As I sit to write what will likely be my final letter, I find myself overwhelmed-not by sorrow, but by the immense gratitude I feel for each one of you.
For years, your words have been a source of comfort and strength to me. You’ve read my stories, shared my thoughts, and carried my voice to corners of the world I never dreamed I could reach. With every kind message, every thoughtful comment, and every moment you spent reading my work, you gave me purpose. You made an old writer feel seen, heard, and profoundly loved.
I am no longer writing now. My hands are slower, my mind quieter. But my heart is full.
I want to thank you-for believing in my words, for carrying them with you into your lives, and for giving me the honor of being part of your days. Some of you wrote to me about how my words helped you through pain, brought you comfort, or simply gave you something to smile about. But what you may not know is how deeply you helped me, too.
You gave an old soul a reason to keep creating, long after the world began to grow quieter around me. Your love, your encouragement, your thousands of kind messages-they have been my light in aging years.
So, Today I thought of saying farewell to you all no matter where in the World you live and read my blogs. I thank you all for those comments you have sent me over the years that encouraged me to continue writing on new issues. I was energized to receive your support that came from all over the world.
All I have written as blogs will stay in all the WordPress sites in 5 languages and in other sites like Blogger.com, Medium. com, Wixsite.com and Tumblr.com to reach new readers until the sites are removed.
Now my blogs have been published in 5 volumes on Amazon as shown below, that anyone can download and read them in Kindle e-book reader. The 5th volume is uploaded to Amazon and just waiting to be released. They are in digital format so you can download them as e-book. Just search in Amazon Anil the bard series to download the books.
I was never a professional writer, so often did not follow protocol of writing because what I wrote was directly from my heart. It is real and not fiction. I change the names to protect the privacy of people.
My soul will be pleased and filled with eternal gratitude to you, my readers. Please continue to share my blogs with your friends and relatives.
Here are the 5 e-books of my writings that are available in Amazon now. My biography is titled Story of Anil by Anil the bard published on Amazon and available online.
If there’s one final wish, I can leave you with, it’s this: keep sharing kindness, keep reading, keep writing, keep feeling deeply. The world needs more souls like yours.
With all the love I have left to give, Forever yours,
Anil the bard
Story of Anil by Anil the bard
If there’s one final wish, I can leave you with, it’s this: keep sharing kindness, keep reading, keep writing, keep feeling deeply. The world needs more souls like yours.
With all the love I have left to give, Forever yours,
Source: Google photo of Shri Lal Bahadur Shashtri , the 2nd Prime Minister of India
Politicians tend to be arrogant and often treat people like dirt because they want to show that they are important, so everyone must kowtow to them. In a democracy, they are to serve the people who elected them, but after the election such politicians get drunk with power and expect everyone to serve them no matter how corrupt they are. A simple person who is a patriot, honest and dedicates his life to serve the nation and ready to die for it if need be is called great. Such a person shows his greatness through his simplicityand strength of character.
Today I will tell you a story that will show you what the greatness in a person shows in his simplicity even if he is the Prime Minister of a great nation called Bharat or India as the world knows it.
Once there was an incident in my hometown where it was announced that a VIP was coming to town, so the entire platform of the Railway station was scrubbed clean, and the trains were diverted to other platforms because the VIP was arriving by train on platform number one. The station master and his staff were in their best uniform and were anxiously waiting for the special train to arrive from Delhi.
The welcoming committee was waiting with flower garlands and there was high security everywhere so the public who were also curious were kept out by the security people keeping them wondering who could this VIP be.
The policemen spotted an old woman in a simple sari who stood in one corner waiting for someone, so they asked the old woman to leave because a great man was coming. She said in a meek voice that she heard that her Lal is coming today, so she had come to receive him. The Station Master was annoyed and asked who is your Lal, and where is he coming from? She again answered meekly that she heard that her Lal is coming from Delhi. She did not know what her son did for a living. It did not convince the security people, so they tried to gently move her to the waiting room, but she stood her ground and insisted on receiving her beloved son herself.
In the meantime, a shiny train slowly entered and stopped in front of the welcome committee and a great man stepped off the special train that had brought him from Delhi to my hometown train station.
When he saw the old woman, he briskly walked to her and bent down to touch her feet, which is a sign of respect in the Hindu culture. The old woman was in tears, but they were her tears of joy because she had not seen her son since a long time.
