mughals

I just finished reading my 4th William Dalrymple book called "White Mughals". It was on a side of India I had never heard of before. It was like reading the background behind every Bollywood movie we had seen in the last few years. Now I understand where they all came from - the 18th century Indian lives of the wild and crazy British age. There were some pretty wild characters he found in doing his research for this book. I especially like one of the photos in his book of a Scottish man who had a salwar kameez made out of tartan material and even had a turban made of the same cloth. Such interesting British people who mixed with the native people of India. Most of them feel in love for the Mughal woman and some even had harems. Some dressed like the Mughal royalty they interacted with. This quote sums up the whole book on page 7:

India has always had a strange way with her conquerors. In defeat, she beckons them in, then slowly seduces and transforms them

On page 366 is the summary of the Mughal woman covered in the whole book:

Those are the final words we hear of Khair un-Nissa, the Most Excellent of Women, beloved wife of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, and Henry Russel's rejected lover. She had lived the saddest of lives. At a time, and in a society, when women had few options and choices, and little control over their lives. Khair had defied convention, threatened suicide and risked everything to be with the man she had eventually succeeded in marrying, even though he was from a different culture, a different race, and, initially, from a different religion. He love affair had torn her family apart and brought her, her mother, her grandmother and her husband to the brink of destruction. Then, just when it seemed that she had, against all odds, finally succeeded in realising her dream, both her husband and her children were taken from her, for ever, and in her widowhood she was first disgraced, then banished, and finally rejected. When she died - this fiery, passionate, beautiful woman - it was so much from a broken heart, from neglect, and sorrow, as from any apparent physical cause.

birds in India

I have been searching this afternoon on the internet trying to find the amazing birds I saw in India and I think I finally found it:

http://www.pbase.com/ingotkfr/blackcapped_kingfisher
http://www.pbase.com/cajuca/bc_kingfisher

I saw this bird in two different parts of India. Once as I was talking a bucket bath in the Pipli Boy's Home in Orissa. By the time I dried off and got my camera it had flow away as it was sitting on an electric line visible from the second floor window.

The second time I saw it was when we were walking along the Ganges. I tried to get close enough with my disposable camera to take a good photo and it flew away.

What an amazing bird.

JAlbum Camelot

I played around with the new Beta version of JAlbum called Camelot which is all on-line. I created a photo album of the best photos from my India trip:

Best of 2009 India trip

The only thing I found a bit strange the first time I used Camelot was that I wanted to re-order the photos on the page where I added them to the photo album as well as add comments. I found out later that I could reorganize them and add comments after uploading them. I found the overall experience very nice. It will be good when I don't have to download JAlbum to my Mac to build a photo album. However, I think Camelot will not work for me as it appears I am close to running out of space. I post my albums to my public web site currently instead of using JAlbum free account. Very impressive for a beta product!

travel in India

During the last week of October and the first week of November I went to India to travel with a friend, this is a summary of the transportation I took:

14,000 miles by AIR took 30 hours
3,000 miles by TRAIN took 75 hours
100 miles by CAR took 4 hours
30 miles by BUS took 2 hours
30 miles by FOOT took 18 hours
and who knows how many hours in auto-rickshaws?

by AIR : Newwark, NJ ➤ Delhi (3660 miles in 14 hours)
by TRAIN : Delhi ➤ Amritsar (278 miles in 8 hours)
by CAR : Amritsar ➤ Gurdaspur (43 miles in 2 hours)
by CAR : Gurdaspur ➤ Amritsar (43 miles in 2 hours)
by TRAIN : Amritsar ➤ Delhi (278 miles in 6 hours)
by TRAIN : Delhi ➤ Bhubaneswar (1070 miles in 24 hours)
by CAR : Bhubaneswar ➤ Pipli (12 miles in 1 hour)
by CAR : Pipli ➤ Bhubaneswar (12 miles in 1 hour)
by TRAIN : Bhubaneswar ➤ Kolkata (273 miles in 7 hours)
by TRAIN : Kolkata ➤ Varanasi (472 miles in 14 hours)
by FOOT : Varanasi ➤ Saidpur (30 miles in 18 hours walking the Ganges)
by BUS : Saidpur ➤ Varanasi (30 miles in 2 hours)
by TRAIN : Varanasi ➤ Delhi (471 miles in 12 hours)

