Flustered consumer

It's festive season for the billion Indians. A season to celebrate with new clothes and fresh furnishing for homes. Now, this is a great opportunity for sellers to lure in customers. As the trends are changing, we find ourselves peering into the little windows of mobiles and other gadgets to find us the best buy, a better discount and the perfect gift.

Window shopping has finally transformed. And some other things have changed too. The window sizes have gotten smaller and digital. Thanks to all the efforts into  miniaturization, and the globalization, we have the world markets at our hands. Eager sellers are throwing offers upon offers to get us interested into their virtual shops. The trend of unbelievable discounts does not stop at online stores, it extends to the sale seasons too. Why are the prices dropped so much? Do we really pay three times the actual prices? Am I being robbed?!

I wondered for a while about this. Previously I thought we are moving from a repair, maintenance and commitment culture to a replace and don't bother culture. This makes me sad in some ways. I just gave my trekking shoes for repair. The company I bought it from promises a lifetime service. This makes sense to me, because I had to wear my shoes down till they fit me well and I got used to them. This is a  relationship for me, I would hesitate to move to a new pair of shoes. The comfort level is just not the same. Same is true with a well worn pair of jeans. Under what circumstance should I replace something? Time and again we have been reminded of the "don't fix if it ain't broken" law. Is there a don't replace if it works fine law? There should be. But the market compels us to do otherwise. Own more than you need and throw just because it is old. Mostly true with electrical and electronics appliances, this trend makes sense if we think of how we made things smaller. Most of the appliances we buy have a US or, now increasingly, a Chinese brand name. They are manufactured in the developing countries, and that is not India. The electronics incorporated are miniaturized. Instead of being able to replace a little burnt resistor, now a whole board would be replaced. The board unfortunately is not available locally. The import charges far exceed the cost of the board. The local production is also not an option. So, the solution is to just replace the entire machine. At exchange deals, the spare, I am hoping comes back into circulation. The other alternative is that the spare is just thrown in the dump, producing lot of electronic waste, which is terrible for the environment, mostly us, because it has lead and other poisonous chemicals that can seep into our water and soil and such resources.

Another reason to replace is, the number of design engineers and development engineers and such roles created. The  production paradigm has shifted from a constant and stable production line, to an innovation, competition driven system. The innovation could be in design, control software and so on. The focus is on having a good production chain that is changed every sprint, cycle or whatever the company calls it internally. There are no such maintenance positions anymore. To keep up with changing products, a maintenance engineer would have to be always under training. So, maintenance is not for the regular people, it is for big corporations that can afford a maintenance contract. So, we the regular people are forced to replace old-ish technology with a slightly newer version, which in most cases may not perform as well as the old. I would love to quote the degraded performance of new version of an operating system here, but I am sure a hint is sufficient to know what I am talking about.

The effect of this culture is never seen when everything is running well, may not be smooth, but running nonetheless. Once the gadget fails, the cost and the talk with the customer care is just unacceptable. It almost seems like the customer care centers are given a standard script of what our problems should be and even those are not to tackled well. How is it, that a reputed company can have such poor customer care? Slapped onto you is the fact that, if you are not buying something from them, then you are wasting their time. And for this, I need to repeat my contact information and such, that the company already had collected during the purchase. Has it lost the will to loyally serve existing customers? Imagine this happens with your bank account. "Sorry madam! We seem to have lost your record and your money, we don't know why your account number does not come up when you log in to our website. Would you mind restarting the entire business with a new and improved account? For the inconvenience caused, we will assign a personal manager who will hackle you to get new loans." Oh! Wait. That already is happening.

I don't want new trends, I don't want new things to replace things that work well anyways. I want to be able to pay the price that the product actually is worth. Why is it that everyone seems OK with being cheated like this?

Could be the attractive, may have no use in my life, discount on something I don't need, that keeps me excited and buying.

This I know, I can't replace the time wasted on the pointless sale. So, not shopping, this festive season, unless I need something, and not because it looks good.

