Variety, the spice of life

Well, motivation is back! So are other frustrations. What is life without frustration. But about that later.  Let me be positive for once!

News! Had formal interviews and managed to bedazzle the committee somehow and am now officially a part of the institute. Have promised to go to the moon (no, make it Sun) and back and cure all diseases while am at it. Ask me a year later how far I got.

More news. Found two (!!) people willing to risk their happiness, career and life and join the CS Lab. Very smart students but still novices. I am trying to think back, what was it about science that enthused me so much in those days. When every small thing took time, failed, failed again and got nowhere. Here reading Rita’s comments helped me remember that perhaps I do not need to belabour the enthusiasm, it is an integral part of committing yourself to five (or more) years of research. My job is perhaps just to try not to kill it.

Managing science, instead of doing it has been an eye opener in itself. So many facets to doing science that were not obvious when I was doing it myself. So many tricks to easing one’s burden, of speeding things up.  Should I spell these out or should I let them discover them themselves?  Should I push to get more done or let them find their own rhythm? Should I trust their motivation or try to inject enthusiasm? Should I show them how to do it or let them falter and fall and recover? Should I get angry or ignore the irritant? Should I get impatient about science not moving or feel satisfied that a student is learning? Questions and more questions.

But have to say, life is never dull.

There is thinking about science (which sometimes I have to struggle to remember is my job),

there is teaching how to do science,

there is communicating science,

there is  convincing others to give you money to do science,

there is finding ways to spend that money,

there is accounting for that money,

and there is phone calls and meetings and conversations and interactions!

Variety, such that I never had in my life before! 

Indices, energies, collisions and interactions...

Why is the motivation index so low?

I have been puzzling over this problem. Is it because I am not getting any science done? I do not think so. Troughs in productivity are a common problem for us scientists and we have developed mechanisms to pull ourselves out of it. That is one of the essential survival skills in this career.

My analysis points to two factors.

As a post-doc…

(1)  Even on quieter days, when you might not want to go to the lab, going  to the lab was not such a difficult enterprise. You jump on the train and/or bus, you get free meditation time, when you can stare out of the window and let your mind wander or bring your latest favourite book and lose yourself in that world for that little while that it takes to get to the lab.

(2)  When you do get to the lab, you are surrounded by your friends. You could convince one or more to entertain you, in the lab or in the cafeteria. Granted, in the post-doc it was not always that easy to find like-minded company to take the stress off (who had nothing better to do with their time).

But the new life here has pulled both these defense strategies from under my feet.

(1)  Getting to the lab is no child’s play. It involves an hour of driving through messy roads at snail’s pace or wide open 4-lane roads at break neck speeds . Neither very conducive for wandering minds or reading novels. Your mind is fully engaged, your eyes are glued to the fender of the car in front. Your muscles are bunched, your throat is parched. The activation energy barrier in getting to the lab seems most times too high to be cost-effective to overcome. I drag my feet at leaving home in the morning and I wait with bated breath to get back on the road and be done with the return drive home, so I can relax until next day morning.

(2)  The social aspect of life also does not offer much respite. People might think scientists are socially awkward border-line Asperger’s patients (and they would be partially right). But we do have a thriving social life, only it almost exclusively involves people with PhDs and a penchant for pursuing esoteric, elusive goals endlessly. But I am learning that a PI is essentially an island. Students live in a different world, which you can only look from afar with envy now, not be part of. Other PIs are… just other particles in the atmosphere, constantly moving as if in Brownian motion, you are lucky if you collide with each other once in a while. Those interactions are fun and de-stressing. But they are rare….the graph of collisions and transient Van der Waals interactions plummet to near zero as you make that post-doc to PI transition.

Thus, now I am in the process of not just developing new research projects to uncover nature’s wonders, but also to stay afloat in this fast moving stream of time.

Plus One

It would appear I have a PhD student!! That is if he turns up on the joining date. Five years of responsibility. Papers, thesis and a job at the end of it. An undertaking to not make someone hate science at the end of all that!

Exciting…oh yes! Now I just hope I will be able to lead the way until he learns enough to overtake me and run off with the ideas! Here is to the CS Lab!

Progress!

Progress! I have an office now, comes with a fabulous chair and a giant table!! All this excitement for a chair and table? Well, if I had had to order, I would have probably ordered a much more modest one. I still have to learn 1) how to spend other people’s money 2) how much is okay and how much is too much.