cricketering

This weekend was the annual AID cricket tournament and it was the third straight event I participated. UNC was again chosen as the location for the event but because of the anticipated rain only 28 teams signed up instead of the normal 36. I was on the Cary Chargers team again this year but only three of us were from the team the previous year. We also had the same result as we lost all three of our games. This year we allowed a couple of the teenage sons of the fathers to play since we did not have enough people for the eight on a side games. As always I had fun hanging out with my new found Gujarati teammates, who are the same people I play cricket with on Sunday mornings. The nice thing about the AID tournament is that you have a lot of free time just sitting around. This is the best part for me as I love talking to my teammates, in English of course, since I know very little of the Gujarati language. As usual it is all about families so letting the kids play with us just makes the time all special for the parents. It rained on and off all morning long so it was not the best weather for playing cricket. I must say that I am not a fan of playing in the rain. I have a habit now of not being able to do well at batting and bowling in the same game on any given day. Yesterday was a good bowling day as I was able to get many of the opposing runners out, but my hitting was horrible. I just try to enjoy each day as I do not know how much longer I will be able to play cricket at this level. The main AID web site is http://durham.aidindia.org/cricket. I found the photos of the day's activities at http://picasaweb.google.com/aidrtpevents/AIDCricketCup09.


I met my co-workers as they arrived as they are on the serious cricket team of which I am not an invited member. It always seems that I get to see an interesting side of Indians when I play cricket. A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday morning as I arrived to play cricket at our normal location, I met my team members who said they had been kicked off the field because of a tournament. We then found a nearby field and started to play. Less than thirty minutes later the same Indian fellows showed up and said they needed the play on their normal field, which we were on. I was pretty angry as I could see what was happening. Their normal field had a little league baseball mound on it and so they had decided to take over our field instead that day. As they got settled into their game, the local town's grounds keepers came and said our normal field was reserved for a softball tournament. They had been forced to move to decided to reclaim their normal field. Since we were only four adults and five children, they realized we were just playing around and they needed the field more than we did. They told us they would help carry our wickets to the small field next to us if we would move. I was so sorry that they were taking advantage of us, but I did not want to make a scene and suggested we move.

Yesterday it got a bit more ugly in our second game. We were playing the UNC student team and it was very close. We bowled first and we all did very well and held them to 28 runs. When we battled, the adults all started and slowly we got out until only the young teenagers when left. Only the next to last ball, the UNC team overthrew the wicket keeper and we scored a run to tie. A great argument ensued with the whole UNC team charging the field to object to the umpire's call. I never feel comfortable in these situations as it is just a game for me and I don't understand the rules well enough to know who is correct, so I just watched from the sidelines. The captain of the UNC team was already unhappy with me as he claimed I got in his way when he was sure he could have gotten me out. The whole time I batted he complained to the umpire about me. In this case since teenagers were batting and clearly they were not as good as the UNC students, somehow the UNC team convinced the umpire that the run was not allowed. We ended up not getting another run and tied the game. One of the teenagers who was batting for our team was so upset by it that he started crying. To me that is the saddest part as someone forgot that winning a game was never more important that people and their feelings. In the heat of the moment it is easy to forget as I had done the same when I was that age, but it just reminded me that in my old age maybe I had become wiser somehow.

