Promises to Keep

“All men dream: but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their
wake in the day to find that it was vanity;
but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men,
for they may act their dreams with open eyes,
…to make it possible.”
– T E Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

It was a beautiful, cloudy day out in the middle of nowhere, that I currently inhabit. I am slowly recovering from a sleepless night after having a falling out of sorts with a friend I just barely got back in touch with a year ago. Being around athletes has given me a good sense of fair-play and commitment. Nearly a year ago, I had a weird run-in with another friend in his circle which put me out of my comfort zone and bordered on being inappropriate. I discussed it with my mom and my girlfriends and we decided that I should avoid the person who behaved that way but, keep it quiet as I didnt want to  cause a fuss. Everyone can make one thoughtless mistake! I was in a great place, I had just finished my PhD and I was looking forward to my teaching job in rural Punjab. I didnt think too much about it and just laughed around it. A few months later (now) the same person suddenly became a thorn in my side and I am conflicted between having to lose a great friend (that I just reconnected with and some other members of the group that I wanted to get to know better) or my peace of mind. Ive chosen the former because as Howard Zinn famously said “You can’t be neutral on a moving train!”.

My husband and I were talking about structured charity. I am firmly of the opinion that charity is a one-off thing (which some people seem to bring a strong sense of entitlement to). Activism is more constant, consistent effort. Most charitable organizations run after big names, have a one-off photo opportunity and then aftter four group meetings and two dozen emails go dormant over the course of a year. Im a numbers person, I like results.

1. Its unpopular to say that turning off your lights for one hour doesnt mean shit if you are out there driving your car all over town, all week. Really thinking about conscious consumerism is a mammoth task.
2. Its unpopular to say that activism is almost a full-time job and no one can “quantify” how much they give of themselves to the greater common good vs. for their own progress.. besides, miserable people make miserable members of any organization so personal growth is very important.
3. Its unpopular to say that true heroes are never found in newspapers or handing over fat cheques for “charity”. True heroes are made in the moment. I heard the story of a man who threw himself over an old woman when a building in Christchurch collapsed. He died saving her. He was 25 with everything in the world to look forward to. I dont think he was thinking at the time “Im gonna be heroic!”, it was impulse. Heroism is impulsive.
4. Its unpopular to say that one does not have to play to the crowd to be “accepted”, that kind of acceptance means nothing.
5. Its unpopular to say that ethics, respecting your partners (in life and work) and drawing lines with personal space is your biggest daily dose of charity.

That being said, Ive had a really great fortnight. Ive made a few decisions that I have been struggling with and I see a clear path ahead for myself. I see no place in my life for negative people, words, energy and acts. I think the world has enough of that without having to deal with it on a daily basis. I want to celebrate the good things in life. I want to celebrate looking at a wide-open sky and thinking about promises I have made to myself. I want to know for certain that I have never short-changed myself or let people that dont count, under my skin. I want to be moved by the beauty of simple things, acts of kindness and the joy of writing and reading.That being said, I have a few books on my plate including some running books, 13 Bankers, Sherlock Holmes (:) and the Seven Pillars of Wisdom.Heres hoping for a great month of April!

More Sonerous

I am watching the movie “Dead Poets Society” and it reminds me of my first semester at IIT Ropar. I got great reviews and then I got  some mail from a problem student! Later in that semester, the student did really well in my project and came around to tell me that though he got a “B” he learned a lot. That was a high point as a teacher.When I think of most of the things Ive done, they have a common theme - Free Will.

Im ocassionally stuck with people that are “mature, responsible and responsible”. I laugh in their company. That irritates them no end.

Sometimes, its best to listen to your heart. My heart says “dream, aspire, love”… so that my children (if any) will learn the same.

Here is to April 14th, not too late for a new year’s resolution! “If its easy, it ain’t worth doing”!

Run for Japan

I am very happy to share my association with Run For Japan. We were caught in the Feb 22nd Earthquake in New Zealand. We had barely shifted to safety when we heard about Japan, where the death toll and devastation is far worse than what we saw firsthand in Christchurch. Having interacted with the Red Cross in New Zealand made it amply clear that community fund-raising efforts are very important in these times. I really appreciate being a part of this effort at Run for Japan and know that community spirit and compassion are coming through with every step.

