Happy Diwali, Bollywood?

I always thought that Bollywood would have a healthy collection of songs suitable for any Indian festival, but I am not so convinced anymore. The lack of an optimal number of songs dedicated to the festival Diwali (optimal number n being greater than five) only reconfirms my theory that ours is a sex-driven race, just like any other species in the animal kingdom. Have you ever thought why there are hundreds of songs for Holi, Sagai, Sangeet, Shaadi, Karwa Chauth, God Bharai, or even Nag Panchami (characterized by the sinuous dance moves of a reptile-turned-heroine-turned-reptile cursed by some black robe wearing evil man) but only three songs for Diwali? I would argue that in a testosterone and estrogen-driven society where macro-level phenomenon like preening, grooming, mate hunting, courtship, marriage, and procreation exist in any random order, there is no respectable place for a festival which lacks the insinuations of the primal needs of man, namely rain, color, hormones, or the need to touch, want, and hug. Come to think of it, there are hundreds of songs not just for festivals, but for seasons, be it the cot-displacing brrrring of the winter when the khatiya is begged to be sarkaoed because of jaada, the jeth ki garmi waali dopahar (where the heroine instructs the hero - aake god mein utha thaam le baiyan), or the obvious tip tip barsa spawning season. After all, what could be so inviting about a festival characterized by crackers, ear-deafening sounds, the smell of gunpowder, and a bunch of cranky policymakers unhappy about noise pollution? Images of a heavily endowed woman in a flimsy white sari drenched in the rain running around while a male chases her with Holi colors rings a few familiar bells. However, imagine a woman gyrating her hips with a bunch of sparklers and crackers in her hand, hurling fire crackers at unsuspecting males every now and then and singing “Wanna be your chammak challo”? I fail to imagine the latent sexual overtones in this setting. No wonder Bollywood has never really considered dedicating entire songs to the pursuit of the celebration of light and sound, two very important concepts in an extremely dry subject called physics. Sure there are songs with occasional shots of the chick and the lad entwined, playing around with a bunch of sparklers (remember the song Mujhse Mohabbat Ka from Hum Hai Rahi Pyar Ke?), but a random youtube search for Diwali songs yields three results, one from the movie Home Delivery which is not really a “pataakha” item song in any respect, an old song from the time of Akbar where Mukesh’s adenoidal voice (although very melodious) of “Ek who bhi Diwali thi, ek yeh bhi Diwali hai, Ujda hua gulshan hai, rota hua maali hai” sets off a chain reaction of melancholy potent enough to extinguish any number of sparklers and crackers in the world (let’s face it), and another song from the year 1946, where the heroine’s sad state of mind reminded me of the day I had cried buckets at the scary thought of turning 30 because I was convinced that I was approaching senility and half-life decay at an alarming rate. Surely the Ramsay Brothers show more tactile actions (also known as touchy touchy) and hanky (s)panky (amongst ghosts and haunted spirits of course) than these songs do. Sure, there is one song in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham where SRK makes the grand Bhagwan Ram like entry, but then again, every song in that movie reeks of showoff, celebration, and affluence. No fault of Bollywood, which is just a reflection of the evolution of human race (or the lack of it), which brings me back to my irrefutable theory that everything in life ultimately boils down to preening, courtship, mating, and procreation. And anything that does not involve diaphanous clothing, the consequences of global warming (bouts of hot, wet, and cold weather, pun unintended), an umbrella, a few bees buzzing over a rose, a cot (khatiya), or even a reptile-dance number to save the mate from the curse of the evil man will never make it to the Hindi silver screen.

A very happy Diwali everyone, never mind the disappointment Bollywood has brought us.

[P.S.: I thank my friend S who made me notice the scarceness of Diwali songs in Bollywood, something that I had entirely overlooked for reasons not quite clear to me].

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The Titanic is sinking … and she stays onboard

She had walked from the department to the bus stop that afternoon, feeling the weight of the world weighing down on her shoulders. It was a cold, rainy afternoon in fall, and it seemed nature was crying at her predicament. She reached the bus stop just in time to see the bus leave right in front of her. The frustration of missing a bus becomes manifold when you actually watch it leave right in front of you, knowing that you do not have enough time to run and cross the road. This was perhaps very symbolic for her that afternoon, looking at the bus full of opportunities abandon her. Although she was suitably qualified for what she was aspiring to be, she did not have that powerful piece of document that declared her eligible for the job. It was the same document of citizenship or permanent legal residence that people in the past have killed, manipulated, and married for. Neither her parents had the foresight to visit the US and give her birth there, nor she had the foresight to get hitched to someone local. As a result, despite what she would have liked to think of as spectacular and scintillating academic potential, she was disqualified for the numerous teaching fellowships she tried applying to. Apparently, she did not fall under the category of people America deemed fit to allow to teach and educate their children.

