Sriram blogs. A lot.

On Mandela, Nehru, and Washington ...

2013-06-16T03:30:00.000-07:00

Given the news about Nelson Mandela, here is a re-post from a few months ago:

Every year, it seems like I always end up remembering that November 14th is Jawaharlal Nehru's birth anniversary. It is etched so deep in my memory that it can never get erased perhaps? Maybe it is also because it comes only days before the birthday of my closest friend from high school?

When India became independent in 1947 and, became, thereby, the world’s largest democracy, Jawaharlal Nehru became the first prime minister. While India continues to function as a democracy, there is a distinct possibility that Nehru’s continuation in that office until his death in 1964 precluded a natural growth of leadership and made possible, though not by his design, the family dynastic politics which characterizes the country now.

Nehru, his daughter—Indira Gandhi—and grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, have all together governed India for 37 of the 65 years! Nehru’s great-grandson, Rahul Gandhi, is currently being actively groomed for the premiership even as his Italian-born mother, Sonia Gandhi, serves as the party chief.

But, at least, throughout all these, India plods along in its experiments in democracy. India’s sibling, Pakistan, has had more years under military rule than as a free society. In the years since the end of the Second World War, which rapidly terminated European rule over colonies in Asia and Africa, very few countries have had democratic governments.

In contemporary times, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela does appear to be a rare founding president. In 1994, Mandela became the president after the collapse of the apartheid regime that had imprisoned him for almost three decades. With all the national and local goodwill behind him, Mandela, too, could have remained in office for a long time. Yet, he opted to exit the stage in 1999 after serving only one term. Mandela’s shine becomes infinitely brighter against the backdrop of the likes of Mubarak, who was the president of Egypt for 31 years, and Ben Ali’s 24-year reign over Tunisia!

As we scan the rest of Africa, half the sub-Saharan African countries are authoritarian regimes. The most notorious among the rest is Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who has been the country’s leader ever since he successfully led the country to its independence in 1980. In the process of cementing his rule, Mugabe has managed to convert what was the breadbasket of southern Africa into a living hell.

The fact that democratic governance cannot be taken for granted even a decade into the twenty-first century, is quite a reminder of how much the eighteenth-century thinking of the framers of the American Constitution was way ahead of its time.

America was an untested political experiment in the final decades of the 18^th century. In a world that was defined by kings and queens who claimed that divine right granted them the authority to rule over people and wage wars, America was setting up something completely different.

Even in this setup, in a time period when victorious generals automatically became kings, George Washington, as America’s general who led the war to secure its independence and firm it up, made it clear that he would be no king.

As if that much trailblazing was not enough, Washington, unlike his contemporaries who died on their beds as kings, unless defeated in wars, voluntarily walked away from the presidency even though there wasn’t any real threat to his office. When Washington officially retired, it was not only from the presidency but, for all practical purposes, from politics itself.

Washington's farewell address is a testament to his humility that comes from strength; he notes that he might have made mistakes, which were unintentional, and hoped that “after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.”

Awesome!

I wonder how India's story might have been if after completing two terms, in 1957, Nehru had walked away from the office of the prime minister and from politics itself. Given that he was a serious student of politics, I wonder why Nehru didn't draw that lesson from Washington.

Reports of my demise might be exaggerated!

2013-06-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

The time will soon be here when I will meet with my love of twenty-five years.

Spending time with that love means that I shall have very little time for you, dear reader. Such is life. Please do not be jealous ;)

Nor do I want you to think that my absence from blogging is a statement of my demise, which, of course, will be the case at some point. Not now, I hope.

We shall meet again in a few days, soon after the longest day of the year.

Until then ... floss!

Am I in the fifth of Shakespeare's seven ages? Already?

2013-06-12T14:20:00.001-07:00

My mother made absolutely tasty traditional snacks. My favorite of all of them was her முள்ளு தேன்குழல் (mullu thenkuzhal.) It consistently had just the right amount of a kick in it, and just the right kind of bite--not too soft and not too hard.

When I visit India, I underplay a few of my favorites because I worry that mother would then want to make eats like this snack; there is simply too much labor involved. I scan through the shelves of stores and buy some hoping that they would taste as good as my mother's.

Never.

Mother has, thus, made life miserable for me--I have never been able to find that snack at that quality anywhere in Chennai. Thus, every visit, I end up buying that from yet another store, and take a bite only to set that packet aside. "Why do you buy that then?" my parents ask, and my father makes sure that the purchase is not wasted.

Maybe like how Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole's character) in Ratatouille got to finally taste the dish that was every bit as he remembered from his childhood, I too will someday get to taste முள்ளு தேன்குழல் that will be as tasty as I remember it. Hopefully, before I get way too old. Before, as the Bard put it, "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

Life is about creating memories, recalling them, and sharing them. Some are pleasant and a few otherwise. Recalling a tasty food is not merely about the food. It is to recall the life we had. From the profound to the silly. Like the instance when my brother and I were eating some of those snacks, and a monkey boldly ran up to my brother, snatched it from his hand before he even knew what happened. Having tasted my mother's creation, the monkey, too, I am confident, could never again eat that snack from any other kid's hands.

Most dishes and snacks that we ate at home we related to somebody in the extended family because of how much a dish might be their favorite. To be able to remember people, often fondly, is nothing but experiencing life. It is not simply about the food. A cigar, as they say, is not just a cigar.

Perhaps ruminating like this is a sign of me getting old. So be it. I am glad I have all those memories to keep me going.

And hoping to create more before the curtains come down.

My turn to gift. A box of chocolates. To a teacher!

2013-06-11T17:02:00.002-07:00

As I sat down on the dental chair, I told Lori, "you know how much I hate flossing."

She smiled and nodded as I continued, "well, since the last time, I have taken up flossing."

Now Lori was all smiles.

But then she is always smiles. That's how she has been for the eight-plus years I have been to her for dental hygiene. Unless there is a Jekyll/Hyde in her, and I can't imagine that at all, I would think that her husband and kids experience her smiling personality all the time.

Perhaps she was smiling in advance because she was expecting some lame joke from me--the reputation! But, I was serious. "It is not that I floss every night, but easily at least half the nights I have flossed over these months." Lori knows that I am quite maniacal about brushing my teeth--twice, if not thrice a day!

"So, when you examine my teeth and gums, I want you to give me a real, factual, feedback on whether the flossing has made a difference."

On the one hand, I would have been disappointed if Lori's verdict was that it was all the same as before. On the other hand, that same verdict could mean that I don't have to floss anymore, but will have to floss if there is a significant positive difference? Damn, as I get older, it is difficult to figure out if something is really a loss or a gain.

Reminds me of that Chinese parable about a young man rushing to his parents to tell them about a stray horse wandering into his field and that he is now the owner. "It is good news or bad news?" ask the parents. A few weeks later, he hobbles in and says that he fractured his leg after he fell off the horse. "Is it good news or bad news?" ask the parents again. The parable goes on to build situations like this to highlight the moral that we don't really know if something is good or bad until much later in life, with the events that unfold.

But, of course, in the case of flossing, I am exaggerating. I knew very well that whatever her verdict, I was going to floss more and not less.

A few minutes after peering into my mouth, Lori said, "yes, I can see a big difference." And she gave me the gross details, which I shall spare you, dear reader.

I gave her the reason for why I started flossing.

"After the last time, it occurred to me that you might be frustrated with patients like me, the same way I get frustrated with students when they choose to ignore the valuable tips I give them."

Lori laughed and said, "well, it is your health, and all I can do is advise."

"Exactly. That is exactly what I tell students too--that it is their life and they can do whatever, and all I can do is advise."

When that thought struck me, the thought that I was behaving no differently from my students, it felt so wrong. And the only way to right that wrong was, well, to start flossing. Which is what I have been doing, though not consistently.

After the end of it all, as I was driving to work, I thought to myself that I ought to thank her for the teaching that she has done all these years. For how she put up with this crappy student with a bad attitude.

