17 October 2020

Second cousin once removed? Or is it the other way round?

The other night, Avi, Sharmila and I were discussing what would your mom’s aunt’s daughter be to you. (See here). As I had explained to them that would be first cousin once removed.

Some time back, curiosity had gotten the better of me in terms of what are the rules of this nomenclature. Turns out there are some fairly nifty rules. The biggest shock I had was that generations way before you can also be your cousin! I always thought cousins are at your own generation or maybe below your generation.

The following chart (thanks to Alice Ramsay) is a neat way to picture it in your mind. If you are more of a rules based person (which is the way I think), this is what I have boiled it down to…

Let say you are trying to find the relationship of person A to you.
Keep traversing up the tree (your parent, A’s parent) till you find a common ancestor.
Let’s say you had to jump “x” steps and A had to jump “y” steps.
Take the minimum of x and y. Let’s say it is “w” (w=x or w=y). Take (w-1)

If (w-1) is at least 1, then A is your (w-1)th cousin. Now take the difference in your generations – which is (x-y). The absolute value is the difference in your generations. Let’ say, that is “d” (x-y=d).

Then A is your (w-1)th cousin, “d” times removed!!

So to calculate your mom’s aunt’s daughter… You have to jump to your mom’s mom’s mom to find a common ancestor. And the other person has to go mom’s mom to get to the same point. Minimum of 3 and 2 is 2. 2-1=1. So the person is your first cousin. Now you had to jump three times to get there and she had to jump twice. Which means the difference in generation is one. (3-2 = 1)

So, she is your first cousin, once removed.

In short, jump from either side till you get a common ancestors. The minimum value in jumps less one is the “what”-eth cousin. The difference in the jumps is the “how much” removed.

What if (w-1) was not at least 1? Then they are siblings (at same generation level) or uncles/aunts at higher generation and nephews/nieces for lower generation. For every generation jump you go Great, Great Grand, Great Great Grand, 3rd Great Grand and so on.

Of course if the jump up and down goes thru you (all points are common ancestor/descendants) then they are your child or parent – with the same Great, Great Grand, Great Great Grand, 3rd Great Grand rule…,

See if the picture makes it easy..

23 August 2020

The tale of a citronella lamp

This very lamp has witnessed so many different memories at this table. Six years back, it was witness to many a glass of wine imbibed by father-in-law and son-in-law. Sometimes talking about general precepts of life, sometimes specific aspects like his grandson in Kharagpur or the time he was a guard in a train (that was his career for some time).

The lamp has witnessed many an expostulation from the mother-in-law on the short hop from a sip of wine to full blown “matlaami” (drunkenness) and many a short shrift given to those aforementioned arguments by the father in law – no doubt deriving confidence from the fact that we were two versus one. Three, if you count the time the drunken daughter of theirs would also trudge by.

Two years back, on this day – Aug the 23rd – one lamp was put out. For ever. I was in Chicago. Sharmila was driving Nikita to school. We got the news that my father in law was no more.

His is a life to be celebrated. What I feel most happy about is that I got to see him every three months for nearly a decade. Those long trips to India and then the drive from Kalyani to Durgapur… it was all worth it. In fact, the best thing was to convince them to visit us in 2014 – when even Sharmila was not sure. Over a few glasses of wine in Peerless Inn, no less!

If I were to pick three men I would want to be like most (that are at least 40 years old) – undoubtedly, they would be my brother, first, my father in law second (and a Mr. Dubey, third – of whom, I have not written enough). All three of them share a few admirable qualities that admittedly I do not have. First, the ability to keep calm and not be judgmental under pressure. Second is to offer opinion only when asked. Third is to prioritize others’ needs over you own.

I remember even asking him about these things one night sitting by this same lamp. He shooed me away saying – “With age, you will get what you are looking for”.

Sitting outside by the pool this evening, the lamp and I – we miss him.

Seeing what my dad is going thru, I feel happy for him that his departure was a relatively painless one. But I miss his presence.

Sometimes. life is all about not saying anything and just quietly enjoying a glass of drink together.

Wherever you are today, Mr. Ghose, I raise one for you this evening.

Wish you were here.

But I am glad you were here as long as you could.

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8 August 2020

“Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers”

If you have a stressful job or are suffering from stress for whatever reason, this is an amazing book that explains how stress affects different parts of the body and exactly the process by which it happens.

Written by Robert Sapolsky (the author of “Behavior”), it is a little dense. Probably less dense – but since I am not a medical student, I am taking more time to sort out the various actions, names and organs he is talking about. I am ploughing at a rate of about 15-20 pages per hour, right now.

As of now, I am studying (and making a lot of notes) on Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. Reading up on Juvenile Diabetes (Type 1), my mind floated back to a really bright young gentleman – Ronit Ganguly – one of the most amazingly smart and well balanced kids that I have ever come across (we will not count his rooting for New England Patriots against him though 🙂 ) who was suddenly diagnosed with this. I got a better understanding – thanks to this book – what his body went thru. The frustrating part is that medical science has not yet fully understood why this happens and how to prevent it.

