Abol-Tabol

Spicy cooking

2011-07-22T06:38:00.004-04:00

Whilst the world at large fretted about the solvency of Greece and the United States, were traumatized by the Mumbai blasts and crowed about the fall of Murdoch, my attention was drawn to the screaming headlines on Page 3 of the Arab Times: HOUSEMAID ARRESTED FOR RUINING SPONSOR's FAMILY THROUGH MAGIC.

Before I go on further, let me admit that the world at large was probably more focused on the break-up of J-Lo and Marc than any of the above.

The incident, reported by "agencies", involved an Asian housemaid who was detained by the police following a complaint by her Kuwaiti lord and master that "there was a high degree of confusion" in his house and the maid was likely doing black magic. Apparently, his children were walking around dazed and confused which was attributed to strange chanting and other magic being practiced in the kitchen (the deliciousness of the Gobi Manchurian was also attributed to the same).

In case any of you worldly nay-sayers have started snickering at this, let me assure you that the case is closed. It was reported that "during interrogation, the maid is said to have admitted to this act". She now awaits deportation (or will use black magic to beam herself back home, though the police have reportedly seized all her magic charms). Inshallah, the man's children will now no longer look dazed. Stay tuned.

With God on our side

2011-06-28T18:30:00.003-04:00

He first called his son. In the boy’s time zone, school had not yet let out for the day so he left a voicemail. “I am leaving now son. It will be difficult to call the next few months so we’ll just do that Skype thing, okay. Be good at school and enjoy the ball game. Love you, bye!”

He then made a second call. This time, he did not need to leave a voicemail. He discussed mundane everyday things, offered some advice on how to get the computer up and running (“and if that does not work, call Dave”). He ended with “Don’t forget your medications, and remember to refill them when you run low. Awright, gotta go now, I’ll see you soon, dad”.

He hung-up and went back to horsing around with his buddies around him who were all being deployed to Bagram Air Force Base.

It’s a scene that Hollywood has used often with great success, but I found it to be even more effective without the dramatic pauses and the violins. Maybe it was the 3-D effect, since it happened in the seat next to mine on an airplane to Kuwait.

My other neighbor had trouble with his headphones. He had an old-fashioned one that did not work with the socket on his hand rest. My set was missing from my seat pocket and you cannot get an United airlines attendant to help you even if you offer a bribe. My first neighbor offered to share his airline headphones, since he had a personal one. When he took it out however, we found that the cord was frayed and on the verge of snapping. He grinned, displayed a gold cap. “War is hell, ain’t it?” he said.

A friend of mine thinks that everything reminds me of a song by Bob Dylan. I would like to keep that delusion alive, so here goes:

".....the reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side"

Weight, weight, don't tell me.

2010-09-16T21:03:00.001-04:00

My state of denial defines my greed as refined epicureanism ! The truth occasionally finds it's way out of my subconscious when I struggle into clothes or feel enervated under the weight of too much food or drink, but I manage to shove it back in by bedtime. Of late, truth has been fighting back and forcing my brain to to ruminate on Ben Franklin's value of Temperance. My state of denial calls this Old Age !

So I ruminate: Franklin said - "Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation". Let's start with the latter. This is, at times, very necessary. However, those times are becoming fewer and further between with life's growing responsibilities and worries, though of course that presents exactly the sort of situation from which drinking is a refuge. Hmm, this is a tough one. Ruminate further...

The former actually makes sense, food coma is never desirable but it creeps upon you as you convince yourself that you are "just tasting" everything on the table or while thinking about starving children, you decide not to waste any food and stuff your face with the last three kebobs. However, moderation is possible, I think. What I shall do is convince my mind of the same by weighing myself every morning (when possible) and record it on a white board in my study. In short, allow my subconscious to plant a seed to trick my mind to accept reality. That's food for thought as I continue thinking about food.

TALKING ABSOLUTELY JETHRO (i.e. TOTULL)

2010-09-03T14:58:00.014-04:00

“Let me bring you songs from the wood…..”

It was a gut reaction. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell explains that snap decisions are a result of a series of “thin-slicing” performed by our adaptive unconsciousness and that it’s usually disastrous if we try to explain or decipher them. Thus, all there is to say is that I suddenly decided to not leave my then 20-week pregnant wife alone for the weekend and told my friends that I would bail out of our re-union plans set in New Jersey.

My friends (bless their hearts) shuffled the logistics and moved the party up to Boston. I did leave my wife alone at home for the weekend, but remained within a half an hours drive. On Sunday afternoon, peering through heavy eyes, I bid my friends adieu and headed home. I was going to pick up my wife and then head out to watch a Jethro Tull concert at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. She had always wanted to see them after hearing my passionate tales about their entertaining shows (with very good music, to boot). Right before we headed out, she complained of “feeling not exactly right”. We decided to swing by the hospital on our way to the concert to have the nurse on duty check it out and give us the all-clear.

Things did not go as expected. Two seats that were in the first or second row stayed empty at the Pavilion that night. After an initial check-up, they decided to keep my wife at the hospital overnight for observations since they feared imminent danger of a very early pre-term birth. Although they downplayed it saying that they could keep issues at bay and resolve everything with a quick procedure the next day, things got progressively worse. Ultimately, our hospital said that they were not equipped to handle a 20 week baby and had us transferred to Tufts Medical Center. This houses one of the premier NICUs in the world and was not much further from our house than our regular hospital. Thus began a three month ordeal.

For a while, my wife was kept at bed rest continuously in the trendelenburg position. If you are wondering what that is (and I would be surprised if you were not), I suggest you google it. All I can say is that I wish it on no one. After a week or so, they finally discontinued that and moved her to a normal supine position. It was still a long, long time before they allowed her to leave the bed and be wheeled out of her room for anything other than a medical procedure. Six weeks later, they allowed her to go home (and be on bed-rest there) and it was not until the 30^th week of her pregnancy did they clear her to walk again.

“Let me bring you love from the fields

Poppies red and roses filled with summer rain

To heal the wound, to still the pain

That threatens again and again….”

At Tuft’s, I recall Wednesdays as being the worst. It might have been the day that signalled the start of a new week in the pregnancy cycle. A medical specialist, in particular I remember an Indian neo-natal surgeon, would walk us through the various nightmare scenarios that could happen if our child was born that week. It was cold and clinical, and occasionally very graphic. We were then given a few hours to decide and then inform the hospital in advance of our pre-decision. These usually involved whether (and at what point in the post-birth crisis management process) we would allow them to pull the plug since emotions would render decision-making impossible in the heat of the moment. I think this "Sophie's choice" scenario carried on till my wife was a point in her pregnancy where our child was out of the worst risk category, about 4 weeks after we came in.

They say such things are life changing. You hear about people passing through crisis and how they react to it by opening their minds and hearts, diving into charity work, immersing in philanthropy – they hear the tree falling in the forest without being there. Alternately, some become reality TV stars. All I felt was irritabiltity, impatience and bitterness. Four years have passed and I have held on to those feelings strongly. I badly want to slip that skin off like a snake, but have instead ended up like a snake that hisses and spits at the slightest non-provocation.

Anyway, back to everything Absolutely Jethro. On June 15, 2010, we were at what I consider a full circle of some sort. My wife and I took our healthy 3 -year old to see Ian Anderson and his cohorts at the same Bank of America Pavilion. Although lacking the usual antics of a Tull soiree, it was one of the finest Tull concerts I have seen, musically speaking. The set list was mostly the old folk-themed songs which they wove into long musical extravaganas. My son ran around the big open Pavilion, had dinner and fidgeted through

the opening act of Procol Harum. When the sun went down and Mr. Anderson came out and started with “Nothing is Easy”, my son lay on my lap and watched the music through tired but transfixed eyes. Somewhere between “Pastime” and “Jack in the Green”, he slipped quietly into sleep, maybe when Ian sang “the mislethrush is coming Jack, put out the light !!”. After we finished listening to “My God”, the first time I heard Tull play it live, we slowly left the concert pavilion to the strains of “Budapest” on stage behind us.

“Life's long celebration's here.

I'll toast you all in penny cheer.”

A couple of links:

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/jethro-tull/2010/bank-of-america-pavilion-boston-ma-

3bd41c44.html

http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/127887/

An audacity of Hope on our part ?

2009-01-19T23:27:00.004-05:00

I was asked by friends if I am celebrating Obamania. The answer is No, but to be clear, there is certainly cause for celebration as the G W Bush era draws to a close. You could have put Dennis Kucinich and Joe the plumber as Prez and VP and that still would be a reason for a party. There are also other reasons to celebrate - it is a historic occasion. A somewhat-black American from Illinois will be sworn in as President right around the time of MLK's birthday. He will use the same Bible used by Lincoln. All this is bound to turn DC into some sort of a giant Woodstock for the politically liberal mass - a Dead concert minus the weed. Aretha will be on stage.

The question is - what will Barak do. What can he do, the challenge before him is stupendous and a Democratic majority in House and Senate is not likely to support his mandate blindly, if at all. They are, after all, politicians and in it for the power and the glory (not to mention tons of pork). We may be charmed by Obama but to look to him as the new Messiah is like hoping that Jerry Garcia could convince record labels and Ticketmaster to make music free. That is, in my mind, an audacity of hope.

The truth is that we all need to examine our lives and decide what we want for ourselves and our fellow-men. If we truly want the right thing, then let us all continue the grass root effort that Barak used to win the election and channel it towards movements that show public endorsement of actual projects which will strengthen education, energy conservation, efficiency, etc. Let the polls pressurize the pols to support Obama and here's hoping that his team comes through with their message of change.

If we don't care (I am describing myself here), let's just stick with the tax breaks, get some extra cash and watch the AIG execs tan themselves at Club Med.

Facebook Test

2008-12-23T14:05:00.001-05:00

Thought I would try this to see how this synchs with Facebook.

Closing

2008-09-28T20:26:00.000-04:00

The last time we moved, we settled on the house in summer 2001 and closed in October 2001. Imagine my consternation after 9/11. This time, we are not just buying, but selling as well in two weeks. I have so far turned a blind eye and deaf ear to all my portfolios, just hope that both our lender and that of my prospective buyer stay stable for another month. That being said, I am done with any more closings, its just a harbinger of upheavals in geopolitics and economics :-(

I had a dream

2008-09-14T08:54:00.005-04:00

51 days separate me from my very first opportunity to exercise my franchise.

Late one night several months ago, I was struck by a disquieting vision. The nation had woken up one morning to find that due to a medical misfortune, we were proclaiming constitutional allegiance to the new commander in chief – President Huckabee. In his acceptance speech, he was in full pastor mode throwing out Biblical references. Line such as .. (we have gone) “from art being Norman Rockwell to Robert Maplethorpe. From a time when no one thought that much about kids praying in school before they ate their lunch to now having policemen patrolling the schools in uniform. I can remember as a kid-- --that Gideon's would come to the 5th grade and give out Bibles”.

Disquieting though it was, in retrospective it was not that scary – Huckabee is a self-made man (marked contrast with W.) who can be funny and has a record of not mixing religion with politics during his tenure as governor and demonstrated an effort of trying to work with people to get things done. Admittedly, the pressures are different when you live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue but at least there is no scary past.

Let’s talk scary now. Huckabee dissolves, leaving in place a lady who does not blink, who is NOT going to say “Thanks, but no thanks” to the same situation as above. Dare I even speculate on the nature of her acceptance speech? Satirical descriptions of her are taken care of by regular over-the-top catty barbs from Maureen Dowd. Silence is best at this end. News articles even in today's Times scream of secretive, unilateral governance, as well as abuse of power (Shades of Bush adminsitration)

51 days separate me from my very first opportunity to exercise my franchise.

The fact that this is happening in my 41^st year is a tale of circumstance. I resided in India for about a year while eligible to vote (18 years, effective from 1989) during which time there was no general election. After seventeen years in the US, my right to vote came in an election year. I am definitely not letting my chance slip away this time.

51 days separates my son from his second birthday.

At two years and one day, Oyon will found out if America votes for it’s first ever African- American President or first female Veep. History is about to be made, that much we all know. The question is about the future – how will that history look in four or eight years?

Yet another call Center Idea

2008-07-25T15:51:00.002-04:00

There are very few in my family that are truly entrepreneurial - my cousin Priya and her husband Eric fall into this minority. Other than being engaged successfully in business for a long term, they are also quick to provide those "million dollar" ideas. Here is one from Eric:

Set up a call center with my son Oyon (along with some of his friends, as volume grows). People who get un-wanted calls from telemarketers or market researchers press a code number on their phone to have these calls transfered to the Phone-Oyon. The unfortunate caller then goes round and round in a dialogue with this call center operators till he gives up and quits. The call center client can also ensure that future calls to his phone from the same caller ID goes straight to Phone-Oyon without even ringing at home.

To find out how it works - click here (need to have speakers on for this)

Objection, your honor

2007-04-30T10:31:00.001-04:00

I had intended to blog about an incident that occured last December when I was presenting a project update to a community group at the Cape. I did not get around to it but I saw recently that the minutes from the meeting are available on-line. In lieu of my usual rambling blog, here's the script and stage directions, straight from the minutes. I just added an Intro and a couple of thoughts :-)

The IART is the Impact Area Review Team, a group consisting of army, agency and community representatives who review the environmental program at the Mass. Military Reservation. The cast of characters is as follows:
Walsh-Rogalski - USEPA lawyer on the Review Team
Mr. McDonaugh - Army Lawyer not on the Review Team
Mr. Cambareri, Mr. Mullenix and Mr. Lanteri - Concerned Citizen on the Review Team
Mr. Gangopadhyay - Your Humble Narrator
Act I, Scene I

Mr. Walsh-Rogalski stated that one of the conclusions being drawn seems to be that the disposal pits, rather than other areas, tend to be the source of contamination. Mr. Gangopadhyay replied that that’s correct. He also noted, however, that not all of the scattered items found throughout the area were inert – some were MEC items, but didn’t show any signs of leakage and therefore don’t seem to be causing contamination that could affect groundwater.

Mr. Walsh-Rogalski asked again if it’s correct that most of the munitions found in the disposal pit were inert. Mr. Gangopadhyay replied, "A lot of them, yes." Mr. Walsh-Rogalski then asked, "Nonetheless, you found these disposal pits to be a major source of contamination?" Mr. Gangopadhyay started to respond but was twice interrupted by Mr. Walsh-Rogalski asking him to answer the question. Mr. McDonagh, who was in the audience, asked Mr. Walsh-Rogalski to allow Mr. Gangopadhyay to answer.

(All I remember is Walsh-Rogalski screaming "ANSWER THE QUESTION!" over and over, while McDonagh kept shouting "LET HIM ANSWER !!".)

Act I, Scene II
Mr. Walsh-Rogalski noted that his point is that if the majority of the munitions found were in burial pits, and most of them were inert, it seems to make sense that very few of the found munitions would be cracked/leaking. Mr. Gangopadhyay said that that’s true. Mr. Walsh-Rogalski then said that if another thousand munitions that were fired on the range were found, "the proportion of munitions that were cracked or leaking would be much higher than what you’re presenting here, in all likelihood." Mr. Gangopadhyay replied, "Could be, yes."

Mr. Mullennix commented that it seems to him that Mr. Walsh-Rogalski was "leading the witness, and this isn’t a court of law," and he would prefer to see the presentation move along without that happening. Mr. Walsh-Rogalski said that he apologizes if his line of questioning was too aggressive, and added that it’s difficult to make points without asking questions.
(McDonagh kept shouting from the audience "HE's LEADING THE WITNESS". )

Mr. Gangopadhyay then continued with his presentation....

