Why should boys have all the fun?? - BIKES!!!!!!!!! <3 <3

Life would indeed be good and safe with just teddy bears, barbie dolls and pink nailpolishes around. But there's something about me that gets super excited about travel and modes of travel - the wanderlust inside me manifests in different forms! This conclusion has come upon some real careful observation. I wouldn't say nothing excites me better. Just that this is something that gives some exhilarating experience. So, now you know what the post is going to be about - bikes, my love for them.

I don't know when this love for bikes developed. When I grew up, my mode of travel everywhere was bikes - dad and uncle's, atleast then. Rajapalayam has a bad public transport system and it was only in chennai did i first get a taste of how public transport actually works. So it all started probably with the 'gems' outings - from early childhood (infancy is it?) until 1st standard or so when i ceremonially go almost every evening and get a packet of gems( the little colourful yummy chocoloates) once dad comes home. I simply used to love it - maybe not for the bike rides atleast for the chocolates. Then to school and back, though i might have hated the ride in the mornings as i realise now that i am born to be perenially late, be it 2nd grade in school or final year of college!

And then, it was school bus for some time and my tryst with bikes halted. Then came my scooty. Yes, my automobile knowledge is good enough, i wudnt call scooty a bike, but for all practical purposes, let it be! From 9th standard to this day, its my most intimate, trusted possession, though i have almost stopped using it these days. Getting back on track, my bike friend would be rathika, the only one who trusted me enough to ride pillion, my dearest and most adorable friend to this day. The experience is something inexplicable - the first freedom it gives u, the first leash of fresh boldness to shout at someone on the road, to zoom past someone, to overtake the one who juz overtook you and look back, yes, life's small pleasures give you more happiness indeed.

Then its was the 11th class - the bike show during the sports day - though a group of boys did it, i really used to admire this guy shri ohm, my classmate for his biking skills - just that i guess he tried out the same on my scooty and ended up making a mess of it! He could do awesome wheelies and that super fast turns (oops i forgot the name! what was it?) apart from the usual stunts that every guy on earth probably tries out! He was extremely good at it, probably the best i have seen so far! (Sad, that he had to undergo a surgery coz of injuries due to his antics on the bike!) It was at those moments, for once, i wished i was a boy! Now, that's a confession!

Back to my story, towards the end of 12th standard, we (me and rathika) took great pride in how we actually escaped the policeman at a particular signal for four long years - While all the big bad biker guys of class had their stories of what happened to them without a license at the police station! Wow!! We actually had the guts to look at him straight on his face and pass a smile - no dupattas covering the face, mostly in school uniforms which blatantly blurts out that we were still not that legitimately old enough to get a license. But the world has good souls like him! Thank you police uncle! I wish TN police has more ppl like u! :) Now dont book me under any rule, this is not a confession! And rathika was the partner in crime - super cool even when some 5 drunk auto drivers surrounded us and started blasting for something as small as breaking the indicator lamp glass - that too with the impact of a scooty! Very funny!

And then, towards the end of school, the ride became more and more sentimental, how we would miss the ride, how life would become all boring if i get a license, how we would miss the sweet smile of the policeman, how never in life would we be able to get away with minor accidents with a biiiiiig grin and an angelic innocence on our faces, assuming false identities. There's one thing here, in rajapalayam, you can't afford to let your name, especially your family's name out in any circumstance. If i overspeed, my mom would know it even before i reach home. So concealed identities used to be a big thing over there,though not any more, here i am a non-entity! Yes, all that we talked during jan, feb and march 2006 is all true. I really really miss it! I wish i can go back to the maths tution and the physics tution days - when we used to overtake the tution master himself, just to be on time - talk of punctuality! Not to forget the advices that follow - "dont overspeed, especially in such bad roads", and then that becomes the excuse for being late the next day! Sounds like a girl who has never had fun all her life, i know, but that's something very very close to heart and i dont have the power of words to explain it!And then it was college - i had to take the public transport, though it came with its own range of fun during travel. But i havent bothered to take a license until today - procrastination at its worst! So, naturally i miss all that fun of going out, 47A now being my closest friend now!

To this day, my biggest bike experience has been on UP roads - in Noida around midnight! Mostly pillion! Wowww!! I remember it so vividly! UP/Delhi's lack of road law and order adding to the fun! I wish i get it back! The black pulsar! That was also the time when i actually got to try out a looooong time wish of mine - to ride a bike,all by myself! It was the same black pulsar.. Though i never progressed far beyond the 2nd gear, it was a long cherished wish! And, yeah not to mention my ignorance - in scooty the left arm control was the brake and in bikes, it's the cluctch, my mind never took this point seriously and i ended up having a hearty laugh in the end! Half of my love of NCR comes from the love of roads, be it the AIIMS flyover, DND flyway, the loooong flyover in the inner ring road, the most beautiful NH-8, the expressway.. Everything.. If there's something called on top of world feeling, it riding on such roads, minus the irritating traffic ofcourse! No exaggeration!

So yeah, as u can sense, if writing about it can generate so much enthusiasm in me, doing it in reality would obviously do a lot more good to my spirits. Back from the summer fun, life has generally been boring on this front - just tried twice riding arvi's bike and made a mess of my image :P and yeah, saw his antics once near annai - a wheelie that never went beyond a 20 degree i would say, sorry arvi for that dig! I know you have a dubious distinction about wheelies, just that your bike wasnt in proper shape that day! The whole love of bikes story flashes everytime i hear dhoni mentioning a 800cc bike or seeing a launch of a really good looking bike or seeing someone zooming past with the air buzzing on the face, ripping through the wind, when you get a feeling of floating in air! Omg! Why should boys have all the fun! Doesnt mean i would say scooty is no good. It has its own share of fun, no changing gears at signals, you would be the first one to take off, probably you wont rip through wind, you could definitely enjoy the breeze! Gals can indeed have fun! That's probably i luv every ad with this concept - From the silly village gal ad featuring priyanka, why should boys have all the fun, and the more recent, tu peeche baitega ad! Hilarious!

These are things that make life more interesting and i just hope this passion runs alive, though i might not get to ride a bike that very often, and get laughed at by my bro and cousins in the process! Yes, the passion can be kept alive by dragging people to a mall just to catch a glimpse of an all new macho yamaha or a lambhorgini or the breathtaking BMW showroom or even a more accessible volkswagen showroom! Seeing is believing they say, isnt it? :P So yeah, god, lemme own a superbike in the future, and have a good chaffeur friend/bf coz i cant always go through the ordeal of parking lots and traffic jams, hehe.. Long live bikes, bikers and bike manufacturing companies!!!

