Deep Adhya, PhD

The weather in Calcutta isn’t very cold during the winter. It is cool and very pleasant. It is like an elongated autumn, seamlessly leading into spring. During the months of December and January the festive spirit is very high and there is a mood of relaxation in the air. It’s Christmas time and some parts of Calcutta is lit up very brightly in splendid colors in the true spirit of the season. Most notably, there is Park Street which has been the Mecca of Christmas celebrations in Calcutta since time immemorial. On either side of the broad stretch of asphalt, there are grand British structures which still house offices and apartments. On the level of the street, there are perpetual festivities throughout the year. There are such class hangouts like Flury’s and Park Hotel, as well as new franchisees such as Music World and One Step Up. Park Street is also the gastronomic centre of the city boasting restaurants such as Peter Cat, Mocambo, Moulin Rouge and the Waldorf (now off Park Street...

This update is not for the faint of heart, or for vegetarians. This disclaimer has to be declared before you can go on to read. ‘Kobe Sizzlers’ is a great place to eat out when you love to eat sizzling food, served hot on a iron plate, really rustic and bold. I do not deny that it sells vegetarian fare, but that is not what I would like to stress upon, neither is it the specialty of the restaurant. A look at the menu and hardcore non-vegetarians looking out for a workout on red meat of their well-bestowed teeth would ignore the ambience. The ambience is more than adequate with a respectable comfort level, plush, and overlooking the National Highway 8. But again, that is not the point at all about this restaurant. This restaurant specializes in sizzlers, and a look at the menu is ample evidence that it is meant for pure non-vegetarians. It has whole pages dedicated to each type of meat and I have to make a special mention of the beef section, which rare as it is in India, is quite enorm...

When do you last remember eating out in a restaurant looking over a green lake and surrounded by forests, from the third floor of a building? Well, third floor of the building may not sound very sensational, but the hill stationesque surroundings that the restaurant provides, especially during the cold, murky times of winter rain sure needs accolades for its sheer locale. Hauz Khas village is known to all who live in Delhi or have come to Delhi with a vengeance to tour it. From the broad expanse of the outer ring road, there leads a road that keeps narrowing as it enters into the deeply vegetated plains of Hauz Khas. Then starts a long and winding road that leads into a den of boutiques selling dresses for women at a rate which can only be afforded by those who earn in dollars and euros. Where is Gun Powder in all this? It is somewhere, and it still does not show itself even as you reach the end of the treacherous lane (provided you are taking the right one). I remember that at some po...

I am not a zoologist, nor am I an adventurist TV anchor. I am just an ordinary man trying to lead a normal life. These aforementioned people catch butterflies and follow birds. They trail tiger pugmarks and wait patiently at night to catch a glimpse of the leopard. They play hide and seek with poisonous snakes and sit in deep pest-infested forests feeding wild gorillas. But I am no such person. I prefer catching buses to go to work and wait patiently for the football match to start on the television. I can play hide and seek with the neighbor’s docile cat and I much prefer feeding myself. In this normal day to day eventful life of mine, when suddenly a black scorpion with glistening fangs alights on the rim of the window pane of my humble abode, I perceive there is every reason to panic. I am reminded instantly of the curious imagination that went through my furtive mind when I saw a huge TV anchor playing with an equally sizeable bug like that. I am reminded of the fact that I felt be...

I was dreaming of food, of homely Bengali food. It was giving me immense pleasure to dream even though I faintly knew that it was morning and I had to reach lab by ten o’ clock. I was dreaming, as I said, when I was startled out of my beautiful dream by a loud thud. I woke up instantly to find a bottle of water lying on the floor and some water trickling out of its cap. I wondered how on earth the bottle managed to fall from the table. It wasn’t even one of those windy days when the curtains of the room would fly so high that it would tickle my ears while I slept. I looked at the watch, and it was six-thirty in the morning. I heaved a sigh of relief and thought I would make use of my early start. I prepared to make my early morning visit to the loo with my toothbrush in one hand. I walked towards the door of my room which was ajar. The doors of my room are usually left open to let the heavens flow through them and cleanse the evil out of our souls while we sleep. Well, fact is it is ne...

My friend sent me an SMS which goes somewhat like this: Ek Cheeta Cigarette ka sutta lagane hi wala tha ki achanak ek chuha wahan aya aur bola, “Mere bhai chor do nasha, ao mere sath bhaago, dekho ye jungle kitna khubsurat hai, ao mere sath duniya dekho.” Cheeta ne ek lamha socha phir choohe ke sath dorne laga. Aage ek hathi cocaine pi raha tha, chooha phir bola, “Hathi mere bhai chor do nasha, ao mere sath bhago, dekho ye jungle kitna khubsurat hai, ao mere sath duniya dekho.” Hathi bhi sath dorne laga. Agey sher whiskey pine ki tyari kar raha tha, choohe ne usey bhi wohi kaha. Sher ne glass side per rakha aur choohe ko 5-6 thappar mare. Hathi bola, “Arre ye to tumhe zindagi ki taraf le ja raha hai, kyun mar rahe ho is bechare ko?” Sher bole, “Is kamine ne pichli baar bhi afeen kha kar mujhe 3 ghante jungle me aise hi ghumaya tha…” A little mouse suffering from a terrible bout of oppression, and now in an aggravated and disappointed state has the perfect makings of a terrorist. He goe...

