Tiny Hope

 The analogy between the solution for homelessness and aspirin in lieu of chemo for a cancer patient is pretty sad one. 

.. just a quarter of those who used these tiny homes ended up in permanent housing, and fears increased interest in investment in temporary solutions can divert resources from the real solution. 

“Imagine if you have cancer, and the treatment is chemotherapy but I tell you there’s not enough chemo to go around, so you’re going to have to wait, and I’m gonna give you some aspirin,” Loving says. “That’s cool, but you need the treatment. There’s nothing wrong with doing a better job of keeping people in more dignified housing options. But if we’re not making sure that we’re focused on permanent housing, this is an intervention that will be filled up in a minute.”

Following the analogy, it would seem that seventy-five percent of those in need would never get chemo - they would remain forever in the tiny home, a crude shelter that aims to offer a thin layer of dignity to those who have become homeless. Apart from the actual cost to run a complex of such homes which the article talks about, there is the fact of constant reminder that the person lives in a state of transience. Nothing is easy and within reach. Several years ago, I used to commute to work from my then apartment. There was a bench by the bus stop where a homeless woman sat silent and motionless all times of the day with all her worldly possessions in bags around her. We smiled at each other as acquaintances might. If not for the large assortment of bags, you would not recognize her for a homeless person. She carried herself with grace notwithstanding her circumstances.

 In the dead of winter one year, I did not see her for many weeks and grew concerned but fortunately when the weather turned warmer, she was back at her spot - I remember feeling relieved and thinking how absurd the whole situation was. We had known each other for a long time by now as people running into each other at the same place over and over. I did not know her name or anything about her. In my mind, I had created a backstory where she had fallen on hard times quite randomly and would be back on her feet. But that cold month in winter did not have me thinking that her life was back on track - instead I was worried she had frozen to death and I would never see her again. It proved the thinness of the backstory and the average person's inability to do much about such things beyond being a bystander. Would she have been better off in a tiny home village, taking aspirin to cure cancer? I don't know.

Ride Along

Read this news a few days after a couple of my British co-workers joked that they had AI running their government so it does not matter who runs for office or who wins. They advised us not to worry about elections in America either. AI would sort it all out. I thought they were just being cynical about things but turns out there is some truth to that statement about what's going on in their country. 

Though the concept of an AI politician may seem silly to some and disturbing to others, Endacott said he wants to make clear that his platform is “not a joke.” He rejects the premise that the AI is replacing a human politician — instead insisting that the aim is to bring “more humans” into politics.

“​​It’s not AI taking over the world. It’s AI being used as a technical way of connecting to our constituents and reinventing democracy by saying, ‘You don’t just vote for somebody every four years; you actually control the vote on an ongoing basis,’” he said. “Which is very, very radical in the U.K. Probably even more radical in America.”

Maybe there is a use for AI in making the voter better informed about the issues that concern them and understand the position and voting records of the candidates that are on the ballot. There is a lot of detail that gets buried and lost over time. Also, people don't always have the time or interest to do proper diligence on the candidates, even if the information were readily available. AI could then reinvigorate democracy as this politician claims is his intention with AI Steve.

Borrowed Name

We were visiting with some friends we haven't seen in a long time and S insisted we try some of his Japanese whisky gifted to them by their grand-kids who wanted to introduce them to something cool and trendy. Being completely ignorant about whiskies good or bad, I was not the right person to opine but sampled anyway. They all seemed pleasant enough but connoisseurs would know better no doubt. Reading this article reminded me of my own experience and failing to understand much:

“To consider only Japanese malt whisky as Japanese whisky is disingenuous and rooted more in politics than in the reality of how all other world whiskies are created,” he said. “Rice whiskies have an equal if not more authentic history of being categorized as Japanese whisky, as they are based on the grain of Asia and exclusively distilled, matured, and bottled in Asia. The goal should be for Japan to expand the category and offerings of whisky styles from its beautiful country, its multiple distilleries, and the many talented Japanese master blenders.”

When you call something a name that has historic and cultural connotations to a place that you don't belong to, chances are the right to call it that name will not be given naturally. To uninformed folks such as myself, the drink we tasted could as well have been introduced as a novel drink made in Japan - no name necessary. If we liked it, we could as well refer to it by its brand name and it would not be in conflict with anything else. 

Remembering Music

 This article about jhankar beats was a great read. It brought back many memories of childhood in India. While I had observed the T-Series phenomenon up close, did not know the wonderful backstory that has to do with being customer obsessed and making music accessible to everyone. It's about meeting the customer where they are:

Bhushan Kumar, chairman and managing director of T-Series, tells Vogue India that it all started when his father, the late Gulshan Kumar, found out that truck drivers were unable to listen to older songs by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar because the low-cost sound systems in their vehicles were not equipped to play them without distorting them. These songs already came with minimal production, in mono recording, and when they were played on the truck speakers, they’d distort and crackle even more.

“When he interacted with rickshaw drivers up north, they told him the same thing, that as much as they like listening to original songs by Mohd Rafi, a cover version by Sonu Nigam just had better quality.”

I grew up listening to popular Bollywood music exclusively on T-series cassettes. We traded them with friends, made mix-tapes that reflected our "unique" taste. Hearing the songs ad nauseum outside the house was the reason we got to understand what we found most appealing and knew them so well. My parents like many of their generation were quite disdainful of such music and the sound quality of T-series. They liked things more old fashioned, mellow and "classy". If we as kids needed HMV budget to have access to the music our parents did not think much of. it would have never happened. T-series was cheap and parents were okay that we binged on it, even if they complained that the sound hurt their nerves.

