birds start chattering in large numbers these days very early in the morning when it's still dark; I haven't seen this anywhere else. It's fascinating to hear but also jolts me out of my sleep if i do. so I protest sleepily when he invites me to come see.

I've been so busy lately and so overworked; also nervous about how exams would play out etc.; that metro has become my retreat to catch up on precious sleep. and then someday when I drive, I feel like the car and me don't get to see each other enough these days. One day Google maps tried to help me by saving me the hassle of road closures and traffic delays on the highway to sonepat; I ended up lost on unpaved paths in rural haryana and it took me a while to find a way out. but even there an electric blue flash of a Kingfisher flew by.

Neutering dogs makes them more gender equal; it empowers the females. I feel like I've said this here before. in Udaipur recently there was a pair in the homestay where we stayed: the female growled at me when we reached and I tried to pat her. I realised then she had just been raped; the male next to her still had its unnaturally large (compared to its tiny frame) penis out. I wanted to click but I restrained myself. the owners lived what their daughter called "sustainably". it's not like they were blind to the female's plight; they talked about it like it was an unavoidable nuisance.

I saw the white throated (or browed) fantail there; a day or two after i heard his beautiful song. there was also something that kept screaming a monosyllabic sound like a warning or an alarm; haven't yet been able to identify it. and we had a bay window where if u lay u felt like u were lying in the trees.

in our tiny balcony, which we didn't really count as homespace ever since an AC unit filled it up, I have just two plants, old ones, an Adenium and a green yellow ornamental leaves plant the name of which is escaping my aging memory right now. I had planned on hanging some flowering plants in pots from its railing too, but the visiting pigeons there kept me postponing the plan. we used to sleep in the bedroom that hosts that balcony till it was still cool. now we have moved to our summer capital; I call it our 'simla' bedroom, which is in fact mine. 'delhi' is his and as is the only br upstairs, the upper floor acts like his 'bachelor pad' I tease. but for me pottering up and down multiple times a day in the mornings and evenings to water my plants spread over the house, the tiny balcony, the terrace, and to watch the bulbul parties in the peepuls bordering the terrace. we noticed some pigeons were collecting twigs in the tiny balcony. but as in the alcove above my window where for days nothing else happened, I thought they might just be playing around, or 'creating art'. of course I was wrong, I had just been hoping it wouldn't be a nest; most people around me detest pigeons, they love lots of other birds ... but crows and pigeons ?!! so they told us to fear pigeon nests and to break them up etc. etc. ya pigeons can be noisy early mornings but have you heard screaming peacocks, those exotic giants of birds? either way one gets used to them. there was a time when we first saw this place and the broker told us that the funny cracked broken shards of yellow plastic around the large windows in what is now 'simla' was soundproofing installed by previous tenants, we were completely mystified: why would anyone need soundproofing in this quaint quiet neighborhood bordering and surrounded by a biodiversity park? now we know that human noise isn't the only noise one needs to keep out for a good night's sleep. one morning some dog wildly yelping woke me up at about 5 in the morning. but there are benefits to that too. i got to witness that magical enchanted hour with these colors painting the sky

coming back to the pigeons. mom pigeon laid first one egg, then another. we had mixed feelings in the beginning, conditioned by what people told us. the eggs hatched after almost 3 weeks, on consecutive days. the chicks are yellow. mother pigeon first learned how to recognise his face and be unafraid of him. she would still scuttle away and fly off when I went to shower the green yellow plant with water. now she knows me too and watches me quietly. her chicks are slowly developing wing bones and her body no longer covers them completely. I think there's a father pigeon too (he's been reading up and tells me pigeons are monogamous) but he is still scared of us. mother just blinks her eyes now observing my routine of pulling the curtains together, apart, watering plants, and sometimes coochicooing to her and the chicks or taking a short video or pic of them. I'm reading a book about the genius of birds.. pigeons are known to be able to discern different human faces. whereas I cannot tell one from the other and know the mother only by where she is found, dutifully protecting her babies and waiting for them to grow up, for their brains and their wings to mature. apparently birds are of two broad kinds, those whose young are born nearly mature, have larger brains when they are chicks, and can fly in a few days; versus those whose chicks (like ours) are born helpless and tiny, and take a long time to grow and fly. the second type realize a larger adult brain than the first. also like us, birds have evolved to have large brains (to the size of their bodies) by shrinking their jaws and other facial appendages. birds also probably dream, at least they do have REM sleep. I met a neighbor who used to live in our flat some years ago. our flat owner had told us about them but we hadn't realised it was them he had told us about. she is married to a British guy and they have a daughter, a cat, and two dogs. in fact their daughter was born in our flat and that's probably why we have a 'prevent-a-baby-from-tumbling-downstairs' red door at the top of the stairs in his bachelor pad. there's something about a white guy living in the building next to you in India; we still are hungover by our colonized history, or possibly by our colorism and racism. even after years of living in white man's land. that doesn't change anything in fact: there we were the few brown people so we stood out, here the few white ones do and we are eternally curious about them. you might have heard of rented househunters in China, white people who are paid to pretend to be looking at houses because it impresses other househunters and can successfully hike the rent up. when we had first seen our older smaller flat, days after returning to India after years of living away, we saw a white couple also do the rounds of the rooms, allegedly prospective renters. was it that that gave us the confidence that we could live there when every other place so far had felt filthy, broken down, or both? that place was visibly better kept than any other flat we had seen, but yes maybe the possibility that non-Indians were considering the place and thus that the place was comfortable enough for people who weren't used to this hopeless country, might have tricked us, despite the fact that we talked about it and were aware of how we had been primed. later we laughed about it with a friend visiting from amreeka. here now, our flat owner had tried to play that card with us by telling us about this couple, this British guy and his 'partner' who had had their child in this flat. it didn't work on us this time, maybe cos this place before we patched it up, was pretty rundown. our reaction behind his back was 'can you believe that British people could live in this place?! hah!'. still the same higher standards though for their housing expectations. one day, just weeks into this place, I was standing alone in our terrace and staring far at the trees and birds across the colony road in front of us. I felt watched suddenly, looked down and this couple was walking by and the guy was looking up at me. we looked at each other a mere instant and then turned away, back into our thoughts. I didn't know then but now that I do that moment came back to me. he must have been looking up at his old home, transformed by new people and the changes they made to the terrace (she told me they noticed the terrace was being tiled and how that suggested to them that maybe the flat owners were planning on living there because after all tenants don't bother to improve any place in this way)... our older flat we booked on the very first day we saw it. it felt like it was vacant just for us and that it was the only place where we could imagine setting up a home. this one, two months in now, feels to me like we have lived here for ages. it will be weird if that couple from the next building comes in someday and we talk about how the place looks and is different now from when they lived here. does a house change with the people occupying it or does it change those who come to live in it? the first day we saw this place I noticed peacocks from the kitchen window, rufous treepie in the peepul near the terrace and those were my arguments to counter hubby's hopelessness about the rotting wood in the kitchen cabinets (they turned out not to be rotten after all). this neighborhood was also spotted by me a few years ago, on one of my aimless drives around to cheer myself up; but then I never thought I would one day be sharing a place here with a family of pigeons and their chicks. there's also a sweetheart of a stray female dog (neighbors call her Bella) who was left homeless by someone in the next colony moving away apparently and adopted by this place. do we choose our homes or do our homes choose us?

