The fall of the mighty: how my mental discipline fails me in my home country.

My life in the US is fairly rigid. I have a routine which I follow fairly strictly: wake up at a certain time, do certain things in a certain order, get to work at a particular time, eat mostly salads for lunch, supervise very strictly what my kids eat (as much as I can anyway. They let them eat all sorts of junk at daycare and I don't do anything about that). You get the picture. I exert my discipline as much as possible on all steps in my life. I consciously step away from the dessert aisle (and it's very difficult for anyone with a sweet tooth); while cooking, I use organic stuff, I shun processed foods, and although the kids get their fried stuff in the form of puris twice or thrice a week, neither my husband or I touch the stuff. We don't make extravagant purchases; indeed, after shelling out for day care, healthcare, the house, utilities and the like, we don't have much money to splurge either. We spend money on clothes every 6 months or so but are fairly strict in economizing the rest of the year. But in turn, we are fairly healthy, in good shape, have the resources to go camping and sight-seeing on the weekends and we have money saved up for emergencies. It's a fairly frugal, conservative lifestyle... very disciplined.

My life in India is diametrically different. First of all, my parents' house is bang in the middle of a commercial section. One step out of the house and we are met with endless clothes shops and eating joints. It's become a routine for my kids to eat ice-cream or cakes or both nearly every day; I get a long, 4-course meal every 6 or so hours, with multiple fried papads or vadams; if I crave any ghee-stuffed monstrosity, it's just a hop away from wherever I am; and worst of all, there's a festival going on nearly every week for which my mom and grand mom and aunts make a hundred different sweets and fried things. Needless to say, my form has gone from being fairly slim to quite plump. None of my clothes from the US fit me anymore, so of course, I go shopping. And of course, I can't stop- the variety, the designs, the colors, the range of prices- there's nothing to beat India when it comes to clothes. I keep excusing my reckless abandon of all my precious mental discipline with the line that I'll be going back to the US soon. But it's been 3 months! And I still don't have my visa in hand! And I have no idea when I'll get it. So unless I start my exercising and portion-control right now, I'm going to resemble nothing less than the rosagollas and gulab jamuns that I keep popping into my mouth.

Life in India is also a lot friendlier. I talk endlessly here- and not just to the same people. The kids and I have made friends with the neighborhood shopkeepers, some other kids at the park we go to every day, some random ladies who come to visit the astrologer next door, and most of all, with the various cousins. Of course we have friends in the US and we do talk to people, but there, the chances of striking a conversation with some person you have just met are very slim.

Life in the US is going to be terribly flat when we get back.

A wise book

My dad had told me about Dorothy Sayers and the Peter Wimsey series ages ago. I had even checked out the first book "Whose Body?" from the library, but never got around to finishing it somehow. This time, I skipped straight to "Strong Poison", where Peter meets Harriet and falls in love (a bit quickly, but still) and then to "Gaudy Night".

I'm still reeling from the effects of "Gaudy Night". I read it online, never a good strategy if one finds a book good enough to lose oneself in, so I must, absolutely must get the actual solid text in my hands and read it so well the next times that I have the book memorized. Have I ever said this of any other book? Never. This book is that good. There is wisdom in it.

More on it when I can expound in better detail.

