“Learning is not about turning on a light. Instead, it’s about constructing better and faster roads. Smart brains are efficient brains, and that efficiency comes through myelinating brain wires through repeated practice with specific feedback. Although it makes learning more difficult, it’s a difficulty that pays off in the long run.”
crossings as in traversals, contradictions, counterpoints of the heart though often not..
Productive Struggle
“Learning is not about turning on a light. Instead, it’s about constructing better and faster roads. Smart brains are efficient brains, and that efficiency comes through myelinating brain wires through repeated practice with specific feedback. Although it makes learning more difficult, it’s a difficulty that pays off in the long run.”
Burst Point
Missing Mahalaya
Listening to the Mahalaya song on the morning of made me tearful - the familiar effect of this music on me the longer I have been away from home, family and roots. I can pretend none of that matters most of the year until on the first day of Puja, the sound of Birendra Krishna Bhadra's voice triggers good memories I have left behind. The mild nip in the air, waking up very early in the morning and tuning into Akashvaani to listen to this with my parents. The scene was repeated in every Bengali household - we were a community in a way we never were any other time of year. This was the music that set the stage for Puja - a much simpler affair when I was growing up in a semi-rural place outside Bengal.
There were enough Bengali people there for Puja to be a big thing and the everyone else was more than happy to participate in the festivities. So even if Bengali centric, it was not a celebration that excluded anyone. Very few of my friends were Bengali at the time but their enthusiasm for Puja was no less than mine. We all looked forward to this time. It is unlikely anyone of us thought too deeply about good and evil, the symbolism and the esoteric interpretations of the Puja.
It was a time to celebrate, wear new clothes and eat a lot of street food. The predictability of the whole thing was a huge source of comfort - no matter what happened in people's personal lives year-round, they could count on Puja arriving on schedule and being able to have the experiences they had come to expect during that time. I miss that more than anything else - Puja to punctuate my existence in way that made the rest of it read more cohesively.
Deeper Knowning
There is a big difference between knowing and familiarity as this article about companionship AI points out, I have been using ChatGPT to help me with travel itineraries and the results are somewhat useful. I get enough information to re-think my original plan or fine tune what I had in mind. In this case the AI knows information on the subject where I want help but is not familiar with me beyond what I share in the prompt itself. For example, it has not had the opportunity to review all pictures from my past vacations and identify the common themes for those in which I looked the happiest. There could a dimension there that helps with building me a custom trip-plan - one that was aimed to maximize my happiness.
If your house caught fire and you asked a stranger walking by to help, they might be able to call 911 for you, which would be helpful! But if someone who knew you for 20 years was there, they’d be ready to grab your pet turtle, or remember you needed your insulin, or realize that they could run down the block to flag your cousin who lives down the street. They’d know your children’s names and personalities to help keep them calm. They might even show up six months later, when your house was rebuilt, with a casserole in hand to welcome you home. Such is the power of not just knowledge but familiarity, even a certain intimacy. And that’s what’s unlocked when you have a large language model (LLM) by your side, collecting bits of knowledge about you and your life.
The reason such a companionship AI is so alluring is that most of us do not have this mythical friend who goes back twenty years, knows everything about us and is there magically to help us when we find ourselves in trouble. We seek the comfort of having someone who is intimately familiar with us - the life we once had, when people lived in the same village for generations and the family unit was in a sense the village itself. There would be no lack of such friends who could help in a crisis. That way of life has long vanished but the craving for love and companionship has not - so that's the role we want a companion AI to play. Even if it were to be able to do so, it will come at the cost of even greater social isolation from the real people that form our personal worlds and lives.
Wanting More
For several months now, I have been working slowly with my parents and J to organize a vacation from the three of them in India but away from Kolkata. The idea was that it would be a change of scenery for parents while J could see a part of India she has never been to. Making this happen turned out to be a very slow and iterative process with many fits and starts. While everyone involved is well-intentioned, age and cultural differences makes bringing them together complicated. Plans are made and unmade all the time. This is very far from a conflict and yet the process has proved stressful for all involved.
My friends who have elderly parents have counseled me that I would be better off not trying to dislodge my parents from the comfort of their home - have J visit them where they live. There is some sense to that but I find that I am struggling to give up on my vision of a vacation for the three of them in a place new to them all. The hope is to create new memories where everyone starts exactly at the same point - a very hard thing to do when there is such a big age and experience gap between the people involved.
