Cruelty to animals

Source : Google photo of cruelty to animals

Synopsis : We all want to prevent cruelty to animals but we see many are tortured or killed in the name of profit and greed. One day the poachers will make the beautiful animals extinct  making our world poorer so they must be stopped  by any means. The blog shows how compassion by the  NGOs can help save the animals and provide them with shelters and protection.

There is no limit to the cruelty that man makes animals suffer from. I have seen it in many countries and still see it today in spite of worldwide outcry. Apart from man’s cruelty towards fellow human beings that one sees almost daily in the news and reads in the papers, animals of all kinds have been subjected to most violent types of treatment that has decimated their ranks worldwide. A magnificent lion called Cecil was gunned down by a rich American trophy hunter in Africa that brought worldwide condemnation  through the internet and press  but one sees this sort of outrage again and again because there is no law that prevents people from murdering in cold blood these beautiful animals. Some even boast that they have hunted all the magnificent wild animals like lions and tigers and are looking for more such killing for their own ego and pleasure. The taxidermists take the head of the slain animal and mount it on a board that these cruel people then hang in their houses to show off.

When we were growing up, we were naturally filled with empathy for the wounded birds or animals and brought them home to take care, feed and watch them recover and grow. One time I found a newly hatched bird called Bulbuli that had fallen off its nest during the storm and would have surely died had I not rescued it. It had no feathers and was starving so we the siblings took turns in feeding it several times a day and kept a watchful eye to prevent the feral cats to attack it. That ugly chick soon started growing feathers of rainbow colors and had a crown on top of its head and became a beautiful Bulbuli. We grew so fond of it because it learned to whistle so nicely but alas the cat was its enemy so one day it killed the bird.

Once I found a nest just 4 feet off the ground in a hole of the wall of our house that was under construction. There were 4 eggs in the nest that the mama bird called Khanjani came frequently to sit on. Soon the eggs hatched and out came four tiny chicks that the mama bird fed nonstop so they grew and started to drop out on the ground. I put them back in the nest every time because the cats were always around so to prevent them from falling out, I built a clay wall in front of the nest with a round hole in it through which the mama bird could feed the chicks. We were very happy when they learned to fly and one day left.

I thought this empathy comes naturally to children until I went to Algeria where I could see children torturing tethered animals by poking sticks in their anus. These poor animals suffered because they could not get away and no one stopped and told these children that it was wrong to torture animals. When such children grow up, they feel nothing for others let alone animals. I see in many countries including India where animals are tortured but people just look the other way and never stop to tell these people that it is wrong to do so.

You see wild bears that people put a rope through the nose and drag the poor beast to make him dance for a few pennies. It is extremely painful for the animal every time the madari pulls the cord to make the bear dance but they are nomads and make a living this way and continue this trade. Once we were driving down the road to Jaipur from Agra  when we saw a bear on the road so we started counting. We gave up after counting no less than 18 bears being pulled this way by their handlers but there are thousands of such poor animals being tortured every day just so that these illiterate unskilled people can earn a few Rupees. Now an NGO has come to their rescue and has set up a sanctuary somewhere. There the bears are given proper veterinary care, food and most of all freedom from torture. The handlers are given some money and training to learn a new trade like basket making or carpentry through which they can earn a living. Now a days one does not see as many bears on the road but I am sure there still are thousands that need rescue and help but NGOs run their sanctuary through donations only with little or no help from the government.

In  China  they raise these bears in bear farms to extract the bile and sell it as a kind of medicine. The extraction process is extremely painful for the animal and the bear bile is of dubious reputation as a medicine but the Chinese continue this awful practice even today. I have heard that the World Wildlife Fund is setting up sanctuaries for these poor bears and some have been rescued this way but more needs to be done.

The most pathetic case I know of was that of an elephant who was chained for 50 years since birth but under pressure from the animal lovers and welfare society was released. She cried and shed copious tears once she realized that she was free for the first time in her miserable life. Believe it or not, animals feel emotions just like us and show it specially an intelligent animal like the elephant.

Source : U tube

When you show love to the animals , they repay you back a thousand times like what happened in the Zululand of South Africa. There the wild elephants were on a rampage destroying crops so a very kind hearted conservationist named Lawrence Anthony took the elephants into his shelter and talked to them and pleaded with them not to go out of the reserve. Surprisingly they listened to him and slowly came to trust him by touching his head. When Lawrence was dying, all the elephants spread out over a very large area came to pay their respect to the dying man they loved and stayed there .They touched his body gently and stayed for two days by his side until he took his last breath. It shows that animals respond to love .  No one knows how the elephants knew that their benefactor was dying?

The orcas in the Sea World in the United States are so sad and frustrated in their closed pen that they attacked the handler and killed her. There was a public outcry to release her in the ocean where they belong but you see this sort of cruelty to animals everywhere and nowhere more so than in circuses. Behind their glitz and glamour and lights there are sad routines of cruelty to their animals. These beautiful animals like tigers, lions, elephants etc. are beaten, starved and given electric shocks to bring them to submission.

One small elephant in India was beaten until he learned to stand on one leg and hold a ball in his trunk. He was being trained as a mascot for the Asian games but the visitors never knew about it. The snake charmers, monkey charmers, bear handlers, elephant handlers are all guilty of this crime but there is more awareness among the common people through the internet, NGOs and newspapers these days . People are waking up to the fact that these cruelties are done to these animals and must stop. They must return these animals to their natural habitat or into the care of sanctuaries that are being set up in some parts.

In the Philippines I see how brutally dogs are treated. They are kept in small cages that are so restrictive that the poor animal can’t even turn around .These cages have no shade so the dog suffers horribly from the heat and exhaustion. They also kill dogs to eat them although this is being discouraged by the government. In China, Vietnam and Thailand there are no such discouragement so the dog meat is sold openly. In the United States the Pit bulls are chained with very heavy duty chains to make their necks strong. They are raised as fighting dogs that earn a lot of money for their owners who gamble on the fights.

