painters; here, the
flat fixers; there, the welders. Mechanics are divided according to make of
car. There’s a Daewoo Street, a Toyota District, a Renault Alley……Suame
Magazine’s pluses: Ghana’s largest employer, the largest and most efficient
automotive repair center in West Africa………..the soil is heavily polluted, and
drained oil is being dumped directly in the sewer and stream.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….Togo is a small, narrow country – about as big as the
Netherlands and Belgium put together. From border to border, its only about
thirty-five miles. …….Because the Prussians colonized “Togoland” for a brief
period in the nineteenth century, Germany is one of the few European countries
with an embassy here. Togo was a favorite vacation destination among Germans in
the 1970s and 1980s, and many have stayed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is also little left of that other pillar of the
Togolese economy: the trans-Africa auto trade. When the route through Algeria
was still the most popular, Lome was the favourite destination of many a
Western European car trader. Once you’d conquered the Sahara of Algeria and
Niger, it was but a short distance to the magnificent beaches of Togo. The traders
chilled out here and disposed of their cars……..the walls of Chez Alice are
lined with European license plates – but only an occasional Western tourist
arrives with his own car these days. No one dares drive through Algeria anymore
on account of terrorist attacks, and Lebanese traders offer cars at such
rockbottom prices in the port of Lome that it no longer pays to sell your car
here.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nowhere in West Africa do so many used cars arrive in one
place as here, in the port of Cotonou. In the mid-1980s the trade consisted of
a few thousand cars per year; by the beginning of the century, that had risen
to 200,000. The whole economy of the city revolves around the car trade.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The international trade in used cars is constantly in
motion. One year, most of the cars go to Africa; the next year, Eastern Europe;
the year after that, the Middle East. Hardly any used cars were exported to
Iraq under Saddam Hussein, because Iraqis had to pay thousands of dollars in
import duties for every car. After America ousted the dictator in 2003,
however, the import duties were lifted, and almost all the available Western
European used cars disappeared to Iraq that year. In Africa, trade with Liberia
and Sierra Leone was interrupted by civil war; now lots of cars go there. The Ivory
Coast was always an excellent market but has fallen out of favor since 2003.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..Benin ….Just as in Lome, the trade here is mostly in the
hands of the Lebanese, who, like the Indians, have often lived in Africa for
generations. In addition to selling used cars, the Lebanese often run
supermarkets or restaurants.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..the first car dealers in Africa made enormous profits.
Just as in the gold rush, the party ended as soon as thousands of fortune
seekers showed up.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">According to Beuving’s study, the Lebanese actually aren’t so
terribly interested in making a profit at all, let alone in the car business. What
motivates them instead is the exciting life of the expatriate. Beuving paints a
picture of young adults who want nothing more than to escape the oppressive family
ties and rigid social conventions of home. The immigrate to West Africa in
hopes of a carefree life full of booze and broads. And though there’s little to
be made in the car trade, there’s still an ample supply of women and drink. “Its
really hard to meet girls in Lebanon,” says John. “A girlfriend just for sex?
Forget about it.” In Cotonou, however, that’s not a problem.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..I’m in Ouagadougou, which everyone calls Waga for short. The
city makes a bad first impression. Interminable, half-built suburbs ring the
outskirts, and the road downtown is a long-drawn-out assemblage of phone
centers, food vendors, and secondhand auto parts stores…… There’s more life
here, more fun, more enjoyment than elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the average African city, three-quarters of the cars are
cabs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-76139746056658320762023-07-20T10:48:00.001+05:302023-07-20T10:48:09.354+05:30From ‘The Psychology of Money. Timeless lessons on wealth, greed and happiness’ by Morgan Housel<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal">“A genius is the man who can do the average thing when
everyone else around him is losing his mind.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 20.4pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Napoleon<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any
chance ever observes.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 20.4pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Sherlock Holmes<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Forty percent of Americans cannot come up with $400 in an
emergency.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Before World War II, most Americans worked until they died.
That was the expectation and the reality.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….people who have control over their time tend to be
happier in life is a broad and common enough observation that you can do
something with it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As I write this,Warren Buffett's net worth is $84.5 billion.
Of that, $84.2 billion was accumulated after his 50<sup>th</sup> birthday. $81.5
billion came after he qualified for Social Security, in his mid-60s……. His
skill is investing, but his secret is time. That’s how compounding works.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jim Simons, head of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies,
has compounded money at 66% annually since 1988. No one comes close to this
record. ….. Buffett has compounded at roughly 22% annually, a third as much.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….thats only one way to stay wealthy: some combination of
frugality and paranoia.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..40% of companies successful enough to become publicly
traded lost effectively all of their value over time.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Planning is important, but the most important part of every
plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The great art dealers operated like index funds. They bought
everything they could. And they bought it in portfolios, not individual pieces
they happened to like. Then they sat and waited for a few winners to emerge.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That’s all that happens.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps 99% of the works someone like Berggruen…..[<i>art
dealer</i>]………..acquired in his life turned out to be of little value. But that
doesn’t particularly matter if the other 1% turn out to be the work of someone
like Picasso. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Berggruen could be wrong
most of the time and still end up stupendously right.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A lot of things in business and investing work this way…………It
means we underestimate how normal it is for a lot of things to fail. Which causes
us to overreact when they do.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Investment firm Correlation Ventures once crunched ….numbers.
Out of more than 21,000 venture financings from 2004 to 2014:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">65% lost money.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Two and a half percent of investments made 10x-20x.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One percent made more than a 20x return.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Half a percent – about 100 companies out of 21,000 – earned 50x
or more. That’s where the majority of the industry’s returns come from.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This, you might think, is what makes venture capital so
risky. And everyone investing in VC knows its risky. Most startups fail and the
world is only kind enough to allow a few mega successes………Remember, tails drive
<i>everything</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Napoleon’s definition of a military genius was, “The man who
can do the average thing when all those around him are going crazy.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s the same in investing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is an old pilot quip that their jobs are “hours and
hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” It’s the same in investing.
Your success as an investor will be determined by how you respond to punctuated
moments of terror, not the years spent on cruise control………… Tails drive
everything.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in 2013 Warren
Buffett said he’s owned 400 to 500 stocks during his life and made most of his
money on 10 of them…….. “Its not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important,”
George Soros once said, “but how much money you make when you’re right and how
much you lose when you’re wrong.” You can be wrong half the time and still make
a fortune.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Having a strong sense of controlling one’s life is a more
dependable predictor of positive feelings of wellbeing than any of the objective
conditions of life we have considered.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">More than your salary. More than the size of your house. More
than the prestige of your job. Control over doing what you want, when you want
to, with the people you want to, is the broadest lifestyle variable that makes
people happy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A wise old owl lived in an oak,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The more he saw the less he spoke,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The less he spoke, the more he heard,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why aren’t we all like that wise old bird?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We now have better, more scientific evidence of fever’s
usefulness in fighting infection. A one-degree increase in body temperature has
been shown to slow the replication rate of some viruses by a factor of 200.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……progress happens too slowly to notice, but setbacks happen
too quickly to ignore.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are lots of overnight tragedies. There are rarely
overnight miracles.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nassim Taleb explained: “True success is exiting some rat
race to modulate one’s activities for peace of mind.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“The first rule of compounding is to never interrupt it
unnecessarily.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>August, 1945. World War II ends<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..Sixteen million Americans – 11% of the population – served
in the war. About eight million were overseas at the end. Their average age was
23. Within 18 months all but 1.5 million of them would be home and out of
uniform.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And then what?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What were they going to do next?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……no one knew the answers….the most likely scenario – in the
eyes of many economists – was that the economy would slip back int the depths
of the Great Depression.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Three forces had built up during the war:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Housing construction ground to a halt, as
virtually all production capacity was shifted to building war supplies. Fewer than
12,000 homes per month were built in 1943, equivalent to less than one new home
per American city. Returning soldiers faced a severe housing shortage.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The specific jobs created during the war –
building ships, tanks, and planes – were very suddenly not necessary after it,
stopping with a speed and magnitude rarely seen in private business. It was
unclear where soldiers could work.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The marriage rate spiked during and immediately
after the war. Soldiers didn’t want to return to their mothers basement. They wanted
to start a family, in their own home, with a good job, right away.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This worried policymakers, especially since the Great
Depression was still a recent memory, having ended just five years prior.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……This fear was exacerbated by the fact that exports couldn’t
be immediately relied upon for growth, as two of the largest economies – Europe
and Japan – sat in ruins dealing with humanitarian crisis. And America itself
was buried in more debt than ever before, limiting direct government stimulus.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So we did something about it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………The first thing we did to keep the economy afloat after
the war was keep interest rates low. This wasn’t an easy decision, because when
soldiers came home to a shortage of everything from clothes to cars it
temporarily sent inflation into double digits.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……..low rates………made borrowing to buy homes, cars, gadgets,
and toys really cheap………..Consumption became an explicit economic strategy in
the years after World War II.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">An era of encouraging thrift and saving to fund the war
quickly turned into an era of actively promoting spending…….the GI Bill, ….offered
unprecedented mortgage opportunities. Sixteen million veterans could buy a home
often with no money down, no interest in the first year, and fixed rates so low
that monthly mortgage payments could be lower than a rental.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The second was an explosion of consumer credit, enabled by
the loosening of Depression-era regulations. The first credit card was
introduced in 1950. Store credit, installment credit, personal loans, payday
loans – everything took off. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………demand from GIs ……..Married, eager to get on with life,
and emboldened with new cheap consumer credit, they went on a buying spree like
the country had never seen.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….Commercial car and truck manufacturing virtually ceased from
1942 to 1945. Then 21 million cares were sold from 1945 to 1949. Another 37
million were sold by 1955.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Just under two million homes were built from 1940 to 1945.
