Then and now!

It was during the summer of 1998, Calcutta.

Two guys - about 20 years of age - perched on a railing bordering Minto Park, watching the busy traffic rush by, at the intersection of Loudon Street, Landsdowne Road and Lower Circular Road.

This was back when Calcutta summers were muggy, but bearable. It was sunny, the temperature was probably in the 90s.

They sat there in silence - if silence is possible at a busy intersection. Traffic rushing in from each direction, moving in rhythm to the play of the air horns that provided the tenor (taxis) and the base (big buses belching out black smoke and lumbering on), while the electric horns on the newer cars complemented with the alto and the soprano (the really fancy foreign cars). The traffic police stood in the middle of this din and conducted the smooth harmonic flow. But the two of them sat there in silence.

One of them, lets call him A, was back home from college after an amazingly unremarkable and completely forgettable semester, while the other, lets call him J, was bunking afternoon lab. at the local college that he was attending. They had gone to high school together and were good friends. Not long ago, after graduating from high school, their paths had diverged, but the friendship hadn't waned. Their circumstances had significantly changed, though. The flying colors that each had graduated with had faded to a very sad gray. The "we are winners" look was a shadow of its earlier self. The smiles had somewhat hardened - the perfect picture of disillusioned youth.

The question at hand was - now what?? Where were they headed? College seemed to be a bit of a drag for both and the road ahead seemed uncertain and chaotic. Hence the silent contemplation.

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11 years later - probably on the very same summer day, in another part of the world - a place where fall foliage is vibrant, winters are long and the light lingers late on summer evenings.

Scanning the morning news on the NYT webpage, A comes across the picture of a model in a pop-up advertisement. Reminds him of J. How odd - they hadn't spoken in over ten years. Indeed, their lives did diverge. The distance yawned, till each became a memory to the other. Till of course the errant ad. popped up.

A facebook search and a friend request followed.

Later in the afternoon - A was running through J's profile and his network. Photographs of old school buddies, wives, children - Both A and J seemed to have figured a way to navigate the last 11 years. The colors seemed to have returned - or at least they did not need them anymore. Instead they seemed to sport genuine smiles that said "Oh! Well - !?"

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The memory of that afternoon in Calcutta, 11 years ago remains vivid yet!

The illusion of stasis

Its that time of the year again. The semester has come to an end - even the grading pile is winding down. Everything seems to be in a state of transition, as students graduate, or go off for the summer. Packing boxes and U-haul trucks dot the residence hall parking lots, and the late night bus leaving town is now in demand.

One of the joys of being a teacher is watching students grow and evolve. Sometimes the growth happens in an 'ah-ha' moment - sometimes it happens gradually, often slowly, but always surely, over months and years. Often we merely watch the growth - sometimes we have the joy of being part of it. Hence, this time of the year has a bitter-sweet feel to it - bidding farewell to students, while sharing their joys of graduation - often sharing it with their parents who are here for commencement.

On a personal note, this year I said goodbye to my first PhD student - who has started a post-doc elsewhere. Two of my MS students also graduated and even though each of them had very different trajectories - they are both in excellent jobs and one of them has also gotten married. The term 'commencement' is appropriately used for the graduation ceremony - it is indeed the beginning of a new chapter for all of them.

For those of us who call this town our home, this time of the year marks a transition from classes to research and the joys of summer. Part of us is looking forward to the exodus - waiting to reclaim the brewery deck, plotting out our long summer evenings, rooting for the final blot of snow to melt away, and the buds on the trees to finally bloom - finally making winter a distant dream. Summer beckons - but so does yard work :)

As we watch students reach milestones in their lives and negotiate marked transitions, we often miss the subtle changes and transitions we are negotiating in our own lives. My partnership with T' has entered a phase of quiet comfort. We fight the same fights over and over again - often breaking out into laughter half way through in anticipation of the predictable responses. 3 Macs, a wedding, a few fancy cast iron pots, and a programmable coffee brewer later, we lost a few pounds, gained a few pant sizes and some gray hair, and have had lots of good times.

