Yesterday, today and tomorrow

Yesterday, today and tomorrow :

It is nice to remember the things that are no more or people who have long disappeared from the collective memories of humankind because one day we too will disappear wondering if anyone will remember us.

Let us face it. People have short memories and someone no matter how famous he was in his days is forgotten or dimly remembered by the old people but unknown to the young generation who one day also will become old and the next generation will not know who was Madonna or Rihanna or Barack Obama.

But I want to write about the time when I was young and saw and remember many things that have totally disappeared today.

In the 1950s :  The British had left India only a short three years ago but all things British remained in  India. I did not know anything about the freedom struggle or who was Netaji Bose or Gandhi was but my father knew. He used to sing patriotic songs in Bengali to us because the independence was so new then and people were still trying to get used to it so the patriotic songs were still in vogue.

Our morning assembly at school always started with patriotic songs that I can’t remember now except a few lines but we were told that the British are gone for good and we are all free for the first time in our history that our form of government is democratic and our leaders like Bose and Gandhi are the heroes.

But as kids we were not too keen on such things because we did not know what it was like to live under British rule and we had never heard of the massacre at the Jalianwala Bagh in Amritsar or where Amritsar was. We learned about these things much later.

What we thoroughly enjoyed was the monthly show of Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and other such movies that were shown on a big bed sheet strung up on two bamboo poles in our playground in school and we could sit on either side of the screen and did not care if Charlie Chaplin was using his right or left hand because he was so funny. The fee called entertainment fee was collected by the school each month but it was only 25 cents of a Rupee. Our tuition fee each month was only 3 Rupees but to put it in a proper perspective, one Rupee could buy one kilo of mutton and 150 Rupees a month was considered a good salary in those days.

The post card, envelops and inland letters were stamped so you did not need to buy stamps and glue it on. People used telegrams to send mostly bad news like so and so has died etc. so a telegram was always dreaded. The telegraph people often mis typed the words on a white paper ribbon which they tore off and glued onto a telegram form that were then rushed to delivery. There was no such thing as telex then.

Our home entertainment was around the Raymond radio that our father bought and strung up a wire mesh aerial on two bamboo poles to get a good reception. It was made in England as were most of the things then but the radio took a while to warm up the glass tube like receptors called vacuum tubes. There was no transistor those days.

There was no television either. The radio had to be licensed at the nearest post office and Pa had to pay an annual fee to use the radio.

People did not know that there are other kinds of radios like two way radios that police use because the police did not have radios and only carried sticks or batons as per British tradition.

I remember an old man bent with a ladder on his shoulder and a can of kerosene in one hand slowly walking up to light the lamp posts every evening because the street lights were just kerosene lamps and the old man was called the lamp lighter just like in England.

We had a small kerosene lamp that fit in front of our bicycle to give a little light but not much. The adults wore long pants and a steel clip to hold the pants near the ankle so the pants would not get caught in the chain of the bicycle. Many men wore a British style khaki hat made of light material and kept well styled mustaches. Snuff was kept in a fancy small pocket size vial because that too was a British introduction to India.

The British were innovators par excellence. I will give them that. They made a canvas bag called hold all in which one could keep a blanket, a pillow, some clothes, towels, shoes and other paraphernalia that people needed to travel with. This thing folded neatly and was then rolled up and tied with straps of leather and could be easily unfolded on a wooden bench seat on a train to make a comfy bed to lie down on .The third class in trains had only wooden benches and people got in or out through the windows if the trains were over crowded.

The trains waited near the outer signal before entering the station if the platforms were occupied .Now this outer signal was a piece of British sophistication in those days because it too functioned on kerosene lamp that someone had to light up every day and keep the kerosene tank filled. The signal man pulled a long lever that brought the red, green or yellow lens in front of the lamp to give the appropriate light to the driver of the train. Ingenious. This was the same system in England. They had many different gauges of tracks. The broad gauge, the meter gauge and the narrow gauge making train travel difficult because one had to transfer from one gauge to other.

