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Letter From New York 06 21 15 Father’s Day, International Day of Yoga and Summer Solstice…

June 21, 2015

Today is Father’s Day. Happy Father’s Day to all fathers who might be reading this…

It’s a grey day in New York. I’m on the train down to the city where I will be attending a play in Riverside Park at the Police and Firemen’s Memorial near 89th and Riverside, a mere four blocks from the apartment in New York. A friend invited me to join her and her family and friends and I committed to it a while ago.

My own father passed away when I was twelve years old. He was a quiet, reclusive sort of man around the house, preferring to putter every evening in his basement woodworking shop to almost anything else. He maintained a golf course perfect lawn, was well liked at work. He managed a commercial bakery in Minneapolis, owned by American Bakeries; at the time it was the second largest commercial baking company in the world. American made Taystee Bread, “baked while you sleep.” The largest baking company was Continental; they made Wonder Bread.

We were not close the last six years of his life. He became more withdrawn. His health faded following two heart attacks. While recuperating, he played endless games of solitaire in the den, at the desk facing the window; playing cards and watching the world go by. Like him, I have a fondness for the game.

He and my mother were in a very rough patch of their marriage, though I only realized that later, with the wisdom that comes from growing older and ruminating on what has passed, coupled with conversations with my older brother and sister.

The night before he died, I was being a squirrely twelve year old. He was annoyed and told me to go to my room. It was our last encounter. In the morning, he suffered a massive stroke and was gone in minutes.

Over the intervening years, I have grown to have appreciation for him. He did his best with me, given what was going on with him and I now credit him for that. Rest in peace, dad, and Happy Father’s Day.

Today is the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice; from now on the days grow shorter until the Winter Solstice. That’s a little depressing but there is still some time before the days grow short.

Today was chosen by India to celebrate International Yoga Day and all over the world Yoga is being practiced to mark the occasion. My friend, Raja Choudhury, created the official Indian Yoga Film, which is being shown at Indian Embassies around the world.

In Charleston, SC the Emmanuel AME Church has reopened for services after last Wednesday’s massacre. To me it is a sign of resilience and hope that they are worshiping there today.

Just about now, Greece’s creditors are having a meeting in Brussels in advance of an emergency meeting tomorrow to see if there can be a resolution of the Greek debt crisis. Tsipras, Greece’s Prime Minister, flies there tonight after meeting with his cabinet on a “definitive” proposal to their debtors.

Tsipras has also been playing footsie with Vladimir Putin, who says he might consider a loan to Greece. It’s been seen by many as a mutual attempt to thumb noses at Europe and unlikely to happen. But stranger things have happened in Putin’s Russia.

Shortly, I will be off to see the play in Riverside Park. The grey and threatening day seems to have given way to sun and breezes, the air heavy after the night’s rain. It is Henry IV, Part 1 by Shakespeare. I had a small part in it when I was in college.

Right now, I am chilling the white wine in the freezer with a timer set so I don’t forget it. I am bringing strawberries, cherries, cheeses, apples and some bread from yesterday’s Farmer’s Market in Hudson. It should make a good repast. There will be five or six of us.

I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

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Letter From New York 04 22 15 From robotics to singing in the rain…

April 22, 2015

Last night, on a balmy New York spring night, I went at 5:00 to Junior’s Deli on 45th Street in the heart of New York’s theater district and met Cathy, my middle niece, her husband and their two daughters, Clare and Isabel, for a pre-theater dinner. They were off to see “Matilda” and I was off to see “It’s Only A Play.”

Cathy and Michael live in Portland and my brother is there watching after their two sons who had just accompanied he and his wife to Machu Picchu. I don’t get to see Cathy and her family very often so it was a cheery visit and then we went off to our respective performances.

Amazingly, after the performance, as I threaded my way through a hideously congested Times Square, I ran into them on the corner of 44th and Broadway. We laughed and hugged and then moved on.

I curled up in bed and started to read a Peter Wimsey mystery but soon feel asleep, Kindle in hand, only to wake later to turn out the lights.

This morning I had breakfast with David McKillop, who recently stepped down as GM of A&E and stepped into the role of Chief Creative Officer at a new production company called Propagate, which is being funded by A&E. He’s partnered with Howard Owens who used to run Nat Geo.