My Chiggy Wiggy with GRE!!! - Part 1

Yaaaaaaaaay!!! This post is being written from Cloud Ten... 1530 it was meant to be.. Thank you all, each and every soul who bothered to wish me on gun time, each and every soul who helped me with material for GRE, each and every soul who bore the brunt of all my badgering and blabbering before the exam, each and every soul who sat with me and helped me out with every step from passport to name change to registering GRE to preparing for it.... The endless travail of wordlist quizzing and solving quants.. Thank you all...

Hopefully, essay scores don't disappoint me as well. Coz, I have gotten out of that phase in life

- where everything/everyone had a word written on them ...

- when every signal in chennai meant a difficult word like 'sartorial' at taylor's road...

- when i think of food as -viand, victuals, collusions and comestibles and not as food...

- when i think of movie spoofs as burlesques and parody...etc etc etc

And now, life seems a lot more different! How much a person can change in 3 weeks!!! :)

I want to sing out aloud a couple of lines, that seemed so apt for my feeling for sometime now..

"Aa rahi paas ya door mein Ja rahi...
Janoo na mein hu kahan pe..."

Indeed, I don't know where I am going, Near or Far of where I want to be.. Sometimes, the truth is i dont even know what I want... Neither do I know where I am... Entangled eh??

I do understand that this is just the beginning of a long odyssey that's going to be weary.. I say this because I had told everyone that I am not going into MS or PhD way if this fails... I had my ISB website links ready just incase GRE became a debacle.. looks like its not meant to be that way..

And to myself and to all those out there who think i can't and won't do anything else except an MS/PhD... The final call hasn't been made still, I could as well turn out to be a MBA degree holder with a good GRE score, rather I wish so, somewhere in a corner of my heart... And the answer to all this, hopefully would be with me by April/May 2010.. Until then, crossing of fingers continues :)

Nevertheless, hopefully, I would sit and blog one fine afternoon with the same elation about me getting my MS or a PhD degree from a gud univ too!!! If that's what it is meant to be :) God willing :)

Nearing the D-Day...

And it's round the corner... GRE!!! Five more days to go!! Just five!! I really want to document and freeze this feeling in time. I want to revisit this page - when I know my score. Either, to be happy about and cherish my preparation times. Or, God forbid, Be more responsible and learn my lessons right from the debacle - not to sit and blog less than a week before the GRE!!

The decision to write the GRE, though it took years and months of contemplation, was actually taken in a couple of hours of self-introspection on a fine sunday evening. A widely publicised sunday evening at that! I know how many calls and msgs i got that evening sharp at 7!! So thoughtful of you all nice souls, happy to have you all in my life.

And I would be wrong if I dont mention about the people who made me do that - take that step forward. A Big Thanks!! A million of them!! I dont really need to name them, they know it. Well, as it turned out, people who told me not to go this way, actually helped me more in making this decision, than those who told me to go for it! So keep contradicting, disproving, stupefying and arguing with me, that's makes us both prosper! A special thanks for those!

So at this juncture, I am at my wit's end about how my fate would turn out.Crossing fingers about what would happen. As time progressed, I have somehow gotten this feeling that GRE is more of luck, chance and kismet (ofcourse ur preparation )than anything else. But this can't be an excuse for not preparing. As usual, my preparation has been in the last couple of weeks, it has been the same always and i guess I have lost the power and the hope to change this last minute thing atleast in the future. For the past two weeks, I have been seeing people with words written on their foreheads. This is a result of me attributing a word to each and every single person's character i know. I know this sounds hilarious and looks like I am on the verge of something wrong, but this helps. And hopefully, it will all be over by the 23rd!!

The thought of the moment when the score would flash on screen is probably the scariest. People have told me how they want to finish off the last couple of questions faster, and how they get impatient in the last few moments, just to see the scores a second earlier. There have been debacles - about how widely touted as 'sureshot 1400+' got shockingly less scores and also how the not-so-talked about came up with great scores! Well, I have always felt in any race being a well-prepared underdog is the best way to be, and by well prepared, I mean the preparation of victory speech inclusive.

So, wish me, that God, and what people call luck stay with me through the rest of my preparation and more importantly - from 23rd morning 9 to 1.

Right now, all I have to say is just one thing - Pray for me, Brother!! Pray for me, Sister!!

Music, Mind and Me...

It would be better if i start with a small flashback before i jump into the thing i wanted to write. I have been learning to play the musical instrument veena from 14-10-1994. Yes! That is precisely the date. When I was barely five years old and when I was so small that I couldn't reach the ends of the veena with my hands, when my hands would start paining and reddening the moment i played two notes continuously. My mom must have had loads of perseverance and hope, to run behind a five-year old asking her to play veena! I actually went to the music school for vocal music and the kid in me chose to play the veena instead. Of course at that point of time it was just like I had to learn some art or the other and the girl next door learnt it and so i was naturally attracted to it. I learnt and learnt, with no great progress but some real nice grasp of basic fingering, which i now realise is extremely important, (and that's the one i am complimented for very often :P) and a lots of practice sessions on basics, that, again as i now realise, helps me understand the larger perspective, to look beyond notes and ragas, an aspect i shall probably write in future posts. Looks like it's all the same, science/research or music or architecture - stronger the foundation, the higher you reach. I did make some good progress after that - some nice competitions won, played infront of good scholars who have an amazing depth of knowledge, got some good attention, finished a lower grade degree. This by the start of 10th class - somewhere in 2003. And then it all stopped - mam shifted to some other place, i got into studies( i know that's such a sick, lame and cliched excuse, i did a thousand other things other than studying during that time, i could have done this as well) and i stopped going to veena classes - something i am really really sad about, i havent still rejoined a class in the proper sense of the word, and if there is one thing I am really ashamed about myself, its that - not nurturing the skill that i had got with so much of pain, meticulation and time investment. Not to mention my mom's efforts and time, to keep me motivated and take me back to classes even when i am fed up about the scoldings i get from veena mam! Now, there ends the flashback part.

The next issue, jumping to the present, I have always been this last minute person when it comes to studies, well, not just with studies with almost everything else, guess it's pretty much the same with many of us. I have forced myself to study in the days before exams but I havent been able to complete even 1/10 of the portion in a considerable amount of time. But somehow, the day before exam, your level of grasping, concentration and attention scales a super - high peak. On an exam day, you do some 15 times the portion you would do on a non-exam day, in the same time. How is it possible? You study some 5 units in the same time you struggle to study a small part of one unit during the cycle tests. I call it the last-minute-syndrome, clearly an impressive misnomer, nevertheless fine for now. The brain performs better under compulsion and pressure, they say. But how? How nice would it be if we can harvest and cultivate a method to have that attention all that time! Call it greed, man!

