I read this Tagore short "Shasti" recently and recalled hearing my mother reading it out loud to me in Bengali when I was a kid. On the surface, it is a simple narrative even a child can follow. At my age, the experience of reading the story is very different. The character of Chandara comes across way more complex. She is hobbled by her circumstances but not defined by it. She reminds me of Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina. All these women choose to die in the end. In this commentary on how Tolstoy ends Anna Karenina, the author writes
On the basis of this novel, it could be argued that Tolstoy rejects female experience as domestic, limited, even lacking in spiritual insight, because the one woman who attempts to transgress these boundaries ends up committing suicide.
Tagore seems to give Chandara the center stage in his story. She drives the narrative and controls her destiny. In a sense, she epitomizes the inner strength of the Indian woman who historically did not have the same freedom or resources as the Flaubert or Tolstoy characters did. Yet there is a certain fire and energy about Chandara that even death cannot diminish.
crossings as in traversals, contradictions, counterpoints of the heart though often not..
Made in Heaven
I started watching Made in Heaven out of curiosity and found it quite enjoyable. The story is about mega rich desis getting married along with the pomp and circumstance that goes with the territory. The production is slick and the women parade spectacular wardrobes. The vast majority of the men are portrayed as gay, this is interesting until the gratuitous sex scenes detract from the goal of depicting societal hostility towards the community.
No significant character is entirely black or white and that is perhaps what holds the series together. They all have secrets, back-stories and do morally dubious things. Yet they have redeeming qualities. Each of them has a story with enough heft to stand alone. When their complex interactions comes together it produces rich narrative schema.
Is this "real" India? Most desis would agree that it is not. Real is a very relative term in the Indian context. What this series depicts might be close to reality for a very tiny sliver of the population. The vast majority experiences life that is nothing like what we see here. It is like watching fish in an aquarium. They are not representative of all the fish that exist in the ocean, but they are real too and their placement in an aquarium does not invalidate their reality.
Ruined Memories
J will be headed to college in a few months and my thoughts have turned to her childhood many times recently. Usually, it is about memories I deliberately did not capture on in pictures and video so I would have them perfectly preserved in my mind. When every other parent was video recording the piano recital, swim meet and school play, I often just watched and try to be present in that time as completely as I could. This blog which has been around since she was a little kid has no images of anything from her life - I wrote about events that meant something to me but worried that images would alter the way I remembered things.
Reminiscing over the digital footage of their childhood is usually not something the kid does - it is more a parent and family thing. To that end, not having an exhaustive digital archive of her childhood does not appear to be a big deal for J but I could be proven wrong yet. Maybe there will come a time when she wishes there was more for her to see and hear beyond my vivid recollections.
I remember loving it when my grandmother described the silly things I did as a toddler and how much reliving those memories made her laugh. Each time she told her story, it created a word picture in my mind and at each telling, that picture was a bit different. I was at liberty to imagine that incident she was describing how I liked. When I think about my grandmother now I miss her being able to describe me as I once was. The pictures we have together from that age don't nearly tell her story as she was able to.
Reminiscing over the digital footage of their childhood is usually not something the kid does - it is more a parent and family thing. To that end, not having an exhaustive digital archive of her childhood does not appear to be a big deal for J but I could be proven wrong yet. Maybe there will come a time when she wishes there was more for her to see and hear beyond my vivid recollections.
I remember loving it when my grandmother described the silly things I did as a toddler and how much reliving those memories made her laugh. Each time she told her story, it created a word picture in my mind and at each telling, that picture was a bit different. I was at liberty to imagine that incident she was describing how I liked. When I think about my grandmother now I miss her being able to describe me as I once was. The pictures we have together from that age don't nearly tell her story as she was able to.
Hallway and Home
In describing what comedian Sarah Silverman called homesickness, Johann Hari in his book Lost Connections writes
When we talk about home today, we mean just our four walls and (if we’re lucky) our nuclear family.
But that’s never been what home has meant to any humans before us. To them, it meant a community—a dense web of people all around us, a tribe. But that is largely gone. Our sense of home has shriveled so far and so fast it no longer meets our need for a sense of belonging. So we are homesick even when we are at home.
Reading this made me think of the ways I have experienced homesickness and none of it was while being away from the physical place I called home - at any point in my life. I used to attribute that feeling of rootless and unbelonging to the fact that we are a refugee family. Perhaps the answer is a bit different. What we are conditioned to think of as "home" does not meet our emotional definition of "home".
I have spent some of the coziest and at-homes times in the hallway of a small apartment with a constant flow of people coming in and out. A lot of chaos, not enough room for everyone's belongings, cooking meals whenever whoever had time for it. Guests were always welcome and they showed up with their bags and sheets and found a spot to be comfortable. The "homes" I have otherwise lived in bore no resemblance to this hallway that served as "home" sometimes and yet I cannot think of another place that fits my emotional needs so well.
When we talk about home today, we mean just our four walls and (if we’re lucky) our nuclear family.
But that’s never been what home has meant to any humans before us. To them, it meant a community—a dense web of people all around us, a tribe. But that is largely gone. Our sense of home has shriveled so far and so fast it no longer meets our need for a sense of belonging. So we are homesick even when we are at home.
Reading this made me think of the ways I have experienced homesickness and none of it was while being away from the physical place I called home - at any point in my life. I used to attribute that feeling of rootless and unbelonging to the fact that we are a refugee family. Perhaps the answer is a bit different. What we are conditioned to think of as "home" does not meet our emotional definition of "home".
I have spent some of the coziest and at-homes times in the hallway of a small apartment with a constant flow of people coming in and out. A lot of chaos, not enough room for everyone's belongings, cooking meals whenever whoever had time for it. Guests were always welcome and they showed up with their bags and sheets and found a spot to be comfortable. The "homes" I have otherwise lived in bore no resemblance to this hallway that served as "home" sometimes and yet I cannot think of another place that fits my emotional needs so well.
Pie Baking
I think I might benefit from reading this book about baking that does not invoke the feelings this author describes
If you’ve ever followed a recipe for pie, you know that the instructions for making pie crust often read more like you’re casting a spell than baking a dessert.Add water until the dough “just comes together.” Drip ice water over flour and butter at the same pace as a late summer rain, until they resolve into shaggy clumps. Picture your grandma while adding water to the flour and butter mixture; stop when you think she would.
It is actually worse when the ebullient baker explains it all in her nice YT video - step by step and you still miss the mark by a mile. You think you were following along just fine until the dough starts to act weird and does none of the wonderful things it is supposed to do. In addition, your oven may have an uncomfortable relationship with the truth. The reported temperature may be off by 15-25 degrees (I have read that somewhere) so you need to get a feel for what is real. So when precision is the name of the game that is way over three strikes already and time to drop the baking project.
When I remove the "finished product" from the oven, I am often loath to just toss it away. I try to find a redeeming quality in the "baked good" I just produced- but there is none other than it not being charcoal yet. So once it cools down, I may put it away in the freezer like time and cold will transform it into something wonderful. I will pull the thing out six months later and wonder yet again why baking is so hard for me. Like they say you need to bury the pain to forget and dig it up to heal. That must have been the process I followed a couple of dozen times until I finally learned to bake a good whole wheat bread.
If you’ve ever followed a recipe for pie, you know that the instructions for making pie crust often read more like you’re casting a spell than baking a dessert.Add water until the dough “just comes together.” Drip ice water over flour and butter at the same pace as a late summer rain, until they resolve into shaggy clumps. Picture your grandma while adding water to the flour and butter mixture; stop when you think she would.
It is actually worse when the ebullient baker explains it all in her nice YT video - step by step and you still miss the mark by a mile. You think you were following along just fine until the dough starts to act weird and does none of the wonderful things it is supposed to do. In addition, your oven may have an uncomfortable relationship with the truth. The reported temperature may be off by 15-25 degrees (I have read that somewhere) so you need to get a feel for what is real. So when precision is the name of the game that is way over three strikes already and time to drop the baking project.
