A poem in the kuravanji format

உற்றார் இல்லை உரிமை இல்லை 

ஊர்தி இல்லை ஊழ்வினை இல்லை 

ஊர் எமதில்லை உமதும் இல்லை 

உடைமை என்றொன்றில்லை அடி  மானே!

பெற்றோர் உண்டு பெரியோர் உண்டு

பேண்போர் உண்டு போற்றுவர் உண்டு  

கேட்பார்  உண்டு கேளீர் உண்டு

உறவென்றொன்று  உண்டென்றறிவோமே!

My dear girl, (as an  ascetic in pursuit of the real truth or eternal omnipresent, for me) there are no relatives; there are no rights; there are no vehicles; there are no relics of the past requiring forbearance; no place is mine nor is yours; there is no such thing called my procession. (I am thus always happy for I have no care in the world).

(My revered saint, as a woman living my life amongst other humans, I have) parents (to call as mine), elders (to call as mine), nurturers (to call as mine), those who are appreciative of me (to call as mine), those who'll hold injustices incurred to me accountable (to call as mine), relatives ( many relatives, to call as mine), (when another human comes into my life in whatever context) there is a (way I can find  a ) relationship  (to call as mine on every encounter) and we know of all their existence. (I am thus always happy for I have so many people to call my own, to care for and to care about me)    

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

20 SEP 2021

My uncles

I love all my uncles, three  of them are my mother's brothers, four of them are my father's brother, five of them are husbands of my aunts. 

I lost my youngest mama fisrt. All my uncles are charismatic, he the most. He was 6'2", fair- almost rosy, with dark hair and well built with an even temper, except when his room was not cleaned to perfection, with not crease on the sheet nor a drop of water on floor or if the pooja room was not free when wanted to use it.  He ran, what we called a lorry-booking office, even though he owned lorries and operated a interstate-trasportation services for packed goods. He called me Summa-tea, meaning, a way of ordering tea without sugar, as opposed to aska-tea, tea with sugar. He loved all his neices and nephews very much, with an unashamed partiality towards my brother. To my mother's  chagrin, he'll maticulously correct his pronunciation as my brother's baby toungue would slip and trip on the adjectives of choice swear-word viz.,  sakkili. 

In retrospect, I'm ashamed that I was scared of his subordinate Muthelu, not knowing he was hardly responsible for the poor environment that would have contributed to his unwashed manner of speech, boney cheeks, discouloured eyes and stained teeth. But I was aware that my uncle respected him, much more than the scholars my grandmother entertained. My uncle took up to heavy drinking, perhaps in his twenties and passed when he was bearly 32. I remeber him lying on his death-bed, asking myself and my cousin, “will you cry when I pass”. I want to tell him, after thirty-thirty five years, I still cry when I think of his passing.

My second mama was so much fun. He would crack a joke on any occation with out so much as stretching his own lips. He was the co-founder/co-owner of Chandra Praba Pictures, a very successful film distributorship in Coimbatore. On our visits to Madras he'd spoil us rotten with icecreams and peach melbas - only we pronounced it beech melba, not knowing peach is actually a fruit. His wedding was perhaps the most extravagant two-day event that I have been to. The huge wedding hall was extended by a huge shamiyana spanning the lengh and doubling its breath to accomodate all his guests from the film industry. There were consorts galore throughout to suit every taste. The film fame L R Eswari and her orchestra and a magician's show, and the gold woven in my mami's sarees stand out in my memory. My mami was from a farm and didn't quite kee-up with his open, city-culture and she left him to chase some relogious group. It broke him. It broke him visibly. While I took it all in, I didn't know how to help him channel it through me. I wish I did. 

My third mama was my mother's step brother. His very voice would ooze kindness, he was very fond of my mother, particularly becasue she excelled in academics through relentless hard work. His visits to our family were far and few. His family were my aunt's neighbours in Chennai. Infact, my own direct association with him is more as my aunt's friend than my mama.

And to my chithappas. 

My eldest chithappa is kind of the apple of our family. My earleist distinct memory of him is as part of a proud reception team of as many members of our family as we could pack into an ambassodor car when went to recive him at teh Coimbatore Airport upon his return from Schenectady in mid sixties - although a significant part of that memory is made up of my bright pink frock, as I couldn't have told the difference between Coimbatore and Schenectady. He brought us so many toys, including a large model F-some-teen plane, books, records and what we called a show-and-tell, a ~15" automatic slide viewer cum a record player with a dozen or so kindergarten stories. He is very musical; he owned and played any number of instruments. He had an amazing deep voice and would break into a line here and a line there. I haven't heard him sing a whole song to date, I must admit. I love him. He is very intelligent and one of the first lot of engineers to migrate to US in the sixties. Prior to that he worked at the Tarapur atomic powerplant. I remember being impressed by the walk along the narrow railings around the huge biolers of the nuclear power generatot and the cafetarea with huge steam cookers that my chithappa said could make "1000 idilies" at the same time, more impressed by the steam cooker than the boilers though. There were so many fond memories from the trip, and one deep scar of loosing one of my pretty pink slippers in the rush of Bombay's commuter trains. In my chithappa's eyes I am still "just like the laddu two pie two" as I was when I was four. And I  like that.

