An old student

I ran into one of my old students today. She told me, somewhat apologetically, that she hadn't majored in anything 'remotely scienc-ey'. But she has found a job (quite a feat at this moment, I am given to understand) and will graduate and move out shortly. Is this how teachers feel when they see their students spread their wings and move out, full of enthusiasm and vigour, ready to conquer the world? Perhaps. I am not sure. But I think I will have many more opportunities to find out.

Rain

Shohorebrishti, the name of this blog means "rain in the city". It relates to a song by Suman Chattopadhyay, from his album 'Jatiswar'. I want to present here, this guest post from today's Statesman, where this writer (Tanya Ghosh) remembers the rain. At times reminiscent of Gerald Durrel and also Anita Desai, this is a wonderful little article.

One monsoon day

Tanya Gupta
Memories are funny. Of the billions of experiences, only a handful remain embedded in our grey matter. If they are pleasant, they are a source of comfort on difficult days. If the memories are not really wanted, they continue to haunt us, casting a shadow on happier days.
A remote small town somewhere in West Bengal. The skies darken, the clouds rumble and women scurry to remove clothes hung out to dry.
Children, asked to help their mother, are excited at the urgency of the task. Those too small to reach the clotheslines are asked to shut the windows. In older houses that have seen better times, women and children put pails in areas where the roof leaks.
Even the breeze seems to anticipate what is coming and its quality changes, carrying smells that become sharper and travel quickly. The smell of rajnigandha with a boring English name, tube rose, the night blooming jasmine (raat ki rani) fill the air with their strong scents. And then, without waiting for the mass of humanity to be fully prepared, thunder crashes somewhere and large drops of water fall on the dry earth. As the ground starts to grow moist, it gives off a smell that is elemental and primordial. Wet patches quickly grow and the ground becomes wet and sticky.
And the rain now comes down in all its fury. In the open field, boys take off their shirts, and a ball appears from nowhere, they kick it back and forth casually; and then someone shouts, two teams form and the game starts in right earnest. Players run across the field, with bare muddy feet, exhilarated to be fighting the elements and playing the good game. It is a moment perhaps they will remember and cherish later on in their lives.
In most houses, the focus is also elemental, but it is on food and not sport. “Monsoon snacks” are prepared. Young girls sit in the veranda and chat; then one sings a line of a song, the other runs in and gets a harmonium, and suddenly there is song, and if spirits are high, then even dance. Hot snacks arrive and for the moment all the senses are satisfied!
A little girl visiting her grandmother’s looks wide-eyed at the torrents of rain falling on the earth. The rain falls and falls and it does not seem that it will ever stop.
The boys finish their game and go home triumphantly to a scolding from their worried mothers (“if you fall sick now you can take care of yourself”), the girls finish their chai and singing and pack their instruments up and go inside. The buckets holding rain water have been replaced twice.
And yet the rain continues to fall. The girl wonders what will happen if it does not stop! She goes to sleep. When she awakens, the rain has stopped. The girl peeps outside.
The street is flooded but the rain water has stopped just short of the first step to their house. Any more rain and the house would have been flooded!
Her grandmother tells her what a good idea it was to build their house a little higher than everybody else’s ~ it was built for the monsoon.
The girl doesn’t pay much attention; instead, she imagines the house floating away in the sea, for miles and miles, she imagines building a boat and exploring the huge garden, which is now a large lake; she imagines monsters lurking in the water, the “monsoon monsters” she calls them.
He grandmother sees her looking out and forbids her to go outside. Putting the little girl in her mother’s charge, she goes off for her afternoon bath. As soon as she is gone, her mother turns to her, and says: “So what are you waiting for? Let’s go!”
The girl’s eyes open wide. She says: “Really?”
And off they go! The little girl has never been in a swimming pool and this is so much better! Her mother tightens her sari around her and holding the girl’s hands firmly, steps into the water.
Water is up to the girl’s neck. Perhaps the next twenty minutes are some of the most blissful moments for the little girl. From imagining underwater monsters, and walking around the once-familiar garden to “Mum, I am swimming!” It is an unforgettable monsoon day.
Soon, it’s over. They hold hands ~ a woman who is still a girl at heart, and the little girl ~ and return to the house.

Possible newspaper headlines

So I had this wicked idea: take two or three headlines from CNN/BBC/NYT/W.Post/WSJ or whatever your daily fix is, and parse them into one headline. make it wicked. Ok, so maybe the idea is not original, but hey, contributions welcome!!

Here, let me start off with:

Executives at AIG who received bonuses above 1 million $ will not confirm belief in evolution!

A love story and nothing in particular.

The time traveller's wife is a wonderfully written book about a bloke who travels back and forth in time, without any control. It is dressed up as science fiction. But I think it is the most beautiful love story I have read in a long time. And that includes that one time I read a Helen McInnes all the way through expecting that it was a spy novel, only to finish it and realise that there wasn't a single spy there at all!

Also saw Bunuel's Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie. I am so confused!

Provoked. Not impressed.

The title of this blog is rather ambiguous. Could I be provoked, but not impressed? Certainly. This is about the British film about a Punjabi housewife in England who is beaten and abused by her husband for 10 years, and finally burns him to death. The protagonist is played by the beautiful Aishwarya Rai. This woman is ethereal and angelic. Unfortunately, her acting follows in the finest traditions of the Keanu Reaves school. Her abusive husband is acted very ably by Naveen Andrews (damn, he gets in bed with Jodie Foster, and now this?!?!?). When she is in jail, her case is taken up by a women's rights organisation, spearheaded by Nandita Das. This was rather sad, Das is such a great actress, but she comes across as rather lame. The direction was simply bad. Lousy script, bad dialogue. Important story, which needs to be told, but is not told properly. But try to see it.

DNA

Turns out that the DNA used for coding the protein I am working with is damaged. We made a single residue mutation, which seems to have worked, as per the sequencer. However, there are several other insertions and deletions. These lead to frameshift mutations, among other things. That might explain our recent misery in getting the protein to behave.Well, back to the lab again....