Country Rap

Have you noticed how Bengali expats who congregate with other Bengali expats at the airport and bond while bitching about how India will never improve usually share certain common attributes?

One, they usually wear GAP or Nike clothing.

Two, the farther they get from the US (or the closer they get to India), the louder their rants get. They might not be as vocal in Houston or Seattle but will be very loud in Dubai. Perhaps the humid Dubai air makes them realize that shit is about to get real in a few hours.

Three, the rants are always, always in English. Ninde korar belaye accent diye Ingriji.

Based on what people say, it is easy to predict who is who.

"Ayi saala suorer bachcha plane ta deri koralo" -- A Bengali from India.

"Can't believe nothing runs on time. It's always sooo hard to get things done in India. This country will never improve" -- naak oonchoo expat whose patriotism is confined to missing and discussing aam jaam lichu tyangra lyangra on Facebook but dreads every moment of their trip to India. 

A curious spectator (sunshine).

The art of saying “no”

I don't read through emails word-by-word, I skim through them unless they are really important or come from someone important. I get close to 150 emails a day from all kinds of people. Colleagues. University emails. Professional society emails. Urgent emails. Useless emails. Journal editors asking for reviews. Publishers trying to sell me their products that I will never buy. Survey requests. Scams. Phishing emails. Hapless students from abroad who tell me their GRE scores and ask where they should apply and whether they should study fisheries or pharmacokinetics (how am I supposed to know?). Random faculty from China self-inviting themselves as visiting scholars to my university and assuring me they would return the favor if I ever want to visit China. Unfortunate spouses who moved to the US allured by the promised greener pasture and after seeing only snowy pastures, email to ask me of their future prospects (Irony! Little do they know that I am still figuring out my future prospects in this country after all these years!). I skim emails because it is a necessary practice to save time. 

Acceptance emails/notifications are short and sweet. They start with the word, "Congratulations!" The message is delivered, loud and clear, without wasting my time. 

Rejection emails/notifications somehow become all about the person who rejected me. There are two paragraphs about how the selection process was daunting, challenging and how they had to skim through hundreds of great applications to select the best. The outcome is like a hidden gem, I am still on paragraph three and trying to understand what was the outcome of my application. Well, tell me you did not select me and move on. You do not have to make this email a sob saga about you. I have plenty of other things to do, other opportunities to apply for, and all I want to know is the outcome before I move on. I do not care how many applications you had to read. All I care about is I did not make the cut.

Effective communication is an art. Be objective, be succinct, and be precise. Tell me what you are trying to tell me in the first line. Don't make it about you. It is just an award, a paper, a grant, and not the end of the world.  

sunshine

A related post I wrote: I know it’s a no, but I don’t know why

A random day of my life in Kolkata

Somewhere between pre- and post-2014, my perception of Kolkata changed. Pre-2014, I would visit Kolkata from the USA where I drove a car and was used to a certain individualistic lifestyle. Naturally, ma and I used to spend most of our time arguing over what mode of transportation to take, sullying the joys of going out together. I refused to take the slow-moving rickety buses, the dangerously-driven autos, or even the metro. My ma does not believe in taking cabs, classifying all cab-drivers as kidnappers, and we would often stand at the bus stop arguing about this. She later grew wiser, so instead of arguing, she would suspiciously nod and agree that we should indeed take the cab, admitting that buses these days are not reliable anymore. However, as soon as we reached the main road, she would hop on a slowly oncoming bus, shrugging and telling me that no cabs were in sight. She would be standing on the footrest motioning to me by vigorously flailing her hands, "Chole aaye, chole aaye, taxi paabi na." or "Hop on, you won't find a cab." The thing is, she didn't even wait for 5 minutes for a cab to show up. I see her innocent face and I know that I have been tricked. So now I can either stand my ground in which case ma leaves in a bus and I stay where I am, or give in and take the bus. At this point, the conductor joins her too in screaming and asking me to board the bus, "Chole asun didi chole asun." I give up, take the bus, and see a broad grin of victory on ma's face. "Shona meye amar, ma'er katha shunte hoy." "Good girl, you must listen to mommy." I promise never to travel with her again.

