Heartcrossings

D and I met for lunch yesterday after a long time. Hearing about my most recent dating misadventure she commented "You seem to have the knack for meeting the psychoest guys out there. I don't know how you do it". This is not the first time that someone has observed and commented on my weird magnetism. Unfortunately, no one seems to know the fix for it. My friends tell me that its not me - its them. While they theorize the density of weirdoes is abnormally high online so sooner or later meeting one or more of them is inevitable, everyone acknowledges that my encounters have been one too many for comfort and causes concern . D has accosted harmless looking desi guys minding their own business and asked if they were "logically and logistically" single and interested in a getting to know yours faithfully. The first time this happened, her husband had watched the drama unfold with growing concern, now he just looks the other way as D goes about trying to s...

The story about the memory pill for forgetting painful, traumatic memories generated some very interesting discussion. My first thought was that it would be a blessing for those who are dragged down by the past to the point that they can no longer enjoy the bounties of the present moment or look forward to those of the future. This drug could be an enormous help for them because getting over the past is sometimes truly impossible. However the idea of losing control over one's memories by having an external agent erase them by force is scary. Often there are overlaps between bad and good memories - surely the drug would not know to act selectively enough to leave every last good memory intact. Maybe the perception of good and bad could change over time. One comment about how the drug could be misused and how criminals would no longer have to suffer guilt and remorse had not crossed my mind but is a great point. There is also the possibility of this being used as weapon to change a...

I could not help thinking of a parallel between domineering wives and the success of companies headed by women CEOs Apparently, these CEOs experience longer tenures and faster growth. Likewise, in marriages where the wife wears the pants, the chances of the union surviving are seem higher. This not to say it is a healthy or even desirable state of affairs - unlike the women CEOs who are " outstanding role models for business success" Long suffering henpecked husbands are the staple of light-hearted sitcoms and movies but they are not usually shown getting up and out on their wives - they need help to get that far. They might not even think of calling the cops on her believing that her story would win over his.

Up until age sixteen, I was a hundred percent sure where I wanted to spend the rest of my life and in a directional sense of what I wanted to do for a living. I surely wanted to leave the protected confines of my little town which had given me a great schooling, a bunch of friends from all over India and some very positive role models. I had opportunity to meet some uncommonly smart people from around the world who came in as consultants to the major companies in town. They came home for dinner and they indulged my wide eyed curiosity. I learnt a little about the executive lifestyle in Tokyo, about being a management guru lecturing at the best business schools around the world, about being Indian and starting up a consulting company in the mid-western US in the 80s or closer home about trying to using the Bhagwad Gita as a manual for success without stress in the corporate world. Sitting in my living room, I was an enraptured observer soaking in conversations that had very little beari...

I drive through the streets still dark from the night lights shining like jewels on a strand for endless miles. The radio whelps a number too plaintive to hear. Today I have ears for nothing. I walk the downtown streets like a visitor in the city I have lived in for a year, Unfamiliar, disoriented but oddly alert like a sleepwalker in a caffeine haze. The regulars stare at me as I grab a quick McDonald bite. Across from my park bench, the sleeping tramp gets a trooper's prod. I sit waiting, watch the sun gently rising upon the courthouse building. Today some names link theirs to mine in a dense karmic tangle. Craig, Steve Dana and Pallavi. On the eighteenth day of October they together set me free..one golden word is spoken "Granted"

Work was deserted by the lunch hour on Wednesday. Black Friday sales and deals was a topic of conversation among the few of us stragglers that stayed longer. We were talking about a business that could earn down and out students and homeless people some quick cash for squatting in those serpentine queues in pre-dawn vigils for Xboxes and more. Lazy shoppers could sleep in and still get what they wanted maybe for some extra money. Turns out that there are such services even if not in a very organized way. It usually takes a pretty major crisis to make me go shopping and it would be a cold day in hell before I went near a store the day after Thanksgiving. I prefer to vegetate in the Tryptophan induced stupor from the turkey dinner. My mother first came to the US the year J was born. I took her shopping a few weeks after Christmas after the frenzy of shopping for deals had died down. I bought her some interesting trinkets and a coat. That was her first time in a mall in the US. She had se...

