The National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (nirt)
in Chennai, India, is approximately 13 kms from my parents' house.
Riding home on my trusted 2nd hand TVS Scooty (motorized two-wheeler)
one evening. Monsoon season. Pouring all afternoon, the rain had stopped
now. The setting sun was out but the signs of rain were everywhere,
especially in the many road puddles. Light traffic. Unremarkable journey
until I reach RK Mutt Road.
At a traffic light, an auto
rickshaw truck pulls up next to me. An auto rickshaw truck is a rickshaw
repurposed for transporting cargo. Three men in front, squished
together on the narrow driver's seat. Light turns green and we're off,
riding side-by-side for about a kilometer until we approach a puddle in
the middle of the road. I slow down and move to avoid it but the auto
rickshaw deliberately drives towards and into it. Drenching me head to toe, the rickshaw speeds off.
Nice
execution of their puerile act but poor choice of target. I wasn't
going to let them get away with that. Helps that traffic is light. My
trusted Scooty gives chase, catching up with them at the intersection
with Greenways Road. As we approach, luckily for me a traffic policeman
is on duty. Another piece of luck, light turns red as we approach.
Immediately I pull up and turn my Scooty across the front of the auto
rickshaw, shout to the cop to catch his attention, shut off my motor,
get off and park. Cop approaches, asks what's going on. Point to self,
drenched head to toe, explain what happened to me. One of the guys gets
out and starts to argue. I point to myself and ask how it happened that
I'm drenched. It's clear I'm not backing off. I insist to the cop he
write them a ticket at the very least. He starts admonishing them. I
thank him, get on my Scooty and head home, leaving them to it.
I
don't know if the cop actually issued them a ticket, or even if there
was a traffic violation that covered what they did to me. I wanted to
teach them that they weren't going to get away with their harassment.
That happened with the cop questioning and admonishing them in front of
me.
Luck was certainly on my side during this incident. Light
traffic, red light, traffic cop. I recognize that. Yet doesn't this
story start and end with choices? Revealing choices. These men chose to
use their vehicle to bully and endanger a woman on the road. Why did
they do it? The status quo. I chose to not accept that status quo. What
status quo? A culture where the norm is that the rank and file of women,
targets of public harassment, don't push back. It's patriarchy in full
ugly bloom. Accept abuse and it becomes the norm. As simple as that.
Where does this attitude start? It starts at home.
No one can
lead a life of dignity if we deny agency to each other. Dignity, and the
role of choice and agency. Live and let live, not live on your or my
terms. Lessons every parent needs to teach each and every child. This is
how we vanquish the demon of patriarchy.
https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Dignity-and-patriarchy-are-oil-and-water-and-never-the-twain-shall-meet
The
first have-nots. Material have-nots? Auto rickshaw drivers in India.
Trapped in a permanent cycle of debt at the hands of usurers, much of
their income merely pays interest on their loans. Due to poor financial
literacy many aren’t integrated into the larger economy, lacking contact
or accounts with regular banks, remaining ignorant and suspicious of
such entities, and lacking requisite paperwork that the formal banking
bureaucracy typically demands.
The second have-nots. Spiritual
have-nots? Elderly educated Indian middle-class, quickly becoming
irrelevant in a rapidly fast-forwarding society. Increasingly living
longer, this growing group's value remains largely untapped and ignored.
Boom in Florida-style retirement communities is spreading apace with
the collapse of the traditional joint family system. Self-imposed or
not, is such ghetto-ization the only option? Is it inevitable or
avoidable?
Couldn’t healthy, retired people in a given
neighborhood spend some of their midday hours, a few times a week,
educating others? In particular, what if a dedicated cadre of retired
folk taught the basics of financial literacy to their neighborhood auto
rickshaw drivers? How? Typically auto rickshaw drivers have a cyclical
workday: very busy during office rush hours in mornings and evenings,
fairly long period of lull in the afternoons. Auto rickshaw drivers
typically spend their midday lull periods in the same neighborhoods near
large bus stops. Energize their midday lulls with informal teaching
sessions? Not just teach but also help initiate them into the formal
banking system, i.e. help fill out forms, help get necessary
identification papers and ultimately bank accounts? Isn't this do-able?
After all, the two groups likely know each other, the former engaging
the services of the latter for their travels across town.
While I
have this idea, I have no idea how to get it started. I don’t know
anything about development of financial curriculum. Also, I live in the
US, not in India. I believe this idea may fare better at the hands of
people better versed in these matters. Therefore, I’m posting this idea
on this forum in the hope of reaching people or entities in India who
have requisite expertise in development of adult financial literacy
curricula, and who may be interested and competent in actualizing this
idea. Small pilot programs in one or more urban neighborhoods would be
my inkling.