Man has been cruel to his fellow beings that has resulted in slavery, death and untold misery. Why man is so cruel to others is a subject perhaps for another essay but  it will suffice to say that it is inherent in the human nature to have no empathy for others who are not like them that result in cruelty. It can be religion based, race based or may have other historical reasons. A great deal of violence against people is politically motivated where regional powers fight with each other directly or through proxy to gain geo political advantage so people suffer. This is happening in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, tribal part of Pakistan and elsewhere. Often religion is used as an excuse but the result is the same. Millions are displaced and become refugees and hundreds of thousands are killed and wounded. Whole cities are being levelled in the name of war to win territories.

But going back to ancient times, it has always been the same story. The Roman were always fighting to add more territories to collect more revenues for their greedy kings while others like Genghis Khan and Alexander put millions to sword and caused wholesale slaughter of innocent people who had meant no harm to them. The Romans made a great sport out of killing animals and gladiators in their numerous coliseums that were filled to capacity by the common people who enjoyed such blood sports. How many thousands of lions, tigers and other animals were sacrificed this way is not recorded but often such blood sports lasted several weeks. Human and animal life was not worth anything unless you were Roman.

Man has decimated the wildlife in Africa to such an extent that once teeming herds of elephants have been reduced to a few that are being protected by armed guards to save them from poachers. Often you see the government in Kenya or Tanzania burning thousands of ivory tusks that they have confiscated from poachers but the slaughter goes on to satisfy the demands of the ivory carvers in Hong Kong or China. They kill the few remaining rhinoceroses for their horns just because they fetch a high price in Yemen.

The United States government does not ban trophy hunting by rich people who go to Africa to kill Cecil the great lion and take photos posing with the dead lion. They have no shame. The argument that the money earned by the governments in Africa through license fee to kill the animals helps them save other animals  sounds so hollow. People make more money through tourism and wildlife photography safaris than hunting because not only it saves the animals, it creates jobs for local people who organize safaris, put up hotels and other facilities and revitalize the handicraft industry. Of course there are thieves who run away with your camera or tote bag in Masai Mara but that is a part of the new trend.

A change in attitude is needed

Source : Google photo shows a child showing love to elephant

I as a child used to see numerous river dolphins in Jamuna river in my home town. I did not know then that they were rare and very precious but the fishermen who killed them did not care and said that they could earn some money selling the dolphin oil. These wonderful playful animals were hunted down to the last one so now you see none except a few that have survived in  Ganga river in Benares. The government never paid any attention to the wildlife in those days but now people are more aware and there is an effort to save what remains before they too are hunted down. What will the plains of Africa look like when all the big animals are killed and become extinct?

Children should be taught in grade schools how beautiful these animals are, how majestic and how rare they all are. They should be taught to understand that killing them or treating them cruelly is not normal and it must stop so that when they grow up, they will not become trophy hunters or keeps dogs in small cages. It takes more than a generation to instill this awareness through education so that they can grow up as responsible citizens and will learn to love and protect these beautiful animals. It may be too late for some species but it is never too late to start now. The poor Africans who insist on poaching must be given other choices to earn a living. Some have become conservationists and game wardens while others work as tourist guides and trackers.

I really appreciate what a good job the NGOs in India and China are doing to save the bears but many animals need help. People also can help by not buying fur coats, animal products and ivory carvings. They should teach their children that all animals need to be free living in their natural habitat and pet dogs and cats should always be treated in the most humane way. Wild animals should not be kept as pets because they die of loneliness. They never learn how to survive in the wilderness because they were separated from their mothers. That is why the rescued bears in India are kept in the sanctuaries because they can’t be released into the forest. If you keep a wild animal as a pet who does not belong at home then please release it to the care of sanctuaries where they can look after them better. When a tormented animal is rescued, he shows his gratitude in unmistakable ways by shedding tears of joy. That should be enough motivation for anyone to do the right thing.

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.

Mis blogs en espagnol

Blogs von Anil in Deutsch

Blogs in Japanese

My blogs at Wix site

tumblr posts    

Blogger.com

Medium.com

Anil’s biography in English.

Biographie d’Anil en français

La biografía de anil en español.

Anil’s Biografie auf Deutsch

Anil’s biography in Japanese

Биография Анила по-русски

The clash of generations

Synopsis: The young generation is adapting to new technologies faster than the older people who did not have such technologies in their younger days so are at a loss to know how to adapt.  This is where the clash of generations comes because people value different things and grow up differently aided by the technology now. The blog tries to understand the reason for the clash and make the older people more tech savvy. Mostly it is an educational gap between generations that can be bridged.

The clash of generations

The clash of generations

It seems to me that these days there is a conflict brewing between the older generation that grew up after the Second World War and the generation that came after them that is now playing out in the United States and elsewhere in the rhetoric and often extreme bitterness as expressed by one of the candidates running for higher office. The media thrive on such conflict as it means more audience for them and more revenues in terms of advertisement money and sponsorship from people with deep pockets who are supporting one or the other candidate in the election to come.

Let us now sit back, collect our thoughts and find the root cause of this divide that is pitting parents against the younger generation, siblings against each other and communities against each other based on colour, ethnicity, brand of religion, income gap and us vs. them. There are people on both side of this divide that are causing more animosity to bubble over by their aggressive behaviours, rhetoric and postures that the politicians are quick to make hay out of while the atmosphere of dissatisfaction shines bright.

When the last world war ended after the horrendous loss of lives and limbs and tremendous sacrifice the country made to win it, the veterans returned to their home towns to pick up their lives where they had left it while their women tended the hearth and the children. It was not easy for them waiting for the news that their loved ones were coming back in one piece or in a cheap coffin because this waiting was extremely agonizing not knowing what was happening to their lives. They carried on as best as they could with jobs that the government provided in the defence industry or elsewhere making things needed for the war being fought in distant lands. They enthusiastically collected metal, rubber, paper or anything that they could find for recycling for the war effort because they felt that it was their patriotic duty to do so and not complain about their day to day hardship.

