In the span of a single month: a death; an engagement; a wedding; three conferences, of which I'm an organizer of two; a company retreat; two grants; a new position; and looking to move out of our existing space.
And the month isn't even over yet.
Friday, November 23, 2018
Thursday, November 8, 2018
The third one
My grandmother passed away a few days ago.
What strikes me is the sense of relief- she struggled terribly in the last few months.She was 92. It was time.
Her funeral was marked with reunions, stories of her childhood, youth and my aunts' childhoods, stories of my father and laughter and tears.
THIS is what funerals should be.
When my father and mother passed away, the sense of disorientation, the sense of breathlessness, the feeing of a massive stone sitting on my head and heart were overpowering at times.
And all through those days and the ones following them I would keep telling myself to be controlled, to smile and to finish whatever had to be done.
Those days are days that I have no desire to recall again... it feels like a wound that has outwardly begun to close, but you're too afraid to touch it in fear that it will start gushing blood again.
My grandmother's death is the end of an era. She was born in the 20's; she got married at 12; had 13 kids, of which 8 survived; she traveled with her husband to whichever part of the country he was transferred, made friends and managed life for herself and her family no matter where she went; she learnt Hindi and English on her own; she was widowed by the time she was 40; and then singlehandedly brought up 8 kids, ranging from 22 (my father) to 8 (my youngest uncle). She lived long enough that 6 out of her 8 great grandkids will have lasting memories of her. She was erudite, could argue points of law and was a life-long learner, constantly trying out knitting, crocheting, stitching, new recipes and discussing topics of morality vs legality in TV shows, as long as she was able.
What did she not experience in her life? I think she suffered through nearly every possible tragedy- the deaths of a husband, parents, siblings, and multiple children, including the last and most recent blows, those of my parents.
My poor Ajji. I hope she finds a modicum of peace, wherever she is now.
What strikes me is the sense of relief- she struggled terribly in the last few months.She was 92. It was time.
Her funeral was marked with reunions, stories of her childhood, youth and my aunts' childhoods, stories of my father and laughter and tears.
THIS is what funerals should be.
When my father and mother passed away, the sense of disorientation, the sense of breathlessness, the feeing of a massive stone sitting on my head and heart were overpowering at times.
And all through those days and the ones following them I would keep telling myself to be controlled, to smile and to finish whatever had to be done.
Those days are days that I have no desire to recall again... it feels like a wound that has outwardly begun to close, but you're too afraid to touch it in fear that it will start gushing blood again.
My grandmother's death is the end of an era. She was born in the 20's; she got married at 12; had 13 kids, of which 8 survived; she traveled with her husband to whichever part of the country he was transferred, made friends and managed life for herself and her family no matter where she went; she learnt Hindi and English on her own; she was widowed by the time she was 40; and then singlehandedly brought up 8 kids, ranging from 22 (my father) to 8 (my youngest uncle). She lived long enough that 6 out of her 8 great grandkids will have lasting memories of her. She was erudite, could argue points of law and was a life-long learner, constantly trying out knitting, crocheting, stitching, new recipes and discussing topics of morality vs legality in TV shows, as long as she was able.
What did she not experience in her life? I think she suffered through nearly every possible tragedy- the deaths of a husband, parents, siblings, and multiple children, including the last and most recent blows, those of my parents.
My poor Ajji. I hope she finds a modicum of peace, wherever she is now.
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
A new experience in my growth
Today was the first time I dealt in some personnel-management without taking RK's advice and guidance on it. Of course, to be fair, my company has been fairly tiny so far, so personnel management hardly was an issue.
Now that RK's group and mine work jointly on many projects and because I've also hired a new technician and obtained 2 new interns, we are getting pretty crowded.
Crowded place, new responsibilities, new projects etc leads to high stress; behaviors that might otherwise have been shrugged away become large pain points and bad behaviors that might have once been rare or ignored magnify to become real issues.
These past few weeks, I've been mostly absent from lab. In addition to my absence, the senior scientist in lab was also dealing with some family emergency issues and wasn't able to go to lab. This left the younger technicians in a position of high responsibility and independent decision-making. For the most part, it went very smoothly. However, yesterday I heard a complaint about somebody in lab and how their behavior was affecting workplace climate.
