What is entertainment?

Source : Google photo

Synopsis : When we were children, we enjoyed the drama and other entertainment during our festivals that brought us all together in the community but now it seems that the social element is missing from people's lives so they become more lonely and apathetic.The blog scrutinizes the role entertainment plays is people's lives.

When we were kids, we had to pay 25 cents a month as the entertainment fee in our school. On weekends a van would come to our school playground where we eagerly waited for the Charlie Chaplin and Laurel Hardy movies that the projectionist showed on a big bed sheet strung between two bamboo poles.

We could sit on either side of the bed sheet and did not care if Chaplin was using his left hand or right because he was so funny either way and we laughed at the antics of Laurel and Hardy until our stomach ached.

The peanut seller did a roaring business at such times to the dismay of the janitor who had to clean up afterwards but we were just kids having fun. There was no restraint on us and the teachers sat in one corner also enjoying the show.

I also remember staying up whole night along with everyone else to watch the drama that the amateur actors and actresses put up during the Pooja festival. We knew them all because they lived in our community and some were related so it was a big family affair.

The sets and settings were primitive and we could hear the prompter on the side hidden behind a thin proscenium trying his best to prompt the lines from the book because the actors could not remember their lines. It was so funny because the prompter could say anything and the poor actors would repeat it without knowing that a joke was being played on them. We roared in laughter and rolled on the ground holding our stomach.

I was often the one holding the rope of the curtain and pulled it with all my might to lift it or let it down as the scene required while swatting the insects attracted by the lights but it was so much fun.

There was a serious scene in a drama one night when an old man farted loudly while the audience was totally absorbed in the drama. All the hell broke loose and the poor girls on the stage tried desperately not to laugh because it was a serious scene. Someone at the back admonished the old man saying Grand Pa behave yourself. People roared in laughter. That was real entertainment in those days.

Once there was a religious drama being played where a bearded man was supposed to throw an egg in a fit of temper but it was a rubber ball painted white that bounced off the stage and landed on the lap of very naughty kids who always sat in the front. Not to be hesitant, they picked up the ball and threw it back on to the stage shouting Grandpa here is your egg. Oh! It was so much fun that I still laugh thinking about the past.

In those days 50 years ago boys and girls did not mix so the boys dressed as girls or women and vice versa so men put up false stuffed bras and looked very funny. The girls had to flatten their chests somehow to look like boys but we knew them all and had fun.

There was no television those days so our only source of music was our old Raymond radio. It was long before the advent of cassette players, CD and DVD players. I brought the first stereo from abroad that people stopped outside our house to listen to because no one had heard such sound before. The future of music with Dolby sound and stereo was still unknown not to mention the CD that could play for hours with crisp clarity and superb sound.

Oh Yes. There were the old fashioned gramophones. Someone had one that had to be hand cranked to play the record and after each play of few records, the needle had to be replaced because it wore out so fast. We used to joke that a thorn could also do the job. The record played only for three minutes and had to be flipped to hear the part B if it was a narrative or a ghost story that we loved so much. If the speed started to falter, we cranked it up frantically and laughed until tears came.

Then came the long playing records at 33 rpm and stereo sound. I could stack up 6 records on the spindle that would drop one by one and played them all for quite some time that impressed people. By this time the cassette players were common but Walkman stereo was just introduced so people loved the sound in their earphones. The evolution of sound continued resulting in CD where it could play 20 songs but that was still many years away.

But the entertainment I am writing about was more of a social thing like watching a funny movie or a drama where the actors forgot their lines. It was something to be enjoyed with others.

Now it has degenerated to a very selfish narcissistic way of enjoying entertainment watching a DVD alone at home or listening to music in your head phone while traveling or sitting in a park. The technology has put excellent sound and video in the hands of common people but took away from them the joy of entertainment in the company of others. People have become more self-centered and aloof.

The old fashioned opera and drama has not disappeared totally. I was very amused by a drama played in a village in Bengal by a traveling group that followed the harvest season and knew when the farmers had money. They showed up in a village where their advance team put up the huge tents, lights and sound system, brought in their generators and fenced the area to keep out the free loaders. 

Their drama was crude and replete with obscene jokes that the farmers easily understood and laughed at .They walked long distance to get to the venue because it was entertainment for them and their family. These itinerant groups had a busy schedule traveling from village to village entertaining people and making good money in the process.

I have seen the same thing in Vietnam during the war when a group appeared in our town and set up the stage and lights. They made such a racket with their gongs and cymbals that it could make you deaf but people greatly enjoyed their songs and dances. Sometimes the actors lost their false beard or mustache but quickly picked it up and put it on. Everyone laughed and forgot for a while that there was a terrible war going on and one could still hear the B-52s dropping the bombs somewhere.

I think the whole idea of entertainment was to live in a fantasy world even if briefly and forget your daily mundane live with all its problems. We go to movies for the same reason. We know that the scenes we see in dazzling colors on a three story high screen are fake and computer generated but we don’t care because it is entertaining.

We know that the car chases are actually done in slow motion and later speeded up on screen to give the impression that it is a fast chase. The actors and actresses get beaten to pulp but it is fake blood and they don’t really get hurt but the thrill of action keeps us glued to our seats.

But we are now living in our cocoon so to speak and do not care to share our happiness with others. We get terribly annoyed when someone behind you starts talking on cellphone disturbing others. We want to be private even in a crowd and are offended if others invade our private space in anyway.

I know that great changes have come our way the way we interact with others. If you can still find the old neighborhoods in some parts of China, you will see how the houses were constructed all around a common courtyard where children played together and where people sat around smoking and sipping tea with their neighbors while keeping an eye on the kids. It was a social place where everyone knew each other. It was where women washed their clothes around a common well and gossiped with their neighbors.

