Oh America!
Farzana Versey January 12, 2003
#50 Posted by Pankaj on January 15, 2003 4:44:05 pm
Dulla bhatti
``like Hindi wale master ji, Parbhakar ji, used to say...Kendriya Bhaav matters the most...imtihan mein yehi aata hai. ``
My Hindi madam used to call it ``saar-tatva``. Kendriya bhaav sounds like the literal translation of ``central theme``. I like the word ``saar-tatva`` better :-)
``like Hindi wale master ji, Parbhakar ji, used to say...Kendriya Bhaav matters the most...imtihan mein yehi aata hai. ``
My Hindi madam used to call it ``saar-tatva``. Kendriya bhaav sounds like the literal translation of ``central theme``. I like the word ``saar-tatva`` better :-)
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#51 Posted by dullabhatti on January 15, 2003 5:15:42 pm
Pankaj: I made that up..I actually don`t remember what Parbhakar ji said..been long time.:-).
#52 Posted by ana_dobarah on January 15, 2003 5:15:54 pm
farzoo...thanks for the Eminem piece...i`ve yet to hear one of his tracks, let alone meet him!!!
and pata kya...you really should write a piece for some chowkies one of these days in which there is no thought, no questioning, and perhaps nothing from the heart either. prejudiced first-time voyager thi tum amreeka maiN...yahan tau kuch bande aap ka good naam se permanently prejudiced ho gaye haiN....khair, ``kuch tau log kaheNge, logoN ka kaam hai kehna. . .``
love, a.
and pata kya...you really should write a piece for some chowkies one of these days in which there is no thought, no questioning, and perhaps nothing from the heart either. prejudiced first-time voyager thi tum amreeka maiN...yahan tau kuch bande aap ka good naam se permanently prejudiced ho gaye haiN....khair, ``kuch tau log kaheNge, logoN ka kaam hai kehna. . .``
love, a.
#53 Posted by Ali87 on January 15, 2003 10:10:01 pm
#43 by ssdhillon on January 14, 2003 3:31pm PT
Your justification for the whole article is that you agreee you are prejudiced. Keep your prejudices to yourself. There are many people with something creative to post.
---
yet you do the same against muslims and see no harm. Why? or are you blind to your own prejudice?
Your justification for the whole article is that you agreee you are prejudiced. Keep your prejudices to yourself. There are many people with something creative to post.
---
yet you do the same against muslims and see no harm. Why? or are you blind to your own prejudice?
#54 Posted by S.P.Wakil on January 16, 2003 6:52:57 am
I suggest that all of us write up our own experiences, impressions and emotions that we ran into during our first 30 days or so in the United States. Then compare our interpretations of then and of now of those experiences.
It should make an interesting study for ourselves and a priceless general [Ethnographic] gem in the field of ethnography and anthropology; a gem of a piece of humourous writing, a guide for visitors and students from our part of the world and so on and on...
I feel that such narratives may be very narrow for most since many of the visitors and particularly the students never get an opportunity to go about so many places as has Farzana Versey, still, the objective is to make an original communication, not necessarily a comparative one. When the experiences are collected, the work should cover a fairly large geographical area, perhaps as large as Farzana Versey has traversed.
To show that I am serious and honest about it I shall be the first.
It should make an interesting study for ourselves and a priceless general [Ethnographic] gem in the field of ethnography and anthropology; a gem of a piece of humourous writing, a guide for visitors and students from our part of the world and so on and on...
I feel that such narratives may be very narrow for most since many of the visitors and particularly the students never get an opportunity to go about so many places as has Farzana Versey, still, the objective is to make an original communication, not necessarily a comparative one. When the experiences are collected, the work should cover a fairly large geographical area, perhaps as large as Farzana Versey has traversed.
To show that I am serious and honest about it I shall be the first.
