Heartcrossings

Wine tasting at Beaune during our road-trip in France was my first ever wine-tasting. I came into the experience without any idea of what to expect and what good might feel like. First time I swam in the ocean in Gibraltar and that was a one of kind experience for more than one reason. There are wineries an hour from where I have lived for close to two decades now - that is how far the nearest ocean is to me. I have passed by these vineyards many times and can't count the number of beach trips over the years. But for reasons unknown never made it to a wine tasting or experienced riding and floating up on a wave. Thinking about these firsts brought to mind a quote by Tagore that is very near and dear to my heart - it was one he wrote for Satyajit Ray . For many a year, I have travelled many a mile to lands far away I've gone to see the mountains, the oceans I've been to view. But I failed to see that lay. Not two steps from my home. On a sheaf of paddy grain - a glistening d...

The science of how birds navigate is complex and for now an unproven theory. Fascination with the migratory patterns of birds and their ability to stay in formation is not new. Ancients had their way of explaining what they saw. It would be interesting if human's could develop magnetic sixth sense like birds  or perhaps we already have it and don't use it enough ..In 1978, he and Gould found magnetite in the abdomen of honey bees. Then, in 1979, in the heads of pigeons. Unbeknownst to Kirschvink, across the Atlantic Ocean a young, charismatic University of Manchester, U.K., biologist named Robin Baker was setting his sights on the magnetic capabilities of larger, more sophisticated animals: British students. In a series of experiments, he gathered blindfolded students from a "home" point onto a Sherpa minibus, took them on a tortuous route into the countryside, and asked them the compass direction of home. In Science in 1980, Baker reported something uncanny: The st...

We were able to take an impromptu road trip to a little beach town during a work week recently. It was not a vacation as neither of us could take time off from work. We just wanted a change of scenery and being able to walk on the beach instead of our usual route. The three days that we were more rewarding that I imagined.  Cooking in someone else's kitchen, making the most of the little slivers of time we had to go out grab things to cook with and breaking routine because that was the only way to get things done in a new environment. The beach ended up being cold and windy in the evenings when we were finally able to make it there but it felt like a good kind of cold and windy - something we would not have desired if on a "real" vacation.  The experience made me think about what makes for a good vacation and what vacation even means. This was a very pleasant time off and made for great memories. We would not look back at these three cold days on the beach with anything b...

It was such a pleasure reading this excerpt of Annie Ernaux's work . Its one of those pieces of writing that is so perfect that the reader wants to revisit it over and over, each time a line or a word shines brighter than before - presents new meaning. The idea of looking at the girl a woman once was and be able to integrate the two identities in some way is extremely relatable. It is hard to relate to the person who looks at me from a faded picture from decades ago - that was me too. Yet if I were to meet her today, we would have absolutely nothing in common. That person had a world view so different from mine that it would be hard to agree on just about anything. Her dreams were not her own dreams and she did even know that. How do you communicate with such a person. J is at that early stage of her life with experiences coming at her at a pace much faster than she can process. She too at some point in her life will see the world as described in Ernaux's writing. This is true ...

I shared this HBR article with J being that she has recently entered the workforce and could use all the help she can get to avoid mistakes that will cost her down the road. A piece of wisdom I found interesting even for me at this point in my career: Help others understand the truth about your journey by developing a clear and concise elevator pitch that explains how your previous skills connect with, and add value to, what you’re doing now. Make that connection explicit, rather than hoping others will figure it out on their own. To start, chart it out on paper. On one side, write down your past position or experience. On the other side, write down the job you currently hold. Then find the connective tissue that links them. I have long suffered the lack of "connective tissue" that links the different components of my experience and background or the journey that brought them to me. There is a story there not a very glamorous or strategic one. It is about a woman who finds h...

My thoughts immediately turned to J and young people like her when I read this news about current mortgage interest rates . J moved from the comfortable confines of her university campus to a big city for her first job. The day she landed at her one month rental from the airport, she was physically and emotionally exhausted. It was pouring rain outside so she could not go out grab something to eat. I was relieved when she called me but the level of overwhelm was unlike anything before. This was her first foray into the real world and nothing was nearly right never mind perfect. Unless things change drastically in the next few years for young people like her starting out in life, the dreams of home ownership, family building and the rest will be hard to attain.  Everything is relative to where a person started, their expectations for themselves and the dreams they allowed themselves to dream. This was one of those days when a maternal pep-talk was woefully inadequate - the realities...