Balming Pain

Reading these lines from Hemingway's letter consoling parents in the loss of their young child made me think about people I know who have lost a child. As horribly tragic and irreparable the event, it seems that the surviving parents came to have a larger impact on the world in some way because of this experience. The death of the child had deepened their humanity. 

Absolutely truly and coldly in the head, though, I know that anyone who dies young after a happy childhood, and no one ever made a happier childhood than you made for your children, has won a great victory. We all have to look forward to death by defeat, our bodies gone, our world destroyed; but it is the same dying we must do, while he has gotten it all over with, his world all intact and the death only by accident.

Maybe there comes a time in the life of the bereaved parent when they make peace with what happened for exactly the reasons Hemingway describes. One of my dear friends who has survived such loss once told me, the pain never goes away but you learn to live with it, create adaptations so that is bearable to live with the pain. Some of these adaptations might involving doing good in the world to honor the memory of the deceased child. That good is a living force and can have the effect of blunting the pain.

Bad List

Reading this post about the  defining traits of bad managers was so relatable that it made me laugh. Self-centered is correctly #1 on the list I would say self-absorbed falls in the same category. Several examples come to mind - C is probably top of the list. This individual took it upon himself to be a people manager but never had any team meetings, put any effort to create team cohesion or share any thoughts he had on where this team was headed. No surprise, people quit feeling stuck in the mud because that is the only feeling being on C's team could possibly evoke. To be fair, we got along fine and he treated me with respect and advanced my cause best he could.

But C was not well-regarded among his peers and leadership so there was very little he could realistically do to advance anyone's cause even if he wanted to. All of us who were on his team were looked about upon as losers to be reporting to C of all people - surely anyone with a shred of competence could fare better than C for manager. We were the object of collective pity. For contrast, there was N - a manager who had a literal fan club. We were proud to say he was our boss He commanded respect among his peer and leaders. If you were on N's team you were naturally viewed as a star - because he was. Reading through this list, I realize N was the opposite for every item. 

He was about others not about himself, never cared about inputs as long as you delivered our outputs. He was not afraid to fail and certainly not afraid of his team members failing - he would have their back. N was the definition of radical candor - information hoarding was completely against his grain. What was most remarkable about N was that he suffered from a ton of self-doubt about his abilities as a manager, wondered if we deserved better than what he was able to give us. To this day, I remember N as someone who taught me how to solve problems I had no idea how to solve, get out gracefully of situations I should not have stepped into in the first place and create opportunities out of adversity. I can't think of any manager in my long career who helped me improve more than N did and I am grateful he is still a friend and mentor. 

Hearing Tears

I am headed back home by train that was over an hour late. The compartment is mostly empty but there is crying infant nearby. He goes off and on randomly unhappy or uncomfortable or both until too worn out from it all. Outside, the river is full to the brim. There had been a flashflood warning only a couple of days ago. The sky had cried out many tears it seems and then quit much like the infant - there had been no flooding. We all give up with the tears in the end was the thought that crossed my mind - things in nature like the child and nature itself. Earlier at work, I was trying to calm down a distraught colleague who had recently immigrated to America not entirely of her own volition and was not sure she liked it so much. She had been here on business many times over the years and is no stranger to the city she now lives in. But it refuses to become home for her and she can't fall in love with her new life. 

L needs to bawl like the infant to work it through her system but she's a responsible adult and wants to act that way. She wants to make this all work out even as she loses her mind by the minute. I don't have any furniture and I miss my home - my desk and chair, she says. Knowing her for as long as I do, I don't think the desk and chair are the issue. Things refuse to fit and converge in the way she hoped they would, in a way that would make her whole immigration adventure feel worthwhile. Not much has changed. There is new scenery and a lot of settling down to do. But the overall quality of her life cannot improve until she decides that work is not equal to life. L could have made that choice back home and still can in America. Until then she will be a lot like the child in my train who bounced between unhappy and uncomfortable until exhausted. The rain will only sometimes bring deluge - mostly it will threaten consequences and go away. 

Setting Free

Being a leader and also having a life seems quite optional for leaders who are always on, 24/7 types that set the pace for their organization and make it look like having a life outsider work is the realm of the losers. There maybe many reasons that drive a person to treat work like it were the only thing that mattered and had value in their life. But once this style of work starts producing results, they get addicted to it for bigger, greater success which often comes about. That vindicates their style of work and they redouble their efforts. They would find it hard to appreciate how anyone could aspire for a leadership role in their organization if they had a full life outside work. 

In a sense it's the difference between an amateur and a professional. An amateur violinist practices with the all-volunteer orchestra in their town a few times a week, goes on with the rest of their lives being a chiropractor or accountant and performs in ten concerts in a year. They may be someone you know well and often meet at the gym - you have things in common. You would have never guessed about them being a violinist in their spare time unless they told you. It's a bit different than being the number one violinist in the world. 

..intense work styles are often celebrated as the only way to get to the top and be a super-productive leader. Indeed, surveys show that managers and executives describe the “ideal worker” as someone with no personal life or caregiving responsibilities. And a majority of leaders themselves — the ones who set the tone for organizations and model behavior for everyone else — think work-life balance is “at best an elusive ideal and at worst a complete myth.” In an interview, three CEOs rated as top performers by HBR said the job was 24/7 and admitted they weren’t great role models.

