Heaven on earth

You know the cliché that men use when they ask a woman if it hurt her when she fell from heaven?  Well, I saw her.

It happened in a store.

No, she was not a sale item on a shelf.

I saw her sashaying ahead of me.

Ok, she did not fall from heaven.  She carried the sky on her back.

I entered the store and turned left when I saw a woman wearing a tank-top walking ahead.  From an angle, all I saw first was her left arm.

Was it really what I thought I saw?

I quickened my pace in order to get a full view.

I could now clearly see not only her left arm but the right and her back too.

It was indeed what I saw: A tattoo that read चन्द्र just above her left elbow.  I am glad that I learnt Sanskrit and Hindi, which use the Devanagari script.   चन्द्र (chandra) is the word for the moon.

Mirroring on the right, just above the elbow, there was सूर्य.  Of course!  Perhaps even readers who do not know the Devanagari guessed that the contrast to the moon has to be the sun.  Indeed, सूर्य is the sun.

Tattoos of stars, big and small covered the back that was not covered by the tank-top.

I don't want to imagine what was in the front under the top!

She was a walking planetarium!

By now I am used to people with tattoos.  It is almost as if I am surrounded by people who are inked.  A former colleague, who has more than one tattoo, said that you can never have just one tattoo.  The first one is apparently merely a gateway to many more.  Getting inked can be addictive, I understand.

Being a square guy among many who modify their bodies in ways that blows my mind, I have a hard time understanding why people do what they do.

I am reminded of a strange experience, about a decade ago, on a flight on the way to India.  It was in the domestic segment before the international connection from Dulles.  I was in the window seat, a woman-- perhaps in her early-thirties--in the middle, and an older man in the aisle seat. 

The woman made it clear that she was interested in chatting, and every once in a while I participated in the conversation.  She was on her way to Belgium to try living there for a year with her boyfriend whom she had met online.  If it was successful, she would make Belgium her home based on her online interactions alone. 

She got all excited when I said in response to her question that I live in Eugene.  A local tattoo artist was a friend of hers.  She started explaining to me about her professional expertise not only in tattooing but also in body modification. 

Up until that conversation, I never would have guessed scarring as modification. Yes, scarring. As if the topic itself was not enough discomfort to me, offered to show me the scar that she was very proud of.

She proceeded to remove her scarf, and undid the top button of her blouse. 

Imagine my discomfort when being asked by a full-bodied woman to look at her chest, and in the plane!

There it was.  A long scar just above her cleavage.  A scar that she had designed herself!  An intentional scar.

To see the entire five-inch scar, she would have had to remove all the clothing on top; I am glad that she did not.

My mind immediately thought of the physical pain it would have caused.  She didn't think that the pain was any big deal.  No big deal?  I don't even like to accidentally nick myself when chopping vegetables in the kitchen.

A few years after that experience, I was working with a physical therapist to deal with my shoulder pain.  He thought that I would benefit from massage therapy in addition to exercises, and introduced me to the massage therapist in the office.

I removed my shirt and lay on the table all tensed up.  I don't like people to get close to me, especially when I am not fully clothed.

She zoomed into the shoulder.  And, with great excitement, she asked where I had my scarring done.

Scarring?  Me?

I had no idea what she was referring to.

She pointed to the scar.

I told her it was a keeloid that I have always had.

Boy was she disappointed!

Maybe I should proudly talk about my only modification.  Yes, I do have one.  On my first birthday, my ears were pierced as per the old country's old traditions.

Maybe I should start wearing earrings, eh!

Nah. I didn't fall from heaven ;)

The Buddha and ... the Bambara?

When I think about the retirement that my former employer has forced on me, and there are plenty of opportunities every day for me to think about the series of events and the personnel that led to the end, I am always reminded of the Chinese Buddhist parable that captures well the unpredictability of life:

A poor farmer whose only worldly possession is a mare wakes up one morning to discover that the mare has gone. He runs to his parents’ house and breaks the terrible news. When he’s finished, they ask, “Are you sure it’s bad news?”

“Of course it’s bad news!” he replies, stomping angrily away.

Ten days later, his mare returns, bringing with her a magnificent stallion.

The farmer runs to his parents and tells them the wonderful news.

“Are you sure it’s good news?” they ask.

“Of course it’s good news,” he declares, leaving in a huff.

Days go by, and the farmer decides to try to break the stallion. He bridles the beast, climbs on its back, and is promptly thrown to the ground and trampled. The village doctor informs him that he will be a cripple for life. When he can do so, he makes his way to his parents and tells them the dreadful news.

“Are you sure it’s bad news?” they reply.

He doesn’t answer, but he mutters to himself all the way home. Two weeks later, a detachment of the Emperor’s army arrives to draft all the able-bodied men of the village. Of course, they pass over the crippled farmer. He hobbles to his parents’ house to share his joy.

“Are you sure it’s good news?” they ask. 

The story has no end, of course.

The involuntary retirement has been good news, and there is no doubt about it, for what I read and think about. 

When employed, the academic terms were busy enough, and grading essays were often too darn depressing, that I had no time nor energy for reading full-length fiction.  Not too long ago, one of my job responsibilities was to grade many "goodly" written essays that I could have done without!

Source

It was only in the summer that I could devote time to read fiction and reflect on the human condition.  It took effort to curate a reading list, order the books, read them, and then blog about life with the new understanding gained from those books.  While I did systematically expand the diversity of authors and the tales they told, it was nothing like what I have been able to do since I got laid off.

If the parable's question of “are you sure it’s good news?” were asked about the unplanned unemployment, then the vastly diverse fiction that I am able to read now is evidence that it is fantastic that I am jobless. 

Segu is the latest entry in this new reading universe.

It is an epic of a tale that weaves together the arrival of Islam, Christianity, the white man, enslavement for transport to the US and the Caribbean, and all these are told through the transformations in the Kingdom of Segu and its people--the Bambara.

Of course, until I started reading this magnificent fiction, I had not even heard of Segu or Bambara.  Now, they are etched into my memory forever.

In the first couple of pages before the story begins, the book provides a map of West Africa, through which the reader is able to understand the geographical context of Segu.  The family tree of the principal characters is listed on another page.

I practically jumped up from the bed when I read the names in the family tree because two of them were familiar to me.  It will be like if a white Oregonian is familiar with the name Venkataramasubramanian.  What are the chances, right?

The following morning, I took a photo of the page with the family tree, and texted the image to my old graduate school friend, Kayode.  His first son's name is Babatunde.  What are the odds!

With the wonderful sense of humor that continues to live in him, he wrote in a lengthy reply, "the author has chosen some excellent names!"

I ditched engineering, and then came to the US for graduate school, which is where I met Kayode.  Had I continued on in engineering, or if I had opted to go to the University of Iowa instead of USC, my life's trajectory would have been very different.  Every moment in life has "is it good news or is it bad news?" implications.  But, we do not think about life that way.