An illustrative example of killing the messenger in higher education - this story about a non-tenured professor getting fired because his class was too hard . There is ofcourse the other side of the story - the students are being punished unfairly by a professor who takes pride in failing just about the entire class. Where grades determine where the student goes next in their career the consequences cannot be underestimated. Reading this made me wonder if a neutral, third party arbiter of level of difficulty and fairness to the student.  An auditor of the class and the the exam who can validate that students are being a fair shake while the professor is pushing them to perform not just creating conditions for them to fail - in the exam and in life. In this instance, the fact that would be doctors are failing out of their organic chemistry class and the remedy is to fire the professor is cause for additional concern. What if the students are not qualified to enter the profession an...

Some bad planning and worse communication between folks who organized a client meeting found me in Chicago for an extra night and a day. At first I was peeved about being stuck there instead of being at home. Then I reconsidered that feeling - the nest is empty now. Home is not what home used to be. We one of us travels the other catches up on errands and is usually at around much. Home has become a more static base of life - things remain the same there and it's largely empty. Walking around downtown Chicago that evening was a time to take a hard pause from work and the daily routine of home. I focused on the stop signs, browsed stores, watched the boats in the river and people milling about.  A young woman walk down State Street a little ahead of for several stop signs until we parted ways, reminded me of J a lot. She would be about the same age, maybe working her first job. It is how I imagine J looks as she goes about her independent life. I paid attention to her attire and how...

I read this  beautiful Naomi Shihab Nye piece one morning while getting ready for work - it was the Paris Review daily poem that day. It was hard to forget the words on the impact it had on me within the few minutes that it took to read. The words came back over and over during busy times of day, doing things very far removed from poetry reading Missing The Boat It is not so much that the boat passed and you failed to notice it. It is more like the boat stopped directly outside your bedroom window, the captain blowing the signal-horn, the band playing a rousing march. The boat shouted, waving bright flags, its silver hull blinding in the sunlight. But you had this idea you were going by train. You kept checking the time-table, digging for tracks. And the boat got tired of you, so tired it pulled up the anchor and raised the ramp. The boat bobbed into the distance, shrinking like a toy— at which point you probably realized you had always loved the sea. I too had this idea that I was...

Found this article about transfer of cells between mother and fetus specially how long the cells can remain there fascinating. It explains the strength of the bond which for better or worse is one that cannot be shook off. As with any other phenomenon, it is likely that the nature and extent of exchange varies between different pregnant mothers resulting in different outcomes.  If the mother's natural instinct to to protect the baby and her body works in tandem to help her achieve this goal, perhaps she acts as a lightning arrestor that diverts and consumes all harm that comes her baby's way. She would need to absorb it all if she it not capable of releasing it from herself. It is no surprise to see women become entirely different versions of who they used to be after childbirth - specially those that had to go through situations that called on and depleted their mental and physical resources to make it to the finish line. “If these fetal cells are interacting with maternal ph...

While waiting for my flight on a longish layover recently, a bawling toddler and her grandmother entered the scene. The child was about two years old and the grandma was wheelchair bound. At first blush this was no extraordinary scene or event. The grouchy baby in an airport unhappy for any number of reasons having a tantrum. It would run its course and there would be peace again. The two hours that I there turned out to be quite different that expected. The child did not stop crying - she cried like her heart was breaking and she went non-stop.  As it turned out, the mother had to leave her in charge of grandma after dropping the two off at the airport. This was separation anxiety and then some. She was absolutely inconsolable. Many women tried to pacify and distract her, the airlines staff at the gate tried to help. Nothing would work. She baby was simply not in the here and now- nothing could make up for what she was missing. She refused to say a single word and no matter what y...

On Satptami this year, I was traveling for work and checking with friends and family in Kolkata on how they were spending the day. The irony of high heat and thunderstorms during puja back home contrasted with the piercing blue sky and the pleasant fall weather where I was that day. People there in the puja state of mind but nature most definitely was not. It was exactly in inverse for me. There were several hours of daylight left when I landed so I took a walk around downtown and got some food. On my walk, I passed a desi street-food place. For a minute I paused, wondering  if anyone inside knew or remembered what day it was. A quick scan of the place proved it was business as usual for everyone - there would be no way to dip into the nostalgia that I was feeling.  I missed the place and time that no longer exists - this has been the nature of my longing for my roots. Something, I was always told happens to people as they grow older. I like someone missing a long deceased lov...

