Work

To be praised simply for what you are is a strange feeling. Like praising water for liquidity, or fire for burning.

To touch fully that innate quality is the only thing we are taught to strive for- a point where there are no lines between the doer, the object and the observer.

Why would I want to do a thing like that?

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?

- John Hodge, Trainspotting

....
Some quotes slide through peripheral thought the first time they go by. And then they come back and stick in my head, nagging until I look them up, and read them ten times over on an idle Saturday morning.

Perhaps the hardest thing..

.. is to stand by and watch someone else learn what I already know.

In a world going wrong..

A sixteen-year old is pregnant, and is all over the news- How will you explain this to your children? Will her wacko elder sister be a good influence on the child (which presses the question- the 16 year old child, or the 16 year old's child?)

A fourteen year old girl kills her seven year old sister in a "game" mimicking Mortal Kombat moves. Her slightly older boyfriend claims to be uninvolved, since he was "drinking and watching a movie downstairs".

India's first school shooting- Whoopee.

The news about kids gone bad has been coming in in a steady stream over the past week- It makes me glad I am not a child, old enough to be untroubled by these influences. No matter how good an upbringing one has, the world creeps into a child's mind, and if that mind is innocent and inquisitive, the questions it asks are only more hard-hitting, and the answers more elusive.

So I'm spending this weekend with a five year-old. She chases her elder brother around, and hates being called a "girl" - someone who is less capable of things than he is. She's less concerned with femininity and body image, and more with being seen as an equal by her big brother. She's creative enough to make a snowman with an inch of rapidly melting snow, and not afraid to question her father's authority when he sides with her nanny.
She asks questions- Why is that man always inside his house? Why do I have to fit in with my first grade class and pretend to be unable to read? Why can't I stay home and study like you did?

She is wise and innocent, daring and funny and silly, and the kind of child I ache to meet once more. She does not question the absence of her mother, and trusts her elder brother when she follows him into a neighbour's yard in the middle of the night. Knows he will not hit her or rape her, knows that she can listen to him and things will be fine, mostly.

A rare find- Even the most well-brought up kids today lack that complete innocence and freedom of thought. Street-smart, confident, computer-savvy. But where did the innocence go? Who is telling these children that courage is not having a gun in your hand, but knowing when to use it? That teenage sex is not acceptable unless it is a conscious choice and not peer pressure?

That peer pressure is not a substitute for a brain and a conscience.

Not knowing the answers to those, I chose to spend time with a child who still has those traits. So what if she's a fictional eight-year old who lived in Alabama decades ago? Scout Finch is still far better company than most children (and adults) I've read about lately.

Nothing ventured..

More often than not, we "land up" in bad situations- not a choice, but a circumstance.
I didn't ask for this to happen to me.
I don't deserve this.
Life sucks- I hate grad school.
What did I ever do wrong that things had to come to this point?
How much longer must I put up with this before things go back to being normal again?
This is depressing.

After a not-so-great day, I stumbled across this guy- the Coconuter-

http://coconuter.blogspot.com/2004/12/introduction-about.html

To take your life in your hands and toss it to the winds, out of your own choice, your own free will- Immensely courageous, though some might (and probably did) say it's ridiculous. He probably gets more hits off Blogs of Note, but David the Coconuter definitely deserves more than a passing glance.

And another person, in some ways just as courageous-

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2005-01-24-robbery-call_x.htm

Both of them left me tonight with the same questions-

What was he thinking?
What pushed him to walk away from his life/ make that phone call?
Did he not know he would need money for his wife and child?/ Did he not know he would get caught?
What did he think was going to happen when he got there/ when he asked her out?

What keeps you going, when life sucks, and you hate grad school? And whatever it is-is it strong enough as the urges of these two men- for a date, for a meaningful life?

Debate

If you push me too far into my irritation, I will usually land up too far from whatever insight you are hoping to provide me.

The two of us stand facing each other, and we have come from diametrically opposite directions to this crossroads. If you push me so far back along the road I walked all this while, how am I to see the road you want me to take ahead?

I can only look so far beyond my own feet, so don't drag me to your point of view. I am blind there. I cannot stand in your shoes and see what you see.

They are your shoes, they have walked different roads to come to this point where we stand together. The dust on them is from different memories, different impulses. My heart and mind cannot respond to them.

So speak to me from here, from now. From what we share, what we know together. And maybe we can both walk a few steps forward in the same direction- In our own shoes, you understand, but just for this one understanding, we can share the same path.

And for a few years, we could maybe share this- And someday years from now we will speak from the same place, and share a common point of view.

