One of those moments

One of the moments that I remember, as a graduate student, very vividly is the time I burst into Joel's office. The past few months had been exciting since I had discovered an inhibitor. We were now doing a key experiment: Will the inhibitor kill cancer cells? I gathered the results in my hand and burst into Joel's office, with a big smile on my face and asked him whether he wanted to know the results. That moment kind of justified all the nights I stayed up purifying protein. It also justified taking the wrong tube out of the refrigerator and discovering an inhibitor instead.
Today I saw the same smile on Reshma's face...

Okay, let me back track a little bit.

A cell is made of nucleus and cytoplasm at the very gross level. Nucleus is where the DNA resides and cytoplasm is where things other than DNA live. Every event within the cell is regulated and if the regulation goes kaput, the cell too goes kaput. It might not necessarily lead to cancer but every human disease can be tracked down to some protein within the cell becoming dysfunctional. So the regulation of proteins, so that they do what they are supposed to do only at the time they are supposed, is important.

I work with a protein which hydrolyzes ATP in presence of DNA, the energy currency in the cell. When ATP breaks down it releases energy which my protein is supposed to use to do something. I do not know what it does-that is what a big part of my research is.

Now, the protein is a highly active. Give it DNA and ATP, it will happily break down the ATP within matter of minutes. In fact so much so that if it was left unregulated it would just consume all the ATP and kill the cell for the cell cannot survive without ATP. As Tom Thompson, the ex-chairperson of my department at UVa, asked at my viva: "How the heck is the protein regulated?"

Truthfully, I never even was looking at it. I assumed, just as Joel, my advisor, assumed, it is all a matter of availability of the correct DNA.

Anyway, at one point we decided we are going to look where the protein was present in the cell. Was it in the nucleus (which we confidentially assumed it would be) or in the cytoplasm?

To cut a long story short, what we ended up finding is that the protein normally resides in the cytoplasm. So under normal conditions it never even sees DNA, therefore, it does not hydrolyze ATP. But give the cells a little bit of stress that damages the DNA, the protein moves into nucleus.

We did not believe we would see it. I still cannot believe what I saw under the microscope.

But it was one of the moments...

Time Tables

At the beginning of every semester Neera and I wrestle with the time tables. The time tables are a hassle because every one has their own take on it. It need not, of course, be this way but it is. What can you do if a senior faculty throws a tantrum just because I shifted his course from 11am to 12 in the afternoon.
"But it has always been held at 11am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays."
That is it. There is no reprieve. So I quietly change the time table to accommodate him.
Then there are others:
"I can not take a class before 10 because I have to get my daughter to school, get the house cleaned...And I have to pick my daughter up at 11.30am."
Another will tell you:
"I can take classes only 12 in the afternoon on Tuesdays and Thursdays."
It is like as if someone is holding a gun at your temples.
Worse are the 9.00am slots.
"Do you really expect me to come at 9.00 am?" asked a faculty incredulously, when I scheduled his classes for 9.00 am.
Fortunately, there are few understanding souls who will not utter a word of complaint. There are also few very nice faculty who insist that they will teach the 9.00am slot.
"I like to get over the teaching in the morning. So please put me in there."
So keeping these permutations and combinations I dish out a Time Table every semester that often pleases no one other than me.
This semester Neera and I consulted each other.
"We need to make the time table," I reminded her.
She made a face and took an instantaneous decision:
"Use the last year's schedule. The courses have not changed, have they?"
So we have recirculated last year's time table. I remember vividly how unhappy some of the faculty were. I am now waiting for the fireworks to begin.

Nanku Ram and the Rose

The Spanish Language department has faculty from Spain. Their tenure is for three years. So every three years we get a new Spanish Faculty. Maria's tenure got over this year. She was my neighbor and a very friendly person, who for some reason liked appa. She spent considerable time chatting with him, once made him Spanish omelette, and invited him for Spanish plays.

Maria had a small garden but was an unorthodox gardener. When she finally left, she gifted her plants to me. There were two roses with droopy leaves and fleshy thorns, couple of evergreens, and a spider plant.