My next chithappa is a lawyer. He has always been so much fun! I remeber the joys of riding on Mount road at bullet speed on his bike after second shows at the cinemas. He'd buy us the chiclets, only we'd stupidly loose them back to him in a game of toss-the-chiklet-in-the-air-and-catch-with-your-mouth. The books he gave me on Indian penal code and Human Rights adorne my desk as I think of him ever so often, his deligence and work ethic is a constant source of inspiration for me in my own attitude to work. I just love him- love him in ways I can't express.  I want to live in Chennai for a year atleast to have my fill of him, seeing him every day.

I want my children to learn from him. I have never known better professionalism.

I lost my next chithappa in the Kaniska air-crash in '86 to the mischanneled anger of some people at the wake of adverse experinces in the hands of oppressive authority. It doesn't hurt because he was coming to attend my wedding when his plane blew-up. It hurts becasue, I love him. It hurts because he is the gentlest persons that I have ever known. It hurts because he loved me, a communication of affection through the gentlest of looks where I would be aware of only his eyes yet I would feel the whole person just enough to know the eyes belonged elsewhere. It hurts because, my little cousin was with him when the plane blew up. And it hurts because I can't begin to fathom the depth of hurt he would have felt in realising his inability to protect my cousin. It hurts.

My last chitappa is more like an elder brother than a person of the previous generation. I love him to bits. He is very sensitive to human emotions, yet would sweep through his sensitivity with relentless humour. He has this capacity to turn anything into a joke, even cascade a joke into another joke that its impossible to hold  a serious coversation with him even if you put him on blinkers. He is extremely hard working. He is so loyal that he'd give up anything to helpout a relative or friend, an attitude that is exemplified through the spontaneous affection he elicits from all his relatives and friends. As the youngest, every one would take him for granted in assingning errands, the fact he grew in his years made no difference. He is a completely self-made man (except to get through his Tamil paper in his higher secondary) and I am incredibly proud of him. He is technically adept, and can practically fix any broken electro mechanical item of common interest with out a manual- oh. he loathed reading, even to further his hobby. I love him. 

Its hard for me to think of my athimbers without my athais, because each of them were equally devoted to their husbands that there was no them as individuals without my athimbers in the same breath.

My eldest athimber is one of the nicest human beings ever. He has always been calm and collected. I am still at awe when I reflect back on how he managed to walk myself, my brother and my little cousin all the way from Merina to Mylapore, with us taking turns to winge. He'll bring us jangiri every time he visited us. He was very dear to my athai, though my athai way of showing her affection for him would be implicit, given she'll pour it all of over myself and my brother that the whole world and people in the neigbouring galaxies would know about it. The lamp he gave my son as a present for his poonal has been a single source of strength for me- I light it every day, knowing I'd be able to pick myself from any thing that's hurled at me every time.

My next athimber is very dear to me. I remember my cousins teasing him if they can apply for a holiday from their holiday-social commitments. He was a very successful industrialist, socially well connected. With my athai's appetite to entertain it was a match made in heaven. He was also well travelled and his shelves were stacked with contemporary English literature/novels that I would struggle to read upon my visit to my aunt's place during the lazy afternoons when my cousins were in school and my aunt in the kitchen. Two of them stand out, love story and Jonathan the livingston seagull, both of which I picked up and started to read for no other reason other than that they were the thinnest books on his book shelves. He was very close to my father. When my marriage was postponed, he pretty much looked after the bulk of the reorganisaton, as the wedding was to take place in Chennai. He drove a BMW in the mid eighties in Chennai in a driving style that assumed non-existant lanes and and unfollowed existant road rules. I remeber him sneaking me out for a drive to the airport for a surprise farewell to my husband- fiance at that time- in the early hours of Mount road, the experince of the ride more exhilarating than showing up to surprise my fiancé.

My youngest athimber stayed young in my heart as mush as he does in my athai's. I think its my athai's gracefulness manifest in everything she did that kept him young. He was very pious and devout to his parents and family alike. His love for Sri Chandrasekara Saraswathi has inspired me immensely; he used to share articles or writings of the acharya he came across regularly. He travelled to most south indian temples with my athai and would write to me and other friends about his trips. I bought him a little digital camera, a novelty in those days, to augment his textual descriptions of his visits. But I love him because he was unashamedly devoted to my loving athai at all times, and I wouldn't have any other way. I miss him. It kills me to know he is no more.

