Nostalgic Pune

Which is a title a hundred times better than "Drowning in Tears Pune" which is what I probably could have called any blog I might have written during my first visit to Pune in 2018 after leaving it nearly 3 decades before.

In 2018, I had won my first grant. I had written it while my dad was in the hospital, pitched it a few days after he died, pitched it again a few days after my mom died and got word of the approval while waiting in the bank submitting his and her death certificates. As part of the "Welcome to the grant family!" process that large grant funders do for their awardees, they requested me to come to Pune for a day-long thing. I landed at the airport and decided to take advantage of the couple of hours in the early morning that I had, found a bus that took me to Aundh, where my mom and I lived after my dad got transferred to Mumbai, and tracked down that house. But I was an emotional mess and I couldn't handle the fact that they weren't around for me to call and let them know all the old places I could recognize in Pune and sobbed throughout the bus ride and the walk to the house. Received a lot of stares, but there are advantages to wearing glasses- you can hide your tears more easily than not.

But it is 2026. I am no longer that weepy mess. And I am back here in Pune for a 3 day conference. Which just so happens to be in a campus very close to that same Aundh house, so I decided that this time, I would try to track down the very first house that the 3 of us ever lived in in Pune. I could recall the names Shivajinagar and Model Colony, but try as I could, the rest of the address was a total blank. No recollection of the apartment name, or the road, but had full and intense clarity on how the road used to look, the sparrows that would chirrup, the green of the trees, the space in front where Appa first taught me how to ride a bike, and play badminton, and made me skip so I could become stronger; the little garden at the back where Amma helped me bury a sparrow and then her chicks after the former was killed flying into our hall fan and the latter starved to death (yeah, grim!), where we would pluck pomogranites and jamuns, where she found "thizhanellu" plant when I had jaundice, and the garage where the apartment ppl would keep a Ganapathi and sing songs during Ganesh Chaturthi. That house. But what was it called? Where was it?

Then in a massive stroke of luck, I found Vaibhav Sweets on the map! Vaibhav Sweets! The place outside which I would stand every day for my school bus and where I first discovered that male and female sparrows look different! Surely it couldn't be the same! But Google pics assured me that it was- the same bright red lights, the same fonts. So I found my way to Vaibhav Sweets and then to the apartment.

The slums opposite the apartment no longer exist, although it is still clearly a lower socioeconomic neighborhood than the earlier part of the road. Sheetal Apartments (I do NOT recall it being Sheeldutt Apts, frankly...) looks a bit tired. Maybe its charms were invisble to me in the fading twilight and yellow street lamps. The wooden board inside with all the names of the owners is the same that hung there in the 1990s with the exact same names... did nobody sell their unit or move out, or has that wooden board become so much a part of the collective consciousness that nobody has thought to replace or update it? Surely there must have been deaths, weddings, births and movements of families... The garden inside has been paved over - no more pomogranate or jamun or thizhanellus from there. I was too jittery to wait for someone to come and ask me what I was doing there, nor did I feel that, if asked, I could conceivably tell people the reason why I came all the way just to see it again.

I then went on the road that led to my Marathi tuition teacher- a big part of my life in that era. For three years, from the time we moved to Pune, I went to Smita aunty's house nearly every single day trying to learn a new language from scratch so that I could survive school and Puneri life, where everyone spoke (and still speaks) only Marathi. Smita aunty, as a newly wed, had come to live with her husband and his elderly mother in a small house with a very large garden and an outbuilding that served as her husband's printing shop. He would print business cards and the like, and set them out to dry one by one before packing them up neatly in little boxes. That outbuilding used to be a place of magic for me- the walk through damp earth and little tiles laid out in a path, the smell of ink, the stacks of empty cards waiting like so much possibility, and then, after being inked, shipped off to all sorts of places in the city and into unknown hands across the globe. Their sight would fill me with yearning- I desperately wanted to work in a place like that. I felt that there could be no higher purpose than being able to print whatever you wanted in your own home. Smita was a lab tech and a painter. She ran biochemistry tests in a hospital called Ratna Memorial, where my mom, a few years later, had a pretty major surgery to remove a tennis ball-sized lump from the side of her spine, the visible sign of her struggle with bone TB. I wonder if Smita recognized my mom's name when her blood tube must have showed up at her lab for pre-op and post-op tests. Never thought about asking her this at the time, of course. Smita's mother-in-law was a Marathi-version of my grandmother. Widowed at an early age, conservative, would wash her own clothes and set them out to dry by hoisting them on a high clothesline inside the house and when dry, would use a stick to move them down to a clean area, untouched by human hands so that it would remain "pure", fluent in multiple languages and possessed of an acerbic sort of humour. She was an avid gardener and it was there in her beautiful, tree-laden, damp garden that I first saw lemons growing on a shrub and have longed to grow in my home ever since (now I have a lemon shrub, but it is, alas, only filled with thorns and has stubbornly refused to fruit, despite using my Ajji's trick of threatening to cut it) I used to feel very close to the elderly lady, of whose name I have no recollection now. I don't recall the husband's name either, for all the hours I spent in their house.