She had always wanted to work as a science and math teacher. That was her forte, her calling. That was what she did in India, and that is what she eventually wanted to do in the US. Who said PhDs were overqualified to teach in schools? She was doing a PhD, training to be a professor, but she also wanted to take a few years off first and go teach in a public school setting. She thought she would immensely benefit from the classroom experience while developing her research agenda as a professor, and she loved teaching anyway. Hence, while most people’s careers took off on an upward trajectory, she was willing to step down and go teach in a school for a few years. Don’t get her wrong when she said “step down”, for she in no manner insulted teaching in a public school as an endeavor fit for the lesser achieving. What she meant is, she was overqualified for the job, and hence thought she would definitely get it. The minimum requirement for teaching in a school is a bachelor’s degree. Armed with two masters’ degrees, and a PhD on the way, she knew she would never struggle to find a good school to start teaching.

She forgot something very basic while happily making her future plans. She forgot that she did not belong to this country. She was an outsider, a foreigner. A very unwelcome foreigner in a country where she has been told, “The foreigners took our jobs!!”.

She started looking at teaching fellowships. That was when the truth hit her. Every teaching fellowship she tried applying for specifically mentioned that they require citizens and permanent residents only. They would not sponsor her visa. Desperate, she emailed them, each and every institution, asking if they ever made exceptions for doctorate degree holders. None of the answers came as affirmatives.

There was a clear disconnect between theory and practice. In theory, she was always told by different people, at different point of time that America was in dire need of good science and math teachers who were passionate about teaching. That was when she started to think that she would be a great fit in the setting. Even her professors assured her that visa sponsorship should not be an issue. Clearly, she now knew better.

Her thoughts were mostly sad as she waited for the next bus in the rain. She realized that she did not qualify even for an interview. To deny someone the right to employment by denying them the right to be interviewed, not because of lack of credentials or enthusiasm, but because of the lack of paperwork produced as a result of a random event of being born in the United States was perhaps the ultimate example of social injustice. While America embraced international students with open arms (statistics say so, not I), they were equally reluctant in creating job opportunities for them. No one had taken a look at her academic achievements that she had so painstakingly put in her resume. She was rejected - Just like that. It was an alienating experience. She was neither into chip making, nor into programming, occupations that highly commanded visa sponsorships. She was just an ordinary human being and all she wanted to do was teach. For the first time, thoughts of going back to India seriously occurred to her. Strangely, it was a freeing, emancipating thought. Not that there were any better jobs in India, but she would at least not feel like a foreigner, an intruder. True, millions of people immigrated and embraced this country as their own. Then how could she explain the chilliness, the hostility of the situation she was facing? Certainly there was no pride in living the life of a second class citizen from a third world country, trying to fit in a first world nation. Her ideals were conflicted. She had always wanted to excel at what she did, so that she would be in demand for the quality of her work, no matter where she lived. She wanted to be so good in what she did that the job would come looking for her, rather than the other way around. Clearly, she could have all the respect she wanted, as soon as she could produce proof of citizenship.

Various thoughts and incidents from the past flashed in front of her. She remembered the woman in her late thirties she had met at the Zumba class who had beamed in pride, “Why do I need to work? My husband is a professor. I have married well.” She thought of her friend, whose husband had applied for their green card the moment she married and stepped into the country. None of these women had trouble finding legal residency in the country, and were happily and proudly unemployed. However, when some people actually wanted to work and make a difference, they were denied the opportunity because they had probably not married well. Where was social justice in this God?

She remembered a scene out of a movie she had watched in her teens. The big ship was sinking, and the affluent people left in their lifeboats one by one. Clearly, she was staying onboard, sinking with the ship. After all, she was a second class citizen from a third world country, trying to fit in.

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Facebook Follies

Identifying a Facebook moron is easy. They are usually engaged in a predictable and repeated pattern of activities that tend to fall in one or more of the following categories.

1. They write a message on someone's wall informing them that they should check their cell phone voice message because they called them and they did not answer.

2. Someone else's profile picture on Facebook was taken by them, and they comment on it saying, "Wow, great picture. Wonder who the photographer is! Wink Wink!". They might be great photographers, but Facebook morons nevertheless.

3. They are husband-wife in real life and Farmville neighbors or Mafia mobs in the virtual world.

4. They recognize multiple and totally unrelated people in social gatherings like Dandiya or Durga Puja, who they do not know at all (complete strangers), whose pictures they have seen again and again on Facebook. Earlier, people met each other in person and found them later on Facebook. Now, they know faces from Facebook, and meet them later in person.

5. They live and document their entire lives on countdowns. 5 days to the Vegas trip. 6 months before summer vacation starts! 2 hours for the surprise romantic candle light dinner. 3 weeks befoe mother-in-law flies back to India. 9 days for the labor pains to start. And end their announcements with a "Yippiieee!!"

6. They frequently use terms like “awwwwwww” and “XOXOXOXO” in abundance, usually with members of the same gender.

7. They “like” every post you write, every picture you post, and even “like” every comment your pictures or posts earn, but never ever comment. When they occasionally comment, it is never anything more committal than “9ice”, “cool”, or “gr8”.

8. They post forward messages about cancer awareness and about loving their mothers that start with, “I have a request, and I know exactly which ones of you are going to post this ….” and ends with “repost and share this if you are a human, even if for one hour.” Talk about psychological pressure, huh?

9. They post pictures of their newborns still bathing in the amniotic fluid or worse, lying helpless, shriveled up, and without clothes. No offense to mothers, babies, or motherhood, and you might blame me for not understanding the emotions since I have never mothered a baby, but I find it quite repulsive. I wouldn’t be very happy honestly if I found a picture of mine bathing in my mother’s amniotic fluid floating around for people to see.

