Chocolate frosted sugar bombs

That's one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips. There is nothing like waking up to a sickeningly sweet breakfast. Although processed food industry has taken it to a whole new level, I do remember some really happy summer vacations, which included a sickening overdose of sugar. We used to eat fresh "cream rolls" with tea first thing in the morning, at lunch we would have a scary amount of Indian (or Maharashtrian?) version of mango jam (मुरंबा). And I cannot hide my regrets over growing up, when I begin to describe the procedure we had established for eating a bourbon biscuit . It had to be opened first and then the chocolate cream had to be eaten. The left over cookie was usually dunked in extra sweet tea. In summers, we had special clothes to eat mangoes. We were locked out with our mangoes on the balcony to avoid paw prints on the walls. There was sugar available at every meal. No ration. No guilt. 

BUT, all the sugar we consumed was "obvious sugar". There was other food and then there was sugar. It was easy to go off sugar if one wished to do so (who would ever have such a wish!). However, the processed food we consume now comes with a lot of latent sugar.  The food industry in the United States is driven by a wonder sugar -- High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). HFCS has made its way into almost every kind of cheap processed food (burger buns, yoghurts, nutri bars, breakfast cereals, ketchup, pizza, even roasted peanuts!). Proponents of the use of HFCS argue that it is just as bad as eating cane sugar (which by the way is not true). However, the problem arises when HFCS is used in foods that usually don't need sugar. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, this omnipresence of HFCS is a result of persistent lobbying by the corn industry of the United States. Corn growing is heavily subsidized. And the biggest beneficiaries of these subsidies are not just the multinationals that are directly involved in the use of corn but also the leading soda and fast food corporations. Increasing the amount of sugar in any food adds to its, for the lack of a better word, "addiction quotient". The insidious sugar packets that are delivered to us through ketchup and burger buns actually help in getting us hooked on. The manufacturing costs of cane sugar would not accommodate such rampant use of cane sugar in foods such as breads and yoghurts. Hence HFCS just adds an excess amount of sugar to an everyday on-the-run diet. 

This  is an enlightening piece about HFCS. It is often argued that the human body processes HFCS in a process identical to cane sugar. But it may not be true. HFCS consists of unbound fructose and glucose (in a ratio of 55:45), while cane sugar or sucrose consists of bound fructose and glucose (in a 50:50 ratio). Unbound sugars are absorbed rapidly by the body. Moreover, fructose is absorbed more rapidly than glucose, and is converted to fat by the liver. However, it has not been rigorously studied whether these biochemical differences would lead to increased risk of liver and pancreatic diseases. So essentially, the food industry is using its consumers as an experiment. 

Going beyond the details of sucrose Vs HFCS (interesting slide show there), it is not the kind of sugar that poses the bigger risk. It is the amount of sugar, and more importantly the amount of latent sugar, which is a bigger concern. No matter which culture/nation you come from, in order to eat healthy, you have to be in a position to control what you eat. And being able to cook your own food is the best way to control what you eat. 

I too had a dream

I was looking for that one "unputdownable" book since I came back to India. "I too had a dream" (as told to) by Gauri Salvi is a highly addictive account of the journey of Dr. Verghese Kurien. I was first pushed towards reading this book after I read this news. At the time, I was still a post doc at Michigan State University (MSU). So the fact that Dr. Kurien did his masters there, made me feel oddly happy. As I began googling him, I came across this,  which obviously led me to Shyam Benegal's  Manthan. After watching Mathan, I had made a mental note that I am going to read more about this. 

Dr. Kurien did not want to be a dairy engineer. He went to MSU with a sincere intention of studying  metallurgy, even though his scholarship terms clearly stated that he would return as a dairy engineer. He took nominal dairy courses (sadly, MSU was and still is one of the leading universities in dairy engineering in the world), and returned with a cocky assumption that he is going to work for a large corporate. However, when he was asked to cough up Rs. 30,000 for the expenses government incurred on the account of his education or work at a dairy for five years, he chose the latter. He was sent to Anand, Gujrath, with a note on his documents that he would not make a good employee. He had nothing to do for the first year at Anand. He would send his resignation to the government every month, urging them to release him instead of wasting more government money. In what might be called a sudden turn of fate, he had to get his act together to help Tribhuvandas Patel, who was organizing a farmer's ilk cooperative under the guidance of Vallabh Bhai Patel. Kurien started as a technical expert and then never looked back. The book is full of many amusing and enlightening anecdotes. But I think I would like to share some of the important points Kurien makes. 

1. Foreign Aid and subsidies

Kurien elaborates the role of foreign aid and subsidies in the development of people with remarkable perspicuity. In the late sixties, India faced an acute shortage of milk. The per capita consumption of milk of the nation was steadily decreasing and it was necessary to build infrastructure, and supply chains that would resolve this. Kurien along with a visiting professor from Harvard, Michael Halse, wrote the proposal for "Operation Flood", which was implemented from the early seventies through nineties. In 1998, India surpassed the US in the production of milk. And today we are the  world leaders in milk production. This could happen because, instead of accepting excess milk powder that European countries were willing to donate as aid, it was sold at market prices, after reconstituting and packaging as milk. The revenue collected from that aid was used to buy infrastructure to start co-operative milk societies all over the nation, which are still in operation. So instead of feeding free milk to Indian poor and creating more demand (potentially for foreign investors), it was used as a long term investment. Kurien is also skeptical of the various subsidies that the farmers around the world get. It is true, even today (and even in the developed world) that subsidies usually benefit lobbies and corporations more than the farmers. In some cases, subsidies actually create a lot of unwanted problems even for common people (case in point: the various ill effects of the corn lobby in the United States). 

