When you lose everything

 While growing up, my father spent some twenty years in Myanmar, or Burma as it was known then. His father (my grandfather) worked in an insurance company and there were opportunities for someone like him in Rangoon in what was then a part of British India. As the years went by, the family expanded. My father, the oldest son, had at that time two sisters and two brothers. The large family had a good life.

Everything then changed. Japan, with its imperial ambitions, decided to invade Burma. World War II was raging after all, and the Japanese were aggressively expanding the land they had conquered. 

 

With bombs falling, my grandfather made a crucial decision to have my grandmother and five children escape Rangoon while they could. He would stay behind to take care of business. 

 

My grandmother packed up the best she could and the family (without my grandfather) headed to the port to catch one of the last passenger ships to leave Burma. My father, when telling the story, talked about bombs falling everywhere on the port and there was no certainty that they would get out alive.

 

The did get out and after some weeks on the sea, they made it back to India, as refugees. The place they could go back to was my home town where there were some relatives who could look after them. The big question was what had happened to my grandfather.

 

As, there were no means of communication, my father used to go to the train station and wait for trains to come in from the east. Perhaps my grandfather would be on one of them. Slim as the chances were, a miracle happened and one day my grandfather appeared alive and well. 

 

He had a horrific tale to tell. After his family had departed, he decided to do the same along with some friends. The port was closed for civilians and the only choice they had was to walk to India. Imphal, the closet city in India, was 340 miles away and that was by the straight road. The use of that road was not available to “natives” as the British army was pouring into Burma and using it. 

 

One can only speculate how many miles they walked each day, where they slept, or what did they eat. If you fell sick along the way, you were abandoned to die because they could not wait. Finally, they reached Imphal and my grandfather made his way back to my home town located in the Western part of India. My grandfather’s brother was not so “fortunate”. He disappeared during the war, as he did not leave Rangoon. 

 

After the family reunited, my grandfather got a job in another state and took his family there. By now they had one more child (my youngest uncle), but my father did not go with them. He got a scholarship to study medicine in Bombay (now Mumbai). He met my mother in the college, they got married, and moved to a small town as doctors. Meanwhile, my grandfather lost his job and it was up to my parents to take care of the entire family which included both my grandparents and five siblings. There were hardships, of course, but they were safe and could rebuild their lives after losing everything. 

 

This is the lesson my father imparted to his children and his younger siblings. Do not despair when everything you cherish is gone. You can always rebuild. 

 

What an important lesson for us as we contemplate what would have happened if the recent fire, which wiped out our neighboring town, had moved south and taken our house as well.

 

 “You need to move on,” is what my father would have told us citing his own example.  

 

Lessons from a fire

 In Los Angeles, winter is when it rains. During the preceding two winters, it rained a lot, making the whole area greener than normal. However, in January 2025 it had not rained for over nine months and all the vegetation had dried up. Moreover, in this area, strong winds called Santa Ana are quite common during this time of the year. During the winter of 2025, they came in unusually strong, with wind gusts up to 90 miles per hour. Combine dryness with fierce winds presented a deadly combination for fire. Any spark in a wrong place could have created a conflagration and there were many such sparks.

The worst one was the Palisades Fire which burned the town of Pacific Palisades and a part of Malibu. The other was Eaton Fire, which started in the Eaton Canyon and quickly destroyed the town of Altadena and a part of Pasadena. 

 

We, living in Pasadena, experienced the Eaton fire first hand. Fortunately, we live in the southern part of the city and escaped destruction. Except for several false alarms for evacuation (we abided by the first one and ignored the rest), and foul air, we escaped the destruction caused by the fire. 

 

Nevertheless, this incidence taught me many lessons. Here are six of the most important lessons we learned. 

 

1. Life is a crap shoot

 

Totally. When you read about plane crashes you wonder why a group of people had to die while most others are able to fly in comfort. Similarly, we continued to enjoy an almost normal life while people just a few miles away lost everything. For no fault of their own, except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps we experienced “survivor guilt”.