First, I must mention that I am not writing a scientific discourse. This piece has no relation with the noted book ‘The Phantoms of The Brain’. This piece is about a dream that someone had one night while he was trying to get some sleep after a long day’s work. The place that this person stayed in is a far off land which is inhabited by very few, and can be accessed by fewer who yearn so much to. But I must give you readers an introduction of the place and the person. Some of you are co-inhabitants of this strange person in this strange land, and some of you probably know this strange person somehow and are reading this to get an idea of his madness. Some of you know that this place is situated in the middle of a mountainous forest and some of you don’t, who want to know about this mountainous forest. Some of you are aware of the fact that other than a few human beings who risk their whole lives in this place, a lot many spiders, scorpions and snakes also reside here, and in harmony wi...

A 2×2×4 feet tin box with a thunderous rotor and a fountain pump is what I am talking about here. If you try a little, you will no doubt concur with me that it is the ‘Desert Cooler’ that I talk about, which has been recently installed in my room. So what’s so great about this ‘Desert Cooler’? For one, it helps cool down the room a bit (so it seems sometimes). It works on the precipice of absorption of latent heat of evaporation of water (or for that matter any other substances yet untested inside the eight corners of the gurgling gargoyle, such as dry ice and liquid nitrogen). I leave the observations and results of the above experiments to your reliable responsibility. I will recount a short series of anecdotes I have had to go through for this ephemeral (nightmarish and frugal in the long run) elephant. It was a hot and dry day on which six people ventured out to get themselves something to cool their underarms. After three hours of grueling window-shopping and bargaining, the six p...

Where I am working now, is the heartland of the big cat, the leopard. I do research while leopards hang out in the surrounding jungle, oblivious of our existence. I the middle of Manesar, in Haryana, just where I am located now, lies the edge of the Aravalli range, the home to famous Indian dacoits and the Indian leopard. It is one of the few natural habitats of the big cat left in the country, and that itself seems to be a greater matter of concern than a thing of pride. A couple of years ago, leopards had been spotted in Teekli village off SH-13, and it wasn’t one leopard or one family of the cat, but at least five to six families of leopards spotted at different times near and about that village. The sad but obvious story surrounding any wild animal is the continuous shrinking of their habitat and a continuous encroachment by the multiplying human population. The same story holds true for the leopards of Manesar, Haryana. Leopards here in their natural, unprotected environment have ...

My brain is a tangle of mangled neurons. The thoughts forming in my mind are taking their own course then suddenly losing the plot and going any which way it likes. The urge to express my thoughts verbally has been lost somewhere in the loo that is blowing over North India. What is even worse is that I cannot write anything of much sense, and ending up thinking weirdly and negatively in a very cynical manner yet without the cynical sense of humor. There seems to be a lack of purpose, and of romance in my thoughts, and the dreary life of reasoning seems to have awakened in me finally, to drown me into its vast sea. I can feel a certain unease in my thoughts, and also in the foreboding of more boring days to come. The quality of nervous spikes that are keeping me from dozing off is diminishing, and I am dozing off, slowly. Slow, yes that’s the word that suits the moment. Things are very slow and there is that hint of monotony creeping up already. Desperation, it is rising in my soul, to ...

I just want to say that in this terrible weather, I was sitting in my lab, in the AC, when my bejha was not getting fried, when I thought of a story which I can relate to myself, like many others who can relate to it as well (hopefully), during their own daily ramblings. This story is about a fella, Mike (some fictitious character). Hope you enjoy! It was one afternoon when the Sun was shining so hard, that it would melt any fat lying anywhere, even if it were in the myelin sheath of our neurons. So, it so happened that on that particular afternoon, Mike was walking down the road from his lab to the hostel. He was unaware of the fact that the Sun was beating down upon him like a million joules of heat from a coal furnace. He was thinking very deeply, on a scientific problem and he was determined to find out a means to solve it before the end of the day. The Sun was laughing all the while, jeering at Mike’s foolish ideas and even sillier propositions to be thinking about it while walkin...

Kanhaiyalal Kumawat is our lab technician in NBRC. He is a sweet guy, and I am sorry to say that I can’t say much more about him. It so happened that he went off home to get married just the next day that I joined the place, and the only introduction I had with him went somewhat like this: KK: So you have joined today? DA: Yes. KK: Have you signed in the register, in Sir’s lab? DA: No, not yet. Will you tell me where it is? When you are going to Sir’s room just let me know. I’ll go along. KK: It seems that you folks don’t need money. DA: What are you saying Kanhaiyaji. Of course I need money. KK: So you need money. Then what will happen to people like us? DA: Well, we can all make money together. KK: Hmmm. He probably said something, but I couldn’t quite get his dialect. I reflected in the mean time on the stupidest thing that anyone could say to another person in their first introduction. Later, I heard from all my labmates that Kanhaiya is the nicest fellow on this side of In...