Now the link between veena and this exam thing. Its this... my mom keeps attributing this whole grasping and concentration phenomenon of mine, the last-minute syndrome, to my veena classes and more importantly to my strict music teacher. That my mind has been 'conditioned' to concentrate on a number of things at the same time and a number of other allied effects thereby making my cognitive skills better over time. To name a few, selectively hear what the mam plays, ignoring what the other students in the same room play, though i hear them to the same level of audibility ; focus on where she gives the stress on the fingers ; focus on the timing ; focus on the taalam counts, (yes maths doesnt leave music too! ) ; how long she stays on a single note and a hundred other subtle, maybe unimportant or extrememly important things. And play it back to her! Omg! That is probably the toughest part - the input is a combo of audio-visual and the output is motor - after a complex processing of 'god-knows-what' type by the brain. Add to it the audio feedback of what you play and the visual feedback of the fingers on the string and the mam's angry face! And all of it is seemingly so easy! It is all over at the moment, the moment i grasp what she plays and repeat it! Or the worse case - get scolded for not being able to play it, hear it being played once more and play it back to her! Its done! As simple as that! There it ends!

But apparently this simple momentary thing has 'conditioned' my mind for this last-minute syndrome! What exactly is the connect between both? Seemingly very different things... Well, what i am coming to say here is, how can such a input - processing - response behavior, probably performed at the moment only for the fear of punishment, influence more complex cognitive functions like learning and memory in totally a different context- the last minute syndrome? (darn! monkeys can be tested only on reward oriented behavior, i guess, thanks to animal rights ppl, we experience both reward and punishment moderated behavior! )

Could there be a connect at all at the first place? Could it be a cause- effect relation? After years of arguing with my mom, and with myself, plus recently reading a considerable bit on cognition, I think i have come to a rather vague conclusion on this issue. The conclusion is based more than intution and experience than anything else. And the answer is YES! My veena classes could indeed have had a bearing on my attention and concentration. My veena teacher scolding me badly for not playing a strech properly the first time i hear it might have actually been responsible for a couple of good grades in college. They might actually make me learn a topic or two extra on the day before an exam in lesser time, which i would not have done otherwise.

Now, clearly, it's a rather abstract relationship, not definitely a clear cause-effect, but nevertheless, I guess, if there were a study, it would indeed find some statistical significance. The effect might be due to a number of things - could be the magic of music in it, could be the multi-tasking or parallel processing or a series of quick processing by the brain (That humans can multi-task is a topic of intense research debate, so i safely stick to parallel OR a series of quick processing), it could be punishment oriented behavior, it could be inherent, acquired by practice, a combination of all these and whatnot! But the end result is, it influences more important things in life, later in life, in a complex way.

So this comes to say, small, everyday acts of ours, done unconsiously most often, have an influence on more complex things and our behavior, especially when repeated over time. This is just a very blind hypothesis, with no base to support, with no previous knowledge, rather it's a description of how i feel. But something tells me there is some amount of veritability in this, isn't it? These things do seem to have an impact on the person you are. I wonder if you have felt similar things.

There is a problem here - the issue is not just mine! How many out there are last minute people? Almost all of the student community is, except for a few. Not everyone who has this last minute study habit attends a veena class. But i might have an answer to this. In other cases, I would say there might be something similar that hones your brain and its processing - video gaming, music (listening i mean), multitasking habits (including chatting on 6 windows in gtalk! Yes that indeed counts and that's indeed a skill!) to name a few. The degree to which they influence cognition (learning, behavior, language) is different for sure, but they must have an influence, if we are to go by popular experience. After all, there have been popular papers in reputed journals about how gaming can alter our reaction times for the better, alter concentration and attention profiles, most often for the better.Now all this happens ofcourse with a plethora of negative effects that people attribute to gaming. One thing is clear from all these - all these do influence our brain in some way - forget about positive or negative effects, it becomes too relative to compare and varies from person to person. What's positive for me out of gaming might actually be a negative for you.

Now this brings us to a scary juncture - we say, the day-to-day habits and actions have an influence in the long run on the personality, rather the cognition of a person. If small day-to-day acts can have so much importance (assuming they have, say the hypothesis is proved!) what if we do them the wrong way?? Because how they exert their influence is not known, what works in a positive way might just as well work in the negative way too. Oh my, how many things have I done today that would reduce my concentration in the long run! And more importantly, what are those activities??? How do i find out?? How do i optimise them so that i have good concentration?? How can i work today so that i get a better cognitive capability in the long run??Call it greed!

Wait, at this point, there is another voice inside me that is shouting : Come on! Who bothers what influences your cognition? Why is it important anyway? What difference does it make if you have a miniscule difference in concentration levels anyway? You probably wouldn't come to know if your attention span has increased or not, given the very small magnitude of increase by such habits. You have been living althrough without being really bothered about all these for so long. The brain after all, is a self balanced and regulated system. It must be able to juggle with all these, why bother your consious self with so much of endless thought? Yes. very true. I wouldn't probably trace down my concentration, attention, cognition increase or decrease to one particular habit. It is fine the way it is and it is meant to be that way!

So now why this post? Moral of the story?? We can probably give due credit to people and things and habits that have helped our cognition so much that it is of some consipicous, discernible help to us - Recognise people and habits that have made our day a better and an easier one to live, however sublime their influences might have been. So let's stop it at that!

Now i don't really know how to conclude - I have said that i somehow feel my veena classes have helped me for the better with respect to grasping, concentration and cognition. That's the bottomline. So what? Doesn't really matter to us, eh? Okay! For the sake of conclusion, lemme put it this way : Now i just like to say a big thank you to my veena mam. For making me what i am today, for scolding me badly to the point of frustration(!), for teaching me this wonderful art, for increasing my cgpa by a few grade points, for helping me in my effort in trying to distinguish people and things, and gauge their worth at the first glance,something very important in this world and a hundred other things. And thanks to my mom, for having brought out this whole hypothesis, for being there bearing with all my tantrums in veena class, for being my biggest critique and a billion other things. More importantly, thank you both of you for being the starting point for a very different, and a rather personally gratifying post on my blog!

And the post has indeed ended, folks! Thanks for the enormous patience if you have read through fully :P The post is probably long because it is rather a self-talk and an outpour, not per se meant for public blogging. Promises for a shorter post next time!