Happened to read this while waiting for my flight to meet a customer. Late in life I have decided to make a a sharp career turn. I took pride in being a generalist and for years moved between different but somewhat related roles to have broad understanding and skills across them all. It got to me to a point where it was no longer possible define who I was or what I could do - to say just about everything can be in scope of my role sounds borderline ridiculous. While that is accurate it confuses the heck out of folks specially those who have not been around long enough to understand what I am saying is actually reasonable and logical.  I had been seeking more definition and structure in what I do everyday and think I may have finally found it. I had a strong structure in my role as a parent to J until she left to college. So it did not matter that my work life was very chaotic - I had my center and it kept my afloat. Now that role has morphed to the point of being very fluid and li...

I had opportunity to visit my mentee at his college campus earlier in the month. S is a freshman and getting into the swing of things, understanding the joys and struggles of long awaited freedom that comes with adulthood. Yet again as I have seen with a few kids I have know cross this rite of passage, S was staying close to the few people he lucked upon in the first days and weeks. The parties are large, noisy and places where you come and go with your smaller group. That group solidifies into the folks you spend the balance of your time as house-mates in off-campus housing. The potential offered by the large and diverse student body remains unexplored. In this college as I have seen with others, there is not systematic effort to create connections between people whose paths would never cross in the natural course of events because they are too part apart.  This is exactly the type of connection that could elevate the college experience and would force young people out of their co...

I was stuck in rain in a small town recently and with nothing to do for the evening decided to walk around in the mall. Being a weeknight, the crowds were sparse and the stores largely empty. I went from one to another often to find myself the only customer. All items were over-priced the point that even clearance rack prices made no sense. It was no surprise that no one was buying. They say that the d eath of the American mall may have been greatly exaggerated and I certainly claim no subject matter expertise on the topic averaging two visits a year. But in times past, a mall would rarely be this empty no matter what day of the week or time of day- it was always a good time to shop for someone.  I wonder if working from home has reduced mall attendance. People could have swung by on the way home or on their lunch break but now that will need a separate trip- the opportunistic traffic could have faded out resulting in the deserted look. For the one off shopper like it it feels mor...

The life of a college student is fraught with many complications but what the kids are going through in UC is a different level of pain .  experiences of students searching for housing drew stories of stress-triggered hair loss and nausea, fear of having to drop out of school and disproportionate harm to low-income communities of color. One person, who asked for anonymity, described living in a car for the entire year and reaching out to campus officials for help, only to be told to "sleep in Walmart parking lots." If that is the experience a young person has coming into adulthood, it sets the tone for their expectations in life going forward. Of as a student they could at best hope to sleep in a Walmart parking lot without being thrown off, chances are that they will settle for severe underemployment coming out of college. With that kind of baseline a well below average salary and very long working hours will feel like an accomplishment. The person can afford a bed in a hous...

Interesting read on why some people are mosquito magnets (like me). Having a higher metabolic rate leading to greater production of carbon dioxide seems to the big factor. From what I can recall of my childhood in my grand parents' house where there was the greatest abundance of mosquitoes, the kids were more impacted than the elderly. My grandmother's physical activities were confined to cooking a few dishes and supervising the domestic help on the rest. Once those chores were done she was mostly stationary and not attacked by mosquito swarms like us kids were. The human mosquito magnets you can spot at summer parties may have a genetically high metabolic rate or may be more physically active than other attendees. They may also be undertaking other activities that increase their metabolic rate, such as the consumption of alcohol. Increased metabolic rate is why runners attract more mosquitoes during their cooldown stretching exercises. Pregnant women, perhaps due to their inc...

Work has been a series of upheavals lately with stress oozing through the collective pores of my co-workers. There are such times of major unrest when it everyone is impacted one way or another. On one of the hardest weeks I had a chance to spend a few days in a small beach town - found a cute place on at price that could not be passed. It was a working week still with long hours and the insanity continued unabated. But the change of scenery and being by the ocean atleast at once a day restored some balance. J called to chat on one of those days and wanted to share some things that her bothering her - the usual challenges of being out in the world as a working adult and being unsure of what this is all about. At some point I lost the hard-won balance and reverted to being the mother who only sees a to do list when with her child. The things that are left to be done hung like a cloud in that space between us that is supposed to be warm and nurturing. That was how it was for most of her ...