My eldest periyappa was a public relations officer at TVS ever since I can remeber, and he retired as one. he’d bring us assorment of cakes from Iyer and co every time we visited Coimbatore. He didn’t distinguish between his own children and any of his nephews or neices- litle pictures of us crowded a little silver frame that stood on his dresser, and at every opportunity he’ll show me the pictures with some story or other. He took to house a needy youngster, an act of kindness that prolonged for years and was sufficient seed for a verbal duel between my uncle and aunt to the entertainment of us all. He was a sincere person, his sincerety would come through in anything he said. He suffered owing to ill health towards the end of hs life- when I reflect back it doesn’t addup, given he was very diciplined in his eating and exercise habits. His early loss had a toll on my cousins. I wish he didn’t pass when he did.

My next periyappa was a personification of care-fullness- he’ll take his time to understand all he needs to before responding. He along with my father and uncle initiated my wedding proposal exchanging sufficient mutual informatio, my mother in law recollecting his conversations with such high respect, a testimony for his judgement. I love him. He also lead such a diciplined life, hailing from a very wealthy family with servants galore, not easing him into lethargy. When my father had to move to Coimbatore for prolonged hospitalisation all of a sudden, my brother and myself stayed under his roof, to what seemed an indefinite period of wating on the corridors of the hospital for a glimpse of the specialist to give us some definite prognosis. No matter how long it took us to get back home, he’d wait for us, asking for updates and console us if we felt low. I love him, I miss his caring attitude expressed as few simple words reminding us to trust in God, an advice I carry todate.

My brother

I love my brother. I learnt what it is to love some one by loving my brother. He was  this little live toy, I could talk to, play with, carry on my back when I could, there for me when ever I wanted him, and came in my size and shared my interests, though both size and interests diverged as we grew, size- mine that is, more than interest. We are fundamentally the same people with minor tweaks here and there because I am a girl and he is a boy. I think it got to do with our ability to what my chithappa calls, pulling a Sarma. Its an attitude towards dealing with issues one confronts where by before others can understand that there is a potential problem, my grandfather, Sarma to all, would have solved it and moved on leaving those who are still grappling to understand the problem to gaze at their naval. Whatever of pulling-the-Sarma was written into the DNA of our family at birth, was personally nurtured by the very Sarma in both my brother and myself as we grew up in the household he headed in Palani.

I always thought my brother was very handsome. I now know its neurophysics inplay, given my neurons evolved on the neuro-chemicals rewarding me every time I looked at him in my formative years. We always played together. We never ever fought, to the best of my knowledge.  My brother was more explorative with unintentional use of household items that earned him the name "settai" as opposed to "amaithiyana pillai" in reference to me from our primary school teachers. Although most of my family were proud of his exploits. For example, tipping the oil into the tank of water and tipping a bowl of kadalaimavu we used to shampoo out the oil, by way of shampooing out the oil he tipped into the tank would be retold to every guest who walked into the house, probably by every member of the family. Our primary school teachers held our family in such respect that they would hardly bring up anything with them; occasional reporting from high-school teachers would be Sarmaed-out with a laugh.

My brother is very intelligent. I would say he is not hardworking just because you can't hold the fruit of his labour in your hand. He is a straight shooter, and can deliver a bitter pill with the same ease that he can deliver a joke with. His ability to see the funny-side of situations is second to none. He is a very loving person with a clear sense of where to draw the line. He has always loved his toys and continues to do so, only they have grown in price and size. he has always been a quick learner and quick witted. I still remember my uncle taking me for driving lessons and my brother emerging as his star student, learning to manoeuvre the steering sitting at the edge of the seat raised by the piled up cushion and handling break pad and the accelerator  with the tip of his shoe for his ten year old legs didn't stretch that far. He was the pet of my grandfather, who would bend the one or two rules he cared about for him, eg., open up his purse strings to spend or free access to the keys to his bureau.

When my husband was diagnosed with an essential blood condition requiring him to resort to medication that adversely affected his core blood components that otherwise would help him fight the effects of the condition itself, I couldn't process it. My children were young, one barely out of school and the other still in high school. I had my mother living with me on a temporary visa. I didn't want to talk about it to anyone for two reasons: my husband is the gentlest of persons, if he found out that I was hurting, it will hurt him more and I couldn't allow that lest it reduced his ability to fight his medication. My brother was the only one I could rely on to pull me -up, and he did. He asked me to have a blind faith that the condition nor the treatment will have an adverse effect on our life and go about it ignoring any thought that might distract me from living as I normally would.  It worked. We never talked about it ever. I didn't have a need to. I am my own person in that while I take input from every one, I make my own decision on how I act. My husband and children operate in a scale of kindness that does not let them see adversity in others or situations. I on the other hand 'am completely aware of the adversity in people and situations, even if though I will respond to them the same way as they do because I don't let adversity affect me. But on those couple of occasions when it did, when I hit the limit of my faculties, my brother is the only one I'd go to; he'll pick my pulse in seconds and tell me in a three or four words what to do. I owe my sanity to him.

