Experience talking to kids in Jammu and Kashmir

A friend of mine from the good old IIT days invited me to talk to school kids in Jammu and Kashmir. After IIT, he started to work in the Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellows Scheme. This fund allows young educated people to contribute towards development in conflict-ridden or generally impoverished areas of India. Vaibhav got posted in Kashmir and since then he has spoken to me a few times in a way that suggested that he has grown fairly attached to the people of the place.

Recently he asked me if I would like to give a 15 minute presentation to some school children in Kashmir about a career in science and research. Well, of course I got really excited by this so I said that I would like more time. He said, "15, 20, 30, how much ever you would like to speak". I asked him if I could speak for 45 minutes instead, and he was glad to oblige. Little did I know I would be speaking to a group of about 500 children simultaneously skyping in to my presentation from 20 different schools all over Jammu and Kashmir! I also requested Vaibhav that I get to speak to 9th and 10th graders because I felt that my talk could influence these kids the most.

Preparing for this presentation was a lot more unnerving than giving a usual talk to physicists. This was truly unchartered territory and I wasn't sure at what level I was expected to describe things in order to get through to the children. How many pictures? How many questions leading them to answers? How much story and narrative? Should I focus on a single topic and explain it well or should I talk to them generally about many different aspects of research in physics? How many slides that talk about career prospects, and other practical matters? I was also worried about my ability to connect with these kids---how much of my experience at some of the most privileged institutions in India and the US would be relevant to their life? At the end of the day, I desparately wanted the talk to be useful for the children, so that they could go home having learnt something and having been inspired to learn more.

It was 12.30 AM or so here (11 AM in India) when the talk started. Nervousness was keeping me up. Vaibhav's friend did a good job of introducing me to the different schools one by one. None of the them were co-ed, but instead, there were about 12 all girls schools, and 8 all boys schools. I was a little disconcerted at first to see faces of so many girls covered up in hijabs, but I was gladdened by the fact that this did not seem to prohibit them in expressing themselves or in asking questions. The boys were definitely quieter or shyer.

I chose to speak entirely in Hindi because I was not sure how proficient the kids would be in English. There was also the odd chance that they would not be able to understand my Americanized Indian accent, so when I did use English, I tried to enunciate everything as clearly as possible so that this would not be a problem.

I started with a quote from Feynman," You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." Cliched maybe, but extremely relevant in my opinion to the way education is imparted in Indian schools. Underfunding and poor salaries lead to overworked and less than motivated teachers whose sole aim is (often) to cover a myriad set of textbooks from start to end---the actual act of learning takes a back seat. I talked about how necessary it is to ask questions, and find ways of answering them. I feel like this got through to them because I got so many interesting questions at the end of the talk! More on this later.

After describing to them some of the major themes in modern physics, I turned to discussing black holes, gravitational waves, and LIGO. I was particularly impressed by one school of girls who answered every single question of mine! When I showed them a picture of the milky way and asked them what it was, they instantly recognized it. I was shocked. I told them that maybe since they are in Kashmir, recognizing the Milky Way was natural for them but it wasn't so for me, having been brought up in big cities. Then, and this is an example+joke I was extremely proud of, I asked them how "Raju's phone" was able to communicate with "Kaju's phone". And they instantly shouted, "Electromagnetic Waves!". I was shocked again! So then I told them, "when the electrons in Raju's phone wiggle, they radiate electromagnetic waves. But now, let's forget about shaking the electrons in Raju's phone. Let's shake Raju himself!". Now of course they did not know about gravitational waves. So I told them how gravitational waves emitted by Raju could change the distance between Raju and Kaju. This time they were rightly confused. So I told them Raju is a little whiny guy, but when you collide two massive black holes, they can radiate noticeably large gravitational waves---and this was detected in LIGO---and how India is building a LIGO of its own with the help of American scientists.

I was reminded in this moment of my high school physics teacher, Mr. Singh, I sadly forget his first name. He was incredible at making us all laugh while he solved various physics problems for us. Every class was like a comedy show. He would teach us physics using a slew of strange characters to describe something as simple as computing the forces on a body in a free-body diagram, all the while contorting his body in strange angles to describe the effects of various forces. I'm not sure I was as funny as him but I tried to be, a little bit.

After that, I described to them some condensed matter physics---how it is a study of various phases of matter---the principles underlying superconductivity, and its applications in MRI machines and bullet trains. I showed them a few videos of the Meissner effect, etc.

Before I ended my discussion on physics, I wanted to highlight the contribution of some prominent Indian physicists. I talked about how great Indian physicists have come from each and every corner of the country: Abdus Salam from Punjab, SN Bose and JC Bose from Bengal, CV Raman, S Chandrashekhar from Tamil Nadu, etc. I told them how there are so many prominent Indian physicists in top American institutions, and how there are now many excellent physics research institutes in India as well. I think this is important for Indian kids. I'm not sure if this is relevant to most kids in Western societies, but as an Indian kid growing up, and certainly one who is not very well informed, as I was, you're always growing up questioning whether you can ever be good enough to make contributions to a fundamental field like physics. I guess a lot of disadvantaged communities/underrepresented races/or women may face similar self-doubt. Which reminds me, I completely forgot to give more examples of successful women in academia; I totally failed in this respect.

Then I turned my attention to biotechnological research, and some other aspects of data-driven research in industry.

At the end, each school was allowed to ask me one or two questions. I saw all kinds of faces asking questions. A boy asked," How do you observe black holes if even light cannot escape." Another boy asked me about research in robotics (I had shown them some videos of artificial intelligence and robots from Boston Dynamics). A girl asked me about research in biotechnology and the scope for such research in India. Another girl asked me why doctors tell us to avoid going to CT-Scans. I knew that it must be that X-rays denature certain proteins in our cells, but I wasn't sure exactly why it's all so dangerous so I told her that unfortunately I can't answer the question. "Sorry." So the girl smiled and said, "Koi nahin Sir, hota hai" ("No worries, Sir, it happens"). :P Thank god I was able to answer rest of the questions.