Boiling eggs the Nike way

How many ways can you think of to boil an egg? And why would you want to do it in each of those different ways, if your only purpose was to get the egg boiled?

Sometimes, the journey is NOT the destination. If it is, I can understand taking the long scenic route and stopping to admire the sights. But if you're sprinting to a finish line, and hte prize is a grant that covers your next three years of research, DO NOT tell me the scenic route matters. The destination matters.
The most pathetic journey is when you don't know where you're going or why you want to go there, or even how to get there. All you know is that there's cool stuff along the way. Oh, and if you're not at your destination in a month you might as well be dead.

The same goes with science- Find the answer, and it doesn't matter how you got there- whether it was the coolest new method of sequencing DNA off a single bacterium, or you grew 10 liters of culture.

Boil the egg, and your breakfast-eater is happy. Get to the destination, and it doesn't matter what road you take. Do the experiment, and you get your paper published.

Bottom line- Just do it. It doesn't matter how.

Knowing that the means is not the end, if you still choose to think of the coolest means of getting there, what kind of scientist does that make you?

A dream deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

(Langston Hughes)

Finding grace

Life, at its heart, is most like dancing-

A sense of balance is critical- through all the leaps in the air and the pirouettes, hold your center still and let that core be the source of every dip and bend.

Listen- Move with the music; it might not always be the song you wanted to dance to, but keep moving with the flow, the next track is just a few minutes away.

Feel. Let your every movement stem from the deepest emotion, and never waste a movement, not one finger out of place that was not MEANT to be there.

Smile. Sometimes the smile stems from the simple joy of the movements, and at others, you smile through the pain in every screaming muscle- but smile anyway.

And somewhere at the end of years of practice, you find grace- the center and source of every movement, and the destination of any good dancer. It begins with a sense of balance, and that sureness of movement that comes from extreme self-awareness. Move past the childish flinging of limbs in mindless motion- listen and feel every pulse of the music, even when it is not what you wanted to hear, and still hold yourself in perfect posture.

Today, for a change..

Candles
by Carl Dennis

If on your grandmother's birthday you burn a candle
To honor her memory, you might think of burning an extra
To honor the memory of someone who never met her,
A man who may have come to the town she lived in
Looking for work and never found it.
Picture him taking a stroll one morning,
After a month of grief with the want ads,
To refresh himself in the park before moving on.
Suppose he notices on the gravel path the shards
Of a green glass bottle that your grandmother,
Then still a girl, will be destined to step on
When she wanders barefoot away from her school picnic
If he doesn't stoop down and scoop the mess up
With the want-ad section and carry it to a trash can.
For you to burn a candle for him
You needn't suppose the cut would be a deep one,
Just deep enough to keep her at home
The night of the hay ride when she meets Helen,
Who is soon to become her dearest friend,
Whose brother George, thirty years later,
Helps your grandfather with a loan so his shoe store
Doesn't go under in the Great Depression
And his son, your father, is able to stay in school
Where his love of learning is fanned into flames,
A love he labors, later, to kindle in you.
How grateful you are for your father's efforts
Is shown by the candles you've burned for him.
But today, for a change, why not a candle
For the man whose name is unknown to you?
Take a moment to wonder whether he died at home
With friends and family or alone on the road,
On the look-out for no one to sit at his bedside
And hold his hand, the very hand
It's time for you to imagine holding.

Today, for a change.. II

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/30/twins.stabbed.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

If you read that story, light a candle in your mind for the child that lives. For the grandfather that held him as he bled, and the little sister that will not understand where all her brothers went.

Thanks to G.

Lately I've felt an increased sense of urgency about everything in life. Perhaps it has something to do with my ageing-related anxiety- this constant sense of running out of time, "How will I get it all done?" - so sacrifice the sleep, the sense of fun, the simple pleasure of a late night conversation. Get the work done, clean the house, do the laundry, work out, and after it there's a long list of 'important' things that need doing- Strangely (sadly?), a large part of that list is what would once have been FUN. When did I need to start making lists of movies and books to catch up on? When did I need to "find the time" for a long phone call?

Of course, I could attribute it to the current state of my work, or the many deadlines we've had lately. Or just the world in general- This life is so full of care, the standing and staring isn't appreciated anymore. The things I'd like to stare at are usually moving too fast anyway. And if you stand long enough, eventually you'd get run over/ arrested/ shot at/ have chunks torn off your limbs by a giant bird-eating spider. The horrible fate mostly depends on where you stand, but ultimately a horrible fate befalls those that stand anywhere.
Moving targets are usually harder to run over, arrest, etc.

