Tote bags

I have always liked recycling old things. Part of it is because of the good it does to the environment. And part of it is because it motivates me to do my own research and create something out of what would otherwise be a waste.

My house is stuffed with old possessions. At times, I feel that it is more like a museum of memorabilia than a residence. I admit that I have played a role in making it thus. Sadly, it has been a significant one.

With my (soon to end) flexible schedule, I have made some headway in recycling some of my old t shirts and dresses. With help from instructables, I converted them to tote bags.

Three things

Three explorers I wish I had been:

1. Ernest Shackleton
2. David Livingstone
3. Magellan

Three scientists I wish I could have been:

1. Jagdish Chandra Bose
2. Isaac Newton
3. Charles Darwin

Three books I wish I could have written:

1. Great Expectations
2. Fountainhead
3. Catch 22

Three professions I wish I had pursued:

1. Travel journalism
2. Astronomy
3. Law

Three things I hope I’ll see end in India during my lifetime:

1. Garbage piles (with hovering stray dogs)
2. Power cuts
3. Dynastic democracy

Three things I wish I’ll do in my life:

1. Travel the world
2. Create something big
3. Leave a legacy

Spaceship fantasy

Graphic by Jinksy at Alias Jinksy

(Two in Tandem series)

I feel I’ve been on this spaceship too long.

I’m starting to miss people; I’m yearning for a song.

Will I be reaching any place soon? I start to wonder.

Something outside catches my eye and I keep looking yonder.

For the beautiful mass I see, I cannot exactly identify.

When my Earth station pings me, I cannot reply.

There is green and blue, purplish pink and a bit of grey too.

‘I’ll get back to you’, I tell them, and return to enjoy the view.

Uranus or Neptune, this cannot be.

I haven’t travelled that far, do believe me.

A fairyland on my route, then perhaps it is?

Yes! God is fulfilling my childhood wish!

Scattered thoughts

After a particularly dry fortnight, the rain gods decided to spread a wet blanket across my city. The splashing sound of rain woke me up at three in the night. The heavenly reservoirs seem to have an unending supply of water. The temperature has dropped and it is much cooler. Water from above has flooded the streets and has caused drains to clog. That is the downside of a pleasant turn in the weather during monsoons.

It wasn’t just the skies pouring water this morning. Silent drops of water floated down from many eyes as life support to an old patriarch was pulled off early this morning. Death is really the end. It is final. Everything else is transient. I have lived through the worst phases of my life thinking, ‘this too shall pass’. But death, it doesn’t merely pass. It takes you along. For better or worse, it is the absolute finality as we know it today. Isn’t it ironic that death is probably the only certainty of every life? This truth scares me sometimes.

Also this morning, I heard from a good friend about her mother’s illness. She has been through very tough times in the last couple of years, and hearing from her about her mom makes me wonder about how long a cruel streak in life can go on for. How long, really?

An ex-colleague feels that ‘The only quest worth pursuing is the quest for power and money. Earn as much as you can and splurge. Enjoy your life.’ He definitely has more power and more money than I have today. But, I don’t find him enjoying his life any more than I am enjoying mine. Our definitions for enjoyment and life probably differ.

I watched the British parliamentarians question Rebekah Brooks on BBC for a while yesterday. I think I’m regaining some of my lost cynicism.

I feel heavy in the head. Today has been a day of serious news and reflections.

Magic

We live in a world of shrinking distances and internet access. Of video conferences and android phones. Of mobile apps and BRIC economies. Of consumers, services and sophisticated technologies. Of fast lives and faster cars.

I belong to the generation in which friends are made on facebook, and lives are saved by twitter. A generation which is characterized by smart college undergrads and dropouts becoming billionaires.

But most astonishingly, this is also a world, and this is also a generation that is fascinated by, what else but old world wizardry and magic. By Harry Potter and Voldemort, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasely, Hogwarts and Dumbledore. Across continents and countries, the love of magic persists.

