I've come a long way baby!

If I could take you all back in time to, let’s say, three years ago, I could have introduced you to a blissfully ignorant and highly delusional young lady. She used to think that the only things in life that were worth giving a thought to were chemistry problems and Romantic poetry! The only thing worth looking for was Orion in the night sky. All other practical mundane things took care of themselves.
Yes, that was me, only three years from today, living in my ivory tower with no worry other than what I was going to wear to college that day. My room seemed to clean itself no matter how messy I used to leave it everyday. The clothes strewn on the floor would pick themselves up, wash and iron themselves and find their way back into my closet. Food would appear miraculously on the table whenever I was hungry! An atmosphere very conducive for intellectual pursuits but very detrimental to the development of one's practical skills.
But this state of utopia could not continue forever and I was cruelly thrown into a 4 ft by 6 ft room in IIT where I had to make my own bed, mend my own socks and wash my own clothes. Never in my dreams had I imagined that reality could be this cruel. So I simply rebelled against it. I would buy new clothes to replace the old and dirty ones instead of washing them. Instead of eating in the hostel mess, I started eating out or ordering food.
So Fate thought that it would dig deep into my fool's paradise with its iron talons and shred it into bits until it was no more. It brought me to the other end of the world, all by myself, and made me live completely on my own!
My first day of cooking was a complete disaster! I reassembled the pressure cooker which my Mom had packed in for me. Then I studied it for about 15 mins and then finally called up my Mom.
"The lid is bigger than the body. I think you have given me the wrong lid. This one won't fit. It is too big!" I wailed.
I could almost sense my Mom's exasperation over the phone as she gave me very explicit instructions as to how I could get the lid attached to the body of the cooker. Next came the even most difficult part.....COOKING! I had dreaded it all my life as if it was a disease, something along the lines of the bubonic plague.
So my mother had to be woken at an ungodly hour by my confused wailing.
"Exactly how much oil should I put? And how much salt should I add?"
"According to your taste" she yawned!
"That is not an answer! Tell me, how many milliliters of oil should I add and how many grams of salt should I put! Tell me the exact measurements!" I snapped.
In the background my brother giggled "We shall overcome some day......"
And with an iron will, some minor guidance from the cooking gurus and a lot of failed attempts, I finally overcame my inhibitions and fear of cooking.
The other day, when I was promising someone that I will make paneer butter masala for her over the weekend; I couldn’t but help feeling proud of myself. I even know how to make sweet and sour shrimp and I can wash dishes and keep my room clean. Managing all this as well as my intellectual pursuits has become like a sort of a juggling act and sometimes I do feel like twenty four hours aren't enough in a day. However, what I also know is that there is a still a long journey ahead of me before I master the art and science of home management. And I can never rest until I have attained perfection and hence the strife continues. But once in a while, I like to give myself a pat on the back and say "you've come a long way baby!"

Are Engineers RETARDED?????

"Chemistry sort of scares me!"
That was the last line in the introductory speech of an aerospace engineer in the class that I am teaching this semester.
"Yeah, I know what you mean man! Same here!" I noted that he found a kindred spirit.
"Me too....I really don’t like chemistry. I am here because it is a course requirement" chanted a few others.
I was almost beginning to panic. I have never encountered so many chemistry-haters in a single room ever before. Previously I taught chemistry majors and pre-meds and it wasn’t surprising that they were as crazy about chemistry as I was. This semester, I was allotted to teach engineers and it was like a rude shock for me when I realized that not everybody in this whole wide world is madly in love with chemistry.
I mean, how can somebody deny chemistry its due reverence. Chemistry is what makes the world go 'round. You can’t undermine CHEMISTRY. Why, God himself must be a chemist and there is no denying that.
I decided to start from the very beginning. I handed the chalk to a geeky bespectacled computer engineer in front of me and asked him to draw an Erlenmeyer flask on the board. After a while of nail-biting and shuffling, he finally drew a very hackneyed beaker! I frantically began searching my vocabulary to find encouraging words that would make his mistake seem a little less grave.
"Umm....very good effort, I must say....but is this a flask at all? Shouldn’t we call this a beaker?"

"What does it matter what we call it? They are both used to keep water" Zach said, very matter-of-factly. I don’t know what engineering he was into but this dude bore a mighty strong resemblance to John Abraham and therefore the wise-crack was excused!

I decided to take them into the lab thinking that maybe hands-on experience will do them some good. But they refused to get their hands onto the instruments! They stood around fiddling with their pens and calculators instead of actually setting up the experiment.

