Monday, April 11, 2011

Off the soapbox, it's time to compromise

Monument of Gandhi's Salt March, Pondicherry

Lately I've been pondering the question of collaboration. I've been thinking about how it may be possible to reach compromises with people who think and believe very differently. The question arises in many spheres, private and public, professional and political.

My last post was written in a moment of great passion, frustration, anger and disappointment about the lack of compromise, the lack of collaboration between the Republicans and the Democrats of the Wisconsin State Assembly. I am still frustrated with politics. But the local, state, and national politics obviously have been and continue to be constantly fraught with this challenge.

What can be done when people feel very differently, and simultaneously feel very strongly about an issue? How can satisfactory agreement or compromise be reached? More recently, I've been pondering this question not with the question of state or national politics, but with collaborations with colleagues in my professional life.

In collaboration with colleagues towards common goals, such as the development of IAWAWSA as an organization, I find myself sometimes in fairly stark disagreements about how things should be done. I am not surprised that we have differences of opinion, as we are bound to think and feel differently. Sometimes these differences are obviously due to cultural differences, myself as an American, and some of my collaborators who are Indian. Sometimes the differences are simply linguistic and semantic, differences in the way in which we interpret words. But language and culture can't be used as scapegoats for all the differences of opinion and thought. Some of the disagreements are with my fellow American collaborators.

In case you couldn't tell from having read my blog in the past, I'm a person with strong convictions about my beliefs and values. I don't think I'm special or unique in this way. Rather it poses some serious challenges. In particular, though I believe in the importance of compromise, I'm not always very good at it. It's something I struggle with, something that I consciously work to improve in my life.

Because I feel quite strongly about most things, I find it difficult to pick my battles, so to speak. When it comes time to negotiate a compromise, I know that I should prioritize the aspects of the issue that are most important to me, and be willing to let go of the things that I feel are less important. But this principle is harder to apply in practice than it sounds.

When the differences are obviously cultural, it's both easier and harder. On the one hand, it's easier to accept that perhaps I should respect those perspectives with which I disagree. On the other hand, it sometimes means we are so far apart in not just what we think, but how we arrive at those conclusions, it makes it more difficult to find the point of compromise in the middle.

As my readers can tell, I'm writing in a lot of vague generalities, rather than specifics. I don't want to offend anyone, and I don't intend this as a complaint. We are bound to disagree, and it's my responsibility, and everyone's responsibility to find a way to reach a compromise. I work on it every day. But the bigger the goal, the harder it is, and working on these kinds of projects has given me a newfound respect for anyone whose job consists of this sort of compromise every day. As an academic, and being in a field which is not always collaborative, or which often creates hierarchies to decision-making, instead of equal collaborations, I have not needed to confront the challenge of negotiation and compromise most of the time. Maybe what I really need is practice.

I suppose these thoughts tend towards stating the obvious, but I find it useful to think "out loud" about such things. I know that there is no "answer" to these questions. Rather, I am, and I hope we all are, just doing the best we can to get along.


The Honesty Society (provisions store), Pondicherry

Friday, February 25, 2011

At a loss for what to say



Dear Readers,

Whoever you might be out there, whether you know me personally or not, I hope you can understand my taking this moment to stand up on a soapbox, and however incoherently (it's 2am) state my objections, my disappointment, my sadness about the state of democracy and government in my state, and in my country.

I am an American. At times that has been a cause for shame. I've never been much of a patriot, but when we elected Barack Obama, our first African American President, I was proud. For the first time in a long time, I was proud to be an American.

When the legitimacy of democracy, it's fairness, it's possible corruption is questioned in countries other than the US, I might have shook my head in sadness, but if I'm honest with myself, and with you, I never really questioned those reports. I thought to myself, "That's just the way it is." I didn't ever think it would ever come to the same sad status quo in Wisconsin, USA.

We have had our moments of shame. One that stands out is in the wake of G.W. Bush's re-election, and the alleged fraud of voting machines. Today was another one of those moments.

I just watched the Speaker Pro Tem of the Wisconsin State Assembly call a vote, without a motion to end the debate, without due process, call a vote, which was mostly shouted, and not even all those present in the chamber got a chance to register their vote. It was approximately 1:10am, and things had already become heated between the two sides.

Perhaps there was no doubt in anyones mind that the bill would pass. Even with a few dissenting republicans, which there were, it was going to pass anyway. But the vote called in the state assembly, following after the comments of one of the Democrats, with just seconds to respond, and both sides shouting, there was a cacaphony of yeas and nays, and then the roll was closed. Only 68 out of 99 voted. As soon as the words were out of their mouths the Republicans ran out of the room, as the Democrats shouted, "SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!".

The vote went 51 to 17, and the yeas had it. Of the 17 that voted against, four were Republicans. Twenty-five Democrats were not able to register their vote before the vote was closed. Republicans Kaufert, Nerison, Spanbauer, and Tranel should be thanked for not voting with the party line. Even that gives me some small faith in humanity.

On the other hand, the actions of the Republican speaker, who called the vote without warning, without formal roll call, without a motion to end the debate, disgust me. I'm at a loss for what to say.

I wish I could say I've never been so disappointed, but it's not true. I was more disappointed when this country somehow managed to re-elect G.W. Bush, for a second go-round. I wanted to move to Canada.