2. Foreign Investment

Amul rose to glory at a time when India had highly regulated foreign investment policies. At one point Nestle invited him to discuss their intention of setting up a plant in India. The chairman of the board, casually mentioned that Nestle could not delegate the work to 'natives' because it is highly technical. Kurien stormed out of the meeting reminding them that they were actually talking to a native. Although over-regulation of foreign investments has led to problems of the other extreme for India in the late nineties, the nationwide networks which were built for farmers during the post independence years would not have been possible if we had left the country open to investment. I have a placard-waving-hippie inside my mind when it comes to most of these issues, but I genuinely believe that farmers should be able to earn good money, no matter where they come from. 

3. Take expert opinion with a pinch of salt

It was a "well known fact" when Kurien started his career that you "cannot" manufacture powdered form of buffalo milk. All experts, from all the leading milk producing countries (New Zealand, Denmark) endorsed this view. However, it was made possible, on a commercial scale at Amul. This reminds me of so many rampant expert opinions that are currently being thrown around in the petroleum and bio fuel industry. It is very important to find out for whom the said expert works, before accepting his views as gospel. Often expert opinions are also driven by the collective opinion of a particular lobby that the expert works for. 

There is this criticism that Amul could not be repeated in other states. It has a lot to do with the rigid bureaucratic structure that we have come to accept when it comes to anything related to the government. When I hear the word co-operative society, the next word that comes to my mind is corruption. However, when I think of "for profit" corporations, the next word that comes to my mind is exploitation. We live in a world where corporations have not just restricted themselves to exploiting human beings, they have also done a lot of irreparable damage to the planet. The politics of profit often replaces the brightest minds with the "corporate conscience", where simple, age old concepts of taking collective responsibility of our planet, are replaced by some convoluted logic "backed by research". We all have had the misfortune of witnessing 5 million barrels of crude oil gushing into our ocean as the "world's best technical experts" watched it helplessly for three months. 

Sustainable growth can only be achieved by creating self-enriching loops. It is just as true for people as it is for the environment. It is high time we start using the words "nurture" and "profit" together. I think the Amul story has those words written all over it. 

No. I don't think so.

Sunday Times is one of the reasons I came back to India. Waking up on a Sunday morning and picking up the fat TOI, with a hot cup of tea, has always been one of the happiest moments of my week. But these days, newspapers and news channels make me gloomy, mostly because of the rampant acts of misdemeanors, assaults and casual instances of disrespectful treatment of women of my country. In the past few years, my brain has become more and more sensitive to a thought that was mostly subconscious through out my early twenties. Initially it started off  as a comparison between Indian women and Western women. Of how our values are built and how we look at life. There is a clear difference, and for that matter, I am not even a stereotypical "Indian" woman. And that is the problem. One cannot generalize a typical woman of any culture, religion, social class or nationality. We become what we go through, what we endure or enjoy growing up, how our mothers treat us and most importantly, how our fathers treat our mothers.

Women are expected to follow certain rules in every culture. Some conservative politicians/gurus never hesitate to jump to conclusions about how following Western culture is causing girls to get raped. But what does the contemporary Indian culture have to offer? With all the famous 100 crore grossing Bollywood movies, which always include a mindless item song? How are we helping young girls realize that their bodies are not up for abject objectification, if Kareena Kapoor flaunts her size whatever body in skimpy Indian clothes to a song that literally asks the man to devour her with alcohol? And then she proudly tells an interviewer that, for this song she had to have a slightly voluptuous figure, because the song is "desi" (establishing her power to control her body any which way she wants). Together with the lyrics, the lewd facial expressions, the dance moves it is worse than what a short skirt can do to "Indian culture".

Irrespective of the cultural trends in the media, it is equally true that we cannot control the media. We cannot control what the society/media wants men and women to believe. It is not practically possible to stop the advent of any culture or trend in a democracy. You cannot restrict  individual freedom. Moreover,  using our freedom with responsibility takes a lot more conscience and care than following somebody's diktat and being disgruntled about it. This kind of freedom also helps in building better/ safer societies.

 But I am starting to believe that a significant part of how men treat women happens at home. The most influential person in a young girl's or a young boy's life when it comes to perception/treatment of women is their dad. And one of the most powerful relationship dynamic we grow up observing very closely is that of our parents. It has long been proven that a supportive family helps women come out of a lot of traps that they encounter when they step out of home into the real world. Our parents' voice often becomes our inner voice and our parents' choices often deeply influence our choices. It is easier to shrug off/ fight against the media and popular culture. But it is difficult and sometimes impossible to trace our bias/fears/emotional problems back to our upbringing without an intervention. It is difficult for many women to accept that they have a choice. That they can walk out of an abusive relationship. That being healthy and happy is more important than being "taken" or "married". That there is also such a thing as emotional abuse, where being constantly belittled for lack of intelligence/beauty/personality can lead to a long term loss of self respect and esteem. Most of these things are considered okay because the abusers often sound confident to the point of making them believe that "this is how the world works".

I don't think India is ready for My Short Skirt. In fact, in my personal opinion, it won't work for India. Western feminism will not work in India because India needs to develop her own identity when it comes to women's issues. And the first and foremost freedom we all need is the freedom to say NO. Not just when it comes to sexual offenses, but also when it comes to the decisions of women who hold positions of power (or are on their way there). We don't expect men to protect us as much as we expect them to back off gracefully when we say NO. A NO is not always a rejection of your masculinity/personality/power/ability/intellect. It is not always a unidirectional and absolute dynamic. It is not always related to the protection of our chastity, or the proclamation of our superiority. A NO can actually be about us. It could be related to our desire to have a choice. To imagine a life for ourselves, which may not include you at that point. It could be related to our dreams. It could be related to a fulfilling relationship we have found in someone else. It could be related to our confusions about what we want to do, and the time that we need to figure it out. It could also be related to our doubts about whether we could be right for you (or the other way round). It could be related to a conflict that involves others. It could be against injustice that we think we have the courage to fight. It could be against a malpractice that we do not wish to be a part of. It could be about our money, which we wish to save up for our kids. It could be about a lot of things that are beyond you. And if we get the freedom to say NO, it makes us feel a lot more respected than to have you all eager to protect us against evil (and honestly, we are also very grateful for that).

