Reopening this old joint

 I recently tried substack last year. I created an account and wrote a few posts. 

However, I never managed to get into it. By all accounts, it looked like substack was where the blogosphere was being re-awakened after people were disillusioned with social media. There seems to be enough very good writing available in the ecosystem. There were a few concerns about the platform being ok with nazis, but enough writers seem to be making good money (many for the first time in their lives) that quite a few people willing to ignore that one thing. 

In trying to think of what it was that really didn't make substack click for me, I realised that the thing I liked most about this humble little derelict blogspot blog of mine was how minimalist it was. No fancy custom domain name, no fancy custom stylesheets, no clutter of any kind. With substack, as soon as I created an account, each post draft was filled with the platform's attempts to make me broadcast or monetise my writing. While this is great for people who want to get into writing as a career, it simply wasn't for someone like me who really wanted to write occasionally to de-clutter my mind. 

So, here we are. Back to this little space. This little thought garden of mine. Time to clean the cobwebs. 

Closing a chapter

Today, I de-activated my Facebook account.

It was a long time coming. When I created this blog, I envisioned it as a place where I could write long thoughtful pieces for my own benefit, and maybe for the benefit of a handful of my friends who might happen to pass by. But what I have found is that as I kept posting quick throwaway rants on Facebook and kept getting instant validation and responses, my inclination to visit this blog and to write here kept diminishing.

Each time I would visit this blog every few months, a part of me would wish I could spend more time here, but another part of me would crave the interaction, and I would be back on Facebook. But in recent months, I found myself reaching some kind of interaction fatigue. It felt like I was sharing the same stories over and over, expressing the same outrage over the same kinds of events over and over, and increasingly, it felt like I was neither providing new insights, nor changing minds with my interactions there.

I recently came across this handy tool that contrasts "blue feed" and "red feed", and it finally sank in for me how insular interactions on Facebook were becoming. No wonder I was feeling the way I was. I don't want to dismiss this kind of insularity altogether, because historically persecuted groups who need safe spaces for their interactions may appreciate this kind of insularity immensely, and that is as it should be. But for relatively privileged people like me who can afford to take a look at the ugly side, I've started feeling that a less walled-off space might be better.

I've had many friends (in a similar situation) bemoan the loss of the long open interactions they used to enjoy on blogs before all interactions shifted to Facebook likes and shares. What I've noticed is that attempts by these friends to move away from Facebook always seem to fail because they find out once they come out of Facebook that the level of interaction that used to be there on the blogs is no longer there. So these friends end up sharing a link back on Facebook to their blog post about leaving Facebook, only to find that even a post bitching about Facebook gets a lot more comments on Facebook than on their blog. So they're back on Facebook again, and so it goes.

To avoid this fate, I'm thinking that the best approach is to completely halt seeking interaction and feedback altogether. So I've disabled comments, and have also removed my email address from the sidebar. Now, there's no way for anyone to interact back with me in response to anything that I write here.

This place is finally a place where all I can do is put my own thoughts down on "paper" for my own benefit, and maybe for the benefit of a handful of my friends who might happen to pass by.

Thirty Six

As I turned thirty six, I've realized that there are a few changes I am in the process of undergoing which I need to keep an eye on as if they were resolutions to stick to.

The last one year has been pretty rough, to put it mildly.

On the personal front, I've left the cushy comforts of the first world behind me, and returned to my birth country where everyday life is a lot harsher. Everyone except those born rich work themselves to death in India, and that is just a fact of the people to resource ratio, and there's nothing you can do about it. So I've
gone from doing around six hours of stress-free work on any given workday to working twelve to fourteen hours a day with a one hour commute on horrible roads each way on top of that. Often, even this is insufficient to handle the work load and I find myself at work on both days of the weekend more often than not.

