A good marriage

Four of us in the department have defended our qualifiers this summer- Listening to a non-native English speaker defend a proposal has been an eye opener. I've always been a little biased about this- coming from a state in India where English comprehension can be quite sorry, I have always maintained that I would not trust a doctor who did not speak good English- after all, if they didnt understand the language their textbooks were in, how could I trust their diagnosis?

Yet listening to E. and Y. defend their proposals, I have to do more than just change that stand. Remarkably intelligent, both of them speak heavily accented, sometimes incomprehensible English. Yet, shrouded in an unfamiliar language, their science and the clarity of thought behind it was crystal-sharp. Their understanding wrapped itself around words and gave them new meaning, in subtle ways that no native English speaker could have managed.

So, the "gene of interest" became "interesting gene" - intimate, as opposed to something laid out to be examined on a dissecting table. A personal preference, as opposed to a vague 'of interest to the scientific community'.
And a little later, Y. had a problem explaining how he would create his lines of transgenic mice. After drawing all his genes and promoters on the board, he could not explain what he would do with them. Instead of faltering for words, he simply held up his fingers, intertwined them, and said "marriage", with the cutest of grins.

He couldn't have put it better- The cross of an old culture and a new idea, his country's manners and the ideas of this one, an understanding that is more innate than learnt from a textbook- what more is required for the perfect 'marriage', to make the best scientist?