Cricket Madness

It may as well have been a national holiday yesterday. Offices closed early, firecrackers were ready... all for the India-Pakistan World Cup match in cricket. At a meeting at Google's office today, one of first things people pointed out was the room where the World Cup was projected last night, to inaugurate the new wing.

To me, a single match that lasts from 2:30pm until 11pm is pretty nuts, but what do I know about cricket (Indians cringe that I still compare it to baseball). On my flight back from Jharkhand to Hyderabad, the pilot periodically makes announcements on the score. I'm shocked no one is responding, but by 10pm, all I hear sitting in my apartment are periodic bursts of loud shouts all around. By 11pm, an all-around frenzy has ensued, with literally thousands of firecrackers going off all around. I'm on the phone with Tyler, and Delhi seems even louder. For a bit, it makes the distance seem less, as the entire nation is fixated on this one moment.

And now, India plays Sri Lanka in the final. I can only imagine what victory might sound like then.

Access to Finance in Healthcare

Ah, the wonders of technology! I am sitting here in rural Jharkhand, but participating in a pretty fascinating e-conference on access to finance in healthcare, sponsored by USAID, the World Bank, and the IFC. The focus of the conference is around utilizing the tools of the private sector towards health, and is part of the SHOPS (Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector) project of USAID. As part of this, I was asked to present on the experience and growth path of LifeSpring.

For me, the most interesting questions I received were on how the LifeSpring model can be leveraged in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as what lessons can be translated to other health organizations looking to grow and scale. Questions like this certainly make one take a step back from day-to-day operations and challenges, and think of the challenge of high-quality, low-cost maternal health from a systems perspective. It also makes me think more critically about where the private sector can best play a role in such challenges.

I was recently speaking with a senior clinician at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, who spoke about a medical college in Vellore that successfully reduced maternal mortality in a nearby rural village to nearly zero. When I asked one of our doctors about this, her response was that their services are free - again, bringing up concerns about sustainability. But often I feel that the need to be sustainable also makes the private sector turn up their noses at institutions who have achieved much on the clinical side, and happen to also offer subsidized or free care. The interesting models come when we shift from a black-and-white approach, and get comfortable in shades of grey.

Angry People are Different

From Seth Godin:

"Angry people are different from other people. They are not just an inch or two along some curve. Instead, there's a gap in the curve, a vertical chasm, separating the angry from everyone else."

A River of Color

This past weekend was Holi, the Indian festival of colors. The celebration began at work late on Friday, as our head of clinical quality lead the charge of throwing color -- purple, pink, and green -- on our faces (the fact that I was in a meeting in my office did not stop this!)

My favorite sights over the weekend were people going about their normal day, completely colored head-to-toe like red martians: a family of four on their motorcycle - father, mother, and young children all painted in-sync; or an auto driver and passengers looking like they drove through a Willy Wonka car wash.

Likely the most incredible sight was passing a colony on my way to Charminar, an entire river of red as evidence of all the color wars that happened earlier in the day, with droves of red children emerging out of their houses as I passed through.

Sitting in my auto, I remembered advice that our head of finance gave me on my first Holi in India -- useful in Holi as well as in life: "Once you stop resisting, you'll have a lot more fun."

Useful advice, professional and personally

"Create sacred time." - Dr. Uma Kotagal

Tuesday Inspiration - thank you Elizabeth!

Each day is a new beginning,

Another chance to learn more about ourselves,

To care more about others,

To laugh more than we did,

To accomplish more than we thought we could,

To be more than we were before.

Life's Finer Pleasures

I feel as though I'm in an Indian novel -- perhaps even speaking to Dinah from A Fine Balance in her living room, talking about her tailors -- fabric and color swatches all around us. It's a whole new world, and I'm reminded of being in Bombay with Susan and Lisa my first year here, sitting on the floor of a sari shop, and pointing at floor-to-ceiling piles of fabric, which are shown one-by-one to us while being served tea.

It's not quite like that, but there's something overwhelming about designing each and every aspect of a piece of clothing I can barely visualize. After each sari I try on, I say "that's the one I want!" -- until I try on the next.

But trying on various styles of saris is only half the reason I'm there. The other is that in the few times we've seen each other, Shilu has become somewhat of my Indian grandmother. She tells me I'm too skinny, and has me over for lunch so I can eat home-cooked food -- and lots of it. (In a sort-of awkward way, she doesn't eat herself, though she sits next to me and keeps filling my plate with more). She is happy that I found "a nice American boy" in India and thinks we should settle down here. I say that Delhi is too loud and not good for our health, and she recommends Kerela or Shimla instead. When I suggest a style of sari that I've seen in a magazine, she tsks and says, "That's not for a good girl to wear" through her two remaining teeth.

