Outside Purview

People are dealing with quarantine fatigue in many ways. Most folks I know are out and about, within reason. They are not doing anything too crazy but the the days of heightened caution are definitely over. Interesting findings from Pew Research on the topic. One of the findings I could personally relate to is about how closely people are following the news:

as the outbreak grinds on, the share of Americans who say they are following the news about the coronavirus outbreak very closely continues to decline. Nearly six-in-ten (57%) were very closely following COVID-19 news in late March, but that figure has declined steadily since. As of early June, about four-in-ten (39%) say they are following this news story very closely 

In late March, I felt this was the only topic I was reading about and now three months later, I read some news of the pandemic regularly but the intensity is nowhere like those days in March. At some point fatigue and resignation set in. Nothing would change no matter how many news stories I read in a day. The basic rules of safety for me and the family were still the same. All we could do is to comply and try and stay out of trouble. The rest was outside our purview.

Learning from Fatigue

In this WSJ pod-cast Toni Ko, the founder of Nyx talks about a small but illustrative event in her short lived marriage. When her husband asked her what she wanted for dinner, she lost her mind and blew up - after a long day overloaded with decision making, this was yet another one and she just  could not deal with it.  When she looks back, she realizes that her husband had only good intent when he asked her what she wanted for dinner; yet in her mental state she was unable to meet him even half way. Her interview is worth listening to in its entirety for its honesty and life lessons. But this little anecdote felt oddly relatable. 

Not just in marriage but even in other areas of life, we can experience fatigue to the point where it becomes impossible to see what is well-intentioned. We are very done and are desperate for a break - it is just not a good time. When that tidal wave of exhaustion passes, it becomes evident that we were wrong. But by then, it is too late to undo the damage. Like Ko, we may choose to remind ourselves of that mistake so we show more forbearance going forward.

Of Fathers

Brightened my day to read this post by Satya Nadella. I have always found it fascinating to read what people whom I admire have to say about their fathers. This essay was no different. Here is a father who had passion for his work, looked at his job as a say to serve a cause and finally scale and complexity did not deter him. All very valuable leadership lessons learned from a young age in his own home. This made me think of the amazing privilege fathers have is being the guiding light for kids - they are looked up to, admired and hero-worshiped. They could have disproportionate influence on the child relative to time spent. 

As much as a mother may care and nurture her kid, build character and teach good habits, there is a difference in what she can do for the child versus what the father can. If one wanted to quibble about it as many women do, it's not even fair. Mother does all the hard work day in and day out but Father gets to be a hero teaching the kid to ride the bike over the weekend. It is how nature seems to work whether we like it or not. I have known some amazing fathers over the years and without exception they have kids who want to do their best to be worthy of the man they so admire. It gives then energy to strive and succeed. 

Expressing Feeling

The masked faced all around us is becoming a norm but it is yet to feel normal. The anonymity can be liberating sometimes but it makes the distance between people feel more than "social". The idea behind the Civility Mask meets this need to make make the mask a more tolerable thing. The business case is apt:

..when you wear a face mask, you lose your identity. I wanted to address the problem of not being able to see people's emotions, so transparency was the obvious solution. There's a smile hidden behind every mask. In the era of emojis, as we spend our days expressing emotions with emoticons, the world was left paralyzed with a single emoji: ??.

It would be nice to be smile at strangers again, understand if we share a common feeling at a point in time- being bored standing in line, amused at the antics of a toddler, confused by an incoherent announcement over the PA system and so on. These used to the the simple moments of bonding between people who found themselves together in a public place. The mask has eliminated all of that so maybe seeing through glass could restore "civility" 

Diminished Experience

The ROI of college education is already very questionable. If you truly wanted to learn you can do that for free or relatively cheap - there is an abundance of resources out there and more options open up all the time. There is still value in the campus experience though it depends on the student to make the most of it - avail the full extent of the resources at their disposal.

When classes have to go online and the tuition payments do not adjust to reflect the diminished experience for the student, the question of value comes front and center. What other options do students have that are fair to them, fosters their learning and mental growth and does not cost quite as much. Clearly, everyone who is impacted by college going online is thinking exactly these things and they are going to make decisions about next year soon. 

