Technology for good

We start with 3 apparently unrelated incidents:
- Last week I decided to keep some time aside everyday on the really high-end design world I used to be part of. Seven years back I moved to Auroville and pretty much stopped working on designing analog and RF chips, the stuff I was trained for, through my undergrad and PhD at I.I.T.M, Columbia by truly phenomenal professors (KRK, Tsividis), who helped me love electronics.

- I was observing the WhatsApp chat discussion of my college group where it was remarked that technology was value neutral (e.g. facebook) and its the people who use it who are to blame.

- I was contacted by my mentor (who works on development) about a report on the increase in child abuse online at a time of Carona virus and an AI intervention that was aimed to reduce it and what I could do to support such interventions.

A recurring question on my mind has been about the claim of technology being value neutral. I realized my question is perhaps not about technology itself i.e. I'm not talking about a cellphone (though we can now talk to one!), a water filter, a 100 GBs data network, an automatic machine gun, or an atomic bomb (though the last two are perhaps questionable). My question is more of the people behind the technology who built/create/sustain them, engineers like me who make a choice, or do we?

It made me reflect where I have been touched by technology as part of my personal journey in the last 7 yrs at Auroville.
- I first used basic electronics to give children something to tinker with switches, batteries, LEDs, 7 segment displays, sensors, arduinos, etc. This helped children get curious, work with their hands, think logically and be creative.
- Of course I used the internet to learn about stuff I could do with children and document it (at least in the initial couple of years) before starting STEM land - Aura Auro Design (when you youth started blogging and I stopped blogging).
- STEM land-Aura Auro Design that I started  5 years back was created on the backbone of technology. It is an entity where youth could volunteer with children in the mornings and be able to learn and work on technology in the afternoon. Here I learned and used python programming along with the youth. Again we used Coursera online learning and training platforms to learn. In time we also offered courses in programming, hands on electronics and so on.
- At STEM land the centers we created with children we used programming with children to learn to think mathematically and for them to improve their reasoning and logical ability. As a way to express their mastery with something other than examinations, by creating projects in areas their learned. We also used some robotics with children and over the years children have built projects like the electronic voting machine as part of the process of understanding elections.
- With a bit of an effort Isai Ambalam school was connected to the NKN that helped us get access to materials and videos online for children. Most of the material we could put online was thanks to this. We also put a couple of computers in classrooms for teachers and children to have a way to look things up quickly. Some of the children even used these to access videos on how to draw, solve the rubiks cube, and learned these. Overall all the access to the internet and putting out information has been valuable it even helped set up the Support a child program that is maintained by the youth of STEM land and gets in almost half the funds needed to sustain the school.
- About a year back we started working on a group ramping up on VLSI layout so a few youth are supported through this. About 9 months back we also started engaging with Quilt.AI an ethical product research company this brought in some data-science and again programming to show data and trends and scraping. In parallel a group also started on content creation desk research and blogging based on data research and AI data. We now have three tech groups and one content group of youth and all part of a learning organization that is supporting personal journeys of youth learn a skill, mature into looking at their socialization and discover what they really care for - their purpose. As a learning organization time can be put aside for meditation, leadership, etc. In a year on an average we spend a month or more on working on oneself. Also built in are contributions to the community both in terms or time and monitory.
To me while these are not high-end technology and (perhaps some are use of technology), but I consider them technology for good - used for learning, growth of children and the youth. The intent was to use technology for good, be it the projects we or children make, courses we offer or the skills, competencies and inner capacities acquired when working with companies.

Coming back to the three unrelated incidents, in the third, I attempted to explain to my mentor that my expertise as an engineer was not AI but in creating core hardware technology and what I could do was point her to those in my organization dealing with AI. It was nice to know, that the people we are working with can address responsible use of technology.

The second incident I think is oft repeated by us engineers ourselves not necessarily because we believe every product is value neutral, but because it makes our life easier to accept the larger system that govern the products we work on - markets, investors, customers, etc. I wonder if the more educated and specialized we get, 'professionally' we are left with lesser choices in the 'real world'. One solution of course has been what I did the last 7 yrs, not let my specialization be my prison and respond with what was needed for what was around me. Even this year, the choice I am making is to  keep my skills up-to-date, understand new processes, methodologies and technologies to appropriately guide the team that is building up here that works on tech for good.

I am (was?) a fairly good engineer (I have the best paper award at ISSCC and over a billion products show for it) and the question for myself after 7 yrs of working on 'technology for good' is what choices will exist for me for doing the same in the 'real world'.

As Ani joked (as only a spouse can), brain the size of a planet what are you doing with it, in response to when I am in a thoughtful or pondering over are how to support the youth and children I work with make more progress and utilize the opportunities presented to them (perhaps, to 'my' expectations), how to resolve an impasse in my community (where I live and work) that could help it be at its full potential. Things that I need Vipassana for, that allow me to see things as they are, that I can create opportunity for growth, but growth is a choice and that the longer you live in a place the bigger any problem looks! To address them, I still myself, free myself from expectation, create space for others to breath and hope for a quiet insight.
Issues in the technical problems in comparison are significantly well behaved than human problems and looking inside is limited to clearing a cluttered mind. But, perhaps, applying the same methodology as I have to human problems even when I am in a 'pure technology' world may give other solutions than I have found in the past.