I am imaging that this vacation they take together will re-calibrate their relationship - it will become one between adults who love and respect each other, that conversations will be had between J and my parents that have not been had before. We are quite close to making this all come true but I will be a bit on edge until I my dreams actually come true.
Talking Sense
OMG (2023) is a movie that could be classified under a few different genres. Irrespective of tagging, it was enjoyable and brings up an very relevant topic in a non-threatening way. I grew up in an India full of contradiction at home and outside. In the same family we had people who were extremely prudish and would sooner die than talk candidly about sex and those who did not believe in filters. And this was not about age or gender. From what I could, the attitudes were more determined by what each person's understanding of Indian culture and heritage was.
There were those who had fallen victim to Macaulay's efforts to cleanse our heritage away to replace it with some foreign and serving the interests of our overlords. The others believed that an true independence for India meant returning to our roots. We are hardly agreed on what those roots were and how far back in history we needed to return to find them and if the misogyny of Manusmriti was anything worth clinging on to.
Somewhere between these two groups were those that took a cherry-picking approach of selecting what made sense from various phases of Indian history. I aspired to be one of those people when I grew up but it turns out to be a lot harder than it looks - there is a lot of conflicting ideas that have to be turned into something cohesive that aligns with their values framework.
In OMG the protagonist delivers a message that lands without much controversy on the average person. The use of a divine figure to deliver the boldest messages is the best way to neutralize it. Our gods have an established tradition of saying and doing things that mere mortals would not dare to from the fear of. The emissary of Shiva in the movie is fairly peaceful and smiles a lot.
Paid Advisory
The findings of this expose are not so surprising. If the consumer is gullible enough to be influenced by an influencer on seriously big-ticket items like health, then perhaps that is the real problem - they need to be taught to be more critical and skeptical. Its one thing for a consumer to follow fashion trend on clothes or the latest in home decor (neither entirely without risk but definitely not catastrophic) but quite another if they decide to listen to advisory on what they should eat - even if that comes from a so-called dietician.
If what they hear does not square with long-standing wisdom, they would be wise to question it. There are no new or novel trends to follow to maintain good health - the commonsense advisory includes lowering stress, being physically active, getting enough rest and eating sensibly. Those things have been true forever and will not change until the human body evolves to become something entirely different from what it has been for our recorded history.
Shana Minei Spence, a dietitian with more than 265,000 followers on Instagram, eats pizza, French fries and ice cream in her social media videos to illustrate that no foods should be stigmatized. Spence, who works for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, describes herself as “pro-processed foods.”
Anyone who takes such advisory seriously has bigger problems. Maybe they want an excuse to do what they know to be irresponsible and just have "professional" endorsement to support it. Maybe that is the niche these influencers and their backers have tapped into - people who want some form of validation do continue doing things that they know to be harmful for them.
Seeing Often
For a whole week recently, I met a lot of people - much more than I usually do. It was work and vacation combined in the form of a road-trip that allowed us to stop at places we haven't been in a while. Around day four, I noticed I was getting exhausted from meeting yet another person (who I was still excited to see after a long time) because it meant I would need to sit across from them, see them and have them see me for a period of time. I wasn't sure why I would find that draining all at once.
Maybe it was the passage of time and having to confront who we had each become - the fear of being disappointed combined with that of disappointing might have played a part. In the end, none of that happened - it was just nice to meet people after a long time, the initial shock of seeing and hearing about the changes since the last meeting disappeared quickly and the conversations felt just as easy as before - however far back in time that before might be. Reading this essay about how we were never meant to see ourselves this much made me think about my own recent experience with being seen too often in one-on-one settings.
We still don’t know what the full impact of seeing ourselves so often will be, and what the end result will be of this seismic shift in culture that began with the advent of the mirror. While cameras and mirrors might be neutral objects, it’s becoming clear that the rate at which these technologies have become available to us is quicker than we’ve had the time to mentally adjust to. One solution to the growing self-esteem crisis might be to de-prioritise the importance placed on appearances and put the focus back on community-building, resisting the immense pressure to conform to impossible beauty standards. It’s a nice idea – and one we should always be working towards – but it will also take a seemingly insurmountable amount of collective power.
In my case it was far from "impossible beauty standards" - the discomfort was more from the visual manifestations of live events, specially those that were unpleasant. Did the person who had known me from a very different time, see those signs and if so would it change anything.