Nanku Ram, my gardener, and I stared with horror at the plants and then got down to rescuing them. Ruthlessly, we pruned the roses so that only short stumps were left and then moved them into sunshine. The treatment worked. Very soon we saw small tendrils coming up. The peacocks mercifully left them alone, the rains did their job, and I was pleased to small a see small bud coming up.

Today there was a broad smile on Nanku Ram's face.

"See, Madamji, even that rose has bloomed."

And both of us, besotted, stared at that beautiful Orange Rose.

PS. Nanku Ram has some plans. He wants to put up two poles, create an arch with bougainvillea, and finally cover the entire area with net. That way, he tells me, the peacocks will not be a nuisance and we can have winter flowers. I am keeping my fingers crossed for I do not trust the peacocks.

And finally there is the cat

My brother has his Charlie, the next-door cat who has adopted my brother and trained him so that every time Charlie utters a meow my brother hastens with a cup of full-cream milk.

I was free from such tyranny till I took pity on the scrawny little kitten who has rifling through my garbage bag. It is, I think, progeny of one of the cats whom Alpana was feeding.

I fed it a bread piece on that day. The next day it landed up once more and once again I felt sorry for it. I gave it a bread piece.

Today it landed up again. I was watering the garden when it made an appearance. It meowed loudly to attract my attention. I went to the kitchen to check on the bread but it had got fungus. I came out and explained to it the problem and promised bread the next day. But it was not satisfied with my explanation. Sitting outside the door, it kept up its meowing, at times scolding me for my tardiness. So I took out a beaker, poured milk and gave it.

I now fear that I too have been trained.

NOTE: I have no name for the cat. Suggestions are welcome.

A frog in the house

That is exactly what I saw in the bathroom: a frog. It hopped across and disappeared into a crack in the wall.

One must thank the CPWD for constructing such thoughtful houses.

On the other hand, I am getting more and more tolerant towards creatures.

The wasps and I

The wasps started building a nest in April in my verandah on my clothesline. Appa found it out the hard way when one of the wasps took exception to his handling of their nest. A little investigation showed that the wasps had shown exceptional ingenuity and had started building the nest on the clothespin. Appa left the clothespin alone and moved another clothespin in front of it so that none of us would accidentally use it.
I was amused. Pigeons, peacocks, cats, dogs, sparrows, mynahs, bulbuls...and now wasps. I watched. The initial pair become four and then eight and then...one clothespin was not enough. They moved to the next clothespin. When I came back from my vacation a mass of them were busy working hard to expand their nest. My amusement turned to alarm. I wondered what was the best way of removing wasps from verandah.
On Sunday the monsoons arrived in Delhi.
I went outside to remove some clothes and the wasps, who were clearly in a bad mood, no doubt because the rain had spoiled their day, stung me.
That did it.
I finally took the courage and removed the two clothespin from the line and threw them away. The wasps were hopping mad, of course. But they soon sense and left the verandah, no doubt searching for some new clothespin to build new nest.
Meantime, I dashed down and saved one of the clothespin from utter destruction. It now rests in my office where I can admire it from time to time. I still have not figured out how they managed to build their nest on a plastic clothespin.

MTNL and me

The internet connection at home has conked off once again. We are having the summer special: Aandhi (dust storm) with thunder but no rains. And this is enough for the internet to stop working.

So I called up MTNL, who are my service providers. When you dial the number you are welcomed to the service, and then asked to press 1 if you want to continue in Hindi or press 2 if you want service in English. When you press the desired number you are told to press 9 at any time to return to the previous menu. And then the voice continues: dial 0 to speak to a customer representative agent and dial 9 to return to the previous menu.

Once you swallowed the stuff and dialed 0, you will be told that you are in the queue and that you waiting time is 100 seconds. Every 10 seconds they will do a countdown till you are left with 0 sec. Do not assume that you will be automatically connected to a customer representative agent, for you most assuredly will not. You will continue to be on hold, at regular intervals you will be asked whether you want to record your complaint, and an irritating tune 'Ting, Ting, Ting, Ka-ching" will be played.

And then the tune will vanish, and the phone will ring so that you can be connected to the customer representative agent.

You will be all eager...your complaint will be ready...

And the phone will disconnect.

After all this is MTNL.