Heartcrossings

The call (or not meant to call) from N triggered a lot of old memories and not in any particular order. Most are actually not even associated with her. She represents a place and time in my life long gone. Yet there are threads that remain and can be tugged even by such accident as that call. Such is the power of those faded, long ago days. It got me thinking about the time I had heard Soumitra Chatterjee live reciting poetry and specifically Bonolata Sen . That was not the first time I had heard the poem recited but certainly was the version that etched the deepest impression. The words came alive in a way they had not ever before. Then fast forward to my marriage.  Most of my cousins sat out of it for reasons I am not entirely sure of but then I always lacked the social intelligence to thrive in Indian families. That was an arranged marriage and everything about it would have checked off the requisite boxes of acceptable. Yet it was met with a seething disapproval which would com...

Calling in your website changes sounds a bit wacky but a nice experiment all the same. I am trying to imagine a practical application of such a thing. Imagine you launch a minimal beta of a product and then open up the phone line to the users to call in their issues, aggravations and brilliant ideas for improvement. If the system processing the requests is intelligent enough, it can create a prioritized product backlog out of all these phone calls and write up specs for the engineers to develop and release.  Lately there is a lot of noise about said engineers being replaceable by AI. If that were even partly true the whole thing could be set up to run on auto-pilot and the product would be continuously improved based on evolving user needs. It all sounds quite magical if actually feasible and if the chatter did not drive the bot absolutely crazy. That would have the product burn itself to death because most requests were at odds with each other, solving one problem naturally creat...

This story about comedians and Botoxed audiences reads like a piece from The Onion . It had a hard time accepting its veracity but figured there was some logic to the story so maybe its true.  “Comedy thrives on connection, and facial expressions play a huge part. We want people to laugh, cry, frown, sneer, but frozen faces from Botox impact the entire atmosphere. “We hope trialling this ban will help move the needle and get facial reactions back into the room – for the benefit of our comedians and the audience.” Andrew Mensah, one of the venue’s regular stand-up acts, added: “Performing to an audience with frozen faces can be incredibly tough. “Comedy is a two-way street – we feed off the energy and reactions of the crowd. Mark and the team are always devising new ideas to support us comedians – this must be his best one yet.” I have an interesting experience each time I am in my Pilates class. One of the women was a former client and I've known her for over twenty years now. Her...

N is my cousin. We are close in age and about nothing else. When we were younger, I spent a lot of time in her house in Kolkata when visiting there. Much of those times were spent with her mom (my aunt) in the kitchen. I found it easier to be there watch her work and help where I could than be with her kids - N and her brother B. I felt close to my aunt, we had things in common and even where we diverged, it was easy for me to understand why.  Being around her was frictionless and she appreciated the company because her own kids were never there beyond being physically present in their rooms. My aunt shared her anxieties about them - she had tried to be a supportive mother but the kids had both interpreted that as a sign of weakness that they could leverage and exploit. So they did. Her expectations for them were never met, nothing she asked of them (which was very minimal to begin) was ever done.  In contrast my mother had a very high performance bar for me - she simply would...

I remember the day I stopped eating meat a few years ago. We were at a pizza place that some friends had told us about. They let you come up with your own set of toppings from a number of interesting and somewhat unconventional options. You sat at a long table with a bunch of strangers and ate whatever it is that you came up with. I recall distinctly that my toppings were seafood and vegetables and I loved how it turned out. But something happened that day, that meal that made me not want to eat any meat for the next three or four years. I don't know what it was about the place but that was the effect on me.  As someone who never had any dietary restrictions, this was a big change to cope with. When traveling, it limited options for a common, shared meal. Most importantly, I wasn't sure how to make up for the lost protein and found myself eating more carbs than I needed to. It was with concerted effort over a long period of time that I was able to start eating meat, even if sma...

