Life…

…Yeah, I was pondering about life and it’s unexpected twists and turns…life - as exemplifed by an admirable, gracious and one courageous woman – my mom !   And, I found my metaphor in these perfect lines -nothing more, nothing less - penned, of course by my favorite poet Grace Paley.

WALKING IN THE WOODS

That’s when I saw the old maple
a couple of its thick arms cracked
one arm reclining half rotted
into earth black with the delicious
hospitality of rot to the
littlest creatures

the tree not really dying
living     less widely     green head high
above the other leaf-crowded
trees     a terrible stretch to sun
just to stay alive     but if you’ve
liked life

you do it

Copyrighted work of Grace Paley, quoted from : Begin Again, Collected Poems

The Reality of Illusion…

…is an illusion of our reality

Seriously, have you wondered about Maya ?

The philosophers would argue that all reality is just a projection of your thoughts.

And our physicist friends would argue that it is all relative !

For me, right now, this beautiful poem works !

This poem by  Prof. Troy Jollimore appeared in The New Yorker, July 27, 2009 edition.

So here it is….

AT LAKE SCUGOG
by Troy Jollimore

1.
Where what I see comes to rest,
at the edge of the lake,
against what I think I see

and, up on the bank, who I am
maintains an uneasy truce
with who I fear I am,

while in the cabin’s shade the gap between
the words I said
and those I remember saying

is just wide enough to contain
the remains that remain
of what I assumed I knew.

2.
Out in the canoe, the person I thought you were
gingerly trades spots
with the person you are

and what I believe I believe
sits uncomfortably next to
what I believe.

When I promised I will always give you
what I want you to want,
you heard, or desired to hear,

something else. As, over and in the lake,
the cormorant and its image
traced paths through the sky.

Ariel Atom

A dream. A machine. A stud. Enuf said !

Ode to a Nap

A golden hue

breaks across 

the glass,

rays my room,

shimmering up 

the mango wood deco !

That old warmth

arouses my derm

of that distant

sun-kissed

tropical memory !

The tome falls over,

the words fade;

the pillows 

cosset me

against the couch !

Backyard laughter, 

white noise of

a mower,

soft singing of

my girl -

in slow

piannismo,

sweet aural harmony !

Then…

divine sleep 

sets in

unhurried,

unplanned,

unannounced

mid-morn

on a perfect

Seattle Sunday !!!

Seeds of Compassion

You are sometimes filled with doubt as a parent. Is one imparting the right values especially when one has to compete with today’s overbearing dysfunctional media that invades our children’s lives ? And to that mix, if you throw in some complex disparate family geographies, mixed cultural heritages, non-traditional families and hectic lives – it is not a simple village that is raising a child anymore.

In a world of  early kindergarten bullies, “me first”  and “instant gratification” attitudes, it becomes even more important to teach positive assertion and conflict resolution . How do you impart compassion and good judgement?

So one afternoon, I watched a class-room at an elementary school in action. There was a birthday and bite-size cupcakes were given out by the birthday kid . Everyone got two little cupcakes – chocolate and vanilla. And then there was some more left, and the kids wanted to go for a third helping.  And the last-bite-vanilla-cake went to the birthday kid. Then suddenly, a boy got very upset with his head hung down – he was sad that he did not get a third due to a mistake, because he was still on his first since he ate slow.

The birthday kid without flinching  just took the cupake from the plate and handed it over to the boy. It was completely instinctive and selfless. I was very very touched. I later had this conversation with the kid.

Me: That was beautiful, what you did. It was your birthday, yet you gave away your cake to the boy

Kid: Yes, he was sad and I did not want him to be sad. It’s my birthday and I want everyone to be happy.

Me: That is wonderful. Didn’t you want to eat that last piece of cake really bad ? Don’t you love vanilla cake ?

Kid: No, I was sort of full with the two pieces. …Also,  if I had not eaten any cake at all, I would NOT have shared with the boy since he already said he had two.  I would have taken care of myself first, unless there was another kid who had not gotten any cake at all. In that case, I would have split it so I am not sad either.

BINGO !! Yes, it was a zen bingo moment in parenting !

