Infinite curiosity - promising stories about young women - 1

I have the curiosity of a journalist, though not their distrust. I see everyone as manifestation of consciousness but am infinitely curious about why we individual beings think and act the way we do. So to indulge this streak I have long conversations where I mostly listen without judgement. I am often impressed and definitely amused and entertained. On rare occasion, I am caught off-guard by the sheer brilliance of a clear mind and well rounded personality.

I had one such encounter earlier this week. What made it all the more incredulous is that this young woman is very big. I am sure most people do not look past this fact - because as humans with limited capacities we latch on to certain superficial aspects of personality to define the rest of them. We stereotype big people as being irresponsible, overindulgent, lazy and devoid of self control. And maybe these become self fulfilling prophecies. I needed to know the person behind this veneer and boy was I glad I chose to find out!

So this young girl is just over twenty and a recent graduate who is working her first “real job”.. I asked her about her work. She said she was in digital marketing at an e-commerce firm. She did their SEOs, directed their youtube promotional videos and managed the channel. She had graduated from a coveted and competitive
Marketing program. How did she like her job, I casually enquired. To which she replied that she was learning a lot but this was a stepping stone towards some pretty lofty goals. What were they? “Well I want to study at Stanford and ultimately work for Disney”, she said. She gave a self conscious gurgle and added “maybe I have set my sights too high”. I immediaty thought “maybe she has” but did not want to burst that bubble? Instead I chose to explore if this was a passing thought or a deep seated yearning. I was stunned by what I discovered about this sunny, positive woman who has been charting her career path since she was little.

She grew up in a little town in Tamilnadu which is steeped in orthodoxy around women’s roles. At best, girls from middle class families, are sent to college with the ultimate aim of securing them a good husband to look after them. In that town, where she had little opportunity to speak English, her teacher mother introduced her to books. She read and re-read Harry Potter and kept up inner conversations “in spells”, discovered Marvel comics, which she could lay her hands on, watched science fiction series on the good old Star TV Channel and, later, streamed. She devoured Dan Brown’s books and developed a fascination for weaving stories with deep, inner meaning and mystery. Alongside this, she became curious about social media and influencers even when it was not a “thing” and saw its infinite potential in selling product. She wanted to parlay these interests into a profession. This led to more research and soul searching. She became a great fan of the human psychology behind consumerism and realized her passion for creating campaigns that would re-make the image of a product. Soon her icons were the ad makers who revived campaigns. To her it was not about “selling” but about cracking a code, solving a mystery, challenging herself to get behind the human mind to stimulate a mass movement. She wrote to her heroes and she got standard replies that they only hired top tier MBA graduates. She wrote to Disney and they told her she needed a visa to get into the US and then maybe! She saw all these as positive signs!

Today, all she does in her work and life is based on a plan - to hone these skills, with single- minded enthusiasm and passion, to get into an Ivy League program. At an age when most kids are confused, scattered, hormone driven and reactive, this child is clear, focussed, self aware and positive. She has no time or band width to obsess over her weight and she is definitely not defined by how she looks, only by how she thinks! So very refreshing. She is academically whipper smart, is building a portfolio of achievements, reading, observing, building skills, gaining knowledge through everything she does and all with a chipper “can do” attitude! Why would she not get into Disney? They would be lucky to have her!

If you would like to mentor her, please get in touch with me!

Women of Influence Article

HOW LATHA SUKUMAR TURNED A SMALL NON-PROFIT TRANSLATION SERVICE INTO A NATIONAL SUCCESS — GIVING PEOPLE IN NEED A VOICE
June, 18th, 2019 Expert Advice, Latest Articles, Media & News, Not-for-Profit, Profiles, Social Change, Social Change Award


Latha Sukumar was working as a lawyer when a personal experience led her down a new career path. She’s now the Executive Director of MCIS Language Services, a non-profit social enterprise offering translation, interpretation, and consulting to over 800 organizations across Canada — but it wasn’t always such a success. Latha shares how she came into her role and grew the business, with a mission of giving more people a voice.







By Karen van Kampen



As a summer law student working at the Crown’s office, Latha Sukumar witnessed a trial that would have a deep, lasting impact on her life. A man was charged with sexually assaulting an Iraqi woman at a church picnic. It was a difficult and emotional case, says Latha, with the Arabic speaking woman unable to tell her story.