Before taking any action though, I discussed this issue with the senior physician at the clinical group and with the senior scientist from my group. We came up with a strategy which wouldn't point fingers at the person but would place this within the larger context of leadership and personal growth. Because, to be honest, I don't want to lose this person over something which is actually fairly easy to fix.
RK is someone I would have immediately asked help of, but he was busy. And the other person who would have been really helpful, his mentor from the US who is in town right now, was also busy. So, I took a few leaves from RK's book: I went online and read extensively; I looked at algorithms for cultivating a healthy work culture and I looked at images of leadership, work culture, personal growth, work place ethics and so on. This morning I still felt quite unprepared- I didn't feel like I had a cohesive message, I was afraid that I would ramble on without end and I couldn't figure out whether to focus only on workplace culture or personal growth or something completely different (all that reading while useful also confused the heck out of me... what exactly did I want anyway?).
The only thing I was sure of the attitude that I wanted to convey: one of trust and openness.
So I went in to lab, hoping to bumble through it somehow. I started out with asking people what they wanted out of their growth, what did they think contributed to personal growth. Many thoughtful answers, such as personal vision, education, learning from failures, and workplace environment (!) emerged. I asked them to to spend some time reflecting on what factors they felt had been critical for their growth so far. And while they were reflecting, I had a brainwave.
Last week, I had browsed through a book called "High Performance Habits" by Brendan Burchard. It made such an impact on me that I downloaded the book on my phone and have been going through it on and off. One of the first few chapters is about how actively reflecting on and improving one's perceptions of oneself (self), perceptions of what one would like others to think of one (social), a thoughtful approach to building skills critical for success and investing one's energy in service are ways to improve performance and effectiveness in life.
So almost automatically, my thoughts went to whatever I'd learned from this book. So I decided I would bring the conversation to this and have everybody talk about these 4S's (self, social, skills and service, as mentioned in the book).
Weirdly enough, when we discussed the personal growth aspect itself, even before I drove the conversation towards improvement, the person whose behavior triggered this whole session brought up many of these issues of behavior. And then there was a very honest exchange of opinions and thoughts about what triggered these bouts of bad behavior and what the underlying situation was.
Was it because this person suspected what had triggered this meeting and wanted to face it head-on?
Or was it because this environment of openness had been created? Or was I too, too obvious?
I don't know. But I was not going to let the opportunity go to waste! So I probed more, we spent a good amount of time talking about it, we all brainstormed about ways by which we could help and that conversation brought out many underlying confusions and miscommunications that I couldn't have even suspected.
We did the whole 4S thing as well- it seemed like a very good framework to address these exact same issues. And each of my team members came up with a goal list for themselves and selected other team mates to be their "coach"... and guess what? The same person about whom the complaints were, was the person most frequently chosen to be a coach for others to keep themselves on track with their personal goals! How amazing and awesomely crazy is that! I have to give full credit to this person for being honest and upfront about a lot of things- this truly is personal leadership.
And guess what else? We will continue these leadership sessions every month. I think there's some serious gold to be mined here.
So, all in all, feeling pretty good!
Now that RK's group and mine work jointly on many projects and because I've also hired a new technician and obtained 2 new interns, we are getting pretty crowded.
Crowded place, new responsibilities, new projects etc leads to high stress; behaviors that might otherwise have been shrugged away become large pain points and bad behaviors that might have once been rare or ignored magnify to become real issues.
These past few weeks, I've been mostly absent from lab. In addition to my absence, the senior scientist in lab was also dealing with some family emergency issues and wasn't able to go to lab. This left the younger technicians in a position of high responsibility and independent decision-making. For the most part, it went very smoothly. However, yesterday I heard a complaint about somebody in lab and how their behavior was affecting workplace climate.
Before taking any action though, I discussed this issue with the senior physician at the clinical group and with the senior scientist from my group. We came up with a strategy which wouldn't point fingers at the person but would place this within the larger context of leadership and personal growth. Because, to be honest, I don't want to lose this person over something which is actually fairly easy to fix.