Thought this was a beautiful way to describe why the words your partner says or prompts you to say is so valuable: Here was a man who could string together words in all the right ways. I ate his words. His words made me feel things. He was honest and cynical and apologetic and vulnerable and guarded. He read my words and encouraged me to send more words. He didn’t even seem to mind long-winded digressions. I didn’t know yet how important that was.  Havrilesky, Heather. Foreverland (pp. 16-17). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.  Those long digressions are no less important and it is important that there me room for them without impatience or judgement. How many times have I started to share something about my day and all at once there was trigger that took me back in time a couple of decades and suddenly the conversation became about an entirely different and unrelated thing. Having a person in my life who understands that I take such detours often and there is a method to the mad...

Read about this project by way of MeFi and could not help thinking about favorite foods from childhood and home both long gone. A nice way to get the homesick to feel less weary specially when the loss is hard and permanent like that of a young asylum seeker For those newly arrived in the UK, adjusting to unfamiliar surroundings and making new connections can feel daunting. Louise Sidibe,  Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children Lead for Leeds recognised this, having spent decades working with young people in Leeds. She saw firsthand how the comfort of cooking, eating and sharing food was a reminder of home and could help with this period of change.  With an idea to help comfort others arriving in the UK, a group of talented individuals used their skills and knowledge to recreate some of their favourite dishes. Many interesting dishes to try there but the one that looked most off-beat to me was Hilbet and Silsee. All familiar ingredients put together in ways I would not ha...

“Theme parks will develop in a way that you’ll have more and more interactivity. “More and more customisation to your customers as well: all the parks will know who is coming in, their name, their age, probably what they like and what they dislike, and therefore they can transform the park for each guest. And each guest experience will be different and probably fitted directly to that guest. A theme park was already about specific "themes" that drew the associated interested crowd. There had to be some joy in partaking the experience together as a family or a group of friends. It was place to be and have a good time together - and the group in question had a similar idea of what that looked like. Thanks to a move towards hyper-personalization that may be the theme park of the past. The social bubble will now fit just one and people can be lonely in a crowd like never before. This is one of those things were businesses cannot leave good enough alone - they want to innovate and...

This article reads like a cautionary tale - the name of this one is Valley Fever but there are similar stories around the world. The climate of a place changes too much too soon or both and unforeseen consequences follow for every living creature of which humans are one. In my neck of the woods it seems like the air has become stiller over the years - not sure if I am imagining this but there is no breeze most of time. There is random rain and some gusts of wind but a gentle breeze has become a rarity, There is a general feeling of stuffiness all the time that will not let up. It is like the atmosphere is pregnant with things waiting to happen - things we will know nothing about until they are revealed.  Maybe we are experiencing a wind pattern change here and it impacts how a person feels physically and mentally. This level of stillness is usually associated with a lull before a storm - you anticipate the storm, it duly comes, might blow over without much harm done and everythin...

Read this Philip Larkin poem recently and the last few lines of the last stanza stayed in mind through the monotonic hum of the workdays Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose,    And age, and then the only end of age.   I wasn't sure how to interpret it - this is a comment on how well use our time or not. In Larkin's case he remained childless and that stand's in contrast to Dockery his former classmate who had a son. For other the divergence from their once peers and equals could come about in different ways. It would perhaps make them question their use of time and how well they have age and if how they might feel knowing the end is not so far away. These are probably good things to contemplate even without having a moment like Larkin did. There is the version of who we once dreamed we might be and then as time left starts to shrink, consider how well we used what we had and what might b...

As much as I love spending time outdoors and working in the yard, it is a constant battle against creatures that bite. There used to be a hammock between two old trees in my house. The old owners used it and the spot is perfect - secluded and shaded.  It would be ideal to take a nap there in good warm weather and curl in a blanket on a chillier afternoon. Neither is an option for me given my propensity to get bit by any and all creatures that bite humans. But maybe zebra print could come to the rescue of folks like me and extend to things beyond horseflies “We show that the attractiveness to horseflies of a dark brown human body model significantly decreases, if it is painted with the white stripes that are used in body paintings,” the authors write .  “Thus, white-striped bodypaintings, such as those used by African and Australian people, may serve to deter horseflies.”

Caught up with my friend N after a long time and conversation turned to quality of movies coming out of India and her parents being skeptical about them always and even more now that they are elderly and set in their ways. Made me think about how similar our families were growing up in a very similar social and cultural milieu and yet how far apart our formative experiences had been. She grew up on Disney animation and that was a very small part of my childhood. My parents took me to watch Bollywood movies from the 50s and 60s because they loved the music of that time and my father was a very good self-taught vocalist. He had a huge repertoire of Hindi and Bangla songs and he was always singing when at home. They both liked what was called parallel cinema in those days and introduced me to it early.  I used to know other kids from families similar to mine but spoke languages other than Bangla at home. They exposed me to a regional movies made in India both mainstream and arthouse ...

