Heartcrossings

The biggest life event of my past year was J leaving to college. Anticipating that transition, going through it and coming out the other side were very different things. None of which I could have prepared for and was surprised at every turn. My self-concept was definitely challenged as it never has : .. we need to know who we ourselves are to find our life's direction. Among the obstacles we face: Our self-concept arises from many diverse information sources, stored in different parts of our memory. The cognitive scientist Ulric Neisser said that we tuck away information in various pockets of memory, and in each area we store different information, including our global self-concept, our autobiographical memories, and our conscious here-and-now self. If a disproportionate part of a person's self-worth is tied to their performance in one role in life, it is hard to remain objective. The back and forth between self-deprecation and self-aggrandization distorts reality quite se...

Reading this story about things the border patrol threw away of migrants' belongings reminded me of an experience a long time ago. I was a young mother back then, with very slender means and much uncertainty in my life. I had moved several times in a few years, trying hard to hang on to a few items of sentimental value. Much got disposed off along the way for practical reasons, reducing the count of things to hold on to ever smaller with time. There came a point when there was literally one item that I really did not want to let go of. It spent time in the garages of my friends and family until I knew it could have a more permanent home.  Looking back, all of this was a very long time ago - or so it feels. When I visit the homes of those who have had more "conventional" lives and been lucky to be close to all their memorabilia, I feel a twinge of sadness. There are fragments of our lives that connect and make sense only when held together by small things that tell the ...

Reading this poem by Claribel Alegria made me want to learn Spanish just to enjoy it more fully - much like when I first read Neruda's Isla Negra. The last lines of Summing Up are so amazingly luminous even in translation, that you can only wonder what you are missing out not knowing Spanish your eyes bathing me in love one forget-me-not afternoon the desire to mold myself into a verse a cry a fleck of foam. Reading that made me think about that look Alegria speaks of where you feel bathed in love. It may come about a few times in life - love of different kinds - filial, platonic, carnal and more. The look can become your  raison d'etre in a difficult time, help you reset and restart the business of living life. And indeed you wish you could hold that moment forever - mold yourself into a verse as the poet says.

Interesting reading on the confluence of privileges gained and lost. A person may score high in some areas and low in the others but being pretty indeed overcomes a lot. For women who are pretty and much more, it turns a fine line to balance - do they try to make the most of their predominant privilege or overcompensate by bringing other facets of their personality as strongly as they can - to the point of being shrill.  The results can often come across as a chaotic display to the observer. Often with age, the need to prove being more than pretty dies a natural death. That is when the woman truly comes into her own. 

Read this beautiful Jane Hirshfield poem today - No Wind, No Rain One cone’s addition of resinous cell-sap, one small-bodied bird arriving to tap for a beetle. It shattered. What word, what act, was it we thought did not matter? If you have had the misfortune of observing an endlessly resilient person imploding when attacked beyond their threshold of tolerance, then you know what suddenly shattered looks like. The last word or act is usually the least insidious and yet it causes the worst damage. Having seen this happen to a couple of times in my life to people very close to me, I wish more than anything to never witness to such a thing again. 

Interesting article on what the likely causes of increased mental health issues in the workplace might be. ..Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College, said that it’s not social media or young people’s fractured attention spans that are causing their anxiety; it is school itself. He traces a progression from the mid-1950s in which society has gradually taken away children’s internal locus of control (someone with an internal locus of control is likely to believe that both successes and failures are due to their own efforts). As a result, many young people today are lost. “Since the mid-1950s, when they began taking away children’s play, people haven’t learned to take control of their own lives.” Gray said that control is essential to ward off excessive anxiety. Gray advocates overhauling our educational system to instill more of that focus The connection between play and lessons in controlling your own life is something I had not thought about. Personally,...

At a time when the likes of MS are experimenting with the four day work-week for productivity gains, it was interesting to read this article about the benefits of eight hour weeks.  The high-potentials who need a culture of overwork to signal their value can be ill-served by their own proclivities. This is particularly true if that high-potential happens to be a woman. As the boundaries between business and personal life dissolve and she is available round the clock proving her value, her male peers will use her work to further their own careers. They may or may not have a better work-life balance than she does but they will likely benefit more from the overwork than the woman. That has been my observation over the years.  This reminds me of my friend K who in her late twenties seem to have it all. Was married to her high-school sweetheart, had a charming home in the burbs, no kids quite yet so lot of weekends were spent with friends on their boat. Their house overlooked ...