Some people also asked me more philosophical questions. One boy asked me what I thought inspired me to take this route in life, and how much of this is due to guidance. I could sense that he was hurting. Kashmir is a sad place at times. No jobs for young people. Constant threat of terrorism, army and police brutality, all threatening any normalcy in life. I told him that life is a lot about the initial conditions you get; that I was lucky to have good guidance in my life, but that, from one's own perspective, the best we can do is it to forget what we cannot change, and focus on the good inspiration we get in life, and act on it in a positive way. I told him that I understood that many people in life do not lead a life commensurate to their efforts and their talent, but this is unfortunately the way life is at times. I told them that they're still young so if they work hard towards set goals, anything is possible. The students all clapped at the end of that :P At this moment, I felt like talking about the Bhagavad Gita, but I refrained since I did not want to bring anything that could be perceived as religion into the conversation.

In another school, a teacher dedicated an Urdu couplet to me, lol. I wished to reply in another Urdu couplet, but I realized that the only ones I could remember at the time were those on the pleasures of alcohol. Not exactly the best thing to discuss in front of girls in hijabs, so I decided to keep quiet.

Overall, I could not be more satisfied with the experience!

Before a map of Russia

I started reading "Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea" by Teffi. It's basically an autobiographical account of Teffi, the (as I understand) the really popular (my Russian advisor could not recognize her but his wife did) Russian author of old who escaped Russia during the Bolshevik revolution. It's a really interesting read and I may write about it in some detail later. I had to buy the book because I was instantly intrigued by its first page which had this beautiful poem:

"Before a map of Russia"

In a strange house, in a faraway land,
her portrait hangs on the wall;
she herself is dying like a beggar woman,
lying on straw, in pain that can't be told.

But here she looks as she always did look:
young, rich, and draped
in that luxurious green cloak
in which she was always portrayed.

I gaze at your countenance as if at an icon...
"Blessed be your name, slaughtered Rus!"
I quietly touch your cloak with one hand;
and with that same hand make the sign of the cross.

---TEFFI

This is just such a gorgeous poem. I feel like Teffi took my thoughts about India out of my head. This painting hangs possible nowhere but in my head.

The world has changed so much. Are those poor people in Russian villages Teffi describes still living without basic water and sanitation? Russia is just such a strange place. I can imagine. The cold Russian winters. Pack of cigarettes. Grimy coats and broken teeth under Ushankas. Wretched boots wading cumbersomely in the slush of beaten snow and broken paths leading to nowhere. I'd like to go back at some point and visit my childhood school in Moscow. Will it be the same old? My parents said that a Russian flower-seller gave them a free bouquet because she was so happy to see an Indian couple for the first time in her life; otherwise she'd only seen them in Indian movies. Raj Kapoor was a thing back then among Russians. I was even asked about Raj Kapoor by an old Russian man on the bus in Boston once. And another one once asked me about Ravi Shankar. The Soviets used to have a thing for Indians, naming their streets after Nehru, Gandhi. But things are different now from what I understand. That closeness is a thing of the past. For now, there only remain tenuous links through language. My experience may not be as it was of my parents. So who knows how it will be?

Tow-Path

Towpath. Not toepath. Apparently it's a thing. First, I thought that this particular path near Carnegie lake in Princeton was called by people `the toepath'. "Did you go on the toepath yet?" Well of course I did, it runs next to my home. 

Then I got to know that the `toepath' is a universally accepted name for any path on which people can walk on their TOES. "There is a nice toepath next to the Charles in Boston, right?". Me: "Oh, yeah, yeah."

But in fact, the toepath has got nothing to do with toes. It's actually a towpath, as wiki just taught me. It's like the moment you realize that it's not "wet your appetite", but "whet your appetite". Moment of clarity which ends up making less sense than it did before. 

The towpath near my home is especially pretty and conducive to running. I wish I was amazing at this running thing, because this one runs all the way down to Delaware. So I could run a marathon on this, if I was good enough to do so. 

An uncle. Oops. A nice old middle aged person (I wish the Americans would adopt the usage of the word uncle, it's so convenient; my Canadian co-postdoc approves) is seen taking a photograph in the picture. This person (that just sounds so impersonal), rather, this uncle showed me a bird, and I realized that it's the same bird that visits my office tree every other day. It's called a `downy woodpecker'. Now I know the name of the bird that I've been searching on the internet all this while. Unfortunately, he could not explain why the squirrels on my office tree like to tear up the bark and chew on it. He suspected the bark had some nutrition. I told him that I'd read on the internet that pregnant squirrels do it to de-stress. He didn't buy that so I continued my run. 

Some ducks. 

It is important to reach home early enough, especially if you've been watching too much of American Horror Story recently.

 Other good things about New Jersey: Indian food and indian grocery stores. All the full fat yoghurt I can bring home. All the ghee. I mean, it's insane. In Newark, you can even get fresh Paan; how much I've wanted to eat fresh paan here after a meal. 

The paan chewing reminds me. My co-postdoc who is Canadian seems to have only Indian friends and he introduced me to some of them here in Princeton. They were all south indians and we somehow got around to talking about the development in various states, which is a conversation anyone from UP of all places would like to avoid. So my friend Panji's wife then turns around and tells me, "you know, UP may suck in general, but you guys have culture, man. And what's up with the politeness? So much `aap'". That just made my day so much. Yes, we are shitty and poor but we are a polite people. I got this from a Pakistani couple as well when Saloni and I were in Hawaii. They were from the sourthern part of Pakistan, abutting Rajasthan, so they spoke Hindi in the Rajasthani/Gujarati way, like Saloni, using `tu' for you, which a lot of us in UP consider an indecent/uncultured way of speaking. Heck, even my grandfather never once addressed me with `tu', not even `tum', always `aap'. After Saloni told the couple that my parents are from UP, she said, "ah, that's why you speak with such an Urdu accent", which is basically another way of saying, "ah, that's why you speak so politely". 