But what was most impressive to a child like me was the gigantic steam engine called Canadian engine that shook the platform when came and hissed and blew the horn to put fear into our infant hearts. The fireman shoved coal into the furnace to make more steam and the driver polished the machinery constantly. Once I took to train to Kolkata and arrived there looking like African, so dark was my skin with soot not to mention my hair but that was nothing compared to the joy of riding a train.

There were many such inventions brought to India by the British.

One of them was called a Primus stove. This piece of wizardry had a place of its own because it was a small brass kerosene tank with three small legs with a small spindle in the middle with a cup around it. You filled this cup with alcohol or some flammable liquid, light it to heat a small metal disc on top and then pump the tank with a piston attached to it.

The spray of fuel on hot disc produced a high heat flame and made the disc red hot. 

It was like Bunsen burner that we used to use in our chemistry labs later in college days. You could cook anything on this stove in minutes except that it was unstable and sometime tipped over causing the fuel to spill and light up instantly .There were many accidents and women using this kind of stove died horribly so eventually it was banned.

Another British invention was the bachelor’s stove which was very popular with young British men who came to India alone and often worked in remote areas. This contraption was very simple and cylindrical. It had a charcoal burner at the bottom, and a series of cooking pots that fitted on top of each other with a handle on top.

You could put rice and water in the bottom pot, put a pot of water on it and put mixed vegetables in the third and so on. It all got cooked by steam and the bachelor had a decent meal anywhere. My father had one like that but I never saw him use it though.

Then they brought to India the famous DuckBack raincoat. Imagine that even a raincoat was imported from England. It was called Duck back because the rain fell off like from the back of a duck.

Well, the list is long but I just wanted to touch on a few things I remembered in those days but they all have disappeared now.

The railway uses modern electronic signaling system now installed by Siemens and gone are the steam engines and multiple gauge system. The trains now have bars on windows so no one can get in or out through like in old days and the second class coaches have thick cushions so you do not need hold alls.

They also left behind marble statuary everywhere reminding us all that once they were the masters. The marble statue of Queen Victoria sat under a huge marble canopy in the middle of the New York central park size park in our home town called Alfred Park holding a scepter. It was brought from England and made to perfection but her nose was broken by some kids later who had no fascination for her during the heydays of the freedom struggle.

Then there was a huge marble monument in another park called Minto park where the faces of royalty like Victoria, King George V, Lord Minto etc. were placed on each side of the monument but they are all gone now .The inscriptions are also chiseled out just like what the ancient Egyptians did to their pharaohs whom they did not like. May be the Indians took their cue from the Egyptians, I will never know but it took them quite a while to remove all the statuary from India.

  

Today:  Today India is a very different country from those days when we were young. I saw the transformation starting to change the landscape when back in 1960s I saw the electric cable being strung up on top of the railway bridge that I used to cross every day to go to college. Soon came the electric trains and diesel trains that doomed the old fashioned Canadian engines belching black smoke.

New roads, highways, bridges, airports, housing and many such infrastructure sprang up like mushrooms everywhere. Massive new housing projects, new hospitals, schools and other such buildings came up just like magic and have not abated. India continues to grow at an astonishing rate and it can be seen. The new subway system in all major cities that rival the best in the world now carry millions of people daily.

You no longer have to wait in line to buy a railway ticket or bus ticket anymore because it is computerized and can be booked even on line.

The airlines issue e tickets and e checking facilities at major airports and the number of airlines has increased dramatically. Their service is another matter but the fact is that more and more people are travelling by air or in high speed trains.

What is remarkable is the number of motor vehicles on the road now that are creating horrible traffic jams in cities and parking is becoming a serious problem everywhere. People have graduated from bicycle to scooter to motorcycle to cars in a matter of only one generation.

No one during our childhood had a scooter let alone a car. We either had rickety bicycles or just walked. Most of these vehicles are now being made in India in mind boggling varieties of models and sizes.There was a time when one had to wait for five years just to buy a scooter because it was a monopoly then. The monopoly was later broken allowing anyone to manufacture scooter or motor vehicles.

