My thoughts on American Constitutionalism

Beej's Sunday Video Blog - Sunday, March 13, 2016 (North Andover, MA)

I discuss Donald J. Trump, my father Dr. Mukti L. Das, the Republican National Committee, Senator Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton, Senator Ted Cruz, Georgia, Jeb Bush the United States Constitution, my college friend Dan Haley and his former boss Mitt Romney, growing up in Massachusetts and other such topics. The first Sunday edition of my Video Blog is here for your consideration. I found inspiration from John Legend's very public discussion with his classmate at UPenn, Donald Trump Jr., in which he called Trump's father and many of his supporters racist. While I have not formally done the same, I feel Trump's danger emanates from an equally pernicious place. Let me know what your thoughts are.

The choices we make...

reveal the true nature of our character."  The message is strong, and in this moving Guinness ad created by BBDO New York, unmistakably powerful.  It made me pause, from an unbelievably busy week, to reflect for a moment on that.  In just two years, we now employ nearly a hundred employees on three continents.  As we steer our company onto the global stage, the choices we make do indeed reveal our true natures -- and to a large audience.  We have chosen to push forward and grow the right way, believe in our mission and goals, believe in people, smile, build better systems, learn, educate, laugh heartily at ourselves on occasion, make people smile genuinely, do the right thing without fail, and always be kind.  I'm proud of our choices and the people who are making them.

As we launch our new multimedia campaign to tell the world about Boston East India Hotels and our Troca Hotels collection, I look forward to our work being as compelling and ultimately effective as this piece.  Stay tuned and let us know.  

Click here for a link to the video

A tribute to Professor E. Graham Ward

It is with great sadness that I pass along news of the passing of a dear friend, professor and mentor at Brooks School. Prof. E. Graham Ward is one of the people most responsible for my ability to write and appreciate the power of the written word. It was he who awarded me the Brooks School Journalism Award, a prize I still cherish today. Professor Ward's decades of service at Brooks School brought him in contact with approximately one-third of the entire alumni population of the school.

The following tribute, written by Professor Mark Shovan, one of Professor Ward's contemporaries at Brooks, himself a legend at the school, is fitting and worthy of a few minutes of your time. Farewell my dear and beloved Professor Ward, you are and will forever be missed.

E. GRAHAM WARD 



An hour after reminiscing with Doug Burbank about Graham Ward's masterful approach to teaching, I received the call: Graham had died that morning of cardiac arrest.



E. Graham Ward (Graham, never Edgar) was so patient with those less intelligent than he; simply said, everyone. I am still dumbfounded how a man who said so little could convey so much. A man of few words both in the classroom and on the wrestling bench, Graham believed in stepping away from center stage and letting the learning process unfold through discovery aided by his moderate guidance. Forty some odd years ago, Jim Moffett and Graham Ward, both of whom once taught at Exeter began collaborating on a curriculum entitled Interaction, a student centered approach to learning. The Interaction series employed a sound theory of discourse and the use of varying levels of narrative voice. It became a widely circulated program of several varying texts published by Houghton Mifflin in 1973. Graham also wrote a biography of Frank Ashburn; Graham was a newspaper reporter; he wrote for Offshore Magazine; he most recently published a series of World War II letters from his uncle a combatant in Europe to the (McCallum) family back in Falmouth.

Graham was the Chairman of the English Department well before he hired me in 1968 until his retirement in 1997. Under Graham's leadership, the department moved from a program my grandmother might well have recognized in her secondary school education to a more forward-looking, cutting edge, much imitated but never duplicated department: The Brothers Dunnell, Todd Spader and others were all giants of this boarding school/ English Department life; it was indeed a life in this place called Brooks.

Let it be said that Graham was a gentleman too- a gentleman to all but fish: blues, stripers, bonefish and king mackerel all of which he pursued relentlessly in the waters off the Cape and off the Florida Keys. Graham died shortly after having put in his boat in Quissett Harbor. Maria, his wife said, "he was so pleased." He probably would have been out this evening to wet a line.



