This song was sung by late Lata Mangeshkar who died not so long ago but this song has immortalized her in the Galaxy of stars that look down from the Heaven on the humanity and where Lata will live forever even if she had sung no other song. She was awarded the highest award a nation could bestow upon anyone The jewel of India not too long before she died although she had deserved such prestigious award long ago.
So please watch this video on U tube by clicking on the link given above and be grateful to Lata that she recorded this eternal song so that we can show our gratitude to all those sacrificed their lives for the sake of our freedom. This song should fill your heart with the love for your country no matter where you live in the world because Lata would have wanted nothing less from you who are patriotic and show gratitude to those who died for you to safeguard your freedom.
This song has an universal appeal so I will give you the lyrics in Hindi and its translation in English line by line. It gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it.
Ai mere watan ke logon .. O my countrymen
Tum khoob laga lo nara .. You sing with your heart
Yeh shuv din hai ham sabka .. It is a good day for us all
Lahara do tiranga pyara .. when we raise our dear flag
Par mat bhoolo seema par .. But dont forget those in the border
Viron ne pran ganwai .. The heroes who lost their life
Kuch yaad unhe vi kar lo .. Remember them
Jo laut ke ghar na aye .. who did not return home
Jo laut ke ghar na aye .. who did not return home
Ay mere watan ke logon .. O my countrymen
Jara ankh me bhar lo pani .. Fill your eyes with tears
Jo shaheed hue hain unki .. for those who became martyr
Jara yaad karo kurbani .. and remember their sacrifice
Tum bhool na jao unko .. and not forget them
Is liye suno eh kahani .. so listen to this story
Jo shaheed hue hain unko .. Those who became martyr
Jara yaad karo kurbani .. Remember their sacrifices
Jab ghayal hua Himalay .. When Himalay was bleeding
Khatre me padi aajadi .. Our freedom was in danger
Jab tak thi sans lade wo .. they fought until their last breath
Fir apni lash bicha di .. and then laid down their body
Sangeen me dhar kar matha .. they laid their head on the gun
So gaye amar balidani .. to their eternal sleep the heroes
Jo shaheed hue hain unko .. Those who became martyr
Jara yaad karo kurbani .. Remember their sacrifice
Koi Sikh koi Jat Maratha .. some sikh some Jat maratha
Koi Gurkha, koi madrasi .. Some Gurkha some madrasi
Sarhad pe marne wale .. People dying at the border
Har bir the Bharatwasi .. Every brave was an Indian
Jo khoon gira parvat par .. The blood shed in the mountain
Wo khoon tha Hindusthani .. was blood of Hindustani
Thi khoon se latpat kaya .. Their body was covered in blood
Fir bhi bandook uthake .. Still they raised their guns
Das das ko ek ne mara .. and shot tens of them
Fir gir gaye hosh gawanke .. then fell down unconscious
Jab ant samay aya to .. when the end came near
Kah gaye ab marte hain .. they said we die now
Khus rahna desh ke pyaron .. Be happy my dear countrymen
Ab hum to safar karte hain .. Now we go on our journey
Kya log the wo deewane .. What men they were so gallant
Kya log the wo abhimani .. What men they were so proud
Jo shaheed hue hain unko .. Those who died for the country
Jara yaad karo kurbani .. Remember their sacrifices
Tum bhool na jao unko .. Do not forget them
Is liye kahi ye kahani .. That is why I told this story
Jo shaheed hue hain unki .. Those who died for the country
Jara yaad karo kurbani .. Remember their sacrifices
Jaya Hind, Jaya Hind .. Jaya Hind Jaya Hind
Jaya Hindi ki sena .. Victory to the armed services
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Synopsis:The addiction to gambling destroys lives of millions of people as surely as drugs and alcohol. It’s lure enslaves people who only end up in a bad way. The blog looks at the perils of gambling addiction and how to not fall into the trap it sets for you that is very hard to get out of without any damage. It can alter your life in a very negative way so don’t be tempted by its false allure that can ruin your life.
We humans are susceptible to many types of addiction that we suffer from and ultimately pay a very high price often with our life. Addictions like drug, alcohol, smoking, certain food and drinks, sex, chewing Paan or kat to get a kick are just the ones I can think of right now, but I am sure there many other types of addiction that are not in the list. These addictions do far more harm to a person than the temporary kick he or she gets from it so it ultimately destroys a person and throws him into the abyss he cannot escape from.
People shun such an addict. The employer shows him the door. His family suffers financially and socially so he drags down his family because he is an addict. He must have a daily dose of his addiction medium and will go any length to get it but fails to get help. There are clinics or help centers where the trained personnel try to detox his body and mind but the former is easier than the later although the process is very painful.
Once a person gets hooked on any type of addiction, he loses his ability to see through the logic and act on it so he surrenders to the devil that makes him a very sick person who ends his life in a bad way.
But today I will write about an addiction that is like no other that has ruined the lives of millions of people all over the world and continues to do so. It is called the addiction of gambling. This addiction starts early when a person is young and steadily increases its hold on the person until he ends up in jail or dies of utmost poverty and destitution. All addictions start with a small dose, but the addict soon starts to crave for more and more.
