Soap

Ask me again what I want to be when I grow up.

At age 34, I want to be someone who knows how to love and be loved. 

It is the simplest thing I can think of wanting to be. Certainly, also the hardest.

A magnificent thing happened to me while doing the dishes today. A fluff of dish washing foam fell into a vat of oily water and whoosh, like Moses parting the seas, the grease parted and a pristine moat of clear water emerged out of the mess.

Now, I know that soap is designed to make a hearty meal of grease. It’s what the label on the pack says. It’s what my chemistry teacher said in school. It can be proven with equations and formulae. There’s math to explain it. I've had a 25 year long career washing dishes so I’ve also come to place good faith in soap’s appetite for grease.

Yet, there was something about paying attention as it happened: a single droplet of lily-white decimating an entire army of oil & grease in one graceful swoop.

You really had to be there.

***************

(But of course soap doesn't really decimate anything at all. On the contrary, it builds a chemical bridge between natural foes - oil & water. Dang, science, you're awesome.) 

It's never a bad thing when your morning begins with the gentle sounds of Brian Cox discussing the 'wunders of the unee-verse' with Neil deGrasse Tyson & others, against the backdrop of London's Science Museum (BBC Radio 4: The Infinite Monkey Cage, Ep: Science Museum).

Go. Listen.

"Because I Can't!..."

Film: Contact
Year: 1997
Based on the novel 'Contact' by Carl Sagan (1985)

Worth watching a fajillion times because of a brilliant story & screenplay and multitudes of layered meanings that criss-cross science, religion, the tug-of-war between pure scientific enquiry & beaurocratic douchebaggery, the virtues of patience & integrity in the pursuit of truth, daddy issues and the tussle between reason & faith (which may not be an 'either-or' debate at all).

And kickass radioastronomy that includes nerdgasmic scenes from radiotelescopes like Arecibo and the VLA.

Plus cool SETI stuff and brilliantly imagined ET-tech eg: a transportation pod with cool features like doors that become seamless as soon as they shut and...well...the ability to travel through wormholes in the universe at relativistic speeds.

Plus, a strong female character (that could've just as easily been written male), carved to perfection by Carl Sagan, who does cool shit like climb into alien-pods that are likely to kill her - all in the interest of satisfying her scientific curiousity & furthering human knowledge - while her impossibly gorgeous man-friend waits on the sidelines for her to return from her adventures. Full feminist marks.

Plus the hot, hot, HOT Matthew McConaughey, who argues for spiritual faith, while mastering the intricacies of Special Relativity, while managing to look convincingly in love with the biggest girl-geek Hollywood has ever created.

But mostly, it's worth watching because of the most epic movie finale in the history of all films ever made by humans. (What do you mean I haven't seen 'all films ever'? What're you, my mother?):

(Pssst: There are Indian astrophysicists like Jodie Foster's character from Contact, who have dedicated their research lives to the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. I wonder what their backstory is...)

New Guy

My all-consuming project at work involves making a TV series on Indian science & technology. (Not on air yet. Don't ask.)

Our funding agency's brief is: "Lyk Discowery, ok? But without money, ok? Ok."

This, coupled with general inexperience in this type of programming has resulted in something that industry insiders term Very Poor Quality. It's not my first experience working in this genre. In fact, one might say I'm an old hand now. I get by only because, in television, it's always the other guy's fault.

Anyway, so the boss has hired a senior chap to come in and salvage the situation. To bring us all back on track, as it were. This man has an enviable resume (eg: he has worked with Rajdeep Sardesai) and he has the beatific smile of your friendly, neighbourhood saviour. He's also vegetarian, which means he can never be an asshole.

We welcomed him in a fairly non-threatening manner and he spent the day with us, vibin' n groovin' n generally chillin'. Towards the end of the day, we began to get serious, describing the challenges we face trying to translate some seriously hard-core science into viewer (read: dumbass) friendly TV. He listened, respectfully, gravely. We were forthcoming about our weaknesses - the biggest being our lack of qualifications. Not one of us making this series has any academic grounding in the sciences.