My husband and children love him. They haven't seen my grandfather, but they have their own version of problem solving category viz., pull a Giri-mama. I can't tire of writing about my bother.  Infact I will do so throughout the book as I reflect on others in my life.

my grandmothers

I love my  grandmothers. They are two very different people except they both enriched my life equally as I grew-up. 

My paternal grandmother is very dear to me and myself to her; she is supposed to have told my mother just prior to my marriage that she has so many grand daughters, but if she has to call one her own, its me. I miss her touch, the softness of movement as she floated her hand over my face communicating her affection and well wishes to allevaiate my ailment or distress. It never ever failed to provide the releief and joy in all abundance- any trip to my local doctor was more a pretext to polish-up my four sentence strong English. 

My grandmother was an ace cook. Whether it was the sambar served before it released its raw edge from the tamarind as I would hurry her as the first bell for my school's morning assembly rang through our kitchen, or the usili she'll keep aside for me prior to adding cluster beans, the raw bananna podimas, the orange-peal vathal kozhambu, or the gazzillion sweet and savoury snacks, the list of which grew everytime she travelled. She would learn a new recipe by mearely eating a delicacy and upon her return, create a sufficiently south-indianised version to suit our taste and budget- mind you we were a house hold with a large number of permanent members and larger number of floating members with an appetite to consume everything she churned out from our kitchen. I have hung around her in the kitchen all my life eating food in all its stages of preparation, may it be while making the starters for rolling the papadams, or cutting cookies for our charcoal oven, or pitting the berry for making elantha vadai or making(more like eating) vadams, or filling pooranam for karchikai.  I have never actually cooked on my own until I got married.

My grandmother had so many interests. Apart from the dozen or so  major festivals that filled the hindu calender giving us an opportunity to have fun in the name of ou deities, she marked many a clestial occurances with special worships, pradakshina ammavasai being my favourite. The festivity required her to go around a shrine of pillar perched under the twin trees of ficus and neem 108 times with a special offering, an item of utility or food at each count. I'd help her complete her numbers and enjoy distribute the lot to the poor after the worship. Another such worship was to give away 100, 000 spuds of turmeric to women, a couple of hadfuls at a time. As you can imagine, the entreprise ran for som time as I would helpher count and bunch them up as she kept tally in a little very yelllowed note book. She was also very adept with her fingers. She'll reverse engineer any wire or wool or film or string or work of art made from other bits and pieces of recycled material such as glass medicine bottles, from a chance glance and make dozens of them until she perfects them. She'll teach me, though not all of them engaged me. She hardly ever kept any of her handy work for herself and with the nuber of people she came in contat with, there was no shortage of takers for the fruits of her labour. When she visited my uncle in Schenectady, she brought back box-loads of trinkets and craft material and kits, that kept us going for months on end. 

My gradmother loved watching movies. My brother and myself were our grandmother's movie buddies. There were five theatres in Palani, and they would screen the same movie on average for four to six weeks. I would be surprised if we missed any screening for a span of about ten years other than when she was not in town. She has never discussed the movie with us, though, she will tell my mother the stories the following day as they lunched together. Just as well, because, my mother usually would be so tired to stay awake on her movie excursions with my father for the late night shows. 

My grandmother was very musical and played the violin - only practically no one knew that. She was instrumental in getting my uncle to give me his beautiful violin and my training. Her attempts to sit with me with her own violin to practice hardly ever got of the mark. 

My grandmother's greatest gift to me his her friends, poor wives of bramins who provided religious service to our house hold; some of them doubled up as cooks to assist her and my mother on special occations. For  every navarathri and varalakshmi poojai and any other such occation, she will give me special instructions to go to their humble homes and invite them in person, even though one of them lived, kind of farther beyond our local neigbourhood. She taught me to enjoy lyrical beauty and richness of the only song Ammani mami ever sang year after year: potti niraya poo konarnthu poojithen amma, meaning I brought a box full of flowers (of every kind) and worshiped you. She would also point out, how the lady probably couldn't afford so much as a single flower, yet how as she sang you can visualise the goddess drowning in a shower of exquisite flowers. Lakshmi mami, one of the most beautiful women I have seen, never sang- but both her daughters did- coincidentally they also had one song to their repertoire which they faithfully sang every year: panchakshath peeda roopini. I have never heard my grandmother sing. And parvada mami. the most cheerful person I have ever known. Her husband was my tuition teacher for sometime. I can bearly remeber what he taught me though. 