I will cite many types of gambling here and give many examples that will open your eyes to the menace that is literally all around you. Sometimes an addict will invite you to join him or her in his house where he will introduce you to your first dose of it by insisting that it is nothing serious. Remember that all addictions start with a small dose at first.
The mental addiction to gambling also starts with a small dose at first. If you go to a bar to get a beer with your friends while watching the football or baseball game on TV when someone says 20 dollars say that the batter or the player will miss the shot. Soon many beer drinkers join in the bet and put out some dollar bills. The bartender then keeps track of the total money collected and gives it to the person who won while keeping a percentage for himself. It all sounds very innocuous doesn’t it? People bet on horses, on cock fighting, on cricket matches, football games or just about anything but the most devastating type of gambling is promoted by the casinos where one can lose thousands of dollars betting on cards or the roulette. They do not know that the casino operator rigs the bet in his favor, so he always wins.
The occasional wins are shown to the bettors to make them think that the system is fair so take your gamble and roll the dice. You may turn out to be the winner in your next move, so people go to the casinos and gamble away their hard-earned money and come out a pauper while his wife sheds tears because she is unable to stop her husband who is addicted to gambling. The addiction to gambling is so powerful that it starts to control the brain of a person so he keeps gambling even if he knows that he will lose.
Source: Google painting of Yudhistir gambling in the court of Dhritarashtra that led to shaming of Draupadi.
There is a story from Mahabharata that is worth mentioning here. The brother of the queen Gandhari was called Shakuni who was a trickster par excellence who invited Yudhistir to a chess game called shatranj. He was the eldest brother of the Pandavas who was addicted to gambling so he accepted the challenge of playing a game of shatranj with Shakuni not knowing that he had rigged the dice in his favor beforehand.
The other four brothers and their common wife Draupadi were present in the King’s court to give support to their elder brother, but they were very worried about the addiction of Yudhistir because he kept on losing every bet but kept on playing and betting his jewelries and lost that too.
But Shakuni was not done with him so asked him what else he could bet for the next round as he had lost all his money and even the jewelries so blinded by his addiction Yudhistir then bet his wife Draupadi. The whole court was watching and they were shocked when he lost that bet as well so now Draupadi was under the power of Shakuni, and he could do anything with her. Draupadi pleaded and cried but a bet was a bet so Shakuni told his guard to undress Draupadi in front of everyone to insult her and all her husbands who were helpless. She was married to all five brothers.
When Draupadi was being undressed, she prayed to Krishna to come to her aid so Krishna made her Sari very long, so the guard finally gave up when he failed to undress her. Draupadi then made a vow that she will not bind her hair until she had drenched her hair in the blood of her assailant. Later this insult and the refusal to share the kingdom with the Pandavas by the Kauravas led to the Mahabharat battle that the Pandavas won and Draupadi got her revenge when Arjun killed the fellow and brought his blood to Draupadi.
Now you can see how the mind of Yudhistir was addled because of his addiction who even bet his wife that he had no right to do but that is the story. This kind of addiction is very dangerous so the end result can be tragic as was the case of Kauravas in the battle when thousands of them died. If you go to Angkor wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia, you will see the entire story of Mahabharata etched on the 4 kilometers long gallery on the granite walls surrounding the world-famous temple there.
Now I will tell you other stories I know of gambling addiction a fellow suffered from who lived in our neighborhood. He had purchased a house, kept a car and a high-profile existence spending his money like crazy on business that failed and growing vegetable that too failed. But he was addicted to cock fighting that is very common in this country and kept many fighting roosters that he bet on and kept losing. He even tried his hand in local politics and failed to get any votes, so he wasted a lot of money.
Finally, the inevitable happened. He lost his house that the bank repossessed and his car that he could not make payments on so that too was taken away. So one day he disappeared leaving behind a mountain of debt everywhere. The tragedy was that he had retired with a good pension and enough money to live on but his addiction brought him down in a big way. His family suffered due to the bad habits of the fellow.
Now I will tell you a third story that is quite melodramatic as well. There was a fellow who worked as a manager of a section in an aircraft manufacturing plant that paid him quite well but he was a secret gambler who kept on losing money, so he did the unthinkable. He sold his unfinished house to repay his debt, but it was not enough because he had borrowed money from the loan sharks to meet his gambling debts. Now his wife and three innocent children were in big trouble when one day he ran away to hide from the loan sharks and abandoned his wife and kids.
It was shocking how a person can behave who was completely controlled by his addiction. His wife then asked for help from her brothers and sisters who found the fellow in another city where he was hiding and brought him home. Her brother pleaded with the loan sharks to save the family and take some money without the exorbitant interest so finally the shark agreed and let him go. He was lucky that they let him go because these are very nasty people like the mafia. What happened to him and his family is not worth telling here so I will move on. It is also not known if he ever paid her brother and sister who bailed him out to save the family.
Once I took a boat from Hong Kong to Macau but was very annoyed by the Chinese who were gambling in the boat and hit their mahjong pieces hard on the table. Now imagine more than a hundred mahjong playing Chinese all doing the same and you will understand my annoyance. They were all going to Macau to gamble but could not wait until they got there. The Chinese government only allows Macau to operate casinos, so all the Chinese gamblers make a bee line to Macau to lose their money there.
