Appreciating music….

Today is the last session of a course I enrolled for, just on a whim. The course was on ‘Music Appreciation’ – mainly covering Hindustani classical music , but also Carnatic and western music in lesser detail. These have been 2 h live sessions, thrice a week. About 20 people registered, (it was not cheap) of age ranging from early/mid 30s to mid 70s. That there has been no drop outs, and the attendance has been ~ 80% throughout speaks of the quality of the content. All the teachers were performing artists if standing, and excellent teachers too.

I grew up with Carnatic music around me. My exposure to Hindustani music began during my college days, when I had the good fortune to listen to some of the greats in intimate baithaks – and ever since, seldom missed a chance to attend a live concert. There was an annual ITC (the days before the ban on their sponsorship) concert in Chandigarh, Mumbai was a ‘rasik’s’ paradise and when we moved to Lucknow in the late 80s there was still a concert culture. And there was always the 9.30 – 11 pm Saturday night concert on All India Radio.

As a family, we had a brief excursion into learning music in Mumbai and my daughter had a teacher for a few years in Lucknow. But over the years, the concert scene in Lucknow dried up and while AIR continued to air the Saturday program, they could not get the top artists.

Then we went through the various phases of Cassette/CD etc… all of which had limitations, since others in the space also needed to enjoy the same music. But the unlimited online resources have made access easy and post-retirement, I have been listening to a lot of music.

I signed up for the course on a whim, and realised how much more there was to appreciation and enjoyment of music.

There is no limit to knowledge and learning – I wish there were more such opportunities.

Loss of rhythm (Day 35/ 24)

That is Day 35 of my self-imposed isolation, and Day 24 of the official lock down. The difference has been that prior to the officially imposed lock-down, I was taking walks around my residential complex. Since 24/03, it has been indoors, with an occasional outing to my daughter’s flat in the next building. The internal shop in the complex is just behind my flat (I live on the ground floor) and so even supplies are literally 50 steps away. And the supply line has been adequate…I am also fortunate that among my 70+ group, I do not (yet!) have any  chronic illness and hence do not need to access medication or doctor visits etc..So in many ways, life has not really changed for me.

Over the last 2-3 years, since my mother’s passing in early 2017, I had settled into a routine around living alone! I did travel, and spend increasing amounts of time in Goa – in fact, many of my friends felt that I was always on the move;  North America in 2018, Egypt a year ago and a few trips to Europe. But, at the beginning of 2020 I was having some musings in my head, about the need to travel, bucket lists, etc…But, mostly, whether here in Gurgaon or in Goa, I had settled into a rhythm – daily exercise (yoga, walking), planned and healthy eating and occasional excursions to the shops, the library or a movie, almost always on my own.

The restriction in my movement enforced by the current external forces, should really make no changes to my life. And initially it did not. But as time has gone by, I am finding it increasingly difficult to stick to any routine. An early-to-bed early riser, I am finding it difficult to fall asleep or to get up early – after all I do not have to beat the clock and the summer heat and get out for a walk. And although I have switched to daily yoga, who says yoga has to be done at 7 am! A regular breakfast person, it had slipped from 8 am to 9 and even 9.30, suddenly I am finding that I am into overnight fasting – 14 hours and on some days even 16 hrs as the urge to eat is retreating. The clear air, and low pollution levels are probably making me too healthy to feel hungry!!

So while I am very comfortable to live on a day-to-day basis, I am trying to sort out in my head what it is that is making me break a life time of living to a schedule!

#covidtales

Some further reflections on the decade that has gone by….and some resolutions?

Even without any  great ‘life passion’ that needed to be pursued, or bucket lists that needed to be ticked, I did look forward to the freedom of time that retirement promised. And I have used this to pursue both travel and reading , my two great interests.  While my reading never stopped even during busy periods at work, my annual average was 10-12 books. These tended to be best-sellers/popular fiction, with some literary ones here and there. But with more time and less distractions, I started to re-visit the great classics, and explore non-fiction writing. These were mostly around 19th and 20th century history of our subcontinent with special leaning towards the freedom struggle and its heroes. I had always planned to read more on the life and works of Gandhiji, and Ramachandra Guha’s book ‘India after Gandhi’ was one of the first books I read. This  stoked curiosity about the times and the issues, and led me many books about the times and the many players of the ‘Independence drama’. Books by and about Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Maulana Azad, Rajendra Babu and many more. As the political landscape became more strident, I also felt the need to read Ambedkar, Periyar, Savarkar and Hegdewar. I am not very political, but with the strident voices of 24 hour media making decreasing sense to me, I felt the need to arm myself with information. The cacophony of television became deafening, and so in 2014, I stopped watching the news channels, restricting myself to some sports channels.  I followed up by discontinuing TV subscription altogether a couple of years ago, since live streaming and cheap band width made cable redundant!