My hope is two-fold. One, that participating in such
an adult financial literacy program would help free auto rickshaw
drivers from lifelong indebtedness at the hands of unscrupulous usurers
and better integrate them into the formal economy. Two, seeing elderly
teach financial literacy to the disadvantaged within their community
could be a poignant and compelling reminder to a given community of the
untapped and essential value of the elders living amongst them. If such
an endeavor and its ilk (teaching neighborhood slum children, for e.g.)
could take off and spread, maybe it would in some small way help stave
off unnecessary and tragic ghetto-ization of the elderly in India?
https://tirumalaikamala.quora.com/Could-we-make-haves-by-bringing-together-two-have-nots-An-Indian-take-on-Each-One-Teach-One
I have many vivid memories of my childhood. Here, ranging from terror to discrimination to sublime happiness, are a few of them.
3 years old. A hot summer in central India. Hot night. Too hot to sleep inside. Too hot to wear anything but my 'jetti'
(Tamil slang for underwear). Even now, I can recall it in detail.
Orange. Made of some kind of stretchable, soft cotton. I'll be sleeping
outside on the veranda (porch) that night. So would my older brother.
Dinner's over. Sitting in the veranda, I bite eagerly into my
after-dinner orange. Unbeknownst to me, my brother's watching me with
gimlet eyes. At one point the segment I'm about to bite into almost
falls from my hand and in my haste, I swallow it whole, seed and all.
That's when I notice my brother's watching me. Having caught my
attention, he smiles and says, 'You know what's going to happen to you?'. I say, 'No, what?'. He says, 'You just swallowed that orange seed. In the night an orange tree will grow out of your tummy'.
Lie down, not to sleep but to look down at my belly above the orange 'jetti'.
Waiting in terror. When will the orange tree come out? Will it come out
full grown? Will it hurt? Should I run inside and tell mom? Maybe
there's something she can do to stop the tree from growing out of my
belly?
Must have slept off at some point. Get up next morning. No
tree growing from my belly. Brother's still sound asleep. Surely it was
a joke? Mom's awake and as usual, busy in the kitchen. Run inside.
Dialogue that will become standard over the coming years, 'Mom, see what he (that ogre, that monster, my brother) said to me last night'.
Even
now, after so many years, I can easily recall the terror I felt that
night, waiting and watching for that orange tree to grow out of my
belly.
5 to 7 years old. The house we lived in has huge
yards in the front and back. Back yard is a vegetable garden. That
phrase 'green thumb'? Turns out it was invented to describe my mom. She
grew just about every kind of vegetable. Green beans, not just one but
many varieties, okra, beets, gourds, chillies, carrots, tomatoes, even
tamarind and peanuts. I remember the late afternoon walks when I'd
accompany my mom and paternal grand mom. They'd walk up and down the
vegetable rows, assessing and deciding what to harvest. Ever harvested
peanuts and eaten them fresh out of the ground? So soft, they melt in
the mouth like warm butter. Close my eyes and I can still smell those
freshly harvested peanuts. No smell quite like moist earth mixed with
the unique smell of fresh peanuts. And the fruits! She had about 20
banana trees and about 50 mango trees. Ever stand under mango trees as
their fruit ripens under the warm sun? Such an unforgettable divine
smell. Every harvest season, a small truck would pull up. A grocer from
the local market would stop by to harvest the mangoes.
In the
front yard, a guava tree, bougainvillea, about 75 rose bushes and don't
remember how many jasmine bushes, one even growing up a trellis along
the side of the garage. At night, I remember going to sleep breathing in
the heavenly smell of jasmine.
My favorite? The huge Gulmohar (Delonix regia)
tree along the front yard perimeter. My special place. Summers, I'd be
hidden up that tree with my favorite books and comics, whiling away the
lazy afternoon hours in my private haven, idly plucking gulmohar flowers
and eating them. Salty and tangy, no taste quite like a gulmohar
flower, especially the base of the petals.
Mangoes, bananas,
peanuts, roses, jasmine, guava, bougainvillea, gulmohar. Indelibly
imprinted in my mind, these are the idyllic smells of an idyllic
childhood.
Oh, and I remember going to sleep next to my paternal
grand mom. I'd firmly clutch her soft upper arm, close my eyes and I'd
be off in deep slumber. I also remember telling her solemnly on more
than one occasion, 'Grand ma, you have to leave me your arm when you die. How can I sleep without your soft arm?'.
The next two stories have a common thread, how our choice to dwell on negligible differences is divisive, hurtful and corrosive.
5 years old.
Summer vacation at my maternal grandparents. It's morning. For some
reason, I'm playing by myself in the living room. Where are the many
others, grand dad, aunts, uncles, cousins, mom, brother? Getting ready?
