Light and Culture

Culture shock usually manifests in stages and as an aggregated effect of several isolated events over a period of time.  Just as thermal shock is caused by starkly contrasting temperatures, events that contribute to culture shock are ones that lay bare contrasting circumstances pertaining to economic, intellectual, or social disparities.  Interestingly, the contrast in such circumstances need not be particularly stark to create an impact.  Take my case, for instance.  Despite having grown up in a major city in India and having enjoyed a fairly privileged first 22 years of my life, replete with a good deal of what one might call 'western' affectations, there come to mind numerous such events that have revealed many a contrasting 'where it's at' in the course of my NE Ohioan inhabitancy, starting with the day I landed on US soil and hitched a ride with a PhD student in his automatic transmission car (never had I seen a gear stick that moved in a single line) and rode the great American interstate highways (never had I seen a freeway with so many ramps and exits, or experienced such a smooth ride at 70 mph).

It is necessary to note that not every contrasting circumstance is indicative of the superiority or inferiority of any one of the two lifestyles in question.  Besides, superiority is subjective and is only a matter of perception.  A great example that illustrates this is the subject of home lighting.  My upbringing in urban India of the 80s/90s effectively conditioned my mind to postulate that the then ubiquitous fluorescent tubelight, the domestic lighting de choix of the average urban Indian household, was the superiormost home lighting choice, and that lamps that shone shades any yellower than the regal white tubelight belonged to a lower birth in the lamp hierarchy and were better suited for jobs more menial like illuminating the streets or something.  Imagine the culture shock when I saw the supposedly forward thinking Americans give the cool shoulder to the cool tubelight in favor of the warmer and more primitive alternative - the incandescent bulb.  It had to do, they said, with the welcoming warm glow of the 2700K soft white incandescent bulb as opposed to the 4000K bright white fluorescent lights that reminded them of a hospital or an industrial setting.

Here's why I think India got used to white lighting while the US stayed illuminated in yellow incandescence.  Without getting into the details of why India got ahead of the US in the race to phasing out incandescent light bulbs in favor of more efficient lighting alternatives, or delving into a discussion about the absurdity of deregulation of domestic energy policies, let me just say India had started adopting energy efficient lighting alternatives even before I was born, and at the time, the only fluorescent lighting available was the obnoxiously white kind my generation grew up with.  By the time the US was ready to upgrade it’s lighting to CFLs, technology had advanced enough to provide to the masses the option of a 2700K warm white CFL to warm their hearts just like the incandescent bulb.

You might be wondering why I am blubbering wildly on this subject.  This thought tsunami started with a simple sequence of events earlier this week.  It was 7pm one evening when Pavana asked me to turn on our living room lights, a modest arrangement of three 2700K 60W equivalent LED bulbs, which I proceeded to turn on one by one.  After the third bulb was turned on, Pavana remarked, “Why is it still so dull?”

“May be because it’s too yellow?  Should we try white LEDs?”, I replied.

“No.  Whites look weird.  Not welcoming.”

“Then should we put brighter bulbs?”

“That would be too yellow then.”

“Okay, then we should change them to white, right?”

“No.  Whites aren't welcoming.”

“Then let's try putting brighter bulbs.”

“No.  That would be too yellow.”

A slight throbbing developed in the back of my head.  I aborted the futile talk and turned to the Amazon app on my phone.  A cursory search drew a dizzying volume of search results.  I then aborted the search as well.

Over the next couple days though, I did some reading.  I discovered that the Correlated Color Temperature (CCT), i.e. the measure of the warmth using 2700K, 4000K, 5000K etc., is far from being the be-all and end-all for measuring this.  Lighting pundits have apparently been using something called the general Color Rendering Index (CRI), a utility of the Commission internationale de l'éclairage (CIE), for over 50 years.  This CRI is something I have routinely seen printed on the packaging for lights, but always selectively ignored.  In simple terms, a light source's CRI indicates how closely it can render colors like the sun on a scale of 0-100.  The humble incandescent bulb clocks at the most ideal CRI of 100, which explains why it remains the most preferred choice of indoor illumination, while the traditional white tubelight clocks at a CRI of 85-89, which is what folks like me from India are conditioned to.  It is hard to draw a correlation between CCT and CRI, and it becomes a function of the wavelength, because while the low CCT incandescent bulb renders all colors equally well, higher CCT fluorescents render some colors better than others.  With the advent of solid-state lighting (LEDs) however, researchers have found deficiencies with CRI measurement.  The  Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) came up with an alternative to CRI via the technical memorandum IES TM-30-15, which introduces three metrics, namely the Fidelity Index that is similar to the CRI, the Gamut Index that indicates how intense the colors are (saturation level), and the Color vector Graphic that indicates which colors are saturated or desaturated.  Another alternate metric called the Color Quality Scale (CQS) was developed by NIST.  CQS is like a CRI-plus that considers parameters like chromatic discrimination and human preference in addition to color rendering.

