Michael Jackson and The Yearning for Normal

When I was in middle school and high school back in India, Sundays were welcomed with great anticipation for a couple of different reasons. It was the one day of the week there was no school (Saturdays were half-days); Sundays meant family get-togethers; Sundays meant free-wheeling, no-destination-in-mind trips with my dad; Sundays also meant half an hour of 'Western Music' programs on TV. Other than the annual Grammy telecasts - days late and always in the dead of the night on a Saturday - Sunday mornings were our only window into what was happening in the music world in the US and the UK.

And so we saw and heard ABBA, BoneyM, Michael Jackson, the Bee Gees, the Beatles. We had cassette tapes of these artists that we listened to on a single-speaker 'Two-in-One,' but being able to watch them on our small television screen was quite something else. When the Grammys rolled around, we were familiar with a mere one or two of the nominated artists, but who cared?

Of all the Michael Jackson songs, I only knew three of them back then - Billie Jean, Beat It!, and Thriller. I could not for the life of me figure out Thriller. I did not know why they were in a graveyard, I did not know why the man laughed that maniacal laugh in the end. I did not know all of the words to Beat It! or Billie Jean. I don't think I know them even now. But I loved the beat, the energy, the confidence, and the absolute certainty of Jackson's dance steps and actions. He knew what he was doing and it was thrilling to watch him do it so well. When I finished listening to the songs, I felt pumped up, inspired, I was amazed that someone not too much older than me was so successful.

Little did I know that the success came at a price so huge as to be incalculable. I had no clue about the backstory.

It was only when I moved to the US that I realized he had siblings, that there was something called the Jackson 5. I pieced together the story from TV specials and magazine articles. Over and over, one concept popped up repeatedly in the media coverage of Neverland, the child molestation charges, the dangling of the child through the window - his yearning for a normal childhood. Although I noticed it at the time, it did not resonate with me at all. Why would anyone want a normal childhood if he was so obviously talented and could be so successful? A normal childhood was boring. It was infinitely more exciting to be able to travel the world, to have millions of fans hanging on to your every step, to be so rich.

That was many years ago. Now, with children of my own, I have an understanding of normal and not-normal childhoods. Being a wife and mother, having lived away from my parents for a number of years and having had the opportunity to see a lot of lives up close has put my own childhood in perspective.

And yesterday, when my husband first told me that Michael Jackson was in a coma and moments later I saw on the news that he was dead, and this morning as I've been reading website after website covering his life and death and music, my mind raced back - longingly - to those days so far away in my past when my brother and I danced our crazy steps to his music, when we wondered who Billie Jean was, when we would race to lower the volume on the TV or on the music player when we heard our dad clearing his throat disapprovingly and tried to explain but failed hopelessly when our parents asked what this kind of music was all about.

As one of the commenters to this Coates essay put it, I, and a lot of others, are homesick.

Do you see the irony in this? On hearing of the death of a music icon who did not have the sort of upbringing that would have inspired feelings of homesickness in him - whose lack of a normal childhood gave millions of us the music that colored our growing years - my first thoughts were of my own childhood homes, of the various living rooms and bedrooms in which we played his music, of my parents and of my brother, of my cousins and uncles who indulged us by buying us music.

Thank you for the music and the memories, Michael. R.I.P.

Complications during VBAC and a terrible tragedy

The Mad Momma has posted Rashmi and Vivek's horrifying story of the birth and death of their second child. Attempting a vaginal birth after caeserean (VBAC), the delivery ran into complications resulting in the baby's death. It is an excruciatingly painful story, their grief amplified by what they say was the hospital's negligence and uncaring attitude.

I felt no urge whatsoever to push, yet was asked to do so. The stirrup on the delivery table kept breaking off – I was told that this is a recurring problem that “needed attention”. At 1.50 pm, the fetal heart rate dropped to 80 beats per minute. Dr. Prabha was called again. She checked the fetal heart rate on the CTG, explained that this was normal when the baby was passing through the birth canal, and asked me to hold my breath and push hard. I felt no sensation in my cervical area, but felt intense pain tearing my stomach apart. I felt like my baby had rolled into my stomach and could see its body pushing up against my ribcage. I was screaming, pointing at my stomach, and telling them that my stomach was hurting, and there was no urge to push. But she told me to “push, push harder”. I then heard Dr. Prabha saying “Get the OT ready”. She told my husband that she was going to attempt to deliver by forceps – if that was unsuccessful, she’d have to do a Caesarian.

The OT wasn’t on standby, wasn’t ready. I was numb with pain. They wanted me to get up and move to the operation table. I couldn’t move. They eventually slid something under my back and I pushed myself on to the OT table, as there was no transfer stretcher available. I complained of severe shoulder and chest pain. No one paid me any attention; everyone was busy preparing the OT, and the anesthetist was attempting to top up my epidural. The fetal heart rate was never monitored in the OT. Dr. Prabha unsuccessfully attempted a forceps delivery at 2.20 p.m., and then cut me open. I heard a deafening sucking sound, after which I must have passed out.

Later, I learnt that my uterus had ruptured along the scar of my previous Caeserian section. My baby was found floating in my abdomen. He had no heartbeat and he wasn’t breathing. He had been deprived of oxygen for a long time – 43 minutes. They “resuscitated” my son and put him on a ventilator.

When I opened my eyes I saw Dr. Latha leave, followed by Dr. Prabha. Dr. Shirley was suturing me while laughing and talking with another nurse. I felt reassured that my baby was okay, even though I had neither seen nor heard him.