photopost

Setting sun. Kitchen. Geraniums.

shopping; at the plant nursery. Another buyer, a gardener, gave me some tips, and started talking about prices in hushed tones as he saw I was kinda done; I told them to talk freely as I was leaving anyway, thinking to myself "yes of course I'm aware of price discrimination between us".

the peepul showering our terrace with its dead leaves (barely minutes after I've cleared them there's just as many more).

parrots; kitchen window.

I am writing from the delhi metro yellow line. I have lost my commuter mojo a bit, I can't run down the innumerable steps as I used to nearly twenty yrs ago in Bombay local train stations. I'm wearing better shoes now, but they could become slippery soon with so many steps each way. we are about a 10 mins walk from the metro station, I kept thinking I'd be late and would miss some train, and as is with trains even if it's not the last one u need to take, the sight of a train just gone by always feels like a small failure. But no, I still walk faster than the average guy walking in my direction, and even though I kept looking at every auto passing by, wondering if it made sense to take one for those few hundred feet or meters(?) that remained, i let them go. I had to change at Hauz khas and the fast walking crowd leading me to where I needed to go made me smile. Men women kids young students, all seemed so determined, so focused, so prepared and ready and alert; and yet quiet. Most people commute alone, silently walking on, with a purpose. Delhi metro feels like the one rare thing in this country that works and works well, driven by some logic, some planning, and managing to keep its promise. And because it works well it seems to bring out the better human in us the commuters. I have probably written about this before but am still surprised that Indian men behave themselves while on board this thing. They keep their hands and their legs, and even their eyes to quite an extent, to themselves.

A father and daughter boarded somewhere midway in my commute. The little girl had a bandaged arm and was holding it awkwardly raised and folded. A young sardar next to me gave his seat to the girl, also asked the father what happened. I heard that she had been burned. The sardar suggested cold coconut oil as a balm. The father asked the girl to keep exercising her fingers and palm by making fists and claws. The skin was peeling like tissue, off of her palm. She said "abhi nahi" ("not now"). after a bit the train emptied out a bit, I shifted to my right and the father sat to my left next to his child. The person on the other side of the girl started talking to him, "how did it happen?" ... "Boiling water..." and then started giving tips for a quick healing. In his words he had been burned too, in fact had been run over by an automobile and the heat of its running engine had burned him; yes, coconut oil worked, ...." I grimaced at the image of his accident. A young guy opposite us observed me, the girl, the father, the guy with the story. I saw this shared emotion in his eyes, and in fact in other eyes watching the girl; gentleness i think it was. The girl wasn't crying. In fact she got a spasm of pain on her right chest (which was also burned) and exclaimed to her father and then after some small words between them she smiled and chuckled. 

At some point I had crossed Delhi University station, as far as I had ever been on this line, and entered into that other Delhi part of that other India where I don't live or visit. I had chosen my clothes carefully for this first commute, foreseeing this: a cotton crepe white blouse tucked into police green pants, the blouse has sleeves and a neck that can be problematic only because the blouse is loose on my body but falls short of being 'revealing'. The train was also no longer underground and I could see clusters of unplanned unpretty cement houses. the people remained as courteous though, as disciplined. In the entire metro ride I saw one woman in a knee length skirt though, every other was clad from shoulder to ankles. I am now on the University shuttle which is the second hour of my commute, and I am as yet not tired kudos to the metro for that. although I was reluctant to start commuting and saw no point to stop teaching from home and wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been forced by my employers, I am learning to not fight things beyond where the fighting is pointless. and maybe this getting out of my comfortable well will be good for me. so far the weather is good.

the terrace life is good, especially when it borders a peepul grove welcoming of bulbuls, parrots, tailor birds, mynahs, pigeons, kites, barbets, peacocks (very noisy though esp early mornings), and hornbills. the view on the other side although pretty too is distracting as it faces the colony road. in short people are a distraction from all that is worthwhile and beautiful. hah. 