Act 2
... Mr. Cambareri (said he..) thinks that a law-like atmosphere is okay, but finds that "locker room catcalls from the audience" denigrate the formality of the IART...
Mr. McDonagh then closed by saying that as long as those speaking on behalf of the IAGWSP continue to be cross-examined, he will continue to speak up from the audience unless he’s told by "somebody higher up than anybody" at the meeting to stop doing so.
Mr. Cambareri said that he has "some trouble" with Mr. McDonagh’s response to his comments.
Mr. Lantery noted that many individuals at the meeting are paid to be there, but he is a volunteer, who participates in order to be informed. He said that he senses "hostility and aggression underlying the presentations, doesn’t appreciate it, and will stop coming to IART meetings if it continues. Mr. Lantery added that he doesn’t come to IART meeting to "get upset" and he recommended that everyone at the table leave their "animosity and hostilities at the door" if they want volunteer participation to continue.

The last bit struck a sober note in the midst of the chaos that goes by the label of community participation in environmental projcts. Thus, the fun ended for the night.

Samaritans

2007-04-30T09:59:00.000-04:00

Let no act of kindness go unsung !

Driving this morning at 80 mph down the highway like I normally do, chatting on the cell phone, I suddenly noticed a car square up with me and maintain it's speed to stay parallel. Looking left, I was treated to the sight of the driver gesticulating and mouthing unintelligible words. "Road Rage" I think - the man looked like the comic-book store owner from the Simpsons, complete with ponytail. I decided that I would take a chance with this maniac since my life has been lately short on adventures, and rolled down the window. He did the same and I heard him shout at me "Pull over, or you will lose the rear tire".

It was true. I pulled in to a nearby rest area. The driver side rear tire was really low, though I did not feel it while driving. A few more miles of 80 mph and ka-boom was likely. I am not sure if there are any safety lights that come on for this stuff. Luckily, despite not having changed a tire in years, it took all of 15 minutes to locate the neatly-tucked away tools and get the mini-spare in place. Thanks to the gentleman's effort to inform me about my impending predicament, I was not stranded by the side of a road with a burst tire, trying to repalce a tire while dodging speeding cars.

इंडिया's Kerry Packer

2007-04-03T12:28:00.000-04:00

Everybody is analyzing the world cup loss these days (stop and smell the fumes from Pakora Korner) -- too much cricket, too little exposure, players are soft and complacent, coach must go, captain must go, selectors must go, but expert commentators must stay on (how else would we know who should go?).

In the midst of all this comes the news of a parallel league in India. A $23M venture, involving two Indian internationals, four overseas players and eight juniors in each side, along with cricket academies equipped with state-of-the-art facilities across the country. Nothing like competition to liven things up, and nothing like investment in infrastructure to elicit and groom the talent that has to be out there. However, I think there remains a concern for burn-out. Part of the failure was that we simply did not have the intense urge to win. How else can one explain our losses, Team India is simply not able to keep up the pressure when it matters. We had Sri Lanka on the defensive at one point when we suddenly became the mouse in the game. Who from the Indian team gave a demonstrion of going all-out, like the catch Muralitharan took to dismiss dada.

It has been said that Indian cricket is going the way of hockey, where we are unable to keep pace as the game revolves more around fitness than skill. I think we should keep in mind that physical fitness helps to keep us on our toes but for truly inspirational play, mental fitness is also vital. Burn-out is detrimental to this cause. Perhaps the BCCI should look for some balance between cricket and R&R when it sorts things out with the proposed Indian Cricket League.

A man for all seasons but with a penchant for spring !

2007-04-02T13:18:00.000-04:00

"Suzie P – I ♥ you so bad it hurts" – read the vivid red scrawl. I noticed it mainly because it was a change from the usual "Welcome back, Sgt. Harris" graffiti that has been hogging the overpass-billboard spaces lately. This can only mean that spring is here, the time when a young man's fancy turns to the Suzie P's of the world. The equinox has come and gone, and speckled mounds of black and white snow still sit along the edges of parking lots. I am glad I looked up at the overpass.

My friend Banafsheh has also clued in to the arrival of spring and has her ear to the ground. In her hand she held a camera. Click on the link to see what she sees.

Anthems !

2007-03-13T11:22:00.001-04:00

This morning, NPR featured a small segment on the state of Colorado voting on a second (?) state song – a John Denver tune. That was news to me – I did not realize that states actually had official songs, especially ambiguous, trippy ones like "Rocky Mountain High". Here are my suggestions on state songs for places I have resided in:

North Carolina: The Rolling Stones, “Time Is on My Side” – Things don't exactly move quickly down there.
Massachusetts: Yes, “Roundabout” – what tourists are flummoxed by, also called rotaries
California: Pink Floyd, “Money” – seems to be the topmost item on most people's mind in the Bay Area
Alabama: The Moody Blues, “Nights in White Satin”— I would spell it Knights, and remember that the satin sheets have eye holes :-)
Georgia: R.E.M., “Losing My Religion” – Not !! They have Baptist churches on every street corner
Ohio: The Animals, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”. – Sorry, but I felt that way and took off after 6 months..
New Jersey: Nirvana, “Smells like Teen Spirit” – Plenty of teen spirit along the chemical/industrial stretch of the NJ Turn pike.

and finally

West Bengal, India: Woody Guthrie, “This Land Is Your Land”. The State Govt. has moved on to the second line -- this land is MY land.

Abraham and Isaac sitting on a fence

2007-03-12T12:46:00.000-04:00

I did not blog the day I became a father, but I expressed my feelings through pictures. Today, four+ months into fatherhood, I can say that it has been quite an experience. It did not change my life the day it happened, and even now the same holds true. However, there is no doubt that our lives have become full of very joyful experiences, despite a perennial feeling of tiredness that hangs around our shoulders.

The mailbox at home now has 3 different last names on it - गंगोपाध्याय, गांगुली & लाहिरी - practically a village (Any resemblance to names seen in The Namesake is purely coincidental) ! The only mail I get in Oyon's name are bills, so maybe we were premature in sticking his name up there। We should have at least waited till he could read !

Changes

2006-10-24T17:30:00.000-04:00

When I run into a friend from my childhood, adolescent or young-adult years, it feels very refreshing if I find them to be as I remember them (not considering weight gain and other unavoidable physical manifestations). This is by and large rare since most of us have changed, anywhere from a little to quiet a bit. I find it hard and frankly, a little tiresome, to adapt to a new facet of a once-familiar personae. This is not a judgemental statement or a complaint. I am sure that many old acquaintances of mine also hurriedly cross over to the other side of the street when they see me approaching. One can condemn negative changes, but it's hard to control who we become.

Anyhow, the odd moments where I find very positive changes in folks from bygone years are quiet an experience. One such occasion happened last Sunday, when I met Arvind Kejriwal, winner of this years Magsaysay Award. Being the recipient of such an honor is in itself a public validation that Kejri, (as we called him) has had some significant achievement in the recent past, I don't need to blog about it. It's just that some other people I know have also had significant achievements while essentially staying the same. A couple of changes in Kejri that struck a chord:
- A tremendous passion for the causes he espouses. Though I remember Kejri being passionate even during drama practices at IIT, his current goal of "better governance through accountability" runs deep in his blood. While walking aimlessly around Harvard Square, our conversation kept meandering back to this thread.
- A transparent and unguarded approach to his life and work. I probably did not have that many long conversations with Kejri in IIT, but it's hard to believe that any or at least the majority of us being so straightforward about our life, our work and results. I picked this up mostly when he was telling a group of us how Parivartan, the group he founded, accidentally chanced upon the Right to Information Act of New Delhi, which largely focused their effort and is the cause for his current fame.

I could end with the hackneyed statement of how deep inside he remains the same man, but that is true for all of us. My other "changed" buddies are still the same inside. It's the outside for which I need to develop more patience, that will be my goal for a positive change.

The Times they are a changin ?

2006-09-20T08:46:00.000-04:00

Deval Patrick won the Democratic Primary for governor. I was pleasantly surprised. The so-called East Coast Liberals have never fully convinced me of any meaningful dedication to change and in New Jersey & Massachusetts (where I have resided), the old boys network and the status quo seemed granite solid. Yesterday's vote showed that the people have spoken. It was also a demonstration of effective grass roots campaigning, and the benefits of having a tech savvy website.

Now to wait and see what prevails in November. I don't wish to sound gloomy, it's just that my scepticism is still rearing it's ugly head.

Dandelions - Can't Beat 'em ? Eat 'em !

2006-09-17T21:14:00.000-04:00

Part of the process of being a Quincy resident for 5 years is becoming informed of, and maybe getting involved in, activities that the local community is doing in areas that generally interest me. Last week, I met an ex-lawyer turned environmental activist at Nick's wedding, who told me about the Quincy Environmental Network. They are a local non-profit with a thrust on preserving and creating more open spaces within the city. Part of their mission is environmental education. I attended an event today which was built on the latter theme.

A lot of us may have spent time wondering how we would survive in the wake of a natural or man-made catastrophe. After nuking the pet cat and stir-frying the leather couch, what will we look towards for our sustenance? Iris Weaver (the tour guide) pursued this line of thought to it's ultimate conclusion and determined that if something grows -- unattended, uncared for -- in our back yard, it's a message saying that we need to connect. Instead of spending money on weeding products and services, and spending a fortune on vitamin/mineral supplements, just connect the dots - eat what you are paying to dispose. Not only are these plants edible, but they may often have medicinal values that have not yet been fully conquered/commercialized.

There is a lot to write about but to keep it short, my deepest impression from the guided tour (through an area adjacent to the salt marshes) was from sumacade - a tart drink that one can make out of sumac (the non-poisonous variety, identified by red berries as opposed to white). It can be sweetened (based on preference) and drunk hot or cold. The very thought of going hiking through beautiful scenic trails foraging for sumac is making me thirsty.

In case one is left with the understanding that it's only about squeezing berries to create fruit juices, I have to add that I went to a cooking demo at the library following the walk. There, Iris conjured up Apple Crisp, Pesto, a stir-fry and sumacade using mostly wild edible plants. I found all of them very tasty. Maybe it was not "fine dining", but both the pet cat and I are relieved to know that when unknown assailants attack us with their WMDs, I can hunker down and just eat all the dandelions in the backyard. I know we have a plentiful supply to keep us happily fed for a long time.

Some pictures of the event can be found here

A burning bush ?

2006-08-30T09:50:00.000-04:00

I get locked out of the house and make an unscheduled trip to the hospital to retrieve the only set of available keys. The visit was good for both me and her. Divine intervention or coincidence (just kidding).

Hope no one was disappointed that this had nothing to do with effigies of the president.....

Human Gallery

2006-08-28T10:28:00.000-04:00

I'll volunteer for most anything, they serve as my avenues for de-compression. It helps me escape mundane reality by doing something I would not normally do and the more mindless the better. Occasionally, it's for a good cause, well, it's never for a bad cause, just how good the cause is varies and depends on your outlook on life.

Sometimes, my volunteering is linked to a hobby. This Saturday, I joined 21 other photographers (amateur and pro) from the Boston Photography Center and became a living breathing gallery wall as part of a project to raise awareness of photographs taken of Boston and to highlight the lack of sufficient number of photo galleries in the city. Part of the hope is that the city will take heed and utilize photos taken by local professionals to adorn subways and other public space. A large number of locals and tourists offered critique (see photo) and words of praise. One interesting gent came right up to my face and informed me that George Washington (in front of whose statue I was coincidentally standing) was known in his native Virginia as "Indian Killer" because of his propensity to let loose his shot gun on local Native Americans (nothing like snippets of American History from the lunatic fringe to enrich your appreciation of the adopted land). Some asked what we were protesting - I usually replied "Tulips" (click here to see the photo I was exhibiting, note that I did not shoot this picture).

A more graphic description of this event can be found here.

I was wrong, so what's new ...

2006-08-24T09:55:00.000-04:00

My hyperactive, cloud-trodding imagination went down the wrong path -- Are we really ready to reach out and gather more into our fold, or do we wish to partition, marginalize, build walls, create multiple states/countries where previously there was one. What happened to my 36 planets - the galaxy that future generations would hitchhike through someday.. Soon we will be the only planet, the rest will constitute the axis of poseurs, as we embark on our crusade of regime, sorry, status change. Einstein, expressing his belief in Spinoza's god, said that HE ".. does not play dice with the cosmos". Little did he realize that the privilege of playing dice lies with the International Astronomical Union. Fare thee well, Pluto !

:-)

See new below from AP, hot off the wire, 30 minutes ago..
"Leading astronomers approved historic new planet guidelines Thursday downsizing Earth's neighborhood from nine principal heavenly bodies to eight by demoting distant Pluto. After a tumultuous week of clashing over the essence of the cosmos, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of the planetary status it has held since its discovery in 1930."

You know when I was your age....

2006-08-14T11:33:00.000-04:00

.....gasoline was only a penny a gallon. In fact, some stations actually paid you to fill up.

Here's what I'll tell my grandchildren in my old age

"You know, when I was your age, there were only nine planets. 2003 UB13 (Xena) was voted as the tenth planet by a narrow margin in 2006.

It was touch and go for a while. Initially, the USA and France disagreed on mineral discovery-rights and tourism revenue-sharing policies. The then US president, George W. Bush, wanted to add a condition to the vote that his road map for peace take the interstellar highway to Pluto (which was at risk of being demoted to a demi-planet) and create a settlement for the Palestinians so that they could stop that s__t on Planet Earth. The US House of Representatives wanted to make sure that aliens from Xena did not get any short cuts to US citizenship. The European Union wanted to ensure that the solar system had adequate absorption capacity. And on and on..

However, the Russian Space Minister launched a passionate soliloquy and asked that Xena's icy surface be not mistaken for aloofness and that it be considered at least a dwarf planet right away. . This opened the flood gates, and we soon added 2006 UB40 (Buffy), 2020 DMZ (Run) and even revived and named to planethood an older discovery -- 2000 XPSP2 (Windows). Soon, I lost track of the names of the thirty six planets that we have now.

What did you ask. Oh, who were Palestinians? It's a long story..Do you remember the Six Flags Over Dead Sea you visited last summer. Well, .....

Second - the vacation

2006-04-25T16:15:00.000-04:00

We walked the one-mile dyke over to Long Point in Provincetown, which is the very tip of Cape Cod. It was deserted; the only other couple on the beach was leaving as we trekked across the dunes towards the mouth of Plymouth Bay. In the distance, we could see Coast Guard vehicles near the Wood End Lighthouse. It's amazing to think that Long Point was once a fishing village – probably one of the earliest settlements in the New World. Not a trace of humanity remains. The homes were all "rafted" back to the mainland by the early 1800's.

As we napped on the beach, distant spouts indicated presence of whales. We could see a few clearly through binoculars. Then, we gasped – there was a whale about a thousand feet from the shore. The great beast just floated for several seconds and finally dipped and vanished out of sight. Thanks to the wonders of GIS, Chandreyee created a map to illustrate our adventure, click here to see the details.

Ethnic cuisine is a rarity on the Cape. There are a few Thai restaurants in Hyannis/Falmouth and Inaho at Yarmouth is said to serve the best sushi in Massachusetts, but that about sums up the diversity. Thus, we were surprised to find a South African restaurant on Commercial Street. I had earlier asked our gentle inn keepers about Portuguese restaurants in the area – in my warped imagination, Provincetown was still an old whaling town. The duo, Steve and Dave, were at a loss for words. They gently stumbled out the statement that the Portuguese had slowly left Provincetown (as the gay population in town reached the "tipping point" -- they did not say it, just my editorial). The re-gentrification is well noted in Karen Krahulik's "Provincetown". More on this on my next blog.

