Primer

You know what they say about first impressions. The first time you enter a country, the city in which you land and the first few people you interact with form the initial impression in your mind, like a primer. For example, a foreigner who lands in Mumbai may have a very different perception of India compared to someone else who would land in say, Chennai. The same is the case when you join a new company or a work place. While the forthcoming experiences may add on to the primer to form a smooth coat or wash it away into oblivion, it is worth remembering that the primer is all that one had to contend with in the initial few days, and the role it played in initiating the arrival of an assortment of shades that made up that final layer of paint we call opinion should not be forgotten.

In this article, I look back at some of the interactions I had with various people in my department within the first few weeks of my joining. It is imperative to keep in mind that USA, a smaller representation of which is my department, is multicultural, multilingual, multiracial and multiethnic. Therefore while some of my interactions have been confusing, some amusing and a few downright hilarious, they have made me think and realize that, no matter how seriously we think of ourselves, there will be someone somewhere to whom we'd appear as amusing as I found some of the people I will describe below. Needless to say, these should be interpreted with a pinch of salt.

Note: All names in this article have been changed for obvious reasons. 

Episode 1: What's in a name?

One of the first interesting incidents that happened was on the very first day I joined. A senior in the lab, Shraddha, was kind enough to take me around the department and introduce me to the students, staff, post docs and scientists. Around lunch time, we happened to be around the eating area of the lab, named as the "break room" replete with a dining table and chairs, microwaves for people to heat up their lunches, a couple of coffee machines, refrigerators, shelves and racks for food storage and what not. The dining table was occupied by four to five people, merrily enjoying their lunch while discussing food, science, shopping and weather, not necessarily in that order. Shraddha, a popular person in the department, grabbed attention as soon as she entered the room. 

"Hi guys! Did you meet the new post doc in our lab? He is Gautam. He just joined Philip's group today."

Shraddha beamed across the table.

Everyone greeted me warmly. 

My name has been something whose right pronunciation in this country is a concept I can only dream about. While it has "conveniently" been tweaked to be pronounced, written and even printed wrongly from the Korean sounding "Gu-Tam", interchanging "A" and "U" to generate the coded "Guatum", to an envelope addressed to Dr. Skenoy (seriously?) and the ridiculous sounding "Thank you for your business Mr. Shendy" (which resulted from a cashier reading capitalized O as D on a printed bill), it has been a disaster waiting to happen.

While the aforementioned modifications happened much later on, I got a clue of what was coming when the various people on the table tried to say my name. I shall not attempt to describe those, as spelling some of them is beyond the scope of the English alphabet.

Seeing the struggles, Shraddha offered to help out.

"It is Gautam. The first name of Buddha. Haven't you heard of the founder of Buddhism, Gautam Buddha"?

One of the enthusiastic ones, David, promptly expressed his thoughts.

"Oh! I didn't know Buddha had a first name!" said David, impressed and amused by the newly acquired information.

"I thought Buddha was a single name, like Madonna." he went on to explain his thoughts in clear words.

That was the first and only time I have heard of people talking about Buddha and Madonna in the same breath.

Thankfully, Lady Gaga has a first and a last name, though both don't make sense.

Episode 2: Two Big Cities

The break room awarded me my second amusing incident of the week soon after I recovered from the Buddha vs Madonna conflict. This time I happened to find my way there on a leisurely afternoon, and caught up with two gentlemen having their cuppa.

Noel, the taller and the more intelligent looking of the two, asked me about my background.

"I belong to Southern India, though I did my PhD from Delhi." I explained.

"Delhi! I know Delhi!" said an excited Gordon, who had been silently, but intently listening to our conversation.

Noel and I looked at him.

"It is a big city in India right?" Gordon looked at me, posing a semi-rhetoric.

"Yeah. It is the capital of India. It is a big city." I was more than happy to oblige.

"Yeah that is right. I know Delhi." he told me learnedly.

"I know two big cities in India," he continued, "Delhi," Gordon took the last sip from his cup, "and Bangladesh."

Noel looked confused now.

"I thought Bangladesh is a country." he said, sounding unsure.

"Is it? It might be a country then. But I know Delhi." Gordon was assured bout the latter.

"Yeah, it is a country, I am pretty sure." Noel was clearing his doubts.

One man's ignorance is another's assurance.

Sometime next week, I met Ramaswamy, a senior post doc on the break room table. He was pulling Harish's leg, the latter being an Indian who has been born and brought up in the USA, about the general knowledge, or the lack thereof, among Americans with respect to anything outside the US. Since it was a friendly humorous conversation in the right spirit, I shared the conversation I had with Noel and Gordon.