I am encouraged though that smart kids like Ronit (and his friends) will crack the problem sooner than later!

6 July 2020

Report out on not cross posting to Facebook

It was three months back that I had floated the idea of not cross posting from my blog to Facebook. Was soundly denounced by all commenters not to do any such thing. Not exactly of sound mind or body, I went ahead and did it anyways. Actually took Parijat’s advice of “try out for some time”.

I thought I will try it out for a month. It has been three months now. That itself says something. Here are some learnings…

What I gained:
a. A lot of time and self control: It was preposterously difficult in the beginning – missing out on all the comments and counter comments and likes and a rewarding engagement model with the readers and commenters. But over time, I realized what a time waste it had become for me. Now I check Facebook for 15 minutes in the morning – usually there is nothing for me – so, I scroll thru updates of others, smile at the furious points and counterpoints on mask versus no mask, virus versus hoax, Democrats versus Republicans, BJP versus Congress and log out of my laptop screen.

b. Focus on the quality of my blog: With that extra time, I have started focusing on my blog. The writing is still as bad as before but I have started working on how the blog looks. That – and some great encouragement from Larry – led me to learn HTML and CSS (and now I am learning PHP) to make all sorts of tweaks to the blog. You remember how the first time a kid learns fonts and colors and soon the whole document is filled with all the colors of rainbow and all font styles and sizes possible? Yes, I am that dangerous now.

c. Learnt to tweak the model: Over time, I learnt how to mix and match for best results. I still post once in a while directly to Facebook (like this one). After requests from folks like Kenneth, I started a email subscription to my blog (initially I was against it). Instead of immediate email notifications, there are weekly digests that go out. And then somebody suggested – why not send the digest to Facebook with links. Which is what I do now. I am also getting good tips – from folks like Milind, as an example, how to make a lot of things in my blog still better.

I would have missed all this if I had not “tried” out this experiment, that I am afraid is here to stay with me.

What I lost:
d. What I miss most is all the random updates of friends. I had to ply thru a lot of political and other opinions to get those posts, but usually I would get one or two interesting updates every week. Spending 15 minutes on Facebook does not get to that.

Net net, I think Facebook had become an addiction. I think I have been able to get myself back to where I wanted – it is a tool and I will use it as I deem fit and not the other way around.

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28 June 2020

Marketing gone awry?

This goes back a few weeks when Sharmila and I had this debate about distilled water. She had bought distilled water to make coffee at home. We get our water from our well and it can sometimes clog up small appliances because of very small debris.

I was arguing the case that we should not be drinking distilled water. Any water we drink needs to have some amount of minerals etc. Which is why all the cities process the water and add certain elements before it is sent out to the house taps. I also have very severe doubts if the water she bought is truly distilled – that would make the water very costly. It is probably super filtered or something.

Yesterday, when picking up water at the Kroger near our hotel, I noticed “Distilled Water” was the only thing left in the shelves (in the big size container I was looking for). What caught my eye was the marketing twist the label had.

It did state that it is produced by steam distillation. I can’t still fathom the costs of all the energy required to boil the water and then cool it back again after capturing the vapors.

But what made me laugh was mentioning that the source was “Deep Wells”. I suspect to give you a sense of pure and cold water?

My question was – How does it matter? You are distilling the water. The source can be from anywhere in this world – the output will be exactly the same. It is DISTILLED water. It will have no other molecule than H2O. You can boil dirt water and distill it and get exactly the same product.

But I guess these are the days of marketing. We have seen Smart Water, Vitamin Water … Why else would we pay exorbitant prices for tap water put in a bottle rather than have it from a tap?

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28 June 2020

Did you know there is a blue circle?

Usually I get to a green circle on the outer ring on the left set of dials every night. That means I got my 7-8 hour of sleep. Once in a while, I get a yellow if I do not get enough sleep. And in some rare cases, I get a red – especially in long flights because of the disturbed sleep.

On Friday, I woke up after a good night’s sleep. But was somehow not totally feeling well. After driving to Hilton Head, I slept off in the hotel bed for another long bout resulting in getting nearly twelve hours of sleep for the day.

Felt better after it. Also noticed that the Apple Watch sleep ring had turned bright blue! I had no idea that there was another color for the rings!

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28 June 2020

This is a special blog – my 6,000th!!

Taking a break from blogging from my vacation posts to post this one. This is my 6,000th post. What started as a journey of just wanting to write down my learnings from work life during a year off (second one) then morphed into running adventure logs and then a journal for intersection points and eventually became just a place to write down my reflections of moments of my life. And hopefully not forget how to put English words together to form comprehensible sentences.

I remember my biggest fear when I had started blogging. I had a feeling people start doing these things with a lot of gusto and then the energy peters out rapidly. The question I had for myself was how long would I be able to keep up my energy. I believe I have found an answer to that question.

Fifteen years of blogging. That would mean, I have posted a little over one post a day! Some might suggest that is too much! I think they would be right!!

