The performative physicist - Part 2

 Now that I have got my opinions about first kind of performative physicist, let me move on to the second. Namely the ones who post a random apparatus/measuring equipment from a lab and posts a 1000 word caption beneath it. I don't know what the intention of the people who post those are. i.e is their intention to create an outreach post/post that creates awareness to the general public who may see that post? Or is the intention to promote oneself, which may come across as cringe? 

If the intention is creating awareness it is ok. But not fine in my opinion. Rather than posting some mundane thing like a pen and saying "this pen is the one with which I write the readings I read off from my equipment", it would be much helpful to just post a picture of the actual equipment and explain its function in 1000 words. That may actually give people the opportunity to see what the physicist is doing in their lab and may or may not understand the science behind it. This is what big collaborations do - post pictures of accelerators, detectors and components of the experiment and explain them properly. Many collaborations have social media pages where they do these and we also follow them, like the posts and share them. It is all fine if the intention behind the post is to spread knowledge, create awareness and inspire a student or two to actually join the experiment and work on it.

 It is fine if someone (can be oneself too) is posting the picture of a newly awarded PhD student with a description of their work for the purpose of enlightening people about their work.  

     It is not fine, when the whole intention is to draw attention to oneself and humble brag with the help of a random thing/prop from somewhere, because one feels the need to promote oneself and tell the world how awesome they are. (I find it unsettling when people, whom others already consider awesome indulge in this sort of behaviour.) Such posts wouldn't have felt cringe had it not been for the essays people write as captions. It is always the captions. (And sometimes the random object one posts which absolutely doesn't make sense scientifically or aesthetically.) Even if the intention of posting something was heartfelt, a lengthy generic and insincere caption can ruin it all and create the impression of self promotion that will come across as cringe. Then there is the question of why one feels the need to promote oneself with such lengthy captions. The captions that are generic and again seem like they are written by some AI. Ultimately everyone will end up "writing" like an AI (oh wait - AI is writing for everyone) and then start uniformly sounding hollow (like an AI). (Just like a certain generation says "gonna, wanna" despite the geo location they grew up in, because of exposure to social media.) There is a thin line between educating others with a post and performing self promotion. 

 And a question which I want to ask scientists is - "why do we feel the need to behave like celebrities in the entertainment industry"? Really, why do scientists feel the need to attain the status of celebrities in entertainment industry? In that industry, the celebrity is the product - they may have to post numerous photos and videos (if you take any celebrity's page and count the number of posts which doesn't show their face, but a place, thing or something else, it will be very small) as part of their work and to stay relevant. (I know nothing of this industry and I am guessing these as a follower of celebrities on instagram.) Will scientists go out of fashion if we do not create social media posts promoting ourselves doing our profession? Will our relevance dwindle if we stop posting self promotional stuff on the internet?  (So from tomorrow onwards to increase my relevance, I shall make a get ready with me video starring my notebooks, the codes I run and then presentations. Or I will post the photo of me writing equations on a notebook and write a ten thousand word essay as a caption on how important it is to add x and y and square it. Or - make a video documenting how dedicated I am to my work even if the recruiters are rejecting my applications even without reading them. May be the cringe videos I can make will make me "relevant" enough to catch everybody's attention. :/) 

 Are we scientists corporate bros that we feel the need to go to cringedin and do self promotion? Is this to catch the attention of some funding agency that scientists feel the need to post self promotional stuff on social media? Are we scientists trying to catch the attention of algorithms which will then present these in front of some potential funding agency who may just give pennies for research? Is this the intention? (If so, shouldn't the funding agencies be doing their duty and allocate enough money for research rather than to make very intelligent people act like total crazies on the internet?) Or is this phenomenon simply driven by narcissism and over exposure to social media? (And it is especially cringe if people above a certain age do it - people who started using a certain social media app very late compared to younger people.)  

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   Ofcourse I am guilty of self promotion too. I also post photos and videos where I appear as part of something like a lab work. Sometimes I do post captions out of excitement, the excitement of being able to work on whatever I was working on, in that video or photo. But it will become heartless and hollow if I treat that photo and video as a means of self promotion accompanied with ten thousand words describing how proud and humbled (see cringedin has made it impossible for me not to dislike these two words appearing in succession) I am to go and work on my experiment even if I am truly reminded that I am a nobody, by the scale of the experiments I work on? It will be so bad if I start treating it as a means of showing off my "prowess" (or as an ego boost) rather than concentrating on what I actually learn from doing the work in the said photo or video. If I were to post things like : 

"Proud and humbled to do such and such special task in my detector, which won the so and so prize in my field in the year N." And then go on describing the detector and the task in hollow words that they sound so fake that the reader starts hating me instead of getting an idea of the science I do. Readers can tell that the motivation is neither to explain the detector nor the science, but just to show off indirectly that I am so awesome by association with a so and so prize winning scientific project. It will feel very bad to me and others. 