The small house with the large garden no longer exists- it seems to have been converted into a set of flats. But what was astonishing to me was that behind the flat was a garden with an outbuilding! Did Smita and her husband decide to hold on to that space after all? And if so, why? Did he still work out of that space? When did the elderly lady pass away and how?

I wasn't prepared to stick around and ask questions, especially because I don't know any names. How would I even ask and whom would I ask...but more importantly, what would I do with any of this information? It's so random, and kind of pointless, no? It's not like I want to get back in touch with any of them. Is merely satisfying one's curiosity enough to go through the trouble of finding someone to talk to and rehashing all the old times?

Anyway, two points of intrigue: there used to be a small boy, a 6 year old, who had lost his father in a road traffic accident (even in those days!) on the highway between Pune and Mumbai. His father had been a dentist, I think. This kid used to come in my school bus and lived fairly close to Smita's house. The entrance to the road leading to Smita's house now has a large sign board that says Kale Dentistry.... I wonder if it is this kid!

And the second: there used to be a slightly smirky, "cool" kid calle Gaurav Mulchandani- again, living somewhere on or around that road. And there is now a sweet shop (almost exactly opp Vaibhav Sweets) called Mulchand Sweets! Did Smirky Gaurav get into the sweets business? So many points of eyebrow-raising worth!

These are the things I wish I could speak to my parents about. Who else would get any of this adventure? My mom would have totally gotten my need to revisit, we would have gossiped nicely ont the phone and she would have been a fellow detective on my path to discovering the old apartment complex. I think she would have also probably had the courage to go speak to some of the people.

My dad would have remembered names and faces and stories- it wouldn't have been half-baked knowledge like mine. He would have known exactly where I had to go and how. And would have encouraged me to find my way to my old school too.

Being an only child has its pros and cons. But I think the loneliest bits about being one is the fact that once your parents are no longer around, you don't have anyone to share your childhood memories with. And childhood memories are intense and vibrant and matter a lot.

Learning my kids anew

I assumed, before RK left for Australia, that my life here in Blr would be just the same as ever: me and the kids doing our own things, me supporting them when they asked, packing them food and hanging around. I hadn't really given it much thought.

Adolescence, in many ways I'm realising, is like very early childhood- the kids grow so fast that you blink and you miss it.

What I hadn't anticipated was that if I didn't put in some effort, we were at risk of becoming three rather detached roommates and nothing more. It struck me recently that it had been a few days since I had a proper conversation with Ani, for instance, and that the sum of our interactions was limited to mundane practicalities- money for the bus, wishing each other a good day, texts about the house key etc.

While Durga still seeks me out to tell me about her day or share gossip (or tea,as she calls it) or company to go window-shopping, Ani's interests and mine appear to diverge so much that these long spaces occur without even my realising it.

Then there are feelings of loneliness - I miss RK and the laughter and fights we have. I miss how naturally the household comes together when he is around. But I always assumed it was a me- problem, that I had to resolve this within myself.

Then there are the fights that Durga and I are having- she's at the phase where everything I do is wrong, boring and lame. Her greatest pleasure is to make fun of me about everything, especially to other family members. Which is entertaining, no doubt, but can sting.

Today, after reading "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" I decided I needed to spend time with both the kids. I called them out of their rooms, and said we needed to hang out together. Conversation was initially a bit stilted until the topic of weekday lunches came about at which point, it was a lot of laughter and teasing by the kids about my cooking. After that, it was fairly smooth sailing. I excused myself when it turned to "Summer I Turned Pretty" which Durga likes, I loathe and Ani finds so hilariously bad (he claims) that he and his college friends watch it together and text about how bad it is (or they could be gushing about it, who knows!).