So, mahjong, game of cards, blackjack, roulette, poker are all very addictive games that people play and lose money. Then there is another type of gambling that is called lottery that is run by the government of many countries. They sell the lottery tickets to anyone who cares to buy it and the winner may take away millions of dollars in cash. The caveat is that only one winner out of hundreds of thousands who bought the tickets wins. The government makes huge profit from the sale of the tickets and gives the winner a lump sum amount. The rest go again to buy their tickets for the next round and lose their money again.
In this country very poor people fall in line every morning to buy their tickets and hope to win but only a lucky person wins. There are some stories that go around when a winner gets a jackpot of several millions of Pesos and invests wisely in a huge dormitory for students that generates steady income for him while other winners waste their money in gambling and return to poverty again. The hope to win a jackpot someday is so intoxicating that they keep on buying lottery tickets but never win. I consider it to a kind of gambling although the sum lost in buying ticket is small.
If you ever go to a racecourse where horses are run, you will be approached by an old man in very shabby clothes who will whisper to you that he has the inside knowledge of which horse is most likely to win so if you bet on the horse, he may get a small reward. These are con men who tell the same story to all the bettors so someone may believe them. In this business, a sucker is born every minute.
Source: Google photo of Russian roulette played during the Vietnam war as was shown in the movie Deer Hunter.
In the movie Deer Hunter, there is a scene in the China town called Cholon in Saigon where desperate people played Russian roulette which was played by two people facing each other. A loaded gun was placed in the hand of a player that had only one bullet, but the player did not know which chamber had the bullet. People then started betting if the fellow will die if he pulled the trigger on his head. If he missed, then the gun was given to the next player and again the betting started until one was dead and the other winner. The dead body of the GI was then thrown into the river through a hole in the floorboard. I knew such gambling took place in the shady part of Cholon when I was in Vietnam during the war.
If you keep company of people who will drag you into a situation where you are asked to join a poker game or any other form of gambling, it should ring an alarm bell in your brain. You should refuse to participate in gambling and to be coerced to do so by your so-called friends because such people can never be your friends.
You may have fewer friends, but you will live a clean life that will gain you respect from people who know you and even your wife and children who depend on you. It will develop your strong character and moral fortitude so you will not be easily persuaded by the gamblers to join them. Just remember that the peer pressure plays a role in getting you addicted but such people vanish when you have lost everything including your sanity.
Note: My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography. My blogs can be shared by anyone anytime.
Synopsis: It is important that people understand you when you speak but now the technology influences how you talk to people making what you talk about less important. But before the technology, people talked to each other face to face and enjoyed doing so. The technology has its place in our society, but it can never supplant the old ways.
We humans think that we are unique, but we are not. So, what differentiates us from other living beings that makes us think that we are unique in this world? It is this notion that we have developed ways to communicate with others by taking advantage of technologies that we have developed.
The animals also communicate with each other and with other species of animals. Birds, mammals, fish and insects all communicate with others of their kind, but some are known to learn to communicate with humans through the sign language like Koko the gorilla did. Some parrots, mynahs or cockatoo are the natural mimics, so they learn to speak like humans and also understand when spoken to like Einstein the parrot. Dogs can communicate with their owners and perfectly understand numerous commands, so we are not the only ones who communicate.
It is now possible to communicate with any one anywhere anytime using the modern technology that has replaced the need for face to face communication using oral skills that previous generations used to effectively without any help from any technology.
I can go back to the pre telephone era when people could talk to someone face to face to sort out various issues that plagued the humanity like various domestic issues or numerous social issues that needed sorting out. Some used the public forum while others used the print media to say what they wanted to say on certain issues to reach the larger public. Writing letters, publishing articles in newspapers or writing a book were some of the means of communication people used and still do but now the technology permits us to communicate to the global audience to have a far greater impact on others that we could have never imagined.
Now we have all the means at our disposal to communicate with others globally if we want but do we really communicate with each other on serious issues? Now almost everyone has a cell phone of some kind that can connect you with others through the Internet. You can talk to others anywhere and see their video as well and they can also see you. You can send text messages or photos or videos to others and receive them as well, but do we really talk to each other?
What two people talk to each other perhaps depends on their gender so the girls may talk about the crushes in their school or in their neighborhoods while boys call their girlfriends to know if they are ready for a date with them. But do they really talk to each other on serious matters?
When we were children, we had no such gadgets, so we talked to our friends or to others who wanted to be our friends so direct communication was the norm. We communicated in our mother tongue but as we grew up, we learned another language like English in college, so we used it to talk to students who did not speak our language. We were encouraged to speak, read and write English fluently so it opened up the whole world to us through this ability.
The teachers often used the black board to communicate with us directly so everyone in the class could understand what was written on the black board based upon which we could take notes, ask questions or answer if the teacher asked us a question. This was the most effective way of communication because it was direct that left no doubt in our mind what the teacher wanted to say or wanted us to understand. This was long before the lap top computers the students brought to the class and the teachers used the electronic touch screen giant board where he could write or erase it with a touch of a button, make graphs or colored pie chart etc.