After months of working with the hospital to find out exactly what when wrong, Rashmi and Vivek were met with stonewalling and assertions by the attending doctor that she would do the same thing over again in a similar case in the future. And that is exactly what Rashmi says she is looking to prevent.

Please do click the link above and read the entire post.

Wockhardt Bangalore, the hospital where Rashmi attempted to have her baby, is responding in the comments section to The Mad Momma's post. Girl on the Bridge linked to the post on her blog:

As someone who will be (hopefully) a mother soon, this story is my worst nightmare. Of course, my situation is not the same. This is my first child. What annoys me most is the hospital’s claim (Wockhardt has a long rebuttal in MM’s comments) that Rashmi chose Dr. Latha because she wanted a VBAC. This is conjecture and probably not useful to any lawyer fighting on facts but I know, I just KNOW that no matter how certain a woman is about how she wants her birth to be, no matter how much she is set on a certain type of experience she would not, would not put her child at risk.

I have said many times before on this blog that we need to be involved in the medical procedures that we go through, we need to ask questions, read on our own about the conditions and the procedures. Rashmi's story does not take away from any of that. If anything, it emphasizes the need to not only be aware of what's being done to us but also the need to be careful in choosing medical institutions and doctors.

Many times, in emergencies especially, we don't have a choice regarding what hospital we end up in or which doctor attends to us, but for the times we do, I wish there were some service that would rate the doctors on their competency and bedside manner and success in their field. I'm not saying that the tragedy that befell Rashmi and her family will never ever happen again, but it will arm people with the kind of information that I didn't have when I was getting ready to have my baby in Bangalore, the kind of information that parents-to-be come searching for to my blog (and I'm sure many others) on the backs of a google search.

I deeply admire Rashmi for what she is doing. She has lived through an experience so devastating that we would not wish it on our worst enemies and she is using her story to educate mothers-to-be. A story that, I'm sure, calls up her pain every time she recounts it, that reopens wounds that would heal faster if only they were allowed to stay closed. I do hope that her efforts result in a better experience with hospitals for anyone considering having a baby.

P.S. Thanks, Aaman, for alerting me to this story.

In the Wake of the Iranian Elections

From .faramarz's Flikr photostream

Amazing coverage at the Daily Dish. More at Global Voices. Gripping photos on Flikr. History is happening.

Footloose Friday - VIII

When I dabbled as a disc jockey for a radio station in India, the quest to make the shows interesting was never-ending. For two hours each week I anchored shows that played an hour of English songs and an hour of Hindi songs. The third hour was devoted to listener requests, so the radio jockeys had no control over what songs would be played. I would try to mold the English and Hindi play lists around a theme - Rafi songs, or songs of the 60s, Oscar-nominated songs; or compile trivia about the songs that went on air; or make up quizzes about the songs that the audience would call in or message the answers to.

One evening as I was trying to arrive at a play list for the next day, I came across a CD in the radio station's library. Almost lost in the tightly-packed rows on the shelves was a compilation of the title songs from the James Bond movies. I had played some of those songs from the CDs of the artists that had sung them (Golden Eye from a Tina Turner CD, for example) and I had wondered why no one had ever thought of collecting all the James Bond movie songs in one place. Phew! That one CD made my prep work easy that day.

Golden Eye is hands down my favorite Bond song, followed closely by McCartney's Live and Let Die.






And then there is Carly Simon's Nobody Does It Better from The Spy Who Loved Me.



I've always enjoyed this song whenever I've listened to it and the other Carly Simon song I am familiar with, You're So Vain.

These days I just listen to her with a new ear, a new understanding and a new respect for her art.

In this heartbreaking but beautifully written personal essay in The Daily Beast titled How I Found My Voice, Simon traces the history of her struggle with stuttering. Who knew!

Here Simon describes the frist time the words got stuck in her throat:

As I tried to speak this line, a snake that had been hibernating near my oesophagus, grabbed at and strangled the beginning of each word. As the word “fair” struggled to live, the serpent constricted its passage and as if deprived of air, I balked two or three times at the ‘F’ before the word emerged ravaged and in need of oxygen.

This was the unhappy and astonishing birth of my stammer or at least my first gripping self-conscious awareness of it. My sisters and cousins, if they noticed this—and I can’t imagine they didn’t—must have been puzzled by the strange new guttural utterances. They likely imagined they were temporary and didn’t even consider to do or say anything about it. This would fade and disappear—like scratches, bruises, and babysitters.

[...]

For at least the grammar school and high-school years, there was merciless teasing, graduating by about eighth grade to a less beastly imitation and “behind the back of me” fun. In the early years, I was beaten into states of self-hatred and begging to go “home.” Home plate. Please let me go home. To my mother. I was assaulted, bruised, battered, and broken. I knew the answers in class and couldn’t raise my hand. I had to learn that the first devastating lesson was to learn to have the courage to face life.

My mother and I had the closest of times a child and mother can have. I would sit on her lap and we would practise the words. Any word. She would rock me and relax me. Sometimes a word would roll off my tongue, perfectly, passing the throat guards undetected and my mother would say: “See darling, you can do it!”

It's an amazing and humbling story of how she still struggles with speaking, but found along the way that she could sing. And so beautifully at that!

If you'd like to read the article, please do (click on the 'How I Found My Voice' link above), but come back and tell me which of the Bond songs you like best.

Related Post: My Day as a Radio Jockey.

This is the eighth post in the Footloose Friday series. The rest are here.