“I felt totally helpless because I didn’t speak her language,” says Latha. “It became evident that these kinds of cases cannot be properly prosecuted if women don’t have a voice. That became a crusade for me.”

As Executive Director of MCIS Language Solutions — a non-profit social enterprise that specializes in translation, interpretation, and consulting — Latha works tirelessly to give people a voice by removing language barriers. In recognition of this unwavering vision, in 2018 she was presented with the RBC Social Change Award. It’s given to the leader of an organization dedicated to social change, that’s championing philanthropy and volunteerism in Canada.

Latha’s fight for social change began when she was a young girl growing up in India, listening to stories of oppression from her mother’s village. Stories of marital rape and widows working as menials in their own homes. Despite being very smart, her mother had to quit school when she reached puberty, forbidden to attend a mixed school with boys.

Along with her two sisters, she “grew up with the idea that women are subject to all these injustices and we have to stand up for the rights of women,” says Latha, adding that her mother “raised us to be women who were fearless.”

In 1987, at the age of 25, Latha immigrated to Canada with her husband and one-year-old daughter. “I had to go through a whole process of transforming myself,” she says. Latha cut her long hair, removed her nose ring, and began wearing Western skirts and pants.

A year later, Latha began a Master’s in Women’s Studies. “When I came here, I had to find my voice,” she says. “I had the freedom, I sensed, to be able to speak my mind, but it took a while to gain the confidence to believe that I had something important to say.”

Latha continued her studies at Osgoode Hall Law School, where she learned a more evidence-based way of thinking. “If I did not go to law school, I would have a much more rosy-eyed view,” she says. “Now I’m more practical.”

In 1996, Latha was appointed Executive Director at the non-profit Multilingual Community Interpreter Services (MCIS). “It was serendipitous,” she says. “It felt like my cause had found me.” At the time, MCIS had a staff of two-and-a-half, including Latha, operating out of a small warehouse in Scarborough. They relied solely on year-to-year government funding, which was unsustainable.



“When I came here, I had to find my voice. I had the freedom, I sensed, to be able to speak my mind, but it took a while to gain the confidence to believe that I had something important to say.”


In 2004, Latha set out to grow the organization, a feat she says she completely underestimated. “I thought as a lawyer, I had all the competence to do things,” she says. “I was so wrong.” Latha discovered that being an entrepreneur entailed reading financial statements, building streamlined operations, collecting and reading data, predicting and planning.

That year, MCIS partnered with Rotman School of Management, offering students experience at a not-for-profit. In exchange, Latha says the MBA interns shared knowledge of operations, upgrading technology, standard operating procedures, and marketing. MCIS continued the summer program for the next six years. “It was incredible learning,” she says.

As your business grows, it’s important to constantly educate yourself, to stay on top of changes within your industry, and “to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you in many different ways,” says Latha. “That’s hard sometimes because you feel challenged.”

It’s also important to delegate responsibility and not “get bogged down with busy work,” she adds. “The more you grow, the more strategic you have to become. It’s important to look beyond the present and keep calibrating your company’s weaknesses, strengths and opportunities to grow to the next level.”

To stand out in the crowded space of language services, MCIS increased its training programs to ramp up capacity quickly, hired bilingual staff and ensured people had the proper security clearance. This enabled MCIS to compete for federal government contracts, and in 2015, MCIS won the contract to provide interpreter services for Syrian refugees immigrating to Canada. When the first plane landed, Latha says they were ready, deploying hundreds of Arabic speaking interpreters who also spoke English and French to work with government authorities in both Montreal and Toronto.

Today, MCIS has more than 6,000 interpreters and translators who speak more than 300 languages collectively and serve more than 800 organizations across Canada. While it hasn’t always been easy, Latha tells herself, “every day incrementally,” focusing on how she is able to make a difference in people’s lives.

Latha reflects on a woman who refused to speak for three months. Every day, an MCIS interpreter would visit the woman in a shelter, yet the woman remained silent. Then one day the woman found the courage and trust to tell her story of abuse. The case went to superior court and her husband was convicted.

“We know that we made a difference in that woman’s life,” says Latha. “Those are the stories that keep you going every day.”

