the write experiment

A recent article on being socially hyper-neworked, reminded me of two things.

The first.

No matter what the medium and how fast and new and convenient (add any number of other incentives), it seems that the onus of keeping communication alive can still remain as one-sided as it did in the day of snail mail. I suppose I should have learnt my lesson by now. But the eternal optimist in me (or perhaps, it is the love of writing in me?) persists. As a child, I took to the concept of 'Penpals' on Young Times (a supplement of Khaleej Times) instantly. Unfortunately, my pals' responses went from excited to tepid to none at all. My parents reasoned that clearly this was a lot of work to undertake for the sake of complete strangers. They had a point.

So, I tried again with best friends. As I had many opportunities to experiment with this variant of penpals, what with moving schools, apartments, cities and countries (with the last one, I was hopeful of adding to my other agenda of collecting stamps ;)), I figured this model was guaranteed a greater degree of success. I would studiously compile addresses before each move and set aside generous portions of my pocket money for stationery and stamps right after, and promptly send my friends a letter with my new address. Ironically, with this second model, the responses started directly from tepid and rapidly progressed to none at all. On occasion I would receive letters written by the respective mothers. Sigh.

As luck would have it, from time to time our worlds would collide again. And what had been painfully buried as a failed experiment would be dug out again, by a careless comment, such as "I used to love getting your letters. And then you moved." I would think to myself, at least they loved it. Oh well.

And then email arrived. I don't think I need to elaborate on the response rate with this new experiment. :)

The second.

Social networking sites have created a new layer of awareness. What was blissfully ignored is now dangled blatantly in your face. For instance, in years past, I could be completely unaware that a friend was in town at the same time as I was, but chose to call upon another/other friend/s forgetting me altogether. Now, I cannot. What's curious though, is a good number of these kind folks are the ones to have taken the initiative to search you up and add you as a 'friend' in the first place, leaving you with the challenge of trying to figure out if the person now sporting uber-starightened hair, a new-happily-married-last name, and an interesting online avatar is the same person you saw everyday in school a decade ago; posing the dilemma of whether or not to post birthday wishes on his/her wall; and the familiar response to your 'How are you? It's nice to connect after so long'.

Someday in the not so distant future, we might be able to surround ourselves with the virtual clones of everyone in our social network. I wonder what the communication experiment will result in then. A babel of noises? Or, perhaps, a shattering silence. Only time can tell. I do know that I will continue to write...and sing :)

As Arjun says, just breeeeathe...:)

a bar of soap

Little nuggets of happiness are stored in the most unexpected places. Yesterday, after an evening walk at the beach with my parents, Mom and I decided to stop at a road-side bead shop on the way back home, and stumbled into another store that had eluded us for many days. The store, (appropriately) named EcoNut, was supposed to house all kinds of natural, minimally packaged, organic goodies of the kind that is rare to find these days with the explosion of retail multiplexes in the city. As overjoyed as we were to have found the place at long last, I was even more thrilled to find that they stocked NEEV soaps!

A couple of years ago, a friend had brought me a soap handcrafted by a community of rural women in a village in Jharkhand; the enterprise itself had been set up to employ rural people while creating a more eco-friendly alternative to the most commonly marketed soaps. I was sold. But it was many months before I actually tried it out. When the most favorable conditions of discovering I was down to the last few drops of my body wash and no time to make a dash to the store coincided, I went hurriedly looking for that most curiously packaged bar of goodness. At the risk of sounding like a self-appointed brand manager for NEEV, I will proclaim that it was and is still, the most wonderfully moisturizing and refreshing piece of toiletry ever to have been made. Its fragrance (of that earthy first-raindrops-on-parched-mud kind) was so redolent that it lingered for hours afterward filling my senses at every corner of my apartment. Panic instantly gave way to the most luxurious bath I ever remember having. Alas, like all things material, that bar of soap vanished into edible oil. And with it went my morning thrill of being surrounded by its exquisite aroma.

