An evening listening to a real futurist.

I let much time pass by without writing here. There is so much that has happened in the last month and a half. The holidays came and went by, Israel pounded Gaza, and we now have a new President. Somewhere in between all those major events, I also watched some interesting movies - Slumdog Millionaire tore my heart, and made me wake up once again of things that needed doing, and others that were there simply to tell me once again, the chasm that existed between my tastes and the mainstream. Any of these, by themselves, could have provided enough prod to want to say something, but the fact that I did not, brings the challenge of inertia right up to the front. Well, something churned again, when I heard a famous futurist on Monday evening.

Dr. Bishop (of the UoH Futures program) invited all his current and former students to attend a series of lectures by Ted Gordon. Ted can claim to be one of the pioneers of the field. Imagine for example being a futurist since 1968, or having invented techniques such as Delphi. He is very involved with the UN Millennium project now. For some reason, not clear to me he happens to be in Houston, and has agreed to share four of his evenings talking to the students.

I dialed into the web conference from home. Even with the blurry and rather small size of hte video stream, you could see clearly the amazing humanity and geniality that wrapped his deep knowledge and experience. The concern for the future of humanity was not a matter of fascination with technique, or reveling in something esoteric, such as sometimes I believe the techno-fabulists tend to do, but rooted in a deep concern for the world. It meant that being a futurist, even if in mind, was the only compelling option there could be. I think that itself is worth watching anytime.

Ted talked about the Millennium project, and how it had grown with participants from all around the world. He talked about their 15 priorities, and what some of the most critical issues were that the world is facing. There is much material out there on the project, so I will not dwell on that here. One of the issues that came up, of female infanticide (not sure if that is the right word here) in India, in the context of gender equality, got me to think of something.

In the conversation then, I brought up social practices such as dowry, which crossed all belief systems and seemed to be more prominent in the poorer segments, some religious preferences for the male child among Hindus etc, and how things had changed since independence. We talked about the institutional frameworks such as laws, women's development and so on.

But, for some reason, I did not think then of the factor that I believe has exacerbated the problem (if aborting female fetuses), to the crisis that it is now. It is an interesting example of how a seemingly benign technology can become malevolent when put in a context where forces can combine in strange and unpredictable ways.

The technology I am talking about is Ultrasound. It became cheap to the extent that little shops offering scanning services, proliferated like the Public telephone booths (PCO/STD/ISD signs which are so ubiquitous in the Indian market) did. They were an idea which had a willing host. So many in India had perhaps become conscious of limiting family size. The laws on abortion are not very stringent, and they did give an element of power to the women over their own destiny.

However, there was a lurking pathology, a latent preference for the male child. A desire which usually had led to people having lots of girl children in anticipation of a male child. I had tow friends in college, one who was the eighth child after seven girls and one who was the 11th. Anyway, this was in fact a good thing in some ways, since it forced the parents to make the girls autonomous and independent through education, as they could not afford conventional marriage and dowry. However, by and large, the dowry problem remained, and there was a strong reason among the poor and undereducated for avoiding girls when possible.

Needless to say, you can imagine how the demand for scanning soared, as did the consequent growth in abortions. There is a lopsided gender balance now, and hopefully the 'price' for marriageable girls will come down enough to restore some balance to this stupidity.

I say this in jest - but as a technologist and a futurist, it makes me even more conscious of the responsibility to think of consequences of our choices. Technology can contribute to progress and development, but it is not only a money-maing venture, but also an idea, and idea which can combine with other ideas, flawed in this case, to create monsters. Monsters that can destroy our humanity if not us completely.

Watching change from a distance

The visit of an old friend from India over the weekend, and a discussion about developments in the Indian media among other things got me thinking, about whether someone who does not live there any more, truly understands what is meaningful and important for the people over there. 

Apparently there have been a lot of changes in the media since I left. I have had some sense of the changes, from what I have seen during my visits. I think the most fascinating change has been in the proliferation of FM radio. There was very little FM when I left, and even when I do go back I do not get an opportunity to listen to radio. What little I did hear, when we were driving down to Kanakavli from Mumbai was the exuberance, the fluid bilingualism or often trilingualism of the young hosts. It seemed however a very upper class thing though - anglicized yuppies. Apparently, radio has become very regional, and mostly aquired by the Times. The radio not only is a new foray for the newspaper giant, but also reflects a change in its approach to the paper.

Made me think about technology, particularly Information Technology and the kind of changes it brings about. When video cameras became commodity, it broke through a lot of monpolies. So, the commoditization of media technology is all a good thing, as it then becomes a means for expression for all. 

