A question of Genetics and Happy New Year

My brother gave me Rs 1000/-. His wife had given him strict instructions that he had to give me money for Pongal and Karthikai. Needless to say, I love these festivals.
As my shoes had worn out I decided that instead of saving up the Rs 1000/- in my PF or buying a book as usual, I would splurge it. I would buy myself a nice pair of slippers.
I am not really sure how the inheritance of feet happens. All I know is that I have inherited broad big feet from my paternal grandfather and flat feet from my maternal grandfather. Actually I think the broad big feet is a dominant trait considering my brother and other cousins too have it.
Optimism is opium.
Minsens' in CP was having a sale. I went into the shop and found the pair I wanted. I asked the shop girl whether it would be available in my size. She took one look at my feet and said tactfully:
"You should try these, Ma'am. These have adjustable straps. Your feet are very broad, you see."
Sheesh!
At least she wasn't as bad as the shopkeeper in Sarojini Nagar where we had gone for shopping long time back. He took one look at my feet and advised my mother to tie it up so that it wouldn't grow!
Oh well!
A Very Happy New Year.

Tenders and such stuff

The bureaucracy thrives on absurdity and on vengeance. After my run in with the AO last week I expected revenge. And sure it came.
To do animal cell culture work we need special room. Every faculty prudently maintains one out of their project money. It saves hassles. However, lacking funding I decided to renovate the existing animal cell culture facility of the department using department money. For the facility we need a pump. It was priced at Rs 8100/-. As another faculty in the department had purchased it just few months back, I decided to place a repeat order. The pump was installed. The bill came to us for payment. As it is a departmental affair, I passed the bill to the AO. The AO comes back to me: where are the three quotations that says this is the cheapest one? Where is the purchase committee approval? Where is the supply order?
I explained that this was a repeat order so there was no need to get three quotations. It is less than Rs 50,000 so there is no need for a purchase committee approval. And if you want a supply order, I will give you one with a back date.
The AO is not happy. His explanation- which I am sure some babu can understand and appreciate-is that this is being purchased from departmental money. And the faculty who purchased it before me had done so using his project money. Therefore, an order that was placed for an equipment to be paid out of the project money cannot be repeated if it is to be ordered via departmental money.
Go figure!
I can now empathize with BSNL when they plead with CVC to do away with tenders.

Can hair re-grow?

Appa hopes that Popy, my student, will make him a protein that will miraculously restore hair on his head.
Well, this article is not quite that but there is some hope...appa, do you want to try this?

Dealing with bureaucracy

I had really meant to pen down my experiences at Virat Nagar. But that was before I had to deal with the AO of the school.
I have been trying to purchase Mant-ATP, the fluorescent analog of ATP for my experimens. We finally found a cheaper source: Jena Biosciences in Germany. Their Indian representative is based in Hyderabad. Mac, my student, emailed them and got the quote electronically. It would not do. So before going home he frantically emailed them to send us a hardcopy and also the contact address in Delhi.
Then we waited.
Finally last week the Delhi representative got in touch with us. He signed the electronic copy that we had printed out. However, before the order can be placed we need a DSIR certificate that will allow us to import chemicals without paying import duty. To get the DSIR certificate we need to do paper work.
First I needed to get the Dean's permission to purchase it from my Lab Running Expenses (a meagre Rs. 50,000). With the Dean's permission, we filled out the DSIR certificate. It had to be entered in the store records, then the Dean had to sign it, and then the registrar. In between all these procedures, the AO of the school has to sign the supply order.
The AO dearly loves his 10%.
When the form went to him for signature, he threw a fit. How can I order something without his approval?
Excuse me?

A quiet Celebration

My laptop and I are celebrating our first anniversary together. The last time I purchased a laptop (way back in 2000), I managed to break it within a year. It was easy. There was this tangle of wires, I have a big foot (inheritance from my paternal grandfather),the foot and the wires got into a tangle, and the casualty was the laptop. It has since then been repaired but it does not like me. So whenever I attempt to use it, something goes wrong. My father has it now; the laptop does not give him any trouble.
The current laptop was purchased by my brother. (Yes, amma, I know I owe you money for the laptop.) My mother never fails to remind me that she loaned my money to buy it and that I need to return the money. My mother is the CFO of the house. I am really thankful that she has not asked for interest on the amount loaned.
So today, the laptop and I are celebrating the first anniversary. Hopefully, there will be many more anniversaries to celebrate.

Romance Novel

I was delighted to read that A.S. Byatt too likes Georgette Heyer. I have loved Georgette Heyer ever since I was introduced to them way back in the late 80s. We were living in Saket then. Aparna, Indu and I were of the same age and all three of us were avid readers. There was Shanti too, whom we called Shinti Ponti. But she was not into reading. Aparna, Indu, and I swapped books and told each other which books to read. And if I am not mistaken it was Aparna who introduced me into the world of Georgette Heyer. There are all kinds of reasons why I like Heyer so much but the bottom line is that she is not mushy.
Mills and Boons are different kettle of fish. I was introduced into that world in the hostel and I read them because there was singular lack of any story books. There were no libraries in Baroda and there was no way I could get my hands on any book. M&Bs were circulated - I have no clue how they came into the hostel-from one room to another and from one girl's hostel to another. And believe me, after a day's work in the lab where experiments often times do not work, M&Bs were welcome.
Truthfully, the large majority of them are pure trash and I give them a wide berth. I simply cannot stomach those idiotic novels or the language. However, there are few authors who do not insult the reader's intelligence and those I read. Alas, the new ones coming out in the romantic genre are fit only for the dustbin.
However, that does not mean that my brother should not read it :-). In fact I urge him to do so at all possible opportunities. So here are two view points from Guardian for his benefit.

How I run my lab

I have been trying to get some reagents from US. From Joel, my PhD advisor, to be precise. My colleague also needs some reagents from the same place so Neelima and I decided to combine everything. As these reagents need to be shipped on Dry Ice the shipping is expensive so combining shipments makes sense. We agreed we would pay for the reagents. Turns out Fed-ex has some bureaucratic process that does not allow them to ship cell lines if paid in India. However, they have no problems if the payment is done in US. So we called another agent World Express. They said they can do it but the charge comes to USD1200. Our hearts sank. My lab runs on USD7500 per year. This includes all the consumables that I need to purchase to do the experiments. And I have four students. There is simply no way that I can pay USD1200 to get these reagents from US. Now I am hoping Joel will be good natured to send them to me at his expense!
On a similar note, we wanted a reagent called mant ATP. It is a fluorescent reagent. No company in India makes this stuff. The only way to get is from US. Which means I have to pay not only the price of the reagent but also the shipping expenses.
Sometimes I wonder what am I doing out here...

Da bogus code

I read the Da Vinci Code thanks to British Council Library. And I have no idea why the Christian community was up in arms over the movie based on this book. Anyone who reads it would know that it is nothing but pure unadulterated junk. Oh, it is immensely readable; Dan Brown employs all the tricks to keep the reader hooked to the plot. But that is all it is. It is fiction. He takes advantage of the fact that most of us would not have Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper to verify his claims. Come to that most of us would not know much about Da Vinci/Newton/Cocteau's beliefs to agree/disagree with what Dan Brown is saying. Nor would most of us would be steeped in the Christian theology to question/verify his claims. I loved the review that appeared in New Yorker.
I have also managed to get Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar. It tells the story of Meera Bai from her husband's perspective.

Garlic and appa

This one is purely for appa. There is an article in the New York Times extolling the virtues of garlic. Appa will, of course, say that it is better to be ill than to be eating garlic. What do you think, appa?

Bread, Butter, and Jam

Mala and I have been discussing food blogs. Both of us love to try out new recipes and the food blogs are perfect place to find them. There are many Indians out there. 90% of the Indian food bloggers are women who take great pride in making it for their "hubby" and children. It is little nauseating for me to read that. The point of fact is that though amma is a wonderful cook, she does not like being in the kitchen. No sentiments about feeding "hubby" and children ever moves her. She will cook if she wants to. If you are hungry, get into the kitchen and cook. Which is why I got into the kitchen.
So today I decided to try my hand at apple jam. I buy fruits but hardly ever eat them. So bananas are turned into banana milk shake or banana bread for consumption. And apples...I decided on apple jam.
Of course it was Lata's fault that I ended up making butter. She persuaded me to save the cream from milk and promised that she will make the butter. But yesterday she said that her eldest sister-in-law is coming and she is more scared of her than of her mother-in-law. So this morning I decided to convert all the saved up cream into butter.
And thus lunch was bread, butter, and jam. The only thing lacking was homemade bread but I have always failed in my attempt. Yeast is an organism to do experiments with not use in cooking.
Speaking of food blogs, there is a wonderful site called arabic bites. It is by two sisters who post recipes from the arabic world. I plan to try out their semolina coconut cake. But appa will be glad to know that there are two nice recipes out there: Cucumber mint yogurt salad and Coriander-mint salad.

