Thursday, December 17, 2009

First Christmas

The holiday season is here, and although I think I was ahead in planning this year, I am still feeling overwhelmed by the shopping, entertaining house guests, school events etc. This takes me back to my first Christmas in the US.

I had arrived in the US in October as a poor graduate student's wife without the requisite visas to work or study. In the mid-west it was already colder than anything I was used to so I spent a lot of time inside my tiny apartment with not much more than a radio for entertainment. By end of November (yes, back then they still waited until after Thanksgiving to kick off the Christmas season) the airwaves were swamped with holiday ads. The overwhelming theme was shopping and stress resulting from shopping. Growing up in a country where Christians are a small minority and the economy was closed, Christmas didn't really register. We got a day off from school, and the couple of Christians in our neighborhood hung a star shaped lantern outside their house. If not for that, I don't think we would even know about Christmas. Of course I knew of Santa and assumed that the children in a Christian house each got a toy, everyone went to church and that was Christmas - a rather staid and boring holiday, that didn't even come close to the really fun Hindu holidays such as Holi & Diwali. Coming from that background, all the shopping frenzy and the stress implied by the radio hosts and ads, made no sense whatsoever. When I met my American sister-in-law during the season that first year, I asked her my naive question "Why is Christmas about shopping? I quite can't connect the two". She looked at me as if I was a cave-dweller who had just stepped out from some jungle into modern civilization. She was completely at loss as to how to answer my question, not sure where to begin. She looked helplessly at my brother-in-law and said "haven't you told your family about Santa?" and I am quite sure she muttered something about ignorant country bumpkins under her breath. Still I stood there clueless, unable to decipher how knowing about Santa explained anything about the implied Christmas stress. How can buying a toy each, for the children in your house be that stressful? I didn't ask any further questions although I am sure I seriously tarnished the image of my countrymen in my sister-in-law's eyes forever.

Now I can relate to the stress and the shopping mania quite well, but I am still not sure that if that is a good thing.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Pediatricians

Over the Thanksgiving break I met a young pediatrician at a friend's party. She was freshly out of her residency and into motherhood with an almost two year old daughter. Child rearing was the obvious topic of conversation. She shared that her daughter takes hours to go to bed and wakes up many times during the night. The doctor has all kinds of advice coming to her from older women in her family about what to feed the child, how to handle the sleep issue and how to treat common childhood ailments. I was stunned as to how clueless the young mother seemed about things such as discipline, sleeping etc. In fact, not much different from how I was with my first child but somehow I was expecting a pediatrician to be more aware. After all, aren't we always advised to consult our pediatrician when in doubt. I did receive very good and wise advice, and immense support from the first pediatrician I consulted for my babies. I still remember and use his wise words. Now that I think of it, all his advice wasn't really coming from his medical degree. It was the advice of a man who had spent 40 years of his life working with children and had seen it all. The medical degree did not give him the knowledge about child rearing, just the opportunity to be with many parents and children, and to learn from them.

This got me wondering if we should seek our pediatrician's advice on child-rearing matters, or consult them strictly for medical issues. What do you do?

Friday, November 20, 2009

The new cancer directive

New guidelines for cancer screening came out a few days ago and these have understandably sparked a big debate. So we are not supposed to do a daily breast exam anymore? As Gail Collins pointed out in her op-ed - Now if dentists would just decide to withdraw the flossing directive, we may have enough additional spare time to learn Spanish.. She had breast cancer too, but it might have been caused by, as she points out, the now withdrawn directive of estrogen replacement therapy for older women. Cynicism is valid; after all for years it has been drilled into us that with cancer early detection is the key and hence, regular breast exams, mammograms and PAP smears are essential. Now all of a sudden they pop-up and go "umm, we don't think so."

My first thought on hearing the news was that the-medical-powers-that-be have also been going on and on about the usefulness H1N1 vaccine and they haven't had 10 years to study that one. As it is, I am very skeptical of medical advice these days as the drug companies have too much influence on our doctors and FDA. Every time I see an ad for Flu vaccine, I wonder who is making money from the vaccine, and is that why they are promoting is so much and can afford to pay the celebrities? I didn't get the vaccine, neither did my children but they are not little babies anymore and I feel the more the immune system gets exercised the stronger it will be, not to mention my growing fear of subtle corporate exploitation. At this rate by next year I will start questioning all vaccines - this is nuts!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Where is the news?

I was reading an article somewhere bemoaning that we no longer have authoritative newsmen such as Walter Cronkite and universally-admired leaders such as FDR. I have already talked about the article about erosion of dignity in our world that others are worried about. That got me thinking, and the more I think the more I am convinced that people such as Cronkite & FDR still exist, or rather they were no different from the people of today. It is just that the lens through which we view them has changed.

