Bad interview and an exemplary IPS officer (unrelated)

I knew I would have at least a few such experiences and so here it was. First bad interview experience. I literally felt like getting up mid way through the interview and walking out. The woman had attitude and made me feel like the interview was a joke for her. She didn’t seem to take it seriously and sounded almost insulting to me and my work which is something I cannot accept. You may not agree with what I do or my work but why not talk about it like a mature adult. If I were to rationalize it, perhaps I could excuse her behavior as hesitation to answer my questions because of the presence of her children which I actually mentioned to her – their presence that is and she said it was okay. I felt myself cringe at the idea and reminded her of the protocol but she didn’t seem to care. The dilemma for me lay in how I should react to the situation but more on that in a private memo. Even so, her behavior was not warranted. It was unnecessary and totally uncalled for. She wasn’t rude but she wasn’t normal either. In general, I just did not get a good feeling about her or her answers which was what actually made me feel like walking out. Anyway whatever. No research is complete without at least one bad egg and I hope this was mine.

Recently I attended a meeting where (Indian Police Services) IPS Meera Borwankar who was currently with the CID (Crime) was the guest of honor. I am so glad I went. Ms. Borwankar was such an inspiration. She was however very politically correct at times and yet at other times I felt like she totally spoke my language. One of the things she said was that she didn’t mind getting compliments in the evening when away from work but when she was at work, she was very professional. The other side to that can be argued as why should women have to play these dual roles. Men don’t do that. It is indeed sad, that in order to be taken seriously, women have to project an exaggerated behavior of sorts. I guess this is particularly true in the male dominated Indian police force. However as she says, with the 30% reservation for women kicking in at some levels, the number of women may rise. In fact on the argument I discussed above, she mentioned how when talking to a group of women IPS officers, she was impressed with how good looking the women were and how unafraid they were to wear their femininity proudly rather than hiding it for fear of repercussions or worry of not being taken seriously. Naturally, IPS Borwankar has used specific strategies in her career to get to where she is at and they have mostly been at the interpersonal level in having to deal with men at the many different levels she has to, everyday. The point is, it doesn’t matter what position you are, seems like consciously or unconsciously women continue to have to use specific strategies to deal with their male colleagues.

Anyways, it was a great talk and I came away with a new perspective on women police officers and perhaps a better appreciation for our Police force. Then of course there is the reservations based controversy. I am against reservations or quotas of any kind. People should simply be hired on the basis of merit and how deserving they are of a particular position and not because they are somebody’s someone or because they could fulfill certain affirmative action requirements. A long way to go before we get there…

People!!! and Ishanya @ Pune

The people exclamation is justified by the fact that one more potential interviewee incommunicado today. When I called her up last night, she asked me to call at 1:00 p.m. today to confirm a time for later that afternoon. After several attempts at calling her, it was she who finally called me back at 1:10 p.m. promising to call me back in 10 minutes and I did not hear from her the entire day. Needless to say data collection is progressing really slowly. I have only about 75 days left in India which means I CANNOT afford not to interview at least one person a day with some days for a break if I am to collect a good number of interviewees. I need to strategize more effectively and find innovative ways within the protocol of research to recruit participants. As of now I am relying too strongly on snowball sampling which is actually working well but I need to do more.

Meanwhile, I visited the Ishanya mall on Airport Road. It’s a huuge place with a number of high end stores. Only a few of the stores are currently open. However, I liked the facilities and the few stores they did have open such as Nilkamal (who knew Nilkamal could have such beautiful furniture) and FabIndia. Yamini was pretty too. Cannot really make any price comparisons just yet since I did not enter any of the stores. We did however enter this place called CROME, a Tata enterprise. It is an electronic store like any other Circuit City or Best Buy. It’s just what the Indian consumer needed. I wonder how many people now actually have the patience to put up with the attitudes of stern looking, rude shopkeepers completely uninterested in showing you their stores’ wares even though that’s how they earn their living. I am sure the wisened Indian consumer now realizes that she has a choice. I really like to take the time to explore my shopping options by actually touching and feeling items. The only part I don’t like about this new culture change in Indian shopping is the way there are hundreds of store helpers waiting to assist you. In fact they follow you every step you take for whatever reason, most of which I think is because they think you are out to shoplift something or the other…so much so that you feel like they are your own personal body guard waiting to be handed your shopping bags or Chiuahaha or something. Westside stores are the worst.