I met J's kindergarten teacher for a fifteen minute conference a few weeks ago. Mrs. H is in her late forties, has two teenagers and is a recent British immigrant to the US. Other than J, she is the only trace of diversity in J's lily-white all American class room. Mrs. H is everything a parent could ask of a kindergarten teacher and much more. She exudes a maternal warmth along with oodles of confidence. She clearly loves her job and the kids, is interested in them, in understanding their personalities, strengths and weaknesses and will push them very subtly in the right direction. J's buddy Bryce from daycare days epitomized the problem child that experts pontificate about - or at least his caregivers at daycare depicted him as such. Under Mrs. H's able supervision, the kid is thriving. Her assessment of J at the time of our meeting was based on her knowing my child for a little over a month. I was amazed at how well she had her figured out and knew exactly where she...

I knew S for almost a year. We started as friends, made a half hearted attempt to be more but could not and finally parted as friends. We decided it was best not to stay in touch and maybe it is just as well. Early into our acquaintance we once talked about our reading habits. He was fascinated by criminal psychology and forensic pathology - I wondered if it had to do with his father being a psychiatrist and his two long term relationships with highly unusual women. It was almost like his fascination with aberrations in human nature caused him to gravitate towards them - they both had an abundance. I had to wonder if the same was true about me given his interest. He could make jokes about things like necrophilia without batting an eye. I would find myself laughing and then feeling strangely queasy that I did. I often teased him that he should try his hand at crime fiction - maybe he was destined to become the next Thomas Harris His reading was confined to his subjects of interest and w...

Ice You are a crucible of ice Unfeeling receptacle of life’s elixir as I pour on in vain. May fire char your rigor mortis, wind disperse its ashes, icy water trickle back to earth. When your elements return to balance, your heart may beat again. Storm I wish upon you many things most from a love cast away like a warm but threadbare sweater after winter’s bite was gone. I wish that you pray for peace to be upon me and mine each night before you fall asleep. That you dream of making love to me wondering who does instead. That you seek my laughter among other voices in life's passing by. That you try to catch a glimpse of legs sculpted in stone as women mill in and out of the subway.

Steve Yegge's epic rant against Agile is entertaining for more reasons than one. The follow up post even more so. Having being an unwilling participant for the most part and sometimes hostage in Agile projects, Yegge had me laughing until my sides ached. I can't claim to have read all the literature on Agile that is out there, so maybe someone has figured the way around to some problems I see with the methodology. Metrics stands out as the biggest one. In the old fashioned, traditional way there used to be Earned Value Analysis to tell us how we were doing on the triple constraints and burn rate. The ratios meant the same thing to everyone and the project sponsor could monitor health at all times. I think that was a good thing. In the Agile world, those measurements are hard to come by. Everything is relative. The complexity of a user story can be measured in gummy bear units and the team could have enough velocity to take on two hundred gummy bears worth of work in a sprint....

Earlier today we were having a conversation about the air-brushed perfection of models and actresses and how that puts the pressure on regular women to spend more time and money towards acquiring that absolute flawlessness . While it may no longer be impossible to get the magazine cover look with new technology it is not without danger And it is not enough to just look perfect with make-up delivered on the skin in a nano particle spray - modern women are expected to be perfect as well. They must be highly desirable, accomplished and independent. She must find love, a meaningful and remunerative career, be able to keep it together against the most terrific odds and still look like a million bucks. If she happens to be a mother, then nothing short of being super-mom cuts it. There is now a word to describe these women and their state of affairs - Stressettes With women constantly upping the ante on perfection, men are catching up on body image anxieties - it is only fair that the Wonder...

This Metafilter post seeking help for a woman in an abusive relationship has some very thought provoking comments from readers. Anyone who has either seen a bad relationship at close quarters or been in one themselves will be able to relate to the themes that come across. In the final analysis there is no silver bullet in the form of a combo involving getting a restraining order, packing her bags and leaving, calling the women's shelter and such like. Like Leo Tolstoy said "All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Similarly each abusive relationship is abusive in its own way. There is a fine balance of power between the abuser and abusee that lends many shades of gray to their relationship. To reduce all of that to black and white is over simplistic and does not help anyone. It takes perspective to see an abusive relationship for what it truly is - something that friends or family privy to only one side of the story most of...

