I’m wearing sky blue socks with Ouiser’s face on them while checking on Jon Jacques, my new sous vide cooker that is working away gently on a marinated pork tenderloin. Both are Christmas gifts from my lovely thoughtful wife. Soothed by sounds of softly gurgling water emanating from Jon Jacques, the queen of England and I contemplate this annus horribilis, Latin for the year that smelled like ass.

2021 was the year we realized we weren’t very smart. We rejected democracy in favor of race and religion. In the first few days of the new year, just when we were celebrating the return of the rule of law to America – oh look – a squirrel!!

Travel has always been a good squirrel for us. After our year of quarantine we set out cautiously in 2021. I got to hike from the Chisos mountains across the desert to Terlingua in January. For spring break the kids and I went on a short backpacking trip in the Appalachians. We took a family vaca to Port Aransas on the Gulf coast around Jo’s birthday, and then we returned in September with Nicolle’s family and Greta. In July we went on a five-week road trip from Maine to Virginia, meeting Alu and Michelle, Aaron’s family, and friends along the way. In October Jo booked us a flash vacation to New York that we all loved. We ended the year skiing in Telluride – more about that later. For a family touched by wanderlust, it was good to get out again. In fact, by the time of we left for the east coast in summer, the pandemic appeared to be on its back foot. It was just a matter of getting the world vaccinated before the virus could mutate. But we hoarded our vaccines while the virus continued to evolve among the remaining 6 billion earthlings and – look – another squirrel!

The kids had a pretty good year. Evan finished primary and started middle school. He grew out of clothes every couple of weeks, dropped his voice, and grew the outlines of a mustache. He finished a perfect soccer season at the beginning of summer and rejoined all his team mates in Fall in a higher division, reaching the finals in the soccer tournament in December. Evan is beginning to show some interest in academics and had a respectable first trimester in middle school. Or may be we are connecting the dots into a pattern we like. When not asleep, or perhaps instead of sleeping, Evan would prefer playing Minecraft, watching Minecraft videos on YouTube, or reading, in that order. Sometimes he even sketches, eats, plays the guitar, and bathes. Vivian was elected to give the speech for her graduating class at the end of middle school. She got into a competitive high school that she is liking. She seems to be enjoying academics and an active social life. She feels like a college student, with her breaks between classes, a huge campus, and a cappuccino for breakfast at the dining hall. She met a lovely girl, a fellow student, and they dated for *three* solid months including a trip to the high school dance! During her parent-teacher conference, her advisor declared that “Vivian is killing it”. Though both Vivian and Evan’s schools have avoided it so far, in 2021 schools became the new battle ground for the morally virtuous who are increasingly telling teachers what to teach our children so that they can be blissfully ignorant of past shames and – omg – that squirrel, again!

We had a huge snow storm and a week of way below-normal temperatures in Austin back in February. Ouiser, Evan, and Vivian loved playing in the snow. Ouiser thought it was great to frolic and jump about in the fresh powder. An estimated 700 Texans died. Power plants and the grid were not winterized and hundreds of thousands of Texans were without power in freezing weather for days. Manju Shah, who we called Mummy and she really was everyone’s mother, died during the storm. A few months later, her beloved husband, Lalji Shah, died. In between their deaths, we celebrated the life of my dear friend Navaneet Bill Rose. Then Alu’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Beaton died. I only met her once but through Michelle we felt connected to her. Jo and I attended funerals in person and on zoom. We mourned in quarantine for our friends. 2021 saw a lot of deaths. More people died of Covid than during the previous year, especially in my two home countries – the US and India. The Delta variant hit India hard in summer. During this desperate time, my friends in India responded and helped thousands of people breathe and live to see another day, but many more died. Forest fires, floods, tornados, storms, and drought killed even more. We sleepwalked another 12 months closer to the global catastrophic climate disaster that we are leaving for our children to – look – is that the same squirrel?!!