In my opinion, it is a simple consequence of the choices we have in media, especially the 24 hour, for-profit news networks and I just don't mean Fox News. These channels are in the business of making money and will do whatever it takes to get ratings. Anger sells, so we have Fox News. Humor sells and so we have Jon Stewart and Bill Maher. This is why Simon Cowell has been a judge on American Idol for so long - people would rather have snark than reason. People would rather be entertained, even when they are being informed, and hence CNN's vanilla-news is regularly losing viewers. Have you seen Bill O'Reilly outside his show? Watch Lou Dobbs on this video. He seems like such a reasonable guy, but what happens to him on his own show? Nowadays, comedians such as Stephen Colbert aren't the only ones assuming a TV persona. The news personalities and even their shows, put on a persona to entertain. They either stoke anger against those who they don't agree with or turn them their opponents into caricatures to be laughed at. This completely de-legitimizes the other side. Bush was president to some and the village idiot to others. Obama is being painted as anything ranging for Lenin to Hitler, and people who disagree with him are swallowing it up. Same goes for the "experts" - there are too many of them to be relevant, and each side is constantly tearing down at the other. With all this name-calling, digging up of skeletons and questioning everything, no wonder it is hard to find a leader to respect. Even Gandhi would have had tough time in this media climate.

We don't have newsmen like Cronkite anymore because we really don't have news anymore. All we have is entertainment. I think our hope lies with shows such as Law & Order, or Boston Legal - that is where I see hard questions being asked and often a nuanced debate about them. Real entertainment, it looks like, might be our only hope for a reasoned debate.

Monday, November 9, 2009

A continuous civilization

I have been watching the HBO/BBC series Rome. I did not study Roman history or culture in school so I am thoroughly enjoying it. I know a lot of it is drama and cannot be considered authentic history, but it does have some factual basis. Having studied Indian history in some detail, I am struck by how similar to Indian culture ancient Rome seems. Any number of ancient Indian kings, queens and gods could be seamlessly substituted in the stories and it would still ring true. For one there is the religion - the numerous gods, and the little altars in every home; the style of worship ranging from specialized-deities to the revenge-mandalas, seeking Gods to bless everything and the blood-rituals. Then there is the style of clothes and the decor. There is also the clear demarcation between the nobility and the "plebs" and the decadent luxury of the rich. And although current India is sexually-repressed, we know from ancient books and temple carvings that this is a fairly modern happening. The only difference is that the Roman culture ended after advent of Christianity, whereas the Indian one survived and kept evolving; kept incorporating ideas and rituals from all the invaders that came through. It is becoming even clearer why India has been referred to as a "continuous civilization".

All this has given rise to a storm of thoughts and I am sure I will be writing more posts about this.

Monday, October 12, 2009

The pledge

There has been an ongoing effort by atheists to remove the word God from the statement "one nation under God" in the pledge of allegiance. I think they have been going about it all wrong by stressing the separation of church and state. What they should use is "truth in advertising" laws and request that we replace the word "God" by "Media". That is what we are - one nation under media.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Karwachauth

Today is Karwachauth, the holiday when Hindu women fast until moonrise for the longevity of their husbands. In a certain sense the holiday is antiquated, anti-feminist and enforces the subservience of women in the Hindu culture especially if you read this op-ed in New York Times. I think even my grandfather waited for my grandma on Karwachauth, so the author's family seems to be in a whole different century altogether.

The question arises why do I, a seemingly modern progressive woman, continue to observe this holiday every year – going without food or water for an entire day to honor my husband. I used to ask myself this question through hunger pangs every year. Do I really believe the stories retold every year on this holiday about how bad fate befell a woman who unwittingly had a sip of water when mistaking a lamp in a tree for the moon, and hence breaking her fast before the scheduled time? I don’t think so. Do I think that the life of a woman without a husband is no life at all, and hence must continue to pray that I die before him? Umm no.

I have a deep respect for traditions, and I am wary of doing away with one too easily without first understanding its far-reaching roots. That was the reason I started observing this fast and a few others – simply because my mother used to. Most fasting holidays have a whole ceremony centered on breaking the fast. When the time comes, you don’t just fall upon the food but first have to go through a few rituals. Over time I have come to realize that this waiting for food, even when you are allowed to eat, takes the focus away from food on a fasting day and makes you mindful of why you were fasting in the first place. And so tonight, as I make my offerings to the moon, and go through the little rituals along with my husband before sitting down to have a meal, I will remember and honor the person I have decided to spend my life with, and be mindful of the ups and downs of the journey a marriage is. It being one of the most important relationships in our life, it is no surprise that the prescribed fast for it is one of the hardest. I am glad tradition forces me to set aside a day to reflect on this.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Fox News

This is not really related to parenting, but has been on my mind of late. It goes back to what I said in an older post that we seem to give the most attention to people who shout or otherwise behave badly. We mothers are guilty of giving more attention to the whiny, cranky child at the expense of the calm easy-going one. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, I know, and I am sure there is some survival-of-the-fittest theory behind it.