And this cannot be taught to grown up men who are in jail under rape charges. This has to be taught to young boys and girls. By their moms and dads. In part as as education and in part by example. And I am able to think about this on my own because I have been raised by one of the most influential feminists in my life -- my dad.

Meow again!

Do you remember the candid cat that saw me off when I went to Australia? She delivered kittens in my mom's linen closet a few weeks after I left. One of her daughters stuck around and she had her own litter. Then one of her daughters had three kittens last year and now, she is found gallivanting around with a rather handsome dude cat with mysterious green eyes. She also carried forward the legacy and left us one of her daughters to take care of.

I don't want to like cats. Cat-women friendships freak me out. I have seen way too many women going home to cats. Old ladies sitting on fur laden couches with one of their cats arrogantly perched on their shoulders, little bowls of preservative infused tuna fish and that one corner of the house, where the dreaded litter box sits, with its enormous potential of turning your stomach inside out. I reject all these things associated with cats. And I have had some unfortunate experiences of my own. But it is also true that wherever I have traveled, I have always made new feline friends. Whether it was my friend Kyle's obese cat Doc, or his parents' dainty little eighteen year old Ally cat.
Or Elodie's gracefully French cat Mirabelle (below). Growing up, Elodie lost five cats before Mirabelle, and all of them were called Mirabelle. So for a long time Elodie thought that all cats are called Mirabelle. :)




As  Elodie would approach this, maybe this is related to my childhood. Well, it is. Who can forget those endless hours that my cousin and I invested in throwing cats off our first floor balcony? Or putting two kittens under one upside down cardboard box and watch them go berserk? Or trying to wash them and reacting in absolute bewilderment when they escaped and ran for their lives. We never loved cats. We just tortured them. But it was their fault too. Try torturing a dog. It just doesn't work. Even when they love you, you sometimes pity them. Cats invite dislike. They walk into a room with an air of Oh-I-am-better-than-all-of-you and now, you are going to get up and feed me. When you try to tease them, they would attack you. It is like fighting with an equal, and I personally derive great satisfaction from an even fight. A confrontation of two minds that are equally manipulative, intelligent and ruthless.

So back to the current cat in my life. She has this obsessive need for cuddling. It is as if to her eyes, I am a couch. So I started making her life difficult, just to encourage dislike for me in her mind. I would put her on top of an open door and leave her there. I would pick her up from her annoying cat nap and suddenly throw her out of the house. I also put some diluted Eucalyptus oil on the floor of my room to discourage her from coming in. I only feed her because she fights with me for it with really threatening meows. I put her out and close all the windows to the house. But she squeezes in through the exhaust opening and cat walks all over me declaring her triumph. Her end goal is my lap. And it is hard to concentrate on throwing her out when you are busy writing pointless posts on cats. But nonetheless, most of the times, she wins, only because of laziness on my part. One morning I talked my dad into giving her away. But I don't know how, she mysteriously disappeared for two hours when he was supposed to drive her.

Sometimes she looks into my eyes and blinks slowly, as she sits on my lap. And sometimes she licks the inside of my elbows. I didn't quite get this gesture. I thought it was related to her territorial rights over me, which made me a bit angry. I am not her property! But then I looked it up and found out that maybe, it is her way of, yes, expressing love! I think it is now my turn to run for life. :)




 

Blah!

Some of my recent reading (and listening) has made me think about "my generation". Although this may come off as a gross generalization, I have observed in me and around me that we are all overwhelmed. I know that I might be getting an eye roll for using 'overwhelmed' instead of 'lost', but I really do think that we are not as lost as we may appear to be. We are just overwhelmed. In our defense (God! this sounds like the opening of a debate) we all just have too much thrown into our faces. First of all, we were brought up to believe that we could achieve anything we wanted to achieve (that's probably because our parents met each other in the 70s). As feminist Courtney Martin puts it, we were raised as precious little snow flakes. We all inherited, to a certain extent the uber-progressive-liberal ideologies of our parents. I still remember how blissfully  unaware  I was of the caste system in India, until I changed schools and was confronted, by the group of popular girls in my class who asked me about my caste. I came home and asked baba what caste we belong to and he told me to go back and reply, "I am a human being and that is enough". I was innocent enough to do it. I spent two lonely years before I was finally accepted as one of the popular girls in my class. :D

In my travels abroad, I met many men and women with a similar (or even a more left leaning)upbringing. People who grew up in communes, who lived in communes themselves, people who knew more about Yoga than I did (You don't really have to think liberal to be liberal. All you need is a headband with a peace sign on it, a $100 Yoga mat slung across your shoulders and a bicycle), people who could trace their ancestry back to about seven different countries and people who did not really care about social structure.

Of all of these, I have always found it very difficult to agree with the last kind. Some of my friends have blamed it on my Indian upbringing (which also came from the stereotypes for India they grew up with) or my personality (I come out as a strongly judgemental type on the Myers Briggs test). Being Indian and preferring order over chaos, were apparently my 'undesirable' traits when I was in the company of  liberals. But when I traveled to America, I realized that there were many twenty five something people around me who actually preferred a clear social structure, had faith in the institution of marriage and family and were also very progressive on issues such as women's health, education and immigration. It really messed with the black and white parts of my head. Jonathan Haidt explains it better than I can.