I have to admit that the birthday kid was mine. Sorry to sound boastful. You might be confused at what the brouhaha is about, that even requires a blog post :?

We have been working really hard on how it is important to take care of oneself and yet be compassionate, considerate, kind and giving. There is altruism in completely giving up everything  for the greater good. But…

…based on my own experiences, I am learning that if you do not take care of the “self” bit as well, no amount of giving will make you a truly “selfless” person.  The little person inside you, also needs to be absolutely engaged, be conscious and be included in your ”giving” equation. It may sound new-agey, but it is not .

I was inspired by the Dalai Lama’s talk to parents when he visited Seattle . He proclaimed that as soon as they are born, children start learning from everything around them- especially their parents !  See the highlighted/underlined wisdom below:

“WHEN YOU WAKE UP, MAKE A PROMISE: With an open heart and a joyful mind, I promise to practice compassion- to be kind to myself and to others, and, especially, to be kind to every child whose life touches mine, from near or far, for today and always.”

Yes, the seeds of compassion are sown first – with being kind to yourself….

[POST SCRIPT]

To some of you it may seem puzzling. What is the big deal in sharing the “third piece” of  that bite size cake ? Yes, I grew up in India where I have seen folks literally give their last shirt off their back for a worthy cause. But in today’s world where  my child lives in, there is a lot of excess. It becomes increasingly difficult to teach value for things and appreciation for what you have, when plenitude is all around - leave alone teaching compassion to children. So please turn on your contextual “filter”  for this read

Life is sweet…Keep it tweet

“When you feel a pull, go with it” – Grace Paley

  This is exactly what I have been upto :

• Having fun.
• Being content.
• Learning new things.
• Chasing those “technology” butterflies …
• Curious…and still leaving no rock unturned.
• Spontaneous yet responsible

  …And……. I really have nothing else to say !!!

 …Oh wait…before you wonder what ever happened to the verbose me …

…I say,  “Blame it on those damn microblogs !”

Happy Holidays and Wishes For a Happy New Year !

Betelgeuse is nearer than you think

I had this epiphany while driving this weekend.

In that fleeting second, when I instinctively realized I had made that wrong turn despite following the right direction, I came closest to understanding that frizzy-haired man ! Yes, that man who confounded us kids at high school with all his complicated theories about Physics.

I grokked Gravity and the Curving Space in that instant. You may think you are traveling in a perfect straight line, but if the space around you curves, then suddenly you can end up orbiting even around tiny objects without falling off the edge of the universe. Yes, that is it !

And that tiny object in the universe was this little town in a far northwest corner of the globe. A quaint little town that should have fallen off the map into the bay; but somehow did manage to exist, probably thanks to a troll that lives underneath one of it’s bridges.  And getting away from this little town is what I was trying to do  before I got into an orbital state .

Lest you think , I am just a mumbling-physics-and-a-bumbling-geographically-impaired soul,  I want you to know that friends tell me that I have a built-in GPS in my head. I never get lost. I repeat, I never have been ever lost in any part of the world. I never have. But this town, tests my geo-orientation, leave alone the geodesic and geospatial limits of understanding anything about this universe.

I am inclined to believe that the famous hitchhiker Mr. Douglas Adams must have gotten his inspiration for the “hyperspace bypass“ , after having been lost on this intergalactic expressway, commonly referred to as a viaduct by the local populace. This viaduct wildly cuts through the urban landscape and numbs your sense of dimensions and time-space boundaries, and heightens your sense of heights…you almost feel you are riding a “space elevator“. 

Also, I am pretty positive that Mr. Adams must have gotten lost visiting this town and ended up at the local zoo*, where he may have found inspiration for his other famous book which was aptly named “Last Chance to See” !

If you want to experience  zeroG,  then you should definitely go on an orbiting spin/space-elevator ride to this town.  The entry to the viaduct is tricky even if you are paying attention and very easy to miss. And the few exit ramps on this intergalactic viaduct, I noticed , mostly announce the bare simple four letters ”EXIT” – nothing more , nothing less - so as to not confuse any visiting aliens with mundane things (exit numbers, city names, street names, east/west, north/south) that we mortals obsess over.

