A Pat on the Back

It's been 1 month and 1 week since my parents left for India. And I think I can at last say, at the risk of drawing the attention of some mischeivous imp of Fate, that I am beginning to better juggle the different roles I play.

Evidence: I am actually on time (in fact, well before time) for the 9am lab meeting. This is the first time I have managed that in many, many weeks. And I did this and managed to pack lunch for Ani, get a decent breakfast into him, give him a bath, get myself ready and didn't forget to pay his daycare expenses. Hurray!

Now, to repeat this ad infinitum.

Inspiration at last!

I had been feeling, for close to a year now, the lack of any reading material that could inspire, advise and entertain me. I had written in this blog some time ago about how the only books I seemed to have consumed gluttonously in my time in Pittsburgh were useless, forgetable and senseless romances. Yet, the books I had on hand which were not romances were hardly the inspirational, philosophically deep books that I felt the need for.

I am happy to report, at last, that I have found a book that suits my purposes completely: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

This is a book that is wise, humorous, tolerant and lays out a beautiful framework for living life without being pedagogical or preachy. There is such energy in the writing, it draws you in as soon as you read the first few words. This is a book that can be savored all life long, with deeper shades of meaning becoming apparent with growing experience.

Through Franklin's eyes, I can see America as it once was, a colony of England, and then as a new country. There is a quaintness in the idea of a journey from Boston to New York taking 3 days by boat, or with Philadelphia and Boston being considered two separate countries (Boston still, even in those days, being more expensive than Philadelphia), of having to row a boat from New York to Philadelphia because there was no wind for the sails. But what is also apparent is the drive, the hope and the determination of the people of the day to take things into their hands and make their lives better. Franklin's depiction of America reminds one of all that America stands for in the minds of people all over the world- a place where one can wrest control of one's fate and succeed. This is not the America of greed or obesity or parochialistic bickering that we see on TV. This is the very philosophy, the foundation of the IDEA of America- not the country, but the way of life.

It's funny how true Confucious's saying "When the student is ready, the teacher appears" is. Were I to have come across this book even 2 months ago when I was still finishing up my thesis, I would have raced through it and not really spent the time pondering it. Postdoctoral fellowship, while being more demanding, is also giving me the time and the space to think about life and how it ought to be lived.

Perspective

After one month in my new postdoctoral place of work, I went back to my old lab today to backup some data.

3pm on a Friday afternoon. Not too many people around. Firstly, PG himself was off on vacation, then Deena, our supervisor had her usual annual bout of pneumonia. Lori, my ex-lab roommate and good friend, was also off on vacation (why in the world are so many people taking vacation in the beginning of November?). Importantly, Anwesha, the new graduate student, was off at classes. Which meant I had full freedom to sit at her desk and pull out my data from the deep depths of her computer. I suppose I no longer felt any sense of possession of that computer and desk, which had been mine for 5 years. But as soon as I entered the room, the sheer neatness of it made me lose any sense of nostalgia or ownership of that room or desk or computer- it looked nothing like the way it used to.

Copying my files, I came across many presentations which I hadn't opened or seen in years. Here are some titles of some of my presentations at lab meeting: "The Science of Language: A Primer", "Food, Sex and Fruit flies", "Jeopardy!", "Anxiety in Pregnant Rats" and so on. PG would gently remind me, at the end of these talks, that perhaps I should concentrate on something related to my thesis project, or at least that was pertinent to the vast field of Microbiology, if not infectious diseases. But he never stopped me from giving these HOUR-long presentations on completely irrelevant topics, nor did he make me feel like I was wasting his time or the lab's. These presentations reminded me forcefully about what a truly great place I trained at. I couldn't have asked for a better mentor to do my PhD with.

What a wise mentor PG is!

Nonetheless, I am SO happy I am no longer working on the project that I was! No project dealing with disease pathogenesis is easy, but seriously, noncytolytic CD8 antiviral mechanisms are, to me, the most frustrating. And after 5 years of working on that stuff, I still don't have enough data to publish a complete story. It's enough to make a sane person completely sick with rage and impotence. *Deep breath* it's okay. It's okay. It's all over now.... more or less.