For now, at least, it seems that the university delivered good news for me by terminating my tenured full professor status.

Winning is everything. NOT!

After scanning through a few tweets in my Twitter feed, and scanning a few headlines, I tweeted:

But her emails …
He was just kidding …
He is a fighter …
He just tells it as it is …
Three #scotus justices …
It was a legitimate political discourse …
They were touring the Capitol …#LockHimUp #LockThemAllUp #Republicans #traitors pic.twitter.com/aa9phMew6s

— Sriram K (@congoboy) June 28, 2022

My first blog-post about my worries about tRump was on March 9, 2016.  I ended that lengthy post with this:

The global fascination with "the strongman" has always worried me, unlike this debating-friend who has always championed the strong leaders of China and the current leader of India, despite the leaders' blatant disregard for liberty and democratic values.  The emergence of Trump as a candidate--and, gasp, as President of the proverbial free world--will only further reinforce the idea that liberal democracies are for pussies!

Oh well, we get the leaders we deserve!

tRump did not even attempt to hide who he really is.  As a candidate, he was the most transparent ever.  It was clear that he was a sociopath who would do anything to grab power.  But, as much as football fans put aside the sexual assaults committed by a star quarterback, Republicans cared about the only thing that matters in sports, politics, and even life itself to many people: Winning is everything and the only thing ever.  None of his transgressions big and small mattered to Republicans who saw a winner in him.  They looked at the scoreboard and were ecstatic.

The Congressional hearings are exposing his seditious treason at the highest level.  Yet, an overwhelming majority of Republicans do not care because to them the scorecard is all that matters.

Of course, no politician is a saint.  Well, Jimmy Carter comes close to that honor.  But, there is a wide gulf between tRump and the run-of-the-mill politicians who do not always speak the truth.  This difference was glaringly obvious right from when tRump came down the escalator to launch his candidacy.  Yet, millions of my fellow citizens warmly embraced him.

In the Congressional hearings, tRump and his enablers are the accused.  In my books, so are the millions who voted for him despite who he is or because of who he is.  They stand accused with nothing to offer as defense.

Once again, I will note that there is no such thing as a good tRump voter!

The Divided States of America

When the possibility of tRump as the Republican candidate started getting real for me late in the winter of 2016, I started blogging in plenty worried sick about him as the eventual nominee and the winner. 

Soon, I detected a change in the tone of the discussions at what were usually friendly meetings of the Home Owners Association's board, for which I was the secretary.  At one of the meetings, when I heard the HOA president say that he didn't care to be politically correct and worry about hurting feelings, I knew that tRump had truly arrived in my neighborhood.

I quit the Board.  I was not the secretary anymore.

The summer of 2016 we did not have the annual neighborhood potluck because the political heat had been turned up way high.

The election happened, and the result was not a surprise to me, though it thoroughly depressed me that there are millions of fellow citizens who couldn't care about who tRump is.  Millions, in fact, voted not despite who he is, but because of who he is.

A few months after the 2016 election, a neighbor across the street walked up to my home and knocked on the door.  I stepped out to the porch.

She had realized only then that I was no longer her friend on Facebook--this was back when I had an Facebook account.  It had taken her a few months to realize that I had unfriended her well into the campaign season in 2016!

She asked me whether she and/or her husband (who was the HOA president) offended me in any way because I had stopped saying hi to them.

I calmly explained to her that tRump's election had changed everything.  

"It is not about Republican politics," I reminded her. 

After all, in the neighborhood we have always had hardcore Republicans and Democrats.  

"tRump is different," I told her.

She attempted to defend the man that she loudly and vocally supported from the time he launched his candidacy.  "Give him some time," she said.

"I don't want us to debate about him."  I forced myself to be polite.  I got back inside.

She walked away angrier than ever.  That was the last time we spoke.

Other friends who voted for tRump also became persona non grata in my life, consistent with how I never forget nor forgive.

In spring and summer of 2020, protests erupted in response to the horrific murder of George Floyd.  We too marched and raised our fists.  We said his name.

I put up a Black Lives Matter signage on a window that faced the street.  On another street-facing window, I posted The Lincoln Project's "Never Trump" poster.  And, yes, "our flag was still there" in the front.

Some tRump supporting neighbors publicly displayed the "blue-lives-matter" flag and re-election signs for tRump. 

A neighbor whose values coincide with mine was visibly upset.  This is a man who had never shown any negative emotion in all the years that we have lived in the hood.  "What they mean to say is all white lives matter," he complained to me.  We commiserated as we wussy liberals do.

When masks became mandatory in public spaces like grocery stores, the uber-tRumpy neighbors started wearing masks that had their Dear Leader's name.  With the red hat on top, of course.

Even though tRump was defeated in the elections in 2020, trumpism lives on in politics.  The Supreme Court, which was shaped by tRump's appointees who were successfully confirmed by Republicans led by mItch McConnell, has delivered a series of blows to liberal democracy and human rights, and threatens to undo progress that was achieved through blood, sweat, and tears.

I am not sure how to yell a "we shall overcome" in a country that The New Yorker's cover image aptly describes as a House Divided.

Nourishment for the soul

"If you want to make pasta or anything else, you can get them from the store nearby," my sister said when we talked about my upcoming visit to the old country, which will be for more than a mere couple of weeks.

People know how much I love the traditional foods, like erisheri and pitla and sirukizhangu and more.  At a recent wedding in the extended family, a cousin invited us to visit with them on the east coast and she promised me that she cooks all the traditional foods.  Even maambazha puliseri!  She knew how to bait me!

But, they also know that I have changed.  A lot.  My food tastes are also different now, and vastly expanded too.  The pleasure in having a Caprese salad with fresh tomatoes and basil on a warm summer evening is not something that I had known to even dream about when I was young.

"You know me" I told my sister.  "When I am in India, I eat only Indian food."

"Yes, only Indian food."

I bet she also knows that it means that she will end up cooking those awesome dishes for which my tongue tingles even now.

When I worked in Calcutta, I ate Bengali food and sweets every day.  I do not recall going to a "Madrasi" restaurant even once during those three months.  I lived for arepas in Venezuela.  In Costa Rica, I ate rice and beans and potato fries.  I was pleasantly shocked at the familiarity of the okra and plantain dishes that were served with chapati as regular food in Tanzania.

But, there is a great deal of India within me.  The stories of my people and their photographs that I cherish. The wall clock that once chimed the time at grandma's home, which now is a loud tick-tock in a quiet Eugene. 

I am a product of the old country.

There is so much India within me that it reflects in so many things I think and act.  In my old job as a university professor, from which I was laid off, a peer who read my application for promotion later told me that he had never imagined that somebody would quote the poet Kalidasa in an application for promotion, which I had done.  How could I not?

The intellectual and physical wandering away from the old country does not mean that I have ditched the old in favor of the new.  There is now a lot within me from different parts of the world too, and the accumulation within has changed me for the better.  

