The tooth of the matter

Tracing the roots of one's family interests many here in my adopted land.  The technology of the day provides valuable support in this effort--from software that helps organize and visualize family trees, to DNA databases, which makes connections that otherwise might not have been possible.

I do not have any questions about my family roots; we tell each other enough and more stories that easily go back three or four generations.  Perhaps the interest to go back only three generations comes from an internalized Vedic idea of three generations past being up somewhere in a waiting area before the oldest generation is promoted to heaven after the death.

I was, and am, far more interested in the grand narrative of how we ended up where were are from the origins in Africa.  And that is why a decade ago, I submitted my DNA to the National Geographic's Genographic Project. 

This was a project with grand ambitions.  It was "a multiyear, global initiative by National Geographic that used genetics as a tool to address anthropological questions on a global scale."  The data volunteered by people like me "helped to map world migratory patterns dating back some 150,000 years and to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of humankind’s migratory history."

I was curious how my male chromosome ended up in Pattamadai.

The report said that my ancestors "arrived in India around 30,000 years ago and represent the earliest significant settlement of India. For this reason, haplogroup L (M61) is known as the Indian Clan."

Despite going back 30,000 years, this DNA was only a part of the second wave that reached the Subcontinent.

Although more than 50 percent of southern Indians carry marker M20 and are members of haplogroup L (M61), your ancestors were not the first people to reach India; descendants of an early wave of migration out of Africa that took place some 50,000 to 60,000 years ago had already settled in small groups along the southern coastline of the sub-continent.

Of course, there are plenty of other questions that haunt my imaginations.  Did my ancestral male chromosome stay in the Indus Valley area for centuries?  When exactly did this chromosome begin to migrate towards the peninsular south?  How did my people interact with the descendants of the original settlers?

One researcher threads a needle in this piece of multi-generational cloth by focusing on the Dravidian word for tooth--like the word pallu (பல்) in Tamil--and argues that "a significant population of Indus valley civilization must have used that Proto-Dravidian tooth-word in their daily communication."

How do the Indus Civilization and the Tamil language that I grew up with fit within the 30,000 year story of my male chromosome?

There is no family tree database that can help me in this!  At least, not yet.

Mapping a new life

The average life expectancy at birth in India was about 25 years around the time my paternal grandfather was born.  By my calculations, he was born around the year 1905.

He just about lived up to that average when he suddenly died in 1930.  A shave at the barbershop led to a nasty nick of a skin tag that soon got infected in those bad old days before antibiotics.

Slowly and steadily, the average has increased in the old country, to nearly 70 years.

Here in my adopted country, a child born today has a significant chance of living to become a centenarian.

Back when people worried about death being round the corner, it made logical sense to marry young, and have children soon after.  By the time my grandfather died, he had two sons.  Longevity has given humanity a lot more time, thankfully, before they decide whether they want to have children.

Having kids is one of the many experiences in life that humans go through.  So, how should the various experiences be staged in a life that is no longer rushed by the grim reaper?

I have often remarked in classes and in advising sessions that students need to plan for a long game.  A very long game.  "You will be working for at least 45 years after you graduate" is something that I have told students for a long time. 

I am not sure if any student gives a damn about it. I suppose at 18, I would not have imagined 45 long years, when the prospect of 4 years of undergrad itself was huge.  Think about the proportions: 4 out of 18, and then 45 compared to 18. 

As difficult as it might be to imagine these time horizons, we will be better off if we tried to. If we did think about 45 years of working, and living into the 8th and 9th decade of one's life, then we might begin to appreciate the complex aspects of life.  

We are already living nearly immortal lives compared to the average human a mere 200 years ago, when globally the life expectancy at birth was a mere 35 years. When conditions have changed this rapidly, it also means that the magnitude of change has yet to sink into our collective consciousness.

But, we need to spend time and energy trying to figure out how to correspondingly restructure life for a potential centenarian.  When should formal schooling end?  At what age we should expect them to start working?  How long should they work?  How should we rethink the social programs for the elderly?

Aren't you shocked that these are not the kinds of questions that politicians talk about?

It is one thing when a 19-year old in my class does not care about what I say.  It is another when political leaders who make collective decisions for all of us do not seem to engage on such issues.

We need a "new map of life."

[Professor Laura] Carstensen and her colleagues at the Center on Longevity are proposing a potential route out of this mess. This month, the center published a report titled “The New Map of Life” — a blueprint for what education, careers, cities and life transitions could look like if they were designed for lives that span a century (or more).

