dent_ed

It's raining... and it's that wonderful quantity of precipitation which in Bombay would be called "a light drizzle", and in Bangalore is called a reasonably heavy spot of rain. The urge to record this for what passes for posterity around here is too much to resist.
And my mobile posts are all about rain. I'm starting to see a pattern here.

Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com

'Wish You Were Here' is the song of the moment; for reasons other than the obvious.

All I want to do is crawl into a protective cocoon. And stay there.

In the words of the immortal (or should I say "Infinitely Prolonged") Janice: "Oh... My... God!"

Song: Painters
Artist: Jewel
Album: Pieces of You

Eighty years, an old lady now, sitting on the front porch
Watching the clouds roll by
They remind her of her lover, how he left her, and of times long ago.
When she used to color carelessly painted his portrait
A thousand times-or maybe just his smile-
And she and her canvas would follow him wherever he would go

'Cause they were painters and they were painting themselves
A lovely world.

Oil streaked daisies covered the living room wall
He put water-colored roses in her hair
He said, "Love, I love you, I want to give you mountains, the sunshine, the sunset too
I just want to give you a world as beautiful as you are to me

'Cause I'm a painter and I want to paint you a lovely world
A lovely world.

So they sat down and made a drawing of their love, they made it an art to live by
They painted every, passion every home, created every beautiful child
in the winter they were weavers of warmth, in summer they were carpenters of love
They thought blue prints were too sad so they made them yellow

'Cause they were painters and they had painted themselves
A lovely world.

Until one day the rain fell as thick as black oil
And in her heart she knew something was wrong
She went running through the orchard screaming,
'No God, don't take him from me!'
But by the time she got there, she feared he already had gone
She got to where he lay, water-colored roses in his hands for her
She threw them down screaming, 'Damn you man, don't leave me
with nothing left behind but these cold paintings, these cold portraits to remind me!
He said, 'Love I only leave a little, try to understand
I put my soul in this life we've created with these four hands
Love, I leave, but only a little, this world holds me still
My body may die now, but these paintings are real.'

So many seasons came and many seasons went
and many times she saw her love's face watering the flowers,
talking to the trees and singing to his children
And when the wind blew, she knew he was listening,
and how he seemed to laugh along, and how he seemed to hold her
when she was crying

'Cause they were painters and they had painted themselves
A lovely world.

Eighty years, an old lady now, sitting on the front porch
Watching the clouds roll by, they remind her of her lover
how he left her and of times long ago, when she used to color carelessly,
Painted his portrait a thousand times, or maybe just his smile,
and her and her canvas would follow him wherever he would go

Yes, her and her canvas still follow
Because they are painters and they had painted themselves
A lovely world


How does the woman manage to write stuff like this? This song gave me goosebumps the first time I heard it. Oh how I wish I could write like this too!

In one week and two days, I will be going home. While this is not really cause for bringing out the bubbly, I am looking forward to getting away from some of the extremely annoying people here. And the extremely pointless (at least it seems so now) coursework.

Have to remember to keep my sanity somewhere on my person at all times. Like my keys.

On the plus side (ironically, for a "plus" side, it's more like a size small), the weather right now is awesome. On the minus side (size XL), I'm stuck inside, working.

The lightning and thunder are having quite a party outside, though. And the drizzle is trying to keep up.

Subject: Self

Status Report: Subject desperately needs to collapse into somebody's arms. And stay there.

...

This Just In: Subject is now in the process of collapsing into a fit of dry sobs while curled in the foetal position.

This probably says what I want to say better than I ever could, so here goes:

Arthur’s heart sank. This surprised him, because he thought it was already about as low as it could possibly be. He closed his eyes for a moment. He so much wanted to be home. He so much wanted his own home world, the actual Earth he had grown up on, not to have been demolished. He so much wanted none of this to have happened. He so much wanted that when he opened his eyes again he would be standing on the doorstep of his little cottage in the West Country of England, that the sun would be shining over the green hills, the post van would be going up the lane, the daffodils would be blooming in his garden and in the distance the pub would be opening for lunch. He so much wanted to take the newspaper down to the pub and read it over a pint of bitter. He so much wanted to do the crossword. He so much wanted to be able to get completely stuck on 17 across.