10. They post messages like “TGIF”. You are darn right, you need to thank God it is Friday, just like you should sometimes thank God that you have a job and are gainfully employed. You might find it a luxury sitting in your plush office and cribbing about the work load on Facebook, because you make work sound like some kind of punishment you undergo five days a week, and not as your means for finding an identity, engagement, and intellectual stimulation. People like me never get to thank God it is Friday, because we work seven days a week, and do it because we love it. Think about well-qualified people who are unemployed, or about daily wage workers who don’t have a Facebook account and hence don’t get to post status messages like, “Thank God the strike was lifted. Now we will get to work and earn our daily wages.”

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A letter to my PhD

Dear PhD,

Today, I have come closest to the point of breaking up with you. I call it a break up because I have considered it a relationship, perhaps a longstanding, serious, intimate and the most meaningful relationship I have ever had. At some point in life, I decided that I want to spend most of my time in the pursuit of acquiring knowledge and wisdom. I could have been a journalist, a doctor, or a lawyer, but I decided I wanted to do hardcore research, and teach as well. Hence, I started training to be a professor. When I was done with my previous job, I had a few lucrative options. I could have found another job in the US. I could have moved to India. I could have done any number of things. Yet I decided to do a PhD. I decided to give it a second chance, since I had already opted out of PhD once a few years ago. Yet somewhere deep down, I hoped that I would once again enter the research arena. So, I chose you over a job. I readjusted to living on a meager salary, roughly one-third of what I was used to earning. I moved cross-country and tried adjusting myself to a completely different city, field, and work culture. The first year, I was on a roll. I finished my preliminary exam and passed my qualifiers 6 months in advance. I had three more steps to clear, and two more years to do it. However, the disillusionment started to set in the second year. The PhD trajectory became a curved tube I was stuck in the middle of, so that I could no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was taking four courses, doing research, TAing, and traveling. I was learning new statistical software, learning to code, and trying to be as productive as I could. That was when I started to burn out and disillusionment set in. I have never been a good test taker, or a person who works well under pressure. Perhaps as it happens in some relationships (I don’t know, enlighten me), I started to question the meaning of it. I started to wonder about how what I learned would fit in the bigger scheme of things. I was overworked, tired, low on sleep, but more than most things, I started to question the value of all of it. So I had the write this post.

I wrote this post because just like a relationship, I still love you, although I have had my moments of doubt. You are my priority, and I will try my best to ensure we stick it out together. I start my day thinking of all the things I could do in research, and go to sleep planning my next day of work. But like all relationships, things are never perfect and happy all the time. We have our lows, or periods of doubt, times like these when we question the necessity of it. I wrote this post so that someday when in doubt, I will read this and know how much I have wanted you, and how important it is for me to do what I am doing right now. I write this so that someday when you and I have come a long way together after years of partnership, I can look back on times like these when I doubted my abilities to do anything meaningful, and know that I was wrong. I will know that although I have had my moments and thoughts of breakup, I would never actually do it. Yes, I am having a low moment right now, especially since I need to teach a class tomorrow and send revisions for papers by the end of this week and a dozen other things, but this moment shall pass. I know I will be back to my old self when you were my priority, and continue to do some kickass research which will make our future meaningful.

With love,

A sincere PhD student.

Simplicities to Complexities: Seeking the Absolute Truth

When I was a kid, I was told that I could have the answers to most of my questions if I got myself a solid education. I somehow believed that theory, that as one grows old, one acquires more skills and knowledge, gets more experience in doing things, and life becomes less complex. I believed it at age 10 perhaps, but not anymore.

I wonder if the purpose of knowledge and education is meant to reduce, or increase ambiguity. As a kid, the answers to my questions were simple and absolute. There was no ambiguity about it. I learned that 2 plus 2 is always going to be 4. I believed that the harder you worked, the better your grades were. I believed that good behavior always earned you appreciation. I knew that no one dies before old age hits them. These were the absolute truths that I had verified with my little experience with the world. I had very set ideas about things, and those made complete sense to me. I knew that you could never fall in love with a man if he was younger to you or shorter in height (those were my theories then). In between grades 3^rd and 7^th, I was absolutely certain that I had found the right person for me (a classmate I had a crush on for years), and would marry him someday. I studied Moral Science as a subject and was absolutely certain about the presence of God (I knew he lived everywhere, but his favorite place was the church behind our school building). I knew students who worked hard studied science, and went to America. Another absolute truth for me then.

However, as I learned more and gained more experience, I realized that there is perhaps nothing called an absolute truth. Sure not working hard doesn’t get you anywhere, but working hard might also not get you anywhere. My inherent programming makes me want to believe in God, but honestly, I am not so sure of his existence anymore. I know that love can go unreciprocated and totally haywire. I also know that it is totally possible to fall in love with a man younger to you, or shorter than you are. The research papers I read usually end with “it is more likely that this is associated with that”, instead of a “we are absolutely certain that this combined with this leads to this”. I have vigilantly presided over my cookery and ended up with unpalatable food, but I fell asleep after setting something to bake, and it ended up being a crispy golden brown dessert that was totally worth eating. I now know that working the hardest doesn’t necessarily make you the smartest, and you could study everything and still flunk. The guy who got lower grades than you in school could be making ten times more money than you are, and not every good deed goes appreciated. Someone with almost no publications could get into Harvard, while someone with many publications could end up in a local small university.