Post-2014, I am older and wiser, somewhat. I now live in Germany and do not drive anymore. I haven't even renewed my driver's license. I take the public transportation all the time. I know that it is convenient, environmentally friendly, inexpensive, and the right thing to do. So as I board my flight to Kolkata, I tell myself that I am only taking the public transportation. No more cabs for me. If I want to see interesting people, I must take the metro. My ma has never been prouder.

So one evening, I decide to meet a friend in the opposite end of the city. Kolkata metro is fast, convenient, and connects the city north to south. But taking the metro involves walking for ten minutes to the main road, taking an auto to the station, walking under the bridge and hope that no flying missiles from moving trains of the nature of used cloth diapers or flying excreta land on me, and then taking the metro. The humidity is killing me, my clothes uncomfortably sticking to me. I haven't even bothered to put on makeup. I was wearing a light rain jacket in June even last week when I was in Germany. And now, my sluggish sweat glands are working overtime. I take the metro and luckily find a seat in the reserved "Ladies" seat. I get busy trying to read a third-grade bestseller highly vouched for by my sister that was written by a celebrity-wife who clearly did not know what to do with her time. I am trying to focus on page 2, giving it a fair shot before judging my sister. I have a long way to go. The train stops at the next station, and I see a woman walking fast out of the corner of my eye. "Chepe bosun, chepe bosun," she instructs everyone sternly. I am hearing this phrase after such a long time. It means please squeeze in a bit to make space for me, and is said twice for added emphasis.

The thing is, obesity has significantly risen in the last decade or so with the Americanization of Kolkata. The booming "shopping mall culture" is a long rant for another day. While I am old-school and more used to being invited home and fed home-cooked food, people these days prefer hanging out at malls, walking aimlessly and looking at overpriced stores, taking selfies and partaking in Subways and McDonald's. Imagine flying all the way to Kolkata to watch people overdose on American junk food with gusto while I crave for two tiny shingaras, kochuris, and some jilipis. And I continue to embarrass myself in more ways than one. Recently, when someone asked, “Acropilos jaabi? Have you been to Acropolis?" (a recently opened mall in the southern fringes of the city that I had no idea about), I proudly beamed, "Gechi to. I was there last month, that is where I lost my passport." Before this Kolkata trip, I only knew of one Acropolis, the original one in Greece.

Back to my metro rant. While eight voluptuous women easily fit in a ladies seat 10 years ago, wriggling babies and hanging bags and all, the same space can now seat seven women, and a mosquito or two. The others look at each other clueless, feigning an act of wiggling themselves to fake an act of making space for the lady. But there is hardly any space left to make. Our warrior lady is getting impatient. So she screams louder, not even bothering to mask the underlying threat in her voice with courtesy. The other women feel perturbed now. However, I decide to play cool, and instead of looking up, continue pretending to read this horrible book where the writer talks about some first-world problem of her driver not showing up on time and she having to take an auto rickshaw. There is some action going on right next to me with some elbowing, rubbing sweaty arms, and muttering expletives. The warrior lady has made some space for herself finally, all of 2 inches that can barely have her touching her bum to the seat. As if on cue, the driver slams the brakes, breaking her inertia and making her real angry. So she walks over to me, and in that little space we had for 2 mosquitoes, she seats herself. What it means is that she is half-sitting on my left thigh now. And if that is not enough, her right hand, all bare and damp in her sleeveless blouse, comes and rubs mine. I immediately forget my book and with electrifying speed, try to shrink myself to half my width, almost wincing at my physical proximity with another sweating individual (with a fiery temper). As if traveling in a stuffy, sweaty metro was not enough, I now have a woman on my lap threatening me with her "Chepe boshun bolchi kintu!" while the metro sways at speed and makes me conjure traumatic images of getting a lap dance. I am repulsed beyond imagination. I try to think of my choices, or whatever remains of them. My book is long forgotten. I look at the woman on my lap, half-sitting on me and refusing to budge. I contemplate telling her, “Chepe boshte parbo na” (I cannot squeeze in, sorry and thank you). However, I don't think I have the courage to do this. Meekly, I obey her and jiggle myself some more, and when that does not work, go stand and offer her my seat. 

