Of Latitudes and Attidudes

A friend has me hooked to a program of helping . It's really a way to help the self and the way it works, one has to do an act of kindness every week and write about it (regrettably I manage at a much lower frequency). So recently when I was at a conference in Barcelona (home of Gaudi) I wondered, wouldn't it be great to do a little act of kindness in a far away city? I went through the lively La Rambla street - enjoying the scene and (in the back of my mind) looking for an opportunity of kindness - but I couldn't find something right away. It was mostly tourists and street vendors. Finally, I returned to the hotel past midnight when a haggardly old man came up and asked if I could buy a rose. He had not sold one all day and was tired and hungry. I had a friend with me. She warned me that this could be simply a 'line' to rope me in. But I knew what to do. I bought 2 roses, gave her one and walked inside the hotel lobby and surprised someone with the second rose. Ult...

I have mixed feelings about her. It was many cycles of learning, re-learning, and unlearning ago that I first heard her speak. Eloquent. Sheer magic with words that simply left me dazzled and wanting more. Then came the gradual, almost imperceptible signs of her betrayal. Arundhati Roy is more than the sum of words of her first political essay on Narmada dam. Her passion for the those left behind in the meteoric rise up the economic ladder by urban India is enlivening. Her ideas for social justice not so. That's because I have rarely found her offering ideas. She hides behind a snippet of offerings as to what could be done citing lack of "expertise" - after all, she is only an "author". But ask her about what should not be done, and from the same non-expert sprouts voluminous advise faster than one can digest the polysyllabic words used to convey the thoughts. Yes, it's intimidating. But I am grateful to her for bringing to me the deeper awareness of social...

NY City public radio started this series called Radio Lab. This is a summary of a fascinating discussion on time that I had to capture somewhere. What better place than here? Time was a very personal concept back in the middle of the 19th century. Cities throughout the country had their local time that was synchronized to the day, so at noon it was pretty much 12 o'clock no matter where in the country you were. Even within a locality though, there were different times. So when the railroad was introduced, the question became "whose time should we choose?" Would it be the bank's time or the grocer's whose clock ran 10mins ahead of the banker, or the bar, whose clock was 10mins slower than the bank. So, for the sake of it's own business, the Railways introduced their own clocks and prominently displayed them at each railway station. As it turned out, the businesses soon found it necessary to synch up with the railway clocks - the banks because they got cash by t...

(thoughts from a trip to Israel in Jun'04) Even if it was planned, the outcome could not have been more favorable. Before setting off for Israel, a part of me wanted to use the trip to discover first-hand the issues behind the conflict but without knowing the region, not having "kept-up" with a situation that provides "newsbytes" almost daily (and yet, ironically, has remained stagnant for decades), I was going in there as a confused outsider. Not sure how well my hosts would open up to this very personal and seemingly touchy subject, I resolved to simply make the best of it. No expectations, no disappointments. But I was in for a surprise. Not only did I get to meet the major players, I got to engage in deep conversations that have led to this brief write-up. What follows is a small attempt at cataloging a series of interview styled discussions. The idea, of course, is to pen the thoughts before memory betrays me, so it is a bit personal – however, since the ...