Tales of Whale Tails

A pair of whale tail earrings sent me on a stroll down memory lane this past week. After our nightly walk I noticed that my daughter was missing one of her earrings. They were cheap ones gotten as a souvenir from Alaska when we visited the state a few years back. Was it worth re-tracing the four miles at 9:30PM after a long and tiring day? My daughter's face told me yes. She believes that whenever she wore these plain whale-tails I tended to be (subconsciously) more expressive with my love for her and that made those earrings worth going back for. So armed with a flashlight and a phone light we retraced our steps and with pure luck and my eagle eyes we found the lost one to complete the pair! She paid me back with her joy and a fantastic poem about these whale-tails. It is true that the whale-tails are keepers of identity. Each whale-tail is unique in its marks and coloration that individuals are often identified by their tails. My daughter's earrings seem to have been imbued with these qualities - they were keepers of memories.

I am terrified of water. I believe that gravity always trumps buoyancy, but I love whales. I don't know anyone who doesn't. I am not a religious person by any means but the closest spiritual experience I have had was when I watched a mama blue whale with her calf off the coast of Los Angeles on a whale watching trip many years back. Back then I was still getting used to the concept of motherhood. Seeing the whale calf nuzzle alongside her mom while holding my daughter's hand tightly on a rocking boat I distinctly remember the feeling of kinship (however brief) that extended beyond my species. Like an iceberg, the size of the whale is beyond comprehension. What I saw on the surface did not do justice to these giants. How can anyone so huge have so much grace and gentleness? Words failed me as I struggled to make sense of what my eyes were seeing. The romantics had a word for such things - sublime. You know you are in the presence of something sublime when you are in complete awe but also can detect a tinge of fear as the scale and perspective of nature is mind boggling. Was my face covered in salty ocean spray or my own tears, I couldn't tell. But after that experience my then five year old never asked me why we did not go to Seaworld although it was practically in our backyard.

Maybe it was this experience that also made me viscerally upset when in Tokyo I realized whale meat was sold in many places both for human and pet consumption. I had a hard time reconciling the presence of so many Buddhist and Shinto shrines and the peace loving people of Japan with cruelty of whaling and eating cetaceans. But as Melville reminded me "A man's religion is one thing and this practical world quite another." Melville was trying to reconcile the peace loving Quakers who were "sworn foe to human bloodshed... (yet) spilled tuns and tuns of leviathan gore." I had avoided reading Moby Dick for the longest time because I didn't want to read about the butchery of these magnificent beings, but Philip Hoare's The Whale convinced me otherwise. Hoare's book traces his own fascination with whales and along the way he lays bare the difficult relationship our species has had with Cetaceans. 

Whaling stations and whalers fueled the world before the age of fossil fuels. Working on a whaling boat had to be one of the most dangerous professions of all time. For those who could not resist the call to adventure whaling offered a life on seas that took them to the remote corners of the world. When Shackleton was stranded in the Weddell Sea following his Endurance expedition his rescue plan was to reach the remote whaling station of South Georgia. Before there were Antarctic explorers there were whalers. However, while the owners of the whaling ships profited, the hands on the deck, as Melville found out for himself, sometimes came back owing more than they did before they left on a whaling voyage. If there was one benefit of our obsession with fossil fuels is that it saved the whales from being hunted to extinction although it has put the planet on the brink of catastrophe.

There is so much we still don't know about whales. What we know is already enough to blow our mind. Language, sisterhood, songs, teamwork - how can we not see culture in these creatures? How could we have boiled them down for oil! For a species that boasts a superior brain we don't seem to learn from our past. Although we are not hunting whales like we used to, we haven't stopped exploiting the oceans that they depend on. On the same trip that I saw my first Blue whale, a docent showed us what the whales feed on - krill. 

These minuscule organisms feed on even tinier marine algae. They remove carbon from the surface and take it with them deep into the ocean as they plunge into colder waters where they become food for whales and penguins. Climate change and human exploitation are the double whammy these creatures are facing. The Weddell Sea in the Antarctic is facing unprecedented changes and needs to be protected. One of my childhood heroes Jacques Cousteau summed it up beautifully when he said

"Man, at least so it seems, is incapable of leaving a place the way he finds it, whether it is outer space, the moon, or Antarctica. The mark of man's presence is often an absence - the disappearance of blue whales in familiar water....The hope is that man will somehow be able not only to define the problems, but also divine the solutions. Hope is an ephemeral thing. It can easily be shattered by the unscrupulous, the ignorant, the distrusting, the economically deprived. The very nations that found it profitable to exploit the polar regions are the countries that must be relied upon to protect the seas."

Will we rise up to these challenges or are we going to be Ahab on the Pequod? Melville often referred to the whale as a Leviathan, a sea-monster. That word brought to mind the other Leviathan - Hobbes' where he called for a new social contract between the ruler and the ruled. As we are slowly realizing that killing other species and contaminating the planet is just a sure-fire way of killing ourselves, perhaps it is time for a 21st century Leviathan to emerge forging a new social contract between Homo sapiens and all the other species.

