Today, I submitted my first ICMR grant. To me, it feels like an enormous milestone that should be marked in some way. I had immersed myself in it for weeks... working on it a bit at a time until two days ago when I pulled a couple of all-nighters and finished it up and submitted it this morning, a few hours before the deadline.
Why do I feel this sense of accomplishment? I may not get the grant (though I certainly hope I do), and this is not the first grant I have written.. what is so great about this one? Perhaps it is because ICMR is the Indian equivalent of the NIH and the grant I wrote is like the R01- a large, complex beast with expectations of depth of theoretical knowledge, technical expertise, practical wisdom and broad research experience. All the grants I have written and won thus far have been smaller: short, innovative, gives you money to tinker and flash but does not give you the sense of putting down roots.
The grant I wrote was also different in another significant way: it was not a discovery project in fields I have received traditional training in, not a business innovation pitch which is something I have learned to do in the past few years, but in a field that I have long yearned to enter but felt like I could never crack: in public health implementation.
A decade after leaving academia, I submitted a grant to the pinnacle of Indian academic research organizations. I feel good about it.
Do I feel good because I want to be thought of as an academic research scientist?
I think not. Just look at the richness of my life:
During this decade, I have gained experience in so many things. I have learned to stand only on my feet, with no organization and no institutional structure to protect me, no expectation of a predictable salary and no automatic legacy of authority. I have built my networks from scratch, I have stumbled and fallen and clambered up; I have starved, struggled with insecurity and feared; I have brought on people, trained them and let them go. I have built my reputation as someone cheerful, energetic, endlessly optimistic and ever-willing to befriend, be helpful and collaborate. I hope I also have built a reputation for integrity and transparency. These are not things that I have inherited from old mentors or from institutional pedigrees. These are values I cultivated after deep questioning and practiced even when it may not always have been easy.
Would I have been able to do all this in the protected surroundings of an academic institute? I like to think I would not.
I feel a bit battered and bruised. But I feel stable, like I have put down roots. I know that things that would have swayed and shaken me a decade ago do not faze me as much anymore. I know that there is no ideal world, but only the serenity and confidence we build for ourselves. I remember my father like that- as someone who faced the world with the confidence that he had seen things that scared him but faced them anyway. And as someone who knew what he stood for and was like a tree-solid, stable and strong.
It's funny that an ICMR grant makes me think of him. But perhaps it is the knowledge that I have come really far and maybe that much closer to him.
I want to highlight what I read recently in a book called "All About Love- A New Vision" by bell hooks. She shared the definition of love that made most sense to her: Love is anything that leads to your or another's spiritual growth.
Let me spend the next decades living this- let me love my children, husband and family such that they feel enabled in their spiritual growth. Let me grow in mine. And if my spiritual growth includes a component of grant writing that induces such a deep sense of wonder, gratitude and peace, then let me acknowledge and embrace that.
