PEREGRINATIONS

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, s...

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...