The week that was

No. Don't expect any drama here. No life-changing incidents, no close escapes, no spine chilling ghost stories, nothing. I was sitting idle for a bit and thought of sharing my boredom with you. What better way than writing about something totally ordinary, such as the week that just went by.

Monday to Friday, nine to five, is convenient and sweet. I come to my desk, usually a minute late, to friendly taunts by lab mates about that extra minute. I pretend to do some work. Coffee break, Lunch break, another coffee break... Then I finally get down to work,. Making columns, coming close to breaking them, loading samples, etc and by the time I am done, its five and I am off. Oh yeah, how could I miss soccer. That's what keeps me going through the chores these days. And what a World cup this is turning out to be. Spain, France and Germany beaten by less-fancied teams. Italy held by the dodos.. er, the Kiwis, rather. I would love to see Brazil beaten by Ivory Coast, that's starting in an hour. The jabulanis and vuvuzelas seem more exciting than England's soccer skills. No, wait! Their goalies pump it up for the spectators. Word is out that the most defensive of teams get excited on seeing an Englishman in front of the goal. 'Shoot, and they shall help you score', they say.

That aside, Madison is pretty as a picture these days. It rains intermittently, but the sun comes out shining every day. People complain that its too warm. I tell them to take a trip to New Delhi to understand what hot summers mean.

Socca

The big guns fall, fans are appalled
darkness seems all around
But fear not, for a single shot
on target will do you proud.

Public memory is but that of a child
with so much doing the rounds
Yesterday doesn't exist, today's fleeting
Tomorrow is all that counts.

An oily soup

I took a Genomics class in spring that consisted of lectures by an enthusiastic professor and a presentation by each of the 20 odd students who took the course. One of the presentations was based on Asian carp infestation of freshwater lakes across the United States. After the presenter finished speaking, we brainstormed on ways to tackle this issue. This particular problem began when catfish farmers in the U.S.A. imported Asian carp decades ago to eat up algae in their ponds. Little did they know of the fish’s alarming capacity to breed and infest new water bodies. Today, this nuisance has assumed such alarming proportions that the White House needs to sit and debate on possible solutions. A mild-mannered classmate commented that such problems arise only when we try to meddle with nature’s ways of working, to which a few people replied that human interference wasn’t a bad thing in itself. It had to be monitored rationally and any challenges should be dealt scientifically.

As I checked out nationalgeographic.com this evening, I could not help but reflect on that discussion. If the previous issue was about encroachment, this one is just the opposite. The pictures screamed of an ecosystem being uprooted. Pelicans with oil dripping off their wings, hermit crabs struggling their way through the slick, dead fish floating amidst swathes of oil, a laughing gull not laughing any more surely – these are only a handful of millions of species being put to sleep as we breathe. Repositories of endangered and extinct species will have to be rewritten all over. The birds also ingest some of the oil in attempting to get it off their feathers and wings, which could prove fatal. Rehab personnel would rather have them die than suffer a painful recuperation. So much so for our quest to drill out every bit of earth’s resources before anyone else can get their hands on them.

I am eager to see how human intervention can provide a satisfactory solution to this challenge. Forget removing the oil, the hole that is spitting out oil has still not been closed. For all our technical acumen, scientific capabilities, Nobel prizes, etc we have spent 50 days with no clue as to how we shall separate oil from water.

Home away from home

It struck me as I was sipping tea yesterday evening. And to think of it, I had remained oblivious of it until recently, maybe taking it for granted. For a shade less than a year, I have been working in the US and living in little India! That’s what my apartment building is – little India. Yeah, it is true that almost half of the apartments in my building have desi tenants but there is more to it. Living in Oak tree means that, apart from being able to walk into friends’ homes (something that a lot of my Oxbridge migrating brethren miss after College) and meeting over impromptu potlucks, I end up eating and cooking with four roomies, cleaning up the living room on weekends, playing pranks and getting to know a whole lot of people who are walking similar paths. I can also walk to work, another aspect of small-town-India that I have adored (quite interestingly, I could not do that for the majority of my schooling in India, having grown up in a burgeoning metropolis teeming with honking buses and busy roads). By no means could my accommodation be termed luxurious. In fact, modest is the word according to me, and I will not be surprised if a lot of people here find it too small for their ‘stuff’. With little ‘stuff’ to stash away, this apartment has worked quite well. I guess this happy marriage between work and home has been a success so far, and is the sole reason for me not being terribly homesick.

I suspect this thought dawned upon me after I had to spend a week away from home for a conference. For more than two decades, I had known my home as where my family is. Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that changing. But the feeling of homecoming I got as we drove home from the Dane County Airport was proof enough that I had already accepted this to be home.