To end the day, on returning home I got lost just as I had the year before. For 30 minutes I wandered around lost only to find myself back to the same place I started. This time since it was raining and cloudy I could not use the sun to determine which direction I should be going in. I don't what excuse I had for last year. Driving around UNC is just very confusing to me. During the drive I was listening to "This American Life" on National Public Radio. I had heard about the show before but had never had a chance to listen to it. I had also heard the radio show was at times very liberal so I did not expect too much. Yesterday's show was about people following their conscience or ignoring it - some people say they have an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other. There was three parts to the show. The first part was on a church in Texas who each October run what they call Hell House where they try to scare children into following Jesus. The second part was on the film called Devil's Playground about the Amish Rumspringa where teenagers are allowed to choose whether they want to abide by Amish traditions or not. The third part was about a man who denied to he committed murder until he got too drunk and confessed it to the police unknowingly. He said every day that he heard a voice telling him how worthless he was and could never be forgiven and at other times he just wanted to pay his time for what he did and then get out and start over again. For someone who claims he is an atheist, I thought the show was very well done and did not put Christianity in a really bad light which is what I was expecting him to do. I definitely learned something by getting lost!

This photo is of my friends at work who had a second place finish this year:

Indian elections

Someone at work found these photos and posted the link on the India mailing list:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/05/indias_massive_general_electio.html

love & movies

In the past week we have watched two Indian movies. Last night we saw Rab ne bana di Jodi. I have been looking forward to seeing it since my birthday in the middle of November. On that day we were in the shop where we rent Indian movies for home viewing. The $1 rental fee for each movie has to be the best entertainment value of anything you can possibly do for that amount of money. On the end of the counter was a holographic poster for the movie was saw last night. It was advertising the soundtrack for the movie. I asked the owner if I could have it and of course he gave it to me, since we are friends. The next day I put the poster on my office door at work. I typically don't close my door as I want people to feel free to come in and see me at any time, but for the last month I have closed my door so everyone walking by could be amazed at my poster. If move your head slowly side to side you can see the actor and actress change from traditional dress to modern bollywood style clothes. I was wondering as we waited for the movie to begin if I would have to remove the poster from my door, which would have to happen if the movie was bad. We were not disappointed as the movie was great. That is why I love Indian movies as there is always a clear point and both love and GOD has to be mentioned. I have to add this movie to my favorite list near the top. The other thing I wish I had done over the last few years was to record all of my favorite quotes from the movies we had watched.

The movie we watched last week was Slum Dog Millionaire. It was about love as well but the movie was actually rated "R" because of some of the violent content that was not appropriate for children. For me this was about the "real" India and not the fairy tell world of Bollywood that sometimes illustrates the ideal that people can hold onto in order to escape from this "real" world. Plus I got to see Mumbai and India like I remember it. I like movies that show choices we all have to make and the results of those choices. Some choose a dark path and reap what they sow. Others want to choose the right path that actually helps people, but sometimes it is just too hard to do. Even though both of these movies had love as the foundation, they were very different in content. The best thing I like about watching Indian movies is that it makes me think about my life and what is important as well as talk to my wife about what love really means.

Rajastan

There is something that is alluring about Rajastan. I have driven through most of that state in northern India. On the surface it is just one big dry hot desert, which is very dusty. Even after 30 years I can still remember things about it as it is so unique in all of India. I recall driving through the villages and you could easily tell when you have left one and entered another. In one village all of the men would be wearing yellow turbans, in the next they would all be wearing bring red ones and in the next they would be wearing green. The buildings everywhere matched the drab yellow brown sand with few trees in sight, but then you would see the women wearing the most bright colored saris and the men with their colored turbans. An occasional camel would be seen pulling a two wheeled cart. Every now and then you would see an amazing castle on a rocky hill that is centuries old. The hills are nothing more than huge boulders. I have spent the night with friends in the pink city of Jaipur and the blue city of Jodhpur. Driven past the Jal Mahal outside Jaipur, the Mehrangarh Fort on the hill outside of Jodhpur and the Taj Lake Palace on a lake outside Udaipur. So many fascinating and enchanting places to see, so it is no wonder that foreign tourists want to go there.



