A wonderful read

Just finished The Toss of a lemon by Padma Viswanathan. And I haven't enjoyed a book and been touched by it so much in a long, long while. Last time I felt this way it was 2005 and I'd just read Salman Rushdie's Shame. But this book affected me differently...I could relate to it in so many tiny, little, different ways that I found myself nodding vigorously, or laughing or shaking my head in resignation as I read. In case I haven't made myself clear, a bond was forged, we connected, the book and I.

This book brought back so many memories. Of childhood summers in Mayavaram. Of daily visits to the local temple, a small little cubby hole of a temple it was, served by a small little man I only knew as kurukkal. Of helping my Tatha pluck flowers for his daily pooja from the garden. Of sitting by my Tatha as he did his daily pooja and waiting for the naivediyam, so I could eat! Of the sweet, sweet smell of Jasmine that grew on the terrace, where I lingered on sultry evenings to escape the heat of the power cuts that ravaged us. Of afternoon story time with Tatha (he told wonderful stories and took pains to vary them and read up new ones for me) and coconut trees in the backyard, and cycle rickshaw trips to town. Because the author has captured the essence of a small village in Tamil Nadu, and a Brahmin household so beautifully that I can't help but remember.

Mostly though, the protagonist in this book, Sivakami, reminds me of my Lakshmi paati. My maternal grandmother. She wears madisar, follows madi-aacharam, yechal-pathu, and until recently didn't eat food cooked by anyone but herself. She also brought up five kids, and one grandchild. She followed all the rules associated with being "out of the house" 3 days a month..something I resented as a 13 year old. She never forgets birthdays or anniversaries. And she has the quiet inner strength that Sivakami has. She's made of something more than I will ever be. She has courage, resilience, tenacity, and a generous, loving heart occupied in equal portions by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And she believes in feeding people well...one of Sivakami's most enduring qualities!

Oh, this book brought back so many memories of days long gone and reminded me of the people I love the most, and don't call often enough! It has been a rare and most enjoyable treat.

Nothing ever happens in August.....

Have you ever dropped an air-conditioner out of a window? Its not fun. It makes a loud thudding noise and you know its never going to be fixed again, and you just threw 200$ out of the window. But then, have you ever had your super-excellent landlord fix it and install it back in the window where it belongs? And then after it works fine for 2 days, have you ever had an irate landlady come up to tell you you can't use it anymore because its leaking water into her wall? And then have you had to buy a new air-conditioner and have your super-nice landlord help you fix it? And then have you discovered 3 days later that the new air-conditioner leaks too? And then have you had to clean it out...spilling water over your floor and smelling your room up with a weird, mossy wet smell that won't go away for a week? And then have you had to fix it into the other window and keep your fingers crossed it doesn't leak this time around because you installed it tilting outwards? No? Oh, what a humdrum life you lead! Its been a week and I still have a yucky, wet smell in my room and I'm waiting for the air-conditioner to do something weird. Maybe it will do me a favor and give me Legionnaire's disease..

I can't wait for winter.

Also, there is a mouse in my house. I can handle mice in a controlled lab environment...not in the wild....and by wild, I mean my home.

On the bright side, I had the best email conversation I've had in months. Reproduced here for your benefit.

It all began with this innocent note sent by player A:

http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/broadband/video/Interviews/CF3n3z100/3/Shahid-Kapoor-Speaks-About-Kaminey-Part-1.html

Kaminey! Apun ka agla target!

Have a happy working week :)

To which Player B, replies thusly:

I heard that there is a prequel planned for this..."Kutte" ;-p

And I (player C, of course!) couldn't resist:

And its being produced by Dharmendra:)

And then player D was forced to reply:

And the planned sequel to be directed by Ramsey brothers is named "Mein Tera Khoon Pe Jaoonga"

And so and so forth for 15 emails. Which resulted in players A and B watching Suryavanshi that night. And me youtubing every ghostly movie I could think of from Madhumati and Bees saal baad to Bees saal baad!

More than made up for bad days at work and air-conditioning woes and suchlike.

5000 words of nothingness

I like the Arts & Letters website. They usually do a wonderful job of linking to the most interesting articles on the web...erudite, whimsical, funny...you name it..they cover it. Which is why I was surprised when I clicked on today's articles of note link, and landed up here. It was a silly article really. Clearly, she is bitter and unhappy. Even more clearly, she is also self-absorbed and narcissistic. I feel for her, as a person. As a reader, I cringe. There's really nothing she has to say that is at all important. All she has are stories of her girlfriends who all seem to have sucky marriages and sexless lives and a rather disenchanted piece of advice about avoiding marriage because love is fleeting. So, it didn't work for her, so nobody should get married? Sour grapes anyone? She is the anti-Sanford. He, of the sappy e-mails, and rambling press conferences. The only thing they have in common is their unhealthy obsession with themselves.