When I remove the "finished product" from the oven, I am often loath to just toss it away. I try to find a redeeming quality in the "baked good" I just produced- but there is none other than it not being charcoal yet. So once it cools down, I may put it away in the freezer like time and cold will transform it into something wonderful. I will pull the thing out six months later and wonder yet again why baking is so hard for me. Like they say you need to bury the pain to forget and dig it up to heal. That must have been the process I followed a couple of dozen times until I finally learned to bake a good whole wheat bread.
Long Walks
I have been a fan of long walks for as long as I can remember. Was good to read this article about why walking helps us think. It is full of interesting nuggets like this one
Thomas DeQuincey has calculated that William Wordsworth—whose poetry is filled with tramps up mountains, through forests, and along public roads—walked as many as a hundred and eighty thousand miles in his lifetime, which comes to an average of six and a half miles a day starting from age five.
That is truly impressive. For the last few years, I have been doing about ten miles a week which is a silly number compared to what Wordsworth clocked in. The grandfather of a childhood friend I had, was regarded as an eccentric by everyone who knew him because he went out for a walk after breakfast, returned for a small lunch and resumed walking after that to return only at dusk. They had a small dog who was excited to head out with him in the morning but refused to return after lunch.
There were sightings of the grandpa around the small town and people would routinely inform my friend's parents when they saw him. He was a man of few words, kept to himself when at home engrossed in reading. To us kids, he stood out as different from other grandparents we knew. We were intrigued by his walks and also by his reticent manners. When I look back now, I wonder what his life was like before he had the luxury of time to walk as much as he did. If he had some personal demons to fight or perhaps as this article concludes he was trying to organize the world around him.
Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts.
Thomas DeQuincey has calculated that William Wordsworth—whose poetry is filled with tramps up mountains, through forests, and along public roads—walked as many as a hundred and eighty thousand miles in his lifetime, which comes to an average of six and a half miles a day starting from age five.
That is truly impressive. For the last few years, I have been doing about ten miles a week which is a silly number compared to what Wordsworth clocked in. The grandfather of a childhood friend I had, was regarded as an eccentric by everyone who knew him because he went out for a walk after breakfast, returned for a small lunch and resumed walking after that to return only at dusk. They had a small dog who was excited to head out with him in the morning but refused to return after lunch.
There were sightings of the grandpa around the small town and people would routinely inform my friend's parents when they saw him. He was a man of few words, kept to himself when at home engrossed in reading. To us kids, he stood out as different from other grandparents we knew. We were intrigued by his walks and also by his reticent manners. When I look back now, I wonder what his life was like before he had the luxury of time to walk as much as he did. If he had some personal demons to fight or perhaps as this article concludes he was trying to organize the world around him.
Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts.
Food and Mood
Interesting article about a mother's desire and even the ability to cook driven by depression. As a child, I gravitated towards food that was cooked by a person in good spirits. This was not something I knew or understood back then, but when I think back, it seems that the most memorable meals I had were cooked by a person who was in a good place mentally at the time of preparing it. When it was my turn to cook for a family, those who sat at the table to eat what I had made, could tell my state of mind from the taste of it. J is very sensitive to this and will tell me later she knew I must have had a bad day. When the meal was made in a happy frame of mind, she enjoys it a lot better and there is an overall sense of peace and harmony. It would be great to know what smells and tastes can trigger positive feelings for a person. That would be a great way to lift the spirits
Music for Memory
Reading this article about how the memory of music is not lost to dementia and Alzheimer's made me wonder if it was possible to use music to encode and store all those other memories that could be lost. If we could create associations between memories in a systematic way, maybe we can preserve all that we value. Most of my favorite music always takes me back to the first time I heard it. While listening I could relive that moment all over again. Not all of these memories are happy or positive though many are.
Then there is music you were introduced to by someone you love. They turn up the car radio when the song plays and tell you their story - why they love the song, what it means to them and what memories they associate with it. Or sometimes they skip the details and just insist that you hear and make your own connection with it. I love the backstories around people's favorite music -especially the odd and out of place stuff that you would never associate with them.
My mother still recognizes some of the music I played as a teen though most might have been noise to her. The few tunes that struck her as melodic or memorable stayed with her. I am thinking of the music I hear J play - very little of is "sticky" for me. I envy parents who are on trend and can actually enjoy the music their kids listen to. There are so many good conversations that can begin with such shared interest. Reading this article makes me want to try harder to like what J likes - if that is my safety against forgetting a large chunk of life, I will gladly do the work it takes.
My mother still recognizes some of the music I played as a teen though most might have been noise to her. The few tunes that struck her as melodic or memorable stayed with her. I am thinking of the music I hear J play - very little of is "sticky" for me. I envy parents who are on trend and can actually enjoy the music their kids listen to. There are so many good conversations that can begin with such shared interest. Reading this article makes me want to try harder to like what J likes - if that is my safety against forgetting a large chunk of life, I will gladly do the work it takes.
Not My Idli
Nice illustrative example of cultural appropriation by way of the humble idli. Being Bengali and thinking of idli as my favorite comfort food is perhaps an act of cultural appropriation too. I have learned to make them through trial and error over the years but have yet to achieve the sublime perfection that was served by Mrs S, my childhood bestie's mother. That is the gold standard of idli to me. My gravitation towards food quite a bit distant from my cultural roots was likely the first of many steps in growing apart from them; until coming to the point of feeling unmoored and lost.
My efforts to regain connection has led through hilsa cooked in fiery mustard paste or mishti doi. But it feels like infatuation not love. At the height of allergy season, when I am sneezing fifty times a day and curled up in a ball on my couch, nothing will pick me up like a steaming bowl of rasam. If I was lucky enough to come by some idli and chutney a la Mrs. S, I might make a full recovery on the spot. Yet it is not my idli to love as I do.
Lime Juicers
Until a few days ago, I had no idea that a Lime Juicer was infact person with a specific kind of job. It is a very strange side hustle.
"..charging scooters involves capturing the scooter, bringing it home with you, and charging it to full battery. To do this, find a scooter that’s available for capture using your Bird or Lime app, go up to the scooter, then scan it using your app. This will unlock the scooter. At this point, you can ride the scooter or just wheel it along with you"
Every turn of phrase in this line of work is gaming oriented. Instead of playing games online, this allows a person to have the gaming experience out in the real world and also make a few bucks along the way. Makes you wonder, if this might be the beginning of the end for jobs that have no gaming quotient at all. More to point, if such jobs will completely fail to attract the talent that is attracted to gigs such as Lime Juicing and Bird Catching.
A related topic is work-life integration and extending childhood and youth forever. Maybe the next few decades will make the boring business of adulthood an irrelevant concept. Everyone can be Peter Pan for life. Minimizing expectations from life, reducing footprint to match does offer degrees of freedom people of my generation and earlier have not experienced. Who is to say that the goals we pursue serve any larger purpose at all.
To that end, it may be best to live in the moment, catch a Lime to Juice, earn a few bucks to spend at the neighborhood cafe, sit there enjoy the coffee and design a website to pay for a few weeks abroad. Once abroad, soak in the culture mixing gigs with travel. Since there is no time-bound responsibilities back home, no permanent partner or children to raise, no firm plans are needed at all. A person may be able to float around the world for a few years and return home maybe to pursue some new passions. I know a few people who are living a "lite" version of this life already so it must only be a matter of time when this becomes mainstream.
"..charging scooters involves capturing the scooter, bringing it home with you, and charging it to full battery. To do this, find a scooter that’s available for capture using your Bird or Lime app, go up to the scooter, then scan it using your app. This will unlock the scooter. At this point, you can ride the scooter or just wheel it along with you"
Every turn of phrase in this line of work is gaming oriented. Instead of playing games online, this allows a person to have the gaming experience out in the real world and also make a few bucks along the way. Makes you wonder, if this might be the beginning of the end for jobs that have no gaming quotient at all. More to point, if such jobs will completely fail to attract the talent that is attracted to gigs such as Lime Juicing and Bird Catching.