The same thing is now happening in the media. The nuts on Fox News such as Beck and Hannity, and the protesters they incite seem to be getting all the media attention. Other networks, congressmen, even the president seem compelled to respond to these idiots and their ridiculous biased rants. What this attention given to Fox results in is that whatever the wing-nuts decide to get mad about becomes the topic de jour in our national conversation. Fox News claims that more people watch Fox news than any other news on TV. They are probably right, but I also suspect that those who watch that network are the only people FOX has influence on. Everybody else is put off by them. David Brooks agreed with that in his op-ed today. I particulary like how Joe Gandelman framed it "Rage and attack mode are OK for those who already agree with you, but they don’t win over those who are pondering both sides and don’t like what they see on either of them." Judith Warner said something similar about Michael Moore in her op-ed as well.

People who don’t watch Fox News probably don’t get their news from TV anyway so they are not watching any other show either which explains Fox’s numbers. If you are sane enough to think Fox News is far from "Fair and Balanced", then I bet you are capable of thinking for yourself and you can easily see that CNN is equally ridiculous, and Olberman’s rants don’t sway you either. So here is my appeal to thinking people – can we ignore Fox News just as we would a tantrum-throwing child?

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Character and dignity

I came across this article and was reminded how much I admire dignity and character in a person. These are ephemeral qualities, hard to describe or measure, but easy to recognize. The question arises, can these qualities be cultivated? Can I do something now so that my children grow up to be dignified adults with character?

As suggested in the article, George Washington sought to change external habits to “shape inner morals”. Certain acts define graciousness or dignity, and a place to start would be to ensure my children always do them whether they want to or not; simple things such as greeting people, and saying proper goodbyes.

The other aspect of dignity is mysteriousness, or rather restraint in what personal information you reveal to others. In this age of Facebook, when all our friends are intent on telling us everything from what they ate for lunch to what Crayola Crayon they are, restraint seems like a much harder thing to teach kids to value. Add to that our pop-culture where the society is obsessed with the worst of people, and value of dignity becomes even harder to teach. After all, the people who acted insanely during the health-care reform town-hall meetings got to come on TV and express their opinions, whereas nobody noticed the people who asked reasonable questions.

The other problem the ubiquity of so called “real people”, with the help of TV and other media, creates the feeling that it is fine to behave in an undignified manner because others are doing it too. Milgram proved with his social experiments that people are capable of doing nasty things just because other people are doing them as well. The way current pop-culture is going, there are no good role models left for children. Maybe the thing to do is to actively cultivate friendship with the type of people that can be good role models for my kids. Then they can do what the “crowd” does.

As far as building character goes, a major contributing factor is hardship in childhood. In comfortable middle-class families like ours, hardship is hard to come by. What parent wants to deliberately put their kids through hardship? As a friend said, “it is crazy that you are worried about lack of lack”. The other ingredient for character seems to be strict discipline. Discipline is a hardship, in the sense that kids aren’t allowed to just do what they want. We parents however are overloaded with too much information about how to achieve discipline. Should the children be paid for doing chores? If punishing for bad behavior too negative, then isn’t rewarding for good behavior same as bribing? How much praise is too much?

What is a parent to do?

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

How to forgive friends and judge people

With Senator Kennedy’s death today, most media and friends on Facebook were talking about the loss of a great man. But then somebody piped up “He should be buried at the bottom of a lake. A murderer cannot be glorified”. I was reminded of similar comments when Michael Jackson died. I even blogged about it. My first reaction is to say that we should judge a person by their body of work, and not just one or two, what could be constituted, as mistakes. It is possible to like somebody's work without liking the person himself. But then again, just because somebody is glorified, we shouldn’t gloss over their negatives.

But it got me thinking. Who decides when the balance has tipped in one direction or another? Hitler must have done some good deeds in his life, but his death was as good a riddance as any, and I would be the last person asking him to be honored just because he is dead.

I often tell my kids that there are no good or bad people – only good and bad actions, and you judge people by weighing their good actions against their bad ones. All actions, however, don’t weigh the same. How do you teach them when to tip the scales? Did Ted Kennedy do enough good that his part in causing harm to some young women can be excused?

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Survival of the Fittest

I just saw this video on YouTube, and it got me wondering why is it that we don’t see a lot of original art coming out of India. India has a large population and an ancient tradition of classical forms of art, and yet you have to really strain hard to think of original artists – A. R. Rahman, M. F. Hussein and that’s it! I cannot even imagine a performance like this in “India’s got talent”. India has a huge film and music industry, yet most of the films are rehashed and adapted Hollywood scripts. Fittingly, there is no award distinguishing between adapted and original screenplay in the Indian "Oscars". The music directors for these movies are too smart to plagiarize from popular songs from big artists so they look for “inspiration” in smaller markets such as Turkey and Thailand and lift music from there.

This brings me to an article I read today about how babies can very quickly internalize the concept of probability and discover new mechanisms, just by exploring. The article stresses, however, that this type of learning best happens when babies are given freedom to explore and experiment on their own. Most babies and young children in India do not get this freedom and I think this is what ends up in stilted creativity as they grow older.