Some of us in our zeal to change the world, forget what we really owe to all the religions. It is true that we have grown up in a world which has a potential to induce a severe identity crisis in us, depending on how far we let our guards down. We have perhaps witnessed the fanatic and divisive side of religion to a greater extent than our parents. But by not opening up to religion, we also deviate from the basic quality of being liberal -- being open minded.

Another common practice of my generation is to associate freedom with actions. Maybe we have inherited this from the previous generation. From people like Kerouac. We think that traveling will set us free. We think that preserving the habits of our youth, all life long, would keep us young and set us free. I was fascinated with On the Road, by the sheer span and the events of the book. But I was also filled with resentment for the life that Sal Paradise lives. Particularly to the slightly begrudging allusion to the women in the story line. Somehow, women seem like an obstacle in men's way to freedom. The road is more enticing than setting up a home, a resting place on your way. Perhaps that is why my generation has also witnessed an age of long lasting female friendships. Maybe someone could come up with a feminist version of On the Road!

Whatever we "do" to become free ties us down in some way or the other, maybe as emptiness, loneliness and insecurity. Too much choice has the potential to at best slow us down, or at worst, lead us astray. And an overarching structure if not social, emotional, would perhaps put our lives into perspective. So it is not surprising that I have always met people who think like I do, in Yoga or Meditation sessions. Why do we need it so early? Why do so many of us seek peace of mind at such an early age? Is it because there is pressure to constantly display the best of us? Is it because our existence is so virtual that we never log off to face the seemingly ordinary yet essential activities of everyday life (watering the solitary plant in your room every day, at the same time?).

Maybe we seem overwhelmed now. But at this pace, I think we would end up either as perfectly balanced fifty year olds orstubborn lunatics. :)

 

Epilogue

I recently watched this Israeli film at the Pune International Film Festival (PIFF), which is happening in Pune from January 10th through 17th. The festival opened in a sombre mood with Epilogue, directed by Amir Manoz. This film has already been showered with many accolades in other film festivals and it certainly speaks for today's elderly across the world.

Hayuta and Berl reside in a tiny, decrepit apartment, in a low income neighborhood of Tel Aviv. Their somewhat painful, yet comfortably familiar routine is disturbed, when a welfare officer visits them to assess their "fitness levels", by conducting a short but humiliating exercise. Although the incident itself is small enough to ignore, Berl and Hayuta's pent up frustrations get ignited by this one event and both express it in their own ways. The movie is open ended but the beauty of this film is in the details.

In his youth, Berl has been the follower of the romantic Jewish socialist movement, which in spite of its failure, is still alive in his heart. He remembers himself as a revolutionary. But the couple find themselves lost and ignored, and in Hayuta's words, irrelevant in the new wealth consuming world. They grow older with an expectation that people would care for each other in the end, but find themselves left alone. In addition to the grief of failed dreams, now in their eighties, they also have to face the reality of failing health, and not enough money to cover the cost of medication. In a touching scene, Hayuta slowly takes off one item at a time from her list at the pharmacy, to fit the most urgent medicines within her budget. She has to let go of her insulin in the end, but the young man at the check out takes pity on her and brings it to her outside the shop as she is on her way out.

Another outstanding element of this film is the use of humor, even at the saddest turns in the storyline. The humor transcends the nationality/cultural background of the actor-directors  because it comes naturally, as it would between any couple who has spent their entire life together. And the plot also goes beyond the film as it is our reality too, especially in the developed world, where the populations are aging. Social welfare looms over many European economies as the next big peril. However, when you are in the prime of your life, it is hard to imagine just how lonely and helpless you could become when you are sick and helpless towards the end of your life. These people often end up being an election statistic but it must be a very emotional period of their lives, when they look back with happiness, pride or regret and look forward with apprehension, as they go through the aches and discomforts of their present.

PS: For some reason, Google doesn't let me save images on my computer. Is it me or Google?

Keep scrolling, I am Pinterested!

About five months ago, as I was finishing lab work and settling into manuscript writing, I started feeling really old. It had been a while since I had tried to "keep up" with the times. For example, I did not know what Instragram was and why everyone on my newsfeed used it. Plus, I found one grey hair comfortably hidden away under my side fringe. So in retaliation to all these panic attacks, I decided to find out what Pinterest and Instragram were. Two weeks into it and I was extremely Pinterested.

In the beginning, I was sure that Pinterest was going to be another Twitter for me. I have not been able to get Twitter. I tried to study how others use it but I still prefer Facebook. Over time, I accepted that I am not a Twitter person. When I first read about Pinterest, the description "time waster" stayed with me. Three weeks into getting a Pinterest account, I could see how it lives up to that nickname.  What I really like about Pinterest is that it is all about images. Originally, it was a hit among fashion followers. Big clothes and shoe brands have a "pin it" option if you want to share your find with friends and followers. It pins the image of the merchandise you liked on your board, which brings me to the point where I should tell you how this works.

You can create boards on your page (similar to a story board, which is a common illustration technique used in the fashion industry). You can pin various images on your board and you can organize your boards according to their utility. For example, you could have a dedicated 'recipe' board or a 'quotes' board. You can also use your creativity and make boards on a specific theme that reflect your taste. If you click away, the pins lead you to the original source of the image and this is precisely what makes it a big time waster (and a money waster too if it leads you to shoes). No wonder around 80% of its user base is female. :)

Some users desribe the Pinterest experience similar to that of leafing through a magazine. And perhaps that is also why it is so popular with the girls. Maybe, we associate it with the time we spend getting our nails done or getting a foot massage, as we browse through the latest gossip. But it is not just that. It is relaxing also because it is an entirely visual experience. It doesn't involve the opinionated Facebook and Twitter chatter. It does not involve direct interaction with other users. It gives you the opportunity to browse and escape in what grabs your attention.