One Family, Three (or Four) Languages, One Fine Legacy

Summer holidays back when we were growing up meant family get-togethers. The four of us - my parents, my brother and I - would drive down to Tamil Nadu from wherever we happened to be living to visit my father's side of the family or we would drive to Mysore where my mother's parents lived. Alternatively, family came to visit us. We moved every two years to a new town or city and visiting us was, therefore, always an adventure. And then there were the weddings and upanayanams* that had seasons of their own. Auspicious days occurring during a few months of the year meant wedding dates and dates for other rituals were crammed into those few months.

While the summer holidays, weddings and other occasions had a charm all their own and were eagerly anticipated, they were by no means the only times the families converged. Whenever we lived in the same town as my mother's or father's siblings, Sunday afternoons meant everyone would gather in one house for a massive lunch. I could never figure out how it happened, who planned it or who called everyone else, but there we were in the midst of a gaggle of aunts, uncles and cousins, chowing down food until we could eat no more, my father's deep laughter resonating around the house, my uncles backing him up with cackles of their own, my aunts picking an argument with my father just because, and whoever the host was packing dinner for the guests in steel tiffin boxes to be hauled away at the end of the visit in buttis (plastic baskets with handles).

Amidst the laughter and fake arguments and the heady aromas and family rituals and gossip that enveloped us children like a warm blanket, one curious fact at these gatherings was (and is) a great source of delight to me. At any point in time we were liable to hear any one of four languages** - English, Kannada, Telugu or Tamil - floating in the air. It was, as far as I knew, unique to our family.

Since the pieces of this puzzle were in place way before I was born, I have never known anything other than my parents speaking to each other and with us children in one language (Telugu) and with their siblings and in-laws in two separate languages (Kannada and Tamil), all generously interspersed with English. It was only when I got older and visited my friends' homes that I realized that it was not normal at all.

The explanation for how this came about is innocuous enough - my father grew up in Tamil Nadu, my mother in Karnataka. One day my mother's aunt came with a marriage proposal for my mother. That aunt and one of my father's sisters were somehow related through an earlier marriage. It has been explained to me a hundred times, but I still don't get it (the next time around, I'm sitting down with a pencil and paper when I talk to my parents about this). But because they grew up in different states speaking different languages - Kannada in my mother's case and Tamil in my father's - how would my parents speak to each other? The elders talked about it a little and came up with a solution, a lingua franca - a third different language, Telugu - one that my maternal grandmother and mother knew how to speak and one that my dad spoke with his sisters-in-law and his sisters. Although each of their versions of the language was corrupted from being secondary to their main tongues, they could manage. And so they got married.

In time, my father became fluent in Kannada and my mother learned to speak and read Tamil, but they stuck to the original plan of speaking in Telugu to each other. So family events in which both sides of the family were present looked somewhat like this:

My parents spoke to each other and to us in Telugu; my father spoke to his brothers and brothers-in-law in Tamil, to his sisters-in-law and sisters in Telugu, to my mother's siblings in Kannada, to my maternal grandmother in Telugu and to my maternal grandfather in Kannada; my mother spoke to her parents, brothers and sisters and associated in-laws in Kannada, to all of my father's family in Telugu; my maternal grandmother spoke to my mother in Telugu (but my mother unfailingly responded in Kannada), and she spoke in Kannada to the rest of her children; my maternal uncles and aunts spoke to each other in Kannada; my paternal uncles and aunts spoke to each other in Tamil, but they spoke to the sisters-in-law in Telugu; my mother's nieces and nephews spoke to her in Kannada and the ones on my father's side spoke to her in Telugu; my brother and I spoke to cousins from my father's side in Telugu and to the ones from my mother's side in Kannada.

Depending on the participants, the same conversation would be had in all three languages, with everyone following and not missing a beat, and any exclamatory statements and pronouncements would be made in English. As in, "But that is preposterous!" to sum up someone's less than desirable stance on an issue. And sermons about bad behavior or life lessons were almost always in English.

As I tried to lay out and trace this bowl-of-spaghetti lingual connections to someone I worked for years ago when I moved to the US, he wondered if all this meant my brain was wired differently from his. It is quite possible that it is, but the one abiding lesson my parents tried to drill into us was respect for languages, and by extension, cultures. My father does not hesitate to express immediate and visceral disgust for anyone who puts down a language or culture. He maintains a small pocket dairy in which he notes down unfamiliar turns of phrases or new words he comes across in magazines or newspapers (he finds a boatload of them in The Atlantic Monthly magazine every time he comes here) and takes great pleasure in using them.

And if you thought I'd had my fill of languages to last me a lifetime, my husband speaks an entirely different dialect of Kannada than I do - the North Karnataka dialect. So when I first got to know his family, I, who had grown up speaking the language and studying it in school, stared at them a few times with a blank face trying to piece together what they said and trying to make sense of it in the context.

Over the years, our different languages and dialects have been a source of fun, too. My mother-in-law or my husband try to say something in Telugu with rather hilarious results, and they look at my face in anticipation when they use a particularly obscure word in the North Karnataka dialect.

Now all I need to figure out is how we're going to pass on this treasure to our children. My son picked up Kannada during our three-year stay in Bangalore and my daughter, who thought anything that did not sound like English was, by default, Spanish (courtesy Dora), now can identify Kannada words when she hears them. I have a strong feeling that the iron is hot and this summer is the time to strike it. The kids and I have planned to set aside an hour a day to speak exclusively in Kannada during the summer. I want them to be able to converse in the languages of our families without inhibitions, and am not really particular about them being able to write or read in those languages. Although if that does happen, no one will be more delighted than me.


