Shevlin Sebastian's Blog, page 21

A ‘bald’ anniversary

Today, May 26, it is one year since I went completely bald. 

A barber did the act in 10 minutes.  

I am happy with my decision. 

No more depressing thoughts as I looked in the mirror. Earlier, I would watch with dismay at my receding hairline and the growing bald patch at the crown of my head. Now, when I look at my reflection, I feel happy and proud. It gives off a lively look. 

But it is not easy to maintain this. 

A 10-minute shave of the head is required every morning. I use the Gillette Mach 3 shaving razor like a comb. Of course, I could use a Phillips trimmer but a razor is more hands-on. But I have to be careful. 

So far, I have had a nick only once. Most of the time, I concentrate when I am shaving my head: after all, it is the place where my brain is resting. But the best way I realised is to let the fingers do the work. No need to interfere. Because the body has its intelligence. Without our help, it runs our inner physical system. You don’t need to bother how digestion takes place or how the heart is pumping blood over the body and how it fights germs. 

All this is explained in the book, ‘The Power of Not Thinking: How Our Bodies Learn and Why We Should Trust Them’ by business anthropologist Simon Roberts. 

Former cricketer Sachin Tendulkar said something similar during an interview with TV personality Mark Nicholas. “It is important to play not with your conscious, but with your subconscious,” said Tendulkar. “And when you reach the peak of your concentration, you will not notice whether the bowler is coming at you from around the wicket or over the wicket. All you will see is the ball, and your subconscious mind will do the rest.” 

The only problem arises when the mind interferes with the body with its panicky thoughts and soon things descend into chaos. So I am sure the body is happy when we sleep. That’s when they can do their repair work with peace. 

Coming back to my baldness, people used to stare at me initially. But as more people go the bald route, everyone is getting used to it. Even women are doing it. My niece, Aneesha, within months of her marriage went bald, as a style statement. 

Nowadays, I have completely forgotten I am bald when I step out in public. I am so glad I don’t have to use a comb, oil, shampoo or go to the barber. And when it rains, you can feel it drum on your head. That’s a pleasant feeling. No fears about getting sick because your hair is wet. Mums would always tell us this in an admonishing tone during our childhoods.

After a run, I noticed my head also sweats a lot. So, apart from wiping my face with a handkerchief, I have to wipe my head as well. I have wondered whether there was so much perspiration when I had hair. I can’t remember. It is also a fact the climate has become hotter and more humid. 

I don’t have a full round head. There is a teeny bump if anyone looks upward from the forehead. But otherwise, it is round. Most people tell me they like what they see. But some did point out the bump. You can’t please all the people all the time. Thus said the 15th-century monk and poet John Lydgate. 

How right he was.   

For those of you who want to go down the same path, my suggestion is to find out whether your head is round. You can place a photo of yours in Photoshop and remove the hair. You will get an idea of how you look. If you like what you see, take the plunge.

There is nothing more powerful than to be bald and bold. 

You will become irresistible to women. 

Just joking!

A friend dies

By Shevlin Sebastian

Photos: George Joseph and his wife Tessy; the Notre Dame Catholic Church at Southbridge, Massachusetts 

At 7.30 p.m. on Saturday, May 15, I logged on to take part in the funeral service of my friend George Joseph, who died of Covid comorbidities on May 7, in a hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts. The service was taking place in the 109-year-old Notre Dame Catholic Church at Southbridge, Massachusetts. George’s friends had logged in from different parts of America, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, and in India, from Kolkata, Kochi, Jaipur and other places.

At the start, Gina Kuruvilla, George’s cousin, gave a eulogy. “George was very kind,” she said. “He was one of those people whom everyone will agree did not have a single mean bone in his body. He loved his family. He especially loved Tessy (wife). He talked about you so much.”

I knew George because we lived a few buildings away from each other in Kolkata in the 1980s. He was 6’2” and heavily built. I was 5’6” and frail. It was like David and Goliath. We regularly met up with friends for an evening adda, sitting on a low wall by the side of a road.

We gazed longingly at the girls in the area, and we watched as one friend adopted an almost foolproof method of getting a woman’s attention. He would go up and say, “You are beautiful. Would you be interested in acting in the movies or even theatre?” Our friend was a theatre artist, so what he said was correct. He also knew people in Tollywood.

Many girls stopped in their tracks, zapped by this question and with immediate stars in their eyes. And then our friend, with his silky-smooth tongue, would make the necessary moves to go on a first date. And he succeeded most of the time. To his credit, one or two even tried their luck at the theatre.

We would laugh but felt envious of his skill. This was a time before the mobile phone and its irresistible apps, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. So, it was not easy to get access to the fairer sex, at all.