People were in shock. This simple old woman in a plain sari was the mother of the Minister of Railways in India ? He was no other than Shri Lal Bahadur Shashtri who hugged his mother and apologized to her that his heavy work load left him with little time to come to see his mother.
The reporters realized who the old lady was and took many photos that appeared in the news papers the next day, so the story went viral.
Mr. Lal Bahadur Shashtri came from a poor family that lived very simply, so he grew up in poverty, but his mother tried her best to raise him and sent him to school in spite of her poverty. Later he joined the independence movement of Gandhi and became his loyal follower in the Congress Party. After Independence, he was given the portfolio of the Railway Ministry that was and still is the largest ministry that has a huge budget, so to become the Indian Railways Minister was a very big and important job.
Lal Bahadur Shashtri was small who dressed very simply in his khadi Kurta and Dhoti and a plain jacket just like any common man on the street, but today I will tell you how extraordinarily uncommon he was. Khadi is homespun cotton cloth. Dhoti is also cotton cloth of several yards in length men wear to wrap around the legs.
He was chosen to become the Prime Minister of India after the death of Nehru that bought him the enmity of Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi who aspired to be the Prime Minister, but the Congress Party chose Shashtri because they believed in his character, his honesty and integrity who could lead India toward a great future. This he did in a splendid manner and stood up to bullies of the Western world that always tried to treat India as a poor and undeveloped country that they could easily subjugate.
They saw the meek new Prime Minister of small height who did not look impressive, so they underestimated Mr. Shashtri. It was their biggest mistake. They would know later that under his simple Kurta and Dhoti he was a man of steel who never hesitated in taking the toughest decisions. He was a true patriot who loved India and always put country first.
When Richard Nixon tried to intimidate Mr. Shashtri by suggesting that the food aid to India could be in jeopardy because India was not giving in to their demands in return, Mr. Shashtri answered that India did not need the US food aid which was of poor quality and unfit for human consumption. India had always managed its sporadic food shortages and will manage it again without any outside help. Nixon, like many others, had seriously underestimated this diminutive small man and was shocked at his strong personality.
Shashtri returned to India and asked the whole nation to switch to other food like corn, millets and rice while the country tried to overcome the wheat shortage that was temporary. The Indians took up the challenge and supported their beloved Prime Minister. India became self-sufficient in all types of food because the government gave the farmers a lot of help in subsidies in seed, fertilizer and irrigation. Mr. Shashtri was the person behind this massive transformation in agriculture.
I was in college in 1963 when Mr. Shashtri came to our campus one day and sat with all the students, answering their questions on many subjects with a sweet smile. We were very impressed by his simplicity and down to earth manners. He was so sweet and easy to approach. I saw him from a distance of less than 6 feet and knew instinctively how great a Prime Minister he really was.
Politician like Nehru also visited our college one day and I saw him when his car came to a stop in front of us. He was arrogant and very opposite in nature of Mr. Shashtri. He did not sit with us like Shashtri and I doubt if the students were eager to talk to him knowing his arrogance and scandalous nature.
The war with Pakistan started in 1965 when the Indian army reached Lahore in Pakistan. India won the war like all the other wars with Pakistan, but the whole nation stood in awe of the Prime Minister Shashtri and his strong leadership during the crisis.
Mr. Shashtri and his Pakistani counterpart met in Tashkent to sort out their differences and signed a Peace Treaty that Russian PM Kosygin mediated. The peace accord was signed, and the Indian army pulled back from Lahore to give away for free the land they had won with their blood, sweat and sacrifices.
But it did not turn out well for Mr. Shashtri because someone poisoned his milk and the doctors said that he had a heart attack. There was no autopsy which was required in such cases, but his body was flown to India and cremated hastily in Delhi, suggesting foul play. The assassin was never found.
Thus ended the life of a great man who had won everyone's heart. I still remember him sitting only 6 feet from me and smiling so sweetly at us. He was simple but great. I miss him. The whole nation misses him.
Note: My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography. My blogs can be shared by anyone anytime in any social media.
Someone once said that I write the way I speak. It stayed with me and made me think if I was wrong in writing the way I speak or was it a more effective way of transforming what I was thinking into text without the cumbersome process of writing it all down on paper and editing it again and again until I was satisfied with what I wrote. I chose the direct method, so I started to use the keyboard to turn my thinking into a text. It suited me because my brain was telling me what to write quickly and be done with it.
This was long before I had ever written anything worthwhile except my dissertation, which was more of a scientific nature where I could not write in a freewheeling way because it required a protocol to follow. I did take some liberty in writing the introduction part of it, so probably that triggered the comment someone made, but this freewheeling idea stayed with me for a long time until I went to work in Burundi.