 

2. Our material possessions are fragile

 

Our friends who lost their houses had everything under the sun a few days ago, and in a moment, all was gone. How fragile are our material possessions?

 

As one of my friends said, “To quote Adi Shankaracharya from his immensely popular Bhaja Govindam: मा कुरुधनजनयौवनगर्वम्। हरति निमेषात् कालः सर्वम्। Don’t be proud of your wealth, people and youth; time snatches it all away in a flash.”

 

3. Certain items are worth preserving

 

In spite of the fragility of our material possessions, we have to make an attempt to preserve certain items if we have a warning of an impending catastrophe. Even those who lost their houses were able to scoop up some items before they had to flee. So, the lesson we learned is that there is a need to prioritize and make hard decisions regarding what is worth preserving and what can be sacrificed.

 

In this day and age, where almost every bit of information is on our laptops or iPhones, they are the most important items that need to be saved Next are hard discs and camera chips that contain records and photographs. Several paper documents are also worth saving (passports, house deed, birth certificates, social security cards, naturalization certificates and so on). In addition, jewelry is important to save, more sentimental value than anything else. Finally, old photographs, travelogues, professional records, memorabilia are worth preserving, even though you may have electronic records of many of these items. 

 

4.  People are good hearted and caring

 

The outpouring of support by citizens for people affected by a calamity such as this is heartwarming. Food, clothing and water is available for those who need them, and various Go Fund sites have opened up to raise money. There is no Republican or Democrat divide, nor is there any consideration for race of people. 

 

Even for us, we got text message, emails and calls from around the world, even from people we had met only once a long time ago. They were all concerned. We got offer for housing from people living in this area, if we needed. It was amazing.

 

5. The media provides a more horrific view than reality

 

These fires have been horrible. They have burnt to ashes some 3000 houses. Streets are desolate and people are evacuated. Some have perished in the fire. That is what most people, including us, have seen on television and social media. Horrible as that is, one needs to remember the destroyed area is just a tiny fraction of this vast metropolis. Almost everywhere you look, the life is almost normal, except for the area that were unfortunately in the path of the fire. 

 

These normal life areas don’t get mentioned on TV because that type of news does not attract viewers.  So, for friends and relatives living outside LA, the image is that of total destruction, more so than what is happening in reality. We got so many messages and calls from our friends and family worried that the whole city was burning. That was not the case. 

 

6. Climate change is here. 

 

To quote an article from NY Times (1/10/2025), “With temperatures rising around the globe and the oceans unusually warm, scientists are warning that the world has entered a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change.” “Wildfires are burning hotter and moving faster. Storms are getting bigger and carrying more moisture. And soaring temperatures worldwide are leading to heat waves and drought, which can be devastating on their own and leave communities vulnerable to dangers like mudslides when heavy rains return.”

 

What we got is a taste of what is happening around the world. Instead of doing something about it, our country is going to head in the wrong direction under the reign of a despot who has promised to increase drilling and abandon most of the environmental protection. 

 

Looking in the future, I wonder how habitable will be parts of our world due to the effects of climate change? 

Social Network

 We are all social animals. Some are more so than others, but it is hard to imagine life without a network of friends and family members. When I reflect on my social networks, I can see how they have changed over life time. Moreover, these changes have been driven primarily by technology.

While growing up in India, with almost no telephones around, the only way to make friends and make them a part of your network was through physically being at the same place at the same time. That meant knocking on doors, or gathering to play at home or in a field at a previously agreed time. 

 

When I moved away from my town for studies, I could have written letters to keep in touch with the old friends, but that did not happen often. Except for occasional letters to my parents, I did not correspond much. The only time I revived my old contacts was when I went back home.

 

Telephone had arrived by then, but the use was primarily for local calls. My parents were the primary users. We did not use it to chitchat with friends. Also, there was an issue that many of them were not privileged to having telephones in their homes. Walking over to their houses was the only way to maintain the social network. 

 

Then, I moved to US and a whole set of new challenges presented themselves in maintaining the old network. Although public phones were around, we did not use them for overseas calls--- that was way too expensive. Writing letters---using “aerograms”, as they were called, or lightweight stationary--- were the only ways to keep in touch. For more urgent communication, there was a little more expensive alternative, a telegram. 