Now such places have been replaced by suburbs where people live isolated from their neighbors and their children do not get to play with others like they used to. This is the same thing with entertainment. People are less social these days so the emphasis is on the nuclear family.

I have lived in Africa for quite some time working in different countries and know that the Africans in rural remote villages make their own entertainment that is truly fantastic. There would be balafonists , guitar players, singers and dancers who could keep the whole village entertained all night around  a camp fire under a baobab tree. I could even join them in their dance around the fire banging on cymbals making the villagers laugh.

They had village bards who told them stories while playing their home made guitars. It kept people mesmerized. They had men dressed in feathers or hidden under such a cloak and chirped like a bird while dancing that only a shaman could understand and interpret. They were the master entertainers who needed no prompting and could make up a song or a story impromptu. Anyone could attend because it was free.

But city folks are different. They become self-centered and aloof. So we in the process of developing a higher standard of living meaning earning a good salary that permits us to live in a big house in the suburb, drive a fancy car and buy the 60 inch curved 4G HDTV etc. have gradually lost our social nature that poor Africans living in remote village still have. Granted most people in this world are still poor and do not have such luxuries that I write about but given half a chance, they will discard their social life in a hurry and jump into the middle class that is their ideal.

They say that there is no one more fanatic than a new convert but that also goes for poor people who join the middle class and become unsocial, arrogant, and narcissistic and lose their soul in the process. It is like eating fast food knowing it is bad for your health just because it tastes good so hell with the health.

What does the future hold?

It is hard to see how anything can get better given the society we now live in unless we change our values dramatically. When sharing, caring and feeling for others are no longer fashionable, it is hard to see how people can come together and enjoy themselves like in the old days.

We whether like it or not have become gadget freaks that bring us instant satisfaction. Today it is I phone or I pad or I something and tomorrow it may be Z pad or Z phone. There is no end to the gadgets that keep popping up in the market place making the old ones instantly obsolete. Remember the 8 tracks? Where are they now?

It is like filling the room with toys for your only child who soon gets bored with toys and smashes them. He grows up with toys and gadgets but never learns to share them with the poor kid who lives in the community. He does not know them and does not care. When he grows up , he becomes even more self-centered and selfish. I have seen how selfish some people are when I was living in the United States. 

They had abominable behaviors as adults because no one taught them how to be a decent person. The parents probably are to blame or perhaps it is the society as a whole that now values material things more than developing decent values that makes a person a good person.

The entertainment used to be an outlet to let our feelings out in the open when we were not ashamed to laugh hysterically but now it seems that it is no longer fashionable to laugh and enjoy the company of others.

One woman went to an English pub somewhere in a small town and ordered a Guinness beer. The place was full of people all sitting with their drinks morosely like in a funeral parlor, no one even looking at the woman. You are not supposed to look at any one and just mind your own business so the woman started laughing at herself and stood up to break the ice. Hey Guys! She said I am from another country where people greet strangers and offer drinks. What is wrong with you people? Why are you so afraid and afraid of what?

Do you know what happened next? Some people started smiling and opened up and invited her to sit with them. Soon others joined and everybody toasted everybody and talking at once.

So it needs a kick in the bottom for people now to come out of their shells and find out that they enjoy it mixing with others and sharing a joke or a story with a stranger.

It is the same with entertainment so throw away your gadgets and smile at a person, make friends and invite him or her to have fun together. You will soon learn that it is more fun and entertaining than the gadgets.

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Agony of flying

Synopsis : The first experience of flying can not be pleasant for anyone but we now are in the era of mass air transport where people of all class fly often in budget airlines that has diminished the service and pleasant company the older era provided .Flying then was mostly limited to more polished travelers . I miss the glamor of flying.

Agony of flying 


Source : Google photo

I remember the first time I flew in a plane was from my home town to Kolkata some fifty years ago. No one in our family had ever flown in a plane anywhere so it was a first for them. Naturally they were all very excited and some piled into a small car that a friend of mine had to bring us all to the small municipal airport outside the town. They wanted to give me a big sendoff not knowing what was in store for me. I did not know it either.

In those days there was practically no airport security so the well-wishers could go and climb into the plane. The small plane landed on time and unloaded a few passengers so that I could get on. The polite stewardess asked the non-passengers to get off the plane who were gawking because none had seen the inside of plane .We were all small town boys.

Finally the door was shut and the propeller driven plane took off and slowly gained altitude. I could see my town for the first time from the air and was impressed at how good the job the British had done in laying it out in a strict grid pattern. I could clearly identify the railway station, the water works and the huge park with Queen Victoria’s marble statue at the center of it.

Soon we attained the flying altitude so the pilot turned off the seat belt sign and we all prepared for the three hour flight. Ma had given me a good breakfast but now it became a great problem for me. The plane had non retractable wheels that I could see from my window and thought that in case of an emergency landing, they will come in mighty handy. But the small plane dropped in air pockets like a stone while the pilot struggled to bring it up to altitude again.

It was the most miserable flight I ever had and threw up all that I had eaten and wished the journey to end but I had to endure two more hours of this agony that made me weak. I deeply regretted flying because it was so unpleasant.

Finally when we reached out destination, an American fellow sitting next to me helped me out of the plane. My cousins had come to the airport to receive me but they did not see me so were about to go home when at last I stepped out quite pale and weak from retching. They had never flown either so did not know what it was like to fly in a small plane that dropped like a stone in air pockets. Any way I was glad to be home where I gulped down some soothing drink that eased my stomach pain.

My next flight was in a huge jet plane of Pan Am that was smooth and so powerful. It was a Boeing 707 in those days that no longer flies anywhere and the Pan Am has gone out of service now but in those days it offered a very comfortable flight. There were no air pockets and we flew at a tremendous altitude from where nothing could really be seen. The stewardesses were pretty and quite friendly so I was glad that it was so nice.

