Linkage disequilibrium

Non-random. Two forms of a gene, not necessarily identical, nor in the same place. Sometimes, even on different pieces of DNA altogether. For many, many reasons, they should not link. Should not move together in evolutionary space-time without obvious reason. Yet they do.

Insomnia. The internet. Too much coffee, too much work. Too little time. Two continents and a 12 hour time difference should equal less connection.

But through your nights and my days, we write together. Through my days and your nights, we still share- Music. Work. Ideas. Coffee.

Plugged in to conversations with my mother, still. Remember birthdays from another lifetime.

Tuned out of randomness. Workplace small talk. Who used the last of the cells Who stuffed tips last Send out those emails asap. On the same plane, meaningless.

I move like an allele linked to another place, another time. In happy disequilibrium.

Middle ground

Once upon a time, in sunset hues in a distant land, my father held Lehninger's Biochemistry on his lap and explained glycolysis and enantiomers, the cycles within cycles of breathing and respiration. In that same golden light, my mother's voice beckoned, the rhythm of Tennyson's Brook exacted to scientific precision, each word clear as the molten glass alchemists shaped once.

Now words flounder and stand bunched up in the spotlight, refugees fleeing clarity and fearing shadow. At work, I must write to simplify. The rhythms of oxidative phosphorylation and voltage-gated ion channels must be broken down, glued together with what's popular and catchy to appeal to the masses.'Science' must not be speculative. 'Interesting' is sacrificed and turned into the accurate, as if the two must necessarily be mutually exclusive.

To my eye, sunlight bouncing off chlorophyll and phytopigments is still poetry, still worth lyrics set to metered rhyme as precise as the electrons dancing. But I am told poetry must not be scientific or lucid, poetry may only be in abstract terms that complicate the most basic human emotions. Are emotions less meaningful because they have scientific explanations, or beauty lost because there is an explanation to it?

I teeter on the scales, searching for the middle ground where both sides of my childhood can still exist in that same equal, golden light.

Grass

It is everywhere, underfoot in everyone's life. Nowhere of consequence, and still everywhere. In the end, everything returns to the earth and turns to grass. And it is nothing, of no importance, really. Even at the end, who thinks of grass as their next destination?

When I am sad, I turn to the grass. It is everywhere, and I can turn to it through crowded streets and rainy windows. Unnoticed, I slip into it, anywhere and everywhere. Like grass, I can be nowhere and nobody, anywhere. Un-peopled, a grassy world is a happy place. It is people that make me unhappy.

Being judgemental

When asked for an opinion, you wrap it up in words like these- Might be, perhaps, "to them it's the right thing, and who am I to judge?"

Perhaps you are right, and I might be wrong, in forming opinions in complete sentences. To them it may be the right thing to do, but I am asking about you. Who aren't you, that you would deny yourself the right to an opinion, a thought, conviction in your own beliefs? In this limited space-time, why not frame your personality in words that express your self with conviction, your views punctuated clearly in the light of your own reasoning?

It is a contradiction to think that one of my firmest beliefs is in being individualistic- to 'let' others do what they want without forcing them to change, give people the space and time they need for self-realization. But I have this need to evaluate, weigh the actions of one against the other and in the difference frame another facet of my understanding. After the balancing, they may step off my mental scales and go back to being themselves, but I seem unable to let go off this process. You, on the other hand, have no problems with never considering, never balancing and accepting unconditionally. They are what they are, and I am what I am. Why must we weigh and measure that as greater or this as lesser?

I find myself in the tilt of those scales, in the balancing act that helps me decide how to live my life as myself. And I ask you now- where do you find yourself, in this unconditional sea of unthinking acceptance? How, in the million ways of living a life and being happy, do you decide which one you want?

Strength training

There has always been this refrain, in the background.
Lose ten pounds.
Pretty. Dark. Big. Graceful.
Lose ten pounds.
Wide hips. Bad skin. Great hair. Big feet.
Lose ten pounds.

Through years and phases, swinging through all my memory of childhood and beyond, are these words. Physical descriptors, half-pleasant, half-unpleasant. The day I overheard my PT instructor pass a comment about my giant hips, and the same evening that the ladies in the temple gushed over me, asking if I was the dancer scheduled for the evening's performance. The day I was supposed to be sleeping, when a despairing maiden aunt asked my mother- "She's so dark and fat, make sure she loses weight or you will never find a groom." I was twelve. Being told, through acne and awards, top marks and good writing and terrible physics, to lose ten pounds to look good. As if they were all that stood between me and confidence, success and true love.

Confused, I chose to lose the body, in dreams that left me single, and preferably invisible. And when the refrain changed, it only confused me more. Suddenly, it is acceptable to be unhealthily obese and still consider oneself lovely. There are opinions and clothes and people and places that have expanded to fit these sizes, and I am still confused, unsure whether to stand when they call for the petites or the large-framed women, the tall or the average or the perfectly-toned. I am lost in many descriptors- It is only one body, and I don't know where to place it.

I see-saw in self images, the woman's compliments struggling to outweigh the child's hurt, all over an image and size that has remained largely unchanged. I've asked, over and over- Am I beautiful? And never believed the answer yes, because beauty itself was so hard to define, it seemed. Of late, this is my answer- Lift the weight, don't obsess over losing it. Don't avoid the comments, just outrun them.

And I forget them all, in the hardest, most comforting way I have found. Beauty is in strength, in knowing my possibilities and reaching past my toes, and resilience is in beauty, expanding my limits as my arm arches overhead, weights in hand. And beauty and strength come together in the most perfect way possible when I run, in the feel of road and wind and sun.

And to all those words that I questioned myself with, I have an answer that pleases both the child and the woman within.

"Oh you're so pretty!"
Perhaps, but I can run 20 miles.

"You'll never get those jeans past those hips."
Perhaps, but I can still run 20 miles.

In strength and health, in the light of my clear, fatigued mind after a run, my body becomes visible to me, slowly. Just as it is, and it fits me perfectly, regardless of the perceptions its sometimes squeezed into.

Middle ground-1

Once upon a time, in sunset hues in a distant land, my father held Lehninger's Biochemistry on his lap and explained glycolysis and enantiomers, the cycles within cycles of breathing and respiration. In that same golden light, my mother's voice beckoned, the rhythm of Tennyson's Brook exacted to scientific precision, each word clear as the molten glass alchemists shaped once.

Now words flounder and stand bunched up in the spotlight, refugees fleeing clarity and fearing shadow. At work, I must write to simplify. The rhythms of oxidative phosphorylation and voltage-gated ion channels must be broken down, glued together with what's popular and catchy to appeal to the masses.'Science' must not be speculative. 'Interesting' is sacrificed and turned into the accurate, as if the two must necessarily be mutually exclusive.

To my eye, sunlight bouncing off chlorophyll and phytopigments is still poetry, still worth lyrics set to metered rhyme as precise as the electrons dancing. Poetry must not be scientific or lucid, poetry may only be in abstract terms that complicate the most basic human emotions. Are emotions less meaningful because they have scientific explanations, or beauty lost because there is an explanation to it?

I teeter on the scales, searching for the middle ground where both sides of my childhood can still exist in that same equal, golden light.

The comfort of myth

What do you do, when faced with insurmountable obstacles? Over the last few years, I've had more than what I let on or calculated for. Some of them, I knew I was getting into a challenge- research, marriage, living with strangers. Others, I doubt anyone could have anticipated. The most trained researchers and doctors in the most scientifically advanced country have stood staring at numbers in charts, unable to resolve the contradictions between numbers and 'reality'. There are no explanations, except the ones I offer myself, trusting in the power of the mind to heal just as strongly as it can hurt.

And there are these, not quite as petty as the quotidien struggles of kitchen supplies, not as painful or requiring of faith as medical mysteries. Just this everyday struggle of incompetence and inefficiency, of poor work ethic and people so irresponsible and blind to their own insufficiencies as they blame the world for their problems, and I struggle, pulling every fiber of my being together to remind myself to stay in the present. Not dwell on the mistakes they made two years ago, not dwell on what should have been done or could have been done ten years ago. Live in the now, and deal with the current problem- Advice that I excel at applying to personal problems, and struggle so much with at work and elsewhere.

I always assumed objectivity and rational thought was easier outside the little bubble of the people closest to me. When logic and basic evolutionary principles that assume people would choose the best actions to ensure their survival fail, I fall back on myth. The stories of my childhood, of an egoistic, pompous man, who was granted a wish by the gods. (Why did the gods grant the wish of a demon? Who knows, but in an attempt to explain a world where bad people have power, let's assume they do.)

Once upon a time, there lived a man who prayed and prayed, and was granted a wish, that if he laid his hand on a person's head, they would be reduced to ashes. He traveled the world, creating havoc and pain and confusion, until the gods were forced to intervene. I take silly satisfaction in the fact that god chose the form of a woman to mete his judgement. The girl danced with the man, danced until he matched her skill, and then forced him to follow as she placed her hand on her head. And in following, he was forced to face his own malice, and lost power and self when he turned to a heap of ashes.

