Tag: Life

How Public Policy Shapes Life

Public policy is powerful. Public policy shapes our daily actions more than we realize. There are also results that are not always foreseen by the policymakers.

Take the experience of shopping for instance. Recently, the county we live in passed a decree that forbade businesses from doling out plastic bags. We could buy one for 10c if really wanted, but the idea was to encourage more environment friendly bags.

Where before, people were before doing their shopping in the most organized manner possible and sometimes preferring to finish up their grocery alone, the recent public policy of no plastic bags and charging 10c for the bags has increased family togetherness.

I walk into stores and I see large families shopping together. There is a sea change I tell you. The change is best explained in the check-out lanes where the harassed looking clerks ask you whether you would like a bag for 10c and you look him in the eye and say, “No Siree! No I don’t. You see I have 5 children of my own and I offered to babysit three of my neighbors. Then, I just borrowed a bus and came grocery shopping!”

There is a look of utter disbelief on the clerk’s face. The table is full of groceries and the customers have no bags! This is when the customers stoop in with a bugle call to the children, “So Ed, Louis, Dennis and Menace pick up the bread, milk, meats and sauces. Don’t hold the eggs and yogurt in one hand Millie! Tie a string around the goat cheese and hang it around the baby’s neck. Anne, do you have the pastas? Good! Whose that child? Does she belong to our party?”

“Yes Father.”
“Well…come here then and lend a hand with the ice creams young lady.” Nobody is spared. The produce is collected and the family outing is done without spending a dime on bags.

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That is economy.

PS: I like the idea of no plastic bags, and marvel at how a simple policy can change people into bringing their own bags. The environmental awareness was the same before, yet the implementation of the policy made all the difference.

The Distinguished Frog

I attended a conference recently. While there, two aspects of my brain were exploding. One was the silly part of it, and of course the other was the real theme of the conference. As usual, I am here to blog about the former, since the latter will be up on you-tube in a series of presentations in one form or the other.

The proceedings started and all the folks were busy gorging at the free Continental Breakfast Line. There is something about these breakfasts that have people starting off with a muffin, then moving on to yogurt followed by orange juice and then coffee before having another muffin. It happened right when folks were stuffing their third muffin into their mouths. A busy looking man with a shiny pate came up to the front of the room and addressed the audience. A respectful hush fell upon one and all. He said a few words about why we were all gathered there, and then said, “Well….this wonderful person here is going to facilitate the proceedings and he, as you all know, needs no introduction!”

I have been to tons of programs where people start the proceedings by saying, “Mr. Gasbag here is very famous and needs no introduction.” When this happens, I settle down deeply in my chair to listen to the 15 minute introduction that follows, ripe with details the audience had no clue about and in some cases what Mrs Gasbag did not know.

But this time it was different. Mr Shiny Pate kept mum after this, while polite laughter broke out through the room. He smiled at the poor fish and bid him to come up to the front of the room. The poor wonderful-person now made it awkwardly to the limelight. I have a feeling Mr. S. Pate might have forgotten his name, but all the same, that was quite a jar.

The whole audience gulped their muffins as one. Because, apart from a handful of folks in the room, the rest did not know the wonderful-person at all. Meanwhile, it was almost as if I could see the debate raging in his head. “Do I introduce myself? Or don’t I introduce myself? Am I distinguished enough or am I not? ” He gulped and he finally decided against it. He decided to test his popularity and it must have hurt him. He was one of those academic types who are happiest when analyzing the result of their latest research paper, not winning popularity contests.

It was the wrong choice. Just as soon as he skirted the introduction and started on the agenda instead, I saw that the room, like myself, was scrambling at the packet handed to us to see who he was.

Well, that shows us doesn’t it? One may be the most distinguished frog in the pond, but when frogs from other ponds gather, where are we?

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This picture is so bad, I should have actually gone for the one I liked on google images – sigh!

The Journey starts with Garbage Trucks

I spent the morning on the curb wearing a jacket over my frumpy night-clothes with an infant in my arms. The mists had not yet lifted, and I yearned for the warmth of the bed. Unlike me, the infant was fully awake and extremely excited at the sight before him. He gasped in awe and chuckled with glee. We were watching the garbage truck and the driver do his duty.

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My mind was pulled back 15 years when the similar thing was being done for the nephew. His ambitions wavered with time of course. But the solid one for a few years was to be a garbage truck driver. The garbage truck drivers must look grand to their little eyes: Sitting high on their seats like exalted thrones, manning the wicked machines and watch as cars steered respectfully from them.