He expressed solidarity with us and then, in a heartfelt admission of his own shortcomings, told us, "I have a confession: Even I'm doing this kind of work for the first time. I have never before worked in Science Fiction."

http://wightpartyradio.com/are-aliens-among-us

Carl & Marissa: Some Thought Experiments

I'm reading Broca's Brain, Carl Sagan's book of essays on the 'romance of science'. It's always been a struggle for me to get through non-fiction but this is a great read and I'm congratulating myself on keeping up with it. Here's an excerpt:

"...We might therefore one day travel to the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy and return in a time of a few decades measured on board the ship - although, as measured back on Earth, the elapsed time would be sixty thousand years, and very few of the friends who saw us off would be around to commemorate our return."

Not 'none' but 'very few'.

Hahaha Carl, you're such a kidder. You're kidding aren't you Carl? 

Carl? Are you there, Carl? 

You're freaking me out Carl, stop it. 

....Carl?....

*************

On Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to ban working from home.

As a professional:

When I'm not traveling I work from home and I love it. It helps my process. I'm disciplined. I meet all my deadlines and on most days I don't turn in rubbish.
If Mayer was my boss I'd want to strangle her. 

At the same time, I also agree with this article: '3 Reasons Marissa Mayer Has Made A Smart Move' 

Even though my job is creative and needs peace and quiet, I've felt the drawbacks of working far removed from my colleagues, where the kick of working for a common goal gets diluted. It's difficult to feel part of a team when you are geographically separated for 80% of your teamwork activities. I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect the end-product.

In that sense, I'm tempted to think that Mayer might be onto something here (plus, to make an assessment of her decision from a business point of view, one might need to study the circumstances at Yahoo! that prompted this decision. It could hardly have been a random act to make its employees' lives miserable. I mean, who is she? My ex-boss?).

As a working woman, who doesn't have children and can't speak for those who do: 

Do I feel her decision is anti-women? In spite of that bloody 5-star nursery next to her office, I might be tempted to say no, I don't think her decision is anti-women (insensitive yes, anti-women no). 

I've always been suspicious of this culture of 'supporting' women by tailoring their professional lives to allow them to be mothers & wives. 

Call me paranoid but I find it sinister to promote the idea that women can & must do it all (i.e. be rocket scientists at NASA & Mother India all in one). 

It puts an unrealistic amount of pressure on women, propping us up to be failures no matter how hard we try. 

So here's a thought experiment in 2 parts: 

What would happen if a woman (or a man, for that matter) had to choose between profession and parenting? Wouldn't we have to question what we've come to assume is axiomatic? (The axiom being: we can 'have it all'/ 'having it all' is helpful to us as individuals & as a community.)

Part 1: What if Yahoo!'s decision influences work cultures across the professional world and there comes a time, when it becomes less demonic & more normal to choose one over the other?

Could it be that a woman (or a man) will be free of the pressure to have it all, do it all and be some impossible version of the 'complete woman/ man'?

Could it be that women (and men) might actually be happy being one (professional) or the other (parent) without a sense of loss or having 'missed out'?

Part 2: What if we reject Yahoo!s decision and there comes a time when we have to embrace the 'having it all' trope in every possible way?

Could it be that more men might become equal stakeholders in the child-rearing process (and women might actually let them)?

Could it be that workplaces alter & adapt themselves to support this 'having it all' trope (rather than banishing employees to their homes, where the messiness of raising children is not the organization's problem)?

We live in an age when we are expected to be all the big things: parents, consummate professionals, responsible caretakers of our aging parents, contributing members to our community. 

Is it realistic to be all of these, all at once? Do measures (like encouraging working from home) that allow us to be a million things at once, help us or harm us?

I still haven't figured it out. But until I do, I can't scream bloody (sexist) murder at Mayer.

