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

(Continued from How to be a Workout Nazi ...) "I also remember a guy during those initial days of gym. He used to go Ryan Gosling from  Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)  on us in the locker room. Although not fully nude, he would strip down to his bare minimum and do some free-hand exercises that would require lots of bending and twisting. Things, you don't want to see on your first day at gym. So, trust me when I say I braved it out there in those initial period. Trying to gel in, I stripped down myself to those shorts showing some skinny legs, lest they think I was homophobic!" The biweekly weight check and diet counselling was carried out by a professional who sits in an office at the ladies' gym. Not so surprisingly, everyone at the men's gym wants to get their weights checked all the time. After 4 weeks of working out (and two discarded, outgrown t-shirts later), I was asked to get my weight checked at the office. Little did I know, that th

Last time I wrote a blog post on visiting the capital , I ended it up with the epilogue that I will get back to you about the rest of the trip.  The part which took me on a wild-goose chase of discovering the elusive  'Indianness'  in it's history and places, brought me back to a larger realization that the thing I was looking for was only to be found in it's people . By the way, did you guys catch 2 States in the movie hall yet? The main character - Krissh - seemed to be living in the Hauz Khas area - the one place I described very well in the first part of this two-post travel series. Also, finally I'm glad that Bollywood cleared the air about the people living in Tamil Nadu after the image they usually portrayed of them in movies like Singham and Chennai Express! All the locations in this movie were either my favourite or the most memorable of all places I've ever lived in! Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai.. aah nostalgia! This movie was already written i

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!

Ever since the arrival of two new neighbours, return of an exiled habit, proof of lives in the 6 rooms that face my balcony and a family of sparrows to nest under our air conditioning system, life in my neighbourhood has been different, to say the least. Freud will tell you that people tend to resist change. That they'll almost always react badly to it. But by a twist of natural law, my neighbourhood seems to have welcomed it. There is harmony, cohesion, gossip at the local 'jagrata' club and random acts of rather unusual behavior seem to have made a comeback with a reinvigorated sense of purpose. All this in a matter of months.  Mum says this is normal for our neighbourhood. And that all I needed   to realize this,  was to spend just a little more time at home. I'm guessing she's right! Like always. After fighting a legal battle for ages, the ownership of the land lying right in front of my house was awarded to the local college for women. They were supp

I have traversed the seven continents and have crossed seven seas to find the truth behind why most of the perfect women in Kolkata date almost all the wrong kind of men in this city. Why the smart and beautiful Bengali girls are going out with the slimy haired, cigarette smoking, sling-bag flaunting 'Ekta chumu dao na, shonamuni?'-waale Bengali boys. And as you would have it, I have emerged enlightened in this quest. All I needed was to travel by a mini-bus from the archaic Howrah station to the upscale Park Street on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. After seeing off my uncle, aunt and my cutest, youngest cousin at the Howrah station, I got on the relatively empty bus and found myself a place in the second last seating by the window. Before the bus could find a way out through the routinely heavy traffic that follows once you get on the Howrah bridge, I found the entire bus filled. Including of course, the seat behind me, where sat a relatively young man in his early twenti

It was a Saturday. It was a lazy afternoon. And to top it all, it required for me to travel an hour on the Mumbai local train to reach the venue. But still I went for the 'Mumbai For Women' blogger's meet, organized by The Times of India and Indiblogger . This wasn't to be the first time I'd be part of something that would rather require the involvement of women. Like the entire nation, I too, was awakened by the sheer effrontery of the Nirbhaya gang-rape case in the capital. The unprovoked and dastardly attack brought me to a face-off with how uncivilized our society has ultimately turned out to be. That how every essence of safety that we've carefully put up for ourselves, has been rendered senseless. Why is the progressive Indian society passively accepting this situation, for the last decade? Like a fellow blogger pointed out, unfortunately we're all here at this point of confrontation because of the use of a rusted, L-shaped, metallic wheel ja