Page 57 - GOTIL (ENG) Sample

Village Life in Bangladesh 25

Being so isolated from modern technological society,
Bangladeshi village life is in almost total contrast to that
of the industrialized West. Villagers don’t know what it
means to have attached bathrooms, automobiles, or other
innumerable “necessities” of modern civilization. It seems
that as long as no one tells them about such things, they’re
quite happy to live without them. They’ve never heard
of washing machines, toilet paper, sponges for washing
plates, air fresheners, canned or frozen food, or even
knives and forks.

Being attracted by our kīrtana, some young village boys
once followed us back to the rented house in Dhaka
which we had transformed into an āśrama. That house
had all modern amenities, as much as can be expected in
Bangladesh: doors with handles, municipal water from
taps, electric lights, and so on. The boys opened and
closed the doors again and again, fascinated to see the
latch system, and repeatedly turned the lights on and
off. They would also turn on the tap and then walk away
leaving the water running. Apparently they thought it was
like a river flowing naturally.

Another time in Dhaka, I asked a village boy to make
a photocopy but he hadn’t the slightest clue what that
was. When I tried to explain it to him, he couldn’t even
begin to comprehend it. City slickers may consider such
ignorance to be backward, but then such townsfolk are
themselves ignorant of country lore. They don’t have
the slightest idea how to plow a field or husk rice, nor
the names of different crops, trees, insects, and birds.