The Echos of Our Past

December, 2015

It's not about what you're called, but what you answer to - African Proverb
~~
In our lives, shit happens.

More important than the things that happen, are the things that resonate. The quality of our lives doesn't just depend on the things that happen to us. It depends equally on how we react and deal with what happens and what part of all that resonates over time.

We all know what lies on the other side of positivity and contentment. We know because that is where we spend much of our time. That place is strewn with all the detritus of the miserable parts of our lives—failed relationships, busted business ventures, regrets and bad decisions. It echoes with laments and smells of bad eggs. In such chambers, we moan and sigh and scratch our scabs. As the song says, "it feels so good to feel so bad."

It doesn't have to be that way. The past is gone, and though we live with the consequences, both good and bad, we can cultivate the habit of accentuating the positive.

As a brown person with a bullying father and penniless pockets growing up in racist, hectic, money-grubbing Hong Kong, I faced my share of bigotry, hardship and despair, and my tales of woe are many. The things that resonate the most though are the instances of generosity, kindness and good humor:

The all-Chinese schoolmates who took me into the fold with nary a thought, the teachers who gladly sacrificed their personal break times to help me with my Chinese, the neighbor who kept their door ajar for me to go watch their new color TV any time I wanted, the family that learned to make curry potatoes and purchased spoons and forks so they could invite us over for vegetarian meals, the friend's Amah who took me for Yum Cha on her breaks many a Sunday, the grocer who gave me a free Vitasoy when my coins didn't add up to the requisite twenty cents, the neighborhood tailor who professionally sewed on my Boy Scout merit badges in exchange for teaching him a few Indian words that he had no use for, the bookstore owner who gave me a much-needed part time job and paid me a generous wage, the factory owners who gave me hundreds of thousands in credit on a mere promise to pay and helped me establish my business, and, best of all, my best friend's family, who embraced me as their own and who, after half a century are still my family and my friend, still my best friend, and brother.

That is the Hong Kong and the childhood I cherish and that resonates.

Of all the noises in our lives, let's allow the sweeter sounds more resonance.

Happy new year.


Gaurang Thakkar

copyleft asserted: https://gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.en.html

Parental Love

Love is an earthquake. It arrives unexpectedly, and shakes your world.

We knew what pregnancy meant: that there would be a baby. We loved them even before they were born. But nothing could have prepared us for the surge of love we felt when we first saw our babies in the flesh. Not even the prior experience of the birth of our first child prepared us for the emotional surge we would feel with the birth of our second. It was all new, as if our lives had just begun.

A friend I'd reconnected with after a twenty five year gap told me she had no children, and therefore, no headaches. I replied that, yes, kids are a pain in the arse, except for when they're not.

All the heartaches and heartbreaks, all the apprehension, and frustrations and anger and teeth-grinding, the sleepless nights and worries and smelly diapers and financial burdens—We would gladly go through again and again for the two earthquakes that shook our world when they arrived, and have kept it shaking ever since.

On Old Friends

On old friends

It's funny how old friends make you feel young.

I met some old friends today. Friends from forty years ago. People who shaped my life. At first, I couldn't remember some names, and I couldn't remember some faces. As the eventing wore on, and with the help of some wine, it all came flooding back. 

These wonderful people made me who I am. I was the only Indian in a Chinese school, yet, for the most part, and by most of the students, I was embraced as part of the student family.

To my shame, I had forgotten this. Tonight, with hugs and smiles and back-slapping, I was reminded that I am still part of that family. The years melted away, and I was fifteen again. We were all fifteen again. Fifteen and grand parents, some of us.

There is no scent fresher, or younger and more vivacious than the scent of old friends.

Happy New Year, parents and their spawn

Dec., 2014

Is there such a thing as "effective parenting"?

Probably not.

Anecdotally, I've seen kids of parents who seem to have done much right, turn out disappointingly while kids of parents who muddled along, turn out brilliantly.

What gives?

