"Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory". How can I understand the sentences by Milan Kundera?

What drives the need for metaphors? Jorge Luis Borges says, 'Censorship is the mother of metaphors'.

Censorship, a tool of authority, especially totalitarian, enforces a no tolerance policy against criticism. How to express dissent in such circumstances? Find a more convoluted way. Enter the metaphor. Thus, writers use metaphors as tools to express dissent and other unfashionable notions when prevailing authority censors speech, a stark example of the many ways we use metaphors.

Simply put, metaphors are how we navigate through life. In the process, Kundera says, we end up submitting to their edict.  How? Kundera explores some of this process through Tomas and Tereza's love story in 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'

An authority figure in our lives, love is or can be absolute. Unlike totalitarianism which imposes censorship externally, love imposes a state of mind that serves to self-censor, something Kundera describes as Tomas' poetic memory'.

Early on in Kundera's novel, Tomas casts his nascent feelings for Tereza in the metaphor of protector-dependent. Why? Because shortly after they meet, she falls sick while with him and he takes care of her. Kundera writes, 'He had come to feel an inexplicable love for this all but complete stranger; she seemed a child to him, a child someone had put in a bulrush basket daubed with pitch and sent downstream for Tomas to fetch at the riverbank of his bed'. This is how Tereza enters her first word in Tomas' poetic memory or how Tomas lets her, by letting the circumstance of her falling sick in his house, her transient incapacitation, her vulnerability, lower his defenses.

A little later still, 'Again it occurred to him that Tereza was a child put in a pitch-daubed bulrush basket and sent downstream. He couldn't very well let a basket with a child in it float down a stormy river!'. Teresa's place within Tomas' poetic memory strengthens as his metaphor for her takes deeper root.

It's after this that Kundera writes, 'Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love'. According to Kundera, in the process of creating a metaphor to explain Teresa's presence in his life to himself, Tomas falls in love with her. Is Tomas really in love with Tereza or in love with the idea of the role of protector that his metaphor for her helps him create for himself? Is it the one or the other or a little of both?

So when we come to much later in the book where Kundera writes, 'I have said before that metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word in our poetic memory', Tomas is a prisoner of the metaphor he created for Tereza.

Ian Beacock considers the power of metaphors from an angle that reverberates strongly in our time, 'Since the 1970s, the free market has slowly become our master metaphor. Its benchmarks of efficiency and profit have become ours. Our capacity to respond to the world and engage with one another as citizens has eroded, and instead we’ve become consumers in all things, rational actors seeking competitive advantage.' (Why we need Arnold Toynbee's good life – Ian Beacock – Aeon). In this digital age of constant, ephemeral and dubious quantification through likes and views, who could argue against this self-evident truth?

Kundera's insight is far more profound than the simple proposition that metaphors are dangerous. Rather it's about how they are dangerous. He warns us that the power metaphors exercise over us is through our imagination, and that this power is very real and very consequential. Metaphors can help foster a giddy feeling of revolt against the prevailing order even as they help keep us in thrall to authority, be it internal or external.

https://www.quora.com/Metaphors-are-dangerous-Love-begins-with-a-metaphor-Which-is-to-say-love-begins-at-the-point-when-a-woman-enters-her-first-word-into-our-poetic-memory-How-can-I-understand-the-sentences-by-Milan-Kundera/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

The Sounds of Childhood Memories

Music doesn't trigger childhood or any of my memories. Rather than music, specific sounds are the soundtrack of my life, and nostalgic memories of my childhood come flooding back when I hear some of them.

Whenever I hear the sound of trains in Bollywood movies, it brings back memories of my unforgettable journeys on Indian trains and their utterly unique sounds. Thud-ag-thud, thud-ag-thud, thud-ag-thud. Repetitive, soporific, hypnotic, a sound once heard, never forgotten. Oh, and so much more. After all, in a country where a rail trip from the South (Chennai/Madras) to the North-East (Guwahati) takes full nights and days, childhood memories of Indian trains get suffused with so many myriad sounds, especially the enduring calls of train station chaiwalas (tea vendors; About - Chai Wallahs of India; Chaiwala). No matter the time of day or night the train pulls up into the station, the call of the chaiwala resonates. He goes chai-chai-chai-chai-chaiiiyyyan, the last sound extending out and ending on a high note. The memorable ones are those in tiny hamlets, so-called mofussil (mofussil - Wiktionary) stations, where the arrival of a major broad gauge line is not just the event of the day, it's also when they earn their daily bread. The monumental Indian Railways runs on the backs of unique creatures such as Indian train station chaiwala as this marvelously entertaining account, The Station Chai-wallah, evidences.

Often when I hear the clickety-clack of hoof beats, it brings back memories of those vacation horse-buggy rides across the old India that still lives alongside its modern counterpart. Old Delhi, Hyderabad, Bhopal. My childhood horse-buggy rides in all these cities. So different, so exotic, so exciting compared to mundane everyday life, those holiday horses with their swishing tails and their snorts. In turn of course I then remember that one summer vacation in the Northern hill station called Shimla. My dad had arranged for horse rides for the whole family. We saddled up but as we headed out something strange happened. It appeared that the horses my dad and brother were on had other ideas. The two of them appeared to be inseparable so much so they kept clinging to each other, grinding my dad's and brother's legs between them in the process. The guide kept admonishing the horses and tried to yank at them to separate but they kept clinging to each other. Laughing hysterically at this bizarre display, my mom and I almost fell off our own horses. An unforgettable family anecdote.

Sometimes when I hear the sound of waves crashing against the shore just so, it triggers memories of childhood vacation trips to Chennai, in particular to its Marina Beach. Scared of the Bay of Bengal, that vast expanse of water in front of me, I'd cling tightly to my uncle's hand as I braved the water's edge. As the waves crashed down, my feet would sink down into the soaking sand, and as they receded, that sudden leap of fear in the heart as they drag-pulled my sand-stuck feet along with them. As the waves receded, that strange disconcerting feeling of moving yet being perfectly still.

Indian trains, voices of chaiwalas, hoof beats and the sounds of waves crashing on the sea shore. These sounds tend to trigger memories of my childhood.

https://www.quora.com/What-tune-lyric-brings-childhood-memories-back-into-your-mind/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

What are the psychological and biological origins of human philanthropy?

I am not sure we know the psychological and/or biological origin of human philanthropy. However, I believe that Thornton Wilder accurately identified the baleful sociological impulse that sustains and drives human philanthropy. In his 1967 novel, the Eighth Day, he indelibly defined human philanthropy for me as a malevolent sociological impediment, an anodyne most supreme, a delicately insidious sop to human conscience. Written almost fifty years ago, the following words from his book, The Eighth Day, ring as true for me today as the day I first read them:

"Philanthropy is the roadblock in the path of social justice. Philanthropy is like an infected rain from heaven; it poiseneth him who gives and him who takes

...No rich man ever gave away a penny that he could find a use for. Never has and never will. By separating themselves from a little money the rich feel justified in making a lot more. Spiders draw just enough silk out of their bowels to catch those half-dozen flies they need to feed themselves and their loved ones, but the rich make silk and silk and silk. Nothing can stop them. Their houses are stuffed with it. Their banks are stuffed with it, and it's not out of their bowels they make it, but out of the bowels and lungs and eye-balls of others. The little coins that fall from their tables make churches and libraries. Churches! That's where the soothing syrup's stored. There's no marriage tighter than that between the banker and the bishop. The poor should rest content in the situation in which God has seen fit to place them. It's God's will that they work a lifetime over a sewing machine or in a mine