A related topic is work-life integration and extending childhood and youth forever. Maybe the next few decades will make the boring business of adulthood an irrelevant concept. Everyone can be Peter Pan for life. Minimizing expectations from life, reducing footprint to match does offer degrees of freedom people of my generation and earlier have not experienced. Who is to say that the goals we pursue serve any larger purpose at all.
To that end, it may be best to live in the moment, catch a Lime to Juice, earn a few bucks to spend at the neighborhood cafe, sit there enjoy the coffee and design a website to pay for a few weeks abroad. Once abroad, soak in the culture mixing gigs with travel. Since there is no time-bound responsibilities back home, no permanent partner or children to raise, no firm plans are needed at all. A person may be able to float around the world for a few years and return home maybe to pursue some new passions. I know a few people who are living a "lite" version of this life already so it must only be a matter of time when this becomes mainstream.
Recycling Deadend
Interesting read about the current state of waste recycling in America. Each time I am in the grocery check-out line and the cashier asks "Paper or Plastic?" - I cringe inside as knowing that both choices are bad and one needs to be made. For many years, I lugged around my cloth bags to grocery stores and found it impractical for the way I tend to shop - a couple of big trips a month and then only quick stops for a few things. The most environmental harm comes from those two big trips that end up needing a lot of bags.
A greener way would be to walk to the nearest store and bring back what I can carry in my cloth bag - it is how my father still does it. He combines walking and grocery shopping every morning; something he can afford to do at this stage of his life. It seems like once a person grows older and the pace of their life slows down, being green becomes way more possible. Conversely, the more we automate our lives, and create more productive hours, the worse off things will be. Maybe the real solution to improving the environment lies in slowing us all down - not having to account for every minute of our day. Once people have jurisdiction over their time, it becomes easy to make decisions that serve the world better.
This FT story on why recycling is collapsing in America is a good read too. It is an interesting way to make peace with over-consumption
“Recycling is like a religion here,” says Laura Leebrick, head of government affairs at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in Southern Oregon. “It has been meaningful for people in Oregon to recycle, they feel like they are doing something good for the planet – and now they are having the rug pulled out from under them.”
A greener way would be to walk to the nearest store and bring back what I can carry in my cloth bag - it is how my father still does it. He combines walking and grocery shopping every morning; something he can afford to do at this stage of his life. It seems like once a person grows older and the pace of their life slows down, being green becomes way more possible. Conversely, the more we automate our lives, and create more productive hours, the worse off things will be. Maybe the real solution to improving the environment lies in slowing us all down - not having to account for every minute of our day. Once people have jurisdiction over their time, it becomes easy to make decisions that serve the world better.
This FT story on why recycling is collapsing in America is a good read too. It is an interesting way to make peace with over-consumption
“Recycling is like a religion here,” says Laura Leebrick, head of government affairs at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in Southern Oregon. “It has been meaningful for people in Oregon to recycle, they feel like they are doing something good for the planet – and now they are having the rug pulled out from under them.”
Money and Love
A longish read but a very useful one about the role of money and discussions about how to spend it impacts relationships. Very commonsense advise comes somewhere towards the end of the article
We realized that it suits our style to have a loose structure, something that provides a framework—but not so much that we rage against the rules. We decided that we’ll each take money out of our individual accounts and combine it for big projects, like home renovations and furniture and vacations; we’ll Venmo each other when necessary to even things out; we’ll alternate organically when buying dinners and other day-to-day things.
The author quotes a woman as saying “I think that being financially transparent in a relationship is more intimate than sex.” I could not agree more and will add that the lack of synch in the one area can quickly bleed into the other. People come to a relationship with very different attitudes towards earning and spending money. While not always a deal-breaker to have different financial values, this is not the topic to push under the rug in hopes that it will either go away or will cease to matter. None of that will happen. Instead, avoidance will likely lead to terminal pain at some point.
Beginning with good and sustainable habits regarding money early in the relationship could be key to long term peace and stability. If you are kind of person that needs to split every last expense then just be that person from the beginning- there is no need to pretend otherwise. If the other party cannot last six months in this mode of operation, they won't last a lifetime. If you don't ever intend to work as hard as you can to make as much as you can, may be a good idea to come clean about that too. Your partner will need to decide if your "just enough" strategy for work and money that comes with it is good enough for them. If you want to live for today and not worry about the future until retirement - be honest about that. It works for some people and is a deal-breaker for others. And the list goes on.
We realized that it suits our style to have a loose structure, something that provides a framework—but not so much that we rage against the rules. We decided that we’ll each take money out of our individual accounts and combine it for big projects, like home renovations and furniture and vacations; we’ll Venmo each other when necessary to even things out; we’ll alternate organically when buying dinners and other day-to-day things.
The author quotes a woman as saying “I think that being financially transparent in a relationship is more intimate than sex.” I could not agree more and will add that the lack of synch in the one area can quickly bleed into the other. People come to a relationship with very different attitudes towards earning and spending money. While not always a deal-breaker to have different financial values, this is not the topic to push under the rug in hopes that it will either go away or will cease to matter. None of that will happen. Instead, avoidance will likely lead to terminal pain at some point.
Beginning with good and sustainable habits regarding money early in the relationship could be key to long term peace and stability. If you are kind of person that needs to split every last expense then just be that person from the beginning- there is no need to pretend otherwise. If the other party cannot last six months in this mode of operation, they won't last a lifetime. If you don't ever intend to work as hard as you can to make as much as you can, may be a good idea to come clean about that too. Your partner will need to decide if your "just enough" strategy for work and money that comes with it is good enough for them. If you want to live for today and not worry about the future until retirement - be honest about that. It works for some people and is a deal-breaker for others. And the list goes on.
The Moonstone
My quest for fiction that I could enjoy reading lead me to The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. A familiar title by name but one I had never read before. There is a certain quality to the storytelling that appeals to me - and it may have everything to do with the kind of fiction I read when I was first able to choose my own books. Those were not times of choice or abundance. The local library was stocked with books that were donated by people who longer had any use for them. Frequently, the belonged to the older generations. When the person had passed on, their family needed to clear the space for the burgeoning ranks of the living. It was good that the books found a home in the library. Thanks so such provenance, I grew up reading literature that was popular and fashionable a few generations ago.
That seemed to have set my tastes in literature in a certain almost inflexible way. There must be some intangible qualities that are shared between these books I encountered in my early reading life. When I see them reflected in a more modern book, it is easier to get into the flow of reading it and often liking it. The more it deviates from that quality palette, the harder it is to like. The pacing and the overall flow of the storytelling seems to be the most important factor. Deviations in that area have a jarring effect and make the book unreadable to me. The experience of reading Wilkie Collins made me wonder about the books J read early in her life - of her own choosing and how that has shaped her as a reader.
That seemed to have set my tastes in literature in a certain almost inflexible way. There must be some intangible qualities that are shared between these books I encountered in my early reading life. When I see them reflected in a more modern book, it is easier to get into the flow of reading it and often liking it. The more it deviates from that quality palette, the harder it is to like. The pacing and the overall flow of the storytelling seems to be the most important factor. Deviations in that area have a jarring effect and make the book unreadable to me. The experience of reading Wilkie Collins made me wonder about the books J read early in her life - of her own choosing and how that has shaped her as a reader.
Club of Privilege
People are struggling to make sense of the college admissions scandal and this author attempts to provide perspective on the recipients of the unfair advantage who remained blissfully ignorant of the many intercessions on their behalf. Stancil ridiculously conflates the situation at hand with kids who get a chance to attend the best schools because their parents paid a premium on home prices.
He claims they too are privileged and ignorant of it and therefore no different than the kids whose parents got their kids into college with million dollar bribes and other chicanery. I am sure a big tent approach to ignorance about privilege expiates guilt here but at some point commonsense needs to prevail.
I was one of those parents who strove for their kid to have access to the best public schools and yet never owned a home in the most expensive neighborhood in town. We lived in a modest apartment for the longest time and still made it work. I know many kids from similar backgrounds who have a great appreciation for the efforts their parents put into get them the best education they could. They try to make the most of the opportunities they get and are extremely cognizant of their blessings.