As a kid, I always thought there is an absolute answer that fits everyone’s questions. Not anymore. When I ask myself a basic question like, “Should I get married?”, I honestly don’t know the answer to it, even with all my knowledge and wisdom. On one hand, it sounds like a wonderful idea, companionship and all, but on the other hand, I am not so sure if it is that much of a value addition in my life. The honest answer is, “I don’t know”. Yet if you asked me the same question as a kid, I would have said, “Of course. Everyone should be married before they grow old and have white hair.” Then, there are other existential questions I struggle with, I have no direct answer to. Even in an experiment, the atoms and molecules all do not behave as predicted, and I hear that there is a certain probability of observing a difference or variation due to chance. There is nothing called the absolute reality, and our realities differ, and even exist in multiple dimensions. How else would you explain Dabang being a super hit, and Andaz Apna Apna being a flop?

With time, I see a major rift in the philosophy of my life. The assumptions of physical sciences do not translate to the assumptions of the human sciences. How humans make meaning of a particular phenomenon varies. I always thought science was singular, convergent, and fragmented, as opposed to being multiple, divergent, and inter-related. I always thought that if you can replicate a process and get the same answer, you have achieved the truth. But then you make errors, both type I and type II, where you can either wrongly agree to something which is wrong, or wrongly disagree to something which is right. Not everyone is free, liberated, and happy, even if they have access to similar resources or luxuries. Some people eat a lot and never put on a pound, while some hapless souls like me could live on oxygen alone, and still keep expanding. I once used to have a constellation of values and beliefs about the way the world works. I knew that as you add more to the database of knowledge, problems became clearer and solutions come up, leading to a less complicated and more simplistic world overall. However, the truth is neither generalized, nor can be triangulated upon. The best one can do is achieve the nearest approximation. Now if this is what my philosophy after 25 years of being in school (I discount the first 3 years of my life, and the 2 years in between when I worked), I wonder if my education is worth anything at all. I also question this after the adviser recently read something I wrote and said, “With these ideas of yours, you will never find a job.” If I cannot find a job after being in school for more than 25 years, I question the value and validity of all that I have learned so far.

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5 Years !

Sometime earlier this month, I celebrated the completion of my 5 years of stay in the U.S. It meant a lot to me, since I have always considered moving to the U.S. as the biggest “good decision” I have made for personal reasons. It hasn’t been a smooth joy ride, I assure you, and it still isn’t. Things went wrong during the first few years, and I was never hopeful that I would be able to make it. I had to give up a lot, especially the security of a sheltered life, of a secure job, of the prospects of being gainfully married and raising a family. I was singly driven by my desire to pursue graduate school, and to establish myself as an academician. It became challenging and increasingly hard for me to keep myself rooted here (opting out of the PhD program in 2008, job layoff in 2009, resuming PhD in 2010, etc.). However, here I am, and here I was celebrating my 5 years of stay by taking a journey down the memory lane and remembering all the happy and not-so-happy moments that defined the latter half of my twenties.

Incidentally, I was out of town the day I completed 5 years. I was attending a conference, not presenting though. Academic daddy was invited to be there, and since he was traveling, he sent me instead. This was a huge privilege, much bigger than presenting at a conference, because in this case, someone revered in the field gave up his chance so that I could replace him temporarily and do the same kind of work that he was expected to do. I was expected to listen to the talks, evaluate the kind of research that was being done in the field, and prepare a synthesis report. This would not only give me a chance to network and meet the people in the field, but also train me in synthesizing information and making sense of them.

A quick scanning around the room revealed that as expected, I was perhaps the only “Indian-from-India” in the room, if you know what I meant. The conference started, people began to present their work, mostly in the field of developing education and bettering the school educational systems for scientific workforce development so that more students were motivated to continue into college. There was one spokesperson who got up on stage to present. I don’t remember the affiliation, but I remember listening to an impressive talk. The person had some great ideas, and was very enthusiastic about it. The person breezed through the presentation slides, and there was this last bullet point on the last slide that seemed somewhat odd, but did not register anything right away. I am not sure if I had read that point, or perhaps I was beginning to, but before I did, the person repeated what was written in the last slide.

“And hopefully this way, we will be able to stop the foreigners taking up our jobs.”

The crowd clapped and applauded. However, I sat there stone faced. You see, I had never once fooled myself into believing that this country is mine, and has embraced me lovingly. I was always reminded of the fact that I am here as long as I had my visa validated, for which, I had to struggle, compete, learn, and produce superior quality work. I had already faced the consequences of losing a job and thereby ending up without a visa (you get deported, what else?). Although I live here, I always knew I never belonged here, not only for the color of my skin or my Indian accented English, but because of the fact that I am a foreigner, and will always be one. But to be a foreigner sitting amidst a group of natives animatedly discussing strategies about how to keep the foreigners at bay was not necessarily the best conversation to hear. This country has given me a lot, taught me a lot of values. However, I believe that I have given this country at least a little bit in return, and I am not just referring to the taxes. I have given this country my hard work, my ideas, my skills, and my expertise. Look at the irony, on one hand, I was sitting there as the representative of my advisor, trying to become an expert in my field, trying to become “one of them” to help their children continue into college. On the other hand, I was also a foreigner and although this person never realized there was at least one foreigner in the room listening to the conversation, I was listening. I did not know then which side of the argument I was in.