Now, nearly two years thence, I have been reunited with this wondrous creation of man (& woman- please check out their website, they do some awesome work!). :)

a familiar strain...

the steady rainfall and the gusty winds reminded me of this, my favorite song from more than a year ago

ओ रे मनवा तू तो बावरा है
तू ही जाने तू क्या सोचता है
तू ही जाने तू क्या सोचता है बावरे
क्यूँ दिखाए सपने तू सोते जागते
जो बरसें सपने बूँद बूँद
नैनों को मूँद मूँद...

Ahh! Music, rain and a steaming cup of tea...life is good. :)

In the end

nothing ever quite pans out the way you or I may plan it. Okay, so this post isn't about to be as serious as it was made to sound with that ominous start. But I thought I would document it here, anyway, that I am now the proud owner of both The Razor's Edge and The English Patient. And yet I brought neither along on my travel; the snippet about the former turned out to be very similar to Siddhartha and Narcissus and Goldmund (both excellent reads by the masterful Herman Hesse, by the way). The latter, a hard-bound heavy-weight, (all puns intended) was too heavy to carry in flight. I did have very pleasant company in the form of a vibrant Parsi community living in Mumbai in the mid '80s, all on print of course.

In the end, too, Madras isn't quite the inferno I'd feared it would be. It has been raining the last few days and it is almost comic how breezy and pleasant it is. Also, this is the first vacation in which I've been able to visit the beach almost every single day. Ah, bliss! :)

Did I mention, how, also, in the end, after weeks of planning a mini ten-year high school reunion, one friend fell sick, another's child did and 2 others canceled their travel plans altogether? Yeah. So, that's that. What I'd envisioned as two weeks of frenzied social activity turned out to be the exact opposite. But, oh, well. I'm not complaining. Surprises of this kind, are not too bad. After all, there's much movie-watching, reading and writing, eating, sleeping and a lot of not-doing-anything to be done! :)
So long!~

a suitable choice...

Yesterday, I accidentally stumbled upon the fact that Somerset Maugham (who, by the way, is one of my all time favorite authors) modeled the character of teacher in his novel The Razor's Edge after Sri Ramana Maharshi. This book (and practically all of Maugham's work) has been on my list of books to read for as long as I can remember and this piece of trivia does make it a very inviting choice for my next read. What's this post about then, you ask.
Well. Yesterday, I also found out that the Stanford book club is reading The English Patient this month. Also a book that hasn't budged from the same list for years. It was an entry made after an aggravating experience when the DVD of the movie version got stuck at what seemed like a pivotal point. Hmm...I must note here that I own neither the Maugham nor the Ondaatje. In hindsight, perhaps this was a question better saved for the Palo Alto Library to answer.
Oh, my dear blog! It must just be that I miss musing about all and sundry to you, then. Hey, there! :)

I am not sure if this is something that bothers any of you, but it is certainly a tricky situation that I haven't been able to resolve for myself. Here's the problem:
Have you ever been asked to lend a pen or pencil for 'just a moment'? I'm sure you have. Now here's what happens to me- the moment becomes eternity and the person all but forgets that the pencil is mine and walks away with it. The dilemma is, whether or not to chase after the person and ask for the pencil.
It isn't really about the pencil, see. It's a trivial thing. But it's about the convenience of the thing. Every time that happens, I have to go around the rest of the day asking to borrow a pencil for 'just a moment' and then also remember to return it!
Ack!!!
p.s: I haven't yet decided if the title ought to be 'A Pen-ny for your thoughts' or 'Penning my thoughts'. ;)

Have I mentioned lately, how wonderful it feels to sing? Well, it does :)

The rains have put me in the mood for music...
For the first time ever, today I truly enjoyed watching the rain fall in bucketfuls. And for the first time too, I listened to music all day as I worked, previously impossible for me to achieve together...and what's more, as I reached for my Rahim Alhaj Oud CD, I discovered an entire pamphlet inside which I'd completely missed on the umpteen occasions I previously heard this album! Not only did it contain a description of the Western equivalent of each Iraqi Maqam (or scale) for every song, I found in it Rumi's beautiful words that seem to so aptly convey what I feel today...
And so I share, this.

Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
It doesn't matter.
We have fallen into the place
Where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
Rise into the atmosphere,
And even if the whole world's harp should burn up, there will still be
Hidden instruments playing...

- Rumi

On his birth anniversary

and on this day of 09-09-09, a beautiful quote just for you:

"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love."

- Leo Tolstoy, From War and Peace.

September is Hispanic Heritage Month and... *drum roll* Self-Improvement Month- couldn't have come sooner for me :)

The Daily News 08/27/2009, Page A02


Random act of kindness balloons


BY LISA FERNANDEZ

Bay Area News Group

A lost wallet. A generous offer. A random comment on Facebook.

This odd recipe sparked at a Trader Joe’s checkout counter has yielded an unusual outpouring of donations totaling more than $ 2,000 to feed the hungry in Silicon Valley. And an energized group of virtual — and real — friends say this viral story highlights the best in human kindness magnified through the hyper- power of social networking.

“ I was blown away at how incredibly fast others had thrown their hat in the ring,” said Carolee Hazard, 43, of Menlo Park — the good Samaritan who started the good- karma phenomenon. “ It’s been incredible to see this grow and how excited people are getting. I have told the story to my friends and they say it gives them goose bumps.”

What led to the goose bumps all began Aug. 11, when hypnotherapist Jenni Ware, 45, of Redwood City realized she lost her wallet while standing in line at Trader Joe’s in Menlo Park. Her cart was packed with groceries. And she had no way to pay for it.

Waiting in line behind the frazzled shopper was Hazard, a retired Genentech biochemist and green activist, who had her daughters, Makenzie, 9, and Jessica, 7, in tow.

“ She was clearly in distress,” Hazard said.

And without thinking much about it, she charged the stranger’s bill — $ 207.29 — on her own credit card.

“ I was at a low point that day,” Ware said. “ I couldn’t believe it. It was a miracle. But I reluctantly accepted it. I knew I was going to pay her back.”

Being kind to strangers isn’t new for Hazard. Her husband, Jon, a senior manager of engineering operations at Google, said his wife sometimes pays strangers’ bridge tolls, just to see their surprised faces in her rearview mirror.

Hazard is also the glue in her neighborhood, both in person and with her Facebook community. When she returned from Trader Joe’s that day, she posted her vacillation on whether to feel “ very good” about what she had done or “ very, very stupid.”

Later that same day, Ware retraced her steps, and discovered her wallet at Draeger’s Markets. She wrote her grocery store “ angel” a check for $ 300. She suggested her benefactress treat herself to a massage with the leftover cash.

Hazard thought to simply return the extra $ 93. Before she did though, she turned to Facebook again. She asked her online community: What would you do?

Within moments, friends suggested she donate the surplus to a charity, and they mentioned several. But the one that seemed perfect for this occasion, since it began in a grocery store, was Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clar a and San Mateo Counties. Hazard loved the idea and matched Ware’s original $ 93 with her own. Then another friend said he’d pitch in $ 93. And so on. Even 8- year- old Maddie Campbell, whose mother learned of the story on Facebook, walked over to Hazard’s house with her parents’ $ 93 check. She also brought along her own 93 cents.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Hazard said she had $ 1,309.90 in her hand and almost $ 1,000 more in pledges. Ware’s friends are now sending in money. And some out- of- state friends have vowed to donate $ 93 of their own to their local food banks.

Second Harvest executives couldn’t be more thrilled.

“ It’s just amazing,” spokeswoman Lynn Crocker said. “ The money is very significant. But on a personal level, to be so generous to a stranger, and the stranger reciprocates, it just warms my heart. It shows me that the majority of people are decent and kind and loving.”

