Ganges

Now I am beginning to wonder if I should change the name of my blog to "IndiaImpressions" or maybe "IndiaAmerican" as it would appear that I am infatuated with the great country of India and it's people.



I received a book named Ganga: A Journey Down the Ganges River by Julian Crandall Hollick. I finished reading the book in 3 days during the week off for Christmas and New Years. The web site for the book has some really nice photos and accompanied radio broadcasts from which the book originated. Over the next few days left in my vacation, I hope to listen to the NPR broadcasts so I can comment on them. I really enjoyed the book as it gave me a better understanding of Indian mind. The Ganges is considered a holy goddess and therefore cannot be polluted but it can be dirty. Even if it dried up from what we westerns think of as factory pollution and human waste dumping freely in the Ganges then the goddess will live on. Since this British man spent 20+ years in India researching the Ganges, the book has valuable insights to help a weak American grasp such deep concepts.

In the future I hope to walk parts of the Ganges with a good friend of mine, who has walked almost half of it in bi-yearly two week jaunts and has only 20 more years to go to complete the walk.

Real men can weep

My blog, which started out as a collection of web design problems and solutions as I encountered them, has turned into a discussion of Indian movies and the Hindi language. Having lived in India for two years, when I was but 20 years old, there is something that happened to me while I was there that I have not been able to remove since - I just love to be around the people of India and to learn more about the culture.

Last night was very interesting... My wife and I wanted to see a movie at the local Indian movie theater. I read the reviews in the local newspaper of the new Indian films currently showing and one of them sounded bad while other one had a certain appeal. A really good friend of mine once told me that he did not like movies that invoked your emotions as the director was manipulating you. I understand his view, but for me a movie has to stir up your emotions or make you contemplate life in order to be a good movie. There is no way I could watch so many Indian movies without this view, as I still believe the goal of an Indian movie is to make you cry, laugh, and dance, but not particularly in that order!

The movie we choose to see was Taare Zameen Par. I was really wondering what we had done as the opening credits were quite strange, but it all made perfect sense by the end of the movie. In summary, I have never ever wept as much as I did last night. I wanted to quickly leave the movie theater when the movie was over, in case I saw someone I knew and had to show them my red eyes! The movie was so emotional for me due to many reasons...

When I was in the first grade I had severe learning disabilities as I had dyslexia. My first grade teacher hated me and it was a mutual feeling. I would not sit still and I could not read, but I loved to draw - not a good combination when the whole goal of the class was to learn how to read. In the rural Virginia school I attended, they decided by the third grade whether you were in the smart class or dumb class and split you up. My mother was determined not to allow me to get into the dumb class as you basically never got out and by high school you were delegated to shop, woodworking and industrial classes. Looking back this seems so cruel and such a bad educational system. Anyway, for two years my mother tutored me and somehow using the local library as a resource learned how to help me get over my dyslexia. I actually only learned about this recently. Throughout my life, few things have come to me easily and I just overcame by working as hard as I could.

Our daughter had similar reading disabilities and had trouble reading until she got into the third grade. The schools now are much more forgiving and she was given special reading classes and taken out of her normal classroom every day for 1-2 hours of tutoring with teachers who specialized in disabilities. Now she loves to read and had the highest grade for reading in her last year of elementary. One of our boys has suffered thru his disabilities, but much later in his life. With the internet providing so much information, my wife has become an expert at helping him. I can just imagine what would become of them both 100 years ago, when ignorance on such issues ruled.

One more point... I have had many Indian friends over the last 25 years who have attended private Catholic schools in Indian as they are considered the best education you can get. Once you get to be college age, if you are the absolute best you can try to get into one of the 5 Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) universities as many of my friends were able to. One of them told me there were 25,000 applications for the 1000 freshmen allowed to attend. Just imagine how privileged you are when you graduate from these universities - truly the cream of he crop. What happens to everyone else who does not make it? It reminds of of professional sports in USA. There is an excellent book that documents just how hard it is to get into pro sports called Fair and Foul: Beyond the Myths and Paradoxes of Sport.


Back to the movie, I think so many factors came into play to cause such emotions to flow. Having lived the subject of the movie and having seen my kids live it as well along with having lived in India, it all came to life in this movie. When watching the movie, I thought I had been there before. In researching it this morning I found out that I had indeed been in the same location for a month when in Mahabaleshwar, Maharastra some 25 years ago. When watching the movie I saw a sign that said New Era High School and the town of Panchgani.

It all just leaves me speechless.

Remembering in Tears

So it is Christmas and time for me to reminisce about Christmas' past as this is my 48^th Christmas. The up and coming year will be a year to remember enduring feats. My sister is turning 50; I will be married 25 years; two sons will be out of the home (hopefully) and other personal landmarks.

Last night I watched It's a Wonderful Life on TV with my wife. I think I had seen it when I was a just a young whipper snapper, as a couple of parts seemed familiar. Watching that movie made me become nostalgic as we just gotten back from eating at Olive Garden for my son's 17^th birthday, when I turned on the TV. My son told me twice during the evening how much he liked that movie. They just don't make them like that any more - I am talking about both my son and the movie!

This has been an emotional couple of weeks for me. It started off last weekend when I rented an Indian movie called BLACK, which I had watched on the plane to India in February of this year. I cried like a baby on the plane and was hoping no one was watching this American man with tears running down his face. India has a way of invoking a broad range of emotions in anyone. I must say that in the privacy of our bedroom, the tears on the plane were nothing compared to my uncontrollable sobing. I tried to turn over so my wife would not see a grown man cry. It amazes me that a movie can invoke such emotions. In this case, the subject matter helps as the movie is an Indian version of the life of Helen Keller. I remember hearing about her when I was a boy. Reading her story now reminds me how little I do with what GOD has given me and how she overcame such huge obstacles.

The next crying event of this week was a CD my wife gave me to listen to in my car driving to work. I thought it was going to be something to stimulate me to think and to challenge me to be a better person. It turns out my wife wanted to embarrass me in public as I was crying huge tears in my car! Just a newer case of someone doing amazing things with their life as David Ring has Cerebral Palsy and yet he did not just give up, he travels all over the USA as a motivational speaker. He motivated me to cry that is for sure. Such an amazing story of how someone can take the little GOD gave them and use it for great good. The CD I was listening to is available on-line at Focus on the Family as a 3 part series called "Victorious Living".

Lastly, a good friend of mine, sent me a YouTube video of Evel Knievel speaking at Robert Schuller's church. I remember when I was a young kid how I marvelled at Evel Knievel's daring antics. A couple of years ago we saw his son at the NC State fair jump a bunch of vehicles just as his father had done many years before. I had anyways heard Evel Knievel liked to live life in the fast lane or cars and women. It warmed my heart to hear that in his last moments of life on this earth he wanted to follow in his Creator's footsteps. I was even more amazed at the comments in this YouTube video as they are people that really take offense to spiritual things. Reminds me of how I used to be many years ago, but that will have to wait for another day.