What is it about the Harry Potter series that makes the facebook and twitter generation crazy about it? If you have read the series, you’d know that the plots, incidents and characters defy all precepts of science and common sense. Vanishing by putting on a cloak? Flying on a broomstick? Killing and saving by chanting spells and pointing wands? Transporting yourself by using a powder? Pouring out memories from your brain in the form of a fluid? Dividing your soul into seven parts to gain immortality? Things just don’t make any sense.

Yet, I enjoy reading Harry Potter. And it is certainly not for literary value. I think of J.K. Rowling as an extremely imaginative writer, and I turn to her works for respite from plebeian life, not to learn literature. She is creative and smart, and she is also commercial. She spun a multi-million empire out of the world she created with words. I’d even agree that she is an entrepreneur. For her creativity, acumen, and business sense, I have the greatest admiration for her. But I do not think of her as someone who has produced great literature.  Great entertainment, she has.

I read the first Potter book in late 2004. I have since then read all the books in the series several times over. I read the sixth book in the series, ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ mostly in my office in Mumbai during a particularly slow phase, when I had very little work, and was yet required to be physically present in office. Of course the entire office, including my boss knew about it. We had lunch time discussions about how dark the series had become, and who could the half blood prince be. In contrast to the slow phase at work during the release of the sixth book, when the last book in the series, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ came out, I was heads down in work. I lived in downtown White Plains then, twenty-five miles north of New York City. Although I had reserved my copy at the local Barnes and Noble weeks in advance, and even gone and picked it, I struggled to find time to read it. Those were days of super crazy work; of blurred boundaries between days and nights; of no distinction between weekdays and weekends; of sleep deprivation, migraines and takeout meals; of black coffee at two in the night; of loss of sleep, appetite and hair. Yeah, that was an enormously busy phase. But that is not the point here. The point is whether or not I was able to read the Deathly Hallows. Yes, I was; after I finally chalked out time over a weekend to read it.  And once I finished reading it, a sense of accomplishment swept through me.

I have often wondered, what makes a person like me enjoy Harry Potter? I believe several social psychologists have mulled over the same question. What makes an entire generation go gaga over a boy with a scar, and his friends and enemies, all of who have one thing in common – Magic? Melissa Burkley, professor of Social Psychology at Oklahoma State University thinks that people in general, believe in magic, whether or not they admit it. Her recent Psychology Today post talks about why people like magic.

Honestly, I don’t know if I really do believe in that kind of magic. I’d perhaps like to believe in it, and perhaps I’d be enamoured if magic of that kind manifests itself around me, and in my life. But till the time that happens, I cannot, for sure, say that I wholly, truly and sincerely believe in it.

What I do know is that magic has offered me an enticing and enjoyable escape from the sometimes monotonous, sometimes cutthroat realities that have surrounded me. It has enabled me to fly away on flights of fantasy. It has enabled me to take a break, imagine and visualize the unimaginable, feel happy and liberated. It has offered a lively infusion of energy into my jaded spirits. In some way, by making me a witness to colourful wizardry, it has awakened the dormant child in me. Yes, perhaps that is it. It has provided a pathway back into my childhood. Childhoods are usually happy. Mine was.

So may be, that is why reading J.K. Rowling makes me happy. Because the magic in that world tricks me into believing that I am little again. 

Can you read faces?

I first read about Dr. Paul Ekman in Sheena Iyengar’s ‘The Art of Choosing’, which was nominated for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2010. Shortly, I came across him in greater detail in the next book I was reading, ‘Destructive Emotions’ by The Dalai Lama and Daniel Goleman. I was fascinated by his work. The ability to read faces accurately bestows on you some kind of invincibility. It would be very difficult for people to lie to you, to cheat you.

In the early days of my fascination with Dr. Ekman’s work, I came across an online test on BBC, where you are asked to separate the fake smiles from genuine ones. Dr. Ekman believes that people with a pessimistic and cynical outlook on life are more accurate in judging genuineness or fakeness of human expressions, as overly positive people tend to get delusional in (and with) their optimism. 

Hmm. That is worth a thought.

Dr. Ekman after all, is a scientist, not a self help guru. May be we should hire his services to figure out the real intentions of those, who for now I’ll call, the battered baron, the obstreperous opponent, the babbling baba, the spicy sushi and the wily widow. (Wow!I'm on a roll!!)