Maybe instead of merely waiting for students to thank me with chocolate, I should thank this teacher with chocolate. Without boring her with this back-story.

That's what I did.

I used one of the thank-you cards from home. I had printed them a while ago using some of my travel photos. And, on the envelope, of course I had to try to be funny!

I took that card along with a box of chocolates--the ones that I always associate with my daughter, for how she used to gobble them up while watching Grease for the gazillionth time!

I walked into the dentist office and gave her the gift.

Lori was all smiles.

American English kicks French butts. Kicks British butts too. Amurica rulz!

2013-06-11T06:55:00.002-07:00

I have to remember to keep the grammar Nazi inside me well under control as I begin to grade the final papers. After all, rmmbr, we r in txtn wrld. prblms w grmmr n sntnces n englsh can luk like polish! lynne truss goin crzy.

At least, we don't do this at our university at graduation; wait, do we?

I don't understand it either!

English rules now, and one awesome aspect of the language is that if enough people mess up the grammar then the mess becomes the norm. I love it and hate it at the same time ;)

The phenomenal adaptability the language, in addition to this reason (!), means that it now reigns supreme as the language of commerce and science. Even the French have no option but to use it. Ha! And that too American English (ht), not the stiffer British one. Ha, ha!

Everyone in the world - except Dutch and Scandinavian footballers - learns American English because it is today’s lingua franca. It’s the principal means for disseminating ideas and getting work, as Latin used to be. As Luc Ferry of Le Figaro, writing approvingly of the new French legislation, noted last week: ‘Si Descartes n’avait pas écrit en latin, come le feront encore après lui Leibniz ou Spinoza, il n’aurait jamais été lu dans le monde entier.’ People stopped using French when that country went into decline and lost influence in the nineteenth century, and it was the same story for British English in the twentieth. But neither language has disappeared, and neither is ‘threatened’ by American English. It’s also worth remembering that as America declines, so will its influence and the importance of its language. No empire lasts for ever.

The American empire ain't declining no time soon, buddy! Yo, Amurica rulz! ;)

Why am I not a "success"? I grew up liking all-rounders!

2013-06-09T21:40:00.001-07:00

I grew up watching cricket and obsessing about it, as most young boys did then (and most probably do even now.) As much as I liked the artistry of the top-order batsmen, especially Vishvanath, and the spin bowlers, my first hero was Abid Ali.

Yes, Abid Ali.

I was perhaps not even into a double-digit age when I decided I liked Abid Ali the most. Here was a player who could bowl pretty decently, bat pretty decently, and field excellently. He could do it all. And, from the radio commentaries and newspaper reports (no TV then!) I understood that he did all these without any flair.

Ali was an "all-rounder," as such players are referred to in cricket. After him, there were a couple more like Ghavri and Madanlal, but it was not the same. Not even Ravi Shastri.

And then the "all-rounder" world simply became fantastic, and was way more than I could have imagined, thanks to Kapil Dev and Ian Botham. These two took the idea of an all rounder to an entirely new level. And, they seemed to approach every opportunity with the same level of intensity and excitement, without ever feeling jaded.

I left India just about when these two had passed their peaks, and soon I was following college football and baseball.

In college ball too, it was the "all-rounder" players that I liked. I was a grad student at USC when Rodney Peete was the Trojan QB. Peete could pass and also run--a contrast to Troy Aikman across town at UCLA, who was a much better QB but not a runner. While they were both excellent baseball players too, only Peete continued playing college baseball.

However, most all rounders don't achieve "stardom," so to say because it is a very, very rare few who can perform exceptionally at more than one. It was Aikman who went on to win the Super Bowls. Rare is a Botham or a Dev. Abid Ali is probably a forgotten name among most casual Indian cricket fans, who will certainly remember Bedi and Pataudi, and even Venkataraghavan.

I wonder how my life would have been if I had been a fan not of all-rounders but of super-specialists instead.

Academe--even at regional teaching universities like mine--encourages specialists and not generalists. People whose focus is to know a lot about one or two small things, and not the other way around. "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing".

But, if I were a specialist, then my life would have been about some strange variation of dukrijnkarane! Odds are that I wouldn't have been exploring and understanding life by blogging, writing op-eds, cooking, traveling, ... my, it would have been a horribly boring life.

Thank heavens I chose Abid Ali as my favorite!

On Tamil poems, Kannadasan, and ... mental disorder?

2013-06-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

All it takes is a casual comment by a friend for me to turn nerdy. Houston, I have a problem!

At dinner table conversations (well, other than when I dine alone, that is!) I often find myself consciously staying away from a nerdy seriousness. After all, social conversations are not classroom seminars, though, ironically, often academic seminars feel like they are dinner table conversations!

So, anyway, a friend commented about the poetry in Indian movie songs, "i like the old ones... Only tamil poetry a lot more" I wanted to launch, yet again, into that frustration of mine that I can rarely ever find anything like a book-reading or poetry evening in Chennai anymore, when I visit India. It is a shame that a culture with a rich literature past has practically abandoned prose and poetry in everyday life that has been transformed into a never-ending pursuit of material comforts and entertainment.

My schooling didn't prepare me to appreciate poems. Thankfully, that has not prevented me from exploring at least a little bit of poetry. One poet, whose mastery always amazed me when young--and more so now-- was Kannadasan.

While famous as a lyricist for movies, Kannadasan, to me, was a poet in the old traditions--highly creative in being able to distill the emotions and mysteries of our existence into verses. Great poets are able to get to those emotions inside, even if we didn't know we had them in us.

Thus, a few minutes after the friend made those comments, given my interest in autoethnography, the nerd in me wondered whether researchers have tried to psychoanalyze Kannadasan via his writings. After all, even from my own writings, a friend concluded that I am charming, attractive, witty, seeking millionaire beauties, ... nah! Anyway, Kannadasan seems to be a prime candidate for such analysis given the quantity of his work and with his sharp deviations from the norm of the day. Stories were in plenty about his fondness for alcohol, drugs, women, and whatever else, while always producing nothing but brilliant literature, sometimes produced within minutes.

Which is how my quest ended with this article, "The seeds of creativity and the soil of poet Kannadasan," in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry.

The web is phenomenal. It is truly the oracle that the old societies wished they had--you ask questions and the web answers. And to think that I accessed this essay via the US' National Institute of Health! I have to be careful when I describe this as "mind blowing" in case any of those psychiatrists then come after me :)

The essay, published two years ago, is exactly what I was after:

It is proposed to study the extraordinary creativity of poet Kannadasan, who lived from 1927 to 1981, with regard to the psychiatric factors. He was an outstanding poet, lyricist, novelist, journalist and devout writer of Hindu philosophy. He was the "Kavi Arasu" (poet laureate) of Tamil Nadu and recipient of the first National Film Award for the best lyrics of Tamil in 1969 and Gnanpith Award of the Sahitya Akademi for his historic novel about the Chera kingdom (the present Kerala state) in 1980.
Kannadasan was a prolific writer of varied interests; he has 3000 lyrics and the scripts of more than a dozen films to his credit. His religious writings include “Meaningful Hinduism” with an introduction by Jagadguru Sankaracharya Chandrashekarar Swamigal, whose orations Kannadasan compiled as a book “God's Voice,” an exposition of the Bhagvad Gita, some translations of short works of Adi Sankara, the epic of Jesus and more than 40 books of poems, dramas and plays. Kannadasan's autobiography deals extensively with his political activities and there is also a biography written by his close associate, relative and friend, Thiru Muthiah.
The creative genius of Kannadasan is assessed by analyzing his life and works.

How did the oracle know that I would look for this?

On analyzing Kannadasan's biographic and autobiographic details, we can reach the indisputable diagnosis of cyclothymic temperamental disorder.

