Letter to Aindri on her 5th birthday

Dearest Aindri,

I love you the most.

You are now a 5-year old child. When we began, 5 years seemed such a distant place, but here we are. 5 years ago we were a nervous lot, with apprehensions galore, and now, 5 years later, we are better.

This past year has been marked by quite the regular things I must say. You have been growing taller. You are a 3.1 feet tall girl now. You have been regularly going to school and I am sure enjoying it too. You have made a great friend in Sanvi and the ritual of hugging bye at the end of the school is adorable. In this year you have learnt all the letters, capital and small, numbers till twenty, many new rhymes, songs at school, dance for annual day, etc, etc.

We have continued our reading together habit this year too. Notably, we read the three part 'Mahabharata' of Amar Chitra Katha, which Sudhakar dadu was so kind to give us when we visited him once. So much so that we have now started re-reading book one.

Predictably, you took to watching TV a bit more than previous year and you have shifted from watching Doraemon to Ninja Hatori (ding ding). Your picking old Hindi songs like 'pyaar humen kis mod pe le aya', 'ek chatura naar' has been interesting. Your love for dance continues, with you sitting through our CCC programs, be it Mohiniattam, Bharatnatyam or even the play by Naya theater the other day. Also, definitely not inspired by your mother, you have grown a penchant for getting dolled up in this past year.

The world for a 5 year old is not very wide, but in the wide world we live in, 2019 has been one that of turmoil. The US, the most powerful nation int he world, has a buffoon for a President, called Donald Trump. There is something called Brexit, which is otherwise complex but then will suffice to understand that UK is to discontinue part of being the larger Europe. North Korea continued to play hide-and-seek with nuclear weapons. India elected a BJP government in this year, the policies of which is affecting both Indian economy and social fabric negatively. Yes, the happenings in India concerns me about your future, as it very much did when you were born; especially since the majority of the country does not respect women as it should. But preserve we shall and shine we shall. There is always light at the end of the tunnel.

Back home, your Nanu had been battling with his cancer and you have become familiar with the terms chemotherapy, bilirubin, etc, which you hear us talking about. Only when you are a certain age, you will realize, there is so much to learn from the way he is battling it out. We could not go out anywhere much this year other than a few trips to Bangalore and one to Odisha. When we went to Odisha we had a fun trip to Puri when so many of our family went in a big bus. You of all things, wore a saree, to Jagannath temple, and had to be lifted for most part of it.

In the past few days your excitement for your birthday had grown to dizzying heights with you having decided quite sometime back that the theme of your birthday would be 'Frozen'. So, some Elsa stuff has been gotten for you. This year we are celebrating your birthday at Bangalore with your maternal side of the family with your aunt having come down from Sweden, and will be inviting few close friends there. You are excited that it will be in club house at Orchid Lake View Apartment. You have become a chatter box, and that has been a source of great joy for all of us.

We don't know what is in store in the year ahead, or philosophically, in the very next moment. I don't know when you would be ready to read these letters, or if I will be able to continue this tradition of writing these letters. Nothing is certain in life and thus we have to live to the fullest in the present. You see, new age liberal parenting, is a tricky thing, and we hope we are managing fine with it. I am liking this letter writing tradition and I hope one day you will get to read these, to understand how you were and to understand what your father is/was.

Happy birthday kichlu michlu.

Love

Papa

Letter to Aindri on her:
1st birthday: https://sambitspeak.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-letter-to-my-daughter.html
2nd birthday: https://sambitspeak.blogspot.com/2017/01/letter-to-aindri-on-her-2nd-birthday.html
3rd birthday: https://sambitspeak.blogspot.com/2018/01/letter-to-aindri-on-her-3rd-birthday.html
4th birthday: https://sambitspeak.blogspot.com/2019/01/letter-to-aindri-on-her-4th-birthday_2.html 

The Neutrality of Balaram

In the great epic The Mahabharata, Balaram, the elder brother of Lord Krishna, plays a curious role. When the two clans, Kauravas and Pandavas prepare to fight the great battle, Krishna joins the Pandavas, but Balaram, to whom both Duryodhan and Arjuna are dear, decides not to join any side. Instead, he goes off to pilgrimage during that period.

Was Balaram right in not choosing one of the sides? What would the course of the war been had he sided with Kauravas or even the Pandavas? The battle of dharma that Mahabharata was, poses various dilemmas, including, the neutrality of Balaram. The similar dilemma extends to everyday life when one has to choose among conflicting narratives.

