Changing times

I was watching a hindi movie this weekend where the hero and heroine, depicted as Indians living in the US, got married with an "I do" and exchange of rings, and the bride wore white. Needless to say I was shocked. I never imagined that the rituals and traditions of marriage will ever change, esp in the case where two Hindus were involved. Of course, movies are not reality but I think they do sometimes depict the aspirations of people that make them. Most Indian movies nowadays have a guy proposing to a girl on his knees with the invariable diamond ring in his hands, and people praying in churches with candles, instead of temples with oil lamps. This is a relatively new phenomenon. India is getting modernized, and somewhat homogenized by the global corporate culture and also by exposure to western TV shows etc. I can understand the changes in diet, the proliferation of starbucks-type coffee shops. However, I never expected a change in the religious rituals. Doesn't faith go deeper than that! I am waiting for a real celebrity wedding in India that will happen in the western "I do" style and I am convinced it will happen. I even have a celebrity picked out who I think will wear white for her wedding.

I read somewhere that the values of an immigrant get stuck in the era he left his country, while his country keeps evolving. As a result most immigrants tend to be much more conservative than their compatriots who stayed in the native country. This seems to make sense. This is probably why I cannot stomach an Indian wedding culminating with "you may now kiss the bride". I had been living in fear that my daughters, who will grow up watching American movies will always equate wedding with a white dress and saying of vows, as opposed to a red dress and circles around a fire. From the look of it, that era has passed and I am apparently stuck in old times.

Spirituality

I have struggled with my own faith and spirituality for a long time. In a way I am an atheist, in that I do not believe in an external all powerful God who sits in judgment upon us. And yet there is a deep need for spirituality in me, a desire to connect with something supreme or divine that I cannot explain. I consider myself a Hindu and have immense respect for yogic philosophies. I have gone through life flip-flopping in limbo, not knowing where I quite stand. Never feeling I could sit and pray to an idol of Krishna but unable to completely renounce the Gods.

So it must be divine intervention that my friend D handed me two book last month - The Secret and Eat Pray Love saying "you might like these". I don't think she has any ideas of my struggles but after reading these books everything is clear to me. I finally know where I stand with my spirituality and beliefs. My scientific and spiritual sides are finally in harmony. The irony is not lost on me that what happened here is exactly what the book The Secret said - if you want something and focus on it, the universe will shift itself to get it to you.

Thank you D.

ps: The Secret

By the way, I think a better title for this book will be "Religion for atheists: How to pray and offer gratitude without invoking God's name".

We are human. We want something or the other in life and so it is given that there will be people who will try to teach us how to get what we want. As I see it, there are two aspects of this. One is learning how to get what you want that this type of books try to teach you. However, the second and more important is knowing what it is that you really want from life. To sit down and think, and go the depths of your soul. Face yourself, your inadequacies and fears. Then ask. But that doesn't sell books or consumer goods off the shelves of super stores, does it?

Book Review - The Secret

I read the book because I have heard about it, and a friend kindly loaned it to me, because I don't buy books that I don't intend to keep forever. It gets mentioned in many places and I do try to stay up-to-date with some of the pop-culture just so that I know what everybody is talking about. If you haven't heard, it is a self-help book that declares that "The Secret" is a law of attraction that successful people have known since ages and the author is bringing it to the commoners. And what is the big secret, this immutable law of the universe - Like attracts like. Hence you will get what you think about, because your thoughts will attract it to you. You have to think positive, think about what you want from life, and not what you don't want, and really believe that the universe is abundant enough to give you whatever it is that you want, and you will get it.

I am intrigued, amused, shocked and a little bit angered by the book. I buy the whole "think positive" idea. I completely agree that how your life, your day and your relationships turn out depends a little on luck and a lot on attitude. There is no denying it. But don't go using physics to explain this, especially if you have never studied physics in school, as the author claims, because it makes what you say ridiculous right there. The basic law of physics is that likes repel, not attract. Little kids do the experiment in preschool, with two magnets. If you are selling philosophy, just sell philosophy. Don't go bringing science into it.

Secondly, the book could have been named "Aham Brahma" (I am Brahma), the chant from Hindu scriptures. That is what the book is talking about. You should see yourself, and everything else in the universe, not as a physical entity, but a mass of energy (or spirit, or soul, or Brahma, or God for that matter, or whatever you want to name it) that is connected to the rest of the energy of the universe. Principal of conversation of energy says that the amount of energy in the universe never changes, it is only converted from one form to another, and The Bhagvad Gita states that "nobody ever dies". By controlling your energy, you in effect, control the universe. The Upanishad, ancient Hindu texts, say exactly that. The practices of various kinds of yoga are specifically designed to control the energy within you. It angers me that Hindu teachings are thus exploited, without giving credit where credit is due. The Hindu philosophy also states that once you connect with the "Brahma", that is you stop seeing yourself as a physical entity separate from the rest of the universe, you will attain great peace because you have freed yourself from material needs and desires. Nirvana! Hence, I find it immensely amusing that "The Secret" tells you to do all this so that you can have the fancy houses and cars that you always wanted! Yeah baby! Consume.....

