The day after

I am confident that I have contributed a few verses.  There remain a few more to contribute.

O Me! O Life!

By Walt Whitman

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

The day has arrived

Hence this re-post of my commentary in The Oregonian (November 4th)

**********************

Early last March was the last time I “set forth toward class,” to use the memorable phrase from the late William Stafford’s charming poem “Old Prof.”

Since then, I have been waking up wondering whether I will ever set forth toward class, especially with my university’s president contemplating faculty layoffs and other cuts primarily in response to the pandemic.

During that final face-to-face meeting in March, students had questions in plenty, from arrangements for the final exams, to whether they will be able to come back to the dorms.  Their facial expressions and body language broke my heart.  “Keep calm and carry on” was one of the many clichés that I shared with them.

That was the last time I saw students in person.

Work has been completely virtual since then.  Logging in from my “home office” is all I do anymore in order to set forth toward class.

Every day, I end up asking myself the same question: Will I be able to once again have meaningful interactions with students?

As if the pandemic weren’t enough to take away those interactions that I cherish, there is one other, and more important, reason for me to worry whether I will ever “set forth toward class.”

Like many regional public universities in the United States, my university too is dealing with financial crisis that had been slowly developing and which the coronavirus accelerated.  “Our goal is to retain as many employees as possible,” noted the president in a three-page, single-spaced memo to the campus about the process of rightsizing the university.

In a couple of weeks, we will find out about the president’s plan to “align faculty resources with enrollment trends to reduce faculty expenses in academic programs.”

Will I be informed that I will not be needed after June 2021?  How will I feel if I stayed on, but favorite colleagues are laid off?

Of course, there are no clear answers in life.

Even if I am laid off, as a citizen and a (former) educator, I will continue to worry about public regional universities like WOU. These are often the institutions that provide valuable learning opportunities for students who might be the first from their families to attend a four-year college.

WOU and other similar colleges are increasingly the ones that serve the “non-traditional students”—adults returning to college after various life experiences. They welcome mothers and fathers, who decide that completing a college degree is way too precious. They open the doors to military veterans, who without fail are the only students who insist on addressing me as “sir.”

Among all the different types of students, I have especially been blown away by the dogged determination of students who are mothers, whose superhuman ability to juggle classwork and family life is simply beyond my wildest imagination. Their roads to degree completion are long and circuitous, but the value of their college degrees seems incomparably more than what a straightforward path from high school might deliver.

Will I never set forth toward class again and work with students, like how I have been doing since joining WOU in 2002? Only time will tell.

Throw like a girl?

As kids, my brother and I played cricket in the wide open space between the gate and home.  Three stumps with bails, a cricket bat, and a cricket ball--all kid size, of course.  One bowled while the other batted.  More time was spent searching for the ball and considerably less was the playing time itself.

Often, my sister's friends came visiting.  Sometimes, they wanted to play with us.  Looking back, I am not sure if they played cricket with us for a few minutes because they wanted to humor us or because they really were keen on playing the game.

Back then, in the school or in the public grounds, girls did not play cricket.  (Nor did they play football either.)  I recall my sister playing games like throwball (or was it volleyball?) and whatever the ring tossing game was called.  And, maybe badminton.

It was one hell of a sexist world.

And then one day I read in the newspaper that there was an all-women Indian cricket team.  All women?  I was impressed.  (Thankfully, Wikipedia gives me the particulars.)

It took me a while to shed my sexist skin.  After all, giving up the privileges of being a male isn't easy ;)

I moved to the US, which was only slightly better than India was when it came to gender issues.  I was shocked that "Trojans" referred by default only to the male sports players.  Otherwise, they were the "Women of Troy."

In Bakersfield, when I started writing commentaries, I sent the editor a piece about such gendered usage.  I remember arguing in that essay that "Americans" doesn't mean men by default.  It was one of the many commentaries that never made it past the editor.

Life in Eugene meant that I was bombarded all the time by the athletic activities at the local university. I wrote another commentary, again, on this topic and emailed that to the editor.  He too decided against publishing that.

