Checking in

I read some of my recent older posts, and thought I should update my vast readership about what's going on.

• I quit my job. Currently on my notice period. Which, you would think, would make me happy, given that my primary source of unhappiness was it. But who would have thought - my unhappiness stems from more deep seated insecurities and inadequacies I have within. Really, big surprise.
• My parents don't know I have quit. As always, they will be the last people to know about any decision I take. They actually think I'm blissful in my current job, so my next life step should be to 'settle down'.
• A friend of mine just found a job in Jaipur. Which sort of renewed my faith in God. Or coincidences. Two of my favourite people are now in the same state capital, a few train ride hours away from me.
• I got over my ill-advised crush. The recovery has been so amazing that I absolutely cannot believe that I used words like pining and longing in his reference. I also called him a cunt though, which is, well, accurate.
• My sister took me to a Buddhism meeting. I felt very very divorced from that group, though apparently all first timers feel that way. I don't know how these first timers get over their disgust of other believers admitting to praying for big cars, however.
• Last weekend, my family dragged me for a road trip to Keoloadeo National Park in Bharatpur . The rickshaw wala who doubled up as guide was very helpful - pointing to the Palpal Heroine (read Purple Heron) and Pentistlor (read Painted Stork). I wasn't too miffed about the pronunciations though - he admitted he was not an official rickshaw wala early on - just the regular type who ferried passengers in the city, but came to the Park whenever he could get away with it. I was also convinced he had a secret life as an underground boxer, looking at his mis-shapen cauliflower ears. I think that's a question I could have asked if I were on a solo trip - not with family who would look all surprised at my new found precocious ability to make casual conversation with North Indian male adults from a different economic strata.
• I also secretly drank rum in the hotel room, and then went to dinner, suitably tipsy. I would think my mom would suspect my cheeriness but she probably put it down to the nice weekend I was having.
• The return journey was terrible though. Was stuck in traffic for half the day with a squabbling couple. Also ended up missing the engagement ceremony of a college friend. She is getting married today. I'm going for it, I think. Though I don't have clothes, logistics, or a gift, planned.
• I'm currently extremely resentful of everyone who is getting married. Not the ones who are already married - because they got married unreasonably early and I almost feel sorry for them. But the ones getting married now - in their late twenties. Like by all accounts, this seems to be the 'right time'. Most of us know ourselves fairly well now, have some sort of clarity about our careers (however bleak the future may seem), and have the sense to know who we want. Except I still feel 14 - where I absolutely cannot imagine being tied to a person (a man, of all things) whose feelings and ambitions and desires I must keep in mind while making a decision about my life, which consideration may not even be reciprocated. Forget about the love, and the sex and the household chore division and the feminism and other complicating factors. And I am resentful that others seem to have matured faster than me. 
• And I also hate the dynamics-change. Like I realise, that for most of my married friends, their priorities are going to change. I mean they should change - if they are tying their lives to another person, that other person should come before me. Especially if it's an arranged marriage, in which case all the time that they have before the wedding, should be spent getting to know the person they have to live with, forever (ideally). So the logical part is clear to me. It's just that I am absolutely hating seeing it happen. Where I'm supposed to be mature and logical and not pushy and clingy (and therefore truthful), but I can't help feel very afraid that everyone is growing up, and my parents are right that if I don't get married, I will just end up being a bitter, lonely, single lady with no friends. Because really, I'm halfway there already.

At the airport

If you are not a man of a certain age (and hence don't feel entitled to being served by uncomfortably dressed young women), it's rather easy to love the idea of Air India. They have flights to everywhere - from Lilabari (which I recently found out was in Assam, and till a few weeks back was the nearest airport to Itanagar) to Pantnagar (which I'm guessing is a dusty little town in Uttar Pradesh).

For some years now, I have thought of doctors as having the best jobs, but now I'm thinking pilots don't have it bad either. The entry barriers are high, and only people with lots of prior privilege get through, but if you can break in, it's a rather cushy job. Especially because you can never ever take your work back home.

