A game

There have been many things that this year has brought and left with. All the cliches that you can tag it with like good, bad, happy, sad will never describe it adequately. There are multitudinous reasons why I would remember this year forever and a few more why I would forget it for good. Nonetheless, I am me for having lived through another year. Everything we have done or will do seems to be part of a cosmic game- or is it? Feels more like we are the inventors of the game of life and we are the players in it too. The game is not really that simple, just because of the number of players involved. More importantly, it is not simple for the fact that a human response is never dictated by the situation, but is more dictated by our perception and involvement in the situation. The purpose of the game is not to win- life is never about winning. What is a victory today might be a failure few years down the road and vice versa. The purpose of the game is neither not to lose. It is just to live and learn. For now, let us just call it the game of emotions.

At this point I would like to dedicate this post to Shweta, whose statement gave me inspiration and direction on this blog. Things that are seemingly innocuous are designed such that you get to know the other conversant or object of research better. This particular trait is true in every aspect of life and I never really saw it that way until a few days ago. The response of a person is always dictated by logic and reason- nay- it is also dictated by emotions. The contribution of these factors to a decision/response is the ultimate variable and fluctuates between a maxima and minima whose limits are unreadable. Emotions seem to exclude logic, but logic does not necessarily preclude emotion. When the response is so variable, how are we even going to stereotype a person. That is another point where the game is complicated further. The response can never be typified and if you do typify the response, you are sent back several paces in the board. You relearn what you need to and then come back to a spot in life from whence you can stare forward and steer clear of further pitfalls.

Wisdom, logic, clear thoughts, and a perspective help you to move through the board game. But they are not all. Sometimes the presence of emotions and sometimes the absence of emotions help you to move forward too. If emotions vary between 0 and 100% on issues, how do we know what will help us move forward. The simplest explanation seems to be when the mind emotes to a huge extent, ( when emotions tend to infinity), our response has to be dictated by logic- learnt that from experience. Similarly, when logic pervades our fiber, we better decide so. This solution is never an exactitude. When people and other people's emotions are involved, we probably need to use a little emotion in our response. Just writing this blog or reading this post is never going to ensure our response, as it would just be a typification then. And I would like to run away from typification in this sense.

If this game is so damn complex, why do we play this? What do we gain from it? Day after day we pose questions and set up experiments that helps us understand the game a bit further. But do we really understand? Where do we really stand in it? Do we understand the number of paces that we have moved forward or backward? How do we know if we have come to the end of the game? That is just it. The game never ends and it grows interesting each day. WE LIVE IT AND LOVE IT as every single day passes. Understanding people, emotions and life is the ultimate intellectual conundrum. Understanding the human body, the numerous diseases and the laws that govern motion and reaction are easy. Understanding everything else is impossible. It is tough even to explain a question in terms of emotions and life that you will not even see a request for financial aid as a written proposal of research in emotions.

We do not research it. We do not question it. But, we experiment it, toy with it, question it. What is that 'it'? 'It' is something inanimate and animate at the same time. 'It' is humongous and tiny at the same time. 'It' is what we all strive to understand. Is 'it' life or a livelihood; emotion or logic; energy or application of energy? I do not know. I am still trying to understand 'It'- the game

Measure of Happiness

All said and done, we do not live for love; we do not live for others; we do not live for the rest of the world and peace in the world; Whatever we do and whatever we undertake is for ourselves and everything makes us happy. When some action makes us happy, we take it for granted because that is what we wanted. When some action fails and makes us sad, it sticks out like a sore thumb in our memory and we think of it more often. For the actions that made us happy, it is not that we forget it, but it hides behind a veil in our memory and we search a little for those memories. It is not very often that people ask you if you are happy. They ask you if you are feeling down or sad when they feel like it. When someone asks you if you are happy over a given period of time, it seems to dredge up thoughts. The quality and emotions of the thought seems to rely on our most recent memory. If sadness or doubts are the most recent memory, we tend towards a depressive state or self doubting or self-loathing and/or sympathetic state. If happiness is the most recent memory, we never seem to care anymore about it. We just move on without mulling over anything. Happiness seems to be one of the most highly rated/highly wanted emotion in this world and in spite of that, it is also the one thing that is taken for granted the most.

If we do take it for granted, by what measure do we say that we are happy. If its the most wanted thing in life, we certainly must have a measure to tell if we are happy or not. Would that measure be something material like money or clothes or food? or would that measure be more abstract in terms of friends, philosophy, satisfaction? I certainly do not think so nor have I been able to point out my measure of happiness in those terms. They just seem to be factors by which others think we are happy. The inherent happiness or sadness in each of these factors is only known to us. The way we weigh happiness today seems to be by accomplishments and big ones at that. Everyday accomplishments take the side bench on our trip to accomplish the greater things and what happiness we should feel for the smaller accomplishments of the everyday routine life have evaporated into nothingness because we do not give it the thought it deserves.

