at the end of the day...

Can I be honest
Your writing on your blog is the blandest writing I've seen coming from you.
There's no soul, there's no you.

Maybe she's right. I don't know. I don't think I've figured out the balance between my thoughts and how I want the world to see them. And maybe I don't have the courage to be honest in html.

tightroped

Today up at tea in NCBS someone said to me, "The strangest thing about Gautam is that he's surprisingly normal."

At the time, given that I was sitting amongst a group of nerdy scientists, I suppose I took it as a compliment.

It isn't really one though, is it. The last thing I want to be is plain old normal. I want Me with a capital M.

Problem is, there are enough flavours of 'normal' to go around. Alright, so I don't fit the crazy-scientist bill. But in my tea-time buddy's head, evidently I'm part of some stereotype. Maybe it's Wannabe-Intellectual Who Needs a Haircut. Or even worse, Urban Anglicised Upper Middle Class Yuppie.

That's my catch-22. I spend a lot of my soul-searching time looking for that one spark which makes me unique, which sets me apart, defines me as a person- but at the same time, subconsciously, I mould myself to a whole bunch of stereotypes so that I can belong to a certain group of people that make up my social universe.

I guess the trick is to reconcile these two opposing pulls. Be yourself but don't end up living in a cave, somehow. The thing is, the latter often seems to overpower the former.

my phantom broom.

I've realised that my room reflects my state of mind. And vice versa. If my room looks like a blast scene from a B-grade hollywood flick, that means I'm definitely not thinking straight.

Today my room's spotlessly clean.

the walls I can't find, but can't hide, either.

Up a narrow flight of stairs
In a narrow little room,
As I lie upon my bed
In the early evening gloom.
Impaled on my wall
My eyes can dimly see
The pattern of my life
And the puzzle that is me.

From the moment of my birth
To the instant of my death,
There are patterns I must follow
Just as I must breathe each breath.
Like a rat in a maze
The path before me lies,
And the pattern never alters
Until the rat dies.

Simon and Garfunkel, 1966.

sunday wisdom

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
-Yogi Berra

Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it is worth.
Wear Sunscreen
Baz Luhrmann (Mary Schmich)

glyco-man

All cells in almost all living organisms are covered with a coat of carbohydrates, serving a variety of functions ranging from recognition of 'self' to complex cell-cell signaling. Some of these carbohydrates belong to a family of sugars known as sialic acids.

Somewhere along the course of human evolution, while we were still 'great apes', one gene got deleted. Not spectacular, as evolutionary changes go. What it means is that our cells have only one type of sialic acid while chimps have two (which differ by a single oxygen atom).

So?

It appears that this is possibly the sole reason that we contract malaria (the Plasmodium falciparum one) and avian flu but orangutans don't. The reason humans suffer excruciating day-long contractions to give birth and chimps finish it off and leave for lunch in half an hour. The reason eating red meat might increase the incidence of cancer. Stunningly (though highly speculative), this may even be part of the reason our brains are what they are. (We have unique brain-specific sialic acid-binding protein expression patterns, one of the major chemical differences between ape and human brains)

All this because of one less oxygen atom.

If this sounds cool (or you don't believe me), check out Ajit Varki and his gang, the guys who've done it all. And the real dirt starts here: Nature 446:1023-1029.

random walk

The next real social revolution is happening right now. Not the NGOs, not the politicians (god forbid!). It's the linux brigade that's quietly, efficiently changing the world. Because nothing matters more on this earth of ours than information (ok, maybe oil). And they're doing it their way, and making money while they're at it.
***********
It wasn't that politicians were more honest in the 60s or rockstars more genuine in the 70s. It's just the sheen of nostalgia.
***********
The only way to really change the world is to align altruism with self-interest. (Is that possible?)
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The World According to Garp is the first real feminist novel written by a man.
***********
Compulsively honest is the way to be. In a relationship, especially. No matter how much grief it causes you.


I love the fact that this was all part of the same conversation. :)

some things don't change.

My apologies to those Bangalore people who have stared at these posters many, many times.

Upstairs to the loo, downstairs for cigarettes. No wonder our regulars are so fit.

Money can't buy me love.
Paul McCartney, 1964
Money can't buy me love. I'll take your credit card.
Paul of Pecos, 2003

from the inbox.