Remember that in those days, flying was reserved only for a few people who could afford like important people or students on a scholarship and a few well to do tourists. It had not degenerated into the mass transit that it has now become so it was classy and quite pleasant. The food was good and the music softly played into my earphone. There were no TV screens at the back of seats.
When the plane landed at Bangkok, I was told that my connecting flight to Saigon was cancelled that day so I was to stay overnight at a five star hotel at the expense of Pan Am.

They took me to my hotel in a fancy car and brought me back to the airport the next day. They did all this for an economy class passenger like me so I wondered what they did for the first class passenger. May be there was a six star hotel somewhere. I did not know. I was just a small town boy flying for the first time and had never been to any hotel five star or not. The waiter offered to show me around the town but he did not know that I had only 5 miserable dollars in my pocket so I declined.

Thus my life of travel around the world started in a way that I had never anticipated and lasted over fifty years. I have since that wretched flight from my town flown in most types of aircrafts one can imagine and then some and saw the evolution of mass air travel that it has now become.

Gone are the niceties of air travel. Now there are security checks everywhere where the stone faced personnel frisk you, pat you and roughly push you if you do not understand what exactly they want. They inspect your luggage through x-rays, sniffing dogs and check your hand bags.

My daughter was roughly pushed back at some airport because her hair pin pinged the scanner. She was only a child but they showed no mercy or care. They shoved and pushed down hard a teen age girl who was a cancer patient and with severe disabilities just because she could not understand what the security people wanted her to do. She suffered injuries at their hands in the name of security.
It gets worse once you step inside your plane. You can no longer choose your seat and may be forced to endure a long flight next to crying or screaming kids or a very fat person who does not give you any elbow room.

Remember that Bill Cosby comedy video where he talked about a hyperactive kid on a plane who poked everybody and said “I am Willie. I am four years old” ? After a long flight the kid finally fell asleep but his mother had a rough time. Her mascara ran and her hair was limp when the plane landed. Then everyone poked the kid on their way out and said Hi Willie wake up. Her well-tanned husband was waiting to receive them when she shoved the sleeping kid into his arm and just walked off angrily. Cosby is a great comedian.

The airlines constantly try to squeeze in as many passengers as they can by reducing the width of the seats. Then there are Willies who are hyperactive.

One airline took my business class ticket and gave me an economy class seat squeezed between two not so nice people because they did not have a business class on that flight and would not upgrade me to first class that I thought was a standard procedure. They also did not refund the huge fare difference to me either which was quite unfair.

But I miss those early days when the airlines took good care of passengers and tried to make the flight a good experience. The worldwide security checks at all the airports are now standard but at some airports they even check your shoes and pat you down in an aggressive manner if you are a woman. All these things have made air travel the unpleasant experience that is a far cry from those days when I could simply ask the stewardess a change of seat for some reason.

Then came the Jumbo 747 that was big and wide. I could lift the handles and make a comfortable bed if there were empty seats on long flights and get a good sleep. The stewardesses did not mind and even brought blankets for you.

The airlines now carry more passengers more frequently over numerous routes and have done away with all the nice things about flying. One stewardess kept on insisting that I must return the earphone to her although I did not take it at all. She kept on counting all the earphones until she was satisfied that I was not hiding one somewhere.

Another kept on asking for my ticket to verify if I was assigned the right seat and left me in peace only when I spoke in French to her. The services vary a great deal from one airline to another so over the years I have learned to avoid certain airlines because of their very bad or nonexistent service while other airlines offer somewhat better service.

What bothers me is the condition of the plane more than the services they offer. We were once flying in a Malian plane where they put us in a section where they had removed most of the seats and the floor was covered with what looked like trash and some sorry looking luggage to me. I was very shocked to fly in such a plane. In another plane I noticed that the wall panels were loose and some had missing screws and rattled so I wondered what else was loose on that plane.

But let me take you back to Beirut in 1970 where I was stuck overnight waiting for a flight to Delhi. The taxi man came to pick me up at the hotel where the airline had put me up and said that he was looking for me all over the town. Anyway he thought that I was going to be late for the flight but brought me to the airport anyway and disappeared.

I saw no one at the airport so I banged at the door of the agent who came out and said that I was late. The check in was closed and the flight was on its way to taxi out for taking off. This was the last straw. It was not my fault that the taxi came late to pick me up so I said that he should see if the plane is still on the ground.

He checked and said that it was but the hatch was closed and it was waiting for the tower to clear it for takeoff. When I said that he should ask the pilot if he could take me on, he said that there was no way he could contact the pilot and take me on so I suggested that he should contact the tower. They can ask the pilot if he is willing to take on a very late passenger. He finally called the tower and the tower called the pilot who said that he will take me.

So the hatch was opened, stairs were brought to the plane and I got  on the flight. Now try to do this today. I miss those days when people were so reasonable.
The security is so tight these days that it requires three hours before flight time to process the multitudes that fly now. The airports look more like a refugee center where a mass of people are trying to get through the process and some are constantly talking on their cell phones at high pitch annoying every one. They fight for a good seat and refuse to pay for the extra kilos if their luggage is overweight. They stuff enormous quantities of stuff into their hand bags that they try to lift and fit into the overhead bins often spilling things on the floor.

The narrow seats are very uncomfortable for long flights and the leg rooms are very limited. If you are stuck in a window seat then going to the toilet becomes difficult if your co passengers are fat and unfriendly.

I try not to sit next to old women who invariably pull out their wallets to show me the photos of their numerous grandkids and talk sans cesse about their life story. At such times I play dumb and say “ I speek no  Ingles “ or something like that.