And if you have “cartographic” pride like I do, please leave it at home. And those of you with GPS, please be aware that it maybe only useful in letting you know how badly you are lost in space. Or, it may be useful for lookups that you need to do while sharing clever stories later about the folks of this little town. When they mean 45th, they actually mean 46th. When they say hang right, they actually mean “hang on to your dear life while staying right on the course“.  And to keep it simple, their town name is what their main thorough-fares seem to be named after (psst..with little attached suffixes Pl. , Ave. , etc).  Oh, the townsfolk will conveniently forget to mention these suffixes because they are not important.

And yes, before you tourists ask about chow - There is this perfect restaurant at the end of this universe that serves the most delicious papaya salad that makes this space travel even more worthwhile! I will leave this as a place for you to find out on your adventure!

Godspeed and travel safe !

* This town is something !! Not only does it call itself the  ”center of the universe” despite being on the edge…edgy, as some might say, ahem… !!  Their zoo’s cyberhome is indeed  http://www.zoo.org.  How cool is that ? I realized they are not just fascinating for space travelers, but for cyber-ones as well

I refuse to answer that question…

..on the grounds that I don’t know the answer” – wisely said a great philosopher of our times !

I guess I have a smart inquisitive child…like every one of them- those curious critters of a certain age group out there !

R as a baby would put apart everything…and I mean everything. And then try to put it all back together.

Now it is precision questioning twenty four hours a day. Why ..How…What…Where…Why ?

I used to be like R for most of my life , who liked to go chasing things deep down a stack…. before mid-life stress kaiboshed that curiosity and washed me ashore, giiving me enough time to just skim over the surface area of things.

To add to that mix, a career change from being a depth-focused-dev to a breadth-focused-technical-program-manager,  put me in all kinds of odd places. For instance, I showed up day-one at the new role a couple years ago, and I was automagically expected to know all answers.

I have had to make breadth decisions without sometimes having the chance to dive deep into the inner engineering annals of every part of the stack, due to severe lack of time. Scary…but corporate landia allows for that !

Oh..and then this- A girlfriend at work once said to me about how she had an unconfirmed theory that pregnancy plus hormones washes away some of the “stick-to-the-point” rational thinking in women in their thirties and how she noticed women “meandered” and “context-switched” in conversations. (Okay, guys stop shaking your head!)  I scoffed at that a decade ago as one of those horrible “genderalizations”

Now that definitely rings a bell , although I don’t subscribe to her theory one bit , considering I am constantly multi-tasking (a myth?) and suffer from a waning attention span that does not allow me to focus on one thing well , esp. with time having disappeared from the continuum.

 And thanks to being interrupted by massive device/gadget overloads (3 or more phone numbers, 5+ email accounts,  sms, social networking, blog posts..DIY photo/video uploads/downloads, constant electronic/home upgrades forced partly thanks to the paradox of choice), all rational focused thinking has ceased to exist !

Shamefully, I dodge answers to R and sometimes pay half-attention to the barrage of questions. My answers are as intelligible as the rambling answers given by the governor of a far-away state or I end up pulling up the classic-parental weapon  ”Because…I told you so!”

So imagine my surprise when this happened early this AM:

R: Is that Doogles Adams ?   <staring at a pile of books that I have on the living room floor ..books are always competing for space all over the house>

Me: What…oh you mean Douglas Adams ? <while I am making coffee in the kitchen and reading my daily news on the Kindle>

R: “What was he like, Douglas Adams?”

Me: < I am somewhat surprised at the question and I head to the family room still not paying full attention. I see R holding the book and literally reading from the Foreword>: “Wha…? Please come back and finish your breakfast and put the book down”

R <Puts the book down , with a twinkle in the eye says>: Mom, ask me any question ?

Me <R likes this joke in Q&A format :”What is your name” ? “What is the color of the sky”? “What is opposite of down”? and I in a typical semi-automaton mode , paying half-attention ask the standard question >  : What is your name ?

R: FORTY TWO !!!

Me <My jaw-drops , the coffee gets spilt and I am stumpfed …at the answer> :”Where did you hear that ?”