 Some things are better left unsaid or said in a few words. Sharing genuine happiness via a post or video is fine. Posting educational content to create awareness/for science outreach is fine. But when a post veers into the territory of soulless self promotion, the readers will definitely find it annoying. It also matters where someone is posting these. Cringedin is the root of all this evil, facebook is the dump yard, instagram is the place where these posts can really irritate users (aka physicists who want to keep their personal and professional social media apart to some extend) and whatsapp is...well connected to fb. I guess if someone wants to dump stuff, they can do so from fb. 

I wonder what the psychology of a scientist, who wakes up with a plan to create a self promotional post that contains a mundane photo/video, is. Like, which scientist has the time and energy to shoot a video, a photo and write a novel in their caption all while doing actual work? Somebody please enlighten me. (Here I am struggling to even function properly because I am always tethered to a screen due to the work for which I am not even paid, and there are people who are just posting random stuff on the internet in the name of science! Shouldn't you be working on your actual job - which is doing science, being a scientist, asking questions, solving problems and being duly diligent?) 

 Anyway, these are my personal opinions. Are people going to stop posting cringe self promotional posts on platforms? No. Are people going to hate me for saying these? Probably yes. Will my own criticism deter me from posting such photos and videos of mine? No! So I guess we all have our own ego to boost and narcissism to nurture.  

The performative physicist - Part 1

 I started writing about AI slop but quit writing midway, but this a is topic which I feel is related and I strongly feel about this so I may actually finish writing it. 

The reason why I wanted to write this is because of the increasing amount of self promotional slop that some physicists have been doing on social media. May be this is not restricted to physicists, people from other fields may also be doing the same, but I as a physicist encounter physics related stuff more. And it is very very annoying to be honest. Hate me for saying it, but it really is. 

There are different kinds of self promotion that I find truly cringe worthy. The first, the posting of screenshots of a recently published paper with an essay like caption on social media platforms. Second, the people who post the most mundane things like a measuring apparatus from a lab and then post a 1000 word essay about the work they do in the lab. Third, the people who post constantly on social media about the group they have created in their institute and act like nobody else in the world has ever created a group and again write essays as captions about the work the group does. Then there are also people who post photos of other people visiting their labs/institutes and giving talks and making a big deal out of it on social media (again with an essay like caption). The other, in my very personal opinion is the fiasco people create in the name of promoting gender equality in STEM, but this has ultimately become another option for essay posters to write infinite essays about gender equality which is not at all achieved by the performances on social media.  

I am not saying that I am not a flawless critic of these activities. I myself am guilty of the things which I wrote about, myself and have dabbled in posting myself in the past. As a matter of fact, I still do post and brag. But where I draw the line is the captions and the level of insincere self promotion in the form of the slop that is the caption. I have been thinking about it for sometime (also correlated to the AI slop post I wanted to write). i.e, why I find the self promotion posts accompanied by the slop captions annoying. So here are some thoughts on the performances physicists give on social media.  

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First of all I find it annoying probably because I still have partitions of which content should go where, in my mind. Remember that old trend where everyone was posting about "your facebook dp, your instagram dp, your linkedin dp and your tinder dp"? That trend implied that there should be a separation between what you post on different platforms and there is a difference between your business related account vs your personal account. I still have that (outdated?) idea in my mind when it comes to content. Probably that is why I find people posting screenshots of their newest publication with an essay like caption on whatsapp and instagram annoying because in my ancient mind they both are for personal use. Especially instagram (as if I don't post paper links and shift videos on instagram)!  

Now to anyone who may think that this person is so outdated that she is ignorant of whatsapp and instagram being used for business, please wait a little bit until I write a few more things.  

Let me talk about the "screenshot of paper accompanied by an essay caption phenomenon". Yes publishing a paper is a big deal. It comes after months, sometimes years of hard work, heartbreaking referee comments and lots of corrections and additional work demanded by the referees. It is the culmination of a very tiring process and every scientist/author/academic has the right to savour the success and brag about it to the whole wide world and share the happiness. And to nudge the peers in the field to read it by posting the link of the paper on all possible social media apps. 

But when does it cross the line into becoming self promotion and cringe worthy? It is when people screenshot the abstract, and post that screenshot with a caption much longer than the abstract and make it look like they are the first ones to publish a paper in the whole wide (academic) world. Then the whole post becomes a means of self promotion and less about telling the people who might actually be interested to read about your work. The whole point of an abstract is to make the reader get an idea of what is in the paper. If you are posting a screenshot of the abstract, what is the need to explain it further? Can't the scientific audience go and read the paper on their own? Are the audience that dumb, that the creator of the post has to rewrite the entire paper in a caption? 

