Home

I had been wrestling with the idea to either make this more compelling and impactful or to make this just flowing, about life and experience. The latter won. As i share my thoughts here and in my blog, I only hope some aspects resonate with you.

At 42, in 2015, my family and i moved continents. Some of us move cities, organisations, neighborhoods, even loved ones. We move away from the known for our own reasons, some of us trigger this event from more dire reasons than the other, however, two basic truths prevail, the first one is the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the second being the pursuit of happiness. In my case whilst the basic needs were met and we were surrounded by friends, love and laughter, we moved because of what we foresaw as the potential impact of pollution on our children’s health.

We managed the transition to the US. remarkably well and probably the credit goes to the level of expectation setting we did with ourselves and the kids. We were also fortunate to have a set of school friends already in the US. who helped us feel welcome and held our hand during the transition.

It has been a few years since the move and i was taking stock of how the needle has moved in our lives.  You see, whilst both my wife and i have traveled to a few countries earlier, and this did indeed make our transition easier, we have never lived in a country such as the United States. I say this with the all the emotions it conjures in your mind.  One of the aspects of life i wanted for us to build on was diversity in our environment. Diversity in culture, backgrounds, socio economic status….. here i suggest to turn on John Lenon’s  Imagine in the background. The US provided my family an opportunity to be a part of United Nations in its truest spirit, the opportunity to experience new cuisines, new adventures, an opportunity to break our biases.

As i introspect, in the past 4 years, have i succeeded (?), the answer is a resounding no. Yes, our children now love Sushi, Tacos, Thai, chomp down a steak with gusto along with their butter chicken (not in one meal), however, is this the extent of what we can create for their future world? This was the genesis of  The Collective Blind. I would like to believe that i am a reasonably good human being, and hopefully my family can testify to that fact, however, i have been bigly unsuccessful in leveraging the opportunity i have on a platter in this country. I have been comfortably numb in my comfort zone. Complacency to stay with the known is natural, however, in a country as diverse as the US., it is not an option, not today.

The vision for The Collective blind is not to evolve into a mass movement globally, but to form a small symbol of recognition of the basic hygiene, a lowest common denominator of our personal lives, a mere acknowledgement that “i see you” because of your values and that i am blind to everything else.

I promise, that in my effort here, i will stay true to the values that make The Collective Blind, i.e., inclusion, fairness, honesty, serendipity and last but not the least, appreciation of data.

 

Prashant