To cut a long story short, I brought to bear all of this new found wisdom and ended up purchasing a set of soft white 3000K 65W equivalent LED recessed flood bulbs for our kitchen.  These bulbs have a humble CRI of 90, but our tubelight-conditioned brains think this is ideal.  We love that it sort of looks yellow but yet yields light almost as white as the tubelight.  All of a sudden now, our kitchen looks cheerful.  The counters look bright.  We don't cut our fingers anymore while chopping fruits.  However, note that we changed only our kitchen lights.  The living room lights alluded to above are still yellow and melancholy.  This lighting disparity unfortunately results in an unanticipated emotional gradient when one walks from the kitchen into the living area.

It's a Virtual Virtual World!

"I'm not sure why it isn't working.  I just had it working a few minutes ago!"

"Try clicking on the top right corner where you see the little note like icon..."

"I did, but it won't allow me to type!"

"Oh, you need to go to settings and enable it."

"Oh okay!  Is it in the meeting settings or do I have to go out into the main settings to enable it?"

"Umm... not sure.  Do you want to share your screen?  We can try to work through it together."

"Yeah okay!  Lemme see...  okay here we go.  Can you see my screen?"

"Not yet, it's thinking... oh there it is!  Yes, I can see it now..."

One would probably assume that the above conversation was being had by two adults, presumably during the course of a work meeting or a call with IT.  What if I told you that this was actually an exchange between two 7-year-olds during a Zoom call?  

The technological adroitness exhibited by today's youngest generation never ceases to amaze us senile Gen-Xers, a generation that supposedly was right in the middle of many major advancements such as personal computers, the internet, smartphones etc. and has yet somehow developed a sentiment of antiquity.  The said talent is all the more discernible this year with society almost completely metamorphosing into a virtual world in the wake of COVID, scilicet virtual school, virtual classes, virtual work, virtual play dates, virtual lunches, virtual happy hours, virtual concerts, what have you.  At the beginning of the school year we had felt a bit apprehensive about virtual school, partly because this was Medha's first time in public school but mostly because we were concerned that virtual school might introduce a steep learning curve for her and that it might come in the way of actual school work.  Our apprehensions were however brought to naught within no time.  Medha has not only became a pro at operating her school issued Chromebook (it took her all of two days to become an expert), but has also gained enough wisdom to give us recommendations in allied matters, for e.g. whether to restart Chromecast or merely end and restart the Hotstar app on the iPad, whether to add the Google meet link in the Google classroom header or send it via Whatsapp for music classes, whether to be on gallery view or speaker view during bhajans, whether to use the reverb tool in the Fx panel or right click on the voice track to select preset effects in BandLab (a cloud based digital audio workstation) etc.  

Mira is not far behind either.  She knows exactly how to switch her 'singing' toys on and off; how she discovered that little switch on the stuffed puppy's lumbar region under the velcro of his coat is beyond my grasp.  She even taught me a sophisticated hack to make the puppy resume his singing if he goes silent for some reason; gently tapping his head and then hurling him violently to the floor usually does the trick!  She also understands how do-while loops work evidenced by her ability to create exact conditions for a given toy to play the exact song she wants to hear.  She has even figured out all by herself how humans of yesteryear used to talk using flip-phones; her latest activité de choix is to roam the living room holding an old flip-phone to her cheek, babbling and giggling incessantly into it.  Oh, and she also knows how to end a Facetime call whenever the conversation turn to topics she might not prefer!

The world has now turned into a real-time sci-fi movie.  And frankly, I am not complaining.  Why would I?  After all, scientific advancement is nothing but a natural consequence of human intelligence.  The concept of technological singularity, i.e. the notion that one day robots will rule humans, is, I think, absolute drivel.  To quote sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov - "I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them."

Smart pain

The first time I discovered smart pain was in a public restroom when the light automatically turned off on me because I was sitting too still.  Try as I might, I cannot forget all the objects I bumped into while trying to exit the restroom a few minutes later. Felt actual pain.

I define 'smart pain' as the trauma caused by smart devices.  Devices capable of inflicting smart pain can range from simple motion sensor lights like the one alluded to above to sophisticated smart speakers like Google Home and Alexa that can hold full blown conversations with their owners.  I vaguely remember hearing a story of someone's Alexa misunderstanding their conversation and placing an order for seven thousand oatmeal raisin cookies or fifty-six bags of cat food or some such ludicrousness.  Real pain, that!  And of course, we constantly hear about the vulnerability of privacy caused by smart devices that clandestinely collect personal data.

