Questions Galore

Last week, a couple of my friends on Facebook shared this first hand report about an American woman’s traumatic experiences with sexual assaults during her visit to India. Anyone who reads the report cannot but sympathise with the trauma that the woman experienced, so much so that she had to be treated for PTSD. I wanted to say something about the facebook posts but all that I came up was confusion. I knew and wanted to say this is not the culture of my country. This is not an apt description of men who share my heritage. We are a country that preaches "Athidi devo bhava" (may the guest be treated as equal to god). This is probably a one off experience of a foreigner who, by her own confession, had come with a preset mind. May be she was overreacting to a curiosity of  people on seeing a white woman participate in traditional festivities assuming them to be stares filled with sexual perversion. But I also knew that was my emotional side reacting. I knew the experience and horror that the woman described was real. I knew she must have faced sexual harassment, molestation and even rape. I knew in my heart of hearts that this cannot be brushed aside as a one off. This is now a trend, one that is very widely prevalent. Fortunately, there was another report on CNN iReports that gave an alternate perspective from a woman who too was part of the same group that spent time in India.

Of course, this is not the first time that we Indians have experienced emotions such as shame and disgust at how some men amongst us treat women. In fact news such as this and worse than this have become a little too common recently and we might be approaching a stage where we might react to news of sexual assaults just the way we react to corruption in government, with apathy. Just this week there was yet another incident of gangrape on a female journalist in Mumbai. This was followed by the now too familiar  outrage, candle light marches, TV studio discussion, raucous in Parliament and self-righteous speeches by celebrities. But in my opinion, none of this is going to help with the problem that is getting to endemic proportions now. It will probably only assure us that we have not yet become an emotionless populace, despite the television and cinema. I think the problem is deep seated and well entrenched in our cultural psyche, the role and position of woman that was traditionally emphasised in our culture and how these are being re-defined in a constantly evolving society. There are probably some elements of this society that are not acclimatizing easily to this rapid rate of evolution. This is probably a phase in the evolution of our society and things will settle down in the course of time. In the short term though, there is no doubt that steps need to be taken to make India a safe place for women to not just survive, but also to live. This is a necessity for our country to progress and prosper. But what are these steps that would make our women feel safe once again? What can we do to tackle the ugliness that has presently engulfed our psyche? Honestly, I have no answers to these questions. I have neither the expertise nor the experience to come up with solutions this vexing problem. What I do have is the ability to observe the going on around me. My intention in this post is to share some of these observations. 

Many people have pointed to the inefficient and insufficient policing of our streets. There have also been suggestions to enact laws such as to make rape an offence that can be punished with death. No one can disagree with the first of these suggestions. There is no doubt that our police is severely understaffed and not very well trained, especially when it comes to matters related to women and children. Also, better enforcement of the existing laws would also help. Its been my long held belief that if there is any institution that has let India and her people down the most in these 67 years of independence, it is the police and the judiciary. Most problems Indians face today wouldn't be there if the judiciary and the police fulfill their constitutionally entrusted duties efficiently. 

Another aspect (probably a more important one) that needs to be studied is the role that our society (that is, all of us) plays in these crimes. How much does our hypocrisy have to do with this? What role does the moral policing, at the family and societal levels, play? What role do immature measures such as outlawing mannequins advertising lingerie play? What role does the treatment of women in the families of those committing these crimes play in shaping their mentality?  We are a society that cannot tolerate an unmarried man and woman living together. We shut our eyes to natural hormonal changes taking place in teenagers and young adults. In the name of morality, most men and women stay away from a serious physical relationship late into their 20s and 30s unless they are given a stamp of approval by the society in the name of marriage. How much do these attitudes contribute to the present perverse behavior of some? How much does the cultural shock of moving from a traditional/rural setting  to a more liberal/urban setting contribute? How much have our movies contributed, especially with their culture of "item songs" (such as this and this) whose main objective is to titillate men?  Will not treating sex as a sin help? Will it help to have a 911-like emergency response system? Will it help to not criminalize production and exhibition of pornography to grown ups? Will it help to legalize prostitution? Will it help if we do not objectify feelings such as love and beauty? Overall, will loosening the society's grip on individual's life help improve the present situation? 

These are just some questions bugging me and most certainly, I am not the first one to think about them. I am sure there are people that are a lot smarter, and occupy positions that matter, who can, or have to, find answers. Otherwise, our future generations may look back at this part of their history with nothing but repugnance.

