Happy Anniversary

If you told us 38 years ago that we'd be celebrating this anniversary in, well, near Hyderabad, India, we'd have probably said, "Well, sure, why not?" So, here we are, piggy-backing off an off-site of Deb's team for dinner and drinks at a resort somewhere northwest of the city. Her team was having a great time with a club DJ playing Indian techno music that everybody seemed to know all the songs. The "rain dance" was over the top for us, but the team really got into it. They were all drenched. Had a great time. Who knows where we'll be next year!
Thanks to all who sent well-wishes. I'm a lucky guy!

Thanksgiving Squared

I have so many things I am thankful for including being here in India. But today is a holiday that we are not celebrating in a traditional way -- no turkey, dressing, pumpkin pie or even a cranberry sauce. I made some khali dahl and will be making some potato salad today so I can concentrate on the important things.

Today is Deb and my 38th wedding anniversary. I am truly thankful for that.
I am thankful for my family -- David and Sarah, Leigh (and Nick, of course) are the products of the creative energy (literally and figuratively for David and Leigh) of Deb's untiring devotion and efforts which she says when she is judged that she can say without reservation "I did my best". I am thankful to still have the remnants of my family of origin -- my sister Ruth and her family, my cousins Patsy and Joanie, and their families.
I am thankful for the parents and grandparents I had. I still think about them often.

I am thankful for my friends and acquaintances. I am thankful for (most) every living person I meet. If you note my hesitation to be all inclusive, there are some people who I have met that, just like my boat ride on the Hussain Sagar, it's a check mark not to be repeated.

Aside from my whining, I am really thankful for this life-changing experience in India.
Deb and I would not change this. I get a blessing from the beggars for whom I had out biscuits every Sunday outside the gate at St. Alphonsus. They have even stopped asking me for money rather than the biscuits. Somehow I've communicated that if I gave them money, it would be less than the value of the biscuits I hand out or something like that. The picture of Deb and me in the archway was at Tipu's summer palace in Mysore, one of our favorite excursions. You can just see the two e-mail equivalent technologies of Tipu's palace on either side of the gateway in the background -- his p-mail (pigeon-mail) boxes.

Our best wishes for a joyous and happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family.

We did it, and we're happy we did!

During a recent Skype video call with our daughter, Leigh, she was very animated about an experience she had volunteering on a project for the School of Social Work. Now, thinking back on this, we had given her a few opportunities to be down with the struggle, but it was always controlled. I believe Leigh and some of her confirmation classmates sorted food at one of the food pantries in Pontiac, Michigan. But that was sorting and organizing donations and didn't have any of the recipients present.

Well, Leigh's volunteer work was doing the registration desk administrative activities for a parenting class in Inkster, Michigan. She expressed shock at the circumstances that most of the attendees found themselves. Simple things like low literacy levels seemed so strange to Leigh that someone couldn't read or that they just weren't able to comprehend questions. And she observed that the chaos that these people exposed their offspring to was in such stark contrast to her home life as a child that seemed so regimented and mundane.

But how she and her brother grew up was a purposeful exercise. Of course, in his 2005 book "Freakonomics", economist Stephen Levitt postulates that it was not so much the actions we took but simply who we were that was the greater influence on our kids' outcome. He was arguing against the obsessive parent syndrome or OPS as the pop parenting trend. But the one thing that I am probably more sure of the efficacy in anything Deb and I did was that David and Leigh grew up in a world of absolutes; things were either right or wrong, no gray areas. The sun, the moon, the stars and the seasons all have recognizable patterns of behavior as our lives should. I do believe Deb was a bit excessive in some things, but I have to admit that David and Leigh still have very good phone manners but that's because Deb told them that it was a mortal sin to answer the phone impolitely.

