Aimless wanderings in the Egyptian heartland. Part Ten- The ancient labour room

Dendera is not often visited… this is a boon for an enterprising traveler… one… it allows you to visit this site without being accompanied by hordes of tourists… and two… it allows you to interact with simpleton Egyptians…

Visiting such a site can be an eye opener… after seeing Aswan, Luxor… you are exasperated by the pushy nature of people around… Dendera… without any pushy seller or tout is a breath of fresh air.

The temple at Dendera… is not as grand as one that I had seen in Luxor or Aswan… but then here at Dendera… you can just roam around… in peace and tranquility… and enjoy every relief, every work of art… at your own pace… without being reminded by a guide… about the dynasty, which build the monument… about the era when it was built… and the finer aspects of the monument.

I remember, years ago, while visiting Tajmahal… I was stuck with a pushy guide… who was hell bent on giving me all sorts of trivia about the Tajmahal… And despite all those trivia, I just could not connect with the beauty of this great monument… till during my forlorn strides, I came across a small window carved out of a single marble piece… I was overwhelmed by its beauty and artistry.

Beauty and awe needs a personal connection… and no amount of tutoring can bring that.

Dendera is devoted to the deity of Hathor…and Isis. I was assisted by a Temple doorman to see the entire place… he could not speak English… and I could, but partly understand his Arabic. The Saeedi accent is a bit different from the Cairo's accent.

When you enter the place… you are led to a place called Birth Chamber… it is believed that Isis (the Sun God) was born over here… with the times to come… this birth house became a sacred labour-room… expectant mothers of royal lineage were brought to this place to deliver infants. (One could actually see the image of the patron Goddess … a mother in labour… on one of the walls of the Birth House). The Birth house itself is a hall like structure… supported on a number of huge pillars, which are adorned by a number of relief…

Standing in midst of the pillars… all by myself… I sensed a strange fear running down my spine… I could sense a hiatus of thousands of years… labour pains… and religious rituals.

The doorman then took me to a place where there is an underground crypt. I actually went inside a crypt… it ran for about 50 meters and then closed down… the doorman told me that Dendera has several such crypts… most of them closed down… and the one I entered was the smallest and the safest… it appears that these crypts were used by the priests to offer offerings to the deity.

There is nothing beyond the birth house to be seen, inside the building… I came to the first floor… there are some chambers… with diminishing relief. Lack of tourists, it seems, had made Dendera a not-so-well-kept destination.

Outside the building, however, there is a small pond called sacred lake. Sacred lake used to have a huge significance in the Pharaonic rituals. This one is dry… so you can actually take couple of steps down and reach the bottom of the lake… and then imagine this place filled with water… and the crocodiles.

A couple of steps ahead is an interesting place… a old pharaonic temple… which was first converted into a Greeco-Roman temple and then into a Coptic chapel. The signs of all the three religions are very much visible in the temple. It signifies… the dramatic and gradual changeover the Egyptian civilization underwent. People have always questioned what happened to the great Pharaonic civilizations…. Answer perhaps lies over here… great civilizations don’t die… they mutate… and then form another civilization…. We sitting at today's vantage point… view number of years as mere numbers… but forget the power of time… about how long a year is… how long a decade is… how long a century is… and how long a millennium is. Similar such questions are often raised about the great Harappan civilization… where did it disappear…it might not have disappeared at all… it could have mutated… over 2500 years… 2500 years is a long time… it’s the time duration between the Gupta period… and today's India…. it is like asking… why all of a sudden the great Hindu kingdom transformed into a secular state… hahaha

While coming out of Dendera… a girl beckoned me… a beautiful Egyptian girl… she asked me for the water bottle I was carrying. I gave it to her… she thanked me and asked where I was from… I told her that I am from India… she smiled and said Aishwarya Rai…. This was the second time… I was hearing Aishwarya's name… she is on the way to become a global celebrity.

My next stop was going to be Balyana…. I retraced my steps… went back to the main road… and then to the bus stand… overlooking the Nile… Nile is at its most beautiful facet… in this part of Egypt…. I took a service taxi to Balyana… to the most magnificent Abydos.

En route… the taxi hit a dog… it died… and the taxi stopped for almost 10-15 minutes… In the Egyptian culture dog is not a very important animal… for us Indian it is a very important animal… I thought it was inauspicious… and how inauspicious it was… unfolded in few hours…

I landed at Balyana… it was about noon time… I tried searching for Yousuf… but couldn’t find him… then met a policeman and asked for the directions of Abydos…

Abydos is located a few kilometers from the mainroad… one needs to take another taxi to reach Abydos… I took it… to reach a place that seemed to be quite touristy…

Abydos unlike Dendera… sees a number of tourists coming from either Luxor on guided tours (these tours don’t come to Dendera) or on a guided tour from Assiyut, the third largest Egyptian city and my next stop.

I was ready to enter the Abydos… but had a problem.

Amidst the stars

I am in Allahabad these days… my home town...

Having lived in mega cities of Bombay, Delhi and Cairo… life in Allahabad appears to be boring… more so when… I don’t have a internet connection… when I am stranded in a city that barely has 6-8 hours of electricity supply… when there is no friend or foe remaining… and when my wife and son are in Delhi…

So yesterday I decided to go to the Anand Bhawan (the building of happiness)…

Anand Bhawan was the ancestral house of India’s first family… the Nehru-Gandhi family. India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was born in Allahabad… in the Anand Bhawan… then Indira Gandhi too was born is this same place.

Today, the place has been converted into a museum and houses a number of memories of the era bygone. A part of the building, called Swaraj Bhawan (the building of independence)… has been converted into a children activity centre. Every summers, couple of hundred kids from all over Allahabad join the center and learn… painting, photography, pottery, carpentry and what not… I remember, that when I was a kid… I used to go to Swaraj Bhawan and spend time reading comics and magazine… (I was first introduced to “Misha” the children magazine published by Mir Publishers of erstwhile Soviet Union… over there)… I also tried my hands at painting… and pottery… (In fact, there was a time when I could make clay pots, cups and saucers… may be one day I would relearn it all)

The museum… is a small one and yet engrossing. Every time, I go there I return with some thought to ponder over. This time while walking through the library of Nehru… I saw a book written by Veer Savarkar… on the “First War of Indian Independence”… it was an eye opener… a person like Nehru… a fiercely secular person… whose credentials cannot be challenged by any arm-chair secularist of the era we live in… chose to read Savarkar… whose basic philosophy was about creating a Hindu state. Now what does that mean… it means that Nehru was not rabidly opposed to any idea… and studied every idea, researched every idea… before forming his world view…. Much unlike… a number of pseudo intellectuals (Mostly leftist) of India… who detest the very mention of any rightist literature. The greatness of Nehru and his liberal pursuit of knowledge should be a lesson for them all.

Then there was a photographic exhibition going on… it had a photo of Nehru with Shankar… the great cartoonist… I am told both were good friends. Shankar was also a collector of dolls… he collected more than 2000 dolls from various countries in the world… and finally created a museum of dolls- called Shankar Doll Museum… located in Delhi, it is one of its kind.

A little ahead was a book shop… I remember last time when I visited (and that was about 15 years ago)… the shop used to sell books from National Book Trust… (NBT publishes a number of informative children books)… this time, however, most of the books were very very superficial… I asked the book-owner… what happened to those cheap and informative NBT books… he smiled… there are no takers…highly metaphoric… today there are no takers for the liberal humanist traditions of Nehru and Gandhi too.

Nevertheless, I bought “My experiments with truth” for nth time in my life… I have never had enough of this book… the message of this book is profound… it must be one of the two most profound books I have ever read… the other being “An autobiography of a Yogi”.

