A false sense of security

Conversation with gay friends a few years ago:  "don't be fooled by the rainbow lighting in the white house. the world is not as pro gay rights as we are led to believe"

We all learned that the folks who went and registered themselves under DACA were naive. They were signing up to be on a round up list when the administration changed.

See the same thing with the MeToo movement. Women are being lulled into a false sense of security and are coming out and naming accusers. 

All those so called Twitter supporters might as well be bots who are echoing election messages for money. People who are sitting on their couches with their laptops, typing frantically on social media, offering their words of support and hashtags, cannot do anything when it comes to actually backing these women all the way to get justice. 

The country(ies) are run by the rich class that is actually part of the problem. The political class, is definitely part of the problem as power has corrupted folks into thinking they can get away with anything and usually it is a case of people scratching peoples back. 

The media will move on to the next best thing, be it toilet paper intentionally left on DJT's shoes as he boards the next plane or Melania's faux pas in Africa. 

Meanwhile the poor women will go through being shamed all over again, be forgotten with the next news cycle and the same guys who were accused will come back to their day jobs using their money, power, influence to haunt their accusers and make them disappear. 

The ones that set the example are always the creeps. Very rarely do we see justice (which again seems disproportionate) for a Cosby or a Weinstein. 

The most powerful man in the world today thinks it is okay to grab women by their body parts and he is still out there. 

So many folks were named as part of the metoo movement. The standard Modus Operandi for the perps seems to be :

1. Why did you not come forward earlier?

2. How come you cannot remember details clearly?

3. If 1 and 2 are answered, they plant a fake accuser whose credibiilty can be questioned and then use that to say "all accusers are not credible" 

4. shaming using multiple methods

Have seen this over and over and over again. 

My kid came and told me "who will believe us if something like that happened to us? no wonder no one comes forward and accuses anyone because no one will believe the woman!" and my answer was "I will definitely believe you. I am your dad". 

It is a sad day if your daughter has doubts on the world when it comes to people believing a woman's word against a man. 

Sincerely want women to band together on this. Women need to believe other women. 

Ladies, if you know a woman who believes "boys will be boys".. "locker room talk" etc. please convince that person that it is not acceptable and it is wrong. Maybe a woman can change the mind of another woman?

Nothing is worse than a mother endorsing such behavior for a son or a wife endorsing such behavior from a husband. 

I grew up in a very male chauvinistic society. Then I ended up in a country where women think they are in much better shape than any place in the world, only to see again and again that it is not much different. 

To all those brave women who are coming forward and naming accusers, the world is not ready for you. My kid is right. One man believing her is not enough. The world will come back and get you. So think twice before you come forward. All those retweets won't save you as they pale against money, power and influence in the real world.  It is not a million candles burning for you. It is one candle and a lot of mirrors. That one flickers and dies and it is total darkness. 

The most powerful country in the world saw a circus to nominate a SC judge who will decide many cases that determine the fate of women and we saw what happened.  There is no chance for ordinary people to get any justice. 

Wait a few years, till something big happens. Something real. Not Twitter rage. Some new laws and regulations when it comes to meaningful investigations and consequences for folks found guilty. A time when a woman goes in front of a panel of people where the percentage of women on the panel is same as the percentage women out there.. even then you should think twice.

A sincere request to all those who are encouraging the women who have come forward for more details on their revelations, or asking more folks to come forward.. please stay behind them to the end. Retweeing might make you feel you have done the right thing, but you are actually doing more damage to people because at the end of the day they face all the conquences while you will still be on your couch with your laptop doing the same thing. 

This post is doing the same on the other side of things, and that is not lost on me.  I am on a couch writing this, but someone needs to caution these women that they are not being backed up as they might think.

The world is not ready for Metoo

Wish it was!

Being a parent has its perks

It has been a great weekend! Months of preparation went into Jr.'s Arangetram. First time she is doing a solo dance performance, in front of a large audience with a live orchestra. It is a new beginning for her to take her Bharathanatyam (form of south Indian classical dance) to the next level. 

Jr. has always loved dancing. Like most kids, she first performed THE CHICKEN DANCE! She would spontaneously dance to movie songs.. She then wanted to learn Bharathanatyam and tried out a local teacher, but she dropped it after a few months. Mostly ten year olds were substitute teaching her, as the teacher had to go to India for a family affair. Kumon took precedence and she stopped dancing. The next year she bugged us again and we decided to take her to Meena teacher in Sunnyvale. She loved Meena teacher. She has been learning from Meena teacher ever since.

Have been pretty much dropping her at the dance teachers house, once a week or twice a week, over the last eight or nine years, go do groceries, or have an occasional chai samosa at Bhavikas and go pick her up at the end of class and drive back home. It is a 20-25 minute drive, which was done with monotonous ease over the years.