Leaders at the top of the food chain should not be looked upon a role model. They can contribute most by letting the next level of leaders thrive in the organization without having to give up their whole lives for their career. 

Having Soul

Dating with intent of finding a long-term, reliable partner was never fun and it seems as though things have gotten much worse over the years and decades. To the point that an AI boyfriend is preferred by some. The companionship factor is definitely a thing even for those who are use AI in their daily lives even if not to date. My friend L was deeply skeptical about the value GenAI could bring to her job. She had all the usual reasons to avoid it - more trouble than it's worth because you have to verify everything the AI produces so its not a productivity gain in the end and so on. 

Recently, L had a change of heart and has started to incorporate AI into her work-day. The most important benefit is that of socialization as L says, having a sounding board for your ideas and being able to chat at all times. Work feels less deary and sometimes the hallucinations can be entertaining. There is some value to be had as well but that is almost a secondary benefit. AI might as well be the modern incarnation of the chia-pet or Tamgotchi. So it's no surprise that Dan exists. 

Minrui says she was drawn to the emotional support provided by the AI, something that she says she has struggled to find in her romantic relationships.

“Men in real life might cheat on you… and when you share your feelings with them, they might not care and just tell you what they think instead,” she says. “But in Dan’s case, he will always tell you what you want to hear.”

Another 23-year-old Qingdao based student, identified only by her surname He, also started a relationship with Dan after watching Lisa’s videos.

“Dan is like an ideal partner,” says Ms He. "He doesn’t have any flaws." 

Feature Phone

New York seems to be on the right track by considering a ban on smartphone for school kids. I never figured why access to such devices was needed for people under the age of 18. Ability exchange calls and texts should alleviate safety concerns. J started out with a feature phone and that worked well enough for all concerned. She graduated to a smartphone in time but by then she had plenty of real-life things to occupy her time with and there was no marked difference in behavior with the new phone. 

The smartphone-ban bill will follow two others Hochul is pushing that outline measures to safeguard children’s privacy online and limit their access to certain features of social networks.

The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (Safe) for Kids act addresses algorithmic feeds. It would require social media platforms to provide minors with a default chronological feed composed of accounts they have chosen to follow rather than algorithmically suggested ones. The bill would also mandate that parents have more wide-reaching controls like the ability to block access to night-time notifications.

If the bill passes, companies that breach the regulations would face fines of $5,000 per violation, and parents could sue for damages.

Not sure if parental controls will be that easy to implement. Kids are pretty clever about working around them. One way to make this work is for a kid to get a state issued license to use social media. The restrictions on acceptable use can be encoded into the license itself so no workaround are possible. Any such heavy-handed oversight can be a slippery slope and can creates opportunity for all manner of abuse and unforeseen consequences. The alternative is status quo which feels much worse right now.

Writing Life

This blog post about a woman's dream of being a writer coming true at last was a nice read. The first success at forty eight implies the person has the resilience to recover from rejection combined with faith in her dream. Reading this reminded me of one of our neighbors when I was growing up in India. The woman was friendly and I would often see her and my mother chatting across the fence. Her father-in-law lived with them. 

His wife had passed many decades ago. The old man was generally peaceful and kept to himself but did not get along with his son. It was known that he wrote things in his notebook - in fact there were several such notebooks. They were considered private and off-limits and no one knew what the contents were. She suspected he wrote the words he would have said to his son if their relationship had been different. That theory made sense to outsiders like us who were aware of the strained father-son relationship. No one had ever seen them exchange a word. He was fine with the daughter-in-law and the two grand-kids. 

My father retired and my parents moved to Kolkata. A few years later our former neighbor called my mother to share some interesting news. The father-in-law had passed and the family had finally seen the mysterious notebooks he always kept locked in his almirah. They were no letters to his son or any thoughts about his fraught relationship with the family. Instead they were a set of sci-fi stories set in a distant planet with a cast of characters that did not bear any resemblance to people the deceased or his survivors had known. 

The curmudgeonly old man was suddenly viewed in new light by one and all. An aspiring sci-fi writer in our midst the whole time and we had no clue. My mother our former neighbor asked her what she thought of the quality of the writing and the woman said it was not half-bad. Everyone who had read the notebooks had enjoyed the experience. The same could not be said of their experience interacting with the author when he was alive. He was not a social or friendly creature and people knew to stay out of his way. There was some talk for trying to get notebooks published but I don't recall if that ever came to pass. 

Low Tide

Interesting idea about forcing the rich to partake in public systems and not escape from it by paying for private amenities. Free public education until a bachelor's degree for anyone who wants it should be an option. Likewise, parents who want to pay for private school from kindergarten should be able to fulfill that wish. I am not sure a one size fits all mandate is the right answer. The legal system would benefit a great deal if court assigned attorneys were the only option for one and all specially that AI is now available and can be use to resolve most things without the matter needing to get in front of a judge. 

Both sides submit their filings and the AI can provide a decision based on how the judges in that court will likely rule. If that is found acceptable, everyone goes home with the situation resolved. If that is not workable, then they get their assigned lawyers who will a fixed number of hours on the case and be paid a fixed amount. There won't be incentives to drag things out needlessly for anyone involved. Settlements should qualify for some incentives for all so there is all around eagerness to get to that point and go home. People might be more willing to resolve issues in a way that is tolerable to both sides if the benefits of a prolonged fight cease to exist - that is already a useful step towards stanching the rot in the system.