Anyways, so for now at least Ishanya looks good. Its huge, has good facilities like free parking (for now at least), restrooms, escalators and so on…all those things that the Indian consumer is slowly but surely getting used to and to which people from the developed world do not even give a second thought to since all of these things are an expected part of any shopping experience.

From Ishanya, we went to Silk Route an Asian multi-cuisine restaurant that includes cuisines of China, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Korea. The food was alright. The music was too loud, the food took forever to arrive, the plates smelt bad, tand he prices were reasonable considering the current price of eating out. Overall it was a high-end restaurant that was okay. Would have liked a faster service and at least a basic high chair for kids.

Visit to Shirdi

On Wednesday, June 25th, we took a sudden decision to visit Shri Sai Baba’s temple in Shirdi the next day. We were to visit the temple anyway and I had especially expressed a desire to do so since I credit my getting the PRF grant almost entirely to Sai Baba. My sister Madhuri had to notify her supervisor for that last minute leave. With that taken care of, we left on Thursday. Madhu had returned home from work around 7:00 a.m. that day and only got to make up her sleep until noon – such are the trials of a MNC. We made two stops on our way to Shirdi.

Our first brief stop was at Ranjangaon, one of the sites of the famed Ashta(eight)Vinayak (Lord Ganesha) temples. Our second stop was a slightly longer one at Shani Shinganapur to pray to Shri Shaneshwar or Shanidev, the ruler of the planet Saturn according to Indian astrology.

Three striking features of this temple and the village it is located in are: (1) None of the rooms in the village have a door and because they don’t have a door, they have no locks. Believe it or not, even the restrooms beside the temple premises don’t have a door – THIS was a nasty surprise to me but when you are in India, you do as everybody does (in most cases). Of course the restroom had a wall that fulfilled the purpose but a restroom without a door was not something I had thought was possible even in a village famed for not having doors or locks. Driving through the village to get to the temple, I notice curtains for doors. Legend has it that if anybody does steal anything from the village, for one or the other reason they are unable to leave the village and subsequent turn of events force them to return the stolen item/s to the rightful owners. As a result, people of this village have no fear of theft or anything untoward happening because of their strong belief in Shanidev and his grace that has been bestowed on the village and villagers.

The second striking feature is that the idol of Shanidev is out in the open. Unlike most Hindu temples where Gods and Goddesses are housed on beautiful thrones or chariots or made to stand amidst gold jewelry and fine textiles, Shanidev stands out in the open, outside of where other deities are placed.

Finally and the more interesting feature for me was that women are forbidden from offering prayers or any item of prayer directly at Shanidev’s idol. Men who want to step up to where Shanidev is kept and adorn him with sesame oil have to change into a plain orange lungi and follow a prescribed procedure. I do not understand the logic of forbidding women from performing prayers directly at Shanidev’s stone but it wasn’t my place to question the tradition at the time and so I left it at that.

The next day, Friday was when we visited the Sai Baba temple. The lines were not as long as we had expected and kept moving along quickly. My blood pressure did rise a number of times when people jumped lines and forced their way through the crowds of people patiently making their way toward the main temple sthan. The behavior of people pushing others to get their way into the crowd to head up the long lines drove me insane. We were at a temple. Everybody was patiently moving along in lines to get Baba’s darshan and some obnoxious morons had to push their way to the front of the lines. RIDICULOUS!! Amidst all this, there were shouts of “Sai Baba ki…” and people in lines chanting unanimously “Jai”. The atmosphere was one of spirituality amidst all the frustration. Once inside the main hall where Baba is seated, I just stared at Him and His eyes and forgot to pray. The look of calmness and serenity was so strong that I was speechless for a long time. I just wanted some alone time with Baba to just stand there and stare at His composed appearance. Unfortunately that was not to be so. The guards were in a rush to get people out of the room. Devotees barely get a few seconds with Baba. I wish I had more time with Him. We also visited Dwarkamai, the place where the fire that He lit during his time has still been kept alive.

