Why do I buy/hoard books?

This article is an effort for me to understand myself...understand what makes me buy and hoard books...especially books which I dont ever read ! I am trying to put down all the different motives behind buying different books and maybe this self-analysis will help me overcome my addiction to buying books.
 I was buying and hoarding books like crazy when I was in India and also in Toronto. As of 2012, I have stopped (or at least making serious efforts to stop) buying books! Reasons:

• My dad is a hoarder and I seem to have inherited it! So I want to fight this hoarding disease.
•  Also,my mother who is visiting is nagging me to "keep the important books" and throw the rest...she has been continually nagging me. I think her disgust at the messiness of my house (books everywhere) is the main reason for my efforts to stop buying-hoarding books
• I am running out of space to store these books and they are spilling all over my home.
• Years ago, I had sort of fantasized   that  my kids would gratefully inherit my book-collection when I die... but I dont have kids nor will I have them and so, one major incentive for my hoarding is gone. I told my sister, that she is the lucky beneficiary of my books when I die and she shook her head, grinned and responded,"No thanks Akka. I have Kindle!"
• I realize that I am not reading most of the books collected at home; These days, I seem to be reading only the books borrowed from the library .I am now asking myself, 'why do I keep these books, if I am not going to read them'? I still dont have the ability to throw or give away the books I have....but I have developed the ability to stop buying from nowonwards.
• I bought several books for other people...such as my siblings in India and for nephews and neices. I dont think these books will ever leave my house as they are hardbound, weigh a ton and cost too much to transport; ergo, no point in buying books for friends and relatives in India.(The airlines too have cut down luggage allowed and Canada post is terribly expensive..I dont know any other way of transporting these books to relatives and friends in far away India)
• I bought several books which I had read already...I planned to reread these books. But these books are simply gathering dust! I am rereading only about 100 of the thousands of books I have bought .
• I am now discovering many many good books and authors I like. I am also realizing that it does not make sense to own every book I like....not unless I have a huge room & can afford bookshelves & have the time to dust the books regularly. I am finally accepting the fact that there is no need to own every book I like!
• I have this compulsive obsession to buy all the books in a series or all the books of one writer and now I have lousy books which I have never read, occupying valuable space in my tiny home! For example, I loved Gone with the wind. And then, like a fool, I bought Scarlett and Rhett Butler's people....which I began to read but did not complete.
• I seem more likely to read a book I borrow from the library than a book I buy/own...The fact that I have a deadline to return the book prompts me to read ...when I own a book, there is no deadline and I dont read the book but decide to read it some time later!. In the interests of 'reading', it is better I borrow a book than buy!
• Of course, there are a few books which I read immediatly after buying ....but most of the books I buy, get dumped into a box, with plans for future reading. I think this happens because there is some mysterious but  plesant 'feeling' when one buys a book...it may be a sense of fulfilment or feeling safe("I dont have to worry about not getting  this book... because I now own it") and this 'safe' feeling seems to extinguish  the drive to read the book! Dont ask me why but this happens to me... Another example is that  I am more likely to listen to a favorite song when it's on radio than if I buy the song's cd! I am more likely to utilize what I borrow than what I own!
• I am realizing that I will never read at least 50% of the books I own and so I should really stop buying any more books. Some of the reasons for not reading the books are given above. I am going to write below, the types of books I have accumulated at my home and the reasons I bought them...then you will understand why I will never ever read them!

Classics: I had this habit of buying classics, when I was in college. Then, I wanted to read them as everyone told me they are good; I wanted to read them, most probably to impress others! I also had a crush on at least two English professors and maybe wanted to impress them.
I have read and enjoyed classics such as by Charles Dickens(David Copperfield), Jane Austen(Pride and Prejudice) but I own other classics which I am less likely to read such as dramas by Shakesphere and novels by Thomas Hardy.
Non-fiction books on philosophy, literature and other areas: I buy these books, thinking that I will read and learn, read and improve, etc; I am now realizing that I am not going to read them as long as I have access to crime fiction books, television shows and daydreams. Since, there is never a moment, when I will be denied access to these three things, it's unlikely that I will ever read these non-fiction books meant to improve me!
Buying books for others but they dont want it : I have several  books accumulated for this reason.
Buying books reccomended by others but after buying, I realize that I dont like it
Buying a book because it is cheap, getting books for free, accepting books dumped on me by others who are moving their house, etc.
Reading a review, falling for it, buying the book and then realizing that it is not my cup of tea... but then too lazy to return it to the book shop.
The gift coupon to a book shop is going to expire and I buy what was best in the limited choice I had and then disliking the choice.
I bought several books in India, which are not available in Canada...but not read them at all. I think I bought them simply because I thought they are difficult to get in Canada and now that I am in India, I better buy them...they are all lying in my home in Canada, unread! These books include Philosophy books from India, Sudhir Kakkar's books, books by Indian authors such as Premchand,Ravindranath Tagore, etc.
Believe it or not, I have also bought several English non-detailed texts I had as a child from the McMillan company in M.G road(Sringar complex)! I felt such a strong urge to buy them for myself and my neices and nephews but I do not think I ever read those books after buying! Did I buy them out of a sense of nostalgia? Maybe.( I am still looking for the Lost Horizons, abridged version by E.F.Dodd. I loved the woodcut illustrations in it)
Hmm. What are the other books I have bought, which I dont read? Just remembered, I bought a few comics (Lucky Luke) in Dollarama as I could not resist those rare old classics for a dollar!
I have this compulsion to buy the books I enjoyed during my childhood...while buying, I am so sure that I will read them, but in the end I dont! I try to get the new children(neices and nephews) to read but they are refusing! They are into the new kids books such as 'diary of a wimpy kid' and refuse to read the books i reccomed they read such as the  Billy Butler series I loved...
 God ! It is so frustrating !.... I know that it is wrong to force them to read what I loved. I have also bought all I could find of the ladybird books whose illustrations I loved as a child (illustrator is Eric Winter and writer is Vera Southgate). I dont read them but still gaze at the illustrations with the same rapture I did as a kid.
I have gone through phases of collecting certain books. Some of the phases I have gone through include,
Wanting to own every Charlie Brown comic, Phantom comic, Andy Capp comic, TinTin comic, Asterix comic, Dennis the Menace comic, Amar Chitra Kata and a few more. In India, I could not afford to buy them and also could not get them in the shops. I also went through a really stupid phase of wanting to own at least one copy of every magazine ever published! Little did I know about the humungous number of magazines published! Inspite of my protestations that I am giving up buying books,   I am right now in the phase of collecting Modesty Blaise comics (Titan publications) and hopefully this addiction will fade away soon. My rationale for collecting this is that : I cannot borrow Modesty Blaise comics as they are not available in the TPL and I do want to read them. I had read the Modesty Blaise strip as a child when it appeared  in the Kannada newspaper daily i.e.  Prajavani...or is it Samyukta Karnataka?
I have gone through phases of wanting to read/own mythological stories and folk tales from all over the world. I have bought so many and read only a few of them! When I see a mythology book I dont have, it is impossible to resist buying! I now have books on Indian , Roman & Greek, Irish and British(King Artuhr, Celtic tales, etc), Japanese, Egyptian, etc.Though, I now own several mythology books,  I  dont have  interest in all of them and I have not read  some of them such as the Native Indian stories, the Chinese and Japanese stories.(the tales about animals dont interest me such as teh Native Indian ones  and the names in the Chinese and Japanese put me off reading...no disrespect intended.)I cannot understand why  I have this irresistable urge to buy, fully knowing that  I will not read. I wish I could  stop buying books which I know,  I wont read.
I have also bought books at cities I am visiting as some sort of a souviener. Also from museums that  I am visiting. I have bought books on India simply because it is about India...and I think it will be a good coffee table book( But I dont have many visitors home and there is simply no space on the already littered teapoy for coffee table books!)
What else.....Oh. I have bought books simply because the titles were intriguing and now so many such books litter my house,unread & undusted  ....but I cant bring myself to give them away! Some of these books are:
I have two and even three copies of many books, simply because I dont remember buying the first copy, when I am buying the second! To avoid this,  I carry a list of books I have and dont have... yet I  made these mistakes! Damn memory!
My motive for buying the unread books seem to be as countless as the books themselves!
But I think I am going to go through all the useless books I bought and find my motives...it may help me understand myself.
A major reason for my buying this many books is the fact that I buy them at Goodwill store, where the books cost about a buck or two...this is so cheap that the temptations to buy is strong...the defence I have for buying so many  books from Goodwill which I never read is "It is only a buck or two. So what if I dont read. I am only losing a buck or two.'
I had accquired over time a series of comics which was complete except for the first comic. I then paid through the nose and got a second full set on ebay; this set had the first comic  which I lacked. The seller refused to break the set to sell me  the one comic I wanted. So now I have one set of twenty and one set of nineteen second copies of the same comics! Why was I so obsessed with buying that one comic....I must surely be suffering from obsessive -compulsive disorder too!
I also went through a, thankfully brief , phase of  wanting to own all Indian crime fiction books.I started with Sacred games  and a few H.R.F.Keating books and the case of the missing servent by Tarquin Hall but quickly came to my senses.....there is a glut of crime fiction books in English from India now...I know I cant keep up with buying them all, nor do I want to. English novelists from India were so few in the 70s and maybe 80s too but now there are so many!
Stopping now. I need a break!

