Thappad in Philly

On the first day of the conference in Philadelphia, I saw my student lugging around two heavy suitcases. Curious, I tried lifting one, quickly regretting the possibility of a hernia. What are you carrying?-- I ask out of curiosity. He grins and says, ready-to-eat food/snacks. The voice in my head goes, "What a desi you are! Carrying your food all the way to Amrika!" As if reading my mind, he proudly says, "Professor, I am Gujarati. Even if Philadelphia runs out of food, I can survive for the next two weeks. And you can too!"

I pretended to ignore his generous offer. A few times after that, he asked me if I wanted upma or poha or bhakri or anything else. My snooty nose quickly declined. I was having sushi three meals a day, hoping that my sushi honeymoon would last forever. No, I did not want dhokla or papad. 

Papad, I didn't get, but I got a thappad (slap) from God quick enough. I woke up with a terrible headache one morning and could not immediately go outside to find food. My student rose up to the occasion and beamed confidently, do you want ginger or cardamom in your tea? Now I am not a morning tea drinker and I had no tea with me. I don't know if he was hallucinating. Who will get me ginger tea in the land of coffee?

In five minutes, he made me a cup of strong ginger tea and filled a plate with bhakri and other snacks. And like a hungry wolf, I gulped down my pride and all the food that came right off his suitcase, the one I had made fun of, including the ginger tea. It felt so good. My headache was gone in no time. I had only known him as a student so far, but now, I learnt what an industrious person he was too. He was visiting the US for the first time and as a vegetarian, he did not know what options he would have. Plus he is a student with not a lot of money, and has been very careful about what he eats for the last three years (he lost about 15 kilos and reversed all his health conditions). I know that he does not need my recommendation letter, he already has a job long before he finishes the PhD. But if he ever asks for one, I'd write him the strongest letter. Not too sure if he would write me a strong letter though.  

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Confe-runs

Last year in Germany:

I am about to bunk one session of the conference to check out the city when a needy-looking student comes running and panting, looking for group 3 (I am group 3). We had to compile a PPT and our team had done 95% of the work. All this person had to do is put it all together and give a two-minute presentation. The person just got here and doesn't yet know me or what group I belong to.

“Hallo, entschuldigen Sie, have you seen someone from group 3? I need help with the presentation!”

I am all for helping people, but I know this student is going to take an hour of my time, the time I could be exploring a new city. PhD students are supposed to be independent anyway. Evil of me, I nod a “nein! nein!” to say that I have no idea who is in group 3. I pointed to the garden in the opposite direction of the exit to tell her that a bunch of people are there and she should check them out. She ran in that direction and I ran to my exit of freedom from needy students, laughing a loud, evil, Muhahahaha in my head.

Karma, however, is a B-I-T-C-H with a capital B! I take a tour of the city and come back to find that the student has found and followed me on Twitter. Fine, I was not going to see her again anyway, I reasoned to myself.

Goddammit, I was walking down my hotel stairs for dinner that night and found her again walking up the stairs. The one time in five days that I bunk one session of the conference, karma hits me like a ton of bricks. So glad for quick reflexes and hoodies that you can use to instantly hide your face, which is what I just did!

Please tell me we are not taking the same train to the airport tomorrow!

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Grandma questions conferences

Two days before I was supposed to board a flight to Seattle, my favorite city in the world, both my conferences got cancelled. I had spent almost a year planning this seven-week long trip with multiple conference talks, invited talks, presentations, work meetings, sleepover parties, and dinner plans with old friends across Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and San Antonio. All gone in a whiff.

 

I was so numb and disoriented the first day that I did not know how to function. By day two, I had to have Bailey’s shots before I could sleep well at night. After spending a busy quarter teaching and traveling, I was really looking forward to this trip. I had said no to a work trip to Kolkata, something I would usually not do otherwise, so that I could be in Seattle.

 

Baby Kalyani threw a tantrum and said, "Auntie not coming, not fair!!" Her little sister looked dejected. Overnight, more than half a page from my vita vanished. My suitcase was packed, and now, I was left with kilos of snacks from Sukhadiya Garbaddas Bapuji and Induben Khakrawaala I did not know what to do with. Continuing my rant on my first world problems, I suddenly did not know what to do with all the unaccountable time. There was still research to do, but suddenly there were no meetings scheduled, no interviews, no students asking me for my time. I had cleared my calendar of everything for 7 weeks. Now, I had the gift of time and did not know what to do with it.