The Cape Cod Light and some other lighthouses in the area have been re-located owing to the sliding cliffs. We did a quick tour of the Cape Cod Light while waiting for our dinner reservations. The lighthouse is surrounded by a golf course, a fitting statement of the Cape's advertised image as a golfing paradise.

First - the realization

2006-04-25T13:18:00.000-04:00

Whenever life turns a corner, I experience two contrasting emotions. Let me first explain what turning a corner means to me. It usually means that I experience first hand something that I never knew before or I may have understood to be true, but I had never previously stepped in those shoes. After the experience, the realization becomes complete and meaningful.

The first emotion is happiness, even though sometimes the realization, or the experience that leads to it, is not happy. The realization I am about to describe here is not an unhappy one. It's about a relaxing vacation. All these years, I have perceived vacations as periods of time were one wrung out the last drips of juice from each milli-second, every waking moment was spent in exploring new areas, immersing in different cultures, sight-seeing and so on. I usually need a few days after a vacation to recuperate. The term R&R was not in my dictionary. Then, we made good a plan that we have discussed often over the years. We spent the weekend in Provincetown.
Provincetown is not that far from home, and for me, even closer from work. A day trip there is quiet possible, we have done it often, but spending the weekend there amounted to a relaxing vacation. I will hasten to add that "relaxing vacation" did not mean curling up on a recliner atop a deck, and hopping in and out of the hot-tub (the B&B offered both the hot tub and the deck). While the wife slept in, I went for a 6-odd mile bike ride, mostly through majestic sand dunes, in the early morning hours. After breakfast, we spent the better part of five hours walking around on different beaches (more on that in my next blog). After a relaxed meal, we ambled along Commercial Street, and retired back to the B&B to watch a movie. When the wife fell asleep a little way through the film, I crept in to the afore-mentioned hot-tub with the book du jour. The evening was spent in a little more sightseeing, a cozy dinner and another attempt to watch the movie, though we both fell asleep quickly. The next day, we climbed up to the top of the Pilgrim monument. Several pictures later, we left for home.

My point is that we did a lot, but it all seemed relaxed, we did not maximize our time there, a fair amount of time was spent lying around and watching {gasp} TV ! Yet, we left sated and feeling complete. I am happy, knowing what R&R truly means, and relieved at understanding that it is not a complete vegetative state.

The second emotion is sadness. I have to find some way to bring sadness into everything, it's genetic. My melancholy stems from the deeper realization that I have aged a little more, yet again. What are experiences if not markers of time.

Cliffs and Beaches

2006-04-03T13:34:00.000-04:00

Living in Quincy, Massachusetts, we utilize our extreme proximity to water and hilly terrain to the fullest extent possible. The water part is obvious, the Atlantic, or at least Quincy Bay, Town River Bay and various coves are clear on any map. They are actually too close, so much so that I have to pay a surcharge on my home insurance!! The less obvious is how much of hilly terrain there is -- 7,000 acres stretching from Quincy to Dedham, a.k.a. The Blue Hills.

I hiked there yesterday, a standard practice for me on most non-blizzard Sunday morning/afternoon! The difference is that I did it with a group of strangers (though not strangers for long) through the Boston LinkUp website. It was a great group of people and a good time was had by me, and apparently all.

(R to L: Wayne, Jennifer, Deepak, Melinda,Me @Blue Hills)

(R to L: Wayne, Jennifer, Deepak, David, me, Blue Hills)

The planned hiking morphed into a hike --> lunch at Newcombe farms (an excellent suggestion by Jennifer) --> walk through Webb State Park --> hanging out on, and by, Wollaston Beach. All in all, a great day's work.

Photos above and below were provided by our Romanian friend- Melinda.

(RtoL Deepak, Chandreyee, Wayne, Melinda - Webb State Park)

(RtoL Wayne, me, Melinda, Deepak, - Wollaston)

The Great Blog That Never Happened

2006-02-13T09:46:00.000-05:00

The Northeastern US reeled under a severe "tropical snow-storm" yesterday. NYC received a record amount of snowfall. We logged in a modest 15 odd inches at the homestead in Quincy, Mass.

At around 11 AM, we lost power. Sometimes, it's hard to tell when you lose power in the daylight. No lights were on ; the laptop flickered and switched over to battery in the wink of an eye. The phone display glowed green and showed some text. I took me a few seconds to realize that the caller on the other end had vanished into the ether. The text said "Check Phone Line" -- our VOIP phone line was down. We were stuck at home during a blizzard with no music, no TV and no Internet !

I remember hearing about people who lose power during large storms -- usually out somewhere in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Western Mass. "About a 100,000 homes remain without power" says the voice on NPR. Poor souls, I think, and switch stations.

Various scenarios started unfolding in my brain. I visualized the hours ticking on, as we put on additional layers, maybe even caps and gloves, to stay warm at home. The perishables in the fridge are put in a box and kept on the front steps (it's about 7F outside, colder than the fridge). "Honey" I could hear myself say, "we need to grill the cajun-spiced catfish in the fireplace tonight cause it's not going to keep". Last summer, the chimney sweep recommended that we re-build the fireplace prior to lighting any more fires. Throwing caution to the wind, we would continue to keep a raging fire going all afternoon, evening and night -- initially for warmth and later for illumination. I saw myself braving the intolerable elements, the near zero visibility, the howling winds and the swirling snow flakes as I made my way across the vast expanse of 50 feet between the house and the shed for more firewood (dressed in layers per REI recommendations - techwick, insulation, shell) .

I could foresee that with the passage of the day, my sympathy with the homeless would rise ten times. After all, I would be almost in their shoes, well, save that I would be inside of a non-heated but fairly well insulated house. All the taps would be left dripping in order to avoid pipes bursting. We would pull out the down comforters and create a makeshift bed by the fireplace. I would keep the rifle by the bed, and a golden toddy on the mantle. The firewood ring would be in easy reach, as would the poker. Hmmm, with the poker at hand, maybe I could skip the rifle. What if I accidentally shot someone's cat if it nuzzled against our front door, smelling the aforementioned catfish. My picture would be broadcast alongside the great white hunter Cheney, a visual that would haunt me for the rest of my life !

My first instinct after the power cut was to start cooking, mainly because I was hungry. Also, it fascinated me that I would have to light our burners with a flint, since the electric starter would not work. I also theorized that it would help warm the house. I proceeded to churn out one my quickfix meals, a hamburger helper clone but not out of a box. As I squinted to see if the onions had fried, my wife offered to light a candle. Wow, I thought, aromatherapy while you cook.

The moment the meal was ready, the power was back on -- 1 PM EST, roughly 2 hrs later. The temperature had barely dipped a few degrees in the house. The wife was in a T-shirt. "The power's back" she said. "Just in time for TV with lunch", I replied

Sweet and Sour Meals

2006-02-01T14:10:00.000-05:00

Amitav Ghosh provides a poetic narration of a little-known folk tale in the opening chapter of The Hungry Tide. Lord Shiva has halted the mighty river Ganga's descent onto the Earth using his thick matted hair. This is not the "little known" part of the tale. I remember this picture vividly from thousands of calendars hanging under thousands of fluorescent tube lights, with geckos occasionally darting across the face of the Lord in pursuit of a meal. The Lords pale blue face sports a beatific smile and half closed eyes, both induced no doubt by a mellow marijuana trip. From the top right corner of the calendar, a somewhat skimpily clad Ganga is flowing straight into his hair.

The little known portion is the sequel to this tale – Ganga washes herself free of Shiva's locks and (forgetting Bhagirath and Kapil Muni's ashram) "the river throws of its bindings and breaks into hundred, maybe thousands, of tangled strands". The map on the left illustrates this tale. The great pleasure I derived from reading this came from being able to close my eyes and visualizing my trip from less than a month ago to this same beautiful place – the Sunderbans.

It started with us boarding a launch from Basanti and making our way over to the Sajnekhali visitor’s center. The visitor center has a crocodile pond, and is teeming with monkeys. Two of our traveling companions parted ways with us here; they were volunteers who were going into training for the tiger census survey that was to begin the next day.

I should first declare that we did not see any tigers despite spending a little amount of time at the watering-hole watchtowers at Sudhanyakhali and Netidhopani. I understand that part of the Project Tiger program has been to provide increased access to sweet water for the local wildlife. However, I have also heard and read that the tigers are used to drinking the saltwater, it's what gives them their taste for human flesh and blood (frankly, I think of this factoid as folklore, akin to Bonbibi, the forest goddess). So what is their incentive for coming to the watering hole? A sweet and sour meal!

The tiger census is a source of great debate. In India, the tragedy of Sariska has brought this issue back to the forefront. The Sunderban tiger census has been criticized as having a lack of transparency and being generally backward compared to standard practices. It is no doubt difficult and dangerous to implement a good process for counting tigers in a hostile environment such as the Sunderbans. Counting and measuring fresh pug marks means probably being on your hands and feet in the immediate vicinity of a tiger – being part of the same sweet and sour meal again. The new method attempts to dart radio collars on tigers to help with the counting and tracking process. Stay tuned for results.

During the 2004 census, the tiger population in the Sundarbans was recorded at 274 as against 271 in 2001 and 284 in 1999. These figures have been labeled as approximate even by official sources. My personal take is this: Statistics/Damn Lies, what's the difference, what matters is how you spin it. Here are a pair of headlines, twenty days apart, from the Deccan Herald and the Hindu (May 2005) :
"Tiger, tiger burning bright in the Sunderbans"
&
"Royal Bengal tiger faces extinction threat."

Mr. Pradip Vyas is the director of the Sunderban Tiger Project. His sharp professional approach to the problem is impressive. There definitely have been certain improvements in the area – nets and fences help keep tigers from straying into villages, and more stringent guards appear to have reduced the infringement of illegal fisherman, woodcutters and honey-collectors in the "buffer" and "core" zones. This reduces the tiger-human conflict which, perhaps contrary to what you would think, is overall worse for the tiger. Every additional tiger that dies out of the (approximately) 274 is another nail in the coffin. I do not intend to devalue the worth of human life, but note that there are about 4 million people in the Sunderban area.

Additionally, Mr Vyas stated that stricter policing and greater involvement of the local population have helped in reporting cases of tiger sightings, and provided a safeguard against poaching. I have no means of confirming or repudiating this. A Times of India report stated:"A tiger requires 9 sq km area for living. As human intervention is growing in the protected 2,585 sq km area of the Tiger Reserve, space is not enough to sustain 250 plus tigers. Figures are fudged. Poacher Naimuddin is active and is helped by forest officials. Everybody has some kind of interests in tiger poaching. Villagers, who don't have a standard source of income, are the basic killers, for money. They trap tigers and kill by poisoning or shooting at close range, for only Rs 100 per tiger."

The above report is quiet credible. The stick approach will work in the short run, but unless a sustainable alternate income generating scheme is put in place for the locals, cold cash for a dead tiger is going to be impossible to resist for people struggling to eke out a living. The project tiger website cites alternate income generation schemes, but no details are provided, nor are figures showing any degree of success of these schemes. We were accompanied by members of an NGO called NEWS. Their main mission is ecology, but they have been involved with some social schemes in the Sunderbans centered in the village of Pakhirala. I enquired about the results of their alternate income generation schemes, and got the same response. What good are batik clothes unless a marketing process is developed for their distribution and sale?

Getting back to our trip -- we first spent some time at the watchtower in Sudhanyakhali. It was dusk and several deer were drinking. The only incident of note is that someone from our group fell into the river while getting back to the launch. What could have been a bad incident was quickly resolved as the staff on board jumped in and retrieved her. She knew how to swim and during the few minutes she spent in the river, she enquired every once in a while if anyone could see a crocodile.

Luckily, we did not see any crocodiles till the next day – big ugly monsters lazing by the side of the river. One particular 15 feet garden variety slithered quickly into the water on our approach, preventing us from deciphering if the bloated stomach was pregnancy or a fresh meal! The one pictured above did not seem to be too concerned by us watching from 50 feet away.

Fishermen were few and far between – a result of the new protocols or just special precautions during the census. Part of our plans had been to buy and eat some fresh fish and the lack of fishermen was frustrating. We finally met a group of anyaykari (outlaws, as they are called) inside a very large mohona. Out of fear that we would turn them in, they amost gave us free fish, and ulimatly accepted about Rs. 50 for a bucketload. The fish was delicious !

The only other point of interest was Netidhopani, located at the edge of the buffer zone. We did not see any tigers but I was very eager to look inside the Ma Monosha temple. This is where Behula had met the washerwoman who would ultimately guide her to her goal. The temple has been reduced to a pile of rubble and is located on the "wrong" side of the fence, next to the watering hole. I missed being a course on the sweet and sour meal.

One last point - I want to mention an NGO called Mukti. Started by a Sunderban native, this group has undertaken as it's mission the emancipation of the Sunderban natives from their problems of illiteracy, lack of sanitation/hygiene and other ills that plague overpopulated developing areas. They are a young organization and need everybody's help. Please visit them at www.muktiweb.org

Have you ever seen elephants mating ?

2005-12-27T11:18:00.000-05:00

Our usual trek to Shantiniketan was a little extended this time for a few reasons. The first was that we recouped some time which was initially scheduled for a trip to South India, cancelled due to circumstances. The second was a plan to hook up with an old friend (Shunya) and his companion for a look at some of Bengals landmarks.

A quick walk through the Vishva-Bharati campus, accompanied by a University registered guide, was made additionally entertaining by the guides' displeasure (and verbal rebuke) whenever the two ladies in our parties started talking to each other during one of his (many) lectures on Tagore's philosophy about human beings and nature. It should be clarified that all Chandreyee was doing was providing sub-titles to Usha, who was having some trouble with the Benglish lecture. Rabindra Bhavan is still bereft of the Nobel Prize, though security has been beefed up a bit.

We left Shantiniketan the morning after our arrival for other pastures. The four-hour bone-jarring road trip across the Damodar to Bishnupur via Durgapur and Bankura set the trend for our long days on the road. The seat springs in our rental '93 Ambassador has definitely seen better days, and all of us were involuntarily leaning on each other or on doors through out the trip. Frequent stops for tea and pakoras were a necessity.

The district of Bankura is well-known for the artisans who manufacture terra -cotta jewelry and the famous "Bankura Horse". The stunning brilliance of their fore-fathers is illustrated in the terra-cotta temples that were built by the Malla kings of Bengal. There are numerous temples in and around Bishnupur (the guide book cites 300 +), a majority the over-zealous product of the recently converted Vaishnavite king. His heirs also did not seem to have been lacking in enthusiasm. Many of the temples are in an advanced state of decay; most of the terra cotta tiles are severely weathered. The ones that still maintain a high degree of carvings are the Jor-Bangla, the Shyamrai, the Radheshyam and the MadanMohan temples. These, along with the ceremonial platform (the Rash-Mancha), are now under the watchful eye of the tourism department. However, a lot more stringency (IMHO) may be required to preserve the temples from the onslaught of that perennially present, rapidly multiplying creature – the Bengali tourist!

Another set of temples can be found around the corner from Dal-Madal, the famous cannon that helped ward off the marauding Marathas. These temples (about seven in number) are scattered over rolling fields. A few of these have been fenced in, with a park and walkways created around them. Lacking exquisite exteriors like the others, these locations are wanting in tourists. The only people present are the eternal lovers. If any tourism department representatives were present, they were either in plain clothes or well-hidden.

There are also the temples that seem to have been abandoned because of lack of "tourist value". Most of them probably do not have a terra-cotta exterior, just the laterite stone that serves as the base for all construction. We happened to run into one that was located in a nook between residential houses, on the way to one of the "famous" temple cluster. The name of this location is "Jor-Mandir" a literal translation is a "Pair of Temples".