It's still March and I have already heard a few podcasts about vibe coding (a phrase coined only last month). From what I could gather listening to folks who say they never coded a line in their lives and are now vibecoding away, it seems to be a way to coax the LLM to do a thing for you. The thing is something you as a regular person (non-coder) want typically as a productivity tool in your life and now suddenly you can make that thing. You ofcourse don't know or care about the thing does what the thing does but it approximately does what you need it to do. Sounds extremely empowering at first blush. It almost wants me to make a coder out of my mother who is yet to be able to send me a WhatsApp message because typing is quite taxing for her.  She has learned to find and watch YouTube videos and movies on Amazon Prime but that took quite a bit of hand-holding, coordinating with the "tech-savvy" college-student neighbor on the phone to get her the help. But vibe codin...

I have a sturdy indoor plant that has thrived even when no one was home for a couple of weeks. All it takes is some extra watering and being placed in sunlight once I am back. It seems to help to get rid of the yellowed leaves. I am no expert on plants or how best to care for them but have used common sense - its a living being and so am I.  So there may be things to apply to us both equally. Having good intent and trying hard enough seems to count. Seeing the plant bounce back after I return from after a longish absence is very energizing. There are figurative yellowed leaves clinging to me too, they got that way from neglect of one sort or another, intended or not. There are indeed life lessons from learn from plants and pruning what is near dead is not the only one.  Healthy and appropriate soil is a must for all your indoor plants. Some plants need more drainage, some need different minerals, and some plants do best with bark instead of soil at all. The life lesson is thi...

Accent neutralization for call center workers is technology that leaves a person with mixed feelings. There is a sense is matching the rep's accent to the caller's accent, giving them a relatable name and backstory even. But to wash off the accent indiscriminately to replace it with something "better" and "more acceptable" does not sit right. I can't count the number of times I have had trouble following a rep's accent because they were from some part of the country that does not have a flat and neutral accent that is easier for everyone to follow. If they were to wash it off for my benefit I would find it a lot more endearing if they settled for an nice Indian accent that I could both relate to and follow with no trouble.  In an interview with Bloomberg, Teleperformance deputy chief executive officer Thomas Mackenbrock said that Sanas' technology, which his employer has gained exclusive rights to through its partnership, can "neutralize th...

I really enjoyed watching All We Imagine As Light . The movie has a moody, introspective atmosphere but does not dwell on what is dark and difficult and instead shines rays of light wherever possible. The three female roles are played well, each bringing a different kind of strength. Parvathy is a strong woman who refuses to see herself as a victim - where doors close on her, she seeks out new ones and without feeling hopeless. Prabha is the calm centering force in the trio, wise and sensible beyond her years but not incapable of dreaming even if secretly. That is her hidden inner resource that keeps her afloat in what seems to be a really difficult life situation. The youngest woman in the group is rebellious and willing to take risks the other two would have cautioned her against so she does not share more than she needs to. I particularly liked how the problems of the three characters are shown in very realistic terms but the movie glides gently past it to illuminate what is bright ...

Great reading about how the patients and doctors could benefit from technology by ensuring   the results delivered by the system meet the high trust bar  The CURE technique has proven useful for synthesizing new patient records too. Outside records detailing patients’ complex problems can have “reams” of data content in different formats, Callstrom explained. This needs to be reviewed and summarized so that clinicians can familiarize themselves before they see the patient for the first time.  “I always describe outside medical records as a little bit like a spreadsheet: You have no idea what’s in each cell, you have to look at each one to pull content,” he said.  But now, the LLM does the extraction, categorizes the material and creates a patient overview. Typically, that task could take 90 or so minutes out of a practitioner’s day — but AI can do it in about 10, Callstrom said.   He described “incredible interest” in expanding the capability across M...

I fasted a lot more often growing up in India because all it took was to join in an activity others were doing. On Laxmi puja for example, I was allowed to help with preparations only if I was fasting. That made it an easy decision because I enjoyed participating, not just sitting it out as an observer. Fasting without a religious context is unfamiliar to me and would be a lot harder to implement consistently. The 7-day fast seems like an advanced level thing, novices would not be able to pull-off. It would almost certainly require taking time off from work to make sure everything went according to plan: By the end of a seven-day fast, the body has fully adapted to using fat as its main energy source, breaking it down into molecules called ketones, which provide fuel for the brain and other organs. Beyond energy shifts, the prolonged absence of food triggers widespread protein adaptations across major organs, including the liver, muscles, and immune system. These changes signal the ac...