There was a time, when I would go in and sit down to watch the lesson. That was when she was around 7 to 8 years old. Soon she declared that she doesn't want me sitting there and watch as she will "thappu panni" (make mistakes). So daddy was banned from coming to watch. She would practice at home, mostly with her sister competing for the mirror in her own cute way!

The only time I have seen her dance, is once a year during the Pushpanjali dance academie's annual day function or the occasional dance performance as a group in some temple or other. The costumes went from various paavadais to a borrowed dress , another borrowed dress, finally to her own dance dress three years ago!

If you read the posts in the links you will see three themes:

1. I keep missing my sister everytime I see Jr. dress up in a dance costume.

2. We are very critical parents, grand parents, relatives when it comes to her dancing

3. In spite of everything, Jr. loves to dance and she does it for herself more than anyone else

The dancing has also improved over the years. Last year at the annual day, I finally got to see her dance very differently from the previous years.

She wanted to do her Arangetram (solo stage debut) last year, but we sent her to India for an entire summer so she could spend time with my parents and brothers family. The event was pushed out to this year. 

Meena teacher and Jr. put in a lot of effort in taking her dancing to a higher level so she could do the arangetram. Given Jr. is a bold girl and I have no stage fright, was confident that somehow she will manage the stage part. I had never seen her dance a single song from her Arangetram at any practice. So I had no idea what was in store.

There were only two things, that kept me up at night the last few months. 

1. Her ability to hold one legged poses (my mom would eventually watch the video and she is a stickler for kids holding the Nataraja pose in an arangetram)

2. Her eyes getting irritated with the eyeliner.

Jr. has ended up in a hospital thrice with her eyes getting so irritated after an annual day performance because of an allergic reaction to the eyeliner. Was praying that it will not happen durng the event. She never wears it during regular class, practice or even the full practice she did the entire week before the event. Fortunately, she got no reaction this time. Her eyes were red, but not to the point where they had to be shut for hours. 

The first time I saw her dance the numbers was last Friday at a rehersal with her uncles. Yes.. there is a flashback in this post, that tops all other flashbacks.

Many years ago, when Jr. was a year and a half old, we visited Melbourne for the first time. San's cousins who were little kids then, went to perform on the Mridangam and Violin at a local music school function. We were in the audience and at the end of the event they said "if Jr. ever does her arangetram, we will come and accompany her!".

We have talked about it many times and Meena teacher agreed to have them accompany her, after we showed her videos of them performing at events in Melbourne area. Practice tapes were sent and things co-ordinated and I was oblivious of all the effort that San and an army of people supporting this were doing. Continued to play chauffer..

Last Friday, at the practice, was blown away by the improvement in her dancing. Had no words.. just sat silently in the car on the way back home with a realization that :

1. my daughter was no longer a kid

2. if she could switch her face from anger to scared to happy to sad, I should be very careful with her going forward.. this is a girl who would put a puppy face and bat her eyelids, to get anything she wanted from me at 4 years old, but that was her only method.. now she has some acting talent, my brain went on high alert!

3. I don't have to worry about the event

On Saturday evening, she got on stage and danced. She did it for herself more than anyone else. She made us very proud that evening. Then she told us "we should tell Meena aunty that I want to come back to the regular class schedule". 

Dancing on stage for the first time alone is all well and good, but it takes a lifetime of practice to improve at anything. Was very happy to hear her say that. As long as she keeps it up, we are happy for her. 

The first step in her dance journey was finding Meena teacher and Pushpanjali dance academy. The second step was this Arangetram. The next step is scheduling the first class after the arangetram. The step after that, is to keep going...

Do not have photographs from the official photographer / videographer yet. It will come in a week. Did walk around with a camera, during the performance, through a side door that goes to backstage and took some shots.. 

A big thanks to her uncles Venkat and Narayanan (aka Varun) for coming all the way up from Melbourne to accompany her,

Smt. Jayanthi Umesh and Sri. Ashwin Krishnakumar for supporting her with the Vocal and Flute

and Meena teacher who is nothing short of a miracle worker.

Sometimes I wish Meena teacher would teach Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics etc. also.. 

Jr.'s aunt Aditi was the MC for the event. 

Was too tongue tied at the end of the performance and opted not to speak. So I get to thank everyone in this blog for posterity.. the voluteers from the dance academy, friends and family who came from near and far, the folks we hired and the folks who volunteered for every aspect of the event, makeup, stage set up, decorations, sound, lighting, compering, taking care of the dancer, the artists, the attenees, video, photos, a very long list of things that I did not know, that have to work perfectly for an event of this magnitude to happen, our entire list of guests who came to the event or sent messages that encouraged Jr. on this event. 

