Indian Ameri

After sneaking out of the shared hotel room at half past midnight, as I worked on the presentation edits sitting beside the San Antonio river walk, I couldn't stop thinking about the strange encounter I had during my lunch break. My mind still could not process the fact that I had a casual tourist-interaction with a short and much more chubby look-alike of my dad. Fortunately this Mexican retiree had nothing outside the looks common to dad. He had to wait for his wife to finish shopping and commented that he would be ready to exchange two 20s for his 40 year old wife. He sung "Dust in the Wind" in his Mexican tongue and got me a flying kiss from a cute chicitha el bonito by teaching me how to say, "Senorita d'hermosa" (which by the way is our home's wireless name for nearly 6 months). Then I cheekishly wished, "if only dad was like him".

With the Texas breeze gradually imbibing my senses, I lost focus on the work at hand and gazed at the Fiesta couples and Latinos walking/dancing around the mall area. Don't know how long I lost contact with reality, all of a sudden my neurons fired up the feeling of extreme pain in my left thigh to notice that my advisors lap (burning) top just roasted my skin out. The agitated reflex action scared the harmless du du du pigeons, which flew in shock to hit the nearby dancers. And the whole night-life crowd started laughing. It was interesting to see some change.

Two more days later, with Ballsy (The friendliest senior who ragged me first in UG) trying his best to get the patrician laid, and the festive city-mood, I overcame all the unfortunate misrepresentation of myself, my work, and of course the humdrum presented in the not too great conference, with some magic dust thrown over the crowd. Thanks to John, a new post doc contact from a big shots group, I overcame the misery of the overrun presentation and rejected dump of the paper with ease.

Oh yeah! Talking about big shots, my powdered memory gave rise to a firm hand shake with a big time faculty - I preyed upon his solitude situation devoid of other hyenas and gave him a handshake. "Nice article in Scientific American with Langer Doctorrrrrr......... (Oh Shit! I forgot his name. I just remembered it as I walked. How can I forget this guy's name? Process u stupid, miserable brain)......" The faculty, ".......(bends his face waiting for me to blurt his name)...... (Finally gives up on my sincere efforts and...) Thanks Hari! and it's Dr. XYZ" Me - "(He knows my name?? huhhhh. smile now instead of the surprised look...)" and the handshake went strong with a sense of knowing.

The return journey was mournfully sulky with boredom and hangover reeking from the sloppy conference. But, interestingly, in spite of the lean patch of sleep, I managed to see patterned amoebic cities with dead red and green alive cells and other biomolecules from the dusky city lights as we flew over the cloudless 3 hour flight. Good thing, I reeled my ever so sumptuous colleague-cum-friend into the idea of viewing cities as a biomaterial surface packed with living tissue/matrix of cells. (Now that's finally something productive out of the conference).