At Long Last....A Couple of Great Books

Have been using much of maternity leave devouring the online books available at CLP. For the past few months, I haven't been able to read anything too upsetting- my mind goes into overdrive and I get visions of those horrible things that I've just read about happening to my kids and I spend the next week broody and depressed.
This happened after reading the first half of J.K.Rowling's "A Casual Vacancy". That book upset me no end. Sure, the writing is beautiful and there are some sentences that are masterful in their understated irony. But the story itself? Drugged mothers, abusive fathers, rape, looting, despair,drugs. I hated the story. I kept wondering if Ani and Durga would end up like some of the kids in the book, if we would ever have a cordial relationship and how in the world I was to become a good parent.
Anyway, that's why I stopped reading the book halfway. Couldn't take the sheer nastiness anymore.
The safest feel-good books are romances, but God, spare me those implausible plots and the saccharine dialogues. I still read romances, of course, but it's getting harder to find truly good books. My safe options- Eloisa James, Lisa Kleypas and Loretta Chase- are not bringing out books fast enough for me.

Since time is on my side, I have been scouring the pages of CLP's "eBooks Available Now" looking for something decent. What do I mean by "something decent"? The book should have good writing and a plot that engrosses me. It shouldn't be vulgar. And it should have something in it, some deeper meaning or nuance that I can ponder on long after I read the book. The gold standard here is something like "Atonement"- a book that sweeps one away, a book that is filled with compassion, horror and humanity that it is instantly recognizable and yet quite unforgettable.
 Here are my picks so far:
a) The Descendents by Kaui Hart Hemmings. Exquisite. Poignant. I am curious about how they made the movie, because so much of the story lies in what is not expressed.

b) More down to earth, but quite entertaining: A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd. Mystery novels set in the time of WWI with the protagonist as a nurse serving with the Brits (who else? Why can't somebody write a novel with a German or French protagonist in the times of WWI or WWII? Oh wait, I suppose you could say that 'Allo 'Allo is a work with French protagonists... though it was actually created by the British. As for the Germans, I can think of one.... a novel by Chris Bohjalian... though not in this genre)


*****Update****
On much more reflection, I don't think The Descendents is worthy of my gushing praise above. It's too black-and-white.

Charles Todd's Bess Crawford books are far nicer to read than the Ian Rutledge series. But where's the romance? There needs to be at least a hint of it, for me to continue the series!

The Name Game

What's in a name, after all?

Everything, I think. Or at the very least, a lot. A name can be, and is, more than just a label. A name embodies traits and meanings and can serve as a beacon to its holder.

And that's why choosing a name for one's child can be so fraught with stress. It needs to be perfect!

The process of choosing a name is just as important as the name itself. In my parents' and grandparents' generations, the process of choosing a baby's name was very different than it is in mine. In their generations, the name was likely to be chosen and bestowed, not by the parents, but by the family elder, or a priest or a scholar, in a process completely entwined with family politics and dynamics.
In my household (if not generation), Ram and I are democratic and exclusive in equal parts. We are adamant that the choice should be ours, while being receptive to the ideas of close family members. And we follow a democratic process between ourselves: we discuss possible sources of names and shortlist some, go through the sources, pick a list of names and discuss those. This process has worked really well so far.

However, I'm finding that choosing a name for a daughter is harder than choosing a name for a son.

When I was pregnant with Ani, Ram and I had a sure-shot method of finding a name. We got hold of a copy of the Vishnu Sahasranamam (a convenient repository of 1000 names of Vishnu), parked ourselves down on the floor and chanted out the text. And sure enough, within a few pages, we found the name that we both liked, which not only sounded good, but was rich in the meaning that we wanted our son's name to have: Aniruddha means unstoppable, someone who recognizes no barriers. This, we felt, was a good trait for a son to have. It would inspire him to great heights and help him overcome difficulties on his way. Plus, it was also the name of a grandson of Krishna, a God who is much loved by both Ram and me.

Now, there are tons of girls' names that sound incredibly pretty. The names that leap to my mind are variations of 'happy' (Shambhavi, for example) or 'playful' (Lalitha, a favorite of mine), or 'beautiful' (too many to list).

But what do I want my daughter to be? Sure, she should be happy and playful and no doubt, she will be beautiful. But I want her to be so much more! I would like my daughter to be strong, resilient, fierce,  truthful, and optimistic. I also want her to be ethical, just, and loyal. So she needs a name that reminds her of all this. She needs a name that will lift her out of darkness and show her the light.

So the hunt for the perfect name is still on.

Kids and Pregnancies and Men

I am trying to imagine all the men in my world as being pregnant. How might RK, for example, be?