I am no beautiful dancer descended from the skies, nor are these people demons of limitless power, that I should dance to their tunes and beat them at their own games. But I wonder still, in moments of frustration, what would happen if I forced them to face their own contradictions. In the objective world, my mind plays these games, where myth and strategic manipulation dance this jubalbandi that brings me to a space where, if not resolution, at least there is solace.

Ebb and flow

Am I writing about dandelions a little too much? They are everywhere now, sprinkled through the mundane-ness of lawns like sudden smiles, like the simple blessings that so often make for a perfect day. Spilling over, unasked for. Like relationships that span fifteen years, stretching and snapping at the seams and rebounding to a grateful security, from dead leaf to blossom to seeds on the wind. Like our families blending, past age and geography and language, simply because once we picked flowers together for our botany projects. Picking up where we left off, peering at ferns and moss together, knowing our eyes are equally open to these littlenesses (like the smell of herbs in warm spring grass) and then swirling into the future as your daughter fills my lap with wildflowers. Blessings, like wildflowers it seems, just wait for us to look for them with innocence, with less expectation and more joyfulness in these simple blues and yellows.

Beloved

Over and over she comes up to me. My back is always to her. I am browsing in an airport bookstore, at home among my favorite authors. She is always pretty and coltish, sometimes awkward, other times cute. Her dark hair is always chopped short. Over and over, she calls my name. Not the name you know me by, not the name I call myself. She calls me Akka, or Maasi, or Chitti.. It is always soft and shy and tentative, and there is always music in her life. Sometimes she is a singer, other times a musician. Her name is always a variant of the word 'Beloved'. She is named for love, and she calls my name as if I would forget her. She is the haunted one, and yet I am the one who lies awake all night. Dreamless and dry-eyed and worrying, as I browse my little bookstore paradise, and she walks up to me and calls out my name from her memories.

She is always lost, and always hesitant. I never know where she has been, all these years. You see, I never knew her. Only her mother, who was someone I loved, who married and had this child, beloved and precious. And walked away with her, from her..into places that I can never see, cannot comprehend. And this child comes back to me, adult and questioning, big-eyed and innocent. And I never have the answers.

Where were you when my father hit my mother? Why was she so full of herself that she never saw me? Where were you when she walked away from him? Why could she never be happy? Didn't you love me, that you would keep in touch and look for me on trains and planes and the cities you knew my mother would run to and take me along?

And most of all, she asks me this - Why did you love her so much, when she was so flawed? And if you loved her, why didn't you stop her?

In dreams, over and over.. I say I'm sorry, and I wish I had been there. Awake, I remind myself that I am here, and I am sorry, and I still do nothing.

What a difference..

I've always had this not-so-secret fascination with makeover shows. Homes, wardrobes, people- Just a difference in fabric, posture, lighting, a slightly different tint of blush or yellow on a wall or face, and there's the fairy-tale transformation of the ugly duckling to the swan. According to the people on these shows, the right dress can make all the difference in finding the perfect job, true love, self-confidence, and anything else you might be looking for.

He first caught my eye at the copier machine in the office yesterday- Blond, bespectacled, and incredibly cute. He caught my eye, but fairly sure he'd pay no attention to me, I gave him a polite half-smile and turned away to wage my daily battle with the monster machine that refuses to yield my printouts without several slams and kicks (Yes, this is why I work out.) When I turned around again, he was still there, staring at me, gape-jawed and fascinated. Wow. Him, looking at me? Who would've thought? I'm pretty sure he doesn't talk to strange nerdy girls.
But a tentative, smiling 'Hi' later, he walked across the room to me.

"Hi, are you a real doctor? Can I have one of those?" (pointing to the surgical glove dangling from my pocket).
Apparently my white lab coat and the right accessories (blue glove, anyone?) can transform me from a stranger that one never talks to, to an object of absolute fascination to a six year old.

Into dandelions

On the bus, through a windowpane, I slip
Into the grass.
Up these small sunbursts of yellow, I rise
On birdsong,
A single note held up to the clouds.
Slide down branches held up to the light
Through petals, into the strength of tree root and earth
And back into myself, replenished, complete.

'I' write, and is it the voice of grass, or clouds, or the parched self that slipped into them? It seems I only find myself when I can learn to move into a greater consciousness of self.

Choosing my confessions

There are words, and there are words. I pick and choose, gleaning and matching words to thought. I could write, I think, a poem about becoming the wind and ruffling the beautiful uncut hair of the earth as I walked across the parking lot last night. Or perhaps a symphony of the heart and muscle as they dance together on a long run, paced to the rhythm of racing blood and air. Wrap words around the way I hold silence like a precious secret in time slipped carelessly through the weave of inane chatter. If I could choose the words to wrap them, I would gift these to you- These silences of power and calm and contentment, a spell against all the dark magic the world chooses to throw our way. A spell to hold you calm as you ride out the winds that fling you wildly through these times. I wish I could take you into this realization of oneness that gives me so much faith, this infallible sense of security in the universe. But there are words that can be spoken, and words I cannot find, and so I choose my confessions and my silences, the writing and the living.

In silence, I work and run and talk and laugh and live. There is a time for words, and a time to wrap myself in silence and drift on spring breezes into summer, hoping you catch the wind and drift with me.

Homecoming

I have lived in this city for 4 years and six months to the day. I've walked and run and driven all over these streets, shopped the stores and know the interesting places in the area. Planted flowers and pulled weeds through summer,watched bulbs I planted come up in the spring. Shoveled snow, built snowmen, thrown snow balls and made angels. Baked cookies and decorated Christmas trees, lit lamps for Diwali and eaten pongal with friends. Lived with friends and family, fallen out of love and in it, gotten married and played house. I've grown up here, in many ways.

And still, at the end of the day, I want to go home. Home to dusty streets and a pani-puri wala, home to noise and confusion and screaming contests with my mother, the maid, the furniture delivery guy, and the kid across the street. Just home. Home to the smell of rain and my mother's cooking, home to harsh white tube lights and laughing with my father. Where for some reason, I lose weight even as I eat my fill, where my skin stops reacting to the sun even when I spend the entire day outdoors. Where life flows seamlessly from the world around into me and back again.

It's not like I didn't try. Love, work, friends, traditions, fun- I listed the ingredients and captured them all, but it still wasn't home, until the sun rose this morning.

As I drove to work, the winter sun-that-might-have-been moon played through bare branches and wimpy clouds, pretending, trying, to warm the earth. And for the first time, I felt the season change. Something elemental, for there is nothing to suggest spring yet. Something instinctive, as the physical memory plugged in at last, connecting me to the pace of the seasons and whispering of things that are and things to come. The gentleness of snow, the depth of springtime, the strength of flowers and the warmth of the earth shielded by winter.

Once again, I feel the slant of the sun in my veins, as it changes from a blazing sunset on a Delhi terrace to this moon-sun that plays through trees and roofs and dances to a rhythm that I have only just begun to sense. I am learning, at last, the feel of the earth beneath my feet, the wind and the sun and the subtler, softer words they speak in this air. At last, we're on the home stretch. I touch the earth, and the earth touches me.

Spare me spring-time, this year.
Saturated color, perfect pastels
Arrangements of adequate proportion and number
A continuous striving for harmony in monotonous buzzing spaces
Counted, shaped, pruned and prosperous
Spare me rhythmic repetition and those horrendous bursts-
Of obviously unexpected fake cheer and inane contrived mystery.

Clutch instead at words retrieved from dusty clarity,
Hold them from slipping into this anonymity of spring.
Give me hungry words, intense as dust choking my breath.
Words that lie parched in the sun,
then swell with the rain and flood the spirit.
Give me words that fight to live.

There are these words of power, that escape as whiffs
From traffic jams and haggling vendors and pollution and hunger-
In little puffs, there are genuine smiles, real anger
Catch those crests and weave them into words for me again.
Give me words that ooze and crack and bleed
Spare me the flowers, this year.

If you're Indian (or India-aware), you're likely to be familiar with the name 'IIT', and what it might mean to someone in Class 12 studying science. In case you're neither of those, suffice it to say that a while ago, about ten or twenty ambitious, intelligent 16 year olds in the country killed themselves because they couldn't get into the IITs to study engineering. A handful of others would die after getting into this prestigious institute, and it usually had nothing to do with the academic pressure, which was, and is, legendary.

But what I'm about to tell you today has nothing to do with those many suicides. It's about a fish tank in a cafeteria in one of the oldest IIT campuses. It's an extremely well-kept, large tank, out in the open where sunlight filters through trees and glistens off a dozen large white fish. Try and take a look at it sometime, even perhaps as you rush into the cafeteria to ask directions to the railway station, desperately trying to beat traffic and get on the train home. With my need to notice and admire them even as we rushed on our way, and your annoyance with my lack of focus on flagging an auto down. Really, did you think I would forget how to wave my fingers to get the driver's attention if I did not focus all my energies on my arm ?

