In defense of Food: I liked it fine, the one take away point I got was his suggestion to not eat anything your grandmother would not recognize as food. He thinks our eating habits have changed so much in the past couple of generations that our bodies have not evolved fast enough to cope with the change, and hence we suffer from a whole lot of new health problems.
Angela's Ashes : I finally gave up on this book. It has taken me forever to read it. Actually that is not true, it took me forever to pick it up between readings. It was just so god damned painful to read it. It describes poverty and hunger in such great detail and so close and personal it makes you cognizant of the painful lives other people in your community are leading. Personally every time I read it I wondered if i had any right to be eating all the things I was, I just couldn't eat, the guilt was too much. I could not convince myself that I was not responsible for the child who went hungry tonight, isn't the blood on all our hands? It has been one of the most traumatic books I have ever read. I questioned myself on my duty towards the hunger problem, I have tried to find out about hunger in my community, I have tried to learn more about food banks, about this food drive that the hare rama hare krishna people run in india and abroad, I have thought long and hard about this, I am not doing anything close to what I think I should be doing, but the book has definitely gotten me thinking in the direction. I am no longer oblivious to the fact that there is a problem and it needs to be addressed. And yet, I am the wuss who could not finish reading the book. It was just excruciatingly painful, I admit defeat.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
am feeling lonely
Today is one of those days when I am feeling so alone, left out, just all by myself. Usually I like that, to have time to myself, to be able to hear myself think, to not have to make conversation. But once in a while it can get to you. As human beings it is in our very natures to seek contact with other human beings. However flawed and unsatisfying we might find that interaction, however upset we might get at their inabilities to understand us, to relate to us, we still seek out someone who would listen to us. And when we don't get that for a while we become sad and forlorn.
You know that feeling, when you are walking on the side of a bridge, on a cold, dark, misty night. You are enjoying the chill in the air, the soft wet vapors that barely condense on your face, inhaling the essence of a lonely night. And then you happen to look at the scene below. For a few minutes you admire it. The valley to the right, the city to the left, and miles of highway below your feet, with its long lines of cars, the unending white lights of those approaching and the red ones of those going away. A necklace of pearls and rubies. Cars coming and going - from nowhere to nowhere.
But no. Not from nowhere, not to nowhere. No, cars coming coming from homes going home. From work, from visiting family, from vacations. Cars hauling people and their possessions, nick-knacks, things. And it occurs to you, that at this hour of the night, they are probably all going home. All trying their best to not cross the speed limit too much, to not fall asleep behind the wheel, and to not stop for gas and just somehow get home.
Home - what an thing, what a place, what a concept.
You look at the city lights, and it dawns on you that as pretty as they look, each one of those shimmering, twinkling, sometimes struggling lights, is a home. Every single one of those lights is a place where some weary traveler longs to be when he is out on the road. Yes, some of those lights are homes where bad things happen. Kids go to bed hungry, women get punched, yelling kicking screaming fests unfold. Where bones and hearts get broken, and people get hurt. Yes, some of those lights are homes, where bad things happen. And yet people would rather be home. Something about a roof and four walls, that compared to all the troubles of homes, the streets are filthier still.
And the night is not so good anymore, is it? This thought about homes has ruined it for you. All those things about this night that you were not just comfortable with, but were positively enjoying moments before, are not so beautiful anymore. The night is cold, the air damp, it even smells malicious. This long line of cars below your feet is a reminder of just how far away from home you are. You are a stranger in these parts, an outsider in an alien land, you don't belong.
And that gets you to wondering who in their right minds would come out on to this dark bridge, in the middle of the night, all by themselves.What were you hoping to achieve - getting mugged? That if you had an iota of sense you would have stayed home and not ventured out.
That is how I am feeling right now. Sitting with my laptop, on the verge of finding 500 million friends, I feel alone. All by myself. Lonely... Here at my fingertips are all those social networking sites, where people update statuses, write messages, and keep in touch with each other on a second by second basis. And yes they are not all friendly interactions, all those messages are not pretty or cordial, there is gossip and spite and malice, there is bitchiness and cattiness and all those other mean things that women do to each other in social contexts. And I am sure men have their own pissing contests, but I am not tuned in to those.
So most of the times I feel why bother? Why ever sign into any of those lousy sites? They are the same people, sitting in front of you, passing you on the street, or commenting on your comments. If you don't get each other in person, it ain't gonna happen online either.
But on some days, you would take even that. Because you are that lonely. And that is one depressing thought.
