Sunday 30/09/07

I have been appauled to learn that the Indian Government, is reported to be spending billions of dollars trying to send people into space, and become a nucleur power. This really was appauling to me, as someone who is just back from India, and has seen at first hand the daily hardships, which so many Indians endure. To see small children fighting over an apple, or to see people sleeping practically naked on bare concrete, surely shows how much better this money could be spent. Someone surely has their priorities mixed up. This is just an arrogant flexing of muscle, based on new found economic prosperity. But surely the sign of any great country, is how well they look after their own least fortunate. Space adventure and military posturing surely has to take a definite back seat to this.

I found the Indians to be a very proud people. When we would stop the car, we would be immediately surrounded by twenty or thirty hawkers, or beggars. But not once did I ever feel unsafe. And it would have been beyond easy to rob me. At the moment, I am trying to digitize and upload video, as I really want to share the remarkable memories which I have. Being on the Ganges, and the festival of aarti in Varansi, was definitely one of the most profound nights of the trip.

The tour guide explained to me, that in Hindu mythology it is believed that all the souls of your departed loved ones, are waiting in this holy town, for you to release their souls from the endless cycle of reincarnationt. The singing, and strong smell of incense, will be a powerful memory for me forever. I am thrilled that I did this trip, but its is definitely getting harder for me to travel, and I can say even now with some certainity, that I do not think I will be back. Not in a bad way, but the world is simply too big to go back to the same place every year. I was looking into going to Israel for Christmas, but I just could not justify spending so much money going at the hectic tourist time. So it looks like, I will have to endure another beyond belief boring, end of year ritual.

It has been so long since I felt that I had anything to put down on this . The last few months were spent thinking and organising India and that consumed all my time. I suppose no news is good news, and my life is fairly uneventful otherwise. I now do not regret spending so much in India, because at least now I'm back to my normal frugal ways.

I am constantly amazed at the power of the internet. Everyone from long lost cousins, to people with ataxia, from Australia to America have contacted me. One woman in America with ataxia wrote and asked me if I knew that Brendon Murphy had travelled to Switzerland, to end his life with FA. I had heard of him vaguely, I knew he was from Northern Ireland, and that he did a lot of research around the world, indeed i think we had exchanged a few general e-mails sometime back.

I dont claim to know what was going through his mind, but then again i fully applaud his human right, to say enough is enough. It is very annoying to me, that he had to travel all that way to a strange enviornment, in order to avail of this. The sad part of the story for me, and the part that really makes my blood boil, is how animals are treated so much better than humans. If a dog had a terminal illness, or was in pain, the owners would be almost legally bound to bring the dog to the vet, but us humans are supposedly in some other category, and are at the whims and mercy of a religous inspired legal system. It is my earnest hope that this changes soon.

A good friend has recently e-mailed me, to tell me that because of his advancing MS, that now his bowels have given out,and his travelling days are over. I was very lucky to have met him in May, and hope that my own travelling days, have a little longer lifespan.

I read recently in some book, that we as humans have chosen to come into our physical bodies to accomplish some task. I found this to be absolutely fascinating, to think I have expressly chosen this physical body to go through life with. I dont know is all of this psycho babble or just the preserve of people who have the luxury to spend all day thinking of such issues, but at the moment, its taking up more and more time and energy to do the simple things, like getting dressed in the morning.

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