Stella's Orange-red Gloves

(A story without climax. My hands typed it after I fell asleep on the keyboard. Hence, excuse me!)

Stella came out of her room. It stank of her. She wanted fresh air just outside her home. It always smelled a little of the nearby playground dust in a red sunset, a little of the delicious lunch that her neighbouring fat lady makes everyday and a little of some distant flowers that bloom in the evening. She put on her dark navy grey winter wear over a pale white dress. But her socks were orange-red. So were her gloves. She wore and loved them secretly.

She wanted to go on a walk. Not alone, but it could not have been helped.
"Stella, the computer is still open!"
"That's OK. Just don't touch it. It'll take care of itself in five minutes."
She hid her socks inside boring brown shoes and gloves inside her pockets. Now she was invisible. She started walking, beyond the curved railway tracks, beyond the lonely sweet shop eagerly sought after by the flies, beyond Mr Henderson's big house on whose son she had a crush on during middle school and beyond the park where everybody else went for an evening walk.

Stella has been this way since before she was born. Many times she looks down at the pebbles and wonders whether she had stamped those particular ones before. Just in case, she stamps them again. When Henderson Jr used to live with his parents, he would take tea with his parents in their balcony facing the road. He was in college already and his name in the newspaper had confirmed the local gossip of him being a bright student. She used to be careful regarding her walk and attire back then. Her mother used to accompany her and it used to be very hard to steal glances of Henderson Jr. But now Henderson Jr worked in a farm in another state. He has a pretty wife too, if Facebook is right. And Stella has grown up and grown out. 
Her orange-red gloves were peeking from her pockets. She quickly scanned the passers by whether anybody were looking at her. Negative. She was relieved. A little disappointed too. She doubted Henderson Jr's wife went so unnoticed when she walked by roads like this. Stella reminded herself she did not want to be like Henderson's wife. She felt better and continued.

In the conservative little town, she always allowed herself one small non-conservative luxury. She kept her hair open and let it swirl against the wind as she walked by. It was more of a fact that she had unruly hair which won't be tamed. But she took pleasure in saying it was by choice. Last time she went to market, she had seen an orange-red hair ribbon. It looked gorgeous. But she didn't dare to purchase it, because it couldn't be hidden if she wore it. A little itch in her mind had told her that she could hide it if she wore helmet always and went on a bike. But she stamped it. Just like she stamped the pebbles. Only that her itches give away more easily than the pebbles. She looked around; in the grey winter evening, she almost could get mixed. She wondered, if the fog could get the exact same colour as her sweater, whether it could render her partially invisible. Would she be able to see her body? How would she recognise herself? And she told herself, she needn't have worried because she could always see her bright orange-red gloves to make out her own body. By the time she realised her musing was totally unworthy, unnecessary and unreasonable, she had already completed thinking all these things. Her lips cracked to a grin and snapped shut as soon as she realised she might look like a fool out of nowhere. 

Suddenly the street lights came to life and the yellow bulbs chased the grey of the evening away. Stella looked up at them basking in the warm light. Although the new town has, now, the LED street lights and it looked posh according to the world, Stella loved the old Sodium Vapour lamps. They were still standing in the old town, in protest of monochromtising the colour of the whole town in all shades of grey.

It was time to return. Stella kept her orange-red gloves successfully hidden for one more day. Nobody knew she wasn't fully grey. Nobody sought to find out.

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Stella name has been extracted from the Facebook sticker of  "Stella Supernova: Dodge comets with this space genius on her interstellar adventures." She's very melodramatic, hyperactive and of course, a genius!

Welcome to Research!

A time invariant dedication to anyone into research.

My quantum mechanics teacher during our Master’s degree, one day, looked at our blessedly ignorant faces and took it as his duty to declare, ‘There walks not a single researcher on earth, who has shed no tears during his days of PhD!’ Keeping aside the debate regarding the validity of such a statement, that day I could see the scars of his past in his eyes. But back then I felt no compulsion to probe deeper.

