How little we know
There s a line that I keep remembering from an old Bengali movie called Herok Rajar Deshe (A Ray classic btw) in which the evil king to keep the students from learning teaches them "Jaanar kono sesh ne.... jaanar cheshta britha tai"
Now a bit of the background. The last month or so has been pretty much very hectic on the job front but now things have gotten slightly easy. Now when you are sitting in the office pretending to be serious when actually you don't have too much work one of the safest things to do is read on the net. So over the past few days I ve been reading up on a few areas that I ve wanted to know more about.
The present one is Che Guevara its been a very revolutionary reading period... with the readings moving to Cuba obviously and finally yet again obviously Castro. However what stood aside is that while I ve seen Che s face in mugs to t- shirts its funny how little we know about him in general. If you expand it a little bit more you ll see how poorly read we actually are. The Cuban crisis remains some missile thing that brought the US and USSR to war and my friends seem to know more about Havana cigars than the revolution. How much do we know about say Latin America apart from their soccer stars, Samba and women?
The moot point here being how little we know. So this plea is simply one to you all that as and when we find time which we waste uselessly lets read. The internet is an amazing encyclopedia not just a chatting place. The television carries lots of good channels and we needn't restrain ourselves to the Floydian "Fourteen channels of shit on tv to choose from".
There is as it is so much in the world that we cannot know in a lifetime but there is a lot that we can if only we are willing to put in a bit of effort. Isn't it worth that much?
Maybe I am the only ignorant one around but something tells me that I m not. Am I preaching too much here or just getting too old?
Now a bit of the background. The last month or so has been pretty much very hectic on the job front but now things have gotten slightly easy. Now when you are sitting in the office pretending to be serious when actually you don't have too much work one of the safest things to do is read on the net. So over the past few days I ve been reading up on a few areas that I ve wanted to know more about.
The present one is Che Guevara its been a very revolutionary reading period... with the readings moving to Cuba obviously and finally yet again obviously Castro. However what stood aside is that while I ve seen Che s face in mugs to t- shirts its funny how little we know about him in general. If you expand it a little bit more you ll see how poorly read we actually are. The Cuban crisis remains some missile thing that brought the US and USSR to war and my friends seem to know more about Havana cigars than the revolution. How much do we know about say Latin America apart from their soccer stars, Samba and women?
The moot point here being how little we know. So this plea is simply one to you all that as and when we find time which we waste uselessly lets read. The internet is an amazing encyclopedia not just a chatting place. The television carries lots of good channels and we needn't restrain ourselves to the Floydian "Fourteen channels of shit on tv to choose from".
There is as it is so much in the world that we cannot know in a lifetime but there is a lot that we can if only we are willing to put in a bit of effort. Isn't it worth that much?
Maybe I am the only ignorant one around but something tells me that I m not. Am I preaching too much here or just getting too old?
posted by Abilin Mukherjee at 4:36 AM
2 Comments:
I completely agree...most of what I know comes from TV( Public TV off course!!), The public Radio and Google. And talking about Che Guevara watch the movie "The Motorcycle Diaries"...very moving and simple.
Everytime I come upon some subject I don't know about I just look it up on Google.
No you ain't ageing yet...i TOTALLY agree, i too have this habit of searching anything that catches my fancy from the net. Presently its Centtral Asian History, last week it was SOuth American music.
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