Little Surprise

I read a short story written by a friend from college recently. It was a proud moment to see one of our own getting published in a reputable literary magazine. B was a geek who dreamed of being literary without the education in early life or the time to work on her craft later. We were kindred spirits in that sense. I was glad to see her make it somewhere even if decades too late. But the topic of her story put me in a pensive mood. Only those who knew her well from her college das would be able to see that it was autobiographical. She was pushed into an arranged marriage by her parents. It was considered a high-status match for their family - having scored the best deal ever, they made haste to close. In her story, B mentions meeting her ex-boyfriend from college a decade after marriage. The event is described with the degree of precision that is hard to mistake. That was S clear as day. In her story S is married and so is the protagonist but both are unhappy in their own ways. S is estranged from his wife. 

The heroine of the story is married to a physically abusive husband she cannot leave because she has two kids. In real life all facts add up to B. Separating fact from fiction can be hard even when you think you know someone reasonably well. Last I saw B she was in her early 20s so I imagine I don't know her at all. But as two women who are of the same age and some shared life experiences, I believe her story is part reality and part fiction. Her marriage is not what she wanted it to be maybe because she could not invest in the husband fully being mentally away with S and imagining what might have been. No marriage can compete with that kind of perfection - where every blemish can be wished away at whim. It is also likely that whatever it was with S ended with such an ostensible finality that such a story became possible to write - there simply cannot be any truth to it. B was always a woman full of mysteries and I am not surprised to see that she retained what was most unique about her - the ability to surprise. For her sake, I want to believe she has never been physically abused.

High Places

I find this story about the shrinking number of female C-suite execs quite insulting. The implication seems to be that women reached those levels because of diversity and inclusion initiatives that are now waning. That implies that women are not C-suite material and need to be propped up by measures aimed at achieving a certain gender balance. 

..one possible contributing factor to this trend is a “waning focus on diversity initiatives”. Mentions of “diversity” and “inclusion” on S&P earnings calls — which surged during the pandemic, when the terms were mentioned 1,367 times in total — have fallen consecutively to fewer than 100 in the most recent quarter, as legal complexities and backlash have stalled inclusion efforts.

The truth is women have to work a lot harder to get to that position and just because they channel energy into their career does not absolve them from having to deliver an all A performance at home as a spouse and a mother. Sometimes that combination may prove too much to deal with. So its no surprise, the best and brightest don't always want to take on the big promotion 

S&P Global published research just last month finding that women held less than a third of stepping-stone management positions, with Fortune also finding that women stayed for an average ~2.7 years less than male counterparts once they reached the coveted top spot.

Satiating Meal

We landed tired and hungry at the airport after a five hour flight followed by car rental shenanigans that set us back an extra hour. Checking for restaurant reviews, I stumbled upon one with only five star reviews but only a handful of them. The pictures of the food showed the attention to detail - whoever cooked it had cooked it with love. We were a bit concerned about the neighborhood and the fact that the restaurant had its door reinforced with iron-bars along with a very big electronic lock. These folks did not take their security lightly. 

The place was run by a middle-aged couple and the food well-exceeded my already high expectation given the ratings. The portion size was very generous, the quality of cooking excellent as was the service. We came in famished and went away satiated. I told the man that we loved the food and wished we had room for dessert - which looked even better than the food. He thanked us very graciously and asked us to come back again. 

The experience reminded me of something I had heard repeated by a few different women in my family. If you feed someone who comes to you hungry, always make sure that you leave them feeling satisfied because that earns the person who provides the meal good karma. Conversely, if the meal leaves them feel underwhelmed or worse does not fill them, you would earn bad karma. The owners of this very modest establishment in a rundown part of town had by that measure earned plenty of good karma. 

While I may never come back since we were only passing through town, I hope their desire to feed people a memorable meal and a reasonable price will one day get them to a place where they are more visible and recognized, many more customers can enjoy the fruit of their skill and labor. I can recall many negative restaurant experiences - some so bad that I declined to leave any tip at all and even had to find something else to eat because the portion was so inadequate. I wonder if that feeling multiplied across a large number of unhappy customers ends up having outcomes like the women in my family claimed. 

Falling Apart

This Economist article about why young men and women are drifting apart was good reading but ends with a defeated whimper

What neither side has done well is to tackle the underlying problems that are driving young men and women apart. Most important, policymakers could think harder about making schools work for underperforming boys. Mr Reeves suggests hiring more male teachers, and having boys start school a year later, by default, since they mature more slowly than girls do. Also, since “the desegregation of the labour market has been almost entirely one-way”, the state could beef up vocational training to prepare young men for occupations they currently shun, such as those involving health, education or administrative tasks. If such reforms help more boys and men adjust to a changing world, that would benefit both men and women

The proposed solution for boys sound more than a little hopeless. Have them start a year later in school sounds like an obviously terrible idea. If indeed the boy was immature compared to the girls, missing a year of learning social skills while the girls are learning away would be an even greater setback. It is also unclear why vocational education should not be extended to women. 

It may infact balance things out as boys will likely outperform girls in those classes. Both sides could learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses. These days when I read writing of this type - starting with some semblance of a thesis, having data to back it up and then devolving into something it was not aiming for, I have to wonder if the author had help from a hallucinating LLM that lost the plot along the way. All that said, the article brings up a lot of valid points that are worth considering for young people and their families. 

