Samarkand And Dylan

I don't know anything about the Blues genre and very little about Bob Dylan's music. The last time, I read about Central Asia was in the high school history text book. With qualifications like that, I would be exactly the kind of reader who would not get an article on Central Asian current affairs explained using lyrics from a Dylan song.

I found the idea  fascinating specially in the context of my complete ignorance on all aspects of the topic. Bravely, I plunged into reading the article and was pleasantly surprised by how most of it made sense. Loved the way two very unfamiliar things came together to create something that is accessible to readers of all stripes.

The sophisticated variety who know enough about the topics the author discusses, have critiqued the essay on its technical merits but for the lowest common denominator (such as myself), this is a painless introduction to something that would have been far out of reach otherwise.

Between The Assassinations

Having loved Aravind Adiga's White Tiger, it was a great deal of anticipation that I started reading Between The Assassinations. I am sad to report that my disappointment is complete. Each story is hard to read, the characters are two dimensional. Denouements simply don't happen and when they do the reader does not sense closure. The book reads like a writer's notebook of character sketches and work in progress story ideas - not a bad thing in itself as long as expectations are managed correctly. Billed as outtakes of White Tiger, this would have been very interesting but the reader is set up to expect a brand new book with a come-hither title no less.

I labored from one story to the next hoping to see some of the White Tiger magic once again but sadly that does not happen. I have recommended the White Tiger to both my Indian friends who are not big fiction readers and non-Indian ones who are (or not) but are looking to read something authentically Indian. Both kinds of folks have loved the book for its gritty charm - quite unlike some of my other recommendations (specially to non-desis) like Anita Desai, R.K Narayan or Raja Rao.

Adiga tries grit (relentlessly I might add) once again in Between The Assassinations but it does not end up having nearly the same effect. I was worn out by the all too predictable plots, the done to death cliches of social and religious tensions and the general lack of spark about the writing itself. The title seemed to suggest that Adiga will take a stab at tracing the change to the social, economic and political climate between the two assassinations (Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi) through a set of short stories. That simply is not true. Talk about truth in marketing.

I am not willing to give up on Adiga quite yet - he has too much raw talent for that. In contemporary writing about India and Indians by desis, dominated by cringe inducing faux exocitism , Adiga had come in like a whiff of fresh air with White Tiger. We need him to write more, explore India and the Indian psyche in ways that he has not done yet. I would however scale back my expectations on his next book and hope he will manage to equal or better the White Tiger.

Uses Of Adversity

I have by now lost count of the Tiger Woods mistresses that keep coming out of the woodwork at a steady clip. It is hard enough to tell them apart anyway. Lately, there is nothing I can read on-line without being interrupted by news, satire, analysis and commentary of the early morning fire hydrant episode - because there is no schadenfreude quite like watching a celeb suddenly topple off their pedestal. It becomes a spectator sport and its not over until the fat lady sings.

But two things stood out of the crowd. One is a campaign by Accenture. The pop up ad where I saw this, had Woods squatting on the green, getting drenched in rain - a creature of circumstance weathering the physical and metaphysical storms of life if you will. The lesson learned from this whole episode per Accenture :

High performers turn periods of uncertainty to their advantage by fully integrating a risk-management programme, which serves not only as a defensive tactic but also as an offensive weapon. Accenture identifies steps that can help you use risk management for competitive advantage.

I won't even begin to parse all that in light on the fire hydrant related adversities the protagonist is facing at this time.

The other one was about the sky-rocketing sales of a physics book that was found in the car Woods was in at the time of the fire hydrant incident. It is not for nothing that Shakespeare spoke of sweetness in adversity :

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

Empowering Patients

I always get sticker shock when I see an EOB (explanation of benefits) from my medical insurance provider and can't help thinking about those who have no insurance. The numbers are bizarre to say the least - seven minutes of a doctor's time and some a routine blood test was billed at over five hundred dollars by the doctor's office the last time I saw one of these. To call this a rip-off seems like an understatement. Whatever the underlying reasons for these numbers to be as ridiculously high as they are, there has to be a better, smarter way to get the job done at a cost that is reasonable.