Now I go to bed feeling happier than I have been these past few days. I was walling myself up thinking I had to figure out how to navigate all this stuff by myself. Maybe the answer is as simple as reaching out to the people who matter the most and creating occasions for us to come together. Memorable family interactions don't just have to happen when all 4 of us are together; maybe we can create routines for us three as well and not feel like we are just in a holding pattern until RK returns. Maybe I could embrace this opportunity to not feel like I am just a placeholder for the double-parental unit.

The Killing of the Shrew

A tiny shrew entered my bedroom today.

Random rodents keep entering our house. We are the only house on the whole street who have a tree and space for the Earth around the tree. We also compost around the tree. And to cap it all off, our dog Perry likes us to keep the door open so she can keep running out and barking at various things. Needless to say, lizards, rats, mice and on one memorable occasion, a squirrel have come in. It's especially bad after harvesting the mangoes- the smell of mangoes in the verandah room is heavenly and serves as a beacon to many many creatures in addition to humans.

I can handle lizards and feel reasonably comfortable guiding them out. I am intensely scared of rats and mice. Once a rat entered our house, climbed the stairs (!) and entered Ani's room upstairs, hung out there all day, emerged in the night and jumped on his bed and bit him on its way elsewhere. We had to go to the emergency room for tetatus shots at 3am. Our househelp Shanthi is very brave and if I have sequestered the rodential intruder in the verandah or the room attached to it, she strides in and pushes them out.

If Perry gets a scent of any of these rodents, she kills them. So, Perry is like a brahmastra- you only bring her in as a last resort and you can expect destruction. Bedroom rat, for example- instant death.

Today I wasn't sure what had entered, but the squeaking sounded like a rat. Durga shut the bedroom door so the rodent couldn't escape. All my clothes cupboard doors had been open and I was dreading going there tomorrow morning to see rat-shit everywhere on my clothes. It was really stressful and I felt very out of control. In fact, while I have managed reasonably well without RK these past few months, this was one of the times I desperately missed him. He would have understood my utter reluctance to enter the room or deal with this problem by myself and would have done something about it (as he has before). He would have made a nice joke, turned it into a learning lesson for the kids.... basically, he would have handled it really well. Unlike me. This is what I did:

I dithered a good bit, messaged some loud messages on Whatsapp to RK and then we let Perry into the room. We could tell that Perry had caught the scent and then on the other side of the door, heard several very loud shrieks and then silence. I gently opened the door and caught sight of a much smaller grey body than I was expecting.

I yelled to the kids (kids are even more scared than I am... I asked Ani to help since he's the man of the house now and had to listen to Durga retorting about patriarchy and Ani informing me that I was the adult here) and then they peeked in and Durga said, I think it's a shrew.

Look at it... it's so cute... it is supposed to feed on insects, worms and spiders. No wonder it was hanging out in my garden. Why, oh why, did it have to come inside the house?

I am swamped with guilt. Also nausea. I wish to God I had done something different.

Panel Discussions

What is the point of a panel discussion? It's like an anthology- it gives you a teaser, a brain worm, or provides enough intrigue for you to search out the author/speaker and learn more about their work.

In a lot of conferences, talks and symposia today, I find that either:

a) the organisers didn't want to seem like they are playing favorites.
b) They are absolutely playing favorites and want everyone to know it (and the fact that they are all a little circle of friends)
c) the topic is so complex or polarising that the organisers would like to aggressively moderate the speakers and the audience.

When should a panel discussion format be used?

a) When the topic is sufficiently novel for a vast majority of the audience b) When you want to offer mid-level professionals a chance to speak about their work (sort of like a "watch this space" prelude to hopefully more impactful work) c) When there are so many opposing sides that you don't want to give any particular side too much time or space (in a dream world. In reality, there will always be one side that figures out how to rig the system so that their POV gets prime time) d) When you want to introduce a piece of work or even a particular emerging field- a book, a highly relevant article, some aspect of computer security or immune cells or road building materials etc. e) When there are broad nuances that the organizers or speakers want to highlight but these are not too technical or detailed for most people to miss.