"In my electrical engineering lab, they actually give us circuit diagrams and so I know exactly what to do" wailed an electrical engineer.
"Well, I am not teaching you guys how to cook and so I can’t give you a recipe. You have to come up with your own procedure" I was beginning to lose patience here.
Then I started getting assaulted from all directions......
"How do we operate a burette?"
"Which one is the pipette?"
"Will you give us an equation or something because I really can’t work unless I see one?"
"Oops....I just broke a funnel!!!!!!"

At the end of the three hours, I was exhausted. I always thought that engineers had slight short-circuiting in the grey cells but these kids were RETARDED! As I worked my way towards the material sciences department I wondered how I was going to deal with them for an entire semester.
I slumped down in my seat and tried hard to concentrate on what the professor was saying. I am taking a course in the Materials Engineering this semester and so I was a bit worried about the mathematical aspects of this course. You see, it has been ages since I did my last differentiation.
I stared at the foreign words on the blackboard like corrosion, beam energy and tried to fathom what the instructor was trying to say. And then, suddenly, like a flash of lightening, it all became clear to me. Finally, I could see the truth and my heart brimmed over with sheer remorse. Why, those poor kids seem as retarded to me as I must seem to this great engineer right here in front of me rattling weird sounding things like friction and dynamics.

If this world is a stage, then both chemists and engineers have their own niches and now that it has become necessary to encroach upon each other's territories, there be the initial teething pains. THAT can’t be helped. But I still believe that God is a chemist and I am sure nobody will challenge that!

Daydreaming.......

A lazy Thursday afternoon, I am in between two stages of my experiment and have about an hour to kill. The lab seemed unusually quiet for a week day. Then I suddenly remembered that there was a guest visiting from Georgia Tech and he was giving a talk today; all the Chinese people were there because the flyer said "refreshments will be served"! No wonder the labs were deserted. I wondered whether I could sneak in and grab a brownie or two but then decided against it. I fumbled in my backpack and found an orange. I remembered Priya put it in today morning saying that I buy stuff and stack it away in the refrigerator and forget about it until it is fit for 'scientific study'!

So I took the orange and went over to the lunch room. Two of its walls were made entirely of glass and through it I could see that it must be more than a hundred degrees outside. It was almost sixty inside and I blew into my hands to make them warm. The strong scent of the orange drifted to my nostrils as I began peeling it.....

"Come quickly" said my grandmother "I have peeled the oranges and sprinkled salt on them and if you don’t want it I will give it to the birds to eat."
She sat in a sunny corner on the terrace on a rug she had woven when her eyesight hadn’t failed her. The huge leaves of the coconut tree swished about in the wintry wind and displaced a very indignant parrot which then walked over cautiously near amma eyeing the orange.
"But I am not hungry amma" I wailed “Mom made me eat bread in the morning"
"Aren’t you ten years old now?" she reasoned “So doesn’t that mean that you have to eat more? Or else how will you ever grow?"
Reluctantly I walked over to the other end of the terrace where she was sitting. The parrot looked at me rather skeptically and decided that the mischievous glint in my eye could not be trusted and trotted over to perch on the coconut leaf.
"I will eat only if you tell me stories of what you used to do in Almora when you were a little girl" I bargained.
"Which one do you want to hear?” she asked as she fondly pulled me onto her lap.
"The one when your father went hunting and killed a tiger" I knew them all by heart.
She began telling me about the British officer who visited Almora and how he and her father went, on an elephant, to kill the tiger that had already been injured a few days back.
"He gave me this after he returned" she pulled out, from the folds of her soft white cotton sari, a tiger's nail which she had made into a necklace and wore around her neck. "You will get it when you are older" I looked at it through my half closed eyes and tried hard to stay awake but the sun was so mellow and her lap was so secure and the lullaby of the coconut leaves was so sweet that I drifted off into slumber land.....

"Kya haal hai?"

I looked around startled. I was surprised to find myself in the lunch room in the Biodesign on a cold steel chair, a half-peeled orange in my hand and Shervin staring at me."Ex... excuse me" was all I could manage to stammer.
"Hey, I just spoke to you in Hindi!" he seemed pretty excited about it." Jas taught me to say 'how are you' in Hindi"

"Yes....you did....yeah....very....umm....very nice! Good job" I was still feeling lost.

