Book Power
The East and the West-By Swami Vivekananda
I am talking about this book –You might have read it. In Bengali version of this book Swamiji had wrote many a objectionable command about many races. Hardly any person can dare it. But the overall topic is very interesting, modern and knowledgeable. You can compare what The American (west ) and what Asian (east) think differently about any subject.
The book also clarifies the food and dress habits and life sense of the people of different communities. The Indian high educated people (as example , software professionals , technical & management persons), who roam all over the world, can gain ideas about other races. But the English version is slightly different than Bengali version. But both are nice.
Everybody should read it.
Highlights of the book:-
Vast and deep rivers — swelling and impetuous — charming pleasure-gardens by the river banks, putting to shame the celestial Nandana-Kânana; amidst these pleasure-gardens rise, towering to the sky, beautiful marble palaces, decorated with the most exquisite workmanship of fine art; on the sides, in front, and behind, clusters of huts, with crumbling mud-walls and dilapidated roofs, the bamboos of which, forming their skeletons, as it were, are exposed to view; moving about here and there emaciated figures of young and old in tattered rags, whose faces bear deep-cut lines of the despair and poverty of hundreds of years; cows, bullocks, buffaloes everywhere — ay, the same melancholy look in their eyes, the same feeble physique; on the wayside refuse and dirt: This is our present-day India! .........**......
We, on the other hand, see that the Europeans eat without discrimination whatever they get, have no idea of cleanliness as we have, do not observe caste distinctions, freely mix with women, drink wine, and shamelessly dance at a ball, men and women held in each other..............
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