But we did not have such gadgets, so we took copious notes to study later. We took dictations that improved our skill of hearing and writing it down fast because often the teachers were irritated if we could not take the dictation properly or did not know the spelling of some words, but we improved our skill as we practiced more.
Now we find that the college students have a hard time taking dictation and are clueless as to how to spell words, so they search Google in their laptops or copy and paste certain articles using the Internet to pretend that they wrote it as a term paper, but it fools no one. The teachers understand computer better than you.
The communication between two people is less risky than communicating with hundreds of people in a classroom where a wrong thing said has a wider multiplier effect that the teacher must correct. Some teachers influenced by their radical ideas can communicate wrong ideas to the students that has much wider social consequences, but the students cannot make counter arguments due to the gap between a teacher and students that is due to the age difference or the level of education or knowledge. This is prevalent in most religious schools where dogmas are emphasized that cannot be questioned.
We can now return to the very basic level of communication that takes place first at home when we sit around the dining table while Ma serves the food while we listen to what our Dad has to say on some subjects. But now this sort of communication has given way to the siblings constantly looking at their cell phone screen to see who is sending text message. They pay less attention to each other or to their parents who may want to say something to them.
I often see in the Hollywood movies how siblings and their guests sit around a Thanksgiving dinner that their Ma had spent many hours in preparing but they break out in nasty comments or arguments upsetting everyone, so all communication fails. Each person then pulls out his cell phone or waits eagerly to finish the meal so that they can get away leaving the parents in shock. The gadgets and the apathy that it breeds, stops people from really communicating with each other in a pleasant manner because the new technology makes people more self-centered and self-conceited that prevents them to be congenial towards each other.
There was a time when people were required to dress appropriately at the dinner table and to follow protocol that meant listening to what the parents had to say before talking to each other. Now if the father comments on the slovenly dress of the daughter or very revealing clothes, this makes the daughter aggressive who then may use crude language or walk away to spoil the mood of everybody. It also says something about the present generation that shows no reverence for the parents and the protocol, so they become argumentative with them or with their siblings. I also understand that it may be a cultural issue that may vary from country to country.
When two people are talking to each other in their native language, it is assumed that they understand each other well and reply accordingly but I have noticed that here in this country where I live, people talking in their own language often misunderstand each other that leads to all sorts of problems. It comes about when people have poor store of vocabulary that makes proper communication difficult. To speak and understand in a language that is not your own like English makes it even more difficult if you do not have a proper grasp of the language and the fluency it requires to follow it. This also leads to the misunderstanding and a break in the communication process.
You may have noticed that some political leaders have tremendous charisma and have excellent communication skills that makes them great orators so this ability sets them apart from those who are always searching for words while trying to communicate with the audience using filler words or sounds like ah, umm, etc.
Indian prime minister Mr. Modi is a good example who is a tremendous communicator who talks directly without the aid of a teleprompter to his audience of hundreds of thousands of people who listen to his every word and respond to his questions that he frequently asks of them. He knows his subject well; does his homework and memorizes the data he presents during his speech. Thus, he connects with his vast audience because of his special skill and charisma while others make boring speeches reading from the teleprompter that makes the audience eager to leave.
Admitted, we are not all born with this gift or skill of oratory, but we can try to speak slowly and with passion that can have an impact on the listener. This is the hallmark of excellent motivational speakers who have mastered the art of communication and are invited to speak to large audience. They speak each word slowly but succinctly so that people can understand completely and absorb its meaning.
So, you have to learn to speak well before you can talk to someone. It is just like any other skill like driving or typing that can only improve through practice. If you are speaking in a language that is not your native tongue, then you have to work very hard to overcome your MTI that is the mother tongue influence and learn the correct accent and the pronunciation so that listener can understand you well.
Often the accent is less important than the pronunciation although it is the pronunciation that makes the accent. So it is very hard to overcome the influence of the MTI because you cannot pronounce certain alphabets and certain words. Those alphabets do not exist in your own language. The Japanese have a hard time with L words, the Thais with R words and the Filipinos have problem with many alphabets. Their own grammar is also responsible for the way they speak English. Other languages follow a similar pattern.
Hindi has 52 alphabets as compared to only 26 in English so you cannot expect a native speaker of English to pronounce certain words in Hindi because he does not have those sounds in his language. Now some people are very good in imitating, so they learn to speak like a native speaker or try to, but I am sure they too have to overcome the challenges that MTI makes for them.
I had a teacher in my communication class in California who one day made an experiment. He told a student a short story with limited words and asked him to tell it to the next student who in his turn told it to the next one. When the last student had heard the story, he was asked to tell it to the class, but this was where the fun began. He told a story that was completely different from the initial story, so the class broke up in laughter. The teacher said when something is said to someone who then passes it on to the next person, something changes that leads to tremendous misunderstanding. This is the root of the malicious gossip among women who slightly change what they hear before they pass it on to the next person who does the same.
A good communicator understands this phenomenon and takes care to speak in a way that everyone understands and responds en masse to his questions. You cannot answer a question that you cannot understand to begin with.