 

Harlan Coben & Lee Child

Recently discovered this great writer Harlan Coben. I am enjoying his books! They are thrillers set in USA and I love his stand-alone novels. Unfortunately, I did not like his Mickey Boliter  series which are apparently very popular(blame me and not this writer! ). Hope Harlan lives long and comes up with more and more such thrillers to keep me happy!

Also read  the fiction novel, "American Dervish" by Ayad Akhtar about a middle-class Pakistani family in USA. It was  realistic(and what a sad reality for Pakistani wives who have to put up  with the value systems in their families !) flowed smoothly and moved me.
It is so sad that sufism is being systematically stamped out by the stupid, concrete-thinking, morons who advocate for a harsh, brutal, unjust interpretation of the Koran. (the violent, idiots are taking control in many countries east & north of India and stamping out modern and moderate muslims)
It is also  sad that one of the lovelist religions of the world, Zoroastrianism, whose birthplace is in Iran too is dwindling slowly.
Buddhism, another lovely religion advocating for  non-violence and one which held sway in Afganisthan, too has been stamped out in that country.

My comments on the dwindling of Zoroastrianism & Buddhism have nothing to do with American Dervish.

September 2012: Tried two new authors this month i.e. Lee Child (Reacher series '61 hours') and Karin Fossum('Black seconds'). Stopped reading  Lee Child's book  after a few pages and found Karin Fossum's book  good but the pace of  Black seconds was a bit slow.
Now reading the books set in modern Russia i.e. Red to Black by Drydan and his next book Moscow Sting. Will briefly tell what I think of these books when I finish.
The reason I gave up Lee Child's 61 hours is that I find the books written in first person, more often irritating than not. The first person writing seems to make me think the person is bragging and that puts me off. Also something about the style of Lee Child put me off. I am realizing how difficult to be a hero and write in first person and not sound boastful! Few authors who have written in first person have impressed me...To kill a mockingbird ofcourse is the best of these first person books. I also like Dick Francis books, several of which seem to be in first person.  Books by James Hadley Chase and Alistair Mclean in first person too are pretty good. I will add more to this list as I recall them.

I am planning to revisit the Perry Mason books and Donald Lam series of Erle Stanley Gardner shortly. I am getting sick of the new crime fiction books. The Perry Mason series are so refreshing to me now...the crime is so straight forward, the motives are straightforward, the people are so real and believable, the author focuses on the plot and wastes little space and words on descriptions. The minimal presence of sex, absence of perversions such as pedophilia, motiveless cruelty, torturing, etc make these books 'not-sickening'. Another great thing : it is only the bad person who gets murdered in most Perry Mason series! The absence of computers, the greater presence of people and their skills than reliance on science makes the characters in the Perry Mason books interesting.
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WHY DO ARRANGED MARRIAGES FAIL?

(23rd Aug 2012)At the outset, let me say that this piece is based on my observations of arranged marriages that I have seen in the last 25 years or so. Since I belong to the Gowda community of southern Karnataka, I have more interaction with these people...and the failed arranged marriages I am talking about are mostly from this community.
The Gowda community  is pretty diverse; we have Gowda family of  rural and urban backgrounds;  belonging to lower, middle and upper economic status, at many levels of literacy, etc. 
The failed arranged marriages I am referring to are mostly from the families I have closely interacted with i.e. middle-class, educated, professional background Gowda families . These are families who are settled in Bangalore but who originated...I mean their grandfathers  were farmers in villages of Tumkur, Chitradurga and Mysore districts.

What I have observed of the marriages of several close relatives and belonging to my father's generation ( In 2012,  I am in my forties and my dad is in his seventies) is that all of them were arranged marriages...arranged by their parents to spouses from the same caste, sub-caste after checking on the horoscopes, etc. At least 50% of these marriages have unhappily married people, who are staying in the marriage as they simply did not know of  arrangements other than (1)staying on with the husband/wife, (2)or the wife returning to parent's house if husband and in laws were impossible to live with and (3)being widowed/widowered. There is severe bickering in these marriages but as the  modern psychiatric,sociological and psychological labels such as 'battered wives', 'controlling', 'autocratic', 'paranoid',etc were unknown to my parents' generation, they did not think of their marriages as 'troubled' but accepted it as their fate!

Happily, there is a  slow but steady increase in the number of Gowda yougsters refusing to enter into arranged marriages; many of the current generation'fall in love' and marry a person of their choice.  The yougsters studying  in the technical courses such as engineering, medical , dental seem to meet with less opposition from parents (when they 'fall in love' and marry) as opposed to the ones studying BA, B.Sc and B.Com! Talk of biased parents!

Inspite of the gradual increase  of those entering love marriages, there are still a huge number of today's youth who are either opting for or forced into arranged marriages. I have seen many of these marriages fail miserably...not over time like in my parents time, but from the very first few weeks of marriage. There are many many reasons for this and the focus of this article is to give my take on the reasons as to why these marriages fail. I am hoping that the youth who intend to enter arranged marriages think about these causes and try to avoid them. The reasons are in no particular order...I am writing them as they come to my mind.