Sometimes, we went to George’s house, when his parents went out to work and his sister was in school. Our morning college finished at 9.45 a.m. Then we would sit and chat, have several cups of tea, and listen to music. George introduced me to rock bands Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull but I never became a fan. I preferred the simple tunes of Abba, Boney M, Carpenters, and the Bee Gees.

All these thoughts passed through my mind as I watched the mass. It was a beautiful church. It had numerous large pillars, and it seemed like the floor was made of mosaic tiles. The priest, Fr. Ken Cardinale gave a sweet sermon and remembered some funny moments with George. With relief, the audience laughed.

I couldn’t believe George had passed away so quickly. The last time I met him was a couple of years ago, when he came to Kerala to meet his mum. We sat in the coffee shop at the Gokulam Park hotel, just opposite my former office, in Kochi. George had prematurely greyed. It was only that time had passed, but the ease of conversation and the camaraderie remained intact. We spoke non-stop for one-and-a-half hours.

During the mass, normally, I would have switched off Whatsapp. This time, for some unknown reason, I kept it on. Soon, a friend wrote, as he watched the service, ‘One by one, we will all have to leave’.

I quickly typed out, ‘Yes. This is unavoidable.’

There were messages from other friends.

One asked for a link to the service.

And some, like Suresh Reginald, were present in the church. Suresh has been George’s friend for over 50 years. He stayed just two houses away from George in Kolkata. Like George, he is 6’ 2” but slimmer. Now he is based in Lexington, Massachusetts, an hour’s drive from the church. They remained in touch (George had worked in India, Singapore and Brunei, where he spent several years, before he migrated to the US).

This is what Suresh wrote after attending the service: ‘The funeral service was perfect. The message from the family brought back warm memories of George, always kind, always high-spirited, always joking, and sometimes the jokes were funny. The sermon was given engagingly by Fr Ken who knew George well. There were about 200 people present, filling the church up with social distancing in place. It was a gorgeous, sunny, and warm spring day, with not a cloud in the sky. Tessy's faith has provided her with an enormous reservoir of hope to handle these weeks of adversity with a positive outlook, and she continued to display this inner strength.’

Indeed, Tessy has a deep faith in God. And this faith will sustain her, as she faces a future without George, who had been by her side for 31 years. It will be tough, very tough, but time, as always, will be the healer.

Because of Covid deaths all around, mortality is at the forefront of our minds.

On Saturday morning, I had read an article in the ‘New York Times’ about an American nun, Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble, whose mission has been to revive the practice of memento mori. This is a Latin phrase that means, ‘Remember your death’.

As the reporter Ruth Graham wrote, ‘The concept is to intentionally think about your death every day, as a means of appreciating the present and focusing on the future’.

In the article, Sr. Aletheia said, “My life is going to end and I have a limited amount of time. We naturally think of our lives as a kind of continuing and continuing.”

George’s death, the first in our group of friends, has made us all focus on our own cessation of life. When will it end? At what age? At 61, 65, 71, 75, 86 or 91. It doesn’t matter. But the years are limited now. The youthful feeling of an endless life ahead has long gone.

The service concludes.

I close off the link and get up.

In Kochi, it is pouring now — a heavy, pulsating, and intense rain, accompanied by howling winds. The effects of Cyclone Tauktae, which hit the Gujarat coast, were being felt in Kochi.

I could not step outside.

So, I walked up and down the house, trying to shake off my melancholy mood...

Memories of Chandra

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Nowadays, owing to the catastrophic Covid pandemic engulfing the country, on some mornings when I open the newspaper, I am reminded of the journalism I had done.

That was the case when I came to know former three-time national table tennis champion V Chandrasekhar passed away in Chennai on May 12, at the age of 64 because of Covid-related issues.

His life took a turn towards hell when at the age of 27, a botched knee surgery at the Apollo Hospital led to him losing his speech, mobility and partial vision. Through physiotherapy he fought back, regaining 80 percent of his mobility. But this was followed by a long and exhausting court case against the hospital which he won eventually.

I met him in 1996 at his home in Chennai and spent almost a day with him.

Since I worked for Sportsworld magazine, we had a lot of space to fill with words and photos.

Chandra was intelligent, pleasant, accommodative and spoke with a quiet intensity.

Accompanying me was the ebullient Chennai-based sports photographer George Francis, who sadly passed on April 11, 2019, to cancer. He had been the doyen of motorsports photography.

George and I got along well. He asked me the theme of the story. So, I told him it was a story of being in a sort of prison. Chandra could no longer do so many things. He had lost his freedom.

At Chandra’s home, George and I scratched our heads on how to get an apt photo. It was a typical middle-class flat, with a drawing cum dining room and bedrooms leading off from the main section.

Eventually, George pointed out at the entrance. I was sceptical, even though the door had small bars. George placed a chair just behind the door. He asked Chandra to sit on it and lean forward, his hands on the wooden base.

