India's first woman President

India is all poised to have its first woman President...there was great debate about it on the TV channels..Well I thought if we cant cow down ( punintended) the West in other matters atleast on this one let us.. Before Hilary Clinton takes the oath I think Pratibha Patil will. Karan Singh the other main contender for the post has gone on record and said,"sometimes it is not enough to have the right man for the job,you need the right woman" All the powerful men described her as a nice woman , but I am afraid it was not said as a compliment but more as it takes more than a nice woman to do the President's job.The most important task she has accomplished in recent times is not passing the anti-conversion bill ..which is a great boon for Christians here...but I wish they would pass the freedom of religion bill. But this is goood having a woman President -a first for Indian History!Now the world will get to see among things...hopefully the fashionable six yards of beautiful Indian silk as befitting Indian Women Presidents.

On a different note, after what seemed as eons of scorching piercing heat wave, the heavens have relented and opened up ..It is raining cats and dogs here..I love that smell of hot baked earth drenched by forcefull rain...Nature is really going beserk here...thunder ,lightening and the trees swaying feversishly...

We are attacked by watermelons!!!!

How does Chennai cope with the heat? Water melons...Scores of watermelons have invaded the city ..almost all the high ways and byways are sidewalked with water melons ! I looked up its vitamin content - wow it is loaded..here goes

Food Value of watermelons Nutrient Amount vitamin C 14.59 mg vitamin A 556.32 I.U. vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) 0.22 mg vitamin B1 (thiamin) 0.12 mg potassium 176.32 mg magnesium 16.72 mg
Medicinal Uses & benefits
1. They are wonderful diuretic agents. They are of great value in diseases like jaundice, typhoid and nephritis. 2. Protection against Macular Degeneration. 3. Watermelon contains high concentrations , an antioxidant that may help reduce the risks of cancer and other diseases. 4. Watermelon is fat free, nutritionally low in calories and considered an ideal diet food, and is high in energy, making it a great energy boost!

Having a relaxing time

It is siesta time for me now... a week of relaxation and rest.. I finally finished my grant writing ... I am going to see a lot of movies, drink lassi and watermelon juice and visit my aunts and uncles. Also any time soon ,June 18 is the date, my nephew/niece will be born!! I am so excited...i missed being there when my older brother's kids were born...butI am glad I am there when my younger brother's little bundle arrives... When my neighbors grand child was born, my neighbor a retired professor in Tamil tied a huge cloth made hammock from the ceiling and used to rock the little one to sleep singing tamil folk songs. I recommended it to my sister-in-law but she was of the opinion that the kid may get used to it and as she works as teacher, the servant at home may overdo the rocking part ...is rocking a baby to sleep very essential for inculcating a sense of safety and security? let me know

women in science

It is finished... the three month marathon grant writing is finally concluded...I submitted two 30 page each documents this morning and a load just slipped off my shoulders. I hope I finally see myself evolving into a seasoned grant writer.. While I was blog-hopping at the science hemisphere-- I came across several blogs that showed how anti-woman the science world was.. every woman seemed to have hit a glass ceiling at some point or other..That reminded me... in 1994 when I was post-doc..ing in US, my mentor a no-nonsense science gladiator - yes very much woman .. told me when I mentioned of my expertise in the transcription ( related to expression of genes) field .. that all the men in that field where sexist- at a time when I barely knew the meaning of that word. Really? hmm, i pondered thinking of all the wise, polite great men scientists I had met.. all very helpfull, courteous and full of wise advice...

I arched my trimmed eyebrows at her .. are you sure ( my expression wore in ethnic style) .. Yes yes she said and in her tall boots stomped out.. Now I test that hypothesis will all those wise, chatty , helpful men upon reading my grant turn to 'women hating' orges these women make them out ot be.. . I am ever hopeful that it would not be so..

Phew.. I can see the finish line

I am the very tip of the iceberg....in my grant writing ...Two days from now on June 12 Tuesday I submit it .. I wanted to finish it off this week end but apparently the grants.gov has gone off the website for infrastructural changes....( a pinch on the cheeks by Big Sam to us ..nervous types , who want to submit well before the last day) and will be back on only on MonJune 11. Pray everything goes smoothly....

