Untitled.

I haven't had such a bad day in lab in quite a while. At least not since I started this one.

Lesson learned: There are worse things than not even having at a chance to get nominated for a fellowship for which it was your last chance because of eligibility issues, just because someone lost your papers and didn't even inform you.

Hell explained by a Chemistry Student

Below is a widely circulated anecdote on the internet. I do wonder though, if this is so legit, why does no  one know who this student is yet, or why has the student not come forward to take credit?

---

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. Hat top to Annabelle Mark who is a constant source of this type of material.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+ "

Bel Canto

 "Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find."

 - Ann Patchett

Tiny Interesting Choices

One of the reasons why I love xkcd so much.

आज बिछड़े हैं

आज बिछड़े हैं कल का डर भी नहीं
जिंदगी इतनी मुख्तसर भी नहीं

ज़ख़्म दिखते नहीं अभी लेकिन
ठंडे होगे तो दर्द निकलेगा
तैश उतरेगा वक्त का जब भी
चेहरा अंदर से ज़र्द निकलेगा

आज बिछड़े हैं...

कहने वालों का कुछ नहीं जाता
सहने वाले कमाल करते हैं
कौन ढूंढे जवाब दर्दों के
लोग तो बस सवाल करते हैं

आज बिछड़े हैं ..

कल जो आयेगा, जाने क्या होगा
बीत जाये जो कल नहीं आते
वक्त की शाख तोड़ने वालों
टूटी शाखों पे फल नहीं आते

आज बिछड़े हैं ..

कच्ची मिट्टी है, दिल भी इंसा भी
देखने ही में सख्त लगता है
आंसू पोंछे तो आंसुओं के निशां
खुश्क़ होने मे वक़्त लगता है

आज बिछड़े हैं कल का डर भी नहीं
जिंदगी इतनी मुख्तसर भी नहीं 


-- गुलज़ार

An Epiphany of Sorts

I am beginning to find it very auspicious that every time I listen to a piece by Sigur Rós, I sit down and I am able to reflect and introspect. 

Today, I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that all I want. All I ever want is to be able to work hard at the things I love, and to be able to accept decisions out of my control, while being with a few people who I have really come to love in life. So, what I really want is to just work hard so I feel good about my existence, and have the acceptance so I can be peaceful, and have the grace of Love in my life. 

I just hope that with passing time, I learn to sort out my confusions and learn how to get these things that are really all that I want from life. Perhaps this is why I feel the need to believe in God. It just seems too difficult to ever figure out on your own, and the fact that there is help out there gives me the comfort that, so what, it's still possible.

Today is a good day. :-)

Bittersweet

I thought this day would never come. Officially drinking coffee without sugar. I blame beer-drinking to have accustomed me to find bitterness, sweet.

Now, if we could only say that about life. How bittersweet. 

Tattoo Revisited

Well, after quite a bit of musing, I finally have a tattoo as of Labor Day weekend 2011. Self-designed, artist-improved and parents approved, no less. Ha.

Thank you, Kevin Collins of Eddie's Chinatown, Philadelphia. You've done a wonderful job.

Aha.

If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It's lethal.

Don't allow your wounds transform you into someone you are not.  - Paulo Coelho.

Destinations for this Year

One of these is going to happen:

1. Multnomah Falls, Oregon.
2. Smoky Mountains, North Carolina.

This is already happening, and I cannot wait:

Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu.

August 2nd - Present

This is officially the most difficult time of my life. And there's no one to share the confusion with.

It is really strange how, despite having all the society, and all the love and all the company, the worst experiences of your life are the ones that you most inevitably end up facing alone.

A few moments can stretch your experience by a lifetime. Making you old in your young skin. I will never forget the early morning, looking out of a rain-fogged car window, feeling my silent tears slide down my cheeks, when I knew things would never be the same. I felt like I had stepped out of my skin, and was looking in on myself as an observer. I was a woman, no longer a child, a girl. I was going to learn to shoulder responsibility, and guilt and pain. I was going to find the faith to hold my head up against the breaking pressure. I was going to learn to stand by my decisions. I was going to learn to keep going with a broken heart, praying it will heal soon. I was going to grow up, and I was going to do it alone.

In the name of Love.