After 30 minutes of standing in the crowd, my nose precariously pointed at several armpits jutting from sleeveless blouses women love to wear, I get off the train in one piece, my lap still bearing the traumatic memory of the pseudo lap-dance it had recently received. Thanks to learning yoga for one semester in grad school, I had managed to stop breathing for most of my ride. I still have an auto rickshaw to take before I can reach my destination. I am smelling of 50 shades of sweat, and I do not even know which shade is mine. I try to squeeze myself in the right extreme of the backseat of an auto. However, my ordeal is far from over. A family of man, woman, and child come running, push me aside, and grab the entire last seat of the auto before I realize what is happening. The mustachioed man with a baby face is the first one to get in. Wow! There was a time when chivalrous men used to offer the back seat to women while flanking the driver. People have taken gender equity really seriously these days. So carefully arranging my half-flowing clothes, I seat myself by the auto driver, confident about smelling something new now- perhaps hair oil. In the next twenty minutes, the auto driver becomes a reincarnation of Keanu Reeves from Matrix, squeezing his vehicle in the lanes in between speeding buses and cars, zooming through approaching traffic in T-sections, making me sit even tighter to him, much to my dismay. Given a choice between falling of an auto rickshaw on the road or sitting uncomfortably close to stranger and smelling his hair oil, I prefer the hair oil.

I get off at my destination and try to enter the mall. However, I am stopped by two female security guards who deem it proper to pat my boobs with the metal detector before letting me in. From getting a lap dance to giving one to the auto driver to having my assets patted, my friends will never know the huge price I have just paid to commute from point A to point B. Ever since, I feign a heart attack whenever someone asks me to meet them at a mall during peak traffic. If that does not work, I just tell myself that 5 Euros (my bus fare in Germany everyday) is close to 377.87 Indian rupees. So once in a while, when I am not craving for any sort of adventures on the road, I just take the cab.

sunshine

27 and Unmarried?

This is a work of f(r)iction, and should not be confused with the author’s intentions of documenting her subdued desires of getting hitched, or claiming that she is 27, when she is long past that age.

"27 and unmarried? Hai Raaam !!! Are you romantically challenged? Kuch gadbad hai kya? Aren’t most girls your age already married?"

You know what shaped my romantic conditioning while growing up. The fantasy world I created from reading hundreds of Mills & Boon (MB) romantic novels, and Harlequin romances. Crumpled yellow pages, a cover best hidden in a newspaper jacket. No matter how much I tried to look indifferent, the size of the book and the fervent way I skimmed through the yellow pages always gave away what I read. Yeah yeah we all know about “the lack of variety in plotlines and their inevitable happy endings”. So what?

The problem is- my imaginary world of romantic hunks sauntering half naked in towels became more real than my real world and the men I met there. In school and college when my friends were mate hunting, I drowned myself in books with these fantastic men, vicariously deriving my romantic stimulus from them. A decade later when my friends have found their mates, I have woken up to the realization that I am perhaps running a good 10 years behind schedule. I haven’t been able to find someone on my own, and the random men I talk to every weekend as a routine of this arranged marriage drill, barely live up to my expectations.

My Indian forefathers had turned in their graves when at 14 I was convinced I was marrying an Italian. To my understanding, all my fantasy men resided in Italy, Greece, and France. Brought up with middle class values and dozens of Mills & Boons hidden between my text books, I have always wondered why the fantasy men I read about were so different from the real men around me - lovers, non-lovers, ex-lovers, buddies, colleagues and the ones I talk to these days, hoping that I would end up marrying one of them. Why was it that the Kamal Kishores, the Venkat Rajans and the Obhrokanti Kumars never stood a chance to these Jakes, Lukes, and Nicks?