This year I have ten times more photos of Ouiser and Zeus on my phone than the rest of my family. I counted. Ouiser and I go for a walk most mornings after the kids are off to school. She trots behind me up the trail in Edwards park or gallops through Turkey creek like a wild mustang. In the evenings, Jo, Vivian, or I take her to Rosedale school where she gets to socialize with her friends. Zeus sleeps on Evan or me at night and on Jo’s lap during the day. She and Ouiser sniff and lick each other every time one or the other walks back into the house, like a long lost friend. We are a pretty solid family of six now. Ouiser and Zeus watch Jo and I watch Ted Lasso after dinner. They listen to us discuss critical race theory. They agree that this country, founded on freedom and equality, isn’t free or equal for everybody. That Trump’s supreme court, for the first time in American history, is rolling back rights. That you win elections fairly but if you lose they were stollen by – omg – that same fucking squirrel again!

So we got to Telluride on a day of incredible blue skies and brilliant white snow. Vivian, Evan, and Lili climbed up a snowy ridge outside the condo and played while Jo, Carrol and I watched from the living room picture windows. Soon after that, Vivian couldn’t find her phone. The next morning we got dressed and headed to the slopes. Vivian looked pretty confident as she tried snowboarding for the very first time. After a few runs on the gentle training hill, she decided to try the slopes. Lili, who had never been on snow before, was more cautious. Evan zipped ahead on his skies. I hung back behind everyone. Then I came up on Vivian, sitting on the snow, still strapped to her board, holding her left wrist in a strange way. Having seen almost exactly this almost exactly three years ago when Vivian broke her arm falling out of a tree, I knew what was ahead. I called for a ski patrol. They snowmobiled her and Lili to a van that drove them down to the ER in Telluride. I met Evan at the bottom of the lift and Jo picked us up from the closest parking lot. Two hours later Vivian was in a splint and had a diagnosis of a crunched left radius near her wrist. Her board had caught its edge on a pile of snow and flipped her around. She felt herself falling backwards downhill and stuck her left arm out. The next day she felt worse. But she’s a trooper and hung in there and we had a pretty good vacation. And we found Vivian’s phone in the snow three days later! We returned to Austin on Christmas eve, passing Santa up there in the moonlit skies high over the Rockies. The next day we had an outdoors Christmas at Nicolle’s. On Monday morning I took Vivian to the orthopedic surgeon to get her bone set. She selected a hot pink cast because the black one three years ago was possibly too goth. Then Jo took her for a Covid test that came back positive. The rest of us go in for Covid tests today.

So here we are again at the arbitrary end of another heliocentric circle, pondering our meaningless existence. Squirrels everywhere.

In the final analysis, Evan would say “eh”, Vivian may say “ok”, and my dear wife would definitely say “meh” and I’ll say 2021 was a rough year but she was kind enough to us. We hope you and yours weathered the ups and downs. JoEllen, Vivian, Evan, Ouiser, Zeus, and I wish you the very best for 2022. Love and hugs to you from the six of us in the White Wooden House.

Dec 29th 2021

Laziness begets laziness, or something biblical like that. Here’s the last month in pictures, again. Writing is for the birds. I should just blog in TikTok.

So here’s the summary. Fall arrived in Austin. Thanksgiving happened. Vivian is still making high school look easy. Evan’s soccer team played well at the Bat City Tournament. We got our Christmas tree earlier than we ever do, and bigger than we ever have. Ouiser went on epic walks. Zeus lent her support to the fledgling start-up by purring very loudly during zoom meetings. Vivian and her girlfriend broke up. Evan dressed up in tails and a top hat for time-travel-Tuesday at school. Jen visited for a weekend of low key fun. Vivian got braces again. Evan got a guitar from our friend Chris and is going to teach himself to play. Jo found us a last minute trip and we are in Telluride for a week.

Getting too lazy to write.