A couple of steps away from this place is the Jawahar Planetarium…. It was one of the first Planetariums to be built in India… first was in Kolkata and this was the second… built with the help of Soviet Union… it had delighted generations and generations of Allahabadites.

During my childhood, I used to regularly go there… I couldn’t understand much of it… but I was dazed by the sight of stars all around… and the air-conditioned environment inside. Going there was a picnic… of sorts.

I made up my mind to see a show over there… the show turned out to be a pleasant surprise… there were a number of kids from a local school that turned up to see the show. It was fascinating to see their enthusiasm to know about the cosmos around.

The Planetarium has two machines… one which gives a person’s weight on moon and one that gives a person’s weight in Jupiter… I remember… it used to be a source of mirth for us…imagine weighing just 7 kgs or weighing 700 kgs… that is the kind of weights that weighing machine used to give us.

I bought a solar clock for 10 rupees… today it was cloudy… I will try to use it tomorrow and smile… for I would unravel my childhood yet again with it.

The show was on stars… and how they are born…. Before that the show gave us primer on the movement of the stars… I could understand how zodiac signs are decided…

Then the discussion shifted to nebulae, to stars, to white dwarfs and to black holes… in half an hour show… I saw it all…

It’s strange but true… having read books like… Big Bang, A Brief History of Almost Everything, A brief history of Time, Cosmos… I still could learn something new from that rudimentary children star show…

I learnt one more thing… never close your eyes when some knowledge is being disbursed… howsoever elementary….

Ramadan Kareem

Ramadan Kareem….

I must have seen 30 Ramadans before I arrived in Cairo… at least 30… I was born on an Eid-ul-Fitr, just after a Ramadan.

To me Ramadan in India… was a passive thing… that happened to Muslims… though; it meant that after the Ramadan would be Eid… when I can go to the houses of my Muslim friends and have a bowlful of delicious "siwai"- dipped in molasses. The taste and aroma of the siwai was absolutely heavenly… it was the oriental meeting with the Arab… Arabs, too, make something like siwai… but often it is not dipped in molasses… when that dish came to India… perhaps, somebody invented siwai dipped in molasses… and as they say the rest was history… today Eid-ul-Fitr is often referred as "Siwaiyon wali Eid" that is the Eid in which siwai is cooked… or referred to as Mithee Eid… the sweet Eid.

When I was about 16, I befriended a Muslim friend… who went on to become one of my best friends… his association made me a bit more involved in the process of Ramadan and Eid…

However it took Egypt… to engulf me with the spirit of Ramadan.

There is something magical about Ramadans in Egypt… if you meet somebody… he greets you with a Ramadan Kareem… and then you reply… Allahu-Akram. (Literally translated… Ramadan is benevolent and you reply that God is the most benevolent).

Everybody fasts and feasts during Ramadan… everybody. From the rich to the poor … from the elderly to the young … and that I think displays the egalitarian message of Islam.

During the second year of my stay in Egypt, I tried fasting… in fact I did it for four days (no big achievement, people tend to fast for 30 to 31 days at a stretch)… it was difficult… waking up in the morning and having something… my wife was not around, so I didn’t have anybody to cook for me… and I being a lethargic cook could only make some cheese sandwich for myself…

Anyway… let's get down to the unique features of an Egyptian Ramadan… and as a disclaimer, let me confess that I haven’t seen any other Muslim country so as to say that Egyptian Ramadan is unique… I haven’t even lived in Indian Muslim localities so as to compare Egypt to India.

The day I woke up in the morning to take the pre-dawn breakfast… I heard a drum beat… the sound grew larger and larger… and then fainter and fainter… somebody was passing by my street beating the drum…. It is a unique feature of Egyptian Ramadan… a drummer, who alarms people, wakes them up to have their pre-dawn meal…

For most of the people… a pre-dawn meal is a lavish affair… but for many others it’s a modest affair… they tend to quote from the life of the Prophet, who lived a modest life… and from a purely medical point of view, I am told, the latter are correct.

People generally go to sleep after having their pre-dawn meal…

They wake up again at around 9 and then there is a mad scramble to reach their places of work… a very very mad scramble… tempers runs high… I have seen occasional fights and altercations during the first few days of the Ramadan… they tend to become fewer and fewer, with the passage of time…

Somebody told me… that Ramadan is a test… God wants to test the patience and devotion of the people… and he gives them the strength to go through the ordeal of this one month.

During the Ramadan days… the restaurant are empty… though Egyptians don’t mind people eating in front of them… but it is often advisable and considerate that one should refrain from eating in front of a fasting Muslim. I refrained.

It is said that the essence of Ramadan is to feel the pain of hunger… and to avoid gluttony… according to a teaching… the food for 2 people is enough for 3 and the food for 3 is enough for 4… it is a noble thought, indeed. Probably this is the reason… every religion has prescribed one form of fasting or the other. Fasting cleanses your system… gives you empathy towards the poor… and also builds your patience levels.

And then towards the evening… there is another mad scramble to reach homes… to have a breakfast together… among the near and dear ones… this time of the day is often considered very important. People don’t want to miss being close to their family members during this time.

And even if one is stuck… you would find people offering others dates, food plates. It’s a bonanza time for the poor… all the big hotels of the city offer free buffet at this time of the day… I am witness to one of them… the Marriot in Zamalek… whose buffest is considered out of this world… and often even not so poor line up to have a taste of it.

Around this time… all the streets are full with tables and chairs… and people are offered food… best they can have, ever. In a way… it is a time… when poor actually get good food.

And then there are beautiful decorations.... tents… one glimpse of them and you would think that you have entered a festivity zone.

On the lighter side… I realized that the number of marriages suddenly jump manifolds just after the Ramadan… I asked if there was any religious significance of this… (In Hinduism, certain days are considered auspicious for marriage)… my friend laughed. He reminded me that during Ramadan days… one not only refrains from food… but also sex.

Ramadan in Egypt was a unique experience… it made me feel a part of the tradition despite being a non-Muslim.

Of Robots and Humans

Accidentally deleted

QIZ and all that…

When I was first introduced to the concept of QIZ… I was literally floored. It was one of the most original and thought provoking model of incentivizing peace and interaction between entities that are naturally estranged.

So what is QIZ…? It is short form of Qualifying Industrial Zone. Quoting from the horse's mouth…

Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZ) are designated geographic areas, within Egypt (and Jordan), that enjoy a duty free status with the United States. Companies located within such zones are granted duty free access to the US markets, provided that they satisfy the agreed upon Israeli component, as per the pre-defined rules of origin.

So basically what it does… is that it incentivizes a joint Egypt-Israel or joint Jordan-Israel production (that is, the final production would happen in Egypt but with a pre-decided amount of Israeli component)… thus leading to more than normal economic exchange between these estranged nations. And then this joint production gets preferential treatment in the US markets. Marvelous piece of policy… and salute to the team that came up with the idea.

The beauty about the policy is that it is downright practical… it doesn’t have any other-worldly notions about politics prevailing in the Middle East that Egypt and Israel can be best pals… after having fought 3 (or is it 4) wars and all that. It proposes an economic solution to the political problem… it assumes that economic relations forces the adversaries to temporarily bury the hatchet for mutual economic benefit. This in turn can help in the longer run… because a larger interaction opens a possibility of understanding each other better…. And then it could lead to some kind of reconciliation in the longer run.

So why do I write about it in my blog… wasn’t my blog supposed to be apolitical and downright boring… well it was… but then I write about this because of a reason.

Yesterday I was interacting with a friend of mine who works for a NGO called Pratham… which works for education of street kids… I have been associated on and off with the NGO. The NGO lauched an ambitious program an all-India teaching program… which was a great success… and now it plans to replicate its success in Pakistan. He went to Pakistan to do some field study and realized that the aspiration levels and the thought pattern of an average Pakistani is more or less similar. I always believed that… I am a firm believer that the Pakistan has all the ingredient of becoming a successful nation… but the Indian pre-occupation of their ruling elite… has actually distorted both their external and internal policies.