Now here I stand-

1. after willingly humiliating myself in seven different interviews in five different cities;
2. storming and thundering inside home with passionate speech about why I want to do research;
3. convincing all my grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins and some skeptic neighbours that doing research out of home town is absolutely the best idea;
4. trying not to envy friends who already have jobs;
5. and, as one of my previous posts suggests, escaping the deadly clutches of marriage-

as a fresh full-time PhD scholar. Already with a supervisor.

As soon as we joined we had to jump into this weird supervisor hunting game which reminded me of musical chair (with so many people in war over a few targets), only more ferocious and serious. We kept spying over each other lest someone else may steal our choice supervisors. Then soon began our course works. Amid all the hustle, the excitement of being in a new institute, new city and having new friends had worn off.

The senior scholars had started their preaching sessions. The long lonely ones who’s been here for endless summers, in search of fresh "empathisers", started ambushing us during lunch, dinner, tea-time, bed-time and any other time we stumbled upon them. At our shocked responses, they promptly assured us it’d not take long before we underwent similar transformations. Criticising guides would not only become normal but also quite good for health.

As work with my guide(supervisor) is accelerating, fear of not being able to keep pace made me cancel my long planned short trip home. Unsuccessful attempts at ongoing project and the approaching evil mid-semester exams are making me jump out of my skin everyday. Presentations, quizzes, solving extraterrestrial problems and head banging have become very normal. Waiting hours on supervisors, envying friends with day offs, actually being unable to find time for movies doesn't sound very strange any more. When I was given my own room in the hostel, ideas of all the things I would do- if I had a room alone for myself- didn't manifest due to sudden departure of my mental sanity.

Although we soon hope to master the art of researching-

1. which includes endless days in front of our computer (or tinker with instruments) without actually being productive;
2. art of playing hide and seek with our guide;
3. convincing the institute for a hike in stipend;
4. assuring ourselves that we are not the only ones who suck at doing research;
5. and fooling our supervisors into believing we’re the best they could have had-

for now I am learning not to let the most important days of my youth pass by before I had time to catch my breath.

Laptop Gone. Not Again!

Yesterday I was spending quality time alone with myself in the shower when mother shouted for me, ‘Chunnie! Something is wrong with your laptop!’ Stopped midstream on an Air Supply song with that ominous news, I sprang out of bathroom to my laptop. ‘Not again!’ was what I was muttering to myself. Several panicked phone calls and amateur attempts later, when my laptop refused to cooperate, I decided to take it to the service centre.

My father is a minimalist. My mother and I join forces to nag him for months before he gives a green signal to purchase any gadget at all. And this requires strategic baiting, hard bargain and persistent luring. So when one of the worshipped gadgets gives out, we never hear the end of it from him. Aside from the perpetual I-told-you-so look, a string of philosophical ideas on the detrimental effect of gadgets are thrown at our general direction. I have grown up with his severe criticism towards materialism. Irony is I love gadgets (more so because I take pride in my laziness). Irony of irony, whenever I persuade my father to purchase any gadget at all after months of research, they somehow all break down the next day after the warranty expires! If my father only dislikes gadgets, he absolutely loathes repairing them. On any average day around the year we shelter more non-functioning gadgets than working ones.

‘Don’t tell father about the laptop. Let me first take it to the service centre.’ I told mother. Father was out on some errand, bless his soul.
‘How will you go? It’s 40 degree outside, wait till evening!’ Mother said. But we both knew I had to go. After a thorough session with sunscreen, I grabbed the bike key and turned on the bike. The charge meter wobbled in the red zone.
‘There ain’t enough charge! What the hell?’ I felt like kicking the helmet to pieces.
‘Charge it for half an hour, its ok.’ Mom switched ON the plug points. I put the charger in place with utter annoyance. Behold my agony, the charger gave a spark and died. I was bathing in my sweat and feeling like it was the most miserable afternoon of my life.

While our desktop had broken down months ago, now packed in its box neglected because father refused to purchase another new hard drive for it, this problem with laptop might cost me a lot. Last morning my internet pack ended too soon for my liking. Then there’s my phone with a malfunctioning camera, mother’s phone with all of its parts malfunctioning. There’s my digital camera with a faulty memory card, three CFL light bulbs who all decided to stop working together, my headset with one side mute, a water purifier in need of immediate attention and many more. I know my father going literally through sleepless nights because of all of them. And I can’t say I don’t feel his pain.