What you hear and see though, is that the authentic voice or is it mimicry? Does it take a while for the true voice to emerge. Perhaps we will have to wait and see. May be there is a form this will take that I cannot foresee

Waiting for happiness

I did watch a movie Wednesday night. After scouring through a whole long list of movies that one could watch online at Netflix, I settled on "Waiting for Happiness".

It turned out to be a fantastic discovery - (the excitement of stumbling upon something new).....in so many ways - just as most good films tend to be. It was complex, nuanced, layered, visual, non-linear and pushed the envelope of imagination in ways that other media cannot too easily. Of course this is a statement which can easily be challenged, so let me just say that this is true for me.

The film seems to have come into being around the story of a young man in his late teens, Abdullah, who has returned after having been gone for over 15 years to this little village in Mauritania. It is presumably somewhere in the Sahara, and the film makes good use of the stark beauty of the desert landscape.

Abdullah does not speak Hassaniya, the local language any more, and therefore cannot communicate with any one. Often lying in his bed, with its small square window, he whiles time away watching life outside, and little seems to register or interest him. However, even through that small aperture into the village, we see a lot of interesting little details, including one shot of a TV being carried. There is life outside, the times are changing and modernity is creeping in to this remote desert as well. We could easily believe Abdullah's version of the world - boring with little to make life interesting, till we get to know some of the people in that world.

There is the electrician, Maata, who cares for an orphan boy who is also his apprentice in the trade. We do not know where Maata came from, but he does not seem local. We do not know about the boy's roots either. They obviously have no one but each other. Their relationship is full of love, caring and respect for each other, as they hang on to each other in their rather fragile existence. Maata's parenting is somewhat comic, but genuine and touching, and it is charming to see the boy accept this rather clumsy effort.

Then we see the little girl who is learning to sing from an older teacher who obviously seems as interested in passing on something precious to someone who she seems to think is a worthy keeper of the art. Here again is a pure relationship, with art and with another person, a relationship that transcends any sense of selfish interest.

The village prostitute, was once in love with this Chinese salesperson, who sold gadgets and trinkets on street corners. We do not see Vincent speak, but we later learn she loved him a lot, and even had a child with him. She once traveled to Europe to find Vincent and tell him in person that the child did not survive.

We see all these and many more nuances of life there, the loss of tradition, the trying to retain the precious, the resolve to be happy in the most trying of places, the joy of togetherness and company, the longing for the basic human needs of love and connection, and the longing to be with one's own people elsewhere (for those who have come here and stayed). Maata seems not to be originally from here and reacts rather sadly to talk about leaving.

And, there is the desperate effort to bring that outside world to the people who find its ways strange. Maata the electrician is trying to electrify Abdullah's room so he could watch TV. When we see a TV program in another context it is running some French show. Abdullah makes weak attempts to connect. He interacts occasionally with the little boy (Maata's assistant) and tries to learn some words. A group of women who invite him to tea find his attempts to learn the language very amusing. But they all have tried to accept him and tried to make him one of them. Like so many others before him, as we see through the obviously different races there, people have come before and stayed. And while this coming and going on of people goes on, there remains a wonderful little world of rich humanity in the middle of that wilderness, where we would not look, where we least expect it.

I discovered Oumani Sangare, the Malian singer. What a lovely voice. I had not seen Mauritania before, now I think I have had a small peep.

The valet at the hotel who got me a cab the next evening is from Ethiopia. I mentioned the movie to him. He told me that he thought "Mother India" (Nargis), was one of the best movies he had seen. The cab driver also from Ethiopia, heard us talk and told me later that he too had seen 'Mother India' several times and in that corner of the world, where English and Hindi were equally strange tongues, the people chose to watch Bollywood. Just like I have been surprised by its reach in strange corners of the world, I was somewhat ashamed to hold my own country's industry in low regard. Perhaps what it doles out make meaning to a lot of people not only within the country but around the world. I am not sure, but the evidence does not agree with my own thoughts. I will leave it at that.

I did meet people who had brought that liking with them to another part of the world, where in its strangeness and perhaps coldness, they had each other (Why are there so many people from North Africa in Columbus OH?), and films from another strange land whose language they did not understand, but made them happy.

The patience lesson

D2li left this morning for Boston to participate in Model UN. She is representing Kazakhstan - UNHCR. I am not sure if K'stan is dealing with refugee issues, but who knows. There days every country in the world is making conditions unbearable, real or imagined for someone or the other. She was telling me that the sessions go late in the night. If those negotiations take time even in these mock sessions, imagine what they must be like for real. There was a tinge of frustration in her voice about how the UN processes seem to take forever. It is seemingly challenging to accomplish anything. Well, if W had learned his lessons at Model UN he might have figured out that you do not change nations overnight.