So, was Kannadasan's genius a result of this disorder? Without the disorder, would Kannadasan have been as prosaic as I am? If he hadn't suffered from this temperamental disorder, would Kannadasan have been even more prolific than he was?

The essay does not address those questions. The author does note the creative process in Kannadasan's own words:

Kannadasan introspects:
“Whenever I sit to write I don′t feel I am writing. An unknown energy, force possesses me. A new sensation arises from head to foot when new words, new similes fall in. There is gooseflesh without my knowledge. Telling becomes bliss.”

It certainly was bliss for lesser mortals like me to listen to his lyrics that were masterfully rendered by musicians.

In a previous entry on Kannadasan, I included this piece:

Wonderful lyrics by the poet Kannadasan, this includes the following lines:

வாழ்க்கை என்றால் ஆயிரம் இருக்கும்
வாசல்தோறும் வேதனை இருக்கும்
வந்த துன்பம் எது என்றலும்
வாடி நின்றால் ஓய்வதில்லை
உனக்கும் கிழே உள்ளவர் கோடி
நினைத்து பார்த்து நிம்மதி தேடு
Easier said than done!

Here are a couple more from my many favorites by Kannadasan:

What exactly do students get from coming to my classes?

2013-06-08T19:45:00.001-07:00

I will outsource the response to Jeremy:

Ok, seriously, this is, and ought to be, one of the biggest issues of the day in higher education: when there is seemingly no limit on educational materials that are, and will be made, available online, what purpose do we achieve when we require students to attend classes at designated times and places?

I have been struggling with this question ever since I started experimenting with online classes more than a decade ago. But, not having a critical mass--even a handful--of faculty to think through this means that I fear I am always dangerously flying solo. Even more, I am afraid that my pedagogical approaches could be so far from the "norm" that it might require students new to me and my classes to dramatically shift their ways of learning, or else we end up with huge mismatches between our respective expectations of what the class times are for.

A few months ago, when my paths crossed with those of the administrator who is responsible for the libraries, I laid out my grand idea of how I would like to use the library. Get rid of those old books and journals that are pretty much never, ever, used anymore. Well, get rid as in move them to a storage unit somewhere for safe-keeping. What a wasteful expenditure of expensive real estate to merely store unused bundles of paper! Instead, we can put that investment into creative uses that will serve the only reason we have universities in the first place--teaching and learning.

In that vast space, we then set up modular structures with computers connected to the information sources--the open and subscription varieties. Or, students could bring their own devices too.

I wouldn't even have a syllabus. Every meeting will be driven by questions from students. They raise the questions that we would then inquire into. After all, asking questions is one of the fundamental aspects of critical thinking. The first step will then be to refine the question itself--a valuable learning exercise.

Then, depending on the content, individually or in teams, students will search the information sources for various pieces that they can assemble to create the answers to the question under scrutiny. They will then take turns explaining their answers to the class, which will not only be a way to pool together the information, but also a wonderful approach to highlight why some answers might be better than others.

At the end of it all, I will then assign students follow-up material that will help them further clarify for themselves the content.

The next class meeting, another question. And we repeat the process.

Now, this is not the kind of learning that can happen online when Jeremy is home on his bed, can it?

Nor is this kind of learning happening in the classrooms now. In the current format, we force students to die a painful death by projecting PowerPoint slides. Slides that sometimes come pre-packaged from the publishers of the textbooks that we force students to purchase, whether or not those books are ever opened. We test students and we are done. Often those tests are even the atrocious bubbling in of responses to questions that come pre-packaged from the textbook publishers.

By thinking such stuff up, I worry that I am the insane one. Maybe, I, too, shouldn't even get out of bed!

But then ... if I hadn't gone to my classes, I wouldn't have received this wonderful gift--a bar of delicious chocolate--from "E":

Regrets, I have a few ...

2013-06-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

It frustrates me to no end when I see the youth casually using YOLO--"you only live once." This writer at the Guardian sums it up well, for me too:

This, as the distinguished internet scholar Matt Muir puts it, is "carpe diem for people with an IQ in double figures". A friend of mine reports her children using this out loud. This has to end.

If only the young would really, really, understand the profound truth that there is but only one life to live. YOLO is not the reason why you should try that insane stunt but the reason why you should really think, and think a lot, about that insane stunt.

Every decision that we make is also about the options that we did not choose. Throughout life, we opt for some and disregard other choices. There is simply no way that every decision will ever be the correct one. It is impossible. The incorrect choices we commit ourselves to, and ones we omitted, add up. Some of us then have more to regret for than others do.

Statistically, I probably have at least another forty years left in me. Perhaps more, given the genes and my lifestyle choices. I wonder if the number of decisions over those years that I will live will lead to fewer or more than the number of regrets I have over the decisions I have made until now. How would I sum up the regrets at my deathbed?

If experience is a great teacher, then I would choose a lot more wisely going forward. But what if it is true that we do not learn from history, including our own, and end up repeating the mistakes and adding to the list of regrets?

The writer here divides up regrets into three categories; I like this structure:

The things you did that you wish you hadn't.
The things you wish you had done but didn't.
The heavy cost of the time you've wasted.

The following points resonate with me:

I myself am a very happy guy. I’m always aware that I have done better than most people, even in the U.S. I have never suffered, much less caused, a premature death or other tragedy in my family, and I've never been challenged by some significant handicap or misfortune, nor any big injustice committed by or against me. I don't want a "do-over." But I really can't take seriously those people who say they wouldn't change anything. Maybe they mean that they are quite content with how it's going, as I am. But I could have done a lot better. There’s no question. If others say they can't think of something they'd change, they have a very limited imagination.

I don't want a "do-over" either. In addition to living a relatively lucky life, it is also because to a large extent I have made my peace with the regretful decisions, which might not seem anything big at all to an outsider looking at my life. But, small or huge, our regrets are our own regrets.

At the same time, I could just easily make an argument that to be who I am now would require all those decisions that I made. I wouldn't be who I am and where I am otherwise, would I? And if I am by and large happy with who I am where I am--which is indeed the case--then I couldn't have reached this place without those regrets too?

To quote from that wonderful song that Paul Anka wrote for Frank Sinatra to sing and make it a timeless classic:

And more, much more than this, I did it my way.
Regrets, I've had a few.
But then again, too few to mention

I did it my way. YOLO!

Did you find everything you were looking for?

2013-06-06T22:07:00.001-07:00

Maybe it is because of the heat that I have been feeling so wiped out--it has been in the high 80s the last couple of days. It was quite an effort to walk through the aisles and pick up stuff. I was tempted to sit on one of those chairs there and enjoy the air conditioned spacious store.

I reached the counter. The young woman with a pleasant smile was such a source of energy. I looked at her name tag as I placed the items on the counter.

"How you doing, Kasey?"

Her smile got even wider. If only we could light up the world with smiles alone. If only we could treat the sick with smiles alone.

"Did you find everything you were looking for?" she asked.

I wanted to grab her hand and tell her that was one profound question to ask anybody.

A philosophical question to ask ourselves.

The immediate challenge when that question is asked is this: what exactly are we looking for?

Most of my angst during my younger years was all because I really didn't know what I was looking for. Nobody could help me either--directly, or via books--because I couldn't articulate to anybody what it was that I was looking for.

Life became a tad easier once I had some kind of an idea of what it was. But, that was merely one part of the challenge because I still had to go find it.

College, in the American settings, is often described as a process to find oneself. But, I would think that it can happen only when one is looking for that. My undergraduate experience seemed to muddy the waters a lot more than clearing things up for me. I had to then work harder to know what I was looking for.

And what a relief, and a pleasure it is, to then find whatever it is that we are looking for. The angst fades away. The dark clouds are gone. A brilliant sky seems to extend forever.

I am yet to find everything, but, there is a contented feeling within that I have found something. Something that is very much along the lines of what I was looking for.

I smiled at Kasey.