Climate injustice

The Sunday section of Hindu has a front page article on how India's rich are contributing 4.5 times more carbon emissions than the poor.
I thought about the article as I walked down to Periappa's house in Vasant Kunj. At a brisk pace the distance is about 30 minutes max from my house inside the University. On a pleasant winter day it is a pleasure to walk down. Though with the rampant felling of trees inside the campus makes me want to howl like Dogmatix. Just outside the gate, we can see the eyesore: The biggest Mall in Delhi.
As this is the ridge area, the last bit of the Arvalli Mountains, about a year back there was a massive protest against bulldozing this area to build a mall. (As an aside why would people want to purchase in the mall when they can go to their friendly neighbourhood shop, have a chat, and get what they want. I am in the minority here). Anyway, the developers won and the mall is slated to open some time soon. I watched the workers for some time and realized that none of these people are ever going to be able to buy or even enter these malls. The mall is going to escalate the electricity and the water problem but none of these made any impact on the Judges.
Inside the campus it is another story. Every time trees are cut and another building comes up we are told that if we don't build the government will move in. There is pressure on the land. But why can't we declare this as protected land because we have plenty of wildlife and provide the green space for the city?
As for the faculty the less said the better. All of them need the car to walk down to the academic buildings or even to the shopping centre within the campus. As the maximum walking distance from anywhere to anywhere within the campus (except for a section called Proovanchal)is just about 15 minutes, I fail to understand why they need the car inside the campus.
This time Rohan has ensured a space for himself in the Campus Development committee. His one-point agenda: to shoot down all requests for car parking space.

Protests are our birthright

14th November is a big day for JNU: Founder's day.
Some 4 years back Poonam (PRO) persuaded the administration to celebrate it in a big way. The idea took root in the form of Nehru Memorial Lecture. One year we had Manmohan Singh. DSU (Democratic Student's Union) and PSU (Progressive Student Union), both part of extreme left-wing, spent days in organizing the protest. AISA was also part of that nonsense. All the rector and VC could do was to stand by helplessly. There was a massive protest. NSUI took offense and all the factions beat each other up. I am assuming lots of frustrations were vented out.
This year we invited Somnath Chatterjee to talk about the role of Parliament in Democracy.
DSU and PSU showed up at the venue with lots of banners and slogans. Their problem: Nandigram. It was the best occasion to indulge in CPI vs CPI(M) fight.
The administration is as usual clueless how to deal with this.

Broadband connection

This month I have been trying to get periappa a broadband connection. He has decided preferences. Only Sify because that is what he has in Trichy, his other home. So I have been calling Sify incessantly. And have decided that I definitely dislike those Press 1 for blah..blah...Press 2 for another set of blah...blah...All I want is actually to talk to a human being.
Anyway, after pressing through star and 1 and 2, I finally ended up with a human voice. I would like a broadband connection to be established at my Periappa's residence. I give his phone number and address. They give me a confirmation number. And assured me that within 2 days it will be all established.
Two days come and go and nothing happens. I call again. This time the human voice laughs sheepishly and says it was Diwali, you see but don't worry within 24 hours.
24 hours come and go and again I call. This time they tell me that all the survey has been done and the cable has been put in and within 48 hours it will be done.
48 hours come and go and again I call. This time all I want to know is what is their definition of 24, 48,72 hours. The human voice is soothing. Let me find out the problem . The problem turns out was that they did not have connection in that area. So when the request poured in, they had to do a survey and lay the cable.
"Shouldn't we have been informed?"
The voice soothes me:
"You will have the connection by 20th."
NOTE: They have not said which 20th.
Meantime, I have a tough job in hand: to soothe periappa.
I really think it is time appa purchased a small plane. Then he can hop across the country soothing his various relatives.

Amla ka Murabba

Vibha has been extolling the virtues of amla (Indian gooseberry) during our daily walks. She claims it can take care of all the throat problems. As I am willing to try anything (except allopathic medicines) for my nasal problem, I put this on the list of the things to try.
So when I saw amla at the stall where I purchase coriander leaves, I fell to the temptation and brought them. The problem with amla is it is sour. The remedy is Murabba, a sweet concoction.
My periamma and I do not see eye to eye on many matters. But when it comes to recipes and knitting patterns we often turn to each other. So I sounded her out. How does one make murabba?
On Diwali day (the north Indian one, so sensible really as they postpone their festivities to evening unlike us south Indians who get up before day break to take an oil bath), I decided to try my hand at it.
The amla was pierced and steamed. And a sugar syrup was made. I could not resist. I added bay leaf, cinnamon, and cloves. When the syrup was thick, I added the juice that the amla had extruded while getting steamed. And a pinch of saffron.
And then I poured the hot mix onto a plastic container. It took me several minutes to realize that the plastic container did not appreciate the hot mix. Oops.
So I transferred it into two glass jar, added the steamed amla, and closed the container.
Periamma says that the amla will absorb the syrup and turn almost black. I am waiting. So far it has not turned any color. On the other hand, the syrup is tasty with a tangy sweet taste.
Appa should be happy. I hope so. It is one recipe that does not contain mint or garlic.

To sue or not to sue

I found this amusing piece in The New York Times. Apparently MIT is going to sue architect Frank Gehry. Amongst the many reasons cited, MIT says that the newly constructed center has persistent seepage problem.
Now CPWD has been at the service of our nation for 150 years. Every construction has the mandatory seepage problem. When I moved into the transit house three years ago, I discovered it for myself. The first showers resulted in massive seepage and yes, mold too, as MIT asserts.
Letters went to the chief engineer. Finally, last year they decided to mend the problem. They got the materials, cleaned the roof, and declared proudly that it was completely done. As a proof they poured water over the roof. Does it leak now, they asked? As a matter of fact, when they poured water over the roof, it poured down into the house too. I put a bucket underneath the leak and wrote nasty letters to the chief Engineer because nothing can be done without written complaint. Ultimately, I got some respite.
My favorite story though is that of the New Transit House. It was built some years back and the folks living in the ground floor noticed seepage. Funny, because the floors above were perfectly okay. The CPWD was called in. They poked and prodded and then finally diagnosed the problem. The pipe from up and the pipe from the side were not joined.
"We forgot, Madam," they said apologetically to the occupant.

Election results

AISA won. So we(?) can all heave a sigh of relief. The university continues to be the bastion of communists. Unlike last time, all the Student Union seats (president, vice-president, secretary) have been won by AISA.
The YFE won as expected the councillor seats in all the science schools. Surprisingly, and this should give Rohan some sleepless nights, ABVP won 4 councillor seats.
My friend Vibha, who is at the German Center, and I discussed the elections in great detail as we took our customary walk yesterday night. She wondered if YFE might be the answer to the Congress and BJP. I do not know. YFE seems to be running on a single point agenda at present: No reservations. I am pretty ambivalent about the entire issue. At one point there is no use of discussing reservations at higher education level unless we ensure good schooling at primary level. But, on the other hand, discriminations exist. Not only at primary school level but even at job level as Surinder Jodhka's research has shown.

Election mayhem

Today we made it to the front page. In The Hindu there is an article about the mayhem created at yesterday's President's debate. The Student Union President, in case anyone is wondering.
It is that time of the year. The student's vote for their representatives today. Some time later it will be the turn of the teachers. Only we are more sophisticated. We make it so that the representatives are elected unanimously. But more about that later.
To get back to the student's election, there is a genuine fear that this time YFE(Youth for Equality) might win, ending the communist monopoly. Last year, there was a fractured mandate with two posts going to SFI-AISA and two posts going to AISF. They kept fighting amongst themselves, wasting away the mandate given to them. It had been a close fight last year with YFE garnering all the votes from the Science schools. For some time it had appeared as though they had won but the Social Science schools ensured that the communists won. This year it appears as though YFE has made tremendous inroads into the Social Science schools too. All the posters from SFI-AISA are targetted towards YFE. Amusingly, considering almost all the YFE students are from science school and I know many of them, the YFE posters are all about drawing tables and pointing out the differences between them and the rest of the parties. It all appears so logical and thoughtful. I just wish they would apply little of that logicality when they are asked analyze their results. Maybe we need to change their Ph.D. topics.
My friend, Rohan, expressed relief that at least the ABVP threat has been nullified. I wanted to tell him that ABVP is capable of decimating themselves without any outside help. Just reading the Hindu article will explain why. Someone should explain to them that Lord Ram can defend himself, thank you.

