Through the window pane..

8:45 am:

Mellow sun rays filtering through the branches of the trees across the SSCU backyard...the sky a pale azure, still holding remnants of the early morning's rain..a light drizzle now and then...the sweeper carries on with his task..unaware of the mynah perched on the peepul tree craning its' neck to have a better look at the leaves blowing up in the dust storm generated by the sweeper's broom..raindrops on green shoots...the branches sway to the cool zephyr...people slowly inching into the department..in fours and threes...some lone pairs as well...umbrellas and raincoats form a bizzare pied array, strewn across the main foyer...a typical rainy morning in IISc..

11:45 am:

The rainy morning has given way to a sunny late-morn..the sun is high up in the sky..beads of perspiration reminds one of the sultry nature of late July mornings as the department is abuzz with activity..people are running up and down the staircase...the office staff have long come in...the Prof. with the strident laugh echoes in the first floor corridor...his colleagues join him on some joke..the branches of the peepul hold still...frozen in a single shot...the mynah is pecking onto some seeds gathered below the tree...

1:45 pm:

News of the blasts has reached some...cell phones are suddenly abuzz in a jiffy...in a desperate attempt to contact near and dear ones before the networks are jammed...the tension and urgency in peoples' voices has reached a crescendo...the verbal scapegoating has started...sudenly, everybody is an overnight expert on politics, terrorism, the recent elections, murky games propagandists play in the name of religion, the dismal state of security in the city...et cetera, et cetera...you name it....it was there in some discussion or the other...in internet chatrooms...over cups of lemon teas in the Tea Board....across the corridor...outside the labs...ubiquitously, vehemently...suddenly, it starts pouring..cats and dogs...the trees swaying to the mad downpour...

Meanwhile, the mynah had left its' lair

The FIRST steps on this PAthwaY

It's 0420 in the morning here and I am tucked away in this room a couple of minutes from the East River and a couple of miles from the Hudson in midtown Manhattan as a trademark Indian Ocean strums across a DELL speaker. I have just planned to wind up my first day's work as a paid employee.

At noon yesterday, our program coordinator handed us our first month's hard earned salary. At this point, memories start tumbling down as I begin to ask what have I done differently over the last few days that a foreign country thinks that it is worthwhile to pay me a couple of thousand bucks.

It makes me wonder is it all about the last month or about all those years that I have spent in search of a dream. Its been 17 long years - actually a lifetime of childhood that I have come through to this stage today. Memories from early childhood, the formative years at Don Bosco, the charismatic time in a school managed by maniacs, the golden years at St. Stephen's and a tumultuous time at a Premier Institute of Technology (The PIT post is coming soon on this blog...) - my inner self has always been this perennial bystander watching the strokes of time on its more exuberant counterpart. I reminisce all those things which string together a significant garland of individually insignificant events, rather anachronistically...