It was a glorious spring morning and we walked around Union Square for a while after breakfast, strolling past all the vendors that form the Union Square Farmer’s Market, then walked over to 7th Avenue where we parted. He off to a meeting and me to day of talks called “Imagination,” being held in conjunction with the Tribeca Film Festival.

The morning was devoted to robotics. While Elon Musk is terrified of intelligent machines, all these speakers were gung-ho enthusiasts of artificial intelligence and robots, as long as every one followed Asimov’s Three Rules of Robotics.

It was fascinating. The demonstration of Watson, IBM’s Supercomputer, was impressive. The video they showed reminded me of “Star Trek.”

Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, spoke in the afternoon about the technology advances they are making in serving ads and video content to their 250,000,000 users and that was impressive, too.

After the 3-D printing talk “Eating Your Way Into 3D Printing” I had to leave to go view a cut of a sizzle reel my friend Todd’s company is working on.

While I was involved in all these fun and rather joyful activities, the world ticked on.

Yesterday the Saudis said they’d stop bombing Yemen but this morning bombs were still falling there, with the country lurching toward a humanitarian crisis as supplies are floating out at sea because of the Saudi embargo.

When I was in India there was lots of news about a land development law that the Modi government is attempting to pass. It would ease the government’s ability to expropriate land belonging to farmers for other uses. It is hugely controversial and hotly debated and stridently opposed by the Congress Party, the opposition to Modi’s BJP.

Today there was a rally in Delhi protesting the bill. At it, an Indian farmer committed suicide, hanging himself from a tree. He left behind a suicide note saying the recent extraordinary rains and hailstorms had ruined him. Rahul Gandhi raced to the hospital and the PM, Modi, is said to be “shattered” by the incident but probably not so much that he will withdraw the law.

Britain, which is facing elections on May 7th, is working overtime to figure out what is going to happen if the Tories lose. If the Scots become the power brokers in the formation of a new government, there is a concern about the results. “Constitutional crisis” is on the lips of a few.

Thousands of Ethiopians have taken to the streets to march in protest against IS’s killing of thirty of their countrymen for being Christian.

Prime Minister Abe of Japan paid slight attention to Japan’s wartime responsibility in a speech in Jakarta, which raised the ire of Japan’s neighbors but not so much that Xi of China wouldn’t meet with Abe. The two had a thirty-minute meeting and stressed their determination to continue working on their relationship. It almost sounded like an estranged couple continuing their therapy sessions.

The Vatican announced today that Pope Francis would stop in Cuba while en route to the US for his visit here. Cuba will probably go mad for the Pontiff.

The bright spring morning turned to afternoon clouds and rain, which has now stopped though the grey continues. I am off to dinner tonight with my friends David and Annette Fox, celebrating my return from India with take out from Indus Valley, our favorite neighborhood Indian restaurant. Will be a good time.

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Letter From New York 04 16 15 Just a little inspiration…

April 16, 2015

This is a day in which I have been, in some ways, remarkably unproductive. Deep into reading “The End of Your Life Book Club,” I am nearing the end and have carved out hours today to continuing reading it. I dallied over my morning cup of coffee to give me more time to read it. On my way to a friend’s office to do a little work, I stopped and had lunch at a coffee shop and used up more than my fair share of time on the stool at the counter, whipping through the pages of the book. My Kindle Fire tells me I now have only 13% of the book left to read and I am anxious to finish it and desperate for it to last.

It’s inspiring me and we all could use a little inspiration. I don’t want to say much about it. I just suggest that you think about getting a copy and reading it. Sarah, whom I have known since I was three, called me up and suggested it to me in no uncertain terms.

I am so glad she did.

In an effort to be more present, I have been working to see things, really see them, the way I sometimes do when I am traveling. Today is a beautiful day in New York and while it is not the riot of color that is India, it is an incredibly textured city. I was particularly noticing how yellow the cabs are. Have I just learned to gloss them over and not really see the vibrancy they bring to the city’s streets?

These are the kinds of things I have been attempting to notice.