Caste - the monkey on our backs

My daughter has been reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson as part of her summer reading assignment for school. This has led to some very uncomfortable yet thought-provoking, must-have conversations at our home. She posed this question to me the other day "Did her parents' caste contribute to her life of privilege in the US?" Just for some context I should say we've been having these discussions around privilege since the early days of BLM. As someone who came of age during the Trump presidency my daughter has not been shielded from uncomfortable questions. She hated it when she was classified as a "person of color" (POC) not because she denies she is one, but because she knows that despite being the daughter of immigrants, her tech-worker parents did not experience the trauma of immigration and she was in a place of privilege. By being labelled a "person of color" she felt she was taking the spotlight away from others who have truly suffered because of the color of their skin. We've spent a good part of the past four years trying to help her deal with the guilt of privilege despite being a "POC" and so I was hesitant to open another can of worms when it came to our caste. Around the time she was reading Wilkerson, I've been reading Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste and Yengde's Caste Matters and this topic was swirling inside my brain. So I decided to first answer her question - How did her parents' caste (Brahmin) in India contribute to her privilege in the US? I came up with this list as the sources of my privilege

1. Precedence: The journey of our lives (high school to engineering to Masters in the US to working in the US) has been undertaken by countless others in our social circle that this was a road well traveled by members of our caste.
2. Education emphasis: This was a huge factor in our lives. Brahmins = learning was something ingrained in our psyche over millennia. So high expectations for academic achievements was something of a norm.
   
3. Art education: Even the poorest in our caste were exposed to the arts. It was considered almost a necessity and there were a number of role models to look up to in any field from classical to popular.
   
4. Confidence: Although intangible this was priceless and came from a source that goes back many many generations
5. English Language Fluency: English newspapers, works of literature, movies/ music were part and parcel of everyday life.

As you can see not once did I mention wealth, because our families were not wealthy by any means. Our ancestors didn't own land or huge properties. But it didn't matter as in most cases every generation ended up being a bit better than its previous one. Every individual's story is unique but some combination of the above 5 factors can be traced in everyone who is now in the US even those who have denounced the shackles of caste. We can all fool ourselves into thinking that it was pure meritocracy that got us here, but there is no denying the cushion that has been afforded by the caste over thousand years.

Here I was happily living in a bubble that I had shed my caste when I immigrated. Our daughter has not been forced to learn Carnatic music, we hardly go to the local temple, the house explicitly avoids any overt symbols of our caste or even religion, I've volunteered for groups that work in India with denotified tribes, landless laborers, migrant rights and protested Modi's handling of Godhra when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat and Modi's Hindu nationalism. I gave up milk & ghee (staple for my caste), silk and leather when I turned vegan two decades back. I have felt suffocated by a highly ritualistic culture that enforced patriarchy in every aspect of its rituals that I rejected many of them. I questioned our scriptures treatment of women and found my religion in nature. But then it dawned on me that caste was like a monkey on my back. There were numerous coded behaviors and the invisible cushion that I failed to see / chose to not see / conveniently ignored.

So where does all this leave me? I know guilt alone is not enough. It has to be turned into positive action. This is important especially when raising a very sensitive child who is sometimes overwhelmed by the burdens the world imposes on her generation for faults that were not of their making. For her, I've always recommended two things 

1. Not to be driven by an "achievement /entitlement mindset" in anything she undertakes. Instead focus on learning and helping others around her learn and grow. I have seen her live by this especially in high school. She understands the importance of leveling the playing field be it through affirmative action or reservations and knows that every child starts the race at a different point depending on the uterus they were born to. So yes while she takes pride in her "achievements" she is trying to not let that define her.
   
2. Volunteering, not for the sake of showing something on your resume, but because you truly care. Since she was 7 she has been doing this in her community and nothing gives her more satisfaction than working with her hands and speaking up for other species.

I have realized that these two things have personally helped me with my own journey. The one other thing I have learned from her is to always give people a second chance. She was bullied by a kid in school and even when upset she was trying to find the source for that kid's meanness. Our pasts influence us in positive and negative ways and knowing where someone is coming from can lead to a better understanding of the other.

Regarding questions of caste I am inspired by the four simple strategies Ambedkar offers

1. Denounce religion based on rules and instead adopt one based on principles - fraternity, equality and liberty. This is a type of religion I can subscribe to. I have hated rule based religion all my life as it always made women bear the brunt of it. I now see how rule based religion fuels casteist ideals. This doesn't mean you have to give up your food, your clothing, your art, your symbols. Just being aware that the other person's food/art/clothing/symbols mean something significant to them and making sure our own symbols don't violate the principles of fraternity, equality and liberty is a good place to start.
   
2. Be selective and prune and transmit only what is useful to the next generation. The concept of the goddess, the worship of nature, the individual soul's relationship to the world's soul, the accommodation of different practices - these are some of the most beautiful concepts of "Hinduism." The rituals and codes that classify and rank people is a deprecated function. I only partially joke when I tell my daughter - just watch Avatar: The Last Airbender (the TV show, not the movie please). It has distilled all the good things about many of the Oriental philosophies that are truly magnificent.
   