Technology Crutch
When people in positions of power, authority and influence make off the cuff remarks, the consequences could be unpleasant. Its unclear what how the 50 vs 10 data point came to exist but it would be a shame if it morphed into a fact
President Biden recently made the extraordinary claim that, largely due to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), “we’ll see more technological change in the next 10 years than we’ve seen in the last 50 years and maybe even beyond that.” If AI could deliver such progress, it would represent an incredible advancement in human progress, and policymakers should do everything in their power to realize its potential. But even with AI’s dizzying possibilities, it is highly unlikely that technological advancements in the next decade will outpace the achievements of the past five decades given the extent of innovation in this timeframe. This matters because if the assumption is that robust innovation is on autopilot, then efforts to promote innovation can slacken.
I was chatting with a kid still in college a couple of days ago to get her perspective on AI and what it means to be a poet or quant these days for a young person like herself. She said it was more imperative than ever to do one's best work poet or quant and not get reliant on AI as a crutch, I tend to agree that quality of mediocre work will likely get elevated a bit so a person wishing to be lazy will be able to do so without too much trouble but the highest quality work will still need something special only a human can bring as long as they don't get mentally lazy. In this kid's mind AI was meant to help her mediocre efforts to look a bit shinier but no replacement for her best work - she expected to strive hard on those to make it count. I have to say I found some inspiration in that perspective myself. With statements like that of the President, it is very well possible that there will be an illusion that innovation no longer needs any feed or care, it will just happen because AI exists as a crutch and exoskeleton - that we are automatically set up for greatness.
Modern Luddite
Loved this article that makes the case for the modern-day luddite. The author calls for a new kind of visionary:
The kind of visionaries we need now are those who see precisely how certain technologies are causing harm and who resist them when necessary.
Lessons from history are worth remembering and learning from:
In the 1800s, entrepreneurs used technology to justify imposing a new mode of work: the factory system. In the 2000s, CEOs used technology to justify imposing a new mode of work: algorithmically organized gig labor, in which pay is lower and protections scarce.
In the 1800s, hosiers and factory owners used automation less to overtly replace workers than to deskill them and drive down their wages. Digital media bosses, call center operators and studio executives are using AI in much the same way.
Met my friend H for coffee recently and found her perspective as a linguist particularly interesting. H thinks that LLMs will greatly reduce the number of writers producing original writing because the incentives to do so will begin to diminish. As such, what the model spews in the form of creative writing will become increasingly mundane over time. The flashes of brilliance that makes classic writing what it is will become just about impossible to come by. Like H, I have a hard time believing that an AI will be able to come up with something original that has the zing of Mark Twain's comments about his own death
‘I can understand perfectly how the report of my illness got about, I have even heard on good authority that I was dead. James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration.’
There is a certain je ne sais quoi about Twain's writing that cannot be captured, bottled and made into an essence that one can add to pedestrian writing to elevate it into something it is never going to be. Maybe that is exactly the thing we need to pursue and with greater zeal than ever before - imbue our own writing with something special even if it is not of the highest caliber, atleast unique and irreproducibly our own.
Making Cut
I haven't seen most of the shows that this list includes in the top fifty but have seen Mad Men which is probably my all-time favorite TV show as well. Being that Sex and the City (which I have also seen) is at number fifty, I get a decent sense of the where the rest would fall specially that I am familiar with Parks and Recreation, Better Call Saul, The Americans and The Daily Show. I feel like I have tasted a good sampling platter of shows that would be interesting to watch. The Tudors, Ozark and Monk did not make the cut for some reason. As with any curated list that takes the sensibilities of much reviewers into account, some inclusions and exclusions:
This final list doesn’t look like what any of our individual Top 50s would be — and that’s exactly how a process like this is supposed to work. A lot of these shows are canon, and you’ll see them in any ranking of this type. But hopefully you’ll find some of our inclusions strange and unexpected. Even more hopefully, perhaps when you read our explanations, you’ll come away understanding our perspective and, if you haven’t watched the show yourself, you’ll seek it out — even if you’re not sure you care about a Southern Gothic drama revolving around a wrongfully accused murderer or the story of sisters trying to save a bar in East Los Angeles.