Anybody growing up in a country as populous as India, has to compete for resources at every stage of life – nothing comes to those who wait. If you don’t push through, leave aside getting a seat on the bus; you will probably not even get on the bus. If you stick to driving in your lane and politely try to pass others, you probably won’t get anywhere. Unless you excel in school in some way, you will be starved for teacher’s attention. Unless you perform, and perform really well in school you will not have any kind of a career. This is the lesson you learn at every step – life is very competitive and it starts early. Even a small block party held in the neighborhood to celebrate a holiday will have some kind of competition for kids – poetry recitation, some sort of race etc. and only the winner gets a prize. Only success is rewarded and recognized; not perseverance, not hard work, not originality – only success. You do not have the freedom to fail, and learn from it. There are no second chances. To see how endemic this has become in the culture you only have to visit a “Chuck-E-Cheese” type game parlor. There you will see the store workers as well as parents helping each child to win as many tickets as possible so that they can get a big prize in the end. This is what brought it home for me finally as I had to keep telling surprised store workers to back off. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t want them to help my child win big!

This is the reason that parents start teaching babies the alphabet, the multiplication tables and seek out academic programs by the time the kids are 3, to give them a heads up later. It is easy to find math and zoology classes for 4 year-olds in India! There is no room or time for exploration – learn your facts so that you can ace that interview for a good elementary school. If you don’t get there in the first try, you don’t have any more chances. And if you don’t get in a good school, your chances in life start dwindling right away. If you don’t do well in your 10th grade finals, you lose the chance to ever study math and science in the grades ahead. There is no room for and no appreciation for creativity, and definitely no time for discovering and indulging in your passions. Most kids spend 2-3 hours every day after school in classes to help them perform better at school. Only winning matters – and this is instilled early and often.

My intention is not to insult my roots, or the system that got me where I am today. But I do think it is time to take some pressure off the children because it seems to just keep growing. Mention this to any Indian and they will point out how Indians win math and science competitions world-wide, and thank you very much, but it is a great system. Why do Indian kids win spelling bees and geography bees – not because they are any smarter but because their parents grew up in a culture where winning competitions and memorizing facts are the tickets to success. Most Indians follow successful careers in the US, but do they ever follow their passion? Do they ever blaze a new trail in their field?

There is some upside for a system like India’s. Children learn early that you don’t get anything for just showing up, you have to perform. I have never seen kids cry at a competition in India because they didn’t win. In the US we seem to have the opposite problem where kids think themselves too entitled. I have had 8yo burst into tears at birthday parties here because they didn’t win musical chairs, and only got the basic “goody bag”, not the special prize. The American public education system has so much focus on leveling the playing field, and catering to the average that exceptional kids often feel left out, unappreciated and bored.

Is it even possible to create a perfect system?

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Ant or Grasshopper?

There are some people who are hard workers, who take action and do things. Then there are others that know how to get others to do their work. The former are admired and hard work is seen as a virtue that we must attempt to instill in our children. And yet I feel that it is the latter group that has an easier life and the hard workers suffer under drudgery. I know a housewife with two part-time maids, whose full-time working spouse seems to be doing a lot of household chores and yet from their conversations you would feel that she has a huge workload and her husband is happy to help her out in every way he can. I especially want to point out that why I am even giving this any thought is because all this happens in a very sweet and charming way, with no party feeling used or burdened. I am not sure if this knack of charming others to do your work is a cultivated skill or if it is a sheer stroke of luck that she has a hard-working partner. In any case I am intrigued.

This isn’t the grasshopper of the fables we are talking about, one who lazed around and starved in the winter, but a grasshopper who played through the summer while the ant happily filled up the winter stores for the both of them. I am really wondering if I shouldn’t be teaching my kids this skill instead of self-sufficiency and hard work. Damsels-in-distress types seem to have it much easier in life, no?

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Good and Great, and knowing the difference therein

As summer vacation rolls along friends have been sharing pictures of the past school year – preschool graduation, Kindergarten graduation, 5th grade graduation and so on. I have a continued sense of unease with such ceremonies.

It used to be that graduation was a special event marking the point in your life where you are finally on your own, with some accumulated skill and a degree to help you get a job, a symbolic leaving of the nest marking transition to adulthood and hence an event worth celebrating. Bigwigs come to lecture you about their wisdom and you listen in your funny hats and archaic gowns, feeling pride and an amazing sense of hope. Somebody somewhere decided to spread that around - why not make it special for everyone! And now I have to sit through a kindergarten graduation! By the time a child reaches college she has already been through a dozen so-called graduations with much pomp and ceremony, and the graduation from college means nothing. Yeah, the president is speaking but I am going to show up in my bikini! In the process of making little things special we have destroyed the importance of a truly special event. I am guilty of this too because by letting my kids ice cream whenever they want, I have robbed them of the childhood joy of going out for ice cream.

Even if my own child is in KG, the graduation ceremony at the end still means nothing to me. The kid has barely started and has not yet achieved anything. I am all for praising children and providing positive feedback, but I do say “great job” when a great job is done otherwise “good” will suffice. If I fawn over them with “great great” with every step they take, what am I going to say when they truly do something “great”?