--
Update: While the feelings last, this bitter phase was over in December 2011. Thanks for your concern, folks! It keeps me going.

"Tryst with Destiny"

Independence Day this year came with many bittersweet feelings. I realized I am starting to question what it really means to "love my country." What is patriotism? When you say you love your country, what do you mean? You love it as your home? You love is a constituent nation? You love it for its landscapes and culture? The Food? You would die fighting for it? Your ideals include improving some aspect of the country's state of affairs, a sort-of giving back? All of these?

I have no idea. Do I love my country? I don't know. I don't know what that means. I love my family, yes. I love my home, yes. Am I proud of my heritage? Yes. Wikipedia tells me that patriotism is devotion to one's country. I am not devoted to my country. I am mostly devoted to the people I love. Does that mean I don't love my country, or that I don't have a sense of civic responsibility? 

Over the years, I've tried to minimize my guilt of being here by donating money to various causes in India, most of the time being absolutely sure it won't go into the right hands. But still, I did it. I suppose my guilt outweighed my logic. I wanted so badly to believe that I love my country and will continue to do so, no matter where I go. However, what I mostly love about India is that my family makes me a home there. If you were to take that away, I would perhaps have a very strong fascination with India, and its rich culture, but would I love it? I don't think so. I am not sure if this stems from my sense of "anomie." A word I learned a few years ago that has become my favorite. I constantly feel like, at least geographically, I have no home. My home is in the hearts of people who love me, who create a home  for me, no matter where I am. 

It is time to close this rant of circular questions and muddled thoughts. Perhaps one day I will come back to this post, knowing the answers. In the meantime, I would like to share the original speech made by our first Prime Minister on our very first Independence Day. 

"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment, we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity. At the dawn of history, India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and grandeur of her success and failures. Through good and ill fortune alike, she has never lost sight of that quest, forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of misfortunes and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future? Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom, we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons us now. That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfill the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means, the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over. And so we have to labour and to work, and to work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace is said to be indivisible, so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments. To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. 

The appointed day has come -the day appointed by destiny- and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about. It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed! We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrow-stricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people. On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation, who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest. Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death. We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good [or] ill fortune alike. The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman. We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action. To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service."

We have come a long way, and we have a long way to go. Jai Hind.

Quite Handy

Courtesy: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Tattoo

Well, what can I say? I want a tattoo but haven't gotten one in the longest time because I keep having second thoughts about the location. Having to wear a saree every now and then eliminates many candidate spots which are likely to remain unseen. Or I am left with areas that are right on the bone and I might just die of pain getting inked there.

Either way, for the past three years, I have at least had the design in my head. The word "Ishq" written in arabic. Ishq because it means love without lust. I felt that was a pretty vital part of my life, my thriving, and that having it written on some part of me would only make it more beautiful to live a life full of love without lust.

However, reassessing myself, the person I am, my ambitions, and my life so far, I've changed my mind. Memento Mori, or "remember your mortality" when translated from Latin (or "remember that you will die") resonates more with my soul than Ishq. Living a life remembering that you have to die is perhaps the biggest challenge to face. Yet, it is something one can never figure out and one must perform an act of courage and resolve to believe in the flow of life, to trust it to take you where you need to go, and to lead that life in such a way that when you are dead, you can be at peace. Find your own nirvana. 

My Life = A Musical?

Who wants to have a conversation with me using these?

Yeah!
Noooo!
::dramatic sound::
Womp womp

Amedeo Modigliani

Modigliani's paintings capture emotion in quite a unique way, though there are many that disagree. I sometimes marvel at myself for seeing emotion in these elongated, caricature-like faces. But then that's the skill of the painter. He can show you the things you want to see with the lines and colors of his choosing.
Perhaps the reason he did mostly (if not all) portraits is because the act of presenting another human being to the viewer and trying to elicit feeling and thought, is both easy and difficult. Perhaps he was really good at it and exhilarated at this challenge, or perhaps people were merely more interesting and spectacular to him than all of nature and its grandeur.
A especially intriguing observation, for me, being that in most paintings, he wouldn't paint the subject's eyes. Empty eyes. One of the feature films on his life seems to suggest that he would paint the eyes of only those subjects when he claimed to be able to "see their soul." The truth, of course, is something we will never know. His motivations are as much debatable, as I dare say, his talent (or as some claim, the lack thereof).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfBo7AYfTIE

Bonus points for anyone who can name the track in the background.

