Happy New Year

Wishing you health and happiness! Cheers!

2 weeks since we got back

What all have I done?

Caught up on 'Being Erica' during my sleepless jet-lagged nights.
Attended a party to tell people I am back and looking for work (sort of)
Washed a lot of dishes
Created a linked-in profile
Kept my farm on farmville somewhat up to date
Made pancakes from scratch for my son

I think if I made a list of all that I haven't done, but intended to do, it would be way way way much longer..

Back

I've been back in Calgary for about 9 days now. Long enough for the cold and snow to feel like a natural part of the landscape - which of course, they are, just not where I am from though. The jet lag is almost gone. It took a while partly because of Kuttipa (and of course I blame Kuttipa for everything these days).

And I wish I could write. There is a lot going on internally (there always is). Not much of it I can write though...for public consumption I mean, whatever little public happens to come through.

What can I write about? Well, Kuttipa ate an apple today. Not an entire apple but about 1/4th. Which is actually pretty darn awesome. The kid has never ever ever done this before. No matter how hard I tried, fruit would never go in unless it happened to be mashed thoroughly and blended into a milkshake or something. So, I am excited! Hopefully this wasn't a one-time freak occurance.

He is obsessesed with the alphabet these days, which he sometimes says in the right order although with a few letters missing. His favorite letters seem to be E, F and W('bubby') and he will wander around the house repeating these letters again and again. Particularly 'efff'. As long as its the letter and not the word, says my husband. I guess..

So long, farewell..

Leaving Chennai today. Feeling terrible. So terrible that I can almost feel the pain physically...
Too much confusion in my mind. I crave clarity.

The nature of Guilt

It's all so relative!

Random thoughts...

from the past few weeks in no particular order. All this time among family and not much to do except tending after Kuttipa has left me time to think..

Gods and Pujas: Maybe there is no God or maybe there is. I prefer to think there is because it is immensely comforting. It is nice to be able to direct a prayer at someone. Or to be able to thank someone. But if there is a God or several of them, would he/she/they be happy to answer anyone's prayer if said in the right manner (homam, pujas etc.). What if the intent of the prayer is frivolous? Of course then the next question would be 'frivolous to who'? Who decides these things? What is a sufficiently serious thing to pray for? The amount of money spent on the puja? What if the desired outcome is actually not so desirable (not necessarily harmful) to someone else? Will it still be answered? Or if the other person has a clear conscience, does he/she have nothing to fear? And of course there is the pujari himself. Is it possible to be a pujari and spend hours everyday praying and fasting and chanting hymns and still be a lech or something just as undesirable?

Family stuff. Parents expect unquestioning obedience from children and yet expect them to go out and be assertive and even agressive in the big bad world. How is that possible? I don't remember who I heard this from or if I read this somewhere...It's not an original thought though. But its been going through my mind recently. I guess being among family makes you realize that you either have to spend a lot of energy resisting things or simply give in to every wish of theirs to avoid conflict. I mostly choose the latter option but then spend energy in simmering resentment. Perhaps there is a better way?

Self validation: How much of our time do we spend doing something in order to get validation from someone else? Inordinate amounts is my answer. Whether it is about trying to look good and evoke appreciation from men or trying to 'be good' and evoke appreciation from my family,

or appreciation from employers for being a 'good employee' or plenty of other such things. But what happens when I fail in these attempts like I mostly do? And the world is always only too quick to point out when and how much you fall short of anything. Then comes untold misery and self-bashing and feeling abject and feeling the complete opposite of validation. And so then it leads to a greater quest for validation. Somehow. Somewhere. Anyhow. It's some kind of vicious spiral. If validation came from within instead of coming from other people, it would be much better, wouldn't it? But how does that happen? I am worthy of existence. I am worthy of happiness. But how do I so completely believe it that it becomes a part of me?

Acting scripts: Kind of related to self-validation. How many of our interactions are kind of scripted, in the sense of saying the expected things, the 'right' things. Are we using our minds in conversation to actually have the conversation or to figure out the 'correct' responses so that we can survive the conversation?

Adrift

Feeling listless, restless and generally angsty. The reasons are several. My time in India is almost over. So there is all the homesickness and all that. And there is the uncertainty of the future. What am I going to do next? Where do things fit in? Does my life make sense in any way? Why am I in Calgary? that sort of thing....

