Seeing Reflection

I watched Indian Matchmaking soon after reconnecting with two desi friends my age after a long time. C in single and S is divorced. All three of us have been through the arranged marriage route. C's strategy was to say no to everyone because she was simply not interested in marriage. S had a narrow set of options with family in strong favor of the candidate she married to her great peril. My strategy back in the day was to say No to nothing and see what the universe would say Yes to, In my infinite wisdom, I thought not being an impediment to the natural flow of things would prevent regrettable decisions and lead to a fantastic outcome. I learned at a great cost and a couple of wasted decades of life that I was dead wrong. 

With all that in the backdrop, it was most illuminating to see the cast of characters in this series. I am going to assume a lot of the show was tailored to play out desi stereotypes - the ubiquitous aunties, the face reader, palm reader, astrologer, pandit with pujas and tantras all make their obligatory appearance. Not everything in a reality show is real. Maybe the characters were having fun at the expenses of a gullible audience who wanted to believe certain mythologies about India and the Indian condition that they happily played out. 

Yet, it is true that the world of Indian matchmaking cannot exist without the supporting cast of characters. You do get your horoscopes matched to make a go/no-go decision on a prospect. This process is imprinted into a person's mind well before they become aware of their personhood and preferences. The astrologer plays a critical role in the life of a family and can become indispensable during matchmaking. 

More thoughts about what I took away in days and weeks to come. 

Woman's View

Self-driving cars is one of those things people dearly wish would exist and any signs of progress in the area was met with enthusiasm. If the tests were lackluster, the tide of public opinion did not immediately turn. Car makers were given fourth and fifth chances to get it right. But consumers have soured over time and as it turns out women more so than men.

Only about 3 in 10 women say they believe self-driving cars will decrease the number of people killed or injured in accidents. Meanwhile, almost half of men (49%) say automated driving will reduce accidents

Super anecdotal ofcourse but every Tesla fan I know is a guy and they believe that self-driving cars are just around the corner though that's been their position since they got into their first Tesla many moons ago, Not quite at that corner yet but they keep their faith in arriving at the promised land. I find my thinking aligned with that of many other women - they need to see the technology arrive and settle a bit before they decide what to believe in. 

Work Day

In my workplace, folks who live near one of our offices are coming in quite often not sure how many times a week but definitely more than once. That in turn is creating a new kind of disaffection among those who are further afield - they don't feel connected to the mainstream of events, the live water cooler conversations, the in-person meetings with clients who live in the same city and so on.

 I don't hear a clamor among my colleagues to come to work more often. It's just that there is a disparity between those who have the opportunity and avail it and those who don't specially because its not an option. The playing field has become uneven now and folks are choosing their own adventure. Without central cohesion, people are more on their own, taking charge of their destiny as they see it. 

“Even with most firms implementing a ‘three days in the office hybrid policy,’ most employees prefer visiting the office just once a week,” Eldar Gizzatov, Basking.io’s chief executive officer, wrote in the report. “The pandemic has accustomed people to work remotely and there is not a concrete reason in most professions to return to the offices.”

There is in fact a concrete reason for those who can to work from where they are most comfortable and consider how best to spend the gift of life they are so lucky to have

Extreme Absurd

Watched Barney Thompson recently and it was a treat. A murder mystery that is also absurd and hilarious. Particularly enjoyed the character of Cemolina played by Emma Thompson. It was a refreshing break after a long work day. As with Barney in the movie, a person's mundane life can take a very different turn. Just the other day, I was talking to a co-worker who has two ailing parents to deal with in India along with a recently widowed mother-in-law. M and his wife were college sweethearts, living in the a small mid-Western town for a couple decades where they raised two kids now close to college age. Between two full time jobs and raising the kids, their life naturally had to fit into a very well-defined structure. Parents back in India were able to take care of themselves and visited occasionally. They rarely traveled back home. 

In the last year between M and his wife they have made a half a dozen trips as the situation gets from bad to out of control. The family is hanging by a thread as the parents take turns to take care of the elderly and manage kids at home at critical age. One of my other friends got yanked out of her sleepy, empty nester suburban life, taking an extended leave of absence from her job to take care of a major family crisis in Manila. In the movies, things are taken to an extreme level of improbable to get us to laugh but what real life can do to the average person living a boring life is no less extreme just that it is not amusing.