That single incident, ironically on the 5^th anniversary of my entry into the US, changed the way I perceive things. It’s been a month almost, and memories of that initial awkwardness still remains fresh. Academic daddy, who is best known for his honesty and bluntness, listened to me recount this in pain, and told me somewhat impassively, “You get established for your skills, the value you bring into a group, and not because of who you are or what country you belong to. If you become a good researcher and have all the combined skills that most people in this field do not have, if you are the best in statistics and can analyze any large scale data set, America will value you. You can either sit and lament about what happened, or fiercely try to establish yourself in the field.”

Advice taken with respect daddy, but not without knowing that perhaps I would never be able to estrange myself from the things I felt at that point, being referred to as an outcast “who is taking our jobs away”.

On a different note, I had to fill out an expense sheet and a tax form by the end of it, listing my expenses. The lady at the conference counter looked at me and said harmlessly, “Oh, I am sure you do not need a tax form.”

Having known her for the last 3 days of the conference, I smiled and almost nodded a yes, assuming she knows best, but decided to confirm again. “You sure?”

“Uh, do international employees pay taxes?”

“Sure ma’am, I do pay my full share of taxes, I assure you”, I said as I helped myself to a form. “Surely us foreigners might be a potential threat who take up the jobs that your children rightly deserved, but we at least pay our taxes”, I thought with bitterness as I grabbed my form and left the conference venue.

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If Einstein was on Facebook…..

Graduate school is hard. Cold and colorless. Most often sleepless. Penniless as well. Whoever thought one should take all those 20 odd courses in order to survive graduate school. Then there is actual research involved. There is TAing, and grading. You need to publish, network, acquire academic currency (as papers), and be in the good books of your advisor. The advisor is always pushing you, making you work harder, never approving of or appreciating your potential. So what if he is paying you to get an education? If PhD was that easy or fancy, everyone would be getting one. It is certainly not that easy to have a smooth ride of a PhD. Not when so many other distractions are involved.

You see, the single most distracting factor is called Facebook (there are many others, I assure you). You wake up every good morning with good intentions of doing some path breaking, jaw dropping research. But, what goes with your morning cup of coffee is the compulsive need to look at the tiny red button that tells you the number of comments and messages you have on Facebook. I would not be writing this post if things stopped there. Between classes and meetings, there is this compulsive need to stay abreast of what is happening in other people’s lives. We “comment” on pictures where we are not to be found, “like” status messages from friends that have no significance to us whatsoever, “join” communities on “How to train your adviser” or “PhD sucks”, “poke” people we would never talk to in parties, and constantly check not just the comments of others made to others, but the comments to the comments that others made on a post where we commented. The professor who claimed you were bad with numbers was crazy. For some inexplicable reason, you cannot remember the principles of matrices or determinants you learnt in your last class, but clearly remembered the number of comments and likes your recent update on “I am going to have an awesome time in Yellowstone next weekend” garnered. There is this constant need to update status messages multiple times a day, to check updates from others, to post albums every now and then giving others a glimpse of your awesome life, and deriving narcissistic pleasure by updating the world on the minutest detail like “Worked out at the gym for 2 hours” (who cares?), or “my baby loved eating strawberries today, yumm yumm !!” (20 out of 25 comments for this post would be “awwwwww”). You suddenly know of everything and everyone, the Bangla aaNtel kobita that man you met just once writes (which you hardly understand), that friend of a friend’s friend you don’t know, but still stalk on Facebook, or the menu and guest list of the last potluck party you missed, whose pictures were just posted.

Things do not stop on Facebook. There are the blogs you read everyday, comment, and comment to the comment the previous commentator makes. You read news, you read other people’s secrets on Postsecret (to be fair, I do it only on Sundays). There is this compulsive need to check weather, not just where you live, but in some remote place like Ullhasnagar you might visit in future someday. There is random browsing on Craigslist, Amazon, and Yelp. You need to know of every possible deal in the city. You are still debating whether to cast a wider net on Google Plus and Twitter. Linkedin is constantly sending you updates about the people you recently added. Netflix is suggesting movies you should watch, based on the recent ratings you posted. There is a bunch of emails from stores and services you subscribed to. The local confectionary is giving away free cookies with purchases of $20 or more. There is this long email chain going on (45 emails and counting) about the upcoming Bijoya Sammelani potluck in 2 weeks, where the chicks are discussing what color of sarees they should wear, and if they should be color coordinated with their partners. And last, but not the least, the Google chat window is perennially open (who logs out of Gmail?), you constantly eyeballing who is online and who is busy, in the hopes that someone as jobless as you are will be nice enough to say hi.

