Beyond Festivity

After my little shopping trip for a littler Diwali celebration at home, my thoughts turned to why we do infact celebrate this holiday and how my understanding is fairly primitive given that I have not read any scholarly commentary on Ramayan. There is always the over-simplification of the story, honing on specific pieces of it out of context in the pursuit of some agenda and finally derivate literature that are so far removed from the source that it might as well be a different thing. My mother is a fan of Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri and I have heard a lot of praise for his erudition from her. Recently, I spend several hours listening to his lectures on the character of Ram and why he is revered, the popular misunderstandings about him and why is human flaws make him the ideal role model. 

For me, this was the most I have learned on the topic in a few hours. It felt particularly timely because holding on to and passing tradition to the next generation is that much harder for a person who is not deeply anchored, and actually understands the reason behind things. What served me well growing up feels insufficient now because I am no longer immersed in the culture and things don't just happen naturally anymore. Detached from meaning, the festival becomes disembodied - just a ritual to follow mindlessly based on a date on the calendar. Instead, his lectures got me thinking about celebrating the ideals that Ram is meant to represent - knowledge with humility, strength with forgiveness - were the two that felt most important for me at this moment, this year of my life.

The professional life of a person like me is about being surrounded by self-promotion, peddling a smattering of understanding on something as vision and so on. There are people in my network who describe themselves as polymaths and without any shred of irony. In that world, staying quiet and unassuming is a way to become invisible, irrelevant and dispensable. It was good to be reminded of what is considered perfect and ideal even if achieving that state is full of hardship and peril. The next one about forgiving freely and easily despite having strength to fight and win.  This one I know is incredibly hard because I have worked on it for decades and still slip up. At that moment, it feels like all the work went to waste. Maybe it did not, maybe it takes a lot more work because it is a goal truly worth achieving. 

Holding Mirror

Watched Selfie Mummy Googl Daddy recently and found it quite interesting and thought-provoking. When I was raising J as a single mother, my parents often spent several months from summer through fall with us. That was their opportunity to observe me in my maternal role and not surprisingly, I felt judged. They often told me that I was too engrossed online and not fully engaged with the family - specially pointing to missing out on time with J, this was a particularly sore point for me and produced guilt. In my defense, I was using the fact of their presence to carve a bit time for myself - I wanted to feel like a person whose entire existence was not defined by the fact of motherhood. I was so worn out mentally from doing it all that I was too quick to check out for a bit of space if I could. Every parent has their reason to be less present than they need or want to be in their children's life. Outside looking in, its easy to be judgmental. 

But thanks to my parents calling attention to this issue repeatedly, I learned to be more mindful of what I was doing and more importantly that J might perceive my escape to my personal space as a woman who had an identity besides being a mother. Because of how I was "escaping" J would perceive it as an escape from her and nothing could be further from the truth. I just needed to recharge my batteries and had very few options in the day - I wanted more than anything to do the best for her. The parents in the movie behaved in ways that could be viewed as unsuitable for those who have children to raise. These are also very different times than two decades ago when I was the mother of a young child - I did not have to curate my social life to picture perfection. I also did not work a job that was particularly demanding of my time or attention. Most importantly, I was the product of my own upbringing and life experiences and no two parents can be alike. 

I just felt that I could not catch a break - it was all me or things would fall apart. That feeling wore me out over time and hence the escape. All parents have to cope with some variant of that feeling when raising young kids. The means of escape have evolved over time and we are where we are now. Generally, a good movie to watch for parents of young kids to help them understand how their actions shape the lives of those little people who are observing and emulating them even if they appear to be acting in defiance.  

Problem Solving

Interesting piece of wisdom on how to think more wisely and make good decisions. It makes sense to put a bit of distance between ourself and the decision we are trying to make. Hearing it out loud from the perspective of a third party could potentially reveal blind-spots that we would otherwise miss. I thought to test this with something I have been struggling with recently and do not feel confident that I am making a good choice so my defense has been to preserve status quo. 

Defining the problem statement and my thinking around the solution did a couple of useful things. It became very obvious that there was no way to solve it without increasing risk tolerance. If that was not an option, then the proposed solution was plainly wrong. I was actually able to step away from the situation and see all parameters with more clarity and without any emotional attachment. It was as if I was trying someone else to think things through. 

..illeism is the practice of talking about oneself in the third person, rather than the first person. The rhetorical device is often used by politicians to try to give their words an air of objectivity. In his account of the Gallic War, for example, the emperor Julius Caesar wrote “Caesar avenged the public” rather than “I avenged the public”. The small linguistic switch seems intended to make the statement feel a little more like historical fact, recorded by an impartial observer

To the modern ear, illeism can sound a little silly or pompous – and we may even deride famous people who choose to talk in this way. Yet recent psychological research suggests that illeism can bring some real cognitive benefits. If we are trying to make a difficult decision, speaking about ourselves in the third person can help to neutralise the emotions that could lead our thinking astray, allowing us to find a wiser solution to our problem.