By the time the students are back it'll be time for the north winds to blow again, and we'll be getting ready for yet another year. We'll go back to our classrooms and forget about these transitions - the students in my junior class will still be 19, just as they were last year and just as they will be next year. Once again we'll get swept up in the rhythm of the academic year, where nothing seems to change. Once again we'll be deluded by the illusion of stasis.

In the mean time - order me a Gin Mojito and lets look forward to summer 08 - i mean summer 09.

On being an elitist

Suffice it to say, all my life I have been called an elitist. I have been aware of such tendencies from an early age - and have tried my best to blur in with the masses. But try as I might, every once in a while I say and do things that lay bare all my efforts at being a card carrying member of the proletariat. (This is when I feel like saying: can't help it, I was born this way!)

However, of late I am finding many many good reasons to finally come out as an elitist and be comfortable being one. I want to take ownership of the term 'elitist' and wear it as a badge of honor rather than carry it as a burden of shame. And in taking ownership I think its critical that I define its semantics rather than let it fall in the hands of unmitigated fools.

Who an elitist is:
1. Someone who believes in equal rights and equal opportunities for everybody.
2. Someone who believes that hard work and diligence should be rewarded while lazy inefficiency and incompetence should be looked down upon.
3. Someone who recognizes that even with equal opportunities, the system is often heavily biased against some sections of society making it difficult for them to succeed.
4. Someone who believes that the wealthy and the successful owe it to society and themselves to give back to those sections of society where hard work and merit is not enough to be successful.
5. Someone who makes no excuses for stupidity - period.
6. Someone who discriminates based on a person's achievement and outlook - how good are they at what they do, what initiatives do they take in life, how positive are they
7. Someone who respects human labor and human capital - but detests lack of self improvement (the self can be improved in many many ways).
8. Someone who believes that wealth has to be created through creation of knowledge, services or tangible products - not speculative abracadabra.
9. Someone who roots for the underdog.

Who an elitist is not:
1. Someone who dismisses or discriminates against individuals simply based on their race, creed (unless stupidity is a creed), caste, sexual orientation, gender, class - or any other visible or perceived identifier that they are not directly responsible for. (I exclude religion - because it is a lifestyle choice - champion a religion at your own risk).
2. Someone who believes that public policy on complex issues such as the environment, civil rights and human conflict should be decided on the whims of the "common man," instead of involving scientists, engineers, soldiers and historians.
3. Someone who believes in a dictatorship - even benevolent ones.
4. Someone who cannot distinguish between a democracy and a democratic republic.

I hold Joe the Plumber and his ilk in utter disdain. It is a tragedy when voices like Rush Limbaugh, Amy Goodman, mislead governors and Hugo Chavez start dominating the air waves. I do not think every individual should have the same quality of life (excepting for equal access to health care, maybe) irrespective of how much effort they have put into self improvement and hard work. The current crisis to a large extent has been created by fools who were spending way more than they should have and had not the means or the ability to discern. Society lied to them when they told them they were just as good as their neighbors who put years of hard work in professional or vocational preparation and earned their homes and their lives. Saying that everybody is equal is telling a terrible lie - even though it may create the warm and cozy feeling of inclusiveness. Unfortunately we are all paying for their stupidity and the unfortunate lies now - and we should call it so. I detest liars - who tried to make money out of people's vulnerabilities and their desires.

There you go I am an elitist - and I dare you to be one!

Scrambled thoughts

This morning as I was scrambling my eggs, it struck me that its been a while since I last posted. So, I starting thinking about a suitable post - and realized that there was so much I had to say and so little that I had posted. Kinda like the junk I was putting in my omelet. So here are some scrambled thoughts.
++++++++++++++

Life is flying by. The days are turning into weeks, the weeks into months, the months into years adding momentum to the snow ball of time. In the blink of an eye life will have gone by - one short tumble down the hill.
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Ever noticed how people react when they watch fireworks? Every big shower of sparks is followed by "That must be the finale ..." - and this starts long before the actual finale. When the finale does arrive, there is a moment of hushed silence, a loud applause and then as the crowd dissipates a sense of "oh... too bad its over".

Oh, but to enjoy the beauty of the moment while it lasts - even if we know that its only transient. Even if we know that its going to be over soon, that it can't last forever, that paradise is gained only to be lost.

