Remembering a Great Occasion of Sharing Joy With My East German Friends!

Today, the 9th November 2014, is the official anniversary day to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany that paved the way for reunification of the German people who were forcefully  separated out by the flawed ideologies of their leaders.

Google doodle most appropriately has reminded all Googlers about this important anniversary lest they forget the importance of this event in the history of our modern times.

25 years ago, on 9th November 1989, me and a couple of my colleagues were hosting a small official party to a couple of our East German engineer friends working with us in central India. They wanted to go back to their country urgently due to the political unrest that began there some time ago. They wanted to be with their near and dear ones immediately and be part of some imminent historic moments. They were too happy with the developments at home. Some thing that they had been desiring for a couple of decades was apparently going to be fulfilled soon! They did not want to miss it out!

They were project design engineers from a renowned government owned company in East Germany. They were in India to renovate and modernize a steel rolling mill in our Indian government owned steel company which was installed some two decades ago by the technology suppliers from erstwhile Soviet Union.

The modernization project was planned as a joint effort by the East German company and by the Indian owner company. A joined team of engineers from both sides had been working on the project design aspects for some months already. I was a member of the Indian side.

My counter part from the East German side was one Mr Dieter Sommer. He was a very unassuming and simple gentleman who understood little English and I understood little German. The German team had brought in one or two language interpreters for us to over come the language barrier. But it was our common engineering skills and our common sense that usually worked.

I was astonished the way Sommer developed the ability to communicate with me in improvised English without the help of the interpreter. It gave us the confidence to work together and even to travel together to various places in India in connection with the project. Soon we developed a good friendship.

By age, he was elder to me by at least ten years. I remember many things that he shared with me about his parents, the world war, his difficult life after his country's division as east and west ,  about his grown up children and their ambition to see their nation re-united once again. His broken English was no barrier for our communication.

While working together, I could feel the joy they were feeling while they read about the news of glasnost effects spreading in the soviet bloc. The fall of Poland from the communist grip had begun to show its positive effects in their East Germany as well.

Sommer's parents were Christians. That was what he told me. But he grew up in the GDR's communist regime as an atheist. Yet I could sense the sparkle in his eyes when he told me about the Bible reading habit of his grown up daughter. 

The German engineers, as I observed them, were very systematic and devoted to their work. Germans were the same, whether they belonged to the east or the west. But, the communist experiment in East Germany caused the biggest economic disaster among half of the Germans who lived in GDR.

Those in the eastern side were struggling hard to live. Even expert engineers like Mr Sommer lived in small apartments. He could own a small car very late in his career. On the other hand, his fellows who lived in the liberalized capitalist economy of West Germany were living in prosperity. Both started from the same conditions of ruin after the world war-II that resulted from the misguided rule of of Adolf Hitler and perhaps even events that began earlier.

There was no reason that the East Germans did not aspire for re-unification of their nation!

While we were having our party dinner, we were watching the TV. We watched the news clippings that showed the Germans from both sides pulling down the cursed Berlin wall.

We watched our German friends and their lone american interpreter shouting in joy. If they had wings, they would have flown right away!

They left and returned back to work for the completion of our project back in India after a couple of months. We could complete that project successfully. When they left, they were citizens of re-united Germany.

The re-unification was not a bed of roses. Many from both sides faced problems. The government company where Sommer and his colleagues worked disintegrated and privatized. I met a couple of them later who came to India in search of potential markets for their industrial products. 

I have not met Sommer or heard about him.

25 years have gone now. Many things have changed in this world. And many things will change in future. That is the way our world is planned! 

It will not be possible for those among us who want to stick to the mores, customs and ideologies of the past based on erroneous concepts and ideas for long.

If we do not accept change, we are perhaps not humans!

Indian Union Budget 2014: Is it Anything Different From Previous Years?

The new Finance Minister of India, Shri Arun Jaitley had already finished his task of reading the budget proposal for 2014-15.

Many of us would not be interested to read the whole thing what he had read out. We know now what it means for us the ordinary individual tax payers. 

Perhaps the business people have to spend some time with their tax lawyers and consultants to understand the implications of taxation affecting their respective business ventures.

For some it could be beneficial, and for some it could mean some loss and problems.

If you are interested, you may have a look in to the whole text of the budget speech of July 10th 2014 by opening it in the Hindu website using this link. 

Unfortunately, the FM has not found it worth while to address the problems of the ordinary individual tax payers to undertake the mandatory e- filing of  the income tax returns that I had written an year ago. 

As with the FM's of the previous UPA regime, he too did not think it prudent to remove some of the ridiculous I-T provisions that got introduced in the earlier years. 

He and his team also did not find it worth while to eliminate the requirements of tax return filing for the salaried class and pensioners. 

Neither there was any thoughts on making some progressive steps by removing the regressive taxation and going for some other progressive methods to raise government income such as the alternatives some financial experts and thinkers have suggested. 