Graham was my mentor, my hero, my old friend without whose gentle guidance and succor, I would never have begun to have learned the little I know about teaching. Everything I ever, ever learned about teaching English, King Lear, negotiating the waters of secondary school, about honing intellect, about crafting independence and wearing an ascot, I learned from a fellow who looked more like Ernest Hemingway than Ernest Hemingway. I simply and greatly miss him so.



- Mark J. Shovan

Why I am leaving Mumbai, and why I will never leave...

The journey which began with a leisure trip to India in December 2005 has come to an end; today is my last day in Mumbai (or, Bombay to the faithful). My trip to this land and city started initially as a two year stint with a hotel investment firm. I came to India to help usher in a new era of institutional hotel development and investment in a part of the world that badly needed it. End corruption, fix infrastructure, improve market efficiency, increase transparency -- those were the goals I thought I could promote. In short, I wanted to change India. In the end, India changed me much more.

When I moved to Mumbai, I was a disaffected corporate lawyer from Boston seeking a thrilling new professional avatar.  I had lived in a variety of American cities -- but never in India.  As I look back at my first few days, weeks, and months in Mumbai, I chuckle at the rookie mistakes I made (my expense reports from China House are just the tip of the iceberg).  Because Bombay is a functioning dysfunctional cosmopolitan city, those mistakes are inevitable and valuable. I feel as if the city forces you to get things wrong before you are blessed with getting them right. The bigger the first mistake, the better the final outcome.

As a child, when mom dragged me to Mumbai to visit my relatives, I'd count the days until I could return home. That has changed. As an adult, having now spent more time in Mumbai in one stretch than in any other city since before law school, I can't ignore the amazing magnetism that this city exudes.  This isn't New York, Paris, Milan, San Francisco, or Boston. No, folks, Bombay is a different breed of animal. This city amazes you because it can be poor and rich, beautiful and ugly, harsh and kind -- all at the same time.  In Mumbai, an emaciated homeless man at the fringe of humanity finds shelter under an overpass adjacent to the Rolls Royce dealership.

So, why am I leaving? After losing my aunt this January to lung cancer and watching her yearlong battle, I decided I needed to make wholesale changes to my life. Months away from my parents at a stretch had to become weeks away. Corporate bureaucracy had to become start-up efficiency. A life of excess had to transform into a life filled with value and values. My new company's first two major projects are based in Goa, which is a 45 minute flight from Bombay. Having considered and seriously contemplated working from Mumbai, I realized that moving to be with my team would allow me to be more efficient and squeeze more time to be in the US with friends and family. Having made the painful decision to leave, I started to reflect on what lessons Bombay provided me.

Bombay has taught me more than I can write in this short piece. It has taught me about the vibrancy and energy of people both strong and weak; the power of good friendships and the danger of bad ones; to follow my passions and embrace my fears; that Indians like to drink and can't really drive; that white folks love to dance to Bollywood; that while divorce might be rarer than in the West, cheating isn't; that commuting more than a few minutes each day is generally wasteful to life; that while clubs may close earlier than in New York, the nightlife doesn't; to crave Holi and enjoy Goa; and to be thankful I don't live in Delhi. While there may be no single unified theory of this place, it is the third rail of metropolitan cities.

I leave behind some of the closest friends I have ever had the fortune to meet. While distance and time do filter out the friendships too weak to handle them, I know that I have met an incredible group of amazing people with whom I shall hope to share many years of meaningful experiences. Most of them, like me, came to Mumbai seeking something. The came, they stayed, they shared, and they lived. Thank you to all of you who are part of that group for enriching my life beyond imagination.

While it is true that I'm leaving Bombay today, I doubt that it will ever leave me. Goodbye for now, dear friend. 

Sick in Goa? Beware of the medical talent available to help you...