Car Nanny

Our cars are increasingly smart and connected with terrible privacy protections and now we could look forward to an automated sanctions when our speech patterns shows we are driving while intoxicated. It just depends on how the research and the solution built on its basis are put to use. For a teenage driver, if the car decided to pull them over and not start until their speech clarity had become normal that would be useful. Maybe ping the parents to make them aware of their teen's whereabouts while at it. 

Even a speech clarity test if starting to drive at night or in adverse weather conditions could have some benefit. Some may not like the idea of their car acting like a nanny but there is still some value it. The risk of automating such things is always that people will find workarounds and the nanny technology will need to stay ahead of the cat and mouse game these things tend to become. Even the abstract of this research gives one pause to the fairness of the AI to non-native English language speakers. Maybe the person sounds garbled and drunk to it even when stone-cold sober. 

Devices such as mobile phones and smart speakers could be useful to remotely identify voice alterations associated with alcohol intoxication that could be used to deliver just-in-time interventions, but data to support such approaches for the English language are lacking. In this controlled laboratory study, we compare how well English spectrographic voice features identify alcohol intoxication.

Data Poisoning

I love the concept of Nightshade - it solves a very worthy problem, protecting the rights of artists.

When integrated into digital artwork, Nightshade misleads AI models, causing them to misidentify objects and scenes.

For instance, Nightshade transformed images of dogs into data that appeared to AI models as cats. After exposure to a mere 100 poison samples, the AI reliably generated a cat when asked for a dog—demonstrating the tool’s effectiveness.

This technique not only confuses AI models but also challenges the fundamental way in which generative AI operates. By exploiting the clustering of similar words and ideas in AI models, Nightshade can manipulate responses to specific prompts and further undermine the accuracy of AI-generated content.

The concept of data poisoning has so far been associated with bad actors trying to cause harm. But in the case of Nightshade the same techniques are being put to good use. Creators of artistic works - no matter what their medium need more protections than ever before. 

Measure Compare

Did not know that the phenomenon had a name (Dunning-Kruger effect) but the description of what it is makes sense.

When it comes to the Dunning-Kruger effect, comparing yourself to others may not be the worst thing you could do—just don’t tell your therapist we said so.

You can avoid being ignorant of your own performance by listening and gaining insight into the performances of others. If your friend who knew only a few Spanish words had asked how the lessons were going for you, your response might clue him into the fact that he’s not all that great at the language after all. Moreover, his poor pronunciation might show you that you actually have an unknown knack for languages.

Comparing myself to others (or more like forced ranked against others) is a core and foundational experience for a desi individual if they grew up in India or among their own kind abroad. You cannot get through the day without being placed in a situation where you compare or are compared against one or more people pegged as your competitors. If this advice on how to overcome the said effect was true, not a single desi soul would have suffered from the malaise. I know that is simply not true. 

There are way too many among us who believe that they have all the answers no matter the question. Conversely, there are many who feel their incompetence and stupidity is quite boundless. Often they are made to feel this way by those who are constantly evaluating, benchmarking and grading them. They start to believe the wisdom of the crowds and give up on believing in themselves. I have to say being desi and having spent half of my life in a very measurement and comparison obsessed culture, I am not sold on the efficacy of the remedy.

Missing Moringa

I always have dry moringa leaves in my pantry. There are days when I miss the shojne flowers cooked in mustard paste - my paternal grandmother's version of it is the standard my taste is settled on. My mother's not too different from it either. There was always a novelty to this dish - the flowers were in bloom on for so long and you could only make the dish during that time. But there was sense of scarcity or impossibility associated with making a meal from this flowers, enjoying the aroma of the dish as it served. When I use my dry moringa leaves to cook, it is to travel back in time when the real thing was in easy reach, when I did not have to make the most of its essence.

It is the difference between wearing your favorite perfume and trying to reconstruct its smell form memory knowing you can never have it again. These thoughts crossed my mind this past Diwali. Going to the Indian grocery store was the closest I came to experiencing actual Diwali. It was Friday evening and the parking lot was overflowing. People were shopping supplies for puja and also preparing festive food. Many like me were taking shortcuts, buying an assortment of sweets and savories. The lady ahead of my in the checkout line was clearly intending to cook a spread judging by copious quantities of ghee, jaggery, coconut and more in her cart. Maybe she had kids at home who would help with the cooking - that would be a wonderful way to bring them along for the cultural journey without being pedantic about it. The guy behind me had decided to keep it simple - a stack of diyas and some sweets.

I was probably in between them - I would cook something elaborate for lunch, dishes that reminded me of home but rely on the pre-made snacks apart from that. It would not feel real no matter what I did so my desire to try has faded over time. In such politically correct times such as we live in, it is risky for people to presume I am Hindu because I look desi and so they shy from wishing me on Diwali. What if they inadvertently trigger something negative. So you celebrate in relative isolation - its only the size and scale of the celebration that varies but the isolation generally remains. 

Looking Forward

Reading these predictions about how AI will change the game for everyone in the next five years made me wonder if there any specific tipping point that makes all this possible for a technology that dates way back. There are similarities between this hype-cycle and the one over Big Data - it was going to be the Holy Grail that businesses must find or perish. That used to be the sentiment until it was not and it sounds like with LLM we might have gone as big as reasonable, feasible and useful:

Shortly after OpenAI released GPT-4, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a crowd at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that he thought the era of “giant, giant” models was over. The strategy of throwing ever more text at ever more neurons had reached a point of diminishing returns. Among other challenges, he said, OpenAI was bumping up against the physical limits of how many data centers the company owned or could build.