"Yes, thanks. I found the ice cream. Who cares about anything else" is all I told her, and spared her the philosophy. We laughed.

Plus, the security guys would have thrown me out if I had grabbed Kasey's hands!

Unemployment and the moral(e) issue

2013-06-05T20:54:00.002-07:00

As it gets closer to the time that I will have to start grading, a different kind of a reflex reaction kicks in--I seek compensation in terms of reading and blogging, perhaps to replenish the dead grey cells.

Plus, there are incredibly serious problems all around--way more than the "poor me" problems. Isn't that right, friend? ;)

Consider, for instance, this scary, scary chart:

I am flummoxed trying to imagine a 50% unemployment. And more! What the what?

We are not talking about some uneducated, illiterate youth simply idling away. It is an educated population that is jobless. I have lucked out in life--no firsthand experience of unemployment. Even the teetotaler me would have picked up the bottle if I had been a young man looking at a decimated job market.

All I have to do is look at the graduating students in order to get a sense of how the dim prospects of jobs begins to affect their morale. Robert Shiller writes about this morale dimension of high unemployment rates:

The high unemployment that we have today in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere is a tragedy, not just because of the aggregate output loss that it entails, but also because of the personal and emotional cost to the unemployed of not being a part of working society.

I recall that in the movie, Up in the Air, the number one issue that the unemployed workers said they faced was this: waking up in the morning and wondering what they were going to do that day. Being jobless, when it is not by design or choice, is one morale crusher, I would imagine.

Unemployment is a product of capitalism: People who are no longer needed are simply made redundant. On the traditional family farm, there was no unemployment.

Indeed. But then, of course, we do not want to return to all of us working on our respective forty acres either. So, ... ?

For morale, we need a social compact that finds a purpose for everyone, a way to show oneself to be part of society by being a worker of some sort.
And for that we need fiscal stimulus—ideally, the debt-friendly stimulus that raises taxes and expenditures equally. The increased tax burden for all who are employed is analogous to the reduced hours in work-sharing.
But, if tax increases are not politically expedient, policymakers should proceed with old-fashioned deficit spending. The important thing is to achieve any fiscal stimulus that boosts job creation and puts the unemployed back to work.

Hmmm ... that's where we will get stuck in an endless debate, won't we?

Here in the US, though the unemployment rate is in the single-digit now, unlike the horror stories in the Euro countries, but the aggregate number doesn't tell the whole story of discouraged and underemployed workers. One thing I am convinced about: there is no way we can escape from re-writing the social contract that ties together the government, taxpayers, businesses, and consumers. Finally, even Germany is waking up to this reality. Let's see what they come up with.

I don't care how the contract is re-written because, like with anything else, not everybody will be happy with a new contract anyway. But, what pisses me off is how atrociously Congress has been ignoring all these issues. It is pathetic.

It is the Congress members who ought to be forced into unemployment, not the young, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed educated youth.

(From the old country ...)

I travel because ... Google Earth and iPhone are useless!

2013-06-05T15:30:00.001-07:00

"What country are you off to next?" asked a neighbor as we both approached the mailbox station at our street.

I laughed. For somebody who blogs a lot about various personal stuff, it is strange that I don't seem to always want to give direct answers when I am asked about those very issues in the real world. It is difficult understanding myself. And I want to understand my fellow humans? Especially the female kind? What a Herculean task!

I asked him whether he had been abroad recently because I hadn't seen him for a while. He and his wife are way past the retirement age and they often travel to different countries.

"We went to Utah" he replied, and we both laughed again for the foreign country that state is, especially when contrasted against this part of Oregon and Southern California from where he and I had moved.

Some day, I will visit that foreign country that is next door.

For now, I need to prepare to meet with my love.

I sometimes wonder how and why a lot more of my fellow humans, particularly those with a lot more money than what I don't have, aren't anywhere as peripatetic as I am. As much as I intellectually understand that we are individuals with our own likes and dislikes, I can't help wonder why people with more disposable incomes than me don't travel way more than I do.

I would have thought that the photographs and videos that people share on the social media will make them want to travel that much more. But, does the abundance of those images and sounds end up dulling that desire to go experience new places? How can that be? Maybe that is enough for some, as much as my small television set is enough for me? Different strokes for different folks, yes.

In the age of social media, how does the traveler-extraordinaire, Pico Iyer, adjust to travel writing?

I have to find things that prose can do, that no iPhone can do better. This usually has to do with memory, reflection and the silences between things.

Yes. That's it. In my versions of travel and travel-writing, that's exactly what I engage in: "memory, reflection and the silences between things." Damn, these writers can convey the ideas so well. No wonder they are the writers and I am but a reader!

Travel is not merely to click a few photographs as some kind of a modern day conquest. I find travel to be humbling in so many ways. It is such a humbling experience when I am a nobody in a strange place, especially when I know not the local language. No special treatment because I have a PhD. Nobody cares. I am like anybody else. Travel is a phenomenal way to understand and appreciate how insignificant I am in this universe.

As I noted before:

यस्तु संचरते देशान् यस्तु सेवेत पण्डितान् ।
तस्य विस्तारिता बुद्धिः तैलबिंदुरिवांभसि ॥

- सम्योचित पद्यमालिका

He who wanders various countries and serves wise men there
will expand his knowledge just like oil on water.
- Samayochita Padyamalika

source

The same idea reflected in the old adage that travel makes a man wiser?

And then when I re-enter the US after a trip abroad, it is truly wonderful to appreciate what G.K. Chesterton wrote:

The object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country

Yes, to set foot on one's own country--hopefully all the wiser.

And that wisdom, I am confident, can never arrive via an iPhone.

All excited to meet my love ... 25 years!

2013-06-04T21:05:00.000-07:00

In a world where love seems to be more and more fleeting anymore, and true love appears to be less terrestrial, I have been in love with her for a quarter century.

A love that has never wavered.

An unconditional love, despite not getting anything in return. Not even a glance in my direction.

She is quite a charmer--very few have ever charmed me like she has over the twenty five years.

I first laid my eyes on her in graduate school.

I was a naive graduate student from India with youthful dreams, and it was so easy to fall for her. I knew she had a long line of fans. I too joined that line. But, I never felt jealous of the others in the line. In fact, it was a case of love, like misery, loving company.

Over the years, I made many plans to spend time with her. But, until a few years ago, I was married, and it is not always easy to work such deep love for another when the spouse has other plans. "Some day" I told myself.

Meanwhile, my daughter said she was going to visit with this love of mine. She didn't know, until she described her idea, how much I had been longing to visit with this love. Yet, she didn't want to take the father along with her, and I told myself, "some day."

My daughter returned with stories that added fuel to that decades of fire. My love was beautiful in the photographs. My daughter was immensely happy, and I was even beginning to feel a little bit of jealousy towards my daughter.

Now, I am only days away from meeting my love.

Oddly enough, I am not at all nervous. It can't be because of my middle age. I get nervous about so many issues even at this age, yet the thought of meeting my love of twenty-five years doesn't make me agitated even one bit.

Perhaps I am confident that I won't be let down. I am confident that she will only treat me well. Not like some of my other loves.

I will soon find out.

Wish me well, dear reader. After all, such love is rare these days, and don't you want this story to end well with a "happily ever after"?

Rain, rain, don't go away

2013-06-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

It is interesting that the monsoon sets in India just as the long wet months of rain end in this part of the world. In my imaginations, the clouds consider their work done here in Oregon and move on to the other side of the planet where the billion-plus in the Subcontinent eagerly await the downpours after having survived yet another summer of heat and dust.

As kids, when we visited grandmas' villages every summer, I found it fascinating that people always talked about the rain. Conversations between men typically involved openers like மேக்க மழை உண்டோ? (any rain in the west?) It seemed like that was how they even said hello to each other. And then the next few minutes were spent talking only about the rains.

There was a good reason why the rain talk featured so much--it is the source of the vital water for life and farming. No snow banks in those near-equatorial conditions.

