To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock, In a pestilential prison with a life long lock, Awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock, From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.

What fun it was to recite these lines as a child, one of several meant to help us learn to enunciate properly. We’d march up and down in our elocution class, enacting these lines as we intoned them in menacing, grim tones, pretending to be a dangerous criminal awaiting punishment for crimes unknown. What tremendous fun!

The other day, I was steeped in gloom and despair and it occured to me that these lines summarised life perfectly. After all, this is exactly what life is. Sitting in a prison waiting for that chopper to deliver the final shock. The quality of our prison cells vary, based, perhaps, on the enormity of our crimes committed in prior births, or so says the law of Karma. But the chopper is waiting for us all, the sharp shock is the only way out.

What comes after? Man has come up with several versions of an afterlife. We don’t want life to end, we want to continue living in some way, shape, or form. Perhaps the stories have some truth to them, perhaps our “essence” does live on, perhaps the cycle of birth and death is a reality. Or maybe it’s all made up, maybe once the physical body stops living, everything stops for that person, there is no spirit that lives on in other realms. The reality is that we don’t definitively know what lies ahead. We don’t know what’s waiting around the corner.

Live in the present, we are told. That’s the secret of happiness, we are told. But how exactly does one do that? How do you stop yourself from reliving the past, and worrying about the future? How do you turn your brain off? My dog Mowgli always seems to be content and happy. How?

It isn’t because he doesn’t have the ability to think and remember. He certainly remembers events, people, and other animals. We are fortunate to have several dog parks in our neighbourhood. He remembers and behaves differently in every dog park we visit. He knows which parks have what types of toys, he remembers the last place he left a toy and runs to that spot. He knows the routes to the different parks. He recognises friends, both human and animal, as well as mortal enemies. He knows the Starbucks symbol and starts licking his lips whenever he sees it, because that’s where he gets his beloved puppucino (whipped cream!). So his contentment is not a reflection of a lack of grey cells or memory. It has to be something else.

Everytime we open the car door, Mowgli jumps inside. He has absolutely no idea where we are going. Perhaps it’s just a ride around the block, perhaps it’s to his favourite dog park, maybe it’s to an exciting trail, or even better, the beach! Perhaps it’s to the doggy daycare or his sitter’s house, or, heaven forbid, the dreaded vet. Mowgli hasn’t a clue as to how this car ride will end. But it doesn’t seem to matter the slightest. He jumps in with great enthusiasm every time, happily sticking his face out the window, lapping up the cool breeze.

How does he do it? Why isn’t there anxiety as to what the future holds? It isn’t because he doesn’t remember or understand what the different destinations mean for him. When we pull up at the vet, his anxiety is palpable. His excitement when we pull up at the beach parking lot is hard to contain. Why then is there no anxiety during the car ride?

Maybe it’s because he trusts his people completely. Even though his people have put him through some terrible times at the vet, have sometimes left him and driven away at the daycare, he still trusts. Or maybe it’s because he is wise enough to realise that he has absolutely no control on the outcome, so why spoil the car ride by worrying?

One of my favourite TV shows is The West Wing. There’s a scene in which one of the characters is describing a scene from the movie “The Lion in Winter”. The context is that Richard and his brothers are locked in the dungeon, knowing that the king is coming in to execute them. Richard tells his brothers to not cower but to take it like a man. His brother says “You fool, as if it matters how a man falls down”. Richard responds “When the fall’s all that’s left, it matters a great deal!”

Let’s not sit in solemn silence contemplating the fall. Let’s not quietly await the chopper. Let’s enjoy the ride while we are in it, living as fully as we can in our prisons, big or small. As hard as that is to do, it matters a great deal.

My mother was a gifted storyteller. For years, my sister and I were told stories at bedtime. One of them was about a king and his three daughters. The king loved his children and decided to pick one of them as the heir. He went to each of their palaces for dinner. At the end of the dinner, he asked them to describe how much he was loved. He made up his mind to hand over his kingdom to the one who valued him the most.