So beyond this point, it is about using the technology to produce value. The novelty with LLM (as manifested via ChatGPT) compared to most other buzzy technology (Big Data, Blockchain, Crypto, IoT and more) is the proximity to the end user. Even my mother knows about ChatGPT and has opinions on it. Her only contact with technology is YouTube and WhatApp - she does not even know to type on a key-board and gets overwhelmed if required to turn up the volume or brightness of her tablet. 

When a technology achieves this level of mass penetration at launch, things start to shape out very differently. My mother might as well build her own chatbot - she is only limited by her imagination (which she has plenty of) as not much else is needed. 

Felt Blue

Reading these lines in a poem, takes me back twenty years and the pain has not quite calloused over yet.

I called for you, in vain, even using your secret names,

the ones only the night knows:

wind-kiss, brilliant-fruit, dervish-moon    . . .

Over and over, I said your names,

over and over until they filled

the wounded air of  the car

and when there was no more room

for another sound, they caught and hooked

the ring of   the brakes hugging the rails.

The secret names for me are the ways in which I thought I knew and loved, the ways in which I imagined I too was known and loved. There came I time when the incantations and requiems for the past finally ended. Most days are too full of things to get done to even remember the few fragments of that time that still remain. The rustle of freshly laundered white cotton, the smell of Bvlgari Blue that brought on tidal waves of sadness. All finally .gone because there was no more room

Building Foundation

Sometimes when I share about things at work with J, I get some very sound advice that forces me to reset my existing way of thinking about whatever my problem us. She has been in the workplace a total of one year now but it has been a very intense ride for her and the mental growth is has been astounding in the last few months - its like she crossed some major threshold of maturity. I often feel grateful for the wisdom I get from J and more than that the way she conveys her message - it is gentle and impactful. It makes me want to make lasting change. 

We want to believe that we raised our kids (hopefully well) and the fruit of our labor is manifested in how they turn out as adults. In my case, I simply did not have it in me to give J what she has at a very young age - a certain Zen about her, having wisdom well beyond her years and the manner of speech is not one I could have taught her either. I can get caustic, sarcastic and worse when stressed or angry. It's how I try to overcome and often make things worse. That is simply not who she is - it is not easy to provoke her and even if one succeeds her reaction is well different from mine. Looking at her as she is coming into her own as a young independent woman, I want to believe I gave her some useful foundations and what she has built with it is all her own. I love watching it all unfold like a story that you don't read to the end at once. 

Hearing Stories

The idea of borrowing a person from a library instead of a book to hear them tell their own story is as wonderfully simple and brilliant. It solves for so many things at the same time. People are increasingly reliant on digital means of keeping in touch with friends and family even as real-life in-person relationships suffer from lack of feed and care. Here in America we are living in the midst of a loneliness epidemic. The lines that divide only proliferate even though there is very little to tell people apart in a globalized world. In such an environment, borrowing a person for an hour to hear their story told in their own words is like the much needed breath of fresh air. 

I am imagining how amazing something like would be to have my neighborhood library. I could go there and borrow a person who grew up in a country I know nothing about and spend an hour hearing them talk about the childhood in a town I might struggle to find on the map. Another day, I could learn about someone's experience in a line of work that feels exotic given my background. There is opportunity to learn so much, specially from people who have the gift of time that they are willing to give that to others. The possibilities are endless - there is  one big novel in every person's life story. It's just that most people don't even get a chance to tell it let alone have the capacity to write it. This way people get to hear those stories that would otherwise go untold, unheard and unknown -  learn from them and make human connections along the way

Optimizing One

There is a lot of sense in a 4-day school week for overworked teachers. But there are downsides for parents who cannot be home on that off day and need daycare coverage. The value for the kids having to spend a whole day at daycare instead of at school is questionable - they really don't get a day of rest and relaxation, just a new kind of friction in their schedule with no benefit. It would start to make sense if the kids could use that extra day in a way that was both useful and comfortable for them. For those who do have a caregiver at home, it could work out very well. As with every change way from established "norm", those that are already thriving will likely do even better but those that are struggling will suffer disproportionately.

.. In Chico, Texas, where the public school district also announced a shift to four-day academic schedules this year, officials said positions that used to receive five applications were suddenly receiving more than 20..

It is great that this schedule is effectively a higher salary for the teachers and hopefully it will attract more diverse talent to teaching. Reading this got me thinking about how as a society we are not able to optimize more holistically. In this case the goal is to help the teachers and hope the benefits will flow down to all others in the system. The potential for unintended consequences is rife unfortunately given that the parents and caregivers of the kids will have a new set of complications introduced in their lives from this move. 

This is particularly interesting in the backdrop of rising absenteeism rates in schools and parents preferring to homeschool given what they have seen schools providing in the name of education during the pandemic. I can see the level of chaos and disenchantment with public schools only growing from such moves. The whole point of the system was to bring order and stability to the lives of kids, building a place where steady habits can grow. 

