Heartcrossings

This is Part Nine of a Nine Part Series If I owned a Gucci pantsuit I would have worn that for my meeting with Mrs. H. That was how badly I needed to be in battle amour. K pronounced that my outfit was perfect for the purpose at hand. The day was easier than I had thought it would be. Today was J's day to take her favorite snack to share with the class. Given the pattern of disappointments that she had dealt with since the beginning of the week, I had not given it to her to take to her class. I told J, I would bring it in when I went to meet Mrs. H in the afternoon. The previous night I had been talking with M about this whole fiasco and he said something interesting. "It seems to me that you bear a great deal of resentment for this teacher. Why is that ?" I had no idea but it was true that I did not like Mrs H very much. I think we started off on a bad note from the first time she sent a note home addressed to Mrs (J's Last Name). Her denial of my existence and entit...

After much soul searching and unnecessary heartache, I think I might have finally come to an understanding of the pattern and modus operandi (MO) of my past relationships. I have a stadium-sized ego cushioned for comfort with several layers of pride. With that combination, I had for the longest time imagined my life's purpose was to take on a man who looked and acted like a train wreck and "decorate" his life as beautifully as possible. No lesser challenge was good enough for my larger than life sense of my own greatness. I had no interest in any man who wasn't desperately in need of being saved. I am sure there is an official nomenclature for my condition, but whatever it is, sure as hell it is painful to live with. Like they say, if you want something bad enough in life, you end up getting it. I was blessed with the kind of man I sought not once, not twice, but thrice. That is what it took for me to understand the fatal flaw of my ways. One marriage and two sign...

This is Part Eight of a Nine Part Series I was not sure how to reach out to J that evening. In the end we both had to come out of this unscathed - that was imperative for our happiness and well being. It would just not do for J to think that she had caused trouble for me or worse it was safer to lie to Mommy than invoke her wrath. I held J close until she was done crying. "J, have I ever been mad at you for doing anything wrong ?" I asked her. She said "No" "Are you scared of Mommy when she does get mad at you for something ?" I asked. "I know Mommy still loves me" she said. I was glad to hear the confidence in her voice. "That's what I want you to remember always. No matter how mad I am at you, I never stop loving you. No matter what anyone tells me about you, I will always believe what you tell me. I want you to know that there is no good or bad about anything you do. You are not supposed to know the difference. All you need to do is t...

Reading about Reborn Dolls reminded me of Suresh, my first boss and his wife Veena. In our team of six, the rest of us were fresh out of engineering school and single. He had been married about twelve years. Sometimes during our coffee breaks he would talk about Meenakshi, his five year old daughter. We could tell he doted on her. Veena was more the disciplinarian and did not approve of how her husband spoilt their daughter. One Diwali, Suresh invited all of us to his house. The day before he called me to his office. "I have a favor to ask of you guys" he said. I waited for him to continue "When you come to our place tomorrow, please make sure you don't mention Meenakshi in front of Veena" he added after a pause. Something told me that it would be inappropriate to ask why not. I assured him I would tell the others. He thanked me profusely for my understanding. We arrived just before noon. Suresh and Veena were at the door to greet us. Their home was picture perf...

This is Part Seven of a Nine Part Series Some firsts in a child's life are black letter rather than red letter days. Wednesday at around 5:30 in the evening I had learnt that J had lied to me and the best I know this was the first time she had done so. To imagine that so many of us adults had gone into a tizzy over what we thought was discrimination and subtle racism over a child' s lie was indescribably deflating not to mention humiliating. I could not imagine how I would face Mrs H at our meeting the next day. I had acted exactly like the minority stereotype who can't get over their ethnic identity and sense they are treated differently all the time and often without good reason. It was time to start questioning J and piece this puzzle together. After an hour of questions and lot of tears a cohesive story started to emerge. J still stood by her version of events on Monday - i.e. she had started so late that Mrs H had to rush through the poster quickly. She had promised th...