Overwhelmed...

is the word to describe my state of mind now. Today is my last night here at NBRC. People can be so kind to you. The moments when they go that extra mile to help you out, the moment they smile an extra inch to show their genuine happiness towards you, well, i have indeed been lucky. Thank you God! And this comes at a time, when i was telling myself 'unexpect the expected' coz friends i expected to do some things out of some sheer basic courtesy never did it and I felt badly disappointed at that. Life is an irony! Frankly speaking i never thought I would have such a weird feeling when I leave this place. It was not like i can't live without it, initially, like the feeling i had got in ICPO. Initially, the only thing that came to my mind was the isolation. But I could get over it very easily once I ventured out. The whole thing of going out on weekends became a compulsion and I am indeed a proud soul to say that I have not missed even one day of outing on the weekends. All the eight weekends i went out, had the best of fun, and geared myself up for a good week of work ahead like a good girl :)


On the professional front, when i look back, things didnt look so bright in the beginning. The day i reported to work happened to be my mentor's farewell party! Life is an irony! How true!! "Unexpect the expected!! " With all the formalities around of getting the signature from your guide, getting used to the lab routine, i was indeed lost. I had some good friends in the hostel and they guided me throughout the initiation process. Then the lab was a total surprise to me. No wet work at all. My work place was similar to a software company. I didn't touch a pipette during my entire stay here. It was all mental work, and trust me, it was more taxing and definitely gave me a more rewarding experience...


My mentor was really kind, he introduced me to the people in the lab, i would probably say the best lot at NBRC in every sense. These two months have been a time of realisation, a time for myself, to see and to observe, then to probably wish how i wanna be, sometimes how i don't wanna be. Both on the work front and the other more important front called life....

My whole opinion about a career in research has changed for the better, I should say for the second time after my last year's stint at ICPO. It has shown me that research is not just about eccentric scientists sacrificing their sleep, sacrificing their social life, accept only science and get drawn into it so much that it swallows all other passions of yours..... NO! Research is exciting, it keeps you on your foot always,and true, its demanding. But after all, scientists do have a life and that can be a lot of fun. They are indeed social, becoming a researcher doesn't mean becoming a loner.... If you sacrifice sleep, its coz you are driven to a sleepless state by the excitement of work and not just because of stupid deadlines.

And I shall probably take this opportunity to thank the people especially the ones in my lab who have inspired me. I know for a fact that they are not going to read this. None of them even know i blog. So no buttering intended. First, Atul and Pooja.They were the ones who were with me throughout, bore the brunt of my bugging, more so coz i was totally ignorant about neuroscience. They were the ones who helped me through the most difficult part of my project. They were the ones who even told me that i can indeed design an experiment of my own and test it. Something unheard for a summer trainee working for two months. Thank you and wish you nothing but the very best. And it would be a mistake if i dont mention their photography passion. You both simply rock!!!!!!!!

Then Arjun and Sharika. Oh my god! I am sure I am gonna run out of words. The couple we (all the summer trainees) reaaaaaaaaaaly admire, made for each other kinds. well to be frank you have influenced atleast a couple of people among the summer trainees to marry a person in the same field. Okie, now for the more important part, what keeps us wondering is how two people of soooooo much (for want of a good adjective, english has very little adjectives, rather, my vocab is bad!) intelligence can just gel together. People will probably start flying if they had so much of brains. Marie and Pierre Curie are the only couple to hav got a Nobel and here is another potential couple! The task i did for arjun was the most challenging one and really made me think really hard. Happy that it was successful. Sharika, she showed me the easiest and the funnest way to earn in the planet.. And then, Neha, the brainy cute one... The one who taught me the most exciting monkey work. Buddism rocks! lol... Nice time!

Well, it would be wrong if i painted a totally rosy picture. Research can be really frustrating and depressing, in enormous proportions. I could have ended up doing nothing but crying out of frustration every single night. I could waft through all those, just because of one factor - my gang of friends at hostel II. I easily had the best time of my life. Not to mention, one of my biggest achievements so far - waking up until dawn, watching shane west movies. The endlesss talks at the lawn, the walk the talk sessions with gagan, the ultimate goal of combing subhankar's hair, the yummmmmmy midnight snacking (omg I put on a lot of weight that way), time with my stupid roomie ankita. The inspiringly studious purabi, the tamil-gossiping duo me and vaishnavi, the pretty cutiepie of a friend neharika and not to forget, what-a-revelation vishala. Miss you too much guys, the only benefactor from our separation being vodafone! I still wish i had spent some more time with gaurav, divayanshu, ali, anand, sheetal and anupama. But that's how its meant to be. I shall for sure publish in Nature one day, the glycogen cycle that me and ali formulated on a lazy saturday afternoon :)

It has indeed been a great experience after all. My guide, the super cool one, probably the coolest i have ever seen. He always looks at the broader perspective and I believe that is the only way to move forward in research. I realised that the respect you tend to command out of sheer knowledge and intelligence is far better and greater than the ones that any post would confer on u. He has been a true inspiration in every sense....

All said and done, I have not still made up my mind on research. Its a commitment for a lifetime, not like switching between political parties. I don't still know if i have it in me to do it. Badly in need of help on that front. Nevertheless, the balance has tilted a lot in favor of research and added to the existing confusion in choice. Well, did someone say, the more the merrier ?

P.S: I am publishing the draft almost ten days after i wrote it. Also, I would like to reiterate : this post is not to thank all those who helped me or to mention all those who inspired me. I know for sure, these wouldn't be read by the people i have thanked. Obviously, they would benefit better by devoting this time to reading a paper in sciene or nature. All I wanted to do was to capture the moment for future, freeze the feelings in time. There are people who influenced me to a great extent and dont find a mention in this post. And there have been moments of fun, so many that i can't probably sit and type down in one post. And this post, is just the tip of the iceberg!

Research can be quite a revelation!

I am sitting here, a week more to go before my odyssey at NBRC ends, with a myriad of feelings, joy, regret, panic, fear, extreme bursts of fun, whatnot. It will probably take me months to write about whatever i wanted to write. But i shall put myself through it for sure. I had been complaining of lack of back-breaking work,but, it did turn out to be a blessing in guise indeed. I did read quite a few things that were simply, mind-blowing, for want of a better word.

The study of cognition is my area of research this summer and it sort of overlaps with psychology quite a bit, in a sense that i do behavioral studies. This area of study is very much intriguing, for u study about a machine, called the brain, using that machine itself, how wonderful!!! I shall talk about it later. Right now, I read this beautiful article about 'the feeling of regret' in animals. I thought this whole feeling of 'i should have done this instead of that' and the self instrospection that occurs in the aftermath of an event that goes terrible wrong is restricted only to humans. But animals also? I simply can't imagine. Probably i have never given it a thought. Read until the very end even if u feel bored.. It's worth it!

here is the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/science/02tier.html

Happy reading!