 I can't tell if this book club is a form of torture or the most unique bonding experience between a group of people who have stuck with something for three decades.  Fialka said he once saw a list of at least 52 active Finnegans Wake reading groups, though Slote, the Joyce scholar, said he thinks there are even more. A Wake group in Zurich, founded in 1984, has read the book three times in nearly 40 years, and is currently well into its fourth cycle. Their first reading took 11 years. Different groups have their own local character. “The New York group is really argumentative, and they’re always yelling at each other, but they’re all friends, they’ve all known each other for 20 years.” Quadrino said. His Austin group is “more friendly, more ‘Yes, and’”. The Zurich group, which attracts a mix of retirees and university students, is “benevolent, although it can also become competitive and contentious,” according to Sabrina Alonso, a member, and Fritz Senn, its host. At any rat...

There is a time in a woman's life where the agonizing hour described by the narrator in story can happen. While living through that experience she feels angry at the man for making her feel so vulnerable and powerless. The most desired thing in that moment is to never ever have to experience this. That time passes and she comes into clarity. The hurt heals over and there is scar tissue where once the heart was so easy to wound. The next man when he comes along will not have this effect on her anymore.  No, no, no. I must stop. I must think about something else. This is what I'll do. I'll put the clock in the other room. Then I can't look at it. If I do have to look at it, then I'll have to walk into the bedroom, and that will be something to do. Maybe, before I look at it again, he will call me. I'll be so sweet to him, if he calls me. If he says he can't see me tonight, I'll say, "Why, that's all right, dear. Why, of course it's all right....

I suppose the point of Mrs . was to stir outrage at the patriarchy but it did not get there for me. The woman who gets married falls into a trap of bad sex, endless cooking, cleaning and service providing had a dance troupe. So this is someone who has more options than most - a path to financial independence. Maybe she chose to marry a doctor to have a better quality of life than she could afford on her own given her skills. The cost of entry to that life is everything that follows - really any other outcome would be miraculous. The lady dives right into cooking lavish spreads for meals everyday, packing lunches for her husband, being at his beck and call - aiming to please as a traditional Indian wife. There is no scenario where any woman can achieve that ideal - the array of issues may vary in each situation but success is never attainable and so of course she fails. To me this movie is not about how messed up the arranged marriage and joint family living is for a woman who has dream...

This silly little essay would have been right on the money back in my time when I was a kid growing up in India. There really was no pleasing your middle-class Indian parent no matter what kind of child you were. No one had heard or known of a parent that was content with their kids no matter how exemplar they were. There was always something missing. Socially it was the right signal to send out - that sense of discontent with your progeny, the hand-wringing over their lack of perfection and such. On the rare occasion one might run into a parent who was oddly braggadocious about their kid.  People held a pretty dim view of such parents and it was generally understood that their kids would end up being hugely problematic, they were indeed the object of pity for having such inept parents. The decorous and proper thing was to complain about the kids, find fault with them in private and public, keep the pressure on for improved performance. Interesting to see that little has changed w...

My friend L is a physical therapist and works with elderly people who need help in their homes or assisted living facilities. She loves her job and the patients but truly resents the mountains of paperwork she needs to do each day. Most of it is to make sure that the services are paid for by insurance but there is an insane amount of busy work that drains her out.  L would love to have more control over her schedule, pick the gigs she wants and ideally have the admin part of her job gone. She could take that time back to further her education, keep up with the latest research and so on - things that would add value for those she cares for. Reading this essay about the uberization of nursing brought L to mind. It seems as if there is no winning scenario for those who care for others and rightfully want to do in way that is sustainable for them. For workers, the old adage of equal pay for equal work has gone out the window. Personalized pay is all the rage (Teachout 2023). On-demand ...