Thoughts on Nerul Polyclinic's Dr. Archana Salgaonkar:

So, I am in Goa tonight. I'm staying at The Sol, located next to the "Nerul Polyclinic," which advertises itself to be a 24x7 medical clinic and emergency room. I drove to the clinic with an eye infection (I feel fairly strongly that I've pet one too many stray dogs, a weakness of mine). Dr. Archana Salgaonkar, the attending physician at the clinic, after barely viewing my clearly infected eye, suggests only that I should return the next day, despite the availability of available eye disinfectants. "Wash your eye with tap water," she offers me.

I love Goa -- but if this is the best medical care we can get, I feel we should all be concerned.

In Memoriam: Swapna Das

Many of you have asked me to post the eulogy I delivered for my aunt Swapna, who passed away on January 15th. As I prepare to head back to India after a month with family, I am posting the transcript of my remarks in her loving memory. 




Swapna Das

I hope you will excuse me for reading this tribute to my aunt Swapna, who I called Rumu Kakima. It is not for lack of preparedness. Rather, I can honestly say that the thoughts I am about to express are among the most important I have ever uttered. In preparing my words, I thought long and hard about the tone I wanted to set. Would this be a tearful goodbye to an amazing woman we all loved or was this to be a lighthearted remembrance of a beautiful lady with an irresistible smile? George Bernard Shaw wrote that “life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” 



As much as I have cried over the past year about the possibility that we would be gathered here today for this purpose, I still cannot help but smile and be happy at the mere mention of my Rumu Kakima’s name. In a world where uncertainty is the only thing that is certain, I could always count upon Rumu Kakima’s warmth, kindness and boundless love. She was everyone’s favorite simply because she said what she meant and meant what she said. She made it her job to understand those she loved – to understand our fears, our passions, our challenges, and the lives we lead. 



Those of you that know my history may know that my aunt helped mom raise me when I was a young child. You may not know, however, that my Rumu Kakima was also my first love interest. Yes, indeed. At the ripe old age of two, I decided that my aunt Tumu – I was not yet able to properly pronounce my “R’s” -- was to be the woman I wanted to marry when I grew up. So enamored was I by her care, that I was apparently prepared to become the world’s youngest home wrecker.

In the nearly 38 years that she has been in my life, Rumu Kakima taught many important lessons:

First, she introduced me to the power and magic of Bengali sweets. A great chef by any standards, she really excelled in producing some of my favorite sweets of all time. I’ll put my Rumu Kakima’s chom chom – which she knew I loved to eat with a hearty dose of Rice Krispies – up against the world’s finest desserts. 



Second, she taught me the power of presentation and finesse. Whether it is modulating your volume and tone for an occasion or room – something us Bengalis really don’t handle well as we shout through life, or ensuring your tie is the right one and tied with an attention to detail, no matter what you do in life – Rumu Kakima first taught me to take the small additional effort to do it well – your audience will appreciate you for it. 



Third, she taught me the importance of family. For as much as we squabble, observing her raise my cousin Raja, who is an exceptional human being or watching our family come together over the past twelve months and especially the devotion and love of my uncle Subhas – my Bachu Kaku – I can truly say that I love each of you more today because Rumu Kakima once lived.

Last but definitely not least, Rumu Kakima taught me the value of life and that the journey is often more important than the destination. The Thanksgiving before she was diagnosed with her illness, during a call that now seems prophetic, she urged me to return to the US to be with my parents and family. Your parents are not getting any younger, she advised me, it is time to spend quality time sharing your life with them. All the money in the world, she told me, could not replace the time spent away from loved ones pursuing that wealth. I can say that my Rumu Kakima’s advice and subsequent illness is the single most important reason I quit my job with Hilton in October and has become a guiding principle in my life. Knowing that she would not be with us for very much longer helped make one of the biggest decisions of my professional an easy one. All my fears and worries about making the decision I needed to make were trivial compared to the battle she waged for her life. When I surprised her this October with news that I had finally quit my India based job, her beautiful eyes welled up with tears as she wept joyfully. 



Rumu Kakima’s illness, and advice to me can be summarized as follows:

Live life with purpose.
Live life with dignity.
Live life with love. 