It is heartwarming to read about this David vs Goliath fight in India that references the East India Company. The little guys in this case have a phenomenal strength in numbers Representing about 70 million small merchants who collectively control almost 90% of India’s retail trade, India’s shopkeepers union has shown itself to be a strong political force. And with those numbers comes power and clout The union’s power is a significant reason the government has placed such onerous restrictions on foreign retailers -- including a minimum $100 million investment and strict local sourcing rules. Because of the hurdles, the likes of Walmart and Carrefour SA have all but given up on opening their eponymous stores in the country. Maybe expats like me have no right to their nostalgia specially if it comes at the cost of a better way of life for those who live and work in India everyday. That said, we only have to look at the cost of big box store success in the America to judge its me...

Reading this WSJ story about a woman scaling Mt Kilmanjaro with cellphone still operational at the peak left an incredibly sad aftertaste. Thanks to the baneful combination of cellphone and social media, the value of an unique human experience has a very different currency than it did fifty or hundred years ago. The first time I ever heard of the mountain was reading the Hemingway short as a teen. Without any pictures, any point of reference except the lines from this story, that name invoked a feeling - a certain atmosphere. It was the only association I ever formed with Mt Kilimanajaro Then they began to climb and they were going to the East it seemed, and then it darkened and they were in a storm, the rain so thick it seemed like flying through a waterfall, and then they were out and Compie turned his head and grinned and pointed and there, ahead, all he could see, as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro. And the...

Returned to reading The Goldfinch after a hiatus which included other books in between. These lines describing the narrator's father struck a familiar chord Yet even in the midst of his new laid-backness he still had that crazed and slightly heroic look of schoolboy insolence, all the more stirring since it was drifting towards autumn, half-ruined and careless of itself. Theo, the narrator describes his father after they have moved to Las Vegas. The father had been alcoholic, abusive and left him and his mother. After his mother's sudden death, the father and his girlfriend bring Theo into their lives. These lines speak to the changes that Theo observes in his father since he last saw him.  As I read this, could not help thinking of a few people I have known in my life who simply failed to mellow with age and turned caricatures of their younger selves. Age had failed to give them grace and yet took away the only redeeming quality of youth - exuberance. The author describ...

Interesting insights on how college can and cannot prepare kids for life in the age of automation. One of the things that does not get mentioned here the preparation that needs to begin much earlier in life to prevent disintermediation by way of robotic automation. College is already too late. It seems like there is needs to be deliberate separation of children from devices and internet to allow space and quiet for thought and expression; individually and together with others.  A significant part of a child's life needs to be experienced off-grid - to acquire the abilities needed to keep themselves relevant in a world where a lot can and will be automated. That and the focus on reading classics from a young age, solving problems from first principles - almost a way to simulate the way of learning from hundreds of years ago. When that is combined with understanding of modern technology, maybe we will have the best of both worlds, create value that was not possible to before. Seem...

Some family I had not seen in a while showed up over the last long weekend. Among many things people discussed over meals, one was the quality of customer care from most businesses these days. Despite the surfeit of technology, it is not easy to get problems resolved to our satisfaction. As long as your behavior as a customer was designed for, you would likely be okay. The moment you stray from that path, things will start to get rough. There is something inherently transaction about the design of customer experience. It does not take the full view of the relationship over time into account. That explains why it can be so brittle and unaccommodating of variations.  The Chris Zane quote " Customer service is what happens when the customer experience breaks down" was mentioned by someone and it seemed to provide an explanation for what we all had learned about being customers. Just that the experience breaking down and service taking over is not seamless and it does not alw...

Amazon brings further dystopia into our lives by way of " ambient intelligence ". They now have the ability to power just about everything with Alexa so you can be snooped on 24/7 in an around your house by harmless looking things that you did not even realize were so powered.  “It just opens up the what we call the real ambient intelligence and ambient computing space,” he said. “Because now you don’t need to identify where’s my hub—you just speak to your environment and your environment can interact with you. I think that’s a massive step towards this ambient intelligence via Alexa.” Apart from the obvious consequences of such intrusive technology, there is the matter of unintended consequences - some for better others for worse. Seniors can age in place thanks to smart home technologies - which is probably a good thing. Makes it easier for the people concerned because moves can be both expensive and emotionally demanding. But it also helps friends and family rest easi...

