Radical

I keep hearing the term "radicalized" and "radicalization" in casual conversations with people these days. Can only imagine what it must be like listening to news. So what is all this about being a "radical"? 

As a kid my definition of radical was a group of atoms that was free to attach to another group of atoms. 

The other definition is "affecting the fundamental nature of something, far reaching or thorough" and apparently that is what is being talked about, "Far reaching".

For lack of a better analogy, let us say there are multiple folks who want to go from various parts of the bay area to the golden gate bridge. If I had to go there I would take highway 101. Sure bet in my opinion and have been driving on it for many years. Know when to change to which lane, where to expect traffic, know I will get there.  If you ask anyone else in our house, chances are they will also say "take 101. best way"

There may be others who will bet on 280 for their own reasons. They will also get to the golden gate. Might be faster or slower, but they will get there and to them it is a safe bet.

There might even be a guy who says "I have a jet pack. I can get there much faster by going up to 2000 feet and going down". He may be right, he may be wrong. The jet pack might work for him, who knows?! Hopefully he does reach as well.

If a new family visits us here and they have never travelled to SFO, we might recommend them through 101 while a different family might suggest 280. Or they might just say "let me use Google maps to decide which route to take based on traffic info. that is crowdsourced"

Where am I going with all this?

Religion mostly provides some kind of route to a destination which most of us are worried about or cannot necessarily deal with until we die. Salvation! 

We will all swear by our religions as a sure bet to reach the other side based on our own lifes experiences, experiences of others we take for granted that are passed on through generations. Most of the time it is information that we cannot rely on as it is embellished over time and it seems to be a very rare event when someone seems to have died and come back to tell us what is on the other side. There is no dearth of smart people on the planet who can explain things by making us look here, there, inward, outward, etc. etc.

At the end of the day, there is no problem with people picking a comforable route to reach their destination. 

The problem is when one says emphatically that "my route is the only route. all other routes are false". It would be great if everyone got to go on a rotation program with different religions, much like a new college grad goes through different departments in a company before joining a particular group. It would be like we all get to try 101 and 280 or that jet pack if we can get our hands on it and see which route we prefer. Unfortunately, that is not realistic. 

What we could do is to acknowledge that different people will have their own comfort zones and let people go through their own routes. While this seems to be simple enough to say "live and let live", it may not be the real problem. It is all about money. That is a bigger problem that is beyond salvation of any kind. However, live and let live is a good place to start.

When I hear someone say "all muslims are terrorists", that person has been radicalized to believe something that is not true. It is as radical as folks who are chanting "death to America". 

There was a recent conversation with a friend who asked me "Most of the Indians I know in the bay area are so far right that they will put the tea party guys look like Bernie Sanders, yet you are preaching live and let live?" 

In all honesty I told him "the average american kid today is not getting an education on the world. they won't know the difference between India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Iran or Syria or for that matter a difference between different religions. My kids might know their world history and geography but that is not enough. It is like being a safe driver on a freeway where a drunk guy is coming in the wrong direction. End result is not going to be good for either driver. There are folks teaching their kids to hate, based on the fact that other kids are of a different skin color or wear a scarf or turban of some kind. My kids could wear a dupatta on their head and could be the target of a hate crime. I want to make sure that I support a live and let live policy and counter this hate"

I also acknowledged that islamophobia is very high among Hindu households that we interact with here in the bay area. Even on the recent India trip, we had many conversations with folks who belive that the Muslim population in India is increasing dispropotionately, not because more people are believing in Islam or converting to the religion, but because the Muslim folks are on a drive to increase their population where they are a local minority, irrespective of the quality of life they can give their kids.

A relative told me "while other communities are stopping with one or two kids, Muslim families are having four or five plus kids, the families tend to be poor and the kids are not educated and this in turn, feeds a dependence on their religious links to sponsor them and in return they are willing to do anything for their sponsors who are invariably people from the middle east with an agenda to create supporters in India". 

I am not sure if that is what is going on, as this sounds like how things were in Indian villages post Independence irrespective of religion. More kids meant more income and it could simply be that the poor folks are living in the past and economic and religious demographics are being mixed up.

What was clear to me after those conversations, was that the problems are not all about whose route is better. It is about the thought that there is strength in numbers, money and power! 

We are all pawns in an elaborate game played by folks who control the money. Most of what we hear is one side of a story that manages to reach us and the stories with money behind them invariably reach us better.

It is going to take the parents of today a herculean effort to make sure that their bigotry is not passed on to the kids. Our kids don't need to learn to hate. They could learn to love and accept diversity and differences. We need to educate our kids better. Not just our kids. All kids! Yes, I sound like an ad for "no child left behind!" that too for an education on social sciences in a world where math and science are being ignored to accomodate spreading more bigotry.

When I hear what is happening in our kids schools based on the stories they tell me, my stomach churns. In spite of what we teach them at home, they are becoming who they are based on the sum total of their experiences in and outside the house. They are smart and inquisitive and will absorb everything like a sponge. Sometimes I just cry because there are no decent answers to their questions. 

Think it was Deming who said "In god we trust. Everyone else bring data".

The way the world is going, we might have to ask God to bring data as well.