One of the report’s central theses is that modern life has a pacing problem. Middle age is uncomfortably crammed with career and caregiving responsibilities, while many older people find themselves with neither enough purpose, connection or income to live comfortably.

I agree.  But, I am not the one who needs to be convinced.

The tricky part is convincing lawmakers, employers, educational institutions and the public to consider alternatives to some of our culture’s most deeply ingrained patterns.

To refer to the task as "the tricky part" is one hell of an understatement.

But, hey, I have done my part over the years.  I will now watch the proceedings from the sidelines.

America

I hadn't yet completed my first year of living in the US as a poor graduate student when I watched West Side Story. 

Nope, it was not on stage.  Not live theatre.

I watched it on a small television set that my dental school roommate owned.

Yet, that miniscule screen size didn't take away the excitement of the musical in any way. 

I am reminded of all that because of the news that one of the people involved in creating that phenomenal musical, Stephen Sondheim, died. 

When I watched West Side Story, it is not as if I had been listening to Broadway musicals in India.  Not at all.  West Side Story was my first ever, and what a way to fall in love with Broadway!

I had no idea about Bernstein and Sondheim until that very day.  I sat there completely transfixed by the visual and aural experience. 

The more I think about it, I am not sure if I fell in love with Broadway musicals or with America itself.  Or both perhaps.

Naturally, the piece that really, really, grabbed my attention was "America." 

When I discussed migration and immigration in my classes, I often played "America" for my students too.  I always hoped that they, too, fell in love with the musical and America--as if they had not been born here but were experiencing it all for the first time.

Thank you, Stephen Sondheim.

I told you so!

I wasn't surprised one bit with the news report about the continuing decline in the fertility rate here in the US. 

I strongly disagree with the second part of the title of the opinion essay: "there are no easy solutions to fix it."

Yes, there are easy solutions.

The easiest of them all?  Encourage immigration.

But, immigration is not mentioned in that essay, which is all focused on childcare expenses and Build Back Better.

Almost four years ago, on December 7, 2017, the newspaper where I was a regular columnist for years, published one of my last columns.  In that essay, I wrote about the decreasing fertility rate and how immigration can quickly and easily address that issue.

Because there is no longer a hyperlink to that column, I have copied/pasted below the version that I emailed to the editor.

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

We are rightfully preoccupied with the political theatre in Washington, DC, especially with President Donald Trump’s tweets, and the ongoing developments in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Trump’s Russia connections.

This also means that we are not paying attention to a number of other issues that will affect the country over the long term, and for which we will need to develop constructive public policies.

One of the trend lines that does not make the headlines is the falling fertility rate in the US. If we do not worry about this now, it will become too late to do anything in the future.

The total fertility rate is the average number of children born to women in a society during their childbearing years. Adjusting for various factors, like kids who might not live to become adults or parents, demographers have presented us with an understanding that the fertility rate has to be about 2.1 children per woman in order for the population to be stable.

Fertility rates higher than 2.1 explain population growth that we see in countries like Nigeria. On the other hand, countries like Japan and Italy are on a path of population decrease because the fertility rates there are significantly below 2.1. In Japan it is 1.46 children per woman and, therefore, the population there is projected to shrink by a third in fifty years. If those trends continue, Japan will have less than half of its current population in a hundred years from now.

Here in the United States, we talk so much about “baby boomers” that we have completely overlooked the fact that we are going through a baby bust. Fertility rates in the US have been staying below that magical 2.1 children per woman. The latest data show that fertility rate has dropped to 1.77 children per woman.

This decrease is not really a surprise. After all, most other economically advanced countries have already experienced such a decline in fertility. 

The surprise is that the US has been a contrast to Europe and Japan for so long, and is only now showing signs of joining them.

There is, of course, an important reason why the US has been different from Europe and Japan in terms of fertility rates. It is related to a huge public policy issue—immigration.

As reported by the Pew Research Center, “were it not for the increase in births to immigrant women, the annual number of U.S. births would have declined since 1970.” 

While immigrants accounted for only one in seven Americans in 2015, a quarter of all the births in America were to immigrant women. “Births to women from Mexico, China, India, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, Honduras, Vietnam, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico accounted for 58% of all births to immigrant mothers in the U.S. in 2014.” Even here in Oregon, births to immigrant mothers have offset what would have otherwise been a decrease in births from 1990 to 2015.

