Spring Break

I could have written this blog on Friday, May 13^th, 2016, right after I finished my last ever final exam in law school! I had a catchy title in mind too—“Friggatriskaidekaphilia,” my own coinage for the opposite of friggatriskaidekaphobia, which is an actual word, meaning ‘a morbid fear of Friday the thirteenth’. But for those impulsive needs to put down our immediate thoughts in writing, there is Facebook. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for creating a vessel for our euphoria!

The ‘day after,’ Saturday, May 14^th, was too sumptuously perfect to confine myself in one place long enough to write a full-fledged blog. I had too much restless energy still bubbling in me! I had old photo albums to organize, trips to plan, calls to make, son’s soccer game to attend, movies to catch, and a million Bollywood songs to listen to! Then came the luxuriating lull of laziness. I became acutely aware that I don’t have to sit down with the hefty law books at least for a few days! It felt surreal, and luscious! I needed to celebrate by doing nothing. The blog could wait.

Today is Sunday. Seems like I am now removed enough from the adrenaline-dominated feeling of lightness to appreciate that I will never find a better time to reflect on law school than now—the ephemeral ‘gap days’ in between the end of the finals and the beginning of the grueling bar preparation schedule of the summer.

Law school was quite a challenge, possibly the hardest that I have ever willingly undertaken, considering where I was in life when I started thinking seriously about law school. I had a full time job at a law firm as a patent agent. I had a full family life with a son in elementary school. I also had ageing parents in India who were not in the soundest of health to visit me in California, so I promised that I would visit them twice a year, no matter what else I had going on in my life.

While I was preparing for law school admission test, my mom was diagnosed with stage IV liver cancer. The doctors gave her six months to a year. So she encouraged me to get done with LSAT before going to India to see her. I planned exactly like that, as my siblings were taking care of my mom. But in a cruel twist of events, while I was up in the air, en route to India, my mom went into a hypoglycemic coma. She passed away on December 21, 2012, literally a few hours after I landed in India. My only consolation was that I did get to spend time with her in the summer of 2012, prior to her diagnosis, when the whole family gathered for my nephew’s rice-feeding ceremony.  

After coming back to California, motivating myself to meet the February 1, 2013 deadline to apply for law school was a real struggle. I was still shocked by the new reality of my life—the fact that I was motherless, and I might have to fly to India on a very short notice if my newly single dad needed me! I remember I started writing my personal statement for the law school application package in the very morning of the February 1 deadline. Writing about my mom’s deep influence in shaping my dreams gave me an outlet to deal with the pain.

My law school orientation started on August 13, 2013, the day my son turned eight years old. We pre-celebrated his birthday the weekend before. My in-laws were visiting us in California that time. Nobody, including myself, had a clue what to expect for the next three years. But if there was any doubt inside their mind, my family didn’t let it show. I was sent off to the ‘first day of school’ in style!

Then came the whirlwind of endless reading assignments, writing assignments, quizzes, papers, mid-terms, end-terms, peppered with occasional client deadlines at work. I cut down my work commitment significantly to make room for law school, but deadlines are deadlines! Saying “no” to friends’ and family’s well-meaning invitations to join them for something fun became routine. The effortless balance that I achieved in life before law school went missing, at least for the first year of law school. I tried to draw inspiration from the collegiality of the classmates, the sincerity of the professors, and the giving spirit of the university, organizing countless social service events. The first respite came when we went to India in December 2013 after the first semester was over. Seeing that dad was somewhat adjusting to his widowed life was comforting. We took him to the Sunderbans---the storied mangrove forest by the Bay of Bengal, so close to home, but never visited before! Another semester went by, followed by a busy summer catching up on billable hours at my law firm. Then it was time to go to India again in August 2014 to see dad. My son says India is the best summer camp ever! Playing with my son in the monsoon rains in my hometown rejuvenated me to take on another year of law school.

This time law school felt different. I could choose some of the elective courses that were of professional interest. There was opportunity for teamwork built into some of the courses. I became more familiar with the study techniques that produce results. I learnt how to mentally decouple from my office work. I started appreciating the fact that law school infused me with a precious dose of youth at this stage of my life! Dad could see the difference in my attitude when we went to India to visit him in December 2014.