Anyone who has had their mailbox flushed clean for not having logged in for 30 days will be able to relate to this woman's frustration with Lycos and giving her attitude to add insult to injury. The story has been Slashdotted and greatly commented upon needless to say. A lot of people believe that she was naive, foolish and in as such, her case was ab initio void. When Hotmail introduced us all to the brave new world of free web email, it was like been ushered into an all you can eat buffet and told "Oh, by the way. This is all free". To make up for the storage limits per email account, people created half a dozen different ones and it was just too hard to remember to login to every one of them at the right frequency. Then one day you open a long forgotten mailbox and voila it was completely empty. The inactivation policy had kicked in and nothing short of paying $20 to reactive it would restore your old mails. Should the consumer blame providers of all you can eat free...

This is Part Six of a Nine Part Series "Did your friends like the Strega Nona story ?" I asked as brightly as I could manage. "I did not get a chance to share my book today. It is still lying in my cubby" J replied sadly. "Did Mrs H tell you why you could not share you book ?" I asked trying to stay calm in the face of the rising tidal wave of anger and indignation. "No" she said. "Did she see my note ?" I asked. "Yes. She sent a note back for you" J replied. I had to stop myself from thinking aloud "What a perfectly passive-aggressive bitch !" I told J that I was sorry about how her Stardom week was turning out and that Mommy would do whatever it took to make it right. I would be meeting with Mrs H to talk about it."Okay, Mommy" she said wanly. It hurt me that she did not sound hopeful. I am more used to being viewed as Supermom who can make the impossible happen effortlessly. J was not so sure. My friends...

This gives new meaning to airing your grievances . Instead of writing to the newspaper editor, people can now call, complain and be podcasted for everyone to hear. Back in the day some people made writing letters to the editor an art form. The new generation of malcontents can take their show on air and thanks to technology bring much innovation to bear on pain old whining and griping. Newspapers for their part are anxious to become livelier. Some are getting creative with incoming mail, and making blog posts out of it . Increasingly, it may become difficult to merely broadcast news, views and opinion without active involvement and particpation of the readership.

This is Part Five of a Nine Part Series All Wednesday I was a bunch of twisted nerves. Thankfully two important meetings got cancelled. I was not prepared for either and thanked God for getting me off the hook. The note had been sent to Mrs. H and now I had to wait on her response. Time flows with a dreamlike slowness when you are waiting for a denouement that you fear may be unpleasant. I thought about her reaction to my note and what her response might be. If only there was any way I could fast forward to the time I was at home in the evening with J and know that answer right now. In the meanwhile, my friends had tapped into their individual networks to help me formulate my strategy as far as meeting with the teacher. They had given me ideas on opening lines, meeting agenda and closing notes. It ranged all the way from bitter, caustic and sarcastic to completely cold, professional and business like. There was a lot overwrought, hyper-anxious, over-protective mother between the two ex...

I was the client CIO all hand meeting a few days ago. The man's reputation precedes him and the reasons became self evident within minutes of him starting his presentation. The two hundred something in attendance that represented almost everyone in his food chain was spellbound. The one thing he reiterated was the importance of disseminating and living the vision at all levels of the organization, every single day. When faced with conflicting priorities every one of us should ask ourselves which of them is the best aligned with the vision statement and let the answer determine what our top priority should be. In the majority of the Fortune 500 types I have consulted for, the people who craft the organizational vision have the greatest ideas. Unfortunately, the nitty-gritty of implementing the operating details of that vision falls to their direct and indirect reports. The greater the number of layers, the more significant are the transmission losses. The vision erodes in successive...

This is Part Four of a Nine Part Series I was concerned about my note to Mrs. H sounding like the hysterical ranting of a over protective mother quick to jump to wanton conclusions. I realized how impossible it was to stay dispassionate and objective when you know your child has been hurt for no reason or atleast have reason to think that has been the case. I sent my note to a few people to proof read and got different feedback. D is half Puerto Rican and half Dutch married to an African American. She has no kids of her own but is in active participant in the life of several in her extended family. She also serves as a mentor to an inner-city teenager. She modified the letter to the point that it longer bore any traces of an aggrieved, anguished mother. It was steeped in businesses-ese such as "I would like to work with you to establish a decorum for exchange of information between the staff and teachers of X Elementary and myself" She made a few phone calls to other friends ...