He opened his eyes.

The strange thing was pulsating irritably at him, tapping some kind of pseudopodia on the desk.

-Douglas Adams, Chapter 11, Mostly Harmless.

Words from the master himself. Admittedly, it's not as bad as that yet. But what are blogs for if not for a little melodrama?

I hate being single. I hate it for the unwanted attention from unwelcome quarters, and the lack of attention from welcome quarters, not that I'm getting much of either.

I hate the never-ending need to be held.

But most of all, I hate it for the way the loneliness gnaws away at your inside, leaving you with nothing to hold on to, not even the last vestiges of being able to put the damn thing into words that have some semblance of sense.

It's strange how one can react to certain sights that one wouldn't normally have found extremely "moving" in the normal scheme of things, or even at times when the mind is not really primed to receive them.

That probably won't make sense to anyone but me. Right.

One of the streets that I walk down every day is lined on one side with Ashoka trees. The trees had recently been pruned, and they had new leaves sprouting near the edges where the branches had been cut. The young Ashoka leaf, for anyone who (hard as it may be to imagine) has never seen one before, is this incredibly delicate, almost translucent little green thing, quite different from the older leaves. It's odd that the sight of a few tiny leaves peeking out from under the protective curtain of the older leaves should affect me so strongly. I actually had to stop and think about it, and about Ashoka trees in particular, before I got it.

The house I lived in when I was little had Ashoka trees all round the periphery. And most evening playing sessions had the trees incorporated into them in some way or the other, with the result that I spent a lot of time back then staring at these leaves and being thoroughly fascinated by them. That's all it was.

So, that's cleared that up.

Losing count of the days
Spent in thinking about you.

Rereading your letter
The one with the silver spades
(We may call a spade a spade
But would it dig as well
By another name?)
Embossed along the bottom.

And wallowing
In the feeling of missing you.

Exams are finally done, and yours truly can now almost luxuriate in the glory of nothing to do... almost. Despite having two reports and a presentation due.

And in the list of new things I have recently learned about myself, watching the progress bar as things download apparently relaxes me. I know, wierd. (It's even better on Ares where it shows you a graph of the download rate).

I've been here for 4 months already, and my, have they flown! To quote one of my seniors, "It seems like just yesterday my class was ragging your class." And yet, I have changed, somewhat. I no longer mind eating soft-boiled eggs, for example. Still can't stand them sunny-side-up, though.

Nevertheless, I'm still here, updating, when I should be writing one of the afore-mentioned reports. I suppose some things never change. *sighs resignedly*

Today I attended a lecture on the Large Hadron Collider, by someone who worked on it (in some small way), and was there when the CMS detector was put in. I can't claim to understand more than half of what she said, (especially considering she had to skip over some slides for lack of time *grumble grumble*) but it did help to put a few concepts in place, besides giving a brilliant perspective to the whole thing. And then there's that feeling when you finally see, and you feel the earth move. (If you're one of those people who think this makes no sense, go away)

She works right here, in the Centre for High Energy Physics, and she gave this talk in the MRDG department, as part of their Spectrum series of lectures. See, this is why I love this place!

This is something that started its life as a letter to Balti, but eventually metamorphosed into something so similar to what I have been wanting to post up here for such a long time, that, well, it seemed a shame to not post it and hence, here it is:

Balti!!!