I grew up in India in a time when the system was rotten and there were very few options to bypass it unless you were rich enough to be above the law. Even the well-do, affluent would not make the cut. Forcing everyone through the public system was the de-facto option that the author imagines will serve us well in America. It won't - the country will slide into larger decline pulling everyone down as it does. But there will be the class of people who will still remain untouched - the bar for the class will be higher and there will be greater incentive to achieve it by whatever means possible. Not sure if that will serve the overall population well. 

Giving Options

My friends who live in Florida are either retired or have pre-school kids, so I had not heard about the situation with public schools there. Vouchers for home schooling sounds would be a good option for parents who have the time, inclination and ability to teach their kids at home. Specially if that is supplemented with activities with other kids homeschooled and otherwise. Not an easy option to pull off from I have observed over the years with homeschool parents. A couple I know were able to achieve great outcomes for their daughter academically - she went to one of the top computer science programs in the country before she turned 16. Things were a bit choppy and uneven for the kid apart from her academic success despite the parents being diligent about giving her every opportunity to socialize with peers. 

The mother quit her job to home-school full time and the father worked a job he was significantly over-qualified for to spare enough time for the family. In balance, a story with positive outcomes but it certainly did not come easy. Both parents had advanced degrees and this was their only child born to them when they were in their mid-40s. So they had a good run with career before becoming parents and were able to take the necessary steps to successfully homeschool. Not every family will be so uniquely privileged so things will not work out quite as well for those kids. Makes you wonder, if people will find another state to call home when comes time to send their kids to school. Even in states that are supposed to have good public schools, funding and enrollment is declining due to aging demographics and economic mobility.

Two Piles

N is a few years older than me but has the spirit of a much younger person. She is still up for a lot of adventure and exploration, excited about things many of our peers stopped caring about long ago. Spending any amount of chatting with her is rejuvenating for me. It forces me tap back into my twenty year old soul and believe in miracles again. While life does not unfold in a series of miracles, just being able to get into that state seems to have benefits. Most recently, after we went over the shenanigans in her current relationship combined with her son getting serious about a woman she thinks is entirely unsuitable for him, I felt like a reset button went off for me somewhere inside. 

This conversation forced me to take stock of what I can at the moment change and not change in my life. There is a good bit of undesirable stuff in the cannot change pile. Borrowing a leaf from N's book, I decided to separate myself mentally from that pile in entirety and allow time to resolve things organically. By not participating, I don't have to feel drained and defeated. The pile is already looking smaller and has receded to some distance in my mind. The things I can change are looking so much more interesting in contrast and I want to stay focused on those. I will never become one like N but it is a great blessing to have a force of nature like that in one's life. 

Book Vending

Loved reading about the book vending machine for kids. I have not seen one of these myself but it sounds like a wonderful idea -making it fun and exciting to read a book. Loving to read fairly common pre-internet and most of us from those times probably took a while how much times had changed. 

On the surface, book vending machines look similar to those that dispense snacks or beverages. But inside there are tidy rows of kids’ best-sellers published by Scholastic and other companies, including popular titles like Dog Man; Eyes That Kiss in the Corners; and Norman the Slug With the Silly Shell. The machines don’t take regular currency. Instead, the organization that owns them gives kids tokens for good grades, acts of kindness, or any other behavior it wants to incentivize, which the kids can then exchange for a book.

The idea of exchanging tokens earned for positive behavior to pay for the books makes so much sense. I can see the kindergartners I work with being very excited about such a plan. They already get their tokens in other forms and its a proven model. All that needs to happen is establishing an exchange rate, make the book vending machine token feel like the best prize to win.

In some schools, where kids aren’t showing up at all, they might get a token for attendance. In others, kids might get tokens for good grades. “The key thing is that the kid sees the book as a reward,” Millard says. “They look forward to choosing their book. This creates an excitement around reading.”

Fall Wife

I am not sure what kind of vows the this man exchanged with his wife at the time of their marriage but blaming her for his troubles seems like a move he borrowed from another political guy in a bit of trouble. Seems to a popular playbook these days frame the wife and claim the man had nothing to with it. For one thing that is a very public declaration of a dubious if not sham marriage - if the parties are that far apart and oblivious to each other's activities, then they are not even friendly room-mates never mind spouses. Why are we calling this a marriage?

 If they want to benefit from the state of matrimony the union should somewhat resemble the standard of marriage established by their officiating institution - both church and state in this case. Maybe there comes a point when the marriage gets so dysfunctional that it should be invalidated for legal and religious purposes even if the parties want to continue the social charades and play house. 

The tax-payer sponsored benefits must most definitely cease. In family court judges ask if you washed your spouses laundry or made them dinner - if  you did, you are still married and can't claim separation. I wonder where the activities of these two wives who have made so much news recently fall on that scale. Are their "alleged" solo activities commensurate with the state of being married at all?

On the other hand if this kind of excuse is accepted for blatantly bad behavior, then it sets the stage for lesser mortals to emulate the example. Wouldn't it be interesting if the NJ politician was able to get away with his don't blame me, it was my wife line, then it becomes acceptable for couples at least in that state to get away with all manner of malfeasance - one of the two will pretend to be unaware of the mischief their spouse was up to even though said mischief was making them richer by the minute. 