In fact, we need to look no further than the White House for these trends. Of the five children that President Trump has, only one was born to his second wife who is from the US, while the other four are the children of immigrant women he married—Melania and Ivana, who respectively immigrated from Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

The facts are clear: Without immigrants, the US too would exhibit the low fertility rates of Europe or Japan.

It has become fashionable, and a politically winning formula, to beat up on immigrants. However, the nativists might not be aware, or perhaps they refuse to acknowledge, that without immigrants and their children, the US population will not grow, but will decrease. As a result, like Japan, we too will be trapped with a stagnant economy.

The question, therefore, is “so what?”

The research is also very clear that it is not easy to provide incentives to American women to have more kids. Fertility rates are dropping because women, and men too, are intentionally making those choices. People prefer to invest in education and to lead comfortable lives in leisure. Such preferences mean that they choose to have fewer children.

As any parent knows, having children is expensive. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates the average cost of raising a child till adulthood to be about $233,610. USDA notes that housing, food, and childcare account for almost two-thirds of those expenses. If we want women to have more children, then it is clear that higher fertility will not happen unless the American people are willing to pay for those expenses. It is highly unlikely that we will subsidize fertility at such high levels.

The answer to “so what?” is, therefore, obvious and staring at us: Encourage immigration for continued growth and prosperity in the United States, despite the farcical theatre in DC.

We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us

I have often remarked to people, and blogged here, that had I been a young man in the 1950s and 1960s here in America, chances are high that I would have signed up with Malcolm X and not with Martin Luther King, Jr.

MLK's movement would not have given the outlet for the anger within, but Malcolm X would have.

After all, even now, well into middle age, I am one angry man.  It is a surprise that I am not dead already from such a pent-up anger.

On this Thanksgiving Day, should one celebrate or mourn the first Thanksgiving that happened 400 years ago?

For the Wampanoags and many other American Indians, the fourth Thursday in November is considered a day of mourning, not a day of celebration.

Because while the Wampanoags did help the Pilgrims survive, their support was followed by years of a slow, unfolding genocide of their people and the taking of their land.

In 1619, a ship called the White Lion brought the first enslaved people from the African continent.  Two years later, in 1621, and about 700 miles away, another group of white settlers observed the first Thanksgiving. 

The decades that followed were some of the darkest and cruelest in human history.

Malcolm X phrased it so well: “Our forefathers weren’t the Pilgrims. We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us. We were brought here against our will. We were not brought here to be made citizens.”

How should we deal with the dark history of a country that is supposedly a beacon for freedom and democracy?

The eminent documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, says: "The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined."

Today, too, is a good day to learn from those dark chapters.

The browning of America ... and blackness

Hari Kondabolu had a serious and comedic take on what Kamala Harris' elevation as the Vice Presidential candidate--back in August 2020--might mean for the Indian community.  He raised a troubling issue:

I wonder if Kamala Harris as VP will have any impact on the “No Blacks” marriage rule Indian immigrants set for their children.

— Hari Kondabolu (@harikondabolu) August 11, 2020

He added a clarifying tweet, in case he was misunderstood:

To clarify this tweet: This is a cynical comment on the anti-Black racism in the Indian community. This is not supporting such actions, but condemning them. It is not the most pleasant thing to talk about, but it’s about time our community did.

— Hari Kondabolu (@harikondabolu) August 13, 2020

The problem of colorism in India is pretty much common knowledge at this point; after all, it is a land of "Fair & Lovely."  Recall the vagina whiteners?

I grew up in that culture where the skin complexion was categorized in so many ways, like:
Coal black
Dark
Dark brown
Brown
Light brown
Wheatish
Fair
Very fair
And, yes, even white!

It is also a land in which we were all acutely aware of our castes and the castes of others.

When Indians immigrate to America, do they bring with them the baggage of colorism and caste?

Isabel Wilkerson made a compelling and insightful argument that immigrants often want to align themselves with the dominant caste here--Whites.  Overlay colorism on the highly race-sensitive society and, well, that's why Kondabolu tweeted that maybe Kamala Harris might be the ticket to the diaspora ditching the "No Blacks" marriage rule for their children.  Blindians don't have to be a rare species, right?

While Rusell Peters joked about the world becoming beige as a result of people mixing across the races, what if the non-white immigrants bring with them the anti-blackness baggage?

Charles Blow writes about this very issue that "when people migrate to this country from those societies, they can bring those biases with them, underscoring that you don’t have to be white to contribute to anti-blackness."