Here I am!!

"Here I am, this is me, there's nowhere else on earth....." I feel like singing.. Yes I am in a really isolated place, a good one at that to be honest, called National Brain Reseach Centre, Manesar. On the work front, I am sort of quite confused and I haven't gotten into the groove yet. But there's another side to it. This is my first real hostel life. Hostel life is something i am super excited about, nevertheless, i can say i am indeed happy that I haven't lived it for long until now. This time, its my 2nd IAS fellowship. So this time around, I was actually looking forward to go around and get a good taste of the NCR. I did quite a bit of this going around, visiting places business last time too and I am always hungry for more of such stuff. It is just two weekends since i am here in this Godforsaken place(strictly in terms of its isolation and nothing else) but I should say I have already got some real adventurous experiences in my kitty.

Apart from the fact that i have indeed finally gotten into this routine of sleeping late, (something almost all the hostel friends of mine would know that i am very,very curious about) and having great fun in the process, this has brought out the brave girl in me, if i can happily say that. Lemme explain..

The first weekend was good fun going around in Delhi. Thanks to arun, we did quite a bit of roaming around business, exactly what i wanted! Arvi and Yuvi joined us from Noida. If u bother to note, its ppl from three different states meeting up.. Me from haryana, yuvi n arvi from noida, and arun from delhi. We went to CP(Oh i still remember the Kaventer's strawberry milk!!), then travelled by Metro (one of my loooooong time wishes) to Chawri Bazaar and there we were in Dilli-6!! "yeh dilli hai mere yaar!!" We actually went to the cramped streets of the place, went to jama masjid in the scorching sun. Scorching, for want of a better word... Omg! I have never burnt my feet in sandstone like that! It was so damn hot! I had boils all over the next day thanks to the super duper heat, but who cares! It was good fun and then we went back to CP(metro again!) and the day ended in delhi... My stint in Gurgaon started at 5 in the evening and i went into the most famous malls of the city, probably the country... Came back feeling lighter.. i mean, my purse became empty!

Then the second weekend... The saturday was one of the most boring days of my life. Very bad. No work, no fun. So we decided to go to "Gobind da dhaba" a typical typical highway dhaba on NH-8 opposite NSG campus. Its a small walk (small in haryana terms, it is actually quite far)from the insti so we made a quick plan and started off for dinner at 8. Then came the first hinderance! Aandhi!! Windstorm!! After it subdued (abated! scary GRE!!!!!) we started walking towards it... The insti's gate is a 25 min walk from the hostel. The security stopped us saying 'ladkon ke saath ladkiyon, raat ko, aat bhaje, yeh, voh'. It was one good crowd of people, obviously, there's absolutely no difference between guys and girls when it comes to good food! But alas, no! we werent let out! God! Our last hope for the saturday was gone! we returned back wid a biiiig frown, totally frustrated! So we took a cornetto at the 'monu ka mall' (in our lingo,it cant even qualify as a dhukan let alone a mall) the only thing called a shop near the insti, to satiate(!) our hunger, and drive away the frustu mood. It did no good. So we said, 'ok we shall go to Ambience mall tomorrow'. Ambience is that huuuuuge 3km mall.But again, malls can get indeed boring, really boring and u end up paying a fortune for getting bored! So we barged into the lab, at 11 in the night, googled on what all places we could visit in Gurgaon. Internet is indeed a boon for desperate people like us and the blogosphere and google maps, a even better bliss. So we noted down, made superb plans for the sunday to go into proper gurgaon. Until then, gurgaon had started and ended in sahara mall for us!Wow!! There were so many places to go!!

Sunday, i woke up early got ready, raring to go, explore gurgaon! 10 :45 was the time the NBRC van starts, well, that's what we thought and wrongly so. And i happened to forget the fact that i was living in a hostel where mornings start at 10! I woke up the other partners in crime that day at 10.. We were almost there at 10: 40... only to see that the bus had gone! GONE! leaving us alone in that isolated, god-forbidden(again, strictly with respect to its isolation) place! All our ambitious plans were shattered!


But wait! Weren't we supposed to be brave, daring girls? The bus has left, so what? There were no guys to accompany us, as silly as it sounds, for safety as they say, so what? It is after all a highway and there were thousands of people travelling on it. Why dont we venture out? Our frustration became our motivation!

So there we were, dabbing on our sunscreens, three of us, walking out of the institute, on NH-8, all alone, with just googled knowledge of where we wanted to go. Then came a tempo, as they call it here(i wouldnt even call it a vehicle with an engine) loaded with wheat sacks, we were asked to sit on top of the sacks! That was bad!! We said no!! We are adventurous all right, but it seemed to be a bad idea!

Then came another tempo, our saviour, this time, empty. We got in and finished off all the tropicana we carried along, thanks to the 11 o'clock sun. The tempo driver suddenly stopped at a temple, took some prashad and started giving us! All of us instantly shouted in the lowest of our voices"dont eat!"What if he planned to rob us giving us something! Okie, it wasnt a biscuit but still it was some eatable! it was oily and we had to keep it. It was prashad after all. Then the next shock! he suddenly stopped in the middle of nowhere and said, go to the other tempo! Apparently its a deal between them about who is to go first or sumthin. We ended up in a smelly tempo in the hottest of weather with some of typical haryanvi villagers. Weird looks were passed as if we were Martians! Wherever i went, all i could hear was something starting wid "akeli mein theen ladkiyon" stuff all over.. Why is this so bad???

But after three four shift, we finally came to the place - Sec 14 market!! It isn't such a big place n all, as u would probly think from my build up, its juz a decent market. But anything out of the institute and within gurgaon limits was heaven for me. Vishala was with us, who has never gone shopping in the whole of her life so she freaked out at the cheap kurtas and added to the exchequer! We gorged on street food(golgoppas and golas, the kala kattas stuff) searched all around for om sweets, ate like aliens to food, went to dominoes and yes we still had time to shop after so much of eating! I put on mehndi, my first love in north india! It was so intricate and good, only that i had to bear with some embarrasing questions and funny predictions about my brother in law the next day seeing the color! And as usual, we ended our day in sahara mall and gurgaon central that day too! We felt like we achieved something great in our lives and the whole insti knew what we were upto that day. Maybe now it sounds silly to me to blow such a simple sunday outing out of proportion, but trust me, the more u want and wait for sumthing, the better u like it. The frustration made us enjoy every second of it, all the more! And dont blame me if u wasted your time reading this, you gotta bear with it!