I baked a whole mackerel with mustard greens, jalapeno peppers, turmeric and tkemali sauce for dinner recently. It was one of those events where a good fish was on hand but the rest was a mix of whatever the fridge held a day before grocery day. The results were wonderful and though they bore no resemblance to the mackerel I was familiar with from my younger days in India, very reminiscent of home.  Something about blending ingredients from the past with more recent discoveries always makes me happy. The Georgian spice set is still new to me but one I have come to love. I can see affinities between spices I grew up with and berberis and ajika. There are ways to bring them together to create tastes known and novel at the same time. Reading about exotic spices , I always want to try the few that I have not worked with yet - see how they fit into the spectrum of things I know to create tastes that are surprising and fun.

Interesting article about husbands being increasingly stressed as their wives make more money than they do. Wonder what that says about men who are the spouses of hugely successful and powerful women in business, politics and entertainment. Not only are these women making more than their husbands they also have celebrity that their men do not.  Yet some of these marriages turn out to be very durable and the women attribute much of their success to having such husbands by their side. Logically, these men have inner confidence and self-possession that is so strong that it is able to overcome the stress produced by income disparity. That would be the definition of a true alpha male.  Seems like it would benefit society overall if such men were held up as role models in how to be a man in a relationship. There is something to be said for having an amazing woman with no lack of opportunity to stay firmly committed to her partner because she already has the best - nothing else ...

Recently, I spoke to a young lady with an impressive resume for someone in her first year of college. The college she attends is plenty fancy too needless to say. A match made in heaven you would imagine. Yet, this kid is a tortured soul. She has a lot of drive and lot of skills that she has taught herself throughout her high-school years. The parents are a very bright and driven couple so this is no surprise. She arrived in college to get educated - nothing wrong with such expectation. The only problem is that her college is all about image and projection. They are providing her an imaginary education in subjects that make no sense. And then there is this notion of inter-disciplinary studies that will presumably get unknown billions of neurons in her brain firing off all to serve the greater good of humanity. The problem is, without foundation in core disciplines not even the bare minimum neurons are firing effectively. That leads to the lost kid syndrome that ails so many students ...

Flirting in a long term relationship is an interesting and worthy topic. This article touches on why it helps and how. It probably also matters how you look at your partner. It is possible to make a person feel adored just by they way you look at them. If on the occasional date night, many years after you first met, he can still make you feel bashful when he looks at you - that is priceless. Often the first casualty in a relationship could be eye contact - it gets harder to make it without giving away some of the resentment and negativity that might be brewing. To avoid conflict, it is easier to avoid looking the other in the eye. You cease to understand each other in degrees as eye contact fades. 

This NYT story about a royal family of Oudh holed up a hunting lodge in the middle of Delhi is a bizarre and fascinating read. The plot twists and turns around better than any potboiler. Yet, the core of this amazing tale is aptly summarized in one line:  An ordinary grievance, unaddressed, had metastasized to become an epic one. The "ordinary grievance" in this case being a person's refusal to accept the conditions of their life created by the partition of India. There were many of those - being from a refugee family I am familiar with many stories. Whereas the vast majority of the victims came to terms with their new reality and did what they could to live the rest of their lives, some were just not able to cross this chasm between past and present. Their new lives and personas become loosely tethered to reality. As their peers overcame the trauma and moved on, these folks were left behind fighting their demons alone. This story about Wilayat is at the far end ...

Very heartwarming to read this story about Slack hiring people who were formerly incarcerated . The quote in the article from one of these men is very poignant “We’ve come up with thousands of ways that a plastic bottle or an aluminum can can have a new life,” Leal explained to the crowd. “We need to have that same kind of mind set when people return to the community.” The idea of giving bad, broken and damaged things a new life is one that many hold close to their heart. It is the basis of a sustainable way of life.But when it comes to human beings we can't seem to find it so easy to give second chances.