My journey to better

It was uninteresting, repetitive and colorless. I was tired and ready to push one more item to the later not now list. I looked at the list, the length of it was very discouraging indeed.

I started to read the things I had wished to achieve one by one. Learn flute, self defense, writing as a habit, own a bike and many more items. I let myself down on so many of my dreams. And another trivial item was to become a part of this list, whose marker ink did not budge with just a duster any more.

Who was I making these promises to? What was I losing by breaking them? Why was I making the promises at all? The convoluted answers did not make sense. But one did.

I was making promises to myself. I would lose a little spirit in me that kept me ticking. I was looking at myself to be better than what I am, wanting to strive to be better. It just was me trying to be better and nothing else.

I did not push my jog on the list. I picked up my shoes and hummed the little tune that kept me going and got out. Just that step was hard, the rest was not so hard. I touched a new record against myself. I smiled and hummed out loud! My victory song. My triumph.

And thus, I started ticking off the perpetual to do list. But this time I changed its name to "my journey to better"

Fruitless prayer of a weak mind

Early in the morning, groggy from tossing in the bus trying to get some shut eye as I traveled between the cities. I thought I was imaging it, a blood soaked shirt, the colour still red, still fresh. A wound on the old man's forehead, like he had struck a stone in his fall. An uncertainty in his eyes, he was unaware of where he was. In a public bus. He asked for the ticket and the conductor made the bold move of asking how he was wounded. He said some biker hit him and fled the scene. Clearly this man was drunk, was he? Or was it concussion from a head wound. I don't know.

The bus was fully occupied and all of us were curious at this man's state. Just curiosity. I sat half way across the bus from him. I suddenly realized I had a bottle of water with me. Maybe I can offer him some and help him clean the blood off his face. I stopped this thought mid-way. Strange argument of consequences started in my mind, I am ashamed of what followed in arguments and led to my freezing in inaction.

I wondered if I could take him to the hospital, clearly he needed a bandage. I could maybe try a simple bandage. I would have to get off the bus with him, ask him if he wanted any help and offer him water and go to a medicine store and try to patch him up a bit. Why could I not ask him in the bus? Many of us were sitting and looking at him, no one offered help. Was it that we were hoping for someone else to offer help to him? Or was it that, somehow in our twisted logic we had declared that because this man is drunk he had written his own fate? No one asked him anything. Are we not humans? Am I not human? If I asked, I would become an over involved girl. I would have to see the help through. I would need to take him to the hospital and file an FIR before he gets any treatment. What a mess that would be. I thought of the cost of treatment, clearly he did not have enough money and I doubt he had any insurance. I thought if I had any insurance, I do, but it only covers me. Sad that health care is this twisted. If he was any other wounded animal like the pups in the street, Blue cross would help, sadly he was a human.

I remembered all my trivial appointments of the day and the pointless financial commitments that stem from wants and not needs. I could help this man if I wanted to. He got off the bus, and I was still rooted to me seat in conflict with myself. He started shouting on the road and I watched him as he cried about his injustice, the typical drunken speech. Drunken he maybe, but the wound on his head was real and the blood was real. I could only pray hoping he has someone at home to care for him. That was my way out, a small prayer from a frozen position.

If you have accidentally stumbled across this blog, or are following me, please let me know what you would have done. Also, I would like to know the right course of action so that next time I am more human than this.

Shreek’s guide to messing up your head and rendering yourself useless for an indefinite amount of time at the middle of your PhD + the guide to getting out of it!

    (Disclaimer: This blog entry is mostly notes to myself. However, I know many more people, other than me, are going through phases similar to mine. I only hope that this helps to see their lives in better perspective and helps them to get out of their own situations in a stronger, smarter and more resilient manner than ever before!)
      

      When the Dr. before my name, the end of stipend in another 2 years or the usual things that got me ticking earlier stopped mattering, I knew something was wrong. When my beloved setup accumulating dust in the dungeons stopped bothering me, I had hit another low. Any questions about my work that I loved to counter usually and I  enjoyed the different perspective started to annoy me, another low was hit. The final straw was probably when the excitement of figuring out how the nitty gritty things made trapping happen, died, I knew the lowest low had come. This is how the low became a rut and this is how I got stuck more and more in it.