I remembered taking the nephew on trips in India more than a decade ago. He would insist on waiting for a bus with two ladders in the back. Like fools, we would let buses go by waiting for the two-laddered ones, because he believed that those buses traveled faster.

Today is the nephew’s birthday and I watch with love and pride as he looks to enter college in the fall.

A honk pulled me back to the present. The son was beside himself with glee. The garbage truck driver was honking and waving at him before turning away from our street. My star-struck son and I came home to call and wish my nephew a happy birthday!

Life has its deja-vus.

Is Photography Art?

Sometimes I think a monkey would do a better job with a camera. But on the other hand I think, people should open their minds a little more to appreciate true art. What is art? Is it something that kindles some kind of emotion in others? What if it brings joy to others?

The other day we found this gorgeous field stretching out for a few miles carpeted with yellow flowers. My heart whooped with joy and I insisted on getting there on the week-end for a picture shoot.
“I will put this up on Facebook!” I cried. Thrilled at my unique idea, we went there for our picture shoot. Saturday morning, I found the place jam-packed with Facebook-profile-picture-takers. People I tell you! Tut! Tut!

When the daughter was much younger, I used to swing her around me really fast. We have a beautiful picture on the Hawaiian coasts doing this.I wanted a similar one of me throwing my son up in the air and catching him. I had to throw and catch a few times before we got this picture. But I totally loved it, and promptly made it my profile pic on Faceb.

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The daughter is tall for her age and has outgrown the swinging-by-mother stage, but believes that her father, the hero, can still catch her as she jumps in the air. I tried telling her that she is too old for that, to which she says, “But appa is really strong, and I can jump! He doesn’t have to throw me.” Put something like that out to the husband and he can’t resist. He summons up his imaginary biceps and steps forth gallantly to make her jump and catch her. I gingerly took the camera, aware that I can’t take the same number of chances he took to get a good picture.

I suppose this happens to wildlife photographers all the time. They lie waiting for the lion to jump, and the lion roars and skips instead. My feelings were similar. What is my lioness skipped?

I focussed and refocused yelling “1-2-3” loud enough for horses in neighboring fields to jump. They did a marvelous job and she jumped- much higher than I expected and got this picture.

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I totally blame it on her. I mean I had my camera focussed for where I thought she was going to jump and she shot past it. Whose fault is that really?

My school did a good job on me with its motto: “Never Give In”. So what if I got one bad picture? I plowed on. This time the strong man wanted a portrait. I attempted to truly give him the picture of a lifetime. I’ve always wondered why photographers show off about blurring certain objects and making others sharper. How hard can it be? See?

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Like the daughter kindly pointed out, even the houses in the far background are sharp. I challenged the husband to take a picture of me like that and he couldn’t. I believe I took the harder picture. He was a bit upset initially, but the bad pictures had all of us laughing (quite heartily I might add) at my expense – so that is true art in my opinion. Go on…’Like’ my pictures please.

The Small Joys …

I remember it vividly. The father came home beaming one evening. The President of India was visiting our School and the general populace was abuzz. I remember all of us feverishly polishing our shoes for days, like the President’s prime task of the day was to check our shoes. This activity was encouraged almost with indecent glee by everyone. Really, I don’t know why we polished our shoes that hard.

So, why was the father beaming? Oh..yes…sorry, I lost my train of thought and got carried away with the shoe-polishing. The father was given the honorable task of signing all the permit cards into the auditorium where the President would give his speech. He thought that the honor was bestowed on him because he was a responsible member of the teaching community etc. I told him that it might be because his signature was the hardest to emulate. His signature is like a hot cooked ‘Cup-o-Noodle’ slipped off your hands and splashed across the pages. Something like this cool 3-D pen.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could-be-big-abc-news/3-d-printing-revolution-gets-first-pen-173841593.html

He laughed at my description and selected his best pen to get started. Around the 100th card, his hands started paining. He complained and carried on. By the time 500 cards were signed…well, there is no need to go into what shape he was in.

Every now and then, situations arise where my esteemed signature is required on paragraph 3.4 on page 12, and then again in 4.2 on page 16. Fifteen such pages later, the joy of using a pen (even a special one) fades a little, and I think of the father and the President’s visit. Maybe, one of those ‘Software License Agreements’ are the best. You know the ones where you don’t read what it says and just hit the cute looking ‘Accept’ button to proceed? Those ones.

Anyway, I noticed small things that can make the drudgery of this better. Some people have the forethought of placing those little placeholders to indicate the place of signature, but I recently had a 300 page stack without the placeholders and I missed them so sorely.