Reading this article about being an American conservative abroad reminded me of a town-hall in my neighborhood that I attended some time back. The majority booed every-time a voice of dissent was heard and shut it down. In today's world, it matters little the political persuasion of the majority, they will aggressively drown out the other side.  I saw that happen here too. In our situation, there was a bipartisan panel of experts who were taking questions from the audience. In the next couple of hours, people mostly heard what they wanted to hear - it was show tailored to their taste by their elected representative.  None of us gained perspectives of the world we did not already have. We did not come out  of there edified and possessed of any novel insights - multiple experts notwithstanding. Questions were answered with biases baked into the answers dressed in subject matter authority. So we accepted what was said as it were the only version of the truth.

We learned about Kautilya's Arthashastra in the course of history lessons in school about the Maurya dynasty. Most of the content was about the reigns of various kings, the wars they waged, territories won and lost. Many dates, many events but nothing really stuck with us after the dreadful final exams.  The mentions of Arthashastra and the character of Kautilya was one of the exceptions. The man and his book intrigued us jaded lot to the point we discussed him outside history class and even the following year. So reading recently about the precarious state of the original Arthashastra manuscript made me want to read the book . And there is so much to learn and ponder - like this nugget about the unteachable Discipline is of two kinds: artificial and natural; for instruction (kriya) can render only a docile being conformable to the rules of discipline, and not an undocile being (adravyam). The study of sciences can tame only those who are possessed of such mental faculties as ...

Over the years, through my volunteer work,  I have read a fair bit of writing by middle and high-school kids. Short personal statements but mostly scientific an analytical writing. Even with that being the scope, it is easy to see the flair some kids have for writing. It shines even when the topic does not lend itself to much creativity or drama. You can imagine the kid writing creative prose that would have a distinct voice. Reading this article about a teacher's experience teaching English to prison inmates , for some reason brought to mind Cadbury's Book of Children's Poetry - on of my favorite things to read as a kid.  It used to filled me with wonder to see how kids my age and younger played with words and how they expressed thoughts I may have had myself without the artistry they did. It was deeply inspiring - much more that reading the works of established, well-regarding writers. The kids were way more relatable and yet so admirable. There is some parallel there -...

Recently, at a gas station convenience store where I had stepped to get some regular coffee, I found myself terminally confused. For speed and convenience they have ordering stations with touch-screens that should presumably let you print out a ticket for your order and in a couple of minutes you would be on your way without needing to talk to anyone. The navigation felt like a crossword puzzle without any clues.  My friend A and I stood pecking at the screen trying to order two small coffees and a small box of doughnut holes.  Fortunately for us, the place was relatively empty so our incompetence was not being publicly broadcast. We were not holding up the progress of the nation as we struggled very hard at such a simple task. After a good fifteen minutes we managed to get our order number. When we went to collect it, mine turned out to be steamed milk not coffee at all. The woman at the counter gave me a withering look when I described my problem and asked me to go add som...

Interesting Quartz article on millennials preferring to opt-out of social life and chill indoors.  Worth reading in its entirety. These lines offer a good insight into the mindset driving this culture An added benefit of posting about staying in is that it can double as a form of personal branding: A way to assert control over your social anxiety, or a rebuff to the cultural pressures that can make young people feel like duds if their personal lives aren’t full of constant glitz and adventure. It’s also a subtle power move. Cracking a joke on Twitter about waiting for love to come find you in your apartment is a way of letting the world know that you’re self-sufficient and happy with or without social plans, free from pangs of loneliness or rejection. In times past, it was not so complicated. There were people out there who did not care too much what society thought of them and their lifestyles. So they lived how they chose. There was no much signaling needed because they did n...

The idea of data as a property right is an definitely and intriguing one. Some have been toying around with this idea already and for a while . Recently Aetna has been offering a free Apple watch if you can attain you health and wellness goals. Auto insurers have long been offering incentives for tracking your driving behavior. In all instances, we the consumers are getting paid for the use and sharing of our data.  If the system regulated, we might have one giant silo of all our data that can be accessed by just about any entity for a fee. A variety of add-on and mash-up solutions can ride on top of such a repository aimed at specific industries and applications.  If any of that creates a level playing field for companies seeking to consume our data, perhaps it is a good thing. Maybe that will create credible competition for the tech oligopoly that we have today. Say we started to make money from data which is now treated as our personal property, then stands to reason w...