Acknowledgement: Thank you, Mr. Salman Rushdie and Midnight’s Children for inimitable inspiration.

On a completely unrelated note, have you seen the Time magazine’s recently released list of the Top 10 most expensive cities of the world? The list had some big surprises for me. 

Old Walls

Graphic by Jinksy at Alias Jinksy

(Two in Tandem series)

My old room was yellow and white;

It was such a fun place to live.

Walls like happy sunshine;

And a pristine white ceiling;

Filled my childhood with glee.

My old room needs new paint today.

The walls are old, the ceiling is weary;

Tired of the paint that is decades old.

I should take out time to make it new;

For those old walls made my childhood happy.

A soft target?

Is Mumbai a soft target for terror groups? Why does it keep getting hit again and again?

Yesterday’s multiple explosions killing several people comes less than three years after the nightmarish 26/11/2008, when the city was held siege. And precisely five years after the July 11 train blasts in 2006. A disturbing, horrifying déjà vu, is what a news anchor called it.

I haven’t lived in Mumbai for almost five years now, but I have friends living there. Every time I get news like this, I panic. I reach for my phone, vacillate between calling and not calling for minutes, then finally call, only to hear a recorded voice chanting, ‘All lines in this route are busy; please try after some time’.

Is there an end to this?

Who do you write like?

A couple of days back, when I was rummaging my old diaries for forgotten memories, I found I had written down the url to a website named I Write Like. Curiosity aroused, and memory not helping, I went on to read my entry. And then I remembered that I had heard about this website on some radio show (was it John Tesh?). The website has an analyzer that compares word choices and writing styles of the text pasted with those of famous writers and gives a result.

I went ahead and submitted most of my blog entries for analysis, one by one. It appears that I do not write like any specific writer. Based on my blog entries, the maximum number of times I write like Cory Doctorow, a Canadian writer, about who, I did not know anything till today. Of course since the analyzer told me that 23% of the times, I wrote like him, I was naturally curious to find out more about this writer. He is almost forty, lives in Canada and mostly writes science fiction, a genre I am not a huge fan of. He is a huge proponent of the Creative Commons organization.

In all, my blog post writing style has resembled that of twenty-six different writers (!), plainly implying that it resembles no one in particular.

The analyzer tells me that I have written like these ten writers 80% of the time: 

Cory Doctorow                             23%
David Foster Wallace                 13%

James Joyce                                    9%

H.P. Lovecraft                                 9%

Dan Brown                                        6%

Kurt Vonnegut                                6%

Edgar Allan Poe                              4%

Vladimir Nabokov                         4%

Gertrude Stein                                  3%

Stephanie Meyer                              3%

And beyond these, apparently, I have single blog entries that correspond to the styles of Arthur Conan Doyle (I am a huge fan!), William Shakespeare (Shakespeare in me? It is a flattering thought, nevertheless, not true, I must admit), J.D. Salinger (again, I’m a huge fan!), Mark Twain (another writer I enjoy reading), Margaret Mitchell, J.K. Rowling (hmm, really?), Raymond Chandler (I haven’t read much of him, but I know of several fans who vow he is the best ever in that genre), Bram Stoker, Margaret Atwood, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, Chuck Palahniuk, Harry Harrison, Stephen King, Issac Asimov and Douglas Adams.

Notwithstanding the absence of any clear basis to these results, it is a fun activity.

Ladies, Time Alert!

 

Delhi’s police commissioner had some words of wisdom for the ladies of the national capital recently, for which he has been drawing a lot of flak. The essence of his advice was that women should refrain from venturing out very late in the night, and if they do, they should be appropriately chaperoned by a male friend or relative.

Perfectly sound advice. The kind my father gives me every time I have talked about being late at work. The kind I try to follow religiously ever since I returned to India. So then why is Mr. Commissioner drawing so much flak?

