Horn, ok, please!

I never feel alone in India, not even when skipping red lights :)  You may wonder what transpired to make a generally law abiding person to break the law. The deafening horn of multiple vehicles:motor bikes, scooties, auto rickshaws, cars, buses colluded to make me a law breaker.

The traffic scenario in all major cities is worsening world over, but in Pune it is doing so by leaps and bounds. I have been away for only 2 years and it seems skipping traffic signals has become a norm. It is not just the ubiquitous and multitudes of two wheelers that skip red lights, PMT (Pune Municipal board) buses do so too!!!

Just to give you an idea of what PMT buses look like here’s a picture

Honking is the unspoken language of everyone on the road. It is used to communicate a variety of emotions: to get you to speed up or to slow down, move to your left, sometimes right, take a pass, to break up a crowd of people who have decided to congregate in the middle of the road to chat up some, scare away the stray cows or dogs ambling away on the road undaunted, among many other emotions. Since it is such a common language, to grasp it entirely one has to supplement its understanding by some supporting observations. In case of two wheel drivers one may have to gauge their body language to guess what their next step maybe,  for PMT bus drivers, look out for their frustration level by how much squealing noise they make with their brakes (a tactic commonly employed to emote by many PMT bus drivers). Having a meek little bell is a big disadvantage for bicyclists who emote in the following way :

Having been sensitized in the USA and UK for the last 5 years where honking is considered disrespectful unless absolutely necessary, my husband refrains from honking here in India as well. It is just a matter of time before he re-learns that honking is not only necessary but mandatory to survive Pune traffic. As for me, I often feel like using Harry Potter’s charm “Silencio”. In Harry Potter lingo,   The Silencing Charm (Silencio) is a charm that renders the victim temporarily mute, working on both beasts and beings. Here though I want to modify the charm to use it on the vehicles and mute them instead.

Driving on the wrong side of the road, stopping anywhere without indication even though the roads are narrow and can easily slow down the ongoing traffic are some other road “mis- etiquettes” that can be very annoying.  If I have to look at it differently though, driving in Pune can be likened to a thrilling video gaming experience, in real life. It has definitely sharpened my reflexes! An American friend of mine who was briefly visiting India had remarked to me “traffic in India is like water, it finds its own way to flow”, a really astute observation!  Nothing can deter the traffic: be it large pot holes, water logging or a bus that has broken down in the middle of the road. There are traffic jams and bottlenecks often but people squeeze in and make room by going over the pavement, going over to the wrong side of the road, and not to leave out the most lethal weapon: persistent honking till the person in front gets annoyed and somehow makes room for you to pass, many a times by skipping the traffic light!

Its been 2 months since I wrote this blog and I would like to update some developments in dealing with persistent honking. I now have a helmet!! People use helmet to save their precious heads, my objective though is to use it for mitigation of noise :) Also having a headphone with music playing ( in one ear) helps me enjoy music while I ride. This is serving me quite well, I am glad to say that I am now fully adjusted in :)
Steps in getting ready for a ride:
Step 1: switch on the music and plug your ear phone in one ear

Step 2: Wrap your scarp around your head, taking care the head phone is still in place

Step 3: Wear your helmet on top of all this

Now we are set to take on the noisy traffic with an elan ;)

Learn, Unlearn, Relearn

We are back to India after 2 years of  our stay in the USA.  A lot seems to have changed while we were away.  As we grapple with the substantial context switch from bay area to Pune, I muse: Even though air travel and other technology has made life faster, ‘adapting’ is still a function of psychology and biology, it takes its own time!

Suddenly it all feels so cramped. Houses look unkempt, roads look narrow, driving on the left side of the lane seems abnormal, people seem far too many…. things I maybe never noticed earlier are now an eyesore. The personal interaction I yearned for in the USA now seems intrusive. When we went to get the sim card for a new phone number the sales guy began asking me: “How much do you talk on phone, how much data do you use, do you text often?” These are routine questions, but to me it seemed like an interrogation. I had grown accustomed to being shown brochures of the choices available and then selecting an option, rather than give out details about my phone usage to a stranger. Has it really been just two years? I hope this dissonance ends soon.

I was always a planner, but the unpredictability of India kept it in check:there were always myriad contingencies that could not be planned for. In USA everything worked seamlessly with clockwork precision and predictability. In such a system one cannot blame anyone/anything except oneself  for a plan not working out well. This increased my ownership and unleashed the ‘monster planner’ in me. My husband had started calling me a control freak. I wanted to know everything upfront. For example if we were planning an outing to San Francisco I would plan for: what time should we start from home to be able to get a parking spot, where to park, what to do if that parking spot was full, what if we have to park really far, what mode of public transport would reach us to our destination, would it be cost effective, and on and on and on. There was hardly any spontaneity left. The fact of the matter was that most plans worked well! I would get a huge rush every time this happened, it fueled my obsessiveness.  It was turning me into a perfectionist, somewhat intolerant and impatient. The uncertainty of India is humbling and a welcome reminder to let off control from self to the unknown. I am re- learning to be spontaneous again,to keep faith, to believe in higher power and let things be, to say "so what" if things don't work according to plan.