On a more political/principled front, India is backward in ways that someone in the first world may not even realize or comprehend, and this has been a bitter re-learning for me. Recently, there was the news story of a judge who ruled against a woman's plea for separation saying "So what if your husband beats you? He hasn't failed in providing for you. Get your priorities straight." Similarly, there was another court ruling where a judge ruled that the rapist needs to marry the woman he raped because "That would teach him a lesson, and besides, who else would marry her?" What is a feminist to do in a society where such beliefs are so unexamined and mainstream that actual judges sworn to uphold the secular rule of law can act like some patriarchal village elders?

Feminism is just one example. On every dimension that a progressive holds dear, India is backward in ways that are depressing. But the most depressing part of it all is that in India, the people who are in power or hold positions of privilege are dangerous in ways that are fundamentally different than in first world countries, in that these people can and do commit acts of physical violence against any voices raised against them with no fear of consequences.

Activism in India is like going into a mafia-controlled neighborhood and trying to have arguments based on principles. People still do it, but they go prepared to lose their lives. Most of the time, such lives lost end up not creating even the slightest dent in the status quo. This was probably true in the first world until a few decades back, but in India, this is still the case. When I look at India, I'm reminded of a scene from the movie "The Incredibles" where Mr. Incredible is pummelled with soft sticky blobs that he can't fight back against. The futility of saying or doing anything positive for the larger good is overwhelming.

Lastly, I've experienced some changes in my body (thanks to a tougher daily life) like creakier bones and achier muscles that have combined with the other frustrating factors to result in a more intense feeling of aging. Some kind of early onset midlife crisis of sorts. This has led to a very (uncharacteristic for me) pessimistic outlook that was threatening to go into a very negative downward spiral.

As a way to cope with all of this, I have recently been thinking about ways to shut out all the things that are wrong with the world that I can't do much about. I do realize I'm lucky enough to be in a position of privilege to be able to do this. But it still takes some effort to overcome the guilt of being blind to these things, and to undo nearly ten years of an activist outlook and learn to focus back on the little things in life like getting through each day without feeling despondent or depressed.

So, as I turn thirty-six, I've resolved not to think of myself as growing old, not to focus on my hardships, and to focus on personal happiness under whatever circumstances even at the cost of losing focus on trying to do
something meaningful in a larger sense. This is something I've been trying to do for a month or two so far. I'm sure this is just a phase where once I get my bearings, I'll start to look outward again with a less pessimistic attitude and learn to be able to do something small and meaningful that makes at least a few other lives better.

But as of now, I'm learning to focus on myself, and I need to keep remembering that.

Revisiting Rootlessness

More than three years back, I wrote this.

A few days back, I was talking to a friend who was frustrated with the lack of rootedness in her life. The conversation made me revisit my own lack of rootedness, and the long, winding journey in nomadic frustration my life has been so far.

When I went to the US in 1998, I didn’t expect my life to be this chaotic. I thought I’d finish my degree in civil engineering, get a job in the US, start working and either settle down with the same job, or work in the same job there for a few years, come back to India, and settle down here for good. I didn’t expect to end up unhappy in a civil engineering career, pick up software programming, and do a series of software gigs all over the US for the next few years, essentially living out of two suitcases.

When I finally found a stable gig in early 2004 that lasted nearly 4 years, I thought I was all set. I was doing all the right things to get my green card and settle down in the US for good. Then at the end of 2007, the stable gig ended, my green card process got messed up, and I ended up moving to New Jersey to find a new gig and begin a slow and painful period of uncertainty for me and my wife, where she was stuck in a short term dead-end academic career while I was waiting for the adjudication on my green card appeal, mentally prepared to be kicked out at any time if the decision didn’t go my way.

That piece I’d written at the end of 2008 portrays my frustration at the time pretty well.

Since then, all we have found so far was more uncertainty. We moved to Singapore at the end of 2010, where I tried to get a job in vain for a year as I was overqualified in terms of years of experience, while my wife struggled to find her post-academic feet, overqualified in a different way. I tried to immigrate to Australia, where they said everything looks good on paper, except I shouldn’t have been out of a job all these months, and closed the door on me.