Another good thing about New Jersey, I have some family: 

This cute guy better start showing that he's also got Indian blood at some point. 

Little birdie

Little yellow birdie,
whachu thinking?

Perched atop a sun-kissed shrub,
you crane your neck and gaze ahead,
with a frenzied, manic intensity,
well whachu thinking, little birdie? :)
Underneath that feathered head,
are you the general, of this warbling fleet,
set on orchestrating the next great siege,
from bush to shrub, and sometimes fern,
down in the trenches where it all begun?

Or are you, in fact, seeking out,
your philandering husband, on his return route,
from, and you'd bet your mortgage on it,
the pudgy blue-tailed wench,

to whose home curiously all roads tend, 

especially for that son of a bitch, 

who cohabits your bush,
in ways more than one, you shall admit.
You've even seen him size her up,
much like the other cockfolk too eager to coo,
which makes you think,
"fuck this shit, I gots better things to do."

Or maybe you're just thinking?
Contemplating the subtle mechanisms,
by which time flows, and chaos grows,
and space-travel may not be so far,
birds may colonize Mars,
thusly expected,
but before that, it would be nice, wouldn't it?
if you had your morning coffee,
a nice shower, a bagel,
topped with the most dewy worm,
the Grasslands could serve,
so you can go back to beaking the shit
out of whichever tree that grinds your nerves!

Little yellow birdie,
whachu thinking? :)

Exodus.

Interesting. I didn't know anything remained!

http://www.dawn.com/news/1110497. 

Afreen Afreen

Happiness: link.

It is impossible to praise enough her beauty.
Oh beloved, oh beloved.
If you saw her, you'd be spellbound too!

Language.

``Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter,
or friendly milk will countermand my trousers."

Cute article recognizes the beautiful genius of Stephen Fry in conjuring up this never-before but now oft-repeated sentence in the English language: link

As does my thesis.

And the most amazing skit ever: link. What would I give to have the eloquence of Stephen Fry!

Princeton, NJ and office.

I must admit I was not very comfortable initially with the suburban-ness of the campus and my housing situation. The Princeton campus feels at times like an exclusivist haven that is surrounded by golf courses, and a lake named after one of the richest industrialists in the history of America, while a few dozen miles away lies the filth and mirk of Newark and Jersey city and worse Trenton, which has one of the highest crime-rates of any city in America. 

It's all very different from Harvard, with its seamless integration into the city of Boston. I know its a strange thing to say esp. concerning Harvard, but there's an egalitarian quality to this. It always felt to me as if the university and its intellectualism spread outwards into the city, that the average Bostonian benefited from this resource, and it reflected in the way you could talk with them about so many things in science and the arts, and I grew extremely fond of this in my time there. I will miss Boston. Boston is a rich, rich place.

Nevertheless, Princeton is growing on me. There's undeniably a serene magnificence in doing research in the quiet of a secluded forestal area. I like it. It reminds me a little of my undergraduate days. I can walk around the campus and not have my thoughts be disturbed by hordes of tourists. I don't have to worry about the morning bus and finding a seat somewhere amidst the crowd of early travelers. I can again admire nature. I don't have to rush or be rushed anywhere. And I can again ask those kinds of questions that drew me into physics in the first place---questions that are `basal'. And that is a beautiful feeling. Hopefully it comes to good things.

The campus is certainly beautiful. It's a strange mix of both old stone buildings and ultra-modern buildings that somehow work well together. Here are some random pics I took today. 

An undergraduate dorm.

Whitman College

No idea.

Engineering and Science Building area.

Woodrow Wilson building for Public Policy

Strange chromatic purple building.

There's a lot of wooded area, lots of trees. It's almost like you're working in the middle of a forest. 

I spotted a black squirrel! Not for the first time though. I did see one in the Harvard Athletics center once.

Jewish Center

I like my office space. A personal room with a window and a nice blackboard cannot be beat.

View from office

View from office window. A squirrel raises its hand to make way for its hind leg to tickle its ear 

View from office window. Another time, same place. This strange bird appears to be responsible for chipping away the outer skin of the tree in that whole area.

Lots of ideas. Lots to do. 

And I'm finally settling into our home. Although Alone :/

View from home porch.

Thoughts on American politics, liberalism, etc.

This has been the first American presidential cycle I have followed. Prior to this year's political process---the presidential debates, the primaries, the rhetoric, the whole shebang---I was completely unwise to the peculiarities of American politics. In my imagination, American politics was a fairly mundane affair; if it is correct as I was told that the election of Bush Jr. to the position of POTUS was primarily on the basis of a strong "pro-life" wave of support, then I had figured that Americans must not have any real-life issues to contend with. It did not help that there are only two parties with any reasonable shot at election and this limits the space for disparate voices. I yet see the two party system as an ultimately inadequate system for America as the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society it is moulding itself into but as the recent elections have informed me, there is considerable room for dialogue and re-imagination in the American political system.

Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the prominent players of the primary season represent many different faces of the American populace and along with that, a fairly broad set of economic and social ideals. This is, in my opinion, and unlike those ridiculing the rise of a figure like Trump, or Drumpf as they say, an impressive achievement for a secular democracy--it reflects a populace with a diverse background of motivations and opinions and that is ready to participate in fair political process to demonstrate it. Sometimes it gets looney, but that is rather limited, and I reckon the looneys exist equally on both the liberal and conservative ends of the spectrum.

Here I discuss my thoughts on the various candidates, especially Trump, Sanders and Hillary in the hope that I may also be able to fine-tune my assessment of their various policy stances through the process of writing this post.