One can see another change in India that is very interesting. You can see towers of cell phones or communication towers loaded with antenna of all sorts in all parts of India especially in rural areas that are increasingly being electrified and joined with concrete roads. Farmers and the common people now use cell phones which have brought about major changes in business practices and the way social services are being delivered everywhere. You also see hundreds of wind mills and huge solar farms in some parts.

Gone are the days when people had to vote by ticking on a ballot paper. Now it is electronic and tabulated nationwide in a matter of days right after the election. People are given their salaries or monies earned directly to their account by the government cutting out the middlemen and reducing corruption and exploitation.

The government stores food grains, dals, sugar etc. in massive quantities in every district in every state to be sold at subsidized prices to every citizen so everyone has access to low cost food in the whole country. This is a big change from our days.

Another big change is in the availability of generic drugs that are made in India and sold at a low cost to anyone. This causes problems with international drug companies that want to sell their high price drugs but the Indian government is pro poor so encourages generics.

The school children in some states are given free bicycles, books and even cheap laptop computers which is a big big change from our days. The government feeds millions of school children daily. All children in all schools were given free vaccinations, eye checkup and other free medical checkups that continue today. The small pox and malaria has been eliminated as a scourge in most part and people no longer die from TB these days.

We did not know about such things as computer, internet or cell phones because it did not exist .Nobody believed that someday you could talk and see at the same time on Skype anyone anywhere in the world for free. Nobody knew about digital cameras and its ability to send photos instantly to anyone anywhere. These modern gadgets have brought profound changes in today’s society in the way they communicate with each other.

The television has come to India in a very big way almost beyond belief. I counted 82 satellite Chanel providers in one city alone so everyone is hooked to satellite TV watching CNN, BBC etc. but also foreign movies from Hollywood that are being dubbed in local languages and spread throughout India. Almost every home has the TV, fridge and other gadgets that were once limited to rich people proving that the middle class is growing and creating more demands for goods and services.

New malls are springing up in big cities giving people more choices and quality products and services that the old system could not.

Even Uber and similar services are at the finger tip of anyone who wants to rent a car or taxi giving people more choices. India has opened up to the world in a big way.

In short the wide range of products and services that are now available have made life a whole lot easier than before for the average person but at what cost?

Tomorrow: Now I come to the last part to assess the impact of the breakneck development on people and how they interact socially with each other.

Now the kids seldom play together like we used to and are glued to their TV or computer to play video games.

Now people seldom drop by to see how you are doing and have a cup of tea or take a walk together in the park like we used to.

Now everyone has a cell phone in his or her pocket peering constantly at it for new messages in Facebook or twitter and pays little attention to his friends or anyone.

India has gone from bullock carts to space age in a short time that took the western countries many generations to achieve but has also paid dearly in terms of devaluation of basic humanity we took for granted during our time. One seldom hears the words like thank you or please and there is less emphasis on a person to person contact.

Now no one has any time for you or play carom board or ludo or monopoly. They say those are obsolete games today so the social interaction we used to have has diminished drastically.

If cell phones, curved TV or gadgets could improve the quality of life of a person then just look at the so called developed countries that are finding it so hard to cope with teen age pregnancies, immorality, gun violence, domestic violence, drugs and the social problems that are the result. People are being thrown into jails for years just because of a broken tail light or worse. A young girl suffering from cancer and with severe disabilities is thrown down and beaten by the agents at the airport just because she could not understand what they wanted. They showed no compassion.

A young man is shot dead because he was pulling out his Bible from his pocket and an autistic child is shot dead because he was playing with a plastic toy gun.

Will India become like them in the race to become a developed country? I hope not.