 

I decided to visit Kolkata and spend some time at home. My family, who was traveling at that time, made super quick plans to come back before I did. My sister finished her office for the day and decided to show up. My grandma, who is old and not as mobile, ordered her to be brought to our place. Everyone knew I would be in a terrible mood. Barely two hours before I landed, the entire family in different corners of the city and state had regrouped to welcome me.

 

And welcome me with something that always works- food. My parents stopped at Shanti Niketan to get me the most amazing Gokul Pithe. My sister got me the best mutton biryani I have had in a while. My parents asked me to list what I was craving. For the next twenty-four hours, everything I was craving the last 3 months was there- from begun pora to bel to toker daal to homemade kababs and what not. It seemed like an entire army was deployed to take care of me. And the narrative went something like, "Ahaare bachcha meye ta conference e jete parlona." The poor little girl (poor? little?) could not go to the conference.

 

My sister and I giggled and gossiped till late hours, just like we used to. I heard her telling my brother-in-law on the phone, "Look, I don't know when I am coming home, I just need to spend some more time here." My entire family made it their mission to make me happy.

 

But then, the talk came, from my grandma. Hands on her hips, she asked me, "Hya re, conference talk dile ki taaka daye?" (Do they pay you for speaking at conferences?)

 

Money? No. I pay money to go to conferences. They do not pay me.

 

What? Then why are you losing sleep over cancelled conference talks, she chided.

 

My family does not understand much of how academia works. Sometimes, through their eyes, I get a fresh perspective!

 

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Car-Ma

I was recently invited to speak at Princeton University. The organizers there treated me really well. I have been invited at other places too, but Princeton clearly stands out as classy. They put me up at one of the best hotels, the food was excellent, and the invitation letter and all was once again, a class above the rest. But the icing on the cake was my mom's response to something they did. Yes, a mommy post again!

Princeton got me a chauffeur-driven limousine for the 50-mile, hour-long drive from the Newark Liberty International Airport to the university/hotel (I was planning to take the train/dinky). My jaws dropped open when I read the letter. I, for one, have never been in a limo before. Forget the limo, I am used to taking the public transport, and for a good part of my life, I have lived in hostels and crashed at people's living rooms to save money during travel. The world of upscale hotels is very new to me, but the limo ride was something I did not see coming.

I was very excited, and when I told my ma, she was excited too! I do not know how much she understands cars, but based on my response, she could sense that it is a big deal. Very sincerely, she said, "This is so exciting. Is a limo as comfortable as the Toyota Innova? Innova'r thekeo bhalo gaadi?"

It reminded me of my first year in the US. G drove a Honda Pilot then, so the Honda Pilot became my standard of excellence, "my" first car in the US. As our friendship grew, my emotional connection with the car grew too. A year or two later, I got onto a friend's SUV during a road trip to San Diego and sincerely told her husband, whom I was meeting for the first time, "Very nice car. Love the Honda Pilot!" To which, I got a very dirty look and a clipped response, "It is a Lexus!"

Oh, well!

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Things I learned as faculty: Unconscious bias

As faculty, I have learned to be more cognizant of unconscious bias, how people view me and what’s going on around me. Sometimes, in a room full of people who do not know me, some assume that I am a student. This has happened at conferences and board meetings. In the same room, some people will talk to other faculty as faculty but ask me what year of my PhD program I am in.

It is tempting to get flattered and think that I look young, and hence the misunderstanding. However, this has nothing got to do with age. Many people are subconsciously primed to think of women and minorities as holding lower positions. White faculty, brown student. Male faculty, female student. Male doctor, female nurse. People are not evil but they just do not know any better.

If it was about age, they would assume I am young faculty, not an older student. I always use this as a teachable moment for my minority students. I sense those few seconds of discomfort when I calmly tell them that I am not a student. However, I do not take my position for granted.