George stepped outside, switched on two photography lights, resting on triangular bases, which he had brought along. The result is the striking image on the first page.

It was in those days I understood the importance of the collaboration between reporter/writer and photographer. Of how the photos must match the theme of the story. Therefore, the photographer and the journalist should talk about what the story was all about. 

It was also a time when we used typewriters to tap out the stories. So, in our office in Calcutta, the most consistent sound was of keys being hit at high speed as they slammed against the white paper, placed on a roller, and formed words in black letters…. unbelievable for today’s youngsters. 

What’s the future going to be like?

By Shevlin Sebastian

One gets the feeling that while India is changing, thanks to its youthful population, its politicians have not. They are still stuck in tribalism, the caste system, fueling antagonisms and hate, focusing on temples, mosques, and churches, and ignoring the more important things of life.

They may not know it, but all religions have a finite date, even though it is difficult to believe. During the time of the Pharaohs, the Egyptians worshipped the sun god Ra. Now Egypt is an Islamic country.

Christianity is 2000 years old. But it is already in terminal decline in the West.

The truly powerful religions last between 2000 to 5000 years, and then they are gone. New religions and new ideologies will come up, especially now, as we are on the cusp of vast technological change.

Drones and robots are going to take over our lives. Many robots will look like real human beings. They will dress, walk and talk like us. So, on the street, you will not know who is an actual person and who is not.

Robots will gobble up jobs, especially done by labour. No labourer can replace 1000 tiles of a floor in a mere one hour. And there is no need to pay a salary and give other benefits. The robots will work 24/7 for years together until their parts fall into disrepair.

Which job will be safe? Nobody knows for sure. You already have robot dentists. Robots can read the evening news and write daily news reports. They can sweep the floor and lift heavy loads on to trucks. They could become doctors, engineers, or chartered accountants. Or as waiters in restaurants and security guards. And they can provide emotional sustenance, too. You can tell your problems, it will listen sympathetically and provide answers.

There are going to be robot women whom you can make love to. What will that do for marriage? Men mostly marry to get an easier access to sex. Now what? Will marriage collapse as an institution? Recently, a Chinese man married his robot woman. He is not the only one.

See the link: https://www.buzzworthy.com/meet-men-married-robots/

Will the state produce children in artificial wombs? Would they tinker with the DNA to produce perfect children? All criminal genes are edited out.

Those who have superior firepower and lakhs of robots can invade other countries and capture them for the host country.

There is talk of a world government. The nation-state will be decimated.

It sounds unreal, but it could be true.

Computer tycoon Bill Gates said the biggest danger of the 21st century will be from bio-terrorism and climate change.

We are already experiencing a type of bio-terrorism with the coronavirus.

So, a man can take a virus, put it in a small bottle, get a tourist visa, go to the enemy country, release the virus and create havoc.

No Army is required for this.

In case an Army is required, millions of robot soldiers will be at the ready.

As for climate change, in the future, 600 million Indians are expected to suffer from extreme water shortage.

Where are the solutions? What are the politicians doing about this? Maybe they will tell the people to get solace by staring at the Grand Vista.

Oceans are going to overwhelm coastal cities in less than a hundred years thanks to melting glaciers. So, goodbye to Tokyo, Mexico, Shanghai, Melbourne, Sydney, Mumbai and thousands of other cities. Check out ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ by American journalist David Wallace-Wells. It will give you chills as you flip the pages.

The heat has become so intense that migrations have begun northwards in several countries. All this is explored in social scientist Sonia Shah’s book, ‘The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move’. Sonia says that even insects like butterflies are on the move, looking for cooler climes. Agriculture will no longer be sustainable. Food will be made in laboratories and in farms located inside buildings.

And what is the mobile phone doing to the brain? I met a Hollywood producer who came to Kochi who said that in the future, a movie will be ten minutes long. Babies who are born today and go straight to the mobile phone, with its endless distractions, will no longer have the patience to sit through a two-hour movie.

Surely, this heralds the end of the book also.

One gets the feeling the politician, sprouting a brain-washed but outdated ideology, will soon be swept away by the tides of human history.

An incident outside the Lulu Mall

By Shevlin Sebastian

On a recent Sunday afternoon, I had just got out of the Lulu Mall, Kochi, with my daughter when a young woman, in a white mask, standing next to an auto-rickshaw nodded at me and said, “Would you have any change?”

She was holding a Rs 500 note in her hand. I checked my purse, and had only Rs 300. In these times of constant card usage, I carry little physical money. So I said that I didn’t have the change and walked away. Twenty metres away, I got an idea.

I returned and said, “How much is the fare?”

She said, “Rs 70.”

I gave her a Rs 100 note and said, “Pay the fare and you can return the money to me through Google Pay.”

She smiled gratefully, and that could only be seen in her eyes. So, the driver paid Rs 30 back to her, and she quickly took down my number.