Friday, June 26, 2009

Flawed humans

I am seeing myriad reactions from people around me about Michael Jackson’s death. There are people who grew up on his music and are on the verge of tears and then there are others who say “good riddance” to a freak . Yes, he did finally descend into inexplicable behavior but does that in anyway undermine his music and its appeal?

On a similar note we have the recent saga of the South Carolina Governor – a rising star in GOP, an independent thinker, a sharp politician and what not, until he had an affair and acted in a somewhat weird manner to hide that affair. Now he is nothing.

I haven’t lived in any other society for my adult life so do not have a perspective on this, but I wonder if it is only US society that holds its public figures to such high standards of behavior. An idolizing to such an extent that the slightest misstep derails everything they might have achieved in life, and strips them of all other qualities they posses. Is there no room for regular flawed humans in public life?

I am reminded of something I read on religion once. Islam and most Evangelical forms of Christianity in the US have a lot in common. They are new religions, still in their teens, full of hope and ideals, and not yet tempered by missteps, questions from within and attacks form the outside. The morality is absolute and the word of religious texts is literal with no room for interpretation. That or as I blogged before, an immigrant's values are stuck in the times he left his native country. Since the US population is all immigrants, maybe that explains the wide-spread prudishness.

The thoughts of Jacko beg another question. With the examples of Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan all around us, what is it that still prompts parents to push their children to be ‘stars’?

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Forced conservation

In India people are very careful about their water usage. They don’t need a TV ad to tell them to not keep the tap running when brushing their teeth. Not many people use showers as they are wasteful, choosing instead to bathe using a bucket of water where the usage is more easily monitored. Many toilets have two different flushing mechanisms, and you can choose one or the other depending upon what you are trying to flush. In Bangalore, many apartment complexes have water treatment plants that process waste water to be used for landscaping and toilets flushing.

In the US, on the other hand, you will have to search high and low, and probably pay a premium, to get a dual-flushing toilet. A few people may use rain-barrels to water their gardens but by and large you could drink from the lawn sprinkler.

It is not that Indians are a more environmentally aware people. The water conservation is a way of life because most Indian cities face acute water shortages. The municipality supplies water for a few hours every day, and everyone must store up enough water to last for a couple of days during that supply time. Just last week, I was in Delhi. There were a few more relatives in the house and we used up all the stored water. Unfortunately there was no water supply the next day, and we had to borrow water from a neighbor. This is fairly common occurrence.

This got me thinking about the current push to be “green” in the US – an extremely consumer-oriented society. I am convinced that to promote conservation we need actual shortages. No amount of awareness or education can make human beings save up resources that seem unlimited, even if they aren’t. Either that or it has to be felt in the pocketbook. The talk of being “green” was highest when gas prices were high. No politician will even go there, but maybe the prices of gas, water and electricity need to be kept artificially inflated. Hell, this could just pay off a large chunk of our national debt while making us greener.

Monday, June 22, 2009

India and development

I made a short trip to Delhi recently and visited the Select City Walk mall. Except for the crowds, and the fact that you didn't have to bus your own tables at the food court, I might as well have been in a mall in the US. Same stores, similar styles, same restaurants. There is much more security of course - you have to pass through metal detectors and get your bags checked when entering the mall, a constant reminder of the terrorist threat that looms close. Same holds for the Delhi airport. I am still pleasantly surprised on every visit.

The newspaper stands are full of the same magazines - Vogue, Cosmo, Elle. Even the home-grown glossy Femina proclaims very Cosmo-like headlines about sex and fashion. There is a craze for brand-names even in little kids. Women dress in the latest styles. Even the leading conservative political party is having very GOP-like identity crisis.

Kids are eating too much junk food, watching too much TV and obesity is a real concern. Going out and playing however poses a problem. There aren't many open areas to play in. Given the heavy traffic, and lack of sidewalks etc. purposeful exercise such as riding a bike to school or walking to the store is impossible. Most houses don't have yards. Most urban kids live in apartment complexes making going out and playing even more difficult.

India is in a rush to Xerox the lifestyle that developed countries took decades to build. The breakneck pace of this development is leaving no room to ponder the downside or a concerted effort to preserve what is unique. Maybe India will continue to remain the mish-mash of old and new that I see now, or maybe our kids will never know what it means to shop at a sabzi mandi.

I still make sure I make a trip to the Haus Khas village and Aminabad before they too become festooned with McDee arches and become a picture postcard of their original self.

So many conflicting thoughts swirl in my mind these days, and NY Times' India correspondent expressed them better and more poetically than I ever could.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Happiness

Happiness eludes those who actively pursue it. It has taken me a long time to learn this lesson and started ruminating on it again after reading this article.

For as long as I remember my answer to the question what I want from life has been “happiness”. I finally find that I am achieving that goal only after giving up its dogged pursuit. Weird as it may sound, once I gave up trying to actively plan to do the things that I thought would make me happy, partly in frustration and partly due to lack of time, I seem to be finding time and avenues to do those things.