Learning Secrets

Learning very recently that a very dear friend from childhood had been the victim of incest starting at twelve years old with the mother blaming her and defending the abuser left me totally dumbfounded. Once the shock of the news faded, disappointment and sadness set in. I have known P since childhood and I consider her among my closest friends, yet I did not know this until now. I questioned the very foundation of our relationship. Maybe something would have been different in her life had I known when this first started, maybe she did not consider me worthy of sharing such intensely painful and private information. 

In the months and weeks after she told me, I replayed scenes from childhood to the present in my head many times, filled with guilt. Not only had I failed to be there for her for decades, I was oblivious to my failings as a friend. I am trying harder than ever to do right by her without treading on this topic which was clearly very difficult for her to talk about with me. I used to think I was a chronic over-sharer with P - she knows a lot about me that few other people in the world do. I felt safe and comfortable telling. Clearly that feeling was not reciprocated - at least not when it mattered, for what made her feel the most vulnerable. 

This is not my first childhood friend that has spoken about sexual abuse by a close family member. Each time once I was told, the pieces of the puzzle began to fit about the person. They were working to build a carapace around this unrelenting pain and that manifested itself in how they lived, their challenges in intimate relationships and ability to trust in general. The problem runs deep in India and the greatest tragedy of all is that the parents of the victim are complicit - they blame the victim, hide behind lies and subterfuge hoping that ignoring what is happening will make it go away. It does not help that some types of incest are not illegal in India

Making Lists

It took several days to unpack what the trip to Kolkata had been about. I had two goals - one to help my parents complete long-standing tasks that required my physical presence and two to make this trip one that they would remember fondly if this turned out be the last time I saw one of them alive. The second goal set the tone for my visit. Time and again, I tried to imagine what it might be to be in their shoes where every day that they live independently, do the things they enjoy, stay on in the home they have made together is gift. Their universe has shrunk to a the narrow confines of their apartment, the people who in the community and their daily living rituals. 

It took me a lot of time and effort to realize that asking that they expand their horizons is not realistic. I can bring the world to them, try and show what is out there and within their reach but that does not mean they will do anything about it. This I need to accept and leave in peace. I immersed myself in their environment for a couple of weeks, understood the ebb and tide of their daily lives and discovered some small changes that could improve the quality of their lives. Before leaving Kolkata, I made a list of actions for them to take and it is heart-warming to see that they have started working through my list and are reporting favorable results. I don't think I have the right to ask for more. 

Maternal Love

My thoughts turned to the two women I had reconnected with after a long time during my stay in Kolkata. One a friend from college and the other a cousin. Both find themselves in the position of being the primary care-giver of their ailing parents because there is no one else to share that burden with. Both have mothers whose love bleeds into control. 

They were raised to believe that is how the world of mothers and daughters operate. The departure from the childhood home, establishing an independent life of their own did not alter the dynamic, instead it remained in idle mode where the mother was not able to act out her proclivities very intensely. Now that they are back in that same home they grew up, all the destructive patterns established in the past have come to be bear upon them ferociously. 

All at once they have become who had long ceased to be. The change comes with friction and stress. Part of them is trying to move forward by norms they have established for themselves but there is a part that was always subservient to the mother's wishes and creates a drag force.  My good friend A told me once that adult children need to reset the rules of engagement with parents. If they fail to that they will be forever stuck in the quagmire of the past with parents who are not able to evolve with time and adapt to the adulthood of their children. Both of these women failed to make that reset and are paying a heavy price for it. 

Energy Sink

It's impossible not to feel the energy of NYC if you are visiting. I did the first time and do every time since then. Not sure how that manifests for people who live there and call the city their home. Interesting to read the NYC's mayor's rationale for why this energy exists. He believes: 

..that New York City has a “special energy” because it sits atop a store of rare gems and stones – the so-called “Manhattan schist,” which is over 450 million years old and contains over 100 minerals.

Having recently returned from good old Kolkata and having experienced the lack of energy and motivation to get things done, I have to wonder what kind of stuff this city sits on. Clearly it is not something that radiates energy that people can feel. Instead, it works like an energy sink - you spin you wheels, try to get things gone, don't make much progress if any at all, sweat out every ounce of water in your body as you try. Once you return home the only reasonable action is a shower followed by a nap. You need to physically recover from your efforts to be productive which had been for naught to make another attempt. 

Time Horizon

The last day before I returned from Kolkata, my father asked me when I would visit next. It is a natural question to ask and a hard one to answer. I realize we don't have a lot of time left together so the more often I can come see them the better. A full immersion into the their way of life is not sustainable yet that is what is takes for us make the most of my stay. In an ideal world, I would not just visit but spend a few months each time I came here. I am not at the stage of life where that is possible. My father's question made me wonder about the time I would ask J the same thing and how she might answer. 