  Or are you putting up a performance to the lay people in your contact list? The lay people who may not even be interested in knowing what you worked on? I mean who is the target audience of such posts?    

 Ahhh the caption! What can one say about it? So insincere, so sloppy, so generic that the reader feels like it is generated by one AI or the other. :/ First of all if you really want to share your happiness and brag about something, do it in your own words. Not with some generic essay an AI churns out. When you rely on an AI tool to "express your heartfelt feelings", it ultimately leads to a post which has no heart, no soul and reeks of insincerity. 

  Your fellow scientists are smart enough to click on the paper link or the arXiv link if the paper is not open access and read it for themselves. And especially for people in high energy physics, the links to your papers and your author profiles are available on Inspire. Anybody who wants to find out about your "productivity", h-index and how awesome you are, can actually go there and find it. Dear fellow (hep) physicists, your fellow (hep) physicists are smart enough to click on a link, download, read and digest the contents of your paper if they are really interested. You don't have to post the AI generated sloppy caption for your paper on a social media platform. If you really have to describe the core idea of the paper to a scientific audience, you can, but please don't make it this self promotional cringe content that will turn people away from your work in addition to undermining human curiosity that may make the audience go and read the paper. If you really want people to read your paper, don't post that long essay caption and let go off this self promotion cringe.

And please don't use that AI generated slop as your caption! You are a scientist, not a business bro or someone from the entertainment industry who has to put up a performance everywhere to keep their relevance. 

To be continued... 

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PS : Having said all these, I will still like a post where someone has posted about their new paper, because people do need digital applause too for a publication from their peers. 

PPS : I will blame "cringedin" for all these, because that is where the humble bragging accompanied by insincere words probably began and then millenial social media users just took it to all other platforms accessible. :/ 

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"Reading" Agatha Christie as a millenial woman

 So in the months of March and April, I went down the rabbit hole of "reading" Agatha Christie novels. "Reading" in quotes because I actually listened to the audio books. This was a long pending thing (atleast I should make use of my unemployed-stuck-at-home-with-no-escaping-this-hell situation) which I finally did somehow. The thing that lead to this was the series "Agatha Christie's Seven Dials" series. And the many different "who dunnit" movies which would always remind me of the fact that I hadn't read any of Agatha Christie's books though I love to read detective stories. I had listened to the "Murder on the Orient Express" audio book sometime ago and had liked it. Also I did suffer from the fomo of not knowing the character of Hercule Poirot. So the netflix series did stir up my fomo and made me listen to the numerous novels written by Agatha Christie. Though I started with "The mysterious affair at Styles" and then listened to "The Murder at the Vicarage" I decided that I should not listen to Poirot and Miss Marple in a mixed fashion. So I searched for the books so that I could find the chronological order of publishing and then started listening to the audio books accordingly. 

 "https://www.agathachristie.com/en" lists all the books by her (and also the new books written by other people - I had read about others writing stories of these characters long ago). I decided to stick to the books written by Agatha Christie herself. So I listened to all the Poirot novels first (these are the novels with the maximum number of books) and then moved on to Miss Marple novels and then Tommy and Tuppence novels. And this was quite something. Each audiobook usually is about 6-7 hours long. So this was the audio book version of binging. i.e one book per day. Had I read them I wouldn't have finished them this soon. 

And "reading" those books were like pattern identification. Many of her novels are similar in structure. Money features as a main motive in many of these books, there are several characters assembled at a certain location when something happens. Infact this feels like the darker/morbid version of a cozy Hindi family movie. (Also the reason why we love the original "Knives Out" movie.) There is no doubt that Agatha Christie was the queen of a certain genre of mystery thrillers. The binging aspect certifies that. And in many cases she portrays uncomfortable human emotions accurately. But as a modern millenial woman, there are certain things which I definitely cannot agree with, in her novels. I even asked google, google also agrees with me that such aspects have been pointed out by other readers too. So here are some things that struck me as a modern millenial female reader of Agatha Christie books. 

 

1) We are living in the remnants of colonialism. As a millenial Indian woman "reading" these books in 2026, I could not help noticing that the "morality" of Indians in 2026 is not at all different from that of the English characters written in the early part of the 20th century. Like women looked down as nobodies, men controlling women's lives and bodies, women not allowed to go freely out of home and work. Independent women being called names, the list goes on. This made me look the things I had to endure in my life as an Indian woman in a different light. I started wondering if we Indians are still living in colonial era - keeping the "morals" imposed upon us during colonial days? Even after 78 years of independence? So colonialism still has its effect on the quality of life of a woman born years after India became independent. People of my country cannot shake off the remnants of these colonialist "values" even after all these decades? Caste and other discriminatory things already existed in India. Add classism and morals like "kula sthree/gentlewoman" (basically a woman who obeys patriarchy :/) to these already existing vile, and we get everything that make the life of a woman miserable right from her birth. 