There I lived alone and had a computer that allowed me to write in my own fashion. No one saw me writing except my dog I called Jumbo, who looked at me from time to time, but I doubt if he was interested in what I wrote. His interest was more limited to food and chasing the village chickens on his short legs. He was a dachshund. The year was 1990 when I started on a whim to write about my life and all the experiences I got working in many countries, but I had no idea what to do with my story once it was finished.
Let us say that it started because I had very few people visiting me so being alone was one reason why I took up the task. There was no one to disturb me or make comments on what I wrote, so I continued day after day to pour out what was in my mind, which was quite a lot of information that had accumulated there since my childhood.
Once I finished, I got it printed in my printer and carried the voluminous story to India where no one was interested in reading it so it just stayed in a folder.
My next assignment was in Sudan where also I stayed alone but had no jumbo to give me company and I did not have a computer at home so I wrote nothing and got busy with my job as a Project manager of a large project spread out in many parts of the country. I observed the people in Burundi and Sudan, their culture and their social issues, so I added it to my story later. By this time I had lived and worked in over 8 countries as an agronomist in various agricultural projects, so I wrote about all the countries where I worked, but I had to start somewhere so I started in India where I was born and grew up.
Then my fate or destiny brought me to the Philippines where I came on a scholarship to study and found my wife, got married and had our son born in a small provincial town. I was offered a job in Mali after my graduation, but first we went to India where our beautiful daughter was born, so we took our two small kids to Mali where they grew up for a while.
I then worked in Haiti, Burundi and Sudan, but I started working first in Vietnam and then USA where I went for graduate studies and then to Algeria and the Philippines. The printed story stayed with me while I added more chapters to it about all the countries where I worked.
In 1994, I felt that living alone in Africa was not worth it, so abruptly I ended my professional career and returned to the Philippines to start building a new home in a small town and to reunite my family under one roof.
I bought a computer and one day sat down at the keyboard because my mind was full of ideas and issues I wanted to write about so took up blog writing to publish them in various platforms and in many languages. This was some 9 years ago. I also finalized my biography and published it in 6 languages. Now I was happy because writing was a way for me to express myself and share it with my numerous readers. People like me who lived alone or have very few friends choose this method to communicate with unknown people all over the world. Their wonderful comments lift my spirit and encourage me to write more on many issues.
Then suddenly an idea started to gain a foothold in my mind. What if my writings could be uploaded to the Amazon KDP program and publish them as e-books ? Amazon reaches all parts of the world, so it can reach many more readers.
This is where came in our beautiful daughter, who is an IT expert and well-trained to handle this job. She took over the job of getting thousands of pages ready in a form that Amazon could approve for publication. I was very happy to see how deftly she handled the job and spent countless hours to do it.
To prepare the manuscripts of 30 volumes in a particular format is no joke. I helped from here as much as I could do, but I am no IT expert like our daughter. She is our blessing who is helping me to complete this massive task. She is redefining the meaning of legacy in the form of the e-book publication that will endure long after I fade into oblivion.
My life has been an exciting journey full of adventure and some dangerous experiences in some countries that I have shared with my readers. My long journey in life has literally come to an end, but I was a happy wanderer who learned a lot about many things that I want to share with you, my readers. It makes me happy to think that all I have written will stay long after I become dust. That is a priceless gift our daughter has given me. What more could I ask ?
I want you to know that 4 books containing my blogs have been published by Amazon as e-book that anyone can download and read them in Kindle, so that is good news. In the future there will be more books that our daughter is working on to make them up loadable to the Kindle Direct Publishing. My biography in 6 languages will be a major part of the publication. If you are interested in reading my e-books, then just type Anil the bard series on Amazon and download them. At present, they are available in English, but other languages will hopefully be added to it in the future. So happy reading.
Anil the bard.
These are the four e-books available in Amazon now. The 5th book will be available in the future. It is named Grit and glory.
Source: Google photo of downsizing your life and living a better life.
Synopsis: We look for a happy ending in our life but unfortunately many of us will die someday unhappily alone and without loved ones nearby. But it does not have to be this way because there are alternatives to unhappy life during your retirement. This post looks at the happy alternatives.