The mind is a strange thing. It takes you down those dusty memory lanes which you thought you had forgotten long ago and clears away the cobwebs to fill you heart with the strange pangs known as nostalgia. The whispers never fail to reach you......those voices from the past. And then they go away again, like the clearing of an enchanted mist, and leave you stranded on your isolated island, wondering why you couldnt be there forever.

Ain’t it funny?

Everyone has certain idiosyncrasies and it can’t be helped, of course. However, when you sit back and observe them, or think of them at leisure, it sure does appear funny! The primary reason being that there is no particular logic behind us doing these things but even then, they are so very important to us.
I, for example, have this habit of listening to a song over and over, and over again, if I happen to like it. This sometimes drives my roommates crazy and they swear that even if they originally liked that song, they will hate it forever from that day onwards. I had a friend, who had a friend, who was an extreme form of me. He used to record the same song over and over again in the same CD/cassette so that he wouldn’t have to rewind it again and again. Wow! Imagine an entire CD with only ONE song recorded over and over again.

My brother had this extremely irritating habit of holding someone's hand when he slept. It had to be either me or my Mom or Dad. He just refused to sleep unless he had a hand to hold on to. Well, he is the only person in this world whose idiosyncrasies I would gladly humor and so more often than not, I obliged. But I remember those times when I would have exams and he would take ages to sleep and ultimately I would dose off instead of revising my notes.

Speaking of exams, I don’t know whether this is an idiosyncrasy or plain old laziness but I HAVE to keep everything for the last minute. I will always stay up the whole night before any presentation or exam getting ready for it. This came as a shock to my American friends who would be ready with their stuff weeks before the due date. Every time I promise myself that the next time will be different but the 'next time' hasnt come as yet!

My sister had a math tutor who would make the strangest slurping sound when he was drinking his tea. He would pour out his tea onto a small plate and he would slurp away happily, blissfully oblivious of the racket he was causing. I would go into fits of laughter whenever I happened to be around and my poor sis had to struggle to keep a straight face.

And the award goes to......
My new roommate! She loves washing dishes....pots, pans, spoons, in fact everything washable! The utensils are always spick and span and a used dish barely has to touch the table before it is whisked off to the sink, given a thorough wash and put back on the dish rack. She puts the dishwasher in my apartment to shame with her skills.
Well, if she enjoys it, I am definitely not complaining!!!!!!

To Blog or Not To Blog?

Of late I have noticed that blogging, like orkutting, is slightly addictive! I am one of those people who have bees in their bonnets and therefore enjoy speaking about themselves! Not only speaking, I also enjoy writing about myself, my thoughts, and my activities; in fact anything which touches my life in the slightest way.
Throughout my school and college life, I assiduously maintained a dairy. It used to be my religion. I wrote in it every single day, even if it were two lines or two pages. In fact, it used to be my 'best friend', simply because it was never judgmental and was so very patient with me. It had all my thoughts, starting from the most frivolous ones to the very deepest ones.
However, a blog is not exactly a diary, is it? So how do I know when it is becoming too personal and it is time for me to stop? Is there any yardstick which I am not aware of or a certain unwritten protocol? No, I don’t think there is......
At the same time, I wouldn’t want to make this as personal as my diary. When you are enjoying yourself, you do lose the sense of self-restrain and I, for one, am especially good at not knowing where to stop.
So I was very relieved today when a really good friend of mine told me that he would keep tabs on my blog and let me know when it becomes too personal for a public place! Given the fact that I really trust his judgment in certain matters, it came as a great relief to me! Now I can blog away to my heart's content without any inhibitions whatsoever! I think I have the best and most sensible friends in the whole world! Here’s to friendship and blogging ..........*clink*

Misfit!