So how do you bring about reconciliation between the two countries… well do the same thing… be downright BLOODY practical… realize that we are not friends and are not going to become one in the near or not-so-near future… but that we can bury the hatchet if something incentivizes that… and then try to find what can actually help in incentivizing the same.

And what can do the trick is mutual economic benefit… look around… Egypt and Israel are trading… China and Japan are trading… the World's most fruitful and revolutionary economic partnership is between China and US… the nations that fought bitterly over Vietnam and Korea. Closer home… India and China are trading… even India and Myanmar are trying to do the same. So examples are aplenty.

Let us make a Free-trade zone… activate SAFTA or SAPTA (whatever serves the purpose) invest in each other's country… like India can invest in Information Technology… I am told that Pakistani youth is equally good at computer skills and English… let us create competition for ourselves that would keep us evolving… similarly India can import food grains from Pakistan… thus opening more and more land for cash crops (like Jatropha… incidentally Jatropha farming in India is under intense criticism due to food shortages)…the benefits are mutual. And once these benefits are established, we will be forced to bury the hatchet (if not become friends)… I think, as a thumb rule, India-Pakistan trade should be at least half of India-China trade, owing to historical linkages, societal linkages.

This brings me to a more important issue… that is of Kashmir. Well let us be downrightly practical… if we create massive opportunities for Kashmiri youth in the economic miracle of India… they would be incentivized to remain a part of India… the economic incentive should be more organically linked to mainland India than tourism… lets say if we have 100s of Engineering colleges in Kashmir and a large number of Kashmiri youth working in software firms in Hyderabad and Bangalore… to the tune that every family has one of its earning member working in Indian silicon valley… well then who would like to rock the boat….

I know things are not as simple as I depict… but these are the broad contours that I am arguing my case in…. this is the template… we can work on it to refine it.

But how it is related to the travels of a pondering vagabond… simply because I saw it in action in Egypt… that set me thinking… if we can apply the same template in India… as I have always said different countries are doing different things and are doing similar things differently to be happier societies… and some of the learning from these countries can definitely be applied in the case of India.

Co-option as a policy is one of the most effective way of sorting out differences…. Sadly one of the biggest proponents of the same policy, US- that has done wonders in case of China, Vietnam and Latin America, and in recent times in North Korea and Libya… is not following the policy of co-option in Iran and Sudan… perhaps it should… though I am extremely under-equipped to comment on that

Who needs Equal Opportunity?

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Hiking with my son…

On last weekend, I went on hiking with my 2.5 year old son… well, not exactly hiking but a casual walk in the woods…

Just across the road where my residence is located… lies a city forest… stretching may be, in an area of 2 square kilometers. Not very big… but indeed, it is a far cry from the usual concrete jungles, we tend to see all around…

For last few months, I had been seeing them while commuting to and from the office… and always promised that I will take my son Vidhu… there. And then finally I was able to keep the promise… and what a day it was… when I first did it.

Some words about Vidhu… he is an average two year old kid… who loves to run around, do mischief, to see cartoon (his favourite these days is Popeye the Sailorman and Ben 10)… what makes him special… is the way he treats his younger brother, Kinshu… with so much of care and affection… that we almost feel as if he was an elderly person… He often supervises Kinshu… checks what he is picking up from the floor and eating… he beckons us from other rooms when Kinshu reaches the edge of bed and is about to fall… and holds his baby carriage when we go for a walk. We surely are blessed.

Sadly… he is having speech delay… he is not able to speak, as fluently, as any other kid of his age would do… he can say Mama, Baba, What Happened, Yes and No… but not much beyond that… we took him to few doctors… one said that he needs speech therapy… other said he needs psychological tests… till one day, a senior doctor, whom I know… reprimanded me for treating the kid as a guinea pig and said that every kid has his way of growing… and so has Vidhu… and that day we decided to just leave him alone for a while.

Coming to the hike… well it was raining heavily when I decided to take him for a hike… my wife found it to be a preposterous idea… why on earth do I want to hike when it's raining cats and dogs… I told her just because it’s the best time to hike and see Mother Nature in its most bountiful moods. She gave in to my logic…. For whatever it meant.

I packed Vidhu's bag with Potato Chips, Umbrella, bananas, Water bottle, Camera and a spare pairs of clothes…. He was so excited to see his being packed… it meant that he was out for something big…

When we entered the woods… we were overwhelmed with the greenery all around… for the first time… or may be after a long long time (when I took him to a botanical garden in Allahabad)… he was seeing so much of greenery… I gave him a stick, and showed him how to use a stick while hiking… of first checking the grass… and plant outgrowths before treading over them…. He found everything so amusing… he smiled and came close to me and kissed me on cheeks. It was a lovely feeling…

We saw many large trees… I helped him to climb one of them… initially he was bit scared… but then after checking the fun of it all… he volunteered to climb higher and higher… till the reach of my hands just gave in….

A couple of steps ahead we found a stream of water… and some frogs… and earthworms and leeches… he was particularly amused to see a frog jump after being bothered by the stick… however, he found earthworms and leeches a bit detestable and yucky. And another couple of steps later, we found some village boys plucking Jamuns (a tropical fruit found in India and Pakistan… is considered very good for Diabetes and other medicinal purposes)… we joined them… it was fun to see Vidhu trying to throw pebbles high in the air to get some jamuns… then we struck a new idea… I started shaking the tree so that some ripe jamun would fall… he followed me and started shaking the tree…. The village boys laughed at his antics. But when I gathered the jamuns… he plainly refused to eat them…after all weren’t they littered on earth… and how his mother had told him not to eat anything fallen on earth… or not to let Kinshu eat anything fallen on earth…

We then just sat on a bench and picnicked, he ate some chips and drank some juice… then I told a nearby Churmura (a north Indian snack made up of puffed rice, herbs and spices) vendor to give me a pack of churmura… we enjoyed that, too.

We saw some animals too… a crow, a buffalo, a hare (just a glimpse), a crane… every animal was a new discovery for Vidhu.

There after, we left the place… came out of the woods… to the streets… in a near by place… a person was selling Chokha Bati (a East Indian snack), we enjoyed that together… we went to a park and played there for a while… with few other village kids… and then it was time to go….

While coming home… we encountered a commonly found grass… whose flowers stick to your clothes… I tried to show him that grass… he wasn’t amused… and threw that flower away… and started laughing…

Everything was a new discovery for him… he reminded me of times when I used to react to new things in the same fashion… when we reached home… we were drenched… just before we entered the colony gate… I saw rainbow… and tried to show that to Vidhu… I don’t know whether he realized it or not… but he kept staring at the sky for a while…

What a great day it was….

Aimless wanderings in the Egyptian heartland. Part Nine- In the terrorland or Was it?

The coming 36 hours were going to be long and tiring…

Though my initial plan wasn’t like that… I planned to travel to Luxor… take a bus to Aswan… and then take some rest there… before leaving for Abu Simble… I even called Hotel Keylany in Aswan… for a room.

The bus to Luxor arrived at 7 pm… by that time… darkness had engulfed El-Tor… I was sitting alone on a bench of El-Tor bus stand… with a Sandwich store owner… I told him my plan … and he was amazed … from El Tor to Abu Simble in 36 hours… I must be crazy… travelers are crazy.

The bus to Luxor… travels first to Suez and then drives along the Red Sea coast… up to Safaga and then turns right to travel towards Qena… the northern end of Upper Nile Valley. It passes through the resort town of Hurgadha… one of the few places that I couldn’t visit during my stay in Egypt… Hurgadha used to be a much liked resort for Egyptians … till Russians arrived… with their money and numbers, they changed the way the resort used to be… not a new story… I have heard the same things about Goa, Ayanapa, and to some extent about Antalya.