When should a panel discussion format NOT be used?

a) When the topic is sufficiently personal to everyone- even if they don't know the nitty gritties of it, they all have experience of it. In such a case, it's far better to either have an extended the Q & A session, or even better, have a series of short talks by the panelists with a Q & A at the end of each session and ideally, also provide Q & A time at the end of all talks. Otherwise, the entire panel risks being dismissed for being underwhelming, not actually understanding the nuances of the topic, or the personal lived experience of individuals, or worse. If people are coming to a venue specifically for a session- why design it for a miniscule 1h or 90m? By the time the intros are done (don't even get me started on panel discussions that have an inauguration first... why??!) and the initial mildly funny opening remarks are over, you have already lost 20 minutes. Then invariably the first speaker takes up way too much time and the last speaker has to speak very fast to cover all their key points. And then the organizers claim they will take "only two questions please, in the interests of time". Can there be a more irritating format?

b) When the audience knows the topic... one can claim that in today's age of complexity, nobody knows every perspective. Ok, fair point. But when the audience are those you have invited specifically because of their experience or interest in something or the other, why would you then assume they don't have a depth of understanding to catch up fairly fast? Then of course, EVERYone has opinions that they would like to share. A well-planned panel discussion format might actually work pretty fine here, but nothing irritates or frustrates people as when they either haven't been allowed to dig deeper into something or share something of importance to them.

Graduating from some Tropes

In the history of romance novels, a wildly successful trope that has lasted for several decades is the one with the well-meaning but generally incompetent heroine. There are several excuses- she's having a bad day; she's nervous, distracted, overwhelmed, underwhelmed, bored etc. So she leaves important documents on the train, drops her handbag, forgets her wallet and her phone and her charger and her car keys (like, seriously... what exactly did she remember to take in her large handbag?). She has no freaking clue how to be patient, how to maybe think a little bit before shooting her mouth off in public, how to be a bit attuned to the general vibes in a place... so she says stupid things which are overheard by the wrong people and then she has to run around apologizing to them and so on and so forth. You get the pic. Anyway, I am now done with this trope. I have decided, no more books with the dumb heroine.. If I need to teach you to be a bit careful about your stuff, lady, then I don't need to be reading about your lovelife- it has nothing to offer me. I wonder if I will, as I age, start shedding annoying tropes. Maybe when I am a wise old eighty year old, I will only be reading very specific books- maybe they will be competent, older women who can take care of themselves. Maybe it will be about couples who can communicate honestly without mumming up

Fear

Jiddu Krishnamurthy says that there are really only two emotions in the Universe: Love and Fear.

When I first read that, I scoffed. What about the 87 different emotions painstakingly laid out in great detail in the Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown, Mr. Krishnamurthy, I thought. That book makes perfect sense to me!

Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to dig deep into myself and ask where are many of my negative emotions coming from. I have felt feelings of deep insecurity, FOMO, anger, resentment, betrayal, bitterness, hurt, and just plain and pure fear.

Digging deeper is not easy. My throat catches, my breath stills, emotions beat against my brain like a never-ending tide, red-hot anger sweeps over me, and drowning in all these emotions is far, far easier- I willingly swim deeper inside a vortex of negativity with each thought and dwell where all my actions have unbeatable justifications, there is no possibility of any blame coming to me, and I feel only blemishless, pure, untainted victimhood. Climbing out of the vortex requires first and foremost a stilling of the brain. For me, this is only possible when I write. Yogis and mahayogis describe the use of breath in stilling the brain- this hasn't worked too much for me before. My monkey brain leaps too fast for me to catch hold of my breath. Writing, on the other hand, forces the monkey brain to slow down for my hands to catch up to my head and that slowing down then helps my breath to take over.

Digging deeper requires the willingness to change. I know several people who refuse, who cannot imagine that there could ever be a different perspective and are afraid of being "proved" wrong- who are so attached to their truth because to be otherwise means that they might have been wrong about other things before and that can shatter the edifice of their life.

Digging deeper requires me to forgive myself. This has taken time. I have realized that if I cannot believe that there is forgiveness to be had, there is no way I can acknowledge my mistakes. So I will always be in a state of denial and more importantly, in a state of fear that my mistakes will be found out. To be able to forgive myself is to be kind to myself. I have heard all my life that I should be kind to others. I had never realized that showing kindness to myself is extremely hard. I think women especially are taught not to be kind to themselves- it is some sort of badge of honour to show that you treat yourself like shit: the last to eat, the person who wakes up first and goes to bed last, the person who doesn't take a break, the person who needs to be everywhere, doing everything, all the time, every time. Just like charity, kindness begins at home- if you can't be kind to yourself, you can't be kind to your kids or to anyone else.

Digging deeper requires me not to accept platitudes: Easy answers are fairly quick to come to mind. They also push the onus away from me and on to some external factor which is out of my control.