David Brooks wrote a rather nice article in the NYT about the loss of dignity in America. (Which aldaily linked to!) The Sandra Tsing Lohs of the world need to give it a dekko. She is a writer and a commentator..must she not strive to bring dignity to her writing? And if she isn't capable of doing that for any reason, can't she just go on vacation or something? Not churn out some crass piece which makes my head explode at 10pm at night, because of its sheer idiocy.

PS: I was trying to think of more dignified people. Here's my list in random order: Hema Malini, Naseerudin Shah, Rachel Maddow, Julia Roberts, Sachin Tendulkar, AR Rahman, Michael J. Fox come to mind immediately.

My thoughts on this

Its incredibly hard to get funded by the NCI. Just ask my advisor. He just got his first RO1 from them...and he literally jumped through hoops to get it. The final version of the grant that got funded had enough data to publish a paper...almost.

But its not just about funding high-risk projects..if faster progress has to be made in cancer research, the entire grant review system needs to be revamped. Some soul-searching on the part of the scientific community is imperative. Lets not blame the NIH entirely. A simple example is study section. Ideally, you'd want the best and brightest minds in Study section to judge the grants, and make suggestions for improvement. But many a time the best and brightest minds are unavailable for study section. A lot of top notch researchers don't go to it, (too busy, don't care enough..whatever) because it is voluntary.

The competition for NCI funding is fierce. Less than 10% of the grants get funded. This means a lot of very very good grants fall by the wayside just because there isn't enough money to go around. So, I say we stop building Nuclear weapons and fund more scientific research. I guarantee that this will speed up the "war on cancer". BTW, I find it amusing that it is referred to as a "war on cancer", as if all cancers were the same, and there is one single cure out there. As someone who works on cancer biology, I can only say that the level of complexity is astounding.

We've made great strides in the last 50 years...really molecular biology is just coming into its own. We've identified tumor suppressors, worked out whole signaling pathways that regulate cell proliferation, developed technologies to model diseases (cancer included) in mice and now have the power to analyze whole genome sequences. I believe the best years of cancer biology research are ahead of us.

These are heady times. Yamanaka has figured out a way to engineer iPS cells. The field of RNA biology has exploded, and microRNAs are beginning to make their mark in the field. Paper after paper identifies new genes as oncogenes/tumor suppressors. People in the field of cancer biology study phenomena ranging from embryo development to aging in an effort to understand normal physiological processes and how they can affect neoplastic transformation. Its just an exciting time to be a researcher in cancer biology.

That said, the level of uncertainty amongst faculty is disturbing to see. People are genuinely afraid for their livelihoods. So, in the midst of this sucky economy, with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and one threatening to spillover into Pakistan, a 10% NIH funding rate, and a PhD that doesn't seem like its going to end anytime soon, do I really need to read Gina Kolata's article in the NYT about how we're not making good enough progress? I really must stop reading the news. Or, like everyone else in the 18-30 year age group, I should get all my news from here.

Sigh.

NB: I find her reference to a study on colon cancer that may also impact breast cancer disturbing. There are many commonalities between different cancers, just as there are many differences. I see no reason to be dismissive of it just because.

Weirdness, death and a change of mind

So MJ is dead. Larry King is all over it like a rash. He's interviewing Cher. And she comes on and gives the most rambling, weird, disingenuous spiel I've ever heard, on her relationship with the man and what she thought of him. I heard her go on for about 2 minutes about how he'd walk his swaddled baby back and forth from his trailer for no apparent reason, and how she wondered about it, and I just had to laugh. Poor Larry. He tried hard to bring her to say something nice...something that resembled a eulogy, but she just wouldn't oblige. And I was thinking, here is the man who dangled his baby out of a window. He was accused of being a child molester. And lets face it..he was weird..surgeries and all. And Cher is surprised at his walking his swaddled baby? But I still like Cher. Because she did this awesome movie.

And I take back what I said about Reza Aslan yesterday. I guess I read more than I should have into a certain eloquence of speech and distinguished demeanor. He's just another Muslim apologist saying all the politically correct things. A species I distrust completely, because they're too smart to let you know what they actually think.

But nothing can make me love Jon Stewart less. Nothing. My devotion to him is unwavering. I worship at the altar of Jon, and at the altar of Jon alone.