While gadgets ease my work to a remarkable extent, none of us are ready to give the money or time required for their maintenance. They are the unwanted pain in the arse. Sometimes I promise myself I’ll do some hardware repairing course so I never have to turn to the exuberantly charging mechanists all the time; shouldn’t be difficult for a physics student although I dislike the study of electronics from the bottom of my heart.

Wrestling with the charger and the bike for some more sweating minutes, I managed to get the perfect fit where the battery started charging. Half an hour later I rode to the service centre pessimistic about the repair. Never once it has happened in my life, when I have taken something for repair and I got it back quickly. If I did, I had to loosen my pocket by a huge sum. As my father never forgets to point out, ‘ଘୋଡ଼ା ଛ’ ଟଂକା କୁ ଦାନା ନ’ ଟଂକା’. So it was a pleasant surprise when my laptop was back to normal in two minutes once I reached the service centre. I still braced myself and asked how much I had to pay. The guy made a dramatic sweeping gesture in the air and said what I never thought I’d hear, ‘It’s nothing. You don’t have to pay.’ And he went back to his work with his head inside a giant old CPU.

Bemused at my luck, feeling optimistic about the cosmic forces I rode back home. Of course I didn't forget to spend the money, I had taken for repairing, on food. It would have been a sin otherwise. While I stuffed myself, I decided again, ‘Buying gadgets ain’t so bad after all!’Later that night when father asked how my day was, I saw no harm in keeping mum about everything.

Father Asked, 'Ready To Marry?'

WARNING: Do not read the post if you’re an engineer.

23^rd year running, I have apparently hit the age to embrace marital bliss. Blithely unaware of this truth of life, I was tinkering with my Master’s degree project. Then enters my father into the room and sits himself beside me, his eyes shining peculiarly and forehead sweating profusely. My sixth sense sends me high alert signals and screams ‘RUN AWAY!’

Suddenly puzzled with my intuition I look at my father as he opens his mouth to deliver the blow.
‘We’ve been receiving proposals for you. Marriage proposals.’
All my life, I had thought, whenever this topic would be raised in my family, I’d be laughing so hard that I’d not be able to talk. But the time has come and all it has brought with it is not mirth but shock. MARRIAGE PROPOSALS! Already!? 

‘So?’ I have no idea which arrogant part of my brain was operational at that time, ‘I have been receiving proposals too. Relationship proposals.’
I guess that fairly shut him up for a while. I cannot say he could have seen it coming. But hey, he started it! Although somewhere in the back of my mind it was slowly registering there was no competition going on here.

‘Do you like someone? Do you have somebody in your mind?’ He asked without a trace of disapproval. Good question, I’d say. Fair enough. Most of my friends would kill to be asked this question by their fathers. As things go unfairly, I lack a boyfriend. While I toyed with the idea of telling him (shocking him more like) who all are actually in my mind (it would come to a large total of two digit number if I throw in the celebrity crushes) I know that was not what he meant. Like the good girl I usually pretend to be (not to give my parents heart attacks everyday) I bobbled my head to a ‘no’ while silently I added, ‘Not yet!’

The nitwit who set off this idea in my father’s brain, the prospective groom, is apparently an engineer. ‘ENGINEER!’ I cried out involuntarily!
The scatter brain will have no idea or respect towards research.
He would not understand my jokes on Physics.
Being an engineer, he couldn’t find himself a girl to marry already which clearly says a lot about his personality.
Probably he’s happy working like a cattle, drinking himself dead and cracking intellectually cheap jokes all day and night.
If not anything else, he’d be rotting in Bengaluru, Chennai or Hyderabad and settle there and die. At best he’d get himself shipped to US and settle there and die. What a rich death!
While I realise my stereotypes are clouding my judgement (I mean no offense to engineers and I appreciate their contribution to the enhancement of our world!), I sure as hell do not want to marry one. Not a doctor either, the other supposedly best profession a prospective groom can have. When I was a kid, all my friends were studying hard to get into either an engineering college or a medical one. I was no exception. I ended up in science though and now I know I made hell of a good choice for myself. I cannot begin to imagine the extent of incompatibility issues that will arise.

