Be Suspicious by Default

I stay in one of the University apartments located at a remote place in the south border of the campus. A crop field spreads over a vast area across the street. There I see a flock of birds every day making a peculiar chirp, which are bigger than the crow in my country. I wanted to know the name of the bird. But when I see the bird, I couldn’t find anyone appropriate to ask and when someone was available I couldn’t find even a single bird around.

Horses in the field

That day when I reached the bus stop, one girl was already there waiting for the bus. She looked at me and smiled. Her smile was so open and welcoming that I decided to ask her the name of the bird. “Is it crow? I’m not sure.” She answered. It was my first meeting with Marisa Gwidt who is a journalist, now back to school for her masters course.

But the other day I told her, “If I had read that article earlier, I would not have dared to talk to you.” I was referring to an article appeared in the Daily Illini entitled, “Stepping outside comfort zone isn’t that difficult.” Actually the tone of the article was positive; the author Rebecca says that sometimes it’s good to talk to someone even though it is a stranger. But there were a few comments which bothered me, like “parental warnings of never talk to strangers,” “talking to strangers is creepy and doesn’t seem socially acceptable,” etc. Then I started watching fellow passengers in bus. Yes, it’s true. No one talks to others. And now I’m afraid even to occupy the vacant seat if someone is already on the next seat. Because I don’t know how they feel if a stranger, and that too a foreigner sits next to them.

Then Marisa asked me, “How is in your country? Do you talk?”

I told her that we behave similarly too and I could not find any surprise as this is quite natural everywhere. In my country, we talk to strangers during travels only if it is necessary. I never claim that my country is safe. Recently there was a blast in the Supreme Court campus, a place where we expect utmost security and safety. We need to and have to take precautions. I read similar warnings in India and America, “Don’t touch unattended bags or boxes. If you find it, call the police from a safe distance. Be a transit watcher.” or “Be suspicious by default.” Then we become all the more conscious. It is scary for anyone to read such warnings.

Then Marisa said, “May be we think that we can control everything.” Evidence for the freedom of speech in America. Perhaps this is because of her journalistic mind.

It’s Winter Here

We have only two major seasons in our place: summer and the rainy seasons. In all the other months we experience more or less the same weather. But in the US, the changes in all the four seasons are very visible. Fall is famous for the changing hues of leaves from green to brown, yellow, red and orange. Winter is the toughest, sometimes with terrible snow fall. It is difficult for a south Indian to bear severe cold.

Winter vanishes slowly

Physically Challenged: They are Human Beings too

Not in my country, but here in America. It can be true in Europe and some other countries as well.

Sometimes my country beats all the other nations in my ‘comparisons’, sometimes it just wins, but there are occasions where she undergoes utter failure. The management of persons with disabilities is an example of this. At the place where I live in my country, I’ve never seen anyone on wheelchairs in public places, except in hospitals. No surprise. We never expect them to come out of their dwellings. If someone is challenged by birth, he/she is supposed to spend the entire life inside their home. We don’t expect something different from a person who becomes physically challenged by an accident or some disease. Perhaps in developing countries like mine, wheelchairs are too expensive for a common man to afford. Even if someone can buy it, they can’t move about in public places. There are no handicapped facilities on streets, side ways, buses and buildings in India.

In America, the rights of a handicapped person are protected by law and they get priorities in public places. There are special ramps near the entrance of the buildings so they can wheel inside. The sidewalks on streets are designed so that they can move without any hassles. It is said that this is one of the first universities which provided curb cuts to facilitate persons on wheelchairs. The MTD public buses have an access system for them; if a person on a wheelchair is there to board the bus, the driver can lower the side of the door and a metal platform is projected outward so that the person can move the wheelchair inside. There are facilities at the front of the bus to secure the wheelchair firmly. 

Ramp near the Material Research Lab

Beckman Institute, a Multidisciplinary Lab

One lion fish, one star fish, one clown fish and two other fish too in that fish pot. All are beautiful. I learned their names from the description posted by the side. There is a wall poster too highlighting an interesting recent finding of that research team. The phenomenon of changing the gender in clown fish; a male clown fish can become a female in certain circumstances!

I’m not in a zoo, nor in an aquarium. But I’m in the corridor outside our lab in the Beckman Institute. Our neighboring lab is Marine Biology, containing many fish bowls used for their experiments. They maintain a sample aquarium on their windowsill for people like me to see. 