Art & Science Group polled 1,171 high school seniors from April 21-24 and found that one in six students who'd planned to attend four-year colleges full-time no longer plan to do so.

Richard Hesel, a principal with the group, said further numbers showed that 60 percent of students have no interest in online education. And two-thirds of students think they should pay "much less" for tuition if the programs they have been shifted to in recent weeks should continue in the next academic year.

Not Seeing

Read this story about how the pandemic is unfolding in America and this is one of many. Some from well-known sources others like this one that takes a graph and create a narrative around it. Hard to discern fact from outrage in most cases as the lines blur very quickly. But compared it to the sights I see walking around the part of town where people are back social fitnessing and getting together to laugh, eat and drink,all of the writing seems to be about another universe. Many wear masks and many don't from what I see. This is not the same reality that is being written about and definitely not how people are experiencing it. Over time, we seem to grow lax about the safety measures that are being advocated or descend into germophobic paranoia as is the case with my parents. When I hear about their daily cleanse routines, I am in total awe but do understand where it comes from. My mother has taken it upon herself to be the mask police in her small community. She is scolding young people for not taking it seriously and putting the elderly at risk. 

The elderly feel like the world is moving on for better or worse. Things will unravel in ways they cannot imagine and certainly cannot control. The only agency they have left is over how they manage their lives - what safety precautions they take each day to stay out of harm's way. One older couple I know has decided to stay in atleast until the end of August as a precaution as the number of cases in their state climbs. If there is a tsunami out there is it hard for the ordinary person to understand and I count those like me among them - we are not reckless and are being as careful as can be and yet the reality of this has not registered. People like me do what they are advised to do because not doing so seems irresponsible. It is not yet coming from a place of deep fear.

Hot Mess

Interesting post about projecting a hot-mess persona to be a successful yet relate-able woman. This made me think of a boss I had for sometime - H. When I first met her, I thought she was sharp as as tack that could run circles around most people her level and higher. It made sense she was where she was in her career. 

Over time, I learned other things about her - she could be a control-freak, act like a diva, attack people like we were still in kindergarten and fighting over who got on the swing-set first. She integrated these aspects of her personality seamlessly with her razor-sharp professional one. Those of us who worked with her were in a permanent state of vigilance, we never knew what would happen next, so we remained in high-alert mode. That was her preferred management style and apparently also the strategy to come across a hot mess. 

By and large, Hot Messes haven’t merely weathered the ebbs and flows of their professional lot in life; with varying combinations of grit, talent, vision, and luck, they’ve actually managed to thrive. They tend to have relatively privileged upbringings. But even if they grew up in five-bedroom McMansions with parents who could pay the sum total of their college tuitions (biographical details they’ll reveal over their dead bodies, thank you), their successes were neither handed to them nor presumed. Sure, they may have had a leg up, but they didn’t squander it. And they were always just a little weird.

That sounds like it was written after spending a year joined in the hip with H. I think the author has me convinced she may be on to something with her hot mess theory.

Purple Rind

There are clothes that are worth writing poems to like this one written to a yellow coat. It made me think of my the oldest piece of clothing I have that has been in regular use for decades. It is a mauve sweater that was not fashionable even in its time. It was just cozy with no frills or flare. When it was still "new" a phase that for me lasted a decade I wore it whenever the weather was right for it to just about anywhere. 

Beyond that point, even to me my favorite sweater lost some of its sheen. It became something to wear around the house but I loved it just the same. There is a certain immortality to the mauve cable-knit. The tumult of life went on unabated. The years were good, difficult or indifferent but the sweater was always been the perfect fit and warmth - a steadfast companion. I can very much to these lines

my old potato.
my yellow mother.
my horse with buttons.
my rind.

Learning History

Recently finished read How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World. Steven Johnson has been my introduction to this genre itself - telling stories from history like they were puzzle pieces that fit in a logical way. If they taught us history like this back when I was in high school, we would have produced a dozen historians just in my own class. The rest would have gone into the world with analytic skills that would have served them well in any profession. His choice of the six innovations is fascinating. Makes the reader wonder if there were others he could have selected and they would form a completely different narrative arc. The connections that the author makes are always clever and reminiscent of Freakonomics. 