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Historical Jesus and Mary Magdalene

Historical Jesus and Mary Magdalene

Source : Google photo of painting of Jesus and Mary Magdalene

Synopsis :  The historical Jesus and Mary Magdalene are of great importance to those who are interested in knowing who really was Jesus and why his wife Mary Magdalene was vilified by the Catholic church in the Bible as a mere prostitute. History shows that Mary was of royal descent and survived by escaping to France where she lays buried.

I found this video that discusses the reasons why the Catholic church denigrates Mary Magdalene as a prostitute and gives her no importance in the life of Jesus although the history and records show that she was indeed married to Jesus and was of royal descent.

Source : U tube 

The Catholic Church rigidly follows a certain number of dogmas that can’t be challenged because the dogmas make it the foundation of the church. One such dogma is that Jesus died on the cross and rose after a few days to ascend to heaven. Another is that he was not married and Mary Magdalene was one of his disciples. This is the Jesus of faith that the church promotes.

However, there are a certain number of discrepancies between the Jesus of faith and the historical Jesus so I will today discuss these discrepancies although it does not change anything because dogmas will remain dogmas since they relate to faith and not history.

In the book called The messianic legacy by ( Baigent, Michael; Leigh, Richard; Lincoln, Henry (1986). The Messianic Legacy. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-02185-0.) et al they mention that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute and was of royal descent who married Jesus. This was also found in the gospels found in Egypt and in Nag Hammadi  and  Qumran scrolls found near Dead Sea in Israel later. She was forced to flee to Southern France while being pregnant and gave birth to their son who later married into nobility and ruled France for a long period as Merovingian kings.

Mary as the wife of Jesus was not acceptable to his followers for their own reason so she had to leave Israel. While Jesus who did not die on the cross which is quite well documented was brought down by those nearest to him right after the crucifixion and kept him hidden in a cave where he received medical help to heal his wounds. If found by the Romans, they would have made sure that he was dead this time so he was hidden. So the dogma that he rose again after the crucifixion is technically true. It takes many days for a person crucified to die of loss of blood and injuries but Jesus was brought down soon after the crucifixion because there was a lot of thunder and lightning and rain that drove away the guards. This is also a historical fact.

According to some accounts, Jesus and Mary (his mother) were then secretly spirited out of Israel because his life was in danger so they kept walking with some of his followers toward the east meaning Iraq where there is a grave of Mary. It means she died there and was buried. Jesus then continued to walk eastward and reached Kashmir after many months of travel.

Jesus is believed to have settled down in SriNagar where he married a princess and had many children. There is a church in SriNagar where they say he was buried in its grounds. This church is called the church of Issa Masiha meaning the church of Jesus the Messiah. The descendants of Jesus have kept a genealogical records of 400 generations to prove that they descended from Jesus.

Let us now go back to southern France where his wife Mary Magdalene  gave birth to his son and died. There is a church in her name ( photo) and a grave where she was buried that pilgrims visit in large numbers.

Source : Google photo of Church of Mary Magdalene in France

Source : Google photo of Rennes le chateau 

This mountain village of Rennes le chateau in the Pyrenees mountains  had a dilapidated church where an impoverished priest lived and one day while renovating his church came across a document of parchment that he found . The content of the parchment was so explosive that he was astounded and traded this document with the secret society called Prieury de Sion who paid him a very large sum of money ( todays term nearly USD 50 million ) that the poor father used to renovate his church completely and built additional buildings. He never disclosed where he got so much money and what was in the document that someone paid so much money for. He died with this mystery intact.

I will copy and paste here what I found on this subject in Wikipedia.

A nineteenth century French priest discovers something in his mountain village at the foot of The Pyrenees which enabled him to amass and spend a fortune of millions of pounds. The tale seems to begin with buried treasure and then turns into an unprecedented historical detective story - a modern Grail quest leading back through cryptically coded parchments, secret societies, the Knights Templar, the Cathar heretics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a dynasty of obscure French kings deposed more than 1, 300 years ago. The author's conclusions are persuasive at the core is not material riches but a secret - a secret of explosive and controversial proportions, which radiates out from the little Pyrenees village to all the way to contemporary politics and the entire edifice of the Christian faith. It involves nothing less than the Holy Grail.