RK is someone I would have immediately asked help of, but he was busy. And the other person who would have been really helpful, his mentor from the US who is in town right now, was also busy. So, I took a few leaves from RK's book: I went online and read extensively; I looked at algorithms for cultivating a healthy work culture and I looked at images of leadership, work culture, personal growth, work place ethics and so on. This morning I still felt quite unprepared- I didn't feel like I had a cohesive message, I was afraid that I would ramble on without end and I couldn't figure out whether to focus only on workplace culture or personal growth or something completely different (all that reading while useful also confused the heck out of me... what exactly did I want anyway?).
The only thing I was sure of the attitude that I wanted to convey: one of trust and openness.
So I went in to lab, hoping to bumble through it somehow. I started out with asking people what they wanted out of their growth, what did they think contributed to personal growth. Many thoughtful answers, such as personal vision, education, learning from failures, and workplace environment (!) emerged. I asked them to to spend some time reflecting on what factors they felt had been critical for their growth so far. And while they were reflecting, I had a brainwave.
Last week, I had browsed through a book called "High Performance Habits" by Brendan Burchard. It made such an impact on me that I downloaded the book on my phone and have been going through it on and off. One of the first few chapters is about how actively reflecting on and improving one's perceptions of oneself (self), perceptions of what one would like others to think of one (social), a thoughtful approach to building skills critical for success and investing one's energy in service are ways to improve performance and effectiveness in life.
So almost automatically, my thoughts went to whatever I'd learned from this book. So I decided I would bring the conversation to this and have everybody talk about these 4S's (self, social, skills and service, as mentioned in the book).
Weirdly enough, when we discussed the personal growth aspect itself, even before I drove the conversation towards improvement, the person whose behavior triggered this whole session brought up many of these issues of behavior. And then there was a very honest exchange of opinions and thoughts about what triggered these bouts of bad behavior and what the underlying situation was.
Was it because this person suspected what had triggered this meeting and wanted to face it head-on?
Or was it because this environment of openness had been created? Or was I too, too obvious?
I don't know. But I was not going to let the opportunity go to waste! So I probed more, we spent a good amount of time talking about it, we all brainstormed about ways by which we could help and that conversation brought out many underlying confusions and miscommunications that I couldn't have even suspected.
We did the whole 4S thing as well- it seemed like a very good framework to address these exact same issues. And each of my team members came up with a goal list for themselves and selected other team mates to be their "coach"... and guess what? The same person about whom the complaints were, was the person most frequently chosen to be a coach for others to keep themselves on track with their personal goals! How amazing and awesomely crazy is that! I have to give full credit to this person for being honest and upfront about a lot of things- this truly is personal leadership.
And guess what else? We will continue these leadership sessions every month. I think there's some serious gold to be mined here.
So, all in all, feeling pretty good!
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Why I feel happier in India
I never could explain this until just now.
In the US, when I was going through a bad patch emotionally, or was feeling down, I would feel alone. And truly, there would be days when I wouldn't (or couldn't) talk to another person for days on end- people typically don't begin conversations on the bus or on the street with others. In my lab, the need for professionalism kept most interactions to the superficial.
I saw innumerable people over multiple years, either on the road leading to our house, or in the daycare when I went to pick up kids, and they would have seen me, but we never struck up a conversation or had any kind of connection.
.
Here, in India, on my street, on the street where my parents' home is, in my work places, I matter. People come and talk to me. I don't feel invisible.
And that's why, despite all the pollution and the problems, I like it here.
In the US, when I was going through a bad patch emotionally, or was feeling down, I would feel alone. And truly, there would be days when I wouldn't (or couldn't) talk to another person for days on end- people typically don't begin conversations on the bus or on the street with others. In my lab, the need for professionalism kept most interactions to the superficial.
I saw innumerable people over multiple years, either on the road leading to our house, or in the daycare when I went to pick up kids, and they would have seen me, but we never struck up a conversation or had any kind of connection.
.
Here, in India, on my street, on the street where my parents' home is, in my work places, I matter. People come and talk to me. I don't feel invisible.
And that's why, despite all the pollution and the problems, I like it here.
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Ilona Andrews
Have you read Ilona Andrews? This husband-wife team has to be hands-down the best fantasy authors in the world right now. I would classify IA right up there with JK Rowling, to be honest.
Just fantastic world creation, plot lines and writing.
Just fantastic world creation, plot lines and writing.