Progress! I have a student trainee working with me now. I think I was as nervous on his first day as he. What will I give him to do? Will it make sense? Would I be able to show him the experiment without seeming too controlling or too lackadaisical? Well, the first day is over. Phew! Now two more months to go, and if he decides to stay!!??!! 

Progress! My reagents have arrived from Boston. The dry-ice box that my labmate carefully packed and sent from Boston to arrive within the week, did arrive within the week, into the airport customs cargo hold. Then it sat there, for a day, a week, nearly two weeks. While a magical person called the ‘clearing agent’ filled in, exchanged, submitted masses of paperwork….I imagine. And finally on Friday evening at 9:00pm it  arrived at the lab. Thanks be to all dedicated student all-nighters. There is always someone at the lab, working away.

I feel a respect and something resembling envy for these students. They are there before I arrive in the morning, they are there after I leave in the evening. They are working hard at something meaningful. While I drag myself to the lab, ask people hundreds of questions, fill in paperwork, figure out what to order, where to submit the indents, what grants to apply for, how to cut paste my much abused research proposal(s). And then run back home, telling myself, I can work on this work plan at home, after all it is computer(and brain) work and then get home, drink tea, chat with my family, stuff myself with food, stare woodenly at the TV and it is time for bed!!!

Oh if I could only recapture the purpose, the will, the wish and energy of those PhD days once again! Soon. I know all will fall into place and life will start flowing like a well traveled river carving out its own path. Soon.

to build...

On the payroll, officially! The work begins.


I have been having numerous conversations with people about their experiences as they got started; it seems a new comer gives everyone a chance to relive their ordeals, stories now retold with humor. Trials and tribulations that serve not to shake your resolve, but to inspire you.


What I picked up from all these stories is that a move to India is seldom smooth. Perhaps only those can survive who are completely committed to the change in address. Cut off all other escape routes and you would do very well, because you have no choice but to survive. There are plenty of helping hands, mentors, well wishers and support, you just have to ferret them out.


People arrive, look around for the promised land(lab) and... they are sent to another part of the town to abandoned godowns to carve out their niche on their own or... even sometimes  to nearby towns to literally build their labs in complete wilderness. And they survive, thrive, succeed and go on to tell the story. Surely in view of such adventures, mine seems tame. Or perhaps I speak too soon...

The 'excited' and 'resting' states

Building my own lab...well I knew what it meant in the abstract. Even, I imagined, in the concrete. Well now apparently it is the reality. Although it still has a surreal quality to it. 


As I always do, I plan, replan, map out, write down, dream, dream, dream some more...now, all the details are like a well written algorithm on my eyelids, I close my eyes and the screen lights up. But then it really happens, and it looks nothing like what it did in the eyelid-map! But ages later, when you look back at it, on the whole things worked out, rather well, but the details are all different. 


So now, I have a job (I write project proposals, attend faculty meetings, begin making lists of equipment), but I don't really (I don't get paid, I take off from work when I please, I don't receive any of the emails notifying the faculty about faculty meetings!) . I have a proposed office, a cleaned out lab bench, fish in the nursery and no plasmids to call my own,  no students, no work (?).


Work. That is an interesting conundrum. I write about what I plan to do and how much I plan to spend all the time, sometimes day and night , monday and sunda, in fact I wonder how and when people really get any work done this way. But, I don't seem to be able to get activated beyond the resting state to start anything. Granted its only been a week, but still what the hell am I doing here?!?!?!?!?

Food for thought and water for the drought...

Something that I hadn't accounted for before I came to India was how a new environment makes perfectly functional, sometimes highly efficient systems completely obsolete or irrelevant.

The other day I took out a pack of chewing gum from my bag to clean my palette after a delicious meal and its melted into a clump of goo and sticks to my fingers! I had brought a boat load of electronic gizmos (at least by my standards it was a boatload) and a few days in my newly refurbished bedroom and the laptop has scratches and dirt streaks on it, the E-reader has a coating of dust on its screen. My beautiful, delicate looking white blouse, bought for the hot climate is suddenly a dirty brown colour.

On another note, but the same song...the birds and flying squirrels (so says the newspaper) are dying of dehydration; people have been encouraged to leave out shallow bowls of water for them (the birds, not the squirrels that is). Who said humanity is dead?

while we wait...