They can always say the other party was taking care of finances and they did not pay attention to the fact that they had acquired five new homes in the last five years or spent ten times as much on vacations this year than they did last year. It also calls into question the mental health of the person and their ability to hold any responsible office. If they can't stay on top of what is going on at home, maybe they should be relieved of the burdens of state and nation. Another guy in bit of legal trouble was not able to blame it all on his wife - almost have to respect him for taking the fall. 

Seeing Red

There is science that explains why relitigating the past and going through dark feelings is bad for your health. It seems obvious that you feel bad mentally though if stirred up enough emotionally, it can feel awful physically as well. Reading this reminded me of the the cycles of anger I have been through in my younger years over events that where I had been hurt without cause. It was like being a victim for the second and third time without gaining any clarity or being closer to resolution. The whole episode was a waste of mental energy. 

"We saw that evoking an angered state led to blood vessel dysfunction, though we don't yet understand what may cause these changes," Shimbo said. "Investigation into the underlying links between anger and blood vessel dysfunction may help identify effective intervention targets for people at increased risk of cardiovascular events."

I am thinking about the people in my life who have suffered heart attacks - all of them without exception in my small sample size were pretty quick to anger. They would be described as emotionally volatile. Maybe there could an intervention strategy that slows or blocks the blood vessel dysfunction.

Word Art

Read this interview with the author of The Dictionary of Obscure words on why he felt it necessary to make up words. The idea is to give word to a somewhat complicated feeling or emotion for which there is not a single word. The author created one. It would be considered a success if others agree it makes sense and conveys the meaning it is supposed to. That is not so trivial. Specially if one person on their own goes about making up a dictionary of words that needed to exist (in their mind) but don't. That is probably not how the words have existed in the dictionary for a while came to be there. 

I defined a word called “sonder,” the awareness that everyone around you is the main character of their own story, but to you they’re just extras in the background. Sonder caught on in a way that none of the others have. Often, I’ll run into sonder being used in earnest online, and I’ve even overheard it being used in conversation at cafés.

That changed everything for me because we usually tend to accept the words that we are given in life. The words we use to build our lives were handed to us in the crib or picked up on the playground. Once you realize that, you realize all of our words were basically made up. All of them. The word “robot” didn’t exist until someone made it up, and now that’s part of our parlance. Dr. Seuss invented the word “nerd” because he needed a rhyme

It is definitely a fun game to play with words and lets anyone create receptacles for things they don't want to express in long form and instead have a word for it. 

Gilded Cage

I can't recall how I ran into this ancient NYT article where Nancy Mehta describes without much sugar-coating what it is like to be the wife of Zubin Mehta. Her experience is shared by other like her - the wife who remains silent and ever-present in the background so the star can shine brightly:

She herself tends to refer to him as “my husband” rather than by name. She attributes this to “the fact that Zubin Mehta is not my husband. There is no room in there to be husband.”

But, she continued matter-of-factly,  “I had a revelation recently that the great people in any category historically are basically self‐oriented. The self‐interest is necessary to bring the greatness to its apex. Nehru and Einstein weren't terrific family men. Not that they wouldn't have been if that's what they decided to do, but they decided to do something else.”

Self-orientation and greatness being strongly corelated isn't something outsiders would put together naturally. You imagine, there is the person beyond the fame and personality that does ordinary things like ordinary people- atleast some of the time. Perhaps even a temporary descent to ordinary is not permissible if a person is meant to achieve greatness. 

If she is happy living in the gilded cage, her honest words do not reflect it: “I can't think of a way this life isn't sacrifice. It is total sacrifice. But I'm working very hard, daily, without making much headway, to alleviate that."

Regular people can graduate to some version of a gilded cage too - maybe not quite as glitzy as that of the Mehtas but still something that projects perfection to all that behold it. So much so, that a person would feel foolish if they entertained thoughts of escape. Escape to where and do what that could even compare to the life they appear to have to outside observers.

Changing Life

I shared this Andy Jassy interview with some kids I know who are still early in their careers. While not everything applies to everyone the part that I liked most was what he said about having the right attitude early in your career and being a ravenous learner all the way. The need to find sponsors and mentors has been talked about a lot but Jassy offers some concrete tips on what showing up with good attitude means and how that can further a young person's cause to find those much needed sponsors and mentors. He also indirectly illustrates a few other things with his own story that are worthy of consideration. You have a kid that is passionate about sports or something else non-academic. They understand winning, losing, scores, and points in that context. It is not the worst thing to re-frame learning to that context they know and love. He talks about how this played out in his own life. 

A failure to reach the pinnacle of dreams does not mean that the dream is not worth pursuing at all. If a person is not cut out to be a professional athlete maybe there is a detour somewhere that keeps them in the proximity of their dreams because that is the source of their energy. Too often young people are persuaded off their course because it is crazy, wild, impractical, and worse. It is unclear from the interview itself how much Jassy as a young person drove his destiny and how much coaching and steering he received from well-meaning adults in his life. In any event, there is a value in helping a young person whose dreams exceed their capacity. The adults in their life could help them think through the alternatives and workarounds instead of giving up and losing the vital source of energy they will need to be fulfilled in their lives. 

Not too long ago, I heard some great wisdom from a colleague whose daughter was a high-school freshman at the time. She has no specific passions as of yet and is bouncing around a variety of career options which is perfectly normal. But she is totally obsessed with home improvement shows and has already formulated what her dream home would look like and where it would be located. B used this as his starting point to get her thinking about the steps she will need to take to achieve that dream. This worked out to be a very methodical process where the goal was set to be achieved ten years out by a date of her choice. From there father and daughter worked together to plan financial and other milestones so the home would be move-in ready on goal-date. This a holistic discussion about the future not just college. 