And I have been also attempting to notice what is going on in the world, despite a distinct aversion to wanting to know. I realized yesterday I did not want to read a story about Ukraine. I wanted to go straight to other, less threatening pieces of information. But I forced myself to go back to the article and read how difficult it is for the sick in the rebel held part of Ukraine. There are no medicines to be had.

In Kiev, two men, both pro-Russian, one a journalist and another a former Parliament member, have died of gunshot wounds. Two men shot the journalist dead in broad daylight from a passing car.

In Durban, South African thousands of immigrants fled to shelters for safety after an anti-immigration riot left five dead.

Africans attempting to cross to Italy have died in the hundreds in the past week. One set of Muslims threw twelve Christians overboard because; well, because they were Christian.

In Yemen, where it is hard to keep track of the players, President Hadi, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia, has named Khaled Bahah, who is also in Saudi Arabia, as his Vice President. Bahah is well liked and respected across many sections of the political landscape in Yemen. He hopes that a Saudi Arabian land invasion can be avoided though it is looking more likely every day as the rebel Houthis gobble up much of the country.

Meanwhile, five ships with food are being prevented from unloading their cargoes until they are searched stem to stern by the Saudis to make sure there are no guns coming in with the food.

Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island is indicating he’ll run for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

In news that I find heartening, the Vatican has completed its investigation of American nuns, begun under Pope Benedict XVI. The final report is quietly burying a controversy that has plagued Francis since his ascension.

Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens debuts in December of this year. In California, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were present for the first screening of the film’s second trailer. Not present was Harrison Ford, who is still recuperating from his March plane crash. Looking forward to the film.

In another piece of news I appreciated, the little town of Lindstrom, Minnesota [my home state] is getting the umlauts back over the o in its name. They were taken away by the Department of Transportation and ordered returned by Democratic Governor Mark Dayton. A third of Minnesotans have Scandinavian heritage. [I’m half Swedish.] The town was quite upset about the umlauts disappearing and is rejoicing about their return.

Tonight, I am off to the New York Video Meet-up, a chance to explore some new things in digital video. After that, a little bite of something and then home to finish “The End of Your Life Book Club.”

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Letter From New York 04 15 15 An Indian Reprise…

April 15, 2015

Yesterday, I emailed out a Letter From New York. I have been writing one nearly every day since mid-November but I don’t email many of those out, not wanting to clutter email inboxes.

If you’re interested, you can see them at www.mathewtombers.com. I realized yesterday that I hadn’t emailed one about the trip to India. I have been there and back again.

India is still not the easiest of trips but it’s certainly different from the India I first visited twenty years ago. Delhi is changed, and most westerners would think it for the better. The acrid smell of burnt rubber doesn’t cling to the streets as it did twenty years ago and the streets are no longer lined with people living in tents. The city has been freshened and is more colorful than I remember.

They still drive like madmen and I found the only way I could really deal with the four different road trips I took while in India was to close my eyes and surrender my safety to the universe. Whenever I opened my eyes it seemed death was rushing at me at sixty kilometers per hour.

I was in India to give a speech at the Indian Institute of Technology at Roorkee, one of the five branches of the IIT. It is a four-hour drive from Delhi, generally to the northeast. I was riding with another gentleman and he asked the driver to be a little more careful as he was scaring the American guest. I didn’t notice much difference but, at the end of those trips, I am alive and now back in the States where people, mostly, obey the rules and drive on their side of the road.

On the Saturday of the Conference at which I had been asked to speak, I went with another American speaker, Ron Eglash, an ethno-mathematician whose specialty is fractals, to Haridwar, one of the seven holy spots in the Hindu religion. I strolled along the edge of the Ganges, near where it flows into India, watching people bathe in its holy waters.

The speech went off without a hitch. I was pretty good, if I say so myself. The speech was to last for 60 minutes with questions and they were still being asked after 90. Shortly after that I told them to go enjoy themselves. It was great fun.

For the three days I was there I had two “minders” whose job was to see that I was fed and cossetted and had what I needed. They were the ones who arranged for Ron and I to go to Haridwar.

Returning to Delhi for a couple of days, I shopped some and rested and walked around Connaught Place, a central shopping area in Delhi that I had visited when I was first in India.

