Not-so-smooth transitions make good life lessons

Before returning to India, Ram perused a few R2I (Return to India) blogs- there are many out there, explaining which schools to target, where to live, whether to rent or own, which cars to buy etc. He was especially taken with the lists that people would make about what to get and how to get it. There are people who planned every step of their move back and who wrote about it.

Somehow for our return, I didn't plan as much as I normally do. I assumed that things would sort themselves out some time. We had some grand visions (my dad called them "unreasonable and half-baked". Turns out he was right) while still in Pittsburgh about what we would do in India, but those didn't pan out quite as we had envisioned. Maybe I'll type out the details of that venture at a later point.

But we made some mistakes and took some wrong turns, but thankfully turned back before committing to anything drastic. This was our lowest point, as a couple and as a family. Had we continued on the wrong paths, we would have compromised on a lot of things, including integrity and happiness. Our mistakes did cost us a lot financially, but hopefully, that's only temporary. I still think that things are in the process of sorting themselves out and that we don't have to worry too much or plan too far ahead. And so far, my belief has been correct.

I'm in the process of a pretty big change in terms of career paths. I've spent the last 10 years (14, if you count my undergrad days) training to become a basic scientist. Now I'm changing gears to become a childbirth educator and counselor for pregnant women. Would I have committed to this choice, if we hadn't gone through a period where we questioned our beliefs and actions? I think not... I tend to be a chronic ditherer and I would have probably continued dithering. But somehow, something has worked out and I have been offered a opportunity of a lifetime. There's not much money in it, but there's the promise of fulfillment and meaning.

Similarly, Ram too has chosen his workplaces with care, making sure that these offer him something more than just clinical revenue. His work at an HIV clinic and at a charity hospital enable him to function by being true to his core.

It takes time to settle and to find the right spot to settle.... I wonder if all the other people who write those R2I blogs also felt the same, or if they jumped into work full swing right away.

These days, I end every day by feeling grateful to whatever higher being is controlling our lives (if there is such a one), for the opportunities given to us and for the support we have from our parents and extended families and friends. It's good place to be.

Ani's First Fancy Dress Competition

Ani's school handed out some advertisements by Big Bazaar to a fancy dress competition. On a corner of the advertisement was a picture of the Avengers, which thrilled Ani to bits, who imagined a whole bunch of kids dressed up as various characters from the Avengers.

So yes, of course we had to go. He decided that he wanted to be Ironman, so that's what we went with. I made a mask, painted it and inserted some ties. Then stuck a white circle to a  red T shirt (that's supposed to be his heart or something.... can't remember what it's called) and tada! My job was done.

Tracing out the Ironman face

 When we reached the competition, we realized that nobody, but NOBODY, else was an American superhero, let alone a character from the Avengers. Instead, they were all the ultimate Indian superhero, Krishna.

Ani in his costume at the competition, very upset at lack of Avengers characters

Other kids: a million Krishnas and Radhas

 Ani stared aghast at what his contemporaries thought of superheros. I stared aghast at the sheer effort expended by the moms. Some of them had even trained their kids to sing Krishna bhajans!
Yes, moms of India, I bow down to you- there is NO way I can compete with that.

One of the Radhas. Observe the hair! How much time did this kid's mom spend??

 There was a non-Krishna boy, who jumped up on stage and did some Hrithik Roshan+ Michael Jackson combination dance moves.

The only non-Krishna guy, other than Ani. 

Main lesson learned from this experience:
My Ani does not know (yet) how to discreetly shove his way to the front of any line.

So, all parents had to leave their kids by the side of the stage. By a stroke of good luck and some anticipatory moves on my part, I left him at the front of the line and expected that he would be the 2nd or 3rd kid on the stage and we could leave early.
I hadn't counted on the sheer experience of other kids when confronted with a queue. Before long, what seemed like a hundred kids went on the stage and Ani still hadn't showed up. So I peeked backstage and realized that this poor guy was expecting the other kids to let him on the stage, but didn't know how to just get up ahead and go. He was waiting to be asked to step up! My heart melted a bit there... my poor little baby, with no experience with a whole bunch of dress-up crazy, competitive, expertly shoving kids.

Note to self: practice with kids on how to shove ahead.

Doctors and their choices

I never understood, until recently, why in India people revere doctors so. To "get into Medicine" after 12th std is considered to be a pinnacle of success (on par with "getting into IIT"). Now I wonder if I ought to have tried harder, at 18, to get one of those Medical seats. But the choice between Engineering and Medicine requires some amount of firm decision-making. For chronic ditherers like me, an engineering seat in Biotechnology forms the perfect compromise of getting an education without having to choose a camp. 