In the summer of 2019, I blogged about the separate and unequal character of female sports.  Even when a female team is successful, as was the case with women's soccer, it gained neither respect nor the dollars that the losing men's team did.

I don't care for sports.  But, I do care for equal treatment.

The "March Madness" underway has brought the unequal treatment to the foreground, again. "Men’s sports, athletes, coaches and events have always been the association’s priority."

When college women basketball players began to post photos and videos of how they got less food, less accurate COVID-19 testing and less exercise equipment in the NCAA March Madness Tournament bubbles than their male counterparts, a sense of collective outrage ensued.

It is not new, but I am glad it made it to the news.  Let's see if this new outrage produces a different and better outcome.

Jobs and Homes

A couple of years ago, reading "WFH" might have made many of say WTF?  A year into the pandemic, we are all well aware of WFH.  There is so much work happening at home that it seems more like we are living at work :(

Technology has stepped up with tools that we didn't know even existed.  We are now emailing, chatting, Zooming, and chatting while Zooming while checking emails while checking personal messages on the smartphone, ... All these make one wonder, well, is this a win-win-win all around?  Or, is something important lost in this WFH?

Microsoft teams "conducted over 50 studies to understand how the nature of work itself has changed since early 2020." What did they do?

Microsoft’s annual Work Trend Index is part of this initiative and includes an analysis of trillions of productivity signals — think emails, meetings, chats, and posts — across Microsoft and LinkedIn’s user base. It also includes a survey of more than 30,000 people in 31 countries around the world.

That's a pretty good survey.  What did they find?

The effort revealed a significant impact on "organizational connections — the fundamental basis of social capital."

People consistently report feeling disconnected, and in studying anonymized collaboration trends between billions of Outlook emails and Microsoft Teams meetings, we saw a clear trend: the shift to remote work shrunk people’s networks.

It doesn't surprise me one bit. But, before I add my editorial comments, let me present more from that report:

[Interactions] within close networks increased, while interactions with distant networks diminished. As people shifted into lockdown, they focused on connecting with the people they were used to seeing regularly, letting weaker relationships fall to the wayside. Simply put, companies became more siloed than they were pre-pandemic. And while interactions with close networks are still frequent, we’re seeing that now — one year in — even these close team interactions have started to diminish.

Now, this is also the time when big organizations are beginning to think about office structure post-pandemic.  Microsoft announced that from March 29th, it will open its headquarters to a limited number of employees.  As more and more organizations think about these issues, will everything be remote?  WFH forever?  Or, fully back to how things were pre-pandemic? Or, a hybrid of sorts?

Most of us hypothesize that it will be a hybrid.  Employers realize that productivity does not mean everybody has to be in the same place at the same time. Employees have experienced the advantage of doing laundry in the background while working on reports.  So, will a hybrid mode restore people's networks and the social capital in the organization?

When we studied trends in countries where more people had returned to hybrid work environments, we saw improvements in team isolation. For example, in New Zealand, we saw spikes in team isolation — measured by the amount of communication with distant networks — when lockdowns were issued. When lockdowns were eased, team isolation improved. We saw this trend in other countries as well, like Korea.

This data supports our hypothesis: remote work makes teams more siloed, but adding some in-person time back to the workplace will help.

The pandemic has changed the world in many ways.  There's no going back.    

This cruel life :(

It happened.

Yet again.

It was a text message from my sister informing me about the sudden death of my father's very young cousin, who was only a few months older than me.

A family man, he leaves behind his wife and two daughters.  And a whole lot of people who will terribly miss him.

There are photographs of the two of us as kids hanging out at grandma's home.  Two nearly bald-headed infants, who could have easily been mistaken as twins.

As we got older, when we went to grandma's for the summer vacations, he was very much a part of the fun and games when India hadn't yet seen a television set. We have played hours and hours of cards at his place, which was one street over from grandma's.

I was about seven or eight years old when we went to grandma's place to attend the wedding of his eldest sibling.  He came down with a strange fever that quickly weakened his legs.  He couldn't walk.  For a couple of years after that, he wore braces on both legs and slowly dragged one foot after another.  I never heard him complain.  Never.