For example, I never wear jeans and informal clothes to work. I am always in semi-formals or formals. I don’t care whether people think I am a student because those are their biases to deal with. However, I am immensely aware of the responsibility my position brings, not just for me, but for others who are training to be faculty. My colleague next door will wear denims, sports jacket and running shoes and no one will flip an eyelid. However, I cannot assume that I will be treated like a faculty if I wore the same kind of clothes. We do not live in an ideal world. We don’t get what we deserve. We get what we negotiate.

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A random day in the life of a faculty

As a PhD student, research seemed hard. Protocols did not work, data did not make sense, and I often found myself stuck between false positives and false negatives. We have all been there.

As a faculty, research seems the most cherished part of my day. And that is because I actually get so little time to do research. Here is what a random workday of my life looks like:

1. 6:30 am: Woke up. Stayed in bed for the next 45 minutes, wondering if the "revise and resubmit" comments I wrote last night would work. Then hurriedly scampered to work.

2. Made a mental note not to miss the Skype call tonight. The last time, I thought that it was at 9pm while the meeting was at 8pm and I missed it.

3. Made a note to reply to the fifty-seven emails that have been pending a response for the past five days since I was traveling.

4. Chatted with a colleague who hates the words "seminal work" and "dissemination" because of their roots in the word "semen" (hence, male; hence, power). I added my bit by saying that I hate the morbid terms in academia such as "deadlines," "terminal degree," and "publish or perish."

5. Almost slept through a committee meeting that lasted ninety minutes. I have no idea what they said. I was more surprised by how much people talk, make printouts, and waste paper at these meetings. I am pretty sure everything they said could be summarized in ten minutes.

6. Checked my Google Scholar citation for the umpteenth time. The numbers haven't changed since the past month. It is a strange addiction of seeking external validation I have developed of late, similar to counting Facebook Likes. This is only more consequential and more harmful.

7. Kept thinking about the annual review that I will be writing in January. Have I made enough progress this year? The process is so rigorous, it makes the PhD defense look like child's play. How can I hit a couple of sixes in the last six weeks of the year and look great on my annual review?

8. Read a bunch of student assignments. One, most students have horrible handwriting. I wonder if they ever had compulsory, daily, cursive writing lessons in schools. Two, many have bad grammar too, which is surprising since most people here can get away knowing just one language- English. I was also amazed by the number of times they used the word "cool” -- The book was cool. The program was cool. The class was cool. The professor was cool. Such informal language in academia- not so cool!

9. Registered for an upcoming conference in Boston. This is the first time I paid more than a thousand dollars for registration alone. So I sat at my desk and whined for a while.

10. Filled out a bunch of paperwork to get my student enrolled in the system.

11. Filled out a bunch of doodles indicating my availability for future meetings. Created a Doodle myself and sent a reminder email to those who need to fill it out on time.

12. Conducted an interview to collect data, which also meant inputting mundane information into an excel spreadsheet that my hypothetical undergraduate student should have been doing. Hypothetical, because I do not have one.

13. Prepared a bunch of expense bills from a previous conference travel. This involved painstakingly putting together every receipt with comments and scanning all of them.

14. Called our communication manager to chat about how I would like my new business card designed.

15. Thought of new research ideas. It means mostly sitting at my desk, staring blankly into the ceiling until a new email pops up or someone knocks on the door, and repeating the process till it is time to go home.

These are not necessarily research. Just a bunch of mundane things that may lead to research in the future.

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Read like you are eating rice

As academics, we read a lot of journal papers. This is the foundation work that helps us understand what is happening in the field. Long before we start doing our own research, we need to know what has been already done and what needs to be done next. The same is for grant writing. The precursor to good, productive writing is plentiful, goal-driven reading.

Speaking in analogy, have you ever climbed atop one of the churches in Europe? You keep climbing the spiral stairways and every few floors there is a tiny window that looks outside. The lower you are, the less you see (whatever you see is also in a lot of detail). The higher you climb, the more you see (the level of detail also decreases). Learning about a field is just like that. You keep reading papers until you have a bird-eye view of the field. But in order to attain a bird-eye view, you have to start with the detailed view first.

Reading journal papers is time-consuming. Typically, they start with an abstract and introduction followed by a literature review, methods, results, discussion, limitation and conclusion. The order could vary depending on the field, but this is a general overview.