I had thought we would want to share this place with friends and family. but so far it feels comfortable without, plus maybe the curtain rod will fall down on their heads (etc.) if people unfamiliar with the weaknesses of this home stay here. hah.

running in the biodiversity park is even more exhilarating than just running. y'day I met a fellow runner from the other park in it and he started giving me tips on how to use my hands; apparently my hands are too lose and it bothers him. hah to that too. and i always thought his hands looked too tight, too close to his body, and too uncomfortable for what I consider freestyle running. but I didn't mansplain.

Safal outlets I have grown to appreciate a lot. there's one near here too, I like stopping by after a run and picking up produce, dairy, frozen stuff, etc. the guys who man them are different from random others all around. they will initially stare but immediately avert their gaze when they realise you are conscious. and they are very efficient, professional (as can get here), and to the point. I wonder if they are trained.

work (research) is suffering. and last class I made multiple silly mistakes in how answered questions on indifference curves in one of the two sections of intro classes that I'm teaching this sem. after so much study of this subject it is still possible to do this? I must be an idiot

Coppersmith barbets have almost vanished, but their larger cousins, the brown headed barbets have exploded in numbers (and calls). 

we took the broken down house surrounded by forest and birds still in this corner of Delhi over the perfect interiors, dishwasher fitted, hauz khas place from whose bedrooms you could see a semi clad uncle brushing his teeth late in the day. he called this our 'romantic crumble' then, and now our 'jungle home' although he can't be bothered to get out amongst the trees; for him the windows and terrace are more than enough. bird species are mostly the same as in vk, but we have also spotted an owl and an Indian grey hornbill so far. there are leaks in our bathrooms and kitchen that persist after numerous plumber visits. the first time we ran our washing machine in what we have renovated to be our laundry room up on our terrace, our bath flooded with its water (the drain is common we learned). our repair contractors have been so awesome (sarcasm) that they've gifted us a kitchen sink that slopes the wrong way, with a joint in it's slab through which the water seeps below,.... I could go on. but we can see the sunrise from our bed, and for the first time in his life he has been watching the pole star rising. people are a lil more weird here: seems like car washers are banned and drivers are monopolizing that market too; them and cleaners keep lying to sabotage each other's chances; the guard seems like a broker for odd jobs; and neighbors yell at me without specifying what about his parking caused them inconvenience. I can still drive to my running park, in less time than before in fact. and there's another larger park here, but ppl seem older on average, richer, and less outdoorsy. I can walk to the local market which has nice restaurants too (and behind which the park lies) after my day of teaching and get a sweet crisp morning bun for an evening snack. My hotel swimming pool is walking distance for when the weather warms up. and we can stare at trees and listen to birdsong while crapping on the hotseats. we chose to remove the exhaust fan from the kitchen too and use the windows instead which look out onto a large tree that seems to be a home for rose ringed parrots. we do have a lot more space than we need but hopefully we will learn how to use it better as we spread our stuff. and we finally got a proper (large hand me down) dining table that serves that purpose. we also got another more modern roomba and updated our older one with new wheels etc. and I no longer have to leave the house when he has therapy sessions upstairs.

this has however also helped me decide that we are not doing this (choosing forest over interiors) again. and maybe that's just as well. he turns 39 this month, and later this year I turn 40! the next home has got to be more compact, with better plumbing, and easier to manage. this one probably was fated to be ours for exactly now, before we become decrepit. 

In old suitcases forgotten in closets and claimed by mould, sometimes one finds remnants of one's past self. safe and dry. asking one whether one finds them precious still, enough to save them for the future; or whether they will be thrown away such that their tomorrow is impersonal, disconnected, and they become orphaned and meaningless. 

I rammed the car today. it's barely 4 months old. and I think I'm a pretty good driver. but I rammed the car today. about 5-7 mins after having a strange thought that said that I might have an accident the way I was driving, fatigued and distracted. I'd been about 6 hrs in the new place we are to move into getting wifi fixed and electrician odd jobs done in an empty flat. I had left home a lil after lunch. but in the hrs there I had had no water or snack or rest. I hadn't really wanted to call both those guys together, after a full day there last week with multiple ppl that had left me exhausted. and wifi had been his job to get done. but it hadn't been done to satisfaction, with the guest bedroom getting the strongest signal and the rest of the place left out a bit. so I had to get it redone. plus these wifi guys were supposed to come in the morning so I could finish with them, come back home for a few hrs and then go back to deal with eletricians. but as is in this country, nothing goes according to plan. ppl don't show up when they are supposed to. I also went and bought a ladder before I got to the place. so ladder-equipped, I thought I could do it all. and I did manage to get all of that done a lil before dinner time. all that was left was get my big notes of money changed somewhere, pay the electricians, and then decide whether I could also stop buy groceries or not. but even that's not what caused the accident. I once read somewhere that most automobile accidents (probably in the US) occur very close to the driver's home. (my last car in TX also I rammed into a pole at the gas station closest to my home on my way back after a long tiring teaching day). today I was driving back tired and listening to radio, and like I said a lil distracted after all that had happened - I had managed to drink a small bottle of juice after buying grocery to hydrate myself before starting back - when I had that funny thought about what if i hit someone in this state, which made me use my headlights much more and be careful. and then as I took the last big turn away from one of the busy streets into the lil VK lanes, barely 5 mins from home, I suddenly realised my windows and windshield were fogging and my vision was blurring cos of it. I slowed down and decided to stop by the roadside cos I didn't trust myself to use those controls while moving cos I knew I was fatigued and possibly driving without that sixth alive sense that drives automatically. I was stunned as I rammed into something. for a minute I couldn't even figure out what cos I couldn't see anything by now but before I had turned the car to the roadside I had made sure there weren't any vehicles or people there. and nothing else is supposed to be on the road, right? but no, this is India, and nothing makes sense where it is and things will always be where they aren't supposed to be. after turning on my heater and windshield warmers I could see that I had hit a giant bunch of twisted iron electric (or some such) wires that were anchored in the ground on that patch of the road. I've seen them before and one usually drives away from them but this time I missed seeing them cos of the fogged windshield. a man stopped and got out to check if I was ok. I reversed a lil to clear the car of the hit, and assured him I wasn't hurt or drunk. he thought I must have been on the phone. and advised me where to get it repaired and to leave the crime scene before policemen came around and harassed me. the iron wires were as strong as ever, well grounded, permanent. my left headlight was shattered, the broken glass had cut the car body there a bit, and the wires had bent about two inches of the bottom of the front. some part of that had also come unhinged and was sticking out. 