What does one do when one has to choose? Choose anything.

Every choice we make gets our mind to evaluate pros and cons, ease and difficulty, dharma and adharma, cost and benefit and many such factors. We get conditioned fast and deeply and then these evaluations becomes mundane for things that do not affect us much. It is only when the situation poses a challenge, when the conditioning is at loggerheads with new set of thoughts that conflict arises.

So, does being neutral take away the burden of making a choice? And in doing so, does it absolve oneself of the conflicts?

There are no easy answers to that.

Think about the numerous battles of narratives that are fought, as an extension, in the social media. There is a constant pressure on one to choose, to take a side. Is neutrality an option available though?

Yes, perhaps neutrality is an option available when one is faced with situations where there is a conflict between ideology depicted in a movie, where there is a fight over origin of a food item, about a certain depiction of history, etc.

But there are certain situations where the line gets drawn.

When it comes to neutrality, parts of Nobel laureate Elie Weisel's famous acceptance speech is often quoted. And in those beautiful lines are defined those situations where neutrality ceases to become an option. (many people I know, know nothing about Holocaust. If you, the reader is one of them, I plead you to read about it)

His famous lines are part of a story. Excerpt from his Nobel Prize speech:

"I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

I remember he asked his father: “Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?”

And now the boy is turning to me. “Tell me,” he asks, “what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life?” And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

And then I explain to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe."

So was Balaram, the "centrist", erroneous in his choice? To be a centrist is all right, to be a fence sitter is all right. That can as well be someones moral compass. Not everyone, especially in the public (real or media) appreciates confrontation. It is for the competing narratives to sway the centrist. Arjuna could not do that to Balaram, Duryodhan could not do that to Balaram.

Would participation of Balaram saved many more lives? Would the war have ended earlier had he sided with Pandavas? Would he have persuaded Duryodhan to end the battle earlier? There are no answers for these questions, but the possibilities are aplenty.

To be or not to be neutral. That is the question (h/t Shakespeare). To sum it, I feel, it is all right for someone to be neutral about many issues. In a networked society, constantly outraging, one can choose ones peace of mind over chaos. But when it comes to issues of injustice, of oppression, of stifling of freedom, neutrality would not confer high moral ground to the individual. The luxury to be Balaram may not always be there.

Medicine on phone

Last week I was under the weather. And the week prior, the rest two in the family. High grade fever, throat infection, etc bogged us all down. Situation sometimes warranted immediate advice regarding what should be done, whether a medicine had to be changed, whether it was time to start antibiotics, if it was required to see a doctor. And to give that much needed advice, all I had to do was pick the phone and text, or if situation was too emergent, to call. We weathered the two weeks.

I was able to  do so perhaps because I teach in a medical school, I have the fortune of knowing some good doctors, to have a good rapport with them. But how many have that privilege? May be only the socially active individuals would have a doctor in their phone list whom they can call or text seeking advice.

There arise umpteen health issues which needs advice. It could be a mental health issue, menstrual health issue, simple viral fever, gait issue, etc. But where does one go to seeking simple information, advice?

Internet, of course.

But internet suffers from the peculiar problem of plenty. There is so much information, misdirected that one will get lost more often than not.

There would be nothing like a person on the other side of the phone, listening with empathy, possessing adequate knowledge to address basic queries, direct, follow up.

In a country where healthcare is in a mess, plagued by severe shortage of doctors, tele medicine could serve as a panacea.

With increased mobile phone penetration, especially in rural India where gaps in healthcare is glaring, a toll free number which would help clarify simple questions about health, would be welcome.

One would think, what happens currently? For basic queries one who can't access or cave afford ends up with a quack or the nearest pharmacy, both places which are unlikely to give the right advice.

In such conditions to be able to talk to a health care professional would be beneficial and it has numerous positive fallouts.

The onus for developing such an enabling architecture should lay with the government for the positive externalities are plenty. The system could employ MBBS interns who would volunteer to retired doctors to other qualified healthcare professionals. CSR funds may also be channelized for the realization of such a scheme.

The challenges would be to find professionals who already are less in number, to provide solution givers in local languages, to ensure quality being maintained. The scheme can be piloted in few districts to iron out these issues before rolling it at the national level.

Health literacy is abysmal in India and issues like antibiotic resistance plague us. A tele medicine service can help in addressing many of these issues.

It is time such a scheme is given serious thought and experimented with.