Kids Are Funny

Dear Amit Shah,

I want to tell you a funny thing that happened at this place where I work in Delhi. It's a small library and on Mondays I go in to hang out with the members (mostly kids between the ages of 4 and 18), help them check out books and every so often read books aloud to them and have chats.

Every Monday is funny, because kids are funny. Even when they're not trying to be. They have a funny way of observing the world that grown ups built. I'm convinced they've got a whole standup routine running in their heads about the absurdities they experience on a daily basis.

This Monday was no different. Actually it was. Half a world away, an angry man had opened fire on a nightclub full of people, overwhelmingly from the LGBTQ community. They were just there for a good time, but by the end of the night 50 of them didn't make it out alive. Because of that angry man with a gun. So we spoke about it, funny kids and grown ups.

Why do we fear the things we don't understand? What kind of responses do we have to the fear? Do we have a choice in how we respond? Do certain groups of people deserve to live more than others? The funny kids and grown ups decided to make a list of all the different kinds of people that are targets of hate, mockery, disrespect & oppression. The list was long and had all kinds of folks in it: weird shapes & sizes, weird skin colours, weird family names, weird ways of dressing, weird choices of romantic partners, weird ways of speaking, praying and eating food. Just weird, you know?

Finally, when the list was complete the grownups wondered: If we choose hatred as a response, what would happen to these groups?
Kids: They'll all be killed!
Grown ups: If they all disappear who'll be left?

***silence***
And then an unsure but gravely serious voice offered: "Mmmm...Modi?"


I told you, Amitbhai, kids are funny. You should come hang with us.

Love,
AS

 

Baby Amte

"you are my baby amte."

This is the Skype message I get from my sister from halfway across the world, at 4 am. It makes me laugh at my situation for the first time in many days. After over a decade of dealing with bouts of excruciating pain in my lower back, I've finally been properly diagnosed with having a slipped disc - a scary sounding but way too common problem nowadays.

It comes in conjunction with other setbacks (ha ha - if only the back were set - ha ha) that have had me feeling most defeated. Unlike Baba Amte, I have not quite risen (ha ha - or laid down - ha ha) to the challenge and they will not be writing wikipedia pages about my courage in the face of adversity any time soon. I've spent most mornings weeping surreptitiously or watching episodes of Downton Abbey.

If there were a tagline to the epic sob story running in my mind, it would be: I am All Alone. Even as friends drop by in the middle of punishing schedules armed with truckloads of doughnuts & books on managing back pain, even if they send their drivers across town to deliver a pair of perfect walking shoes, even if people who barely know me send me messages inquiring how I am, even if loved ones take time out of their jobs to ferry me to doctors' offices, my standard refrain remains: I am All Alone.

This tragic heroine is a pain in my ass. (And it's not the kind of pain that my physiotherapist can banish with a round of delectable electric currents zipping across butt cheeks.) She's convinced that life is out to get her - an inconvenient fact since life is all around her and wherever she goes, she finds she can't avoid it. She is angry and thinks hateful thoughts. She feels sorry for herself constantly because everyone else always has it better. (Yeah, even that shivering kid that's approaching her car window, begging for a couple of rupees.)

She starts speaking of herself in third person and begins to realize the extent of her delusion.

Of all the stories I've told myself over the years the one that is least backed up by evidence is the idea that I lack support. Some books even suggest that my spine has given way precisely because of this belief (I think the terrifying speedboat ride I took a few months ago might also have something to with it but still...). Now lying here in bed, propped up on two pillows, I wonder if it's time to dismantle this thought once and for all. To question its logic every time it pops up and to blatantly mock it if it persists.

So last night, I tried with one hand to open a bottle of whiskey that I had a friend bring in. I was having a particularly tragic-heroine time and I kept thinking 'this bottle is going to break, this bottle is going to break' even as I dangled it over the bathroom sink (don't ask), trying to pry open the seal with my teeth, while hanging on to it for dear life.

this bottle is going to break this bottle is going to break this bottle is going to break this bottle is going to

*CRASH*

I stood there for what seemed like forever, staring at my-only-friend-whiskey quite literally go down the drain. The strong waft of alcohol rose up to my nose along with a militant 'poor me' thought. Then as the golden brew slipped away from me, I thought: What would baby amte do? She'd probably laugh. She might even call her friend up and ask for another bottle. Then she'd get to work.

Soap

Ask me again what I want to be when I grow up.

At age 34, I want to be someone who knows how to love and be loved. 

It is the simplest thing I can think of wanting to be. Certainly, also the hardest.

A magnificent thing happened to me while doing the dishes today. A fluff of dish washing foam fell into a vat of oily water and whoosh, like Moses parting the seas, the grease parted and a pristine moat of clear water emerged out of the mess.

Now, I know that soap is designed to make a hearty meal of grease. It’s what the label on the pack says. It’s what my chemistry teacher said in school. It can be proven with equations and formulae. There’s math to explain it. I've had a 25 year long career washing dishes so I’ve also come to place good faith in soap’s appetite for grease.

Yet, there was something about paying attention as it happened: a single droplet of lily-white decimating an entire army of oil & grease in one graceful swoop.

You really had to be there.

***************

(But of course soap doesn't really decimate anything at all. On the contrary, it builds a chemical bridge between natural foes - oil & water. Dang, science, you're awesome.) 