Everything is smart these days.  A smart key gets you into your car.  A smart thermostat controls your furnace.  A smart speaker controls your lights.  A smart TV controls your entertainment needs.  A smart phone controls, well, you.  There is no escape from all this smartness.  And we regular humans are barely beginning to catch up.  Like the time I was standing in front of a lamp blurting out various permutations and combinations of commands trying to turn it on until someone walked into the room and turned it on by nonchalantly flipping a switch!

Once Upon a Mall

I am fairly positive that when they said that the world is coming to an end, they referred to the annihilation of brick-and-mortar retail stores.  The last decade or so, in-person retail shopping has been swiftly outmoded by e-commerce.  The 'Retail Apocalypse', they call it.  The dilapidation of shopping malls is almost eschatological and certainly symbolic of the speed of evolution (or devolution) of things in this Ghor Kaliyuga.  ऐसे में  one can only muse over the glory days of the JCPenneys and the Macy'ses.

Chapel Hill Mall

When I was a graduate student, a visit to a shopping mall was one of the most glamorous getaways for my roommates and me.  On selected Saturdays, the four of us would hop onto Akron Metro bus no. 10 that would painstakingly traverse the 4.5 mi distance from Downtown Akron to Chapel Hill Mall in about an hour.  We would then trek the entire square footage of the mall and snoop around JCPenney and Sears in search of that one elusive $4 t-shirt and that one $8 jeans.  Shiny clearance boards at Aeropostale and American Eagle would lure us in to buy apparel that we would then save to take back to India during the next vacation as gifts.  We would also sometimes splurge on an expensive $13 haircut at one of the swanky hair outlets in the mall instead of our usual $7 barbershop grandpa near campus.  A Saturday mall visit was also an opportunity to treat ourselves to a veggie burger lunch at the Burger King next to the mall (this humble meal has been since expunged from BK's menu and replaced with a monstrosity called the impossible whopper).  We would also religiously partake in the annual lunacy that is Black Friday by hitching a car ride to the mall to contribute to the enormity of the 3AM line outside BestBuy so that we could get our hands on that cheap USB stick or some other such inutile entity.  We share many a mall memoir, including that one somewhat snowy November evening when we missed the last bus back and had to stand in the cold outside the closed mall doors waiting for a car-धारी student to come and rescue us!  Eventually when I graduated, divorced this group of friends, and moved to Youngstown (read about it here), the Boardman mall became a big part of life for me and Pavana.  Since we lived practically down the street from the mall, we would spend many evenings shopping at the mall.

It is a different world today with online shopping literally eating away at the remains of whatever is left of shopping malls.  As a consumer, while I certainly feel for the stores going out of business, I honestly have no problem with the online shopping experience.  My take is that as long as you can keep track of your weekly waistline trends, you can effectively e-shop for pants without stepping out from your home.  The trouble I have with online shopping is when the item you receive fails to meet your expectations, and you rather ironically have to step out from your home and go to UPS armed with a malodorous cardboard box and return label! 

The Essentialest Service

The COVID pandemic has created heightened awareness of what is essential to our lives.  Administrators say that services like public health, law enforcement, energy, water, financial services, agriculture etc. are essential services.  As a commoner, however, there is one that has impacted me the most...

The internet.

The internet has come a long way since its ARPANET days.  It is no longer a measly network transporting tiny messages between two computers.  It has grown into a behemoth that effectually controls our existence.  It plays a role in almost everything we do today.  Want to order a pizza?  Click.  Want to share a photo with a friend?  Click.  Want to schedule a doctor appointment?  Click.  Think about how you and your internet connection are inseparable throughout your day.  You no longer open your curtains and announce 'Good Morning' when you wake up; you instead open Whatsapp on your phone and read all the Good Morning messages first.  Once you have made yourself coffee, you no longer step outside to pick up your newspaper; you instead click on the dozen new apps on your iPad.  You then fire up your computer and login into a plethora of applications to help you get through your work day, which then gets punctuated by a million pings emanating from your messaging apps announcing important incoming messages that you must respond to immediately because communication has to be instantaneous.  Meanwhile, your kid is in the other room, using up sizable bandwidth attending virtual school and watching video after video that the teacher designates as educational.  You finish work and have your kid login for completing homework, virtual music classes, and virtual play dates.  You then decide to unwind by throwing on some Netflix and simultaneously savoring your double life on Facebook.  Finally, when it is time to sleep, you open Whatsapp again and read all the Good Night messages.