Had a brush with death, or less dramatically speaking a brush with a huge bus!! Literally. Driving on Delhi streets or probably any other city-streets in India is a hypertensive experience or an adventure, if you like to look at it that way (which is much preferable). No inch, no quarter is given. No opportunity to squeeze through must be missed. Or you will be left standing where you are while the world rushes (or inches) past you. And I used to wonder at this tearing hurry everyone is in. As if they might all be ambulances rushing to save fatally wounded passengers, while of course the real ambulances are just another set of blaring sirens (or horns) in the sea of sound, pleasantly ignored.


BUT... now I have developed a hypothesis. It is this. Indians have to wait so much, so long, everywhere, that a moment saved on the streets is a moment more you could wait...somewhere more productive.


This of course comes from my (very limited for now) experiences of waiting...
...waiting for the bank manager to appear in his office (the doors of which are thrown open, and customers help themselves to the chairs inside with no invitation)
...waiting for the banking clerk to confer, refer and then eventually prefer to answer your questions
...waiting for 'madam' (I mention no names or contexts because it is universal) to finish her phone conversation about her previous shopping experiences and impending trips and then to notice you, which she does by turning to you and raising a well plucked eyebrow
...waiting for the unidentifiable-but-ubiquitous 'helper' to take the form out of the drawer and present it to you (after of course repeatedly denying that he is in possession of any such forms)


...and thus, now I wait for all IAS and UPSC staff to clear their medical board certification. Because, only then will the 'Standing Medical Board'  test my health and hopefully find me fit to serve this great nation. I live in hope and wait......

submersion

If the last two weeks are any indication then it is not looking good for my creativity. It has been 13 days since I arrived in India. It is not that the heat, the dust, the noise, the light, the smells kill you; it is just that it saps your energy, your will, your motivation, your zest.

It is my firm belief that as the heat and dust and smell and sounds become part of me, as I immerse myself in them, I shall rise again, reborn in my 'Indian' guise, having washed away the western patina. Equipped once again, to live in this part of the world.

of cherry blossoms and democracies…

Last weekend I took a break from the slow-crawl feel of the move and took a trip to Washington DC. Retracing a trip I took 9 years ago, my first visit to this country, wetting my toes in the ocean of unknown, unfamiliar, the foreign. The beginning of the circle that would close in 11 days when I board that one-way flight to Delhi.

I digress. The last time I made this journey down the east-coast it was somewhat different. For one, it was winter outside, snow covered the ground. The coast was beautiful, but in a harsh wintry way.  I had little money in my hands, return flight unconfirmed, under perpetual tension of being in a foreign land, far away from family, from the familiar. Now, I am a more seasoned traveler. Yes, I am still a ‘worrier’ by nature. But the terror of the unfamiliar is gone. But happy to say, not so jaded to not look forward to the Cherry Blossom festival on the Mall and the beautiful symmetry of DC.

As I stood on the Mall, crowded with families from all over the world, colourful kites soaring in the sky I looked at the Capitol where, just few days ago the legislators had celebrated the passing of the Healthcare bill. Where a year or so ago stood the first black president of this country. I reflect upon the small journey of mine through some of the greatest democracies of the world. From the most populous, to the then most powerful one that ruled us for 200 years to the most powerful one of today. So many different ways of executing this one idea:  people can rule themselves. However insular, however set in their ways, however illiterate, people are smart enough to be able to run their own lives.

As we drove back in the evening I noticed the posters advertising an exhibition I had been wanting to see for a long time. The Terracotta Warriors of China were visiting! I had to see them. The first Qi emperor conquers his neighbours and consolidates the warring states to unite into a single country, stamping out dissent and diversity, imposing a single language, a single currency, a single administration and gives birth to what would become the largest group of people living under a single banner. He recreates a whole new city of clay and wood and precious materials, just to accompany him into the netherworld. A giant architectural project, a wonder of the world.

It strikes me that all those wonders that we memorialize, admire and hold in awe are for the most part products of powerful autocracies. Where the unreasonableness of pouring unlimited resources into essentially useless structures is never questioned.  But then, I remember Madam Mayawati, a democratically elected autocrat, and my theory falls on its face!

synapses, alive and crackling…

It is One O’clock at night. And I am lying awake with a headache coming on. It appears that the excitement-less state that had me lamenting a few days back is gone! The neurons are fizzing and synapses are crackling. Plans of possible projects emerge and fade into the blackness behind closed eyes like fireflies. Who knows what will survive into the daylight tomorrow.