This para is written on 17th Jan 2016. I just saw a lovely movie "Meet the Patels" which is about arranged marriage. I enjoyed this movie a lot and it speaks positively about arranged marriages. I loved the parents of this Patel guy; his parents, both dad and mom are such a lovely couple...charming, articulate ,pragmatic and both believe in arranged marriage. I suppose this movie is a documentary  and so I think everything in this movie is true. People who read my bitter rant against arranged marriages should see this movie which is positive about arranged marriages. Then the reader is this article will get to see the positives of arranged marriages! 

Inadequate information about the family or person one is marrying:
To me, this is the most important or the only explanation as to why arranged marriages fail today. Analyzing the failed arranged marriages I have seen in the last 5-10 years, the biggest cause of failed marriages is the lack of information about the person one is marrying or lack of information about the family. The missing information may be major such as a serious mental illness in either the bride or the groom or minor information (but big enough to make it break the marriage) such as not knowing  that the person one is marrying is aloof and not as social as one wanted. 
Here are some (of the true cases and)   issues the person marrying was not aware of in the broken marriages I know of.

• One marriage failed as the bride did not know the groom was suffering from schizophrenia.
• In another, the groom was acting  'weird' and not consummating the marriage .
• In several  failed marriages the bride or the groom informed the spouse, immediatly after marriage, that he /she was not interested in marrying but was forced to by the parents. Let me add here that  I have seen many men & women  of my parents generation who throw this in their spouses face daily for years and years!
• In some, the groom was extremely controlling and paranoid and violent.
• In at least one marriage, the groom had concealed from the bride's party that he was already married (and not divorced). the bride divorced him after she came to know of his earlier marriage but by then she had gone through this expensive bigamous wedding!
• In another instance, the groom, who was already living in USA, 'with a woman'. He obeyed his parents when they suggested  an arranged marriage with another lady; he intended  to leave  his wife behind in India, to look after his aged parents...while he returns to USA, alone, and continues to live in bliss in the US with his girlfriend!

All these true cases, reveal that families, going into arranged marriages are not always truthful and can be very very deceptive. On the other hand it also reveals that there are families which can be duped  easily....inspite of their education, experience and intelligence.
The families hide major problems such as mental illnesses when they get their mentally ill son or daughter married. The other party would not have done 'due diligence' before marriage. I know that due diligence is not the right term but I hope you get what I mean...that you should obtain as much information as possible about the person/family whom you want to marry, before you decide to go ahead with the marriage.  

The second reason arranged marriages fail today is the expectations the brides and grooms of today have about marriage. While in the past i.e. my parents days, women had lesser level of education;were mostly housewives and did not work outside the home and were expected to have few expectations from the husband. If the husband had a job, did not have 'bad' habits like drinking, gambling or womanizing, he was considered 'good husband material'. 
 However, today young adults have much higher expectations from their partner. They want to be matched in looks, want someone who has similar interests, have expectations about the partner's education, job, social skills, etc. Since women are educated and working, they are no longer (and rightly so) ready to accept a guy just because he is of the same caste and the horoscope matches. The expectations of women have changed drastically . Empowerment of women through education & employment, being treated equally (or almost) as men by their parents and in educational institutions(I hope so!), the concepts of democracy and women's rights and equality, the huge influence of the west have  all contributed to women having higher expectations from their husbands than their mothers and grandmothers.
I have seen a few marriages break down soon after the wedding in my community as the men expected their wives to be subservient to them! One guy apparently wanted a 'tall and social girl' and when he married one, he objected to her talking to her friends! The young lady left him!
While in the past, married people were fatalistic about the person they married i.e. accepted whatever spouse, fate had given them, now people are ready to divorce and look for a better person to be with. I am so glad about this. It is better a person divorces than live , cursing and fighting an entire life time and also having children who in turn have endure their bickering parents all through their lives.

Ignoring red flags before or even during the wedding is another major reason for marriages flopping. I find it so frustrating that families ignore several red flags which show up before the wedding and go through the marriage only to see it fail. The trauma for the bride( I have seen brides suffer more often than the grooms), the wedding expenses, the trauma for the several people involved, the years spend in trying to cope with or get out of the miserable marrige could have been avoided if only people heeded their gut feeling, their instincts and the red flags. Here are a few examples:
Why the bloody hell do people not get a hint that their daughter will not be happy if she married this guy, whose parents are demanding a big fat dowry?
 Why the hell do they not realize that something is fishy if the groom makes no attempt to talk to the girl at all...after the marriage is finalized, the groom makes no attempt to phone or talk to the bride and this bizzare disinterest is labelled as reserved and dignified by stupid well-wishers instead of perceiving it as the disinterest it is.("huduga tumba gambeera" is the description for these assholes)
While I know several decent Gowdas, I also have seen several crude, rude, greedy, ruthless Gowdas, who think that marriage is one easy way of getting rich. Fortunately they are unable to act decent even for the few times they meet with the bride's family before the wedding. Yet, the bride's family does not react to their greed, boorish behaviour by running away from this family...they go ahead with the wedding!

Some parents are aware of the red flags but still go ahead, hoping that thier son or daughter will cope with the issue or that the issue will go away! Talk about wishful thinking!

Consenting to an arranged marriage, though not happy with the person selected : Consenting for reasons such as ' I may not get another offer' , 'I am getting older.. what if there is no one else out there: I have seen quite a few arranged marriages which flopped, where the bride or the groom was not at all interested in the person they were marrying but still agreed as they were forced by family or were themselves worried that they may not get anyone else if they refuse this one.
I feel really sorry for these people. Some of them seem to have self-esteem issues and their stupid parents attack their self-esteem even further(instead of being supportive) to brow-beat them into consenting to the marriage. I have heard mothers tell cruel and mean things to their daughters to bully them into agreeing to marry the guy they have found; they say things like,"You are dark. Still, he has agreed to marry you. If you refuse him, we will not be able to find anyone else, willing to marry you."
Or,  "You are nearing 28. All guys are married by the time they are 25 these days. Where can we find some for you if you get older?"
The attack on self-esteem can be anything...you are too dark/fat/short/tall/ not educated enough or too educated!
Can you imagine, attacking a girl by saying she is too educated or too tall? These are things of pride in the west but here, they can be reason for a groom rejecting you! I have seen a dark-skinned friend of mine, browbeaten into an early marriage to the first guy who came to 'see her' as her brother and sister-in-law (my friend's dad died when she was a child) thought she will not get any other offers.
I have seen men and several women who have been married(through arranged marriages)  to people who were  intellectually and in other ways  incompatible. They seem to have  married their spouses as they did not seem to have the hope that they will find someone more compatible if they wait. People simply endure and do not really enjoy marriages when they are not compatible intellectually or otherwise.

When Indian youth go to such great trouble to find a pair of pants or shirt which 'fits perfectly', why the hell, do they agree to marry someone they hardly know and spend the rest of their life, trying to 'fit' or 'adjust' to the other person?  Instead, they could get off their fat butts and  find someone compatible?

People unfamiliar with arranged marriages will wonder why their families did not find compatible spouses, when they were searching for brides and grooms.
 Parents can get only some information about a person such as his or her  level of education,  age, looks (photos are given), etc. If the family is new to them, they know nothing of them and can only go by the information the family gives them. They can  infer or guess only some facts by the family's or the prospective bride/groom's behaviour in the all-too-brief meeting when the prospective suitor comes to the girl's house to 'see her'. The families are treading blindly when they enter into marriage alliances with families they hardly know! They enter into the marriage allaince, hoping for the best! To me arranged marriages are like blind dates set up by your parents...only it does not end after one date if you dont like your date...you are stuck with your date for life, whether you like it or not!!!