..a poison-bloated cloud. Everyone can see it. It's fed by the unequal distribution of wealth. It poisons the child in the cradle. It befouls the home. It's so dark in the courthouse you can't see a truth two feet away. The most sacred thing in the world is property. It's more sacred than conscience. It's more untouchable than a woman's reputation. And for all its importance, no one, NO ONE, has ever attempted to put a qualifying value on it. Property can be unearned, unmerited, extorted, abused, misspent, without losing one iota of its sacred character - its religious character." Thornton Wilder. The Eighth Day.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-psychological-and-biological-origins-of-human-philanthropy/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

The 2015 South Indian Floods: The Front Page News Story that Global News Media Wantonly Neglected

Heard what happened in Chennai, India's 4th largest metro? Wouldn't be surprised if the answer's no or at least not enough. After all, it's about unprecedented floods, that too in South India, not in Delhi or Mumbai. As well, clearly nothing to do with terrorism, and everything to do with a lethal mix of non-existent city planning, and rampant big business and government corruption. So there you have it, heavy rains pounding it already since mid-November, this city of ~7 to 9 million received so much rain on 1st December, 2015 that it broke a record set in 1918, its English National news daily, the Hindu, unable to publish a print edition for the 1st time since 1878. As heavy rains continued incessantly, Chennai then became marooned for about a day and a half, i.e., no flights, trains or buses going in or coming out. Plus no power, no cell phone service. However, the rains didn't bring this marvelous, beloved city to its knees. No, unrestrained, unplanned growth did. A coastal town on the Bay of Bengal, Chennai's flat as a pancake. Who in their right mind builds office parks, even an IT corridor, in flood plains? Yet, over the past decade, the flood plains areas around Rajiv Gandhi Salai  became home to spanking new office parks housing the likes of corporate giants such as Cognizant, Infosys,  Tata Consultancy Services, while East Coast Road became the site of unrestrained housing construction, all underwater or recently underwater as I write this.

 

No, not the fig-leaf of climate change, A to Z this was a human-made disaster

With an average elevation of only 6.7 meters above sea level (1, 2), and many neighborhoods actually at sea level, Chennai's water drainage is challenging even in the best of times.

 

In actuality, Chennai is really a conglomeration of a bunch of overgrown villages that merged and grew beyond, of course only in 3 directions, North, West and South. The Bay of Bengal to the East precludes growth in that direction. Each of these villages used to have its temple with a water tank used for water storage. Inlets leading to such tanks and surrounding lakes would be kept open. As the city grew, these tanks and lakes shrank from ~650 to ~27. As Geeta Doctor writes, 'The areas least affected by the floods were the older parts of the city, where temple tanks remembered their history and culverts and drains constructed in the 19th century managed to find ways to carry the overflow' (2).

 

'The Virugambakkam drain, which was 6.5 km long and drained into the Nungambakkam tank, is now present only for an of extent of 4.5 km. The remaining two km stretch of the drain is missing. Nungambakkam tank was filled and built. This along with the loss of Koyambedu drain has resulted in the periodic flooding of Koyambedu and Virugambakkam areas' (3).

 

This phenomenon is now repeating in the suburbs. The surplus channels connecting various waterbodies in western suburbs such as Ambattur and Korattur have been encroached upon. The waterbody in Mogappair has almost disappeared. Lake beds often serve as make shift dumping yards and cesspool. This has resulted in inundation of neighbouring localities. The Veerangal Odai that connects the Adambakkam lake with Pallikaranai marsh ends abruptly after 550 m from its origin and the remaining part is not to be seen. This causes inundation in places such as Puzhithivakkam and Madipakkam' (3).

 

S. Mohan, professor, Environment and Water Resources Engineering, IIT Madras, cautions that loss of waterbodies and channels not only induced flood but also increased saltwater intrusion. As a thumb rule, he said, every one metre of water-head in a water body can push sea water laterally by 40 meters' (3). Note the date of this report (3), June 2011. No plausible deniability possible for the powers-that-be.

 

'The corporation began storm water drain projects across 31 canals and four major drainage basins, namely Kosasthalaiyar, Cooum, Adyar and Kovalam, promising to remodel 183 kilometres of drains and construct 321 kilometres of new drains. Multiple deadlines later, it hasn’t reached the halfway mark. The cost has crossed Rs 5,000 crore, on various components of the projects, but change is hard to gauge (4).

 

“So far nearly 140 kilometres of the storm water project are complete and progress is made for the rest,” Paranthaman says. “It’s a better situation today than it was in 2005 or even last year. The corporation is a large entity; things cannot happen overnight.” (4).

 

The drains are only a part of the story. “These are temporary patches,” says Arpan Sundaresan, a professor of water mapping and management who has done extensive research on Chennai’s water management. “Canals and rivers need to be widened, drains to be connected to water bodies. Concrete roads tend to waterlog faster. Things get worse when marshlands are encroached for construction. You can’t ignore these issues and simply focus on one aspect of a huge problem.” (4). Will someone demand from the aforesaid Paranthaman, zonal officer, Zone VIII, Corporation of Chennai, an explanation for his parlous statements to the contrary? Probably not. After all, we've habituated civic officials and politicians to never expect to be held accountable, especially so in India.

 

'Today, Chennai has a host of expensive infrastructure aimed at ushering in a “Make in Chennai” boom – a brand-new (though leaky) airport built on the floodplains of the River Adyar, a sprawling bus terminal in flood-prone Koyambedu, a Mass Rapid Transit System constructed almost wholly over the Buckingham Canal and the Pallikaranai marshlands, expressways and bypass roads constructed with no mind to the tendency of water to flow, an IT corridor and a Knowledge Corridor consisting of engineering colleges constructed on waterbodies, and automobile and telecom SEZs and gated residential areas built on important drainage courses and catchments' (5).

 

The case of the Pallikaranai marshlands, which drains water from a 250-squarekilometre catchment, is telling. Not long ago, it was a 50-square-kilometre water sprawl in the southern suburbs of Chennai. Now, it is 4.3 square kilometres – less than a tenth of its original. The growing finger of a garbage dump sticks out like a cancerous tumour in the northern part of the marshland. Two major roads cut through the waterbody with few pitifully small culverts that are not up to the job of transferring the rain water flows from such a large catchment. The edges have been eaten into by institutes like the National Institute of Ocean Technology. Ironically, NIOT is an accredited consultant to prepare Environmental Impact Assessments on various subjects, including on the implications of constructing on waterbodies' (5).

 

Virtually every one of the flood-hit areas can be linked to ill-planned construction. The Chennai Bypass connecting NH45 to NH4 blocks the east flowing drainage causing flooding in Anna Nagar, Porur, Vanagaram, Maduravoyal, Mugappair and Ambattur. The Maduravoyal lake has shrunk from 120 acres to 25. Ditto with Ambattur, Kodungaiyur and Adambakkam tanks. The Koyambedu drain and the surplus channels from Korattur and Ambattur tanks are missing. Sections of the Veerangal Odai connecting Adambakkam tank to Pallikaranai are missing. The South Buckingham Canal from Adyar creek to Kovalam creek has been squeezed from its original width of 25 metres to 10 metres in many places due to the Mass Rapid Transit System railway stations. Important flood retention structures such as Virugambakkam, Padi and Villivakkam tanks are officially abandoned' (5). As I wrote already, who in their right minds builds on floodplains?

 

'The  sewage system in Chennai  was originally designed for a population of 0.65 million  at 114 litres per capita per  day of water supply; it was  further modified during 1989–1991, but is now much  below the required capacity'. Even more appallingly, 'The city has only 855 km of storm  drains against 2847 km of urban roads' (6). Inevitable insult to injury? Banks of all three major water bodies, the Adyar and Cooum rivers, and the Buckingham Canal are heavily encroached. Replaced by concrete (7), green covers in some city wards have reduced by ~99%, drastically reducing the city's water-holding capacity as well (6).