Neither here nor there

3 months ago, I would have thought that a 3 month-long holiday in India was the best thing to wish for. Well, after 3 enforced months in India, I can say with great firmness that it isn't all that's cracked up to be. Hear me well, you expat desis.
Short story as to why I'm still here in the desh: visa issues. Specifically, that beast called "administrative processing". Never mind what that is if you don't know it. It's a thing most boring and completely insane.
So yaay, here we are, the kids and I, in the lap of the motherland, experiencing life as it truly is in India, and not through a 2- or 3- week frenetic holiday window. It's been good and bad. It's the first time I have spent Diwali or Dussera at home in 10 years. It's the first time the kids have got to experience fireworks. It's nice to see the kids become close friends with their cousins. But, these moments are like raisins in a piece of raisin bread, some moments of sweetness in an otherwise boring and flat landscape.
The biggest hurdle: the man's back in the US. Let me tell you, those of you patient chaps still with me, one of the biggest and most unexpected results of sudden quasi-single parenthood: obnoxious kids. Kids who are normally fairly well-behaved start acting out like crazy. I put this down to the fact that they miss the other parent quite desperately, they are floundering even though there're plenty of relatives around, and they miss the stability the other parent brings. For my 4 year old son, if mom's in a bitchy mood, there's always dad to turn to. Now, even though he has Ajji, Thatha or Avva to turn to, it just isn't the same. So there are tantrums, general whininess, utter unreasonableness.... you get the picture. What in the world do divorced parents do, I wonder? It must be terribly difficult. At least I have the consolation that my husband will come and visit next week and I can hand over one of the kids to him.

Another great realization, or rather, a confirmation of what I've known for a while: home may be where the heart is, but home is also definitely where the work is. Mooching around here, I realize there's nothing particularly important that I need to do, there's nowhere that I particularly need to be and it's a depressing thought. But yet, it isn't just work for work's sake that I miss. It's my work, my research and my questions. I miss pottering around at my work bench, I miss pipetting things and I miss discussing stuff with my lab chaps.  At my parents' place, I do no work. At my in-law's place, I don't get time to breathe, let alone sit. Neither state is particularly joy-inducing.

Birding in Lalbagh

One fine morning during our trip to India in August, Ram, Durgoose and I went to Lalbagh Botanical Gardens in Bangalore.  Long ago, my cousins and I used to be taken to Lalbagh, but it's been decades since I've visited the place. It is just so huge that it's really difficult for anyone, let alone some cranky five year olds, to spend too much time there without getting utterly exhausted. Places in the US might be larger, but you can drive through such parks. In Lalbagh, you enter through one of four gates at the periphery of a 240-acre garden and then walk through its various sections.

As you enter through the gates, you will be greeted by some pretty spectacular gladioli and the sight of a lot of people walking through the gardens. Early in the morning, Lalbagh is free to walk through. After about 10:30am, when the flower show opens, is when the ticket stalls open.

One of the first marvels of Lalbagh is the Lalbagh hill, a 3000 million year old formation which is, if I recall the sign correctly, supposed to be some kind of pseudo-gneiss (whatever that is). On top of this small hill, Kempegowda, the founder of modern Bangalore, installed a post some time in the 1500's to mark one of the four corners of his new city. Bangalore has grown so much since then that the post is now in the middle of the city.

One of the first birds we encountered was the common myna. A member of the starling family, it is as common a sight in urban India as starlings are in the USA.

From the summit, on the opposite side from which you climb the hill, you can see a water body choking with water hydrangea. This is a perfect hiding place for birds like the purple moorhen. Nearby gulmohar trees and bamboos sway gently in the breeze.

Is there another tree as graceful as the gulmohar?

A family of parakeets madly cackle away. Can you tell where they are?










The lake at Lalbagh is where inexperienced birdwatchers like me feel like we have really hit pay dirt.  So many birds, each one more graceful than the next!

Here are cormorants (which, by the way, I could recognize because we had seen them all the way back in Galveston, TX!), pelicans, brahminy kites and painted storks!

Pelicans and cormorants fishing together

Cormorants sunbathing and swimming

Painted stork, cormorants and purple moorhen

Purple moorhen

Here are some pictures of the beautiful painted stork.  See that little dash of pink right by the tail? I think that's why it's called "painted".

Guess what this stork is doing by lifting its wing like that? It's blocking the sunlight and its reflection so that it can see its fish better!