It also gives you an insight into what interests people who are not like you. For example, even though I have sufficiently long hair, I had not thought about braids until I saw a board dedicated to, yes, braids! You can also see very inspiring boards dedicated to various causes. Right now, I am back home in India, taking a  break before I decide what to do next. My day goes by effortlessly, managing the diet food I need for my weight loss program, watching NatGeo and Comedy Central on T.V., spending an hour or so browsing through pins, reading a book, and spending my evenings with friends. I should write this down now because some day in the near future I am going to be jealous of this past me. :)

Silent battefields

After my dismal performance in the 12th grade exams, my mom took me to a counselor because I was depressed. During our sessions, the counselor was mostly sympathetic but at times, he also reminded me of the trivial nature of my problems, in the face of the bigger picture. Then, he recommended that I talk to more people, outside my social circle, which at the time consisted of highly competitive eighteen year old kids. My anguish had two layers: the first layer was my disappointment with myself;  the second layer was my anger at God or whatever operating force there was, for making me least successful in the set of around four friends.

Since then, I tried to trivialize my mental blocks and struggles to see if indeed, I was the product of the "rich kid" syndrome. One of the biggest differences I found between developing and developed countries was the nature of emotional struggles of  the people. But over time, I have realized that  trivializing "rich people problems" by placing them against the apparently larger struggles that the less fortunate go through, is not exactly being fair.

One such example, is the issue of female beauty and body image. I read this article in Huff Post on the 24 best moments for women in 2012. Out of those, 3 focus on body image related issues. The most prominent being the war Lady Gaga declared against people of the media who criticized her for her recent weight gain.It also features 12 body image heroes including Adele and Stella Boonshoft, who writes the Body Love Blog. There is of course, Aishwarya Rai, our own body image hero, who walked the red carpet at Cannes gracefully in the face of YouTube videos of her overweight pictures with elephant sounds for background music.

The problem again is two layered. First, it is our own struggle trying to maintain a healthy weight amidst crazy work schedules, motherhood, slowing metabolism and sometimes, just taking it easy for a bit and not hitting the gym. The second layer is always the bench mark we are compared to, or at least women in the entertainment industry are compared to. Sadly, most of the benchmarks here are airbrushed before they are published. You don't even need to be Aishwarya Rai to get criticized for gaining weight. It happens to everyone at some point. What with all the skin lightening creams and diet pills being sold in the market! Every Fair and Lovely advert on T.V gets on my nerves, not just because it tells us that having a darker complexion is an unfortunate predicament, but also the fact that the ads are so well accepted by everyone.

But above all, it is the critic within us that is the harshest. There is a point where we tend to echo what we see around us and what we put up with. Sometimes, the opinion of a few or even a single person matters so much to us,  that we turn blind to ten others who think otherwise. And when one Lady Gaga challenges her fans to fight for a cause, we can see thousands rallying for it. It is important to know our limits and to take care of our bodies with compassion. But it is equally or perhaps more important to surround ourselves with people who do not make us feel ashamed or helpless about something we may not have complete control over. Becoming aware that you are unique and you cannot be a "standard" anything is not easy. And standing up for yourself after that realization is an empowering experience. In the end, it is a silent battlefield but I am sure that it is one of the most significant victories for the woman who goes through it and comes out triumphant.

Conversations

Invisible children that fill the empty space
Between us, in a cold, gloomy pub
I start sketching first, sometimes,
And then everybody helps me dress them up.

And slowly, the attention shifts from me,
To these delightful invisible people
They have their own identity, created
In collaboration with a lot of  collectively inebriated,
Hence more flexible minds

Sometimes, it is the child of the present
Born out of a snide remark
Sometimes, it is the baby of future
Emerging from an impossible dream
Sometimes, it is the clingy fat kid
That refuses to let go of your foot
As you try to go to the next room
The child of the past, how typical!

You try to be a proud parent
Driving it in the right direction, as
It jumps up and down on the social
Trampoline that the group creates..
Sometimes, you try to influence others' kids
Sometimes, you just don't want to believe
That you created it, as it goes out of control
Right in front of your eyes!

Whatever the outcome, my friends
You have to  know that I am not interested
As much, in the attention I get
As I am in dressing up my conversations
Using your ideas.

So don't blame me for taking all the attention.
Because,
If I don't talk,
No one has a good time.

 

What makes you happy?

Whenever I ask this question to any of my friends, they go blank. I don't know why. Perhaps because everyone is looking for a larger, loftier goal that would eventually make them happy. Happiness is usually in something that is yet to be achieved. But what about local happiness? I have found out that the things that make me happy are really insignificant in the larger context. But they have the power to make me happy instantly, and keep me happy for a long time. Those things are like the complex carbohydrates of the world of emotions. :)

For example, the other day, I collected fall leaves with my flatmate. Then I googled the recipe to preserve them and I spent a part of my afternoon pressing them into a wax paper and immortalizing them. Sometimes, after Yoga, I cook myself a very light dinner and usually go to bed thinking about breakfast (Nutella on toast). I wake up feeling really happy on those occasions.
There is a lot of happiness in watching birds. I often spend my Sunday mornings watching the social patterns of the geese that flock around the lake outside my apartment. Watching the sun kissed sky in the American Midwest has also been a source of joy. I don't know what it is about the sky here, but it is exquisite. The sunsets especially, make me want to cut out a piece of the sky and use it on a quilt.

