Volunteer...

You all know how bad I am in picking up a new language! In spite of living in Paris for more than 3 years, I still don’t know if this word ‘Volunteer’ exist in any of the Latin language or not! In my school days we had an association call National Social Service, students volunteer in this association to go to village to spread social awareness, do some cleaning etc. It was one of the very tough things I have done so far; during these services we have to live in extreme conditions and most of the places we were not welcomed! In spite of this, each year there were over flowing amount of volunteer as it gives us some sort of satisfaction, nice and peaceful sleep at the end of a very hectic 'bad' day!

Yesterday as we were organising a lab event, a friend’s thesis defence and farewell! I had tough time explaining this term ‘Volunteer’ to my Latin language speaking friends! I really wish this beautiful term do exist in Latin languages and hope that the small set of different ‘Latin speakers’ I met yesterday where ignorant of this word and the divine happiness this word gives. yeah! That should be the case as my online dictionary shows Etymology of this word volunteer as Latin(French). Otherwise It will be very scary to live in a Latin country, especially if there is a big unexpected disaster like Tsunami where the government may not be fully equipped to help the public and may end up depending on volunteers, after all its not good to live with an ego centric thought that my tax money that I pay the government can give all the security I need!

Yesterday I had a tough day and a peaceful night, the whole day revealed me the people I can count on!

Let’s blame it on ...

The second law of thermodynamics, when I was reading about that in the internet I came across a phase, “Life is hard. But it's harder if you don't know how the material world works!" We living things are physical system, which constantly uses energy in different forms and add chaos or disorder in the system. From living things just used sun as the ultimate source of energy, to the present days where the accessory energies like the fossil fuel and nuclear energy is becoming indispensable. Now the big debate is these accessory energies really indispensable? This big question put the world’s biggest democracy into test today. After living in two counties, one where these energies are used extensively and the other sparingly, I think I can say that the people’s life is been accelerated with the use of these energies. Life is no more as slow as this elephants carrying electronic voting device. Well! I do enjoy the speed TGV. But today after seeing people around me running around so fast and making me run behind them in the speed of TGV just to get a simple help like making a phone call in French, I would definitely vote for a calm and quite elephant raid in a green forest than to jump between two 500 miles apart castles in TGV. Well! My vote was not counted and thus I failed today! Today all the people I wanted to be with me were too far to access. Let’s blame it on “second law of thermodynamics”!

Me...Not always!

Hmmm! Shall I hang this in my lab working space? May be soon...!

Near death experience

In India I grew up hearing that the extreme conditions in life add wisdom and make us mature gracefully in life. There are many spiritual practices which make the person suffer physically and mentally to achieve spiritual wisdom in life! I don’t know how far it works but I have read few incidents of ‘near death experience’ bringing drastic change in people’s life, may be such incidents give us a different view of our life and the bitter reality that we are living. Its believed that Dr. Alfred Nobel , created the ‘Nobel Prize’ after reading his erroneous publication of his premature obituary titled Le marchand de la mort est mort ("The merchant of death is dead") "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday."!

Well! All premature obituaries will not have the same effect, especially in the incident where CNN.com mistakenly removed the password of their stored obituary pages and these obituaries where written mainly using 3 keys in the keyboard ctrl-C and crtl-V which resulted in calling Dick Cheney 'UK's favorite grandmother', Pope's 'love of racing' and Castro as 'lifeguard, athlete, movie star'.

Ok! Finally hoping that extreme conditions and difficulties I am facing in finishing my thesis will add something to my ‘growth’ and making a resolution that I will not follow my colleague’s advice to use “ctrl-C and crtl-V” to make the writing faster and easier, I am learning one more tough lesson in life!