Of course, with weakened legs and braces, he couldn't climb the stairs that were everywhere.  His father or mother took turns carrying him up the steps, and he was never ever left out of any wedding celebration, or prayers at temples.

Slowly and steadily, his system regained the strength.  He could finally walk without braces.  Like how he used to, and how we do.

In the old country, in the old tradition, people didn't openly talk about anything unfortunate that happens in one's life, which is why I have no idea what the strange illness was that affected him for a couple of years.  I suppose all that mattered, and matters, is that he fought it off and his life became normal again.

Our paths did not intersect much after the teenage years.  We did our undergraduate studies in different cities, and met only at weddings.

Later, I moved to the US.  He left for the Middle East to work there.

When I met him many years later, his daughters were all grown up, and he was excited about the older one beginning her engineering studies.  

He looked muscular and stockier, and had a full head of hair.  I was well on my way to baldness.  We certainly didn't look like twins anymore.

He was only 57!

Life can be bitterly cruel and unfair.

There's something rotten in India

I rarely blog anything about India because, well, I have practically given up on the old country.  There was so much hope and promise ... but, the saffronization of every aspect of life in India has ended all the hope and promise.

The last time I commented on India's democracy was in September 2018.  I wrote in that post that India was practically in the kind of "emergency rule" that Indira Gandhi imposed on the country.  I quoted Arundhati Roy: "The vulnerable are being cordoned off and silenced. The vociferous are being incarcerated. God help us to get our country back."  

If god favors only the Hindus, then Roy will not be getting her country back. 

The world's largest democracy has been transformed into a combination of cult-worship and "electoral autocracy."  The BBC's Soutik Biswas reports:

Earlier this month, in its annual report on global political rights and liberties, US-based non-profit Freedom House downgraded India from a free democracy to a "partially free democracy".

Last week, Sweden-based V-Dem Institute was harsher in its latest report on democracy. It said India had become an "electoral autocracy". And last month, India, described as a "flawed democracy", slipped two places to 53rd position in the latest Democracy Index published by The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Sure, one could raise all kinds of questions about the methods used in these reports.  But, when report after report concludes that democracy in India is increasingly flawed, and that the country is only partially free, then there is something awful going on in the old country, right?

Writing on "the decay of Indian democracy," Milan Vaishnav adds to the power of the cult figure:

[Voters] didn’t necessarily judge Modi on his record in office. Instead, the force of Modi’s character inspired them to look forward and imagine what transformations he might engender.

Would the BJP’s dominance be as comprehensive if Modi were not in the picture? The answer is likely no. 

Decay!

US Senator Bob Menendez, who chairs the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, is not happy:

The Indian government’s ongoing crackdown on farmers peacefully protesting new farming laws and corresponding intimidation of journalists and government critics only underscores the deteriorating situation of democracy in India.  Moveover, in recent years, rising anti-Muslim sentiment and related government actions like the Citizenship Amendment Act, the suppression of political dialogue and arrest of political opponents following the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir, and the use of sedition laws to persecute political opponents have resulted in the U.S. human rights group Freedom House stripping India of its ‘Free’ status in its yearly global survey.

Where will all this end?

Predicting the future is the easiest way to make a fool of oneself.  All I know is if India continues to move in the same direction as it has been over the past decade, then the ending will not be pretty.

Ding-dong! Philosophy is dead!

It happened.

At my university, the provost followed up on the president's plan to eliminate athletics a few academic programs, including philosophy, by formally submitting the paperwork to the campus curriculum committee.

What good does philosophy serve in a university anyway, right?  For that matter, who cares for philosophy in the real world outside the ivory towers!  It is not as if philosophy provides any kind of guidance to one of most pressing questions that people wrestle with: What is a "good life" to live?

I am sure the favored academic disciplines of criminal justice, business, computer science, and the like, provide clear and concise answers to students to the question, "what is a "good life" to live?"  So, when those programs provide all those clear answers, why duplicate the effort through a philosophy program?  It is an enormous waste of taxpayer money and the tuition that students pay.