********** 

(Another thought experiment: If Mayer was a male CEO, would the outrage target him personally for his life choices or would it focus on Yahoo! as an organization?)

(Additionally: There's something very creepy about expecting her to be a card-carrying feminist just because she is a head honcho. And then demonizing her because she's not.)

***********
Slightly off-point but connected : Read about the feud between Rebecca Walker and her Pulitzer Prize winning author mother, Alice Walker. It's the seamier side of what happens when a woman tries to make a go of both profession and motherhood and gets it all muddled up. Not saying all woman are unable to handle both. Not even saying that all women don't want to handle both. But here is a woman (Alice), who clearly couldn't and didn't and the consequences were painful for all parties involved.

The mother-daugher wars: Phyllis Chesler

"Rebecca: Trust me, a woman really cannot do both. The myth that we can is a dangerous one."

On Radiotelescopes & Expectations

Hark all you beautiful people
Waiting on dreams but losing hope
Here's a touching personal tale
Of me and a magnificent telescope

I'll admit my version of astronomy
Only stretched to the optical kind
While a radio-window to the stars
Waited, in other wavelengths, to blow my mind*

Wavelengths beyond my presumptions
Its 'vision' in radio most unique
Instead of the anticipated optical lens
30 giant antennae constitute its physique

Not one, not two, but 30
Radio receivers listening to the sky
Reaching deep into space & history
With data sensitivity that could make you cry**

Oh the things this telescope can tell us
Painting pictures of the radio-universe
Astounding in prospect & meaning
That can't be put into optical verse

And so at the GMRT***
I learnt a lesson about great expectation
That the things I define most narrowly
Might, in reality, exceed imagination

So its not about the desperation
With which you searched or the time it took
But the openness with which you sought
And the new places it made you look

*********************

* Radioastronomy is a delightfully mind-bendy way of studying objects in the sky, where stargazers don't use visible light to capture images. In fact the whole act of 'seeing' is re-defined, as astronomers use non-light waves i.e. radiowaves to observe a facet of celestial objects one couldn't otherwise observe. 
As an analogy: There are many ways to 'look' at the human body: One is using only the optical light that our eyes can see. The other is using X-rays. Both give us radically different perspectives of the same human body.

** Especially if you're into really accurate data about pulsars

*** The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope at Khodad (80 kms from Pune, Maharashtra): http://gmrt.ncra.tifr.res.in/gmrt_hpage/GMRT/intro_gmrt.html

**** What is it about bad poetry that makes you feel so good? 

Get A Better Argument

 

So I found this on Facebook, 'shared' nearly 44,000 times the last I checked.

Since Science is obviously a person, as is indicated by Gervais, I figure she must be weeping right now (because Science has feelings and is insecure and always needs to be one up on Religion - that pesky & incovenient cousin). She's probably distraught over how folks make such unscientific & simplistic arguments to defend her virtue (like arguments of Religion that folks use to defend the virtue of the ladies).

I can't be sure, but if Science were anything like me (and she's got to be, right?) she'd be wondering why these mullahs of Atheism forget this: the gun used to shoot the child in her head for wanting to go to school was created by Science, designed expressly for shooting at living things. In that sense, culpability - in varying degrees - lies with both parties.

Science doesn't like to be told things like this - especially when she's trying so hard to trump Religion using the platform of logic.

And because she knows there are plenty of great ones, she wishes these defenders of hers would get a better argument.

******************

Carl Sagan on Charlie Rose (at 7:45 he talks about religion): 

What Gives Us Mass

Growing up in classrooms where a brand of fascist physics held sway in the steel cold grip of NCERT, we never looked beyond Rutherford's atom. There was no such thing as the Standard Model and everything was particulate & unquestionably spherical. 

The electron was life of the party, hopping about in celebrity circles, making all the difference between one kind of compound and another.

Considering that we rote-learned the Periodic Table built on its back...

Considering its firstborn, Hydrogen, seemed to be 75% responsible for our existence (and the existence of Boyzone, whom we loved in those days)...