Since I am swirling in the cold waters of the scientific littany ..my grey cells are in a state of freeze as far as relishing the savories of day to day life goes ..chit chatting and LOL ... so for now I leave you to mediate on the iceberg.. for all you silent pygmies out in the woods ..watching but not commenting...:):):):):):):):

The Mouse is here to stay.

I am on the verge ...I quiver frightfully at the very edge... of submitting my third grant for this half of the year and the mouse has welded itself to the palm of my hand all this season ..if anyone out there knows some brilliant hand exercises, do oblige ..it needs urgent servicing...Now for the next five years be it grant writing or experiments in the lab, the mouse is here to stay. All my last three grants are on mouse models.. so after almost a decade of tissue culturing ,I am back to my Ph.D muse, the mouse.

That reminded in true indian filmy style .. an interesting flashback... I was doing my Ph.D at the then Cancer Research Institute ,Parel, Mumbai ,India ...now it is the pompus ACTREC lying like silent monster on the outskirts of Mumbai... and my project was on epidermal carcinogenesis as studied in the mouse model. This required for the most part ..painting the skin(not with painter's brush but with syringe and 28gauge needle) with different carcinogens and waiting and watching little cancers mushroom on the back of the white swiss mice. We had to sacrifice ..yes the humane way, by pinching its cervical cord and pulling its tail ...one swift movement ( not the inhumane way I have seen in US .. unanaestized mouse guillotined..ohhh gory,gory ) . When I was new, I was not very sure of holding the mouse and pinning him down by the cervix.. so invariably on most occasions, the little fur would squeeze himself through my wabbling finegers and bound through the glass jar s , down the bench and out into the corridors of the Institute with me and my lab mate ( another newcomer like me) in hot pursuit. The major part of the day would be taken up thus.. trying to corner the escaped white mouse. It tooks several months to master the art of clasping its neck before it wriggled out and later when months turned to years.. I was indeed an expert in this dark skill of life, and I would be chit-chatting with a colleague in uninterrupted, earnest conversation ,complete with laugh and giggles,as I would be if I were tearing lettuce for a salad and chatting with a friend simultaneously, while all the time with the seasoned grace of a master executioner , I was pinning the little blisters by the neck and pulling their tails, killing them by the dozen without so much as a glance at the luckless creatures ..

Summer Reading

Summer Reading

While growing up in Mumbai, summer holidays was usually spent rummaging through the bookcases of my equally bookish friends..collecting a handful and settling down in a darkened room with a ice-cold glass of lassi (buttermilk- for recipe refer next blog of Amrita.. yesugarden.blogspot.com) . My father worked for the Railways so all the apartments were similar-and so all the bookcases were open wooden cupboards built into the wall and going way down..Invariably that was the same floor space for the sofa set s and as most of the homes displayed curios like minature Taj Mahal and marble fish and peacocks from marble mountains and trophies of kids .. the books usually occupied the lower shelves and were often hidden from view by the backrest of the sofas. So I have had this childhood memory of retrieving hidden treasure from behind sofas ...piling them up and reading them..It was a common joke then that we found our books in our friends bookcases and vice versa.. we read perry mason, arthur hailey, Alistair maclean.Ken Follet and of course PG Wodehouse.. The latter a lifelong favorite ,never gone stale always adding the right zest to life... I recently read two good ones ..Pigs have wings and Full Moon ...blew away the tedious part of grant writing..all this made possible by the opening of a small lending library bang opposite my home in K.K. Nagar. It is called Sri Kumaran lending library and has all adventure, suspense, romantic, historical novels and most importantly PG Wodehouses..Mumbai used to have plenty of these small libraries wedged between paan(tobacco chewing) shops and textiles stores spilling over its dilapidated walls with books...they dotted almost every street nook much like a Starbuck store these days..I thought Madras would never sprout one ...and in the last 7 years I had to travel an hour to get to the British Council Library or American Library to get a handful of books...But now the landscape seem to be changing...a library close to home... who could ask for more