The caste system, the division of rich and poor, the dowry custom, the cremation custom in India, the horrible unsanitary life on the Ganges River were shared by the female writer in her travel book “Lonely on Everest”. “. On the occasion of the Covid-19 earthquake raging violently in India, writer Di Li shared his experiences about this country on his personal Facebook page. VietNamNet would like to introduce to readers: Writer Di Li visits the Victoria Museum in Kolkata, India (photo: Di Li) Criticizing poor and dirty India: a half perspective The number of deaths from Covid in India has reached 4,529 cases / day (an incomplete number), the highest in the world since the beginning of the epidemic season until now. Indians have the custom of cremation, so if people die too much, they will break branches in the park and burn their bodies on the sidewalk, poor people can’t buy firewood and can’t steal branches from the park. then stealthily carry the body of a relative to the door of the funeral home, throw it, then abandon the body and run for someone else, or more simply, let the body be thrown into the Ganges River to float. The virus in the body just mixes with the river water and then drifts downstream wherever it goes, whoever it sticks to next, while the water of the Ganges River still travels throughout Asia. I have been to India 4 times (March 18 last year was canceled because of India’s blockade due to Covid-19, not 5 times). Trot has already changed money, so there is still a pile of rupees in the drawer. Because India is a passion, a destination that I can fly to several dozen times in my life. In short, every time I make a fuss, I buy a ticket to India. Many people think that India is dirty and poor, Indians are ugly, Indian boys are fierce, India is backward, India is uncivilized… but only half of it has been seen. In New Delhi, there are many greener, cleaner, more beautiful places than Europe, with great buildings dating back many centuries. India is the world’s second silicon valley and is set to overtake the US in computing software capacity. The place that produces the most movies is Bollywood, not Hollywood. The countries that own the most Miss Universe in the world, in addition to a few South American countries, there is also India. India has many beautiful people, because they are multi-racial. The young man covered in a scarf who looks like a football star is a tuk tuk driver in the village in Jaipur – photo taken in 2013 (photo: Di Li) For example, two young men I met and took random pictures in Jaipur. The young man with a scarf who looks like a soccer star is a tuk tuk driver in the village (I only took portraits because if I scrolled down… he was wearing ripped pants). The Indian guy with dark glasses that I (Di Li) took with me was a street vendor, making the whole crew bewildered because he looked like a Hollywood actor” -(photo: Di Li) The guy with the dark glasses I took with him was a street vendor, making our whole group bewildered because he looked like a Hollywood actor. He offered to buy goods, I stood dumbfounded because he asked in turn in English, French, German, Italian to see if I knew what language I could speak, so I would communicate in that language. Indian men are actually the gentlest of the countries I’ve been to, and even the salesmen are often humble and poor. Even scolded did not dare to react. In Vietnam, if you scold, you will be beaten back. I used to travel across North India and a few times to New Delhi, traveling all by myself but still safe, and not being watched by anyone as people say. India is one of the world’s earliest philosophies, the cradle of culture, architecture and art, one of which is Buddha. The world’s richest people and the world’s best playboys are also concentrated in India. In 2018, the daughter of tycoon Mukesh Ambani got married (Ambani is the richest person in Asia and the fourth in the world with a fortune of 40 billion USD, even surpassing Bill Gates in one year), the money for mosaic wedding invitations alone. encrusted, calculated in Vietnamese currency has cost hundreds of billion. The price of extremism But unfortunately, India is an extreme country, in this place it seems that there are only two concepts. Either very nice or very ugly. Either extremely gentle and shy, or extremely aggressive and perverted. Either very clean or extremely dirty. Either extremely intellectual or illiterate. Either so rich or so poor that they can’t afford firewood for cremation. Either extremely civilized or extremely backward (so much so that now many villages still maintain the custom of widows burning themselves with their husbands). Either extreme meditation, peaceful mind and body (the birthplace of Yoga), or extreme lust (also the birthplace of Kama Sutra). The landscape is extremely cold (the Himalayas) and extremely hot (the Great Indian desert). The food is either amazing (just brought to the mouth, must be spit out) or extremely delicious. India has the most luxurious hotels in the world for guests to stay there as ecstatic as the land of ecstasy and there are also slums that are considered as hell on earth. All this polarization is due to the five caste system that has persisted in India from BC until now. If someone is dirty, ugly, poor, illiterate, or ignorant, their descendants will be passed down for hundreds of generations. But it’s very rare like other countries that from a shoe shine boy to become a billionaire, from the son of an illiterate mother who can become a