How depressing that the browning of America does not automatically mean an elimination of anti-blackness.  As Blow concluded, "Colorism and racism are cousins, and both are a pestilence."

Traditions

As a kid, I always knew it was only a matter of time.  Time to graduate from wearing shorts at home to wearing veshti. 

I do not recall when exactly that happened, but it did.

It worked well.  It felt wonderful to feel that I was being recognized as a grown up.  Almost an adult. 

When the veshti got dirty, however, there was no way to camouflage that.  Eventually the white became off-white, and then an inevitable yellowish-brown.  The attempts to whiten that and make it look new all over included dyeing it with Robin Blue, which always made it worse unlike what the manufacturer claimed.

Soon, the the charm of the newness of wearing a veshti wore off.  I didn't want to become a dull and boring adult.  And certainly I did not want to become a brahmin.  

So, into the teens, I suppose wearing a lungi was how we teenagers and young men rebelled within this traditional world. 

A lungi, also called a kylee, was a horror to the traditional elders.  Disgusted they were with what they considered to be trashy and uncultured.

But then it is not that the elders were sticking with the traditions either.  The traditional nine-yard sari (madisar) had given way to the six-yards.  Mother wore it only when she was participating in religious rituals.  On a daily basis, father wore trousers and not the panchakachcham.  

The drift away from traditions wasn't anything new.  My grandfather wore shorts in his adult life!

Grandfather during his undergraduate years at Varanasi (Benares)
in the early-1930s.  Notice his socks/stockings? ;)

Imagine that!  No veshti but in a pair of shorts.  And no kudumi but a "crop" as my grandmother referred to the modernized man's hairstyle.

Veshti and and kudumi stand out in a world that has become globalized.

In Neyveli, the town where I grew up, there were a couple of professionals who wore veshtis to work.  Even to clubs.  A favorite memory is of one gent, with the traditional kudumi rushing around town on his Lambretta.  And, even more surreal the image of him at the bridge table in the smoke-filled cards room at Park Club--apparently he was sharp at bridge.

The older I get, the more I tire of the modern, especially when the world begins to look the same.  I suppose the old rebel in me wants to rebel against this "modernity."  But, relax, I have no plans to wear a veshti to work, or anywhere for that matter ;)  The last I wore one was at my niece's wedding:

When I travel, men and women wearing clothes that reflect their respective cultures and traditions fascinate me.  When in India, I am impressed with the sight of half-sari wearing girls. Or, the women in their traditional outfits in Ecuador.

In the clash between the tradition and the "modern," rarely does a tradition survive.  But then we create new traditions as we become modern, which a future generation will slowly and systematically walk away from.

Traditions!

Brahms, Bartók, and the Bhagavatar

It was quite a transformation for me to come from a provincial life to be suddenly thrown into a global mix!  Countries that I had only read about now came to life through those fellow students.  In a matter of months after graduate school began, I had become what the Republicans now condescendingly, insultingly, and dangerously refer to as a "globalist."  And there was no going back.

So much have I been bitten by this bug that I long for interactions with people from other parts of the world.  And the list of countries that I want to travel to is long.  I am proud to be a globalist.

Among the international students in graduate school across various disciplines, I had a whole bunch of classmates from South Korea.  Some of the Korean classmates became good friends.  Friendly enough to borrow and loan money, and share meals with.  One of them took me to a Korean BBQ restaurant, which was quite an experience.  Another guy took me to the Chart House in Malibu.

All of them are now doing really well as academics and policy wonks, and remain well networked.  They are the Korean Mafia.

Only one among them had a Christian first name--Keith.  I am not sure whether he was a Christian, as quite a few Koreans are, or if he assumed that to make his interactions easier in the US.  I never did ask him that question.

After his PhD, Keith went on to work on a number of innovative urban planning solutions, including tearing down a multi-lane freeway in downtown Seoul in order to restore the river and create a green space.

Keith's wife was pursuing a graduate degree in music.  Graduation recital was a part of the academic process, and Keith invited us to attend.  I went there in my sloppy graduate student outfit and was shocked to see Keith in a full suit.  His wife was in a flowing gown.  And it was a piano recital!

Classical music appealing to people coming from different cultures has always fascinated me since growing up listening to, and reading about, Higgins Bhagavathar.  Except for a tiny minority, an overwhelming majority of Carnatic music fans and musicians welcomed Jon Higgins as one of our own and even bestowed on him the honorific "Bhagavatar."