And then I walked away.

Within a few minutes, my account was credited.

So that went off well.

In the evening, I was chatting with my sister June, who had come from Kottayam on a casual visit. So I recounted the incident with the girl at the auto-rickshaw. Through Google Pay, I realised her name was Rebecca Thomas (name changed).

When I mentioned this name, June immediately said, “I know of Rebecca Thomas.”

“What?” I exclaimed.

Quickly I mentioned, she has a middle name: ‘Susan’.

“Yes, it is the same,” she said. “She was my student in Pallikoodam.”

My sister was Principal and now Administrator of this school in Kottayam, which is run by Mary Roy, the mother of the Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy.

I found the coincidence astonishing.

I called Rebecca. But she seemed to have panicked, thinking I was one of those guys trying to get friendly, even though I met her along with my daughter. Her father picked up the phone. I passed the phone to my sister.

Soon Rebecca came on the line. And she was equally shocked at the coincidence.

She said many people said no when she asked for change, even though she was sure they had the money. It seemed it was instinctive for people to say no. Nobody wanted to do anything out of the way. So, she was glad I took the effort to solve her problem.

(An aside: sometime ago I came up with the idea that if a salesperson comes to the house, and most of the time we usually say no to them, because they sell plastic containers, cups and saucers, Britannica books or the Eureka Forbes vacuum cleaner, I plan to give Rs 100 and say, “This is for tea and biscuits.” The aim is to mitigate the sting of the no. Most of the time, these salespeople are young men and women in their first jobs.)

June and Rebecca spoke for a while and she informed my sister that she had graduated from the OP Jindal Global Law School at Sonipat and was working in a firm at Bangalore.

This incident made me ponder about coincidences. Like most people, I had read Deepak Chopra’s bestselling book, ‘Synchrodestiny: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence to Create Miracles’.

Here are some quotes from the book:

“I do not believe in meaningless coincidences. I believe every coincidence is a message, a clue about a particular facet of our lives that requires our attention.”

“We cannot even imagine the complex forces behind every event that occurs in our lives.”

“When you live with an appreciation of coincidences and their meanings, you connect with the underlying field of infinite possibilities.”

Of course, all of us have experienced coincidences all the time. You think of somebody and that person calls you up. You have a dream; something in the dream happens in actual life. You meet a stranger unexpectedly; that person changes your life.

But it is too early to say what is the meaning of this unexpected interaction with Rebecca.

The answer lies somewhere in the future.

Where are you now?

 

By Shevlin Sebastian

It was twilight. Walking near several trees, I could see them get darker. The cries of the birds were getting fainter. The sky was darkening. Another day was ending. Nature was shutting down for the night.

As I walked, a thought popped into my head: where is my father right now?

Is he thousands of kilometres or a million light-years away?

Where in the universe do souls go? Is there a particular spot where they all congregate?

It has been over one month since he passed away. Would he have met all the people he knows by now? His parents, grandparents, in-laws, relatives, and friends? How did they recognise each other without their bodies? How did they talk without tongues? What do they communicate with each other? Was it about life on earth, sharing memories and unforgettable events?

How old is my Dad’s soul? When he passed away, he was 94? Would his soul be that age? Or younger? Or ageless?

How does he pass the time? Are there movies to see, or music programmes to attend? Are there coffee shops where souls can hang around and shoot the breeze? Can they sit down without bodies?

Do these spirits ever sleep? Is the light on 24 hours a day? Do they ever feel tired? Do they have regrets they had died? Does a soul have a desire to eat? Or is food of no consequence?

When you meet a former flame, will you try to resume the relationship?

What about people who harmed you and yet reached the place where there is light? Will they ask for forgiveness?

Will those who suffered from mental ailments like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s, become completely restored after their death?

Is the soul perfect in every way?

What about the dark people of earth: the murderers, killers and thieves? Do they go to a different place than the good people? Is it dark there? Do they feel remorse for their actions?

Can my Dad see me? Watch what I do on earth?

Can he extend help if I am in trouble? Some friends told me they do.

He must be shaking his head, so to say, at the massive ego people have, when he realises the earth is not even a dot in the Milky Way.

Has my Dad seen God yet?

If so, what conversation did he have?

Has he met the human representatives of God? Was he able to have a chat with Jesus, Prophet Muhammad, Guru Nanak, Lord Buddha and the great Hindu saint Ramakrishna Paramahansa?

Is there a possibility he could meet a member of that much-reviled group: a politician? Can they reach the place where there is light, despite their many misdeeds?

Will God assign souls any work? Or will they remain idle?

How do they pass the time?

Do they play sports like football, cricket, or table tennis?

Or are they in a constant state of nirvana?

So many questions.

Who will give the answers?

Nobody.

If they do, it is guesswork.