My grandmother was very devoted to my grandfather. Their dependency on each other visibly grew as I grew-up though it would be difficult for me to articulate in exactly which way. She grew frail over the years, though she was a tireless worker and would hardly waste a moment with out turning it into some tangible outcome. She loved all her children- I got to see more of her love for my father and his for her.  

I wear her ring, clinging to her touch that can never come back to me.

My maternal grandmother was a very pios woman. She was well versed in the scriptures and had a very methodical way of approaching everything she did or said for that matter. She was also a great cook, but she'll use choice vegetables and ingradients, maticulously prepare them and cook them perfection, taking pride in the size of the hole of the vadai being exactly the same everytime she made it. She'll prepare baskets full of flowers that Murugesan would have collected for her every morning grouping them in terms of size and colour and shape- I'd help her on our visits during school holidays. Her daily worships/poojai will last close to a couple of hours as she'd wash and bathe and dry a large plateful of little deities and stones, and icons, put chandanam kungumam for each of them as she packed them back so beautifully in to a little box with one fourth the footprint of teh original plate- with each piece equally visible. She would follow it up with jabam and recital of several hyms/slokams in a mature, collected calm voice. I would be sitting there mesmarised by the elegance of the whole ritual not realising the time roll-on waiting to jump at the occational errand to fetch some thing or other. Coming to thin of it, the silver mahalakshmi bust she worshiped held an uncanny resemblance to my maternal grandmother's friend Lakshmi mami- perhaps that's why I think of her as the most beautiful women I have known. 

My grand mother had a lot of respect for saints. She wouldn't miss an opportunity to attend or host discourses. With none of my cousins or my brother sharing her interests, I would be her chosen companion, initially during our visits during school holidays and later when I stayed with her for a couple of years as I started University. I can't recollect ever discussing philosophy with her nor learning any hymns or slogams- at the same time I am chokeful-of her insights imparted seamlessly in a variety of contexts. She survived the lossof both my uncles, and was the carer for one of them for 3-4 years towards the fag end of her own life. I was in my late teens at that time and thirsty for independent experinces and moved to the hostel when I got the opportunity. I wish I didn't and stayed with her instead and looked after both of them instead. She beleived in reincarnation - Ididn't and I don't. But if I am wrong, I want to be able to correct my short-coming and baby my grandmother and uncle for life.

Sumathy, Sydney

4 September 2021

Strong Governance - an apolitical ideology that can go under the banner of <whatever>ism

I have always believed in strong governments. And I am afraid we, as humans are stretching our governance structures beyond comprehension by refusing to accept the framework and associated checks and balances we, as humans established after world war II are no longer adequate to drive or deliver their original intent. Though technically, I could argue, it probably was not adequate even in the early fifties, its irrelevant for my purposes in 2021.

The issue is the same irrespective of the political ideology or the governance structure derived from such an ideology, irrespective of whether its current practices still reflect the original ideology, because:

- all governance frameworks are defined by roles and associated responsibilities and accountabilities 

- the governance framework stipulates how each role would be fulfilled/how the human for the given role is selected/elected/assigned/assumed

- never there was a need to define any human faculty corresponding to a human as different from the human

Today's technology has the potential to render fundamental human faculties belonging to a given human overridden in a way that its near impossible to ascribe responsibility or accountability for any role with out allowing the benefit reasonable doubt, on occasions of failure/insufficiency. No political system is immune to it.

Thanks to COVID, I am beginning to understand, while strong governments are probably thought of as an inconvenience for one or more individuals or entities, the interference from inadequately informed attempts of such individuals or entities in preventing strong governments from becoming totalitarian governments are inadvertently accelerating such a transition, allowing/tolerating vulnerabilities in the tools/communication infrastructure unwittingly diminishing the political structures paramount in the strengthening of governance. The tools, infrastructure and associated outfits require an immediate dispassionate review and immediate correction to protect humans prior to driving accountabilities to enable correction to be applied acknowledging the wrongs of the past, and forge a future for all humans. The time is right as the globe is looking for a restart after COVID.

The first pass of such a review is to determine extent of human harm already inflicted and potential for human harm.

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

5 August 2021

SALES

(Reproduced from my original article on my Linked page on July 28, 2021)

I have practically no experience in sales, except for this one humbling experience.

I had just transitioned to regulatory affairs from a few glorious years at Data Management product development at ResMed. After two(or three?) days at the RAPS conference rubbing shoulders with regulatory professionals representing all countries including a few I didn't know existed, and head full of questions on the seemingly elaborate ploy to keep the designers from building, I was thirsty to say so much as a hello to anyone from a different function. So when a sales representative picked me up to join him on a sales call to sell masks, a product line I knew nothing about at that time, I was over joyed. 

