sindhuri's Space http://sindhuri.posterous.com Most recent posts at sindhuri's Space posterous.com Thu, 16 Aug 2012 13:39:00 -0700 Leaving little footprints, hand-prints and memory-prints everywhere... http://sindhuri.posterous.com/leaving-little-footprints-hand-prints-and-mem http://sindhuri.posterous.com/leaving-little-footprints-hand-prints-and-mem

Dscn1624
“Some kind of magic...

happens late at night.

When the moon smiles

down at me

and bathes me in its light.”

Brand New Day by Joshua Radin

---

Sam, Christina and I would benefit from some kind of magic tonight. After shuttling around from paying hospital to free hospital to breakfast and lunch, to temple, to sweets shops and bakery, various clinics and departments, we have, in front of us, piles of clothes, books and a lot of unfinished tasks.

Thank you cards have to be written.

Final emails have to sent as I prepare to go internet-less for the next two weeks.

Eight months of my worldly possessions have to be trimmed to fit my airline company's weight restrictions.

Mental preparation for life without Sam and Christina has to commence.

Goodbyes have to be said.

Tomorrow, we'll tie up all these loose ends and then part ways. I will go off to Trichy where I will spend some time with my family before I head home to Sri Lanka for two weeks. Christina is travelling around Mumbai and Delhi before flying home and Sam heads back to the land of “real” cheese, pizza and bagels on Sunday.

I have met and talked to inspiring people who it will be difficult to say bye to.

I have also met and talked to people who frustrate me so much, to the extent that I will be happy to say bye to them.

I have been reminded by aforementioned people that I have my own personality flaws that I should work on – being less sensitive, giving people another chance, and pushing myself to believe that a little bit more gentle persuasion will help get the work done.

Working at Aravind has been a wonderful experience. The story of Dr. V, the founder of Aravind, always moves me to think of ways in which I can stop complaining and start doing. While I have definitely decided that healthcare is not my field, and have been validated in studying Political Science, I have picked so many skills that will be very useful in what I want to do: intense commitment and a stronger appreciation hard work, humility, the importance of friends and family, and the value of down time. I would not exchange this summer experience!

I will miss a lot about Aravind, but in that typically non-exotic way, I will also miss my non-Indian peers: Sam and Christina. Between the three of us, we have psychoanalyzed a lot of things like why Sam has trouble sleeping, why Sindhu and Christina talk SO much about carbohydrates, why Christina should go to medical school and why Sindhu thinks being called 'mainstream' can be an insult. After spending 9 months away from Penn and the United States of America, I have been eased back into life in the “best country in the world”, reminded of what I experienced over the past three years, thanks to Christina and Sam's outbursts of American appreciation whenever they got wistful and nostalgic about home. Now I know all about how Christina got asked out to prom, what Sam eats at his favourite Italian restaurant in Long Island, and (finally) how Greek life works (thanks to the fact that Sam is such a frat bro).

So before I go back to my magical night of packing and doing other chores, I would like to say, thank you for reading our blog posts. I should also warn you that the three of us have blog posts due consecutively, so apologies in advance for the Aravind overdose. Also, please stay tuned for our amateur but enthusiastically taken video describing our lives at Aravind for you.

Until then,

with much love,

Sindhu

 

 

 

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Tue, 17 Jul 2012 10:41:00 -0700 Life in the Audio-Visual Room http://sindhuri.posterous.com/life-in-the-audio-visual-room-92236 http://sindhuri.posterous.com/life-in-the-audio-visual-room-92236

Zamania, a good friend and former roommate from Israel, was travelling around India by herself, and with a little bit of persuasion, she visited me in Madurai for 3 days. I picked her up at midnight at the Madurai Stain Station. Palani, the driver who was taking me to the station, asked me which train she was coming on, which was when I realized that I didn't know. Not because Zamania didn't tell me, but because I had been too lazy to check. Not wanting to look like a bad friend or unprepared person, I said, “Pandian Express.”

Mr. Palani looked at me a bit suspiciously and said, “The Pandian arrives at 8 in the morning. Isn't this a bit too early?”

I don't think he was being sarcastic as much as curious to find out if I had peculiar tendencies.

After asking the station master, we deduced that Zamania was probably on the train from Coimbatore, the closest place to Ootty, which is where she was leaving from. Mr. Palani and I executed a division of labour plan, each of us standing at different exists, so we could catch Zamania as soon as she got off the train. In hindsight though, I realize that that plan wasn't so foolproof because I never told Mr. Palani anything about Zamania's appearance, besides telling him that yes, “she's from foreign.” But luckily, Zamania walked out through my assigned exit. After being happily reunited, we proceeded to talk to each other, only going to bed at half past four.

I feel like I only barely prepared Zamania for the day that was to follow. Even though Aravind employees work on Saturdays, I was hoping to cash in on my first “off-day.” Everything was going according to plan until on Thursday evening, I realized how overly ambitious the video project I had taken on was. As the videographer constantly reminded me, within the span of a week, we had amassed up to 7 hours worth of footage for a 10 minute video. My sometimes unrelenting attitude, combined with the fact that the editor was recovering from jaundice meant that the ambitious deadline of Wednesday went by unnoticed, with no fanfare or congratulatory pat on the back.