It would depend on our physical distance from each other, her ability to support what she does for a living from my home and finally her desire to spend time with me. It's not clear how much of each factor I can influence if at all. I was not able to give my father any specific answer beyond that I will be there if any need arises (which he is well aware of and not the point of his question). What might have my parents done differently while raising me or me while raising J, so that question would not need to be asked at all. The answer would be known and one that would be a happy one for all. There are those parent-child relationships too but it seems to have not played out in my family. I treated this trip as if it might be the last time I see one of my parents alive and it really made me focus on what would matter to both them and me if that were to be true.

Customer Intent

Great interview on the true cost of customer experience from a seller's perspective. A generous return policy is a key component of great customer experience. There are examples of best in class in that area like Nordstrom's, Lands End, REI, LL Bean and the like. Their products are expensive and the cost of supporting such return policy is a big part of why:

I think that the race for market share in online retail really created a whole host of bad behaviors that are both costly to them and other retailers, but are also just flat out environmentally destructive and really need to stop. 

We have to really blame Amazon and especially Zappos (who Amazon owns) for driving most of these bad behaviors which most other retailers were forced to go along with or even try to one-up in the race for market share. 

The consumer expectation now is that not only will you get a product in a day or two at most, but that you can return it for any reason, and that if you say the product is ‘defective’, then the return shipping is free. So of course, everything returned is claimed to be defective! 

The best system when stressed enough by a significant number of bad actors can misfire badly. So is the case with return policies. As Josh Poertner says in the interview - 99.8% of the customers are good but the stress produced by the 0.2% is bad enough to warrant drastic change. The better way might be to take a data driven approach to flag return fraud behavior so only the bad actors are penalized instead of everyone.

Shall See

One of the folks I met on my visit to Kolkata works in the printing operations of a Bengali newspaper that's been around forever. A has worked there for over twenty years and likes that he has fixed hours and life is largely predictable. The modernization of technology has crept up very slowly on his job over the years so it has never been a challenge to keep up. He is warm and friendly, well-informed about world affairs given what he does for a living. As with any adda over chai and snacks in a Bengali household, it was no surprise that conversation turned to politics. Starting with antics of the chief minister and her endless set of goons, moving on to the dysfunction in America - notably the regressive politics of abortion rights and then finally Ukraine and Taiwan. 

There were several other people in that gathering of different age brackets and backgrounds. One thing that united everyone was the sentiment that America is a very meddlesome nation with no track record of winning any war and yet continues to engage in new ones all the time. A's sentiments about how the media was covering Ukraine very much aligns with this article. He was very disdainful of his own newspaper and joked about how stuff that makes it to the printed newspaper is a copy and paste job from sources that are actually doing the work of gathering news. He thinks reading his publication is a waste of time but if people are willing to pay for that privilege he can't complain because it pays his salary.

A is an archetypical Bengali - very clear eyed about their place in the world, suffering no illusions about the value or meaning of their work. He has his priorities that do not include a high-stress, high-paying job. He is not looking for meaning in his work or any validation of his person-hood through it. He collects his paycheck in the most comfortable way he can. There is no plan for the future other than "dekha jabe" (we shall see) and that is just fine. 

Old Connections

At one of the banks I had to visit with my parents, the bulk of the staff was from Bihar many of them domiciled in Bengal. Everyone understands Bangla and many speak the language fluently. Once they learned I spent a good part of my growing up years in Jharkhand, the conversation turned to food and particularly their signature mango pickle of which I am a huge fan, One of the women promised she would have some on hand next time I came to the bank. It was strangely comforting to chat about the place I grew up in with a bunch of strangers and have a common understanding of the norms and culture that defined it. 

Whatever my resentments I harbored about Bihar(then) Jharkhand(now) faded away in warmth of the company. This is not the level of discourse I could expect as a customer in a bank anywhere else. In Kolkata they take "antarikata" very seriously and these folks from the neighboring state had clearly embraced the culture whole-heartedly. Later in the day, I chanced upon a story from Bihar which is reality too, albeit one I have not seen up close. Growing up, I had friends from Bihar who chose to fight the dowry system by refusing to have their marriage arranged. They chose their own partners and very successfully. I thought it was the smartest way to fight the system - the more people opt out of it, the quicker it will die. 