It was through Keith's wife's performance that I learnt about the spread of Western classical music in South Korea and China.  Until then, I had never imagined tiny kids in Seoul or Shanghai learning to play the piano.  Mao destroyed pianos, and what a cultural transformation it has been after Deng Xiaoping opened up China to the world!

Last night, Joyce Yang was the featured guest musician at the local symphony concert.  Her finger movements over the keys, the way her entire body swayed to the music, and the magical sounds that she produced were a delight even to this uninformed listener.

I was not surprised by this part of her biography: "Born in 1986 in Seoul, South Korea, Yang received her first piano lesson from her aunt at the age of four."  That was about the same time that Keith's wife was playing the piano as part of her graduation recital!

Two East Asian-looking women were seated a couple of rows in front of us.  They did not return after the intermission--Yang was the featured artist only in the first half.  I wonder if they went to talk with Yang about music and Korea and more.

I would not have had any of these experiences if I hadn't left the old country in 1987!

Horseshit!

Many years ago, but what feels like centuries ago, the agency where I worked had two secretaries.  Their job responsibilities differed with one taking on more substantive tasks than the other. 

At some point, the professional world retitled them as "administrative assistants" and the old title was discarded.  "Secretaries Day" now became even more a mouthful to say as "Administrative Professionals Day."

Once I got my footing in the workplace and town, which took me a couple of years, I figured that I would treat the secretaries, er, administrative assistants, to lunch sometime during that week.  And that is what I did.

My only favorite restaurant in town was only a couple of blocks away, and we walked.  I'm sure I would have ordered one of the only two dishes I always ate there: Penne puttanesca, or the chicken picatta.

Anyway, back to the secretaries.  I walked by the side of the road, and the two secretaries--women--walked on the sidewalk.  That's when the younger (relatively speaking) secretary commented that I was being a perfect gentleman by being in between them and the traffic.

These were women who were highly capable, but were working as secretaries as a result of the social mores in which they (we) were born and raised.  So, it never surprised me when they made insightful comments like any thinking person would.

The one who complimented me on being a gentleman continued about the origins of such a practice.  It was to shield the women from horse manure and farts from back in the day when horses were the mode of transportation in cities.

Whether or not that was entirely true I didn't care.  But, I had never before thought about the possibility that the way we walk on the sidewalk could have been influenced by the city transport of the past.

Before cars and buses and trucks, cities depended on horses for transporting goods and people.  Well, in the old country it was not horses but bullocks.

Big cities were, therefore, full of horseshit everywhere.

For a recent telling, you can turn to SuperFreakonomics, the best-selling 2009 book by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner. The authors describe how, in the late 19th century, the streets of fast-industrializing cities were congested with horses, each pulling a cart or a coach, one after the other, in some places three abreast. There were something like 200,000 horses in New York City alone, depositing manure at a rate of roughly 35 pounds per day, per horse. It piled high in vacant lots and “lined city streets like banks of snow.” The elegant brownstone stoops so beloved of contemporary city-dwellers allowed homeowners to “rise above a sea of manure.” In Rochester, N. Y., health officials calculated that the city’s annual horse waste would, if collected on a single acre, make a 175-foot-tall tower.

Gradually, and then rapidly, horses gave way to streetcars and then to cars and trucks and buses.  We don't care about the real horseshit anymore, but only about the metaphorical ones that come blowing out from the mouths of politicians, especially of the Republican variety.

Now, a significant percentage of administrative assistants have been replaced by the likes of Microsoft Word,  Google calendar, and Siri.  And Siri does not care about Administrative Professionals Day either, nor does Siri care about horseshit. 

Heck, rarely do people go to the office and to restaurants in a world that has been upended by a damn epidemic!

Homebodies

‘Amazon knows, if you’ve bought the game for the last three years or whatever, that you’re likely to buy it again.’ So they’ve already got it packaged up for you, waiting for you to press the button. You do that, and they’ll stick your name on it, and it’s gone.”

If that doesn't boggle your mind, then there is something seriously wrong with you!

We live in a science-fiction world in which we search, click, and order ... and our orders show up on our porches within a couple of days. And if you pay more, they could reach you within even a few hours.

Pause for a minute and think about your own childhood. 

If you are old enough like me, then there years when milk was delivered. Newspapers were delivered. Mail was delivered. They happened according to a present schedule.  For everything else, we went looking for the stuff.  We walked or took buses or drove cars or whatever to the store to buy clothes, gadgets, utensils, shoes, ... And that is how people lived for the longest time.  It was primarily only what they bought that changed over the years.