R : Remember a while ago…you told me that the answer to all the questions about life and the world was forty-two ? And I asked you how do you know that is the answer for sure ? And you said to me that a very smart man “Douglas Adams” told you so!

I give R a big enormous delightful hug …but I am scratching my head not remembering that conversation at all. I am guessing it must have been one of those tiring days of answering endless R’s questions in the past, in a semi-comatose tired parental state!

And then R looked at me , reading my mind and asked if I paid attention to the game R and grandpa played this past summer. R went on to tell me that the entire summer with grandpa, R used “forty two” as an answer to any of the tough math/geography questions gramps posed ! And funnily, my dad who did not know about this “forty two” business changed the questions to always ensure the answer was “forty two” . And only now…I grokked it ! Jeez…. for being one “inattentive” parent !

Nevertheless….the immense maternal connection I made with my child this morning, was an ultimate trip inside a parental hitchiker’s guide to this galaxy

 [UPDATE:  Having a conversation with someone today who read my blog, I caught myself saying - Parenting indeed happens in-between those inattentive moments ]

PS:  I have still not figured an answer to this latest R’s question…any creative answers ..anybody?…You will get a free dinner at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Why did you adults create certain words if you would not allow them(words) to be used in conversations …you know like.. “stupid”?

Just Don’t Do It

No Worries

A couple months ago, I came to the realization that I was in this eternal state of constant running, and yet I had not covered much ground; for I was running faster and harder in the same spot !!

So I took a stance.  I came up with a “NOT TO DO LIST” and followed that list more rigidly than I had ever followed my “TO DOs” <Note to Self: Sounds like  a classic Barber Paradox?>  And I got this epiphany from attending a conference at amazon.com, where the inspiring Nadia Shouraboura, a senior VP at amazon.com  was a guest speaker.

And thanks to that list, I did not feel obligated to blog. I also completely toned down on my technological obsession of keeping up on the inner annals and mechanics of search engines. And especially considering that my day job had nothing to do with search engines.  And I magically started to get back my beauty sleep.

I also reduced my reading pile – I stopped looking at my goal-oriented book lists. And ironically this gave me time to go meet the real people behind the books. I met the fantastic Mr. Pico Iyer, my literary hero, in person, when he came to town for a lecture. And I had the most remarkable half-hour conversation with the man himself. ( I do have a blog post about this still in a draft state, thanks to my Not-to-do List )

I stopped going to my music lessons because of the time spent on the long commutes.  Yet,  I feel I am absorbing more music by just listening consciously in a relaxed home setting. And after many years, I felt blessed at the opportunity to attend a vocal concert by a revered Carnatic musician, early this summer at Seattle.

I dropped a day’s training from my strict fitness routine that was getting to be exhausting. Instead it gave me time to rediscover with R,  a passion for bicycling and running -  we even managed to do a 5K run this past summer, just like that.  The pleasure we derived from these unscheduled activities is undescribable.

And as much as I am embracing Hakuna Matata, I am also learning to “ask”. I had booked tickets to take R to India for a quick visit to the grandparents. R was very keen to spend the summer here and R firmly picked up the phone one evening and asked the grandparents if they would come visit us instead. And next thing I knew, my parents came over and we had the most enjoyable summer ever together.  All I had to do was - “ask” ! Thanks for that lesson my lil R!

I am also getting better at saying “No”. I am trying to be decisive, draw clear lines and boundaries in everyday things and relationships. I stopped volunteering on my sleep-addled time. I now do things out of zero obligation.

And despite my “Not To Do” status-quo, fab opportunities have come a-knocking. During a chance conversation, I was asked to interview for a fascinating role in the Chief of Staff org for the Chief Software Architect.  I was beyond thrilled and that single conversation woke me up from my everyday schlepping. I had to ask hard questions – Am I happy at my current role ? Where do I want to be in 3 years ?  Am I passionate about what I do , when I wake up in the morning everyday ?