The idea of DeckRobot must have surely been born from living in slideware hell for a long time. That was my first thought upon seeing the promo video. Only had to look at the about page and there it was the ninth circle of slideware hell .  CTO once slept right on the rail tank car at the oil refinery because of the slides alignment ;)  Also CEO once was drawing slides for 40 hours in a row to prepare for a client meeting :) After such experience it stands to reason that they would come up with the one-click ticket out of their miserable existence. Makes my own troubles seem small in comparison when I read that. The solution here is almost too good to be true. I will be trying it out for sure to see if it brings much needed relief. An idea whose time has been long overdue that's for sure.

It had been a tumultuous time in my life when The Goldfinch was published. Certainly, there were enough daily calamities then to keep me occupied without needing a bildungsroman novel to liven things up. Over time, the days returned to a more even but busier keel - recreational reading became a luxury that I could not afford. With an empty nest now, I have been able to work through some of my reading list but the backlog is deep. The Goldfinch turns out to be lively reading - a story that grabbed and kept my attention. I want to know what happens next - a basic premise of a story that is no longer a given.  I truly struggle to stay interested in novels these days and my overall demeanor is very reminiscent of my grandfather's. He was a notorious nay-sayer and prognosticated the worst case scenario at every turn. But he was at heart a very peaceful man, loved hanging out with us grand-kids trying to help us help ourselves. If there was anything he could do to be useful to pe...

A recent event made me think what dealing with discomfort can teach. I was supposed to accompany a friend to a networking event. Last minute business travel left B out of town and the prospect of me attending this event alone. Generally that would not be a problem but we have very different lines of work and I did not think I could gain or contribute much on my own there - this was B's crowd and I was only a secondary beneficiary. I did not want to beg out entirely because this could turn out to be useful to one or both of us. Yet, I wished very much to avoid going.  So there was some back and forth on the topic - I needed a fair bit on convincing and finally I decided to go. The sense of discomfort permeated the whole experience - I was not dressed warm enough for the weather; had to stop at a department store to grab a scarf. My shoes felt wrong as did my entire outfit though objectively I was dressed very average business casual like everyone else there. The conversations fe...

When I first arrived to America, I was not aware that a person's health is a deeply private business in this country. Once I wrapped my head around that concept, things I observed around me started to make sense. It is no surprise that Google's foray into healthcare is triggering all kinds of concerns .  I grew up in a family of hypochondriacs who loved to discuss their many imagined ailments and compare notes of such with each other with great earnestness. There were also a few "protesters" in the mix that refused to participate in any of this negativity. Their strategy was to not discuss any health issues at all until they ended up in an emergency room with some complex, full-blown problem. My maternal grandfather never left that emergency room and he was not yet sixty at the time.  Given the extremes we saw around us, it was hard for my generation of kids in the family to work out their relationship with health. I find we tend not to discuss it - it ranges ...

Interesting article on the lost art of big bets in the WSJ. Proceeding to build a new kind of truck without any market research seems to bet on the cult of personality rather than consumer preference. It is still a valid way to enter the market - specially that Musk has cultivated his brand carefully over the years.  The truck and anything else he makes is just an expression of that brand which his prospective buyers are sold on. It obviates the need for market research - he does not need to address those who lack the "imagination" to embrace his vision. Depending on the charisma of the founder and their individual ability to move prospects to buy, they can well exceed anything data and market research can deliver. The article cites an interesting story about how the Polaroid came to exist In his re­cent book “Loon­shots,” Safi Bach­call tells the story of Ed­win Land, the founder and for­mer CEO of Po­laroid, who is best known as the fa­ther of the in­stant cam­era. Th...

Dropped in at improv class with two friends recently. The idea was to shake us out of our comfort zone a bit and meet people we don't usually run into in our daily lives. We each experienced the class in a different way. A was able to express being silly and child-like - make outrageous claims and statements as we developed scenes together with people we had never seen before. S was able to physically relax with both absurd sound and movement in the warm-up exercises. We were the only three novices in the group. I had the most fun delivering outrageous lines as seriously as possible, introducing drama and complexity into the plot. The most rewarding experience was to have strangers play along and amp it up even further - take it in directions well beyond my capacity for absurd. For a solid two hours, we acted in funny ways that we normally don't, enjoyed seeing friends in new and interesting light and came away feeling pleasantly relaxed. On the way back we discussed how it w...