Slavery

A few days ago I visited the museum of slavery at Liverpool. In the first place when my husband said lets go to the slavery museum I was like...'what.. do you even have museums like that??' he said, it seems like this one has a lot of facts and is quite RAW... its not been sugarcoated by a 'lot' of factors.And then we decided... yesss, lets go there.

At the entrance there was a statement that said something like 'Each and every person should be informed about slavery and the sort of tortures given to the slaves during older times...specially the tortures undergone by people from Africa'

I don't know where to start from. From when Africa was discovered, Europeans were awestruck! They couldn't figure out how to borrow, steal or exploit the riches in their nature. They started one by one, not only with spices, grains, oils and gold but they also wanted to buy or just take away the people as their 'Slaves' such that their lives were enriched.

Slaves not even maids.. they were called slaves and they were assured of getting back one thing from their masters at some point of time while discharging their duties- 'Insult'. They were carried in large cruises, dumped in them to be transported to various other places like UK, Spain, Denmark, Portugal, France, Germany, North America,South America, The Caribbean Islands etc.

Liverpool was the capital or the junction of slavery..mainly because slaves (according to me 'naive people') were brought form Africa... held at Liverpool and transported to the west..across the Atlantic to North, South America and the Caribbean Island for helping the local or the immigrant European's life easy.

Slave trading was such a big trade that there are statistics of 1 million plus slaves sent to the Americas in the 13th century, 2+ million in 14th, 4+ million in 15 century and it went on to 6+, 7+ million toward 19th century. HOLD ON...this statement FREAKED ME OUT. My blood was pumping more than usual!

They were harassed, treated badly, dumped like animals, exploited like machines, insulted, not cared for at many occasions.

After improvising the European cities, towns with the help of naive people, after getting all their personal/domestic work done, after having attained a comfortable life because of them, after obtaining a bright future for their kids... is this what they should do? Isn't there anything called empathy?

Beyond all this the worst thing is the misuse of 'Race'. Slaves were reminded and cursed that they had to suffer due to their race..they weren't good due o the race, they were not beautiful due to the race and what not... pick up a weak point..and that was pointed out at thier race..the so called 'coloured phenomenon'. Didn't they have heart and feelings like everyone else?

I'd like to conclude this sensitive topic by writing a statement that was said by a slave (a naive and a great man) and which is recorded in the museum 'The masters own/buy/hire us in order to improvise their cities, their homes, their workplace in order to have better life for themselves, their children, their family, their friends, their society.'

Does your memory amuse you?

I was thinking about this while traveling in the train across the city. I travel everyday in a reasonably fast underground train  lasting approximately 45 minutes. Since its underground I can't look out and hence I get bored at times. Also its crowded most of the times at various places. It takes 21 stops for my train to reach the destination and today I just realized that I remember what stop comes after what in the first order and the reverse order :-) yes just tested myself for 21 stops just like how you test kids to say January to December and the reverse order and everybody seems to be thrilled when the reverse order comes right... so was I :-)

Why is it that our memory is very clear and sharp at times and why is it so bad at times. Why do we forget our critical passwords at times... there could be so many questions in our minds... we sometimes forget names of people, places, etc but we remember things that are not very important.....we forget important tasks and feel stupid when reminded... we forget to report at a given place and time but remember something very trivial..... the analysis of memory amuses me...  what about you :-)