The college education was not their priority then although a few went to college. They were whites, blacks and all the shades in between but they all pitched in because it was demanded of them. They came from small towns that had only a main street, a rail line, a few shops and always a few churches of various denominations and not much else. Often their only employer was a steel mill or a paper mill or a factory making other things that did not pay well but did not require college or even high school education. No one needed a high school or college education to shovel coal or work in looms so the average education level remained low for them.

When the war ended and the veterans started coming home, they had to be given jobs of sorts so they found work in whatever capacity wherever because they were basically unskilled in anything except the skill of fighting that was no longer required. People found jobs in mines, in mills, in stores, in farms, in defence industries where women were working so that their women could go home and raise their kids like before the war. Those who had college education before they went to war found employment in schools and colleges as teachers as hiring them became a priority for the government.

These small town people lived within their small means, went to church regularly, prayed before each meal and proudly displayed the flag in their front porch, paraded on the 4^th of July with their military uniform and wore all the medals they had earned on their caps to show that they were proud veterans and true patriots. I was constantly amazed at their open display of this sort of patriotism when I was in California as a student but then I did not know what these people had gone through in Io Jima or Bataan or in the sands of North Africa. Every family suffered some loss of their loved ones and those who returned often had PTSD problems who needed rehabilitation and care.

Life was rather simple then. People could afford a small wooden house, a model T Ford and the black and white TV. They listened to Elvis on their gramophone and went to the local pub for a beer and talk about their farms, their politics and their hopes and aspirations. Women mostly stayed home and went to church with their customary pumpkin pies, washed and cleaned and cooked and gossiped with their neighbours. They exchanged recipes, new crotchet designs, learned how to make dresses and pinafores on their hand cranked Singer machine and raised children.

They also hoped a better education for their children so that they could get better jobs and live a better life than their hard working parents. So the kids went to school and many went to college. Thus a whole new generation of young people grew up after the Second World War who were better educated and had not known what war was like until the next war in Vietnam came along. By this time they were coming of age and realized that they did not like war and were forced to sign up. Their patriotic parents could not understand why they were protesting the war in Vietnam when they had gone to fight in Europe, Korea and the Philippines when their country called them.

But education had caused the youngsters to question the validity of war that was brought to them live via the TV and Walter Cronkite every day. Everybody knew someone had come back in body bags and attended their funerals so they questioned the government, defied the draft and some fled to Canada. Some became hippies, smoked pot in frustration and listened to Bob Dylan. This was a completely different generation from the parent’s. They also joined the Democratic Party in droves while the parents remained loyal to the republicans often splitting families right down the middle. This educated generation became mobile and sought jobs in faraway places and received better salaries because of their higher education and newfound skills in computers. They refused to work in steel mills or mines in low paying jobs because they did not have to.

The industries that were the mainstays of small towns found it harder to compete with other countries that produced the same good cheaper and more efficiently. The world was more interconnected than ever before so the factories closed laying off people who depended on them. They had no other skills and they were getting old. The ripple effect that was caused by the closure of the only source of employment in a small towns was devastating on those who depended on them. Stores closed, open air movie houses shut down because people were watching movies in DVD at home and people had less money and ever lesser savings while the living costs escalated so they fell behind the mortgage payments.

With this background in mind let us now fast forward and see why America became so divided politically and even socially. The technological revolution that came about in the last thirty years or so has had a profound effect on how people live. Now you have instant communication around the globe and talk to anyone or see anyone on Skype for free, send digital photos for free and listen to music and download videos from the internet also for free. The mind boggling amount of information is available in Wikipedia so just Google whatever you want. Now people can apply for a job by filling up a form on line and have an interview also on line through Skype across the globe. But these jobs are for very skilled people.

When an aircraft is undergoing maintenance in a Hong Kong hangar, the technicians take a photo of the part they need and  e mail it to Germany where an instant search is made in their data base and the part is found and shipped by DHL within the hour. This is the power of technology that the older generation still can’t understand. When their sons and daughters talk of new algorithm they are working to make a better program, they are completely lost. They can’t understand why some countries take away their jobs and their government is unable to do anything because they are a part of the global trade that is now regulated by the WTO in Geneva. They can’t understand why all the good things they used to make in local factories have disappeared and find only cheap shoddy things made in other countries that are flooding the shelves of Walmarts and K-marts. They can’t understand why the health care costs are so high and keep rising. Who will look after their health when they are old and needy?

These are very legitimate reasons for them to be angry because they are not prepared to deal with it unlike the younger more educated generation. Their education is limited, their skill level stagnates, their opportunities are limited and they are ashamed that they have lost their mining or steel mill jobs and can’t take care of their family like they used to. They are ashamed that they are too old to be retrained in other jobs that require education and intense analytical skills that they don’t have so they are angry.

It is as if the new modern world is so fast running away from them that they can’t catch up. This makes them frustrated and angry. When there is so much frustration and anger built up over so many issues, it needs an outlet to manifest itself. That outlet is the election. This is where they can still show that they have the power of vote to change things and bring back a government that listens to them and makes life easier for them. Proud people do not like to stand in line for doles. Their generation fought the terrible war, suffered for it and came back to rebuild their lives. Now they see that their old world is vanishing  before their eyes and they can’t get used to it.

This is no surprise that the election in the United States is so bitterly fought this time. Fast talking politicians are taking advantage of this anger to turn it in their favour but causing more divisions in the process. The old sin of racism is rearing its ugly head again and people are getting hurt. I wonder what will it take to see that people must change and accept the new reality that the technology has brought about because people who will not accept this new reality of the modern world will be left behind.

 

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.

Mis blogs en espagnol

Blogs von Anil in Deutsch

Blogs in Japanese

My blogs at Wix site

tumblr posts    

Blogger.com

Medium.com

Anil’s biography in English.

Biographie d’Anil en français

La biografía de anil en español.