In seemingly no time at all, this model has already flipped here in the US and increasingly all over the world. 

Milk delivery stopped a long time ago.  Only old fogies like me even bother to check the mailbox and use the postal system!  Malls are dead already.  

If ordering stuff online and expecting that to be delivered within a matter of hours becomes the norm, what might the future hold?

Eventually, we will want our deliveries to be so prompt that we will practically be sitting on top of the products we will order. At Chetwoods, the architecture firm, a managing director named Tim Ward told me about “brownfield” sites in London that the e-commerce industry can swallow: real estate that has fallen into disuse, and that can be repurposed to hold inventory and sort deliveries. Car parks, for instance, that will empty out as people drive less, and which can be converted into fulfilment centres for half-hour orders. Or multi-storey towers, each floor connected to the next by a ramp, so that vans can drive goods up and down the building. Or underground storage caverns, one of which is already being prepared near Heathrow. Other companies had mined the area for minerals, Ward explained. “Why fill that void in? Why not use it for logistics? It makes an ideal use, and then you can put a lovely park across the top of it.”

Our push for this is also why there is an increasing level of surveillance that we willingly allow:

Which is why we are not taking any notice that the apparatus of buying will soon be everywhere in our lives. It is already under our thumbs in our apps, and in most delivery vans in most streets. Soon it will be in our fridges, washing machines and printers, ordering refills; it will be beneath our feet in storage canyons and delivery tunnels; it will tower above us in multi-storey city blocks.

Those are not the only changes in how things connected to the internet "serve" us.

Meanwhile, the pandemic has further accelerated electronic interactions of all kinds. 

Back in the "old" days before Covid, if we could not cook quality food at home, we went to restaurants.  The pandemic has upended even our relationship with restaurant food.  Instead of only pizzas and Chinese food that we ordered in, there has been a rapid evolution (?) in food delivery.

The advent of appealing, user-friendly apps and tech-enabled driver networks, coupled with changing consumer expectations, has unlocked ready-to-eat food delivery as a major category. Lockdowns and physical-distancing requirements early on in the pandemic gave the category an enormous boost, with delivery becoming a lifeline for the hurting restaurant industry. Moving forward, it is poised to remain a permanent fixture in the dining landscape.

I wonder what the reasons might ever be in the future for people to step out of their homes!

Our stuff isn’t our identity

"Will you be taking gifts with you to India?" the dental hygienist asked when working on my unflossed teeth.

I have a complicated relationship with flossing.  As in I rarely do it; maybe ten times a year!

Once, I asked the dentist about the news that I read that too much flossing can be bad for dental hygiene.  Especially because most of us floss the wrong way.

He laughed off my question.

I figured that there is something going well with my quality spit and oral microbiome.  So, why try to meddle with it by flossing!

Anyway, there I was with my mouth wide open when she asked me about taking gifts to India. 

I wasn't sure if the question was triggered by the upcoming mass-consumption season.  If that's the case, then I would have to remind her that my people don't celebrate the birth of Jesus. 

On the other hand, she could have thought about people usually taking gifts when visiting their old countries.

After the tube sucked away the dental detritus, I got a chance to reply. 

"Nah, they all have everything."

I opened my mouth again for her to resume scraping away the plaque.

"My plan is for the family to spend time together, and make foods that we all like to eat" she said.

I thought to myself that this is exactly what we did all the time when I was young.  When visiting with grandmas or the extended family aunts and uncles, we didn't take any gifts nor did they have any gifts for us.  We spent time together.  We ate together.  We traded stories--even if they were old ones that had been told many times over.

In the age of mass consumption, we have easily and conveniently forgotten the simple and profound ways of how we used to live :( 

Now, with the world worried about sustainability that has been brought about by consumption of goods, especially the ones that do not last, isn't it time that we ditched the gift-buying and instead reminded ourselves that the "time spent together in conversation, on a walk or preparing a meal is far more meaningful than anything you can unwrap."

Wrap your mind around that!

The 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month

 

Dual

After coming to the US for graduate studies, it didn't me take me any time at all to realize that I was interested in all things Americana. The music. The movies. The newspapers and magazines. Football and baseball.  Politics. 

Sometimes it seemed that my doctoral program was more about learning about the US than about the PhD itself.

One of the movies that I watched--in reruns, of course--was Duel.  The cast was minimal.  A huge truck was the villain.  It was a unique and fascinating movie. 