This generic name applies to any similar twin-temple arrangement in Bengal. It has a clearing in front with no evidence of any activity, squatters or otherwise. Does anyone visit this temple? The door to one is locked – I ducked into the other to see mounds of ant hills and possible snake holes in a fairly small sized grotto. No trace of devotion whatsoever. Despite the lack of attention from the tourism department, the area is clean and not subject to vandalism or graffiti. The zealous Vaishnavites still appear to be around in Vishnupur.

Other than the terra-cotta, the other feature of note is the roof of the Jor-Bangla temple. The name signifies a twin roof structure, each mound being similar to the roof (chala) of the huts in rural Bengal that were mostly mud with a thatched roof. The terra-cota images represent the Purans, Ramayana, Mahabharat. We wondered at the fact that these carvings lacked what was standard temple fare, the Kama-Sutra depictions, and started decrying the puritanical spirit of the Malla kings. This apparent lack of attention to sex and desire, as can be deduced from the temple carvings, is contradicted by folk lore – a Malla king once spirited Lal-Bai, a Baiji, away from her lover, the ruler of Maharashtra. His infatuation with her so enraged the queen that she poisoned her husband and drowned the Bai in one of the multiple ponds which were constructed by the kings to satisfy the water demands of the locals and the palace. To ensure an operatic end to this saga, the queen committed sati on the funeral pyre.

Closer scrutiny of the thousands of panels finally revealed one of elephants copulating. My friends, recently back from trips to Eastern Africa and Kumayon, told me that the posture depicted was not how elephants mate. We grudgingly accepted it as poetic license of the artisan although other reasons offered included ignorance ("the artist has never witnessed elephants in the act"), and space ("had only three quarters of a panel to fit in two elephants and meet the quota"). One thing we agreed on – so much for the puritanical spirit.

India's growth rate and economic boom have not spread uniformly across the population spectrum. The retail-heavy restaurant-filled Kolkata is a far cry from the living conditions and employment opportunities in parts of rural Bengal. The onslaught of tourism has been seen as a boon for the locals. Other than numerous restaurants (the paise hotel of yore, with a fixed meal system – choice of fish, meat or egg) and other tourism related units, numerous guides mill around tourist destinations and eateries. They sport a badge certifying their affiliations/accredication, one even gave me a card that said "Senior-most Guide in Bishnupur" a fact apparently attested by the WB tourism department. Having visited this area about 20 years ago, this was a striking change. The poor trying to eke out an existence by grasping at straws. This phenomenon in India used to be restricted to active religious sites; all visitors to Puri will surely remember being mobbed by the Panda the second you stepped on to the railway platform. Murshidabad, which we visited later, exemplified the worst instance of this, but more on that later.

(Click here for more pictures of Bishnupur terracotta and temples)

Kolkata 12-2005

2005-12-10T04:44:00.000-05:00

We have been in the city for less than 24 hours and have blended right into the lifestyle. We have negotiated the bureaucratic machinations of the banking system, gone shoe & grocery shopping, used an Internet cafe, seen a play and chased it up with late night clubbing with the Calcutta Club set – barra pegs of whiskey and rum along with Chicken Reshmi Kebabs.

The play was produced by a theater group called Rupo-Darshini and was set among the lives of Sunderban inhabitants. The theater (at the Academy of Fine Arts) is one of the less attractive places to watch a play in the city. The theater was barely half full – a sad plight for what was definitely a good production. The director/lead actor made an appeal at the end to spread the word if we liked the play.

Awake at 4 AM, although that is better than the no sleep condition of last night. Sounds of street construction filter through the closed windows, the cawing of crows welcome the dawn. Day 2 begins.

Grim Movie

2005-10-16T18:28:00.000-04:00

I wasted time on Saturday and Sunday watching a couple of movies. What I mean is that the movies were imminently mediocre and my time would have better spent getting drunk with friends. The movies were "El Crimen Perfecto" and "Batman Begins". I have decided that in keeping in with the theme of this weekend, I will write my thoughts on another mediocre disappointing movie that I saw a few weeks ago.

I have to offer a point of clarification, lest my definition of mediocre be misconstrued. "El Crimen Perfecto" was billed as a black comedy, supposedly painted with shades of Almadovar. I'll admit that the movie had it's moments, but the director, de la Iglesia, is no Almadovar. As far as Batman Begins, do not mistake my trashing it as some sort of pseudo intellectual bullying. When I go to the theater to watch a film adaptation of one of my childhood favorite comics, I expect to be fully entertained, lost in the world of cool dialogue, delightful excesses and slick action. As was the case with Tim Burtons muy sabroso "Batman". However, when a comic book starts taking itself seriously, and special effects overwhelm coolness, you've lost me!

Anyway, the movie that really disappointed me was "The Brother's Grimm". I have been enraptured with Terry Gilliams creations. From his cartoons in Monty Python to the Fisher King and Brazil, he has used his imagination to portray the bizarre and the fantastic while delivering a human message. Maybe the message was not that human in "Fear and Loathing.." but it was a great laugh. It was heartbreaking to see his movie based on Don Quixote fall apart, and I was eagerly anticipating the Brother's Grimm.

Perhaps my disappointment was due to anticipation. The wrong premise that a filmmaker who makes few movies always delivers the goods either through a subtle plot or a subliminal insight into some facet of humanity or a novel style of filmography. The Brother's Grimm served up none of the above. To top it all, one coughs up a good $10 per head for this experience.

Routine

2005-10-14T15:07:00.000-04:00

There's not a whole lot to blog about, when your life consists of a 7 to 7 routine of work and commute, followed by dinner, and errands. Ever had days like that ? No revelations, great or small, at work. No towering achievements, no babies were killed, no million-dollar-oops. The ride to and fro was essentially blah ! No damsels in distress, no menacing acts by road -rage racked individuals. The weather was fine with a slight drizzle. You came home and ate leftovers, watched some TV and completed one chore you had been meaning to do.

It was that kind of a day. .

Trio!

2005-10-13T10:25:00.000-04:00

I am not musically inclined – rhythm has never claimed me as her own, be it while dancing, or just tapping fingers to keep the beat. (Forget actually trying to play an instrument). However, this much I know – listening to music is unmitigated pleasure. It's a source of revelry and joy as well as free therapy for malaise.

In other words, I spend a lot of money on concerts and CDs! With that justification of my squandering habits off my chest, let me get on to my real point.

Every so often, I have had the opportunity to be at a concert where the music is truly real (IMHO). It is usually a confluence of geniuses, whose towering minds allow for no ego and the music is played out of sheer joy, camaraderie is created on-stage through majestic talent recognizing the same. [The key, I believe, is the towering mind + humility, witness the shambles of the 3 tenors]

The list is as follows:

Paco, Al and John (San Fran 1996). Maybe not as good as their first concert, but they still had the magic, 15 years later at the 15th SF Jazz festival.

Ali Akbar Khan and Allah Rakkah (Kolkata, 1993). I am fairly ignorant when it comes to Indian classical but when music moves and mesmerizes, what do you need to know.

Bela, Stanley Clark and Jean-Luc Ponty (New Bedford, yesterday). My muse today. So much virtuosity, seeping off-stage and gathering up the crowd. Clark shuts his eyes and thumps the double bass, his eyes closed in some sort of an ecstasy; Bela, with his wry humor, humble yet mischievous as he plays with his boyhood legends; Jean-Luc, an apparition from elf land, swaying to his own musical swirling cloud.

I am indeed fortunate.

Seasons of the Witch

2005-10-12T12:21:00.000-04:00

The New England Fall is upon us.

I am not referring to the season of spectacular colors, the richly-hued vista that elicits gasps from hikers and other tourists. I am talking about the grey dull days, the continual rain since Friday, the creeping chill that is forcing home heating systems to turn on. The season of the at-least-40%-more-expensive natural gas.

Legalize it !

2005-10-11T14:31:00.000-04:00

The dichotomy of people getting increasingly isolated from each other as technology brings the world closer together just hit home again. I am at a coffee shop, I've had lunch and am now drinking copious amounts of coffee (free refills). I am connected to office e-mail, Yahoo e-mail, and all kinds of IM's. I can do a quick check on the latest on the Islamabad earthquake, or look up the meaning of "peregrinations" on the On-Line Merriam Webster, I can Skype pals in India, I am downloading bit torrent files of the 1989 Telluride Blue Grass festival and rating the sound quality of the audio files seeded by Xpanding Man.

All this while I sit in a roomful of people, most of whom are eating or working alone, or are talking on cell phones. I can shut my eyes and imagine scenes out some futuristic novel, glassy eyed people in mod cat space suits, gliding on walkways. I feel depressed. I am shaken out of my gloom by a timeless mating-ritual tableau at the table next to mine, reminding me that I am still on Planet Earth.

Various websites debunk and glorify the hypothesis of- The Neurotransmitter "Serotonin" & Serotonin Acting Anti-depressants. I had my "so-called clear-thoughts" about this, and I realized today that I actually don’t quiet know where I stand. (So what's new).
I used to think that our emotions change our "biochemical balance" which affects us physically. Sometimes, the circle is complete when our physical incapacity induces inertia which then impacts our emotions further. Thus, we spiral downwards. Anti-depressants are supposed to handle this. Since I am opposed to medication in general, I (Dr. Shouvik 8-) advise that we deal with our imbalance through "wellness"  That new age concept of a balanced diet coupled with Yoga.

The truth is that discipline is hard – it also takes away so much from life. I want my whiskey-soda-bourbon, my biriyani from Shiraz, the blue smoke wisps swirling when I try to give my aching mind a break late at night, Chandrapuli, Baklava, goat curry. Without these objects, I would be emotionally drained (a circle within a circle). I want to stop nothing, but practice moderation.

So what's my point? I'm blabbering. Apparently no one is quiet sure what out biochemical balance should be, so what are anti-depressants actually doing? Laughter is the best medicine. Meet friends, have fun, fight isolation. The young man in the next table  is now giving his paramour a neck-shoulder massage. All the solitary folks are looking in their direction, glaring/sneering. Fools... follow their example. Find a friend, share the joy of company, it's medicinal.

That's just the way it is

2005-08-25T11:24:00.000-04:00

Our 4th Bruce Hornsby concert in 5 years. I think we can be called groupies 8-)

To me, music is always best experienced in cozy intimate settings - the audience is at one with the performer, dancing like dervishes to intricate beats and extended jams, swaying gently with eyes closed to the ballads. It's what I estimate the Dead always tried to do, before fame and the mob juggernaut overcame the happiness. Hornsby manages to achieve that at Cohasset inside the tent. The show, which we have always seen on a middle-of-the-week night, is barely half sold. The empty seats fade into the background once the diehards are immersed in the music. Hornsby does transitions so well - seguing in and out of Dark Star, and the final ballad medley where he inter-twined "Comfortably Numb" with "Fortunate Son" again. Magic was in the air.

If only the acoustics were a little better. The concerts are so enjoyable that I did not even realize what was missing till last year -- we missed Hornsby at the tent but caught him at the Orpheum instead. It's a real venue with real sound, but still cozy. It was the best Hornsby show we ever saw. The bad part about that is some unfair standards have now been set.

Beautiful People

2005-08-18T08:32:00.000-04:00

They say everybody has a story.

The second meeting of the "writer's hang-out" took place at Panera Bread. It seems that Lisa has dropped out, but we have picked up a new member who has a lot to offer. The sustenance of the group is no longer in question, the members scheduled a third meeting before we adjourned.

The shy girl who barely speaks was frantically writing down snippets of information. Suddenly, completely out of character, she broke in during a conversation between Chandreyee and the new member and said "I've been to Varanasi, India". I sat up. "It was during the time I was spending an year in Japan teaching English" she added. My jaw dropped, ever so slightly. "I used to go for Yoga classes in the morning by the river, and I saw a Bollywood movie in a theater". Game, set and match.

As a young boy/man, I remember distinguished movie theaters such as Alea, Menoka, and New Empire. It was the early eighties, when legend has it that the rowdier elements once even threw a cat down from the upper balcony to liven up a boring movie. The women of the family would go to such theaters only in groups, at a distinguished hour and preferably with some male "support". The scene was worse in Kharagpur, I don't recall female students attending shows at the town theater. The creme de la creme was an Amitabh Bachchan movie that a group of preppy Bosco Boys saw in Puri. We had a good time, but definitely stood out in that environment- molestation was not entirely improbable. In this context, a blond woman in the late 1990's at a Sunny Deol/Amrita Singh blockbuster in the Holy City is a story. More to follow....

New York is real - the rest are just mirrors !

2005-08-16T11:20:00.000-04:00

I got to check off an item from my wishlist this past weekend, an item I had developed during our stay in New Jersey. It was to visit the Mecca of jazz clubs, the Blue Note. (I wanted to see Medina as well, Birdland, but that's for another day). My real wish was to catch the late late night sets that they have, usually 1 to 4, but let's get real. I usually collapse by 1:30, even in a loud bar. So the 10:30 set it was - Cachao, a Latin Jazz sensation.

There is a feeling of youth that accompanies a day at the Met, dinner at a Sushi restaurant in the Village and a visit to a Jazz Club. We were discussing how residents of Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston prefer their hometown to NYC on a comfort level basis (I am one of those people). However, New York still stuns oneself. There are more people on the subway and at Times Square at 1 AM than most places have at mid-day. As far as the entire package goes, New York is the REAL DEAL !

Opening Shot

2004-12-31T08:27:00.000-05:00

I am a fairly non-descript Indian citizen, living in the US of A as a permanent resident (aka green card holder). I cannot vote, but feel free, nay compelled, to rant and rave about the state of US politics. I eulogize constantly about India's unrestrained growth and the positive differences I perceive in people's attitudes and ambitions, but have as yet made no concrete efforts to shift back to my homeland. My M.O. for obtaining a good Karma is mainly to write a check at intervals to various causes/organizations, based on natural disasters, or the fact that a friend has taken the time and effort to put herself through the paces to be able to run 26 miles straight, purely on the strength of will power and Gatorade. (Oh, by the way, does the charity have 501 (c) (3) status ? Good.)

I read, see movies, attend concerts and recitals, occasionally travel and constantly watch people. I don't do a whole lot, but have a lot to say. I yearn to be a humble narrator. Thus came the decison, lost in the anonymity of the web, I will provide thoughts and rhetoric. It'll mostly be nonsense, but I hope that like the book of poems from where I stole my title, some hidden, perchance witty insight can be separated as wheat from chaffe (Just to make it clear though, the original Abol-Tabol has no chaffe, just all golden wheat ).

Thus, a blogger I am. Close my eyes, deep breath and I am on my way.

Election Awe

2004-11-07T10:45:00.000-05:00

This is an old one I wrote around early November '04, sticking it up here for posterity..
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The writing workshop group met at the back of the first floor of the library annex. We trooped in for a session the evening of November 1st, and realized that the room was designated to serve as a polling station for the local precinct the following day. As a resident without voting rights, this was my first look at the sanctimonious inner space of the temples of democracy.

The room is what you would expect to find tucked away in the depths of a public library, one that serves for the occasional meetings, or book sales. One of the pastel yellow side walls is dominated by a mural that represents Quincy as the City of Immigrants. On the portion of the wall that the mural does not encompass, a small plaque provides a flow chart, almost a design template, which the architects of the mural must have followed to focus their creativity. As one enters the room, a table against the near wall contains an assortment of items that I have now come to view as familiar accoutrements for the workshop sessions. There is a jug of cider, a wicker basket of stirrers and sugar packets, some deliciously fluffy pound cake and a box containing tea bags and collectible animal miniatures. A large officious wooden table sits along the side wall across from the mural. I imagined the voting official seated there, along with a few lawyers, greeting voters as they enter. On the table is an ominous black telephone, probably kept for the extremely undecided voter to call a life line.