They worked on this project plan over many weeks taking pauses to discuss options along the way - one career path over the other, what that meant for her ability to own the home of her dreams and physically live there, if a higher salary meant going into a profession she cared less about and so on. By the end of the exercise, the dream home served the great purpose of bringing clarity into this young lady's life. She may or may not end up owning the home on the target date but B seized the opportunity to show her what it would take to translate her dream to reality. 

Getting Along

Gen Z is regularly called out as difficult to deal with in the workplace. I have a few in mine but don't relate to all the issues cited in this story all the issues cited in this story. 

The disconnect between Gen Z and the workplace could in part be due to the pandemic. According to a 2021 study, 46% of Gen Zers said the pandemic made pursuing their educational or career goals more difficult. Plus, when work and school moved to an online format, many Gen Zers never had the opportunity to fully experience an in-person office dynamic.

I find that some Gen Zers are able to make the most of the forces that shaped them and use that to their advantage. They are able to demonstrate that they bring value to the organization even if everyone does not agree with how they go about their business. Some are able to make small compromises that helps bridge the gap between "them" and "us". The ones who succeed in the multi-generational workplace of today are able to grasp that they have advantages over the older generations and use it tactfully. I believe they are also the ones that will be future leaders in the organization - mostly it is about empathy and emotional intelligence, not everyone is blessed with that does not matter the generation. It seems a bit silly to blame it on the pandemic.

Hanging Coat

This story about the PTO culture (or lack thereof) of millennials is not so unique to that generation or the the current times. Unlimited PTO has existed for a while and it is usually a bad deal for the employee because their management sets an implicit limit by their own actions. We have all had bosses who are always on and connected to work does not matter if they are on vacation or its a national holiday. They send emails at ungodly hours. Everyone knows the person has no life outside work and that is their bar for performance. 

It's up to the individual to decide if they want to play that same game or do something else. The most successful in such an organization tend to be the ones who have a mind-meld going on with this boss - which means no life outside work and being always on. The more "clever" ones fake their dedication to the cause using all the methods cited in the article. I have not seen it work beyond a point because the fake dedication is easy to see for someone who truly lives for their job. This is not to say folks should not try their strategies to eke out a life in such organizations - but sooner or later they will need to find another job.

A majority, 78%, of U.S. workers say they don’t take all their PTO days, and it’s highest among Gen Z workers and millennials, according to a new Harris Poll survey of 1,170 American workers.

Younger professionals say they don’t ask for time off because they feel pressure to meet deadlines and be productive, and they get nervous requesting PTO because they don’t want to look like a slacker, says Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at The Harris Poll.

That’s not to say they’re not taking breaks — they’re just not telling their boss.

Back in the 50s and 60s it was common at least among state government employees in India to take off to wherever they needed to be leaving their coat hanging on their chair. Such stories were often recounted at home and the younger generations were in awe at the ingenuity. People would assume for several months sometimes that the person had merely stepped out for chai or some such. Given the glacial pace of work the absence never had any tangible consequences. 

Great Ache

Read these beautiful lines in an essay by V.S. Naipaul : India as an ache, for which one has a great tenderness, but from which at length one always wishes to separate oneself.

He talks about his impressions upon his visiting the country for the first time - the constant whirl of things happening, the desire to place people in an understandable frame of reference because India is vast and complex. Naipaul also notices that people want to plunder and leave as far as state of mind goes - not stay from love, loyalty or something else. 

How strange to find, in free India, this attitude of the conqueror, this attitude of plundering—a frenzied attitude, as though the opportunity might at any moment be withdrawn—in those very people to whom the developing society has given so many opportunities. This attitude of plundering is that of the immigrant colonial society.

What Naipaul observed back then must have been the harbinger of what is to come. Since that time to the present day, there is the desire to make the most of what opportunity exists right now because circumstances can change - there is no faith in the future but there is abundant pessimism. My friend A recently said that nothing can possibly change for India by way of election because the defeated party's workforce will simply re-badge themselves - it is the same cast of characters doing what they have forever done in the name of the ruling party (whatever that happens to be). So there is really no point to elections or democracy in the end. Needless to say, A has never voted in her entire life and does not intend to start now. I never saw adults go out to vote when I was a kid growing up in India. Their reasons were variants of A's. Naipaul observed very astutely that Indians love to slip into the mysterious and abstract from actionable and concrete:

..there always came a moment when Indians, administrator, journalist, poet, holy man, slipped away like eels into muddy abstraction. They abandoned intellect, observation, reason; and became “mysterious.” It is in that very area that separates India from comprehension that the Indian deficiency lies. To see mysteriousness is to excuse the intellectual failure or to ignore it. It is to fall into the Indian trap, to assume that the poverty of the Indian land must also extend to the Indian mind.

Of why India is fragmented- true of the time when Naipaul wrote the essay and to this day, he says: 

.. India is fragmented; it is part of her dependence. This is not the fragmentation of region, religion or caste. It is the fragmentation of a country held together by no intellectual current, no developing inner life of its own. It is the fragmentation of a country without even an idea of a graded but linked society.