Notes:
* I wrote about my son's Upanayanam, a thread ceremony marking the passage from boyhood to the life of a student, here.

** The Government of India recognizes 22 official Indian languages. There are hundreds of dialects of each of these languages.

Pico Iyer's Journey to Happiness

Pico Iyer, a travel writer (among other things) is someone whose writings I make it a point to read whenever I come across them. The topics he writes about are not raging controversies nor the latest hot-button issues of the day, but they do offer a unique view of the world and offer food for thought. In yesterday's New York Times, he wrote about living with less and getting wants to match with needs.

I’m not sure I knew the details of all these lives [Etty Hillesum, a Dutchwoman on the way to a Nazi death camp, Ralph Waldo Emerson and a Japanese poet Issa] when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.”

Towards the end of the essay he says,

The constitution of Japan, refreshingly, says nothing about the pursuit of happiness, as if to suggest that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most when it isn’t pursued.

There is something vaguely discordant about that idea, am not sure what it is. His giving up his life in New York and seeking a life in Japan seems like the pursuit of something. And anyone giving a thought to whether they are happy or not (which is the only way you'll know you're happy) must be seeking it. And if they don't give a thought to whether they are happy or not, then more power to them and their detachment, but it is not the same as being happy. I guess what I'm trying to ask is, Can you be happy without seeking happiness?

I know this must seem like a nit picky point, but it was, perhaps, unnecessary on the author's part to ding all things American, including the Constitution, in order to make his point. I'm sure there are a lot of genuinely happy people in the Western World working and living within its value system.

Related post: What Makes You Happy?

[Update June 9, 2009: The New York Times carries reader reactions to the original Pico Iyer article, some in agreement and some in disagreement (such as, It takes a boat load of money to go off and live a simple life). Worth reading. Thanks, BPSK, for pointing me to the revision of the original article.]

[Update #2, June 9, 2009: The revision to the original article was to remove the reference to the Japanese Constitution. Thought I'd put it here in case you don't make it back to the original article or to BPSK's comment to this post. At some point during the day yesterday I got to wondering whether Japan even had a constitution given that they had emperors 'n all. NYT's note just says that the reference to the Japanese Constitution was 'incorrect' without elaborating.]

Obama's Cairo University Speech

Andrew Sullivan carries the entire text of Obama's speech at Cairo University. Many goose-bump inducing parts, including this one:

So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground.

The speech is most definitely worth a read and worth sharing with our children.

Video below from YouTube:

The Newsweek Oprah Story: What Do Celebrities Owe Us?

Newsweek carries a scathing article in its latest edition, about Oprah and the 'bad', 'wrong', 'risky' health advice she dishes on her daily TV show:

Her viewers follow her guidance because they like and admire her, sure. But also because they believe that Oprah, with her billions and her Rolodex of experts, doesn't have to settle for second best. If she says something is good, it must be.

This is where things get tricky. Because the truth is, some of what Oprah promotes isn't good, and a lot of the advice her guests dispense on the show is just bad. The Suzanne Somers episode wasn't an oddball occurrence. This kind of thing happens again and again on Oprah. Some of the many experts who cross her stage offer interesting and useful information (props to you, Dr. Oz). Others gush nonsense. Oprah, who holds up her guests as prophets, can't seem to tell the difference. She has the power to summon the most learned authorities on any subject; who would refuse her? Instead, all too often Oprah winds up putting herself and her trusting audience in the hands of celebrity authors and pop-science artists pitching wonder cures and miracle treatments that are questionable or flat-out wrong, and sometimes dangerous.

Yes, Oprah is popular. Wildly so. Yes, she has a broad-based, ardent following for her TV show. Yes, the things she recommends on her show have the habit of flying off the shelves (or whatever the equivalent is on Amazon). But does any of this mean that she owes anything to her audience other than being honest when she says she tried such and such product or when she says she loved the book she picked for her book club?

I am not an expert on Oprah. I watch clips from her shows off and on and read her and about her in magazines and on websites. From what I've seen and read, she comes across as the person who is enthusiastic about certain things (some ideas, some products, some services) and uses her show - a vehicle and brand she created from scratch and built to dish on her view of life and its struggles - to talk about them. That a million people rush off buy the thing she mentions on the show - what exactly does it require her to do? Worry that her audience might use the information blindly without investigating it further for themselves? Should she be responsible for the actions of her audience?

This is a question I've asked before in relation to the Phelps marijuana fiasco. Just because a celebrity is good at something and they make money off of it or are popular because of it, does it mean that they should be on their best behaviour, do the right things and say the right things?

The Newsweek article places a litany of demands on Oprah's show. A sampling:

""Because of the power and influence that Oprah's show has, she should make an extra effort to be clear."" (Comment on a show about the HPV vaccine.)

"Oprah said almost nothing about possible risks." (Comment on a show about 'thread-lifting'.)

"Fanning believes Oprah should have made it clear that Thermage isn't for everyone."

Which leads me to believe that the audience has no responsibility for its own actions, that her viewers are gullible and unquestioning, that they will swallow every piece of advice that tumbles out of her mouth without assessing the pros and cons for their specific circumstances and health conditions. Is this really so? If that is the case, then Oprah and other celebrities like her are standing at the top of a very long, slippery slope. Which one of her audience members should she worry about? The ones that do not understand that medical or cosmetic procedures involve risks? The ones that do not get that medicines may have side effects? The ones that do not know enough to ask if such and such procedure is right for them? The ones that will refuse vaccinations for their children because Jenny McCarthy said so and she was on Oprah's show? Where do you start and where do you stop?