The future of air transport:

Now I would like to write something about the future. I have seen a steady deterioration of airline services over the years so I am not hopeful that it will get better anytime soon. More and more people fly these days because of cheaper flights or budget airlines. Many fliers are overseas contract workers like maids, servants, workers who go to the Middle East for construction jobs and all sorts of other jobs. They are not the sophisticated fliers with good manners that I used to meet in those early days.
I had to ask the stewardess in one flight to stop a fellow near me smoking so you will meet all sorts of rough and tough people who have no manners and are aggressive to boot and will disturb you for hours talking on their cell phones.

So how the airlines can improve the service and make flying once again a good experience? This is easily said than done. To keep the ticket cheap, they must squeeze in more passengers per plane meaning narrower seats, less hand carried baggage, cheaper food and drinks  etc. because the airlines must make money.

They have to pay more for the jet fuel, more for the landing and parking fees and pay penalty if they stay too long at the gate where the next flight wants to come in. They also pay for the added cost of airport security and baggage checks.

Some ill-mannered passengers take the cologne and hand wash lotions from the toilet so they remove the caps to make it difficult to steal. So I do not envy their jobs. It is not so glamorous as it used to be. At the end of the long flight you can see the strain the stewardesses are under but they do it for a living so it must be hard.

At the other end of the flight you have to once again go through people who are often impolite and scan the computers to see if you are wanted for some offence somewhere. Then the customs people are waiting to check your bags once again to see if you have anything that you are not supposed to have.

But 50 years ago they were more courteous and waved you through. I even saw old women walked into the plane with their dogs in Europe. Try it now and you will be stopped at the gate. Your dog will be put in a cage and you will be charged a hefty fee for it. That poor dog will cry its heart out in the dark underbelly of the plane.

The flying has changed dramatically from good to bad to worse. I do not know what is next to worse but I guess it is coming. The airbus has now introduced a plane that is a double decker and so massive that they can fit in over 500 passengers into it. I do not know how many toilets they have but if you have to pee then I feel sorry for you.

So I think they should bring back the sea planes once again that were so nice and could land on water .They did not require fancy and expensive airports and you could be off and into a taxi in no time at all. This could serve all the cities that are near the water thus cutting down air traffic in airports and decongest them. Did you know that the first sea planes had nice bar and even a piano that a hired pianist played good music on? They served champagne too.

They could bring back the Zeppelins (not the kind that bursts into flames) that could transport people at a fraction of the cost and you could once again enjoy flying. I know there are blimps that take tourists to show them the scenery but it could be a serious mode of transport someday. They use helium to fill up those blimps so it is quite safe.

They could develop vertical takeoff and landing type planes that could land the passengers on a football field. I know that such air crafts exist. All they have to do is to make a passenger plane using this technology. I know that the blimps can land anywhere.

They could bring back the supersonic planes that could cut down the flying time and your misery if they could make these planes fly using ethanol or some such cheaper fuel. Let us face it. Most people do not like to be stuck inside a metal tube in small seats that produce cramps so they want to get to their destination fast and forget the experience.

If you are rich, you can now buy a flying car for short distance flying but most people are not rich so a flying car to them is just a dream.

May be people should just forget flying and take a ship where there is a lot of room, a nice bed and good food. This was the way most people traveled in the old days before Titanic and the advent of aircrafts so it may be an alternative if you are not pressed for time although I had a bad experience in an old rust bucket once and never boarded a ship since. You can read that story in my biography.

Now that the drone technology is exploding everywhere, I can foresee a day when an Uber drone can pick you up in front of your house and drop you off unceremoniously at your destination minus the cheap food on plastic trays. The technology is advancing so fast that anything is possible.

Or you can just quit the rat race and retire like I have done and reminisce about the good old days.


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The price they paid

The price they paid

Synopsis : Few people remember the colonial period of the British empire  so most people pass by the forgotten cemeteries all over the empire where the British lay but that was the price they paid to rule the world in the distant past. The blog recounts their achievements and their sacrifices that most people have forgotten.




Source : Google photo


In my home town there is a cemetery for the British who died there since they arrived in India. There are many such cemeteries in my home town and all over India. One day I was passing by the cemetery and just out of curiosity went in because the beautiful monuments carved in pure white marble some with angels and others also decorated attracted my attention so I started reading the epitaphs of some of them.

The cemetery was full of weed and not maintained at all. Many epitaphs were broken and fallen down while the others had cracks in them so I was wondering what might be hiding in the grass and weeds that choked the monuments. Still I went in and was literally shocked to read some of the epitaphs.

One read  “ In loving memory of Agnes, age 2 , who died in 1872 “ The other read “ in loving memory of Sarah, age  18 months , died in 1851  etc.  There were so many of these graves where small children who died were buried and forgotten. I wonder if the living relatives of these children ever visited the grave site or knew about it because it happened so long ago.

I also wondered why and how so small beautiful British children died in India but the answer was staring at my face. They died of cholera, small pox, dysentery, malaria, simple heat exhaustion and many other causes that their tiny bodies could not cope with. Some were born in India and others had arrived with their parents from England.

Just across the street, there was another cemetery that was also for the British where many who served in India in the British colonial period died for one reason or other and are buried there. Cemeteries always depress me because no matter how much time passes, it always reminds you who is buried there, their names, their regiment, their home in Dorset or some other parts back in England and at what age they all died.

Many years later I passed by that road and noticed that the cemetery was clean and with a new decorative steel fence. There was a new drain by the side of the fence so the whole place looked better and well managed. May be there was someone in the municipal office who thought that it should be put to order even if the descendants of the dead have long forgotten them. I was happy to see the change.

