Swimming is impossible for me. I just can't swim. I don't know why.

So when I have really nothing to say, and for the sake of weekly blogging and for the sake of those 2-3 people who actually care about this blog, I have some general notes for this week.

1. Summer's are going hot and nice. Especially that almost everyone is wearing very little or no clothes. Except me, of course.

2. I am finally understanding Sir Mark Twain's language after finishing 2/3 of the current book.

3. It's strange to know that an year has passed in US and still almost nothing has been accomplished. The world, as of now, still remains unconquered and out of our reach.

4. I'm falling in love every other week. But of course the one person I really love is being constantly loved and remembered by us.

5. Don't know what to put under number 5.

6. Fast Five is one of the biggest no-brainers I have watched in a while. Felt like committing suicide on every other scene. But it was very funny. No doubt about that. Brawny and pea brain men always amuse me :) (Should have put this in #5)

7. I realized I made more resolutions in summer than at new year. Still struggling to keep 'em up.

8. Writing is as bad as ever. Some other project is taking our time indefinitely. Probably will hook up with friends and write some shit later this week.

Oh wait, need to make friends first.

"What's your progress?" asked my professor with regard to the summer research that I'm supposed to conduct in return of the money I get paid.

Note: It's interesting to observe how my writing style is constantly influenced by the authors I read. From Salinger to Steinbeck. Btw, Grapes of Wrath totally ripped me. Totally.

Now the real post, the thing I was going to talk about:

The huge dinner table is set. The party is on. Knives are flashing, forks are digging, tongues are rolling. There is barbecue. Here's pork. And some beef. Is that a rib? Is that a leg? But what animal is that made of, she asks. It doesn't matter, they say. Just eat it. It's good. No? You don't want it? Try something. Here, try a chicken breast. It's soft. If not, get some turkey. Here, c'mon take it. Put some pepper. Why? It's hard to cut? Use a knife. Cut it, tear it, pull it apart, swallow it down.

I can't, she says. Why? It's barbecue! Have fun! Don' be shy. See, the chicken wings are juicy. And red. Red with blood or topping sauce, she asks. Don' know, they say and bite at it. They forget her after a while. She sits there, and looks about the table with hungry yet restricted eyes.

Jokes are made, memories are shared, bonds are made, but the lamb is torn. Torn with delicacy. Torn with knives, forks, bony hands and neat napkins. The mirth and slaughter goes by and by.

Finally, she slides her wrist across the table, the fingers seem to steal a bread piece that came as a side dish. All the side dishes are sitting untouched on the table. She gathers them. She applies a layer of green salad and butter to make a two bread piece sandwich. And without any knives, forks or napkins, she grapples with the sandwich and takes a bite.

And now the others stare at her, in wonder.

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Current Book: "1984" By George Orwell

Current Music: "Mitwa" from Lagaan

Stage I: Doubting

My terribleness follows me like a Shadow. It swoops in almost every event that transpires in my life.

# Science? 
I had submitted a poster 'just-for-fun' for an environmental/sustainability conference which was asking for submissions. I did it in like just 5 hours and send it on the last day. One of the mistakes I did was I never discussed it with my advisor. I should at least taken her advice if not permission (which was infact the most important thing)

But when someone told me that you can't simply send out research stuff by writing your professor's name without consulting her first. It could be sensitive data or data which is not ready to be shared yet. I got a bit scared and just hoped that ofcourse yeah they are not going to accept my silly poster.

And guess what, they did. Bless them.

Then they offered a financed trip to Atlanta in the first week on January, 2011 with the host (Georgia Tech) providing good accommodation and everything in a nice hotel for 4 days. I was elated the day I got that email. But then, my terribleness came into the picture. I had to finally, reluctantly tell everything to my advisor who was kind of  'shocked, not-very-happy' and she gave me some long lectures and told things which made me realize how big mistake I had made. I had sent out the research results without even asking the entire team and she explained, "You're too young now, its just your 1st sem, its too early to put out results, don't worry you'll have a lot of conferences in your career."

And I withdrew from the offer.