Freedom Limits

Good essay on software for medical devices and the perils of that not being free. The reasoning makes sense in some situations but not all:

Free software in medical aids helps the patient, the environment, and the healthcare system. After all, the software in hearing aids, insulin pumps and pacemakers controls parts of our body. We should be allowed to control it. Software in medical aids has to respect our freedom! Free software can make the medical device last longer. The free software community can fix bugs and provide updates so that patients are not left at the mercy of the companies. Then, patients can choose to repair their device instead of throwing it away. Last but not least, long-time support can save the healthcare system and its patients lots of money

My aunt has been on a pacemaker for almost a decade now. Recently, she had to have a procedure to fix something inside that was broken and there was no non-invasive way to fix the problem. I am trying to imagine a scenario where the problem was software related and the device was out of warranty and some kind of upgrade had failed. If there were open-source fixes for the problem, I doubt the family would feel comfortable about using it. 

It is a huge judgement call for someone to make and if that decision impacts your mother's life for instance, chances are the person will err heavily on the side of caution. I would imagine, my cousin would do exactly what he done in the case of the equipment malfunction - go the most fool-proof route, replace the whole thing if the doctor told that would definitely resolve the issue. That same doctor would not be asked for his advice on the the open-source software solution to the problem. It is a difference between what can be seen and believed by the average person versus faith in something that cannot. 

Searching Tart

Searching for the word Canterbury in my emails for a tart recipe and stumbled upon an exchange with C from over ten years ago. At the time of writing, I had once met her once and we had hit it off. She was married twenty five years at the time to a guy she had met a church. He came highly recommended by common friends so C said "Yes" when he proposed. They looked very comfortable together - I recognized the warm, peaceful feeling between them that could be relaxing to an outsider. I was going through what appeared to be unsurmountable challenges in my personal life at the time, trapped in a miserable, no-win situation. I felt safe to unburden to C and she promised to pray for me. I have no doubt that she did but sometimes good wishes and prayers are simply not enough, It is like having a well-meaning neighbor lend you a broom when your car is buried in snow. Reading through that exchange with C brought back memories I would rather forget. 

We are no longer in touch and not for any particular reason. I wonder now if I had overshared and burdened her in some way. Maybe she wanted my troubles to be over before reaching out again. And they were in due course but I had never told her anything about it. Now, I am not sure where to begin - the context of my connection with C no longer exists. It will be like two relative strangers having lost that tenuous tie that brought them together, seeking something else to anchor on. I am not sure there is any such thing between us. I remember C's forest green Mulberry purse, worn ever so casually. I did not know of the brand but the that purse made me curious and I looked it up. Everything about C was upscale but in a quiet, understated way - just like her marriage was on the scale of compatibility. That purse so became her and not because it was expensive. 

Earning Trust

I am observing a Gen Z on the younger end of the spectrum working fully remote. The company culture is not about being on video - people find it distracting so all calls are off video. The combination of remote work combined with no requirement to even look presentable for work has created some habits that would be hard to break as time goes on. V is able to lay in bed most day and work from there. Even sitting is not a requirement for his job. 

There is no need to wake up before the first meeting of the day whenever that is and he can fall asleep right there in bed whenever he feels like a nap which could be any time of day or night. Monday to Friday proceed in the same manner - a blur of naps and calls all taken from bed, some work in between. Weekends are a different mode when he is out and about with friends who have freed up for the weekend. Many among them are still in school and have more structure in their lives. I don't think remote work is serving V well at all - but not sure if RTO will magically solve it for all Gen Z. 

J is at the opposite end of the spectrum commuting to work five days a week which can get soul-crushing for anyone but for a young person it has far reaching consequences as they cannot prepare themselves for what lies ahead in their lives. The truth for Gen Z and everyone else is likely a compromise and not forcing a strict schedule that everyone has to comply with. For some people and teams, collocating three days a week might be the perfect solution. For others, it may be spending two weeks together every quarter. There has to a rhythm that works for teams and people who are part of the team. A certain degree of flexibility must be afforded so give individuals a sense of balance and autonomy.

People do strike friendships at work - some continue for life. This should however not be the expectation or motivation for coming to the office. It is more about structure in life specially for those who struggle with it. There are Gen Zs out there who can function extremely well while fully remote and not drop into the abyss like V. Forcing them to comply with arbitrary mandates will not bode well for their employers - these are likely among their highest performing employees and they will jump ship the first chance they get. 

Back in my day the right to work remotely was earned based on a person's performance at work. Once they had earned trust with the team and leadership, they were afforded flexibility. Annual reviews were often used to check if the person had demonstrated that they should continue to have the privilege. It was not uncommon to see A players have the ability to manage their schedules as they saw fit. More often than not, these were the hardest working, best engaged and most productive members of the team. Their presence or absence from their office or desk was a non-issue. I am not sure why this is not a valid system any more. 