"I am surprised they've heard of Bangladesh at all." remarked Ramaswamy.

He went on to narrate an incident that had led him to say what he did.  Apparently, someone he knew, a young lad called Mike wanted to go to Arizona State University for college from his hometown in Kansas. On being asked the reason "Why Arizona?", what Mike said was,

"I've always wanted to live near the ocean. I am tired of living in a landlocked state."

"But where is the ocean in Arizona? asked a confused Ramaswamy.

The world according to Mike: 
The part outside the landmass is the "ocean".

"To the south ofcourse." chided Mike. "Haven't you seen the map? There are no states south of Arizona."

He was right, except that there was the minor matter of a country named Mexico that happened to exist there.

There is a reason why people say that general knowledge is about as (not) general as common sense is (not) common.                                                                   

That, however, is a topic for a different day.

Episode 3: Number Crunching

Our department was a strong one in terms of sheer numbers, and the head count crossed the three figure mark in the summer of 2011. So, for the first couple of weeks, I was meeting some new person or the other every day. Strangely, while I need more than a glance to register a face in my mind, remembering names comes easily to me. Therefore, before long, I could name a lot of people in the department that I had been introduced to, without really remembering how they looked.  

One such time I bumped into a Chinese girl in the department. She was all smiles when she saw me headed towards her, which was a sign that I had been introduced to her before.

"Hi!" she greeted cheerfully. She had one of those smiles which made the face light up.

"You are the new post doc in Philip's group", she informed me. "I am sorry I don't recall your name", she said apologetically.

"Gautam." I said, smiling back at her, expecting a weird sounding version of my name to be repeated.

To my relief (as well as disappointment, to be honest), I was spared the horror.

"I might take some time to remember that." 

I appreciated her honesty.

"You are Xiaoqing, right?" I knew she was. That was easy. Among the Chinese I had been introduced to, only one was a girl and her name was Xiaoqing.

"Yes!" she beamed at me, pleasantly surprised. "You are very good with names."

After a brief chat where she gathered basics about where I came from and the likes, I posed her a regular question.

"So how long have you been here?"

"This is my forst year." 

Did I mention she had a heavy accent?

"Oh! This is your first year too?" I asked enthusiastically, wondering whether I had finally met someone in my age group.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no." Heavy disagreement there.

"This is my.." Xiaoqing held up four fingers, "Four-st year."

"Oh! Fourth year?!

Xiaoqing nodded in agreement.

We chatted for another ten fifteen minutes but her accent got the better of her and what I ended up remembering from our chat that day is how she pronounced Ramaswamy as Llama-swamy (a South American camelid turned ascetic?) and her appreciation for the fact that her boss gives her the freedom to "sink independently" about her project. 

Pun intended? You never know.

Episode 4: The Curious Case of Girish

Indians are never found wanting when it comes to dishing out entertainment, intentionally or other wise. There were quite a few Indians in the department as well as in the institute itself, and it was just a matter of time before I knew most of them.

During the Virginia earthquake of August 2011, we had exited the building and were awaiting instructions for a period of about a couple of hours. The mass of people that had congregated outside formed groups the way they do, by designation, nationality, department or simply leftovers who didn't fit into the other groups. It was at this time that I got introduced to many Indians including a guy who continually cracked jokes to have the people around him in splits most of the time. He was Shridharan. He was tall, had a shaved head and wore glasses. His eyes shifted continuously as if something was distracting him all the time. After exchanging pleasantries, we even figured out that we had a common friend outside the current institute. 

A few days later, it was deja vu as a mass had once again congregated outside the building, this time due to a mock fire drill. And as luck may have it, I ran into Shridharan once again. From his body language, it was apparent that he recognized me.

"Hey man!" A typical dude exchange.

"This stupid fire drill has taken out most of my morning." he complained.

"Yeah, it should be over soon."

"So how is life?"

"Good. I am more or less settled in now."

"Good. So did you find a school for your son?"

I smiled at him. "I don't have a son."

"Atleast that I know of."

Shridharan saw the humor and smiled back.

"Oh yeah, I am sorry. It is a daughter, right?"

I smiled again. "I don't have kids, dude.

You are confusing me with someone else."

"Oh is it?" he looked confused for a moment.

"Has your wife moved in or is she still in Mumbai?"

My smile grew wider. "I am not married." 

"Oh, ok!" There was absolutely no change in his expression.

And at that moment the security guards announced that the fire drill was over and we could enter the building and get on with our business.

"Finally! What a relief!" He did look relieved.

"Alright then, Shridharan, I'll catch up with you later."

"See you, man. You are Girish, right?"