I am yet to meet anyone in the real world who liked Duel.  In fact, most people seem unaware of this movie!

I was reminded of the movie earlier this morning when I was driving to campus.

The roads were wet, and there was an occasional drizzle.  Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, appeared a semi with a trailer too, with a full load of freshly sawed hefty wooden beams.  The image filled my rear view mirror.

The truck engine's noise and the smoke from the exhaust pipes brought back memories of the sounds in Duel.  I was all set for that terrible horn, which, thankfully, the driver didn't use.  At least, I didn't have to worry about any railroad crossing!

I thought I had gotten rid of the monster when I overtook a slow-moving car on the rural road.  I took comfort that it was the vehicle behind me that was being tailgated by a fully-loaded semi that was travelling at the speed limit.

But then, the car behind me exited.  The truck was now catching up on me.

Did I want the truck behind me until I reached my destination? 

I am not wired for being macho, and definitely not on the road.  My defensive driving approach has always been to avoid the idiots and hooligans who drive like maniacs.

I did what I do.  

I pulled over and let the truck pass me at 60 mph.

Have you ever parked on the shoulder and experienced the madness of a semi passing by at 60 mph?  It is a Halloween scare all by itself!

I gave the truck an additional minute before I resumed the drive.

It was, yet again, a leisurely drive that I have come to enjoy over the years.  Green all around, with hills at a distance.  Hawks on telephone polls.

While the sky ahead was dark, the sun slowly lit up the sky behind with a brilliant yellow that was soft and cool.

A rainbow started appearing in the horizon ahead of me.

It started as a patch close to the ground.  That patch grew and curved.  And it grew some more.  And then it brightened.  The colors became sharper and sharper against a darkening background.  The curve lengthened.  The colors were simply splendid.

And then it happened.

A second rainbow.

Now there were two arcs.  One was ultra-bright, and the second was dull.  And they were on either side of the highway.

I didn't want the drive to end.

Vox Populi and the Nobel

The divide between art vs. commercial movies in India was too wide back when I was a kid.  I would assume that the gap has further widened over the decades that I have been away from the old country.

I longed for the arty movies.  As I have blogged here in plenty about movies by the likes of Adoor Goplakrishnan and Satyajit Ray, I found them engaging.  They made me think about the human condition.  There was so much to learn about the world, and the art movies were wonderful teachers.  The commercial movies were, well, I had my fill of those too.

The printed word, too, seemed to fall into classic works vs. potboilers.  Sure, the pulp fiction met my cheap thrills. But, with the little money that I had I purchased only the classics.  And read them.  And held on to them for a long time.  And loved going to book fairs!

Such divides have always been there.  They won't go away anytime soon. Perhaps never. 

In recent years, the Oscars even expanded the number of films for the ultimate prize because of PR concerns that the Oscar "best picture" was not one that resonated with the public opinion.  With an expanded list and other changes, the Academy hoped to regain a level of cultural relevance that it seemed to once have.

In a world in which most people do not care for the "arty" should we be surprised that the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature is an unknown back in his old country?

Of course, Abdulrazak Gurnah is not a household name.  Despite all my pretentious artsy-ness, I had no idea about Gurnah.  Usually my select news and magazine sources tip me off about phenomenal authors and then I read a work or two of theirs.  Like how it happened with the Polish author Olga Tokarzcuk.  But, Gurnah was not in my radar.

Hey, at least I have an excuse: I neither live in the UK, which is Gurnah's adopted home, nor in Tanzania (Zanzibar)--his old country.  But, "in bookshops across the East Africa nation, Gurnah's novels are nowhere to be found."  Oh my!

TPH Bookshop, the sister company of Mkuki na Nyota, in Tanzania's main city Dar es Salaam, has been one of the few bookshops in the country to stock Gurnah's work. 

"We saw a huge gap in the publishing industry in Tanzania, which focuses solely on educational books. To address that we started producing and selling fiction, poetry and other literary works. Particularly works written by Tanzanians," says Mr Bgoya. 

"Gurnah's novels took a long time to sell, so we didn't restock."

After the Nobel announcement, we got a chance to read one his relatively recent works.  And then read an essay of his that is geographic.

I hope the recipient of the award will be a name that won't be new to me ;)

Timefoolery

The old clock that once tick-tocked at my grandmother's home struck ten when I was talking with my mother.

"Did you hear that?" I asked her.  "The Sengottai clock keeps working."

She heard it loud and clear.  

