Heartcrossings

Some days ago, J declared "I would love to live in a place where I get to eat fresh mangoes and cherries all year long". Those are her favorite fruits and the operative word is of course "fresh". I am not sure where exactly J's Shangri La is situated but it can easily be mine as well. I do know where she could get her wish for fresh mangoes at least for a few months of the year. Adding cherries to the mix throws a spanner in the works. So anyways we got talking about the kind of climate it takes for the best mangoes to grow. The heat that bakes and scorches the earth and makes every pore of you crave for respite. You watch the first clouds of monsoon approach tantalizingly but float away in the end. The ritual is repeated for days. You wait for that magic moment when the clouds will not be as fickle, when they will be full enough to burst upon the parched land. That's what it takes to make the best mangoes. The deliverance of monsoon is a difficult concept t...

One mother argues her case for abolishing handwriting as skill to be taught in schools . She says : As writing technologies evolve, we romanticize the old and adapt to the new. This will happen with keyboards, too—some contemporary novelists have ceased using them already. Richard Powers uses voice-recognition software to compose everything, including his novels. "Except for brief moments of duress, I haven't touched a keyboard for years," he says. "No fingers were tortured in producing these words—or the last half a million words of my published fiction." Powers is wonderfully free of technological nostalgia: "Writing is the act of accepting the huge shortfall between the story in the mind and what hits the page. ...For that, no interface will ever be clean or invisible enough for us to get the passage right," he says to his computer. Having gone from very beautiful to completely unreadable handwriting within a span of ten years, I often find myself f...

I watched Dead Man Walking a few days ago and found it a hard movie to like and for the most unlikely reason - the soundtrack. The moment it came on along with the opening credits, it piqued my interest and I loved it. The Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan sound and the use of musical instruments from the Indian subcontinent made for wonderful music but it just did not jive with the plot, mood and setting of the movie. Through out the movie, it proved to be a distraction from the story sometimes enough to make characters appear unreal and their pathos unbelievable. Not sure if the idea was to inspire a Sufi vibe through the music in keeping with the theme of kindness, forgiveness, love and redemption. I am guessing the same effect could have been achieved by something like a Gregorian chant - it would help the story remain in character and maintain its cultural and religious context. I found it quite amazing how a perfectly good story and great music could be combined to such disappointing and of...

There are women I know either professionally, socially or both. They are in their twenties and thirties, married with or without children. Some are from India, like I am, and others are not. They have very little in common except for one thing: they just can't stop rhapsodizing about their marriages and their husbands. They have stars in their eyes as they recount the many generous, romantic, and thoughtful things their men do for them all the time. They seem to be married to their soul mates and are very naturally beside themselves with joy. Not everyone has the good fortune to find someone so special with which to share their lives. It brings the kind of happiness that levitates them. They are floating on a cloud high above the ordinary and mundane. You can tell the joy is not manufactured. They really believe they are living in heaven and are married to the most perfect man in the whole world. They are aware of their good fortune and never fail to show their heartfelt appreciati...

Read this short verse on the meaning of existence that begins with the inadequacy of language to explain it. Far be it from me to dwell on existence when I have J's endless stream of questions to reckon with. She challenges me to come up with half-intelligent answers about everything we see around us. Even with that, language fails me almost constantly. I find myself groping and struggling to find the words that will convey what I have in mind. Sometimes, the mind draws a blank too. She brings me to the humbling realization that I am able to talk and present so effortlessly at the workplace only because the content I am delivering does not mean much. Maybe the world of working adults is just that - meaningless. We don't challenge each other by asking and answering simple questions. We veneer our emptiness with a lot of businessese and geekese. If I had anything useful to say, I'd be just as tongue tied. The Meaning of Existence by Les Murray Everything except language knows...

Shashi Tharoor's The Elephant, The Tiger And The Cell Phone is a great read just on the strength of the book's last and final part - An A to Z of Being Indian. It is a pithy summary of things that define a desi and the idea of desiness. I would love to read a longer version of this glossary. In this list, he notes the huge untapped export potential of the bidi and the cell phone as the unlikely agent of socialism. Elections and election symbols are fully explained and demystified along with our crazy traffic and larger than life weddings - " The classic Indian social event, glittering occasions for conspicuous consumption, outrageous overdressing and free food" Part One talks about the importance of India being and remaining a pluralistic society and how Hinduism is the perfect vehicle for this, the difference between Hinduism and Hindutva. He concludes chapter two thusly: "In building an Indian nation that takes account of the country's true Hindu heritage...