No prizes for guessing that the fiction writers had transported me to this imaginary world of men who didn’t exist in reality. But it didn’t make the fantasy men any less appealing. You know why? Because they are self made. Born with a silver spoon, yet a go-getter. Exceptionally tall, always towering and above 6 feet (something which Bengali men rarely are). My mother never really understood my need to tiptoe to the man I marry, and still makes me talk to these short men with the notion that “a good character and a secure job is more important than height”.

My MB men are always dark. Brooding. Broad chested. Very angry with life. It seems every woman wants to chain him down, though frankly, I don’t know why none of his flings ever made it to the altar. His charm and virility increases as an exponential function with age. Very devoted to his huge family of 4 generations residing somewhere in Italy. Usually Greek or Italian (but never Indian). He travels all around the world and he owns a chain of art galleries or Victoria’s secret stores. Drives Porsches and Ferraris. Sleeps in boxer shorts. Doesn’t snore or fart or scratch himself like a hairy porcupine. Well toned. No hanging pot bellies or a receding hairline. Never found shopping in Walmart, IKEA or Target. Unparalleled sartorial elegance. He doesn’t do menial jobs like – coding, writing software, or cloning animals in the lab.

Reality bites. I remember talking to a doctor as a part of my mate hunting routine. I placed him in the genre of medical romances where the doctor always fell for the nurse. Then I discovered that the man got his kicks describing gory details of what went in the operating rooms. He was too engaged in conversation to notice me cringe as he described the entire process of childbirth over a cup of coffee. Who did he think he was, Dr. Gregory House? I mean, for all my dreams of him undressing me mentally, who knows if he was dissecting me mentally. No, things never really went anywhere with him.

My MB man owns private islands in the Bahamas, while the common man, even after topping the JEE, the IIT, and ending up as a software luminary, spends his entire life paying off mortgages for a house in the outskirts of Seattle. My MB man always gets attracted to the plain Jane no-non-sense girl with oodles of self esteem. In fact, I never wore makeup for years, just to live up to the plain Jane image. My MB man always initiates the first kiss and is never slapped for such unwarranted animal lust. Sometimes, my MB man is the father of the baby he never knew existed because he did not want to be tied down to marriage despite his miraculous procreative abilities. Sometimes, he is the only employer in the vicinity and offers marriage when you are least expecting it. Sometimes he is that man you find in the desolate island where you went for your last field trip. Soon, you are thrown into a situation where neither of you can do without each other. A hurricane strikes the island, he discovers a secret of his life you are the key to, or he simply realizes that you belong to an exotic species naïve enough to not use contraceptives during these accidental, unplanned acts of passionate love making.

I grew up firmly believing that the man I marry would be like one of these characters. The ones who would pin me down against the wall to initiate the first kiss. Not the ones who describe how pancreatic cancers are cured. My world of romantic fantasy came crashing down with every relationship gone haywire. Tainted are those, marred by the gory wrath of society, who are unable to sail through the trials and tribulations of a socially acceptable relationship. I saw this train filled with potential grooms leaving the station while someone pushed me frantically to run after the train. I thought of my MB men and my make-believe world in Italy and how happy I was there. I wondered why I didn’t find the Indian version of my MB man. While the world eagerly awaits Mr. Right’s arrival to put an end to my miseries of singlehood for life, Mr. Right is a split personality, who in his other personality, is a mama’s boy brought up with good values who only listens to mama.

My conflicting worlds confuse me – the one with the Jakes and Lukes, the one with people pushing me to get married to whoever was smart enough to make it to the US, and the world of these prospective grooms sitting in a train, one of which might be kind enough to marry me someday. While these worlds of mine collide, I bear a heavy burden on my chest, traumatized at the thought of dying an old spinster. My feelings remain unresolved so far- call it tragedy or consider it comical. Like my friend says, “27 and unmarried? Hai Raaam !!! Aren’t most girls your age already married?”

sunshine

Good Mo(u)rning Mr. Valentine

It’s that time of the year again, and given the laws of relativity, it amazes me how soon the “this time” of the year comes. Today is THE day, your only opportunity to show how much you love your spouse/partner/girl/boy friend. So what if countries are at war, you are thinking of switching boy/girl friends, you hate your in-laws or you have realized this is perhaps a merger of convenience and not a marriage of love. This is your only chance to publicly show the expansiveness of your love. 