Creating Taste

When we arrived in Marseille, it was already dusk and we were hungry for dinner. I picked a place that seemed to be a favorite with the locals and ordered bouillabaisse . It may have been the excitement of actually seeing Marseille for the first time mingled with hunger but the dish was a excellent. I wish I could remember what about it made it so special and different from other times I had tried the dish other places. Reading this ode to Marseille's cuisine and why it may not feature in guidebooks and not be Provencal and fancy enough brought back the warmest memories: 

Such people aren’t too crazy about aïoli, bouillabaisse or anchovy purée. They don’t know anything about the pleasure of fried chickpea cakes. They’ve never tasted snails in spicy sauce, or sea urchins, or lambs’ feet and tripe, or cod in a tomato and red wine sauce, or eggplant ratatouille or fresh bean stew, and they don’t know the joy of feasting on slightly warm vegetable soup with basil and garlic in the shade of a pine. I haven’t plucked these dishes out of the air. The cuisine of Marseilles has always rested on the art of using fish and vegetables disdained by the local ship-owning upper classes, who were kept supplied with refined produce like game and poultry, lamb, truffles, cheese and fruit by the farms of the Aix region.

We did not get to stay long enough in Marseille to try much of the food Izzo refers to but I went looking for (and found) recipes for several of the dishes so will be trying them at home and reliving the memories. While I was at it, found a recipe for the first dish I ever ate there.

Story Arc

Reading these lines in Rajat Parr's book The Sommelier's Atlas of Taste made me smile - it perfectly described my first time tasting Sancerre. An easy and likable wine, it just made sense to stick with it:

Sommeliers have a love-hate relationship with Sancerre. They love it because it sells, sells, sells. As one wine director told us, “If we put it by the glass, it’s all anyone orders!” For sommeliers, it’s never bad to have a reliable cash flow. But if you sense a hint of exasperation in the above quote, it’s for the same reason. Sancerre is the knee-jerk selection of people who don’t bother to engage with wine. It’s the same as saying, “I’ll have a Bud” or “Give me a gin and tonic” without bothering to look at a menu.

This is just a notch above asking for the house red or white based on what you are eating. No thinking is involved. You want to enjoy the meal and the company and trust that they who are serving you the food know what they are doing with their house wines. 

I got interested in this book based on the provenance of the author and his background. A guy born and raised in Kolkata who had never tasted any wine until age 20 comes to become "one of the most celebrated sommeliers in the world". It got me thinking about the boundless nature of what a person can be no matter where they started and how limited their horizons had once been. Often the inner drive the fuels such stories, brings about luck and opportunity. The book can go to depth in areas I have very little understanding, but it also has wisdom a layperson could use:

The difference between these two wines can be compared to that of a marathoner’s body versus a sprinter’s. Paradis is the long-distance runner, lean, long, and angular; Chambrates is the sprinter, ripped, thicker, and rounder.

Break Fix

I am not sure what to make of this HBR piece on what organizations should do with toxic senior leaders who are too critical for the business to just be fired when infact that is one and only right solution for the problem. The examples cited in the story connect the bad behavior to some unresolved psychological issues going back to the person's childhood. While that is mildly entertaining for all to know, it is entirely unclear how it helps resolve the issues the individual's behavior is causing company wide. How does it exactly help those who are impacted every day to learn that this person is the world's greatest jerk because his parents did an awful job of raising him - why does that need to become our collective cross to bear. 

Every place I have ever worked in since I graduated college has had a few of these hyper-toxic, absolutely insufferable leaders that contaminated everything they came into contact with. The higher their position in the food change, the more havoc they were able to wreak. Those higher up than this individual seem to stand idly by and let the mayhem continue no matter what the cost. The way I see it, unless the individual is God and can basically decide if the universe will exist or not tomorrow morning, no one is indispensable in the world never mind such a trivial thing as a business. 

What is more, if a company is structured so poorly that one jerk can drive it to its knees and into bankruptcy, then it speaks volumes for the quality of leadership all the way from the top.  Maybe a wholescale restructuring is in order to fully clean house because this degree of ineptness will manifest itself in a myriad of baleful ways even if the jerk issue is resolved by putting the person on a daily regimen of therapy (paid for by the company) for the rest of their life - because nothing less than that will work for issues that run that deep and go that far back. Maybe the recruiting process should include a psych evaluation to determine if there is any ROI to hiring the person given how broken and unfixable they are for whatever reason.

Happily Aged

Happiness in India is described as an anomaly in this article that analyses results from a survey: 

India is an anomaly. Here, life satisfaction was found to be higher among the older people. At 140 million, India’s older population is the second largest in the world and growing steadily, with the average growth rate “three times higher than the overall population growth rate”. The researchers relied on the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI, 2017-19) dataset and analysed the following metrics: satisfaction with living arrangements, perceived discrimination and self-rated health. Education, wealth, access to healthcare, support systems and social acceptance were also analysed. To their surprise, and a departure from scholarly research, older age in India was associated with higher life satisfaction. The opposite was believed to be true to so far. Age and life satisfaction go hand-in-hand only in high-income countries; the experiences of India’s old people were also defined by childhood, financial status, lack of social support, physical frailty, and feelings of loneliness.