Food Culture
Upon stumbling upon this intriguing chart, I couldn't help but reflect on my own experiences while traveling through the first three countries on the list. The food culture in these places, especially in the more remote areas away from bustling cities, left an indelible mark on me. At first, I attributed my enchantment to the rosy lens of vacationing, seeing the lives of local people as more idyllic than reality allowed. However, as they say, the numbers don't lie. When food is not merely sustenance but a profound experience for the body and soul, it naturally takes time to savor its entirety.
In many ways, the pace of eating in a culture mirrors its values and priorities. Take, for instance, countries like France, Italy, and Spain, where I, as a visitor, was captivated by their unhurried approach to dining. Meals transcend mere nourishment; they transform into social events, occasions for families and friends to convene and relish not just the food but also each other's company.
In these countries, it's a common sight to witness people lingering at the table for hours, engrossed in animated conversations and savoring the flavors of the cuisine with sips of wine. It's almost as if time itself conspires to accommodate the joy of indulging in a meticulously prepared meal—an homage to the skill and dedication that went into crafting it. This leisurely dining approach fosters a profound connection with food and an appreciation for culinary traditions handed down through generations.
Contrastingly, when we look at North America and India—two places I call home—the chart suggests a preference for a faster pace during meals. Perhaps it's a reflection of the demands of daily life, distinct as they are in these regions. People often find themselves hurrying to navigate their hectic schedules, driven by the need to move swiftly through the day. The absence of a robust social safety net can cast a shadow, leaving individuals perpetually on edge, as they must fend for themselves until the day's end. Achieving the kind of vibrant food culture witnessed in countries that prioritize leisurely dining might entail more than simply slowing down during meals.
Regular Enshittification
Can't say that learning that Google manipulates our search queries to make up its own variant to drive monetization. There is a reason that most searches yield unsatisfactory results and there are no good alternatives to Google notwithstanding DuckDuckGo and Bing. Ultimately money controls the aperture through which people see the world. Between manufactured queries to boost ads, blacklisting of sites for no good reason and lack of other credible search options, those who pay Google for visibility control what the rest of us see or not.
More illuminating is the lack of coverage in the media of Google's antitrust trial. I was not aware of the reasons for it but they make sense from Google's perspective. By keeping this business out of the public eye, they can create a narrative that this whole things is irrelevant and so there is nothing to see.
..deference of Judge Amit Mehta to Google’s neurotic demands to keep as much as possible of the evidence presented in court out of the public eye.
Early in the proceedings, for example, he denied a third-party motion to broadcast a publicly accessible audio feed of the trial. As a consequence, the hearing is only available to people who can attend in person. And even if you can attend, as the writer and former policymaker Matt Stoller reports on his BIG newsletter, “it’s hard to see the trial because huge portions are fully sealed”. This is no way for a democracy to go about checking unaccountable corporate power. Justice needs to be seen to be believed, even if Google disagrees.
Pygmalion Management
I met a former colleague recently who had been fired from the job when we worked together. The circumstances leading to his leaving the company were shrouded in mystery. No one talked about it. We were told S is no longer with the company effective immediately. S was one of the best sales people on team and his exit was met with surprise. Its been a long time since the event, the cast of characters who precipitated his departure from the company have moved on to other jobs.
L was our former manager and I found it amusing that S rated her as "adequately competent" and no major complaints. That is quite a bar to set for a people manager. The person only has to get a barely passing grade and that's completely okay. By any objective measure, L was quite a terrible manager and was let go not too long S departed. In his present job, the hierarchy is much worse and L's only expectations are that his manager will not impede his ability to do the job he is being paid to do. There is the concept of Pygmalion in management which centers around low expectations of managers from their subordinates.
..most managers, like Professor Higgins, unintentionally treat their subordinates in a way that leads to lower performance than they are capable of achieving. The way managers treat their subordinates is subtly influenced by what they expect of them. If managers’ expectations are high, productivity is likely to be excellent. If their expectations are low, productivity is likely to be poor. It is as though there were a law that caused subordinates’ performance to rise or fall to meet managers’ expectations
The situation with S and all others like him ( and I would include myself in this category) is the low expectations of the subordinate from their managers. Following the Pygmalion analogy, that makes the manger's productivity and performance to become and forever remain sub-par. Which means their subordinates will fail to thrive and grow in their own roles. We do ourselves a great disservice by not expecting more from those who have chosen to be people managers - they need to deliver on the basic premise of that role. It is no surprise that S is seeking greener pastures despite enjoying the work he does.