As for "radicalization", for anything to reach far, there are two forces behind it. A push and a pull. The pull for radicalization is there in every shape and form with every over zealous preacher saying "only route xyz can save you!". In spite of that pull existing, not everyone takes a radical view.

It also needs a push. Either the push is a mental defect of some kind in some individuals, or a society that creates a situation where people around the person push that person closer to what is pulling. The youth of today don't need that push. The more we teach our kids to hate, or fear people and things that are different from them, the more the push.

Actually like the Chinese folks I interact with in Asia. They work hard, play hard and religion doesn't seem to be a big part of the day to day life and they are doing fine. They think they are all going to a nice place after thus life and don't seem too worried. The Chinese folks in Cupertino though, seem to be very much like the desi folks when it comes to religious prejudices. The melting pot that is the US of A does seem to do strange things to folks when they melt in.

As we close down on 2015, it is my sincere hope that we all spread a message of peace and do our best to educate everyone around us on going after facts, instead of made up stuff on FB and Whatsapp! Teach your kids to be nice to all their classmates. We are working on it at home.

Out of time, out of place

Conversation with Jr. while driving her back from class

Me: did you know that your cousins and uncle went to a high school football game ? Apparently it is called a .. 

Jr. : Homecoming game.. I know. Do you know why it is called a homecoming game?

Me: No. 

Jr. : (starts explaining something about games, winning, losing, parties, etc. etc.) and sees my eyes glaze over in the rear view mirror and asks "do you know what a homecoming is?"

Me : No.

Jr. : didn't you have any school rivalries when you went to school?

Me: No.

Jr. : Didn't you have homecoming games?

Me: No.

Jr. : thinks for a second and goes "okay. let's start with the basics. Did you go to high school?! "

Next time I have to start steering the conversation in a different direction.

History projects

The little one has a school project where she has to be a person of historic interest, dress like that person and do a report, 5 minute speech in front of the class etc. 

The two most popular picks for desi girls ? Sacagawea and Pocahontas! 

Jr. was Sacagawea three years ago and the little one is Pocahontas. San found an old tops of hers that fits like a gown on the little one and with some creative touches with feathers from three years ago, we present to you an authentic looking Pocahontas.. well, as authentic as we can make her..

The sepia tone doesn't do justice to the colorful feathers, so here is a full color picture of the little Indian. 

We hope she does her speech with the same enthusiasm she showed for dressing in costume. 

Daddy world

The second week of June is the most anticipated week for me. 

It involves three things..

1. Kids graduation from school.. or like we used to say when we were kids "last day of school"!

2. Father's day

3. Our wedding anniversary

We did the last day of school on Wednesday and it was special this year because Jr. finished Elementary school and moves to middle school next year.

This also marks a huge gap when the two girls will be in the same school. In the US we have 6th to 8th grade as Middle school and 9th to 12th grade as high school. In three years when the little one goes to middle school, Jr. will already be moving out of that school to high school. 

The last year of school for Jr. will be the next time they are both in same school and that is 6 years away. So we are back to two pickups, two drop offs and different school timings etc. Our hope is that Jr. becomes more responsible and starts walking or biking to middle school! 

Now.. Father's day is always nice. My kids give me the extra huggies and kissies and this year I already have my gifts. The school has a limit to creativity (and budget) for the father's day gifts. So guess what the little one gave me?

Same Frog! well, it does not seem to have any storage value given the small mouth but the little one tells me it is a paperclip holder.. Well, now my office will have two frog paperclip holders! Funny thing is I wont know who made what because they both have the same initials and they both were in Room 12 for 2nd Grade! 

(Note for posterity : one on left is Little One, right is Jr's)

They also make me nice cards which really make my day! This year they put a lot of effort into it and was really happy to read /see what they gave me..

I did not get the boat and the caption first..

till she told me that I had to flip the flags over to see which my "Jobs" were!

As you can clearly see, my jobs are all non critical functions which involve the fishes and plants. In other words, I am a "Uppukku chappani" or the twelveth man in a cricket team. Nevertheless, yours truly is happy to play any role as part of the crew! 

The letter was clear but "What in Perumal's name is a woodly?" I asked and the reply was :

Daddy, I really wanted to say "you are cuddly like my cuddle bear, but what can I do?! There is no C in AWESOME! so I changed the W to say Woodly instead of Cuddly!" .  While the concept is baffling to me, the way she said it in all seriousness with her hands waving wildly will stay in my mind forever. 

Next was Jr's turn and she gave me this nice heart and card to put in my office! 

She painstakingly created the logos for the Yoga studio, my work etc and put them there. The cartoon of me on a yoga mat with a small water bottle cracked me up! 

They have both promised to behave their best tomorrow to celebrate Father's day.. will hold them to it, given yesterday evening and most of today was a blur with yet another migraine. Feeling good now after all that sleep. Daddy day promises to be interesting!

As for the third thing that makes our week, we have our Aussie relatives visiting us and it has been a blast! So we celebrate with a larger family this year!

Here is a video of me dancing with the little one and her cousin at a local restaurant.. 

It is just great to see the kids happy! 