Thursday, August 23, 2018
A thought about cricket..
... Which, I realise now, has to be the ultimate game in delayed gratification.
You wait and wait and stare into space and occasionally field a ball that happens to roll into your space, all for the momentary gratification of being asked to bat or bowl.
Amazingly enough, kids tap into the joy of this quite quickly, far quicker than adults who try their hand at cricket for the first time.
You wait and wait and stare into space and occasionally field a ball that happens to roll into your space, all for the momentary gratification of being asked to bat or bowl.
Amazingly enough, kids tap into the joy of this quite quickly, far quicker than adults who try their hand at cricket for the first time.
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Gratitude
Things that make me feel that someone out there is looking out for me:
To be honest, these past 6 months have been probably the most impactful in my life- both positive and negative.
Again, in the spirit of moving on, let's not dwell on deaths, but I really have so much gratitude for the multiple other things that have happened:
a) My maternal family- without my uncles and aunts from my mom's side, I would have never been in a state of mind to think about my device, get a provisional patent for it, or apply for and win a grant for it. In the past 2-3 months, I've gotten into the habit of looking to them for advice. It feels awfully heart-warming to know that social support exists... especially because, in the decade I spent in the US, I used to feel quite lonely.
b) My paternal aunts- for looking out for me in multiple ways.
c) For the glimpse of the musk deer and Monal pheasants in the Himalayas- both extremely rare, the former near extinct. The fact that we saw them is incredible...
d) For the black sheep dog who helped me on the trek to the Himalayas- he came suddenly, and walked by me, lay down next to me as I panted and gasped for breath and went away once he saw I was fine again. Wasn't the dog that walked with the Pandavas on their trek on Swargarohini also a black dog? The one that was left with Yudhishthira when everyone else fell by the wayside?
e) For the twist of fate that led to us carrying the temple flag from Chopta village to Tungnath to give to the priests there so they could fly it over the temple... what an unexpected privilege!
f) For the opportunity to share our temple prasadam with some of the other pilgrims on the mountain.
g) For the immense world of opportunities that have opened up for me in terms of professional growth. I have been hesitant about figuring out how to use these opportunities. But writing this post has helped me realize how privileged I am. I really must not waste these chances, or other people's time.
h) For the man, the kids, and the extended family and friends.
Truly, I am blessed. They say "Sa vidya ya vimuktate" That is knowledge, which liberates.
Well, on this independence day, I think the time has come for me to get a bit more liberated in my mind and go forth without being bound by my preconceptions of what is and is not possible.
To be honest, these past 6 months have been probably the most impactful in my life- both positive and negative.
Again, in the spirit of moving on, let's not dwell on deaths, but I really have so much gratitude for the multiple other things that have happened:
a) My maternal family- without my uncles and aunts from my mom's side, I would have never been in a state of mind to think about my device, get a provisional patent for it, or apply for and win a grant for it. In the past 2-3 months, I've gotten into the habit of looking to them for advice. It feels awfully heart-warming to know that social support exists... especially because, in the decade I spent in the US, I used to feel quite lonely.
b) My paternal aunts- for looking out for me in multiple ways.
 |
| The male monal |
 |
| Himalayan male musk deer |
d) For the black sheep dog who helped me on the trek to the Himalayas- he came suddenly, and walked by me, lay down next to me as I panted and gasped for breath and went away once he saw I was fine again. Wasn't the dog that walked with the Pandavas on their trek on Swargarohini also a black dog? The one that was left with Yudhishthira when everyone else fell by the wayside?
e) For the twist of fate that led to us carrying the temple flag from Chopta village to Tungnath to give to the priests there so they could fly it over the temple... what an unexpected privilege!
f) For the opportunity to share our temple prasadam with some of the other pilgrims on the mountain.
g) For the immense world of opportunities that have opened up for me in terms of professional growth. I have been hesitant about figuring out how to use these opportunities. But writing this post has helped me realize how privileged I am. I really must not waste these chances, or other people's time.
h) For the man, the kids, and the extended family and friends.
Truly, I am blessed. They say "Sa vidya ya vimuktate" That is knowledge, which liberates.
Well, on this independence day, I think the time has come for me to get a bit more liberated in my mind and go forth without being bound by my preconceptions of what is and is not possible.
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