It is little things that make a difference. I have always marveled at the housekeeping staff in places I have worked in. For the most part, you don’t see them around and yet, everything is available. That is the kind of efficacy that the President of India would have liked to see. Not polished shoes. Anyway…

Imagine my joy every time I walk into our mini-kitchen and see the tea bags placed like this?

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What are the little things that you notice that bring you joy?

What is in a name?

He was at the age when digging one’s nose in the school grounds was not yet something to be ashamed of. Probably driven by the comfort level this accorded him, one of the boys picked up a frog from a pond, in the fond hope of adopting it as a pet. Pets, as my learning-to-debate daughter will tell you, can serve as great companions. Frogs have more sense than we credit them with, however, and made a swift escape that very night. But by then, he had acquired the name ‘Croaky’ and the name frogged him through college.

One may argue that his actions led folks to croak his name.

I have also seen parents play fiddle with their children’s futures by giving them unique names: Impressive names such as Lionel (changes to Looney) or Fourswarth (forsooth)

But to make a business of this: Maybe, I should just wait and watch to see the name being chosen for this child.

http://moms.popsugar.com/Mom-Lets-Strangers-Name-Her-Baby-5000-28286485?utm_campaign=com_digest&utm_source=com_digest_v4&utm_medium=featured_article

I quote:
Baby Ballot will create a list of baby names based on what’s trending and their sponsored advertisers, then post the final list of names online on March 18. Users worldwide will be able to choose one girl name and one boy name each from the list of names provided until March 22 when voting closes. The name with the most votes for each gender will be the name of Natasha’s future boy or girl.

I hope the collective wisdom of random jobless people on the internet will not lead this child astray.

Lightning in the Butterfly Grove

There is something immensely enjoyable about being around babies I tell you. You ask them the dumbest questions and they buckle down, crease their foreheads in deep thought and give you serious answers. 

“Where is your nose?”
“Where is the car?”
“What did Curious George do?”
“Did you throw the blocks outside?”

The infant son enjoys sitting on my lap and reading stories. There is one he particularly enjoys about an elephant playing hide and seek with his friends. You see, the pages are filled with illustrations of a baby elephant, a zebra, a giraffe and a crocodile. In that book, there is one whole page dedicated to a giraffe. When I get to this complex page, I ask the son “Where is the giraffe?” He sticks out his little index finger at the giraffe and I beam like Einstein’s mother. Pride pouring forth.

The sister watched me carefully as we did the ‘stick-index-finger-in-giraffe’ routine. There was another book that had pictures of animals in it.
“What does a lion do?” He roars impressively every time he sees a tiger or a lion.
“What does a dog do?” He barks (bo-bo) in response.
Just to prove that the man can think about tougher questions, I ask “What does a snake do?” He hisses like one.
WE high-fived, low-fived and fist-bumped in glee.

Finally convinced of his zoological knowledge, the sister took him to the zoo. Aunt and nephew made a great show of it. They packed snacks, milk etc and headed off. Midway through their visit, I got a frantic call from the sister. Apparently, they had stopped in front of the giraffes and she asked him where the giraffes were. The question seemed to excite him quite a bit. He clapped his hands in glee, jumped in excitement, smiled and pointed to a bunch of lions gamboling nearby.

All that effort into the little giraffe book – anyway….

Never one to brood, I decided that what the guy needs is real life exposure. So, we headed out to this almost magical eucalyptus grove that is filled with monarch butterflies during the Winter. While in the grove, we were watching the beautiful butterflies flit past, and I asked my little zoologist “How does a butterfly fly?”.

The fellow pulls on his thinking look, creases his forehead and whips out a model of Lightning McQueen and goes “whiz…whiz…whiz” and demonstrates the flying motion.

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One can only hope those butterflies don’t fly the way cars do.

I need a new set of questions.

The Driver’s Spirituality

Somehow my India stories never seem complete without a driver’s story thrown in. So here goes…

Our driver for the day was Shiva or Murugan. Let’s call him Shiva. Shiva was a nice guy. Young-ish. He had a smile on his face and a can-do attitude in his stride. He was told that his duty in the cosmos that day was to take our family to the airport after stopping at a temple enroute. He smiled and nodded. He did not seem like a spiritual person himself but seemed happy to come along.