We have now crossed two 7 year itches and still "itching for each other".. so that must be a good thing! There are no secret presents planned for San this year.  When the whole NSA Prism scandal came out, I realized that San knows every little move I make.. she has all the passwords for the credit cards, amazon, ATT sites etc. and I have none. No wonder I can never surprise her with anything!  

Maybe I will handcraft her a card that says "You are my NSA and I still love you!"

Happy Father's day to all the dads out there!

Numbers..

We go to war because of possible WMD's in a country and eventually justify the war by saying 140 people in a village were killed by chemical weapons and the tyrant who killed them must go and the country must be democratized.

All of you know my feelings about how Americans are taught (subconsciously) that their lives are somehow worth more than the lives of people from other countries..  My kids growing up in here somehow get that "holier than thou" attitude inspite of my working constantly to bring them back down to earth.

28 lives is not far off from 140 and if you factor in any mutliplier for the Chuck Norris factor, it is even closer! An automatic weapon that can put out bullets at that rate is a WMD. Cannot understand why we would let these weapons be so easily accessible to anyone be it a sane person or an insane person.. because you never know when it can get in the wrong hands. 

So what are we going to do about automatic and semi-automatic weapons?

On the day of the shooting rampage, will go through the following reactions:

1- I will write a blog post which will practically be a copy of what I wrote after the previous such shooting and will realize it after going through archives and ask myself "when will I get the courage to do something about this other than write a blog post?" and will console myself saying "next election I will vote for guys who say they will bring in gun control" and also get frustrated after realizing "wait a second.. that is what I said last time".

2- Indian friends will say something about "too bad. America still a great country? My heart goes out to an almost great country.. etc. etc." 

3- My  Desi US Citizen friends will write about how their heart bleeds, how we have to take a stand against gun control, forward a few standard facebook articles that somehow articulate an equal percentage of truths and untruths that will actually weaken a stand for gun control, send some chain mails that urge you to share a hallmark card of sorts which say "1 share = 1 tear, 1 like = 1 hug for the victims" or some such thing.

4- A few friends who actually do some fact checking and are the intellectual types will either write articles which put forward "why gun control never happens" and the real facts behind guns in the US, statistical correlation of semi automatic weapons vs. number of mass shootings, etc. etc. and will be critiqued by some other friends who out of fear of losing their rifles and pistols will accuse them of focusing on gun control while we should really be grieving. There will be posts about how not all gun owners are insane killer etc etc.

5- My kids will freak out. Jr. usually throws up when she gets graphic descriptions of violence and the little one will sulk for a day or two and be angry at anyone and no one in particular to a great predictability.

Just yesterday morning there were helicopters above our house because the local high school which is four blocks away had a bomb threat. They closed two of the four schools that are within a 4 block radius of our house.. (no, kid you not.. there are really 4 schools within a four block radius from our house.. two elementary, one middle, one high school) and we had to wait to see if our kids school was going to be open or not. The local roads were blocked by cops and TV crews and we were glad that the whole thing turned out to be a false alarm. The kids were already spooked by this yesterday. 

We had gone through a similar experience recently with someone killing a bunch of co-workers at the Quarry up the mountain and more folks in the parking lot of the same high school and he was eventually shot by cops the next day..

So it was difficult for them to hear that school kids got killed by some insane gunman. 

Yes, we have it easy compared to the parents who have lost their kids today or have injured kids today or have to explain to their kids why their friends are not going to be back in their class when the school eventually opens.

Yes, our hearts go out to those folks. 

Yes, I cried after hearing this news and came home and hugged my kids a little tighter. 

But NO. There is no reason to stop voicing our opinions on gun control policy out of respect for the victims. That is non-sense and it is not trying to sway opinions on gun control by "exploiting" this event.

While driving home NPR was interviewing three people who were experts on "such matters" and one of them said "schools in the US are extremely safe and what happened today while horrid is a rare event!"

Seriously?! It is rare compared to what? There are more mass shootings in the US than any other country in the world unless you normalize it with the number of automatic weapons sold and even that statistic might be beat by some other country for all I know. 

Every week some bozo goes on a rampage and while controling said bozos is not practical, the damage will definitely be limited if he had to shoot one bullet at a time or use a knife. 

If we cannot stop these rampages, the least we should do is make killing less easier.

To all those folks who tell me to hold off on voicing opinions on gun control out of respect for the victims.. 

go shoot yourself!

We all react to events and things like this that get no real action towards a solution, will get a voice only for a short time after the event till Paris Hilton poses naked outside the Louvre or Justin Bieber gets his next girlfriend. Things like this trend on twitter and facebook for much shorter times than trivial matters. 

The human brain is amazing in the way it selectively forgets bad things and moves on. We all die peacefully or tragically and our brain figures out how to move on amidst facing death. This too will be forgotten by the public except for the folks who are impacted and next year the media will dig that up to do an anniversary of the event and things will fade away.  

Nothing wrong in talking gun control NOW while there are still a lot of folks who want to stand up for it.

ps. I am planning to recycle this post after the next mass shooting rampage in the very near future, as my heart is filled with so much optimism that we the people will do something about it now all of a sudden, given the age of the victims.