That evening, the far wall was a forest of plastic. Voting stations, consisting of long spindly legs and three sides which created a little sheltered table, stood brilliantly backlit with halogen lamps. The back of each station contained a flyer with instructions on the voting procedure. The center of the room contained a box which looked like a mailbox lying on its side. Blue in color, it had numerous openings with latches and locks. One side had a slot which I assume would swallow the cast ballots. The seal above it, which I first thought to be the Commonwealths, turned out to be two sailboats on the bay with blue sky in the background. I see this picture often while kayaking, and thought it aptly symbolized Quincy.

In my minds eye, I can see the crowd arriving. The early morning voters, who want to strike the task off their list before starting out the day, come in briskly. They have ID cards and other formalities ready, and their voting is with a purpose. They feel strongly about their candidate, and achieve peace of mind by carrying on with life knowing that they have thrown their vote behind their principles. As time passes, people who vote out of peer pressure or are nagged into voting arrive in dribs and drabs. They are impatient. However, once the situation has boiled down to they and a slip of paper with numerous choices, there is much hesitancy, false starts and pondering. They look up to the ceiling; they look to the sides as if to guess the choices of their neighbors. Then, finally realizing that they have been standing there for ten minutes, they complete their choices in a furious flourish.

Late in the day, the crowd partly consists of the weary. These are people who were unable to vote before work but want to perform their civic duty, even it means trudging at the end of a hard day to the stations. The ties are loosened, eye-liners are slightly smudged, and the occasional coffee spill stains show on objects of clothing. The other section of the crowd consists of the target audience of the get-out-the-vote campaigns. As exit polls show fluctuating futures of the candidates, campaign workers, volunteers, and concerned citizens are getting their friends and acquaintances to turn out and seal the fate of the election. They show up in hybrid vehicles with tree hugging signs, they show up in pick-up trucks with “Kick Saddam’s butt” stickers. They come dressed in suits, in denim, in fatigues and in rainbow garb.

Since the mighty Soviet Union collapsed, and in its fall revealed that its might was more fiction than reality, the political climate in the United States has a world wide impact that greatly exceeds global warming. Eulogies about the global village not withstanding, this effect/ relationship has had some disastrous effects on a large percentage of Americans and a majority of the world population. Thus, I, along with the rest of the world, watched eagerly to see which way the winds blew in this election.

I remember the tension and suspense during the evening of the election. The news flashes reeling off decisions in battleground states and scorecards of the Senate and the House. The dead-heat, deadlock, even-steven poll results gave no indication of how things would end. Now, looking back a week after it’s all over, those moments seem very far away.

Adlai Stevenson had said “In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take”. That anybody could be President for a second term was a little beyond the comprehension of most people on the planet. Here’s what was beyond the comprehension of your humble narrator:
Why did the moral majority choose to ignore the pernicious elements of foreign (and domestic) policy and the shenanigans of major contractors in Iraq, and focus instead on sexual deviances of a minority group who primarily reside at the dead ends of highways such as I-95 and Route 6? (Come to think of it, were it not for the Golden Gate Bridge, the same could be said of San Francisco).
Does the moral majority truly care more about tax cuts and less about the loss of innocent lives?
What happened to the likes of Bill Buckley, who chose silent partisanship over intellectual conservatism?

The list is endless, so why go on. Here’s what I concluded. It appeared that there was a sudden determination that the Age of Enlightment was one gigantic mistake which should be corrected promptly, say in four more years? The beliefs of the period that led to the Revolutionary War, that separated church from state and led to formation of liberal Christian sects with beliefs in humanism and science seems to have been a referendum question on the national ballot. The result of that vote --- two thumbs down!!

In my minds eye, the plastic booths still glow from the halogen tubes. They are extinguished one by one, legs taken apart, packed into the case formed by folding the sides and leave the building as a pile of small suitcases. They will be back in a few years. What choices we will face then? How will we respond?

Red Sox Nation

2004-10-21T08:43:00.000-04:00

From the archives, written after the Sox miraculously beat the Yankees to win the AL and in the process stirred something in my immigrant self:
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To me, baseball has always been the Great American Mystery. I am aware of why it is a popular pastime, since more beers are drunk and hot dogs wolfed down at the games I attended, as opposed to minutes spent in actually watching anything. However, despite attending both a major and a minor league game at the stadium, nay, ball park (that's "paahk" as of yesterday!) I am still at a loss as to why pitchers don't bat, what fouls a ball, and why a "ball" becomes a "strike" just because the batter (obviously driven by ennui) decides to take a huge swing. I think to myself, what's up with those big goofy mitts? Until earlier this week, I never knew that the term Grand Slam existed outside tennis and bridge. My routine involvement with baseball was restricted to the following:
• Nodding gravely in the company of denizens of the RSN during the inevitable post-season "wake". There were the usual share of gaffes, "Is Ortis starting the pitching tomorrow ?" but the good folks of Fenwayland merely smiled, and took pains to correct it, adding a small discourse on where this burly hitter stands while fielding.
• Amusement at the annual re-appearance of the "Reverse the Curse" graffiti on Storrow Drive, and at the innumerable discussion of the "bambino".
• Being aware that "Yankees suck" was as good an ice-breaker as any at a party.
A change was brought about, my friends, after the Sox won Game 4 in the ALS. The humiliating debacle (19-8) of Game 3, and the impending 4-0 sweep had rendered a mood sullener than usual around town, and to come back and win the next in a marathon session was the spark that set the fire blazing. Actually, no, it was merely the kindling. The spark was as follows:
I kept hearing the scores of Game 5 off and on since it began at around 5 PM. The 2-0 score at 7 PM made me brace myself for all the somber nodding I would have to perform the next day. At around 9 pm, my wife (that most unlikely of baseball fans) asked me what the score was. I switched on the telly to catch Bill Mueller tie the score at the bottom of the ninth. I kept the TV on, while trying to finish reading the Suskind article on Dubya in the NYT magazine. My eyes kept straying from this racy piece, and I continued watching inning after inning of masterful pitching by Wakefield, tension filled moments when Johnny slipped that easy bunt. The game, as they say, sucked me right in. After 5 hours of a grueling game (I'll admit I only watched the last 2 1/2), I felt somewhat like the 16 year old teen on a late hot night in June 1983, as the incredulous BBC commentator said "INDIA HAS WON THE WORLD CUP".. (Okay, it wasn't quiet the same feeling, but there are two things to consider -- One, I am no longer a 16 year old teen but a 36 year old balding dude. Two (in retrospect), the SOX had never before beaten the Yankees in the playoffs.
The other admission at this point is that I did not really watch any of the remaining games fully. However, just turning on the TV at night was reminiscent of walking in with the other 119,999 people into the Eden Gardens Cricket Grounds in Calcutta (that's Gah-dens, as of yesterday 8-). To be able to go to sleep in peace, knowing that it's 4 - zip at the bottom of the 6th. To slip into slumber, watching that Damon send yet another into the stands, and its 8-1 at the top of the 7th. Here again my wife, that most latent of fanatical baseball fans, would keep a firm grip on the clicker, and watch the game long past my departure to dreamland.
A fella told me recently that he watches sports since it represents "Reality TV" for him. He said the games (and back stories) have it all - drama, tension, fear factor, idols, trading spouses 8-).. I finally saw the logic behind his words. The legends behind this match-up are numerous and unforgettable. 1918, the Babe's piano in the lake, Billy Buckner, the inevitable meltdowns and all the other "curse" related legends. Then there are the game related tales -- the "no-other-team-came-back-from-3-down" statistic, the tethered tendon, the Bellhorn miracle homer, and the A-Rod riot police incident. This is all that is needed to transform a slow, uneventful activity by a bunch o' baccy chewin' buckeroos into an epic involving the Fellowship of the Ring. Yes, Frodo lives!!!!
A fan is thus born -- perhaps not the most enlightened fan, and one who will continue to make many baseball gaffes ("So how many steps does the pitcher usually run before throwing the ball?") but a fan nonetheless. I don't know what it is. Some attachment to Boston, maybe? I am not completely immobile yet, but my roots do feel a slight tug from that granite-gravel laced soil on which my house sits. Whatever it is, the thrill is back, at least good enough for a 36 year old who is not able to stay up much past 11.
Go SOX!!!

2000-02-07T16:15:00.000-05:00

Georgia on my mind

1997-11-01T18:03:00.000-05:00

Another one from the archives: Written circa October'97 after I returned from Belarus --> India --> and then hit the Bible belt.
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The black side of my project experience in the former Soviet Union of Belarus is now clear to me. I suspect, alas, that my professional life may have hit it's peak of excitement a little too early. That is not to say that there are no more challenges or lessons, but wacky adventures in bizarro-land are going to be hard to come by. (I joke, though I recently got an e-mail from my interpreter who says that though he is not willing to immigrate at the age of 45, it may be a wiser option than jail, for it seems that premier Lukashenko has gone off the left edge, being entangled in a skirmish with Yeltsin and the Duma at the same time). The point is that a project in rural Georgia with noveau-yuppified gasping-in-the-wake-of-recent-multiculturalism red-necks leaves little scope for adventure, the high life here refers to golf tournaments. It is a great place for Chandreyee to practice driving, and of course there was the man in the Macon mall who offered me phone numbers of a service that will (for a price) deliver jalebi and alu paratha to my apartment. However, other than being stopped by an MP (that’s military police, not member of any sabha-shabha) for doing 30 miles per hour in a 20 mile zone, and being caught without proper insurance requirements (I had left my rental car agreement in the office and the officer gave me a warning and an order to go back and pick up my papers), life has been slow. Where is the espionage, the cloak and dagger days? When I was severely warned by the Air Force against taking ANY pictures of aircrafts, my heart leapt. I later realized that you could stand immediately outside of the Base fence and take photographs, as many as you want, B&W, color, Kodak Advantix !!! In front of me, a lake drained of water stinks of dead fish, while people scurry to put de-odorifying powder. The resident ducks have all vanished (the lake is called Duck Lake). Some of the site workers have seen diamond back rattlesnakes, one was stung by a bee, I sit and watch cobwebs form on book-shelves.

I persevere to make the most of it. I play tennis (which is a nice change in late October, it’s been a while that I have spent winter in a warm clime). I also went to a REAL country fair. We dined on corn-dogs and elephant ears, washed down with fresh lemonade. We saw cows the size of baby stegosauruses at a milking competition with mechanical “milkers”. A huge barn was full of llamas of every variety, and rabbits had arrived from Angora, Australia and the Himalayas. I lost a suitable amount of money trying to win soft toys and argued with stall owners. On a minor note, I packed in a little excitement at the Ferris wheel, aka the Gentle Giant (I have a weak stomach !). Of course, they did not sell any beer at the fair. As a colleague mentioned “I’m surprised that there wasn’t a big Baptist church set-up in the middle”. On the main street in Warner Robins, the slogan on the Lutheran Church says “I read the last page of the Bible, and it’s all going to turn out fine.”
Amen to that !!

From Belaurus, with Love

1997-07-10T16:45:00.000-04:00

The last week is turning out to be better than I expected. The trainees are fairly in control of the equipment, and I spend my time walking around the base taking photographs. Other times, I am in the control house, where I tend to give advice in order to maintain the image of my usefulness. Sometimes I type such as now. Else I listen to their banter through the interpreter.

Anatoly gave Franz some money to buy cigarettes. Franz came back without any cigarettes. Anatoly asked him: Where is the money? Franz said: Inside the bags. Anatoly asked: What bag? Franz said: the bags under my eyes.

While we were all laughing, Franz said: I have a head-ache, the money is gone. Vodka is shit (Vodka kaka). It is unfortunate how much people drink here. Most people drink since morning, vodka is cheaper than chewing gum, and apparently the situation is much worse in Russia. It is a nation with a terrible drinking problem, which I fail to understand given that the male/female ratio is 1:5.

I am sitting eating wild strawberries and blueberries that Vladimyr picked in the forest ten minutes ago. This is the right time of the year, and the blueberries are delicious. Also, at this time of the year, Russians look for mushrooms with which they make great soup. (Supa gribi). When Russians go for a walk in the forest, nobody looks at the sky, but all eyes are on the ground, searching for mushrooms.

So our training is a success. First, the site visit by conference attendees was a huge hit, although the system ran on borrowed power and jerry-rigged starters. Then, the trainees learnt to use and operate the unit, albeit with minor hiccups. It is my belief that they may even trouble-shoot soon. As to their future after we leave, no one knows. I have bought 30,000 liters of diesel and will leave it for them to use. I doubt if any more will be purchased later, in a country where pilots join and retire from the army without flying a plane because of lack of fuel. I have tried to advise these guys on how to convert this technology into an asphalt plant maybe that will provide them with some stable income.

Independence Day

1997-07-05T16:45:00.000-04:00

This may well be my last note on Belarus before I leave, unless I can sit down and re-write the weird story of the site visit and the conference banquet. It’s pretty much my last e-mail session from Minsk, the grand old city which celebrated it’s 930th year this week-end. I am glad, cutting and re-connecting wires in hotel rooms was just a bit much. I’m also glad, because like I said before, it will be good to get back. It has become noticeable, sometimes during the middle of the work day, I let off this statement “I wanna go home”. The Byelorussians are concerned and they say “Shouvik, you may want to go home now, but in a week, you will miss this place.” I know they are right, and my statement is half in jest. It is a curious phenomenon for me. In reality, what is home? I have never hankered for home, because I move from one place to set up in another semi-hotel accommodation. Home is where I hang my hat. Talking about hats, I bought two here.

The first hat is the leather working class hat. It reminds me of the one that Yuri Zhivago’s brother wore (played by Alec Guinness in the movie version) when he assimilated among the marching crowds. My interpreter does not like me to wear it, as with the fall of the Soviet Union, class distinctions are back. It looks cool. I used to wear it during the days that I needed a haircut, but did not have the time to find a barber. I almost need another haircut now, may wait till the USA for that one.

The other one is a black hat worn by cadets in the Naval Academy, during Soviet days. I bought it in Lenin’s hills off MGU as a present for someone. It has the red Soviet star and three cyrillic “slavs”. I was thinking about buying one of those really Russian looking fur hats, but finally gave up the idea.

I attended the parade in Minsk. It was pouring, so clutching an umbrella I set out for independence square. Along the way, I got stopped by policemen, who had cordoned off the street leading to it. I was unable to understand a word they said, so I stood there till a group of people came marching down the road carrying flags and banners. The militia opened the road for them taking care to still cordon off the rest of us. In a jiffy, I slipped through the police line, joined the march and hiding my face with my umbrella went down the road, in solidarity with people with scores of medals on their chest, clutching pictures of Stalin, and carrying the old Red Soviet “hammer an sickle” flag. Soon, we were at Independence Square. I am, of course, making my trip to the square sound like a James Bond movie. Although factually, this is exactly how it happened, I don't think the militia really cared if I went or not. They were just following orders.