Finally after shopping for some Sai Baba’s pictures, audio CDs and other stuff, we left for Pune a little after noon.

How do I spend my time in Pune?

What an amazing city! More special for me however is the time spent at home with my parents, sisters and niece. After I got over the jet lag, when to my own surprise, I’d wake up at 6:30 or 7:00 a.m., I have slowly got adjusted to the Indian clock as is evidenced by my waking up at a leisure 9:00 or 9:30 a.m. Usually I have interviews scheduled for a given day or need to make calls to confirm appointments. That done, the agenda of my day is set and off I go, with my notebook, recorder, consent forms in hand. Once outside the house, I hire a rickshaw, tell the rickshaw driver (always a male) where to go and am on my way. Occasionally I have to give directions to the driver myself or stop the rickshaw and ask passers-by for them. Many a times, my father, very graciously takes time off his schedule to drop me at very far off places.

All this may make it seem like I have very busy days with data collection going on track. Not quite so. Getting contacts is not difficult, being able to establish those contacts and convert them into a successful DONE is what takes up all my time. I can’t believe how so many people in India lack common courtesy – that of simply picking up the phone and informing me that they cannot make a certain appointment or would like to reschedule. Culturally I understand the innate Indian norm of not wanting to disappoint anybody by saying an outright no. So people then end up saying yes without really any intentions of seeing it through. So much for blind trust in people’s common courtesies. Today I went all the way to Bhandarkar Road with papa and when I called the woman to ask her exact location while in her area, she said she couldn’t make the interview today since she had to go out on some business. Now I totally understand such things happen but couldn’t she have called me earlier or before I actually called her for directions while circling the area around her house, looking for HER exact location…PEOPLE!!!!

Other than this hiccup, I’ve met some very interesting women many of who have amazed me with their life stories and struggles. I am realizing that data collection is not as easy as it sounds or at least as a gullible me had assumed it to be. I’ll write about specific in the field experiences tomorrow.

But overall, data collection is progressing. I don’t want to provide an adjective for how the progression is just yet.

Laptop update

No my laptop’s hard drive was never recovered. After Sudipto and I made unsuccessful attempts at recovering it, it was mailed to my brother-in-law in Florida who did not have very encouraging news. However, his colleague just bought some data recovery equipment and now further attempts will be made to revive my dead hard drive. Keeping my fingers crossed…

Talking only about the laptop itself, it is back to being a useful ally of mine. I do not spend as much time on it as I do when I am at home in Tennessee or even in WL. For now, I have my lovely Dora-obsessed niece to spend time with which I absolutely enjoy doing. When I am not collecting data or transcribing, I am following her around, camera in hand, capturing all her amazing moments both in pictures and video.

Pune is expensive!

It’s been over a fortnight since I came to Pune. I don’t know what to make of the city except that what I knew as “My Pune” has changed dramatically. Things were much simpler then and even though we didn’t have the conveniences of today, because we didn’t know any different, it didn’t seem to matter. I believe today’s youth are treading a double edged sword. While they have more options as far as shopping, places to go, restaurants to frequent and so on, everything is at a price.