Sweet Spot

Recently, we stopped by at Chinese restaurant at the local strip mall for early dinner. The supplies in the fridge did not inspire any creativity and the day had been too long to contemplate a grocery run. This place was very quiet and we were among the half a dozen people dining there. The food was good not great but that was the expectation given the type of establishment. But the quietness felt wonderful to have a conversation without needing to be loud. The level of loud at restaurants specially the ones that come highly rates is very frustrating for me. I was happy to have mediocre food in relative peace on a weeknight. Noise generally drives business but the the implication is that the diner is there for entertainment

Restaurant owners think they know something about their diners that their diners might not fully know about themselves: They enjoy busy spaces more than they realize. Customers tend to have more fun in louder environments. High-energy dining rooms are more likely to turn diners into repeat clients, they say. 

If you just want a decent meal and not a whole experience, then the loudness could prove a deterrent. Getting the balance right seems to be a pretty dynamic problem. Would be interesting to poll all tables a few times the course of dinner to see if the level of noise is high, low or just right and have the sound profile of the restaurant adapt to what the majority would like. 

Second Chance

I never warmed up to the self-checkout lane though use it the majority of the time. There is something to be said for being familiar with names and faces of people. Some cashiers can be chattier than others, they warm up over time even if things were transactional to begin. Shopping at a big box store where these lanes are typically found is usually a soulless experience. The only human touch could be experienced at the check-out lane which many retailers decided to do away with to save monies. 

Yet the success of retail relies on the human experience at the store, it may be the only way to differentiate from competitors who look and feel much the same and can price match as well. Those few minutes at the check out line can the only way brand can stand out. I always found it counter-intuitive that brands did not see than as an opportunity but as a lever to crank up operational efficiency. Thanks to rampant theft, the math of self-out no longer makes sense and many retailers are removing this option. One can only hope this time around they have the sense to treat the presence of a human cashier and their ability to interact with the customer as the unique brand building opportunity that it is. 

My favorite check-out experience is at Trader Joe's and love that they never plan to introduce self-checkout. They are on to a good thing and are wise not to fix what is not broken. 

Fantastic Imagination

I was reading this essay curious to understand how Richard Feynman distinguished knowing from understanding but was struck by his definition of what is means to have "fantastic imagination"

"If you can find any other view of the world which agrees over the entire range where things have already been observed, but disagrees somewhere else, you have made a great discovery. It is very nearly impossible, but not quite, to find any theory which agrees with experiments over the entire range in which all theories have been checked, and yet gives different consequences in some other range, even a theory whose different consequences do not turn out to agree with nature. A new idea is extremely difficult to think of. It takes a fantastic imagination…”

As someone from with a very rudimentary science background, I was not able to fully appreciate how imagination plays a role in discovery but it got me thinking about art and literature where it is easier for me to see imagination. The framework Feynman proposes should still work. If a movie or a book is genre-defying, intelligent and imaginative then is it the case that it "gives different consequences in some other range, even a theory whose different consequences do not turn out to agree with nature." and is that the reason it is special in the ways that it is, gets the reader and audience to alter their perspective entirely. 

Rejection Style

Heart-warming to read about Toni Morrison handing rejection letters to aspiring authors. There is so much grace and kindness in how she said no. 

..she occasionally ended a rejection by offering her name as a kind of passport with which hopeful authors might navigate the borders erected by other cultural gatekeepers. In 1977, she advised one young writer to find an agent and directed him toward the legendary literary agents Georges Borchardt and Peter Matson, adding, “When you write to them you may say that although I could not take your manuscript myself, I was very much in love with it, and I’m willing to put it in writing.”

The role of cultural gatekeeper is to decide the bar writers must clear to be sellable in the market they address. Being sellable is not always correlated to the quality of the writing or the novelty of thought. The world can miss out on both because someone decided to gatekeep for reasons of not meeting the bar not matter how ill-advised. It is also the reason, it is gets harder to find worthwhile new books.

Owning Fifty

Loved reading about this woman who became a scuba diver at fifty just because she wanted to. In the paragraphs that form the story, it becomes evident that she had potential that was ignored, undermined or denied. There are always the better informed, more traveled and worldly relatives who can't wait to find fault.

It was only at the age of 45 that Uma revived her interest in painting. “When I started to paint, I felt like I was reborn. Then, I saw a documentary on coral reefs which encouraged me to read more about them. I started painting them and holding exhibitions,” she shares.

Once while speaking on the impact of pollution on coral reefs, she was mocked by one of her cousins. “He asked me if I had seen coral reefs in real life, or how the ocean even looked underwater, or what the colour of the ocean was. Although it appears to be blue and beautiful outside, it’s full of pollution inside. This sparked my curiosity to dive deep into the water,” she adds.

What is so inspiring about the story for me is how Uma held on to her inquisitive spirit, fed her dreams what little she could so they would not completely die. If the core of the person can stay protected despite the odds of their life, then one day at fifty they can turn into scuba divers - as if magically. It takes a tremendous resilience and determination to safer-guard that core, the thing the defines who the person is.