Qena is a special town… in Pharaonic period a canal was dug from Qena to Quseir… the canal was used by Pharaonic ships to travel to Red Sea and back… Queen Hatepshut went to Punt through the same route… but with time this canal got destroyed… I am told a few decades ago, there was a move to reconstruct it… but techno-economic studies rejected the idea as preposterous.

I was sitting beside an old man… an Egyptian… who was from Hurgadha… ran a resort over there… his son had started a resort in Nuweiba… and he was coming after meeting him. He told me something I knew and had completely forgotten… the convoys between Luxor and Aswan.

In mid 1990s, Egypt faced a massive outbreak of Islamic terrorism… mainly propagated by a group called Gamaa al-Islamiya… it carried out a number of attacks on tourists in Cairo, Luxor… and other places… these attacks created a huge challenge for the Egyptian tourism industry. The Egyptian Government took some hard steps.. it strengthen its intelligence network, gave them sweeping powers, recruited thousands and thousands of police personnel (they later on became ubiquitous, manning the railway crossings, standing without any purpose by the river side in Cairo and what not)… In Minya and adjoining regions, they prohibited farmers from growing sugarcane… as its fields were used by terrorists as a hideout… this decision killed the sugar industry in Egypt… it also introduced the system of convoys.

It introduced a system of convoys, by which… all the vehicles in the main tourist circuits move in a convoy… Luxor to Aswan and Aswan to Abu Simble are two examples… these convoys are prevalent elsewhere too. Long after the threat of terrorism has dissipated and gone….

The elderly gentleman told me that I would reach Luxor by 7 am… and that the next convoy to Aswan wouldn’t be before 2 pm… so I would have to fend for myself for 7 hours…

Now I had visited Luxor 3 times… seen most of the places over there… and I was in no mood to spend 7 hours, yet again, in Luxor… I struck an idea… that of alighting at Qena… and trying to see the temple of Dendera and then come back to Luxor to push for Aswan. The Dendera temple has been out of bounds for most tourists…. Plainly because the Authorities don’t allow people to visit it… for fear of more terrorist attacks… but I argued, what if I just land over there… the police wouldn’t just shoo me away… they will allow me to see the place… and then probably tell me to retrace my steps and go to safer zones.

At 5 am in the morning, I alighted in Qena… little did I know that my entire programme would change… I saw a new face of Egypt… where people were most helpful, least greedy, simple and ever smiling… sadly, this is not what tourist are able to see… and probably that is what keeps these people pure… one of my teacher in AUC was lamenting… how people in Aswan have changed over the years… mainly due to influx of tourists…

I had to change two microbuses to reach Dendera… people helped, they were elated to see a foreigner… they told me much of the foreign tourists that come to see Dendera… come via Luxor in buses, escorted by police vans… they don’t get to feel the real Dendera… or Qena.

The microbus… left me at a place… from where Dendera Temple was a two kilometer walk… instead of taking another microbus… I decided to walk the entire distance… flanked by green fields… village simpletons, riding on donkeys… cheery children… and a rustic smell… it was a home-coming… as if, I have reached my village in India… I was blessed.

When I reached the security gate of Dendera… the guards were surprised… I was taken to a room… of the Superintendent, who grilled me… as to how I came over here… what are my plans… he checked my passport… and then relayed a message that an unescorted Indian had come to see the Temple… I was amused… the entire place looked so safe…and yet so much of paraphernalia to ensure safety…

While alighting from the Microbus on the main road… some one told me that I should definitely go to Balyana… where the Abydos Temple lies… he said it was more beautiful than Dendera… and that he was from Balyana… he said that he had a small general store in Balyana… and if I come over there… then he should ask for Yousuf…. I thanked him… and made up my mind… I wouldn’t be going back to Luxor… I will proceed to Balyana… and my entire plan got changed.

The Superintendent asked me… where do you go from here… I said Abydos… he relayed the message on a walkie talkie… and let me enter the periphery of Dendera…

First view and I said WOW….

The Great Travelers: Part Two- Guillaume Le Gentil

"The one real interest in life is the flies… No mosquitoes… but flies by day and flies by night… flies in the water… flies in the food"

Harry Moseley

Moseley wrote these words to his mother… when he was fighting for British forces in Gallipoli… against the mighty Turks… in the First World War. He died at the hands of the Turks… he was a promising scientist, who fell… not for science… but for stupid political ideologies.

The story is not about him… these are the words, which Moseley wrote to his mother while on the battle front. These words capture the emotions of a man, who had been plucked out of his natural surrounding and thrown into an alien atmosphere… where everything is different… and strange. And many of us do it almost willingly… and these words would always remain a tribute to those daring few.

It's about another scientist… who traveled distant lands in search of science…and by a quirk of fate, today; he is not so very known for his scientific works but for the travels. He represents both the scientific quest and the thirst to travel… and therefore he is the second traveler… I am going to write about.

He had a rather long name… Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galaisière… for us he is just Guillaume Le Gentil… and he is best known for his travelogue " Voyage dans les mers de l'Inde, fait par ordre du Roi, à l'occasion du passage de Vénus, sur le disque du Soleil"- literally that means "Travel in the seas of India, made by order of King, during the passage of Venus on the disc of the Sun"

I was first introduced to the name of this man, by an elderly Bengali gentleman… in Kolkata. I remember the date… it was 8th June 2004… there was something very special about the day. It was a 'Transit of Venus'. I didn’t know this… in the morning I woke up… decided to go to Kumartuli… a Kolkata suburb famous for its huge workshops that makes clay images of Durga… and every other conceivable personalities on earth… Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly and Saddam Hussein. While walking down from the by-lanes of Kumartuli towards the metro station… I met a bunch of excited people… who were glued to some astronomical gadgets… I asked what it was…

"Why young men… don’t you know its Transit of Venus"… the elderly gentleman then told me about the importance of the event and how the next such event would happen only in 2012 and then never in our lifetimes. It was a big event. I saw the Transit of Venus. Later that gentleman invited me to his house that was nearby… the name plate in his old Kolkata home read N.C. Bandopadhyay (I didn’t dare to ask him his name, he was authoritative to say the least)… his house was in a dilapidated state… as more or less every other house in this Kolkata suburb was. He offered me some plain water, 'sandesh' and some words about the importance of this event… and how it had helped us in understanding the universe. It helped us in calculating the distance between Sun and Earth… by simple trigonometry.

It is nothing but when Venus comes in between Sun and Earth… thus causing a small eclipse… it's like a black dot traveling across the sun… the event happens in pairs… like 2004 and 2012…

Earlier, it happened on 1874 and 1882… and even earlier on 1761 and 1769… the story of Le Gentil happened then.

The methodology to measure Distance between Sun and Earth (known then as astronomical unit) was developed by Kepler and subsequent Kepler followers. The idea was to see the transit from different points and calculate the total time of transit from there and use parallax method and simple trigonometry to calculate the distance. This method was first tested in 1761, when hundreds of scientists from Europe traveled far and wide to Africa, South America, North America, Siberia, Asia… to find suitable points to observe the Transit…. One such man, Le Gentil mounted an expedition to India… Pondicherry, to be precise. Before this, he was a not-so-great astronomer… having discovered a few heavenly bodies… but after this trip… he became famous for something he never thought… his travelogue.

He set out for India in 1760… via Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius… the same route, as was taken by Vasco Da Gama. The journey was going along nicely… and he arrived in Mauritius, ahead of schedule… what else he could have asked for… he took a ship to Pondicherry, when the misfortune struck.

