Genes, Adda and Other Inheritances

  Thinking Through Exams: Tales from Both Sides of the Table This rambling ( a longish one) was triggered by a comment made by one of my M.Sc. students from the last batch that I formally examined. Responding to my earlier blog, the student wrote: “I am really excited to read more of your upcoming blogs. I hope they will be simple, full of puns, unlike the complicated exam questions you set!!!!” Complicated exam questions! That got me thinking. Had I got it right? Or had I got it terribly wrong? Today, we have semester-end examinations, continuing assessments, internal assessments, and what not. In our times, life was simpler. There was one year-end annual examination, occasionally interrupted by a few class tests taken by the more adventurous teachers. I have often wondered what the real difference is between an examination and an assessment. To me, assessment is a broader idea. It is a little more open-ended. It tries to understand, qualitatively, what a student has actually gras...

  As I start my blogging… I asked myself….. Who am I? I am a student of Genetics for over several decades, sharing with others whatever I have imbibed — sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I call myself a student as whenever I thought I had everything under control a gene here expressed differently, a gene there mutated and I was back to learning.  I am also a researcher. I began my first steps with the lovely fruit fly, then to microbes like yeast and E. coli , and finally to plants. Through all this, I have tried to understand aspects of gene expression — how genes speak, when they remain silent, and why they sometimes speak in places where they were not expected to. In between, I also tried to make a useful product for the country. That dream, remains alive — though still a little stubbornly unfulfilled. I have survived proposals, reports, meetings, finance and probably too much optimism. I am also a son. I have inherited a lot of my thoughts from my parents, who were sc...

  For a long time, I have written in scattered spaces — a note here, a Facebook post there, a birthday tribute, a comment on science, a memory from school, a reflection on teaching, a few lines on people who shaped my life. Many of these pieces disappear too quickly. They get buried under the next message, the next notification, the next day’s noise. I thought it may be time to gather some of them in one place. This blog is not meant to be a formal autobiography. Nor is it only a science blog. It will be a space where different parts of my life can sit together — genetics and classrooms, South Campus, St. Xavier’s, BHU, friends and family, poems and public issues, memories and occasional mischief. I have spent a large part of my life teaching genetics, but I have also learned that genes are not the only things that are inherited. We inherit stories, phrases, habits, friendships, food memories, songs, prejudices, laughter, and sometimes even unfinished conversations. Perhaps th...