It has been a long journey from Sengottai and Pattamadai, and erisheri and chakka_varatti.  Soon, I will be able to taste pooris and vadais and idlis all over again. 

The Caprese can wait.

She sells shampoo sachets on the sea shore

Why should only the rich enjoy material comforts?  Don't the poor too have a right to enjoy comforts as long as they can afford them?  If the materials cannot be afforded, then why not provide them with a scaled down version?

If you know me well, you know that I am setting you up for something that is not really black and white.  Not really cut and dried, if you think that the phrase "black and white" does not pass the JEDI test.  But then if you claim that "cut" is violent, then, well, I am out of idioms in this context.  So, I will get to the point instead ;)

A couple of decades ago, as India's consumer population began to explode, multinational corporations drooling over the profits to be realized from selling goods to the rapidly growing middle class faced a challenge: Millions of Indians wanted those products but lacked the cash to buy them.  

It was like when I was on a tight budget as an undergraduate student.  It was not uncommon for us students, and many other patrons at the tea stalls, to ask for a "one by two" in which a glass of tea (yes, literally served in a glass) would be split between two glasses.  Hence the "one by two."

That was possible because it was tea that we drank right there.  But, if one wanted to buy shampoo and lacked the cash to pay for it, it is not as if the shop owner can pour a few tablespoons of shampoo to the customer's jar, right? 

(An aside: A reminder that the word shampoo entered the English language from the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era and is derived from the Sanskrit root chapati (चपति), which means to press, knead, soothe.)

Perhaps at this point you are thinking, "if they cannot afford to buy shampoo, then why do they want to buy it?  Why not stick to using native products like shikakai?"  Indeed, there are better alternatives.  But, as long as we buy and use shampoo and soaps, we lack any standing to tell others that they do not need shampoo and soaps, correct?  Recall the story that is attributed to Gandhi about him advising a young boy not to eat too much sugar?

Multinational corporations correctly understood that young men and young women even in villages and small towns wanted to buy their products and would--but, only if they were in small and affordable packages.

The sachet retail revolution happened.

(Yes, you can substitute in place of India any other country that is nowhere as affluent as the US or, heck, even Portugal.  And instead of shampoo, you can think of many, many other products.  As I noted in this recent post, even in grandmas' villages, dal and spices and oils come in prepackaged quantities in sachets.)

Sachets after use become lightweight plastic waste that cannot be recycled.  Further, in countries that do not have trash collection services, used sachets can be found all around.  In urban areas, one can easily imagine them jamming up the storm water drains too.

So, do the poor too have a right to enjoy comforts as long as they can afford them? 

If the poor buy sachets that they can afford, and if the sachets are contributors to pollution, then should we ban sachets and make the products beyond the reach of the poor?  Should we fault governments for not providing for trash collection services even as they spend gazillions on their military?  Should multinational corporations be held responsible for (a) marketing such products, or (b) selling such products that add to pollution, or (c) all of the above? 

In this lengthy report, Reuters brings together all these issues and more for you also to think about how you might approach this problem that ultimately affects us all, irrespective of where we live.

I will end with this about which I have written a lot, like even just over a month ago.  Consumption is practically what the modern economy is all about, once we get beyond basic survival.  We buy things that we want, or we don't need, and sometimes we even buy stuff that we neither want nor need.  We have grown addicted to stuff, and getting rid of this addiction is impossible it seems. The sachet is a symptom of consumption; it is not the problem. 

Let me know where the Consumers Anonymous meets; I have lots to sort out myself.

Hold on to your hat

I decided to go for a walk before the sun and its heat started blasting away. 

A big, cool wind was blowing keeping the temperature down.  One day of heat and I already know that I don't miss it all that much, which is strange for a guy whose first 23 years of life were in a hot and humid part of peninsular India.

"That's a good hat for a day like this" commented a middle-aged woman about my hat.  

She was outfitted in the appropriate walking gear that included a visor-cap on her head.  I think of that kind of visor cap, which is essentially only to keep the glare away, as a practical American solution even if not really all that fashionable. ;)

I was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, which keeps the glare away, and protects my bald(ing) head.  The hat was so inexpensive that I do not understand how they make money selling it.  It is made with pure straw, except for the sweatband inside.  It was manufactured in China.  It is sold through a hipster outfit in Brooklyn, NY.  It was delivered to my home in a huge cardboard box because of the shape of the wide-brimmed hat. Yet, it cost me next to nothing. 

Even though I dealt with economic geography throughout my career, that I cannot explain! ;)

"How you doin'?" I asked as I proceeded on my walk.

"Great.  Am waiting for my walking buddy.  I think she is waiting in the other parking place."

"Have a good one."

Of course a woman has a walking buddy.  Hear me out; it is more than a mere gender difference.  It is not about how women are chatty or that men seek solitude.  Nope.

I suspect that the behavior has been perfected over thousands of years.  Girls, and women of any age, know enough about testosterone-filled men that they have a buddy whether it is walking for pleasure or to go to the bathroom.

It is not that all men feel safe by themselves.  Need I remind you of the fate of a solo jogger or a solo birder, who both were young black men?

The only person who really feels safe when out and about is a white man.  The rest of us have varying levels of feeling comfortable being alone in the woods or in the back roads, and almost always we don't engage in these by ourselves.  It is not without reason that we love the sarcasm that sums it all: God, grant me the confidence of a mediocre white dude.

Soon after the former guy was elected to serve as our President, I, a brown immigrant male, began to experience angst every time I saw pickup trucks with huge flags.  Or worse, with the flag of the loser in the Civil War. 

Over dinner, I shared this feeling with the women around the table, and added that I might never get to places like Montana and Wyoming, or even the back roads right here in Oregon.

One of them didn't miss a beat.  She said, "welcome to being a woman."

Lost in such thoughts, I overshot the mark where I had planned to turn around and head back.  But, it was a good day to have walked a tad longer.

A few minutes into my return path, I saw at a distance the woman in the visor walking in the direction towards me along with another woman.  Soon we were within hearing range.  I knew that the American small talk would happen, and I was ready.

"There is the good hat guy again."

With the right index finger pointing to the other woman, I said "so, you finally found your walking buddy."

The other woman laughed.

We went our respective ways.

Visible and yet invisible

Soon after reading the news item that an Indian-American woman had been appointed to lead Oregon State University, I wrote an email welcoming her to the state.  I wrote there that "it absolutely gladdens my heart that a fellow Indian-American will lead and manage the state's largest university."

Within minutes a reply from her appeared in my inbox.  Truly busy people do have time for everything because they know how to manage really well the same 24 hours that all of us have.

With Oregon Institute of Technology having an Indian-American president, it would have been three public universities with my fellow immigrants at the lead, if only the presidential appointment had not derailed at my former employer. 