One of the bigger shockers since my visit to Pune has been the current extremely high cost of living. For example, a regular, cotton kurti at a Westside or Piramyd is Rs. 499. Of course the fit is great and the designs are really smart but that’s still too expensive especially since in the last few years, this ridiculous thing called ‘Mix n Match’ has emerged. According to this fashion trend, you can match any kind of salwars, patialas, or chudidaars with any other kind of kurtis, kameezs and so on. Nothing needs to match as long as it looks somewhat coordinated. I guess it works because the final ensemble does look good, again, at a very high price. For example, a good kurti – Rs. 499, a Patiala pant – Rs. 499, a dupatta/odhni – Rs. 199 – Total Rs. 1197 (about $30) which is not really bad. I find this expensive because I know cheaper options are available and then again after several tries at a store on Laxmi Road, both me and my sister were of the opinion that we’d rather spend Rs. 499 on one kurti at a mall store than spend a couple hundred rupees more and buy a whole set on Laxmi Road – one without a good fit. To spend on quality or to skimp is the question.

An alternative I found really good was to buy dress material on Laxmi Road/Raviwar Peth/Tulsibag and get it stitched to a desired style from a tailor. My favorite tailors are the ones at S.B. Vaste on FC Road. I’ve been their customer since 1995 – ever since my FYJC (First Year Junior College) and they have never disappointed me as far as their work. They have always been a little pricey but because they are so good, you don’t mind paying for that fit. The current price for a basic salwar kameez without anything fancy additional design is Rs. 175. Add this to the price of a reasonable dress material – about Rs. 350 and you get a wonderful set, fitted for you for only Rs. 525.

The fact of the matter is, everything seems to be excruciatingly expensive. Moving on from the example, last night I bought a pair of footwear for a buy 1 – get 1 free deal, of which my pair was for Rs. 995 ($24) and my sister’s was Rs. 1395 ($35). My most expensive pairs of shoes so far have been the $29.99 Sketchers day sports pair bought at the Lafayette TJ Maxx and a pair of winter boots for the same price bought at Target. I took over two weeks to find a reasonable pair of shoes here in Pune and finally made a very practical choice settling for one that’ll go well with western wear as well as traditional attire – which is another thing to think about when shopping for footwear in India. What works for traditional Indian clothes does not work for western wear such as trousers, jeans and so on – an issue I don’t face while shopping for shoes in the US.

The other expensive item on Pune City’s menu is the rickshaw fare which now has a minimum charge of Rs. 10. Even traveling by a rickshaw has become a luxury I cannot really afford but have no choice in. The other day I had to travel to Pune-Satara road beyond Big Bazaar for a couple of interviews and just one-way there cost me Rs. 47 – something that may have cost in the teens a few years ago. Given the traffic situation in the city, my dad as well as my in-laws have prevented me from driving my Kinetic Honda which drives me insane. While I was and whenever I am in Pune, I was/am so used to my independence – taking my Kine and cruising around town that not being able to do that is a major limitation on my mobility.

A laptop dead in the midst of this crazy life…

On Monday, June 2, just as I was trying out a new recipe with Sudipto helping me in the kitchen, something happened and my laptop jumped to its colossal death, taking the blow straight on the hard drive. Much to my own surprise I was alarmingly calm for my own good. I guess Sudipto was so freaked out (he tends to overreact when it comes to cars and computers) that I figured I simply had to maintain my sanity or perhaps the outcome hadn’t sunk in yet. Regardless, we finished with the food I was making (Aloo paratha) and Sudipto wrapped up the Gobi manchurian he was making with my instructions and some guidelines from a cooking website and we turned to the laptop. It refused to boot up. Even though I should have been the one consoled, I ended up consoling Sudipto rationalizing the material nature of a physical object like a laptop that could always be replaced. Plus, I knew I had a lot of backup. I just didn’t know how up to date I was, but I had most of my files.

Later that night, we ordered a hard drive for the laptop and the next day Sudipto ordered a few other things that would enable us to recover the data from my old hard drive. It was only later that night that everything began to sink in. I had lost three years of my life in one nasty fall. I imagined myself the metaphorical witch of many a children’s stories that saves her soul in a parrot in a cage on top of a hard to find and reach castle such that even if she were to be killed, she would never die since her soul was safely kept elsewhere. That was exactly how I felt – that my soul had so far been safely locked inside a hard drive and now it had fallen and died (. Needless to say I was very upset.