Ware and Hazard are no longer stra ngers. They’ve become Facebook friends and they’ve made a realworld connection that will likely stay with them the rest of their lives. Ware remembers that she was at a “ spiritual low” that day in the grocery store, and Hazard’s “ tap on the shoulder” reminded her of God and good people.

“ My faith in humanity is just huge,” Ware said. “ It’s just a reminder that there are these amazingly awesome people out there. And it also reminds me of how good I want to be.”

and August is the month of Romance!~

The month of...

Ice cream!!!! Apparently.
Okay, this is not about my little VOTM actually, but I just noticed today as I was about to change the calendar page over to August before leaving from work, that there is a tiny caption hidden in a corner for each month that says what that month is (meant for) observing/honoring/celebrating. And I am so far behind, I thought I would list it so you might enjoy/observe in retrospect (or look up for next year :) ). Well, that's not entirely true, I think some have been popularized and duly observed, such as Black history month and National garden month to name a couple, but for the rest, here goes:

January: Celebration of Life and International Creativity month
February: Black History and American Heart month
March: Wome's History month
April: National Garden month
May: Older American and Asian/Pacific American Heritage month
June: Adopt a Cat month
July: Yes! Ice cream month. (I always knew it deserved a month dedicated to it).
and...
August: will have to wait until tomorrow ;)

Madras in Alameda

For anybody interested, the Phoenix Adlabs in San Jose provides quite the authentic movie-going experience, corrected to a b-grade theater in Madras in the mid-80s, the reenaction, wholly, unintended.



Perhaps I should begin by rewinding to the conversation en route to the theater on May 31st, to the screening of Margazhi Raagam. (To be clear, this post is solely dedicated to the setting of a unique visual and aural treat and has nothing, absolutely, to do with margazhi or raagam). N, S and I agreed that bringing the traditional kutcheri to digital cinema was indeed a novel concept; we mused about the endless possibilities for improvisation that this unconventional format for presenting Carnatic music might provide; what effects might they create? Oh! what magic and dazzle might digital surround sound add to this divine art form? And so on we went...B, wearing a sage smile the whole while, kept his own counsel.



Our collective imagination soared and with it our expectations.



"My parents saw it in Madras last year and the experience was really pretty good.'



"I would've liked to see it in the Dolby labs in the city; it sounded like it would be the ideal place for such an experiment...I wonder what the Phoenix Adlabs would be like."



"Well, considering they only picked two locations to screen it at, it must be good."



"Yeah, it must."



"I mean, why would they present such a format in anything but a place with superb acoustics??"



Seriously.



"Yeah, the entire package is supposed to be pretty neat."



...



"So, where is the theater exactly?"



"On the right, a few blocks down I guess; we're still at 1600, we need to hit 1400."

"I am sure we will see it."




"I hope there is sufficient parking."



"I hope we aren't too late to find good seats."







...



"Wait, it's this one on the right!"

"Really? Do you see a parking garage?"

"No...not really."

Hmm...




...

We had arrived half an hour early, as recommended. The 'Phoenix Adlabs', we discovered, was the more ambitious name for the imagined alter ego of what's also famously known as the IMC6- India Movie Center. There was a line all right, of the much-branched chaotic sort you see in any kind of Indian congregation. They could hardly be blamed for gathering thus; the hallway just past the entrance could have barely held more than 50 people wihout some serious air circulation issues.



The canteen to the left was just coming alive as we got there; trays of samosas, bought the previous day at one of the numerous Indian grocery stores, no doubt, were being unwrappped; a coffee machine, with dust gathering on the top and rings of dried decoction in the transparent carafe stared back at us. A narrow carpet that had been worn to the point of being indistinguishable from the flooring, led the way to the main auditorium. The side walls were adorned with centerpage Filmfare poster cutouts of a pouting Kareena Kapoor and a sultry Priyanka Chopra.



Have you ever been transported in time to a place far away from just a fleeting sensation? A familiar melody perhaps, or the sight of a scooter in PA or the smell of earth as the first drops of rain fall upon it? I was. Quite violently.