Digging deeper requires me to work through the signs of my body panicking- this is the sign that I am truly reaching the truth. When my heart starts beating faster, my eyes tear up and breaths start coming in gasps. This is the sign that what is true is actually deeply frightening. What started as anger, bitterness, resentment, betrayal, jealousy, envy and any number of negative emotions is actually deeply rooted in fear.

For me, fear of abandonment is the deepest fear of all. It manifests itself in various types of ways, it comes up in several avatars and underlies nearly every strong negative emotion I feel. It doesn't have to be abandonment by a particular person/s: it could be society (whatever way I define it in whatever situation). Fear of abandoment also shows up as fear of not having a legacy, fear of missing out, fear of being forgotten, fear of being passed over, fear of not-counting.

So, J Krishnamurthy was right: Fear is a root emotion of everything negative. By the reverse logic, I suppose love is the root emotion of everything positive. Love for a person, community, land, memory, things makes us feel all the positive emotions Brene Brown lists.

Today morning, I had a moment of visceral negative emotion. A group that I work with closely didn't include me in a research project in a field that I have been working in for a few years. I was upset last night going to bed when I found out, and I woke up upset. When describing this to RK, my voice broke, tears welled and I sobbed.... all the while thinking, why in the world am I so upset? Surely, this is not anything to get so carried away by!

Then I realized the reason- It is intimately connected to what I am considering doing next in my life: Here I am, thinking about doing a midwifery degree, which, from all descriptions, looks like it will be an intense study of 4-5 years. I am struggling with fears of losing out, of having these past years of work be forgotten and my contributions overlooked. I am worried that life is a zero-sum game: that if I gain something new, I will need to lose something else. My fears of abandonment manifested as feelings of betrayal and anger against a completely different object because of this context and what might have been a pinch instead became a gigantic ball of hurt.

So, this is a breakthrough: if I am feeling such intense feelings of fear about midwifery, and the journey it will take me on, clearly there is something here that bears further examination, of myself, of my perceived place in society, of my perceived role and stage of life.

On one hand, is familiarity, things that I have built by myself and where I am beginning to do some great work. But on the other hand, is a growing boredom. I have to admit that my brain is built for taking on the challenge (and stress) of novelty. Once I figure out something, I don't take a lot of time to do it and then I back to square one, wondering what to do with my time. My training and default avatar of a researcher also means that a lot of my work is mental. I feel the need to work with my hands... and not in a lab either. Logically, and heart wise, I feel ready to take on this new direction. But fears lie much deeper than logic or even desire. Fears stem from the lizard brain, the primordial part of us, where our basest nature lies. Fear can only be conquered by acceptance and love. I accept that I am afraid, that I fear oblivion, that I won't be seen as "serious" or "committed" to my current, socially acceptable, comfortable, settled way of life. I also probably will get lots of questions from various people about why I want to do what I intend to do. I myself no doubt will question my own sanity several times. And I will be starting from scratch- for the 5th time in my life: the first time didn't count as I was just starting my adult life in my 20s and decided to study Virology without having any idea about what it was; the second time was after we came back to India and I started work as a childbirth educator; the third time was when I decided to start a business; the fourth time was when I started work as a diagnostician in probably the most challenging period possible- during the Covid pandemic.

So, if this is my 5th time in 44 years, then I am averaging one identity-shift every 8-9 years. Really, by now, it's par for the course for me to reinvent myself every few years, it's actually become the norm.

But as I grow older, reinvention feels scarier... am I being biased by sunk cost? am I just tired of starting from scratch? Am I really starting from scratch though? If I am being honest, I have been working in public health as a diagnostician and will begin working in public health as a nurse/midwife. So, actually, one might say, I am actually deeply committed and serious about the same field.

Anyway, enough placating. And enough reflecting for now. No doubt the days ahead will bring further emotional upheavals. The main thing to know is that fear is a constant and I welcome it as a friend. Only then can I hope to understand it and transcend it.

Striding Forth (Cautiously) Towards a New Phase in Life

These past 10 years (no wait.. ELEVEN!! Mind-boggling!) in India have revealed aspects of myself that I neither knew nor would have bothered to find out had I stayed on in the US. India has a way of ripping apart facades (and like every other place, putting in new ones). I have learned that I need to keep learning new things, doing things with my own hands, and occasionally feeling fear and feeling like I have triumphed over fear, to keep myself engaged and energized. Otherwise, I drift into ennuii and existential crises and have terrible moodiness. I also start devouring books without rhyme or reason, mostly to keep thoughts at bay and to fill up time.

