Of Quirky England! #1

England is where cricket was born and football is worshipped. India, I confess I do not know what sport was born here, probably chess (?), but cricket is most definitely an addition to our many Gods. As a highly skilled migrant from India, cricket jargon came with the crib, I had no choice in the matter whatsoever, you see, but well football, not so much. Now that I have established how I met MANY cricket fanatics, football fanatics was a first for me when I landed here.

It is easy to spot a football freak in England. It is still easier to find if there is a match going on at a stadium near you. A clear indication of whether there is a Hull City match at KC Stadium (or anywhere else for that matter) is the bee-like appearance of old and young, yellow and black striped T-shirts swarming the city pubs. And while all these bees sit in front of a beaming light-box (more like light-planks, now that all pubs have super-sized flat screen televisions), sipping frothy, fermented nectar from pint-glasses - frankly, it felt odd walking in the opposite direction away from the bustle and into the arcades, where shops were getting progressively emptier as the match got increasingly interesting! Good for me!

What made me ponder over this apis phenonmenon was the difference I noticed in the sports watchers' cultures. In India, streets clear out as people head home hoping to watch the Indian cricket team win the day's match, for a change. While India headed home, England came on to the streets into the pubs in support of an equally appalling football side.

P.S.: A disclaimer is in order, I do not watch sports obsessively, I would not watch it all if there was a film (any film) on television. I know what you are thinking, I'm not judging anyone and you shouldn't either!

Of Marriage And More.

Thoughts...
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Married. Nothing more, nothing less.

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Carved dreams of togetherness and life.

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Of passionate disagreements and involvements.

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Tenets of understatement and understanding.

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Shared sense of belonging and acceptance.

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Of forthright judgements and unquestioned rights.

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Exasperated expectations wild and convoluted comprehensions of us.

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Desperate cry for insatiable intimacy.

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Letting go of common sense to avoid hurtful people running scott free.

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Of illusions and reality.

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Of Things.

It's not like I haven't written anything this month. It just happened that this month has seen the maximum number of unpublished posts. I have 5 drafts on relatively important issues but I haven't the will or the courage (?) to post them here. I'm not sure if I'm an example of a private person, but lately I've raised my guards. Knowingly I've kept (almost) everyone out.

The reason, you ask me, well, haven't you read that I've become private?!

Hmmn, so I don't really know the point to this post. I want to ramble on, about nothing in particular (like always)... but words evade me (like always)...

Has someone already said it better than me? (like always)...

I am the one winged bird for flying
Sinking quickly to the ground
See your faith in me subsiding
See you prime for giving in
I give you all that I am

----

Life. I wonder what it is?
I wonder why I'm made to live by the rules?
I wonder if I'm capable of breaking the rules?
I wonder if I can survive after breaking the rules?
I find myself in a place and time in my life where I want to thrash all the Right-things-to-do and rebel, point blank, irrespective of whether I like it or not. Simply put I desperately want to go on a wrong-doing spree! I'm so full of myself and yet I can't figure out WHY? The answer eludes me.

Life happens. Then why have things ceased to happen in my life? I'm living a string of melancholic days and these force me to rethink my strategies and plans.

Isn't life just another term that has become so redundant that it has lost all it's meaning?

I'm sure now that I hate sitting idle. I need to work. I need to have things on my mind to lead a normal life. I need something to keep me occupied so that I can feel like I belong somewhere.

I am the white dove for a soldier
Ever marching as to war
I would give my life to save you
I stand guarding at your door
I give you all that I am

----

"Another one bites the dust", one of my UK friends said, she wants to get married too, you know :). This really has been a year of marriages for a lot of "my" people.

My school best-friend is getting engaged tomorrow and I am so happy for her.

Life is changing for us (for the better)... and I'm enjoying that we are going through it together.m We can actually exchange notes. We've both been hopeless with men so far and then we found our respective fiances. It's an exciting time in our lives. It's assuring to know someone else also understands exactly just how happy you are, how jittery you get, how nervous you feel, how cheerful you can be, how much love you can suddenly feel for a till-now-unknown human being, how grown-up you become, how you willfully change, how you can sway between extreme happiness and sadness in a span of a couple of hours, and finally, know how lucky you've been! It's amazing.