Anil’s Biografie auf Deutsch

Anil’s biography in Japanese

Биография Анила по-русски

You can always leave but never go back

Synopsis : People leave their home and seek a life elsewhere for all sorts of reasons .It is a trend that can’t be reversed. It is therefore to be considered seriously before leaving home because it is harder to return home than to leave. People who travel, work and settle abroad gain experience through education and find it harder to go back and fit into the society they left behind . The blog highlights this conundrum.

 

Source : Google photo of what people leve behind

A  friend of mine once told me that one can always leave his home town but can seldom go back. There is a lot of truth in this statement and I too fall into this category of Diaspora living abroad for the past 50 years so I feel that the time has come for me to analyze this phenomenon of why most people who leave cannot go back to their place of origin. It is a worldwide phenomenon that should not be misconstrued as a migrant problem. The temporary migrant workers in the Middle East for example number in millions but rarely anyone stays there for good. They all have a temporary permit to work but must leave at the end of their contract.

I am writing about those people like myself who have left their country and settled in another country quite unlike the ones they left behind and literally turned a new page in their life. So this is the story of the Diaspora but here too there are those who forsake their homeland for good and become a citizen of another country and there are those like myself who always remain attached to their home country through a piece of ID card euphemistically called a passport.

My home town was a pleasant, sleepy, placid and a rather unexciting town where the annual exhibition or a circus once in a few years was the high light of the year. I say was because it no longer has the unenviable status of a placid, boring city that it once was but has become rather worse. I grew up there like anyone else, started schooling at the age of five, went to high school and later college, got to know a few neighbourhood kids who were my playmates up to a certain age and had the common aspiration of graduating and finding a good job somewhere, perhaps get married (through arranged marriage) and raise a family just like others.

I saw what the elders were doing going to the market with a basket to buy vegetable and fish everyday or going to the doctor for a bottle of medicine for their sick child or going to pay their bills that showed up like a hated routine. I saw them going through life with a monotony that would drive any ambitious person to distraction and tried to imagine what life would be like for me if I stayed and followed the same routine.

I was the errand boy of the family so I had to shop for all the things they needed every month, pay the bills of electricity and water, fall in line to buy the subsidized food grains from the government approved ration shops, bring the wheat to the mill for grinding to make flour, fall in line at 4 am in the coal yard to buy 20 kgs of coal a week that they allowed and came back home at 2pm without breakfast and lunch, ran errands for everybody else as well because I never could refuse anyone anything. I even had to iron my sister’s saris with a charcoal iron that got very hot and brought her to the train station at 4 am every now and then just because she would not take the bus for some reason.

Still it was my home town where I was born and where I went to school and knew so many people of my own age or older people who always asked me to run errands for them. I knew all the roads and places and knew what could be found where so I was the shopper for all the family needs because they depended on me. There was a wonderful park not too far from our rented house where every day we went to play and made life difficult for the gardeners who liked to protect their flowerbeds and thought we were devils in the guise of angels and they were not very wrong either.

My playmates in our lane were always full of mischief and I was a participant or a leader among them catching nasty hornets and keeping them in match boxes to be traded for marbles or something else. We made our own toys and games and flew our kites from the rooftop. I even brought down many kites using a stone and a line but the kite flyers never could guess who the culprit was. We as children made many mischief that I do not need to elaborate here. It was a normal childhood when we learned to live without fancy toys or pocket money. We never had a birthday celebration because it is not a part of the culture so it did not bother me or anyone I knew.

Thus growing up in a town like ours where nothing spectacular happened except the annual festival of Pooja or Dhakando or some fairs, I was nevertheless fond of my hometown where most people I knew were middle class and few very poor as well. Our monthly show of Laurel Hardy or Charlie Chaplin movies in our school play ground was enough excitement for us kids. We did not have television but had a radio that we listened to mostly for Hindi songs played on a band called radio Ceylon. My father listened to the English news in the morning that a fellow in heavy British accent read but we did not care about what was happening elsewhere and were more interested in our own affairs that included playing marbles or milking the goat of the neighbor on the sly once in a while.

The college days were also routine and I pedaled my beat up bicycle every morning along with a few classmates so this way the years passed swiftly, we graduated and moved on with our respective lives. This was the time after graduation to think about what to do next. Some found jobs easily and moved to other parts of the country while I also found a good job but decided not to take it and started on my M.Sc. program. This was the time when I decided on a drastic new course of my life and accepted an offer to go to Vietnam as a volunteer agronomist. I did not know what would happen after my two years in Vietnam and that was during the war to boot that had some opposition but nothing I could not overcome so I left and never looked back.

I will not narrate here my life story because it appears as a blog as “The story of a lifetime by Anil” in wordpress.com so check it out. I just want to write why I left in the first place and why I could never return home.

People leave for many reasons. Some leave because they find a good job somewhere far from their town. Others leave for higher studies in other places and get a job later on near their place of study. Still others like me leave because they cannot imagine a humdrum life like others and take their chances to see what happens if they go to other countries and see what opportunities come their way for a better life. No doubt it was a risky proposition to go to a country like Vietnam where there was a fierce war going on but I persevered to finally convince the authorities to give me a passport that took many agonizing months and many more months to get a visa so finally a day came when I said goodbye to my home town and my country not at all knowing at that time if I will ever return. In fact no one knew.

That was some 50 years ago. My life took a turn that no one had foreseen including myself but I will not get into that as it appears in a story I mentioned earlier. I never forgot the link to my hometown where I spent my first 22 years of life, where my siblings and my mother lived, where I knew many people who I grew up with and shared many joyful moments, where I knew all the roads, places of interest and shops, where I enjoyed the seasons and the joys of summer with mangoes, water melons and ice creams  so I made an effort to visit my home town whenever I could. Believe it or not, I visited at least 18 times in 50 years and kept in touch when not visiting. Each visit brought me closer to the realization that I had grown so apart from them that nothing could bridge that gap in spite of lavish gifts I brought for them. I brought cameras and other things for those who had asked me and those who didn’t. I donated money for the celebration of Pooja, paid for holidays to the mountains for my sister and to Agra for my mother but it failed to bring me closer to them.