He shows us how flash photography led to antipoverty programs at the turn of the 20th century; and how the invention of the laser contributed to the decline of mom-and-pop stores. Taking those things a step further one could say for instance the laser is connected to the rise of big box retail in America leading to suburban sprawl and the re-organization of residential locations around these stores, leading to more and less expensive zip-codes and school-zones. That in turn leads to inequity of access to education and opportunity for social mobility. 

But for the invention of the laser, the rise and fall of a community's fortunes would not be tied to which retailers were able to survive in the neighborhood mall in the wake of a pandemic. Johnson has given is readers a framework to use and extend their understanding of the world we live and how it is that we came to be here - what forks existed along the way to here and what different outcomes may have resulted if our forbears had gone different direction.

Stir Crazy

I was waiting for curb-side pick-up at Panera, the only eating out we do these days once a week. Three old ladies emerged from inside all without masks and demonstrably not social-distancing. Lots of hugs and kisses were exchanged before they got into their separate cars and drove away. This was likely a Saturday morning reunion after our state started to re-open. Everyone is going stir-crazy, there is no question about that. But it does boggle the mind to see the highest risk people go well out their way to endanger themselves. As I watched these women, I had to wonder if they believed this whole pandemic was some kind of media hoax or perhaps they were to invincible to get sick from a virus. Whatever the case, they made quite the statement as they defied all the advisory on staying safe in full view of the world. A few others were waiting inside our cars and we could not help looking their way in dismay.  On the drive back home, I noticed the busy parking lots outside the mall and other restaurants.

The desperation for normal at any cost is hard to understand. These are times when we should count ourselves very fortunate to even have the choice of staying in and carrying on with our lives. Not everyone has the luxury and they are being forced to place themselves at risk everyday. Even more than that perhaps be grateful for being employed and being in good health. What is the sense in jeopardizing all that good fortune over this misguided need to be free. Had I not seen this scene first hand, an indoor political rally would not make sense but it does now. My friend D is hunkering down in her house in Florida - stocked up for several months. They are an older couple and the kids are scattered around the country. The way D sees it, they are on completely on their own and need to ride this out as people exercise their right to be self-absorbed and devoid of concern for those more vulnerable than them.

Forest Mist

We went on a long hike through the woods drenched in mist in the middle of a light rain. After being stuck at home for months, the weather was not nearly bad enough to hold us back. A mile in, we wanted to keep going. The rain held steady and we were unlikely to get soaked given the dense canopy. It was just the two of us for six miles - perfect solitude, nature completely untouched by the chaos in the world. Deer were everywhere more than usually startled to see humans. It was fun to learn the names of the weeds, plants and flowers along the way. 

The Seek app seems to have come a long way since the last time I used it. Just about everything I pointed to had a name. Driving back home, I thought about the strength in the apparently frail things in the world - the rain soaked wildflowers growing along the road-sides, the bees and lady bugs going about their day. They had been here before us and would be there long after we are gone. Nature sneezed a bit to warn us with covid but we seemed to have learned just about all the wrong lessons from it to our further peril. For the few hours that we walked in the forest mist, I experienced a spot of clarity - one that would not last once we got home and prepared for the business of living day to day.

Safe Distance

Simple yet useful technology necessitated by the pandemic - the Oura ring, meant to alert a the wearer if there are failing the six feet apart social distancing requirement

..the rings are similar to larger fitness trackers and smart watches with infrared LED sensors, three body temperature sensors, an accelerometer and a gyroscope.

and they beep if people are within six feet of each other for too long — is its proposed use of Oura’s smart rings. Earlier this month, study results from West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute suggested that physiological data from the rings, combined in its digital platform with information obtained from wearers via in-app surveys, can “forecast and predict the onset of COVID-19 related symptoms” three days in advance, with 90 percent accuracy.

That sounds pretty useful for workplaces, schools and colleges too. Should not be too hard to enhance the electronic badges people already use to have this type of functionality added on. 