In a rambling walk over the hills of thought, with perhaps a little dabbling in streams of consciousness on the way home, my point has to do with those fish, and our differing reactions to them. The point itself is a simple one, and short too-

Happiness is peripheral.

If I could offer only piece of advice to you and get you to accept it, that would be it. Life is ridiculously hard, and ignoring peripheral joy doesn't make it simpler. The big issues are and always will be the big issues.

Work.
Food.
Health.
Money.
Relationships.

There will never be enough of the first few, and there will always be one too many inconvenient relationships. But happiness weaves itself in and out of it all, and keeps you company through all the striving, if you only pay a little attention.

Instead, we walk these long difficult roads, with me stopping to pick dandelions and watch butterflies and fish, and you dragging me back to keep my eyes on some far-off, as yet invisible grand prize that we are all endlessly striving for. When I show you the dandelions, you only say, "That's not important right now." "Let's stay focused here." You remind me- the road is long, it will soon be night, we are running out of food and must make for the next town for resources, or wolves might fall on us in the night. We must hurry, and hurry now. Don't lose sight of the big picture. The dandelions can wait.

For what, I wonder? And why?

Of (oxy)morons..

Voice your opinion.
VOTE NOW.
Express your feelings.
Follow your innermost dreams to the point of idiocy. Not insanity, which would be far more acceptable, at least to me.

Self-expression is often over-rated. Why is the constant casting forth of the self so important? So much more fun to sit back and watch people act like morons in an attempt to convince the world they're right and interesting and their opinions on furniture design, hangovers and good restaurants are of greater significance to the world than most other things.

Suddenly, so few people seem worth engaging in conversation with. Am I talking to the wrong people, or talking about the wrong things?
(Yes, I realize this post makes me sound like a conceited, opinionated jerk too.If you don't like it, please excuse yourself while I finish growing up here.)

Even my silence is filled with these opinions- foolish, conceited opinions that leave me unsatisfied and disgusted, yet unable to move past them into things more meaningful and permanent.

Metaphors for words

When I wrote as a child, I gained insight. Every word that spilled out marked a little realization of things, a perspective I might not have seen had I not written. Words were welcome friends, who came in and sat down and helped me sort out things that didn't make sense. Of late, they are more like the relatives one must oblige with the occasional visit, or the friends who come over, uninvited, when you'd rather be alone. So I smile politely and accommodate them for a while, but they tire me, these meandering words that stop by to make small talk.

Perhaps it is that I spend too much time with them, now. But like a confused teenager who succumbs to peer pressure and tries to impress the cool kids, I come back to writing. It is, in so many ways, the only thing I really know, the way I define myself...- What do you do when the things you define yourself with begin to tire you and slowly drag you into the mundanity they used to help you avoid?

Of too few eyes

I find it hard to write a neutral article. An objective standpoint, a simple overview. Everything is personal, there's always a perspective I know I am missing. After events and analysis and summaries, it is still only my standpoint, my perception. It feels like too much self-awareness, too much internalization. Everything circles back to this handful of ideas- incredibly creative ones from some of the best minds on the planet, but the strings are still held only in the weave of my thoughts, the loom is still my mind and nothing more.

All that I write is a strange mixture of other voices, with my chiming in with a line or two to connect the dots. All that I write is my thoughts on the views of others. As an example, either I can write "Evolution, in Dawkins' words.." or "My understanding of evolution.." . But I am sick of both- I know what D. said, and if you wanted to, you could go read it yourself. I know whats in my head, how does it help for me to voice it?

The corollary to this is that I am often annoyed and bored by what I write- simply because there is too much of myself in it, and how long can anyone explore this limited little space inside the self? I'd like to step out, somehow, and leave the self behind. I want to look with other eyes, feel with a different heart.

Write with other words and other ideas, in another voice, from an angle I've never seen before. It feels, these days, like there is too much of 'I', and not enough vision.

Any ideas on how to get out of this?

Baadalon ka naam na ho, ambar ke gaon mein
Jalta ho jungle jab, apni chaaon mein
Yahi to hai mausam
Aao, tum aur hum
Baarish ke nagme gungunae
Thoda sa roomani ho jaaye


(From the movie Thoda sa roomani..)

Life on a song

Try it sometime. Take all your rage and fling it out into high melodramatic seas and ride the wave.

Live your life through fired up songs of angst and the deepest cuts. Believe that your professor not taking notice of your deadline really is the deepest cut.

Hold on to hope, like it really is the last thing holding you up. Hope that people will love your work as much as you do, accept it at first submission.

Laugh at the idiocy of the M.D, Ph.D, tenured professor who proclaims that it takes more than two points to draw a line. Despair for the survival of intelligence and the human race.

Sit down in a long darkening hallway like you did in high school, feel dusk breaking through you as you wonder whether you will ever walk out into the sunshine at the other end. Wonder whether you will ever get out of here as hopeful, as in love with the things that drew you in. If you will ever not feel disillusioned again.

Fling it all on the storm of a song, and live every word of it, for just five minutes. Reaching out with both hands, try to feel the kick inside.

Melodramatize life, because sometimes that is the only way it makes sense.

Spotting the rainbows

I know he isn't always right, he can be very judgmental and he's biased in his opinions of me. Nonetheless, the bond between us is stronger than most others in my life, and in the lives of others I know. And so I still ask his opinion, question myself over his critique. When the adult, logical woman knows he is wrong, the child in me craves approval, is a little afraid of losing this tie because of his opinions, and I want, more than necessary, to prove my point, convince him of the other side of things.

So when this person claimed to be younger at heart than I am, it turned into an instant competition in my head. For him, it is likely a conclusion that he has arrived at after many judgments over many instances that I brushed off as too casual, and the statement itself, cast off just as easily, is not even something worth arguing about, because there is nothing I could possibly say that would convince him otherwise.

Only time, I tell myself as I hold my tongue. Only time, and life's experiences, will convince him otherwise. The contest remains, though, in my head. And for the last two days, I have pondered the meaning of childhood, and being young at heart.

Does it mean not being careful with things like health and money? Eating badly because only boring old people fuss over healthy foods and exercise? Is it a refusal to move forward in life- avoiding romance, marriage, and adult conversations about life choices- is refusing the trappings of adulthood a sign of being young at heart?

To me, being an adult and a child have much in common. Both are about walking into dark mazes, sticky situations, jumping off giant walls- and finding your way out, testing your skills and knowing that you can, that there is always a happy ending when your mom yells out the door to come in, the day's play is over and its time for dinner with the family.

Being young at heart is the ability to see life as an endless game, and in the end everyone really does win. The playgrounds change as one grows older, but the games are the same. 'Adults' are only the people who have forgotten that at the end of the game, the cops and robbers, pirates and kidnapped princesses, all link arms and go home as friends. That the scary enemies surrounding your besieged fortress are only friends waving sticks in the dusk. The crocodile who will not let you cross the golden river unless you give him a certain color? He's a friend too, all he wants is that you have the right perspective, and spot the solutions hidden in the kaleidoscope of colors that can confuse you in times of stress.

The difference between an adult and a child is in perception. When the child sees the rainbow on the sidewalk, the adult only sees an oil leak from someone's car. The Real Adult admires the rainbow, feels a little thrill at knowing the physics of refraction and angles of light, remembers to tell their neighbor to check their car, and walks home.

=======================================================================

So who is younger at heart- him or I? It is no longer a contest, only a difference in perspective. I still don't understand the reason for his statement, nor the necessity of it. But I am, for now, more comfortable with who I am, the way I am growing up, growing older.)

Here and there

I say,
There are other places words prefer,
Where they flow more freely, settle in more easily
Grow deeper roots, send up brighter blooms
Spaces fertile with events and ideas.

The other only whispers-
Stay, please stay.
Will the words of others keep you happy?
Would you care for new friends, Jincy Willett or the Age of Wonder?
Or old loves, we could visit them too, if you like.
Enid Blyton and Pablo Neruda?

As we argue, words hide in the crevices,
Out of the crossfire, or perhaps
They're only the shadows shifting,
And the words left long ago.

Let's start at the very beginning..

After all, its a very good place to start- When you read you begin with ABC, so why not attack writers block with an ABC as well :). So here's my first meme:

Here are the "rules":
Link the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Share the ABCs of you.
Tag 3 people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
Let the 3 tagged people know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
Do not tag the same person repeatedly but try to tag different people, so that there is a big network of bloggers doing this tag! (Very Important One!) - Ah, possibly the toughest clause of all !:)

And the meme:

A – Available/Single? - Single, no. Available- depends on what I'm expected to be available for.

B – Best friend? - Uh,me? Tying as top choices- me, my mom, certain books, a few cherished people..