He would get in his complaints, I think, but try to do so while pretending that he actually was not. He would talk about it like it was some kind of a scientific question, but pepper the statement with all his aches and pains.

"Oh, yeah, I think my deep throbbing knee pain is really due to the fact that my ..ahem.. lateral patellar retinaculum is being stretched. I wonder if there have been any studies done on how inflamed this muscle can get in pregnancies. I mean, I'm sure...ha ha... that I'm not the only pregnant man in the world to be in such great agony"

"You laugh, Varsha, but you don't know the stress! It's very stressful to not be in control of your own body! I don't know just how I manage it, but I must say, I have some incredibly good coping mechanisms. Hmm... you might do well to try some of them"

Or my dad:
"My motto in life is to grin and bear it.
Bloody hell! Where the h$##$$# is my $%##$$ towel? Who in bloody #$### moved the TV remote? Arrrggghhhh... if that truck doesn't move out of the street already, I'm going to PUNCH the damn ##$### wall!"


PG (thesis adviser, for those of you who don't know him):
"You know. It's interesting. They have all this technology, but they just cannot take a LITTLE vial of blood without clotting up your whole arm. I must tell Wishwa and ask him what kind of education these doctors get these days. Of course, these days, doctors don't do any kind of procedures. They only want to get more and more specialized"

LOL
This is fun. Now every time I meet a guy, I'm going to imagine him pregnant.
Not too many guys at MWRI, but quite a few at IDM- imagine the great Don Burke, or better yet, the skeletal Paolo. Snap! Just like that, they are all pregnant, at least 2 trimesters along, waddling down the corridors.

A hard week

I have wept a bit this week. I attribute part of the reason to hormones. Apparently, hormones rage during the 2nd trimester. I'd like to know, when do hormones not rage? Teenagers, menstruating women, menopausal women, pregnant women, lactating women- everyone appears to have hormones that rage. Why don't hormones just do their thing quietly and leave?
And really, why haven't more hormonal studies been done in men? I'll bet my bottom dollar that men in their 30's, men in their 40's, men with 2 kids, men with no kids, men who are bald, men with big bottoms and men with sweaty handshakes are also afflicted with indiscreetly fuming hormones.

Other possible reasons for my general state of weepiness:

a) Lack of support from that esteemed spouse of mine in the specific area of housework: really, my man, could you PLEASE, for crying out loud, move that ass away from that computer and help me a bit? Or at least, spend some time while I am doing housework so I don't feel alone?

b) Incredible support from my lovely little son: the more Ani spends time with me and tries to help with whatever I am doing, the more weepy I get, because really, what a big heart on such a small kid!

c) Lack of sleep: thanks to those indiscriminate hormones, I suppose. Am too big to sleep on my tummy, too nasally-obstructed to breathe easily, and too prone to vivid dreams in which I have to eat the frogs that come out of Ani's nose.


What I need is an escape from my real life. Romance novels don't cut it anymore. I'm like the druggie who needs coke, and not marijuana, for a real fix. What I really need is...

....a Hindi movie, luridly romantic, incredibly silly, laugh-out-aloud funny, with a heart-stoppingly handsome hero and a stunningly beautiful heroine.

There's a scene at the end of the song "Bol Na Halke" where Preity Zinta (who satisfies my criterion for a beautiful heroine) and Abhishek Bachchan (Yuck. Double yuck.) walk in front of the Taj Mahal with their grown-up kids. The sun is setting behind them, everyone is dressed simply but oh so elegantly, and you can't see Bachchan's face (thankfully), but his physique is perfectly hero-material. The music is splendid, the evening is indescribably beautiful and the scene is perfect. Zinta and Bachchan have done their jobs of bringing up their kids and now can spend time gazing at the Taj Mahal without a care in the world.
Wow.
They probably have a couple of maidservants to take care of the house and a cook for their meals.

That is where I want to be.

Books and Authors- My Latest Discovery

Deanna Raybourne has written a series of mystery novels in the Lady Julia Grey series.
The first three books of the series are pretty gripping: great language, imaginative plots- if slightly twisted, and great protagonists.
The suspense and plots fall a bit flat after the protagonists get married, but the books are still good for a lazy afternoon's read.

The series reminds me of Lindsey Davis' Marcus Falco series, with a few key changes:

The Falco series is written in the voice of Falco, a man and a detective who marries above his station and whose wife helps him with his work; the Grey series is written in the voice of Julia Grey, an aristocrat who falls in love with a detective and wants to help him with his work.

The Falco series is set in ancient Rome- a period that is not particularly well-known among most readers and as such, the author has a lot more freedom to play around with creating this world with regards to the place of women in that society, societal rules and constraints, descriptions of male-female interactions and so forth. So Davis endows the females of her books with relative freedom of speech and action, the right to inheritance and so forth.