Live life surrounded by those you love and who love you. 

Live life remembering that for all of us, it shall end someday.



In short, live a life worth living.

I cannot thank you enough, Rumu Kakima, for being such a powerful force in my life. I can’t believe I’m standing here today and it shall take some time to understand and come to terms with the fact that God has moved you on. But, I take solace in the fact that someone as amazing and loving as you is now looking upon and guiding us from above. 



I’d like to end my remarks with an old Vedanta prayer:



Oh Lord, 

lead us from the unreal to the real;
from darkness to light;
from death to immortality. 



Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

See also: Facebook Memoriam

Farewell, Hilton...

For the past four years, I have served as a senior member of the Hilton Worldwide team in India; today is my last day in that role and marks an important professional and personal milestone for me. When I moved to India in late 2006, it was for a two year stint as a hotel advisor. Back then, I was a bored American lawyer looking for the thrill and challenge of working in India.

When I joined Hilton in 2008 the company had no hotels operating in India and was coming off a largely failed joint venture. Today, the Hilton flag flies proudly over seven hotels in India, with nearly that number opening this year and dozens of hotels under construction and in the pipeline. I am proud of the time I've spent at Hilton, my fellow Hilton team members, and the wonderful people I've met and done business with along the way. It has been a ride I could not have imagined six years ago. Tomorrow, we officially launch Boston East India Hotels LLC, an American hotel ownership, development and management company of boutique and branded mid-scale and lifestyle hotels that will operate in India and the United States. Today, I celebrate and salute Hilton Worldwide.

Thanks for the amazing opportunity.

Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

RIP Steve. You lived a truly inspired and inspirational life. Reading the account of your life -- and its healthy dose of both adversity and triumph -- gave me and I'm quite sure millions of others, motivation to think and do as if this day is our last.

Click here for the NY Times article on the passing of Steve Jobs.

Thoughts on the Awful Carnage in Norway

The people of Norway have just experienced unbelievable carnage. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their relatives and friends at this time of great loss. It now appears that the acts of terrorism are those of a lone right-wing lunatic with anti-Islamic beliefs and domestic in nature, not the work of Islamic terrorist as first believed. That said, violence is violence; terror has no nationality or ideology. An awful day for Norway and peace loving people everywhere.

NY Times: At Least 80 Are Dead in Norway Shooting, July 23, 2011

Thoughts on yet another Mumbai terrorist attack

The citizens of Mumbai have seen this before.  Bombs, Bombay, and terrorism against this big bustling city that just takes it and moves on has become a recurrent theme. While the year 2003 was an especially bad year for explosions in the city, terrorism has hit with alarming frequency and with little or no opposition from India's military or intelligence operation. Just over five years ago to the day, on July 11, more than 1,000 people were killed or injured from seven coordinated bombs in the city. Who can forget the terrorist attacks of the 26th of November, 2008? Surely not Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman of the 2008 attack, who celebrated his birthday today. Did anyone in the intelligence apparatus of India know it was Kasab's birthday today? Did anyone have even one conversation about whether someone might use the date to plan attack? Did anyone care? Probably not.

So what do we do about all this terror, death and destruction? What can we do? While there is no one answer to solving terrorism, one thing is quite clear: India's government, politicians and public institutions have failed their people. Government is instituted by people to ensure, at a minimum, the common peace.  India's government, with rather striking universality across its many states and cities, has failed to deliver clean water, roads, and air. But those are relative luxuries, it would appear. India has also failed in its basic duty to protect its citizens against attacks, both foreign and domestic. Whether it is a completely failed response to terrorism that happens nearly weekly in the northeast states, or the internationally publicized attacks in Mumbai like those of earlier today, India's politicians are more interested in pointing their many fingers at Pakistan than in trying to make their people safer.

