A woman cycles through the streets with her children, looking for drinking water. (Pic : M. Vedhan/ The Hindu)

At least in Chennai, rain water harvesting by residences has been made mandatory and going by anecdote at least, it has made a lot of difference to the water table. If nothing else, it has cut down the amount of water flowing into the streets after every rain and waterlogging them.

Unlike Chennai, where rain water harvesting is mandatory for all residences and commercial buildings, new and old, public and private, in many other states where there is legislation on rain water harvesting, I understand it is only mandatory for new buildings.  That makes a big difference.  If people in Chennai can modify their homes to harvest rainwater, why cannot those in the rest of the country do so?  Obviously, very few will voluntarily do so unless there is legislation mandating it.

Rainwater harvesting is just one part of the story, though.  What I cannot understand is why, with such a long coastline, India has never been serious about reverse osmosis plants for providing drinking water.  I’ve heard every possible excuse now – the membranes are expensive, they need to be imported, no one will buy RO water because it is too costly etc etc.  Yet, in many cities now, people routinely buy water and some of it is RO based, set up by private companies.  But there has been no concerted effort on the part of either the Central or State governments to set up  large-scale RO plants to meet the drinking water needs of the population.  If cost is the only issue, why not subsidize?  If the government can subsidize petroleum, it can subsidize drinking water, which is far more essential, and for which there are no alternatives.

Water usage in the cities is only going to increase as cities expand, so it baffles me that there is not more focus or urgency on this issue.  A few good monsoons and everyone thinks that the problem has been resolved.  Short-term measures are used, like using water tankers to supply water at an additional cost, and these tankers then cause accidents and damage the roads.

As a child, I remember a water crisis in Chennai in the 80s, waking up to the sounds of my mother rushing to fill up on water at 3 a.m. before the taps ran dry for the day. I think it was only that one summer and we moved away from Chennai shortly after, but it is not an experience that I am ever likely to forget.  All these years later, I still  cringe at the amount of water my lawn sprinklers seem to spray around, even though I am in a different country and water is much more plentiful here.  But it is really sad and at the same time, horrifying to see that  nothing has changed for the residents in Chennai. A few bad monsoons and water becomes scarce again.

I only hope by the time the children in the picture grow up, the water scarcity issue is resolved – in Chennai and everywhere else in India.  Is that too much of a hope?

Not that there haven’t been topics I’ve wanted to blog about.  But typing on your phone (as I am doing now) or on a tablet can be really frustrating. Maybe it works for those who write short posts. Or maybe I’ll get better with more practice. I’d love to hear from those who habitually blog from their phones as to how they do it.  Tweeting and Facebook updates are one thing, long blog posts are quite another.

Not that I get the chance to sit and compose blog posts – my daughter S seems to take up every available second of my time. The only reason I finally got the free time to start this post was that S fell sick – a nasty viral infection, which meant that she wanted to lie on my lap all day long.  So I had some downtime when I could peer into a tablet (or phone) – at least until  I caught the infection from her.  But it was startling to see that so few of the blogs I follow had seen many posts either.  Clearly, blogging is dying, and soon my trusty Google Reader will be dead too.

I am emerging from a hibernation of many kinds.  Here in the upper mid-west, we are still digging out from all the snowstorms.  There is snow on the deck and ice in the shaded parts of the driveway.  It’s the vernal equinox today, the first day of astronomical spring, apparently. The key word here is “astronomical”.  It has nothing to do with the weather. Temperatures are 25 degrees below normal (and yes, well below zero celsius).  Not to mention the biting wind, and 25 mph of it.  This winter, I have sometimes wondered whether I am living in Alaska.  Mind you, parts of Alaska (the southeast, especially) are much warmer.  Juneau, the capital, has probably never seen temperatures below zero celsius.

But back to us – meteorological spring seems months away – maybe, just maybe, I can enjoy a 50 degree day in July, do you think ? If I cross my fingers and don’t jinx it? Temperatures can only increase from here on! Someday soon, we will even get to step out without dressing up like an eskimo! Lots of things to cheer about.