3. Let not the past dictate all your ideals. Just because something has been around for 2000 years doesn't automatically make it ideal. It took courage to reject Aristotle (who has been right about many things and spectacularly wrong about many other things) before the scientific revolution could truly take place. While it is OK to take pride in a civilization that is thousands of years old it is important to acknowledge when that pride results in shackles.
4. Consider nothing is fixed and change is a way of life. There needs to be a constant revolution of old values. We appreciate this in every other aspect of life. My favorite artists are the impressionists, not just because they started to represent a world that I know and see with my eyes but also because they rejected the Salon and their rules. Shakespeare borrowed liberally from Virgil and others before him but made it his own. Stories can be timeless but how we tell them can and should change. Last week I watched Dev Patel as Gawain. Gawain is a tale from the 14th century. I am sure the Gawain poet never imagined that one day an Indian man would play Sir Gawain in a new and improved interpretation of his work. But this new interpretation has opened up his poem to millions who would have never heard of this tale otherwise. 

I am still on this journey and my own beliefs have changed/ are changing and are evolving that I am sure I sound like a hypocrite at times. When I feel bogged down by my own hypocrisy I remember that beautiful quote from Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer "sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a person in the process of changing." For now I am OK to be a hypocrite as long as I am changing for the better.

Summer of Art

 I am no artist. Have zero skill in anything artistic but I enjoy a wide range of artistic expressions. I walk away from good art not understanding the technical aspects of why it worked but just knowing it worked for me. Our daughter therefore has been subjected to museum tours from the time she was a toddler. Any trip we undertook was never complete without a stop at the local museum - whether it is natural history or national art. This year she decided to take an Art History class at school for a bunch of reasons but the primary one was to enjoy these "unavoidable trips to the museums with mom" better. I am happy to report that she enjoyed the class (kudos to her wonderful teacher) and I offer incontrovertible proof - of her own volition she asked for a trip to the Getty villa and the Center this summer. 

Although I don't need any special motivation to visit these places, two women reached out from the past and offered us inspiration. One was the world's first known author/poet and the other was a brilliant painter whose achievements are finally being acknowledged by the world at large. From the villa to the center we went from 1800 BC to 1600AD and through the lives of these two women one can trace an arc of women's role in society.

The Villa hosted exhibitions which featured artifacts from Mesopotamia and of all the things on display this tablet was my favorite! This was Princess and High Priestess Enheduana's work "Exaltation of Inanna" from 1850-1700 BC. Although the original is lost this is a copy done by scribes who preserved the hymn in clay tablets. Enheduanna was the daughter of King Sargon who upon conquering Ur made his daughter the High Priestess of Nanna the moon god. It is interesting to note that during a time of crisis she composed the hymn not to Nanna (her husband, the moon god) but to Inanna the Goddess of love. Sisterhood rules!

Granted she was the daughter of a king, but she was powerful in her own right. After all she remained a priestess through the reign of her father, her brothers and her nephew. She certainly was not an exception. Right next to this artifact there was a small statue. It showed another powerful woman, a priestess and it seemed to be fairly common in Mesopotamia 4000 years ago! These women controlled large tracts of land, received huge dowries which remained their possession throughout their life and were theirs to dispose of at the time of their death. Many scribes were women (the kings were illiterate) and the patron deity of scribes was also a goddess!

Standing in front of this object with my daughter (who is a budding writer) next to me I was covered in goosebumps. Never did I imagine that the world's first author was a woman! There is no doubt we've made significant strides in women's education in the past 50 years but when I look back to the early civilizations I can't help wonder how far we've actually fallen! Women priestesses, women writers, women in control of their own finances - this is humanity's collective past. 

From Old Babylonia to Baroque Italy - our next stop this summer was at the Getty Center to see their latest acquisition - Artemisia Gentileschi's painting of Lucretia. Artemisia has become a feminist icon these days and in the era of #metoo it is not hard to see why. Her story adds to her art as she usually painted "donne forti" or strong women and thereby carved out a unique space for herself in the world of Baroque art. Raped by Tassi who then reneged on his promise to marry her, she took him to court, testified against him despite being tortured and got him convicted. She then married another, got accepted into the Academy at Florence, went on to paint a number of masterpieces in many famous courts. 

I love this painting of Lucretia about to stab herself due to her rape proclaiming her innocence. A woman having faced sexual violence is about to commit a violent act on her own body. Historians remind us not to see everything Artemisia created from the perspective of her rape. She after all lived a long life and saw much professional success after the rape. Perhaps that is the message here. Women who have faced sexual assault don't have to be defined only as victims. She seems to have taken charge of her career and her destiny. Both the art and the artist are emotionally complex and they evoke complex feelings in the viewer too. 

That wrapped up July for us! I was thrilled my daughter loved both the trips and she got so much out of them. Walking from room to room with her and hearing her talk about things that she loved was one of the most  memorable experiences for me in recent times. My daughter always saw art everywhere. We went on a grocery run recently and as I parked my car and got out, a leaf that got painted over caught her eye. She snapped these three pictures and forced me to look closely even if it was just a parking lot in Costco!