Of course, I am being sarcastic!

The sciences, business, and criminal justice, do not address the questions that overwhelm most of us, which (from my post in 2015) Tolstoy articulated so well:

The question is this: What will come from what I do and from what I will do tomorrow--what will come from my whole life? Expressed differently, the question would be this: Why should I live, why should I wish for anything, why should I do anything?  One can put the question differently again: Is there any meaning in my life that wouldn't be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me? ...

These sciences directly ignore the questions of life.  They say, "We have no answers to 'What are you?' and 'Why do you live?' and are not concerned with this; but if you need to know the laws of light, of chemical compounds, the laws of the development of organisms, if you need to know the laws of bodies and their forms and the relation of numbers and quantities, if you need to know the laws of your own mind, to all that we have clear, precise, and unquestionable answers."

These questions and more suddenly became painfully important in the age of Covid-19.  When friends, family, and neighbors, were all kept apart by an invisible virus that killed people, many of us were compelled to consider the questions that Tolstoy brought to our attention.

Later as the vaccine distribution began, we were forced to think about questions that are philosophical, like how do we prioritize who gets the vaccines first and who should go to the end of the queue.  But, of course, it is during these Covid times that my university is axing the philosophy program!

But we knew this was coming.

In this post in May 2020, I quoted Yuval Noah Harari, who wrote:

The present crisis might indeed make many individuals more aware of the impermanent nature of human life and human achievements. Nevertheless, our modern civilisation as a whole will most probably go in the opposite direction. Reminded of its fragility, it will react by building stronger defences. When the present crisis is over, I don’t expect we will see a significant increase in the budgets of philosophy departments. But I bet we will see a massive increase in the budgets of medical schools and healthcare systems.

It is a shame of the nth order that an undergraduate university is getting rid of its philosophy program.  And, oh, the geography program, too, is gone.

It was once a Third World Country posterchild

A few years ago, I met with an activist environmental lawyer from Bangladesh.  Syeda Rizwana Hasan was the first one from Bangladesh that I met since my graduate school days.

Always excited to meet with accomplished people from my old part of the world, I talked with her about her work.  And then I asked her a lot about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

In 1970, when Bangladesh was still East Pakistan, "Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a landslide victory in national elections. The Pakistani leadership was reluctant to accept the results because it did not want an East Pakistani political party heading the federal government."

West Pakistan, now Pakistan, was the center of all the economic, commercial, and military power. The West Pakistan government and its people couldn't care about the Bengali-speaking fellow-citizens who were thousands of miles away, separated by India.  The last thing they wanted to grant was autonomy to the Bengali-speaking Pakistanis.

As the demand for Bengali autonomy grew, the Pakistani government launched Operation Searchlight,“ a military operation to crush the emerging movement. According to journalist Robert Payne, it killed at least 7,000 Bengali civilians – both Hindus and Muslims – in a single night.

On March 26, Bangladesh was declared independent and the liberation war began.

The US, mad with its supremacy and in a Cold War against the USSR, sided with West Pakistan's leaders and military.  As we review history, I wonder how many times we ever sided with the good guys!

When refugees started spilling over to India in the millions, India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, decided to employ the military against the West Pakistani forces in East Pakistan.  In less than two weeks, the West Pakistani forces surrendered.  India's military chief, S.H.F.J. Manekshaw, became a household name.  We kids thought he was the greatest ever!

In no time at all, the Nixonian realpolitik Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, labeled Bangladesh as a "basket case."

Nick Kristof writes about how much Bangladesh has developed over the 50 years, and how we in the US can learn from it.

Life expectancy in Bangladesh is 72 years. That’s longer than in quite a few places in the United States, including in 10 counties in Mississippi. Bangladesh may have once epitomized hopelessness, but it now has much to teach the world about how to engineer progress.