Then seven million were built from 1945 to 1950. Another eight million were built
by 1955. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Pent-up demand for stuff, and our newfound ability to make
stuff, created the jobs that put returning GIs back to work. ………..The defining
characteristic of economics in the 1950s is that the country got rich by making
the poor less poor.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Average wages doubled from 1940 to 1948, then doubled again
by 1963.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And those gains focused on those who had been left behind
for decades before. The gap between rich and poor narrowed by an extraordinary
amount.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….Women held jobs outside the home in record numbers. Their
labor force participation rate went from 31% after the war to 37% by 1955, and
to 40% by 1965.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Minorities gained, too………..Women and minority rights were
still a fraction of what they are today. But the progress toward equality in
the late ‘40s and ‘50s was extraordinary.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The levelling out of classes meant a levelling out of
lifestyles……… TV and radio equalized the entertainment and culture people
enjoyed regardless of class. Mail-order catalogs equalized the clothes people
wore and the goods they bought regardless of where they lived. ……..most people –
lived lives that were either equal or at least fathomable to those around them…….Debt
rose tremendously. But so did incomes, so the impact wasn’t a big deal……… the
growth in household debt-to-income from 1947-1957 was manageable………..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The homeownership rate in 1900 was 47%. It stayed right
about there for the next four decades. Then it took off, hitting 53% by 1945
and 62% by 1970………….<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">1973……..The recession that began that year brought unemployment
to the highest it had been since the 1930s.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Inflation surged. But unlike the post-war spikes, it stayed
high. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Short-term interest rates hit 8% in 1973, up from 2.5% a
decade earlier.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And you have to put all of that in the context of how much
fear there was between Vietnam, riots, and the assassination of Martin Luther
King, and John and Bobby Kennedy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It got bleak.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">America dominated the world economy in the two decades after
the war. Many of the largest countries had their manufacturing capacity bombed
into rubble. But as the 1970s emerged, that changed. Japan was booming. China’s
economy was opening up. The Middle East was flexing its oil muscles.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A combination of lucky economic advantages and a culture
shared by the Greatest Generation – hardened by the Depression and anchored in
systematic cooperation from the war – shifted when Baby Boomers began coming of
age. A new generation that had a different view of what's normal hit at the same
time a lot of the economic tailwinds of the previous two decades ended.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………between the early 1970s through the early 2000s …… growth
continued, but became more uneven…..Ronald Reagan’s 1984………GDP growth was the
highest it had been since the 1950s. by 1989 there were six million fewer
unemployed Americans than there were seven years before. The S&P 500 rose
almost fourfold between 1982 and 1990. Total real GDP growth in the 1990s was
roughly equal to that of the 1950s – 40% vs 42% ………..Between 1993 and 2012, the
top 1 percent saw their incomes grow 86.1 percent, while the bottom 99 percent
saw just 6.6 percent growth………It was nearly the opposite of the flattening that
occurred after the war.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rising incomes among a small group of Americans led to that
group breaking away in lifestyle.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They bought bigger homes, nicer cars, went to expensive
schools, and took fancy vacations………….The lifestyles of a small portion of
legitimately rich Americans inflated the aspirations of the majority of
Americans, whose incomes weren’t rising.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A culture of equality and togetherness that came out of the
1950s-1970s innocently morphs into a Keeping Up With The Joneses effect.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……..the beginning of debt crises: The moment when people
take on more debt than they can service………what happened in 2008.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….A lot of debt was shed after 2008. And then interest rates
plunged. ….The Fed backstopped corporate debt in 2008. That helped those who owned
that debt – mostly rich people.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tax cuts over the last 20 years have predominantly gone to
those with higher incomes. People with higher incomes send their kids to the
best colleges. Those kids can go on to earn higher incomes and invest in
corporate debt that will be backstopped by the Fed, own stocks that will be
supported by various government policies, and so on………the bigger thing that’s happened
since the early 1980s. The economy works better for some people than others.
Success isn’t as meritocratic as it used to be ………….<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You can scoff at linking the rise of Trump to income
inequality alone. And you should. These things are always layers of complexity
deep. But it’s a key part of what drives people to think, “I don’t live in the
world I expected. That pisses me off. So screw this. And screw you! I’m going
to fight for something totally different, because this – whatever it is – isn’t
working.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Take that mentality and raise it to the power of Facebook,
Instagram, and cable news – where people are more keenly aware of how other
people live than ever before……. “The more the Internet exposes people to new
points of view, the angrier people get that different views exist.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………….The unemployment rate is now the lowest its been in decades.
Wages are now actually growing faster for low-income workers than the rich. ……….If
everyone studied advances in health care, communication, transportation, and
civil rights since the Glorious 1950s, my guess is most wouldn’t want to go
back……..expectations move slower than reality on the ground ……..So the era of “This
isn’t working” may stick around.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And the era of “We need something radically new, right now, whatever
it is” may stick around.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-82486890396202200012022-10-29T17:49:00.005+05:302022-10-29T17:49:47.389+05:30From ‘A parrot in the pepper tree’ by Chris Stewart<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span></p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">…….country Swedes have an appealing tradition of leaving a light burning all night in the window to cheer the passing traveler………..</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">When I switched off the engine, I was against struck by the extraordinary stillness of the Swedish winter. There is no wind, and even if there were, the trees would be too heavy in their thick load of frozen snow to move. There are no birds to sing and the sea is silenced by its sarcophagus of ice. The only sound in the landscape is you.</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">……. the usual Immaculate turnout of Swedish houses. But as the Swedes themselves so nicely put it: <i>Bättre lite skit i hörnet än ett rent helvete</i> – ‘better a little shit in the corner than a clean hell’</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">‘I usually do it myself, only I've hurt my back- chainsawing in the woods.’ The old Swedish complaint.</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I breathed in deep the inimitable Spanish town smell of coffee, garlic and black tobacco……..</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">….Orgiva Feria - the town's big festival - was the following week……….. Feria is a time of unbelievable cacophony, when the townsfolk go overboard indulging their passion for noise……….The bars in the plaza …….. have sound systems the size of small houses, which thunder and rattle day and night, making it impossible to hold the faintest trace of conversation. Yet the locals just sit there chatting away as though nothing were happening. It's my belief that the Spanish have better evolved ears than the rest of us.</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">As if the noise isn't enough, Feria is also the time of year when the wind gets up….. it moans and wails around every corner, thick with grit and gravel which stings your eyes and gets into your nose……..</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">In Sevilla, which is the most romantic city in the world, the heavy cloud of orange-blossom scent that envelops it in spring and early summer drives people mad with love.</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Just beneath the peak of Mulhacen, which at 3450m is the highest peak in the Sierra Nevada, indeed in the whole Iberian peninsula, are the <i>borreguiles</i>. In days gone by, a lamb was not considered fit to be eaten until it had passed a summer grazing on the sweet grasses that cloak these high mountain meadows- hence the name, from <i>borrego</i>, which means a lamb…….. Common to them all is the perfect peace, the almost supernatural clarity of the water and the springiness of the deep green grass……… the time to see the is late May to late July- that's spring in the high Sierra- and somehow, the very fleeting nature of this beauty makes it all the more appealing…….. I was struck dumb by what I saw. The grass was no longer green, it was a sheet of livid blue- a blue so dazzling it seemed to come from outside the normal spectrum of perception. These were the Sierra Nevada gentians. ……..There were two varieties in bloom………the ultramarine………and the delicate, almost luminescent……..</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Sheep always do this for some reason; when they see a person, they squat and pee- unless of course they happen to be rams, in which case they just stand around and dribble.</p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-59266639970834112312022-10-29T17:48:00.001+05:302022-10-29T17:48:38.829+05:30From ‘Driving Over Lemons. An optimist in Andalucia’ by Chris Stewart<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It eyed us for a moment, then performed that trick that has so endeared the goat to mankind since the beginnings of time, the simultaneous belch and fart.</span></p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">A thick silence ensued. I felt like a dead pig in a tea room.</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">…. few country people over fifty here have an inkling about their written language.</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Seven o'clock, the afternoon gone, but now not only was the sun burning fiercely from high in the sky, but all the hills and rocks were giving back as good as they had got and radiating heat vengefully back into the air. The air, sandwiched between its tormentors, had given up and lay draped over the valley like a rag.</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It must have been the Perseids: mid August is usually the time for this shower of meteors to pass</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">……….pigs love figs and they would squabble and bounce about with glee………. everyone around here keeps pigs, fattening them through the year and killing them, at the traditional <i>matanzas</i>, in the fly-free days of winter……… any other time and flies and wasps would amass in a frenzy of looting and spoil the neighborly business of slaughter. For the same reason the days grim deed starts early in the cool of the morning.</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Then he helped himself, while Maria crouched beside him and picked at bits from his plate. This seemed to be their preferred way of eating, she like one of those birds that pick the ticks off the backs of hippopotami.</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">She was currently working through maths and physics and veterinary science, and in order to prevent her outlook on life becoming too earnest, was reading Swiss satirical magazines in French and German. Try as I might, I found it impossible to imagine the Swiss as a fund of satirical humor. I said as much to Janet. ‘Yes… yes, Chris, you’re perfectly right. They don't have any humor at all. In fact, the Swiss have the sort of sense of humor you'd expect a dog to have!’