I have felt ennuii multiple times, but more so over the past year. This happens more frequently as I become more efficient- by delegating, mentoring, putting systems in place and sometimes, plain disappearing, my various projects start running by themselves and junior people grow, start taking on more responsibilities and life becomes smoother.

Age and experience have also taught me to be less tightly wound and more philosophical about occasional perceived slowness of pace, retreats, and backfoots.

With all this knowledge and wisdom, the amount of time I have on my hands is increasing, which means I am getting awfully bored and feeling very directionless. But how to articulate this? For months I was irritated with myself- how ungrateful, how dissatisfied and how unaware of my own privilege was I acting by feeling like I didn't have enough, when I actually have so much? What right do I have to feel stressed when I have nothing concrete to feel stressed about? I am at a stage where my kids are on the brink of independence- I should be focussing on enabling that, not wallowing in some inexplicable, nebulous fugue state.

Over the past two weeks of staying in rural Australia, I have been able to get to a point where I can articulate this better. Where I realize that the lack in my life is not something concrete but internal. That I need new challenges and new directions. The old ones are familiar and while there may be occasional hiccups, they feel like roads already traveled.

This is why I am re-looking with new eyes at an old desire: to study to become a midwife. I had thought about this intensely while leaving the US for India. The timing was just never right. Now, as the kids grow up, and my interest in primary care practice increases (along with experience), I am drawn to the idea once more. I could probably also get into medical school- either in India or abroad- but not sure why I would want to. I mean, I already have a doctorate. I also have mixed feelings about the attitudes taught to medical students regardless of country (this is certainly true in India, somewhat true in the US. Not sure how it is in Australia or other parts of the world): one of condescending superiority. As a non-medical person working in the health field, I come across this often. I deal with it when personally experiencing it by batting my PhD back at them. But I have observed this in shocking ways in India with others and cringe from it.

The midwifery idea is more congruent with my own personal philosophy- support, hands-on work, giving space for another's personal preferences, valuing another's mindset and personal values, compassion, and quiet action. My life right now has a lot of the so-called "higher order" activities- leadership, management, mentoring, organization-building, systems-thinking. What I lack is higher order embodiment- using my hands and mind to actively do and improve.

What I hope to gain from completing such a course of study is access to serve in rural clinics in India and abroad. To be able to run a practice and touch someone's life for the better. To use all my learnings in building an organization and managing it, to think critically, to innovate locally and rapidly, to be nimble and flexible in operations, to grow local talent and instill leadership in young people, but in this new setting and role.

In India, the course is a combined one in Nursing and Midwifery. However, I do not like the servile attitude taught to nurses in these programs. Nurses are taught to be subservient to doctors, to have their innate leadership abilities tamped down initially and then ostentatiously and artificially "built up" through nurse leadership programs. I could be wrong, but this is my impression of it. There are also strong caste and religion- ties to nursing as a profession. I am not sure if I want to wade into these murky waters. Some of this subservience is also present in the American landscapes.

The courses in Australia and New Zealand seem much more straight-forward, "clean" in their attitudes and nurses do not act servile or subservient- they consider themselves equal to doctors. This allows for fantastic community-oriented programs run and managed by nurses and tremendous opportunities for growth in rural programs.

I also have considered if I should do only a midwifery course or a combined nursing and midwifery course. The latter seems better for future work in rural primary care. However, the combined programs are also 4 years long, compared to 2 or 3 year midwifery specific programs. I am 44 years old now. I would ideally like to start practicing before I am 50!! There are conversion pathways in Australia and NZ for registered midwifes to become nurses. I need to understand better if becoming and practising as a midwife first for a few years before becoming a nurse is better or just getting both done at the same time is better.

I also should find out how to leverage all my learnings thus far into this next phase- surely my experience and talents should atleast be able to get me some sort of scholarship or assistance in the coursework and later.

All this thinking reminds me that the best research into a new phase of life is actually conversation and discussion. Maybe in the next two weeks, before returning to India, I should reach out to some people and talk to them about all this.

Thankfully, RK is as supportive as he has always been throughout our lives together, not to mention perceptive and clear-thinking. I can't help feeling that my parents would also approve of this (while being a bit bewildered as to why, perhaps... but understanding the motivation and desire, nonetheless). As for my kids, I hope what they learn from these attempts is to be open to reinvention. Freedom of thinking is the greatest asset anyone can have ("emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds", as Bob Marley says) and I hope they actively pursue the same in their own lives.