In 1758, almost taking a cue from the 7-year war between the French plus Austrian forces and British plus Prussian forces in Europe… the two forces also clashed in India… popularly known as the Third and the decisive Carnatic War. The French side, which had seen great victories in the First and Second Carnatic war under the leadership of great Dupleix, lost this war badly… and that was the end of great French dream to win India…. By 1761, Pondicherry had fallen to the British… and it was end of Le Gentil's dream to observe the Transit of Venus. He could have taken the observation from the high-seas… but even that was not allowed by the British Naval forces, which forced him to return to Mauritius.

Heartbroken… Le Gentil made up his mind to wait for 8 more years to observe the Transit… but the question he faced was what to do for these 8 years… he set up an observatory in Mauritius… went to Madagascar… discovered hitherto unknown places over there… and waited. Then he went to Philippines… and made up his mind to observe it in Manila… but then fate was never with him…. In 1768-69, France and Spain clashed over the some territories in the North America… (This event in history is known as Rebellion of 1768)… and then the tensions between the two rose… Philippines, at that time, was a Spanish colony… and they forced Le Gentil to leave Manila…

Le Gentil came back to Pondicherry… by then it was firmly under the control of French. He set up an observatory and waited for the fateful day… but the day turned out to be cloudy… he couldn’t observe the Transit. He couldn’t observe it ever… and to think of it, Le Gentil's entire career was about trying to see it.

Le Gentil left India… but his misfortune didn’t leave him… he fell for a mysterious illness… and was forced to disembark the ship at Reunion Island….. He stayed there, almost anonymously, till he was rescued by a Spanish ship (yeah a Spanish ship!!! Aren't the ways of life amazing)…

When he returned back… he found that he had been declared dead, his wife had remarried, his wealth had been plundered…. And he was a pauper… he rebuilt his life from scratch and wrote a book on his experience… "Travel in the seas of India, made by order of King, during the passage of Venus on the disc of the Sun"… it became a huge commercial success and he lived happily ever after.

Amazing isn’t it. His travels are a tribute to many scientists and discoverers who set out to change the world… some of them… and very few of them found their place under the sun… most of them perished unknown… unsung… his story is a tribute to them all…

And what is more interesting… is that his story is linked with the history of India… Carnatic War… was an event that changed the course of history in India… and then it is related to one of my wanderings near Kolkata…

As French saying goes…

"One often meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it"… Le Gentil accidentally met his destiny… Some day I will also meet my destiny in some corner of this mother earth.

Aimless wanderings in the Egyptian heartland. Part Eight- Home to a weary traveler

El Tor is nowhere… Ask any tourist, he mustn’t have heard about it…

When I reached the bus stand of Dahab… I realized that there was no bus to the mainland Egypt till late in the evening… there was a bus going to Port Suez… but that at around 2 in the noon, and after reaching there… I could have taken a bus going to anywhere in Egypt… but then I couldn’t have waited that long. It was then I met Wahid.

Wahid was a plumpy fellow… driving a pick-up van… he used to ferry to El-Tor and back… to buy some ration for his small resort in Dahab… ever smiling, with yellow teeth and more than a bad breath… his hallmark was a packet-full of Egyptian sandwiches, always ready to quench his appetite.

While I was sitting on one of the benches of the Dahab bus stand, wondering what to do next… he arrived with a few foreigners, who wanted to board a bus going to Saint Katherine. He saw me for a while, bid farewell to his foreigner customer cum friends… and then came close to me and cheerfully greeted me "Salaam Alaikum"…

Peace be upon me... Yeah I needed these good words… here I was sitting alone… and without a plan, with an uncertainty hovering over my plans… uncertainty that threatened to gobble up one valuable day of my journey. "Wa Alaikum As-Salaam"… I replied back…

"Inta Hindi"….

I always used to wonder… as to how they guess that I am an Indian… I mean, I resemble a 'Saeedi' in colour and contours… and yet I am so discernable… So discernable, that the moment I step into the streets of Khan-e-Khalili or Luxor- I am greeted with Namaste and Amitabh Bachhan.

"Naam"… yes. While replying, I started doing a threat assessment… what would this guy say next… will he sell me his resort room… or offer me to take to Dahab… ahhhhhhhh! I wanted none of these.

He didn’t…. He plainly told me that there was no bus to anywhere for next three-four hours… I took a deep breath… and said that-yes, I know. And then, he offered me something that was sweet to my ears…. He offered me to take to El-Tor, for free. As he confided later… he gets bored on these long monotonous drives and needs to talk to somebody… and often takes people for a ride (no pun intended)….

It was two and half hours journey to El-Tor… through a magical route… surrounded by the majesty of Sinai… one bat of an eyelid and it was difficult to remember if I was in Sinai… or Spiti or Heaven. He told me something interesting… Dahab in Arabic means Gold… and in ancient times… when Arab sailors used to pass through the Gulf of Aqaba, they used to see the shining hillocks of the place, which glittered like gold… and hence named the place- Dahab, the Gold… many of them came to Sinai… to hunt for the gold… some died at the hands of treacherous nature and some at the hands of robbers… and nobody could find gold…

The ride was very interesting… Wahid offered me different types of sandwiches… one that really set my taste bud on fire were filled with Tuna, Baba Ghanoug (eggplant) and Tahina sauce. Only hitch… the worst smelling breath, I ever smelt, coming out of constant chattering mouth.

El-Tor is the capital of South Sinai Governorate… it is a small township with a few shops that cater to people around… I asked Wahid, as to why he comes to El-Tor for his rations… and why not to Sharm… his reply was simple… things in Sharm are sold at inflated prices… in fact a lot of people, running small time resorts in Nama Bay and Sharm… often purchase their wares from El-Tor.

El-Tor is hardly a tourist spot… but often it is a great stop-over for people planning to go to Saint Katherine… or Sharm or Moses Spring (which, I was told was a small tourist spot very close to El-Tor… it is supposed to be a biblical spring that has now dried up with some portions having brackish water… not really very enticing, is it)

I had a few hours to go… before I could have taken any bus to the mainland Egypt… one option was taking a bus coming from Saint Kathrine… going towards Port Suez or Cairo… and the other was taking the bus to Luxor… the same bus that starts from Dahab at four in the evening and reached El-Tor at six in the evening… I chose the latter course…

El-Tor is a friendly place… though quite deserted…most of the people living here, come from the canal region… and are very gentle… their main business is trading and not tourism… and therefore they treat tourists as one of them… Wahid was right… I would be better off at El-Tor than in Dahab…

The other reason was the beauty of the place itself… wide roads… surrounded by beautiful hills… cold breeze… you could sit anywhere… any Ahwa… without being bothered by a persistent waiter… you could have eaten anything… without being bothered about being over-charged… you could pick-up conversation with anybody without being treated as a potential customer… this is what I missed in Dahab…. Bohemian or not.

I slept at one of the road side Ahwa, tried out my hands on Domino with a local-ite… in short I was really having a vacation… it was a strange feeling… it was like as if… I , a weary traveler, had reached an abode to rest….

The next two days were going to be difficult and harrowing… little did I know this… but destiny had brought me to a place… where I got recharged….to travel… to learn and to yearn….

El-Tor was magical in its own way… I would remember that local lad who taught me to play domino… or the policeman who listened to my description of India… in broken Arabic… or that Ahwa-owner who didn’t bother me, when I was sleeping without buying anything from his Ahwa….

Reviving my blog…

In last three days, three different people have asked about my blog… What was its address? Why am I not writing these days? They all told me that my blog had always been a wonderful read, and they look forward to see more of it. So naturally, I owe an answer and the onus to revive my blog…

The few months have been hectic and difficult… adjusting in India had been difficult… more number of working hours, travel time of more than a couple of hours, two kids who deserve all my time, a burning ambition… all have taken a toll. All these worries were not very much present in Cairo… and therefore I was a more carefree person… and could pursue this blog with a penchant.