I'm frustrated. shocked that I did this. but more annoyed at this place, where trees grow in the middle of roads, where wires are planted on streets, where people don't turn up when they are supposed to, where nothing has any logic to it. and I feel alone in trying to fight it, even though these months I've given in quite a bit to 'the hand of god', that's why I wasnt angry this morning with those guys not turning up as scheduled, and I've been trying to 'go with the flow'. but I shudn't be hitting anything when I'm trying so hard to avoid just that by stopping along the side of the road before figuring out how to clear my windshield. but that's exactly what happens in this place. f#@$*&@ shit hole

I think I need help dealing with his illness. It sometimes overwhelms me, scares me, makes me feel helpless. and I've been feeling lately that the therapist isn't helping me, cos she is his therapist firstly. everything she does or says comes from the primary goal of helping him learn how to live with his illness. I feel lately like that's not helping me, at least not in the same way I had hoped it would. She doesn't respond to my messages or emails anymore either. and there is literally no one I can reach out to, who would understand or help me when he is in that frame of mind, expressing it as anger directed at me. sometimes it feels like there's been no progress at all. sometimes I feel my life is not mine. sometimes I don't know how I will smile tomorrow and forget. and how I will deal with it again because there will be an again. cos this is not going away. the therapist told him in his session today that he was much better. and soon after that we were watching a movie he thought was brilliant and I disagreed and thought was bad because I felt it was trying to create horror out of (what seemed to me) terrible tragedy and bad parenting (possibly a mentally ill mother); that caused him to be annoyed at me and when I didn't understand why it turned soon into anger and accusations. I have walked out many times, sometimes out of the room, sometimes out the front door without a purse or warm clothes, just to preserve myself. I have also tried shutting up, holding his hand, listening, ignoring, trying to reason, ... nothing helps till it passes, and that can sometimes take very long and is unbearable while it lasts. it's like he can't take it that I don't share his anger and he keeps lashing out trying to invoke it in me too. anything I say then gets distorted in his mind. and when he starts shouting I just can't think anymore, I feel trapped and constrained, I feel numb and tired and I want to hide or run.

when we did not live together it was easier. I would shut my phone off or throw it under a pillow. he would go on calling till he got tired. and I waited for him to cool off, for it to pass. now there is nowhere to hide, nowhere to wait. 

and yet most of the time I am glad we finally live together. especially in this pandemic. and when I hear news of death. today I heard from another friend who has lost her husband. I gasped when I read her email, I knew he was sick but I didn't think he would pass away. 

life is unreal.

they gave trees their annual haircut here, to let the sun into human homes in winter. I managed to finally touch and feel the long twisted seedpods of the mother tree in a mass of its cut branches and soft large floppy leaves. on asking I found that those leaves are often used to make pattals or leaf-bowls. and the tree is a Kath-sagwan! someone also said it grows wild in these parts. Wiki also says its oil is therapeutic. Kath-sagwan is similar to - or is in fact the very same - Teak. it's wood is used in furniture. it's trunk is not wide, feels like a waste that it would be cut for furniture ever. especially when it's such a generous hospitable tree to so many birds (they love it's buds and flowers and it's sunny perch on top), squirrels, and insects. and then I dreamed about a beautiful giant tree cut and yet bellissimo and host to a small local ecology. 

a Drongo has been visiting us for the last couple days, and once a week a (white breasted?) Kingfisher also shows up. Purple sunbirds keep sue-sue-ing all morning; I recently found out that their local name in the Chota Nagpur region (where my dad's family lives) is 'sue'. But we have been house hunting cos this has become small for us and is disconnected from all commuting arteries of (and out of) the city (travails of a job far away and yet technically in the same metropolitan area and of course of a plan to an 'end' to the pandemic and wfh). we will miss these birds, and possibly also this quieter corner of South Delhi which feels less like the rest of the flashy loud city. alternatively we stay this side and move up to be slightly more commutable and live in a dilapidated place that has charm and character and is surrounded by the ridge and forests. the coice feels like that between a practical balanced meal and a mouth watering dessert, the latter possibly hard to digest as well. 

my problems are I chase perfection too much (which can make me controlling) and yet I don't like to perform and be in the hotspot. or maybe I like it but the possibility of messing up while in the hotspot is too upsetting. Online teaching is teaching me what I like and don't like about teaching. I do not like leaving my home to teach, because teaching is a lot about performing and that makes me anxious and nervous, and my tummy runs; and that becomes a source in itself of embarassment if I have to visit the loo often at school; I used to go into buildings where no one would recognise me, far from my own department. online teaching is also easier cos only my face and shoulders show, and I needn't get into the "is my butt showing, is my bra showing, am I looking too good/sexy for a teacher's image...; what should I wear...". and that has felt easier moreover in India cos American students even commented on these things a lil more; once a student bothered his neighbor cos he was wondering about my sexual orientation. here there is more deference (or so I think so far) for heirarchies, which though not always good, does help in class.