    I was made to wonder whether colonialism might have played a part in imparting some of the problematic "values" belonging to a very old era to many Indians who might have blindly imbibed those  and even transformed them to suit the Indian local settings. (Or it might have been the other way around also.) In any case I was reminded of the stupid ideals people still cling to - like honor killing, "respectability", denial of a woman's agency and freedom. In addition to these many of these novels have racial slurs we cannot ignore in the modern days (and those were not altered in the audiobook versions that were definitely read after the abolition of apartheid in most of the world). There are many racist remarks which definitely are triggering and unacceptable to a modern millenial.

Then there is the over promotion of the "family" establishment. Many women characters sitting at home are either good wives or mothers (if they are not criminals). 

 Men who control everyone around them. Every Indian kid has gone through this. Women endure this as girls and are forced to endure this as grown women. Boys endure this and grow up to be men who control others in their lives. Men who kill their wives for money. Agatha Christie did get these characters spot on. It is a known fact that intimate partner violence is one of the most common form of violence a woman is subject to. It was so in the 20th century, it still is in 21st century. (Doesn't that make you marvel at how patriarchy operates successfully in passing on rotten ideals from millenia to millenia?)  

 2) Normalisation of toxic relationships : This is a very important aspect of Agatha Christie novels, a millenial woman with awareness cannot igore. There is Miss Marple novel named "Nemesis". Half way through it, I stopped listening to it, because it normalised sexual assault as if it is nothing at all! What on Earth? The author required the readers - rather preached to her readers that sexual assault is a forgivable crime. That was horrible. And the guy who did this crime had to be exonerated of some other suspected crimes so he could live freely?! Wow! That book was so triggering that I could not continue. Then I googled the story and read that a queer woman was the murderer? This books is the worst of her novels in my opinion. First of all justifying a certain crime and then making a queer person a criminal. This book is really really bad and unacceptable to anybody who lives in the modern world. I don't know why this book is still even in circulation. :/ 

Then the toxic relationship where a potential "love interest" strangles a woman at first sight! What the hell? And she is so madly in love with this guy that she finds someone choking her exciting? What illogical substance was the author smoking while writing such things? The same guy "professes his love" to the woman by saying that he will beat her black and blue if she ever thinks about going off with someone else! This book happens to be "The Man in the Brown Suit" a book in which it is the seemingly independent heroine who does these stupid things. The moment I heard these dialogues I was reminded of the SNL sketch about the actresses round table and the old actress played by Kate McKinnon normalising crimes against women and the younger generation getting uncomfortable. 

 As a millenial I would think that the women of my generation and younger would be wiser and lesser prone to these things. But the news we read point to the fact that even in a modern, world with so much awareness women are conditioned to believe that someone who physically assaults her can be forgiven because he "loves" her and will "protect" her.  

 3) Justification of relationships with large age gap : In many of these books, very young women, basically kids are shown to be married to men who are much older than them. It is treated as if this is normal and that men who are even above 60 are allowed by some magic intervention to have young wives. :/ In the context of the novels I may console myself that these are the morals from a bygone era. But what about the real life instances that are still prevalent in our 21st century society?

   In many cases movies justify a 40+ year old hero romancing a ~22 year old heroine (two such movies are "Sarvam Maya" and "Vishwanath & Sons"; earlier the movies wouldn't justify anything, but just cast, now they cast and justify with plot points too). And real life people vetting relations with such age gap and imbalance of power that, you as a modern woman start to wonder which dark era you are living in. Real world examples may even include cases where a college teacher proposes to a possibly underage student and the gharwaale (including the girl's parents) arranging a marriage, not realizing that this is exploitation and abuse of power on the part of the teacher who holds the internal marks of the teenage student. It definitely tells something about a man who goes after women who are much much younger than him. And should tell even more about this man when the woman happens to be in a position where she is a budding artist or a young student or a struggling actress and the older man is her superior/teacher or simply somebody who is a senior in the same field (say movie industry) and holds power and has more money than the young woman. This is not love, this is exploitation. 

    By no argument can one justify the predatory nature of such relationships. In the world of Agatha Christie novels these are normal. And the sad reality is that in the age of internet where one can google if such relations are predatory or not, people just blindly arrange and give blessing for the union of a potential predator with someone who has just crossed teenage. :|

      In addition to these, google tells me that some of the references which are used to mention characters indicate internalised misogyny. That is very true. The words used in the books to indicate mental illness are not very respectful either.  And there is definitely a prejudice against queer people. 