Having scaled back my expectations by several notches already, I was completely unprepared for the smell that welcomed us in to the hall. I was thrown back to a summer 10 years ago, to a small dilapidated theater in Madurai, where the smell of dried cowdung patties on the outside and the pungent odour of bathrooms just cleaned out with phenol mingled freely, not to mention the various other tantalizing aromas that numb the olfactory system in an Indian summer.

As we made our way into the hall, which I might add was very nearly empty, the odour got only stronger. We realized as we sat down that this most incredible stench emanated from the seats! Oh! How wonderful that we should now be able to carry back a reminder of this experience all the way home! As I looked up to entreat the Lord, the peeling blue paint on the ceiling only filled me with more foreboding for the rest of the afternoon.

...

The auditorium started to fill up slowly. Children scurried about noisily as the ground floor of Nalli was recreated around us. That was all fine and well, until popcorn cones arrived. Now, I don't know about you, but that was just not something I had imagined along with a kutcheri. Coffee, perhaps, but popcorn and soda? This added a zing to the already heady mix of fragrances available, mind you.



A good three-quarters of an hour later, a small group gathered at a podium to the front of the hall. The gentleman, who'd served at the make-shift ticket counter, the usher, and also briefly seen behind the canteen counter, took on the mantle of well, I don't know, the compeer. He literally yelled out to us, mike and all notwithstanding, (he was excited I could tell) how it was that SIFA came to host this screening, solely for our enjoyment. After the group was done exchanging mutual admiration on a job well done, he shouted out to us to be sure to enjoy. Now that the tone had been set, we only prayed that the light bulb glaring at us from the side of the podium would be turned off.





...

For the next two hours, our ears were digitally pounded and stunned by what was to be an exciting new experiment in taking Indian classical music to the next stage. We certainly had a thing or two to recommend to the distributors for future endeavours, the most obvious being a better 'lab' at the very least.

Having said all that I must end by adding quite frankly that it was entirely to the artists' credit, singers, accompanists, cinematographers and the entire team really, that we enjoyed the music in spite of IMC. A brilliant performance all around, and a testament to the fact that despite a frightening package, the music inside had all the power to transport us to a vastly different plane and to move us as only music can...

Filoli gardens

A beautiful California Saturday was spent exploring this national historic estate: The Filoli Gardens. Snuggled away in the Woodside hills, the 600-acre estate has a sprawling 43-room mansion, surrounded by a series of wonderfully designed and painstakingly manicured gardens. Walking through the rose garden, with a myriad different varieties of sweet smelling roses, all in full bloom was indeed a most delightful experience. As if this treat of nature were not enough, there was an art exhibition too, and I am told a Jazz festival is coming in summer! I highly recommend a visit to this estate, which offers nature hikes as well...I shall stop here with my advertising efforts for the gardens and conclude with what struck me the most from the visit.
The original owner of the estate had chosen the name Filoli as an acronym of sorts from these three guiding principle he'd lived his life by.
'Fight for a just cause, love your fellowmen and live a good life.'

Wonderful, eh? :)

What makes home so special?

Yes, the people we love. Yes, the sights and sounds made familiar and dear from a lifetime of memories. But a beautiful poem shared by N made me wonder if there were not something else too? I speak only for myself here. In my moments of weakness, I have often wondered if home were not also that place in which we feel completely unjudged and un-compelled to strive to be, rather to just be; a place where we are unquestionably and unconditionally loved, a place that brings forth an outpouring of our own love. A place we feel entitled to belong to; a place where we do not always have to be strong...
It makes me wonder then about all the fears that I must overcome to always feel at home; always be loving and loved. It makes me strive for a state of being of complete abandon and peace, within as from without; to know I am home.

i am so proud of my bbbb :)

http://www.hindu.com/2009/05/15/stories/2009051559340400.htm

Trust engenders trustworthiness

I have talked of this to many friends before, but I felt the urge, nonetheless, to record here a lesson I was truly blown away by in my masters program. While the principle was there all along for me to apply as a student, it was only as a TA that the full force of it hit me. The honor code.

