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!