Let me add an example here. A girl may assume that if the guy  whom her parents have found has a professional degree( such as engineering, dental or medicine...these are  3 well-loved degrees in my community!) he must be bright. But the guy may turn out to be average or even dull as he has got into this professioal course by paying donations to the college and passed his exams with great difficulty. It is very very difficult to gauge a person's intellectual level, when he coes to see the girl and talks little or not at all! The girl has to simply assume he must be 'okay'  or 'bright' if he has passed engineering and has a job now!
Not to sound callous, but I have come across several super-duds who have passed out of Indian medical, dental and engineering colleges! I am going off-topic here but more than 50% of Indian youth passing out from Indian medical, engineering, dental, colleges are ill-qualified for their jobs. They get into the colleges though they have neither the brains nor the aptitude; their parents shell out huge sums of money(if you dont have good marks, you need to shell out money to join....then you pass the exams by bribing and then you get a job by bribing and then, if you are a male, your father's investment in you comes back in the form of dowry....so there are several super-dud professionals wiht degrees but not even common-sense in their heads...let alone, technical expertise, in their area of study...why do so many people die in Indian hospitals? Why do Indian buildings fall during the construction stage itself? It is because of these morons who bought their seats in the colleges and bribed and passed and bribed and got their jobs)


My sincere advise to the young people going into arranged marriages...Please don't !

I will be writing some  more on this issue shortly. Pardon me for going on and on about this but I have seen three young arranged marriages break this year and I am boiling mad about it!
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(24th Aug 2012) I got a few more ideas and am continuing this article.

Search-fatigue is another major reason for mismatched people getting married. I have seen several parents, go through a lot of prospective bride or groom's briefly or elaborately and start feeling exhausted by the search and reach a stage when they simply want the marriage to be fixed, over and done with. Let me explain: When parents search for a suitor, their examination of a suitor may be brief ...for example, decline a proposal within minutes or seconds as they spot reasons for this match  to fail such as ...horoscope not matching, too much of an age difference , looks not as expected, gotra being the same or unsuitable for other reasons, and so on.
But for the proposals which appear seemingly okay, at least initially,  they spend a lot of effort and time in tasks such as the suitor visiting the girl's house, lots of talk and discussion between the families, and sometimes the boy and girl may meet more than once. Inspite of investing so much time and effort the marriage proposal falls through for some reason sometimes. If this happens often, the family and the girl/boy to be married, start feeling exhausted and then they decide to be 'less choosy' and want to simply be done with it...so the exhausted parents force their ward to simply agree to whoever they 'next' meet i.e.  when they are at their most exhausted or the person getting married will herself or himself simply agree as they are fed up with this process! I cannot imagine how one can reach this stage of indifference, when they are making the most important decision in their life but this unbelievable thing happens so often!

It is very very important the girl or boy going into arranged marriage keep these factors in mind and take precautions against it. Maintain self-esteem; maintain hope; be realistic; be optimistic...do not marry just for the sake of getting the  marriage over and done with! Also do not get brow-beaten into marrying by parents, uncles, grandparents or the marriage broker( I have never seen a marriage set up by a 'professional'marriage-broker  but I know they do exist)

Another important reason for lousy arranged marriages I forgot to mention till now.... parents with limited contacts, limited ability to judge people, parents who 'feel awkward' to ask around and search for a good match for their child
I know of at least four fathers who made little or no effort to find suitors for their children when they came to age of marriage. My analysis of why they were like that is this(my English is sounding terribly Indian now but I dont have the patience to edit now!)
Three of these four fathers were working in very high government  posts; they were  honest, never took bribes or ever used their official positions to grant favours to any of their families or friends...unlike majority of government employees in India. They never asked anyone for help during their working period probably due to the fear that they may be asked to do 'favours' in return;   This is my take on the reasons why they did not search for matches for their children. Even by asking someone to find a good spouse for their child meant that they are asking a favour and fear being asked one in return...and then they may be forced to  compromise their ethical standards!
Luckily for them, they had relatives(who did not expect any favours in return) who worried about their children and who did the search and came up with matches for them!

In the context of the above para, let me mention that I have seen three such arranged marriages where the brides were exceptionally brilliant and 'decent' ...by decent I mean that they did not date and agreed for arranged marriages. I loved and admired all three of these women and all got husbands who were nice but not at their  intellectual level. But they accepted their lot. Can I say they are happy with their marriages as they get along fine with their husbands and have no 'problems'? No. I do not want to say they are happy as I feel I am overstating the happiness. I cannot say, they are unhappy as that is also overstating and untrue. The best way to define their marriages is to say these women(Indian young ladies of the 70s and 80s) seem to accept that they have to get along with whom their parents find for them..that the kind of husband they get is written in their fate and they simply have to 'adjust' with the person they get. They are grateful, if the guy they get is not 'too bad'..... they know or accept that it is near impossible to get someone who is really good or fantastic...that getting someone who suits them perfectly  happens only in movies. The bottom line is that people who enter arranged marriages, give up the dream of finding someone they can truly love; give up passion and become very passive...I think giving up passion and dreams is a defense mechanism which helps  one to accept arranged marriages. Having dreams and passion and going into arrnaged marriages is an impossibility!
Let me add here that I am sick of the bull-shit I see on the internet by people who support arranged marriages saying that they are better than western love marriages...that In Indian arranged marriages, the couple fall in love 'after' the marriage. It is such bull-shit nonsense! I have seen several who cant stand their spouses and have to endure them for years and years and the only reason they present a 'happy-marriage' face is because appearences are so damn important in Indian society.
Remember, these are marriages which took place in the 80s; most of the youth of the 70s and 80s whom I know(are Bangalore based, middle-class, Hindus) were conservative, focussed on 'studies' and expected their parents to find matches for them. None of them ever dated or befriended members of the opposite sex.
I have seen daughters and sons of these kinds of fathers simply agree to marry as they knew that their parents will not make any effort. This is such a crying shame! I have seen a father who was lost in his world of 'spirituality' and his kids had to hunt their spouses themselves! This man's wife would nag him but to no avail! I have seen another father who is a procrastinator and would always rush off to do something non-urgent and totally unimportant/irrelevant while his children aged, waiting for him to find matches! If the children, especially girls had tried to date and find a groom themselves, they would be labelled as 'fast' and 'not of good character'! Talking of procrastinators, I have seen a procrastinating father of grown daughters,  who would rather help a child find nests of weaverbirds for a child than go to court when his case was being heard!
In the 80s and earlier(maybe even now in some families)  adult singles were expected to marry the matches found/approved by their families and not supposed to mingle with the opposite sex and find a partner for themselves.
There was another father(who probably thought he was a big-shot) who in my opinion was very arrogant and simply did not make any effort to find matches for his children. He expected people to approach him(I think!) and unfortunately, this  did not work out. His kids remained single.
There is another father who found one or two grooms for his daughter and when she declined this guy or the guy declined to marry her,he simply stopped looking for anyone else. He also didn't allow his daughter to find someone on her own. When he was asked why he's not looking for anyone for his daughter he would rage that she refuses everyone he has found. His rages were so fearful that his family members remained silent. Can you imagine the situation...the girl is not allowed to find someone on her own and her dad refuses to find anyone because she 'refused' the alliances he brought her....Can you imagine being stuck in this stalemate for years, getting older and older and 'less marriagble' by the day while the rest of your friends lives move on?

