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We live in a world full of labels and isms

Can we not see its causing a chasm?

It’s right or it’s wrong, good or bad

If everything’s black or white

No colour – isn’t it sad?

Racist, elitist, castist and sexist

Socialist, capitalist, communist and anarchist

Atheist, egotist, hedonist, annihilationist

Oh my word – aren’t we but istists?

We point a finger – but what about me?

Ignorance is bliss – did I just point three?

Can we please live – respond, not react?

Agree not to harm, but forgive and disagree?

Don’t you see my friend, only then can we be free.

A peripatetic parent looks up in lockdown

 Generally, word associations seem difficult to replace. However, there may be some exceptional events that might create new ones that eclipse old associations. For example, most Cricket enthusiasts may have associated the term "twenty-twenty" with the game's shortest format. And then the year 2020 happened! 

Last night, the Netherlands embarked on its second total lockdown which will last 5-weeks. Whilst I was sanguine about reduced carbon emissions during the lockdown in spring, I find the prospects of Gaia staying home through this winter closure exsanguinating. Five days from winter solstice, scarce sunlight and the plummeting mercury afford few opportunities to play outside with other children. How are the two of us to stimulate her incredibly curious sponge of a mind for such a long time? After all, 5 weeks for her is the equivalent of just over 21 months for a 40-year old! 

After putting Gaia to bed last night, I left for my evening walk. It was an utterly unusual night, at least for the Netherlands. It is generally cloudy and often windy (no wonder the Dutch were early adopters of windmills) here. Last night, however, there wasn't a trace of cloud, nor so much as a breeze. Preoccupied with the consequences of lockdown for Gaia, however, my head was down as I walked in search for inspiration, not noticing anything out of the ordinary. It was only when I started walking next to a canal in the pitch dark did I notice the twinkling lights reflecting off it. No sooner than I looked up did the stars take my breath away.

It was new moon night, and yet it seemed that the celestial bodies had pronounced: "Let there be light"! In that instant I forgot about my anguish about lockdown, and ideas that had earlier seemed difficult started seeming more feasible!

Only a couple of days ago, Joline was mentioning about Jupiter and Saturn being closest to each other from Earth's vantage point in December 2020. Whilst Mars was easy to spot lording over the southwest of the Leiden sky (despite a bit more light pollution in that direction), I was unable to spot the other Jupiter and Saturn.

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I remember clearly the emotions I experienced when Joline and I discovered that we were going to be parents. The need to protect what was yet the abstract idea of our child against certain experiences to ensure that she has a better life than mine was visceral. 

School in Bombay was perhaps the worst time of my life. A single, ill-trained teacher managing as many as 85 students in one classroom; in a culture subscribing to humiliation and unfettered corporal punishment as a mode of disciplining recalcitrant boys like me could not have yielded happy memories. Those memories fuelled the thought that we ought to homeschool our child. 

I had already begun fantasizing about using the Socratic method to help her - who was but an embryo - find answers to questions herself. I was daydreaming about travelling with her to the Bastille and Jallianwala Bagh whilst studying the French Revolution and the Indian freedom struggle respectively; or to the Savanna or Tundra whilst studying geography.  In my mind, this couldn't be achieved by sending her to "normal" school, but in truth I was just afraid of my memories of school. 

Joline and I have managed to realise some of those daydreams about helping Gaia find her own answers. But none of those ideas excludes her from going to school in the Netherlands, which is nothing like the one I went to in India of the 1980s and 1990s.

One of my daydreamed ideas that has materialised, but only partially, is that Gaia loves asking questions about, and discovering, the natural world. She loves asking questions about wildlife. Not only can she say the words, but she has also digested concepts such as metamorphosis and hibernation. She also loves heavenly bodies, and knows vaguely some elements of the Solar system. I had always dreamed of having an amateur telescope at her disposal to discover nebulae, planets and their rings. And that we do not have. 

Failing to spot Saturn and Jupiter last night, I rushed back home to check what Joline was talking about. According to National Geographic, those two, brightest planets of the solar system will engage in a celestial dance on winter solstice for the first time in 397 years! 

I am trying to find out if we can rent a cottage in Schiermonnikoog, the smallest of the inhabited Wadden islands of the Netherlands for winter solstice to witness the event. Schiermonnikoog has the darkest skies of the country from where one can spot 3000 stars with the naked eye, provided there is no cloud cover, of course! Perhaps it is not possible to acquire the right telescope before 21 December 2020, but I shall try nonetheless. Hopefully the celestial powers will say "let there be light" again; so we shall go to a dark place to see it!

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Today was day 1 of lockdown, and it went swimmingly. Gaia ate all her meals well, and had a lot of fun solving puzzles and reading about african wildlife in her new TeePee tent. Luckily, it was a sunny afternoon, and she was able to play with some other children in the neighbourhood park - wearing her brand new pair of sneakers for the first time. But we have 34 more days to go!