Each time I return from a desi do where I've had to feel like an outcast because I don't come packaged like a "normal" family, I have wondered how many more times I have do this for J's benefit. At what point would the cultural assimilation be complete so I did not have to put up with desis being their desi-est worst on their own turf. I have gone into these things knowing fully well what to expect but they presented the only opportunities for J to learn about Indian festivals and social customs, meet a bunch of people who looked like her and spoke Indian languages. It felt wrong to deprive her of the opportunity and risk her growing up with a distorted view of her cultural roots. But my patience is running thin and each time it is a little bit harder to bite the bullet and show up with my child when every pore of me wants to run away. Most often the hosts and a few other close to them already know that there is no husband in my domesticity. Apparently, word passe...

Pankaj Mishra's Temptations Of The West is titled misleadingly and contributes directly to the reader's disappointment. When the subtitle reads 'How to be modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and beyond', you imagine that author will expand on the theme of the collision of ancient and modern cultures and its socio-political impacts on that part of the world. Mishra is a undoubtedly good writer and starts of on a promising note but the story just does not get anywhere. After a 79 pages of Allahabad and Benares - cities he has known very intimately, Mishra rambles off in other destinations and offers us random slices of political history spliced with journalism. It makes for rather tedious reading. Yet, you plod along hoping for something larger to emerge in the end from these vignettes. Sadly that does not happen. While on the theme of India, Bollywood gets a fair amount of attention but one is not sure exactly to what end. For those of us who lived in India when a lot of th...

J was playing a game on PBS called About Face which teaches kids to recognize facial expression. This could be a first level EQ game and a definitely a good thing to learn. Watching J play, I was thinking about the ways the idea could be extended and still remain kid friendly. Recently, J's best friend L told her she does not want to be her friend anymore. Thankfully, J has another best friend M and was able to ignore the provocation and hang out with M. As expected L now is wedging herself between J and M - she wants M to be her best friend. J is feeling insecure - what will happen if L and M become best friends and she is left alone. We have talked about the situation and I have helped her figure out a few different options. The scenario we have at hand is hardly exceptional. It is also the kind of thing EQ games could help with. Arthur and friends could be placed in a situation like J's. The game would offer several ways out of the impasse. It will have the child select one...

Found this article via MeFi on the myths about buying versus renting . One commentator says " At the very least, the tone of the article is a little bit bitter, a little bit ranty, and a little bit caps-locky." I would tend to agree simply because the author does cover the renting side of the story - I know from experience it is no bed of roses. Even so, I feel just a little bit vindicated in my decision to postpone buying until I know for a fact I will live and work in that area for a very long time. I have always sensed a tinge of pity and condescension when I mention that I rent and have done so for a while. I guess that flags me as a delinquent loser. In their minds, it makes perfect sense too - I am a single parent, so I must not be able to afford it. They feel sorry for J for being saddled with a parent who is not able to make the American Dream come true for her. My aversion for brand name clothes and retail excess in general does not help my case either. I guess J mu...

It's not very often that I am able to take away a meaningful message from a Bollywood flick so I had to write about it. The movie in question is Laaga Chunari Me Daag . The story is an old chestnut overdone Bollywood-style. A family of four in a decaying mansion - the mother spinning the years away Arachne-like on the sewing machine, the idle father hoping the next lottery ticket will reverse the tide of his fortune and the two pretty daughter unequipped to seek a better future. Desperate to help her struggling family, she goes to Bombay to find work and runs into a man who promises her a job in return for spending the night with him. She calls her mother defeated and ready to abandon her quest for employment. She is frightened by the proposition and wants to come home to Benares right away. The mother's response to this SOS is tinged by her precarious circumstances, she does not rush to embrace her child and snatch her out of harm's way. In her daughter's most desperat...

J is very photogenic and I am anything but. In the few pictures we have together, I look like a severely sleep deprived zombie with half shut eyes while she looks her normal happy self. It ruins the keepsake value of the memory and the image. Very rarely do we get a mother and daughter picture that is a good enough to preserve. I don't do well with flashes, waiting for the photographer to get ready to click and cannot strike a "natural pose" to save my life - what an oxymoron. For the likes of me Methodizaz would be a great idea. MethodIzaz is a unique photography experience. Subjects are unaware of the exact moment they will be photographed and of the photographer's identity. Instead, the subject is photographed completely naturally, living life as normal.