I am the sound of love's arriving
Echoed softly on the sand
Lay your head
upon my shoulder
Lay your hand within my hand
I give you all that I am

----

I am the one winged bird for flying
Sinking quickly to the ground
I am
the blind man for a watchdog
I am prime for giving in
I'll show you all that I am

And I breathe so you breathe
Let me stand so you'll stand
With all that I am

----

Interspersed lyrics from Rob Thomas' song, "All That I Am".

Of Reasons To Avoid Cooking.

All grad-students at some time or the other face the cooking burn-out.

I was brainstorming the highest used reasons for eating out:
(List not jotted down with respect to preference or the frequency)

"Too much work" ('tis never really so)

"No decision on WHO should cook"

"All tv-meals are already consumed"

"No food at all" (that's like the most valid reason)

"No breakfast cereal left" ('cause breakfast cereal make for excellent, healthy lunches and dinners!)

"Too bored to cook today"

"I've had a brilliant day at work, let's celebrate!"

"My advisor was pissed with me, I need some cheering!"

"Don't know what to cook?!"

"I'm in a mood to cook something exotic, I wish I had the ingredients..."

"Life is a bitch and she just had babies, all bitches!"

"There is a new place that opened in town, let's check it out!"



Can't think of anymore reasons right now. But I'm sure there are many, many, many more... and I will keep adding to this space. :)


Happy Cooking Everyone! :D

Of That Day, I Remember Every Single Detail.

I was scared shitless and I was looking around my strange surroundings with more anxiety than curiosity. Being geographically challenged, I was desperately hunting for maps to guide me to the Great Hall (and then to make matters worse, the maps said, "you are here", and I did not know how to get there from here, I mean where do you go from here when here is a circular dot!). I had earlier called him at his residence only to find that he wasn't available. The guy at the front-desk had taken a message for him. Then, he had called while I was collecting my money. I was thrilled to hear him talk in Marathi. It was quite sometime before that had happened. We had fixed a date to meet up at the Great Hall. And the challenge of getting there was boggling the wits out of me. I was looking around for a familiar face amongst the stiff-upper-lipped population of disinterested strangers. I felt lonely. A friendly Black-American saw me, I think I looked obviously lost. It took me close to a few seconds to answer in the affirmative. I felt so racist! (I am not like that usually, I blame the hostility I felt on those empty streets). He asked me this-and-that and before I could ask his name, we were already at the Great Hall. I thanked him with gratitude that's unparalleled till date. I walked into the iron gate, and into the ornate wooden doors that led me up to the grand, red-carpeted staircase, huge portraits of ex-Chancellors and such hanging on the enormous golden walls that seemed to stretch out to the sky. Awe-struck, I suddenly felt under-dressed and awkward in my shoes. I saw the signs directing me to the right room. I wasn't interested in anything I saw in the room. My eyes were searching for him. The only thing we knew about each other at that point in time was the clothes we were supposed to have on on that day; him, a UMM red pullover and me my worn-out Benetton pullover. And yet I was looking for a face. Weird, right? We saw each other almost simultaneously, and to noone's surprise we identified the pullovers! I almost wanted to give him a huge hug just because he was there. I felt immensely happy to see him. We looked around the exhibition. Conversation flowed as if we were old friends catching up. We came out of the Great Hall and I realized for the very first time what a beautiful day it was! Spring flowers all around with clear weather and warm sun, we were already making lunch plans at 11am. Eating out was not even an option. We walked all over discovering and re-discovering the place, finding new ways to get to the same place (the place that was later to be my favourite place to have all my lone lunches). Thankfully, at least he was geographically sound and we came out of the place eventually. We headed back to his place to get our lunch sorted. I instantly fell in love with the apartment complex. (I loved it so much, I later exchanged my far better accomodation for that place! Plus, the fact that everyone I knew was living there helped too). He lived in the basement. It looked dingy. He took me to his room. It was a mess. It looked like what it was supposed to be, a straight man's bachelor pad. Strangely, I always thought bachelor pads had pictures of naked girls on the walls. I was disappointed there, but what a relief that was! There was a Ferrari model (red) lying on his table, CDs and books strewn around. Clothes adorned all the empty spaces. He piled them elsewhere and made place for me to sit. And if you know how spring beds are, you will fully appreciate how difficult it was to sit on the very springy edge of the one I was sitting on. I was glad when we headed to the kitchen to cook ourselves some Maggie. Before entering the kitchen, we found a note addressed to him. It said, "Call back. Ewooja." The front-desk person had just dropped the note four and half hours after I had left the message, with my name all messed-up! (He still calls me that). While he was making Maggie, he told me he was a brilliant cook, apparently he had taken cooking classes! He could make Butter Chicken, Roasted chicken, Biryani, Makhanwala, Fish Curry, Rotis and what-not. I was floored. We had a quick lunch and headed to the City-Centre. On our way we met some more of our kind and we shopped for food. We came back from the City-Centre, had similar dinner. We wanted to experience the wild night life people had promised this place would have, we went back to the city. Within a couple of minutes we had already gotten ourselves nicely lost. We were two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl. Walking on strange streets we came to the theatre. We had no identification on us to prove that we were students. I had a mere 5 quid in my pocket and he had 3. The ticket for one non-student was that much! It was late and there weren't too many people around wanting to catch "The Longest Yard" at a theatre near them. He was short and I looked right out-of-school. They figured we were students after all and let us in for 3.50 a head. We came out to streets complete with flashy, half-inebriated, pub-hopping under-grads. It looked like any University city looks at that time of the night. We walked back to his place. Chit-chatted for a couple of hours. I was scared to go home alone so he walked me home. It had just rained and the streets, washed clean seemed different. I was weary. I was looking forward to the warmth and coziness of my bed. I reached home and cried myself to sleep.
(I now know (almost!) what James Joyce was feeling when he wrote 'Ulysees'!)
I met a million strangers that day, some of them I became best-friends with. And him, we hung out together for a week. I moved into the same apartment complex as him on the top-most floor. And then we went our own ways, cordially meeting once in a while to talk about this-and-that. He grew into a different set of people and I into a completely different set. Through it all and a thousand days later, I still remember every single detail of that day.
Every detail is etched in my memory. Every detail as if it happened yesterday. Every detail as if that day was all that would ever matter. Every detail as if it was the best day of my life. Every detail as if it was the beginning of the rest of my life.