Reading this NYT article on how one engineer repurposed a cell-phone to work as a microscope gives me hope. It should not be in the too distant future that people can run basic tests from home using low-cost kits that can be hooked up to a cellphone. Potentially, they can patten match their readings against the public domain databases and understand their condition.

Thanks for the abundance of medical information online, people are already much better educated and informed about their condition than they had the ability to be in the pre-internet days. Having the tools for running diagnostic tests at home will only make this better. A patient can in the future consult with a doctor, fully armed with the data points needed to make a prognosis. What currently takes several visits and tests can happen over a single consultation. Besides the cost and time savings, the empowerment of the patient this would provide is of considerable value.

List Making

Even when Umberto Eco talks about something as mundane as a list, he can give the reader enough to ponder over for days. The interview makes for fascinating reading as does anything written by Eco.

SPIEGEL: Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can't be realistically completed?

Eco: We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.

It would be hard to look at to-do or shopping lists the same again after reading this. Of Google Eco has this to say :

Google makes a list, but the minute I look at my Google-generated list, it has already changed. These lists can be dangerous -- not for old people like me, who have acquired their knowledge in another way, but for young people, for whom Google is a tragedy. Schools ought to teach the high art of how to be discriminating.

There is something reactionary and hidebound in not wanting children to grow too dependent on Google and learn to source information from other sources the more painful, old fashioned way. I am guilty of doing this myself. Weaning kids off Google is difficult because it so dramatically simplifies their lives. Spending a few minutes doing a search on their topic is all takes kids to get their job done. As a parent who grew up before the internet happened, it is probably natural to worry about a child's absolute dependence on Internet search fearing that it can kill intellectual curiosity and make a young person flat out lazy.

Friends With Benefits - A Social Media Marketing Handbook

Traditional businesses are still trying to grasp what the expanding universe of social media means for them, their marketing and PR efforts. While there is consensus around the imperative to be a part of it, decision makers in these organizations find themselves struggling for guidance when they try to put a social media strategy together. If they do end up trying the "social media thing" the results are often either underwhelming or unmeasurable stymieing the way forward to trying a different, more informed approach to it.

The single biggest question for marketing organizations is what is the risk of getting it wrong. What if their campaign fails to generate the positive buzz and turns to a marketeers worst nightmare - the social networks get control of the story in an unfavorable way and decide to digg and stumble it right into the Hall Of Shame. There is a sense that the social media can be cruel, unforgiving and even somewhat whimsical. Unless your recipe is exactly right, you could be in trouble. No one wants to become a case study for what not to do with social media.

With all that, there is a pressing need for a guidebook on navigating through the vast and confusing social media space. Friends With Benefits - A Social Media Marketing Handbook is just such a book and it does an outstanding job of being the expert voice without miring the reader in the minutiae of geek-speak. The authors Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo, cover a lot of ground in 300 pages. The book is a comprehensive compendium on the tools of the trade, implementing an effective social media campaign, excellent case studies of both successes and failures, what the future holds for this medium and of course lessons learned.

For those who have up to now remained on the fringes of social networking, reading this book is their chance to come up speed quickly and regain lost ground. Yet, there is a lot someone who is conversant with social media can learn from it as well. Having consulted with marketing organizations of large companies for a few years now, I see the value of Friends With Benefits from an education and awareness standpoint - the essential first step to utilizing the medium effectively.

This is great addition to bookshelves of foot soldiers in marketing organizations (specially in large companies) but distilling the learnings from it into a business case to pitch to senior management would still pose a challenge if the audience is not particularly web technology savvy and social media aware (as is often the case). I would love to see a book by the authors that addresses this need.