Chithi - a short story

Today, International Women's Day I remember the widows of South India and the lives they were condemned to live. This is about one of them, written in short story form.

GChithi picked coconut barks and dried twigs that were strewn all around the garden of that old house, gathered them in a basket woven from bark and carried them over to the bathroom located beside the well. Inside, a big copper pot filled with water had been set to boil. Chithi added the fodder to the fire which then blazed with an orange glow. A column of smoke escaped from the top of the pot and caught by the sunlight which entered through the tiny bathroom’s open chimney revealed a discotheque of dancing dust particles. Usually, Chithi would have reveled in its beauty while enjoying her few minutes of solitude and privacy. But today, she was preoccupied. She removed her faded saffron coloured saree which she wore without a blouse, and soaked it in a bucket with soap powder. She then wrapped herself in a piece of cloth which she wore while bathing, reveling as the warm water she poured over herself soothed her aching limbs. She was 65 years old and had lost her husband when he was only 25 and she 16. He had been a school teacher. She found out about 10 years ago that she was entitled to a small pension as a result of his service in a government school. On this day every month, she made the trip to the government office to inquire after her pension entitlement. She then stopped by the ration store, picked up her meager monthly quota of rice, sugar and, sometimes, 6 yards of coarse cotton cloth in beige. She dyed this cloth to saffron to wear as a saree. That piece of cloth was the extent of her security in the world. With no source of income and dependent on the largess of others for food and shelter, she had to make this dreaded trip every month.

Today, after her quick bath, she would once again make that trip. She had woken up an hour earlier than her usual time of 5:00 a.m., to cut the vegetables and grate the coconuts for the day’s meal. There were guests in the house from America. Sudha’s son Mani and daughter in law, Vidya. They had just arrived last night and there was much excitement. Although the visitors enquired after her, she felt like an intruder and compensated by doing all that she could to make herself useful. She felt awkward to abandon the kitchen on a day like this. But what could she do? She had to go. She quietly slipped out of the bath, hung her washed clothes to dry in the yard, and went into the dark and dingy store-room which afforded her some privacy. Since she slept on a mat in the living room, there was no corner in that house which she could call hers. She peeled off her wet cover and wrapped a dry saree, with no blouse inside. Her large breasts and nipples that showed through the thin cotton fabric, embarrassed her. She worried about the young men who stared at her their cruel gazes dehumanizing and their crude, obscene remarks painful and oppressive. She shut out the many times she had been molested and fondled by strangers and relatives alike. She made a mental note to threaten to slap anyone who did that today. Maybe she should break free from a tradition that condemned widows to be “blouseless” and start wearing a white blouse she thought. She could ask Mani for some money? After all she had known him since he was a little baby. God knows how many times she had asked Sudha to no avail. As she smeared ash on her forehead and covered her bald head with the coarse “saree”, she made a mental note to send for the barber to shave the stubble on her head. The 50 years, since her widowhood, had desensitized her to these rituals that were meant to deny her femininity. She placed her worn purse, which contained all the money she had in the world, ten rupees in change, in her little cloth bag and quietly bypassing the watery breakfast gruel, left the house. She walked barefoot, as had always been her practice. Maybe she would have Mani buy her a pair of slippers, for those summer days when the tar sizzled and melted under the merciless sun. She did not dwell too much on her desperate financial straits. She thanked God that for now she had a roof over her head and 1.5 square meals a day. Brunch at 11 after everyone had eaten, and a light tiffin around 5 pm. Widows like her were condemned to a monastic life with no food after sun down and many foods, which could stir up desires for sensual pleasure, denied to them. Her niece was kind to her. Granted she used and exploited her. But Chithi rationalized that it was infinitely better than living in one of those old age homes for the desperately poor, where non-Brahmins cook the meals and where she would live along-side people from lower castes?

The bus stop was right beside the market. She bought herself a banana as insurance in case she felt faint from hunger. She got on the bus and bought a ticket. Then her cloth bag in one hand, she held on for dear life to the back of a seat with the other. The bus was packed and tilted to the right as it moved, trundling through traffic. No one stood up to offer her a seat. Young men deliberately grazed against her body, some touching her breasts as though by accident. She gritted her teeth and glared directly at them. She did not want to cause a scene and bring further shame on herself.