People Manager

I met a former manager after a long time recently. Like many managers I have had in my life, T was harmless but not particularly useful. He most certainly was not a mentor to me. Twelve or so years ago, I might have had different expectations of one such as T and was likely too consumed with troubles in my own life to notice anything that did not have a "house on fire" grade impact on me. The rest was all noise that I was only too happy to ignore. I saw things in very different light this time. T had assumed that I remained where he had last found me and that the power dynamic between us stayed the same as well. I was surprised at first and then mildly amused. We had a civil and completely useless conversation about nothing. 

Back when T was my boss, we had to do 1:1s once a week and the norm in the company was for the manager to take their direct to lunch and have the chat offsite. It seemed like a nice idea when I started there but good intentions don't always produce desired outcomes. I don't recall any single one of those lunches except one where we went to a restaurant that had only chicken on the menu - cooked in every unhealthy way possible. I recall feeling like a rabbit nibbling on lettuce, unable to find any form of chicken in the menu that did not totally revolt me. 

T sat across from me eating a normal meal. I don't think he noticed that I had struggled long and hard with the available options - it extended from his inability or unwillingness to notice much about people he supposedly managed. We were just there, reminders of status he needed to check on, 1:1 lunches he had to schedule and so on - a lot of unrewarding chores. We were just in his way and he did his best to make it work - tolerating the burden we placed on him. Meeting T made me think about the staggering lack of good people managers in the world. A lot of people want the role to grown in their careers but have absolutely no skills to be a manager. But they exist anyway in all companies I have worked or had as clients. Folks like T actually harm the people they are meant to manage, in active and passive ways. It is one of those roles where the lack of innate talent is a true deal-breaker - you cannot coach or train people to become good managers

Sure, every manager can learn to engage a team somewhat. But without the raw, natural talent to individualize; focus on each person’s needs and strengths; boldly review their team members; rally people around a cause; and execute efficient processes, the day-to-day experience will burn out both the manager and his or her team. 

Old Ties

Some ten years ago, I was laid from a company that I enjoyed working at mainly for the quality of talent they attracted combined with terrific work-life balance. I looked forward to meeting the people I worked with everyday - that made up for a lot that was not right about the job. That year, they let go about a dozen of us - we all took it pretty hard. One of the women in that group who is my friend to this day, has made great strides in her career since that event and has been on a mission to poach the best talent away from the company that treated her poorly. Thanks to her and similar efforts of a few others like her, the best people have left the company, hurting their business. Recently, some folks who had we had known from back then, organized a happy hour for the alumni and current employees. Both of my friend and I decided to attend. 

The bad feelings from that layoff years ago has gone away for us at least - management appeared to be a mix of confused and contrite but tried to be as friendly as they could under the circumstances. It was a cathartic experience for me to go back there, talk to these people that had once caused me so much pain and humiliation at a very difficult time in my personal life - it was the terrible confluence of things that made it so hard. It was impossible for me to rise above the emotions triggered by that event and act with professional poise - so I just stayed away.

All these years later, it was no different than meeting some random group of people any other place or time. The people who once ran the place, all seemed like former shadows of themselves - trying to hold on to what remained of a once fantastic place to work. To their credit, they tried to bring people together to remind them of better, happier times. Being able to forget and forgive was a wonderful feeling for me and I am glad I decided to go there and know for a fact that I had indeed moved on from that event. Time truly does heal.

Work Rant

What this kid's rant about her 9-5 life in the office gave me food for thought. We live in a time where a young lady such as herself should consider herself lucky she even has a job - there is a terrible unfairness to that and it speaks to how badly we are failing our children. If all a young person can do is commute, work and come home to sleep they cannot grow to their full potential as human beings - there is no time to think about what is next, planning and preparing to seize a bigger, better opportunity. It is also true, time moves at a different pace when you are that young - the days all blur into one infinite stretch of quiet, sad desperation - when will I cook, clean, care for me, meet friends or date. J's life is a lot like this kid's life. 

Just because our generation and perhaps those before us had no option but to work in this manner, does not mean that our kids and their kids have to continue to follow a the same soul-crushing pattern. When I started at my first job out of college, having a laptop was a big deal and those that did were considered very special. It was not an option for anyone to work remotely - you had to be tethered to your desk where your computer sat if you job required the use of one. Cellphones started to pop-up a bit later but that did not help untether people from their office desk. 

All that has long changed, the barriers no longer exist and yet we want to drain the soul out of person forcing them to commute like the young lady in the video does. Something feels wrong about this desire to regress the workforce to a more primitive time just to keep tabs on them, better control their lives. I hope such inhospitable workplaces act as a catalyst for innovation and entrepreneurship among young people - a way for them to build a workplace of their dreams and do truly meaningful work along the way. 

Just Being

We sometimes take a walk through a neighborhood close to ours that sits around a little lake. The lake has a small population of mallards, herons and egrets. I never fail to think how those birds have a great life - there is no competition for resources and no animals around that could prey on them. There is a abundance of fish in the lake, the trees and bushes all around it make for a cozy habitat. The people and their houses are set away from the lake by a good distance separated by woods. There are no benches for people to sit around by the lake - which based on your perspective is a good or bad thing. There are walkers (like us) and some runners that do their laps around the water. 