The article gives off a whiff of wanting to take the contrarian view just because. The complaints against the show appear lame and the authors and the experts they consult indulge in some heavy patronizing. The recommendations for alterations to Oprah's show (listing a procedure's side effects, introducing experts who take the opposite view on the medication being discussed, among other things) are great - if you are a C-SPAN show or a medicine ad that must follow the Federal Trade Commission rules or one of those public TV channels that no one watches. Not if you are Oprah and all you are selling is escapism in doses of an hour a day and the idea that we are all in the same boat (so what if she is super rich and super connected and super famous while most of her audience is thoroughly entrenched in the middle class?), and believe strongly in stories about wanting to be the best you can be.

So let's hang back and take Oprah's health advice with a pinch of salt. As we should. And as I'm sure she would want her audience to.

Updated June 2: Changed 'author' to 'authors' in the penultimate paragraph. The Newsweek article is credited to two writers.

Blogging

I will be offline for a couple of weeks. I'll post links to interesting stuff as and when I can, but in the meantime I hope you will find something you like in the archives. I look forward to catching up when I get back.

NRI Parents' Association in Vadodara

Via e-mail I received a link to the website of an organization serving the needs of NRI parents (parents of non-resident Indians) in Vadodara:

http://www.nripagujarat.com/

The website also provides information about a similar organization in Bangalore (http://www.nripagujarat.com/nri/other-nri-organisations/). The following few paragraphs is from their "About" section:

NRI Parents Association, Vadodara, Gujarat was formed on July 21, 2002 by a group of concerned NRI parents who felt the need to promote the Association with following aims and objectives.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

To promote fellowship goodwill and mutual support among members and others.

To build a network of support in the areas of Health Care, Help in Ageing Processes, Cultural and Religious, legal help for protecting rights to properties and assets.

To utilize the expertise, experience and resources of parents and their children for the benefit of the society at large.

With a view to achieve above objectives following activities are planned:

Publication of Newsletter to promote contacts among parents and children.

Arrange lectures, seminars, workshops to give information with regard to Visa, Passport, Medical Insurance, Foreign exchange regulation and other related topics.

Contact the Government agencies, Foreign Missions and other related agencies to sort out the problems of NRI parents.

Set up a small library of books, magazines and journals and documents related to NRI affairs and helpful to them.

A couple of years ago I wrote about an article in Outlook magazine about NRI parent associations mushrooming in cities across India and how these groups help aging parents cope with having to live far away from their children:

Here's a social sub-group that my parents belong to, but it never crossed my mind until I read this article in the Feb 6, 2006 edition of Outlook magazine - NRI Parents.
In other words, parents of Non-Resident Indians.

These parents have a lot more in common than just their children living away from them in foreign lands. They face common issues at home - loneliness, lack of a support system, travel issues, management of funds, etc. So they banded together to form associations. Many such associations are already up and running in almost every major city in India including Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Baroda, Ahmedabad and Coimbatore.

The entire post is here.

If you are aware of anyone who might benefit from these associations, please direct them appropriately.

My World: Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery is one of the most visited tourist sites in the Washington, D.C. area, with around four million visitors every year. The evidence is all too clear as you stand at the information desk inside the bright, airy building at the entrance to the cemetery. A thousand people seem to be milling around you, buying tickets for guided tours, asking for information, perusing maps, getting oriented before heading out the doors and on to the grounds.

Barely a couple of hundred feet outside the entrance to the visitors' information office lies another world.

Perhaps it is this gentle reminder that sets the tone.

Perhaps it's the 600 acres of land sprawling outward and upward from under your feet. Perhaps it's the winding pathways on gently undulating hills, the lush trees, the grass drenched in a rich shade of green. Perhaps it's this oasis of silence just outside a bustling city.

Perhaps.

But at just a few more steps from that signpost the reason - hundreds of thousands of reasons, in fact - for the serenity and the awed hush that envelopes you becomes painfully obvious. Gravestones. On either side of you and ahead of you as far as the eye can see.

The neat rows appear to be in straight lines no matter the angle from which you view them, forming mesmerizing patterns.



If people talk at all, it's in quiet tones and in whispers. On the pedestrian only pathways, if a car drives by, pedestrians move away in respect, because only those who have loved ones buried at this cemetery are allowed to drive in.

Designated in 1864 as a military cemetery, the Arlington National Cemetery was initially used to bury the Civil War dead. Now more than 300,000 people, including soldiers who died in the wars since the Civil War, combat veterans, Presidents and Supreme Court Justices, are buried at the cemetery. The cemetery's website says that an average of 27 funerals take place every day. The funerals these days are for those soldiers who die on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and for World War II veterans.


The cemetery is divided into various numbered sections, each section designated for a particular conflict. In Section 27, for example, are buried former slaves who fought during the Civil War. Their tombstones designate their rank as "civilian" or "citizen". Section 60, pictured above, has been called the "saddest acre in America," and is the designated space for soldiers who die in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the end of the section bookended by two streets, lies another marker. From this end the empty space is foreboding.

In 1868, the military issued an order and set aside the last Monday in the month of May as a day of remembrance and as a day to honor those who serve in the military, now observed as Memorial Day. From the Memorial Day Order:

We are organized, Comrades, as our regulations tell us, for the purpose among other things, "of preserving and strengthening those kind and fraternal feelings which have bound together the soldiers sailors and Marines, who united to suppress the late rebellion." What can aid more to assure this result than by cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead? We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security, is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

[...]