# Love? 
Over the past few months in this new land, I had strange encounters with the undergraduate (ug) kind. Especially the female types.

- There was this American blonde ug chick who asked me out for lunch one day. I was sort of blank faced for 20 seconds after which she added, "Only if you're okay with it, I will join you". Then we went to teh lunch in a nice place (I don't know if I have described all this in a previous post, I really don't remember), and she was telling me all sorts of crazy stories including the ones in which she and her friends got so much drunk one Friday night, that her she-friend took off her top in front of everyone and then didn't remember anything about doing such a thing the next day when she woke up.

After that she asked me, "Are you a social drinker?" I hesitated, after which she added, "Do you drink, at all?"

My ideal answer should have been, "Hell yeah, what's life without alcohol?" Instead I told the truth and said, "Umm, no." After knowing that she began to behave a bit differently with me in class, although she still sits next to me. Thank you terribleness.

- Then there is this weird Chinese chick who has been having some close encounters. She doesn't really get tired of waving hands at me whether its the outside of the library or the inside of my department or even if its bloody long corridor. Whenever I see her, or I go past her, I see a hand propped up in air and a smile spread on her face welcoming my existence. But then I discarded all these signs considering the fact that some people are just really cheerful and friendly. Too BLOODY FRIENDLY.

But then my doubts were assured when yesterday I met her on my way to the lab and she appeared there, with a propped hand and a plastered smile and asked me,

"Are these your new glasses?"
"Wuh? uh? Umm, yeah," (I was left shocked as nobody in the entire frikking town recognized that I bought new glasses, cuz they pretty much look the same as my old ones, and yes if you remember well I had to order new glasses online due to this.)

"Well, how did you know? I mean, how'd you notice?" I asked.

"It has gray...bla bla..earlier was black..." and she added a lot of other technical information which I didn't hear as I was too busy being shocked at her power of observance.

"Oh um okay. okay c u then," I said and tried to escape my stalker (totally different stalker from this one)

"Btw, you know your glasses are awesome," she smiled as wide she could before I turned my back to her.

That line kept ringing for quite a bit in my mind but then I thought I shouldn't waste too much time thinking about Americans and Chinese, cuz there is a Indian out there, far away, waiting for me.

And since she is there for me, so I could really care less.

I could feel that man's warm breath gently brushing past my right cheek. His exhalation and inhalation were absolutely uniform, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm. The longer his face stayed so close to mine, the higher my uneasiness grew. Not to say about the red light he was shining in my right eye since the past 40 seconds.

Finally he wheeled back on his swivel chair and said, "Hmm, okay the next test now."

I let out a sigh of relief on having my optician off my face and remembered the day it had all begun. It started recently when the letters and numbers on the blackboards of my classes began to blur. I knew I had to get an eye exam but I was delaying until now. After finding the cheapest deal in the city, on which my health insurance gave some discount, I finally had found time to take the eye exam.

All the time I had cursed the healthcare, eye-care and such stuff since it was so costly in US but now when I actually went through the examination of my ENTIRE eye, I was convinced that it was worth the cost. The doctor spend around 45 minutes on me and did a whole lot series of tests which I had never heard of. That's another thing, that this one eye exam has changed a lot in my life.

After a lot of boring and long sessions of guessing my vision defect by showing a hell lot of skewed images, the doctor gave my first shock. He told me that I was suffering from something called "Astigmatism" and till now I have been wearing incorrect glasses. This first shock of being diagnosed with a new disease was subdued when he said that its pretty normal and can be easily corrected by a kind of lenses.

"But when your new glasses with the new subscription come out, you gonna hate me, at least for two days because your vision will be all groggy," the doctor said with a dramatic tone.

I was already beginning to feel that there was something queer about this particular eye doctor and I was sure of it after a few minutes. Because this first shock was nothing compared to the second shock that came and shook me and my life.

After a series of another tests which included dropping stingy and weird liquids in my eyes, he pulled out a large sheet with four technical sketches of a human eye.

