It's gonna be one crazy summer...beginning of the end...dreading it!

Research, Luck and Alexander Fleming...

Do you value chance discoveries? Like Alexander Fleming’s discovery of Penicillin in 1928, for which he got Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1945? I think the man got plain lucky. With due credit, it is one of the greatest discoveries of all time, and it was definitely because of a certain deductive logic on his part. But you see, it is just partly. For most part, it was an accident. You start your research with some objective in mind, say X, and in the process end up finding Y which turns out to be a compound that revolutionizes research…very well done. That means it is a great discovery…that does not necessarily follow that the discoverer is great. It is important to understand that difference. And that’s why I think it’s important to weigh the enormity of a discovery by how judiciously and methodically it was pursued. Otherwise the whole exercise becomes synonymous to a lottery.

An Ideal Respite

It’s been a hectic week and an ideal respite will be somewhere in the arctic. A dark frozen icy landscape on one side and a gently lapping sea on the other, me skiing for hours and then lying on my back with sheer exhaustion but unimaginable exhilaration, with the multihued arctic light as the wallpaper of my eyes and a woman like Clementine with me. Paradise.

Who am I kidding? Isn’t it the day of the equinox today?

Ever watched someone...

...when they think they are alone? When I happen to do that, truth be told, I enjoy it. No eavesdropping and that is not the intention anyway. Out of earshot and you can rest your conscience in the grandpa chair and relax back and enjoy the view. There is something very genuine and true about those moments. Sounds almost voyeuristic, but to see an unadulterated expression of anger, glum or delight sometimes tells you things about that person that no spoken conversation can ever possibly achieve. Everyone has their minds fortressed in such carefully cultivated façades that however ugly it gets, even a genuinely negative expression will be preferred over dull and fake cheerful shrieks.

10 years since...

1. 12th exams.

2. I started keeping a journal.

3. My first serious girlfriend.

4. My first clean shave.

5. Sigh!

I do not love you...

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

- Pablo Neruda

Translated by Stephen Tapscott

Anything...

...you do for the first time, you yourself should be clear in your mind.

I sincerely hope the experiments work out. I don't wanna hear "we told you so"!

But I'm not desperate. Don't wanna see patterns that don't exist. I rather be laughed at than that.

Rajendra Pachauri

...has lashed out at governments for spending trillions of dollars on the banking crisis while neglecting funding for poverty alleviation and climate change.

"It defies any kind of logic, if you look at the type of money that the world has spent on these bailouts, 2.7 trillion [US] dollars is the estimate, and it's been done so quickly and without questioning," he said. Fifty billion dollars a year was the estimate for tackling the Millenium Development Goals on sckness and poverty, he noted. "But everyone scoffed at it. Nobody did a damn thing."

www.tinyurl.com/9kqwb6

I've Unsubscribed...

...the feed of two blogs I’ve been following diligently for two years or even more for just one reason that the blogs were turning out to be mere exercises in self-praise, and they were not even witty enough like waiterant to sustain my interest. People have their individual styles, but how can every entry be aimed at self-gratification? I guess, to each his own. I am sure there are people who enjoy a narcissistic streak. I don’t. Speaking for myself, I like adulation, but I rather have it from others or not have it at all. I do some self-indulgent stuff on this blog, but I hope it’s few and far between…not so often as to make someone feel like giving up on me. I don’t want my self-absorption to drive people away. I know many people feel a blog is yours and yours only, and you can do whatever you want, but I don’t want to do or behave in a way that I don’t expect from others.
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I have a work presentation on Saturday. I am expecting two reactions…either people will be elated and overjoyed (and jealous?), or they will berate me for the conclusions I’ve drawn. Whichever reaction it is, I hope I don’t get swayed or start biting. I want to be calm, in control, present the data, enjoy it whatever it is that comes my way, and get done with.
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You know that it’s time for a new batch to arrive when kids from Bangalore start coming personally and kids outside Bangalore start sending mails like dear sir, I am student of xyz university and would like to know more about the entrance exam/interviews/faculties/CES/IISc…absolutely crazy! Bonkers! But then I remember me dashing a similar mail before my interviews to my seniors whom I hardly knew and how I worshipped the ones from whom I got a reply. These youngsters look so innocent and naïve. And they worship you. Most of them are intelligent…they are just inexperienced. It’s hard to believe anyone can be so raw. And that’s endearing.

I Always Find...

...the sea surface at the horizon bulging. Everyone else says it's in a straight line. And no, it's not optical illusion that's tricking me. Because if it is, it would trick everyone.

This weekend was awesome!