A Reflection on “Nothing can be Taught”

I reflected upon my interpretation at different times as a teacher.

of Sri Aurobindo’s: 'The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught.'¹

When I started teaching I wanted to be a good teacher. I planned my classes, used many resources and TLM (Teaching Learning Material), had many classes with activities, attempted to open the minds of children, and took a lot of notes. A workshop called the 'Stewardship for a New Emergence' helped me notice my growth as a teacher and capture the fleeting insights - it helped me be more patient and capable of listening to children. At this time, I interpreted the first principle of teaching as the learning I was going through to be a better teacher and a better person through my experience. I took the principle to refer to spiritual experiences that are our own. For example, in a typical classroom I would teach different points of view, or of looking at something to support diversity or handle misconceptions and children would work with TLM and at times the computer².

As I continued working with children I noticed that my best classes were not the ones I prepared the most. Some classes had a flow and some, in spite of planning (and a few because of much planning) were hard. An almost identical incident or comment from children that derailed one class would have no impact in another. I noticed that this had less to do with the environment around me or what children experienced at home and more to do with the environment I was carrying with me to the classrooms and who I was being while I was in the class. I also noticed children were learning more when I was instructing less. Practically, my classes were getting more activity based with much peer learning and less lecturing. I often used computers with children creating projects to learn the material. I read up on constructivist theory and learned that each child (and adult) builds their own knowledge and I only needed to create an environment to let learning happen. I noticed that it was my 'I have a PhD and can show other ways of doing this' ego that was coming in the way of learning and was able to consciously make a choice to let opportunities to teach go, and let opportunities for learning flourish. My interpretation of Sri Aurobindo’s first principle at that time was that this also applies to practical learning through a constructivist approach³.

Some time has passed since then and I no longer see spiritual growth and practical learning as two distinct applications of the first principle of true teaching. It appears that every true learning is with the engagement of our entire being and is spiritual and helps us follow our core. Practically, now the environment I am working to create at STEM Land is such that a session with children is about self-discovery. It’s not about a procedure or the underlying concept, but about their experience. The environment offers choice and looks to the children to take responsibility for their learning. I do instruct, children do projects, but it happens when the need comes up from the children⁴.

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1. Sri. Aurobindo, (1910) The Human Mind, Karmayogin.

2.  Ranganathan, S. (2014) Program to encourage critical thinking in children – 2013-2014. Grant report by Udavi School to SAIIER.

3.  Ranganathan S., Anand B., Kothandaraman S. and Gunasekar V. (Dec 2015) Using programming with rural children For Learning to think mathematically, epiSTEM 6 HBCSE, IITB.

4.  Ranganathan S., STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) Land and Resource Center (2015) Grant proposal to SAIIER.

On work and play...

At an educational meeting we went about making a distinction between 'work and play'. The closest I could come up with was that work was an activity being done that is useful for others and play was an activity not meant to be useful. Of course, I knew it was flawed, self-work is useful for others intangibly and for professional cricketers play is actually work. Of course this doesn't start to capture where work and play seem all mixed up! I could not define it in terms of enjoyment as there have been many times when I enjoyed myself being at work and at play.

An incident with the children helped me understand this distinction differently.

While creating an animation of the Earth going around the Sun in an ellipse (with the Moon rotating around the Earth) the children had use the computer to create the solution for ellipse equation they got from geogebra. It was all done and they had created the following animation. 
(If you are having trouble viewing animations please update your flash player).

Here is a short clip of the part where children noticed that the earth was rushing past at the top extreme in the program that they had created.




I had felt that being able to solve a complex algebraic equation was enough of a challenge and the children had already spent a week on this project and would want to move on, but the glitch really bothered the children, they were unsatisfied with what they had created. This created an opportunity for conversation about slopes and how things were changing differently when solving in one part of the curve, but faster in the other part of the curve. That we needed to compensate with more points where things were changing faster. It took another three days till the children were happy with their work and it looked like the one below:



On reflecting on the incident I learnt that its play when you do something that you don't have to. Of course this definition seems obvious when you are at 'play'. But, it applies equally to 'work'. The moments where I felt I had done something special were the moments when I did what I had to, but pondered over it and did something more. There were already solutions and I didn't have to do more, but I made work play and kept going. 

It helped me connect to the idea of the next right answer, the pursuit of excellence in getting an answer and continuing to look makes work play.

What a world we would create if all our children could make their work into play.

Questions of children

I started a science class once a week with young children in Udavi.

I asked him what science was and the quick answer was experiments, then a study of living beings. I explored if they could tell a living being from a non-living being by creating a rule that we could apply. The children came up with various aspects they could think of it moves (you mean like a fan or car?),  it talks (like a tree?), soon the children got the hang of what was going on a conversation got going where a child would propose a rule and anyone who disagreed would come up with an example of why they disagree that the rule is always valid.

They made a table
Rule for Living and non-living:
Rule              Example(s) of Agreement     Example(s) of disagreement
Breathing      Humans, dogs                         Do plants breath?