How did I get here? Simple, by getting lost, losing hope and losing the drive to work. How did that happen? Prolonged periods of little or no results and acknowledgement of my work. Coming from a culture with appraisal cycles to a lonely place where days just roll over is not easy. The final goal seemed further and further away with the problems that were not technical at all. During this period making my system work seemed like the carrot dangling in front of me, but the hunger suddenly died and the carrot turned worthless. That meant the chase became pointless. This is where other things that I missed on the way during the chase suddenly started showing up. I missed a lot of “traditional” goals. Till now it was easy to brush these concerns aside, because I was chasing something that was important to me. But, on this day I could not remember what the important goal was anymore. Then the motivation died, drive died, enthusiasm died. I gave up the pointless fight. Like the start of decline of a relationship, I started counting the cost I had paid for this dream. Family, marriage, industry career, savings and things I did not even know I was giving up. The numbers like age that did not matter before, suddenly started to become important. First, 30, my age this year, the biological clock ticking, and before that no husband! Second, 35, the age to apply for post in the IITs for becoming a lecturer/ prof or the other government jobs that promise security. This still needs a post-doc, and with my research, a post-doc by 34-35 is a distant dream. And third, 0, the savings I will be left with when I am done with the struggle to get the degree. 0 was also the contribution I was making to the society. 0 was the number of times I stepped out of my country, it never mattered before, but now I just saw that my passport expires in 2016, and it started to become my concern. 0 the number of international conference journal papers I have. 0 is a big number, and suddenly was exponentially important in my life. The slump seemed inevitable, once the slide had begun.

Like all lows, there is always a lowest point that one hits. Once I felt I had hit it, it somehow became easier.  So, more interesting than how I got into the slump, is the story that is being written even as I write this article. I am getting out of this slump, in my own way. Everyone who has been here, somehow or the other got into the slump, but the ones who got out, always found their own way out. I am carving my own way out, in such a way that I will not see another slump for another decade at the least.

This is how I am doing it. I am answering my own doubts, one by one, I have found what is right for me and I am taking it slow and meandering my own way out of it. Starting with the 0s, here is how it will happen;

1. 0 conference and journal papers - I will make my work more visible, work to conclude the questions I am asking, ask question that are not too big to chase in 3 months’ time. One question at a time, I will build up my research.
2. 0 international travels – I will make sure that I apply to a conference where my work matters. With this I will ensure a ticket to myself by the end of this year!
3. 0 social contributions – All the children who learnt physics from me passed in science, this is significant. I am now also participating in the translator community. I can teach and increase enthusiasm in science, the way I love science, by thinking and wondering and doing it. I will find more ways to contribute back.
4. 0 savings- well this is how much I will always have J. I think money is something I will never accumulate. I will save what I make for the little luxuries that matter to me, like the book case for all the wonderful books I own. More important however is the books of all flavors that I am going to read, reading and have read. I am going to make a big balance of the experiences I am going to have in my life. I will always have the best stories to tell. And that is what I will accumulate. A lot of stories, even from the single rupee or no money that I will have.
5. 35 age limit – No government job for me. If I can finish my post-doc by 35 yrs, then it is great, else, it is fine. I will chase this dream slowly. The future will just have to sort itself out. Maybe I will create my own opportunity. The best way to do that, is to saying “yes” to any opportunity that gives me a chance to learn. Yes, 35 is actually just a number.
6. 30 clock – my husband will just have to wait to meet me, won’t he?! He better have larger dreams than mine. I can’t have someone boring to spend the rest of my life with.
7. 30 clock – No children of mine is just fine. The world has too many children anyways. I am sure not adding to the human pool is perfectly fine. I am sure I will also come across someone who needs a family as much I need one, once I am settled a bit more than this. Then we will mutually adopt each other. Phew! How much I will have to hear from society for this, a few more years on my age should help me fight this with confidence.