The rain-fed Tamarabarani at sundown, Srivaikuntam 2012

Many, many movies that I watched during those childhood years explored rural stories that also portrayed life when the monsoon failed. Stories of hardship, deprivation, and heroism. "Thanneer thanneer" (water, water) was one of the movies that made quite an impression on the young adult that I was; as I blogged earlier, using the context of water scarcity,:

Adapted from a play, the movie was one sarcastic tragic-comedy on the plight of the poor, the bureaucracy, and the self-promoting and self-aggrandizing politicians. It was brilliant.

Perhaps conditioned by all the experiences of growing up in the rural settings, and interacting with folks from there throughout the adult life, even now my father, who lives anything but a rural life, worries about the rains. Even before I had read the news about the meteorologists statement on the monsoon, father talked about it when I called him up a couple of days ago.

Listening to father's comments, I, too, then visualized in my mind the breeze in Sengottai that typically was the monsoon's calling card. The rains that then made the waterfalls at Courtallam a wonderful sight for the eyes, and a pleasure for the body when getting massaged by those waters.

Here is to hoping that the rain clouds from Oregon have reached their destinations in India. A "meghaduta" of a different kind.

I know I will see them here again in October. I shall wait for you, my friend. And welcome you with open arms.

A pregnancy that men should also avoid. Yes, men, too!

2013-06-03T23:13:00.000-07:00

Way back, when young, once when I was experimenting in the kitchen, I wondered what could happen if I added a couple of drops of vanilla essence to the coffee that was being "filtered" in the traditional south Indian approach.

Both my mother and grandmother had the same reaction: "why does this coffee taste like Bournvita? Did you add that to the coffee?" Good thing I didn't get smacked for messing with the holy coffee that was a religious experience every single time it was consumed! One aunt of mine was very particular about her 3:00 pm coffee service.

I was, thus, not really surprised to learn later on that there were food technologists. A classmate's brother was a scientist whose job was the create via chemicals the natural flavors. It didn't seem crazy then, but as an adult, the thought ingesting chemicals has always worried me. Worries me a lot. My roommate in graduate school, Avu, would mix himself a glass of Nesquik chocolate milk and refer to that sarcastically as his "chemical breakfast."

It is bizarre that scientists and technologists work hard to bring us stuff that doesn't seem to be all that constructive. They build weapons that can kill. Cigarettes and alcohol. And food. The breakdown the process in which our bodies "think" of food and then successfully manipulate our biochemistry.

[If] you end up with a food baby, a distended stomach caused by excessive overeating, you’ve made a fast-food executive somewhere very happy.

If your grandmothers were like mine, they would have advised you to eat slowly. Not too sloooooowly like how a cousin of mine at, but slowly. That is exactly what the food industries technologists do not want us to do:

The holy grail of junk-food science is vanishing caloric density, where the food melts in your mouth so quickly that the brain is fooled into thinking it’s hardly consuming any calories at all, so it just keeps snacking.

If they could convince us to intake calories before the brain has processed that information, then we end up with a food baby.

My strategy has been a simple one: I avoid a whole lot of aisles in the market. I bypass them. I spend a great deal of time where the fruits and vegetables are. I didn't know I was contributing to the cookie aisle problem:

consumers shun a particular aisle in the store, such as the one containing the cookies, because there is too great a risk they would buy-and-binge

I told a friend the other day that she should make sure to go to the grocery store only after meals, and not when hungry. "Why?" she asked. Because when hungry, our brain picks up all the wrong signals. Now, I can add this: we then end up with a food baby.

If only the food science people can put their energy and expertise into teaching our brains good things, right? Science, unfortunately, has always been a double-edged sword!

Make yourself a lentil salad. No chemicals that will fool your brain. You will eat slowly giving the brain the time to measure the calories coming in.

You will then not carry a food baby.

You can make the food company executives unhappy.

And, yes, you can experiment away in the kitchen!

The end of the term. And the end of the year. Where are the gifts?

2013-06-03T14:58:00.002-07:00

Looks like I already missed out on a gift!

I returned from class and there was a note stuck on my office door:

Hello!
We came by to say hi since we were on campus. We hope you are doing well
"P" and "L"

Oh, it would have been such a pleasure to meet the couple, who got married two summers ago. Of all the weddings of students that I have been to, this was unique because both the groom and the bride had been in my classes. Once, in the same class too. At the wedding "P" told me, "you are the only teacher we have invited." And for a good measure clarified that he wasn't referring to university teaching alone.

I hope that was not the only gift that was destined for this term.

It is so strange that students have, over the years, made sure that I have such a Pavlovian response--they have successfully conditioned me into thinking that the end of a term means that I can expect gifts. It is their fault. Not mine. Nothing is ever my fault, of course ;)

Oh, I forgot that I already got a gift, even during the middle of the term:

I did get another kind of a gift--not a tangible one though.

A few weeks ago, I guest-lectured at a class that "M" teaches. A couple of days ago, "M" emailed me. They were discussing something in class. "At that point one student said, I think Sriram would ..." Isn't a student from a class where I guest-lectured referring to what I had shared with them also a gift? I think so.

A student writes in the final written assignment for the term:

[Without] sounding like a complete suck up just prior to finals week, I want to thank you for putting such time and effort into your class. You can look forward to another 5 star rating on "ratemyprofessor.com"

I enjoy certain other kinds of gifts too, like in this comment. A reader who goes under the alias of "4umexpert" concludes after reading my op-ed:

SRIRAM, the issue may not be inferior liberal education, but your lack of abilities to teach.

Teaching is a gift that keeps on giving, when I have the abilities and, apparently, even when I lack them!

No, all these do not mean that I am not open to the idea of cookies and chocolates and airfare to Ukraine as gifts. Oops, did I say Ukraine? I misspoke. Not just Ukraine, but a lot more :)

Seriously though, my thanks to students for all the fun and enjoyment that I get in this profession.

Samples of previous entries on this theme: here, here, and here

Never been a better time to be a public intellectual

2013-06-02T10:51:00.000-07:00

Eleven years ago, when about this time of the year I had started planning for the migration northward to Oregon, I was scanning the local, downtown, community newsletter of sorts--I think it was called the Village News, perhaps modeled after the Village Voice.

In that, and unexpectedly, I received one of the best compliments that I have ever received. The editor had noted my departure from the university and the town with a comment that the area was losing a public intellectual. It was all the more wonderful because it came from a person whom I had never met. This meant that she had based her comment strictly on my op-eds in the local newspaper, the Bakersfield Californian.

I knew even back in my teenage years that my life would be in the intellectual arena. Further, I knew that I wanted my intellectual activities to be in the public, and not in some obscure office, not because of a need to be in the spotlight but because of an obsession of sorts to understand social issues and to discuss and debate with others my understanding.

But, of course, I had no idea then of a phrase "public intellectual." It was one of the many new ideas that came to understand over the course of six graduate school years.

A couple of years ago, a student told me that he wanted to engage in the kind of public discussion of ideas like how I do, and asked me for suggestions on how he could go about it. That stumped me. I had no idea what the formula is. I was reminded of the wicket keeper, Alan Knott, from my younger cricket-watching days. One of the greatest keepers ever, if not the greatest, Knott remarked that wicket keepers were not made but born. But, of course, I couldn't crush the student's goal by remarking that you are either a public intellectual or you are not. I gave a vague response that probably didn't say much. If a student were to ask me that question now, I can at least point them to this short piece, in which the author takes a strong stance on the issue:

It isn’t a smart person; it is someone, precisely, who speaks of public issues to a public audience. Wilson et al. were not called “public” intellectuals, because the public part was taken for granted. The longer term was introduced by Russell Jacoby (in 1987—only 25 years ago) to differentiate the older type from those who had displaced it: professors. The problem is that professors have taken it over. The phrase has come to mean an academic who occasionally addresses a general audience, as if all academics were intellectuals, and some of them were also public ones. In fact, academics and intellectuals are antithetical types. An intellectual is not an expert, and a public intellectual is not an expert who condescends to speak to a wider audience about her area of expertise. An intellectual is a generalist, an autodidact, a thinker who wanders and speculates. As Jack Miles puts it in a stellar essay on the question, “It takes years of disciplined preparation to become an academic. It takes years of undisciplined preparation to become an intellectual.”