The British came to India to do trade so they set up a company called East India Trading Company that got the permission to trade from a king several centuries ago so they set up trading posts in various parts of the huge country.

I heard the story that goes something like this. A Moslem ruler’s daughter was very sick and the traditional hakims had done all they could but the princess got worse so a British doctor offered to help cure the princess. At first there was opposition to it because no foreign man could enter the palace doctor or not but the king was desperate so the doctor was allowed to see the daughter. With his medicine and care the princess soon got well making the king very happy.
He said that the doctor could ask anything he desired and his wish will be granted but the doctor only asked king’s permission to trade in India. This was granted.

The British came to India to trade but stayed on to occupy most of the country in the name of the British Queen. They recruited locals into their army and trained them well to fight numerous wars that they always won and gradually expanded their hold on the country. They also created the huge civil service that recruited young British men from England to serve in numerous capacity throughout the country and as officers to organize, train and open up many military posts.

They are still called cantonments and can be found in the outskirts of any major city in India. They also needed numerous Indians to serve under their British officers as clerks, accountants etc. My father thus served as an accountant and was posted in many parts of India.

This blog is not about the colonial history of India but I wanted to write about the price the British paid to stay in India for so long. Very few people write about it or even look at those cemeteries because it is a forgotten chapter in the Indian history. It may even be a forgotten chapter in the British colonial history back in England because it was so long ago. All the principal actors of that period are dead so people in England and India have moved on since the independence.

I have written earlier that all the statues of British people have been removed and all the British names have been changed that I used to see as a child on road signs. There is hardly any trace left of their long history and presence in India except the roads, railway bridges they built, the institutions and universities they set up, the judicial system that they patterned after the English system , the laws they enacted, the modern medicine they brought in, the medical colleges they set up, the telegraph posts that you see along the rail lines for thousands of miles all remind you of their legacy today.

Kolkata that was called Calcutta in those days became their capital where they built wide boulevards, brought in trams and gas lamps to light the streets and made it the grandiose well planned city that became the seat of the British Empire.

But Bengal had a ruler called Siraj Ud Daula  who had a huge army that gave the British a fight in the field of Plassey where a lot of blood was spilled on both sides. Siraj Ud Daula was defeated at that battle due to the treachery of his general Mir Jafar at the last moment who had connived with the British. But what led to the battle of Plassey was the incident in Fort Williams in Kolkata where 147 British who were imprisoned by the Nawab died of suffocation in the dungeon that was called the black hole. The year was 1757.The British blood had already started to spill but the worst was yet to come.

The 1857 mutiny and general uprising:

One hundred years later the British faced their first great challenge to rule India. This time the challenge came from the soldiers in the British Army who were all Indians .Only the officers were British. The uprising against the British rule started in Kolkata and rapidly spread to Allahabad, Meerut, Kanpur, Lucknow, Delhi and other cities which took the British completely by surprise. They were not prepared to face such a great challenge.

The Lucknow Residency :  1857

Source Google photo

In this place in Lucknow , thousands of British men , women and children took shelter but they were completely surrounded by the rebel troops who bombarded the building from all sides and killed hundreds of British inside.

I have been to the Residency (governor’s palace) in Lucknow and showed my wife the ruins. It gives you chills to even look at that building where so many British people died. Those who hid there soon ran out of food, water and medicines. The wounded died of their wounds but the shelling continued until practically nothing was left of the grand palace. You can stare at the bullet scarred walls today and imagine what took place there in 1857.

The propaganda that India got its independence through nonviolent means of Gandhi was a lie that the world still believes in but the fight for independence had started long ago and continued violently throughout the colonial period culminating in the formation of the Indian National Army by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in 1938 in Singapore that put the final nail in the British coffin. Gandhi had nothing to do with it.

The British reprisal that eventually put down the mutiny or uprising was brutal. They hanged scores of people everywhere while mourning the loss of their countrymen and women. No one really knows how many British died in that war in 1857 but the numbers were high judging from the siege of the Residency in Lucknow. One well in Kanpur was stuffed with the bodies of British people.
This is the price they paid to stay in India for another 90 years and finally left in 1947. Atlee confirmed that it was the pressure from the INA of Bose that made them leave and not because of the hunger strikes of Gandhi. World War II was catastrophic for England so they could not face such a challenge from Bose at that time so cut their losses and left.

But the long stay of the British in India laid the foundation of a modern state so that legacy can’t be denied. They did it to enrich their country is a fact but they spent heavily on infrastructure development and brought the country into the modern world of the 19^th century with the technology they had at that time.

In the process they made sacrifices and died in large numbers like in the dungeon of Fort Williams in Kolkata and in the Residency of Lucknow or elsewhere.

The young British men served in India either as civilians or in the army as officers but it was never easy for them to acclimatize in the sweltering heat and mosquitos of India so they developed hill stations like Musoori, Darjeeling and Shimla in the north where they stayed during the summer months. Those who stayed in the plains suffered the heat and diseases that caused those cemeteries to be filled up everywhere. I think women and children paid the highest price as is evident in those epitaphs I read.

Coming from England, they found India to be an utterly bewildering country that took some time for them to adjust to so they took comfort in staying with their own kind and not mixing with the locals. They formed their own clubs for social activities and they established their own church and schools.

The movie Passage to India shows the trouble the British had in India and is worth seeing.
India was a feudal country before the British arrived. There were so many independent kingdoms whose kings and queens built huge forts all over India because of the threat of war from their neighbors. The fort in my home town is massive but there are hundreds of more massive forts built all over the country.

The British subdued these kings and collected taxes from them. These kingdoms were eliminated only after the independence in 1947 by the new government of India but their palaces and forts remain as a testament to India’s glorious past.