In absolute contrast to enjoying every small thing in life, if we go down to the level of enjoying mundane things, the special nature of the big accomplishments are lost. Either way, whether we smile for routine matters or for bigger surprises, we do not seem to know a measure of happiness, nor do we care to measure a singular important entity like happiness. This seems to be a paradox from where I view it and would definitely seem to be a better situation if people could objectively talk about an emotion like happiness. I wish I could point out a measure of happiness that would seem to fit all considerations. But,happiness being such an abstract thought would depend so much on individual perspectives.

If there is no measure for happiness, we would not know where to stop in its pursuit. Each small thing that seemingly would make us happy would only increase the necessity for further things in life. This would precipitate as a huge race and the final marker indicating happiness/victory would never arrive. We essentially would be where we are currently- in pursuit of material and metaphysical milestones with the hope that they would lead to happiness. When we reach one milestone, the road stretches further and we do not know if we want to stop our journey or continue. We do not know if we want to see further nor do we know if we are happy with the milestone reached. The only real search in life is for happiness and the target is invisible. If the journey is happiness, then the journey is never-ending.

The question now is should I feel happy for having written the blog? or should I feel sad for not having found an answer yet?

Evolution of knowledge

There is never a single moment that the world has slept. It has lived, breathed, perspired, toiled, sweated and grown. Inexorable and ineffable, we have watched it grow without some understanding at first and with a slight understanding later on. What we know seems to be a drop in the ocean and the mysteries we are yet to understand are endless. And it shall remain so for the future generations that shall live on this earth, for growth leads to evolution and evolution leads to convolution of current knowledge and that leads us onto further searches of knowledge. In a strange thought of paganism, we have probably been made in the splitting image of the Earth- Mentally and metaphysically and not physically though.

We change from birth until death and whatever change we have made is subject to further changes. We live or try to live, we breath and that is a given, we perspire and toil to feed us and others, grow in stature and strength and finally without understanding ourselves, and without realizing our dreams, we die. The energy within us does not die though and it is conserved around us and we pass on the energy to someone else and that is probably where the concept of 'rebirth' occurs. Since it is the same amount of energy that has pervaded the universe from time immemorial, there has to be the process of rebirth. We sure know or we do not believe that such a thing occurs in physical form. But the ideas and thoughts we perceive and provide stay for generations to come until they are abolished to obscurity for the future generations will always know better than us.

Knowledge grows from strength to strength, but ancient knowledge does not diminish in value. The knowledge gained over the past centuries will not mean a thing to the future unless we know why and how the knowledge was obtained. Till the end of our life, we try to learn this aspect and the irony is that at the end, we do not want to pass on all of it. The future is better off when it learns for itself. This is not about the change that occurs around us, but the constant that pervades the universe. For thousands of years billions of people have lived on this earth and we still do not understand every single personality that lives within our reach. Statistics could very well argue that if knowledge of people and knowledge of psyche were passed on from person to person, we would know everything to know about others and there might not have been war or peace; opinions or arguments; good or bad; perception or absolute.

Every which way we turn, we are faced by perceptions and opinions. It is up to us to learn what each one of them means and how each one of them impacts. Whether we shall contradict those opinions or argue or ill-treat others depends on us and the knowledge we gain while interacting with the rest. The knowledge is neither set in stone nor written on water. The knowledge is again a perception when we learn it. The only way to then make knowledge absolute is by constantly evolving it and ourselves, in which case knowledge is not absolute again. We shall go through these circles forever- of knowing and not knowing and of appeasing and letting down people. At the end, it does not matter at all, because the knowledge is good only when you learn it yourself.

Choices

Dear Sanath,

Times have passed- some good and some bad. Avenues have been explored- some fruitful, some a dead end. Life still moves on and I have lived it as best as I could. The praises heaped and the eye brows raised by others have not had an impact on me. They are fleeting moments of pleasure or heartbreak. The silent moments where I have sat by myself and contemplated life and things I had done have largely made me what I am today. I have committed a great many mistakes for which I have brooded a lot and finally forgiven myself for. I have performed a few good deeds, which in retrospect have made me really happy. The best times have always been when I did good by myself and not affected anything or anybody around me. Time and again life has given to me what I thought I would never need, but ultimately could not live without. Whether I went behind things or whether I stood waiting, they have always arrived and they have helped me along.

Choices were abundant. Lines of thought were abundant. Philosophies of life were abundant. But the over riding theme of everything was that life progresses, no matter what. On the point of choices, whether it makes you feel good about yourself or not, the truth is choices are always right or wrong. But, being wrong is just a perception and it is not absolute. Being right is also the same, although a great big majority would agree on right decisions than on wrong decisions. So, to rephrase, choices have been right or easy. From what I have understood, choices when right, make you feel good regardless of the outcome. The easier choices do not give you a feeling of satisfaction and bug you for days on end. Further on those lines, when you make a choice without knowing what you are getting into, they have never worked well for you- they were just the easy choices. Then again, there were a few choices were you knew what you were getting into and still took the easier choice instead of the right one. I am writing this to you only because these choices have shaped me. As I have rightly heard in some movie, 'History is never an accident. It is always a choice'.