So on Friday night, I shared the audio-visual room with a bemused freelance animation artist (working on a different project). The editors, unamused by my request to stay on past 7.30 pm, had left, asking me to please shut down the computer before I leave. They also made a copy of our work in progress, and told me that I could mess with it as much as I wanted. After playing around with footage for about 2 hours, I did mess up with something because the computer froze. I asked my roommate to please take a moment from his work to help me out, and he did, but to no avail. So I shut down the computer, and went home, with dramatic premonitions of doom, including people shaking their heads after watching the video, talking about how I had, in one quick spate of miscalculated artistic and editorial decisions, reduced the entire legacy of Dr. V to a joke.

So the next day, after waking Zamania up early in the morning and treating her to breakfast at the hospital restaurant whose menu has a grand total of 5 breakfast items, I took her with me to the Audio-Visual room. With the exception of bathroom breaks and a small coffee break (again to the hospital restaurant), we didn't leave the room. Zamania sat there and talked to everyone, answering my many frantic questions about whether certain things were appropriate, and she answered patiently, even though certain questions, such as whether a certain sentence made sense in Tamil, she obviously couldn't answer. The editor also kept throwing vicious looks at me, and when I asked him to explain his behavior, he said, “how could you let your friend go hungry like this?”

Zamania was a champ. We finished the video at 4.30, sent it off to other Aravind hospitals, and screened it at 5.30. I was satisfied with it, given the time we had for it, and also taking into consideration some of the editor's uncensored remarks like, “this video is going to be such a failure,” and “the music (composed by a staff member) is going to be the video's only redeeming factor.”

When I finished the video, both the videographer and editor asked me eagerly when I was leaving, only to look a bit deflated when I told them that I would be working on different projects with them until August. Which makes me wonder why they walked all the way from the hospital, across the street to LAICO (which is where my office is), to say hi to me and ask me if I wanted to get coffee with them on Monday. Sindhuri-withdrawal I assume.

Also, Zamania and I did get dinner at 7.30 pm – at Madurai's best Chinese restaurant. The fast was worth it.

 

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Tue, 17 Jul 2012 10:41:00 -0700 Life in the Audio-Visual Room http://sindhuri.posterous.com/life-in-the-audio-visual-room-66984 http://sindhuri.posterous.com/life-in-the-audio-visual-room-66984

Zamania, a good friend and former roommate from Israel, was travelling around India by herself, and with a little bit of persuasion, she visited me in Madurai for 3 days. I picked her up at midnight at the Madurai Stain Station. Palani, the driver who was taking me to the station, asked me which train she was coming on, which was when I realized that I didn't know. Not because Zamania didn't tell me, but because I had been too lazy to check. Not wanting to look like a bad friend or unprepared person, I said, “Pandian Express.”

 

Mr. Palani looked at me a bit suspiciously and said, “The Pandian arrives at 8 in the morning. Isn't this a bit too early?”

 

I don't think he was being sarcastic as much as curious to find out if I had peculiar tendencies.

 

After asking the station master, we deduced that Zamania was probably on the train from Coimbatore, the closest place to Ootty, which is where she was leaving from. Mr. Palani and I executed a division of labour plan, each of us standing at different exists, so we could catch Zamania as soon as she got off the train. In hindsight though, I realize that that plan wasn't so foolproof because I never told Mr. Palani anything about Zamania's appearance, besides telling him that yes, “she's from foreign.” But luckily, Zamania walked out through my assigned exit. After being happily reunited, we proceeded to talk to each other, only going to bed at half past four.

 

I feel like I only barely prepared Zamania for the day that was to follow. Even though Aravind employees work on Saturdays, I was hoping to cash in on my first “off-day.” Everything was going according to plan until on Thursday evening, I realized how overly ambitious the video project I had taken on was. As the videographer constantly reminded me, within the span of a week, we had amassed up to 7 hours worth of footage for a 10 minute video. My sometimes unrelenting attitude, combined with the fact that the editor was recovering from jaundice meant that the ambitious deadline of Wednesday went by unnoticed, with no fanfare or congratulatory pat on the back.

 

So on Friday night, I shared the audio-visual room with a bemused freelance animation artist (working on a different project). The editors, unamused by my request to stay on past 7.30 pm, had left, asking me to please shut down the computer before I leave. They also made a copy of our work in progress, and told me that I could mess with it as much as I wanted. After playing around with footage for about 2 hours, I did mess up with something because the computer froze. I asked my roommate to please take a moment from his work to help me out, and he did, but to no avail. So I shut down the computer, and went home, with dramatic premonitions of doom, including people shaking their heads after watching the video, talking about how I had, in one quick spate of miscalculated artistic and editorial decisions, reduced the entire legacy of Dr. V to a joke.