Abstract (a summary of the study)

Introduction (what you are going to read)

Literature review (what others have already done)

Methods (what the authors did and how they did it)

Results (what they found)

Discussion (interpreting what they found)

Limitation (what they could not find)

Conclusion (closing along with a note on what could be found in the future)

As a novice reader, it is easy to get caught up in the details of a paper until you realize that it’s been hours and you are still reading it. A good program or department offers a lot of classes that involve critically analyzing a paper. It’s an art you master with time and practice. Students read one or multiple papers beforehand and spend time in class critiquing singly or in groups. I used to find myself being caught up in reading because I would read very slowly and in a lot of detail. This is especially because I was not familiar with the methodology (another reason why I always recommend that PhD students take as many methods courses as they can, even if they might not seem immediately relevant or rewarding) and often wondered how to make sense of what the authors did. I would soon lose attention and start doing something else, not wanting to come back to the paper again. Then I got some great advice from my advisor.

Read a paper as if you are eating a bowl of rice. You do not eat rice one grain at a time. You do not individually chew the grains. You take a mouthful and chew until it is of digestible consistency before you swallow and go for the next helping.

Similarly, don’t read a paper word by word. Don’t get caught up in the mundane minutiae. Read the abstract very well. Skim through the introduction and directly go for the methods. If you are not clear about why they did what they did, come back to the literature review later, but do not spend a whole lot of time on it. After methods, go to the results/discussion to see what they found. Again, skim through it until you find the area that gets your attention. Read that well. Don’t get caught up in words. Skim until you see something interesting. Read that in detail. Repeat process. Don’t read word by word or line by line. Read idea by idea.

I found this advice very helpful. For my dissertation, I had to read more than 500 odd papers (some were not relevant, but how do you know they are not relevant unless you read a little bit of it?). I had attacked those papers like a bowl of rice. As a faculty, I read between 10-20 papers every week, and many more when I am writing a literature review. On an average, I give myself five minutes for each paper. I start with the title, read the abstract, and go straight for the research questions and methods. If the paper doesn’t make much sense to me, I do not put a whole lot of time into it. It is a skill you master with time. The more you read, the more you can get away reading lesser of a paper. You learn to directly attack the core, the meat.

Time yourself when you read. If you take 30 minutes for a paper, try reading the next one in 25 minutes. The idea is not to read lazily, but be able to find and attack the meat of the paper directly. Read fast. Read smart. Read purposefully. Good luck! 

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Being faculty: End of year one

This week, I completed one year of being faculty. Exactly one year ago, I had moved back to the US and landed here. My landlady, whom I had never seen before, had come to pick me up. This time, I celebrated my first anniversary with a goat that lay on my dinner plate as mutton biryani. That is one thing I will never grow tired of eating.

So what does faculty life mean to me after one year? It means no longer being able to play the "I am a new faculty and I don't know what I am doing" card. To say that time flew would be an understatement. Talking of time, I was reading about the research on biological clock that won the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year. Other than conceiving time as what we know, the lifespan clock and the biological clock, I have also come to understand what the pre-tenure clock means. I could fill an entire book with my thoughts and realizations of life as a faculty, perhaps some day post-tenure.

New currency

I have learnt many new things over the past year. Some of them were skills and the others, deep realizations. However, if I had to point to that one thing that has been my most important learning this past year, it is the concept of currency. We are used to thinking of money as currency.  But for the first time, I learnt that time and energy (and not money) are my new currencies. Time is non-renewable and it surely depletes fast. As a student, I spent a lot of time trying to earn some money. Now, I will happily spend money to earn time, which is what all the grant writing and making graduate students do the work is about. It also means learning money management. I protect my research money much more fiercely than my personal money. I am always bargaining and looking for better deals to buy stuff for my research group. I could not even bargain a pair of earrings for ten rupees less.

The power of “No”

I have mastered the habit of saying no. No, I cannot be a part of this committee, it will take away my research time. No, I cannot visit Seattle this month, I have a conference deadline. No, you cannot visit me either, because of the same deadline. No, I cannot attend this potluck or cook for twenty people, and no, I cannot go on a dinner date, no, not even coffee. I use my work as a shield to bail out of a lot of things I do not want to do. If you plot time versus "no", I think I have said no maximum number of times this past year.