You will undoubtedly reach this stage in life and think about everything in retrospect as I am right now doing. If there was anything in my life that I had to change, It would be the easier choices. Now that I know they were not right for me, I would like to go back and lead a perfect life. Then again, I would not have had the experiences that I did without all those choices, good or bad. Just a warning that your life is ahead of you and you have the time to take the better and the right choices all the time. Though, I shall not complain if you chose either way because then we would have a chance to meet just as we are.

From

Dr. Sanath Kumar,PhD
Nobel Laureate for time travel :P

Re-search

Days pass by us in a hurry. Every single day brings us a new delight and every single day shows us a new direction. We know not where the direction leads. But it is novel and we shall pave the path for the others to trod. When I started working on a research project in the lab, I had a defined project that would give me a singular answer. As time passed, I explored around my project a bit and discovered one more direction my research could take me. As I kept exploring both the directions, something new cropped up and very soon I was sitting on a pile of directions I could take. When I was pondering about this, I noticed that life was not that much different. Every single thought, action and emotion have this characteristic of divergence. What is true today does not remain true tomorrow. The conviction and connotation of truth is not the same from day to day. Change has affected every little thing possible. The land beneath my feet has not been a constant. The friends around me has not been a constant. The crushes in life have not been a constant. The work, the books and lots more- everything has taken different directions.

When I came to cross roads in my project, I had the freedom to choose multiple routes, explore them each a bit and continue with the most promising one. In reality, I am afraid, we make a choice and we just progress on that choice. To turn back to the fork is not going to work as every little thing influences our life and we are changed because of our choice. Every single fork that we choose upon stays in our mind, dulled by the repetition of memories and dulled by the richness of experiences of every single second since then.

As a mark of progress towards an academic doctoral degree, we write journal articles at some point of time. I would write mine by sifting through all the data that I have collected over the course of my work and try to make sense out of it. It is these data points which we interpret to mean a lot of things and it is these data points that define the direction of our research. And as we look back, choices that we made while facing forks are what have defined us. What we thought of our choices lends to understanding ourselves; What others think of us are shaped by those choices as the rest of the world perceives. Somewhere along this way, we understand what life is about; about social customs that are deemed appropriate; about impressions that we try for and impressions that we obtain; about the million other things that dont make sense when we just perform them.

In research,there are a lot of things questioned and we have the liberty of falling on previous literature to try and understand whatever we study. In life, despite the presence of numerous biographies and autobiographies, we tend to think every situation is unique and we tend not to understand lessons taught. True that every situation for every person is unique. However, the lessons learnt seem to be pretty universal. We go through every situation learn things ourselves and berate ourselves for not having understood the lesson earlier- pretty much like research.

As I think about this and write this piece, I hope that when life flashes past in my memories, I would feel that I have been a pretty good researcher. As much in life as in science

On the count of attraction, I plead guilty

You breeze your way through the streets of my heart and expect me to look away while a whiff of you sets me afire. A glimpse of you and all that I am is ready to follow you to hell and back. If all you want is my peace, here I am ready to give you a piece of my soul. Only if you would turn around, I could show you a fraction of the passion that I hold for you.

What attracts you may ask. I have no answer nor would I want to search and find the answer. The question is tantalizingly out of reach and as long as it is out of my grasp, I will strive to find out more about you; I would want to lose my solitude in your company. If all it takes is one lifetime to win you over, I shall give it and expect to give more. As time leaves its traces on my body, I want to leave traces of my love in your heart.

With all this in my mind and a heart-stopping vision in front of me, I approach you to only let you know that you are my dream poured into an earthenware of your body, molded with the fire of your soul, enlightened by the radiance of your smile. You storm my mind with the disdain of a tempest and I want to know if you would also calm the waters rippling in my heart with your presence. I profess my love to you as I would profess my allegiance to the king of my lands.

What burns in me and what do I know of you? is the thought on your mind. I do not know you except before this very minute nor for the life of me can I answer what burns me to tell you so. But the one thing that is imprinted into my very thoughts is that I want to be with you from this moment on. I do not know if my thoughts are right, nor do I know if you perceive my truest intentions. I believe the future will tell you the fiber that built me if you were to be my life. If you reject me outright, I shall not rescind my love; Rather, I shall apologize for my impetuous thought and action.

The apology is not because I disturbed you without purpose, but because the distress that I caused is to the one I am in love with. The apology is not because of the sadness I would feel for a loss but because of the happiness that I would have shared with you. The apology is not because you do not like me, but because I am attracted to you. If it was not love at first sight, I shall apologize for my attraction. If it was love at first sight, I shall apologize for the attraction.