As some who rarely buys potato chips, I have not paid attention to how they are priced these days .  In the wake of rising potato chip prices, more consumers have been turning to private-label, less-expensive store brand options. The New York Times reported back in October 2023 that “private-label foods and beverages have crept up to a 20.6 % share of grocery dollars from 18.7% before the pandemic,” citing market research from Circana. Potato chips are just another food item that inflation-weary consumers are either abandoning or seeking cheaper alternatives for. Consumers did the same with fast food which led to several chains, including McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy's to release their own rendition of value meals. We do have this long-standing road-trip tradition where I'll buy a big bag of potato chips for the road if we are in a foreign country. I like picking a popular local flavor I would not find back at home. Its a way to indulge in and understand what kind of chip...

Meeting A on my trip to India was a return to childhood in many ways. We go back to the end of high school which feels like an infinitely long time ago. It is great to be able to reset to a very uncomplicated time of our lives whenever we meet. It is almost impossible to stay in the here and now for too long - we have our happy place that is too easy to return to and we do that reflexively.  Yes, there were conversations about her ailing parents, the need for nursing care and what their long term care means for her own life since she is single and has no plans of changing that. While those are real problems she is dealing with everyday, having an escape even for a few days gave her much needed reset. It is sad to read that the young people of today may not have such a luxury when they are our age.  The internet is the “main contender” for blame, Blanchflower told Al Jazeera. “Nothing else fits the facts.” In 2024, a Pew Research Survey found that three in four American teenag...

Had a chance to watch Lee Chang-dong's Burning recently. I have not read either of the two source stories the movie uses - one by Faulkner and the other by Muraki, so I came to the experience without any bias or expectation. Each of the three main characters draw the viewer in. They get you to think about their inner lives as their interactions with each other play out on the screen. There could have been a way for this to feel unsatisfactory but the Chang-dong makes it work beautifully.  He shows us the world as the protagonist's neurotic eye sees it specially after the woman disappears. The woman herself is a great study in what it means to seek class mobility while being a woman with very few options. The chaos of her tiny apartment which she shares with an authorized cat mirrors the precariousness of her existence. She has to live in a pretend world for the most part for her dreams to come true.  While she and Jongshu share the same background she is not shown angry a...

I imagined a Pepto-Bismol pink city when I saw Jaipur for the first time a few weeks ago. Growing up, I had read stories of mystery, adventure and intrigue set there - with the obligatory reference to its preternatural pinkness. Since I had never come into contact with the reality of Rajasthan, everything was highly romanticized in my mind. This is where I would travel back in time, see the India as it had once been. There would be perfection that never made it out to the rest of the country. Our car crossed one of the city gates and into Jaipur - dream had come into contact with material things. Absolutely chaotic traffic, no real pink but the color of sandstone, the impossibility of taking anything in without the clamor of vendors, peddlers, tour guides, scam artists, and rickshaw guys all trying to sell and pitch you things.  The level of chaos is such that is impossible to focus on anything. You just want a few minutes of peace and quiet to see what is around, savor coming...

The developers I have truly enjoyed working with over the years have been the ones who can see and think far beyond the requirement in front of them. They ask probing questions, pressure-test assumptions and think through things that can and will go wrong. The design process is long and the team can remain at an impasse for weeks because the all proposed solutions are problematic in one way or another. Implementation once it begins, goes smoothly and the results are great.  This is the kind of talent any company would want to pay for and coding is the very small subset of the skills they would be paying for. It should not have taken AI to highlight this and neither does it help that the lowest level coding jobs can now be somewhat automated - those were not jobs worth doing to begin and those who could not differentiate between the levels of caliber cannot be helped even by AI. I would argue their conditions will only grow worse.  Companies that might have compromised on what ...

