The wafting reek around one's ideas: A funny reminiscence

 This morning on Skype, the family got to talking about food and the importance of sticking to recipes. My brother is a purist in this matter. My wife, Nikita, agrees with him.  To a large extent, so do my parents and sister in law. If the a dish is called, say Pasta, it should not contain cauliflower. Pizza shouldn't be topped with cabbage. Specially so, after I praised cauliflower in pasta and cabbage topped pizza when we visited relatives on my side of the family. Nikita was also reacting to my revulsion of chopped carrots in her pasta. In the same vein, I react strongly to potatoes in okra. The list goes on. Some of it was in reaction to my use of French beans in my pasta. I have come to the conclusion that you can cook most things edible together, as long as you call it some other dish. The name of the dish determines expectations of flavour. 

Papa and I share a fundamental belief that if someone has put in the effort to cook for you, the cooking must be appreciated verbally and through the act of voluminous consumption. Again, Nikita strongly objects. She says I'm a fraud for doing so. Papa pulling on that thread said he would forward Nikita texts from various banks that we all receive warning us of "fraudsters". Noshi, in his academic style even in story telling, went on to formalise the observation concerning the taste and cost of food. He declared "The flavour of food is inversely proportional to its cost and quantity." His statement can be construed to mean that if the food is free, it tastes great even in small quantity. Clearly this equation does not bear out in reality. When I challenged him, he told the story of how a neighbour in Hyderabad cooked up something barely edible for a party, but we had finish everything on our plate and even pile high praise for it out of politeness. Noshi's position was indefensible but he insisted it was correct. He went on to vehemently defend it against any examination. I did however formalise his grand unifying theory of flavour into an equation that operates on a universal set containing only the one element (That specific neighbour's cooking on that day). I rolled around laughing at my joke, which as usual, was funny mostly to me. I think everyone else smiled watching me enjoy myself so much. Noshi I'm sure didn't like this all that much.

Noshi reminded me of graduate students on the first leg of research. It's not easy getting started with research. One is often unclear conceptually about the project in addition to not having good hands. Forget about the instinct for experiment design, data acquisition, analysis and interpretation. However, once you have the semblance of a single result, one gets possessive and defensive of it as though it sprung from one's loins. I remember doing so myself. After a few pointless projects I was assigned, nearing the end of my MSc when I still didn't have a thesis, I was given a project with a future. To summarise, a mutant had two buds of tissue at the back of the brain within the developing skull. I chopped them up and identified them through gene expression as developmentally arrested eyes. When I started though, I had no idea. They could have been just anything, a growth or undeveloped eyes/ears, anything. So I chose to call these buds the Lhx2 Null Forebrain Vesicle (LnFV). I think I have that name down in my MSc thesis. Because no project had worked so far, my attachment to these vesicles was inordinate. They were centre of developmental biology and the formal sounding name I bestowed on them was all important. At the end of experiments that largely constituted my thesis, at lab meeting, the Boss questioned the name. She rightly questioned the name's general importance and how likely it was to ever be used again. She also called the LnFVs "nubbins". Nubbins, like a small mushroom on rotting wood or wart that just happens to be there. I was mortified and felt personally attacked. I insisted on the term LnFV. She let it go. Much time has passed. 

I can see behind both reactions now. People get very territorial and possessive of their ideas, findings, products, companies, political parties, favourite brands, tribe and so on. These things help you stay moored and help with some sense of identity and uniqueness, which our ego feeds on for some reason. Then again, having grown up, I'm willing to admit that this just an idea and possibly incorrect .