Incentives For Loyalty

Love the idea of Sprize. While many stores offer to match their own prices (if lowered in within a certain window of time of after the purchase) or against their competitors, the idea of crediting the difference to your account automatically is an enhancement that would be a hit with customers. It eliminates the hassle of keeping an eye for price reductions - often people will forget all about their purchase the minute they hit the submit button on the web or step out of the store. Sprize levels the playingfield by giving the non-savvy shopper the same incentives as the adept bargain hunter. This is great news for those of us who are never able to take advantage of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the like

It would be nice if other stores took a cue from Gap and went one step further. Instead of inundating a customer's physical and electronic mail boxes with largely irrelevant and time insensitive rewards, discounts and coupons they could have everything applied to the account automatically. So if you are eligible for that 25% off coupon, the next time you are at the store the cashier would automatically take the deduction for you - or borrowing from the Sprize idea give you the option to credit your account with the amount of deduction you chose not to take.

Loyalty programs designed to make a customer's life easier while saving them money would likely garner much better response than one that takes a lot of work from a customer before it saves them some money.

Loneliness Virus

Read this story on Live Science about loneliness being like a virus that spreads and found myself wondering if I have seen any evidence of this in my surroundings. Folks that I know who do not care to socialize much (or at all) are friends with like minded people. They would cringe at the thought of hanging out those who are unlike them.

The part that did not register with me right away was the contagious aspect of loneliness. Say Person A is lonely and naturally gravitates toward Person B who is also a loner. The pair becomes lonelier together as they feed off of each other's sense of isolation. What are the chances of Person A (or B) reaching out to Person C who is highly social and outgoing and transferring the loneliness virus to them. Suddenly Person C turns introverted and withdraws social contact.

That scenario does not make as much sense at first. The phenomenon is explained thusly :

Over time, lonely individuals become lonelier and transmit such feelings to others before severing ties. "People with few friends are more likely to become lonelier over time, which then makes it less likely that they will attract or try to form new social ties," they write. Such friendless individuals ended up on the outskirts of their social networks.

Now, that is quite fascinating to consider. In inverse of this scenario would be a lonely person coming into contact with an very friendly individual and being infected by the social virus. They may remain on the fringes of this new person's vibrant social network, but the energy emanating from this large, dynamic and friendly organism could be enough to ease the loneliness a little. Wonder if the antidote to loneliness would be then to latch on to the networks of those who are not quite as lonely and hope the salutary effects transmit over.

Featured Loser

I found this story about Facebook monitoring users with low or no wall activity and prompting their friends to write on their wall, somewhat disturbing. I have a FB account for my blog but not one for my real self. I find the constant connection and interaction with hundreds of friends and acquaintances very suffocating. If my real self did have FB profile, it would probably not see much wall or any activity for that matter. One sided communication can last only so long - after a while folks would simply stop poking me and writing on my wall. With that, I would be a prime candidate for FB's Featured Loser program.

FB assumes that a person's social standing is directly proportional to the volume of activity on their wall. What if the person is on FB simply because everyone else in their social circle is but they are not into social networking at all. Making them feel like a loser is not likely to get them excited about a medium they are lukewarm about to begin with. Upping activity and usage stats is all fine and dandy but this is probably not the smartest way to go about the job.

Shazam

Read about Shazam - a tune identification application on Slate the other day and have been thinking about all kinds of uses for it. The way the technology works seems to lend itself to a variety of other uses.

One thought that crossed my mind was to use the cellphone as a stethoscope that would match sounds against a database of healthy and unhealthy sounds so the user gets a sense of what if anything is wrong with them even without having seen a doctor. Putting diagnostic tools in the hands of the consumer of health care services could be both helpful and empowering.

Wildlife enthusiasts could obviously benefit from Shazam as could someone with a car problem. Instead of taking their clunker to a car repair shop they could have Shazam listen to the wheeze, grunt, rattle or shake and give them skinny on what might be ailing their vehicle. Identifying an animal or bird by the sounds they make would likewise become a simple pattern match.

You are probably only limited by your imagination when finding ways to put technology like this to good use.