You may be wondering, what  is the mother's role in all these cases. Mothers in those days(60s,70s and 80s) were mostly housewives and had no contacts except for relatives, neighbours and friends. Many of these mothers would ask their relatives to find matches for their children and relatives would try their best. I know of one exasperated grandmother, who was unhappy with her laid-back son's slowness in finding a partner for her grand-daughter.Much to her grand-daughter's embarassment, she would take initiative and would ask all and sundry(even complete strangers, sitting next to her on the bus, going to her home-town!) for a match for her granddaughter! She would give the full details of her granddaughter in the bus, within hearing range of about 20 people!

My advise to children of such parents is that you should recognize in time your parents personality traits especially those which have a bearing on their finding a match for you. If you have a parent who has any of these qualities, then you better do something about it! Also, check if your parent is a good judge of character. I have seen so many arranged marriages fail as the parent failed to judge the character of the match and the match's family. The ability to judge correctly is so damn important! As one friend of mine crudely put it, arranged marriages are like buying a pumpkin in the market...you have to look at the  pumpkins from OUTSIDE and guess which one is  good ...and buy it...you have to buy the pumpkin before you can cut it...and once you have bought it and  cut it, you cannot return even it if it turns out to be bad!
Parents who are too sticky and reject all matches or the opposite i.e. parents who agree to every single proposal ...even for matches who are grossly unsuited to their children are another set of  parents who are setting up their children for future marriage disasters.
I  just read this article to edit and I am realizing how much one's spouse selection is influenced by parents and how little control one has over it! The more I read this and think about arranged marriage, the more I realize how  archiac it is and that it  needs to be stopped...or changed drastically.

It is time for Indian youth to take charge of their lives and find spouses for themselves. Time to stop giving in to parents and families finding partners. Come on, please think. Who knows you better than yourself? Why do you think a spouse found by your mother and father will suit you better than one you find yourself?

Indian youth need to be assertive with families who push them into arranged marriages. They should realize that  marriage is one of the biggest decisons in one's  life and one which has a tremendous impact on quality of life. As this is the biggest and most important decision, the person marrying should make the decision and not someone else...even if it is the parents. 

You should agree to marry someone because you want to and NOT  because you want to obey someone or make someone else happy or get some nagger off your back...you are the one marrying and living with the person, it is not your father or mother who has to live with the partner...so marry only if you are sure, you will be happy with the person.

You are spending the rest of  your  life with your spouse...your parents may force you to marry someone, but they are not going to live the marriage...you are.

 It is utter foolishness to marry someone to make your family happy and then be bitter and resentful for the rest of your life saying that you were forced to marry and that you wanted to marry someone else! You are a grade A loser if you do that. It is better to gather courage, to be assertive and say no to your parents if you do not want to marry...instead of being meek and acquiescent with your parents. Please grow a spine people! Dont be spineless and say yes when you mean no....especially for important decisions such as marriage.

I have come across many blogs where the arranged marriage concept has been written about very well. Those authors' are witty, humorous and I have to admit with truth & envy  that they write better than me.
However, I do not want to  write about arranged marriages in a humorous vein. I am troubled by the large number of people in arranged marriages who are leading miserable lives, unable or unwilling to get out. Humour helps to cover up the mess;  I want to expose the ugliness of arranged marriages; I will not allow humour to make this ugly archiac concept palatable.

As I do not find many articles against arranged marriages by guys, I guess, women suffer more through arranged marriages than men. Maybe, arranged marriages work out very well for Indian men!

Here are the links to some funny articles on arranged marriages
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/16/living/arranged-marriage/index.html
above link is for  the article 'Arranged marriage, American-style'

http://www.basenotes.net/entries/2800-Blind-Buys-are-like-Arranged-Marriages



http://rivr.sulekha.com/arranged-marriage_87529_blog


http://almostarranged.com/post/4928009222/arranged-brunch


http://anuglyhead.blogspot.ca/2011/07/game-over.html
http://anuglyhead.blogspot.ca/2011/10/somebody-please-marry-me.html

http://sepiamutiny.com/blog/2006/06/02/more_abcd_arran/


http://smruthy.blogspot.ca/2007/10/arrange-marriage-tribulations-beginning.html

http://arrangedindianmarriage.blogspot.ca/

and the book, Marrying Anita by Anita Jain.

advise to guys going into arranged marriages in India

ADVISE TO GUYS GOING INTO ARRANGED MARRIAGES(in India)

My number one advise is that you do not say this to the girl after you marry her:

“I was not interested in marrying you. I was forced to by my parents”.

This is one disgusting sentence, many a bride has to hear, the moment, a minor tiff occurs between the newly weds.

·         Please develop a spine/ develop some courage to say   ”No. I don’t want to marry”  to your parents when they pressure you instead of taking our your anger against the poor girl after you marry her!  Even if you forget about ethics and decency, at least think logically….It is better to say No to your parents before you marry ; there is no logic in whining and torturing the girl you married, AFTER you marry.

·         (3)*Please tell your parents you do not want dowry/gifts/”a honeymoon” paid by your father-in-law.

Remember that the girl may keep quiet about you and your parents expecting dowry/gifts, etc but thinks very poorly of you. You would die of shame if you hear, what girls who give dowry think of you and your parents.  These are some of the things you and your parents were called by me and my friends who were discussing your rapacious greed when you loot the girls family in the name of marriage:

Bunch of losers

Sons of bitches

Beggars

Greedy snakes

Dirty bastards

Family of whores and prostitutes.

The rest are unprintable.

Do you really want to demand dowry, when this is the opinion the girl has of you???

·         Remember, the girl’s father has worked as hard as your father. Why should he alone spend for the wedding? Why the hell cant your son-of-a-bitch father, share the expenses??? I am not calling your father son of a bitch, but one irate friend of mine is calling all Indian men, who do not spend for their sons’ wedding as bastards. I know she should be more polite but I also agree that you guys deserve it.

·         Another advise to the families of guys going in for arranged marriage is, “Please do not ask for a “grand wedding” when you guys are not spending  a penny for the marriage! The girl’s family is not a bank for you to loot! Do you guys have any shame or decency at all???

·         Guys. Please do not think you are being smart or clever when you couch your demand for dowry or a grand wedding in honeyed words. The girl and her family are not stupid and can read between the lines. They may be too polite to let you know that they can read your intentions. Please remember that whether you are crass enough to ask for the money upfront or to ask later in a veiled manner…it is the same. You are nothing but a ‘very demanding set of beggars’ or bhikaris as my friend and mother put it. If you want to be thought of as beggars, then go ahead and ask for dowry. If you want respect, then forget about dowry. The irony about today’s Indian guys is that they are so shameless that many openly say, they would rather have the dowry than respect as respect is not of practical use to them!

·         Guys, also realize that it is a very very humiliating and hateful process the girl goes through, when you come to her house with your parents to “see her”…….Girls hate it but have to submit to their parents wishes. Remember, many girls curse you and your parents, and if God exists, their curses may actually work!