Being Whimsical
Met V after fifteen years and saw some shades of the person I had known back then. She always impressed me with her boldness and confidence at work. She and her then boyfriend owned a marketing agency. She sold and he executed - they worked very well together. V used to be coy about her relationship with N. He was always introduced by the title on his business card and there was no mention of anything else. I worked closely with both of them for about a year and observed the signs of a warm and loving relationship. I was divorced and raising J alone back then and often wondered if V and N had just by stroke of luck found themselves through work and then started a company together. Knowing of her hesitance to talk about her personal life, I never asked.
Over lunch that afternoon, I learned that N and her are married and have a teen-aged daughter together. Counting back, that kid was likely already born when we first met. I seem to recall vaguely that she had a baby she was always stressed about leaving behind. Not being able to tell her clients about her marital status and how it intersected with her business relationship with N, must have created complications but she just dealt with it best she could. She also mentioned a previous marriage and a period of widowhood. All of these events had occurred in her life before she was thirty.
V has started and sold a few companies since then and works as a freelance advisor to startups now. The family lives in rural France because they fell in love with the village they visited a few years ago and just decided to stay on just for the lark. Now they feel pretty rooted there and its their home. That was always the thing about V that I found fascinating. Her story was never static and never boring. She was constantly re-inventing herself and there was no telling what version of V you would see if you met her after a hiatus. She has always inspired me to go off in directions unknown and unexplored and see what's the worst that can happen. In her case, even in the worst case, she got to have a fantastic adventure.
Half Moon
Character Actor
Met my friend S after nine years today. Depending on life stage that can be a very large or rather trivial number. For us it is in between - S is five years younger than me. The spate of events in both of our lives has been intense during this period. She got married to the man she had been in a relationship with since her early twenties. It took her that long to recover from betrayal by her first love, recover her ability to trust anyone. I saw her this time a married woman, comfortable in her life choices that her family did not quite support.
We were taken aback when we first saw each other in the lobby of my hotel - life experiences have changed us both more dramatically than nine years would warrant. It made us struggle to find the right words to express what we were seeing without being hurtful to each other. She was a dramatically different person even if a lot had remain unchanged. It is as if she went from being a character in one movie to another one of a very different genre. You don't fail to recognize the actor just because they are playing a different role.
That is how S came across to me. I have no doubt she went away with very similar feelings about me. After parting ways with her, I wondered what it means when you see people you once knew well after long hiatus and they have gone on to star in a different movie which is still the ongoing story of their life. Do you treat the person as an aggregate of the various roles you have watched them play or the person beyond all of the roles. In a fictional setting the answer is rather obvious but in real life the character seems to supersede the core entity of the person.
Lasting Fragments
I met W after over two decades at a coffee shop in the town where we had first met as young women. She was single at the time and lived in the apartment above mine. I was pregnant with J and on very unsteady ground in my marriage. I have yanked out large chunks of memory from that time to help me forget pain that was making me act in destructive ways.
Years later, when I look back I can barely reconstruct a few hours of content about my life from a period spanning a decade. When I meet someone like W who recalls details I no longer remember, it is as if they are returning pieces of my life to me that were given up for lost, damaged or both. She shared some of her recollections and I was very grateful for that.
Like W holds a few fragments of me, I hold some of others in who passed through my life. I am all but certain those memories I have of them are not the most significant ones for them - but in the context of our short acquaintance, they etched a mark on me. There was a young couple I remember from when I was about six years old. They were friends of my parents and came to visit with us for a few days. I remember feeling that these two had something between them that my parents did not. It was magnetic and drew me in.
I was too young to understand, that is how a couple that is highly compatible in every way feels to the world - they have a calm, centering effect on those around them. The unit feels strong and one that has enough energy to nourish others. I recall telling my parents that I wanted to leave with them - it had been a sobering moment for all the adults.
Ignored Employees
Not surprised to read this story about CVS pharmacists. My local one is a quiet part of a small town and still manages to produce long wait times for customers who need to pick up their prescriptions. There is only one pharmacist there that has been around for any length of time. The rest are a revolving door. If you step on the system even in the smallest way, the whole thing grinds to a halt. My own experience involved a very trivial issue compared to what others might be faced with. I was traveling out of country for several weeks and need my refill a few days ahead of schedule. That out-of-turn request caused a massive issue and required me to wait for an hour almost. The customers queuing up behind me got super-frustrated as I can imagine. As some point I stepped aside and asked to come back later.
