Nila Kaigirathu

Sorry Guys! I have been bit bitchy lately! Life is full of ups and downs and we meet all sorts of people! It’s not good to lose our balance and to generalize things. If you are wondering where I got this enlightenment, yesterday I saw the full moon from my bed, beautifully hiding behind my curtains and clouds. This made me recall one of my favorite Tamil moon song, “Nila Kaigirathu” (Moon is shining), little girl singing (to console her sad father) a beautiful song in Carnatic (Tamil nadu’s classical music) style.

The song goes like this, we have the moon, breeze and beautiful flowers, my little eyes can see it, my little hands can feel it but no one else seems to be enjoying this (they are doomed in worries), We have the sun, air, pouring clouds, cuckoo’s songs, earth and sky to bless us everyday, take the life as a gift (live it happily) !
Lets count our blessings! When there is light, the darkness disappears! I will go and wait for the moon!

Lack of common language!

Now you will know, why I had conflicts with my lovely?, adorable? lab mates! End of the day its not their fault, we just don't live in the same world nor speak the same language! just as it happens in this clipping!

India / Relationships - Between Earth and Sky!

How exciting the life can be, if we dare to have a new dimensional view to our life! yesterday I had a interesting discussion with some of my friends about the feeling of possessiveness in an relationship! we all agree that any relationship should be based on faith, but still we don't agree/like our partner spending time with someone we don't like, I feel this feeling of possessiveness(?) is not as the result of fear of losing the partner but its a question of dignity. Most of us will agree that if the partner have a valid (dignified) reason to spent time with a person whom we don't value or who don't have much values in life, we will not suffer from this relationship crisis. A good relationship may be perfect balance between earth and sky!

Every time when we can see a action,place, behaviour or a thing in a completely new dimension with the help of a friend, poet, philosopher, painter or a photographer...wow! what an enlightening movement! I have see lots of photographs of India, today I happen to see Nicolas Chorier, a french Kite Aerial Photographer's collection on India. I was overwhelmed to see it from a completely new angel. Check his site! http://www.nicopix.com/ (specially India in the 'editions' menu and some wild whales in the 'nature' link! ) I didn't know that we can do so many exciting things with a kite and can make me miss India!

Momo Party!

As a teenager, I had a poster in my bed room with a caption "A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out"! and I still can't imagine a life without my fun filled friends around me in my good and bad times. To end a very stressful week we had a 'momo' party, with Meena's pregnancy and Micha's birthday as an excuse! Had delicious momo and lively people who made me laugh at all reasons, which made me cry last week! Thanks to Poonam for her special Nepali momos and my friends who gave me energy to face a new week!

My best friend's birthday!

In the name of culture we started giving hard and fast rules to define everything we do and for the relationships we encounter in our daily life. Different culture share the common core definitions for relationships with some slight variations. Lack of knowledge of this intricate variations can put us in difficult conditions. For instance in friendship, I feel in India the intimacy of the friendship is often expressed verbally and with lots of friendly gestures and some 'basic' friendly gestures are given more monotonously to acquaintances or even to people with whom we don't share anything in common. But doing the same here in the 'west' have got some of my acquaintances from work suffocatingly closer to me, then in my attempts to escape from this suffocation and try to create a healthy distance end up in the creation of 'big' distance. Also, I feel it happens often with girls, may be we girls lack empathy or too egoistic to accept that they can be source of suffocation?

While I was playing this game of distance and healthy distance in friendship, there came a person in my life who gave a new definition for friendship, he showed me that just silent presence of a person can make a big difference in our life and he gave me the assure, 'I am there for you' just by this silence. Well! even though i have suffered enough because of my 'Indian friendly gestures' I cant completely give up my Indian way of verbal definition of friend, so let me give a glimpse of my special friend in my bollywood style......Can you imagine mix of a German (intelligence)technology, their healthy delicious salad with sophisticated french perfume and style? such an unbeatable unique combination is my best friend and today's birthday boy Micha, he always creates his own ways and may your path always filled with green trees and teas!

Stadt der Wissenschaft

No I didn’t learn German in two days, just that word because that’s the most appropriate word to describe the town I visited (Stadt der Wissenschaft – town or city of Science). We drove into the town almost at midnight seeing this small town intertwined with very old classical style house and some modern ones, just in the banks of the river Saale…..