The parade was quiet impressive, as parades go. When it was over, I walked over to Victory Square where they have the eternal flame for the Unknown Soldier. Atop the monument is the famous star, which has been awarded to only five people, Stalin and Zhukanov among them. Four young cadets stood at each corner of this monument, while little children played among the flowers that are placed on the monument perhaps every day. There must have been a million people on the street. I walked through Gorky Park, and Ivan Kupala Park, amidst the music and gaiety. There was a theatre going on, with men dressed in armor and fighting dragons, with a guy in the background playing a bagpipe. Just a very lazy afternoon, and of course me without a camera. I drank gin and tonic with new found friends, university students who spoke a little English. They sell this mixture in both bottles and cans, and it is a favorite among young women here. The alcohol percent is lower than a regular gin and tonic. The Byelorussian name (note: Byelorussian and Russian are two fairly different languages, and Byelorussian is spoken only in very rural areas. Everyone else speaks Russian, some with Byelorussian accent) for it is “djin djer tonic” which I managed to pronounce correctly after a few attempts. To do it perfectly, one has to drink a few gin/tonics first.

The city has gone crazy for a few days. There is the Minsk marathon, the fireworks every night, music in the park and other ethnic entertainment. The fireworks were really very good, my favorite being the one which exploded creating a white circle with a red star in the center. Way cool!!!!! People throng the streets, till about 4 am. Many among them are extreme pianitsa’s, who my friends describe as “crazy Russian boys”. Actually, they said “Kray-zee Rush-an bow-ez”. My new theory is that communication here is simple. A lot of these people know broken English. I know about 50 odd Russian words. The only other thing I need to do is tune my English accent to make it palatable to the Russian ear. And it seems to be working in moderation.

I walk by the Stella monument, dedicated to the mother of dead war heroes. Bright flags of every color adorn the steps leading up to it. Stella looks like any other statue/mural in the former Soviet Union. Glorious face held high, with a beatific smile. I am on my way to a farewell dinner for our team. We eat at the Spanish Corner Restaurant across from McDonalds, two of the cities most expensive restaurants. (McDonalds is not that bad). I mail five post cards that I have written, and then stop at a Post Office to buy more stamps. I realize then that I am being charged more for the stamps, and find out that the postage has gone up since June 20th. I have thrown five post cards into a black hole. At the little post office in Postavy, perhaps nobody has sent a letter outside the Soviet Union for decades.

I ended the night drinking some vodka with friends, who follow the strange custom of buying a bottle of orange juice and vodka, and will drink the orange juice, then swig some vodka and then drink orange juice again. Why not mix it in one glass?

When I leave Belarus, the following changes will happen:
• Bedtime will shift from the average one a.m. to 11 p.m.
• Daily sleep quota will rise from 5 hours to 8&1/2 hours.
• Vodka consumption will take an incredible dive down (My blood potato level will decrease)
• Will no longer trade vodka for spare parts.
• Will start having milk again. (I went through two months with bare minimum dairy products.)
• No more cabbage, beet and fish for breakfast.
• Raw meat intake may all but disappear. (I will still try and eat caviar).
• My disco attendance will be badly affected (though in truth I have gone to a disco maybe once in the last two weeks.)
• Will not hear any more diatribes on Lukashenko from drunken people on the street. (Lou-ka-shane-ko is beeg bool-sheet)
• Lose my Russian accent.

Life, in short, will really suck. ;-)

All Men Are Equal in Poverty

1997-07-02T16:43:00.000-04:00

Moscow is a grand old city. The city has changed significantly since I was last here, for one it is extremely crowded now. It resembles New York in some ways. It is also beastly expensive. We arrived and sat at a small cafe for breakfast, of pancakes with caviar, eggs and orange juice (actually, only I ate caviar, the rest had pancakes with butter, not being too enthused about fish eggs in the morning). The bill came to $60 for five people! Since then we always checked the menu first, but it was still harsh. Our hotel, the Belgrad, was right off the Arbat. The street is lined with stalls selling tourist trinkets, artists selling paintings and cartoonists. Its cobbled streets give it the European look, not really found elsewhere in Moscow. It seemed to be a good place to be at night, but it poured the only night I spent in Moscow, and I went to sleep reluctantly at 11 PM, watching Bernie Shaw of CNN talk about the “Hong-Kong Handover”. What will they think of next? The Congo Chaos!!

I have always tried to assimilate. Well, at least externally. I was one of the boys at Kharagpur, for sure, wearing rubber slippers to class. At Boston, I wore a tweed jacket with leather patches, hung out on Harvard Square reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In Alabama, I drank beer and shot pool with the good old boys, all dressed in Harley Davidson T’s. In California, I drink mango smoothies with 50 gm of bee pollen, wear shades and look cool. In Red Square, Moscow, it was easy to assimilate. The area was full of tourists taking photographs, and I joined the gang. Click - St. Vasilis. Click - A group of young Russian militia men. Click-Young girl dancing in front of Lenin’s mausoleum. Snap-umbrella shop in the GUM. Click-Tsar cannon inside the Kremlin. Click - Post perestroika Russian rebel youth in torn jeans. Bang-Accident with hawker selling Moscow T-shirts). The camera I am using now has no zoom feature, and I try to create the frame by walking around with my eye to the eye-piece. I have run into Byelorussian peasants, street-walkers in Minsk, ADL honchos, Naroch tourists. My favorite Russky phrase is “pzhalsta, prastitye” (please, excuse me).

The old Soviet architecture is striking. If Van Der Rowe (spelling?) visited Moscow, he must have gone back feeling ill. This is definitely not “less is more”, this is “big is beautiful”. The main building at the Moscow State University stands like a staggering Goliath, by mere presence crushing all the applicants that stand before it, waiting for results from the entrance exams. It probably has more rooms than the entire Kharagpur and Duke University campus buildings did. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs is monumental, as I look at it from my hotel window. The unique style, with the star on top. The Kremlin has the highest church in the whole of the former Soviet Union. It was impossible to build a higher one in the land. I like the word “impossible” the way it is mentioned by a former Soviet Union resident. Vladimyr said that it was impossible to construct a higher church. Why impossible, I asked him. Well, it was made a law that no one could build a higher one. A physical capacity was reduced to null by a mere law. They tried to build a higher church in the Ukraine, but were forced, forced to reduce the height of the cross in order to meet the decree.

At the Moscow State University, all buildings are entered from the side doors, the front ones are barred. This happened from the time of the October Revolution. At that point, only the gentry entered from the main door, stepping on plush carpeting. The doors were blocked since then, and all men were created equal. Dave asked Vladimyr “So Lenin never really understood the concept, did he? All men are equal, but Lenin was more equal than others.” Vladimyr said “No, Lenin understood, in his special way. The way is that “All men will be equal in poverty”.

I also visited the Exhibition for Achievements of the Nations. This place, with very striking architecture, and many beautiful fountains, have buildings that were dedicated to exhibitions , as I mentioned before, of achievements in the fields of physics, chemistry, education, agriculture, metallurgy, and the cosmos. The place is now a giant “mela”, selling JVC TVs and Vidal Sassoon shampoo. The saddest is the building dedicated to Cosmos. It is almost empty, with one end having the remnants of a magnificent model of the Lada, and a towering photograph of Yuri Gagarin. It used to be a great museum, but now there is no money to heat it in winter. The place is a little dilapidated, and looks like an old hangar. Actually, it looks a little like the missile silo that I crawled into over at Kostiny. It is sad because this is truly one of their achievements and a lack of funding has lead to the decay of this monument. On the wall is a quote by Lenin which I mis-phrase (it was in Russian). “Man has learnt and will continue to learn many secrets of the environment and through his knowledge will strengthen the same environment”.

In Moscow, they consider Minsk to be provincial, which may be true. Also, they hold it in very low esteem from an aesthetic point. “Stalin architecture” said the street vendor on the Arbat.

Sasha who

1997-07-01T16:37:00.000-04:00

It was fortunate that I packed my umbrella. It rains here almost every single day, some days a lot more than others. So it was that I, brolly in hand, made my way towards McDonalds in downtown to have a quick and cheap lunch. I woke up at around noon, and only because the maid wanted to clean my room. Last night was way late. After an excellent dinner of lagma and plof at the "Uzbegisthan", Don and I went to the Art Cafe Disco in the Trade Union Building. It was not a good night, as no one really wanted to dance with us. Finally, I joined a group of people, who turned out to be students celebrating their graduation from the Minsk Institute Physics Department. I sensed a good party in this, and immediately decided to buy them some champagne on a congratulatory note. Many drinks later, I was discussing Lenin and Lukashenko, Bill Gates and Chicago Bulls, India and Belarus, with these students. In true nineties fashion, we exchanged e-mail addresses, though only one of them had access. (hotmail.com, just like so many of y'all). As I made my way back to the hotel Belarus past McDonalds on main street, through Old Town on the cobbled roads and finally by the cemented banks of the Villye river, it was 4 a.m. There was not a soul on the streets, and I suddenly realized that it was Summer Solstice -- the shortest night of the year. This enabled me to say that I spent all night at the disco. I went in at 10:30, while it was still dusk, and out at 4 a.m., when dawn had broken. I checked the time on my newly purchased Soviet military watches that are now publicly available since perestroika, from the Vostok Military Watch Company for $18. It is a good watch, though I have to remember to wind it up daily.

I had written a long piece last week-end. While trying to retrieve it for e-mail, I found that I lost it all due to something called "Unrecoverable Disk Error". I knew that in some form I would pay the price for buying pirated software here.... Anyhow, I was in a funny mood that day, which has abated some owing to passage of time. It is just that last week in some way was like the end of the project, and I had a dull feeling. The grand finale took place in the form of the site visit by all the attendees of the fourth annual environmental conference at the Academy of Sciences in Belarus. It was a grand success for us, though not without plenty of alarms. Now, it is left to finish our training and there is still a good three weeks left. Last week though, it felt like it was all over. I was mulling over such thoughts while lazing next to the Afghanistan Memorial on a sunny day by the river, and I fell asleep on a park bench. When I woke up, there were about 10 wedding parties, all of whom come to the memorial to place flowers and take the ceremonial picture. I, as usual, was without a camera.

Like the song says, "Lately it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip it's been". This project started for me back in the days when I was unemployed in Boston. Since then, I have trekked forth across the US to San Francisco, then Alabama, then back to San Francisco, a trip to Denver, and finally in Belarus. In the middle of all this, I even got married. I have stayed in Holiday Inns, Comfort Inns, You name it Inns, but nothing beats the Gastinitsya Turista Naroch where every night is Disco Night, and our bar is full of live adventure, drunken men and women doing absurd things, we trying to compete with them. Dogs running around the bar, the bartender pulls our beers when she sees any of us walking in through the door, "our" table is almost always left empty for us, though of late some upstart Mafia type tourists have been spotted sitting there. This may be because we spend a lot of time nowadays in the Sauna, from which I have a blister on my ear (120 degrees C is not what is used to be). Anyhow, to get back, I used to spend once a week involved in a ritual teleconference with people from across the USA. It was the most boring and pointless exercise imaginable, and I used to turn on the speaker phone, put it on mute and do other work. All of a sudden I met all of them, yes, ALL of them, during the conference. I used to hear names being dropped as if they were colleagues down the hall. Suddenly, they came alive as I entered Belarus: Doropyevich, definitely the most sensible member of the Ministry of Extra-ordinary Affairs, although he did a pretty good Macarena at the banquet, Chepyk the Mayor, at whose parties the table are set with two vodka bottles per person, Colonel Levsha, who will always break out into deep rumbling song at any vodka-fest, even inside a crowded restaurant with strangers, and Eugene Borovko, the only English speaker in this crowd. He was involved with the program since its inception five years ago in some retreat out in New Hampshire, maybe Bretton Woods.

Finally here, my worlds have collided. Now, when I hear some music and start tapping my feet, I do not know if I knew the song in the US or heard it in Belarus... I have my own favorite Rusky pop songs. We spend our days doing fairly strange and irregular things during the course of work (which I am going to describe later), and though we used to joke about it earlier, it's become normal now. I go around Minsk 9 to 5 on Fridays running personal and business errands, mostly without interpreters or any assistance. Yes, worlds have indeed collided. I know Minsk better than I know San Francisco, though I have spent a combined total of 12 days in the city. I know where to have a good haircut (I have had one), where the best little coffee shop is, which bars to avoid, which short cuts to take, where to change lines on the subway, which place to eat khalodnik in, and where the best sashlik is served. I know it when there is an exhibit of Chagal at the Fine Arts Museum, and walking down the gallery, I even see familiar faces -- Don West, Lyena (daughter of Vladimyr, our interpreter) and the man from whom I buy pirated software.

Incidentally, talking about Chagal, he is from Vitebsk, which is near Postavy. Some years ago, the city of Vitebsk denounced any affiliation with Chagal, and Yuri Pan, because they were Jews. They actually sawed his portion off a bust comprising of major Byelorussian artists, in a public ceremony.

We describe restaurants by their proximity to landmarks. (Conversations are as follows: "well, we could meet by the IBB, and maybe go on to Bergamo's for dinner. If you are in old town, make a left by the footbridge and cut across the park. I'll see you in front of the Circus.) I arrive in town wearing faded jeans and dirty sneakers, and am invited to a party at Levsha's house... Nyet problyem -- I am at the G.U.M. sans interpreter, buying an outfit for the occasion, through the universal languages of signs and calculators. My Russian is improving. At least I read decently. I have been to the opera, and at the first chance will go to the ballet. I have ridden the metro, the tram, the trolley bus, though as yet not during rush hour. (It's very much like Calcutta then...).

I had a date in Naroch. Shasha Batanov is one of the interpreters for ADL. I met him first in Alabama many months ago. He is an extremely jovial guy, reminds me a lot of Selim Sanin, my Turkish friend from Duke. We had initially requested for him to be our interpreter, but ADL pre-empted us. Anyhow, last week, I went to the disco, fresh from the sauna (the sauna sessions are interesting - one enters a blisteringly hot and dry room, sits there till one can no longer endure the heat, jumps out, takes a shower, plunges into the swimming pool, and then after some swimming/wading/ relaxation, back to the little hot room. This continues for an hour and a half, about 4 rounds). At the disco, I met Tanya, Shasha's wife, who informed me that he was baby-sitting, and she really wanted to dance. So we danced till the disco shut and the next morning I informed Shasha that while he was in his room, I danced the night away with his wife. He told me "I know, I have heard and I must have my revenge... So, tonight, I will go to the disco and dance with you!!!!” (This makes a better story told, because he really has a good way of speaking...)

While on the subject Shasha, during WW 2, one of every 4 Byelorussians were killed. For new born babies, one of every 2 was named Alexander = Shasha. My opinion is that if one is in trouble in Belarus, it is easier to obtain assistance by shouting "Shasha" because for any situation or circumstance, there has to be one of them around. Besides, I do not really know the Russian for "help". We have four Shasha's in our group, and they have been nick named for clarity. Shasha Vidayev from Moscow who works for ADL is Shasha Yankee, Shasha Batanov is called Shasha Bellaju, after the name of a new product we are planning to help him launch in the USA -- an alcoholic drink from birch sap, Sasha Egdakimov, another interpreter, is called Shasha Coffee, for he has managed to find a way to brew some at HQ in Kostinyi base, where the power supply is irregular and there is no running water. Shasha coffee also introduced us to the sauna, so essentially, during the day he is mild mannered Shasha coffee, but at night he changes into Banya-man (banya is the Russian version of sauna). Finally, there is Shasha Lukianov, our driver, who is called Shasha rectifier. The story behind the name is one of the best till date, and it is what I typed last week, only to lose to equipment malfunction. I will have to do it again at a later time. Other than that, I have met about 50 more Shasha's.

I have to leave to go to another of Levsha's singing parties. Let me end with a new one from the trainees:
A man is being trained to be a chauffeur. He is shown the car, the interiors, the controls, the steering mechanism, the engine, the pistons and cylinders. Then, he is told to present any questions that he may have. He says "just one. Where do you attach the horse?”