As additional proof that Spring is approaching, I even saw birds for the first time in months ! And no, they were not penguins.  I think they were grouse.  I even heard birdsong ! That was definitely not from penguins.  Granted, all this was before the last snowstorm, and I have neither seen nor heard any birds since, but no doubt they are hiding somewhere. Soon, there will be birds and something like the start of spring. And after the ice in the backyard recedes and the glaciers melt – no wait, that’s just the pond, we can even see a spot of green in the landscape ! (And no, I don’t mean the algae in the pond.)

It’s time to come out of hibernation, and I suppose my blog should too.

I’m not so sure, though, that allowing FDI in retail is such a bad thing.  I can think of several ways it will actually help the Indian consumer :

1.  Small shops, street vendors and malls can all co-exist (as they are doing now) :  They all serve different needs, and sometimes different income segments.  Not everyone is going to be able to drive to a Walmart, or shop at malls.   The neighborhood shop selling everything from toothpaste to SIM cards is not going to go away anytime soon, whatever giant retailer comes in.  To say that Walmart will harm small vendors is like saying McDonalds will harm the roadside chaat / tea shop.

2.  Premium pricing has not meant better quality :  I have found this to be true of almost every product and service in India. Just because you go to a big store and pay a premium for a product, you cannot expect either that the product will be better quality, or that the service will be better.  Prices for a whole lot of products are the same as in the US, though the quality is just not the same.

When I visit India, I buy kurtis and bags from street vendors for Rs 100 or so.  I also buy kurtis from big-name stores in malls, and from Fabindia for anywhere from Rs 400 to Rs 1000.  At the end of the day, I don’t find much difference between the Rs 100 kurti and the Rs 500 one.  Both are cotton, both run during the initial few washes, and both last equally long.

3.  Customer service is non-existent :  Most stores in India will not allow a customer to return a product even if he/she has the purchase receipt and the product is unused.  Salesmen are more inclined to hardsell a product than understand the customer’s needs and steer her to what will fit her needs. And if you get a lemon, getting the store or the manufacturer to fix anything is extremely time-consuming.   I have been surprised that the same big name brands who provide excellent customer service in the US do not do so in India, not even in their company-owned stores.  If  the advent of FDI means stores with US standards of customer service, it would be a big improvement.

A Bharti Walmart store in Amritsar. (Pic courtesy : PTI/ The Hindu)

4.  Local industry doesn’t have to suffer :  A lot of stuff will still be made in India.  If people want to use Hamam soap and Bambino vermicelli, that is what Walmart will have to stock.  Even where there is no brand preference, it makes complete sense to source items locally instead of importing them from say, Mexico.  It’s not as if products made in China are not already sold in  Indian stores, small and large.  That is the greater threat to Indian industry, not Walmart.  Granted, Walmart has a long history of squeezing its suppliers (and will do the same to any Indian suppliers), but the suppliers who stick with Walmart do so because what they lose in margins per unit, they make up with the huge volumes.

Finally, the FDI approval does state that “ 30 per cent of the products must be procured from small scale industries which have a total investment in plant and machinery not exceeding $1 million. ”

5. Hypermarkets aren’t new to India, right ?  We already have the Big Bazaars and Spencer’s and so on.  So what are these international chains going to do that’s so dangerous for local industry? If anything, the consumer will have greater choice.

6. Some categories currently have no big players :  There are some categories of stores that are just not present in India.  For instance, we have the friendly neighborhood hardware stores, but something like Home Depot could really change people’s attitudes towards DIY.  (At first, though, people will just buy tools so their handyman/carpenter has what is needed.  A bit like how washing machines mainly make the maid’s work easier.)

Similarly, craft shops like Joann could potentially do well in India given how many people still sew/ embroider/ knit etc.  Knowing India, it could well also be a go-to store for tailors and owners of clothing boutiques.