When my old university appointed an Indian-American as its president, I tweeted about it, with sarcastic humor, of course:

#WesternOregonUniversity laid off a balding and graying middle-aged #IndianAmerican professor and has hired another balding and graying middle-aged Indian-American professor as its president.
So, are we even now? 🤣https://t.co/XPdMrzfWy5#HigherEd #Academia #Layoff @wounews

— Sriram K (@congoboy) April 21, 2022

That appointment was short-lived.  I suspect that the newly hired man smelled something rotten and withdrew.

The public often equates Indian-Americans with tech-support, convenience stores, and motels, and often forgets that even the Vice President is one of us.  The public doesn't always connect the dots when their health care specialists or professors and even entertainers are Indian-Americans.  I suppose we have flown under the radar because there is no history of white supremacists ill-treating us, unlike the history with other non-whites: Blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, ... 

Our arrival here in America was made possible by all those other non-white groups, especially Blacks and Chinese.

The story begins in 1965:

Inspired by the Civil Rights revolution in American society, the 1965 Immigration Act explicitly abolished the discriminatory national origins quotas that had regulated entrance into the country since the 1920s. It explicitly prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence in the U.S. government’s decisions to issue immigrant visas. Instead, the law established a new system preference system based on professional status and family reunification.

America was now legally welcoming non-white immigration.  A radical departure from the previous centuries!

When Congress and President Lyndon Johnson enacted that sweeping immigration reform, they didn't really think that brown people would rush to America.  But, hey, what's good for white migration is good for brown migration too, right?

In the 1990s, Silicon technology was altering the global economic landscape at warped speeds, and the population from India flooded in; a lot more would have come here if not for the restricted number of work visas.

But, a new kind of problem has popped up.  Congress restricts the number of Indian immigrants who can become permanent residents in America.

The U.S. offers roughly a hundred and forty thousand employment-based green cards a year, a quota that covers both the person sponsored by an employer and their family members. But, by law, no more than seven per cent of nationals from a particular country are supposed to receive employment-based green cards each year. The caps were established to support diversity within the immigrant pool. Immigrants from Mexico, China, and the Philippines also far exceed their country limits, and have longer wait times because of the backlog. But because of the sheer number of Indians applying for employment-based green cards—as of September, 2021, eighty-two per cent of the petitions in the employment-based backlog were filed by Indians—their wait times are longer than that of any other immigrant group.

Many are, therefore, on work visas forever.  It is a “bonded labor situation” because the visa holders in the backlog are allowed to renew their visas in perpetuity, while their permanent residency is delayed.

That itself is a lesser problem compared to the ones faced by the children of the "bonded labor" visa workers.  If the children were not born here but came here with their parents, then into adulthood they lose their standing as dependents to be legally in this country.  "Once in college, they are usually ineligible for either in-state tuition or federal financial aid, and required to pay the fees of an international student."

This group of children, who came here legally, call themselves "Documented Dreamers or Visa Dreamers."  It is not a handful; "there are more than a quarter of a million young adults."

Indian-Americans flying under the radar means that the Documented Dreamers problem is also invisible.

This is merely one of the many problems in the highly messed up immigration system.  Every politician knows about the urgency for a comprehensive immigration reform.  But, any talk of immigration riles up the white supremacist base of the GQP.

I wonder if the political climate in America will ever change for the better in order to have rational and constructive discussions and policies on the issues that impact our collective future: Immigration, climate change, structural racism, ...

Do you hear me sneeze?

Finally, the rains stopped.  The sun and warmth have arrived as if responding to our calendars that it is now officially summer.

The warmth has also triggered an explosion of grass pollen that was otherwise kept under check by the cooler temperature and precipitation.  The count jumped to way, way, way off the chart:

Source

The fortnight ahead will be rough because my body will react to unknown foreign agents entering my system. 

I have had to deal with grass pollen ever since I moved to Oregon.

My first spring in this state, I started sniffling in response to all the pollen.  The season ended and the sniffling also did.

The second spring was worse.  I suppose that my body had by then figured out that the grass pollen was one dangerous enemy and was all set to defend itself.  But, I hadn't received that memo.  So, there I was enjoying the river and the walk as I always did.

I sneezed. My nose was runny.  I took an anti-allergy pill.  Showered and ate.  I was off to bed.

Slowly, the heaviness in my chest increased.  It was as if somebody was systematically increasing the weight on my chest and squeezing it.  My breathing produced a cacophony of wheezing sounds. 

I sat up. It didn't work.

I sat in an incline. It didn't work.

I stood up and walked around. It didn't help.

I was off to the emergency room in the middle of the night.

Even as I waited for a doctor to examine me, I noticed that my breathing was becoming less difficult.  The ER doctor explained that the highly filtered air that circulated in the hospital made it easy for my lungs.  And then handed me an inhaler and showed me how to use it if I experienced such tightness again.

Over the years, I have become smarter and carefully scan reports of pollen levels.  Like the chart above.  When the levels are high, which often is also when the days are simply gorgeous, I have to restrain myself from being outside a lot.  Such a controlled exposure to the pollen is infinitely better than the feeling of elephants walking on my chest. And I rarely ever use the inhaler.

During a sabbatical stay in India, I realized that I didn't have an inhaler with me.  A moment of panic.  My security blanket was not with me.  What if I needed to use one to drive those elephants away when traveling to one of the smoggiest places in India--Delhi.  My friend, a physician, handed me a brand new one.  What an awesome gift that was!  Thankfully, I did not use it even once during the three months.

Allergies are not new to me.  (Most people find me to be allergic to their minds, but that calls for a different post!)   At the 30th high school reunion, some of us allergy sufferers wondered if our systems had been weakened as a result of growing up in a mining/industrial town.

I suppose the body's response to allergens is different from how it reacts to living organisms that enter our bodies.  When a virus enters the system, the body fights it, yes, but at the same time learns how to protect itself from future attacks.  However, it appears that my system has not learnt how to deal with grass pollen.

Every day of our life is another day of victory over all kinds of attempts to kill us.  It is a constant struggle to postpone that inevitable finality.  The story of humans on this planet has been one of systematically fending off various ailments that routinely troubled people's lives in the past.  Thanks to the accumulated wisdom over the centuries, we live long lives now,  Such long lives that many countries are struggling to figure out how to take care of the aged, whose population is rapidly increasing all around the world.

As much as I complain about the grass pollen allergy, I am glad we live in a much better world now.  Further, as Nietzsche said, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger!

A view of the power station complex at Neyveli, 2002

Summertime ... and the livin' is easy

Sunrise: 5:29 am
Sunset: 8:59 pm

Add to that the additional minutes of the early light before the sunrise, and the twilight after the sun goes down.

The longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.

It is summer solstice.

Source

Of course, I am on a permanent vacation after my former employer laid me off.  But, hey, summer is summer whether or not I am employed ;)

Down under in Australia, where my brother lives, it is the winter solstice.  He is perhaps delighted that the shortest day of the year is history, and from now on the days will get only longer and longer.