I reluctantly stepped out of the rat race a decade ago, thinking I was making a compromise for the sake of my children by giving up on a promising career. However, I have finally achieved professional satisfaction after being freed of the burden to climb the next rung of the corporate ladder. I don’t have some middle management executive position to impress people with, but I do have work I enjoy that utilizes my talents, and I work with people I share mutual respect with. The money is adequate, and the biggest perk is that hours and location are flexible. I am able to spend entire summer break in India giving kids time to connect with their roots and bond with family which will nourish their souls and provide more memories than any exotic vacation could. Summer camps might be enriching, but carefree and agenda-free summer breaks are rejuvenating.

In a similar manner I was very reluctantly pushed into a semi-permanent lifestyle a few years ago – no house to call my own, 3-6 months leases and absolutely no clue where we will be after that. Practicality and lack of storage space forced me to pare down our possessions and stop acquiring new ones. And their again I was liberated from spending time shopping for and caring for inanimate objects. I find time to read, exercise and play with the kids – all activities that add joy to life.

I am not about to renounce the world and enter a monastery. I am quite aware of the power of money. However, I am also convinced that after you have enough money to cover the basics, the correlation between happiness and money breaks. There is definitely more happiness in less, and I hope to enjoy every minute of it.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

A third world country?

I am in India these days and I have to say the contrasts still amaze and sadden me at the same time.

Private enterprise is flourishing and carving out opportunities. I have been going to a club everyday to use the gym and marvel at the facilities there. There is a lovely pool, restaurant, spa etc. but more amazing to me is the fact that there are drinking fountains around the club, all hooked up to a state-of-the-art water filtration system. I just got a high speed satellite internet hook-up that I can use anywhere in the city. For the first time in all my visits, I actually saw street sweeping trucks on the roads. On a smaller scale somebody has setup a diminutive temple under a tree, just outside our neighborhood. Once a few people start visiting the idol, I am sure the shrine will slowly grow and not only a priest have found an income, but a piece of land would have been quietly acquired as nobody would dare demolish a temple. I am always impressed by the ingenuity of people.

However, it doesn't take too long to realize that there is a parallel third world country here too. There are piles of trash, and ragged little children playing in it. The drive from our house to the club is equally revealing. You pass scum covered ponds with water buffalo, and impromptu childcare by the side of a construction site - little kids watching even littler kids, on swings fashioned out of rags hung between two trees, while the mothers work carrying bricks on their heads. But then this is also the first time that I see street urchins dressed in jeans - maybe there is indeed a trickle down affect.

I couldn't help but agree with this article I just read about the state of India.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Flimsiness

This a test post from my mobile phone. It got fragmented so I have combined multiple posts in one. Posting from mobile requires brevity.

I have this cooking range - stainless steel construction, nice sturdy looks. Yesterday the bottom drawer, where I store my kitchen linens, looked a bit askance. I pulled it out to fix it and find that the things that connect this sturdy drawer to the sturdy body are made of flimsy plastic which had broken off. This is a perfect stand-in for the state of affairs these days - a fancy exterior with a hollowness in all the important parts. I guess, if you need something that is solid through and through you gotta look in Germany!

Friday, April 10, 2009

Sunday School

"It is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason," Charles Darwin wrote in "The Descent of Man."

Judith Warner quoted this in NY Times today and it once again got me thinking about religious education of my children. In my opinion a strong sense of one’s roots is important for growing up a mature adult. A tree with strong roots can stand up to strong winds, and may twist with the wind, but doesn’t easily lose its ground. This is illustrated very well by the Rumspringa tradition of the Amish. My children will have the freedom to rebel, but they do need to know what they are rebelling against. Just as, to be able to improvise in music, you first need to learn the classical form, if the girls choose to not be Hindus when they grow up, it should come from an understanding of the religion and not because they are embarrassed by the caricatures of it in the western media.

Herein lies my dilemma. Neither my husband nor I am overtly religious, and vary of committing our children to formal religious education. However, we are definitely spiritual and consider ourselves Hindus. That is to say that we do not take religious teachings literally but consider them abstractions or “storification” of concepts. I don’t believe that there is, in flesh and blood, a God of destruction, Shiva, who lives on a mountain in the Himalayas with his wife, the goddess of strength, and their son, the lord of auspicious beginnings. However, I do think that this is a way to explain the concept that whatever is created eventually dies, and post that destruction you need to partner with strength to create a new beginning.

I cannot deny that my religion is closely tied to my culture which I really value, and believe it is impossible to separate one form the other. Growing up Hindu in India, one doesn’t need to undergo formal religious instruction in the form of Sunday School to understand one’s religion. Hinduism is a way of life and is not tied to overt practices such as regularly visiting the temple or praying. My children are not growing up in that culture, and because we do not indulge in overt practices, they are growing up in ignorance of their roots which is unacceptable to me. I Think it might be time to enroll them in formal Hindu religious instruction. I might disagree with what they teach there, but at least it will help start a conversation about religion in the house.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Time to return to the bake sale?