Nobody knows what happens after we die.

Although my Dad has left physically, he seems to be with me.

I think of him a lot.

Sometimes I cry.

I realised feelings are like an ocean within oneself. When things are okay, the waves are quiescent. But if a big event happens, the waves swirl about, as if a storm is approaching. After a while, the waves of sorrow buffet your body, and you use your willpower to suppress it. For some time, you succeed, but then it gets into a fearsome motion and crashes against your eyelids and the tears flow out in an uncontrollable rush.

Still trying to get used to the lack of the physical presence of my father.

Death is so permanent.

Death, an alien concept in one’s youth is becoming increasingly familiar.

My uncles and aunts have died. A cousin’s wife. Distant relatives. And you battle on, trying to look for the sunny side of life. But it is getting increasingly difficult.

As you age, you can see death grinning at you from the sidelines.

You realise people are dying all the time. You see or hear this when you browse through newspapers, online, on TV and on the radio. Calamities are happening everywhere: natural disasters, accidents, war and murders. One human being killing another. No member of any species kills another of their own with such alarming frequency.

It has become dark now.

I look up at the sky.

I can see a few stars.

The whine of mosquitoes can be heard.

‘Time to go back home’, I think as I dab my eyes with a handkerchief.

Fighting the loss of privacy

This book is a disturbing one.

The author, Carissa Veliz, makes clear that you are under 24-hour surveillance by Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook. They study what you do, who are your colleagues, where do you go for vacations, what you like to eat, who are your friends, your relationship with your spouse and children, the type of stuff you buy, the moves you like to see and your political beliefs.

They end up doing a psychological profile of you.

This can be used by them or sold to third parties and governments.

Through the laptop and mobile cameras, they can even look at you and see what you are doing.

The author suggests it may be safer to post as few personal information and photos online as possible.

And in case you want to turn the surveillance off, one way is to disable the web and apps activity.

I have attached a page for a quick read. And a link to disable the app. 

https://www.ricksdailytips.com/disable-web-and-app.../

Some thoughts about running

 

By Shevlin Sebastian

A few months ago, I discovered an area to jog which was salubrious. A broad tiled path ran through a large forest on one side and a few houses on the other. The advantage of this was that, unlike running on roads, I no longer encountered traffic. Instead, what I heard were the sounds of nature: birds chirping, the leaves rustling, and the crick-crick of the crickets.

Not surprisingly, there were walkers on the path. A group of four middle-aged women were regulars in their salwar kameez and sneakers. When I go past, I have heard the words, ‘cakes’, ‘pickles’, ‘property’ and ‘vaccine’. There are elderly couples too. Inevitably, the man walks ahead.

There are boys in cycles. A couple of them ride without touching the handle with the casual self-confidence of the very young. A man in his mid-thirties, with his shoulder length hair tied in a topknot, and with white earphones sticking out of his ears walks past, listening to music. Another girl in her late twenties also has earphones, but she is inevitably talking to somebody on the phone.

Sometimes, there are teenage boys and girls who stand on one side and have a chat. If they are in the mood, they play badminton but with no net. Just hitting the shuttle back and forth, interspersed with shouts and giggles. There is a group of seniors, all men with white hair, chatting about politics and the state of the world. The watchman, who is from Sikkim, is talking to his family back home.

In the midst of this crowd, I was the only runner, till recently. Now two youngsters do a bit of running.

I went about my run, thinking about this and that, even as my mouth was wide open, as I drew in gulps of air, whenever I increased my speed. Sweat poured off my forehead, and my T-shirt was drenched. But there were positives: my adrenal flow increased and so did my dopamine.

All was fine, till my wife asked me to drop off some clothes at a tailoring shop, which was just outside the area where I run. Imagine my surprise when the woman who runs the shop called my wife and said, “Oh, this is your husband. He runs like the breeze.”

Did I? I don’t think I am running fast. But it may look fast, because after a year of running non-stop, I have missed about 10 days in 365 days, I may have developed my stamina and endurance. Somebody told my aunt who lives nearby about my running. When I met her, she said, “Please try not to run so much. You are putting a lot of strain on my knees.”

Yes, I too am worried about my knees. So, I tell my knees: ‘please rejuvenate yourself and be healthy and full of vitality’. This is a practice I do often: I thank different parts of my body because of the ceaseless work they do: the eyes, ears, heart, lungs, liver, small and large intestines, arms, legs and the guru of them all: the brain. Sometimes, I will go further and thank the femur, tibia, ankles, soles, teeth, tongue, throat, spine, coccyx and even the anus.

The only alternative to running is swimming, the greatest exercise of them all, but thanks to the coronavirus, the pools are closed to ordinary people. Only competitors can access a pool.