Have you ever been in a room full of people and felt incredibly lonely at the same time? Or, have you ever sat on a deserted beach, all by yourself, and felt completely at home? No, I don’t think you have. That is why I am the misfit here.
When did it start?
Well, obviously I wasn’t born like this. I used to be like other kids too. I loved to hang out with people, talk, and be merry and cheerful. In fact, to a casual observer, I still may appear that way. It was first brought to my notice when, once in Presidency college, I was sitting with my friends on the staircase. My cousin sister passed by and we exchanged a casual "Hi!" That day she called me up and remarked "Poor Tan (abbreviated version of Tanya, my nickname), you were sticking out like a sore thumb."
I was shocked! There I was, trying my best to blend in with the so-called 'intellectual' Presidency crowd, trying my level best not to attract attention to my 'different' ways and it still wasn’t working for me.
"Maybe next time I shall try horn-rimmed glasses and a khadi kurta with oil dripping from my hair" I joked.
For three years, I tried to be like others. I did what they did, I watched the movies they watched, I wore the clothes they wore, ate the food they preferred and spoke in their language. But deep down within I stifled. Unconsciously, it chaffed me until, one day it just snapped.
So..... what then?
I decided to live my life by my standards. I began to treasure my solitude; the same frightening solitude which I had abhorred once. There have been bouts when I tried to go back. But then I retreated, realizing that I had gone far ahead on the forsaken path.
I tried to hang out with the girls once in a while but the frivolous talk, the overbearing perfume and the flirty ways made me want to cry out in disgust.
The opposite sex, well, you know you can’t be 'just friends' with them without giving them ideas (I have met a few exceptions, though). How can they ever respect women if they refer to them as a 'chic' or a 'doll' or other even more such derogatory terms?
So what is the life of a loner like?
Oh! You won’t even be identifying me as a loner from the outside. I will never pass by you without saying a "Hi!" and smiling. If you hang out with me, you will be surprised to find that I am quite capable of animated and intelligent conversation. You will rarely find me irritable or impatient, unless you rub me the wrong way. If you call me over to a party, I will certainly oblige. In fact, I might even call you myself on Saturday night to chill out over a Margarita. If you coax me hang out with your company more often, I will politely decline saying that I have a few close friends from school and IIT and I like spending time with them when I get the chance (which is the absolute truth!). If you happen to be one of those rare odd balls, I might even let you in my circle of trust. But, of course, that will not be till ages after I know you.
In the meantime?
......I shall sit in a room full of gregarious people and feel desperately lonely.
......I shall stroll down a beach, bare feet, all by myself, with wind in my hair and my eyes will light up with the warm hues of the setting sun. Only then shall I feel unison with the One I love......the love of my life; and all the lives hereafter.........

Give me a break!

Following up on the unfortunate incident at Starbucks a few days ago, let me tell you folks that I never went back to the store after that.
I had resolved to deprive myself of my manna and with an iron will, I stuck to that resolution. I started drinking water whenever I felt the cravings (much healthier as well!) and started chewing gum when it got too tough. Things continued this way till today.
Now today, the eighth of August, had been difficult! I was confused about so many things, the project I am working on, the courses I am supposed to take ...and life, in general. I finished my experiments and attended a meeting at 2.30 pm. It was held in a conference room in the Biodesign and was attended by five professors from different departments and it lasted for one and a half hours. By the end of it, I felt like a truck just ran over me.
I slumped back at my desk and started fantasizing about my Caramel Frapuccino. It was just the thing I needed at that point of time. Water was a miserable substitute. How pale and lily-livered it seemed in comparison. I fiddled around my desk and realized that I was out of chewing gum as well. I was, as they say, in 'deep shit'.
"Will you two just do it and get it over with!" Quinn brought me back to reality with a jolt.
"...huh, are you talking to me?" I thought she had gone out of her mind.