That is not want I had originally intended to write about today, but the origin of my thoughts was a movie was saw last night called Nanhe Jaisalmer. I have been watching Indian movies since we lived in Saudi in the late '80s, where the local Qatar TV station showed the weekly Thursday night Indian movie. Since the weekend was Thursday and Friday, this was the equivalent on our Saturday night, so I stayed up late watching the movie which ended around midnight. Now we rent Indian movies at a local Indian store. In all of those years and the unknown number of movies I have seen, it still amazes me at now uplifting they are and a true learning experience for me. Of course it really helps that I have lived to see many of the places in India where they shoot the films, but still the culture is so fascinating to me that I learn something new about the culture with every movie I see. I enjoyed the music in "Nanhe" and there were so many wonderful one liners. Just a great family movie with a good story and wholesome point. Who can complain about that?

Mumbai mess

Having watched hours of news coverage on the Mumbai 9/11 terrorist attacks in the past couple of days, it is so sad to see how a few crazy people can cause such pain and grief. I don't like my idealist view of India being manipulated by people with no brains. We recently watched several Bollywood movies on terrorists in India as it is a hot topic even before this disaster. I still think the best way to deal with such horrible situations is to not allow terrorists to force us to change our lives as that makes them win.

family matters

We saw an Indian movie that we really liked last night called Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, which means "Sometimes happy, sometimes sad". It is about how a family interacts with each other. A son obeying his parents and when he does not, how the consequences affect everyone for many years. His father setup a marriage for him and he decided to follow his feelings of love for a "common" woman that broke up the family. Such great family values that apply half way around the world to our family. It never ceases to amaze me how such a different culture has so many applicable wonderful traits that are valuable for us as a family. I don't even have to try hard to favor Indian culture as it just comes naturally somehow to a Virginia country boy like me.

diwali #2

Last night we attended our company wide Diwali festivities at the local Hindu temple. In past years it was held in the temple hall, but this year because of a scheduling conflict it was held in the main hall that could hold at least 1000 people. The sound system was absolutely amazing and the Indian music sounded wonderful. The event started at 6:30pm and we arrived early at 6:20pm. For all of the times I have been in India and knew better, still for some odd reason I forgot Indian Standard Time. When we got there, a good friend of mine who was the master of ceremonies for the evening was the only one there! At least I got to talk to him for a good 20 minutes as we are always too busy at work for a relaxing conversation like that. At 7:15pm there was but a hand full of people present, a couple of them I knew so there was plenty of time to talk. This event for me is all about talking to friends from work, some of which I never get the chance to talk to about non-work related things. Two of the people I talked to are in my own group and I seldom get any time to talk to them. That is sad, but I took advantage of the time last night and had a great time.

cricket tournament

Today was the end of the cricket season for me as I play all summer long to get ready for the local annual AID cricket tournament. This year I was on a different team from last year. Two of the same players from last years's team were on this year's team but all of the other were new. I found out this morning that all of them but one were from Gujarat. My Hindi lessons don't do much good in that situation I am afraid. We had fun playing cricket and talking on the side lines in between and during games. We lost pretty bad, but it was not about winning for us. Last year I got involved as my previous team got very serious during play and I definitely did not want to do that again. I bowled the last game today and that was definitely fun as two of their best hitters hit balls that were caught in the field and thus were out of the game. In that same game when I batted I stayed in longer than I normally do and actually go a hold of one ball and hit it over the fence into the field next to ours for a 6. It was good to end on that note as I got to know more Indians that I enjoy being around and having fun playing cricket.

These are photos from the AID cricket tournament. There are a couple of them of our team members:

Diwali

Today was the local Diwali Festival. We have attended this celebration around many times previously. In the past few years our daughter accompanied us, but this year my wife and I went by ourselves as are not cool any more I suppose. At the Diwali last year, our oldest son went with us also as he had just moved into his own house down the road from where they have the festival. What a difference a year makes as that was the beginning of all kinds of trouble for us. This year he is nearly at the end of his Army boot camp and a totally different person from last year, which is a great thing.