</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Manuel’s stories were too good to doze through. He told them well, fluently and with a fine sense of balance and dramatic timing. Those who cannot read or write have the advantage in this; the ability to keep a long story in one's head tends to diminish with literacy.</p><p class="yiv2229261095ydp861c486aMsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-35574768385048200212022-10-14T20:06:00.002+05:302022-10-14T20:06:23.539+05:30From ‘On Rue Tatin’ by Susan Loomis<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">……… I had always heard the French were cold and somewhat austere………</span></p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Admittedly, France is set up for small children. Working mothers get a lot of time off to have children, and a good deal of financial support from the state as well. There are many options for their babies when they do go back to work- either a state-run <i>creche</i>, which is like a daycare center but more personal and set up for tiny babies and very young children, or <i>nounou</i>, babysitter, who generally works at her home and takes no more than three children at the time. At age three children start school, and they can stay there from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day if parents desire, as lunch, snacks and nap time are provided.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It had three gas burners and one electric, a curious but common quirk in French stoves. The electric burner was like an emergency burner should the gas be cut off, apparently created after the Second World War when this often happened.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I have seen her sewing on buttons in the dark, refinishing banisters, painting, scraping, organizing, cleaning. I asked her why she works in the dark………… I think I know why. I've met lots of older people in France who do much the same thing. I think it dates from before and during the Second World War, when electricity was scarce, then very expensive. It is still outrageously expensive. One look at a French electrical bill and anyone would be tempted to spend their lives in the dark.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Working in the dark is one of those French ‘things', like the national dislike for Jerusalem artichokes (they were the main staple for most people during the war); The conviction that all ills result from the liver (though we hear fewer references to <i>le foie </i>than we used to); The notion that crying is good for babies because it strengthens their lungs. There is no real sense in arguing about any of these things, nor in trying to change one's opinion. It's part of the national character and you have to love it or ignore it.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">French doctors have a penchant for prescribing quantities of medicine for the slightest ailment………. truly the quantity of medicines prescribed often borders on the absurd……</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">…… the multiple skin treatments which help French skin look so lovely</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Applying a unique scent is an innate French skill, shared by men and women. I never fail to be charmed when, for instance, a plasterer or friend comes to help Michael work on the house and I catch a whiff of his perfume as we exchange our obligatory four kisses – two on each cheek. Parents as they walk their children to school leave a sweet scent behind them, as do babysitters and truck drivers, cafe owners and the mayor.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Dogs are royalty in France and nothing, but nothing, is too good for them.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Her background is Portuguese, which is noticeable in her jet black hair, beautiful white skin and stately proportions, and in her food, which is fresh, lively, unusual.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">On the other hand, corn on the cob is something of an exotic in France, where it has only recently become available at all.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Showrooms in France aren't like showrooms in the US. They don't usually have much in them, and the customer is required to have a great deal of faith in photographs, and the salesperson.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">……… Italians aren't noted for the quality of their kitchen equipment. In fact Italian kitchen equipment manufacturers are rather like Italian politicians- they change all the time and have short staying power.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">……… For all the glories of French cuisine, most meals cooked in a French home today are prepared in kitchens the size of a large bathroom on the simplest of stoves with maybe four Cold this girl, but often just three burners and one tiny oven. The grandiose French kitchen belongs to a bygone era</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I wondered, understanding how important conformity is in this often frustratingly conformist country.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">……….. shoes slightly scuffed - Frenchman always seem to ignore that one detail of their dress.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">……… In general French parents yell at their kids a great deal, so we weren't entirely surprised that this carried over into school.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">As the pregnancy progressed I met the considerable obligations imposed on me by the French medical system, which included the monthly blood test for toxoplasmosis. When I asked doctor at the clinic why I had to have a test every single month he rolled his eyes. ‘It is a disease discovered by a Frenchman. We are very proud to have discovered it, thus we must test constantly for it. It is ridiculous.’</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Champagne, I had learned, is an integral part of a French pregnancy. Every single time I announced to friends that I was pregnant they broke out a bottle and insisted I drink a glass. ‘Champagne is good for pregnant mothers,’ they would say. I believe them and sipped completely free of guilt</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">There appears to be no taboo in France on alcohol during pregnancy……….</p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-54249984947619096722022-10-14T20:05:00.003+05:302022-10-14T20:05:35.414+05:30From ‘Why I'm crazy about Japan. Heartwarming and rib tickling stories from the Land of the Rising Sun’ by Ashutosh V Rawal<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">If for some reason, the train is delayed by more than two minutes, all passengers get a delay certificate which they can show at their office should they require to. This kind of discipline and respect for time can only be experienced in Japan. I have traveled across the world and been to over 70 countries but I have never seen this kind of culture anywhere.</span></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-56771345531465229492022-10-14T20:04:00.002+05:302022-10-14T20:04:32.118+05:30From ‘The Travel Gods must be crazy. Wacky encounters in exotic lands’ by Sudha Mahalingam<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Yazd is a fascinating desert town stuck in a time warp. Its labyrinthine streets are lined with adobe houses whose earthy hues are relieved every now and then by exquisite turquoise tile panels and ornamental doorways. The intricately carved wooden doors have double knockers - a slender one for woman visitors and a sturdy one for men. Depending on the sound from the knocker, the residents of the house could decide whether the door would be opened by a male or female………………</span></p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Joyce……….. the most sobering declaration; Of all the countries she had traveled through, India was where she had faced the worst sexual harassment. She narrated harrowing tales of how she had been groped and pinched, probed and propositioned in most places she had traveled to.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">…. Moreh, a sleepy border town between Myanmar and Manipur. Maraikayar, Tamil Muslim, has been a Moreh resident for over forty years now, and dabbles in everything from dosas to gems…… I had come to his roadside eatery lured by the Tamil board outside which advertised dosas in this most unlikely corner of India, the Manipur - Myanmar border.…….. Tamil population in Moreh - they all came from the east, many on foot, trudging for months through the malarial jungles of what was then known as Burma, during the Second World War. Those days, there used to be a huge Tamil expat population in Malaysia, mostly traders. The lot comprised refugees fleeing Japanese- occupied lands, traders from Penang and beyond. When they reached the Indian border, some were too tired to trudge any further and chose to settle down there. They went on to build their own Tamil schools, of which there are five now, and an equal number of Tamil temples.…………… Tamil settlers in Moreh trade in ginger mostly, but also do a bit of smuggling on the side- mostly Chinese blankets, thermos flasks, torches and, perhaps other contraband…………..</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Moreh is the very last town on the Indian side of the border.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">…..Swampy and mosquito- ridden, it was a picture of despair. But for the disenfranchised lot of Tamils who could not find a home in prosperous Malaya……………… it was a land of opportunity………..</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Curiosity takes me to the other side of the border, a Myanmarese village called Tamu………………… I can't believe my eyes. This tiny, nondescript village in a godforsaken corner of the jungle has a row of shops stocked to the gills with……………. ruby- studded jewellery………… there are also heaps of rubies and sapphires, cats iron and peridot, jade and topaz, all neatly arranged in bowls and sold by the carat. I have never seen so much jewellery and so many gems in one place, not even in the jewellery section of Mustafa store in Singapore…………….. obviously, they must be doing brisk business; why else would they be there?</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Wadi Musa, the jumping-off point for Petra……….. It's high street is littered with star chains- in fact, the highest concentration of five star hotels anywhere in the world.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Pushkar, congested, crowded and dirty by day, is magically transformed by evening……………. The ghats, swarming with bathers and seekers of spiritual salvation, become bereft and silent as night falls…………. seekers of a different kind of salvation, emerge out of the shadows; the gullies and lanes are now enveloped in a haze from their chillums.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">…….. Seville………. What we find is a dreary town with uninspiring concrete blocks. The romantic sounding Guadalquivir is nothing but a foul ditch winding its way through the towns congested streets.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">………Samarkand’s city square, is easily among the most magnificent in the entire world, at par with Emam square in Isfahan.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Once taller than the Andes, now reduced to a stub just 348 meters in height, Uluru is nevertheless stunning, whichever angle you view it from.</p><p class="yiv7847577062MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-72575622519864108212022-04-19T15:06:00.001+05:302022-04-19T15:06:02.874+05:30From ‘The Subtle Art of Not giving a Fuck. A counterintuitive approach to living a good life’ by Mark Manson<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #26282a; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There is a bluntness to Russian culture that
generally rubs Westerners the wrong way. Gone are the fake niceties and verbal
webs of politeness. You don't smile at strangers or pretend to like anything
you don't. In Russia, if something is stupid, you say it's stupid. If someone
is being an asshole you tell him he's being an asshole. If you really like
someone and are having a great time, you tell her that you like her and are
having a great time. It doesn't matter if this person is your friend, a
stranger, or someone you met five minutes ago on the street……….</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">I remember discussing this dynamic with my Russian
teacher one day, and he had an interesting theory. Having lived under communism
for so many generations, with little to no economic opportunity and caged by a
culture of fear, Russian society found the most valuable currency to be trust.
