Dangling our feet over the Seine #ParisBliss
So 2017 is the year of discovering Paris for me. Sometimes stuff you never even dreamt of comes true. I’ve spent the last couple of months steeped in logistics for this stint here, chiefly to manoeuvre things so the family could join me for some time, but without actually thinking about what it would be like. Delayed gratification, have you heard of it?
When we actually got here, it’s in the middle of a heat wave. It’s like we brought the bad weather with us from Delhi. Ever tried 37 degrees without ACS and fans?
I’ve been at work during the day, in a stifling office with the nicest people wading through literature as part of a research stay. In the evenings, I’ve tried to join the mums and kids as they explore the city. Museums in the heat is the mantra they are loosely following, spending the mornings in our rental apartment and dashing into a museum in the hot afternoon.
Yesterday I met them outside the Musee Rodin and we walked around the area, ending up in the courtyard of les Invalides, which houses the Military Museum. In this beautifully proportioned space, Aadyaa was inspired to sketch and Udai conjured up fantasies about cannon balls, fire and destruction. The walk across the vast lawns towards the Seine felt good, with the cool grass under our feet and the winds beginning to blow.
We ambled pointlessly wondering where to eat. Food was very much on the mind of the young man, who can be super fussy and was likely imagining a proper Parisian meal. Down the steps right next to Seine, the city was settling into a long evening of fun and partying. On a whim, we ordered burgers and joined the picnic. What bliss to sit dangling our feet over the lovely Seine watching the world go by, hearing laughter and conversation and sharing a hearty meal. Doesn’t Aadyaa’s expression say it all?
In India, the political is everywhere, the space for the neutral has shrunk
Everything is political in India right now. Simple pleasures are tinged with the political. Conversations, amplified and intermingled with digital social interactions, are no longer linear but imbued with multiple meanings. For instance, I befriend someone I nod at on my regular evening walks. I think this person is nice. We become Facebook friends. On FB, I find this personal has a radically opposing political stand than mine. Our evening conversations become strained. I am no longer able to separate the political from the personal. I’m suspicious about a (probably) innocent comment by the said friend about her house help’s ethnicity, for instance. I’m questioning her motivations even as I nod and listen to her. Mentally, I’m wondering if I should change my walking routine!
I’m sure this has happened to many of my friends in India. This inability to separate what used to be separate worlds for many of us middle class folks has brought an element of stress into everyday life.
This is to be expected. The spectacular rise of the BJP on the back of Modi’s popularity is rewriting the script for how we live our lives. The political thinking of our parents’ generation was dominated by post-Independence thinking and the enormous footprint of the Congress party (whether they were supporters or opposers). Young folks today are looking for change and novelty. They are accepting that the BJP is here to stay and falling in line with its new script.
For folks like me, in their 40s with a political sensibility that is part-old and part-recent, these are confusing times. Personally, I am well aware of the dangers of echo chambers. As a researcher, the easy trap of preaching to the converted is something we discuss all the time. I am used to analyzing my own speech, writing, behaviour and I put everything under the scanner.
Even so, I am deeply uncomfortable about this point we seem to have reached, when facts are junked almost entirely and we seem consumed by the political narrative. We forget that it is change driven by evidence that will eventually drive policy, innovation and investment, the factors we need to evolve, become economically stronger and deliver a better life for India’s people.
As Kaushik Basu points out in his recent piece Look at the facts of demonetisation, Modi’s ‘master stroke’ is a perfect example of a move that has been a total failure in its own stated objectives, but yet touted repeatedly as a success by a political establishment that seems to have simply erased the word failure from its vocabulary. I would be perfectly ok if they said something like: We tried our best. It did not work out as planned. I would be happy to admire the immense boldness of the move if the analysis of its outcomes were honest.
But the politics of today does not allow me to take a nuanced position. It does not allow me to be neutral if I am not also silent. For example, the critique of demonetisation offered by my colleagues and me (read our two opinion pieces here and here and listen to our podcast here), for instance, was read by several as anti-Modi anti-BJP rather than an honest analysis of what we observed in our research. Those who engaged with the content were rarely our critics, but there were many who judged us by the titles of what we wrote. There were those who refused to engage, insisting on slotting us into a particular narrow political spectrum.