"Yes dear, I am addressing you and your Caramel Frappucino. You think I don’t know what’s on your mind?" I blushed at her precision. She must be a mind-reader or something. I made a mental note to be more careful with my thoughts when I am around her.
"Only 45 minutes left for Starbucks to close." Quinn tapped her wrist watch with a crooked smile on her face.
At that point of time, she seemed like the cruelest person in the whole world. How could she? I couldn’t take it any more. I could hear Starbucks calling out to me. I heard it call, loud and clear. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee floated through my nostrils and before I knew it, I was on my feet and walking towards the door.
At this point I have to point out to you that I am a master at my game. I admit that I succumbed to my temptations but I did take precautions. I disguised myself. I wore dark glasses and a hat. I even tied my hair differently. I poked my head back into the lab before leaving.
"Yes, do you need any............Oh, it you" Quinn gaped.
Completely satisfied, I walked towards Starbucks with a smug smile on my face.
PART II (at Starbucks)
There were about five people, in all, at Starbucks today. Before long, the very cheery Chinese guy popped out from behind the counter and asked if I needed assistance. For a moment I was petrified. Then as his broad smile did not change into one of recognition, I relaxed a bit and placed my order. The effeminate black guy peered suspiciously at me and I instantly went and hid behind Raul (he is about 6ft 3 in which made it really convenient for me!). Before long (more importantly, before Raul's order came) my beautiful Caramel Frapuccino was ready and my eyes moistened just at the sight of it. I was trying to find a place to wedge through between the table and Raul (he is also 4ft broad, you see!) when something dreadful happened.
A tiny Chinese (or maybe Korean) girl with a stern and bespectacled face jumped ahead and grabbed it.
"Umm......uh......that’s.....I think........"Was all could stutter in dismay as she walked right away with my coffee under my very nose.
"Hey....I couldn’t recognize you" Raul smiled at me. With inhuman effort, I managed to flash him a wry smile.
Then came what was supposed to be the other girl’s order. It was decafed, loaded with extra syrup and had whipped cream on it. Well, it almost had everything I disliked in my coffee.
"This is not what I ordered" I pointed out to the Mexican girl nearby. "See, it says 'Lin' but my name is Shreya." She still stared blankly at me.
"Oh My God, I messed up" gasped the thin Chinese fellow, with a horrified expression.
"No, no, it wasn’t your....." my meek attempt to calm him down got drowned as the black guy started fretting. "How could you? Don’t you know she likes Caramel Frapuccino?"
"Yes I do and I will make it up to her" the Chinese guy was smiling again.
I was pretty much horrified. I could see the whole sequence of events repeating it all over again. I had to think of a way to stop it, immediately!
"Oh, how silly of me" I grabbed my cup of coffee right from the hands of the Mexican girl. "I thought I ordered a Caramel Frapuccino" Her grip was firm but I wasn’t the going to let go either. "But actually I ordered THIS." Finally her grip loosened and I had the coffee safe in my hands.
I scurried away, back to my lab, and sipped on the new concoction. It was horrible! I nearly spat it out, it was so bad.
Well, a waste of $3.62 but there are some things that money can’t buy, and that was intact.........well, almost!

Why ME????????

It started of like any ordinary day, a few experiments, a meeting and then my usual midday ritual at Starbucks. As I lined up for my caffeine shot I saw that it was really overcrowded. It seemed like a bunch of high school kids were having their first coffee and were really excited........uh; I am not speaking metaphorically here! Well, seeing that I am a coffee addict and I can’t do without my daily dose and given the fact that Starbucks is so far from Biodesign(a.k.a my lab) I reluctantly joined the queue.
"What are those weird words on the menu? Are they even English?" the girls with blue hair in front of me asked.
"Err.....not all" I racked my brains as to how I could make it simpler for her. "' Tall' is an English word, 'Grande' means 'large' in Spanish and 'Venti' is Italian for 'twenty'. However, in Starbucks lingo, 'tall' means 'small', 'grande' is medium and 'venti' is 'large' and they are the sizes of coffee that you can have." Two semester of working as a teaching assistant made me good at explaining things, I noted.
"What's a Frapuccino?" this time I noticed that she had bright pink nail polish and a pierced tongue. "It is a sort of cold coffee. They put crushed ice instead of milk" I was getting impatient here. This process was taking far too long than I had bargained.
The girl in front started shuffling around with a perplexed look again and instantly I pretended to get busy with my phone. Life savers, these cell phones! At the same time the very nice girl at Starbucks also came to my rescue and finally took my order. "Unanticipated rush today” she panted, looking thoroughly disheveled. I smiled knowingly and waited for my order.
After about ten minutes of waiting, the attendant handed me not one but two large cups of coffee. "Excuse me, I ordered only one! And that too a small one!" I also noticed that he had heaped whipped cream on it and it was dripping with caramel.
"This is our gift to you...." beamed a very effeminate, six foot tall black guy.
"......because we love you" added a very thin Chinese guy with bulging eyes, spiky hair and a very wide smile.
"Please take it" chorused three Mexican girls in very shrill voices.
I noticed that everybody in the cafeteria, including the weird punk kids, were almost holding their breath in excitement, their eyes glued on me. The only way I could escape was if, miraculously, the floor opened up and swallowed me inside! I waited for a second.....but then, miracles don’t happen, do they? So now remained only one alternative. I extended two trembling hands towards the coffee and then, with one determined and swift movement, grabbed the cups. Everybody in the whole cafeteria started clapping! The Chinese guy even had tears in his eyes. I flashed a very forced and a very plastic smile and before anyone could blink their eyes, I was out of that place!
The entire event was so unsettling that I simply HAD to return home instantly. Years ago, I had gotten into this habit of analyzing any event which was out of the ordinary. However, when I thought about this recent occurrence, the only question that came to my mind was "Why me?"
And take my word for it when I say that I still don’t have an answer...........