Patchwork Family

Nice essay on the building a patchwork family and the particularly painful decision to leave a good enough marriage when there are children involved. An overwhelming majority of folks who are in decent marriages, do their best to maintain status quo. While there maybe the secret yen for change, the gnawing doubts about if this can be the partnership for life, people realize finding good enough is a miracle too. To that end there is the concept of a "parenting marriage" and the rising wave of gray divorces. A parenting marriage simply cannot last after the parenting done. The couple is forced to reorganize in some sense - look the other way or part ways, whichever is less painful, less disruptive. 

To me, ‘blended’ suggests a homogenised state of merging; or, more precisely, of erasing differences and becoming indivisible; the new family, a seamlessly repaired vessel trying to replicate the original before it was ruptured. This attempt at merging into one is where so many stepfamilies go wrong. How families deal with this tension differs dramatically according to what age the children are when the adults meet, and how active a role the stepparent takes in everyday parenting. The term ‘blended’ risks denying this tension. The stepparent is a parent and not yet a parent, the stepfamily is a family but not a family, and one of the base-level challenges to the stepfamily is that its bonds, at least initially, give primacy to pre-existing biological connections rather than the romance that birthed it. Blending is a process that can happen over decades, and sometimes not at all.

Undertaking to blend families can come from a place of courage or desperation. Sometimes there is a bit of both. The process is never quite done, things are never quite evenly blended.

Group Therapy

If you have ever been part of a large program involving between ten to over hundred teams, then you have surely sat in a program retro session. The higher the level of dysfunction in the organization, the greater the zeal of leadership to organize these and spent hours and weeks to get people to provide candid feedback in on what went well, what didn't and what can be improved. At first blush this would seem like an honest and prudent thing to do - let's all be self-critical and call out our collective failures to perform and see what we could change going forward. 

Reality tends to be a bit different. The highest ranking person in the session will almost always kick off the session by saying this is not about blaming people so don't make anything personal. It's only about process that can be improved. So the group consisting of those who precipitated trouble and those who dealt with its consequences are now left to review their collective feedback  as myriad manifestations of broken process. It is as if there was no human hand in such rampant brokenness - it just happened. 

They are not allowed to bring up the fact that A who is up for a very big promotion refused to let his team take any single action that might rock that promotion boat. This meant that the whole organization had to pay for his unbridled ambition in ways that irreparably hurt the program under retrospection. They are not able to address the other elephant in the room that C, a leader who controls a highly visible function in the company, also runs a consulting business on the side. She takes random days off to balance the demands of her side hustle. While there is no conflict of interest, it manifests in her level of engagement and ability to drive timely resolution when issues are escalated to her. Tremendous chaos ensues as teams proceed with hacks, short-cuts and workarounds absent clear direction from her.

Every last issue discussed pointlessly in these interminably long sessions tie back to some person behaving in ways that create conditions where the program simply cannot succeed. The broken processes are a symptom of  such bad behaviors creating domino effects. By refusing to even acknowledge root cause, the whole exercise devolves to a ridiculous charade. After several hours of useless talk, the expectation is everyone goes back feeling absolved or vindicated as the case might be. As a group therapy session this may have some passing value, in terms of being a catalyst for change, the chances are slim to none. The whole point of organizing a retro is for the people in the positions of power maintain their rights to go on behaving badly without fear of consequences. 

No Face

Kudos to this woman for being able to get honest feedback on why she was not hired for the job - not wasting an hour of her life to put on a face - that is called making an effort when you are a woman and seeking a senior level position.

..As an HR expert herself, Weaver pushed for feedback, which is when she was told via email by the recruiter that the company was "concerned that you didn't put forth enough effort into your appearance given you were interviewing for a Vice President role."

Putting effort into your appearance when female has no single or simple answer. How much effort is enough is the question. What if a woman looks at herself in the mirror and has no problem with what looks back at her. Maybe she applied a lot of effort to remain physically and mentally healthy and takes pride that the results show. But for the person in the video call making a decision about hiring her, that would not be enough - this woman did not aim to look flawless and airbrushed. How can she be possibly trusted to do her job. 

I have known a few female leaders how absolutely do not "put forth enough effort" into their appearance. I like to believe that they are so above and beyond good at what they do, that such minor detail no longer touches them. It's great that these ladies are so exceptional but it does not have to be the only way you get away without makeup while being a woman.

Small Wins

I started to volunteer at my local kindergarten recently. The idea has been on my mind for a few years but it took a friend to learn about my goal and hold me accountable - she made sure I signed up for real and just did not waste time "thinking about it". It's early days yet but I already look forward to the mornings I go to the school. The kids recognize me now and beam when I walk in the door of their classroom. We do mundane things together like learning to spell three letter words but it's a great way to learn the distinct personalities of the kids. 

Even if  I forgot a name, I would remember how each child was unique. I go through the same exercise with the group of kids but they all behave differently. As they grow familiar with me, they want to spend as much time being silly and playing. These kids were identified as needing extra help but in reality none of them do. They are just bored and don't want to follow instructions. But none of them are acting out or being defiant - they just don't want to do anything right because its too easy and dull, making mistakes get them time and attention so they love doing things wrong over and over. Once I stop paying attention to their clearly deliberate mistakes, they do things right almost at once.