Let us, then, at the time appointed, gather around their sacred remains, and garland the passionless mounds above them with choicest flowers of springtime; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledge to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon the Nation's gratitude—the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan.

As you make your way up and around the winding paths at Arlington National Cemetery, it is not just the miles and miles of gravestones that remind you just exactly what it takes to preserve freedom. It is also the people that are walking all around you - aging parents who've come to say goodbye to their children, young soldiers, some of them barely 19, 20 years old; comrades who've come to remember; young women, with flowers in one hand, the other hand wrapped around a child's tiny palm who've come to say goodbye to their husbands; women, widowed now for years, who've come to plant flowers at their husband's graves; widowers who've come with a stool in tow, just to sit for a while near their wives' graves.

All kinds of people, in all shades of the human rainbow, of myriad nationalities, of all ages and abilities, in all stations in life - rich, poor, middle class. If a walk through the cemetery is a walk through American and world history, it is also a lesson in anthropology.

Families pay homage to a loved one. There were three generations in that small group you see in the center.
The man came to pay a visit to his wife's gravestone, but searched in vain for that of a friend

Some come by walk, some come by metro, some come in cars, some come on buses, some come on thundering motorbikes.

Memorial Day Weekend in Washington means that the Rolling Thunder comes into town. From Wikipedia:

Starting in 1987 and continuing through May of 2008 Rolling Thunder has been conducting the “Rolling Thunder Run” in which all of its members attend. For 21 years the members of Rolling Thunder have converged on Washington, D.C to show their continued support for the efforts to find lost service men and women of past conflicts. In May of 2001 the estimated number of motorcycles involved in this rally was 200,000; by May 2008 that number had risen to more than 350,000.

It is humbling and thrilling to be anywhere close to where a large group of the vets on bikes have gathered. You only have an inkling of what they might have gone through in combat, but you can't help admiring their determination and perseverance in showing up every year and in large numbers for their fallen and missing comrades.

Two members of the Rolling Thunder arrive at Arlington Cemetery to pay homage

I took this picture last year as the bikers made their way to Constitution Avenue from the Lincoln Memorial

Memorial Day means many things to many people. It means the end of the school year - well, almost; the beginning of summer; the day the swimming pools open in the colder regions of the country; a day for blockbuster sales; a day when the smoke and aroma of barbecues fill backyards across the country. It also means, in cities and towns across the country, and in the capital, Washington, D.C., a day to remember those who fight on our behalf and give their lives so we may live ours in peace.

No matter which nook of the world we live in and no matter which corner of the world we came from, it's a fine day to tip our collective hat to all our soldiers.

P.S. HBO Documentary Films made a movie about Section 60. I couldn't bring myself to see it when it was first shown. For those who are interested, there's information about the movie online on HBO's website.

This is my world this week. For views from other corners of the world, visit My World.

Update: Adding a link to Lola's heartfelt post about the Sant'Anna massacre called 'Tiny Heroes':

I entered the church at my own risk. I had been warned by the sound engineer, my friend Maurizio. He had gone in minutes prior and exited sniffling. He's usually a big smile person, so a sad face on him stood out like a sore thumb. I wanted to go in nonetheless, to say a little prayer for those 560 people that died on a morning not unlike that one.

The entire east-facing wall of the tiny chapel was covered floor to ceiling with small plaques, faded photos, scribbled inscriptions and epitaphs. The age of the oldest victim honored on that wall was 16. The youngest was a 2-week old infant. That wall was the children's memorial section, and the images of those 110 innocent faces staring back at me was gripping my throat like a tight Nazi fist. The majority of the victims of the massacre that took place in Sant'Anna di Stazzema were children and young women. The men were either fighting, dead or hiding in the mountains surrounding the town. The few invalid elders in Sant'Anna died by the same two MG34 machine-guns that swept the church ground that day.

Please do read the entire post. It is available by clicking here.

A soldier faces down the Taliban - in pink boxer shorts

I was driving to Arlington National Cemetery this morning when I heard this report on NPR's Weekend Edition titled Real Men Wear Pink Boxers:

Photo Credit: Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder

U.S. Army Specialist Zachary Boyd of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry, who is 19, was sleeping when the Taliban attacked his unit in Afghanistan's Kunar province. Specialist Boyd leapt from his bunk. He grabbed his weapon, pulled on his helmet and vest, and manned his station behind sandbags at Firebase Restropo. He did not stop to pull on trousers.

His mom's reaction? Priceless.

"I was always telling him to pull up his pants," Sheree Boyd recalls. "I would give him a wedgie to make him do it. As a mom, you want your son to look nice. But he has always been one to run around in his boxers."

Bravery comes in all forms. Some are brave in battlefields. Some are brave in ordinary homes just like yours and mine all over the world.

Footloose Friday - VII

My brother sent me this video of musicians from around the world singing Stand By Me. I've always loved the song and I've watched the video many times, but it never fails to produce goose bumps and a prickling behind my eyes. Music is truly the language of the heart. It needs no words.

"Stand by Me" performed by musicians around the world from SKAT on Vimeo.

Have a wonderful weekend with the people that stand by you!

This is the seventh in a series. For more Footloose Friday posts, please click here.

