Purim Pictures from Israel

My Brother Itzhak is in Israel with his wife and son, Shmulik. He sent me these lovely photos of the Purim celebrations in Jerusalem.

Ice Snow in the Indian Country

The village where i am now is eerily quiet, nary a vehicle or sound ..This morning, I noticed that the steps in front of the house where I am staying is slicker than usual and after warming up the car drove towards the Clinic. More like Sailing in that the car had no grip of the road and it was swaying. I was so deeply engrossed in listening to BBC world services that i was taken out of reverie only when the car spun around in front of the clinic.. I noticed that two indians in another car were keeping a respectable distance.. they told me later, perhaps spirits will protect you but you are a danger to others..

No one was at the clinic, and the clinic was shut down.. Now the problem of getting back to the house. Someone suggested that i leave the car there and get a ride with them, which i did. The photo shows the darkening skies of the morning and pictures taken of the same scenery at 6 pm, when the mellowing sun had decided to peek out.

Like the Indians say, never take Nature for granted, always listen to its pulse... you can have BBC another day..

Culture of Poverty

The Culture of Poverty

Today is March 9^th, 2009 and I am in the richest country. (By their own reckoning and calculations.) But I am amidst a very disadvantaged part of that population. This is not Japan... you would know why if you are to read the just published book,

The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Allen Lane, 297 pages. In a review, it was written: Within the rich world, where destitution is rare, countries where incomes are more evenly distributed have longer lived citizens and lower rates of obesity, delinquency, depression and teenage pregnancy than richer countries where wealth is more concentrated.

So I am in a rich country, with a distribution of wealth similar to many Latin American countries, but without much destitution...Poverty yes, but not destitution, the kind one would see in SlumDog Millionaire!

I met a 35 year old from the Culture of Poverty today.

What is Culture of Poverty? Anthropologists would immediately recognize this sociological moniker of Oscar Lewis.

The culture of poverty concept is a social theory explaining the cycle of poverty. Based on the concept that the poor have a unique value system, the culture of poverty theory suggests the poor remain in poverty because of their adaptations to the burdens of poverty. (From Wikipedia)

The culture of Poverty is not just about MONEY and income but as many thinkers have pointed out, it is about values which are upheld by the society and also by individuals in that society. Those of us who are travelers would agree with my Meskwaki teacher, who told me... We may be poor, but we have our culture; we don’t mind poverty, we can deal with it, but it is misery that we don’t like. Recent excellent literature in English from India, (Vikas Swarup: Six Suspects; Arvind Adiga: The White Tiger) mould the characters with the motto: it is not just about poverty but Suffering…

Let me tell you about this representative of the culture of poverty. He had a nonchalant way of talking, the friendly way of talking of his people. He is 35 years old. He was happy to see me, having come to get some medications from the Pharmacy. He has not taken any medications (which he receives free of charge) since he left the job because he did not like the rules and regulations and the control the supervisor had over his work habits. (He was the janitor at a Clinic). He had been to the Casino, and had won some money, 1500 USD and has been in a splurging mood, and he and his wife has been out drinking each night and also visiting popular all you can eat restaurants in the vicinity. He looked at his watch and said, can’t wait to leave to go back to the city for some drinks and food.

The nurse opens the door and slips me the result of his blood sugar, it was over 525 mg/dl, a level at which any “normal” person would be suffering enough to be admitted to a hospital. Are you OK, yes, I feel fine…

He then began ranting and raving about his wife’s 18 year old son, who has dropped out of school, and thus depriving himself of a chance to learn a skill, ability to exercise his body by playing football...Now, I am told, he stays in bed during the day, at night gallivants around, with other in his age group..

Where is his father? I asked. His father lives nearby with his new wife and a daughter who is 16 years old. This boy used to live with them, but the father had kicked him out of his house after the boy made the girl (who is the daughter of the wife of his father) pregnant and before he turned 18, he was already a father. Now with no education, no skills, depending upon his mother for his daily expenses, this young boy stare into a future of darkness.

When I was his age, I was working, I was responsible, did the chores around the house, my new friend continued. This kid does not lift a finger, sleeps most of the day, does not prepare food for himself, throws something into the microwave oven and waits for his mother to prepare him something to eat in the evening and give him some money to go out and have fun with his friends.

My friend, to whom I had just administered 10 units of Insulin to bring his high blood sugar down, said... Soon after my sixteenth birthday, my girlfriend who was 16 at that time gave birth to my daughter... I worked hard and always provided for the girl who is now 19...

Words of a soldier of the culture of poverty, who at 35 is already a grandfather (his stepson has a one year old daughter!)...Unemployed and very soon unemployable, with no great skill to offer the society, and his health failing. (Even though he has type 2 Diabetes which affects adults, he has had this diabetes since he was 19 years old and is already beginning to show signs of complications such as early blindness!)…he has already created directly or indirectly another generation to carry on this legacy of poverty... Money, Job will not carry him out of the hole he has dug in the society, the very same society which discriminated against him and he is paying it back by becoming a burden and creating another generation of burden... and he will have the greatest revenge… by dying early... to hit this competitive society where the material production is most valued, he dies and deprives the society of its investment on him, whatever little it was. He will not pay them back and even in his death, he will continue to demand payments for those he had created…

I felt immensely sad. A life without hope. A darkness. And this in the richest country, he has become the measurement of the crimes the society as committed: dropping out of school, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, early death.

“Society prepares the crime, wrote Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian statistician, in 1835, and the guilty person is only the instrument.”