But over the past few years I've realized how much we walled our children off from the realities of the world. David pinged me from the observation room of his first focus group asking if these were the type of people I talked to when I moderated groups. He was shocked at the level of naive ignorance the participants exhibited. Now this description that Leigh presented of her volunteer experience made me think about how the Siddhartha's father, the king, must have felt when Siddhartha had slipped out of the palace and got down with his peeps. Well, Siddhartha may have gone overboard a bit, but then again, that was 2600 years ago when being poor meant something; when Untouchables were REALLY untouchable. (I caught one of the younger beggars in front of St. Alphonsus on his cell phone -- busted! No biscuits for HIM anymore!!) Anyhow, I realized that my children had been going through the process of finding the gray areas of living and being exposed to some stark realities that they had never experienced. And the Buddha had a contemporary who was even farther out than he was: Mahavira, the founding saint of Jainism. Now many of the figures you see of what many people think are of the Buddha are really Mahavira. You could say "all religious converts look alike" and you'd be quite right, but you can tell Mahavira from Buddha fairly easily, Mahavira's the guy without a Dodi.
Yep, nekkid as a Jaybird, as they say in Karnataka. Well, they say it in Kannadian, once again not to be confused with Canadian. Afterall, you don't see too many people in Yellow Knife walking around nekkid in November, do you?
Mahavira preached that you don't kill anything. He was way beyond PETA. Some Jain aesthetes wear a cloth over their mouth as to not suck in a bug. Their yogis are the ones that practice bringing their hearts to a stop, leading to Moksha or release from all greed and fear. Same goal as the Buddha, but more dramatic; Buddha was into the enlightment as a mechanism to release. You can reach Nirvana without the radical element of, well, dying.

And that's one of the things we in the West often mistake about Nirvana. We think of "bliss" in terms of an orgasm, whether sexual or tasting some great chocolate. Just the opposite! It's experiencing -- nothing! Nope, no pain, no fear, no lust, no nothin'! And that's the hardest thing of all for us to do. I love living. I love eating and drinking. I love loving. I love watching the sun rise and set, the moon rise, the stars come out, the waves hit the shore, the lightening strike across the sky, and on and on and on. I don't care to give up any of those feelings I experience from living. OK, yes, I experience fear, worry, anxiety, anger over another lost season of Michigan football, yadda, yadda, yadda, but that is a price I am willing to pay for what is all the other wonderful stuff I experience. A great scene from an OK film adaptation of a William Faulkner short story "Long, Hot Summer" is delivered by Orson Welles at the end of the movie where he says "I just might live forever" expressing his joi d' vie.

I'm not looking for Moksha any time soon, so I'm going to go for now. Have a great day!

Wowki, Chowki, Expats go Native. Well, not really.

Last evening we attended the expat Chowki dinner and Ghazal sing along. OK, we only look like we've gone native and it wasn't a sing-along. However, the music was interesting as it comes from the time of the first Muslim-converted Arab and Persian traders, so it's about 1400 years old which is still relatively new for Indians. You will note through some of the photos that there are quite a few people of Indian origin. The TEA association is an expatriate group for those of us foreigners. Well, after Deb and I went to the US Consulate Town Hall meeting about a month ago, we realized that the vast majority of US citizens in Hyderabad were NRIs -- non-resident Indians. So they are in the same boat as us -- not having a home unless like our new acquaintance, Mahdu, you have family here in Hyderabad. Now Mahdu is a proud Aggie. Yep, she's a graduate twice-over from Texas A&M and she and her husband (also a grad) are proud of it. They have an interesting tale of their first experiences in Texas, but that is for her blog. She runs one of the two NGOs that she and her husband have founded.
But the Chowki dinner is an exposure to traditional Hyderabadi cuisine. There is, of course, Biryani. And there was Haleem which was either left over from Ramsan or was a subversion of the strict Hyderabadi tradition of only making Haleem during Ramsan. However, Indian "strict" is interpreted in the same way that most governmental offices define the unalterable rules of the day until when tomorrow comes and the new unalterable rules are given (all orally, of course, just like our malaria pills). And just like malaria, you get a high fever, chills, and jaundice if you (1) try to resist the unalterable rule of the day or (2) try to determine the logic in what the new unalterable rule of the day is supposed to do other than give you the symptoms of malaria. Butttttttt, I digress.
We were greatly entertained by a video that was produced by some of the expats with the help of some native Hyderabadis. I am trying to get a copy.
It was just so right-on about living in Hyderabad, it was scary funny. But Deb was very happy to be among some other expats so she didn't feel like she was the only blond in a sea of brunettes.




Now I see where FabIndia sells all their clothing. Besides Deb and me, every other expat has the entire line of kurtas and pajamas that FabIndia carries.



But overall, the party is a big event for the Expat community every year. So we went with it. Another check mark for our time in Hyderabad.