Back in India… things changed. And therefore my blog became more and more conspicuous by its lack of activity than the other way round.

However… by now my blog had became a habit… an act of catharsis… by which I could spell out my inner emotions… could say things which did not find a vent… and the lack of activity had its price…

There were a lot of times, when I wanted to say something… when I rode a bus… when I saw people fighting… when I saw a cobbler talking about postpaid and prepaid mobile connection… there were a lot of impressions that went unexpressed… I cannot express them now…. Because somewhere I stopped observing them in a way, I should have…

Did I travel… well yes and no… I went to a few places in Uttaranchal… nothing very great… I went to a place called Chunar, by the banks of river Ganges… the entire experience was magical… going to Chunar… seeing a British cemetery… going to Shakteshgad… all these were far flung places in India. I needed to write about them all… but just couldn’t.

A couple of days ago, I went with my son for a jungle hike… it was again a marvelous experience… he saw a few birds, animals and plants for the first time in life…. I need to write about that…

In short I need to write about a lot of things… I need to revive my blog… and that I will.

From the Archives- My 150th post

(Why have I chosen this article to showcase my previous articles, simply because I have made up my mind to execute it... its a race against time and odds, lets see if I am able to make it or not)

An Indian Fulbright Commission

“The Fulbright Commission aims to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.”
- Senator J William Fulbright

Fulbright Commission is a fabulous experiment… it provides study grants to students for pursuing studies in different social and cultural settings. Thus it is helping US students to study in- say Egypt, India, China or even Ethiopia… and is also helping students of other countries of- say India, Spain, Turkey or even Mozambique... to study in the US.

What the program does in turn is something very revolutionary… it promotes a strong cross-cultural understanding… it helps in promoting the idea of the United States all around the globe… and helps the US in learning from other socio-politico and cultural milieus.

Till date I have met three Fulbright scholars… two were from the US studying in Egypt… and one was a Spanish who is studying in the US. I am yet to meet an Indian Fulbright scholar… but I am told that there are lots of luminaries who have been Fulbright scholars… one name that comes to my mind is that of former CM of Karnataka S M Krishna.

Great initiative, one might say.

What the Fulbright does not do, however, is to give opportunity to Indians to travel to other places than the US… to study. So if an Indian wants to study in Tanzania, Columbia or Vietnam… he will have to look for other avenues than Fulbright. Thus… Fulbright is very US centric initiative. It provides opportunity for the Americans to learn from others experiences… and also propagates the idea of the US to others… and if other countries benefit from the initiative… then it is purely incidental.

One may argue… that why would anyone from India like to go and study in God forsaken places- like Ethiopia, Columbia or Vietnam... and what is its utility. I don’t have answers… as of now… but as I always say… different societies are doing different things, successfully… countering different problems in different way, successfully- and some, if not all… such learnings can be utilized in India with some modifications. If we don’t study such models, such initiatives, such efforts… we are shutting ourselves from a vast amount of vicarious learning and probably are going to re-invent the wheel.

A few decades from now, may be just two… when we will really be big, economically and may be politically… playing important role in International forums… we will need to enact our bigness. And mind you, there will be no escape. We will need to formulate opinions on all the world issues… not from an outsider's perspective but from a perspective of those who are deeply involved and deeply concerned. One channel of developing it would be diplomatic missions… another would be business and trade relations… but we will still need to have people to people contact. And for that we will need our scholars to travel to these countries and their scholars to come to our countries. Thereby, and only thereby, will we be able to seize our moment of greatness.

This brings me to my original hypothesis… on the need to create similar such institution for India… an Indian Fulbright Commission. That will sponsor Indians to study in US, Europe and above all... other God forsaken places… so as to have a direct experiential learning from what different societies are doing or have done in different circumstances… and what can India learn from them.

Similarly, it would invite nationals from different countries to come and study in India and share their experiences with Indian students… (Though this would be the second step that will come after the success of the first step).

There are a few more things that I need to clarify…

People may ask why we should have such a body… why can't people just take study loan and go to study… the reason is that often study loan are too steep and repaying them becomes a big headache… thus the candidate who has to repay it… starts dancing to the tune of market forces in order to get the best monetary returns for his studies. Sometimes you just don’t get study loans for such studies… going for MBA, Engineering sounds saleable to banks… but the moment you say Cultural Anthropology or Vietnamese Language… the bank wouldn’t even have a second look at your proposal.

Why only that, one of my friends who was going to study International Studies in Georgetown University had to run pillar to post for getting these loans. Also, studying abroad is not one of the easiest things to do… it involves a lot of forward and backward linkages… say if you want to study in Vietnam… it may involve learning Vietnamese… therefore it is an entire value chain that needs to be catered… and not just the academic fees…

Others might say that there are government scholarships to do such courses abroad... and why not utilize them. Well the only reason is that there are far fewer than required by our country... and are often having strict academic parameter to judge the candidates... little stress is given to life experiences... that is the suitability of candidate to absorb from cross cultural situations.

People will also ask as to how one will fund such a commission… well funding is the least of the problems… Government, of course, can be one such source… but to keep government and political ideologies out of the play, one should tap corporate resource or venture capital for this initiative… the returns for them wouldn’t of course be tangible but if the initiative is successful… then such a philanthropy will earn them vast amount of goodwill. Anyway this initiative doesn’t need much of a capital to start its operation… an initial corpus of say INR 10 crore or USD 2.5 million might be enough… and surely with a booming economy, Indian corporate or some visionary venture capitalist can spare this much.

The process of this initiative however doesn’t stop here… it goes further… it will sponsor Indians to travel and do projects in different countries and communities without any binding of academic courses. It will help Indian graduate students to spend their gap years in different social milieus etc. etc.

This idea is both possible and plausible… it is a vision for the future… of creating a group of scholars who are able to understand cross cultural nuances and set an agenda for India. And if we start today, we might not have to take a knee jerk decision in future towards it.

The idea is open for anybody to work upon, refine and adopt… or else who knows… you might see me with a few like minded people in front of a venture capitalist's office or outside the board room of a high flying corporate entity… armed with a burning desire to shape India of future…

What to buy when you leave Cairo…

What to buy when you leave Cairo…

Many of my very good friends would soon be leaving Cairo… Amit and Pradeep, Arushi… to name a few… But then it is not directed towards them… if they read it and do the needful, it's purely incidental.

Some would say… buy a pyramid replica, some would say buy a Pharaoh replica, some will vouch for a Sheesha… all of this and more represent the marvelous variety that this fascinating country offers. And I will recommend almost all of them. I have bought Pyramids, Papyrus, Crystals, and whatever Khan e Khalili had to offer… but more than all of them put together, there is one thing that reminds me of the magic of Egypt.

The voice of Umm Kulthoum, the nightingale of Egypt.

I have heard it many a times, every day and many a times in a day… on the roads of Egypt, in the rickety taxis of Egypt, in the lazy coffee houses and almost everywhere. It’s the voice of Egypt… nothing comes close.

Today out of Nostalgia I heard a cassette of hers… closed my eyes, I was transferred to the streets of Cairo, driving around in a Taxi driven by a bearded driver… zipping through the Kasr al-Aini Bridge, Corniche, Zamalek, Midan Tehrir… everywhere… the dream was soothing and relaxing… the voice made me feel that I carry a part of Egypt with me, yet… and till this immortal voice remains with me… this part of Egypt will always remain with me…

The Pyramids will break down and so would the Pharaohs, Crystals will shatter and Papyrus will get old and worn… but this voice will remain as fresh, as innocent, as sensitive and as nostalgic… and beckon me back to Cairo…to Egypt…and somewhere in the oasis of Dakhla, I will sit down with this voice and remember the old days, beautiful days spent in this country. Yes I will come back.