What if everything you think you know about Jesus is wrong? In the sequel to ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ Michael Baigent reveals the truth and tackles controversial questions, such as whether or not Christ survived the crucifixion.

Twenty years ago Michael Baigent and his colleagues stunned the world with a controversial theory that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene married and founded a holy bloodline. His bestselling book ‘The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail’ (with co-authors Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh) became an international publishing phenomenon and was one of the sources for Dan Brown's novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’. Now, with two additional decades of research behind him, Baigent's ‘The Jesus Papers’ presents explosive new evidence that challenges everything we know about the life and death of Jesus.

• Who could have aided and abetted Jesus and why?
• Where could Jesus have gone after the crucifixion?
• What is the truth behind the creation of the New Testament?
• Who is working to keep the truth buried and why?

Taking us back to sites that over the last twenty years he has meticulously explored, studied, and in some instances excavated for the first time, Baigent provides a detailed account of his groundbreaking discoveries, including many never-before-seen photos.

In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln posit the existence of a secret society known as the Priory of Sion, which is supposed to have a long history starting in 1099 and had illustrious Grand Masters including Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton. According to the authors' claims, the Priory of Sion is devoted to installing the Merovingian dynasty, which ruled the Franks from 457 to 751, on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe. It is also said to have created the Knights Templar as its military arm and financial branch.

The authors re-interpreted the Dossiers Secrets in the light of their own interest in undermining the Roman Catholic Church's institutional reading of Judeo-Christian history. Contrary to Plantard's ( current grand master of the Priory de sion) initial Franco-Israelist claim that the Merovingians were only descended from the Tribe of Benjamin, they asserted that the Priory of Sion protects Merovingian dynasts because they are the lineal descendants of the historical Jesus and his alleged wife, Mary Magdalene, traced further back to King David. According to them, the legendary Holy Grail is simultaneously the womb of saint Mary Magdalene and the sacred royal bloodline she gave birth to, and the Church tried to kill off all remnants of this bloodline and their supposed guardians, the Cathars and the Templars, in order for popes to hold the episcopal throne through the apostolic succession of Peter without fear of it ever being usurped by an antipope from the hereditary succession of Mary Magdalene.

Note : One French King who had borrowed enormous sums from the  Templars to fight his never ending wars invited them all to a secret meeting to sort out his debts but had them all assassinated. But some Templars stayed back fearing a trap and hid their enormous wealth somewhere that is yet to be discovered. Perhaps only the Priory de Sion knows about it.( AKC)

The authors therefore concluded that the modern goals of the Priory of Sion are:

• the public revelation of the tomb and shrine of Sigebert IV as well as the lost treasure of the Temple in Jerusalem, which supposedly contains genealogical records that prove the Merovingian dynasty was of the Davidic line, to facilitate Merovingian restoration in France;
• the re-institutionalization of chivalry and the promotion of pan-European nationalism;
• the establishment of a theocratic "United States of Europe": a Holy European Empire politically and religiously unified through the imperial cult of a Merovingian Great Monarch who occupies both the throne of Europe and the Holy See; and
• the actual governance of Europe residing with the Priory of Sion through a one-party European Parliament.

The authors also incorporated the antisemitic and anti-Masonic tract known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into their story, concluding that it was actually based on the master plan of the Priory of Sion. They presented it as the most persuasive piece of evidence for the existence and activities of the Priory of Sion by arguing that the original text on which the published version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was based had nothing to do with Judaism or an "international Jewish conspiracy", as it issued from a Masonic body practicing the Scottish Rite which incorporated the word "Zion" in its name. Per Baigent et al, the text was not intended to be released publicly, but was a program for gaining control of Freemasonry as part of a strategy to infiltrate and reorganise church and state according to esoteric Christian principles. 

