Normal

"Normal" is entirely subjective. It is person-dependent, society-dependent, culture-dependent and time-dependent.

What seems normal to us today (where to start.... homosexual relationships, divorces, premarital sex, women working, women in government! ... ) would have been extremely shocking at various points of time in history, and if all our texts are right, then in fact not so shocking if one were to go even further back in history.

We get so bogged down by what is normal, we get so scared about not appearing normal, and are so afraid of others telling us so, that we forget that the definition of normal is temporary.  

RK has been spending the last 2 months in Udaipur and will be spending another 2-3 months there. He gets asked this question a lot: but why are you doing this? Isn't this abnormal? What about your wife and kids? Wouldn't this have an adverse effect on the children's emotional state?

To me, this actually feels a bit normal- growing up, my mom and I used to be one of the rare families that would accompany my dad to every city he ever got transferred to. Most other bank officials would leave their families in their home towns and basically spend years in various other cities, occasionally meeting up with wife and kids and parents. We were the abnormal ones at that time and I recall my parents constantly fielding questions about why they were ok with my changing schools every so often, and wouldn't this have an adverse impact on my emotional state and so on. 

I think the things that feel right and give joy are the right choices to pursue. Obviously this will change from person to person, from family to family and from time to time. Then Everything is normal. 

Remembering my dad

 I've had the opportunity these past two days to spend a couple of hours at IITM. My father did his B.Tech and M.Tech there in the late 60s- early 70s. 

For some reason,  when I was doing my B.Tech in Anna Uni opposite IITM, neither he nor I thought about going to the IITM campus to see what he did and where and how things might have changed 30/35 years later. I never went to IITM by myself during those 4 years either.  

He didn't tell me much about his years there (and I didn't ask... most teenagers/ early 20s new adults feel no great curiosity about their parents' lives and I think we have established over the course of this blog that I'm fairly self- absorbed).

 Now that they are both in a different realm,  I wonder a great deal about their early lives and the choices they made and wish I could have the opportunity for easy conversations that I have with my friends.  

As I explored the campus, shrouded in a thin mist but not particularly cold,  early today morning,  I marveled at the giant banyans, the blackbucks and the white spotted deer. These trees must be a few hundred years old... my dad must have walked past them.  Some buildings, including Chemical Engineering, his major,  look to be the squat old buildings of the 70s..I wonder if he too, like so many students today,  cycled back and forth between his hostel and dept, or if he preferred to walk,  as he did in his later years.

He must have mentioned the name of his hostel at some point,  especially during the single reunion he attended a year or so before his death,  but in the long list of hostel names on the road signs, I couldn't recall it.  

He had told me about how, for his M.Tech thesis,  he had to use a computer, which in those days was as long as a room and would be housed across the main road in the Uni of Madras campus.  He would use punch cards. It would take him a few hours to punch holes in the card in IITM, then he would go to Uni of Madras (would have to reserve the computer ahead of time), and then feed the punch card into the machine and return the next day for his computations.  

Huh.

I also found out, the hard way,  that the distance between his likely dept at IITM and the likely dept at Uni of Madras (where the computer must have been) is not exactly an easy walk... must have been at least 3km one way 

My mom and grandmother had told me that he never actually wanted to become an engineer.  He was interested in medicine.  And my uncle,  Sampath, who did Medicine actually wanted to be an engineer.  Ani,  who resembles my father a great deal in looks and personality,  likes neither.  He likes cooking and food.  My father also used to like cooking. He would make the same elaborate plans for menus and ways of cooking that I see Ani make these days.  

This rather unexpected trip made me reflect on my father's life and choices. It also underscored to me that while our kids may have very different preferences to us,  there is still a familiarity to them.  Ani's desires for his life may seem unusual on the surface, but weirdly makes me feel closer to my dad.  

Growth as a public health researcher

Today I did something quite brilliant and I want to crow about it a bit. 

In a particular coalition project on dengue prevention,  one of the coalition partners left rather abruptly and in an unpleasant manner.  This partner was our main community link,  having been embedded in that community for years and years. With their departure,  a lot of the other work,  including ours, was adversely impacted. 

To complete the requirements of the project,  I need to get the data of 100 people in about a week. This is not just surveys, but also blood tests.  With our access to apartments,  community leaders,  labour unions etc completely cut off, I was getting really jittery about being about to finish this thing. I had done a lot of nifty Googling and found other community partners, but things were moving too slowly. 

Last night I decided that the only way to solve this was to go to the community and walk around the area a bit and I hoped that once I saw things with my own eyes and talked to a few people, I would get some ideas.  Well,  long and short of it is,  I did and I got :)

First,  there was a police station as soon as one enters the ward.  I spoke to the constables and the inspector and they agreed to have us come by next week for the surveys and tests! I think i should get atleast 20 -25 ppl here during the 90m they have given us.  

Next,  I realized that places of worship could be other potential areas and tracked down some mosques, temples and churches.  However, when today was Fri, and the mosques were busy; the temples were all closed in the afternoon and my personal bet of churches working out (since a lot of laborers in the area are from Tamil Nadu and most of them tend to be Christians) didn't really materialize. 

I then checked out the banks and have another appointment for testing next week...I hope to get atleast 30-40 there.  Here's a funny thing- one may not have access to the large apartment complexes for such surveillance work, but one can catch the same people at the public institutions (like banks) where most of them conduct their business... of course, nobody goes to a physical bank anymore. Shopping malls or neighborhood supermarkets might work even better, but I don't think it's a good idea to mix up blood collection with food.  

Finally, I spoke to shopkeepers, telling them about what we are doing and have the phone number of one of the owners of a most promising place to request permission- the shop faces a slum with a lot of foot and vehicular traffic, it has the Indian postal service branch above it and the fire brigade a few feet away.  I think I should be able to get the remainder of ppl, if the owner allows us.  

I walked around for nearly 3 hours.  Spoke to a lot of people.  My key learnings have been:

A) nothing can beat the sheer efficiency of personally going to a place and meeting people face to face when one wants to do community engagement projects. 

B) my title helped :)

C) the name of BBMP was like magic- this project is supported by the municipality and so leading the conversation with that really opened a lot of doors... it does indicate a level of trust with the govt that is good to observe. 

I hope next week by this time,  I should have not only met but exceeded the expectations of the project!