I also want to butt into his therapy, recovery, maintenance, etc. but I am conscious of it and try to kill that instinct. sometimes it's hard, when I know my life with him depends on it, my own sanity and well being depends on it. I usually leave our home to give him privacy for his video therapy calls. and I have realised that helps me disassociate myself. cos y'day I was at home with my ears plugged with music (cos the pollution outdoors is awful these evenings and cos I get tired after long teaching days) and it was harder; I felt shut out, unwanted, wondered why I needed to be shut out, how and why did he benefit from a wall between me and him. 

my problem is also too much honesty, and the expectation of the same from others. so I end up blurting out everything that bothers me about someone, about the how and the why, and then it upsets him. he isn't so good at self expression, plus his therapist has been teaching him to ignore and dismiss thoughts, and I think the first step to that is not offload them at me. but that again makes me feel shut out.

I'm reading a book of personal notes on mental health that he read and recommended. and I kept feeling this is so much more than about mental health and illness, this is simply about one person's place in her world, about her connections and her bias toward herself in how she perceives everyone and everything, said and unsaid, from within her mind. we all have that relationship with the world, maybe more or less frought, maybe with a greater or smaller feeling of being victimized or a greater or smaller effort at self analysis. I know if my mom in law wrote notes like that, she would always be the victim. what I like about the book is the self analysis, the effort to peek out from the biases imposed by the illness to turn the tables and to practice empathy, to question and unravel her biases. writing helps do these things. and I keep thinking of those lines where she writes, asking herself if her illness was abusive to her then partner; and what does it ask from a caregiver. I think all personal relationships become emotionally abusive at some moment or another. I also think 'abuse' is a very big word. the goal is to realize, be conscious, and to prevent. and two people can be constantly learning and practicing that. I am learning that my concern, my need to help, my need to belong in every solution, my need to adopt every problem, can upset. 

I am reading Amiya Srinivasan's The Right to Sex, wherein she examines sexism and feminism through the lens of the private and personal and yet highly politicised act of sex and the social constructs surrounding it. The books that I love best are those that make me realize my unexpressed feelings, opinions, experiences, and even more so if those amount to some larger latent truth of my life that I and others had so far not understood or observed in entirety. This does that in many lil parts, but also did that in a big way in the pages I read last night where she is deconstructing student professor relationships: what they have the potential to become, what is the role of societal gender conditioning, and what is the responsibility of the more responsible party in it.

Yes, a professor's role is to inspire and to stir and arouse the student's passions and curiosity for the subject, and in doing so give rise to the by-products of awe and admiration and desire (to be like the professor or more directly for the professor, but often a confounded emotion of both). This can also be influenced by the social construction of the dynamic of power (and authority to appraise) between the (often) male professor and the female student. But it must be the professor's responsibility to not make this personal and to not be affected by this and to keep it purely professional. Srinivasan quotes a female student, that she would have been devastated if any of her male professor idols had taken even the slightest advantage of her awe/admiration/desire for them, not simply because it would have been a breach of trust but because it would massacre for her, all the credit and appraisal she had earned for her work and would have reduced it all to sexual attraction, thus destroying her self worth which often depended on male appraisal in this gender distorted world of ours. 

It hit home. My first big crush on these lines was a professor at Dschool, whose course and conversations made me realise the love of learning for the pure sake of learning. He helped me through my struggle to get into a habit of hardwork too. The second was my PhD Advisor who had also been my teacher and boss when I worked as his TA. The third I think is now, this much more senior and brilliant professor who I know very little personally but whose fame and brilliance have me enthralled. I've been very lucky that the first two were friendly and yet professional with me. The first still welcomes me warmly every time we meet while also giving me honest feedback on what I "always were", someone who kept questioning my worth and purpose. The one time in heavens breaking rain in the late evening when I was struggling to find my way to the metro station and he offered me a ride in his car, I refused, a lil annoyed; he let me be, but then stopped again and insisted; I think I sat in the back rather than with him in the front to keep my distance, and he dropped me off at the metro, courteous and professional. The second, my Advisor, I got overly friendly with, so much so that I would visit his office to talk about anything and everything and sometimes even get upset when I felt the one-sidedness of my emotions. He refused my invitation for a gathering at my place, but was always open to hearing what I had to say, about teaching, about the incumbent ideas in economics, about my interactions with others on that campus, about my sudden revelations and findings on any subject really. I am grateful neither of them caused to devastate me.

The third is this person some blogposts ago I wrote about. His attention frightens me, makes me want to disappear; and yet so far I have no clue about his reasons. Does he see me as a woman or as a person. In this patriarchal world where each of these men were and are symbols for me, sources of admiration and feedback on who I am professionally and who I want to be, who I want to be like, I want to be seen and known and desired for my thoughts, my words, my work, and never for my gender my sex. 

I do realize that I have inculcated this in myself too, partially unintentionally (but who knows), where in my professional circle and interactions (and maybe beyond), I've been seeing people as persons, individuals with separate characteristics and talents, rather than as men or women. I used to think that was what made me slightly bisexual, but I don't know, maybe that's what simply makes me non-discriminatory on the basis of sex and gender.

