Travel, Read, Conserve

A few days after we booked our Big Island trip, Mauna Loa (the largest active volcano in the world, located in Big Island) started erupting. My social media feed was flooded with incredible video footage of the lava spewing from Mauna Loa, and getting closer to Saddle Road, the main connecting highway between the western and eastern sides of the Big Island. We were a little nervous, and indecisive whether we should cancel the trip, but decided to take a risk with the hope of experiencing live volcano sightings, a once in a lifetime opportunity. It did not really turn out as exciting, honestly was an anticlimax - Mauna Loa stopped erupting just a few days before we left 🙁. While we were able to see the fissures and lava/ash trail of the latest eruption, explored the steam vents and cinder cones on Saddle Road, compared and read up on pāhoehoe and ʻaʻā lava patterns and textures, shocked by the devastation of the 2018 Kilauea volcano eruption taking out whole neighborhoods, and marvele...

  M  Fall morning- weekday. Squeezing in a walk between meetings with half an eye on my phone for work messages.  On my way back, met this elderly lady walking her three dogs - I have seen her before, always with her dogs. Stopped to pet her dogs, two sisters and a brother. Dogs wanted more attention, and we started talking. About the weather, her ten-year-old dogs coming from the same litter, her walking times.  The conversation geared from love for her dogs, to some owners mistreating their pets and the general unkindness and cruelty in the larger world. A moment of empathy between two women. Floodgates opened. Her thoughts went back - to the early years of her marriage and her verbally abusive, narcissistic husband. Forced pregnancies. His attempts to manipulate her, the children. Years after their divorce,  him continuing to threaten her and disrupt her life. Showing up wherever she moved.  Shared our common fear of the upcoming elec...

2021 was a strange year, different from a normal year, but also very different from 2020. It was a year that started with fatigue. Fatigue from nine months of isolation, anxiety, hyper awareness and gloom. Covid, US elections, climate disasters, uprising of the BLM movement - emotional exhaustion while navigating the cycles of hope and despair. But we are eternally hopeful as a species. In December 2020, we still tried to list our 2021 resolutions, looked back at the positives and lessons learnt, confident that the end of the pandemic will soon be in sight. Vaccines and a new Presidential chapter were on the horizon, making us optimistic, a little relieved, along with some skepticism. In general, we are able to separate the happenings in the larger world from our personal lives. The last two years have been an anomaly - the two worlds have crossed, and how! The global pandemic entered our bedrooms. It ruled every decision from last minute travel cancellations with regulations changing...

বাইশ বছর এক চাকাতেই বাঁধা , রাঁধার পরে খাওয়া, খাওয়ার পরে রাঁধা' - অগুন্তি বার মা-য়ের মুখে এই লাইন টা শুনেছি। সঙ্গে যেন ছোটো একটা প্রায় না শুনতে পাওয়া আক্ষেপের শ্বাস। রবীন্দ্রনাথের বহু কবিতা মা স্মৃতি থেকে আবৃত্তি করতেন, কিন্তু এটার সঙ্গে ছিল একটা আম্তিক যোগাযোগ। মা বললেই সাধারনত যে শান্ত,স্নিগ্ধ, সংসারে নিমজ্জিত মূর্তি মনে ভেসে আসে, আমার মা তার থেকে একটু ব্যতিক্রমী চরিত্রের ছিলেন। অনবদ্য রান্নায় সবাইকে মুগ্ধ করে, নিপুন হাতে অতিথি সেবা করে, একটা ঝকঝকে তকতকে বাড়ি সামলে, প্রতিদিন দুপুরে খুঁটিয়ে খুঁটিয়ে কাগজ আর গভীর রাত অবধি বই পড়ায় খুব একটা ফাঁক পড়তে দেখিনি। তাতে হয়ত কখনো সখনো কাজ থাকত পড়ে, হত অনাবশ্যক দেরি, তবু আমাদের কাছে ওটাই মায়ের চেনা জানা ভালবাসার চেহারা | বহুবার গল্প শুনেছি , ছোটবেলায় মা আমাকে রেখে 'মহিলা সমিতি' তে যেত তাতে আমি আমার আপত্তি প্রকাশ করেই বোধয় সে জায়গার নামকরণ করেছিলাম 'ময়লা সমিতি '! আমাদের চেনা জানা পরিসরে কারো মা -কেই সে সময় তেমন ভাবে ঘর থেকে বেরিয়ে সভা সমিতি, মিটিং মিছিল এ অংশগ্রহণ করতে দেখিনি, তাতে ...

I recently read these two bestsellers in succession,  stories of striking women who keep the reader spellbound through their journeys. ' Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup ' by John Carryrou ' Where the Crawdads Sing ' by Delia Owens. These two books do not have much in common - their tones, setting, mood, characterization are all  poles apart from each other.  The main characters live in different times, different places, and very different circumstances. Elizabeth Holmes (Bad Blood) is a ruthless egotistic ambitious 21st century tech whiz chasing an unrealistic dream in Silicon Valley. Kya Clark (Where the Crawdads Sing) is a shy, gentle, abandoned child growing up in a marshland by herself in 1960s, and through prejudice and poverty, educates herself to become a naturalist and author. But what makes these two women similar is their grit, resilience and uncompromising characters - for better or worse. There is also a sense of vulnerability that ...

  The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by   Daniel James Brown   ( Harmony, balance and rhythm. They`re the three things that stay  with you your whole life. Without them civilization is out of whack. And that's why oarsman when he goes out in life, he can fight it, he can handle life. That's what he gets from rowing. ~ George Yeoman Pocock (One of the most engaging characters in the book) As a non sports enthusiast, with zero idea about rowing except admiring rowers on Lake Washington waters I am not sure what drew me to this book. But as a Seattle resident, I am inherently drawn to names such as Álki or Sequim, and this book definitely thrilled me with references to all the favorite spots around Seattle, and above all the University of Washington and Husky references on every other page. There is a second thread running in this book - Hitlerś Germany - Berlin being the venue for the 1936 Olympics. The Berlin...

  2020 is the year that cannot be passed by without reflecting on it. It has been a year that united the entire globe by a phenomenon that is probably that single event in the history of mankind that has crossed all boundaries and impacted all countries, because of how connected and mobile the world is today. All over the world, humans lived through the same dread, same anxiety, same ups and downs of hope and despair. For those of us that were fortunate to be not impacted directly by the pandemic, it was a year of revelations and forming new habits. As I was hearing in the year end podcast from Shankar Vedantam’s series ‘Hidden Brain’ - old habits are ‘automatic and mindless’, while forming new ones needs us to be ‘ conscious and mindful ’. And that is probably why 2020 has been so difficult for us. We had to rethink and rewire our everyday life. Find new ways to stay engaged, stay productive and come out relatively unscathed. On a personal front, while I navigated several changes...