The Deep Cut

The legal system back home in India has gone bonkers over the recent furor raised by some lame sexist comments made by a supposedly sexist scientist at a conference in South Korea. Taking cue from the swift judgment in this case, lawmakers are seeking to sign MOUs with the respective CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Tinder to fast-track the much needed improvement in the justice system of the country. Bright days ahead for the states, won't you say? As those connected to my Facebook profile and worldwide Twitter feed know, life took a darker turn recently for celebrated biochemistry researcher and failed stand-up comedian, Dr. Tim Hunt. But considering that he has bagged a Knighthood and the Nobel Prize in this lifetime, they say that this dark turn is perhaps only a couple shades darker in the array of all the 50 different shades of Grey. He would now retire and dedicate the rest of his life to growing quince trees in his backyard English garden. Or gingers, for the much-neede

English, the lingua franca of modern world, has definitely done it's share in improving our knowledge of science. But does it also draw a divide and restrict those who do not have access to it? In this post, I'd like to sum up few interesting things  that I've come across, on the topic: numerous POVs, a TED talk , a few scientific letters and a couple of articles, a few lessons in history, but mostly my bit of some loud-mouthed thinking as usual. At the heart of this chain of thought is actually a trivial conversation in my office, where Andrew - who was peering into his laptop otherwise - made a comment on how easy we have it with most research papers being published in English. Me and Stefania chimed in, in agreement. To my knowledge, this group of casual chit-chatters had a cumulative knowledge of at least seven languages: Hindi, Bengali, French, Spanish, Italian, Sanskrit (at least in principle) and of course, English. (But even though we mutually tease each othe

Yesterday I heard him say my God doesn't exist. Who does he think he is? How dare he? I didn't talk to him yesterday. I walked right past him. He was dead to me. Yesterday he said my God is fake. I stared at him angrily, while he hissed. He should be taught a lesson. I threw a stone at him. By inches, it missed. Yesterday I saw him spit at the name of my God. I lured away his dog. His owner has crossed a line! Till it were dead, I beat him with a log. Yesterday he refused to pray to my God. I burned down his house. Enough has been sought by talks. I kidnapped and raped his spouse. Yesterday he cursed at my God. This time, I took away his daughter. He cried and cried all throughout the day. I raped her, shot her in the head and left her for slaughter. Yesterday I found him weeping to my God. He pleaded for mercy and for his misfortunes to cease. But it wasn't over - I brought out his son. Humiliated him.  Cursed him.

BE ADVISED, CONTAINS SPOILERS. CRAZY BAT SHIT OF THEM! You can tell I was super excited when I learnt that Christopher Nolan has picked up on the idea of black holes and wormholes in his next venture. Unfortunately, he made Inception earlier and ruined everything for me. While Inception was a huge leap in science fiction, it raised the bar for the kind of movies the duo of Christopher and Jonathan Nolan can achieve. Inception was worthy of all the hype it has ever got, because not only was it a brilliant movie, it was also a refreshingly cerebral idea. It was something new. With Inception having set the stage to welcome Interstellar to the movie theatre, it was the sense of expectation that undid everything.  To list a few scientific inaccuracies  (or shall we say) inconsistencies that I personally found with the movie, I would have to start somewhere here: 1. How did the wormhole - the one near Saturn - came to be in the first place? It takes an enormous mass to

This will be an extremely personal post, so don't go reading into it too much if you don't particularly like the sorts. Remember I warned you! __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ There are times when you feel utterly hopeless. Like whatever you have done, or are doing, would ultimately amount to nothing. That in the whole seventy plus years you've lived or would perhaps live, and all the work that you've done or would do, they would simply not matter in the end. That you would not matter. Your life wouldn't matter, like so many everyday. Your name wouldn't be remembered. You wouldn't be remembered. That however much you've tried doing things against that, you've ended up achieving nothing. How can anyone live knowing that? Yesterday I went to the market to get some eggs, 'Dada, I'll buy the entire tray. We'll be having guests tonight!' I added, w

Everytime I go to the northern parts of the city of Calcutta, I feel like I have gone back in time on a time machine. Not that I go much. Had I known that I just had to wait for the budding art enthusiastic friend to come back home from her grad studies in New Jersey in order to be rediscovering some forgotten history of my own city, I would have had something to look forward to in the summer! The northern part of Kolkata, oops.. sorry.. of Calcutta, is that old part of the city where people from south seldom visit. Many among the youngsters today, do not know that this city was once called the 'City of Palaces' (now used, rather in reference to Mexico city) - you can see for yourself the dilapidated palaces and their decaying columns from Victorian times on your way to the Howrah station. But you've got to visit North Kolkata in order to truly establish this expression. Just a few steps north from the M.G. Road metro station, further away from the Calcutta Me