...No one really talked to us about the proton at all.

  

**************************************************

There's a light drizzle as we stand beneath the belly of the Globe. There's a lull in filming so we begin to chat. She's a revelation to me and she's mildly uncomfortable about it. "Everyone always wants to talk to me about being a woman scientist," she says, exasperated.

I cringe inwardly because, to be honest, that's what interests me the most about her. In spite of a higher voice trying to steer conversation to matters of scientific importance, I realise I'm starving to know how a young girl from smalltown India, grows up through the '80's to become (a) a particle detector hardware expert (b) a permanent employee at CERN and (c) the top honcho for all the upgrades of a CMS sub-detector. My mind is screaming "But you're an Indian woman!!" There's an urgent need to crack this code.

Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt her mind. Her remarkable intellect is above any discussion of gender or nationality. I'm not such a fool. 

I'm trying to understand what else sets her apart from me. Or what set her apart from me 25 odd years ago, when she emerged from an Indian university and earned a first-class ticket to this mecca of particle physics. I want to know if she ever hesitated. 

**************************************************

Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider are said to be 'paradigm shifting' landmarks of our times. Whenever they run, they perform profound feats like recreating conditions similar to the universe a billionth of a second after the Big Bang and attempting to describe the Higgs boson: that thingamijig that gives everything (you, me, Boyzone) mass, etc.

As the name suggests, the LHC collides hadrons to achieve these ambitious goals. Hadrons like protons. Two protons accelerated in opposite directions at 99% the speed of light, meeting along the 27kms tunnel only to smash up against each other. Much of this catastrophic rendezvous proves to be beyond our visual imagination and it will take mathematics to make complete sense of it.

Infact, before the LHC began its first run, there were those who panicked that such colliding protons would hasten the end of the world. Instead, they gave us new science.

*************************************************

On camera, she is vibrant and engaging when talking about her physics, her workplace and the exciting ventures she'll be part of in the LHC's next phase. It's hard not to look at her animated face and be very aware of her fate, inextricably bound with the most fascinating discoveries of our time.

I see an opening and take my chance. I ask her to tell our viewers what it's been like being Indian, female and making it big. "Tell those young girls watching that they can be scientists, physicists, hardware specialists even though they're in traditionally male domains. Tell them, tell them!" 

She falters, her confidence wavering. Like a bloodhound, I pursue my track relentlessly, egging her to talk about her personal story. But she needs a moment. She composes herself and then looks askance to the director, who nods yes. 

Her answer is a public service announcement. It's one I've heard a million times before, about believing in dreams and not giving up. The bloodhound's scent has run cold. 

Ok, I want to whine, screw the viewers. Screw gender or being Indian. Screw your smalltown upbringing and all that it came with. Tell me your secret: Did you ever question your talent? Were you ever ashamed of being the odd one out, did you ever regret your intellect? Did you ever balk at winning the biggest trophy in the room? Did you skip a beat before accepting your entitlement? Did you ever second-guess your worth?

************************************************

On the 4th of July 2012, CERN holds a live webcast to unveil an astounding discovery. 

Director-General Rolf-Dieter Heuer announces: "As a layman I would now say I think we have it." 

'Bumps' in data from two LHC experiments show that the Higgs boson has finally been detected. Thanks to a bunch of enterprising protons, it has graduated from being a theoretical construct to a highly probable, experential reality.

There's mad applause. A snow-haired gentleman in the audience wipes his eyes.

 

We'd always known we had mass. But, I guess, it had been really important to know why.

  

Sidebar: Watch Sheryl Sandberg Talk About Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders

Technology Down

Three years ago, when I'd just signed up on Twitter, the site went down. In a moment of bitchiness, I composed a tweet that was ready and waiting for when service would be restored: "Don't panic. Twitter will soon be up and we can all go back to our jobs at CERN."

Today Google went down for a bit. No Gmail, no nothing and I panicked. Because I...ahem...had to get back to a job at CERN.