There were great changes that took place in my absence that were negative in nature. The first was their perception that I was very rich and could afford to travel to so many countries by plane, visit India so many times, spend  so freely for others and build the second floor of the house my father had built, renovate the ground floor extensively with flush toilet etc. This perception became the wall that I could not break down but more importantly it was my marriage to a lovely woman from a foreign country that rattled them the most so it all went downhill from there. Now the boys I knew in my childhood had no time for me and disappeared after saying a brief hello.

When I went to see one of them, he at first could not recognize me but soon came around and started a litany of his personal struggles never once asking anything about me and my children or what I did and where in the world I lived. It was so depressing to hear from him how bad the town has become full of horrendous traffic, how polluted the air is, how everything is adulterated and how the corruption is everywhere. Even the pooja which is the annual celebration for the Bengalis had become so commercialized and lack luster that I became very nostalgic about the good old days when it used to be fun.

We used to visit each other and go for walks or play guitar and sing but those days are gone. Now they look at me as someone who is rich and successful so they feel they have nothing in common with me anymore. A game of carom board or Ludo or monopoly was the way to spend the time together but not anymore. One chap whom I had not seen for many years passed by our front gate saying “see you later” but did not stop and never did come back. Another fellow who was my playmate when we were kids would not give me the time of the day and walked on by never looking back. So I realized that people had changed and I was wrong to believe that I would find them same as before.

My siblings criticized my faded denim and said that I was no longer a part of their society because I had gotten foreign education and foreign wife and our children were not given proper names. They said that I had given up all traditions although could not elaborate exactly what I had given up and what new tradition I had adopted abroad.

It is true that visiting my old college was useless because my professors had retired or died so no one knew me. My classmates had scattered all over the country and some went abroad never to meet again. The alumni association is very weak so I did not bother to ask them about others because all they wanted was my contribution to the association that does not mean anything to me. I met only one class mate but he was now a professor and did not have any time to spare for me. Another fellow I met on the road asked me abruptly if I knew French and said I should translate something for him and kept on walking never stopping to ask me if I had a family of my own and where I lived. I guess it did not matter to him other than the translation he was after. I also noticed that no one gave me his address, phone number or e mail address or asked for mine to keep in touch.

I found that almost everyone was struggling with their day to day affairs and this constant struggle was wearing them down. Some are sick and others are past redemption. They never asked me about the countries where I had worked, where I live now and what my children are doing or if I have kids. They were not interested. They were not interested in other countries or world affairs because they said that it did not concern them. So gradually I became cognizant of the fact that I was never going to mean anything to them because they had written me off including my siblings.

The sense of alienation for me was complete when my mother’s house was sold and my brother moved away to Delhi. My ma had died and so did 2 of my elder sisters. Some one told me that the house where we spent so many years together joyfully is now locked up , dark and the garden is full of weeds. No one knows what the new owner will do so the last link was cut. When I tried to rent a bicycle from a neighborhood shop, the woman said she did not know me and could not trust me. When I said that I live in the house across the street, she said she knows someone there meaning my brother but had never seen me so she could not let me rent the bike. That is when it hit me that one can always leave but never go back. I know now that I can’t.

 

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.

Mis blogs en espagnol

Blogs von Anil in Deutsch

Blogs in Japanese

My blogs at Wix site

tumblr posts    

Blogger.com

Medium.com

Anil’s biography in English.

Biographie d’Anil en français

La biografía de anil en español.

Anil’s Biografie auf Deutsch

Anil’s biography in Japanese

Биография Анила по-русски

The art of writing

Synopsis :  The art of writing using calligraphy has been practiced since a very long time when people learned to write beautifully using only quills and brushes. The art of writing has been diminished over a period of time as people now do not learn the art and have poor penmanship. The blog studies the art of writing as practiced by the ancient people like in Egypt and in China that people still admire .

The art of writing

Source : Google photo

Man has from ancient times been known to write. He wrote about his life, his exploits, history, about war, about the wild life, his food, his clothes, his dwellings, his hunting and on everything one could imagine. The writing was invented by man for a solid reason. It was called posterity. People wrote because they wanted to leave something behind for others to know and follow. It could be a record of financial dealings, a record of taxes collected or a record of war. It could be record of genealogy so that people could know who descended from who and reigned as monarch for how long. Records were kept to detail the construction of massive projects like the pyramids or cities.

But the ancient man was just as anxious to write something about him except that he did not have paper and pen and did not have the alphabets so how did he go about writing? At first  the primitive man who was not so primitive as you and I may suggest judging from his art and history he left behind in the caves of France or in sacred sites in Australia wrote using the means available to him namely the cave walls as writing surface and paint made from natural colors and minerals or plants.

He made exquisite paintings of animals, people, plants and recorded history in pictures since no system of writing as we know it today had developed. The native Americans used this method of writing using pictorial on animal hides recording wars, famine, invasion of whites, hunting scenes, their gods and demons, their daily lives, their arts and craft, in short a complete narrative in pictures of their life and history. Others like the Mayas and Incas had developed a system of writings using hieroglyphs and chiseled it on stones for eternity but also on barks and other medium. It took a long time for people to understand what they meant but slowly the symbols were deciphered so now experts and scholars can read them and are astonished at the wealth of information they get from these records.

Source : Google photo

Earlier the Egyptians had started recording their history in the hieroglyphs on stone and on animal hides, later parchments and later still on paper made from papyrus reeds. The Egyptians were  masters at this art and scribes were employed to record anything and everything to suit the whims of the kings and also destroyed some writings because the new pharaoh wanted history to be rewritten so the phrase ‘history is written by victors” was born. The study of the evolution of writing is a very interesting topic because it shows the sheer ingenuity of man to develop a system that suited his purpose at the time. It could be the cuneiform writings of the ancient Sumerians that you can still see in some museums and see for the first time the Hammurabi codes chiseled in stone that has survived thousands of years of ravages of time and destruction due to warfare.