Over the years my children have brought a constant stream of fund-raising materials from school, each with tactics to put emotional pressure on parents, and I have finally had it with this blackmail. I understand times are tough, our schools are losing money and we need to help. However, I do not appreciate our schools’ and PTO’s liaisons with the commercial vendors and their becoming a party to this.

I attended an assembly in my kids’ school once and somebody from a fund-raising company spoke at the assembly. The speaker exhorted kids to sell more and showed them all the goodies they could earn. I was aghast at this exploitation of our children. I would have been much happier giving $20 directly to the PTO instead of putting my kids through this and then buying $50 worth of cookie dough out of which the school got all of $10!

Our school had a picture session this Spring, in addition to the one in Fall. An order form came home which I did not sign and thought this meant that I was expressly declining my kids’ photos being taken. However, not only were their pictures taken but also sent home in their backpacks along with various photo-trinkets. I knew I was under no obligation to buy but I still had to endure constant begging from my kids and then repeatedly say no.

Then we had the Scholastic book fair, selling some books and lot of unnecessary trinkets. First, the kids were paraded through the book fair making a “wish list” to bring home. Then they were taken en-masse with their peers for a shopping trip to the fair. What parent can bear the thought of their child being the only one without any money to buy a ridiculous, large and unnecessary finger-pointer-thingy, when all her friends are buying one? I love books, I and my kids are avid readers and I even volunteer for the book fair but I really dislike the tactics used by Scholastic. Why don’t we just ask families to donate books for a used book sale? We would be teaching our kids to reuse in addition to buying wonderful books.

The last straw is an Art Gallery Event the school will be hosting. I have to Pony up $30 per child to have their artwork framed and displayed at this event. Do I want to once again be the parent who says no, and lets my child down in front of her peers? Our school used to have a similar albeit non-commercial event called the “Art Walk”, where students’ artwork was simply placed on construction paper and displayed in the hallways and parents gathered one evening to eat together and view the art. It was a wonderful event to bring the community together and I am sad to see it go.

Now I am the last person to let my child to succumb to peer pressure. However, I would like to choose to do this on my own terms and am quite offended by being repeatedly put in the position of the “bad person”, by my children’s school no less.

Alas, I do not have enough time to jump in a become the PTO president or even the fund-raising chair. I can share ideas and occasionally volunteer. Still I did write an email to the principal and the PTO today.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Talking of tradition

Let us talk breakfast tradition. For me breakfast was something mom cooked everyday - things such as whole wheat breads with locally-grown fresh vegetables, cracked wheat or chivda cooked pilaf style.

When I visit India now, kids often seem more interested in, and their moms happy to feed them, highly processed and sugar-loaded industrial breakfasts such as Kellog's Chocos, Ramen-noodle type things or pancakes made from store-bought mixes which are nothing more than white flour. Relatives ask me to bring some fancier 'pancake mixes' from the US so that they can feed their kids healthier things. This new breakfast tradition has been fueled by ads comprising of smiling moms and kids, placed in urban middle class settings, proclaiming the benefits of vitamins and minerals in these new breakfast products. Ads also teach kids how to be 'healthy', thus associating their product with health in little minds and shaping a generation of junk-food eaters.

It is worth noting that it is not the convenience factor of cereal that is the attraction here. Busy middle class moms, the kind pictured in the ads, have servants.

I don’t know if anybody has even noticed this slow erosion of healthy traditions. but, hey, if few women ever enter a pub, watch for the culture police to descend in full force!

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire

I have to admit that I am quite embarrassed by the excitement among the Indian community about the Slumdog Millionaire’s Oscar wins. Do we really have the right to feel any sense of pride about that movie? Agreed it was shot in Mumbai, and has a cast of Indian actors but what else would you expect in a movie about a boy from Indian slums – Regis hosting Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Angelina Jolie as the love interest, shot in Vancouver? The movie was written, produced and directed by British – they made the movie and hired Indians as appropriate. It was not an Indian creation. It shows the worst of India – the slums, exploitation of children, the filth and lack of proper sanitation facilities. I found the film quite depressing despite its happy ending.

The only silver lining was the win for A. R. Rahman's music. He is a talented musician and combines various genres with ease and always produces beautiful music. I was happy to see his talent getting wider recognition and reaching more people.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Can good sense be taught?

I was recently watching this special report on CNBC about how we got into the current economic mess. The cause of the mess seems to be basic human flaws – greed, lack of judgment and jumping on the bandwagon. If Tom was making money flipping houses then, Jerry wanted to too. People knew they were making bad loans but they still continued to make them. A factory worker never stopped to think "can I really afford this house, ever?".

I felt this anxiety during the housing boom too – the prices are going up, we should buy soon. My husband, however, kept saying that the house prices are rising too fast and don’t make sense, and held off on buying a house then. And I used to think the best decision in life he made was by marrying me! I am really impressed by his judgment, skeptical mind and the fact that he never felt the need to do what everybody else was doing.