Why is it that we have become so averse to complexity? Why does everything now have to be black or white, yes or no, aar ya paar? For a nation full of fence sitters, why is being politically non-aligned, or simply cautious, now a cardinal sin?
Parenting a teen: When self-awareness gets you nowhere much, you need a new toolbox
Seeking opinions on parenting a teen….
A parent never does really know right from wrong. We think we do, but in my experience a lot of it is guesswork. There appear to be some broad rules and the rest is a matter of instinct. Most times, we draw from our own memories of what we remember from our childhoods. But neither does memory always serve us well, nor are circumstances always comparable.
What we do remember though, is a code of ethics, the rights and wrongs, the general patterns of our childhoods. Who set these patterns? Our parents, other elders in the family, our peers, our living environment- many elements went into that mix. For some of us, these rules were clear despite their complexities. For others, they changed with frightening regularity, which meant we never really knew whether we were breaking them, we never really knew when we might be in trouble.
Sometimes, when we…
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Would you use innovative tools to ‘invest’ in your child?
As a mom-investor, I am trying out something new to discover my children’s interests. Would you be open to this?
There is no doubt that we parents are deeply invested (arguably, over-invested!) in our children. The quality and extent of this investment is a constant subject for debate and introspection among parents across the world. In a changing India, where economic liberalization has meant new experiences in technology, lifestyles, aspirations and opportunities for a burgeoning middle class, parents are facing new challenges.
Right from the outset of our parenting journey, Indian parents grapple with a clash of tradition and modernity. We ask basic questions about child bearing and rearing- nappies or diapers, when do we potty train, alopathy or home remedies…you get the picture. As our children grow, we struggle to keep the balance between using parental authority and encouraging independent thought. We feel frustrated when the methods our parents used with us fail to engage our children. We worry about safety, education quality and how to nurture talent and…
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Why I’m writing another blog and why parenting…
Introducing my all-new parenting blog!!
Much of the post below was written 5 years ago when I set up this blog, but for reasons unknown I never actually got going. Here I am now, reposting in the hope that I will reguarly contribute to the very important conversation around parenting.
Isn’t it already overcrowded, the parenting space? I tried several different names just to get this one for my blog! I have wanted to write about my experiences as a parent for a long time now. So many discussions with friends on other seemingly unrelated issues turn to parenting all of a sudden. I have realized, after a long struggle, that my parenting side has now got infused into everything else that I do. That instead of going to work, or going shopping and coming back to my kids, I actually look at work, chores, friends and indeed everything in life from the lens of…
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Hey kid, is your parent a part-time teenager too?
No matter how confident you are about your parenting skills, the impending teens are just sheer trouble. And it’s not about the kids. They’re doing what they do. Procrastinating, wasting time, shuffling along, despondent. Or on overdrive, wanting to overachieve, pushing you over the edge. But what do you do?
Try to be there for them, is the advice I get. But what does that mean? Does that mean be a silent supporter, opining only when asked, standing around in case you need to have their back when they are in trouble? Or does that mean being the dragon mum, actively helping them work through issues, holding them to deadlines, negotiating time schedules? Neither of the two is a comfortable position. Are you doing too little, or too much? And then there is the issue of losing your cool. For when you get there, the battle is surely lost.
A wise friend told me to not overthink it. She said I have to trust that the kids will eventually be more like the parents in terms of their values and mental make-up. While that is comforting, do I not get the chance to alert them of my own shortcomings? Can I tell them what they should not be doing, tell them about the errors I made?
I’ve been thinking (no I cannot not do the overthink!) about this for a few weeks now and I think each one of us has a teen inside us. At the core, I still feel the urge to defend myself even when I know I’m not right. I still gravitate towards those who agree with me, while dismissing folks with a contrary opinion. I still think people who judge me are uncool. I still struggle with setting goals from time to time. Have issues with planning my time and even occasional ego hassles with co-workers and friends. Yes, some bit of me is still a teen, part-time sulker, part-time enthu cutlet!