Blame it on his accompanying statement that ‘police alone cannot be blamed’ if a woman is on the streets after 2 a.m. and becomes the victim of a crime. The statement is tantamount to washing hands off primary responsibility of maintaining law and order post 2 am on the streets of Delhi. What, on earth, could his underlying assumption be? That to be a woman not at home after 2 am implies an intrinsic character defect in the lady in question? That women who are out after 2 am are whores, and police cannot take responsibility for crimes against whores because, well, they are whores anyway? Or perhaps some other assumption equally biased and judgemental, an assumption that is, in all likelihood, an offspring of the one-track North Indian cow-belt mentality? If you are a woman, and heaven forbid, for some emergency you need to go out after 2, and someone attacks you, leaving you in mental and physical trauma, or worse still, kills you, then the primary responsibility for what has befallen you lies on your own shoulders, lady!

I like to believe that I am a rational human being (on most occasions), and as such, I will not knowingly endanger my life. Life is dear, friends. Everything else that you lose, with efforts, time and luck, you can hope to regain some day. Not life. Once gone, it is gone. The curtain falls and the show is over. The end. There is no coming back. No second chances. Fighting sick maniacs, rapists and criminals on my own at 2 in the night has never really been my aim, notwithstanding my desire to make my cities better places to live. That job is best left to the police and law enforcement.

Mr. Commissioner should appreciate the fact, that unless there is a need, women (and for that matter, even men) would not be out that late. So, is he saying that even if circumstances necessitate me being out late, police will not take responsibility for my safety? I’ll give you an example from the time when I lived in Delhi. I had come to Patna for a week’s vacation, and was going to fly back to Delhi on a Sunday evening, scheduled to land in Delhi at 7-30 pm. I had to be in my office the next morning. Air India delayed my flight hour after hour, till it finally took off at 11 in the night. It was past one in the night when I sat in the cab for home. Call it the driver’s bad luck or whatever, the guy hit a van parked near the exit of the airport, and immediate hit the brake. The single piece of my baggage that was parked beside me on the rear seat flew and after tangentially touching the driver on the head made a head on impact with the glass. As for me, I was hurled forward, my chin hitting hard against the back of the front seats. In time I had tightly grasped the back rest, so did not have to suffer any more damages apart from a swollen jaw. As I painstakingly turned to look at the vehicle that my rented car’s driver had hit, I saw men in black, some of them carrying sleek machine guns (or some other kind of gun – I am not a gun expert) around it. And then I spotted ‘Anti Terrorist Squad’ written. ‘Great!’, I remember myself muttering, ‘this is exactly what I need at 1-30 in the night.’

Thankfully, only a short conversation took place, and after my credentials were checked, I was safely despatched home (the driver was detained).But, not before being lectured on how I had the primary responsibility for my own safety, and that I should have taken an earlier flight. ‘If anything happens, you’ll blame the administration.’

When I heard about the commissioner’s remark, I was reminded of this incident. I was not trying to act daredevil, or prove my courage to anyone that night. I had planned to be at my Delhi residence by 8-30, 9 that night. But matters went out of my hand. Air India played a spoiler. Why did I not call male friends or relatives to the airport? Well, for starters, how about not wanting to spoil someone’s Sunday night? Maybe I didn’t have close family in Delhi, so there was no family member to call. I can think of a dozen different reasons. Is the commissioner saying that had something untoward happened that night, it would have been my fault?

What the hell do I pay my taxes for, if I cannot even expect this bare minimum from the guardians of law? I know it is not wise for a woman to be on streets very late, but sometimes, you just cannot help it. As a citizen and a loyal taxpayer, is it too much to ask for that security?

Such incidents make me yearn for the life I had in New York. Yeah, they make me miss it so badly, that I sometimes feel like just going back and starting over. And oh! There, I wasn’t even a citizen. I want to live in the world that Tagore once envisioned, a place ‘where the mind is without fear and the head is held high’.

I should add here though, that it is possible all Mr. Commissioner was really trying to do was to give some fatherly advice to the women of the city he is supposed to be legal guardian of. In that case, though, he should not have added the ‘police alone cannot be blamed’ phrase. I can live with advice.

Victory by absence

It seems counterintuitive that you win after you leave. Doesn’t most of the pop motivational literature tell us to stay put, and try and try, and eventually we’d win?

