Midnight in Mumbai

We had a whole-day marathon meeting with the ASPBAE leaders, reviewing the draft evaluation report they had commissioned Vasanth and myself to write.

I walked around the streets near the Diplomat Hotel, where we have been booked by our hosts. The sidewalks are like the night market in Chiang Mai, full of stalls selling bangles, crafts, and all sorts of goods for tourists. I dropped in a small book store, hoping to find some titles that are selling cheaper here than in the Philippine malls.

I got the new edition of Freakonomics, and the book co-written by Barbara and Allan Pease, why men don’t listen and women can’t read maps. I had given Girlie the latest book written by the same couple, why men don’t have a clue and women love to buy shoes, and we had a good laugh over some of their observations.

I got back to the hotel to do my e-mails and post a blog. John, an ASPBAE staff, kindly lent me a laptop with Wi-Fi connection. He did some studies in the Philippines and was wearing a Pinoy T-shirt. When I met him for the first time, I asked what he found most interesting in the Philippines. He said, “I would like women in India to experience walking the streets of Manila at midnight.”

I asked why. He said that women tend to be harassed when they walk on the streets of Indian cities at night.

I got a welcome e-mail from Girlie, with a twist. She said she had done half of an entry for her blog before realizing that she was drafting it on my blog which she had opened. ” Don’t want to finish it. Don’t want to delete it. Just keep it and answer it,” she wrote.

Girlie’s unfinished blog

Charles Handy in his book, Myself and Other More Important Matters, writes that there are three occupations that do not require prior formal training, even though they are very important – becoming a politician, parent, or manager.

May I add that in this life, a university education does not always lead to one becoming an excellent parent, politician, or manager. So what can prepare us for these occupations? These are the roles that matter and their decisions make a difference in our life.

For many teenagers in the Philippines, becoming a parent is a daily event. In fact we have so many girls becoming pregnant because they don’t know how to have safe sex. Our country has millions of citizens placed in harm’s way because of politicians whose values and minds are as colorful as scum in polluted swamps.

My answer is recognizing the value of lifelong learning and developing grassroots learning systems. Ed and I have been advocates of lifelong learning and we have spent fifteen years learning how to build alternative learning systems. We have experimented in developing curricula for grassroots leaders, grassroots educators, even for grassroots journalists. If the business managers have the Asian Institute of Management, we have the Philippine Danish folkschool where we train grassroots leaders in communications, negotiations, conflict-management, and gender relations.

Why is grassroots education important? because for an 88 million population, we cannot afford to have politicians making laws and policies that push its citizenry to the brink of chaos and poverty. Nor can we afford to have parents who are not learning from the science and art of growing families. Becoming managers is not difficult if we recognize the importance of continuing adult education. In fact we have many people who have these three roles; and they need appropriate education for them to become assets to our nation…

Marriage is a long conversation

Girlie and I both like Charles Handy, especially his later writings. We often use his simple quadrant for work – Paid work, House work, Study work, and Gift work. It’s useful for assessing how one allocates time and energy, but even more useful for checking how two partners divide our responsibilities.

More often than not, there is either unfair division of work, or conflict between partners who both have paid work, given the way roles of men and women have been socially determined. Charles described the solution he and his wife Elizabeth agreed on. He would schedule most of his paid work within one half of the year, and adjusted his other year assisting Elizabeth to do her paid work.

When we first read this, Girlie and I thought it would be a good idea if we could arrive at a similar arrangement, assisting one another in our paid work. But unlike Charles and Elizabeth, neither of us can earn in half a year what we need for the whole year and save some for the future.

Still, it is a useful idea to consider, especially for young couples who have enough lead time to plan. Charles rightly cautions thatwhile the solution they arrived at works for them, it may not be possible for others.

What matters is that the partners continue discussing it and exploring options. That is in the spirit of Girlie’s description of marriage as “a long conversation.”

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