Key Phrase

A cool way to see see scenes from a movie filtered by key phrases. The tired and cliché lines we've heard over and over in movies, many are typical for a genre. Then there are catch phrases from iconic movies that become part of our cultural lexicon. Would be interesting to see the rise and fall in the popularity of phrases over time. When I watch movies from India, I always notice how the use of language has changed over time. In my childhood, I watched a fair amount of black and white Bollywood movies with my parents - it was the stuff they grew up on and wanted to share with me. 

The music was almost always great but the storylines were a bit out of touch with my world. I went along with it because there was not much choice in entertainment options. Thanks to that early exposure, I still love watching black and white movies - they make it easier to focus on substance over style. Since others in the family don't share my affinity, this is a solo indulgence. When traveling or alone at home, I often watch a black and white movie and relive my first exposure to cinema. Recently, I re-watched Citizen Kane and found new things to like about the movie.  

Hidden Treasures

Nice article on the boom to bust cycle of social media. It used to be that people were creating content much in the manner of my writing this blog. The material was whatever the producer cared to produce. There was not much thought paid to the consumer. If some folks happened by and liked what they saw, they would stick around or tell others about it. Either way, it did not influence what content creator chose to produce. It was the fun part of social media - the serendipitous connections, chance discovery of interesting, offbeat stuff. People were doing their own thing with the option to share. Over time, the joy of that style of low pressure social sharing went away as this author points out. 

"Part of the reason why social media doesn't feel fun is because the communication around it is: 'You're a brand. Everyone is their own brand. Everyone is their own television network. You should be making videos,'" Merritt said. "All this pressure to produce not only content but a high level of content in conjunction with living your actual life."

Those of us who don't want to partake in this avatar of social media have only one choice - sit out of it. In my case, I have found it harder and harder to find unique content that I enjoy reading because the producer is not interested in being found by an audience. Every once in a while I run into a real treasure - a website run by someone deeply passionate about their subject with an small but devoted audience. 

Guardian Angel

Every time I come to Kolkata, there is a hard reset to the last time I lived in my parents' home as a dependent child. This was before I left to college and it is where their understanding of me as a person has fossilized. It is understandable being that the flow of information reduced over time, they did not have many in-person data points to validate that information against. 

Consequently, they stayed with  what they knew to be true for sure. The baseline of a person is formed by eighteen and the core set of values might persist for the most part. Each time they see me, they calibrate against that baseline and find I am who they knew me to be but that does not explain all that they don't understand anymore about their daughter. 

The other side effect of this recalibration is my father's anxiety about my safety and his need to protect me. Since we have traveled backwards in time, he can easily forget he is close to eighty now and cannot physically protect me. In his mind, he can and therefore insists on taking me places to keep me out of harm's way. 

He is an old man now and comes a time when he is too exhausted to go anywhere. This might be my last trip alone to Kolkata just as it was my first. We need to come together so my father knows there is someone there to protect me when it cannot be him anymore. The fact that such protection is needed for any woman is the great tragedy of everyday life in Kolkata and India. 

Cobbler's Son

I spent a lot of time in banks with my parents on this trip. The last time I was inside a bank in India was when I was working here. A long time ago and less complex times - you took a token and waited in line for your turn. Computerization was very limited and there was no access to internet back in those days. Decades later, not much has changed and that is such a tragedy considering our people have coded most of the banking applications around the world. 

Two of the significant core banking solutions come from TCS and Infosys. There is clearly no lack of talent required to digitize banking end to end in India. Sadly they have not even bothered to begin the process from any end. In two large banks, the entire intake process was through paper forms filled by hand in triplicate, tons of documents photocopied and self-attested and a battery of other paper work filled by the bank personnel where I was asked the same questions a dozen times. That was not even the worst of it. 

After spending three hours doing said paper-work, upon returning home, personnel from the bank started to call me for information that was filled out in half a dozen forms. Then they outdid themselves by coming to my parents' home to take pictures of original documents that they had photocopied also a dozen times in the bank. The level of inefficiency, ineptitude and lack of process was mind-boggling. 

Work that was supposed to be completed in three days was not done in over two weeks. Even absence of any digitization, these folks could put themselves out their misery by defining workflows and processes for their work. But that thought never crossed their mind. The only reason I could think of is they are compensated for the appearance of being busy and clocking time at bank. Results delivered and customer experience are not the metrics that drive them.