 

'Pallikaranai marshland covered 50 sq km in 2001, now it’s 4.3 sq km. Maduravoyal lake shrunk from 120 to 25 acres. Excess rain had nowhere to drain. Authorities had abandoned retention canals too, further compounding floods' (8).

 

To top off the litany of human-made woes, everywhere, indiscriminate garbage, especially plastic, especially in storm water drains. No mystery about the outcome. Floods and inundations more likely (9, 10).

Research by the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) shows (11),

• Of the >600 waterbodies in the 1960s, only a fraction were healthy in 2008.
• The State's Water Resources Department's records show that 19 major lakes had shrunk from 1, 130 hectares in the 1980s to ~645 by the early 2000s. 
• Chennai's aquifers are depleted.

And it's not as though others haven't published careful risk-assessment of rains and floods in Chennai (12, 13). Again, no plausible deniability for politicians, city planners, bureaucrats and big business corporates.

 

News Media coverage of the 2015 South Indian Floods: A total washout

First time I saw BBC World news cover the story of the unprecedented Chennai Floods was on December 5, 2015, in its 1PM US Eastern time broad-cast. A brief interview with the Chennai City Commissioner. I timed the coverage. ~ 2 minutes. The 2PM broadcast? No coverage at all. An oil rig explosion in the Caspian Sea took precedence. Of course both times the US 2015 San Bernardino shooting took most of the air-time. US news media? Never expected them to cover it anyway just as I never expect them to cover real global news, only sensationalist crimes and terrorist attacks. Meantime, death tolls from the  2015 South Indian Rains is twice that of the Paris attacks and counting.

 

India's so-called national news media. Why so-called? You know there's a story there. So-called because Chennai floods patently proved, at least to me, that India lacks a national news media. I saw English news channels start covering the story but only sporadically and desultorily. Timing of their coverage is telling. Started to happen when reports began coming out of an ~100-year old record being broken and TV channels could beam images of grubby, 'foreign visitors' stranded at the flooded Chennai airport (8). The modern 24X7 news cycle is verily an insatiable beast, sensationalism bred into its very marrow. Accountability and accurate information? Laughably idealistic concepts, so passe and irrelevant. Not just that, the old North-South divide I grew up in is still very much alive and kicking. Mumbai 2008 terror attacks? 24X7 coverage not just locally but also internationally. Chennai Floods 2015? Perfunctory, lip-service coverage and quickly move on to the real news, either Rahul Gandhi's newfound aggression or Delhi's smog or the never-endingly sensational turns in the Sheena Bora murder case for national news agencies, or the 2015 San Bernardino shooting incident for international news agencies. Only local dailies like the Hindu and vernacular press (Dinamalar, Dinamani, Dina Thanthi, etc.), and online magazines like the Scroll and the Wire sustained the yeoman effort of wall-to-wall flood news coverage.

 

Why am I harping so much about unforgivably lamentable national and international news coverage of this unprecedented disaster in Chennai? The press is rightfully called the Fourth Estate, ideally holding accountable the administration, legislature and judiciary. Sustained coverage of the scale and details of the disaster unfolding since December 1 is the only means to put unrelenting pressure on powers-that-be to deliver, i.e., deliver timely succor, relief, rehabilitation and explanations. For e..g., what did the Jayalalithaa-led State Government and Narendra Modi-led Central Government do on Dec 1 and 2, 2015? To all intents and purposes, sat with their thumbs stuck firmly up their asses. After all, there was no substantial media coverage to stoke public outrage that in one fell swoop, millions in India's 4th largest metro had been relegated to the medieval age.

 

Irony is we're globally connected as never before, at least in theory, and yet global news coverage has likely never been as abysmal as it is today. Certainly the internet has democratized many aspects of society but the downside is more information doesn't equal better or accurate information. Accurate, vetted information's gasping and struggling to make itself heard through all the noise. Forget about knowledge, that's left behind at the starting line. Surfeit of technology yoked to deficit of wisdom, in public, corporate and individual life. Such a most unholy recipe for epic disaster only makes future episodes more inevitable.

 

Disasters inevitably stir into prominence Human Nature's Ugly Underbelly and How

• Public officials bullying relief supply workers to stick Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's photo on relief supply packages (14, 15), throwing much-needed relief supplies into the river rather than allow volunteers to deliver without political patronage (16).
• Corporates such as Zomato and Uber (company) preying on desperation to make a quick buck (17).
• Individuals stockpiling diesel fuel to illegally sell at exorbitant prices, 'ordinary white candles, normally sold for Rs.5 to Rs.10 apiece, retailed for a little over Rs.50, with shopkeepers warning that prices would skyrocket over Rs.80 in the coming days', affluent folk fleeing in droves if not outright out of the city then to 3rd, 4th and 5th star hotels, gated communities pumping water out of their underground car parks into neighboring communities, thoughtlessly flooding them (18), I could go on and on. And as usual, leaving their pets to their own miserable fate, enough affluent folk who patently don't deserve their material bounty (19).

All shame, no decency.

 

Even more ominous? 2015 South Indian floods doesn't cite any data since November 18 for water- and vector-borne diseases (20). As my brother pointed out, official sources are being lax, maybe deliberately so, in divulging data on disease outbreaks. Already, his friends and neighbors active in the NGO arena are inundated with calls and texts requesting Clioquinol and Enteral administration, commonly used for treating symptoms of GI tract infections.

 

Social Media: Spontaneous Voice and Will of Decent Chennaites

Many reports asked, 'where's the government?'. As Indians know all too well, less is better where the government's concerned. After all, the civic authority's so inept and corrupt, they kept even the heroic military and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) waiting (21) or forced them to rescue relatives of VIPs at the cost of ordinary citizens (16).

 

Apart from the military and NDRF, volunteer- and social media-driven efforts have kept Chennai from drowning completely (22, 23) . As I write this on Dec 6, 2015, going by their Twitter feeds, some such as RJ Balaji and Siddharth (actor) seem to be awake since Dec 1, 2015.

 

#Chennaimicro, #chennaimicro hashtag on Twitter, #ChennaiRainsHelp, #ChennaiRainsHelp - Twitter Search, #ChennaiRains, #chennairains - Twitter Search, and region-wise statuses on Google docs, Area and Road Updates, these, and not official sources, offer a real-time snapshot of on-the-ground situation in Chennai. Unfortunately, it's even more difficult to separate facts from noise in social media.

Unlike the widespread looting and violence of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, Chennai's millions suffered stoically and largely non-violently. A few scuffles broke out between gated communities and individual house owners when the former thoughtlessly drained their underground car parks (18). Poorer North Chennai, ever the step-child, saw some spontaneous protests at delays in relief (24). No looting, no deaths through violence, at least none reported in local or social media. In the face of unbearable pressure, the immeasurable restraint and dignity of ordinary Chennaites brings tears to my eyes.

 

Another story to restore faith in humanity? During a brief respite at the height of the rains, my brother ventured out for necessities when a little van pulled up. Some volunteers got out, took out pans, placed them on the sidewalk and poured out freshly cooked food. Apparently familiar with the drill, stray dogs gathered around and ate. The volunteers patiently waited until they finished, then poured clean water for them to drink, again waited until they finished drinking, then cleaned up, packed up and moved on. He spoke to the volunteers but unfortunately, he forgot the name of the NGO doing this. Such people are angels on earth.