But mine is not the kind of heart that can stay sad too long, and usually it is on nights like these, before I get too blue, that I think of that song - जाने क्या सोच कर नही गुज़रा... वो एक पल रात भर नही गुज़रा.' there is a line in there ... अपनी तन्हाई का शिकवा न किसी से करना, तुम अकेले नही वो सब भी अकेले हैं. ये अकेला सफ़र नही गुज़रा...
and that always makes me smile. Always, and somehow feel less lonely. Because it is true, i may feel lonely sometimes, but I am not alone. I know that there are a whole lot of people out there who probably feel the same way too. So ... whatever.... I need to get over myself, right. :)
You know that feeling, when you are walking on the side of a bridge, on a cold, dark, misty night. You are enjoying the chill in the air, the soft wet vapors that barely condense on your face, inhaling the essence of a lonely night. And then you happen to look at the scene below. For a few minutes you admire it. The valley to the right, the city to the left, and miles of highway below your feet, with its long lines of cars, the unending white lights of those approaching and the red ones of those going away. A necklace of pearls and rubies. Cars coming and going - from nowhere to nowhere.
But no. Not from nowhere, not to nowhere. No, cars coming coming from homes going home. From work, from visiting family, from vacations. Cars hauling people and their possessions, nick-knacks, things. And it occurs to you, that at this hour of the night, they are probably all going home. All trying their best to not cross the speed limit too much, to not fall asleep behind the wheel, and to not stop for gas and just somehow get home.
Home - what an thing, what a place, what a concept.
You look at the city lights, and it dawns on you that as pretty as they look, each one of those shimmering, twinkling, sometimes struggling lights, is a home. Every single one of those lights is a place where some weary traveler longs to be when he is out on the road. Yes, some of those lights are homes where bad things happen. Kids go to bed hungry, women get punched, yelling kicking screaming fests unfold. Where bones and hearts get broken, and people get hurt. Yes, some of those lights are homes, where bad things happen. And yet people would rather be home. Something about a roof and four walls, that compared to all the troubles of homes, the streets are filthier still.
And the night is not so good anymore, is it? This thought about homes has ruined it for you. All those things about this night that you were not just comfortable with, but were positively enjoying moments before, are not so beautiful anymore. The night is cold, the air damp, it even smells malicious. This long line of cars below your feet is a reminder of just how far away from home you are. You are a stranger in these parts, an outsider in an alien land, you don't belong.
And that gets you to wondering who in their right minds would come out on to this dark bridge, in the middle of the night, all by themselves.What were you hoping to achieve - getting mugged? That if you had an iota of sense you would have stayed home and not ventured out.
That is how I am feeling right now. Sitting with my laptop, on the verge of finding 500 million friends, I feel alone. All by myself. Lonely... Here at my fingertips are all those social networking sites, where people update statuses, write messages, and keep in touch with each other on a second by second basis. And yes they are not all friendly interactions, all those messages are not pretty or cordial, there is gossip and spite and malice, there is bitchiness and cattiness and all those other mean things that women do to each other in social contexts. And I am sure men have their own pissing contests, but I am not tuned in to those.
So most of the times I feel why bother? Why ever sign into any of those lousy sites? They are the same people, sitting in front of you, passing you on the street, or commenting on your comments. If you don't get each other in person, it ain't gonna happen online either.
But on some days, you would take even that. Because you are that lonely. And that is one depressing thought.
But mine is not the kind of heart that can stay sad too long, and usually it is on nights like these, before I get too blue, that I think of that song - जाने क्या सोच कर नही गुज़रा... वो एक पल रात भर नही गुज़रा.' there is a line in there ... अपनी तन्हाई का शिकवा न किसी से करना, तुम अकेले नही वो सब भी अकेले हैं. ये अकेला सफ़र नही गुज़रा...
and that always makes me smile. Always, and somehow feel less lonely. Because it is true, i may feel lonely sometimes, but I am not alone. I know that there are a whole lot of people out there who probably feel the same way too. So ... whatever.... I need to get over myself, right. :)
Saturday, March 12, 2011
February books part 2
It was like i had expected, i was not able to get a lot done during february. :((
1. The emotional brain: Joseph Ledoux: I was loving it in the beginning. It is a neurobiologist's look at how the brain generates, interprets, and responds to emotions. What stimuli produce what kinds of reactions, what parts of the brain are involved and what are not. He goes over the history of the science of understanding emotions and does a pretty good job of it if i might say so. He describes experiments that give scientists a peek into the mysteries of what goes on in the brain.
