Some Curious Western Customs

You can tell a man’s character from his type of handshake, distinguishing between the assertive, the retiring, the dishonest and the weak and calmly hands which instinctively repel one.

More senseless still is the custom of taking off one’s hat.

The Inhumanity of Western Dress

The philosophy behind Indian and Western dress is that the latter tries to reveal the human form while the former tries to conceal it.  As essentially the human body is like monkeys, usually the less of it revealed the better.  Think of Gandhi in his loin-cloth!

On House and Interiors

The charm of a house lies in its individuality.  Art of living emphasis on two points familiarity and individuality.  Familiarity is more important than individuality.  No matter how big and pretentious a house a man may have, there is always one particular room that he likes and really lives in and that is invariably a small, unpretentious room, disorderly and familiar and warm.

A man cannot live without a house as his body cannot go about without clothing.  As, it is true of clothing that it should be cool in summer and warm in winter, the same is true of a house. For a house and the people living in it must harmonize as in a picture. Painters of landscape have a formula saying, “ten feet mountain and one foot trees; one-inch horses and a bean sized human beings”.

Luxury and expensiveness are the things most to be avoided in architecture.  People like to show off their rich splendor, not because they love it but because they are lacking in originality and, besides trying to show off, they are at a total loss to invent something else.  That is why they have to put up with mere splendor.

The western world has invented rotating, collapsible, adjustable, reversible and convertible beds, sofas and barber chairs.  The principle of devisable tables originated with a game similar to building blocks for western children, according to which collection of blocks of wood forming a perfect square can be made into the diverse symbolic figures of animals, human figures, utensils and furniture on a flat surface.

The Indian idea is that every man born into this world is predestined with a certain quantity of luck or happiness, which may not be changed, and of one enjoys too much of something, his luck in other respects is curtailed, or he may live a shorter life.