The Terminal 3 airport is extremely impractical, though I will never admit this to non Delhiites who unanimously like to compare Terminal 1 to a bus stand (which is ridiculous, especially from people whose most frequently used airport is Chennai). The terminal must have been designed by a Delhi person, who lived in the suburbs and had to cross 50 km everyday to reach anywhere. Also must have been Punjabi, given the wall to wall carpeting and garish patterns and the gigantic brass statues used as decoration.

There are people at airports who will reach unearthly early and then be pissed off when people who come in time for their flights want to cut ahead in queue. And then express this pissiness loudly. I mean do they consider that assholes like them are crowding the check in and security counters unnecessarily? And if they weren't there, the people who are on time or slightly late, would be able to pass through more easily?
And this isn't even coming from a place of anger. I'm actually always early.

A crowded airport where you have no option but to queue up is fertile ground for introspection and self flagellation. But I have now decided to treat myself like I would treat a friend. Which is a rather daunting task if you are your worst enemy. In every way.

The pointlessness continues

Though it's not completely edit-proof today. I admit I deleted an entire paragraph I started with, which talked of the hopelessness in my life - the dreary work situation, the frustrating family situation, and the absolutely friendless-ness (in person) situation. And there, I have practically written all of it anyway. But I don't have the heart to delete this again, so I will continue to write like the existence of this paragraph can be ignored. Do you feel like a stupid fucker for having read this paragraph?

Talking of stupid fuckers, guess whose day started with her feeling like one?

Not me. I started my day by making a Whatsapp group with some ex and current female colleagues, who while together in Chennai, were part of a closely knit women's support group. So I whined and gossiped for a little while in the morning, which is really as perfect as a morning can get.

I did feel like a stupid fucker a little later though, when I read the newspaper. Rajiv Kumar, the Deputy Chairman of the NITI Aayog had tried to claim that demonetisation had not caused the slowdown, which is a predictable stand for a bureaucrat. In his view, the large NPAs (which had begun to be identified better under Raghuram Rajan's term as the RBI Governor) of banks may have been the reason. This, as a partial reason, is not incorrect. Yet - and I realise I'm providing context too late - I had spent a good 10 minutes bristling yesterday, when some news portals put out clickbait-y articles with headlines such as 'NITI Aayog bureaucrat blames Rajan for growth slowdown'.

How can a person with as much cynicism about the media as me, be taken in? Maybe because this time the clickbait appealed to my biases?

There is still no point to this post

I have a shorthand for whining. It's where I thrust my wrist out at people, in a silent but over-dramatic plea for them to slit it. Fortunately or unfortunately, no one takes it seriously, so it's still possible for me to procrastinate on stuff I really need to get done, and sit here, writing pointless blog-posts instead. I haven't done this, this thrusting of wrist at people, in a few months though. For some time, I was sequestered with only two senior male colleagues, who would never take this behaviour in the right spirit. (If you are my friend, you probably know that the right spirit involves miming a brutal slitting. If you are my best friend, you know that it involves thrusting your wrist at me in return). After that, I got company of people belonging to the same generation, but who seem to derive some kind of pleasure from life, and work (shorthand for people I can get along reasonably well with, but who I can never fully come to love as my own). Essentially, they are not the right audience for my whining either. Instead, I have to resort to verbalising my disgust in the form of furious Whatsapp messages to people, who, if physically present would have been the perfect audience. But all this verbalising just makes me angrier and angrier, and then sadder and sadder, and then more and more hopeless about the future.

No, I'm not trying to say I miss anybody. Shut up.