Through it all, Shilu tells me all sorts of stories... stories of her youth, where her house near Lodhi Gardens was considered "rural" and her siblings used to count the cars that passed (as she talks, she covers her ears every time a car honks too loud, which is to say, every two minutes or so). Stories of how she started her tailor shop, and how she found young men and women living in the nearby slums, trained them, and made them her tailors. She's so close to them that even before her son is to be married, she wants to marry off the young tailor who has worked with her since the beginning ("We're hoping for a wedding in May. There is no girl yet but we are ready with the wedding as soon as a good one comes!"... she says the same about her son, and his "ready" wedding this November).

I sit in rapture, as she tells me family stories that are intertwined with all the India history books I've been reading... how her family moved from Bengal to Delhi when partition made their home Bangladesh, how much Delhi has changed since the assassination of Indira Gandhi (for the far worst, in her opinion), how she misses the mango trees of her youth.

She offers me chai, but it's time to go. I leave and head to Khan Market, imagining her mango trees lining the way.

Where's Jharkhand? (a brief geography lesson)

The Beauty of Rural Jharkhand

LifeSpring has been asked to consult for a chain of hospitals in rural Jharkhand in East India. The context is much different, but the challenges -- increasing conversion of women who deliver at the hospital, keeping quality high while costs low, and ensuring sustainability -- are remarkably similar.

Some scenes nearby the hospital:

International Women's Day

In the spirit of the 100th International Women's Day (today!), Acumen Fund has launched a challenge with ABC News "Save a Life": Mom's Matter. Make it Obvious. Because raising kids is hard, surviving childbirth shouldn't be.

Here are the details:

THE CHALLENGE: Raising kids is hard. Surviving childbirth shouldn’t be. Use your creative genius to show that moms matter and deserve more! Quality maternal health is not an option, it's a right. Submissions are due April 17^th at 11:59pm Pacific. This challenge dares students, kids, husbands, fathers, designers, videographers, and creative minds of all shapes and stripes to come up with the craftiest campaign for putting maternal health on the map and into the public eye. Winners of the challenge will be chosen by an esteemed panel of judges and announced by ABC News, GOOD Magazine, and Acumen Fund on Monday May 9^th, in celebration of Mother’s Day!

THE PROBLEM: For too many women the world, childbirth is hardly safer today than it was 100 years ago. By the time you’ve finished reading this, a woman will have died from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. That’s 1,000 women a day – 99% of them in developing countries. And for every woman who dies, 20 more will suffer injury, infection or disease. Yet the vast majority of maternal deaths (eight in ten, if you want to be precise) could be averted with simple – often low-cost – treatments and quality obstetric care.

Check out the full challenge brief at http://searchfortheobvious.com/moms

Birthday Happiness

A birthday full of surprises...

...with so much to celebrate this year!

Home Sweet India

There's nothing like two weeks away to re-open your eyes to home. I arrive back in India last Saturday, after two weeks in Ghana. The honking horns never sounded louder; I flinch every time a car gets too close to our motorcycle; and our apartment in a quaint tree-lined street sounds like my apartment on 57th Street in NYC.

At the same time, there is renewed beauty in the everyday. Two little boys, around 3-years old, hold hands while walking down the street. A group of men crowd around outside Cafe Coffee Day in Defense Colony, looking into the television inside to watch the India vs. Ireland cricket match, which the workers inside have positioned to face the window.

On my way to my coffee shop "office" this morning, I pass a small funeral parade, body clearly displayed on top of a bamboo cot being held up by a few men. A family of beggars cleans up on the side of the road, little baby crawling around on the sidewalk between being swooped up by his mother as he's about to cross the street. India is the ultimate expression of Langston Hughes' sense of being too "crowded" for fear. Death intersperses with life; there is humanity all around us, in all its dirtiness, beauty, hope, and despair.

There's something about the scene -- or more precisely, the feelings swirling within me about it, that remind me of a Sufi prayer I read during Giselle's visit to Delhi and our walking tour around Nizammuddin Basti:

"Open our hearts, that we may hear Thy Voice,

which constantly cometh from within."

God, the universe, within all of us. It's not about external salvation, but rather realizing the light that already shines within each of us. A beautiful thought on my 32nd birthday!

Words of wisdom

I really like this blog post by Seth Godin, which also reminds me of something an incredible mentor of mine, Ralph Biggadike, often says: "You have to be fascinated by human behavior."

Wonder and anger

It's hard to imagine two emotions more different from one another.

And yet one can easily replace the other. A sense of wonder and grinding anger can't co-exist.

Great innovations, powerful interactions and real art are often produced by someone in a state of wonder. Looking around with stars in your eyes and amazement at the tools that are available to you can inspire generosity and creativity and connection.

Anger, on the other hand, merely makes us smaller.

Lessons from West Africa

As I'm learning, in Accra you can often have either electricity or running water, but not both.

The flip side of this: learning to appreciate whichever it is that you have that day!!

Content vs. Process

As my mentor Ralph Biggadike often says: "Culture eats strategy for lunch."