Metropolitan Diary

Source: New York Times

DEAR DIARY:

(This is a true story; it took place in Sheepshead Bay this winter.)

In Dunkin’ Donuts this morning,

an old lady wearing a tattered watch cap

started speaking to no one in particular.

“I can’t sleep at night.

I have pains in my chest all the time.

My leg hurts and my children do not love me.”

People waiting in line

hid in their cellphones, looked away

or stared straight ahead.

“I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know where to turn.

My husband died two years ago on the 27th.”

Everyone pretended she wasn’t there.

The girls behind the counter took the next customers.

The line inched forward.

At a side table, a beautiful young lady with matching purple scarf and hat

looked at the old woman and said, simply,

“Honey, please sit down with me,

and tell me your story.”

It’s possible, you see,

for one person to save the world.

Mel Glenn

Dear Diary:

I was recently on Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn. As I waited to cross the street, buses coming from opposite directions stopped about 20 feet apart as the sound of a fire engine grew louder.

The fire engine came upon the opening between the two buses, and its driver proceeded to angle diagonally in between them. Neither bus driver made any effort to pull back and give more space to the fire engine, which broke off one bus’s side mirror, a rather important accessory.

The mirror was smashed, and its many pieces fell to the ground. The fire engine kept going. The bus drivers calmly remained behind the wheels. A street sweeper with his small cart happened to be next to the bus that had just lost its mirror. He calmly took his shovel and brush, walked over, swept up the debris, and continued his work.

No fuss, no inspection, and the bus drivers proceeded on their way. They were true New Yorkers; no one seemed particularly surprised, perturbed or bothered, and everything rather matter-of-factly resumed.

Elliott R. Barkan

Dear Diary:

During lunch break on a recent Tuesday, I walked to nearby Central Park. To my surprise, the coffee stand by the Duck Pond was open for business. Normally, except on weekends, during the winter, the stand is closed. Not expecting the stand to be open I hadn’t brought any money.

I reached into the deep pockets of my nurse’s uniform and discovered four quarters and a dollar bill. At the counter, I pointed to a cookie in the jar and meekly asked, “How much?” The man behind the counter was handing a customer a hot bowl of chicken noodle soup. “Three dollars,” he replied. I hesitantly requested if there was anything for $2.

The woman next to me, from, as I later learned, Glasgow, Scotland, exclaimed: “This soup is hot and delicious. May I pay for yours?” I graciously declined. At that moment the gentleman behind the counter said, “Anything you want, take anything.”

“But I only have $2.”

“That’s O.K. Take anything. Two dollars.”

I handed him the $2. And took a cookie.

I am from Okinawa and have lived here for 20 years. America and New Yorkers will never cease to amaze me. The pond was frozen and the path slippery with ice. I smiled all the way back to the office tasting the sweetness of the cookie and the warmth of strangers.

Sonoko Niswander

Insomnia

"When I am with you, we stay up all night
When you are gone, I can't get to sleep!
Praise God for these two insomnias
And the difference between them."

(Jalal-ud-din Rumi of Konya; translated by Coleman Barks)

Life of a Ph.D. student in NY

It's been a long time since I posted on my blog. I am sure whatever little readership I had garnered, has moved on to other blogs! Nevertheless, it feels good to be back. Last 2.5 months have moved me from DC to NY, as well as from a real-life job to student life. Even though I was a little anxious about both these changes, I actually love them both! NY has been wonderful so far. Even though my life usually takes place in the same zip-code, I like my zip-code! The area around Columbia University is wonderful! It has a very campus-y feel, as expected, plus very ethnically diverse neighborhoods of Harlem and Washington Heights. I feel safer here than I did in DC, I like the fact that there are at least two 24-hr open coffee shops just minutes from my apartment and my grocery store is also open 24-hrs!

Although,I have to admit, the more dominant change HAS to be the return to student life. There is pretty much no time left for anything else! Problem sets, mid-terms, classes, coffee, losing weight, lack of sleep, no time for phone calls..well that pretty much sums it all up :) And, I love it.

For those who want a serious peek into the Ph.D. student life, I recommend phdcomics.com

Will 'I heart DC' ever become 'I heart NY' for me?