Meeting parents after a hiatus is an emotional roller-coaster for me. My paternal grandparents lived with their oldest son for as long as I remember, visiting their other kids on occasion. When my grand mother come to our home, it was an unremarkable event. She had a designated area where she liked her bed to be set up. It allowed her to be in the midst of activity and not alone in a bedroom.  This spot between the kitchen and the living room is where she could always be found for the couple of months she was with us. When she returned, her things got put away and the space looked barren for a few weeks until my eyes grew accustomed to the emptiness. These visits happened on a rather fixed schedule and we saw her other times of the year in her primary residence - there was nothing notable about her arrivals or departures.  At some point she passed away and that event was just as understated. The last time I heard my father reminiscence about her would be a couple of decades ag...

It was particularly relaxing to read this longish essay about the perfect pencil . While I have never used any of the brands mentioned in the story and the last time I wrote with a pencil is ancient history, it is still a great story about competing to be the best, peak perfection in manufacturing and so on Pencils have vanished from offices and are used mainly by artists and students. Since the 1970s, many historic European and American brands have actually decreased in quality. Frankly, we have to accept that Hi-Uni and MONO 100 will probably not be improved upon. But is that such a bad thing? Maybe Mitsubishi never fired back with a "Hi-Hi-Uni" because pencil manufacturing had reached a natural point of diminishing returns, where any further increase in quality would be virtually imperceptible. Today's manufacturers are not racing to improve the pocket knife, for example, because the technology is mature and the major flaws have been sorted out by past generations. Man...

I met two of my former coworkers after a long time. C told me that she loves her job, the team and her manager. While she did not get the raise she was expecting, everything else was so amazing that she wanted to stay where she was. It was energizing for me to see how happy she was with what she was doing. L on the other hand is on a promotion track, has newly expanded scope of responsibilities and may even come into a decent raise. And yet she is unsure if she will stay through the end of the year. She is actively in the market. The things that keeps C in her job are exactly the things that L is missing in hers - she does not particularly like what she does, her manager is completely disengaged and the team is not high-performance. The two conversations remined me of an article I had read about the cost of disengaged employees such as L .  Both of these woman are highly talented one is so motivated that she is willing to be undercompensated because the job gives her just about eve...

We had rented a car with driver for the duration of our India trip. A turned out to be cheerful guy eager to show us around and recommend the best places for local food - all of which turned out to be excellent. As with most folks back home, he is versed in local and national level politics, holds strong opinions and is not shy about airing them. Neither is my father. So they naturally hit it off and traded gossip, speculation and preposterous claims about things they could not possibly know anything about.  But it is the confidence with which the statements are made that matters. This kind of idle yet earnest chatter between strangers has always been common in India and it was nice to see that remains unchanged. The politicians are as always a thieving, lying, and conniving bunch but they accidentally do some good for the citizenry. A had no interest in American politics and and he did not care to hear or read news coming out of this part of the world. He did not see that its rele...

 I have a picture of me age two seated next to my mother on the iconic bench in front of Taj Mahal. Its a black and white picture and there is a group of four men far away in the background. The day seems to be windy given how our hair is flying. This picture was taken on one of my father's business trips to Delhi that we joined him on. I have seen this picture many times in my childhood and never imagined an opportunity to re-create it someday. We now have a digital picture of the two of us in the same spot. The background of  the picture is crowded this time with hundreds of people - its a bright spring day, shortly after sunrise. My mother's face is full of naiveté in that old picture. She is at once hopeful and helpless. She wants her story to unfold like in her dreams but she has no power or agency to impact any of the outcomes as a housewife with no college education and no avocation other than being a wife and mother. It is no surprise that she believes in the power of ...

I almost did not make it to Mathura on the trip. Just earlier in the morning we had survived a near stampeded at the Banke Bihari temple at Vrindavan and I did not have capacity for any other adventure involving a temple. On the way to the Bihari temple, my friend A had a monkey snatch away her glasses. A pandit showed up ever so conveniently with a solution. The monkey perched on the ledge with her glasses dangling in its hand needed to be bribed with a mango drink and the glasses would be promptly returned. He had the packet of mango juice ready and for his consult, he expected to be paid. I am not a religious person and yet going to this temple had been my idea.  Once in that heaving sea of humanity crushing me from every direction my only thought was to keep my mother alive. I wrapped her with both arms to shield her from the crowd and get to the darshan. She unlike me is a religious person but never had any desire to brave stampede-like conditions in the name of religion - sh...