So here’s an update mostly in pictures. We went to the coast (before the NY trip but I never got to blog about it). Carol got her new she-shed delivered. Halloween was fun. Evan was Loki – which isn’t surprising, and Vivian made an elaborate hat and was a poisonous mushroom which was even less surprising. Jen visited Austin over Halloween (and we finally got our new oven just in time). Alu and Michelle came for a quick trip for the Stones concert. Vivian had her first high school dance and finished her first finals week at school (a rite of passage apparently, though she seemed very unconcerned). We’ve hardly seen her since – she is out there perfecting the post-exam partying thing. Oh – and she had her first official with-complete-strangers-kids babysitting gig. Evan finished his term rather well and for what seems like the first time, he gives a shit. His grade in science and a couple of other subjects were what his teacher called the “walks-on-water grade”, so Evan is temporarily in the throes of Big Head syndrome. Ouiser is doing well. She loves her morning walks that end in Turkey Creek or Bull Creek with a nice swim. In the evening she socializes with friends at Rosedale school. I know Ouiser’s friends’ parents better than I know most of Vivian and Evan’s friends’ parents. Zeus is alive and well. For Thanksgiving she has traveled to Canyon Lake to be with family. Jo and I are mostly fulfilling our roles as free Uber drivers. Once a while we get to see each other between our respective rides, especially now that SUP board season is over. While on the topic of rides, I need to mention that what is saving our lazy asses is Vivian’s ride to school. A conscientious teacher who lives close by takes five students from here to school every morning. Bless her heart.

So, pictures.

Here’s some humor to go with your turkey. Happy Thanksgiving.

Seventeen years since the day Jo married me: it feels like that was just yesterday and it feels like it always was this way. One makes only a few really good decisions in life. The one where I convinced Jo to marry me is by far my best. So here we are, celebrating our anniversary with a selfie in New York with Vivian perfectly timing her photo bomb.

If I had to pick the second best decision, that would be the one to have kids – but let’s revisit that one again in a few years, shall we? We did the usual touristy things in New York – starting with a huge New York breakfast after which we were only fit for a horse carriage ride around Central Park. Then a nap, followed by a visit to the 9/11 memorial. How strange to see two giant pools of water where two really tall buildings full of people used to be. I remember standing on the observation deck of one of the towers four decades ago. After walking around the memorial, we went down to Battery Park from where you can see the statue of Liberty. I explained to Vivian and Evan that my immigrant story in the US starts much less dramatically – at the immigration hall of Houston airport, and not on Elis Island, ancient as I may be. Then we wandered into this surreal looking carousel called Sea Glass where the kids and Jo rode on hollow glowing fish that swirled and danced and turned to the beat of even more surreal music. Dinner at Ajisen, a ramen restaurant in China Town. Then the kids and Jo ubered back and I walked through SoHo and Little Italy and up along Broadway past Union Square and then on 6th Avenue to our hotel near Central Park. Later that evening my friend’s son Abhik, dropped by for drinks, and by 11pm we were in line a few blocks away at the Halal Guys food cart.

On Sunday we met Vikram and his lovely family for an enormous brunch in mid town. We sat outside in one of those wood and plastic sheds that have popped up everywhere in an attempt to bring fine dining outdoors during CoVid. Jo and Vivian went “thrifting” in the East Village. Later that evening we strolled down to Times Square and looked at a world bathed in the glow of giant displays. On a wet Monday morning Vivian and I went walking/running in Central Park and then I worked while Jo and the kids went to the Met. In the evening we went to the new Little Island park, wandered through Chelsea market, and then strolled up the H Line to the crazy new buildings at the Hudson Yards – stopping to look at the Shed with it’s giant roller wheels so it can be retracted in 5 minutes, and the Vessel, a vanity sculpture/building that is reminiscent of Escher’s Steps but is unfortunately closed now due to multiple suicides by jumping from it’s open 16-stories of waist high glass rails. Then we wandered into Muji to restock ourselves with precious brown notebooks and pens and pencils before heading home to Evan who was supposedly working on “homework”.

We’ve had a lovely time. Why don’t we come here more often?