Amid such a day, can you imagine having issues with your internet connection?  

For the last few weeks, bad internet has defined our lives.  Our household has seen some tense moments.  Every day, there are at least 2-3 instances when one of us doing something really important, and the internet connection suddenly becomes painstakingly slow or disappears altogether.  Neighbors probably know this too because every time such an event occurs, rather emphatic vocalization happens in our house. Phone conversations with our ISP's customer support and visits by technicians seem to temporarily fix the issue, but it returns soon with vengeance.  Every work meeting, every class, every live event is nerve-racking because we don't know when the internet connection will start acting up.  I'm sure you will sympathize when I say that we are currently living on edge...

Technology and the Individual

Technology has earned the sobriquet of The Great Enabler.  Right from the ancient invention of the wheel to the soon-to-come-of-age self driving automobile technology, the homo sapien has committed himself to ameliorating his living standards by hatching schemes to laze through his lifespan.  Quite enabling, what!  

First, let me profess, lest you think that I scorn any and every scientific advancement, that being a pupil of science myself, I have undertaken many an endeavor toward becoming a positive contributor in this area.  Being a man of science, however, does not automatically translate into being adept at all things technology.  Case in point, our new television.

In the earlier part of the previous decade, I had spent an entire semester in engineering college assimilating the contents of a magnificent tome - "Monochrome And Colour Television", meticulously penned by R. R. Gulati.  By the end of the semester, I and every other kid in my class would claim to be an authority in TV concepts like video signal transmission, vertical and horizontal sync, vestigial sideband transmission, NTSC and PAL coders, etc.  What was interesting though, was that I used the exact same textbook my mother had used when she had studied the subject during her engineering college days.  As such, one could hazard a conjecture that television technology had not evolved much in the aforesaid time-span.  In the last 20 or so years, however, television technology (and every other technology, for that matter) has seen alacritous advancement.  

We set up our shiny new LG 55" 4K UHD Smart TV yesterday.  During this exercise, I found that the lessons gleaned from R. R. Gulati's volume failed to come to my assistance.  For instance, I learned that my little homemade antenna made using paper clips, while quite effective, is now irrelevant in the face of myriad web-based video on-demand apps designed to cater to the whims of the impatient human brain.  Learning-curve, schmearning-curve; at least so far, between the Smart TV and myself, the former is the Smarter entity.

Crazy little thing called Phone

When Bell invented the telephone in the 19th century, little did he know that the instrument would morph into a 2 dimensional slab that the 21st century creature would nonchalantly slip into its jeans pocket.  Although this instrument is mononymously called a "phone", it is actually a full blown computer; a pocket PC that is way more powerful and millions of times faster than the computers that assisted in the first moon landing.  The incongruity of this moniker is that actual human conversations make up only a tiny portion of the use cases of this instrument.  And for good reason.  iPhones today are equipped with 12 MP cameras that can shoot videos in 4K resolution.  Your email is on the phone as are a dozen other work related software apps.  You can record studio quality audio on it and churn out professional music productions.  You don't need newspapers anymore; your phone will tell you the weather and scream headlines at you all day if you so desire.  What previously required detailed printed maps, spiral bound books from AAA, or bulky GPS devices, can now all be accomplished on your phone using a simple app.  Then you have Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and what not, to satisfy your social media appetite.  Furthermore, there are apps for day-to-day stuff like banking, cab services, home appliances, and even your baby daycare's daily reports!

Today's teenager knows not of the thrill of using a rotary telephone to call his high school crush while praying that a parent does not answer.  But he sure does know how to aggrandize his nonverbal communication with emojis and stickers! 

Trends

Back in the early 90s, a contribution of ₹ 2.00 to the earnings of Oven Fresh Foods Pvt. Ltd., Pune would buy you a half loaf packet of sliced white bread.  This was also the era of the World Wrestling Federation.  "Dabloo-Dabloo-Aphe", we boys used to call it.  Playing with GI Joes had become passé, while discussing the exploits of Yokozuna or Macho Man was the in thing.  It was only a matter of time before astute product managers at Oven Fresh Foods Pvt. Ltd. decided to take advantage of this craze by including a greasy little WWF wrestler sticker at the bottom every half loaf bread packet.  And quite obviously, 2 half loaves had always costed more than 1 full loaf, so OFF Pvt. Ltd. became a rapidly burgeoning business.  Meanwhile, collecting WWF stickers completely replaced more solemn hobbies like philately.