1. Quartz, Devjyot Ghoshal, Nov 18, Dec 3, 2015. http://qz.com/551967/why-does-ch...
2. The Scroll, Geeta Doctor. Nov 20, 2015, http://scroll.in/article/770438/...
3. The Hindu, A. Srivatsan, K. Lakshmi, June 13, 2011. http://www.thehindu.com/news/cit...
4. FountainInk, Jayashree Arunachalam, Nov 17, 2015. http://fountainink.in/?p=7766&all=1
5. The Scroll, Nityanand Jayaraman, Nov 18, 2015. http://scroll.in/article/769928/...
6. Gupta, Anil K., and Sreeja S. Nair. "Urban floods in Bangalore and Chennai: risk management challenges and lessons for sustainable urban ecology." Current Science(Bangalore) 100.11 (2011): 1638-1645. http://www.currentscience.ac.in/...
7. The Wire, Gopalakrishna Gandhi, Dec 6, 2015, http://thewire.in/2015/12/06/for...
8. Outlook, Geeta Doctor, Dec 14, 2015, http://www.outlookindia.com/arti...
9. The Scroll, Nityanand Jayaraman, Nov 26, 2015, http://scroll.in/article/771408/...
10. The Wire, Dec 2, 2015, http://thewire.in/2015/12/02/in-...
11. The Hindu, Vikas Vasudeva, Dec 4, 2015, http://www.thehindu.com/news/cit...
12. Drescher, Axel, et al. "Risk assessment of extreme precipitation in the coastal areas of Chennai as an element of catastrophe prevention." Forum DKKV/CEDIM: disaster reduction in climate change. Vol. 15. No. 16.10. 2007. http://www.researchgate.net/prof...
13. Suriya, S., Mudgal, B.V. Assessment of Flood Potential Ranking of Subwatersheds: Adayar Watershed a Case Study. International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology. Vol.3, Issue 7, July 2014. http://www.ijirset.com/upload/20...
14. The Scroll, Dec 5, 2015. http://scroll.in/article/773852/...
15. The Hindu, T.K. Rohit, Dec 6, 2015, http://www.thehindu.com/news/cit...
16. The Hindu, Tamil Nadu Bureau, Dec 5, 2015. http://www.thehindu.com/news/cit...
17. The Scroll, Carlo Pizzati, Dec 5, 2015. http://scroll.in/article/773686/...
18. The Wire, Anuj Srivas, Dec 5, 2015. http://thewire.in/2015/12/05/the...
19. The Hindu, S. Vijay Kumar, The Hindu, Nov 26, 2015. http://www.thehindu.com/news/cit...
20. The Economic Times, Nov 18, 2015. http://articles.economictimes.in...
21. The Hindu, Sruthisagar Yamunan, Dec 6, 2015. http://www.thehindu.com/news/cit...
22. The Scroll, Dec 2, 2015, http://scroll.in/article/773058/...
23. The Hindu, Raveena Joseph, Apporva Sripathu, Dec 3, 5, 2015, http://www.thehindu.com/features...
24. The Hindu, Sruthisagar Ramanan, Dec 3, 5, 2015, http://www.thehindu.com/news/nat...  

Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part VI Why a cup of tea shouldn't be anyone's cup of tea, Part 2.

Part I: With the nature and value of work in harmony, dignity in work no longer an ignominy.  Part I by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part II: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work.  Part II by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part III: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work.  Part III by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part IV: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work.  Part IV by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part V: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part V Why a cup of tea shouldn't be anyone's cup of tea, Part 1. by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk

Comfort. Such a reassuring word. To each of us, it represents ambience, habits and rituals that soothe, calm and recharge. Mine is a cup of hot black tea with lemon. Nothing like the comfort of my hot lemon tea. Early in the morning, no one else awake, no one needs me. Just the ticking of the clock and the comforting, mellowing, soothing bliss of my tea. I'm certainly not alone in seeking the comfort of my daily cup of tea. Wikipedia says that after water, tea is drunk by more people world-wide than any other beverage.

Then why is this comfort denied those who grow and harvest the tea leaves? Purely wanton and avoidable, there is nothing inevitable about this denial. The unacceptably appalling conditions of tea plantation workers in India hide in plain sight. Owned by McLead Russel, the world's largest tea producer, much of the world's black tea comes from Indian tea plantations, many of them located in the North-eastern state of Assam.

As I wrote earlier, India's tea industry is governed by the Plantation Labour Act of 1951. This Act applies to any tea grower with >15 workers or operates a plantation of >5 acres (Page on teaboard.gov.in). On paper the Plantation Labour Act exudes acumen, compassion and foresight. After all it guarantees housing, toilets, water supply, recreational facilities, day care for children below 5 years of age, life insurance, medical insurance, sick leave, and educational facilities for plantation workers' children. In other words, the Act envisioned the Indian tea plantation to be a microcosm of an idealized welfare state.

In January 2014, Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute published a 109-page report of their two-year long investigation of Indian tea estates. Their report, Page on columbia.edu, uncovered a litany of problems that include endemic 'abusive' practices. Nothing trivial about the abuses. To the contrary, no running water, toilets that are nothing but holes in the ground, drinking water sources adjacent to said 'toilet' holes, the evidence and scale of abuse is all too graphic and undeniable.

Culture certainly plays its part in local management practices. Time-tested, ingrained prejudices, even frank bigotry certainly underlie the pathetic living conditions of these hapless tea estate workers. After all, what value human rights and laws enacted by parliaments when the people to whom they pertain are considered less-than-human by management? For e.g., p.26 of the report states, 'The separation and hierarchy are inscribed in the language of the plantation and all interactions between workers and management. Even when speaking to the research team, some APPL managers referred to the workers as if they were inferior humans, or even animals. At Achabam, after intervening in an unannounced visit, the management warned the team not to trust what workers said because they were 'just like cattle', unintelligent and prone to mob mentality (25).At Namroop, the plantation’s doctor said we had to understand that the workers had lower IQs (26). At Hathikuli, the General Manager and his wife matter-of-factly commented that their own children were 'completely alone', as if the the thousands of other families around them did not exist (27)'.
25 Interview with General Manager, Achabam Tea Estate, Assam, January 10, 2012.
26 Interview with clinic doctor, Namroop Tea Estate, Assam, April 17, 2012.
27 Interview with General Manager and wife, Hathikuli Tea Estate, Assam, April 19, 2012.

This report was published in 2014. What changed after it came out? Hope, desperate hope, drives the need for closure, for the righting of age-old wrongs. Yet, when in August-September 2015, BBC World News broadcast an investigative report on the scandalously atrocious living and working conditions of tea plantation workers in Assam, India, it was as if all this were being uncovered anew (The bitter story behind the UK's national drink - BBC News). Nothing surprising about McLeod Russel's response either, typical boilerplate caught-with-pants-down, Page on mcleodrussel.com.

Tea grown on these estates is sold worldwide by reputed brands such as Lipton, Tetley, PG Tips, etc. Even more egregious, it's certified 'ethical' by the Rainforest Alliance, an NGO, which now concedes 'the investigation has revealed flaws in its audit process' (The bitter story behind the UK's national drink - BBC News). Many of the products we buy and consume are proudly stamped with such certifications of sustainability, ethics or fair-trade. Yet, even cursory scrutiny of this certification process reveals it to be little more than rubber-stamping. Only the ignorant or foolish or uncaring could take them at face value.