Somewhere in this almost-perpetual rush, I came across a blog post by G., about how patience and complacence are probably equivalent, and are the scariest thing in the world. Once you're complacent, you're old. He LIKES the perpetual rush, the constant burning to see and do the big things- travel and read the "good" books and write things of deep impact, and hopes to be able to live like this all his life.

If you'd asked me ten minutes ago, I might have said the same things. However, G. is someone I choose to disagree with- I dislike him, his views, and most things about him, and will disagree with him just because its him.(I know, I'm a small, petty, intolerant person, but I like it that way!)

I began contradicting, just on principle (The principle being: "I hate him, everything he says is wrong"), and ended up with this-

The difference between patience and complacence- Choice. Patience is caring enough to stand back and wait, complacence is not giving a damn in the first place.

Somehow, a random thought intended to annoy ended up making me respect all the patient people around me so much more. Just the capacity to stand back and hold on- To run fast and hard for something, then stand back and wait for it to get away and come back on its own. Patience needs more courage, more grit and more will than the burning ambition that asks to travel the world and live the good life.

Thanks to G., I understand patience a little better. And the fact that in writing this, I have not been able to think of a single synonym that truly empathises with the meaning of the word only rubs it in deeper, somehow.
No one word to describe that unique combination of deep strength and silent hope that makes up patience- A rare trait, worth holding on to where I find it- and hope some of it rubs off on me :)

Life sucks, and then...?

Beginning on the (supposedly) typical third-year blues of a PhD, I've heard several stories of how to deal with things, and what comes next. Here's a listing, for whoever's interested.
(I guess it goes without saying that I'm sitting in the lab waiting for another experiment to not work.)

1. Alcohol- Works to precipitate RNA and drown your sorrows, both. However, neither of these effects is particularly long-lasting. The RNA will degrade, and you will wake up with a hangover.

2. Keep your head down, mouth shut, and plough through the work. D-uh, I work, the work doesn't. And if it worked, I wouldn't be blue in the first place (I think, since I am no longer sure of anything about my work anymore).

3. Pretend its not happening (PITH). I do this by pretending to be working on the less important aspects of my so-called life, such as looking at jobs for if/when I graduate, paying bills I should never have generated in the first place, and frowning at my computer periodically so it looks like I'm working.

4. PITH-II. Take a vacation- This works, I know. Except that the places I can afford I dont want to go/ have already gone, and I still can't afford the places I couldn't afford when I took vacations to the places I could afford. Oh, and reality just hits harder when I get back from the break.

5. ??????????? This one would definitely work. If only I knew what it was.

As to the "What comes after third year blues/ Does it get better" question, I've had two responses so far-

1. "Oh, don't worry, the third year really is the worst. You know, it feels like you work and work and nothing happens. Then all of a sudden everything falls into place, and its wonderful!"

2. "Third year blues give way to fourth year blues, which give way to fifth year blues. And then (hopefully), unlike me, you'll graduate."

Those were both fifth-year students speaking. After those responses, I didn't bother asking anyone who'd been around longer than that.

Thank god for girlfriends:)

There are some things that are just so purely woman that NO man can ever do. Regardless of how much he cares- He may be the man that changed your diapers and held you when you puked, or he may be the guy friend you hung out at the college canteen with, or the person who wants to spend his life with you. None of those things matter at some points- they just don't get it.
Having gone through the fights and the explanations and the wiles it takes to get them to understand, I've come to the conclusion that its not worth it. It takes a woman to do some things, and that's the bottom line.

So thank god for girlfriends- the people I can wake up at 6 am on Sunday morning with the panicked phone call- "What was I thinking?! I'm not ready to get married!!", and get a suitably satisfying reaction. If that same phone call had been made to a guy, he would probably have rolled over and gone back to sleep, knowing that I would return to my senses in an hour or so. A girlfriend will talk you through it, sympathise and worry and agonise with you, until you both decide you were being silly and nothing's wrong.

Girlfriends to shop with- NO man, no matter how much he loves you, will spend four hours walking through a store with you, admiring things you have no intention or money to buy.

And most of all, the point was driven home by the long contradictory conversation I had with R last night- Swimsuits and holidays, and her stories about frustration with a two year old baby and flinging chairs at walls, which in some way was supposed to convince me that marriage and motherhood are wonderful, desirable things every single person in the world should get into.