Third year of law school started with a unique experience—a full-time externship at a federal courthouse in San Jose. I just took one evening class, and spent my entire semester working at the chambers of Judge Beth Labson Freeman. It was a 180 degree departure from my normal life in so many ways! For the first time, I had a female boss. For the first time after graduate school, I had to share a windowless small office room with another extern, and had to make do with a modest desk and a prehistoric computer with a tiny monitor. But none of them mattered because of the intellectual thrill of finally having an insider’s perspective on the judicial system! On my last day of the externship, I went out to lunch with the Judge, and she asked me about my parents. She was curious about the life of a working couple in India in her generation. Suddenly it felt like law school is my most favorite thing in the world!

But can life be that good for long? Of course not! A few days before Thanksgiving 2015, my dad had a ‘mild’ cardiac arrest. My sister valiantly took care of things in India. Dad had an emergency angioplasty that looked all successful initially. Once again, my dad told me to finish my final exam before coming to visit him. But I guess I was a little wiser this time remembering how three years back waiting to finish my LSAT robbed me of the opportunity to see my mom before she went into coma. So I was seriously contemplating the idea of postponing the exam and go right away. My dad’s second heart attack within days of his angioplasty made it easier for me to just drop everything and book the flight to India on Thanksgiving day. This time life gave me a little more opportunity. I could spend nine whole days by the side of my dad, chatting with him, cherishing childhood memories, before my dad rejoined my mom in a different world, reunited for their 46^th marriage anniversary. I would never forget the feeling of emptiness that I felt leaving India in January 2016—the first time dad didn’t come to the gate to say goodbye and to wish me good luck for what would be the last semester of law school.

Looking back, I see that my life outside of law school interweaved itself with my life in law school in a strangely inseparable way! My parents’ death made me realize that there are bigger things in life than worrying about law school. At the same time, law school kept me occupied, making it easier to deal with the loss of both parents in three short years. Perhaps that is the reason it is bittersweet to say goodbye to law school. It was quite a journey that we had together for three years! It was my extended youthful spring break in the scorching summer of my life!

Privilege and Monodimensionality in the Media

Prologue (April 25, 2016): I just finished watching the HBO docudrama "Confirmation," that sheds light on one of 1990's political flashpoints--law professor Anita Hill's accusation of sexual harassment against her former boss Clarence Thomas, the then-Supreme Court nominee. After watching the feature, I felt like re-posting (with some edits) the reflection that I wrote for my 'Gender and Law' class in Spring 2015 at the Santa Clara University regarding male privilege in the media. 
________________________________________________________________________________________
Colleen McCullough was a beloved and wildly successful Australian novelist, who passed away on January 29, 2015. Her obituary in the prominent newspaper “The Australian” started like this: “Colleen McCullough, Australia’s bestselling author, was a charmer.” So far so good. However, the next sentence in the obituary was: “Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless a woman of wit and warmth.”

This sentence is wrong on so many levels, that I cannot even conceive where to begin. All I can say is that I found myself imagining with horror a future obituary of Stephen Hawking (sorry Dr. Hawking---I wish you a long life!) that may read like this: “Hawking was no Tom Cruise, and his looks certainly deteriorated over the years by the debilitating disease of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). He was, nevertheless, a man of intellect.”

I realize the fruitlessness of such a retaliatory gut reaction, and I would be remiss not to mention the huge public outcry against the Australian newspaper for publishing that churlish obituary of McCullough. But this incidence certainly made me think about how the media treats men and women differently. It is unlikely that Stephen Hawking would have a future obituary that will go into his looks. It may be more flattering or less flattering depending on who is writing, but the discussion would likely focus on his talent. Male privilege is a real thing in the media.

