IT fills my heart with such pride and joy that a small nation of just 11 million people, strangled by international forces, mainly to the north and their peons, was able to produce not one but two vaccines against the Covid 19.
Thus it joins the giants of science USA Russia China India UK ..in the vaccine technology world. Not a small feat ..
Congratulations CUBA and its scientists ..
Listen to the Intellectuals, whether you agree with them or not, you may learn something. Just because other people have different opinions from your own, they are not your enemies. This is how you create a divide within yourself, with others in the society and with other diverse people: listening to social media or main stream media such as FOX or other right wing sources . I have always wondered about the dearth of Right Wing Intellectuals, if such an oxymoron an exist.
Christopher Hitchins who died in 2013 is a American-British Public Intellectual. If you have time to listen to this debate, 90 minutes long, you will understand his thoughts on the position he takes whether Islam is a religion of Peace? Tariq Ramadan, An Europe Born, Religious Muslim grandson of the founder of Islamic Brotherhood of Egypt has become very polemic not because of his less than respectful regard for women (he has an Islamic explanation) but for the multiple convictions for rape in various countries and he remains unwelcome. I doubt we would hear much from him in the future. He has been described both as Brilliant and Slippery.
If you want to watch the video in its original HD quality, here is the link,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMraxhd9Z9Q
Christopher Hutchins being British and educated in the UK, speaks beautifully and for those students of English, it would be a nice exercise to listen to him
here is the reduced quality video of the debate between Christopher Hutchins and Tariq Ramadan
Once again, a good debate. Memory of Hutchins lives on..
PS if the audio is not working, please watch the original in you tube. it runs 90 minutes
I can look through the large glass window as I type this and see wonderful trees that grow in the space on the front of these townhouses.
When I first went to the Indigenous people I work with, in the National Park near here, a young man who was driving me around, stopped the car at a desolate part of their village and said: Doctor, if you listen carefully, you can hear the trees talking to you.
Indigenous people have not lost touch with the nature that surrounds them while the settlers regardless of their colour, nationality or origin, want to cut down the trees and build flats and introduce cattle to the lands that have lost their diversity. I heard from my friend from the Ticuna people of Colombian amazon: Madre Selva. Mother Forest is sad because she is missing our footsteps.
As soon as it is feasible, I will be there , I promised.
While driving home from the Indians today, I was listening to BBC World Service (Radio to the World) and imagine my pleasure listening about Ecuadorians reclaiming land which had been turned into farm land and actually reforesting areas. My hats to the people involved in the project.
But the story of the life of people was made real for me by Amitav Ghosh in his book The Hungry Tide.
Few months ago I heard about a man in the Sunderbans who planted a forest on his own, much like his fellow human in Ecuador.
to the humble men in Sunderbans and Ecuador and also the Lady and her friends who have formed an NGO to bring reforestation techniques to lots of people (let us hope) in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Thank You
It is nice to know that we are hearing tidbits of good news of the reversal of the settlers policy of cutting and burning and turning forest into playground for cattle.
At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.
It was a nice day here in Miami today. The weather was picture perfect. I had contact with many of my friends around the world.
Omar Khayyam
Beautiful yogic commentaries on the stanzas of Rubaiyat by Paramahansa Yogananda. The book arrived this morning by mail and it is so well illustrated and it is a kind of book to cherish. The Yogi gives the inner meaning of the worlds of Khayyam and explains it in the Yogic terms and more importantly he adds the practical importance of each verse. I am sure I will write about it later.
Hutchins was nothing short of brilliant. The debate is available on you tube and I plan to reduce the size to one small enough to load on the blog.
Other intellectuals in the western mode that put in an appearance today in my life were
Yuval Noah Harari from Jerusalem
Alain de Botton a british philosopher on how you will fall in love with the wrong person or marry one. His philosophy explains how to avoid the mistake our romanticism leads us into. Worth listening to and put into our practise.
I do know how many people died of Covid today in Malaysia
and that a branch of the American chain OUTBACK (apart from the name there is nothing remotely australian about this place and the food is incredibly unhealthy and thus tasty) has opened in Bauru in the interior of the State of Sao Paolo in Brasil
Today I saw the siblings wandering around but with no mother around. I wonder what happened to the mother..
Two answers came from Cuba (it tells more about Cuba than about the Ducks)
My sister said.. the little ones are now old enough to fall in love. A friend wrote to say that the mother might have gone to look for a lover.
I will accept their explanation.
Nice to receive messages from Cochin, Iran, Brasil Thailand
It was a good day here in Miami..
These are the countries which are close to my heart and in each one of them there are conflicts of one sort of another: all politicized, whether it is the virus or long standing social conflicts.