इथला माझा एक सहयोगी...त्याला या ४ वर्षात मी कधीही आनंदी बघितला नाही...खदखदणारे हास्य सोडा, महाशयांच्या चेहऱ्यावर समाधानाची एक पुसटशी खूणही कधी दिसली नाही. चेहरा सारखा चिंतेत बुडालेला किंवा रागाने पछाडलेला. बहुतांशी रागच. त्याला बोलतं करण्याच्या प्रयत्नात मी कधीच माघार घेतलीय. कारणांचा काही पत्ता लागत नाही. या अपात्री क्रोध-कुण्डाचा प्रकोप कधी कोणावर होईल सांगता येत नाही. सगळे रागाचे आविष्कार छापखान्यातल्या खिळ्यांसारखे नेमी आणि आवर्तनीय. फ़्रॉइड ने तर नक्की याला केस स्टडी म्हणून स्वीकारला असता. म्हणला असता, "श्रीमान एक्स, तुमच्या या वागण्याचे मूळ जरूर तुमच्या बालपणात आहे. यापैकी एक तुमच्याशी जरूर घडली असण्याची शक्यता आहे:

१. तुमच्या आईने तुमच्याशी फार जास्त शारीरिक लगट तरी केली किंवा तुम्हाला प्रेमाच्या एका शब्दाला तरी पारखं केलं. जे काही असेल, तुम्हाला निर्मळ मातृप्रेम कधी मिळालेच नाही,
२. शाळेत सगळे तुमच्याशी तुसडेपणाने वागायचे,
३. रात्री-अपरात्री सगळे झोपले असताना तुमचा कोणी एक काका तुमचा लैंगिक छळ करायचा."

I'm being unnecessarily nasty.

पण जे काही कारण असेल, इतका त्रास, इतका राग बघणे शक्य नव्हते. Thought everyone deserves happiness. त्याच्याशी मैत्री करण्याचा दांडगा पण अयशस्वी प्रयत्न करून झाला. मित्रांकडून त्याला ग्रूप मध्ये समाविष्ट करण्याचे प्रयत्न झाले. त्याच्या ऍडवायजर शी बोलून त्याला कामाच्या नव्या संधी मिळाव्यात असे पण बोलून झाले. पण कशाचाही काहीही फायदा झाला नाही. कदाचित हे सगळे त्याला नको असेल. कदाचित भार वाहण्याची मनाला इतकी सवय झाली आहे, प्रसन्नचित्त, प्रफुल्ल, हलके मन असणे काय असते हे तो विसरला असेल, त्याची सवय नसल्याने ते हलकेपण डोकेदुखी वाटत असेल.

Maybe not everyone wants to be happy. Maybe, sometimes, happiness hurts.

With Honors

With Honors...brilliant...Joe Pesci rocks!

Research...Beacon at the end of a long, winding tunnel without light...that's what it is. Nothing less. Nothing more...

Once you find the light, the path seems very easy and you berate yourself for not seeing the obvious thing.

But that's working backwards.

Like going to the answers section without solving the riddle...

Or reading a story from the last page...

Thesis is like a story.

Dictionary.com says the word 'thesis' has its origins in greek and latin. It came from settling down.

ps. I can start with research and reach settling down. Beat it!

Yes!!!

A has left for home. And within next fortnight, I will leave too. Really, really looking forward. Dad says winter is the best time to come home. He doesn't understand. Even if I have to travel unreserved in the heat of May, I will. Coz it's home. And anyone who comes from that part of the country will understand that that's saying a great deal. Coz it's not any summer...it touches 47 C and stabilizes if you are lucky. Now, if you are unlucky, it may rise further and go upto 50. Add to that load shedding. No coolers. No fans. The only respite is water and keeping yourself drenched all the time, but mostly there's no water, too. Anyway, the point being, it doesn't really matter. Wanna take bath three times a day? Stay and rot in Bangalore. Wanna rejuvenate? Head back home. Coz any season, any time, home is the best place to be!

Because it's only at home, with friends and family that the magic really dwells.

It's there that you spent some of the best years of your life, with some of the best people you would ever encounter. When you didn't even have a concept of a friend, some of them were your bestest friends...and what an irony, today when friendships and relationships break over not having enough time together, those, of the childhood times, with whom you haven't met for years, still feel so close.

The mangoes were never so perrrfect again! Neither was anything else...The taste, the aroma of the food lingered in the memory long after leaving home...

Swings tied onto sturdy neem branches, loaded with every adult and kid in the locality, throughout the day, till the vacation would get over, never broke even once in all these years. Talk about small reassurances...

It's there that you stop worrying about getting wet in the rains. Rather, you go out and soak yourself like a 5-year old kid at the first opportunity.

Standing on the water tank and scrutinizing the whole area with hawk's eye, the vast greenish-brown fields, the scarecrows, the bullocks and the carts, the tillers in between the planted rows of crops...all this while, a steady, pleasant drizzle from the top...and a rainbow if you are lucky for bringing the sky out of its blues...