7.  The Prime Minister’s perishables argument is very true : We do have enormous wastage in foods and vegetables because small stores and vegetable vendors cannot afford refrigerated trucks, or actually any refrigeration.  The stores lose money, and so does the consumer (because a lot of the fruits/ vegetables spoil too quickly after purchase).

Having said all this, a Walmart , Target or  Home Depot will only do well in India if it adapts quickly to the Indian market, otherwise it could very well fail spectacularly.  So it should be very interesting to see how this all plays out over the next few months.

I may be an extreme case, but apparently, I am not alone.  It is easy to see where all the bloggers are these days.  Not on their blogs, surely, for on the rare occasion that I open up my feed reader (do people even still use them?) I see hardly any new posts.  Perhaps they are on Facebook and Twitter, but they are definitely visible on Flipkart.  Every Indian blogger seems to have a book or three out.

Frankly, I am envious of them.  Leave alone writing books, I’d love to be able to get a chance to write a mere blog post.  Gone are the days when my only excuse for not blogging was laziness. These days I compose multiple blog posts in my head, where they are doomed to remain, for I am destined to not touch a laptop while S is around. The little despot has long decreed that all laptops/ tablet PCs/ phones, cameras and other electronic devices are hers alone. Even when she was barely crawling, she would rush across and close any laptop that anyone dared use around her.

Then there is the question of sleep.  It has been a while since I have had more than 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep, and more than 6 hours of a night’s sleep.  It has, in fact, been more than a year.  There are bad days that I muddle through, zombie-like, and good days when I am merely tired. Multiple night wakings have always been the norm with S, on bad days it could be as frequent as every hour.

S (at 6 months) “reading” an ebook

Almost every pediatrician I have talked to during the last year has had the same solution – let her cry it out. The Ferber method is the standard mantra for sleep training in the West. “Cry It Out” (CIO) and its variations like Attended CIO are used to teach babies to soothe themselves.

CIO works for many babies. I have heard many parents tell me how their child started sleeping through the night after a few days of CIO. What is less clear is why it works. Does the baby really learn to soothe himself/ herself, or does he/ she decide that crying is a waste because no one is going to listen to them? Then there are studies that show that CIO can cause really high levels of the stress hormone cortisol and kill neurons.

Having decided that I am not going to attempt CIO or any kind of sleep training, I have no choice but to muddle my way through. But I was tired of the constant admonitions to CIO, so I changed pediatricians till I found one who said that sleep training was unnecessary, that she would eventually outgrow the nightwakings. Unfortunately, he followed this very reassuring statement with “She is not going to do this till she goes to college, right?” which was a little less reassuring.

The good thing, though is that S has started taking longer afternoon naps, so maybe, just maybe, I might be able to blog more frequently.

That, at any rate, is my hope. Some day (maybe by the time S goes to college) I shall have enough time to write a book. But for now, baby steps.

She had spent the last month or more in the hospital, mainly in the ICU at a big name hospital.  A great team of doctors was taking care of her round the clock, as were a great team of caregivers – two sons and three daughters.

The problem, in some ways, was that there was too much care.  There were tubes attached to her neck, and tubes attached to her wrists. She had bed sores.  She had never worn anything but a sari tied in the orthodox “madisaar” in all her ninety three years, now she had to wear a hospital gown, and worse, diapers.  She hated the diapers, and in the initial few days of hospital stay, would insist on walking to the bathroom.  She was not allowed to drink more than a few teaspoons of coffee, even when she begged for it.

There was nothing much wrong with her when she was admitted to hospital.  She had had a fall, and though she did not seem to have suffered anything more than a cut, the doctors found that her sodium levels were low.  So they began injecting sodium.  But hospital stays take a toll on everyone, and more so in the elderly.  Soon she had pneumonia and was on a ventilator, and by the time she recovered from the infection and was off the ventilator, her heart began to weaken.  The doctors would not discharge her until she was perfectly normal, which, for 93 year old, was probably  expecting too much.  They even went to the extent of saying, at times, that they could not guarantee she would even reach home alive if they discharged her (although  there didn’t seem to be anything to justify this statement, she was mainly just under observation, though taking medication.)