·         After coming to the girl’s house, eating like pigs and going away, it is disgusting that you do not have the courtesy to inform the family quickly whether you want to marry the girl or not…you keep the girl and her family wait in a state of tension, for days together. Please do have to courtesy to inform, immediately.

·         Guys in the west, Please do not think that you deserve a beautiful girl who will bring a fat dowry and whose father will spend for a grand wedding, simply because you are in USA.

·         Guys. You should develop social skills and know how to interact. Most of my friends who had to meet guys when their families were looking for grooms, found that the guys going in for arranged marriage have miserable social skills, are poor at conversations(how the hell do they do their jobs as engineers, doctors, etc, when they can’t form 2 decent sentences?) and have no clue, about interacting with women.  These days, girls do not want to be married to a guy just because he is an engineer or doctor or whatever…girls want  husbands with social skills, ability to dress well, interact well with a range of people ….

·         And one comment all my friends have to say to the dozens of spineless Indian  guys in arranged marriages, who are making their wives lives  miserable…because they did not want to marry but were forced to against their wish by their retarded and evil parents…..SHAME ON YOU!

Here is another comment for guys going into arranged marriages….A girl from Andhra who married a doctor(MD medicine) was heard saying this to her friends on her wedding day,  “ We got him quite cheap. Only 18 lakhs!”    …… Are you guys a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder?

Guys going into arranged marriages……Please Please Please get yourselves a conscience, some morals, some respect for yourselves and for women, get yourselves some spine to stand up to your parents, get yourselves a reality check and PLEASE realize that you are not only nothing special but actually quite banal….

·         One thing, I cannot understand about both guys and girls going into arranged marriages is this…..when you do so much research before selecting  a course to study, or before  buying  a house or a car or even a simple pair of jeans, how the hell can you select a life partner, after seeing a girl/guy for a few minutes! Don’t you think, selecting a life partner deserves greater research…don’t you think you need to know your future life partner well , before you agree to marry….

You can always discard a shirt, which you bought in a hurry…it’s no great loss. But can you so easily discard the person you married in a hurry?  This is one mystery of Indian arranged marriages I can never understand. I have seen Indian girls relentlessly going from shop to shop to find the perfectly matching blouse piece for a sari…a girl can spend two days to find the right colour blouse for her sari …..and yet  the same girl, agrees or disagrees  to marry a guy after she meets him for a few minutes!

Before someone says, why are you not telling the same thing for girls going into arranged marriages, let me inform you that girls have a lot less freedom, even today in India…I have seen girls locked up and beaten for refusing to marry the boy chosen  by their parents. This does not happen to boys…they have more freedom.

Lot of Indian girls think that Indian  guys go in for arranged marriages as they are too lazy to exert themselves or too socially clumsy to find a girl on their own…. And they very well  know that all they have to do is  tell their parents the kind of  girl  they want and and their parents will find  many and aksk him to select one!

Visiting Relatives

Three relatives of mine are visiting the US & Canada now. They are 2 women and a man, all in their sixties. While one lady has a Bachelor’s degree and the man is a retired doctor, the other lady has finished high school. All three were born and brought up in villages, but have lived their adult lives  in a major south Indian city and are of middle class background.  
 I have explained their backgrounds above..this is   because I cannot understand, how with this middleclass, urban Indian background and education,   they could still  behave in  really exasperating ways!

All three of my relatives  have children, who have settled in America(USA & Canada). This is their first visit to the USA & Canada. This type of visit is typical of all immigrants to USA & Canada .....The pattern runs like this: kids come here to study, then get a job in USA and then settle here for good. Parents visit to see them and also see the country....parents also visit to help their adult children  by looking after their grand-kids.

Now about my relatives' annoying behaviours!

The behaviour of the 2 women, which bugged me the most was their refusal to sit on the toilets, either at home or in the public toilets. They have this  firm unshakable belief  that the toiletseats are dirty and they do not want any part of their body touching it. They stand to pee ...ergo..there is pee on the toilet seat and on the floor! I end up queuing up outside the  toilet  my relatives use in all public bathrooms, so that I can go in and wipe the toilet seat! I do not want people in North America hating all Indian women, because of these two, messing up the toilets! I have repeatedly and gently told them, to sit and pee but they still mess  up the toilets!

Another  behaviour of theirs which is bugging me is that they avoid eye contact and do not greet when any friendly stranger greets them on the street.  If I happen to be around when this happens, I jump in, smile at the greeter and explain that they do not understand English.

 I cant understand why my folks cannot even return a smile…even if they do not understand the language, they are surely able to get the friendliness of the greeter through his or her body language, and smiles.

Refusal to try any food other than Indian food is another thing which rankles with me! We end up spending a lot of time, hunting for an Indian restaurant in a new city we are sightseeing in…time which could be used for more sightseeing. But my folks insist on Indian and refuse to try anything else. Once when I could not find any Indian restaurant, I took them to a Tim Horton’s and got them a sub. The women pulled out all the meat and vegetables between the two pieces of bread and ate only the bread! One lady especially was put off by dried tomatoes, claiming that  it was meat!

Curiosity about the personal aspects of people, relentless gossip about the relatives and their issues, morbid curiosity about others was another whole set of behaviours I witnessed in my two visiting  lady relatives. I too had gossiped and probably been rude to some extent when  I was in India, years ago…I cannot deny that…but I do not think I was this rude!

The final and most bugging behaviour of theirs was the constant comments (usually negative) and advice coming from these two  women. If I make a list of their advice and comments,  it would be endless! Here are a few comments and advice of theirs.

“This food is too salty in this sambar. “ or

“The salt is too  less in this rasam”.

“Why do you have so many things in your house? Throw out the things.”

“Why don’t you buy another house? This does not have enough storage space”.

“Get rid of your dog. Why do you want a dog?”

"Why did you buy this furniture (patio furniture for our deck) You could have bought some gold jewellery instead”.

"Why do you use artificial jewellery? Why dont you buy gold?"

"Why dont you also join a company? you can earn more"(the lady who made this comment has no clue about the job I do, but feels free to give this advise!)

One lady, especially, has very little positive to say about anyone and makes her comments in a matter-of-fact, bland tone.  From what I can infer, she does not mean to hurt…she simply makes these comments and seems to have no insight about the impact her comments can have on people.
Thinking back on all their comments and conversation, I wonder if they even think, before they talk? They are so quick to comment...they do not even finish seeing or eating or whatever...but are in a rush to comment, criticize or advise!

I keep wondering …Is  it that, in my extended family, brutal honesty is bred into us while  politeness, tact, gentleness, regard for others feelings, social skills, decency, etc  are left out?

Or is it that, I have been out of India and forgotten how rudely  Indians behave…and have got used to the Polite Canadian ways  ….

Frankly, I cant understand why  the behaviour of my visiting relatives, is shocking me…. I had been used to this behaviour when I was in India for the first three decades of my life! My relatives  have not changed...they are the same…but I seem to have changed after coming to Canada and maybe I have become sensitive to these things!
 If I record and replay, even a five minute conversation of my relatives(not just the ones from India..even the ones from Canada and USA)...one can find about 50 brutal, disparaging, condescending, sarcastic, uppity comments and hardly one or two positive comments!
(here is one bit I remember:
Me: We went on a trip to Havana.
Relative whose spouse is a doctor:Oh. Secretaries go to Cuba for a vacation.)
This particular lady puts her foot in her mouth, every single time she talks!