The Tamil #metoo movement

 These past few days my birth city of Chennai has been rocked by a couple of major scandals. 1) The sexual harassment of female students by a male teacher in a leading school in Chennai 2) The seemingly free pass afforded to one of the most powerful poets/lyricist in Tamil cinema despite 17 women accusing him of sexual harassment. At the outset I have to say that I have not lived in Chennai for nearly 25 years but spent the first half of my life there. I also did not go to the school in question (although I am married into a family in which everyone graduated from the school) and have no direct connections to the movie or literary industry. Thirdly, as anything in Tamil Nadu is an intersection of caste and class I have to state that I grew up in an upper middle class Brahmin family, not financially rich but not poor either. 

With all that out of the way, I wanted to share what it meant to grow up as a woman in the so-called "Tamil culture" in the period between 1975-1995 Chennai. I am not speaking for other parts of India although I am sure that the Tamils are not unique in terms of the reckoning they need to have w.r.t misogyny and patriarchy that is so ingrained and steeped in everything we do that we never had words or phrases we could use to describe the female experience in such a suffocating environment until recently. 

1. Misogyny in everyday life

The Great Indian Kitchen captured this beautifully and this is a story that has been timelessly repeated in every home in India and TN is no exception. Our moms and grandmoms always ate the last despite having prepared the food; there was an expectation that the girls in the family have to help out with chores around the house (how else will we survive when we get married); you can study all you want but when I say it's time, you need to be ready for marriage and marry the guy I ask you to; your wedding will break my bank and back but that's the way it is; put up with any "inconveniences" in your married home; when it's time to raise a child step back from your career. Some classes and some castes might do a bit better on some parts of this narrative but this playbook applies to most women. I personally didn't face much of this at home and this also meant I naively challenged a lot of these issues outside of home and wherever I encountered it and this came with its own side effects as it generally made me angry and come across as a belligerent person.

2. Portrayal of women in our popular art (specifically Tamil movies and songs)

Model women are often portrayed as selfless creatures whose duty to the family trumps anything she wants to do as an individual. Our movies will show women as one of the following stereotypes

a)The shrew who had to be tamed- she had a choice, but unfortunately she chose badly and had to be taught a lesson

b) Angel in the house - she gave up choice and did her duty - this is usually reserved for the mother characters

c) The victim - no choice, just die

d) The sex siren during courtship who turns into the angel the moment the wedding is over 

It is also important to juxtapose these stereotypes against the hyper-masculinity of our heroes in Tamil films as the two go hand-in-hand.

3. A woman's body is not hers.

It is meant to be prodded, pinched, rubbed against and violated in countless other ways everyday and in public. It is meant to be shrouded in 6 yards of mystic beauty - the magical sari which somehow still doesn't guarantee any protection from violations. It has been dictated to in terms of what it can wear or not wear. It was an unsaid rule in my college (1991-1995) that I am better off not wearing jeans and not parking my bike in front of the department so I won't incur the wrath of certain male professors. 

Then there is the concept of a girl attaining puberty that has been celebrated in tamil films and music and is also fertile ground for male fantasy. It never ceases to amaze me how a woman's natural bodily function is simultaneously both celebrated and ostracized.

 The concept of "karppu" (virginity) in tamil cinema has made me want to throw up. Rape is termed as "karpazhipu" (erasing of virgnity), model women in tamil literature are referred to as "karpukarasi" (the queen of virginity). I wish someone does a study of the number of popular movies that have played with these notions, not from the point of view of stepping away from trying to control a woman's body. Modern movies have moved away from explicitly mentioning karppu but I bet you to revisit any movie from even a so called modern film maker like Shankar or Maniratnam and see if you can spot these themes or the 4 stereotypes I laid out in #2

4. Lack of awareness of what sexual harrassment and trauma does to a woman's psyche.

Growing up we had a number of weird phrases "eve teasing", "accused", "jollu party" to describe the predators and perpetrators of sexual harassment, for to even use the word "sex" was a taboo. Most girls and women knew the perpetrators - they went to school with them, study under them, work with them, meet them in family gatherings but very rarely we spoke up and when we did we used the watered down phrases that somehow made it seem harmless. Even before social media, no woman would want to speak up as it brought unwanted attention to her and any small spot to her reputation will be a violation of all the rules laid out in #1. In general there is a lack of awareness that sexual harassment is not about sex. It is about power and the more stratified a society is, the more patriarchal its values are and the more rigid its structures are the power equations don't favor women.

Take all of the above and now let's consider intersectionalities which complicate the picture even further.  Two types of intersectionalities are at play here.

These intersections have made it nearly impossible to get to the truth and bring about change, because everyone is coming at this with the lens that suits them best. Tamil Nadu politicians have always known how to manipulate casteism to their advantage. So any political solution is going to come from that angle. The Tamil movie industry and the associated popular culture is closely intertwined with the political establishment that it is going to take cover under politics. The school in question should be seriously taking a look at its own policies and the protection it owes to its student body. Instead the case has become politicized and as politics = caste in TN it has become a conversation about caste instead of about the children whose well being is at stake. In fact the incident at the school only goes to make my point about the second intersectionality above - if this happens to girls in an upper class, upper caste school, can you imagine what would be the plight of girls who belong to the lower classes and lower castes? (I am cringing to use the phrase upper and lower castes, but in TN we take pride in our myriad classifications OC, BC, MBC, SC, ST - innocuous abbreviations which make everyday casteism more palatable. It is like KFC but for castes).