When we learnt about seasons and about earth's tilt, it was merely an intellectual idea for me.  I suppose that might have been in the 8th or 9th grade.  It was mere textbook knowledge because in the real world, in Neyveli, seasons did not change dramatically the way the book said happened because of the tilt. 

Neyveli is about 11 degrees north of the equator.  Grandmas' villages, where we spent our summer vacations, were further south at about 9 degrees north of the equator.  The four seasons that I knew and experienced in all these places were hot, hotter, hottest, and rainy, which did not match with winter, spring, summer, and fall ;)

As kids, we didn't care.  The real difference was between school days and holidays.  During the summer vacation, life was about climbing up mango and tamarind trees, or biking all over the place, or playing cricket or badminton, or fighting with my brother while doing any of the previously listed activities, or simply doing nothing.

It has been decades of living far away from the old country.  Just a few miles up the road is a sign along the interstate freeway that notes it is halfway between the equator and the north pole.  After having acclimated to this mid-latitude, it now seems to me that there are only two seasons in the old country: A long HOT season, and rains during the other season!

The change in seasons here in Oregon, on the other hand, well, it is magical.

The cold, damp, and dark months of winter yield to spring when green shoots and flowers appear.  And then summer explodes around the Fourth of July.

When summer comes, the endless days seem to go on for ever and ever and ever.  In a short while, we begin to complain about the heat.  We turn the air conditioners on.  We search for relief in the rivers and lakes.  We flee to the coast, seeking refuge by the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Just when it seems like we can't take the heat anymore, the cooling arrives.  We begin to appreciate why fall is just about everybody's favorite season.  We catch our breath. 

The rains begin.

We embrace the first few rains.  A long-lost friend has returned.  And then the rains keep coming. And coming. The days get shorter and colder and darker.

We do this year after year.

May we live through a lot more solstices!

The way to chronic pleasure

I am pretty confident that most of the readers--subscribed or accidental--of this blog are middle-aged.  It is, therefore, with supreme confidence that I ask you to think about the physical and mental pains that you have suffered through or are dealing with even now.  I mean, is there anyone who has lived 50 or 60 years without pain?

Now that you are thinking about pain, you have also had chronic pain, correct?  The National Institutes of Health defines and explains chronic pain as "pain that lasts more than several months (variously defined as 3 to 6 months, but longer than “normal healing”). It’s a very common problem."

It's a very common problem!

You've been there, you say?

How about I ask you to think about the other extreme of chronic pain.  Have you experienced chronic pleasure?

Take your time to think about it.  Chronic pleasure.  Any experience of it?

If you have no personal knowledge of chronic pleasure, do you know of any friend or relative who suffers from chronic pleasure?

Of course not!

So, if there is no chronic pleasure in life, but a person will invariably have to deal with chronic pain, and if we do know this for a fact, then isn't it rather bizarre that people have kids?  Fully aware that the child that they beget (finally I get to use this word!) will experience pain and chronic pain but never any chronic pleasure, people decide to reproduce?

Back when I was a teenager, which is when I first knew that I didn't want to have kids, I didn't think about such pain or pleasure.  I simply never found any compelling reason to have kids.  As I got older, when I understood that my birth and death do not make a damn difference in this cosmos, whose mystery continues to fascinate me, I became even more convinced about my decision.

The chronic pain versus pleasure argument is something more recent that I read almost five years ago in The New Yorker's profile of an anti-natalist philosopher, David Benatar.

According to Benatar:

While good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place

He anticipates the objections that you might have:

"Many people suggest that the best experiences in life—love, beauty, discovery, and so on—make up for the bad ones. To this, Benatar replies that pain is worse than pleasure is good. Pain lasts longer: “There’s such a thing as chronic pain, but there’s no such thing as chronic pleasure,” he said. It’s also more powerful: would you trade five minutes of the worst pain imaginable for five minutes of the greatest pleasure? Moreover, there’s an abstract sense in which missing out on good experiences isn’t as bad as having bad ones. “For an existing person, the presence of bad things is bad and the presence of good things is good,” Benatar explained. “But compare that with a scenario in which that person never existed—then, the absence of the bad would be good, but the absence of the good wouldn’t be bad, because there’d be nobody to be deprived of those good things.” This asymmetry “completely stacks the deck against existence,” he continued, because it suggests that “all the unpleasantness and all the misery and all the suffering could be over, without any real cost.” 

Some people argue that talk of pain and pleasure misses the point: even if life isn’t good, it’s meaningful. Benatar replies that, in fact, human life is cosmically meaningless"

In my classes, I have often asked students to think about the fact that people have far fewer children than ever in the past.   During those discussions, sometimes I have also joked that if people say that their children are their greatest happiness, then why are they choosing to have few--only one or two--and not many more? Don't they want to multiply their chronic pleasure, er, happiness?

These questions too are part of trying to understand our my existence.  I don't pretend that my interpretation of any aspect of life is the correct one.  Que sais-je?  I do know that a life examined makes it worth the existence that followed a fateful encounter between my parents ;)

We shall overcome!

On June 19th in 2020, when the former guy was in the Oval Office, and with the pandemic beginning to wreak havoc in our lives, everything seemed dark and gloomy.  On top of that, I knew that I would be laid off because of the financial hole that the university's managers had dug and led us to, and I was doing all the prep work at home for an unemployed future.

On that June 19th in 2020 I blogged about Juneteenth.  Despite the overall sense of doom and gloom, and despite my own General Malaise personality, I wrote then that some day Juneteenth will become a national holiday.

Back in 2020, I would never, ever have bet that Juneteenth would become a national holiday the very next year.  In 2021.

If ever I need to remind myself that I should never give up hope, this is the best and most recent example.

I was so happy with Juneteenth becoming a national holiday that I organized a celebratory dinner at home.  It is humbling to think that the enslaved lived in terrible conditions in a completely alien land under the white supremacist savagery, and yet they survived and prospered.  About time we paid homage to the phenomenally resilient people and celebrated them.

I thought through the dishes that would resonate well with the culinary traditions that people brought from West Africa to the US.  I wanted to celebrate it through a vegetarian version of the foods and colors that are typically included in Juneteenth celebrations. 

And thus the menu became:

Tomato Rice (similar to jollof) 

A dish with okra 

Boiled peanuts (சுண்டல் sundal in the old coutntry)

Watermelon with feta and mint

Red cherry sauce over vanilla ice cream

(We learnt from High on the Hog, a four-part Netflix documentary, about the connection with okra and watermelon, and the red-colored foods and dessert.)

I am glad that we now have a national holiday, which will at least tempt many to Google for what Juneteenth is all about.

The following is my blog-post from June 19th in 2020:

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

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Some day, soon, we will have a truth and reconciliation commission that will help us collectively acknowledge the sin of slavery, come to terms with that horrible past, and launch us on a path forward.  And in that process, Juneteenth will become a national holiday.