 And once I started to peel the layers of  my “career onion” with great inputs from some thoughtful mentors and friends, I found my answers. I interviewed not just for that role, but for a few other roles  as well. And one thing lead to another and I found a job where I can dream up my technological passions. I start my new role in a couple weeks.   Yes, it definitely helps that I work with a brilliant set of people in an amazing company where opportunities are abound.

I learnt that in life you have to stop, unthink, and ask. The world will turn and listen.  I also learnt that you just open your eyes to new possibilities sticking outside your door,  if you only learn to breathe and stop flailing in the wind. Ok, mom , I grok it now, really !!!

If  ***NOT*** anything, this summer has proved to me that often we are prisoners of our own device.

So I let go of those shackles and handcuffs that my “inner critic” bound me….and I am loving the ride so far.

Dump Truck : Zen and the Art of …

It’s not what you are thinking.

My post has nothing to do with the upcoming Seattle’s Green Festival nor the Dalai Lama’s Seeds of Compassion visit to Seattle.

Try again. 

I wanted my title to be -

“Dump Truck: Zen and the Art of Playing Cards…” Yes, playing cards of the “Poker” variety

Last week, I played this remarkable yet elegant simple game, that too with a child. It is based on another game called “Knock Knock” – which I cannot find any references online , but it is a popular game played in our family circles.

The rules of “Dump Truck” are simple :

a.  Objective of the game is to get rid of all your cards . You start with 52 cards and it’a 2 player game, maybe.

b.  Each player gets dealt with 7 cards, and 1 card is put facing upward (open) , beside the other undealt cards which are all put facing down. Game goes clockwise.

c. You put down a card either of the same color or the same set as of the open facing card that is on the floor ( with some additional following rules -see below). If you don’t have the same color or the same set at hand, or satisfy the other rules below, you pick up one card from the undealt set and the next player plays.

d. Additional rules :

1. If the open facing card on the floor is a 7,  and you do not have a 7 in your deck, then you need to pick up 7 cards from the undealt card and forego a turn
2. Another sub-rule to when you are picking up the 7 cards above, if you pick up a 7 from the undealt set-say as your “third” card, then you can stop at that, and not have to pick the 4 remaining cards.
3. If the open facing card on the floor is a 7, and you are able to put down a 7 from your deck , then the other player has to now pick up 14 undealt cards.
4. Also, If the open facing card on the floor is a K, then the player can put a J of the same set.
5. If you are down to the last two cards in your hand, when you put down the last but one card – you must say “Dump”, and if indeed on the next turn, you are able to put down your last card you must say “Truck” and you win. (Note that it is possible, that after you say “Dump”, you may not get to “Truck” the next immediate turn, because you picked up some more undealt cards. And you have to continue playing and the “Dump” is no more valid)
6. And if you end up picking the last card among the undealt cards, you lose and go to “The Dumpster”.

I was absolutely delighted with playing this game . You want to know why ?

Because my fabulous little R invented this clever game with the rules above. No kidding !!!

As I started to play , I thought there would be loop-holes with us playing in an infinite recursion, especially if we are done with all the 7s.  Also , I was thinking that we may  not be able to get to the clear “2 phase commit” of  saying “Dump” and “Truck” sequentially :-)  But R made up the rules very ingeniously -especially rule #6 was a clear “exit” to the possible recursion, that manages to end the game.

I am indeed a boastful mama. I wondered about the simple combinatorial math that a six year old can explore in his/her head. Initially, I was a bit skeptical and called everyone in the family to see if anyone had played a closer/similar version of this “Dump truck” game with R in the recent past. But no, it was truly R’s own invention, based on R’s knowledge of Knock-Knock which of course has a complex set of rules and a multi-player game.

I am a lousy card player- definitely, the black sheep of the family. Looking back at my life, I had indeed been surrounded by an enthusiastic bunch where every family holiday , gatherings, weddings, funerals (yes, that is right!) were graced with card games. R’s paternal family has some rather excellent card players including her grandmom who carries a pack of cards in her purse ! Everyone in the family, has been ecstatic about R’s Dump Truck.

I am now considering checking the algorithmic validity of this game with someone academic, seriously ! Any tips, anyone ?

It surly was one of the best-est sick days (as R would say) that R and me spent together ! It was Zenful indeed !