Burden of knowledge

While returning from lab yesterday night, I was accosted by a Firefly. The first thought that occured to me on seeing the firefly was my son. What would he think when he sees a firefly for the first time? Would he be curious why its back is on fire? Would he want to know where and how that beautiful glow came from? I could then tell him how wonderful evolution is. I could tell him how nature has devised these wonderful factories in the fly's body that makes the light so that the fly could make little babies. I could probably also tell him about other such wonders like the petals of flowers or the plumage of a Peacock. Or I could just tell him how beautiful nature is. I could tell him to enjoy the beauty that surrounds him. I could tell him that it may not last for a very long time. That his father's and grandfather's generations have not been smart enough to preserve it in all its glory so it could be passed on to him. I would infact just teach him to worship and thank Mother Nature for making this planet our home. 

The price of pursuit.

At many points in my life, I have wondered if what I someday hope to achieve is really worth all that I am giving up in this pursuit of the elusive. I am at that point once again. Recently a lab colleague received the news that her mother was in an accident and had to rush back to her native country. I don’t know if she made it in time. That was the trigger for my latest bout of contemplation. In the past, on occasions like this, I would deliberate and argue with self, resulting in some really bad effects on my psyche. So this time around, I have decided to let it out. As a graduate student in India, I was pretty clear about what my goal was. There was probably a kind of arrogance that I knew what my priorities at that point ought to be. Work hard, be as much published as possible, keep my supervisor happy, get a PhD. So I skipped over many many important events. I would visit my parents at the most once a year though it would have taken only an overnight trains to reach their place. I did not take a day off to meet friends who were visiting from abroad after a while. It was really hard to take some time off to attend friends’ wedding or school reunions. I did not even remember to take my mind off the depressing spectra so I could call and say good-bye to a dear friend who was setting off to distant lands in pursuit of scientific truths. In the end, I managed to work hard and was even given a piece of paper in recognition of that work which proclaimed that I am a doctor (“who cannot cure people”). But I couldn’t accomplish my other two goals of graduate school. At the end of it, I asked myself, was it worth? As a post-doc, living thousands of miles farther away from my family, I have published more work and have earned the respect of supervisors. I have still not got my life’s priorities straight, though. The greatest regret of my life yet is that I was not there to welcome my son into this world. Now, as I watch him grow up over Skype, I find myself asking yet again, is it worth? 

O' My God..............

There is a prayer that Hindus are supposed to say immediately after they wake up and set foot on ground for the first time on a day. It roughly translates to: "O' mother Earth, the wife of Lord Vishnu, please excuse me for I have to touch you with my foot while carrying out my life's duties". We have long forgotten that prayer. Not only do we not ask for Mother Earth's forgiveness anymore, but also actively participate in her mutilation.

I always thought God was invented as a means to explain things that we couldn't completely comprehend. What are those shiny things in the sky? Why do we have day and night? Why do we have seasons? Where does rain come from? How are we born? Why do we die and what happens after that? How did this wondrous planet of ours come about? We were always an inquisitive and curious lot. And at a time when we did not have the tools and means to answer our curiosity, community's self-appointed wise-men and -women told us this was all the magic of a mysterious, all-powerful being, "The God".

But I am clearly wrong. God was invented as a tool to justify escapism; run away from taking responsibility for your own actions. Don't study and fail in exams; gods are angry. Invest without using your brain and lose all your money; gods are not kind. Be unproductive and lose your job, gods must be upset. Destroy the forests, dig out the mountains, build dams to imprison the rivers and when you are faced with drought, floods and calamity blame it on the merciless gods. 

I am in complete agreement with people who think the present calamity happened because the God is pissed off. Of course he would be. Wouldn't you, if you worked hard for many days to create something wonderful only for it to be tastelessly tampered with by a fool? The gods are really angry and if we do not acquire a taste to appreciate their creations, it might not be long before we are kicked out of this art exhibition. 