So let's start with Trump. In my mind, Trump represents (largely) two sets of reactionary forces. One, there is a section of the white populace that is less educated but has traditionally enjoyed a decent standard of living working blue-collar manufacturing jobs. The rise of cheap (and predatory) Chinese manufacturing in the past three decades has dismantled the economic position of these people. They have also had to face a lowering wage structure as an unregulated influx of cheap Mexican labor has flooded the American market. These are traditional Republican voters who stand disenchanted with the American political process. The Republican party, in no way differently from the Democratic party, has refused to take up their cause because cheap immigrant labor is vital to many industries whose rich donations keep afloat the mega-money election process. I feel for these people, because even if they may be opposed to the idea of America as a multi-cultural society, these people have a right to their economic interests being protected by the American political system which I do not see happening.

That said, it is worthwhile to ask why these people do not expect themselves to compete with Mexicans for cheap labor jobs. Perhaps this is due to generational inertia; American kids have grown up seeing their parents enjoy a relatively comfortable life working daily wage jobs and they probably expect a similar standard of living for themselves. The issue is that we live in a highly globalized economy so if you cannot re-imagine yourself and find a place in the system, someone else will do so. This inertia, or fatigue among the original inhabitants, as I understand, is a large part of what drives the immigration policy of many rich economies.

Europe, for instance, has long remained fairly isolated due to strict anti-immigration policies. I remember during the English Language Proficiency sessions that I partook in when first joining Harvard, I had discussed this issue with an Italian girl. She had proudly stated that you could not become an Italian citizen without having Italian blood. This obsession with ethnic purity has generally hampered Europe's progress. There are factories upon factories in Germany for instance, that need laborers but cannot attract young Germans. The new generation wants to settle in cities and do something more exciting and (or) profitable. The unwanted factory jobs are the kinds that immigrants don't mind taking up.

Europe is only now beginning to realize that much of America's growth story can be attributed to this openness to immigration; perhaps the greatest rise in America fortunes came on the back of the exodus of persecuted Jewish and other minorities after the Second World War and after that, the opening up of America's doors to Indian and East Asian immigrants in the 60s under Lyndon B. Johnson. The establishment of the European Union was a first step towards this end; the free movement of people across Europe's borders has generally benefited Europe, but perhaps not as much as some would have previously ascertained. This may be down to the choice of a single currency which has hampered the ability of poorer countries like Greece and Italy to regulate trade and commerce. And in the light of this, Europe is becoming more open to immigration from non-European nations.

  I had an interesting conversation the other day with a professor from Spain. He told me that Spain's immigration policy is focussed on getting semi-skilled migrant workers from Morocco. He said that immigration from Andalusia into Madrid, for instance, does not help drive Spain's economy as much as the immigration from Morocco (even though the geographical separation between the two is not much at all). As is true for immigrants generally, for the Moroccan immigrant into Spain, even a modest wage by Spanish standards represents a wage increase that is far more significant and infinitely more compelling than any increase in riches for a Spanish native from Andalusia.

But of course while immigration makes a lot of economic sense, it will always remain a tricky topic. For one, there's always a gnawing question in my mind: are capitalists piggybacking on the shoulders of liberals to foist upon local people levels of immigration that are simply unmanageable? Is excess growth, a few points more on the GDP scale, all that nations and human society must constantly strive to achieve? Americans are working longer hours, getting paid less, all in the hope that this will enable continued growth for the nation, and probably fund more iPads, and cars and other such things that are now perceived as essentials for living. But are they?

And then we enter the murky region of nationalism based on language, ethnicity and culture. What is the immigrant's right to cultural preservation? What is the right of the local people to ask the immigrant to conform to their cultural standards? Should the state actively participate in enforcing the assimilation of immigrants into the host society? The second set of forces that supports Trump is one that sees immigration as a threat to the social fabric of the society. Unlike the previous group of Trump supporters, this one is more diverse. I think a lot of people who may vote for Trump in the end may align with him based on his anti-immigration stance; a thorny issue that certainly seems to have been the major driving force behind the Leave campaign and the Brexit vote. While these questions deserve a political discussion, I often find Trump's comments on the matter, which I get the sense he seems to pass off as policy proposals, both unfounded and bordering on the dangerous.

For instance, take his exhortation to his followers to attack (online, with words, and other vitriol) a US-born judge who delivered a verdict against the scummy Trump University, on the basis that the judge's Mexican heritage influenced his decision. Heck, even Kayleigh Mcenany, recent Harvard Law school grad turned CNN political pundit who agrees with literally everything Trump has to say, was forced to disagree with him on this. I also disagree with Trump's blanket statements like," ban all muslim immigration". I was shocked that my extended family in the US that is otherwise entirely Democrat is more than willing to entertain this idea of Trump's. Recently when my parents visited us here in the US, we went to the home of a Sikh family who left India in the 80s; my grandparents had sheltered/hid them during the bloody anti-Sikh riots right after the death of Indira Gandhi. I figured that they might have a different view on this matter as being part of a community that had once faced persecution themselves, but it wasn't the case.

The problem with Trump's talk on this matter is, to an extent, about how coarse it is. It does not help America in any way whatsoever when the GOP presidential nominee openly lays suspicion on an entire community. This only creates more distrust among the general population towards this community and can lead to an increase in hate crime and other kinds of hostilities. Take for example the various street attacks on Sikh men that happened soon after Trump's incendiary statements against Muslims. (It is a rather sad matter that Sikhs are often confused with Arab muslims because of their religious tradition of wearing turbans.)  

So how did Trump defend this one? After the media backlash, Trump soon backed off from asserting a blanket ban on Muslim immigrants and said instead that there should be greater scrutiny in accepting immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. Here I do not entirely disagree. I believe that any state must be vigilant and smart about where it wants to get its immigrants from and it should reserve the right to do so without castigation. In this sense, I do not see any harm in Trump's suggestion that immigration from Muslim-majority countries should be considered on a case-by-case basis whereby it is made clear by a US officer that the said person does not believe in something as egregious as, say, `all gays will burn in hell', or 'I will make my wife and daughter wear a Burqa all their lives and I will view every other woman who expresses herself in the way she wants as a whore'. This is simply not acceptable, and there are enough poor, forward-thinking and hard-working immigrants from around the world to consider from before accepting barbarians into the country.