Srinivasan draws the analogy of the therapist-patient relationship and cites Freud's clarity on the ethics of such an influential/powerful role. She argues that consent is not enough, and what must be considered is the effect of such relationships on the student, on her/his self worth and their will and progress as a student after. I had a student one semester in Texas with some history of sexual harassment, who I noticed barely wanted to show up for classes and even when she did her classmates snubbed her and treated her with disrespect. I tried to reach out if she wanted to talk but she was offended I think and closed herself in. 

Ironically one of my students some years ago got into the habit of chatting and walking with me to my office after every class. I was friendly and professional and this went on almost the whole semester; he told me he carried a gun (this was Texas) because he lived in a troubled neighborhood, we discussed politics and other issues while I remember saying I tried to keep my biases/opinions out of the classroom, till the last day of class after which we found ourselves talking about feminism. His idea of feminism was militant and extremist, and that of sexism was that it was innocent and unintentional and arising simply to accommodate biological differences in a less developed world. He stopped visiting after that day, after hearing my views on sexism and my 'coming out' as a feminist. And maybe that was ok in many other ways. Srinivasan quotes Jane Tompkins from A Life in School, "Life is right in front of me in the classroom, in the faces and bodies of the students. They are life, and I want us to share our lives, make something together, for as long as the course lasts, and let that be enough."

I find the young inspiring these days. Not just my students but some my nieces and nephews too. And from some I feel their awe toward me. It is important to encourage, admire, support, while leaving it untainted and undamaged, un-devastated and whole.

honesty is a rare quality in us. and without it communication becomes heavy, dragged, and hard. but not just that, it's even more important to be honest with oneself, to question one's own motives, to check oneself. do dishonesty and self-centered-ness often go hand in hand; is there causality in some direction between those two. in my therapy sessions, other ppl sometimes come up. their narrow mindedness, their assumptional attitude about people, ... and the importance of honesty. and sometimes the therapist shares similar stories from her end to illustrate some point. she feels like a kindred soul, an honest one.

dogs have a sense of fairness, they communicate their emotions, and are capable of receiving empathy

Whiskey bit me some weeks ago, one morning when I was getting out for my run and he was sleeping on our staircase blocking my way. on being woken up he lolled around a bit and then when I tried to stroke his head with the hand that also held my big metal key I think I scared him and he jumped at my wrist grabbing it in his teeth for a split second. I calmed him down, surprised, but later when I saw a small bloody scratch on my wrist I got worried. I didn't run that day. instead came home washed it with soap water, went out again, trying to make sure of the identity of the dog. couldn't find him anymore. called my RWA to ask if these dogs were vaccinated, was assured they were. but having a small doubt in my mind as to which dog it was and their vaccination claim, I went and got my first rabies shot that day after a while and after breakfast.

instead of shying away from them, I have been feeding Whiskey and Beauty (also Tutee now) more since then; and because Beauty doesn't quite relish these doggie cookies, I started ordering some soup bones (of goat) to give to them. they realise its precious and valuable as soon as they smell it or touch it, and they gobble it up.

I'm getting into the habit of taking a few bones to them after a long day of teaching. the last time I took 5 bones for the three dogs. I found them kinda all together (they are friends and have proprietor-rights on this lane, not allowing other strays to venture here). Whiskey was fast and got two, one after another, the second of which was a meatier one that Beauty rejected so I pointed it out to him. And Beauty had finished her first so I dropped a second in front of her when Whiskey was busy a lil way ahead (to avoid attracting his attention cos he seemed to be very excited by everyone's bones). Beauty had just begun cracking hers, when Whiskey suddenly growled and attacked her mouth, and she being the sensible peacemaker, dropped it reflexively. It was gone in seconds, while I was trying to scold him and order him to drop it. 

I was still scolding him when he was done with it and smacking his lips around his mouth. Beauty was now to my right and facing him, she let out two angry short barks straight at him, one after another. these startled me, but he avoided her glance and kept slowly wagging his tail and looking at me appeasingly.

I ignored him, telling him he was a bully and that he stole her bone. he eventually left, leaving me consoling Beauty stroking her and talking to her crouching on my haunches. she moved in and sat between my legs as if she was hugging me. I hugged her back and gave her a few belly rubs. Tutee was on the side, also getting a few.

and then I came back home, took two big bones from the freezer, and went back again. the bully was still not back. and I watched over Beauty and Tutee till they finished eating theirs, ushering them away from the road when a car approached. 

I met the two another morning, and later Whiskey on his own atop a car. of course he ran to me when he realised it was me, and of course I wasn't mad anymore. and as usual he kept following me till I gave him a nice side belly rub.

usually the rains dry up by September and you get this second summer for a couple months before it starts to cool down. but this year it's pouring almost every other day, and some days the clouds burst for a few minutes in between blue skies and sunshine in small pockets, every now and then. is this still monsoon? rain is dripping down our kitchen exhaust hole and it's about 8 in the morning but it's dark and secretive. and on the few mornings when I don't have to teach and the skies are not weeping, I run and smile at the glistening leaves avoiding the lil pools collected in the tiny park within my block. I haven't gone out to the bigger park in almost a month now, partly cos of the rain and because our old car, as old as our marriage and a hand me down gave up on us. also running on the street within my block is easier when the world is soaked. so we got a new car. 

they sprayed against mosquitoes one day, this after almost a year or maybe more cos they had been busy with the pandemic. I've been reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. so of course I got worried about what was in their spray, and for the birds. calls were useless, no one could tell me what they were spraying. in this world of ours we trust others for so much. I trust and hope that Carson has changed the world enough that my neighbor birds won't be hurt too much now by this fumigation. although our window spider/s did die. 