I love that description of "years of undisciplined preparation." I might never have come up with that phrasing, but that has exactly been my life until now. Undisciplined preparation. Well, it is that same approach in my cooking too!

The intellectual’s job is to think past the culture: to question the myths, metaphors, and assumptions that limit our collective imagination. The founder of the breed was Socrates. As Kazin also said, an intellectual is someone for whom ideas are “instruments of salvation.” Becoming one requires a little more than setting up a blog.

Indeed.

Engaging the public has been far more productive in terms of creating and sharing knowledge, than my formal scholarship can ever be. I was cautioned against it a long time ago by one of my graduate school professors. Jim Moore applauded my passion for this approach, but warned me that academia would care only about my formal academic inquiries, though they would certainly get jealous about any notoriety that I gained from my approach. Jim was, and is, correct. But, it would not be me, and not my life, if I did anything other than what I wanted to do.

The internet and the web have been a public intellectual's heaven. I would think that there has never, ever, been a better time to be a public intellectual. A few days ago, I came across a blog post, of course, on a conference at Notre Dame: Public intellectualism in a comparative context. I am sure it had some wonderful discussions.

Every time I visit India, either explicitly or within me, I end up making that kind of a comparison. For instance, the op-eds in the newspapers there are not the kind of the public intellectual discussions that I favor. Often they are filled with jargon, written by experts and not by intellectuals. The writings often seem to have an undertone of the specialist having decided that the ignorant public needs to be educated with his/her expert opinion. As if the public policy issue would be solved, and solved easily, if and only if the public listened to that expert. That does not strike me as the role of the intellectual at all. Thus, when my father remarks that I should write pieces for the newspapers in India, I sing the same tune over and over again that my idea of opinion pieces is very different and that it does not work in India, it seems.

There is so much to talk about ... never has there been a better time. Who cares if nobody is listening to me!

On Father's Day Gifts

2013-06-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

In an episode of the Cosby Show, Cliff Huxtable whines on about how the children put a lot of thought into making their mother feel special on Mother's Day, but that they shop at the last minute for him and get cheap, atrocious gifts.

Yes, fathers all over America, and perhaps in a few other countries too, put on a fake smile when they get boring neckties, yet again, as gifts. Makes for ah, some--oops, awesome--memories!

A few years ago, my daughter gave me a gift that I certainly would never have bought for myself: A pomegranate face wash. Who woulda thunk that!

I liked it.

It feels very good when I use it. But, I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to use it every day, or once a week, or ... Though the small size that is, perhaps I haven't used it as often as I am supposed to--there is at least a quarter that remains. (Note to self: use that tonight and look good in the dreams!)

Does that kind of a product have an expiration date? The face wash doesn't seem to have any date printed on it. Do they not include that information because they don't expect the customer to keep it for such a long time?

More questions. Now that my hairline is receding fast, the forehead is as large as Texas. So, does it mean that I can now use this face wash on the balding top that once used to get a shampoo treatment? If I go fully bald, then do I simply not purchase shampoos and only get face wash for the head too?

Life was simpler when I was a kid.

Help is certainly on the way though; the soap people are already on to helping men like me. (Note: do not misread that earlier phrase to mean men liking me. The idea is to only attract women. At the least millionaires, and preferably multi-millionaires.)

I picked up a product the other day because it promises to make my life really simple. An Old Spice product that is both a hair and body wash. So, no need to buy a shampoo, and it is a conditioner too! I will continue with the Pomegranate face wash until an Old Spice four-in-one product comes along. I am sure the face wash will last another couple of years, at least.

Now that she is married, perhaps the daughter has a lot deeper understanding of us men. The gift arrived early as well. The husband and wife team got me a wonderful Father's Day gift when they yanked out the dying bushes in the front yard, bought lovely new plants, dug holes, planted them, and spread mulch cover too.

I wonder what is in store for next year. Should I remind them that my car is getting old? Preempt any possible pomegranate skin cream gift?

Nah. The daughter is the ultimate gift of all. I am a rich man. A balding rich man.

Life is not about the grammar issues

2013-06-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

Before you get any incorrect ideas and leap to conclusions, let me make it clear: spellings matter; watch out for the comma, which can kill a person; and, yes, make the writing look sophisticated by using semicolons!

However, let us not get carried away. There is more to life than grammar. A lot more. Way more.

When I was a kid, one relative who never failed to impress me was my father's uncle. In conversations we always referred to him as RM. Like all of us, he was also a mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the ugly. RM was sharp. Quick witted. And well read. He didn't keep up with the modern science and literature, yes. But, he knew what he had studied during his younger days.

A rather argumentative and cantankerous man he was. (Now you know there might be a biological reason, too, for my fascination for The Argumentative Indian!) Mostly irreligious, and definitely irreverent too. The religious rarely dared to pick an argument with him not merely because he was good at arguing but, and more importantly, because he would recite from memory verses from any number of religious texts and proceed on to interpreting them.

One that made an early impression on me was the way he presented to the young me how Bhjaja Govindam came about. Now, thanks to the information technology, I am able to simply link to that Wikipedia entry. The Wikipedia note says the same that RM told me a long time ago. That devotional, philosophical, and poetic work, the story goes, was Sankara's reaction when he came across a Sanskrit professor teaching the finer points of grammar to his students. Sankara observed:

Bhajagovindam bhajagovindam
Govindam bhaja muudhamate
Sampraapte sannihite kaale
Nahi nahi rakshati dukrijnkarane. Translation:
Worship Govinda, Worship Govinda,
Worship Govinda. Oh fool!
Rules of Grammar will not save you
At the time of your death.

RM was often annoyed that those reciting this didn't even pause to understand what it meant and, thus, I have often heard him talk about dukrijnkarane. The audience would get nervous, while I sat there enjoying the show.

We draw our own lessons from what we experience in life. In my case, I fell in love with the idea that there is a lot more to life than the small stuff that we are so fascinated with. That there are much larger issues that we needed to understand. I didn't care for the religious "Govindam" bottom line that Sankara preached, but I appreciated that dukrijnkarane as a metaphor for the ultimately trivial stuff that don't matter at all.

Graduate school and the research activities that professors and students engaged in often reminded me of this dukrijnkarane approach. Instead of grammar, it was about some minutiae. I didn't refer to such research not as dukrijnkarane; after all, I was an in alien culture. So, I made fun of research in the field of economic development as nothing but a fixation on "the productivity of left-handed female labor in the cotton textile mills of who-cares-where."

I felt convinced that modern day academic research was nothing but a variation of that Sanskrit professor being monomaniac about dukrijnkarane.

Whether in intellectual pursuits, or in life, I understand that there is a lot more to it than the fine details we worry about. Yes, those details matter, like how the comma does. But, it is not about the comma, right? And that we forget.

It was always easy to get RM going on such issues. He loved them. He seemed to draw energy from making life miserable for others by bringing up such topics. He was also the first one I really knew who grew a beard. Well, sometimes he grew one, and at other times he was clean-shaven. Once, in his bearded phase, while assisting somebody else at a food charity event of sorts, he was asked to be in-charge when the other person left. RM being RM, he decided to play a practical joke; he sat there like a holy man--he had the beard, the looks, and the erudition after all. When people came, he made the appropriate comments and soon had collected donations from the passers by by offering his profound words of wisdom!