(Before I am accused of also broad-brushing an entire community, it helps to look at statistics: Pew Research Study. About 90% of muslims in Asia support the barbaric Sharia Law. About 90% of Egyptians consider the death penalty an appropriate punishment for an apostate from Islam. Omar Mateen's Aghan-born dad posted videos saying that "God will punish all gays"; Omar Mateen is now understood to have been gay himself and could have carried out the attack in a fit of rage driven by self-hate for being gay. Finally, Muslims must introspect why no Muslim-majority society has allowed the peaceful existence of other religious communities.)

Just this morning, I saw on New Day on CNN, Alison Camerota interviewing Sohail Ahmed, the son of Pakistani immigrants in Britain. Sohail is an ex-Jihadi sympathizer, and one who at some point chalked out an elaborate plan to blow things up in London. Sohail says he eventually abandoned such ideas because of the work of a charity anti-terrorism organization that stepped in and helped him reform himself. He also happens to be gay. The conversation with him was enlightening. Sohail said that right from childhood (in London, no less), the local mosque and muslim community drilled it into his psyche that the UK and US are at "war with Muslims", and that they want to destroy Islam. He said that the most damaging aspect of this narrative is this obsession with the idea of "us and them". I think he hit the hammer right on the head with that point.

Us and them

About a month ago, we were out to buy our first car. Often times, the salesman who we would go on a test-drive with happened to be black. This one salesman was a very well-mannered older black man from a farming family in Ohio. I don't remember how the conversation started with him, but we ended up discussing Donald Trump, muslims, gun control and the history of the Irish and Italian mafia in Boston. The conversation eventually veered into the domain of race. This man had exceptionally forward-thinking views. He was strongly in favor of banning all guns besides hunting rifles, and making compulsory basic gun education before getting the right to own a gun. He was a devoted Christian, but he sympathized very strongly with Muslims who he said have suffered a lot over recent years at the hands of America; he encouraged us to watch Fareed Zakaria's documentary, "Why they hate us", which we had been wanting to watch anyway.

But I felt less comfortable listening to his views on racial tensions in America. He suggested that most white people do not understand their "white privilege", that they think of black people as "mud-people" who they wish were as far away from them as possible. He said that white people destroyed Africa, which was back then an amazing place, and he wished that he could go live in Africa once "they could sort some of their issues out". Some of it may be true, while some of it, especially the latter, is false at least by most modern standards of living. But African American history is so blighted by injustice that it is hard not to sympathize with black people here. Racial discrimination, predatory policing and profiling---none of these are yet a thing of the past. And there is a seething anger amongst black people due to these injustices.

But is this anger really productive? This is a difficult topic to address. When this anger comes out on college campuses, it often seems like a farce, at least to me. Take the case of Dorothy Bland, the Dean of the school of journalism at U. North Texas, who made up a story of how she got arrested walking the street because she is black, or the intense rage depicted by young liberals, black, white or blue, over a harmless email discussing Halloween costumes by the Yale lecturer Erika Christakis, or this demand letter from black students at Oberlin college demanding `exclusive black safe spaces' among other things that violate any sense of justice and equality. And finally, what was Black Lives Matter doing interrupting the Toronto Pride Parade (link)? (To be clear, I think BLM is an indispensable movement against police brutality and I fully support it otherwise.)

These movements take away from the real problems that black people face in America and it gives all the more ammunition needed for Republicans to summarily dispel any idea that the country has race issues. It makes those people say that the shooting of unarmed black teenagers such as in Ferguson is down to statistics (given black people commit so much more crime in the US). It makes all the unjust, and racially-biased sentencing, such as that of falsely convicted Brian Banks getting 6 years for rape he did not commit as opposed to one Brock Turner getting 6 months and less for rape that he did, such as one 18 year old black kid getting 162 years in prison for armed robberies in which no one was hurt, disappear into the background.

It is my observation that much of the same anger hounds Muslims across the world; this time the enemy is Israel, the West, the Jews, Christians, and Hindus. And this mass-scale anger, funded through Mosques operated by Imams on the payroll of the Wahabbi Sunnis of Saudi Arabia and Qatar is what is producing the droves of Jihadis out there. As long as the community does not see beyond this problematic way of thinking and shuns vengeful local Imams, there is nothing that Western liberals can do or say to stem the tide of Jihadi violence. There is no amount of rallying against Islamophobia that can take away the anger of Muslim societies against the West. This is for Muslim societies to introspect: why are they filling their children with so much hate for everyone else? Calling a spade a spade may then be the best strategy from the point of view of the US, along with carefully screening immigrants from Muslim-majority nations while keeping a strict eye on the kinds of sermons handed out in Mosques in the US.

The American Liberal and Bernie Sanders

Amidst all this rage and confusion is the American liberal. The American liberal, like their Indian counterparts, and I'm guessing, really all liberals around the world are driven by two basic impulses: justice, sure but also an immense savior complex. The modern liberal often fails to appreciate, at any level, the line of thinking of conservatives because the modern liberal is often too egotistic to entertain any fact or opposing view-point that does not fall in line with the well-drummed narrative of an overbearing majority oppressing the minority. Not only is this narrative often a naive representation of the reality, it deprives minority communities of the urge and really, the duty, to introspect. It creates a huge victim mentality which disallows people to set higher standards for themselves. And sadly, it is at the centers of academic excellence, such as universities, where the most open-minded individuals of different backgrounds (should) congregate, that we sorely lack a different perspective to the liberal narrative. Bernie Sanders, to me, is an incarnation of this rage.