And so, I will listen to the wise ones and try and lead by example. Focus on my goals and stay calm. Leave the door open. And hope my sanity does not walk out through it!
That smile, that warmth, that beauty: Remembering my Amamma
Amma + Amma = Amamma
It’s a month today since her passing. I know she’s gone, but I still haven’t fully registered her absence. It struck me this past weekend, as mum and me sorted out her sarees, and her scent wafted around the room, that it isn’t possible to really comprehend the death of a loved one. We try, we pretend to be all pragmatic and grown up about it. We talk, we share memories, we laugh. And then, one day, in an unexpected moment, we find our cheeks wet and our hearts heavy. We find we cannot breathe very well for a few moments. Then things appear in focus again. And life goes on.
At least that’s how it has been with me this past month. The thing is, Amamma and me have always been very close. She was a second mother to me through my early childhood when I spent two years with my grandparents in Delhi while my parents were abroad. I followed her around like a puppy dog in my growing years when they lived in Bangalore, loving the scents and flavours of her divine cooking, inhaling the aromas of freshly ground coffee and the freshly picked jasmines from her garden. She had a beautiful voice and my best memories are of Amamma singing her morning prayers even as she went about doing her chores. A busybee if there was one! She taught me how to do a mean kollam and everyday of the summer vacations that I spent with them, she encouraged me and guided me in making better designs.
She was the one who pampered me during my 10th and 12th grade Board Exams, rustling of my favourite eats and handing me coffee in a flask before turning in at night, knowing I could be up studying. Even in college, when she lived alone in Chennai, I remember visiting her from college in Delhi to spend time with her. She was a good sport, accompanying me to Kancheepuram to study traditional homes for my B.Arch dissertation way back in ’98. In recent years, she has been in Gurgaon living in the adjacent building with my mum. Though the roles were reversed and it was me checking in on her every now and then, we shared an easy bond with much laughing and cuddling involved.
My relationship with Amamma was different in a very marked way from nearly all other relationships in my life. We never shared an intellectual relationship, even in part. Instead, our bond had a deep aesthetic and emotional foundation. I have known for a long time, and this has only been reinforced by the sort of memories that have surfaced recently, that I derived my love for the beautiful things in life largely from her. She shaped my aesthetic tastes in a very profound manner. In my deep comfort with music, in my enjoyment of religious rituals despite my agnostic position on religious belief, and most markedly in how I choose to dress. Her grace and beauty, inside and out, left an impression on me right from my early years. My love for dressing up, for beautiful clothes and traditional jewellery is entirely a result of her grooming and her generosity.
The trademark grin!
Speechless at her beauty
Contemplative
I see now how I’ve styled myself after her time and again, and this was brought home to me during the #100sareepact I was part of in 2015. Being the only grandchild with so much access to her, I’ve benefited from numerous handouts from her cupboard through my life-bits and pieces of jewellery, scarves, perfumes, and of course, sarees…..Each piece came with a story, a nugget of wisdom, a bit of gossip from her past. Through the years, I have constructed a veritable tapestry of her life experiences, from her childhood to her life as a wife and mother. Even those stories, unraveling from her sarees and jewelry, have been an invaluable education.
When I woke up this morning, I wanted to make today special. I wanted to clear the haze of grief and celebrate the zest and spirit that she had always had for life. I wore her saree, one of those many that have made the journey from her cupboard to mine over the years. I felt her warmth, I smiled her smile, I felt beautiful.
Broadening engagement: amidst the crowds at JLF
Don’t ask my why this is my first visit to the Jaipur Literature Festival, the literary event that seems to have caught the fancy of the public owing to its curious mix of the eclectic and popular. To be honest, it hasn’t been high on my radar but this year work took me to the Pink City during Litfest week and the coincidence was too much to ignore.