scientist, from a hired dishwasher to become a beauty queen, from unacknowledged adopted son to deputy prime minister. In India, the monks and nuns sweep banyan leaves, and there are rare cases of jumping from one caste to another. Most of the time, trying to come up, they were drowned so they couldn’t open their eyes. So the tourism slogan given by India itself is as true as they claim to be “Incredible India”. Covid-19 when it came to India it was also weird according to this country, it mutated and increased virulence, and of course it excluded the rich. Because the rich, they take a private plane to the Maldives or Dubai to stay in a 6-star resort to avoid illness, when the epidemic is over, they will return. They sunbathe, shop for diamonds, drink cocktails under the stars at night and post pictures on Facebook. If you are poor, you will suffer everywhere, whether East or West, whether Buddhist or Christian, feudal or modern, hierarchical society or democratic equality. When something happens in the country, war, coup, epidemic, economic crisis, natural disaster, climate change, the poor receive enough. They are the most vulnerable in society. And India has many poor people. No matter how high GDP is, it is only in the hands of the billionaire elite. On the 7th of last year, I was still in India. At that time, seeing the news at home, they rushed to buy masks but sold out, so the last day the group went to the market not to buy any gifts but just bought a bunch of masks to bring back. The Indians found that very strange, shrugging their shoulders in surprise because at that time there were no cases in India. But at that time I said: If Covid-19 spread to India, the whole country will be infected, the number of cases will lead the world. The poet Nguyet Vu who accompanied me later kept saying that my words were… prophetic. Poor thing, it’s not a prophecy, India is always full of people every day, it looks like a Zombie movie, it’s strange that it’s not infected. The world keeps scolding India for not locking down. But they couldn’t do that. Thousands of Indians still bathe in the Ganges River in Haridwar during the Kumbh Mela festival despite the Covid-19 epidemic Firstly, India has many of the world’s leading religious festivals. People die right next to them how they do not know, but still several tens of thousands of Indians bathe together during the religious festival of Kumbh Mela. No one wants to wear a mask. They poured water on them from the Ganges River, then buried their faces in the viscous cow dung and told the gods to help them. They would rather die from Covid-19 but definitely refuse to give up their pilgrimage. The Prime Minister also cannot ban the festival because the power of the Brahmin priests here is supreme (Is the first of the 5 castes). Called the king’s magic to lose to the village rules. Our festivals also gather as many people as in India, but the Party and Government ask people to stay at home right away, and the whole country listens. Countries that have prided themselves on long-standing democracies can’t do that. Because the people above told them not to listen, people also scolded for more, not to mention asking people to declare and trace Covid-19. In the epidemic situation, this is called the other side of democracy. Mr. Ram Vriksha Gaur, one of the directors of the popular TV series “8-year-old bride” went bankrupt due to the epidemic, had to sell vegetables and fruits. Second, India’s poverty rate is very high. If the blockade, it is likely that the number of people starving to death is higher than dying from Covid-19. For example, Ram Vriksha Gaur, one of the directors of “8-Year-Old Bride”. The epidemic made him bankrupt, so he had to drive a car to sell vegetables. It is not surprising that the Indian variant of Covid will spread to the whole world, especially Africa. At that time, it was normal for middle-class people to go bankrupt. So if you guys go away for a holiday, don’t wear a mask during the trip, come home and hide from the declaration, then carry your body around and go out in contact with other people, then only the poor will hurt the most. Because if the epidemic breaks out, the poor will not be able to sell baskets of vegetables and fruits. According to media reports, if vaccinated diligently, it will also take India … 10 years to fully vaccinate more than 1 billion of their people. The story of India makes me see nothing too optimistic about the current Covid-19 situation. Because the first logic is that only when the vaccine is given enough around the world, travel between countries will be completely free. As long as there is still a country with Covid-19, it will spread back and forth, even adding new strains for which a vaccine will not solve the problem. The second logic is that the land border between countries (except for the island countries) is often open for hundreds of kilometers, the whole field is not empty, so it is normal to spread each other. Now India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia are considered defeated. Soon it will be Nepal’s turn to fall, a country with a high population density, poor health care, poor sanitation and unfortunately shares a very long border with India. If anything happens, the outcome could be even worse than India, because they are much poorer than India, traffic is no different from Indiana Jones movies, it is difficult to get aid and supplies. This is really heartbreaking because these are the two countries that I love the most.