Weird moments

Being faculty to me also means sometimes hearing, "How far in your PhD are you?" And I don't think it has anything to do with my youthful looks (or the lack of it, especially given the crop of grey hair I sport now). It comes from something called unconscious bias where women (especially minority women) are usually designated stereotypical roles with less power. Male doctor, female patient. Male professor, female student. Rich guy, poor girl. Older guy, younger girl. Such stereotypes not only penetrate, but also deeply cut through reality to make up fairy tale stories and Harlequin romances.

Being faculty also means getting some very strange emails sometimes. So far, I saw random strangers emailing me their GRE scores and asking what they should study and what university they should apply to. However, I recently got an email from a complete stranger asking to be my friend (with a few smileys following) and wanting to know how to get a faculty position and to also help their spouse figure out how to do their PhD and what prospects await the spouse after their PhD. Complete strangers from completely strange fields asking me strange questions. I was tempted to ask if their children also needed help looking for schools and while doing so, if I could also visit their home to help them fold the laundry.

What else?

It means looking at a potentially interesting guy and thinking, "Hmm... I wonder what his h-index and his citation number is." It means little joys like free textbooks (ask the publisher and they will send you a copy) and free bus rides. It means three months of freedom every year to go and work in any part of the world I want to. It also means "technically" not having to show up at work unless I have a class or meeting. It is an unthinkable idea to many working in other industries. I could show up to work every day at 3 pm and no one would care.

And it means sometimes hearing, "Oh, you are at this university? What does your husband do there?" (The assumption being that my fictitious husband is a faculty, not me, I might be a trailing spouse). It also means being asked "What do you teach?" all the time. Not all faculty teach, and not all the time. Teaching is less than 50% of my job. I have only taught one course so far.

But all this aside, one of the best things about being faculty is being able to chat with some very smart people. Only today, I chatted for an hour each with a space researcher who works on galaxies, a cancer researcher, and a NASA scientist.

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Working for myself

One year ago, I started working as a tenure-track faculty at a research university. After the first day at work, Ma asked me, "So what work did they give you today?" Soon after, a few friends who are not acquainted with academia asked me the same question. These friends from the tech industry may know about coding and fixing bugs, but looks like they are not quite acquainted with how academia works.

The funny thing is as an academic, these questions, or the way non-academics see academia never dawn on you. This is a job where no one gives me work. I create my own work. Yeah. Take a few minutes to digest that idea. 

I don't have to show up to office every day, or at a specific time. I could be Facebooking, chatting, or chasing Pokemons all day. No one is going to come at the end of the day asking me how productive I have been. Unless I am teaching a class or have a meeting with other colleagues, I do not have to be at a particular place at a certain time every day. I could be anywhere.

Work-wise, no one tells me what to do. To give a simplistic analogy, getting this job is like getting a car with some limited gas/petrol (startup funding). Where I go with my car and how much gas/petrol I spend is my business. I could take it to Glacier National Park. Or I could drive to New York City. Or I can keep my car in the garage and never use it. Unless I do something drastic like harass a student or smuggle and store drugs in the department, no one can fire me during my 6-year pre-tenure period.

However, I have to meet high expectations by the time I go up for tenure review at the end of my fifth year. This includes consistent performance in terms of getting money through grant funding (getting my own gas/petrol to be able to continue driving my car), publishing my work (showing others how well my car drives) multiple times in peer-reviewed journals, meeting high standards of teaching and mentoring students (training novice drivers to drive), collaborating (carpooling), and doing service such as serving on committees and editorial boards (helping fellow drivers service their cars or helping them when their car breaks down or inspiring others to become drivers or ensuring I do not kill anyone while driving). I am putting this very simply with a car/driving analogy, the process is more complicated and labor-intensive than it sounds.

I have the freedom to do any kind of research that aligns with the department's interests. I can collaborate with anyone in the department, in the country, and in the world. There are three broad expectations (research, teaching/mentoring, and service) that I need to fulfill well in order to be able to get tenure. And these are not something that can be achieved overnight, in a month or even a year. I have been preparing to meet these expectations even before my particular position was advertised. 

So to answer Ma's question, they did not give me any work on day one, and never will. I work for myself now and have to give myself work, if that makes sense.