Many of these kids despite being perfectly qualified do not even bother to apply to the ritzy schools that are the subject of this scandal. They are aware that the game is seriously rigged and don't want to waste their time trying to play it. Instead they get full-rides to very respectable universities and go on thrive in their careers. So as much as Stancil would love to co-opt these kids into the privileged and ignorant about it, that is very far from the truth.
He claims they too are privileged and ignorant of it and therefore no different than the kids whose parents got their kids into college with million dollar bribes and other chicanery. I am sure a big tent approach to ignorance about privilege expiates guilt here but at some point commonsense needs to prevail.
I was one of those parents who strove for their kid to have access to the best public schools and yet never owned a home in the most expensive neighborhood in town. We lived in a modest apartment for the longest time and still made it work. I know many kids from similar backgrounds who have a great appreciation for the efforts their parents put into get them the best education they could. They try to make the most of the opportunities they get and are extremely cognizant of their blessings.
Many of these kids despite being perfectly qualified do not even bother to apply to the ritzy schools that are the subject of this scandal. They are aware that the game is seriously rigged and don't want to waste their time trying to play it. Instead they get full-rides to very respectable universities and go on thrive in their careers. So as much as Stancil would love to co-opt these kids into the privileged and ignorant about it, that is very far from the truth.
The Viceroy's House
Watched The Viceroy's House and left confused thanks to my glaring lack of knowledge of Indian history. Gurinder Chadha tells the story of partition from one perspective, supported by a set of facts that pundits may or may not agree with. But it makes for great story-telling and the premise sounds entirely plausible. As someone who comes from a refugee family, I felt woefully uninformed about the facts of history that had such a great impact on my own family and fourteen million others. Growing up in India, the stories of partition formed a backdrop against which the present unfolded. The stories were often told by older family members who had direct experience and memories of that time. Then there was a huge volume of literature centered on the topic many of these books were made into movies.
So there was no lack of clarity on what partition meant at the human level to the people who had suffered through it. Yet I know very little about the reasons and drivers of this event that continues to define the fate of the subcontinent to this day. Why did we end up in this place, what if we had leadership that gave us a different fate. Were we left divided against our will, were we played by our imperial overlords. So many questions that would take years of reading and in-depth research to truly answer. As Marcus Gravey said "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."
People like me are a prime example of what Gravey describes. It is a travesty that all the Indian history we know is what was taught in high school;to characterize that as "knowing" is laughable. Unless we made a serious effort to educate ourselves, seek out a multitude of conflicting perspectives to arrive at our own independent conclusion, we really know nothing about Indian history. Chadha made me aware of the depth of my ignorance in a subject that I should have known something about. She has inspired me to learn.
So there was no lack of clarity on what partition meant at the human level to the people who had suffered through it. Yet I know very little about the reasons and drivers of this event that continues to define the fate of the subcontinent to this day. Why did we end up in this place, what if we had leadership that gave us a different fate. Were we left divided against our will, were we played by our imperial overlords. So many questions that would take years of reading and in-depth research to truly answer. As Marcus Gravey said "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."
People like me are a prime example of what Gravey describes. It is a travesty that all the Indian history we know is what was taught in high school;to characterize that as "knowing" is laughable. Unless we made a serious effort to educate ourselves, seek out a multitude of conflicting perspectives to arrive at our own independent conclusion, we really know nothing about Indian history. Chadha made me aware of the depth of my ignorance in a subject that I should have known something about. She has inspired me to learn.
Love of Persimmon
I first ran into persimmons when J was about four years old. We were in an Asian grocery store stocking up on greens and seafood when the bright orange fruit caught my eye. They were incredibly cheap considering how wonderfully tempting they looked. So I bought a big box and that it was love at first bite. There is no other fruit that I am familiar with that triggers such happy feelings each time I see them. It's like all that perfection was meant to be in a fruit came together in this one.
I am not counting ripe mangoes here - because there is so much nostalgia associated with it, that I don't think I could be objective about my love for them. Semi-ripe guavas with a bright pink core plucked fresh off the branch, is another fruit of the same ilk. Childhood memories could easily cloud my judgment. But the persimmon came to me way later in life and that is a more mature, unclouded love. It is a love that has remained strong and steady since though I never could get J to appreciate it nearly as much. She finds it an "interesting" fruit but is far from crazy about it. Not unlike other loves in a person's life - only they get what it means to them. To the rest of the world including those closest to them, it can often make no sense.
I am not counting ripe mangoes here - because there is so much nostalgia associated with it, that I don't think I could be objective about my love for them. Semi-ripe guavas with a bright pink core plucked fresh off the branch, is another fruit of the same ilk. Childhood memories could easily cloud my judgment. But the persimmon came to me way later in life and that is a more mature, unclouded love. It is a love that has remained strong and steady since though I never could get J to appreciate it nearly as much. She finds it an "interesting" fruit but is far from crazy about it. Not unlike other loves in a person's life - only they get what it means to them. To the rest of the world including those closest to them, it can often make no sense.
Malgudi Days
Like many desis of my generation, I am a big fan of Malgudi Days so I could not be more excited to see it on Amazon subtitled and all. Waiting all week for the next episode to air had pleasures that simply cannot be recreated in this format but I am very much looking forward to watching the series with J. It will be interesting to see what if anything resonates with her from these wonderful vignettes. There is a lot of time, distance and cultural separation that separate her from characters from R.K Narayan's stories. It may not be like us back in the day, rooting for Swami because he was such a relate-able kid. I hope the idyllic pace of his life will give J a feel for this long forgotten world of pre-independence rural India.
The title track of the show is music etched in memory for those of us who watched it as kids. It was the siren song that rustled us out of whatever activity we were engaged in, to gather in front of the TV. It was also the time, when the neighborhood was quiet and the streets empty. The scene in our living room was identical to that in everyone else's too. We all needed to catch up with the latest hijinks of Swami and his friends. While there always have been cultural fault-lines in India, shows like Malgudi Days had the universal appeal that brought people of all stripe together - atleast for some time. I cannot recall anyone including the worst cynics and malcontents (which I happen to have a large number of just within my extended family) who had a problem with Swami and his crew.
The title track of the show is music etched in memory for those of us who watched it as kids. It was the siren song that rustled us out of whatever activity we were engaged in, to gather in front of the TV. It was also the time, when the neighborhood was quiet and the streets empty. The scene in our living room was identical to that in everyone else's too. We all needed to catch up with the latest hijinks of Swami and his friends. While there always have been cultural fault-lines in India, shows like Malgudi Days had the universal appeal that brought people of all stripe together - atleast for some time. I cannot recall anyone including the worst cynics and malcontents (which I happen to have a large number of just within my extended family) who had a problem with Swami and his crew.
Victory or Defeat
Reading this light-hearted essay about the art of always being right, prompted me to check out the source of its inspiration - The Art of Being Right by Arthur Schopenhauer.
I cannot recall how many times, I have witnessed versions of this trick - Claim Victory Despite Defeat - played with various degrees of success. My response when I have been the receiving end of it has been to make a mental note of what just happened but not give the other side the satisfaction of knowing that I was able to see through it. That involves letting them claim victory and act quietly defeated. Often it triggers even more blatant efforts at claims. Comes a point when it is no longer interesting for the "winner" and it makes them wonder if they are wasting time with me. There is no glory in prevailing over a dimwit who does not even try to put up a fight.
This, which is an impudent trick, is played as follows: When your opponent has answered several of your questions without the answers turning out favourable to the conclusion at which you are aiming, advance the desired conclusion, — although it does not in the least follow, — as though it had been proved, and proclaim it in a tone of triumph. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the trick may easily succeed. It is akin to the fallacy non causae ut causae.