There was a time when "living in the moment" was a mission. I remember being very regimented about being in the moment and I remember failing very badly too. It was during my PhD when I was really obsessed about having a plan for everything. I remember trying meditation and being utterly exhausted at the end, trying to control my mind. And I can't fathom why it was so difficult to control it. I don't know what scared me so much. I think my fear was mostly related to other people and my failure in their eyes. But it is really hard to define what failure is. Or for that matter success too. Because sometimes, failing makes us happier than sustaining success as defined by someone else. Sometimes, the fear of failing is more crippling than failure itself.

There is also this feeling, which can be described as I-don't-want-to-trade-my-life-with-anyone-else. You suddenly become genuinely grateful for your journey. It happened to me during my France trip. The whole trip sort of happened in a haze (mostly because I did everything last minute). One day, when we were in Paris, my best friend (and flatmate) Elodie and I were crossing subway platforms to change lines. At the junction where all the stairs meet, there was a chubby accordion player. We did not have much time but Elodie decided to let the next train go and requested that he play "Bella Ciao" for us. He did, and we danced together on that filthy, crowded subway station. That was a bitter sweet moment. Mostly because I knew I cannot do anything about it once it is over. I knew it was going to hurt just as much as it made me happy. But above all of that, it made me grateful. It is only in moments like these, when you know that the only "reason" this is happening to you is to make that little groove, that notch, that scar of memory on your mind, so you never ever forget that you have been loved like this.That you have been this lucky.

Then there is also this question that is often overlooked. How deeply can you fall in friendship? How honestly can you sustain it? How many times do you have to distill your emotions to get rid of envy when you are friends with someone? How many times do you have to ignite little dynamite cylinders to get rid of the barriers you build in friendship, to protect yourself from an honest opinion? Sometimes, our friendships go through a loop and we return to innocence. But we have to stay and fight until the end of the loop. The ends of these loops are important not just in friendship, but also everywhere else. Somehow, as we simplify ourselves, we can manage a better performance with each of these small avartans. It is our expertise as dancers on our own stage, with no one else but ourselves as audience. I guess the happiness also comes from impressing ourselves, by not making the mistakes from the last time we looped (pun intended).

And I guess, when you are grateful, every little joy is happiness. Happiness doesn't stick to deadlines or public performances. And then probably, the answer to that question would eventually be "I make myself happy". :)

Happy Birthday PurpleMoon

Another year gone by and I can see how I am losing my enthusiasm to write here. :)
But that said, I would like to wish my blog another (hopefully more interesting) year of posts.
And Thank YOU for visiting.

The taste of India

I have been escaping into a parallel research topic, much against the intentions of the sane and organized part of my mind. I recently read a post on Pinterest that said, if you want to find out what you are really passionate about, look where your mind goes when it wanders. :)

Lately, my mind has been wandering away from the lab and away from academia, towards applications and concepts that are more people-centered. And that is why, perhaps, the obituary of  Dr. Verghese Kurien captured my mind. Abi blogged about it and I took off from there. Since I am post-docing at Michigan State now, I found a connection to the story. It is interesting to know that MSU did not have a dairy program back then.Now MSU's dairy and animal science course is regarded as one of the best in the US. By far, the best outcome of their research is the MSU dairy store that sells ice cream made entirely on campus. "Death by chocolate" is my favorite flavor. :)

In the course of my work on economic modeling for biorefineries, I have also realized how important a place India has in the near future when it comes to animal feed markets. And unlike the US, where most of this demand comes from cattle farming intended towards beef production, in India, almost all of the animal feed market is catering to the production of milk. India is the largest producer of milk in the world when you consider milk production by individual countries. I think the Amul story has a lot to do with this place we have today. 


This also led me to a beautiful film (Manthan) by Shyam Benegal. I had watched it before but this time, I had a new perspective. Any team of human beings, working in any area, be it arts or technology, always comes with a potential for negativity, exploitation, ego trips, discrimination, dissatisfaction, unethical conduct, corruption and misguided optimism. But when a team works so well, it is obvious that it is expressing the antonyms of all the above words in significantly larger quantities (in a hypothetical scenario where they could be quantified). And what the team expresses is a reflection of the person who leads it.

I will leave you with this and this. They always get me nostalgic. :)

Poetic detour

Raj's post about Vikram Seth's novel (A Suitable Boy) made me escape, to see my favorite Vikram Seth poems. Some of his poetry astonishes me every time I read it. Although it reads simple, it always unearths a complex, difficult-to-put-your-finger-on feeling.

Thanks to Poem Hunter, we can all read some of Seth's poems. 
But I cannot suppress the urge to copy-paste some of my all time favorites here.

1. Unclaimed

To make love with a stranger is the best.
There is no riddle and there is no test. --

To lie and love, not aching to make sense
Of this night in the mesh of reference.

To touch, unclaimed by fear of imminent day,
And understand, as only strangers may.

To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart
Preferring neither to prolong nor part.

To rest within the unknown arms and know
That this is all there is; that this is so.

Vikram Seth

2. Prandial Plaint

My love, I love your breasts, I love your nose.
I love your accent and I love your toes.
I am your slave. One word, and I obey.
But please don't slurp your morning brew that way.

Vikram Seth

3. Timezones

I willed my love to dream of me last night, that we might lie
at peace, if not beneath a single sheet, under one sky.
I dreamed of her but she could not alas humour my will;
it struck me suddenly that where she was was daylight still.

Vikram Seth

I am also amazed by the emotion that could have inspired  Round and Round.
It reads like Vikram Seth is trying to collect water droplets off a leaf. What touches me above all the simplicity in his poetry is the acceptance of  loneliness, with no long term solution or alternative. And he does not express it as a lament or a pain but simply as an everyday reality, sometimes even with a bit of humor.
Perhaps one of his better known (and widely read) verses is All You Who Sleep Tonight.

