India: A Tryst With Destiny

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Introduction In many respects India is a timeless land, for good or for ill, obstinately-consciously or otherwise, refusing to discard, or allow to drift, any part of her neverendingly fascinating, rich heritage. Events happening hundreds of years ago, or just yesterday, meld into the whole which is today. There are few or no subtractions, only additions.

While her cities become more and more crowded, for the greater numbers of people who live in rural India on the agricultural estate, apart from advances in modern irrigation and plant technology augmenting the old, not a lot in the methodology used or in how attendant village life is lived has changed, from what the situation was hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. Peace and tranquillity and the contentment that accompanies it, qualities so frequently undervalued and dismissively ignored by India's critics, have been enhanced with the threat of starvation no longer a constant.

In India's incomparable way, life moves on. The 'living' time capsule simply takes on more appendages, as more years, more experiences, and more people are added. No other country offers more. Few others in this, the industrial age, possess more potential.

Half of the essays/discourses included in this volume were compiled (and taped) for the enjoyment and edification of visually handicapped people, from material the author collected on numerous visits made to India, over the past decade. Except for the most adventurous and courageous of their number able to partake individually, fascinating India, through these glimpses and 'word pictures', could have been denied to many less self-equipped.

But as well, except for the serious scholar and the genuinely curious, most visitors to India rarely leave the well-trodden trails, being hostage to the stereotyped narrowly formal diet' meted out by travelagencies, themselves only sketchily familiar with the enormous reservoir of interesting people and interesting facets that abound everywhere in India. These essays could provide added stimulation for those people seeking next time to delve deeper and to learn and enjoy more.

There are few adjectives that would not fit India, or which have not been used by writers and historians over the past couple of hundred years, to describe the myriad aspects of India, and her colourful history. India provides prodigious helpings of every conceivable kind diverse cultures; multiple languages and dialects; religions and religious architecture; of great tracts of history witnessing, the triumphs and the tragedies of powerful, and sometimes philanthropic empires, reaching back to Asóka and ending with the creation of the modern State of India, from 1947, when a new dawning for Indians began.

The complete disappearance from India of British 'imperialism" has not happened (argument for and against retention, so far as any freed nation is concerned, will never abate. Practical vision is often left very much in the rear of the field, by the erupting euphoria). Unlike some other parts of Britain's erstwhile Empire, no transmigration from Britain occurred, and no nucleus of 'permanent' white population was assimilated into Independent India beyond a small number of expatriates who chose to stay.

Ordinarily, it is not part of normal Indian culture to believe (or behave) in any way that suggests that one is better than another, whether through birthright, inheritance, superior education or position of office. Arrogance and pompousness is considered ungracious.

Humility is a virtue and attracts greater acceptance and recognition, from all (there will always be some whose vanity is beyond containment).

For the most part, Indian expatriates and those Indians who have migrated to other countries have steadfastly maintained these same commendable virtues. Most prefer to keep a low-profile, while continuing to keep close ties with their native land.

**Contents and Sample Pages**