It was interesting that even through children said living things - they first associated it with humans, then with animals, then plants and then non-living things....
It also took them some time to think in terms of examples of agreement of disagreement. Some of the children initially wrote living things in the first column and non-living things in the second column which were  in agreement with the hypothesis. It appears more tempting to classify than to see if it is relevant to a rule...

We then moved to questions they had, do plants breath. What is breathing? If its taking oxygen and giving out carbon-di-oxide (like a fire?) then its one answer and if its taking in air its another. This led us to doubts and questions children had and how as humans we are prone to have doubts and are willing to put an effort in resolving these doubts, perhaps, that is what science is. I wanted to hear from each child so we started talking about doubts that children had about the world, here are some of them:
- How can you tell if a fish is male or female?
- Where does an electric eel get its electricity from?
- Why do birds fly and not humans?
- How exactly do gills help fish get oxygen?
- Why do plants use carbon-di-oxide and give oxygen and why do humans do the opposite?
... and then it exploded, everyone had something to ask and add.

I suggested that we make one large list of all of them and go through them. Looks like a nice curriculum for that class to me.

I also noticed there were many fish questions, I wondered if it was natural or because the new building has a pond within it.

It takes you 40 yrs to get...

well, of course to 40 yrs of age!

It has also taken me time to figure out that I want to create a learning space of constant growth that makes Science, Math and Engineering natural and fun.

I have already been working on the basis of such a space for the last couple of yrs and now with the team at Aura Auro am ready to create STEM Land.

STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics)  Land will
- Work with over 100 children from multiple schools for 4-5 days a week on Math and Science using hands on work.
- Work to transform the culture of right answer and 'sums' to discussions on approaches and patient problem solving
- Remap curriculum starting from 6-9 grades to activities and projects using technology, puzzles, games, etc
- Serve as a teachers resource center for Math and Science teaching aids and activities

In short provide an alternative model to the current education system.

I need your help in raising funds for STEM Land. My present target is 23 lakhs over the coming year. Here is a detailed concept note on what STEM Land is about and here is the budget for the same.

Please send me an email if you can support the initiative. Donations in India are 100% tax deductible.

Truth and love,
Sanjeev
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Shifu presses the pause button

Shifu decided that our life was too hectic and even Ani was getting back from her Somatics course she fell quite ill.

The extent of her illness was initially unclear as we called the local vet to come and take a look at her. He felt that there was an infection and gave her an antibiotic shot. She showed no progress, wasn't eating. By the third day she was completely listless and Ani and I went to the vet clinic in Pondy to have her treated. The first day they were closed but made an exception and gave her 100 ml of drip.
The next day they diagnosed her as having a version of tick fever. On the second and third day to the clinic her poop started to show blood. 
Unfortunately, one assumption (hemoglobin low) and one inaccurate lab test (platelets were 1/20 and it showed a normal number) led them to the conclusion that her kidneys were chronically failing and the infection was a secondary issue. It had already been 6 days since she had been sick and I called Shifu's vet in Bangalore. 
Having known Shifu, the doctor felt that she she was young (5 yrs) and generally healthy and a kidney condition is likely to be temporary in response to an illness and she needed continued support.

This started Shifu and my adventure to Bangalore. At least that's what I called it for Arham as I occasionally took pictures of what was going on with us... partly, for him to to have some idea no matter what happened. We reached Bangalore on 21st night.

On 22nd morning was a long drip session and I just sat and pet shifu for 4-1/2 hrs as she lay getting drips. They also took blood for various tests including a new kit that detects if its one of the big four:
Escherichia
Anaplasma
Heart Worm
Borrelia/Lime disease (not sure which of these two)

That evening from the blood tests the doctors felt that the kidneys were under stress primarily due to the illness and should recover in time, but they remained tentative given the discrepancies in the report. They felt that we would be in the clear only when we did a test a couple of days later to see the numbers improving or at least consistent with either report.

They also gave some medicated dog food (k/d diet) that does not require much digestion to see if Shifu can eat on her own. Shifu had not been eating for a while and the drips + visitors + smell of the dog food caught her fancy. She was able to eat what was prescribed (and wanted more)

 

The vets were very happy with her progress with eating and on 23 reduced the drips to a single slow one with her medicines and asked us to slowly increase food intake. They were also feeling a little more confident that the kidneys had not failed and started the antibiotic treatment (imizol).

In the evening Ajay and Neha visited us. Neha overcame her fear of dogs and sat next to Shifu. Shifu dosed off and we also saw her first dream since she had been sick and wondered what  she was chasing in her dream.

Shifu also felt comfortable enough to venture into mom's house (abet briefly) and checked out the bed.

By 24th Shifu was looking better and initially refused to sit down for her single drip but eventually let it go. The doctors also took a blood sample to check the consistency of the reports and to see if there was any improvement in Shifu.

 

Today on 25th the reports confirmed that her hemoglobin in holding and the total cell count has gone up consistent with recovery. The platelets continue to be low that the doctors feel will improve as the month long treatment for tick fever continues.

We still need to go to see the vet for a day or two, but hope its primarily down to medication at home from that point and head back home to Auroville by the weekend.