So a big hug to Raj for putting Seth back into my head. I just ordered  A Suitable Boy. :)

Homeward bound

I have decided to return to India for good post December 2012. Although there were some obviously compelling reasons that propelled me towards this decision, every day, I realize that there are a lot of smaller, very impractical and innocent things that have participated in that process. So I have decided to list them (apparently, strong Js like making lists and I am one of them).

1. The fresh fruit/veggie market (मंडई)
I wrote this post before I left India. The spirit of Phule Mandai cannot be translated into any language. Being there is the only way  to completely understand its beauty.

2. Music
To be able to buy and listen to as much classical Indian music as I want to. I want to be able to go to live concerts all the time and perhaps, also organize some travel, exclusively for the music, around places where I have found it in the past.

3. Yoga (and hopefully, vipassana)
My passion for Yoga was something I truly discovered away from home. When I was in India, Yoga always felt like an imposition! But now that it is a part of everyday life, I think I want to start all over again from the beginning.

4. Lazy weekends in my grandfather's home
I really hate feeling nostalgic about anything. And I think this loathing for nostalgia has been brought about almost exclusively by how nostalgic Kolhapur makes me. I have never been able to fully get over my childhood memories of summers spent in Kolhapur.
But I still look forward to lazy weekends in what used to be my Aaji's room, reading all day, and stepping out of the house only when I am ready to leave the city!

5. Rickshaws
Yes. They are that important to me. :)

6. Street food


And most important of all reasons is to eliminate digital communication with my best friends and to be a real three dimensional part of their everyday life. I think this last reason is too important to be on the list. :)

Music in my posts?

 We don't realize it but our generation grew up with so much digital technology at hand that it has made us more musical (?). When I  was in Australia, I used to stay in touch with my friends in the US through email. Our emails usually came with mp3 attachments. I did this for years. To the point that I took it for granted. But isn't it the most wonderful thing to receive a song with your letter? A song that you haven't heard, or you have heard so many times that it is somehow dearer!

There are very few times in my day when I am alone and headphone free at the same time. I am always listening to music. It is a big part of my life.  It has the power to bring all the hidden feelings to the surface. As a kid, sometimes I felt irrationally uneasy when my dad played certain songs in the house. It was difficult to pinpoint what exactly it was that made me uneasy. Some tracks make it extremely difficult to sit in one place and work. You are almost compelled to get up and dance. Some just take you back to a familiar place (or sometimes, too familiar a place?).

I listen to every kind of music there is. I am a fan of  Pt. Jasraj and Lady Gaga at the same time without any judgement. But I always go back to Indian classical music. I have tried asking people how they listen to music (with my ears?!). How (and why) do some of us evolve into door slamming Black Sabbath fans (even temporarily as teenagers), and some of us can take an unhealthy amount of Chopin or Beethoven? I think music activates my imagination. So when it is too structured (with a great score, great lyrics, great movie), there is little room to add anything of my own. I find that kind of structured music too processed. :)
But with Indian Classical/ folk music, there is room to set your mind free. There is also room for little experiments. When it is accompanied by the tabla or the mridangam, it throws your mental stage wide open for an imaginary dancer.

And even though it lets me wander, it also has the mathematical/metaphysical quality of coming back to the same point in circles. Each circle can be different in its own way. Some go by slowly, savoring every moment there is, while some just spin out of control until you are reminded that you are back to the same point. So when I discovered that I could now make my posts musical using Spotify, I had to write this pointless post to include three of my recent favorites.

1. Zakir Hussain takes us through rupak variations.



2. Anoushka Shankar playing Desh at Carnegie Hall

I totally absolutely love Raga Desh. This track is a really good example of  "coming back to the same point". It feels like a little girl is trying to run wild in the courtyard as her mom brings her back to the center so that she can finally tie her wild curly hair. :)



3. Ustad Shujaat Khan performing Sham Kalyan (Drut)

Breathe and Smile!

I took a Yoga class after a long time yesterday. I entered the studio later than everyone else so the only place left was the front corner, right in front of the mirror. Somehow, no one likes this spot. Maybe because it is too close to the instructor, or too close to the mirror. I like to be there only when I have been practicing for a while and when I really like looking at myself in the mirror. Yesterday was definitely not one of those days. After two weeks in France, I could literally feel all the pain au chocolates around my waist. But I had no choice so I took the spot and unrolled my mat.

Throughout the class, I could hear a really annoying voice in my head.
"Look at you! You used to be able to do this so easy a year ago!"
"That pose is just not flattering. Uff! What am I going to do with you!"
"That's it. No carbs at night. You cannot look like that. It is unacceptable."
"Okay. If one hot yoga class burns 800 calories, then how many should you eat during the day to lose weight?"

It was persistent, constant and unbelievably annoying. (un)Fortunately, I am so used to doing this to myself that it doesn't reach or activate any emotional centers in my brain. It is just the same effort I make when I reject data with high standard deviation in the lab, or when I repeat an experiment because I am not happy with the result.

At the end of the class, the instructor said the usual nice things that the Yoga teacher is supposed to say
"Thank yourself for taking these ninety minutes out of your day for your body"
"Thank your body and mind for sticking together through this practice"
"Look in the mirror and smile at yourself for doing this"
"Be compassionate towards yourself and your body"
"You deserve all the love and happiness in the world. You are beautiful"

A girl in the very last row broke down into tears. The instructor walked over towards her and kissed her on the head. And for the first time in those hot, sweaty ninety minutes, the voice in my head stopped.

Why is it that when someone else says something we really want to hear, it brings us to tears?
If we really want to hear these things, why can't we just say them to ourselves? Why are all these essential emotions, like being compassionate towards yourself, so difficult to practice? 