Flood in the lab

My lab is adjacent to the toilet and thanks to the excellent plumbing system put in place by the CPWD, there is always water in my lab-leakage from the toilet.
So this morning when the security called me up to say there is water in my laboratory, I cursed the plumbing system and ran over. But this time CPWD was innocent of the carnage. It was my student.

Anyway, at 7am in the morning I ran over to the lab, caught hold of the cleaning staff and got the bucketloads of water out of the lab. Fortunately, there is no lab underneath mine so I did not have to worry about leaks. But the student who was responsible for perpetrating the mess got it from me.

That one would think was the end of the story. But apparently today is flood day. Around mid-day, just after I had finished yelling at Mac, the lab gets flooded again. This time it is the plumbing works. Someone had left the tap open in the adjacent toilet and the water spilled over into mine.

It is still wet but at least Pravin ran over to close the taps.

My Mamu's Daughter

That is the name of the story that I submitted to Indian Literature, a publication of Sahitya Akademi,when I was still living in Bangalore. I moved places, I called them up a year later to ask about the status, and they said it will get printed when it does. I gave up but just in case informed them about the change in address.

It was published five years later. The author's copy went to Bangalore from where Uncle (my ex-landlord) redirected it to Madras. Appa found it waiting for him.

All is well that ends well.

On a similar note: I called up NBT about the manuscript I had submitted. It had taken them two years to even accept the manuscript. Last year we finally signed the agreement. And then I waited and waited and waited. Till...They assure me that it is slated for publication next year. They are, apparently, searching for an illustrator.

Amma's dilemma

About two weeks the snake appeared in the Old Transit House. It was calmly sunning itself when a group of human beings arrived on the scene. It is impossible to say who was more alarmed but the upshot of it was that the snake quickly slithered over to a wall of bricks left behind by a thoughtful bunch of CPWD workers. And there it remained, resistant to all attempts to flush it out.
Now amma is petrified of snakes. She is convinced that all of them bite and all of them are poisonous. So she refused to step out unless Ravi, the iron-wallah was there as a protector against the snakes. After all he irons clothes downstairs and if a snake ventures out, he would thrash it.
So here began amma's dilemma. On the 21st October she is due to leave for Madras. The train is at 6.40pm. The taxi is at the door. She has to take the taxi to go to the station. But there is that snake, making its appearance at the most (in)appropriate time. What should amma do?
I posed the problem to my brother who claims that game-theory can solve all problems. He said that amma will cancel the trip. Oh, rubbish. The trip cannot be canceled. Remember, there is the TV (all the idiotic serials) and gossip waiting in Chennai while things at her daughter's place are plain boring. So the ticket cannot be cancelled.
Then my brother said that tell the CPWD to build a staircase from the balcony. Baloney. CPWD with their 150 years of excellent service will tell you that the materials for building the staircase is not in store. It will take six months.
Then my brother, quickly losing patience, said that it was not game-theory problem. Whatever.
Hah!
The perfect solution awaited on Sunday when amma was ready to leave.
We came out of the house, the luggage rolled out, ready to lock the door. The taxi was at the door. Ravi, as I had predicted, had left early because it was Vijayadashmi.
And out on the porch stood the peacock. Her peacock. She adores all the peacocks and runs out, pushing her glasses up her nose, to gaze at them enraptured whenever they make an appearance. She feeds them endless bajra impervious to the fact that the peacocks are a pest who eat up my saplings.
So there was that peacock, saying goodbye to her, protecting her from the snake.
The perfect solution. Say what?

photos

Finally, I got around to it. Or rather Appa did. So the photos of my site visit can be accessed here. I will get around to the captions, promise. Meantime, it is back to teaching. One class every day: Mon, Wed and Fri- M.Phil. And Tue and Thur-M.Sc. To one bunch I teach eukaryotic gene transcription and to the other bunch I teach Human genetics. As different as chalk from cheese. Ugh! The only kind thing I can actually say about Human Genetics is that I have learnt something about a subject that I knew zilch.
Oh, the university has been kind. For days I could not access the blog website. They had put restrictions on which sites we can access. It appears that they came to their senses and lifted up the restriction.

For the want of opportunities

Today I visited a NGO named Udayan Care. It was started by Dr. Kiran Modi after a personal tragedy. One of the schemes launched by Udayan Care is known as Udayan Shalini fellowships. The scheme provides fellowships to young girls who want to pursue higher education but cannot because of circumstances. Very often girls have to drop out of school because they have to add to the family income or the family is pressurizing them to get married or there is no money. Dr. Modi told me how the scheme was initiated. At first the organization was focusing on orphans. They had started homes for these children much like the SOS village. Then one day her driver said to her that he wished he was dead because then the education of his children too would have been taken care by Dr. Modi's organization. And thus was launched the scheme.
I was reminded of my own encounter with a young woman at Bahranpur. Here, Mahila Swarojgar Samiti has organized Self Help groups for women. When we reached the village the women all got together. A young woman sat besides me. She asked me where I was from. I asked her what she was doing.
"I am in the final year Inter," she confided.
Final year Inter is equivalent to 12th class.
"What will you do next?"
"I will have to stop my studies."
"Why?"
"We have no money. I have to start earning."
"What will you do if you had money to go to college?"
Her eyes lit up.
"I would like to become a doctor."

Alpana Daya Sagar

Today Alpana died.

I first met Alpana when I joined the university way back in 2004. She had a lovely garden and a host of cats. The cats were her passion. She fed them, she took care of them when they fell ill, and she cried when they died. I remember the petition we signed on the dog menace on the campus- she agreed to sign it because the dogs were harassing her cats.

The cats are an orphaned lot today. Who is going to take care of them?

Why I dislike zoos

I dislike zoos.

Prof. Anil Bhatti's lecture on Monday for the orientation course was really on art and science being the two sides of the same coin-the coin of creativity. As he is a professor at the Center for German studies, he used Rilke's poems to illustrate his point. In the handout he gave us was the following poem by Rilke. The translation is by Albert Ernest Flemming.

The Panther

His tired gaze-from passing endless bars-
has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds.
To him there seem to be a thousand bars,
and out beyond these bars exists no world.

His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in ever smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable.

But sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part.
the pupils of his eyes dilate as images
of past encounters enter while through his limbs
a tension strains in silence
only to cease to be, to die within his heart.

Child marriages

One of the sights that remain etched in my memory is that of girls walking/biking to school. It was a heartening scene, something that I have not seen in my previous trips. I looked at the girls closely. Many of them were sporting the sindoor. They were married.

In July I made a trip to Panjab. The destination was Sherpur Village where Asha India meeting was going to be held. I took the Dadar-Amritsar express from Delhi. I shared the berths with a young couple. With them was an old man and a very ill old woman- the young man's parents. I got into a chat with the young wife who was cradling a baby.
"Boy or girl?"
"Girl."
Then I was questioned:
"Where are you going?"
"Dhuri. From there to Sherpur."
"Is it your mother's house or mother-in-law's house."
"Neither."
"They why are you going?"
"Some work."
"How many children you have?"
"I am not married."
Her eyes went large:
"You are not married?"
"No."
"I have been married for three years."
There was silence in the compartment. The young woman was obviously brooding over what I had told her.
"You know how old I am?"
I shook my head.
"I am eighteen. I was fifteen when I got married."
"Oh."
"It is really bad. Now I have a baby to look after. I am tired all the time. Now my husband has decided to bring his parents over. Look at my mother-in-law. I have to take care of her, do all the household work, and take care of the baby. My husband will go off for work. What does it matter to him?"
I made some noises.
"I tell you. One should not get married so early."
I nodded. I asked:
"What will you do with your daughter?"
She beamed with pride:
"This one is going to study. She is going to do a job. Do you know, madamji, girls who work need not get married till they are 25-26."
I decided not to tell her my age.