Tonight, there will be gifts, flowers, candle night dinners, and claims of husband taking half day off work, or better still, not going to work at all. Tonight there will be sultry love making, with all your half-baked and malformed teenage fantasies from the Harlequin Romances coming true. How do I know all this? From Facebook of course. Is there a better medium of showoff affluence display than Facebook? There will be 6 dozen “surprise” roses arriving at office during an unsuspecting moment when you are at a meeting and pretend you didn’t even know it is Valentine’s Day. Oh oh oh, I am so surprised, I just fainted. 

There would be bars and standards set in comparison to previous years, or better still, in comparison to what your friends got this year. Like the World Cup cricket, there will be live updates of the different stages and phases of the display of love. “Oh I just got a bunch of flowers at work and someone made sure that everyone in office knew about it before I did”. “Oh hubby is chopping onions and crying, in the process of cooking the “surprise” tandoori chicken for dinner”. “Look there he goes hunting for the matchstick to light the candle for the candle lit dinner”. “Oh now he is at Tiffany’s with his ex-college girl friend, deciding which diamond to buy for me (we are now all friends, you see)”. “Oh, I also got a phone call from someone who is not really my girl friend, but we are great open minded buddies you see. It’s all about being in love with everyone at the same time”. “Look, the husband just confronted the boss and told him how he doesn’t care that he is on pager duty, and he is taking off for the rest of the afternoon”.

Honestly, would you have much respect for a person who refuses to go to work because it is Valentine’s Day? I would actually, I will go swooning at his feet out of respect, wondering if he can differentiate between praise and sarcasm. With a bunch of carnations and an incarnation of Cupid for a husband, the only good thing missing in life would be a live documentation of the amorous life you lead. Facebook comes into the picture now and fulfills and surpasses all expectations of a live coverage of love, longing, hormones, pheromones, and expectation fulfillment in the name of “Surprise!!!!”. 

I was greeted by an email this morning that read, “Have you experienced that deep-rooted longing, the longing for a love that is big, beautiful, and blissful?” Of course I have, I muttered to myself, recovering after falling off my chair. With 5 core courses, 3 days/week workout, research work, homework, assignments, classroom observations, writing a bunch of papers, learning the new NVivo and SPSS software, and modeling logistic regression data, all I feel at the end of the day is a “longing for that big and beautiful love”. Hence I take a shower, tuck myself in bed, play a few rounds of online scrabble, cocoon inside the bed reading the book “He’s not that into you”, and before I know, I am snoring my brains out, and it is morning again, the alarm is shrieking with routine discipline, and it’s time to run to work. Isn’t that big, beautiful love? 

Maybe not. No, really, it is refreshing to see so many people view life and romanticism through a different lens, a lens where there is joy in not just receiving gifts, but in showing it off on a social networking site as well. I don’t know if it is age, hormones, or mental makeup, but who cares? At least you are not wasting and whiling your dhalti jawani setting youth hunched on categorical predictors and missing data handling. And don’t take my words seriously. Long before I saw doctors, I knew I suffered from the “Sour Grapes Syndrome”.

Happy Valentines Day you people. Keep the love alive, kicking, and most importantly, showing! For it isn't love if it doesn't show.

sunshine

Gratitude with an Attitude

About a year and a half ago, my friend called me while I was working on a health litigation case. The plaintiff was demanding a large compensation from the company who fixed sewage lines after a particular mishap when the restroom commode exploded and shit literally hit the fan, leading to a prolonged fungus contamination and related health effects. My friend was inconsolable; she said she had no money and was a week away from an international trip to India. I had lived the life of a poor graduate student for two years by then. She even offered to carry chocolates for my parents back home.