What no one writes or talks about is what price the British paid to come to India and make it the jewel in their crown. What is sad is that not a single monument or name remains now anywhere in India of all those British who lived and many who died except in the  broken epitaphs in a forgotten cemetery somewhere that no one visits or cares for. Is that all their long occupation amounted to?



Source : Google photo of a forgotten  British cemetery somewhere.



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Monuments to glory

Synopsis : All dictators fall eventually and their infamous monuments to their own rule are pulled down by the avenging mobs to be replaced by their own heros. The blog scrutinises the penchant for the people to erect monuments and their desire to demolish them when the time passes to a new era when people try to forget the shameful past.

Monuments to glory


Source : Google photo

All nations have the desire to glorify their heroes and their leaders. This is a very ancient practice that shows the gratefulness toward a person for his or her contribution to enhance the greatness of a nation and its people.

You will see a great number of statues strewn around ancient sites of the Roman empire some intact and most broken  or headless because no one cares for them anymore  although there was a time when the kings and queens paid homage to such persons by erecting their statues with great fanfare and expense.

Some were of their ancient Gods and Goddesses that have fallen out of favors because they were replaced by new religions that showed no reverence to them and neglected them. Some were vandalized by the common people while other such statues ended up in the corridors of museums around the world. Some heads of these statues were rescued and piled up in the warehouses of great museums because of shortage of space to display them. Some statues carved out of the mountainside long long time ago were blown up by the intolerant jihadists like in Bamyan the statue of Buddha or smashed to pieces in the museums of Mosul and Palmyra that the whole world condemned.

You can gawk at their craftsmanship and how beautifully the ancients chiseled them out of pure white carrara marbles with remarkable resemblance to the real person. In those days there were no cameras to capture the image of a person so an artist was called to make a painting or a sketch from which the artisans then carved out a statue.

But not all such statues were made to display in public places or forums because the people revered them. Some were ordered made by the kings and queens to glorify themselves so you will still see them in  Abu Simbel in Aswan, in Karnak, in Thebes, in Rome, in Athens and elsewhere  with broken nose or other parts but still largely intact after thousands of years.

The new pharaohs who did not like their predecessors often ordered their statues to be destroyed or mutilated out of spite and had their history on the temple walls chiseled out to be replaced by their own glorified history. This has been going on since ages and still continues today.  One man’s hero is another’s villain so the definition of a hero varies according to who is doing the defining and the political condition prevailing.

We now see in India the clamor for a temple of Nathuram Godse who assassinated Gandhi because millions think of him as a patriot and want to show their respect. Similarly Germans have honored Stauffenberg by naming a major boulevard in his name because he tried to assassinate Hitler, failed and was shot by the Gestapo.

Hindus have their temples full of statues of their Gods and Goddesses often covered in gold and adorned with jewels while the Christians make statues of Jesus, Mary and the saints to adorn their places of worship. The statue of Jesus the redeemer in Rio on top of a mountain is a spectacular one but there are statues and grottoes all over the world. The great statue of Buddha in Kamakura is world famous .

But today I will write about the non-religious aspect of statuary that we see everywhere that were erected as a monument to someone the people considered great who gave their lives for the nation for a great cause. If you go to Washington D.C., you will see the great Mall leading to the Lincoln memorial at the end where his huge statue sits looking at people though his marble eyes. On the walls all around him are his words chiseled into the marble for people to read. Lincoln gave his life so that the blacks could be free.

Then at the side of the pool, you will see the monument of Thomas Jefferson not as grandiose perhaps as that of Lincoln but still quite impressive. Now a huge statue carved in white marble adorns a square in the city to show nation’s respect to Martin Luther King. His birthday is now a national holiday there.

While there is nothing wrong in erecting a statue or a great memorial for a great person by a nation, we now see the resurgence of various hate groups that come out in force often heavily armed to defend the symbol of slavery in the name of General Lee or Stonewall Jackson and clash with protester who want to remove such symbols of their shameful past. These hate groups that are white and still believe in their racial supremacy proudly wave the confederate flag everywhere and attack anyone who disagrees with them. One lady died very recently in such a clash in Charlottesville while protesting against racism in the United States. I can understand if it happened in 1850 but today this sort of hate display while the rest of the world has long moved away from slavery and racism is not understandable.

People want to remove all symbols of the shameful past from every town square in the country but some groups disagree and say that these symbols are a part of their history and heritage so must not be removed.

Expanding the same logic, let us now see why in other countries people want to forget the past that brought shame on their nation. I remember the park in my hometown in India where I used to play as a child. There is a beautiful marble monument at its center that has steps on all four sides leading to the center where a tall marble pillar with four sides sits. On each side there used to be the carved faces of Queen Victoria, King George V, Viceroy Minto and the fourth one I can’t remember with great words chiseled into the wall that we used to read and try to remember. After the independence, all such statuary were removed and dumped into a heap somewhere and forgotten. No one protests the removal of the symbol of colonial subjugation of India by the British.

The central park the size of the New York Central Park had a life-size statue of Victoria sitting on a throne with a scepter in her hand and a broken nose under a huge marble cupola but one day the statue was removed and dumped somewhere unceremoniously. The place has remained empty ever since.

All the names of the roads and boulevards that had British names like Hewett, Canning; McPherson etc. have been removed so the new generation does not know who they were. This was done deliberately by the government so that people can put that part of the inglorious past into the dustbin of history and move on.

There used to be a statue of General Gordon on a camel in Khartoum that was removed and transported at a great cost to England where he is still respected but the Sudanese want to forget their colonial past. Now you will see a great mausoleum of Mahdi in Omdurman just across the Nile who had raised a fanatic army to kill Gordon and establish Islamic rule to Sudan. When Gen. Kitchener came back to take revenge a few years later, he hanged a whole lot of people including the brutal Khalifa but Mahdi had conveniently died in the meantime so his bones were dug up by the British and scattered to jackals.