For now, here's a Langston Hughes poem that I first blogged ten years ago:

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides, 
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

It is father's day ...

Father's Day is on Sunday.  Over the years, I have blogged in plenty about this day, which was not something that we grew up with in the old country.  Everyday was father's day and mother's day in the multi-generational context in which we lived.  Parents reigned supreme ;)

But, over the years, the American Hallmark Cards days have spread all over the world including to India.  Though I talk with my parents every couple of days, I make sure I call them on Father's Day and Mother's Day too.

One year I didn't call my father because I was having a great time in Costa Rica.  It was a long-delayed trip to a country that had enchanted me forever.

The following is a post from June 2013. 

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

After checking in, when chatting with Andreas, I understood he was a father.  I didn't know if he had sons or daughters or how many children he had. He was a dad, and that much I knew.

Andreas looks about my age.  Perhaps I am at a stage in my life that I can relate to the trials and tribulations and joys that fathers go through.  At least a little bit of resonant emotions.

It was Father's Day Sunday.

I wished Andreas a happy Father's Day.

And handed him a bar of Trader Joe's Belgian chocolate.

I almost never, ever travel without those chocolate bars.  When I am alone, they comfort me.  When I am excited, they share that with me. When I want to give somebody, especially students, a gift, those bars are awesome.

Orosi is quite a picturesque town

Once, at a crowded Lufthansa checking-in, a stern young German woman completed the process and handed me the boarding pass.  Thankfully, the paranoid self looked at them to make sure it was kosher. It was a surprise--business class.  A free upgrade!

That was one of the many free upgrades I have had over the years. The pleasures of a free upgrade are immeasurable especially when flying halfway around the world.

When it was time to board the aircraft, I noticed the same young woman verifying the passports and boarding passes.  I dug into my backpack and kept ready in my hand a bar of Trader Joe's chocolate bar.

First, I gave her my passport and boarding pass.  She handed them back to me when she was done.  

I then gave her the chocolate bar and said "thanks."  The stern German simply nodded her head as she accepted it.  True to the German stereotype, not even a smile!

Now, it was another German to whom I gave another chocolate bar.  Andreas was visibly excited, unlike that Lufthansa woman. "Thanks.  It is my son who should give me a gift" he said.

Connie, his wife, chipped in: "he is sleeping and won't get up for a while. I don't think he has any gift for you."

So, there was a son.

The following morning, I saw a young man working with Andreas and Connie.  "You must be the son" I said.

"One of the two" Andreas said.

"Twins" said Connie.

"Thanks for giving my father a gift on my behalf" said the son with a huge grin on his face.

Father and son: Andreas and Sebastian

A recession in the barbershop is not about hair

"So, anything fun planned?" asked the barber. 

A woman, yes, but if they call it a barbershop then she is a barber.

Thanks to my former employer forcing me off my tenured full-professor job, a small-talk question about the weekend or the summer is now easy to handle.

"Every day is fun now that I am retired."

"Oh, you are already retired ..."

Source

For once, somebody did not think that I was a retired old fart.

"Some day soon I hope to be retired."

"What do you want to do in retirement?"

I am still the old academic who loved asking questions for students to respond.  People usually run away from professors--especially the retired kind--because the stereotype that they love to pontificate is true.  Early on in my teaching career I understood that teaching is not about me droning on and on but is all about providing opportunities for students to understand and demonstrate what they figured out on their own.  In the barbershop chair, I was more interested in what she had to say.

"I want to travel ... go to a remote island.  Like the Maldives."

"Oh yeah?  You might want to do that sooner than later.  Those islands will soon be underwater because of climate change."

I continue to be true my true General Malaise persona wherever I go, even in the barbershop.  The fact that she had dangerous weapons in her hand made no difference to this battle-tested general.

"Really? ..."

"Yep.  In fact, a few years ago, the Maldives government held an underwater cabinet meeting in order to get the world's attention about how climate change will affect them."

There was a pause in the conversation.  I feared that General Malaise had nuked the life out of her.

But after a few seconds she said, "with gas prices going so high, I doubt if I can even travel to the next town over.  I think we are in a recession."

Now, this is not something that Professor Khé would have allowed.  It is one thing for students to express their opinions.  But, it is another if they are not clear about the concept.  A recession is not what she thinks it is.  The inflation that we experience is not recession.

"Well ... we are not in any recession.  The economy is growing.  Unemployment is low.  But, yes, prices are high.  A major factor is the war in Ukraine.  Even if the war ends tomorrow, it will be a while before gas and food prices come down."

I now wondered if she was already asleep from my lecture, like how most students were in my classes.  But, what if she is an influencer among her friends and spreads the correct information to her Facebook friends based on what I told her.  I had to lecture dammit, and I am glad I did.

"Oh, you mean like when all those containers were stuck in ports all over during the pandemic and there was a shortage?"

Now, she is an A+ student!

"Yes.  This is the downside to living in a highly interconnected world.  Something happens somewhere and we all experience it."

"Which is how it should be so that we can all work together.  But, people are so ready to fight over nothing."

I hope that President Joe "hair plug" Biden and the Democratic Party will talk to people like her and gear up for the upcoming elections.  If not, they will end up laying a red carpet for this guy to become the next President and his party to control all the branches of the federal government! 

It's what it is

There wasn't a man waiting for a haircut and all the three barber chairs were vacant.  If only the cosmos always worked in my favor.

It is a women-owned business that is an old style barbershop serving only men.  I would never have imagined such a business venture.  Perhaps because haircuts for most men are incredibly simpler than for women, and this way they don't have to deal with the complications of women's hair. 

(But then do African-American men go to this barbershop?  Do these white women know how to deal with an Afro?)

When I lived in California, the state passed a law against discrimination in pricing for haircuts, and it became illegal to charge different prices for men and women.  I thought it was ridiculous that my simple haircut for which they mostly used the buzzing trimmer would cost the same as laborious scissor-snipping for a woman's lengthy ringlets.  So, I moved to Oregon ;)

I walked over to the chair that one of the women pointed to. 

"How do you want your hair cut?"

"A trim all around."

"Do you want me to leave the hair on top or cut that too?"

"Yes, trim that too.  I don't ever try to use that for any comb over."

She laughed but only slightly.  I suppose she imagined a few customers and their efforts to hide their bald domes.

Years ago, when John McCain was running against George Bush in the Republican primaries, I wanted to write to his campaign staff that McCain could get even my vote if only he stopped combing hair over in that awful manner that he did.

That was the time I was beginning to see and feel the male pattern baldness developing on my head. 

A course that I taught had students in the same classroom and students at another off-campus site. The class was held at a television studio-classroom, and images and sounds from the studio were sent in real time to the off campus site, and the video and audio from there were beamed back as well.  The classroom had a camera turned towards the instructor (me) and another from behind me to capture the students. In the monitors in front of me, I could see the images from all the cameras.  And that is when I caught the image from the camera that was behind my back--it showed the back of my head with the (then) thinning hair where the scalp was beginning to shine through.