My topic of communication is a lot more than making speeches in a public forum. It has to do with what two people talk about and how they do it. Some people are shy, so they hesitate to talk about their fears, their obsessions, their dreams or their aspirations so they become introverts and have difficulty in talking to people. Others are more extroverts, so they talk about anything, but communication is more than talking about your boyfriend or girlfriend, your latest gadgets or your escapades. It is about connecting with people using your language as a bridge to make an impression. It is about understanding and making yourself understood well.
I had a classmate in high school who was one day asked by our English teacher what he understood in the lesson. He could not answer so exasperated the teacher asked him the meaning of the word understand. To this he promptly replied, " To stand under Sirr " We all broke up in laughter, but the point is that you can laugh at others for their shortcomings but are we all born with super IQ?
What we communicate about and how we communicate are both important so we have a lot to learn before we can make ourselves understood in a civilized way.
Note: My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography. My blogs can be shared by anyone anytime in any social media.
Source: Belamy photo of the interchange that divides people
Synopsis:The imitation of the Western model of development by the developing countries is based on the premise that the Western model is better than their own traditional way of building cities and villages. They also ignore the beauty of their own architecture and adopt the steel and glass tall buildings model that divides the communities instead of uniting them. When the city planning does not include the happiness of people, people leave and abandon the lifeless small towns and cities that starts the decay of such communities.
I have been to many countries in Africa, Europe and the Americas and noticed that many developing countries are adopting the North American model to develop and grow their cities and their infrastructure.
My home country India is also doing the same in the name of development so we now see the glass and steel upended box like buildings everywhere that are imposing but lack the ability to bring people together to live in a society where people can have social interaction and get to know each other to form human bonds.
I understand that the high cost of land in big cities worldwide favors a monolithic tall structure that is perhaps efficient and allows the maximum use of space on an expensive piece of land, but it does not inspire anyone to be creative in designing a new building that would be based on how people living or working in it interact with each other socially.
Source: Tall monolithic buildings and empty streets in USA
These upended and quite ugly buildings are the symbol of the development just like the immense jungle of intertwined highways, expressways and roads that look like tangled spaghetti blotting the cities that divide people and communities in the name of efficiency and speedier movement of vehicles 24 hours a day but scary just the same. It represents the concrete jungle that keeps on growing like cancer but ignores the basic need of humanity of living together happily and in peace and harmony.
Such roads and buildings that are a symbol of the Western style of development have helped create a more individualistic and apathetic people who may live or work in such tall buildings but do not know their neighbors or the workmates because the sterile design does not create a warm living space where people are happy. It does not create a happy living community because it cuts off people from each other in the name of efficiency.
City planners in poor countries are greatly impressed by the steel and glass structure and assume that it represents modernity and progress but have no idea what it means in terms of human relationship so they abandon their cultural and humanistic values and start to follow blindly the Western culture and architecture that starts to assert itself on the spiritual health of a country in a bold and aggressive manner that changes people in a negative way.
Source: Google photo of small, abandoned towns in North America
I have watched several videos made by some people in the United States who show the decay of small towns and cities in almost all the States that show dilapidated and abandoned houses and other properties where people live in abject poverty and despair who are trying to survive on food aid some charitable organizations are providing. The abandoned neighborhoods, the overgrown weeds that fail to hide the rusty abandoned vehicles and household things strewn everywhere show how people are suffering and are leaving such dens of poverty and despair.
Source: Google photo of small towns in America that look forlorn and deserted. This is an empty, abandoned building in small town America.
The ramshackle structures that are put up by the fast-food companies, derelict shuttered stores, graffiti-stained walls and garbage piles tells you how the roads and highways have divided and destroyed what was once a thriving community of people who lived together in peace and harmony.
What will strike you is the sameness of these small towns no matter where you go that are featureless and downright ugly and forlorn. Crime and vandalism thrive in such towns where people live in fear and are suspicious of strangers who may be just passing through while getting gas or food.
You will see abandoned factories in the outskirt of such towns that have gone bankrupt that used to provide some jobs with poor wages. You will see enormous piles of abandoned farm machinery and vehicles of all sorts just dumped here and there overgrown with weeds.
You will see huge, abandoned school buildings because there are no more children to go there. You will see the broken playground see saws, swings etc. where once children played. (Read my blog called Small town and dreamershere)
A great deal of this decay is directly related to the unemployment so people leave to go where they can find some jobs. It is even more difficult for the young people who have little or no education, so they too leave to find jobs elsewhere. The agriculture used to employ a lot of these people, but those jobs are now handled my machines in most parts except where they need farm workers to hand pick the produce, thus employing the itinerant Mexican or others who have no choice but to accept very low wages. Watch the movie Deer hunter that shows the plight of small towns in Virginia, but it could be any other town anywhere.
This blog looks at the folly and consequence of what the developing countries are imitating from the Western model that is tearing their people apart just like in the United States, but they do not see it coming. Here I emphasize the beauty and simplicity of the African and the Indian village architecture that inspires communal harmony that creates bond between people that brings them all together to help each other. The Western model does not do that.
They do not yet realize that these office towers built everywhere are just offices that big companies rent so it is a profitable business. Some are built as residential buildings where the rent may be high depending on the location but most of the downtown area becomes empty when people working there shut down their stores or offices and go back to their suburban homes that are also featureless, drab and uninviting places. This has created the commute culture due to the development of suburbs that may be 20 kms from the city.