More Drosophila genes

Courtesy Frank Macabenta, our resident Drosophiliac. I mean, er...

"embargoed."  Phenotype: Mutants display nuclear export defects.

"dissatisfaction" (dsf). Phenotype: Female flies display increased resistance to courtship.

Nahmane

"Here, on the land, where you place your feet, you will also place your heart." - Tom Bissinger.

Void(0)

Going to have my last cigarette from the pack.

Tooth still hurts. 

Exam still on Thursday.

Ah.

Ashes on Concrete

As I sit here, under the burden of wasted time, I cannot help but think about how things would be if that time was not wasted. If indeed, every moment was utilized to the fullest, as many cliches advise us so. Would I be more successful, happier or more wise? It's difficult to know since its an outcome I have not experienced.

Of all the things I complain about on a regular basis, motivation (or lack thereof) is pretty high up on the list. Lack of motivation results in more wasted time, and lesser dreams accomplished. At the end of the day, it is very demoralizing but it is also very much self-orchestrated. Like some sort of vile addiction that is difficult to break even though it leaves the body helpless and sometimes, lifeless.

I wonder if it is possible to change. If it is possible to somehow consciously always remember to be frugal with time. To organize my day so that everything I wish to do in that day actually gets done, and within a reasonable amount of time too. If what can be done in 6 hours is done in 11, it is rather pointless, right?

I am beginning to realize that this, perhaps, is the biggest challenge I will ever face. To do what is right, versus what is easy. Giving in to distraction is easy. Too easy. Perhaps it is time to test whether I have the backbone to pursue what I know in my heart to be right, and my reward will be that I actually get to find out whether there really is a light at the end of the tunnel, rather than wondering for the rest of my life.

If you read this, and know what I'm talking about, it'd be cool if you could share your experience. What do you do when you find yourself in this vicious cycle?

Created by Oatmeal

Munchkin

I would like to humbly proclaim that this munchkin is humbly grateful for all the divine interventions in my life. I swear, if more people believed how awesome Hanumanji really is, their life would be less miserable. At least, mine is.

After spending much time observing others, I find it a bit sad to find that just to admit a little belief in something, people have to not only fight their own self-doubts, but also the prejudice of others, who despise everything in which the word "religious" appears even once. The pride in being an atheist. The pride in having nothing to believe in oneself. That is okay, of course. What is amusing is the condescension towards those who do need something else to believe in. Something else to fill the gap, when faith in oneself crashes. Something else to help restructure your soul. Many don't even know the difference between religious and spiritual anymore. Did we really become that self-sufficient? I must've missed that.

I am starting to wonder when it became bad to believe in the divine. When religion began to be used for mass control and manipulation? Or later, when it started influencing government policy, scientific education, and altering historical accounts? Or even long before, when different religious views were a cause to separate and divide communities into closed circles? The sort of division that sparks everyone's self-preservation instinct and a discomfort towards those that are different? We may never know.

Beliefs and opinions have always been a cause for argument, but not among people who are curious, and full of wonder towards things that are different and new. These are a cause for argument among self-righteous people, who are not only convinced that theirs is the correct, overarching idea, but also that others should also think so. Trouble really starts when such people are in positions of power. Curious thing is, nothing stimulates the Ego more than these two things, and which is why even close friends will have arguments over these. There is so much complexity to human psychology, and I really do wonder how it evolved.

Even as I write this, through my rambling questions, is a hint of self-doubt. I never pray in public, yet I carry around my Hanuman Chalisa in public, always. And I really am not sure which I despise more: judgment from those who don't understand why I choose to believe, or judgment from those who themselves have nothing to believe in, and are thus unable to accept their faults and move on. Because there is nothing that can catch them to bring them home. Perhaps one day, I shall evolve too, and stop caring.

Resolution 2011

After not-so-much deliberation,  I have decided upon the following resolutions:

1. Keep more promises.
2. Actually carry out my good intentions more often.
3. Be more ambitious.
4. Work harder.
5. Focus more.

This year for the first time, I will actually come back to this list at the end of the year and evaluate my success.