But before I discuss Bernie Sanders, I want to ask why is the modern liberal so out-of-touch with the conservatives? Why is there so much bi-polarity in world views amongst people, especially when so many more are enjoying a better education? My guess is the problem lies in the amount of information and data we have in today's world. You would think that this availability of data drives people towards choosing better, clearer answers but it doesn't. There is so much data that you now simply pick and choose the data that suits you. Then there's false data that misleads you. And then there's the arrogance of having access to all that data at the tip of a button that you do not need advice anymore from peers, relatives, doctors, engineers, sociologists, and older people who generally advocate the calmer, more sensible option; heck, you know it all because you have Google. Every random bloke has highly curated views on science and arts and you name it. (And by extension, an idiot like me can also choose to occasionally `opine'.) It would be good, honestly, if we did away with all this technology for a bit and learned to give one another a tad bit more respect, try and hear each other out for a change, ya know?

Back to Bernie; I had several initial reservations about him. First, someone who advocates the Scandinavian economic and social model for a country of the size and population density as the US is grossly out of touch with reality. Norway is basically a Western Saudi Arabia; people have progressive social values, yeah, but you're talking about a very homogeneous country with a TINY population of around 5 million living off huge reserves of oil and gas. Even so, over 50% of Norwegians survive directly with the aid of public welfare, a system that is completely unfeasible for a country as large as the US. Sweden has a tiny population living off of massive reserves of forests and iron ore; it still benefits from its relative isolation during the second World War that generally ravaged its major trading partners in Europe. Previously, Sweden's main export was Volvo and Nokia. Volvo went bankrupt and was bought out by a Chinese firm while the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy have practically wiped out Nokia. The remarkable figure of merit here is that Nokia's downfall alone has raised the unemployment level in Sweden by 5 percentage points.

Even with the above economic reservations out of the way, I was dismayed at Bernie's poor record with guns. Maybe I'm completely out of touch with the whole of America on this issue, but I simply do not understand how it can be okay for any average Joe to carry around firearms with them. I find it hard to swallow how glibly conservatives state that a person could have killed just as well with a knife as with an assault rifle---umm no, carrying out a mass-killing with a knife is insanely harder than with an automated gun---the last `mass stabbing' amounted to a total of 3 victims (recall the ``you ain't muslim bro" video; link); life lost is always unfortunate but it is important to note that it in no way compares to the number of lives lost in gun violence. Conservatives also point to Europe quickly to say that, even though Europe has strong anti-gun laws, ISIS has carried out its worst attacks in Europe. This conveniently ignores the fact that Europe suffers the sad fate of having a porous border with ISIS-threatened states unlike the US where you must fly in and go through an intense immigration examination. Just imagine what would happen if it was as easy to buy these guns of war in Europe as it is, apparently, in the US. But even liberals in this country do not want guns out of the streets and many give similar arguments as to those given by the conservatives. For all the liberal talk, Mr. Bernie Sanders has taken donations from the NRA, and has opposed a bill to hold accountable gun store owners for not doing enough background checks before selling their wares to customers.

Even so, there were moments during the first few debates back in December/January that I thought Bernie raised some good points. Bernie asserted that the major issue with healthcare in America is not so much universal coverage but the cost of it in the first place. He said that the predatory involvement of private insurance companies has led to massive inflation of hospital costs making healthcare unaffordable for the common American; he lent his backing to the idea of a centralized insurance, or single-payer system to address these rising costs. I'm not sure what the real pros and cons of this system are and I'm weary of a wasteful body like the government dealing directly with money flow, but I was happy to hear someone at least focus on the idea that healthcare costs in America need to be brought down in a time when the dominant conversation amongst politicians is about providing more people with the same inflated insurance coverage.

Example. Our friend recently caught the Norovirus. She was fit to drive herself to the hospital but the hospital insisted on having her call the ambulance and assured her that the insurance would cover the costs. The 1-mile ambulance ride was billed at 8k dollars. (Insane.) Little to no haggling but haggling nonetheless brought that down to 3k. The insurance company refused to pay at first but they finally had to pay up. All that mental stress, the haggling, the harassment, arbitrary and inflated pricing, and unprofessional conduct; this is a torture story that people in one of the most developed countries in the world should not have to go through. Compare this to a story some of my Canadian friends who visited India for the first time told me of their experience---one of them got pretty sick and she desperately needed medical attention. The doctor at the hospital just got her on an IV drip and discharged her without asking for any money reasoning that, it was, after all, a bit of electrolytes and water that were needed. (This is not to paint rosy the bleak condition of healthcare resources in India but to point out how a bit of humanity and common-sense billing can go a long way in helping people out.) Surely the ambulance ride did not have to be billed at 8k? The insurance company paid this cost but only because of the highly inflated cost of insurance in the first place. In this sense, I question whether universal healthcare ala Obama is side-stepping the more urgent issue: how to make healthcare more affordable.

But Bernie Sanders has since then gone from being a politician who wants to engage with the public on the basis of certain respectable economic and social ideals, to a self-proclaimed messiah who's leading a revolution to single-handedly overturn the nexus of crony capitalists and big banks that are running down American people. It is not surprising that his aggressive oratory before the California state primaries led to his supporters throwing chairs on to the stage and threatening Debbie Shultz, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair for her perceived bias towards getting Hillary to win the Democratic nomination. Sanders could not so much as apologize for his supporters actions but instead said of the matter, that it was to be expected since the people are angry at the way the democratic process is being subverted by the DNC. This is a particularly farcical accusation considering Hillary at that stage, and now, holds both more popular votes and popular delegates.

Given how Bernie and Trump derive their popular appeal from populist ideals backed with aggressive, `rage against the machine' kind of oratory, it is not at all surprising, that CNN polled over a third of the Democrats who supported Bernie as being ready to jump ship and vote Trump 2016 if Hillary became the Democratic nominee. I think that itself is perhaps the most damning indictment of Bernie's campaign.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

And so finally we come to one Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hillary is a unique proposition. I'm not quite sure why I support her. I'm not sure I even do support her. (Regardless, I have no vote.) I'm not sure she has offered us any good reason to support her besides the fact that she has a long history as a public servant, and that she would, in her own words, continue President Obama's policies. `Make America Whole Again' as opposed to Trump's `Make America Great Again' makes me wonder if she's trying to sell milk products to America instead of running a political campaign in a time when the world desperately needs new ways of thinking about important economic questions related to globalization, immigration, environmental reform and the ever-growing threat of Islamism.