C – Cake or Pie? - Cake :)

D – Drink of choice? - Hm, depends on the time and the mood. Coffee at midnight during deadlines, martinis for breakfast on certain occasions!

E – Essential item you use every day? – A smile, probably..

F – Favorite colour? - The sky- Sunrise pink, sunset orange, white and blue and gray and everything else!

G – Gummy Bears or Worms? - Neither.. but if you held a gun to my head to choose, I'd pick the worms, I think.

H – Hometown – 'vasudhaiva kutumbakam' !

I – Indulgence? – Haagen-Dazs rum raisin ice cream, chick flicks and chinese food.. all in one evening.

J – January or February? - Wedding anniversary, my first trip to Paris..it's got to be February!

K – Kids & their names? - None so far. I'm toying with Priyangumanjari and Katyayani- if you have similarly dramatic suggestions for names, leave them in the comments please :)

L – Life is incomplete without? - Achieving what makes you deep-down happy.

M – Marriage date? - Those who ought to remember should manage it without the reminder here ;)

N – Name? Your real name!! - What do you think it is? :) One of my favorite 'quotes' on names is here..

O – Oranges or Apples? - Oranges

P – Phobias/Fears? - I can frighten myself with almost anything if I start imagining it, so the list probably spans the entire dictionary!

Q – Quote for today? - "What we have here is failure to communicate!"

R – Reason to smile? - Must I have a reason? After all, 'sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, and sometimes your smile is the source of your joy"

S – Season? - Fall

T – Tag 3 People? – Dew drops, Rain, and NV !

U – Unknown fact about me? - Uh, if I knew it wouldn't be unknown.

V – Vegetable you don’t like? - Not that I don't like them, but I've always wondered about the reason for artichokes..

W – Worst habit? – Hmm.. over-analysing things? A short temper and a sharp tongue? Needing to know the end of all stories, and it better be a satisfying one? Indecisiveness? Not knowing when to stop listing my faults?

X – X-rays? - Twice, and the dental ones were the worse of the two times.

Y – Your favorite food? - Street food in India- Pani puri, sev puri, chinese at the roadside laari.. and round it off with matka kulfi !

Z – Zodiac sign? - Leo

“What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.”

-Andre Gide

Questions

1. How many habits/ traits do I have to pick up from another person to stop being myself?

2. If I change to adapt to a new situation, do I stop being my 'self'?

3. How much of my 'self' can be defined only in the context of my environment, based on circumstance, and how much is me, regardless of whether I am isolated or with others? Which of these selves is more critical to my identity?

Looking for words?

I've been doing that, for a very long while. There are plenty of words- but to find just the right one, in the right place and time, and then realize that you don't really have anything that great to say in the first place, that you need these oh-so-perfect words for. I'm tired of "just writing". For once, I don't want to write. I want the words to mean what they did before. To pick me up and carry me out on field trips of consciousness, tripping over self-discovery as we walk together. To start walking and not know where we're going, yet reach the perfect finish together, words and me. Somewhere, they told me- "Sometimes if you stand still, the world comes to you." So I'll lay my tools down, and maybe take a nice nap. I'll wait for words to come wake me again, when they really mean it.

In the meantime, if you wended your way over here looking for something to read, try this. As always, he knows just what to do with the words that land up at his fingertips and ask to stay.

Understanding

What is this light that disturbs the peace?
Illuminating shadow without clarity
Disturbing ideas half-understood
and a dark, unnamed thing slithers, uncoils
Uncomfortable in the sudden cold, in unfamiliar light.

No questions prod, no answers hurt
Just this strange glow that lights the comfortable dark.
The dark is simple, unchallenged and enfolding.
It welcomes strange silences, holds them unquestioned.
This light, though-
It creeps out from somewhere unknown
Unwanted, distasteful
A cold, watery, brittle light-
Stretching grasping fingers
Towards truths better left in the dark.

Connections

Tuesday morning, 2 a.m

14409735862 : We are at the ICU.
Through sleep, she registers this number that looks like home.
"Mom, I just got this text message. Are you guys okay?"
"We're fine, what message are you talking about?"

14409735862 : Please come, she doesn't have much time left. She's asking for you.
The phone rings and rings with no replies, her call ends in a text message and voicemail.

14409735862 : She didn't make it, why wouldn't you come see her?
When he calls, they talk. "I'm so sorry for your loss. Whoever you are, whatever she meant to you, I hope you find peace. I wish you'd seen my messages last night and called the right person instead of me."

Faith (f)or science

Most of life's conundrums are usually covered by the blanket answers of bhakti - "Have faith, He solves all problems in his own time." "God sees the truth, but waits."
Simple answers, requiring nothing more from me than that I smile beatifically at an idol, and ask an inanimate object to fix all my troubles.

Don't get me wrong- I do believe in a higher spirit, a universal energy that can guide and protect and solve all problems. I believe in places of power, where eons of energy lie stored, and if the connections are strong enough, each of us can reach those stores. I just don't buy into the idea that a shiny sticker of a goddess on my computer will give me greater wisdom. So what would you do, if your mentor told you to have faith in God, for he solves all problems and will give you your due?

The situation is a simple one, something we've all faced to some extent since we started school. A copies the work that B did, and passes it off as his own. Not just that, he's quite nice about it, telling B- look, we can say we did this project together, and you can share the credit.

If it were only a question of A and B, I would wage righteous crusades and make sure B got his due. The realization that morality is so much easier in the third person makes me cringe.

But this is my work, three years of research. I fought tooth and nail to prove my hypothesis, worked on a single protocol for more than a year, spent endless nights writing it all up. Through qualifiers and exams and conferences I slaved over it, and came close to quitting my Ph.D over this project. This isn't a grade on a class project at stake, it's a lot of research money, the careers of several people, possible collaborations.

Should I stick up for myself, demand my due- "Our group did the work, we should get the credit and screw the others"? Or should I choose a middle road, share the credit and diminish the value of everything that we did? Doesn't that in some cosmic way condone the wrong, say that it's acceptable to copy and demand credit for it?
What would you do, if you were me?

The substance of home

I don't remember why I was running that night, or what I tripped on and fell over. I remember only hitting the edge of this table, the cut on my chin and the bright blue of the wall I looked up at as I landed. My mother rushing to the doctor, and the faint scar on my chin that remains. Today, the table itself feels like something of a miracle. It's survived over twenty-five years, 10 moves across as many cities, two continents and an earthquake. I run my fingers over the edges and try to recollect being just that high, to land with my chin on that edge.

There are whole shelves everywhere, filled with the things I have gathered over the years. An old fishtank, overflowing with the toy ducks and penguins and snakes I collected. A rabbit, two interlinked bears once named Coffee and Toffee, and Maggie Ann perch on top, guarding the lot. High-school biology notes. French class books, old letters and birthday cards.. the list is endless. None of it is particularly aesthetic, most of it would be easy to classify as clutter.

That stuff that gets tossed out when you move house, sweep away dust bunnies. I, and most other 'intellectuals' I know, would like to think of ourselves as detached, these things as just material possessions- dispensable, and in some ways, deserving of disposal, as proof that nothing holds us back, ties us down to a place. When we leave, we pick up the 'essentials' and walk out. A few more aesthetic individuals would be so very disdainful of these shelves- There is one that seems to be exclusively dedicated to the extremely tasteless vases I once had a habit of gathering. A pointy shoe, a green face, a pink flowered vase, and a sheep. Ugh.

But the green face was bought for a laugh, the sheep was a gift from a friend when we were ten, and the vase, to six-year old eyes, was a thing of beauty, worth saving my pocket money and buying for my mother's birthday.

What strikes me is how my perspective has changed. Those things were preserved with sheer emotion, no thought of color schemes or price, of minimalism or theme or good design. As an adult, when I visualise my house, place my things, I want no part of the unaesthetic. If it doesn't fit, it must be tossed. Things that don't look lovely are left behind. As so many others do, I go out and buy things that fit color schemes and lighting plans, that are considered good design and reflect my personality.

Here, none of those matter. The only thing that holds this clutter together is love. The things on these shelves don't reflect my personality, just the events that shaped who I am. Pick any one of those ugly, mismatched, cheap objects, and there is a memory that justifies its persistence. More than my perfectly matched blue shelf, blue couch, and the array of hand bags that I never remember to coordinate after buying them, this is the substance of my life- the inexplicable love that sees what is important to me and holds it safe, waiting for me to come home and rediscover joy.

I'm re-thinking, now, what I want in my home, what I hold dispensable. If you had a choice, what material possessions, apart from photographs and heirlooms, would you consider essential?

As if..

As if the universe cast these lines in the same mould- religion and region (You're Muslim? But I thought you were Bengali?), country and culture (We don't do that in this country), name and location (Michelle? I wouldn't have thought you were Indian!), language and identity (You don't speak your mother tongue?)