Now, I move on, to the next big storm in life. I shall neither curse you nor forget you nor shall I regret the loss, but I shall watch my feelings and draw bliss out of every emotion I savored. As I meet the next big person in my life, I shall not be afraid to apologize for being attracted. For, it seems, an apology relieves you from the guilt of attraction.

A love letter

The days pass in a whiz. The nights pass in a whiz. The weeks, the months, the years have zoomed past me. I am still searching for you. I shall find you and live my life with you else, I shall die trying. The beauty of nature pales at a single thought of you. I just want to bend towards my work and stay focused to escape thoughts of you. It seems to me that I would be more readily accepted in this world if I were with you. You complete me; You complete my purpose; You complement my purpose in life.

You are the dad who pats on my back for having done something good. You are the brother who goads me on to do something better. You are the sister who wishes the best for me. You are the mother who cradles me in her thoughts. You are the daughter whom I would always protect and set free at the same time. You are the family for which I shall feed through thick and thin. I shall work hard for you. I shall search the 7 oceans, the mighty mountains, the vast plains and the silent deserts. If that were not enough, my heart, nerve and sinew would search for you individually in this cosmic wonder called earth and life.

I shall recognize you in every work of mine. My passion for you shall never end. If you chose to caress me, I shall forever be your slave. If you chose to hold me close, I promise to not abuse you. If you chose to live with me, I shall forever be worthy of you. If these were not enough, I shall discipline myself to just wait for you till you choose me.

You shall be my guiding beacon. A single thought of you shall wake me up from my slumber and set my adrenaline flowing. A thought of you will push me to the limits of my existence. As each day flows into the night and each night flows onto the next day, dreams of you shall follow every movement of mine.

'Success', I love you.

The final refuge

We are where we are, not because of our present, but because of our past. The lines that connect the dots are apparent only in retrospect. If it were for man to predict future, he probably would do it- very erroneously though. He wants to connect the dots in a certain way, but depending on how time moves in its mysterious mechanisms, he changes the dots as and when he sees fit. If he were to look back, all his dots and all his lines would make sense to him, both individually and communally.

I would like to dedicate this to Manasa, who suggested this line of thought. Steve Jobs talks about the same in an obscure yet personally esoteric way in his speech at Stanford.

It made me think about the past that is me today and the future that my past is going to make. The fact that I write in terms of personal opinions are shaped by my past and the present adds to it in terms of retrospective thought. If given a choice, would I go back and change it? Yes! Maybe!- but only in certain aspects. The richness of my experiences have gained a physical form in me and a mental form in my thoughts.

What would it take to shape a person and shape the world. Well, that is again a speculation of the action to be made and I bet I would be wrong at it. The safest way out will be to say, the past shall design my present, and my present shall determine my future. In fact, destiny is one thing we do not have power over, in spite of so many non-believers. We are partially if not totally powerless in the hands of destiny. We shape our fate in certain ways and the inherent complexity in the environment will affect our destiny in ways indeterminable.

In all cases of determining the future, we look into our own past or into others' past and decide our course of action. The results shall be what they will be and we will not be able to control them. The most profound and concise thing that I have learnt and read is "Only the effort is yours; The result is not". The effort to make something happen comes from our analysis of what we have done about the same in the past. The result belongs to the future- though we can reasonably predict the way things will go by comparing it to our past, its not absolutely right. Our past is our comfort; It is our proof; It is what we turn to, when we cannot explain what is happening to us now.

The memories that run through our minds every single day and our thoughts and observations of all things around us have all been shaped by our past. Every single word that makes sense comes from our past. Every single word that does not make sense to others comes from our past. Every single second that we spend alone is spent in our past with thoughts of what we have done. The past is so important to us, that forgetting it is impossible. To ignore our past and to ignore the lessons of the past would be the one folly that can never be redeemed.

True that our life progresses beyond the present. True also that future shall be succeeded by futures. At every point, the past is our stepping stone. We find safety in our past. We find creaking stairs, broken steps and steady steps in the staircase to our future, destiny and life. It is the only refuge that we use at every step of our way. At the day we reckon our own lives, the past is our final refuge- the one refuge that justifies our existence on this earth.

The Parallel Universe

Have you ever experienced the 'phasing-out' in class?- The one where, the mind struggles to stay in the physical dimension, but transcends into multiple dimensions of time and space? Shortly, have you ever noticed that you are day- dreaming? Dreams seem to be a dimension of life that we all like and we all find comfort in. Nothing bad seems to happen there. We are the heroes/heroines in every dream that hits us; Else we are the innocent victims; We are the caring/sad people deserving some care and love. Why should we live there? Why do we shun reality in dreams? Are we really what we dream about? It seems not- both from personal experience and from listening to dreams of others. I definitely do not want to discredit the value of dreams- I shall distinguish them as visions and dreams. Visions in my words shall be those that picture you accomplishing something in reality through logic and logic-filled methods. Dreams shall be the ones that are theatrical visions of yourself in situations that are untenable and unrealistic.