Times Past

Reading this article about smart cradles made me about J's baby life which feels like a long time ago now. She was a good sleeper but woke up at the crack of dawn and created a huge racket because she could not see anyone around. So we would turn on lights and come up near her and try to make her open her eyes and see people around. There were a few adults around at the time so it was not a problem to have someone show up by her bed. 

But that never solved the problem. I had to get there myself and gently pry her eyes open and tell her to look around. It took some doing because she would clench her eyes even tighter and scream even louder at first. Then after a while, she would relax and open her eyes check out her surroundings. We learned that she liked the blinds pulled up so she could see the the soft sunlight outside. And just like that she would act like nothing happened - ready to get on with her day. This phase lasted for over a month and no one could figure out why. 

J never slept the advertised hours for her age and this was always a topic of discussion on her well-baby visits. The answer was always the same - babies are all different. The hours they sleep vary too. Be that as it may, my day started at crack of dawn though I could generally sleep through the night no problem. While she took her catnaps through the day, I did not have the same luxury. So I ended up just as sleep-deprived and cranky as many other parents whose babies kept them up at night. I am sure they would have appreciated a cradle that did their job for them for the night. For the likes of J, this particular automation would not be a solution. 

Elegy and Mokha

I am nearing the end of J.D Vance's Hillybilly Elegy He is a very engaging story-teller and to an outsider to the culture it sounds authentic. He tells is in an unvarnished manner but there is a lot of love and nostalgia in his recounting of the past. This is how most of us like recalling our growing up years no matter how different they might have been from Vance's. The cast of characters that shaped his life are multi-dimensional. There are no villains here as he says early in the book though at first blush it may appear that there may be a few of those. He loves them openly blemishes and all. 

There were times when Vance's book reminded me of Dave Egger's The Monk of Mokha. A coming of age story where a boy navigates through an endless assortment of adversities to somehow, unaccountably come into bright light in the end. The kind of story that fills people with hope and makes our own lives seem so uncomplicated and fortunate in comparison. Both stories are about improbable lives, about how a few positive influences in a child's otherwise miserable, dysfunctional existence may be all it takes to transform them in ways that seem magical. 

Both books got me thinking about kids who with much less adversity than the protagonists in these books faced, have far worse outcomes. If resilience is more the exception than the norm.

Limitless Tea

This subscription offer from Panera Bread appears to a prefect value for the customer. I am regular at Panera but not a big spender. For customers like me this could make sense and yes, sometimes we may buy some food too. What is more, we may likely look to stop at a Panera for our coffee on a road-trip and that would be at the cost of Dunkin or McDonald's which are our current options. Once a customer signs-up, which is likely the biggest hurdle to overcome for Panera, the rest will likely go pretty easy. 

The question is does at what point does the customer cost them more than the $9 they bring per month. The old ladies from the knitting club at my local Panera could keep those refills coming for hours and only share one bear-claw between the four of them. They are they to knit and chat- such a monthly plan could help them hang out more often and longer. The trick would be to get the mix right - not much different than keeping the vacuum cleaner category of buffet customers at bay for the venture to be profitable. .

As we all wait for normalcy to return those long hang-outs at Panera with groups of people may be a dream right now. But a ritual of grabbing a cup of coffee every day just to step out of the house maybe actually be therapeutic right now.

Sowing Chaos

We went for a hike by the river outside town after many months this past weekend. The weather was great and people were out making the most of it. Advisories on social distancing were everywhere around the path. What struck me most about this crowd compared to what I encounter at the grocery stores was their nonchalant air. 

If you had lived under the rock since the early part of this year and had just come out to get some air, you would have no reason to believe you were living in the middle of a pandemic. Every time we came too close to others, we would rush to make away and create some separation but no one else cared how close we came to them. Quarantine fatigue has clearly set in and some of it may be driven by data that people are seeing and interpreting to meet their needs:

“The moment people start seeing the curves flattening, the number of cases start dropping or holding steady,” he said, “that gives people a false sense of safety.”

It seems like local governments should provide the public simple and unambiguous metrics that do not need complication interpretation. Green, Amber and Red for expected behavior from people if they are allowed to be outside their homes. We need a common and easy to understand vocabulary we all follow the same way as we do traffic lights. Right now it is a free for all and people act based on their personal perception of risk, their empathy for their fellow human and their willingness to inconvenience themselves on account of others. 