As if self-realisation were not difficult enough, that it must be compounded with these confused, imaginary boundaries of geography and religion.

In lieu of..

A real post, this round-up shall have to suffice- News of two weddings, a baby and a trip home in two weeks !

(Yes, I know that's cheating. But in the interest of internet conservation, it's probably best.)

Spell-casting, part 1

Begin with an unhappy cut. The cut must be sharp, and deep enough that emotion flows out as words on paper. The source can be anything, but the cut should be neither long-drawn nor shallow- just short and sharp. A product, perhaps, of a summer afternoon, blinding headache, and too many inane conversations when you would rather be quiet. The words must be written, not remembered.

Toss them in the back of a notebook and forget about them. Remember only that a writer you admired was impressed with what you wrote.

Take a long summer night, a year later. Find an almost-stranger, whom you trust for their smile, and something more you will never be able to put into words. Preferably, live with this person for a short while. Enough to keep you close over a lifetime. In a room far from home, toss in some brightly-colored sheets, poster boards, and the iron beds and tables that are the trappings of most hostels in India. Remember the sounds of a girls' hostel settling in for the night. When the almost-stranger asks to see something you've written, one of the things you reach for is the back of that notebook. Forget this.

A few years later, tell her all that happened over the last few weeks. Why you no longer speak with someone you loved. Why you no longer trust as easily. Feel her anger rise, revel in her love for you. And over the conversation, she tells you she still has what you wrote all those years ago, and she still enjoys it. She sends it back to you, and says she feels wonderful doing it.

The charm requires several years to cast to perfection, but it never fails to buffer you with love on a bad day.

Voices

Like hands-
probing solitude
pawing their way through quiet
Voices-
suffocating thought
stifle emotions in words
Like insects-
whining, buzzing
swarms around my brain
Like claws-
plucking at skin
flinging webs of inanity
Voices-
smothering screams
in polite ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

Not words nor silence

Poetry, like good coffee, is best served dark, strong and sweet. Preferably with a touch of some undefined spice that jogs memories of things half-forgotten, lingers on the tip of your tongue and leaves you half-satisfied, longing for more and trying, for the rest of your life, to re-create that taste, remember the forgotten.

"And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and
flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky. "

(Poetry, Pablo Neruda)

The dew of little things

This lovely post raised, once again, the idea of simple pleasures- "For in the dew of little things, the heart finds its morning and is refreshed." So here's a list of seven, culled for not costing a thing, not requiring too much by way of material goods (well, shoes are helpful :)), and being available anywhere, geographically.

1. Real conversations. I have proof that there is magic in friendship, magic that sprinkles fairy dust through bad days and keeps you protected from hurt. Real conversations are part of that charm.

2. Opening my eyes to life around- Birds, trees, dandelions, a potted plant in a dingy lab- A glimpse of a perfect sky is enough to lift my spirits.

3. Running. I don't go too fast or far, but it's still one of my favorite things ways to get happy.

4. Falling sick. Really :). Listening to 'real adults' gives me the impression that as we get older, taking time for the body to heal becomes a luxury. When children hurt themselves, they avoid the hurting limb, limp around, tell parents. 'Real adults' tell their limbs to stop bothering them, pop a painkiller (The equivalent of telling your body, "Shut up! I don't care what you have to say!") and get on with all-important things to do. Most mothers I know don't have the time to stay sick. Me, I'm miserable with it, but glad to be able to take the time, laze around in a robe and fuzzy socks.

5. Getting better :) - Yes, I know that's the equivalent of saying I like banging my head on the wall 'cos it feels so good when I stop. But seriously, after being sick, it feels so good to get through a day without the fatigue! Why take wellness for granted when good health can be so enjoyable?

6. Babies and small animals. Obvious, but cuteness never fails to satisfy :)

7. Fantasies. They don't cost a thing, can be conjured up anywhere, and the idea of a red-green house-sized dragon named Fitzgerald walking down Main Street demanding cookies never hurt anyone, did it?

The light shines through..

There's this rather famous blog I stop by occasionally. Written by someone my own age, living a life as different from mine as possible, I think. Even in the same city, we would be in different worlds. Her blog is light-hearted entertainment, a quick gurgle of delight, a slight glug of despair.. and she moves on. It's fun, but not something I'd think twice about- or even once, really. In the same room, we might not have much to say to each other. I might dismiss her as the chick, she might dismiss me as the nerd. Her latest post, however, skews perspective.

It takes courage to walk out of a bad marriage, to stand up to abuse and heal yourself, body and mind and soul. It takes especial courage if you come from a society that is sometimes too quick to voice its opinion, and not quick enough to send out a helping hand. And it takes courage to stand up and say you were being trite and never thought about things, acknowledge the person who pointed it out, and give her a space to lean forward into and speak her voice. Is one greater than the other? Quite possibly. For me, I am grateful for the reminder to judge more slowly, the sign that chicks can have hearts and good sense, and be willing to share them.

In older words...

Was it like this the last time we looked?
Were the colors so clear, laughter as sweet
And simple things- hot chai, the smell of marigolds
life in black and white
So precious in childhood?

Sweet innocence and calm it was, I know
But washed by tears
Starved by images of broken homes and broken people,
Isn't the heart a little deeper,
And beauty more sweet?

Irresistible!

In lieu of New Year's resolutions, this has been beckoning since January. Like all good intentions, it's been easily cast aside- with a really valid excuse, of course. In April, I peeked at the theme for May and said a little "Yay! I can do that for a month, easily!" May flowers, gestures from friends, baking adventures, random good things.. there's more than enough sweetness to write about for a month, certainly.

And May hit harder than I thought, with papers to write (and nasty deception! More as the mystery unravels! But not this month ;)), hospitals, conferences, illnesses, an un expected trip home... So, I figured I'd wait. Let those posts pile up and weave them into the theme for another month, maybe. But like deadlines and illness and everything bad, the good things refuse to wait either (Thank goodness!:)). And so it begins, my attempt that's doomed to failure- When I'm supposed to be working furiously to finish up this paper, I'm writing instead- a rather silly blog post, about Nutella. The sweet satisfaction of finding the last clean spoon in the tray (If there's Nutella at home, this is quite a challenge), and grabbing the perfect fix of 2 a.m chocolate and hazelnut with my coffee. Irresistible, inevitable, like the sweetness of May and all the good things in life.. What could be better? :)
(Yes, I know the correct answer to that last question would be- a LOT.Nonetheless, the rhetoric stands :)).

Recycled euphoria

When it's raining out, and the world is a little gloomier than it should be, the past can be a nice place to hang out, and so, this post is just a list of random things I put together a while back, as I crossed that dreaded quarter-life mark, and it wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be.. Things that almost make being an adult worth it! :)

=====================================================================================

1. Money- however little/ much it is, or how generous my parents were and are, nothing beats earning my own!

2. Understanding my own needs- The clarity that comes from having tasted several flavors (icecream/ people/ emotions/ professions), and knowing which one I prefer.

3. Dark chocolate- Find me the child that favors dark chocolate over milk chocolate and caramel, and I will show you a person with truly evolved taste.

4. Walking away from unpleasantness, no longer forced to be a victim of someone else's bad behavior.

5. The self-righteousness that comes from having behaved well when the other person behaved badly ;)- (No childish heel-kicking tantrum comes close!

6. Late night drives with the windows down and the moon-roof open. And my choice of music, because I'm the only one in the car.

7. Self-discovery- The depths of teenage angst are fantastic, but they don't come close to the thrill of discovering something new about myself, however tiny the realization.

8. No fixed bedtimes !! I can blog when I like and sleep when I choose.

9. COFFEE- Why, why are small children denied this wonderful pleasure?

10. Cellphones.

11. Any phone, just for me!

12. Roadtripping with friends, and my favorite allies ;)

13. No-one stopping me from eating all the ice-cream, straight out of the carton.

14. Having an icecream container to myself, rum-raisin flavored !

15. The look on my dad's face when I drive my own car:)

16. Knowing there can be two rights and no wrong- Knowing that I know this slaps growing-up in my face harder than most other things, yet its a good feeling.

17. Making sense of books I first read when I was too young to understand them.

18. Laughing at silly 22-year old kids, with others as wise and mature as myself :)

19. Not ALWAYS fighting with my brother. Most of the time is not the same as always,
no matter what it looks like to my parents.

20. OLD friends. The kind who understand both where I'm coming from and where I'm headed to- and won't hesitate to tell me if its a blind alley I will bash my non-existent brains into.


21. Realising that age really is just a number. Most days I'm too busy to even remember which side of 25 I'm on!

22. Ranting, as opposed to throwing a tantrum. Knowing when to rant, when to stand and fight, and when to just ignore idiocy. (Atleast some of the time!).

23. Work- Enjoying what I do, and having the freedom to procrastinate when I like!

24. The option of utter and complete laziness- To lie on the couch with a book all day, munching junk food and tuning out every other demand on my time.