Thank you all for your emails/messages about Shifu, please consider this post as an update :). Special thanks to Arham, for who, the pics on this blog were taken.

I'm exhausted, but getting better.

Stewardship for a new emergence : Monica Sharma (Stage 1, Session 1)

From April 2013 (two months before our move to Auroville) I started attending the 'Stewardship for a new emergence' workshop conducted by Monica Sharma.One of the teachers from Isai Ambalam was interested in the workshop, but felt that she needed support at the workshop. This is where I came into picture, I was also moving to a new place a workshop seemed like a good place to explore what all is happening at Auroville.

Monica worked with the UN on large scale sustainable change (and leadership program) in 60 countries. My blog is called small is beautiful...and yet I found myself at the workshop again. I realized that it was because I had imbibed the workshop and used it as a template to organize my own classes and it was a chance to learn more and contribute to the growth of others.

Practically, the workshop is organized as three sets of three days each. They are spaced out a month apart for practice.
I am supporting the workshop this year as a practitioner-coach (PC). The sessions were similar to the ones I attended earlier, but I saw them differently and could see the common threads and the connections between the areas covered in the workshop. My insights were deeper and clearer. Each course was followed by an additional day for Stage 2 where we covered additional areas building on what we had done before.

The workshop offers a set of practical tools, but when I use them I find that I need to be grounded in my wisdom space (or connected to my higher consciousness). The method of the workshop is based of inquiry, sharing insights and planing and looking at work in progress. When others share their insights it often helps to make your own implicit ideas explicit resulting in your own insights.

I'm listing the work in areas/sessions to give a hint of what is to come and possibly encourage people to participate in such workshops at Auroville or elsewhere in the world:

Stage I (7-9 Feb 2014)
1) Self: The first effort is made to understand oneself and look beyond our philosophies and feelings and understand who we are being when we do our best work. It is exploring the qualities we embody when we believe we did our best work or we were at peace with our work. This quality was called stand in the workshop and it was a space of possibility that we could connect with. Harmony, happiness, equality, contentment, self-awareness, self-expression, oneness, integrity, love, unity and self-realizations were all the stands of various people.

One way of identifying the stand was by looking at what we are working towards and what we would be left with when all there is to be done is accomplished. Another approach was to find out the points of most joy and harmony in our life and looking at what we were embodying at that time.

For some it helped to think of a person (they did not know personally) that they looked up to and think of the quality they admired.

My stand in the last workshop was happiness. In this workshop I realized the need to add self-awareness to happiness.

2) Fears
We dealt with our greatest fears some of them were - not being good enough, not being in control, not being recognized, failure, being misunderstood, insecurity, rejection, backstabbing, loosing confidence, discouragement.
Whenever something goes wrong our fight-flight-freeze reptilian brain immediately takes us to this default space as a protection mechanism (Amygdala hijack). In order to transcend the fears we need to be capable of sourcing our inner power (working from our stand).
Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act in spite of fear. The way to deal with a fear is to notice it, name it and let it go and to be in action.
A quote of Chief Seattle of the Suquamish Indians - "When you know who you are, when your mission is clear and you burn with the inner fire of unbreakable will; no cold can touch your heart; no deluge can dampen your spirits" was shared in the session that I found an appropriate way to close this session.

3) 4-profiles
We examined the 4-profiles we possess and use - wisdom (working of inner guidance), social (assumption and conditioning of society), personality (personal style of expression), professional (skills, successes, service, etc). An important insight was that I often think that I am working from my wisdom space, but it is distorted by my other profiles. 

4) Background conversations: This is the most pervasive listening of - I am right and you are wrong. These are judgement we make of something a person is saying while they are saying it e.g. right/wrong, agree/disagree, not responsible, either/or, not enough, us/them. There was an exercise with a partner where we tried one conversation with and without this judgement to see its impact.

An important insight is that response has its place, but only after we are able hear someone with an open heart.

5) We saw a wonderful film on background conversations. I noticed that this time when I watched it I observed a lot of subtle application of the 4-profiles not only verbally, but also in body language.

All through the sessions individuals offer insights of what they have learnt which were extremely useful for my own growth as they make explicit what is sometimes implicit.

6) System Principles
 We saw the movie the story of stuff to look for principles of system shifts. Some principles were making the invisible visible (externalizing costs), looking at the results chains and having strategies that can impact various points on the chain, use of media and advertising, creating matrices to check what is important, mindset changes, need to state explicitly the guiding principles (qualities/values) of the system.

7) Designing my breakthrough initiative for sustainable and equitable change: 
Having reminded the participants of self and system changes we look at the conscious full spectrum response (CFSR) worksheet. CFSR attempts to connect underlying technical solutions with system shifts (workplace, government, society), to our inner capacities and that of the project that would make these actions possible.

In essence, the worksheet helps answer the questions:
a) What are the measurable deliverables: what problem are you solving? (technological solutions)
b) What systems will you need to shift to make the solution sustainable? (systems solutions)
c) What are the core values of your project? (personal/shared stewardship)
d) What inner qualities will be the basis of your actions? (personal stewardship)
at the same time and harmonize these spaces within you.