I have run in the most unlikely places, for the most unseemingly lengths of time, in many mind-frames, up and down, indoors and outdoors, Ive run hard and slower than one can imagine… In short, every step you take for this cause will make a difference in someone’s life. Please join us this month as we try to cover 24,901 miles in 28 days. We have 555 runners as of this posting and nearly 10,000 miles done and dusted!

The Bucket List

I watched this hilarious movie called “The bucket list” starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. What was not so hilarious was that it was one day after we had decided to depart from Christchurch, after waiting for a week to see whether the situation would improve in the earthquake ravaged place. We did fear for our lives for all of five minutes when we ran down the stairs that Tuesday and then all night, when we slept quivering by the door… and then every night that followed when we still felt very violent aftershocks. I have never liked making more of a situation than there is to it but, let me tell you, this has put a whole new perspective on my own life and how I wish to lead it. Funnily enough, it was not the earthquake itself that created that perspective. We were in a different mindset for a whole fortnight following the quake, one that was very stressful, sleepless and generally anxious. What really put the perspective on my life was what happened on Tuesday, this week. There was a moment of absolute clarity on how much I valued free will.

There was still mistletoe in the aeroplane when I boarded for my January adventure and I cried watching the movie Eat, Pray, Love (so I had some clue that something had changed in my life) but, nothing in the world could have prepared me for this experience. So, it made me face my mortality and think about a suitable “Bucket List” so to speak.. some wise woman said that as we grow older in a profession, the distance between what we set out to do and what we end up doing gets shorter, with a bit of focus and hard work…….. I have two dreams in life, one to be a great athlete, one more to use my brain to its full extent. In that light, here is my bucket list, with items I think I have achieved, ticked off:

a. To always be honest with myself and those closest to me.[CHECK] <-- This has made me very unpopular at times, oh well!
b. To love unconditionally. [CHECK]
c. To explore the world from the seat of my bike without petrol involved.
d. To be a decent teacher. [CHECK]
e. To win a busy and important award [This wont happen as I asked my bosses at one point to take a hike... Ill take one for the team].
f. To write, a lot!
g. To sleep, undisturbed.
h. To re-discover passion, as I knew it, that had no boundaries, no time-limits, no fears.
i. To LIVE and ASPIRE to what are personal goals, no matter how difficult.

Wish me luck!

Flashback – Tsunami 2004

“A thousand rupees, two dozen bags of rice, one bag of potatoes and drinking water.”

This is what the lady in the picture (whose livelihood was centered around fixing boats, not quite fisher-woman) had to say in terms of compensation she recieved for losing everything they had to the Tsunami, back in 2004. I took the time to visit Nagapattinam and Velankanni eight months down the line and here are some pictures from back then.

Here is an older post on this subject:
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Post-Tsunami Notes

I took an opportunity that presented itself to visit Nagapattinam and Velankanni, two of the places worst hit by the Tsunami on December 26, 2004. After reading a lot about aid that was being rushed to these areas, trying frantically to raise money myself, I thought it would be worthwhile to see what had chanced since.

My journey started at Tarangampadi, a part of the coast which had a fort that was a “must see” according to the driver. I don’t think he realized that I was not exactly sight-seeing, but, whatever. The funny thing was that there was a fort (supposedly a historical monument) and the compound (or the surrounding wall) had been whitewashed after the Tsunami. For a second, I wondered how much the paint job cost, but, clicked a phew photos and headed towards Nagapattinam.

On the surface, things seemed like they were back to normal. There were shops selling things as usual, people moving around trying to fix boats
and some more
houses, with new paint jobs.

