Lab Diaries - Day 4:

Thursday, 27^th November –

Before I start boring you with details of another lacklustre day at the lab, I would like to rewind to early this night. I could not sleep; I was not having nightmares, not yet (the worst nightmare would be a life sentence to be served in the lab), but I just couldn’t shut my mind off for the night. So I kept thinking. Introspecting. And a couple of points hit . When I realized what I’d written and (actually) done the past three days, I sort of felt ashamed that I did not do any “real” (or experimental) work this week and don't plan on doing any either. To make my current situation clear, I am working on an honorary basis. But recently Il talked again to the D (when I came to the lab really late) and he decided to pay for my accommodation. I was pleasantly surprised to hear this when I came late that day, and Il sat down next to me and told me that I’d struck bronze (no one really strikes gold in research). So last night, I started to feel guilty that I was not being sincere. Well for what I’m being paid, I can afford to be insincere seven days out of ten. Anyhow, the feeling of guilt was there.

But that’s what I realized. That money is not the point. I was being renumerated for Il’s and D’s faith in my ability and I should work hard to maintain that faith (I’m an Indian, can’t help it) . It dawned upon me that part of the reason why I was being as lazy as a sloth’s ass was that I was trying to measure my work in terms of monetary compensation. And forgot that in neuroscience, its not the buck that counts, but the brain that matters, yours and mine and most importantly the lab animals'. And things sort of fell into place and I felt blissful. The kind of bliss that is rare in a research career anyways (the kind of bliss you feel when you get data after months of trials and tribulations, when a paper is published after years of haggling with the referees, and so on and so forth). And I decided that next week, I’d do at least 3 experiments (Yours sincerely).

The second realization was that I don’t think that any other career could be as exciting and frustrating, as stimulating and dull, as multidisciplinary and focussed, as multicultural and Hungarian, as collaborative and independent as neuroscientific research. Just by writing about my day at the lab over the past three days, I’ve realized how interesting life in the lab can be. I never know what I’ll write for the next day! Even though I have a project to work upon, if you observe life as it passes by in the lab, it can be as varied and unpredictable as a woman having her periods. It’s true that maybe I can’t think beyond a research career (forgive my limited imagination) but anything is better than a 9 to 5 desk job, or a job dictated by the opening and closing times of international stock exchanges.

Now that I’ve wasted half a thousand words on last night’s dreams (only half of the dreams, to be honest), let’s get on with today. I was in and out of the lab today– that would be the abstract. I had volunteered to take part in a couple of experiments – one psychiatric, the other cognitive. I was up by 11am, and scurried to the lab by 12.15pm to check my email (I don’t have internet at home, and sadly do not catch the university’s wireless service) before heading off to the Warneford Hospital for a 1 o’clock appointment. I had to fill in more than a dozen questionnaires about how am I feeling, how I felt the past week, how do you feel about the future and so on. The interesting bit came when I was instructed to watch a twenty two minute long video containing traumatic and depressing clips and then quantify my feelings by placing a mark on a straight line. The only interesting clip was from 'The Shawshank Redemption' (I was amazed to see it being used for psychiatric research) starting from the moment where Brooks releases Jake and is let off from Shawshank; his loneliness in his new life outside prison; sleepless nights marred with nightmares; and eventually his decision and act of ending his life. Of course, there was a filler task in between where I sat like the red headed guy from the Sherlock Holmes’ adventure – “The Case of the Red Headed League” and scanned a home encyclopaedia of sorts to find answers to questions which the experimenter had no interest in knowing. It could have been very irritating but as I realized that this task was just to buy time before I answer questions about the video clip (thirty minutes after viewing), I was calm, but very very hungry.

Finally the torture was over, and I took the bus back to the High Street and bought a baguette from everybody’s favourite corner shop on Holywell Street before going back to the lab. I had barely finished my lunch that it was time to pop over to the Experimental Psychology department next door for the other experiment. This one was to prepare me for the kind of tasks I would repeat in an fMRI scanner this Sunday. I managed to survive this one somehow, (I would rather not talk about it) and ran back to the lab to breathe again.

Once back, Il briefed me on the experiments he wanted me to do to clarify certain doubts raised by collaborators on the manuscript. Of course, his manner of request was both polite and politically correct. Finally, I got the opportunity to spend quality time with the world wide web. Mumbai was still in a state of terror and unrest; they managed to put out the fire at Taj Palace but not the fire burning in a billion Indian hearts. And the fire’s spreading, across borders and seas, engulfing the world in a united rage against terrorism.

And then strangely enough, the fire alarm in the department went off, alerting us to the danger of the real thing. That brought another day in the lab to an abrupt end, much like the hundreds of lives back in Mumbai.

I like this picture in today's TOI as it symbolizes that we Indians stand united against terror and our spirit is truly unbreakable -