All his children welcomed him with great affection, and had scrumptious meals prepared. The oldest daughter said she loved him more than the biggest diamond in the kingdom. The middle daughter declared she loved him more than all the gold in the kingdom. The youngest daughter replied that she loved him more than salt. The king was very pleased with his two older children, and livid with his youngest’s response. He decided to divide his kingdom between the older children, and he banished his youngest child. He was hurt and disgusted that the youngest one cared so little for her father.

Years later, the king fell on hard times. His daughters drove him out of the kingdom. Heartbroken, he wandered from place to place. One day he arrived at a small kingdom tucked away in the Himalayan mountains. There appeared to be a feast set up for all the people to enjoy. Soon he was seated at a table with a huge plate heaped with a variety of food. He began eating and realised none of the food tasted good at all. In fact, hungry as he was, he was unable to eat any of it. He pushed his food away and got up to leave. Standing by the door was his youngest daughter. She took him by the hand and led him inside the palace. She explained how she had come to this kingdom after being banished, and made it her home. The king of that kingdom, impressed by her wisdom, had adopted her. Her father was very happy to hear about the good life his daughter had made for herself. He regretted deeply that he had driven her away, but her answer to his question still bothered him.

They talked for a while, and then her father asked about the feast being served to the people of the kingdom. Why was the food so tasteless, he asked. How was anyone meant to eat it? The young girl smiled and offered her father the same food again. “Try it now”, she said. To his surprise, it now tasted very good. “We can live without diamonds and gold, but can we really live without salt? I recognised you and had them serve you food with no salt in it”, she said. The old man realised his mistake and realised how deeply his daughter valued him.

Salt. A simple compound, so essential for a flavourful life. I’m extremely fortunate to still have a variety of salt to enrich my life. But the depth and flavour my mother provided to my life is irreplaceable. We argued all the time, often disagreed, but still talked every day. She was my salt.

At the end of the day, that’s what makes for an enriched life. Find your salt. And may it forever flavour your lives.

My mother is dead. A simple sentence, grammar tells us. A simple sentence that carries the weight of the world. A simple sentence that speaks volumes and yet holds a whole universe of things unsaid.

My mother is dead. She fell prey to the virus of our times, she’s now a statistic, a single count in the daily death toll published everywhere; a victim of her immune system and a microscopic foe.

I hate the word “victim” with all its implied passivity and submission; my mother was not a victim. She fought with all her strength. I like to believe that at the end, when she realised her body did not have any fight left, she made the choice to leave. To leave the physical, and enter the ethereal. We tell ourselves it’s better this way, that her body would have been too damaged to allow her to live as she would have wanted, that she wouldn’t have wanted to live the diminished life that would have been her lot.

My mother believed that the soul lives on, the soul leaves this miserable plane of existence behind and moves on towards higher planes, towards the ultimate, towards the light. She believed that grieving for the person hurts the soul, traps it on this plane, doesn’t allow it to move on in peace. She lived this belief when her parents moved on, celebrated their lives with great joy, and prayed for their souls to ascend to the light. She was a pure person, spiritual and deep. She eschewed rituals, reaching straight for the core instead.

I don’t know what I believe, I’m certainly neither pure nor spiritual. But I will honor her life and abide by her wishes to the best of my ability. I will celebrate the joy she brought to all those around her, I will continue to learn from her.

My mother is dead. But her spirit lives on. It lives on within her family. It lives on in this silly blog which she pushed me to write. If there’s one thing I’m eternally grateful for, it is that I started writing it while she was still here in the flesh. She was able to read a few pieces, and she loved them.

My mother is dead. But she will live on in our memories, she will live on in my writings, she will live on in her grandchildren, whom she adored. Her soul is free now, merged with the light.

My mother is dead. We live on joyously, to make her proud, to play the cards we have been dealt with grace. One day, we might meet again. I live in hope.

Gia came home from school one day in the second grade, thrilled to bits and jumping for joy. They had a tug of war contest that day, boys versus girls, and, needless to say, the girls won! “We were all pulling with all our might. I had my eyes closed and was pulling as hard as I could”. “Is it easier to pull with your eyes closed?” I asked. “No, it’s easier to hope with your eyes closed” she replied!