Since in our society education is considered as a means to occupation, I cannot radically alter my parents’ arguments. Although my vehement ‘NO!’ I am sure, shall put him off for a couple of more years, I hope to find a middle ground where both of us can bargain on a single groom to satisfy all. Tough job ahead! 

Nights With Lights

Usually I boast of a mind far from being inquisitive. I sustain on spoon-fed knowledge, hardly very nourishing. So it was more due to want of options than interest I became a LASER specialized student. Since then I and Lasers had become intimate enemies. No amount of humiliation at laboratory viva or spooky experiments involving exorbitant apparatus were able to impart my inertial mind a touch of acceleration.

So when our teacher offered us non-compulsory mini projects last semester, I knew what I was going to do. Under his persisting insistence, I presented my best resistance and won. It was only later I was appraised of the fact that one of the mini projects might have been the 3D holographic images. A feeble flutter arose in my brain, but the looming semester exam swiftly slayed it before I could further analyse the foreign premonition.

Three months passed by with my mind safely in hibernation mode. Last week, for Reflections 2014 (a scientific event organised by our Dept. of Physics on the occasion of National Science Day), I heard, my fellow classmates were trying to develop the same 3D holographic image. My ugly conscience roused itself and sure enough my indolent brain was in deep trouble. An unusual amount of a certain kind of emotion called ‘curiosity’ started getting the better of me. One must appreciate the amount of effort I put in to say ‘no’ to my laziness. Due to the obvious demand of pitch darkness of all LASER labs, the experiments were shifted to night time. So even harder was to tell ‘no’ to my slumber beckoning me at 10 of clock. Convincing my friend to give me a lift on her bicycle (of course mine doesn’t have pressure in the wheels- credit goes again to my sluggishness), in the slightly cold night I and five more classmates gathered at the department to carry out our nocturnal experimentation.

Our guiding faculty was not one to beat about the bush. The Optical table (on which the set up was established), he told, was not a company made product- rather another Master Degree project of one of our senior constructed with barely a few thousands of rupees. He assured us of zero help from his side (being busy with the organising of the event). So we were supposed to start from the scratch, which was exciting yet not promising; especially for someone always ready to shirk from duties. With only numerous packed boxes to start with, I admit I was pleasantly surprised to see, my friends had already achieved the required complicated alignment by the time I joined them. In Laser experiments, alignment is the most important and tricky section. The first time they had tried to test the alignment, the laser beam had diverged into infinite number of beams, illuminating the whole dark laboratory momentarily. To have finally minimized them all into that one high intensity coherent beam with subtle manipulations is a sure call for commendation! Oh, how many lab classes I had let pass without any results thanks to the requirements of precautionary alignment! Forget about the lost marks.

The set up fixed magnetically on optical table, we fumbled through with cutting of photographic plates (which cannot be taken out in light other than in the presence of dim green wavelength photons as specified by the manufacturer)and clamped it in place without disturbing the object (a small cute white elephant of dimension approximately 3x2x1 cm). Forget about all the tripping over each other’s feet and the legs of the screens blocking our path. Withstanding the impending huge yawns and loud snores, we ploughed on with our trials and errors with the exposure and developing time of the photographic plate. Each failure was a little heart breaking followed by insane ideas on improvement, chitter chatter nonsense and some prophetic visions. It was all frustrating with drooping eye lids and painfully slow procedures, but we had to try once more.

One night ended with the 3D image of a beheaded elephant while the other with an elephant head without body. Eight attempts later, the third night finally produced the desired image on the photographic plate. The clinging fatigue, dark circles around sleep deprived eyes forgotten, an excited clamour followed that marked the success of our project. Undoubtedly, a huge turn up was there at the entrance of Laser lab for Reflections the very next day.

Besides the excitement of the nights, I finally got to know my friends better before I finish the course two months hence. Turned out, they are not as terrible as I thought after all.

Laser had gone and hooked my attention. I decided to finally go read the text book we were prescribed the previous semester for Laser Theory, and for once my laziness was too lazy to put up any fight at all.