Twenty years ago it was pretty run down; today, there is a new coat of paint and the stores have been upgraded. Every third store was an international brand. Once, like all of Delhi, it was crowded with beggars but now there are few. My friend, Raja, who has now lived in Delhi for eight years told me they have all been moved out of Delhi into some other area, far enough away that they’re not visible. Another friend said that was more work and so fewer beggars. The difference was notable.

India though is still India, with wrenching gullies of poverty. Road trips take you past buildings that could never have been new and new ones that were old before they were finished. India has had a building boom and bust, too. Structural skeletons pockmark the landscape, looking as if they had been abandoned.

In Jaipur, I had the best meal I had in India at the Royal Heritage Haveli, a royal villa converted into a boutique luxury hotel. I wandered the Amber Fort and the City Palace and stared up at the Palace of the Winds.

In Jaipur I had a night of discomforting “Delhi belly” that came and went swiftly but left me tired.

India is a riot of colors, a visual feast if you can and are willing to take it all in. As I was driven to the airport to depart, I remember noticing the curbs were painted mint green.

Returning to New York, it seemed everything was beige. I felt color deprived.

It is comforting to be home, splitting my time between the little apartment in the city and the cottage upstate, where the brown of winter is beginning to yield to the green of spring.

It was my fourth trip to India. If the opportunity came, I would go again. I still would like to go to Goa and to the mountain town of Mussoorie, a hill town populated during the Raj by Brits fleeing the deadly heat of the plains.

It is a land that is both mystic and a bit mystifying. After my first trip I described the adventure as the most wonderful, horrible, awful, magnificent, transcendental experience I had ever had. It is less horrible and awful and still wonderful, magnificent and transcendental.

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Letter From New York April 13, 2015 With a bit of spring in my step…

April 13, 2015

Yesterday, half way through writing my blog, I stopped and quit. I didn’t like anything coming from mind to fingers to the sheet of digital white paper in front of me. Every word felt flat and unexciting and, worse, devoid of meaning. In a funk, I gave up and took a nap.

It may have been that yesterday was a bit of a funky day as it was the day that Lionel and Pierre departed for Baltimore. They arrived safely, checked into their hotel. We texted back and forth but their physical absence could be felt.

I woke up this morning in not such a funky mood and am now on the train, heading south, for a week in the city. I have a few things to do, meetings to attend and my godson, Paul, is in for New York from LA for business and we’re having dinner on Wednesday evening.

The sun is out and the sky is clear and it’s a warm, lovely day, with hints of blue green in the Hudson River as we roll along it. The dark steel grey of winter seems to be relinquishing its hold on the river. Tankers and barges are gliding south, unhampered by ice. While I was in India, it all disappeared.

Sipping coffee this mid-morning, I feel refreshed and relieved and not so gloomy. Not that the world is less of a gloomy place. But I am shrugging off those feelings and focusing on the brighter parts.

The light is sparkling on the river. Spring seems to be actually arriving and I am choosing hope this spring morning.

Even the Kardashians are giving me something to feel hopeful about; they have been in Armenia from whence the family once came and they have brought a spotlight on the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, which occurred in 1915-16, as the Ottoman Empire was beginning to disintegrate under the stress of World War I.

Pope Francis also commented on the Armenian Genocide, calling it the first case in the 20th Century of genocide, thereby infuriating the Turks, who deny that it ever happened – or, that if it did, it wasn’t all that bad.

Yesterday, the thought of another Presidential campaign was giving me dyspepsia. Today, I am choosing to think of it as an interesting intellectual and educational exercise for the body politic.

Yesterday, as everyone who is literate in the Western world must know, Hillary Clinton has declared, officially, she is running for the nomination – not that I think there ever was any real doubt.

It will be an explosive eighteen months. Let us hope that it will be at least a little amusing.

Republicans have already begun attacking her in tweets and videos. Ah, yes! Let the games begin!

And while Hillary is off to some low-key meetings in Iowa, driving there in her van named after “Scooby Doo,” Marco Rubio has thrown his hat into the ring and is now the third Republican to declare he is running for President after Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. After this it will be a little harder to keep track. There are a lot of Republicans in the wings.

It is also fascinating to me that Apple is beating its own estimates on Apple watch orders. I wasn’t sure anyone but the diehards would really want one but it seems to have struck a nerve with the public. Almost a million were pre-ordered the first day.