There is no point to this post

Really, there isn't. I just realized I am out of writing practice, my sentences are not flowing naturally, like they had a tendency to do, a few months back, when I was working on the worst thing in the world. (There was a project post that, which shattered my mental stability and continues to lead me to question my faith in everything and everyone, but imagine, this is still something I hate more). Basically, I had taken on the mantle of telling overpaid development sector professionals, having tax-free incomes in a global donor agency that women are people too, and deserve to be targeted, when designing development oriented projects. And how else to tell them, except through a 300 page, well-referenced document crawling with laboriously placed hyperlinks (placed by yours truly, over the course of the most traumatic 36 hours of my life), that is guaranteed to be read by no one. Not that I think anyone should read that garbage, even though it is, well-written garbage, where the words went shooting out.

Anyway, the point of this post is to write, write without censorship, and write without editing, and write without a plan or an agenda, to get back into the groove of just writing. Mainly because I need to remind myself that Plan A was to write, and that it is still possible to activate Plan A, while trying to salvage the Plan B I'm currently stuck in. No writing about the frustrations of Plan B though. Plan B is currently open on the same laptop, on a window that is definitely not incognito.

A lot of people I know have frustration and regrets. About not having enough fun in college, of having too much fun in college, of never learning an extra-curricular in school, or not taking enough initiative in class. I have all of those regrets, and more. My biggest regret is my ruined teen years - which I lived through like a hermit. I wasn't a docile kid by any stretch of imagination, who bottled up her unhappiness and lived under the thumb of tyrannical parents. Instead, I was an over-mature prude, who had a more severe moral outlook towards life, than people thrice her age. Hell I was such a prude, I never so much had a hormone addled crush.

Ok no, that's a lie, I did. For as long as I remember, I was sweet on the class topper. He wasn't a friend, just my occasional desk-partner who I got along reasonably well with, always a head shorter than me (we stopped interacting completely in high school - so I don't know whether that persisted), and always a few marks ahead. When we were little, all of my classmates had a crush on him - I swear all, even the boys. I think I remember people fighting to have him on their cricket team during long break. And sure, you might say, that maybe he was really good at cricket, and I'm not stereotyping - nerds could have athletic abilities too. Except, I'm talking about book-cricket, which, along with long break, maybe terms you don't understand. I don't have the patience to explain the intricacies of the game (long break was a 30 minute break to eat 'lunch' at 10:30 am, as opposed to short break, which was at 9, to eat a snack), but take my word for it, it requires neither smarts  nor athletic ability. Hence the only possible explanation is that the little boys of II-A (and then III-A and IV-A and V-A) had the hots for their longstanding class topper.

The point is that as we grew up, people moved away from the good, wholesome class toppers, and started crushing on boys who were far more stupid, and who would grow up to be far more conventionally attractive. I, on the other hand, continued my devout admiration-from-a-distance, till we graduated (I recently added him on Linked-in, which is apparently how I keep in touch with people now).

I liked no one in college. All five years, not one boy.

And since then I have had a grand total of two crushes (three if you count a passing fancy for a good-looking colleague that was a mostly pleasant distraction), both of which were again on the nice wholesome class topper types, and both of which have crashed and burned. I look at the first of these with some degree of fondness though - it would have never worked anyway. The second of these, is one of the only two men I have ever described as a cunt. And judged myself for pining over. And pined, I have.

Hence my regret of not living it up in my teen years - if I had exhausted my teen years with immature, ill-advised crushes, this nonsense would not have carried over to my almost-thirties. An age, where everyone else seems to be ready to get married and settle down while I agonise over Plan As and Bs and long for a completely terrible man, being near whom, basically necessitates that I surrender my mental stability and faith in everything and everyone.

Yes I know this is a waste of time, you reading this. See the heading - it's practically a disclaimer. 

Starting new project.

#willnottalkbeforeitbecomessomethingconcrete

Dida

Grief can affect people in different ways.