Professor Stephanie Wildman’s book "Privilege Revealed" has a chapter called “Privilege and the Media” that focuses on the media’s role in propagating gender stereotyping. The chapter uses the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas saga as a vehicle for discussion. I was in India in 1991, when Anita Hill became notorious for accusing then-Supreme-Court-nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment--a very powerful term for which we are grateful to celebrated feminist theorist Catherine MacKinnon. Because of the American media’s one-sided depiction of the Hill-Thomas judicial hearing episode, back then I had no inkling that Hill was an accomplished legal scholar. I am not denying that her professional stature was somewhat justifiably overshadowed by the larger-than-life stature of Clarence Thomas. But the media could have done a much better job in establishing Hill’s credibility as the accuser and the testifying witness by focusing on her accomplished career. 

We talk a lot on intersectionality of gender and race in the context of feminism. I feel like somewhere along the way the Hill-Thomas saga lost its rich intersectionality aspect. Initially the media decided to focus only on gender--as both the accused and the accuser were Black (hence no racial difference). But, eventually the initial focus on gender got distorted to such an extent that sexual harassment became a secondary issue, and media became obsessed only on racial issues, as Judge Thomas used his formidable oratory skills to describe his tribulations at the senate hearing as "high-tech lynching of uppity Blacks". A powerful male voice got the media's ultimate attention no matter what the real issue was.

May be one of the reasons the media oversimplifies the stories based on either gender or racial stereotyping, but not both, is because intersectionality is just too complex to communicate to the masses. Still, media cannot shy away from the inherent power that it holds to act as an agent of change. In the shooting death of an unarmed Black youth Michael Brown in Ferguson by a White policeman, both the killer policeman and the unarmed victim were male, but belonged to two different races. So the media's focus immediately, and may be justifiably in this case, became race. If the Ferguson incident was altered hypothetically into a situation where a female White policeperson fatally shot an unarmed Black man, then the issues of gender and race would have been intertwined, but I wonder if media would have picked up the gender aspect as much as the race aspect. In my view, if the angle of violence is relevant in the discussion of police shooting, then one cannot avoid addressing both gender and race. Is a female policeperson with a gun more likely to shoot an innocent Black man, because in the heat of the moment, her perception may have been muddled by thinking that the man may become violent towards her because of her gender? Catherine MacKinnon would probably agree that (according to her Dominance theory) the policewoman would have felt threatened when confronted by a man in an adversarial situation. I find myself feeling quite disturbed by the thought that the perception of threat, rather than real threat, may lead to unwarranted violence. And that perception of threat is rooted in both gender and racial identity.

Instead of propagating stereotypes--as the Colleen McCullough obituary did, media should do a better job at covering all aspects of a complex issue, especially when the public is receptive in the wake of a high-profile incident, be it a police shooting incident or a sexual harassment accusation.

Life and Death Between and Beyond the Blogs

My first blog in 2015 was somewhat self-aggrandizingly titled "Time." It was about my visit to a watch repair shop in the neighborhood that made me all philosophical. And my last blog in 2015 was titled, "The Answer is 42!"--self-laudatory once again, as I was describing the beautiful things in my mid-life that I am grateful for, including my 82-year old father's "successful" angioplasty after he suffered a cardiac infraction. Life was near-perfect between the first and the last blogs of 2015. Until it wasn't. Two days after I wrote my last blog on November 23, 2015, my father suffered a second infraction. The angioplasty turned out to be not that successful after all. I rushed to India on the Thanksgiving Day to see my father. I got to spend nine precious days with him at his bedside, thinking he is on his way to a slow recovery. Then his aging, battle-torn heart stopped beating forever---he didn't survive the third infraction. My optimism was silenced, and how!

My father's demise taught me one vital lesson. I can blog to my heart's content, but life and death happen on their own terms beyond what I can control through my wishful blogging. No matter how fancifully I title my blogs, time doesn't care to stop for me or my loved ones. This feeling of powerlessness is painfully and poignantly real. But strangely enough, I also cannot think of any other way to catharsis. So here I am--trying to get over the pain caused by the loss of a parent by blogging about the act of blogging itself! Talk about meta!

I brag, I breathe, I bleed and I break down through my blogs. Celebrated novelist Haruki Murakami once wrote, "Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of it. By living our lives, we nurture death." My blogs nurture me as I nurture my eventual inevitable death. But until death comes, I plan on living my life every day--a life shaped partly by shiny memories of my parents, but mostly by the thriving hopes for the long list of things to come before I join my parents in their journey to eternity. Here's a slightly belated toast to living life in the new year 2016!