 

Somehow, through letters, I was able to keep in touch with a selected group of people back home. However, I now had a set of friends in the new country. When not physically meeting them, I kept in touch using telephone calls. All local, mind you, and all on landlines. 

 

The next innovation was electronic mail, or email. Now a letter could be sent instantaneously to whoever had an email address. Thanks to AOL (America-On-Line), I started communicating with people all over the world. Pretty soon, I had the capability to send group emails, so communication with a whole bunch of people became possible. Keeping the social network going was now relatively easy.

 

Then came cell phones and our ability to connect went up. Initially, they were just phones and there was no text function, but I could communicate from where ever there was a cell phone signal. When we had smart phones, I could start texting people so they could communicate at their leisure. Thanks to applications like “WhatsApp”, it was now possible to connect with people in India, or around the world, without any charges. 

 

Social media applications, such as FaceBook, changed the paradigm of social network once again. Now it was possible to post photos that people in in my network could see. Not only was it possible to keep in touch with folks around the world, but also see what they were up to, even in minute details. Interestingly, I could now get in touch with people I had lost contact with. FaceBook was helping me revive old networks and relationships. 

 

Further, people I had physically met while on travel could keep in touch with me long after the event, using FaceBook or other similar social media offerings. This group of new friends included fellow travelers or local guides we had met while travelling.

 

Having an active social network no longer required physical proximity, as when I started. Now, I could keep in touch with a much more extended network around the world.

 

As I look at the situation now, a common theme in my social network, as defined above, is that with a very few exceptions, I have met all people in my network at least once. That is not true with, say, a hobby related network I belong to, Flickr. We all in that network have a shared interest in photography, or, creating visual images, but have never met.

 

Over the fifteen years, I have made “friends” with other photographers. We post photos (or images) and make comments on each other’s work. However, I have never met them, nor do I have too much information on them. Most often, I do not even know what they look like or what part of the world do they live.

 

The progression in technology already makes it possible to meet these people, say through holograms or virtual reality glasses. The only thing missing is the social need. If that hurdle is overcome, there will come the day when we will all be in the same room, virtually. I will meet all my Flickr friends---Mark, Tim, Victor, Renee, Silene, Sonja, Amba, Maarten--- and interact with them just as I did with my friends in the old home town. 

 

It would be like the good old days, except, the much larger network will be international and include friends I have never physically met, or likely to meet.

 

 

 

 

Election from a vision perspective

  

Frequently management consultants are called in to develop a strategic plan for a corporation. I know the process fairly well, because I used to be a management consultant too.

 

A major step in the process is to develop a vision for the corporation. This is based on what is happening in the external world and what the stakeholders in the corporation are saying. Three to five years from now, the corporation may need to look different from what it does right now because the external environment is constantly shifting and opportunities emerge. Such vision is at the foundation of what a strategic plan would look like. It will be a roadmap for how to get there from here.

 

A corporation does not have to deal with alternate-visions. It could be that the workers in the company may feel differently from the management about where the corporation is heading, but in most cases, they have faith that those running the company to know what they are doing. They also have the ability to leave the corporation if they disagree. In an extreme situation, they may go on strike. That however, does not change the vision a great deal, only how the benefits of fulfilling the vision would be distributed.

 

It is different for democratic nations. There could be different visions and the election will give right to someone to implement strategy to achieve the selected vision.

 

What the Democrats were trying to do in the recent presidential election was to communicate a vision for US in face of changing environment, both externally and internally. There are major trends such as globalization, advanced technologies and changing demographics of this country. Their vision would recognize these changes and incorporate them in the way the country would look like.  “We look ahead”, was their mantra. 

 

However, there was a competing vision that was proposed. This vision reminded people that the country does not need to follow global changes in the environment, but can go back to the good old times. “Make America Great AGAIN” is what the opponents said.