Now with the human brain having a definite (and certainly measurable) attention span and the capacity to bear a somewhat fixed amount of cognitive load, I don’t blame you that you cannot finish deadlines on time, hardly get the time to do class readings before class, are perennially sleep deprived and grumpy, just asked for a project extension, and have started to question if getting a PhD is a waste of your youth after all. I am totally empathetic, being guilty of the same follies myself (everything that was written as “you” so far referred to “me”). You see, if Newton was sitting under the apple tree with his laptop, gravitation would never be discovered. Instead of thinking about what just happened, he would get busy updating Facebook, “An apple fell on my head, that’s a bad apple !!!” (a comment that would garner him 45 likes and 30 comments about the best cider places in town and the current recruitment policies of Apple). Imagine how Einstein’s life would be if he was Facebooking and Netflixing from his lab in Princeton. No wonder graduate school is hard these days, and advisers just do not understand.

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NoSeattlegia

I once used to dream of living in a big house with glass windows overlooking the lake in Fremont, Seattle. For all of you who are familiar with the city of Seattle, you will know what I mean. I always thought that was the place that suited my personality best. I would never live in Downtown, or close to a pub district. Yet I have never wanted to wander too far from the happening hot spots and live in a 3 bedroom townhouse somewhere in Bellevue or Kirkland. Fremont was the right place. The lake nearby provides a wonderful view and a nice place to walk by, or watch the boats and occasionally the hydroplanes. There is no dearth of great eating places and coffee shops. The area is well connected by bus services, and who wants to drive when you can take the bus? The troll nearby used to be my favorite hangout area. The Space Needle looks beautiful, and so does the Seattle skyline. How do I know all this? I know this because I worked close to Fremont for a year. That was when I wrote this poem.

The joy ride welcomes me aboard
Through thirty fifth and Wallingford

To zig zag left right up and down
The view of water down and town

The needle points straight in the sky
The buildings stand so proud and high

From Stoneway me a stone throw 'way
To the monster troll I always "hey"

The one eyed giant who gobbles cars
All hairy mighty full of scars

And then to left my tastebuds vie
For coffee sushi greek and thai

Through Fremont streets with joy we hail
And watch the ships cut through and sail

The bridge that's now an upside "V"
And azureness is all I see

In skies and waters traverse planes
With lakes and sun and things arcane

Through Fremont ways and dextered roads
My City of Joy, my new abode

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Kawta Jaama Holo?

I was shaken out of my reverie where I heard the loud ghonta and shaankh in the wee hours of dawn. It had drizzled the night before, and the cold and dampness in the air made me want to cocoon myself tighter. Shaking off the remnants of sleep, I tried to bring my world into focus again. Apparently, I was no longer in Calcutta, a city where I spent a significant amount of my youth. I was in the U.S. of A., a home away from home, where the heart of Ma Durga beats in a nostalgically similar, yet a painfully different rhythm.

My cousin texted me “Shubho Mahalaya” the other day. It is that time of the year when Ma Durga, her children, and Mahishasura are busy getting spruced up for Pujo. However, Pujo is a different story in this country. Ma Durga’s calendar has been modified for years to suit that of her devotees for the probashi (NRI) Bangali in the US. She visits home not per the tithis of the calendar, but during the weekends, and in the vicinity of community colleges and high school buildings instead of paara, goli, or raasta. Thakur dekha (also known as, pandal hopping) is no longer an activity I associate with hours of walking, standing in lines, brazening the sweltering heat or the torrential downpour that is so characteristic of the pujo-scape in Calcutta. It was refreshing to see such energy reflected everywhere during pujo. I saw it in the faces of people excitedly asking friends and neighbors, “Kawta jaama holo?” (How many sets of new clothes did you buy or were gifted this season?).The real reason of the question was not really to know how many sets of clothes you acquired, but to open up the discussion about all the great places to shop, not to mention announcing to the world of your own count of clothes. I saw it in the scaffolds of the still incomplete puja pandals. I saw it in those craftsmen working diligently to add the final touches of paint on Ma Durga. The otherwise ill-reputed as “dead” city pulsates with life. The smell of pujo permeates the air- a smell characterized not just by the dhup-dhuno, but by puppy love blossoming in every paara or goli, the enthusiasm of shoppers amidst the crazy stampeding, the smell of roadside phuchka and chicken roll, the heart beating to the rhythm of the dhaak, and by loudspeakers blaring anything from “Anjali Mantra” to “Bangla adhunik gaan”, “tu cheez badi hai mast mast” for the braver communities, or “twinkle twinkle little star” recited in monotony by a 4-year old rising star during those “kalcharal nights” organized by her father who also happens to be the secretary of the local pujo’r committee.