I wish I could call myself as one of those who believe in the here- and- now. Unfortunately, I am not. I find that dreams make me happy and make me smile lot more than the monotonous seconds that may or may not lead to an exciting second of a fast- paced, bone-chilling, blood-curdling action, which I would take in my stride. If I were the hero I dream I am, I would have conquered HIV ten times over, would have wooed any girl on the face of Earth, beaten up any guy who dared lay his eyes on my girl, would have been a muscular hunk and the brainiest Nobel- prize winner. Maybe these are all what I really want to be. I do not see them in my reality and so I dream up an alternate world where I am all these and more. Stephen Hawking is right- there are zillions of parallel universes- the ones in everyone's imagination. It seems to me that if it were not for the involuntary nature of our senses, we would be in a perpetual state of dreams- the parallel universe.

The voluntary state of your senses- This is probably what distinguishes a normal person from a mentally- affected person. To wish that you gain acute control over your senses would mean you could phase-in and phase-out of your universe at any second. To be in the state that we are currently in would mean that someone setting our pants on fire or just simply pinching us hard would return us to this mortal Earth. Well, to seriously consider it, it would probably bring back the mentally- affected too. However, if beauty and goodness is the characteristic of the dreams that the mentally-affected live in, I would very badly want to gain control over my senses.

I want to live in that world where everything is beautiful; where everything obeys my wish; where I am the master of minds and the slave of love; where I am the brawn of the civilization and the brain of the revolution; where I am the auditor and the earner and the payer; where I am the start of all good and the end of all bad; where I could instill fear and inspire respect; where mortals shall extol my virtues till the end of the universe.

In short, I want to be a mad person. I want to live in the realm of my dreams- the final refuge of one and all who have lived there.

What am I doing here?

Tiffany to herself: " What am I doing here?"
And then realizing I am nearby, she apologized to me and remarked that I should be asking that question to myself quite often; More so than her because I am from a different continent. I replied, " No.... I have not asked that question because I came here by choice, to pursue what I wanted". I am still wondering about her reply!:" Oh! then you have asked that question to yourself!". "No!... I was just responding to your remark" I protested feebly.

This small incident was such a small thing in the larger picture of the workday. However, in my mind, the question it raised was no small thing. Have I really asked that question to myself? Do I question my motives for having come here? Is this question so important in the first place?

Well, I slowly went over the events that led to where I am right now; The first time I saw the term 'genetic engineering'; The first time, someone explained the potential of 'gene therapy'; The first time I thought of gene therapy and HIV in the same sentence; The times I thought of half-baked ideas to cure HIV; The times I was called the AIDS guy; The times when I would immediately wake up from monotony upon hearing anything about HIV; The times I knocked on the doors of the labs working on HIV only to be refused; The days I waited in tense anticipation after applying to Universities with strong research cores in HIV; The year of waiting along the sidelines as the world marched inexorably; The process of reapplying; The days of interviews and finally the decision to come to Missouri; Looking back and listing out these thoughts, the journey seems to be long. The common theme however has been passion- passion that I will settle for nothing lesser than pitting what little thought I have against HIV.

Where is this passion leading me to? Today I am here working on a part of what I have always wanted to work on. Esoteric it be as it may, my work is leading me to someplace, I know not what, I know not how- but someplace where I shall find satisfaction. An advanced science degree, recognition for being what I am and the sense of self-satisfaction seem to be breathing points in the longer journey that I have embarked on.

Now that I am here, what am I doing here? Am I on the journey or am I on the threshold? As of today, I have started on the work/walk part of the journey. The cognition and the queries that go along with it have just now started. I am learning and learn I shall to slowly trudge along the road to salvation- The road which will ultimately lead to some important day when the virus shall be stopped in its tracks. In the larger picture of the things, I am just a small part of the machine. I hope to be an important part of the machine someday.

Again, What am I doing here?- Walking. Walking the walk

The Mask

About 3 years old....
I wanted the hot cars racer. My mom refused to get it for me. I cried.
About 7 years old...
I wanted a new board game. My dad refused. I threw a tantrum.
About 14 years old....
I wanted a parker pen. My dad said I would lose it very easily. I acted sad.
About 19 years old....
The girl I liked said no. I acted heartbroken.
Now- 23 years
I think about all these and one thought comes to my mind immediately- The MASK
Every single time, I would have done easily pretty well without whatever I had wanted at that point of time. But I just had to act out my emotions then. It was all a mask. A mask that would have conveyed how I felt about it at that time; A mask that would change with time. A mask is just something that I want others to perceive- a part of what I want them to know- A truth that is half exposed.