Family planning

To return back to my Varanasi trip:

In Ramdaspur, another Mushaar basti, I was surrounded by women and children. One woman, obviously pregnant asked me:
"How much do they pay to get a family planning operation done?"
I have no idea.
"They say they are giving Rs 100/-. But tell me in these times how far will Rs 100 stretch?"
I murmur something.
"But this time I am going to get the operation done."
"Where?"
"In Jaunpur. When I visit my mother's house. I already have two children. When I had my second child, I wanted to get the operation done. But I couldn't. Now I am going to have a third child. This is enough. It is difficult to educate them when you have too many. So I have decided to put a stop to it."

The Mushaar bastis are electricity deprived. None of the households have a television. The nearest tehsil headquarters is miles away. But family planning has reached this remote hamlet, obviously.

In passing, apparently the government used money as a lure to get the operations done. But they have stopped payment now.

(Dis)Orientation program

The UGC requires all lecturers to take an orientation course to be eligible for senior lecturer position. In their wisdom (?) they treat college lecturers on par with the University lecturers/assistant professors. So I, in order to be eligible for senior scale pay, have to attend this course.

Ugh!

And that about sums up the nonsense. It is a month long course. I hope I remain sane at the end of it.

Oh, to attend the course I need the permission of the Dean for there are M.Sc/M.Phil courses to be taught. The Dean gave permission under the condition that I would take the classes in the afternoon.

So I attend the (dis)orientation course from 9-2. Come back. And then start teaching my regular courses.

Help!

Chak De India

The best part of the movie was when the girls bashed up the boys. They asked for it. Whistling at the girls from the North East deserved the punishment they got.
The other thing that interested me was the National Stadium and the facilities provided to our athletes. It is the same old story- taps leaking, unbearable toilets, dark and dingy dorms. Somehow this never changes. Maybe it is patented. After all CPWD has been at it for 150 years. The facilities were non-existent. This stands in stark contrast when they go to Australia to take part in world championship. Does the government want to tell us that it has no money to spend on sports?
It extends beyond sports. Take any primary school. There are four bare walls. There are no desks or chairs. Children squat on the floor. The walls are painted clinical white. There is a blackboard and few chalk pieces. Why can't the walls be painted a more cheerful colour? Why not posters to relieve the tedium? Why not desks and chairs? Why not play items like see-saw in the playground? Why not make the school a fun place?
The teacher's training program does instruct the teachers on the use of teaching aids. But where are the teaching aids?
The funniest part was the government school that we visited. The principal said that the school had a library.
"But the books are for the teachers. There are no books for the children."
Great! So you teach the alphabets. You teach them to string them together to make words, sentences, and lo, they can read a sentence. But when there are no interesting books to read, no story books to lose oneself in, why should a child retain interest in the magical world of reading?

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan-III

Her name was Deepali. And she was in Class II. She went to the government school.
"Do you like going to school?"
A very emphatic shake of the head.
"No."
"Why?"
"Sirji beats me."
Her mother piped up:
"If you do not study, will not Sirji beat you?"
And this was very common across villages. Sirji beats us. But if we do something wrong, it is but right that Sirji beats us.
I do not know whether Sirji beats because these are dalit students or Sirji generally beats because he believes that is how children should be taught.
It was also funny how the children always referred to Sirji. There were no madamji. Male teachers predominate in schools. Aanganwadis, on the other hand, are always run by women.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan-II

At one of the villages, we asked the routine question:
"Are the children enrolled in schools?"
One of the women said:
"They are refusing to admission to my daughter. They are saying that she should be 10 years of age before they admit her."
"In the primary school?"
"Yes. I took her to the school but the principal refuses to admit her. He says she is not old enough. But two years back they admitted her sister."
"Is there an aanganwadi?"
"Yes."
"Then they have absolutely no reason to refuse. You can enroll your child in aanganwadi at the age of 3 and the child will continue in the school till primary education is finished. Even other wise, the principal has no reason to refuse admission. A child who is 6 years old is admitted."
The principal and the assistant teacher both are upper-caste men. They do not want the lower-caste, especially the Mushaar community, in their school.
Every time I visit UP, I stuck afresh by the caste politics. There are layers within layers within layers.
In this case, we finally asked Visvesh Bhai to have a chat with the principal and ensure that the children are admitted to the school.
Even as the government is trying to do its bit, the villagers themselves prefer to send their children to the private school if money is available.
In another village this was so evident. This was an SC community. The children were much neater, wore clean clothes, and were attending private school.
It is completely another matter that neither the government school nor the private school teach much.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan-I

The schools have been renovated. Every primary school in UP wears a fresh coat of white wash, a green band running through the middle indicates that this is a primary school (Red band indicates middle school), and construction activities are frenzied. Each school now has ample classrooms. In the school that we visited there were 8 rooms: 5 classrooms, 1 office, and 1 Aanganwadi. Classrooms are bare; there are no teaching aids, and children sit on the floor. Now, funds have been provided for purchasing desks but only 10 at a time.
On one wall, the mid-day meal scheme is enumerated. The scheme is lavish and provides wholesome nutrition. On Monday the children would be given roti, vegetable, and soybean. On Tuesday they would be provided rice and dal. And so on. If prepared. There are hurdles. The gram panchayat secretary is the signatory. He/she might not be available to sign the documents. He/she has to send the utilization certificate to the government and might not have done it. The grains and money might not have come from the government. So, there are schools where the scheme does not run.
And in schools where the scheme does run, parents complain that the children are provided kichdi every day.
"And it is unpalatable," the women complained.
Only two teachers are appointed per primary school. To compensate Shiksha Mitra have been appointed. It does not matter. Teachers do not teach. They have government duties to do: Pulse polio campaign, election duty, census taking, collecting statistics for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and so on and so forth.

There is a faint breeze of hope

We have been supporting Jeevan Daan Samiti since 2002. Vishvesh Bhai who heads JDS came to the Kaithi meeting and told us how he would start in the morning, bicycle from village to village teaching children.
Today JDS runs 6 non-formal education centers in Ghazipur district. Each center has an enrollment of about 30-35 children per year. All these children belong to an community known as Mushars (Rat-eating). In the hierarchy of castes, these people fall in the outer most section. Even the dalits consider them untouchable.
For the past couple of years, the samiti has been actively encouraging parents to get their children enrolled in the primary schools, whether private or government. It has been an uphill task and continues to be one for the teachers do not like to have these children enrolled into their school. But the organization and the parents have persisted. There has been an increase in enrollment.
For the past couple of years, we have also realized that teaching alphabets is meaningless. Yes, the child can read but where is the reading material? So we sponsored libraries in almost all of our project. Each library has 500 books. Children can either read them at the center or take them home to read.
And all this adds up. Finally.
This year when I asked the children to read a book, they read confidently. They could add, subtract, and do basic math.
The story was repeated in other projects too.
But the most heartening scene was that of uniform-clad children walking to the school in the morning.
For the first time, since 2007, I felt there was a faint breeze of hope.

Something called Fate

I took the Shivganga express for New Delhi-Varanasi-New Delhi trip. As usual I had booked by second class.
Rekha Chauhan, who heads Mahila Swarojgar Samiti, was very concerned about the trip.
"Didi, what will you eat on the train? Should I make you chappatis?"
I told her to relax. I will find something to eat on the train. It was hardly that important. But she worried and worried and then found out that a friend of hers, an ex-MP, was traveling to Delhi by that very train. So she called him up and asked him to organize the meal for me.
"Just two chappatis. Didi does not eat anything else," she told him.
The ex-MP, Dr. Bizay Shastri who is from Kaithi and is with BJP, happened to have high regard for Rekha. The upshot was that I found myself moving from S8 compartment to AC two tier. Apparently, a member of the National executive council, BJP, had booked an entire coupe for himself and his wife. And they gave me one berth. So I ended up listening to the BJP spiel.
In the S8 compartment, I was sharing the seat with a Muslim family. The lady was loaded with jewels. The police came around to check and warn the passengers. Very duly they warned her.
In the S3 compartment, a dacoit was being taken to Delhi under police escort. There were plenty of police and the dacoit was indulging in his favorite past time-gambling.
The BJP party members made comments on it conveniently forgetting that they too had given tickets to many criminals. Ah well.
Just before Kanpur the dacoits stuck. The S8 compartment was the target.
Draw your own conclusions.
The Shivganga express was delayed by 6 hours as it halted in Kanpur for recording the passenger's statements.
All I can do is to thank my guardian angels and Dr. Bizay Shastri.