Very amusing to see these pictures of very glamorous panic rooms . In case of the scale of disaster for which such fortifications would be warranted, one would assume months and years of living underground. The service providers to keep the place ship-shape would need to be present and functioning as they would in  a normal world.  What if they decided to band together in this new dystopia and toss the owners above ground. The balance of power and the priorities that drive people would change a great deal if there is huge population thinning and the world becomes largely uninhabitable for a long period of time. But this is not how these folks are thinking about their place in the world in the event of a large scale societal collapse.  Never before have our society’s most powerful players assumed that the primary impact of their own conquests would be to render the world itself unliveable for everyone else. Nor have they ever before had the technologies through which to p...

Like many consumers I love Trader Joe's and make it a point of reading their Flyer end to end though lately I have not been there too much and they have wisely stopped mailing me their publication. They need people who will shop at their store with some reliability not folks like me who read the Flyer to be amused and entertained. To learn that the founder was a man way ahead of his time did not come as a great surprise Joe may have stood on some tall shoulders, but he saw further than any man in groceries before him; by 1967 he had successfully envisioned the consumer of 2017; by 1978 he had perfected a strategy for private labeling that has come to dominate the industry, even as competitors are still playing catch-up trying to understand and mimic it. He did this meticulously, through hundreds of pages of internal documents—he called them Theory Papers—whereby he forecast cultural shifts, currency fluctuations, and educational trends and drew on philosophical tracts, military pla...

My friend A shared this video with me and I absolutely loved it - how to dissect the a story and understand the good and bad news in life in the  words of Kurt Vonnegut . Watching it prompted me to look for  more advice from Vonnegut on how to write well . The best piece of wisdom for me was about not taking liberties with language a musician and take with jazz or an artist with cubism. A writer simply cannot to that to be understood and understandable as Vonnegut says If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledly-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood. And there was wisdom in  this other article related to his views on writing  and being an author. In a way, it explains why I struggle to read fiction with the level of difficulty growing in proportion to time li...

My friend S told me how much she and her mother enjoyed watching the movie Bramhastra  I was curious about her perspective having read mixed and largely unenthusiastic reviews. As we chatted about it, I thought how mythology never gets old and every retelling if done artfully has a chance of re-creating the magic for a new type of audience.  What S was talking about is not the quality of the movie but what it was derived from. A myth reinterpreted for the modern world can bring people of different stripes into a common fold. Those than liked the classic version and are mildly curious about the modern take on it but also relative strangers to the historical version who now grow curious to go back to source. That is a strong unifying force. What is true of Greek myths is true of myths from around the world: Greek myths remain true for us because they excavate the very extremes of human experience: sudden, inexplicable catastrophe; radical reversals of fortune; seemingly ar...

The misrepresentation by way of data comes as no surprise in this story about the ranking of US colleges . With such a tremendous financial incentive to getting a higher ranking, the stage is set for all manner of maleficence - nothing less should be expected. Would be great to have outcomes ranking for colleges instead of what there is today - how prepared are the students for the real world - both personal and professional, how strong and supportive is the alumni network, how happy are the students with the overall experience, would they look back at their time in college and say it was the best years of their lives.  Those seem to be better measures for a kid coming out of high school in helping them decide if a particular college is a best fit for them. A persona analysis of the kind of student who is most likely to enjoy and benefit from a specific college is no less important. I know a fair number of young people who are either in college or graduated in the last few years w...

If a voice assistant is embedded in every device, chances are they should be able to speak to each other. For instance the coffee bot could be programmed to make sure the toaster gets going exactly at the right time so toast is ready to pop same time the coffee is ready. Would be handy to have some eggs scrambled to round out breakfast. It's only a matter of deciding who calls the shots for food service and who takes orders. But chaining the activities in a way the stuff is delivered warm by the time you show up to the kitchen would be quite a big help. It could really make a lifestyle difference for the elderly and disabled - they could manage on their own with a little help from the kitchen elves.  With the Voicy, users can make a coffee without so much as touching the machine. All they’ll need to do is speak a phrase like “Alexa, make me a cappuccino,” and the Voicy will then do all the hard work. You can even set the temperature of your coffee, as well as its volume, all throu...