I don't have the resume that it takes to land a dating expert position but the pay is enticing enough to consider a change of profession. The job description does not sound half bad either I am a dating consultant, President of Rapid Dating and the author of Love Mechanics. I do personal dating consulting and give dating ideas and advice for women and men; including makeover services, wardrobe tune-ups and love nest tune-ups. I will tune up people’s homes and create love environments. Guys often think, “Once I meet a girl, I’ll fix up my place,” but it’s actually the reverse. He needs to fix up his home first! I take people shopping for a new wardrobe. I create love scripts for people in different dating situations; for people who don’t know what to say. I have in my time given dating advice to both men and women to their eventual benefit. Wardrobe and make-up wisdom comes to me naturally though I hesitate to dispense it lest it offends the recipient. Likewise for home interiors t...

This is Part Three of a Nine Part Series My Tuesdays are inevitably busy. I have inherited a lot chaos from a mismanaged and misdirected program and until we get our house in some semblance of order the fires will never be fully doused. Between my meetings, I found myself worrying about J and how her day was going at school. While J is always on my mind when I am at work , I rarely if ever worry about her. I had told her that morning when I saw her off at the bus stop to remind Mrs. H about the poster assuming that it might not be as big of a deal to the teacher as it was for her. I blamed myself for going a little over the top on her very first kindergarten project. Maybe I should have left her alone with construction paper, marker pens, glue and some pictures and all this would have not happened. In my infinite foolishness I had ascribed to that silly little poster more significance than it merited and the child was suffering its consequences. She expected to make a splash and was no...

But for Kottke, I would have never realized that my abiding dislike for Valentine's Day comes from having been a victim of love bombing . My ex was big on pomp and circumstance when it came to demonstrating his feelings even if the sincerity was suspect. There was embarrassing amounts of PDA, surprise flowers on the way back from work, liqueur filled chocolate, perfume - the works. I have even had love poetry read to me on the phone from work. And all this for no special reason or occasion. He was infatuated with the idea of being in love while being entirely incapable of loving anyone but himself. Come Valentine's Day, I would be carpet bombed by the many tokens of affection with mood music playing for ambience. Another woman might have found in him the Prince Charming of her dreams come to life and I found it suffocating. It felt a lot like drowning in a tub of Jaipur mixed with high fructose corn syrup. Back in the day, I used to wonder if there was something inherently fl...

This is Part Two of a Nine part series Swami Chinmayanad once said "Disappointment occurs to those who make an appointment with the future". I have often remembered this quote when the future I had wanted shaped up a lot contrary to my desire or dreams. Had J been any older or wiser, I might have said that to her when I called home Monday afternoon after she had returned from school to check how things went with the poster. "Mommy, I started very late and then the bell for the school bus rang. Mrs. H showed it to the class herself. She said I can have my turn tomorrow". J said sadly. I could sense deep hurt and disappointment in her voice. I tried to tell her that it was no big deal and she could talk about it on Tuesday. J insisted that all the other kids who had their turn to be the star always started to present their poster right after naptime but she was not allowed to do so until much later. I was surprised that she could even discern the difference in timing...

All of us who have a bad memory for faces and names along with an inability to make the correct name to face associations would love the idea of having a surrogate brain take over when the real one fails to do the job. It's a crazy experiment. But perhaps its craziest aspect is that soon you'll be part of it too--whether you want to be or not. The way Bell sees it, computers and the Internet are now rapidly becoming capable of storing everything you do and see. Hard-drive space has exploded in size, and every day people are recording more and more of their lives: We blog about our thoughts, upload personal pictures to Flickr, save every email on our infinitely expanding Gmail accounts, shoot video on our cell phones, record phone calls straight to our hard drives when we use Skype. Back in the learning multiplication tables, doing mental math, being a good speller all counted among must haves for a good student. Some or all of these skills may become redundant soon. All of us ...