Let me end this post by quickly summarizing the birds we saw that morning:

Common myna

Golden eagle

Purple moorhens

Jungle myna

Common crow

Jungle crow

Parakeets

Brahminy kite

Pelicans

Cormorants

Wild ducks

Painted storks

Owlets

Lalbagh is massive. We were only able to see a fraction of it. The terrains we covered (in about 2 hours) were:

Hills and rocks

Vegetation-covered ponds

Thickets

Big shady groves with large canopies

Lake and surrounding areas

The OMG-We're_Doomed! List

It just keeps getting worse.

I've decided to compile a list of things that frightens me a bit more about our future as a species on this planet and about the future of the planet itself. I think it's a good coping mechanism. I shall call this list OMG-We're-Doomed!

a) Fertilizer run-off into streams overgrowing algae, messing up the water and causing gender-upsets in fish

To be updated...

The maddening, all-consuming and ultimately pointless act of buying gifts

This must be what it is like for Westerners during Christmas. But for us desis, the gift-buying happens during the once-in-a-blue-moon trip to India.

Over the years, I have developed a system of gift buying. It's not a very efficient one, to be honest. The ideas for gifts start coming a few months before the actual trip. Then, a few weeks later, when I can no longer keep these straight in my head, I write down a list.
As we edge closer to the date of the travel, I realize my hand-written lists are woefully inadequate and I move to Excel spreadsheets. I type down the following: people on my side and on Ram's side that we will meet, categorized by city; gifts that I would like to give; gifts that I have already bought; gifts that need to be bought and the quantities of all these.

When I populate the lists by matching up the gift to the person, that's when the problems start. There will always be about a dozen or so for whom I have not thought of anything at all. And then there will be those teens who used to be mad about a particular thing the last time you saw them, a few years ago, and you buy them something that you think they will treasure. Then, from an offhand comment that someone makes, you realize they are no longer into that thing, that they in fact feel that that particular activity was the stupidest thing they could have indulged in, and that they have moved on to greener pastures, leaving you with a giant-sized cricket bat or multiple pairs of hot-hands hand-painted with scenery by Rembrandt or some such thing (I'm kidding.... really. Even I know not to buy cricket bats in the US!).

Then there are generic gifts that you just buy because you have no clue what to give some people: chocolates, of course; ties, wallets etc.

The hardest gifts to buy are for those uncles whom you haven't met in many years, but for whom you have a soft spot. What might they like, you wonder. Well, what do they do? Watch cricket, drink tea, and umm... well.. that's about it. So all of them get... guess what? Almonds! I figure they can snack on something healthy while watching TV.

Anyway, you buy all this nonsense and go back and give them, hoping that they will find happy homes where they will be treasured. But inwardly you know that most will disappoint, and be thrown aside as junk.

What to do? There's only so many creative gifts one person can think of. And invariably one ends up buying way too many gifts for a particular set of people and not enough for anybody else.

If I have to keep my head and not go mad, I must let go of this attachment, as Buddha would say. I must just get a bunch of gifts that seem nice to me and then, without worrying about consequences, results, fruits of labor or their ultimate fate, release them gently and calmly into the turbulent seas.

Which then brings me to the next problem: how to carry all this within the baggage limit?


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Update:

You know what's worse? You lug your luggage (magically made to fit all the hordes of gifts that you bought) and after the inescapably frustrating and long trip, land up in the great desh, and finally get to go... either to your parents' home or to your in-laws' home and with a flourish you open up the gifts and pass them along. Then, because you can't help yourself and because everybody is asking why in the world you had to bring so many pieces of luggage which all weigh a ton, you make the fatal mistake of briefly mentioning the other people for whom you bought gifts.
Uh oh.
Rule #1: let nobody know whom you have bought gifts for.
Because if you, invariably, the response will be: you bought something for them? Why? Don't you know we have not spoken to them for more than a year, ever since they took the inexcusable decision to.... (something.... from not inviting somebody else to some wedding (a big faux pas in Indian weddings when EVERYbody and their neighbors are invited), to not phoning someone when they were in the same town to something minor like not returning some borrowed item).