When I got back, the issue was not resolved but they were nearing closing time so the queue was lite. The problem was finally resolved and I went on my way but standing there as long as I did that day, gave me some insight into how over-worked that crew of pharmacists is given the flow of traffic to the desk and the drive through window, endless phone calls and what appears to be a very clunky system. When a company decides to leave its frontline, customer-facing employees stranded with systems that are very frustrating to work with, it is a strong signal that they do not treat their employees well generally. They might make all the right sounds about caring about their customers and even make some half-baked effort at delight but in reality the customer experience nearly on par with the employee experience. No one is winning here.
Red Envelope
This post from Netflix reminded me of the free AOL CDs I used to receive in the mail when I first got here. The first few times I was bemused by them and then started to wonder if there were things I could do with them instead of just tossing them in trash. There is only so many coasters a person can use. The AOL CD was profoundly aggravating because they would not stop coming and there was nowhere for them to go. Not everyone has what it takes to turn those into a throne
"AOL...takes the saturation-marketing concept and the creation of needless waste to an unprecedented level," McKenna said. "As (the discs) are not recyclable and last for centuries, they are desperately in need of changing their practice. Others do it too, but everyone has received many unwanted AOL CDs, multiple times, from multiple sources."
The Netflix DVD in the signature red envelope was nothing like it. Those red envelopes got the recipient excited and in the mood for movie night. It was a significant step up from the experience of renting from Blockbusters and the like. The idea that the customer did not have to go somewhere to get the thing they wanted, instead the thing could come to them was not a novel one by the time the red envelopes started to come in the mail. Yet, what was inside it made the difference and the fact that you could effortlessly return it once done.
Cutting Ties
Brick Home
Giving Space
Charming story about a village where time has stopped for a while and where rent is not subject to inflation. In a time where privacy is very far from a given and is being encroached upon from every direction, the founder's rationale for creating this low cost housing project is very interesting:
The estate's namesake is its founder, Jakob Fugger, a prominent Augsburg merchant and entrepreneur whose family name was synonymous with copper trading. While Fugger required his tenants to pray for him three times a day as a strategy to limit his own time in purgatory, he was also a pioneer in terms of creating affordable housing for the poor.
Astrid Gabler, the head of communications at the Fugger Foundation, said Fugger's idea of creating a space for impoverished citizens to get back on their feet was unusual for the time. "Fugger gave people the chance to have a right to privacy when they slipped into poverty," she said.
At the time, impoverished families were often split up and sent to workhouses. "Fugger kept families together," Gabler explained. "He believed that families that had their privacy had a better chance of getting back on their feet."
That got me thinking about the opportunity cost of losing privacy. In a over-crowded space, people can express themselves without reservation. To reflect, contemplate or even do nothing while surrounded by spectators is just about impossible. Climbing out of poverty or any kind of setback requires quiet, alone time to regroup emotionally and resume to the fight. This concept was so ahead of its time. Too bad, its not more widespread.
Melting Frost
My father's recent illness helped me restore connection with a cousin I was dear friends with as a child and got estranged with over the years. It was a slow drift and almost imperceptible at first. We were both young and busy with our own lives without much concern for keeping up with close relatives - there was a presumption that a cousin is a static fixture in the evolving landscape of life, there was no need to feed and care for things that were a given and unchanging.
In a couple of decades, the relationship had turned so awkward that we had no place to start chipping away at the ice. Every move felt stiff, formal and unnatural. This is not who we were, this is not the conversation we would have had in the times where talk flowed effortlessly between us. So we let more time pass and more freeze gather and settle unless it was an impenetrable wall of ice.
As my father recovers, I have been reaching out to people to help him along the way - mainly with recommendations for doctors who could offer him a second opinion. He does not trust the one who treated him. I was not there for the event so I follow his lead - if the doctor does not make him feel comfortable whatever the reason, then it is not a good fit and we need to keep looking until we find one that makes him feel safe.
I decided this was the time for me to reach out to C - the freeze, ice, awkwardness did not count. I wrote to him and he replied almost at once - it was such an amazing relief that our communication was restored. Does not matter the circumstances though one could wish they had been different. I am glad that we are chatting now - about my dad and doctors for the most part. Someday, the subject will change to other things. If we are both very lucky, we might restore our childhood friendship yet.