 

There is an obvious appeal to that alternate vision. People have a myopic memory as they recall the past. It is almost always “Good old times” and not “Bad old times”.  When looking back, it feels good to remember times when inflation was low, and those pesky immigrants were few. Unlike a corporation, people of the country can change the direction of the country by a simple vote, so that the alternate vision can be achieved. 

 

To a large percentage of people, that seemed to be a much more appealing task then doing something new with no clear benefit to them. It really did not matter that the huckster pedaling the alternate vision was coming up with unworkable ideas. The force of his personality was sufficient.  The story he told was convincing.

 

So, now, hold on to your seats.

Automation running amuck

 I was alarmed when most of the warning lights came up on my Subaru Forester one fine day a few weeks ago. One of them was indicating a malfunction of “Eye Sight” , a vision system that keeps car in the lane and maintains distance from the car in front. Especially disturbing was the sign that we need to check the engine. In addition, among others, there was an "S" blinking in and out, where "S" is the sports mode of driving.

I checked the manual to see what was going on. That was totally futile because nowhere in the manual it said what the Christmas Tree of lights (my name for multiple lights coming on and blinking) meant. When we tried Google and YouTube, there were all types of suggestions: It is the engine, it is the transmission, it is the Vehicle Dynamic System, it is the battery, it is water in the gas. In short, totally confusing answers, written by equally frustrated customers.

 

So, I took the car to the dealer. They hooked it up and came up with diagnostic....it was the coolant bypass valve failure, which, if not attended, can lead to the engine overheating. They fixed it in a few hours and, better still, it was covered under warranty.

 

My question: How can so many warning lights come up for a coolant bypass valve failure? I can see check the engine light but all the rest? Probably, the engineers that designed the system wanted a way to communicate to me that something was wrong, but to use the “Christmas light” approach? 

 

In short, the modern cars have become so complicated that it is impossible, even for an engineer, to figure out their bizarre behaviors.

 

This is not the only case where automation has run amuck. The very same day I had the car incidence, I had to battle the sprinkler system in our backyard. 

 

The old controller was replaced by a system called Rachio which operates through my iPhone, using the home’s Wi-Fi system. The problem was that our Internet service provider had issues and so we had periodic Internet blackouts. That made our dear Rachio get disoriented and disconnected. The problem persisted even after the Internet service was restored.

 

Worse, one of the sprinklers sprung a leak and I wanted to shut the system off. Without Wi-Fi connection, Rachio will not obey. I had to find the shut off valve and manually disconnect the system.

 

Meanwhile, the Rachio controller had multiple lights blinking. I tried to decipher the meaning of blinking lights and reconnect Rachio. That just did not work. Like an endless loop, the system changed its blinking light sequence but came back to the original set. I was going to call Rachio for assistance but then, magically, the system started working.

 

After giving away the simplicity for controlling sprinklers to a Wi-Fi run automated system, I said “hell no” when our new microwave and gas stove (from LG) asked to be connected to Wi-Fi. 

 

Enough is enough. Especially for a senior citizen. 

 

 

 

On automation and redundancies

 Three events made me think about the topic of automation and redundancies. First one was collision of a containership with a vital bridge in Baltimore a few months ago. The second, the crash of an Air France flight (AF447) in Atlantic a few years ago, and the third, the massive global impact of a glitch in a Microsoft software that happened just a few days ago. 

 

The container ship apparently had several power outages as it left the port. Without power, it was not possible to steer the ship and the result was catastrophic. My question is what was there no redundancy bult in the system, so if one thing fails another takes over? That’s what make airplanes so safe.

 

Then there was a curious case of the crash of Air France flight AF477. This modern Airbus A330 was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. As the airplane entered a thunderstorm, its air speed indicator froze and the autopilot stopped working, as well as a fly by wire system which corrects pilot’s errors. When automation failed, the pilots made mistakes and the airplane entered a stall. One major reason was these pilots were trained for using fail-safe systems all the time and their experience in manually operating an aircraft was limited, particularly at high altitudes. 

 

In an excellent Podcast of the event (“Cautionary Tales”) Tim Hartford mentions experiments in which training under full automation led to poor responses for situations where it failed. Almost like it is better to train using automation that is not guaranteed to work always. The humans then know what to do in case of failure.