Now I wonder, if judgment can be taught? Can we take active steps now to teach our kids, and not just mouth the words but actually instill the fact, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Can we teach them that we don't have to keep up with anybody, and buy a fancier car just because our friends have one? Or is it just nature - some are born with it and some are not.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

China building fire

The leading internationl news today was about a high rise building completely burned by a fire in China. One reason the building couldn't be saved was because the fire fighters did not have equipment that reached beyond the twelfth floor. I was immediately reminded of all the new construction of very modernistic high-rise buildings in Bangalore and Gurgaon . Do the fire departments there have equipment to extinguish a blaze on higher floors? India is no stranger to enthusiastic and unsafe fireworks use during Diwali season.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Religion does poison everything

I came across this story in the New York Times about girls being attacked in a college town in India for visiting a bar. That college town is ‘my’ college town so the story hits close to home and brings back memories of somehow being made to feel guilty because you got molested – “Well, why were you out after dark? Probably to meet your boyfriend. Heh heh” Even if that is the truth, how does that give anybody the right to molest a woman?

For all the globalization in India, the only progress seems to have happened there is in the consumer culture – there is more stuff to buy and fancier pubs to visit. The reverse logic of blaming women for the crimes committed against them and that of suppressing women continues. Rapists are not brought to justice, and most women are still scared of going to the police to report a crime. The political parties continue the ‘talibanization’ of the culture by recruiting a moral police – a way for insignificant men to feel powerful. Women drinking in a bar is against the 'culture', but, pray, tell me what kind of culture condones assaulting women? No wonder these men call themselves 'Lord Ram's army', the very same Ram who went to great lengths to rescue his wife from a kidnapper, and then denounced her and eventually abandoned her in a jungle while she was pregnant, because she had been with another man, namely, the kidnapper. It was all about Ram's honor - when rescuing his wife and when abandoning her. By the way another traditional name for Ram is 'Best among men'. Sigh. As Christopher Hitchens says – religion does poison everything.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Homemade pizza lunchables

My kids are fascinated by Lunchables. I cannot stand them and refuse to buy them but I do like the concept. So I set out to make my own version of a pizza “lunchable”. We use Laptop lunchboxes which inherently lend themselves to the lunchable concept by providing multiple containers to attractively package this. Most of it is easy – shredded cheese, homemade or store-bought pizza sauce, olives and other toppings, and of course, a treat. It was the crust for the pizza that presented a challenge.

I experimented with my basic pizza crust recipe – rolled it out, cut in it about 3” circles using a steel bowl, and baked them. The result however wasn’t satisfactory. Pizza crust baked without any topping on it came out too hard, and tough to bite into. Little pita breads might have worked but I haven’t found them in local stores where I usually shop. Then a friend suggested I use the flat bread served in Olga’s Kitchen restaurents and provided the recipe. I made a batch - some large ones for dinner, and many little ones for my lunchable experiment. This worked wonderfully! The crust had a soft, chewy texture. Kids loved it, and have been taking “pizza lunchables” to school once a week. I made about 30 little crusts, and froze them. Along with homemade pizza sauce that I freeze in cubes in ice cube trays, lunch is very easily put together.

I will make a few adjustments to the bread recipe the next time around. For one, I will omit the honey because I found the sweetness out of place in a pizza crust. Secondly, I will probably replace some of the white flour with a combination of soy and teff flours.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Personal responsibility

So I was talking to a relative who is on her first-ever visit to the US. She was amazed by the cleanliness. "There are neat little garden in front of every house and they are all so well-maintained. All houses have identical roofs and even the roofs are so clean!" she gushed. "The government must either be really good at maintaining everything or the laws about keeping things clean must be really strict, no?" She added.

I didn't say anything because I was not in a mood to lecture, but no, it is not the government. There is no "cleanliness police" going around cuffing people the instant they litter. Things are clean because littering, and people who litter, are frowned upon. It is the culture of the place - people like to keep their houses, their yards, their streets and their neighborhood clean, and do it themselves rather than waiting for the government to do it.

I had met another family member in India on my recent trip, and mentioned that my daughter was playing soccer in a league. She remarked "see that is why they have America is so good in sports, the government has such good sports programs." I had to point out that the government has nothing to do with it. The soccer league is organized by parents and for most part is managed by parents. The coaches are all parents that volunteer for the job and coach in their spare time.

That is when it struck me. The reason why India hasn't developed, (it hasn't, you ask. I can go into that in another blog or a book!) and still looks like a 3rd world country is exactly because of that mind-set. Complete ignorance of personal and civic responsibility and the expectation that the government will and should take care of everything. If we had more people such as my friend V, India might be a different place. When she sees a luxury car throwing litter out of its windows in the street of New Delhi, she chases down the car and tells the occupants what they just did. Unfortunately, many don't take her seriously, or say "what difference will another water bottle make" and never once feel a need to change their habits. You know, government is supposed to keep the streets clean!