Being There

There are several elderly couples in my parent's neighborhood who have one or more of their children and grandchildren living abroad. I ran into at least have a dozen of them. They have visited their expat kids many times over the years similar to my parents so there is no mystery about life there. Notwithstanding the talk of how things are "there" is fraught with needless dramatic flourish. I see that with all these folks including my parents. There is a desire to glamorize the mundane, gloss over the struggle and strife it takes for a new immigrant to establish a foothold - something every one of us has had to deal with. 

It seems like being "there" is an accomplishment on its own does not matter the cost or the complexity. I ended up being a party pooper a few times around this crowd commingled with folks who don't have relatives abroad. Vignettes from my life my parents are eager to share with anyone who cares to listen most often make me cringe. Its like hearing a song with the tune all wrong, it grates on the nerves. I feel the need to imbue what they are saying with reality - they look crestfallen when I do that. It leaves the other parents like them quite perplexed too. There is a narrative about kids living abroad that they have all created together and here I am picking it apart. 

I view my immigrant journey as one fraught with challenges that I chose to take on because my alternatives were significantly worse. There are no free lunches for anyone. I might not have the same problems as the folks in Kolkata but they definitely don't have to deal with things I have to. There are days when I have wanted to compact and simplify my life so I could get return to the figurative womb of life. During my time in Kolkata recently there were a new hours when I experienced that exact feeling that I had been craving - the noise of my world had died down entirely as I cooked in the hot kitchen replete with inconveniences. The only goal for the day was to prepare a nice meal for a loved one. 

Seeing Truth

One of the neighbors I met around my parents' apartment is a woman about a decade younger than me the mother of a twelve year old. She is a stay-at-home mom. The husband works at a bank in central Kolkata. I visited D a couple of times during my stay and each time she was waiting for her husband to return from work. The man was being called by mother and daughter in turn as he explained the delay. 

Late meeting, stuck in traffic, missed metro train and so on. On the second occasion, the daughter answered the door without giving mother a chance to prepare for me. The living room had lights dimmed and she had been drinking alone. The table was cleared of liquor in a flash and bright lights came on. It was close to 9 pm but she looked completely disheveled like she'd just rolled out of bed. Her smile was bright and she kept up a steady chatter. 

The daughter flitted in and out of the living room, alternating between asking D when dad would be back and calling him directly. The late meeting excuse did not seem to hold much water with D. The kid looked anxious. The husband finally reported he had reached the metro station and would be in shortly. I took that as my cue to leave. There is been a bored and lonely housewife as long as there have been housewives. I just happened to run into one of them who might have taken to drinking to pass the time and soothe her nerves - not such a novel idea either. 

Yet seeing this happening to a woman much younger than me and close to my parents, made me want to help. Just as quickly as that urge came I knew I would be way out of line. Instead I wished mother and daughter good night and returned to my parents' home. The scene that played out in D's living room made me wonder what kind of truth can set a person free and what a person might want not to know to remain free. 

Finding Meaning

Sometimes D sends me videos of her grandson being adorable. I have known her for a long time now. We met when she was at the prime of her career, sharp as a tack and not afraid of any challenge. She could be a handful to deal with - atleast for some people but her work was truly exceptional. Over the years she has won awards and accolades for what she does. After she relocated to Florida with her husband, we keep in touch sporadically. Each phase change in her life impacted the cadence and content of our communication. She started thinking hard about changing career tracks to do something closer to her soul, This proved to be a hard dream to chase - I observed from the sidelines rooting for her success because I yearned to do exactly the same thing. 

The new career was not all that she dreamed about. With closeness to soul came the steep learning curve and establishing herself in a market where others had a thirty year head start on her. I am sure the experience provided for inner growth but it was not a dream come true. I wondered then and still do, what might have D done different to reach the goal post and what does that mean for me. Then came the grandbaby and D finally found the cause worth putting all her energy into. What she had missed doing for her kids, she now had a chance to do over and with the benefit of experience she did not have back then. It is an absolute pleasure to see D bloom into her perhaps what she was meant to be. 

Highlights Reel

I have been spending the bulk of my days in Kolkata cooking traditional Bengali food to feed family and friends. The process involves going to the market with my father in the mornings and cooking for hours after that. This is no longer everyone's way of life. People who are not retirees like my parents don't have time in their day to lead this kind of life. Traditional Bengali fare is very time-intensive cooking. The meal is made of a large number of small sides. There is no prescribed number and it depends on how much time the person has to prep the meal. 