These days I visit Chennai only for a couple of weeks every other year. Some things are different and for the better. More women seem to be exercising their choices from clothing, to career, to partner choices, but this is still not the norm and certainly this is not true across classes/castes. I don't see a bunch of "road side romeos" (another one of our watered-down phrases) stalking women on sidewalks, but they don't need to do it physically. Most trolling has moved online. I still love Chennai, but being removed from it has allowed me to see its culture honestly. Culture is not simply about the past. It is a living, breathing thing. We can sit on our laurels and talk about Sangam, Thiruvalluvar, Bharathi, Mammallapuram etc but let's look at the lived reality for women today. Let's not forget that just because a culture worships women it does not automatically value them. After all witch burning in the west during medieval times also coincided with the rise of Marian worship. And from where I stand we seem to be stuck in medieval times and have a long way to go before this culture does it right by its women.

Celebrating Mother's Day with Moms of a Different Kind

 This Mother's Day was a very special one! We spent it with moms of a different kind. All I wanted for today was a little bit of nature time. Given that May 8th was Global Big Day we went birding in San Elijo Lagoon (my favorite birding spot in SD). So for today we decided we will go to a place we haven't been to in many, many years. When my daughter was a toddler we used to go to the Scripps Ranch Library + Pond often. Since we moved away, we only ever went there for her annual piano recitals and since the last two were online, we haven't been there in ages! 

This is how I spent my Mother's Day - in the company of mothers of different species! I never really paid attention to bird mothers during Mother's Day before although May is the perfect month for rearing the young. As we took a stroll around the pond we encountered many moms with newborns and it was such a delight.

Here is a Mallard mom watching over her 5 chicks while simultaneously warding off unwanted attention from a fairly obnoxious male who was after her. Bravo dear lady!

And then we ran into a Pied-Billed Grebe mom on her nest. We didn't see the eggs, but am sure she was keeping them warm as the weather was getting a bit chilly around sunset.

 

 

 And as we turned around the corner, we saw another Mallard mom with 3 of her chicks. She had them all tucked under her when she decided maybe it was time for a swim lesson after all.

 

 

 

I know, I know this last one is probably not the greatest of moms! My daughter once broke into tears when she saw how harshly coots treat some of their little ones. But today in the spirit of Mother's Day we were not going to judge anyone and their mothering styles. So we were happy to note that even the Coot showed her tender side (even though she appeared to favor one of the chicks).

And so here I am thrilled to have spent Mother's day in the company of these moms and my very own chick. I thought about how quickly time flies! She used to take unsure steps near this very pond more than a decade ago. Since then she has taught me to love birds and care about other species and I could not have asked for a better Mother's Day gift than what she has taught me over the years and the joy she gives me by coming out to bird with me.

The Ides of March (to May)

While the Romans and Shakespeare intended the ides to last a single day on the 15th of March, for me it usually lasts from March to May bookended by my dad's death and birth anniversaries respectively. Usually this is a time when I think about his life, our times together and the things he missed being a part of due to his untimely death. However, this year the Ides have taken on ginormous proportions due to the horrific outbreak of Covid in India. Just when things were beginning to look brighter in the US, the pandemic seemed to send us a shocking reminder of the need for constant vigilance. While I expected the systems in India to be not as sophisticated as in the West, this was a failure at many levels. The hubris of declaring victory so early can only be compared to W declaring "Mission Accomplished"in 2003, also in May! In both cases declaring premature victory led to complacency, confusion and colossal loss of human lives. While I don't blame just W or Modi for both these "Himalayan Blunders", take their leadership (or lack thereof) and add to it a heady mix of hypernationalism, hubris, and exceptionalism, you end up with a deadly combination (both literally and figuratively). Behind all the numbers and statistics there are personal stories of individual lives lost which is heartbreaking. There is a palpable sense of heightened anxiety coupled with fatigue/ burnout as this pandemic has gone on far too long. As I sat down to write today I wanted to wear my optimistic glasses to look at the world, but it is hard as the goalposts seem to keep moving. But I am going to take a crack at it. Maybe it is a  cracked looking-glass view of the world, but for now I will take it.

Looking back these past two months amidst all the horror, birds have been a constant source of joy to me. I have to say that Covid opened a few windows (albeit on my laptop) even as it shut a lot of others. Birdcams for one! I would have never had the time to look at BirdCams normally but this year everything was topsy turvy. I had to drop out of Feederwatch given the salmonella outbreak in California and I couldn't put my backyard feeder up. Instead here I was watching BirdCams from Cornell and participating in a data collection effort for a feeder in Ithaca! Oh and if I wanted to watch tropical birds I could always switch to the Panama feedercam. Every morning I would wake up to the sound of birds except they were not in my backyard but in Sapsucker woods or in Panama.

