Arbit

What's with this blog??? Defunct for months, eh! Time to sweep aside the cobwebs yet again.

Madison tit-bits

Let me start by apologizing to the scant readers who might have given up all hope, if ever there was some, to see something new spring up here. Spring... ya, that's something new. The next five months are the best time to be in this part of the globe. Longer days, warmer nights, music by the lake, bike trips, shorts and tees.... those little things I never knew I would cherish and crave for!

From back home

Think India right now and the first thing that comes to one's mind is the 22 yard strip, timber, men-in-blue and the Cup. However mediocre the teams may be, this Cup seems to have been as entertaining as any. Holding it in the subcontinent, the heart of the cricketing world, has proven to be a master stroke for the ICC. More moolaah, more fans, everyone's happy. The Indian team has stumbled its way through to set up a mouth watering clash with neighbours Pakistan. May the best team win.

Across the world

Earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear threats.. eeks! What's next? (I had stopped here to check on an experiment. As things usually turn out, I followed this with a quick browse of the world news and was horrified to watch a video of a Brazilian teen being shot five times by a bunch of cops!! It seemed as if the cops were on weed, or thought they were playing PS2... sanity, people!)

Lab chatter

NO AIR BUBBLES!!! Yay!

I am getting started on a project that involves watching how bacteria get killed by a toxin; and until today, was being 'bug'ged by air bubbles that would enter my reaction chamber. This problem seems to have been sorted out today. Hope this isn't a flash in the pan. Progress feels sweet :)

That's all for now. Peace out...

Questions?

I am writing this post to discuss the inherent fear of raising a question in public, which undoubtedly resides within many of us. Most of us fear becoming the butt of everyone’s jokes for asking a seemingly dumb question, although we secretly admire someone brave enough to ask the same question. Having experienced the pangs of many an unasked question personally, I can easily relate to this thought. Where does this apprehension arise from? I feel one overarching source is the fear of being judged by others. Questions tend to acquire tags, which lead to you questioning yourself and that eventually results in hesitation. I am, often, amused by the tags people assign: a ‘simple’ question gets the ‘dumb’ tag, a well-framed question might be called ‘smart’, etc. Such tags invariably get transferred from the question to the questioner, and may have high levels of persistence.

As a high schooler, I remember feeling happy asking questions in class. Some were due to my imagination, a few would come to my mind because I would day dream in lectures and lose track of what was being taught, yet others came up when I wanted to break the monotony of the class; and I would always have one question to eat up the last five minutes of class hours! Asking questions is always easier when people around you are interested more in the discussion than in taking potshots at each other. It also has a lot to do with how the respondent answers a question. I have felt less inclined to question teachers who have rubbished my questions nonchalantly. Instead, those who would help me frame a question properly and then go on to answer it were the ones who got more queries from me later. Brushing aside a question without paying attention is probably the worst thing a teacher could do. It breaks the confidence in the teacher, sending out a message that the teacher is superior and hence should not be bugged with trivia. Giving a patient hearing to a question breaks the ice between the questioner and the respondent, paving the way for detailed discussion.

Some of my most memorable classes were in Biochemistry during my Masters where my teacher would set aside time in each lecture for questions alone. The thought of being able to ask any question, even one without any relevance to the day’s discussion, was liberating. He would then ponder over it for a minute, and give a lot more than just a straightforward answer. A good answer should open one or more windows, he would say, that allow the questioner to look beyond the confines of a specific answer and provide ample opportunities to scratch parallel lines of thought.

Shashi Tharoor, former Under-Secretary General of the UN and member of the Indian Parliament, said about his undergrad life, “In College, in addition to answering questions, we learnt to question the answers. Some of us would go a step further and question the questions!” Questioning observed and abstract concepts lies at the root of science and life. Ignoring or discouraging this basic act is akin to anathema.

Indie bhaashi

Living away from where I had lived for a couple of decades has helped me realize the pros of knowing more than one language. Part of the reason why I have felt less alien than expected is that the locals here speak the same language that I have been taught for more than a decade. Migrating to a country that speaks a different language can be hard for some and enjoyable for others. An interesting incident that comes to my mind is that of an Indian friend in Germany being forced to shadow an 'Indian-looking' family so that he could get to the nearest Indian store. 'I will make do without learning German till as long as I possibly can!', he remarked. Six months later, he has found his way to a German class. Seems like all Indian-looking families in this guy's town have sorted him out!

In India, there is a new language every few hundreds of square kilometres or less and each language has its fair share of dialects. Indian cities bear witness to a massive confluence of languages, and this brings along a vibrant mix of cultures, festivals and tradition. Be it jumpy Punjabi or melodious Malayalam, every language has an earthy ring to it. Probably the best way to learn a language is to spend some time in the host state, or mix with people from that state in your city. I can say this from first hand experience of experiencing the city of joy and its language sitting miles away in New Delhi. Knowing a little bit of a language can also help a great deal when you visit the host state. Try cracking an expression in the local language - its the best way to endear yourself to the locals.

The cities of India make for an interesting experience, often forgotten in the mad race of living to earn a living and nothing else.

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.