This is never a busy place and the you can almost always expect total silence except for the sound of the birds. Last time we were there it was on Halloween so the neighborhood was a hive of activity with trick-or-treaters doing their rounds accompanied by groups of adults. Back at the lake nothing had changed. If anything it was quieter and emptier - we were the only ones taking a walk. I noticed a pair of mallards in the water, forming a V as they went from one edge of the lake to the other. They maintained a consistent distance between themselves - the male leading, the female following close behind. The V in the water reflected their perfectly synchronized movement. 

I took pause to observe and thought about how they had created beauty just by being and moving - acts of living, nothing more. It made me think if we as humans could ever achieve that state - what might it take for me (for instance) to create observable beauty in the world by simply being and moving. I could not come up with anything. It seemed like that was a gift reserved only the very young - a baby could certainly create beauty just by being. 

Toxic Culture

Reading these lines from What If This Were Enough made me smile thinking about all the times that I have felt the way I expressed myself to my boss or a peer came out a bit too caustic for corporate tastes and that I needed to sweeten the talk:

It’s the boss who wants you to be more polite in your email messages, and not point out the obvious sloppy work and bizarre groupthink and passive-aggressiveness and corner-cutting madness that unfold every day without comment.

Partner teams I have had the misfortune to work with over the years in many organizations, refused to deliver on the most basic requirements of their job without the issue being escalated as high as it could be. But calling them out for such behavior was always considered improper and not demonstrative of "leadership". It was never clear to me how anyone could expect bad behavior to change without any incentive. 

Over time, I came to think that this debilitating level of organizational dysfunction is exactly what everyone in the power structure needed to preserve. The actual work did not support the endless layers of middle-management or the bloated teams with each assigned "ownership" of a microscopic piece of the puzzle. A relative simple problem had to be spilt ten or more ways to turn into a complex, unsolvable mess requiring ten times the headcount to deal with. That automatically grew the remit of each sub-problem owner. Fiefdoms sprung around each of them and as history shows a lifetime of skirmishes follow organizing people this way.

This kind of chaotic federation without any central command and control fosters job security for the most irrelevant and dispensable (which correlates strongly to most overpaid) people in the company. So no wonder such a strong push for politeness and civility - its not cool to bite the hand that feeds you (in the collective sense). It took me a while to figure out why egregiously bad behavior  had no absolutely consequence and was routinely rewarded in companies with toxic cultures. It is exactly what it takes to keep such culture alive and well, which in turn provides the basis for the existence of roles that add no value but pay a lot of money. Behavior that introduces novel friction in the system is the best leadership trait - the person demonstrating it has just carved out a new fief with all the benefits that accrue from it.

Making Space

I can relate to one of the blockers to de-cluttering - avoidance of some stuff from the past that triggers bad and painful memories but buried in that pile somewhere are morsels of good that I do want to hold on to. 

The effort it takes to sift through the whole thing and discard what causes pain is feels like a pointless undertaking - wasted time for very little value. My symptoms of the problem are a bit different from what the article describes but there is avoidance at the root to push the problem to another day and in the meanwhile pretend the problem does not exist

Lettings things pile up, like unopened mail, unfixed paperwork, unfinished projects, and unreturned items, can cause an insurmountable amount of anxiety. "I say this to you now: It will not take care of itself. And you are undermining your self-confidence with every day that goes by and you don't act," the author writes.

I do not have any of these things " unopened mail, unfixed paperwork, unfinished projects, and unreturned items" in that avoidance pile and yet it is a pile that should be dealt with if  I want to improve my life and sense of well-being. All avoidance does not look alike I guess. 

Two Thoughts

The idea that after the population bubble bursts, humankind will be forced back to a primitive way of life has some logical basis. If K-12 education continues declining and kids don't see the point of learning anything because AI can answer all questions, chances are there will be no qualified people left to repair things after natural catastrophes. So, there is a path to going to back to basics and somehow surviving. Maybe that is nature's way of slowing down our unhealthy, unsustainable, unnatural growth. This was not the happiest thing to read so for balance found some inspiration in Simon Sinek's Find Your Why where he starts with :

Fulfillment is a right and not a privilege. Every single one of us is entitled to feel fulfilled by the work we do, to wake up feeling inspired to go to work, to feel safe when we’re there and to return home with a sense that we contributed to something larger than ourselves. Fulfillment is not a lottery. It is not a feeling reserved for a lucky few who get to say, “I love what I do.”

As someone who is yet to find fulfillment at work and struggles for purpose since J left to college, I felt I was the right audience for this book. Maybe I could and would discover my Why too 

At its core, the WHY is an origin story. Who we are is the sum total of all the experiences we’ve had growing up—the lessons we learned, the teachers we had and the things we did. In order to help your companion discover their WHY, you’ll need to listen to stories from their past. Their WHY represents who they are at their natural best and will be revealed through specific stories and experiences that affected their life and shaped who they are.

Reading the essay about the impending population bust and the book about finding the Why of my life back to back feels jarring. Does the Why even matter if there won't be a world (as we know it) left to act on it. Perhaps if we all knew our individual Whys then we might make decisions that would postpone the end-times that that essay portends. 