We are who we are. Throughout our lives we unfold, or are unfolded to become whatever it is in us to become. Other things being equal (education, social placement, etc), the kind of parenting we receive matters somewhat, but not much.

Some research I've read bears this out.

This notion is hard to accept because we are used to thinking in terms of actions and consequences. But the truth is that the results of any particular type of parenting are less consequential than we'd like to think.

Besides, our children aren't ours to mould. They don't belong to us; they belong to themselves, and soon enough, their selves will claim them back.

So what's a conscientious parent to do?

I think this:

Be gentle, be kind. Be available, as and when needed. Be liberal—free our kids to go walkabout, to unfold as they may (they will, anyway!) Not stressing out over the parenting may be the best thing we can do for them, and for ourselves.

As for our children, they owe us nothing. Though some kindness, some forgiveness, and a hug every now and again would be nice.

So here's to a future of reduced-stress, light-touch parenting—whether you're parenting your kids or dealing with your own tired, grumpy old parents.

Happy new year.

Gaurang Thakkar.

http://backyardbarbeques.blogspot.com/

Have a Kindly New Year

Dec, 2013

Have a Kindly New Year

I lecture my kids a lot. I know because they tell me so. In my defense, my lectures are just variations on three simple themes: 

Be Alert

Be Kind

Be Brave

Previously, I spoke 0n Alertness. This time: Kindness.

When my daughter began dating, I said that to get her boyfriend's true measure, watch how he treats not her, but others. This was also my indirect way of telling her to be kind by default, that kindness isn't something to be switched on and off. Indirect, because better that she figure it out herself, as any direct advice to a teenager gets ignored.

This echos my mother's advice to me. A devout Hindu who gave a respectful nod to Buddha, Yahweh and Allah (after all, to a Hindu, what's an extra three deities), she posited that god lives in each of us and so compassion is the only way to treat all creatures.

Even as an atheist, this made sense to me. After all, we are all made of the same stardust. Each of us, a child of the universe, linked.

I read about Quantum Entanglement. Heady stuff. Take two quantum particles. Even if they are light years apart, the mere act of measuring one, instantaneously changes the state of the other. More bizarre, is that these two particles don't even have to exist at the same time to be entangled. For the purposes of this message, I take from this that we are all kindred, regardless of distance and time.

So let us spread kindness, and trust that all else will be well in our own little worlds.

Have a kindly New Year.

Have a Full New Year

Dec, 2012

While searching for a book review, I came across a Guardian piece entitled 1000 books everyone must read.

Suddenly, I felt I was never going to live long enough. While I was gratified at how many books on the list that I had read, I was dismayed at how many more I hadn't. And dismayed further at how many more that should've been on the list but weren't, that I also hadn't read.

On the list is Lady Chatterley's Lover, which I first read as a precocious teenager. To an aficionado of Penthouse Forums, the book was a huge let-down. But even through the fog of disappointment, I felt the beauty of the writing, and became a lifelong D.H. Lawrence fan.

Lawrence's Sons and Lovers is, sadly, not on the list. The book contains one of my favorite Lawrence lines: "it doesn't matter whether your life is happy or not, as long as it is full". Counter-intuitively, this is an uplifting notion because while one may have little control over happiness, one does have a degree of control over life's fullness.

So without taking away from any of your happiness, I wish you a full life, an eventful New Year and spare time enough to read (and re-read) all the books on that confounding list.

Have an equanimous New Year.

Dec, 2011

I've heard said that life is an illusion. It probably isn't, if only because reality, when it bites, bites like an existent bitch.

Still, fact is,  we live in our minds.  And with the recent mental illness of a distant friend, I've realized how fragile this state of affairs is. We are hopeful for our friend's recovery, but I bring this up to note what a frighteningly thin line it is between daylight and darkness.

Without a healthy mind, the things worth living for - Love, Art, Cuisine - are lost to us, their objective reality notwithstanding.

So let's celebrate that we are - though precariously so - on the right side of that line, let's hold our loved ones close and our demons at bay.

Have an equanimous New Year

Have an Alert New Year

Dec, 2010

I lecture my kids a lot. I know because they tell me so.