By some twist of fate (an enterprising boss and a lot of swotting) yours truly, who has yet to miss a single episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, is going to be at CERN this time, next week.

Career high. Showing Off. Hell yeah.

Books And Covers

My grandmother, my mother's mother, was a biologist. She did her MSc in an era when good Brahmin girls were reared to be good Brahmin wives. She was the Head of Department of Biology at one of Delhi's biggest public schools. She walked out of an unhappy marriage and earned her PhD at age 60. For years, I remember her taking crowded DTC buses (much to the annoyance of my mother) to go meet her thesis advisor. 

My aunt, my father's elder sister, is a biotechnologist. She left her only daughter in the care of her husband and went off abroad to study in an era when good wives gave up careers to raise good children. She returned to join the All India Insititute of Medical Sciences and went on to do remarkable work in the field of leprosy. Every time I visit her I'm drawn to the Padmashri hanging in her living room, awarded for her contribution to Indian science.

My mother is a doctor. Growing up, she was perhaps the only mum amongst my friends', who pursued a full time career and managed to be available to her family. I remember the few times she took us with her to the clinic. I was so proud to see her in action. She cured people. With science.

Today I attended a seminar on high-energy particle physics. A national meet to celebrate India's contribution to the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. 

It was not until I sat through this session....:

Crappy Photos, Awesome Lecture

...that I realized how unprepared I was for the appearance of these women on this particular stage. 

The lady in the white sari is a key member of the India-CMS project. (The CMS experiment at the LHC detected the Higgs Boson.) In the picture, she's just finished schooling the audience on how the Higgs was discovered. The lady in the brown sari is one of India's leading authorities on S particles and Supersymmetry. (To quote The Hindu, 'she is in a panel that decides the specifications of the next big collider at CERN'). She's just finished schooling a grumpy 185 yr old scientist-bully in the audience on how it's really done bitch.

If you'd asked me to visualize what India's leading particle physicists look like, these ladies would not be it. Why? Probably because they look like my grandmother.

And that's where it becomes about my failings. Why shouldn't they be India's leading particle physicists?
After all, they look like my grandmother.

**********
Must read: Lilavati's Daughters:The Women Scientists of India by Prof. Rohini Godbole

Sunday Morning: A Short & Miserable Story

Last evening I went on a bender, which in old lady speak means I went to a nearly empty pub at 4 in the afternoon and after saying a couple of 'No no no, I can't drink - I have to drive. I can't drink - I've given up alcohol. I shouldn't drink because I'm trying to maintain my weight loss...', I gave in and had 6-8 pints of Budweiser.

Then I was punished for my lack of coolth by the stupidest hangover ever.

Of all the Sundays of the year, this had to be when my boss emo-blackmail-bullied me into attending a seminar that had nothing to do with work, just to suck up to the seminar organizer (who happens to a guy of immense coolth).

I'd been up for most of the night nursing my hangover (when you start drinking at 4 and end by 12, the hangover begins at 3am) and the head poundage and generally gross state of booze-sweatiness had succeeded in eliminating all traces of joie de vivre from my usually buoyant personality.

I staggered out of bed - not my bed, a friend's bed...I hadn't made it home (see I can still summon up some coolth) - at 7.30am, hoping to make a quick getaway and promptly bumped into friend's parents, who were happy to meet me after many months. Postponing plans of peeling off my grotty skin, I had to instead be nice & polite and talk to them. Meanwhile the humidity rose in proportion to the headache.

Made it out. Strapped into my vehicle, plugged in my ipod and Norah's promise of 'Happy Pills' helped me make it home in one piece. A quick shower & Ibuprofen and off I went to attend the lecture. At least the roads would be empty on a Sunday morning.

I got caught in the worst traffic jam ever. What kind of old lady hangover hell was this? Cars crawling like millipedes, creepy taxi-driver in the adjacent car trying to lean across and look down my shirt (for reals!), and the ever-exploding temples. By the power of Cumberbatch, I prayed, let me get out of here intact and un-hurled.