In 2010, I took my first cruise holiday with a group of girl friends – 12 days of eating  or rather over eating, and some sight seeing around the Scandinavian countries. The ship was a mobile township of nearly 2500 people, and had all the facilities that a small town has – swimming pool, gym, restaurants, cinema halls, gaming rooms etc…The cabins were cramped, the sight seeing was a bit hurried and since I am not a great social bird, there was no special attraction in the experience – except of course, the bonding with friends. But since then, I have had a number of holidays  in many parts of India and other parts of the world. As I already said, the trek to Kailas Mansarovar was the most memorable. But also had lovely visits to Canada and US, Egypt, many parts of Europe…….

Of course much has changed over these last 10 years, both in the world around me and the wider world out there. Divisive politics has risen around the world while the growing disparities and unrest brought home to each one of us by almost ‘real time’ coverage, has driven hordes of people across the world to face unbelievable challenges in order to seek a better life. This migrant ‘crisis’ has provided some of the most poignant and heart breaking images of the decade. However, these images seem only to have hardened postures and made people more isolationist. I do feel that almost all that has happened and continues to happen, be it politics, economics, wars or anything else, can be traced back to the utter lack of respect that humans have shown the planet over the last 2 centuries. This is a global change that is affecting me in a personal way.

So  going forward, how am I looking at the decade ahead. For one, I am not thinking such long term, as I am already a couple of years into my 70s. But, it is clear that just as the global change affects us individually, we cannot afford to wait for global or national responses. Each one of us need to make as many changes (within feasibility) as possible to decrease our own footprint, so that individuals can collectively make global changes. My own efforts are small….but a beginning.

• I got rid of my 4 wheeler;  do use one to move around Gurugram though, as the public transport is abysmal!
• Moved towards eating organic, since all the food stuffs in the market are probably contaminated. This is just a logical assumption, although the direct and convincing link to any health related issues or even any specific disease is absent. Of course, organic fruits and vegetables also taste a lot better. This move has also been facilitated by the increasing availability of organic foods. They are expensive and possible  and hence a difficult option for many!
• Eating seasonal – I grew up at a time when there was no other option. But, with   globalization, we have been pampered to believe that we should eat a thing when we feel like it!! A mango in December? Apples in the summer?  When imported fruits started appearing  in the market more than a decade ago, I found them expensive and then I felt that it was not needed. Now I  avoid them altogether, and look forward to the seasonal fare. One of the best moments for my mother was the arrival of the first mangoes in the market in the early summer!
• Became plastic aware – just noticing how much of it we discard every day. We cannot avoid, its everywhere. So, I started carrying my own water  (refused the water in sealed bottles at meetings etc, and persuaded a few offices to stop the practice) and cloth bags everywhere. Just as an exercise I preserved all the plastic packings of the stuff I bought (cannot be avoided – namkeens, groceries of various sorts…) and found that it added up to 400g in a month – 4.8Kg in a year for an elderly, single fairly conscientious person who leads a relatively low key life!! Quantification and numbers help to put things in perspective.  Can I decrease this? How? Well, my Amazon orders crashed, as the packaging is a lot!! Will have to see how else I can adjust!
• Growing awareness of ‘clothes’ as pollutants. While I have never been a shopaholic, and have always favored natural fibres (cotton, silk, wool), the numbers is a problem. When is enough, enough? The impulse to buy, because it ‘looks good’ or ‘it is a good price’ is difficult to check. This is an area I am working on – and while I’d like to resolve that I’ll buy no clothes for…… time,  its a step I have not taken.
• Since I read a lot, and read a lot of book reviews, there is an ever growing ‘to be read’ (TBR) list. Sometimes the urge is so strong (its a kind of addiction), that it is immediately ordered on Amazon. Since my Kindle reading has dwindled, its a hard copy that arrived from Amazon/Flipkart in hordes of wrapping. So, I have stopped ordering books online since the 1st (although I did cheat and order on one 31st, December to beat my own time line) and suspended the purchase of any book for now, Between my daughter and me, there must be unread books enough for many years. And then there is the possibility in of re-reading some of the classics sitting on the shelves! I have set myself no time lines, but tentatively the initial target is 6 months!