This is Part One of a Nine Part Series When I checked J's homework folder last Friday, I had no idea I would be setting in motion a chain of events that would by the weekend among other things make me physically ill. There was the weekly report stating the usual "J had a great week" with all parameters for a successful kindergarten week marked "Met or exceeded expectations". There was also a flyer letting me know that it would be J's turn to be the "Kindergarten Star Of The Week" the following week. A list of activities was outlined from Monday to Thursday. The goal was to give each child in class a chance to shine and be the cynosure of attention for a whole week. I thought it was a wonderful idea and set to work on our assignment for Monday enthusiastically. I was tasked with helping her to make a poster about herself to bring and share with the class. Interestingly enough, J had never mentioned anyone's poster until then. I had heard about t...

I loved thrillers in my teens and so did most of my compadres - we could not get enough of John Le Carre, Robert Ludlum and Helen MacInnes. Many of us girls were also into Mills and Boon romances on the sly. Our parents generally disapproved of the saccharine romance genre a whole lot more than they did of spy thrillers though we were not entirely sure why. After all the rallying cry during their youth had been "Make love not war". Maybe they wanted us to stop believing in the myth of Cinderella, get a decent education and a job that gave us financial independence. Since “The Bourne Supremacy” did not interfere with any of those objectives, it must have qualified as acceptable reading. If only they had known that love of crime fiction is a sign of low self esteem , we may not have had to sneak our Harlequin romances inside school text books and risk the ire of the history teacher if caught. The article does not say anything about the predictability of romance novels or other ...

You understand the uses of popular culture when they decide to name a server Bamm-Bamm instead of lets say Macavity . I would have never got the Flintstones reference but the T.S. Elliot allusion would have made me smile. So much better if there was another person in the room who also remembered the mystery cat. It makes for a small but meaningful moment of coworker bonding. It takes the edge off a serious discussion around the degrading performance stats of a production server that has been getting the boss undesirable attention from his management. Cultural reference points change by place and time. You become aware of the flow of both relative to you when you do not understand references to popular icons. You lean on others to help you navigate a varied landscape of pop-culture, understand key landmarks and their significance. When all else fails there is Google and Wikipedia. I think both generation and culture gap will become things of the past at least in terms of awareness. As ...

"Hi Sheila" says a tired and somewhat peeved voice after the sixth ring. "I am not on call today. Steve is. You can't reach him ?" he asks. "Sean, I am sorry to call you this early on Sunday but I need your help. Can you meet me at Cosi's on Skillman Street in about fifteen ?" Shiela asks anxiously. Sean sounds fully alert and a little concerned "I'll be over. Are you ok ? What's going on ?" he asks. "I am fine. A childhood friend sounds like she could be in trouble and I need help for her. Tell you more when we meet. I am on my way there" she replies. She settles herself a corner table and powers up her laptop. Sean walks in a few minutes later looking dangerously sleep deprived. It had been an insane week at work for all of them but specially for the production support guys. While the worst was probably over, they were not fully out of the woods yet. "Couldn't whatever this is wait till tomorrow ? I'd have...

Besides the loss to scientific history due to letters being supplanted by email correspondence between scientists, future generations may not know the amazing genre of letters exchanged poets, philosophers, artists, writers who wrote to peers, friends and family. They would remain strangers to the human side of genius and celebrity alike. Before, unlimited email storage became common, most people were forced to purge their mailboxes periodically to make room for new email. Not everyone bothered to save these electronic notes elsewhere. If they lived in today's world there would be no letters from Franz Kafka to Milena , the fifty years of correspondence between Graham Greene and R.K Narayan or letters from Rudyard Kipling to his children To all of us who have loved reading those letters and many more, years after they were written, it was our way of getting to know the person behind the name. With every unsaved and deleted email we will know corresponding less of the minds we a...