The Answer is 42!

I turned 42 this year in January. As you can imagine, for somebody whose friend circle has a lot of geeks, there was no dearth of reference to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—the book that has literally bestowed the number 42 its universal fame. One of the practical aspects of having an early January birthday is that by Thanksgiving when you look back into the year anyway to think about what you are thankful for in life, you pretty much end up doing an annual review of yourself between your last birthday and the coming one. And I can honestly say this year of my life has been eventful.

This is the year when I have surprised myself by going to not one, not two, but eight musical concerts plus a live stand-up comedy show! I also read ten-plus books that had nothing to do with law school, celebrated our son’s tenth birthday in Hawaii by zip-lining with him over waterfalls in a rainforest, wrote the most number of blogs in a year since 2010, and got back to hands-on STEM volunteering after a long gap by serving as a mentor for young schoolgirls at the Tech Museum at San Jose.

This is also the year where I have truly enjoyed law school and took advantage of everything that it has to offer to broaden my horizon. I took a 3-credit course on Gender and Law so that I have a legitimate excuse to research and write a paper on the controversial topic of “scheduling motherhood” by freezing eggs on the employers’ dime. And I took a semester-long break from my law firm job to work at the chambers of a federal Judge—my first-ever female boss—and loved every moment of it!

The other day I was listening to an interview with prominent TV producer Shonda Rhimes, whose book Year of Yes has become an instant bestseller. She described how a family get together in Thanksgiving 2013 led her to decide that “for one year, she would say YES to everything that scared her.”  Unlike Shonda, I don’t recall having a conscious moment of epiphany to do things differently in 2015. But perhaps something clicked this year. Perhaps I have discovered the magic of letting go and opening up to well-meaning gestures and actions of friends and family rather than relying too much on myself. I now recognize that when I reluctantly said yes to a law school buddy to give ‘group study’ a shot before an exam, or, listened to the advice of a colleague to try out audiobooks, or, agreed to my neighbor’s proposal of going to a concert together, quite unknowingly I had my little moments of triumph that collectively made 2015 so special. This is the year when I became available for my friends again to celebrate the happy occasions of their lives. This is the year when I found the beauty and liberation in trusting my sibling completely to take care of my dad when he suffered a heart attack unexpectedly! I am relishing the process of maturing towards a point where I do not squander the support system that I already have beyond my own home. I am thankful for that conscious recognition of the blessing that is all around me.

May be the supercomputer in Hitchhiker’s Guide did get it right after seven and a half million years of thought. May be the answer is 42. Now what was the question?

Birth

I always knew I need a life outside of home. I have tried the purest form of domesticity ten years back when I was pregnant with our first child—it felt like the perfect time to “take a break” with something exciting to look forward to at home. Instead, I found myself interviewing with a couple of law firms in Washington DC, six months pregnant, telling the interviewers that I am ready to switch my career from engineering to law. They were persuaded. I frequently joke that my son and my legal career are practically twins. I completed ten years as a patent practitioner recently, and my son is going to turn ten in less than a fortnight.

My well-meaning friends keep telling me that I am not too old yet to give birth to another child—after all my first pregnancy was really smooth and my son turned out to be an easy child all along. I never had a concrete response to why I did not go for another child. I think I finally found the response that I was looking for. I am giving birth to another child! I am giving birth to myself—in a new avatar. I am giving birth to a lawyer.

The gestation period for the 'lawyer–baby' is long and arduous. And I am noticing the unmissable parallel with pregnancy. In pregnancy, the first trimester is dominated by the fear of unknown and thinking constantly what may go wrong. The second trimester is the easiest, and the most enjoyable, because you learn to go with the flow. And the last trimester is all about patience. You just want to get done with the whole pregnancy thing! Law school is not much different. The first year was a bit torturous, the second year was a very enjoyable ride, and now third year is about to begin, but already I cannot wait to get done with law school! And then the formidable California Bar is waiting to ruin my summer of 2016. But who said giving birth to anyone or anything is easy!