At some point we start thinking of living a simple life in our later stage of life where money, big house, cars and pampered life loses its Lustre, so we start thinking about how to simplify our lifestyle. We come to realize a simple truth. It is that no one really cares about you and how you spend the last part of your life because they never cared about the glamorous part of your life or to know about your achievements. They only care about what they can get from you. When they do not get anything from you anymore, they discard you, so you start to fade away into oblivion and one day close your eyes forever. This is the life of most people.
But today I started to think that no matter how old and simple you look, you may have achieved great things in life and were appreciated by people who admired your talents like a great author, great musician, great actor or artist but the ordinary people have short memories of someone who has become old and is waiting for his death. At that time no one remains your friend or shows any care or concern for the man you once were so great scientists like Nicola Tesla died in a dirty hotel room in his old age with no one to share his pathetic life or visit him to know how he was doing. He nearly starved to death and had no friends who could sit with him, give him sympathy for his dire conditions and left with him food and medicine that he desperately needed. There are many such examples where once a great movie actress was found scrounging for food in the garbage bins and sleeping in a graveyard covered in a sheet of plastic.
People who have earned and saved a lot of money and lived in style have been known to waste their life in the end because they did not plan for their retirement from whatever their profession was. The sad part is that no one cares to know how you live your retired life including your relatives who have stopped receiving money or other benefits from you, so they have no more interest in you. But when you die someday, they start to fight over your money and property so they descend like vultures and compete to grab whatever they can grab.
This is the sad nature of human beings, especially the relatives and others who had benefited from your generosity toward them but now forget what a great person you once were. Rarely such relatives show love and respect to you when you were alive and now dead. Their sole interest in you depends on what they get from you while alive and after your death.
However, there are always exceptions to every rule, so I know one or two cases where the siblings respected and honored their elder brother who sacrificed his life for their welfare, so they built a house where they kept one room for their dead brother in impeccable conditions and with flowers and incense as if he was still alive. Such loyalty, love and respect for a person who is dead is rare so worth a mention.
Lord Buddha was a prince who grew up in the lap of luxury and who had a beautiful wife, a palace and servants to attend to his every need but he chose to leave everything behind him to seek Nirvana and wandered all over India in search for the meaning of his life. He wore a simple orange gown and went to sleep often without food under a tree because he had given up all his comfort and pleasure as a royal prince. He took a vow of poverty and the life of a monk who ate only when some people gave him some food. When nearing his few remaining years, he meditated and reached the conclusion that nothing in life is permanent so one must seek the liberty from material things of life that ties a person down to keep him from the bliss of liberty or moksha as the Hindus say.
We of course are the ordinary people who cannot understand such high philosophy of Lord Buddha, so we live a humdrum life until the end and try to hold on to the material things until our last breath, but everything slips out of our hands when we are old and feeble like Gene Hackman who died pitifully in spite of having a lot of wealth.
The common people like you and me are afraid of the unknown and reluctant to give up our comfort zones so we seek the company of people like us, food that we commonly eat and like to live in a familiar environment where everyone speaks the same language so cannot imagine us living a life of sacrifice and uncertainty looking for Nirvana.
Most of us do not understand what it means and how it can make us free from the temptations of life that we get so used to. People who seldom walk cannot imagine how hard it is to wander on foot with a begging bowl in hand like the monks. That calls for extreme sacrifice that most of us cannot accept.
I think this much introduction in this blog is enough so I will now try to focus on the title of this article called Downsizing is great. I will explain why the downsizing of your lifestyle and everything that is related to it is great when you become old, meaning over seventy years of age.
Now the life expectancy depends on your health, which depends on good nourishing food, a good environment where you live and a good and loyal person who can be your wife or husband who cares for you and sees to it that you are in good health and comfortable until you die.
People say that dogs are more loyal and trustworthy than humans because a dog will never abandon you and will serve and protect you with his life. He will mourn you for days and weeks over your body but not your relatives. Just remember Hachiko in Japan who gave his life waiting for his master. The relatives will wear fancy black clothes and go to the cemetery in shiny cars but look at other relatives with venom in their heart because now the fight for the property and money starts.
So I started to think that anyone can plan for his remaining days so that he or she remains independent of others and lives his or her life on his or her's own terms
and ends it on his or her own terms, as well. It may sound like a difficult proposition, but it is quite doable, but we are human beings who come in various shapes, sizes, colors and abilities.
By ability I mean a firm resolve to live your life the way you want until you croak. Not every Tom Dick and Harry can do it because it depends on how you grew up and under what circumstances. Not everyone is prepared to live his life on his own terms because it requires a strong personality with resolve and taking matters into his own hand.