25. No homework!

26. Enjoying being a geek- at long last I have a cooler life than the gossipy popular girls who now crib about tending babies!

27. Taking off from work to blog- Not something I'd have managed in school ;)

Flying/ falling

The only difference between flying and falling is learning not to hit the ground. Sometimes, though, the wind that carries you to soaring can hurt more than turning into a wet squishy mass on the ground. For who's to say where the wind will take you, and how do you know that it isn't carrying you towards a giant brick wall in the sky, only to make a bigger, uglier SPLAT!- Higher up, for more people to see and point at, and no earth to sink into.

Do you always trust the wind that carries you? What do you do, when you are so carried away by your ideas/beliefs, that you no longer see the ground you once stood firm on, or the destination you thought you were heading towards? What holds you up, when you no longer trust the wind?

Advising the present

There's a popular question that goes, "If you could give your teenage self one piece of advice,based on what you have learned since then, what would it be?"
Too much of my time of late has been spent in impatience, anger at the slowness of medical reports, the inefficiency of research, and so much else. When this typically gets expressed in a rant to Mom, I'm reminded to be patient, not push people too much, and so on. I never quite got why- WHY couldn't people just get the damn job done ??
A friend shared this song today, and I couldn't have asked for a better explanation, I think.. And thus, a piece of advice to the present me -

Dheere jalna, dheere jalna
Zindagi ki lau pe jalna
Kaanch ka sapna gal hi na jaye
Soch samajh ke aanch rakhna
Dheere jalna..

(Gulzar, from Paheli)

Writing conundrums and cooler stuff

I've been meaning not to write, these last several days. One of my closest-held writing notions is to only write what I feel, what I hold dear- If I don't mean it, it will not sound right. So I've written, a lot really- but why would I want to bore you with the rants and the moping and the whining that ensued? There has been a little too much of it on this blog lately, and I'm sick of it. So here, instead of all that, is a random list of things that have made me happy in these times of much ranting and not enough laughter.

1. Supercool moms- My own, a blog I visit, and a sweet little sight I saw yesterday afternoon. A mom on a bicycle, with one of those little toddler cars trailing behind. Matching helmets, and parent and child enjoying their afternoon sunshine. The beginning of spring, and a firm reminder that the whiny, sad little creatures who hide behind children as an excuse for not having a life of their own are not the only kind of mom there is. My mom- requires a long, separate post all of her own, which she'll get, someday soon :)

2. Pineapple cake ! Here's a GREAT recipe, please try it out, everyone! :)

* 1 1/2 cups oil
* 2 cups sugar
* 4 eggs
* 2 1/4 cups cake flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 cup nuts
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon vanilla/ orange extract
* 1 cup carrots
* 2 cups crushed pineapple
Bake at 350 F for about 45 mins. (Be warned, this is huge, so either halve the quantities or prepare to share )

3. Early morning walks- Right after I am woken up with coffee in bed, a fantastic-weather-tulips-poking-out-of-soil walk with the husband. When the rest of the day goes downhill, its nice to think that some things stay perfect- No failed experiments or deadlines or health issues can change the coming of spring, and the fact of coffee!

4. Funny blogs- Perfect afternoon pick-me-ups, for those slow days at work. Try this one !

5. Perspective- Sometimes, all the screw-ups in the world are just plain funny. Just squint at them, or top them off with a purple hat with an ostrich plume and a few assorted fruits on it. Or a dinosaur.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

-Billy Collins

Promises like shoes

“Next time I will …”


“From now on I will never …”




What makes me think I am wiser today than I will be tomorrow?

-From Notes to myself, by Hugh Prather

.. Two days ago I was going on about words that hold me up, and today I'm kicking myself for having forgotten them. Why should I hold myself to old promises of friendship, when the grown-up me knows better than the child who sealed the deal?

How do you move on, when you're still walking around in too-old, too-tight shoes from long ago? Do you drag your feet and walk in misery, or do you squinch up your toes for so long that you lose all feeling in them, and then the shoes feel fine? After a while you might even think you enjoy not having toes anymore, and think those who do are freaks to want to keep them.

Or are you strong enough to rip outgrown, worn shoes off your feet, and walk with the blisters for a while? Do you slip your injured feet right back into another pair, just to hide the ugly wounds, or do you let yourself heal before you slip into a pair you'd like to try?

Like no-one's watching

I'm not sure what to write here. Having spent the greater part of time not sharing words, I'm not sure what it involves to use them as a medium of communication.

Words are understanding, words are fun. Words wrap around and make sense when the world doesn't. They can mean so much or nothing at all. I can stare at a word, fall so deep into it that the alphabets lose meaning. Then re-surface and smile with renewed understanding. Try it with AREA. That was one of my favorites in Math class. Write it down, over and over, mouth the letters, exaggerated. Take it apart- why those four letters, why so many vowels? Where did this word 'area' come from? Imagine Egypt as you calculate the area of a pyramid. What did they call it? What would we call it if we were talking to them? AREA. Fall into it. If it doesn't work with this one, try your favorite word. Tell me what happens :)

Words have power, beyond reckoning. In any language, as long as it touches the heart. My current favorite is a line from Gulzar, "Gin gin taare maine ungli jalayi hai.." - I have burnt my fingers counting the stars. I don't understand what it means, but the words sink in and take hold, and they will let go when I have understood. None of it is my doing, it is their power, their magic. Fall back on words, and see which ones hold you up.

But to get to the point of this post- I'm still fumbling here, trying to communicate with words, through words. And I'm fumbling with a few awards- surprised and touched, that people I like read this blog and even enjoy it! This makes me aware that somewhere, someone might actually read what I write, and I think I have stage(blog?) fright now!:) So, uhm, thank you, you and you !

I think I'll pass this right back to both of you, Neeraja and Perception - for the fantastic writing, lovely ideas, and perfect capacity to always entertain :)
..To Nish, who got me into blogging, with hopes that the lady will write again,
soon ;) And Nidhi- it's such a pleasure to reconnect after the years, even though it's only online for now :)

(The image is shamelessly borrowed from Perception's blog, I didn't know how else to get it on here!)

Would it be against blogger protocol to turn this into a tag and demand a new post from everyone I passed it to? That way there's more to read ;)

The things we do for love!

In my experience, most people in relationships are confused, to a greater or lesser extent. We're brought up for 20 odd years with the idea that we must develop our personalities, be independent, free-thinking individuals, and then somehow we find ourselves in this mess of hormones and expectations of other people and obligations and everything else. If you work your way out, you end up crying over your break-up, single and miserable while everyone around is in happily-ever-after land.
The alternative, of course, is to be brave (or foolish) enough to fight your way through the mess, emerging on the other side with the tag of 'committed/ married'.

Working the kinks out of relationships, dealing with relatives and familial obligations, figuring out how this person you live with can manage to unfailingly forget at least one out of every four items on the grocery list (Feel free to substitute personal annoyance here- I'm sure each of us, man or woman, has our own)
- As if all this weren't crazy enough, we now step into the month of February, with grocery stores covered in pink and red balloons and everywhere you look you see hearts and doves and all the rest of it. When did picking up salad and potatoes begin to necessitate such festivity? I can understand card stores and gift shops, but the produce section?

This year promises to be especially amusing in India- with pink underwear and pink saris battling it out, and the grand proclamation that "India is the land of Lord Krishna and nobody should compete with him in terms of love and relationship."
(I'm already wondering how this man arrived on the planet, or is he claiming to be a direct descendant of the Lord?) To add to the confusion, there is the Pub bharo andolan- which leads to the rather interesting image of the streets of Bombay and Delhi teeming with women of all shapes and sizes, clad in pink saris, clutching images of Lord Krishna to prove that their love is unsurpassed by anyone. I'm waiting for all the pictures to be uploaded as promised here.

Considering that all of this is for a 'festival' that has nothing to do with Indian culture in the first place, I get the feeling poor St. Valentine is probably feeling a little left out right now.

Something like love

A simple time, in a complex country. Where words like love come not as strings attached to relationships, but in a soft unyielding weave of time, tradition, religion, and so much else. Where teenagers fumble with this cloth, and fret, wondering whether this is fabric to be worn with pride, or ripped apart to find that one constant thread that is love.

So lets go back to this simple time. A classroom, like most others in India. February is a pleasant time of the year, in most places. Far from home, twenty or so single boys and girls plan a Valentine's party for themselves. Who needs a boyfriend/ girlfriend, when all this friendly love abounds? A cell phone rings, and one person steps out to answer it.

On to a terrace, sun-warmed cement and brick under bare feet. The smell of dusty earth and neem trees. The conversation is quite typical- how was your day, did you talk to your advisor about that last set of experiments? Yes, and did you get your reports in on time? What plans for the evening? They talk, the boy and the girl, for a little while. Across the warp and weft that separate them, they find the threads that hold them together for the span of this conversation, a few minutes in a late winter evening.