I managed to squeeze in a few sessions, all of them invigorating. Whether it was Pavan Varma quizzing Naqvi on his reading of history or Manu Joseph making tongue-in-cheek remarks about the difficulties writers face putting themselves in the opposite gender’s shoes, the content was rich and engaging. Every single venue was full. The ones with Bollywood personalities were distinctly overflowing. But sessions on Sanskrit writing and the literature of anger as expressed by Dalit and tribal writers were full as well. I wondered why.
One way of looking at it is that there are simply too many people at JLF and they have to go somewhere and do something! And while this is true, I suspect there’s a lot more going on here beyond the thrill of attending a mela.
I identified a few distinct types of visitors- the artistic and creative community, the must-be-seen-here types, the book lovers, the firangs, the senior citizens and a large number of school and college students. After a point, I opted out of the sessions and just sat and watched the crowd, overheard the conversations and chatted with folks. I met college kids from Jaipur who had chosen sessions because they were about subjects that were new to them. A friend who attends every year comes here to meet authors and expand his book collection. One young couple told me that it is exciting to be at an event like this where you get a chance to rub shoulders (literally) with everyone from popular Bollywood personalities to your favorite author. For some students I met here, being at JLF was like traveling the world, gaining a new set of experiences. Neither can I complain about passive audiences; I found questions from the floor were very sharp across age groups in the sessions I attended.
Clearly, JLF means different things to different people. All things said, it is certainly a step forward in taking literature, art and academic writing out of its elitist bastion (and may I say, pushing those in the bastion to learn a thing or two from the real world outside!). This is a new world where young people explore many ways to engage with new ideas and fresh content. Our schools and colleges are hard pressed to offer that novelty and excitement and maybe events like this, in some infinitesimally small way, fill that gap. Can we do more?
#Demonetisation as ritual sacrifice: In light of a recent trip to Inka territory
Anthropologist and friend Durba Chattaraj, in this insightful piece, compares the ‘inconvenience’ experienced by ordinary and honest people as a consequence of Modi’s bold demonetization announcement to the ritual sacrifice of innocents in ancient civilizations across the world. “In many cultures across the world,” she writes, “the logic of sacrifice to expiate collective sin demanded that the purest, rather than the most corrupt, be offered up to the gods.” She goes on to wonder whether this concept is still valid if the majority, and not the symbolic few, are on the sacrificial altar.
Durba’s analogy has appealed to me because I am fascinated by the emotional logic and perhaps habitual hopefulness with which the poor in this country have taken this enormously disruptive move in their stride. And because I had the fortune of spending some time amidst Inka ruins a few weeks ago, I’m equally fascinated by her bid to compare the mores of a territorial and if I may say so, fairly aggressive people to the supposedly civilized and democratic setup of modern India. So let me take the opportunity to recall that journey….
Our journey to Ingapirca, an Inka site in the Canar district of Ecuador in October this year took us through winding mountain roads and fertile terrain. Far less dramatic that Macchu Pichu, the ruins of Ingapirca hug the terrain close but the Temple of the Sun, probably built as an astronomical observatory stands out. These were a people obsessed and vastly knowledgeable about the movements of the sun, which they worshiped as the ultimate power not unlike contemporary and even older civilizations across the world. What makes Ingapirca different though, in a departure from the usual script of war and conquer, circumstances forced them to settle differences with the local Canari people and they ended up intermarrying with them and living peacefully. The Canaris worshipped the moon and the Ingapirca ruins clearly demonstrate that both lunar and solar worship became part of the unique Inka-Canari culture.
We were fortunate to be assigned a passionate guide, whose enthusiasm and knowledge enabled him to surpass his language difficulties. Whenever he was unsure, he didn’t hesitate to take help the lady in our group who spoke both Spanish and English reasonably well. Interacting with him not only revealed the deeper secrets of the site but also offered some insights into the ongoing attempts by Ecuador and other Andean nations to preserve the language and oral histories of the indigenous people; his own attempts to learn Kechwa, the indigenous tongue, made an interesting tale.