For me, this year was the best Diwali ever as we met and talked to several Indian friends the five hours we were there. We went early so we could see the younger kids dance as they are he cutest things ever in their Indian saris. I talked to a co-worker who designed all of the backdrops for the stage and the main logo when we first arrived. I had been wanting to talk to him outside of work for some time. Of course I had to stop by and see the man who we rent all of our Indian videos from as he always recognizes me. It was not that hard in past Diwali ceremonies, but this year there seemed to be many more white faces in the crowd. Next I met the husband of a co-worker who I had met last year at a company Diwali party. As I was talking to him I spotted a next door neighbor of ours when we first moved to this area. I watched where he sat with his wife and without being too rude, quickly went over and started talking to him. We saw him a couple of years ago with his family at another local Indian event but had not seen him since. Right as we were leaving I saw another co-worker who I play cricket with and of course had to stop and talk to him for an extended period of time. For me this is a perfect way to spend an afternoon, talking with Indian friends and getting to know them better. Makes me want to go back to India!

favorite Indian movies

This is the list of my wife and my favorite Indian movies that we have watched over the last couple of years. I still think watching Indian movies are the cheapest and best forms of entertainment on the planet today. We can rent these at the local Indian movie store for $1 each.

Taara Zameen Par
Vivah
Jodhaa Akbar
Bride and Prejudice
Black
Provoked
Eklavya
Guru
Bend it like Beckham
Chak ed India
Dor
Paheli
Veer Zaara
Iqbal
Lagaan
Pinjar
Hum Tumhara Hain Sanam
Swades
Dil se
Pardes
Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam
Fanaa
Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge
Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham
Nanhe Jaisalmer
Rab ne bana di Jodi

A really good set of links on Indian movies can be found here: Highest Grossing Bollwood movies

silsila vs vivah

This weekend we watched two very different Indian movies.

The first, Silsila was made in 1981 but had pretty shocking subject matter for it's time. The main character's brother had premarital sex and his girl friend became pregnant, which was revealed at his premature death. His brother had a choice to marry his brother's wife or to follow his heart's desire to marry his girl friend. He choose his duty of taking his brother's pregnant wife to cover up her pregnancy. He regretted it and finally had a long term adulterous relationship with his girl friend. Quite shocking subject matter indeed for an Indian movie even today.

The second, Vivah was a complete contrast. It is about the prefect premarital engagement process. Long drawn out and shows how traditional marriages are arranged and work themselves out. I found the movie very entertaining as for me, this is the "real" India that I saw when I lived there.

On a complete different subject, this weekend was a long 4th of July holiday and it seems like we have changed as a family all of the sudden. And I don't mean that the kids started watching Indian movies with us. The kids all went outside and we played frisbee together on Friday, which was the first day of the long weekend. That set the tone for the weekend. As I have mentioned previously, we typically only get together during vacations, but we got together several times this weekend. Eating together, playing cards together, talking together was enough to send me into a state of shock. I even took two of the kids to play tennis with me. We repeated that again today, so at the moment life is very good in our household, which I cannot always says was the case. I am going to keep it all positive and now regress in time to contrast to our current situation.

Akbar to 81

This was an interesting weekend as this time of year we celebrate the combined birthdays of my wife's father and my daughter, since their birthdays are only a couple of days apart. Before leaving for Wilmington, we started the weekend off by seeing the newest Indian movie called Jodhaa Akbar. Indian movies are so fascinating to me as they always seem to have an interesting point or are pure entertainment without bad language or sexual content. This was a movie of epic proportions - I am so thankful to have a wife who enjoys going with me as that makes it even more enjoyable.

I don't know what happened on the drive down to the beach city of Wilmington as I slept almost all of the way. Happily I was not driving! Once we arrived, my daughter was treated like royalty as usual. I think that is why she wants to stay longer when it is time to return. We had a few laughs over presents and times of reminiscing of life in South Korea for the Dietrick family. Then the subject of computers came up of which I quickly become the family expert. In the morning I tried to fix my wife's father's five year old laptop.