We were going to show the mask line to a bunch of nursing staff in a hospital with a tray of sandwiches to lure them into the demonstration-room. On the way to the hospital we talked about his new Lexus, San Fransisco, his new Lexus, how difficult it is to get time with the physicians, his new Lexus, and how grateful he was to our data Management products, because it gave him something to put on the screen when he socialised his masks to the physicians. Given the sweat and blood that went into making those Data Management products, I could have killed him for reducing them to some sort of a marketing collateral, had he not sold his new car to me along the way - I mean, when you know a bloke's car, you are buddies and there is no going back from that. 

The hospital was huge with wide corridors and stair wells and a dinky little room where the staff huddled, which doubled up as a venue for our sales pitch. I watched in awe as our sales rep pulled out one mask after other and reeled off its features and differentiators as the five of six people kept up their steadfast dedication to containing the fillings between the bread before they made their way to their mouths. There were few questions, a few laughs and a few expressions of admiration for the technical merit of the device on hand before the staff trickled out of the room. We packed up and followed. No sale was made. No commitment for a follow-up. No assurance of anything that remotely resembled a possibility of a potential lead for a future sale. Our rep didn't so much as stoop his lips. He told me, if you make inroads on one out of ten calls, you are doing great- you just need to know to keep your chin-up, that's all or words to that effect.

From that day on he was my hero. 

If any intellectual arrogance was left in me before then, it left me once and for all. Upon my return, if any one of my team members winged or got annoyed at the seemingly disproportionate approval of head-count increases to the sales function, I never tired of telling them, how much ever difficult they think their role is, it would fade in insignificance compared to the field the sales folks have to navigate to keep us in jobs, a field that is typically hostile and at best indifferent.

Now I am on my way to make a sale on my thought-ware; with the lock-down looming to extend for another four weeks, I can't even buy sandwiches!!! 

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

28 JULY 2021

In 2021 we need a new function: Cyber Security Assurance 

Reproduced from my original article on my Linked page on July 27, 2021

... and it has nothing to do with the ICT function. 

Let me explain.

When I was a little kid, around late sixties/early seventies, my grandmother used to host a series of discourses at home by an elderly lady, the grand daughter of her aunt; the aunt by the way, was acclaimed as a saint amongst those who were close to her and virtually unknown to the rest of the world. The discourses were rendered with the palm of the lady placed over a planchet, heart shaped plank with two legs silver caped legs, the third leg being the tip of a graphite pencil. The plank itself was silver rimmed - not unlike the areal wound around the iPhone 4. The lady, whose typical conversation would hover around the raising cost of vegetables or the woes of a distant relative, would derive inspiration by scrolling the pencil back and forth on another plank, sounding like a C on a bagpipe, and give discourses on scriptures and literature. Being my grandmother's pet companion on all her endeavors I was a constant presence in all the sessions. I would devour everything my little brain could understand- mostly stories of saints and poets and leave discussions of astral planes to lavitate out of my hearing. Except the one time, when she said that there are all these worlds but planet earth is the only one that had humans. I remember being awed and piping-up for clarification and confirmation, breaking the typical silence from this side of the planchet. To my embarrassment and my grand mother's pride, I became an instant celebrity amongst her friends; thank fully mine, didn't come with in miles of discourses of any kind, let alone philosophical. The point is, it was one of the defining moments in my life. If I sat there now my mind may loose all philosophical significance of discourse and try to elicit the physics behind the planchet as a telecommunication device; but I owe my uncompromising dedication to all things human to that embarrassing moment. 

MY TAKE HOME: humans are precious, every one of them. Security of person, every person, takes priority over anything else.

Information and Communication Technology to augment human to human communication has had an exponential growth in the past 50 odd years, transitioning the Information Age through peta, exa, zetta, and probably yotta<whatever> to Mis-Information Age as alarmingly demonstrated by many a recent mainstream media reports. I think humans don't have sufficient sensitivity to inherently appreciate any more than counts of 10s. Not unlike our eyes which can't resolve beyond the moon and think, the Sun and the moon and Betelgeuse are all at the same distance from us to the chagrin of a photon from Betelgeuse which is slogged for some 262, 800, 000 minutes to get to us compared to its counterpart from the Sun that floated in on an 8 minute flight. 

TAKE HOME: humans can't understand something that they don't have the capacity to appreciate; they can't adequately/usefully understand big data. 

To me, common sense dictates that you can't rely on something you don't understand to assure the security of what is most precious to you. Assurance of security, cyber in this case is thus a human function. It being unlike any other function individual entities had to deal with, mandates that it is an independent function in its own right, in-situ to every entity. 