"No, I am Gautam." the smile hadn't left my face.

"Oh! Gautam, is it?"

"Yeah. So this Girish is this friend of yours whose wife is in Mumbai and whose son needs to join school?" I asked him lightly, still grinning. "When you meet him, make sure you don't confuse him with me." I added cheerfully.

"I don't know anyone called Girish." He gave me a look as if I had just accused him of something grave.

"Well then, where did Girish come from?" I genuinely wondered.

"You just look like a Girish to me." With that he smiled at me and went his way.

The smile on my face gave way to bewilderment. I admit I was stumped.

I still haven't been able to explain to myself what exactly happened that day, or how the minds of certain people work.

Maybe I'll die wondering.

And that my friends, is a brief collection of some of the more memorable incidents I remember from my first few weeks here. What happens to the primer remains to be seen.

Just last week, I was sitting on my desk talking to a young American research assistant in our lab and couldn't help but notice that she was able to pronounce my name as well as that of my recently migrated friend Hridesh to near perfection.

"You've got to give it to them", I thought. "They are making an effort; and with this kind of Indian influx into the country, they'd soon be far more comfortable with our names."

And that was when someone from Hridesh's lab came looking for him.

"Your friend Radish, has he come in today?"

"Yes, Hridesh has come in, I think he is reading by his desk." I sent him off in the right direction.

I couldn't suppress a quiet smile.

His priming has just begun. 

After all, he has just started his forst year..

Ricky Ponting Fined for Sydney Ton- ICC Suspects Foul Play; Orders Probe

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has fined former Australian captain Ricky Ponting eighty percent of his match fee for scoring a century in the ongoing test match at Sydney. Sharad Pawar, the president of the ICC, said that the $400 fine was justified for letting down the immense expectations that cricket fans had harbored before the start of the series.

"Ricky has obviously disappointed all of us", said Pawar in words that were as clear as they were minced, in a unique sort of a way. "He has been under the radar for the past few innings now. People do not pay money to watch this. Ricky is a role model to people like Steve Smith. He should not set wrong examples.We are ordering an inquiry into the matter. Foul play cannot be ruled out. While foul play is generally used to describe the way Aussies play their cricket, there are chances that we have been missing the bigger picture all along."

"The first hint of suspicion arose when Ponting started hitting the ball far more frequently than he ever has for the last few seasons. At once stage, he even middled three balls in a row. We have video evidence for this."

"Under the circumstances, we all know that Ponting could not have made all those runs without any help. We have reason to suspect the involvement of a bigger nexus. The exclusion of Harbhajan Singh from the Indian attack, for example, has been puzzling and got us thinking about a bigger scam. Pretty much everyone who watches cricket knows that Ponting can read Mandarin better than he can ever read Harbhajan's offspinners, even the ones that don't turn."

"If we do find them guilty, we will not hesitate to put the on trial. You saw how ICC kicked Amir, Asif and Salman('s) Butt. We have zero tolerance." said Pawar in angst.

Searching for answers: Ricky Ponting

 

When contacted, Ricky Ponting conceded that he had made a mistake.

"It was obviously something I did not do on purpose", explained Ponting. "It was a run here, a run there and suddenly, without realizing, I was a hundred plus. No matter how much I tried, the ball kept finding my bat. This is obviously something I have been working on. I am batting well in the nets. Most of the balls hit the middle of my pad. It is just a matter of time before that translates into performances out in the middle."

Michael Clarke, who is the captain of the current side, said he had full faith in Ponting, and was confident that he would bounce back from this debacle soon.

 "I've known Ricky since I was a stupid young lad, who knew nothing about cricket", said Clarke, referring to the 2009-2010 season. "Ricky would never do something like that on purpose. He knows what he can and cannot do. One of the evenings when we had gulped down a couple of bottles in the bar, Ricky told me how much Australian cricket meant to him and how he would do everything to protect the reputation that greats like David Boon, Greg Chappell and  Steve Waugh had given our team. You could take one look at his career and see how mush he strove to protect the spirit of Australian cricket. Over the years, he has relentlessly toiled to claim grounded catches, argue with umpires about right decisions, foul mouth the opposition, spit on his hands before shaking hands with the Poms and do everything else that Steve Waugh would have been proud of."

"Ricky knows what he can do and what he can't. For instance, I was next to him when Andrew Strauss won the toss in a 2009 Ashes test and told Ricky he can bat. Ricky told him, 'No, mate, I can't. I really can't.' Now it takes extreme confidence to say something like this. Of course, England went on to bat first and make a huge score and won the test comfortably. But that is irrelevant."