I wondered why a graduate student needed one month’s salary as a loan. This friend had previously plagiarized my statement of purpose after asking to read it, changing her name and the name of her department and school. She made it to the US and vouched that it was all her effort.  

I sent her a check, never asking her why she was in a financial crisis. People who let go of their pride and asked for a loan must be in dire need for money, and there was no need for me to compound her discomfort by asking for a reason. In return, I got a lot of phone hugs, a promise that my family would get a box of chocolate truffles, and her word that she will return the money as soon as possible.

I waited. And waited. And waited. I am still waiting.

Six months later, I sent her a reminder. She told me what a scumbag her PhD advisor was. The grants she was working on was put on hold and she was living hand-to-mouth.

I also noticed an update on her Facebook album where she and her boyfriend held hands in Florida.

Nine months later, I lost my job. I asked once more for the money. I did not get it back. However, there was a Facebook update a few days later about how excited she was planning a trip to meet her boyfriend in California.

One year later, she said that she will be visiting me in Seattle. I was impressed that she had decided to personally repay the loan. When she arrived, she told me that she wanted to visit Mount Rainier National Park. The money was never mentioned.

After a-year-and-a-half of asking, being unemployed for eight months, and going through her adventurous Facebook tourism updates, all I got were grieving emails about how bad it is to be a poor student. Imagine a poor person telling an unemployed person this. Then arrived the letters with enclosed checks with instructions that I should not deposit the checks since there was not enough money in her bank. Then came another set of letters telling me that I could deposit the checks in instalments. There were another set of checks that were claimed to be Fedexed but never reached me. Finally, I got an email from her.

“Just a quick (quick??) reminder that you can deposit the checks now. I am happy to be able to re-pay your loan and grateful for your help and patience”

The email felt nice till I came to the last sentence.

“Now that you will be a student and I will have a job after graduating, don’t hesitate to ask me if you ever need financial help. Love”.

For someone who stole my statement of purpose, asked me for money and did not repay it despite all the fun Florida/California, a boyfriend and family members in the US for help, and for someone who was helped without any questions asked, the last sentence of the gratitude email was something. I never replied to it.

sunshine

Ad-Wiser

When I cleared my thesis defense a few months back, I had thought – “Boy, that was simple. I can now write my thesis in two days”. Two indeed it was, but weeks that it took me to write it. That’s good too, thought I, as I clicked on the “pay now” button for my flight tickets for a week-long vacation in New York. The vacation never happened. Two months later, my advisor is still kicking my ass, making changes to my thesis. So here goes the equation: 2 hours to defend it, 2 week to write it, and 2 months to edit it.

Now this 2 month thing is an exceptional situation, or more of an equation imbalance with my advisor. I mean, who edits a thesis for 2 months, making me labor my ass off even on weekends? But my hate-post for my advisor would be written another day. However, as I am finishing up my process of writing my thesis, I realize that there indeed is a list of at least a dozen things one cannot write a thesis without. If you have been there, you know what I am talking about. If you haven’t, you will soon be.

1. Caffeine- It sometimes helps you not to fall asleep on your keyboard, but there is also something glamorous about walking the department corridor at 1 in the morning, a coffee cup in one hand, your satchel on the other shoulder, while you walk in slow motion with the other prowling night owls in the department. Not being a coffee person, I use it more for my image boost.

2. Ready made food- Maggi might seem as a mass of squirming caterpillars otherwise, but there is nothing more conveniently made and slurped on while meeting deadlines. Nothing beats the soups and sushi and spring rolls from Trader Joe’s. I have survived for weeks with my pantry stored like a bomb shelter with readymade food.

3. Eveready friends who will be willing to hear your whining at any time of the day (or night). Believe me, when you are done typing a hundred pages and have had it enough, you can do with an empathetic shoulder.