I had a maternal uncle who one day abandoned his wife and disappeared never to return home. Some say that he became a wandering monk and others say other things. He may have sought freedom but abandoning his wife who depended on him was an act of cowardice and selfishness in the extreme. Marriage means responsibility.
But if you want to live simply somewhere, then downsizing comes as a good alternative. You no longer need your big house, big screen TV and air conditioners. You do not need so many servants to keep your house and your garden in perfect shape. You do not need so many dogs and birds to amuse you and certainly you do not need so many luxury cars and motorbikes. After all these are just material things one can get rid of, but some people say that it is nearly impossible. They care more for their cats and dogs than people.
One thing that separates common people from the monks who are spiritual people is the degree of spirituality they have. Just attending Church service or going to mosques to pray five times every day does not make you a Christian or Moslem unless you grow in your spirituality. I do not mean the Bible thumpers who annoy everyone with their fanaticism, but it is possible to grow in your spirituality without the Bible thumping.
Now let us suppose that you have finally realized the need to downsize your house and your lifestyle. Where can you go and live simply and peacefully? There are many countries that offer peaceful living. There you can buy or rent a small house in a beautiful surrounding at a low cost. You can get a wonderful cook who will delight you with the local cuisine every day for a small salary. They will cook and clean your house and run all the errands for you and your wife.
Their culture and lifestyle will amaze you. They will come to ask you how you are and bring a doctor if need be. There are excellent health care facilities and very good doctors who will attend to you whenever you need. If you have a lot of money, there are local banks that will keep it for you and give you easy access any time. Such countries do exist where your life will be secure and peaceful.
You will be able to participate in their amazing and colorful festivals and get used to wearing their local and comfortable clothes. They will even walk your dog if you care to keep one and you will enjoy their hospitality. It will be a far cry from your country where neighbors will ignore you and report to police only when they smell the odor of death. You will not want to live there where old people die alone and their pets die of hunger and neglect.
Japan and many European countries that claim to be developed countries are also known for their indifference to the old people who live alone in tiny apartments. Their neighbors living next door ignore them and do not knock on their door to ask how you are. There old people living alone die of loneliness and lack of care. They may have been notable artists, writers, engineers or great scientists but they were ignored by their society when they were alone and lived a very lonely life. I shudder to think of the old people in such countries.
But the Asian culture in most countries is not like Japan. They may be poor, but they have not lost their humanity so to live among them is a good choice where you can live the remainder of your life in peace, tranquility and without worries. What could be a better choice than this? Downsizing does not mean that you compromise on your quality of lifestyle. It means that you can enjoy a quality life at a much lower cost of living than your country where no one seems to care for you.
Note: My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography. My blogs can be shared by anyone anytime in any social media.
Source: Google photo of emotional parting of friends
Synopsis: Weall experience the emotional parting of friends and relatives during our lifetime. True and close friends make parting more difficult because of the uncertainty that we may never see them again as life itself is uncertain. We never know if we will see them again so cherish their friendship that is so rare.
I often think of the reasons why I get emotionally affected when a dear friend or a relative comes to see me and we enjoy his or her company but feel sad when the time comes for them to leave. I am not sure how my visitors feel but certainly I feel a sense of loss because there is always an air of uncertainty because it may be their last visit so I may never see them again. It happened to me when my sister came here for the last time. I gave her a big hug at the airport but did not know that she will never again come to visit us here in the Philippines because she died of cancer in India.
I was emotional when she left because she was my companion when I was just a baby and later, we used to go to school every day and return home together as well. So, we shared a lot of time together while growing up. I did errands for her and brought her to the train station numerous times when she had to go back to her town where she was a teacher. I pressed her clothes, bought things for her and went to a picnic that she enjoyed. I invited her to travel with me in India to visit beautiful places and I brought her to the Philippines three times, which she enjoyed very much. My wife, being a very generous woman, bought her many gifts and took many photos that she printed and put in an album to bring with her to India.
I felt sad when one day I received an email from India that she had died of cancer, so I sent money for her last rites, but I did not feel any emotion when my three other sisters died. Why did I not feel any emotion when they died? The answer lies in one word "Sharing".
I did not share anything with them because of the huge age gap between us so they did not play with me or share anything. I ran errands for them as well, but they remained aloof and left the town when they got married and were busy raising their children who later did not have any connection with me. They did not show any excitement when I left India or went to see me off at the train station but this sister I grew up with, always went to the train station or the airport to see me off and shed a few tears while giving me a big hug.