Then we moved back to India, and I got a good stable job, and I finally thought we were done with our wanderings. Except, they’ve been trying to send me overseas from day one because of my prior experience overseas. This possibility always leaves me with mixed feelings because I never know if the country I’d visit would seduce me into wanting to settle down there, and if I’d sign up for more uncertainty in that hope.

They recently tried to send me to the US again for a gig so sweet I was pretty excited about the idea of going back to the US for something that could be for more than a year. I was very hopeful that we’ll both be back there by October. We were excited about the prospect of visiting all the places we haven’t had a chance to see yet in the US, and meeting all our old friends again.

This possibility kept us from really accepting that we have come back to India for good. For both of us, the US still feels like home a lot of times. In fact, a lot more than India does, to be honest.

This weekend was a bit bittersweet because the US gig fell through. They called me on Friday evening and told me. They said they can try to send me again, but now it can only be next October, thanks to the bureaucratic complexities of the work visa quota.

The sweet part of bittersweet though is that it is finally sinking in for us that we will be in India for good. And with that realization comes the excitement that we can finally grow roots. I would not have thought in a million years that I would settle down in Pune, but that is how the dice have rolled. Although I can’t stop wondering what the future has in store for us.

Philosophy

I've started reading Bertrand Russell's "The History of Western Philosophy", and the Introduction (where I'm still currently at) has some brutally frank and hilarious parts that had the atheist in me laughing out loud with delight. So I thought I'd share a few snippets:

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Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile?

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Why, then, you may ask, waste time on such insoluble problems? To this one may answer as a historian, or as an individual facing the terror of cosmic loneliness.

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Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe.

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Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.

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Turtle Island

To take a breather from Gary Snyder's prose, and the extreme reactions (both positive and negative) that it keeps triggering in me, I decided to read some of his poetry instead.

I'm halfway through the book of poems titled "Turtle Island", and thought I'd share some of my favorite snippets:

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How did a great Red-tailed Hawk
come to lie-all stiff and dry-
on the shoulder of
Interstate 5?

(From "The Dead by the Side of the Road")

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I would like to say
Coyote is forever
Inside you.

But it's not true.

(From "The Call of the Wild")

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Manzanita the tips in fruit,
Clusters of hard green berries
The longer you look
The harder they seem

"little apples"

(From "Manzanita")

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It warms my bones
say the stones

(From "The Uses of Light")

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A vast vague white
Draws me out of the night
Says the moth in his flight-

(Also from "The Uses of Light")

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squirrel bones crunched,
tight and dry in scats of
fox.

(From "On San Gabriel Ridges")

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And finally, an entire poem - this funny and delightful one is called "The Wild Mushroom"

Well the sunset rays are shining
Me and Kai have got our tools
A basket and a trowel
And a book with all the rules

Don't ever eat Boletus
If the tube-mouths they are red
Stay away from the Amanitas
Or brother you are dead

Sometimes they're already rotten
Or the stalks are broken off
Where the deer have knocked them over
While turning up the duff

We set out in the forest
To seek the wild mushroom
In shapes diverse and colorful
Shining through the woodland gloom

If you look out under oak trees
Or around an old pine stump
You'll know a mushroom's coming
By the way the leaves are humped

They send out multiple fibers
Through the roots and sod
Some make you mighty sick they say
Or bring you close to God

So here's to the mushroom family
A far-flung friendly clan
For food, for fun, for poison
They are a help to man.

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Sonoran

The first time I set foot in a desert in my life was in April 2004 when I went to Tucson. I remember the first feeling the landscape evoked. It was a feeling of sadness at how desolate it looked. I had only lived in regions of India and the US that would be called lush.

It was not like the reaction was a total surprise to me. I had seen deserts before in photographs and movies, whether it be the Thar desert or deserts of the middle east in Indian movies, or the deserts of the American southwest in cowboy movies. Each time, I remember having a milder version of the same reaction. The reaction was just much stronger in intensity when I was finally staring at a desert in real life. How could an area become so sandy, dusty and bereft of the kind of lush greenery that makes the human heart happy? How could the people who call such a region home not do something to make it better?