Widowed and a menial all her life, Chithi was cursed with upper caste pride. In a previous era, as a Brahmin widow, she could have acted outraged and sanctimonious against members of the lower caste. Of course, those occasions would have been rare because she, an inauspicious sight, would not have been allowed in the public sphere. Now, in a political era rife with intense anti-brahmin sentiment, she was just a “bald Brahmin woman”, a pejorative, symbolizing society’s disdain for everything the caste represented and aimed at its most vulnerable members. Due to some vestige of caste loyalty fiercely held by her family members, she was the object of their pity and was provided shelter and food. Sudha was her late husband’s older brother’s daughter.

Usually she stopped by at Sudha’s sister Akila’s, on her way back from the ration store, to rest a bit after a strenuously long wait in the ration queue under the strong Chennai sun. The minute Akila saw her by the gate, she would soak rice for murrukkus or begin preparations for some other snack that took time and effort. She would offer Chithi lunch and then make her grind the rice manually on the stone mill and toil before the hot stove, making murrukkus or vadams from scratch. Chithi would have to finish a huge batch of murrukkus or vadams before she returned home. As she entered the house, after sundown, Sudha would greet her at the door with a scowl demanding where she had been loitering all day and stating that she had chosen the wrong day to abandon her with all the housework. It was a no win situation.

These days Chithi had developed a sharp tongue and gave as good as she got. “Well what do you want me to do? Don’t you realize my age? I can’t do any more than I am doing, my body is giving way”. Chithi tolerated Sudha’s moods, her fits of temper and her hurtful remarks. She survived purely using cunning strategy. She knew what she had to do to be Sudha’s physical and emotional crutch. Besides offering her sound advice on running a household on a tight budget, she planted greens in the backyard, made brooms from coconuts leaves and innovated in the kitchen. She was lively and entertaining, with lots of stories from her visits to relatives’ homes and from her colourful past. She also capitalized on Sudha’s insecurities, praising her often, urging her to wear her nice silk sarees and jewellery, validating her at every turn and serving as an ally when her husband or children yelled at her. All this took a lot of effort and sometimes she found her patience wearing thin, but she forebore. Chithi had come over to help Sudha when she delivered her second child and had stayed.

Chithi got off at her stop and moved quickly towards the Central Government building which housed the department responsible for pensions. The clerk looked up when he saw her enter and smiled. She was a familiar sight and he had hoped someday to convey the tidings that he had for her today. “Paatti”, he said “Your pension allocation has come. You will receive Rs. 75 every month and there is an arrears of Rs. 10,000 which you will receive in one lump sum. You will need to open a bank account and deposit the cheque. Tell us what your address is and we will send it to you. You don’t have to make this trip anymore”. Chithi was overwhelmed. Heart of hearts she had not even dreamed that her efforts would come to fruition. Now that they had, it all seemed anti-climactic. She suddenly had control over her destiny. She did not know what this meant for her future. She could not live by herself anyway. But with the money, how would her relatives, especially Sudha, treat her? Would she exhibit palpable greed and try to extort money from her now. How could she use this money to protect herself? Her mind disturbed by this turn of events, she rode back home without going to the ration store or making her usual detour to Akila’s. Brunch was just getting over and the young woman from America told Chithi she would serve her. Grateful, Chithi sat down and ate in silence. She then mechanically cleared the kitchen and went to lie on her mat to take her siesta. She suddenly felt stifled, invisible and alone in a house full of people. She did not count as anything, other than a caricature, a two dimensional relic from the past. No one cared that she had a mind, thoughts or feelings. She could hear Sudha say “ we will have to do something about Chithi, she is becoming too much of a liability.” Chithi’s mind was made up. When the cheque arrived, she would give Sudha Rs. 5000 for all that she had done for her and donate the balance and her monthly pension to a home for the aged, in exchange for a room and the same 1.5 meals per day. At least then, her mind and body would be rested, and she could spend her last days in dignity.

it is the story of...the moment I Knew Everything Was Going To Be Okay

When I arrived in Canada 30 years ago, I was young and naive.


Newly married, a new mother, I had a Master’s degree but no work experience. I wore a red dot on my forehead, a nose-ring, anklets, and jewellery. Dressed in “ethnic clothing” and visibly “different”, I felt like a fish out of water.


