Television shows during lock down

I am not a big fan of television or even movies as I find it difficult to sit through them without having crochet or knitting in my hands.  But lock down has ensured the unthinkable.  After my television stopped working (There is a problem with the remote and I have to call in the service people), I decided to shift to Amazon Prime and Netflix.  I remembered reading some good television shows and decided that this was the time to see them considering that the lock down keeps on extending.

So this blog is about some of the shows I really liked and disliked.

Gilmore girls- I watched two episodes and gave up.  Incessant banter and no character development.  I know that there are fans out there for this show but I could not watch it.  It was just Ugh!

The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel- Written by the same people who wrote Gilmore girls.  It was marginally better than  Gilmore Girls.  Season 1 was really good and I wished that they had stopped it there.  The show is about an upper class Jewish housewife who becomes a stand-up  comedian after her husband leaves her for his secretary.  Only he never disappears from her life.  He seems to be forever around.  And I could not figure out  how a professor in Columbia University could have such a lavish lifestyle. Of course, it is quite possible in Bollywood movies (In particular, I remember the awful movie called Hum Aapke hain kaun) and I assumed that it is possibly the same but it appears that the professor's wife comes from a rich background. Anyway, I saw couple of episodes of Season 2 and gave up.

Schitt's Creek- Marvellous.  I really enjoyed the improbable but warm, humorous story line.  What happens if a very rich family loses all its money?  This a Canadian TV drama. The Roses lose all their money and have to move to a small town called Schitt's creek which long time back they had bought as a joke.   The sitcom revolves around how the Roses adapt and grow as a family while living in Schitt's Creek.

Panchayat- Wonderful Hindi sitcom airing on Amazon Prime.  This is the first season of the production and shows an young man, who has slacked in Engineering college, accepting the post of panchayat secretary for want of better options.  He moves from city to the village of Phulera in Uttar Pradesh.  The panchayat head is a woman (it is reserved seat for women) who has happily ceded the official work to her husband while she takes care of their  home.  Nothing strange here as it is the reality in many cases.  Our hero has only one mission in life- how to get out of the village.  The only way out is to prepare for MBA entrance examination while dealing with the vagaries of the village.  The problems are commonplace- where should they put up the solar lights provided by the government (of course, outside the houses of each panchayat member),  how to placate the villagers with the insensitive family planning messages (the family planning messages were truly hilarious),  what name should be given to the newly born baby... the first season ends with the panchayat head (played by Neena Gupta) taking over her responsibilities (one has to see her learning the national anthem!).  I am looking forward to the second season.

Humsafar (Companion)- This is a Pakistani drama with Fawad Khan as Asher and Mahira Khan as Khirad in the lead.  Very popular in India.  The story is straight out of Mills and Boon with a wicked mother-in-law and a  cousin, Sara, who is madly in love with Asher and would do anything to marry him.  Asher ends up marrying Khirad, who also happens to be his cousin (her mother and his father are siblings).  As expected, they fall in love but the mother-in-law does not like Khirad because she is from a lower middle class background (her parents were teachers) while Asher belongs to an affluent upper class family.  The mother-in-law wants Sara to marry Asher.

In the first half, Khirad is naive and innocent, an easy prey for her mother-in-law and Sara, who engineer her downfall.  Pregnant, she is thrown out of the house while Asher does nothing to help her.  In the second half, Khirad emerges as a strong woman who holds a job as she brings up her daughter.  Needing money for the open heart surgery for her daughter, Khirad approaches her husband (I love the way she tells the secretary that her name is Umme Hareem (mother of Hareem) to gain entrance to her husband's office).  We know how that is going to end but I liked the way Khirad holds her own and reunites with Asher on her own terms.  Even as it ends in a happy way,  the viewers know that both Asher and Khirad will have to work very hard on their marriage and no one can walk over Khirad anymore. 

Zindagi Gulzar hai (Life is a garden)- Another Pakistani Drama which was also popular in India.  There are 26 episodes of this drama and the plot revolves around two sets of families- The Murtuzas and the Junaids. 

The Murtuza family is lower middle class.  The father has two wives.  His first wife gives birth to three daughters.  So he marries a second time so that he can a son.  The first wife lives separately, works a teacher and ensures that her three daughters are well-educated.  She also ensures that she infuses a strong sense of independence and at the core is a strong plea for women's education. However, the girls, especially the eldest one, Kashaf , develops insecurities because her father has abandoned the family.

The Junaids are obscenely rich (a la  The Social Butterfly written by Moni Mohsin for The Friday Times).  The father has a business and the mother works for NGO.  They have a daughter, Sara, and a son, Zaroon.  