So someone’s villain is other’s hero hence the mausoleum of Mahdi. The history of many nations is replete with such monuments. In Germany, Hitler is not remembered this way but there are still die hard Hitler fanatics who wear Swastika bands on their arm and give Heil Hitler Nazi salute as if Hitler was such a great person. They are fewer in number than before but they exists and come out in force to beat up poor black immigrants or anyone who is foreign.

The question is why some people behave this way when the whole world has moved away from the past that brought only shame. They teach history to children in a very selective way so some of the infamous deeds against the blacks or the native Americans are expunged from the text books. This is done deliberately so that people will not learn about the slavery or the mistreatment of the blacks in the hands of KKK or other hate groups.

But the hate groups exists today and KKK was never banned so they form chapters in various parts of the country even today and shout Heil Hitler in the name of freedom of speech. Beating up innocent Black people is still a sport in some parts the local policemen are eager to practice.
If you go to Ulan Bataar which is the capital of Mongolia, you will see a great statue of Genghis Khan in the center glorifying a butcher who perhaps killed several million innocent people in the name of expanding his kingdom. Yet the Mongols are proud of this infamous man. Similarly if you go to Samarkand, you will see a great statue of Taimur who was responsible for so much bloodshed but people there glorify his butchery.

Alexander is similarly honored in his birthplace of Pella in Macedonia although even his army got sick of the massacre and wanted to return home.

I think there is a tendency to glorify and romanticize the Genghis Khans of this world so that the history will look kindly on them hence the statues but does it really change the facts? Does it really change the fact that slavery and ill treatment of blacks was morally, ethically and spiritually wrong? Since when the cold blooded massacre of innocent Native Americans, Incas, the Aztecs or anyone anywhere was right ? Since when the glorification of tyrants who killed millions was right?

There is a road in Delhi called Aurangjeb road that was recently changed to Abdul Kalam Boulevard but you should have seen the protests that some Muslims made. Aurangjeb was a very cruel king who forcibly converted Hindus to Islam and destroyed hundreds of Hindu temples yet some Muslims think that he was great and his name from the road should not be removed.

There was a time when Lenin and Stalin were the heroes in the communist Russia so they put up their statues everywhere but most of them have been brought down in the new democratic Russia where they do not revere Lenin and Stalin.

The tyrants always put up their own statues but people once free of the tyrant waste no time to bring them down and hit them with shoes like in Iraq. People who have the moral ascendancy over the minorities and hate groups have the right to vote in a government that represents them and their values. This is true in all countries where people practice democracy. This is not the case in the United States right now but the time will come when the majority will rule there and a truly representative government will be chosen by the people.

So I think that days of tyrants, despots and Kim Jong Uns of this world are numbered. One day their statues will also come down and be broken into rubble by the oppressed people who will then replace them with their own heroes who suffered in the hands of tyrants.

Noriega, Suharto, Shah of Iran, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Mobutu etc. have all been relegated to the dustbin of history and their self-glorified statuary removed but some people never learn and stick to the past as if they were always right and the whole world wrong.

History has a way of righting the wrong committed by a few people so someday a new Mandela will be born somewhere to bring justice to all. That is the hope we all live on because without such hope there is only despair. I do not wish to live in a world full of despair so I hope like millions of others.


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Education today

Source : Google photo

Synopsis : The education today is undergoing a transformation through the advent of technology like internet so the traditional educational system is under pressure to conform to the modern times. The blog focuses on the value students get or do not get under the old system of rote learning and the options they have now.



When I was a graduate student here in the Philippines at a local university, there was one professor who taught nothing during the entire semester and spent his time smoking outside the class room and chatting with some students. His favorite ploy was to give the students a topic on which they were supposed to write a paper with another co student and solely graded on its basis.

I have attended three different universities in three countries and can fairly asses the qualities of teachers in each. I was told that in pedagogical institutes where the teachers are supposed to be trained in the art of teaching, they are taught to prepare a lesson plan, a plan for the whole semester to cover the curriculum and the dates on which exams are to be held, a deadline for the submission of term papers etc. The teacher is supposed to do this on his first day of teaching a class.

In reality I have never seen any teacher do this and lay out a lesson plan in undergraduate or graduate studies level so students are kept in the dark. It gets worse. Often the teachers ask the students to refer to a certain text book in the library to learn more on the subject but the library keeps only one or two copies so the students jostle for the book but find it hard to get it.

Some students who have a large allowance from their generous parents borrow the book and rush to photocopy it but not all students have generous allowances. In fact most struggle to meet their expenses. Most of the well written text books are imported from abroad because they are not available in cheaper Asia Edition that McGraw Hill and others publish in India on cheaper paper keeping the text original.

The cost of imported text books are so high that it is beyond the means of an average struggling student unless he is backed up by wealthy parents or a scholarship leaving most student to fend for themselves.

At CalPoly in San Luis Obispo where I did my graduate studies, I had a wonderful professor who lent me his lab key so that I could work there at night and he paid for some of the materials I needed to write my thesis. Such teachers are rare and exceptional. On the whole I really liked the American educational system where the teachers took their job of guiding a student seriously and helped anyway they could so that the student graduated with good grades and on time.

He took us on many field trips where we could learn in practical ways about soils and how to take samples. Another teacher took us to the Yosemite National Park where we learned about the conservation and talked to park rangers.

In India where I started my college education, we had a professor who was exemplary. He loved teaching and loved his students. He took us on field trips to teach us practical agronomy. There was almost nothing he would not do for his students. In return we loved him and mourned his sudden death.