4. A post-thesis fun plan. It gives you lots of incentive to push yourself. Plan a trip to the Bahamas or the Hawaii. Keep aside a thousand dollars for your post-thesis fun shopping. You probably won’t be able to carry out these plans (unless you have a sugar daddy sponsoring you). This is just to trick you into working harder.

5. Lots of suddenly built rapport with the advisor. You suddenly want to call/email your advisor and end with a “thank you for everything you have done for me”, remember her birthday, send her a box full of Haldiram’s sweets on her anniversary, make her a dabba full of the best Indian curry your mommy taught you back at home, and remind her everyday how she is more important for you than your boy friend. This might still not save you from the onslaught of her making you write a hundred extra pages, but is still a good disaster contingency plan if you can tap on her more humane side this way.

6. Super skills with MS Office- I think I don’t just deserve a degree in whatever field in am in, but also a degree in MS Office from Mr. Gates. Never before have I known how to wade my way so smoothly through track changes, formatting, and Endnote data input. Don’t balk if I tell you it took me three whole days just to format my thesis and present it the way the school wants to read it, and I am still not done. Schools tend to be picky about small things like the page number being on top right and not bottom centered, following the same font type and size throughout, and leaving a margin accurate to three decimal places.

7. Throw away all the comfortable bedding, pillows, things that make you sleep. Instead, use your bedding and comforters to cushion your room wall(s). After months of hard work when your advisor ruthlessly chops off your favorite segments in the thesis, you want something to thunk your head against.

8. Plenty of change of clothes and lots of deodorants. There will be days at a stretch when you won’t be going home but would be working in that underground cubbyhole they call the computer lab.

9. Meditation classes with half a watermelon sitting on your head every day. There are times when you will be so close to snapping at your advisor, but will still have to smile your way through the process subserviently and keep your cool.

10. Lists. Lists of sections to finish. Lists of sections completed. Lists of diagrams and tables to include that no one cares about. List of people to thank in that acknowledgement section no one is going to read. List of reasons why you hate your advisor. List of introspective thoughts on why you don’t think you want to come back to school again. Write it down. Trust me, it is therapeutic.

11. A deaf ear. Soon, you will get used to words like “No, you haven’t”, “How come you can’t”, and “This won’t”. You will be made to feel as if you were born stupid. Just learn to gulp your ego with everything that goes down the throat, take the advice you think is useful, and dispose the rest of it.

12. The ability to laugh at the unfair side of things. You will be made to do things that you consider unnecessary and catering more to the whims of your advisor. You will be told things where you would want to scream back, “No, this is not the way it is”. But remember to choose your battles and fight those you think you can win. You need those approval signatures at the end of the day, and if that means working for an extra few weeks or repeating some experiments or rewriting entire segments, you might still want to get it done with and never look back again. Handle it with humor, handle it with wit, handle it with sarcasm, whatever it takes to motivate you to GET IT DONE ! Remember, there are far better things in life waiting for you once you are finished.

Like my acknowledgement reads, dripping with sarcasm,

“This thesis would have been finished long back without your positive input, interference or distractions- but wouldn’t have looked the same as it does today”.

If only I had the nerve to show it to her.

sunshine

My “Wonder”ful World.

I wonder-

Why no matter which side of the street I am on waiting for the bus, there always seems to be more buses running on the opposite side.

Why every time I hit the “up” button on the elevator, the one going down arrives first.

Why the more I study for the exams, the better gets my chances of screwing them up.

Why every time the professor in class asks a student some question, I always know the answer to it, but when it is my turn to answer questions, I am clueless.

Why every guy I have a crush on has a crush on somebody else, and guys who have a crush on me do not get crushed back at.

Why every girl from college who was better in academics has a better job, and every girl academically inferior to me has a husband, while I have neither.

Why every time I try to guess the correct answer to a true/false question in the exams, I end up choosing the wrong option.

Why every time I check the prices for avocados before buying them, they are $1 each, but every time I forget to check their price, they are $1.80 each.