I loved Asterix comic books as a child and was excited to introduce them to J when I saw one at the local library. As a fan of the good old fashioned Asterix fare, my disappointment was complete when Mickey Mouse and Superman made appearances within a few callouts of each other in the Falling Sky. That sentiment is probably shared by other fans as well. There should be some things in life that Disney cannot touch - no matter what. Stuck with Asterix and the Falling Sky I wondered if I should read to the end and see if the political controversy angle about it would be fun enough to make up for the dejecting Disneyfication. Each time I tried, I remembered Asterix as it used to be back in my day. The placement of Obleix, Getafix et al next to Mickey and Superman felt like a terrible food pairing that left you with a royal stomach ache. There is only so much pain I could subject myself to for a trip down memory lane - I returned the book unread.

Recently, for the want of a designer on the team it fell on me to create a simple web interface. Being that my direct programming and UI design experience is at least ten years old it was a pretty daunting task. While I was able to get something stood up that worked functionally, the aesthetics were primitive at best. It was akin to watching a black and white movie from the 40s when the world had moved on to The Matrix. This article on baby steps towards bringing a mature design sensibility to mobile, handheld devices speaks to my own experience. Movies looked very much like filmed stage plays in their first decade of life. Similarly, television worked much like visual radio in its inaugural decade. And the World Wide Web – the desktop version, where typography and layout bear at least some resemblance to the intention of designers – went to great lengths in its early years to imitate the values of printed matter. Eventually, all media will leave behind these chameleon-like baby steps...

J and I watched Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story this weekend. This was the first time she's watched a foreign language film and actually followed the sub-titles. The story is universal and timeless in its appeal. Any child who has grown up and moved away and any parent who has been left behind can relate. The older couple Shukishi and Tomi Hirayama are like the parents we have left behind - some in another city and others in a different country. They visit their children more often than the children are able visit them. Often, they struggle to fit into the lives of their grown up kids who are married and have families of their own. They wonder when and how their children changed so much. They do not want to impose themselves in anyway and if they lack independent means to support themselves, they are worried about what their visit is costing their children. Yet amid all this discomfort and disharmony all they probably want is to love and be loved in return. Watching this movie with...

We used to call her the Mistress of Decks. The boss needed to spin the same data over fifty different ways for different audiences over a period of six months until he hit pay dirt - a promotion and a new line of business. The M of D was indefatigable when it came to rehashing the same message in an infinite number of ways - we marveled at her patience and resourcefulness. But it was a thankless job that took up the better part of her working day. As a result, she slaved over the weekends to get "work" done. Docstoc could be a dream come true for The M of D and the rest of us. Another woman I once worked with had a discreet computer rear view mirror installed on her cube so she would near be caught off guard by someone sneaking up on her. While the alarm mechanism worked like a charm, there was quite a bit of snickering about the device by the water-cooler. Maybe she can get herself a smart mouse and get rid of the offending mirror. Then there is this PMI certified Project M...

When you have the Deepak Chopra brand on your side you can write a book called 100 Questions from My Child and get a bunch of endorsements when in fact content at random places on the web gives you both food for thought and chuckle in far more generous portions. Mallika Chopra's world as it comes through the saccharine sweetness of her copy is perfect beyond belief. There is not one thing out of place in her charmed existence which naturally includes the two little girls. In doing that, the average mother, with her share of challenges in life will find it hard to relate to the framework within which a lot of the questions are asked and get answered. As for the questions themselves - they are fairly run of the mill in that most children ask them in different variations. And that is not such a terrible thing and does not undermine the importance of the questions in any way. Childhood is a rite of passage and it to be expected that it will be experienced by those who pass through it i...

My omission was not a serious one. I did not realize that the tardy bell at J's school was rung at 7:50 a.m. instead of 7:55 a.m. She had been working on a project to present to her class all of last week. Today was the big day and she wanted me to drop her off instead of taking the poster on the bus. I watched her climb out of the car and then burst into tears when a teacher told her to get a tardy pass. I felt gripped by guilt for tarnishing what would otherwise have been a perfect day for J. She had worked for days and had even practiced presenting her project. My child had entered the bowels of the school building crying and I was not allowed follow her there and comfort her. Even so, I went to the front office as fast as I could to see if I could give her a hug to soothe the blow. I called out to her as a woman led her to her class "J ! Its' alright, baby". She turned around briefly surprised to see me and then walked away. There was lingering sadness on her face...