The way I jumped out of my kindergarten class window on my first day in school...how I used to dehydrate myself in front of school every morning so as to extend my stay with my father...how I fell into the drain after my admission test at Don Bosco...how I couldnt recognize a bat (which my principal Fr. T. Albert expected to be quite familiar with since my father was working on them) in an encyclopedia during my interview and blamed it on the artist...how I fell off as a pillion from my dad's cycle close to the Geography department of our University Campus...the four stumps of my cricket set which had no bails...those extended hours of cricket in the Sukladi lawns...my first rendezvous with my class teacher who I still remember clad in a Green saree helped me take the first steps into this academic world...how I fell off the stairs on my first day at DonBosco..the perforated false ceiling in our Assembly Hall...the blue colored Bus Pass which had a prayer tagged along...coming home to a Didibhai, a Mamma and later in the evening Babai came home to a new home of surprises...how I adored my first silver colored ink pen in Class 4..i used chelpark ink and used to look forward to refill time so eagerly...how Payel and I diluted didibhai's ink thinking that she wud have more to write with during her ICSE exam and no worries in case her ink finished...(God knows how I became a chemist!!) ... then a reorientation of ambience..an apartment in the heart of the city...my bus no. in school changed..we now had a cable connection to our TV...i began interacting with a different friend circle...Siliguri used to be much quieter then...once in a while on a rainy night one could smell the nearby forests...how Baba and I walked to the bus stop every morning till Class 10...so many things he ended up teaching me just by his way of showing things...how we adored the service man who used to diligently day after day go into the drains of our neighborhood and keep things clean...how my mama lost an umbrella at my school bus stand...my first Durga puja on a bike with didibhai..how the silencer heat got better off my skin...having a physics teacher who taught me there could be multiple approaches to a problem...winning all the city quizzes..what a combo we had..Chandan, Munsi and me...even getting a chance to represent the school at the national level and winning the runners up trophy...I remember wondering way back from the triumph..would there be a reception for us at the station??would our schoolmates come and hug us??or would there be some people from the city too...I was naive after all...though that win did make us slightly famous on the city circuits...all those bike trips into the hills and forests...especially the one to Baikunthapur...it was truly heaven redefined...how I left Siliguri for ever to two waving hands on a night laden platform...how I watched the train switch tracks taking me to a new direction...to a distant dreamland...my Father was thankfully beside me...how my first days were in a shabby Delhi PG...then a fresh lease of life in the land of red bricks..so much happening around that the only place I could find resort in was at the mirror..and when I looked into myself, I found it to be so void that I shuddered at its echo...life moves on..a fantastic quartet giving way to a buffer to four people to a lady through a hill called Musoorie...How Dr Eswaran dismissed me after the qualifying interview...I was awed at the celerity of decision making at Stephen's...it was only later I realized that he had dismissed into the open from the confines of XB...three years of groping for the right fit...two more years in search..in a rouge land...the citadel of red...the alleys of Chandni Chowk providing the perfect escapade to a tired body...coming to know a person who taught me that the importance of the syllable 'dha' - the one that holds u..conceptualizing something that is intangible as its too soft to be true...listening to some guitar strums on a moonlit night at Andrews court when the load was shedding itself...awing at how a set of non bonded interactions can be so fascinating that it brings a new mother son duo home....taking the leap across the oceans..I wonder often had all this happened, had someone not taken the same steps 4 decades back..probably not!! Thats why I adore you Babai...

As far as the last few days go...I have been only doing what my lifetime has taught me so far..being passionate though my friend VB has her words of caution against it (I know I can only be grateful to her for it)..being dilligent as the serviceman teaches me time and again..being myself as I know thats what I always wanted to be..and having the faith to be that...and on a more literal note, trying to know the way some molecules behave in order to understand the orchestrations of life.

The irony of the First Pay being..is it just worth these last few days or all these years that one leaves behind??And then the next obvious question is - was it worth it? When you look forward into the time that you spent, one sees all these little bubbles emerging..those dreams that were a part of my reality then can be truly reality now...one strives to achieve them..And at this point when the trance recedes, I remember I had promised to buy a saree to my first class teacher with my first salary...on the lookout for a store..I guess back home will always be a better option.

Carbide

The Cooper Invention

It's been something that has been at the back of my mind for quite some time now...was only waiting to put fingers on the keyboard...call it lassitude, or may be my inherent lackadaisical attitude...procrastination kept getting the better of me..

My cell phone balance has remained steady at a range of 70 to 90 for nearly a month now...considering that I have the notorious label of blowing up nearly a 1000 bucks per month on phone bills, this seems almost an impossibility, but then, its true...

It all started on 2nd Jan, 2004 when I bought my first (and so far, only) cell phone from a quaint little Nokia outlet in South Delhi..at that time in the chilly winter of 2004, I was getting used to a number of things besides the newly acquired mobile...my first Delhi winter for one, the first vacation away from home and a wonderful college life where everyday was a revealation in itself..