Then… there would be no Rajesh, no Amit, no Pradeep, no Arushi, no Brahma, no Paritosh, no Juno… but this voice would remind me about all of them…

And then I would see the smiling faces of Wael, Ibrahim, Ahmed and Mohammed and Nasrallah… Mubarak or no Mubarak, Egypt would remain Egypt till this voice hums in the heart of millions over there.

This voice means so many things to me… and if one has to buy one thing…. Buy a cassette of this voice.

Aimless wanderings in the Egyptian heartland. Part Seven- A Goa by the Red Sea

The bus to Sharm el Sheikh goes to Port Suez and then after crossing the Suez Canal follows the coastline to reach Sharm el Sheikh…

Taking it was an unwise decision. I reached Sharm at 2 am; the bus stand of Sharm is a small tea-shop that overcharges for every bloody thing… a tea costs 7 Egyptian Pound… I felt like punching that grinning waiter who duped me… but anyway, the confines of the teashop saved me from the chill outside. And that ordeal lasted for 2 hours, when I got a bus to Dahab… the same bus that was coming from Ismailiya… as I said it was an unwise decision.

The decision, however, gave me an opportunity to see the resort town of Sharm in the night… when the bright lights were in their full glamour. The bright lights reconfirmed my impression about the place… it is a plastic town… without a soul, as if erected to worship hedonism. I had been there thrice… and somehow every time its plastic-ness became more and more pronounced.

Dahab is an hour drive from Sharm… and the route is magical… the terrain of Sinai has always been referred to as a natural wonder… the hills at a distant seem to change colors at different times of the day… in the night they seemed to be hill of silver, ghostly and surreal. While looking outside, I was enticed and frightened by the thought of just abandoning the bus and walking down the road. Sinai, surely, has many secrets inside its surreal shape… once I tried to unlock those secrets, when I did a camel trek through the hills of Sinai… the travelogue of which beckons me to be finished- somewhere in this blog.

Dahab is an exact opposite to Sharm… its Bohemian, it's unplanned and it's bold & beautiful. Once someone asked me as to what was my favorite place in Sinai… I scratched my head, for I had visited so many beautiful places… Aswan, Siwa, Dakhla, White Desert etc. but pat came my reply… it is Sinai… there is an air of freedom and unbridled pleasure in Sinai, which is so conspicuous by its absence in rest of Egypt. Dahab is Sinai at its best. No wonder it is often referred to as the Goa of the Red Sea.

I reached the Dahab bus stand at 5 in the morning… it was chilly and the town lights seemed to be some kilometers away. One needs to take a cab to get to the town… but at these unearthly hours, there was none. There were not many people who arrived at Dahab at this hour… there were two locals who had their houses close by. Then there was a European couple and another man who was a Turk and I.

All we could get at this hour was a pick up van with open body. The couple sat in the front, with the driver and I and the Turkish man at the back… the cold winds blew against us, nearly killing us. The Turk who had been living in Dahab for last few years was a SCUBA trainer… seeing my predicament, he offered me a cigarette… I smiled and declined. I have seen chillier climes in Himalayas and elsewhere.

The driver took me to a small place called Auski camp… the name was a bit strange… but as I later discovered; it used to be a backpacker haunt for Australian and New Zealanders initially…. And therefore the name from Australians and Kiwis stuck to it. I took a small room for thirty odd pounds… the place seemed fine for me… as I was too tired, I just slept… and started dreaming about roaming in Dahab the next day.

I woke up well past the morning… with a severe hunger pang… the last meal I had was a bowl full of Kushri in Ismailiya… it was about time to hunt down for some food… which was not very much away.

Between the beach front and the Auski Camp, there was a small Bedouin camp-like restaurant. It served a wide variety of eateries including a Bedouin breakfast…Bedouin bread, eggs, cheese, honey, marmalade and more than a cupful of sweet black tea... it was heavenly. Thoroughly refreshed, I was ready to savour the delights of relaxed Dahab.

Dahab is a truly bohemian… I have met many people who just swoon over the reference of this beautiful place… the corals are not the best of Sinai… but somehow everything else is beautiful about this place… the atmosphere… you can enjoy at whatever budget you are aiming for… people are friendly… they exude genuine warmth…

I just roamed through the streets of this place, nothing less and nothing more… met few people – a British couple, a Korean group... I had my lunch with the Korean group… a lot of sea food and lemonade… on the seafront, with a cool breeze hitting my face.

It was a day to go for Christmas; everything was decked up for the great time ahead… I was here at the opportune moment. Lot of happy faces, festive faces around… earlier I had thought of moving away from Dahab after a day of hedonism… but then I said that I will move only tomorrow. I waded through the turquoise waters of the place… which splashed against my legs and soul and heart… it was a beautiful day spent. I saw a vacant beach chair… lay down on it and had one of the sweetest sleeps of my life. Cairo had been hard on my slumbers, giving me sleepless nights… these jaunts had been a blessing- nice sleep, a lungful of pure air, good food, meeting people who don’t know me and whom I don’t know…. It is all bliss.

For a circuit, I had planned to take a speed boat from Sharm El Sheikh to Hurgadha… but upon enquiring I realized that not only it is very expensive, a proposition, but also quite cumbersome and not suiting to my itinerary. I asked myself, what I want to do… I wanted to reach to the Nile… preferably Luxor and then plan something else… there was a bus from Dahab to Luxor but it was only late in the evening, which would had meant that I spend another entire day in Dahab…not my cup of tea. It was a strange predicament that led me do unusual things leading to unusual destination… with the thrill of it.

The night at the Auski was fun… I joined a group of American backpackers and we chatted for hours together. I went to sleep at 3 and woke up at 8 and was still feeling refreshed, contrary to Cairo when even 9 hours of sleep never made me look fresh. I had seen the destination I had been dreaming for last two years…

I packed my bag, paid the bill and left for the bus stand… a new day waited for me, with a new set of adventure… a new set of experience and a very off beat destination… that most have not even heard off. Including me.

Aimless wanderings in the Egyptian heartland. Part Six- Rafah and Ismailiya, a study in contrast

Garnata is the most beautiful beach that I have seen in my life… and I have seen a plenty of them… from the Kovlam, Vagator and Devgarh on the Arabian Sea to the Ayanapas, Dahabs and Sharm El Sheikh elsewhere… Garnata is Mediterranean at its best.

I must have walked the stretch of the beach for hours… lost in my thoughts…. Trying to talk with myself… one of my best friends and the very best listener of the banter is my wife… and for some time now she had left for India… and therefore I was always pent up with a lot of unexpressed thoughts…. Garnata gave me an opportunity to speak them aloud… mull them over and to self advise myself. Such is the power of loneliness… miles and miles I didn’t see a human being apart from a lone fisherman adjusting and readjusting his fishing line and some small kids playing with the splashing waves… these companionships added to the romance of being lonely.

Time loses its bearings when you are enjoying the bliss… it either becomes too short to enjoy or a moment brings a elongated stretch of happiness… in my opinion, the former attribute of time does not bring out the best in you… it underlines us as a desireful human being… the latter is pure bliss… I walked in soliloquy for hours and hours and then after a while when I checked my watch… it had been a little more than an hour. The beauty of nature… the catharsis of loneliness and eloquence of my self had nourished me soulful. It was time to go and to let go.

My next stop was Rafah… Rafah is a border town in the Gaza Strip… and it's only contact with the rest of the world… its narrow opening to the world of hope and opportunity. The rest of the Gaza Strip is surrounded by a sea of hostilities, Israel. And not that the Rafah Crossing is friendly either… it's sometimes even more hostile than that 'sea of hostilities' called Israel. Some months ago it was taken over by the radical and much more popular Hamas… and therefore isolated from all sides. It has since then been a constant source of threat for Israel… launching rocket attacks on it. And therefore had been seized and blockaded. The Palestinians face enormous amount of difficulties and rely a lot on Rafah. Only that these difficulties are multiplied due to unhelpful attitude of Egyptian government.