The Yard Sale

It was a bright yellow table with four sturdy legs. White flowers arched gracefully across its shiny top. Two panels, attached by hinges to the main panel, hung on the sides. Without them the table was round. When the panels came up, the table morphed into an oval-top.

But its best feature was the price. At $5.00 (with a chair thrown in), it had my name written all over it.

I was a newly minted immigrant foraging low cost department stores and although I did not know it then, that uniquely American phenomenon known as the 'yard sale', for the basic household items I needed as a student. I slept on a sleeping bag I had brought from India. My room had a built-in, rectangular closet for my clothes. Renee, my roommate, drove me out to the store where I purchased a fan (for $10.00 - turned out to be a great value; we still use it 16 years later) to minimize cooling costs. All I needed now was a table to house my books.

On the way back to our apartment, we came across a small house with all manner of stuff on the sidewalk. A young man and a woman were busy running in and out of their house. Renee stopped the car and asked if I wanted to look at what they had. Not really sure what she meant, I just nodded. Straightaway she zoned in on the table, assessing if it would fit in her car.

At some point in the next few minutes I gleaned what was going on. The man and the woman had finished up school and were getting ready to move away. They were trying to sell as many of their possessions as they could before packing up the rest. Five dollars seemed like a great price for a table. Perhaps he saw 'poor, desperate student' written all over my face. He offered one of the two chairs for the same price. So what if it was a dining table? I could leave the panels down and it would fit perfectly in the corner by the window in my room.

As we stashed the table into the trunk and the chair into the back seat and drove on, the novelty of the situation, the thrill of a cheap buy and the relief at not having to spend any more money on setting up my room in the immediate future brought on a giddy feeling.

It was my first brush with a yard sale. In the intervening years, however, it has become obvious that the yard sale - or the moving sale, garage sale or rummage sale as it is variously known - is much more complex than someone trying to offload their expendable belongings before moving on.

At a community yard sale a few days ago I talked to one woman who walked or drove from yard to yard. I was on my walk and I ran into her a few times. She peered carefully at the display tables, occasionally talking to the owners. She came away from each yard with empty hands. It was apparent that she did not find what she was looking for. After about the fourth time of seeing each other, we stopped to chat.

Seriously awesome boots for sale
"Are you looking for anything in particular?" I asked.

"A nut cracker," she said.

"Couldn't you find one in a shop?"

"Well, I was hoping to get one for around 50 cents."

There in lies the thrill of the yard sale. The prospect of finding something for a fraction of its retail cost. Perhaps the nut cracker was a necessity in her kitchen, but she was willing to wait until the weather turned favorable for yard sales, willing to wait until she could eventually find one that someone else no longer needed. Growing up, her family made the rounds of yard sales every weekend, she said. The habit must be hard to shake off.

It was difficult not to notice the large numbers of immigrant families at the yard sale. Being a new immigrant in a rich country is tough, especially in a country that prays at the altar of consumerism and especially in this period of prolonged downturn we find ourselves in. Most had come looking for clothes, toys and games for their children. As I watched one of the mothers pick out the clothes for the younger children, the older ones walked around picking out their own clothes and games. The prices were clearly marked on the items, but when the mother went to pay for her purchases, the owner halved the prices. The mother's face lit up and she walked to her car with a delighted grin.

A young boy eagerly flipped through a carton of children's books
A couple of older ladies walked around the tables, their languid gait belying the intensity of their purpose. They were looking for that special something - an antique lamp that could make a pair out of one they already had, or an antique chair or table that would match their decor. A little girl looked out through the window of her car as her father slowly drove by and spied what she thought was a megaphone. She ran up excitedly to the display table and was crushed to find that it was a table lamp. A man found the study desk he wanted. It was priced at $25. He wanted it for $10. "Come back in a couple of hours and if I still haven't sold it you can have it for $10," the owner told him. A woman drove in from ten miles away hoping to find a pair of boots but they turned out to be too small for her. A man bought a table fan for his son's room. A couple bought a pair of cross-country skis and the ski suits and gloves to go with them. A mother bought a coffee maker and a floor lamp for her children's new dorms. They were going away to college and she was trying to set up their dorm rooms for them as much as she could before they left home. A man drove in with a pick-up truck. He was looking for a lawn mower and he found one. A grand-mother bought a stack of children's books for her grand-daughter. A woman bought a play pen for her daughter.

A quirky sign
A group of high school kids got together, pooled all the stuff in their homes they (and their families) no longer needed and set up a collective yard sale to raise funds for the adventure group they were part of. A family with grown children sold toys and books that were no longer used. A woman sold her grand-children's toys and her daughter's books. Lots of families sold old kitchen utensils, photo frames, deck chairs, jewelery, tables, crockery, garden tools, stereo systems. The variety was breathtaking.

An old, old set of plates to clean crumbs off a table. This set belonged to the seller's daughter-in-law's great grandmother.

The seller no longer had any use for The Wonder That Was India
Why would they not just give it away? This question has occurred to me more than once, especially when I see mounds of clothes on the lawns. But the fact is people do give away their things. Every winter the schools organize clothing and toy drives for disadvantaged families and the donations are more than generous. Then there are the regular donations to the Salvation Army and to churches and community food banks.

The answer to the question came from the lady who came looking for a nut cracker. She said she gives away many things each year, but that some of her belongings hold a sentimental value for her. She'd rather see the person she is giving it to and know that the item has some value to the person who is buying it from her. Even if she ends up selling it for a dollar, she derives satisfaction from knowing that the person bought it because they wanted it and will use it.