Homeschooling may have been an irrational idea back when Gaia was conceived, but it is the only way out now. Serendipitously, I am unemployed at the moment, and can devote the time. One does wonder how working parents are going to cope though!

A key to happiness

We recently bought a Jaguar sports car, and it puts a smile on my face each time i drive it. Last week, i went kayaking for the first time in four years, and arrived at the kayaking club in the Jag.

There i met Bob - an old member of the club in his sixties - who has Alzheimer's disease. Bob had been an adventurer in his younger days and traveled to Africa by bicycle from the Netherlands. He loves fixing things, and one often sees him welding broken rudders at the club. When asked what was new, I told Bob about our new house, new child, new jobs etc., and my friend added: "and a new car". "Which car", asked Bob. I sjowed him the key, with the picture of an angry feline on it.

"I don't know this brand, which one is it?"

"What do you see on the key fob, Bob?"

"A tiger."

"Which other big cats can you think of?"

"A jaguar.. jaguar.. you've got a Jaguar!!!", Bob was delighted to have finally solved the mystery. And his joy was contagious. 

Despite his handicap, and the knowledge thereof, I have always found Bob to be one of the happiest people I know. He has never been bothered by things he cannot do, but does everything he can to the best of his ability, and to the utmost enjoyment.

My best friend and i often talk about the meaning of happiness. Walking along a canal a couple of days ago, i had an epiphany: one of the keys to happiness is to celebrate possibilities rather than mourning what one might perceive to be impossible.

Both poles are as cold!

It is unlikely that global warming was the cause, but my frosty relationship with Fritzie had begun to thaw. But like climate change, the warming was erratic and yielded some tempestuous interactions, two of which stand out.

Meditation

Writing my PhD was an intense experience in which I meditated on how some things worked and how they did not. I meditated on what was intended and what was being achieved - what the gaps were, and what were their causes. And a cause is key to a solution. 

At times, I could not sleep for days at end, finding nothing. And when, out of sheer exhaustion, my consciousness slipped away,

Law in a democracy: an eventual choice between elective dictatorship or mob justice?

As a lawyer, one is hardwired to distinguish between what is legal and what is illegal. One is hardwired to defend those who society may view as despicable for their actions, which may be repugnant to one's sensibilities, but are not illegal. After all, as defenders of democracy, lawyers are hardwired to jealously defend the rule of law, against the rule of sentiment. Aren't we?

Racist Gandhi?

Recently, I invited a Donald Trump admirer (who has the honesty to admit that she would have voted for certain elected dictators had she lived in those times) to read Gandhi's 'The Story of My Experiments with Truth'. But she said it was too long for her. So she tried German Wikipedia instead. Soon I received a text message from him: "Hey Dhruv, I have read the part where he is in South Africa - he seems to be a thorough racist."  She followed it up by some corroboratory evidence in an email which said: "They must have read Wilipedia: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34265882".

an exceptional traffic story (the discovery of India road trip)

22 December 2015

Fabian was very keen to visit one of the waterfalls near Khajuraho, but Tim was not, since he wanted to write postcards. So Fabian, Joline and I decided to go. The drive lasted a couple of hours, but we never made it to the waterfalls. We did not correctly insert the address in the GPS device, and it took us to the end of the street on which our Ashram was situated. But that part of the street was perhaps the most chaotic little street I had seen. Scores of motorbikes, bicycles, feral cattle, bullock carts, busses, hand carts, hawkers selling vegetables. So we decided to properly enter the address for the waterfalls in the GPS device and we were set in motion. Very slowly.

Khajuraho (the discovery of India road trip)

22 December 2015

Of all the places we have visited so far, Khajuraho was the most overrated destination so far. I had expected to discover many more nuances about this city and its culture, but it seems to me that there isn’t much more than what has been published about it already. The only other culture on display was one in which touts chased tourists to sell their wares. The city is essentially a dust bowl, and a few temples from the Chandela Empire. The temples are pretty, no doubt, but the few that have remained have been so overexposed that there is almost no sculpture one hadn’t seen before in pictures. The sculpture of Varaha – the third avatar of Vishnu as a wild boar – was most impressive. One that I had not seen before, the sculpture was a stylised representation of a boar. The stone is minutely sculpted to bear distinct representations of about a thousand gods, goddesses over its body.

Koliwada (the discovery of India road trip)

Sunday, 13 December 2015

Incredible as it was, the last bit of the lawsuit work had spilled over, and I had to go to notarise my affidavit at 08:30, this morning – a Sunday morning. But once this was done, it was done, and finally, we were able to go to Elephanta. It took us all day and we took one of the last ferries back to Bombay. We were rather tired and hungry when we returned home at about 19:00.