All in all getting familiar with the works of Agatha Christie made me reflect upon my current life circumstances. Being stuck at home in a place where people still care about "kula sthree" and cannot think scientifically or about anything other than inheritance (don't tell me that people in small towns aren't bothered about inheritances) or gossip about independent women (especially single women who), I could not shake off the realisation that we are still living backwardly with the ideals of the past that other parts of the world have abandoned. And how better my life as a millenial woman would have been, had such ideals not been imposed by the stupid people of the society. One can read Agatha Christie novels and do some detective thinking to solve the cases. But never take morals and ideals from her novels because they are really problematic. 

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PS  : I have to mention the names of the Agatha Christie novels I like, out of the ones I have finished: 

1) Death On The Nile

2) Murder on the Orient Express

3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - this one is very interesting since I was wondering if a certain kind of narrator was there in her novels and here it was. 

4) Peril At End House

5) 4.50 From Paddington

6) At Bertram's Hotel

 

 

 

 

Giving up

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I started writing this last August, but left it unfinished. After 8 months I am trying to finish it. 

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August 2025 :  I quit my job! Yes; I - a non-quitter, the beacon of perseverance finally quit a job! Not that it was permanent; it would have ended months later anyway. Not that I have anything planned for my life after quitting. Still I quit - almost as an impulsive decision and regretted it for almost two weeks after quitting. Not because everything was going fine in the said job and my chosen career. But I realised that I will miss something I love the most in my life. That's how it has always been. First I quit loving. Now a job which might have given me a feeble opportunity at having a so called academic career. Still I quit and honestly I am very surprised I did! So surprised to the point that I am wondering what has come over me that I did such a "drastic" thing in my life!  

     I am trying to find the reasons of why I quit. Is it because of the realisation that I will never even get a permanent job despite working as a post doc for almost ten years now? Or is it because of the realisation that no matter what remarkable things I do in my career, I will never get any recognition for it because I am a woman? Or is it because I feel like a slave toiling away at the cost of my own physical and mental health, while some people who are capable of networking are given praise and positions whereas I am constantly overlooked (again also because I am a woman and a woman of colour)? Or is it because I was given two bad choices only - the choice of living as a jobless single woman who has to face taunts about not having a man in her life or not being a mother (as if these are the only greatest achievement even a modern woman can have 😒) or of living in a far away land in a toxic living situation, with no opportunity to travel and be able to fulfill the minimum requirements of my very demanding career? A career where I am constantly judged on the basis of how many conferences I have attended, how many talks I have given in international conferences, how many grants and awards I have received and so on. It is quite unfair that a woman who had to struggle in the first place to reach where she is, is forced to face bad situations again and again and is driven to the point where her only options are to either take her own life because living with dignity is no longer a right or to chose the less worse option out of two really bad situations. So for the past few years I had been making choices to literally escape a life of torture from people who are still stuck ideologically in dark ages despite living in a modern world. And the places available to escape were those which would make me feel virtually imprisoned and stagnated in my career. 

        But then I realised that whatever choice I make, I will never escape the perils of being a woman - my gender will always come in the way of my success in life. Had I been a man, everything would have fallen on my lap just like that. I would have had a career handed over to me on a golden platter. I would have been given leadership positions, name, fame - whatever I could ask for. But no. I am a woman who had to fight patriarchy to pursue a career which dreamed she would have one day. A woman who instead got robbed off her dreams and is being chucked out of the system. No matter how much ever I love my subject, my opportunities to keep loving it will always be temporary. My freedom to love it with all my heart is restricted by the academic and general society because of my gender. I will never get a permanent job as an academic. I will never win the rat race of grants, leadership positions and whatnot. When I was young, being a scientist was all about seeking the truth about Nature. But nobody told me that seeking truths about the Nature can sometimes occur in corporate settings. Do I love Nature? Yes I do. Do I think I will pass every criteria humans have set up to be in a position to learn about Nature further? No. 

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March 2026 : So many things have happened in the months in between. I came home and started "working" as a volunteer (i.e a person without salary) from home in the feeble hopes of keeping my dying academic career alive. Ah! I have fallen from a virutually imprisoned person who was being denied growth and opportunities to a slave who is literally in the dungeons. Meanwhile some of the job applications I had applied to, sent perfunctory rejections months after they had selected their favourite candidates. A not so prestigious institute in India cannot hire a person working 3 international particle physics collaborations. The rejection letter shouldn't have upset me. But it did. Because it reminded me off all the rejections and reopened the wounds that I have been trying to heal. And I realised that rejection from a not so desirable job also can hurt one! And the self talk starts - "I am too old; my career is over; I am a failure". And combined with being stuck at home as a jobless person, who will turn 40 this year, I have been feeling lately that my career is over.  People who are concerned are only able to offer post doc positions only. Yet another post doc after 10 years. That makes me wonder what sin have I committed in my life to be treated like this in academia. 