So yeah, Here I Am, waiting for my next weekend. The plannin process starts on monday morning, but the plans never turn out to be true. Somehow, the moments we have the most fun seem to be the moments that are most unplanned. So lemme wait, this time without any plans, but with loads of expectations, for the next weekend!! While all of u folks remember and keep reminding me that there is something called a week inbetween the ends and all of us are supposed to work!

Happy week ahead!!

P.S: The biggest miss of the first weekend was probably Ghantewala sweets. From my grandpa's days to this day, i have always heard, and once, i have myself tasted its mouth-watering sweets.I really wanted to go there, but somehow, it didnt strike me when i was right there at dilli-6. Well, that gives me one more reason to go to dilli-6 again!

Next, i found(well, actually arvi pointed out!) a truly mind-blowing innovation.May be it has existed for ages, but i have never known. Probably if they asked me to choose this year's Nobel, i shall give it to this. The thing is most, almost all, escalators have shoe brushes on their sides. What an idea! Save time; Save human labor/effort; Step out with sparkling shoes! Awesome! Hats off to the brain behind the idea! And many more hats off to the pioneering engineers of the delhi metro, of which one i heard was from Civil Engg dept of Anna Univ, obviously belonging to the old, glorious past batches.

No more reservations!

Indeed, this has been a personal, a mundane, small scale blog revolving around me and me only, so far. But i do live in a big bad world and i do have my very own humble opinions on a few things, however insignificant they might be. Of course, my opinions tend to be stronger in the issues i'm part of directly or indirectly, or those issues that have affected my life, for the better or for the worse. One such is this huge issue of RESERVATIONS, in education and employment, something which generates a big hue and cry everytime the elections or admissions are round the corner. Enough has been said and discussed about it, still, the issue is never settled.

So here, at reverberations, i wanna say a thing or two about reservations. I fully support the cause of differently-abled people or people from the lower economic strata. I completely endorse reservations in education and in employment for such people, only for such people. But the prevalent system of reservation based on caste and minority/majority is, for want of a better word, ridiculous. Nowhere else in the world, would people of the minority consider themselves to be more privileged than the majority, thanks to this funny system called reservation. The reverse is even more true. The people of the so-called forward class indeed repent their roots, just because it takes away a helluva lotsa opportunities from them. They see their dreams getting shattered through the narrowest of misses of the sky-high, himalayan cut-offs, all their hard work getting wasted in hundredth of a mark, while the so-called minority counterparts, happily walk into the coveted corridors of plum courses and colleges, with marks and merit way less than the original cut offs. What a pity! All this holds good, even if the minority person is better off economically,influentially, a son of a rich person(!)and drives to college in an Audi. And the forward class person is some poor kid of a middle class father who struggles to make ends meet. Okay at the next level, how far does that person who comes in via reservations really do well in that course? Wouldn't the seat have been better utilised by a person with more merit?
Why should so many dreams go futile because of vote bank politics and just because some politician just wants to get richer? Why can't we have reservations based only on economic status and not anything else like caste or minority? I just wanted to voice it out, open in public. Not that this outburst of mine is going to do any good to the system. Also, i do want to categorically state that this absolutely has no personal connotations, to whoever is reading it. I don't mean to take away any credit from the people who have gotten into colleges and jobs through reservation. I should also agree to the fact that sometimes the resources are indeed limited for a few students and reservation is necessary in such cases. But the problem has to be addressed at a different level, namely increasing the available resources or coaching for such people and not definitely by bringing down the standards of the renowned institutions. As Kamal Haasan once said, "Don't make mediocricity a standard". The best of institutions like IITs and IIMs should strive to be that - 'the best'. They can't go on diluting standards like this. A simple fact will clear the air: in Tamilnadu engineering admissions, the percentage of seats reserved is a whopping 69% . And the rest of the seats are not exclusively for the forward class alone. Its the open quota, wherein truly meritorious students of the other reserved classes also compete. Where are we heading to??
So the final word, let there be no reservations. Don't openly call a section of the people intellectually backward! And the people being called that way, don't consider it a previlige to be called backward! It's backward, after all, and they are saying you are, in some way, lesser! If at all reservations have to exist, let it be based only on economic basis, excluding the 'creamy layer' as the politicians love to call it!

And talking of matching frequencies, I found my thoughts to be very, very similar to (reverberate with!) this blogger's. But trust me, his clarity of thought, his use of language is better and this helps to discuss the issue better. Just fitting for an IITian who went in there by merit, i should say, nowhere comparable to me! But come on! the world is big and blogosphere even bigger! It has space for everyone, big or small, doesn't it?
Check out the link and do temme your take on the issue.
http://bawandinesh.name/reservations/

Jai ho!!!

I was literally on the seventh heaven when ARR won the oscar . How it must have felt to perform infront of so many people, win two awards hands-down and still remain as humble as he always is and go on to say ‘ella pugazhum iraivanukke’!! Wowww!!! The world is replete with success stories, from humble beginnings. They say ‘nothing succeeds like success’. Indeed. First it was the pussycat dolls making a remix of jai ho and now its kylie minogue in ‘blue’. People queue up to be with you and ride your success bandwagon the moment you succeed. Here’s the link for the jai ho remix. I would say i really liked it... But then..Nothing can match the original, however spiced up it is…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wltOf-nMn9g&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N28sZZW87lM&annotation_id=annotation_922707&feature=iv

OK. Why I am so bothered about ARR and his oscar (leave alone the fact that I am his die-hard fan, for the moment) is this: the first thing I did that day in the morning was to switch on the TV and watch out for ARR., His performance and his oscar.. I had my coffee mug in one hand and my dear, dearest, beautiful, sleek, intimate, enviable mobile on the other, sharing my jubilation with friends with the mobile, calling and smsing. Watching ARR reach the highest note of jai ho, I dropped both… out of sheer sleepiness. Thudddd!! And the mobile’s motherboard was gone! Along with my mom’s wonderful coffee! I did manage to get another coffee, but my mobile I guess is gone forever. Some how, mobile is something that has invaded our lives to an extent that it has become one of the most personal things, with a definite sense of attachment. Atleast to me. And living without those contacts(replying to every msg thereafter with a ‘may I know who this is’ is even worse!) and a few of those wonderful forward msgs I have treasured all along and all those memorable pics is really difficult. I just wish I get them back….

P.S: I recently read that the congress is planning to use jai ho as its anthem for the upcoming polls and priyadarshan is filming a video for it. Indeed, nothing succeeds like success. Shrewd move by the congress!