I am being mindful of etiquette and the fact that I am there very sporadically - the teachers are there every day and it is their job. Its too easy for even a well-intentioned outsider to find fault with how things are run in the classroom. I cringe a lot every time I am there, find myself unable to agree with just about anything that is happening in the name of teaching. When I get back home, I find myself recalibrating that reaction and thinking of ways I could make my short interactions with a few kids count - if there was a way to make a difference. That is not a small challenge and it seems the right place for me to focus. My volunteer engagement at the school has helped me see other challenges in my life in the same way - focus on the small things I can impact instead of being frustrated with bigger things that I will tire of trying to change.

Facts Fiction

Reading this essay about how coincidences are not magical and signs from the universe reminded me of another story I had read a while back also involving truly large numbers, double jackpot winners and chances of sharing your birthday with another person at a party - this one was about astrology. Elsewhere economists have been compared to astrologers.

To a lay person it seems as if you can create a mathematical structure to explain observed phenomenon than you automatically start to resemble a science. But sometimes when you go a step further and start prognosticate what will happen in the future using that same structure - it puts you in the realm of economists and astrologers. Since there is some mathematical basis to begin, then they likely have a lingering claim to science as well.

..Ultimately, the problem isn’t with worshipping models of the stars, but rather with uncritical worship of the language used to model them, and nowhere is this more prevalent than in economics. The economist Paul Romer at New York University has recently begun calling attention to an issue he dubs ‘mathiness’ – first in the paper ‘Mathiness in the Theory of Economic Growth’ (2015) and then in a series of blog posts.  Romer believes that macroeconomics, plagued by mathiness, is failing to progress as a true science should, and compares debates among economists to those between 16thcentury advocates of heliocentrism and geocentrism

Open Window

Being rich and leaving your windows open go together. I have seen this phenomenon is some neighborhoods - one that comes to mind is a townhouse community on the river with boats docked in front of the homes. There is a walkway that meanders through the community and the artsy part of downtown behind it. If you are the homeowner in your living room, you have a much better vantage point than the passersby who might curiously peer into your house. I always thought it was a strange choice to leave windows open specially when the living space is at eye-level with someone walking by.

The only way it makes sense is if the space that is in public view is decorative and performative. The people who live there perform their lives and show themselves in the most flattering light from that open window. Reality is a few walls away and hidden from view. There are likely rooms in that house that are soundproof and also don't have windows open to the world. It makes sense that the rich want to flaunt an ideal life - because it implies money can and has bought them happiness. If that were not true, there is almost no point in doing all the work it takes to get rich and stay rich. I think it has more to do with self-soothing and affirmation than exercising privilege. It is also like being on social media but in real life. You can gauge how the audience receives your staged and performed live - you can do more of what works and refrain from what does not. The author of this Atlantic piece has a different perspective though:

In the U.S., the uncovered window is perhaps less an expression of communal trust than one of personal protection. Wealthier homeowners, who can also afford state-of-the-art security systems, may not feel that they need shades. These curtainless windows have become one of our subtlest statements of privilege. They demand our attention, not only because they give us a peek inside beautiful homes, but also because they project the type of confidence and stability that few of us can dream of replicating.

In my parents' apartment complex in Kolkata all neighbors have all windows open. My mother checks in to see if M her neighbor in the building across from her is by her sewing machine sipping her chai before calling her. This signals that she is done with breakfast and puja and now working on her hobby projects - it is a good time to call. Everyone has some kind of routine that others have learned by observation and it is part of the social fabric. That is very different kind of open window situation than giving some random person walking by your house a glimpse of the Venetian chandelier hanging above your black ebony dining table. 

Total Fadeout

I took my friend L to the most authentic desi restaurant in town. The food and ambience are both a real taste of India without the filters and adaptations that make Indian food very uninteresting to me. I had warned L that she will be the only person who was born outside India in that establishment but it had not prepared her enough for the experience. We found ourselves a table in the farthest corner from the kitchen and the place started to fill out fast. L stuck out and looked pretty lost. 

Across from us sat an Indian couple and I knew the woman from J's kindergarten days. Our daughters we in the same class and I often ran into her at school. But that evening, I could not recall the kid's name or the mothers. I am not sure if she recognized me and had the same issue as I did with recollection. For the duration of her meal she kept her eyes on the food and declined to look our way. L needed help figuring out how to properly eat Masala dosa with her fingers and what ingredients went into each of the assorted chutneys. 

At some point, we got busy in our conversation and I forgot about this woman whose name I struggled to recall. I was not even able to remember where they lived even though I am sure J had to be dropped off there at some point. It got me thinking about the nature of memory and how it has been for me. Clearly, I knew all of this detail about this woman and her kid - their names, where they lived and possibly had a phone number too. Then at some point, J and the other kid went their separate ways and these data points were no longer relevant. When did my brain decide to flush it out completely with no hope of restoration. I do remember a few other kids from J's kindergarten class - not everyone stayed with her in middle school or high school but some pieces of information about them stuck like a burr to the sock of my brain. 

But in this instance it was completely, irretrievably gone. Why this and not the rest. Who gets to choose remembrance over forgetting. I have to imagine, this is now memory works for most people - in a somewhat mysterious and autonomous way. Somehow our brain decides for us that some memories are not worth the effort to keep and decides to clear room for better (or at least more relevant) things. Who is to say that the brain makes the right calls in delete versus preserve. I hoped that in days to follow, something would come to mind but it did not. The lady's face I could recall vividly and correctly connect her to J's kindergarten. The rest remained stubbornly absent. 

