A week that would have never happened!

Yesterday I dreamt that I had received a postdoc position in the US. I woke up with a strange discomfort. Perhaps because curiosity in me has never stayed put in one discipline. It keeps slipping across boundaries, from science to history to art and back again. For a long time I felt like I was missing out on entire worlds that existed just beyond the one I was trained in. Only recently, by saying yes to things that appear unexpectedly, I feel like I am finally catching glimpses of those other worlds.

This last week I went to Hyderabad and Baroda, not very specifically for work, but yet as an extention of it. Hyderabad happened because Prof. Mustansir Barma, former director of TIFR, invited me to visit TIFR Hyderabad during a conversation we had for my current project. I thought, why not?

Baroda happened because Dr. Samira Sheikh asked if I would like to join a small group visiting to study an extraordinary map from the 1750s using spectroscopy-based pigment analysis and other methods. What a privilege to get invited to everything. And what an experience this last week have been!

The entire trip, I encountered people who treated me with a generosity they absolutely did not have to extend. Conversations with Prof. Barma, Anusheela, Shrushti, and many others at TIFR Hyderabad were filled with warmth and curiosity. During one of our conversations, Mustansir told me that he does science for the surprises. We ended up speaking at length about time, about science communication, and about the possibilities of collaboration in science. I also had the chance to see some remarkable work being done by different groups at TIFR-H. It reminded me of that very particular feeling in research, the moment when you realise that you might be the only person in the world looking at or understanding something in exactly that way.

I also somehow managed to convince the TIFR to let me enter the balloon facility. That alone was astonishing. In that humble facility they build enormous balloons, some nearly a hundred metres long, capable of carrying about five tons and rising almost fifty kilometres into the atmosphere. I even met a startup trying to send miniature pharmaceutical factories up there to manufacture drugs in low gravity. I know. It sounds unbelievable.

In Baroda, the highlight was of course the sheer madness of the 1750s map we had come to study. Experts from many different fields coming together to understand the material, the pigments, the intentions, the people and every other story this 13*14 feet monster could tell us.

But just as memorable meeting Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh and Neelima Sheikh, and the chance to see the extraordinary textile and block print collections of Mala Sinha. Walking through the museum with Sindhu and Dhaanya and getting to see art with a very different eyes was also amazing. There was also, at one point, a very elite dinner where all of us collectively seemed unsure what we were supposed to talk about. Baroda exceeded every expectation I had.

All in all, what a week!

I am just saying yes to life and taking trips wherever they lead. But the questions that life is now placing before me are ones I never expected to confront, but only dreamed of. But the curious little child in me, the one who was always the last to leave museums and science exhibitions, is incredibly happy right now. I am deeply grateful that I can still walk into a laboratory or a museum and feel the same thrill, as if the dopamine molecules in my brain have suddenly started dancing in bright colours.

Maybe that's why I don't want to go back to what I was doing, atleast not now. I  hope I can remain in a space where life continues to drop such surprises. As Mustansir said, why do u do what u do? FOR THE SURPRISES BABY!