Getting back to the ruins themselves, and the starting point in my post today, we had an animated discussion in Ingapirca about the practice of ritual sacrifice. We stared down at the grave of the High Priestess, with whom over a dozen children had been buried alive to tend to her in her journey after death. Children were considered the purest beings and hence ideal for sacrifice. They were fattened and treated well before the sacrifice and usually drugged to make it painless. In Ingapirca, archaeologists believe they were given a highly intoxicating drink made of coca leaves (we found the plant growing right there on the site!).
The Inka Temple of the Sun looms up in the background but in the foreground are Canari vessels for lunar rituals
Grain storage
Granaries, residences, and sacrificial spaces
The sacrifical stone, aligned with solar solstices
Nestles low amid the spectacular Andean mountains
The Temple of the Sun dominates the valley
Walking away from the Temple of the Sun
In present day India, the poor may well be the innocents who have made sacrifices post-demonetisation, losing work and wages for sure, and the state has indeed ordered rather than requested that they make it. While the Inka fattened the innocents for sacrifice, the poor have been promised redistribution or reward at a later date. The parallels make me want to question a bit our belief that choice, rationalism, debate and dialogue are hallmarks of the modern era we live in. In evolutionary terms, the span of time between the Inkas and us is only a blink and maybe as citizens we are still very much in that psychological space: content to not have a choice, accustomed to the powers taking our fate in their hands, always placing the survival of the clan above our own, happy for the rewards we might get but not necessarily assuming they will come….
Transitioning to 2017: Of gratitude, hope and confidence
In the rumble-tumble, scramble-ramble life that I lead, moments of reflection are snatched and savoured like rich Belgian chocolate. As I end the first day of 2017, I am filled with gratitude for the year gone by.
At a personal level, 2016 was a spectacular year for me, a year marked by extraordinary focus on research and learning, a year of achieving clarity in terms of not just my career but also how I see myself. It was a year that saw me blur the lines between mother, daughter, colleague and wife and make giant strides towards being just me, regardless and in spite of all of those relationships. A year in which I grew that thick skin that I had been wanting for so long, the type that accepts constructive criticism but stonewalls any negativity that does not teach me anything.
A year in which I leaped ahead and simply assumed that the safety nets would be there when I fell. And miraculously they were! People in my life who held me together, supported me in ways never imagined before. Events that unfolded before me unplanned.
A record year for travel, especially international. I visited Shenzhen in China, made three trips to Indonesia- one to Bali with friends, to Surabaya for a UN conference and then a whirlwind 12 day work trip covering 5 cities in that vast and fascinating archipelago. To top that, the dream trip to Quito in Ecuador did materialize and a short hop in Amsterdam and Paris was like the icing on the cake! I soaked in this travel year like a sponge, reveling in the new sights and sounds and smells, the conversations, the energy that comes with endless novelty. I fell in love with people and places, cultures and architecture all over again. I learned to pack better, plan better and be more organized. I also learned to un-plan and un-think and let things unravel. More importantly, on my travels I was reminded repeatedly of the inherent goodness of people, the sheer beauty of this world. And so, I have been filled with hope and positivism even as I have despaired and feared this year, as political and social events in India and abroad have threatened to shake the very foundations of what I believe in- rationality, humanism, equality, empathy and love.
I know the year ahead will be full challenges, but I feel far more prepared than I have ever felt before. For once, I seem to have accepted that things will be crazy, that there will be serious limits, that it is in my nature to go off script and that there is always learning in that. I feel less pressurized by the passage of time. I turned 40 this year, and that number sits very well with me, urging me to focus on quality, to savor the experience, to run my own unique race.
There is much to be done this year and I have my hands full. I pray for balance, for the ability to unplug and reset myself, for objectivity and for resilience. I pray for good health for everyone around me, I pray for sanity for the world. But most of all, I pray that we can all become children again for a few precious moments in this year ahead, so that we may remember that it all can be very very simple and yet extremely complex at the same time; that there is no contradiction, or that contradiction is the point!
Happy New Year everyone!
ramblinginthecity 