Here's a stab at a possible skeleton, organisatinal structure for my dream function for forward looking organisations:

Department of Cyber Security Assurance 

Vice President accountable for providing advice to other functions on ability or inability to assure security of organisational assets particularly employees and customers; responsible for understanding and communicating needs, priorities, and cyber reliance of other functions. 

Director accountable for providing information on compromises and potential compromises to assurance of security of organisational assets, particularly employees and customers and measures undertaken to resolve the compromise or potential compromise; accountable for securing adequate funds required to assure security; responsible for establishing accurate understanding of and communicating the needs, priorities, and cyber reliance of other functions. 

Cost-account/people-manager accountable for ensuring allocation of activities appropriately to engineers and upward managing scope creep in the absence of capacity; responsible for delivery of accurate information on compromises and potential compromises to assurance of security and measures undertaken to resolve them; responsible for driving resolution to the very best of the ability of the team as opposed to reporting.

Engineers  accountable for understanding the communication needs, priorities and resilience of the supporting functions; accountable for reporting accurately to the best of their ability; responsible for deriving actionable requirements from the needs, priorities and resilience and inter dependencies of supporting other functions; responsible for exercising leadership with in the scope of applicable regulations in all actions.  

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

Tuesday, 27 JUL 2021

16 JUNE 2021

I am a human. I love humans. I worship humanity expressed through humans. To me the universe consists of my family, my friends, my colleagues, my people, people on their way to becoming my family, my friends, my colleagues and my people. 

Do I care what happens to them? Yes I do, I care about what happens to each one of them. With all my physical faculties intact, its a difficult task to ensure our life, viz., the ability of a human to realise their  full potential in an environment that doesn't constrict it. Given the constrictions under which I am operating today, let alone the past decade, it is even more difficult . So yes, I can't drop the ball on things that are a concern for the assurance of life of humans -even for a moment. I am tired. Not because of the load of what I do- but because the constrictions wear me out from working to my full potential imparting my insights to appropriate people with in the governance framework in my nation and equivalent frameworks in other nations where I am unaware of my own government's participation. I understand the root-cause of the issues that are playing out in today's world. I understand how they manifest as concerns that keep me awake.  The enormity of the task is, at the moment, the only thing that gives me the strength to pick myself up and forge forward.

To me today has the potential to become a historic day. A day when we as humans living in 2021 understand we have no obligation to continue the rivalries between empires from eighteen hundreds for several reasons. We have the benefit of hindsight and two hundred years of history and intellectual evolution to know humans got it wrong when it came to the amount of room and resources the plant has for all of us to live and flourish. Objectively think about the physical limitation of our ability to visualise: our eyes and brain resolve the size of the sun and the moon to be about the same and their proximity to us to also be about the same. Given the sun is ~400 times further from us and the sun is ~ 60,893,759 times larger than the moon, our ability to visualise or compare is atleast 400 times incorrect in resolving something as simple as an illuminated disk. From a human perspective, even the vast expanses of the largest room in a huge mansion is minuscule compared to the size of probably the tip of the town in which the mansion stands. And there is this vast amount of space on the planet that is uninhabited and there is vast advances in our understanding of science and technology to turn what was once declared as uninhabitable land into oasises. Besides we are culturally evolved in 2021 that our kings didn't have to rule a place wiping out the local inhabitatnts before we can enjoy its natural and cultural riches or have access to their ports. We can speak as humans, we resolve our issues as humans and walk another way just as happily if we can’t walk together; we don’t have to block each other’s ways in fear that we may not be able to walk on our chosen path. In other words, we have the hindsight of our experiences from the last millennium to reflect, learn and internalise that the era of Risk Management as a strategy for assurance of anything, may it be safety, wealth or health, is truly over. I mean, how many understand it comprehensively any way. On a lighter note, think of the hours you would save ploughing through million coloumned spreadsheets that as you spend your best talent getting the value on each cell accurate loosing sense of every other line while doing so. 

To me today has the potential to become a historic day. As the heads of states of two constitutional republics meet to discuss their differences, I wish they'll recognise they are but both humans, that they are but both vulnerable to the limitations of perceptions our species is born with. I hope amidst all the conflicts there will be time for civility, for the issues I see that would undo us as humans don't distinguish one of us from the other. For example, just as I was writing the last paragraph, infact precisely at 10:57 am AEST my mobile phone rang displaying an interstate land line number.  The call failed with in 3 seconds with no response from the other end to my hello. I called back at 10:58 am and was responded with a recorded message from my service provider saying that the number I was dialing has been disconnected. And I thought we had reliable telecommunication, i.e., understanding who the caller is, receiving the communication from the caller and responding knowing the caller will receive your response, was something we had in the bag well with in the life time of Alexander Graham Bell. Looks like we have a long way to go and we can only get there together looking out for each other as human to human.

I look forward to tomorrow's paper to check on history.