Having Choice

Right after reading the story about women working in the sugar cane fields of India, read this other one about the declining number of delivery wards in China. In this instance the decline comes from choices women are making about marriage and childbirth. They don't feel like the conditions are right for them to make one or both of those decisions.

“We would have to work a lot more to provide for a baby, and we don’t want more stress and pressure right now. Life is not just about starting a family, quality of life is also important,” she said.

“So for now, we just have a cat.”

India is much the same for women who have the privilege of making their own choices. 

The figures of the continuously declining fertility rate among educated women are a reflection of the changing beliefs in society.  This emerging situation in demography does not bode well for the rising level of population in the country. Although theoretically, even in uneducated and less educated families, children can become better off through education, there is a greater possibility that they remain illiterate and poor. Such a situation can bring down the quality of population. There is a need for deep thinking on this subject by society and the government.

Can't help thinking how the systematic abuse of women and their bodies build up collective bad karma and when at least some women have choice, they are able to exercise it to punish society - whether that is their direct intent or not. It's like my friend A said of her decision to stay lovelessly married to a man who gives her social status and connections but she would "never let him have the satisfaction" of having her give birth to his progeny. 

A is way younger than me and but has held her ground about being childless for the couple of decades she has been married. The man in question can't really "trade up" as far as wives go - A is the full package and probably the best he can ever get. She knows she has the power and does not hesitate to use it. A is "lucky" that she is not driven by material desire in life, so she is able to make decisions based on other considerations. 

Lost Womanhood

It was incredibly sad to read this story about the abuse of female workers in the sugar can fields of India. I grew up in India in what seems a different time - things were far from great for the poor but forced hysterectomies were not common. There was no Pepsi and Coke so presumably the sky high demand for sugar and the abuse that comes with it had yet to come. Maybe the problem existed for other reasons and I had simply not known about it. 

Young girls are pushed into illegal child marriages so they can work alongside their husbands cutting and gathering sugar cane. Instead of receiving wages, they work to pay off advances from their employers — an arrangement that requires them to pay a fee for the privilege of missing work, even to see a doctor.

An extreme yet common consequence of this financial entrapment is hysterectomies. Labor brokers loan money for the surgeries, even to resolve ailments as routine as heavy, painful periods. And the women — most of them uneducated — say they have little choice.
Hysterectomies keep them working, undistracted by doctor visits or the hardship of menstruating in a field with no access to running water, toilets or shelter.

But the abuse of hysterectomies is not limited to India and the hapless sugar cane field workers. The control of women and their bodies is pervasive and universal.

Sterilization was used to uphold white supremacy and limit the reproductive futures of BIPOC communities, as well as people with physical and/or mental health challenges. In the early 20th century, more than 60,000 people were sterilized in 32 states based on the “science” of eugenics.

State-sanctioned sterilizations peaked in the 1930s and 1940s but continued throughout the 20th century. In the 1960s and 1970s, federal programs started funding non-consensual sterilizations, which ultimately affected more than 100,000 BIPOC women

Keeping Quiet

Reading this in the news some time ago reminded me of my friend N. A regular person but she has had life experience similar to royalty in this case. N too has three kids and her spouse was diagnosed with cancer. She made the choice not to discuss the situation with anyone and also not share the diagnosis with the younger kids because they would not know how to process it. Their father was said to be working from home because he needed some time to recover from an unspecified illness - nothing to worry about. The kids were satisfied with the explanation and life went on. He had made it five years since the time of his first chemo. N still does not talk about his situation with anyone. Those who know her know that the topic is off-limits. All three kids are doing fine. Their lives are as normal as it could possibly be. 

When at first N refused to even acknowledge what was going on, I will admit I was concerned for her mental health and reached out to be someone who could just listen if she wanted to say something. I would not take the conversation anywhere that made her uncomfortable. She firmly declined the offer. It took me some to time to understand that a person does not suddenly turn incompetent or mentally unstable in crisis - least of all someone like N. She is a formidable woman and has accomplished near impossible things in her life. It was people like me who though well-meaning were not able to maintain perspective when we heard the bad news impacting our friend. We were the ones that needed to back off and let her do what she judged was the best for her family. It turns out that only regular people can have such the luxury of such choice. When a person is so much in the public eye they lose their right to the very basic protections afforded to people in such times.

Naming Feelings

When I got my first Lakme lipstick as a teen, I remember the giddy excitement of reading the names of the different shades and how each one produced a different emotional response and informed my buying decision. That was also the time when I believed my dream job would be being paid to name lipstick and nail polish shades. I was never a make-up person and certainly did not have a weekly manicure habit - the supposed pre-requisites to dream of such a career. That job appealed to me based on the level of impact it had on me. 

I imagined every woman who was shopping for these products experienced the same things I did when I read the name of a shade. It was not enough that the shade was right for me - the name had to resonate as well, wearing that color needed to make me feel a certain way and the name had to communicate that feeling effectively. I could tell that doing such a thing at scale was not easy - each woman is different and yet the shade can be called only one name - it has to work for everyone. 

Needless to say, the shades of Lakme in India back then were fairly limited and the names were completely uncontroversial. The naming conventions of Lakme today are still quite modest. Lipstick or interior wall paint, the naming of shades had held its fascination for me over the years. But the idea is extensible to other products - ice-cream flavors for instance. When there are two or more equally worthy contenders, then the winning name can make the difference. 