One thing you will notice in any big city in the United States is that almost all the people who work there leave at the end of the day to return to their suburban homes, so the city center looks deserted. The stores and shops also close due to lack of customers or due to rules that they must shut down everything after a fixed hour.
If you are new and are out to walk to get some fresh air in the evening, you may be accosted by a heavily armed policeman who may want to know why you are loitering when you should be home and will scrutinize your ID thoroughly. Just walking on the sidewalk at a certain hour may be considered as loitering by the police.
It is very different in Europe or Asia where the cities are vibrant with shops, restaurants and night clubs and people everywhere enjoying the evening shopping or eating or meeting with friends in a popular café. Some cities never really shut down. There are eateries everywhere and there are huge markets that sell everything you need or want at an affordable price, so the cities really come alive in the evenings.
But the north American cities and towns are strictly regulated through numerous laws and edicts making them isolated and lifeless because everything is shut down at a specific time. All you will see are empty streets and monolithic tall buildings on both sides and an occasional street dog that looks lonely and is desperately looking for some food scraps.
You will also find some homosexuals or drug addicts wandering the empty streets to look for someone or anyone to talk to. They are sorry looking pathetic people who wander the empty streets of big or small cities as I found out in Washington, D.C. one day. The parks are the favorite hangouts of the poor drug addicts and prostitutes who are looking for some business so never go to any park in the evening anywhere if you value your safety.
Then there are dark streets where some red lights give out the impression that these are dangerous quarters run by criminals who also control the prostitution business. The drug dealers are seen peddling to the motorists or anyone who buys drugs from them. Often serious crimes happen there.
The sidewalks are often occupied by the homeless people who are seen scavenging for scraps to eat from the huge garbage bins. They sleep on the sidewalks because no one helps them find a decent shelter and something to eat. The homelessness is a very serious issue in North America that fails these poor jobless people who are forced to sleep on the sidewalks of the richest cities and beg for money or food.
Source: Google photo of homeless people in Oakland, California
So, I look at these glass and steel buildings as nothing but a lifeless structure that cancels out people from it but glows in dazzling lights all night representing the so-called modernity. Other countries are now trying to imitate this type of modernity at the cost of dividing people and forcing poor people to sleep in their shadows wrapped often in rags and plastic sheets. The rich people take better care of their dogs than these poor people who lost their shelter, their jobs and their source of income due to redundancy.
Now we will see how the traditional living, the architecture and the communal living style that is still found in many countries in Africa and Asia is slowly giving way to the soulless development found in Western countries that they imitate.
The educated Africans snigger at their own traditional architecture so they prefer the Western style because they were taught that the white people are more modern and live in modern houses. In the process they ignore their rich culture and architecture because they do not appreciate it. Africans think that the monolithic steel and glass, but soulless structures represent the modernity.
I have lived in many African countries like Mali, Burundi, Algeria and Sudan where I was deeply impressed by their handicraft and beautiful jewelries. In Mali, I designed my own house in a village far from the town where the villagers built for me a 5-room house with laterite base and mudbricks with a novelty they had never seen before.
Source: Schematic diagram of our mud house in Mali village
They built round huts of impressive size in a semi-circular fashion that were all interconnected making it one big house with cross ventilation and perfectly conical roof of golden colored grass. The idea of interconnecting round huts was a new idea to them, but they took pride in building such a house for me that was cool inside and free from mosquitoes and other insects. They beat the dirt floor with mallet to make it compact and hard and coated it with cow dung to give it a dust free clean floor. It was the most beautiful house in the village built by the Africans who took pride in their workmanship.
They coated the outer walls with shea butter they extracted from shea nuts to give the walls protection from rain. It made the round huts look beautiful with a sheen of the coating. The house was so appreciated by the villagers that they kept coming to see it from distant villages for months. I just took the concept of traditional African mud houses to a new level when I asked them to join them. They did it perfectly because they could understand a diagram on a piece of paper with exact dimensions. I added a stone figurine near the main entrance door and Khajuraho sculptures of plaster of Paris inside the rooms.
In Burkina Faso the villagers build a new house for a neighbor free of charge with the collective effort of the entire village. Women brought water from a long distance to make mud bricks. Even children participated. Men built the walls and the women beat the floor with wooden mallets to make it hard while singing traditional songs. They collected grass from their forest and helped make the perfectly conical roof or rectangular roof.
Source: Google photo of mosque in a village of Africa
Source: Google photo of African village mud houses
Once the house was finished, they coated it with shea butter and later made beautiful paintings on the walls using natural dyes. You will not see this type of houses built anywhere with the community effort but only in African villages. The same Africans who go to live in cities build ugly mud houses or concrete houses that are too hot and uncomfortable, there being no community spirit in cities.
Here is a video that shows how people in Burkina Faso build a house together as a communal effort.
Source: U tube video of how a rural mud house is being made in Burkina Faso
In Rural Zimbabwe people build beautiful houses that are very pleasing to look at. Source: U tube video
Source: U tube video of the traditional African architecture
The traditional African architecture shown in the video is not only beautiful, but also practical and durable that uses adobe and grass as the building material that anyone can afford. The laterite, the soil of the termite mounds, the grass and the shea nuts to make butter to coat the walls are all freely available to most Africans to make the most beautiful houses.