I found it was much easier to fill out CFSR this time and found that my work with the children and the youth were the same as related to inner capacities and principles of the project - self-awareness, confidence and self-expression.

I also learnt how to support individuals to use CFS by focussing on the questions - what was easy, what was difficult and what can you see or do now that you could not before. It also helped to remind people that it is important to apply the method to day-to-day work rather than for a Sunday morning hobby. The idea is to change/transform yourself in your workspace (hence transforming the workspace itself). Taking a real project makes the exercise real.

This work was the core of the workshop and after people wrote out their ideas they shared it at their tables with a partner and with the PC. It is iterative work and as one fills one section e.g. about embodied qualities with activities themselves could change and vice versa.

8) Complaints as commitment:
Stewardship centres around changing conversations towards progress. The first technique of viewing a complaint as a commitment. We first learnt to classify complaints - recreational complaints - fun (not gossip, not put-downs), expressive complaints - someone just wanting to be listened deeply to, complaints that are commitment for action.
It is important not to take things personally. You need to find your stand and be able to see what the individual is committed to that can benefit the project. There were many examples given and we also enquired in ourselves the complaints we had received and tried to look for the commitment behind those complaints.

9) Inspiring others to commit to action:
For the project one was asked to identify who they would want to talk to in order to move the project (collegue, groups, etc). Methodology connect with your stand, connect with your audience, state your work, make a committed request (specific request, specific group/people, specific time frame). As a PC I organized sessions for people to cover these in about three minutes. This was followed by feedback (10 below) from another individual and a PC.

10) How to give feedback that grows people:
There was a very specific way we gave feedback.
Ask if the person wants your feedback.
Use only use:
a) increase
b) decrease
c) retain
These words have been found to be sufficient to convey what needs to be done without making it personal.

It was interesting that it appeared to be sterile for some people in the beginning, but as they started using it and receiving feedback many found it useful and non-threatening.

11) Conversations for generating action
Promises: for specific actions in specific time frames.
Committed responses: does not always need to be yes even if you can't. Effective responses can include declining, counter-offer or counter-request, promise to respond at a specific later time, accept.
We covered the common breakdowns in applying committed actions - including lack of specificity, asking for behaviour change rather than action, penalizing others for declining requests or revoking promises.

12) Stages of leadership/stewardship
As adapted from Likert-Emberling this conveys the various stages of leadership. Stages are different from levels in that they encompass what is before and build on it. In each stage the individual can be acting as a healthy and unhealthy leader at that stage based on if they are able to generate results or not. These stages are unorganized, autocratic (principle and logic of one individual), manager (based on following rules to the letter), pragmatic (produce results beyond rules, but are not linked by principle and ends justify the means), principled leadership (based on principles, becomes unhealthy if rightiousness becomes self-rightious), perspectivist (able to be principled, able to hold differences as long as principles are not violated)

One of the key areas of how the program works is the splitting up of triads that meet every week to share what each person was able to practice and apply to their projects and daily lives.

One way of looking at stewardship is deep listening, responsible speaking and being capable of shifting conversations to generate action. We learn various aspects of these in the workshop.

How about a drama for math/science?

At the end of the term the children put up a cultural program. At the end of last term I had hinted on doing some experiments, but that didn't pan out. This time around the idea of doing a drama on Archimedes really caught the attention of the children.

I gave them one version of the story on dday-2 and they added characters, settings and created a drama out of it. They took up the roles - king Hiero, confidant queen, goldsmith, his unscrupulous sidekick, then enrolled others - friends of goldsmith who attended a party after the goldsmith thought he fooled the king, gatekeepers and soldiers of the king and put together some props, etc. They also modified the story from Archimedes being in a bath to it being a hot day and he drinking from a public water station in which he pushed the container in to see the water rise.

They were also kind enough to let me modify the ending with the king to thanking Archimedes from saving him from the wrath of the Gods by offering them a defective crown (from the more obvious one of the goldsmith's head rolling :)).

Butterfly says thanks...

Ani has been working on making some flower beds. Arham permitting, we go and collect cow dung in the mornings for the same. Her favorite bed are the hope flowers just outside our house. The buds are just starting to come out. Ani was sitting in front of the bed adding some cow dung when a butterfly came by sat on few of the buds. Ani didn't notice the butterfly till I mentioned it to her from the window and the butterfly flew did a circle around her and she saw it sit on another bud for a few seconds and then said goodbye. Perhaps, it was the butterfly's way of saying thanks for the time and effort she has been putting to get flowers to bloom at Isai Ambalam.

It was a nice moment and I wish I had captured it with a picture as its better than 130 words :).

Cooking with Arham

We made chana this morning. 

On being vegan...

I found an incomplete blog from 2009 that I wrote after concluding a vegan experiment...
One of our friends had mentioned that he ran his fastest marathon when he was vegan and was more careful about what he ate. I decided to give it an honest shot six months back as a ramp up to the Auroville half-marathon. It has been an interesting experience especially with a trip to France almost a few weeks after the decision and the Learning network conference which was in WB in the Sandesh season.

I run my fastest half marathon 2 hrs 15 mins (with possibly having got lost and missed a mile somewhere, but the official record stands :)).