Zaveri Bazar, which has been hit before by terrorist blasts, had no improved infrastructure, no CCTV monitoring, no bomb detection or prevention methods. In fact, with the exception of the haphazard approach taken by hotels in Mumbai, nowhere in the city will you find any coordinated approach implemented by the government to prevent, deter, monitor, or detect the type of terrorism that the city regularly now faces.

The politicians will make bold and impassioned speeches tomorrow. They will point fingers. They will appeal for the public's strength, unity and determination. The next day, they will return to business as usual, as will the amazingly forgiving and tolerant public that elevates these politicians to power every year. Bribes will be paid, favors will be handed out. Scams will be hatched, public tax revenue will be squandered. Yet, sadly, nobody will do anything to make it even a touch less likely that today's attacks won't be the same as tomorrow's ones.

The brave citizens behind the Public Concern for Governance Trust have long advocated for better governance in India. It is time to head their calls. It is indeed time for the people to stand up, not just to the debased humans that perpetrate these acts of violence, but also to the politicians that allow them to continue to feast on an unfettered buffet of terrorist opportunity.

What do Ron Paul, Jimmy Carter and Barney Frank have in common? Drugs!

In the days of divided American politics in which we find ourselves living, it is a rare issue that brings politicians on opposite ends of the political spectrum together to co-sponsor legislation. Somewhat surprisingly, federal control over marijuana happens to be just such an issue.

Last week, former President Jimmy Carter wrote a insightful Op-Ed piece in the New York Times urging the administration to call off the American led war on drugs launched under the the Nixon administration and reaffirmed by President Reagan. President Carter made reference to the "courageous and profoundly important recommendations" made by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes as its members former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, former US Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, entrepreneur and Virgin founder Richard Branson, and former Presidents Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico), César Gaviria (Colombia), and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil). At its core, the Commission concluded that the "global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." While the finding is harsh, it is indeed hard to conclude otherwise.

The principal recommendation made by the Commission is that governments "end the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others." This is a sensible recommendation that should be adopted. The escalation in rates of incarceration for non violent drug offenders is absurd. When President Carter left office in 1980, about a half million prisoners inhabited American jails. Today, nearly five times as many people are incarcerated and according to President Carter, the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses has increasing more than twelvefold since he left office.

I recall a conversation I had with my judge, the Hon. Benson Everett Legg, United States District Judge for the District of Maryland, about a few policy issues related to drug sentencing. Judge Legg, who had seen many federal drug cases by the time I clerked with him in 2000 and has undoubtedly seen many more, shared his frustrations regarding the effectiveness of federal drug prosecutions. According to the judge, as soon as federal or state prosecutors cleared one Baltimore street corner of a drug dealer, another would surely pop up nearby. The inner city simply lacked opportunities for the young (and predominantly African American) men who were being convicted of selling drugs to the suburban (and predominantly white) consumers of those drugs. Supply and Demand 101: where there is demand, a supply will be available. These were not the musings of a liberal Democrat but rather a moderate to conservative jurist who had once been prominent in the Maryland Republican party. Judge Legg's views are hardly unique, however. Many federal judges are frustrated with drug policy and sentencing in the United States. (See generally articles in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Sentencing Project and salon.com)

Judge Legg's observations about Federal drug prosecutions on the streets of Baltimore back in 2000 are mirrored in the Commission's findings that "apparent victories in eliminating one source or trafficking organization are negated almost instantly by the emergence of other sources and traffickers." The futility of the war on drugs on the streets of the US and the amazing surge in the number of people in U.S. prisons and the phenomenal incarceration costs thereof represent the tip of the drug policy iceberg. As President Carter and the Commission note, a growing number of Latin American countries have witnessed an appalling surge in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights as a result of the US led and funded war on drugs.

Against this backdrop, Reps. Barney Frank (D), a Massachusetts liberal, and Ron Paul (R), a Texas libertarian, who are often not on the same page on policy matters, will introduce a bill in the House today that would effectively end most federal control over marijuana by deferring to individual states on such matters and only invoking federal authority in cases involving cross-border or inter-state smuggling. If passed, the bill would allow individuals to grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal. While the bill is not a legalization measure, it represents a solid and wise first step in the rationalization of federal drug policy.