On Vaccination

There is a debate raging on vaccinations. There are parents who believe that their child became autistic because of vaccinations. And then there are scientists who say that there is no connection between vaccination and autism. While the debate rages on and we wait for the last word to appear on vaccinations, I can only quote Arabella Simpkins. Arabella Simpkins appears in many of William books, and whom the author describes as a red-haired, long-nosed girl, who automatically constituted herself the leader of any group of which she formed part. This particular episode is described in William and the Evacuees.

"I have been 'vacuated", said a small, foursquare child proudly. "It made my arm come up somethin' korful."
"Shut up, Georgie Parker," said Arabella. "It is a diff'rent sort of 'vacuated you have done on your arm. It's to stop you turnin' into a cow you have it done on your arm."
"Thought it was to stop you gettin' chicken pox," said Frankie, wrinkling up his snub nose in perplexity. "Someone told me it was to stop you gettin' chicken pox anyway."
"It is nothin' to do with chickens," snapped Arabella. "It's cows. Everyone what's not 'vacuated on their arms turns into cows. Half the cows you see in fields is people what weren't 'vacuated on their arms."

Two perfect roses

I realized my ambition today when my gardener cut two perfect roses from my terrace garden. I put them into the flower vase along with a vine of money plant and few sprigs of the morpanki (I do not know its English/Latin name but it looks like a peacock tail).

This is what I have longed for all my life. A garden with flowers blossoming. Right now I have a bougainvillea creeper climbing up the water spout. It is full of paper-thin white flowers. The jasmines had a riotous time this summer filling the terrace with their heady smell. And ever since we changed the soil in the pots, the roses have been putting forth one bud after another. I now have two small pots of marigold plantlets. And gongura. I am looking forward to the autumn when the marigolds will bloom.

Of course, before appa comes I will ensure that I have a nice large pot of mint!

This University Life

I was at a DST meeting on Monday, 9th July 2007. The occasion was project proposal defense before the committee.
I love to go to these meetings. Of course there is the chance to hobnob with the big shots in the biological world of India. But more than that, one gets to meet researchers from other Institutes and Universities.
There is a world of difference between these two. The researchers from the Institutes are a confident lot. They have lot of money. Even if they do not write projects they can survive. And the biggest advantage/disadvantage (depending on your view point)is that they do not have to do any teaching.
The researchers from the Universities are not only over-burdened with teaching but are also anxious for grants. They beg that their consumable money should not be cut as they have no other source for funding.
There was a woman from Lucknow this time. This is her story.
Her name is Dr. Shikha. She is at a newly-established Central University, located on the Lucknow-RaeBarielly Road, near Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute (more about this wonderful hospital later some time).
Dr. Shikha is one of the 6 woman faculty at the University. She is the only woman faculty in her department. She did her PhD from a University at Faizabad and joined this University two years back.
The finance officer who, as in all places, holds all the power has ensured that even chemicals required by the researchers should be purchased by calling for tender. So even if she has to buy common salt, NaCl, a tender has to be floated, three quotations have to be examined, the lowest quotation determined, and then it will be purchased. It is a different matter that the officer has not even paid Shikha her emoluments for extra administration duties she has undertaken for the university.
There is only one refrigerator that is non-functional. There is no other cold storage facility including -20oC and -80oC available. The internet connection has also been non-functional for past one and half years.
Despite all these setbacks Shikha wants to do research. Her project might not be the cutting edge research but it is something that she has thought through, and has ensured will be feasible in the limited conditions that is available to her.
We pump so much money into Institutes whereas our Universities languish. Yet it is the Universities that generates batches and batches of science graduates.
The Prime Minister has promised to establish 30 New Universities. What about the old ones?
Our advice to Shikha was to file a RTI and collaborate with researchers in other Universities who would allow her to buy consumables, circumventing the finance officer of her University.

Kalimpong and Sikkim

I went to Kalimpong because of Department of Science and Technology. I have a grant from them and it was time to make a presentation to the expert committee explaining the work done in the past three years.

When we reached Kalimpong we realized that Gangtok was only 21/2 hours away. Fortunately the expert committee (they wanted to visit the Indo-China border) cooperated. The review meeting was done away with in one day and the next day the entire lot of us disappeared for sight-seeing.

There were four of us for the Sikkim trip: Neelima Alam (who is now with DST), Prabhavati (from Delhi University and with whom I shared the hotel room), Tara (who is a student in Gourinath's lab and who had come with Neelima to Kalimpong), and I.

Rongpo is the border town between West Bengal and Sikkim. The West Bengal half is poverty-stricken while the Sikkim half is sleek and prosperous. Tourist taxis from other states are not allowed inside Sikkim. So at Raniphool, about few kilometers away from Gangtok, we changed taxis. The driver and our idea of sight-seeing did not mesh, lending a sour tone to the trip.

Gangtok was shrouded in mist. I was looking for Sikkim cheese (Alok had given me money to buy cheese for him) but the taxi driver was most clueless about cheese or indeed any shopping stuff in Gangtok. As it was getting late, we headed for Rumtek Monastery. Fortunately, the mist lifted by the time we reached Rumtek, which was simply breathtaking.

The photos can be accessed here.

A word about the Royal Family photograph. This the group photo of the Royal family (Tashi Namgyal was the King) of Sikkim taken some time in early 1900s. The photograph was hung in the dining room/bar of Hotel Gompus, Kalimpong. We were amused by the photo because we simply could not figure out who the King was as they all looked extremely young.

The DST, by the way, still owes me the ticket fare to Kalimpong.

State Bank Of India

Apparently it works, sometimes.

I paid my telephone bill by cheque. Very carefully on the back of the cheque I wrote down the bill number, the customer account number, and my telephone number. And forgot to put the account number on the cheque (it is another story of how SBI, JNU branch gives us cheque books without the account number stamped on each cheque). Today at lunch hour SBI called me:
"Can you please come and write down your account number on the cheque?"
I asked whether after lunch would do?
"Please come as soon as possible. We need to clear the cheque today itself."

No wonder it poured and poured as I made my way to SBI. What has happened to the rude officials? And since when did they make it a point to clear the cheque on the day they receive it?

Relay Hunger Strike

I had decided early on that I would not post anything concerned with the University. But I have brooding on this issue for a long time. So here it goes:

The students are on strike because the administration rusticated 11 students.

It all started simply enough. The construction workers were paid much below their minimum wage. The University is responsible to see that the construction workers are paid their dues and that they have proper accommodation. However, no one ever follows the law. The University will pass the buck to the contractor and the contractor will point out that it is the University's responsibility.

In February tension ran high. The staff was also on strike as they had some demands. The workers from the electricity (or was it engineering?) department had been on strike for quite a long time. The students joined in.

And things got out of hand. The students gheraoed the registrar's car and refused to let him come out. For seven hours they held him prisoner.

Retribution was swift. The students apologized but it was too late. Late because the students had restored to closing all the gates of the University for several hours at least three times in the past year. There were other instances too. Taken all together, the administration proceeded with its inquiry into the matter.

The students predictably are demanding that there should be no punishment for their acts and that the administration is against their demands for the construction workers. There might or might not be truth in that matter. But what the students forget is that gheraoing a person and keeping him/her confined in a car is human rights violation. What if the person had suffered a panic attack? Or was diabetic? Who would have taken the responsibility?

Which really brings me to biggest grouse I have. Everyone demands their rights. But no one ever talks about their duties or responsibilities. Don't all these go hand in hand?