The big dreams always change course as life happens, but how I go about chasing them makes every day more interesting. This is what I am going to do right from this moment.

1. Love science – I love the chase to only two questions – how and why. I will chase them, learn as much as I can every day and think about the questions and answer them for myself. No doing research for goal’s sake. If the degree happens to be a consequence of it, then so be it! Till I am satisfied with how I think and how my temperament has changed, I will chase it till then and not care for anyone else’s measure of my abilities.
2. Live well – Only discipline that is really need is one that keeps me strong. So exercise, well-being and good food is now on top of my list. I will play, jog/ swim, eat well and sleep well every day. I will keep myself fit and enthusiastic with new activities that keep me healthy.
3. Find passion – I have discovered over the past year, that I love travelling. So, travel is my reward for every little feat, every month I am taking a day off around a weekend to travel/trek or just chase the clouds! I will follow 2 train trails by end of 2014, I will trek the Himalayas by 2015 and I will visit a foreign country by 2015 (this is not on my funds).
4. Spread passion – I will make sure that I give back to people. Interacting and teaching is amazing, the enthusiasm is just infectious! I will keep at it.

I know I can get a lot out of this! I am sure that I will get out this, but the trick is to get out in style, with a little of shreekiness in it!

Reason to smile

It just was so,
In her eyes, she had that look,
She did not see the drabness in front of her, she hid a smile.

While she smiled away at what she saw, nothing seemed out of place,
ordinary, very ordinary all was,
and she was looking at and away from all of it for a while.

What was it, I wondered?
Amused by something so mundane, but how?
Maybe she saw the hidden spaces, maybe she saw more colours.

It might just be that she saw time too,
Maybe she sees whats to come, what was,
And maybe she smiles, because what can be are many.

The Kodchadri Trekventure

Days after the trek I am waking upto a slow morning, an image of pure beauty flashes. 

Black rocks, lush dark green forest, water like silver falling incessantly on the rocks. As they meet, the water sculpts the rocks, and the rocks break the water into a dense mist that just hangs in the air. And through the mist is sunlight streaming through. Wherever it kisses the mist it leaves a trail of its presence for all to see.

This is the story of how I trekked to stand in this breath-taking place. I could tell you how the nine of us, the trekkers on this adventure, met and a chronological account of events, but where is the fun in that? Like all story tellers, let me start with my favourite bit.

It all ended when we got on to our respective buses and headed back to our cosy lives. Even as we said our goodbyes to each other, we were wondering when the next call of adventure would come. And the next day, as they sit at their desks staring at the monitors, for a moment they close their eyes, and they are transported back to this adventure that was. They visit their favourite moment and they smile as they open their eyes to the reality of the flickering monitor. Just a casual glance at the inbox for the next call.

On this adventure, there were nine of us. There is something amazing about that number 9. It’s the number of people apart from the driver that can fit into a rickety jeep, and still manage to reach the destination without falling off on the track. And tracks that seemed like dinosaurs had walked the mountain side, which driver casually dismissed as a good road. 9 is 3 sets of 3 girls for each tent. 9 is 4 pairs of paragliders, with one guard. Well, that is what it was, the perfect number for everything on this adventure, we loosely called a trek.

It started out innocently; even as we signed the indemnity bond we were thinking it would be just a climb here, a long walk there and some breath-taking wilderness. The bond, yes, the bond would have never prepared us for this. It lacked the phrase – “thou shall meet thy worst outdoor fear, and no animals will be harmed in this adventure”.

One thing you have to understand about Kodchadri is that it has this cloud of mist on it, in the mornings and the evenings. The mist that surrounds is actually the clouds that lay over the hills and blanket them as the hills sleep till the next sunrise. We decided to chase the sun and put the hills to sleep with the setting sun. 