Kristof continues:

Bangladesh invested in its most underutilized assets — its poor, with a focus on the most marginalized and least productive, because that’s where the highest returns would be. And the same could be true in America. We’re not going to squeeze much more productivity out of our billionaires, but we as a country will benefit hugely if we can help the one in seven American children who don’t even graduate from high school.

That’s what Biden’s attack on child poverty may be able to do, and why its central element, a refundable child tax credit, should be made permanent. Bangladesh reminds us that investing in marginalized children isn’t just about compassion, but about helping a nation soar.

I wonder what Kissinger has to say about Bangladesh now.  But then, who cares for Kissinger, right?

With women like Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Bangladesh is now well on its way to even surge past India.

Well, it has.

A few months ago, the IMF reported that Bangladesh had moved ahead of India in terms of per capita income.  Boy did that cause quite some issues for the Modi-toadies who believe in the superiority of Hindus!

We all can learn a lot from the 50-year old Bangladesh success story.

A terrible year it has been. Now, roll up your sleeve!

Earlier this morning, I emailed my colleagues marking the completion of a year since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus to be a global pandemic.

Sending that email is consistent with how I behave: I mark the passing of time, whether it is birthdays or deaths or, yes, even the awful pandemic.

Even as we struggled with the pandemic, here in Oregon we also had to deal with unprecedented fires and smoke, and snow/ice storms that triggered power outage also.  And, oh, I am also waiting for the final layoff decision, which could send me into premature retirement.

No wonder I am anxious all the time, and panicky quite a bit.

But, hey, I am alive.  Beats the alternative, right?

Like millions around the world, I am waiting for my turn to get vaccinated. A year ago, when the pandemic forced us to learn about a whole bunch of epidemiology, experts suggested that a vaccine might be not available for a while, and that it might take 18 to 24 months.

The reality has turned out to be much, much rosier than that.  Scientists set out to develop a vaccine well before WHO's announcement, and as soon as the coronavirus structure was figured out.  As I noted in this post about the Turkish immigrant scientists in Germany who developed the vaccine that Pfizer markets and distributes:

BioNTech began work on the vaccine in January, after Dr. Sahin read an article in the medical journal The Lancet that left him convinced that the coronavirus, at the time spreading quickly in parts of China, would explode into a full-blown pandemic.

They began the work in January of 2020!

If not for the scientific advancements, the past year would have been even more disastrous for humans.  Beyond our wildest imaginations!

Now, a year after WHO's determination that it was a pandemic, a summer of near-normalcy seems within reach.  

Wait for your turn to get jabbed. 

A wasp nest no more

I ditched engineering in order to understand the world through the humanities and the social sciences.  Plus, I was in a new country/culture.  There was a lot that I had to grasp, and quickly.  It is no wonder that there is always a nagging feeling that I am an impostor, which then triggers panic attacks!

WASP was one of the new usages that I had to quickly decode and understand.  The expansion of WASP was one thing.  The significance, the baggage, the history, was quite something to understand.

Understanding all those was why it made sense to me when a student said that she was a Christian and not a Catholic.  Head-spinning for somebody like me who had learnt back in school in the old country that Christians referred to the followers of Christ, whatever be the denomination.

WASP also put in place anybody who was non-WASP.  Blacks. Jews. Catholics. Muslims. Chinese. Japanese. Native Americans. Hell, a long list!

Is it any wonder then that JFK had to convince the WASP voters and leaders that he was an American as much as they were, but merely happened to be a Catholic.  JFK said:

For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me. 

Whatever issue may come before me as president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.

Now in 2021, let's recap where we are.

President Biden--Catholic.

Vice President Harris--need I say anything!

Speaker Pelosi--Catholic

Senate Majority Leader Schumer--Jewish.

Let that sink in.

And then think of the news today that Merrick Garland was confirmed by the Senate as the country's Attorney General.  Garland is Jewish, whose grandparents fled Antisemitism and found refuge in the US.

Think about the openly gay and happily married Mayor Pete serving in Biden's cabinet.  Or about the first African-American Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin.

If you are like me, and I hope you are, all these provide immense hope for my country and the world. 

