SighLab

.. and this cold winter morning
I finally realize you've gone.

The gas sensors still detect love in the air,
But the IR doesn't show that bond, and,
I don't see l'amourium peaks on the NMR.
The kissing magnets now laugh at me.

The weighing balance still fluctuates,
Like it would when you walked by.
The lonely stain-studded labcoat still hangs in there,
The safety glasses still give me that soulful look.

The sonicator hums your name,
But the litmus turns blue all the time.
The esters have all but lost the fragrance,
And forming gas doesn't bubble through happily anymore.

The furnace doesn't warm up to me anymore,
And the only void the porosimetry shows
Is the one you left behind.
Only the pycnometer knows how heavy I feel.

.. and the amaltash outside sheds golden yellow tears.

The long and short of it

For me, 2008 was the year that started with a trip to India, and ended with another one. In the eleven months that passed in between, I was busy reading, traveling and chatting away. I could spend a lot of time following the elections in the US, reading news columns and articles, watching speeches and interviews. I could read a few good books too. Apart from the two trips to India, I made some 6 outings in the US - familiar LA in March, scenic Northern Arizona and flashy Las Vegas in May, idyllic Ohio in July, scenic Colorado in August and chilly Baltimore for Thanksgiving.

When I wasn't doing that, I managed to get a little work done. On that front, this year was really like a big STOP sign. I had to wait for months for three of my instruments to come in. Now all the wait is over and it's time to get some real work done.


Though I am not a big fan of one-liners put forth with an ambition to sum up the whole world, there are times when I fall for them. They may come from the experts, or otherwise. One such occasion was when I was talking to a friend about short-term and long-term economic policies and decisions. And then I said, "For me, there is no long-term. You cannot keep doing different things in the short-term and expect different results in the long-term."
This is obviously nothing different from the age-old wisdom about how 'you'll keep getting what you have been getting if you keep doing what you have been doing'; or the famous quote by J M Keynes - "In the long run, we are all dead". Original or not, sometimes you just like the way it is put.


Currently reading - "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Taleb.
Find a good talk by him here - 'The future has always been crazier than we thought'.

The Separation(?)

The Separation of the Church and the State - one of the lessons we got as school-kids - is conspicuous by the lack of it. This is nothing new, here are just a few more recent revealing incidents:

On the official website of the Governor of Maharashtra Shri S C Jamir, the page detailing his profile opens with a long introduction to his religious beliefs and activities - quite unnecessary, I think. :-|

In the US, Rick Warren interviewed the two Presidential candidates back-to-back, and he did it as a pastor. Had he done it simply to hold a conversation with the two candidates, it would have been understandable. But no, he did it as an evangelical pastor, in a church. He says he is interested in the candidates' understanding of the role of the Constitution. So is this the Church quizzing the State ?! WTH !

The Democratic Party Convention in Denver has kicked off. In a political convention, they are holding out-of-the-place things like 'Faith Caucuses'. The party, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, is "trying to make political peace with God and wants voters to be comfortable not just with the policies of their president, but his spiritual compass, as well." huh?

(Be)longing

For many of us, the legal status both in India and the US is that of a non-resident. We're Non-resident Indians back home, and Non-resident Aliens in the US.

Guess I'll have to wait a bit to become a Resident Indian again.

We the Children

When We are born, We are
Neither theists nor atheists,
We are without any biases
Neither racists, nor sexists.

We aren't born as bigots
Nor crazy about any 'ism's,
With no preconceived notions
All unaware of the schisms.

We weren't given a choice
Coming into this world
We were tagged and labeled
With whatever you loved.

Truly free, peaceful world
Is all We're really asking
Where We sing our own song
And make our own painting.

A world where We are shown
Diversity, not Differences
Connections, not Boundaries
Blissful Peace, not Silences.

Mandar.

What's in a name?

SLOW - it's far from what it appears to be. It stands for Stanford Learning Organization Web. Doesn't sound sluggish now, eh?

NSF - academia can never get enough funds from these guys. No wonder they stand for Not Sufficient Funds!

Food!

Till I was about 19, I had never eaten meat. Nobody in my house had, either. My mom is a pure vegetarian. In fact, she has nausea - she cannot even handle the smell of raw eggs while making a cake. Dad used to eat meat, but he gave up, as my mom doesn't. But cool as my parents are, they never told me what I can or cannot do with such issues, they left it to me to decide what I wanted to eat or not eat.

I started eating meat with my college friends, first to try something new, and then continuing as I liked it. It was mainly chicken, sometimes fish. I tried beef once too, but didn't like it.

Sometimes there were debates - the typical vegetarians vs non-vegetarians versions. The veggie people argued with animal rights and painful killings on their side. The other group talked about how we cannot differentiate between the pains that a plant goes through and the animals go through.