I have long endorsed liberalization of drug policy, especially with regard to cannabis, and I welcome this most recent, even if long-shot attempt to do just that. To sign a petition to your member of Congress urging his or her support for the Frank/Paul legislation, please click here.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, 1928 - 2011

Dr. Jack Kevorkian Dies at 83; A Doctor Who Helped End Lives
(NY Times)

I met Dr. Kevorkian through one of my closest friends at Michigan Law School, Nick Holmes, who along with his mother and sister were close friends of Dr. Kevorkian. Nick's mother and sister were integral parts of Dr. Kevorkian's legal team and were important in his several acquittals. I only met Dr. Kevorkian twice, once on the campus of the University of Michigan and once for Thanksgiving dinner at the Holmes residence. He was a brilliant man whose compassion and love for human dignity are made even more ironic by the "Dr. Death" title that the media gave him. I weeped for him the day of his conviction (though we all agreed that he had made several strategic and tactical errors in the positioning and defense of the Youk case) and felt such joy the day he was finally released.

Until I met Jack, I was unsure of how I felt about medically assisted suicide. My professor in law school, Yale Kamisar, is a leading advocate against the right to die. And while I think there are compelling arguments on both sides, I have come to conclude that the right to die with dignity is as fundamental as the right to live. If my difficulties with doctors and the medical system, as an able bodied middle-age man is any example, I can't imagine being afflicted with a terminal disease and in constant pain and at the mercy of an uncaring doctor and medical system. Dr. Kevorkian, was right.

Jack, the world never understood you but is better as a result of your brave and tireless work on behalf of those who were too weak to advocate for dignity, even in death. May you live in eternal peace.

For the NY Times obituary, please click here.

It's time for sensible drug legislation

The movement in the Netherlands to reverse its leadership in the area of sensible drug laws compels me to again support drug legislation reform in the United States. I hope some of you will join me on the Founders Wall at the CCPR.


To contribute to the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, please click here.
For news updates on the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, please click here.

For an NY times article on the most recent movement in the Netherlands, click here.

The Observer and the Observed

In his interesting blog post, The Producers: Are Pictures Detaching Us From Life?, UC Berkeley Prof. Alva Noë writes of the creeping wedding-ization of experience. The proliferation of technology, especially digital imaging technology, is making us all detached producers rather than active participants in everyday life, he suggests. While the point is well taken, I wonder if we can't make a broader point about observation and the observer. In quantum physics, the observer and the observed are linked; the observed is affected by the observer. The video of Osama watching himself on TV, remote in hand, offers a stark recursive example of this phenomenon. The technology that is available today has no doubt democratized the producer function and with that created a new need for composers and editors as well as a realization that participatory detachment from the activity has its own impact. Yet, with or without technology, observation has the power to alter the observed. Our awareness of this law of nature and our knowledge thereof offers us our only real method to control how and to what extent we observer-participants impact that which we seek to merely observe.

India Calling (Little India Magazine)

Click here for Naomi Abraham's article on Indian Americans moving to India for opportunities, which has a mention of my own experience here.

Just Another Victim of 9-11...

My mom's long time colleague and fellow Sociology Professor, Shirley Kolack, was married to Sol Kolack, the New England Director of the Anti-Defamation League. Sol, who passed away a few years ago at age 80 but whose image and principles are still vivid in my memory, stood for everything this inexplicable decision by the ADL does not: equality in law and culture for all religions and faiths. (Debate Heating Up on Plans for Mosque Near Ground Zero, New York Times, July 30, 2010)

While I can understand and appreciate a desire to be sensitive to the families of the nearly 3,000 victims forever lost at the site, we have to remember that the attack itself was committed by radical Muslim extremists against us and our way of life, which includes at its core religious pluralism and diversity. The hundred or so Muslims who also died in the attacks, who make up about a percent of the victims, and the families who loved them should not be forgotten.