Day!

Gems, I tell you. All my students. (Not Cadbury's Gems, that being the case...I would've liked them better, or not, or I'm unconformed on the issue.) Today's topic of discussion in my class was about hereditary metabolic disorders that can be identified and studied using cell cultures. After rambling for an hour about how certain cells have mutated genes, how that leads to non-expression of enzymes vital for cell metabolism, therefore rendering the cell incapable of functioning properly, causing the disorder.
For every class I take, I have a different pet phrase. Today it happened to be "cells lack" so-and-so enzymes, therefore they suffer from so-and-so disorder.
[Cells lacking the enzyme X, cause a metabolic disorder Y. Any further questions on the matter, email me, I'll be more than glad to be of help! :P !]
So, I am sitting in the lab, and a girl from my TY class comes and says, "Ma'am, we are lacking in journal papers, can you please give them to us?!" (Biotenglish Syndrome?! Well we will have to see about that.) I SO wanted to burst out laughing then-and-there. But according to the stupid Teachers' Code (and I don't know it really exists, or if other teachers abide by it) I cannot, rather should not be laughing at anything that my students say or ask, however ridiculous it might be. Don't get me wrong here, I am perfectly OK with them asking me outrageously stupid technical questions. I am ready to answer them all, mind you, with a very open mind. But saying foolish things as is the case, I have to try really hard to contain my laughter inside ...So, keeping with the code, I made a face, moved my tongue around in my mouth as if my molars had food stuck in them and wrote it down in my to-do diary for cheering me up whenever I need some cheering. Desperate measures for those desperately hopeless times. [I know what you are thinking! Don't get all judgemental on me, OK!?! ]



