0 Never marry a scientist who is poetic in nature

Thanks to the depressed social and atmospheric condition of United States, I did not get opportunity to fulfill my talkative appetite. Yes, people from the US socialize only in the clubs. Though you will always be flooded with the hello and hi even by strangers. I am stating this because I had very bad experience. Here, is the first example. In last week of October, I visited a team of scientist collaborating with us in Berkeley. I have given a talk to them. Our hosts, the US colleagues, used to sit in the conference room with a mug of coffee in their hands. They never offered me a cup of coffee, on any occasion. Now imagine this in India. This is never possible that your host will take something without offering you the same. If this happen at all, it will be considered as a rude. But we need to keep in mind this is what a culture is. Some of our behavior make look strange to them.

Anyway, yesterday was one of the best days in last few weeks. At least, I got the chance to fulfill the appetite of my talkative disposition, and I can vouch, this was not “yet another unplanned and unacknowledged talks” to my team members. It was well received. Though I am very talkative in nature but it rarely happened that whatever I am talking becomes a great statement to be quoted by others. But yesterday was my day and it happened like this. I told Amrit, if you want to be a good researcher, you will have to develop a poetic skill in yourself which will instill a courage in you to compare a moon and a lady which seems very absurd in consummated terms.

Amrit is my junior colleague in the team which I have been leading, a very enthusiastic and energetic in nature. I have rejected some of his innovative research idea in recent past. Yesterday, I was explaining him, how to channelize his energy to produce good and quality research. I told him that a scientist needs to compare two entirely different sets of objects, which seems to be very absurd at first glance. I told him, how I used my childhood experience related to the behavior of torch (battery power flash light) during the last hour of draining of the battery. I told him “how I used the idea that if you put the battery on rest, after sustained draining of current, it regains some of the energy.” Yes this was my childhood experience and I used it successfully analyzing the idea and producing a result which was never thought before and which helped me to write a complete chapter of my PhD thesis, producing at least 6 international research papers.

I kept reiterating him, be like a poet only who can dare to compare the two absurd things. Take lessons from all those poets who compared a moon and a beautiful maiden. Yes a moon, the non-living satellite without oxygen in it, a heavenly mass where man walks like kangaroos, which consists of the mountains and craters of sands, where American flag doesn’t wave even after investing billions of dollars and about which, the people still suspect that there will be millions of viruses hidden in their magical sands. And a lady which still remains the ultimate subject of a dejected or over enthusiastic poet. As two individual objects the moon and the lady are two extremes but it has been compared by the poets.

Today, when I was commuting back to my office, I tried to find out the outcome of yesterday’s 10 hours and 30 minutes which I spent in the office. I did a volume of pending work including 3 meetings and telephone calls and a bit of study. I analyzed each hour, I spent yesterday in the office. I didn’t find any one of them worth remembering or adding to the value of my intellectual assets. Everything was a regular corporate routine work. Except the one statement which I made to Amrit. Today evening when I will return back to my home, I will tell it to my wife, “Honey! only scientists or a poet can compare two absurd things of the life”, giving her an example of a beautiful woman and the mystic moon. I believe it will be the double depressing blow, a big impasse to her. Because, at any moment of time, I claim to be a poet and a scientist both, within four walls of my mind.