Here's a German couple that we sat with at dinner.

This is one of my classmates, Sandy, in my "Hindi for Dummies" class. Deb's driver, Ashraf is my guinea pig for practicing my phrases. I notice when he winces as I pronounce different words, but at least he understands them.
And we end with my "Moon over the Hyderabad Skyline". Well, that's not quite true. The old city is about 120 degrees to the left of the direction this picture was taken. It's more Gachibowli, Jubilee Hills, Madhapur, and HiTech City. But enjoy it. I do. I'll be posting again quite soon.

In Search Of . . . .

Recalling Leonard Nimoy’s gravely voice in the slick production “In Search of”, I have been on a quest in search of so many things, people, and places for more than half a century. But only a few have truly been what I consider to be so impactful that the experiences changed me. One such place was Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. My best friend, Lou and I buzzed through the kings’ sarcophagi but both of us, having recently graduated as Lit majors, stopped and sat in this particular place. We knew that not everyone represented there was buried there, but to be among these great dead guys and recalling their words that inspired or moved or cajoled us to think, to act, and just to be (or not) was awesome – I mean truly awesome. I believe that directly after this memorable event, Lou and I also experienced our first real Indian cuisine in London as well as the English way of enjoying beer. Talk about memorable! The Indian food, which I admit we ASKED to be made as hot as possible, was Angry Shiva and Kali all in one. But then to take a large gulp of room temperature beer was memorable as well, but not necessarily a positive one. I think the Sikh’s that ran the place were in the back laughing at us.
During that same trip, I caught up with Deb in Munich and we went to the Dachau memorial. Now Dachau was not intended to be a killing camp like Auschwitz, but tens of thousands died there. It was a model for the entire concentration camp system the Nazis constructed. Dachau housed the dissidents, journalists, and just about every other German (and thousands of non-Germans) they believed didn’t drink the Kool Aid.
Being there has made me appreciate the people I have met that lived through that experience.

Nearly 20 years later I had the opportunity to search for Harry's New York Bar in Paris. Silly me, I thought I would be the only person who might be remotely interested in finding the place where the most famous 20th century expats hung out.
And while it is a niche tourist destination, it blew me away when I walked in to see the pendants of virtually every major US university pinned on the walls. My first reaction was to look for a UofM banner. This was something of an epiphany -- there were others out there looking for similar things as me. It was comforting to know that there were others who were on a quest as well and that our paths had crossed even though at different times. It brought to mind the Arthurian story of when the knights of the Round Table went out on their Grail quest. They made a pact that each one would enter the forest at a different point. Now that was significant for the writer/story-teller as well as the few readers and/or audience. The forest represented chaos while the community represented order and civilization. Of course, none of them could have ever visited Detroit's Belle Isle on a hot summer night. Now THAT'S chaos. The knights of the Round Table had to map their own path; not follow someone else. Upon entering Harry's, I realized that many others had entered the forest and many of us came to the same places as part of our individual quests. Now it just happened that on one leg of that same journey (a long project that took me to France, Belgium, and Germany looking for Anglo-autophiles -- a very rare breed) I ended up in Offenbach, Germany in late December, 1988. Offenbach was home to the poet Goethe and philosopher Schiller. Upon completing the German phase of the project on December 18, I had a free day before my scheduled flight on the 20th. While walking back to my hotel, I had the overwhelming feeling that I should be home with my family. Back in my hotel room, I contacted my corporate travel agent and asked to arrange a flight back a day early. Now this was significant. When they were able to get me out of Frankfurt on a December 19th Lufthansa flight, you must realize I was scheduled on Pan Am 103, the flight that was brought down over Locherbie Scotland the next day. When I got home, this picture was on all the television stations.
So what has my time in India added to my quest? First and foremost, I understand much better what must have happened to Siddhartha when he got out of his father's palace gates and mingled with his peeps. You can't help but see the struggle for survival everywhere you look. All of our fancy stuff and fancy places are the illusion and this is the reality. But as we've asserted before, the caste system is alive and it brings to mind the segment in Mel Brooks 'A History of the World Part I:
Harvey Korman as Count De Money: "Your Highness, the peasants are revolting."
Mel Brooks as Louis XVI: "Yes, they stink on ice. But they're my people, I love them. Pull!"
Peasant being used like a clay pigeon: "Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!"
MB as LXVI: "It's good to be king!"