He isn't sure whether to wish her. Will she take it to mean he assumes she's his girlfriend? Should he have sent flowers, or would she get angry if he did? Why hasn't he wished her? Does this mean that he assumes her answer is no? But she really isn't sure. If she wishes him, will he assume its a yes? If you say Happy Valentine's on the phone, isnt that like saying- go enjoy yourself even though you're half a world away from me? So they talk for a while, and hang up. Satisfied with the idea of romance, without the tangles of love.

.. While that's probably not a love story of any kind, it amuses and reassures me to think of it now- A time when love, or something like it, was just as simple as a phone call. No strings attached. And that we were once people like that, who could find and hold the one strand we liked out of that vast, intricate tapestry, even if it was just for a few minutes of a lifetime.

Keeping it simple

Big words are scary and hard to understand. When you explain the world, already big and scary enough, with big words, I get confused. So don't explain to me some wondrous thing you saw with magical technology, and then ask me to fit it into my comprehension.

The mind is a little thing, and can only stretch so far and wrap itself around so much. So tell me of the simple things, in words I can understand. Don't explain things I dont understand with terms I understand even less. Spare me the prokaryotic apoptosis communism sociobiology determinism in development cell fate dualism altruism.. Spare me all of that. The world is confusing enough without them.
Explain to me instead the simple things.

Don't speak of long-term potentiation and how it affects love in mice. Tell me why I can break my heart over someone I don't care about. Everything in the universe may be a fractal, but tell me how your equations explain why people smile over flowers.

Tell me why the right rhythm in my earphones is all that is needed for the perfect three-mile run. Tell me why some days I just need a hug.

Tell me how a virus killing some bacteria and not others can explain why we do things for the greater common good. At the end of the day, remember that science and philosophy share the same roots- A love of wisdom, a desire for knowledge. And if your science and philosophy cannot increase the wisdom or knowledge of the audience you hope to impress, how does it help?

Clueless!

I'm beginning to think the clueless undergrad doing research is an essential part of any grad student's learning process. Like the Sarah Palins of academia, they teach you to laugh at the things that should technically fill you with the most despair.
Most importantly, they are good reminders of exactly how stupid people can be, and why warnings like " May contain peanuts" are to be found on a pack of peanuts.

I've only encountered two specimens so far, and until now they have given me NO hope for the future of science. Or geography, for that matter. (All this enlightenment apart from completely messing up my work, of course.)

A few snippets -

"Sooo... Singapore... isnt that like a city in Thailand?" (This from a person whose greatest claim to fame is having seen the ACTUAL Mona Lisa. Don't ask her who the artist was.)

"The bottles of solutions in the autoclave? I put them in the drying oven... isn't that where you put things after sterilizing them?"
(Yes, exactly. I spent two hours making these solutions up and adjusting pH just so that you could dry them down to salt-encrusted films at the end of my ridiculously long Friday.)

Argh. I don't remember my generation ever being so collectively dumb, even in our teens. I'm as confused about these kids as they're clueless about common-sensical things- What happened to them?

Fly like paper, get high like planes

Like India, it is a heady mix of color and big dreams and the dusty, filthy heart-breaking things one must do to achieve them. A simple enough story, that could happen in any country- Of a young boy who wants to win a pot of money, and hopes that his love will watch him on live television and come back to him.

It could be any boy, in any country. But like India, the film is the color of dusty streets and dhobi ghat, of clothes of many colors that fly with the wind like street children playing cricket on a runway. He takes off from the slums, running from righteous fire and a dying mother, selling trinkets on trains and having the time of his life.

Every tourist spot has people trying to make a fast buck, and the boy is no different. But Jamal is Indian, and his story wraps an emperor from a few centuries ago into a luxury hotel with a swimming pool, ties it all up into an elaborate, child-like scam, and presents it to you with an endearing smile. You could smile and give him a hundred bucks for the act, or you could rage at the inefficiency of the system that forces street children to steal the tires of a car.

A rare perspective- the 'foreign' viewpoint is obvious in the juxtaposition that runs throughout the film- insecticide sprayed at the railway stations as a boy runs through the poisonous mist to find the girl he left behind, and the people too poor to afford a television who crowd on the pavement to watch one man win a million. India runs through the story, as much a character to reckon with as Javedbhai and Manan.

The film pulses with unrelenting power in a city that really never sleeps, in a country that can ride on the dreams of one man and put bullets into a dozen others on its journey to the top. Unapologetic for its inadequacies, unmindful of the heartbreak it takes to make a dream happen - Like India, the film goes deeper than I can put into words, and every frame made me ache for home even as it transported me there. And I'm still high from Slumdog Millionaire.

Lunch-time mystery

I am currently reading a book with no context. A strange thing- I picked it up in the basement of a friend's house, he himself was unaware of how it got there. A simple green leather-bound book, with a title in gold letters. I've never heard of the book or the author, no biographical flap, no picture on the cover. The pages are a little yellowed, and its a second-hand book, but whether it was written in the 1980s or the turning of the previous century, I would not be able to tell.

The insides are equally strange- A story that tells of two borders to a country, and a war, and an excessively beautiful woman and a wounded soldier. An anonymous country, and I can find no obvious parallels to any of the historical wars that the story might be an allegory for. It's just some country, with some war. Unfamiliar terms in an old french are the only thing that have given the story any placement in time, and even those are uncertain holds on history.

The lack of context, geographic and temporal, is both in the story itself and in the way it ended up in my hands.

I could probably google the author and the book, and have all the answers in a few minutes. When faced with unfamiliar facts, thats usually where I begin (and several people would agree that I'm good at fishing out the obscure ;) ). But somehow, this book feels a little different. I carry it with me to the lab and read it at lunchtime,and every time I pick it up it is a little contact with the unknown.

A reminder in the middle of research and writing and constant analysis and the finding out of things, that we all need breaks to venture into the unknown, and not all questions need firm answers.

Incoherence, elaborated

There are an awful lot of metaphors that liken life to water. To live happily one must flow contented, one must always move, etc. etc. Fluidity is critical. So what of the rocks along the way, the stones that shatter calm surfaces to create ripples? What do you do when life casts pebbles at you and seems to enjoy it?

From a mass of incoherent ripples, I attempt to find flow again. Some interruptions are mild, a few ripples and the surface reforms. Others are even simpler, and flat stones skim off the top effortlessly.
And some days are like God/life is a kid with nothing better to do, and stone after stone after stone is cast in, shattering stillness hard and creating a mess of silt and froth that gets in my eyes and ears and mouth, making me lose all perspective. Calm stemming from insight is impossible, and I spew grit out of my mouth, shake my head and clench my eyes shut, just trying to clear things out so I can flow again.

One part physiology, one part ego. A huge chunk of petty annoyances. People acting up, atmospheric pressure lows. A friend's illness that none of us can control. Cast them in one after the other, all together... and the ripples clash and surge and I am lost. Where do I find the strength to pull myself together again, to flow contented and find purpose?

For now I flounder, from ripple to drop to splash, I attack each problem with no strength. What I need is to go deep, to find my footing on bedrock. Instead of flailing to create more confusion, I must perhaps let myself sink. Through cool calmness, soft filtered sunlight and the weightlessness of water. Sink lower still, until my feet touch the ripples on the sand beneath, and feel them give way, re-forming around whatever touches them.

Immersion in stillness, emotional and metaphoric, is the only way to not let the splashing on the surface reach the core.

Butterflies in the brain

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain."

Words help, sometimes. Wise words by minds so great, sometimes they help with the understanding of the present. Of some questions. He tells me why there is pain, but I knew that already. I'm ready to understand- just not sure what the lesson I'm supposed to understand is. Isn't the master supposed to show up when the student is ready?

And now that I begin to write, the title of the chapter, atleast, is clear.

Living with uncertainty.
Drawing once more on better words - "And much of your pain is self-chosen"
"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."

So technically, the uncertainty should end when I've figured out how to deal with it.
When I can stop focusing so much of my energy on the problem, it will cease to exist. Just like vaporising a cloud. Or casting a Patronus charm.

* Random quotes and paraphrasing from multiple sources- I'm fairly sure anyone reading this will know what they are :)

Winter within

It's the holiday season, and everything is bright and cheery. Everywhere you look there are holiday lights and christmas spirit, and yesterday I was tempted to take pictures of all the neighbourhood houses that have been hit by christmas bombs, and put them up here. Today, however, is a different story. Today feels like a tree I saw this morning- just one bare scrawny thing with no leaves, but hung here and there with leftover christmas ornaments. In the dark, the lights twinkle and you cant see the bare bones of it. In morning light it's just sorry. Like a pathetic attempt to gloss over the bad bits, as if a few laughs could hide the fact that there is nothing beneath. The strange thing is that the tree itself would be quite lovely on its own- stark and bare against winter white. It is the cover-up that makes it sad.