"I know Ricky shall come back strong from this. He is a dirty old fighter. I am sure he will bounce back with single digit scores and hopefully even get a couple of ducks before the end of the series. It is funny how cricket fans are so short sighted, he has played consistently over the last two years with an average of nearly 27 and not one century to his name. It has to be some sort of a record. Even in the recent South Africa series, he got off to a good start with three single digit scores before his form waned towards the end of the series where he made a seventy odd. Where were his critics then? He gets one century now and look at how people are calling for his head. Ridiculous."

Clarke went on to say that he did not disagree with the imposed fine, but would appeal against it as a matter of principle. "That is just the way we play our cricket, and we as a team, are proud of it. We always appeal, it doesn't matter to us if it is out or not, or whether that ball bounced a couple of times before we caught it. This is no exception, and who knows, things might just go our way again. However, I am confident Ricky won't repeat this in the near future."

Symonds: An enigma in himself

The incident sparked widespread interest among the cricketing fraternity, equally so among the greats and the not so greats.

Andrew Symonds, a former Australian cricketer closely associated with Sydney and who had been nominated thrice for the "spirit" of cricket award, tweeted " A ton at the SCG? No monkey business!! I feel really sorry for Ricky. We used to have so much fun punching each other in the face.  Hoo Hoo Haa Haa! I am going out for a drink at the Bananas Pub."

"Ricky is an inspiration for wannabes like me", said an excited Steve Smith, glad to be asked his opinion on anything at all. "Not everyone who plays for the Australian team has talent, but that doesn't mean they should not nurse any hope. We look at him and think, if he can stay in the team, so can we." Steve Smith top scored with 26 runs for Tasmanian Bullies XI in addition to his impressive returns of 1-76 in 10 overs against NSW Pussycats in a  match on Tuesday, and was hopeful of a test spot soon. "If I keep playing like this and get a few more twenties, and Ricky fails a few more times, who knows what could happen?"

Michael Hussey, another veteran who made a century in the test match, was quick to jump to Ponting's defense. "Give that guy a break. He certainly doesn't deserve this hundred after what he has done for Australian and world cricket. He should have been dropped at least a year back. I don't know why selectors are treating him so badly. With his age and the kind of form he has been in, he should be hunting ducks in the wild rather than getting them on the field like he is. He certainly doesn't deserve it."

Steve Waugh, never the man to shy away from the limelight, was typically distraught as he was pretentiously critical. "Ricky has hit a bad spot, no doubt. If you see this innings properly, it does appear that he tried his best to get out, as there were a couple of chances that went down. Maybe he should have tried harder. At the end of the day, he doesn't want to make a difference. I looked at some of the stats and it appeared that the ball hit the center of his bat about 43 percent of the time, which is much higher than the 20.9 percent that he has managed over the last couple of successful years he's had. It is obviously something he has to work on. His bat is not used to hitting so many balls in the center. Even his footwork seemed present in that innings. Generally, he shows the best footwork on his way back to the pavilion."

Ian Chappell, one of Ponting's greatest fans and one of the most neutral commentators ever in every Australian's opinion, said, "Looking at the way he made those runs, I am thinking of making a comeback to test cricket myself."

The spectators also expressed their disappointment. Michael Beer, holding a bottle of whiskey, was at the SCG. "The moment Ricky walked in, we were waiting for his wicket. There was huge anticipation about how he would get out. Unfortunately, it never happened.I don't know what came over him. It hasn't happened for a long time that we've had to wait for a Ponting wicket. We are immensely disappointed and want our money back."

"Hope this doesn't happen again, else that will be the end of test cricket." he added.

The ICC, while ordering a probe to look into the circumstances under which Ponting scored a century, sounded out an alarm for the SCG curator as well.

"Pitches that allow every Mike, Ricky and Hussey to score tons are simply not acceptable. For all you know, even Brad Haddin might have scored a 30 plus on this wicket. These substandard wickets will be examined by our representatives and appropriate action will be taken.", said Ruwana Kulaweerapatabandigahare, an ICC official who didn't want to be named for obvious reasons.

There was also a warning for the Indian bowling attack.

"This is their second breach. In the world cup quarter finals too they had allowed Ponting to score a century. One more breach will lead to severe disciplinary measures being taken against them. This is bad sportsmanship. They are disappointing cricket fans the world over. We will be keeping an eye on them for the rest of the series."

"At this rate, even tail-enders like Stuart Broad will score centuries against them." Wait, but hasn't he, already?

"We have spoken to the Indian team management and said they will avoid a repeat of this in the rest of the series."

The third test starts on January 13th at Perth, Western Australia. Everyone will be hoping that the Sydney ton was an oddity and will not be repeated in the near future.