……… That’s exactly when my computer crashed!!!!!!!! (14^th sep 2007)

When I came back from Jena, I was over excited by my work, I was able to understand the importance of the type of work that I am doing and I was able to appreciate it more than ever. But this excitement didn't last long, as I was typing my blog about the trip, my computer crashed (the memory failure this time). Hoping that I can get it fixed with system admin of my lab, i left to my lab and on the way I lost my mobile, with all my contacts! then running to the police station, fighting for a new mobile and sim card with the same number....got to know that I have to replace the RAM in my computer...hunting for a cheap and good one to fit in my emergency budget! Hmm! that was just the start of the depression, the actual storm was yesterday! my friends, who know me for a long time will refuse to believe this but I promise its true! I SCREAMED at my lab mates yesterday for a stupid issues and then as usual cried and cried for hours but thank God in very strong and supportive shoulders of Micha! Anton who can understand my lab more than me, made me realize that with type of personality I have, I will always have few 'burning' people around me and I should be strong enough to face this and when I started telling this to my brother, he asked me the full name of the people who annoyed me, in the 'godfather' style, I was bit worried first and then I realized that he is asking just to send some positive energy for them and for me during his meditation. Now don't ask me, what went wrong and why I shouted! that's altogether a big story, I fill first fix my energy depletion, and then I can describe the incident more objectively!

anyway! that's a photo of Max Planck, proudly standing(?) in a very beautiful chemical ecology institute named after him, the best biology lab i have see in my life, well organized and a very beautiful modern building standing in between the valleys in Jena.

Road to Jena!

Just before my summer vacation, Chris asked me if I am interested in presenting some work in Jena in Germany. Just hearing the word Germany and thinking about the delicious salads they make, without even having a second thought about amount of work I need to do for that, I told him a big yes! After coming back, I genuinely tried to collect enough data for the meeting, with two power fluctuations and one server break down in the past 10days, my current status is like this. “I can never make it for the presentation”.

I have to leave today. To add fuel to this depression, just at the last minute checked my tickets booked by the lab secretary, the itinerary is more complicated than my life. I have to fly to Frankfurt then to Leipzig and from there an hour on road to Jena, 6 hours travel to my neighboring country? oops! All this for the German salad? Why I didn’t ask Micha to make one for me?

Rugby 2007!

I told you.....! the Rugby world cup is adding new colors to Paris. As I was taking the pictures of Eiffel tower, lighted green and golden for the rugby world cup, I heard people screaming and cheering their team! Well! these cheering and the colors didn't make France win the opening match against Argentina! lets see... still a long way to go! till then check out the lighted 'Tour Eiffel'

La Rentrée

End of the summer vacation when French come back to their work, Paris welcomes them with various activities; one such was the fireworks at La Défense. La Défense is the business quarter, the only place in Paris where you can see lots of skyscrapers and also has 'La Grande Arche', which is in the axis of ...(not the evil) other major monuments of Paris. This year this La Rentrée also coincides with the start of rugby world cup! these celebration are adding color to Paris, the city is going to be crazy and colorful for sometime.

You can see some more photos here, my crazy attempt to catch the fireworks without and tripod. Again! Thanks Micha! for all the information! you are a walking encyclopedia.

God? save America!

After seeing the Miss Teen South Carolina's performance, last few days we were discussing a lot about the 'Intellectual" properties of America, Obviously the role of Indians especially that of ABCD -'America Born Confused Desi' were also talked about! May be this is the Image of Indians created in/by America!

PS: Thanks Micha! for the clipping and for introducing Family guy! a thought provoking comedy, sometimes when a long intellectual discussion and big philosophies fail, a simple joke can provoke thoughts! Hats off to the Americans who are making it! well! not every one in USA is Miss South Carolina!

The power of myth!

Now a days we humans consider getting married and buying a house as the biggest accomplishment in their life, once we achieve these stuffs, we try to train his next generation ‘genes’ to achieve the same. In ancient India, the ‘achievements’, siddhi (in Sanskrit) was of eight different types, and one who have archived these eight siddhi are considered to be saintly person or even worshiped as ‘God’! Check out the list of siddhi to achieve to become God! Well! These siddhi really existed or not? Is it possible to achieve all these siddhi? Well these are multi-billion dollar question. We, the rationalist will start laughing at these ‘siddhi’ in the same way as the people laughed at the concept of electricity, telephone or even the theory of relativity when it was fist spoken about. Well! spiritualist’s history can be rationalist’s mythology. But even if we consider this as just a myth, naïvely believing in such a myth, can give us power to overcome our obsession over silly ‘modern’ human defined achievements, right?

Well! How did I get into all these mythological stories today? I was reading an article on the discovery of new gene which contributes to the small height differences in humans. That remained me of the mythological stories about hanuman (monkey God) and many other ‘Godly’ characters who had the siddhi to change their heights. The painting is an ‘God’ (mythological character) Ganesh(elephant God) with his eight siddhi personified as women by the famous painter Ravi Varma.