Immigration debate

There is a debate, supposedly on illegal immigration in the US. With the recent rash of presidential candidate debates, the issue has come up again and again.

I do think the problem everybody really wants to address is the wave of illegal immigrants from Mexico. The growing number of Hispanics is what is bothering everyone, but nobody will state that openly. That would, of course, be xenophobia and the xenophobes will not admit to that. So they talk in expansive terms and it invariably, and quite clearly sounds like that these people are talking about all non-European immigrants - legal or not, educated or uneducated. The 9/11 terrorists were legal immigrants, and so are many doctors and engineers in this country. Unfortunately, the people who seem to be on the side of illegal Hispanic immigrants get caught up in that debate as well and start talking about their grandfather who came from Scotland a century ago and how immigrants have enriched this country. That is completely irrelevant in this context and only serves to derail the real issue.

Yes, there is a problem and it needs to be addressed, but first you have to clearly state the problem. Any scientist will tell you, defining the problem clearly is the first step towards a solution.

Laptops in School

I just read this artcile in NY Times and I would be laughing hard, if it wasn't so sad. Who ever thought that giving students laptops will enhance their academic performance? And why are they now flabbergasted that the laptops are more of a distraction than help? How could they not see that the idea was ridiculous to begin with? Do the decision-makers even realize that the high-tech jobs are going to people educated in developing countries like India, who probably had very limited access to computers even while pursuing degrees in computer science and engineering, and they are doing great, aren't they? Abroad and here. I am sure even a Psychology major in a typical US college things she cannot function without a personal computer.

Education, success and acquisition of knowledge has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to with hunger, motivation, and a passion for learning. No amount of high-tech gadgetry can teach attitude. What is sad is, this is so obvious. It is common sense and yet school administrations had to spend millions to learn this. So the question is what kind of people are running our schools and making crucial decisions such as diverting funding from Art programs to individual laptops? The same people who think that children shouldn't be taught calculus as it is never used in "real life". Yeah, you probably don't need it if your real life is making dumb decisions about running schools! If you have money to burn, raise teacher salaries. As I said, I would laugh if it hadn't been such a humongous waste.

Over-parenting

I recently came across this article by Katie Allison Granju and not only enjoyed reading it but agree with it as well.

She quotes Jackie Kennedy as saying "If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much." I agree with that as well, but also know that overdoing and obsessing over every little detail of child rearing doesn't equate to good parenting. In this culture, that is overrun by parenting experts, of which Granju is one too, it is very easy to get overwrought by all the advice and worry about every little detail. Not to mention the competition with other parents, where we can feel good about our parenting, only when we get to put down somebody else's style. Yes, this competition has always been there, but now we have the muscle of the marketing and consumer industry behind it.

Granju wrote this article, partly to promote her book on the same topic, which brings me to my pet-peeve. Did you have to write a whole book about it? The article is enough. It is just like this other parenting book I am currently reading "Hold on to your kids" by Gordon Neufeld. The book has a good point, but all it needed was about 20 pages. I am through three quarters of the book, often skipping entire chapters at a time, and he is still defining the problem! Geeze. You had me at hello and are going to lose me soon if you don't come to the point already.

Dr. Neufeld's point is that the most important thing you need as a parent, the thing that gives you natural authority, makes the child want to be good for you, is the child's attachment to you. This attachment cannot be taken for granted, and must be nurtured and developed, esp in the modern society where everybody is so busy and we don't spend as much time with our children. As they grow, you have to make sure that your only interaction with your kids isn't you asking them to do or not do something. You have to take the time to enjoy being with them, just to hang out and show them how much they matter to you. When they are misbehaving, you shouldn't push them away, send them to time-out or try to teach them anything. Show them that you still love them and do what you need to get through the situation quickly. Work on a solution later, when everyone is calm. Some ideas are similar to what "Love and Logic" says - if you don't have the love, you can't enforce the logic. But of course, this man needs to sell his own formula so he denigrates all others and takes a few chapters doing it. Sigh.

His second point is that every child needs to orient themselves to somebody, like a compass needle. If the parent isn't available as the orientation point, then the kids orient themselves to their peers, which automatically results in turning away from the parents, leading to ill-behaved children who don't respect their parents and want to spend all their time with their friends. Since peers aren't mature or provide unconditional love, the children get bereft, do all kinds of wrong things to fit in and take rejection from the peer group very hard. The compass needle can only point in one direction at a time, so if you think your child is pushing you away and her friends matter more to her, you have to reorient the child's compass back towards yourself. He claims he has solutions for this and maybe I will reach that chapter one day.