I know that my perception is a pretty common one that would probably be expressed by a large majority of people who look at the desert. However, the other thing I know today is that the only reason for this state is that ignorance is also a pretty common trait in a large majority of people. In my ignorance, I was looking at the landscape from a completely human-centric view. The only reason humans find lush topography more appealing is because of our arboreal roots. There is nothing intrinsically "better" about a tropical landscape when human preference is taken out of the equation. The mistake I think we humans make is that we think of the desert the same way we think of a concrete jungle. They both lack the kind of greenery that appeals to most humans. So we assume they are both barren areas, lacking the kind of diverse biological life that could be found in thick forests or woods.

It takes a closer look to realize that the desert is nothing like a concrete jungle. The desert is literally buzzing and teeming with life. I was fortunate enough in my life to have come to this realization. Yes, the scarcity of water may have driven this life to evolve in a direction that we humans need to take a second look to notice. But once you see it, it is everywhere. Saguaros, prickly pears, creosote bush, pinyon pines, cactii, agaves, palms, mesquites, cottontails, jackrabbits, bighorn sheep, rock squirrels, lizards, tortoises, rattlesnakes, spiders, scorpions, wrens, ravens, swallowtails, the list is endless.

It is the Sonoran desert that I need to thank for my realization. It happened very quietly and very slowly. In my several visits to Arizona, my eyes opened gradually to the beauty of the landscape. I can't even remember when it was that the rugged majesty of it all finally sunk in fully. Between April 2004 to December 2006, I flew to Tucson somewhere between 15 to 20 times. Two of those visits were monthlong vacations. I drove around a bit during all those visits, not just in the Sonoran desert in and around Tucson, but also around Arizona. I visited places like the Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest. I took a detour through scenic Sedona rather than take the interstate to Flagstaff. I've come to love the geography of the entire state so much that it has become one of my favorite regions of the world.

Would I want to live there? I don't know. It is a very harsh environment for humans. We humans got very used to technology, and wouldn't survive too long in the wild. In case the technological infrastructure breaks down, the desert would be one of the least forgiving of the wild environs out there. There is also a second reason I hesitate. The tenacity displayed by life adapted to the desert may give one the false impression that the desert is a very resilient environment. In fact, deserts are very fragile ecosystems. Life does thrive in them amidst unbelievable odds, but it takes very little effort by humans to change that from unbelievable to insurmountable.
Not that humans can't do this or aren't doing this in other places. We do have the tenacity and will to destroy life wherever we find it. We would just have to work that much harder to destroy a rainforest, is all.

Also, the rainforests and the pandas of the world have a slight advantage when it comes to appealing to the human heart. Deserts, like reptiles or arachnids, are the ugly stepchildren. The people who look at the desert and see nothing but empty wasteland are everywhere. Just turn on the TV and have a look at any extreme sports channels. There may be some human powered options like snowboarding or skateboarding, but pretty soon you'll come across folks in heavily modified motorized vehicles either trying to set some speed record or careen down impossible grades. The most common places for such activities are either playas or canyonsides. Desert races like the Baja 1000 consider their courses to be relatively barren terrain. Barren? The desert?

This disdain for the desert has a long history that precedes the recent ORV craze. Most governments conduct their nuclear weapons testing and other military operations in deserts. Got a shitload of radioactive waste to dispose of? Why, there's all that desert! I am ashamed to think that at one point in my life, I have shared this view.

Not anymore. Today, I cannot see a desert in the world and not think it is beautiful. Yes, even Antarctica. I recently happened to watch some video footage of Rajasthan after a long time. I saw the dusty Thar desert against the Aravalli mountains in the background, and was struck by how stunningly beautiful it looked. An old friend who went to BITS Pilani for his undergraduate degree used to rave about the beauty of the Thar desert. I used to think he was a nut. Turns out I was right. It takes a special kind of nut to love the desert. But it feels good to be one.