Intact is a relative term so let me just say, I reached, checked my pulse and was relieved to discover I was still alive. Onwards, warrior, onwards. And into a seminar hall with only 6 people in it! There would be no skulking to the back of the room and gently drifting off to sleep, while great science was discussed in the front of the class. Some pretense of attention-payment would have to be made. 

Luckily the speaker was the most boring sod in all the land. Not even my land, as it turned out. Japanese, with a thick Japanese accent and even thicker Japanese ppt slides ("I aporogize, I cannot make Engrish sride."). 

I tried valiantly to keep up - but not just in the interest of science. My boss, seated next to me, kept nodding off & sliding down his chair. Turns out there were two hangovers in the house and every so often, I would revenge-poke him awake with my pen. We strove on. The talk was all over the place but to my credit I managed to figure out its central theme of how mankind had smartypanted itself into hastening its own extinction and that if we were going down, we'd be taking everything else down with us.

As the clock ticked and the talk approached the 2 hr mark, I suddenly snapped awake and realised the purpose of this entire ordeal. This sequence of seemingly disconnected & pointlessly tortuous events was in fact leading up to a single moment of enlightenment. At first I thought it was God trying to show me to be stronger-willed, to push past the pain and emerge on the other side, having smashed through personal limits of endurance.

Turns out God just wanted me to know that when a Japanese person enunciates English words, chances are the Earth suddenly becomes the Arse.

It's On Amazon, Yo

Scientists Say The Darndest Things

In my few interactions with science folk across India, I've come to have deep respect for their work...and for their kinky sense of humour. Not all scientists are funny, but when they are, they can be delightfully dark.

I met up with a biomedical engineer whose artificial heart pump is designed to assist the left ventricle in doing its business. Unlike the heart, which is a pulsating pump, this one is centrifugal & continuous in nature. It's a nifty little titanium rotor device that ensures a steady flow of blood at all times.

Very seriously, the engineer tells us about extensive studies that suggest that continuous flow of blood through the body does not create any major differences in physiology as compared to a pulsating flow.

Suddenly his face softens, his eyes crinkle and his mouth widens into a spectacular grin.

"Wonly wone thing izzzthere...vether sleepingor DEDD, vee vill naat know. No pulse izzzthere wonly! Hahahahaa..."

I can't tell if she's alive. Quick, someone check her Facebook.

*******
There was also the case of the delightful elevator music at ISRO's headquarters.

On Serious Pursuits Like Science And Such

Over the last 3 weeks, I've had the most amazing, life-altering experiences that I can't possibly encapsulate in this space. My work has taken me across some of India's most exciting science labs and research facilities. I've met dynamic scientists, engineers and thinkers - many at the top of their game not just in India but globally - who have generously shared their time, energy and wisdom dumbing down their science for me to understand. It is an unparalleled privilege and I'm still recovering.

The following are my observations from these visits & encounters.

*********************************************************************************

The Story We Forgot To Tell 

I'm old enough to remember a time when our list of national heroes included people of science like S. Chandrasekhar, Homi Bhabha and even Rakesh Sharma. Somewhere along the way the number of heroes began to dwindle until we were left with our standard go-to-guy, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, whom we'd summon every time we wanted to prove we were an intellectual race. Today's newspapers are filled with articles from The Guardian and the New York Times extolling the latest advances made in Western science and it would appear that Indian science has flatlined.

When did we stop doing any science of worth? Turns out, not ever.

Did you know that we have one of the world's most sophisticated and sensitive radio telescopes in our own backyard, which our astronomers are using to understand how galaxies are formed? (One PhD student I met was using it to hunt for aliens. For real.) 

Did you know that Indians are an integral part of the LHC experiments at CERN? (Wanna hunt for the Higgs-Boson particle? Good luck doing it without Indian-made detectors.)

