Heartcrossings

We discovered one evening that there was Taoist temple not to far from our hotel and decided to visit there the following morning. The map had the temple up on the nearby hill that did not look too hard to climb so we set on our way. The winding road took us through small farms on both sides, a few rundown shacks and a number of shrines honoring the dead. Out of curiosity we stopped to read the inscription on one of them. It belonged to a concubine of some emperor. There was more detail on her lineage and progeny that we understood nothing about. As the road went uphill we found more such shrines big and small, many dedicated to concubines. There was an old man in a hut pulling nails out of a wooden board. It was unclear if he was salvaging the wood, nails or both. A stray dog lay curled up in sleep under a grapefruit tree laden with fruit one of which had dropped right next to where the dog lay. After the while the road ended abruptly.  The map showed the temple to our right but what

The village is lit up with LED lights all colors of the rainbow. Some are blinking, others not. Every tree and house is decorated with lights and in the center where most of the shopping and restaurants are the lights are even more spectacular. In the distance, lasers are beaming on the sky. This is no holiday season and yet the place is more festive than many cities are during Christmas. I had to wonder how many more lights go on when they have a major holiday. I buy a little vermillion sand bracelet for J. It is meant to ward off the evil eye and attract prosperity. The shop-owner is a young woman probably about the same age as J. We converse using a translator. She wants to know how old J is and if I want smaller or larger beads in the bracelet. She picks out something that she thinks would be nice for her.  Buying a piece of jewelry is always imbued with meaning far beyond the act of purchase. I am thinking the color would suit J very well but I also want her to a have a piece of a

This story about how young people are coping with post-election realities made for pretty sad reading. These are choices that can become irreversible in some cases but the desire to take charge of one's destiny particularly in youth is understandable as well. I have heard such lines from younger members of my extended family so many times over the years, just replace "election" with some other burning, insurmountable and unsolvable problem India has - there is no shortage of those, and you have their reasoning to remain childless by choice. “Before the election, we both had been back and forth on having kids, but after the election, we agreed that this is no world to bring a child into,” Many young couples can be ambivalent about becoming parents and the reasons run the gamut. But the one thing that seems to firm up their decision is their perception of what the future holds for their child - the future that is beyond their power to control. If they feel bad enough about

It is common for people in their middle-age or older to bemoan the falling standards of things and recall how things were better in their youth. We have all seen our grandparents and parents go through this phase and then it becomes our turn to repeat the pattern - I am guilty myself. But reading about Gen Z bringing their parents to their job interviews feels like something that would have been incomprehensible in my day and it legitimately sounds like things have taken a turn for the worse.  In my day, no employer would take such a person seriously, there was no way such interview would translate into a job offer. What is interesting about the story is how HR is responding to this next level compulsive hovering of parents. They want to be accommodative and find way to explain and excuse the behavior and give this person a fair-shake. Sounds to me like a great disservice is being done to members of Gen Z who are perfectly capable of writing their own resume, conducting their own job-

 I had heard of Bibek Debroy but have read any of his writing except this obituary he wrote a few days before his passing . His recollection of conversations between him and his sons who live abroad and want to know if they should hop on plane in time of a parent's health crisis. The words they hear back, most expat kids have heard from their parents. There is nothing going here than you can solve by coming over, you will be more hindrance than help since you don't know how things work here. There will be a time when you need to rush but this is not the time.  As it almost always happens, that time when one must rush is the last time. Parents do not want to impose, act needy and be an impediment. They played a significant role in the the child's immigration journey through their support and encouragement - it is like an investment they really want to work out. What working out means can get very distorted over time and the cultures start to diverge between parent and child.

Read this interesting article about crows holding on to grudges  for a long time and making it an intergenerational  - much like humans. Though with humans sometimes the source of the grudge is sometimes replaced by the default behavior of one who holds a grudge. If the grudge holder were asked specific reasons why they are resentful, they may no longer be able to recall. And even if they did, they would realize it made no sense anymore. Those events from long ago might have been relevant to who they were as a person back then but time has changed them at the the one they resent so much that it is now illogical and bizarre even.  Yet that is not how humans always think. For crows seems there is a time limit for grudge-holding  - they can remember people they perceive as threats for as long as 17 years. This long-term memory enables them to react aggressively towards these individuals even after many years have passed since the initial encounter. I have a few folks in my life who have f

Reading in-flight magazines always felt an odd thing to do. I always leafed through them and took comfort in the half-filled cross-word puzzles. It was proof there were other people like me who read these publications, whatever their reasons. I liked being able to escape into something very bounded to the trip and yet informative in odd ways - some ad for a jewelry store in Hawaii, a story about a guy who had taken his grandfather's dying oyster business international, the most unique candy from a country I have never been to, interviews with people who had traveled to challenging destinations and so on. All of the reading was meant to inspire thoughts about what adventures await if someone just buys a ticket to a place they have never been to. The reason for this publication's demise are complex:  But even as they have been selling up, on the whole, they’ve slimmed down. Carpenter told me how, in the course of her tenure, in-flight magazines began to be printed on thinner pap