"These are the four stages of a human eye. This first one is the normal eye, everybody has it like this. When suffering from a particular disease, the structure begins to change and a person shifts to stage two and then the eye looks like this. The fourth stage, can you see, how distorted that is? That's the final stage of X," he lectured and allowed me some time to grasp and make sense of what he was saying. I also asked some doubts and I made sure I could now answer any question based on those sketches.

Once I had nodded to indicate that I had understood so far and he could now proceed to teach me more, he blurted out the bloody fact,

"And guess what? You're on stage four," he said and watched my face with the most serious look.

"Wh-what? Why? I am suffering from X? But what is this X?" words that left my mouth were staggered and ill-structured.

"X is a disease which slowly leads to complete blindness," he said in a calm tone, just like stating a fact or writing a death sentence.

"B-but it can be cured right?"

"No, X has no cure. But yes, it can be managed," he said with an expressionless face, not allowing me to make any inference from his statements.


I stayed silent for a few seconds and then he filled the silence between us with a smile and some assuring words, "But, but, but, BUT, I said your condition is at stage four it doesn't mean you are diagnosed with X. The good news is your bla bla is quite huge. I mean, its gigantic as compared to normal people. Its very strong. So that bla bla could be the reason why I am getting a number higher than normal. But again it could be X too."


I didn't know whether to feel good or bad. I just stayed silent, my eyes and ears urging to hear more. My heart skipped a few beats and I was breathing fast now. The small room's walls at the clinic were suddenly beginning to crash upon me.

He continued after a pause, "SO, X is very rare at your age of 21. It usually occurs at old age or people having such such diseases. But then it could occur at your age as well, we can't say. Since I don't know your old records and you haven't been ever tested for this before, I can't say whether you have moved from stage 1 to stage 4 over the time - which means you are suffering from X OR you're born with stage 4 and your bla bla large size is giving me higher range numbers."

"S-so what does it mean?"

"It means I will put you under surveillance condition. You will have to get regular eye exams in order to verify whether your number is increasing or not, whether you are indeed moving up the stages or not. If you're not, well then its just because your bla bla is huge and its because of that, so no worries there."

"How often do I need to take a test?"

"Atleast once a year would be adequate. Okay so you're good to go. Anymore questions?" he said and pulled back his chair.

I wanted to ask a whole bunch of questions and have a long discussion with him in which he could assure me that I was all right but then nothing much came to my mind so I stayed blank face.

"Did I confuse you to death with all that jargon and technical terms?" he asked with a mild pity on his lips.

"No, I got it. But you scared me a bit," I said, like making a plea before a judge.

"Well," he hunched up his shoulders in a manner of justifying himself, "I just believe that you should know the truth about your health. You should be in control of your own life."

I exited the clinic, my mind swinging. On my way back, while sitting in the bus, I was looking the greenery and all those pretty sites which I daily see and then thought, "One day, I won't be able to see them?" Fear and worry struck me like it had before but this time the intensity was higher.

Then after a few hours, I remembered all other people in the world and their conditions and their rare problems. And compared to them, I thought, I am nothing. I am not even diagnosed with X yet. I might have it and I will know about that for sure after one year. And even I have it, I can manage it with proper medication. All those people did fight it, right? So I am. I am going to fight it.

Either you can get scared of a situation and hide your face in your pillow and tell n oone about it. OR, you can come out, yell and say, "I am going to fight it."

People like Helen Keller, Lance Armstrong, Stephen Hawking did fight, didn't they? But one thing I have realized today is, its easier to fight off a financial burden and seek success, because you know your financial problems will be taken care of after success and thus you have the right motivation. I am no more in any kind of financial burden, but there were times in my childhood when I lived under a temporary roof that leaked, that's completely another story. But I am saying that its much difficult to fight a medical problem and still do something in your life. Because for a few hours, I had lost complete motivation to do anything in my life. I just wanted to lie down and rest. I wanted to stop running.

But no, I am not going to sit back. I am going to fight it. There will be a post after an year about my results. Either I am clean or am not.  Even if that means waiting for one year for one test I can do nothing about and which will decide my fate, I will fight. I am in control of my life.

Are you?