I have always tried to keep myself aware of the world around me. Take a peek into my life, and you'll find me spending quite a lot of my time on all kinds of news feed on my HTC device. Apart from science, I take interest in politics, sports, current affairs - national and international - literature, entertainment and in so many other fields. So when everyone I met in New Delhi asked me what I do, I found myself disappointing them again and again. "How does a PhD in Molecular Biology aspirant find his way to the 13th India Today Conclave?" They couldn't believe me further when I told them of my invitation as the official blogger for the event. Take a careful note, ladies and gentlemen. Take a careful note of the kind of social apathy a gap-toothed, bespectacled science student has to face everyday in his life!

Every time I would be watching a match on the television, there'll be people behind my back stopping time and again to inquire about the game. 'What's the score?' they'll ask. Even my mother, who may not quite follow any particular sport, ends up asking 'Who's winning?' after some time. There's something about 'winning' that attracts everybody all around us. Countless are the inspirational speakers who have made quite a lot of money by quoting Vince Lombardi alone. Their success rate at inspiring even one member from the audience is however, dubitable. Countless still, are the inspirational  non-fiction   books in the shelves of a bookstore. Some of them even best-sellers! They all seem to promise the ultimate 'winning mantra' to their readers. And yet their contribution in influencing readers is something we can only guess at. Countless again, are the people who roam around pointlessly being part of the 'herd', oblivi

Blame it on Benaras, if I get even wee bit spiritual and lest my thoughts wander like a Bohemian  septuagenarian,  high on marijuana. The dimly lit ghats, the serene flow of the river Ganga, the calls of 'har-har Mahadev' throughout the city, the high and mighty cows and their cow-dungs and the foreigners smoking pot here, there and everywhere make Varanasi, the most vibrant and timeless city of India.  I also heard a man burp and follow it up with  'Jai Sri Ram!'.  A city, as old as history itself, Varanasi is witness to the migration of and subsequent settlement of Aryans in India. A city, that is regarded as the holiest of all the cities in the world. A city, where if you die, you qualify for all the shortcuts that take you to the heavens. And that, was the most ancient form of reservation, ladies and gentlemen. People who die in Varanasi get the first 10 seats on the Airbus, for a direct trip to heaven (wherein they'll be roasted and fried in boiling

In the past few years, I have adopted academia as the way of living. And subsequently have I been clarified on a large number of presumptions regarding science and the people who practice it as a religion. For example, I had always thought that the people of science were a binary lot! The Yes-and-No kind of people. A chemist would pose wearing an apron, holding beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks in his hands, while a physicist would beat his head at the chalkboard that is repleted with complex equations of quantum mechanics. A biologist would be dissecting a lab-rat for nothing while a computer person would spend sleepless nights sitting in front of the glowing screen, punching codes and high on caffeine. That is the general image we have in our heads, right? But in the past few years, I have been let in on a secret, 'Things are not exactly that simple dummy!' And as we progress into the future with towering banners of discovery, invention and innovation, all the fields a

Oh Bombay! As I otherwise immerse myself completely for the cause of foul-smelling genetically modified organisms in the lab, there are only the sudden, last minute get-away plans that have been my saving grace for quite sometime now. And my saviour is one of my junior-school friends, who is now working for Fractal Analytics . Posted in Mumbai, he resides just a few kilometers further on the JVLR, making it easy for me to make quick escapes from the lab. This Saturday, with the plausible excuse being meeting a third friend, I skip my preconceived afternoon catnap to gear up for another night out with the guys. After lazily browsing for the bus routes for half an hour on Google Navigation, I called a cab-service, only to take an auto-rickshaw finally. The auto-man, for some very odd reason, immediately asked me if I had a girlfriend. (I can't possibly be that handsome now, can I?!) Sensing weirdness, I cut my route short and forcefully asked him to drop me at the IIT  main

So, apparently I'm at risk. Not just me, all you 20 something youth of the second most populous democratic constitution in the world. You are at risk. All you twitter addicts, facebook fans, the blogger junta - everyone is after all, at risk. But why are we at risk? Well, the great constitution that boasts of (wait, lets take a deep breath here; and begin) Sovereignty, Secularism, Liberal democracy and Republicanism, is kind of turning onto itself, more often nowadays. Why, is the pressure of a billion people's antagonistic mindset, too much to handle for the government we elected? Following the twitter ticker nowadays really shows how many people out there are actually aware of the contemporary situation in the country. They are the other kind of people I guess, the ones who won't have to look up into the dictionary to get the precise meaning of the 'strong' words I mentioned above. Most people, I believe, would ignorantly flash their wrongly-spelled voter