I had to mutate into a person I could not recognize. My red dot came off and then my jewellery. I traded my Indian clothes for skirts, shoes, and stockings. I wore gloves, hats, and a scarf, all mismatched with each other and my coat, and felt like a museum piece. I was desperate to “fit in”. The more I tried, it seemed, the less I succeeded.


I then thought I would achieve this if I found a job. However, I ended up in a room full of telemarketers, all folks like me, newcomers trying to find their feet. It was not “mainstream” experience by any stretch and while it did build my confidence a little and enhanced my communication skills, I did not feel competent to do anything else.


I was still an outsider trying to recreate my identity in my new milieu. So I worked at building my ability to make “small talk”, to improve my clothes and dressing style. I even cut my hair. I just could not be spontaneous and speak my truth.


It also did not help that I was lonely, missing my parents and extended family, and could not look to anyone, other than my husband, who was struggling like me, for validation. There were times when I was so depressed I wanted to give it all up and go back to India.


However, it all changed for me when I decided to pursue a graduate degree. I got into the Women’s Studies program.


The first essay I wrote was in the passive voice. My professor called me in and asked me why I chose the passive voice. I said I thought that’s how we expressed ourselves in an academic setting.


She looked me in the eye and said “I want you to write in the active voice. Your story is valid and now with the personal being political it’s important that you express yourself in your voice and speak your truth.”


That is the moment when everything changed for me. I found my voice, stopped trying to “fit in” and be like someone else, and have never looked back since!

Preparing for the end

I wrote earlier about a mother whose child was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year. She amazed us all with her dogged effort to get him the best treatment and a normal life. So she said no to Wish Foundation Disney World trips but instead gave him normalcy. No also to radical medical Intervention that would rob him of a normal life. He got through treatment last winter and had an amazing year, each day a bonus and a gift which his mother made extra special with school, fun activities and undivided attention, a five year old’s dream. Alas the good times came with a time stamp and now the tumour has returned twice its original size. So after more radiation it will be months or even weeks, a mother’s worst nightmare. But she has organized the home, got her family to plan their time off around when he will be palliative and has shown the same equanimity and strength she did at the time of his original diagnosis. That was earlier this week. At the end of this week, ironically, I was invited to sit with someone in his late eighties, who has meticulously planned his last days including his passage into the other world. He showed me five boxes of files all meticulously tabulated and organised. His primary objective to control how every detail is managed after he is gone - with nothing left to ineptitude or chance. He even has made a list of people to be invited to his cremation with their contact information. It has been an interesting and thought provoking week. What is this life? What is it’s meaning for each of us ? Ultimately is it about our legacy? Or about a life well lived, on our terms? Are we the body, our thoughts and memories? Or are we deathless, animated by and expressions of consciousness that flash and pass like pictures on a screen? Experientially what do you each feel you are? I would love to hear!

Memories of Toronto - A Guardian Angel Called John (written in 2002)

John Cole has adopted our family. But like ours he has adopted many others. When there is a problem such as a plugged toilet, keys locked inside the house, a furnace that won’t work, the first thing I do is to reach for the phone to call up John. He is this burly young seventy something, who rides in his van and “does good”. John does not attend parties, he goes on “missions of mercy”. He is our guardian angel and has been for so many people I know for so many years. After all who would arrive at an airport armed with coats to welcome an immigrant family dreading their return to Canada after a holiday in balmy India. When we arrived at the house from the airport that January 2000, snow banks piled 8 feet high by the side of our streets, we joyfully noted that this beloved man had cleared our entire driveway with our antiquated snow blower! We also then found out that John had wired our house up against security breaches so his pager would go off if someone attempted a “break in”

John was born and raised in Toronto in a white Anglo Saxon protestant family. He trained to be an electrician. He has worked at several exciting locales, done amazing and daring work in this city that he loves and is chock full of stories of his many adventures. I have spent so many afternoons sipping tea and listening to John’s inspiring stories, which told me how he pushed the envelope every time in his pursuit of excellence in everything he did. But it is not John’s style to brag. He is modest about his accomplishments and just brushes off compliments with a grunt.