Paronychia

Nail infection around the base of the nail fold. That is what happened to me on Sunday. It started suddenly around Sunday afternoon. I ignored it for few hours believing that by ignoring it will go off. But the pain persisted and by the evening pus had begun to form. This morning the pain was intolerable so I went to the Health Center on the campus. The doctor wrote the prescription. Antibiotics and painkiller for two days. And:
"The pus will dry off. If it does not you will have to get it drained. I will refer you to Safdarjung hospital or AIIMS OPD."
"Should I wait for two days?"
"The pus will dry off. If it does not you will have to get it drained."
"When should I go to the hospital?"
"The pus will dry off. If it does not you will have to get it drained."
I gave up. The health center will not sell medicines to the faculty. So I waited for the chemist to open the shop.
The antibiotic and the painkiller had no effect. By afternoon it was a throbbing pulsating pain as the pus accumulated and pushed against the nail fold. The pain was so unbearable that I thought I would simply faint.
So I went to my doctor who is an ENT specialist and who has a clinic in Munirka. He incised and took out the pus.
Why does the Health Center have to refer even a simple matter like this to SJ or AIIMS? Surely we can provide a better health service to the community living on campus?

Rivers on the way

The Delhi-Madras trip that Amma insisted on making every year while I was growing up was made bearable by the train journey. There were the Chambal ravines to be crossed, then the Vindhyas, the tunnels, at the Nagpur station would by my athai and athaimber with lunch, and then down into the south. But the most thrilling part was crossing the rivers. Chambal, Betwa, Narmada, Godavari, and Krishna.

Even today when I take the train, I wait for the rivers to appear. But the rivers are no longer the same! In fact after my recent trips I have decided not to look at the rivers in the city.

Yamuna, at Delhi, is just a sewage canal.

I waited eagerly for Teesta near Siliguri. But both the Teesta and Mahananda were a big disappointment. I had to wait till we entered the mountains to see the beauty of Teesta. And then followed it all the way to Sikkim, pausing on the way to see the merger of Rangeet with Teesta. The photos are yet to be scanned.

From Kalimpong, I came down to Chennai for a two week holiday. The parents, Ganesa Mama, Meena Mami, and I went to Munnar for three days. The photos can be accessed here.
On the way back we stopped at Madurai because I do not remember being there. Vaigai was a huge let down.There was no water and there were the usual slums lining the river bank. It reminded me of Krishna just outside Vijaywada.

Godavari was just a dried bed. And since we crossed Chambal and Betul in the night, I could not make out how the rivers were.

But I got a reprieve. Just outside Budni flowed Narmada. Majestic.

Of chick-lits and other books

This past month I had the misfortune of reading the most horrible books. Let me start with Chick-lits.

Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones Diary set the trend of Chick-Lits. Bridget Jones Diary is hilarious, even though it is a cleverly wrapped up Mills and Boons complete with the Tall Dark Handsome Hero in the form of Mark Darcy (so neatly she adapted the hero of Pride and Prejudice). So now there are authors and authors out there who seem to think that one ditzy heroine makes a novel. And my only source of books, the British Council Library, is flooded with them. Ugh! They are horrible; the writing is childish, and the plots non-existent. In fact, BCL might as well get Mills and Boons. At least the plot finishes in 150 pages, just enough to read it one sitting, instead of running on and on and on and on...

Then there was Phillipa Gregory's The Constant Princess. I loved Phillipa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl, which told the history of Anne Boleyn and Henry the VIII. The book told the story from the view point of Mary Boleyn who was mistress of Henry the VIII before he married Anne Boleyn. Even though the book painted Mary as an angel and Anne as the wicked witch of the west, it was interesting as each character was neatly fleshed out, the language was beautiful, and the plot was well-developed. In The Constant Princess, Phillipa Gregory talks about Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII first wife. Katherine was married to Henry's brother who unfortunately died within months of marriage. This entire part was just another Mills and Boons replete with horrible language and no imagination. The rest of it was implausible including the lie that Katherine tells Henry regarding whether her first marriage was consummated or not. And worse of all, the image of Katherine that Phillipa paints in this book is at total variance with the image of Katherine in The Other Boleyn Girl. She should have at least got that straight.

Okay, I will admit that Phillipa Gregory is no great shakes as an author. I had such high hopes from Alice Walker. Her Color Purple was a wonderful novel. But Now is the time to Open your Heart was filled with cliches and implausible characters. There was all this talk about mysticism, about shamans and medicine men from South America, and yoga from India, and all other forms of whatever you want to call it. The heroine has achieved everything and had numerous lovers and she is searching for peace. And she is supposed to find it in the jungles of South America. After all America, the White America, especially is bad and materialistic. Ugh!

I fell back on my stock PG Wodehouse and was delighted to find finally a reference to the brainlessness of the peacock. In the saga of Florence Craye and Bertie Wooster, Florence tells Bertie that he has the brains of a peahen. Of course Florence was mistaken. As everyone knows the Peahen has intelligent. It is the peacock, given to screeching its raucous call at 3am in the morning, that is brainless.

Oh, the one other book that was truly wonderful was Nelson's Daughter by Miranda Hearn. This is the story of Nelson's illegitimate daughter, Horatia, and it was a beautiful tale.

I wish I had read The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai especially as I am journeying to Kalimpong. But maybe once I get back...

Meantime, I have Mrignayani with me. Long time back when Doordarshan used to put up wonderful serials (including Fauji which introduced Shah Rukh Khan), Mrignayani was telecast. It had Pallavi Joshi in the lead and I have wanted to read the book ever since. And lo, I found it at the railway station.

On the backs of the trucks

I love to read the pithy sayings on the backs of the trucks. There is the ubiquitous Hello, Ok TATA, Bye-bye. And Horn Please.

But there are some who display their shayari.

Bala ka husn hai, ghazab ki beauty hai
hasino par marna to Raj ki duty hai.

And beneath were the immortal, wise words:

No girl friends No Tenstion(sic)


And then there was the truck with:

Chalti hai Gaadi, udati hai dhool
Jalte hain dushman, khilte hain phool.

And finally, there was the truck I saw today with:

OWNER IS GOD.

The interpretation is up to you.

The Hippocratic oath

This has been a stressful week for Anupama, my M.Sc. student. Anupama's father was admitted to the hospital this weekend when he complained of severe pain. He has a history of heart problem, with first angioplasty done 10 year back when he was only 40. He also has diabetes. And stones in the gall bladder.
When he complained of pain, the family rushed him to the nearest private hospital- Balaji Hospitals. The hospital staff demanded money even before they would admit him. After Rs 12,000 was paid in cash, they did an angiogram and diagnosed two blocks-both 100%. However, they concluded that he did not have a heart attack. The pain he was experiencing was due to the gall bladder. They wanted to do a ballooning. Anupama fought with them. With high sugar level and 100% block, she argued that ballooning was not the procedure to be followed. The doctors discharged her father saying it was on her head.
They then brought him to AIIMS- the premier referral hospital. But at AIIMS they refused to admit him. He was kept in the Emergency room (a most horrible place, believe me) and told no room was available. Of course. You need to know someone at AIIMS to get room. We had enough experience with the system when another student of mine, Junaid, had an accident last year and broke his girdle bone.
So they took him back home and searched for a connection.
Meanwhile the pain increased and they rushed him to Escorts Hospital this time, where a sister-in-law of Anupama works.
The doctors decided to do angioplasty and yesterday they wheeled him into the operation theatre. There after the doctors opened the heart they discovered that there was a 50% block at a place where two arteries join. Either the doctors at Balaji did not notice this block or they completely misdiagnosed the case.
Her father is in the recovery room as I write. He will be undergoing a bypass tomorrow. And two months after this will come the gall bladder surgery.
Anupama is furious. She plans to take the case to Consumer courts. But her main worry now are the finances and blood donation. The entire stay and operation will cost Rs 3 lakhs. For a middle-class family this is a huge sum of money to cough out at a moment's notice. The bank, where her father works, will not pay this amount of money especially since they have gone to a private instead of government hospital.
The blood banks are not to be trusted so she is asking her friends to give blood for her father.
I wonder. We talk so much about medical tourism. Shouldn't health care-affordable health care- to our citizens be the main concern?
Our doctors are supposed to take the Hippocratic oath.
What does it really mean?

M.S. University, Baroda

The past weekend I in Baroda. The Paschim express was late by about 3 hours, which is nothing as compared to the Ahmedabad-Madras Navjivan Express. Its scheduled hour of arrival was 5 pm but it very rarely made it at the correct time. The Jalgaon-Surat was a single track and the trains were invariably late. Once when I took the train it arrived in Baroda at midnight long after the hostel gates were closed. A kind fellow passenger took me home and I made my way back to the hostel in the morning.