In less than a year she will be moving off to college. Time for her to take on the next stage of life. 

I sketched out ways I might rearchitect my life. It would be interesting. The uncertainty adds a pinch of uncertainty to life. And of course there are so many other things to think about. Really important ones.

I wish I could watch a movie tonight. Perhaps I should try and watch something on Netflix on line. Speaking of online, I discovered this nice routine for the morning. Listen to BBC World Service in the morning while doing other things. It gives me a sense of being at home. It is a pleasure to listen to sports around the world, and they even cover the NFL and NBA!

Catching up on lost time...

It has been almost a month since I was here last. It has indeed been a momentous month. I think I got distracted by the excitement of the election. On the night of the election, I fell asleep when the count was still short. B called to tell me we were over the magic number. I had known it would happen, but it still was unbelievable in some ways. It felt good to have felt so much and having been in some ways, however peripherally a part of a potentially pivotal moment in history.

There is perhaps not a facet now left unexplored, so there is not much to write after such a long gap. The immediacy of that emotion has drifted away. My memories do not have new words, so they must remain personal.

Everyone is now watching the appointments to see if somehow the dream will end. I wonder if we have lost our ability to judge people. We do not seem to know how to recognize a person who can be trusted, in whose capabilities we can have confidence. Or is that just me hoping? I am still confident that this person can be trusted for the very same reasons I have mentioned before - because he has a heart, a beautiful mind and a soul.

If there is something however, that still surprise me was the extent to which his election had touched people across the world. My mother for one. When I called her that weekend, it was the first thing she mentioned. She was excited and she was happy. She was hopeful for the world. It is amazing that one person should have so much power to make the world a better place. To create so much hope. How often before, has that power been conferred to others, just by them being given a position to impact the lives of so many, and how often have those opportunities been badly mauled. And in spite of those layers upon layers of disappointments, people are willing to catch on to that first wispy sliver of hope.

In this last month since the election, the news has continued to be gloomy with the economy. The system is teetering gaping into the mouth of chaos, ripe for radical transformation. Maybe it is a good thing. Sometimes when structures become non-functional, there is nothing better than having something like this happen, instead of doing a 'deliberate dive into chaos' (Snowden). We could possibly get a clean start - an opportunity to fix structural issues for new times. the only issue as usual is managing the inevitable collateral damage. I could be on that list. It is so easy and so close. I have to make structural adjustments myself. The middle-class dream is really over. One just has to wake up now.

If the economy alone was dysfunctional, I guess we could deal with it. But, the economic mis-alignments which we have been living with and in fact pushing in the name of globalization and progress, have perhaps been seeding some other malaises as well.

Mumbai got some unneeded attention with the terrorist attack. Over the thanksgiving weekend, in Paris, this event, perhaps understandably became a focus for more reasons than one. The familiarity of all the places involved, where I tend to take my nieces every time I visit, the places I often have to visit myself such as CST, where I spent over five hours the last time I was there, and so on. I kept telling myself, that none of my people had any need to be there at that time. As if that was a consolation. Whatever was happening to whoever, it all felt very like a very close and personal affront. I felt deeply sad for all the people who had to lose their lives.

And, like so many others, I realize that the security systems in India are woefully inadequate. I do not know if we can ever put in place anything that can protect a country so large, when it is not strucured for the most part for the modern approach such things demand. The crowds, the congestion, the poorly paid and equipped police - the list is endless. Even the special forces the flew down from Delhi, seemed incompetent. Seemed.

I felt that I had to look inside to find where we might have been responsible for leading to this situation. It seemed like we had done all the right things. In practicing secular democracy, for having learned to look without the traditional lenses, for having opened our hearts and minds to a new India, for having willingly signed up for it. Perhaps, we unwittingly bought into the dreams sold by innocous -looking systems of malevolence. I felt guilty somehow for having let myself be deceived.

Yet, when the tragedy was over there was something redeeming in the way the people reacted. My worst fears, that people would exploit the opportunity and retaliate along religious lines did not materialize. There seemed to be a new maturity in the country, something which has always existed I believe, but seemed to have momentarily lapsed in the recent past. I took proud note of the fact that we had a Parsi air-force chief, a muslim chief-of-police for the city, and that there was an unambiguous public committment to transcend the petty lines which a new generation of 'colonialists' were trying to draw.

Oh well, the city has once again drawn on its famed resilience. I feel hopeful that I can draw on its energies - it must run in my veins too somewhere.