More, I supervised my first test. FY students appearing for Biochemistry test, 20 marks Internal Exam. I cannot begin expressing how kicked I was by the whole darned thing!
I was generally very excited. Almost felt juvenile. Like I was a school kid playing teacher-teacher. Going to the class, distributing papers, being strict (I enjoyed that the BEST!), collecting answer-sheets, you get the picture!
All through the test, while my students were busy writing answers, I was smiling to myself! (Giggling inwardly) I haven't felt this child-ish in loooonng time. It feels good.
[Mental Note to Self #1: Do juvenile things more often :D]



On the Department notice board, my name is prefixed by Prof. All you non-teacher people, you have NO idea how cool it sounds/feels! It made my day!
Ah! Such are the little pleasures of teaching in India. (Seriously, where else in the world will you find a 6 month old teacher being called that?!)



Today was honestly, a very nice day, ignoring the fact that I *almost* hurt all my body parts in ONE day. Bumped my head on the cupboard door, I think they'll have to replace the door. Burnt 2 fingers, thumb and the middle finger, just the memory of which makes me want to hold it out to noone in particular. I got a sore toe, thanks to my iPod. Yes, that is possible, anything is possible. AND to top it all my back still hurts as hell from my workout going horribly wrong!
[Mental Note #2: When you have a good day, leave it at that!]


Anyhoo...
:)
:P
:D
LOL
I'm happy!

The Importance of Being Earnest.

And Now The Crap I Left Unsaid....

I think I have made up my mind about what relationships really are and I think I know that they are never what they are supposed to be, and definitely never what they appear to be...
What they are or what they become after a considerable time-span, if they are still extant, I cannot say for sure because of this very reason. I believe, rather unromantically, that these so-called relationships become seriously stagnated and progressively so with time. In an *earnest* attempt to undersand this mêlée between ideas and hypotheses generated in my tiny little brain with their tangibility, their practicality, I have tried using analogies drawn from real-life experiences (others' not mine), films, books, even agony-aunt-type magazines and blogs to no avail. I have since given up pondering over such "matters" completely, which I'm sure you must have figured by now as I am writing an entire blog. I have to admit, I don't mull over it at all!

I need a break man! I get way too involved in other people's "matters" and forget I have a life of my own that I ought to be Living. The sad part is that I gave to remind myself. Shit! Why I spend SO much time thinking and not actually putting things into practice, is something I honestly don't know. I am brooding over it as I am typing out this crap. And I am saying to myself; thinking about this isn't trivial, it's simply my general interest in other people's business, which "they" mildly refer to as curiosity, it's just my need to be earnest about everything, my insatiable necessity to be Miss Goody-two-shoes Know-it-all!
(Which, for no reason, reminds me of something I read about ignorance in Oscar Wilde's 'Importance of Being Earnest', which has nothing to do with relationships or for that matter to do with curiosity...I just remembered it and said to myself, why not get more arbitrary than my usual self. Besides I find it absolutely hilarious, so....)

Lady Bracknell: I have always been of the opinion that a man who desires to
get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?
Jack: I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.
Lady Bracknell: I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a very delicate exotic fruit. Touch it and the
bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect
whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes,
and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor's Square.

Ah! I have exhausted myself talking about inconsequential things, as is my favourite diversion from mundane, monotonous routine, I loosely refer to as my life. :D So, I leave you think about the importance of being earnest.

*Random-ness Alert*

Please go listen to this song by Oasis called "Importance of Being Idle"....

I don't mind
As long as there's a bed beneath the stars that shine
I'll be fine, if you give me a minute, a man's got a limit
I can't get a life if my heart's not in it

OK, so I'll go listen to the song now, and you get back to whatever it is that you were doing before you chanced upon reading and bearing with my random reflections! :D

Adieu! Tata! Bye-bye!

Of Things I Left Behind. #1

Anytime is a good time for nostalgia and all this application work keeps transporting me to a time when I handled and manhandled quite a few "matters"! ... "Ah! those were the days..."