Of course, we know that Kashaf and Zaroon are going to end up together.   The problem is that while there was a plea for girl's education in the first half, it was undone in the second half by bringing to forefront the patriarchy.   The mother, who has worked hard to ensure her daughters get good education, now has only one bee in her bonnet- get them married.  And Kashaf, who says she would rather be single, is guilt tripped into marriage just to satisfy the society.  She, of course, marries Zaroon.  Zaroon wants to marry her because she is what he considers an ideal woman- educated, has a job and yet is conservative.  She will look after him, cook for him, sew button on his shirt (there is a scene where she sews a button on Zaroon's shirt and all I wanted to do was to tell him to learn to do so himself).  It does not matter that both Kashaf and Zaroon had similar education and hold similar government jobs.  In the end the viewer knows that it would be Kashaf who makes the compromises.  That was problematic for me.

I want to end here by saying just as Pakistani TV shows are popular in India, so are Indian movies and shows in Pakistan.  If Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan are popular in India, Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan are popular in Pakistan.  As the governments entangle, the people would rather know what is it like across the border.  As I watched both Humsafar and Zindagi Gulzar hai, I found the themes resonating.  Home tuition, of course!  Traffic jams, of course!  Taps running dry, but of course!  Power cuts in the poorer section of the cities, nothing new!  Unaffordable health care, nothing new. And I whooped when I saw the pot-holed roads.  Both countries know how to mix bitumen in water and have the same road laying strategy. 

The great digital divide

We are now two months into lock down- one of the most stringent in the world.  Of course, the main concern for the educators is how we are going to complete the syllabus, when are we going to open, and as researchers, we are also worried about our laboratories.

When the lock down was announced, my students decided to freeze down the cells and store them in -80oC.  Some of the cells were stored in liquid nitrogen tanks.  After two months, we ended up losing all the cells stored in one liquid nitrogen tank because we could not fill it.  We moved the cells from the other liquid nitrogen tank into -80oC.  Of course this is summer, a very mild one but still intense.  This means we have to run Air conditioners non-stop.  Given the condition of wiring (the engineering department has not got around to changing the wiring system), we have asked one of the lab attendant (who has not been paid since the lock down began) to come to the lab every day and ensure that everything is okay.   Even then, my students and I are apprehensive- will our cells survive?  How long will it take to restart the lab?

This is just one aspect.

When the lock down began, the faculty started looking into ways of finishing the syllabus. Many of them have finished the course by sending the students power point slides, hoping that they can download it and study.  The first year Ph.D. students, however, have to write a term paper and a research proposal as part of their course work.  With great enthusiasm, we told these students to complete both the assignments during the lock down.  They immediately sent us an email saying that most of them do not have internet connection and therefore, cannot access research articles/journals.  Hence, all such assignments can be completed only after the lock down is lifted.  We were silenced.

One of my student later told me that the internet connection in her place only works intermittently.  Most of them time she uses the data card in her phone to download and access research articles.  Another student told me that he has written part of his thesis but  cannot send it to me due to erratic internet connection.

That brings me to the great digital divide.

Living in Delhi, it often escapes my attention that electricity and internet are not available 24 hr in other cities- especially the small towns and villages where most of our students reside.  Even in Delhi, children living in urban slums do not access to 24 hr electricity and internet.  They also do not have privacy.  One room is shared by all the members of the family.

Private schools and private colleges have been conducting online classes- but these are accessible only to a minuscule section of students. The government schools do not have required infrastructure to conduct online classes and their students do not have access to internet.  For us, in government universities- the infrastructure is available but students do not have access to internet.

Lillies and Roses

The weather continues to be kind.  Early mornings are still cold.  There is cold breeze through the day.  Best of all, with the cutting down in noise pollution, the birds are having a wonderful time.  I was woken up this morning by the peacocks.  Later I could hear the barbets and while coming back after purchasing groceries, I could hear the koel heralding the advent of summer.  It is simply wonderful!
Some years back, one of my upstairs neighbours planted lilies.  They bloom every year around this time.

I have four rose bushes-each one of different colour. Here are the white roses.

Cross-stitch in the time of lockdown

To me it seems as though the lockdown has been going on forever.  Since October, the school has been shutdown for one reason or other.
Last year, my friend's daughter got married. I could not attend it as amma was not well.  But a gift was certainly due.  It took lots of trawling, looking at cross-stitch patterns before I found the pattern I wanted to make.
The Art of Stitch is based in Malaysia and they shipped to India.  Best of all, they tracked the package.  This was important because in the past I have missed packages-they were not delivered and the online store was not willing to do anything about it.
I chose an artwork by Tanigami Konan.   He was a Japanese painter and the Art of Stitch studio had converted one of his artwork into a cross-stitch pattern.
I ordered the kit thinking that I would not have order the threads separately and worry about shipping.  Alas, if there is one thing that I did not like about Art of Stitch, it was that the threads provided with the kit was not sufficient to complete the project.  So, I had to ultimately order threads- fortunately, they were DMC threads and I ordered them from Lovecrafts.  Fortunately, the threads came without any mishap.
Of course, when I ordered the kit (Japan Dahlia), I did not realize how big the project was! I had asked for 18-count Aida as smaller the holes, the smoother the pattern.  But the smaller holes also meant that it was lot of work and eye strain.  I started in mid-December. The lockdowns helped as I could work on the design for a longer time each day instead of squeezing it between work.  I finally finished the project yesterday at 4 pm.  I enjoyed every minute of it because it was such a joy to watch the flowers emerge with each stitch.  Plus, there were no half stitch and back stitch involved- I hate both of them.
I missed amma because she is the one who takes care of all my cross-stitch, crochet, and knitting projects, washing them carefully and storing them properly.  I hopeless with both these aspects.  So I washed the cross-stitch wishing she was with me to help me out.
Here is the finished project, which will be sent to my friends's daughter once the lockdown is lifted.