Just Enough

I was down with a very bad cold for over a week. At the lowest point it was as mentally exhausting as it was physically. A cold is not something that is even relevant mentioning to anyone but I did have to take a day off to recover. Yet, it brought one some end of life thoughts for me. Particularly, difficult was to think about the one or two people in my life that matter a lot of to me and how they might manage my passing. On the one hand you want to be missed and remembered for the good you did your life on the other, you don't want the people who you love most to grieve so much that they can no longer function. 

How much is enough and when it is too much. I could not help thinking what a ridiculously vain metric this thing was. If the person is dead, what do they care if they are missed or not, mourned or not. They are done with all that. Everything of consequence has to happen before their passing. Once the worst of the cold was past me, I was back to my normal routine and end of life thoughts had disappeared. Instead, I was thinking about how I was failing in small ways to make the time I have left with my parents truly count. That is the metric that actually matters not how grief-stricken and heart-broken I am after their passing. In fact, it may have been this very guilt that I experienced very acutely on those couple of days when I felt so completely spent.

Separately Flawed

My friend L has two kids of her own and two step children of which I she likes very much but still can't claim to love. Her own kids have posed more than their fair share of challenges to her and she struggles with them. No one is perfect here, no one has any illusions of being perfect - not L, not her husband and none of the four kids in the mix. This is a situation this set of people have landed themselves into - some of their own volition and others not quite. L told me once, that her own kids at flawed and complicated as they are a product of whatever she was able to make of them given the circumstances of her life - marrying too young, staying with the wrong man for far too long and so on. 

For better or worse she had an active role in how they were raised. With the step-kids that is the single biggest missing piece - they are the product of some other couple's parental framework, she mostly does not agree with the decisions they made regarding their kids. This is not to say all her decisions were perfect and flawless but she made them and is willing to stand by them. She has no desire to take ownership of mistakes that were not precipitated by her. She wants them magically fixed so its not her problem. Is that fair? Probably not but it is how real-life works.

That chat with L got me thinking of imperfect things we own that have sentimental value. If that sentimental value were dissociated with those things, their flaws could prove terminal and fatal. Maybe such is the case with kids and step kids. The flaws being equal one comes with a huge about of sentimental value and near infinite goodwill whereas the other is lacking both. So it is hard to make things whole never mind equitable. 

Comfort Number

Sad reality of how much a single person needs to make to live comfortably in a big city. Presumably it make sense to live in such places while single to maximize professional and personal prospects but at what point does the opportunity cost become untenable and how does a person realize they have breached that threshold - because that is the point they need to recalibrate their options. I am not sure the definition of comfortable is quite comprehensive here. 

“Comfortable” is defined as the income needed to cover a 50/30/20 budget, which assumes 50% of your monthly income can pay for necessities like housing and utility costs, 30% can cover discretionary spending and 20% can be set aside for savings or investments.

Commuting time from home to work is a huge factor in the math of comfortable. A person may come out looking "comfortable" by the proposed math but the housing that can actually fit in their budget puts them over an hour away from their place of work. That situation is a very far cry from comfortable. Similarly, say a person wants to eat healthy and prep their own meals. That likely requires they own a car so they are able to make the required grocery store trips have supplies on hand at all times. It is not a given that the affordable place they live in also supports reliable public transportation to grocery stores. Now suddenly, the person has to find parking and pay for it never mind paying for the car itself. I have to believe that the real number to achieve sustainable level of comfort might be even higher. 

Skilling Right

One of the rites of Spring in my town (and maybe elsewhere as well) is the emergence of Girls Scouts selling cookies outside grocery stores. The other day, I saw a group when I was making my last minute run after work and one young lady was distinctly uncomfortable asking passers-by like me to buy the cookies. She was sulking in the corner and one of the adults was trying to have a conversation with her. 

The sight brought to mind an article I had read about the shortage of plumbers and variety of skilled tradespeople in the country. Jobs that are future-proof in that they cannot be automated away. And unlike many technology jobs that still pay well, these jobs involve real and tangible work where the results are unambiguous. You either have fixed the leak or not. There is no lying and fudging about it. You have solved an actual problem for a person instead of providing a service that the person did not even know they need.

Maybe kids should be encouraged to learn some real skills - go past the lemonade stands, car-washing and cookie selling. The reluctant cookie seller was far to young to join a community college class to become a plumber but if a strong DIY and maker mindset can be instilled into young kids too - its just that they tasks they undertake will be what they can safely undertake and still accomplish results. My father was always fixing and repairing things around the house along with rigging up jugaad workarounds where materials to do the job right were unavailable. 

While I watched him with some curiosity, I was never eager to participate - and not for his lack of trying to bring me into the projects. It was not something I saw my peers do, so at that age it felt awkward. But in hindsight, it was a big miss. These skills can be learned later in life but the level of fluency a person achieves will be very different - they will never quite be natural at it. Back to the reluctant cookie-seller, she could definitely be enlisted to help on a project, have meaningful contribution and fundraise for her cause why learning skills that she could turn into a business someday. 