Guy Browning's 20 tips for career success made me chuckle - specially tip number 2 : Ignore all email. The reason being - "Most emails are biodegradable, however. If you let them sink to the bottom of the pile and go unanswered they will eventually become irrelevant." Number 12 is not half bad either : Dress up not down - The one caveat being "On the other hand, never look too businesslike. This marks you out as someone who works in organised crime or as an undertaker, if not both." I have a metrosexual sitting right across from me and he gives me the creeps each time he moisturizes his hands and uses lip balm in full view of everyone. His white shirts could serve as reflectors for portrait photographers - it actually hurts the eye. I wonder now if he might have anything to do with the underworld. His definition of a consultant - "A consultant is someone in business with an ego so large it takes more than one company to support it " is spot on as wel...

The rate at which single girlfriends call me for relationship advice, I think I should set up a Paypal payment plan, skip the day job (and town for good measure) to find a myself a retreat by the ocean where I can meditate in peace on the question of human relationships. The inevitable happened. Steve and Poorvi broke up and I was in the know within hours. I have to admit I get good news pretty fast as well. So its not as if I am remembered only in the darkest hour which would be terrible. I had been informed when they had decided to "go exclusive". Best that I knew, Poorvi was not really seeing anyone else even before the exclusivity had been declared - she is just not good at multi-tasking men given the demands on her time. Between her modeling gigs, dance performances and job time is invariably scarce and the little she had left she religiously gave to her boyfriend of six months. We had a long discussion about the events leading up to the break up. Women hav...

Since it already takes a googobs of money to own many pairs of Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahniks so getting a toe liposuction to look pretty in them is no big deal in monetary terms. That said, even the idea of shaping toes so they can fit a pair of designer shoes is strongly reminiscent of Chinese foot binding Foot binding started out as a way for a woman to look beautiful but came to be considered a cruel and inhuman practice. Toe liposuction is now haute coutre but if the long term prognosis is anywhere as dire as foot binding, some day it will get banned too. By then it may have transcended its original role as a way to look perfect in a pair of Jimmy Choos. "Foot binding not only crippled the women who went through the process but as well as crippled women in China for centuries. Being crippled by foot binding, they had such a little role in the government. It was a custom that started out to define beauty but ended up defining the way the society was."

Blogging is still new enough to beg the question "Why do people blog ?" and further "What drives people to blogging ?" Micheal Karen attempts answering both. According to him : "Bloggers think of themselves as rebels against mainstream society, but that rebellion is mostly confined to cyberspace, which makes blogging as melancholic and illusionary as Don Quixote tilting at windmills" What makes this analysis questionable are the underlying assumptions i.e. bloggers are rebelling against mainstream society - food and travel blogs for instance clearly don't fit that description. What's so rebellious and anti-establishment about posting an unusual cake recipe, the how-to for brewing beer at home or a photoblog of the trip to Machu Pichu ? People always shared such things with friends and family. A blog has just made the process much easier. The global scope of this sharing is a www phenomenon of which blogs are just an incidental part. The next assu...

Great NYT article on the way we look at food, how we eat and the rise of nutritionism . In the case of nutritionism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. From this basic premise flow several others. Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to the scientists (and to the journalists through whom the scientists speak) to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. To enter a world in which you dine on unseen nutrients, you need lots of expert help. Just like the 200 calories can look and taste different depending on their source, the same set of nutrients can be derived from a variety of sources to completely different levels of satisfaction. Eating well is no longer easy or straightforward though Micheal Pollan tries to summarize the plethora of opinion and subject matter expertise in the opening line of his essay "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants....

The retired husband syndrome strikes a uncomfortably familiar chord. I have seen several men in my extended family in their 60s and 70s who have significantly increased the stress levels of their wives post retirement. These women are housewives and ran their households just as they thought fit. Now with a stay at home husband who provides non-stop performance appraisals and reviews , these women are at their wits end. No longer is their way of thirty five years good enough. Their best judgment is almost always suspect. Often times, the children are grown-up, married and live separately so there is no one they can turn to for reassurance or comfort. Some of them confess that they long to spend time alone and would love for their husbands to return to work - ideally fulltime. They seek escape in volunteer work, prayer or sympathetic friends and relatives. The men for their part seem keen on taking an active interest and contributing to the domesticity they were outsiders to all their ...