What Gives Us Mass

Growing up in classrooms where a brand of fascist physics held sway in the steel cold grip of NCERT, we never looked beyond Rutherford's atom. There was no such thing as the Standard Model and everything was particulate & unquestionably spherical. 

The electron was life of the party, hopping about in celebrity circles, making all the difference between one kind of compound and another.

Considering that we rote-learned the Periodic Table built on its back...

Considering its firstborn, Hydrogen, seemed to be 75% responsible for our existence (and the existence of Boyzone, whom we loved in those days)...

...No one really talked to us about the proton at all.

  

**************************************************

There's a light drizzle as we stand beneath the belly of the Globe. There's a lull in filming so we begin to chat. She's a revelation to me and she's mildly uncomfortable about it. "Everyone always wants to talk to me about being a woman scientist," she says, exasperated.

I cringe inwardly because, to be honest, that's what interests me the most about her. In spite of a higher voice trying to steer conversation to matters of scientific importance, I realise I'm starving to know how a young girl from smalltown India, grows up through the '80's to become (a) a particle detector hardware expert (b) a permanent employee at CERN and (c) the top honcho for all the upgrades of a CMS sub-detector. My mind is screaming "But you're an Indian woman!!" There's an urgent need to crack this code.

Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt her mind. Her remarkable intellect is above any discussion of gender or nationality. I'm not such a fool. 

I'm trying to understand what else sets her apart from me. Or what set her apart from me 25 odd years ago, when she emerged from an Indian university and earned a first-class ticket to this mecca of particle physics. I want to know if she ever hesitated. 

**************************************************

Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider are said to be 'paradigm shifting' landmarks of our times. Whenever they run, they perform profound feats like recreating conditions similar to the universe a billionth of a second after the Big Bang and attempting to describe the Higgs boson: that thingamijig that gives everything (you, me, Boyzone) mass, etc.

As the name suggests, the LHC collides hadrons to achieve these ambitious goals. Hadrons like protons. Two protons accelerated in opposite directions at 99% the speed of light, meeting along the 27kms tunnel only to smash up against each other. Much of this catastrophic rendezvous proves to be beyond our visual imagination and it will take mathematics to make complete sense of it.

Infact, before the LHC began its first run, there were those who panicked that such colliding protons would hasten the end of the world. Instead, they gave us new science.

*************************************************

On camera, she is vibrant and engaging when talking about her physics, her workplace and the exciting ventures she'll be part of in the LHC's next phase. It's hard not to look at her animated face and be very aware of her fate, inextricably bound with the most fascinating discoveries of our time.

I see an opening and take my chance. I ask her to tell our viewers what it's been like being Indian, female and making it big. "Tell those young girls watching that they can be scientists, physicists, hardware specialists even though they're in traditionally male domains. Tell them, tell them!" 

She falters, her confidence wavering. Like a bloodhound, I pursue my track relentlessly, egging her to talk about her personal story. But she needs a moment. She composes herself and then looks askance to the director, who nods yes. 

Her answer is a public service announcement. It's one I've heard a million times before, about believing in dreams and not giving up. The bloodhound's scent has run cold. 

Ok, I want to whine, screw the viewers. Screw gender or being Indian. Screw your smalltown upbringing and all that it came with. Tell me your secret: Did you ever question your talent? Were you ever ashamed of being the odd one out, did you ever regret your intellect? Did you ever balk at winning the biggest trophy in the room? Did you skip a beat before accepting your entitlement? Did you ever second-guess your worth?

************************************************

On the 4th of July 2012, CERN holds a live webcast to unveil an astounding discovery. 

Director-General Rolf-Dieter Heuer announces: "As a layman I would now say I think we have it." 

'Bumps' in data from two LHC experiments show that the Higgs boson has finally been detected. Thanks to a bunch of enterprising protons, it has graduated from being a theoretical construct to a highly probable, experential reality.

There's mad applause. A snow-haired gentleman in the audience wipes his eyes.

 

We'd always known we had mass. But, I guess, it had been really important to know why.

  

Sidebar: Watch Sheryl Sandberg Talk About Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders

I'll Take It

I recently returned to film production after nearly a decade of being 'just the writer'. It's been scary and exhilarating to see all the little holes & high points of my script come to life. I'm in love with my subject and over the past 6 weeks, I've poured my heart, soul and last dregs of energy into editing the film.

Today we invited a senior editor to preview the rough cut. After the 50 minute viewing he slumped back in his chair and said, "If I didn't have to watch this film, I wouldn't."

This creation I'm so in love with has turned out to be the world's most boring film.
The heart is there, he acknowledges, but who cares?

I can feel my windpipe constrict and my hackles being raised. I can't understand how something so meaningful to me can be so meaningless to someone else. There is deflation, a moment of 'don't mind me, I'll go back to my writer's dungeon then'. Then there's something else. I'm not 21 anymore and I don't need to run away for another decade.

"What can we do to fix it?" I ask.

And he tells me. It is a singular, most magical solution - the kind that takes my breath away with its elegance. Just like that I'm a student again and I can see why this film needed to suck. I think to myself, Damn it, if this is what it means to make a shitty film, I'll take it.

A scene from 'Jules et Jim', which is not a shitty film