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Building on an abundance model

The first recommendation letter I ever wrote for someone was under extremely ironic circumstances. An international colleague I had briefly worked with wanted a letter of support for their green card/permanent residency application in the US. I was a postdoc in Germany then, trying very hard to find a faculty position in the US. I applied for innumerable positions, almost a few every week, got Skype-interviewed by some, but never heard back. I never got invited for campus interviews. It was one of the darker times in my career when I was constantly engulfed in worry, self-doubt, and fear that the situation would never change and I might run out of my postdoc time without a faculty position. To write a letter vouching for someone about why they should be able to stay and work in the US long-term was ironic.

I did write that letter, a stellar one too. My situation was independent of their situation, and as colleagues, we support each other in our careers. But this was not before I emailed them back asking why they were considering me as a potential referee. What I did not ask directly was, "Why should people reviewing your application believe me when I myself have been unable to find a faculty position in the US?" I asked if a letter of support coming from someone outside the US would be effective at all. What they said was eye-opening.

“Are you kidding me? You are an international scholar who has worked in both the US and Germany. A letter from you would be incredible.”

The revelation was eye-opening. As intuitive as it is, I was not viewing myself as an international researcher. I was viewing myself as a researcher who was struggling to find a position in the US, and was hence working in Germany. Rather than approaching my situation from a position of abundance, I was approaching it from a position of deficit.

In life, reality is subjective, not single, and there are often multiple perspectives to it. The fact that I was struggling to gain my foothold in the US was a reality (more real for me). And the fact that I had work experience in multiple countries as a result was also a reality (more real for my colleague).

It made me wonder how often had I undermined myself similarly. How often I had focused on the “don’t haves” and not on the “haves.” I grew up in a culture where highlighting one’s accomplishments was considered bragging or showing off. And I now work in a culture where it is not just necessary, but imperative to highlight one’s accomplishments. We do that in conferences and meetings. We create websites to show the expanse of the work that we have done. It’s a cultural shift that takes some time and experience getting used to.

I often tend to think, “Shit! I have no experience running structural equation models.”

However, I usually don’t think, “I have some good grant writing and collaborative experience now.”

This email exchange taught me to position myself from a perspective of abundance and NOT from a perspective of deficit. I started enlisting every achievement I should have highlighted earlier. The list wasn’t spectacular, but not bad either. Along with being my own critic, I also became my own champion.

My colleague eventually got their permanent residency. And I got my faculty position. The department told me how excited they are to have a colleague with international experience. People started viewing me in a certain way only after I started viewing myself in that way.    

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Conferences and Weddings

Conferences are like giant weddings. Everyone you met there is somewhere in the spectrum of guests, people from your life you typically bump into.

The PhD adviser is more of the parent you are meeting after a long time. You go have dinner, talk about work and life. He tells you how to win people at the new job (in-laws), because what I do reflects on his training. Beaming with pride, he goes around introducing me to everyone. The pride on his face, and my occasional embarrassment felt similar to when a smart kid from town cracks the IIT-JEE exams, and their parents go about beaming in pride and showcasing their kid to every (highly disinterested) neighbor, distant relative, and visitor. I am more like the academic child.

Grad school friends/classmates: They are more like the siblings, the friends you made in the neighborhood where you grew up. Most left the neighborhood at some point while some stayed back. We talked about childhood, about the good old times, the scary courses and the fun professors, our anxieties about not being able to finish the degree, and so on.

The new department: Perhaps the future in-laws, the husband being the new position. The head of my future family (the dean) introduced me to everyone, bought me drinks, and told me how excited they are to have me. I am more like the new bride.

People from the current workplace are more like members from the current family. Yes, I will change families soon, but it is more of an amicable separation.

People who do similar work in the field. They are the potential future collaborators. People I might be developing intimate (academic) relationships with in the future. Academia is interesting that way. Once wedded, you are encouraged to go develop partnerships with others in the field.

And this is perhaps the most interesting one. I was standing with a group of people in the elevator when I saw a familiar face. I looked at the name tag, and I knew who it was. The person never recognized me, but I did, and involuntarily took a few steps backward in the elevator. A person who had interviewed me on Skype, but neither gave me a job, nor informed me about their decision. It was the ex. Someone you had wanted to be with in the past, someone who had rejected you, broken your heart. It might have disturbed me to bump into an ex just like that under ordinary circumstances, but now that I have recently made a new family, I felt like doing a happy dance inside my head in front of them. 