Did you know that Indians were the first to detect atmospheric neutrinos way back in the 1960's and that the world's largest magnet will be used in an underground observatory being built just to study neutrinos? (Did you also know you could 'Like' its page on Facebook?)

Did you know that Indian biomedical engineers have created a low cost cardiac device that's brought down global prices hiked by international biotech corporations, allowing the poorest of the poor to have access to life-saving heart valves?

Did you know that in a few years, we'll be setting up our own observatory in space to study the Sun's corona?

Did you know that it is now possible for Indians to make a good living researching the flight mechanisms of insects or discovering how memories are made?

Did you know that in the last 5-10 years, various Indian governments have pumped good money into science and technology research, the results of which are now beginning to show?

Did you know that as the West protected its own interests by keeping some of its most sensitive science & engineering methodologies under wraps, our chaps went about developing their own funky instruments and techniques (and not just to build missiles either).

Did you? Because I sure as heck didn't. If anything, my ignorance was astounding - and as tremendous as the excitement I was sensing as I traveled from one research institute to another. These were not grumpy, snobbish or cynical scientists I was meeting. This was a whole other breed...

Indian Science Is Sexy

Yes, you heard me. Indian science is sexy. First, the best of it is being done in places that look like this:

This used to be, like, a palace. For, like, a king.

....and this:

Those white things in the water aren't polythene junk, they're ducks

Second, Indian scientists seem happy. They look well-fed and well-clothed. Some of them even work out. They have cars and smartphones and a childlike enthusiasm of those who're in love with their jobs and can't believe they get paid for it. Their (extremely fancy & very well-equipped) labs are their playgrounds and they're using them to build some pretty snazzy sand castles.

But the real reason I found the scientists I met sexy is because they're fun and they want to hang out with us. It may not have been so a few decades ago ("Indian science used to be very Brahminical..." I was told) but today it's different. Many want to talk about their science and tell us how they're spending our tax money to discover and create wonderful things. They want to let us into fascinating worlds where brain cells switch on & off like LEDs and things are present & absent at the same time. They're throwing open their doors to us - regardless of who we are, where we come from, how much money we have or what caste/ religion we are.

In short: It's a great time to be a nerd. What we need now is for the nerd to be heard.

Make Some Noise For Indian Science

As a card carrying member of the media, I am drawn into many discussions about the state of science communication in the country in the course of my travel. Each tale carries untold horror: from misrepresentation (in one misguided article in a popular current affairs magazine, a cell biologist working on how cell membranes work was celebrated as the man who'd found the cure to AIDS) to being outright ignored. While Arnab is busy yelling down Suhel Seth, these folks are left wondering why we couldn't sneak a single 3-minute science story into a 24 hr news cycle. 

I tell them I hold them equally responsible for this complete breakdown in communication. I cite examples of Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman who did more for mainstreaming scientific thought than anyone from the press. They nod their heads in agreement and pledge co-operation if we could just give them the platform. We conclude that both the scientific community and the Indian media need an attitude adjustment. After a particularly energetic exchange with an astronomer, we both slump back into our seats, destroyed by the irony of an Arts major (me) being the only person left in TV, who gives a damn about this man's work. We speak in idealist tongues but the truth is more complex than we have courage to accept or ability to comprehend.

The Afterglow

Back from this most epic trip, I find my world view changing. Every new thought is now visualized as a string of neural fairy-lights in my hippocampus. When I look up at the night sky, I'm thinking of how I'm looking not just into the distance but also into the past. Even that ridiculous ad for Sunsilk Shampoo thrills me because I now understand how its nanoparticles are great for my hair. Knowing how things work hasn't taken away the romance, it's enhanced it. Everything is magic now and I'm completely sold.

The GMRT outside Pune: Standing beneath these beautiful antennae, wondering which galaxy, star or planet they're currently eavesdropping on, is pure, distilled joy.

****************
I strongly recommend that you read the comments section of this blog, which provides deeper insight into the Indian science community in a way this post cannot.