She was only a few years older than me so there was no big age gap. Maybe that could be another reason why we were closer to each other and shared many things. I tormented her for being a crying kid, but she never complained and always carried me, fed me and took care of me but others were not like her, so I felt her absence when she died.
I find that these two factors, i.e. the sharing and small age gap played a role in bringing us together. We shared our childhood and later our teen years together. She had a great impact on my education when one day she told me that I should get admission to an agriculture college because the students there spoke good English and were smart, so I became an agronomist and received my B.Sc. Ag degree one day that she was very proud of. She did not know that one day this education will open many doors for me and provide many opportunities that would make me an international traveler working in many countries. My other sisters were aloof and had nothing to do with me, so I did not feel anything when they died.
Then I started to think why some people I met long ago became my lifelong friends while others never offered any friendship, so they all faded away. Some were my classmates in college, others were my coworkers and still others I met in many countries, but none became my friend, so I have forgotten their names but not their indifference and often nasty toxic behavior. Some were jealous so they talked against me to prove that they were better than me.
I too ignored them and never kept any contact with them because they were not worth my time to keep my friendship with them that was never there to start with.
A friendship develops between two persons when they share the same ethics of hard work, honest living and offer help to anyone who needs their help. They never say anything but the truth and they never make any promise they cannot keep. They are always ready to help each other whenever needed so a bond develops that gets stronger as we age.
They go through life facing many challenges but eventually overcome them because they work hard with honesty and diligence, so they share this trait with their friend who has overcome somewhat similar challenges and succeeds at some point. It is often said that people who suffer challenges together become lifelong friends. It is common in the armed services where they get wounded or worse in some distant war but return home as lifelong friends. The sharing of danger and hardship is what makes people come together this way, but it is not limited to the armed services.
Often people say that we are not like wild animals because wild animals care only for their own survival, but I disagree. Wild animals of different species raised together become lifelong friends and shed tears when they are separated. If you raise such animals, they will never forget you even after many years living in the wilderness.
But we seek others like us and rarely make friends with people who are not like us. Humans go one step further. Some will seek friendship only if the other person is of the same race, same religion and even has the same political views so they make many conditions in their friendship.
Those who do not make conditions for their friendship are those rare people who share similar values and work ethics with another person, irrespective of their race, skin color or ethnicity become good friends in a selfless manner. They do not want any favors from you but want plain and honest friendship. Such people do exist but are not very common.
Meeting with them years later somewhere brings joy but parting with them at some airport one day brings a sense of emptiness that is hard to fill. Life is short and unpredictable so we all feel that anything can happen to us anytime without warning especially when we are at the end of our life and waiting for the final curtain to descend.
Friendship is like a sapling that you plant together and nurture it to grow into a lively healthy tree someday that gives shade and fruits. Friendship is also like that and needs to be nurtured so that it can grow strong over the years and create a strong bond between people.
Most people go through life without friends meaning true friends. They become friends for a reason and for a season, but such people are not your true friends because they are your friends for a reason and for a season. Later they all fade away leaving no trace because their friendship is always tainted by their self interest in you. A true friend wants nothing from you. Such people are rare and should be cherished because they are like hen's teeth.
I am happy to tell you that I have a few friends like that who have helped me, mentored me and always stood by me because they believed in me and in my ability to get the job given to me done professionally. Some were my professors in college and others whom I met working in other countries, so I consider myself very lucky to have met them and got to know them well. Many have died so I miss them and feel emptiness whenever I think of them.
Note: I have nearly come to the end of my writing career as a blogger so you may have noticed that I have written very few blogs in the past few months. Sometimes an idea comes, and I write a blog like this one but one day surely, I will come to a stop. After publishing over 440 blogs on various subjects, I feel that I have written enough that will keep you busy reading them for a long time so I should quit.
But a change was in the offing. It came in the form of an idea that Amazon may accept my blogs now called posts in the form of an e-book in many languages and publish them.
So, my IT expert daughter is putting together all the blogs I have ever written into a format acceptable to Amazon called KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) as e- book. You may be able to download the volumes no matter where you live in the world once it becomes an Amazon publication sometime in the future.
In the e-book if it ever sees the light of the day , it will be free of all the links I usually add to my Wordpress blogs and all the power points and YouTube links to movies or other subjects so it will be plain but with the same content as my blogs present. I will tell you when it comes online. In the meantime, share my blogs with your friends and others as usual and always send me your comments on them. My e book pen name will be Anil. Someday my biography will also be published there as an e-book. Cheers and best wishes. Aumolc.