When in love, I have found conversation to flow effortlessly in the dark without the distractions of facial expression or body language. Darkness makes it easier to cry, confide, confess or get drunk - apparently dining with a roomful of strangers in the dark can be pleasurable as well. It heightens their enjoyment of the meal Patrons never see the food because the three-course meal is served in complete darkness – so diners must rely on other senses to discern the meal. Not surprising therefore that blind dating agencies have found a natural habitat in the blind restaurant. Other than the obvious advantage of being able to talk to a stranger without the awkwardness that a blind date is fraught with, you can also leave mysteriously in the dark without revealing yourself to your date should you never want to meet again.

Reading Alison Townsend's What I Never Told You About the Abortion was incredibly hard. As a woman and a mother, I try to reach out to the pain of a mother who is forced to take away life rather than create it - yet I can't . This is not the kind of suffering that can be simulated or emulated - you cannot claim empathy without having experienced what that mother has. When you have known it and have the words to tell of it, you will write like Townsend - you will make the reader want to cry along with you - for you, hug you to soften the bristling edges of pain. For a moment you imagine that you understand the dense pattern of grief that produced these words. That the table I lay on was cold. That there was a poster of a kitten dangling from a tree limb, with the words "Hang in there, baby" on the ceiling above me. That I turned names over and over in my head like bright stones: Caitlin, Phoebe, Rebecca, Siobhan That the nurse wept with me, like some twentieth-century...

The author of The Vagina Monologues , Eve Ensler writes in the introduction of her book Insecure At Last : "My dreams were limited, simple. All I wanted was to grow up not be hit or molested. I lived as a survivor. Happy every day not to be screamed at, ridiculed, beaten, terrorized, or thrown out. I did not care about a career. I did not think what kind of person might be right for me. It was all about what was not happening, all about the pain stopping, all about safety, security. I wanted a man or woman who would not hit me. This, as you can imagine, is not the greatest prerequisite for a relationship. Not a very high standard. And, it's broad. And, to be honest, until you have gone back and purged and transformed that initial violation, it is impossible not to keep being attracted to what you were trying to escape" While she says this in context of her affluent childhood and a physically violent father, it translates fairly easily to any abusive relationship that le...

Vibha and Sheila went to school together but had been only in episodic touch the last ten years. Not in the least because Vibha never had an e-mail address. So when a few weeks ago, Sheila saw a mail from her in her inbox, she was beyond elated. They had been very good friends once. She hoped time and distance had not impaired their connection too much, that it would be easy to pick up from where they had left off. In response to her very brief note that said: "Hope you still remember me. More when you reply - Vibs" Shiela wrote : "Heaven be praised ! Vibs has an e-mail id like the rest of us ordinary mortals ! Where have you been, girl ? And what have you been up to ? Tell me all - of course I remember you - what did you imagine ? " Sometimes utter innocuity - like her message to Vibha - has a way to hitting a raw nerve but even knowing that would not have prepared Shiela for her response. Which was: "I am writing this to you from the public library which is a...

The present day desi in the US returning to India is completely unlike the NRIs of the 80s vintage and earlier on their biennial pilgrimages. The whole purpose of their visits was to impress upon the less fortunate natives the true state of their material and physical well being. Gifts would be given liberally, drawing rooms would be chock full of relatives listening enraptured to the stories their fantastic lifestyles abroad. Their teen-aged children could at best understand their mother tongue and lisp charmingly when pushed to speak it. Grandmothers and aunts cooed and fawned at how precious they sounded and made sure that they were stocked up on toilet paper even if the nearest store that carried it was at the other end of town. These were cyclically returning natives who reinforced to themselves and those that they deigned to visit with that they were glad to be out of the rat hole known as desh. A mini army came together from in and around town to see these oh-so-fortunate prodig...

Living a good, honorable life and being able to die in peace without regrets was always challenging, now with online obituary service providers the later part may become impossible. Reading this article reminded me of a line from Julius Caesar " The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones ." Most people grow up learning that it is uncouth to speak ill of the dead often there is no religious sanction for this as well. Yet online anonymity brings out the worst in people. It is as if the acceptable norms of social interaction cease to apply once you dissociate your name from your opinion. While this behavior is commonly accepted on all online forums and dismissed as trolling or flaming, "dissing the dead" is fortunately still being viewed with the seriousness it deserves.