The next morning when I checked my back up, I realized I had all my teaching files (except the recently scanned teaching evaluations) as well as my prelims’ answers but I did not have a single file, document, article or pdfs of my 150 page prospectus which was very, very disheartening. I have a reference list that runs 20 pages and most of these were electronic files acquired through ILL. Just going back and requesting them again would be a time consuming affair. I do have soft copies of my prospectus emailed to myself but it’s just extremely upsetting that a laptop that had become such an inseparable part of the last three years of my life was suddenly not there.

Last night, we tried to get the laptop working again installing the new hard drive and it worked just fine but within a few minutes, I ended up opening some website and before I knew it, the laptop was infested by all kinds of viruses and spyware. At this time, in less than 24 hours, I cannot use anything on the laptop since everything has been “hijacked” by some virus/spyware. I can’t even run any anti-spyware, anti-virus software….you can imagine my state of mind… Also last night, all our attempts at recovering my data were also unsuccessful. Sudipto is going to try again tonight. If nothing works, I am going to mail it to Aniket (my brother-in-law in Florida) and request him to do something, anything, to recover my files (he is a s/w engineer). What makes this even more crazy is the fact that I leave for India on Wednesday, June 11 and do not have time to buy and customize a new laptop and I DO NOT want a Vista operating system….oh Heaven!!! Please help!!!

Got my IRB approval today!! YEAH!

Yep! Strangely I don’t feel anything about it yet…perhaps because it was hovering around me for a long time.

I started the process on Thursday, April 24th. Because I knew this was going to be a tedious process and a particularly challenging one because of all the translations that were needed, I met with Christa at the IRB office this day. She was kind enough to go over all my paperwork and provide some really good advice. I also mentioned that in order to process my paycheck, I needed to have an approval real soon. She understood. I submitted all of my documents with her suggested changes on Thursday night.

Friday morning, I walked up to the IRB office and delivered the hard copies with Patrice’s signature. Within a few hours, I had a reply from the office with a memo requesting some very minor revisions. I made those revisions and mailed it to them over the weekend, requesting a quick reply so I could get the translations working. Got their reply on Monday, April 28th and I immediately mailed the consent forms to Papa. However the translations took a while because of the May 1 Labor Day holiday in India as well as some personnel issues but this morning, Monday, May 5, I had his email, bright and early. I needed to make some changes to the Photography consent form but I was all set and emailed them away to IRB. Within a few hours, I got their final approval and the go ahead for the project.

A small step for research, a giant leap toward a P H D.

Here’s some advice for those in the process of getting their IRBs for international projects:

1. It is a GREAT idea to meet with an IRB staff member and have him or her review your forms prior to submission. I thought I knew the process well but it really helped having Christa read through it all and provide some really valuable additions that saved me a lot of time later on.
2. Once you submit your documents, request that they review the consent forms asap so that you can get started on the translations.
3. Follow the template that is on their website to facilitate a quicker review.
4. Do not hesitate to pick up the phone or drop by Hovde 300 to get your questions answered. Believe me, it saves a lot of time and effort.
5. If you can, anticipate questions about your research from the perspective of an outsider (not necessarily the research project itself but the procedures, etc.) and answer them somewhere in your documents before they ask you to.
6. And finally, I know there were numerous occasions where I went through “I know my project is culturally sensitive” and “I know that this is just not going to work given my cultural context” and such other nagging thoughts, but I kept reminding myself that the whole IRB process is to ensure that your participants are not taken advantage of and the IRB only means well (I know that last thought can be challenging sometimes), but trust me, it is possible to get everything done the way IRB wants it done and still feel like you aren’t compromising on your research. After all this, you KNOW you are well on your way to your research.