Didn't someone say something about "holding eternity in a moment ..."
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So today is supposed to be "Evolution Sunday." The day when the God fearing try to reconcile the theory of evolution with the idea that all we hold dear was indeed created.

I can understand the urge to hold onto the idea of creation - even against our better senses. With creation comes an implicit statement of beginning - which inevitably implies an ending. This mirrors our lives - we are born and we die - our lives are packed in neatly bounded intervals. The story of creation is a construct that helps us comprehend the infinite universe beyond by projecting an image of ourselves and our finite lives on it. It helps us ignore the eternal - even while we acknowledge an omniscient creator.

Evolution - on the other hands sets us adrift on a continuum of millions of years - with no beginning and no end in sight.
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Notice, how folklore has it that the poor are the happiest. Some or all scriptures say (in one form or another) "it is easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into the kingdom of God." But of course, the story of life is written in the verses that are tied together by strings of greed. Indeed, there is a mad rush to get wealthy. The aforementioned kingdom may not be a preferred destination.

However, in spite of the mixed response, there might be more to it than meets the eye. After all, isn't it true that the more we have, the more we stand to lose. . . that the wealthy cannot sleep in peace, and indeed the poor have nothing to lose.

If we could love just enough ... where we could live without the loved one ... just enough, not too much, not too little. If we could find that sweet spot, then maybe we could have all the wealth in the world and yet not acquire camel like proportions.

But what is it to love, if loss brings no pain - what value is wealth, if it leaves no void?

A camel, staring at the eye of a needle, lost in the dreary desert of want.
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Consider the identity:
n^2 +(n+1) = (n+1)^2 - n
Today this is my identity, for n=5.

Once again ...

Once again, you visit us,
Most Beautiful, Lady of Fall -
A wealth of harvest, food and flower,
Your basket brimmeth over.
In orange and red, behold,
How the woods rejoice your coming
And joy rolls out across fields of gold.

The vigor of Summer gives away
to morning mists, that reveal each day -
your gentle beauty. The breeze swirls
in the woods, telling tales of love and loss.
Of victories that have been won
and pain that has left many undone.
All this and more you bear.

In your gentle strength we rejoice,
To myriad songs you give voice.
Songs of victory from far and near,
Good over evil - we love to hear.
Even as we say our thanks, and gather around
accepting shades of dark and light;
that holds us to each other, sound.

You leave us at the mercy of Winter -
With visions of hope and joy forever.
A joy that wells from far within-
beyond the grasp of pain and suffering.
A knowledge that life is short,
and fragile, but long enough -
for each of us to love in splendor.

Of haircuts, vanity and philosophy

This post is a response to Orange's post. It set me wondering if our hairstyles can tell the story of our lives and how our barbers influence the stands and stances we take. So I shall set out to give you a brief history of my life in haircuts. Eventually I will address the burning question: is this is an vanity - or merely a form of self expression.

But first the story. (Kinda like they say on NPR - "but first the news")

I grew up in what we broadly referred to as the "upper middle class" - i.e. we had aspirations and pretensions of the upper classes and the means of the middle classes. (Which is not a bad thing - but thats another post). Add to that a catholic school education - where we were sent home if our shoes weren't reasonably polished every morning and the tie length wasn't just right. Now, now! That is not vanity - its called being "well groomed" (the term always reminded me of horses!). Similarly, our hair had to be combed properly and not be long "like the hippies" and being bald had various unhappy social consequences.

As a child, I went for my haircuts when Baba decided the time was right. I was taken to a reasonable - not the under-the-tree-shade barbers - hair salon where I was given a "sensible haircut". My hair was combed to the side neatly - with a left parting - and a clean trim at the back. My barber was always confounded by a hump of hair on top of my head which refused to be tamed (and to this day stands up in reverence to who knows what!!). And till I turned 18 and left home for the wilderness beyond - this continued. Without fail, no questions asked. Excepting for one time when I was 14 and had to go through the ordeal of going bald in order to respect my Grand-ma's desire for my sacred thread ceremony (which for the record, I wore for only two weeks afterwards). At school - I promptly earned the name of "taklu" - and the name persisted and many of my friends continued to call me that till I left school.