Then a friend of mine decided to take care of his rodent-problem by putting up an owl box with a ring cam. What luck, that the owl box was immediately occupied by a couple of barn owls and he was kind enough to share his stream with me! For the past two months we've been engaged in bird voyeurism spying on the pair as they did some fairly intimate and graphic acts! So far the female has not laid any eggs as her mate is not bringing in as many rodents as she would like him to. He seems to be of the "Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma'am" school (despite the tender picture below) and she is not ready to commit to raising a chick with him. But am still waiting to see if things change once we are past May.

We had another opportunity to watch birds when we signed up to monitor Vaux Swifts as they migrate from the South to the North during spring. San Diego is a layover in their long journey. These swifts rely on chimneys to roost in the nights and we were asked to monitor one such chimney and count the number of birds that showed up. Nothing we knew could have prepared us for the sights we witnessed. After a couple of nights of no luck, we hit jackpot on the third night of monitoring. About 2000 birds circled the air and put on a show unlike anything we've seen and then they all rushed into the chimney as though it was a blackhole that sucks anything around it. We went back multiple evenings to monitor these amazing birds and to have witnessed these record-breaking numbers has to be a silver lining amidst all the bleak news.

Finally we also went to hear live music for the first time in a year and a half! I had tickets to the SD Opera's Barber of Seville (my daughter's favorite opera) from 2020. That season was cancelled and this year they tried to offer a reduced version of the opera in the form of a drive-in. We remained in our cars, listening to the opera over FM, but with live orchestra and performers on stage which was beamed onto screens around the car park. Rossini could have never imagined that people would respond to his music with honks, but that's how we collectively applauded every aria. Would we ever get back inside a theater? I certainly hope so. But for now, the drive-in opera reminded me how much live music and a collective experience of it was soul-enhancing.

 

So here I am waiting for the Ides of May to tide over leaning on birds and barbers to get me through it. The pandemic has proven to us how vulnerable we are as a species and I am hoping that when we are out of this we lose some of our hubris and instead channel our efforts into understanding all forms of vulnerabilities around us. Watching My Octopus Teacher I found myself moved to tears at the bond between a mollusc and man. The ephemerality of life is all too familiar for countless species in the natural world. The pandemic is just forcing us to come to terms with our own. Today would have been my dad's 77th birthday. I haven't wished him in 18 years, but I am thankful for the time we spent together. As I hear of other friends losing loved ones during this past year, I only hope with time they are able to celebrate the life of the person they lost and find solace in shared memories.

Pelagic Ponderings

 For the past seven years, my daughter and I (and sometimes my husband too) have spent a lot of time flocking with other birders as they all come to town for the San Diego Audubon's Annual Bird Festival. This year most of the activities went online and only a few tours were operated with significantly reduced numbers to adhere to Covid related guidelines. My daughter and I signed up for the Pelagic trip. Living off the coast of the Pacific we are not unfamiliar with the shore birds and visitors, but we've never truly birded in the ocean. We've done a couple of whale watching tours off Channel Islands but somehow we always tend to take our own port for granted. Well, this year maybe because we've been locked up for most of the time and the only travel we did was a few days to Sequoia NP and a day trip to Anza we've been itching to get out and couldn't pass up on this opportunity.
 

I didn't know what to expect. I was just hoping to see anything other than gulls I suppose. So I signed up for a lecture on Pelagic birding to help prepare. It was a whirlwind tour of species but two species got me excited - Shearwaters and Boobies. Who knew there were Brown Boobies off the coast of San Diego! There was also the possibility of Albatross and possibilities are good, but the probabilities were against us, so I was not optimistic. I was also gently reminded that there are only shades of black and white among pelagic species and factoring in the light, the waves, and the motion of the boat I need not feel ashamed if I make mistakes. The presenter left me with profound words - Don't bird, just observe! 

Black Vented Shearwaters

Bonaparte's Gull

Our boat left the dock at 8 AM and we got back around 3PM and I think we sat down for a total of 30 minutes (only when we ate our packed sandwiches). The rest of the time we were on our feet, and we literally had no faces! What with the mask, the beanie, our glasses, the binoculars and the constant up and down motion of the waves, it was quite an adventure! (My husband doesn't do well on boats and therefore stayed firm on land). 

 We saw a gazillion gulls, most of them were the Western and California kind, but when they are not eating trash in Mission Bay they actually gained our respect! Why, oh why, when you can fly into the Ocean do you settle for our trash? This was the question we asked of the birds. Flying among these gulls were other varieties - the Bonaparte, the Heermann's and even the small Mew gull. And then we ran into the Black Vented Shearwaters, oh about 600 of them, which were a delight to watch! The more experienced birders on the boat were looking for the elusive Manx Shearwater, I was personally happy with the Black Vented ones as I could have never told them apart anyway. Some folks kindly pointed out to us the lone Sooty shearwater and the Pink footed one, but to my non-Pelagic eyes they all looked the same, especially after a day of standing and bobbing up and down. Out of the blue, a Brown Booby dropped in and made quite an appearance! I only got a glimpse of it, but knowing the boobies were here brought joy even if I didn't get to binoc them.