Bad Sale

I have been oversold on every job I ever had. Earlier in my career, when I was naive enough to believe some of the story, I ended up disappointed. Restlessness set in soon after that and within a year or eighteen months I was on to the next thing. One way to look at a person like me is to say they are a job-hopper - which is factually true. But a closer look would reveal that they had a series of breakups from short-lived relationships that is very much the norm of the dating life. That very same person when the meet the one they are meant to be with, does settle down. They get off the dating market and start a family. 

So is the case with a serial job-hopper - they have been lied to early on in their career much like the person who got off to a rough start with unsuitable partners, then they get a taste for change of scenery and develop a propensity to look around all too soon and with little provocation. As does the woman who had a series of bad dates and questionable boyfriends - she comes into a new relationship with a bit of prejudice - small things can set her off.

As with relationships, it is in everyone's best interest to present the facts of the job the person is interviewing for - no sugar-coating, no half-truths and no white lies. It's a shit job but high visibility, your predecessors did not last more than a year, the prospects of growth are limited, there are things you can learn here that are fairly unique and valuable in the market, leadership is confused and trying to figure out a plan for the company, the money is pretty decent, work-life balance is great and as a boss I promise to stay out of your way and let you do your thing. These things are all true for some of the jobs I have had. If I had been told all this upfront, I might have still taken the job but come in better calibrated as far as expectations and stayed longer - the company could have avoided all the problems this article talks about. 

The problem is that many hiring managers seem to forget the conversations they had during the interview once a new hire is onboarded. So stay tuned into what's going on with those you hire and help keep them on the path you previously discussed. 

Whether hiring or dating, the truth may not always paint the prettiest picture. But in the long run, it doesn't matter how great something initially appears if it was all smoke and mirrors. In business, it leads to unhappy employees and higher turnover rates--a big price to pay for 'little' white lies.

Bad Decisions

Recently, I have been mulling over why competent people sometimes make a series of bad decisions that look like a set of bad gambling bets, each building on previous losses. Is this a time-bound thing that will pass with some break-through event occurring or is there a way to push the reset button on the process. Reading this HBR article on the topic was interesting. Decision fatigue seems to the likely culprit when one bad decision causes new variables to be introduced in an unstable system, requiring the decision-maker to make even better decisions than they were able to make before. 

Under such challenging circumstances and given their most recent loss, chances are the decision is bad one once again. Even if objectively "smart" decision, in the context it plays out badly. So now we have upto two bad decisions - the later worse than the former. The system is further de-stablized and yet more unknowns come into play and the cycle continues. It is possible to get to the point, when this decision-maker will simply not be able to climb out of their hole without divine intervention. The science of decision-making offers some insights into how we can fall into the trap of making the first wrong choice that can lead to a domino effect.

Seeking End

I have seen a couple of people who went from being completely healthy to nearing death's door without any early warning signs. While not very young were still too young to die - their parents were still alive. How a person thinks about their own impending death is probably more complex than anything else they might have spend their time thinking about. Having an estimated date attached to an event that is an absolutely certainty in everyone's life, it becomes hyper-real to that person and those close to them. It can be an out of body experience for loved ones who cannot forget for a minute what is coming and yet the person's life and normalcy feels like a daily miracle they are grateful to witness. I could not help thinking about my journey as a helpless bystander to the soon to come death of people I loved, as I read this story abut medically assisted death. 

..legalized MAID, allowing physicians to administer lethal drugs to patients who, as the law put it, had a “grievous and irremediable” sickness, disease, and disability and whose “natural death” was “reasonably foreseeable.” (Interpretations of the term “reasonably foreseeable” and what sort of timeline it denotes can vary, but it is generally understood by clinicians that it can mean several years.) This would, presumably, allow individuals with terminal illnesses to end their lives when they wanted and on their own terms.

Of all the key-phrases listed here, the more pernicious one is "reasonably foreseeable". What does that even mean. There are people in this world who bring incomparable value to the lives of others every hour and minute they live. The "foreseeable" is hardly a number a clinician can assign to their life. Then the issue of "grievous and irremediable" while that sounds like an absolute truth, it could be that the patient's perspective should matter too.

Dark Face

The racism inherent in the technology of camera phone is a problem a brown woman like myself is very familiar with specially if she happens to be one is frequently shares the frame with light-skinned people. The only way for me to get a passably decent picture is to put on make-up with HD powder to finish and make sure the lighting is near prefect. These conditions are not achievable in a candid shot and out comes a picture where my face looks dimension-less, weirdly blotchy, deathly exhausted and worse. It's not they way I want to memorialize the moment - not sure anyone else in the picture wants it either. 

I don't wear makeup regularly and am fortunate to have skin that can get away without it. In pictures taken by a phone (which is almost always the case these days), the light-skinned person in the frame looks mostly like themselves, maybe a notch paler in comparison to my much darker version as the phone camera renders me. I have absolutely no problem with dark skin (my own or that of anyone else - its who we are naturally and it is perfect for us) and I am very happy with the shade of brown I am. I do have a problem being turned into a caricature of myself and being forced to use makeup to try and get around it. 

