Rakesh Ahuja @DwnlodingMyMind · Dec 24
#4 My Travels with Oz Multiculturalism
Social media is flooded with videos and photos of white Australians sunning and playing on Bondi Beach in the 1960s. They aim to contrast what was with what is: the Australian life, so much more peaceful and homogeneous before multiculturalism infected the country.
Look where we are now, they ask, with non-whites and even terrorists contaminating our beaches now?
I understand. I suppose the aborigines, too, watched with trembling trepidation the arrival of white skins on Bondi’s shores. No doubt, they too resented the immigrants who did not fit their norm that black was beautiful.
As a teen in the early 1960s in Canberra, I fell in with a group of fair Australians. Two Mizrahi Jewish women and I were not Anglos. We all bonded; we cavorted at weekends on beaches from Bondi to Broulee, Cronulla to Congo, Mollymook to Manly. It was a magical time.
The only question vaguely referring to my differentness was whether I got sunburnt, much like the children’s curiosity about different genitalia.
Gradually, our group expanded to include ‘New Australians’ from Southern Europe. Our Fair friends often expressed wistfulness about our natural advantage of having hybridic tanned or brown skin.
Sixty years later, I observe with amusement the adherents of Make Australia Great Again extoling the 'Bondi' life of their white compatriots of two generations ago, who had a beach all to themselves for becoming brownish. Are they aware of the irony of it all?
This is all quite apart from the obvious point now known that no tan is worth the risk of Melanoma or skin cancer. The white beachgoers of those times did not know, but why propagate that ignorance today with scenes from the past?
http://DownloadingMyMind.com
#auspol #Multiculturalism #BondiBeachTerrorAttack
Rakesh Ahuja @DwnlodingMyMind · Dec 17
#3 My Travels with Oz Multiculturalism
I have lived in the (now gentrified) #Canberra suburb of #O'Connor for 60 years. It is a 'bush' home in the middle of a small city. There is no manicuration anywhere in its boundaries; everywhere the green of bamboo, Irish strawberry, Photinia, Lilly Pilly, Bottle Brush and honeysuckle are abundantly overgrowing and blossoming. Long ago, before the Barry Drive expressway, kangaroos contemplated imperially on the nature strip.
On 7 December 2025, I awoke to a thud outside. I discovered a large plastic container, a large window blind and a bag of rubbish (albeit neatly tied). And a placard reading, "Indian go home". It is the puzzling singularity of the word rather than the word itself that struck me.
It was not a pleasant encounter to wake up in multicultural Australia, where I grew up. I left on 9 December.
#auspol #Multiculturalism #ThingsCanberra
http://DownloadingMyMind.com
Rakesh Ahuja @DwnlodingMyMind · Dec 17
Ignorance in the Age of Information
At 80, the sheer irony of the Age of Information strikes. The more I know, the less I know. It is a disturbing realisation that, as I seek to acquire more knowledge of the human condition (Andre Malraux), I am becoming aware that the shores of my ignorance are growing. All I can do is be aware of how much I do not know. Hence, all I can do is to be curious, which a Saint (Augustine?) said, is the wellspring of knowledge.
Apropos of nothing, of all the cultures I have traversed, I have never encountered one less curious than the (north) Indians. They have no self-awareness, the capability for confessing, “I do not know". They know everything. Hence, the predilection for (irritating) monologues unpaused by a question. That is why Indians can rarely project the true nature of their (Hindu) civilisation.
@narendramodi
@rishibagree
@amitmalviya
#Curiosity #auspol #India
Rakesh Ahuja @DwnlodingMyMind · Dec 11
Erkhart Tolle - NOW
#Tolle is best known for his book "The Power of Now". Its core message is that almost all human suffering comes from being lost in thoughts about the past and future, and that freedom lies in fully inhabiting the present moment, the “Now.”
Recently, I was penned (comfortably) for a week, but consistently offered icky meals. Unsurprisingly for a life-long foodie, the thought of good fare gathered mental moss. So, this 'creative' attempt to capture Tolle's philosophy with culinary imagery.
#NOW! #auspol
@adamliaw
Rakesh Ahuja @DwnlodingMyMind · Oct 10
#2My Travels with Oz Multiculturalism
Stepping into the Terra Nullius Colony
Sydney, September spring 1961.
I disembarked from the P&O SS Strathmore at Circular Quay. The teen son of a junior Indian diplomat posted to Canberra. Immigration and Customs processed us at the pier itself, a benign Sovereign Border at that time.
2. Their correct but cold treatment of us was in marked contrast to the solicitous greetings offered to the incoming Pound 10 pommies also disembarking.
3. My father had warned me of the Australian preference for shades of white. The some 700 displaced refugees on the SS Misr, barely fourteen years before, had been greeted as a bunch of "so many Jews, of so many swarthy dark-skinned southern Mediterranean, un-British, un-Australian, unsuitable aliens". They were perceived as a threat to White Australia.
#auspol #Multiculturalism #AustralianWayOfLife #AntiMemoirs
Rakesh Ahuja @DwnlodingMyMind · Oct 10
#1My Travels with Oz Multiculturalism
Fifty years since it replaced the White Australia policy in the 1970s, Multiculturalism in Australia is facing significant challenges. I am devoting my remaining life to assessing its Costs and Benefits for the Australian way of life and determining the way forward to ensure its relevance.
I have no wish to write an autobiography, linearly enumerating my personal encounters since 1961 with the changing Australian society. Here, I wish only to record stray fragments of my travels in Australia Fair as and when a thought, a comment by another or a development warrants my perspective. There is no chronological order to my observations.
#auspol #Multiculturalism #AustralianLife #AntiMemoirs
Rakesh Ahuja @DwnlodingMyMind · Sep 2
AntiMemoir - An Augustinian Confession.
I turned 80 and wrote this in my journal. It is now posted in:
https://downloadingmymind.com/my-augustinian-confession-3/
#AntiMemoir #Malraux #SelfAutoBio
Rakesh Ahuja @DwnlodingMyMind · Sep 16
St. Augustine & Goa
Thank you for revealing to me #Goa's past connection with the Order of #St_Augustine. The following might give you an idea of my fascination with this subject.
https://downloadingmymind.com/my-augustinian-confession-3/
- Explore
