Unwinding

I love Sundays!! Spent a really relaxing morning doing yoga, meditating, walking around Banjara Hills (and discovering an AMAZING hidden bakery run out of a woman's house... you walk through this gate...no signs...but inside are the most amazing creations of chocolate cake, cheesecake, cupcakes, and brownies!).

One of the morning highlights (besides a brownie breakfast) was getting an Ayurvedic massage. Entering the Ayurvedic spa was a bit surreal... there must have been a VVIP in there, because there was an entourage of five men with machine guns standing outside! Not necessarily a relaxing start, but oh well...

I'm not sure what it is about Ayurvedic massages, but I've grown to absolutely love them. I think it's all the oil that feels so nourishing to my skin, which has gotten really dry and flakey in the 50-degree winter here ;)

What's funny about Ayurvedic massages is how much I used to absolutely detest them! How much? This is an excerpt from my journal on December 2nd, 2007 -- just a couple of weeks after arriving in India:

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Weekend #3 in Hyderabad: My Quest for Inner Peace

I am squatting underneath a faucet that’s about knee-height. The showerhead isn’t working, so this will have to do. Nearby is a large garden pail full of mud – it literally looks like dirt from outside, mixed with water. Yellowish gook is slowly coming off my body and making a mess all over the bathroom floor tiles. This is Hyderabad, where there are no shower curtains or bathtubs, so all shower run-off makes its way all over the floor. I rub my arms, trying to wash all the gook off. But my body is covered in so much oil that the water literally just pools together on my skin and falls to the ground.

Because I’m squatting under a tiny faucet, I have to be strategic about washing my body – one appendage at a time. Meanwhile, there’s a wet paper towel covering my head. Why? Don’t ask me…a woman put it on, and I haven’t taken it off yet. The shampoo comes in a little paper sachet that’s disintegrating with the water – I decide maybe I’ll save washing my hair for later. Regardless of how much I scrub my body, I do not feel any cleaner and now the bathroom looks like one massive oil spill.

The hot water turns into a lukewarm temperature, and I decide it’s as good a time as any to leave. There are no towels, and instead I am given a green-and-white-checkered cloth – it looks like it belongs on a picnic table but is the material consistency of a Mr. Clean reusable cleansing cloth. A somewhat suitable end to this morning’s unsuccessful quest for tranquility…I have learned my lesson the hard way: Ayurvedic massages are just not my thing.

It’s too bad, really…All week I was very excited for the 350 rupee ($9 USD) massage. And the Ayurvedic tradition is very strong in this country; it’s the ancient science of Indian herbal medicine and holistic healing.

Herbal, yes. But it felt more like I was being prepared to be eaten.

First comes the oil…what feels like a whole cup-full, right on my face. I am so taken-aback, I almost jump off the table. It feels like Crisco. I am about to say no, but considering the oil is already oozing down my forehead, cheeks and chin, I decide to just go along with the experience. As she rubs the oil deeper into my skin, thoughts of clogged pores permeate my thoughts (against my will, I’ve become a product of the Neutrogena marketers from my adolescent years). Deep breath. Deep breath.

Next comes the rest of my body. And I realize this is much less a massage to loosen my muscles than simply a rubbing of oil all around. Lots of attention to parts of my body I don’t necessarily need or want massaged – like my stomach. In fact, that’s really just tickling. Relax. Relax. Go to your happy place, I tell myself.

I am turned over and she marinates my other side. Face-down, there is no hole for my head, so I feel like I’m suffocating in the almond-smelling oil. Happy place, happy place. Needless to say, anytime you must consciously find your “happy place” while you’re getting massaged…well, that’s just not a good sign.

She leaves and comes back with a towel. I think that I am done, but I learn there is another layer of marinade to come. This time, it feels (and smells) like butter with brown sugar…which theoretically sounds potentially appealing, but I am already oiled up and don’t want any more food products on my body. The butter smells like ghee from the temples of Tibet I visited this past summer, and I try to convince myself (unfortunately quite unsuccessfully) that I’m having a spiritual healing experience.

Later that night I get a text message from John: "Shower number 2. 3 shampoos later and I still feel dirty and now my bathroom looks like Valdez."

A bit of nature and a whole lotta rupees...