Perhaps our biggest excitement was spotting the Mola Molas, one was such a giant that my daughter was at first sad when she thought it was either a) a dead animal b) or a piece of plastic trash. Imagine our surprise when we realized it was a Sunfish. Then, of course came the dolphins - a pod of about hundred or maybe two hundred of them playing and jumping alongside our boat. We peered down into their blowholes and for those few moments we forgot covid, our backlog of work, our aching feet and heads. 

Out in the ocean we had no landmarks to localize ourselves and I was imagining how it must've been for the first ocean navigators who got on a boat and traveled to the unknown. As a person who cannot swim and is afraid of the water, I said perhaps that was Columbus' only redeeming quality - his bravery! My daughter said she thought bravery was overrated and kindness often went underrated. Would you rather be brave or kind, she asked. She closed her eloquent arguments by stating why she felt that Hufflepuffs were severely underrated while Gryffindor's value of bravery was overrated as it would mean people like Columbus would easily qualify as a Gryffindor! 

It was a tiring day, but our wind chapped faces and dazed expressions don't do justice to the joy we felt. With no distractions of the electronic kind, my daughter and I spent so much time together and while our conversations went from trashy seagulls to trashier Conquistadors, I tried to savor every minute. Of course she had a ton of homework and I had my own load of housework and officework to get to, but they are always there. I reminded myself that you can never step in the same ocean twice. 

That's a Brown Booby & I'm sticking to it!

Less face and less worries on the ocean

Every birding experience is unique even when all we do is watch our backyard feeder. I learn so much from the experienced birders and biologists about the natural wonder around us and I also learn from my daughter about empathy for other species. She is trying hard these days to refer to animals and plants not as "it" but as "they." She has not read Barry Lopez herself, but some of her thoughts and deeds have made Barry Lopez's words come to life for me. Lopez reminds us about how our culture has objectified animals, detached ourselves from our landscapes. He says "we have irrevocably separated ourselves from the world that animals occupy. We have turned all animals and elements of the natural world into objects... because we have objectified animals, we are able to treat them impersonally." So while I missed seeing the booby through my binoculars or capturing a good picture of the mola mola, I borrow Barry Lopez's words to say  "I was satisfied only to watch. This was the great drift and pause of life. These were the arrangements that made the land [and the sea] ring with integrity." I wish I had such remarkable insights to offer, but for now I was glad to have slowed down and paid attention to the world around me.

The Open Roads of Latin America

 Although I live practically at the doorstep of Latin America, for many years it didn't capture my interest beyond just cursory curiosity. I had rudimentary knowledge of its history and its geographical wonders. Motorcycle Diaries changed all that in two hours. It was 2004 and we had two hours to kill and walked into a Landmark Theater picking this movie at a recommendation of a friend not knowing it was Che's story and with no expectations. The movie changed everything for me. I became restless to see all the glorious landscapes and meet the people of this fabulous continent and although not as adventurous as the young Che, I've headed South for many a vacations this past decade.

One thing led to another and I was reading Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Eduardo Galleano and even biographies of Humboldt, Darwin and the scientists of the age of discovery all featured this magnificent continent. South America changed these men and in its own way it changed me. Setting aside motherhood, I would rate the W Circuit as the most challenging and rewarding thing I have ever done. These days when I am closeted in my home my mind wanders to all the places I saw in the beautiful continent down below and nostalgia overwhelms me. As a vegan I found Latin America an easy place to find food - rice and beans and fresh fruit and vegetables were available everywhere. From the mercain peppers of Chile to the heart of palms in Ecuador, coca tea in Peru, and simple pico-de-gallo in Costa Rica I never once felt out-of-place as I sometimes did when I traveled in Europe. Despite the dark history of colonialism I also found in places like Ecuador and Peru the Native Americans of South America were not rendered invisible. Many people I met in these travels claimed mixed heritage.

Arenal Volcano - Costa Rica

Napo River - Amazonian Ecuador

Chinchero weaving - Peru

Incan terraces Sacred Valley

Machu Pichu

Mayan Ruins - Belize

Rio-Frio Caves, Cayo Belize

Patagonian lakes - Chile

Mirador Del Torres - W circuit, Chile

I just wrapped up Janet Browne's first volume of Darwin's biography (Voyaging) which covered his voyage with the Beagle. No experience or no person was trivial for Darwin. Despite a Victorian mindset, he was willing to learn from anyone and from anything. Without the five years of traveling with the Beagle, and his encounter with the natives of Tierra Del Fuego, Darwin would have never become Darwin.  Similarly, whatever one thinks of Che, one cannot deny that his motorcycle travels opened his eyes and changed him. In this age of hyper-specialization we sometimes force our kids to pick and choose too early. We forget that personality changes more than we think and as David Epstein reminds us in his book Range, unanticipated experiences will lead to unanticipated goals and growth.  I know I am very fortunate to have traveled through this continent and seen these sights. While I cannot claim to have been transformed like Darwin or Humboldt or Che, these experiences made me re-learn history and question my assumptions and biases.