Running around doing errands, requesting Profs for references, collecting, photocopying a million and a half documents, short-listing Universities, the actual applications and then wondering if the ones that have managed to make the list are really worth something in the long run. Then there were other issues that I had to figure; funding. I did not want to be one of those(read pampered and spoilt) kids whose only qualification for getting admits to the British Universities is parents with good-looking bank accounts! Thankfully, luckily, I did not have to be one of 'them'...
I've since left all the worries of funding far behind. My theory (and I hope as hell it works for me) is that: If I did not pay for my Masters why on this Earth would I pay for a PhD?! Besides NO ONE sane enough would consider coughing up $30,000/year for 4-5 years!?! So, most Universities give stipends which help cover for most of the costs.
(Anyhoo, the funding worries have now been replaced by other worries; if I have enough research experience, etc. But I'm not going to talk about it here, because I still have to leave it behind. When I do leave it behind, I will delve further on the "matter".)

Arrrgh! How did I start about my applications?!
I had initially decided I will write a post about my life in UK and generally reminisce about the good ol' days, but main yahan kahan aa gayi?! khair thik hai...this *was* how it ALL began!

I'll blog about it later.

Philosophy of the D in my PhD.

I plan to apply for a PhD soon (read,in a couple of months), and I took up teaching so that I don't sit at home listlessly, uselessly, and basically to avoid making my life pointless. You get the idea, right?!
(the pittance of a pay-check is responsible for such negativity towards teaching!)

I'm between my M Sc and my PhD,
I am in the transition state, let's call it 'D'
'D' is the high-energy state where all the excess energies are being resourced towards attaining a stable state PhD.
*nerd alert blaring at top volume!*

Yes, the point of all the rambling is something I read written on the black-board when I entered my classroom.

"Experience is something you get when you are looking for something else."
--Anonymous

How perfectly it defined my transition state for me!

*sigh* *sigh* *sigh*

My Teaching 'Experience'...so far...

As time passed by, I realized that sitting at home made me progressively dumber, stupider (I know it's not a word!), it was driving me insane everyday. My mind had become so empty; I saw myself becoming the DEVIL!! Sitting at home reading, listening to music all day, watching all the films that I always wanted to watch, etc., it was all fun at first, but the realization that things in my life stayed where they were annoyed me immensely. Exciting things had ceased to happen in my life...the ennui seemed to have no end. That was when I decided, I had to set in motion all my blasted brain-cells and do something constructive with my time...I had to start working part-time somewhere, to keep myself occupied at any rate with something 'technical'...I was done with the non-technicalities of life! The artistic urges wanted to go to sleep while the practical, more scientific ones took over and took charge of my life! [spicing it up for me while they were at it! :)]

I started teaching. Something I always dreamed of doing!...but in my head, I always thought I would teach the grad-students (I've always considered them to be more committed to learning, and education, and have a wider knowledge base to work upon, etc.). NOW, here I was teaching first and second year under-grads! I mean, I was one of them so recently! I knew so well their never-ending need to be nasty to the new TA's! How I dreaded doing it!

Fortunately my first class with the first year B Sc kids was fabulous! *phew* I liked my students and they liked me! (atleast that is what I would sincerely like to believe). It was hard for me to accept how much I was enjoying teaching a bunch eighteen-nineteen year olds!...and thinking about it, for the first time, I realized what I was enjoying, I was loving the process of making better grad-students out of them! I was thrilled when they looked up to me for answers, I was elated when they asked me logical questions. It was fun leading them to answer their own questions, by deducing from the knowledge they already had, from their experiences and observations in day-to-day matters and then building upon it to finally teach them what I intended to do in the first place!

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."
--Anatole France (1844 - 1924), The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

So far, according to me, it has been an enriching and educating experience for me (definitely) and my kids (hopefully). To sum it all up...

"When one teaches, two learn."
--Robert Half.

GOD knows how much I love teaching! God bless my kids!



P.S.: The, er, inspiration for typing this post was the Robert Half quote on my Gmail. "Fucking coincidence" was what 'S' called it when he randomly emailed me same the quote just as I began punching in my thoughts in this space, I loosely refer to as 'my blog'! :D