Why every time I wake up late, I have all the unfinished jobs in the world to do before I leave for class.

Why my fellow passengers have always been uninteresting couples with badly behaved kids throwing a tantrum every now and then whenever I travel.

Why every time I get late for class and do not bring lunch, the girl in front of me always munches on a chicken burrito.

Why every time I tell myself that I do not have the time to cook, and my body should understand and cooperate and use up all the fat reserves, I end up feeling hungrier than ever. Perhaps my stomach has no brains.

Why the probability of me meeting my dad on my way back home always increases a hundred fold whenever I am with some guy friend.

Why when we lived in an era with no call waiting on the phone, every important call for dad came whenever I used to be on the phone.

Why mirrors in shopping malls are strategically placed everywhere so that every time you pick up a sexy dress, the fat girl in the mirror sarcastically laughs back at you.

Why every time I am done buying something (say a camera, a laptop, a webcam, whatever), its price either goes down or I see a better deal elsewhere.

Why every time I am the least prepared for class, the professor seeks my opinion on topics the most.

Why every time some girl in the group starts going out with some guy, I am always the last one to know.

Why every time a handsome guy on the plane is looking lost trying to find his seat and I pray that the empty seat beside me be his, he seats himself at the remotest corner in the plane.

Why lip sticks look great on every woman, but it makes me look like a blood-sucking vampire.

Why whenever I absentmindedly scratch my hair or dig my nose in an empty room, someone walks in without preamble.

Why of all the 30 odd 5 year old kids who were by themselves at that wedding, I was the only kid who sat on a broken chair and fell in the gutter on that cold, wintry night.

Why every time I make a resolution of working the most on a particular weekend, I end up sleeping the most.

Why every time G comes over to my place, my room is in a mess, while it looks fine the rest of the days (or maybe whenever my room is in a mess, G decides to come over).

Why every guy who looks interesting is engaged, married, or has migrated to Antarctica.

Why every time Y would call me up back at home, I would be in the loo.

Why every time I study lead, arsenic, and cadmium, a question on mercury comes for the exams.

If the hypothesis of a good looking person always marrying a bad looking spouse is true, should I prefer considering myself good looking or should I prefer having a good looking husband instead?

Why every time I forget the phone and imagine every Tom, Dick, and Harry trying to call me up, I rush home at the end of the day only to find that no Tom, Dick, or Harry called me.

Why any sari that looks good on me always looks better on my friends.

Why just when I reach the crossing does the light turn red.

Why every time I stood on the left in a crowded metro, the lady on the right always got a seat first.
Why every time someone clicked the camera without telling me, either my eyes were shut or my paunch was showing.

Why every time I had an important appointment to attend to, the alarm clock would ditch me.

Why every time I sat down to watch India playing, Ganguly got out.

Why every time I would need my sun glasses, I would forget to put them in my purse.

Why every time I would go on for a photo-clicking spree, the batteries would run low.

Why every time there would be a huge queue to get a platform ticket, there would be a paunchy ticket inspector right at the gate.

Why I can never determine what spices to put in what curry and always end up cooking horrible food with all the wrong spices.

Why every time I am in a huge family gathering, some aunt of mine always has to recount inappropriate stories from my childhood.

Why every time I have a nightmare of getting onto a weighing machine and the pointer crazily deflecting to the right, it is actually never a nightmare, but stark, harsh reality.

Why every time I decided to wear something adventurous to college, dad would go to office late or come home early.

Why every time I am on the phone and am required to note down something, maybe a number or an address, I can never find a pen in the radius of some 10 feet.

Why I can usually remember any persons’ month of birth, but usually never the date of birth.

Why every time I miss the bus despite running to get it is the bus I needed to take, and why whenever I reach the bus stop on time, it is never the bus I needed to take that arrives first.

Why every time I sneaked into the kitchen at night, I’d get caught by mom. Even now I have this habit of looking here and there to make sure that no one is around when I am stealing food from the fridge, though I very well know that no one is around.

So what are you wondering about today?

sunshine.