The Common Ladies Bathroom

A ladies bathroom is without match the most happening part in a ladies hostel, a curious clandestine to all those who never witnessed it and a pain in the arse for the long-time victims. This article stemmed to give some droll insight into the enduring events of a Ladies’ bathroom, in short this article contains spoilers. Girls planning or forced to embark upon a new hostel life are advised to bug off.

The never-uninhabited ladies bathroom is host to girls in frenzied states of dressing-up (or dreassing-down for that matter) and make ups. From the annoying girl next door who spends craziest amount of time on counting her pimples to the hottie from the far corner room who doesn’t enter bathroom (or more precisely doesn’t come out of her room) without lipstick on- from the bug-eyed (no pun intended, if you know who I mean) to the no-eyed (no pun intended again!) our bathroom is the waving flag of unity in diversity!

Although I cannot hide the infamies of many a civil wars fought inside its four walls, I can vouch for the regaling show it puts on for the rest (no guilty conscience here!). The untiringly changing rules of reserving a bathroom at the peak time (right when you’ve got 15 min left to battle to your classes) or the crime of taking more than ten minutes to (again in those climax times) re-emerge from bathroom, or throwing water on the floor at the inopportune moment of a senior crossing that path - just about anything is enough to trigger a spark of verbal currents between two excited damsels in distress here. Violation of any decrees- that is yet made public or not, in awareness or ignorance- will give you a straight ticket to perdition in hostel. A girl who accomplishes dodging all these fire bullets within her stay in hostel deserves nothing less than a gold medal! The above mentioned predicaments goes wild when there surfaces a momentary water crisis. Heated arguments take off between girls inside bathroom (who’re supposedly using up all the water) and those outside (feeling panicked and deprived of the minimal resource!) resulting in yearlong snubs, cold shoulders, ostracising and so the list goes on. There’s absolutely no room to escape the menagerie.

Hierarchy of students is most vivid here. While the seniors enjoy complete autocracy the juniors are all effectively muzzled and reigned. While one girl stuffs her clothes and a soap in her bucket before running to bathroom (like me) another’s got two buckets- one packed with bottles of cosmetics and the other with all the frills of the world (rolling my eyes!). While the conservative girls in salwar abysmally fail to school their expression of horror when they stumble across carefree scantily clad girls parading by, the more fashionable girls don’t relinquish any opportunity to poke fun at the traditional. Ultimately it ends in nasty waterworks or creative sniffs or of course in some more verbal explosions.

Amidst all these banters the few neutral parties suffer (my story) the most. The respective hostel wings-in-charge fly off the handle every time there is a question of cleanliness inside bathroom. Littering of used shampoo sachets, cluster of fallen hairs all over the floor (Ugh!), dripping water from showers and used utensils -forgotten to be washed- stinking (Oww!) near the basins; any of these are sufficient to guarantee a new poster on the bathroom wall next day that reads something like,
“Start behaving like ladies, not dogs.” “Dustbins are not for decorations! Use them, they’ll feel happy (huh?).” “Girls, next time you see somebody’s used utensil left unattended near wash basin, you’re given leave to help them out of the window (He he)!” “Nobody wants to worship your beautiful (fallen) hair at the sink. Do not leave them there for eternal display!” A more subduing ones prepared to provoke your conscience will be like, “Feel for the cleaning ladies!” “Show respect to your fellow users!” and so many more that gives you food for thought. The frequency of such posters on bathroom etiquettes rockets up during the early months of academic year. Besides all these, clothes left hanging from showers (don’t ask what they were doing at such inconvenient places), soaked for days in buckets, forgotten oil bottles of all kind and many such unimportant things grace our bathrooms time after time.

The Lata Mangeskars and Shakiras from adjacent bathrooms are constantly there to take care of everybody’s entertainment 24x7. If you’d like to switch them off, well you just have to give up on that thought! Trust me you get used to all kinds of crowing voices which would shame a toad, and soon to your horror one day you join them too! The ladies bathroom usually oozes with potentials of revolutionary thoughts. This is where you suddenly get answer to the physics problem you were breaking your head over for the whole of last night. This is where you suddenly discover your long destined best friend! This is where I had busted my head once (Ouch!) and this is the place I’ll miss most after my hostel life is over. The common ladies bathroom.