Lion Fish

 

This is Beckman Institute, which is an interdisciplinary research institute devoted to physical sciences, engineering, biology, behavior, cognition, neuroscience and computation. Here research groups work within and across their own field. There can be marine biology lab next to the signal processing lab and a brain mapping lab near the environmental lab. This provides a facility for people belonging to different fields so they can at least watch the research work of others, even though they aren’t permitted to encroach upon the work of others. People start thinking about collaborations only if there are chances to know the difficulties or challenges in others’ work. This is one reason why I really appreciate my Professor (faculty associate) who takes people from different fields like physics, electrical engineering, polymers, chemistry, bio engineering, electronics and other fields. Selecting the host and the host institution is very important. Fortunately, I got one best innovator as my faculty associate.

I haven’t found such a laboratory in any of the universities in my country. There can be certain national labs where different disciplines function under the same roof. But in universities different departments function in separate buildings. We don’t even think about the possibility of interdisciplinary research.

Beckman Lab; different views

Morrow Plots, Daily Illini and the Nobel Prize

The flight landed at the Willard airport which is owned by University of Illinois (UC). Yes, this is one of the few universities which has an airport of its own. The university has an aviation institute associated with this airport. 

Being one of the oldest universities in America, UIUC has many historic places and buildings. One is the Morrow Plots formed in 1876. This is the oldest continually used experimental crop fields in America and second oldest in the world. It is said that when the university planned to construct the library near the plots, it was built underground to get sunlight for the crops. This place is that much important for the university. The tour guide, who leads the new students and parents through the campus, says, “It’s rumored that if you trespass the Morrow Plots, you’ll be expelled from the university.” 

They publish an independent student newspaper, The Daily Illini since 1871. One university publishes a daily newspaper with a minimum of 12 pages and it looks like any other newspapers on stand, for a century and a half! The paper has a long history of producing many of the country’s most influential journalists and media persons. Whenever I see that paper I ask myself, “Is it possible for my home university to publish at least a monthly newspaper? Will it ever happen?” 

        John Bardeen was with this University, who won the Nobel Prize twice; for inventing transistor and for the idea of Superconductivity. It is interesting to see the importance they give to the department where he worked during that period.

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                 The engineering library has a beautiful courtyard. I saw a gentleman sitting outside  the library lost in reading a book. But when reached closer I realized that it was a statue. I was curious to know what he was reading. It was The Future: A Broader Agenda for Computer Science & Engineering.

Engineering Library

My Complexion and Bhagavad Gita

I used to stand outside the lab those days. There were many who passed by me. Most of them didn’t even notice me while some just looked at me and passed. But he smiled at me and asked, “Why are you standing here? Thinking?”

“No, it’s very cold inside the lab,” I replied.

“Where’re you from?”

“India”

“Then you must be from South India?”

He guessed it correctly from my complexion, I thought. Some foreigners have a notion that all the south Indians are dark. It’s true to some extent, though. I had faced the same question before and I didn’t have any problems in referring to my complexion. Anyway, I didn’t want to tell him that even though I’m of very dark complexion, there’re fair ones even in my own family. One can’t predict exactly the home place of an Indian from her color.

“Wear your lab coat; it’ll keep you warm.” He continued.

“I don’t have a lab coat.”

“Really? I’ve a spare lab coat. I can give you that.”

It was so surprising that a person, who had seen me just for a couple of times, was offering me a lab coat. Are Americans so friendly? I refused his offer politely. He (Jason) asked my name.

“Is it Bhagavad Gita?” He asked me when he heard my name. I was really astonished and glad that an American knows about our sacred book. “My wife is from Dehradun, India. It’s very cold there. But south India is very hot, isn’t it?” He added.

That’s it; he wasn’t referring to my complexion when he guessed I was from South India.

About a Professor

“See that pattern. It seems so weird? Why is it so? Does anyone know the answer?” the professor said, looking at the diagram and laughing. It was a gathering of research scholars, postdoctoral fellows and their supervisor. One student was presenting his experiments on some specific materials.

Mind you, this was said by a person who has about 80 patents in his credits among which 50 are in active use by reputed companies. In addition to many prestigious awards, recently he received the Lemelson-MIT prize, one of the biggest awards in the world for innovation and creativity. This is none other than my faculty associate, Prof. John Rogers in the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign).

In another meeting he said, “I don’t know the answer; you change the design and make it a device.” Only a person with utmost humility can say like this. Because further discussions revealed that it was a mere statement. He described where the students went wrong and gave them guidelines for future experiments. I was so amazed at this sort of approach as I met another faculty member quite recently boasting, “I’m a full professor. I know everything.”