One last sad-funny thing about my relatives was their absolutely materialistic attitudes when they saw the houses of the various cousins they visited. They were impressed by the size of the bigger houses and unimpressed by the smaller houses. They advised the cousins with smaller houses to get bigger ones! They did not spare a thought  about how the person with the  smaller house will feel when they comment like that. They did not try to understand that some people would like to spend their money on things other than houses…that people have big houses for a reason and small houses for a reason.  Their materialistic outlook  was so strong that they failed to appreciate the aesthetic aspects of the beautiful things around them…especially in the smaller houses. They did not seem to even see the original art work in the small houses, the beauty and old world charm of the old houses (they loved the new houses and did not like the older ones), they did not appreciate the friendly lovely neighbours….All they could see was the big size of the houses and newness of the big houses and the things in them….they simply could not even see, let alone appreciate anything else.

I should probably not expect them to have an aesthetic sense similar to mine, considering that we do not share backgrounds and experiences (though we do share the same DNA) but I am still saddened  that  they are not able to appreciate so much of the beauty around them. I think they would be unimpressed and put off if I had shown them creative ways of recycling things or showed them items altered to repurpose them for other uses...I find this altering and reuse of items  very exciting, aesthetically appealing and creative but my two female relatives would rather  throw out the old things and buy new things meant for the job  instead of recycling & repurposing. I am now able to fathom, how creativity is crushed by Indian parents!

I feel  really sorry for one of the ladies whose child has the smallest house of all the cousins…ergo, the least successful of the dozen cousins who migrated to America over the last 25 years!

 She had been happy with her child’s house when she first landed in America . She loved the house and enjoyed it. Once  she started visiting relatives and sightseeing all over USA & Canada and saw the huge houses of her nephews and nieces she seemed to become aware that her child had a 'small' house. I hope that at some time,  she understands that her child is content with what he has and loves his home and  is happy and that happiness is the most important thing…not a huge house or wealth!

I hope my folks stay long enough to appreciate the non-material beauty of America….such as the polite behaviour of people, the safety women have at home, work place and in public places, the respect, comforts and priority given to disabled and  aged people in all places, the attention to detail and aesthetics in buildings, houses, gardens, and even the humble bus-stands, the absence of corruption and hassles (which  the common man in India faces daily). I think they need to live here for at least 6 months to get a deeper understanding of these two countries in the American continent. Right now, they are blown away by the  overtly visible ....they have not yet had time to see and experience all aspects of life here.

 I have been a bit harsh, criticising my folks here. Given more time, they may probably  get a deeper understanding of life in America and slowly evolve. I know for a fact that I did change a lot after coming to Canada. 

Books read in June-July 2012

These are the books from Toronto Public Library  I was/am reading and enjoying. This list includes only those books I really liked and wish to reccomend others to read.

1)Saudi Arabia Exposed:Inside a Kingdom in Crisis by John R Bradley.

2) The Eye of  Jade by Diane Wei Liang

While the first is by a journalist and tells about Saudi Arabia today, the second is a crime fiction and tells about life in China today. Both books are highly readable(Bradley's more readable, though it is not fiction!).

After reading Bradley's book, I was inspired to borrow again and read a crime fiction book set in Saudi Arabia i.e. ' City of veils' by Ferraris. I am also thrilled that her  new book  i.e. Kingdom of Strangers has been released! I am waiting to get my hands on it...Hurry up TPL! Give me the book soon!

Incidentally, Ferraris is an American lady who was married to a Saudi-Palestinian Bedouin when she wrote her first book "Finding Nouf". By the time she wrote her second book, City of veils, she had seperated from him and moved back  to USA. Her books reveal how claustrophobic life is for Saudi women. The more I read books set in Saudi and other Gulf countries, the more I grateful that I was not born there! Other books I read recently set in Saudi Arabia, include The Ruins of us by Keija Parssinen, which reflects life of a Saudi family and the emotional difficulties faced by a son born of an American mother and Saudi father. A Gentleman's game: a queen and country novel by Greg Rucka. This is a thriller about a female assasin of the British government who kills a terrorist.
I did borrow a few other books set in this region but stopped reading half-way through. The books may be good but for some reason, they did not hold my attention i.e. Wolves of the cresent moon, The sand cafe and The desert contract.

A few other books I have booked at TPL as the reviews impressed me include:

American Dervish..I generally read only crime fiction but I am going to read this, though it is not crime fiction. I was impressed by the review and curious about the story.
Lone wolf and Stone rain by Linwood Barclay: both are crime fction. This author is new to me but I liked one book of his I read and so I am reading all of his.
Caught by Harlan Coben..I have never read any book of this guy...but a review of this book revealed that this story also has  a televised sting about sexual predators and I want to read about it. I remember seeing a program on tv which was a sting operation and I had found it very very entertaining!  I know it is bad of me to find this entertaining but I found it so funny when these guys got caught!!!
One last book is 'Decorating Junk market style". I hope  this is the same book I had read and loved a long time ago. I will let you know, when I get this book.
31st July: Yep. This is the same book and I loved browsing through it!
Enjoyed reading Caught but did not like another book by same author i.e. Live Wire.
Enjoyed Kingdom of Strangers too.....a crime fiction set in Saudi
Now looking forward to reading a novel set in India i.e. The Sarishop by Rupa Bajwa.
Once again, I am so immensly grateful to the Toronto Public Library which makes my reading possible...free of cost!
If I were in India, I would not have read even one tenth of what I am reading now because of ..(a).poorly funded  public libraries which do not have english novels ...at least the type I read;(b) few private circulating libraries where one pays to borrow books and they still cannot afford to buy all the books I want...(c)buying books to read is out of question in India as the salary one makes is not adequate...buying 'foreign' titles especially is expensive.

Are traits such as carelessness, laziness and procrastination as bad as 'evil intent' or jealousy?

I had, till now,  been easygoing about certain traits in people  such as laziness, procrastination, inefficiency and so on. These traits did not upset me much and I  would forgive the display of such traits easily.  My reasons for this easy forgiveness about such traits:   Lazy people or procrastinating people(or whatever trait) are basically 'good & decent' people ;  "all human beings have faults";"these people are not evil"; "everyone is careless sometime"; "I too  am careless at times". Infact, I have been very forgiving and accepting of any triats or behaviours which I believed were not "evil' or had 'evil intent' underlying them.

I had however, been very unforgiving  about behaviours such as lying, cheating, stealing, harming others, wilfully hurting others, jealousy, etc. I found these impossibly hard to forgive as I believed that these behaviours were evil or had an underlying 'evil' motive .

Something happened recently that made me rethink my easygoing attitude towards the traits I believed should be forgiven, as they were 'not evil'. I am now, no longer, easy-going about these traits.

Three to four weeks ago, someone close to me was  drastically affected by the laziness, procrastination and inefficiency shown by a HR staff in his organization. Here is the bald, brief version of the story.