Before the paper was invented, people used clay tablets, flat board of wood or stone to write on. These baked tablets of clay in cuneiform show a wealth of information on how much  and what was traded, giving a marvelous insight into the system that prevailed so long ago. So you can see an evolution in writing from the ancient times into what it has become today. Slowly and steadily the form and method as well as the medium evolved to reach the sophistication that exists today but it surely took a very long time if you count in years the time it took for the man to start writing but a very short time if you consider how long the mankind has been evolving from Lucy to the present time.

The Jews at the time of Moses and even before had started to write their Torah and religious texts on paper using their own form of writing that persists even today and has little changed but Moses at one time used stones to chisel on God’s words as commandments because he too was thinking of posterity and to leave behind something more durable than paper or parchment. The Egyptians although had developed the paper also saw durability in stone so decorated the inner walls of the tombs with a written records chiseled into it although they also used bright paints to write their story as well because they knew that the pigments would be preserved in the desert heat and deep underground chambers cut into the stones where no daylight ever reaches.

The Jewish writings and Aramaic  language that Jesus spoke lead the way to systematic recordings of the teachings of Jesus as has been found in Dead sea scrolls found at Qumran and pieces of gospel found in Egypt clearly showing the sophistication of Aramaic as a language that the scribes used to write so beautifully on parchments. The written language was clearly evolving and reaching its peak of sophistication long before Latin and Greek writings evolved in pre-Roman period that gave rise to the modern alphabets that we use today. By the time of Jesus, all the writings were done either on parchment because of its durability or on hand-made paper that can still be found in some museums in Israel or in England and it was done by scribes who wrote in beautiful handwriting called calligraphy using ink made from soot or burned ivory powder and even vegetable dyes. There was no printing press in those days although I will write about a system of printing in Tibet that still exists today a bit later in this article.

The Romans took the Latin as their language and left behind a treasure trove of papyrus or parchment scrolls on which they recorded everything of interest to them. They patronized the scribes lavishly to write and copy from other languages books, documents or other materials to furnish their libraries  just like the Egyptians before them and left behind valuable records that we can still read. But the Romans were master builders just like the Egyptians so they too recorded their history in stone because stone is more durable than anything else. You can see these arches and ruins all over Europe and the Mediterranean where even the date of certain event is written if you can read the Roman system of writing them like LXCMMM etc. The numerals that we use today came partly from Arabic and from ancient Hindu scriptures that invented zero as O with the decimal system so the Roman way of writing date became gradually obsolete.

If you study the history of writing and its development over a long period, you will know that education was strictly limited to a few people so the vast majority of the population was kept out of education. The education was meant for the elites only who were the rulers and the decision makers so they felt no need for mass education and printing books for everyone like today. Besides there were no printing presses so everything was hand written meticulously by scribes who practically became blind straining their eyes to write books or copying them from other sources in lamp lights. The fact that they made thousands of such hand written books to fill the library shelves in Alexandria or Taxila or Nalanda speaks volumes of their tenacity, hard work even if the Romans and later the Moslems saw it fit to destroy such valuable depository of knowledge out of religious zeal and fanaticism.

The Chinese too developed calligraphy as a form of art and copied from other languages to develop their store of knowledge. The Arabs later wrote their books by hand and used extensive calligraphy to illustrate their books and the Koran itself but found stone as a good medium to use calligraphy on using Koranic texts. You can see this on the front of the main door of Taj Mahal or around Qutub Minar in Delhi. Harun al Rashid, the famous Khalifa of ancient Baghdad was a patron of scribes whom he gave salaries in gold and fine clothes of silk who worked for him to write books to fill his library. He encouraged translation into Arabic any book of value that a traveler brought with him in other languages like Greek, Latin and even Sanskrit to develop his treasure trove of knowledge.

Then came the modern age of printing when moving types were developed in Germany and the ancestor of modern printing press was born resulting in the mass production of books that lead to mass education of people in many parts of the world. But let me go back a bit now and write about a system that ancient Tibetans developed to make mass printing of their religious texts available.

This was done and still is done by carving the texts onto a flat wooden tablet painstakingly with absolute perfection and then using this tablet to stamp the text onto paper or parchment. The beauty of this system is that the carved wooden tablet is very durable and can be re used again and again so over the long period of time they have accumulated thousands of these tablets that can be found in their library today and can be printed from it. They also use calligraphy to write on cloth or paper using brushes like the Chinese.

The old Sanskrit texts were written on palm leaves some of which have survived the ravages of time but palm leaf is never a good substitute for parchment or paper. May be the ancients did not know how to make paper or use parchment like the Romans or the Native Americans although I doubt it. The fact is that the palm leaf texts that are found today are not thousands of years old but rather copies of the originals that became very fragile. I have seen these palm leaf writings stored in appalling conditions in some temples in South India that are deteriorating rapidly and may soon be lost if not copied. Some temples have their history chiseled on the walls in ancient scripts that few can read but it is all there nicely preserved unlike the modest palm leaf. The Angkoreans took the stone chiseling to new heights when they recorded the entire story of Mahabharata in galleries around the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap in what is known as the bas-relief which is the same technique the ancient Egyptians used but AngKor is unique since no such monument exists anywhere else in the World.

The story of Maha Bharata in India existed only on palm leaves that later developed into what it is today in finely printed form. In a civilization as sophisticated as the ancient India when flying machines and rockets were used in the war of Mahabharata, it is hard to imagine that they did not have paper or printing press  and if they did, there is no trace left except some hand written Sanskrit scripts on palm leaves. I think the Egyptians and the Romans were smart enough to record their story in stone that still endures. Angkor by comparison is not that old but still gives a very good example of what endures and what does not.

Now I come to the part where I want to write about beautiful handwriting called calligraphy that is vanishing slowly but definitely. Now practically no one writes a book or anything by hand. The days of hand written book and artfully decorated pages are gone and no one I know knows or practices calligraphy.  Students scribble notes in classrooms in bad hand writing that becomes a habit that they carry on like the doctors but in general good flowing handwriting in cursive is now as rare as hen’s tooth.