Eating? Don't remember. What I do remember is my maternal grand mom
walking in with some guests. She points to me and says in Tamil, 'Oh, that's so-and-so's daughter. She's very bright but too bad she's so dark-skinned'. My first recollected memory that I'm perceived to be different.
8 years old.
First day at my new primary all-girls school in Delhi. It's a school
that prides itself on no school uniform. In her ignorance, my mom has
sent me off in my Tamil finest, a pattu paavadai-sattai (silk
skirt-shirt). The silk skirt, one of my favorites, is dark red with a
broad forest green border, all criss-crossed with gold threads. Siting
in class with strangers I look around to find no one is dressed like me.
Noon. Lunch time. Class empties out as soon as the bell rings. I take
out my lunch box and make my way to the play ground just outside the
class room. Shy, unsure of myself, I look around for any familiar faces.
I see 4 girls from my class. Giddy at having located some familiar
faces, I eagerly make my way towards them. As soon as I near, one of
them, the leader perhaps, turns to me and says, 'Inge pinge po' (gibberish to mimic and mock my native Tamil). Then she looks down at my lunch box and says in Hindi, 'Chee, you people eat food with your hands, don't you?'. The girls laugh and turn away from me. Shocked, I have no memory of my own response or what I did after that.
Isn't
most of the tragedy in human history that it's so much easier to be
primed to see differences, the tip of the iceberg, when what we humans
share is the enormous hidden iceberg itself?
8 years old until about 13 or so.
Every month, I could hardly bear to wait for that special day. That
would be the day mom and I'd walk down the street, cross Ring Road and
into the glitzy shopping center in South Extension Part I. We'd head to
Tekson's, a bookstore, where I'd browse through to my heart's content,
and buy all the new quiz and puzzle books that caught my fancy. Just the
two of us. It was our time. Fun time. I don't recall a single month I
came away disappointed. Studies took over once I entered Senior
Secondary (High School), and unremarked, our monthly Tekson's ritual
petered off. Sadly, Tekson's shuttered its doors recently.
The
monthly ritual of visiting Tekson's bookstore is one of my happiest
childhood memories. Through this ritual my mom inculcated in me that
most priceless of habits, the habit of cultivating my mind. Many times my mom would say to me in Tamil, 'I was handed this ladle
from the moment I came out of my mother's uterus. Fated to practice
this cooking business (roughly translated from the Tamil 'karandi
udhyogam'). I don't want that for you. Study hard. Be financially
independent. Be your own person'. Isn't that some of the best advice any mom could give her daughter?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-vivid-memories-of-your-childhood/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala
No,
this is not about climate change. What then? First World retirees in
Third World retirement villages. Too wild? Let's consider the idea
first.
As US baby boomers retire,
life expectancy data suggest the rapidly expanding retiree population
has several decades ahead of it. Have they saved enough for their
retirement? Financial analysts repeatedly warn that Americans don't save
enough for retirement, except they may indeed be saving enough for
retirement, if they retired to India.
Could a First World retiree
in a Third World retirement village be a match made in heaven? Would US
retirees even consider retiring in India?
Why India? Plenty of
English-speaking people. A young country. More than 50% of India's
enormous population is below the age of 25. That implies a service
sector with plenty of physically capable English-speaking youth to staff
retirement communities. With those mushrooming in India these days,
it's a recognized service sector with the infrastructure that entails.
US is already familiar with the concept of medical tourism, and India is
a recognized medical tourism destination (Medical tourism in India). Much lower cost of living (Page on numbeo.com).
A dollar that couldn't buy one nutritious meal in the US could
certainly do so in India. The mighty dollar would not only command a
decent standard of life in India but stretch out much longer. Factors
likely to render the prospect of retiring to India less outlandish than
would otherwise be the case.
The cons. Are there many or any
American retirees willing to relocate to India? How to identify and
reach out to such? Maybe start with those who have visited India more
than once as tourists, i.e. enjoyed their time there? Legal
ramifications? Dual citizenship isn't currently possible so expatriate
issues. Cultural differences. Food, noise, traffic, hygiene, hospitals.
Location. Maybe smaller cities, “hill stations”? Potential staff need to
be trained on cultural differences in addition to their standard
responsibilities. These are not insurmountable obstacles. India already
has or is developing The Villages, Florida
style retirement communities. For this idea, they merely need to be
US-adapted. So what about it, US and India? By bringing together
disparate cultures in this win-win manner, don't we increase the scope
for global warming of the healthful kind? A practical purpose with
potentially priceless intangibles. Is this meeting of the hearts and
minds do-able? It certainly seems possible. Any entrepreneurs out there
willing to give this a whirl?