Note: My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography. My blogs can be shared by anyone anytime in any social media.
Source Google photo of North American model of development
Synopsis: People say that the imitation is a form of flattery but when people imitate blindly the Western model of development at the cost of losing their own culture, their art and their social structure, they lose their heritage, their social cohesion and their humanity in the process. It is something that is very difficult to get back once lost. The blog looks at the pros and cons of such development.
I have been to many countries in Africa, Europe and the Americas and noticed that many developing countries are adopting the North American model to develop and grow their cities and their infrastructure.
My home country India is also doing the same in the name of development so we now see the glass and steel upended box like buildings everywhere that are imposing but lack the ability to bring people together to live in a society where people can have social interaction and get to know each other to form human bonds.
I understand that the high cost of land in big cities worldwide favors a monolithic tall structure that is perhaps efficient and allows the maximum use of space on an expensive piece of land, but it does not inspire anyone to be creative in designing a new building that would be based on how people living or working in it interact to each other socially.
These upended and quite ugly buildings are the symbol of the development just like the immense jungle of intertwined highways, expressways and roads that look like tangled spaghetti blotting the cities that divide people and communities in the name of efficiency and speedier movement of vehicles 24 hours a day but scary just the same. It represents the concrete jungle that keeps on growing like cancer but ignores the basic need of humanity of living together happily and in peace and harmony.
Such roads and buildings that are a symbol of the Western style of development have helped create a more individualistic and apathetic people who may live or work in such tall buildings but do not know their neighbors or the workmates because the sterile design does not create a warm living space where people are happy. It does not create a happy living community because it cuts off people from each other in the name of efficiency.
People in poor countries are greatly impressed by the steel and glass structure and assume that it represents modernity and progress but have no idea what it means in terms of human relationship so they abandon their cultural and humanistic values and start to follow blindly the Western culture and architecture that starts to assert itself on the spiritual health of a country in a bold and aggressive manner that changes people in a negative way.
I have watched several videos made by some people in the United States who show the decay of small towns and cities in almost all the States that show dilapidated and abandoned houses and other properties where people live in abject poverty and despair who are trying to survive on food aid some charitable organizations are providing. The abandoned neighborhoods, the overgrown weeds that fail to hide the rusty abandoned vehicles and household things strewn everywhere show how people are suffering and are leaving such dens of poverty and despair.
Source: Google photo of small towns in America that look forlorn and deserted.
The ramshackle structures that are put up by the fast-food companies, derelict shuttered stores, graffiti-stained walls and garbage piles tells you how the roads and highways have divided and destroyed what was once a thriving community of people who lived together in peace and harmony.
What will strike you is the sameness of these small towns no matter where you go that are featureless and downright ugly and forlorn. Crime and vandalism thrive in such towns where people live in fear and are suspicious of strangers who may be just passing through while getting gas or food.
You will see abandoned factories in the outskirt of such towns that have gone bankrupt that used to provide some jobs with poor wages. You will see enormous piles of abandoned farm machinery and vehicles of all sorts just dumped here and there overgrown with weeds.
You will see huge, abandoned school buildings because there are no more children to go there. You will see the broken playground see saws, swings etc. where once children played. (Read my blog called Small town dreamers here)
A great deal of this decay is directly related to the unemployment so people leave to go where they can find some jobs. It is even more difficult for the young people who have little or no education so they too leave to find jobs elsewhere. The agriculture used to employ a lot of these people but those jobs are now handled my machines in most parts except where they need farm workers to hand pick the produce, thus employing the itinerant Mexican or others who have no choice but to accept very low wages. Watch the movie Deer hunter that shows the plight of small towns in Virginia, but it could be any other town anywhere.
What brings me to write this blog is what the developing countries are imitating from the Western model that is tearing their people apart just like in the United States, but they do not see it coming.
They do not yet realize that these office towers built everywhere are just offices that big companies rent so it is just profitable business. Some are built as residential buildings where the rent may be high depending on the location but most of the downtown area becomes empty when people working there shut down their stores or offices and go back to their suburban homes that are also featureless, drab and uninviting places. This has created the commute culture due to the development of suburbs that may be 20 kms from the city.
One thing you will notice in any big city in the United States is that almost all the people who work there leave at the end of the day to return to their suburban homes, so the city center looks deserted. The stores and shops also close due to lack of customers or due to rules that they must shut down everything after a fixed hour.