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An educational dream

Between the mid-eighties and the mid-nineties, my first school was one located in a small town in Orissa. I still have vivid memories of certain things there; the two mango trees, the bougainvillea tree right at the entrance, and the huge playground that smoked of dust. We did not have electric bells. A huge piece of metal used to hang from the branches of the mango tree, and the bell man would hop onto a paved wall, and bang the metal, hammer in hand, to ring the bell. Unsuspecting little children unaware of him around and playing happily would often get startled and start crying at the loud sound of metal that reached the far corners of the school, heralding the end of a class period.

For the longest time, I wanted to know where the nuns lived. One day, I got lost on purpose, and walked through a small garden to see a door slightly ajar. I peeped through, looking at a room with the most antique looking furniture and a huge piano sitting at a corner, with stained glass windows. They used to call it the parlor. This was also the time when I was beginning to read Bronte and Charles Dickens, and the room had looked straight out of one of these novels. I always thought that our nuns from the school had come here to teach from Ireland. Later, I learnt that most of them were from Kerala. Back then as a fourth grader, my secret desire was to convert to Christianity, become one of them, and spend my evenings reading at the parlor.

Last night, I had a very vivid dream. I dreamed that I was sitting on the ground by the trees with a few professors from Virginia, discussing research ideas, and a proposal we wanted to submit to the National Science Foundation. They had no inkling that this was my first school. Everything looked ten times vivid, there were greener and more mangoes on the trees, the oranges were really orange (although I do not remember an orange tree in school), and there were many more children playing around us. And sitting there by the shade of the trees, we discussed research ideas. In my dreams, we had transcended all barriers- country, visa, race, and language. I had gone back to where all the education had started. Of course when I woke up, the rational mind could not connect the dots and kept asking, "How is this possible?" But in my dreams, memories from my childhood and other recent memories had nicely merged into one single landscape.

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A Conference in Chicago- 6

This time in Chicago, I decided to skip the touristy things (because I already did them last August), and have a more local experience instead. I was staying in a beautiful neighborhood of Lincoln Park, resplendent with parks, walking trails, lakes, greenery, pubs, and restaurants. I started exploring one new restaurant every day, and walking a lot. The bus connectivity is great too, and entry to the Lincoln Park Zoo is free. Every day, I took a new street and continued to walk in a new direction. I did this for a week, and it felt like I had already lived there forever.

The other day, I stepped out to buy fruits and vegetables in a bid to eat healthy, and ended up discovering an Indian restaurant. People who know me well know my obsession with eating biryani. So instead of apples and bananas, I ended up having biryani that day.

The other highlight of my trip was meeting my PhD adviser. One of the brightest people I know, I am fortunate to have been mentored by him. It is interesting how our mentor-mentee relationship evolved over the last five years. Back then, I used to seek his permission, his approval for everything, and my biggest reason of worry was how to do well in a class exam. Five years later, I have realized that exams and grades do not matter, and I do not need his approval. I already have it.

He used to often tell me many useful things, one of which was that he is training me to be his colleague, his equal. I chatted with him for hours at the conference that day, and it was an invigorating, one-on-one discussion. I shared my new research ideas with him, and he did the same. Looks like a German-US collaboration might be on the cards. He promised to visit me in Deutschland soon.

On a different note, a hilarious thing happened at the conference. I was sitting in a room, waiting for the presentations to start. As I looked around, I saw someone I had been introduced to yesterday sitting behind me. I waved and smiled, and she smiled back, a little reluctantly. Ignoring the cue, I started making small talk. At some point, my eyes fell on her name tag, and to my horror, I realized that I was speaking with a stranger. But she did look like the person I met yesterday. And before you tag me borderline racist, let me assure you that it's not just the Asians I get confused about. Often, I get confused between Whites or Blacks who look alike.

Looks like this is not the only embarrassing faux pas moment I had at this conference.

I totally missed seeing an old acquaintance professor as we were crossing the road. It was not until he started calling out my name that I realized this. We crossed the road coming from opposite directions, and I looked at him and looked past him, lost in my thoughts. He was nice enough to stall me and spend a few minutes asking how I am and what I am doing now. It was all the more embarrassing because he is a really famous guy, and the dean of a school.