Now, I am at an age that probably RM was when I began to interact with him as a kid. My beard, unlike his, is always well-trimmed. I suspect that my beard is why people pay attention to me even the little bit they do. Ask yourself: if you were a student in my classes, or a newspaper reader scanning through my op-ed, would you think I had any gravitas if I looked like this?:

yes, me, in summer 2012.
http://sriramkhe.blogspot.com/2012/07/so-why-havent-bald-men-gone-extinct.html

With all the pontification that I do, I can easily imagine that I, too, can sit at a place, make appropriate comments and, in the process, earn immensely more money than I currently do now. I am not that far away from the place where something like that actually happened, after all.

There is a demand for a false prophet like RM, even if only for those few minutes, or a lot more such RMs because innately we humans are always driven to understanding the mystery that life is. We intuitively feel that there is a lot more to life than whatever dukrijnkarane we pursue. We want to make sense of that larger issues. We then seek people who, we think and believe, might have the answer. Or, at least, show us the path towards that.

But, the search for that master is futile. Nobody knows. It is up to us individually to understand that life is not about the fine points of grammar. In a way, that is what I tell students, without going into all this philosophy talk. When I tell them that a course they take with me is not really about the course alone, and that education is not merely about the letter-grade and diploma alone, I know that I am implicitly hoping that they would engage in a self-driven inquiry into what they understand the big picture to be.

Perhaps it was six years ago that I went to Sengottai to say hi to RM. It was our last interaction. He was anything but that person he was when younger when he made a serious impression on me. RM spoke so softly that I had to strain to catch his words. In my Americanized way, I tried telling RM how much I appreciated him. I held his bony arms with the skin that was dry and wrinkled. I am not sure whether my expressions crossed across the cultures.

I like to imagine that as RM neared his last few breaths, he knew really, really well that life is not about dukrijnkarane.

A few months ago, when my mother saw a recent photo of mine, she couldn't stop commenting on how much I look like RM. Am not sure whether it is a case of we see what we want to see, or whether there is more of a resemblance. The beard helps, for certain :)

The poor will always be with us ... NOT!

2013-05-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

As I noted in this commentary at Planetizen, back in 2007, the graduate schooling in the social sciences, after an undergraduate in electrical engineering, was a result of wanting to do something to mitigate the suffering that was all around me, and caused by economic deprivation.

It didn't take much to realize that this was no easy project. But, that made it all the more intellectually fascinating and an important one from a practical standpoint. Of course, a few years after wrapping up the doctorate, I went the way of "if you can't, teach!"

It is exciting that even without my contribution to this project of poverty reduction, or perhaps because of me not being involved (ha!), the world has gotten incredibly better off over the two decades. On a scale that I never imagined possible when I was a worrywart sitting on the railroad tracks by the college in Coimbatore. What an amazing transformation, as the Economist points out:

It's getting better all the time, as the Beatles sang.

The Economist notes that biggest reason, a no-brainer, behind this dramatic reduction:

China (which has never shown any interest in MDGs) is responsible for three-quarters of the achievement. Its economy has been growing so fast that, even though inequality is rising fast, extreme poverty is disappearing. China pulled 680m people out of misery in 1981-2010, and reduced its extreme-poverty rate from 84% in 1980 to 10% now.

In graduate school, and remember this was back when there was no sign that the Cold War would end and China was barely into the Deng reform period, it was a matter of routine for studies to compare India and China. A theme that I have continued to explore here in this blog too. There is simply no way any rational person can deny that China has done well, and much better than India, on the issue of tackling economic deprivation. It is a tragedy that India's politics is so dysfunctional that the country continues to be the home to the largest number of people in poverty.

There is a long road ahead. The Economist identifies some of the issues, via the number of "ifs" that it employs, for instance:

If developing countries maintain the impressive growth they have managed since 2000; if the poorest countries are not left behind by faster-growing middle-income ones; and if inequality does not widen so that the rich lap up all the cream of growth—then developing countries would cut extreme poverty from 16% of their populations now to 3% by 2030. That would reduce the absolute numbers by 1 billion. If growth is a little faster and income more equal, extreme poverty could fall to just 1.5%—as near to zero as is realistically possible. The number of the destitute would then be about 100m, most of them in intractable countries in Africa. Misery’s billions would be consigned to the annals of history.

Consider that first "if" on maintaining the impressive economic growth rates. For more than a year now, I have been concerned, like in this post, that India's growth rates have slowed down and that it could easily slip back to that old "Hindu rate" of growth. The latest news further confirms that trend--India's growth rate over the past year was the lowest over the decade. Not at the "Hindu rate" yet, and was a healthy 5%. But, that simply isn't enough:

While growth of 5% would be high for a developed Western economy, such a rate is insufficient in India to create enough new jobs for a young workforce.

I noted two years ago (in the pre-Ramesh era of this blog!):

I fear that India will have a tough time tackling poverty while another half a billion is added: the politics in the form that is practiced in India precludes the kinds of direct policy interventions that are necessary. Unless the politics changes, the demographic dividend cannot be realized. But, it doesn't look like politics will change there for the better.

We will hope that better heads will prevail. As the Economist notes, "The world now knows how to reduce poverty." That knowledge itself is a world of a difference from when I began graduate school. There are enough reasons to celebrate--the past quarter-century has been phenomenal in terms of poverty reduction. Won't it be wonderful if we eliminated that acute deprivation well within two decades from now?

Can a man not working long hours get paid a lot? Yes, I can!

2013-05-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

Consider this excerpt:

For upper-middle class men, notes sociologist Michèle Lamont, ambition and a strong work ethic are "doubly sacred. . . as signals of both moral and socioeconomic purity. Elite men's jobs revolve around the work devotion schema, which communicates that high-level professionals should "demonstrate commitment by making work the central focus of their lives" and "manifest singular 'devotion to work,' unencumbered with family responsibilities," to quote sociologist Mary Blair-Loy. ... How do the elite signal to each other how important they are? "I am slammed" is a socially acceptable way of saying "I am important." Fifty years ago, Americans signaled class by displaying their leisure: think banker's hours (9 to 3). Today, the elite — journalist Chrystia Freeland calls them "the working rich" — display their extreme schedules.

Think about the professionals you know who are in that elite stratosphere. (I know you, reader, are not one. Because, if you were, you would not have the time to read this post. Elementary, my dear Watson!) They are uber-busy, right? Awfully packed schedules. Always on the go. You will be lucky if you can get five minutes of their undivided attention.

We have turned the very idea of being rich upside down: we used to think that being rich meant that you had all the time in the world because you didn't have to work at all. Now, it turns out that being rich means to boast that you have no time at all.

And, there is an unending rush, a long line, to join that elite club.

What's the deal?

It's not productivity. It's not innovation. It's identity. If you've lived a life where holidays are a nuisance, where you've missed your favorite uncle's funeral and your children's childhoods, in a culture that conflates manly heroism with long hours, it's going to take more than a few regressions to convince you it wasn't really necessary, after all, for your work to devour you.

It's identity. I work, therefore I am. I work incredibly long hours, therefore I am. I am tempted to believe that it is not merely the money that motivates this extreme work schedule, but it is very much the identity. Like the character that George Clooney played in Up in the Air.

I doubt that Max Weber would have ever imagined such an extreme version of the Protestant Ethic. These rich are, ironically, not in the leisure class anymore!

I have a different version of identity: the good ol' I think, therefore I am.

In this identify, work is a 24x7 commitment. Thinking is a lot of work. Sometimes I wish I didn't think. I worry that I overthink. I even wonder whether I am thinking in my sleep.

But, despite that intense 24x7 schedule, my calendar is always wide open. Ask my neighbor who jokes all the time that he has never seen me at work. You want to meet with me? Say when, and pay for my plane ticket and I can be there. It is not any BFD, to use Joe Biden's language!

I don't get paid for the 24x7 thinking work that I do.

Well, not in dollars.