I cannot recall how many times, I have witnessed versions of this trick - Claim Victory Despite Defeat - played with various degrees of success. My response when I have been the receiving end of it has been to make a mental note of what just happened but not give the other side the satisfaction of knowing that I was able to see through it. That involves letting them claim victory and act quietly defeated. Often it triggers even more blatant efforts at claims. Comes a point when it is no longer interesting for the "winner" and it makes them wonder if they are wasting time with me. There is no glory in prevailing over a dimwit who does not even try to put up a fight.
This, which is an impudent trick, is played as follows: When your opponent has answered several of your questions without the answers turning out favourable to the conclusion at which you are aiming, advance the desired conclusion, — although it does not in the least follow, — as though it had been proved, and proclaim it in a tone of triumph. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the trick may easily succeed. It is akin to the fallacy non causae ut causae.
Sharenting
This Washpost essay by a mother who has used content from her daughter's life and despite protests will likely continue doing so makes for an interesting read. This blog has been about many things but my kid J has been written about regularly since I started blogging in 2005. I hit a huge writer's block when she transitioned to a young person from being a child. Any confidences she shared with me I treated as off-limits for my blog. The same was true for all significant highs and lows of her life. I did not think I had the right to talk about any of that. But like this author, I experienced the feeling of being stifled. Being J's mother is a very significant part of my life and who I am as a person. When I amputated that from my writing, I was hit was an all-consuming emptiness bordering on identity crisis. The intent of sharing anecdotes about J had always been for me a way to create memories I might otherwise forget in the shuffle of the daily grind. Through the process of sharing, I learned from other parents in various life stages and benefited a great deal from their collective experience.
When I read my posts from over a decade ago, I feel relieved that I have a way to relive those days again - and remember J as she had been then. Every parent has a different way to preserve their memories. Some want to have pictures and videos of moments that don't want to lose - others like me want to write. Whatever good or bad we bring to the lives of our children is driven atleast in part by how we curate our memories of their time with us. I have over the years been able to use writing as a way to clarify my own feelings and become more objective in how I addressed issues with J. Instead of dealing with a situation head-on often in the heat of the moment, I was able to use blogging as a way to re-articulate things in my head, create some space and emotional distance from what needed to be addressed. For J, it may have been for the better. There is no one or right answer to the issue of "sharenting" but personally, I am very much in favor of privacy.
When I read my posts from over a decade ago, I feel relieved that I have a way to relive those days again - and remember J as she had been then. Every parent has a different way to preserve their memories. Some want to have pictures and videos of moments that don't want to lose - others like me want to write. Whatever good or bad we bring to the lives of our children is driven atleast in part by how we curate our memories of their time with us. I have over the years been able to use writing as a way to clarify my own feelings and become more objective in how I addressed issues with J. Instead of dealing with a situation head-on often in the heat of the moment, I was able to use blogging as a way to re-articulate things in my head, create some space and emotional distance from what needed to be addressed. For J, it may have been for the better. There is no one or right answer to the issue of "sharenting" but personally, I am very much in favor of privacy.
Cult of Ignorance
Asimov wrote this wonderful essay in 1980 and it is still completely relevant.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way throughout political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
In the present day context, not only is "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." but also if I am more popular as evidenced by my social media following, then my ignorance entirely supersedes your real knowledge rendering it irrelevant. If I have mastered the fine art of click-baiting and can get a large number of people to read (or pretend to have read) what I have to say, irrespective of my credentials, I could earn the badge of an "influencer". You on the other hand with your years of education and research experience may not have the coveted "influencer" status in the very field of your expertise. Such is the irony of our times.
Once anointed as an influencer, the drivel I spew out could even start earning me money. No one cares about intrinsic value, as long as the click-through rates go up and my followers engage and communicate their reaction to all of my nonsense in real-time. Those are the metrics for me to be rewarded. There is a serious disincentive to being thoughtful and taking the time to write something of real value based on real knowledge. That is not the stuff that is buzz, retweet, like or share worthy. It will just get TLDR'd.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way throughout political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
In the present day context, not only is "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." but also if I am more popular as evidenced by my social media following, then my ignorance entirely supersedes your real knowledge rendering it irrelevant. If I have mastered the fine art of click-baiting and can get a large number of people to read (or pretend to have read) what I have to say, irrespective of my credentials, I could earn the badge of an "influencer". You on the other hand with your years of education and research experience may not have the coveted "influencer" status in the very field of your expertise. Such is the irony of our times.
Once anointed as an influencer, the drivel I spew out could even start earning me money. No one cares about intrinsic value, as long as the click-through rates go up and my followers engage and communicate their reaction to all of my nonsense in real-time. Those are the metrics for me to be rewarded. There is a serious disincentive to being thoughtful and taking the time to write something of real value based on real knowledge. That is not the stuff that is buzz, retweet, like or share worthy. It will just get TLDR'd.
Woebot
I read about Woebot and decided to try it out for myself. Without a specific use case, I just decided to just engage with the chatbot to see what that felt like. The whole interaction is tightly scripted, so your responses back to the bot can only be one of the available options that it has been coded for. The moment I entered free form text, its ability to converse "intelligently" plummeted. It tried to get me back on track by prompting me to choose a word that best described what I was feeling. It took less than two minutes to throw it off its game and turn the interaction from mildly interesting to just pointless. The Wired story about Woebot had this to say about it:
In some ways, a CBT chatbot is the ultimate manifestation of that philosophy. “Woebot is a robot you can tell anything to,” says Darcy. “It’s not an AI that’s going to tell you stuff you don’t know about yourself by detecting some magic you’re not even aware of.” Woebot only knows as much as you reveal to it—and it can only help as much as you decide to help yourself.
It is not really possible to reveal much to Woebot it seems. Your freeform messages won't make immediate sense to it but over time and with wider use adoption it is likely to make better sense of it than it does now. The more data to train the bot with the better and you could look at yourself helping out a good cause in this way - supplying it training data. As far as immediate benefits to yourself - not much to write home about. Based on my limited interaction, it seemed like a chat with Woebot was just as illuminating as an iChing reading online. If you test it with a large number of questions, at some point the response seems plausible even profound. As with other slick AI snake-oil offerings Woebot has garnered a great deal of press. The name itself I found clever but rather unfortunate.
In some ways, a CBT chatbot is the ultimate manifestation of that philosophy. “Woebot is a robot you can tell anything to,” says Darcy. “It’s not an AI that’s going to tell you stuff you don’t know about yourself by detecting some magic you’re not even aware of.” Woebot only knows as much as you reveal to it—and it can only help as much as you decide to help yourself.
It is not really possible to reveal much to Woebot it seems. Your freeform messages won't make immediate sense to it but over time and with wider use adoption it is likely to make better sense of it than it does now. The more data to train the bot with the better and you could look at yourself helping out a good cause in this way - supplying it training data. As far as immediate benefits to yourself - not much to write home about. Based on my limited interaction, it seemed like a chat with Woebot was just as illuminating as an iChing reading online. If you test it with a large number of questions, at some point the response seems plausible even profound. As with other slick AI snake-oil offerings Woebot has garnered a great deal of press. The name itself I found clever but rather unfortunate.
A Chair in Snow
It rains so often where I live that my deck furniture never gets a chance to fully dry up and is beginning to fall apart. What used to once be a place to sit and enjoy warm days is now mostly an eyesore now. I need to get rid of the crumbling furniture and the moldy seat covers.
I probably don't because the presence of these decrepit chairs an implied option of enjoying the sun when it comes out. If I turn the place bare then that illusion disappears as well. It is an acknowledgment of what cannot be.
After a snowfall, the chairs look particularly sad - it's like their last vestige of usefulness was taken away by becoming a receptacle for several inches of snow.
Jane Hirshfield conveys this feeling perfectly in her poem A Chair in Snow
I probably don't because the presence of these decrepit chairs an implied option of enjoying the sun when it comes out. If I turn the place bare then that illusion disappears as well. It is an acknowledgment of what cannot be.
After a snowfall, the chairs look particularly sad - it's like their last vestige of usefulness was taken away by becoming a receptacle for several inches of snow.
