I envy R and R (can you guess who they are??!!! R1, I don't want him to ever come to my blog coz he will 100 per cent throw a fit reading some of the stuff here...R2, now she is a different ballgame...she is a regular buyer of my shitty monologues and keeps coming to this blog like an ant to a fungus). These are two people I know who sleep even less than me (ha ha ha)! Now in case you are wondering why (I know, I know, there's absolutely nothing else to envy about them), I am the kind of person who thinks sleeping is a waste of time.

So, are you smirking already? That probably goes on to show that either you love your quota of sleep and find my reasoning ridiculous or you know me too well to believe what I said in the previous line. But who said thoughts and deeds are one and the same? Wanting to achieve something and actually being capable of achieving are two different things. I learnt it long back. I loathe sleeping. It's just that I can't help falling asleep. For the logically/verbally challenged, who still haven't got hold of my uber-cool logic on why I loathe sleeping, I will spell it out for you in numbers...1/3 rd of your life, you've spent sleeping...Look, for me, that's a big deal...I mean 9 years of my life...Do you realize what it means?

1. With my average, I could have had 9 more girlfriends.

2. I could have done 2 more PhDs (ok, this actually sounds scary, but you get the point, right?!)


So, the problem is that I sleep after a gap of every 14-15 hours even when I hate it coz I just can't seem to keep awake. My brain starts giving up. I can actually hear the knobs and switches in my brain getting turned off, I can actually see the lights being turned off and I can sense the buzzing and whirring of my neurons slowly coming to a standstill. Things start running in slow motion and I slip in the whirlpool of darkness.

This creates a dichotomy. My circadian rhythm is screwed up as the hatred pushes me to postpone sleep as long as I can, wondering in awe every single day whether I can skip sleep. Of course that doesn't happen being the sloth that I am, and eventually I do fall asleep, but then it's so late that when I finally get up again, half the day is already over. It's a nightmare (no pun intended).

Anyway, so that is the reason why I envy people who can do with much less sleep than me as they get more time living.

ps. I just can't believe I have spent half an hour of my time on writing a post on sleep!!!

Something happened in Dharwad. One of those insignificant details which make you smile when you think about them later on.

I met this girl. A sweet girl. One who gave me a lot of attention! Haven't got that in a while now. It made me feel years younger...Like when I was in PU or even before that during Bachelor's...

That raw awkwardness when you meet someone new...

What's absolutely great is that for those 2-3 days, I realized I have a heart too...which I'd given up on...so much so that I'd probably forgotten about its existence...and though I know nothing's gonna come out of this, I realized how my heart can thaw and revive at the slightest degree of attention from a female! I feel alive!

To paraphrase G. H. Hardy,

"There is no permanent place in the world for ugly science ... . It may be very hard to define beauty in science but that is just as true of beauty of any kind, we may not know quite what we mean by a beautiful poem, but that does not prevent us from recognising one when we read it."

So, these days I'm searching for a brain wave which will probably hit the right spot in my brain and help me come up with an appropriate title for my thesis. Something snazzy, cool and one which summarizes everything that I have been working toward...

We all have to finalize on our thesis titles by the end of the second year but no one really sticks to it as PhD is all about flexibility, checking out preferences and practicalities in the given arena of work. So the titles are quite dynamic.

Of course, I have seen people slogging, with only the faintest idea as to what is that one (or a few!) questions they would like to answer. Just work, gather data, and something will definitely emerge. This is their motto. It's ridiculous and pathetic. You know what that reminds me of? A supervisor writing a recommendation letter for one of his students, not knowing for whom he is writing and yet scribbling frantically on his notepad, and at the end of it, depending on how it has turned out, deciding which student he will give that letter to.

ps. Okkk. That was a distant simile. What to do? Everything these days reminds me of reco letters. Forget about my vices and virtues, I just hope my boss remembers who I am. He asked me few days ago whether I am done with my colloquium already!!!

Huhhhhhh??!!!

I'm glad I chose ecology. Can't think of doing anything else. This is what I know the best, and this is what I love doing...research...logic...thinking...aaahh...nothing can beat it.

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

- Rainer Maria Rilke