We were told in high school to always learn to write beautifully and very legibly so that the examiners would not have a hard time deciphering what we wrote as answers .Our exams were a test of this skill but now the exams are multiple choices where you just tick the square. A good teacher gives a good example by writing beautifully on the blackboard but how many teachers you know can do that? A student who does not write beautifully does the same when he becomes a teacher later on. The schools do not emphasize enough the importance of good hand writing so I was very appreciative of the teacher in India who taught our children how to write beautifully by practical methods. She would hold the finger of the child to show how to make equal spacing between words.

But now a days it is the keyboard like this one that does the writing and the dictionary at the bottom bar keeps an eye on what you are writing. It warns of spelling or spacing mistakes and offers to correct it. It would have taken me longer to write this article by hand beautifully and legibly but I am not writing for a classroom teacher. I am using the technology to write and instantly post my writing to a blog site so that thousands can read it in many parts of the world. So the technology is changing the way we write and how we disseminate the writing. I do not know anyone who writes letters by hand using aerogram anymore because it is so obsolete and time-consuming. Now it is e-mail and instant messaging that can even include colored photos you take with your digital camera and upload and send to the end of the world in an instant.

Still I feel that there is a place for calligraphy and beautiful writing in the modern world where it will never get obsolete. May be I am old-fashioned.

 

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.

Mis blogs en espagnol

Blogs von Anil in Deutsch

Blogs in Japanese

My blogs at Wix site

tumblr posts    

Blogger.com

Medium.com

Anil’s biography in English.

Biographie d’Anil en français

La biografía de anil en español.

Anil’s Biografie auf Deutsch

Anil’s biography in Japanese

Биография Анила по-русски

Language and its evolution

Synopsis :  The trend now is to learn a foreign language along with your higher education that makes you qualified over others lacking such skills therefore more employable if you happen to have the right kind of education that is in demand. But the influence of mother tongue and  poorly qualified teachers to teach foreign languages are some reasons why most people can’t speak a foreign language well. The blog shows how languages evolve and spread.

Language and its evolution

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source : Google photo

I once listened to two Indians castigating the English used by an American to teach children in an Indian school. Their point of contention was that the American said “children- what color is the sky?”. They vehemently opposed it and said the correct way was to say “ What is the colour of the sky” because that is what they were taught by their teachers so the American must be wrong and is not a good teacher so should be fired from his job. I just listened but kept quiet because I understood that there was something else at play here other than the grammar, spelling and syntax. I thought about it a great deal and found over the years that this phenomenon of “correct way” is quite prevalent in many countries where English is not their native language or even the second language and where English is taught by the locals whose mother tongue is not English.

Now a days there is a fad of learning English in many countries because they have come to realize that learning English the proper way is the ticket to better jobs and better pay because the world today is more interconnected than ever before and English is on its way to become the language most people like to use in communicating with others. So there is great demand in many countries for native English speakers like the British or Americans ,Australians or New Zealanders who are hired as teachers in their high schools. There are many expatriates in Vietnam , Cambodia, Thailand , Japan, Korea among others but in other countries like in the Philippines or India ,they still rely more on locals to teach English in primary schools and in college where the “correct way phenomenon” is   observed. In the Philippines they constantly brag that they are the largest English speaking people in Asia  but the fact remains that 95% of the population does not speak, read or write English at all and the rest 5%  manages to speak it with a tenuous claim to fluency at best and poor grammar at worst.  India does not make such outlandish claims but does have a small percentage of the population that speaks, reads and writes in English better than others so they work in call centers and in other jobs that require English as the main language.

The country also has quite a few English news papers where they have good editors to take out grammar or other errors before it goes to print. The Indians educated in the US universities or in England stand apart from others in fluency and the mastery of the language but seldom return to India because they easily get residency and good jobs there and settle down. Those who do return also find good jobs in India because of their education and fluency in the language since there is a need for good speakers of English.

I was just watching the BBC news this morning where a Sikh gentleman discussed the news with Mr.Adnan Nawaz in flawless British accented English but most likely he was born and educated in England like so many others. Often the off the boat people who emigrate to the United States or England do poorly but the second generation does much better than their parents because they integrate better than their parents and pick up the local accent quicker and more easily. You see this in Australia as well where Chinese immigrant girls speak with near perfect Aussie accent and vocabulary. So the key word is social integration that starts in the community and the school. Those who fail to integrate and remain apart from the rest of the population find solace in their own community where they can speak their native tongue ,shop in their neighborhood that are run by their countrymen, send their children to their own day care center and later to schools run by their countrymen.

The Filipinos who live in Daly city for twenty years or more still can’t speak good English because they mostly interact with Tagalog speakers like themselves but perhaps their children do better than the parents due to necessity more than anything else because all western countries encourage integration as a way to a better life with good paying jobs and a brighter future. Those who do not integrate due to self imposed fear of losing their ethnic, cultural or religious identity do so at the peril of stagnating socially and more importantly economically. You can see this stagnation in France, Germany and some European countries where Moslems tend to live apart in ghettos and end up in poor paying jobs although many speak good French or German. Their insistence on maintaining their religious identity often leads to radicalization in the worst way possible that has its own consequences.

So I would like to come back to the issue of “the correct way phenomenon” and study it some more to understand the reasons behind it so I will stick to English only.

There was a Peace Corps girl teaching in a rural barrio in the Philippines whom the children greeted by saying “hey you, what’s your name”? so she answered “My name is Susan.” The next time the children asked “ Susan , what’s your name”. These kids who did not speak, read or write English at all thought that “ hey you,what’s your name was a greeting that they had memorized and continued that way to the amusement of the American. Later these kids will get some primary education and some even a secondary education where they will learn some English taught by the locals who are not proficient themselves but take great pride in their ability to “teach” English. This is  where the “correct way phenomenon” kicks in. It is the same way in India as I mentioned earlier.