we get to see school pics of our nephew in amrika who has just started school. lil kids in colorful masks all day, playing around and learning with picture books, wooden blocks, craft dough, beads, paints and pipettes. I wonder what kind of ppl we would have been if we had had that. not the masks but the freedom of such schools. and the company of lil ppl from different cultures and of parents from around the world. even now even in my adult world I do miss that, hearing of stories from across the world, from countries I have to look up on the map. 

last two three weeks had been nuts. and one day we had my cousins over and we had this argument with them. it's hard to explain. but conversations like that highlight my feeling like an alien here. ppl don't understand that stereotypes lead to prejudice, which can lead to fear of certain ppl. and that the fear makes the fearful feel like a victim, but the fear itself is not just a passive victim emotion, and that it is guilty of hurting those against whom it's targeted. and that ridding oneself of such fear is one's problem to own accept and control. then a friend of his visited from amrika. felt godsent. someone from home. who understands how this home country can feel alienating now. although to be fair, after these many years I'm finally finding my balance. I love that we don't put down stray dogs here as they would in the west. I love that my critter-phobia that had developed there is fading away and I'm learning to accept myself as an animal sharing this earth with all these others. 

and yes I am excited to belong to the frontier pushing institute in Indian academia/education. even as I realise the nature and construct of my particular perspective. 

I got a new beautiful sleek smooth powerful computer; my old one was more than 10 yrs old and sputtered with online teaching the first day. the efficiency of this university is impressive and my second day of teaching was on the new one. and so is the effort to build institutions within it that protect freedoms while ensuring everyone feels safe. at the same time something of the commercialization of education is being imported from the west, partly I feel because of its high price/cost. 

and I'm teaching something new, which means I'm learning and sharing what I'm learning with my students. the online platform is also a big change. I no longer have to notice students pouring in late or leaving early. and I'm learning how to imagine their presence while I share with them my screen my thoughts and my scribbles. I'm still formulating the difference between these Indian students who are very aware of the world outside and are continuously looking toward the west, and those my past students across the globe. 

Y'day I heard of someone's death on twitter. someone I barely knew, but liked a lot and remembered very fondly. I had met him on that summer school in Jerusalem in 2013, many years ago now. He was either a lil older to me (I was doing my PhD then and he was a postdoc) or probably just my age as I have spent years of my life doing detours and u-turns. He wasn't quite a star yet, but he was really smart and rising, and yet very humble and normal and sweet. I remember a few moments, one where he caught something in the speaker's presentation that no one including the speaker could understand immediately, it took us all a lil while to get it, and I don't remember if I got it at all. Another where I had just come back to the hotel after exchanging some money and was paying off my room at the reception, after which he beckoned to me from the adjoining lounge holding his laptop in hand, and asked for advice on how to fill in a couchsurfing form for some travellers group/network. He said I looked like someone who would know. I told him I had no clue but wished him luck. That same day or the next probably I saw him in the corridoor outside a door a few away from mine. And he grinned like a child and we expressed surprise at boarding in rooms so close. Another day at breakfast he was organizing a group for a day trip up north for a hike and swim. I didn't go cos I was a lil scared in that country. Another day he and I were talking about running and how I had left my running shoes back home cos this was a long trip and one needed clothes more, and I think that conversation led to him wondering aloud how and where we could do laundry .... small conversations but each somewhat reveals his persona. An enthusiastic and very bright economist, he was also an explorer, who was measured and careful, and a humble one at both those things and as a person. He was probably a six footer, I always felt like a pygmy with him, but he would bend softly. And he was tall metaphorically too, I came away from that trip thinking v highly and dearly of him. I never met him again. He was on my facebook but seems to have deleted his account; he used to post v rarely, some pics from an Arizona trek, monument valley, ... some other long trip with a friend, once in a couple years. He is still on my Goodreads friend list, but wasn't regular or updated on it.

I was stunned when I read that he died. In K's swivel chair with my phone in my hand, waiting for my laptop to start as I had planned an evening of work on my teaching notes. And then I went a lil frantic. The twitter post had a black screen accompanying it, so I went online to check if it really was him. The post said something like 4 days ago he died while hiking some mountain in Switzerland. It sounded like him... "One is still what one is going to cease to be, .... One lives one's death, one dies one's life." I did find an official note on his University page, he was already a full professor. Lots of ppl retweeted the first post, someone used the word "kind" for him. Rare words in this profession, in this age. 

I suddenly wanted to connect with anyone who might have known him. I wrote to my only friend from that summer school, I wrote to one of my profs cos all European economists know all others. I fretted about it for hours, I cried, I slept and dreamt strange things, and I woke up feeling dazed. How can someone just cease to be without warning without illness, someone bright and healthy and genuine and nice and kind and enthusiastic, and successful and with so much promise. And why?

Watching orange is the new black is not helping. and reading a memoir of growing up in Kashmir in the early 90s (Rumours of spring by Farah Bashir).

in this yr and a half I have aged a great deal. in my thoughts and realizations, in the news of demise I have heard. I feel old and yet not all these passings away are due to age. Joan didion wrote The year of magical thinking, after her husband's death, in her year of grieving I think. I need to read that now. but I am already a changed person. And it's not just covid related. it's been some long months of digging within our minds too, for other reasons, and finding both worms and flowers there. K and I have been mind explorers while being locked out from others' company. sometimes I wonder if the pandemic arose to give us this space. sometimes I wonder why other ppl are leaving us for other reasons now. Why now? Why at all?