Jane Hirshfield conveys this feeling perfectly in her poem A Chair in Snow
A chair in snow
should be
like any other object whited
& rounded
and yet a chair in snow is always sad
Still Relevant
I read Rajinder Singh Bedi's short story Lajwanti recently and was struck by how the more things change, the more they stay the same. The character of Lajwanti's husband encapsulates many of the conflicts that continue to plague the modern day sub-continental man. They really desire to accept the women in their lives "blemishes" and all because they realize it is the decent, progressive and humane thing to do. Yet often there is an insurmountable gap between what they wish to do and what they have the ability for. They are victims themselves as they have not been raised to fully accept and indeed celebrate a woman's personhood. So they end up being lesser versions of themselves, unable to live up to their own aspirations, making others miserable along the way.
My dear friend S, is single and without kids at my age. She tells me about her life experiences that have left her convinced that there is no place for a woman like herself in an Indian marriage and the expectations that go with it. She is probably right - her quirks are one too many and she does not have any "redeeming" qualities expected from a "good" desi wife to make up for them. A man would need to accept her as-is and nothing good will likely come of it for either of them. Yet, S as an amazing human being - a great mentor to many young people who have gone on to achieve wonderful things with her guidance and support. She has a capacity to love and give without reservation that very few have. I always wish for a miracle to happen in her life - for her to be the exception to the rule.
My dear friend S, is single and without kids at my age. She tells me about her life experiences that have left her convinced that there is no place for a woman like herself in an Indian marriage and the expectations that go with it. She is probably right - her quirks are one too many and she does not have any "redeeming" qualities expected from a "good" desi wife to make up for them. A man would need to accept her as-is and nothing good will likely come of it for either of them. Yet, S as an amazing human being - a great mentor to many young people who have gone on to achieve wonderful things with her guidance and support. She has a capacity to love and give without reservation that very few have. I always wish for a miracle to happen in her life - for her to be the exception to the rule.
Women's Day
My early contact with feminist literature were the writings of Erica Jong and Simone de Beauvoir. I was much too young and naive to fully grasp the significance of what I read. The value of their ideas came to me much later. The modern feminist agenda is a lot more confusing. This excerpt a blog post by Erin McKean is very typical of the female empowerment messaging that is currently in vogue
You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.
On the surface, this seems to be exactly right. Why would a woman need to botox-up to remain employable in her late 50s while a man can get away with quadruple chins? That is exactly the issue McKean is pointing out - Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.
While that sounds great that women do not owe rent to be female, there will be some consequences to not "try" and look "put together". Almost no woman in a powerful position ever shows up in public without makeup or nice clothes. They are not excused from paying rent on account of their very impressive resumes. For a young girl, these women serve as role models for who they may want to be when they grow up.
So understanding the difference between reality and rhetoric helps. Seems to me that modern feminism has devolved into a lot of grand-standing but is not giving women levers to make the skewed system work for them. Perhaps there are lessons to learn from women who carved their niche in the most oppressive and backward societies, old matriarchs in families where men made all the rules. These women played the game using rules that were to their great disadvantage and still came out ahead. Their strategy likely involved building alliances and behind the scenes power-brokering but little overt discontent. Those are the skills our girls need to learn too.
You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.
On the surface, this seems to be exactly right. Why would a woman need to botox-up to remain employable in her late 50s while a man can get away with quadruple chins? That is exactly the issue McKean is pointing out - Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.
While that sounds great that women do not owe rent to be female, there will be some consequences to not "try" and look "put together". Almost no woman in a powerful position ever shows up in public without makeup or nice clothes. They are not excused from paying rent on account of their very impressive resumes. For a young girl, these women serve as role models for who they may want to be when they grow up.
So understanding the difference between reality and rhetoric helps. Seems to me that modern feminism has devolved into a lot of grand-standing but is not giving women levers to make the skewed system work for them. Perhaps there are lessons to learn from women who carved their niche in the most oppressive and backward societies, old matriarchs in families where men made all the rules. These women played the game using rules that were to their great disadvantage and still came out ahead. Their strategy likely involved building alliances and behind the scenes power-brokering but little overt discontent. Those are the skills our girls need to learn too.
The Age of Kali
The recent events in India finally got me around to reading William Dalrymple for the first time - an omission that I sorely needed to correct. I cannot count the number of times people I respect have recommended reading Dalrymple. The book I started with is The Age of Kali. His opening chapter is about his time in the bowels of Bihar - a state where I have spent a lot of years of my life. The PTSD inducing qualities for his prose for one such as myself cannot be overstated.
I was fortunate enough not to live in places like Gomoh during my time there, but the level of fear and anxiety that formed the background noise of my life back then is incomparable to anything I have experienced since then. Having spent my formative years in Bihar created a baseline for what I was able and willing to tolerate in life - a level not everyone can measure up to. I have friends from my childhood scattered around the world now, who like me are the product of their time in Bihar. We are fundamentally different and reading Dalrymple helps explains why.
A lot of the background and context Dalrymple provides throughout the book is meant for readers unfamiliar with India. He does a great job of summarizing the information in a way that helps the reader understand the experiences he goes on to describe. However, there are some oversimplifications:
The lower castes are no longer content to remain at the bottom of the pile and be shoved around by the Brahmins. Laloo has given them a stake in power and made them politically conscious: exactly as the Civil Rights Movement did for American blacks in the 1960s.
There are some parallels certainly to the civil rights movement on the surface. However, political leaders like Laloo driving the charge of lower caste "empowerment" cannot be compared even remotely to those of the Civil Rights Movement and that makes all the difference in the outcomes for those that are being purportedly "liberated" in India. They have gone from being exploited by one set of overlords to another.
His insight into Bihar and its place in the fate of India is undeniable when he says:
In a very real sense, Bihar may be a kind of Heart of Darkness, pumping violence and corruption, pulse after pulse, out in to the rest of the subcontinent. The first ballot-rigging recorded in India took place in Bihar in the 1962 general election. Thirty years later, it is common across the country. The first example of major criminals winning parliamentary seats took place in Bihar in the 1980 election. Again, it is now quite normal all over India.
He moves on to other parts of India, some of which are more familiar to me than others. The Rajasthan section was particularly hard to read - the Roop Kanwar reference brought back memories of reading about this tragedy in the news. The blur of reading about the custom of Sati in history and this event in the news had us confused as kids. I don't recall anyone making an effort to clarify any of this to us. The news cycle moved on to other topics and no one talked about it anymore.
Having also spent several years in Bangalore at different points in my life, I struggled with this observation, Dalrymple makes:
In conversations about India’s future, just as Bihar is sometimes presented as a vision of where India could be heading if everything went wrong, so Karnataka, and particularly the area around Bangalore, is held up as what the country could be like in twenty years’ time if everything went right.
Bangalore is no longer that icon of perfection and has not been for a long time. But context, perspective, and scale do matter here. In Bangalore, a person may struggle with very long commutes and limited access to running water. Juxtaposed against Bihar, these are silly problems to complain about and so his statement is true; a sad acknowledgment of how dire things are.
In summary, I am very glad I finally got around to reading Dalrymple. There is almost a therapeutic quality in this book for me. An outsider to India and Bihar was able to diagnose the pain much like a doctor treating a patient who struggles even to describe the symptoms of their terrible malady.
I was fortunate enough not to live in places like Gomoh during my time there, but the level of fear and anxiety that formed the background noise of my life back then is incomparable to anything I have experienced since then. Having spent my formative years in Bihar created a baseline for what I was able and willing to tolerate in life - a level not everyone can measure up to. I have friends from my childhood scattered around the world now, who like me are the product of their time in Bihar. We are fundamentally different and reading Dalrymple helps explains why.
A lot of the background and context Dalrymple provides throughout the book is meant for readers unfamiliar with India. He does a great job of summarizing the information in a way that helps the reader understand the experiences he goes on to describe. However, there are some oversimplifications:
The lower castes are no longer content to remain at the bottom of the pile and be shoved around by the Brahmins. Laloo has given them a stake in power and made them politically conscious: exactly as the Civil Rights Movement did for American blacks in the 1960s.