These are the countries I would like to visit
ISRAEL
FRANCE
BRASIL
COLOMBIA
INDIA
CAMBODIA
MALAYSIA
MYANMAR
you can see that with the exception of ISRAEL and FRANCE , none of the others are bastions of democracy.
Brasil under the governance of an extremely right wing President and his cronies has let many Brazilians unnecessarily die..
Their vaccine acquiring programme and dispersal has nothing but a sham.
The same applies to India, which is more of an autocracy with religious undertones than a true democracy
Cambodia has had the same leader since 1979 and Malaysian mechanism of democracy would make Putin proud! In Malaysia, they should have a Chinese Lives Matter or Indian lives matter..
Colombia where there is a continuing protest against the government, police has killed dozens of protesters.
The worst of all is Myanmar, which has killed nearly 1000 of its own citizens.
I look myself in the mirror, then why do I travel often to these countries.
ISRAEL and FRANCE
easy to answer
Family
Why Myanmar?
I would like to stroll down the Anhwarata Road, through Indian town, past piles of biryani sold by bearded muslims who cannot remember where they came from (Came here at a time when Burma was part of British India) , to the corner street area where U Tun Tun and his family has a repair shop: with their precious singer machine which furiously work stitching your torn handbag or trouser..
U Tun Tun, his teeth bloodied by the red of the Betel Nut, with a checkered longyi tied over his prosperous tummy in the typical indian fashion , one day confessed to me that while he is now a Muslim, his ancestors had originated from Tamil Nadu (he has no idea where it is precisely) and the family had carried the name Doraiswamy to British Burma. They had converted into Islam and he married a Bamar Muslim women and has a fairly large family, of whom I have watched two grow up: Osman and Aysha both of whom have also Burmese names.They are burmese to the hilt, except their religion distinguishes them from the majority Buddhists. They speak only Burmese, their food is burmese and they speak no other language other than Burmese.
The people of Burma are close to my heart. many of my burmese friends have double names such as Nwe Nwe, Yin Yin..
I miss them all and wish to see them when the world settles down from the conflicts which envelop it..
I began travelling to South East Asia in 2001, with my brother Eliyahu. At that time both Vietnam and Myanmar were exotic and Cambodia and Laos were only blimps on the tourist itineraries.
Thailand, Laos and Vietnam became very popular but they were geared for another type of traveller. Myanmar and Malaysia became my favourite.
There is a lady in front of the old market in Siem Reap where you turn right on the bridge over the river to go to the Night Market. She began making nice fruit juices for me and over the many visits, each night she would give me a gift of some fruits. I got to know her family, the daughter now in school who wants to be a doctor and she always had a smile for the tourists she invited to drink a fresh juice she made for them.
I do miss her, adding to the list of many others i miss in Siem Reap, Cambodia .. Stef the painteur naif, the children at the Rakseay Laundry, my burmese brother Ko Maung Maung.. servers at the restos that i visit,, PO or Uncle .. Kandall Organic and also the friends who give a good foot massage at Gekko..
When you are in a country like Cambodia, you know in the back of your mind that the joy you have being there has some misery of the local people associated with it and the repression of the government that had caused it.
Malaysia is special to my heart, I feel very much at home in that country and usually is mistaken for a Malaysian. My best friend in Asia lives in KL the capital with her Portuguese Mozambican husband and we have shared wonderful times with the likes of the personalities: Ho the ex president of the Mahler society and a Go champion, Abid the talented content maker, the brooding Brijesh and his intellect and his multi talented wife, Aparna and the list goes on and on .. despite their toy democracy and squeezing of the hardworking chinese and indians, i will always love Malaysia .
In Myanmar, Cambodia and Malaysia .. they have not been able to control the Covid virus and are under strict lockdowns (Myanmar a different scenario).
So i have no hope of traveling to these countries anytime soon.
I was hoping to spend the end of the year in Cochin, like I did the year 2019 going into 2020 at the seaside hotel, Bristow Bungalow.. Over the years and multiple visits, I have gotten to some very good quality people in Cochin and some of them have become good friends and have introduced me to the cuisine and scenery of the neighbourhood.
I miss not visiting Cochin, a very long absence indeed . in 2019 I might have visited Cochin about 5 times. The locally cynical people ask: why do you come so often if you have no family or relatives here.. I just like it here, I tell them, they do not believe me.
Brasil which has brought us some stormy dictators in the past, gifted us with this current president, you can only chuckle at his judgements but in his carelessness he has killed thousands of people at the altar of Covid , much like his buddy the Orange Menace to the North (thank God he was voted out).
I has a flight booked to Sao Paolo in Brasil but that was just as the surge of covid was becoming a Tsunami taking with it thousands of people. It was not an auspicious moment to meet friends..