He was complaining about how slow it was and how he had no disk space left. I first looked at his Recycle Bin and noticed it was almost 1 GB. When I looked at the contents I saw it had never been empty since 2002 when he bought it. I am still amazed at how unintuitive computers can be to someone's who career is not working with them. After running Disk Cleanup, and cleaning up the trash can, the space was still not coming back. I then found a utility called Folder Size, and it pointed me right to the problem of 6 GB of temporary files on main windows folder. Then I found out that with all of the programs installed recently the disk was badly fragmented. When I checked Windows Task Manager, I found out that 400 MB of memory was allocated but only 204 MB of memory was installed. We went out trying to find matching memory and after visiting every store we could find we had nothing to show for it. In the last store the man was so helpful that he said we could substitute other memory for the one I was looking for, but they were out. We went back to the next to last store that we had visited and found another person to help us. He located memory we needed and once back home it actually worked! In the end, he had a computer with 7 GB more free and 640 MB of memory and a laptop he could actually use! This was my birthday present for him and it was greatly appreciated by the newly crowned 81 year old patriarch of the family.

food and family

It is almost impossible to get our whole family together at this stage in every one's lives, but for my wife's birthday we came close. Since my wife was born and grew up her whole life in South Korea, she really likes Asian food, so we went to P.F. Chang's. I had always heard that it was a very expensive Chinese restaurant, which it was, but the atmosphere was really great for such special occasions, plus I did not have to pay for the bill so it was even more special! My wife's parents, my wife's sister and a really good friend of theirs as well as our children were all present. My oldest son is currently a waiter at another lesser food establishment so he could appreciate the high cost which means high tips and even said he would like to work at a place this nice. This is the first event in the series of landmarks for this year and hopefully they will all be as nice as this one. The older you get, the more the events themselves are not the focal point, but who is present to share them with you and this is why this one was so special.

Speaking of my waiter son, he rode is the car with us and as we talked I realized how much he has become responsible in the last four months. Can I dare say matured? For me, the idea of becoming mature means taking the responsibility you have been given and using it wisely. I see in the American Heritage Dictionary they define maturity as "The state or quality of being fully grown or developed". I am not sure when I can say any of my kids are fully grown mentally, but he is definitely on the path to getting there. I think life should be about getting better with age and learning new things all along the way, so I guess I will never fully achieve this goal either, which is good. The other good thing about my son is that is he learning what he is not good at doing, which is just as important as knowing what you like to do. This for me also is maturing.

To end the day, our two youngest children huddled on the floor in our bedroom to watch a 2004 Bollywood movie called Bride & Prejudice with us. We had all four watched this together before and the kids liked the line "no life without wife" so they did not mind seeing it again. It was nice to have them watch it with us as who knows how many more times this will happen as it is not "cool" to watch Indian movies with your parents.

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.

Hidden secrets of every society

My wife and I saw the Indian movie Provoked this weekend. It did not shock me that there was only one other couple in the theater with us when we saw it, as I do not expect this movie to be popular. It is not your typical feel good movie, but a true life story of an abused wife who kills her husband. We get used to bad news in the west, but to even talk about a husband abusing his wife is shocking for an Indian topic. Shocking that someone would try to make a movie about such a taboo topic.

I was 19 years old when I first went to India. I knew very little about India, except that Indira Gandhi had something to do with it and that my mom always told me "eat all your food since children are starving in India". For some odd reason I thought India would be full of highly religious people. I still remember how shocked I was the first time I saw drunk men in a remote village. I had the strangest misconceptions, but what to expect at such a young age! I would not have been able to handle such a harsh topic as wife abuse.

Becoming wiser in my old age, I now understand morals have nothing to do with culture as there are good things about India and America and at the same time evils I really don't want to know about. There are so many good things about the Indian culture that I really like and appreciate the more I get to know Indians. I have to say that I am a better person because of becoming immersed in another culture other than my own.