NPR describes SB 8, the new Texas abortion law as: “…[it] prohibits terminations after about six weeks, even in the case of incest and rape, and it allows private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone else who helps a woman break the law and gives them money if they win.”

If abortion was an issue that had a clear solution, like say, Covid vaccines, it would have been settled decades ago by the good people of America who are sometimes smarter than they look. But it doesn’t. It pits the individual rights of the woman carrying the fetus against the rights of the unborn fetus. Almost everyone in modern liberal secular democracies agree that a new born deserves the same protections from the state as any one else. Children are not considered the property of their parents to do with them as they choose. In that light, one way to frame the abortion question is: when does the state grant those rights to the child? At birth? Or when it is still a fetus but it is viable outside the womb, which depends on when and where you are pregnant? Or when a heartbeat is first detected using a Doppler transducer and increasingly more sophisticated scientific instruments? No one has a convincing answer, let alone a single correct answer. Texas grudgingly allowed abortions till 20 weeks. The new law lowers that down to six weeks. There isn’t any logical reason to not just keep going to “just a few seconds after fucking”.

The new Texas law relies on private citizens to sue anyone who aids in an abortion. The state will pay them up to $10,000 in bounty as an encouragement. The state is expressly forbidden from directly acting against those who break SB 8 for a reason. By turning all the people of Texas into peeping toms and snitches, the Texas law gets past the usual judicial process that would have otherwise declared the law unconstitutional.

At the center of the target of who gets sued in accordance to SB 8 is the doctor who performs the abortion. My friend Alan did exactly that six days after SB 8 went into effect and then he wrote about it in an op-ed for the Washington Post.

And that is why, on the morning of Sept. 6, I provided an abortion to a woman who, though still in her first trimester, was beyond the state’s new limit. 

I saw Alan two weeks before SB 8 went into effect at a lunch. We had a drink and got caught up and he chatted with Vivian who he still remembered as a little girl. Vivian and I had no idea that afternoon that we would be soon be reading about him in the national news.

Alan performed the abortion because as a doctor, he was simply providing medical care to his patient. It is his job. He swore to do it. But he is also testing the law. Someone needed to.

On the other side, who is the kind of person that stands up for the rights of the unborn fetus over the rights of the mother? That would be the kind of person who works on behalf of the weakest, who doesn’t hurt anyone, who is staunchly against any form of state sanctioned killings – abortion, war, capital punishment, etc. The kind of person who is probably a vegan and practices non-violence even with regard other species. The kind of person who is the opposite of a red-meat-eating war-mongering law-and-order freak. Hmmm. I seemed to have explained myself into the exact opposite of reality. So what is it then that motivates most anti-abortion Americans? Certainly not pacifism and non-violence toward fellow humans. It is because their god prohibits them from committing adultery, eating shellfish, aborting fetuses, and several other things. Adultery and shellfish are a lot harder to give up than telling someone else not to get an abortion.

I’ll never get an abortion – but simply because I’ll never get pregnant. I can’t tell you whether you should – I don’t have the moral certitude or authority. But I do hope that the world that my children grow up in is one where abortion is less necessary. No one wants one. But if someone needs one, that it is legal and safe. Abortion often ends the possibility of a life that could have been, and changes another for ever. Let us let them sort that out with their doctor and their god. Your god won’t mind if you comfort them instead.

Jo and I celebrated our back-to-school lunch last week. We probably didn’t start doing these till Vivian went off to kindergarten. But that is still ten solid years of back-to-school day-drinking. We are rapidly getting used to not having the kids around. Earlier this week we went to Jo’s suping place and paddled and swam and hung out with Ouiser. Mansfield dam is half a mile upstream and the water in this portion of the Colorado comes out from the bottom of Lake Travis. It is the coldest water I have encountered in Texas. I can’t swim in it longer than a few seconds but Jo floats and splashes around in shoulder-deep water for a while. Ouiser had the most fun once she got used to the doggie life jacket. Did I mention that we are really enjoying the kids being back in school : – )

It’s not that we saw them much during summer vacation anymore. Evan mostly stayed in his room, reading or playing Minecraft while shit-talking with Niko over Discord, his headphones firmly clamped over his ears. Vivian left her room periodically, forced out by hunger or to watch Hunter X Hunter on Netflix. In her room she read, snaped with friends, listened to music, and sketched.