A couple of days ago, two boys, on cycles, who looked to be ten and twelve years old, accosted me and asked my name and age. After I told my name, I asked them to guess my age. The ten-year-old shook his head, unable to think of a number, but the elder one took a shot. It was twelve years younger and I let it be. He would probably get a shock at the true number.

I felt elated that even youngsters had noticed me. But my wife killed me when she described my running style: “It’s like you have just grabbed a gold necklace from the neck of a woman and are fleeing, with the policemen chasing you.”

I had to laugh at this description, but it at least showed I ran fast.

But do I? In a country where very few people exercise, I might stand out. But if I go abroad, what I do, running a mere 3 kms a day, and walking another 3 kms will be regarded as pathetic.

A few years ago when I went to Singapore, my childhood friend Pradeep Paul invited me to go for a 10 km run with the Hash House Harriers Club, a group of cross-country runners. So we ran on roads, on bridges, climbed fences, and whizzed through fields. But there were so many foreigners in their sixties and even in their seventies who ran faster. I finished in the middle of the pack. So, in Singapore, my stamina would be considered not-so-great.

But in Kerala and India, where standards are abysmally low, a bit of speed is seen to be a big thing. So, I am not tapping myself on the back.

Meanwhile, I understood one important lesson from these daily runs. The mind controls the body. On days when I am in a good mood, I run faster. And there have been days when I have been low, and my body quickly got the message. I had to drag myself through the course, unable to get up the usual speed.

So, as author Deepak Chopra rightly said, what you think that you become. And your body responds to your every mood in that manner.

These are some thoughts which came my way on a sunny Sunday morning.

The Malayali girl who worked for Joe Biden

Lubna Sebastian, 24, was the national director of students for Joe Biden during the latter’s 2020 presidential campaign. She speaks about her experiences

Photos: Lubna Sebastian with President Joe Biden. The family (from left) Adila, Lubna, Shahin and Sebastian 

By Shevlin Sebastian 

On October 18, 2019, Lubna Sebastian was having a turkey sandwich in a hotel hallway in Houston. She was helping the Joe Biden campaign before the debate among the presidential candidates of the Democratic Party. Suddenly Biden came up, saw Lubna, and said, “Thank you for coming all the way down here.” 

Lubna, who had flown in from the campaign headquarters of Philadelphia, a distance of 2900 kms, smiled. 

After another debate at Las Vegas, Lubna went up to Biden and said, “Congratulations, you did a superb job.” 

Biden smiled and said, “Thank you.”  

Lubna saw Biden on the road when she worked on the campaign in Iowa and Nevada. “After each speech, Biden would stay at the venue for two hours, interacting with the local people,” she said. “It was crazy. I did not know you could have so much access to a prominent politician.” 

Biden’s humanity always had an impact. “You may only have 30 seconds with him but people would immediately share their problems: ‘My child has cancer’ or ‘I got laid off’,” said Lubna. “He is a person with whom it is easy to be comfortable with. He will listen and connect with you, no matter where you are from.”   

Asked the difference between Biden and former President Donald Trump, Lubna said, “He is the exact opposite of Trump. The level of exhaustion because of what happened during the past four years is immense. We have lived through a disaster. During the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration, things were so calm that people became a little politically absent. Even I was, at times.” 

But for students who grew up during Trump’s presidency, they had to endure tough times. “They saw mass shootings go unanswered, while their parents could be struck off benefits from Obamacare,” she said. “They had seen kids in cages, who had been separated from their parents on the border with Mexico. They heard about a ban on people from six Muslim countries. Some international students were worried about whether they could study further because of possible future immigration laws. The list goes on. The level of stress which people lived under was abnormal.”

As a result, the students became politically active, including Lubna. She joined the campaign, ‘It’s on Us’, which was founded by the Obama-Biden administration. This was a programme to raise awareness of sexual assault on campuses. She became one of 105 students across the country who became a national committee member. 

Asked why a 24-year-old like her supported one of the oldest candidates (Biden is 78), Lubna laughed on a Zoom call, and said, “I grew up seeing Biden on TV. He always seemed personable, someone who was very empathetic and down-to-earth. I felt I had a connection with him.” 

Lubna joined Biden’s campaign as an assistant. When some students, after doing their internships, returned to their schools, Lubna set up a programme to keep the students plugged into the campaign. 

In July, 2020, Lubna was promoted to be the national director of students for Joe Biden. There were over 400 student chapters. Lubna developed campaign updates and national events for the students across the country. 

By this time, Lubna was working 16 hours a day. “Campaign work is back-breaking, and you cannot do it unless you deeply believe in the candidate,” she said. 

On September 3, 2020, Lubna sat for her citizenship examination. Later, Biden wrote a letter in which he congratulated Lubna on becoming a citizen. ‘Your family decided to make this country home because they knew, above all else, America is all about possibilities,’ he wrote.  