India Inc. like the proverbial glass could be half full or half empty depending on who is looking at it. The cornfield of opportunity that is India forms the former perspective. Entrepreneurs like Sridhar Vembu see it as such and make the best of it . The many challenges the country faces in including the uneven to poor quality of higher education is the half empty glass that Shashi Tharoor writes about . Both perspectives are equally valid. To expect every entrepreneur with a promising idea to harness the best that India has to offer without getting dragged down by all that it seriously lacks is not realistic. Poster children like Vembu will continue to be the model (and inspiring) minority – they will consistently beat the odds instead of getting beat by them. Tharoor's prescription for change however might give the hard-working but vision-challenged majority a shot at becoming almost as successful.

Words of wisdom from someone who has obviously been there and done that. When it comes to marriage settling for Mr. Good Enough beats holding out for Mr. Right. The author, Lori Gottlieb says : When we’re holding out for deep romantic love, we have the fantasy that this level of passionate intensity will make us happier. But marrying Mr. Good Enough might be an equally viable option, especially if you’re looking for a stable, reliable life companion. Madame Bovary might not see it that way, but if she’d remained single, I’ll bet she would have been even more depressed than she was while living with her tedious but caring husband. I could not agree more. In my own case, it has been a long series of misadventures beginning from the time I had looked at marriage as an escape hatch from issues I lacked the courage to face and work through. I preferred to push them under the carpet and pretend all was well. Needless to say, the marriage ended and the issues remained. I was left with no op...

Art is only limited by imagination - here is one made of used tea-bags . Used tea and tea-bags can be put to more mundane use and some artful ones as well. Love the jewelry but its hard to see the teabag in them - they are easier to spot in the bookmarks and this outfit . And finally, a fun Halloween costume idea I could use for J. After all this tea-talk, I can't wait for my favorite Darjeeling tea that her grandparents will bring from Kolkata when they visit us in a couple of months. In the meanwhile, I'll keep an eye out for the solid honey to go with it and help J make her tea bag book-mark.

While I am very eager to learn about today's teenagers I can't claim to having any real teen friends. My overtures of friendship are frequently rebuffed because they bundle me with their parents and are suspicious of my motives. Whatever the magic pass that allows one into the charmed world of today’s teens, I just don't have. The concept of a guest pass does not exist. Until now, young adult fiction has been my only glimpse into their world. So when my much younger cousins let it slip that they all have profiles on Orkut, I could not resist the temptation to check out their online avatars. There are five of them in all. Three come from somewhat dysfunctional families. The mothers have always been physically and emotionally absent from their lives. One in pursuit of a career and the other as a result of being hypochondriac. The fathers have stepped in to fill the gaps the best they could without knowing exactly what it takes to do so. The other two have model parents who co...

J's first grade curriculum is quite alarming in how inward looking it is. The world begins and ends in America like the rest of the planet was simply empty and had nothing worth knowing or learning about. The argument it seems is that first graders have no need to know about the world, staying local is the best way to introduce them to concepts that can be extended later. But I hear from parents of older kids, it does not change that much even at the high school level unless a kid is taking advanced courses in specific subject. So to learn about ancient cultures around the world, a child would need to be on an advanced history track. The rest would go out into the world with just a smattering of American history and that would be the extent of their sense of history. The pattern follows with all other subjects as well. The kids "graduate" and come out into a highly globalized and competitive real world with a lot of strong non-American players in it; find themselves strug...

I think they should go a few steps further and create and immersive internet experience rather an ambient one. Have all the walls in your house be net and wi-fi ready. The widgets on the bedroom walls can be doing romantic travel destinations, chick-flicks and the like whereas the ones in the kitchen connect you to online grocery stores, recipe ideas for the RFIDed odds and ends it detects in your fridge not to mention exotic food blogs. After all there is a time and place for everything. What a shame the we have to come untethered from the internet when we log off at night and have to confine our online experience to one monitor that we must tote with us where we go. Immersion should not exclude community. Walls in all public places could double as prime real estate for browsers. We could be creating mash-ups anywhere, anytime sharing neat widgets with friends and strangers alike. True immersion is not possible without having your own skin in the game and it looks like they are alrea...

Watched recently, three movies and three takes on love (and maybe more) The Illusionist , Swann In Love and Pratidwandi . The theme of love is woven into the fabric of the first two, other themes if any are secondary to it. In Pratidwandi (The Adversary), love is only one among many other things that the story is about. While love is not the protagonist's focus, it is what helps him find his way in the world. The three stories end on very different notes. In keeping with the theme of magic and illusion, Eisenheim and Sophie escape the confines of their real world to live happily ever after. Swann allows infatuation to drive him to the brink, rob him of his sense of self and his aesthetic taste. He decides to trade all and turn himself into a social pariah to bring Odette into his life. Then there is Siddharta in Pratidwandi who has more than one adversary as he copes with life as an unemployed man in Calcutta during the Naxalite movement. The woman he loves makes no promises abou...