Rhinovirus genome sequenced! - Hope for a common cold drug...

I am gonna kill the next person who says 'something is in the air this february'.. everytime there happens to be a virus in the air for me - no, not the usual rosy love virus that everyone talks about.. in 2008 it was chicken pox virus and now in 2009, it was the common cold - causing rhinovirus, both during btx!!

But it turned out that my fever and cold during this btx actually did some good to my biotech knowledge. I googled a bit on cold causing rhinovirus, as I remembered reading recently that its genome had been sequenced. I have a cold often, i have been living with it literally. It's one of the most irritating and annoing diseases i have known and that probably made me to dwell more on his topic. Here’s something more on it.

Scientists say they have put together the pieces of the genetic codes for all known strains of the pathogen responsible for the common cold, in a work that might eventually lead to the first cure for the illness. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin-Madison completed the genomic sequences of many strains of the virus, called the human rhinovirus, and assembled them into a “family tree” showing their relationships. The study appears in the Feb. 12 online version of the journal Science.There has been no success in developing effective drugs to cure the common cold, which is due to incomplete information about the genes. The researchers found that human rhinoviruses are organized into about 15 small groups that come from distant ancestors. The discovery of these multiple groups explains why a “one-drug-fits-all” approach for anti-viral agents doesn’t work. But, perhaps several anti-viral drugs could be developed, targeted to specific genetic regions of certain groups. The choice would be based on the genetic characteristics of a patient’s rhinovirus infection. While anti-virals seem the best bet, the data gathered from these full genome sequences gives us an opportunity to reconsider vaccines as a possibility.
The analysis found that some human rhinoviruses result from the exchange of genetic material between different strains of the virus in one person. The viruses also mutate often, helping them avoid being hunted down by the immune system.

Now we can put together many pieces of the human rhinovirus puzzle to help us answer some fundamental questions: “how these rhinoviruses might mutate as they spread from one person to another; which rhinoviruses are more associated with asthma etc .." With all this information at hand, we can see a strong potential for the development of the long-sought cure for the common cold.

My dearest rhino virus, baby u better BEWARE!! coz we biotech people are after you and not once again would a girl have to sorely miss a carrot halwa icecream topped deliciously with strawberry sauce for the fear of cold!!!

BIOTECHCELLENCE FEVER!!!

Quite literally so. It turned out that I had a bad fever during btx (for people who dunno, btx is the shortened version of biotechcellence, a national level technical symposium on biotechnology with international participation, conduced by the 6th semester students of Centre for Biotechnology, Anna university) that played a bit of spoilsport. Coming to the event, here are some of the afterthoughts that flash in my memory when I think of btx-09..

To start with, the highlight of btx this year..I remember reading these lines somewhere:

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods..
There is rapture on the lonely shore...
I love not man the less; but Nature more...”

Yes, Biotechcellence-09 went green! 10.5 lakhs, hundreds of colleges, 300 papers, a huge response just in proportion with the huge expectations, an explosion of innovative ideas… by any yardstick, it was indeed one of the best of department symposiums ever. Given the amount of planning and preparatory work that was involved, all of us in the class had been very very eagerly and anxiously waiting for Feb 19-22nd.

The preparation for btx would probably take up a longer post for me to blog about. As far as I was concerned, I was shuttling between committees, though officially I was in scientific affairs. What I did was in fact a very negligibly small portion of the work, compared to a lot of other people, who put their mind body and soul into it. I did a bit of sci affairs work (full credit to suman, though), a very little bit of sponsorship, a bit of competitions. The best was for the online quiz, for which apoorva and me prepared most of the questions. It was probably the most interesting of all the works I did for btx. I shall post the questions in this blog soon. The response was good too and that was the happiest part. Many contestants were actually kind enough to congratulate us on the work. Nothing like it!

On Wednesday, the 18th, we had a hands-on workshop for CBT iians conducted by eppendorf. The workshop was good to say the least. We did real time PCR and it was a good learning experience, as we really ‘did’ it, ‘hands-on’ unlike many other workshops. Then there was some last minute work as usual and the day ended…

The next morning was the inauguration. I was just hoping biotechnology and pharmacology actually work - in the sense that my antibiotic worked along with paracetamol to bring my fever down. It perfectly did! Not for nothing is medical biotech being touted as the next big thing! I woke up on the right side of the bed, and yeah, I remember the day for the saree more than anything else. There I was, quite guessably, in a blue saree. Saree in my view, is probably one of the most feminine and mystifyingly charming clothing the world has ever seen. Yes, it is indeed very uncomfortable and doesn’t let u to be the least tomboyish you wanna be, but it is indeed a wonder clothing. Coming back to the symposium, the chief guest was Mr. George, chief advisor to the Department of Biotechnology. The VC was present and so were the other dignitaries along with the Exnora chairman, Mr. Nirmal. We at Btx had really worked hard on the eco friendly aspect and it did pay rich dividends in the end. There were some ambitious plans being made by the policy makers – here the VC and Mr. Nirmal - about making Anna University a zero waste institution and all that. Would be great if biotechcellence provided the beginning for such good ventures. At least, it would be remembered beyond the 4 days, if all of these plans work. And then there was the ‘tribute to 14 years of btx’ that was released on the occasion
So, biotechcellence-09 started with a bang, a prelude of what was in store for the next few days. Probably the most tiring work I indulged in that day was covering up the bamboo dustbins with eco friendly sheets for easy clearance of waste. Quite funny. The food was good too, and I still feel sorry for having indulged in that ice cream that day coz it added to my sickness and I couldn’t attend the next day’s events.

The next day.. Practically the first day of btx.. And this annoying irritating fever, cold stopped my enthusiasm. The antibiotic didn’t do any good and rhinovirus got the better of my immune system. I decided to skip the day’s events and be fit for the next two days, which according to me were more important given the fact that the video conferences and the culturals were scheduled on those days. I did miss being there, of course. It was really frustrating to sit at home and do some work of putting up banners at the venue over phone. As usual, it was my friends who came to my rescue. From what I heard, though everything was really worth attending, there were two things I missed the most. The first was Dr. Yamuna Krishna’s lecture. Her research is simply mind blowing from what I had searched on the internet. Incidentally, she happened to be the first person who accepted our offer for a guest lecture at the event, that too in a very kind manner. When I saw the pics and from what I heard, I missed watching her in person, too. Apparently she was the coolest (actually the hottest, dressed up wonderfully in formal wear) among the guest lecture circuit. Somehow, women wielding power never fail to impress and inspire me, however small their reign and expanse of power might be. And here was a woman, standing tall with her achievements speaking for themselves, still, cheerful and down-to-earth like anyone else. Sure, women on top are always hot, in every sense of the word!