Today, I wonder what are these emotions. Are they what I feel? Are they real? I am not sure I know the answer. Why should sadness be expressed with tears and frowns. Why should happiness be expressed with a smile. Is the reaction innate? or has it been taught to us in this fashion? If my face were to be carved in granite and every time I feel something, all I have to do is wear a mask that would depict my face in a contortion that would be understood as my thought. Well seems to me like I am just thinking in a weird way, where the social convention has a different meaning to me. Does not mean that I am going to change it. I shall practice this and make the mask perfect such that I can let others know what I am not feeling too.

Calmness, when my heart races and does a little dance.
Happiness when all I want to do is wring my heart and do the crudest surgery on it.
Sympathy when all I want to do is tie the other person's tongue in an irretrievable knot
Impassiveness when some comments have guillotined my ego

This is what everyone does and it is the accepted social convention. The planet of masks welcomes you!

The test of a free pizza!

As a grad student, or even just a student, how many times in your life have you been to an event, for the sake of a free pizza... probably countless... and if you can count, not worth mentioning in a conversation! Why do we do this? Is it the money that you save by eating a slice of pizza- no way.. one slice of pizza at a tiem is not going to save you anything. Is it the taste?- maybe... but then taste would excite you only for so long. Is it hunger that drives you in the direction of the smell wafting through the air?- hmm sometimes... but very very rare. On the downside, its quite unhealthy- the major options being cheese and cheese with pepperoni. Being a veggie, I eat only the cheese pizza and think about the huge amount of fat calories that was accumulating in that belly of mine. The flip-side is that it is free- That is it! 'FREE'. That is the word that drives us to it.

This is probably better understood by shopaholics. We see a lot of things we like in stores. Every time we want to buy something, the worth of the product in relation to the price drives us away. However, when we see the tag free or sale, we throw everything else out of our mind and just go and get it. I guess that is exactly what happens when we see a 'Free' pizza.

Pros of a free pizza
1) It is Free
2) It is free
3) IT IS FREE

Cons
1) not healthy
2) they make you do a lot of stuff you dont want to do in order to get the free pizza
3) what the hell- its just a pizza

Considerations to decide if we want to go for the event with a free pizza-
Would any 'interesting' person attend it?
How crowded will the pizza line be?
Do they give free t-shirts along with the Pizza? or any other freebies
Is there anything of interest in the event to me?
Do I have to do any other important thing at that time?
These are probably my considerations in the order mentioned.

The test of strength is only when you are able to cross the first three questions and reach the 4th one.

I have given this problem considerable thought and decided I will go for the Mizzou activities mart sometime next week- serves free pizza!

Of respectful conversations

17 days between posts... sort of bad.... but trying to write again.. so here it goes

What would it take to talk to a person?
Even though we do not think of this all the time, at every party and every meeting, when we meet new people, we or at least I struggle to find words to talk to a person. Consciousness can be a bad thing at times. What will that person think if I just went up to him/her and talked? What if I appear stupid? What if she thinks I am hitting on her? But you know what- once you start talking past those first few awkward moments, the words flow. It is said that you make your impression in the first three minutes of meeting a person and it is true. If you can make them smile whole-heartedly in those crucial moments, you have hit the wavelength. They will listen to you, even if you ramble on.

Case-in-point: At a recent conference I went to, I introduced myself to a few people and talked to them about their research and doubts that I had. To one person, I just went up and asked him about fluorescence and plate readers. I did not get much of an answer. There was some hand-waving explanations and obscure references to published scientific papers talking about the same. I in fact think he took me for a lowly grad student. On the other hand, there was this other post-doc to whom I introduced myself over dinner and talked to him about his own research and how we might be on common grounds in terms of research. Over the next four days, we had some quite good chats about research, life in science, skiing, alcohol, food etc. The difference in the two incidents is that, we hit upon a common ground quite early and our attitude towards each other was unofficial/ non-condescending/ mutual respect. I think that is where conversations and interactions start. The mutual respect part.

If I were to talk to a girl with the sole purpose of hitting on her, I might get to first base with her. But then the hitting-upon part is dependent on her curves and does not really respect who she is- it just respects any girl with curves. On the contrary, if I spoke to her about something common we both had, or something she likes, or even something that has got nothing to do with how she looks, that is where you might get to know if you would respect her or not. And that is a long conversation inducer. Man is a social animal. And talk as he might about independence, there is absolutely no way that he would be able to live without interacting with anyone. A true conversation and respect is where it all starts. It is not until a person respects you, that you learn to respect yourself. Reasons and feigning apart, respect is what we all live on. If not for respect, we might as well be creatures of indecision, self- loathing and suicidal maniacs.

This post is not a guide as to how to talk to a person, but about what in my opinion would be important to talk to a person. Ayn Rand's Fountainhead is a beautiful example on this line of thought. You can either suck up to a person and make him feel good just to boost his ego or you can truly be yourself and let him understand his worth through your talk with him. Every talk on some level lets you know of what the other person thinks of you- through arguments, or through level of intellect in the talk or through the tone in your voice. If you think high of the person, it will show in your attitude. Attitudes are always relative. It is yourself in respect to that person that determines attitudes towards personalities.