I feel soul-crushing sorrow about the abuse that underlies my daily cup of tea. I'm angry about my helplessness to tangibly right such wrongs. Greed is eternally in play. Greed on the part of the owners and the corporate titans who profit off the toil of those whose misfortune is to be born into privation. However, greed is a convenient straw-man. After all, greed's been with us, in us since time immemorial. What's lacking in us is the capacity and resolute commitment for developing stable, robust systems for managing greed, holding it in check and sharply punishing it when it inevitably gets out of hand. This is a global problem. I saw uncontrolled greed all around me growing up in India. I see it all around me working in the US. When we reflexively bemoan greed, we do nothing but abjure our responsibility, tacitly deflecting it by pretending the problem's unchangeable, too vast, too entrenched and our efforts too meagre, too weak and too ineffectual to effect meaningful change. We'd rather be left to drink our daily cuppa undisturbed. Certain problems are age-old, after all. We can't live our lives tilting at wind-mills. Those who consider themselves grown-up are the most proficient at wearing this particular mask. Nothing grown-up about the attitude though. No, rather it's nothing but a cheat. It's punting that has a distinctly yellow cast.

When thousands of tea estate workers on the Kanan Devan Hills Plantation, one of the largest tea estates in South India, walked off protesting their work conditions and pay (see Part 1), I was with them in spirit. I cheered when they won their much-deserved and much-denied work benefits. For once, the have-nots stood together long enough to stare down the entrenched, unjustly empowered. It will take just such effort to brick-by-brick dismantle the old constructs, mental and literal, that form the foundation of so much of the human-made world. Constructs that reek with the rottenness of our common and messily entangled colonial, imperialist past with its sharp, unforgiving and utterly superfluous divisions of class, caste, ethnicity, nationality. Brave new world? I certainly hope not. Rather, a world where the institutions we build constantly scrutinize themselves, and are scrutinized and held accountable in practice, not just on paper. A world with systems of checks and balances that don't tacitly look the other way when faced with incontrovertible proof of injustice. A world where we live in genuine, not self-deceiving, comfort.

https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Dignity-is-in-work-not-in-the-nature-of-the-work-Part-VI

Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part V. Why a cup of tea shouldn't be anyone's cup of tea, Part 1.

Part I: With the nature and value of work in harmony, dignity in work no longer an ignominy.  Part I by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part II: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work.  Part II by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part III: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work.  Part III by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part IV: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work.  Part IV by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk

Aren't tea plantations the very picture of tranquility? Set in picturesque mountainsides, mist and lush greenery merge to create picture-perfect tourist havens. The dismal reality of Indian tea plantation workers' lives stands in obscene contrast, wage theft the least of the abominations they endure.

With more than an estimated million directly and nearly 6 million indirectly employed across some 150000 tea estates, the Indian tea industry is literally big business in every sense of the phrase. To fully appreciate the scale of egregious labor abuse in the Indian tea industry, we need to start in 1951. India's tea industry is governed by the Plantation Labour Act of 1951. This Act applies to any tea grower with >15 workers or operates a plantation of >5 acres (Page on teaboard.gov.in). On paper the Plantation Labour Act exudes acumen, compassion and foresight. After all it guarantees housing, toilets, water supply, recreational facilities, day care for children below 5 years of age, life insurance, medical insurance, sick leave, and educational facilities for plantation workers' children. In other words, the Act envisioned the Indian tea plantation to be a microcosm of an idealized welfare state. Certainly it's so on paper. Problem is that's where it's stubbornly stayed and there lies the rub because 60 years and counting, many of the provisions of the Act remain unimplemented. For e.g., many plantations built toilets for workers only in 2000-2001. Many plantations still lack electricity supply.

I started this post on a very different tack, intending to highlight the Everest-like scale of Indian tea estate labor abuses uncovered by recent investigative reports by the Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute and by the BBC.

Thankfully real-life events of a much more empowering kind temporarily but happily derailed me from that dismal prospect. Instead of dwelling on a gloomy tale of deprivation, abuse and chicanery, I can revel in the carpe diem of a few thousand resolute women who stood up to both management and trade unions, unyielding in their demands for a wage hike, bonus and medical facilities, and then it happened, the powers-that-be blinked.

Irony guides us to the appropriate place to start and that's in July 2015. Kanan Devan Hills Plantations (KDHP; Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company Private Limited) is the largest tea estate in Munnar. A Hill stationin Indian parlance, Munnar is a popular tourist destination in the South Indian state of Kerala. Go ahead, check out Munnar on Wikipedia or Google Images. It hardly seems possible that imagination could improve on Munnar's heaven-on-earth picture-postcard perfection. Yet entirely through the volition of man-made actions, the tea workers' abjectly impoverished lives stand in stark abnegation of this heart-stopping natural beauty.

In July 2015, the Great Place to Work Institute and People Matters, an entity that bills itself as a Human Resources knowledge platform, whatever that means, lauded KDHP as having some of the best management practices in India (Munnar tea agitation is a warning to companies, politicians and... union leaders).

Ironically, early in September 2015, >5000 of KDHP workers went on strike demanding higher wages and bonuses. For 9 days, neither politicians nor labour unions could budge them from their demands. Finally, Oommen Chandy, Kerala's Chief Minister himself stepped into the breach and negotiated management's acceptance of the striking workers' demands for a 20% bonus.

What started the workers' agitation in the first place? KDHP was owned by Tata Tea Limited until 2005 when it divested itself of active tea plantation management across India to focus on its branded tea business though it retains minority stake in many of them (Tata Global Beverages). It used to own 17 tea estates in Munnar with nearly 13000 workers. Sounding excellent on paper, owning 68% of KDHP's shares, the workers were now co-owners, each owning 300 shares each. In actuality, the lofty-sounding co-ownership stamp got the workers nothing but a paltry yearly dividend. In 2014, this amounted to a mere Rs. 300. Then, in a sudden move, citing reduced profits, the company announced it would slash 2015's bonus from 19% down to 10%. The match was lit. The agitation was on.

What made this strike different? Not union leaders but workers themselves, mostly women, stood in solidarity on the frontline, shunning politicians and trade unions alike (Stir against Kanan Devan intensifies in Munnar, VS calls it Tata's 'fraud' company).

For example, sensing electoral opportunity a local politician arrived at the scene, ostensibly to lend his support to the workers' demands. The workers firmly and unhesitatingly shooed him away (Page on thenewsminute.com).

Weren't trade unions set up to safeguard tea plantation workers and negotiate with management on their behalf? After all, these aren't just any trade unions. All India Trade Union Congress, Centre of Indian Trade Unions and Indian National Trade Union Congress, these are storied, well-established unions with all-India presence. Sounds like over time, they'd lost the workers' trust.  'The women alleged that the trade union leaders had colluded with the management of the Kannan Devan Hills Plantations Limited (KDHP) to deny them 20 per cent bonus' (Kerala: 4,000 tea workers protest bonus cut, keep unions out in Munnar).

Let's revisit the irony that started this story because therein lies a necessary eye-opener. Let's also consider other choice words from the word salad incessantly drummed up by PR-marketing brigades to disingenuously embellish modern day corporate products. Ethical, sustainable, certified, and the most gilded lily of them all, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). When it comes to tea, especially branded tea, these saccharine-sweet words of lofty idealism slosh about merrily but hollowly in our tea cups. For what kind of CSR is even remotely credible when the very foundation of the tea business, the workers, are treated worse than the tea leaves they harvest? And what value accolades from industry and trade groups when real-life events upend carefully orchestrated corporate narratives to reveal the mean tawdriness that actually lurks below the thread-bare front of such rubber-stamped approvals?

Why is this a rare happy work story? Hitherto disempowered and voiceless, these workers stood together and Goliath slunk away in defeat, at least so far. Cohesion. Over 9 days, the previously disenfranchised stood together. The playbook says different. Usually leaderless agitations rapidly break apart, novice leaders-in-the-making either threatened or bribed to toe the management line, even killed. However it happened, this time that time-tested inevitable didn't come to pass.