Abraham H. Foxman's decision to endorse the Palin/Gingrich position opposing a Islamic Center near ground zero goes far beyond the professed goal of being sensitive to the majority of the victims and approaches the realm of religious intolerance that the ADL was formed to fight. Kudos to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, for standing up for the principle of religious freedom, which may have just become another sad victim of that horrible day in 2001.

A bedtime thought for May 12th...

A little perspective...
Mumbai, India

Most of you who know me and have been in touch recently are aware of why today was not one of my better days.

I spent the day at work -- thinking a lot about the direction in which my life appears to be going. On the one hand, I have a job I really enjoy for a company I like, my family is generally happy and healthy (knock on wood), and I have yet to really go in want of something I really desire in life (let's leave out, for a moment, the over the top fanciful items like the Gulfstream). On the other hand, the past few years have seen enough stress (the economic downturn of '01, the crazy exit from my previous employer, etc.) to cause me to lose more hair than has unmercifully already fallen, the long term performance of my overall investment portfolio remains anemic and pathetic, and I have yet to find success in relationships. The analysis that I ran through my head all had me feeling much worse for myself than perhaps would be warranted by a rational review. Yet, I left work and headed home this evening feeling like I had been defeated. I felt that my most recent life failures had left me an unfortunate and unusually unlucky man. A sad soul, lost, even if temporarily.

This evening, as I entered by bedroom to prepare for bed, I remembered a thought I wanted to share with all of you . Only a few hours before, I had returned home through the dusty streets of Mumbai in my comfortable German car. Yes, this was the car that I recently purchased because the late model Japanese car it replaced had "no soul," in my oft repeated opinion. This was the car I had purchased to help myself enjoy my life more.

My housekeeper was waiting for me to arrive home before leaving for the evening. As I took my blazer off, she asked rather meekly, "Sir, is it OK if I take the pillow you had thrown away home with me tonight." I remembered back to yesterday, when I had thrown away a spare pillow that had gathered a touch of mold. "This isn't safe at all," I had wondered while promptly discarding the pillow. As I wondered why would she could possibly want a moldy pillow, she told me about an old woman without any pillows that she was going to see. "She would really appreciate it, sir," my housekeeper continued. Lest she upset me for re-using something I had thrown out without my permission, she had asked. While suddenly feeling guilty for having thrown out something that perhaps many view as a luxury here, I quickly added another pillow to my housekeeper's bag to take over to this old pillow-less woman I would likely never meet.

The story I have just recounted has no real purpose, plot, or punchline. However, it did give me enough pause to ponder the fact that during a day when all the fancy material goods that surround me could not buy me a simple smile, a moldy pillow I had discarded would provide someone much less fortunate than me exactly the smile that had eluded me all day.

It is perhaps important, in these lives we lead, to take a step back and place our lives in perspective on occasion. It is with the perspective gained from a moldy pillow that I sign off tonight. And yes, I go off to bed finally with that simple smile on my face.

Good night everyone.

- Beej

A revised history: Otto Frank and the Dixie Chicks

A friend of mine recently sent me a copy of a New York Times editorial, dated February 13, 2007 entitled "The Courage of Others’ Convictions." (Incidentally, I attended a Dixie Chicks concert with this friend, Ellen Downes, at her request, last year). The editorial discussed how the music industry's Grammy awards to the Dixie Chicks came several years late. I share the editors beliefs that the Dixie Chicks faced an unusually un-American barrage of hatred for exercising their rights to free speech and expression. The industry's award makes me think of another period in our collective history that bears remembering: the Holocaust and the revision of history that followed.

It has always been clear that history is written by the victors. These victors are often those who never had the courage to be leaders, but rather rode waves of convenience and popularity. I was reading a New York Times article about the recent discovery of a file containing Otto Frank's increasingly desperate letters to his American friends trying to get his family out of Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. Otto Frank, of course, was the father of Anne Frank, whose diary has informed generations of the individual and personal tragedies that formed together to form the tragedy of the Holocaust. The file, owned by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research remained buried in a warehouse in Jersey until a recent clerical error led to its discovery.