There are some parallels certainly to the civil rights movement on the surface. However, political leaders like Laloo driving the charge of lower caste "empowerment" cannot be compared even remotely to those of the Civil Rights Movement and that makes all the difference in the outcomes for those that are being purportedly "liberated" in India. They have gone from being exploited by one set of overlords to another.
His insight into Bihar and its place in the fate of India is undeniable when he says:
In a very real sense, Bihar may be a kind of Heart of Darkness, pumping violence and corruption, pulse after pulse, out in to the rest of the subcontinent. The first ballot-rigging recorded in India took place in Bihar in the 1962 general election. Thirty years later, it is common across the country. The first example of major criminals winning parliamentary seats took place in Bihar in the 1980 election. Again, it is now quite normal all over India.
He moves on to other parts of India, some of which are more familiar to me than others. The Rajasthan section was particularly hard to read - the Roop Kanwar reference brought back memories of reading about this tragedy in the news. The blur of reading about the custom of Sati in history and this event in the news had us confused as kids. I don't recall anyone making an effort to clarify any of this to us. The news cycle moved on to other topics and no one talked about it anymore.
Having also spent several years in Bangalore at different points in my life, I struggled with this observation, Dalrymple makes:
In conversations about India’s future, just as Bihar is sometimes presented as a vision of where India could be heading if everything went wrong, so Karnataka, and particularly the area around Bangalore, is held up as what the country could be like in twenty years’ time if everything went right.
Bangalore is no longer that icon of perfection and has not been for a long time. But context, perspective, and scale do matter here. In Bangalore, a person may struggle with very long commutes and limited access to running water. Juxtaposed against Bihar, these are silly problems to complain about and so his statement is true; a sad acknowledgment of how dire things are.
In summary, I am very glad I finally got around to reading Dalrymple. There is almost a therapeutic quality in this book for me. An outsider to India and Bihar was able to diagnose the pain much like a doctor treating a patient who struggles even to describe the symptoms of their terrible malady.
Tidying Up Mantra
I received a copy of Marie Kondo's book as a gift and enjoyed reading it as a matter of curiosity. I live very sparsely and habitually organize things as a means of stress relief. After I am done, I often misremember what was bothering me in the first place - which is very therapeutic. So, I am not really in need of intervention to tidy up. Nevertheless, it was interesting to read Kondo's perspective on the topic. It did inspire me to clean up my closet in a big way.
Being forced to think about why I am hanging on to clothes that are decades old, no longer wear and do not bring me any "joy" was instructive. It forced me to think about the real reasons for not letting go. In my case, a key driver was effort spent into finding the outfit. Clothes shopping does not come easily to me so everything I own took time to find. Tossing it into a discard pile made me think about the wasted hours that could have gone something more useful and permanent.
There is some sense of failure associated with the act of discarding - if the job was done right, this would not be needed. If the item of clothing was of real value it would never need tossing out. In addition, inertia and unwillingness to think about stuff we own is a cause of clutter. It is a lot easier to do nothing than to take some decisive action about stuff that is just sitting around and not causing you active distress. Despite the benefits of her ideas, this article on what is wrong with the current Kondo-mania in the West is exactly right. The author gets to the heart of the problem:
Both the urge to improve ourselves and the curiosity to look beyond our own boundaries seem salutary. The problem, though, is when doing so looks like one more iteration of what started our troubles in the first place. The distracted impulse to acquire the new and shiny, as well as the desperate hope that novelty might alleviate anhedonic consumerist malaise – these are why Kondo’s clients have houses overwhelmed with stuff. We have homes joylessly cluttered by the artefacts of a fruitless search for joy, or at least a reprieve from bathetic numbness.
Being forced to think about why I am hanging on to clothes that are decades old, no longer wear and do not bring me any "joy" was instructive. It forced me to think about the real reasons for not letting go. In my case, a key driver was effort spent into finding the outfit. Clothes shopping does not come easily to me so everything I own took time to find. Tossing it into a discard pile made me think about the wasted hours that could have gone something more useful and permanent.
There is some sense of failure associated with the act of discarding - if the job was done right, this would not be needed. If the item of clothing was of real value it would never need tossing out. In addition, inertia and unwillingness to think about stuff we own is a cause of clutter. It is a lot easier to do nothing than to take some decisive action about stuff that is just sitting around and not causing you active distress. Despite the benefits of her ideas, this article on what is wrong with the current Kondo-mania in the West is exactly right. The author gets to the heart of the problem:
Both the urge to improve ourselves and the curiosity to look beyond our own boundaries seem salutary. The problem, though, is when doing so looks like one more iteration of what started our troubles in the first place. The distracted impulse to acquire the new and shiny, as well as the desperate hope that novelty might alleviate anhedonic consumerist malaise – these are why Kondo’s clients have houses overwhelmed with stuff. We have homes joylessly cluttered by the artefacts of a fruitless search for joy, or at least a reprieve from bathetic numbness.
Making Math Fun
The idea of gamifying the teaching of math in school is not such a bad one but pushing in-app purchases in that process is a big problem. I introduced J to Free Rice when she was a kid and I played along with her sometimes. We both loved the premise of this vocabulary game. Over the years, I have met other kids who have enjoyed playing it because they like the idea of learning combined with doing good. This is gamification of education done right.
Similar ideas could be brought into teaching math. For every sixty math problems solved a kid may generate a volunteer hour that they can assign to a cause of their choice. If they work as a team they can raise more hours towards more challenging projects. A variety of different partnerships are possible and none of them would involve in-app purchases or pushing advertisements on kids who don't need their learning to be completely taken over by the online retail complex.
Recently, J introduced me the search engine Ecosia - a clever idea certainly to use search for social good.
Similar ideas could be brought into teaching math. For every sixty math problems solved a kid may generate a volunteer hour that they can assign to a cause of their choice. If they work as a team they can raise more hours towards more challenging projects. A variety of different partnerships are possible and none of them would involve in-app purchases or pushing advertisements on kids who don't need their learning to be completely taken over by the online retail complex.
Recently, J introduced me the search engine Ecosia - a clever idea certainly to use search for social good.
Safer Cars
J drives a small, inexpensive car with a lot of miles on it. We bought it because the safety features were good and it still has three or four years of useful life left in it. The idea of exterior safety bags on cars - especially the smaller ones is very appealing. Every little bit helps with novice drivers. It would also be great if there was a distraction sensor in the car that would call on them to be attentive.
The idea of cameras watching the driver is certainly intrusive especially with insurance industry trends moving towards collecting driving behavior data directly from the car onboard computer and using it to adjust premiums. Elsewhere in the world, dashcam footage can be publicly shared and used by law enforcement. All of these ideas come from a place of good intention but as adoption grows so does the opportunity for abuse.
The period of time between first teaching J to drive in empty parking lots and the day she got her driving license was difficult for me as it must be for all parents in that situation. On the one hand, it is a huge rite of passage for the kid, a tremendous emotional growth spurt. By longer being reliant on you to drive them around they become masters of their destiny in ways no one is prepared for. Yet, they are out in the world expected to act like responsible adults while they are still not quite there.
So we cobble up some homespun way to cope with the dilemma - a patch-work of daily reminders to be safe, driving with them whenever possible to see if they are becoming too lazy or complacent and considering any and all technology options that propose to improve their safety. There is probably no other time in a parent's life when they need to balance release and control quite as carefully - too much in either direction could ill-serve kids.
The idea of cameras watching the driver is certainly intrusive especially with insurance industry trends moving towards collecting driving behavior data directly from the car onboard computer and using it to adjust premiums. Elsewhere in the world, dashcam footage can be publicly shared and used by law enforcement. All of these ideas come from a place of good intention but as adoption grows so does the opportunity for abuse.