Seven or eight is not out of the norm if you have invited someone over. And then there is the main event - a big fish. It used to be baby goat but I see that less often. My cousin L came over from Mumbai during my stay and while cooking for her, I thought about my expat existence - what I have craved and missed over the decades. It would be impossible to serve the full wish-list in a few meals. I thought of a highlights reel of my assorted food cravings and that made the lunch menu for L. 

Teeming Talent

T is a neighbor of my parents. He is a doctor and an amateur stage actor. The wife and daughter are semi-professional vocalists. Having the family over for dinner naturally occasioned impromptu performances by all three of them. It was an absolute treat. T and family are not the only ones that can burst into song and poetry with no preparation when they come by to my parents' house. In the few days that I have been here a dozen neighbors have come by from the surrounding apartments and just about everyone of them can sing, dance, perform in some way. There are a couple of water colorists, a handicrafts person, a photographer and an eight year old video editor who had taught himself editing software to do what he loves. 

All this in an very unremarkable neighborhood of Kolkata beset with the problems of unplanned construction, roads unable to support the traffic, no infrastructure, deplorable quality of services and many other malaises that are the hallmark of this city. Yet in my parents' living room when these people get together and put on a show in a minute's notice, it is easy to forget all that is broken and lost in Bengal. This is the culture I loved and grew up in. Everyone has their favorite songs of Tagore and Nazrul, poems that spoke to their heart and soul. I have heard Jibananda Das, Sankha Ghosh, Shakti Chattopadhyay and ofcourse Tagore recited by family and friends when I was growing up. It was a real home-coming to dip into that experience again. 

Clicquot Vinegar

One afternoon, I decided to scan the headlines of a Bengali newspaper that was lying around my parents' living room. The political news is too disheartening to read and besides its all everyone talks about when they meet anyway. I think I am well caught on on the shenanigans of the Chief Minister and her cronies.  Instead, I decided to out the food and culture section of the paper. To my great dismay some new age chef had taken it upon himself to re-invent Hilsa recipes to make them fare akin to what one might expect at mainstream American restaurant - he had effectively murdered the Hilsa the favorite fish of many a Bengali including me. I could not for the life of me imagine why the man wanted to fillet and batter fry the Hilsa and serve it mayo, cheese and fries. Had the world gone completely mad, I wondered? 

This is no different than than using a Veuve Clicquot champagne to make vinegar to clean the kitchen countertop. I am not sure in what universe that would be considered appropriate use of one of the best champagnes in the world,  but in mine, I was absolutely appalled by the travesty in the name of cooking Hilsa. I felt outraged enough to look for the chef's email and considered writing to express my outrage. In my few days in Kolkata, I did cook Hilsa in the manner that has been passed down the generations of my family - great grandmothers to me. It was deeply satisfying to cling to my roots notwithstanding the times and changing tastes of my people.

Tracing Roots

I have never enjoyed visiting Kolkata - not while I lived in India or now that I don't. It was a like eating a bitter pill - the thing you had to do so you could spend time with people you cared about. That feeling has stood the test of time. Every morning, I walked with my father to the local market where he buys fish and vegetables. The banter with the fishmonger and vegetable sellers has not changed at all. There is some gentle teasing and haggling over prices - both sides know if it is low-stakes and part of the performative process of buying things in the marketplace. He knows many of the vendors by name - they in turn remember he has a daughter who is visiting for a couple of weeks and that he has a grandchild. One of the fruit sellers promised to get me jamun (Indian blackberry) before I left. He knows the tree that he'll need to climb to get me about five hundred grams of fruit. 

L gave me is WhatsApp number so I could call ahead and make sure he had the fruit for me. S, my father's favorite vegetable seller is making sure I get to try all the local delicacies I have missed for years - things that are so niche to the Bengali experience that it would be hard to explain the draw to anyone else. Back at home, I have taken over my mother's tiny kitchen to try my hand and cooking very complex meals, feeding family and friends. It has become a point of pride for me that my cooking is authentic and does not involve my usual creative leaps with recipes. I am back at my roots, being Bengali and nothing else. There is a certain joy in that act of simplification in my identity. As much as I detest Kolkata as a place, I care deeply about my cultural identity of which Kolkata does form an integral and unshakable part. 

Old Ties

Seeing my best friend from college after four years was bitter-sweet. The physical decline was hard to see. This is someone who had lived independently her whole post-college life, away from parents with no partner or kids to be accountable to. With that comes a certain level of laxity in pace. Beyond her work responsibilities there was not much she needed to show up for and certainly not expected to take charge and lead from the front. That has now come to pass with two ailing parents who can no longer support themselves. They as a family unit have regressed to the time when she was a child living with parents except that she is now their primary care-giver.