And when I am feeling angsty, the bad poetry starts to flow ;-)

Faces

In the landscape of my mind
Some faces remain etched
Deep in the granite,
Cut deeper and deeper
by thoughts, feelings
And dreams.
Other faces vanish though
washed away in the tides,
of everyday life

In the moonlight,
in my dreams,
a sentence winds
through, ebbs
flows
and
then s t
o
p
s
.

Heavy stuff

I've been overweight most of my life. I say most instead of all, because there are some childhood photos of me looking like a normal child. But anyway, after a certain point the weight started piling on. A variety of factors I am sure contributed to it and although I've analyzed a million billion times, I don't have a conclusive answer. And even if I did, what of it? How does it help?

The weight gain certainly didn't help. I've lived most of my life feeling like a lesser person; feeling depressed, feeling unattractive, feeling unworthy of love, feeling like because I couldn't successfully lose weight I couldn't possibly be good at anything.... Believing the stereotypes of 'fat' (dirty, lazy, slothful, stupid).

The only thing that kept me going sometimes was the distant hope that someday I'd somehow lose all that weight and then I'd show everybody who I really was. Or some such thing. All my childhood diaries teem with this fantasy. Particularly when I was terribly enamored with some boy or the other in my class but did not dare reveal my crush to him because I was so sure I was unworthy of his attention. I actually did muster the courage to talk about it after I went to college but the results were always bad. And I expected no less. I looked down on myself and was confident that others looked down on me too.

Somewhere along the time I met my husband I'd developed a better self-image. I was happier with myself and wasn't desperately trying to attract a guy to improve my self-esteem. And so I guess things worked out between us. Paradoxically the improved self-image attitude was because of another guy... but that's a different story.

And yet the improved self-image thing somehow got lost, as I gained even more weight upon getting married and moving and all that stuff.

There have been times when I have lost some weight, significant amounts even. And then gained it all back. Terrible, terrible, terrible! Every unit of weight gained was a unit of self esteem lost. And here I am at 32, weighing close to the most I've ever weighed and starting (yet another) diet. Feeling almost as bad as my teenaged self, though she was agonizing over far less weight than I am right now.

And somehow I came across a website called 'Shapely Prose' about weight issues. Good prose. I couldn't stop reading. And one of their core premises is that you can be healthy at every size. That link leads to a news article about a research project. And what was the study? Two different groups of women - one group on a diet and the other being counseled on self-acceptance and being healthy. The diet group lost weight the first year and gained it all back after that. The 2nd group lost nothing but became much more fit (cholesterol levels, etc.) compared to the first group. And they were more physically active too...Surprising eh?

'.

What does this mean to me personally? Am I going to stop my diet? No, I can't stop now. I am not quite there yet. I still am under the spell of 'the fantasy of being thin.' I've held this one for too many years now to give it up in a couple of nights of reading.

But perhaps I can start the journey of self-acceptance as opposed to constant self-flagellation (metaphorically speaking of course). And perhaps my goal should be becoming healthier even if not necessarily slimmer(!)

Trapped in my tower,
I yearn to be free.
Can someone rescue me?
But who has the key?
Me?

Avva

My grandmother passed away 11 days ago. I loved her and yet I have shed few tears. I don't know if this is because she suffered a lot for the past few years and (from my perspective) is finally free. Or is it because the tears are there within somewhere, waiting to be released at the right time, whenever that is? I don't know.

We looked into her cupboard a couple of days ago and found a dairy from 1985 written by my Thatha (her husband). My parents meant to toss it and instead I held on to it and have been reading it on and off. I am amazed at the intensity of emotion in my grandfather's writing. I was nine years old when he passed away. Old enough to remember him in many ways but too young in other ways to have known and understood him.

In particular the dynamics of the relationship between my Avva and Thatha are fascinating, sad... and maybe even a tad scary. All the drama of lives lived and intertwined over decades. Just because the participants are no more, does it make it all meaningless?
Meanwhile more lives are lived and more dramas unfold. And left unrecorded, they are lost. As if they never happened. But it was real. What does that even mean? I am confused.

And yet its different

1. More dazzling fireworks. Lots more.
2. More smoke. Lots more.
3. Less social interaction and people coming over with sweets.
4. Less people stopping by on the street.

Happy Deepavali

I am at home in Madurai for Deepavali after a long time. Home for Deepavali, with everyone around me celebrating the same festival in an explosion of color and sound. Instead of solitarily trying to celebrate it in a distant land, surrounded by snow and people who haven't a clue about what it all means. Very different! Celebrations are always so much nicer with a whole lot of people around you...