If you are new and are out to walk to get some fresh air, you may be accosted by a heavily armed policeman who wants to know why you are loitering when you should be home and will scrutinize your ID thoroughly.
It is very different in Europe or Asia where the cities are vibrant with shops, restaurants and night clubs and people everywhere enjoying the evening shopping or eating or meeting with friends in a popular café. Some cities never really shut down. There are eateries everywhere and there are huge markets that sell everything you need or want at an affordable price so the cities really come alive in the evenings.
But the north American cities and towns are strictly regulated through numerous laws and edicts making them isolated and lifeless because everything is shut down at a specific time. All you will see are empty streets and monolithic tall buildings on both sides and an occasional street dog that looks lonely and is desperately looking for some food scraps.
You will also find some homosexuals wandering the empty streets to look for someone or anyone to talk to. They are sorry looking pathetic people who wander the empty streets of big or small cities as I found out in Washington, D.C. one day. The parks are the favorite hangouts of the poor drug addicts and prostitutes who are looking for some business so never go to any park in the evening anywhere if you value your safety.
Then there are dark streets where some red lights give out the impression that these are dangerous quarters run by criminals who also control the prostitution business. The drug dealers are seen peddling to the motorists or anyone who buys drugs from them. Often serious crimes happen there.
The sidewalks are often occupied by the homeless people who are seen scavenging for scraps to eat from the huge garbage bins. They sleep on the sidewalks because no one helps them find a decent shelter and something to eat. The homelessness is a very serious issue in North America that fails these poor jobless people who are forced to sleep on the sidewalks of the richest cities and beg for money or food.
So, I look at these glass and steel buildings as nothing but a lifeless structure that cancels out people from it but glows in dazzling lights all night to representing the so-called modernity. Other countries are now trying to imitate this type of modernity at the cost of dividing people and forcing poor people to sleep in their shadows wrapped often in rags and plastic sheets. The rich people take better care of their dogs than these poor people no one cares for.
Now we will see how the traditional living, the architecture and the communal living style that is still found in many countries in Africa and Asia is slowly giving way to the soulless development found in Western countries that they imitate.
The educated Africans snigger at their own traditional architecture so they prefer the Western style because they were taught that the white people are more modern and live in modern houses.
In the process they ignore their rich culture and architecture because they do not appreciate it. Africans think that the monolithic steel and glass, but soulless structure represent the modernity.
I have lived in many African countries like Mali, Burundi and Sudan where I was deeply impressed by their handicraft and beautiful jewelries. In Mali, I designed my own house in a village far from the town where the villagers built for me a 5 room house with laterite base and mudbricks with a novelty they had never seen before.
They built round huts of impressive size in a semi-circular fashion that were all interconnected making it one big house with cross ventilation and perfectly conical roof of golden colored grass. The idea of interconnecting round huts was a new idea to them, but they took pride in building such a house for me that was cool inside and free from mosquitoes and other insects. They beat the dirt floor with mallet to make it compact and hard and coated it with cow dung to give it a dust free clean floor.
They coated the outer walls with shea butter they extracted from shea nuts to give the walls protection from rain. It made the round huts look beautiful with a sheen of the coating. The house was so appreciated by the villagers that they kept coming to see it from distant village for months. I just took the concept of traditional African mud houses to a new level when I asked them to join them. They did it perfectly because they could understand a diagram on a piece of paper with exact dimensions.
Source: Am African village mosque in Mali
In Bourkina Faso the villagers build a new house for a neighbor free of charge with the collective effort of the entire villagers. Women brought water from a long distance to make mud bricks. Even children participated. Men built the walls, and the women beat the floor with wooden mallets to make it hard while singing traditional songs. They collected grass from their forest and helped make the perfectly conical roof or rectangular roof.
Source : Google photo of African village mud house
Once the house was finished, they coated it with shea butter and later made beautiful paintings on the walls using natural dies. You will not see this type of houses built anywhere with the community effort but only in African villages. The same Africans who go to live in cities build ugly mud houses or concrete houses that are too hot and uncomfortable, there being no community spirit in cities.
Source: Google photo of an African village mud houses
In the State of Rajasthan, India, you can see beautiful mud houses that are neat, clean and decorated with paintings on the walls. There too the community spirit brings people together to build a house for a villager, but the cities are a different matter just like in Africa.
Source: Google photo of mud house in Rajasthan India that are made beautiful with paintings.
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