Dilli badnam hui...

That is what the CNN-IBN is happily saying:
Dilli badnam hui darling tere liye.

I thought the height of absurd statements was Lalit Bhanot's sage pronouncement:
"The standards of our hygiene is different from theirs."

One of the most enduring memories of my hostel days is the dark and dank and smelly toilet. I simply do not know how I managed the two years at Baroda but it was terrible.  Toilets, for me, have to be clean and airy and light.  But Indian toilets are generally afterthought...something we need but prefer to push it out of sight.  Of course cleaning toilets is anathema to us. Forget what Gandhi said or did, it is simply not done because we, you see, do not clean toilets. There  are special people to do so. One of my acquaintances once said to me that he does not clean toilets and he did not see what was big deal for Infosys Chief and his wife to highlight this aspect of their life. I was little stunned. I was about to ask as to who cleans up the toilets in his house but I bit my tongue in time.

When I moved into my current residence, which by the way is currently dripping water thanks to the incessant rains and 150 years of excellent work by CPWD, the toilet was a sight to be seen. The first thing I did was to get a bottle of Harpic and scrub the toilet till it was usable.  Why do we do such things?

The toilets in our School are no better.  I finally had to post a stinker of a note before the girls started behaving themselves. Even now we keep the Western toilet locked up because we figured that many girls do not know how to use it.

There is no question of their hygiene and our hygiene. Simply put-toilets have to be clean. It is good sanitation and key to prevent health problems. The sooner Lalit Bhanot understands this point the better.

Meantime, Dilli badnaam hui darling tere liye.

I think I am going to enjoy the CWG.

A tale of two songs.

Two songs have been composed for the Commonwealth Games. One is by Palash Sen who has a group called Euphoria.  The other is by A.R. Rahman.  Therein lies the tale.

The song by Palash Sen is fantastic. The lyrics evoke the old time Delhi- you know the sepia tinted photographs of an era long gone by. Of course Palash Sen is very much a Delhite. He grew up in Delhi and he lives in Delhi and the passion for his city is reflected in the song. We can argue endlessly whether Delhi as a city is worth being passionate about but as someone who grew up in Delhi I remember a Delhi that is every different from the one it is today.  Listening to the Delhi theme song, it is that old time Delhi, the laid-back city, the one with wide tree-lined avenues, the one of lazy winter afternoons flashes through the mind.

I listened to A.R.Rahman's song too and I think the major problem is the language. Palash Sen has very wisely stuck to Hindi.  It is different matter whether Hindi is the language of our country or not. But the fact is that the ethos, the passion is usually reflected only one's native tongue.  A. R. Rahman's song is a kichdi. It is a wannabe and unfortunately it remains a wannabe. The music content of many of Rahman's song takes multiple listening before it grows on to you. So I am keeping an open mind. Maybe I will like the music after multiple listenings.   But what do we do with the lyric. Nonsense lyrics like Take it Easy policy is okay for a movie. However, when you expand it to something like Commonwealth Games it is stupid. 

A.R. Rahman had said that he would do one better than Waka Waka, the theme song of World Cup. We will leave it for history to judge it.  Personally, I prefer Waka Waka.

In today's Delhi Times Geeta Chandran has aptly summed up the problem with the theme music. And she concludes by reminding the readers of the Asiad theme song which was set to music by Ravi Shankar and sung by Amitabh Bacchan. The point to remember is that the music as well as lyric were so simple that all of us hummed.  

As a last point I do not know how much Palash Sen was paid but definitely Rs 5 crore that was paid to Rahman for a theme song is obscene especially when there was flash flood in Ladakh and parts of Bihar are reeling under drought.

Refreshed

Finally the refresher course is over. There was a fracas. One of the persons who came to give a talk decided to tell us that he was an expert in Helicases. These are proteins that unwind DNA during replication, transcription etc.  I have no problems in someone declaring that they are experts as long as they are willing to substantiate that claim. To be fair, I think he thought he would be safe in making that declaration because the refresher courses are generally for college teachers and as they do not do research he decided he could get away with the proclamation. Unfortunately, I was there in the audience and once he pompously announced that we should keep quiet during the lecture as it was a difficult topic he was explaining, I decided to have some fun. I asked a very legitimate question and he was furious. Then my colleague with whom I collaborate for doing biophysical studies decided to ask a question which he could not answer. He boiled with rage when I prompted him by taking names of the scientists who done the work and therefore, if he is an expert, he should immediately recall. That cooked my goose.  The next opportunity he got he went for me with all guns blazing. The end result was that I happily walked out of the class and he ranted that we were all stupid. Which got another of my colleague riled up and there was a lovely fracas. Hopefully, we will not ever get him to give another talk.