I met someone, and spent a good few minutes telling them how hard the German language is and how things do not make sense, until they told me that they are from Germany.

But this one takes the cake.

In Germany, when you are at a restaurant and need to use the restroom, you usually open a door that leads to a passage with another door, and then you see the Ladies room and the Gents room. Either that schema was stuck in my head, or I was plain unmindful. I went out for lunch with a colleague. When he rose to use the restroom, I followed him too. He took a left, and so did I. He opened the door. I was probably far enough that he did not notice me following him. I held the door and entered inside before it shut on my face. I never read the sign on the door. I should have. And I should have taken the right door, not the left. I was in the men’s restroom! Those few seconds turned out to be the longest seconds of my life.

Conference talks. Meeting my adviser. Procuring biryani. Taking long walks in unknown roads. Taking in the sights and smells of a vibrant city. Gazing at the turquoise waters of Lake Michigan. Meeting the only friend I have in Chicago, and spending the next 24 hours eating nothing but dozens of idlis and bowls of sambar she made for me. Running to catch a Metra train, with two minutes to go, Kajol in DDLJ style. Listening to live music at the hostel every night as I fell asleep. And conceptualizing two new research studies while listening to others presenting.

That is pretty much a summary of my 10-day long Chicago trip.

I headed to Seattle next, to spend a month working at the university there. And traveling some more.

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A Conference in Chicago- 4

I met the most uxorious man at the conference. A wife's pride. Or a wife's nightmare, depending on which side of the crazy continuum you are in.

I thought that the man was presenting, until I realized that he was just setting up the computer for his wife. I didn't notice any visible signs of impairment in the wife though. And then, during the entire length of her talk, he held a point and shoot camera, recording her. In case you are wondering, I have never seen this at the conferences I attend. Sure, some people take a picture or two after the presentation (mostly Asians from abroad do that, understandably), and that's about it.

And this is not all. When the wife finished and someone in the audience asked a question, he pointed the camera at the audience. I did not ask her a single question, because I did not want a camera in my face, recording me. He continued doing that, until the baby woke up and started crying. Yeah, they brought in a few month old baby too. At that point, he had no option but to take the crying baby outside the conference room.

I am wondering if it's a new wife, a new camera, or a new experience of presenting at an international conference.

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A Conference in Chicago- 3

Conferences are like huge weddings. People have convened for a common purpose of course (of presenting their work), all very well-dressed and all, but everyone has their own side agenda going on.

For some, it is a reunion- Old buddies meet up, hug, hang out, have drinks and meals, discuss their research, catch up, and make such a lively crowd. They are usually the ones much older and well-settled in their careers, the associate professors and the full professors, or the ones with permanent positions. They are done with the arduous task of looking for a job or getting tenure. They are dressed less formally and hang out in larger groups.

For some, it is getting away from work, only to get some more work done. They usually sit at the corners with their laptops, poring over their data and typing furiously. They are like little isolated islands. They are the ones with approaching tenures or appraisals.

For some, it is about networking and job hunting- Finding employers and employees. They sit in smaller groups and talk more seriously. Usually, one person is older and more mature and talks the most, while the other one is much younger and looks in wide-eyed appreciation. They are usually found in smaller groups of twos and threes, the younger one dressed very formally. They are the postdocs and the ones still looking for next year's job.

For some, it is about finding collaborators. They talk more seriously, in groups of twos, moving their hands frantically. They say goodbyes with promises of sharing research proposals, attending one another's talks, and finding each other on LinkedIn. They are the ones about to start something totally new.

For some, it is all about their talk. They look visibly nervous, fixing their slides until the last moment. They don't understand that it is really informal, and people have come here to enjoy themselves, academically speaking. They are usually the younger graduate students.

I suspect that there is also a small group of people who have been set up, trying to find dates and mates (although that was not the primary intent). They are usually the ones making awkward conversation.

And for me, I am just happy to sit back and watch human behavior- how people talk and walk and dress, meet some old friends and colleagues, disappear for a couple of hours to get some work done, support close friends by going to their presentations, get a little nervous at my own presentation, and above all, just take in the sights and smells of a new city.

P.S.: Ever seen how everyone walks very fast at conferences? I have seldom seen anyone walking slowly or looking lost.

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