Per Wiki:

'An honor code or honor system is a set of rules or principles governing a community based on a set of rules or ideals that define what constitutes honorable behavior within that community. The use of an honor code depends on the idea that people (at least within the community) can be trusted to act honorably...'

Having always been accustomed to the presence of an invigilator during examinations at schools and colleges back home, on the first mid-term that my fellow TAs and I were asked to proctor here, I assumed, naturally, that one TA ought to sit inside the classroom keeping watch over the students. Lest they resort to some malpractice, yeah? Just as I made myself comfortable and pulled out a book to read, the senior TA whispered urgently from outside for me to come out. I did, expecting her to tell me something important. But she just smiled and showed me the book she was reading, the exact same thing I'd brought along! A coincidence all right, but there was work to be done, so I smiled back and made for the door again. This time she touched me lightly on the shoulder and said, 'Why are you going back inside?' Puzzled, I asked, 'But shouldn't there be someone inside?'

'Oh, they'll come outside if they have any questions; they know we're right here.'

'Sure, but to proctor?'

'Proctor? We don't have to be inside to proctor. In reality it is the Honor code that does it, right?'

It took a few slow seconds for that to sink in. Yes, indeed it is the honor code that proctors. In fact, it is the honor code that binds us as a society for all ethical conduct, in all those spheres not governed by rules set in stone, authorized by any penal code.

--

Ever since I have thought about how there really can be no other way to build trust in any relationship than by stating clearly, that one trusts the other to do the right thing and holds oneself up to the same standard. (It is another matter altogether, what the agreed upon/how to know what the right thing is. But trusting first is the most critical.) Over time, it helped me also understand why at some level the popular notion parents hold of rebellious teens and their compulsion to flout norms arises. There are many complex psychological & hormonal triggers governing it for sure, but I posit that an absence of trust, is definitely what aggravates it.

Trust goes beyond an implicit decision on one's part to blindly believe in someone. It is crystallized by an honest dialog between two parties. In the specific instance used above of the dynamic between parents and children, out of a fear that addressing an issue can license or sanction less than commendble behavior in some ways, parents often fail to engage in a joint process of questioning and arriving at the truth. Instead, they lay it down as the law of the house, which ought be followed, or else... Implicit in this behavior is, at a very deep level, a lack of trust in the child that individuals are capable of reasoning and mature decision-making through a process than by an overnight switch. More deeply, and quite sadly, it must also a reflect a lack of trust in themselves too, no? A lack of confidence in their ability to lead by example, and a lack of faith in an essential goodness in beings that does respond to actions and habits that bring discord and calibrates iteratively, each at their own pace, to what restores harmony.

Applying trust more broadly to any relationship, placing trust out there on the table, I believe, is also a commitment to accept that mistakes do happen even with the best of intentions, granting that a mistake is only an opportunity to learn; it is a commitment to separate the action from the doer, to be critical of the action and only loving of the doer; it is an unerstanding that trustworthiness only springs forth by first investing trust.

--


The honor code- a sacred, unspoken truth binding the maker and the keeper and rewarding them both aplenty with conviction and honor; it rests solely on the firmament of abiding faith.

There's a hero,

If you look inside your heart,

You don't have to be afraid of what you are,

There's an answer,

If you reach into your soul,

And the sorrow that you know will melt away.

And then a hero comes along,

With the strength to carry on,

And you cast your fears aside and you know you can survive,

So when you feel like hope is gone,

Look inside you and be strong,

And you'll finally see the truth that a hero lies in you.

It's a long road,

When you face the world alone,

No one reaches out a hand for you to hold,

You can find love,

If you search within yourself,

And the emptiness you felt will disappear.

Lord knows,

Dreams are hard to follow,

But don't let anyone tear them away,

Hold on,

There will be tomorrow,

In time you'll find the way.

That a hero lies in.....you

that a hero lies in.....you....