The first place I stopped at Nagapattinam was a shelter put up by an NGO called sevai. I thought this would be a good place to walk into and ask a few nosy questions. I met the residents, one of whom was making idlis for sale. I sat down and spoke to her for a while, asking her what happened and how things had been dealt with. She told me that her husband fixed and painted boats for a living. She herself used to have a cycle shop while her youngest son was still in school, before the tsunami. When it hit, they left everything they owned and fled. Some combination of the government and NGOs gave them temporary shelter for a week after. After this time, they were given 25 bags of rice (per family), and Rs. 2000 twice (total of Rs. 4000). After this, there was NO FURTHER AID . I was a little surprised, but not too much. She seemed grateful and sincerely so, because in her view, they had given her shelter and care just after the disaster. Prodding a little further, I asked about the cycle shop and the boat-repair shop to which she replied that neither existed anymore. Her youngest son had dropped out of school and gone to work (in a city) to raise some more money for the family and she herself now made idlis, to be sold. Most of the aid-money had gone to fishermen but, not the adjoining industries (like boat-repair or small shops on the coast).

I have questions (nerd-alert again):

First, what was the total amount of aid that was sent into India and seggregated by the government itself for relief purposes?

Second, how many fishermen were compensated and with how much money/other goods?

Third, why is the issue about making the aid-disbursement process more transparent not being raised by anyone?

More soon.. until then my story remains incomplete

Whats missing?

The spate of bad-news including the quakes in New Zealand and Japan have made me sit up and think. I have been overwhelmed trying to balance my personal goals and my goals for social involvement, both pulling me in different directions. When I landed up at IIT Ropar, one bewildered student asked me “Why are you here ma’am?”. It was meant as a friendly question (as I am really inspired by this kid) but, I thought about it today. I left home at a very young age and probably ended up pining for my country and changes thereof in a different dimension all together.

In high-school, I met Medha Patkar when our school went on an excursion to a nearby dam. I didnt know what she was doing then (I was just a kid) but, she seemed nice and talked to us children very kindly. In college, I worked 20 hours a week on a work-study scholarship… sometimes this meant scraping dishes, other times data-entry or programming jobs by the third year but, money was precious. I never spared an ocassion to splurge my hard-earned cash on some second-hand books and I read a lot. I also knew about P Sainath, Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy. I dont know how much I agree with what Arundhati Roy says, as I grow older. However, I do know that P Sainath has done a lot to put the spotlight on farmer-suicides within India.

To a student in Computer Science in any of my classes, farmer-suicides are the LAST thing on their mind. They are more concerned about grades, exams, projects, internships (this is a new fad, the biggest names are more important than the actual learning experience), complaining about bad hostel food and ocassionally, when they meet a goofy teacher like me, puzzlement ensues. There is just massive apathy about current-affairs. Politics is almost a swear-word, its dirty, we wont go near it. The same with systemic flaws, if something doesnt work, its easier to complain amongst friends rather to think about what the cause of the problem is and go after it. When I was a student, I had big causes, boycotted processed foods very early on (and genetically modified crap at McDonalds, which is the HIT of the weekend outing in India) and eagerly read up on political debates. The most basic human-right is the right to life. Lets forget about television and employment for a minute. I had an opinion on the policies on Genocide within various historic events (not that anyone cared but, at least I knew what happened or what was happening )…. I cannot say the same for the youth of today and I am a little baffled myself.

There are massive problems with our system and I am no proponent of solving all of them. In fact, I have no answers to how any of these problems CAN be solved. However, if India were to face a natural disaster today (and lets not forget, we already had our issue of nature’s wrath with the Tsunami in 2004), we would have no road for reprieve. Most things are sort of buzz-words in our brains till it affects us, personally and this is a bad thing. Our choices define who we are.. however even the most idealistic person would know that natural disasters have no rhyme or reason and dont discriminate by zip-code. Its just that our path back to normalcy (systemically) would be much worse than in New Zealand or Japan and that is a scary thought.

There is almost NO importance for human life in India. Are we stupid enough to think that a tsunami or natural disaster would only affect rural areas, where neither anyone cares about the state of health-care, nor education, nor food-security, nor income-demographics (how many of my students KNOW where Nagapattinam is? Do they know that a majority of people affected in the 2004 tsunami were fishermen? People who were too poor to complain about rehabilitation?) nor employment guarantees? Activism is almost a dirty word in student life or a non-entity. But, the present state of affairs works for no-one. Not the poorest of the poor and not the middle-class (we are much more smug though). We pay a lot of taxes though, do we have the freedom to run at 6am if we wanted to without fear, without reservations and with joy? Do we have the freedom to stay in our country and contribute to the projects that interest us instead of seeking sunny shores for the 100,000$$ paychecks? Do we have the freedom to take care of our parents and stay close to our roots without having to drive 2 hours in mad traffic, lost sleep and bad eating habits and long hours at work?