    I have been thinking of changing careers. Discussions with friends about transitioning to industry. But I still haven't done anything in that direction. Deep down I know the reason for that. I still love this subject too much. And that one thought - that if I, a woman leave this field, that is one less woman in a field that already has less number of women and which is notorious for chucking women out of the system. So here I am waking up everyday, working for 3 hours (the truth is that it goes beyond 3 hours anyway) per day as a volunteer as per the contract chasing something that will never reward me anything in the end. Can I go and participate in the 30th anniversary celebration of the experiment I work in? No. Can I go to the collaboration meeting of the other experiment I am working on. No. So basically I am left at a place where people exploit me and squeeze all work out of me and yet all accolades, opportunities, leadership positions and what not are given to the so called "young blood". 

    I have never in my life participated in what people call as "pennu kaanal". Where a woman of a certain age is paraded in front of a bunch of people with idiotic and retrograde ideologies in the name of marriage. Where women are judged by entitled men and the accompanying slaves of patriarchy. No never. But, what I am forced to endure as a job applicant in academia is the exact academic version of this "pennu kaanal". I write my application, write proposals, update my CV (ah yes, even when I am unemployed my CV gets updated - I don't even know for what) and endure the indignation and submit it. Only to be judged by faceless "referees" who look at my age and say that I am too old (just like the slaves of patriarchy who deem a woman to be too old in a marriage market - wonder why it is a called a "market") to be hired. And other standards that are similar to the impossible beauty standards that are being forced upon women even in this age. Just like people say that a woman is "too thin", "too fat"; her hair "too long", "too short", "too curly"; her skin tone "too dark", a list of academic "beauty standards" exists. 
 

"1) Applicant is too old for this post . 
 

2) Applicant has never won a grant previously. So we cannot give her this grant. 
(So I want to ask that panel of referees some questions. Will you deny admission to a three year old in LKG because they don't know how to read or write? Or will you enroll the child in a school and give it the proper education it deserves? Or will you deny food to someone who is starving because they have never eaten before? There is a limit to being illogical.) Somebody has to give me a grant for the first time! If you don't give me that grant in the first place what right do you have to pass such idiotic comments on me?   

3) Applicant has only won local prizes (this was one of the most egregious comments I have received). 

4) Applicant has not attended an international conference in the past 2 years. Why? Because the bureaucracy in the country of the said grant does not issue temporary residence permit on time even for scientists who are classified as highly skilled workers.  Also because nobody is there to support me when it comes to nominations for talks in "prestigious" international conferences because my blood is not young. :/ 

5) Some hires who reject are so sure that I will continue to contribute to this field (with an empty pockets and with no health care when I literally am harming my body and mind in the name of succeeding in a non existent career). 

6) Some jobs will hire people only if they were convenors in their respective experiments. Ah! That means I will never get a job because convenership is  only given to young blood in certain collaborations. I am not a leader, but only a worker bee who is disposable. (How I read this attitude- "she is a mere woman from a third world country (which was our colony long ago). What right does she have to be a leader? She is a slave, she is a worker and has no value. She is a dumb person who is just there to fill the diversity quota and has no real intelligence. Who is she to become someone, let alone be intelligent? What does her contribution and hard work matter? She is not worthy or anything. She is disposable. Her labour is valueless. She has no right to have a career in this field.") 

7) I am "not good enough" to be even called for a job interview in so called prestigious institutes.  

  People enjoy the fruits of my labour and never acknowledge me. All I am left with is unemployment and mental agony because of being at the receiving ends of sexism, racism, ageism and every other shorter ends of sticks. What I refused to face in a marriage market, I am being forced to face in my chosen career path. 

Which brings me to the other point. There was a time when I was willing to love someone and "fall" in love. But then what happened? I was never loved. I was always rejected. "Why don't you cut your hair and lose your weight?" Such were the comments I used to hear. At 30 then I decided that I will never love anyone in my life ever again. That is something I gave up because hoping to find true love one day was doing me more harm than good. As a 30 year old I learnt not to waste my time and mental energy in people who would never love me back. I think I am learning a similar thing as a soon going to be 40 millenial woman - i.e not to waste my time, physical and mental health (very important as a person who is aging) on a career where I will never be appreciated let alone be given a permanent job. It broke my heart 10 years ago and made me a person devoid of any feelings 10 years ago. It breaks my heart to teach myself to detach from something I have loved so deeply since high school. The realisation that not everyone is given an opportunity to make a mark in this world is heartbreaking. Yes. I too had got fascinated with physics and the physicists as a high schooler. I too wanted to become a scientist. And when I became one, I realised that I am not welcome here at all. Because just like I don't fit any beauty standards that is expected out of women and will never be loved by anyone, I don't anything to fit the unreasonable standards of academia.