So I present to you, the instrument of the Culture of Poverty.

Who comes to your Blog and reads them? NEOMETER

Just a few days ago I added this NEOCOUNTER to the blog. I never thought many people would have the time or inclination to read random postings, but it was nice to see that in a few days time, 55 people had visited the site, and more people had looked at the profile.. but what is interesting is that these people were from 24 different countries.. that is the power of Internet, something like this would have been impossible without the internet.. Diversity and Velocity.. this is our world now

By the way i got the neometer from an excellent blog of an armchair traveller who has interesting things about travel and sites and geography at his site

http://armchairtravelogue.blogspot.com/2009/02/strange-town-of-setenil.html

all the best and i would also make an effort to read other people's blogs.. just to show that someone is taking time to read what they write...

Jiddu in India and Rachel in Hong Kong...

A mind which is seeking permanency soon stagnates.. said JKM.

But like moths to the light, we are standing in line to conform. Here he is talking about the mind, but for most of us, we don’t even reach the level of thinking about it..we are trying to preserve our bodies and their integrity, mainly by providing it by comfort, mainly by coveting money, mainly sacrificing everything else.. in the end a life of very little consequence. An absence of life which took up some space, reproduced and left some evidence behind!

I meet people like this in Asia, in the name of Family, they destroy the uniqueness of the individual. They have thought only about money, what to do with it when they have it, and while they don’t how to accumulate it and what is that they must do to accumulate it.. discretion, good taste, enjoying the aesthetics are not part of the picture here..

Why are people so keen to follow this? They are willing to sacrifice themselves and their ideals for this, this idea of a future, where they would be healthy and happy.

In her book, Theatre of the Mind, the Paris based New Zealand Psychiatrist had written, most people are waiting as if the stage is about to open and they would feast on some show, without realizing that their life is the show and they are already on stage, only that they have forgotten their lines.. the scriptwriter without a training has left his job and gone, now the grown up man or woman faces a situation in which they are forced to imitate what the others say, rather than have the courage to think for themselves..

All this while being selfish. Selfish to an extreme. In the end what? If those surrounding you, closer to you cant love you, what about the humanity which you have completely ignored, do you expect them to love you? and are you going to the grave knowing that not many people loved you and that you played no significant part in any ones life, including your own children?

There is something of a connection between Security and Decay, you can achieve security only through some process of corruption and decay. That which has stalled cannot bring you happiness, that which is moving, the mind, which is fluid, which is open, will be happy..

But how many of us have courage to do that? to be free like that?

Written after getting an email from Rachel in Hong Kong who likes Jiddu Krishnamurti, one of the lesser appreciated Indian philosophers. This note is  dedicated to her.

Back to the Blue House among the UmonHon

Air France Paris to Miami. a full flight, comfortable and safe flight. a little tedious, 9 h 40 minutes. five minutes for Immigration and less than one minute for Customs at Miami. They are now fingerprinting all non US citizens entering the USA.. 

A nice homecooked Jamaican meal waiting at the home of sister.. delicious.. and then a few short hours of sleep and time to go to the Land of the Indians.. the Indian Country

what all happens in such a short period of time..suddenly the air is different, the food does not taste the same, even the faces are different..

Gone are the fancy cars, well kept houses with tidy lawns... miles of fields now shivering under the cold..and suddenly you arrive at the village of the Indians..

I open the doors of the house where i stay, which we call the Blue House. An Indian patient and his wife had come during my absence and had cleaned the place up.. it was a nice feeling..

The American people in these parts are very friendly.. When I went to rent a car at AVIS the manager says to me, Have not seen you in a while? you would think they have other things to think of rather of worrying about a foreigner coming to their country once in a while.. such is their hospitality, friendliness and they are genuine when they say that..

I am looking forward to the next few days with the Indians, and believe you me, it is just like entering another time and space and i will slowly forget about every thing from that outside world, except of course Paris .. now that i have my homework to do in French...

Normandie, Friends, Food and Nostalgie

I think of the good friends I have made over the years, how did they enter your life, silently, and then become inevitably etched..some arrive and leave soon enough but some others, will stay, regardless of time and distance.. How different it was for our ancestors, who were born, lived and died within miles of their known world.. We are the generation of travellers, first of all genetic travellers, since many of us carry genes from various parts of the world, we are born into places where our parents were strangers, and we grew up in some other part of the world and then studied, more travels.. Lucky are those of us, who can maintain our cultural identity through all this commotion. Some escape this cultural confusion by saying that they are a citizen of the world, more metaphoric than meanigful.. we all belong somewhere.. and as the poet Pablo Neruda has said.. un alma sin raices es injusticia.. a soul without roots is an injustice.. I have always liked people with strong national identity, who did not let geography or politics sway them into believing something else..

Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Burma all have given me good friends.. just in that part of the world... the largest number of friends are still in Cuba...with the advent of internet, it has become easier to keep in touch ..

The couple who stay in a farm house which was built in 1750s, she is from Normandie and he is a Breton; what a delightful couple. unpretentious. warm and in their presence, you feel yourself glowing.. i was with them this past weekend.. 

it is a wednesday evening in Paris, tomorrow I fly to Miami, yet another change. Liminality it is called in Anthropology...changing worlds, but full of affections..

Two months of 2009: Two Trips to India, this is the second trip to the USA.. just sit back and enjoy..

and of course, this is France, there is always good food, a nice bottle of wine.. just add lustre to the friendship..