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Science and women

blogland

There is an interesting concept....someone has put up a blogland with street addresses. You can occupy any available address and then "live" there...you can chat with your neighbours, connect them to your blog ... and all for "middle aged ladies". Interesting!

time

Growing older is so definite. When young, we feel we will be young forever, but past 45, old age is visible there in the horizon...that's when I really truly realised that time moves in only one direction. But later, I am coming to believe maybe it doesn't....maybe, we just dont perceive backwards movement of time. ...

nilgiris

It is sad to see the devastation in the Nilgiris.
http://www.hindu.com/2009/11/12/stories/2009111250160100.htm

http://wownilgiris.blogspot.com/

Our hills and coasts are the most vulnerable to the climate change we see. Life is unfair .
The climate change caused by the industrialised countries in the last 200 years is hitting us now.

coming back

Coming back after a long time, what makes me write is the realisation that great minds start working at an early age and need to be nurtured, not by others, but by the person himself/herslf.
I have always felt that our schools do not nurture the thinking child. That is true for most children. But a truly great mind, the real genius, does not need nurturing from outside. The person somehow finds ways to whet his own curiosity and ways to improve his skills. I obviously won't know how, but that it happens, I am sure. This is because they go to the same schools, same colleges as others who end up as bank clerks or office managers, but go on to do Nobel work.

http://reflections-shivanand.blogspot.com/2009/10/missed-physics-nobel-2009-narendra.html
A boy gets his path breaking idea in school, sticks to it through college, and ends up working on it for his PhD, and gives teh world a miracle.....light through a pipeline!!
Such minds do not need the school physics teacher, or the incompetent college lecturer!!

monsoon

May & June were bad, hot and dusty. But July was really horrible. The unfulfilled promise of rain can be borne for about a month so June was bearable, but when the dry days go into July, it starts to become scary and unbearable. Thankfully mid August brought a good spell of rain. It's still raining. This city gets wonderful in the monsoon....cool and just wet enough.
What amazes me is the clockwork precision that the monsoon has under normal circumstances(and we have destroyed that). It reaches Delhi on the 29th june. One year long ago, on the 29th june, I was standing at the 6th floor window of my lab. I could see the smoke stack of the Badarpur thermal palnt and a huge black mass of cloud advancing slowly from the southerly direction....a HUGE bank of black clouds in one single mass.
It was awe inspiring. The rains broke in two hours and my way home was knee deep in water.
Another monsoon few years back, I was driving out to buy my grocery, when I saw a similar black mass advancing. It was amazing...I drove along and was in the downpour within a few minutes....the sight is truly awesome.....clear blue summer sky bordered by black cloud mass stretching endlessly.
The most awesome rain, though it was not monsoon time, was the day I was at a beach all alone...one lone crab catcher in the distance and a storm brewing on the Bay of Bengal. The sight was fascinating and frighteneing. I was about 12 and I truly felt the power of nature. Storm on the sea is absolute power-display. If ever God wanted to teach a human being that He is powerful, he just has to show him a thunder storm on a sea. I wonder how sailors don't cower in their bunks when a storm comes up during their voyage...sailors are truly brave.

sad to be leaving

It is sad that I have to leave this place and go to the heat and dust and traffic of the city -that too in May,when it is at its worst.

It was a wonderful interlude, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I had lived in the hills in my childhood and loved it . So, it had been my dream that I would spend at least a year in the hills again. This interlude has been a dream come true.

Nowadays there is a lot written about people neglecting old people. It is truly painful
Few years back, a lot was written about harrased brides...mothers-in-law harrassing young women for dowry. That is also painful
Now put the two together. A woman harasses her daughter-in-law when she comes newly wed into the household.
But when old, this same woman has to be looked after by the now middle aged, but the same,daughter-in-law. Are you surprised, she does not get much loving kindness?

I would like my old age to be:

I would like it to be like the sunset pictured below.

Beautiful, bright enough but not the glaring brightness of the midday sky.

Giving happiness to those around.

Fading quickly..not lingering on.

some more pictures

When I was a girl, I used to visit our village about once a year. An urban girl is made to feel useless and alien in a village. We do not possess the skills taht the village girls have. They can carry pots of water without spilling. We cannot. They can roll out perfect papads we cannot...the list goes on. This prevented me from appreciating village life. So sad...missed oppurtunities!

Today was our new year, but I forgot about it. Late in the day, I hurriedly rectified the lapse in a very abbreviated manner.

I am not really fond of an extroverted display of religion. Of late, I believe that it causes more harm than good. Religion is personal. It should be kept so. In particular, the Hindu religion, emphasises the personal equation with the Supreme Being as the essence...so why these processions and pujas ? Ours was not originally a congregational religion. It is being made so nowadays.

we the people

We, the mediocre people are the majority...how many geniuses do you know and also, how many absolutely undiluted idiots are there(not counting those with medical problems)?

So we, the intelligent-but-not-genius people, must unite and stick up for our right to be recognised as the majority whose wishes are supreme.We make up this world. We do the most important jobs that are the essential cogs in the machine of civilisation.

mediocrity

Usually, mediocrity is a baaad word. It is as if being mediocre is a sin. But as I had previously said, who would the geniuses look down upon? Mediocrity has its uses....you can't be in high spirits all the time, you can't eat chocolates all the time, you can't be smiling all the time. The pleasure is in the perceived change. Genius is appreciated only because the rest of us are mediocre.
Hence the praise of mediocrity.

Blogging is an egoistical pursuit. You have your say. People comment only after you finish and if you dont like their comments, you can delete them. You are all powerful in this world of communication. But then, if your blog is well-read, you may get sued by ndtv or some such corporate giants..so not so powerful after all.

mediocrity

The reason I had started my old blog and continue this is a protest against deriding mediocrity. I ahd posted about that and am happy to see many similar views in blogsphere...and not surprisingly all of them are middle-aged women.

From my old blog

On growing old

I think the two things that make old age painful is losing ones energy and ones memory....not losing ones good looks as is the popular perception.When one is 10 years old, anyone above 15 seems old. Then, when one is 20, 40 is old. At 40, 70 is old and so on. So the definition of old age is very flexible. When young, we think it is sad to be old. Of course, old age when one is feeble, helpless is awfully sad.But as one grows older, there is a sense of liberation. As we leave the insecurities of our teenage, we become more confident. In our twenties, we become independent and that's a source of happiness. In our thirties, we become parents, learn to handle professional responsibilities.We really grow. We are not so worried about what others say, we are sure of ourselves, more confident about doing what we want.What I find most liberating about being old is the freedom. A young girl cannot chat with strange people, auto drivers, co passengers in a bus. Now, I just have nice conversations with strangers---I give free advice on anything I feel like, even if they dont like it, they tolerate that nice old lady. You can bargain with impunity.... It is liberating. What is not nice is the loss of energy...I see a hill but I know I cant trek up to the top...it's sad.I envy the young their energy

blogging

Blogging is a satisfying activity. You can write what you feel like.
The old id through which I was blogging is my general purpose id. Hence the new id for this blog.