The yard sale (and perhaps the flea market, I don't know) is just about the only place in the US where the art of haggling finds a place. The lady who bought books for her grand-children bargained the price down to half the listed price. An Asian lady made out like a bandit with three huge pans. It is obvious to all the participants what the purpose of the yard sale is - the sellers want to move the items; under no circumstances do they want to have to take the stuff back into their homes. So the buyers negotiate and are willing to wait until the end of the designated time for the yard sale to move in for the kill.

Children's books were marked down as the day wore on
For the youngsters who were trying to raise funds for their adventure trips, this turned out to be an exercise in figuring out what they could live without, pricing, inventory management, negotiating and closing the deal. And what a delightful objective to work towards!

At the material level, the yard sale is a lesson in economics and resource management, a course in consumer behavior, a way to make money, and yes, a sure fire approach to getting rid of stuff and clearing out clutter. At the human level, though, it is an intricate web of needs, wants, desires and necessities. And people connecting over mundane objects that once meant something to someone, and if the stars are aligned on that particular day, will continue to have meaning to someone else.

That yellow table I bought all those years ago? It's use reverted to the original intent. When I got married and moved out of Philadelphia, we used it - with the side panels up - as a dining table for nearly four years. Pretty good for $5, eh?

P.S. When C heard of the high-schoolers' plan, he hatched a plot of his own to make money for a video game he wanted to buy. He set up a lemonade and pakoda (an Indian savory snack) stand right next to the high school kids. After the first couple of times he mastered his explanation of what a pakoda was and he actually made it sound very delicious. As the day wore on and it got hot and lunchtime neared, he made brisk business and made more money than he expected to. At the end of the day he realized he was at the right place with the right product at the right price. I could only marvel at the chain of events that led to this. At his age, I was clueless about any of it.

What's to love about being a mom?

It was during one of those innumerable calls I made to my mother and my mother-in-law when I was pregnant that I distinctly remember noticing a difference - I now related to them as a woman. I was not yet a mother, but neither was I merely a daughter or daughter-in-law. I was a woman on a journey to motherhood, a journey they'd already been on and therefore were repositories of rich experience I was grateful to tap into.

They guided me through the aches and pains, through the heartburn, the strange goings-on in the pit of my stomach, amazed that I had no cravings while regaling me with stories of their own. Between the two of them, they had raised six children (well, first of all they had delivered six children without pain killers), stay at home mothers while their husbands worked and took them around from town to town, moving every two or so years. They created homes for us out of strangers' houses in big cities, small towns and villages, they were our anchors in alien ports. They did all the things mothers are supposed to do and then much more. What's not to love about being in their company?

Then C was born. And so a mother and a father. When we first got married, my husband and I got busy finishing up school, starting out on our careers, and finding our feet in a brand new country. Having babies and growing our family was way down on the list of priorities. When we did get around to it, it was a good eight years after we got married. By then we were ready to be parents (as much as anyone could be without having had a child). Nine years after C was born, I no longer remember what I thought being a parent would mean, but it is so many things I did not even have the bandwidth to imagine at the time. The way in which the children relate to their father has been an unexpected source of delight and fascination for me. My becoming a mother had made a father out of my husband. His children reduce him to a puddle of tears, produce antics that have him helplessly laughing until he doubles over in pain, have him looking at the world and wishing it were a gentler, kinder place for children his own and unknown, have shown him his unbounded capacity for love. What's not to love about that?

And the two little human beings that bind us together have also strengthened the bonds between two families. My parents and my in-laws revel in recounting to each other the antics of their grand-children. Never mind that it's a story that's been told and retold a hundred times. The laughter is as genuine as it was the first time anyone heard the stories. And each set of grand-parents sees reflections of their own child in their grand-children and there is great joy in calling out the similarities. As a result, my parents know much more about my husband as a little boy and my in-laws know a little bit more about me as I was when I was a little girl. The same is true of my uncles and aunts - they take delight in catching glimpses of me in D and shades of my brother in C. During the eight years before C was born, I had no inkling that becoming a mother would set off all these ripples that would echo through so many lives. All our lives are richer because my husband and I became parents. What's not to love about that?

And then there is the awesomeness of being handed ring-side seats to witness the journey of two beings - from helpless babies to already now proper little people, with their own ideas; with the tools to express them and act on them; their own quirks and sense of humor; with the curiosity to ask the questions, oh the questions, that drag the imponderables down to the realm of the here and now; with the capacity to feel empathy and sadness for another person; with the wisdom to make the decisions that seem tiny but have enormous impact on their lives; with the hearts to love and to make friendships and to give the softest, sweetest hugs at just the right times; with the ability to understand certain things without receiving an explanation that is at times humbling as it is awe inspiring. What's not to love about that?

Finally, this is the most unexpected of all. Being a mother has made me a lot less judgemental of other people's actions and choices. Having a child puts in front of you a human being that you brought into this world, but is still so different from you. I only have to look at C and D and realize that people cannot react in the same way to the world around them. They are shaped by a different set of genes, by different upbringings, by different environments, by different experiences. Being a mother has made me more understanding. It has made it a little easier to know that most mothers have their children's best interests at heart and are really doing everything they can within their particular set of circumstances to be the best mother they can be.

What's not to love about being a mom?

Sands and Cantaloupe'sAmma both tagged me to write five things I love about being a mother. Apologies, but I'm going to break the rules. I won't tag any of you. If you're interested, however, please do take up the tag.

Update: Sorry about the errors. Fixed the ones I noticed.