Non-Ferrous Metals

1997-06-30T16:39:00.000-04:00

The Old Soviet Union can be described as a mighty statue, let’s say a statue of Lenin. Standing high and tall, arm outstretched forward, as one can find at the Va Da En Ka in Moscow. When one attempts to blow up a statue like that, it usually never crumbles to dust. Bits and pieces stick out, such as the legs, and other parts are found scattered over the ground. Such it is with the former Soviet Union. You can take an old communist to Starbucks, but he is not going to easily forsake his vodka for a Latte. Old communist apparatchiks still rule everywhere, but under a different label. Much more water has to flow on the Volga before change really sets in.

I took the night train from Minsk to Moscow. The train is wonderful, nice clean with tiny compartments that sleep four. It has the look of the inside of an old English tea shop (I cannot explain why), and each compartment has a uniformed conductor who serves tea/coffee on request. Most people stand on the corridor during the trip as the windows inside compartments do not open, and it gets quite stuffy. The train leaves Minsk at 9 p.m., and stops at Orsaw, Smolensk and one other stop that I cannot recall. It did not matter anyway, because I was fast asleep before the first one. The previous three nights, I slept 3, 5 and 3 hours respectively. Sad to say, the story of Shasha rectifier did not have a happy ending, but thanks to some luck, and of course expenditure of some more money, things were back to normal. For each of these occasions, I need to go out and party. When things are bad, I need to get out and gain energy. When things are good, I need to go out and expend energy. It is the ordinary days that do nothing for me. Unfortunately, such days are few and far in between in Belarus -- especially because of the project.

Our generator set has been giving trouble since almost day one. The final blow in the coffin was when an internal voltage regulator failed, causing the generator set to be completely useless. Upon diagnosis, we called the representatives in the US, France and UK. The best answer they all could give was to provide some external excitation voltage till a new part was available. Since we were pressed for time (this was pre-conference) we first tried to fix the regulator. Our mission took us to an incredible flea market in Minsk, where one could buy Tsar gold coins, faucets, automotive parts (and automobiles), CDS, dogs, goldfish and every electronic component, sort of like Chadni Chowk. We bought a host of parts, but could not find all that we needed. It was then that our driver Shasha said that he might have the parts we need. Thus begins the story of Shasha Rectifier.

At Shasha’s house, we started looking at capacitors, diodes, resistors, by the bagful, catalogued by sizes, stored in tin cans/wooden boxes. It was unbelievable. When we could not find something, Vladimyr, our interpreter said, “Oh you should have come to my place. I have capacitors with 200 mF capacity...” I am willing to bet that you stop the first fifty people on the street in the USA or India, not more than 20 (if you are lucky) will be able to identify a diode. In the former SU, if you are short of capacitors, just knock on a door. Any door. If they don’t have the right farads, then the neighboring house is bound to have it.

The bad news is that we tried to fix the regulator but could not. The alternative was to provide an external source. We would have to connect a supply power to a variable transformer, and then adapt it for our needs.

The Variable Transformer: Enter Victor, the former Missile Base Chief Electrician. We explained our needs to him. Victor said that it was possible, and then broke off into a long unintelligible string of Russian. Vladimyr provides this translation: “Victor said that it is easy, but nothing is for free, you know”. So what is the fee? Victor makes the familiar Byelorussian sign of tapping his throat with his middle finger, and then indicating four. Thus, we purchase a variable lab transformer for four bottles of vodka.

I recall when I wrote this story for the first time, a week after it occurred; I was still excited and thrilled. I added many exclamations at this point. Now, it is passé. I have bought transformers for vodka, exchanged power tools for propane cylinders, and paid laborers with work gloves. Victor 2, who enters the story later, gains entry into a power station, by bribing the guard with a bottle of vodka.

The Retrofit: We now have 110 V AC which we are able to vary between 0 and max, but we still needed to convert it into DC. Enter Shasha, our driver. WE first looked for a bread board, which we made by thinly slicing plywood from the scrapped crates where we had shipped our supplies in. Next, Shasha makes a half wave rectifier for us, using a butane soldering iron. And it works. We extend a line from the control trailer to the generator set. The generator set is functioning again, except that some fellow, whose name is Shouvik, has to spend his time next to a transformer, working a knob to keep a stable voltage every time we start or shut down a big motor. And the stage is set for our dog and pony show, during the so-called important site visit by the conference attendees.

Later, I tried to get the regulator fixed in Minsk, by a friend of Shasha rectifier, who owns his own work shop. A week later, I am told that is fixed and Victor 2 (a label for convenience) has offered to come and field test it for us. That Sunday, I get back to Naroch with a new team member. Ron Mis of ADL is livid. Apparently, what I am doing is “highly irregular” (I had not heard that word in years). I cannot get him a room, or get food ordered for him. Thus, I have a new room mate, who shares my meals. Lucky that I skip breakfast, and lunch is essentially a free for all in a big room.

It rains the next two days, and the regulator still does not work. We try to fix it, by setting a tarpaulin cover and working underneath it. Victor 2 alternates between soldering under the makeshift roof, testing with a portable oscilloscope, and trying to get rid of a headache by reading the manual. The ADL team is on my back, demanding that I order a new regulator, and finally to my utter regret, I succumb. I had faith in Victor, and if I had time, I would have persisted. Unfortunately, I bit the political bullet and ordered a new one for 1400 US$. Victor 2 refuses to take any money, although he has spent nine days working on the unit, including 2 on site. Three days later, I have a new unit which is installed and things are back to normal. I then get another call from Victor 2, who said that he has managed to fix it. How could you know? I ask. He said that he had gotten into a power plant, where he found a generator set like ours and tested the regulator using that generator. It cost him one bottle of vodka to conduct this test. {I sent him a bottle of Vodka later}

It is almost over now. The trainees are doing well, and I am actually looking forward to leaving. This week-end will be nice, as it is the Independence Day week-end of Belarus (and the US) and we are in Minsk for 4 &1/2 days. They have fireworks on the river and Vodka on the streets. Nazdarovya!!! About 14 days later, I am off to the U.S.

Sasha-Coffee, the interpreter with the blackest sense of humor, told me the following, after I mentioned to him the number of bootleg software CDs that I purchased here:

So, you are finally picking up Belarusian habits. You are smuggling. Soon you will start stealing.
Ok, so what next.
Then, you will start trading in non-ferrous metals.
After that?
You will start drinking heavily.
And then?
You will begin to like it!!!!

Big Blue

1997-06-29T16:36:00.000-04:00

Last night must have been the most enjoyable party of my stay in Belarus till date. It was not a big gathering which made it cozy. There was Colonel Levsha and his daughter Tanya; Colonel Borovko, his wife and two daughters (Katya and Dasha), Sergei (an informal ECC employee in Minsk) his wife and baby daughter and then about six of us. It started with a whole table full of hors d'ourves, and I pigged out on the caviar. I have developed quite a taste for it, particularly the red ones which are available only in this region. After many toasts later, we stopped for a smoking break. The banquet was at a restaurant called the Billiard Club, and they had reserved the whole place for us. Don West, who had missed the earlier banquet, asked me if the appetizers were all we would get, as this part of the meal lasted for an hour and a half. I told him that there was more, since I had already been there and done it. He was skeptical.

After the smoking break, we went back for some more appetizers, and then started playing Russian pool, or billiards. It was great, although the tables are different and much more difficult than in the US. Each game lasted at least half an hour, and the rules took a little while to get used to. Then we went back to the table. Eugene Borovko had produced a guitar which he played, as well as his two daughters and Sergei. They were all excellent and the whole company sang songs. And Fyodor Levsha sang. His booming baritone took over the place, he is really good. Finally, at 11:30, the main course was served. Don, by this time, was giving me dirty looks as he thought the meal was over, he was actually convinced during billiards itself. I had the last laugh, and he said "I guess you know your Byelorussian banquet norms ". After dinner we danced for a little while and drank some more vodka. Then I went back to the hotel Belarus.

Another tragic post soviet syndrome came to light on the way back. I was given a car to take me back although I had wanted to walk (it's about 10/15 minutes). However, Ron Mis of ADL was in no shape to travel, which made me finally understand something. ADL had given us a memo of do's and don’ts before we got here, and one item was No Drinking. We had laughed at it, and looking at Ron, I guess they have their own employees in mind when they write it. Anyhow, on the drive back, I started talking to the driver, and it turned out that he was the coach for the National Rowing Team and he was in Atlanta for the Olympic Games. He is now driving me around Minsk.

I had a pleasant Sunday morning as Tanya Levsha and Dasha Borovko had offered to take me around Minsk. I treated them to McDonalds (which turned out to be a huge deal for these giggly teens). Then we went back to Naroch, making our usual pit stop at Vladimir’s house to drink coffee with him and his wife Natasha. I am a little nervous, as tomorrow will bring a hopefully happy ending to a long adventure that we have been having (this is the story of Shasha rectifier), and if it is solved, the project is just gravy from here on. I already typed this story to lose it to unrecoverable disk error, so will wait to type it till tomorrow. Just to add to suspense, we have imported Victor from Minsk, who will be sharing my room in Naroch till we have a solution.

The usual way back to Naroch, through the fields that I have watched being tilled, seeded, hayed and has now little rows of potato plants coming up; through the rolling countryside, speckled by the militia every so often; through little towns where girls wait at bus stops with golden locks, glistening in the sunshine. Little streets where babushkas sit on park benches and gossip. Dogs that chase our Citroen van. Dense forests and open fields with the blue and yellow wild flowers, the nizabutka. Fyodor Levsha sang a song yesterday, comparing a woman to a nizabutka who he saw tolka dlye (only for) minutka, but he will remember her nafsyegda (forever).

I remember a story by Kundera where a man is suddenly overwhelmed by his own achievement. So much so that he raises his hands up to the sky and says "I am Bobby Fisher". To me, this had seemed so classically East European, where idols are so different. No one wants "to be like Mike". The superhuman is a chess genius, incredible, so very soviet or soviet like, the land of the game of shak-matee.

This morning, I had called Shasha, our driver. He was not home, and it was his wife Lesha who answered the phone. She spoke no English, but I understood that he was not home. It was really urgent for me to leave a message for him, so I started talking in English. Then, realizing the haplessness of the situation, I laughed and laughed and I could hear her laughing at the other end. I raked my memory for all the Russian words that I know, and continued till she finally said "Ya ponemayu (I understand). And I knew she did, for she confirmed my message in what was much more proper Russian. As I hung up, I am left with a sense of supreme achievement. I raise my hands to the skies and say "I am Bobby F...." but stop. Times have changed, technology has advanced. I am not Fisher, Korshnoi, Karpov or even Kasparaov. I raise my hands again and say "I am Big Blue!!!”

Bill Gates won't be happy

1997-06-17T16:35:00.000-04:00

I spent the last two days wiring. What that basically means is that I connected cables to electrical motors, and terminated them on the control or power panel. Quite a low brainer job, so it gave me plenty of time to sit around (the days are nice and sunny) and dream about Chandreyee. Occasionally, I thought also of the situation in Belarus:

Belarus has been de-certified by the UN for human rights violation. The reasons for this are mostly due to the action by the governments on people who organize rallies and other forms of protests. In particular, a newspaper editor and her father were brutally beaten and this was demonstrated on State TV. The European community is willing to let Belarus back into the fold if they have an elected parliament, but Madeline Albright, the US Secretary of State has put down her foot and said "NYET!!” Human rights violation.... China has an extremely similar track record, but has a most favored nation status. But China has to offer cheap organized labor. Belarus has nothing to offer but poverty and complete chaos. Oh yes, and pirated software.

I bought software here that easily cost a few thousand in the original, for six dollars. I am sure Bill Gates considers that as human rights violation.

The big show for us is on Wednesday. The US Ambassador and a whole bunch of Byelorussian officials will be here. Lukashenko has declined the offer. Our friends from Arthur D Little are doing the most significant work of the project: they are setting up the outhouses. That is a mighty strange thing. I forgot to mention this earlier, but the entire Kostinyi base has no running water. No wash basin in site anywhere. This is sad. It used to be a grand place; I am sure, in the soviet times. The Russians left and whatever they could take went with them. The rest were scrapped by the locals. The few buildings that are intact form about 10% of the total. It is like a ruin, with gawky Soviet architecture. The silos stand like huge white elephants. And there is no running water. I have as yet never washed my hands before lunch. The trainees use gasoline from the can. I am bracing myself to do the same, wondering which is worse...

But now the outhouses are here, and the show is almost set. We have entered the last phase of this three year project, which is usually "praise and honor for non-participants." It is ridiculous, as all the equipment will be scrapped for material value the day after we leave. And rightly so, for Belarus cannot have an agenda for soil clean-up. What they could have done is to form a crack team and go after projects in East Germany or Poland for they can offer competitive labor rates. But the problem is that the Soviet Union produced Physicists, Mathematicians, Chemists, and other learned men, but unfortunately no managers.

Our trainees keep talking about the strangeness off it all, about all this effort and money being invested for a demonstration lasting probably one hour, because all these guys want to do is hit the vodka bottle as soon as possible. And so it is -- a strange thing. The absurdity of life once again. But we go through the motions, and as my friend is wont to say "the pay's the same...”

We were supposed to go to the ballet tonight in Minsk, but unfortunately could not due to work. We did go to the opera one night a few weeks ago. It was Tosca, by Puccini. I actually managed to stay awake through the whole thing; although I must say that it got pretty exciting by the third act. Of course, everyone died, including Tosca, who leapt off the turret. We had sparkling Byelorussian wine, and were unfortunately dressed as Americans (slacks/sneakers).

I like to end each piece with a humorous episode, but cannot recall any at this time. Either I am losing my sense of humor or the cabbage at breakfast is really getting to me.

Chernobyl Children

1997-06-13T16:34:00.000-04:00

There is too much to write, and I am overwhelmed by information and impressions. To top it all, I went to Minsk on a Tuesday, which is highly irregular. Through most of this bumpy ride on country road, I sat and typed (in true yuppie fashion) on my laptop. At the end of it, my computer crashed, and I was unable to save what was almost one hour of typing. I wrote about the countryside, and it was spontaneous as I saw it. The rolling fields, the cow traffic, the quaint bus stops, the cops stopping us every half and hour for no good reason... I will have to re-try this some other day.

At the Naroch hotel, there are about a hundred kids on some sort of a summer camp. I have had diverse information about this, one from our interpreter Vladimyr. I was informed that the kids stay here all year around, and they are all children who were affected by the nuclear radiation - The Chernobyl Children. I play ping-pong downstairs, and since then the kids and I have formed a friendship. The kids range in ages from four to fifteen, and occasionally a few of them come and borrow cigarettes off me. I have also struck up a friendship with a couple of the teachers. Though conversation is cumbersome, we manage to communicate and they sort of shrieked when I asked about Chernobyl. "No, No" they said, or was it Nyet, Nyet. Anyhow, I gather that they will be leaving on June 4th and are definitely not staying all year. The children are from Gomil, which is south of Minsk and fairly close to the Ukraine border where Chenobyl is.

The first person in Minsk to be informed about Chernobyl was the director of the Nuclear Institute. He lived in a village about 10 km from Minsk (dare I call it a suburb). He informed the community about the incidents and told them to take all necessary precaution about radiation fall out. The man lost his job, and was expelled from the Party. It was only through some amazing luck that he did not go to jail.