I am still processing what travels through South America has meant for me, but there is no denying that they have touched me in unforeseen ways. These days when we talk about privilege my teen is often frustrated how even these discussions are so anthropocentric. She constantly questions the privilege that our species claims over other species and the arrogance that is associated with that privilege. In the last five hundred years the theories of Copernicus, Darwin, and Turing have slowly chipped away at our privileged position in the universe. Humility instead of hubris is needed as we face new and unprecedented challenges in the coming decades.Traveling in South America is a lesson in human geography - a reminder that our landscapes affect us and we affect our landscapes. I remember much hue and cry was raised when Hugo Chavez gifted President Obama The Open Veins of Latin America. Both its veins and its roads have much to teach if only we are open to learning.

Unprecedented President?

 The events of the last week were disturbing to say the least. Some people expressed shock. What happened to the beacon on the hill, American Exceptionalism? Others saw this as a blow to democracy while some others convince us that this was a test of how well democracy held. Insurrection, sedition, treason, free speech, first amendment - words with specific meanings are bandied about. I am trying to make sense of the situation and political pundits and journalists are not helping. There is only one thing I know that I truly want, I want Trump out of the White House so that we can get some oxygen back to begin the process of dealing with other pressing issues. I wanted to take some time to think through some key questions that are being raised in the aftermath of the violence.

1) Should Twitter, Facebook etc ban Trump?

This is easy for me. My answer is NO! I don't think these for-profit companies should become arbiters of what is acceptable and not acceptable in society. We need to look to Europe and other countries which have government regulations concerning how such platforms operate. The Internet companies conveniently switch from being platforms to content producers as and when it suits them. I don't trust them to do the right thing as they have had ample opportunity to do it in the past and they've always put their bottom line ahead of everything else. I don't trust them to do right by our teens. So why will I suddenly trust them with our democracy?

2) Did Capitol police treat the rioters differently from BLM protestors?

Absolutely! They should've definitely been better prepared. I know it would have been a very different situation if the protestors wore hoodies instead of MAGA hats. However, the restraint shown by the police during the Capitol insurrection was admirable. I am not going to suddenly wish that the police show less restraint just because these were MAGA enthusiasts and not BLM protestors. I only wish they show the same admirable restraint when people of color engage in peaceful protests. 

3) Should Trump be impeached, again? What about other Presidents who misled us?

I am torn on this one. On the one hand I want some kind of justice. Arresting the actual rioters and charging them is one thing, but this essentially gives a free pass to the enablers who instigated these riots not just by the speeches delivered on the day of, but for what they have been doing all along - peddling lies, fueling conspiracy theories, muddying the waters and preying on people.

Since the time of Clinton's impeachment we've seen leaders worried about starting off a cycle of retribution against the outgoing President. But this meant that we gave a free pass to W and his enablers who misled the country and took us into a protracted war that had implications all around the world. No one went to jail for Abu Ghraib, atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, for torture. That was a mistake and maybe it is time to remind our Presidents that no one is above the law.

However, impeaching Trump means he will occupy news cycles and suck out more oxygen from us. But is that a small price to pay for someone who has ignored all decency and norms? I know that the only thing that will truly hurt Trump is when his brand is hurt financially. Like Al Capone maybe it is taxes and financial engineering that will finally be his downfall. But that means all the Presidential crimes are overlooked and future Presidents can expect to get a similar pass.

I know I am arguing with myself on this one and I would love to hear what others think. I am still on the fence as I don't know if it will do more harm than good.

4) What structural changes should we make to ensure we don't suffer another four years like this?

There are a number of things that need to be looked at

• Electoral college vs popular vote
• Abolishing filler buster
• News Vs Opinions in media 
• Money in politics
• Length of a campaign season (can we please restrict campaigns to 2 months before an election as opposed to the 2 years!)
• Regulation of Big Tech

Other than the last one, I doubt any politician wants the others. They all benefit from it at different times. This list makes me less hopeful as I am not sure if we can get meaningful change anytime soon.

However, my daughter wanted to start with something basic and personal. How can we get better people (not just highly qualified) running for political offices? She was appalled that her graduation requirements from high school seemed more rigorous than the requirements placed on the person running for President. 

That gave me an idea. How would it be if the requirements for running for President or any elected office included the following (some are based on high school graduation requirements):

• Release 5 years tax returns
• Insulate themselves from their private companies and financial interests
• Agree to not join a lobbying group/ financial institution for 3 to 5 years after they are out of office
• Undergo sexual harassment and diversity training before they file in their applications 
• How about community service requirements? How about all candidates are required to contribute 100 hours every year for 5 years before they seek an elected office? 
• Take a world history and US civics test and get at least a B
• Take a basic science and statistics test (SAT level is good enough) and get at least a B
• Should have studied one foreign language and culture for 4 consecutive years

I know it is wishful thinking but it is unfortunate that we place stricter guidelines on ethics, higher expectations on character, and tougher academic requirements on our teenagers than we do on our elected officials.

This past week just showed that democracy is hard work and the US has numerous skeletons in its closet, literally skeletons of Native Americans and Slaves on which it was built. It is time to come to terms with the legacy but it is also true that people will line up to come to the US in a heartbeat than any other country in the world because of the aspirational ideals of being an American. Do we let our aspirations or our failures define us? Maybe it is time to combine both as we take the next step towards a more perfect Union.