But this is closer to home. With Bush, it was people someplace else, somewhere hundreds of miles away. This is HERE, in my home, and it's personal. For me it's served a dual purpose. It's highlighted the depth and width of the huge chasm of differences between my beliefs and convictions, and people on the other side. It's also had the amazing power to create unity, and solidarity, with people I didn't know before, and amongst the friends I already had, within my department in the university.

It's not about self-interest, or personal gain. It's about doing what is right, and fighting against the corporations and institutions and lawmakers that want to take from poor and give to the rich, that want to disenfranchise us, that want to take away our voice.

We are now unified under a common cause, and the more ridiculous and un-democratic the behavior of those in power, the more angry, but also more unified we're bound to get.




Sunday, February 06, 2011

Adjust-panni, ippo enna?

After visiting a teeny village in rural Andhra Pradesh,
the school children were waving goodbye as I left (Sep 2010).


So I've adjusted. Now what?

I'm back in the swing of normal daily life in America, my calorie intake is up, with chocolate, cheese, and american junk food, and I've stopped seeing things around me as especially strange or foreign. Everything is normal. Almost. Mostly.

There are times now, in the normal-est circumstances, when I feel completely out of place. Only, it seems, in the moments of utter and absolute normalcy, when everyone else around me is so deeply and completely caught up in that unaware normalness, then I feel somehow transported to another world.

One night not too long ago I was riding the bus home late from the university, observing the other passengers. I couldn't help but see the way in which they organize themselves in the space of the bus so differently from the alternative reality of Indian buses. I experienced a strange double vision of an ordinary, late night, Indian bus, filled with passengers, superimposed on this bus of Americans. Though they are going about the same essential activity, riding a bus to go home, or to visit someone, or go to work, I can't help but marvel at the difference in the ways in which they, those physically present Americans, and imagined Indians, accomplish that task.

No one else around me was aware of the ghostly Indian bus, taking the same route, with ethereal other-worldly passengers, saris and shawls wrapped over heads, bending forwards in their seats, instead of leaning back, babies sleeping on laps, instead of in strollers, young children stretched across a row of three or four people. The small zippered duffle bags containing clothing and other essentials for entire families, jostling quietly on the floor. Women sitting only with other women, and men with men, unless they happen to be husband and wife, and even then, still sometimes separated. The chilly night wind blows through the Indian bus, even if chilly means its 70 degrees fahrenheit, everyone feels cold. It is only the body heat of the number of people packed closely together, 3 or 4 or 5 to a bench seat, that keeps the bus warm.

On the American bus, men in women, girls and boys sit together, and perhaps because there are so many fewer people, they all seem to spread out, legs spread wide, slumped down and leaning back, there are several people dozing or sleeping, or listening to music on headphones. Backpacks and purses and bags spread out over the adjacent seats, creating the buffer of ever-so-important personal space. Hot air blasts out of vents, and some people are talking loudly, trying to talk over the sound of the roaring heat.

I don't know why I sometimes experience double vision. Perhaps it's a trick of my tired, near-dreaming state, when I imagine what it would be like if I were still in India now. Sometimes I feel like I live simultaneously in a double-world.


India from the air, a flight between Chennai and Delhi, 2010.

Now that I'm home, and adjusted, more or less. I find myself missing India more and more. Certainly I don't miss everything. But I sometimes dream about the food, the dosas, idlis and chutneys of Thevar's Cafe near my old apartment. I miss how friendly everyone was, in a way that sometimes seemed more genuine than even the classic midwestern friendliness. Here the woman checking out my groceries at the store might smile, or make polite small talk, but she doesn't know me at all. Though there were things I hated about the small town life of Thanjavur, I miss the shopkeepers of the shop across the street from my house, who knew me, and always greeted me with genuine care. I miss the potter and his family who I used to visit, just to watch them work. I miss lots of things, maybe too many to name each person, place or thing.

It occurred to me once again though, (I've come full circle), I miss the challenge of daily life. I miss the lack of convenience, the effort it took to accomplish so many ordinary daily tasks, and I miss the joy and sense of great satisfaction at having succeeded in such basic things.

America, as I have felt for a long time now, is too easy. Everything is too convenient. I manage to make it somewhat less convenient through my own choices - for instance, currently not owning a car. Sometimes it's hard to put a finger on exactly what it is, or why too much convenience bothers me. I suspect it's that I'm not getting the same sense of accomplishment and satisfaction out the basic tasks of daily life.

So, I've adjusted. Now what? இப்பொழுது என்ன? I suppose I will go on as I have before, always missing one or more of the places that I have called home. Happy to be where I am, happy to be alive, but with twinges of longing for my alternative realities.


Saying goodbye to my friend Ramu, in Kadebakele village last March (2010).

As an aside, I wanted to post a link to this wonderful column reflecting on India, "Modern India's Dance of Creation and Destruction", by Akash Kapur for the International Herald Tribune (and NY Times). It has not much to do with the above post, except in that it also points to the constancy of change, the fact that since I can't live in two places at once, the next time I go back to India, it will no longer be the same place it was when I left. There is a kind of bitter-sweetness in that, one that I savor and let linger in my heart.