It is always a pleasure to get back to Baroda. Even though close to 17 years have passed since I left Baroda, nothing much has changed. Stepping out of the train, I could see the STD/ISD booth from where we (Ritu, Vidya, and I) made phone calls to home. Ritu and Vidya would always accompany me. Not because they too wanted to call home but because they were the ones who remembered my home phone number. They also would check the address on every letter I wrote ensuring the address as well as the country was written clearly and legibly.

The gate which we often climbed over after the curfew hours is still there though it is little bit dented and does not look as imposing as it did when we broke the rules.

The Hotel Kalyan where we gorged on the club sandwiches and the Dairy Den which we frequented for its lovely ice-creams are still there. As is the large bus stands minus buses (somehow Baroda never went in for public transport) and the medical store where we purchased our medicines.

The Kamati Bagh, opposite the girls hostel, is as lovely as before. We girls spent quite a lot of time there.

The department has run down quite a lot though. Lack of funds is one of the major reason. But the entire faculty is still there. And it was very disconcerting to realize that there were few of them who saw through our demure facade.

Prof. Ali Baquer

Prof. Baquer died on Saturday.

I first heard about Prof. Baquer through Sneha, who told me that I should meet him as he is an interesting character.

Almost a year passed before I met Prof. Baquer, even though he lived on the campus. The occasion was a site visit to Concerned Action Now(CAN), an organization founded by Prof. Baquer. CAN runs vocational training program for disabled children and they wanted to start a non-formal education center for children in one of the nearby slum. For this they wanted funds. I was more entranced by their vocational training program and convinced them to submit a proposal to us. Alas, that proposal has been languishing for the past two years. This year finally after much prodding from Sabita and others, Asha-SV became interested in it. But it was simply too late.

Prof. Baquer was an advocate of equal opportunities for the disabled. He pushed for legislations, his organization helped the disabled living in the slums access the government schemes, he wrote books, and he ran CAN. For a person who had two by-pass surgeries, who had a complete organ failure last year and who clawed his way back to life, who had a minor heart attack again late last year, he was full of energy and enthusiasm. Every holiday, be it Id, Holi, Diwali, or New Year, he would send us a card or an e-mail.

And every email correspondence I had with him over CAN, he would never fail to remind me of Ghalib's gazal:

Hum ney maana ke taghaful na karogey lekin
Khak ho jaein gey hum tum ko khabad honey tak

(I accept that you will not be indifferent to my needs but I may mingle with dust by the time you react)

I had hoped it might not be true but fate had something else planned apparently...

global warming and us

This being the second straight day without AC and internet connection (it comes and goes) I have been forced to do some soul-searching. The internet connection in the school has been intermittent for the past one month. No explanation has been forthcoming. The AC has stopped working. They tell me it is the phase but since the entire school is without it I am wondering which phase. No explanation has been deemed necessary. So I searched and found one- Global warming. After all, the newspapers are full of global warming and the harmful effects of the greenhouse gas. And we have decided to do what we can to curb global warming. So no AC. No Internet.

I told my students that at this rate we might as well shut shop and go home. Pravin, my student, pointed out:
"There is no electricity at home either Ma'am."

He lives outside the campus. I assumed he meant that. But no. He was talking about his small village in Samastipur district. Electricity is available there for couple of hours.

Sometimes I need to be thankful for small mercies. At least there is electricity here. The fan feebly sends in some air. For now. Touch wood.

Dance implies grace

Long time back when I was post-docing, I had a lab mate, MK. MK and I used to have long discussions on all topics and of course, we also had the solutions to all the problems. One of the solutions we proposed was Parental Aptitude Test before a person can become a parent.

I was reminded of the parental aptitude test as I watched Ilakiya's dance performance yesterday at the Tamil Sangam under the aegis of Delhi Karnataka Sangeetha Sabha. And wished I could tell the poor kid (they gave her official age as 11) to stop dancing and do something else. The child was physically unfit and grace was a concept alien to her. Araimandi means just that- half-sitting position. You cannot dance standing. And jathis does not imply you stomp on the ground.

But of course her parents, being wealthy and well-connected this was probably a sponsored program whereby the parents purchased a slot for their child to perform.

A child is just a child. Why can't they let her grow normally? Somewhere down the line she is going to be ready for an arangetram and maybe would like to perform dance. Or may be not. Either way it is fine, if only the parents could understand it.

The saving grace was the choreography and the music. The program started with Pusphanjali and alarippu. A jathiswaram in Vasantha and then Varnam in Khamas. This is my favorite- Mathe Malayadwaja by Muthiah Bhagvathar. And as time was running short they concluded with Valli Kannavin, again a very nice dance song. They fortunately spared us the Thillana.

The dance was followed by Nityasree's concert.

Amma and DNA

Last week I sent some DNA to Joel, my PhD advisor and now my collaborator. Amma was curious. How does the DNA look? I told her that we had dried down the DNA and it cannot be seen. Then what will Joel do with it? He will dissolve it in water and give it to bacteria. The bacteria will make more of the DNA, then we will make protein, and use that protein to synthesize our inhibitor. She nodded her head. Ever since then she has been curious to know whether Joel resuspended the DNA in water. Yesterday night when I came back from my walk she had gone off to sleep. Appa was awake and I was telling him how Joel had sent me some reagents and we are now almost on to the track to determine to function of the protein that I work with. Amma heard the word Joel and woke up immediately. Has Joel dissolved the DNA in water, she asked? She was most disappointed to know that Joel still has not done it.

As amma gets ready to go back to her beloved Madras and the serials, more than me, it is the rest of the gang who are going to miss her. My gardener who brings in big bunches of curry leaves for mataji, Ravi who does the ironing, and Lata and her husband who do the cooking and the cleaning. In fact Lata misses her the most as amma keeps everything ready for her, all the vegetables chopped and washed, the stove neatly wiped, and almost no utensils in the kitchen sink. And then she and Lata enjoy a cozy gossip session and every thing is hunky dory. After amma leaves, Lata has to come to an empty house as I am never there when she comes to do the house.

Amma shares one trait with my students. They never tell me when they are going to get back. Usually when my students go off home, they give me a probable date of return. I wait for a week or two then ask the rest of the students for the correct date of return. With amma, I ask Lata as to when her mataji will be back in Delhi. Invariably she knows to the dot when amma will be back in Delhi.

The reservation mess

With the supreme court refusing to vacate the stay and the HRD minister on his ego trip, I wonder what is going to happen to the admissions this year.

In one of his lectures, Pratap Bhanu Mehta asked the question: What is the motive behind the reservation? What does the government hope to achieve?

The politicians are fond of saying that we are a secular nation. Then why do all sundry forms ask you to state your religion?

Even more horrendous is what we found out in an informal survey of government schools. Every classroom, at least in Uttaranchal and Chattisgarh, has to put up the number of boys and girls enrolled in that class. Then they have to put up the number of students who belong to the general category and to the SC/ST. In the attendance register, in Chattisgarh, against every child is written the information whether they belong to the reserved category or not. As the government has announced special sops to the children belonging to the SC/ST, these children are given books and other aids. Naturally, the children who do not get it want to know why this special treatment. And then they console themselves:

"Yeh chamaran hai na."

So what we essentially have done through our misguided policies is to accentuate the caste lines. They exist as I found out in another separate incident that I will relate some other time. But there is no need to emphasize it or teach our children about it in the schools.

This does not happen in schools only. When our admission lists are put up in our departments, against each student is indicated whether they belong to general category or to reserved category. Now why do I need to know whether my students belong to certain section or not? I am a teacher and my job is to teach, irrespective of which section the student belongs to. What this does is that the faculties get biased against the students and there is deep resentment against them.

At Asha-Delhi we are wondering whether we can use the Right To Information/PIL to fight this nonsense.

A rose by any other name...

The family cackles every time my students call me Ma'am. They find it extremely amusing.
When I joined in as faculty, I told the students that they can call me by my name. They nodded their heads very obediently and said "Yes Ma'am." Lacking forcefulness like my neighbor, Rohan who bulldozed his students into not calling him Sir, I meekly submitted to my students diktats. It was an uneasy relationship till...

Ritu and I met on the first day of college. She lives in Ghaziabad and has two daughters. Diya is now in 2nd class and Tanu has turned three. Tanu and I met for the first time on the eve of Holi. She gazed at me uncertain as to who I am. Tentatively, pulling my kurta, she said "Aunty."
Diya immediately piped up: "Yeh Aunty thodi hai. Yeh to Maasi hai."