 

Finally, something that happened ta few days ago….it seems that an error in the Cybersecurity code that Microsoft asked people to use resulted in a massive meltdown in all types of sectors: aviation, banking, and hospitals. This brings forth another issue… how can we give so much power to one company or one software? Here too, there was a human override possible but that did not work well. Perhaps people were not used to manually doing things that were automated. 

 

Automation is inevitable, but these examples show that (1) make sure there are redundancies built in, (2) make sure that humans are trained to take over if automated system fails (i.e., they are trained on non-foolproof systems), (3) do not let one company, system, person become the ruler of the automation game across sectors.

 

Early in my professional career I used to do quantitative risk analysis. There were tools available even then, like Fault Tree Analysis, that would have caught some of these issues before they resulted in tragedies. I am sure there are more sophisticated tools available now then at that time So, why were they not used?

 

Finally, as Tim Hartford mentions, in the coming wave of AI, humans are going to become even more reliant on AI based automation. 

Will that reduce even further the chances of humans learning the basics of how to manual take over if automation fails? 

They called us exceptional

 I just finished reading a book that chronicles the experience of a woman with Indian parents growing up in this country. Titled “They called us exceptional: and other lies that raised us” by Prachi Gupta, it is an interesting read, though a bit too dense and long. It is also a depressing story that ends with her family completely falling apart. 

 

The book is especially relevant to us as we are immigrants from India and raised two kids in this country. I was trying to see how our story matches that of Prachi’s and where it does not, what could be the reasons.

 

In one important way it does not match is in terms of what has happened to our family vs. Prachi’s. We are an intact family that lives happily in California. Nothing as dramatic as what happened to the Prachi’s in the book. It could be just good luck or there may be reasons. 

 

The main reason for Prachi’s family falling apart is her father, who was authoritarian with old fashioned views of how his wife and children should behave with him. The way he treated his wife, daughter and son is frankly shocking. As the book progresses, we find out that he was also suffering from mental illness.

 

To elaborate, in many families in India, wives are still second-class citizens. They are there to cook food, bear children, raise them, and be obedient. Also, the fathers demand their children to become doctors, or lawyers, or investment bankers. Those are, in their opinion, the surest ways of making money, and that they believe would lead to happiness. These beliefs come with them as they emigrate to US.

 

Children are also made to believe that as Indian immigrants, they are exceptional. Unlike the population around them, they have to study hard, ignore any distractions, and become doctors. If they fail to achieve the target professions, they are treated like failures. 

 

Another point that Prachi makes is that as a brown person, she felt like a fish out of water in school and work environment which was mostly white. Surely discrimination exists and one cannot deny how she felt and coped with the situation. 

 

However, there is one point I would like to make in that regard. It appears that Prachi’s parents did not make too much effort to assimilate in America. In other words, they remained “Indians in America” and not become “Americans with an Indian Heritage”.

 

I am a strong proponent of the latter. By assimilating, while not abandoning your Indian heritage, you can have the best of both worlds. There is so much that this country and immigrants from the other parts of the world have to offer. Different cultures, food, music, and life stories. Doing it also gives you confidence in dealing with people who are not like you. It reduces “them vs us” attitude and you may stop seeing every action by “them” as an indication that it was based on racism, when very likely it was not. That has been my experience.

 

One caveat. My experience was based on working at high level consulting firms where having people with a variety of backgrounds is common. I am sure the same situation exists in hi-tech firms as well. If you are in a field where those who work are either less educated or live in a more insular world, the situation would be different from what I experienced. 

 

To make it more complex, in some situations, they are looking for an Indian (say, because they want to make a movie about India) and assume that you are an Indian because you look like one, when you really are an American who has parents from India. You get discriminated when they find out that you are too much like them, and not different. 

An interesting paradox, isn’t it? 

 

Overall, as immigrants, one of the most important challenges we face is raising our children. While there is no one way to raise them, the attitude we have toward our new country matters a great deal in whether they end up flourishing and being happy.