And to build trust you have to be honest. That means when things suck, you say
so openly and without apology. People’s displays of unpleasant honesty were rewarded
for the simple fact that they were necessary for survival - you had to know
whom you could rely on and whom you couldn't, and you needed to know quickly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">But in the “free” West, my Russian teacher
continued, there existed an abundance of economic opportunity - so much
economic opportunity that it became far more valuable to present yourself in a
certain way, even if it was false, then to actually <i>be</i> that way. Trust
lost its value. Appearances and salesmanship became more advantages forms of
expression. Knowing a lot of people superficially was more beneficial than
knowing a few people closely.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">This is why it became the norm in western cultures
to smile and say polite things even when you don't feel like it, to tell little
white lies and agree with someone whom you don't actually agree with. This is
why people learn to pretend to be friends with people they don't actually like,
to buy things they don't actually want. The economic system promotes such
deception.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">The downside of this is that you never know, in the
West, if you can completely trust the person you're talking to. Sometimes this
is the case even among good friends or family members. There is such pressure
in the West to be likable that people often reconfigure their entire
personality depending on the person they're dealing with.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-43343598946617399692022-04-18T22:38:00.003+05:302022-04-18T22:38:52.034+05:30From ‘Undiplomatic Incidents’ by Apa Pant<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">President Nasser of Egypt …… As Indian
ambassador in Cairo I was once involved in organizing a charity show of the
Indian Film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mother India</i> for the
Egyptian Red Crescent movement. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Knowing how busy the president’s schedule
of engagements was, I indicated, while inviting him to grace the charity show,
that he need not actually stay for more than a few minutes, particularly since
Indian films were, in any case, far too long<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">…….. When Nasser arrived at the theater, I thanked
him profusely …… I reminded him that he need only stay for ten minutes …..
Nasser turned to me and asked me whether I had seen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mother India</i>. Outraged at the suggestion that I wasted my time on
Indian films, I replied, ‘Of course not, Your Excellency.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Nasser said softly, ‘Mr Ambassador, I have
already seen the film twice and I want to see the whole of it again for a third
time!’<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-64618571655853753972022-04-18T22:31:00.002+05:302022-04-18T22:31:29.587+05:30From ‘India My Love’ by Dominique Lapierre<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nirmala UI",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">तन्नश्तम्</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nirmala UI",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">यन्न</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nirmala UI",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">दियते</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">tannashtam yanna diyate<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“All that is not given is lost”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Indian Proverb<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I soon
learnt the habit of indicating ones religion immediately is typically Indian.
It takes precedence over all other forms of identification.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Five
sovereigns - those of Hyderabad, Kashmir, Mysore, Gwalior and Baroda - were
granted the supreme honor of a twenty-one gun salute. Then came the states with
nineteen then seventeen, fifteen, thirteen, elevan and nine gun salutes. For four
hundred and twenty-five more modest <i>rajas</i> and <i>nawabs</i> who ruled
over small principalities almost forgotten on the map of the subcontinent,
there was no gun salute. They were the forsaken princess of India; men for whom
the guns were not fired.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“If only
you knew what these whims of Gandhi cost the British treasury!” Mountbatten,
the last Viceroy of India, revealed to us. “We were so worried he might get
assassinated that all his co-travelers in his third class compartment –
untouchables, beggars and lepers - were police inspectors in disguise.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">What
bliss! My beloved India, had gratified Larry and me with the most exhaustive
documentation ever collected on the fall of the British Empire in India and the
partition of the subcontinent into two sovereign nations, India with the Hindu
majority and Muslim Pakistan. We had collected more than two thousand
unpublished accounts and about five hundred kilos of material. The documents in
our treasure trove were almost entirely original, rich material that
constituted the basis of the narrative for one of the greatest epochs in the
history of the 20th century.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-22051834329970502702022-04-18T22:29:00.003+05:302022-04-18T22:29:56.396+05:30From ‘Toujours Provence’ by Peter Mayle<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The
doctor began to scribble like a poet on heat…….he passed over a wad of hieroglyphics<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">…….. The
Anglo-Saxon custom of the orderly queue has no place in French life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">……… why
French drains behave and smell the way they do, which I found to be a topic of
common curiosity among English expatriates. Isn't it strange, they said, that
the French are so good at sophisticated technology like high-speed trains and
electronic telephone systems and Concorde, and yet revert to the eighteenth
century in their bathrooms. Only the other day, an elderly lady informed me, she
had flushed her lavatory and the remains of a mixed salad had surfaced in the
bowl. Really, it was <i>too bad</i>. That sort of thing would never happen in Cheltenham.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">He
ordered a glass of champagne and showed us some baby melons, no bigger than
apples, that he had just bought in the market. They were to be scooped clean, dosed
with ratafia of grape juice and Brandy and left for twenty-four hours in the
refrigerator. They would taste, so Regis assured us, like a young girl's lips. I
had never thought of melons in quite that way before, but I put that down to
the shortcomings of my English education.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I
remembered being turned away from restaurant with airs and graces in Somerset
because I wasn't wearing a tie, something that has never happened to me in
France.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">He was
unused to speaking into a microphone and, being a Provencal, he was unable to
keep his hands still. Thus his explanation came and went in intermittent
snatches as he pointed the microphone hopefully at various parts of the field
while his words disappeared into the breeze.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">People
are attracted to an area because of its beauty and its promise of peace, and
then they transform it into a high-rent suburb complete with cocktail parties, burglar
alarm systems, four-wheel-drive recreational vehicles and other essential
trappings of <i>la vie rustique</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I don't
think the locals mind. Why would they? Barren patches of land that couldn't
support a herd of goats are suddenly worth millions of francs. Shops and
restaurants and hotels prosper. The <i>macons</i>, the carpenters, the
landscape gardeners and the tennis court builders have bulging order books and
everyone benefits from <i>le boum</i>. Cultivating tourists is much more
rewarding than growing grapes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Sooner or
later, as we now expected, every conversation in Provence seems to turn to food
or drink.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Every
time it rains we are delighted, which Faustin takes as a promising sign that we
are becoming less English.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The time
that elapses in Provence between planning a rendezvous and keeping it can often
stretch into months, and sometimes years…..<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">‘Tomorrow
morning at eleven,’ he said. ‘In the caves at Chateauneuf. Eat plenty of bread
at breakfast.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I had
done what he suggested and, as an extra precaution, taking a soup-spoonful of
neat olive oil, which one of the local gourmets had told me was an excellent
way to coat the stomach and cushion the system against repeated assault by
young and powerful wines. In any case………. I wouldn't be swallowing much. I
would do as the experts do, rinse and spit. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">…..Frenchman
with an empty stomach drives twice as fast as a Frenchman with a full stomach (which
is already too fast for sanity and speed limits)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">There is
something about lunch in France that never fails to overcome any small reserves
of will-power that I possess. I can sit down, resolved to be moderate, determined
to eat and drink lightly, and be there three hours later, nursing my wine and
still open to temptation. I don't think it's greed. I think it's the atmosphere
generated by a roomful of people who are totally intent on eating and drinking.
And while they do it, they talk about it; not about politics or sport or
business, but about what is on the plate and in the glass. Sauces are compared,
recipes argued over, past meals remembered and future meals planned. The world
and its problems can be dealt with later on, <i>la bouffe</i> takes priority
and contentment hangs in the air. I find it irresistible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">…..