In my defense, I'd like to say that the rules I wish them to abide by are simple and that my lectures are just variations on three elementary themes: 

Be Alert

Be Kind

Be Brave

Of the above, alertness has been more on my mind lately. 

Often, when leaving a restaurant or mall with my family, I'd take a deliberately circuitous route back to the car and they would mindlessly follow as I mischievously zigged and zagged my way all over the parking lot. They had not taken note of where we'd parked or that I was leading them in circles. When they discover the ruse, they complain that I'm wasting time and I enjoin them to be more alert.

But alertness isn't just about remembering where we parked or to avoid mindlessly following the guy in front, or even about dangers to watch out for, though all that is important. Alertness is also about noticing the beauty and hilarity that surrounds us, attentiveness to others' needs and feelings as well as being aware of our own motivations and weaknesses and strengths. These are some of the alertness issues I've been working on when lecturing my kids. 

There's a a dog park where my kids and I take our dogs. Once I showed my daughter, Abia how our dog would urinate right over the area where another dog had just done so, and how the other dog, seeing this, would return to urinate over that and how this would go on till one of the dogs ran out of urine. A real pissing contest. Abia volunteers for a dog shelter and had actually seen this without ever really noticing it or the hilarity of it. "That's because you're not alert," I said.

So, be alert— you never know what you might miss.

Have a Happy (and alert) New Year.

Gaurang Thakkar

A Friendly Message

Dec, 2008

Whatever our troubles, we should be glad to be alive. Even in sorrow, we should rejoice in our capacity to feel that sorrow, for it implies an equal capacity to feel joy. 

In the vastness of a universe 14 billion years old and spanning tens of billions of light years in all directions, 96% of which consists of undefined dark matter and dark energy, where only 4% consists of matter as we know it, how fortunate that we are part of that minuscule 4%. And even within that tiny bit, an infinitesimally minuscule part consists of living, thinking, feeling beings like us. To date, as far as we know, we are the only ones here. In the great scheme of things, you and I have won one hell of a lottery.

Still, there are times when solace seems out of reach. I understand that. 

Perhaps the solace we seek is right under our noses as we engage in our daily deeds. I often find inspiration from this poem by DH Lawrence that I first encountered in my high school library. It has been my calm, dependable companion through thick and thin:

We are Transmitters 

As we live, we are transmitters of life. 

And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us. 

That is part of the mystery of sex, it is a flow onwards. 

Sexless people transmit nothing. 

And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work, 

life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready 

and we ripple with life through the days. 

Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool, 

if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding 

good is the stool, 

content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her, 

content is the man. 

Give, and it shall be given unto you 

is still the truth about life. 

But giving life is not so easy. 

It doesn't mean handing it out to some mean fool, or letting the living dead eat you up. 

It means kindling the life-quality where it was not, 

even if it's only in the whiteness of a washed pocket-handkerchief.

DH Lawrence

"as we work, we can transmit life into our work" - I encountered this notion a few years later in Salman Rushdi's "Midnight's Children" where he describes how a woman cooks her frustrations into her food and how the resulting meals are strangely unsatisfying for the diners. The concept was brought home to me soon afterwards when my father died and my mother's cooking, always excellent, suddenly tasted bland even though she used the same ingredients and same methods, the same stove and pots and pans.

Some may seek solace in religion, others in a non-religious spirituality of sorts. However if you find yourself praying just out of reflex and without thinking or feeling the content, then it is time to re-think your spirituality.

If there is a God, and he speaks to us, then surely an omnipotent God would speak directly to each of us and not through a parchment, priest, guru or mullah.

Or consider for a moment that, perhaps, to some people, he speaks through DH Lawrence. Or not. Who knows?

I guess what I’m saying is:

May you have comfort and cheer—however it is that you find it.

A Happy New Year to all my dear friends. 

Magazine Ads From a Hundred Years Ago

Aug, 2008

I don’t know...I think this “sweeping with electricity” thing will never catch on.