In conclusion, it is the attitude that is an ice-breaker to every conversation that goes on around us.

Gift and the joy of giving

What would it mean to give a gift? Everytime I want to get a gift, I go to the store and search for something that the other person might like or what I think might be what the other person wants. When on the receiving end, you are much too grateful if its something that you absolutely wanted to own and you were putting off the purchase for some excuse or the other. But there is one more level to gifting that I have felt so good about for sometime now. The gift of time, effort and personal likes.

A gift received always makes you happy- it could be the thought that someone cares enough to give you a gift or it could be the fact that the gift would be very useful to you or a combination of both, where the gifter takes the initiative to know what you like and gives you what you want. This is probably the quintessential law of a gift, but one which is very loosely followed. I have relished every gift that I have received- There was one, where a dear friend had written a poem wishing me to experience life without fear; French press and thermos for coffee was another instance; so on and so forth. I thank everyone for their gifts; but more importantly I felt important when I received the gifts; I felt cared for. Of course, I am the receiver and hence I am happy.

What would give the gifter happiness? The thought of spending money and time and effort into making a gift is of course a part of the process, but is not the source of happiness in a realistic world among non- ideal people which is what we all are. Happiness for the giver is seeing joy in the face of the receiver. Its the acceptance of the gift and truly appreciating the gift. This is all true and everyone realises it.

If everyone realises it, why should I be writing about what everyone knows? well, because I recently found greater happiness as a giver not when gifting from the receiver's perspective, but when giving away something that I really wanted for myself and in which I had invested a lot of time and effort. I am an avid numismatist and collected the fifty state quarters issued in the USA over a period of 10 months. The fiftieth coin in the collection was the toughest to get and I spent quite sometime for that coin alone. I gifted the collection to a very close friend. The happiness stemmed not from just giving it away, but in the gift being accepted for what it was. It was an important part of me. The hobby defines some very essential flaws and strongpoints in my character. The gift was appreciated in a sense (atleast in my perspective) that could probably not be expressed in words. That is when I understood the joy of giving.

When you give a part of yourself and it is accepted with gratitude, its as if you are accepted and are rejoiced. Its definitely not practical for everyone and definitely not practical to gift just about anybody in this sense. But when you do so, I would imagine you would understand an essential point. That gifts are dime a dozen. But great gifts are priceless and are the unexpected things.

'Be kind'- perspective of a rhetoric

"Be good with your friends" shouted out a mom to her son, who was going to play. I was walking on the pavement when I heard these words. And me being me, started thinking. Why do people say 'be good to others' or 'be kind to others'. What do they really mean? The natural instinct of normal people would be to behave in a manner that is acceptable society. So what would they mean by saying 'be kind'? What is acceptable to the society? Would being kind mean to be sympathetic with the sad? Would being kind mean being charitable to the needy? Would being kind mean talking normally to the abnormal? Would it mean to help those in requirement of help?

Now, I am a guy whose thoughts have been framed partly by my parents, partly by the society and partly by books that I read, just like almost every other person in the world. What would these say about 'being kind'? In other words, how would my natural instinct interpret the phrase 'being kind'? A couple of instances might be in order here.

"Fifth Mountain" by Paulo Coelho, the latest book that I read talks about the prophet Elijah and his actions during the early stages of Israel- Phoenicia conflict. In this regard, the one thing that stands out in my mind is the way he behaved with a younster after the destruction of the city Zarephath. The survivors of the massacre in the town were weary and were deep in grief including a boy of thirteen who was mourning his mother's demise. Elijah forced himself to pull the cadavers to a single spot to set them on fire. Few of the elderly started helping him and when they were hungry they went in search of food. When the food arrived, an old woman noticed the boy and was about to profer food to him, when Elijah stopped her. He told her that the boy could find food for himself after doing some work. If the boy had been given food, he would have just gone on brooding and would not have gotten out of his depression. On the other hand, the tedium of work is a wonderful anaesthetic to the pains of the heart. This particular action, taken out of context would only strike the word 'cruelty' in the observer's heart. But the life ahead cannot be wasted on the memories of the past. So, was Elijah cruel or kind to the boy? From the reasoning offered, it seems like he was being good to the boy.

The next instance I shall write about is a true life chance at being good. I have a friend who is very fond of potatoes. So much so that, she would be willing to eat fried potatoes every single day of her existence. She would also differentiate food on the basis of color. Her dislike for some vegetables would also stem form it being green or red in color. If someone were to come along and ease her into the habit of eating vegetables other than potatoes, what would be the potential benefit for her? She gets a much varied nutrition and also gets to live a healthier life. If this were to be forced on her, albeit with a reluctant participation by her, would it be cruelty? I would very much differ on that aspect. I would say this is an example of being good to a person, may not be so in her own eyes or in the eyes of an onlooker.