The Grey series is set in England in the mid 1800s- a period that has been 'done to death' in hundreds of novels in multiple genres and is much better known to the average reader: females from this era are expected to conform to much more rigid rules and are not expected to question or challenge men; and ought to pay sufficient attention to clothing.

In that respect, the Grey series portrays an interesting evolution of Julia Grey, from a "Dresden shepherdess" (her description), meekly following, to one who struggles with and challenges the limits that society places on her and finally reaches for what she wants regardless of what is expected from a woman in her position. The man Julia loves and wants to marry, Nicholas Brisbane, is half-Gypsy, and poor and is "in trade" as a private investigator. Julia has to overcome the economic differences between herself and Brisbane, her family's horror of non-aristocrats and tradesmen, and the social consequences of being seen around a Gypsy.

As I mentioned before, once she does overcome all these struggles and gets married to Brisbane, the series goes downhill a bit. Frankly, one can't help feeling that they ought to get themselves to a marriage counselor pronto.

What's the big deal?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-petraeus-allen-sex-scandal-20121113,0,29930.story

David Petraeus had an affair with his biographer. The affair came to light when the biographer supposedly sent anonymous and threatening emails to some other woman whom she thought was also sleeping with Petraeus. Somehow, through some convoluted rigmarole that hasn't yet been unearthed, the investigation into these emails not only revealed the affair between Petraeus and the biographer but  has also pulled some other Army chiefs into suspicion.

Tell me again how someone's extramarital affairs has any role on their functions as a professional? Why did Petraeus have to resign just because his extramarital affair became public? Seriously, other than families closely connected to the protagonists of this drama, who cares?

Indiscretions by people in high positions have become the rule, not the exception. And even among the ranks of sexual indiscretions indulged by those in power, Petraeus' seems rather mild. Petraeus didn't tweet pictures of his wiener, like Antony Wiener did, didn't patronize a prostitution ring, like Eliot Spitzer did, didn't solicit male partners in a public restroom, like Larry Craig, and didn't even, like Arnold Schwartznegger, have a secret "other" family. He slept with someone who wasn't his wife. So what? Why should this become media fodder and why should we be subjected to sordid details about who did whom and when every single moment of our waking lives?


Can anyone in this day and world be puzzled and appalled at adultery? And why confine ourself to this day and world? In the history of the world and yes, even the Christian American world, you puritanical hypocrites, adultery is fairly common. The only difference between this age and all the previous ones is that we are so incredibly quick to leap up on our moral pedestal and sneer at someone. And I think we secretly sneer not at the act, but at the discovery.






 

Ranking of the Pittsburgh hospital cafeterias

Hospital cafeterias in Pittsburgh (to the best of my knowledge):

UPMC Presbyterian

UPMC Montefiore

Magee Women's Hospital

Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh

Allegheny General (how many?)

West Penn Hospital (how many?)

I'll rank them using the NIH scoring system (given below, lifted directly from a presentation by Freeman and Friedman on Developing Competitive Grant Applications)




















I'm a vegetarian. So I'm biasing my scores towards how vegetarian-friendly these cafeterias are. You may have different opinions about these places. Go write them on your blog, if you feel strongly enough about it.

Hospital	Score	Reasons
Magee	1	Delicious, healthy food; plenty of options of vegetarians and others with diet restrictions; creative in use of ingredients.
CHP	2	Great food. However, sometimes, only options for vegetarians are pizza and burger. On good days, plenty of choice.
Presby	9	Absolute nightmare. Menu has not changed in 4 years.  Terrible choice of soups and desserts. Exactly 1 vegetarian entrée (“Mediterranean Veggie Wrap”) per week.
Montefiore	?	Have only eaten here once. Greasy, overly salty food. But I’ll give it the benefit of doubt and put it down to a bad day.
Allegheny General	?	Need to assess
West Penn	?	Need to assess

So what brought this on? My new job is at Magee Women's Research Institute, a short walk away from the Magee cafeteria. I can't help comparing the quality of my noon meal at Magee to what I subjected myself last year, when the closest place to eat was the Presby cafeteria.

I lost about 10 pounds last year while subsisting on Presby food, because all I could eat was the salad- the sole dish that was not floating in oil. Compare that to yesterday's vegetarian entree at Magee (quinoa with baked butternut squash. Yummy!) and today's (vegetarian chili with succotash and rutabaga on brown rice. Lovely!)

So, I hope that the Presby chefs take some ideas from the Magee guys. Then again, who cares? I don't have to ever eat there again!