One needs to take a shared taxi to Rafah crossing… and as Maghawary had warned me, it's indeed a heavily protected area… every few kilometers your credentials are checked and being a foreigner brings you under a constant barrage of question. Luckily those days Rafah was having a bout of peaceful times. And therefore the authorities were a bit less skeptical about the fact that an Indian is trying to travel to Rafah without any sense of purpose.

Rafah, however, turned out to be a disappointment. There was hardly anything to see or do there. It was even more a ghost town than El Arish. People later told me that there are a few Palestinian refugee camps that are heavily guarded, they have in them Palestinians who were driven out of Gaza Strip and therefore have no place to go. They were mostly Fatah supporters. A similar such thing is happening in the West Bank too… but the Hashemite government in Jordan is a bit more sympathetic. In any case, it was virtually impossible for me to meet any of them.

The over burdening security apparatus in Rafah is palpable. Far away I could see the Gaza Strip… it was a scene that would be sketched in my memory forever. I was seeing the theatre of the longest standing political of the human civilization, a problem that threatens to swallow us in a vortex of violence. A few months ago, I met Austrian diplomat and he was remembering that how 23 years ago when he started his career in Egypt (that was 1984, and Israel had invaded Lebanon), the centrality of global polity was Israel and Palestine… and how even after 23 years the same remains true. I hope that after 23 years of my existence this does not hold true.

I came back to El Arish and started for Ismailiya… my plan was to somehow reach Dahab by the night.

Ismailiya is a very pleasant town… a town of gardens and greenery. People who hail from the Canal area often term it as the most beautiful place in Egypt. That may be a bit of a superlative for I have seen much more beautiful places in Egypt… Dakhla for instance has an enticing raw beauty that most of the touristy destinations do not have; same goes for Dahab that has a carefree beauty about it. But Ismailiya is definitely a beautiful place… and more than that it is a place full of beautiful and young girls… as I was told, that Ismailiya has a lot of educational institutions that serve the entire Canal area, so a lot of students from all over the canal area travel to Ismailiya… students from Port Said, Qantara, Port Suez etc. And all over the place, I saw lots and lots of young boys and girls traveling to and from Ismailiya…

When I reached Ismailiya bus stand, I realized that the bus to Dahab is late in the night at 10 pm… so I had all the time in the world to see Ismailiya… it was only 4 pm… I hired a cab and gave him 20 Egyptian pounds to show me entire Ismailiya; he took me to the house of De Lesseps, the maker of the Suez Canal and to the Canal. The town is really very beautiful… and a nice place to take break from Cairo or even the more unaesthetic Suez and Port Said.

The driver took me to a Kushri shop, which he claimed served better Kushris than the more famous shops of Cairo… I, however, begged to differ. I have a doubt and that too a strong one that somehow Kushri and Kichhadi of India are related, ingredient wise they have an uncanny resemblance… rice and lentils… One Egyptian was telling me that there is a very strong relationship between Kosher and Kushri… as Kushri devoid of any meat and milk was kosher diet for the Jews of Egypt…

After the round through the town… I waited eagerly for the Bus to Dahab… that went there via Port Suez and Sharm El Sheikh. At 8 however I found a bus going to Sharm El Sheikh and boarded the bus thinking that it would be a faster way to get to Dahab; that however was my folly as I discovered later on.

I was off to Sharm El Sheikh, bidding adieu to the serenity of Ismailiya.

Have I really improved

Ever heard of Flesch/Flesch–Kincaid Readability Tests…

According to the wikipedia

"They are readability tests designed to indicate comprehension difficulty when reading a passage of contemporary academic English. There are two tests, the Flesch Reading Ease, and the Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level. Although they use the same core measures (word length and sentence length), they have different weighting factors, so the results of the two tests do not always correlate: a text with a higher score on the Reading Ease test over another text may have a lower score on the Grade Level test. Both systems were devised by Rudolf Flesch."

The first indicator Flesch Reading Ease decides how easy is to read a particular piece of writing- thus an indicator of the flow of narrative. The simpler the narrative, more logical the narrative… the higher the Flesch Reading indicator….

The second indicator Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level indicates what level of eruditeness is required to read a given piece of writing… thus a text which a fifth grader can read will necessarily be better than a text that requires a graduate to read, given the same content. Here lower the indicator, the better.

These indicator are at best empirical… and there is no rocket science behind them… therefore they should not be taken at a face value… they are indicative, but give very good results.

A random excerpt from my favourite book- Catcher in the Rye has a Flesch Reading Ease of 80.7 and Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level of 4.8, great isn’t it.

Similarly a random excerpt from Alchemist… has a Flesch Reading Ease of 73.4 and Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level of 6.6..

The idea being that a good book generally is simple to read and that one does not need to put a great effort to read them.

People tell me that over the time that I have blogged, my writing has become simpler and eloquent… is it just a compliment or a truth.

I tried to check myself with the above indicator. I applied these indicators on a three part series that I wrote in the initial phases of my blog… "WHY BLOG". The scores were Flesch Reading Ease of 34.9 and Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level of 12.

And then I applied the same indicators on the last three parts of my latest blog series on "AIMLESS WANDERINGS IN THE EGYPTIAN HEARTLAND". The scores were Flesch Reading Ease of 59.9 and Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level of 9.7.

There seems to be an appreciable improvement in my writing style… my writings have become easy to read and require a lower eruditeness to read… way to go. So after all these compliments were not way off the mark.

Before I part… if you want to check your scores… you can do it on MS Word. Type your pieces on MS WORD… go to tools… and then options… and in that Spellings and Grammar tab… check the SHOW READABILITY STATISTICS box and you are done. Check your spellings and grammar… after that is done, the readability statistics will automatically be showed.

I vote for Barak Obama

Admittedly, I am not even bothered to follow the ongoing rage on the CNN. Who wins? And why to bother.

For me… McCain, Obama and Hillary are all alike. Hillary harps on being the first women President… albeit she derives the advantage of being the first lady not so long ago. McCain position is hardly enviable… calling himself a Vietnam War hero… a war that every nation should feel embarrassed about. Millions of poorly and unarmed Vietnamese were massacred by Agent Orange and unethical war tactics… and yet McCain does not fail to evoke a national pride out of the tragedy.

And then came Obama… he was black… something abominable and daring to dream. The first peek into him… and I discovered a child in him… a dreamer, a hyper… not the greatest person to be the most powerful man on the earth… till I went through his speech on Racial Discrimination.

A good leader transcends artificial boundaries… that artificial human models impose on him. If today, I fondly remember Abraham Lincoln, Napolean Bornaparte, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela as my role model… it is because their persona… transcended the nation state boundaries, ethnic boundaries... etc. They will forever be etched on the times lines of humanity due to their ability to give a universal vision to humanity.

It will be too early to put Obama in that category… but his speech is one of the finest I have ever come across in my life… the message is so universal, so pure and so beautiful… it makes me salute the mind that has conjured up the message... and it is none other than Obama…

The speech goes like this… it is a long speech…a very long speech, but if I had to request just one thing to be read in my blog… it would be this speech. Please do read it.

And then see the universal message of the speech… in India… one has to change the race with caste, and union with the world fraternity enshrined in the preamble of our constitution.

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least 20 more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough". We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarisation, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic healthcare crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a US Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over 30 years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters … And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about … memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding and baptised my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like healthcare, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, 50 years after Brown v Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
Legalised discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late '50s and early '60s, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognising they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans - the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know - what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realise that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathise with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say: "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st-century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have healthcare; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorised and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for president if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, 23-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organised for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organise a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was 9 years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her healthcare. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say healthcare or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give healthcare to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realise over the course of the 221 years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.