As some who started went to college in India and started their career there, I think it makes sense that the elderly feel happier than the youth. My friend S who lives and works in Kolkata framed the problem as the muscle of Bengal being outside of West Bengal and India. So what remains in Kolkata is retirees who have no goals to pursue, no need to go out and earn a living - a body sans muscle. While that is not the state of every state and big city in India, the problems of Bengal and Kolkata are not that unique. The elderly are surrounded by people - friends, neighbors and family so they don't feel lonely. Since they no longer have to perform daily heroics to earn a salary, get kids through school and college, the level of stress is confined to buying food, paying bills and taking care of health issues. There are no unpleasant surprises and obstacle courses waiting for them each day as they go out to be gainfully employed and provide for those that depend on them.

Fitting Pattern

These lines were written by the author within the last few years and it immediately brought to mind what D.H Lawrence had to say about being a women a long time ago

..cool chicks are still women. And there’s no easy way to be a woman, because there’s no acceptable way to be a woman. And if there’s no acceptable way to be the thing you are, then maybe you drink a little. Or a lot.

Lawrence in his essay Give Her a Pattern says:

..the real tragedy is not that women ask and must ask for a pattern of womanhood. The tragedy is not, even, that men give them such abominable patterns, child-wives, little-boy-baby-face-girls, perfect secretaries, noble spouses, self-sacrificing mothers, pure women who bring forth children in virgin coldness, prostitutes who just make themselves low, to please the men; all the atrocious patterns of womanhood that men have supplied to woman; patterns all perverted from any real natural fulness of a human being.

The problem identified by D.H Lawrence about women requiring to ask for and follow a pattern is still true. But no matter what pattern she is given to follow, it will never be good enough. The cool chick that Coulter mentions is driven to drink because she can't find the pattern which makes being cool feel cool. The more things change the more they remain the same. 

I have have read some D.H Lawrence growing up but his book of essays was quite a tedious read for me though there are interesting tidbits in most of them including Give Her a Pattern. I read Exit Interview by Kristi Coulter and found it very entertaining but this one about return to sobriety was not worth reading for me - I was mostly done after the first twenty pages. She had one good story (like just about everyone does) and she told it well. Maybe there is nothing else there judging by this book - which is not so uncommon for most people. There is no second or third story in the content of their lives. This is a fact even a person with the right mechanical skills to "write" needs to make peace with. 

Breathe Perfection

Beautiful lines from a D.H Lawrence essay that explains why free verse exists and what purpose it is meant to serve

But in free verse we look for the insurgent naked throb of the instant moment. To break the lovely form of metrical verse, and to dish up the fragments as a new substance, called vers libre, this is what most of the free-versifiers accomplish. They do not know that free verse has its own nature, that it is neither star nor pearl, but instantaneous like plasm. It has no goal in either eternity. It has no finish. It has no satisfying stability, satisfying to those who like the immutable. None of this. It is the instant; the quick; the very jetting source of all will-be and has-been. The utterance is like a spasm, naked contact with all influences at once. It does not want to get anywhere. It just takes place.

There seems to be the implication once perfection is achieved in the romanticized past or yet to come future which can be perfected by our imagination, there is an expectation of metered verse. The Iliad and the Odyssey deserve metered verse. This made me wonder about one of my favorite books of all time - Vikram Seth's Golden Gate - a highly metered form of poetry but set in the present. Maybe that is greatness - when poet can bring the two opposing forces together and bind what is transient into meter to breathe perfection where none can naturally exist following Lawrence's logic.

Less Belief

These lines by Tolstoy about why humans need religions gave me food for thought for many days after:

..a rational human being had to and always did establish a relationship to the whole of the infinite and eternal universe, understanding it as a single whole. And this establishment of a human being’s relationship to that whole, of which he feels himself a part and from which he derives guidance for his actions, is that which has been and is called religion.

And that is why religion always has been and cannot stop being a necessity and an inescapable condition for the life of a rational human being and a rational humankind.

Establishing a relationship between oneself and the infinite whole and a framework a person can use to guide their actions - that is the raison d'etre of any and all religions per Tolstoy. It makes sense that the flavor an existing religion takes (or a new one comes to exist) is determined by the social norms and the cultural mores of a people. The same guiding and reasoning framework (to oversimply) will not work consistently across all geographies and societies. 

So local adaptations are required. The flavors start to clash - one person's system is placed under real or imagined existential threat by another's. If indeed religion is what keeps humans for turning into animals, it could as essential as air and water to our survival and there will never be a time when religion is no longer relevant. If anything in the absence of somewhat centralized (and well functioning) organization, the primal need will be addressed by things that will step in for religion and lead to worse consequences. With more and more people turning away from religion, if Tolstoy is right, humankind will become less human. 

Dream Ending

 Nice essay about sports parents which easily transcends sports. Of the second death died by a sports parents, the author says:

..the death that comes in the midst of life, the purgatorial purposelessness that follows the final season on the sidelines or in the bleachers, when your sports kid hangs up their skates, cleats, or spikes after that last game.

That purgatorial purposelessness is the fate of any and all parents who wrap up their hopes and dreams into the lives of their children - see parenting as an act of sacrifice where nothing is too much as long as the kid wins big. The field where this win needs to be delivered could be baseball, business or something else. It is where the parent's own hopes for grand success had been belied. 

The way the child asks out of living the parent's dream is also typical and mirror's the author's experience:

“I’m going to think about it.” Think about it? For me, this was the same as a girlfriend saying, “We need to talk.”Only later did I realize that those words were the first move in a careful choreography. My son wanted to quit, but in a way that would not break my heart. He also didn’t want me to rant and rave and try to talk him out of it. We had reversed roles. He was the adult. I was the child.