Things look somewhat similar here, albeit in a more controlled and otherwise monotonous fashion. You could identify a pujo-hosting high school after hours of being lost in the Amazon rainforests, if only you could find that telltale parking lot filled with the Hondas and the Toyotas mostly in shades of black, blue, or silver. As you shut off the car ignition and adjust your Baluchori sari and the kundan necklace after undoing the seatbelt, other telltale signs clue you in to the venue of the pujo. Mr. Software Sen, otherwise seen in his checkered shorts and Google tee shirt with a cuppa Starbucks coffee as he drives his blue Lexus to office every morning, is spruced up in his dhuti and tussar panjabi and neatly combed hair parted sideways, dutifully handing out lunch coupons and talking unsuspecting and stray pandal hoppers into buying their annual Bangali association membership. Mrs. Anima(ted) Sen, looking straight out of the sets of the movie Devdas in her cream and red sari and her vermilion headed, kohl-smeared eyes and Ma-Kali avatar, chats animatedly about their trip to Greece earlier in summer to spend their 10^th wedding anniversary, urging her bored audiences kitty party pals to check out her Facebook album now replete with “wow” comments and XOXOXOXOs. On a different note, it took years for a dehati-to-the-American-culture like me to figure out that those “showered with love” XOXOXOs found in abundance on Facebook are in no way related to the “kaata-kuti” criss-cross board games you played as a middle school student when the teacher did not make it to class. However, I digress here. The Khokon Shonas and Mamonis are running around in their Baby GAP sweatshirts or Dora pink frilly frocks and Stride Rite shoes. They are happily chomping on their pijjas and Mc Dee burgers especially ordered off the kids menu, because they have been universally stereotyped by their parents to lack the digestive system hardy enough to digest khichuri bhog. Important discussions are churning in the name of socializing and networking- I overhear a group of balding, middle-aged, and bespectacled dadas discussing Green Cards and citizenships, options for stock investment and mortgages, Xboxs andPSP3s, Kinects and Builds, or the awaited deals for the upcoming Thanksgiving Black Friday sales. The mashimas and boudis enthusiastically discuss clothing and jewelry, juicy Facebook gossip, impending annual visits of in-laws, the newest desi store selling Tyangra maach and frozen Lyangra aam, and the awesome videos of their Khokon shonas eating organic strawberries in their Bumbo seats. A bunch of young people form a visibly distinct sub-group – the “fresh off the boat” graduate students, enthusiastically discuss research agenda, upcoming conference deadlines, and demanding advisors, definitely lacking the visible traits and polish of the nouveau riches from the east now living over a decade in this country.

However, no matter how sardonically you choose to look at the Americanized version of Durga Pujo, this is the best you are going to get here. No wonder we convince ourselves over time that there is an undeniable magic, an aura even amidst talks of green cards and Tiffany’s jewelry, our mashima who is visiting her son and his family from Borishal proudly beaming, “amar naati you ass citigen” (My grandson is a US citizen). Our pujari moshai is an investment banker, dutifully chanting mantras, the sacred thread and dhoti a far cry from his menacing corporate look. The dhaaki starts to play the dhaak at some point, ushering people for the session of onjoli, picking up fistfuls of yellow lilies and carnations bought from Trader Joe’s. As usual, I experience the all familiar feeling of getting gooseflesh, tapping my feet to the beat of the dhaak. My blood rings and my soul sings to the beats of the drum. A strange magic suffused with nostalgia fills the air. Durga Pujo will remain a unique celebration for me, incomparable with the pumpkin carvings during Halloween, or the turkey roasting during Thanksgiving. I am shaken out of my reverie yet again when a GAP wearer less than half my height innocuously bumps into me, running around in excitement, followed by his hapless dad who reminds me of a pet trainer. It is the same man who was conversing in Bengali, and now, he is running after his son not with the typically what you would expect “jaashna, jaashna, orey khoka firey aaye” (Come back dear son, don’t scamper around), but with a trained and somewhat accented monosyllabic “Don’t run, come back, sit down, eat your pizza !!”, instructed in a fake accent perhaps for the benefit of the scampering kid who might not understand a word of Bangla spoken at home. I see that “Kaan mola khabi” has been aptly replaced by “You will be grounded!!”.

Somewhere in between my present and my past, in between the uloos (the sounds you make flicking your tongue) and the shaankh (conch shell), I am transported to a different era, awash with joyous anticipation. I am 6 years old and am wearing a bright blue frock my parents bought me from the neighborhood garment store. Then I am a 20 year old, wearing a bright green silk sari that belongs to my mother, that she has painstakingly wrapped around me, safety pins and all. I am with my friends pandal hopping in Madox Square, enlivened by the dazzling beauties exchanging hushed glances and sheepish smiles with the handsomely spruced up pajama-panjabi clad group of young men who have spent the last hour or so visually appraising the chicks (an act also known as jhaari maara). So many love relationships form and dissipate in the vicinity of the pandals by the grace of Goddess Durga every year. While most never make it to the altar, an innocuous glance exchanged or that racing of heart beats as you eyed a bunch of decked up people from the opposite gender works wonders in your otherwise drab life marred by academic pressures, social expectations, and what not. I flip between the past and my 30-year old present, casually glancing around me to look in vain for the now-extinct group of good looking and single men roughly my age. A corpulent mashima just stepped on my sari (and my toes), glaring unapologetically at me for intercepting her trajectory as she walks by. She is the same mashima, I recognize, who was animatedly boasting about her sonny boy studying electrical engineering at MIT. I sigh, zoning out of my surroundings for the moment and focusing on the beauty of Ma Durga’s face instead. Of all the things that have changed around me (for better or for worse) in the last few decades of my pujo experience, people, social dynamics, pompousness and all, Ma Durga is the only one who has not changed, still looking as young and stunning as she used to for as long as I can remember. So beautiful, so powerful, yet so very feminine. The only thing that brings in unalloyed joy for me is the visage of Ma Durga and her children. And the smell of pujo. Not to mention the music of the dhaak. Or sometimes the familiar feeling of excitement I used to have as a kid as I marveled at the six packs and brawns of the demon Mahishasura.