I knew then that I would face up to it rather than cover it up.  If people were so desperate to hide their baldness, to what extent would they go to cover up far more important things in life?

"It's what it is" I told her.

She nodded in agreement.

As she picked up the tools of her trade, she said after a few seconds "yes, it's what it is."

She repeated those words with such relish that I suspect she will use that line for a long time.

We humans are not always ready to embrace it's what it is.  We are not wired that way.  We almost always want something different from what it is.  The Buddha advised that such a want for things big or small means there will be suffering.  The path forward, to peace and happiness, is not to want but to humbly accept what is in the here and the now.

Though I intellectually and emotionally understand it, it is not easy for me to think about the big hair that I once had, and the full head of grey hair that I would like to have as an old man.  What does the Buddha know about hair anyway?  In all the images as an enlightened soul he is a completely bald man! 

While I fail to practice the Buddha's advice, at least I don't do a comb over!

My hairy self more than 30 years ago!

Frayed and Fulfilled

"There is a tiny bug on your tshirt near the neck" she said.

My finger felt a tiny hole.  A hole in the tshirt that looked like a bug from a distance.

"It is a hole.  Another well-worn and frayed tshirt."

We laughed.

A few days ago, I noticed that a pair of shorts had a huge gaping hole.  The threads had just given up.  Over the decades, I have worn plenty of upper and lower garments to the very end of their lives.  Especially shorts and pants.  I am always reminded of my grandmother joking: "துணிய கிழிக்க சந்துல ஆணி இருக்கா?" (Do you have nails in your butt to tear the cloth?)

I haven't outgrown the habits formed from growing up in a time and place that now come across practically as an alien planet.  It was a time when new clothes were not purchased on whim, but only for special occasions like birthdays and Deepavali.  And for the weddings of very close relatives.  

Those were also the days when shirts and pants were not bought "ready-made" but were custom made every single time.  We bought the cloth and took it to the tailor.  He--Shanmugam in Neyveli, and Aadhi in Sengottai--took the needed measurements and then told us when it would be ready. 

My parents and the tailor went through the same routine every time:

Parent: "We need it by that date.  It is very important."

Tailor: "Of course.  You don't worry."

But, my parents and I knew that it wouldn't be ready by the promised date.  The tailor too, I am sure, knew that he couldn't deliver.  Yet, people said their respective dialogues and carried on.  Now when I visit the old country, because I have gotten used to the American way of deadlines in any kind of a transaction, I end up being fooled over and over when it turns out that deadlines are merely theatrical devices in negotiations.  My father laughs at my gullibility.

The day would finally arrive well after the negotiated deadline.  In Sengottai the clothes were delivered to grandma's home, and in Neyveli we picked them up from Shanmugam.  It was magical to smell and feel the new clothes.

We couldn't wear the new clothes without getting blessed by the gods.  A parent, invariably my mother, would apply a little bit of kungumam to the shirt collar or the waist of the pant, and then we could wear them.

Clothes were precious.  Well, everything was precious back then.  In the contemporary life, if blue is the new red, then we get the blue by simply clicking a button at a favorite online store.  We know the price of clothes and things but we have no idea about their value.  We simply do not care.

We do not care because billions of us now live in a world of plenty, in contrast to life a mere couple of decades ago.  Walk-in closets are the pride and joy of many.  Wardrobe closets are a lot more spacious than even many kitchens are, and are perhaps bigger than the square footage that hundreds of millions around the world claim as their sleeping space. 

However, choosing from plenty is a problem to most humans because we have not been wired for that.  The tyranny of choice leads to decision fatigue, and we end up using a few clothes over and over again, while condemning a bunch of clothes to being locked up in the closet forever.

Meanwhile, the world of fashion demands that we put aside clothes from two years ago lest we come across as fuddy-duddy.

There are many questions that we can raise about the long-term impacts of such a consumer behavior.  And, many questions like the following two about the changes that we need to initiate:

How can consumers be persuaded to slow down—to purchase fewer clothes of more enduring quality? And what measures can be taken to encourage the industry to favor quality over quantity?

I used to engage students and compel them to think through such issues.  I don't imagine that I made any difference in their thinking and behavior.  At the very least, I can rest assured that I tried.

I don't pretend that this blog-post will make any difference either.  But, the fact that this post or I don't make any difference to this world does not make the problem disappear.  The elephant is still there in the middle of the room, and the elephant is clearly unhappy.

Unhappy!

Three months ago, after reading an essay in The New Yorker about a legal fight to gain personhood for elephants I blogged in support.  To me, it was a no-brainer.

Their brains are highly developed.  "Their huge brains are capable of complex thinking—including imitation, memory, coöperative problem-solving—and such emotions as altruism, compassion, grief, and empathy."

Altruism, compassion, empathy, all emotions lacking in many human beings, and yet they are merely animals while we humans are some superior species! 

If elephants can remember, imitate, work with groups, and show those emotions, don't they qualify to be recognized as persons?  If an abstract corporation can be legally recognized as a person, why not a real elephant?  Do corporations emote?  Do corporations die?  Do corporations give birth?  Elephants do them all, and more.

If fertilized human eggs are celebrated by half the country as having some kind of a personhood with rights,  don't elephants, and chimpanzees, and whales, and more deserve to be recognized as persons?  As non-human persons?

New York's highest court rejected the argument that the elephant, Happy, is a person and, thereby, allowed for the Bronx Zoo to continue to, well, harass and torture this highly intelligent and sentient animal.

The New York court's decision will certainly not be the last word on personhood for highly intelligent animals like elephants and chimpanzees.  The group that fought on behalf of Happy, The Nonhuman Rights Project, has filed a habeas corpus petition in the San Francisco Superior Court to require the Fresno Chaffee Zoo to come before the Court to attempt to justify the continued imprisonment of elephants Nolwazi, Amahle, and Vusmusi.  (The Fresno Chaffee Zoo has been rated as one of The 10 Worst Zoos for Elephants in North America.)

The science writer, Elizabeth Kolbert, writes in a recent issue of The New Yorker that "every year the outlook for nonhuman species grows grimmer." Her essay is about "the burgeoning field of bioacoustics," which, as the portmanteau suggests, is the combination of biology and acoustics.  A field of study that is all about the production, dispersion, and reception of sounds in animals.  Even insects. 

Kolbert quotes a British documentary filmmaker Tom Mustill, who writes: “The more we learn about other animals and discover evidence of their manifold capacities, the more we care, and this alters how we treat them.”