Wherever I go, when I see something different or if I face a peculiar situation, I start comparing it with my past experiences. I know it is a bad habit. People are having entirely different culture, character, education, life style, economical status and family background. How can we expect the same outcome from dissimilar conditions? I know it is not even reasonable to compare different situations with one another. But I can’t help avoid this comparison anyway.

I started my research work in a few days of my arrival at the UIUC. It has been a highly productive time in my research career. I learned a lot from Prof. Rogers, my group members Kazuki, Debashis and Rico. Prof. Rogers is so stimulating saying, “Looks fine” or “Good thoughts”. I know these are mere words of encouragement or courtesy, but it matters a lot to me. I’ve learned many lessons from my Fulbright life, especially as a faculty member. I will try to practice it, though I might not succeed fully.

I am a faculty member in my country. The experience in this lab and the knowledge I gained helped me preparing the syllabus for a new subject in our curriculum. If I am the person who is going to teach this subject, I’m pretty sure that I would be more confident than I was.

Differences

India is a big country with people having so many languages, culture, food habits, dressing style, complexion and celebrations. Being from such a country, I could not find many cultural differences in America. The main differences I felt were only due to the difference in human character. Of course there are some differences. It will be foolish to judge whether these differences are good or bad, as these are just differences only. People are similar everywhere and they have many things in common too.

I knew earlier that the social and academic lives in the US are very different from those in India. The freedom of the young generation to live separately from their parents and the free interaction of students and teachers are very rare in my country.

I found an interesting difference; Students in US do their internship with local politicians and a selected few even get the opportunity to work in the White House as well. But in India, I’ve never heard of students doing their internships with politicians. And I’m not sure whether they get permission from the academic authority, even if anyone wishes to do so. Perhaps Indians don’t accept politics as a systematic profession. And do we consider it as public service, which can be accomplished only by dedicated human beings?

Americans show good manners always. They follow the queue in public places. They keep the door open for the next person, which is very rare in my country. Americans believe in strong family relationships and they put photographs of their family members in offices. But in our country normally people do not exhibit such photos in offices. Apart from Christmas; soccer, football, Halloween and New Year are the biggest celebrations for Americans, not religious ceremonies as in my country.

Bus drivers often wish us “good day.” I can’t even imagine saying “thank you” to a bus driver in my country. Drivers obey all the road rules without failure, which is not that true in my country. Proper instructions are always given to people with signs. Visitors are not confused what to do and what not to do. The important thing is that people obey all these instructions unlike in my country, where if it is marked ‘stick no posters’ on a wall, posters in the entire district will be pasted over there.

Even in the midst of all the technological advancements, a researcher still needs to carry a bunch of keys with him. I always wonder why they don’t find an alternative instead of carrying many keys. Perhaps they don’t find it difficult to carry so many keys.

Lesson 1: Color of My Bag

It was a long, tiring journey, changing four flights. Finally I was at the baggage claim area in the last airport. It was a regional airport and not so busy. All the passengers left the place leaving me there searching for my bag. Yes, I didn’t get it. I heard many others complaining that they lost their bag during flight journey. It wasn’t my first overseas travel. Such a mishap never happened to me and I never expected that it would happen to me (ha ha!!!).

I described my itinerary to the officer. He searched in the computer and said, “It shows that your bag is at Cochin, India.” I said, “How come is it in Cochin? About three hours ago I checked it in at the Atlanta airport. Even if they send it back, it will take about twenty hours to reach Cochin, if we count only the flying hours.”

Officer replied, “Anyway I will register a complaint. If you’re fortunate you’ll get it back.”

I knew, I wasn’t.

He then asked me, “What’s the color of your bag? Show me the type of bag in this list.”

“Color of my bag…” I mumbled. “I think it’s maroon..no brown. It’s blue. It’s having black lines.”

He looked at me suspiciously.

Anyway then typed; Maroon/Brown/Blue with black lines and gave me a copy of that complaint for record.

I was really upset and my mind was completely after the lost bag. I had only an extra pair of clothes in my carry on bag. All the warm clothes were in the lost bag. I was tired and sleepy from jet lag but still I couldn’t sleep well and many times I woke up in the night and made a list of things to be purchased urgently on the next day.

Next morning at the door of the residence, there smiled my bag.

A black box with a few blue lines here and there..