... and the world matures, but what of its leaders?

It has been ages since I last wrote a blog. Truth be told, I am not an avid blogger at all. It takes some issues that are close to my heart before I can start typing.

Events of last couple of weeks have had issues galore. Issues from lands as diverse as America, South Africa, Australia and India. It is the issue of race and ethnicity. A issue that never goes away, but may seem latent at times.

First, let’s turn to the one speech that got me writing this – Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia. The speech came in the backdrop of intense media scrutiny of the speeches of his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. A wiki search on Rev Wright seems to suggest that he has been a proponent of black separatism. And with Barack Obama having strong relations with Rev Wright, this was a ripe issue for the media, and, dare I say all the Obama critics. Surely, the critics might think, the election would witness him playing a race card.

And how did Obama respond? He didn’t dodge the issue of race, of racial discrimination. He didn’t disown Rev Wright. He simply stated a truism that hot heads and despots always forget – that in such sensitive issues, nothing can ever be gained by being exclusive; that even people with blatantly biased views deserve a hearing. Because these bias are not the bias of an individual. They simply represent the microcosm of the society we live in. For the society to be progressive and harmonious we need everyone to work towards common goals, which in a broad sense are goals of equality and equal opportunity in the true sense (emphasis – equal opportunity in the true sense and not race based opportunity).

Unfortunately, not every politician, not in USA, not in India, will go the Obama way. Some will incite the divisive nature of the race (read caste for the Indian scenario) issue in order to polarize votes; others will simply sweep them under the carpet and let it be fodder for idle speculations and lighthearted quips.

Let’s now move towards South Africa – a country that espoused apartheid in face of condemnation from rest of the world. But that is history. Today, South Africa is changing, and changing fast. Their policy makers are trying to provide more opportunities for the underprivileged (read colored) community. A system of reservations (similar to India, in case of jobs and education) is being implemented and this has made its way to the world of sports also. The South African cricket board has a “transformation policy” that has certain “targets” in way of number of colored players in a cricket team. A noble aim, considering how people of color had been treated in past. All was well until the team was selected for twin tours of Bangladesh and India. Rumblings started when the team was to tour Bangladesh was chosen. The volcano erupted when the South African squad for its tour of India was announced.

Andre Nel, the big fast furious, in-your-face snarling fast bowler, who is white, was dropped. Charl Langeveldt, the sharp medium pacer who had made a mark in one-dayers, but who seemed to lack the “zing” of a test match bowler was picked. Langeveldt is not white. Nel was disheartened. He reportedly started thinking of quitting. Langeveldt was traumatized as well. After 5 years in the international circuit, playing regularly in the one-day cricket team, having access to the best coaching facilities in the country, he had been labeled as a “quota” player – an underprivileged player. This was a clear implication that he wasn’t considered good enough on “merit” for a test match, but was condescendingly chosen. Charl Langeveldt subsequently withdrew from the squad stating he was too emotionally drained at being thus labeled (unfairly). A genuinely decent person like Langeveldt didn’t deserve such treatment. Nor did Nel.

Rather aptly, the South African journalist Neil Manthrop, in his column, commented:

“If 1000 South Africans entered a road race, it would be incumbent on the organisers to ensure that everybody had decent shoes, that everybody had access to water stations, physio points and everything else that goes with road running. And it would also be right to set aside the majority of the 1000 places for disadvantaged runners, most of whom would be black - say 700. But the one thing you can't do, if you want to preserve the race's integrity, is stipulate how many black runners must finish in the top ten. And in cricketing terms, the top 10 is the national team”

Unfortunately, there are very few good men left in political leadership positions. Most tend to be like the South African cricket bigwigs – people who try to pacify their supporters (or vote banks). The Barack Obamas of this world are the exceptions.

We need to understand that deprivation and discrimination are not the one and the same. Sure, in a number of cases they are strongly related, but they are not the same. Deprivation can be targeted using financial means. Money can be invested in the poorer schools. Investments can be made in prisons and efforts made to guide those who were sucked into a murky world through poverty. But the issue of discrimination is one that has to be sorted out in the mind. To end discrimination, the mindset has to change.

In Obama’s words:

“But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.”

As Charl Langeveldt showed, as the South African cricketers (led by Ashwell Prince – yes, he is black too, in case you wanted to know) showed by passing a resolution condemning quotas in sports, the world is maturing. The majority of us would accept that wrongs have been committed in history. We would also accept that two wrongs don’t make a right. We would re-affirm our dream, phrased so aptly by John Lennon in his song "Imagine':

"… Nothing to kill or die for …
Imagine, all the people
Living life in peace.
Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one.”