In another interesting turn of events, at least some in the world think a deal will be made with Iran on its nuclear activities. Investors, according to the Iranian press, have started to approach Iran about investments in their stock market, including some Americans.

John Boehner is touting “titanic” reform he hopes to bring to Medicare [something I am suspicious of from the get-go] but he is using gifs from the movie “Titanic” to explain his reform. I find that confusing and a little off-putting. May be a little amusing.

Right now the train is slowly rolling through a patch of woods, struggling to catch the spirit of spring and turn to green. Sharp shadows play across the landscape and with a springy step; I look forward to arriving in New York.

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Letter From New York 04 09 15 A grey day with grey thoughts…

April 9, 2015

As I was driving from the India Habitat Center to the airport last Sunday, I drove past the nearby Lodi Gardens. Somehow, it imprinted on my mind the gay colors of green that the curbs were painted. I was thinking of those green curbs while walking back to the apartment after a late lunch at a local diner, Big Daddy’s.

New York is not so festive though I am delighted to be drinking New York water again. It’s one of the great freedoms one has in America; the water from the faucet is almost always good to drink. In India, I went through my fair share of bottled water.

It has been a good day, if a little melancholy. My friend Lionel and I rode the train in together this morning, the last time we will probably do so for a long time. On Sunday, he and Pierre leave for Baltimore as Lionel starts his new job with AOL on Monday.

I will miss he and Pierre swinging by on their way to the train to get me. It will be another new adventure once they are gone. On Saturday night some of the neighbors are gathering for a little farewell.

Life moves on, doesn’t it?

There was a morning meeting for me and another one later this afternoon. In between I ate and read and ruminated about life a little.

It’s a complex world out there and as I was sitting down to order my omelet, a news flash came to my phone saying that Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, would only approve a nuclear deal if all sanctions went as soon as it was signed. That is not how I think the West envisages this happening. So maybe no deal will get done after all.

It was yesterday, I think, I read something about celebrations in the streets of Tehran at the possibility of a deal though as Khamenei made his remarks this morning there were the usual shouts of “Death to America!”

It increases my lack of envy for John Kerry.

As was to be expected, the family of Walter Scott, the South Carolinian shot to death as he was running away from a police officer, is prepping a lawsuit. The cop who shot him has been fired and arrested for murder.

Feidin Santana, the man who shot the video that resulted in the murder charge, almost erased the video out of fear for his life. But he didn’t.

French TV5Monde, a French television network and its digital properties, were shut down by a cyber attack; the trail seems to lead to IS, which brings a new wrinkle to the conflict with them.

Continuing their winning ways, IS has released photos of a man being stoned to death for being gay as well as another photo of a beheading. They have also announced killing 52 Iraqi border guards, who have been captive since their post was overrun last year.

The election campaign in the UK, the election to be following this month, is too close to call but it has been an off week for the Tories. David Cameron, who has been more popular than his opponent, Ed Miliband, has lost that edge this week. The odds layers are still predicting that the Conservatives will pull off a win but this week the Conservatives have been bumbling about and off point. And there are only four weeks until the election.

These were some of the grey thoughts that were tumbling through my mind after I had my omelet and was walking back to the apartment, thinking it would be fun to have the curbs painted green to brighten things up a bit.

When you are traveling, there is some respite from the workaday and events of the world can seem further away than they do when you’re home. Today, both my mind and my body felt as if they were pretty much in the same time zone. And I am definitely home and the events of the world seem all to close.

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Letter From New York 04 08 15 From the heat of Delhi to wearing a winter coat…

April 8, 2015

Outside, it is still grey and chill; I have taken to wearing my winter jacket again, worse luck. It’s also been raining today with my mantra being: April showers bring Mayflowers.

Though, for all the grey, it’s been a very pleasant day. I am not quite so time zone loopy as I was yesterday or the day before. I am a little more centered and not quite so forgetful. I feel good and am looking forward to dinner tonight at the Red Dot, with a group of friends, for whom I have souvenirs of India.

I still almost expect to look out my window and see the vivid amber colors of Jaipur or the greens of Delhi but, instead, am greeted by the muted colors of the Northeast, struggling to come alive in the early days of spring.

