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Their attitude is much more publicly blatant than a western man's, who is probably just as vain but would never publicly show it. It is part of the Indian childlike attitude which many of the men here possess. No sophisticated cover.

"Family sickness. That's what Indians have. If a boy is offered a job in Bombay for a thousand Rupees a month he won't take it. He can't leave his mother and father and they won't want him to go 800 kilometers away. He can't be separated from his family. It is a sickness." add to conversation on p 94.

homo sum: nihil humani a me alienum puto."

Terence: "I am a man; nothing is alien to me."

There is some fine craftsmanship in India in some of the cottage industries. Sari weaving, textiles, baskets, handicrafts. But most things are of shoddy workmanship: Books for example. Indian books are badly made; poorly glued and bound, sloppily printed. True the quality of paper is terrible but still a book could be well-printed and packaged. This is not a matter of money but of attention to quality. Books are a luxury for most Indians, expensive, so you would think they would be well-produced at least. I have always take an almost sensual pleasure in a well-made book. Motilal an Indian publisher here in Benares has imported a book from Germany with their imprint called "The Doctrine of the Buddha." It has beautiful typography, well spaced

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evenly printed pages, good cloth binding. Yet this book is nothing special or extraordinary, just a well-made book. The book opens without trouble, lies flat, is a pleasure to read. The Indian books by comparison are truly ugly. the cheap labor here, the materials except for inexpensive good paper are here, but the pride in a well-made object is missing.

"Civilization alone, without culture, that means without impoverishment of the heart, is nothing but refinement of every form of pleasure-seeking, and therefore ultimately producing an enhancement of egoism, and thereby of the struggle of everybody against everybody." footnote p 55 Doctrine of the Buddha - Grimm

The Moslems here refuse to believe that the Americans have landed on the moon. This being a sacred orb, that decides when their festivals are held.

One of the inheritances of the British is that people walk to the left, the whole nation of street traffic being arranged that way. So even in a narrow gully you pass on the left. [Conquered and subject to occupation for years when the invader is overthrown, the nation that has been occupied, as much as it hates its former rulers, will have assimilated many subtle traits from them - badly constructed sentence.] When men come together it is inevitable there will be an exchange between them, that something will pass from one to the other, even though no contact is wished for on either side. Subtle, invisible things are communicated that neither are consciously aware for. More subtle than an obvious enforced rule of traffic that is still followed.