In the file, Frank writes to Nathan Straus, the director of the federal housing authority at the time, and a personal friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and son of the co-owner of the Macy’s department store asking for any possible assistance to help his family reach America. If there was anyone in the world who should have been able to help, it would have been someone like Straus. He was, after all, an American, and a well connected one at that. We Americans, of course, are proud to take credit as the victors in WWII. Yet, as Frank's letters painfully demonstrate, Americans were rather complicit in failing to prevent the deaths of so many Jews during that period. Getting into the United States -- because of the State Department's polices at the time -- became a insurmountable hurdle for the people who most needed the lifeline that America might have provided. The State Department regulations changed constantly, often contradicting policies promulgated only days before. It seems clear that all of the obstacles were designed towards stemming the flow of refugees from Europe during that period.

The story, as we all know, did not end well. Near the end of the file, there was a note that “Mrs. Edith Frank died; daughters are still missing.” In the last entry in the file, a letter from a friend of Otto Frank informs that “Otto Frank said he wants to stay in Amsterdam” and no longer wants to come to the United States. Of course, after the war ended, Americans were pronounced the benevolent victors who wiped the scourge of Nazi terror from Europe. No doubt Americans deserved the praise, but the history is not that simple.

The Dixie Chicks have now received delayed recognition of the ordeal they faced after criticizing President Bush and his misguided Iraq war policy. The music industry will surely now claim the courage that the Dixie Chicks displayed for themselves, and perhaps, even belatedly, they should. But, much like Americans after WWII, the story is not a simple one. Had the United States been more open to the plight of European Jews during WWII, our history may in fact have been much different. Perhaps, even, millions of lives saved. Similarly, had the music industry -- and even our country -- been more receptive to dissent during our rush into Iraq, our history may well have been different. The horrors of WWII and the Holocaust are slowly beginning to fade from our collective memories, those from Iraq are now just beginning.

Both Otto Frank and the Dixie Chicks should remind us all that sticking to our principles and values, while seemingly impossible at times, remains the surest way to protect those ideals we cherish the most. Alas, the history that is written is never that simple.

P.S. As I write this, the genocide in Darfur continues. Please consider joining me in making a generous contribution to the effort to save lives there. You can contribute by clicking on the link below. Please consider doing so. http://www.SaveDarfur.org/Donate

Friends, friendster, and life.

I logged onto friendster today and noticed that a friend had deleted himself as one of my friendster friends. I logged in because I hadn't received a birthday alert from friendster about this particular friend and knowing that it was his birthday, I found it somewhat odd that the friendster computer hadn't spit out its generic blast email reminding me of it. I soon realized that the friendster computer that manages all of this data hadn't messed up at all. Indeed, it was my friend who had chosen to remove himself from my network of friendster friends.

Now, don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong in editing one's list of friends -- in culling the proverbial herd of friends -- either in life or online. But, this particular friend's action prompted me to wonder about our new online frontier. Much like email often fails to afford society the nuance of personal human interaction, our new online world dramatizes what perhaps is otherwise subtle and common human behavior. Take my friend's action to remove himself from my friendster circle: in life, this "removal" would most likely have taken place in the form of distancing oneself gradually -- perhaps not calling or writing as much as one might otherwise. Lacking any other option in the online world, my friend's deletion became a dramatic act. One day he was a friend, the next, he was gone.

I cannot yet opine on whether the lack of nuance that currently exists online is good or otherwise. Perhaps the gradual ebb of a friendship built over time is not desirable. Perhaps the dramatic punctuation that is afforded online is the better route. Or, perhaps, someday, we will have more online tools to simulate the nuance that does exist in real life. Maybe version 10.0 of Friendster will include a "Fade" button. Friendship in decline? Just hit the fade button and your picture will gray our over time, disappearing completely over the period of time you specify. Oh the possibilities...