Cold winter mornings and the thick rajai...

Common bed for everyone during vacations...same age-groups carefully kept together...a mass pretension of sleep beyond the retiring time and as things would quieten down, slow awakening of nudges, whispers, and stifled laughing fits...

..........

It seems like yesterday. I'm gearing up for all this and more, once again!

Life's Colourful

Watching Eminem’s 8 Mile. Good movie. He knows his shit. Was never a rap fan, but this movie is real, it’s good. IMDB says lot of references to his old life.

Anyway, so in one scene, before his demo, he is practising his songs, and his sister is painting something. I paused the movie. Something suddenly zapped in my mind. I rewound and saw the scene again. No mistaking. The same reaction.

I remembered the time when I used to draw and paint. I don’t do that anymore. But there was a time when I was absolutely addicted to it. Poster colours, oil-based colours were a rage with pro’s, but I never fancied them. My favourites were water colours. My constant and faithful companion was Camlin’s 12 colour plate. The colours came in as crisp dry circular discs fitted in 12 different circular holes in the metallic compass-box kind of structure. The height of all gifts was a Camlin colour box. I would sit with them, a brand new brush that came with the box, and a katori full of water in the courtyard and paint. No pencilling the outline. Just flickering the brush over a paper. For hours together.

The colours would soon lose their individuality as they would trickle into each other. On paper as well as in the colour plate. The most colourful one would be white, showing traces of all the others. The solid disc would in time, turn into a ring and slowly the ring would break into small parched pieces. And I would start bothering everyone for a new box.

…….

That’s the thing with memories…You never know what stimulus would trigger specific ones. It’s not logical. That’s the fun part. You aren’t prepared. You are completely off-guard. You never know how and where they are gonna catch up. And while you are musing over them, for those few moments, your present turns into a colourful canvas. Brimming with emotions. With happiness, in this case.

Last Year!

The nightmare these days is that the work I’ve been doing for last couple of years is going to get destroyed in a fire or I'll loose it coz of hard disc failure of my computer. Forget about finishing in time, it just means, I will go degree-less. Just the thought freaks me out.

I am paranoid about it…So, I 've stopped leaving the laptop in lab overnight and have been copying the whole thesis folder in three different places every day. Every single day! The only worry is all the three drives don’t collapse or get corrupted simultaneously. The chances are really low, everyone says. I still think prevention is better…I guess I should create one more folder...I mean, I'm anyway copying it to three different places, why not four?

I am beginning to understand what is meant when we sarcastically tell someone, ‘you’re getting old’…I think I’m becoming too cautious…but you see it's just common sense/fear of losing 4 years’ work...nothing’s worth losing that much time and work.

Have been working like a maniac and got some work done which has been pending for months…it feels good. Have been so so lazy in doing part of the data analysis, especially the data entry part…I am so bored, I thought I will advertise a paid position for a needy MS/ME fellow here and all they’ll have to do is entering my data but then it seemed even more risky…to let them handle the data sheets…told myself, “this is like the materialization of all the sweat on all the week-days and weekends you spent making it out with your hymenopteran girls, observing them doing unspeakable things…so don’t slight it by such antics at the last minute. "

Gotta sleep now. This is the earliest in months. Starting observations again, and I’m absolutely thrilled. I have been following this particular nest for 7 months now, just to get to know the ages of all the animals...so many times felt like throwing this nest away…the unknown age individuals just wouldn’t leave or die…but the patience has finally paid off…may the dead ones’ souls rest in peace…and hope to keep up my appointment with the alive ones at 8 tomorrow morning!

Good night!

Pondicherry, especially the university, elicits extreme responses in people. Some people loved their time there. Some are indifferent. And few hated it. There are various reasons for being indifferent or hating it, they say. They said it wasn't good enough, there were not enough opportunities, professors were biased, they were not at all encouraging, if anything, they tried to scare the students away, killed the students' spirits, blah, blah, blah...it's a big blah...no doubt all that happened. But it made all of us into tough cookies, didn't it? Thank god, we were not sheltered for 2 years, otherwise after coming into the open, we would not be familiar with realities of the outside world.

Man, just think about it! Given the environment, the people, the circumstances, everyone, each one of us is granted with two choices - to whine or to turn the situation in our favour. Given all the adversities, will you try to be a winner or just a whiney loser? Why not try to turn the tables? It just takes a try...you may not succeed, but at least you would have tried.

Plus, how can you entirely blame the environment and people? Because given more or less the same conditions, some succeeded, whereas you didn't! By saying that the blame lies somewhere else, are you trying to hide your own inconsistencies? Not just that...you are fucking taking away others' success from them by saying favouritism, bias, or whatever.