I do believe that a large majority of us, the citizens of this world, are mature enough. But the question is, are our leaders mature enough? Have they managed to chuck away their vestiges of selfish goals of staying in power? Have they stopped deluding themselves that a world divided is the world best to rule.

Ironically, it seems, now most of the leaders have to be led.

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A footnote:

A March 2007 news article titled “Obama record may be a gold mine for critics” makes for interesting reading. The article starts off listing some of the “controversial” activities and voting tendencies of Barack Obama. But a careful reading shows that one fact repeatedly surfaced – no matter what Obama’s personal views be, he was always inclusive in his style of functioning – he always gave everyone a fair hearing. And this characteristic resonated again in his speech.

Personally, I give a thumbs up to Barack Obama – he spoke of issues openly and with finesse that should better be put under carpet by vote savvy politicians. If the world is to enter a golden era, then we need honest men at the helm. This is not to say that I give a thumbs down to the other candidates – I simply have no interest in American politics, but I do admire Obama’s strength of character.

The metal warrior

As the turmoil of life passes on,
A new dawn emerges on the horizon.
Each day one learns to live with pain,
And as we learn, life becomes serene.

Aye, I am not prattling and beating a can,
The fire of adversity doth really forge the man.
Things came to naught, took blows on the chin,
But I still stood upright, yeah that’s in my gene.

Fights I fought and my heart did I crush,
Yet never breathed a word, lest it create a hush.
All this to bring a smile on a pretty face.
You all know whom that face doth grace.

John Cahn, Willard Gibbs and Hume Rothery,
Were the persons who went before me.
We all loved the same pretty face,
Metal research is what the face does grace.

Fights I fought and blood I gave,
When I am gone, it will be emblazoned on my grave.
Here’s one who lived without fear,
And made alloys that resisted wear – he’s the true metal warrior.

Art, science, and a muddled mind of mine

Yet another of those weekends, spent in the metallography lab, where I was polishing another of those stubborn samples. I had been working on the sample for an hour now. The lab was pleasantly cool compared to the summer heat outside. This, coupled with the hypnotic droning sound of the polishing wheel, set my mind wandering, rather incoherently.

I could hear my professor from undergrad school drilling into my ear “polishing sample is as much an art as it is science”. Damn! That should have been good for me. I am a fairly decent artist. But this was one form of “art” I had absolutely no knack for. I cursed the sample for the umpteenth time and drifted into thoughts of the other forms of art that I was reasonably adept at, namely, pencil sketching.

Animals were my favorite subjects. I remembered the little fawn I had sketched as a 13 year old, which my art teacher had said was good enough to be put up for an exhibition. And that brought a silly smile on my face – thinking of babies, whether human or animal, always brings on those silly smiles on my face, dunno why. “Yes”, I told myself, “my animal sketching skills aren’t that bad”. And then I thought of the (attempted) self portrait – my latest artistic creation, a week ago. That was horrible. I had showed it to my labmate and asked him to identify it, and after a long hard look he had said, “You know, he sort of resembles our prime-minister” (our = chinese in this case, since my labmate happens to be from China). I winced in chagrin as I thought of this. The sample wobbled apologetically between my fingers. There was a slight “plop” and all of a sudden, my fingertips started feeling warmer and warmer.

Again I indulged in soliloquy – “I am not going to give up on sketching portraits”, I said. And I resolved to sketch one of my idols, Richard Feynman, once I was done polishing the sample. Feynman was a genius. He was a fantastic physicist, and it is said that three of his works – quantum electrodynamics (QED), super-fluidity of helium, and studies on friction at atomic scales – were good enough for a Nobel, although he got the Nobel only once for QED. But Feynman, apart from being a scientist was a superb artist too. As I thought of sketching Feynman, I thought of one of his anecdotes. Those days he was learning to sketch from a friend called Jerry. They struck a deal. Jerry was to teach Feynman how to sketch. In return, Feynman would teach physics to Jerry. Here is an excerpt on this from Feynman’s biography:

"I practiced drawing all the time, and became very interested in it. If I was at a meeting that wasn’t getting anywhere–like the one where Carl Rogers came to Caltech to discuss with us whether Caltech should develop a psychology department–I would draw the other people. I had a little pad of paper I kept with me and I practiced drawing wherever I went. So, as Jerry taught me, I worked very hard.

Jerry, on the other hand, didn’t learn much physics. His mind wandered too easily. I tried to teach him something about electricity and magnetism, but as soon as I mentioned electricity,” he’d tell me about some motor he had that didn’t work, and how might he fix it. When I tried to show him how an electromagnet works by making a little coil of wire and hanging a nail on a piece of string, I put the voltage on, the nail swung into the coil, and Jerry said, “Ooh! It’s just like fucking!” So that was the end of that."