Which is why the gods are important. While we took an unexpected side trip to Cochin three weeks ago due to a cancelled flight, we took in a Kathakali play. It was a scene from the much larger depiction of the Ramayana legend which for length makes Wagner's Ring Cycle seem like Samuel Beckett's "Breath" by comparison.

Anyhow. . .Arjuna, a princely guy, but arrogant and haughty, is out hunting with a woodsman and his wife (Shiva and Pavarti in disguise). Arjuna is doing his princely hunting thing and, to make a very long story short, is humbled by the gods and learns a lesson, therefore being granted a boon by Shiva and Pavarti. I know I am guilty of such stuff and I know that I've been bitch slapped by God more than a few times.

Further, in Hindu tradition, even before the gods were created, there was "I" in a void. I is probably best thought of a conscious awareness of self. According to the Vedas, "I" realized it was alone and was afraid. Thus, the first of the two great karmic weights on the soul was created (the other being lust which was created when "I" split in two; one half being man and the other half being woman). This might be comparable to the original sin of the Levant-origin religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam for which salvation from original sin is either pending as in Judaism or through (your credo faith goes here). For Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists, moksha or the soul's release is finally being free of the two great weights thus not having to come back in another life as a bug or life insurance salesman.

Since I am an advocate of the secular Grail quest as written in the Parzival legend, I can continue on my quest and, although I often fail, I get an abundant number of passes until I get it right and heal the wounded Fisher King.

And our journey will continue as our next adventure is just a couple weeks away. Keep tuned in and don't drop out.

Did Saddam smoke a Hussain Sagar before the hanging?

OK, so Sagar means sea, not cigar in Sanskrit, but it just seemed so tacky and oblique to make the reference. And that is like so much here in India, that is, tacky and oblique. You easily recognize the tacky part simply by walking down the street. Certainly when you wear sandals, there is a momentary delay as the heel of your sandal sticks to the sidewalk, or dirt, or whatever you step on until its bond to the surface on which you are walking releases it with a slap as the sandal hits the sole of your foot. So you always have a four sound step: thud (heel to surface), rock (sole to ball shift except when moon walking with a great deal of difficulty here), silence (release delay), and slap. That is two more sounds than that from the one art student at my undergraduate graduation who wore a modified whoopee cushion on one foot and an ankle bracelet of bells on the other so you heard a "bllluuush, ching, bllluuush, ching" as she walked by. And the four sound walk in India has some parallels with the four sounds when chanting Ohm. There is (1) the long "O" followed by (2) a trailing "ooo", then comes (3) the closed "mmmmm" and all that surrounded by (4) the sound of silence, and I am NOT talking about Simon and Garfunkel either. href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3J5peee0SAngsalH2DV9vPNWG88-77RXst0p1OIV4Y2VLEq20Upb2Ha9qjf-T6T93OO9DkM1QGc0TOkBsjrKL5veFQmxOQvrv8ozebtW6NFJ2_dJRgJgYg5mlY16JEUL5gT4cykq2B1E/s1600/album-Simon--Garfunkel-Sounds-of-Silence.jpg">

The oblique is not as easily recognizable until you've been here a while and realize nothing, but NOTHING, is in square. I know my brother-in-law, Bill Nygren, can appreciate that condition since he has worked for years coming behind people who had very little concept of 360 degrees or the division of them when building homes in the States. Have I mentioned that everything that isn't a worker's tarpaulin shelter is made of cement? Forget what the facade veneer might be, everything else is made of slightly-reinforced-steel cement. And I've shown a few photos of buildings and elevated roadways (called flyovers here) with the wooden scaffolding bracing the cement as it cures. Once again, anyone with the slightest modicum of material elasticity awareness knows that the wooden poles flex much more than a steel pole might. However, there are far more saplings than there are steel mills, so wooden scaffolding it is. There are consequences to this quality-value trade-off that can be best explained by the Australian minister's interview after a shipping accident off the coast of Australia. If you note the first photo above, it is of the large Buddha statue on the man-made island in the middle of the Hussain Sagar (to the Muslims) or Tank Bund (to the Hindus).