What exactly IS missing?

Christchurch Earthquake

I was tempted to title this post Mortality but, I digress. On Tuesday, February 22nd, my husband and I were at our rented premises in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was about lunch time, I was finishing a report and nibbling at some pasta, he was heating his food. At first, we felt what seemed like an aftershock but when the rumbling continued and my food fell on the carpet, we ran out of the first-floor apartment, helter-skelter. Within minutes of coming outside the house, we felt what was a series of aftershocks. On further inspection, we found the whole neighborhood was ravaged but nothing sank in on the first day. We hardly slept that night and woke up at least a dozen times to more aftershocks. Sadly, we were stuck with a house-owner who came by to inform us that he expected us to pay rent.. we were not sure why he said that as most of our rent had been pre-paid. The power went off immediately after the first quake hit and we expected that it would be back in 24 hours or so. What followed was a bizzare nightmare of outlandish proportions, here is a brief recounting:

Our main door had sunk in and we couldnt open it without considerable force. What we did not notice on Tuesday (as there was no power after a while and it was pitch dark and our nerves were frayed by the time nigthfall came) was a huge crack in our bedroom wall and in several other places in the building. We slept in a little space (with our legs folded) with the door slightly ajar on Tuesday night. It was bitterly cold outside (by our standards) and we just couldnt bear to sleep in the open. It was no use as we hardly slept that night and were completely perplexed at what was happening. On the second day, it started to dawn on us that we had no running water, no electricity and no sewage. All these basic human necessities were down and it was not easy to gather when these would be back. As we had no access to TV, I had a radio on my music player, which I listened to for emergency news. We heard that 40 people were confirmed dead in the central business district and that our suburb was the worst hit, in terms of basic supplies. It also became amply clear to us that we were simply not safe in the house any more as our only exit was jammed shut and it was too cold to sleep outside at night. We also realized that the landlord knew that it would take a very long time to repair things and thats probably why the comment about rent surfaced, but, we didnt want to think negatively. The neighbors were helping each other out with well water and sharing barbeques for cooking and we were trying to stay very positive about the situation.

On Thursday, our cell phones ran out of power. I biked an hour to my friend’s house, which usually would have taken 20 minutes but, the roads were broken, there were police and emergency workers in some parts of town and traffic was moving very very slowly. There was a heck of a lot of dust and silt and mini water holes to get past. I couldnt believe my eyes. It looked like a war-zone to one part of town and then there was power in some other parts of town. I charged our electronics half-way and returned home, exhausted. We had also had cumulatively lost sleep and we were at our wits ends. While we considered ourselves very lucky to be alive, the aftershocks while reducing in frequency, had not reduced in intensity/violence. Added to this, our daily routine now consisted of walking to get water, filling water, boiling water and eating out of boxes and cans. We had no idea where to ask for help as we were not mobile. On Friday, we managed to get a ride to the local Civil Defense welfare center to register our case with the Red Cross and housing about feeling unsafe in the house and getting out of there. Most of our neighbors had started to leave as it was becoming evident that power would not return for weeks and the energy company was talking about running overhead lines in the area. Several areas of the city were being manned by large swathes of police and military from many different countries and the law-and-order situation seemed to be going South. In fact, within an hour of the quake, when we were returning from a little walk (as we preferred being outside) we saw some people steal milk and frozen items from the local gas station. Air New Zealand had also started to offer 50$ flights to people that wanted to leave Christchurch but neither could we get them on the phone nor did we know how to make it to the airport with no means of transport.

We then continued to clean up our apartment (as our house owner returned to check if we were still in the apartment, several times, while never offering to give us any help to get to where local churches had organized free food and drinking water) for two days and decided to move to safer grounds.