Lubna voted by mail for Biden, on October 3, a month before the election. 

After the campaign, in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump to become the 46th President of the United States, Lubna worked on the committee that organised the inauguration ceremony of Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. After a month relaxing, Lubna is now job hunting from Bethesda, Maryland, where she is staying with her parents.

Lubna’s father Sebastian James is a Washington-based economist with the World Bank. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, in 1995, he got into the Indian Revenue Service and was posted in Delhi. Later, he completed his Master’s and PhD from Harvard University. He resigned from the Government of India when he was Joint Commissioner and went to America in 2002. “I wanted a more challenging life,” he said.  

A Christian, he is married to a Malayali Muslim Shahin whom he had met in Delhi. “It was love at first sight for me,” he said. 

Asked whether the couple faced pressure from their families when they decided to get married, Sebastian said, “Shahin’s father did not believe religion should come in the way of two people who are in love. My side of the family had some reservations, but I convinced them that Shahin’s character was more important than her religion. In both our families, we had members who had cross-religious marriages, and they were doing fine.” 

Apart from Lubna, the couple has another daughter, Adila, who is 17.

Interestingly, both Lubna’s mother and she were born in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Delhi, which was set up in 1956. The family migrated when Lubna was five years old. “Growing up in America, there was a lot of pressure to conform,” said Lubna. “No one could pronounce my name. Or they would do it incorrectly. I looked very different from my classmates, most of whom were white. As a child, you don’t want to be different. You want to be like everybody else.”

She felt she did not belong at times. But when she grew up and worked on different professional projects, Lubna met with a diverse range of people who belonged to so many different countries. “We had the most fun, and brought unique experiences to the table,” she said.  

Asked the meaning of her name, Lubna said, “It is an Arabic word which means river of milk in paradise. It is also the name of a tree that produces a fragrant flower.” Many people tell Lubna it is a beautiful name, including her family who are originally from Thiruvananthapuram.

When she was growing up, she would come to Kerala once every two years. But in college, the gaps became larger. The last time she came was in December, 2019. “I grew up with my mom’s parents, because they were in Delhi, so I was closer to them,” she said.  

Lubna admits that when she comes to Kerala, she feels she is reconnecting with her roots. “I blend in a lot more easily because everybody looks like me, unlike in the US, where I don’t always see anybody else like me,” she said. 

Lubna particularly enjoys eating the fruits in Kerala which she says are very fresh, like mangos, bananas, and guavas. 

Asked about her plans, Lubna says she is interested in a career in politics. “There are different ways to be politically active,” she said. “It can be through elected office, or advocacy groups that are inherently political.” 

(Published in OnManorama)

Face-to-face with death

By Shevlin Sebastian

Mangalore native, Shazeer Majeed, a war surgeon talks about his work in Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Iraq and Jordan

On a sunny February morning, in the residential area of Shmeisani in Amman, Jordan, the Mangalore native Shazeer Majeed looks out of the third-floor window. He has been in Amman for the past one year as the medical director for the Reconstructive Surgery Project of Medecins San Frontieres (MSF).

The organisation brings in war-wounded patients who need reconstructive, maxillofacial, plastic and orthopaedic surgery from Palestine, Iraq, Yemen as well as Syrian refugees living in Jordan. “We want to return them to a near-normal life,” said Shazeer.

But as he stared out of the window, the image of Noor Abdullah (name changed) came to his mind. The 14-year-old lived in the town of Ad Dahi in Yemen. He had found a land mine near his house. He tried to open it because it fetched a good price with scrap-metal dealers, but it exploded.    

The major injury was to his right hand. Noor was rushed to the emergency room of a hospital run by MSF. “There were a lot of shrapnel wounds and his forearm had fractured,” said Shazeer, who is a war surgeon. “The main artery which supplies blood to the hand was damaged.” 

The boy was in shock. But at the same time, he was aware of his injury. He kept telling Shazeer, “Please do not amputate my hand.” 

At that moment Shazeer did not have the equipment or the instruments to do vascular surgery. The instruments were in another MSF project, at Hodeidah, 53 kms away. But within an hour, it was brought to the hospital. 

Shazeer did a graft repair. He took a vein from the leg and used it on the forearm. “We were able to re-connect the arteries and restore the blood supply, which fixed the fracture and saved his hand,” said Shazeer, who has done numerous stints in South Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Yemen. Within a couple of weeks, Noor was able to move his fingers and arms. And in four months, he made a complete recovery. 

But not everybody experiences this recovery. Shazeer admits there are many times when the patient dies. “But I pick myself up,” he said. “Honestly, we are putting in 16 or 18-hour days and when we return to our apartments, we just want to sleep. There is no time to think about victory or defeat in the operation theatre. Sometimes, after a patient passes away, we immediately begin work on another patient to save his life.”