Now, since the big return, I'm seeing the benefits of being a doctor. Red carpets are rolled out, people are begging you to take their money and are willing to let you ride roughshod all over them. It's insanely easy, if you're a doctor, to make choices that are very beneficial to you personally, but may not be in the best interests of anybody else. When a whole culture of medicine is like that, with doctors willing to cut corners or make decisions that benefit them financially, the trust between patients and doctors erodes. This is true even in a big city like Bangalore, with a hospital at the corner of every block, and presumably, that many doctors. Patients go from one doctor to another, hoping to find two opinions that are the same or similar, to reassure themselves that they are not being taken complete advantage of (the wording here is deliberate: I think nearly all patients are aware they are being taken advantage of, but they are willing to fight for how much).

Doctors almost never write notes on their patient encounters, keeping other doctors (even other doctors who may be involved in the care of the same patient, within the same hospital system) in the dark about their thinking. Is this some kind of self protection? Or just plain laziness? Can this same doctor recall why they made certain decisions with regards to a particular patient a few months down the line? How can they, with the numbers of patients they see? In which case, where is there any opportunity for longitudinal, continuity of care? The onus of keeping track of prescriptions, of what the doctor said during the visit lies wholly with the patient and heaven help him if he gets muddled or forgets something that the doctor said! 

On the shoulders of the doctors and the choices they make is a whole industry of middle-men, agents whose sole purpose is to help a doctor make "cuts", from the referral fees that a hospital pays doctors to refer their patients for additional treatment,  from prescribing certain branded, non-generic drugs, or from ordering additional tests or drugs to be procured only in certain establishments.  

This is an ecosystem without any kind of oversight or accountability. 

In the US, health insurance companies are considered to be the "bad guys" who limit payments, who force doctors to choose one treatment over another, who push for outdated practices and who are easily influenced by rich lobbies. But I am appreciating the other, more crucial role they play- that of keeping a doctor accountable for his or her choices and actions. 

The insurance options in India are fairly limited, especially if you happen to be middle class or poorer (which encompasses, what, about 95% of the population?). The government has multiple schemes for the truly poor (and it makes these truly poor people jump through hoops to prove that they are truly poor) and there are other schemes for inpatient admissions. Nothing exists for continuous, out-patient treatment for chronic diseases. 

Our first Id holiday

We spent the holiday for Id really well. We did some birdwatching in Cubbon Park and saw:

Magpie Robin and its family. Pic courtesy: birdforum.com

Ashy Wren Warbler

Green Barbet. Also observed in Dayanand Sagar University. Image courtesy Wiki.

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Yellow Wagtail.

Indian mynah

Female rose ringed parakeet

Lesser cormorant. Image courtesy Joy Sinha, tripadviser.com

Pond Heron. I initially thought it was a white bird that had got dirty in the pond

Later that evening, we went to Sankey Tank near Malleshwaram. I had been here a long time ago, to meet an uncle who worked at a Statistics center somewhere nearby. But I had never spent too much time there before. Now, after hanging out there for a few hours, I think Sankey Tank has to be one of the best places in Bangalore both for individuals and for families, very like Schenley Park back in Pittsburgh. The only major drawbacks to Sankey Tank are the low height railings over which even a two and half year old can lean far out (as we learned yesterday) and potentially fall into the water. So it's a bit hazardous and parents can't just leave their kids to run around.
But otherwise, it's rather marvelous.
We went there around sunset, when flying foxes emerged from their nests in the nearby trees to hunt:

A beautiful waterfall evoked images of Ganga falling from Shiva's head, while simultaneously reminding us of a similar fountain at Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh

Durga, who had watched the sunset, the fountain and the flying foxes, fairly impassively, came to life when she saw bandicoots coming out of their holes with the darkening sky. "'Ello! 'Ello, lat! Come to me!" she cried in her lisp.


A Ganapathy visarjan was in progress, accompanied by loud drums, clanging bells and yells of "Ganapathy bappa moriya!" We also learned a new little Ganapathy jingle: Twinkle twinkle little star, Ganapathy bappa superstar!
The kids loved it!

All in all, a great holiday!

