Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Scenes and sceneries from Andhra villages

I have uploaded some photographs, mostly taken by my son Rohan, of Andhra villages. If somebody like Kuffir asks "What is the point?", I have no answer. These are the kind of images that I remember frequently and they do not seem to have changed much since I finished school in 1954. There is also one of me singing to my granddaughter Leila. I found that I was loosing my breath and decided to give up smoking. It was 20 days ago and the going is tough. The previous attempt in 1988 lasted four and half years; that time visa to Australia was delayed by 6 months due to some suspicion about lungs. I am still struggling with Partha Dasgupta's papers.

6 comments:

kuffir said...

swarup garu,

i do understand the importance of pictures... i searched high and wide to get some prints of damerla rama rao's village scenes (can't afford the originals and not many are on sale)..you can see i used to link to pictures/paintings (especially those of vaikuntham and laxma goud) in my earlier posts regularly..wish you'd upload those pictures of yours on your blog..
sometimes when i see old..old arguments put forth by some conservatives (i call the pseudo-liberal brand of leftists in india by that term)in the guise of new, radical ideas about how india is not shining etc., i get railed because the stupid 'india shining' campaign undertaken by the nda, and before that various juvenile propaganda efforts of rajiv gandhi (mera bharat mahaan)and indira gandhi (garibi hatao..and twenty point programme which used to be regulaly bombarded at us through all state-owned means of broadcasting- which means all)as not worthy of inclusion in healthy debates. it's an adolescent game - it's about scoring points and not about investigating the truth.
the fact remains that liberalisation has managed to stir things up in india...and one of the results is that you see so many young people lambasting it on the net...
so when some old-style conservatives try to dish out stale stuff about how india was better during the pre-liberalisation days one gets naturally angry at their hypocrisy..
that said, i am glad you're trying to give up smoking, i've been trying a little too, but failing.. but one effort worthy of pride for me has been that i managed to kick alcohol altogether a few years ago..and i feel great about that. hope you succeed..

kuffir said...

'These are the kind of images that I remember frequently and they do not seem to have changed much since I finished school in 1954.'

that is the point - if things are changing in some other areas, one needs to seriously study those changes...not dismiss them with arguments rooted in old biases.

gaddeswarup said...

Kuffir,
As the economists say incentives help. Last time, I was the only bread winner in thefamily and needed a job. This time, my daughter Lalita and her husband are working and I have retired. I would like to help them a bit if I can.

Rohiniprasad Kodavatiganti said...

Several years ago, they showed old (early 1940s) Hindi movies like Bandhan and Kismet on Doordarshan in India. I was shocked to notice that, while the living style of the middle classes as shown in the movies underwent drastic changes over the years, the labourers appeared exactly as they appear today!

Rohiniprasad

Rohiniprasad Kodavatiganti said...

Several years ago they showed old (early 1940s) Hindi movies like Bandhan and Kismet on Doordarshan TV. I was shocked to observe that, while the life styles of the middle and upper classes changed drastically over the years, the labourers appeared exactly as they do now. For them, better days are yet to come.

gaddeswarup said...

Rohiniprasad garu,
It is 24 days since I smoked and brain is not fuctioning. I guess that I will keep uploading pictures. If the situation continues after two months, I will start smoking.