Vivian’s school published a survey on vaccination rates for each class and the percentages are pretty good. We get emails from Evan’s school every time a kid tests positive. Just one from the middle school so far, but surprisingly many more from the pre-school campus. I worry about teachers. This should have been easy peasy. Get vaccinated, wear masks, outsmart the bug. I heard an interview on the radio this week where this woman in the army is mad because she feels she is being forced to get vaccinated. She is healthy and doesn’t understand why someone healthy needs a vaccine. We are spending taxpayer dollars to teach her to shoot. The army has already vaccinated her probably against 15 different diseases, all while she was healthy. We should perhaps spend some more tax dollars to teach her to think. I can’t imagine how doctors and nurses are dealing with the pandemic of stupidity. When we went to the kids’ dentist last week (which is why Vivian is wearing the shades in the photo), the staff looked a little rough.

On Friday evening I went to a party and cookout at Vivian’s school. Jo was conveniently in Washington D.C., so I wandered around by myself for a few minutes till I ran into Vivian on the sidelines of a field hockey game. I look around and suddenly realize that Vivian is on her way to being an adult. It’s not the first time that thought has crossed Jo and my minds, but it is still a shock. Vivian went to a club on 6th street for a (outdoor) concert with a friend last weekend and got back home after 11pm. As she texted me on her way home, I had a flashback to my teen years, growing up wrapped in privilege in Hyderabad. Even then there were some close calls. I hope Vivian mostly makes good decisions and learns from her bad ones. I drove her to a friend’s birthday party last night. She is trying to find an identity for herself in her new high school. It’s fun and a bit nerve wracking to watch. On the way to her party, I call the host of where I was headed for dinner to tell him I’ll arrive a little late. Vivian realizes that her detour is the cause of my delay.

She mumbles something like “Dad – thanks for agreeing to take me to this party.”

I say, “So what do I get back in return?”

She smiles and says “I’ll be careful, and I’m building trust”

Evan and I spend a few minutes together most days, on our way to his school in the morning and on the return trip in the afternoon. The other morning he hops into the car and says “Do we only think in the languages we know?” Whoa, kid. Philosophers have been debating this for centuries and more recently linguists and psychologists have gotten into it too. We chat about language of thought, Chomsky, and Pinker. A few years ago, when Vivian realized the existence of her inner monologue, Evan was too young to understand. He said he didn’t have an inner monologue. Now, he recognizes it and chats about it. I challenge him to try to think without language. He thinks for a while and says maybe with music, or in visuals. And then we are at his school.

On the drive back from school one afternoon, Evan asked why the order of the alphabet is what it is. We talk about non-Greek languages. He told me something about Mandarin. I told him about the phonetic ordering of the Hindi alphabet. It’s a fun time to be a parent!

The other kids are doing well. Ouiser loves her morning trail walks and swims, and her evening social time with her other doggy friends. She has extracted a large clear plastic ball that was the squeaker in a toy that Jo got him, and it is her favorite toy ever. My work is coming along. It is 5:20am on a Sunday and I am blogging because I am usually up and working by this time. I am enjoying optimizing my time, trying to squeeze in the usual 12 hour workdays in a startup while keeping my mornings with Ouiser and our evenings with the kids from changing too much. If you know anyone who enjoys living at the intersection of AI and video, I’d love to invite them for a beer or a tea or anything in-between, virtually. I’m on zoom a few hours everyday. I had heard and read how it wasn’t the best format to meet, but I’m loving it so far. The rest of the time I’m on Evan’s old Chromebook or working things out in my trusty engineering notebook with a pencil. When I did this 22 years ago, we rented office space, and bought servers and computers and furniture. Now we live in our home offices and kitchen tables and meet and work in the cloud. I think in three time zones from Boston to Palo Alto, and I strangely know the time in Karachi. This little adventure definitely keeps things interesting.