But I am eager to go as soon as possible, as this fourth wave of infections come down and before the fifth wave starts or the imbeciles leave office or forced out.
This is the destination I want to get to. But will have to wait for the vaccines to reach Brasil (Last year the government refused an offer from Pfizer and currently their Sinopharm vaccine production is stalled)..
I also look forward to practise my newly acquired vocabulary in Portugese ..
Colombia and especially the town of Leticia at the confluence of the three amazonian countries: Brasil Colombia Peru is very close to my heart and have visited the area along the Amazon river up to Puerto Narino where the local hostelry is owned by a cuban music professor . I miss my Ticuna Indian friends and it is always nice to be present at 5 30 pm at the Santander Park when the parrots return back from their day hunting in the Amazon forest.
Covid is beyond control and the country is in the midst of a turmoil of unexpected protests.
Two safe countries from my list
ISRAEL and within a few weeks , hopefully everything will be calm down in that little country subjected to so much abuse by its neighbours for the las 70 plus years.
I have already booked my ticket to go to Israel.
This morning I received a photograph from Quiberon on the Brittany coast of France. On this saturday, there seems to be lots of people visiting Quiberon.
I want to be among them, as soon as France recognizes my vaccine status!
Cuba
Bresil
France
Israel
Here I come..
this is what I woke up to, in Miami, this morning. I am truly grateful to have spent the isolation from Covid 19 in Miami. While the travel life and social life completely ceased, it was nice to be somewhere where there was a guarantee of food, shelter and with a bit of luck, a good glass of wine and refuge from the madness of the politics of this country. Lack of individual interactions also meant, you had no chance to hear the imbecilic ideas of some of the Cuban emigres about the pandemic and its response. A good proportion of the Americans are sensible, friendly, logical, unselfish, hospitable, innovative and generous as witnessed by the kind, gentle government they chose to have.
Thank You.
Thank you, my dear friends, who kept me company on line throughout the pandemic from
Belgium
Brasil
Malaysia
India
Cambodia
Thailand
Cochin, Kerala
Dali City, Yunnan
My extended family in Portland, Or, Lakeport, Wash and Aventura, florida
My UmonHon, Lakota, Kickapoo, Ticuna friends
and most importantly the daily dose of affections from that great bakery in the sky, CUBA.
dedicated to 16 July 2020
A little History:
I used to make a side trip to Bangalore when I visited Cochin to visit the Premier Bookstore, alas no more, the owner migrated to Australia, I think.
It was worthwhile detour and you could rely upon him to come up with recommendations.
On one visit he said, Please try and read this, you might enjoy it.
It was Murakami, Haruki's. Kafka on the Shore
I was drawn to his style, the lack of distinction between reality and magic or wonder... something I have always aspired to.
IT WAS MR SHANBAG WHO INTRODUCED ME MURAKAMI HARUKI AS WELL AS MANY OTHER TITLES.
On a visit to Bangalore, I was told he had closed his shop. and I went across to Koshy for a good cup of coffee ..
today is 13 May 2021. I am in Miami. Few tears began to roll down when I read the newest edition of THE ECONOMIST, my favourite magazine (also MONOCLE).. OBITUARY section under the title The Bookseller of Bangalore..
On days when he was working, T.S. Shanbhag kept to the same routine. He would drive in from the west of the city and park near M. Chinnaswamy stadium by 8.30am. From there he would walk to the centre, to Koshy’s restaurant on St Mark’s Road, where he had his morning coffee: the best in Bangalore, proper south Indian, milky yet strong. It was hard to resist the breakfasts on offer, appam with vegetable stew, potato smileys and the rest, served by waiters who glided about with the deference of English butlers. But he preferred just to banter with his old friend Prem Koshy, who would greet him with a hearty “How are you, my dear Sir?” and later, repaying the favour, might well drop in to buy books.
Premier Book Shop stood diagonally opposite, on Church Street, a modest place shaded by a honge tree. His place and Koshy’s were relics of the sleepy Bangalore of the past, before it became tech city and the malls and multiplexes moved in. Increasingly now the corner swarmed with traffic, hooting motorbikes and swerving autorickshaws, but he dodged neatly between them. He was limber from all his crouching and stretching to retrieve this or that book, daily acrobatics in the service of good reading.