Simple Story

One of my LinkedIn connection shared this no bullshit profile that I totally loved. This person tells a compelling story about his career without wasting his words or the reader's time. In a time when there is so much embellishment of accomplishments and self-aggrandization all untethered to reality, this was refreshing. It takes someone very comfortable in their skin to state they stopped learning much once they reached a certain level in their career - this should inspire confidence in anyone who wants to hire the person. Middle managers have always been that precarious position where their contributions can't be measured clearly, but they make too much money. The most important issue that is not talked about as much is they stop learning making their situation that much worse. 

After dealing with people management and all the administrivia that goes with it, the average middle manager has little capacity left to keep their skills sharp. Every once in a while, I run into a person in this level who clearly understands that they are on very thin ice and work extra hard to drive direct, measurable value. My thoughts turned to my friend A who most recently started to post a learning curriculum he has worked on as his side project in his non-existent spare time. His aims to make software development understandable to one and all because a lot of decision makers in his company come from non-technical backgrounds that make decisions that result in tremendous hardship for engineering teams tasked with delivering. A is a long suffering middle-manager who is caught up between these opposing forces decided to do something about it, started learning again and is now trying to teach others. 

Flip Side

The first time I paid attention to all the chatter about TikTok was when I read the NYT article on how its recommendation engine works. The numbers to chase were time watched and retention - which are sensible things to do, but how it gets done is where the problem lies and gives cause for concern. 

...watch time is key. The algorithm tries to get people addicted rather than giving them what they really want,” said Guillaume Chaslot, the founder of Algo Transparency, a group based in Paris that has studied YouTube’s recommendation system and takes a dark view of the effect of the product on children, in particular. Mr. Chaslot reviewed the TikTok document at my request.

“I think it’s a crazy idea to let TikTok’s algorithm steer the life of our kids,” he said. “Each video a kid watches, TikTok gains a piece of information on him. In a few hours, the algorithm can detect his musical tastes, his physical attraction, if he’s depressed, if he might be into drugs, and many other sensitive information. There’s a high risk that some of this information will be used against him. It could potentially be used to micro-target him or make him more addicted to the platform.”

What is harmful to our kids is ironically what is great for small business owners - the virality of TikTok is helping them drive sales. Imagine a struggling small business owner is able to afford a better life for her kids because TikTok boosts her sales. And on the other hand, the said kids are addicted to the medium and are being harmed in lasting ways. Maybe TikTok holds up a mirror to our collective societal failures and banning it will not make our problems magically disappear.

Muddied Language

Over the years, I have often questioned what it is to be Bengali and Indian when the colonial debris is removed from those concepts. It seems quite an impossible task as all the history of my family that I am aware of spans a period of time when we were a colonized people. Whatever it meant to be Bengali and Indian was already distorted by that overbearing influence. From that time on, its layer upon layer of foreign ideas grafted upon the core of what might have been my people's actual identity. Reading these lines from Asif Manan Ahmed's The Loss of Hindustan gives words to what I had been struggling to express for the longest time: 

Colonization refuses the colonized access to their own past. By imposing a colonial language, it retards the capacity of indigenous languages to represent reality. It claims that the languages of the colonized lack “technical” or “scientific” vocabulary. It removes the archives, renders history as lack, blurs faces and names.14 Thus, the colonized face a diminished capacity to represent their past in categories other than those given to them in a European language, or provided to them in an imperial archive.

I grew up in a household where the rules of intermingling languages was very strict. If I started in English I had to complete in English and the same for Bengali. At no point was I allowed to switch. Both my parents agreed that switching languages within the same conversation would make me illiterate in both. I had no choice but to comply but some adaptations came about. If there was point I needed to argue and win with them on "data" and "merits" I used English. If the matter was more relaxed, mundane, fun or funny I would use Bengali. Reading what Ahmed has to say about the impact to the language of the colonized by colonialists imposing their language as the one possessed of scientific and technical vocabulary, the way I made my language choices at home starts to make more sense - I had never viewed the issue in such light.

Trending Veggie

I always find it amusing to read that a certain vegetable is having its moment as it it were a new line of handbags launched by a famous designer. This year the cabbage is having its moment in the limelight presumably because its still relatively cheap

... restaurants across the country have taken notice, adding cabbage dishes up and down their menus. At Michael Stoltzfus’s Coquette in New Orleans, one of the most popular dishes is a charred wedge of green cabbage atop turnip ravigote, covered with Parmesan. “It’s something we joke about,” he told The New York Times. “Our best-selling appetizer is the thing we’re most excited about, and also by far our best cost margin.” That’s particularly important at a time when restaurants are dealing with rising costs across the board.

J and I have a favorite appetizer at our favorite restaurant in town. She used to take me there for lunch on my birthday once she got her driver's license. Of all the dishes on their menu, that particular appetizer must be their best cost margin (though no cabbage is involved) and the customers are well aware. But what the dish lacks in expensive ingredients it makes up for in being fun and bold. Such is the way with the best hits in any successful restaurant menu. 

It also turns out that 2024 is the year of the vegetable - some folks have been thousands of years ahead of the trend I guess. 

Hard Line

Interesting article about outcomes in one British school is being helped by strictness. Some of ideas being implemented in these schools are reminiscent of how school was for me in India growing up. Teachers were often strict and compliance was both demanded and expected. Not that we loved it as kids but understood clearly those were the rules we had to play by. 