Here comes the barrage of stuff:

Where do I start? Ooh, I know... I’ll start with the coursework... Well, the faculty taking classes, at least... There are only two worth describing. One is Vidyanand Nanjundaiah. Yeah, it’s a mouthful. The man claims to work on Dictyostelium, but he really spends most of his time on public speaking, and hey, I’m not complaining... It is what he does best. He takes the General Biology course. He has long, white hair, swept back in this miniature bob-like do, which he regularly tosses back, for effect. One could, in fact, call him a theoretical biologist, and then enjoy a calm, peaceful night’s sleep. His talks are often like this: you see a lot of little blue beads (why blue? I don't know, they just seem blue to me) scattered on the floor and then someone comes along and lifts up one bead and you suddenly realise that there's an incredibly thin, invisible thread of spider silk holding the beads together, because the rest of the beads come up with it. He says things like this:

• So physics and chemistry got together and said, ‘Let’s have some biology’.
• The term ‘sexual reproduction’ is a clever cover-up for the fact that there isn’t really any reproduction, in the true sense of the word, happening.
• All chemistry is physics, and all biology is chemistry. (He also once said something about thermodynamics being all physics, but don’t tell the chemists.)
• Transcription is stochastic as hell.
• Noise is serious business for small cells.

And he once gave a talk on Turing patterning, which is this model put forward by a physicist to explain pattern formation during development, which, frankly, blew me away. I told him so after the talk. I’ll tell you about it when we meet. He also presented a model for the working of kinesin, dynein and such, using purely stochastic and probabilistic methods. Needless to say, I love his lectures. And he has read so extensively, although at his age I suppose anyone would have. Ooh, ooh, and he’s from Xavier’s (graduated in Physics) and he knows Donde and he knows Namdas’ brother, Ebenezer... he mentioned that their parents named their three sons after biblical prophets.

The other one is Siddhartha Sarma. He, get this, studies proteins using NMR. I do not exaggerate when I say that I am in love with him. Nay, nay, do not dismiss this as the ravings of an impressionable young girl, although I am neither (I refer to the adjectives. Last time I checked, I was still a girl, despite what some might say). Reserve thy judgement till after I say this: he once told us that his father plagued his childhood with the question, “If so, why so; if not, why not?” (and he actually used the word ‘plagued’) until finally, tiring of this harassment, the young, reckless Siddhartha replied, “Ipso facto” *muffled cries of “It fits, it fits! And on so many levels!” in the background*, which, sadly, led to strained relations between the two for some time. He also likes Dylan, the Beatles and the rest of the oldies, is extremely well read, writes random poetry lambasting the abusers of centrifuges which he sends as an email broadcast to the entire department, thinks lipids are the only thing that make life worth living, intermittently spouts Latin, plays every sport on the planet, randomly quotes random things in class (he was once talking about LSD and he said, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and all of three people in the class understood *rolls eyes* honestly, his talents are being wasted on this crowd), and has a brilliant sense of humour (I know this because many times I’m thinking something and he says it, so it must be brilliant, right? *nudge nudge wink wink*).

This, I save for a new paragraph (for emphasis): He talks to us about the aesthetics of an NMR spectrum. And he lives for the perfect spectrum. It’s so rare to find somebody who loves what they’re doing so much (yes, even here).

And I’m going to work in his lab for six weeks in January-February! *turns cartwheels* Of course, it goes without saying that I plan to take every course the man offers.

The rest of the teachers we have are so-so; there’s Mahadevan (Genetics), who is really sweet and takes a lot of trouble to see that everyone understands what he is teaching. But we’ve done most of it before, so it’s really hard to stay awake in his classes. He’s from Xavier’s too. He graduated in Physics with Nanjundaiah, did his Masters in Genetics and taught in LSD for some time. I thought he looked familiar and then I figured out it was because I had seen him in the old pictures we were pottering about with during the reunion brochure phase.

Then there are the Microbiology triplets: there’s Nagaraj, who looks distinctly murine and says things like S-P-woh-A which is supposed to mean SpoOA (don’t ask); there’s Dipshika Chakravortty who lives up to her initials, DC (she looks like she just checked herself out of an electroshock therapy program), who thinks that ‘ingenious’ means someone who is not a genius, and who once famously got so excited that she said Antonivanleewenouwee three times in the course of a lecture; and there’s K. P. Gopinathan, who really isn’t that bad, but I suspect it’s just because he gets to talk about bacteriophages.