In the State of Rajasthan, India, you can see beautiful mud houses that are neat, clean and decorated with paintings on the walls. There too the community spirit brings people together to build a house for a villager, but the cities are a different matter just like in Africa.
Source: Google photo of mud house in Rajasthan India that are made beautiful with paintings using natural colors.
Source: Google photo of a Rajasthani village house in India that is aesthetically pleasing. You will notice the cleanliness as well.
I think that people should not forget and abandon their cultural heritage that are priceless and blindly imitate the North American model of development that not only divides people with their soulless designs that destroy community.
There is tremendous beauty in African and Indian rural architecture where people live in close communities and where they help each other to build their houses as they did for me in Mali. They not only show ingenuity and their artistic abilities, they show a way to build their homes using only locally available materials at a cost they can all afford or for free.
Source: Google photo of homeless and hungry people in America
When I see the homeless and sad people sleeping on the sidewalks in big cities in the so-called developed countries, I feel for them and wish they had the same communal spirit of Africans who help each other to build their homes and share their food so no one goes homeless and hungry. (Read my blog here called Soulless development.)
Note: My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography. My blogs can be shared by anyone anytime in any social media.
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Synopsis:We all retain some memories in our brain that we can recall later but we do not understand how the brain works and how it embeds the memories in vivid colors and in detail. The blog looks at this ability in people but states that this ability to remember and recall varies from people to people.
It is interesting that some memories we have are so embedded in our brain that we can recall them instantly in 3 D and in color in great detail while other memories are shoved into the waste bin where they are either deleted or fade away into nothing. This selective memory of our brain is the subject of this blog today.
I have always wondered how our brain remembers anything. I am not a brain specialist, but I know that they too have not been able to sort out all the mysteries of the brain although I must admit that some progress has been made in the last century toward a better understanding of the human brain. They have dissected the brain of Einstein to understand how he was such a genius and how extraordinary his brain was. They should have studied the brains of Tesla or Leonardo da Vinci to learn why they were so extraordinary.
I am probably just an average person but even I could tell you what I was wearing on my first birthday and sitting on an Ekka which is a horse drawn carriage because I remembered. My Ma was bringing me to a Kali temple for the traditional temple blessing, so she was incredulous when I told her one day about it. She said that it is not possible for a one-year child to remember anything but this ability to remember varies from child to child. Ma even confirmed what I told her about my clothes and the scented flower garland I was wearing. Some children say that they remember who they were in their past life and give details, but I will not go so far so I will stick to the present issue of the power of our brain to remember.
We now live in the age of cell phones with camera, Internet and Skype but not too long ago it was just a dream to have such technology in our hands. Now everyone has a cell phone of some kind that can take very sharp photos in color and send it to anyone anywhere in the world, thanks to the Internet and free transmission.
Now you do not have to take a photo with your camera, wait until the reel in your camera is full, then take it out to a shop where they develop the film and make prints thanks to the new technology that is free and does not require printing although it can be sent by e mail and printed anywhere in the world. We have now arrived in the digital world but most people only have a very vague idea about it.
This digital technology in the hands of common people has led to the abuse of the technology when people take thousands of photos to paste them in their social media daily just because they can do it. It does not matter to people what they take photos of like what they are eating, what they wear, where they are at the moment, numerous selfies of their ugly faces and their ugly children because their focus is not on taking quality photos on subjects of great public interest or of relevant issues but on their own self-gratification. The kids learn it from the adults and imitate but do not develop their own ability of discernment.
The era of SLR cameras and the artistic photography it allowed you to master is over now and my fancy Nikon and long lenses are collecting dust because it is the age of digital photography that does not need any knowledge of light and f stops, the aperture and the focus. It has made photography so easy that even a child can press a button to take photos. The digital age has replaced the art of taking photos with something absurd that has become meaningless because the ease of taking photos has diminished the art of photography to a mere push button phenomenon that encourages visual pollution everywhere.
When I was young, very few people had a camera. There were the old fashioned cameras like a box with a crank and two lenses and used a 3 inch wide black and white film that could take a reasonable photo depending on the skill of the cameraman. The negative was big so it could be easily enlarged into a bigger photo if you so desired. Our very few childhood photos were taken by someone who had such a camera and who gave us the prints later. We could not take our own photos like they can do now.
Then there were the professional photographers who had big cameras on tripod and came to take our graduation photos in college or on other occasions. They were the real artists who took very sharp photos on big negatives that could be enlarged at will to take a permanent and sharp record of our classmates in the graduation photos. They charged a minimal fee for their services but now they too use digital cameras that look like SLR but are in reality very complicated things.
In our time, the memories were kept alive through the black and white small photos of 4 inch by 4-inch size if we were lucky and if someone, we knew had a camera. Mostly we recorded what we saw in our brain and kept it languishing there because there was no way we could tell our brain to print it.