You can be all practical, deciding to prioritise an official visit over rushing to Kolkata on hearing the news of Dida’s passing away, knowing that she is gone already. Knowing that all there will be to see, is her bloated, dead body, surrounded by aging relatives and neighbours, some talking about how they had just come to see her the other day, others, about how she had suffered greatly, and would now finally be at peace. Some others attributing their usual Bengali affliction of heartburns and acid reflux to premonitions of ill-tidings, yet others, talking about the steps that should have been taken to prevent her untimely death.

You can be all practical, knowing that you have been grieving for the last five years already – that death is only a culmination of a long period of wasting away. When every next photo, showed her progressive emaciation; when every next conversation with her meant more lost threads, and longer spells of hallucinatory observations; when the phone conversations stopped; when every next visit meant lower chances of her recognizing you, responding to your coaxing or your touch.

But then, what is this impulse to weep, this inopportune onslaught of tears? When browsing books, but not being able to read a preface by a behavioural economist, because he wants to discuss Tversky’s period of illness and death. When sitting alone at the airport, sipping coffee, and thinking of the last office trip, when you made a detour to Kolkata, and saw Dida for the last time. When travelling long distances in rural UP, in a dark car, with a government employee talking about being over-looked for a promotion by a corrupt boss and imagining Dida’s indignation at this injustice. Or when a friend sends you a photo reminding you of the life you used to have (even though that life had nothing to do with Dida), and days which have deserted you forever. Or even when sitting for the pujo, at her kaaj, resolutely refusing to repeat the Sanskrit prayers being spoken aloud by the priest, because Dida didn’t like us to say things we didn’t understand – not because she was irreligious (she wasn’t), but because she didn’t want us to inadvertently ask the Gods for something wrong (sons, for instance).

Or when writing a blog-post about her but finding a single post to be inadequate to explain what she meant for you.

#Everyday Sexism

I heard on the radio yesterday, that in a study on mixed-gender workplaces, women exhibited higher stress than men. The RJs then went on to opine that women couldn't possibly be stressed about work - it must be to do with how their female colleague's lipstick was better than theirs. I hope these men don't have to deal with younger female colleagues or girlfriends/ wives ever.

The Master Post on Everything you need to Know about Agriculture in India

Again, a Work-in-Progress post, where I dump everything of relevance. No, the heading is not presumptuous at all.

Source 1: A deceptive-looking useful document prepared by a Foretell Business Solutions Private Ltd. in collaboration with ICRISAT. A Guide to Linking Farmers to Markets - Concepts and Case Studies.

Rao, P., Basavaraj, G., & Foretell Business Solutions (P) Ltd. (2013). A Guide to Linking Farmers to Markets - Concepts and Case Studies. (Research Program on Markets, Institutions and Policy (MIP), ICRISAT, Issue brief). ICRISAT. Retrieved May 10, 2018, from http://hope.icrisat.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Guide-to-linking-farmers-to-markets.pdf

Based on operating location, markets in India can be divided into -

1. Village markets - allows for direct transactions between farmer and consumer.
2. Primary markets - located in towns near the area of agricultural production - typically would involve farmers or traders bringing product for sale.
3. Secondary wholesale markets - located at sub/district level, away from area of agricultural production. Transaction takes place between trader and wholesaler. E.g. APMC mandis
4. Terminal markets - in larger cities where the produce is dumped for sale to final consumer or for export. E.g. Azadpur mandi in Delhi

I just realised a Value chain is a specific kind of marketing system. This, after doing a six month project evaluating whether a project looking at integrating value-chains had robust processes. In a traditional marketing systems, there is just a 'push' from one player to another - farmers produce commodities that are sold to the final consumer through a chain of intermediaries, and there are spot transactions. Farmers have no control over prices they receive.