  So difficult as it is, I have arrived at a very hard and painful decision after taking into account the realities that I have been facing. I am not going to get a permanent job in academia at all. Infact I will be 40 in two months. Nothing is going to happen within the next two months that will give me some hope about a career as a Physicist. So to stay true to my decision, I will quit Physics forever after my 40th birthday. It will be heart wrenching, tear inducing and what not. But nevertheless I may find peace and may find something to pursue for the next 10 years so that I can leave that thing when I am 50... 

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"Sookshmadarshini" a haunting social commentary

 I am supposed to be working. Yet I can't help writing this because watching "Sookshmadarshini" has shaken me so much. If you are someone who has already watched it then you will understand why this movie is so haunting. If you are someone who hasn't watched it already you must watch it before reading this. This is not a review but some thoughts the movie evoked in my mind. 

   The movie is a mystery thriller where a very "nosy" woman solves a crime. I liked this movie even more because of how it makes a social commentary without being preachy but just depicting how cruel the mentality of the people who perpetrate such crimes are. Also the fact that the network of women which people usually dismiss as "gossipy" (paradooshanam) and useless is the one which aids to solve the case and bring justice to other women who were victims of a hate crime. 

    So if you have watched it, you already know that the crime is an "honor" killing. Let me remind you that there is no honor in any honor killing and those who take part in such activities should be held accountable by the justice system. Now, we live in a country where we hear about caste based honor killings. There have been countless instances where parents kill their own children to "preserve honor". Because "honor" is so fragile that it will break if a person marries someone from another caste. So in a society where love between two heterosexual people is viewed as forbidden because of caste even in the 21st century, it is obvious that if someone is queer and chooses to live their life as they please (in a country which struck down section 377 in 2018), they will be killed by a cruel family who only care about "honor".  (All these when any form of discrimination is unlawful. So the perpetrators are not just cruel but unwilling to respect the rights given to a human being by law.)

     That is exactly the theme of "Sookshmadarshini" and the revelation hits you hard. And it does it in a very non dramatic way which is very relatable. The victim of the gruesome crime in the movie is a young woman which makes it even more painful. Even if you are not a queer person but someone who has chosen to live your life and preserve your independence this movie scares you and makes you wonder if a similar plight will befall you. 

    Assume you are a cis hetero woman, but still wants to live your life as a single person. The society will get uncomfortable because it just views you as a brainless object of pleasure and a reproduction machine. So the patriarchal society which is used to submissive women will view you as a threat. You think that your "near and dear" people will support you. But no, they are first ones to deny you your rights and freedom. By being single you are not harming anyone, if you are financially independent you are not living at anybody else's expense. Then ideally you should be able to live your life according to your personal choices. If you are a person who doesn't want to marry and fall into the family business you have that right. If everyone around you accepts that and decides to live their own lives (in which you are not interfering) then the world would be a harmonious place. But patriarchy wants to control women's lives and bodies. So a woman who wants to live alone is a "threat" and a "matter of shame" for the "family". So her parents and family decide to kill and dispose of her.

     Does this sound scary? It does to me. It should sound scary to you also, especially if you are someone who will not put up any facades and will live a life honest to yourself. It should sound scary to people of any gender, any sexuality or any age. This will sound scarier to millenials and gen Z who aspire to live their lives freely compared to the older generations who are eager to control their lives. The premise of "Sookshmadarshini" was a hateful parent and close family blinded by "shame" deciding to kill the daughter because of her sexuality and the fact that she chose to live true to herself. Living true to oneself can be anything. It may be not wanting to marry and conform, it may be deciding to go childless and not conform, it may be living together with someone whom you love or trust, it may be choosing a partner (see choosing a partner on your own is a "shame" in an over controlling society like ours). It may be merely reminding your family that they cannot control you who are an adult. (Nobody has the right to control children either. By control I mean misuse of power and abuse by parents and other guardians.)  

      Where is the guarantee that our parents with old conservative, restrictive, divisive and cruel "values" won't kill us because they perceive us as "shame"? What is the guarantee that parents of independent people won't kill them because no matter what one achieves in life the parents cannot let go of their ego and rotten values and choose to side with evil rather than humanity, because they "evaluate" you only based on their outdated system? There is no guarantee.

   That is why "Sookshmadarshini" is so haunting. The victim in that movie is a very relatable young woman. That woman is many of us. Those who have a career, those who travel, those who are fashionable, those who have instagram accounts, those who live an urban life, those who won't be beaten down to conform, those who have endured abuse from others yet declared their freedom and escaped the evil clutches of an abusive family. And yet that evil family kills her for "honor". 