Mending Fences

This is not something people easily confess to. For the longest time, I felt like an outcast in the desi community because no one else seems to have the issues I had communicating with my parents. Everyone I know has a good stable rhythm or so it seems. Just about every relative I have of my age is in closer contact with their parents than I am, they play an active role in the life of the parents. I find that just about everything I do for them stems from guilt. There are no happy or positive drivers. When I first started to talk about it with my American friends about a decade ago, I was surprised to learn that I was hardly in the minority. 

Just about everyone I spoke to about this had been through periods of difficulty and they had to work hard to resolve them. They had to do all the work because the parents were too old and set in their ways. It was not reasonable to expect change and most parents did not think there was anything about them that needed change. Stonewalling and denying the child a right to resolution and closure was a very common theme as well. They just acted injured, entitled to better and made the children feel guilty just like mine did. I started to understand the power dynamics of the situation much better as I talked to more people in my shoes.

As an adult child of a parent you do not get along with, you have very little power except for the illusory one of going silent on them. That does not change anything, helps very little and when you resume talking as you eventually will and must you find yourself even more powerless than before. I can't say any of this is universally true, people are different, their relationships are different so maybe there are other outcomes too. 

No one I have discussed this with has told me they were able to solve anything, get their parents to co-own the problem and work together on a resolution - generally get to a better place in their relationship. It is all the child's burden. I found this interview an honest and interesting read specially that the parent in question is a therapist. The stories are in reverse here and pretty heart-breaking anyway. 

Fault Line

When I read about how school is adapting to shelter in place requirements, I wonder who will want their kids back in a physical classroom and who won't. Ultimately it will become a test of privilege that decides. Those parents who can afford to keep their kids around and work with them on school and extra curricular activities while they themselves work from home would be among the privileged. Being a functional two parent household will definitely go a long way. Both parents holding white-collar jobs that make remote work possible even more so. It will also matter how many kids are in the household and how heavily one or more of them need to be supervised. 

Families that score average and better on all key factors that allow them to successfully home-school will likely see better academic outcomes for their kids than what they saw before the pandemic. So these folks will be reluctant to downgrade to public school, physical classroom education once that becomes possible. They will likely push to keep the kids in the flow that they got used to. For schools it will be hard to make the case for why the kids are needed in the classroom if they did fine without physical presence. The longer schools remain closed the harder it will be to mandate the return.

On the other hand would be the parents who lack privilege in a myriad of ways - single parents, low-income parents who need to work multiple jobs and gigs, kids with special needs, kids who are plain difficult to manage, dysfunctional families, blue-collar workers, people who need to physically show up to their place of work everyday and the list goes on. These parents will want their kids back in school so they could work and provide for the family or maybe just get help with raising their child because it is overwhelming. 

If physical attendance in school were to become optional, this will be a game-changer and create the ultimate privilege based fault line in society. 

What's Next

In his book Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World, Steven Johnson says: 

The institutions of society that so dominate traditional history—political bodies, corporations, religions—can tell you quite a bit about the current state of the social order. But if you are trying to figure out what’s coming next, you are often better off exploring the margins of play: the hobbies and curiosity pieces and subcultures of human beings devising new ways to have fun.

In today's context, subcultures seem to center around online influence or fashion. Connecting everything in the world, using voice and gesture to control are themes around which consumer innovation is happening. This Ericsson report on the ten hot consumer trends of the day makes for interesting reading. We crave mental obesity as a society and so there will be providers of solutions that fulfill that need

In fact, 57 percent say they want a smartphone that knows when they are becoming ill before they notice themselves, and 54 percent would like a smartwatch that senses when they are getting stressed before noticing it themselves. 

When we no longer want to know how we feel, what we truly need and want and let it all run on auto-pilot, the idea of new, interesting hobbies and avenues to exercise curiosity fades out. Following Johnson's logic, its hard to understand where the world is headed next. 

Petri Dish

Nice article about the pandemic being a great psychological experiment.

