Deep Adhya, PhD

Most people in the scientific field will know what happens when the going gets tough. It is not as if you are physically drained of all energy and all your bones are stiff. It is the mind that cannot take it anymore, and is at the brink of a breakdown. What happens then? What do you do? Nothing. There really is nothing that you can do except go back to your assigned room and weep about it for a while. The situation as I describe is more or less what happens in NBRC, at the end of the world. On the banks of the road that turns out from the institute lies a watering hole in a tin shack. The tin of the shack is often noisy from the apes who dance on it, the banking from naked apes chattering. The clean forest air seems like the perfect buffer to absorb the anger and resentment of everyday disappointments. Sadbir Singh is the owner of a little shop just outside the gates of the National Brain Research Centre. His son is called by the name Manu (in Hindu tradition it refers to the ver...

Acknowledgment: Parthiv Haldipur for showing me around his city and not allowing me to pay a penny out of my pocket for our travails. Outside, the Sun was shining hot. It was hurting the human flesh like needles. Inside the air-conditioning was chilling the bones, freezing the thoughts. The mind is a strange organ. It needs uniformity, it demands challenge. When you think that you are tired and need rest, soon your mind becomes restless for action. Attending a seminar is as torturous as the implementation of the Ludovico Technique on Alex in the movie ‘ The Clockwork Orange ’. Soon the mind rebels the torture and wants to break free, but in the absence of such a freedom, it is made to withstand the pain, till it numbs the senses. But I don’t intend to write a commentary on torture techniques, I intend to explore the feeling of euphoria once you have been able to successfully break free before being destroyed by it. The feeling of crashing the glass of hot water before it c...