I get paid a lot in so many other ways. For one, I get to interact with you, dear reader. Did you already know that you are a reward for my thinking? Yes, without you, I will be infinitely poorer and I don't want to slide into that poverty.

There are plenty of payments that I receive, every single day. Earlier today, on my way to the physical therapy appointment (now, that is an expense item, not a reward!) I flashed the hazard lights to warn the cars behind and came to a stop.

To collect a payment; this one:

Yes, it is an annual payment I receive for the long hours I work thinking.

And you thought I don't work long hours and that I earn pittance. Now you know.

Can you hear me now?

2013-05-29T21:06:00.001-07:00

The older I get, the more I can think about the mistakes, small and big, that I have made. "How could I have been that stupid?" I often ask myself. But, hey, stupid is as stupid does!

Thanks to the years, I have also had my share of marveling at how much the folks across from me may have completely misunderstood me.

I bet it happens in anybody's life. Students misunderstand us. So do children, parents, spouses, gardeners. Heck, even dogs misunderstand us! Life is full of misunderstandings. We try to clear up things.

But then, sometimes, there might be people who consistently misunderstand us. It is almost as if they are wired that way. Like they live in a bizarro world. You say up, and they misunderstand that you said down. Left becomes right, and then you tell them, "no, the other left!"

In such situations, perhaps you think to yourselves "how the hell do you manage to misunderstand me this much every single time?"

Or, maybe, sometimes you just feel like yelling at the other person for yet again misunderstanding your words or actions.

There you are with your nostrils flaring, blood flowing at increased speeds. You can actually feel the global warming. You have been there, right?

So the next time you reach that explosive stage, take a deep breath.

And then, lean on the following poem.

Wrong

I wish to be misunderstood;
that is,
to be understood from your perspective.

From Bill Knott’s The Unsubscriber HT

Maybe you can even recite this poem at the height (depth?) of the misunderstanding. Recite aloud. With dramatic pauses.

If you do that, and if you live to report that to me, please update me :)

PS: I love you!

2013-05-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

I like to think that the reason for the adoption of English as a dominant global language lies not in its adaptability or the geographic reach of the British Empire, but in a phenomenally easy one: the utterly uncomplicated, and simple-syllable, way of saying "I love you."

That phrase explains it all.

Many of the Tamil and the Hindi movies that I watched when growing up in India, if they were not stories that were strictly rural in their settings, had "I love you" sometimes even more than once in the dialog. After all, most movies dealt the affairs of the heart and they ran for nearly three hours.

My guess is that thanks to the movies, even quite a few among the population who didn't know how to read and write were familiar with "I love you" as an expression and its meaning.

If one of the characters had to say "I love you" in Tamil, for instance, it is way more than three syllables. நான் உன்னை காதலிக்கிறேன் (Naan unnai kaadhalikkiren)

Way easier to say "I love you" instead and seal the deal by running around the trees!

Or, consider in Hindi (I hope I am correct here with my rudimentary knowledge that is nearly 30 years old): मैं तुमसे प्यार करता हूँ (Main tumse pyar karta hun) Isn't the English version way easier for the mouth?

I like to also think that the words and sounds needed to express that feeling is why those were also not said much when I was a kid. To this day, I have never heard my parents tell each other "I love you." Of course, it is the cultural aspect here--where such expressions were not a part of the everyday existence. I wonder if India has changed, and whether my generation, or their kids, freely say "I love you."

Back in my life in California, once we had invited over for dinner an older couple, who had immigrated from South Korea. It was hilarious when during the conversation the wife remarked that her husband doesn't say "I love you" to her.

She then looked at him and practically dared him. He didn't bite though! My guess is that it is way more syllables in Korean than it is in English :)

He had a wonderful sense of humor, too and maybe that was his key to success at home and at his business. Without a pause, he replied in his Korean accent, "but, what has love got to do with marriage?"

We all laughed. Unlike "I love you" laughter is easy and the same in any language.

If everyone does what they love ...

2013-05-28T16:04:00.000-07:00

... the economy will collapse tomorrow morning

That is pretty funny, and profound when you consider the source: Samantha Who?

Yes, that Christina Applegate sitcom, which has been in the rerun world for years now, and I am slowly catching up. It will be quite a while before I get to the Skyfall CD that is gathering dust.

If only everyone does what they love, right? Well, not those who love whacking others, but doing anything that is constructive and not destructive.

It is not often in life we are in situations when work is hobby and hobby is work and we love what we do. I lucked out. Who cares if I am unlucky at many other things!

I kid around sometimes that I will do what I do even if I don't get paid, and that I am glad I get paid to have fun! Or, I modify this awful humor with "I get paid only for the grading, which I will not do for free and, dammit, they don't pay me enough for that!"

More often than not, people end up doing whatever they can in order to earn their paychecks, and then drive around with "I would rather be fishing" bumper stickers. "For the sake of the stomach, many acts do we put on" is how an old Sanskrit translates to in English. If I dared to reveal my ignorance by recalling my Sanskrit and the phrase, it would be something like this: "उढर निमिथे बहु वेशः" (please let me know if you have the correct version of this phrase.)

I love blogging too. I cannot imagine a world without blogging.

I love cooking too. My frequent (and more often than not, the only) debating partner at this blog might even be impressed, despite all his wet-blanket-comments (ha ha!), with my latest project in a most frequented room at home--the kitchen, not that other room.

I made சுண்டல் :)

Here is to hoping that a lot more people would get to do what they love.

Oh, men! ... Everything is comedy

2013-05-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, when I was in Los Angeles, I walked over to Trader Joe's, which was an easy fifteen minutes on foot. I wanted to pick up flowers to brighten up my daughter's and son-in-law's charming home that was being dulled by my presence. Plus, hey, which daughter won't like flowers, right?

I picked up a bouquet that I planned to arrange according to my own tastes. It is like preparing food dishes the way I like them, even if not the best way.

When I reached the checkout counter, the young dude--perhaps not even twenty-five, did his part at small talk, from which one cannot escape here in these United States.

"Ooh, the wife will be happy" he said.

I smiled first. Then said "no wife."

He should have called it quits. But, I suppose that like me, he too wasn't all sauve. I know that feeling of being a klutz!

"For your girlfriend, eh" .... and then he thought he was correcting himself to something more politically correct when he said, "oh, sorry, for your significant other."

Perhaps he switched to "significant other" because it suddenly occurred to him that I could be gay. I don't blame him if after that he suspended any small talk for a couple of days; life is way too complicated for small talk now.

When walking back home, I kept thinking about the dude's failed attempt at small talk. It seems like female checkout clerks are always more measured and careful in their small talk compared to the men. At any age. It has to do with us men, I decided. Perhaps because we want to be funny. Right from our elementary school days, the class clowns were boys and not girls.

I then remembered the wonderful line that ~~Vanessa~~ Lynn Redgrave sarcastically delivers with the accent of the character that she plays in Gods and Monsters:

Oh, men! Always pulling legs. Everything is comedy. Oh, how very amusing. How marvelously droll.

Yes, marvelously droll!

I reached home and put those flowers together as an arrangement.

The daughter returned home after another tiring day on the job. As any father would, I waited for the daughter to appreciate the marvelous droll who brought those flowers.

She saw them.

She smiled.

She said a big thanks.

Made my day.

That Trader Joe's dude can rest easy.

Earlier today, I drove to the local Trader Joe's to restock my pantry. Pantry, with an "r," See "marvelously droll" I am being even now!

At the checkout counter, it was a team--a young woman at the scanner and a young man bagging.

"Any fun plans for today?" she asked.

"If you call grading papers fun, yes" I replied. See, we men want to be funny all the time!

The young man didn't want to be left out, I suppose. "Oh yeah, what grade do you teach?"

I smiled. "I teach at the university."

His face shrunk. I wanted to tell him, "hey, no big deal. I fail at small talk like you. Sympatico"

I didn't. I kept walking. Papers to be graded were waiting for me.