There have been times when Shazeer has worked for over 30 hours at a stretch. This was during a stint in Yemen. “There was fighting close by,” he said. “We just kept receiving patients, so we slept when the operation theatre would be cleaned before the next patient was brought in.” 

Shazeer says that he copes with the job by shutting out thoughts about it as soon as he leaves the MSF Mission. “Otherwise, it would be impossible for me to remain calm,” he said. 

Sometimes, the MSF sends its staff to another country for five days, so that they can recover from the stress and the tension. “So, if you are in Yemen, they will send you to Djibouti,” said Shazeer. 

As for the patients, most of them are ordinary men, women and children. The military has its hospital to treat their victims. 

Usually, the people suffer from wounds and injuries which take place when a bomb blast happens. There are also high-velocity bullet injuries. But not all injuries are caused by the war between the Saudis, who are allied with the government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and the Houthis. 

“Sometimes, bullet injuries happen when there are fights between family members or friends because Yemen has one of the highest ratios of gun ownership per population in the world,” said Shazeer. “Everyone carries a gun in Yemen.” 

Even minor injuries can become fatal. Sometimes, the bullet may hit the leg. But if the hospital is four hours away, the person will bleed to death. Sometimes, the gunshot may be to the chest but the hospital may be only 20 minutes away. “Then he will get proper treatment and survive,” said Shazeer. 

Most of the time there are no facilities, like in any hospital. “There is a shortage of blood, or sometimes, we don’t have the right equipment,” said Shazeer. “It is usually a low-resource setting. So, I have developed ways to overcome these limitations.” 

As to the precautions that are taken to safeguard the lives of the doctors, nurses and patients, the MSF shares their location with the warring parties. On the roof of the hospital, there is a large logo of MSF; this can be seen from the air, along with the Red Cross sign which depicts a hospital. However, despite these precautions, MSF hospitals have been targeted in Yemen and Afghanistan. 

On May 12, 2020, insurgents attacked the Dasht-e-Barchi maternity hospital in Kabul. Twenty-four mothers, children and babies were shot dead. “The organisation is always in touch with the local authorities and keeps them updated,” said Shazeer. “We tell them we are impartial and neutral and have only one aim: to provide medical care to the people who need it.” 

Shazeer feels sad about the impact of the six-year war on Yemen. The economy is in freefall. Many young Yemenis want to go abroad for studies. Now they are unable to do so because of severe financial constraints. The medical facilities have broken down. 

“There is a lot of hardship, and a high degree of malnutrition because of food shortages,” he said. “There are outbreaks of cholera. But the people are nice, humble and smart. They are eager to learn and are good at grasping a subject.” 

Expectedly, Yemen had a large number of Malayalis. Before the war began in 2014, his MSF colleagues in Yemen worked with a lot of Malayali nurses. Now all of them have left the country. Many of them took advantage of Operation Raahat, which was conducted by the Indian Armed Forces to evacuate Indian citizens and foreign nationals from Yemen in April, 2015. “I don’t think there are any Malayalis left in the country,” said Shazeer.

However, there are many Yemenis of Indian origin. Their great grandfathers had migrated to Aden from India during the British rule, which began in 1839.  

A desire to help

Shazeer joined MSF in September 2014, because he was interested in doing humanitarian work. His inspiration was his father, Abdul Majeed, a surgeon who always helped the downtrodden as well as his former mother-in-law Nimmi Sheriff. “Their work for the poor had a big impact on me,” he said.

As for his education, he did his undergraduate studies from Yenepoya Medical College in Mangalore. This was followed by a residency in general surgery at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kochi. Then Shazeer did his ‘humanitarian surgery in an austere environment’ from the Catholic University of Leuven, Brussels in 2018. At present, he is pursuing his Master’s in Public Health from King’s College, London.

Meanwhile, all these years of working in war zones has changed Shazeer. “I appreciate life much more,” he said. “We complain when we don’t have electricity in our houses for 15 minutes but there are people who stay in 50 degrees centigrade, and do not have power for days together.”

It is also a blessing to walk around in a city like Mangalore. “You can get out of your house, and get back without any major incident happening to you,” he said. “That is no longer the case in Syria, Palestine and Yemen. You could be shot at or bombed. I appreciate everything about life.”

Whenever he finishes a stint with MSF, Shazeer returns to Mangalore where he does operations alongside his father Abdul who works in private hospitals.

Asked how he has viewed the incessant attacks by one group of men on another, and vice versa, Shazeer said, “Man has been killing each other since the beginning of time. There has never been a time when men have not killed other men. It is usually in the name of religion, country, caste, or tribe. Man will always find a reason to kill other human beings. But what is most disheartening is that those who suffer are not involved in the battle. They are the ordinary people who just want to get on with their daily lives, like having a job and looking after their family. They want a normal life.”

(Published in Onmanorama.com)