So here I am clad in my new Salwar Kameez, having eaten my fill of a vellai appam and idli breakfast and way too many sweets! There is the incessant sound of crackers and bombs and other things that explode too loud. And on the streets, people are walking around wearing brightly coloured sarees and churidhars and pavadais and long strands of malligai poo. Every now and then the phone in the living room rings and greetings are exchanged. Some one drops by with some sweets and other sweets are given in exchange. I've missed all this!

Kuttipa

Photos from my trip

Oh why?

Why do most lunatics seem to be Republican? Just asking...I seldom read the news but when I do, I invariably come up with this question..

Beauty

First things first. I am really excited that Kuttipa looked at the shadow of his hand today and was experimenting with different shapes using his fingers.

I gave it a name. "Shadow!"

"Shayee"

Close enough. For the next few minutes he kept saying "Shayee" and looking at his hands (and the resulting shadows).

Just got back from a wonderful trip to one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Ever.

We went on a four day trip to Portstewart, a nice little seaside town in Northern Ireland, where we rented an apartment that happened to overlook the ocean (we didn't know this when we rented it. We just picked a number from the tourism website and called it.) The apartment itself was gorgeous. And there was a collection of P.G.Wodehouse novels. This was heaven in itself so far. We spent the first couple of days roaming around the town and visiting the very beautiful but hellishly cold beach there. And I spent my nights reading the novels.

On the third day we went to a place called the Mussenden temple. Getting there meant a bus ride and then a train journey to a place called Castlerock. From there it was quite a walk and an uphill one too. But the rewards of that walk, oh my!!! Such beauty all around! Tall wavy grass, ruined fragments of buildings, steep cliffs and the beautiful Atlantic ocean meeting the golden sandy beach in foam and glass layers of waves. I was so moved and close to tears!

I will post a photo of that place sometime in the next couple of days.

Too many words on this page, so...

Any way you look at it

It's a good thing to be be more respectful of the environment and the planet. We know that. We have heard it tons and tons of times in the media, from other people, etc. But, are we doing anything at all about it? I am not (except for being vegetarian, which I can't really claim credit for since it's upbringing and not my conscious moral choice that has been the cause).

I am not noble or selfless or particularly passionate about the planet. In fact, to tell you the truth if you gave me a lecture on climate change, my eyes would probably glaze over and my mind will wander. And this has been bugging me a bit. Why am I not more interested? Why do I perceive those who do care as saints and those who don't as being normal? How can the normal join the ranks of the saints without giving up their appetite for life?

From my very limited knowledge (what is this blog called again?), being green kind of looks like you've to give up a lot of fun. No car. No paper. No nothing. And to do all this for what? What is the selling point? A sense of personal virtue from being green? That is not bad, but really I don't care too much for that and neither do a lot of other people.

But the answer is hidden in plain sight. Our survival, our health, our children... real selfish reasons for why you might want to go green as opposed to being a selfless saint. Consider this article for instance, from which I've quoted the paragraph below.

"Just as liberal tree-huggers need to understand that we cannot make a case for altruism in any sense, least of all when it comes to saving the environment, conservatives need to understand that “saving the planet” is a euphemism for saving ourselves. It’s not the environment we’re actually concerned about. It’s our ego-driven selves, along with the future generations that will carry our DNA. And that’s the only compelling case we can make in taking any and all action to protect and preserve our vital ecosystems e.g. air, freshwater, forests, oceans, and the animals upon which they all depend."

So there is such a thing as selfish environmentalism then? As usual I turn to google for some answers. And as usual I found some very interesting reads that kept me up well past midnight. The most interesting one was "Can Selfishness Save the Environment?" by Matt Ridley and Bobbi S. Low. It was published 16 years ago and I think the intervening years have only proved some of their points.

They discuss some ways of dealing with over-exploiting common resources (land, air, water etc.). One effective way has been privitizing the resource. This may not always work in the desired way or it may be near impossible to implement (How do you privitize air?). Another effective way has been legislation. This is not necessarily effective all the time either. There may be other ways too.. such as a mutual benefit system (explained by the 'Tit for Tat' model in game theory). The article goes on to argue for the creation of positive incentives for being 'Green' and negative incentives for polluting. A bigger version of 'Tit for Tat'.

I don't think I did a good job at explaining it and would strongly urge anyone (anyone?) reading this blog to go read the article.

One thing that struck me was the USGBC's LEED rating system for buildings and how successful this program has been despite its many flaws. The article was probably written well before the creation of LEED ratings but can well explain its success.

Now that I've read this, what am I going to do next? I am still working on the answer.