Thesis

Guess how many chapters my thesis consists of?

NINE!!

I'm a lean, mean writing machine!


Either that, or I'm still favoring quantity over quality...

Oh God, let me be a QUALITY lean mean writing machine!


*snort*

Lame-o

Books

I need to read something a little more intelligent than romance novels.

I read better books in India, when they were hard to come by, than I have in the US. The reason is simple: I would have to buy books in India, whereas I don't in the US. The number of books that are sheer muck (think Charlaine Harris or Stephanie Laurens) that I have unashamedly gobbled up here makes me cringe a bit.

In my 6 years here, what are the truly memorable books that I have read?

a) Atonement by Ian McEwan
b) At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances by Alexander McCall Smith
c) Brother Cadfael's Penance by Ellis Peters
d) The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant
e) The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
f) A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson

Gosh. And that's it. I can't think of anything else that I have read completely and can actually say that it made an impact on me. How lowering that I should have checked out so many books from the library in the past 6 years and barely a fraction of a percentage actually registerd. I need to get back to treasuring quality over quantity.

Overkill?

Came to the decision some weeks ago that I would not pursue a research-intensive post doc, and would instead focus on a teaching-based one.
Love the decision, feel good about it, and the birds are singing, the sky is blue, etc etc.

Now, I fear that I might have been a bit too aggressive towards getting my dream job. *Cringe*
D.J. is the post of lecturer at University of Pittsburgh. Awesome, right? I WANT this job. I would be good for them, and they would be good for me. Everyone wins.

But what if, in my confident (over-confident?) enthusiasm, I have put them off? Let me tell you what I did: put in my application, got my 3 referees to write their letters on time, then got my adviser to mail them (about 2 weeks after he sent the recommendation letter, reiterating the main points), VISITED them and told them about myself and that this was my top choice, AND when my labmate said that she would write a recommendation letter for me, egged her on to do it.

Might this be a case of over-exposure? *wince*

I might have killed my chances, or raised unnecessary expectations, or even resentment.

Oh nooooo :(

It's been 52 days since the deadline and I haven't heard back from them... or, come to think of it, from anybody else whom I applied to. I wish there could be a tracking system where I could see my status among all the candidates and modify my behavior as and when necessary.

Lessons, lessons and more lessons

Feels like I've just been learning stuff from a variety of people these past few weeks. I hope somebody in the world feels like they are learning things from me... might balance out things a bit and make me feel better.

Biggest lesson learned: from my son. It humbles me to say this, but my 1 year old son has a better attitude towards life, and especially towards ill health, than I do. No matter how shitty he feels (and he's had a pretty bad bout of some flu like illness), he always smiles and plays and is happy, as long as he is surrounded by family. No matter how hungry or tired he may be, he is ever willing to go exploring or try out something new.

Other lesson learned: from the man. Gosh, actually, strike that. There have been so many things that he wants me to improve upon that I don't even know where to start. I really need to think before I speak- that's the next biggest lesson learned.

Then from my mom: about how to engage little boys in play. My tendency is to give the kid a toy and expect him to learn how to play with it. I forget that unless I show him how to, and keep repeating this, he will never show any interest in it.

Enough things to ponder about for now.

Latest Waste of Time

is Rent the Runway (www.renttherunway.com).

Love the concept, love the website.

If you need a party dress (Western-style, that is) and you don't want to buy one, you go to Rent the Runway and rent one. They get designer clothes from previous seasons and rent them out for cheap. The clothes're clean, you get 2 sizes for free and you don't have to dry clean the clothes before returning them.

I had signed up for this about a year ago after reading about it on NYT, but never found a need to use it. Recently though, I got invited to a friend's wedding shower and wedding. Now, in my younger days, I might have pooh-poohed the idea of wearing some dress and said, with my nose obstinately up in the air, that I would wear a saree... and probably done it too.