After my wedding, this was the first time we had my brother, sister , San's brother and sister all be here in one location. Some of them made it with their families. We had 20-21 folks stay in a house where normally 4-5 of us are there. Now we have an empty house effect after everyone has gone. The silence is deafening. 

Two photographs that never saw the light of day.. they were taken during the still shoot for the invitation..

San doesn't get enough thanks from me, for making me see what could be, because she knows what our kids are capable of, has a wider imagination, and she is not soft on them like me.. THANK YOU SANGEETHA! 

You were right, again! The girl can dance!

Here is to Jr. and her continued dancing journey...

Picking your battles

When you are on a busy holiday where nine days of traveling where you are on your feet for 12+ hours a day, the choice of places to visit makes all the difference as you get close to the end of the trip.

Pick places with plenty of options for folks to sit down every now and then, places without long lines, places with decent restrooms (a big thing when traveling with wife and two girls).. these are lessons that should have already been learned.. somehow I keep failing at it.. classic example was day 9 (previous post on this series)

So on day 10, we all woke up late. There was a small Indian restaurant right below our Air B&B and I got some rice pulav and rotis to go first thing in the morning. We had been lugging around these MTR packets of instant Dal, Mattar Paneer etc.. we "cooked" (or hot watered is more like it) those, and ate a directl early lunch.

Then I told them we could go to a quiet small museum which was on my list. The Monet Museum. It was a 90 minute to 2 hour spend at the most and there would be no rush. The family having decided that being nice to each other was a pre-requisite for the day, all agreed to go. 

So we took an Uber and went to this place. I left my heavy camera bag in the room. It was going to be casual snaps on the iPhone if any for the day. In the middle of a residential area, is a three story building which is the Monet Museum. 

It is quiet, clean, the exhibits are done nicely and the write up to the exhibits are done equally well. However, one has to have a certain appeal for this type of art. I like it, but the family was just plain giggling. 

Appa, anyone could have done that.. 

Appa, those are supposed to be what? Lilies ? how? 

Did this guy have fogged up spectacles while painting all these? 

etc. etc. an endless list of questions that usually mocked me, not the artist for picking this place.. but was done in a very roundabout way. 

My kids and wife were smiling and laughnig and being happy, so it didn't matter if they thought my choice of art was funny. We did enjoy two of the rooms (other than the Monet hall) where all the paintings were done by a guy called Jean Baptiste Corot and a lady called Berthe Morisot. Her paintings were amazing. Wondered why we never heard of her before..

Here are two slide shows of most of the stuff that was impressive in this museum.

After we went through the museum, we exited into a park where we watched a bunch of school kids doing their PE class. There was an afternoon to spend with no particular plans.. so we were off to Champs Elysses by day. 

No one minded waiting in line for Macaroons and other stuff at Laduree and they were absolutely delicious. My kids declared that going to Paris and not eating at Laduree is like going to Benaras and not having chai at Bihari's for me.. I kind of missed the logic as I had lived on that Chai for four years, but they had never been to this store.. but kind of realized that it was the "importance" that was the connecting factor.

Then we walked through the Louis Vutton store. There was a long line just to enter the store.. My job was to steer them clear of their wants changing to needs and I succeeded in a big way. 

Saw people ring up 4000$ handbags and my jaw dropped. The bags looked great but I could not figure out the price tags. Maybe I never will. 

We wandered around a few more shops, spent some time at a starbucks and it was time for an early dinner. The decision was to make everyone happy, so we all ate crepes at a Brittony style restaurant (which is famous for crepes, highly recommended by three Uber drivers.. the La Petite Bretonne)

and started walking back towards Saravana Bhavan.. The streets were getting tense because France was playing the world cup soccer semi finals.

Roads were jammed, crowds were gathering in large numbers, our drivers had warned us to get to where we need to get to before 6PM.

So after crepes and dosas, we walked to the Air B&B to watch the semi finals. France won and we were not prepared for what happened next. The entire apartment complex had a noise level increase at that instant. It was like a mini earthquake. We opened the door to the balcony and could hear a collective roar outside. Folks were coming out in their underwear and shouting from balconies. 

In short, it was crazy!

The honking and shouting did not stop all night. The sound level dropped to bearable around 1PM. We were going to leave for London the next morning on the Eurostar at 9AM and given we had to go through passport checks and security, were told to be at the station by 7 AM. It was a 30 minute walk to the station. 

We were not sure if we would wake up and rush in time. We had had a pretty relaxing day and there was no exhaustion to force us to sleep. The kids were already reminscing about Paris while we were still lying in bed. It was weird. 

The video of the day is here..

It was time to say bye to Paris and move on.. we were already into day 11..