This the second time in my life I have been in Delhi decades separating the two visits. That first time I came by train with my father for my first job interview, I was a few months away from graduating college. I could not recall any details from the trip other than a short shopping trip after the interview before catching the train home. Delhi remained a pleasant memory for me since then, that interview converted to my first job and defined the trajectory of my life. First jobs don't have to be extraordinary in any way for that life-altering outcome. It almost does not matter what it is - but it determines what kinds of stimulus you will experience for change. That change (or a series of changes) is really what does the trick but it all relies on the initial stimulus.  Those thoughts crossed my mind wandering through Dilli Haat as I browsed through the wonderful store display and food options. This time the city seemed vast and full of hidden treasures but I was still very short ...

My infrequent trips to India never fail to provide food for thought. This time it was the Air India direct flight which I preferred to other options I had. The flight attendants wore an outfit that was a cross between pants or skirts and a sari. While everyone wore the strange outfit the best it could be worn, the fact of its existence says a lot about India. We want to hang on to tradition while running full-speed in the opposite direction with odd and unpredictable results. To that end there is an arranged marriage followed by a surprise engagement complete with a professional photographer and later a bachelorette party. It bothers no one that these things inherently do not belong together.  The ladies needed a variety to pins to hold this outfit together and what might have been the elegant pallu of the sari now looked like a pleated tail - oddly shaped and sized. Any number of tray tables were atleast partly broken and one was held together by duct-tape. The elderly woman who s...

I was at a sitar concert at a small venue recently and had never heard of the musician who was playing. It turned out to be a phenomenal experience - seeing sitar taken where it hasn't been before. He transitioned from ragas to western scales and back flawlessly. There were songs he had created and then songs there were songs by Beatles. It was fun to chat with the musician after and be able to tell him how awesome he was at such a young age.  There is something deeply restorative about seeing young talent in a world full of pessimistic opinions about Gen Z. For me there is a second layer of hearing bad news about the fate of Bengalis in the world - our best days are west past us, maybe centuries past depending on how you are counting. It's all about reliving the glories of the past and having no proof points for here and now.  I found myself sharing about my experience to my somewhat bewildered friends in Kolkata and abroad. You had to be there to feel what I felt but they ap...

Watched The River by Jean Renoir recently as a way to see Bengal in 1950s - a time I have only heard and imagined of. Both my parents used to tell me stories from their childhood when I was growing up. Some stories were repeated more often than others. The characters from the stories were real to me even if they were people I would never have a chance to meet. They were essential to my understanding of who my parents were when they were kids. After I left India and as they grew older, I heard those stories a lot less. Certainly they are not told spontaneously anymore. Maybe too much time has passed and there is no anchoring point. I have forgotten a lot of detail and they find it amusing that I even remember as much as I do. There was a time when they would have filled in the details, naturally. Now, I would ask and it would unnatural. What if that is a time they no longer want to return to.  Watching the movie transported to the time when my parents were very young. Most of the a...

As someone who has been an empty nester for five years now, reading this story about Gen Z finding it harder than ever to leave home got me thinking about the good and bad of the situation. I have seen very little of J since she left home to college and while we call each other often enough, I do miss seeing her. Would either of us like that situation to change to where she lives in her childhood bedroom and becomes my roommate? I don't think so.  She has grown used to having her freedom to operate as she sees fit, not having to keep me posted on her every move. No one likes to lose independence that they have earned over time and have to regress to a time when they had far lesser agency. As a mother, I have struggled to let go and this would be a huge step back for me I think. I'd find myself slipping into patterns of behavior that have produced friction between us after J became an adult.  I lived with my parents in India even when I was working because that was the norm ba...