Jaane Tu ... Ya Jaane Na

Jaane Tu ... Ya Jaane Na (Whether you know... or not)

Bollywood is still ridiculed by many here in the west but how do they know that it is the best medicine for loneliness, stress and depression! You can just switch off the brain for some time, go to a dream world, far from the bitter reality and have some stimulant for eyes and ears! Even in a depressing day, how can you resist to smile along with Amir Khan or Shahrukh Khan ! Now it is time for the next generation Khan, I saw Imran Khan’s new movie this weekend! Yes! Obviously made me feel old! But he is equally entertaining as other khans! After the big success of all the new comers, I was not able to stop myself from reading the director’s interview…I felt.. well… that is me talking! Someone had once felt the same way as I am feeling recently , but found a way out and got a big success! Here is interview with my little changes to make it suit me! So, the bottom-line is not just the bollywood movie, even their interview can put some hope back in your life! (You know it or not, you accept it or not)

Tyrewala: I went through this really productive phase where I developed three films, one of them happened to be Jaane Tu. Then came a point where I went through depression, writer's block and an intense feeling of loneliness. And I suddenly realised, 'what the hell I've been sitting in a room and typing away on a computer for 12 years. Honestly, I was going to start having conversations with the walls. I desperately needed to be out, working with people because I was losing touch with them. I was so comfortable not interacting with people because I believed human beings are a useless species. (including me) So, for me the biggest challenge was to trust people again and counting on a hundred others to do their job so I could do mine. And that is really what the whole journey of Jaane Tu was about.

NDTV: Depression, writer's block, loneliness, not being able to trust people what happened there?

Tyrewala: I've been unlucky in love. I've been in relationships (including friends and family) that didn't suit my heart, my temperament and my personality. My only way of dealing with that was having a complete breakdown. That's how my system deals with things. It happens once every 10 years year, but I'm done with it now, because I'm quite happy(???)

Hammam!

Had a nice long weekend, totally refreshing, celebrated my friend’s birthday with total cleansing of body and mind, body with a Turkish bath and mind with lots of laughter. One of my favourite place in my working quarter is ‘ La mosquée’, a masque with an Arabic style garden tea shop, a restaurant with all the best Arabic sweet and food you can imagine and a nice Hammam! Obviously getting together with friends I love in this beautiful place was so much of fun!

La Vie de Bohême

Yeah! I am back, of course in a bit better shape, after a nice Friday dinner with boss and lab’s guest. It is nice to meet new people from scientific world, always I get to know many new scientific stuffs and some random discussions about the place we live, visit etc. etc. Our guest came from all the way from Seattle with a mountain bike and did a small tour de ‘France’ (Bretagne). One of the topic came up during our discussion was about the famous French people like scientist, singers etc. and always we end up meeting famous people very casually in the supermarkets, streets etc. For example today I had lunch in an Indian restaurant with Susheela Raman (British-Tamil pop singer) in the next table. And during our evening tea break in our friends Indian antique shop, we had Brigitte Fontaine (French actress singer) walking in the shop, tried an Indian antique dress. Today after seeing both I can say be it an Indian or French pop singer it is “La Vie de Bohême”! Ok! For people who don’t know them...

Brigitte Fontaine ... Susheela Raman...

To meet and part!

Last few weeks was spent in just saying bye-bye to friends and colleagues so, obviously lots of eating, drinking, celebrating the successful completion of thesis, masters project, getting a fellowship etc. etc. Many many people leaving/joining the lab and that makes me one of the older members of the lab. Almost the complete crowd you see in the below photo was not there when I joined the lab, it makes me wonder what bids us so strongly just in a very short period of time and makes us come together in rain and shine! I will miss my lab! This condition was described as a part of learning, in a couplet, almost 2000 years back by the Tamil poet, Tiruvalluvar in one of Tamil's most celebrated work Thirukkural .

"உவல்ப்பத் தலைக்கூடி உள்ளப் பிரிதல்
அனைத்தே புலவர் தொழில்."

You meet with joy, with pleasant thought you part; Such is the learned scholar's wonderous art! .

Academia here I come!

I am now starting the most difficult part of my PhD, writing the thesis. Last few weeks I was messing up with an manuscript, with that fear being a part of my depression, I almost lost all my hope of finishing my Phd in time, till I spoke to my boss yesterday,we had similar conversation and he made me realize that when I have enough facts (wait! its not made up) I can make a thesis by approaching the conclusion by describing my results step by step! Thank you boss! Academia here I come!

I demand euphoria!

Today the Eiffle tower was matching with my mood! Not really, today was not that bad, got some good news about my publications! I hope I am not becoming like Calvin in saying "Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!"