Take home lesson:  Never take your audience for granted.

"Common Wealth" Games

I do not know why there is so much fuss about all the corruption. After all it is Common Wealth, so every one is helping themselves to it.

Bachi Karkaria as usual nails it down in her column.

The CPWD with its 160 years of experience has created world class facility. Where in the world will you have stadium with leaking roofs?  Where else can you find seepages in brand new constructions?

Of course the roads caved in. It is part of the monsoon charm. The month of Sawan...

Two days back we had a 11 hour power cut. The Government is ensuring that we become acclimatized to the long power cuts because that is the only way they can provide power during the games.

Meantime, I am spending time getting refreshed yet again. The University refuses to believe that having projects and papers are sufficient proof that I am constantly updating myself. Most of the lectures are terrible so we sit in back giggling and making comments. It helps in passing the time.

Decision making-whom to accept as PhD student

This year there was a deluge of applications to join my lab.  There were applications even before our interview processes took place and of course after the candidates were selected, all of them made a beeline to my lab. Chromatin remodeling is the latest buzzword. While I can preen myself on it, it also made life difficult for me. How do I select a candidate?

The first thing is that I do not look at resumes. It does not tell me anything. Given the Indian University context, it tells me how good a student is at memorizing stuff. Beyond it I do not get any information about the student. Is she/he creative? What do they like to do? What is it that they find fascinating?

I took recourse in the way interviews are done abroad. Where the faculty and the student essentially chat. All my interactions were one-to-one. As I told the student about the work we were doing I was looking for responses. Is the student curious? Do they find a phenomenon interesting? How do they react to unusual data?

I interacted with 20 students in all. I found 2 who were very interesting and keen. It was a pleasure to interact with them. 2 were responsive but not curious. The rest were not curious.

All the students were asked to interact with my lab. The feedback I got back from my students was then matched with what I had observed in my interviews.

Unanimously we have narrowed down on one student. I do have back-up names but I know whom I want to have in my lab.

I have not yet announced my decision. Funnily none of the 4 students are toppers in any sense. They are good but they are not the kinds who have won awards. They have not even topped our merit list.  But as I said in the beginning, resumes in India are meaningless till we stop evaluating students based on what they have memorized.

New Web Page

Finally, I pulled myself together and created a new web page. Or at least I put the material together and Ritu Nidhi from CIS created the web page.  There are some glitches that need to be taken care off. But for the present there is a web page that provides information about my laboratory. It can be accessed here:
http://www.jnu.ac.in/Faculty/rohini/

Monsoons and Commonwealth Games

My gardener, Nanku Ram, was extremely upset this morning. Yesterday's downpour has wreaked havoc in his home. Water entered the house and everything, from atta to bed, was soaked. His children were pulled out by a neighbour as they tried to wade through waist high water. The family finally had dinner late in the night that they purchased from outside because there was nothing to cook.
Nanku Ram lives in Munirka.  Of late, Munirka has been receiving attention in the form of flyovers. They have been built one after another on the outer ring road to ease traffic problems. Of course, small unimportant things like proper drainage for the rain water has been forgotten. As well as subways/footbridge for the pedestrians. The pedestrians do not exist and it is the houseowner's problem to make sure that their house is built in such a way that the water does not enter in during rains.
Munirka does not have bus shelters either despite a plethora of buses plying on the route. On the other hand, GK-I where no bus plys has two bus shelters. Go figure!
Delhi is a chaos.  The Chief Minister has made a comment today that Delhi is appearing dirty because all the construction activity is going on simultaneously.  What can one say? This is the CM who also said that she was unaware of CVC report on corruption in CWG.  Blind, that is what she is. Someone give her glasses please.