Marseille itself didn't enjoy the best of reputations among its neighbors. (even
today, a Marsellais is regarded as a <i>blaguer</i>, an exaggerator, a man who
will describe a sardine as a whale, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>not
entirely to be believed.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">….. monks,
for some reason, I have an affinity for alcoholic invention, from champagne to
Benedictine……..<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I remembered
being told not to handle the vegetables in a London greengrocer’s. There would
have been outrage here if the same miserable ruling were introduced. No fruit
or vegetables are bought without going through trial by touch, and any
stallholder who tried to discourage the habit would be pelted out of the market.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I had
once heard a Frenchman express his opinion of Italian food in a single libelous
phrase: after the noodle, there is nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">It is
impossible to live in France for any length of time and stay immune to the
national enthusiasm for food…….<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">………. to bewilder
foreigners. Where is the logic, for instance, in the genders given to proper
names and nouns? Why is the Rhone masculine and the Durance feminine? They are
both rivers, and if they must have a sex, why can't it be the same one? ………. he
went on to the masculine ocean, the feminine sea, the masculine lake and the
feminine puddle. Even the water must get confused.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">……. genders
are there for no other reason than to make life difficult. They have been
allocated in a whimsical and arbitrary fashion, sometimes with a cavalier
disregard for the anatomical niceties. The French for vagina is <i>vagin</i>. <i>Le
vagin</i>. Masculine. How can the puzzled student hope to apply logic to a
language in which the vagina is masculine?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">It is
perhaps because of these perplexing twists and turns that French was for
centuries the language of diplomacy, and occupation in which simplicity and
clarity are not regarded as being necessary, or even desirable. Indeed, the
guarded statement, made fuzzy by formality and open to several different
interpretations, is much less likely to land an ambassador in the soup then
plain words which mean what they say. A diplomat, according to Alex Dreier, is ‘anyone
who thinks twice before saying nothing’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-14349531024218847602022-04-18T22:27:00.005+05:302022-04-18T22:27:52.430+05:30From ‘Close Encounters’ by M V Kamath<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">In course
of covering these meetings I have met, conversed with, exchanged jokes with
practically every President and Prime Minister world over. I had one of the
most engaging conversations on, of all things, Indian curries - believe it or
not - with Stalin's foreign minister Molotov.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Jawaharlal
was known to be particularly snooty. He had no use for mere reporters,
especially the Indian variety. He would be available to foreign (white)
correspondents as I was later to know more painfully in 1956 but not to Indians<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Dr. Ambedkar………
had some awful things to say about the <i>Free Press Journal</i> ……. said some
uncharitable and unprintable things about Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai
Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru and then he lit up on me in no uncertain terms..<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">One,
never let go a chance to talk to a celebrity, even at the risk of being
snubbed. Two, never pretend to be knowledgeable. If you don't know something,
admit to the fact. Never pretend to knowledge you don't have. The real expert
would always be willing to enlighten the ignorant. Three, pay respectful
attention to the one person in front of you.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">…….a
brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Col Fitzpatrick whose tribute to Gandhiji
on his assassination remains one of the finest pieces of drawing, even beating Bill
Maudlin’s cartoon on assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The
interview went off well. I had never met Krishna Menon before. I was taken
aback by his haughtiness. It was as if he was bestowing a favor on me by the
very act of answering my questions…….. Menon behaved like a petulent child………
He wanted to be considered as someone special….. I could not fathom Menon. He
was a different kind of Indian who had lived all his adult life in Britain and
had his ups and downs. He was probably more at peace with the British than his
own countrymen.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I had
heard a good deal about him, how he fought for India's independence in his own
way through the India League, how he lived a frugal, even ascetic life, how he
often went out of his way to help Indian students stranded in London etc. etc.
and I was full of admiration for him……… Intellectual arrogance is something
hard to put up with. And that seemed to be Menon’s main fault.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">One may
say anything about Morarji Desai, but he appreciates a person who stands up to
him and is truthful.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Mr M.C. Chagla……..
was a man of guts though not always distinguished for diplomacy. He reminded
Pakistanis that when they attacked Hindus, they were attacking their own
ancestors, since many of them were converts. That could not have gone down well
with Muslims in Pakistan. He refused to go to the mosque to pray in Malaysia,
insisting that he did not believe in such matters. That embarrassed the
Government of India, but Chagla was not the one to be a token Muslim - in any
cabinet. He asserted his right to have his own views on religion and religious
observances and was not to be browbeaten either by the government or by the
press to play the role of compliant Muslim.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">One
predominant trait in Bhutto was his discomfort when challenged. He was not
accustomed to being questioned by anyone - least of all by an Indian
correspondent. What he said had to be accepted as indisputable truth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Kissinger
is a third rate diplomat, his smartness vastly overvalued. He has given a lame
excuse for calling Indians bastards saying that this was done at the height of
the Cold War. He is a sycophant……. A man utterly without any principles, he was
the right man to work for Nixon whose devotion to principles was even less.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The Nehrus
must have lived under the belief that they are above most of us ordinary human
beings………..<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I have
fond memories of justice Hidayatullah. In my galaxy of truly noble men he is
one of the brightest stars.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-10559156994741904712022-04-18T22:24:00.002+05:302022-04-18T22:24:34.446+05:30From ‘Riding Towards Me. A thousand-day journey from Chicago to Delhi’ by Jay Kannaiyan<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">… riding through Mexico, I realized I was being taken for a
Mexican whenever I spoke Spanish.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">America is a place where your origin isn't as important as
what you are capable of doing and who you are as an individual.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">… the well known beauty of Medellin women became apparent to
me….. they all possessed a glowing, inherent grace and beauty. I later learned
that plastic surgery is very popular in Colombia and neighboring Venezuela.
Regardless, the wide smiles and pronounced cheekbones brought out the natural
beauty in these women. Their features were in sharp contrast to the men, who
were comparatively average-looking. One can easily pass time over a beer
pondering Columbia’s evident gender ‘imbalance’; a fate shared only by a few
nations. That evening, I mused on stories about travelers who had reached
Columbia and not ventured further because they had been trapped by the beauty
of the women.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Being brown, I felt like I could mingle with the indigenous
population of Peru…..I was intrigued by the fact that chillies had actually
originated in Peru but are hardly used in their local cuisine nowadays.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My reason for leaving Chicago in the cold of March was so
that I could cross the Amazon in August, the driest month of the year in the
rainforest and the safest time to make the crossing solo.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Eudaimonia, found at the intersection of what's true, good
and beautiful, is an oft-forgotten philosophy from Socrates’s time.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I had seen people bathing in public by leaving their
underwear on and found it strange……….. it was perfectly normal, at least in
rural parts of South America, to strip naked if it was to bathe yourself. This
whole continent is quite conservative since Roman Catholicism is the major line
of faith, Primarily in the urban areas. In rural areas, privacy is a luxury
that not many can afford, and people go about their business without putting
much thought into coming across as prudish.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Each positive experience in Brazil was helping me build a
very friendly impression of the country…… the development of the roads with
proper tarmac and regularly spaced distance boards confirmed that Brazil is
much more advanced than Bolivia…….. the road…..the legendary TransAmazonica…..
this road is mythical in the adventure riding community and as I later found
out, even amongst the locals. it was built in the 1970s by the then military
government of Brazil to bring development from the Atlantic Coast deep into the
vast Amazon region. The construction was treacherous as a rain forest is no
easy place to clear a path and then keep it clear. The initial plan was to pave
the whole stretch from West to east, but thankfully to adventurers, it is yet
to be done…… the utmost difficulty in traversing this route. it is an unpaved
road through not just any rainforest, but the Amazon rainforest, which means
the road surface is primarily clay…… it rains eleven months of the year in the
Amazon, being the heaviest around the beginning of the year. Of course, it was
quite intense during the other months as well since it was a rainforest…… I was
pleasantly surprised to see that the Amazon was not a flat plain, as one might
imagine while seeing satellite pictures, but it is instead quite hilly………. My
admiration for good-natured Brazilians was only increasing with each
interaction…. There was something about the openness among Brazilians I had
come across so far that I found very comforting.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Maybe Brazilians have an understanding of how important a
bath is at the end of the day since it is always so humid and hot. This was my
kind of place. …. We walked back to his little hut as I wondered why he had sat
there looking at me while I bathed. But I knew that Brazil was more open than
most cultures and nudity was really nothing special.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At the end of the tour, Mauricio, in a spontaneous act I had
come to love and expect in South America, invited us to a street party in the
evening.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The blinding white salt surface of the Salar de Uyuni raced
ahead of me all the way to the horizon….. This is a 10,582 sq km…. flat, dry
salt lake at 3,656 m (11,955 ft) that doesn't vary by more than a meter across
its whole surface. Due to its near uniform geological flatness and high
reflectivity (being white), the Salar has been used for many decades to
calibrate the altimeters of earth-observing satellites. It's also an easy place
to get lost…… The brine is a solution containing large amounts of different
salts ranging from sodium, potassium, lithium and magnesium. Of those, lithium
has the most economic value. Bolivia harbors about 50 per cent of the known
reserves on this planet and most of these are under the Salar de Uyuni. This
rare substance already in very high demand because lithium batteries power
almost all electronic devices today………. The flatness has been attributed to its
annual flooding, which levels out any changes in the malleable topography.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….. I knew from other travelers that Argentina was a safe
country with an established damping culture….. Argentines are very friendly
people…..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To avoid paying for a doctor, most cargo ships around the
world have welcome no more than twelve passengers on their voyages across the
sea. It's a niche travel sector known as freighter cruises.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Feeling very much at home across South America, I wondered
if my skin color had played a part in that. I have been surprised, time and
time again, at how curious people were about India.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….’ Oh, I'm sorry, you are too late, come again on Monday.’
‘But Sir, the boat is leaving on Monday!’ I pleaded as I thrust my clutch of
documents towards him. He saw the Ashoka emblem on the cover of my passport and
exclaimed, ‘Oh, you’re from India? Amitabh Bachchan is great! I'll help you
out, one second.’ The reference to one of India's Bollywood greats momentarily
stumped me, and I stared at the officer for a second with the papers held out
in my hand before he took them and swept into action. My Indian passport had
worked in my favor…….<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even while Sudan happened to be in the world’s consciousness
for all the wrong reasons, such as the conflicts in Darfur and Abyei and for
it's authoritarian president, other travelers had informed me that the people
of Sudan were one of the most genuine they had encountered in all of Africa…………
Just like Egypt, it [Sudan] was expensive to enter, but once inside, travel was
cheap….. I asked him about his time in India and he said that he loved it,
besides the occasional racial slur that is strangely common against black
people in India<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Zambia are being one of the few African countries never to
have had a coup or military dictator….. Unlike Indian migrants who went to
South Africa or other parts of the continent, Indians who came to Zambia (or
Northern Rhodesia as it was known before independence) were not indentured
laborers, but artisans and business people. Contrary to the uneasy relations
between Indians and locals in other African countries, such as Uganda in the 70s,
Zambia has been good to its Indian community, which is maybe why so many stayed
and prospered<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…… The popularity of Indian food in South Africa….. it was
intriguing to witness how Indian food had spread into the local cuisine.