So come on losers, try to catch up...that is if you get time from your whining!

Westward Bound 1: Waiting for Sunrise

After reaching three hours prior to the take-off and after umpteen assurances at the security about my backpack and poster container (which looked like a miniature canon) weights and volumes which I was to carry as cabin luggage, I was sure that everything was in place and the journey would be without any problems. I had nothing much to worry and I kept repeating to myself that though the beginning of the day resembled Murphy’s law where he very prudently states, “if things can go wrong, they will”, what’s there to worry about once one reaches the airport…

The morning began at 10 in the night the previous day. I was in turmoil whether I should sleep or not. If I would have slept, there were absolutely no chances of getting up on time…at 4 in the morning. Such a ghastly hour to begin the day. Having the absolute benefit of knowing myself well, I was sure that the deep foray with Morpheus into the unknown would not be interrupted by anything, even by the most alluring day dream I kept having for last 26 years, namely the dream of travelling...

You see, ever since I remember, I was fascinated with maps, atlases, rivers, mountains, oceans…geography was my most favourite subject and I was absolutely awesome at it…and I don’t mean just the banal quiz game of countries and their capitals. I would not remember even the most recent historical fact, but ask me about minutest details about geography and I’ll be up and reciting them happily in the middle of the night …what’re Ganga and Brahmaputra called in Bangladesh before and after meeting, or which 2 rivers surrounded Mesopotamia or how many countries does Danube pass through or the longest mountain range, or how biggest lake in the world is actually called a sea…fortunately, geography and history are closely linked and sometimes it helped me scraping marks in history, answering questions like why Mesopotamia was called so and some such unusually placed interesting questions in history papers.

Point being, even this deep a love would have to forego if I slept.

So I didn’t. I finished the packing, watched some random movie, took bath, tidied the room, and got ready by 5:30. From the hostel to the bus stop is not a walkable distance and I’d convinced one of my friends to drop me. I tried her number. It was switched off!!! Hmm…a bit freaky as I was almost sure there would be no autos on the roads so early in the morning…I went on the main road to get an auto, but the roads were absolutely deserted. Tried calling her again, it was still switched off. I tried a common friend’s number who lives in the same hostel…this number was switched off too! By this time, I was freaking out…I went to this friend’s hostel, argued with the security…the damn fellow wouldn’t let me in (it’s open to guys between 6 AM to 10 PM…hah!)…anyway, thankfully, I remembered this common friend’s room number, convinced the security that if he is not allowing me to enter, the least he can do is go in himself and knock on her room door…

For 5 minutes, nothing happened…everyone here sleeps like a log…this is what happens if you watch movies till 2 in the morning…anyway, finally this common friend awoke, came out, I asked her to go and break into my escort’s room…5 minutes of disturbing and the longest silence again, after which the escort comes out…”it’s not 6 yet, we decided on 6”…I cursed her mentally for all the hyperventilating moments and told her to come to my room…

The new airport is not bad at all…it’s just tad too far…the bus ride was mostly accompanied with morning sun on face and a nice refreshing slumber...

Airports (or railway stations for that matter, but especially airports), they fascinate me…I am an absent-minded person and end up paying very little attention to what’s happening around me…except on airports! When I am on an airport, I transform into an absolutely alert and inquisitive fellow…I watch and observe people around me…I make use of their faces, behavioural patterns, gestures and personalities and mentally project my own imaginary characters onto them, concocting their backgrounds, fabricating their accounts and narratives…

After a round of this, I was already cursing myself to be there so early…8 in the morning and they should have announced the check-in. Just as I was thinking this, they announced that there was a technical glitch in the whole clearance…believe the authorities to be as vague as possible…anyway, I doze off…after an uneventful, dreamless doze, I woke up to another announcement for check-in of my flight...

An hour in that damn line, my turn comes and I was told that the technical glitch they were referring to had something to do with the computers, and since nothing was responding, they had to process everything manually…great!!! Reminded them once again about the connecting flight from Dubai, and headed toward immigration...

Tu Muskura...

I have Tu Muskura from Yuvvraaj on repeat mode for the whole day…can’t seem to get enough of it…Alka in her best form…so is Gulzar, simple but soulful…and Rahman, this is a very different Rahman…never heard a western classical melody of this kind from him…

More I hear this song, the more restless I become…Have you ever spent sleepless nights, coz something haunted you? Tonight’s fate was sealed the moment I heard this song…

Violin…How could I not touch it for so long? I have to start again…from scratch if be so…

Tu muskura jahaan bhi hai tu muskura…
Tu dhoop ki tarah badan ko chhoo zara…
Shareer si ye muskurahaten teri,
Badan me sunti hun main aahaten teri,
Labon pe aake chhu de apne lab zara,
Tu Muskura...