My best friend lost his coach and his neighbor. It has been a pretty senseless tragedy and I listened to the radio every day for hours, just to document the responses by major players. Ive only now realized that a lot of ideas in my PhD thesis, relating to the use of cell-phone technology for Emergency Response, are very valid. Throughout the entire time, we never had a group SMS notification about local efforts to supply food and water. Not everyone had a battery operated radio and news was not proliferating properly. Altruism I believe, is a function of time. While this brought out the best in many, it also brought out the worst in some. Im hoping to document this this but my head is in a tizzy! I dont really know how I am going to publicize my research but I am. In similar situations in India, the loss of life would cross 100,000 (given human density) and the response would be as poor, if not worse. We are very lucky because the trails I bike/run in had a rockfall and killed two people.

The only thing that kept us going was the daylight (I was terrified in the night-time with no power and reports of looting in abandoned homes), some hot food by a local church group in conjunction with the military and police and the friendly faces of the Red Cross Volunteers. Please donate generously to the Red Cross, for New Zealand. This country has given me so much and most of the people here are amazing people, resilient and very hard-working. I have no doubt they will be back on their feet however, major disasters come with a steady state time of about 5-7 years in terms of the aftermath. Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, didnt try to sugarcoat what it would take for the city to revive itself. But, here is to trying to do whatever little we can to help this along.

The daily grind

I was talking to an inspiring young man today… and we were commiserating on how it gets more and more difficult to dream as one grows older. We have a lot more to lose as we grow older, that is the perception at least! As our conversation progressed and we shared our thoughts on life, the number 42, the chamber of secrets and fast bits and bytes and priorities. His were music, running, adventure(s) in the outdoors and then a real job. Sounded a lot like me, except perhaps to me the adventures and running are before music… I think Ive found great inspiration in books, great movies and characters, fictional or otherwise. I dont think growing older has anything to do with sources of inspiration (thank goodness!) … once a dreamer, always a dreamer.

I remember reading some great books by a renowned Psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl. Although the most famous of his works is Man’s Search for Meaning, he also has a repository of amazing books on general psychiatry, if one can call it that. One of those books is called The Will to Meaning… albeit a slightly thicker book than the first, it made for some good reading in the rainy June back in 2008 in Seattle. I would run to work every morning, in the pouring rain, work 5 hours, and run home in the dryness and work at home there on. I had an incredibly hard time managing my time as an athlete, a PhD Student and a CEO. I really have no idea how I got through it. According to the Wikipedia rendition of Frankl’s theories (which I believe are accurate, existentialism is about living in the moment or the present as much as possible): “We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering” and that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances” I think one other thing he said in his book is that an athletes life is challenging because it creates simplicity and enough engagement with the task at hand to completely occupy a person. There is no boredom when being an athlete, not too much at least and not when one is trying hard enough. One is constantly hungry, focussed and entirely engaged with getting things done.

When we think of the daily grind I feel that a lot of the conflict comes from working jobs that we dont particularly identify with and that bring us little personal reward (other than money). There are many theories on happiness and love but to me, love it time and happiness is satisfaction. These are interchangable. Many times I feel that if I really love doing something, I would probably do it for free. Money (for me, a middle-class denizen) is not an immediate concern, although that could change at any time if circumstances went bad or changed drastically. Also, living in big cities in India can become the bane of our existance, even though 90% of the population will never realize how much living close to nature (even if working for basic wages to pay bills) can change our lives for the better. How much a run or a daily exercise routine or just physical labour can change how we percieve ourselves and the world. Being an athlete this is a no-brainer for me but, not for most.

For me, I believe very sternly in cutting my losses, when situations get out of control or sound meaningless. In terms of work, I am privileged to be self-employed in one path down the wooded trail and working for IIT Ropar on the other path of the wooded trail. Its a hard thing to keep in perspective. Academic jobs offer a lot of intellectual freedom and satisfaction but the pay is a joke and the politics are through the roof. Industrial jobs dont offer that much intellectual freedom unless you are a carpenter (which is what I try to be, as busy and important as my degrees might sound I believe in a job well done rather than ten pages of jargon, any day of the week). Academia brings out the best in me sometimes. I am an idealist, I believe that the world should be a certain way and that the educated and the privileged have an additional responsibility to do something to challenge the status quo. But, I also believe that free will is the cornerstone of individuality and uniqueness so, if there ever be a balancing act in my life, it would be to find a happy middle ground somewhere.