And then there is the classical chinese story, where a beggar taught to fish on his own, leads a life independent of others. The general tone of this post has been that 'being kind' is not about performing things in favor of the others. It is we would perceive as good at that point of time. Its not a fixed rule. The only rule is to be good, although the internal mechanisms are flexible.

This thought is only as good as the differentiation between good and bad. We all perceive and agree certain things to be good and certain things to be bad. In spite of this, we tend to think of 'beneficial' lies amongst others such. In the same reasoning, perception of being kind is dependant on the situation. Charity and encouragement are not the only answers to being kind. The difference between being kind and spoiling the other person will lead us a long way.

For all seasons and reasons

This is something I wrote a while back

Relations happen all the time

Marriage happens for a reason- The familial bond; Procreation;

Love happens for a reason- Togetherness;

Friendship happens for a reason- mmmmm….. That’s just it- They don’t happen for a specific reason. It happens for a multitude of reasons and I cannot put my finger on one.

I have heard people say “friendship is for all reasons and seasons”- In my experience I found that to be true. However, I could not fathom the phrase “All seasons”- Why not just say ‘forever’? Much later on, I understood that ‘forever’ is a relative term and a phrase not to be trusted. Time flew and there came a time when I had to understand the phrase ‘all seasons’

Be it summer or winter, autumn or spring, my friends have stood by me. But mind you, I am not talking about the climate around, but within.

When happiness dwelled in my heart, their lips bloomed in a smile, not unlike a spring bloom.

When sadness streaked my face, their lips frowned, not unlike the dark clouds on a rainy day

When I jumped in victory and joy, their face shone like the summer afternoon

When I was down, they set my spirits afire, not unlike the crackling fires lit during winter

I will never be sure if forever means a day or a week or a month or a year. But I am sure of this – Friendship is an absolute for all seasons, whatever is the reason for the friendship or the season.

I want to thank my best friends- Not for just being friends, but for being there for all reasons and seasons. Love you so much.

Stupidity!

This refers to a beautiful article that I read some time back- " The importance of stupidity in scientific research". Every single time I have come up with an Idea, there have been a multitude of people who have pointed out some flaw or the other to me. At one point of time, I would seriously doubt my idea and think about it a lot. Sometimes, I would scorn at the other person's thought and think 'what does he know; I am better'. Sometime later, I have also realised that my idea was really flawed and used to feel sorry that I had mistaken the other person's intentions.

When I started my graduate study, I approached professors who were working on HIV and used to talk to them about a few ideas of mine, which I thought had merit. For sometime, the ideas seemingly interested the professors. When I finally joined the lab in which I was going to pursue my thesis, I was still gung-ho about my own ideas. While some students advised me to keep my ideas to myself and work on them later on in my career, I was more inclined to working on them right away. And hence, I kept harping on it with my professor/adviser/mentor. He would point out what was to be improved in the idea or he would point out a very serious flaw, to which I had to agree ( In terms of logic and not otherwise- Other grad students would know what I am talking about). I kept going back to him with some idea or the other and he would always tell me of some published journal articles to read in order to better understand the problem at hand. Invariably he would apologize for the criticism also.

I kept going back with ideas, because I really didnt feel stupid about it. I just thought it was smart to keep throwing out ideas. Finally I realised that formulating workable ideas was far more important than to randomly speak of something I knew. 'Empty vessels make more noise' and 'Its better to shut your mouth and let someone think you are stupid than to open your mouth and confirm the fact' would often course through my brain.

In due course, I had to start thinking about my Comprehensive/ Qualifying exam, in which I have to present workable ideas in the form of a grant. I was speaking out loud to two colleagues that I was scared of my exam because all I seemed to have were stupid ideas. And then something changed for me. Instead of agreeing or keeping quiet about it, they told me that it was alright; And that it was what grad students at my time of their study usually do. Its perfectly normal to talk about ideas that seem to work but in actuality would not, because that proves that you are not stupid. It proves your brain is active in your research. This heartened me to an extent that hope sprang and I knew I would make it someday. I must thank Elisa and Maggie for that!

I have been stupid all this while for a reason! My stupidity has not let my brain rust so far. I know now that I shall come up with a zillion ideas of which 99.9% would not be worth its salt. But then, I also know that the .1% would be my saving grace and that it shall be an important contribution- Be it to science or to the future generations. This post shall remind me of my insecurities when I read them and also shall instill hope in me.

I have always wondered how I my written word would be accepted in the general mass. In short this is a territory that I have not explored and hence the name of my blog. Also, in a sense, my thoughts are not mapped by every single person around. For that reason, these blogs or my thoughts shall be 'Terra incognito' for you!

This shall not be a place where I will force my thoughts on you. You are welcome to opine, and I shall not argue about my thoughts. However, if I feel it necessary, I shall justify my line of thought. I do not hope for a lot of feedback on whatever I write, but shall be happy if I have any.