Carrying forward the theme from last post, let me write about what I will miss most about DC. By now it has been established that I truly like living in DC :) It is not like the suburbia with only sprawling rich people's mansions and also not like NY where you tend to feel lost amongst the human and non-human traffic.There is a sense of peace without loneliness that I feel in DC. The pace is just right for me. It reminds me of Delhi in so many ways. DC ofcourse has its own issues. I have spent my 1.5 years in a pretty safe, up-class neighborhood, like most of NW DC, but I am aware of the 'dark chocolate cookie with a white center' issue that this city has. One of my first memories of DC is about a homeless man who used to live in front of the building opposite mine. This other building was under construction then, and still is. So, this man used to roam around all over the city, since I never saw him there during the day. But then at night he used to come back and sleep on a few cardboard boxes spread out as his bed. I wonder if it was the uncomfortable ground or the hunger, but he never slept. And I know this because I too used to be up till 4 am atleast. And it became sort of a habit for me to peep out of the window and check to see what he was doing every hour or so. The worst was when it rained heavily for a week. I am sure it got pretty chilly outside. There is a homeless shelter near my house, but since this guy was not spending his nights there, I guess they didn't have enough space to accomodate everyone. Having lived in India for 24 years, I am all too used to seeing poverty and deprivation around me. But there is something different in this kind of misery that you see in the US. It's about the relative inequality. On the one hand you have these very very rich people, driving expensive cars, changing their wardrobes every season (and by season I mean the fashion season), shopping for stuff to prevent themselves from getting bored, and on the other you can see so many homeless, begging for 'small change', covering themselves with card board to not get wet in the rain, eating out of garbage bins and just walking around the city with no purpose at all.

Coming back to the building still being under construction, for the past one month the carpenters and plumbers who had been working there have been protesting against being paid a lower than market wage by the construction company. 30-40 of them come everyday at 9 am sharp and beat drums, sing songs, raise slogans and hold banners to protest. I used to be bugged because the noises woke me up from my sleep, but what bugs me now is that it's been over a month and these people are still protesting! Clearly no one is listening to them! What happened to the American values of equality and democracy?

OK enough of all the sad stuff now. I started writing about what I will miss in DC and I am sure misery and inequality are not going to be two of them, given that I am moving to NY of all places! So, here goes the list:

1. What I'll miss most is my apartment! And it's lovely windows. They have shown me everything from rain, sun, snow, trees, cars, rich people, homeless people, office people, protesting people, prostitutes waiting for clients at night, people being hand-cuffed by police etc. etc.

2. Trader Joe's and its 3 dollar wine being just a few blocks away from my office.

3. The numerous churches and chapels that I have all around my house and not having been inside a single one of them!

4. The Washington Monument and how it is visible from any damn place in DC (of course I used to find that mighty irritating) and my countless attempts to wake up early on the weekends to go to the top of the monument. I still have one more weekend left, so may be I'll try again!

5. The walk from Dupont circle to my house on Mass Av.

6. Casey's Garden Veggie sandwich.

7. Amsterdam Falafel's Falafel sandwich.

8. DC metro rail, since I will have to travel in the dirty NY Subway trains!

9. Naan and Beyond's Veggie biryani

10. Holly (the bunny I've been taking care of for the past 10 days) and her weird hops and jumps.

11. Sharing the vaccuum cleaner and cart with Cristina..he he

12. Cherry blossoms and the Potomac

13. And last but not the least, Living alone all by myself!

So, the countdown begins, eh!

The home that was, no longer remains. Well, that's why the 'was'! But I am incredibly sad about it. To be honest, setting up a home is one of my greatest joys. Ofcourse, that makes me wonder why I am not an interior designer and instead, am planning to get into a 5-year ordeal they call a Ph.D. in Economics!

For me, going from 'before' to 'after' creates bonds, emotions and nostalgia with people, places and things. And you are not even aware of it till it's time to move on to another of those before-after exercises. Having spent the last 3 years in 6 different houses, I wonder why I haven't gotten over this sense of attachment.
I am sure not many would appreciate this, but come to think of it, no one else who is going to live in my apartment after me is ever going to have the exact same furniture, the same layout, same furnishings...which means that a particular snapshot from the life of this apartment is never going to repeat itself and will only be stored in pictures and memories! May be this can be dismissed as just plain-old nostalgia talking :)

Violence against women

Violence against women is the most pervasive human rights violation that we know today. While there are several forms that this violence takes (e.g. sexual violence by non-partners, harmful traditional practices like female genital mutilation, dowry murder, "honour killings", early marriage, trafficking, war-related violence), women are more at risk of violence in intimate relationships than anywhere else.

Have a look at these horrifying statistics:

* More than 50% of women in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru and Tanzania reported having been physically or sexually abused by intimate partners, the figure being 71% in rural Ethiopia.

* Japan is the only country where this figure is less than 20%. The developed nations like the US and the UK report 22% and 30% respectively.

* Worldwide, 1 in 5 women becomes a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.