• Finally, travel, which is the tough one! I’ll leave that for another day…..

Reflections on the decade that has gone by….

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I retired at the end of August 2009,  and not just from my job, but also from major professional activity. This decade has been the first of my of ‘retired life’ and since I don’t remember many breaks from work in my life (3 months between house job and PG, 5-6 weeks between jobs in Chandigarh and Mumbai and 90 days of maternity leave), retirement was something I did look forward to. However, doctors are not supposed to retire, and people did not take me seriously when I said that I had little desire to go on doing what I had been doing for over 3 decades. It is not that I had some great passion that needed to be pursued, or some bucket lists that needed to be ticked. Maybe lab medicine is more repetitive than clinical medicine, and hence there was a lack of enthusiasm to do more of the ‘same’!

I had planned to move out of Lucknow after retirement, and change of city brings new challenges. I had moved to Lucknow with Subhash and a young daughter in 1987, but Subhash had left  us a few years ago and Mukta was settled in Gurgaon with a family of her own. There was nothing in Lucknow to keep me there, and so at the beginning of the decade I was struggling to settle into the exploding megapolis that was Gurgaon. I had lived most of my life in sarkari houses and the last residence in Lucknow, was  in one of the largest and beautiful campuses in the country. So, the move was not easy.

The most significant change was life in a gated community. Not only was I elevated from ground level to the 7th floor, there was a sense of crowding that was new. Also, from knowing everyone around you in a campus, suddenly you knew no one around you! But I adapted, and learnt my way around Gurgaon, venturing out in my Santro even to Delhi on the week ends. My flat was in Sector 50 and Mukta lived in Sector 48,  and so this was a frequent commute.  There was an explosion of construction all around and we lived in a dust haze, but ‘air quality’  was not a term that had even entered our vocabulary.  The construction was only seen as an irritation –  ‘how dusty the house got’. Then traffic grew and grew and  I got involved in some academic activities that took me to Delhi.  So, a driver was enlisted as the frequency of  the Delhi trips grew, and the little Santro was replaced with a Sedan. Over time I drove less and less,  as I was not confident about negotiating the ever exploding traffic! Then, as academic involvements started to peter down, the driver  was replaced with a ‘driver-for-hire’ service,  In the meanwhile the ‘Uber/Ola’ phenomenon happened, and a couple of years ago I also got rid of the car!

I  changed my residence from Sector 50 to the same community, that my daughter lives in, in Sector 48 a few years ago. This is situated on the main Sohna road, which I could cross easily to go to the shops, (there were few on our side of the road) or just for a morning walk. But over the decade, the road has gone from 2 to 4 to 6 lanes . Of course, there are no traffic lights, or overhead/subway crossing for the whole 4-5 Km stretch!  Rudimentary side walks were built during the 4 to 6 lane transformation, but have disappeared in the recent activity to create an elevated roadway.  I now have to find a motorised transport to carry me across the street, often a detour of a 2-3 KM depending on where the U-turns are placed for the day!  Almost every vacant space that were around a decade ago,  has been built up in these last years. But, the building activity never ceases and only moves a few kilometers further and further away.  In these 10 years, ‘air quality’ is discussed even by little children. We, the residents of the city have watched it earn the  status of ‘ poorest air quality in the world’,  and of course, much is contributed to by construction activity.  I now have 2 separate Apps on my phone to monitor the air quality (a parameter that had no role of in my life in 2010) and as I am not doing so well with the pollution, I even time my outdoor activity based on what the App tells me.

At the beginning of the decade, having recently retired, I was a member of various Scientific expert groups and committees. This gave me opportunity to continue to travel and interact with colleagues, old and new. Over time, as these have been re-constituted my involvement has gradually declined. The most rewarding assignment was the opportunity to serve on the topmost medical regulatory Body in 2010-11. It was a busy year, with opportunity to travel across the country and interact with a wide variety of excellent medical professionals. We could also review the  existing system and work towards meaningful change with inputs from enthusiastic colleagues, who were anxious for change. These interactions re-enforced my faith in the huge talent pool the country is fortunate to have, but he frustration came from the very tardy system that is so resistant to the changes we need to make. In fact, the curriculum we revised at that time was finally notified by GOI and implemented in 2019, with minor modifications. During the 2012-15 period I also was on a number of GOI committees related to health and education, the most interesting one being the one for revamping the structure of medial regulation. In fact, the National Medical Commission Bill that was passed by Parliament has essentially followed the structure that we had recommended with modifications.