#55 Posted by S.P.Wakil on January 16, 2003 6:52:57 am
This is a Jaini story, I sent it to my dear friend, Zeemax, some years ago on the Chowk. He had not heard it and had asked me to send it to him. The story goes something like this:
These three/five/seven blind men heard that a mahawat was taking his elephant to the nearby pond for a dip and wash. Knowing not what an elephant looked like, these blind men expressed the wish to know what it was. The mahawat let them come close to the elephant and touch it.
One of the blind men took its tail in hand, the other put his arms around its leg, and still another its trunk. And so on....
After the elephant was gone, one of them said, ``what a magnificient animal the elephant was; it was like a solid pillar``. At this another said that ``it was not all that solid really. It was big and thick alright, but it curled all the time and was pliable, supple and pliant like a giant worm.`` The third was totally disappointed at these descriptions and said that he didn`t know what these two were talking about. ``It was more like a thick, small rope hanging from a wall,`` he added.
And so it went. For instance, the fellow who had touched its ear had another picture of the elephant, and said that he did not know what the others were talking about. ``The elephant was like a huge hand fan!``, he said almost disdainfully to his friends.
The moral of the story is clear, in fact there are many, e.g., from the elementary psychology`s concept of the importance of `reality testing` in learning, to the most emphatically and positively demonstrated power of developing a weltanschauung -- our `world-view`.
The story is quite common and I am sure you have heard it. The point in it, to repeat, is how as individuals of different ideas and backgrounds, of different weltanschauungs, we grow up with different world-views and interpret reality -- including art and literature -- in the `light` -- socialization? -- of our own `worlds`. They differ. Only [Linton`s]
`cultural universals` are shared by all, or almost all, of us; so should they be, by virtue of the definition being tautological.
But apart from those `universals` we are very different beings. We are! Our biological baggage interacts [X] with culture, and both of these interact [X] with our unique personal experiences! We are interacting social beings alright but in our personal interpretations of art, literature, humour and symbolic presentations of all genres we are indiviual human boutiques, custom made; one-of-a-kind!
That is what makes some of us painters and others not, some writers and others not. And just to focus on writers for a minute, among writers some John Steinbecks [Travels with Charley] while others, Verseys and Arundhati Roys, pets of gods, irrespective of, whether of small things or of large!
Then there are the literary Lumpenproletariats, of sorts, who learned English composition in their Corporation high schools and some grammar at the same time, and can put a few sentences together as if committing word-rape....
[And start expressing them in the Chowk as sterling opinions, nay, facts, {number of words, lines and such ?} -- perhaps all of us end up doing this at one time or another].
No matter how we look at ourselves, the elephants or the Jainis, we are all blind. The ‘elephant’ at the time does not mind being looked at the way it is, piecemeal [gradationally] and mis-‘conceivedly’. But the elephant is blind too. We, in this universe, shall remain so since this is how the universe is.
I should feel that of all our friends the writer, the literary personage, the erudite litterateur would be more alive to this reality and receptive to it since this is part of the whole package of learning, seeing, studying; being alive to life, and such aspects of it, to which, the hoi-polloi lack appropriate sensitivity than the literati. A litterateur has, or so one hopes, the sensitivity of mind in a way the wine taster has a sensitive palate.
It would be disappointing if the universality of blindness were lost sight of and an elephant, as if with a 20/20 sight, were assumed installed,
‘absent’, as the lawyers say, ‘the realization that the elephant is the biggest blind of us all’ ! I make this statement as a generic case, of course, and, thus, it has no relevance to any specific person on or off Chowk; dead or alive !!
These three/five/seven blind men heard that a mahawat was taking his elephant to the nearby pond for a dip and wash. Knowing not what an elephant looked like, these blind men expressed the wish to know what it was. The mahawat let them come close to the elephant and touch it.
One of the blind men took its tail in hand, the other put his arms around its leg, and still another its trunk. And so on....
After the elephant was gone, one of them said, ``what a magnificient animal the elephant was; it was like a solid pillar``. At this another said that ``it was not all that solid really. It was big and thick alright, but it curled all the time and was pliable, supple and pliant like a giant worm.`` The third was totally disappointed at these descriptions and said that he didn`t know what these two were talking about. ``It was more like a thick, small rope hanging from a wall,`` he added.