With the advent fast personal computers in the mid-90s, however, young boys were no longer sitting around trading greasy stickers.  Computer games programmed for the then powerful MS-DOS 6.0 suddenly became the dernier cri.  Boys were now playing Space Commanders, Frog, Elevator, Dave, Mortal Kombat, and Doom on their swanky new PCs.  If they wanted to challenge themselves, they would press the red turbo button on the CPU, and the little pixelated Frog would hop twice as fast and the annoying sawtooth wave buzzer beeping would rise in pitch and tempo.

In any case, I do not know what young boys are into these days.  I see that my almost seven year old daughter is into Shopkins, LOL surprizes, Polly Pockets, Jo Jo Siwa, and a few other things that I have selectively chosen not to comprehend.  I understand that changing trends are inevitable; I have no problem with them.  All I am saying is that I feel old when I catch myself thinking, “What was wrong with collecting stamps?”

New car: To buy or not to buy?

The first car I bought was a heavily used white(ish) gas guzzler of an American make that went extinct in the earlier part of this decade.  From a distance, it was a fairly ritzy looking automobile.  However, small areas of rust would peek out at you through chipped paint as you got closer.  Although it was the only car I could afford back then, the rugged Americanness of the car suited my juvenile resolve of not acting in acquiescence with my fellow desis by picking one of their favorite Japanese makes.  I used to love the car.  It was sporty, had good acceleration, and felt quite sturdy; until one fateful winter day involving a snow storm, black ice, and a discourteous pickup truck.  I escaped, probably because of the car's said rugged Americanness.  Unfortunately, the car was totaled.

The incident shook me up enough to opt for a car that was a complete antithesis - a used and unoriginal gray all-wheel-drive crossover SUV of a Japanese make.  Make no mistake though, I used to love this vehicle as well.  By this time I had entered vie conjugale.  As such, this car served faithfully on many an ensuing long drive, viz. through the winding highways of Pennsylvania, scenic routes of West Virginia and Virginia, and flat roadways cutting through midwestern states.  Also, our first-born came home in this car.  All was well until one day, at a traffic light at a busy intersection, the car's timing belt decided to give up on me and the engine sputtered to a permanent stop.

Not long before this incident, we had acquired another car to accommodate our contradistinctive commuting requirements; a sand colored ('gracious beige', per the manufacturer) coupe sedan of another Japanese make.  Despite being heavily used at the time of purchase, it turned out to be a particularly prolific giver of miles to the gallon, which suited my preposterous 140 mi. daily commute at the time.  While the odometer strained to keep up with my insane commutes, the engine continued to stay in top notch condition.  Everything else on the car however started coming detached one by one, all while driving on the highway.  First, I saw one wiper blade fly off.  Next, one rear view mirror started dangling.  Then, the muffler excused itself from the underbelly.  Finally, an entire brake assembly severed itself.  That is when I decided to terminate my faith in the vehicle, and sold it off.

Today we own an SUV and a mini-van, both Japanese makes, thus staying true to our current existence as a borderline boring desi couple married for 12 years.  The vehicles presently run fine.  However, as you can see, I have never been proactive with car replacements.  I often look at the duo in our garage and wonder what I am waiting for.  Sans conclusion, I usually end up convincing myself that it isn't time yet.

COVID-19

It is a strange world out there.  Some call it COVID, as if it is telling us to VIDu (விடு) everything that is co- (i.e. joint, together), or to stay inside the COsy COve that is your VEEDu (வீடு).  Some call it Corona, because it has undeniably caused हम सब का-रोना, and some others say इसी लिए social distancing करो ना.  Whatever we call it, it isn't hard to hazard a hunch that the world is going to remain hazardous for some more time now.
 
COVID-19 is often compared with the pandemic of 1918 and quarantine life with World War days.  However, what sets the COVID-19 pandemic apart from these two historic crises is a great invention called the internet that supposedly saves us from social isolation that our grandparents or great grandparents might have faced back then.  While one cannot deny the role the internet plays in keeping us informed and up to date, one also cannot ignore the inordinately discordant pieces of information we are inundated with every single day via social media and news sources, both legitimate and semi-legitimate.  Opinions are frequently passed as facts as they get heavily circulated on Whatsapp.  फेंकी हुई  disinformation hardly gets called out as फेक news as folks gleefully share their daily quotas of inaccuracies with each other.  After all, a little bit of मसाला causes no harm, they say.  Per contra, we have constantly remind ourselves that distorted truth is worse than a lie.  Alternative facts help no one, and are in fact very dangerous.  Perhaps more dangerous than what COVID ஐயா originally planned for us when he decided to be our बिन बुलाया मेहमान. 

Some food for thought.