We also present for your inspection Raghavan Varadarajan, a diminutive, soft-spoken, quietly humourous man, who takes a course called Biophysical Chemistry, which is just a fancy name for a lot of grab-you-by-the-balls-and-not-let-go-even-if-you-say-pretty-please thermodynamics. And this isn’t your garden variety S.Y.B. Sc. thermodynamics, oh no, this is thermodynamics as applied to biological systems, proteins melting, DNA melting, (not to mention ice melting and a whole bunch of things evaporating) ligands binding, hypothetical hikers dying of hypothermia in the rain, and other what-have-yous; also known as the course that everyone fails.

That wraps up the list of faculty we have teaching us right now, and yes the Biological Sciences Inties are the only insane group in the Institute who take five courses.

Love, Andy.

I stumbled onto two songs by Jewel recently, one called 'Goodbye Alice in Wonderland' and the other called 'Foolish Games'. I remember maya_spins waxing eloquent about a Jewel song... Was it 'Foolish Games'? I vaguely remember sitting in the foyer literally falling off a bench overflowing with random peoples' bags and straining to listen to the lyrics, which I couldn't hear. Well, I did hear it recently and, to paraphrase Dylan, "Every one of them words rang true and burned like glowing coal, pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul."

I'm including it here, not because I think anyone cares, but because it's too beautiful not to be up here.

( Foolish Games )

'Goodbye Alice in Wonderland', although not something that I identify with as much, is nonetheless equally kick-ass. Sample, for example, Fame is filled with spoiled children; we grow fat on fantasy, and Growing up is not an absence of dreaming, it's being able to understand the difference between the ones you can hold and the ones that you've been sold.

The woman is a fricking genius!

It's been a long time since I was last here. I'm a little drunk on unexpected free wireless internet, so I doubt I'll make any sense right now... but I'll be back soon. Hopefully.

I found a number of interesting things while cleaning out five-odd years of accumulated paper, most of it rubbish and some of it impossibly never-ever-to-be-parted-with precious...


I don't know what this is about but I'm pretty sure it was written during a presentation by the subject:

I just heard that my first standard teacher is no more. It's not like I talked to her regularly or anything, but I saw her sometimes, in church on Sundays. I won't lie by saying she made the rest of my day better, but seeing her helped me remember those half-forgotten when-I-was-little moments... and just for that tiny second, I could feel like a 5 year old again. I'm going to miss that.

I'm sending this message out among the flotsam of digitally encoded nonsense out in the void, to Mrs. Blanche Pinto: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your patience, your kindness, and your belief in dealing with this, well, the word that springs to mind is crybaby. Thank you for making me your first class-monitor, taking away my badge till I learned to control my tear ducts, and then making me your second class-monitor when I did. With lots of love, from a student who will remember you, always.

The insomnia isn't showing any sign of letting up, or of letting me sleep, either. Which leaves me updating in the middle of the night from my cellphone, while lying in bed.

Yeah, you read that right, in bed.

Anyway, it's raining outside, and while that isn't particularly interesting, what I'm getting at is this: I have been listening to the rain. I can tell the sound of rain falling on banana leaves apart from the sound of rain falling on whatever-the-hell the tiles on the ground are made of, and the sound of rain falling on the aluminium roof-thingy of the little switch-box outside my window, and the sound of terrace-rainwater gushing out of the storm-drain. I think that's kinda cool. I ain't complaining.

I still don't know how much this is going to cost.

As usual I find myself wanting to write something and not knowing what it is.

There's that, and then there's the irresistible urge to call my new phone Glamdring. It sounds like the kind of name you would give a bell, mostly because of the 'dring' part, I guess. My phone does remind me of a bell, but only because it has nothing in common with one. I'm not sure if that counts.

I've been re-reading The Lord Of The Rings, and I guess it's starting to show.