And so it went. For instance, the fellow who had touched its ear had another picture of the elephant, and said that he did not know what the others were talking about. ``The elephant was like a huge hand fan!``, he said almost disdainfully to his friends.
The moral of the story is clear, in fact there are many, e.g., from the elementary psychology`s concept of the importance of `reality testing` in learning, to the most emphatically and positively demonstrated power of developing a weltanschauung -- our `world-view`.
The story is quite common and I am sure you have heard it. The point in it, to repeat, is how as individuals of different ideas and backgrounds, of different weltanschauungs, we grow up with different world-views and interpret reality -- including art and literature -- in the `light` -- socialization? -- of our own `worlds`. They differ. Only [Linton`s]
`cultural universals` are shared by all, or almost all, of us; so should they be, by virtue of the definition being tautological.
But apart from those `universals` we are very different beings. We are! Our biological baggage interacts [X] with culture, and both of these interact [X] with our unique personal experiences! We are interacting social beings alright but in our personal interpretations of art, literature, humour and symbolic presentations of all genres we are indiviual human boutiques, custom made; one-of-a-kind!
That is what makes some of us painters and others not, some writers and others not. And just to focus on writers for a minute, among writers some John Steinbecks [Travels with Charley] while others, Verseys and Arundhati Roys, pets of gods, irrespective of, whether of small things or of large!
Then there are the literary Lumpenproletariats, of sorts, who learned English composition in their Corporation high schools and some grammar at the same time, and can put a few sentences together as if committing word-rape....
[And start expressing them in the Chowk as sterling opinions, nay, facts, {number of words, lines and such ?} -- perhaps all of us end up doing this at one time or another].
No matter how we look at ourselves, the elephants or the Jainis, we are all blind. The ‘elephant’ at the time does not mind being looked at the way it is, piecemeal [gradationally] and mis-‘conceivedly’. But the elephant is blind too. We, in this universe, shall remain so since this is how the universe is.
I should feel that of all our friends the writer, the literary personage, the erudite litterateur would be more alive to this reality and receptive to it since this is part of the whole package of learning, seeing, studying; being alive to life, and such aspects of it, to which, the hoi-polloi lack appropriate sensitivity than the literati. A litterateur has, or so one hopes, the sensitivity of mind in a way the wine taster has a sensitive palate.
It would be disappointing if the universality of blindness were lost sight of and an elephant, as if with a 20/20 sight, were assumed installed,
‘absent’, as the lawyers say, ‘the realization that the elephant is the biggest blind of us all’ ! I make this statement as a generic case, of course, and, thus, it has no relevance to any specific person on or off Chowk; dead or alive !!
#56 Posted by FarhanNazeer on January 16, 2003 11:50:54 am
Very disappointing, to say the least. Shallow and highly biased observation and opinions, generated from seemingly preconceived ideas. You should stick to writing about India, FV.
#58 Posted by sri on January 16, 2003 6:55:15 pm
American Express ( #57 ),
So leave this place and find your paradise in pakiland or whereever you came from.
By the way, did you register yet ?
#59 Posted by arjun_m on January 16, 2003 6:59:48 pm
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#60 Posted by PM on January 16, 2003 8:32:48 pm
Farzana,
I think your observations are quite brilliant! Both honest and probing, penetrative as well as expansive, I think you`d do Toqueville himself pretty proud.
America, IMO, is indeed a land of paradoxes and extremes. That, is what yopu get, I suppose when you mix a healthy dose of liberalism (at least economic), fanatically stress on individualism, have people as diverse in ethnicity and of course have corporate interests constantly brought to bear on society.
You aid it weel when you said: ``As somebody said, “You can be impressed by efficiency and dismayed by commercialism; enraptured by natural beauty and appalled by urban ugliness; overwhelmed by kindness and offended by indifference; staggered by wealth and shocked by poverty.”