Of all our human emotions, and good lord we have a myriad, hope is by far the most treasured as well as the most maligned. Is it the greatest of all evil, or is it the saving grace by which we live our lives? Did Pandora release evil into the world and keep hope in the box to benefit humanity, or did she send all the good things back to the gods and keep hope as the worse evil of all for humanity?

Does hope make it impossible for us to accept the circumstances of our lives and so render us forever longing for something better, unable to be at peace? Or does it give us some solace and help us deal with what the gods have seen fit to send our way?

Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle and varies greatly not only amongst people, but also for the same person at different points in our life. Hope is defined as “the feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen” and “grounds for believing that something good might happen”. Expectation, desire, and reason – three things needed to generate that strange emotion, hope. But do you really need expectation and reason? Or does desire suffice?

Is there such a thing as false hope? Matt Santos, a character on my beloved show, The West Wing, declares that there’s no such thing as false hope, that hope is real. What absolute rot. Of course there’s false hope, we have all lived false hope. My ardent hope that an exam I was ill-prepared for would be canceled was always a false hope, there wasn’t the slightest chance it was going to come true, and I knew that, even as I hoped with all my heart that it would somehow come true. Someone who is on her deathbed but still hopes for a full recovery is certainly labouring under a false hope. Gia, whose eyes light up everytime we praise her for being responsible, hoping that today’s the day we will give her a much-longed for cell phone, is quite definitely cherishing a false hope.

But does the fact that the outcome is a foregone conclusion, make the feeling of hope any less intense? Is it truly “false”? Isn’t it still a desire for a particular thing to happen, whether or not there are strong grounds to expect that? So then that must mean that hope is real. Hope gives us courage to face our challenges and work towards the better future. Hope isn’t the greatest evil, it’s the greatest blessing known to man.

Mowgli longs to play with two dogs at the park. The dogs in question only have eyes for each other and completely and thoroughly ignore everyone else. It’s been two years and Mowgli has not given up hope. He still runs after them, barks and play growls with the same intensity, every single day. Hope is real.

The world seems to be in a downward spiral, every country seems to have a moutain of problems to tackle, seemingly insurmountable ones. The pandemic has rocked the world and completely altered the way we live our lives. There is hatred, deep divisions, a total mistrust in our fellow man. Through all the chaos, hope exists, hope is real, we cling to it for comfort. As my wise daughter said, it’s easier to hope with our eyes closed. And yet, here we all are, eyes wide open, hoping.

All of 11, our bright, witty child has filled our days with laughter and embarassment in equal measure. Just last week, whilst learning about Newton’s laws of physics, she mused that Newton was the first person to use an apple device! Her mind is constantly buzzing and she feels the need to share those thoughts and observations with the world at large. Perhaps the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree! At least I do my sharing quietly, from the safety of my computer. This child, on the other hand, thought it fit to declare in the middle of Target, “it’s not good to have black skin”. All of 3, she expressed this particular thought in loud, dulcet tones as she watched a black man walk past. Beetroot red, I pleaded with her to use her inside voice (a foreign concept to her), and asked what she meant by that. “My teacher said that they catch you and make you into slaves if you have black skin, so I think it isn’t good for you to have black skin.” Explanations followed, and all was well.

“Your children are not your children” says Khalil Gibran. Of all his writings, this is the piece that speaks to my soul. It is beautiful, poignant, moving, and, more importantly, absolves me of some of the responsibility for this little piece of life that came through me, but not from me.

“You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts” says Gibran, and how fervently I agree with him! I remember trying to get her to wear a jacket and being told with an exasperated sigh “sometimes humans don’t need jackets”! In pre-school, when one of the kids said Gia’s Indian food looked yucky, she responded “it may be yucky for you, but it’s not yucky for me, I like it, I will eat it, you eat something else”. No anger, no hurt feelings, just a self-assured statement of fact. If only we all truly lived this each unto his own philosophy. A couple of years later, in a restaurant, my 5 year old leaned over the table and, in a penetrating whisper, asked us if the girl on the next table was poor. The girl in question was wearing fashionably ripped shirt and jeans.