Race in the hat

A landmark at the university that my daughter attended is an odd-shaped building.

Source

It is the main library at the university: Geisel Library.

Geisel as in Dr. Seuss.

Dr. Seuss is in the news now because his estate has withdrawn a few books of his because of racist depiction.

As an immigrant, I didn't grow up with Dr. Seuss books.  I was unfamiliar with all things Seuss, and had to quickly catch up.  Like even the hat that a student was wearing when I was in grad school.  I had to ask what the deal was with that hat.  Turned out, you know, it was a Seuss hat!

As always is the case, it turns out that academics have looked into the messages in Dr. Seuss books.  One of them wrote in 2017 a book: Was the Cat in the Hat Black? In that book, the author Philip Nel "argues that the lanky and mischievous feline was inspired by blackface minstrelsy."

Interestingly, The Cat in the Hat is not one of the titles that is being discontinued.  Why so?  Not overtly racist.  Plus:

I would also say because it's the brand. Dr. Seuss isn't just a children's author. He is a brand. And for the Beginner Books series, which are the books designed for younger readers, written by him and many others, the logo for that is the Cat in the Hat. He's literally the corporate brand.

The hat that a student was wearing when I was in grad school is the Seuss brand.  You can't kill the goose that lays golden eggs!

Whatever it is, kudos to the estate for reconsidering Seuss' works.  In an interview with The Guardian, Philip Nel says:

Dr Seuss Enterprises has made a moral decision of choosing not to profit from work with racist caricature in it and they have taken responsibility for the art they are putting into the world and I would support that

Exactly.  It is a moral decision.  Good for them!

Perhaps you now have a thought that I had after the news broke.  Did blacks know that some of Dr. Seuss' stuff was racist?

At The Atlantic, Michael Harriot writes about this very question.  He writes about his mother who "went to enormous lengths to protect her family from negative stereotypes of Black people."  That meant that she banned Dr. Seuss at home.  Naturally, he and his sisters got into trouble when his mother found the copy of Green Eggs and Ham that Harriot thought he had hidden well from his mother!

Why did Harriot's mother adopt such a strict approach?

A few years ago, I asked my mother why she put so much effort into concocting this Caucasian-free cocoon. She informed me that our childhood was part of an experiment she had envisioned before we were even born. “A Black person’s humanity can never be fully realized in the presence of whiteness,” she explained. Not a single day has passed since in which I have not thought about that sentence.

That's powerful!

If you’re really worried about Dr. Seuss’ books being removed from shelves, we have just the book for you. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/OYizG8npDA

— A Late Show (@colbertlateshow) March 3, 2021

The poor you will always have with you

 In October 2009--yes, 2009--I wrote in this post:

When I was in India this past summer, as reports of swine flu came to dominate the news and conversations, I sincerely suggested to my parents that they should frequently wash their hands, and time it by humming the “happy birthday” song.

Wash hands and time it by humming the "happy birthday" song.  How familiar is that one now, right?  But, that was the public health advisory 12 years ago too.

In that post, I also wrote how absurd such a suggestion was:

As the words slipped out of my mouth, I knew it was a stupid and incongruous advice because of the water shortage in the city.  Apartment complexes were paying hefty amounts to private operators who supplied water by transporting them in special water-tankers.  When that was the condition for middle-class households, I cannot imagine the less affluent spending their precious money to wash hands in order to battle an invisible enemy.    Clean water is a super-luxury for the poor.

Which is why I suggested back then--yes, 12 years ago:

I do not mean to minimize the risks of a global pandemic, particularly if the swine flu virus were to mutate into a highly virulent form.  But, I do want to point out that the global focus on the swine flu, which we have rightfully managed to accomplish, should remind us that being a good citizen of the world also means that we ought to pay attention to the priorities of the rest of the world—in particular, the sufferings of the poor, who are almost always voiceless in the international arena.

Unfortunately, our track record has not been one that we can proudly hold up when it comes to supporting public health programs for the world’s poor.