The truth, of course, is that there really is no `American` character. It`s diverstiy may make nonsense of any attempt to define a nation in cultural terms. Maybe the best part--also the unnerving part-- about it is that is more or less, at least in the cultural sense, a microcosm of the world.
Once again, thoroghly enjoyed the keenness of observation, even if you came across as a tad judgemental (in the bot so good sense) in a few places.
regards,
PM
I think your observations are quite brilliant! Both honest and probing, penetrative as well as expansive, I think you`d do Toqueville himself pretty proud.
America, IMO, is indeed a land of paradoxes and extremes. That, is what yopu get, I suppose when you mix a healthy dose of liberalism (at least economic), fanatically stress on individualism, have people as diverse in ethnicity and of course have corporate interests constantly brought to bear on society.
You aid it weel when you said: ``As somebody said, “You can be impressed by efficiency and dismayed by commercialism; enraptured by natural beauty and appalled by urban ugliness; overwhelmed by kindness and offended by indifference; staggered by wealth and shocked by poverty.”
The truth, of course, is that there really is no `American` character. It`s diverstiy may make nonsense of any attempt to define a nation in cultural terms. Maybe the best part--also the unnerving part-- about it is that is more or less, at least in the cultural sense, a microcosm of the world.
Once again, thoroghly enjoyed the keenness of observation, even if you came across as a tad judgemental (in the bot so good sense) in a few places.
regards,
PM
#62 Posted by FarzanaVersey on January 16, 2003 10:52:22 pm
Just popped in to thank ali, Roohi and PM :) and everyone who read the article.
FarhanNazeer: I suppose it is possible to agree to disagree? This note is primarly to thank you for your kind words on my Lonely board. I had been away and therefore could not acknowledge them earlier.
Regards,
Farzana
FarhanNazeer: I suppose it is possible to agree to disagree? This note is primarly to thank you for your kind words on my Lonely board. I had been away and therefore could not acknowledge them earlier.
Regards,
Farzana
#63 Posted by Saminasha on January 17, 2003 7:03:24 am
Sri,
You forgot our queer bros and sisters....also, I`m putting out a public question to those interactors who write nasty response posts to any FV column on Chowk...why? Because I don`t understand why y`all continue to squeak your derogatory comments at her and say nothing to other writers...and let me find out that any of you live in the suburbs. Lets hear it, gentlemen...and I`d advise you to consider your comments carefully.
FV,
Eminem....all I know is that if his bone structure wasn`t as finely precise and symmetrical, we wouldn`t be having this conversation. Your piece does touch on one aspect of his success and I guess that his working class personal is political alter ego is something to think about...once I rouse the interest, I`ll check him out.
Meanwhile:
America
America I`ve given you all and now I`m nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can`t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go f yourself with your atom bomb
I don`t feel good don`t bother me.
I won`t write my poem till I`m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I`m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don`t think he`ll come back it`s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I`m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I`m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven`t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I`m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there`s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I`m perfectly right.
I won`t say the Lord`s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven`t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I`m addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I`m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It`s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody`s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven`t got a chinaman`s chance.
I`d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I`m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they`re all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don`re really want to go to war.
America it`s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia`s power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader`s Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I`d better get right down to the job.
It`s true I don`t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I`m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I`m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
-Allen Ginsberg
You forgot our queer bros and sisters....also, I`m putting out a public question to those interactors who write nasty response posts to any FV column on Chowk...why? Because I don`t understand why y`all continue to squeak your derogatory comments at her and say nothing to other writers...and let me find out that any of you live in the suburbs. Lets hear it, gentlemen...and I`d advise you to consider your comments carefully.
FV,
Eminem....all I know is that if his bone structure wasn`t as finely precise and symmetrical, we wouldn`t be having this conversation. Your piece does touch on one aspect of his success and I guess that his working class personal is political alter ego is something to think about...once I rouse the interest, I`ll check him out.