I gave up being vegan when I started getting sores in my mouth and was worried that I needed to take vitamin supplements. I also felt that the sores went away if I had buttermilk and that was that.

Fast forward 2013, Ani and I have been off dairy for over a year. I'm not sure if I meant to write more in 2009, but there isn't much more to share, other than that we have been enjoying our food and now have a larger content of fruits and veggies than we did before.

This round of  veganism, primarily non-dairy diet, was prompted by an Ayurvedic doctor who advised me to get off milk to help with my frequent and lengthy bouts colds and nasal allergies.

We had also spent some time at a farm. It was not a profit making venture where animals were beaten or abused or overused and run by nice caring people. They had a cow (Lakshmi) and a calf (Kari). This made local, organic milk available to them and they took care of the cow. Kari was a good friend of Ani, he would lie down and put his massive head on Ani's lap (no serious horns yet) and let her pet him. He associated me with Shifu and unfortunately they didn't get along.

Kari needed to be tied during the day and when Kari was not tied well, he would run around and find his mother and drink the milk, and there would not be much left for the people on the farm. The calf would get to be with the mother for some time once she had been milked. Many times he was tied around where we lived and when he was tied well, he would bawl with something that sounded like 'Amma' and the cow would reply with something that sounded like 'Engay'. It would go on for sometime and it was a little surreal.

I knew that for me to get milk the calf would get less. But, I never connected it with the calf needing to be away from his mother most of the day. I also never gave thought that the calf may actually need the milk and not eat grass as soon as he/she was born. Kari would chew on a single blade of grass for an hour even when he was a couple of months old. I was even more surprised when Lakshmi stopped giving milk after 3 months. This period can vary among cows, the nati varieties can extend to 6 months and the Jersey cows 10 months. Nonetheless, I realized that for me to have milk, cows need to be repeatedly impregnated.

Some of these realizations had made me wonder if I needed milk so badly that such a complicated arrangement needs to be maintained...the possible need of supplements had made me give up being a vegan earlier. I felt that perhaps, if such a diet it lacking, its not for me.

Ani went for a workshop by Nandita Shah who explained that only vitamin B-12 is missing from the diet of vegans. Vitamin B-12 is made only by bacteria and is available in naturally occurring grass, veggies, etc. Of course we wash most of the veggies and so they do not get any vitamin B-12 from veggies. Cows and other animals consume the bacteria as part of their food and so its available in dairy, meat, etc.

We did a test to get our baseline B-12 levels and realized that we had low B-12 levels even without a vegan diet and needed to take the supplements. Given our experience and our need to take supplements irrespective of our diet, I turned vegan.

Diet is a personal choice, no statistics change because of my choice. I find this liberating. I do not need to make choices because it makes sense for the world, the world will take care of itself (or not!), I just need to make choices that take care of myself and makes sense based on what I know about the food I eat.

What I find is that generally I lack knowledge about where my food comes from, how it is made, the invisible costs, how it is processed, etc. It takes an effort to find this out, but to make an informed choice I need to take this effort.

Baking bread

I got interested in baking bread a couple of years ago when I had come across Andrew Whitley’s book, “Bread Matters: The State of Modern Bread and a Definitive Guide to Baking Your Own” in the magazine Resurgence. While I was curious, I stayed away from buying a copy since it seemed expensive and I was not sure about my interest in baking.
Later, chatting with a friend about whole wheat bread options in Bangalore, we talked about Daily Bread. Among other things, they sell a brown bread and a whole wheat bread. I had looked up the ingredients of brown bread (which appears to be white flour with a little whole wheat flour and some coloring agent that turns the bread miraculously brown!), wasn’t impressed and had naively assumed that the whole wheat bread was made of what it was meant to be made of. After this chat, I looked up the ingredients and was surprised at how many chemicals were listed. Also, it wasn’t clear how much whole wheat was actually present. So I just went off bread for many months.
I love to eat bread with my tea, especially bread toasted with butter. I missed my toast. The cuppa wasn’t as much fun anymore. So I decided to move my butt and bake my own. My first whole wheat recipe was from a friend’s sister-in-law and I baked a small loaf, so solid that cutting it was not easy. Apparently she meant it when she said the dough should be sloppier than the regular roti-dough we mix. I had ignored that point and did not like sticky hands, so the loaf was a brick. The next one was better but it still wasn’t fun with tea (that was my goal – to bake bread that I can have with my tea :)).
Around this time, I visited the bakery in Auroville and got a chance to watch them knead and bake. It was good to see how hydrated the dough needs to be, as I was still making doughs that were less hydrated. Then I bought a copy of Whitley’s book and bread making apart, it makes a good read about the state of bread today. I got attached to one particular sponge-and-dough recipe that uses very little yeast and an overnight sponge. The bread turned out tasty. And the breads have been turning out quite tasty over time. I recently got myself a couple of Reinhart's books and they've got some nice whole wheat/grain breads as well. And most of them go so well with my tea - life is good :)
Here are some pictures from my baking experiments:

One of my better first breads

Post-Auroville Bakery

From Whitley's book

Foccacia

Mushroom bread From Reinhart's books. Scoring is fun and you can create your art on the bread

See...