The second thing I missed was the project design event. There is a reason behind that. It was apoorva and me who framed the IDP problem for it, with the help of Dr. Ramalingam, our professor. It really felt great that so many people could take it so seriously, work on it day and night and come up with mind-blowing solutions to it. Really honoured and humbled.
On the 2nd day, there was the videoconference with Mr.Narasimhan Sudharsan, from Yale University who talked about riboswitches, followed by an array of interesting events.
The highlight of the day was the quiz, conducted b V.V.Ramanan of ‘the Hindu’ fame. Though the audience wasn’t as great in the finals as much as in the prelims, the quality of questions made up for it all.
Then it was time for the most awaited event of all, the Culturals. So we went to ‘Green Park’. Had a blast to say the least. Our performance of ‘desi girl’ turned out to be a disaster. It was quite good during the practice sessions, but bad luck!! The worst part was that, I was on an overdose of antibiotics just to sound good, without signs of the bad throat infection, but alas, my mic didn’t work and nobody heard me. We couldn’t hear the karaoke track on stage and ended up making a mess of the song. Thankfully, nothing sounded too obviously wrong as the mood was really upbeat and nobody really bothered about the quality of singing. It was indeed a great feeling when the ‘making of btx’ was screened. BP easily deserved an equivalent of an oscar for that athmika scene alone and hari as the cinematographer and eco-friendly ghajini was simply awesome. Though all the performances were indeed good, it was the song medley and the dance medley that all of us were waiting for, and obviously the ones that hogged the limelight. One thing worth mentioning was the stage decoration and that disco lights. It was superb.. party environs plus a dash of biotech.. just perfect!!
And yeah, the farewell for seniors was good too, with the candle lights and all. Must have been very nostalgic to them. Somehow I just hate to even think of seeing myself at the receiving end just a year from now. Okay let’s reserve that for another post. Back to the scene of action.
After the dinner, (which my fever didn’t let me enjoy to the fullest), I had a good ice-cream with strawberry sauce, (my first ice-cream in btx09), immediately followed by paracetamol and roxid-150! I didn’t want to miss the final day too. The day finally drew to a close. Time really flies when you are happy and when you don’t want it to.

I pushed myself out of bed literally the next day and I had forgotten my fever. I rushed just in time for Mr. Palani’s video conf. That was probably the best lecture of the whole of btx. He was the head of labeling dept of Invitrogen, USA. I shall find time to post more on the content of the lectures some time later. The basic technology was called ‘Click-it’. Awesome applications! It was followed by a host of events. Short films event was good. Met a couple of friends from other colleges, whom I had met in other symposiums. After the spin-a-yarn event, (Japesh had been going around with a heavy blazer all through the hot day just for the sake of that event! Poor guy! ) it was time for the valedictory function. The speech by Mr. Sundar was one of the best. Very interesting concepts and innovative ideas indeed! I actually wasn’t very much into it when I was distributing all those pamphlets with soluble films made of bio-based and bio-degradable materials. I thought of it as just another sponsor-tantrum. But Mr. Sunder was kind of the perfect marketing guy, who was quite convincing about almost everything that he talked about.

All good things come to an end, and so did Biotechcellence-09. (Completely out of context, this is probably why mega-serials are bad-coz they never end). All of us were quite happy with the way everything turned out. The faculty said it was ‘the’ best and that we left nothing more for our juniors to innovate. Probably they were generous enough, but still, nobody can deny the fact that, every single soul in 6th sem had worked for it in his/her own way, in whatever small or big magnitude possible. And that in totality contributed to the success of the event. Indeed, success is sweeter when rejoiced as a team!
To me, what made it so special were the little things - they made it all the more interesting- mud pots instead of plastic mineral water cans, the soft board with comments, the eco-friendly dustbins, Re.1 for exchange of plastic to paper bags, the disco lights during the culturals, the quirky volunteer cards, the bamboo sapling and pot painting mementos to the guests…. I can go on and on… and of course, some of the most interesting of ideas that couldn’t be implemented for some reason or the other - The energy producing eco-friendly machine, the eco-friendly mascot (arvind was the unanimous choice, obviously), using shankar-mahadevan’s NDTV green anthem as a theme (the tune composed by pritika actually suited the mood better, so we went with it), to quote a few… I wish the fun had lasted longer… In all, 4 happy and eventful days etched evergreen in memory..
Curtains fall!!!

My first blog!

HARI OHM!!! (A rather nice way to begin, isn't it??)
Welcome, swagatham, namaste, vanakkam, vandanamu, satsriyakal!!!
Yes I’m into the blogosphere finally - and time has come for this blogger account to have its first post nearly an year after it was created. I am neither a great thinker nor a person with a great mastery of the language. But as far as I know myself, I would never like to leave any stone unturned. So I shall try my hand at blogging too.
I like to look at this blog as a space to voice my views about people, things, events, experiences, happenings, occurrences, accidents, regrets… In short, about anything and everything under the sun that strikes a chord with me. Also, I would love to share some of the rather weird and wonderful things I have come across - including some terribly jargonized science (as if I can decipher it!). That isn’t surprising considering the fact that I have been into it for three full years now and I have to prove, atleast to myself that it hasn’t indeed been a waste. No promises on the quality of blogs, though.

Quite understandably, the views/comments expressed in this blog are solely mine and cannot be used as evidence in whatever ways possible against the author(that’s me btw) under any law.
The unwritten rules or practices of the blogosphere would probably not be followed in this blog, because I view it as MY space and its MY ruling all the way, atleast here.
The posts may be outbursts of what I feel at that moment, and not necessarily would I subscribe to the same opinion a while later.
There is no guarantee on the accuracy/legitimacy of the statements expressed and hence the posts cannot be considered factual.
All referenced/copyrighted/patented matter that shall henceforth be used/published in this space shall be deemed to have been used with utmost credit being given to the original author and can, in no way account to plagiarism. Well that’s the wannabe lawyer in me speaking!!

Coming to why I named it Reverberations, I found it to be the perfect mix of everything I like - some music, some science and some mystifying play of language. And I thought it gels well with the tagline too. It’s like two or more frequencies matching and producing more-than-additive effects. That’s what people call positive energy flowing around, positive influence, radiance, an air of attraction and all that jazz. May not be the perfect choice, but probably the best I can think of now. Hoping to post soon again. Does your frequency match mine???