Even if she had been discharged, the question was how to take care of her.  The hospital stay was very expensive (Rs 20,000 per day on ICU and medication alone, not including doctors’ fees) and she did not need much except for an oxygen cylinder and a nurse.  But round the clock nursing support was not available in the city, and my grandmother’s children are all themselves in their 60s and 70s and cannot manage 24×7 care without help.  My grandmother was desperate to go home, she was begging every visitor every day to take her home, but that was just not possible.

It is always very difficult, emotionally, for any child to decide to stop treatment for a parent.  It is even more difficult, rather, almost impossible to do so when the doctors treating her are eager to try every possible aggressive intervention.  But at what stage (and what age) should the doctors decide to step back and try palliative care/ hospice care instead of prolonging the agony? Shouldn’t this be either the doctor’s decision, or at least a suggestion by the doctors to the immediate family?  Only the doctors know the exact prognosis and chances if recovery.  They are also the ones who know how much pain a procedure can cause (the family can guess by looking at the patient, but when the patient is in ICU they don’t see him/ her  often).

There are many studies that show that hospice care/ palliative care can actually prolong the life of patients. Here is one study, which states “Prolongation of life and focus on quality of life seem to be at first glance mutually exclusive. However, in daily clinical routine they occasionally do simultaneously occur, when further medical treatment to prolong life is not successful, not appropriate, or simply refused by the patient.”  There are other situations, like end-stage cancer patients, where palliative care has been shown to prolong life.

If nothing else, in my grandmother’s case, it would have allowed her to die surrounded by her family, in familiar surroundings, doing the things she liked (watching tear-jerker serials, drinking coffee).  The question is – why is this facility not available in India?  There are two ways of doing this – one is to have a hospice care center in the hospital itself where the patient could be admitted, and/or have a staff of trained nurses who would be available for in-home care for patients.  The doctors should be able to suggest hospice care rather than aggressive intervention where they feel the situation demands it.

This is going to be an increasingly common issue in India, as the population ages.  Paying for round-the-clock nursing is not the issue here, many people can afford to pay and would be willing to pay. The problem seems to be availability of trained nurses. The ideal situation would be for the hospital itself to provide in-home nurses who would take over the care of the patient.  This way the hospital is not  discharging the patient without continuation of appropriate care.

From my research, it appears that there are a few hospice facilities in India, although these appear to be independent entities that are not affiliated to any hospital.  In-home nursing is a completely different story.  There are a few firms that claim to provide in-home nursing, the credentials of these firms and quality of nursing  is anybody’s guess, and very few hospitals loan out nurses for in-home care.  For a country that provides exports nurses on a regular basis, it is amazing how difficult it is to find a trained nurse in a major city to provide in-home care.

From a hospital’s perspective, I can see that providing hospice care is not as lucrative as more aggressive treatment.  But surely, doctors are not thinking of the hospital’s bottom line when they suggest medical treatments?  I’d rather think they are just showing misguided enthusiasm.  Or perhaps, in the absence of a framework for hospice / palliative care, they are forced to choose between aggressive treatment and no treatment.  In the case of my grandmother, this meant that with the best care in the world, she still ended up suffering so much (despite not having any painful illness) that one could only see her death as a relief from her suffering.

All of which just underscores the urgent need for a better system of hospice/ palliative care in India, and a much better system of in-home nursing assistance.