One of the things I miss most about New York (besides my amazing friends and family!) is living just a couple of blocks from Central Park -- a complete oasis in the middle of the city. Considering that, it's pretty funny it's taken me over two years to explore KBR Park -- only 10 minutes away from my apartment here in Hyderabad! (that's not completely true... Tyler and I went to KBR Park for our first date but got kicked out by the police because it was past sunset, so that doesn't really count...)

Finally truly explored KBR Park earlier this month with Deepna and Tracy. The grounds were a bit more "brown" and drab that I expected, but I was just thrilled you couldn't hear the cars and two-wheelers honking from inside. And I shouldn't be too critical -- there were trees everywhere, walking trails were great -- and even lined with quotes about preserving nature. The best part? Peacocks seemed to greet us at every turn!

Turns out the park was once the Nizam's hunting grounds... but I can only imagine what animals were being hunted in Hyderabad?! The history of the Nizams here in Hyderabad is fascinating: as I surprisingly learned from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, the Nizam of Hyderabad, Osman Ali Khan Asaf Jah VII, is the 5th richest person in the history of mankind, with a net worth equivalent of $210.8 billion! (Cleopatra is 21; Bill Gates is 37... #1 and #2 are John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie)

This last Nizam ruled Hyderabad between 1911 and 1948 until it was made a part of India (interestingly, Hyderabad - a Hindu-majority state with Muslim leaders and the largest princely state in India, remained independent for over a year after Indian independence, before the Army came and Hyderabad joined the rest of the country).

The components of the Nizam's fortune are mind-boggling: apparently his collection of pearls could fill an Olympic size swimming pool. He owned a 400 carat diamond (the Jacob Diamond) - the world's fifth largest, which is now owned by the Government of India and stored at the Reserve Bank of India in Bombay. The last Nizam apparently fathered more than 100 illegitimate children... I can only imagine what claims to his vast fortune are like! My favorite anecdote of his wealth: he apparently found the duck-egg-sized diamond hidden in his father's slippers and used it as a paperweight! Ah, to be rich...

Republic Day

Yesterday India celebrated Republic Day - the day that the constitution came into force, on 26th January 1950. Here's some trivia: it was actually passed by the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949 (a little over two years since independence in 1947), but the date 26th January was chosen to commemorate the declaration of independence of 1930.

Another piece of trivia that perhaps isn't surprising once you've lived here: it is the longest written constitution of any sovereign country in the world (395 articles, 14 schedules, and 94 amendments).

The day was marked with a huge parade here in Delhi, from the Rajghat along the Vijaypath. Army, Navy, and Air force marched in the parade, performing their drills. As we drove around yesterday, we saw some jets in the air and wondered if they were part of the celebration.

So how did we celebrate? Wish I could say we were right there with the millions of people watching the parade, but we were more than content to stay away from the crowds -- the definition of which is on a whole new level here in India. At night we took a nice drive around the city and ended the evening with chocolate oreo cheesecake and banoffee pie. It wasn't Indian, but it definitely was delicious! ;)

Sleeping soundly

Little boy sleeps soundly, nestled between two grown men on a major road in Hyderabad.

I shouldn't really talk... I fall asleep on the back of Tyler's motorcycle fairly often. I know, sounds pretty impossible considering the crazy traffic, honking horns, and general nuttiness of India streets. But at least I'm wearing a helmet!

Freedom Foundation

One of my favorite weekend activities is volunteering at Freedom Foundation, an orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS. Tyler and I started volunteering here about a year and a half ago, after being introduced to it from some friends at Google.

Freedom Foundation was never meant to be an orphanage... the location, in Bolerum, Secunderabad, opened as an HIV/AIDS Center in 2001, providing care and anti-retroviral treatment to women with AIDS. However, the stigma against AIDS is so severe here in India, that if the woman died, no one would take care of her children.

(Or a more mild interpretation: remaining family members didn't have the resources and/or will to take care of the remaining children. One heartbreaking story: one 15-year old girl has 4 older brothers, all in IT and earning good wages -- but unwilling to support her because she has AIDS).

Thus Freedom Foundation as an orphanage was born. There are 28 children, aged 5 - 16. People ask what Tyler and I do there; the answer is simple: just play!! One of my favorites was when the Center hired a Bollywood dance instructor to teach the kids. Cricket and tag are good stand-bys as well.