I told you about how we travel haven’t I? (https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/the-wedding-aboard-emirates-636-at-3-a-m/)  We had 3 large suitcases that needed to be hoisted atop the car and tied firmly with rope, or 3 large adults to be strapped and hoisted atop the car. Shiva chose the luggage to hoist on the car because he thought the people would be better company in the car. Well..I suppose everyone makes mistakes.

The family is generally genial and noisy and out-performing each other in the talking department, but this trip had it all stripped.

Now, imagine a broadway show where the cast introduction is bound to start and 2 major characters are missing because they were off visiting their uncle, who’d graciously offered to take them on a grand-tour of his new office parking lot. Backstage meanwhile, tempers run high…scripts are modified in the last minute to blend the introduction without the parking lot tourist characters, hoping against hope that they would make it in time for their real character scenes. Then, just a minute before the curtain goes up, the characters arrive and the whole cast shouts at them for being late. Not only that, tempers are running high because the script-writer has been ticked off for not being quick enough at redrafting the whole play without these characters, the orchestra is being told to cut out songs about these two characters and add extra ones about random characters instead and the percussionist had a few things to say to the drummer about this and all in all, melee reigned in the circus tent.

That was the scene back at the old home. The brother-in-law and sister-in-law went a-visiting somebody, got held up and came back bitingly late. Meanwhile, things were heating up to baking capacity nicely inside the home. An injudicious remark here and a callous remark there was enough to set some tempers going. The remaining were taken care of by the lack of electricity. Let’s just say that by the time the family piled into the car, the atmosphere was icy. Poor Shiva the driver watched the scene for a while and then decided that he couldn’t bear the quiet anymore and switched on a movie to keep his sanity.

It didn’t help that Shiva did not have rope on his person to tie the suitcases up and we had scrambled for rope at the last minute. The father-in-law kept kindly pointing out to him every 3 miles or so about the benefits of any driver keeping rope with him. Shiva might have been okay with the 3 minute reminders if it wasn’t interspersed with 2 minute reminders to ask somebody for directions. (I had my reservations on the driver-keeping-rope-handy theory – Shiva looked ready to hang himself, and readymade rope would not help matters, would they? )

All in all, he decided to trust to a greater power and switched on a movie about two elephants(one mad and the other not quite) and a bunch of lovers. The movie that Shiva had banked on to raise our spirits was doing its job at a snail’s pace. Jokes were eliciting a grunt every now and then, and the coldness in the car was melting. Once when I commented about how wonderful the songs were, Shiva said that they were the best part of the movie, since it was a tragic one and we’d all be pulling our tissues by the time the movie ended.

To everyone’s stupendous relief, the car rolled to a stop in front of the right temple, and the temple was open after all. Not only that, there was a huge elephant. Now call that uncanny. The temple elephant was decorated beautifully. In a moment, the family’s mood lightened. The children were awe-struck by the elephant and went in turns with their affectionate grand-father to touch him.

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A short visit inside the temple and the family was miraculously back to being the gregarious-guffawing-silly_jokes lot.

If anything were to convince Shiva about what God really meant to people’s hearts the question was amply answered for him that day. A turning point in his life. I mean look at the facts:

Input: Morose, quiet, brooding family
Output: g-g-sj lot

To make matters worse, when we piled back into the car and the movie came on again; it tried its best to get us to turn on the hosepipes, but nothing happened. We laughed at the misery in the movie and called the director a dumb fellow for whatever he was doing.

Shiva either thinks that we are a family to gains love and laughter by going to temples, or thinks of us as potential clients to some excellent mental health hospitals he has heard of.

The Wedding Aboard Emirates 636 at 3 a.m.

It all started the day we were leaving India. I had spent all day the previous day packing everything we owned into the large suitcases. There is something charming about weighing international baggage to see if a packet of sambar powder would fit in the first 13 times you do it.  After the 17th time this happened, I lost patience.

The previous day had morphed into the day we were leaving and I was still doing the pack-dance. I sighed a loud sigh. Loud enough for the considerate and well-intentioned husband to abandon all pretense at not-hearing. He was nominated to finish packing before he could flee the premises on a flimsy context. He did.

Our plans are always simple. For instance, if we have to go from home to the airport, our plan is:
1) Go to a temple that is an hour and a half away from the airport in a south easterly direction.
2) After the temple visit, go to a guesthouse that is an hour away in the eest westerly direction. Change.
3) Proceed to airport that is an hour away in a northern southerly direction.
See?

When plans are made, strategies are not far behind. Napolean could take a correspondence course from us. The able general may have moved his troops from France to Russia and back fighting some wars along the way, but I doubt he could have loaded the suitcases onto the top rack of a car, tied it with rope and loaded the troops into the car before transporting them to a temple enroute to an airport. It would have him stumped.