Dreaming Mustard
I was chatting with my friend D (who is also Bengali) about fish we love versus fish that is available to us where we live. The mullet turned out to be something we both had easy access to. Back in Kolkata, it would not be our first choice of fish but it feels like a treat now where the other options are even less inspiring. We both have frozen hilsa in the fridge to cook on occasion. The whole conversation about fish made me think how we build adaptations around taste we developed from childhood and where we find ourselves in terms of access to those tastes.
Every expat has their unique story of adaptation. It could be oatmeal dosa, scrambled tofu made in the style of egg bhurji, sandesh with ricotta cheese and so on. After we got off the phone, D sent me this link with a message "maybe rethink the mullet?". It made me smile to think of the unforeseen potential consequences of cooking mullet with mustard paste as I like to do sometimes - trying to dress up a fish that I grew up considering quite pedestrian. Turns out that it can do a lot more than taste of mustard.
Telling Tales
Long Wired essay linked to essays generated by ChatGPT. Judging by the similarity in style of writing and the excessive length of writing, I guessed both pieces of writing had AI help. One was acknowledged and showcased as an example and the other was not. Both pieces appear collaborative so the writer's voice and tone is not completely drowned. The essays were mediocre and it was surprising to learn that they were included in some best essay anthology - as a shining example of AI parlor tricks played on literature and writing, maybe there is a case for that. On the merits of writing alone, not so much.
Reading about the mother who does not like the children's book options in the store and wants to write her own adventure story - I can relate to that. My mother was a prolific maker of such stories when I was a child. They were all made up on the fly and held my attention. Sometimes I remembered the plot points at a level of detail she could not replicate in her second telling of the story. I found this deeply frustrating but it never occurred to me back then that the stories were being instantly manufactured.
When it came my turn to tell stories to J, I found myself doing what my mother did but I went for short and punchy plot lines where all was said and done in under ten minutes. J was always one for brevity unlike me at her age - I liked the plot twists and turns, no detail was too small. Different kid, different approach - mothers adapt to what is needed to get the little person to fall asleep. I am not sure how I feel about outsourcing such a delightful job to an AI.
It is a moment of spontaneous bonding, a chance to tell a story about complex things in a way that makes sense to a child. At other times it could be an escape into a wonderland with the child being their age with them. I am glad I got to do all of that myself - flawed and imperfect as my productions might have been.
Peepli Live
Watched Peepli Live recently and though the director did a remarkable job. The issue of farmers committing suicide in India is serious and shameful one - it has made plenty of headlines over the years but the news cycle has moved on. The plight of this community only grows worse. Notwithstanding the weight of her chosen topic, Anusha Rizwi delivers a scathing dark comedy that makes the viewer laugh at times while feeling awful that they find any of this funny,
The situation for India’s more than 260 million agricultural workers is dire. Nearly 30 people in the farming sector die by suicide daily, according to the most recent figures available, typically due to overwhelming debt. Indeed in 2020, more than 10,000 people in the agricultural sector ended their own lives, according to government data.
It was interesting to read a western reviewer's take on a style of story-telling that would be a bit niche even for audiences from India.
..most of the satire has a secondhand feel to it, the sense that we’ve seen this all before. Worse, it often turns to an unnecessary didacticism to hammer home its points, as when a veteran reporter lectures a younger colleague on the reasons why this particular would-be suicide is news, but the plight of all the country’s other farmers who die every day is not. Still, Rizvi occasionally hits on an inspired bit by amping up the absurdity factor. In one scene, a reporter examines Natha’s “droppings,” musing on the ways in which the colors of a man’s feces reflect his mental state..
As a desi born and raised, I don't see things the same way. The point of the movie to me was to demonstrate how the extremely poor and dispossessed in India have absolutely no winning moves in life or death. They are considered irrelevant and dispensable given their large numbers. No one in the movie ever had even a fleeting interest in the plight of this poor farmer who had to auction his land to settle his debt. He was just a pawn in the game whose set of players and rules evolved all the time. The only certainty the story shows that the viewer should already expect if they are from that part of the world - things will end badly for Natha, they will go from bad to worse and he will accept it as his lot. To that end, I am not aligned with this reviewer's summation:
..left to wonder whether Rizvi, amid all her zeal for crafting cheap laughs at easy targets, has forgotten to “consider the person” in whom she’s allegedly interested.