* Half of the women who die from homicides are killed by their current or former husbands or partners.

Why is there so much violence against women? Women have almost always been considered to be the 'weaker' sex in most societies. We might worship female deities, but the same respect does not manifest itself in the treatment of "everyday" women. There are several individual characteristics, family variables and societal factors that explain this phenomenon. There are significant interlinkages between and within these three. The patriarchical structure/attitude of most present-day societies legitimizes men’s control over “their” women and is an important cause of women's ill-treatment. Then there is the case of situational couple violence, which is mostly caused by individual characteristics such as need for control over one's partner and jealousy. But what is most striking is that these individual characteristics are not gender specific, but still in heterosexual relationships intimate partner violence is perpetrated almost exclusively by men. And this is where the linkages between patriarchical social attitude and individual behaviour comes in. I am reminded of the time I spent in a village in Madhya Pradesh where men used to beat up their wives for slightest things like a 'roti' not being cooked properly. And their reasoning was that the woman needed to be punished for her mistake to 'correct' her. When I asked them if by the same logic a woman should be allowed to beat her husband if he made a mistake, their response was that it would be against "our tradition". You see the connection.

In order for violence to actually take place there are 2 conditions that need to be met:

Firstly, the male partner should have the motivation to inflict violence on the female. This is provided by the desire to control and supported by the societal attitudes.(In some cases, the motivation could come from biological factors; I read somewhere about a genetic component behind violence, but that's not as important).

This motivation gets translated into actual violence if the male partner is comfortable with violence, there is a considerable size difference between the two partners or the female has to be 'stuck' or 'committed' to the relationship due to the presence of children, economic dependence or societal pressure.

These 2 conditions also tell us how to stop violence against women. Changing the attitudes of individuals (men and women) and society as a whole towards women is important to take care of the first condition. Of course easier said then done!
To overcome the second condition, women need to be more economically and socially independent. They need to be better educated, healthier, capable of earning on their own. Also, there needs to be a drastic change in the legal system so that reporting of domestic violence is easier and more accesible. Between 55 and 95% of women who had been physically abused by their partners have never contacted NGOs, shelters or the police for help.

Well I can go on and on about this, but more later. For anyone who's interested, a good resource is www.unifem.org

What can we do to save the planet? My easy-to-do list.

I was watching the Live Earth concerts the whole day and also went to attend the one organized in DC (more on the music later). But just listening to the music won't help, obviously! What can we do? Based on my observation of people around me, I have come up with this list of things that people leading the same lifestyle as me can easily incorporate in their day-to-day life.

1. Keep a ceramic/glass mug at your desk in office, instead of using paper/Styrofoam cups. Just imagine how much paper you can save and use less plastic by this simple change.

2. Shut down your PC's when you leave office. And when at home, shut down your laptops before sleeping. So many people I know just don't do it! If just 1 million people shut down their office PCs overnight, we could eliminate up to 45,000 tons of CO2 per year.

3. Unplug your electronics when not in use. In India, we have switches with plug points, which is good. But in places like the US where there are no switches with the plug points, most of us leave our lamps, phone chargers, laptops, music systems always plugged in. They are sucking up electricity even when not in use! I know it will be a little inconvenient to plug them back each time, but then it's worth it! Even I am trying to get used to it.

4. Print/copy on both sides of the paper. It can't get simpler. Get used to reading documents on the computer. I know it's a little painful, but try it when you can. As far as our eyes are concerned, I am sure we anyway stare at the stupid screen throughout the day whether reading or not!

5. Reuse plastic bags. Use them as garbage bags instead of buying separate trash bags.Globally, we use as many as 1 million new plastic bags every MINUTE at a cost of 2.2 billion gallons of oil a year. Go reusable whenever, wherever.

6. Use cloth towels in the kitchen instead of using those paper rolls. Also, instead of using tissues, use the good old handkerchief.

7. Use a bus instead of car whenever possible. Carpool. Ride public transit and help conserve an estimated 1.4 billion gallons of gas & curb the release of roughly 1.5 million tons of harmful CO2 a year.

8. Stop spending hours in the shower! I know they are relaxing, but do you know how much water they use up!

9. Turn off all the lights before leaving the house. Also, keep the lights in your kitchen, bathroom etc off when not using these rooms (I need to work on this one!)

10. Reuse plastic water bottles. Carry water with you whenever you leave home, instead of buying a bottle every time you feel thirsty and then chucking the bottle in the bin.

11. Use the option of cold wash in your washing machines, instead of hot water. Clothes anyway get sanitized when you dry them.

Not all of us can start using solar power right now (not at least till we own houses!), but we can do something for sure.