While I appreciate that Hillary attempts to present various sides to any argument before providing her endorsement---a more nuanced view exhibits, to my mind, both a necessary intelligence and a statesman-like temperament---it often seems her answers come not from a deeply held conviction or belief but mere political expedience. For instance, she says she supports raising the minimum wage when being grilled by Bernie in a public debate, but talks about being conservative about it, and keeping in mind concerns of small-shop owners, when she's speaking separately to independents. Hillary appears to be perpetually frightened by the possibility of alienating voters to the extent that it drives what she says and where she says it.

The fact of the matter though is that she must know what she is doing because she has more or less wrapped up the Democratic nomination. Her strategy of towing Obama's line gave her a free pass with African Americans which allowed her to handsomely consolidate delegates from southern states where a large number of Democrats are of African American heritage. By appealing to the milky goodness of `Make America Whole Again', that luscious good feeling of how America is for everyone and how we will continue to be a great country by not doing much other than loving each other seems to have worked fairly well with minorities and has given her enough votes to stay neck-to-neck with Bernie in all the other states. And then being a Democrat of yore has meant she was handed a large initial super-delegate lead which was always going to be hard for Bernie to surpass.

Political machinations aside, Hillary has failed to come across as an inspiring candidate. In fact, at times her submissive towing of Obama's line, repeating that she will bring Obama's policies to fruition has left me angry. I absolutely hate it when women, especially those who are educated and in a position of strength, act like doormats and it is a sad proposition that the first female nominee of any major American political party is asking for votes on the platform that she will simply continue someone else's policies.

But Hillary knows of her lack of charm and had admitted as much to the press sometime ago this year. She says she isn't like her husband who can go around and give these excellent speeches and sound convincing and inspiring. (Sure, Bill, we all know how that helped you out.) She tries to present herself then as this person who knows how to work the channels but cannot necessarily project her behind-the-scenes persona into her speeches. But this is again not really acceptable. Being a statesman is also about being charismatic and getting people to feel enthused about your plans and buy into your ideas. Being a statesman also involves talking to different political constituents, business partners, foreign leaders and much more.

I hope Hillary can win against Trump but it is going to be a hard fought battle. Here's hoping that we will see a more fiery and enthusiastic version of Hillary when she rounds off against Trump. Because so far, it's not been very convincing. 

Graduating.

It was nerve-racking for the last few days. I was sleeping a little less due to the apprehension. And I wasn't able to focus on completing a new paper even though I love this piece of work. I dressed up in my favorite suit, because I figured, no one can fail a man in a suit. And then the day came. So many unexpected faces. Old group members who had graduated, people from my college days in India, friends of my wife, a person from my early childhood in Moscow. Some unexpected absentees; oh well. There were lots of questions during the defense which is the best thing anyone can ask for as a scientist. The deliberation took surprisingly long. I'm not sure what it was all about! And then I was done, and surprisingly, I was left with a sense of emptiness.

In recent times, I've felt an extremely strong desire to solve more and more problems in physics. I have finally begun checking the ArXiv every day; I didn't do so before. I was encumbered with questions of, "but why do we care about physics". Today that question seems irrelevant. The answer is that it is enjoyable and I just want to solve all the problems out there. Do everything. Be the best. Sounds a bit amateurish. Like first love or some such shit. Anyhow. In the light of these thoughts, the emptiness was, perhaps natural. Because there's always more to be done. Many more questions and riddles to be solved and a PhD is nothing in the grand scheme of things. 

But then Bert came by and asked me to come see him in his office for a bit. He sat me down and first told me that my thesis was an impressive achievement in terms of the quality and the breadth of topics I had contributed to. And that he would like me to give him a bound copy of my thesis. I looked up to his shelf of theses, and it had the names, "Sachdev, Kivelson, ..." We talked about our latest piece of work together for the next hour or so. It felt symmetrical---an idea exchange session---a back and forth of "how do we do one better on the results we already have." It made the day worth its weight in gold for me. 

Hartford, Connecticut.

Hartford is the capital of Connecticut. And we hadn't really done anything useful in Connecticut before, so soon after our trip to Vermont, we headed to Hartford.

What is there to do in Hartford? TripAdvisor lists 2 top picks: some art museum, and Mark Twain's home. At the time of this trip, I knew very little about Mark Twain. Certainly, a few years ago, I absolutely nothing about him. At some point, I think in high school, when I hadn't really gotten around to hearing music/movies/shows in English, I swear I believed that Mark Twain was some pop star in America. I think I had read some quote of his and it sounded like one of those pop-starrish things to say. I don't think I still properly know what Mark Twain was all about. But it seems clear that he wrote stuff, and also entertained in various ways. Some of his stuff was about some Huckleberry Finn, who I swear, after I learned about this, thought was related to the cartoon Huckleberry Hound. My word, I'm a pleb. Because of this, we first headed to the museum.

It was a helluva cold and windy day. :/

The art museum was nicely curated. It was one of the few places I've seen Dali's paintings in America, and I was absolutely thrilled. There were a number of paintings by other less known French artists. It was worth the visit.

Me looking goofy with a Dali painting. 

Louis Antequin's really cool blue painting. 

The red glow of the sunlight is just so uniquely, and honestly portrayed in this Theodore Rosseau painting.   

Lady peering out. What is she thinking? I'm always intrigued by such paintings. 

After that, we headed to Mark Twain's house which was boring as fuck. If you ever do end up at Hartford, whoever you are, I forbid you to see Mark Twain's house there, however lavish it is. (It is not.) I mean, there was some interesting stuff with the fact that he was poor and his wife's parents opposed their relationship for a long time and so on. Maybe our tour guide was just lazy. I cannot imagine it being worth it however. 

Mark Twain's house. 