Both licenses were obtained through a driving school.  I would have had to go through the driving school to learn car driving anyway, but for the two wheeler license, the driving school was just an expensive way to circumvent the long delays at the RTO, not to mention the bribes that needed to be given.  The Driving School’s main job really was to take care of the bribe-giving  and smooth the process.  I still had to get my Learner License, and pass the driving test, everything I would have done otherwise.  This was in Chennai, though, and one always hears anecdotes about RTOs in other states/ cities where you don’t have to take any test, or have to just show up on test day, to get a license.  The RTO, after all, is a part of the State Government, so the rules, or at least the level of enforcement of the rules, can very well vary from state to state.   I had one colleague who couldn’t get a car license in Delhi (his right hand was afflicted by polio), so he went to Bihar, where he apparently did not need to take a test.  He drove well enough, and with power steering and automatic transmission, I  don’t see why his driving one-handed was a problem for the RTO, but I suppose India is still not disabled-friendly in many ways.

But coming back to RTO corruption, if this blog post on India Ink is any indication, nothing has changed – you still need a Driving School to smooth your way in the RTO.  The blog post talks circumspectly about the RTO “maze” and “drudgery” – there is no maze except the hierarchy of bribe-giving that’s involved.

It’s surprising, though, that nothing has changed.  It is common knowledge that the RTO is one of the most corrupt parts of Government.  It is also one of  those Government departments which deal with the public on a daily basis.

Given all the anti-corruption movements and the mood of the people, I’m assuming that both Central and State governments are doing something about reducing corruption.  If they are, shouldn’t the RTO be one of the first places they start with?

Has anyone found that RTOs have actually become less corrupt, or are things still the same ?

Pic : Flickr/ S_W_Ellis

Yes, I know it is February and normally the peak of winter, but this year winter seems to have made a guest appearance. There is practically no snow on the ground this year.  The temperatures have been in the thirties.  It feels more like we are already in an early spring.  Not that I am complaining, especially after last year’s Snowmageddons.

But this weather means, among other things, that the pond ice must not be too thick.  The backyard pond freezes over every winter; the ice is thick enough to walk on, and I have always wondered if it is thick enough to drive a car on.  I suspect it would be, but in six years of living here, though, I haven’t even walked on the pond in winter, let alone drive a car on it.

This winter though, there have been very few days of  subzero temperatures, and for the past week or more, the temperatures have been in the thirties.  I thought that was perhaps not cold enough for thick ice to form.  Yet the neighbor has bravely decided to build a hockey rink in the backyard.

When we say “hockey” in these parts, we mean ice hockey, of course.  When Sarah Palin called herself a “Hockey Mom”, she did not mean the game that Dhyan Chand played.  That would be”Field hockey”, a sport that very few people play.  I suspect we will have to explain the game to  people in this country as ice hockey played on astroturf. To my mind, though, calling ice hockey as hockey (or NFL football as football) is like calling table tennis as tennis.

Ice hockey is a deceptively violent and dangerous game. It’s  not just that players use the hockey puck as an assault weapon, but these games are played on ice. Even with helmets and protective gear, falls on ice cause concussions and other injuries. Players have even died of on-ice injuries. (Look at this list of ice hockey player deaths on wikipedia – quite a few on-ice deaths since 1990 alone.  And this list is only pro ice hockey, and does not include high school and college teams).

What this means is that even if you are playing ice hockey in your backyard, you still need to don helmets and other protective gear. If anything, it might be slightly more dangerous as the ice will not be as smooth as in a rink.

This year, there is another danger, with the warmer temperatures – the risk of melting ice.

When I saw the neighbor carving out the rink with a shovel, I worried he would fall through the ice.  I was excited at the idea of watching an impromptu game of ice hockey, but didn’t think it would happen.  After all, there is field hockey and ice hockey, but there is no such thing as pond hockey.

Then, finally, it happened today evening.  No ice hockey, just broomball.  We got an invitation to join too, but then that would involve babysitters and so on.

The pond ice, we were told, was 10 inches thick.

If you are like me then, you’d be fascinated by “Growing Up Amish”.  It’s about one man’s experience of trying multiple times to leave the Amish church, and finally succeeding.  I’m usually not a big fan of autobiographies or memoirs, but I found this quite interesting.