Through her writings, is the feeling of an India different and out of the currents very clear? On the 7th day of the Lunar New Year, when COVID-19 raged in Wuhan, I was in Kolkata with a delegation of Vietnamese writers. For a few days we did not have internet, so we did not know any news in Hanoi or the world. Until the last day, we were invited to dinner by your side in a luxury restaurant, then there was wifi. Looking at the photos taken online, we were scared and scared, unable to believe that the city where we lived was still peaceful a few days ago. So we stuck our noses in reading the news, couldn’t eat or drink, didn’t even bother to raise our heads to chat with anyone. The landlord saw that no one had touched the chopsticks, and wondered and worried, did not understand what was going on. Of course they were saddened because the party they carefully prepared was a failure. We then were also ashamed of that impolite attitude. But at that time how could not eat anymore. So early the next morning, instead of going shopping and preparing presents, we suggest that you take to the pharmacy to buy … masks. Each person took advantage of buying 3-layer masks. Buying stubs buy crazy makes everyone surprised. We tell each other that this thing to bring back as a gift is very precious, because there is a shortage of goods at home. They were surprised because in the big city of Kolkata, people still go to school to work normally. Because COVID has yet to spread and India has not had any cases yet. At that time I said that if India had COVID, it would be catastrophic because their case number would definitely be at the top of the world. After exactly 1 year, the members of the crew kept saying that I had the ability … to prophesy, but I only spoke logically. Writer Di Li released flowers to pray at the Ganges River. Does the wave of COVID-19 seem like it only wants to submerge this country has to do with the different lifestyles of the people here? Yes, India is the second most populous in the world and is expected to be about to take the top spot of China. However, India’s population density is now 3 times that of China. If we look at the pictures taken of India, most of our impression is the terrible crowd. It seems that every time you open the door, you can see people intertwined in chaos as if there was a big turn, at times it seemed like there was a war and people were in a hurry to evacuate. Living conditions, hygiene and awareness of the people are also major issues contributing to the spread of the epidemic (not just COVID). The Indians are also religious. Vietnamese people participate in religious festivals not because of fanaticism or devotion, but a mixture of culture, habits, joyful assembly and superstition, if the Government requests that the festival be stopped. everyone is happy to obey. Not in India. We are amazed that the Indian Kashmir government is still allowing 600,000 pilgrims in the midst of more than 3 hundred thousand new infections each day and nearly 3 thousand COVID deaths. But religion has a huge power in this country. Many would rather die than give up on pilgrimage. The king lost to the village’s custom in such place. Di Li’s feelings in the days when the whole world was heading towards India must certainly be different from those who have never set foot here. You can share that with readers of Health & Life. I love India so much that after my return trip last New Year, less than 2 months later, I arranged another trip to India, which was to travel by myself, not for business. I bought a plane ticket and made a visa, but close to the date of the flight, in early March, India announced a blockade, internal and external import and export. It is true that I quietly watch India every day, over there I also have many friends. And I worry about them. I was heartbroken to see the numbers soar every day but not surprised. Anyway, I always pray for the country I love. I am extremely impressed with the pages written under the title Dawn on the Ganges River. Is there a connection between dead bodies floating in rivers and mass cremations in this country? In the past, when I was sailing on the Ganges River, I was scared to see the crematoriums along the river and the chaos of people bathing and washing activities right next to me. Now it is too mysterious that people have to cremate even on the street, still in the midst of the common activities. I can imagine it, but I always try not to imagine it anymore. Thank you writer Di Li for the conversation! Vo Hong Thu ( (perform) )