Individual resilience is further complicated by the fact that this pandemic has not affected each person in the same way. For all that is shared--the coronavirus has struck every level of society and left few lives unchanged--there has been tremendous variation in the disruption and devastation experienced. Consider Brooklyn, just one borough in hard-hit New York City. Residents who started the year living or working within a few miles of one another have very different stories of illness, loss and navigating the challenges of social distancing.

What is true about people separated by a few miles within the city is also true about members of an extended family scattered across continents. There used to a lot that they had in common before the pandemic but how they experienced the onset of the crisis and the aftermath was very different. My parents and their elderly friends for instance are not sure they are at all sure that they are safe venturing outside just because India is now re-opening. 

They continue to stay in as much as they can, they don't trust what they hear about what is going on outside and feel like they have to fend for themselves. The world will move on and the life or death of an old person is not the priority. This feeling of being dispensable is certainly a new one for these folks and arguably the psychological toll of the pandemic.

Feel Good

Reading about mission-driven startups is a lot like watching feel-good movies. You can feel complacent about having your heart in the right place and caring about things that matter without having contributed anything at all. This one is about replanting trees at a mind-boggling pace to undo the ills of deforestation. At first blush you would think this is all a done deal and there are millions of acres of land that this drone has successfully greened and there will be before and after pictures to prove it. That would be more than a feel-good movie. So reality as it often turns out is a lot more modest

"After launching the company in early 2019, the small team had a working prototype by the middle of the year and ran a pilot test in August, followed by larger tests in September and October. So far, Ahlstrom says, they’ve seen high rates of survival in controlled studies, and are hoping to replicate those in real world settings."

It begs the question why a credible publication would write about a re-forestation startup under a year of launch even before the show has got on the road. Time scale does matter here- we are not talking about the next coolest coffee machine that can pour the more perfect espresso. A tree is going to take whatever number of years it takes to mature. No drone technology will speed that process up. Consequently, evidence of any of this working is several years out. But the times demand happy stories couched as news so we feel better about what lies ahead.

Deceptively Simple

Love the idea of bringing one reject together with a near reject to create something usable. This egg-wash for fruits and vegetables apparently helps in many ways. It could be a ways to go before such a thing can be commercialized but the idea is definitely clever. This reminded me of my misguided and failed composting experiment some years back that attracted a few mice right into the house. 

It took skill and patience to get them out and keep them out - including a consult with a specialist who was puzzled by the provenance of the mice given the house was completely clean and would be unattractive to rodents. So while at first blush, it seems logical to compost kitchen scraps to feed the plants in the yard, there are many ways for things to go wrong. I would love to try again and see if I could use the lessons learned from the mistakes the first time around. Yet, each time I check out reviews for compost bins, I realize the scars have not quite healed yet but news of making useful things from waste is always exciting to read.

Wishing Modestly

One of my co-workers had a baby this past weekend. For the first time since work from home became the mandate, was there re-generating, happy news from someone we work with everyday. The mother did not have a baby shower and there will not be anyone coming around to visit the new parents anytime soon. They are largely on their own from here on out. But everyone is well and the baby is now home and we may see her on Zoom one of these days.

My friend A and I were talking about how birth can come to have larger than life significance at such times. There is collective fatigue reading about the mortality rates, the total number of deaths, new cases and so on. Its no surprise that the arrival of this baby gave us all a shot of happiness that had been missing for while. Nature renews and regenerates and here is proof close to us. 

The feelings that this news of a baby's birth produced, reminded me of a Philip Larkin poem Born Yesterday that I never fully grasped or even properly liked. It seemed defeatist, reticent and as if he were trying not to jinx the little girl he had written this for - by wishing her abundance and greatness that may likely not be achievable. Other have analyzed the poem much better and it seems so apropos for the times that we live in.

In fact, may you be dull —

If that is what a skilled,

Vigilant, flexible,

Unemphasised, enthralled

Catching of happiness is called.

Sound Bites

I am listening to Suicide of the West audio-book these days, while taking my walk. Jonah Goldberg's reference to the Hamlet quote about worms and kings made me look up the text to read. The book is full of interesting asides like this one but I think the main thesis as stated in the sub-title was laid out early on. Humans are meant to be tribal and have a natural tendency to see those outside the tribe as rivals and enemies who need to be overcome. 