This morning when I woke up, and opened twitter to check if that was a dream, that black space turned into a photo of him, with red hair mustache and beard. Y'day my phone was probably misbehaving and the pic hadn't loaded at all.

and now I keep wondering if he was trekking or hiking alone, if he fell or if there was an unexpected storm, did he go missing and was found days later, what happened really. Cos the news was announced some 4 days after the announced date when he died. did he see it coming, what were his last thoughts...

a deep seated anxiety when awakened without warning can sometimes cause frustration, and the frustration can turn into anger at the person who awakened the anxiety. that anger can feel like a sudden and unexplained attack to that person, leading to a sense of helplessness and a feeling of being victimized for no fault of one, turning into a desire to run away to claim one's life and to protect oneself. 

somedays ago on twitter people were sharing personal stories of mental illness of family members, and how it torments not just the patient but their caregivers and live-in family. someone connected it with the idea of mental abuse and how sometimes the only solution is to leave, and maybe that's for the better. 

but sometimes the very essence of the anxiety is the fear of losing a close one, that of being left alone and abandoned. and often the leaving would simply realize that fear, prove that such anxiety can often be a self-fulfilling belief. 

I remember hearing a story on Radiolab years ago, of this lil village/town in Germany where it was the norm to host and house some stranger (often from far away) suffering from mental illness and how the program was quite a success. of the theory arising from that experiment that often family members are not only useless but perverse to patients because they are connected and have expectations. of how kind strangers can be better caregivers because they have the distance from attachment. 

but I think empathy can overcome attachment and expectations. and sometimes it comes in a flash, explaining the source and content of the discord. and you can choose to stay or leave or to go back and hold their hand. and all that matters is that you are family, and that that is larger than these small nights of tears. I never believed in the institution of marriage, in it's social contract, but I do slowly realize it's solace of unconditional love and acknowledgement.

just because someone doesn't do what you hope and expect of them, doesn't mean they aren't trying to do their best. and twitter can communicate much harder sufferings, much more destructive anger, and the resistance to getting help/medication.

somedays ago we were talking about mental illness and death, how I see it as the illness taking life just as you would with a physical ailment, how the patient can lose agency, and how the 'choice' isn't that to end life but is simply the desperation to end suffering, and how the two are not the same thing. 

I am so glad to have found you, and we do fit in like jigsaw pieces with our respective quirks.

I turned 39 some weeks ago. that number sounds and looks so strange still, like I'm talking about someone else. and a lil before that I heard from a guy who was in school with me in third grade. we were probably 9-10 yr olds. some 30 yrs ago. wow. I didn't even remember this guy's name but he says he remembered mine and 3 others' from that class and now saw mine on the faculty list of a sister institute of a university where he is a post doc. I hadn't bothered updating my LinkedIn. he kept saying how struck he was by the coincidence of both of us doing PhDs around the same time in the same city so far away from where we went to school together decades ago. I don't think thats the surprising part cos there's only so many places most desis go to do PhDs. his email gave me a small kick when I needed it, when I was feeling like a nobody. what is surprising is that he remembered me. and then today another long ago classmate messaged me, from the next school. both of these were guys who kept the second place in class where I topped, I think that's why they remember me so well, it was probably something like awe and crush on the person they wanted to beat but couldnt. the second of those schools was the last place I topped in (always effortlessly till then), and after that coming back to India after some years away kinda dislodged me in class forever.

the guy who messaged today I started chatting with. he had remembered my awkwardness all these years and I couldn't help defending myself with the reason. I always thought he had had a crush on me and had thus steered clear of him. he remembered that I had lost some notebook (days before the exam), borrowed his, and then beat him to top again. I laughed and apologized. and I thought he was going to tell me that he had stolen that notebook of mine, maybe to then do me a favor or to get an excuse to talk to me. I thought he was going to tell me that he had written me that anonymous love letter that I both cherished and laughed at for years. but all he said was that he had been shy and teased by others about me. 

I have moved between too many schools, but only a very few of them were co-educational, and mostly all my life I would keep bumping into girls who were my classmates in the past. at one point three women sharing a rickshaw who were living together as students met me, one was my then classmate (Masters program), one my classmate from 10th grade, and another that from 12th grade, and they were just finding out that they all knew me. but I never met guys who had shared a past long ago with me. although there are a few I have been curious about, those few who scared me by their attention. one I remember I left stranded in the middle of the street by hurriedly refusing to share a taxi with him in Bombay and shutting it's door right in his face cos I was afraid he was going to propose in some way if we shared a car and I did like him just as a friend; for years now I have tried searching for him and I fear he doesn't exist anymore and maybe that's my fault. only in a superstitious way (I hope).

funny thing childhood, teenage, growing up, and growing old. I feel like now I can tell and ask everyone from my past all that was for many years very awkward. 

na, I was wrong, I haven't acclimatized to Delhi summer, I never can. it has actually been that Delhi summer has been fickle last year and this, has been kinder to us. this year it has only now come more than a month later, so much so that the cyclonic rains in May led us to use the geyser for baths for about a week; unprecedented. and now I'm melting away in sweat again, had forgotten how oppressive this feels. and yes, swimming is the only physical activity possible in this, but alas the pools are closed and I'm having to run. the heat weakens the brain's generation of cannabis and only the moving body cutting through the dense still hot air brings a small relief of a breeze. but people wear jeans in this weather, and tights; and what of those who have to be outdoors in the desert streets working through the burning afternoon for their daily wages; how again do we live in this unlivable summer, this ain't human weather.