“You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you”. When Gia was 3, we gave some of her baby things to a friend. Noticing that she did not look thrilled about it, I praised her for sharing, hoping to instill some “good values”. “I did not share, you and Baba did” she said, and went off to play. It struck me the other day, that perhaps that’s at the heart of the issue some people have with democratic socialism. There is a lack of ownership on how to share, how much to share, with whom to share, and a complete lack of trust in the people making those decisions for them. This, of course, isn’t some earth shattering realisation to most people, but I’m slow, it takes a while for the gears to turn. Sharing your hard earned wealth, whether that’s money, property, or country, with people you neither like nor relate to, cannot be easy.

What if we turned the whole thing on its’ head? Make it about “what’s in it for me”. Stop talking completely about welfare for all, college for all, housing for all. Take the morality out of it. Make it about self-interest and self-interest alone. After all, it is in my best interest to have clean air to breathe, clean water flowing from my taps at all times. It is in my best interest that my children have a wonderful school with brilliant, compassionate teachers who want to be there. It is in my best interest if those teachers are paid well so you can attract the best and keep them happy. It is in my best interest that people in my community have their healthcare needs covered, if for no other reason than providing my business with healthy workers without my having to pay for them. Make it not about sharing the wealth, but about ensuring my well-being. After all, it benefits me if my society does well.

The problem comes when my society becomes so large that parts of it do not have any direct impact on my life. How does it matter to me, sitting comfortably in Florida, whether a school in NY city is crumbling? It doesn’t directly affect my life, so when asked to fork over a part of my income to pay for that school, it creates resistance. The whole thing comes down again to defining our tribes. The universe is my home, says a Marathi proverb. How we make that a reality is the question.

They say the first step towards solving a problem is acknowledging that it exists. It is with a heavy heart that I must admit that my darling dog Mowgli, the sweetest angel in canine form, is deeply prejudiced against certain fellow canines.

Mowgli has a rabid and (to my mind) irrational prejudice against boxers, bulldogs, and pugs of all shapes and sizes. If the dog in question has a squishy face and a flat nose, that dog must be the devil and must be squashed instantly. He has weighed the flat nosed dogs and found them wanting. He judges the dog, not by the content of its character, but by the squishiness of its face. Mowgli is racist, or is breedist perhaps the more appropriate word? Either ways, as a flaming liberal, it is acutely embarrassing to have to acknowledge this character flaw in a beloved family member.

It is an irrefutable truth that the closeness of a relationship determines the enormity of the offense. A strangers’ failings are because the dog in question is abhorrent and a blight on society. If dogs close to you exhibit the same characteristics, they are, of course, a victim of circumstances. Maybe, as a puppy, Mowgli was attacked by a raving herd of flat nosed bullies. Perhaps an ill-intentioned Boxer stole his bouncy ball, or an evil French bulldog, bent on unleashing terror, nipped at his feet.

Amongst my many failings, is an inability to speak dog. What wouldn’t I give to be able to talk to Mowgli, understand what his fear are when it comes to the nasally-challenged, get to root of the problem! Perhaps I could get Mowgli to look at each individual squishy-face that crosses his path as an individual canine, with hopes and dreams similar to his own. Perhaps Mowgli would be able to see the dog and not the breed, maybe Mowgli would learn not to put the faults and misdeeds of a few Boxers on the shoulders of every member of the group.

If only I could speak canine! That’s the only thing stopping me from being able to understand where Mowgli comes from, and being able to explain my point of view- the lack of a common language. Look at us humans, as long as we speak the same language, there are no problems at all in understanding where we come from, in working out our fears, in accepting fellow humans as human. If only we did all speak the same language!

Why does every man, woman, and child feel the need to broadcast their often worthless opinions to the world at large? Why indeed? The world at large certainly doesn’t care. It has hobbled along thus far, and will somehow muddle through without the benefit of my profound wisdom. So why write a blog?

I think the answer may lie somewhere in the realm of man being a social animal. Humanity has survived and thrived through connections with fellow humans. These connections were of course, crucial to actual survival of the species and the individual. But in times of safety and plenty, these connections meant a deeper, richer, more productive life, a life where art and culture thrived.

Of course for most people, these enrichments come via social contact. For socially awkward humans like me, a rich social life is anathema, and so I have to seek it in different ways. I used to love to write, many eons ago, and so why not try to revive that whilst also reaching out, in some way, to the world at large?