In the west we are returning to a primitive state by indulging in various forms of tribalism on both sides of the political aisle. The forays into history where such examples of tribalism run rife are interesting but there was not much more I learned that I already did in the first chapter. I will get through this book in hopes there may be little detours it will prompt like reading Hamlet. The author aims to be both provocative and cover a tremendous amount of ground. With that combination, the only way to get the action moving is to over-stuff the book with sound-bites and wry observations about human nature, history, economics, religion and politics. It is as if Goldberg were aiming to edify his readers in one fell swoop on every topic they could possibly care to know about. 

If I was twenty five years younger and as gauche as I was back then, I am sure I would have devoured the book and used the crumbs of wisdom from it to act like I actually knew things and had "informed" opinions on them. It would serve as the cram-sheet for someone who wanted to look cool without having put time and effort to understanding what makes the world the place that it is. So there is a demographic for this book most certainly - I am just too old and jaded to be a fit. 

Mouth of Shark

In their book Good Economics for Hard times, the authors refer to this beautiful poem by Warsan Shire as they explain the complex drivers of migration and what that means for the wages of the natives. I am listening to this book during my walks these days. Unlike the Gawande book that I recently finished, this ones does not flow nearly as easy. It takes effort to focus and a lot of the arguments are repetitive. 

Yet, there are some useful things to ponder over - one of being what it really takes for  migrant to leave their village to move to a city where they know they could be more prosperous. What it takes to leave one's country. At some level home would need to feel like "the mouth of a shark" for this to happen. The incentives to leave what is known, familiar and even comfortable could come from that feeling or from a desire to take risk that is higher than the average for their native counterparts. 

It seems like both of those arguments would weaken if the destination local or international is one where a person can reasonably expect a strong social network and degree of familiarity. Coming to America in the 1950s from India would have taken a huge degree of audacity. In the 2000s not at all if you were willing to jump through the immigration hoops. To that end, the types of people who migrate in different waves is very different. 

I recently re-connected with one of my father's old friends who came to America in the late 70s. I have vague memories of having seen him as a child but we met a few times since I came here. Over the years, we had drifted apart and I reached out to him recently to make sure he was well. It was a happy reunion and the man looks great for seventy. He is still working nearly full-time, and is sharp as a tack. I wondered what compelling forces were at work when he left his stable public sector job in India. He was newly married then and from what I have heard had a trophy wife. She wanted a better life abroad, keep up with some of her affluent family members in Canada and so they moved. 

Maybe there is a sliding scale of forcing functions that go from "mouth of a shark" to burning desire for a "better" life whatever that entails for a person, that drives migration. Depending on where they fall on that scale, the time of the migration and the destination, outcomes for the person and the natives they impact directly and indirectly could be very different. 

Short Pause

The Rip Van Winkle of our day comes out of his silent retreat to discover social distancing. Reading this made me think about the many ways a person could be afforded an escape. One would be to go off the grid and stay that way for a a couple of years. Assuming they had enough supplies and largely self-sufficient it is not impossible. They could write the modern day Walden while at it. 

Another way would be some form of amnesia where a person loses time or memory or both. That would afford them a way to stay in the past and not connect with what is going on all around. Not ideal but still an escape. My friend D's father is currently in this state. With his dementia his life is no bed of roses but atleast he does not understand that he was tested positive for covid or that it is a bit of a miracle that he also made a recovery from it. The old man was spared a lot of anxiety given his trouble with memory. 

Some days, when I wake up in the morning, random thoughts of ordinary days from years past come to mind - the time when we made travel plans for Spring Break in less than 24 hours and ended up having a great time. The time when we went to watch a local band playing in music in a park. The time we got together at T's for dinner and the her husband told a joke that had everyone in splits. The time when we went to the farmer's market and got some strange looking squashes. So many mundane things that seem miraculous and wonderful now. 

Extreme Exaggeration

Watched a strange movie recently - Dogtooth. Found it bizarre, genre-defying tinged with some sarcastic homage to Greek mythology. One way to look at it would be as a story of extreme exaggeration. When a patriarch of the family is the ultimate control freak and everyone submits to him unconditionally then things go seriously wrong.  

