तिश्ना—लब

One little trick I use on my mum is sing a line or a stanza from a ghazal or a song she likes while she is cooking and leave. She goes around the house singing in her sweet, Hindustani- classical trained voice, chirping  for next 2 hrs. It's like my home comes to life! What a joy! I inherited this love for Urdu poetry from my mother and unfortunately enough, not her voice (that doesn't prevent me from singing anyway). I certainly can't write because of so many rules for it. You see, it requires special talent to look at the world in most basic forms and metaphorize with something completely different. Like here, the poet calls himself as useless as a handful of dust,'musht-e-gubaar', Irshaad!! na kisī kī aañkh kā nuur huuñ na kisī ke dil kā qarār huuñ jo kisī ke kaam na aa sake maiñ vo ek musht-e-ġhubār huuñ  -Muztar Khairaabadi Rekhta offers an excellent database for Urdu related things- especially the dictionary! Yes! Being a native Hindi speaker, I...

Indians have always had a great pride in their ancestral heritage, be it individualistic or collective. It sure is worth and there is much more in India that one can be proud of, for instance, the area of arable land available to Indians or biodiversity profile of India or something more under one's control - saving our economy from financial crisis in 2008 (and more). That is OK. That is acceptable. What is not acceptable is bad science, complacence and fake pride in the bad science. Now, I don't have to list out all the instances defying scientific temper here. They are all over the place -news, internet, social network. They have invoked a lot of criticism from the scientific community in India and abroad (for example, this ).  The point I want to stress here is the great divide between the general understanding of people about science and what it actually is. Now, being brought up in a family in which some believe in the origin of varnas from various parts of Brahma...

Recently, I have started applying to graduate schools for a PhD. I have received one rejection letter already. It was written in a very ,say, measured (if that is the right word) way such that it only pulls you by a thin thread from falling off into a deep cliff of depression. It was a really nice and kind gesture. Others had specified that they will get back if they would like to interview me. Fair enough. But for me, this experience marks the beginning of the second most faced situations in the life of researchers-getting rejected. From journals, editors, publishers etc etc. (concentrated optimism dripping all over, I know)The first one is, in my honest opinion, is the developing a habit of contesting an idea. I had joined The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, in 2016 for a PhD program and did a Molecular Dynamics simulation project. This is more of physics than what I had imagined. The techniques and training people need to do this kind of job is very different from w...