Now, I am older and more Westernized and frankly (my younger self would have been horrified to hear this), I CAN'T handle a saree. Things jab into me from all ends, I feel suffocated in the skin tight blouses and God, I have turned into one of those detestable NRIs who lounge about in T shirts and baggy drawstring pants. I blame the drawstring pants entirely on the pregnancy. If I had never become pregnant, I would have never ventured to wear them and become suckered in. Now I can't let go. I have stepped into the dark side and going back will be impossible.

So where was I? Oh yes, the dresses for the shower etc. Long story short: went to the website, totally mesmerized by dresses with names like "Make Him Regret It dress"


or the "Bam Pow dress" (sounds better than it looks)


or "The Miss Mysterious Gown" (lovely, just perfectly lovely )



or even "The Passion Twist"

Really, half the fun is in the names!


The dress I have rented out (for $50) is comparatively quite conservative... no "Drive anybody crazy" dresses for me. But I think it's cute and I'm looking forward to wearing it

India trip Part I

I didn't realize what a toll jetlag can take- especially if you are a little baby.

Little Fellow (LF), in the space of 72 hours, has undertaken a 19h flight, endured cramped spaces and disorienting, shifting time zones, a barrage of new faces and higher noise levels, with a remarkable amount of patience and equanimity. He did throw a fit yesterday morning, when faced with yet another round of new faces, while being desperately tired, but that is totally excusable. But trying times are still ahead: the biggest and most urgent consequence is constipation. LF's digestive system, tending to be a bit creaky at the best of times, seems to have gone on a temporary strike. Next is the upcoming trip to easily one of the hottest places in India- Chennai. I called Chennai my home during my undergrad years, and in the 6 years since I left India, I always felt a great affection for it based on nostalgia. But now that I actually have to go there (and that too in March... of course, it could have been worse. It might have been April... or May or June or really, any month), I feel some trepidation. What if LF finds it unbearably hot and humid? What if he gets a bad headache? What if the food doesn't agree with him?

In the end, one can only prepare so much. This is something I learned from my mother-in-law, and it has served me well in the few months that I have put it to the test: There's no point worrying relentlessly about things outside one's control. One prepares as well as one can and then prays to the Big Being Above. There's something very liberating about this approach- there's a clear endpoint to planning and preparing for anything. And then one admits, "There. Can't do anything more. Please, oh Big Being Above, take over"

Lab Inspection

The annual lab inspection is today!! There's a palpable sense of excitement in the air, butterflies flutter in otherwise immune (ha) tummies, hearts skip beats. There are whispers of "Is the inspector here yet?" and faces peek into the room of the lab superviser.

*Snort*

Okay, not really. Yes, we are in dire need of excitement in our lives, but really, even WE aren't particularly excited by lab inspectors or inspections. For one thing, we can never find anything after the inspection. Things have been moved around, jammed into draws, hidden out of sight, gloves that you would like to reuse are suddenly whisked into the trash can by a dozen unseen hands.... it's not fun, I can tell you.
And there's the question that always gets different answer every time you ask it: Can we continue to work while the inspection is going on? Rationally, you would think, yes. But then again... what if there's some catastrophic mistake in the method of my working that has escaped my attention all these years and which the eagle-eyed, granite jawed inspector will immediately spot and suspend me from working?

Okay, time to stop speculations. The inspector is here. Hey, she looks kinda young to be an inspector.

I think I can go and work in the lab now.

Enya II and others

Now I feel bad about dissing Enya so much yesterday because since then, I've been listening to her songs and I have to admit: Orinoco Flow and Only If are pretty awesome songs. One can't help but put everything down and sing along- even if one has to make up one's own lyrics for a greater part of the songs.

Why, I hear you ask, can't you just go online and find out the lyrics for these songs, if you like them so much?

What a question to ask. This is why: There's no better way of KILLING a song than to read up its lyrics online.

What is mysterious and full of endless possibilities, potential and speculation falls down with a thud when you see the words hammered in and unchangeable. And really, half the time, one's made-up lyrics are far better.

Case in point: Bon Jovi's "It's My Life". Before, I had loved, LOVED, LOVED that song. Now I know the lyrics and I feel embarrassed singing it. Who the hell is Frankie?