If science is what we need for a better treatment of animals, yes, bring more science.  But, we don't really need science as much as common sense.  It is foolish and arrogant to think that the cosmos is only about us humans, and that everything else--living and nonliving--are merely for us to use in any which way we deem fit.  Don't elephants have a right to be with other elephants in their own habitats?  Don't whales have a right to live in the deep waters and communicate with other whales?  And, if we are the most intelligent of all the animals, don't we have a responsibility to take care of the whales and elephants and rivers and forests and everything else?

Or, are we going to blindly believe that man rules over nature because "God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" and spread this message all over the world?

Does Happy the elephant deserve to be boxed in an enclosure in a zoo?

Reading Ulysses is an odyssey!

Let's see if this cartoon tickles you ... at least half as much as how funny it was to me:

Source

Maybe the book was James Joyce's Ulysses! ;)

How many people are like me who know about James Joyce's Ulysses but have never read the book in full?  I think I gave it three good attempts, but never progressed beyond the first couple of pages.  I do not exaggerate when I write that it was only a couple of pages that I read.  It is insanely difficult to go past a few pages of that book.  

It is the centenary year of the publication of Ulysses.  The author of this essay that marks the occasion writes that Joyce knew well that people like me will have problems reading the book:

It is a novel to learn from and obsess about, and you can spend a lifetime immersed in its pages. Nevertheless, many uninitiated readers view Joyce’s epic with paralyzing fear, something the author didn’t exactly allay with this admission in the mid-1920s: “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.” The stance is flippant, though in many ways, Joyce intended for the novel to be intimidating.

I am not sure if intimidating is the word that I would use, but I can live that description.

I am with this writer from a few years ago, who spoke the truth, during his graduate schooling, to his Joyce scholar professor: "If I had to choose between rereading Ulysses or Tarzan of the Apes, I'd go for Tarzan."

Yet, when we list our summer reading lists, even the wish lists, it is not the likes of Tarzan that we think of but the heavy ones like Ulysses.  What's going on?  I like this take:

Of course, we tackle more elaborate books in summer because we have more time on our hands, with the season’s longer days, the time off from work, and the promise of leisure in the air. But there’s also a psychological effect at work. From our childhood days, the coming of summer and the end of the school year meant the end of our “required” reading: no more homework, no more chapter assignments, no more mandatory synopses of The Scarlet Letter or historical summaries of “Everyday Life in Dickens’ London.” Come the solstice, many of us experienced something that will never disappear: the exhilaration of setting our own literary agenda—a private summer syllabus devoid of grades and fueled by love alone.

For once, it is not about the grades.  We want to read because it is not a required reading. It is love.

But the reality is that I rarely ever run into people anymore who want to talk about the books that they are reading or plan to read.  It is almost as if a vast majority does not read books anymore.  Neither Tarzan of the Apes nor Ulysses.  Neither here nor in the old country.  Maybe there really never was a book-reading culture and it was only a few who read?

The dystopian future that Ray Bradbury described in Fahrenheit 451, in which books were burnt because they triggered discomfort in people, has arrived.

On top of that, Republicans understand that preventing people--especially kids--from reading books that are critical will make it easier for them to govern over unthinking and brainwashed masses.  Don't you already see around you the loss of a thoughtful citizenry, who are incapable of discerning truth from misinformation and good from bad? 

Republicans are passing laws galore to ban books from schools and public libraries.  They are out to prove that Bradbury was correct in saying: “You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them”.  Stop young people from reading altogether, or at least from reading the "wrong" books, and, as one of the Republican standard-bearers famously said in a different context, "Mission Accomplished"!

Maybe they should ban Ulysses again (yes, it was banned a long time ago) in order to make Joyce great again ;)

In a couple of days, it will be Bloomsday: The entire novel is set, I am told (keep in mind that I never progress beyond a couple of pages) on the events of one day--June 16th--in the life of its protagonist Leopold Bloom.  I am sure NPR will feature a few writers, academics, and readers, who will talk about the profundity of Ulysses and read their favorite sentences that are longer than paragraphs in most books.  I will listen to the report and chuckle thinking of the cartoon of a man dead on the beach while attempting to read a book that I imagine is Ulysses ;)

Not lost in translation

Daisy Rockwell suggests that we read translated fiction even if we think it might be difficult.  "Expand your mind! The language is alive! Translation brings you the world!"

Translated fiction is not new to me.  Through my formative years in India, I read quite a few Russian works that had been translated into the English language, which itself was a second language to me.  And, of course, I had to translate for myself British and American English to my version of Indian English ;)

I suppose the difficulty arises in translated stories from the fact that they are set in alien lands, with cultural norms and behaviors that are not what we are used to.  And the names too.  I recall the difficulty in keeping track of the Russian names with all the patronymic and the diminutives, and learning new words like samovars.  But, to me, this was also the attraction.  I was able to transport myself into a part of the world that was far away from me, that was very different from what I was used to, and understand and appreciate the complexity and charm of our lives.

Without translators and their translations, would I have been able to read and enjoy Haruki Murakami's short stories?  Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera?

A couple of years ago, reading Tamil works that were translated into English was quite an experience.  To read in the English language and to simultaneously think about the Tamil words that the author might have used in the original was a unique experience.  

After reading Perumal Murugan's One Part Woman, I emailed the translator, Aniruddhan Vasudevan, appreciating his work.  "Your translation works awesomely well. As troubling as the content is--Perumal Murugan's work on the human condition is one of the best in the Indian context--your translation was wonderful."  

Vasudevan replied: "That was my very first translation project, and I am acutely, and perpetually, aware of its shortcomings. So it really means a lot to receive this email from you when I am in the middle of reading through another translation manuscript, feeling both exhilarated and vulnerable!"

Later, it turned out that Vasudevan was collaborating with Archana Venkatesan on a huge project "to produce a complete, scholarly, fully annotated literary English translation of the Tamil Rāmāyaṇa of Kampaṉ."  It is a small world in which the degrees of separation are often not that huge as we might think.

Which brings me to the work in translation that is next on my reading list.  Ties by Domenico Starnone.

I had no idea about this Italian author and perhaps would never have known him if not for Jhumpa Lahiri.  After critical and commercial success that rarely comes to authors, including a movie adaptation of her work, Lahiri packed it all up and moved to Italy.  And she started writing only in Italian.  Not in English or Bengali, which was the language spoken at home as she grew up here in the northeast.  She wanted a language of her own, and not something that was thrust on her as a result of the accident of birth.

I found, and continue to find, this mind-boggling.  Here I am struggling to keep up with Tamil and English that I have practically known all my life, and she just adopts a new language and becomes an expert at it?  

Lahiri also became a translator of Italian works.  A few months ago, she wrote in The New Yorker about an Italian author whose works interested her enough for her to translate too, and about the process of translating.

If an author who was unknown to me was good for Jhumpa Lahiri then who am I to think twice about it?  Unfortunately, the book that she talked about was not available in the local library.  So, I am off to reading Domenico Starnone's Ties, which is not translated by Lahiri.

What is your favorite fiction that was translated into English?