And there I rest my case.

Happy Birthday Tanu.

language woes

What do they teach in school nowadays?

I am reading project reports and wishing I was not. If the student is from rural background and English was not taught to them, I can understand and be patient about the mistakes. But the students whose reports I am reading are from the so-called elite public schools, which pride themselves on teaching English, French, German, whatever. These kids openly admit that they do not know any of the Indian languages and then they turn in assignments/reports in badly written English, with SMS language sprinkled in liberally. I now routinely ask the students not to use SMS language and abbreviations while answering my questions in the exam.

One of the students has turned in a report where the introduction was simply cut and paste from various web sites. a) I wish to let the students know that I too can google b) Wikipedia and other web sites are not acceptable references c) If you do want to cut and paste, at least ensure that the report is readable. Simply cutting and pasting information that you like does not constitute a report or thesis or whatever you want to call it.

Grrrrr!

Occupational hazard

As the semester/academic year draws to a close, universities start scrounging around for gullible faculty who will not only set the question paper but also evaluate them. It is an occupational hazard. Some times it is unavoidable especially when your alma mater approaches you. But some are downright nusiansical. Like the private university that sent many of us a large packet with a letter stating that the VC of their university has been pleased to appoint us on the panel to set question papers. The best part was that I was supposed to set questions for Botany, a subject I haven't studied after the 12th board exams, as they had figured out that I was an expert in it. I promptly put the whole thing in an envelope, wrote a regret letter and asked my technician to send it off at the department's expense. He was very worried. Should I send it by registered post, he asked. I don't care. Just send it off. He took the decision. Knowing his madamji has no clue about life, he decided to send it by registered post.

But the best response to this idiotic packet came from my colleague, Shyamal. He says he always takes such packets and puts them in the dustbin unopened. Next time maybe that is what I should do.

Poor amma is beginning to feel the heat of Delhi. She is longing for the salubrious climate, as appa calls it, of Madras. A dose of TV soaps would also help.

What is in a title?

Yesterday night, around 10pm, my friend called up to discuss whether a Ph.D. can use Dr. or a MBBS can use Dr. I blinked, my attitude being what do I care?

This morning, piqued, I checked the dictionaries. So here we go into the origin and the usage of the word Doctor.

The Oxford and Webster dictionaries describe it as a noun describing a medical doctor or a person who has obtained Ph.D., the highest degree that a university offers.

The Merriam-Webster degree further provides the etymology of the word as Teacher from Middle English Doctour.

My students love to use Wikipedia, believing it to be more complete and comprehensive than any research papers. So I turned to it to see what I can come up about the usage. It provided the origin and usage of the word Doctor. Apparently there is also Biology wiki called Biocrawler, hmmm, wonder if the students have discovered it? Anyway, the site provides the answer to my friend's question. The usage differs between US and UK. In US, the M.D. degree is considered as first-professionals and therefore, are allowed to prefix their name with Dr. In UK, only those with Ph.D. can do so.

Of course none of our beloved politicians and cine stars who have been conferred the honorary doctorate can prefix their names with Dr. Remarkably both US and UK are agreed on that.

But my favorite is what I discovered when long time back we were living in Lucknow. One of our neighbours had a name plate in front of their house. It was written Er. X. I was puzzled by Er. The dictionaries describe it as an abbreviation either for Emergency Room or for Erybium. They missed the third. Er in this case was an abbreviation for Engineer!

Manga madness

When anyone asks me what we do for a particular festival, I am always at a loss. To me festivals are associated with food. Each festival has its specialty. Okkarai and Inji lehyam for Deepavali, Thiruvadurai sees amma making Kalli-kozhumbu, Janamashtami results in seedai, and so on...

Today is Varsha Pirappu/Tamil Puttandu/Tamil New Year. And to me it is associated with the best of all- Manga Pachadi. Amma boils raw unripe mango slices with turmeric, salt, jaggery and gives it a tadka of red chillies and neem flowers. It is supposed to symbolize the coming year- sourness of mango, sweetness of jaggery, bitterness of neem flowers, the hot and the salty- all in balance. To me it is simply ambrosia. I wait for the entire year just to have this.

No lab meeting today as Sneha, my collaborator, is celebrating Vishu. Mac, my student, is happy. He does not have to do his journal presentation.

Happy New Year!

Nature abhors vacuum

Nature abhors vacuum. Since I got relieved off the teaching loading, other things have rushed in.

The audit date looms large in horizon. Thanks to my laziness and incompetency of my lab technician (who believes that I, being a woman and so much younger than him, do not know any thing), the finances are in a mess. I am chasing missing copies of bills, ensuring that everything including chemicals purchased are entered into stock register, permissions granting the purchase, and the least quotation are in place . I do not know why they make a fuss because the ones who want to cheat the system still do it. The other day a vendor told my colleague that a particular equipment costs Rs 1 lakh if purchased from abroad. However, if she so desires, he can get it made locally for Rs 10,000.
"Madam, you pay me Rs 1 lakh from your grant and I will pay back Rs 90,000 as a cheque in your name."
See, how easy it is to siphon off money from grants into your personal expenses!

So we spend our time calling for quotations, figuring out the lowest quotation (L1), doing all sorts of paper work because the agencies are worried that we will siphon off money. I could have easily spent all this time working on my experiments!

And the prime minister worries that the quality of research is declining in India!

Semester ends

I am done with classes for this semester. All that is left are the student presentations and the final exams. Woo Hoo!

I should not complain. This semester was very relaxed. All I had was one class per week. Last year was tough. I started with full load of Biochemistry. I was also on GSCASH and had to deal with a horrible case of sexual harassment. Then in the monsoon semester I had the full load of Human Genetics with dashes of Genetics as seasoning.

Now that was a googly that life threw at me. Who had the brilliant idea of putting me up for Genetics? With chemistry and biochemistry as background, genetics was always a horror for me. Yes, I know it has game theory and lots of mathematics but I have always made it my life's mission to avoid anything remotely resembling maths.

The M.Sc. and M.Phil courses are being revamped (old wine in new bottle) and I have been offered partial redemption. I need not do Genetics. Which means I can participate in a M.Phil course work and teach chromatin remodeling. Sensible subject with no game theory in it.

The PRO had a chat with the Rector. The bottom line is that I continue with the News, Annual report, and other idiotic committees.

Dessert course: Butterscotch ice-cream. Amma is happy.

Recording is a serious business

Appa loves to record. I remember him sitting up late, past his usual bedtime of 9 pm, to record the All India Radio classical music broadcasts on Saturdays. Next day morning we would wake up to the new recording played on our spool recorder. However, appa also loves to erase and re-record. As he also dislikes to write down what he has recorded, none of us know what each cassette/spool tape holds.

My brother loves to classify. He is meticulous and orderly, his collections are all neatly labeled and alphabetically organized.

After much protest, appa agreed to certain changes. Each cassette that he records will have only two artists at a given time. Occasionally, he slips. As he discovered today.

Side A:
One song by R. K. Srikantan
One song by Maharajapuram Santhanam.
An announcement about the Afro-asian games. This gives us the clue that the recording was done some time in 2004-2005, when I was living in Bangalore.
One song by Sheik Chinna Moulana
Two violin pieces-unknown artist

Side B:
Vocal.
Sowmya
Unnikrishnan
Balamurali Krishna
Nityashree


Occasionally, I too can classify. On the cassette, I have written "Recorded. Different Artists".

Recording, as I said, is a serious business. Classification is even more.

Child labor

Jharna Jhaveri's short documentary Maya Nagri raises some very valid questions about the way our government approaches a problem. Maya Nagri is a short 20 minute documentary featuring the zari workers of Sarai Kale Khan. When the movie begins, the children have been "arrested" and are about to be taken to the police station. Apparently under the child labor law that the government has passed both the employee and the employer are criminals. So the children , mostly from Bihar, are rounded up and taken to the police station. Their names and ages (which most of the children had no clue about) are noted down. They are produced before magistrate and finally parceled off home. Nowhere did the procedure pay attention to:
1) why do the children come to Delhi?
2) If we send them back, will it resolve the problem.

My favorite moment was when the police and the locals deny the existence of these units.

On a completely unrelated note, amma who is visiting me for two months is all charged up. She got up at 4 am today ready to make masala dosa. Appa says that at this rate lunch will be ready before breakfast.