Like there was this one experiment, where they gave women a lot of stockings in different bins and asked them to pick the best ones. Later they were asked reasons for their choices and people used explanations like texture, feel, quality of the cloth etc. The catch was, that they were all the same kinds of stockings, exactly alike. The inference being that once people make a choice, they fill in the reasons themselves, irrespective of whether those reasons exist in fact or not. Which I find very interesting, because that means that all you can ever say with confidence is that you like or do not like something, you can not really know why, your brain will give you bogus excuses. Or perhaps you cannot even be sure it likes what it likes, because why would it like one pair of stockings over the other when they are all supposedly alike? Interesting stuff isn't it.
In fact, i was having so much fun in the beginning I had half a mind to write to him and ask him if he would let me come work for him, then i figured, him being a brain scientist and all, he might insist on a full mind commitment :)
But later on the experiments conducted on animals got a bit too gore for my sensibilities, now may be i am wuss of all kinds, but I cannot imagine chopping off parts of a monkey's brain to infer that even though the visual regions of the brain were completely intact the monkey had the lost the ability to interpret the vision so he acted blind and would touch and smell and taste everything to be able to decide if that was edible or not. that is heinous! Or this other other one where they scared rats 'shitless' literally and measured the amount of fear by the number of droppings. Or where they modified the parts of the brain that experience fear, and then provided scary stimulii. How inhumane is that. I just find it hard to digest that you can learn about emotions in human beings by so grossly denying the one emotion that makes us human - compassion. How can we be so cruel to animals in the name of research. I could not stomach it anymore so I had to give up on it.
2. The E Myth revisted - The book is about the entrepreneurial myth, why most small businesses fail and what to do about it, being the tag line. I enjoyed it because it was very relevant, I could see my husband having gone through those stages since he started his business a few years back. It was also humbling, because of all the arguments and disagreements that we have had about the business - at least according to this book - he was right and i was wrong. Which is good too, because I ahve this whole new respect for him for having had foresight and instinct without reading about it in any book :) But then, this book did for me, what he himself has not been able to do in all these years. It has given me a whole new understanding of what a business should be about and just completely changed my idea of who should and should not go into business. I enjoyed reading it.
1. The emotional brain: Joseph Ledoux: I was loving it in the beginning. It is a neurobiologist's look at how the brain generates, interprets, and responds to emotions. What stimuli produce what kinds of reactions, what parts of the brain are involved and what are not. He goes over the history of the science of understanding emotions and does a pretty good job of it if i might say so. He describes experiments that give scientists a peek into the mysteries of what goes on in the brain.
Like there was this one experiment, where they gave women a lot of stockings in different bins and asked them to pick the best ones. Later they were asked reasons for their choices and people used explanations like texture, feel, quality of the cloth etc. The catch was, that they were all the same kinds of stockings, exactly alike. The inference being that once people make a choice, they fill in the reasons themselves, irrespective of whether those reasons exist in fact or not. Which I find very interesting, because that means that all you can ever say with confidence is that you like or do not like something, you can not really know why, your brain will give you bogus excuses. Or perhaps you cannot even be sure it likes what it likes, because why would it like one pair of stockings over the other when they are all supposedly alike? Interesting stuff isn't it.
In fact, i was having so much fun in the beginning I had half a mind to write to him and ask him if he would let me come work for him, then i figured, him being a brain scientist and all, he might insist on a full mind commitment :)
But later on the experiments conducted on animals got a bit too gore for my sensibilities, now may be i am wuss of all kinds, but I cannot imagine chopping off parts of a monkey's brain to infer that even though the visual regions of the brain were completely intact the monkey had the lost the ability to interpret the vision so he acted blind and would touch and smell and taste everything to be able to decide if that was edible or not. that is heinous! Or this other other one where they scared rats 'shitless' literally and measured the amount of fear by the number of droppings. Or where they modified the parts of the brain that experience fear, and then provided scary stimulii. How inhumane is that. I just find it hard to digest that you can learn about emotions in human beings by so grossly denying the one emotion that makes us human - compassion. How can we be so cruel to animals in the name of research. I could not stomach it anymore so I had to give up on it.
2. The E Myth revisted - The book is about the entrepreneurial myth, why most small businesses fail and what to do about it, being the tag line. I enjoyed it because it was very relevant, I could see my husband having gone through those stages since he started his business a few years back. It was also humbling, because of all the arguments and disagreements that we have had about the business - at least according to this book - he was right and i was wrong. Which is good too, because I ahve this whole new respect for him for having had foresight and instinct without reading about it in any book :) But then, this book did for me, what he himself has not been able to do in all these years. It has given me a whole new understanding of what a business should be about and just completely changed my idea of who should and should not go into business. I enjoyed reading it.
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