Signature, artisan bread - observe my 'a' Bread and tea - life is good.

Vipassana: Seeing things as they are

It's been three months since we attended the Vipassana course - a 10-day silent meditative camp. I have found the technique useful and felt that this was a good time to talk about the experience.
The group that hosts the camp is called 'dhamma' and has a pretty informative website regarding these camps. If you want to decide whether to go to such a camp or not I would encourage reading the information regarding rules, facilities, program, etc to decide whether they want to go to a camp or not (and not this blog!). This blog is an account of my experience which would not be the same as yours.
We arrived at the center on Tumkur road (Bangalore) passing the Jindal Naturopathy Campus. On arriving on day "zero" we gave up our cellphones, etc for safekeeping and cut of all communication with the external world. Turns out there were no international emergencies over the 10 day period for which I had to be called out. We had a evening snack of upma and slept early.
Day 1 started with a bell at 0400 hrs. The first session for the day would start at 0430 hrs. I was pretty excited since this was the first time I was attending a camp like this and was up by 0350 hrs and took a bath in cold water (oh, hot water is available at 0630 hrs break in case you are wondering). This became a routine for the 10 days there, to be done and leave the bathrooms free for others when they got up at 0400 hrs. Actually, I have been trying to kick the habit of needing hot water for a bath (carbon footprint and all) and now I often take a bath in cold water.
The 'noble' silence had started the previous evening. The 'noble' is a suggestion to keep your eyes low and avoid any eye contact apart from not talking. I didn't really know anyone in the men's hostel so this wasn't much of an issue. In the course of the course I realized that this was a great idea and perhaps helped me in my concentration. I didn't see much of Ani till the end of the course though we shared the same hall for much of the day. Recently, Ani and I tried the noble silence at home from Sat afternoon to Sun morning, and it was broadly effective, apart from a phone call from a friend, etc :).
Vipassana is not so much a technique of meditation than a technique of concentration on what is here and now. The first three days were what is called Aana-Paana which is just concentrating on your breath in and out. The technique then builds on it making the zone of concentration narrower...but, that was later.
The tougher thing for me was the physical aspect of sitting on the floor (actually, on a cushion on the floor). Padmasan has not been a position for me, never been flexible and not been used to it. I had difficulty sitting for more than 5 mins without stretching. Even this was not enough and the first few days I walked a lot in the breaks to keep my circulation going and help my legs get used to the stretch. BTW, the area for walking (and no jogging or running is allowed) is limited, but was sufficient for this purpose.
As far as monitoring breath in and out is concerned, how much easier can it get for a kid who has grown up in the defense! So the first day was spent in 1-2-1-2... In the evening we have about an hr lecture by the main teacher Goenka where he talks about what you did, why you did it and what you would be doing next. (The technique is taught using his audio tapes and video lectures. The people sitting in the sessions are assistant teachers who help you when you have difficulties). Anyway, he talked about why the technique does not use a symbol e.g. idols, visual pictures to focus on and instead on something that is real and existing like breath (yes, naturally) and the reason why we don't use mantras (yeah, yeah) or counting (hey! wait a minute!). The reason again being that you end up controlling your breath rather than observing your natural breath...Ah well! Day 1 wasted and to top it all my legs hurt worse than after a marathon.
Day 2 was extremely difficult, with the counting out, I was trying to focus on observing my breath. This was very hard. The technique had built on the last day and added a step of concentrating on where the air from the breath touches the nostrils which felt like something more concrete to focus on. But, I realized very soon how difficult it was to keep the mind centered in the here and now. From reruns of LOTR, Matrix, conversations from last week to incidents in my life I ended up doing everything else but observe my breath.
I found myself trying to tell 'me' (my mind if you wish) to focus on my breath, but by the time I was done with 'my' instruction 'I' had already drifted. Slowly over the day and partly the next I could tell that I had drifted and just needed to mentally say 'I have drifted into a different time and space' and find myself back again. This was starting to work (nice!) till I started wondering who the 'I' was who was telling 'me' what to do. Was there really an observer and observed? Wasn't the observer the observed as well in this case? This also raised the question that as soon as I would start observing my breath it would change, so it was not my natural breath that I was observing... Talk about mind games! Suffice to say that these thoughts kept me pretty occupied and messed any chance of meditation in the last session on the third day.
Day 4, I had arrived at a 'practical' solution. I would focus on my breath and any residual 'I' can do whatever it wanted to and join me if it liked. I'm not sure how, but this worked.
Mid-day of day 4 we started Vipassana. The session felt a bit of a let down then after all the hype that had been created about the technique by the assistant teachers and the main one. Rather straightforward to understand and implementable with just a bit of difficulty. It had slowly become easy to focus on an area of the body and scan for sensations and move to the next. In some body areas e.g. the head were very difficult to feel any sensations on the other hand the nose area which we had focused so much on was the easiest. In the more difficult areas I was grappling at straws, we had moved to a smaller and more cramped room and perspiration was what I felt and would look for.
It was 5 days since I had spoke a word and concentration became a lot easier, everything seemed to have become quite and calm. Sitting on the floor was still not working out. I was only able to manage 10 min in pseudo-padmasan 15 mins held up with my hands like a ball and that day we were asked to start sitting in adisthanam - i.e. in one position for an hour for three sessions a day (excuse me). This is where I decided to stand up for my rights! I was supposed to be meditating not contemplating pain. I went up to the teacher and told him (you are allowed to talk to the assistant teachers - about the technique and to organizers - about the arrangements), I tried to speak- no voice came out - I tried again and in a croaking voice managed to say 'you see I have tried this sitting on the floor business and can perhaps manage 10-15 mins, but with this one hr business I think I'll need a chair'. He let me know there was no reason to take the main teacher's word for it, that I could just sit for as long as I could and try to reduce the number of positions I was shifting between over the days. Secretly, I was really hoping to get the chair, a wall or something. Ah well, I went back to the pillow.
Day 6, something thrilling happened, as I concentrated on my nose-lip area it started to throb. Whao! what's going on here. This thing was really throbbing and as I 'moved my gaze' the area under attention started to buzz. I briefly visualized cyclops (x-men, eyes guy) and was pretty thrilled with the buzzing. I could feel sensations in all parts of my body. I kept buzzing all morning! I was eager to tell the assistant teacher about the buzzing, but I didn't get a chance till much later. The buzzing continued in the session after breakfast. I felt all ready for the hour long session that I felt I would be able to last with this feeling dominating over the body pain of setting in one position.
Before the session I spoke to the assistant teacher. He told me that this is a little early, but it was probably my good Karma. Hmm...I wondered if I was better off continuing my silence...then he settled down and told me things that seemed useful. He said what I was feeling was free-flow, this instantly seemed like a good name for it. He also told me not to worry and that it would go away! This seemed a little under the belt, here I was finally 'getting it' and he told me not to worry AND that it would go away. Needless to say in the very next session when we had to actually sit for an hour in one position the buzzing disappeared.
That perhaps was the most miserable hour of meditation, like a super hero trying to retrieve his power, but failing. I felt miserable. I wondered why? I didn't even know about this response before today. I settled down and got back to what I was doing the previous day. A few sessions later it was back and a session later it was gone. I got used to it being there and not. We had been warned about this aspect of having conditioned our sub-conscious to dislike some sensations (leading to aversion) and like some sensations (leading to attachment).
I finally started to grasp the two fundamentals of Vipassana, that it's not just about being able to feel sensations, but about recognizing their impermanence and staying steady - referred to as 'awareness' and 'equanimity' at the course. I had heard of these, but understood from my experience then.
The following three days I practiced what I understood of Vipassana on the 6th day. On the 8th day in adisthanam pain also reminded of incidents in my life that would have perturbed me and brought forth much emotion. Some of these incidents I had intellectually accepted a long time back and the amount of attached emotions were surprising. Interesting, I was able I stay equanimous and just observe the sensation come and go away. Three months later if I recall these incidents they don't disturb me. It's just there and I can just watch it like watching a movie.
This is an aspect in Vipassana I liked, although a pseudo world setting e.g. a lab instead of the real world (where you react) - you can fundamentally change how you have conditioned yourself and how sub-consciously you respond to a situation. You observe your sensations, not meaning to change them, but just as a practice. But, having seen so many there is the acceptance that they come and go. It appears that instead of reacting in the heat of the moment, you can act on them with a certain calm. This means you don't need to stay in the lab and retract from life but actively participate in life with (emotional) 'freedom'.
I have dabbled in 'spiritual' teachings in text, but this was my introduction to a practical meditation technique that I could use and learn directly from my own experience.