Today, I am not even tempted to remind myself of favorite sayings, or inspire myself to be better. Sometimes, it must be okay to just be a caterpillar, curl up and sleep. Sometimes, when you spread your wings, you don't fly, you only open yourself to hurt. Sometimes, wounds are better left to air and dry, rather than fester under the fake brightness of a Mickey mouse bandage, or a smile.

So just for today, there is no cheer, no message of hope to myself. Only a reminder, that sometimes hurt is okay.

Argh

Snood and Tetris- totally addictive, the perfect grad student TP. You match up the pieces, and when you get the pattern right, it all falls apart. And for some reason that makes you a winner.And when you win all it means is that the pieces come at you faster, and you have to figure out the patterns quicker.

Talk about crappy metaphors for life. And I play these to get away from my so-called work. I don't even want to think about what that makes me.

Sunscreen for the cynic

"Never take anything in life too seriously, including me and yourself."

In a completely (oxy)moronic way, I find myself drawn to that line over and over. Beyond all logic, I try to reason that sentence out. Like a lost key, I fit it into every single lock, trying to figure out where it fits. I'm not sure what I'll do if I find out. But I carry it around and test it on almost every situation, just to see how far the little cogs and wheels inside the lock spin, twisting into kaleidoscopic new perspective. So I hang on to those words, as what remains- after love and friendship, walking barefoot through night rain in Pune and conversations from Bombay to New York to Bangalore and beyond.. what remains of it all is these words. Like a real-life game of rock,paper and scissors- what survived is the one thing that defeated the rest.

In real-life terms,however, that doesn't make sense. Evolution craves balance, and one thing that shatters (or feeds on/ overpowers) the rest cannot indefinitely survive. So there must be a lock, somewhere, that is strong enough to withstand that key. I know for sure the statement must unlock something, and the day I find it, hopefully I will drop the key, as I have the rest of the memories.

What holds together..

The last few weeks have been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster, making me question relationships I held dear for so many years.

Childhood friendships are sheer unquestioning acceptance- The neighbour's kid is my friend because we play together every day. The girl I sit next to in class soon becomes my best friend. My parents told me not to play with the rough kids, so they aren't my friends. Adult relationships tend to be similar- not unquestioning, but more accepting- I can play tennis with you even if you support the politicians I hate. You're a content mother, so I'll overlook the fact that you have no ambitions to a career like mine. The lines are clearer, yet fuzzier- I have learnt not to broach uncomfortable subjects, make small talk, and accept that someone who disagrees with me on some things may be the most passionate supporter of some of my other causes.

The big realizations come from adolescent friendships- the ones forged in fire, where passion and ideals and big dreams are the bedrock of the relationship, and they're held together by the mundane cement of life- We share the same dreams, so we drool over the same books at the book fair. Go to the same concerts, and like the same coffee shake at Barista. And then we grow up, grow apart, and real life happens.

Some relationships hold so strong over years of not talking, as if our minds grew in the same ways even without words or contact. Others fall apart- without the mundane to hold it together, the deepest dreams and highest passions crumble to extinction.

And I find myself aching for lost time. When love was unquestioning and absolute, when I took a silent stand to be there for a friend no matter what. My idea of "no matter what" accounted for bad decisions, tough times, and the other person waking up to the realization that they were wrong. I even accounted for the possibility that maybe I would reverse my opinion of what I thought was a bad decision, imagining myself gloriously open-minded and forgiving in my outlook. I considered geography and careers, time zones and lifestyles- the perfect plan for life. I could and would make this relationship work, no matter what.

Except the one thing I forgot. The other person. Perhaps we had already grown apart, or perhaps we were never together. The realization was mine- That sometimes a bad decision is merely the lack of decision, not a conscious choice at all.

I can account for everything in my "no matter what", but it takes two people to make a relationship work. And a conscious choice by both. Whether it is the child next door who chooses to come out and play with me, or the mother who overlooks my career choice as I do hers- it takes a conscious choice. A mindless, circumstantial drifting together of two people is not a friendship, it is a convenience.

And conveniences, like plastic grocery bags, are disposable, recyclable, and not worth a second thought.

(What do you know? Even at 27, I learn something new every day.. Maybe there's still some growing up to do, and life isn't as jaded as I thought it was! )

Come, tell me a story..

My earliest memory of a book would be from when I was about six or so. I'm not sure why, perhaps the lack of a babysitter, but I spent three hours after school everyday (atleast it felt like that much time) waiting for my mom to get done with her classes. I read before that, fairy tales and the brothers Grimm and the little match girl and little stories from the Panchatantra. But that book from the musty school corridor stands out.
It was the wizard of Oz, and sitting in a darkening corridor in an almost-empty school, it was so much more fun to be out in Kansas or Oz, both equally fantastic to a six year old in Bombay. Now that I think of it, I'm not really sure how I managed to read at that level- Did I understand everything I read? Who taught me the big words or told me that emeralds were green? I don't remember asking those questions, or any of the other details my mother does, but the book stayed with me like a little secret, three hours of childhood solitude expanding into an omnipresent cosmos of words swirling in the brain.

I don't remember a time, before or after that, when stories haven't been a constant presence, whether I'm looking for one or telling one or reading one. The only important part is sharing them- Few lasting stories live on memory alone, they need re-telling and re-thinking and constant life infused into them. Real stories grow with us and change as we do, as memory and experience meld together. Real stories hold us to our roots, reminding us of honor and doing the right thing when every brain cell screams with anger and a desire to hurt. Real stories warm and comfort, reminders that things can turn around overnight even when they are at their bleakest.

So come, tell me a story today.. Even a little one will do- just as long as it means something to you. It could be six words long to sum up your life, or an epic poem of your love. It could be a fairytale that you loved, or a tale about Cinderella slippers that you wore for a birthday long ago. Perhaps a memory, of schoolyard bullies. Or a wish unfulfilled. But tell me about something that touches your heart. An experience or a memory, fact or fiction... come, share a story today.

Writing, writing

When the mood is right, words flow so freely, half unconsidered, drifting in the rhythms of what I last read or who was on my mind.
Other times, I spend days mulling over the ideas of other minds, weaving them together to form a coherent enough mesh to hold my own leap of faith, a list of references to justify every thread of the net that holds up the hypothesis. Sometimes the threads congeal to the perfect shape almost effortlessly- Three days of mulling things over, and writing from 3 am to 10 am produces the near-perfect hypothesis (for my needs of the moment), and the perfect language, and it is done.
And on yet other occasions I spend months on end sifting through things- papers, ideas, plagiarism in hope of inspiration, endless drafts, help from mentors- NOTHING.

There is no formula to writing, even after all these years. Outlines, schematics, moods and inspiration- they chase after each other in a dance I cannot put my finger on. All I know is that I run with them, no matter how tiring it gets, until we come together fingers entwined in one last inspired whirl of a finish. The roots of inspired writing that soars above the rest are simple perspiration- the mental kind.

Is it presumptuous to call myself a writer, or write about writing before I have actually written? To speak of inspired writing that soars, when almost no one else would agree? Perhaps.. But when I write like that, it lifts me above the ordinary, and that high is all that matters :)

un-organising

Everywhere I look are signs to help me. Find time to exercise ! Unclutter your desk space! Thirty organising tips ! How to find time for everything you want to do NOW!

Yes, my days overflow into one another, last week's to-do lists often spilling over into next month. I look them over, re-evaluate and promise to attack the neglected tasks with more vigor. I tell myself I can do more if only I'm more organised, more focused, more efficient.. a little more of everything. One of my favorite magazines has a little footer at the bottom of each page, which goes "If you have ten minutes.. do this!" "If you have 20 minutes, do that!" "If you have an hour, you can take in the latest CD/ book/ movie/ inspiring cancer survivor story!"

The latest article I read along these lines was about meal planning- How, if I only plan out the meals for the week ahead beforehand, I can order the ingredients online, pick them up at my local supermarket, and save myself so much time every single day. Of late, my culinary interests have ebbed and waned, but overall I've cared more about what I eat than I ever did before. Conscious choices- Strawberries without the sugar, just pure fruit. Lets try steaming an artichoke today, shall we? Chocolate-orange noodles.. why not? Hands wander over strange vegetables at the store (Ghost pumpkins, anyone?), and new flavors fuse with the familiar to create comfort and excitement in my kitchen.

Why would I want to trade in a lazy Saturday morning of wandering around the stores for meal plans and ten minutes more every day? And by the same token, I could be more organised, so I'd have more time to relax and spend time with people and things I care about- but thats what I usually waste my time on anyway- Lounging around on the sofa watching old movies with A, or rummaging at garage sales for silly funny treasured finds, long after-dinner walks... If I have time enough for these, why be more organised?

Some claim lost time, others a lack of space,
I plead life's crippling embrace.
Laundry, food and other necessities
Fill voids where words might have been.