Maybe the uncommonly mature and thoughtful role the police chose to play during the 9 days of agitation helped, 'The best help the police did was to ensure that the liquor shops were closed during the agitation,” said Rajan, a leader of the agitating employees. This ensured that there were no untoward incidents during the protest by the woman workers'...and then, even more remarkably, 'When the agitation became intense, the workers closed the roads from the morning to the evening, and the police, sensing the mood, did not resort to using force and instead allowed them to have their say' (Kanan Devan Hills Plantations workers all praise for cops).

Fair wage for a fair day's work. Not wage theft, not impoverished catchphrases like CSR to dress up the rotting carcasses of Potemkin villages that have become so much a part of modern day work life. Dignity in work, not in the nature of the work.

The Sep 2015 all-women Munnar tea estate strike:
A clear, comprehensive summary of its genesis, A Green Blood Women’s Revolution In Munnar By Binu Mathew
A political perspective on the rarity of such a women-led labour movement, The Woman Worker Re-emerges - Lessons from Munnar

A linked post on the sordid reality behind a daily cuppa joe (cup of coffee) here: Tirumalai Kamala's answer to What are some interesting illustrations of the adage "There is no ethical consumption in late capitalism"?.

https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Dignity-is-in-work-not-in-the-nature-of-the-work-Part-V

Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part IV

Part I: With the nature and value of work in harmony, dignity in work no longer an ignominy.  Part I by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part II: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work.  Part II by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part III: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work.  Part III by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
 
How ghastly it is to contemplate that we live in a world where boredom is an unattainable luxury for the multitude who make ease and convenience possible for the rest of us few. With access to browse the internet at our leisure we are a much more visible and vocal but tiny handful that feasts off of the labor of a vast multitude who toil to make our daily lives possible and yet who are rendered easily invisible.

Sometimes, it seems hardly a week goes by without gurus, pundits and their numerous, willing and credulous amplifiers expounding glibly about Work-Life Balance or the Pareto Principle or Life Hack or some other fad. What part of global human life experience are they mining? The purview of a lucky few. With modicum of financial stability and security our bulwark, and internet access, indoor plumbing, electricity and a solid roof over our heads givens, we are that lucky few.

Yet look around with a more discerning eye and I see everywhere around me the labor of that invisible multitude. My T-shirts, sneakers, smart phone and laptop are only the more visible signs of their mind-numbing toil.

Look around my home. All the fixtures, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. Every wall covered with pictures. All those picture frames. Who made them? Surely not anyone toiling in a US factory. Likely an ill-paid factory worker in China. After all the stickers do proclaim, 'Made in China'. Likely no work safety, no paid leave, certainly no Work-Life Balance for them.

Life hack. How that phrase sickens me. It only serves to emphasize how permanently we remain divided into the few Haves who can afford to wallow in self-comforting panaceas about Life Hacks and Work-Life Balances while the rest of the vast, invisible Have-nots have no choice but to supply the labor that makes our caterwauling possible. So much of our daily life sustained by their labor. The Dickensian world of endless toil in sub-human conditions is a historical vignette of the Industrial Revolution only for us lucky few. For the multitude who toil to make our lives easy and comfortable, it's a painful and inescapable daily reality. Where the luxury of Life Hacks and Work-Life Balance for this vast invisible multitude?  Only reason for their ill-fate? Missing the birth lottery.

Every lemon in the grocery store has a little sticker on it. Who put it there? Who packs the lettuce so clean and tight into these plastic bags? Surely not yet the work of robots. Some human toiled in work conditions I'd find sub-human to put that rubber band on the cilantro bunch I just used in my cooking.

We live in a globalized world so it matters not one whit where we live. One way or another, this basic edict of obscene work caste sustains our lives, imbued in the garb that cover our bodies, in the electronic gadgets that enable our work and allay our tedium, and most importantly, in the very food that sustains our life.

Food. Is anything more important to life than food? And yet, the labor necessary for growing our food and bringing it to our plates we deem less dignified and hence less valuable than all the so-called white-collar work of dubious value we netizens engage in to earn the bucks to procure it. Only with something terribly wrong in the way we compute and bestow value could we live with such debased value systems. Debased all the more because birth lottery underpins every aspect of it.

https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Dignity-is-in-work-not-in-the-nature-of-the-work-2

Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part III

Part I: With the nature and value of work in harmony, dignity in work no longer an ignominy.  Part I by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
Part II: Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work.  Part II by Tirumalai Kamala on TK Talk
 
Apprenticeship is implicit in the scientific enterprise but the elephant in the room is that it's insular and parochial. The purview of the initiated, it excludes more than includes. The latter are the select few, post-graduates, doctoral students, post-docs and junior faculty. The former, the more numerous support staff, the technicians, animal caretakers, core facility staff.

Most basic biomedical research involves use of experimental animal models. Mouse is the most popular. How are research animal facilities organized? Usually physically separate from the labs where scientists spend most of their working hours, they operate as if in a parallel world. Here's yet another hierarchy to explain. In animal facilities, the pyramid consists of veterinarians, technicians, floor leaders and near the bottom of the rung, the animal caretakers, the ones who actually handle the animals day in and day out, change their cages, food and water, observe them for signs of ill-health, every single day, holidays included be it Christmas, New Year or Thanksgiving. Bottom of the rung? Those who don't even come near live animals. Those who spend all their day in the back, cleaning and sterilizing the cages and sundry, and handling the daily numerous dead.

The years I spent at the US NIH were the surfeit of its gravy train. The NIH budget was increasing year on year and yet it didn't make a whit of difference in the lives of those toiling on the bottom rung. The most obvious sign of something different? I first observed how the animal care staff tended to be largely black or immigrant, usually from South America or Africa. Plenty from Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal. This at a time when post-docs at NIH from sub-Saharan Africa were at an all-time low. Apparently no room or applicants among the included, the apprentices and above. Plenty among the excluded.

By no means the only exclusion. I'll never forget my first glimpse behind another obscene curtain of exclusion. A young woman animal caretaker doubled over upon herself in pain in the changing room of the animal facility. Black, an immigrant from some North African country.

Research animal facilities have a similar design edict. Enter and one is forced to go through into the changing rooms to don the PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) before one can proceed through into the main facility where the research animals are housed in individual rooms. This young woman writhing in pain. What to do?

Another caretaker steps into the changing room. I ask her if there's anything we could do to help this young woman in pain. She shrugs and says no. The woman in pain had given birth the previous week. A difficult delivery. She was suffering from the consequences. Aghast, I asked what she was doing back at work so soon? What else to do? She needed the money. What? No paid maternity leave? No, only unpaid and she needed the money. How could that be? Easy, we three may have been working at the NIH, a US federal government agency that provides at least a few weeks of paid maternity leave but they and their ilk weren't federal government employees. They were employees of a contractor who had the contract for running that research animal facility. Paid a relative pittance, physically demanding jobs, and that's not all. Their numbers are now legion. That reduction in government jobs? Simply expansion of contractors. In every agency, at all levels. As well, in the case of science, excluded from scientific recognition.

Scientific recognition. Another Rabelesian joke of an exclusion. Scientists and their apprentices spend a fraction of their work time among the research animals that have become the bread and butter of so much of their research. Support staff, in particular animal caretakers spend almost all their work time among them. Yet, the data and knowledge ensuing from such science consists solely of the input of scientists and their apprentices. How could this be right?

We know from observations across all human endeavor that practice makes perfect. Someone who actually plays the piano knows more about playing the piano than one who reads about it or just imagines it. How could I, a scientist, be presumed to know more about research mice when I spent at most a few hours per week among them compared to those caretakers who spent all their work hours among them?