After a failed attempt to gain influence in the court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Sergei Nilus was supposed to have changed the original text to forge an inflammatory tract in 1903 in order to discredit the esoteric clique around Papus by implying they were Judaeo-Masonic conspirators, but he ignored some esoteric Christian elements, which hence remained unchanged in the published antisemitic canard.

Source : Wikipedia

The church and the grave of Mary Magdalene in the cathedral of St Maximin in Provence where her skull is preserved   is now a pilgrimage site where untold number of people visit every year because they believe that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus and is buried there.

Source : Google photo of the cathedral of St. Maximin  in Provence  , France

Source : Google photo of the grave of Mary Magdalene in the cathedral of St Maximin in Provence, France

Source : Google photo of the skull of Mary Magdalene at the Cathedral of St. Maximin la St Baume in Provence, France

The Vatican denies it and says it is not true because it runs contrary to the Vatican doctrine. It is also true that the New Testament excludes many gospels that were found in Egypt and elsewhere because they contradict what the Church preaches but experts who examined such gospels in detail say that the gospels are original.

I do not know how authentic the story of Jesus in Kashmir is because that too is debunked by the Vatican but there is a church in Sri Nagar in Kashmir and there is a genealogical record of 400 generations.

Jesus of history generates considerable interest among Biblical scholars who continue to uncover ancient documents and artifacts that paints a different picture of Jesus that makes him more human and approachable so I like it.  


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You can be lonely in a crowd

You can be lonely in a crowd

Source : Google photo

Synopsis : Loneliness does not mean when you are alone because one can be lonely in a crowd. Loneliness is a state of mind that that tells you that you are close to no one even if you are surrounded by people .I discuss it and note that people are lonely when they do not find someone their intellectual equivalent .It is true of many writers.


It is true that a person can feel terribly alone in a crowd and not feel alone at all when he is just by himself so it is not related to the number of people around you or not around you. I think it is related more to the inner fulfillment of a person.

Often people feel that they are empty inside so no number of people can fill that void. People who are rich and famous who know many people but none of them intimately often feel this way and end up overdosing on drugs like Whitney Houston.

You often meet lonely people who are only too eager to tell you their life story even if you have just met them. You soon forget them, their names and their story because they offer unsolicited information that you do not know what to do with and look for ways to escape them.

The problem of the modern world is that most people are wrapped up in their problems or their day to day struggles that they cannot seem to manage so have little time for others except in a very superficial level. You may know them slightly or not at all even if they seem familiar to you. They may be your neighbors or office workers. They may be the people you meet in your church regularly but you do not know them.

Someone wrote an article recently about the lonesome people who do not like others in general and prefer to be alone because they find others not at their level of intellectuality, education, work or travel experience so they prefer not to be bothered.

We, whether like it or not always judge others as others constantly judge you. I think it is inherent in our nature to judge others using our own yardstick, our own values, our own beliefs and our own experience. If we find them not measuring up to our standard which may be quite high, we back up and return to our shell.

A widely traveled person who has rich experience to share finds no one interested so he keeps quiet. If he is a wide reader of classic literature and finds no one who shares his excitement in discussing the books he reads then he keeps quiet. If he loves fine art, classical music or history and finds no one in the small town where he lives who show any interest then he feels out of place and unappreciated.

I knew a very sophisticated French lady who had rich experience in Africa and knew a lot about their art, culture and food but found no one in the small village in France where she lived interested so felt very isolated.

This is the problem with intellectuality and curious people who rarely find their equivalent in others so prefer to keep their own company instead of cheap talk.

I was once in Sicily where I met a German couple in Taormina. They gave me a ride and found me a place for the night and sat with me until midnight talking about wide range of things and said that they felt they had known me all their lives. They kept this friendship going for well over thirty years but I cannot talk to people I have known all my life because they are not interested.

But in life the most popular people are the ones who can cheap talk, tell raunchy jokes, can remember names and birthdays, who are never serious about anything, who have the same level of knowledge or curiosity as the average small town dweller and can feel at home with the most ordinary people.