Worshipping wrong Gods

There was a time not long ago when Malayalam films used to narrate stories where someone or the other would be lured with the promise of a ‘Gulf visa’, taken to Madras or Bombay, robbed of their possessions and dumped. Looks like the Malayali entertainment industry has kept pace with the changing times in Kerala. These days Malayalees get duped for water. This skit is probably an over exaggeration and the situation is probably not as grave in reality. But the it is (though tacky and not very funny) a good reminder of where things are moving in the state. Mind you, we are talking of a state that is famously canvassed, and for a good reason, as ‘Gods own country’. This is the state where Monsoons enter the Indian mainland and probably receives the longest spell of rains than any other state. This is the state where people agitated to protect the Silent Valley and shut down Coca Cola. But today, in a mad rush towards urbanization and ill-planned development, we are destroying the precious gifts of nature that we were endowed with and in the process endangering the quality of our lives.
This water story is probably true of most states in India, not just Kerala. That things have come to such a pass in a place like India reveals a lot about how we have changed as people because we were a culture of nature worshippers. We have gods for every element in nature; for Sun and Moon, for rivers and oceans, for air and rain. Every animal that we can find in the wild is an object of our devotion on account of being the favoured vehicle of one or the other of our gods. Not only tigers and lions, we revere even snakes and chicken. For such a culture to not just neglect conserving what was given to us by nature but to abuse it, in my opinion reflects how misplaced our ideals and ideologies have become. We have forgotten the original ideals that our ancestors so zealously pursued that they placed these animals and elements of nature on a divine pedestal as god and goddesses. We practise the religion but have forgotten its sacred tenets. We worship the gods but have forgotten why they were considered divine in the first place. We worship the wrong gods and neglect the most important one that sustains our existence on this planet. 

ISI vs ISI

Courtesy this blog, came to know about this news article published in Deccan Herald. While the article is about the founding member of ISI, Mr. Khan Bahadur Qurban Ali Khan, the photo published along with the article is that of the founder of ISI, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. The only problem here is that P.C.Mahalanobis had no association with Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence. He was the founder of Indian Statistical Institute. Says a lot about the journalism standards of that publication.

Doordarshan............Nostalgia

I recently happened to watch an episode of Dekh Bhai Dekh on youtube. And was flooded with memories of all those shows I watched on Doordarshan (DD) as a child. But as I suggest in the title of this post, good shows on DD are now confined to memories. On second thoughts, that's probably not a fair judgement. I haven't watched anything on DD (not even news) for a very long time. So, I don't really know if there are any good shows. But my guess is that most people in India don't either. (My statistics here are limited to my friends and relatives, close and distant. Since they are spread far and wide in the country and abroad, there is enough variety in there for the data to be representative.) Back then (that is before the advent of Zee TV) though, things were different. DD was the only television station in most of India and there were a few really good shows. So much so that I still remember dialogues in some of them. This post is about a few of those shows I remember from the 'DD days'.
There were the two very famous shows based on Indian epics, Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan and B.R. Chopra's Mahabharat (see I remember the maker's names). As I am typing this out, the title song of Mahabharat is on in my mind. (unrelated to the subject of this post, I wonder if DD would venture to telecast shows such as these now a days based on 'Hindu' epics in the present 'secular' environment in India). The subject of these two shows was not new to me (and probably to most Indians), having already heard most of it from my grandparents. But the exciting part of watching them was to put faces to the characters and visualize the incidents from bed-time stories. 
After the tenth board exams, I got a silver medal from my school for having stood first in History in those exams (class first of course!!!!!). But I enjoyed learning about Indian history the most while watching Bharat Ek Khoj based on Jawaharlal Nehru's Discovery of India. For a very long time I believed the narrator of the show was actually our first Prime Minister. Roshan Seth as the narrator was that great. Then there was Chanakya narrating the story of the famous Indian economist, thinker, administrator.
I (and most of the world) saw the future Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan for the first time in the serial Fauji based on the lives of a few army cadets. I used to love the show so much that even today I remember a dialogue that one of the characters utters repeatedly ("I say chaps"). We again watched SRK's subdued acting in Circus before he was afflicted with stammering and super-stardom happened. 
Another show I remember very fondly was Param Vir Chakra which used to depict the lives of those brave soldiers who sacrificed their lives to protect the country and later were awarded the nation's highest gallantry award. What I remember the most about this show was not so much the stories themselves. I and my friends used to play role-playing games after watching the show (talking of role-playing games, during the 1992 cricket world cup, we organized a mini-world cup of our own where we were members of different teams. I was captain of South Africa Kepler Wessels!!!!!).
There were other shows like Surabhi which was probably India's first talk-show, Japal Bhatti's Flop-Show and a science-based show (whose name I can't remember, any help?) hosted by Prof. Yashpal (what's the second name?). About those and others in some other post (maybe when I am in a nostalgic mood again).  
Do you have a fond DD memory? What was your favorite TV show growing up? 