Chapati and samosas were very much a part of the staple in a lot of areas…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">….. The Hoba meteorite site….. A massive boulder that didn't
look like any rock I had ever seen before. Squat, square, shiny and most
certainly, other-worldly. It had excavated a shallow crater as it crashed into
earth 80,000 years ago…… What remains is the largest known meteorite and lump
of naturally-occurring iron on earth.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The only word of caution they gave me was to remain in the
campgrounds. The risk of snakes and other animals was just too high in Namibia……….
The Namib desert is considered the world's oldest desert. It formed around
fifty-five million years ago and has been arid ever since. In comparison the
Sahara is only around seven years old<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Surrounding Deadvlei were the largest sand dunes I had ever
seen. Bid Daddy at the far end of the vlei, soaring almost 325 m (1067 ft)
above, is one of the largest sand dunes in the world. It is an enormous wall of
rust orange sand rising from the desert floor….. This was one of the strangest
places in the world.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">in all my travels, I have seen a greater sense of civility
in rural areas then in urban areas…….. unlike the aggression that is so typical
of the plains, people in the hills are a lot friendlier and more amiable,
almost certainly a result of the climate.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……. like most places in India, pollution came with the
passage of people. Alas, it is something I have found be far more pronounced in
India than in most other countries I have visited. The mindlessness with which
I would see people throw empty bottles, candy bar wrappers and plastic bags,
regardless of the national beauty they were in the midst of, remains an
Incomprehensible affront to our country. This bothered me even more because I
know that Indians don't behave the same way abroad. Lamentably it is getting
steadily worse amongst the younger travelers whose lack of shame was all too
evident……. India's attitude towards its environment has become a national shame<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Manali-Leh highway is one of the most incredible rides on
the planet and its popularity is well deserved.<o:p></o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-9650136682954494512021-01-20T17:57:00.003+05:302021-01-20T17:57:58.517+05:30From ‘Asian Absences. Searching for Shangri-La’ by Wolfgang Büscher<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My first impression remained. This town had none of the
anarchy of Indian towns with their intense spiciness and sweetness, their
absolute physicality and pervasive dampness. No betel spit, no beggars showing
off their bodily defects in dramatic poses. No children, who immediately
surround a stranger and start massaging his legs quickly and roughly, breaking
off to make equally quick and rough eating signs. Grab leg, rub tummy, grab
food.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Arabia’s sun was not the friendly son of our songs. It was
naked, red-hot violence. Now the flaming ball shot up angrily, the terror of
the world. In minutes it had asserted it's despotism - everything bowed its
head and covered itself.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You don't stare at people in Tokyo. You don't do it
anywhere, but in Tokyo no one does it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The night didn't fall like a black cushion suffocating everything-
the day took its time leaving. <o:p></o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-66048349448295924452021-01-20T17:56:00.000+05:302021-01-20T17:56:07.704+05:30From ‘Mystic Experiences with Himalayan Masters’ by Dr Sant S Dharamananda, Phd A direct disciple of Sri Swami Rama<p><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">An enlightened guru can also help his beloved students
transmigrate from one life to another. The guru's grace selects future parents
for his beloved students before death occurs. Upon death the soul goes on to the
new parents <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I then recalled a meeting I had many years ago with a Yogi
who was visiting Florida . He had said to me, ‘never touch my feet without my
permission. I am a spiritual healer and I transport people's sickness on my
feet. If you touch my feet unknowingly, you may contract the disease and not
know how to get rid of it.’ The Yogi continued to say, ‘Be aware of touching
the feet of other yogis as well. When they give you permission to touch their
feet, they will pull back their feet. Touch the ground where they stand and not
the feet.’ <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A soul is in astral transit when the nine gates of the body
begin to close. The nine gates are the nine openings to the body: two ears, two
eyes, two nostrils, the mouth, and the urethra, and the anus openings. In the
case of an enlightened person, he or she will leave the body through the tenth
gate, which is the fontanel or opening on the top of the skull. It is commonly
known as the soft spot on a baby's head. This tenth gateway is like an express
highway for heavenly travels. When one leaves the body through this gateway one
can remember all the knowledge of one's past lives. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Based on our karmic density of consciousness, the life force
of every human being will leave the body through one of the openings of the nine
gates. In a human being with a lower consciousness the life force leaves the
body through the lower openings. Whereas in a human being with higher
consciousness, the life force will leave the body through one of the upper
openings. By the grace of a Sat Guru, an enlightened soul can leave the body,
cracking through the tenth gate in the head. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Y-chromosome is very active in alkaline body fluids and
the X-chromosome is very active in acidic body fluids. Most of the foods
offered in the ceremonies by my father consisted of foods that were sweet and
rich in flavorful aromas, like ripe bananas, honey, sugar or sugar cane juice, warm
boiled milk, Kheer, and any type of sweet delicacy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When a man eats these sweet and flavorful foods, his body
fluids become alkaline and the Y chromosomes in his seminal fluids yield a
greater chance of conceiving a baby boy. The foods that are sour, bitter,
pungent, astringent and salty tend to acidify the body fluids . Thus, a man who
has such food will have a higher acidic body fluid. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Upon copulation, the X-chromosomes in his seminal fluids
will lead to a baby girl . I have found that foods that are sour, bitter,
pungent, astringent and salty were not offered in ceremonies…………<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The food combination during the seven days of either acidic
or alkaline pH helps determine the gender of the baby. The timing of the moon
phase also helps determine the exact gender during conception. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….What my Transcendental Meditation teacher told my class …………when
people gather on a regular basis to meditate, the plants become greener, the
air gets purified, the waters become more soothing, and people become happy. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-65113506071540792762020-10-10T18:53:00.003+05:302020-10-10T18:53:35.515+05:30From ‘Road to Mekong. Four Women. Six Countries. 17,000 kilometres-an adventure of a lifetime’ by Piya Bahadur<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……..we drove 300 kilometres into the Odisha countryside before
I realized we had seen no woman out on her own. Not a single woman driver nor a
dhaba-owner. The women we saw were either in groups or accompanied by men. The only
unaccompanied women were the prostitutes at the truck stops……….<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">During my years in the US, I had seen almost an equal number
of drivers of either gender. In Telangana, I had seen women working at toll
booths and running dhabas…..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……the rural hinterland of West Bengal is relatively free of
plastic because people here are too poor to buy packaged rubbish……..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The gods of the Indian highways are not our usual Krishnas
and Ramas who resides in palaces and rule over a world with <i>ghar sansar</i>
and domesticity as the central themes. ……The gods revered along the highways
are the remote, rugged Shivji and the effervescent Hanuman……Though we see a
smattering of Devi temples, it is her consort Shiva who is ever-present.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……as we were entering India’s northeastern states, that we
began to see roads in real disrepair and highways getting more crowded. It was
on this stretch that we met some of the worst roads one might see in India. But
the silver lining was that there was road construction activity everywhere. ……people
told us that these were the first roadworks they were seeing in almost a
decade. The new government was bringing about changes that we in other parts of
India do not hear about ………<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….Assam………..i was awestruck by the clean mountain air and
relieved at the clean toilets and the spotless dhabas.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Motorcycling is one of the most gender-free passions……the
average biker….questions are gender-neutral and completely unbiased…..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Under the India-Myanmar Friendship Treaty unrestricted entry
is permitted within a 16-kilometre belt on either side. This may mean little to
people living elsewhere, but to those living along the border it opens up
possibilities.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….on the Indian side, the villagers speak Hindi, English,
and Manipuri; and just 30 kilometres into Myanmar, the English is broken and
the Hindi absent.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…..Burmese women who caught my envious attention. I marveled
at their slight build, fine features, skin to die for, and glossy black hair.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rural Myanmar, much like India’s northeast, was refreshingly
clean. The dhabas we stopped at and the toilets we used, whether attached to
the dhabas or in people’s homes, were invariably impeccably clean……humblest of
the houses, toilets would always have a bucket of water and a dustbin…….Mandalay,
on the banks of the Irrawaddy, is a city of golden spires glistening in the sun,
with charming people who do not honk on the roads. Even their vehicles were
gentler: no sound and fury, no fume-spewing autos and carriers (apparently
their fuel is of better quality), no overloaded trucks and buses……….Orderliness
and a quiet discipline is the hallmark of the Burmese. From all reports,
Myanmar has average levels of literacy. Yet, the country is kept scrupulously
clean with regularly swept streets, ubiquitous garbage cans, covered food, no
standing water, or visible piles of garbage. ……..The cows were familiar though.