These people can’t be corrected by anyone because their pride in their ability stands in the way. Only they know the correct way , the grammar and the pronunciation so they will make fun of anyone who is different. My son’s teacher in elementary school insisted in her class that people in Haiti should be called Hatian and not Haitian so made fun of our son who was innocent and had answered correctly but the teacher had to put him in his place. This emphasis on “correct way” persists in college as well but more so in high school where conformity is the rule. You must say ooch instead of ouch, sweet shirt instead of sweat shirt, ausome instead of awesome. The list is long but the point is that you must conform and speak the way everybody speaks because that is the “right and correct way”.

It gets worse later on because some of these kids get to college later where the English may be taught as a subject again by non native speaker of the language  so the students who do not speak English or are very poor develop a language of their own called Tagalish which is a mixture of Tagalog and some English . In other countries it may be Hinlish, (Hindi-English), Chinglish( Chinese-English)  or Thinglish(Thai-English) as the case may be but it all comes from the inability to express oneself in English fluently. The teachers in colleges prefer Tagalish because their own education was in Tagalish so they can’t teach in straight correct English. Students quickly find out who among them is good in English and will copy their book report with slight modifications because they cannot comprehend Joseph Conrad’s writings. Our daughter was always sought out by her classmates  in such cases. They did not know that her first language was English but knew that she spoke fluently with an astounding vocabulary that won her first prize in extemporaneous speaking contest as a child as did her brother. Now the Tagalish is used extensively in movies, TV and radio so it has become a language of its own.

The influence of mother tongue :

The pernicious effect of mother tongue in learning a language like English is perhaps inevitable but prevents people from learning English with good accent specially if they do not go out of their country to live elsewhere where English is the language. This has something to do again with conformity. Filipinos must speak English like other Filipinos, Indians like other Indians and Thais like other Thais. There is a second factor that comes to play here. Many languages do not have a certain alphabet so it is very difficult for them to pronounce a word in English using that alphabet like the Filipinos do not have C, F, Z etc. so you can understand their conundrum. Similarly Thais do not have R in their alphabet and the Japanese do not have L  so the Thais have a hard time with R words and Japanese with L words. I do not know about the Koreans or the Chinese but they too must have their own issues. When we were children , our father taught us conjugation that we had to memorize. So we learned ba, be ,bi,  bo,  bu, by etc. But this is not taught here in the Philippines so they miss out on correct pronunciation.

The third factor that comes into play is the grammar of the mother tongue. When people apply the same grammar rule to English, they run into trouble. When you ask them a question in English, they compose an answer in their mind in their own language and then try to translate it into English instead of thinking in English. Often the translation is very different from what the answer should be so that too can be very problematic that leads to poor comprehension. It is hard to converse with anyone who has so much translation to do mentally before he opens his mouth and even then you are not sure how much he comprehends.

The last factor that stands in the way of learning good fluent English is the accent of the mother tongue. The Hindi speakers for example can’t say Botany because they do not have this O sound in Hindi so it comes out as Baatni . Similarly the Bengali speakers can’t say Cut, But, Must etc . because their language does not have the  U sound so it comes out as Caat, Baat, Maast etc. This is called the mother tongue influence and is common in all countries where English is not their language.

How some people can overcome these influences and learn to speak English fluently like the Americans or an Englishman is perhaps more dependent on the individual’s own effort and endeavor but living in an English speaking environment can make a big difference. It is no secret that you can Learn French a lot faster and start to talk like a Frenchman if you live in France in a rural area where no one speaks English or your language. Often children are great teachers because they do not embarrass you if you make mistakes and are very patient with you. The television and radio are also great teachers of the language and then there are language schools.

So learning English or any other language is a skill that can get better with practice and the desire to imitate and by developing a vast vocabulary. The ability to learn quickly and imitating can go a long way in improving the skill.

Language and its evolution :

All languages tend to evolve over a certain period of time so English is no different in that sense. In fact the modern English is quite different from the old English spoken and written 400 years ago and it is still evolving. This is also true in French and many other languages that enrich their language by borrowing words from other languages. No one will criticize Jean Ferrat for singing  “je twisterai  “ in his songs .Many English words are now part of their language just like many Hindi and Arabic words are now part of the English language.

When one American asked me rather contemptuously what Hindi words English had borrowed ,I answered that off the bat I can recall many words like cummerbund, jodhpur,  jungle, pyjama,  chutney, veranda etc. to his great surprise but he still snickered. But English has borrowed for centuries words from Latin and Greek and Arabic to enrich itself. The Arabic words like Shaitan ( satan), Alkohl ( alcohol) are now part of the English vocabulary. The languages that borrow words from others grow in its richness and those that do not borrow do not grow as a language and do not evolve. Just imagine how google has become a word now a days and many others that have come about due to technological advancements. New words are added periodically that then become the vogue.

The French are a stubborn people when it comes to their language so they refuse to say septant, octant, nonant like the Belgians or the Canadians and still say soixant dix, quatre vingt, quatre vingt dix etc. although septant, octant etc. makes more sense. When they do invent a word on their own, they take great pride like when the space capsule landed in the ocean, they coined the word “amerisage” . But other languages like Sanskrit is a very ancient language that stays that way because it can’t evolve.

The ability of any language that expresses itself well and is willing to accommodate words from other languages then gains prominence just like English has done and has become a major language that everyone wants to learn to speak. Other languages like German or French have remained limited to some countries although learning them can be considered a great skill .Anyone who is fluent in English, French and Spanish and has proper education can get a job easily in his vocation.

So if you have children of your own, give them the opportunity to learn a foreign language as their mother tongue. If that is not possible then as a second language. Remember that language is a skill that people can pick up and it gets better with practice just like any other skill.

 

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.

Mis blogs en espagnol

Blogs von Anil in Deutsch

Blogs in Japanese

My blogs at Wix site

tumblr posts    

Blogger.com

Medium.com

Anil’s biography in English.

Biographie d’Anil en français

La biografía de anil en español.

Anil’s Biografie auf Deutsch

Anil’s biography in Japanese

Биография Анила по-русски