Good behavior was sometimes rewarded - even publicly recognized but the penalties for bad behavior were significantly more memorable. Yet, our parents complained about how lax things were in our schools and how our teachers did not command the kind of authority their teachers did. We heard stories of legendary punishments doled out to those who did not follow direction. I am not sure if class or wealth had much to do with any of this. School was not about fun and games no matter who you were and how affluent your parents were. 

Ms. Birbalsingh argues that wealthy children can afford to waste time at school because “their parents take them to museums and art galleries,” she said, whereas for children from poorer backgrounds, “the only way you’re going to know about some Roman history is if you’re in your school learning.” Accepting the tiniest misbehavior or adapting expectations to students’ circumstances, she said, “means that there is no social mobility for any of these children.”

This is quite a different approach compared to what I have seen in some public schools here in America. Meeting the bar is made ridiculously simple and yet kids fail to deliver the basics like coming to school each day and maintaining a C average with the lowest possible course load. Maybe there is something to be said for how things were done in India back in my day and what inner-city schools in Britain are attempting to do - but being strict enough but not too much is a very hard balance to achieve in a school setting.

Motherhood Penalty

S hasn't been her usual cheerful self for many months granted I only see her during calls where we are both required attendees and come on video. I wasn't sure what to make of it and with things as busy they have been for the both of us, I could not find a time to just connect with her for a chat. This has been a pattern with other women I have known at work. I can sense something is not right but since we work in different cities or even countries, making that wellness check is not something that happens without effort. We finally had a 1:1 a few days ago and I learned that S was leaving on maternity leave and by the way the conversation went it was not a given that she planned to stick around even if she returned.

 There is a point of inflection in an employee's timeline at a job when they decide they have done enough, have not been recognized enough or even had their tribulations acknowledged. S has had a bit of all that I think in the last couple of years. Having the baby forces a natural pause to her rhythm and allows her to revaluate her options. S is a very smart and capable woman but she's not in a role where she can truly shine. After the call, I wondered how motherhood might make her see her job all that's wrong with it. It reminded me of an NYT article I had read a decade ago about how a baby is penalty to a woman's career and a bonus for a man's. The data speaks for itself in a sad way:

This bias is most extreme for the parents who can least afford it, according to new data from Michelle Budig, a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who has studied the parenthood pay gap for 15 years. High-income men get the biggest pay bump for having children, and low-income women pay the biggest price, she said in a paper published this month by Third Way, a research group that aims to advance moderate policy ideas. “Families with lower resources are bearing more of the economic costs of raising kids,” she said in an interview.

The explanation is simplistic but most likely true. It's probably also the reason, many men in leadership roles often include the number of years married to same woman in their introduction. When I first started seeing this as a pattern, I was confused - why does a random person at work need to know how long some guy has been married to a woman. I was not sure what I was meant to do with that data point. I did not hear women share this stat as often even though some of them could have been married just as long if not longer. This was detail you learned in more personal settings - at lunch or happy hour. It comes with detail that made the story memorable - how they first met and when they decided to marry and the best friend who is jeweler and made their rings. It was not just a stat that counted - years continuously married. For men it signals stable and reliable - for women probably not nearly as much

..much of the pay gap seems to arise from old-fashioned notions about parenthood. “Employers read fathers as more stable and committed to their work; they have a family to provide for, so they’re less likely to be flaky,” Ms. Budig said. “That is the opposite of how parenthood by women is interpreted by employers. The conventional story is they work less and they’re more distractible when on the job.”

For S and many women like her, the penalty could have started to incur as soon as they started dealing with morning sickness, moodiness and more that go along with pregnancy. They stop being their "usual selves" at work and it probably gets noticed. 

Thinking Home

 In his book Imaging India, Nilekani says "Voters, especially the poorest ones, see their votes in these states as a trade for safeguarding their basic rights." This largely squares with what I have known to be true from back in my time which feels like history now. But trying to map this to West Bengal, my home state is a bit harder. Its decline seems never-ending and its not clear what rock-bottom looks like. Every time I return to Kolkata, things seem significantly worse. Literacy or lack thereof is a culprit but there are many others

..West Bengal is second only to Kerala in terms of literacy of people over the age of 80, suggesting that the state was a high performer back when it was prosperous. But now it has fallen far behind states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu when it comes to the literacy of the age group 10-14 year-olds, kids who are supposed to be in school now. West Bengal has a large negative residual when one plots the literacy rates of these two age groups across states — suggesting its new peers are Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, and Jharkhand.

In the case of West Bengal, the decline in literacy tracks lower levels of awareness of what is going on around the country and the world even among those who are literate and educated. The modern day understanding of what it means to be Bengali is a mere pantomime of what it once meant. To that end folks are hosting any number of literary and cultural gatherings, singing, dancing, performing theater and the like but the point of it all is a bit lost as these activities are entirely untethered from their way of life. It is celebration for the sake of it - just another excuse to escape from rather unescapable realities of their life in this place that can't seem to pull itself from sliding to the very bottom wherever that is.

The politics of West Bengal are not driven on caste lines even though the poor and underprivileged have few if any basic rights. The strategy used there is hardly any different from those by populist leaders around the world "use of resentment, spreading falsehoods and manipulating media". For West Bengal, it seems like the rise of illiteracy and education in name only has created a path for such leadership to rise and thrive even if caste is not such a big deal in the state.