In a lighter tone, Bloat, in Finding Nemo comes to mind when I think of our mind-boggling excesses of technology and attention-grabbing widgets… this is a puffer-fish that bloats when he gets stressed Im not a very smart person but I do know one thing, Passion is not for sale. My mom had turned down several amazing jobs saying “you couldnt pay me enough” (when referring to ownership) and what can I say, Im nothing original. Just a chip off the old block.. and Im OK with that. My grammie was even more free-willed, learning Sanskrit at age 53 when physically impaired… Stick your tongue out, live a little… its never too late!

In any case, I think a lot of the journey is about sticking to our priorities… not so much a grand search for the next big thing. As Kerouac said, Id rather be thin, than famous! Lets see where the cobblestone trails lead…………

Driftwood

I woke up late today morning and was very angry to have missed the morning session before the rains. I started a run in the pissing rain, determined to make the most of my day. I was not going to let someone get in the way of a burning fire in my stomach, I had finally felt some passion for my life as I know it on my last night’s introspection.

I remembered all the long hard nights and days of training with no care for weather, tiredness, apparel or hope. I met two kids on the beach, two boys probably teenagers who started running with me! I asked them if they were surfers and they said yes… they asked how long I was planning on running, to which I replied about 20 minutes, that way pointing ahead of me. They were barefoot, totally muddy and ran a while before they dropped off… I saw another lone man ahead of me, who was screaming at the wind! I got a bit concerned as I had been about these two boys, as I was alone on the beach, the sea looking like a John Masefield poem. I turned around earlier than I had intended, only to run into the two boys again. These two, after a while had two pieces of driftwood, that they used to draw lines on either side of me. What are you doing? I asked to which one of them said It’s a path!.. I laughed out and followed their cue… they drew the path, I stayed on it. They took a lot of turns, curves and such and wrote me funny messages by running ahead of me including, Have a Nice Day, Lots of Love and Smiles, See ya!, word by word, in turn, one would write one word, the other the next  Very co-ordinated effort. Then they drew the finish line and I stopped before it and one of them raced me across it and said I win! I couldn’t stop laughing. These two made my day! My belly was full of laughter and I shared my music with them and thanked them for making my day and gave one of ‘em a hug. Sure enough, they had a younger sister with them and their mom was there as well.

All this, in the pouring rain!

I also got attacked by a manic-depressed seagull, who probably thought I was a big pink salmon, given the shocking neon tights I had worn to cheer myself up on my run and get a laugh… When I went back to get photos, the gull really came after me till I took one of the pieces of driftwood and held it above my head. It was too funny, amazing and strange to be true. Sometimes, you just gotta trust the Universe to show you the way.

A day with the ladies

Mom and I went to a beauty parlor yesterday… I wanted to say “Spa Date” but every Spa in Bangalore that I called wanted twice my employee’s salary for a few things beautiful so, I thought Id stick to friendly, neighborhood Lakme…. They were WAY more than what I needed.. and have more fun, local staff too. Anyway, mom is way more personable than I ever will be.. I wonder if there is a parlour that can fix personalities. I am trying hard to develop chatting skills. The lady that was going to be performing what seemed like a major car overhaul (remember the scene from Ms. Congeniality, in goes a geek out comes a hottie?) was a very nice lady and said that she had noticed me a couple of times before when I came in, was always in a big hurry to leave and never talked So, she didnt insist that I start this time and I was grateful for that. Since we had nearly 6.5 hours together, we did talk a bit and I really respect what some of the ladies there are trying to achieve.

The 6.5 hours was mostly a blur but, the effect was the same as putting a monkey in a washing machine! I am not sure I look any better but, my hair is washed, Ive been seeing the effects of major moisturizer and heck, I have NAILPOLISH on……..