Shams Tabraiz Muzaffar is one of my closest friends. We first met early in college at UT Austin on the steps of Dobie movie theater. While he was initially suspected to be stalking our friend Arun, it turned out we all just happened to live on the same dorm floor. He currently works as a researcher for a healthcare worker’s labor union based in California whose many functions include negotiating better worker contracts, developing policy measures some of which have helped to raise the minimum wage and to expand Medicaid, and helping to reform troubled industries such as the dialysis industry. Prior to California, he spent significant time living, teaching, and working abroad in countries including Pakistan and Eritrea. His family moved to Texas in the early 80’s, and he suspects a large factor in this decision was his dad’s love of Westerns and cowboys. The stories of his parents’ kindness and generosity are refreshingly hard to fathom. From an early age, he could see there was significant injustice in the world, and he has been an activist for most of his life. After taking a ‘break’ to stretch our legs, we unfortunately did not finish our conversation entirely and didn’t delve into his harrowing addiction to ice cream, milkshakes, and fast food.
KATHERINE JEANS
Katherine Jeans is my friend who I met at the Third Unitarian church and whose monthly book club I joined. She grew up in rural Kentucky with loving parents and five siblings during the Great Depression. Although experiencing bullying in her youth, she moved to beautiful Florida where she learned to make friends and wrote book reviews for the school newspaper. After marriage, she lived briefly in Georgia and Mississippi before arriving to Chicago in 1947. She soon started working on the campaign for Henry Wallace as well as being part of the tenant’s council to help ensure affordable housing. After a difficult marriage and divorce, she managed and raised her 3 children as well as finding a home and community at Third Unitarian Church. At age 60, she pursued her dream and became a clinical psychologist. She practiced clinical psychology for a time before becoming a teacher at Triton College where she also helped organize a union for the part-time faculty. She enjoys people, and feels fortunate to have such a tremendous group of friends and a wonderful family that she deeply loves.
MEREDITH MORRIS
Meredith Morris is my friend and former neighbor. She currently is the Director of Community Relations at a memory care assisted living community serving residents with dementia and their families. She grew up in Evanston, IL and after being told her fingers were too short, her trajectory towards being a professional cellist tragically ended. Beginning in high school and later in college, she hosted her own music and news radio shows. While ambivalent about high school, she loved her time at Earlham college where she majored in psychology. Taking a one year sabbatical to re-assess her career path, she worked at a Quaker boarding school and learning the difficulties in wrangling young women. After initially considering graduate school in poetry, she went into journalism and has worn different professional hats including managing public relations for clients such as Brookfield Zoo and the Morton Arboretum. Throughout her life, she has been drawn to community service, and always has a found a way to get involved in the local communities that she lives in.
VIKASH RAVI
Vikash Ravi aka Lil' V is my younger cousin and the kid brother of Bala Baby (see Episode 3). Vikash and I have a wide ranging conversation delving into childhood love at the playground, a youth spent playing games outside with neighborhood friends, playing cello, a love of dance that emerged after watching the film Step Up 2, and being elected Prom Prince. The years of middle school and high school were intense, and a period through which he discovered himself. In college, he continued dancing in both the choreographed dance group 'Fade to Black' and in the free-style dance group 'Fused.' At the end of college, he realized his passion for social work and entered a career that he finds amazingly fulfilling, and one in which he will be able to effect change at both the micro- and macro-levels.
AMMA MUDALIAR
Amma Mudaliar is my mommy who I was super excited to interview! She grew up in the temperately cool hilltop city of Coonoor India, and lived in an extended household that included her grandmother, father, uncles, aunts, siblings, and cousins. During her childhood, she would often go to her family run Mani's cloth store where her uncle would give her money for snacks that she and her little brother would eat while watching the city goings-ons. At her school run by nuns, some of whom were from England, her favorite subject was math. Never a dull moment , her life was busy with family, friends, and school. At college, she majored in physics. Afterwards, she taught physics at several colleges for four years until one day a caravan of people including my father arrived at her family's home. Within two weeks, she and my father were married and she soon found herself transitioning to a markedly different way of life in the United States. After the glorious arrival of her children and their later enrollment in school, she started learning the ropes of my father's private practice and eventually managing all aspects of his practice.
VELAN MUDALIAR
Velan Mudaliar is my dear cousin with whom I spent most of my formative childhood years building blanket castles and running around trees with. During our discussion, we discuss his early life in Carrollton Texas, the monstrous emergence of his brother Senthil, his childhood literary career, and eventual descent into a life of video game addiction. During early adolescence, he and his family moved to India and he transitioned to a markedly different way of life and schooling. After two years spent at the Kodaikanal boarding school, he returned to finish his senior year of high school in the great state of New Jersey and subsequently attended Rutgers University. His time in college were some of the best years of his life and a place where he developed many close friendships, studied materials engineering, and trained as part of the ROTC progam. In his free time, he is a proud comic nerd and science fiction aficionado, and in recent years has created a fantastic entertainment blog 'Infinity Curry.'
BALA RAVI
Bala, aka 'Bala Baby', is my younger cousin who is currently finishing up his Internal Medicine residency and who is soon to embark on a year-long fellowship in sports medicine. We discuss his early beginnings in Shreveport LA, the glorious arrival of his lil' bro Vikash (who apparently learned all his dance moves from Bala), moving to Houston TX, and summers spent 'Temple Hopping' in India. In high school as part of the ROTC program, he maintained a buzzcut and participated in marching drills, but soon started running amuck after getting his driver's license. After high school, he attended medical school in Manipal India which became a home away from home and a place where he developed some very important friendships. He subsequently made his way to Atlanta GA and then onto NYC to finish his clinical rotations, and during this period he often spent the weekends with our cousin Velan watching football and movies until they had a dramatic falling out. While in residency, he discovered his love of sports medicine and his ultimate goal of practicing while wearing shades and tanktops.
ZAFAR SHAH
Zafar Shah is one my closest friends that I've known since the seventh grade. After a two year watchful waiting period, we became friends at the beginning of ninth grade and have remained close ever since. He currently works in Baltimore as an attorney at the Public Justice Center. His work entails representing clients facing eviction and also advocating for fairer laws that would help low-income tenants. Despite Zafar's advice that the podcast be edited down to a more digestible portion (s), I have done little editing as I find everything he says to be fascinating. We discuss varied topics including the difficulties of friendship, the challenges obstructing his mother's desire to become an entrepreneur, my bench time during basketball games, the X-files, his path towards activism and his current career, and him being one of the best dads I know (at least when I happen to be around).
ARUN NAIR
Arun Nair is one of my closest friends that I've known since early childhood. He is an ER physician currently working in Baltimore and likely will be moving soon to Austin TX with his wife Kathryn and Major dog. Our conversation delves into a riveting discussion of woodworking, young memories laying atop of a couch, and novel approaches to ordering fast food. The conversation pummels forward to a discussion of his time as a New York hipster before medical school. While there, his activities included taking photographs of strangers on the mean streets of NYC, designing an art/music installation piece with musician David Bryne, and working as a laboratory assistant studying beta-amyloid plaques.