This Fall I will be working for a federal Judge at the San Jose Courthouse as part of my third year law school curriculum.  When I got the interview call from the Judge's chambers last week, I dusted off the same leather portfolio bag that I carried on the first day of my first law firm job ten years back. The interview with the Judge and her senior staff was cordial. I even got to share my 'twin' joke with the Judge after the substantive part of the interview was over. She laughed and shook my hand. I got the job offer that afternoon. 

I am starting to like the beginning of my ‘third trimester.’ Looks like giving birth to myself is not a bad undertaking at all!

*Image source: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/picture/2014/may/24/bobdylan-photography

Priceless?: Putting a Price Tag on a Mom's Work at Home

Mother’s day is less than a month away. The department store shelves are already chockablock with mom-themed greeting cards and coffee mugs. Groupon is selling discount-rate coupons for a ‘spa day for mom.’ The irony, however, is that the mothers who most deserve to be pampered—the single mothers—rarely get to feel special on mother’s day. Most of the merchandizing efforts are after all targeted towards having the non-primary-caregiving father show appreciation through his wallet to his wife, who provides the primary care for their school-age children.

In her book titled “Privilege Revealed,” my law school Professor Stephanie Wildman discussed how the 1970s wave of feminism failed to recognize women’s work in the domestic sphere, including primary caregiving to children and/or elderly, as “real work” that deserves protection from discrimination in terms of treatment, opportunities and salary, and benefits like paid leave, similar to what is available at a "workplace," i.e. a place of work outside of one's own home. Women’s work at home has historically always been undervalued. Government never attempted to quantify the value of domestic work in measurable economic terms, perhaps out of fear of criticism for encroaching on the privacy rights of individuals and families.

The website Salary.com attempted to quantify what a mom’s domestic work is worth. According to the infrographics available at http://www.salary.com/2014-mothers-day-infographics/, stay-at-home moms on an average work 96.5 hours of work per week, among which 56.6 hours are entitled to overtime rates. This calculation shows that an average stay-at-home mom should earn about $119,000 per year for her contribution.

An average working mother performs 59.4 hours of work at home on top of what she does at her job. Her work at home alone should earn her $70,160 per year. Adding what she would earn at her job outside of home, her earning will likely comfortably cross six-figures.

Of course, these calculations adopt a straightforward methodology of multiplying the rates of various types of work (e.g., cook, driver, cleaner, day care teacher, psychologist, facilities manager etc.) with hours spent on each task to come up with a final figure. The study has many flaws. Some of the roles might be a stretch. (CEO? Really?) It probably does not take into account the specialized training/experience/expertise needed to hold a similar job outside of home and get paid for it. It does not take into account student loans accumulated to acquire the required qualification for those jobs. It even does not account for the stress, politics and peer pressure that one has to endure in a competitive world to get and hold on to a job outside of home. Still, associating dollar value to the work done at home is an eye-opening experience for people who choose to be stay-at-home caregivers, as well as people who undervalue their contribution.

The Salary.com study is not the only research done on this topic of putting a price tag on a mom’s work. There are other studies done all across the globe. As somewhat expected, the results of the studies vary widely. For example, according to a 2014 study conducted by the website Insurance.com, titled, “The Mother’s Day Index: Inequality Edition,” (http://www.insure.com/life-insurance/the-mothers-day-index.html), a stay-at-home mom is worth just about $63,000 per year. [Side note: A man would earn about $68,000 for the same tasks; hence the emphasis on the term “Inequality.”] This study is probably a bit more realistic, because it does not include higher paying jobs (like a CEO) in the list of different roles that a mom assumes at home. On the other hand, a similar 2014 study done in the UK comes up with a figure closer to the Salary.com study. The article says,  "If being a mother was a paid job, it would come with a salary of £100,000 per year." (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mothers-day-2014-if-being-a-mother-was-a-paid-job-it-would-come-with-a-100000-salary-9214860.html)

While the safest answer to the question “how much is a mom worth?” is “priceless,” studies like the Salary.com study are essential so that at least people can make an informed decision about whether to stay at home or work outside of home, or demand a paycheck for work done at home for “free.” A non-caregiving breadwinner may argue that the the "non-working" partner is "covered" for basic sustenance---food, shelter, health insurance, safety and security of home--in exchange of their services. So no salary is necessary. However, it is worth thinking that if there was a paycheck for those services, it won't be a problem for the domestic worker to cover for their own expenses. My personal choice is to be a joint breadwinner with my husband, because both of us enjoy having a career outside of home. But at the same time, I don't see much room for a breadwinner--sole or joint--being too complacent, and having the right to undermine the value of work done at home.