Columbus was warmer and wet today. I finally slept well last night since returning frm Paris. What a jet lag!

Of nipping in the bud

In the cliche-ridden world of popular discourse, none is more urgent then the one about "nipping things in the bud". I am referring to the reprehensible utterances and behaviour that have been observed at the McCain/Palin rallies. Ostensibly in response to statements associating Senator Obama with Ayers, supporters of these candidates have called for the most unimaginable actions against him. Unimaginable, that is, in civil society, the kind we intend to put before the world as an example for people around the world to emulate, as the 'shining light', as the 'beacon on the hill', and as one candidate put it "as a force for good".

The irony of this situation is that, the very same people who are questioning Senator Obama's integrity and judgment for associating with someone, whose actions 40 years ago were indeed questionable, are themselves associating with people who are demanding actions against him that are reprehensible today. Anybody who claims to denounce terrorism in any form, would disassociate themselves from people who advocate it, in however minor a form, particularly against a civil servant of Senator Obama's standing, whose only issue at the moment seems to be a secondary and rather distant association.

Are the candidates who associate with those who call for violence today not more guilty by direct association with such people? Well, I admit that is somwhat of a stretch. We do not know of any direct associations between the candidates and these nasty elements in the crowd. But by any measure of civil propriety in our society, these are indeed lumpen elements. That is indeed what one should call them, whatever be the nature of one's political belief. That is the least one would expect from someone who intends to lead this nation and the world. For, if they cannot see things for what they are, happening in front of their very noses, then, how can we expect them to see and respond to more serious threats as they emerge in remoter parts of the world.

It is indeed well known, that these calls for violence are seeds of venomous ideas that can disseminate very rapidly if left unattended. We should be smart enough now to know that there are certain things that are unacceptable under any circumstances, and the response against such acts must be appropriate and swift. Civil discourse is appropriate to use with people who have accepted it as their mode of resolving issues. For those others however, who have not yet signed-on, we must emphatically deny participation in conversations about our future. We must make it clear in no uncertain terms that, they will not only be ignored, but excluded and rejected, even if the price of that exclusion results in a loss in the election. That would be a worthy of a statesperson leading a "force for good".

Unless of course, the candidates indeed wish to include the lumpen elements in their fold. They then should know that they have deliberately and wantonly invited the first cancerous cells into the body politic. Not only should they strenously exclude it from their party, but now that they know it exists, the responsibilities of leadership demand that it takes an active role in identifying these elements and dealing with them appropriately.

I believe that the violence we experience in our lives is the violence which already exists within us in some form. The intensity of our hatred and dark thoughts comes back to hurt us multiplied several times over. That is what Gandhi meant, when he said "we must be the change we want to see in the world".

Never before has it been more urgent for the world to respond firmly and nonviolently to the intractable threats that are confronting us. But while we take on the larger challenges, we have to begin by defusing these ideas in our own minds and among us here, now.

Senator McCain can become a great leader in posterity, even if he never were to become President, by disassociating himself from all who foster, sponsor and encourage such seeds of hatred and violence to sprout. He needs to nip these ideas in their buds - now!

Among friends

It was hard to keep up with the resolve of writing regularly. There have been so many things that have been happening in the world since I wrote last that it was certainly not for a dearth of things to write about, that I did not. I wanted to react to the VP debate, and then the second Presidential debate. I wanted to write about the financial crisis, and its implications. It seemed like what I wanted to say, was perhaps no different from what was already being said by so many people in so many different ways. It is so difficult to sift through all these voices and find that unique reaction that is just yours. Or perhaps there does not exist any such thing, for we are all listening and processing so much information from so many different directions. I still think I will write about all the events and happenings of the last week, for they are too substantial to ignore. We are at a true transformational moment in the history of the world. There are too many disruptions, too many important trends coming together at this juncture, and how we deal with them and what we make of them will determine the course of history for the rest of my life for sure. Hmmm, that sounds way to heavy. I think I will come back to it a little later.





Right now, it is also the second day of talking to so many of my old theater friends from Bangalore, after a gap of over two decades. Some of them I have been in touch with. Others I have not spoken to or corresponded with during this entire period. It is wonderful to make contact with them again. They bring back fond memories of wonderful times. They make me conscious of the time that has passed. So many of us have daughters who have just entered college or on the verge of doing so. Is that just coincidence? But, it also brought home sharply how much this means to me and I am sure to all of us, perhaps not in the same way.





It brings me back to why there is something about this VP choice that is so bothersome. And, that is what I want to write about. Why is it, that when the issue of the rights and role of women has been so important to me, that I feel that this is not a good choice for either the country or the world and even for women.