An enlarged version to see the stitches:

Finally, the print by Tanigami Konan can be seen on pinterest.  I think the Art of Stitch artists did a wonderful job in recreating the colors.

Gardening in the time of lockdown

The University officially closed on March 21st though we are supposed to be on duty.  We have to conduct classes online.
The campus is now deserted as most of the students have gone home and everyone is cooped inside.
Nanku Ram, my gardener, called to inform that he cannot come because of the curfew, which means that I have taken over the gardening activities now.  Before the lockdown he had sowed the seeds for bhindi and brinjal.  He also planted bitter gourd, which is now beginning to climb up the fence.  Last year, we had a good yield of the vegetable.  I am crossing my fingers for this year.

We planted the dahlia plants late this year and they are now beginning to bloom.  The weather has also been very strange.  Even though we are now at the end of March, the summer has not yet begun. There is a cool breeze through the day,  it rained couple of days this month, and the dahlias seem to like it enough to flower. 

Few years back my mother had planted lemon seeds in a pot.  It has now grown into a full tree.  Two years back amma advised me to mix rock salt in the soil so that the tree will bear fruit.  Which I did so last year.  This year, I can see tiny fruits.  Yay!

Coronavirus and social distancing

With the number of cases of Coronavirus positive patients increasing, the University has finally closed down.  All the students have been asked to leave the hostel, exams and classes have been cancelled. Ostensibly this is till 31st March and I devoutly hope so.   I am kind of resigned.  The labs in the University has not been functioning since last November when the students went on strike.  We open and we close down.  Again and again.  This time we functioned at least for 2 months before closing down.

Every one has been talking about social distancing. It can be done if we have large enough flat/house.  What will Sumitra, my help, do?  She lives in one room with her husband and two sons.  There is a tiny kitchen.  The room has two beds, one refrigerator, one cooler (summer without one would be simply impossible), and one washing machine.  What social distance can the four of them practice?  This, unfortunately, is the reality for the majority of the people living in our country.

My colleague, extremely cynical at times, pointed out that this is an infection of the well-to-do.  The ones who traveled abroad carried it back to the country.  If, he said, it had been infection affecting the poor, no one in the country would have bothered.  Which is what happens with TB- the poor are majorly affected and kills more than what Coronavirus will do-but who talks about it?

A lab of one's own- Patricia Fara

I picked this book up in the book fair.  Bookstores are becoming scarce in India as the independent book stores are closing and we do not have anything like Barnes and Noble. 

Patricia Fara reveals the stories of female scientists, doctors, engineers against the backdrop of the first world war.  Women were admitted to colleges by 1869 in England.  However, the scope of their work was limited.  Most ended up as teachers.  However, when World War I happened, men were conscripted and what was initially thought as something would last only weeks or months ended up lasting for years.  This when the doors opened for women.  They worked in munition factories, they were engaged as engineers, as doctors and of course as nurses.  Patricia Fara examines the role of these unsung women in the war.  Intertwined is the Women Suffragette movement and women get the right to vote- not all women but some of them-during the war.
Of course, when the war ends the women are expected to take a back seat to men.  People expect things to go back to as usual but things have changed subtly.  Women no longer are willing to take a back seat.  There are still struggles (in fact it continues today also) but slowly there is a grudging acceptance too.
I really enjoyed the book- in fact I finished half of the book during the flight from Delhi to Chennai.  It was an absorbing tale.

The stories are limited to England but I was asking myself about India.  Of course, this was the time of Freedom struggle.  But it was also the time when child marriages were the norm and girls were not educated.  If the husband died, then the wife (whether the marriage was consummated or not) became a child widow with her head shaven and forced to wear the widow's garb.
The first college for Women was Isabella Thoburn College in Lucknow which was started in 1870 as a school and later became a college.  Queen Mary's in Chennai was started 1914.   Much before Queen Mary's was started, the first women graduate in Chennai was  Sister Subbalakshmi who attended Presidency College.  I remember reading her memoir in Imprint where she says that used to go to college in a rickshaw.  She was, in fact, a child widow but her father refused to shave her head. Instead he had her educated.  She later opened Sarada Vidayalaya in Chennai where my mother studied.
But education for girls remained a rarity except in few of the highly educated/enlighted houses.  The woman professor, most celebrated, was Janaki Ammal  who studied in Queen Mary's and later obtained Ph.D at the University of Michigan. 

Information about these early women is scarce or at least I have not come across the information.  Something to do later on.