J comes up with unusual metaphors sometimes. The bright pink and orange streaked sky of dusk would be "someone scribbling with a highlighter on the sky". This evening, in appreciation of dinner (which was perfectly ordinary by the way) I served she said "I love you as much as two Mount Everests joined lengthwise". I was deeply gratified to hear that. That is a child's world in similes and metaphor and then there is the poet's. A gifted poet could create stunning word pictures with something as banal as sentence punctuation. Asides - by Richard Wilbur Though the season's begun to speak Its long sentences of darkness, The upswept boughs of the larch Bristle with gold for a week, And then there is only the willow To make bright interjection, Its drooping branches decked With thin leaves, curved and yellow, Till winter, loosening these With a first flurry and bluster, Shall scatter across the snow-crust Their dropped parentheses. I wish I was able to see th...

Read this quote by Kahlil Gibran today “ Generosity is giving more than you can; pride is taking less than you need .” This is familiar to me from my teens when I first discovered Gibran but it gives me more food for thought now than it had back then. From what I have seen in life, generosity and pride sometimes go together. My friend D will do anything she can to help me but feels awkward about accepting the smallest token of appreciation or ask me for a favor lest it should be considered owed. It makes her feel like her generosity is being calibrated and paid what it was worth to me. The truth is, I don’t have any way to measure her kindness, less be able to compensate equal or more of its value to me. I merely strive to strike a balance between an adequate expression of my gratitude and finding a gift that is thoughtful without being over the top. And D is not alone – there are many other like her. Generous to a fault but too proud to accept another’s generosity. They often seek s...

J once told me that she feels "different" from the other kids because they are so into their video gaming world and "all the stuff about it" that she does not understand. I asked her if she wanted to participate in it as in getting a Nintendo DS, Playstation or Wii and she was said "No. I don't find it interesting" pretty promptly. She is quite content to continue feeling different and being unable to relate to some of the things her generation finds most exciting. Thanks goodness for Hannah Montana but for her, J would have been a complete social misfit. Apparently we are both living in the dark ages even as other parents are readying their kids for the digital world . J did come into a couple of Webkinz on her birthday - gifts from her friends. We went through the motions of signing her up on the site and such but she showed no interest in participating in the virtual world that apparently caters to the infotainment needs of kids age 6-10. Bob Tedesc...

My co-worker was joking a few days ago about how he tells his family (which includes a six year old) each month after he gets his paycheck "Looks like we'll have our house till the end of the month". The "joke" was clearly lost on the child who had nightmares about becoming homeless. The wife got furious about his "sick sense of humor". We all cope with stress differently and this man's way though not exemplary, must have had its merits to him. Being able to keep his home weighs on his mind and the only way he knew to make light of his anxiety has been clamped shut. I feel for him and I am glad I don't have a mortgage payment to deal with myself. For those of us who don't have the smarts to make sense of keyword rich articles on the subprime crisis such as this , MeFi has help at hand. This comic book style subprime primer is almost at my level of comprehension though I started to feel rather dizzy towards the end. If you happen to be an ...

Being a somewhat paranoid parent, I find myself supporting the no more than two second hug rule - better still would be a complete ban on hugging at school. Growing up in a culture and time when hugging or kissing in school was not permissible, I don't recall our friendships having suffered for the lack of physical contact. We confided in our best friends both boy and girl. When someone was upset the rest of us comforted him or her - a lot of it was about empathy, talking and listening. It made for a bond of friendship that has stood the test of time. A hug is a very comforting thing but one assumes the kids has the parents, siblings and other family to provide that essential emotional nurture. It does not need to come from classmates in school -if indeed classmates are standing in for a child's emotionally absent parents and family, that is a serious concern. When kids have always been allowed to hug each other, it seems very unnatural for them to stop doing so just because th...

I was listening to this story on NPR on tax break for artists and it got me thinking about the many creative indeed "artistic" ways this could be misused. Talk about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Surely, a work of art is worth much more than the time and material that goes into creating it and that must be factored into the tax break amount. It does defy commonsense that the buyer of an artwork who donates it to a museum gets a tax break equivalent to the market price of the piece of art when the artist doing the same gets credit for little more than material plus labor. There was talk of fair market value, independent assessment and such to make sure the system would not be gamed. Yet despite the checks and balances, it very well could be simply because the operating definitions of art and fair maket value are vague at best. Would it not make more sense to create a micro-credit or even better micro-patronage system for artists that could stand in for th...