This was the simple idea and with that we set out on our trek. It was an 8 km trek. We walked the country side, crops towering above our heads, fresh green plains of paddy that broke into the hills. Trees on both sides of the trail replaced the fields and the plains. All through the woods there were the funnel spiders, beautiful creatures. Soil here is red with patches of yellow like I have never seen before. The land has colour, everything is colourful and beautiful. Sun was rising and the trek left us parched. A small buttermilk stall, which also was a house that treated arca nuts was a welcome break.

After that small break, we set forth again and reached the spot that came in my dreams. After a pause here is when the real trek began. The terrain was unexpected, rocky at places, grassy at others. Dense forests gave away to the grasslands. The sun climbed and things got more adventurous. The grass lands were so steep, the trees standing on them seemed to be bent to us. Just to confirm you look away at the horizon and realize, its not the tree but the whole terrain we are standing on that is at a 60 degree slope.

We reached the peak of the first hill. After lunch here, we started the next leg of the trek. Sometimes you take the road less traveled, so instead of going over the next hill, we went around it. At this point I met my first fear, the fear of heights. This was easily an 80 degree slope with a path cut for a goat next to it. No trees no rocks around, just blades of dried grass on one side and the other had a steep fall, I would rather not describe. We got a generous drop to the temple at the Kodchadri hill’s temple. From here it was another 1.5 km trek. We raced against time to make it to the peak by sunset. At the top of this hill is a little temple. It is dedicated to the best trekker in India, Shankaracharya. Reaching here was like paying tribute to him as trekkers. He was 31 when he passed away, in the short life he had, he lived to trek. We sat where he sat and watched Kodchadri go to sleep.

We came down from the peak to the temple and watched the stars light up the night sky. The sky in the cities have just a few stars, here on the other hand, the constellations were also lost amongst the many stars. We discussed lighting bugs (I know what they are, but some people think they cause lighting) and many other interesting things about the sky here. We camped that night, probably first camp experience for most of us. 

The best adventures are always the ones with an element of surprise. Nothing gives as strong a surprise as not having it on the plan. We started the next day at the Kollur Mookambika temple. We got blessings from an elephant and a cow. When we got back to our tempo traveller, the seriousness of the day ended.

We set out for a whole new kind of adventure. And an adventure it was! We glided in the skies on parachutes manned without any controls, except the weight of the guide. He shifted his weight around to turn and sway the parachute. We were in the sky, with nothing but physics to guide us. I love physics, have faith in it, believe it completely. At this altitude though, no amount of physics and its explanations could have made me let go of the straps that tied me to the chute. I held on till my knuckles were white. Strangest thing is, all my life, I thought winds are turbulent. I was wrong. The wind is calm and amazing. Awesome! That is the word. It is awesome, because even though the straps were the only links holding me from plummeting down into water, somewhere I wanted to let go and fly. We landed. Just when my feet found the ground and got used to the 2-D space, I was crashing into the salty waves of the Arabian sea in water motorbikes at Malpe beach in Udupi. When I tried to steer the bike, it rode on water like snail with sneezing problem.

That was a topsy-turvy adventure.
On this adventure I also found my pilgrimage. On an island called St. Mary's, time is taking its own time to carve. It has rocks that look sculpted, but they are not. These were spewed up by volcanic activity long time ago. The edges are smoothed out, but the pores on these rocks tell the violent story of the volcano. The black colour of the rocks against the cream sand stand out against the green waters of the Arabian sea. On these rocks there are creatures, young corals that are opening their eyes. Slowly life will take over the bare rocks, and perhaps there is an underwater coral reef with multitude of fishes and other organisms, literally just under our feet. Yes, it is worth a pilgrimage, year after year, just to see if the corals have taken over from the sea yet.

So that was the Kodchadri Trekventure, an experience I am unlikely to forget for a long time to come.
PS: None of the photos are clicked by me. Credits go to the other 8.

Space and solitude

This space is free from bitterness.
This space is free from loneliness.
This space is free from pain from sadness.
This space is free from expectation and disappointment.
This space is mine.
This space is me.
This is my solitude.
This is my peace.