They are not able to treat her like the middle-aged woman she is, someone with a life and history much to complex for them to understand. The level of communication was never great and now it is a complete breakdown. The stress of living in these circumstances has manifested itself in her declining physical health and a sense of resignation towards whatever the environment throws at her. As always she wants to give me little gifts that remind her of long ago relatively uncomplicated times of college. Truth be told those were not the best years of our lives but everything is about context. 

She needs a rescue and has a few good friends including myself who can help. We are all reaching out and offering our hands so she can latch on and climb out of the deep, intractable mess she is in. None of us can wade into that pool with her. 

Coming Home

Long layover at Delhi occasioned by nervous parents who were too afraid to come to Kolkata airport until daylight hours - I can no longer properly calibrate what is reasonable versus nervousness borne from their being elderly.

People are how I remember from my working years - specially those in my age bracket. We started at the same place and diverged but it is still possible to have some common ground. The expats have lousy manners - not universally but in large enough numbers for it start showing as a bit of a trend. They want to show American muscle in Delhi and act too familiar based on perceived power which is likely not very smart. It’s met with rudeness and hostility from what I observed

The domestic terminal where I made my connection was pleasantly diverse in food options even at the late hour I was there. Breakfast sadly is not 24/7 which would make it perfect for me.

The most significant part of the experience was the least expected- the place was largely quiet except for the cleaning crew running equipment to clean the floors. Plenty of empty seats and people were far from noisy.

My everyday experience of India is so dated it’s no longer relevant but I seem to remember a lot way more chatter, random conversations with strangers which does go with loss of privacy.

Like the rest of the world, in India too the orb of the person’s universe is defined by their cellphone. It’s where everyone is at so talking to strangers and tracing their ancestry on the spot as my grandmother used to is absolutely not the way to go. I would learn in the next few days about what changed and remained the same in Kolkata.

Knowing Options

This is the first time I have spend alone time with my parents in their home. This is not the place I grew up in or have any memories of. They bought this apartment after my father retired and they spent years making it into their home. Last time I met them was a couple of years before the pandemic hit and a long time before that. What struck me hard was now much love and care they had put into the place. The feed and care of the home has become their way to nurture something. This was the same energy that drove them in their more active years to work, raise me, support family and so on. 

They have a defined routine for things and there is place for all stuff that is useful and used. I used to be casual about inheriting this house and what it means for me. I realized today that I would find it hard to sell it and just as hard to maintain in. I will be between a rock and a hard place. The window sills have plants that are growing exuberantly. They each have their history - gifts from friends and neighbors for the most part. Some of the gift givers have since died imbuing their plant with greater significance. It would be incredibly hard to separate the objects from the stories. 

New Lexicon

Reading this made me smile and reminded me of a conversation with a data science guy a few months ago. L was solving for a problem that all sales organizations can relate to. Are they catching the buying (or churn) signals early and often and are they equipped to do what is needed once such signal is detected. In L's case the sales people were selling into complex organizations where buying decisions were made by an array of factors including geo-political issues. 

He had identified the full laundry list of features and set up some Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to build his prediction models. The efficacy of this thing was apparently very hard to discern but the key variables that signaled a buying interest L could have deduced through pure commonsense. 

I asked him what he thought of his grand adventure to arrive at confirming answers he already knew. L was not sure he was ready to call his bag of tools not dazzling enough. He was more inclined to believe that if he thought about the problem harder a smarter solution would emerge - and one that he would not have already known. We promised to check on his progress a few months out. I am all but certain there is no golden needle in his haystack but I look forward to being proven wrong. 

Solo Journeys

I have traveled alone more in the past few months than I have done in a long time. While the pandemic raged, I also grew older and a less happy traveler. Looking back I am not sure when if ever I was excited for travel. It was theoretical wanderlust with me being reluctant to enjoy the process as much as good traveler must. 

When I was a child, my mother would pore over the maps of the different Indian states and propose adventures by train that took us through towns known and unknown, some having historical significance others blessed with nature's bounty. She saw what was possible in a magical dreamscape where the reality of booking tickets at the railway station, packing for the trip, finding places to stay along the way and understanding what modes of transportation to use - simply did not exist.

