Deep Adhya, PhD

I love the balcony. The tiny platform, projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, has seen many a tale unfold for mankind. My own house in Calcutta didn’t have one, but the rooms that I lived in subsequently, had balconies. When I was working near Delhi in an ad agency, I lived in a top floor room having a west-facing balcony floored with marble. I spent close to six months in that room, throughout autumn, winter and spring. After that, I lived in institute accommodation in the middle of a wilderness about fifty kilometres from Delhi. The campus was surrounded by hills in all directions, and was a sight for sore eyes from the monsoon season, through winter, till spring. I exclude the summer months as it is difficult to distinguish this place from the Kalahari Desert during that time. In this place, I lived on a first floor room with an east-facing balcony for two and a half years. It was in Gurgaon, bordering Delhi in the South, that I...

It has been more that forty years since the first mission on moon. Since then, moon has been invaded many times, by man or unman. But all of these missions have needed rigorous planning and plenty of Government money. And, now Richard Branson aims at sending tourists to space and someday even to the moon.  But all that is besides the point. Mandi House is a seven-point crossing at the heart of New Delhi. It is located close to the famous Connaught Place and it is the cultural hub of the city. Other than the National School of Drama, it is home to several auditoriums and museums. But what is its relationship with Manesar?  Manesar is a little village in Haryana about 50km away from Mandi House. Other than the silly village folk who live here, it is home to the headquarters of the National Security Guard or the NSG. NSG serves the obvious purpose of protecting our vulnerable nation against evil-doers. It is also a seat of national intelligence (or so run the rumor m...

He sat in the corner, not able to decide what to do in his free time. Each day after he finished his assignments and came back home, he was faced with this unique problem. He was a cartoonist, and he was experienced in drawing caricatures of men. But that was at night. At day time, he worked in a lab.  When he was at home, there were so many people around, known or unknown. Just looking at them gave him weird ideas on how to turn them into cartoons. Often he went back home, put pencil on paper, then for a couple hours was transported to an imaginary world of facial elements floating, which through his willpower he harnessed and put together into a living form on paper. There was nothing dull about such days however trying the work might have been. He was satisfied with his life, happy with the little that he did.  On some days, he went to the theatre, watching whatever went on, getting ideas from individual performances. He rarely ever cared about the story, and even...

Silence! Enough said. Listen to the delirious rapture of hungry birds. Watch the steady eyes of the crouching cat. The aroma reaches the nostrils with the gentle waft of air as you walk with the bag of food to the dining room. The pet dog watches patiently, expectantly, his mouth half open. You slowly open the screen door to enter the room where hungry humans have gathered. There is no need to announce. Opening the bag, you find several plastic bowls, the food glistening through their transparent lids. Someone has to bring in the rotis. That has been taken care of, thankfully. Eating together had never been so systemized. You close the door on the eager dog and solemn cat. Once inside, your heart softens. You unpack the food. Humans, they eat all day, yet are the greediest of all animals. Looking at the food, they know they are going to eat it but soon start whining when they still don’t find anything on their plate after a couple of minutes. Whose fault is it? The momentar...

My name is Hachiko. I live in the land of the end of the world. Here I have met many interesting monsters in my little life. These monsters have given me shelter, so they are not so bad. But sometimes, they behave rudely with me, as if I have done anything wrong by asking for some food. In any case, they feed me with all kinds of food. They have no idea how much acidity I have because of that. First, they used to give me biscuits, and sometimes milk. For how long can I subsist on biscuits? I stopped eating them. Sometimes I used to make a fool of these monsters by showing that I am interested in the biscuits. I used to sniff them, and pretend that I want them. How foolish these monsters can be. By the way, they call themselves humans. I am Hachiko the dog, the dog who is thankfully not a human. I can bark little bit. I am learning to clear my throat. These humans make so much noise in so many frequencies that sometimes I faint trying to understand what they try to say to me. I...

Life in a pinball machine can be a rather rough life, closed within the four walls with God watching from the glass window above. Within, inescapable scrutiny, there are obstacles. Even then, one never gets to know what one is doing, being controlled at all time by plastic flippers. One has to gather as many points as possible. That is the aim. For this, one has to bounce around aimlessly, since it is beyond one’s control to direct destiny. One cannot act on one’s conscience. One acts on the consciousness of God. To remain satisfied one has to either submit to this reality or be the one on the outside controlling the game. People who will read this will know that when one lives in such a system, as in a pinball machine, one bounces around, initially in the momentum from the plunger, then gradually as the juice dries up, and the energy seeps away, one is inevitably pulled towards the black hole, interrupted only by the divine intervention of the flippers. In between the close...

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...