Even though we live in a world that constantly subjects us to comparisons and judgements, I am starting to believe that our acceptance of unfair judgement from others starts within. It starts with that mechanically annoying voice inside our heads. You first fall victim to your own judgment and then somehow, you see the world around you mirroring your own thoughts back at you.

If we become strong enough to shut that voice, we would become strong enough to cross that judgment barrier. And perhaps, we can all be happy! :)

In Transit

Between the paranoia over security

And the head rush of take off

Lies a fragrant corridor, of tax free scents

Where breathing suddenly becomes easy

Like clouds after precipitation,

We look fluffy and light

Old ladies, with wrinkled hands

(How do you fit three rings on one finger?)

Open paper backs with mascara eyes

Bored dads with empty strollers

People sitting around power points

Like baited fish, giving me odd looks

As I write with my ball point

In a totally organic, three dimensional notebook

Eyes everywhere, locking and unlocking

Sometimes, predictably, turning into a brilliant smile

It is easy to make friends in transit

Perhaps because we all share the feeling

Of a deliciously suspended and an utterly aimless moment!

On the road -- Jack Kerouac

Post Kindle, I had started wondering if a digital reader really helps or hurts my reading. I cannot handle more than one book at a time. It makes me jump from one book to the other without finishing or enjoying either. So I walked into a second hand book store in Chicago and bought On The Road by Jack Kerouac.
Now, I am not so sure if this was the right book to test my theory. It haunts me even when I am not reading it. All I think about is Jack Kerouac and what kind of a person he must have been to write a book like that.

On the road is a beautiful ramble. It is about several road trips across America, all of which really happened.  The publishers made Kerouac change the names of his characters to protect him against litigation. If I have to describe what this book is really about, it would sound very unimpressive.It is about an American guy who is always broke, and travels from the New York to San Fransisco and back several times, usually hitch hiking with random strangers. He meets his gang of friends -- each one unique and eccentric in their own way. They get tangled badly in problems that would seem quite ridiculous to a "normal" person. The writer tries to place his stories around the craziest one of all his friends -- Dean Moriarty.

What is more important is the revolution this book represents.
For the travelers, backpackers, road trippers and the adventurers around the world, On The Road would perhaps provide an explanation as to why the "road" is so enticing. We are growing up in a generation that believes in extending youth indefinitely. We could all very well go into our late thirties and not really have a "plan". But for some of us, the road is enough of a destination, making it very confusing to look at ourselves through others' eyes. The things you discover about the journey and about yourself on the road sometimes are more valuable than the things you would gather if you stop. It was perhaps the first paradigm shift where the road became the representative of male identity, the romance being in not conforming to the traditional roles associated with being a man. 

Salvatore (Sal) Paradise [Kerouac in real life] travels to Denver to meet this crazy guy called Dean Moriarty [Neal Cassady in real life]. In Sal's own words, "[Dean]He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted to so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him...Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line, the pearl would be handed to me." 
Dean is trying to find something through his own journeys but he does not really know what he is looking for. Sometimes, his long monologues remind you of the teachings of Eastern mysticism. But most of the times his craziness, his absolute disorganization and his unwillingness to be responsible for anything drowns all his dismal sane thoughts. Sal, on the other hand, is the passive and reflective mirror that reflects Dean back to the readers. And I think more than the real Dean, I came to appreciate this reflection of Dean Moriarty towards the end of the book.

Kerouac has inspired not just other Beat poets and writers but also musicians such as Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and The Beatles. However, behind all the celebration of individual identity, seeking truth and meaning in life, not conforming to the expected cultural and social roles, you can sense the soul destroying confusion that absolute freedom is able to create. There is a point to which freedom helps nourish and cherish human spirit. After you cross that point, the feeling of being helpless is similar to what it could have been on the other end of the spectrum -- with limited freedom and lot of social and cultural obligations.

What is worth reading and re-reading is Kerouac's impatient and spontaneous style. The entire book talks to you like a passionate, high-on-life person you just met who is telling you his story on a hot summer evening. Some lines just emerge out of nowhere and make the all-over-the-place story seem suddenly profound. Like this one:
“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” 

And beyond all the philosophy, you can clearly see how much Kerouac loved America. There is a lot of poetry in the pages as New York gently turns into the Midwest taking you through corn fields and clear, starry nights, the warmth and the jazzy smoothness of the South and the craziness of the West. Fifty years later, it is all still there. Interestingly, when I bought this book in Chicago, I was reading Kerouac's description of Chicago. Then, I went to Denver, Laramie, New Orleans, Las Vegas and Salt Lake city in a span of those two months with the book. And I always read about the city I was in! :)

Get over it. She doesn't care!

My Hero this month is Aishwarya Rai.
For stepping on the red carpet looking absolutely radiant and perhaps much more graceful than she has ever looked before.
For answering the question about her weight simply as, "This is reality. And it is no big deal".

It is shameful that she was subjected to a lot of bitter criticism almost exclusively by the Indian media, while the Western media mostly reported her first international red carpet appearance post-delivery, in a positive light.
Why should the public (or the media) dictate when she should lose her weight (and what if she doesn't want to lose it at all!)?
She does not owe anyone a standardized appearance. 
Who decided the time frames for shedding post-pregnancy weight?
And why is the underlying message always, "thin is beautiful?"

I think she has done a bigger service to women all over the world by walking the walk with such conviction.
I was never really a fan of Aishwarya Rai. But now I am. :)

Blind folded Yoga

We did a small experiment at our Yoga session yesterday. We worked half the time with our eyes open and the rest of the time with blind folds on.
Our sight plays such an important role in keeping us balanced. No matter how strong, flexible and graceful you are, being blind folded throws everyone off balance. :)

It is kind of true, metaphorically for life too. Without a vision, your talents kind of stumble along and get dragged here and there. :D