I've always thought that being candid was admirable. Then some where along the way I realised that being candid could perhaps be a defence mechanism in itself - say something "candid" and that often distracts the "masses" from where that came from. Or that it could even be a smokescreen.

chase those blues

When I walked into NCBS this morning, half-asleep and grumpy and completely monday-morninged, the guy at the reception looked up from his books and greeted me with this huge warm, spontaneous grin.

Made my day.

need i say more?

just.

I concluded yesterday that rock music has changed in primarily two ways since the 80s.

1. They were making real music back then.
2. They had long hair then and long hair now. The difference is, back then no matter how long their hair was it never ever covered their faces.

cogito, ergo sum?

Windsor Pub, wednesday evening. Is there something unique that drives someone to be a scientist- and a good one? These days the three of us ask ourselves questions like these with increasing regularity. Cynicism is thriving, fueled daily by petty lab politics, vindictive (or incompetent) bosses and mafioso journals.

So over beer we search for answers- if I may be melodramatic- to bolster our crumbling beliefs in the power and beauty of science. O and I argue that to be a good scientist, you need an inherent sense of curiosity. Curiosity about the world around us, a burning desire to understand. Without that, you'll never be the real deal, hell, you wouldn't even have picked this life in the first place! And this spills over into our 'real' lives as well. Question beliefs. Challenge dogmas. It could be religion or politics, it might be my own relationship with someone- but I always try to really get under the skin of things and figure them out. Isn't it this which makes me what I am? Scientist and person?

IR counters though- devil's advocate always- wait, he says. What is a 'good' scientist? Is good= success= good? For success, you don't need curiosity. You just need to play it by the book, grease the right palms, do the experiments the journals expect from you. Just like any other job. And success will be yours. And people will say, oh yes, he's good. You might be the most creative person around, the most curious, but success may elude you. And in the eyes of the world, so will greatness.

Hold on, I say. I don't believe that. I don't believe you can truly be a scientist if you don't have that spark inside you, eating you up, egging you on. Despite the politics and the rat race and god knows what else. It has to be that way. Otherwise I'm driving in the wrong lane.

I don't think IR really believes what he said either.

*************

A few weeks ago D told me (following a long monologue on my part about my life and my choices) ,"so... you're a creative person, who has simply chosen to express that creativity through science". That must be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

I hope I deserve it.

my '07

Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici

Or, "By the power of truth, I, a living man, have conquered the universe."

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Had he ever tired of being a melodramatic anarchist, V could have opted for professional scrabble.

While the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.

Powerful stuff for DC comics, na?

a long way gone

Ishmael Beah. AK-47-toting 13 year old in Sierra Leone in the 90s. Now American college graduate and campaigner for human rights. Some courage, to relive those moments and portray them with such brutal honesty. Talk about facing your demons. There is hope for the world, if someone can come through a childhood like that with some part of their soul intact.

One of my favourite bits:

It was nighttime and we sat by the fire stretching our arms towards the flames as we listened to stories and watched the moon and the stars retire. Pa Sesay... cleared his throat and began:
"There was a hunter who went into the bush to kill a monkey. He had looked for only a few minutes when he saw a monkey sitting comfortably in the branch of a low tree. When he was close enough and behind a tree, he raised his rifle and aimed. Just when he was about to pull the trigger, the monkey spoke: 'If you shoot me, your mother will die, and if you don't, your father will die.' The monkey resumed its position, chewing its food, and every so often scratched its head or the side of its belly. "What would you do if you were the hunter?"
When I was seven I had an answer to this question that made sense to me. I never discussed it with anyone, though, for fear of how my mother would feel. I concluded to myself that if I were the hunter, I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament.

raison d'etre

I've always secretly wanted a blog, but what's held me back is the fear that I'll get so caught up trying to play to the audience (if there is one) that whatever spontaneity and honesty my writing might have had will simply turn around and slink away. For I'd like to think at the end of the day (though this view is an eminently contestable one) that I'm writing for me. Spring-cleaning my thought process by laying the whole dirty mess in front of me in Arial size 11 or Garamond size 10. (I know whole generations of the world's finest writers will turn in their graves when they hear this but i can actually think straighter on the keyboard than on paper.) But its not just that. The little observations and feelings that make my day are stale by the time I get to talk to somebody about them. And I suck on the phone. Whole sentences inside my head come out as monosyllabic grunts. My ideal would be a lazy conversation over coffee or beer but who am I kidding? Some of the most important people in my life don't even live in the same time zone.

So here goes.