We made it back to Austin in the beginning of August by which time the pandemic in America was mostly just an IQ test. But it is a free country and you can’t outlaw stupidity. In Texas it is constitutionally protected right.

So the spring of hope is a distant memory. Evan is still too young to be vaccinated – eating out indoors is over. But we did make it to a couple of movies. Jo picked the time carefully, so we were the only ones in the entire movie theater. Or maybe we picked really crappy movies to watch. We told the kids we had rented out the theater for them.

Evan is taller and browner and buffer after summer. He’s back to his old school and his old soccer team and seems to not be unhappy with either arrangement. He has mastered the art of setting expectations pretty damn low. So I am thrilled when he does five minutes of homework at bedtime on Sunday night. Or when he eats a piece of salmon. I can see where this is headed. Great job, Evan. That was fantastic breathing! Try another one. Not now, whenever. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But Evan is funny and quirky and cute and continues to stay alive and some would even say, thrive.

Vivian is settling into her new school. At 300 acres the campus is a tad bigger than the two-acre patch that was her old school – which she dearly loved. But she is settling in and making friends and spending most of her evenings buried in homework after volleyball practice or games. She expected that and it seems to make her happy. We met our international student that we are “hosting”. We hope to see more of her and may be Evan will try to learn a bit of Korean from her.

Our other baby, Ouiser, is doing well (Zeus the cat doesn’t give a shit because she’s a cat). After putting on a few extra pounds during her boarding, she is getting her shape back again. I enjoy walking her at Zilker or Edwards or Turkey Creek in the mornings and she goes to visit her neighborhood friends at the park at Rosedale School in the evenings. She enjoys the best social life in the family. Though it does involve smelling a lot of butts.

• 

Jo has taken to suping. She bought an eleven and a half foot board she takes for paddling. The board sits in our bedroom when not in use. I’m thinking if we lived by a beach, this would be when the kids and I realize that we’ve lost her to the surfing life. Is there a suping life?

I have – hold on to your pants – started working. Not much has changed – I’m still not getting paid. But instead of not getting paid to do nothing, now I don’t get paid to work. I’m smart, aint I? Anyway, it is a startup and it is in stealth mode so I can’t say anything more except that it sucks to start my day an hour before sunrise. I’ve discovered yet again that I’m not a morning person. Or an afternoon or evening person. Besides being a hooker, do you have a suggestion for a well paid profession where I can work from after dinner till 2am while making the world a better place?

The weekends are already a blur. Jo has taken up the slack with me pretending to work, which wasn’t much of a slack to take up. Vivian had her friend over for a sleepover this weekend. Evan had his over last weekend. Karen took the kids to the Blue Hole on Sunday afternoon (thanks for the videos, Karen – I extracted a couple of stills from them). Both Vivian and Evan had so much fun.

• 

• 

• 

But summer is over – as in the time of year when the kids are out of school, not the time of year when it isn’t like a sweaty armpit outside – and we’ve got a semblance of our lives back, at least during the week. One of these days when Jo isn’t out suping on the lake we’ll go and have our celebratory back-to-school drinks for brunch. Oh – she is looking for a boathouse on the water. Just a boathouse, not a home. Must have a bathroom. And a nice cozy space for her sup board.

In Virginia, Vivian and Evan got to hang with their cousins. And we did fun adult things with Aaron and Beth like visiting a brew pub and arranging a seafood boil. Not to take away from any of these fine activities and people, but we also got to go to the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News!