I hope they are right. Life would be nothing if you did not do a few things here and there that people would be critical about.

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27 June 2020

Is “home” a lie we tell ourselves?

I read this a few days back in one of those Stoicism write ups. (Roger Whitney had introduced my to Stoicism). Worth reading for all of us. Although the message will probably not resonate with youngsters as much.

If you’ve ever made it to the end of Homer’s Odyssey, you might have noticed a rather strange part of the ending. It’s a part that’s talked about a lot less than the rest of the poem, possibly because it makes so little sense. You see, despite spending every waking second for ten years fighting to get home, despite overcoming nearly insurmountable obstacles on his way, despite all the carnage of the final battle to reclaim his kingdom, Odysseus does something almost inconceivable the second he possesses what he longed for…

…he starts planning to leave again! On another mission. Another voyage. Didn’t he learn his lesson? Can’t he be content or happy for even one minute? Apparently not.

Perhaps this is really the message of the epic: We are incapable of being still. Even when we get what we want, we immediately crave something else. We are addicted to the hunt, to the journey, and ‘home’ is just a lie we tell ourselves. Isn’t that sad?

Seneca, an ambitious guy if there ever was one, wrote about the shameful spectacle of the “lawyer whose dying breath passes while at court, at an advanced age, pleading for unknown litigants and still seeking the approval of ignorant spectators.” He was just talking about Odysseus in another form — he was talking about all of us who can’t stop, who have to keep going, who have to keep achieving, who are incapable of knowing what “enough” is.

The key to a great life — and to happiness — is stillness. It’s contentment. It’s enjoying what we have. It’s the ability to say “no”. To reject the temptation to do more even if more is another impressive journey or an occupational honor.

Stop. At least for today. Just stop. Be still.

The author also talks about the book “Stillness is the Key” as a suggested read. As you will see in review of the book I did in April this year, I was fairly unimpressed. I will post if I come across better books (by my judgment).

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16 June 2020

What I learnt from a few second generation immigrants about BLM

The backdrop to this is rather unfortunate. If I have my facts right, a young adult from our Bengali community (Rupkatha) posted about BLM in a Bengali forum and a grown up adult Bengali used the vilest of languages to attack her (and some other women in the forum). That had triggered in my mind a thought about how does the second generation immigrant Bengali community view the first generation immigrant Bengali community’s reaction to issues like BLM that is pretty much on everybody’s mind in this country.

Did a video interview with four young Bengali girls from our community Rupkatha, Dyuti, Diya and Puspita – all born in the US. Here is what I learnt:

First, I am simply amazed by the articulation power of young kids these days. Their ability to construct points of views and express them coherently and cogently far supersedes what I remember of my generation’s ability in those days. The sheer oratory skills – let alone the intellectual constructs used in debating a point of view – is impressive. This is why I always feel we are going to leave this world in smarter hands than ours. As it should be.

For folks my age – their message below might be hard hitting (I have tried to soften it without losing the essence). It is important not to get defensive and just listen to their points of views and respect them for that. Perhaps, some amount of reflection, if you so choose.

The key messages I heard from them for us first generation immigrants are:

(*) We should educate ourselves with the history of black Americans. We miss a deeper understanding of black Americans and the struggle the country has gone thru that shaped the platform for immigrants like us to succeed. It is not BLM’s responsibility to educate us. There is enough information out there. Lack of this education can only lead to lesser than deserved empathy.

(*) We need to realize that not saying anything or not taking a position is giving a message of not caring and thus makes us complicit. Especially, when we organize ourselves as a community, we need to realize that we represent a demography – whether we like it or not. Not speaking up when the rest of the country has – only speaks for supporting status quo. This is one of those few cases where not taking a position IS taking a position.

(*) We need to realize that situation is more complicated than just black Americans. On the other side of this equation is police brutality. Police (like military) is something our whole sense of right and justice is indexed on. It is important not to throw the baby with the bath water. Therefore, it is important that we listen to the other side. Regardless of whether we agree or not.

*ALERT* This gets really hard hitting for my community
(*) Speaking up is a function of how much privilege one enjoys. For most of our community, we came here due to our skills (technology, research etc) and we associate ourselves more with the affluent. That tends to be more white than black due to the history of the country. We therefore tend to have a dismissive attitude towards black Americans’ plight.

(*) We have inborn bias for fairer skin color (and against dark skin). [Rajib notes: as a background, in India, at least when I was growing up, a darker girl had far less chance of getting married than her fairer sister – I have a true story from my own family; there was a whole cosmetic industry peddling stuff to make your look fairer. I am not sure how it is now but I suspect biases do not go away in a couple of decades.]

(*) We instill hard work, good grades and staying out of trouble as virtues in our younger generation. Because, as immigrants, that is what made us survive and flourish. But does that teach the next generation how to integrate into a society and community that their parents might have only a cursory and a privileged point of view?

Like I said before – I learnt a lot from these young adults. I hope this is not the last discussion we have had.

Thanks are due to Amitesh for scribing while I was engaged in this video discussion.

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