Janu and the monk

Janu, a 10 year old girl, lived with her parents and three brothers in an old house right across the beach. They had a huge garden, which with its trees, plants and open space was a playground for the children. Janu’s three brothers went to school but she did not. Her parents were growing old and they needed help with the household chores. So little Janu would help around the house, though she really wanted to study like her brothers. She would help cook, fetch water, wash the clothes and utensils, and take care of her sisters’ children who used to visit regularly.
One day a monk moved close to their house. He started Sunday classes for children. Janu and her brothers would go every Sunday. He would show them some short movies, sing songs with them, and give them books to read. There were many other children there too. It was so much fun. Janu loved the books in the monk’s library. Some of them had such lovely pictures. She would spend a lot of time looking at the pictures. The monk noticed how she loved books and he soon was puzzled. The girl just seemed to be looking at the pictures, not reading anything.
He asked her if she could read and she told him no. She did not go to school, though she did want to, and so she could not read. The monk was very sad and asked her brothers why only their sister did not go to school. They didn’t know why. This is how it had been. He then asked if they could help their sister read and write. One of them said he could and he started teaching her the alphabet.
Janu was thrilled! She was finally getting a chance to study. She would quickly finish the household chores and spend her time learning the alphabet. She was soon quite comfortable with it. Her brother was also happy that she was learning enthusiastically and well. And the monk was happy seeing the young girl learning what she wanted to.

Rambling

• Rabindra Sangeet
• Composting at home
• Using the cup
• A year in India
• Thatch
• Stories
• Vipassana: Seeing things as they are