In fact I know I learned a lot more about research mice from veterinary technicians and caretakers than from my PI or colleagues. The ones who practice more know more. As simple as that. And yet that inevitable value judgment that accompanies work stratification negates the value of the contribution of those at the lowest rung of the scientific enterprise, debases it and even renders it invisible and worthless. I often wonder how knowledge that ensues from such a grotesque system be merit worthy. It just can't since it excludes the most holistically obtained knowledge. These animal caretakers observe the research animals every single day and know so much more about the nuances of their health and behavior, and yet their knowledge is neither sought nor documented nor recognized. A system of work organization that is not only seriously flawed in its design but also in its intent. The structure of the biomedical research enterprise. A hierarchy that proscribes more than welcomes. Encoded in its very structure with exclusion in its very marrow.

I still remember the little gift bags I used to prepare so carefully for each staff member I worked with in all those animal facilities. Every Christmas. So trite and pathetic. I wanted to change an obscene status quo but I was only one person. Myself an immigrant with my own problems. How could I change an entire system? Yet I felt compelled to do something. So those little gift bags, each costing less than $10. Just a box of candy from CVS and a card. My way of saying I recognize you and your contributions to my research work.

If only the systems within which we find ourselves operating were self-aware enough to be more equitable. If only we each have the political will to make it so. Only then will we have ourselves a world where dignity lies in work, not in the nature of the work.

https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Dignity-is-in-work-not-in-the-nature-of-the-work-1
 

Dignity is in work, not in the nature of the work. Part II

Why are certain kinds of work considered dignified and others not? Cerebral, dignified. Manual, not as much. I see this in India and in the US as well. Is this ingrained in the nature of work or in our need to stratify? The industrial age, post-industrial age and free market, dominant metaphors that define work. They say work stratification is necessary for optimal efficiency. Is it? More importantly, is the process value neutral? Doesn't an inevitable value judgment accompany work stratification? Hence the age-old hierarchy that disdains certain work more than others. In all types of work, similar process at play. Take science, for instance. Typically, project leads design the research while technical staff do the hands-on work. Paid and rewarded less, and recognized not at all, unmistakably hands-on science work is deemed grunge work. To the detriment of the scientific enterprise, scientists and science itself. With essential meaning lost in the process, we end up building bodies of knowledge that are mere chimera.

When work is stratified in hierarchical silos that prioritize efficiency, it leaches essential meaning out of it. How much meaning is lost to that soulless tyrant, efficiency? Can't be quantified and therein lies more absurdity. Efficiency reigns in a world where the quantifiable is synonymous with meaningful. That which can't be quantified? Rendered unimportant, even meaningless. A more grotesque disconnect my mind cannot conceive.

The essential we lose pertain to unquantifiable elements such as bonds of purpose and meaning with others at work, and with the work itself. Bonds not reducible to simple quantification. What ensues? An abundance of terms that reveal an absurdly unnatural relationship to work. The daily grind, the rat race, TGIF (Thank God It's Friday), Work-Life Balance.

Work-Life Balance. How that phrase grabs me by the throat and suffocates. It scares me. My work gives essential meaning to my life. Instead I'm supposed to regard it as a necessary evil that makes the rest of my life possible? A glib corporatist phrase, implicit in it the idea that meaning comes from life, not from work. After all, meaning comes from intimate relationships, and our intimates inhabit our life, not our work, it decrees. Only in a world where work equals a pay cheque does Work-Life Balance make sense. Is work only a pay cheque though? Should it be?

How about Nature? What is Work-Life Balance to Nature? If I could commune with a bird or a bee, would they speak of the need for Work-Life Balance in their lives? Rather isn't the phrase Work-Life Balance itself the clearest evidence of a debasing process that makes our work lives less meaningful? Where the irrepressible joy of discovery, of purpose in work?

Should we expect irrepressible joy and purpose from work? Let's flip that proposition. Isn't there much tedium in non-work life as well? So many chores are part of daily life. Our bodies. Brushing teeth, bathing, personal grooming, shitting. Our lives. Cooking, cleaning, running errands, raising children. Yet we don't begrudge their daily presence in our lives the way we are prodded to do about work, especially in the US. No Work-Life Balance equivalent there. Why? Simple. Such daily chores are still a holistic part of our life while we have organized work, that which we get paid for, in such a way that it isn't. Our mandatory daily life chores don't befuddle us the way much of the work we get paid for do. We don't seek an explanation for their presence in our lives but we have created work lives which need explaining, even to ourselves. And therein lies the rub.

We spend more and more of our life at work even as the cultural and economic powers-that-be exhort us that it's a means for doing other, presumably more important and/or meaningful things. Do contradiction of terms get any bigger than this? Shouldn't work be more than a means, even an end in itself? Isn't work, any and every work, entitled to its own dignity?

https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Dignity-is-in-work-not-in-the-nature-of-the-work

Dignity is in work, not in the nature of work. Part I.

With the nature and value of work in harmony, dignity in work no longer an ignominy.

 

See the bee buzzing among the flowers
Never found among Nature's disavowers

'Work is life, life is work', says the bee
'Meaningful work is the only way to be'

With fruits of earnest labor a soul merrily basks
'Yet what's a fair wage for such work?', one asks

Ah, therein lies the human's existential rub!
For our work value outweighs our pay stub

Such a fatal fissure between human work and life
'Work-life balance' embodies our ensuing strife

Yet 'Meaningful work is play, the play of life',
Asserts Nature's gleam, with mischief rife 

https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/With-the-nature-and-value-of-work-in-harmony-dignity-in-work-no-longer-an-ignominy 

Power without accountability creates a desert where disdain blooms at the expense of humanism and dignity

What to say about an old routine traffic stop that was anything but routine? How lucky it wasn't worse, much worse.

May 6-7, 1998. Past mid-night, ~12:20AM. Heading home from work in my second-hand, beat-up Honda hatchback, the only car I could afford back then. I'd been working on my scientific presentation for the next morning. An immunology lab at the NIH, the PIs' work the stuff of text-books. New to the lab and to the US, my mind's still running through my data slides, slides I'd toiled over till late that night.

Preoccupied, I cross the Montrose Road and East Jefferson intersection. Become dimly aware of flashing lights behind me. Instinctively assume an ambulance and swerve to the right to give space but the lights follow. Confused, swerve to the left, again to give space but the lights still follow. Only then do I suddenly realize it's a police car not an ambulance, and immediately stop.

Cop car drives ahead, swerves to block my car and stops, cop lunges out of his car, yells to get out of the car and to keep my hands out of my pockets. No one else in sight or on the road, no person nor car. Totally shell-shocked, I get out with my hands up, left hand in a splint. A lab mishap the previous month had meant emergency tendon repair surgery in my left hand.

Moved to the curb. Proceed with exercises. So clueless, I realize only later they're tests for ascertaining alcohol-induced driving impairment. Pass those tests? Of course. After all, I hadn't consumed alcohol, ever. Cop's still haranguing me. Says I'm not on alcohol but he's sure I'm on something. What is it? Point to my ID badge, explain to the cop that I worked at NIH, that I'd initially mistaken his car lights for an ambulance, that my mind was on my next morning's presentation. Patent innocence and naivete of someone habituated to speaking truthfully and used to being believed.

Response? To cuff me. Threatens to take me into custody. With my left arm in a splint, struggles to put the cuffs with my arms in the back, finally cuffs in front. Pitiful and thus fittingly absurd.

Second cop car with two cops pulls up. Shine a light into my face. First cop says I was clean for drink. Explain my story to them, ask why the first cop's treating me so badly. Shrug, say they can't do anything about it, it's his call. Drive off.