It is also the human nature that we all seek our own type of people to associate with socially. There are various clubs where people of similar interests meet and socialize over beer or bridge game or a poker.

The church is a popular place for people with similar religious background to meet yet they feel that they never become friends with anyone.

Now there are people who do not wear their religion on their sleeves and keep it very private because their views  on religion may clash with others so they are reticent about discussing such topics with anyone.

If you are the type who enjoys traveling all over the world and tries different food, participates in their festivals and meets people from other countries easily and then go back to your small town , you will find yourself quite apart from the rest who do not travel and cannot comprehend your excitement.

I have made over 100 power points on wide ranging topics from arts and crafts of Africa to art, history, artists in Europe and other countries etc. and have offered them free to anyone interested in my neighborhood but people said they are not interested in such knowledge. So I have put them out in the internet Google + for anyone anywhere to see. 

There is so much to share with the world and there are so many people out there who love to see the power points and learn from it that I feel encouraged. The world of knowledge is infinite.

So I come back to the topic at hand and try to understand why it is so hard to find people who share your values, your knowledge, your ideas, your stories in other countries and open up a channel of communication. It is easier to find people you do not know and share with than the people you know   or think you do even if superficially.

So superficiality is the key word here. You cannot get beyond superficiality with most people around you because people create a bubble of their own and are afraid to burst their bubble and go beyond. They will tell you that it is their comfort zone and are ill at ease with someone who is not like them in mediocrity.

They are afraid to wander into a wide world of knowledge where they feel inadequate to absorb all they see and experience. The good example is food. Why do you find so many Americans at any McDonalds overseas?

I had an American friend who had traveled all over the world and had extensive knowledge of many things that he could not share with his small town mates in Texas where people were more interested in Bingo games or weekend football.

When I showed slides of various countries to my relatives , they kept mum and showed apathy. They did not care to see photos of Africans or wild life because they could not relate to them. Their interest perked up considerably when their own photos showed up.

The frog in the well is very limited in its knowledge of the outside world and is content to live in its well because it cannot get out of that proverbial well even if it tries. Most people live in their own well and cannot climb out of it to see the beauty of the world. Those who make the effort are dazzled by its beauty.

There was a Portuguese traveler who one day came upon the ruins of Angkor Wat in the jungles of Cambodia , made sketches and showed the world what an astounding find it was . Such people bring knowledge to the rest who never travel and never know what is out there and perhaps do not care. How can a small town person in Texas who has never traveled anywhere know where is Angkor Wat and what it means let alone where is Cambodia? He just can’t relate to it.

The good news is that not all people want to live in their well and want to know and see and feel what is out there and appreciate any one who helps them get there.

Sharing is the key :

I think the idea of sharing with anyone what is worth sharing is the key to overcome the barrier that most people put up. The idea is to open up a channel of communication with people so that sharing becomes exciting. People who live alone and are highly creative, full of knowledge and ideas are so by choice because they do not find anyone to share their ideas with so they become great writers, poets or philosophers.

It is like a great teacher who finds his pupils dull and unmotivated but finds joy if his students start learning what he has to share.

A writer is also a teacher of sorts. He finds joy if more and more people start reading his works and show appreciation. A great writer does not write for monetary gains or fame but does so because he is generous in sharing his thoughts and ideas just like a great teacher who is poorly paid but enjoys teaching because he has so much to share.

Not everyone is lucky to get to know a person who becomes a lifelong friend and a true soul mate who understands and appreciates all the knowledge a person has to offer. But there are many unknown people who will appreciate you if you give them the chance to do so.

To be alone is therefore is not the same as being lonely. You can be alone in a crowd but not alone if you are a thinker and share it with the world.


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

tumblr posts    
Blogs in French
Blogs in Spanish
Blogs in German
Blogs in Japanese
Anil's biography in Japanese
Anil's biography in French.
Anil's biography in English.
Anil's biography in Spanish.
Anil's biography in German