My family groans when we enter museums. I like to read everything and view everything s-l-o-w-l-y. If its a maritime museum, it feels as if time has stopped. Or even reversed. Jo first experienced this time freeze when we went to the maritime museum in Halifax many years ago when we were there for Michelle and Alu’s wedding (in a sad irony, as I type this Michelle and Alu are both in Halifax today for a less joyous event). About five years ago we went to the Vasa museum near Stockholm. That was a treat but also a torture because Jo and the kids were done and ready in a mere 5 hours!! So I was pleasantly surprised when Jo took Aaron’s suggestion to go see the Mariners’ Museum. Hell – it was pouring rain anyway and admission is just a buck. One dollar. What could go wrong?

I won’t bore you with the details. If you are interested in the first battle of the ironclads, this is where they are restoring the salvaged remains of the USS Monitor. This tank below contains the full 21 1/2 foot rotating turret of the ship, slowly being electrolysed back into life after having spent a hundred years in her watery grave. The photo above is a model of the Monitor’s arch enemy, the CSS Virginia, and in the background is a full scale mock of the ship.

The Monitor and the Virginia were the world’s two first ironclad battleships to do battle. They pounded each other at close range for hours on a March morning in 1862 in the calm enclosed waters between Newport News and Norfolk and changed the course of naval battles and American history from that moment forward. Neither ship won, but neither ship suffered much damage. According to historians, if the Monitor had not arrived when she did, the Virginia may instead have steamed north up the Potomac and shelled the White House and the Capitol with impunity and today we wouldn’t be trying to outlaw the Confederate Flag.

The museum tells the fascinating story of how both these ironclads came about and the circumstances of their first meeting. I hurried through everything as fast as I could, finished, walked back to where the family was waiting patiently, and realized that this was just one exhibit in the fascinating museum. If you are within a hundred miles of this place, go take a look. Even Vivian, Evan, and Jo would agree.

Our little baby is starting high school in a week. And our littler baby is headed for middle school. Being the plan-years-ahead types of parents we are decidedly not, we surprised ourselves by driving Vivian and Evan around a few college campuses while we travelled. Jo got the idea from a friend with a son of Vivian’s age. We drove to or through Colby, Harvard, MIT, Yale, Vasser, Washington College (Jo’s alma mater), URI, and William and Mary. We were in the neighborhood of Brown and Johns Hopkins, and perhaps a handful others that we didn’t get to. While it would be wonderful if Vivian or Evan have to choose between these schools, that is unlikely and moreover it isn’t the point. We wanted to show them what campuses look like and to inspire them a bit. And we would have had to literally drive out of our way to avoid most of these colleges. Besides, my philosophy about colleges and their campuses is simpler: go to the best college that will have you. Period. Of course I say that after having enjoyed the campuses of the Hyderabad Public School and Pilani, which makes me sound pretty damn insincere.

We had a joke about these campuses. They are all, with the exception of MIT and a couple others, old and prestigious liberal arts colleges. But they award degrees in the sciences and often engineering too. These colleges have different buildings for Jewish Studies and African American Women’s Studies but there was usually The So-and-So Science Hall. Science is a nice umbrella term, but come on. Now, I admit that here too I’m guilty of hypocrisy. In Pilani, the physics, chem, and bio departments were all in the S-Block but it was a small school with only four interconnected buildings for all the different academic departments. Going further back, in HPS we learned science till the 7th grade. From the 8th grade Biology, Physics, and Chemistry are different subjects with their own textbooks and separate teachers and labs. So I am more than weirded out by the American system of learning “science” well past one’s tweens. But judging by the number of Nobel prize winners in the sciences (haha) from the US versus India, I should let that one pass, shouldn’t I?

Vivian and Evan enjoyed the brief visits and Vasser, Yale, and Harvard were Vivian’s favorites. These kids may belong to the last generation whose parents are willing to pay ridiculous sums of money to institutions associated with historic buildings and campuses. Delivery of high quality higher education in other ways will happen within a few decades. So if you’re Evan’s offspring reading this blog post in 2050, I can understand if you are bewildered. What is this so-called “college tour” you “blog” about, Grandpa?