A Bird's Eye View of IISc

On a wet, slightly cold morning recently, RK and I took an auto to IISc for breakfast. I think anybody who has spent any length of time in IISc falls in love with it. What a campus! What architecture! What beautiful space!
As RK got busy on a phone call almost as soon as we entered, I explored some parts that were lesser known to me. I tried to spot a bird whose call was entirely unfamiliar, with little success. I explored a building with nondescript walls but the most stunning set of what appeared to be garage doors, painted a refreshing orange, a shade probably not found anywhere else outside Holland.  walked below the ivy covered stone columns by Choksi Auditorium towards the cafeteria. There were nooks entirely covered by ivy and I fantasized about young couples meeting there in secret while it poured rain just a foot away. What a romantic walkway that was!
Suddenly, I came across this beautiful specimen of a Gulmohar Tree, planted in its own special stone enclosing:

Tell me, who wouldn't have the intense urge to climb one of these beauties?

So I hoisted my handbag more securely on a shoulder, placed one foot on the V of the trunk closest to the ground and pulled myself up. I imagined that I could easily get to one of the closer branches which were stretching out all the way across the roof of the walkway. Only after I'd gotten fairly high up did I realize that what appeared to be a thick sturdy trunk across which one might even trot across with ease, was actually quite slender, rather slippery and sloping, not at all conducive to balancing, let alone trotting across:

Stuck. Couldn't go further up, or across. Realized the ground was a bit too high up to jump down. What now?

I admired the roof of the stone walkway:

 and bantered down with RK when he finally showed up:

Then, when I could procrastinate no longer, I dropped the handbag down and slithered, slipped and skidded down the main trunk and could at last rescue myself.

What struck me was the total and utter freedom to do these kinds of antics. There were people nearby who watched, many more who gave me a glance and walked on unconcerned. But every one of them left me to do what I wanted.

What an awesome morning! May there be many more of these!

Sick

Every time I come across another little child molested in Bangalore schools, my stomach turns. I have a visceral fear of this, which mother does not? Fear, disgust, horror: these are common reactions to these stories whomever I speak to, wherever I bring this up. But when I ask other moms, what do you do when you hear something as unspeakable as this crime, I don't get any answers that satisfy me.

What should a person do when confronted with what seems to be an epidemic of sexual abuse of babies and children? What can we, as parents, as citizens, as sane humans do?
The answers I get vary from "I pray" to "My kids' school is very good. I know they will be safe there".
I cannot be content with these passive methods.We cannot keep on praying that someone else will tidy up things for us, pass laws that are stringent against these offenders (by the way, what are the punishments for these men? Why do they do the things they do? Are they sexually frustrated? Do they have some psychiatric issues? Are they under some kind of fucked-up, weird peer pressure to prove their masculinity? ). Or maybe I should stop saying "We cannot sit here doing nothing, hoping that things will improve", because from my experience, that is EXACTLY what most moms that I have spoken to want to do.

So let me rephrase that to I cannot sit here doing nothing. I need to feel that I have at least raised my voice. The very thought of sitting quiet, hoping someone else will fix the problem, hoping that my kids don't get harmed, hoping that the school they eventually join has taken the necessary steps to protect the kids, makes me sick, sick sick.Silence is acquiescence and I do not want to be silent.

Just starting a Facebook page will be useless. It has to be with an aim and some objectives in mind. So I've been keeping my fear at bay, by thinking about how to think through something like this. How does one start a movement? How does one bring about change? There are lessons to be learned here from any politician, movements like Arab spring, or even last year's parent protests that forced the police to make some infinitesimal rules, such as CCTV in schools.

Anger management

Why is it SO difficult to manage anger? Just when I think I'm doing a great job controlling the anger flare-ups with the kids, I go and blow up at the husband.
It's like a volcano that needs to erupt somehow, or a water pipe that has to burst. You close up one hole and another opens up.
This tells me that I have not succeeded in truly calming myself, but have just suppressed my emotions. And this lid on the boiling pot of anger is as ineffectual in controlling the flow of anger as a finger plugging a hole in a sea wall (yes, Hans Brinkner, I'm looking at you)
So that begs the question, why is this volcano there in the first place? Why is it so easy to feed it?

Some things that increase anger:
a) Hunger
b) Multi-tasking while hungry
c) Reading a novel obsessively.
d) Not taking the time to have a general plan

My recent flare-ups have been caused by all four, but especially by (c) and (d). I've been reading "The Hidden Blade" and its sequel "My Beautiful Enemy" by Sherry Thomas and found them so fantastic that I have been reading them nearly continuously for more than a week now. So there's very little space in my mind for anything more serious. Which irritates the man no end and in turn, makes me really upset.

On-going attempts to control anger involve:
a) A few minutes of meditation. I really need to make more time for this.
b) A few minutes of planning every day.
c) Writing. It's amazing how much writing about this process is helping me. So I need to continue logging my thoughts and progress (or regress) and learning from them.