The large suitcases were all loaded and tied onto the car. The children were counted and loaded inside the car. I hollered to make sure the hand baggage was not tied on to the top and then the whole family piled in and we took off. I don’t know why this is, but the temple we were visiting insists on women wearing sarees and men wearing dhotis. The husband smartly tied his dhoti over his pants and deemed himself ready. The last time I’d tried to wear a saree on my salwar kameez, I was rapped on my knuckles and told that any pant-like garment was not allowed. So, I was relying on step 2 in our plan to change into something comfortable before the flight.

We stopped at the guest house to change. It was hot and the infant in my arms was having fun with my saree. He kept playing peek-a-boo in it. I was holding onto the garment quite gingerly. The husband thrust the hand carry suitcase in my infant-free arm and then bounded off indecently behind some banana chips that were being fried half a mile away.

I haven’t really talked to men of the desert, but I suppose they must feel a sense of relief when they see an oasis. My senses were similar. Silk sarees are extremely hot and uncomfortable. I clutched the suitcase and opened it with longing. At first sight, I could not find any clothes for me or the daughter or the son. So I looked again. Nothing. I gasped and tried everything. Closing and re-opening to see if I’d missed the goods in a poor angle of light or something. Still nothing.

The husband walked in with a smile on his face. My look must have unnerved him for he came and asked me to eat chips and “chill”. Hot though I was, I asked him icily where our clothes were.
“There!” he said.
“Where?” I said.
“Just there – under the bed sheet!” he says. Why a man should pack a bed sheet in our hand-carry suitcase I still don’t know.
I pulled out a nightie. “You mean this?” I ask. Sheep could have detected the sarcasm, but the husband ignored it.
“Yes!”

flight
He was serious. That was the garment he had for me. A nightie. One of those barrel-like pillowcase shaped garments that are so popular as night wear in India. I gasped. Even by my lax standards of dressing, I could hardly travel abroad in a nightie. I gulped and swallowed a hundred times and asked about the children’s clothes. There was nothing in that department either. He had 4 vests of his, 2 pairs of his jeans, some towels and bedsheets in there. Also the camera. I could hardly wrap the daughter in a towel!

For those of you who wondered why the daughter and I were dressed like the Emirates Flight leaving at 3 a.m in the morning was to host a dear one’s wedding: that’s why.

Sigh!

The Orange Torn Balloon

I’ve always liked balloons and my children seem to like them too. Our local Traders Joe has balloons that they dole out to kids. I almost always pick one up for the kids and can then be seen chasing the balloon for at least a few feet in the parking lot because of one of the following goofy reasons:
(a) I thought the balloon was inside the car before closing the door, when it really wasn’t
(or)
(b)the daughter opened the other door through which it floated out
(or)
(c)some such bloomer.
In any case, I had no idea my liking balloons in general would permeate to the extent of my hobnobbing with torn balloons for several hours every other day.

Since I don’t mind exposing my many idiosyncrasies on this blog, I shall tell you what I was doing one evening.
I walked into a room full of serious minded people. You know folks frowning with deep lines of concentration etched on their faces. There was Ms. Dont-Disturb-Me, Mr. No-eye-contact , Mrs Dopey and Mr Smiley all minding their business of the day.

I took off my shoes and planted myself on the floor. I first sat on the mat, but then shifted my butt to the dirty carpet instead. The freshly laundered pant of mine shuddered a bit, but I ignored it.

I pulled an orange colored torn balloon fastened to a chair’s leg toward myself and heaved and ho-ed like no man has heaved a torn balloon before. Mrs Dopey gave me a wince and turned back to what she was doing, while Mr Smiley was a bit taken aback. At one point, the balloon even made funny noises against my skin. You know one of those sounds like a dinosaur playing with whistles (the kind that are handed out in children’s parties).

Yet I pulled on the torn balloon till I could tear it no more, and looked up hopefully at Ms Dont-Disturb-Me. She merely passed the buck to Mr No-eye-contact. I sat there feeling dumber and smaller by the minute. After all, which adult sits on the floor pulling strands of balloon from chair-ends in a room full of people engaged in activities not involving pulling balloons? Huh?

After what seemed like hours, but was in fact only several minutes, I was invited to lie down and the old ankle received a wonderful massage.

The physiotherapy session was coming to an end. Hopefully I can get to using the pretty blue torn balloon one day…blue balloons have always fascinated me. Even torn ones.Image