 

So the next day, after waking Zamania up early in the morning and treating her to breakfast at the hospital restaurant whose menu has a grand total of 5 breakfast items, I took her with me to the Audio-Visual room. With the exception of bathroom breaks and a small coffee break (again to the hospital restaurant), we didn't leave the room. Zamania sat there and talked to everyone, answering my many frantic questions about whether certain things were appropriate, and she answered patiently, even though certain questions, such as whether a certain sentence made sense in Tamil, she obviously couldn't answer. The editor also kept throwing vicious looks at me, and when I asked him to explain his behavior, he said, “how could you let your friend go hungry like this?”

 

Zamania was a champ. We finished the video at 4.30, sent it off to other Aravind hospitals, and screened it at 5.30. I was satisfied with it, given the time we had for it, and also taking into consideration some of the editor's uncensored remarks like, “this video is going to be such a failure,” and “the music (composed by a staff member) is going to be the video's only redeeming factor.”

 

When I finished the video, both the videographer and editor asked me eagerly when I was leaving, only to look a bit deflated when I told them that I would be working on different projects with them until August. Which makes me wonder why they walked all the way from the hospital, across the street to LAICO (which is where my office is), to say hi to me and ask me if I wanted to get coffee with them on Monday. Sindhuri-withdrawal I assume.

 

Also, Zamania and I did get dinner at 7.30 pm – at Madurai's best Chinese restaurant. The fast was worth it.

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]]>
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Tue, 17 Jul 2012 10:41:00 -0700 Life in the Audio-Visual Room http://sindhuri.posterous.com/life-in-the-audio-visual-room http://sindhuri.posterous.com/life-in-the-audio-visual-room

Zamania, a good friend and former roommate from Israel, was travelling around India by herself, and with a little bit of persuasion, she visited me in Madurai for 3 days. I picked her up at midnight at the Madurai Stain Station. Palani, the driver who was taking me to the station, asked me which train she was coming on, which was when I realized that I didn't know. Not because Zamania didn't tell me, but because I had been too lazy to check. Not wanting to look like a bad friend or unprepared person, I said, “Pandian Express.” Mr. Palani looked at me a bit suspiciously and said, “The Pandian arrives at 8 in the morning. Isn't this a bit too early?” I don't think he was being sarcastic as much as curious to find out if I had peculiar tendencies. After asking the station master, we deduced that Zamania was probably on the train from Coimbatore, the closest place to Ootty, which is where she was leaving from. Mr. Palani and I executed a division of labour plan, each of us standing at different exists, so we could catch Zamania as soon as she got off the train. In hindsight though, I realize that that plan wasn't so foolproof because I never told Mr. Palani anything about Zamania's appearance, besides telling him that yes, “she's from foreign.” But luckily, Zamania walked out through my assigned exit. After being happily reunited, we proceeded to talk to each other, only going to bed at half past four. I feel like I only barely prepared Zamania for the day that was to follow. Even though Aravind employees work on Saturdays, I was hoping to cash in on my first “off-day.” Everything was going according to plan until on Thursday evening, I realized how overly ambitious the video project I had taken on was. As the videographer constantly reminded me, within the span of a week, we had amassed up to 7 hours worth of footage for a 10 minute video. My sometimes unrelenting attitude, combined with the fact that the editor was recovering from jaundice meant that the ambitious deadline of Wednesday went by unnoticed, with no fanfare or congratulatory pat on the back. So on Friday night, I shared the audio-visual room with a bemused freelance animation artist (working on a different project). The editors, unamused by my request to stay on past 7.30 pm, had left, asking me to please shut down the computer before I leave. They also made a copy of our work in progress, and told me that I could mess with it as much as I wanted. After playing around with footage for about 2 hours, I did mess up with something because the computer froze. I asked my roommate to please take a moment from his work to help me out, and he did, but to no avail. So I shut down the computer, and went home, with dramatic premonitions of doom, including people shaking their heads after watching the video, talking about how I had, in one quick spate of miscalculated artistic and editorial decisions, reduced the entire legacy of Dr. V to a joke. So the next day, after waking Zamania up early in the morning and treating her to breakfast at the hospital restaurant whose menu has a grand total of 5 breakfast items, I took her with me to the Audio-Visual room. With the exception of bathroom breaks and a small coffee break (again to the hospital restaurant), we didn't leave the room. Zamania sat there and talked to everyone, answering my many frantic questions about whether certain things were appropriate, and she answered patiently, even though certain questions, such as whether a certain sentence made sense in Tamil, she obviously couldn't answer. The editor also kept throwing vicious looks at me, and when I asked him to explain his behavior, he said, “how could you let your friend go hungry like this?” Zamania was a champ. We finished the video at 4.30, sent it off to other Aravind hospitals, and screened it at 5.30. I was satisfied with it, given the time we had for it, and also taking into consideration some of the editor's uncensored remarks like, “this video is going to be such a failure,” and “the music (composed by a staff member) is going to be the video's only redeeming factor.” When I finished the video, both the videographer and editor asked me eagerly when I was leaving, only to look a bit deflated when I told them that I would be working on different projects with them until August. Which makes me wonder why they walked all the way from the hospital, across the street to LAICO (which is where my office is), to say hi to me and ask me if I wanted to get coffee with them on Monday. Sindhuri-withdrawal I assume. Also, Zamania and I did get dinner at 7.30 pm – at Madurai's best Chinese restaurant. The fast was worth it.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

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