"Well, the plants do not have a nervous system, so they cannot feel pain."

"That's what we know as of now. Our basis for substantiating the existence of pain or the lack thereof is based on the notion that one needs a nervous system for the same - what if there is something about plants which we do not know? And hence one cannot distinguish between the plants and the animals, and thus meat-eaters or not, we all inflict pain on those living things. So you cannot support eating vegetables, and not meat."

Personally, I thought both had a point. Not all of the argument on either side made sense. I liked meat and considered it as my personal choice to have it. It is not that I was unable to imagine the pain the animals may be going through, but it somehow never came to such a level as to stop me from having it in a restaurant. Maybe because I never really saw how they were treated. Maybe I was only focusing on my taste buds.


........


But then, all the news about the acute food shortage started pouring in. It was there in more than 30 countries! Not that I was unaware of any hunger/ malnutrition issues earlier, but I simply did not link it with my food habits per se. I could see it when we did not get any rice on our trip to the huge Costco store here in Tempe.

And then I came across a couple of articles on the food crisis, changing food habits and the emerging meat economy of the world: The Last Bite in the New Yorker and Carnivores Like Us in the Seed Magazine. This got me thinking. And then I also remembered the "10% Law" regarding the energy transfer in a food chain that we had been taught in school.

As it looks, three main forces are competing for the agricultural land we have: The production of food grains for the human consumption, the production of fodder for the animals to feed on, and the production of 'bio-fuels'. (Well, there is the fourth one - using this land for non-agricultural purposes. That's scary!)

As more humans start eating meat, we would need more grains and fodder - to feed those animals. And it seems that we have to make a conscious choice about the distribution of existing farmlands and grazing pastures. We certainly cannot afford to create more of them by bringing down whatever remaining forests we have. Re-distribution of farmlands means having to regulate our consumption of meat (and food-grains, and bio-fuels too).

In such a situation, it is not a personal choice anymore. It's plainly a matter of "Can we, as the human race, produce these many vegetables and this much meat to keep our demands met?" This is a practical issue, a ground reality. This is not about "should we eat meat or not" or "are our intestines suitable for meat consumption at all?" or "how do you know that plants don't experience pain" or religious conceptions or "morals and ethics".
Hunger is something I can understand and feel about much more than those things. And now I will be able to make my choice in a much better way.

Good for me.

All I need is reason.

I have come to know something about myself, to the point of verbalizing it. But an example first.

All my life, I was used to the squatting position for evacuation. In the Occident however, I adopted the sitting style. Then I came to know that in the squatting position, the puborectalis muscle is relaxed, straightening the rectum. This helps in faster, easier and complete evacuation, along with some other benefits. (I do not want to suggest looking up random websites for such facts, but would rather send scientific journal articles to someone curious). No one back home told me this. Anyhow, after learning about it, I have reverted back to my earlier habit.

For all I know, if I understand and agree with the logic behind a certain thing, I do it. At times, I actively seek the reason too. But if I am not convinced, I can be as apathetic as ever.

Three Tiers

While in college, I had a theory about the people we interact with outside our families.

They can be grouped in three tiers:

Tier-I is made of all the people with whom you share a platonic relationship. They are acquaintances and friends.

Tier-II is made of those we are interested in - in a romantic way, people we have a crush on. For some, this tier could be composed of more than one person at a given time; for others it may be the case of on(c)e-crush(ed)-at-a-time.

Tier-III is that special person - the one you look at as the prospective life partner. More romantically, "THE one". You are madly in love with this person. There is nothing negative you can see about this. Never. You are in total awe, you are into it - to the fullest.

And this was the observation: when somebody from Tier-II moves to Tier-III - that's when you "fall" in love - the other people previously in Tier-II (if applicable) move to Tier-I.

Now all you can think of is the one in Tier-III. And whatever awkwardness you had while interacting with the other previous Tier-II people goes away like magic! You are in an elated mood all the time (well, almost). When you acknowledge what you feel, and better still - convey it - it gets nicer! You almost get a high from being honest and frank about your feelings, and you take pride in that.

And most importantly, things become crystal-clear.. for me, clarity is beauty.

Window and Mirror

The Day is my window
To the world outside,
The Night - my mirror
That I have inside.

The Day is about work
And all the commotion,
The Night is a pause
A quiet introspection.

In the Day I run away
Like a fawn in the woods,
In the Night I come back
To the blissful moods.

Daytime I spend with
High pressures and valves,
Come Night I vent out
The mystery resolves!

All day long I look out
For how much and what,
Who, why and how cook
In the Night's dark pot.

I memorize in the Day
All that I must remember,
Can I forget the hard-to-forget
In the Night, I so wonder..

-- Mandar.