On A Taut Leash

Recently I got some interesting relationship advice from a pretty unlikely source. H and I went to grade school together and he is among the few childhood friends that I am still in touch with. When I decided to marry R (my ex), H's reaction was one of honest puzzlement - WTF more likely. However, he held his peace figuring that things that don't in the normal course of life make any sense do in marriage. He was at time in a "quasi-serious relationship" but not quite "ready for prime-time" as in for the responsibilities that go with marriage. It was not a situation I found particularly easy to comprehend but as an old buddy, I wished him well with whatever he had going on.

A few years later when H was good and ready and had finally found the woman he wanted to marry, I had a reaction very similar to his would-be bride and just like him, said nothing about it. He seemed genuinely happy to be with her and I hated to be the one to dampen his enthusiasm. Maybe he has changed over the years, maybe he likes this kind of woman now I reasoned.

So here we are many years later. I have been divorced for a while. H was deeply disappointed but not particularly shocked when it happened given his initial reaction to R. His marriage in his own words is a "mutually beneficial and largely peaceful co-existence". They have both decided to tough it out in the best interest of the children and their families - live under the same roof in two different universes that rarely if ever intersect.

H will often exhort me to find a man and get my life back on track and I have to tell him to get off my case and stop being my mother. Recently, I asked him what advice he had for me given the state of his own marriage, my failed one and his long acquaintance with me.

The question was "How do I know someone will work out for me ?". What H had to say on the subject over the course of a few emails was very interesting.

"Sadly, there is no magic formula that I can hand out. In hindsight, I seemed to have gone into a state of trance when I decided to marry the woman who is now my wife. If I was thinking rationally, I would have not done what I did. I have come to believe that connections between people such as in marriage are pre-ordained and every defense mechanism we build to keep us out of harm's way will come undone and push us in the path of this person. Thereafter, we are merely puppets in the hand of Fate.Sometimes we end up okay, sometimes we don't. You just have to take your chances and hope for the best."

"How absolutely encouraging, H !" I wrote back.

"But I do have some advice for women who want to marry. Unless she is able to reel the man in (before marriage) and keep him on a taut (do note the use of the word taut as opposed to tight) leash thereafter, there is little hope for her to marry or remain married well. In my own example, my wife was able to reel me in (and hence we got married) but she has failed to do the rest.

So while we are "technically" married, it is not the kind of relationship either of us had in mind when we exchanged our vows. A woman is always ill-served to lose control in a relationship or marriage and let the man call the shots - that always ends badly. I have to say here that very few women are adept at the fine art of keeping their men on a taut leash."

"So you are saying that I need to be a more equal partner in the relationship ?" I wrote

"Absolutely. There is no other way for you or any other woman. When my daughter comes of age, that is exactly what I will tell her too. Of course, you don't want to come across as a Virago - but you must set the rules of engagement and make sure he plays by them at all times. You concede an inch and he will take a mile and what is worse it will set a bad precedent for all time to come. You would have a set forces in motion that then cannot be controlled. Women are always tempted to concede in order to make quick gains - they end up winning the battle and losing the war.

Getting married is the easy part, making it really work out is much harder. Now, my mother is a woman who knows how to keep the reins in her own hands without chipping away my father's self-worth. I wish my wife had the good sense to learn a few things from her."

I have known H's folks since I was a kid. His father was a serious somewhat dour-faced man. He worked very long hours and said very little to us(H's friends) on the rare occassions that he actually met us. We for our part, did our best to stay out of his way. His mother, a housewife, always looked happy and upbeat - there was a certain peacefulness about her that was hard to miss. Despite the very different temperaments, they looked very comfortable and content together. Maybe H has a point about the taut leash and maybe he should get his mother to write up a how-to book on the subject.

Fearless Flyer

I love flipping through (and even reading) Trader Joe's Fearless Flyers. There is no other piece of unsolicited mail that I even bother with. When you consider the cost of acquiring mailing lists, scrubbing them, segmenting the consumer population, matching the names back to internal databases, setting up a marketing campaign, glossy print, postage and all - the numbers add up quickly.