Meanwhile:
America
America I`ve given you all and now I`m nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can`t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go f yourself with your atom bomb
I don`t feel good don`t bother me.
I won`t write my poem till I`m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I`m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don`t think he`ll come back it`s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I`m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I`m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven`t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I`m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there`s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I`m perfectly right.
I won`t say the Lord`s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven`t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I`m addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I`m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It`s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody`s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven`t got a chinaman`s chance.
I`d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I`m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they`re all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don`re really want to go to war.
America it`s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia`s power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader`s Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I`d better get right down to the job.
It`s true I don`t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I`m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I`m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
-Allen Ginsberg
#64 Posted by InYourFace on January 17, 2003 8:03:47 am
#56 by FarhanNazeer
``Very disappointing, to say the least. Shallow and highly biased observation and opinions, generated from seemingly preconceived ideas. You should stick to writing about India, FV. ``
What makes you think her writings about India are any different?
``Very disappointing, to say the least. Shallow and highly biased observation and opinions, generated from seemingly preconceived ideas. You should stick to writing about India, FV. ``
What makes you think her writings about India are any different?
#65 Posted by Ali87 on January 17, 2003 11:30:02 am
#63 by Saminasha on January 17, 2003 7:03am PT
Perhaps she disturbs their carefully balanced justifications for the contradictions between the west and our countries.. They see the problems at home and consider that they are unsolvable and latch on to the nearest peice of wood floating by. You can always expect gratidue from a drowning man. No amount of crituque of the log of wood will enable them to analyse that indeed there is shore somewhere and they can reach it. For them the log is all they have and they cant think of anything else.
Perhaps she disturbs their carefully balanced justifications for the contradictions between the west and our countries.. They see the problems at home and consider that they are unsolvable and latch on to the nearest peice of wood floating by. You can always expect gratidue from a drowning man. No amount of crituque of the log of wood will enable them to analyse that indeed there is shore somewhere and they can reach it. For them the log is all they have and they cant think of anything else.
#66 Posted by rsridhar on January 17, 2003 6:48:06 pm
re:#54 by S.P.Wakil
A nice post. The elephant analogy is often told to spiritual aspirants to bring home a point. The 5 blind men, who were told to describe an elephant, gave different versions of what they taught an elephant looked like. These blind men are synonymous with the religious beliefs. Few have seen the whole picture (the whole elephant), each saw a part of the whole picture. Each is right in his own way but does not tell the complete truth.
The religious tension in today`s world is about one`s version of God and His teachings when few have seen or heard Him (like the blind men in the story). A few prophets down the ages have been given the previlege but like the blind men, they too have seen only part of the picture. Even that has been so awe-inspiring that their lives have been changed for ever. We must never forget that we are like the blind men in the story and must always seek to forge an understanding between different religious belief systems.
sridhar
A nice post. The elephant analogy is often told to spiritual aspirants to bring home a point. The 5 blind men, who were told to describe an elephant, gave different versions of what they taught an elephant looked like. These blind men are synonymous with the religious beliefs. Few have seen the whole picture (the whole elephant), each saw a part of the whole picture. Each is right in his own way but does not tell the complete truth.
The religious tension in today`s world is about one`s version of God and His teachings when few have seen or heard Him (like the blind men in the story). A few prophets down the ages have been given the previlege but like the blind men, they too have seen only part of the picture. Even that has been so awe-inspiring that their lives have been changed for ever. We must never forget that we are like the blind men in the story and must always seek to forge an understanding between different religious belief systems.
sridhar
#67 Posted by rsridhar on January 17, 2003 9:24:50 pm
re: post #66
The sentence ``The 5 blind men, who were told to ....`` should read:
The 5 blind men were asked to describe..... Just a grammatical error.
Sridhar
The sentence ``The 5 blind men, who were told to ....`` should read:
The 5 blind men were asked to describe..... Just a grammatical error.
Sridhar
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