Dignity and patriarchy are oil and water, and never the twain shall meet

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

Could we make haves by bringing together two have-nots? An Indian take on Each One Teach One

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
 

What are some vivid memories of your childhood?

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

Global Warming of the Healthful Kind

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?