She made it sound easy and possible. We never made any of these imagined trips - my father was a realist though back then I simply did not see it that way. I only saw the field of dead and abandoned dreams of travel. That must have set the tone for me even before I realized it. That travel is inherently difficult and prone to delivering unpleasant surprises and mostly impossible. The magic got stripped to the bone. When we traveled together for the first time I thought these ghosts from aborted trips past would come to haunt. They gladly did not. I was not the best planner but a few trips later I got into the swing of things. Mistakes were made but none so bad that the trip was ruined.

Traveling alone brings back memories I wish would not come back. 

Coming Home

I will be traveling alone to India for the first time since I immigrated to America. For most people there is nothing remarkable about such an event but it created a heightened sense of anxiety about the trip for me - beyond the usual that travel brings about these days. I will be meeting family members I have not seen in close to thirty years - people who were once close and then drifted away largely due to physical distance also drift from what used to be a joint family once. 

I realized that I don't know much about my cousin who I last saw when she was still in high school. Since I don't do social media, I have no idea how time has shaped her. But I wanted to get her a little something because she is still my baby sister. After hours and days of struggle I landed on a gift that felt right. I won't know until I give it to her and even then I might not. 

We plan to meet a couple of days after I arrive - it will be in a sense a return to childhood. My parents, her parents (my uncle and aunt) and the two of us. She is child-free and career demands has her living away from her husband for the last few months. I tried to imagine as I packed my bags how it will be to sit around the dining table at my parents' home as we had done years ago in the same configuration as we will find ourselves in now. 

If that will somehow make return to a time and place in our lives left far behind. My aunt used to be a force of nature back then - its the mental image I still have of her. She has been ailing for a good decade and the years have caught up to her. My uncle used to be a thoughtful man prone to making pithy observations about life even in casual conversation. It was as if he examined what was around him a lot closer than the rest of us did, leading to discoveries that we would have never made. C herself when I last spoke to her sounded like an astute woman - that was my strongest impression from our short conversation. 

Another Woman

The character of Marion in Another Woman epitomizes the ultimate state of an inwardly focused person. The world shrinks constantly until becomes the point inside their mind. Marion does not see herself as others see her - many among us could relate to that but we likely don't suffer from the extreme form of the malaise. She has her reasons to be the way she is and overhearing some chance conversation between a patient and their therapist ends up unraveling her life. 

That turns out to be a blessing for her because it allows her to relate to people as opposed to stand away and apart observing them. She begins to participate in life. Turning fifty might have provided the needed impetus for change, accepting the mistakes of the past and making peace with them. Marion's encounter with her one time best friend Claire and the events that unfold from there was one of my favorite parts of the movie. 

As someone who has experienced the loss of many friendships since childhood, I wondered if there was a lesson for me somewhere. Maybe I came across or did things that triggered the drift. Maybe I was too caught up with my own problems to pay attention to how others felt. Working under the assumption that I was a decent person it never occurred to me that I could be the one at fault. Notwithstanding, I have been lucky to have a few steadfast friendships in my life that have stood the test of time - these are people who have no problem telling me the truth no matter how unpleasant and unflattering it is. They are the reason I have not lost my center despite many failings and missteps. 

Thinking Travel

Longish essay musing on Covid but the part that resonated most with me was on travel. I had chance to travel internationally several times during the pandemic. Sometimes to visit a loved one, sometimes to explore a part of the world I have never been to. Traditionally, both have been considered very worthy reasons for travel.

It makes for an memorable experience and one that you reminisce about for years. During the travels with all the complications arising from pandemic restrictions, it was often impossible to convince myself that this was a good decision. During the time spent being with people I love or places I have wanted to see or both, there was some sense of redemption. But there were moments all along when the costs simply did not compute - I wished I had not even bothered. Small aggravations that are part of any trip no matter where and for what reason, would make wish I had the sense to just stay home. 

The romantic ideal of travel is to leave as one version of yourself and return another, changed, “better” of yourself. This trip changed me, but not in the ways you might classically expect. I’ve returned suspicious of travel, more confused than ever about why so many people travel. Unsure if most travel of the last few decades makes sense, or has ever made sense or justified the cost. 

I am finding it quite difficult these days to embrace the romantic ideal of travel. The level of aggravations have got to the point where its too easy to get dislodged from the feeling, land with a thud on the hard reality of delayed and cancelled flights, lost baggage, arcane entry and exit rules, assortment of paperwork that needs to be on hand and much more. That is after weeks of struggle to book tickets that are reasonably priced without having huge layovers and multiple connections. You arrive at your destination nerves frayed hoping that the vacation will restore them when in fact, reality is far from that.