They had the same lovely eyes, the same colours of coat, and the same placid
manner of cud-chewing and little care for traffic as the ones back home……..density
in Myanmar is only abut 82 persons per square kilometer compared to 457 persons
per square kilometer …….Driving through the mountain passes and cutting through
the country on the approach to Thailand took us through pristine forests. Every
time I thought that this was easily the most picturesque place we had crossed
so far, we would turn a corner to a yet more charming view.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………Keng Tung, a small town surrounded by mountains about 150
kilometres from Tachilet on the Myanmar-Thai border…..selling….even Bollywood movie
CDs dubbed in Burmese! Akshay Kumar seemed to be the local favourite.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thailand announced itself with its smooth roads, far higher
traffic speeds, and strict lane discipline ……..The pleasure of driving through
Myanmar’s pristine silence was replaced by the boisterous vivacity of Chiang
Rai’s urban landscape…….Unlike the more demure Burmese, the Thai motorists engaged
with us more readily at traffic signals. ………Our motorcycles were also not the
largest vehicles on the road any more. The Thai are known to be fond of heavy
two-wheelers…….on their fabulous roads.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Laos was a surprise……..our ingress from the north……the
country’s seductively virginal landscape – population density of 27 persons per
square kilometre – captivated us: mountainous roads winding through unspoilt
jungles, lush paddy fields, picturesque villages. Every turn on the wondrous
mountain ranges, plains, and plateaus revealed a surprise……this country of
myriad ethnicities in the gentle heart of the Southeast Asian peninsula……..the
bloody history of the country in the recent past. Between 1964 and 1973, the US
dropped 2 million tons of bombs on Laos, nearly equal to the 2.1 million tons
it dropped on Europe and Asia during World War II. Up to a third of those bombs
failed to explode and today remain scattered throughout the country, rendering
vast swathes of land impossible to cultivate. They kill or maim close to a hundred
Laotians every year. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While western Myanmar felt remote and unconnected, traditional
and vernacular, Mandalay seemed to be turning cautiously modern. Thailand was a
visibly exuberant and glamorous economy, and Laos, hauntingly desolate with an
austere beauty.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">………how the Chinese, the Thais, and the Vietnamese migrated,
warred, plundered, settled, and finally became Laos as we know today.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">……….Myanmar had been pristine, Laos had seemed at peace, and
Thailand very sophisticated. But Vietnam was ruins, the result of tens of
thousands of bombs and several gallons of Agent Orange and napalm dropped by
the Americans to strip the forest cover. It left the rivers and farm land
poisoned and gifted the next generation with birth defects. The unexploded
landmines still kill a thousand people every year. The need to rebuild had cast
Vietnam in a state of terrifying industriousness. Every structure looked like
it was designed to be a sweatshop. This was a nation in a hurry to make up for
the time and work lost to war.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Almost nothing in the cities, towns and villages we passed was
made beautifully – except the tombstones. The Vietnamese carve stone and wood
well………….they had become a factory for the world. There were few gardens or interesting
houses. There were no pleasant touches that impart a certain warmth to a
country; instead there was a focused, frowning earnestness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While the highways so far had been scrupulously clean, the
road to Hanoi was conspicuously not so. Almost all the roads we drove along now
were lined with industries, and the air smelt of chemicals. Vietnam had given
itself over to industry in order to manufacture a new future……the effects of an
extended war, pollution and landmines strewn over all of North Vietnam and
large parts of the rest of the country have lasted three generations. It was a
tragedy long enough for a people to lose large chunks of their tradition.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The traffic in Hanoi was a fantastic mess of two-wheelers. The
roads were swarmed by petite people on petite two-wheelers. Industrious,
sincere, determined they looked.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Land of Million Elephants is what they call Laos. ……….Laos
has been a memorable experience. The least westernized of the countries we had
travelled through, its laid-back approach to life, the beautiful scenery dotted
with pagodas, its comfortable pace of life…..<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Images of the twelfth-century temple Angkor Wat could be
seen anywhere – on the national flag.………The only country other than Cambodia to
have the image of a building – a mosque – on its flag is Afghanistan. Cambodia
wanted the word to recognize its identity through a living, ancient monument……<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thailand is clearly the most dynamic economy in the
Southeast Asian peninsula. It thrives on individual business enterprise, which
imparts to the country the vibrancy of a bustling marketplace…….its consumption-led
economy, strong middle class, and vibrant society were immediately evident. It’s
a complete contrast with the other countries in the region. War-torn Vietnam,
having a larger manufacturing base, was dotted with sweatshops. Cambodia seemed
to have only two classes: the rich and the just-above-subsistence class. The middle
class……..is significantly missing…….despite their economic limitations,
Cambodia and Vietnam afforded us great riding conditions. We made great time on
the fantastic Cambodian roads, averaging 130 kilometres per hour to the Thai
border…….Vietnam had even better roads: even the curves could be handled easily
at speeds greater than 100 kilometres per hour.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Movement across the borders for local people is seamless.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">…….Thailand………..western style toilets are clean and aplenty……..There
were well-appointed toilets at every gas stations……the roads too were smooth
and lined with trees.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Once again in Myanmar I marveled at how clean the country
was, the abundance of usable simple toilets, and the pristine mountains.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Back on our side of the border, we saw not a trace of fish
oil and vinegar. How strange that a man-made border could wall off cooking
ingredients from foreign lands. In the Southeast Asian countries we rode
through, we found eating establishments mainly using soya sauce for seasoning.
Salt was a tough ask.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We had several cups of the strong, sweet tea so native to
all Indian roadsides. In no other country does one get this kind of tea, boiled
to death with milk and sugar. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What we need is more women on the streets engaged in
livelihood activities. Six weeks ago, I had felt their absence on the highway
through Odisha. But through our northeastern states and the South East
neighbours, I had seen women thronging the streets, markets and public places. I
had seen the confidence in their eyes and in the self-assured flick of their
wrists – handling vehicles, babies, and money with equal aplomb.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The filthy toilets we saw in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were a
sharp reminder of the absence of women on the highways. They are absent because
they have very little work that requires them to travel…….In our travels all across
India’s northeast and Southeast Asia, we saw efficient, clean toilets and
confident women. We had seen women filling our fuel tanks in Myanmar, handling
dhabas in Manipur, collecting toll in Telangana. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar
such women were conspicuous by their absence. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-41263593406976983942020-10-10T18:49:00.003+05:302020-10-10T18:51:21.596+05:30From ‘Bending over backwards. A journey to the end of the world to find a cure for a chronic backache’ by Carlo Pizzati<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When you walk out in the streets in India, you will always
find a meaningful experience. There’s an intensity of life here that you can’t
find anywhere else……….<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I remember a Neapolitan friend’s quip as soon as he came
back from India ………. ‘Can you picture the streets of Naples near the San Paolo
stadium after the Sunday soccer game? All those little flags and the noise in
the streets, with the traffic all stuck? India is like that, but 24/7’<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-66349234782135589172020-08-02T15:39:00.001+05:302020-08-02T15:39:25.284+05:30From ‘Land of the Midnight Sun. My Arctic Adventures’ by Alexander Armstrong<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Lofoten Islands themselves are famous for many things, chiefly
their beauty. You’ll never find a more pleasing rugged-coastline-and-soaring-mountains
combination……..the celebrated Lofoten fish. The islands are a kind of lush Eden
for the codfish ……..every year the world’s largest cod shoal (indeed the planet’s
only growing cod stock) drops by for the famous ‘skrei’ season. By virtue of
the happy confluence of the Gulf Stream and inch-perfect submarine
direction-finding, each February millions of these wonderful fish swim here all
the way from the Barents Sea, over a thousand kilometres away……thanks to the
Norwegians’ innate knack for practical forward thinking, they have never fished
the things to extinction – <i>au contraire</i>, they have caught them through
patient line fishing, always being particularly strict on themselves to respect
their quotas, never taking more than is sustainable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The way the shoal has grown and grown over the centuries
remains an exquisite if rare example of man and nature living in per-fect
har-mo-nee.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Driving in the Arctic……..is a good deal less perilous than
you might expect. Yes, the road surface is invariably compacted snow and ice,
but all the tyres are fitted with studs and this makes an astonishing
difference<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Strangely, even as you drive through the most mountaineous
passes of Northern Norway, the radio signal stays remarkably constant…….I find
that eerily impressive.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Narvik is the northernmost port in Norway – and famously the
only deep-sea port in the Scandinavian Arctic to remain ice free throughout the
year. This distinction has made Narvik strategically vital to the Norwegians …….as
it means that the colossal iron-ore extraction just over the border at Kiruna
in Sweden can be shipped from there all year round. Such useful attributes can
come at a terrible price, though. Poor Narvik was the scene of vicious fighting
in 1940 as Hitler went all out to bring Norway to heel…….the old town was
completely destroyed by a series of battles that raged between April and June
that year.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We travel by train along the iron-ore line over the Swedish
border to Kiruna. This is said to be one of the most beautiful train journeys
in the world<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kiruna……is on the site of an ancient Sami settlement, but
the modern town wasn’t founded till 1900. The Samis are the indigenous people
of that area of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola peninsula of Russia ………The
Samis, who’ve been living in this region semi-nomadically for over twelve
thousand years …….have been bullied terribly one way or the other by the
dominant cultures of mainland Europe over the centuries, suffering the worst
kinds of ethnic cleansing right up to the middle of the twentieth century…….At
the first sniff of heavy industry and its riches the Samis seem to get shunted
fairly unceremoniously to one side……..iron ore has been dug out of what is now
called Kiruna since the seventeenth century…….It was only when the railway came
along in 1903 that the output rose to anything like its current levels and the town
expanded vastly. The Kiruna mine produces over 26 million tonnes of iron ore a
year, which is exported all over the world……..To put that in context, the
annual iron-ore output of the US is 47.5 million tonnes……..<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Polar bear training is mandatory for anyone visiting
Svalbard and involves a lesson in rifle shooting…….Its a sobering fact that on
Svalbard all front doors have to remain unlocked so that people fleeing polar
bears can run in and take shelter. That’s how often people run from polar
bears, and presumably how a great many Svalbardian romances start……..One thing
you see an awful lot of in the Arctic is stuffed polar bears…….<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
….Norway ….I have fallen heads over heels in love with it. The
countryside is so heartbreakingly beautiful……Best of all, though, are the people……
I have come across such humanity and decency in Norway, such intelligence, such
advanced social ideas (I haven’t even touched on their revolutionary penal
system, which has all but eliminated reoffending), such entrenched contentedness
and warmth. It turns out its not an act at all, they’re just wonderful,
wonderful people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Norway poses for photographs from the minute you arrive……..The
tiny little bit of Iceland we’ve seen so far doesn’t seem to do this so much, or
at least not in February…..<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Norway and Sweden they are aware of – and celebrate –
their Viking past but it seems to survive more as a sort of colourful historic
sideshow…..Iceland’s Viking heritage, on the other hand, is a chapter that hasn’t
closed – they are still Vikings – its all around you all the time….its culture
is proudly held up as the origin of all Icelandic life, its politics, even its religion.