In contrast, in a 'value-chain' market system, the farmer is apparently tuned into the needs of the consumer, and works closely with suppliers and processors to get the product to the consumers. Hence finance, R&D, seeds, irrigation, risk management tools etc. are inputs for farmers, they are in close contact with processors and manufacturers, who in turn are in close contact with retailers and exports who in turn provide the good to the consumers. This is true for a traditional  marketing system as well. In a value chain marketing system, there is additional bi-directionality in terms of flow of information from consumers to retailers/ exporters to processors/ manufacturers to farmers to suppliers/ finance/ agri scientists etc. [This could be overall framework for our study].

The issue is basically - how to integrate the small farmer into the value chain? [Since small farmers dominate in eastern UP]

There are essentially various ways to do that (say contract farming, FPOs etc. which are forms of marketing channels). But in terms of basic steps, the following are needed - some form of collective marketing that can graduate to full collective enterprise. The idea is to enable aggregation of produce, basic processing (procurement, sorting, grading and cleaning) and negotiation with traders. Can also pool capital, share risks, and benefits. Additionally, makes it easier to have basic infra like weighing machine, drying platform, storage platform etc. Training may be needed for providing marketing skills and partnerships with the private sector may help have assured market.

Looking at the actual models of marketing these may be -

Contract farming: 

You know there are times when sex selection works in favour of females?
For cows.

       
When I say 'couple', I mean two. Is that not the correct usage? 

Living at home

I don't know what it is about living at home that makes me a complete and utter bitch. And I have just lived alone for a year; so what could have happened in the meantime, such that everything my parents do, now grates on my nerves?

I mean, my bad mood at them is not even related to them pestering me about marriage. It could be an innocuous question about where I'm going and what time I will be back (and really, where do I even go except for work meetings), or some long discussion about something I said myself (say I described a particularly idiosyncratic colleague to my mother and she repeats that to my father, in front of me, with inadvertent inaccuracies or deliberate embellishments), or just some wishful thinking on the part of my mother - about how she would come with me if I moved back to Chennai.

All of it, for some reason, feels like a violation of my life and personal space. And all this talk makes me feel weirdly nauseous, like the walls are closing in.

And they haven't even done anything wrong.

Reasons to love Delhi (again)

This is a Work-in-Progress list that will get updated as and when yours truly has a moment of doting fondness for the city where, among other things, she was born, brought up and groped.

• The pink coloured vikram that has 'Dekh mat pagli, pyar ho jayega' as its bumper sticker.
• The stories I have already eavesdropped on, with three days of stepping out - one of them was to do with someone trying to remember their past life while being 'hypnotised'.
• The campus. The iced tea. The coffee sprinkled with cocoa powder.
• Trying to park in a clearly demarcated no-parking zone, being told not to by the security guard even though other cars are also flouting the rule because in his words, they belong to the Judge sahab and CEO sahab.
• The possibility of having an office space in the Statesman House. However remote.
• The scribbling on the newly white-washed walls of CP, advertising for 'Tel Maalish'.
• The fares demanded by auto-wallahs, that now seem reasonable to a person who thinks of herself as partially belonging to the land of the worst auto drivers.
• The conversations between Very Fancy People at restaurants located in Important Cultural Hubs about National Events of Importance that sound like gossip about friends, relatives and acquaintances.
• The Delhi metro and the city's unrelenting attitude of 'Have space, will use it'. Even a hitherto nondescript metro station (INA) can, over a year, when you didn't check in, be transformed into an important interchange. Or be used as a commercial space with mushrooming offices and co-working spaces.
• The feeling of being 'settled in' when a 40 minute metro ride starts looking like a short commute again.

Blog B-Day

It's the sixth B-Day of the blog and the poor thing has been sitting ignored for a while. No longer. This blog gets active this week! With less self censoring! And probably ever more limited readership!

I told a bunch of people I will write a book in five years so now I have to at least try.

Re this post, I have now realised that reading everything on everything is impossible when you have a full-time job, a love for fan-fiction and everything frivolous, and live in this current era.

Hence I have decided my areas of interest are:

1. Indian agriculture
2. Renewable energy 
3. Macro-economics  
4. International politics