Cop tells me I'm not fit to drive my car home. Not alcohol but I'm on something, he doesn't know what or so he insists. Calls for a tow truck. We wait for it. My apartment is less than 500 yards away. After it arrives, asks if I have the $75 to pay for it, uncuffs me, tells me to get out and go home with the tow truck. Drives off, never explaining why he cuffed and uncuffed me.

Get home around 2AM. Pay off the tow truck driver. Do I sleep that night? Don't remember. Next morning, get dressed, go to Bagel City bagels, get bagels and cream cheese for the presentation, go to NIH and present my data at 10:30 as usual.

After the presentation, tell my PI (Principal Investigator) about my mishap. She advises to not pay the tickets and to instead appeal in traffic court. Also to write everything down while it's still fresh in my mind.

I write down everything as I remember it and send it to the First Secretary, Consul, Embassy of India in Washington D.C.. Also send a copy to Bob Levey, a Washington Post reporter then covering disproportionate use of force by local cops. He thanks me for sending him my report but he's moved on from covering this story. Meet the vice-consul at the Indian Consulate in Washington, D.C.. Unsurprisingly, a dead end there too.

September 14, 1998. My day in traffic court. Cop lies, says I was on alcohol that night. My threadbare protection? That his own recording of the facts don't support his lie. After all, when it's my turn to speak, I freeze. Never been in court. Judge decides quickly. Just fines to be paid after all. Pay at the counter with a personal check. Now history, the entire event meticulously documented, labeled and filed away in my ever-burgeoning file cabinet of a life.

Other things take longer to put away. For years, while driving, whenever I heard the sound of sirens, be they cops or ambulances, one of my legs would start trembling uncontrollably.

I'd made a traffic error for sure. Past midnight, traffic signs stop working. If they blink orange, slow and go. If they turn red, stop and go. At the Montrose intersection, they'd blinked red. I should have stopped before going. Instead my error was to slow and go. A new driver, I'd only learnt car driving after coming to the US. My mind was also too much on my presentation.

Did my traffic error justify this cop cuffing me and threatening to take me into custody? Certainly not. Diligent researcher, not involved in anything even remotely anti-social or criminal. Ours the only cars on that road while this entire incident transpired. Safe neighborhood, not a drug- and/or crime-infested one. Yet so lucky it didn't end another way.

Smart phone cameras. One brutal incident after another uncovering a critical slice of American culture that stayed largely hidden or unspoken in polite society, a culture of police impunity, especially against non-whites. Beggars the imagination that an immigrant scientist could have a harrowing personal experience about cops and yet I do, that too years old. My bad luck? Maybe. Certainly arbitrary and capricious. An anomaly? Certainly not, too many tragic videos attest to a culture of law enforcers habitually violating the rule of law.

Power exercised arbitrarily, with bias. Inevitable when complacence, willful ignorance and apathy drive a Faustian bargain prioritizing so-called safety and security at the expense of accountability. A basic tenet for an equitable society, selective or non-existent accountability desiccates human relations. What withers first? Humanism. Is it even possible to prosper and feel good about ourselves without it? Rather, isn't denying others basic dignity by opportunistically abusing power the very manifestation of privation of human decency? After all, what's civility but to treat each other with a modicum of dignity, and to not dehumanize? Easy to say, 'let's reverse course'. Not so in practice. Once given away, arbitrarily bestowed power isn't easily wrested back, nor its pernicious corrosion of human values easily reversed.

What's behavior worthy of emulation? One where individual dignity prevails. Going to traffic court, lodging my complaint with the Indian Embassy in writing and in person, writing to the Washington Post's Bob Levey, all to reclaim my dignity because I choose to live a life where it's sacrosanct. It behooves each and every one of us to choose to make this the norm in our lives but are we equally up to the task? Not in the least, else why this ruinous state of affairs where bigotry and inequity of one kind or the other prevail the world over? Not simply because bigots and other agents of inequity exist but because cultures tolerate and even accommodate them. And so, driven by cravenness, humanity's caravan of the absurd lumbers on in perpetuity, a Sisyphean quest seeking to create nobler versions of ourselves.

https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Power-without-accountability-creates-a-desert-where-disdain-blooms-at-the-expense-of-humanism-and-dignity

October 31, 1984: The night of my brother's right stuff.

Moments of shared history. For Indians, especially Sikhs, October 31, 1984 is such a day. Seared in my memory, a date of ignominy with only a tinge of fraternal quick-wittedness tempering some of its horror.

A day of rumors. Something had happened to Indira Gandhi. Rushed to AIIMS or Safdarjung, she was sick or wounded or dead. All day long, rumors swirled, thickening, thinning, like flocks of birds. Then it came, the moment of truth. Wasn't it 6PM when All India Radio officially announced? Indira Gandhi was dead, shot and killed by her own Sikh body guards.

Didn't the riots begin almost instantaneously? Living so close to AIIMS and Safdarjung, rush upstairs to the roof, climb atop the water tanks. Against the setting sun, a memory of smoke rising from among the many high-end fashion stores in the distance. Isn't that Perfection Silk and Saree House, the smoke a sign of its demise? Isn't it owned by a Sikh?  Chilling portent of the coming evil hours. Soon, not one but several smoke stacks rise up into the sky. People mill around in the street, talking. Then the distant non-stop strum. Takes a while to understand it's the sound of rioting humans.

Maybe speak briefly with Jyoti, our Sikh landlord's grandson and his mom, Manoranjana? That day, they had visitors from Punjab, the heartland of Sikhs. Also seared in my memory? The first P on their visitors' Ambassador car's license plate.

How did my brother do it? The front gate, flanked by two posts with glass encased bulbs that lit up at night, one displaying the address, the other, the names including our landlord's, unmistakably Sikh. Suddenly, as the rioters grew ever louder, nearer, he picks up a paving brick from the garden and smashes the glass and bulb. Dark. Name display gone. Next, another inspired act. From the thelawala's ironing stand out on the street, takes a piece of coal and, in the thickening darkness, quickly changes the tell-tale P in the visitor car's license plate to B. Back then, with Mumbai still Bombay, it could be a Bombay car in the driveway. Wouldn't pass muster in light but at night? Fingers crossed.

Marauding rioters run past. Shouting gleefully, arms filled with goods from freshly looted stores. No reason to stop. No Sikh in sight. No sign this is even a Sikh house. Some even graciously share their loot, throwing designer shoes and sarees onto the lawns as they run past. A macabre vista of the end of days? Surely it would be something like this.

All night, our landlords hide upstairs in/ behind the roof-top water tanks. Next morning, I hear friends drove up in the dark of night, around 2:30 or 3. Stealing out, crouching below the car seats, spirited away to a safe house.

As the smoke cleared over the next few days, it also became clear we'd lived through a genocide. The Sikh genocide. Thousands of Sikhs were mercilessly slaughtered that day and the days that followed, certainly thousands in Delhi alone. Beaten up and burned alive as they made their innocent way home from work.

2009. Jyoti's working in Chennai and he, Manoranjana aunty and Jyoti's wife drop by the evening I'm flying back to the US. Now Jyoti has two kids of his own. A boy and a girl. A future materialized, a future that hung in the balance the day Indira Gandhi died. My brother recalls smashing the glass but surprisingly, he forgot changing the license plate but Manoranjana aunty hasn't. She reminds him.

My brother's quick thinking likely saved lives that night. The lives of our Sikh landlords. How did he do it? Still can't answer. The world suddenly topsy-turvy. Lives in the balance. Can't be sure what to do, let alone do right. A moment of reckoning. Instinctual, visceral? Maybe, but what my brother did on the night of October 31, 1984 was the right stuff, then and forever. The right stuff that precariously separates the civilized from the bestial.

https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/October-31-1984-The-night-of-my-brothers-right-stuff