After all that is done, the average recipient of these materials tosses them into trash without a second thought. The Fearless Flyer on the other hand, is printed on really cheap paper, it is anything but flashy and is takes no trouble to target messaging by way personalization.

Yet there is something about the Flyer that makes me want to read about products I have not considered buying before. Even if I don't buy, I am at least aware of what is available - a good enough engagement metric by most counts. Occassionally, the reading has translated into an actual purchase - which is exactly the kind of conversion marketeers want to see happen.

Being that the fans of the Fearless Flyer abound, I am not a demographic anomaly. Obviously they are doing something right with it. You have to wonder what makes the Flyer (and by extension Trader Joe's) tick at a time when the consumer is innundated by slick narrowly targeted ads online and offline.

Apostrophes

I am grammar challenged in general and haven't quite figured the use of apostrophes and it is not for the want of trying. Anytime I see someone use a semicolon in what appears to be in the right context, I am very impressed. I figure if I have survived thus far without getting apostrophes right, I'll be okay with this handicap for the rest of my life. When I saw this excellent visual on the correct use of the apostrophe by Mathew Inman of The Oatmeal, I wondered if there was a chance that I could learn too.

I managed to keep up with Inman for the first couple of rules but starting losing him right around the fourth or fifth. Clearly, this is not one of those "a picture is worth a thousand words" things - I am just not wired in a way that will allow apostrophe (or grammar) rules to sink in.

Skipping over to the end, I was delighted to find advise that I could actually put to good use : When in doubt, don't use an apostrophe. That pretty much, sums up my strategy with them anyway. Looks like I have a workable solution and as they say don't fix what's not broken.

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there.

For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt to be treated as person first and woman after that.

I would hate for J's world-view to be shaped by a society that puts her gender before her and have that influence the most significant decisions in her life. I don't see the point of living inside the sanitized confines of a gated community so one does not have to deal with any of the "unpleasantness". That life would be a poor proxy of the Indian experience - J could end up being even more confused about her identity than she will be growing up in America.

L was not sure that my concerns were particularly valid in present day India and I was quick to chalk that up to India Shining Kool-Aid drinking. According to L, the current societal view of the gender allows for more nuance than the Sita or Slut that I was familiar with from my time and it was hardly fair to pass judgment without experiencing the transformation for myself.

Apparently, everything that was true from six or seven years ago (the last time I lived and worked in India) is null and void now. As much as I would like to believe that, I have seem little evidence of this seismic shift that L talks about, in print and on-line media and lesser still in the attitudes of the brethren who have arrived here very recently.

To have to believe that the magic will be evident upon setting foot in India is a giant leap of faith I find really hard to make. That said, it does not help to read about harassment of women in India who are in research and academia being more norm than exception.

If that is the fate of researchers and academics, chances are that the average woman will fare only much worse. When I read the comments by women on this post on their own experiences of harassment, I feel even less hopeful about what the future holds for women in India.

The Alchemy Of Desire

The first few pages of Tarun Tejpal's The Alchemy Of Desire, read beautifully. I stayed up late one night, mesmerized by the story that promised to unfold ever so perfectly. Tejpal's language is a delight to read. Hundred pages in, I wondered if Tejpal may have lost his way for a bit but would find it back soon. Instead, the increasing sprawl of the story and the ever expanding cast of characters leaves the reader bewildered. Tejpal had a wonderful story to tell even if he had limited it to exploring the role of Kama (lust) and Prema (love) in marriage and relationships - a narrative that is universally relevant.

The narrator and the his wife Fiza (Fizz) have a relationship that is intense and unconventional enough to stand independent of everything else that this book tries to be about. Tejpal did not have to write a novel of mythic proportions and fall short. He does an outstanding job of telling the story of a marriage and a grand passion gone sour. As a reader, I wished he had edited out everything extraneous to the main theme and given us a book I could enjoy completely and count among my favorites.