The politically minded could very well view the father here as the head of a dysfunctional state. The wife and the mother of three grown up kids is the strangest character of all in this movie. She lives as if under a spell of her husband and acts in unison with him as if they were a two headed monster. 

The kids are remarkably docile and yet sometimes they show sparks of life in ways that range from sad to macabre. Yet, there is the thinnest veneer of normal to this family - they do have meals together and the man goes to work each day.  If the flaws in our individual characters and those of our somewhat dysfunctional families are hyperbolized to the extreme levels, even the most mundane among us could be fodder to birth a Dogtooth out of it all. As the reviewer in The Guardian concludes:

It is a film about the essential strangeness of something society insists is the benchmark of normality: the family, a walled city state with its own autocratic rule and untellable secrets.

Refurbished History

Excellent essay on times we live in. What the author describes as the infantalization of the American psyche seems like making the deliberate choice to live in a state of denial and alternate reality. 

 The only people that have no past and no experiences are children. Denial of the past means you have to think as a child thinks, act as a child acts, relegating one’s daily existence to the surprise of a child. The infantilization of the American psyche is essential to perpetuating grotesque institutional structures that require the suffering of many to pay the debt of power to very few. Yet, it is human nature to fantasize about the past. To live in history with judgment, whether it is reverie or regret, is dangerous.

Refurbishing history is not unique to America. The difference is that in older cultures, re-inventing the past that occurred thousands of years ago, somewhat  dampens the effect of such action on the lives of people today. The systematic lies, alterations and embellishments of the past do produce an array of negative consequences for present day India for example but we may not see it manifested in the way it does America. The time scale of events does matter. 

Being Barred

After days of struggling to find the write words, I finally messaged B - my black friend of a couple of decades. Her life has had more than its fair share of difficulties. Many years ago, her step-son was shot to death just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We never talked about it. That is the way it has always been with B - the pain is buried and never mentioned. It becomes sacred ground that no one is allowed to tread on. 

She copes by expanding the scope of her grief. It is just not her step-son but many young men from the community who have suffered in the same way. And its not just about the community, around the world there are groups and classes of people who are victimized, marginalized and killed because they are the "other" and in the "out" group. B will have transformed her pain to become part of this much larger global pain, wrong done to her can at once become a drop in the ocean of wrong and also be the infinite source of sadness.

The more she deflects and diverts the pain from her, the more she seems to suffer. I have seen this for years and have never found a way to support her. No surprise, my most recent attempt to express solidarity fell flat on its face. I would have regretted not having tired to reach out to her but I regretted that I did and unwittingly hit some raw nerve despite my efforts. 

I realized there is something self-ish about our need to be there and support our friends in what we perceive to be their time of need. We seek validation that our pain is not in error and infact real. When that gesture is rebuffed, we could feel isolated and confused in feeling our particular somewhat undeserving grief that has no place to go because we are not sure we were even allowed to feel it in the first place. 

B by refusing to accept my gesture with kindness, had invalidated my right to feel anything about the situation here in our town and the country. I was not deemed deserving enough, close enough to the cause. I had been placed in the "other" and "out" group, chastised silently for "pretending" that I may have kinship to her cause. 

Giving Voice

I was very grateful to see this post on top of my LinkedIn news section. And more than that people using a professional networking platform to talk directly about what is going on in this country. This comment from an organizational consultant is spot-on:

I know many white leaders of mostly-white companies or teams who are paralyzed right now. If this is you, you're keeping an eye on current events and know that we're living through a moment of racial reckoning on top of a global pandemic. You want to show that you care, and that you're trying to be supportive, but don't know the right thing to do or say. Here's a quick (non-exhaustive) guide.

She goes on to offer some no-nonsense, actionable advice. I hope that the people she is referring to will pay attention and take charge. I would say her observation applies just as much to leadership of all races not just white or mostly white. No one in particular is less paralyzed. They have to strike the right note, not display any personal or political bias in their statements, keep the organization feeling like a safe and neutral space for all their employees and also come across and sensitive while not alienating people in intangible ways. 

Balancing these things is no easy feat and hence the paralysis. There reasons why this is specially hard depends on the racial mix of the leadership team - each posing a different kind of problem.