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

16 Jun 2021

force majeure

I have been working on the production, Kannagi enbathen peyare, an initiative of lzerobzero in collaboration with Samskriti school of dance to realise my poetry as set to music and choreography by my friends. As I work towards the production, there have been a few inexplicable and potentially disruptive constrains requiring resolution to ensure enjoyable delivery of the event. 

While reviewing the contract from the venue, Riverside Theatre, I came across the term force majeure in the context of conditions of cancellation of the event. Macquarie dictionary defines the term as an unexpected and disruptive event operating to excuse a party from a contract. The contract itself gave a more elaborate definition that doesn’t contradict the dictionary definition: The term ‘force majeure’ means an “act of God”, half a dozen man made causes, another half a dozen natural causes, a couple of preventative measures by government and “any other cause with in the control of” the contracting parties.

As a humanist, I had resolved all my 60 years of life’s experiences into recognising bakthi or devotion and limitation of divinity into finding an expression only through humans, the ultimate such expression being spontaneous, unreserved kindness towards fellow humans in all sincerity. And I had arrived at this philosophy by chiding my personal deity any number of times when I experienced cruelty in my environment. Coupled with these is the fact that, when I opened the dictionary, the envelope in which the then director of talents at ResMed gave a parting card in which she had said, “dream big Suma” fell out reminding me of my training to overcome practically any hurdle.

Hence my poem to mean:

my fearless(God), did you fear my wrath and moved the cnstrains that are preventing my progress?

You, who saved our people from the raging floods of the river Vaigai, by shifting the dirt in exchange for a handful of puttu, a simple preparation of rice cooked with a bit of jaggery, on behalf of a fragile woman, who was struggling with her burden in response to the call from her king to all on the land to lend a hand.

Loosing your patience upon witnessing the relentless burden that is shaking my stands, have you exceeded your own limit (of not finding an expression other than through humans) and moved all the constrains that have been preventing my progress?

         திட்டுக்கு அஞ்சி நிலை பெயர்த்தீரோ, எமை காக்க, என் ஐயனே 

என் திட்டுக்கு அஞ்சி நிலை பெயர்த்தீரோ?

         புட்டுக்கு மண் சுமந்து வைகை கரை பெயராது எம்மோர் காத்த நீர்

என் திட்டுக்கு அஞ்சி நிலை பெயர்த்தீரோ?

         கட்டுக்கு நில்லா சுமை  எனை நிலை  பிறழ வீழ்த்த பொறாது 

உம்   மட்டுக்கு மிகைந்து எமை நெரிக்கும் இடரனைத்தையும் நீர் 

என் திட்டுக்கு அஞ்சி நிலை பெயர்த்தீரோ?

Sincerely,

Sumathy, Sydney

11 Jun 2021

Scaling the heights as one

I picked up my self-portrait below from The Art Gallery of NSW this afternoon. I had submitted it to the ARCHIBALD prize competition at the dot of 4:00 pm on 30 APRIL - infact, there were so many hurdles along the way and particularly on the day of the submission that I felt victorious for having made it to the ARTS gallery on time to make my submission.

I am not a trained painter- my skills with the brush and oil was three pieces strong, all three were willows in a forest printed and numbered with each number corresponding to one of eighteen 15ml containers each adifferent color. I was also familiar with water colour through my attempts to paint a herd of wild horses on an A3, using a hand drawn enlargement of the main contours traced using carbon paper over a picture book, an experince I’ll never forget for two reasons: the painting looked so good that some one stole it after the exhibition, but more importantly, my use of carbon left a mark on the picture book which wasn’t mine leaving me to vow to never use carbon paper again. The second water had nothing note-worthy.

A couple of months back when I was at the Paramatta park in the pretext of exercising while my husband peddled his life away, I was fascinated by a couple of gum trees. What caught my eyes were how they grew in awareness of each other, bending and flowing to let the other grow and finding its way back to scale the heights to the sky in one straight line. These gum trees are so human in so many aspects. The red gum flowing under the bark strengthening the trunk, the pealing bark giving way to growth, the limbs sprouting with elbows and knuckles, the over growth of the bark engulfing cuts and bruises. The more I look at them, the more they speak to me. When I realised ARCHIBALD PRIZE was on, knowing its about portraits of celebraties, I thought who better to celebrate than the good old aussie gums. And I projected myself and my husband on to the trees and used the artistic freedom to put brush directly on to canvas as the impressinon of the trees sprung from my heart on to my face, with warts and inflammations and scratches and all. May be its audacious, but I just wanted to submit it for the competition for the fun of it. I mean, I have the experince of coming fourth in a music competion where there four participants and coming nineth in an elocution competion where there were nine participants, for crying out loud!

I am glad I did.

Sumathy, Sydney

10 JUN 2021