But it is a good feeling to get your brain back. Also reminds you why it is so relaxing to have a dead brain and the peace of nothingness. But oh what is the night without those flickering fireflies!

phasing out

Am I excited? It is a ubiquitous question of late. I don’t know what my answer should be. I know they are expecting me to say YES! of course. But honestly, since the day I decided to accept a definite offer, the day I sealed my fate, so to speak, ‘excitement’ has been farthest from my mind. It is as if the glossy picture that I had been staring at, aiming at all this while has suddenly, as I neared it, shed its patina of gloss and become just another matte print.

There are grand plans to be made, experiments to map out, students to entice, a lab to set up. But all I can think of is which plasmids I should take, how will I ship the fish, will the Customs let my things through, when will my brain ditch me and expose me for the fool that I am.

There is a ‘scientist’ to become, an office to choose, computer and instruments to be ordered. But all I can think of is the admin babus to appease, the director to please, bank and hospital staff to be battled.

There is a new life waiting to begin, new excitements to happen, new bonds to be forged, old ones to be polished up. But all I can think of is how many boxes to ship, how to protect the fragile, what is essential and what not, why is no one buying my furniture.

There is a heavy monsoon-like downpour in Boston today; the purples, yellows and whites of the new spring flowers are bursting forth, water droplets dancing on the puddles of clean water in the potholes. But all I can think of is the muddy slush of monsoons in Delhi, the unmentionable, unknowable solution that flows down the ditches, the drenched skeletal little kids knocking on your car windows…

From my vast experience of life I KNOW that these are phases one goes through. It is my firm belief that to squeeze the most of life, I need to immerse myself in each phase completely, thoroughly. If it is grief, wallow in it. If it is anger boil a bit. If it is weakness, succumb to it. If it is melancholy, submerge in it. It too shall pass. And so this too shall pass. But until then, until that excitement steals back into me, I will just have to deal with the mundane and keep craning my neck to see if there is light at the next bend.     

listing east

Booked the tickets, gave notice to landlord….April 15th I shall be airbound, on my way to a fates unknown! The finger hovered over the ‘purchase’ button on the airline website for a few seconds. Very conscious of the fact that this is one of those points of no return. The image of the Ice Age squirrel comes to mind…as he runs ahead, the shattering iceberg chasing at his heels. Don’t look back, keep running.

Now, there are many more things to be done of course. There are clothes to sort, books to pack, boxes to ship. There are plasmids to aliquot, reagents to inventory, lines to cull. There are lists for the home, lists for the lab. Lists for the bank, lists for the shipping company. Lists for the boss and lists for the labmates. Then there are lists of lists so I can list everything on the various lists in my master list.

And now I better go and organize my master list into alphabetical order…

looking back, looking ahead

So, turned out we toasted with Sangria and Tapas and some great company. There were best wishes and sharing of plans and bridging across cultures, of here and there. Someone asked what would I miss most and what do I look forward to the most.

What would I miss most?
 
The luxury of quiet contemplation. After a day spent in the outside world, I can withdraw into my four-walled shell and spend my time in the most relaxing company, those neurons. Turn my thoughts over, consider what is and what not. Why and whyever not. Look deep inside and discover something new. Delve into the world and learn something old and well known. Digest, mull, ponder.

And what do I look forward to?

The inevitable, unrelenting human connection. The complete permeability of the home to the world. The air and light, the cold and heat, the sounds and smells that move within and without as though there were no walls separating them. The unavoidable contacts, physical and emotional. Being part and one with the noise, the bustle, the jostling, teeming, heaving, living world all around. Isolation prohibited.

Marathon begins

Today I accepted an offer from the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi, to become Scientist Gr. IV (3) ad-hoc. All that hard work for Gr IV (3) you say? Well, that’s just a taste of things to come, life à la Govt of India.

 

I feel like I have been running for the past many months and even as the finishing ribbon flutters to the ground, ahead of me stretches the next course. I just finished a 16-month long race so I could qualify for a 29-year long marathon. Congratulations to me!

As I digested this information I began thinking back. To grasp the momentousness of this, well moment, I have to give you some numbers. Here goes…

24 applications sent

10 visits

8 seminars

3 rejections

3 offers

Or look at it another way…

16 months (first application sent in October 2008)

32,000 American Airlines air miles (qualifying me for GOLD (!!) status)

6,300 air miles within India (10,000 km) 

57 scientists (one-on-one interviews)

8 cities

2 Young Investigator’s meetings

I think that is worth a celebration, if for nothing but surviving. We are after all masters or rather doctors of survival. So, tomorrow we, my labmates and I shall go and celebrate with wine, if not champagne!

Stay tuned for further developments. 

Photo by Jake Blucker on Unsplash