My girlfriends who can't agree even on where to grab a bite for lunch are unanimous in their verdict on my social life - I don't have one. I have been in full-steam Mommy mode for so long that I no longer know what I would like to do for R&R for myself.Saturday afternoon momtinis sound only a little bit more fun than going grocery shopping. Single parenting is overwhelmingly about planning up to the minute,balancing conflicting demands on your time, making decisions about a child without the benefit of an adult counterpoint and finally feeling like a twenty four day is not nearly long enough. On most days I do get the job done but the tiredness keeps growing like the US trade deficit. N was traveling through town recently and asked me out on a "non-date date". He is still recovering from his break up with the woman he really loved. Being back in the dating scene has taken a heavy toll and he wanted to spend an evening with a friend and a kindred spirit. We had di...

Nice essay by Anita Nair on why chick lit is good for a woman's soul . Its so true that some women have to grow up to enjoy chick lit. Whereas at sixteen she wouldn't be caught dead with a Mills and Boon number, it is okay to convalesce from flu with gallons of soup and a pile of chick lit on the bedside table at fifty. I remember checking out five to ten random Harlequin romances from the library for my neighbor Ms R when she was feeling under the weather and needed to stay home and rest. Her bookshelf was busy with serious literature and Ms R was no chick. I used to wonder about the Harlequin fix particularly the fact that she could go through those many in a day or two. She didn't even care what I got as long it was a whole bagful. I must be coming of age myself because I skim through chick lit in bulk when I'm in the mood for something light. To me it is not in any way different from a few hours mindless channel surfing. Laksmi Chaudhry is of the opinion that all li...

I can't believe us desis are lagging behind the world in the bridal tourism business. For crying out loud we have a Miss Universe and Miss World from India - just that should suffice for marketing the desi woman's eye candy quoitent. It only helps that Bollywood musicals feature oomphy starlets by the dozen. Something along the lines of A Foreign Affair should find a natural habitat in India. I can picture a bus load of western men traveling from Ludhiana to Cochin to select an aspirant bride to take home to wife. That our girls should fall behind their Ukranian sisters is an anomaly that needs correcting. Done right, this could be a remunerative cottage industry A full-service outfit like AFA can take a man from mouse-click to matrimony for less than $10,000, orchestrating everything from travel and hotel arrangements to legal services to home delivery of flowers and chocolate—complete with digital photos of the woman's ecstatic reaction—while she waits for her paperwork ...

I've stayed with my current bank as long as I have mainly from laziness. Now, if their customer service totally sucked I would have overcome my inertia and taken my business elsewhere. I could not complain of anything except of drowning in their syrupy sea of saccharine sweetness. The tellers in my bank give a new meaning and dimension to service with a smile. If it takes bunny rabbit ears stuck on them to amuse a jaded customer they will gladly do it. I have been asked about my day, if I was enjoying the fair weather or if I planned to do anything fun this weekend all while making my deposit and taking out a couple of tens in cash. I have to admit that I enjoy starting my Saturday mornings by stopping at the bank - it takes the sting out of the many hours of running mindless errands thereafter. Because of perma-smiles on their faces, I prefer them to the ATM machine - it also saves me the trouble of having to write my name and address on the deposit slip. Unlike me, some folks fin...

In my childhood, I had read a folk tale possibly from China in which a young boy has the gift of bringing to life or making real anything he painted. Being able to transform free hand sketches into real furniture is almost like being that boy in the story. When such technology goes mainstream and one is able to buy rapid prototyping kits in the store to give shape and form to their own ideas, that old folk tale will not remain quite as charming or fascinating. As technology continues to advance, our capacity and even ability for amazement will probably suffer. Imagination will turn constrained by the ever expanding limits of what is realistically possible or will be in time - we would have almost always been there, done that.