So suddenly, you've landed yourself in a feud and by taking these gifts, you have claimed friendship with the wrong team.

Mitomaniac!

Imagine a negotiation bid that took place billions of years ago. One bacterial system tells another, "Hey, know what would be really cool? If I got into you and helped light up your place, get you some energy and in turn, you protect me from annihilation" 

The second bacterial guy scratches its imaginary head and says, "Well, okay. But you gotta figure out a way to shut off that energy-making when I don’t need it. I can’t stand the racket you make”

“Deal”

That’s the story of how we got mitochondria within nearly every cell we possess. And in accordance with the treaty of yore, they reside within the cells, do all the dirty work and in return, get access to nutrients, protection from other microbes and harmful chemicals, companionship and love.

And because they weren't total pushovers in that above-mentioned treaty, they got to keep their own DNA. The DNA they have right now is exactly what they need for their primary purpose of energy production. Now, being savvy packers, it might be that they shed some genetic baggage that we don't know much about. But the end result is that we actually carry two pockets of DNA within each of our cells: the check-in baggage that contains the bulk of our DNA stored neatly within the nucleus and our little mitochondrial carry-ons.

Where there is DNA, there is genetics. Of course. Mitochondrial genetics is very different from the nuclear genetics that we know and love so well (ha!). For one, ALL the mitochondrial DNA you have within you comes directly from your mom, and nobody else. So you can sequence every person's mitochondrial DNA and trace back your maternal ancestors. And indeed, when people did that, they figured out the entire migratory routes of womankind (yes, you tagged along too, silly males!)

Here's a nice pic showing human migration from the Professor Taboo blog:

Mitochondrial DNA can get mutated, just like the DNA in the nucleus. But unlike the nuclear DNA, mtDNA has no protein complexes, called nucleosomes,  enveloping it making it more susceptible to mutations. But on the plus side, there are many mitochondria within each cell. So even if one mitochondrion has mutated DNA, the cell might still function just fine if the rest of the mitos within it are normal. It is all a matter of dosage.

Problems arise when many or most mitochondria end up carrying mutated DNA.

A really cool theory goes like this: Mitochondria accumulate mutations over time. Initially it may be a few mitos that carry mutated DNA, then a few more, and a few more.  Even if new mitos are being formed, they arise from mitos that are carrying mutations. So, the new cells in your body are less efficient and more prone to mistakes. Ultimately, new cells may not be produced at all, because there are just too many mutations in the mtDNA. This is what leads to aging and the development of degenerative diseases.

What an interesting concept, no? It forces you to think about your body like a car or a machine. Since mitochondria produce energy, mutations in their DNA can affect the amount of energy each cell produces. As mtDNA mutations accumulate, the efficiency of conversion of food to energy drops off, cell by cell and then organ by organ. It's like an old car that cannot run anymore. It's basic thermodynamics at work: a body needs an energy infusion to keep it running. No more energy, no more running.

As more and more researchers leap on the mito-bandwagon, it is becoming clear that mitochondrial energetics can, at least partially, explain a number of complex diseases or symptoms, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity-associated diseases.

Let me conclude this post with another very interesting theory, which goes back to the dosage effect mentioned earlier: different dosages of the same mtDNA mutation can lead to different effects. A small dosage (only a few mutated mitochondria) might lead to a disease like retinitis pigmentosa, leading to blindness in middle-age, a larger dose might lead to blindness at an earlier age, a still larger dose might lead to early death, while at very high dosage, the mutation might cause stillbirths or miscarriages.


What fascinating stuff! Suddenly, a whole new way by which we think about diseases, their pathology and development has opened up. Very different diseases may actually all arise from the same cause!

How does mtDNA get mutated upon different environmental insults like smoking or drinking polluted water? How do mitochondria compensate for their mutated and less efficient brethren? How do nuclear DNA and mtDNA interact, if at all? And finally, what can we do about mtDNA mutations pharmacologically?
Hopefully we find the answers to these and more questions.