India and Nepal visits by my sons..? 18 3 21 (21) 25 1 31

The first to depart Europe was my younger son P who accompanied his wife J who had decided she would like to visit India to celebrate her 50th birthday. On their return journey home they will also visit Oman where my wife and I took a winter holiday to visit our godson T and his wife C and my namesake, their son E whom they named after me, a very rare compliment indeed, and such a lovely young person, who like me behaves in character with his given name!?

Our elder son S departed yesterday after working during the daytime at his job in one of the capital's universities...This morning I got a WhatsApp message apologising for not telephoning as he promised he would before his departure which didn't surprise me for he does too much work and takes free time only sparingly.

Likewise our younger son but at least his vacation was planned well in advance and J will have taken care of all the details, booking the flights etc., etc., etc... and she has even planned a trip to the dessert in Oman rather than visit the mountains as we did because she is typical of people who grew up in a relatively flat country for she suffers from vertigo and steers clear of high places...

I responded to his WhatsApp message by suggesting he try to make a bit of free time for himself whilst visiting Kathmandu where he and his colleagues will be conducting interviews for deserving scholars who wish to come here to study something in tertiary education, one of the few countries I guess which still sponsors young people from less developed countries to give them a university education as poorer people of the underdeveloped world..?

I added that of my 2 sons in that part of the world there would be no prizes given for guessing which of the two countries India or Nepal I would rather visit..? Since I am a mountain climber naturally I would select Nepal over India but that is only a secondary reason.

My principal reason is the human rights record, especially with regard to its treatment of women, of the relatively much richer and more successful country of India if one looks at the progress each has made in recent years in terms of its development. Naturally I have not paraded these thoughts around the family to either the parents or the children, our grandchildren, of these two sons though I can expect one day perhaps one or more of our 4 grandchildren may get to read my blog, and so I need to qualify what I say in a little more detail.

Well when I read just recently about the actor Michael Caine’s life and his marriage of 47 years standing he reported how when his wife-to-be reflected upon the way he behaved towards his mother she decided to accept his proposal of marriage, describing himself thereafter as a feminist. This got me thinking I too must be a feminist when I think about the way I regarded my mother and of all the compliments she showered upon me for being as far as I was able to be a dutiful son..?

But working in the tea trade all those years in England and then reading in the newspapers about how certain of the tea plantation workers are so exploited that when their young daughters are abducted by men who prey on them to profit by having the girls work for a pittance in rich Indian families as maids and nannies with no legal recourse to get their daughters back I think: what kinds of people are these better off Indians who are happy to exploit such poverty, and that no matter how much I would like to visit the country to see for example the Taj Mahal, I couldn’t visit and be seen to condone such malpractices by my presence in their backward country..? 

Have a good day every one of my blog readers for I hope you are not of the same disposition of the people the exploiters of young girls I write about this day!