This year, J did not notice Halloween come and go. My friends had warned me it would be a mega deal now that she was in kindergarten and there would be terrible consequences of not buying her a costume. J did not come back from school all primed up for Halloween as had been feared and no trick or treaters came knocking at our door either. One toddler dressed like a bright pink bug walking around the community with her mother was the solitary sign of the day. In sharp contrast, it was a big deal at work - there were Goths, Vikings, gypsies and witches all around. Last year, J brought home several pounds of candy and it took her over six months to work through the loot of one evening. Came a point when she was too bored to eat any more but would not give it away either - spoils of war are not so easily given away. Remnants of Tootsie Rolls and sticky Jolly Ranchers routinely show up in the oddest places to this day and I am sure I have not seen the last of it yet. We were clearly missing...

A veteran war horse of the dating game once gave me advice out of pity for my naiveté "Spend time just talking to them, go out for lunch, forget dinner do lunch or coffee..go dutch, disengage all the trappings of 'dating' while still dating." Anyone would agree all of that makes good sense. In an ideal world, one would graduate from friendship to relationship to love and the transitions would be natural and seamless. That is theory and then there is practice. I can speak only to the desi condition not having dated non-desis. We seem to have taken arranged matrimony into our own hands, added to it a western sensibility that is not part of its inherent nature and thrown "dating" into it for good measure. We will get the horoscopes checked out before embarking on anything serious but also expect to feel that natural vibe that tells us we have found "the one". We do not want to get emotionally entangled with the prospect and would prefer to hide behind...

In India there is a whole genre of comedy around fake swamis and other religious impostors. As long as people remain in need of a conduit to heaven their tribe will flourish. The story about unread letters written to God washed up to the New Jersey shore is reminiscent in some ways of the Indian experience with the Hindu religious establishment which derives both its strength and weakness in its lack of formal organization. The Kaligath Temple in Calcutta (somehow the new nomenclature Kolkata does not roll off the keyboard easily) is within walking distance of my grandmother's home. My wish to go there was granted at about twelve years old. The significance of the event had not dawned on me until I realized that my father and uncle would be accompanying me. Grandmother was peeved that her other son was not going to be able to make it and it would just be two males going with me. I was not sure why such a big entourage was needed for a visit to the temple that I had requested speci...

I hope Smita Narang has patented the web vaastu idea. It is high on both cool factor and exotica but its application, if her own website is any proof, leaves much to be desired. The overall aesthetics and design reminds you of your earliest attempts at personal web presence in the time of Geocities. Loved this comment by one Slashdotter on her "web vaastu analysis" of Slashdot: What if they start applying this people's faces? Will Smita Narang rearrange her face for balance? Looks like some 30 year old desperate housewife wanting some money on the side. It would be interesting to compare the traffic stats on her site before and after the vaastu- challenged Slashdot ran her story. Maybe the theory there is the sum of all vaastu good and bad in the world is a constant.Therfore Slashdot's loss is Webvastu's gain. At any rate, Narang gets two thumbs up for ingenuity in thinking this whole thing up and making news.

Just for KishKash it may be worth converting to Skype from anything else you may have. Back in the day, the poster in my hostel room said "I must be a mushroom. Everyone keeps me in the dark and feeds me a lot of bullshit". It was as true a statement of my congenital cluelessness then as it is now. Surely, people of my stripe abound and for us there is hope. Now KishKish SAM offers you a tool to detect the lies you hear on your Skype phone. With the use of KishKish SAM VSA you can monitor whole conversation and see the stress level of the person you talked with. Just keep a record of all your phone calls and monitor them for lies or high stress levels. This would be my first line of defense against smooth talking HR types who try to con me into believing they are making me an offer I'd be stupid to refuse and prospective dates who as previously noted suffer from selective amnesia about wives and children languishing...

Reading Maureen Gibbon's description of the day she saw the picture of her rapist in the Engagements page of her hometown magazine reminded me of a Sunday morning when a woman called me and asked why I had been talking to her husband for months. This was then a six month old relationship and in my imagination it was serious. I did not know then to recognize tell tale signs of hidden wives and children, of a real life that winded in and out of an imaginary one, of sociopaths who will stop at nothing to attain the woman they set their sights on and feel entitled to her love in return for their efforts. I had been lonely long enough to soak in the torrent of attention that he lavished on me. Yet something always felt wrong like the one missing part of a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. You don't know its not there until nearing the end. I spoke to the woman, heard her six month old twins bawling in the background and the helplessness of her situation that she left unarticulated. We ...