[P.S. I am well aware that there are various types of family composition. The primary breadwinner may be a woman, and the primary caregiver at home may be a man. Both the primary breadwinner and primary caregiver at home may be of the same sex. I chose to portray the model of a "traditional" household---a breadwinner father and a caregiving mother--to keep the writing simple, i.e. I was not trying to be overzealous about political correctness.]

(In)visible?

My life is time-shifted. And DVR is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

For someone who is more interested in explaining the physics behind the possible 'causal link' between New England's cold weather and the scandal of the deflated football than caring about the Tom Brady-Russell Wilson showdown, it is no surprise that I recorded the Super Bowl championship game mostly for the commercials. While playing the recording back, among the flurry of 'dad' ads, I do remember getting a chuckle out of the Nationwide Insurance ad featuring Mindy Kaling. The ad showed that Mindy has been treated like an invisible person by people and businesses for a long time, until Nationwide 'noticed' her. But it never occurred to me that there might be a 'minority women' angle to the invisibility theme in the ad, until my talented friend Meghana Joshi came up with the idea of collective blogging on this concept. Thanks Meghana for launching me into an introspective journey that took me back to 2001 in the beautiful island of Ocracoke in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

A group of us, three young couples in their pre-kid days, went to the Outer Banks in the Thanksgiving weekend in 2001. We were in the mood to splurge a little. So we went to one of the fanciest restaurants in the island for dinner the evening after the Thanksgiving Day. We were seated promptly. But, though we could see some of the waiters glancing at us and talking among themselves, for the longest time, nobody came to take our orders. Other 'mainstream' patrons, who came to the restaurant after us, were waited on almost immediately. I didn't have a word at that time to describe how we felt. May be 'invisible' was the word I was looking for.

Our story does have a happy ending though. Since the less experienced waiters were unsure about how to serve the brown-skinned aliens, finally the most experienced waitress stepped in. She was the epitome of professionalism. She apologized for the long wait, chatted us up, and made our entire dining experience an absolute pleasure ultimately. Sometimes it helps to be invisible so that the lesser opportunities do not crowd the way of the 'right' opportunity.

I must say though that I had to think hard to come up with a story that is relevant in the context of the topic of this blog. Either I have a blissfully short memory so that the experiences of being treated as an invisible entity do not tend to stick with me, or, I have not really felt invisible. And a big part of it could be attributed to the confidence and sense of visibility that comes through supportive upbringing, strong role models, and higher education attained in pursuit of a serious career. Forgive me if I sound pompous, but when you are the youngest person and the only woman in a room full of academics deciding which university gets a National Science Foundation research grant on Nanotechnology, you are the exact opposite of invisible. That was twelve years back when I was a post-doctoral research associate. And it hasn't turned for the worse. Now that I am one of the oldest students among a class full of bright law students with a median age of 24, I am anything but invisible when I engage in a Socratic exchange with my Professor. It is no different when I interview a prospective summer associate at my law firm, or when I talk to the Principal of my son's school about fundraising.

To me, Mindy Kaling is an actress with great comic timing who was cleverly used to portray a message favorable to the insurance company that paid for her gig. She is not a symbol of a systemic ill of invisibility for minority women. It will probably be a stretch if I say that the ad could convey the same message if Matt Damon felt invisible until Mindy refused to kiss him. But we are not as invisible as we sometime think we are.

P.S. Addendum on February 22, 2015:
May be Mindy redeemed herself, or at least Amex capitalized on the opportunity to go one up against Nationwide--judge for yourself.
"The Unlikely Leading Lady" advertisement featured during the Oscars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYP7ejP92uo