There is a glorious freshness to the air I breathe here, clean and sweet with the smell of damp earth. The air in Delhi always has an acrid undertow, not so pungent as my first trips but still residing.

Out in the wide world, from which I feel sheltered here at the cottage, the news is much about the guilty verdicts given to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his role in the Boston bombings of over two years ago. Certainly not unexpected given that his defense admitted guilt in their opening statements; it has, for some, brought some closure, some finality, to the wounds, physical and emotional, that were inflicted that day. Now we will see if he is sentenced to death or if his defense team can save his life.

One of the necessities of life is coffee, so I ran down into Hudson to get some good espresso roast from Olde Hudson. As I went, the radio played an interview with Ernest Moniz, the Secretary of Energy, who ended up playing a big role in the Iranian Nuclear talks. I couldn’t tell from the interview if he was defending the outlined deal or simply reporting on his role. He seemed guileless in the little bit I heard him, very much the scientist and not very much the diplomat.

Last night, as I devoured my fajitas at Coyote Flaco, I saw the video of the South Carolinian shot in the back by a police officer, not quite able to assimilate what I was seeing. The officer has been dismissed and is charged with murder as a result of the video. And tension runs high.

Rand Paul is finishing his first full day of campaigning for President, promising “shocking” revelations about the Clinton Foundation [and Hillary]. In the meantime, it seems many people are looking at him and his candidacy and asking: is this for real?

Certainly for real is the chaos in Yemen. Doctors Without Borders announced that a ship had arrived in Aden with 2.5 tons of medical supplies though no one was sure how they would be unloaded given the situation there. Iran has sent two naval vessels toward Yemen while the Saudis continue bombing. The US is underscoring its support for Saudi Arabia. 100,000 people have fled their homes, seeking refuge from the fighting.

A Pakistani plane has arrived in New Delhi, carrying refugees from Yemen, a gesture that will help the usually frayed relations between those two countries.

The Iraqis are hoping to build on the victory at Tikrit by advancing into Anbar province, the Sunni heartland now mostly under the control of IS. At least that’s what the Anbar province regional council has said. Seems to be a bit of a surprise to the central government.

What is also a surprise but not in debate, is that IS has released more Yazidis. What is unclear is why they’re doing this.

Fighting for cyber security, the US is attempting to deflect attacks on White House and State Department computers, which seem to be coming from Russia. The Russians deny this.

In the UK, the election is “hotting up” as the May election draws closer, with Scotland appearing, quite extraordinarily, to end up playing a pivotal role in what shape the new UK government takes.

I do know the shape of my evening. That dinner out with friends and then gathering together the things that need to go with me to the city in the morning, an early rise and off on the 7:20 train in the morning for a 10:30 meeting.

It feels good to have my body and my mind in the same time zone, almost.

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Letter From New York 04 03 15 Good Friday in Delhi…

April 3, 2015

To my great surprise, I discovered that today, Good Friday, is a national holiday in India, created as such in an effort to secularize India. My friend, Sanjay, thought it was an excellent idea.

Felled late last night by Jaipur’s version of Delhi Belly, I spent an uncomfortable night, waking tired but with the storm having passed. So far, so good today. I’ve been incredible lucky health wise in India, except for last night.

Meeting Sanjay for breakfast, I declined to go with him on a business meeting he had and went back to my room and slept an extra hour, which was good for me. I read a little, did a few emails and then Sanjay and I headed out of Jaipur toward Delhi.

As I have become accustomed to doing, I willed myself into nap mode on the drive back, finding it easier on the system to not watch in real time the continuous close calls that make up a day on the road in India. I popped an eye open to see that we were virtually on top of another vehicle. Closing my eyes again, I went back to my happy place.

On the part of the trip when I was awake, Sanjay commented to me that he is discouraged by how India does not pick up after itself. He said that it was always dusty and dirty but not trashy, now trash lines the roads in some parts. Such is India. Up and coming and down and dirty.

At one point, we drove through Gurgoan, a city within the city of Delhi, skyscrapers swarming the landscape, modern buildings that look like they belong in Phoenix or Des Moines or any other mid-sized American city. It’s where the advertising agencies have settled along with most of the cable networks, like Discovery.

Next time you suspect your customer service call has been directed to India, it may well be to one of the buildings in Gurgoan.