I purposefully used that stock photo night scene to help compare to the photos taken in the harsh light of day. The Dalai Lama dedicated the statue in 2006 and yet the base and surroundings look much older. Also note that the Buddha is only granting a blessing in the statue signified by his right hand raised but his left had is not offering a boon as I am demonstrating below the statue. Maybe the sculptor asked the Buddha to shift his Dodi and forgot to reset him. By the way, note two things: (1) I am the only person wearing shorts, and (2) my sandals are both stuck to the cement square on which I'm standing.

Deb also stood out (well, duuuuhhhh).

I've only got two photos that do any justice to giving you a sense of the water quality of the Sagar. In the photo below you'll see a distinct green tone. I've got another example a few photos down that will give you a good view of this.

What I can't give you is a sense of the sweet smell of putrefaction that permeated everyplace you went around the lake. We could smell it in the car as we approached the lake and that was with the outside air turned off and the A/C running. That was the major factor that detoured us from considering a lunch at the restaurant on the water front. Note the Lumbini tour boat. I believe Lumbini is the Telugu word for "sucks to be us" and not the Italian name of the poor eastern coast cousins from Brindisi of the noble Lombardi family. The boat was about the same vintage as the African Queen that Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn sailed down the river in the movie of the same name. If you count, there are about five visible life preservers in total for a boat that has about 75 seats. I wondered why they were playing music during the trip to the Buddha. Look at the water, and call out CCR and we can sing a couple verses of "Green River" but be ready to grab the nearest life preserver when the music stops.
Deb waiting for her ship to come in. Bwahahahahahaha!
What made me a little nervous was the state of decay of the conduit on the side of the boat at the mooring.

This was another "check mark" moment. We have dutifully gone to the "must sees" of Hyderabad. We can safely say "been there, done that. Have a great day, we did!

Happy Diwali!!

It's not a sick genetic mutation of Dilbert and Wally. But Hindus and two of the credo off-spring, Sikhs and Jains. During Diwali, celebrants wear new clothes and share sweets and snacks with family members and friends. Some Indian business communities begin the financial year on the first day of Diwali, hoping for prosperity the following year. In Hinduism, Diwali marks the return of Lord Rama to his kingdom of Ayodhya after defeating (the demon king) Ravana, the ruler of Lanka, in the epic Ramayana. In Jainism, Diwali marks the attainment of moksha by Mahavira in 527 BC. In Sikhism, Diwali commemorates the return of Guru Har Gobind Ji to Amritsar after freeing 52 Hindu kings imprisoned in Fort Gwalior by Emperor Jahangir; the people lit candles and diyas to celebrate his return.

So we celebrated as well. It's about 9:30 at night and since 6pm there have been fireworks going off continuously 360 degrees around us. And we're not talking a couple of firecrackers either. Some of our neighbors set off a string of 1000 firecrackers here's some of the action:



The gun smoke is so thick that it's like Detroit on New Years at midnight. There is a cloud enveloping the city in every direction. OK, we added to it with our diyas.


Our neighbors were much more fancy with rangolis made of flowers with their diyas:


All day, the folks that live in the basement of the apartments and the laborer families from the tents in the vacant lot and construction site were out making rangolis, wearing their finery, and having a good old time.


Deb and I took a walk after sundown to see the lights on the homes and businesses near us.
. . .and had all the young kids asking for me to take their pictures.


We've never seen more fireworks at any 4th of July celebration. Again, Happy Diwali to all our friends in Edison, NJ. Have a great weekend.

Maybe it's because they're full-time students

Dean Ramana of the School of Management at the University of Hyderabad gave me the opportunity to give lecture series on marketing over a three-week period. Each lecture was from 10-12 on Tuesdays. The students were from the MBA program. I had given a introductory lecture during the orientation for the new graduate students earlier in September.
As you will note, I have gone "native" for the later lectures, but with a purpose. The last of the series was on international marketing. I was demonstrating how marketers try to dress up their products for a local market but the facade does not mask the fact that the product is conceived (literally) in and for another market.
In the picture below, I am quizzing the female students who have isolated themselves in the back of the lecture hall.
I only hope that the late Joseph Campbell would appreciate my desire to continue a dialog with these enthusiastic students. My objective was to give them a perspective on doing business outside the borders of Hyderabad. Only two of the students had ever been outside the country and both of them were exchange students. Dean Ramana was very supportive of my efforts.
I am in discussions with the Communications department to give a lecture on advertising as part of communications arts.