Even with a car, I am utterly bekar (bekar = useless in hindi)

Though I haven't really had the time to blog recently due to a spate of unfortunate events in the lab and a tonne of grad school applications, I was compelled by the need to chronicle the sheer magnitude of my stupidity (as reflected by my recent actions) here. As you know, I am quite into self-ridicule and playing the Indian bloody fool.

The events unfolded this Monday as I was driving to work. In the spirit of eco-friendliness (despite, or perhaps due to, the fact that I use a gas guzzling yellow taxi as my means of transport), I switched off my engine while waiting for a train to pass on the tracks in front of me. As soon as the coast was clear I turned my key expecting to hear the engine to burst to life (a sound that increases testosterone levels in men, resulting in it being classified as an empirically tested sexy sound). Alas and alack, what followed was an absence of any sound. For a moment, the ambience was silent as a grave. This proved to be the oft cited lull before the storm since what followed was a crude and strident cacophony of car horns.

I was blocking a lane with a dozen anxious commuters behind me!

Desperately, I turned the key again and again. The lights on my dashboard flashed lazily at me and the engine seemed to have joined Virgil in the world of the dead. I was just beginning to fear being torn to shreds or stoned to death by irate New York drivers when a cop came on the scene and cordoned the area (after almost being run over by an old lady who was making earnest efforts to find a way around my car by driving into the way of oncoming traffic in the other direction). After invoking the son of God and having a cathartic yell at the wanton old lady, the cop called a tow truck and settled down in his car which he had parked behind me.

Mind you, all this time I was feverishly begging the engine to start. When it was clear that it had turned a deaf ear to me, I turned to praying fervently to the large number of Hindu deities to come and rescue me from this Gehenna and making promises of atonement. I still had about 329 million gods to turn to when the tow truck came. The driver who could have been, I swear, Barack Obama's hip-hop loving twin got off and asked me if the car was in park.

I have never laid claim to genius. I am not a rocket scientist or a neurosurgeon and never will be. In fact, I would give quite a lot for someone to upgrade the processor in my brain a little bit. It's still stuck in the Windows 95 era. Now, Windows 95 may not be Windows 7, a webpage does ultimately load in the former. Something like that happened within the unchartered and somewhat frightening viscera of my brain at that instant.

"THE GEAR! I HADN'T PUT IT IN PARK!!! !$£@$@%£%@$!!"

I told him I'd go and check. I got into the car and found that the car was, indeed, still in drive. Somehow, neither the cop, nor I had noticed this in the fifteen febrile minutes that had just passed. While the guy's back was turn, I turned the key with a prayer (to the 100001th Hindu God) on my lips. The engined roared its approval of the new state of affairs. The cop and Barack whipped around at the sound. All I could do at this point was to put on my best thespian performance of the week.

People usually ask: "What would Jesus do?" I asked: "What would Jesus's disciples do?" Astonishment, thy name was Pranay Sinha for a few minutes that Tuesday morning. Peter's reaction to the multiplication of the fish, by comparison, would roughly be as follows: "Meh."

Not being of a scientific or detective bent, Barack-O and the cop did not pursue a line of enquiry as to the how-ness of the miracle. The laconic cop shooed me off. I am fairly sure I'd have beaten a hybrid of Hermes and the flash to the driver's seat. I drove away, my heart beating like a thief's, and my brain in the throes of depression at the realization of its many shortcomings.

James Bond must be ashamed of me.

How Indira Gandhi's assassination was broken to the world

Mr. Anand Sahay is my uncle.

How many??

All of us have seen those asinine games at malls in which humungous transparent containers are full of M&Ms or table tennis balls and chaps are supposed to guess the number of the M&Ms or balls in the containers. Obviously, the scientific approach to this would be to measure the volume of one M&m/ball, estimate the volume of the container and divide the latter by the former. However, people tend to wing it and guess over several powers of 10 (e.g. 50 to 50X10^5).

Anyway, I was walking past these massive, 4 Litre, conical flasks full of Luria Broth that has bacteria growing in them (the optical density is pretty obscene as you can see in the picture) and the perfect guessing game for Biologists occurred to me; it's called "How many Coli". I think it's pretty self explanatory. Should be a big hit at biological research institutes.

Hint: It's not 50.

Sinister bike permit

I am not sure you can read it, but my bike permit advises me as follows:

"Permittee releases MTA LIRR and MTA MNR from any liability for injury, death or damages arising in connection with use of this permit. Have fun."

The "have fun" struck me as very incongruous. I think they forgot to add "at your own risk".

"Skynet" is all I have to say to this!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24drones.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=drones&st=cse

For those who weren't mesmerised by Terminator movies when they were adolescents, skynet is a computer defence system that becomes self aware, considers humans a threat, and nukes them. This paves the way for the rise of the machines. Now the USAF wants to have squadrons of pilotless aircraft of all sizes ranging from tactical bomber to nanospy planes. Makes me uneasy...

Someone's birthday is coming up...

I've never really understood what people mean when they say that. You know, we're getting close to 7 billion in terms of global population. The number of days in a year are 365. So with some crude maths, you expect to have 20 million people who have a birthday every single day (that's wonderful if you're in the Happy birthday business). Therefore, it's kind of a pointless thing to say that someone will have a birthday soon (assuming soon means two-three days) because a subset of humanity equal to france in terms of population will have a birthday in that time period. You may as well say that the Taj is a pretty nifty tomb.

Someone's birthday is coming up...

I've never really understood what people mean when they say that. You know, we're getting close to 7 billion in terms of global population. The number of days in a year are 365. So with some crude maths, you expect to have 20 million people who have a birthday every single day (that's wonderful if you're in the Happy birthday business). Therefore, it's kind of a pointless thing to say that someone will have a birthday soon (assuming soon means two-three days) because a subset of humanity equal to france in terms of population will have a birthday in that time period. You may as well say that the Taj is a pretty nifty tomb.