Well begun isn't always well-done

I recently came across an article in the careers section of the journal Science recently. Here is the link. This is one of those feel-good news write-ups. Especially so if you are interested in Indian science scenario, both as a member of the research community and as someone who takes pride in anything good happening in his country, even if those are few and far between. A point that is repeatedly made out by the author in the article is the need for labor law reforms to enable the research and higher education institutions to hire foreign researchers. An underlying, unstated assumption of such a line of thinking is that the homegrown talent in India is probably not good enough. Not surprising considering the fetish we Indians have for anything and everything that is imported. 
Over the past few years, there have been many schemes launched by the government in New Delhi to invigorate the research eco-system in the country. New institutes and central universities have been established, money has been showered on the  already established premier research institutes and the moon has been promised. There is no doubt that the country needs to reinvest in research to give a fresh impetus to economic growth and stay globally competitive. If anything, this reinvestment has been much delayed. It is alright to spend money but that should not be done without application of thought (as in this example). More importantly, it needs to be followed up by steps that bring about a change in the existing culture and attitude of our research community. Otherwise, the enthusiasm generated by the present investment, like with most schemes launched by our governments, will be short-lived and will not result in long-lasting gains for the country. In my opinion, the most important of these steps should be to restructure and reboot our state universities which is where most of the graduates in our country are trained. Establishing specialized research institutes is fine, but the number of Indian citizens who are directly influenced by these places is minuscule. Most people probably wouldn't even know of their existence. Money needs to be spent in such a way that it benefits the most people. After all, there is a strength in numbers!!! Another important step would be to popularize research as a main-stream career option. Make it less intimidating and more cool to be a researcher in popular imagination. It's probably time someone made an Indian version of Big Bang Theory. Does anyone know how to get in touch with Ekta Kapoor? 

When someone you didn't like passes away.........

Rest of the above statement should be obvious.............you wouldn't care a damn. But thats if you never realized his importance and contribution in your life. The person I am talking about was my maths teacher in school.More than the maths he used to teach, he was known for his strict, and sometimes harsh, punishments. And naturally not many of his students liked him. I wasn't different from others. But as I grew older and learnt more, I realized how important his contribution was towards my development. Agreed that his methods were harsh but they were effective. He taught me maths and got me interested in it though I was initially not interested in it, like many children my age. Only a stone that goes under a hammer and chisel will end up being a sculpture. His contribution in my life, to put in mildly, is inestimable. I pray for his soul to rest in peace.

Good Day !!!!!!!!!

Today was a good day at work, for a change. It started off in a "not so exciting" way just like any other day but now at the end of it, I can feel the elation which Archimedes experienced when he started running straight to the palace from his bath tub. What happened with me isn't exactly as good as that though. But things can always be scaled down. Well, the day started with one of my supervisors informing me that he was not at all happy with the abstract that I had prepared for participating in a conference. I have to redo that all over again. Though I hadn't spent too much sweat on preparing the first draft, I was still disappointed. I got over the disappointment of having been informed to work on the abstract all over again and started working on standardizing the setup that I have been working on for the past ten days. I have been trying different combinations and trying to fiddle around with different things but nothing seemed to work, at least till now. I really get frustrated when things don't work even when everything seems OK. But that's an integral part of my work. That's how people develop endless amounts of patience by the time they finish PhD, especially the biology variety. Coming back, today at last all the nuts, bolts and all sorts of tiny parameters seem to have fallen in place. Late in the afternoon things started looking the way they are supposed to look. At last my experimental setup is ready. Not yet. There is still some fine tuning to be done. But I am almost there. The best part was when my supervisor said " good job". When I look back at my last ten days, it was all a worthy investment for today. And for that day when I will defend my thesis.

My first blog

I have just created my blog space and am not sure what to scribble here. So the question now is why did I create this if I don't have anything to put down. Its because everyone around me seems to have a blog spot and I would seem to be lagging behind in exploiting the technological advances of the mankind if I don't have one. Anyway since I have decided to post my first blog, let me put down what I do or what I feign to be doing. I am a PhD student which implies that I think about something no one else has though about, discover something no one has ever discovered, and thus further the knowledge of the mankind by a little more. But what really happens is that I cook up some crazy ideas, publish lots of papers and look to get a good position somewhere in the world. After that............. wait!!!!!!!!! I sometimes wonder if this is what I wanted to do when I decided to take up research as a career. I am probably stuck up in some old world where scientist actually practiced science not to keep the funding agencies happy or to publish but for the "Pleasure of finding things out" (in Feynman's words). But the world has moved and changed. As one of my seniors advised me, in today's scientific community you either publish or perish.