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A Magnetic Personality

I sometimes wonder what will happen to all those magnets stuck on the white door of my fridge when I am gone. Surely I don’t have any property to boast of, no land, no house, not even a piece of gold or diamond, but I have around 200 magnets collected over the years of traveling in different places around the world. I suspect I might have to buy a bigger fridge in a few years, but that is a different story. There is this blue lava spewing volcano magnet I collected from Sicily. There is this panoramic view of Philadelphia magnet I bought in 2008. They come in all shapes and sizes, from bears of Yosemite to the bison of Yellowstone National Park. There is a cow magnet from the cheese factory, a longhorn from Texas, a cable car from San Francisco, a dolphin from San Diego, and many more. I wonder what will happen to them when I am dead. I am probably wondering about this since I do not have an offspring to inherit them all, but even if I did, I wonder if anyone would be really interested in collecting a bunch of magnets from a travel addict. They mean a lot to me, having collected them personally over the years, but to others, these are just pieces of magnets. Perhaps I could donate it to the science laboratory to conduct experiments using magnets. Perhaps I could donate it to a travel endorsing club. I don’t know why I am worrying about the fate of my magnets of all things, but it is probably one of those days when useful ideas do not come, and the mind is trapped between the needless polarities of the north and the south, wondering about the unknown future and the even more unknown outcome of worldly possessions when the soul defies all directions and heads toward wonderland.

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Happy Teachers’ Day

Good old nostalgic times. On teachers’ day, I was reminded of all the good time I had when I used to teach in Calcutta. It was my first job, I was 24, fresh out of college, and thought I would change the world. Lot of people were surprised, even disappointed, and I somewhat understand why. A measly pay was one thing, and social perception was another. Bright students were supposed to be doctors, engineers, and lawyers, and I can see why such is the perception. Even a professor had a far more social recognition compared to a school teacher. People who had the ability to become something in life did not become school teachers. They designed chips, developed languages, and signed million dollar deals.

Surely I worked with colleagues who were bright, energetic, and had a similar philosophy as mine, where they wanted to change the perception of teachers. But they were only a handful. Most teachers were tired, lethargic, and opposed to change. It seemed a certain degree of boredom had seeped into their bones over the years. Ironically, they did not want to learn anything new. I was faced with some degree of resistance when I tried changing the pattern of questions to incorporate more multiple choice questions to help students prepare for the all India entrance exams they were to take later. My colleagues were used to doing things a certain way, and they did not see why a freshly out of college teacher should bring in reforms. I used to be euphemistically reprimanded for finishing my corrections and setting question papers early, and this might create a certain expectation for them from the school principal. I used to finish work early so that I could go home and enjoy, and do a hundred different things outside my work.

Soon, I realized what people had meant when they had shown surprise about my decision to teach in a school. I started to feel stagnation. I realized I could only do so much, and become so much as a teacher. I did not even have a masters in education, and this meant despite my quality of work, my pay scale would always be in the lowest rung, even less than others who had a bachelors with an M.Ed. Surely I could motivate children to go on to become rocket scientists and mathematicians, but that is where I would stay. I enjoyed every bit of my work during the present, but the future looked bleak. I loved my students, and they loved me back. I would wake up at 5 every morning and get ready with much enthusiasm, eager to go to school. Imagine how many of us get to work where they are all eager and cannot wait to reach office. Ironically, as much as I loved my job, I moved past it.

A friend once told me that although she loved her then boy friend, she had to move on because she did not see a progressive future with him. I was surprised, wondering how you could leave someone you loved just because you were ambitious. But this is exactly what I did too. I applied to a bunch of schools in the US and moved to Seattle the first opportunity I got.

Although I look back at my first job as a teacher with much fondness, I realize now that the decision I made was for my own good. I did not see myself as a teacher with that measly pay 10 years down the line. I needed intellectual development. I needed to feel and experience the world. I needed greater challenges. I moved on.

However, that experience of teaching left a long term impact on me. Years later when I was done with my US masters and working in the industry, I decided to come back to school to finish a PhD. The reason? I am training myself to become a professor. And it has been one hell of a challenging experience, doing research and training myself long term to be able to teach in a university. But I realized this is what I eventually wanted to do, be associated with school in some capacity, teach, and motivate others to follow their dreams. This might sounds very clichéd and dreamy, but I could not see myself working in the industry any longer. So I am back to what I have always loved doing- being in school. And for this, I thank my job as a school teacher in Calcutta. It made me realize how much I love to teach and be in academia. It also made me realize how I needed to move past it, dream bigger, create bigger challenges for myself, and push myself harder. No matter what I go on to become in life, a part of my identity will always be that 24-year old, starry-eyed math and science teacher whose job and occupation meant the world to her.

Happy Teachers’ Day everyone – We are what we are because of our teachers, for all the little experiences life was made of, and for that internal compass that guides us and eventually leads us to do what we are the best and hopefully the happiest doing.

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