Last year, Tyler and I taught them "duck duck goose." A few weeks later, a co-worker volunteered at the Center, and as soon as they associated her with us, the kids yelled: "duck duck goose!!!" I was feeling quite proud of us...until she informed me that perhaps the learning didn't quite stick: instead of running around the circle just once, they went around three to five times!

Some pics of our last visit, earlier this month:

Smile!

Staring and staring and staring at scripts. We are developing videos around LifeSpring's mission and values as a way to onboard all new employees. Speaking about our mission is one thing; writing about them is another... developing videos to educate and inspire are a different challenge altogether!

Makes me especially appreciate the video we created with Aparna and Shivraj at Global Rickshaw when I first started working at LifeSpring. It was a blast; turning the waiting room area of the hospital into a movie studio... Far from disrupting operations and upsetting customers as I feared, the women and their families absolutely loved it and couldn't wait to be filmed.

The idea was how do we create a training video that's so fun that people want to watch it and incorporate the learnings? We worked through many different ideas -- one included a Bollywood-type skit, complete with singing and dancing. We settled on simplicity though and focused on one area: smile!

Watching it two years later for a little inspiration, it still makes me do just that :)

To view the Customer CARES video, click here.

Blast from the past

One of the great things about NY is for a city of 10 million people, it sure is easy to run into people you know -- often people you haven't seen in years. On my last trip home, I bumped into a former boss on 34th Street -- Kerwin Tesdell, president of the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance (CDVCA), where I interned during business school.

We exchanged new contact information, and I just received an interesting email update from him referencing a recent Wall Street Journal blog about the implications of Obama's bank regulation plan -- particularly the impact on this for community development venture funds, which are funds aimed at creating jobs in low-income urban and rural areas of the US. The blog essentially talks about the unintended consequences of preventing banks from investing in PE and VC funds, which would severely hurt community development VCs, which get about 30% of its capital from banks.

The article made me think about my work there, which feels so long ago now! I remember wondering then what exactly makes an investment social -- is it all about job creation? Fascinating that the debate on how to measure social impact has only grown stronger today, with no easy answers.

In a very nerdy way, the best part of the article for me was reading about a call-center in Georgia -- which I had helped research and do diligence on back in 2005... I was excited to learn that since that time and the Central Fund's investment, the company has grown from 150 workers to 3,000 today! A nice thought before heading to bed...

Going door-to-door

LifeSpring senior management spent half-a-day yesterday in the communities where we work, meeting our customers and gathering feedback from them on how we can improve our hospital to make it a better experience for them.

It was inspiring. And made me wonder why I spend so much time in front of my computer on a daily basis, when so many amazing ideas are catalyzed from being out in the communities. This was something I knew when I first arrived in India... but somehow began forgetting (or at least stopped applying), when I moved from being a "Fellow" to "Management".

Our CRM manager did a great job in the organization and pairings. I was matched with our Accounts manager; which was great. By the end, he had quite a few ideas around Marketing (and perhaps a better understanding of where exactly the marketing budget goes!), and I had a better sense of the types of questions customers have around their bill.

In the first house we visited, we were met by a set of happy, healthy twins -- just 18 days old. As is traditional in Indian custom, the woman went to her mother's community for delivery. Confident and proud, both mother and daughter talked about their decision to come to LifeSpring (which was actually much influenced by the father -- who had come to LifeSpring's opening ceremony two years ago). When asked why he didn't choose the government hospital, when a free delivery was available nearby, he shook his head in disgust, saying he'd never bring his family there because of the poor quality. As we're continually learning, decision-making at the BoP is just like decision-making for all of us -- extremely complex, driven by key influencers, and always involves more variables than just price.

One of my favorite activities when I first came to LifeSpring was night duty at our hospitals, required for each manager. Language barrier or not, it's amazing connecting with customers' families, who eagerly await throughout the night to hear those first cries. And when that finally happens, it almost feels as though you've become part of the family yourself.

This is almost as good.

Grandmother and mother proudly show off their new twins, less than a month old and delivered at LSH Vanasthalipuram. (Notice the LifeSpring calendar in the background!)

Our accounts manager listens to customer feedback from a woman planning to deliver at LSH next month.

Staring at the Sun...or not.

The scene is Friday afternoon, around 2:45pm and I'm starving. Flew in from Delhi that morning on a budget-flight empty stomach, and now it's full-day meetings... which wouldn't be a problem except today happens to be a solar eclipse - and the longest one this century (which sounds melodramatic, I know... longest in a decade!)