USA had made me so independent, or rather device dependent.  If you want something- look up the internet, find the best choice from reviews, find the stores in which it is available and go buy that exact thing. Here in India everyone has recommendations: do this, buy that, go there,etc. You get so much advise at the drop of a hat! A skill now required is to be able to listen and filter necessary information, to stand your ground, and then make a choice. All this without losing your temper. Its challenging but I am working at it :)

In a fast changing global world, the ability to not only learn but also unlearn the earlier learnt behavior, as well as relearn a previously forgotten skill are mandatory for survival. This is a measure of adaptability . As Charles Darwin quotes “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Quote from the sunscreen song “ Live in northern California but move out of it before it makes you too soft. Live in New York City but move out of it before it makes you too harsh’’

Keep moving, keep adapting, keep growing!

The sunscreen song:

Motivations behind writing a blog

Earnest reasons

Whacky reasons

After drafting my first blog post, I had the following realizations: The blogging process brought greater clarity in my thinking, made me more deliberate. Maybe even meditative to some extent Creating and completing something my own brought a strange sort of joy Brought back my sense of purpose and excitement. After a long time something  is keeping me motivated for longer than a day! Helped me discover and experiment with my natural writing ability Hopefully it will help organize all my musings in one place, rather than in bits and sheets of paper, which always get misplaced. Will probably help me track different phases and moods I go through.

On a lighter note, blogging helped me: To finally legibly read my own hand(type)writing To increase my typing speed. No better place than a blog to practice typing ;) To find something new to abandon. After unsuccessfully dabbling in pencil sketching and Crochet, it was time for something new To show off my superb vocabulary, pun intended ;) To prove to the world that I am slowly graduating from my technology illiteracy To finally be searchable on google

In search of my locus

For as long as I remember, I have attempted to be liked and praised by others, especially the elders. I have always wanted to be regarded as the prototypical daughter: one who did well in studies and extra–curricular activities, was well mannered and disciplined. To a large extent I have always achieved it. I have done well throughout school, cleared tough exams, completed dental school and performed well in music and sports.

That should be all good, right? Well in a way yes, it always pushed me to try harder. Conversely, it tied my identity to external expectations and validations. I had come to associate the amount of education with intellect. I believed that intelligent people studied more or that the more one studied the more intelligent they were. A sense of pride and entitlement had overcome me.

A certain turn of events, thankfully, rid me of this hubris. Post marriage, I moved to the USA with my husband on H4 or dependent visa status. A new phase of life, new country and a new status challenged me to take on a new role as a home maker. This was quite a challenge for me. Most women my age and qualification were ‘working’ women who drew hefty salaries and held important portfolios. As a ‘dependent’ house wife, I had no external markers of job or salary to base my identity on.  I underwent an identity crisis. This was a wakeup call which propelled me to begin seeking inner validations: the ones that don’t show on report cards and resumes.

At first I experienced severe pangs of what is it that I was doing as a mere house wife. There was a constant FoMo, ‘Fear of missing out’. FoMo is self-regulatory state which arises from situational or long-term lack of psychological need satisfaction, 1 in my case the need was to be gainfully employed and respected for the same. Gradually though, with the help of my husband, I started easing into the role and began enjoying the new place. Kitchen was my new experimental laboratory. Getting recipes right gave me a lot of joy. I learnt to drive and visited a whole lot of wonderful places with my husband. I joined two meet up groups: one was a H4 support group and the other was toastmasters - a public speaking forum. At the H4 support group I met wonderful ladies of different nationalities all of who were sailing in the same boat as me. It was fun to be able to try out several different cuisines and hobbies with them. At toastmasters I took on my fear of public speaking.  I even volunteered with a few organizations. The ample free time allowed me to take advantage of the wonderfully well stocked library and try out different courses on free online sites like Coursera.

All the above experiences helped me gain a whole new perspective. Meeting people from different nationalities, careers and backgrounds busted a lot of my prejudices. I came to acknowledge that intelligent people could belong to every sphere. Home makers, teachers, HRs, many a times were lot more creative and divergent in their problem solving approach than doctors or engineers.  Often times, the best ‘optimizers’ were not programmers or project managers but house wives ;)  There really was no correlation between educational degrees and intelligence. This was a very humbling realization. Interacting with people from different countries gave me a snippet into their cultures and problems. It made me more grateful than ever for being an Indian and having been brought up on strong family values and traditions. It taught me to be more perceptive and to think on my own.  To set my own goals and not simply do what was expected of me. It is a lot tougher to set one’s own targets than to complete a given task or take orders. Goal setting requires a lot more discipline and introspection. I still have a long way to go in finding my inner locus. I am glad I was able to start this journey, albeit a little late. I now truly believe in Buddha’s saying “Every experience, no matter how bad it seems, holds within it, a blessing of some kind. The goal is to find it.”

References:    1. FoMo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out

What took you so long?

About 2 years back I was 2 steps from starting a blog and then, I defaulted.The tell-tale sign that I would default were always there.
  The idea of blogging started when a friend of mine from toastmasters suggested after hearing my quirky speech: "You could start a blog and name it 'Oddities by Aditi'." Another time, a blogger friend of mine remarked that I possessed some talent in storytelling. I had always brushed these remarks aside with the thought ''Ah well, people are simply being nice to me.” And mused, "All original stuff that had to be thought of or written about is long over. I will only be adding to the never ending stream of redundant literature.'' In short, I was hiding behind the mask of perfection, surest way to procrastinate. Having unlimited time at hand (H-4 visa status), did not help either. Blogging could always be a goal for another day.

  A sudden turn of events has threatened the existence of this 'unlimited time'. I can postpone no further. With a sudden frenzy I begin my blog, hoping to bring some justice to the 2 years I sat awaiting a better idea and a better time :)