From my long night last night, I am planning to stay in my room and recuperate. I’m still a bit tired.

Tomorrow morning, I am having a late coffee with Kiran Karnik, who was head of Discovery India at the time I was out helping with the launch. He has gone on to do many more things, including leading NASSCOM, the association for the software industry in India.

Following that, my friend Raja is picking me up so he can introduce me to his wife, who has been down in Mumbai, and so I can see at least one of the shops she runs in Delhi.

Sanjay’s wife, Natasha, has been in Thailand and is returning tonight. Hopefully the three of us will have dinner on Saturday, my last night in India this trip. Sunday at 1:05 I should be lifting off for the long flight back to New York, crossing at least nine time zones and ending in New York at 11:00 PM on Sunday. It’s my intention to go straight to the little apartment in New York, line my bags up like good soldiers and dive into sleep.

While I slept, President Obama announced a framework for a deal with Iran in the Rose Garden. Apparently, it is more detailed than expected. Not unexpected is the war of words that will follow, accompanied by some gnashing of teeth, as Kerry and Obama continue to work to a final agreement.

A thirty-seven year old man, Louis Jordan, survived sixty-six days at sea before being rescued by a container ship. During the ordeal, his boat capsized several times, all his equipment was smashed and he learned to harvest fish that found his laundry enticing.

Nearly 150 individuals, mostly students, were killed in a Shabab attack on a Kenyan University in Garissa, in the eastern part of the country. They came in, separated Christian from Muslim and killed the Christians.

For Christians, this is the holiest time of the year, the time when Jesus was crucified, died and rose from the dead.

It is remarkably sad that religious hatred rips this world apart as fiercely as it did when the Christ lived, walked the earth, preached and died.

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Letter From New York 03 27 15 The road to Roorkee….

March 27, 2015

It is a little after 8 at night in Roorkee, where I am to give my speech on Sunday. I arrived around 4:30 after a 4-hour road trip from Delhi. An Indian road trip is not for the faint of heart. A driver picked me up at the India International Center. Also riding with me was a young man, Dhurv Malik, who, too, was on his way to Roorkee. He manages a musical group that is making an appearance tonight.

I am sure Dhurv found my occasional intakes of breath amusing as we wound our way from Delhi to Roorkee. We seemed to spend much of the time on the wrong side of the road, facing oncoming traffic as the young man driving us worked his way around vehicles going too slowly for his taste.

The roads were not exactly smooth; there were about 50 kilometers when I thought we were going over speed bumps the whole way. It was a bit like being on the inside of a mixer.

For lunch, around 2:30, Dhurv suggested either some food from a roadside cart or McDonalds. I chose McDonalds, not wanting to test my stomach on an Indian roadside cart.

It was nicer than most McDonalds I have been to recently in the States. Very clean and the fries tasted just like home. Remarkable.

Once outside of Delhi, as soon as we entered the state of Uttar Pradesh, I knew I was back in India. Not that I didn’t know it in Delhi but here there were the roadside shantytowns of people. The dust covered the trees, making them look grimy in the afternoon sun.

Advertisements looked homemade and there were more beggars.

Surrendering myself to the universe and into the care of God, I closed my eyes, as I felt sleepy. I opened them once to see us squealing past a little boy in the middle of the highway, begging.

I said a silent prayer he would make it through the day and live to beg another day.

This was the India of pungent smells and rolls of dust scattering across the land, of people sitting on cheap plastic chairs, watching the world roll by, of men having their hair cut on the side of the road, of women in brilliant red saris, carrying babies, begging, the India that has yet to see modernization.

It was fascinating to watch it race by, my senses heightened by wondering if the young man at the wheel had the skill – and the luck – to get me safely where I was going. Dhurv was unconcerned as far as I could tell.

He made fascinating company. He works for a company in Delhi named Only Much Louder that is 51% owned by Indians and 49% owned by Hollywood types like Jerry Bruckheimer. About a month ago they were bringing Jerry Seinfeld to India for his first Asian show.

It was cancelled because the Indian government wanted approval of the script before the show. “It’s stand-up!” cried Seinfeld, and even if there were a script, he wouldn’t give it to them. He didn’t come.