Same thing with all the songs from the Tamil movie "BoYs". Adnan Sami's music, so it's bound to be good, you think. Then you hear the songs, you don't entirely understand the lyrics and everything is great. Then you listen to the songs and understand the lyrics and you cringe from ever singing those songs again. Now you can't even hum the tunes because those godawful lyrics pop into your head and mess up everything.

So after this rant of mine, am I actually saying that Enya's un-understandable, mish-mash lyrics are actually a plus point in her favor?

Yes. I guess that is what I'm saying.

But I still stand by my original point that all her songs sound alike.

Enya

Enya's popularity, in the 90's, and continuing appeal today, among those nostalgic 30-40 year olds, rests on one fact: human beings love repetition. All her songs sound exactly alike, they have the same beat, and the same "garblish" quality in the lyrics: the listener can make out one sentence or two in the song, and these keep repeating themselves with mild variations over and over again, and the rest of it sounds exotic because nobody knows what the heck is being sung. The rest of it even sounds like it could be some exotic foreign language, but not as foreign as say, Arabic, not the kind of foreign that you can pin down and say, Aha, that's French, but foreign, like Celtic, which nobody (that I know of, anyway) knows or has heard, but it's a language that one would LIKE to know or at least pretend that one has heard, because it is just so well, exotic. It evokes carefully crafted scenes of blue seas crashing against Irish coasts with long haired maidens in gowns singing (the "garblish" sections of Enya's songs) like mermaids on the afore-mentioned coasts. But the English sections appease us because we feel a connectedness, because of our understanding of the two sentences, to this Hollywood scene.
Add to that a boom-boom-boom beat and some polyphonies, and there. That's Enya.

Here are the 3 songs that I like of Enya's, and which probably are her most famous:

a) Orinoco Flow


b) Only if


c) May it be from the Lord of the Rings



OKay?

These are the ones that sound kind of new and original.

Now take ANY other song of hers, and every one of them will fit into one of the molds above.

Go on. Try it!

Escapes from Motherhood

There are times I am happy being a mother. These are the times when the kid's playing happily and noisily or staring enraptured at something he's never seen before, the times when he snuggles into me and makes happy sounds, the times he giggles loudly and the times he demands to be with me by calling, "mma mma mmmma", crawls towards me and raises his hands to be carried.

Then there are times when he refuses to sleep at night, refuses to eat but keeps getting crankier and crankier, demands to be carried all the time and when carried, bites into my shoulder, grabs at my spectacles and throws them down, yanks my hair and tries to put his fingers into my nose. During these times, I feel a longing, a deep yearning, to return to my pre-motherhood days.

Depending on my mood, I transport myself back in time to different periods. Sometimes, I go back to my pregnancy days, when I'd eat loads of caramel ice cream and watch Topgear on TV. Other times, I go back to the lab at midnight. There's something so peaceful about working hard in a laboratory when there's absolutely no other sound except for the clink of the pipettes, the whoosh of the hood blower and the soft whir of a centrifuge. In fact, working in lab at night is something I miss very much. These days, I'm lucky if I can stay back till 6pm.

When I am irritated with the kid AND his father, I become 24 again, with a suitcase in my hand, boarding the plane to India to make my first trip back home. In my imaginings, I throw some clothes in my backpack, take the 28X bus to the airport and whoosh! I'm away! Far from the madding crowds, husband and baby!

In my mind, my ancestral home (my dad would laugh to hear it being described as such. But it was built about 50 years ago and it was the place where all of us cousins grew up, so it's ancestral enough for me) in Bangalore is the best of all havens. It is solid and safe and there I can be a girl again and not a mom. I recall my cousin Aditya, and my niece and nephew, Manu and Madhav, as babies and as toddlers and as teenagers in that house. In my mind, once I get to the house in Bangalore, my mother and grandmother and aunts will take care of everything, including the kid, while I gossip, eat enormous meals laden with ghee and with fried vadams, and take many naps, getting up only to go shopping. Bliss!