There are, of course, the glimpses you get on everyday life in Amishland – on their dating customs, their religious customs and so on.  Even though these reminiscences are more than two decades old, I suspect that most things are the same way even now.

You get a fascinating male perspective to what it is to be Amish, and more importantly, the thought process that goes on.  I’ve always wondered why anyone would voluntarily choose to abandon every creature comfort and live an ascetic’s life.  It’s one thing when the poor do it when they have no choice, but why would someone who can afford a car drive a horse-drawn buggy, and why would someone reject electricity and indoor plumbing?

Part of the answer to this, I suspect, lies in the fact that women have little to no say in Amish life, and they do all the housework.  If men had to wash clothes by hand everyday or cook on a smoke-filled wood-burning stove, I suspect they would very quickly bring in electricity and indoor plumbing.

I do wish I could get more insight on how it would be to be a woman in Amishland.  One imagines a lifetime of toiling all day – cooking, canning, cleaning, dressmaking and sewing, laundry, childcare etc.  Big family sizes are very common, so the woman is also likely frequently pregnant while doing all this. Yet it looks like joint families are rare, so there’s little help.

A search on Amazon tells me there are several memoirs by people who have left the Amish, some by women.  I should probably read this book, for instance, to get a woman’s perspective.

Interestingly, it looks like cars and telephones are not verboten under all circumstances.  They do use the car of their “English” (non-Amish) neighbors for needs like say, medical emergencies (or if the grocery store is really far away).  There seems to be no prohibition about riding in a car  every now and then. Phones too, are used occasionally, it is only  having a phone or car in one’s own house that is forbidden.  So while I’m glad that pregnant women in labor aren’t driven to the hospital in horse drawn buggies, it only makes me wonder why there is such a rule in the first place, and why  anyone would listen to such a rule.

You can see why, after reading this book.  It’s fascinating to read about the conditioning, and the kind of brainwashing that the Amish go through.  We are the chosen ones, we are special. Our way is the only way of life to live.  Things should be this way because they have always been this way.  We cannot use telephones because we have never used telephones.   Changing our way of life would mean succumbing to the Devil’s temptations.

This kind of reasoning may seem silly to us, but the fact is that for thousands of Amish people, this makes complete sense.  It’s revealing how much this author struggles with life outside the Amish code.  It may be okay for people who were not born Amish, he reasons, to use phones or electricity or any of the other myriad modern things, but for someone born Amish, living the “English” way would mean a straight ticket to Hell.

The strange thing is that here the debate is not about the basic tenets of religion, the “English” and the Amish are both Christians, but it is about a way of life.  It’s not that there is even anything unusual about the Amish logic.  This-is-the-way-we-should-do-things-because-that’s-what-our-ancestors-did is a reasoning that’s common to every culture in the world.

But most cultures don’t shun change, they adapt to the changing times by incorporating the new mores into their customs.  The Amish seem to be trying to make time stand still in the 1800s.  It’s not surprising that would be a losing cause, what’s fascinating is the extent to which they have succeeded.

After reading different threads on wordpress.org and unsuccessfully trying all kinds of fixes, I came across one fix which suggested that the problem could be solved by adding a line to wp-config.php.  (Specifically,   you should add define('CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS', false);)

Except, I had no idea where wp-config.php was.  I opened Filezilla and tried to connect to my hosting provider, something I hadn’t done in years.  Of course I had forgotten the password.

After a few unsuccessful tries, I figured out the password, but Filezilla still would not connect. That turned out to be a firewall issue, so I had to fix that.

Finally, I located wp-config.php and added the line, and voila, my blog’s editor was back to normal!  Yes, I could finally get started on my post!

As if on cue, S started to bawl.  She was hungry. Or sleepy. Or both.  My window of bloggability had just closed for the day.

Time was when my absence from my blog could be explained very simply as laziness.  Nothing has changed since then – I still don’t blog frequently, but the excuses have become more complicated.