So what does this have to do with food? As I'm learning, Indians traditionally do nothing during the solar eclipse, as anything that happens during the eclipse is considered "bad" and inauspicious. Parents pleaded some of my colleagues to stay home that day... and barring that, certainly not to eat until after 3:48pm, when the eclipse was set to end.

When I asked about it, I received some scientific-like answers like: "there's more radiation during an eclipse, which is obviously very bad for you." (I was hesitant to tell people I went up to our roof to get a first-hand look at the eclipse, lest people think I'd spread the radiation around!) Yet when I kept digging deeper, common answers were much more mythological in nature -- Hindu mythology blames eclipses on the demon Rahu, who is variously depicted as a snake or a dragon, who swallows the sun.

Whatever it is, it certainly led to a much quieter Hyderabad, which was apparent even in the low-traffic ride to work that morning. Reading about it online, "Indian soothsayers have warned that pregnant women should cover the windows and stay indoors, lest the dark forces associated with the eclipse deform their unborn children." I've even heard about doctors (though not in our hospital) who help women delay labor to avoid their children being born on such an unlucky and inauspicious day.

An editorial in "Times of India" chides Indians for turning "the beauty that awaits us in the universe" into a day of fear: "It's fear that drives us to fast during an eclipse lest the mal-influence of the sunless period is ingested with the food."

I'm just grateful that it appears my company's senior management has no such fear associated with the moon passing between the sun and earth. While we tried to be accommodating to our IT partners in the meeting with us (all five of whom would not eat or drink until after the eclipse ended), thankfully we decided to break for lunch.

Back in the board room and tummy sufficiently stuffed, I couldn't help but think how ironic it was -- half the room being IT engineers and impressively versed in the "hard" sciences, yet this same half still starving (as could be seen by their constant looks to the clock as it inched towards 3:48pm) -- based on avoiding "inauspicious" activities during an eclipse. In fact, I heard that the fasting doesn't actually end here... it ends AFTER you take a bath to cleanse yourself after the eclipse has ended. Learning about all this, I gained more insight on a newspaper headline I eyed earlier that day: "Why the eclipse is wasted on India."

I once had a college professor who was an eclipse chaser -- sometimes class would be cancelled because he was off to Egypt or Asia to see an eclipse or some other amazing celestial event (which could probably only happen because this was the longest-running course at Harvard). I can only laugh at the clash of cultures that was bound to have happened on any of his eclipse trips to India.

It's all relative...

I've been in Delhi for the past few days, and it's absolutely freezing! I'm huddled in the corner of a makeshift home office at Tyler's new place -- space heater on high and pointed right at me. I leave the room only when absolutely necessary, as it's freezing in the rest of the house.

Stepping out for lunch, I put on my warmest clothes: trapeze sweatshirt and North Face jacket, scarf, and winter gloves. Looking around, others are equally bundled up. The children walk in the funny way that children do, when their mothers have bundled them up in thick clothes and hats that go down past their ears and slightly cover their eyes.

Coming back, Tyler IM's and asks how lunch was. I respond that my fingers are still warming up ...Delhi is freezing!

His response: "You do realize it's 57 degrees."

And just like that, I realize I'm slowly becoming an Indian...

Christmas Giving

Back from an incredible two weeks in the Philippines. While I was gone, it was nice to hear that Acumen Fund and LifeSpring got a shout-out by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times - just in time for Christmas giving.

He writes about meaningful gift ideas, saying:

"This time of year I'm always barraged with inquiries about well-run charitable groups doing effective work. So let me tell you about some of the organizations that I've encountered that tackle global poverty in innovative ways."

He continues:

"Acumen Fund, www.acumenfund.org, brings a venture capital sensibility to aid work. It invests money in for-profit businesses - like WaterHealth International, whose business model is to provide clean drinking water where none is available. Acumen also invests in LifeSpring Hospitals, which runs low-cost maternity centers where impoverished women can safely deliver babies.

Acumen argues that these businesses, because they earn profits and treat the poor as customers, are more sustainable than giveaways. This reflects a growing trend of using business mechanisms to fight poverty."

What's exciting about posts like this and the growing desire for more meaningful gift-giving is that LifeSpring is gearing up to formally launch its Sponsoring Births Initiative, which will allow funders to sponsor the deliveries of women too poor to afford LifeSpring's services. Stay tuned!