Growing up I didn’t enjoy history lessons at school. It was this dry pedantic subject filled with dates and facts that were perhaps imbued by historians with greater precision than they meritted. I could “mug” – the word used in the Hyderabad Public School for memorize. So I could easily fill four sheets of single ruled foolscap paper in neat cursive writing in Parker Washable Royal Blue ink about the details of the battle between Alexander and Porus in 326 BC. Or how Muhammad bin Tughlaq hastened the downfall of the Delhi Sultanate during his disastrous reign in the 1300’s though he was a genius. I got top grades but history had no fascination for me. Besides, it is burdened by one huge unredeemable fact. It’s in the past. When you are 13, life is about the present. And perhaps the future.

Understandably I wasn’t jumping with excitement when Jo planned a visit to the site of the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia with Aaron as our guide. I went along and hoped that the kids would find it interesting.

Sometime during the last few decades historians have recreated the earthen lines of the allied forces from historical data. The French and Washington’s troops attacked Cornwallis and his English troops holed up in Yorktown in October 1781. The French provided a naval blockade along the York river to prevent the British from resupplying from the water. Aaron explained all this as we walked along the trenches and earthworks, imagining cannon balls and mortar shells raining down on both sides that were separated by less than half a mile. Then we walked up to Redoubt Number 10. Redoubt is a new word in my vocabulary. We learned from Aaron that it is an enclosed defensive fortification that is usually separate from the main fort and is a often a raised earthen structure. In the case of Yorktown the redoubts had steep earthen walls and sharpened timber palisades and trenches under them that made scaling the redoubt difficult, especially when someone from above was shooting musket balls at you.

Here’s what happened according to the Army College website (https://ahec.armywarcollege.edu/trail/Redoubt10/index.cfm).

With their stores dwindling, the British tried to defend the town as the Americans began construction of another, closer trench line. The second trench line was directly under the fire of the last two redoubts the British forces held, allowing Cornwallis’ men to pour artillery onto the troops digging furiously. Washington and his French counterpart, Lieutenant General Comte de Rochambeau, realized the only way they could complete the second line of trenches, and thus get their troops and artillery close enough to storm the town, was to take the two last redoubts.

On the evening of October 14th, two assault parties formed to attack the two redoubts, designated “Redoubts 10 and 9.” A French band under Major General Baron De Viomenil began their attack on Redoubt 9, while LTC Alexander Hamilton commanded the Americans attacking Redoubt 10. Both forces numbered 400 men, and neither had loaded weapons. Instead, the troops fixed their bayonets and followed teams of sappers to the bases of the redoubts. Each redoubt was surrounded by an abatis, or sharpened tree branches tangled together similar to modern day barbed wire, which required the sappers to tear down. The Soldiers, now under heavy musket fire from the British, dropped fascines (bundles of sticks tied with yarn) into the ditch surrounding the redoubt, and placed ladders to climb the sides of the fortification.

The fighting within the redoubts digressed into violent hand-to-hand combat. Washington reported on the assault, simply stating the allies “advanced under the fire of the Enemy without returning a shot and effected the business with bayonet only.” The French captured one hundred and twenty British and Hessian soldiers in thirty minutes, while the Americans captured seventy in Redout 10.

The next morning, the second line of trenches included the two redoubts, allowing the Americans and French to bombard the British incessantly. The British commanders realized there were no reinforcements coming and supplies were running dangerously low. Finally, on the October 17th, Cornwallis sent a drummer boy and an officer to discuss the terms of his surrender.

Vivian and Evan had of course learned about Hamilton’s role not from history books at school but thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda, so they sang it from the walls of the redoubt.

Cornwallis’ surrender marked the end of the last major battle in the American war of independence. Having lost here, the British next sent him to the Raj as the Governor General of India. Aaron pointed out that this one man was responsible for trying to subjugate people on both sides of our family. History is a lot more fun when you learn about it standing on what was once a blood stained battlefield. And when you have a personal dislike for the enemy commander. Asshole.