Rizwi is not interested in Natha per se, she is interested in making the audience feel squirmy very about their response to his life circumstances as she douses it with absurdity to elicit "cheap laughs". What does it say about a person who watches this while eating their oversize bag of popcorn and laughing. That is the person I believe Rizwi is considering with interest.
Crumpet Making
Employers trying to get employees to find friends at work sounds a lot like a anxious and over-zealous parent trying to get other kids to play with their at the park or schoolyard. It does work sometimes and that can be true at work as well. Is the role an employer should play? Not so sure that it is entirely wrong to lend a hand. In a large, diverse and dispersed company it may work quite well without some of the complications the article cites.
If the employer brokers a connection between an employee who works a machinist to another who works in the legal department for example, there is almost no likelihood that one would become the boss of the other at some point in the future. However, there is a tremendous benefit to bringing two people together who in the normal course of events have never crossed paths.
..You thought life was bad? At least you are not making crumpets with a stranger in finance.
It is a mistake for managers to wade into the business of friend-making, and not just because it royally misses the point. The defining characteristic of friendship is that it is voluntary. Employees are adults; they don’t need their managers to arrange play-dates. And the workplace throws people together, often under testing conditions: friendships will naturally follow.
The bigger problem is that workplace friendships are more double-edged than their advocates allow. They can quickly become messy when power dynamics change. The transition from friend to boss, or from friend to underling, is an inherently awkward one..
I don't know if forced crumpet-making is warranted but there is no harm is connecting random people in general. Where it goes from there is upto the individuals and there should certainly not be a performance metric for connections made and sustained - that would be a grave mistake.
Feisty Pond
Enjoyed this lovely essay about the ponds of Bengal. The author's recounting of how a nameless pond adjoining his ancestral house managed to survive the tide of modern construction was particularly satisfying to read about:
..As construction progressed, however, resistance arose from an unexpected quarter. Every time water was pumped out of the pond, it magically reappeared the next morning. It seemed as if the pukur itself was resisting annihilation. A few old-timers guessed that it was being replenished by neighboring waterbodies through subterranean capillaries. Others found recourse in the metaphysical. The resurrection was bhuture, “ghostly,” a vitalist force commandeered by spirits.
Unable to lay the foundation for a planned two-story house, the builders gave up after a few months, leaving behind debris on the pond bed. As the water reclaimed lost ground, memory of the incursion lingered in the form of a lonely pillar, its steel rods jutting from the surface. Kingfishers returned to perch there, peering sharp-eyed into the grey-green water. On quiet afternoons, standing by the pond, one can hear again the delicate sound of their headfirst plunge, and watch them resettle, silvery morsels in their beaks.
In many neighborhoods in the outskirts of Kolkata, such pukurs and dobas still remain, resistant to the changes sweeping all around. They are not much to look at but provide a habitat for some creatures - fish, birds, frogs, snakes and turtles to name a few. The pukur is probably the last remnant of the past in Bengal and I am glad some of them cannot be filled.
Manic Phase
I read this Slate essay as a mother-daughter relationship story - really pulling out all the fluff and the extras until only the breath of life remains. It reminded me of my former co-worker D whose daughter did a fair share of drugs but not to the point where an intervention was required - atleast not at the time I knew of her. D was mostly on edge except in those fleeting days and weeks between crises when her daughter sounded happy and normal, making a serious effort to stay away from drugs.
That was when D shone - she could dive into work, immerse herself in it completely and produce the most remarkable results in a very short period of time. The manic phase as she referred to it, kept her employable and earned her the reputation of someone who got hard things done. There was this glorious period of two or three years when the daughter had been completely sober and was really making strides in her own life. D relaxed in sync and did some of the best work of her career during that time.
One of her projects got national recognition and won her an award. And then just like that, D checked out of the workforce and in time from my life as well. Last I spoke to her several years ago, she mentioned that there are only so many manic phases left in a person's life at her age and they took their toll on her. D had not spoken to her daughter for over a year at the time but I have no doubt she would be there for her anytime the need arose - that was an immutable fact of her life.
Blanchard was circumspect about her relationship with her daughter. “Is she living the life I’d have her live? That’s an absolute no. Am I living the life my mama would have me live? F no,” she said. “I tell people all the time, ‘You feel like you’ve been buried. You’re under the dirt. I get that. But were you buried or planted? I was buried for a while here in this. I chose to see if I could grow. And I did.’ ”
Sea Legs
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