We know well how much the 45th President of the US loved supporting the rest of the world, especially its poor.  His America First policy extended to global public health during the pandemic too.  He couldn't care to work with the world's countries on vaccine development and distribution because he hated the World Health Organization.

The Biden administration has been doing things to re-integrate into the world, and to participate in fighting the world's challenges.  The US rejoined WHO on day one of Biden's presidency.

Further, Biden put our money where our mouth is:

In a reversal of his predecessor's U.S.-centric approach to tackling the coronavirus pandemic, President Biden is ramping up pressure on America's wealthiest allies Friday to get COVID-19 vaccine doses into poor and developing countries. Mr. Biden told his fellow G7 leaders during a virtual summit that the U.S. would contribute up to $4 billion to COVAX, the World Health Organization-backed initiative aimed at ensuring equitable access to vaccines around the world.

Virus knows no borders.  And we have a moral responsibility to help out the poorer countries:

So far, richer countries have been able to buy far more Covid jabs than poorer ones.

Covax hopes to deliver more than two billion doses to people in 190 countries in less than a year.

In particular, it wants to ensure 92 poorer countries will receive access to vaccines at the same time as 98 wealthier countries.

Often, people don't care for moral arguments. As a fellow-graduate school student put it once, material incentives beat moral incentives!

Even the dollars-and-sense approach shows that it is in the rich countries' interest to subsidize vaccines for the poorer countries:

[Unequal] vaccine access among countries will likely lead to a “total cost for the world” between $1.8 trillion and $3.8 trillion, with up to half the losses paid for by wealthier nations. In contrast, the cost of vaccinating one-fifth of the world’s vulnerable population, as the World Health Organization’s covax initiative aims to do, would cost less than forty billion dollars, with expenses decreasing over time. 

If only we understood that we are all in this together!

Say his name

When we were young, mother took us to grandma's village for the annual summer holidays--we were too young to travel on our own.

Those were the days before cellphones and emails. There was no landline at most homes, and one went to the nearest post office in order to place "trunk calls"--long distance calls.

So, the day that we arrived at grandma's, mother would promptly write a letter to my father informing him that we had arrived safely.

When we were of a certain age, we realized that our mother, who never addressed father by his name, would have trouble writing a letter to him.  In the old tradition, the wife was so subservient to the husband that she dare not treat him as an equal and call him by his name.

So, how did my mother address my father in those letters?

We would badger her; but mother always shooed us away.  I don't think she even showed us the letters.  To this date, I have no idea how that letter-writing was done!

Even when talking to father, mother could not use the disrespectful "you" (நீ) but had to use (நீங்க.)

It was all par for the course.

But then things changed in a hurry.

My siblings' marriages were arranged along the traditional, orthodox lines.  My sister addressed her husband by his name, and my brother's wife called him by his name.  And the  நீங்க was tossed away for good.

Changes have happened.  But, these have been mostly in the southern part of India where families and governments have invested in female literacy and empowerment.  In the Hindi heartland, in particular, the lives of women continue to be highly dependent on the whims and fancies of men.  Even the Chief Justice of India's Supreme Court!

Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde, the head of India’s Supreme Court, asked a 23-year-old man accused of raping a minor whether he would marry his victim, who is now an adult. 

The victim, who under Indian law can’t be identified, has accused the man, a distant relative and a civil servant with the Maharashtra State government, of repeatedly stalking and raping her starting when she was 16. 

The judge’s comments provoked new demands that people in power, and particularly men, do more to improve how women and girls are treated in India.

There is more from the same judge:

In a separate case, according to the letter and media reports, Justice Bobde appeared to condone rape in the context of a consensual relationship. 

“When two people are living as husband and wife, however brutal the husband is, can the act of sexual intercourse between them be called rape?” Justice Bobde asked while hearing a petition filed by a man accused of rape by a woman who had been his live-in partner.

In the old country, the more things change, the more they seem to say the same, which is a tragedy and disservice to women :(

What we are seeing is not development.

This is exploitation.

What does it all mean?