What is amazing is the fact that even after 70 years, some memories remain so sharp that we can close our eyes and remember the day, the subject and even the clothes we wore while other memories have faded and even disappeared altogether because the brain keeps what we wish to keep there and disregards the rest although the human brain has infinite capacity of storage of data for a long period. This ability to remember varies from one person to the next so some people with high IQ can develop photographic memory while others remain retards. Some become renowned scientists while others cannot add two plus two.
We all know that our brain is a very complicated part of our body that the scientists are still struggling to understand how it works, how it embeds photos and data, how it instantly recalls and why and how it deletes some memories that we do not wish to keep and want to forget. We also know that our brain slowly develops into what we as adults have so it is a long process of developing neuron connections that speed up as we grow from our childhood into adulthood and at a certain age may reach its peak.
But there is a caveat that says that the development of the brain depends upon the environment in which the child grows up and what kind of knowledge he or she gains while doing so from the people around him or her. The illiterate parents who are religious fanatics to boot only try to make copies of themselves so the child does not get the opportunity to learn other things that may help his thinking process and develop his brain.
Remember the morons of McNamara in Vietnam? They were so retarded that they often shot each other because they were so scared of the Charlie and thought that there was a fellow called Charlie who was the source of their troubles. These boys of very limited ability to understand anything in life were recruited by the US army to fight a war in Vietnam but they did not understand why they were fighting. I have seen them myself when I was a volunteer agronomist in Vietnam.
Our brain is capable of great thinking, new ideas, new ways of doing things and great scientific ideas to bring about great changes in our societies. The great scientists, great mathematicians, great social reformers and great artists and writers have one thing in common. Their try to use their brain power to its maximum ability. They do it by increasing their capacity to remember what they learn that allows them to take it to the next level.
So far, I have written about the ability of our brain to remember things in a positive way but now I want to share with you what some people use their brain for to create trouble for others. They are called the evil people who are smart enough to think of new ways to cheat people, to empty their bank accounts, to dupe simple folks into signing up for fraudulent schemes and think of new ways to harm the country and its economy. They use their brains not for doing good for the society but are bad people who thrive in their criminal world. Eventually they get caught and end up paying for their criminality but the threat of the punishment if caught does not deter them while they are free.
I cannot continue to dwell on the negative part of the paragraph above so I will come back to the positive part our brain can help us in life by remembering good things we saw and experienced while growing up. I know that I gained a lot of knowledge and experience by remembering good things and especially good people who became my mentors and helped me in numerous ways.
It started in my grade school where our teacher wrote on the blackboard the multiplication table that we as children of grade one had to memorize. We could recall instantly the multiplication table up to 20 meaning we knew what was 17 times 3 or 9 times 6. It developed our ability to do mental math later although rote is discouraged in some countries that I will not write about here. This memory has stayed with me even in my present age that still comes in handy.
Another thing we as children learned is the weight, volume and distance so we learned how much was one liter, how much was one kilo and what was one centimeter or one inch. Later we learned how many kilos made a quintal or a ton, how many yards made a mile and how many meters made a kilometer. Later we learned how many square meters made a hectare and how much was a meter.
In our 6th grade we learned how to calculate interest on a given sum and numerous other things that our growing brain tried to remember. We remembered the colored or black and white photos of our national heroes and memorized the patriotic songs we were required to sing during the assembly before the start of our class every day. I still remember some of them if not all.
But what I still cherish in my memory is the time when I as a small child listened to my mother telling me bedtime stories before the sleep came or the scene when I sat next to my mother making balls of colored threads for her that she used to make beautiful and very colorful cross stitch carpets or something. I helped her in grinding salt or turmeric in our heavy stone grinder as a child. Together we rotated the grinder handle while she poured broken pieces of salt or turmeric into the hole because the stone was heavy for me alone.
I remember grating the green mangoes for her to make pickles and I still remember the pain when the sharp grater took a part of my skin as well, but I continued until the job she had given me was completed.
These are recorded in my memory in a vivid way that time has been unable to delete. I think my brain retained these pictures because I wanted it to retain. These were pleasant memories. I also had some unpleasant memories that thankfully has been nearly forgotten and some have disappeared completely.
I have forgotten the name of my counterpart in Sudan because he was not my friend and in fact was a very unpleasant person who was incompetent in his job. I have forgotten the name of the arrogant American woman who used to work as UN volunteer in Khartoum. But the sweet memories are still there. (Read my blog called Forgetting is a blessing here)
I remember the statue of Venus with a broken arm in Louvre and I remember the painting of Mona Lisa there that I looked at for some time, but I have forgotten the exhibits in the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C. So, the memory is selective in choosing what to remember and what to discard.
I remember the beautiful face of my French teacher in Washington, D. C. but now I may not recognize her if we ever meet because she is as old as I and probably looks very different now. The brain remembers good and beautiful people, art and paintings but mostly it remembers good people who had helped me in many ways although they are probably dead. (Read my blog here called Selective memory)
Your good memories will die with you unless you share it with someone who might appreciate such memories. We all have memories embedded in our brain, some good and others not so good so be cheerful with good memories and forget the bad ones. The brain will get the message you send to it and will act accordingly. Just do not try to understand how the brain works to retain the memory because it will make you crazy.
Note: My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography. My blogs can be shared by anyone anytime in any social media.
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