The period of time between first teaching J to drive in empty parking lots and the day she got her driving license was difficult for me as it must be for all parents in that situation. On the one hand, it is a huge rite of passage for the kid, a tremendous emotional growth spurt. By longer being reliant on you to drive them around they become masters of their destiny in ways no one is prepared for. Yet, they are out in the world expected to act like responsible adults while they are still not quite there.
So we cobble up some homespun way to cope with the dilemma - a patch-work of daily reminders to be safe, driving with them whenever possible to see if they are becoming too lazy or complacent and considering any and all technology options that propose to improve their safety. There is probably no other time in a parent's life when they need to balance release and control quite as carefully - too much in either direction could ill-serve kids.
Expiration Dates
In our home, J is vigilant about expiration dates on food. She takes them too seriously and I not at all. Reading this story about a year-long experiment eating expired food lends support to my theory that expiration dates are just a way for retailers to move their products along faster. It seems like we could use our best judgment about these things - some foods just keep much better than others. You need to have a feel for when its too far gone and when it may not quite kill you yet.
Sad looking fruit may not be appetizing but they can be easily converted into something that hides their blemishes. I look at slightly older and misshapen produce as an opportunity to be creative while reducing waste. Sourcing the finest ingredients to create a world-class meal is laudable of course but most of us are not delivering a farm to table experience on the regular. Watching a documentary on how Noma first set up shop in Japan was a worthwhile lesson on the pursuit of perfection to the point of obsession. But working one moldy eggplant and a slightly beat-up bell-pepper into a nice dinner that everyone enjoys is not too bad for a home cook on a busy week-night.
Sad looking fruit may not be appetizing but they can be easily converted into something that hides their blemishes. I look at slightly older and misshapen produce as an opportunity to be creative while reducing waste. Sourcing the finest ingredients to create a world-class meal is laudable of course but most of us are not delivering a farm to table experience on the regular. Watching a documentary on how Noma first set up shop in Japan was a worthwhile lesson on the pursuit of perfection to the point of obsession. But working one moldy eggplant and a slightly beat-up bell-pepper into a nice dinner that everyone enjoys is not too bad for a home cook on a busy week-night.
Original by Adam Grant
In his book Originals: How Non-Conformist Move the World, Adam Grant says: As double minorities, black women defy categories. Because people don’t know which stereotypes to apply to them, they have greater flexibility to act “black” or “female” without violating stereotypes.
I found this to be an interesting insight from my own experience of being brown and female in the American workplace. Some racial stereotypes do apply but in a limited way. There are way too many smart, articulate, independent, confident sisters out there for the archetype of the docile push-over doing a man's bidding to last.
Though truth be told, those docile looking ones often have a ton of hidden strength and can easily come out ahead in the end. Notwithstanding, people are able to classify a brown woman one way or the other and they make peace with it. At that point, rules no longer apply and indeed a brown female may fare better than a white one in many situations.
The book overall is a bit of a yawn considering the expectations I had for it. The Sheryl Sandberg introduction was too saccharine for my taste. I am not at all a fan of the whole Lean In business. Find it to be an elitist slap on the face of women who have real struggles in life and yet go on to accomplish remarkable things. If ever I needed wisdom on how to persevere against all odds as a woman, I would love to learn from one of them.
Grant proposes his thesis in the first couple of dozen pages of the book. There is no way to prove or disprove his ideas using any scientific method. For every example he cites, there may be many counter-examples too. For instance, he states:
And in the long run, research shows that the mistakes we regret are not errors of commission, but errors of omission. If we could do things over, most of us would censor ourselves less and express our ideas more.
You have to ask yourself what kind of research that may have been; indeed if Grant had plumbed the depths of the human soul for a sample size good enough to represent all of humanity. Such lazy references to "research" abound in the book.
So we have to take him at his word and his selective recitation of facts that support his case. It got to be too predictable and boring after a point. In summary, Grant says it's okay to be risk-averse because that does not preclude you from being original. It's a reasonable premise but it is not clear why it required writing a whole entire book.
I found this to be an interesting insight from my own experience of being brown and female in the American workplace. Some racial stereotypes do apply but in a limited way. There are way too many smart, articulate, independent, confident sisters out there for the archetype of the docile push-over doing a man's bidding to last.
Though truth be told, those docile looking ones often have a ton of hidden strength and can easily come out ahead in the end. Notwithstanding, people are able to classify a brown woman one way or the other and they make peace with it. At that point, rules no longer apply and indeed a brown female may fare better than a white one in many situations.
The book overall is a bit of a yawn considering the expectations I had for it. The Sheryl Sandberg introduction was too saccharine for my taste. I am not at all a fan of the whole Lean In business. Find it to be an elitist slap on the face of women who have real struggles in life and yet go on to accomplish remarkable things. If ever I needed wisdom on how to persevere against all odds as a woman, I would love to learn from one of them.
Grant proposes his thesis in the first couple of dozen pages of the book. There is no way to prove or disprove his ideas using any scientific method. For every example he cites, there may be many counter-examples too. For instance, he states:
And in the long run, research shows that the mistakes we regret are not errors of commission, but errors of omission. If we could do things over, most of us would censor ourselves less and express our ideas more.
You have to ask yourself what kind of research that may have been; indeed if Grant had plumbed the depths of the human soul for a sample size good enough to represent all of humanity. Such lazy references to "research" abound in the book.
So we have to take him at his word and his selective recitation of facts that support his case. It got to be too predictable and boring after a point. In summary, Grant says it's okay to be risk-averse because that does not preclude you from being original. It's a reasonable premise but it is not clear why it required writing a whole entire book.
Work is Worship
Listening to this short interview about work being the new American religion brought back childhood memories for me. My father was a great proponent of "Work is Worship" and repeated this mantra often for my edification. He was never a particularly religious man until he retired. It was understood that I would grow up and work - more importantly, I would worship at the altar of that work.
In real terms that meant, doing the best I could every day and giving it all I had. That would be proof I was living an honorable life. While I was free from the pressures of achieving any specific career goals to prove I was a worthy daughter, it would be a betrayal to my father not to workship my work - whatever that may be.
He never found the capacity to worship family, friends and the other blessings he had received in his life. His work demanded all of his available resources. Since he retired, he has an abundance of time and no idea what to do with it. He struggled to settle into this new way of living for a decade before making a restive sort of peace with it. Observing him over the years, I have tried to strike a better balance in my life by making a large part of that work become the raising of J. I was able to bring the worship attitude to this particular "job" a lot easier. It also makes my soul rest easy to know that my father appreciates the effort I put into being a mother - I have not been a traitor to his cause.
I recently blogged about the guy who works for a website and fiddles with its content all the time in hopes of striking viral gold. It is hard to imagine worshipping such work. There are jobs worthy of worship perhaps - work that involves saving human lives, teaching young children, helping people down on their luck get back on their feet. Most of us, do not have such work to show for our existence. To that end, the cult of worshipping work becomes an unbearable burden. We feel deficient and flawed in some fundamental way.
In real terms that meant, doing the best I could every day and giving it all I had. That would be proof I was living an honorable life. While I was free from the pressures of achieving any specific career goals to prove I was a worthy daughter, it would be a betrayal to my father not to workship my work - whatever that may be.
He never found the capacity to worship family, friends and the other blessings he had received in his life. His work demanded all of his available resources. Since he retired, he has an abundance of time and no idea what to do with it. He struggled to settle into this new way of living for a decade before making a restive sort of peace with it. Observing him over the years, I have tried to strike a better balance in my life by making a large part of that work become the raising of J. I was able to bring the worship attitude to this particular "job" a lot easier. It also makes my soul rest easy to know that my father appreciates the effort I put into being a mother - I have not been a traitor to his cause.
I recently blogged about the guy who works for a website and fiddles with its content all the time in hopes of striking viral gold. It is hard to imagine worshipping such work. There are jobs worthy of worship perhaps - work that involves saving human lives, teaching young children, helping people down on their luck get back on their feet. Most of us, do not have such work to show for our existence. To that end, the cult of worshipping work becomes an unbearable burden. We feel deficient and flawed in some fundamental way.
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