These examples show that not all the university level teachers are bad but the current trend is definitely worrisome. The publish or perish syndrome that most professors in good universities suffer from in the United States and elsewhere puts enormous pressure on them to write and publish articles in respected scientific journals so they spend a lot of time doing just that. They hire student assistants who do all the research necessary to write the paper that the profressor then takes credit for in return for a free tution for the student. Often the graduate student takes over the class when the prof is busy. This system does not promote quality education.

The tenure system also can be very stressful for those who aspire for the tenure because it takes into account how many articles one has published so far instead of concentrating on quality teaching that students expect.
What I find very distressing is the fact that the students are required to remember a large amount of knowledge learned from the books and the classroom that they must recall instantly during a time pressured exam. This makes the students memorize by rote instead of deep learning and understanding the subject at hand.

There is a laxity prevalent in many educational institutions where the graduate students are given total freedom to choose what they want to learn, how long it takes them to learn and to present a thesis without much help from his advisors.

Often you will find students who say that they are still writing their doctoral dissertation after seven years at it and not making much progress.

Granted most students just want to graduate as fast as they can completing all the requirements demanded of them and move on to the next phase in their life which is to get a good job, get married etc. but there are those who hang around the campuses for a long time as if they want to be a student forever. Now some universities are getting tough on these professional students and give them a definite time to graduate or leave making room for other students.

In Japan and Korea, the students are very hard pressed to first get into a college of their choice and have to pass very tough entrance exams to get there. Once admitted, they are subject to endless pressure to learn by rote and complete all the requirement to graduate. Then the job hunting starts that is also very stressful.

They learn practically nothing outside their curriculum as general knowledge so the universities all over the world turn out the graduates in large number each year who have passed their exams this way but are ill suited to the modern world. Many remain jobless even after many years of search because of their mismatch with the demands of the employers. I call them cookie cutter graduates because they are so alike.

I know many people in India who go for graduate studies on study leave from their employment just so that they can get a promotion and soon forget what they learned by rote in their class. They do not care about grade or excellence but only how to pass the exams. Some of them are not so smart.

The struggle to get into school in India starts as early as childhood where every parent struggles along with the child to do homework every day that the teacher demands the next day. The competition to get into any school worth mention is fierce at that early age because the schools are few and accept only a certain number of pupils each year. It gets worse later.

If the kid passes high school ,his struggle to get into a college starts where again the competition to get in is fierce and only students with high grades are considered at all because of limited number of seats and great demand. Now if you are the son of a prominent politician or high official, then the process becomes easier so that is where the corruption kicks in.

I know how stressful it is for a student in Hong Kong or China to get into a college of their choice and how hard they have to prepare for the entrance exam just like in Japan or in Singapore. Mental depression and exhaustion is common there. It is not unheard of that a student who fails to get admission or pass his or her exams takes his or her life.

As the world gets more technologically wired for the next decade , there is more pressure on students to get the kind of education they need to get a good job right away . A degree in anthropology or liberal arts does not cut it anymore. In some countries like India a single vacancy attracts thousands of applicants because almost everybody goes to college these days including girls.

So I have to come back to the topic of the quality of education and the right kind of education that makes a graduate employable.

It is a known fact that rote has a role to play in the education of any one because it acts as the basic building block on which the education edifice stands later on.  If you can’t remember what is 2 times 2 or 17 times 5 then you can’t learn mathematics so we as children memorized the multiplication table the same way we memorized the conjugation of  ba , be , bi, bo,  bu,  by etc.

It helped us learn English and pronounce words correctly.
If you can’t remember the formulae in math or Chemistry, then you can’t do the complex equations. It goes for any subject that requires memory and instant recall because that is how we learn and make progress in our studies.

If you want to be an engineer of sorts then you must pass math that may include arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, trigonometry etc. In your profession later on, you will be required to perhaps design and build a complex bridge somewhere so you must be competent to do so.

If you want to be a doctor then you must study biology, chemistry etc. and remember thousands of things you were taught in your class.

So it begs the question-- What is the purpose of education? Is it just to pass the exams through rote memory so that you can get a job later on or it is to expand your ability to comprehend all kinds of things and be knowledgeable?

I just asked a woman who was Hess and she answered that she had never heard the word in her life. She does not read anything and she does not know anything that her teacher in high school did not teach so she has absolutely no knowledge of the world. This is true of most people these days   even if a vast amount of knowledge is available through google now.

One fellow on TV said that the capital of Myanmar was Burma showing complacency toward ignorance that is not only pathetic but outright silly.

The education that I received as an agronomist was given to me by very qualified teachers who loved teaching and practical methods that made me a good agronomist. So every child depends on his teacher for his formal education although some lucky children get some help from their parents as well if the parents are educated.

But what if your teachers are incompetent like that professor here in the Philippines? I also had some bad professors in India who taught nothing.

What if your teacher did not care whether you learned something or not and gave you a minimum passing grade just because you are a valuable basketball player in your college team? I know this happens in many countries.
What I would like to emphasize here is that although formal education is very important for anyone to get a job, it is also very important to have out knowledge about a wide range of subjects that they do not teach in your class room.

You should not only know who Hess was and what role he played in the last war but should gain out knowledge through massive reading and sourcing knowledge through many different outlets like encyclopedia, internet, books ,magazines, newspapers and other means.

The world is full of knowledge .The internet is bursting with knowledge on any subject. The libraries have numerous books that one can borrow and read. You can download thousands of books from the internet for free. That is how I read Mein Kampf. But to say that you do not know anything and have forgotten most of what they taught you in your class is pathetic.

There is a wall in our college in India where it is written in big bold letters the following:  The purpose of education is to free your mind.

Does your education really free your mind so that you can absorb the world of knowledge? If yes then you are a truly educated person. I respect such people.



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