And so here it is – idle writings borne from an idle mind.

“Brown people have no right to move to white countries, they can visit, but then leave”. Never thought I’d hear these words in 2020, particularly from a Jewish woman, herself an immigrant from England. There were so many things to unpack in that sentence, but my blood was up and I waved my brown arms in front of her, demanding to know what about this skin made me unworthy to move to a “white” country. “Brown people spoil our culture, the culture of Europe, the art, language, music, all evolved to suit a white population.”

Those words ended an almost 2 hour conversation at the dog park, walking around a lovely lake, with dogs of all shape, sizes, colours, and, dare I say it, races, playing happily together. Yet here was this human, who, after months of lively conversation with me, was finally admitting that the colour of skin meant I shouldn’t be there, sharing the same country with her. (Predictably perhaps, her dog is snowy white, and mine is a beautiful brown!)

I came to the US in 2002, as countless other Indians did, for higher education. Looking back, I cannot believe how naïve and uninformed I was. Growing up in India in the 80s and 90s, my only exposure to America was through TV shows like Friends and Seinfeld. Everyone got along, everything was happy. Racism was over and done with in the 1960s I believed, when the South was finally desegregated.

Initially in college, I didn’t realise that things were not rainbows and flowers. I’d always wanted to do outdoorsy stuff and so joined a club that did just that. One of our first outings was moonlight kayaking at a state park in Hillsborough county. We were a group of about 8 kids, of which I, and a Pakistani boy, were the only 2 brown ones. We set off in 2 cars, no one in our car had a cell phone, and so we stopped at a payphone we saw on the way, outside a bar. Yes, there really was a time when cell phones weren’t ubiquitous and payphones were real. While one of our party was making the call, the rest of us were walking around the parking lot, stretching our legs. All of a sudden the door opened and a horde of men poured out. In reality, there were about 10-12 people, but in that moment, it seemed like a massive crowd. (I suppose I understand now why Trump thought the crowds at his inauguration were immense. In times of great emotion, one’s mind tends to exaggerate a bit!) They backed us up against the wall of the bar and demanded to know if we had put bombs in their trucks. There was a storm of profanity unleashed, in which the words “brown” and “terrorists” featured strongly. One of our white friends did some rapid talking and got us out of that situation. Even with that experience, I didn’t think racism was a widespread problem. I just thought this was a natural reaction of a few people to the horror of 9/11.

While I stayed in the world of academia, racism didn’t really touch me at all. Outside that world, things were very different. A superficial politeness, even friendliness, hid a world of dislike and distrust. Indians were not immune from this either. An alarming number of Indians treated black people and Hispanics in much the same way. An alarming number of Indians felt and professed superiority over other people based on the colour of our skin and the self-proclaimed richness of our culture.

At first I railed against this, aghast at the hypocrisy my people were demonstrating. Then I ranted against the caste system; perhaps that was to blame for this. But slowly I came to realise that there was a deeper cause at play, a primal cause. Man is a tribal animal, we identify with certain members as our tribe, fight for the survival of our tribe, and have done so since Homo sapiens first evolved. It’s ingrained in our DNA.

Tribalism certainly still has a myriad of benefits. I certainly identified with my Desi-ness; even as I ranted and railed against the racism I saw in some people, I accepted them as “my people”. So, how can we use this trait to our advantage? How can we make tribalism a powerful tool in the fight against racism and inequality?

I believe the answer lies in “spoiling the culture”. Very often, Indians tend to stay in our little worlds, content to find love and acceptance and a family amongst our own. Some of us who venture outside of that make rich, lasting connections with “others”. We spoil the culture of our non-Indian friends by introducing them to the wonders of Indian food, music, dance, and festivals. We light up their lives with Diwali, spread joy and laughter with Holi, spark playfulness and fun with kite festivals, and so much more.

It is impossible to hate that which we know and understand. We must reach out and make those connections, bring people into our world, reach into theirs, build bridges with food and festivities. Spoil the culture, and by doing so, our tribe increases, to engulf everybody. When we are one tribe, one nation, where’s the place for hatred and division?