Life goes on as usual at the base. Usual, that is, for us. For the rest, this has to be some sort of a rare experience. Life on an environmental construction site is that one does what one has to do to make it happen. In the US, it is easy with all the equipment, hardware, and tech support. Here it has been a challenge, not without the humorous parts. Today, we broke a landing jack on a piece of equipment weighing 35 tons. Luckily, our mechanics were able to open it up and figure out how to fix it, with novel techniques. Standing in the pouring rain, watching mechanics weld a piece of machinery together is passé for me, but not when there is a lot of grease on the unit and it is shooting flames. At 5:30 pm on a Friday, with a festival in town. The amazing part of it is that many of the trainees stayed back to watch our circus, while the tractor pulling the piece had to idle his engine because his battery was short circuited and there is no way to re-start it. Well, except one, if you can give him a push, and he did have a 35 ton trailer attached. As Allen said, "this is not really the way I wanted to learn how that jack works...” The show must go on.

There is a market in Minsk which sells bootleg CDs. Walking down the lanes of stalls, actually, people with CDS in their hands was a trip down IIT days. The music was 70s. Our driver plays ABBA on the car stereo on the way to and from work. I actually remembered all the lyrics.

Walking down the hotel lobby, I saw Igor and Alexander intensely watching a TV show. "What are you guys watching?"
I asked. Without batting an eyelid, without moving a muscle, they replied in unison "television."

Life in the army

1997-06-09T15:58:00.000-04:00

Life is like being in the army. And if you had really been in the army, the whole thing gets very tough from there on. This morning, the trainees were completing some pipes under the supervision of Tom, our mechanic. Anatolyi wanted to do it in some fashion other than the instructions. Finally, Tom told him "Look, out here, Allen is the general, I am the bloody sergeant and you are the private. So, if Allen wants in done in one way, that is the way it is." Vladimyr translated this, and Anatolyi apparently understood. But did he, really? I know that in the Soviet Army, Anatolyi used to be a major. Being a private does not come so easily once you lose the habit.

Our interpreter Vladimyr is out of place in Belarus. He and his wife Natasha are absolutely capitalistic, corporate-minded people. The most interesting news is that Vladimyr once had an accident with a KGP vehicle, and it was post-perestroika. His Mazda, bought in Sweden, was smashed, totaled. Somehow, he managed to sue the KGB, and WON!!

In the heart of Minsk is a grand old building. I went in there once, and walked into an auditorium. Not knowing what was going on, I sat down and after a while, the curtains opened. On the podium, two men and a woman came to the mike one by one and gave speeches. I left pretty soon, though I did faithfully clap after each speaker. Later, I learnt that this was the Trade Union building, a place of not insignificant stature during the old days. We went back there this evening (Saturday). The basement has an Italian restaurant, with very good pizza. On the main floor are a bar & casino and a disco. !!! Standing outside at 9 pm, with the sun still high in the sky, I watched the building with its Greco roman facade, murals on top, with scores of young teens standing on the steps, and the pounding beat shaking the pillars. This is indeed Glasnost.

Yet another trip from Minsk to Naroch. The roads are so beautiful, with rolling meadows and the distant hills. Through dense forests and farmlands travel the highway. Our driver Shasha knows each and every pothole on the trip, and steers right into each one!! I am beginning to feel positively car sick. But I lean back in my seat and watch the dachas with smoke coming out of the chimneys, their patches of land speckled with green houses made of plastic sheets. Every so often the militia stops us, and check license, registration, safety box and fire extinguisher. He asks where we are headed and which year the car was manufactured. Shasha finally said "I am tired of these stupid questions...”. Occasionally, the car slows down and tries to veer through a herd of cows. My friends take photographs of cows, cowherds, dogs and dachas.

Our driver Shasha graduated from the University with a technical diploma, corresponding to an electrical engineering degree. For some years he could not find work and was doing odd jobs. Driving for us is a temp job, which is well-paid but will go once the Nunn Lugar program is over. Shasha now goes to a special institute and is taking a degree in Finance. I think it is great and told him so. In my observation, bankers tend to do much better than engineers. His wife is a geologist and models ground water at a research institute. I told her about Chandreyee who does somewhat similar work. Of course, Lisa (the wife) does not speak English, and I communicate with her in a language that my colleagues call Shouvik-Russian and predict that it will be taught in schools soon. They compare it to Ebonics. Laugh they might, but I am doing well. I am the only person who has managed to successfully order two cups of coffee at breakfast.

Anything to wash down the beet and mayonnaise.

Polish Women

1997-06-07T15:55:00.000-04:00

Our trainees cover a wide cross-section of people. The jewel of the Soviet Union was education, and most of these people are extremely educated. We have PhDs, people with Bachelors (referred to as a diploma here) and field people such as foreman, mechanic etc. They unionized very quickly! The reasons were extremely good. There is no doubt that false promises have been made to these people, as to the length of the program. Also, they as yet do not know what the pay is. They have attended a weeks worth of training, and some of them are on unpaid leave from their current jobs. They DO NOT know what the pay is here!!! Already, they are aware that the program is short-lived, and from the conversation in the corridor (as explained to me by our driver Shasha) the pay situation is not comforting to them either. From reports, they were testing the waters, but come Monday they may give the whole thing a miss. Today is Sunday, and I am in Minsk. When I walk back onto the site at Costyini tomorrow, we may be sans trainees. I shall then take another walk through the missile launching pad and the silos.

The interpreter Vladimyr talks to us all the time about the infernal political situation in Belarus. Prior to our departure, we had received a memo concerning do's and don'ts here. We have already broken them all, except perhaps the one about attending a political rally, but then we have not seen one yet. One major item was that we were to avoid discussing politics and Lukashenko. However, the drivers and the interpreters thrive on this topic. Vladimyr has been telling me about the charter that will be signed between Moscow and Minsk, and Belarus may once again be part of Russia. However, the agenda was too far left and definitely not a Yeltsin choice. The communists are very much for it, Lukashenko also being very much inclined in that direction. This country is still ruled by an iron hand with red rust all over it. A draft charter has been drawn up and was signed yesterday. Is Belarus a part of Russia. No one knows as yet, because the charter was secret, the contents not revealed to anyone. The people of Belarus woke up to a Saturday morning and may have turned Russian, but they do not know yet. When will they know? It is like our trainees. They come to work, not knowing what the pay is. Come pay-day and the mystery will be solved. When is pay day for the Belorussians. I do not know, may be when they file taxes next. I have a theory. Premier Lukashenko is scheduled to visit our site on June 11. If he is absent and Yeltsin is there, then we will know that Belarus is now just another state! We could then spread the word around.

We have become regulars at the bar in Naroch. Every time one of our group walks in, the rest of us yell "Norm!!!". The locals sit at our table, and vice versa. The other day, we came to the brink of causing an international shipping incident.... To prepare for the unknown (in the form of a visit by the customs officer the next day) we had a party. It started at the bar, and finally moved up to my room. There must have been thirty odd people, Russian, Belarusian, American (and of course, I).

Our main joke now is to identify the KGB agent in our group. After the Soviet Union collapsed, all the countries had their agencies re-named. Even Moscow has a different secret service. Only in Belarus is the agency still called the KGB (perhaps they were too lazy to think of a new name). Our driver Igor is a prime candidate. He is tall, lean, speaks decent English, and has almost no hair with an aquiline nose. We tease him about it all the time, so much so that he has accepted his pseudo-status and joined the joke. Hey, where were you Igor ? Oh, I just went up to my room to transmit information to Moscow !!

It got rather cold here, almost in the forties. Not really like the end of May. No more short skirts in Minsk, and my friend Don is heart-broken. His wish was to find a nice girl here who he could marry. He still has 7 more weeks to manage it, but the other day we went out to dinner with Igor's wife. Don bared his heart to her and said that he wants to marry someone who a) is not very big; b) does not smoke and c) is Catholic.. Irina (the wife) exhaled a considerable amount of cigarette smoke and said "I think you should go to Poland".

Belorussian Bits Continued:

1997-06-03T15:52:00.000-04:00

Every country has its set of folk humor. I suppose many of them get lost in the translation, but some of them are priceless. They pass down generations of proletariats, and where to find more proletariats than in a former soviet republic. One has to be present at the right place at the right time to get the full flavor of the stories, and also, one has to find the jokers. I have met the jokers.

This classic one is from Moscow during the Soviet days:

The Politburo pretends that they pay us, and we pretend that we work.

I was trying to assemble a duct work and the pieces were just not coming together. As I sat and tried to figure it out, all who passed by offered their two cents? Frants, the trainee mechanic came up with this little one.

Why is it difficult to make love to a woman in the town square?
Too many people stand around and give advice!!!!

The creme de la creme has to be this one, and this has become our theme joke. Our trainees apparently told this among themselves early on in the project, and it was conveyed to me by Vladimyr...

A foreman and his apprentice went to repair a sewage line. They opened the manhole cover and find it to be full of excrement, a filthy situation if there ever was one. However, the work had to be done, so the foreman dove inside the line. After a minute, he came out and wiping the grime shouted “Get me a set of wrenches". So the trainee ran and got the tools. The foreman went back into the sewage pit. Coming back smelling of manure (or worse), he said "Get me some pliers and wire coil" The trainee complied. And so it went on this way for a couple of hours. Finally, the foreman stepped out of the sewage. He was covered with the sewage contents, and it was caked on his body about an inch thick. His hair was matted, and it seemed that he would forever carry that stench around... Trying to scrape some gook off his face, he told the trainee “You see, unless you work hard and learn the trade; you will just end up passing tools all your life."

And so it is, our trainees walk around and tell each other “Unless you work hard and learn the trade, you will be passing tools all your life".

Our hotel in Naroch has a hall downstairs, where there is a TT table. Most nights, that table is moved to one side, and a DJ cranks the stereo, and the place is a disco with techno Russian and Euro pop, the only song that I recognized was Rasputin (Boney M).
We became friendly with a bunch of school teachers and one night they asked us out to dance. From then on, we went to dance every night the disco opened its doors. We would sit in the bar, tired and ready to drop dead, and the girls would come in and say "Disco, yes, Show-vick,
Doan, Al-en, Bay-er-nie," and if we said "Nyet" they would say "No Nyet, yes...” Finally, they would drag us to the dance hall by force. I have to confess one thing here, all my life I have dreamt of such a situation where girls would come and ask me to dance every night, and if I refused, would grab my arm and drag me... IF I was ever predicted such a future for myself, I would have had visions of Utopia. But we live and learn every day. We get up around six-thirty and go to work; it's almost a 45 minute drive. The weather has been pretty miserable, with intermittent showers which mean I am drenched by 5 pm. We get back to the hotel no earlier than six and quite often, there is no hot water for a shower. To top it off, we have been now working 10 straight days... In the midst of this schedule, after three nights at the dance hall, I feel that I have died and gone to disco hell. Thankfully, the girls left today, back to Gomil.

The profound absurdity of life!!

1997-06-01T15:45:00.000-04:00

A communist soviet nation, where unemployment did not exist, officially. Everyone had a job created for them by the state, and was put in positions of un-productivity. Living conditions were appalling, and state rationed living quarters were available after several years of waiting in queue. Food was scarce, and quality of goods produced by the unproductive workers was quite below any existing standard. Yet, life went on, as it always does. It creates in the minds of people an idea of the world, shaped by their existence described above.

A former soviet nation rid of the communist yoke. The shackles of unemployment are now broken, and it is out on the street. Kids beg at local street corners, and many people have had no income for a while. Previously, no one was fired from a job, even if their blood vodka level exceeded red blood cells. Now, they can be. Living conditions are appalling, and state rationed living quarters available after several years of waiting in queue. Food is somewhat scarce, and quality of goods produced is quite below any existing standard. It has been 11 long years since perestroika, but ideas shaped by their old existence cannot be shattered by revolutionary processes heralded by Gorbachev. Many people are confused at the absence of the jobs that were previously created for them, the rest either struggle to get by through innovative means, or are part of the rampant corrupt Mafia (the Neo-Russians). The dynamics of change is met with different responses in different countries. Belarus is on the wrong end of this spectrum. Yet life goes, simply because it always does. And they even have McDonalds, complete with McDrive-throughs..

The tragicomedy: The United States of America is now the big brother of the new world order. Committed to the success of it's Nunn Lugar program, it is determined to make good with all these newly formed nation and offer them aid, as perceived by it's own ideas. And to also internalize some of the benefits of this program, after all, elections are never that far off... The Former Soviet republics are offered a chance to redeem themselves of their bad days, by cleaning up their old mess, by development and re-building (many more McDonalds - 3 in Minsk, and many more to come). Help is offered through transfer of technology. "What do you want" they asked. "Some good old fashioned heavy equipment, of course many more times sophisticated than the ones you have, bigger, more powerful and comfortable? Or how about some state of the earth environmental remediation equipment, words that you probably have never heard before: bio-rememdiation, chemical stabilization, thermal desorbtion. Equipment big huge and complicated which you will not have a clue as to what to do with, and when you do , you realize that there is no cash potential, unless you strip them off parts and components and use them elsewhere. The rest will be moss covered in years, maybe months, of non-use. But remember, the equipment IS state of the earth, exactly the sort that we use in the US." The young free republic wants to wallow in the muck of high technology, to be one of the big guys. And the deed is done. US companies are contracted to build and supply equipment to Belarus, and offer a training program to the best in the nation.

All the above is not necessarily true. The Americans did not perceive that the equipment would be worthless in Belarus. It is all a question of perception, of ideas formed by people through their own existence. There is no world view, and will probably never be one. The unfortunates are "helped" by they who can, but the process of helping is clouded by political and individual opinions. We have a few million tractors in the country, and a few more would not help us any. How could it help any old Belarusian farmer? So the remediation technology is offered, which if nothing, helped one old Belarusian farmer : Premier Lukashenko.

Comedy without too much cost: A group of Americans (and one Indian) meet at the Mayors office in Postavy, a few kilometers from the Kosteniye base where the training program is to be. The dilemma is obvious. The shipment is stuck at customs in St. Petersburg, where Russian officials will make the most of the moment. It is a minor hurdle. But the underlying problem is now coming through. The Byelorussians have now realized that their part of the Nunn Lugar program involves significant money (at least significant for them.) It is a hard bargain to keep, who cares anyway about the Nunn Lugar program. Salary for twenty trainees for two months is big bucks, and the cost of support equipment and supplies, though subsidized, is still money down the polluted waters. The Americans have already complained about conditions at the Naroch Hotel, the nations "hot" resort. No hot water, no phones in rooms, no laundry service, no seats in the toilet, the food is way Un-American. Breakfast today was rice and chicken broth. Actually, that is better than the cabbage and mayo we were served yesterday. Yeah, but it sucked still. The roads are bumpy, and our mini-van feels like a schooner during a tsunami. The ride is about 2 hours one way, which we have done four times in a week. The other ride is 45 minutes, which we do twice daily. How can we teach these people and retain our sanity? And to top it all there is but little co-operation from the other side..

The Mayor of Postavy is a communist from the old days. His questions and wants are pretty direct: What happens after you leave. When do you leave? Oh no, stay longer. No, we have no overhead projector here, you have to get it from Minsk, but when you do, make sure that you leave it behind in my office. Will our people be trained? Oh sure, they will work as many hours as you want them to... What, of course I will pay them for the extra hours, but if they work less, they get paid less. We are no longer a communist nation, you know. I welcome you all here, and you are honored guests at our festival on May 29 - 31. No work for three days, only vodka.

Tragicomedy # 2: A meeting at a hall, somewhere in Postavy. We meet the trainees, possibly very qualified. Their questions are equally direct. How long is the training program, what happens next. (The equipment will be used till at least Sept. '98 - American Proj. Mngr/ Ah, no guarantees after the 17th of July this year - Belorussian official..) What are the hours, how is the pay. Can I leave now, or I may lose the job that I have....

Yet, life goes on. We play tennis at a court without a net, and talk about what breakfast will be tomorrow. I'm psyched.