During this decade, I did get into medical ethics both as member of various ethics committees and teaching ethics. I  served also served various educational ventures in an advisory capacity.  With time, the involvement has been less which is appropriate.  During my time in service I was often  a critic of the ‘old’ folks who continued to hang around. 

Although I did not have any great passion that needed to be pursued, or some bucket lists that needed to be ticked, I did look forward to the free time offered to pursue my two interest – travel and reading. More of that in the next post

The travel bug…..

I have this somewhat unjustified reputation for having wheels on my feet! Yes, I do like to travel, an off shoot of my favorite past-time, reading. Since childhood, I have read deep and wide and reading in English automatically takes you to other land and the mind builds visions of distant and exotic places. In my case, these included Potala palace at Lhasa, the ruins of Macchu Picchu, the great pyramids, the Galapagos etc. etc., And  then there were the streets and locations of London, Paris, New York, Dublin, Italy, the English countryside etc that were brought alive by favorite fiction. But back then, there was no possibility that these destinations would stay beyond the minds eye.

When it came to the actual travel, it was not something I could indulge in for leisure, except the occasional travels within India. For many years, travels took me to those destinations where conferences were hosted and I could generate a travel grant.  In the 80s and 90s, these were few and far between, but became easier after that. As part of these trips, I managed to juggle time out of the conference sessions (always with a feeling of guilt) to see Los Angeles, Toronto, Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, Hawaii……..and parts of England, USA etc. The highlights among these visits was the 4 days I spent alone, seeing the sites of Sicily, after one such meeting!

Impressive Greek temples

Upwards they soar

Looking back, each of these trips were a gigantic effort to get together – slow mail, going through ‘Lonely Planet’ for maps and tips, making several visits to travel agents, photocopies of documents, arming oneself with physical maps! And of course, once you took off, you had no contact with anyone except through physical calls; and these were done with discretion as international call rates were high. While the world changed at its own sedate pace in those last decades of the 20th century, the 21st century was in a greater hurry to move on. So the internet expanded, Google spouted information and while travel agents were still the norm rather than the exception, international SIM cards became available making communication easier. And then in 2009, time became a cheaper commodity for me – I retired!!

Since the Government has been good to its employees, pensions became respectable and so financial constraints were far less than earlier. The telecom boom gifted us with cheaper and more efficient connectivity and smart phones became the rule rather than the exception. Travel agents became redundant, and aggregators took over the landscape – be it Yatra or MakeMy trip etc for tickets, Trivago or Expedia etc for hotels.  There were a host of websites and Apps to get the best rates and reccos for everything from the local cab at the other end, to concert bookings and dining reservations;  everything was a click away!! With affordable broadband connectivity, it became easy to walk strange cities, stay in touch with loved ones and feel secure in any part of the world. I have adopted reasonably well to many of these advances. So I have travelled a fair bit since retirement.  Among the many destinations, the Scandinavian cruise,  Spain/Portugal with friends, Barcelona with family and across North America visiting family and friends have been particularly memorable.  The most memorable of my travels was the Kailash Mansarover Yatra I did in 2012. And this was from my bucket list! So, while I have not been to many parts of the world, the upper Himalayas is undoubtedly the most beautiful place I have visited. Its size and silence humbles you, the air cleanses you and the sheer beauty dazzles you. Walking alone on those mountain paths has been the most exhilarating experience of my life.

However, the places I have visited were not planned from any my bucket list, but mostly serendipitious. Since I am single, I took up travel whenever opportunities arose, with friends, family etc. and I have enjoyed them all. While I enjoy the mechanics of travel (the planning, booking, other details etc..) as much as the travel itself, the destination is not always important. For that to happen, I have to take the next step and travel alone! While in the current scenario, it is not really that hard to do, its a decision that has to be made! As time ticks by, I am not getting younger which adds a sense of urgency – do it while you can.  There is also the added burden of environmental responsibilty, something I feel strongly about – the struggle between ‘how does my decision affect such a huge problem?’ versus ‘each little drop counts’. So, as 2020 is approaching, here to wishing great and responsible travel to all those travel lovers.