To start off with, my phone bill was paltry, the balance refusing to dwindle from its three digit figure for a considerable period of time...so much so, that my hostel mates sometimes used my phone to make STD calls when the validity period was coming to a close...so that the excess balance may not be wasted...even after calling home once a week for a long chat, and smsing friends it remained status quo...and I continued to be baffled by how in the world folks who complained that there was never ever enough balance on the phone, managed to say so...

Things changed in the Autumn of 2005...when I blew up all the accumulated phone balance in the tune of a few thousands (two or three) in two months...one can guess what it was that was finally gnawing away at my balance (pun intended)...anyways, even installing special schemes like "Two to Talk" couldn't salvage the situation.. :)... things reached an acme for the worse when I moved to Bangalore and he stayed in Delhi...and that's the way it has been for the past two years...constantly drooping bills...parents complaining of a dangerous addiction...balance in the phone causing bank balance going kaput for someone.. :)...those days I worried about it, and now that he's in NY and doesn't yet have a number where I can call...I almost miss those "no money-have to fill in balance" days..

So long...some day soon there'll be a post on how to tackle International call rates and the growing frustation thereof...after all, it wouldn't be long before the Social security number comes...till then...

A small post!!

I was in the middle of my end semester exams when the good news came. A nephew had been born. It was a feeling which I guess cant be described in words penned or blogged down. Yet some arbit chitchat of the mental kind is what I intend to share. My mother was stationed right beside my sister and was my initial source of live reporting from the venue.

As happens with all grandmas, who think that they have the smartest grandson...the feelings here too was the same. The focus entirely shifts towards the interest earned as the principal amounts are in due course forgotten for the time being. Things like he's almost talking, has a strong neck, is very well behaved are commonly employed interjectives!!

When I met this 17 day old chap, he was resting on my sister's shoulders..as his rightful place. It was indeed fun to see such a small human being, and one cant help but marvel at the beauty of creation. He was small but the hair on his head exceeded by far that of my peers like Niladri & Rajkumar. His eyes and big head brought back fond memories of a sister that I had only seen in photographs as I was unfortunately 9 years away when she was born. He has already shown a penchant for music, bright colors and has almost fallen in love with the ceiling fan...gazes in awe and admiration for hours on end that he is awake.

New born babies are like newly bought computers waiting for their dose of vaccinations to prevent them from virus attacks, only live ones in their case. So this piece of God's creation is currently in his first phaseof rendezvous with the human counterparts. Let this be a small post...just about as big as the one from upstairs!!

Carbide

86th...

Last sunday, my second one in this land took me to a place where a resident New Yorker is supposed to be baptized. After a sprawling morning in the warmth of the Central Park...it was very warm indeed, we trudged our way to the 86th street subway. At this point let me clarify, we have two types of subways here - one that you can find at almost every corner serving footlongs and six inches (America's love for fast food) and the second one which you more often here whoosh past below the 'Made in India' manhole covers. I am talking about the second one.

It took us to the Times Square station at 42nd street - the pip of the Big apple. Its glitzy to the least, gives one a taste of quintessential America. A sip at Starbucks and a movie opposite Regal theatres (that's the name I remember as that brought back fond memories of a white broken building in a distant land that was quite close till yestermonth), I was geared up to visit the 86th...floor. The corner of 34th street and fifth avenue houses the 86th floor of New York City. It's the observatory of the Empire State Building. One of the world's most referred, photographed, filmed and hence famous skyscraper. It overlooks most of the Manhattan Borough with extensive glimpses onto the other boroughs, giving a brief idea about their geographical sizes. The Empire State bears a silent domination over the whole city. In spite of the facts stated above, the feeling that drives a tourist to the 86th is a desire to be on top of the world. One can witness the sprawling Central park and the serene Hudson & East making way to the Atlantic. The miniscule yellow cabs and black limos, Times Square lighting up the NYC sky, the quite Madison gardens, The Rockefeller and Cornell universities...but there were three sights that made me wonder; was Empire State destined to be on top of NYC if not the world!!