Such are the tensions in the largest democracy in the world, wanting freedom but afraid of too much of it in a deeply conservative country.

I’ve just returned from a concert that closed the session for the first day of the Cognizance Conference. The first act was a Scandinavian blonde in a red dress playing a Lucite electric violin. She must be something of a celebrity in India because the house went wild for her.

Following was a dance group called “The Skeleton Dancers” and they were very interesting though a bit hard to describe, dancing in electric outfits that constantly changed colors though always looking a bit skeletal.

Since I have arrived, I seemed to have been paired with Ron, whose last name I haven’t quite caught yet. He is a Ph.D. in Ethno Mathematics. We are surrounded by a half dozen young students who see to it we are treated like rock stars. I mustn’t become too used to it.

I haven’t a clue what has been happening in the world. My phone makes calls and sends texts but it is not connected to the Internet and I haven’t perused what’s going on in the world.

There is one more appearance I seem to need to make and then I am off to bed. Tomorrow I will see what is happening in the world.

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Letter From New York 03 24 15 Arrived in New Delhi…

March 24, 2015

It is 5:30 here in Delhi; the sun is beginning to set, as my usual world is just getting ready to go to work. I arrived safely after a good flight and a few hours sleep on the plane but was very tired after checking in at the India International Center where I am staying for a few days. I laid down for an hour’s nap but hit the snooze alarm enough that it was two hours before I got back into the world.

It was reported that short naps could improve memory five fold. I hope that is true; I was feeling pretty foggy by the time I laid down.

While I haven’t seen much yet of Delhi, I have seen enough to know that it has changed since I was here ten years ago and is vastly different from when I was here twenty-one years ago.

When I arrived at Delhi International Airport in 1995, I realized I had stepped into a movie I had never seen before. It was wildly chaotic. It was the middle of the night and, despite that, the airport was swarming with people, all yelling and screaming. The airport buildings themselves were tired and not very clean, barren, looking like something out of a 1940’s Humphrey Bogart movie, possibly co-starring Ingrid Bergman.

Today, I arrived at an airport that looked pretty much like any other major airport in the world, being swept by moving sidewalks along the way to immigration and customs. It wasn’t this way even ten years ago.

I was genuinely amazed.

My friend Sanjay sent a driver to pick me up and bring me to my hotel and we wove through the streets of Delhi where the roads have radically improved though, while lanes are clearly marked, the drivers seem to not to notice. It takes nerves of steel to drive in Delhi. I said so to Joginder, the man who picked me up. He smiled tightly.

It was not long before the beggars started coming up to the car and asking for money, always a moment of existential crisis for me, though at this point I had no rupees to give them.   On the drive to the hotel there were fewer beggars than I remember from before when they assaulted one at every turn.

Tomorrow I will be doing some sightseeing. I would like to return to walk around Connaught Place, where I have not been for twenty years and see the changes there.

Here to talk about media as having the ability to empower individuals, the Supreme Court has announced a major court case regarding freedom of speech on the Internet. Section 66A of the Technology Act has been declared unconstitutional, claiming it infringed on free speech. It allowed authorities to make arrests based on their interpretation of social media postings.

While I was safely winging my way to Delhi, an Airbus crashed in the Alps. No one is expected to survive. It was on its way to Germany from Barcelona. I give those passengers and crew a moment of silence.

Long absent from the offensive on Tikrit in Iraq has been air support from the US led coalition. Apparently now there are at least surveillance flights happening, giving direction to troops on the ground. Air strikes may soon follow.

In Mosul, IS is dissembling the city’s cement factories and moving them deeper into their territory as the push by Iraq to take Tikrit seems on the verge of success.

Israel has been accused by some in the US of spying on the Iran Nuclear negotiations and then giving that information to US Congressmen in hopes of undermining the negotiations. Israel denies it. If true, it marks a new low in the relationship with Israel.

Now we know Israel spies on us and we spy on Israel. We spy on everyone. We hacked Angela Merkel’s mobile phone. What makes this a bit different in the eyes of some is that Israel may have shared the information with lawmakers.

What did Rodney King say after the LA Riots: can’t we all get along?

The light is fading in New Delhi and I have work to do on my speech while I have hopefully improved my memory by my nap.

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