It is not that tech companies or smartphones are inherently racist. The people developing these technologies, which usually are made in US companies, are overwhelmingly using data sets that are heavily influenced by white people. What tech companies and smartphone makers can be accused of, is ignorance. Having said that, we’re not sure if that’s a good enough defence.

Without Phone

I definitely have nomophobia. J has called me a wall-hugger given my propensity to plug my phone to airport walls even though I have a phone charger that is fully charged. Nothing short of phobia explains the behavior. This is like having a Plan D as a contingency when the first three fail. It seems like this particular phobia is a manifestation of some other unresolved issues the person has

What causes nomophobia, then? Well, first and foremost, phones. Mobiles are connected to the internet, making them highly addictive instruments. But it’s also possible that nomophobia could be a symptom of another addiction or anxiety.

Other anxiety is likely where things originate for me. I am yet to get used to the idea that J is an independent woman living her own life and a phone call from her is not a crisis that I need to dive in and solve. The calls tend to be about rather mundane things like an air-fryer recipe she is getting ready to try and has a question, which nail color I think would work best for her outfit or some such. There has not been a precedent of the kind of phone call that I am on hot standby for. If there is something more substantive to discuss, she will pre-arrange for a time to talk - these patterns have been established for a while and my brain is somehow slow to catch-up. 

But there are other anxieties like leaving the phone behind at home and driving. Losing the phone entirely is a whole another level of trouble. One of my co-workers had his identity stolen when he lost his phone and it took about six months to have things resolved - hearing him tell the story would make anyone nomphobic.

One Song

This past Puja season, connecting with Bengali friends triggered a lot of musical nostalgia. This is the time of year for me to soak up the music I grew up with and have lost touch with over the years. My father was always singing something - his way of expressing this mood and mental state perhaps. My mother hummed tunes but was not much of a singer. For reasons I don't understand, I did not inherit the humming or singing traits from my parents - and in that sense, I must also lack the ability to vocalize my state of mind. If humans are meant to have vocal or physically demonstrative form of expression like dance, then it can be viewed as a handicap to lack both. 

My Bengali friends can all hold a tune, some with more dexterity that others. We all have a few Tagore songs that are particularly special or meaningful to us. It is interesting when the same song is The One for a few of us and yet the reasons are quite different. This song has evolved in how it makes me feel over the years. When I came of age, the lyrics spoke to unreciprocated infatuation - something I was familiar with given how afraid I was to show vulnerability. In later years it became about that moment when I hesitated to make a commitment to a relationship. 

For my friend S this was the song that reminded her of deceased father, the way he turned back one last time to wave goodbye before leaving her home. She is an accomplished singer and recorded the song in her home studio this year as a tribute to him, the last wave of goodbye is now only a memory that she can bring alive with her voice. Speaking of Bengali girls who can hold a tune, brought to mind this very special one that I can listen to all day. 

Being Quirky

Sometimes and ad is so nicely made, it makes you not hate it at all no matter how often it comes on. Discover's Jennifer series may turn into one of those. Its funny, quirky and touches some common chord. We like exclusive to be truly exclusive so we feel special but so does everyone else. 

That is the sentiment these ads have tapped into very artfully. I for one am looking forward to what comes next. I cannot think of another time when I could say this about an ad since chuckling at the latest Amul ad back in my childhood. Amul felt the pulse of the country and the paid advertising homage to the the most trending topic of the day. Apparently, the jabs Amul ads could freely take back in my time are not so beloved these days. 

While the Amul girl’s snark has tempered, she remains omnipresent. She’s on every packet of Amul milk, with 40 million sold per day. At least once a week, her ad is in the pages of the top 30 newspapers in the country, amounting to roughly 40 million copies, and her face appears on roughly a hundred billboards in the country, including one just three miles from the daCunha Agency’s Mumbai office — where illustrator Jayant Rane, 63, has sketched and painted every Amul ad by hand since 1988.

It will be interesting how Jennifer fares before she runs into trouble like the Amul girl did. 

Parented Out

At the going rate, it won't be long before the idea of having a child will become one only the wealthy can entertain. The numbers are eye-watering. Back in the day when I had to pay for child-care as a single-mother on a modest income, it was a fifth of this and even that felt like a lot. There were parents even back then who had it much harder than I did - they were truly stretched thin. These numbers do not make sense. People on average have not seen their incomes rise four or five times in the twenty years, not even close. 

The desire for parenthood is already a hard one to fulfill, even without the financial complications. It used to be that people could count it as a natural life stage thing. Not anymore. I have had women in their early 20s tell me that they are considering freezing their eggs. Why postpone what must be done any way. One of my good friends finding herself single in her late thirties was getting nightmares of her eggs shriveling inside, followed by her womb and the rest of her. She would wake up expecting to find a pile of dust where she had been sleeping. The right partner simply did not come about for her though financially she could have afforded a child very comfortably. H did not have it her to travel the distance alone. 

Men may experience less stress because the clock does not run out on them as fast. In theory all parts of the puzzle may come together later in life and there maybe a willing younger woman who can make the dream of fatherhood come true. But the financial stress of raising kids is something men talk about too - the career and life choices they can and cannot make are driven by that.