As I thought of this anecdote, I started laughing like a jackass. I felt a slight tap on my shoulder. And my labmate’s voice floated “Pratik!! What are you doing?” Good question. What was I doing indeed. Reverie broken, I saw that the sample had popped out from my finger, and was lying on the table. And there I was, polishing my finger nails against the polishing wheel. It was easy to understand the plopping sound, and the warmth at my fingertips. :-)

I realized why I wasn’t such a good experimentalist. Like Jerry, my mind wandered too easily. I pretend to be a scientist, and actually manage to do some science too, but deep down perhaps the core is made of a different clay.

The sum of small things.

A dreary day drew to a close. It was almost midnight, and I was planning to hit the hay fairly soon, although, normally midnight isn’t all that late an hour for me. A nice numbing sleepiness was slowly beginning to cloud my mind. The last vestiges of the first draft of a pending research proposal remained; and the raging debate in my drowsy mind was whether to plough on for another half an hour, or shut shop and go home.

And that’s when the phone rang. Someone was speaking to me in Oriya. The voice sounded familiar, although I couldn’t recognize it immediately. And then all of a sudden, everything fell in place. It was a childhood friend of mine, who had recently moved to Milwaukee. It was a pleasant surprise indeed. We had a nice chat about the world at large, about our lives in US and about the halcyon days of our childhood that seemed increasingly getting tinted with sepia and chrome.

The one refrain that crept in was the increasingly hectic pace at which life was moving, nay, hurtling along. A poem, which we read about 14 years ago during school days flashed through my mind. It’s a lovely poem called “Leisure”, by William Davies. The sum and substance of the poem was how men missed out on the simple pleasures of life in an increasingly hectic world. Somehow, that struck a tender chord somewhere within – and got me thinking about the small details which made life so fascinating.

Those were days, when a few innocent blokes would head off into the countryside, riding their rickety bicycles. And we would stumble on a decrepit building. For the next few days, that would be our fortress; many a sunsets were enjoyed together from atop the “fortress”. Today though, leave aside countrysides, I hardly ever step out of the main university campus. And when I do, it is with a chip on my shoulders – that I have to travel around. Have to. Why “have to”? Somewhere down the line, the free wheeling spirit started ebbing away to such an extent that enjoying the simple beauties of life has become more of a conscious effort. These days, we discuss nature and all its beauty. Hidden in these discussions is a stifling sophistication – a sophistication whose origins lie as much in hearsay from “sources” including colleagues, travelogues and media, a conciousness for the need to unwind, as much as from our own experience. How starkly this contrasts with the naiveté of days gone by, when the cooing of a pigeon would result in us imitating it unconsciously, even as we indulged in other tasks; when the sound of flowing water would draw us towards the stream automatically, like a magnet drawing an iron. We were nature’s naturals then, without being a Touchstone.

Adrift from nature, even the behavior patterns have changed. The small niceties of life remain unacknowledged. Today, birthday wishes often get acknowledged only through a single bulk mail; flash back to late 80s and early 90s, such a behavior would have been a cardinal sin. Birthdays were what we kids waited for all year round, and to treat a birthday so lightly was something sacrilegious. Something as simple as sharing books or music cassettes was fun. These days though, share a musical with someone, and it is often days before he or she cares to listen to it; and another few days before he/she thinks of acknowledging it, by which time it becomes hazy as to who shared it in the first place.

In a world powered on more by money and "success", we keep losing out on something which is much more priceless – namely, the simple pleasures of small things in life. The sum of small things keeps piling up. And just as the integral of an infinitesimal quantity dx equals a big finite x, the sum of small things equal a huge chunk of joy, a lifetime of joy in fact; pity, that this is exactly what we lose out on today. Oh! for the innocence of yore and Auld Lang Syne.

The easy going gambler

It was my early days in Ames. It had been a hectic morning - any paper work always is hectic - with all the check in procedures, although, to be fair, the folks handling the entire thing were very very helpful. Having finished my lunch, I headed off to the department, eager to meet my PhD research advisors and labmates for the first time.

Our research group was small and nice - 5 graduate students and a post doc. "Hi, I am Pratik." An innocuous enough introduction on my part. Others introduced themselves too. When asked my full name, I replied "Pratik Kumar Ray". An eyebrow was raised; a slight smile flickered on a face. And I, the ever observant (??) fella, raised an enquiring eyebrow as well.

Pat came the answer from my Turkish labmate - You know, "Pratik", in Turkish, means "easy going", and "Kumar", in Turkish, means "gambler". And thus, the easy going gambler was born.