The random readings and the resulting ramblings here are not merely therapeutic.  It is not to merely ease my anxieties about the world and the panic attacks that result.  There is a great deal of practical use too, though they are not always immediate.  It might be years before I find "use" for my rant.

I might as well be channeling a pedestrian and secular interpretation of the famous line from The Bhagavad Gita, in which the god Krishna advises Arjuna to keep doing his duty.  

Krishna tells Arjuna:

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।

मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥

(Karmanyevadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana,

Ma Karmaphalaheturbhurma Te Sangostvakarmani)

Through that couplet, Krishna says that we need to carry on with our duties without thinking about the rewards.  He goes one step more by cautioning that we shouldn't be motivated because of the potential fruits of the action, nor be tempted to inaction.

This is absolutely contrary to the incentive-driven world in which we operate, right? 

Over the years, researchers and policymakers have come up with various incentive schemes in order to nudge people towards action.  They even reward elementary school kids if they read books!  At home, parents reward kids for doing household chores.

"Do your damn duty" apparently doesn't work in this modern world in which kids and adults alike ask "what's in it for ME?"

I read, rant, blog, because ... that's is it.  There is no because!

But, yes, the rewards always arrive.  (And so will the layoff notice, I fear!)

In November 2014, in those peaceful and joyous days before the twin pandemic of tRump and Covid, my post began with these lines:

All of man's troubles have arisen from the fact that we do not know what we are and do not agree on what we want to be.

I had completely forgotten about those wonderful lines from E.O. Wilson.  Until a couple of days ago.

In an email conversation, I wrote to a colleague:

[You] will also appreciate this from E.O. Wilson, from The Meaning of Human Existence:

All of man's troubles have arisen from the fact that we do not know what we are and do not agree on what we want to be.

I continued that email with this:

It is unfortunate that an undergrad education is no longer about helping students understand the bigger picture: Who we are as individuals, as societies; how we came to be who we are; and where we might end up.  That is what a traditional liberal education was about, whatever the major was.  Now, undergrad education is nothing but a transaction: Students pay $$$ and the university issues a piece of paper :(

If students were given an opportunity to inquire into the big picture questions, then they might also think a lot about another observation of Wilson's:

We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.

From Agraharam to Umrika

Early in my life, when I was beginning to read about "art movies" that I didn't get to watch, I read in the news that a Tamil movie had won the national award for the best Tamil film: Agraharathil Kazhutai (A donkey in a Brahmin street/ghetto.)

Commentaries were written in plenty about the movie, and plenty of people were upset too.  But, it was never screened anywhere for me to watch it. 

Wikipedia reminds me that the movie was banned in Tamil Nadu, and that the government television channel, which was the only one that India had for years, was forced to cancel a scheduled telecast.

To date, I haven't watched the award-winning movie!

Years have gone by since.  Heck, it has been four decades and more.  Now in America, I watched an Indian movie, Umrika, that has never been shown in India!

Why it has not been screened in India is beyond me!  After all, it is not anti-Modi, or anti-Hindu or anything along those lines that might hurt the strongman's vanity.  Umrika is not poverty porn, as was the case in Slumdog Millionaire.  The movie didn't explore same-sex relationships that Fire was about.  Yet, Umrika was not shown in India?

Throughout the movie, an actor playing one of the characters reminded me of an old time Hindi actor.   Wiki helped me track him down: Prateik Babbar.  He is the son of son of late actress Smita Patil and actor Raj Babbar.

Smita Patil was very much part of the art movie world of the India of my time.  I remember her in Satyajit Ray's Sadgati.  Patil and Shabana Azmi in Hindi, and Shoba in Tamil made characters come alive even on the tiny black-and-white television screen.  A tragedy that Shoba and Patil died young :(

Over the years, much to my disappointment, the creative arts have taken a dive in the old country.  Carnatic music performances have become bhajan sessions.  Books are rarely read and discussed.  There is pretty much no audience for live theatre; people are happy with the cheap entertainment that is offered when cricket is not available.  Movies are formulaic.

Umrika was a pleasant surprise.  

Maybe someday I will even get to watch Agraharathil Kazhutai?