A friend introduced me to John 6 years ago. He just adopted our family and took us under his wing. From the very first day, he sat at our table eating the food we ate. John loves rice and curd, a South Indian staple, and will seldom refuse the offer. A humanitarian, John embraces people of all races, creed and colour with equal love and respect and is animated and happy that his home, Toronto, is a veritable microcosm of the United Nations. When my friends and family arrive in this city, frightened new immigrants, John embraces them and goes all out to show off to them all the sights in his beloved city. He moves their stuff from one temporary home to another till they get settled, gets them road maps, frequently calls on them to find out if they need anything, and generally watches over them.

John is a consummate intellectual. He always stimulates me to think creatively, tells me about exciting new developments in science, shows me his many innovations and explains to my befuddled brain how they work. When our daughter wanted a parachute made as part of her physics project, John was so excited, he called her everyday to find out how she was doing and then could not help arriving at the house one day a parachute in hand. I cannot number the science toys he has enriched her with. John has taught my husband to paint, to varnish, to fix simple problems around the house. There was one time when my husband and I had bought a hood to be placed over our oven. Not quite sure how to approach this project, even after very clear instructions from John, my husband procrastinated. Well John let it go for a few days. However, after that, he could not take the waiting anymore and one day when we got back home from work, we found the hood had been fixed. People who have not met John truly believe that he is a figment of our imagination. Who in this day and age gives so unconditionally, without expectation, but just with a view to making people happier. But when they see my unique altar on which I have placed my Hindu Gods, the fabulous lighting in my basement with a fancy combination of switches, they know that a genius has been at work.

John loves the radio, television and CB Radio. He is a great admirer of Gandhi and Mother Theresa. He is the most open minded person I know. He is committed to social justice. He visited India once and did not go sightseeing, as most people would have done. He visited the factories, wired up schools and buildings so they would have electricity and learnt from watching fisher-folk haul their catch of the day from the sea. With his power of observation, his memory, his interest in human beings and how they adapt themselves with the help of technology, simple or complex, his compassion, he saw and did more during the 6 weeks he was there, than I did in all the 20 years I lived there. John is the first one to send cheques out when a humanitarian disaster strikes some remote corner of the globe. To this day I carry his many inventions, such as communications devices to be used as teaching aids at schools for poor orphan children in schools in India, when I travel on my biannual trips.

Words cannot do justice to this man, our beloved friend. He gives me hope and inspires me and everyone whose life he has touched with his example.


John died in 2014 of old age. He was 87 years old.

Patriarchy and learned helplessness

Being a woman in (most parts of)India (based on conversations with many women) - Uber and Ola have changed a lot of things from when this post was written (2012), during a trip to India

Every time I return to India, as a visitor, to my middle class moorings I have the experience of stepping into a box. You see my activities are constrained as a result of my role as a daughter/daughter in law who must live by norms that I would scoff at, back in Canada. An important reason for this is the lack of access to a car for me to drive around in. The other is curfew established by safety wary relatives of how long a respectable woman can stay out on her own. Add to this my own guilt over any self indulgence - a deviation from the "self sacrificing woman" that I and all women here are expected to be. Even at home, sleeping-in is out of question, as is an early morning walk on my own before the sun comes up. Reading the paper, when I should be helping in the kitchen, is frowned upon and indulging in pastimes other than plain old TV watching or other forms of domesticity does not endear one to relatives. I am a visitor and I forbear, even though it means I have to temper my expectations of what I can do during my vacation here due to overprotective family members looking out for me at all times.."you don't know about this city - call me when you get to your destination and let me know how long you will be gone"

For those middle and lower middle class women living here, a career offers a legitimate reason for bucking their traditional role as purveyors of home and hearth but it is only accepted if it is financially necessary. If it is not perceived as being so, then her life can be made difficult with expectations that she fulfill her role in the home as nurturer and be there for her children as the attentive parent, tending to their every need, while holding down her full-time job. With life being as difficult as it is with infrastructural and transportation challenges most women live circumscribed within a limited sphere of existence and come to accept their lot in a state of learned helplessness. The systems of patriarchy and of the real material bases of their lives conspire together to keep them there. It is only within this sphere is she validated. Even when she has a chance to venture out, she hesitates knowing that the censure and related consequences will dire be enough for it to not be worth her while.