The first is a tiny building with its characteristic shape leading to its nomenclature as the Flatiron building. It is famous for housing the offices of fictional superheroes - Batman & Superman, but its long forgotten claim to fame was as the world's first skyscraper. It was built at a time when a twenty storey building was commendable by the contemporary construction standards in the early twentieth century. Three decades later in 193os Empire State set out to conquer. The whole process of building it up was a competition with the Chrysler building which had already started to be built. It was JJ Raksob, who had the last laugh as it not only stood taller than the Chrysler on completion but for the next 41 years as the tallest building in NYC.

The North tower of the WTC inched to a higher glory in the 70s. But as all of us now know, the future that it had in store; one is but obviated to devote a thought to the playings of fate. Was the Empire State destined to be forever crowned as the top of NYC or as a mere observatory for these other three, for the map sold for tourists talks only about what all one can see from the 86th except for the Empire state herself??

A piece of cloud that had wandered from across the Atlantic ran a chill and got me back to my senses. The Chrysler had just lit up...(top right)

Carbide

JETlag

Came to know about this hitherto unknown phenomena as a kid when I saw my ever active dad sleep through the day after returning from the other part of the globe. The lexicon blabbered that it had to with the circadian rhythm of the body trying to keep pace with the different diurnal cycle in different parts of the world. But since last week, I have realized that it is a phenomena that doesnt rest at the body alone...as they say, it's all in the MIND!!

The immigration department required me to put down details of teh things I was carrying with me - plants & plant products were an option; being the innocent truthful Indian whose honesty turns a degree higher once they leave their own country, I put down yes as my friend's at Delhi had fared me well with a beautiful bouquet. The officer asked me to show my plant products, I presented my bouquet..he rambled "Those are just a bunch of flowers, they aren't plant products!!"...I set off!

The yellow colored taxi reminded me of our burly ambassadors of Kolkata. My driver was an old gentleman of African origins, the music he was playing seemed akin to blues. On conversing he explained they were ballads, kinda mix of blues and jazz and produced in the golden era of 70s, now lost on the rocks!! I thought the taxi ride had me acquainted with the left hand drive in US and till I really drove a machine, I didnt have to bother about it. I was still lagging behind.

It appeared that every time I took a stair or a footpath, I was bumping into opposite traffic. And I hope that it was only my figments of imagination that jeered, An Indian again!! Truly jetlagged. I am still trying my best to get used to free right turns and not bump into one of these fast cars here as I am yet to be insured.

This jetlagged self was also slow in taking the names of people in the right stride. When my roommate was inquired of his name, he replied "I am No Man...". I didnt know what an American meant by it. Guessed it was a kinda joke being played on me, felt happy at the fact that I at least got it was a joke. Before I tried re-applying it on somebody else, I was lucky enough to come by the roll list; "No man" was spelt Naman and my jetlag just receded a bit.

The loo here is again a mystery to unravel in itself. There's a shower corner as they dont want the whole toilet to be watered. So I am trying out some weird combinations and I hope that this jetlag will soon be a feeling of the past.

The lab was the epitome of the venues where I knew that I was lagging in terms of the apparatus they went about using in wasteful wanton. Being in a wet chemistry laboratory actually gives one the opportunity of various explorations. To keep things short I would end with a couple of anecdotes. They dont use filter papers here, its all vacuum filters where the storage vial has one fitted on the mouth which is shown the dustbin after one use.

As apart of the work I am doing, I wanted to know how dark my sample was? Back home, a prized piece of quartz and later specialized plastic known as a cuvette was used for the purpose. It used to be the holy grail of every research scholar and breaking it would almost mean a premature termination of your PhD program. I remember carefully cleaning its sides and how careful I was in putting it back at the right place with the correct spatio temporal parameters. I was looking for one such prized piece of material when asked to find the darkness around. My unsuccessful search gave me a feeling that these might be just even as pricey here safely lockered away somewhere. To my amazement, a 10 X 10 box of them were lying besides the eppendorfs and were supposed to be used in the same way as the latter...to be shown the bin at the drop of a hat.

My jetlagged self showed the body the door which had just about adjusted to the diurnal schedule in this part of the world...

Carbide