"So, right now there is only a 30-minute difference between your time and ours.  Here it is 10:30."

"For a couple more days," I replied.  "And then it will become a one-and-a-half hour difference."

The dreaded time change is upon us.

Every year, mid-fall, we put our clocks back by an hour, and then shift the clock ahead by an hour in early spring.

Why?  Why go through this rigmarole of resetting the clock twice a year? 

Because we are stupid!  As simple as that.

The reality is simply this: "Standard time is determined by the rotation of our Earth. And it also is optimally phased to correspond to biological clocks."

And, thanks to the planet's tilt, the farther one is from the equator, the more the days get shorter after the longest day in June, and slowly the days get longer after Christmas--in the northern hemisphere--and vice versa.  We can try whatever tricks we want, but the facts don't change.

If anybody believes that fooling with the clocks is somehow an energy efficiency approach, they surely are smoking something awesome for them to overlook the facts.

This stupid gimmick is becoming increasingly unpopular:

Scientists have been calling attention to the damaging effects of the time changes—which include a general reduction in mental and physical well-being, as well as a potential increased risk of serious complications, such as strokes and heart attacks, soon after the shifts. There is also evidence of increases in traffic fatalities and harmful medical errors shortly following when clocks are moved forward in the spring.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine just came out with a support on permanent standard time.  And so have many other scientific groups.

The god awful resetting of the clocks is not based on science and facts. Then why do we do this?

Just one word explains it all: Politics!

If only the bipartisan effort to kill daylight sayings time would succeed!

A special day?

"What are your Deepavali plans?  Or you don't do anything?"

Even though she knew my answer, my sister asked me that question.

"Nothing here," I replied.

"Now, everyday is Deepavali," I added.

We recalled how even just a couple of decades ago making sweets at home was reserved for special occasions.  For birthdays. And, yes, for Deepavali. 

But, now, any day, any time, a person can have any sweet.  "Sweets have lost their value."

Deepavali has lost its charm.

Not that there is no religious dimension to Deepavali.  Of course there is.  But, in practice, the day was less about religion and gods, but more about sweets, new clothes, and socialization.  Sweets and new clothes were rarity, and it is this rarity that provided the excitement.

In this new world of abundance (for most of us--I am not ignoring poverty around the world) new clothes have lost their value.  Sweets have lost their special status in everyday life.  Socialization is now warped with Facebook and WhatsApp.  

Deepavali has become yet another day.  

We are awash with so much abundance that there is no special value for anything.  Those out-of-ordinary sweets and clothes, and interactions with fellow humans, helped us understand and appreciate the human condition.  A message on Facebook wishing one's 942 "friends" (who are overwhelmingly not friends when you need them) does nothing to understand who we are and how we fit into the grand scheme of things.

But then, I am not sure how many really care to understand the human condition.  Perhaps my expectations are disconnected from the reality that most care not about the cosmos and our brief presence here.

Perhaps I am merely being General Malaise.

So ... Happy Deepavali y'all ;)

Deepalakshmi Ranganathan Iyer

Was that a mouthful for you to say?

Try it again.

If you the reader are not Indian, or not familiar with the word Iyer, would you have known that the title of this post is a person's name?  And that it is a female?

Now, try this for size: Julie Sahni.

You recognize Julie as a female name, right?

What if Deepalakshmi Ranganathan Iyer and Julie Sahni are one and the same person?

At the age of five, Julie Sahni began attending a school run by Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement, in the North Indian city of Kanpur. Classes there trained her to be a perfect housewife. Born in 1945 as Deepalakshmi Ranganathan Iyer, she learned how to knit, how to take care of a sick man, how to make dosas.

The essay about Julie Sahni is truly fascinating.

But, it leaves one question unanswered: When did Deepalakshmi change her name to Julie?

I gave up after a few minutes of searching.  The name change remains a mystery!

While she was the first Iyer to write a cookbook for the American and Western market, I remembered another Iyer--Raghavan--an accomplished and prize-winning author of cookbooks.

Thankfully, the chef-celebrity Padma Lakshmi doesn't carry the Iyer label.

And then there is the writer Pico Iyer, whose father was Raghavan Iyer.  No, Pico Iyer's father was not the cookbook author, but was a big time academic.

A few days ago, at a hotel, we spotted a Tesla with a personalized license plate:

For various reasons, I don't wear "Iyer" as a badge of honor and recognition.  But then I didn't re-invent myself as Sam Murphy either.  What's in a name, right?