19 till I die

To my trusty darling mmm… I love you gorgeous You are wider than you are tall Your single arm, bends and all You have no hips You have no shoulders A lovely heavy bodied boulder Bitterness spills over at your wide, black-lipped mouth I see through it, in and out Your brick red ravenously freckled skin patched with white Glistens in the sunlight. Your teeth are missing and so is your hair Your legs, your eyes… they’re just not there You smell at the end of a day’s work I don’t clean you, for I’m a jerk You’re perfect I couldn’t love you more No Romeo, no Ranjha felt such amor You make me warm, when I’m cold You wake me up when my eyes are sore You do not yap, you do not bore You do your job and say no more. I like my laptop, but I’ll replace it Like I’ll replace the furniture and rug But never you… My beloved Coffee mug.

Been here a year now - 2 From DBS to DBS, the transition from Department of Biological Sciences, TIFR, Mumbai to Division of Basic Sciences, UT Southwestern, Dallas has personally been one of the biggest steps in my life, so far. It's a different experience and I seek to find out why. In so doing, drawing comparisons is inevitable. It would be presumptious to claim that this an all encompassing analysis of anything. Like everything else on this blog, they are my private views. I'll try and describe how my experience here has been vastly different from home. The UT Southwestern Campus spreads out over a fair area. It's about a half an hour's rapid walk across. But in spite of the sprawl, it shoots up vertically, which is not typical on Texan landscapes. Dallas downtown, the nearby office district has taller building but nothing else sprouts higher for tens of kilometers. It's more a conglomeration of three hospitals and five, sorry... now seven massive research to...

Dhananjay's Law of Availability Girls are either taken or untakeable. The most elusive exception justifies the pursuit. (DaPunkyBlog March '07) The Selyunin Correction There are no untakeable women. It's just a matter of timing. (Anrdey Selyunin 2200 hrs 30th Sept '09)

The Midweek Crisis ooOOHHhhhh ggGAWDddd... It is Wednesday evening! uggghhh ... It's been three days. Three whole days, since I spoke a sentence outside what work requires. Not a joke, no chit chat, no hanging out over chaay. Just the knee jerk "Good, how're you doing?" to the guy who walked on without bothering for an answer to his " Heyhow'reya'doin' ?". Occasionally on Monday morning, there'll be the "..... So oo o ... how was the weekend"..... to swollen eyed Shane who's at the next bench. He can be kind. He'll say "Not much. Just relaxin' at home." Ah! The vividity smothers me! Others in the lab have their own comfy cliques. The ladies always have things to talk about. Usually its their husbands and other people's kids. I overheard "You know, having babies is infectious, you see one and you want to have one". That has killed any drive to make conversational inroads into this clique. The othe...

As Each Day Goes By Mitochondria conspire within me Insiduously Sparking off free radicals They eat my flesh in a gnawing rage Inevitably, pushing me to age. I'm still a young and feisty soul With a zest for life and set goals I long to understand life, I want to ride across continents and run from pit to peak, I want to meet new people, See new cultures And move the masses... But there are other things For which the time has passed Time slipped by, just too fast. Age is like true love, Of course I'll never get it! Until it smothers me on the sly Leaving me with shriveling skin and a drying heart Rickety knees and a frying mind So Age isn't just a number But surely, a phantom future It'll someday be the present I brighten it now by living it up For I'm as aged as my thoughts As old as my deeds I'll keep them youthful And let the phantom age. What a coincidence... my 24th birthday approaches! :D... Kidding. That has nothing to do with it.

Calling 0091... I wanted the next article on this blog to be an analytical comparison between the UTSW grad school and TIFR. The article is on its way guys... Someday! But then I want to beat my chest in public. I want to shout out how much I miss India. It isn't just about missing home. It's a LOT more. Somehow evry sense feels deprived I miss being in an Indian environment. The people speaking a familiar language (Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Bangla...). Discussing a familiar sport : Cricket! (People I've met here think that cricket is still a five day game). People in a bustling hurry to get to work. Chatting up with the sweeper about how his kids are doing at school. Randomly conversing with passengers in a train about how Manmohan Singh is Mrs Gandhi's puppet; the virtues Rabindra sangeet; (in Marathi) about how the Bhaiyyas (which includes me, I guess they didn't realise) are the canker of Mumbai; to North Indians about how this a free country and merit gets rewar...