Then I left home and went away to college. The critical years of chaos, and confusion. So I decided to change my hairstyle and experimented with my parting. First came the middle parting - which made me look like a Bengali scholar from the middle ages - ugh!!! To add to my miseries my Mom thought I looked quite like Mithun C. That did it!!! So I tried the parting on the right side. And that annoyed my parents --- :)) So I stuck to it. My statement was made - I had come to myself. Can't help laughing at myself, all these years later.

Then I got a job and went to work for an engineering firm - back in the city - with the added joys of a salary. I started getting haircuts for Rs. 300 (which was a LOT in those days - I understand India is very different now). Oh how I enjoyed the looks of utter horror on my aunts' faces when I casually told them about my extravagant haircuts!! I had arrived :))

And then life changed. I started looking beyond familiar shores. Decided to go to graduate school - moved to a town in Western NY, and in the middle of the chaos of moving to a new country, the tensions of coming out to myself, and the pressures of my MS research - I don't even remember taking haircuts. I guess my hair just went into shock and stopped growing.

I moved within a year to Seattle - where my heart lies to this day and where I think I finally played out each card in my hand and having done so, came to myself. But in getting there, I was protesting against the world - wondering where I fit in, if at all. The politics of the era did not help, and further pushed me to the edges. I became an activist, protested and marched against a zillion things, turned vegetarian for a year - and did a variety of crazy things.

Six years - I had a bunch of different hairstyles. It started with questioning the need for grooming at all - once and for all, I am not a horse. Then I questioned the need for a sensible haircut - I tried to define what a "sensible haircut" was - and realized the word "sensible" was rather whimsical itself. The only property that any two things that were both "sensible" shared was that they were either boring or simply un-noteworthy. So I decided to stop being sensible - after all, I was finally finding myself - intellectually alive, emotionally vibrant and politically active. I had no patience for "sensibility." But at the same time - I had no time for such frivolous things as "tending to my hair" - or paying a big corporation for a hair cut. (Corporations, after all are evil!). So I stopped combing my hair, started going to a locally owned hair salon on the Ave., and cut my hair short - very very short. I looked like an egg with black fungus on it - and enjoyed this rather ugly look. Everybody - including my friends - grimaced at me. My parents decided that I had finally gone to the dogs (a far cry from the well groomed son they imagined I was), and even my advisor started wondering at the complete lack of vanity (which may I remark, is actually an exaggerated form of vanity!).

And it was at this cozy hair salon in Seattle that I had my first significant barber Ryan. He was not the annoying kinds - the kinds you felt obliged to make conversation with, instead he knew what was on your mind and very gently if tangentially comforted you, assured you, let you know that all is fine with the world. And every time you looked down - he made you hold your chin up, look up at the mirror and smile at your own goofy reflection.

Ryan told me of his girlfriend, his family, of his trips to the Burning Man festival and through each session I followed the gentle ups and downs in his life as he unsuspectingly offered himself up. He encouraged my ridiculous haircut to start with. (Kind of humored it) but as time passed he slowly mellowed me down by his acceptance of my ridiculous stylistic suggestions (lets go even shorter!!), and without me noticing, gently used his scissors and razors to snip away and round my hard edges. Strangely enough, after every haircut - I felt a bit happier and a bit more sensible.

When I left Seattle, I was sad to say goodbye to Ryan. After all he had been my friend, philosopher and guide in time when I was grappling with many different things. Almost five years hence, to this day, I wear my hair reasonably short, have done away with partings all together, and I still don't comb my hair - but yet manage to look sensible. This morning as I ran into church - as usual late for choir practice - I was quite amused to find my minister sporting a new short hair cut, that made her look ten years younger. She motioned to me and whispered "I asked them to give me an Alan" :))

So what part of this is vanity? The desire to be well groomed? The desire to share with those who are willing to hear (people like Ryan) about internal conflicts. Is the desire to express oneself vanity? If that is so, then isn't being sensible just as vain - in fact its worse in its obnoxious holier-than-thou pretensions.

Now where was I??