Until fifteen years ago, when outsiders started coming here to live and work,
every single person on the island knew exactly what their Viking origins were,
which branch of which clan they belonged to.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Its not just the people who are still Vikings – every species
on the island seems to have some sort of Viking pedigree….Apparently there are
also Viking sheep.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ilulissat – formerly Jacobshaven – is a small town of just
under 5,000 people (which still makes it the ‘third-largest city’ in Greenland)…..<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He seems to have that thing that people on second marriages
often have of being very careful to be fair and even-tempered at all times…….<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You have got to say this for Fairbanks; five minutes out of
town and you’re in some of the finest and most majestic scenery on earth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br /></div>
Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-33294519913158730912020-04-11T21:38:00.001+05:302020-04-11T21:38:37.530+05:30From ‘To the Baltic with Bob’ by Griff Rhys Jones<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[<i>on a boat</i>] Sometimes, the fainter light was closer
than the brighter. Sometimes a small and distant light would suddenly rush upon
you and pass close by, the light itself rocking on what was now a black cone,
speeding by a few yards away and back into the night. Sometimes the light that
had begun to worry you, seemingly hovering aboard an obstacle and about to
collide, gradually resolved itself into a star, millions of miles away and
hanging low in the sky.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So at night, on a boat, you stare. You stare ahead, opening
your eyelids wider, frowning hard……….peering into the black. After a while,
your forehead hurts and your eyeballs ache and the back of your neck goes
tense. And, you remember the chilling fact that a large boat can charge up from
its hidden place on the other side of the horizon to be on top of you in seven
minutes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Kiel Canal was built in the nineteenth century for
strategic reasons. Germany wanted to be able to get her battleships into the
Baltic. It was designed for, and still took, big ships, but of course the canal
was largely redundant now. Real big ships were too big for it in the modern
world. In fact real big ships could no longer enter the Baltic at all. The waters
of the Kattegat were too shallow for ocean-going bulk carriers to pass through
the Danish entrance and the canal was now far too small. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Why do you think, Griff, that I drive that battered old
thing?’…………’Here, in Denmark, I could not be seen driving in a top-of-the-range
Porsche or Ferrari, even though I could easily afford one. Danish people don’t like
anybody to show off.’ ………The Danes do have an enormous social conscience and
they pay massive taxes to support it. It is part of the fabric of their society.
After the Napoleonic Wars, when they backed the wrong side and were mercilessly
punished, losing Norway, bombed by Congreve rockets and shot to pieces by
Admiral Nelson the Danes became a small nation and the conscience of Europe. …….Danes
are very proud of their tolerant history……Hence the flags, and the patriotism. …..Spare,
modern, practical and uncomfortable, that was Danish: nothing frilly or
ornamental, please.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Danes are immensely proud of Denmark. This is because they
are the most sophisticated of the Baltic nations. I was told this not only by
the Danish, but also in Estonia, Sweden and Finland, without a trace of irony.
Nobody said, ‘They think they’re the most sophisticated’, as we British might
about the French. It was taken as a matter of course. Denmark looked south. A
Finnish sound engineer solemnly told me that the Danish had much more in common
with Italy than the Arctic circle. ‘They even drink more espresso coffee.’<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the beginning of the last millennium, the woods and bogs
of Pomerania cut off the wilderness of Estonia and Latvia. There was no settled
government up there. The fjords and bays were populated by individual pagan
tribes. Russian hunters had come out of the east, via Byzantium, working their
way to Novgorod. The Vikings came from the west by boat. Close behind them, the
Teutonic Knights roved up from the south. These particular, ruthless crusaders
helped establish trading posts, and a dominant class of expatriate merchants to
rule them, but outside their walls it remained every man for himself. It was a
lawless wild west of northern Europe. The Russians, the Germans and the Swedes
have fought for control of the area ever since. Estonia and Latvia achieved
their independence only in 1991.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The history of Russian involvement with the Baltic is the
history of Russia’s urge to move west, to become European. St Petersburg was built
by Peter the Great to modernize his country, to leave the exotic, Boyar Moscow
behind, in the past…… But it only ever became an outpost. The real Russia stretched
away across the steppes to the edge of Japan.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the eighteenth century foreign visitors were struck by
Russian stoicism. St Petersburg was a city of appalling disease and grinding
poverty. Sixty out of every 1,000 people were expected to die every year,
because they lived on top of a festering cesspit. Crime was inevitable and
punishments were draconian. Things got considerably worse in the nineteenth
century. Dostoyevsky himself was thrown into the dungeons on the island …………He
was kept in solitary confinement in a cell that regularly flooded with the
sewage-laden waters of the Neva.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Executions were so commonplace that the people on one side
of the town could hardly be bothered with the beheadings taking place on the
other. The visitor from London, used to high levels of public interest in this
sort of thing, put it down to the Russian ability to absorb suffering. And, by
any account, St Petersburg has been a city of suffering.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We were passing through by far the most exquisite scenery we
had yet seen on the journey…….The southern coast of Finland, the northern coast
of the Gulf, was dotted with over 80,000 islands. And every one was beautiful.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The border had moved back and forth along this fragmented
shore many times in the last 1,000 years. The Swedes had been beaten back home
by Peter the Great. For 300 years Finland had been part of Russia…..Russia had
only let go of this wonderland, where the tsar had yachted, in 1917, where the
Finns negotiated their independence with Lenin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finland’s entire history, like that of so many of the small
countries of the area, had been driven by a wholly justified fear of its
neighbours. The disputes, the civil wars, the blood-letting, even the internal
political geography were caused by the aggressive policies of Russia, Germany
and, before them, Sweden. <o:p></o:p></div>
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He [<i>said</i>] ….. ‘The Danes look down on the Swedes, who
look down on the Finns, and the Finns look down on the Estonians, and the Estonians
look down on the Latvians. And the Lithuanians, I’m afraid, are right at the
bottom.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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And everybody still feared the Russians, if not for their military
intentions, then most certainly for their criminal intentions ………..[<i>gangs
coming over</i>]<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7448740953609904430.post-34177006596123093232020-03-09T00:57:00.002+05:302020-03-09T00:57:58.939+05:30From ‘How to Ikigai. The ancient Japanese secret. Lessons for finding happiness and living your life's purpose’ by Tim Tamashiro<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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“I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Abraham Joshua Heschel<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Ikigai map has four simple directions to follow:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Do what you love<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Do what you’re good at<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Do what the world needs<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Do what you can be rewarded for<o:p></o:p></div>
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……<i>iki</i> translates to life, <i>gai</i> means worth.
Ikigai = <i>life’s worth</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dr.Santos demonstrates that studies show you can improve
your well-being through regular efforts at eight things<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Acts of kindness <o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Exercise<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Social connection<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Meditation<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Time affluence<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Good sleep<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Gratitude<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Goalsetting <o:p></o:p></div>
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“Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present,
aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or
overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Kara</i> means empty + <i>te</i> means hand. So <i>karate</i>
……translates to <i>empty hand</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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…..Angela Duckworth…… “grit is about having a goal you care
about so much that it organizes and gives meaning to almost everything you do.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Start with a list of the things that you love to do and what
you’re good at. Take action to do something from your list each day.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Your true Ikigai is something that you would do for free if
you were given the chance.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Start a list of things that you’re good at……..Look for a
thread that connects your strengths.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nirvanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04097479856226957441noreply@blogger.com0