So in short the budget speech of 2014 followed the essential format and frame work of the budget speeches of the past with some changes here and there. It was fundamentally the same as in the previous years!

But perhaps the FM could not have done better than this, given the short time of just a couple of months that he could get to do the work.

To make any drastic changes in the legacy of the existing system, one has to do much painful exertion which most people would not like to do. 

Who would like to antagonize the officers and staff of the ministry and their departments? Change is always painful and cause resistance. 

Sharing Some Photographs of My Life That Remind Me of the Changes that I have been Witnessing!

Today is a Sunday and it has been unusually cold in this part of the country from the morning. A cold and wet day devoid of the usual routines of office going and the like. As there was nothing to do, I thought of reading the Urantia Book. I began reading the foreword once again, the para that I had read many times earlier: 

"It is exceedingly difficult to present enlarged concepts and advanced truth, in our endeavor to expand cosmic consciousness and enhance spiritual perception, when we are restricted to the use of a circumscribed language of the realm. But our mandate admonishes us to make every effort to convey our meanings by using the word symbols of the English tongue. We have been instructed to introduce new terms only when the concept to be portrayed finds no terminology in English which can be employed to convey such a new concept partially or even with more or less distortion of meaning.............Your world, Urantia, is one of many similar inhabited planets which comprise the local universe of Nebadon. This universe, together with similar creations, makes up the superuniverse of Orvonton, from whose capital, Uversa, our commission hails. Orvonton is one of the seven evolutionary superuniverses of time and space which circle the never-beginning, never-ending creation of divine perfection — the central universe of Havona. At the heart of this eternal and central universe is the stationary Isle of Paradise, the geographic center of infinity and the dwelling place of the eternal God."

Yes, it is exceedingly difficult to present enlarged concepts and advanced truth to my fellow men and women. Experience has made me realize that very clear now. I thought this world is very advanced and the people are capable of understanding higher knowledge and thoughts. But unfortunately it is not so. The divine revelators of the Urantia Book knew it well. My world is still in its cultural infancy, though there could be a few individuals here and there who are receptive to advanced truths!

I closed the book. I took the photo album and began glancing through the photographs. From a child of the nineteen fifties, I had progressed to become an old man reaching the sixties. Many of those who shared the space with me in those photographs no more exist in this world. Those who exist have changed their physical appearances. As the time passed, new faces are appearing and old faces are fading out.

Change is continuously taking place. And change is the only thing that has not changed.

Look at these pictures of me, my family and my activities. Changes are too visible and understandable:

Me and My Wife now (2014)

Me, the child of 1958

Me (extreme left) with my parents (extreme right) at mother's parental home(Seen in the photo is Late Mr J John, founder headmaster of MTUP School Nellikkala (Aikuzha School) and his son and its later HM Mr John John. Photo of 1969.

My wife Lizy with her maternal grandmother Mrs Rahelamma Chacko, w/o Late Rev. Chacko (Kumbukkattu Achen, Valakom, Kottarakkara) Photo of 1981

Me and my wife Lizy (Saramma John)  with her siblings, Moncy (Daniel John) 

and Princy at her home. Photo of 1982

My daughter, Shaleen. Photo of 1985

My daughter Shaleen with her great grandma, Mrs Annamma Mathai (d/o Kumplampoika Kulanjikombil Mathai, one of the founders of CMS High School Kumplampoika)

My wife Lizy, daughter Shaleen and son Dejo with my father, Mr T.M.Mathew, Retd Teacher, Mar Thoma High School Pathanamthitta , my mother Mrs.Chinnamma Mathew, Retd Teacher, Govt High School Elanthoor and my youngest brother Mr Joji C Mathew at our Elanthoor Home. Photo 1992

My grandmother Late Mrs Annamma Mathai Kulanjikombil (1898-1996) photo of 1988

My wife Lizy with her sister Dr Princy John and brother Er Daniel John  at Valakom home. 1994

Me and my son, Dejo Rajan Mathew Photo of 1998

My children sharing some happy moments 2001

Me lighting a ceremonial lamp.Photo 2008

Me addressing a professional gathering 2008

Sharing the dais with other dignitaries, 2008

News coverage of professional activities 2008

Wedding of my daughter Shaleen with Prem 14th April 2008

Shaleen and Prem lighting the wedding reception lamp 14th April 2008

Baptism Day of my grandchild Mannah Rachel at Parumala Church 2009

My wife with her brother and parents at Parumala Church 2009

My brother in law Moncy (Er Daniel John) and youngest brother Joji C Mathew at Parumala Church 2009

So life keeps going with continuous changes.

And those changes are inevitable experiences.

But what are those invisible changes that are taking place?

Any changes in the mind ?

Any changes in priorities of  life?

Do you ever thought of any link between my reading the book earlier today and sharing these photos later?

Try to find it out yourself if you have the time!

Read my blogs based on the knowledge I have gained by being a student of the Urantia Book.

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