And finally, we ended up back in Boston at Dana's place. One of the best developments in my life have been the realization that I can bond with dogs too. As a kid, I only have memories of being chased by wild packs of dogs and being terribly terrified of them. I was a generally timid kid anyway and this didn't help. So it wasn't easy for me to get comfortable with Dana's dog. But I'm beginning to realize that dogs are insanely sweet animals. I got so comfortable I was even able to cuddle with Scout, and even allowed her to lick me a little (!).  

Falling asleep on a dog's face with my trusty Mojito in hand. I cannot believe I could do that.  

Vermont

It's a been a few months since we went on this trip but I've been kind of lazy/busy so I couldn't come around to recording it. This time we were accompanied by Richard and Sarah who suggested that we should do a road trip around Vermont, chill around, get some coffee. Get some coffee? But seriously, why would anyone want to drive for 3 hours to Vermont just to get coffee (at a Starbucks no less)? I guess the answer boils down to: becozzz.

(I must admit, ever since Yulia pointed out that Richard and I are basically the same person, I've been noticing many similarities in our ways of thinking myself...)

Road Trip!

So what is Vermont all about? Many strange things, actually. You would've expected it's just a boring old New England place, with nice woody areas, picturesque retiree-filled towns and mostly just emptiness. It's not. At least not the places we went to. In fact, it turned out to be one of the most real places we've visited so far in America.

Poverty. Squalor. Filth. And the smell of burnt wood in the air.

It's not a joke. There were massive stretches of our drive through Vermont where, if we stopped to check around, all we could smell was burnt wood, coal and trash. It was so strong it would seep into the car. Admittedly, most of the people in these places were lumberjacks and so the smell of burning wood sort of makes sense. But the absolute squalor was astounding. There were homes with shanty roofs and dirt on walls. There were heaps of trash, refuse, laundry lying around willy-nilly near the homes of people.
This was real. I honestly could not believe my eyes. I just could not imagine that there was such a side to life in America. Well, poverty and squalor go hand in hand. Anyone from India knows this well.

An example of a relatively clean, well-built but abandoned building in Vermont. We stopped here because this was the first sign of life we had begun to see in Vermont. What followed was much worse, but those places were occupied and we didn't feel like stopping in front of them. 

Eventually we hit the town of Brattleboro. Brattleboro would feel completely in-place alongside the many small towns in Massachusetts but here it did not. Most of these New England towns are an interesting mix of liberal arts students/borderline hipsters and retirees who run to the countrysides for peace and invite the hipsters to keep up some intrigue in their lives. Well, Brattleboro is much of that but on overdrive. The streets are full of art shops that have stuff that's interesting and creative and great to window-browse. (And amongst this, an odd sighting was that of an Indian grocery store!) We had lunch at a really nicely decorated place with some very nice continental food. Lots of old people here. After that we went into this glasshouse like structure which had "local, artisan" pottery and all that jazz. 

Here's the thing. On the one hand, you have those lumberjacks who are living in absolute filth and poverty. And right next door, there's Brattleboro with all it's artisan bread and cheeses and rare vegetables decorated in a glass house (the irony). It just doesn't fit. I thought I was in Sodosopa (of South Park fame). I asked one of the people manning a kiosk in the glasshouse what the town was all about; what did most of the people do here? When he couldn't offer an answer, I offered, "it seems like many of them are retirees?", to which he said, "yeah, I'm not really sure...". And this guy was manning the kiosk for "local information". 

Cross-less church. 

Being an imbiber of artisan shit. 

We then headed to another small town, Bennington. On the way, we got to see some more of Vermont's autumn wilderness, took some pictures, and got ourselves in and out of more stores selling lots of Maple syrup and honey. (The main symbols of Vermont are the maple leaves and the moose which isn't too surprising given the proximity to Canada.)

Wooden Wilderness.

Left to Right: Saloni, Richard, Sarah. 

Testing Richard's fish-eye camera feature. 

Maple Syrup. Maple Syrup. Maple Syrup. 

In Bennington, we got to see a little more of the art scene. This included oddly painted restroom doors, alongside the traditional Hippie moniker of Peace. Even the church doors were oddly painted. There was also some more squalor which we greatly enjoyed.

Trippy door with Hippie insignia. 

Red with passion Church.

Creepy dilapidated warehouse with death threats and such spray-painted = great photo op moment! Oh and there was also a stream alongside. This stream had a dirt path next to it and the signs pointed to it as "River Walk". Oops. The streams had some tattered clothes floating around (or maybe I imagined this) in line with the death-threat theme of the place. 

Finally, we had dinner in some semi-major town oddly named Lebanon. Oh well. There was maybe not so much to do but I think we tried to make the most of Vermont :)

Perfect Mattar Paneer

Today we made perfect mattar paneer. It was so good that it must be recorded for posterity's sake.

We heated about 3 table spoons of vegetable oil until crackling hot and added 2-3 tea spoons of cumin seeds. Two green chillies finely chopped, 4 pods of garlic, about an cubic inch of ginger, were pounded to a soft pulp and added to the hot oil. Some ajwain was sprinkled.

When the ginger-garlic pulp turned yellow, one small to medium-sized onion, pureed, was added. Once this mix was yellow, two pureed medium-sized tomatoes were added. Salt (about 1/2-1 table spoon), turmeric powder (1/2-1 table spoon), and red chili powder (1 tea spoon) were added. We let the mixture simmer in low heat until most of the water was evaporated and the oil had started showing on the tomatoes.

We added one table spoon of fat-free yoghurt was added, about half a cup of 2% milk, and half-to-one cup of water was added. Then the secret ingredient: a table spoon of loose dried kasoori methi leaves were added. The whole mix was stirred until the water, milk and the tomato-onion gravy began to coalesce.

Finally, frozen peas and blocks of paneer were added. The whole mix was allowed to simmer on low heat for about 4-5 minutes.

Best food ever. Total prep time: 30 minutes or so.

Next time: we perfect the Kashmiri Dum aloo.