And yet, my point was best put across when I left.

Those were difficult days, and although the well formed decision in my mind left no room for doubt, I often wondered if my time, efforts and voice were all a waste. My acerbic tongue and their nebulous, romantic optimism hardly prophesised a successful partnership. I had realized it long back. And still, I am glad that I was there for one year. As I now know, it did make a difference.

For sometimes, it is by refusing that we make our strongest statements; it is by leaving that we make our presence most strongly felt; and it is our absence that actually champions the cause we vociferously advocate continuously, and brings about the change we’d perhaps have given our lives for, had we still been there.

Well, that is how things work sometimes.

Opportunity

Graphic by Jinksy at Alias Jinksy

(Two in Tandem series)

The window of opportunity beckons me.

Full of promise, it draws me towards it.

And when I have answered it, and have done it justice;

Its light will shine in my soul, and carry me higher.

For then, I would have realized my true potential;

And would have become the best I can ever be.

Phoenix

Graphic by Jinksy at Alias Jinksy

(Two in Tandem series)

The phoenix rises from its ashes, as it must, everytime it nears end.

For it never dies, the phoenix; it goes on learning from the life just lived.

The life of trials and tribulations, of successes and victories.

And it rises again, everytime it is down, to start all over.

Confession

I am becoming lazy. My addiction to the luxuries of staying at home, working at my own pace, setting my own deadlines (for the most part), having most of my household work done for me, not having to worry over what to cook and then not really having to cook, not having to clean, not having to worry about paying any bills except for my internet bill, is assuming gargantuan proportions. This needs to be rectified. Really. I’m getting worried that I might end up as a skeleton of my former workaholic self.

Abeunt studia in mores. (In English: Practices zealously pursued pass into habits.)

The right practices need to be in place.

I spoke with Pavi yesterday. For more than one hour. I was overjoyed to hear that one of my former students who has just progressed to grade 3, was reading with 95% accuracy on an end of year grade 5 English text, which is to say, almost three years ahead of her actual grade level. Well done V-Day (that was what I called her), you have done me proud!

I also came to know that despite having over forty-five students in the class, and not being able to speak a word of Hindi (or Marathi), Vijay, the new teacher, manages the class with relative ease and often remarks with amazement, at the discipline and receptivity of the class.

I feel happy to know that whatever little I did, tried to do, was worth something.

 

Torn by Partition

I have been reading Midnight’s Children. I am struck by the poignancy of Rushdie’s magnum opus, which at times is heartbreaking. And yet, because the poignancy is so skilfully cooked in satire, you cannot help letting out a wry laugh. I must add here, that I haven’t finished reading it. What I express here are passing, intermediate sentiments that have been forming in my mind as I have been progressing through the book.

Post India’s independence, when the news of Gandhi’s assassination reaches the Sinais, it is as if they are struck by lightning. They do not, as yet, know the identity of the assassin, but are pretty certain that hell will break loose if he turns out to be a Muslim. Imagine their relief when they hear the name of the assassin on the radio, Nathuram Godse. Ah! A Hindu, a Brahmin at that!

Amina Sinai’s remark in that moment of panic, followed by relief, stays with me.

“By being Godse he has saved our lives!”

What was it like to be a Muslim in India, immediately post-partition?

For that matter, what was it like to be a Hindu refugee during that time?
 

I cannot claim to have a firsthand experience of being either of the above; but my grandfather, who I called dadu, could, had he been here today.

Dadu migrated to India leaving behind his ancestral land. Acres of fertile land. The common explanation behind his decision is that dadu, like most Hindus, did not want to live in a Muslim nation. But was that the only reason? I want to know, but I am five years too late with the question.

I found out only recently that my dadu’s father, who was alive and in good health during the partition, did not migrate to India along with him. But my dadu’s mother did. She made the decision to be an Indian when India became independent, and accompanied her son. Her husband died within a decade. And with that, the last remaining ties with the land that was once her own, were snapped. Partition tore apart a lot more than history has documented.

Rushdie’s opus has transported me to the history that I wasn’t a part of. Yet, in a strange way, that history is a part of me.