  Due to the inefficiency of this staff in HR, my friend  did not get his H1 visa; consequently  the great job and pay  he had been offered a week before was withdrawn.  To continue to stay legally in USA,  he shelled out his meagre savings and quickly enrolled  into a university(a third rate one at that!). By enrolling in this university, he got his student visa and will not get turfed out of USA.  His future plans have been put on hold for one more year..plans including clearing bank loans, getting married,  visiting his family, buying a better car,etc. Thanks to the  inefficiency, procrastination, laziness, lack of knowledge and sheer pig-headedness of this HR staff,  my friend's  path went from prosperity to  basic existence!
 My friend was badly upset for a week but thankfully he has recovered....he is a pretty resilient guy and  I hope he has  not become permanently embittered by this experience!


 Traits such as laziness, procrastination, inefficiency, stupidity, carelessness,  do not fall  on the 'good-evil'  dimension. Yet, these traits or behaviours are NOT innocuous; These traits too  can have terrible effects on people's lives.
The lazy person or careless person  may not have any evil intent when they do things but they can still cause serious harm to others. For example, people have died due to doctor's carelessness; people have been killed by an engineeer's inefficient work on roads and railways; lives have been ruined by procrastination of the people in power. The list goes on and  on.

. A lot of grief can be caused by 'good, decent and well meaning' people who display behaviours  which can negatively impact others lives. Detective Thomas Hauk in 'The Wire' is one example who comes to mind. His carelessness, procrastination and stupidity had such terrible consequences on the lives of others...it was unbelievable and unpardonable.

The sad fact of life is that, there are people with such traits in powerful positions, where they can cause a lot of grief and continue to cause grief, year after bloody year. Yet, they are not removed from their positions or asked to improve or punished! They continue to damage the lives of people by their unchanging stupidity, carelessness, etc.The HR staff I mentioned above, has affected not just one peron's life this year but at least a few! This staff has procrastinated in the previous years too, leading to other employees not getting thier H1 visas in the same way as my friend; yet the management, has not done anything about this!

The same thing is seen in other organizations too. I have seen people, who mess up other people's lives,  Yet these people, continue, in their positions, without any improvement.

In one organization, dealing with mental health, I have seen two people, a psychologist and a psychometrist doing almost zero work, year after year for decades! Yet they have neither been kicked out or reprimended and made to improve. The psychologist has now earned about a million dollars(about 90k per year) doing nothing and so has the psychometrist!!! The work load on thier collegues is more as these two bums dont do any work. If you want to know, they do no other work too at the organization such as teaching students, participating in research or attending to the extra works which are there in any organization. The psychometrist thinks she is fooling everyone by giving a gift to all in her department i.e. a handful of chocolates and a greeting card! Does she think, that the people are fools who will fall for her chocolates??? I am so pissed off with these two but I am not in a position of power to kick them out! I wish I had the nerve to do something about this...but the cowardice which seems to be a malise in either my department or in Canada is affecting me too! 

My favorite moments in childhood

Recalling my childhood days, I have decided that the happiest moments of childhood were when I was reading the Ladybird books for children in the Malleshwaram City Central Library on ? Margosa road or ?Sampige road in the 70s. This library had a large space in front of it (If I remember right, the library was facing the large space of it's own backyard and not the street in front.)
These ladybird books had the  loveliest illustrations and to this day they remain a great favorite of mine. The books I read included Snowwhite and Rosered, Rapunzel, Sleeping beauty, Cinderella, Dick Whittington & his cat, amongst several others. These stories are available in many many forms such as, as a story in an English text book in schools; in a book of  stories for children without illustrations and in  illustrated story books for children.
These stories have also been illustrated in a myriad different styles in different publications;    the Ladybird publication house itself,  has republished the same stories with new styles of illustrations over the years. However it is only this particular artwork  which could put me in a trance!

I discovered through googling,  that  Vera Southgate was the writer and Eric Winter was the illustrator of these lovely pictures. These books have one page of writing followed by one page of art work illustrating the story and these books mesmerized me as a child.  The illustrations were the best part of the books for me. As a child in 70s India, I , of course, did not know a thing about hard-bound books or soft bound books, or what a font or font size is or about the texture of pages of books. Yet,  I think I unconsciously  also appreciated the fact that the books were hardbound; the size and weight of these books were ideal for a child; the font, the size of the font, the textures of the pages( I  remember the texture, now, after more than 35 years!!) were just perfect.
I would literally go into a trance when I read these books. I read these books over and over again, staring for endless hours at the illustrations and daydreaming. I especially loved the ? water colour paintings of cottages (roof covered with thatch/hay) in the middle of the forest which is depicted in many of the stories such as Snowwhite and Rosered, I loved the paintings of the gardens (The witch's garden in Rapunzel) in some books. To me the art work depicted the picture of an ideal, perfect and beautiful world, somewhere out there in England, where I could not go but only dream off.  I simply cannot describe the rapture I felt, while gazing at these illustrations! At that young age, I actually believed that these stories truly happened and that the places and people and animals  did look like it did in the art-work! Those fairy tales seemed to be happening in some heavenly place and I was in Heaven when I read those books. The clothes of the princes and princesses, the palaces, the illustration of the weeping willow tree in one of these books, the forest in which Red Ridinghood walked are unforgettable. I wonder if the impact of the illustrations on me would have  been different if they were in oils instead of water colors. Who knows?
Later I saw several other books and the newer Ladybird book editions of the same stories but none of them were as attractive to me to read as the ones illustrated by Eric Winter. Now when I google, I do see, new illustrations done in various styles such as in Manga style, but they do not enrapture me. I wish the illustrations had never changed but then, who can prevent change? It is as unstoppable as the passage of time!

My heartfelt gratitude to Eric Winter, who I was sad to discover is dead.

Here are links to the  pictures of the book covers of those books.

Below is a link for all  pictures of one book

stories-fairy-tales-&-rhymes/rapunzel/page/1/view/12

http://www.ladybirdprints.com/category/6238/stories-fairy-tales-&-rhymes/rapunzel/page/2/view/12

http://www.ladybirdprints.com/category/6238/stories-fairy-tales-&-rhymes/rapunzel/page/3/view/12

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http://www.ladybirdprints.com/category.php?catid=5966

Above link gives a partial look at the covers of the books I enjoyed.  

Tumbe Hoovu in Toronto

Just a while ago, I was bemoaning the fact that certain plants, birds, insects, I grew up with in Bangalore are now missing. One of the plants I mentioned was the tumbe hoovu(Leucas aspera-common Leucas)
 I was surprised and happy to see the Tumbe Hoovu plant, being sold at Toronto's Canadian Super Store today(June 3rd 2012) in their gardening section. This store was selling the red Tumbe Hoovu plant  i.e. the Salvia Coccinea and not the white or pink flower ones, common in Bangalore, in the past. Years ago, the red Tumbe Hoovu  was rare in Bangalore, while the pink flowers were commonly seen in house gardens. The white Tumbe flowers(Leucas Aspera) grew wild, in empty lots, farm lands and at times in homes. This white flower was supposed to be a favorite of Lord

Shiva! (Any wild flower, which are not popular was supposedly

liked by Shiva. I wonder why? Even the flower of the milk weed is

supposeldy a Shiva favorite. Are the unwanted, unpopular less beautiful, common things liked by Shiva...Like ashes, Bilva leaves, Tumbe flowers, snakes, etc)

The botanical name for the two flowers are different i.e. Leucas 

Aspera and Salvia Coccinea, that I wonder, if we, in India, are 

calling two different flowers of two different species by one name

i.e. Tumbe Hoovu?