Difficulties

Yesterday was one of the most eventful days ever in my life.

I spent all day making country profiles of Ethiopia and Tanzania for my oh-so-awesome internship with the Earth Institute. Morbid research truth be told. It is to compile information on demographics, health care scheme failures, existing health care policies - urban and rural and also to form disease profiles. I spent the latter part of the day reading a lot about Jacqueline Novogratz (yes, the Acumen Fund CEO), its been on my to-do list for way too long now. I looked into the Acumen Fellows application (obv!).

I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day and really wanted to get out of for some fresh air, and thanks to the D's blah mood, we went and got some amazing starbucks and went on a 45 mile drive! I am sucker for drives, I would do almost anything for someone to drive me around, while I sit and watch the world pass by and let the breeze graze my face.

I dont have enough words to describe what DC is like. I love the city. Its a perfect mix of fast-pace and culture. Its somewhere between austin and houston and new york. Ok, that's a lot of betweens. Well, personally, I would say its a mix of Heidelberg, parts of Austin downtown and Switzerland (yeah! seriously). It has many quaint old victorian era type bridges with bricked-arches and bricked road-side walls with growing green creepers. Also, the fact that I am here during the prettiest time of the year, makes me love the place more. Its definitely one of the cities I would love to live/work in.

Now for the grand finale.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs goes something like this.

I recently had a discussion saying I don't quite agree with where the Social Needs are placed, more so, that I wouldn't want my social needs to come before "self-actualization". (Adding to never-ending list of 'wants')

D recently moved to a new house in a very pretty 'upscale' neighbourhood. It is surrounded by a very huge park. By park, I mean, a semi-jungle. We see deer and rabbits from time to time in the back patio. The living room has a huge whole-wall french window and another half-wall glass window. The architecture is such that the living room feels like an extension of the backyard with its lush green foliage because of the transparency of the partitions and the absence of curtains on these huge windows. D also has a roommate, who happened to be in the living room late in the night reading a book with a lot of lights on. She suddenly looked out and saw a while male naked, a foot away from the window looking at her and masturbating. She obviously freaked out and came running into the bedrooms and we all screamed as hard as we could and went into one room, and calmed each other down in a minute and tippy-toed back to the living room, called 911, had the police come over. They patrolled the area for a while, but considering the patio is backed by woods is hard to find anyone in the pitch darkness.

Now coming back to Maslow, I experienced what it feels like to be devoid of 'safety needs'. It's tortuously hard to think about anything else when all you can think of is whether someone is after your dear life. I woke up every minute the rest of the night to look at every possible shadow from the windows and in the process, freak myself out a little more. Lots of Paranoia ensued. The thought of being violated leaves an indelible impression. Even being part of the middle-class India, it's been hard to escape sexual abuse, I know at least 3 other people in my friends circle who have been abused in their childhood and who have never vocalized their experience. Its always a deep dark secret you share with the most intimate of people in your life. I have always questioned the carnal-centric nature of humans.

How can you monstrously hurt someone and traumatize them for the rest of their life for a few moments' of self-centered "pleasure"?

Feeling vulnerable in the most powerful nation's capital definitely makes me respect a mother in Africa who has to wait for the end of the day to know if her kid is even alive to get back home.

The burden is hard to fathom.

We, the people

Many times in life we come across people - some who end up becoming a significant part of your life and the journey, some others who swoosh past like a fleeting speck of light and yet end up making an indelible impression, somehow. Every now and then, I end up reminiscing about people of the latter kind to make myself realize the need to detach myself from the former kind. I met some of the most interesting people on cab rides and flights.

On my flight to DC, I made one such acquaintance. She was a 25 yr old with 3 kids. Carrying and 5 months far with the last one, 2 yr old boy and another 8 yr old boy. Do the math. She is a high school drop-out. She lost her 2nd boy 4 months ago and I got the impression she was still grieving. The oldest lives with her 'boyfriend'. She showed me pictures of the 2nd boy and kept talking about how much they spent on his grave and what engravings they got and how technology has come so far that they could laminate a photo of his into the stone. I was out of words. Frankly, I was glad she wasn't talking about how much she missed the cute little kid. She deviated from it all the while, I don't think I would've had any consoling words for her. I can't utter a single appropriate word in situations such as this. I didn't even end up saying "I am sure he knows he is missed" or "May he rest in peace". We moved to brighter topics after that, about how her very close friend is Black Eyed Peas' *wait for it* costume stylist! Such awesomeness in the new 'boom boom pow' song. Me like.

Well, I have a long account of at least 5 other such acquaintances. I will save it for another time.

Life is full of you passing judgments on people you don't know, sometimes on meager qualities like accents. I watched this (I have never liked anyone reading 'If' by Rudyard Kipling more than this, not even the very suave english prof from last sem!). I find it especially cute and absolutely adorable. It must be the exotic-ness of a foreign accent, then i thought about how I find it ridiculous when a fellow south-indian says ayrport or em-en-ey for M-N-A, why?! I bet well-accented-english speaking spaniards find Nadal's english accent just as ridiculous. For me, more than the accent its the indifference to learning the right way of pronunciation that's bothersome, so I let people correct me. Anyways, thats my spiel about judgements.

and I forgot to say, yayyyy DC!