Monday, July 30, 2007

Also

I am trying hard to have a single line of thought ..but it is going to take a few years down the line for that to occur. Had my father remained in Mumbai for the rest of his life, yes that would have been possible ..I would have sent roots down nice and proper..here I have sent roots only upwards given the situation I found myself in. I feel girthed (if that is an authentic word) to the heavens themselves at times , but it is very very odd to live that way. So I try to maintain my identity as far as possible (or impossible)and concentrate on my work at hand. I havent emoted (can you believe that) in the last 7years I think. Terrible . I have only paid attention to work - teaching,notes and fellowshipping at Taftee ( the latter very frustrating with the Malayalee crowd- the tamils have taken a beating from them in that respect- though there are exceptional Malayalees like Mr and Mrs Thomas who have been kind and good and prayerful) Work has been a blessing in many ways but not like the good times in US- you just had to walk to the nearest deep freezer and get your enzyme of choice or the refrigerator and get your tissue culture medium without expending much energy. I even had my own phosphoimager packet - a luxury unaffordable by the Institutes here. I am very excited about my work here though using nanotechnology for imaging migration of cells in cancer. My two favorite subjects were Physics and Cell Biology(also Mol.Biology) I was a nerd in Maths.Could never do the Arithmetic. It has to do with my father (whom I have forgiven and hope my brother's have forgiven him too) He used to give us math problem ( called sums here) to do even during our summer vacation and never used to explain how it is to be done..He would scribble very intelligently something or other and then look up the last page for the answers. And when his answer was right he would jump up and down in his lungi( indian night dress) and vanish from the scene. I was good at Calculus in school but floundered in arthimetic all the time. But ofcourse I was good at the Biological sciences so I dont feel too bad. On a different note, it is still raining here in Chennai ( pretty much unseasonal, it is supposed to rain only in Oct, Nov and Dec-) The city looks well ploughed in many ways...

2 comments:

Rebecca said...

I can picture the antics of your father well - as you describe him and the maths problems!!!

Janet Jeyapaul said...

yes ...even simple arithmetic at the grocery store is beyond me at times ...life without the calculator would be unthinkable for me. I love that pic of yours.