To quote her," No really, it can be so frustrating. You spend your entire morning scrubbing the house and cooking up things so that your baby gets used to new foods and gets a balanced meal. Then she refuses to eat everything you cooked, and when she finally does, she pukes it all over the floor you scrubbed an hour ago. And you spend every single day like that, no breaks since S is working so hard right now he doesn't even take Sundays off."

And according to her, is the most beautiful thing in the world, worth giving up all your dreams of exotic vacations and high-flying careers for.

Huh ?! It probably takes a mother to understand that one.

Home and the world

"Not my daughter, you bitch!" (Molly Weasley, defending Ginny against Bellatrix, HP7)

"Therefore I shall devote myself, my time, my energy, my talents, to the service of South Africa. I shall no longer ask myself if this or that is expedient, but only if it is right. I shall do this, not because I am noble or unselfish, but because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie."
(Arthur Jarvis, in Cry the beloved country)

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From (not-so-)children's literature to books on apartheid, the question remains the same. Where do you draw the lines, between home and the world? When do you choose to cast your voice or raise your wand for what you believe in? Each of us has a breaking point, where we stand up and say "Enough!" - and it's usually when we perceive a threat to 'home'.
...

"For some, home is the world. For others, the world is their home"
(JKB, in Sindhu Bhairavi)

Of words and silences

"Never used an Unforgivable Curse before, have you, boy?" she yelled. "You need to mean them Potter! You need to really want to cause pain.."
-Bellatrix Lestrange (or JKR :) )

"It can’t be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!"
-Thelonius Monk, pianist

And that is the meaning, perhaps, of why some silences can be so unifying, while others linger like the undead between the people that share them. What you mean with the silence is what makes the difference.

How terribly strange to be..

Seventy? Nah, not yet- just 26, which seems almost as bad.

I'm approaching the wrong side of 25, and have begun thinking deep dark thoughts on the subjects of age, crows feet, retirement plans, and such-like. People already on the other side are amused by my sudden paranoia about growing "old" (26? You're a BABY !!), but the reassurance of that is quickly nullified by the looks I get from 23 year old friends. More often, its nullified by my horror at the 'stupid' things 23 year olds do, and the knowledge that I once did them and thought I was being really intelligent.

Interestingly, as I discuss this idea with friends at similar stages,I realise that it isn't mortality itself that scares us. None of us are actually concerned with the "End of Things as We Know Them" (aka "I will die"). It's the idea that we are turning into the "old" people- that one day we might be the ones discussing anti-ageing creams and crows feet and ways to keep our energy levels high, by means other than protein bars and caffeine.

When did we start growing old, anyway? It feels like yesterday we were hanging out at the football field in high school, yet I also feel the rigidity of age creeping up in certain ways-

-I'm not fond of sleepovers anymore. I want my own bed, and I want to wake up to my own coffee in my own kitchen, not to be shared with random people who crashed on my couch last night.

-I no longer see a reason to force myself to like things. I dont like eating meat, period. Same goes for horror movies, loud rap, parties with people I barely know, and gossip about people I dont care about- They're not worth the time it takes to like them.

-I dress to suit myself, and I will buy three pairs of jeans when I like them, even if they're not the latest style. Life is too short to force myself into clothes I'm not comfortable in.

While I could probably go on with the list, I'm reminded of something a musician once had to say about his capacity to create- He held out his cupped hands and said, "You have to be able to let go of yourself. If your hands are so full of yourself, how will you ever have the space to pick up something new?"
And that, perhaps, is the essence of growing old- The mental arthritis that makes me so rigid that there is nothing more to add to life, nothing that I want to experience, no arena left where I'd like to stretch my limits a little.

Twenty-six is old, certainly- old enough to know what I want, and have the capacity to get it. And twenty-six is young too- young enough to make lists of things I'd like to do, young enough to foolishly believe I can do it all. (And it's probably just right for some chocolate, too :) )

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P.S: On the list of things-to-do, the latest addition was to check out the Chocolate Buffet at the Ritz, Washington DC- 35 bucks, and the entire buffet is pure chocolate, in every possible form !!:)

http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/WashingtonDC/Dining/TheLobbyLounge/Default.htm

Culture

"Anything that can distinguish your group from the others could work to keep hatreds high and resist merger. Other groups, conveniently, are similarly disposed.These non-hereditary differences between one group and another- even arbitrary differences, only distantly connected with any adaptive advantage, but serving to preserve group independence and coherence- are called, collectively, culture."


(From Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan)

Only in silence the word,

only in dark the light,

only in dying life:

bright the hawk’s flight

on the empty sky.

(-Ursule Le Guin)

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?