The shop was about 15 feet wide and 25 feet long, fine for his purposes when he moved in in 1971. He had been working at his uncle’s Strand Book Stall in Mumbai, the best job he could find as a village boy from near Kundapur, but for various reasons it was best after a while to start up on his own. This place had been a clothing store, but had been burned out; he paid 900 rupees to rent it, and gradually filled it with five lakh (500,000) books. They not only lined every wall but were piled in an eight-storey mountain in the middle. If you dug to the bottom of it, you would discover the reading habits of Bangaloreans three decades before. He had made the mountain carefully, placing each volume in a slanting position, so that by an apparent miracle it did not fall down. Round it his customers moved clockwise and sideways, as if in a temple of words.
His own little den was just inside the door, behind a desk stacked so high with books and invoices that only his head was visible. From there, with his quiet smile, he greeted the customers in English or Kannada and fetched what they could not find. Some liked to stand and read for hours, leaving without buying, but that was fine. Others rifled through the stacks, pulling them out of all order (for there was a system, in his mind at least), knowing that you could turn up older and cheaper editions under the newer ones, and special treasures, Borges or Fellini perhaps, from the lower right-hand stack near the window. He placidly wiped and sorted after them. Children were parked in the shop while their parents went off somewhere, and that was fine too; there was a little stool in a corner where they could sit, and a pile of abridged Penguin Classics. When his child visitors flowered into writers, poets and historians, he took a modest pride in that.
His grown-up customers were treated with the same care. His shop was intellectually serious: few novels, thrillers, or that bestselling kind of thing, but instead a feast of new books in English on history, biography, science, economics and world literature (his own favourite author was Camus). He provided food for minds, as Koshy’s provided it for bodies. And every book was at a discount, the first at a bookshop in Bangalore, of 10% off everything. If he saw an impoverished student sighing over a volume, then putting it back, he would let them borrow it instead. When orders were needed urgently, he would drive across the city to deliver them in person. No action gave him so much joy as putting a book that was wanted into someone’s hand.
He also knew what his regulars wanted before they knew themselves. He kept a psychological track of their purchases, not on any computer (since he disliked all that, filling out his invoices by hand or on a sturdy ancient typewriter), but in his brain, as good exercise. That brain already contained all the titles of a crowd of authors, as well as the whereabouts of any book in the shop; it also contained the comics customers had bought, years ago, with their first pocket money, and their shifting interests since. Armed with this he would softly approach, in his leather slippers, and say to a browser, “Why don’t you try....?” Customers often complained of leaving with many more books than they had meant to buy; or coming in for a book on cricket, and leaving with one on Marx.
In return, the customers cared about him. They nagged him, though kindly, to take credit cards, which he did with great reluctance, and to expand his business when the restaurant closed next door, though he had no ambitions that way. He saw himself as a friendly local librarian, rather than a businessman. When a huge increase in rents around Church Street threatened the shop, it seemed that most of Bangalore helped him with donations. Those kept him going for two years, but in 2009 he had to shut it down.
He was perfectly sanguine about it. He had been at Premier for 38 years, and was getting old. His eyes, with all that reading, were not so good. Besides, change was part of life; there was no need to get emotional. He sold the books at 60% discount, and gave the rest to libraries all over the city. Even the name-board was recycled, and the shop became a fancy bar. His walks now took him to the other bookshops in the city, where he was just one more customer browsing.
The passing of Premier was much mourned; but his own death seemed to affect the city more. At first sight, this seemed strange. On that day, 161 Bangaloreans died of the virus. He was probably among the most unassuming of them. But what had also died with him, many felt, was a rare part of old Bangalore, an unhurried place far distant from the slick and booming version, together with an old-fashioned style of quiet full-hearted service. In that small corner of the city he had made a sanctuary, along with Prem Koshy, whose coffee had kept him and the browsers going. Koshy’s was open as usual; the metal blinds came down only for lockdowns or personal bereavements. But inside Mr Koshy sighed for “the angel of my books”.
You touched a lot of hearts, Mr Shanbagh near and far and you were respected throughout your long career as a BookSeller .. the best Bookseller that ever as in the city of Bangalore ..Thanks for introducing me to Murakami Haruki.
■
Why do some songs hit you with such a powerful force that you have a feeling that you are in a hurricane and soon an incredible lull of silence and calm in the sky.
listening to the silky voice of Caetano V
I have been a fan of his
suddenly tears begin to fall
it is not sadness
it is something or other you cannot distinguish
like looking at a lamp burning in the distant night and wondering who is sitting by that lamp and what are they dreaming of ?
It was not about a place
It was not about a person
It was about a time of innocence
a heart which is innocent can easily shed tears of happiness
Then a video with the lyrics, so that the songs bring more relevance and meaning to your heart.
that is a lot of caetano but in portugues, spanish and english .
Miami – 12 July 2026, 6:00 a.m. I flew nonstop from Doha, Qatar, to Miami on Qatar Airways. The flight lasted fifteen hours. I have tra...