    This brings me back to my earlier point. Even if you are a straight person but non conforming to other things you are in a similar danger. So it makes one ask "what makes the parents and family become so evil; what "value" system did they grow up?" "What "values" and ideologies were they fed? How humane are they even when they may be educated and wealthy?" "Are education and wealth good indicators of understanding of rights of others?" 

      Say for example if you are someone who is very educated but believes in the arguments against reservation then it is an indication that you may not care about those who suffer because of unjust inequalities in the society. Within our own country if you are someone who discriminates people based on their caste and religion it clearly shows that they are incapable of viewing others as humans too. They are still stuck up in the old days where feudalism and discrimination prevailed and humans were ill treated. If a person discriminates based on color and race it shows that they are still stuck up in their colonial mentality despite living in a very modern world. 

      It also makes you ask the question whether their education truly opened their minds and made them accept that every human has human rights and nobody can meddle with that. And another question is how can someone think that they can control other people? What makes some people think that others should "obey" them no matter what. Else they would abuse the hell out of those who don't and even kill them. Who gave them the power to think that they have power over other people? Why do they even feel the need to control others' lives? The main answer is "patriarchy". 

        If we say that "patriarchy is the root of all social evils" it will not be an exaggeration. It is patriarchy which dictates what people should do with their bodies at what age, who can control the bodies and lives of whom and so on. Patriarchy is a cult. Without a specific cult leader but preached and sustained by benefactors who are unwilling to accept their follies and give up their wrong ways. It has created this situation that it approves and gives social currencies to people who conform but ostracizes those who don't. For example in a society which is hell bent on denying the fact that women have their own rights and choices, if a woman stays single her parents start torturing her, because every of their peers' daughters were married off! So a single woman is "a matter of shame". Any woman who has autonomy over her own life is a "shame" for such parents because they cannot get any social currency from the other people.

       "Log kya bolenge?" "Mattullavar enthu parayum?" "What will others say?" - is the sole guiding principle of our families! They don't care what you have to say about your own life. The problem is there even when you are someone who doesn't give a damn about what others say.  All your family and society cares is "What will others say?" And who are these others? They are people who are conditioned by patriarchy and torture their own families by saying "what will others say". The whole array of these people who only care for the ignorant opinions of "others" but do not have the guts to stand up and take the right action at the right time are the ones cementing and upholding social evils. 

      I will tell you what sensible people from every generation will say. "By bothering too much about what others will say, you are actually contributing to social evils."  In other words, you should get rid of your discriminatory attitudes and biases and broaden your mindset and learn to accept humans as humans. But then there are "families" who accuse sensible members who call out their bad practices that they are trying to "destroy the family" and that "someone is trying to sabotage the family" (which sounds uncannily similar to the arguments used by populists when someone points out their mistakes). (So clearly there are cases where the parents in a family are so corrupt that they are unwilling to change their bad mentality even when others can see clearly that they are cruel.) This also means that patriarchy not only encourages cruelty, but also causes delusions in those who believe in it. To the extend that someone is ready to kill another person without any remorse.

     One cannot even imaging the depth of cruelty a parent must possess if they are "honor" killing their children. How can someone's honor depend on somebody else?  Your children are not your puppets. They are living, breathing creatures with their own lives. If your children are adults then you cannot control them. (The thing is that nobody ever controls their alcoholic, misogynistic or criminal "children", they only control children who understand the right ideologies, do the right things in life and mind their own business!) Sure you can be a faulty parent. But that does not entitle you to kill another person because you are blinded by some false pride and meaningless "shame" from your patriarchal conditioning. 

      Whether it is caste discrimination, queer phobia or misogyny, as long as generations of people do not learn to broaden their minds and accept others as humans, "honor" killings will happen. The Malayalam word is apter for it "durabhimaanakkola". "Durabhimaanam" means "false pride". Because the false ideologies and boost to egos allotted by faulty belief systems result in a false sense of pride which is too fragile. Because that "pride/honor" breaks if someone chooses to deviate from such evil belief systems and live their own lives in their own ways. I won't say that family is everything to a person. But a family, especially parents killing their own children in the name of "honor" is one of the most heartbreaking and twisted scenarios one can ever imagine. (As if there are not enough twisted scenarios where people are harmed.) It is not just an imagination or a movie plot, but a real possibility for many of us. Hence "Sookshmadarshini" will continue to haunt forever.      

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   PS : The real shame are the parents and family committing honor crimes blinded by hate, propelled by stupid ideologies. The real shame is on them for believing that some imaginary thing is above someone's life. 

PPS :  If the people from a younger generation started basing their "honor" on whether their parents provide them with luxury items, popularity on social media platforms (follower counts) and so on and started killing those who did not meet those criteria because those parents were causing "shame", would it look fine?  (Does it sound like some impossible apocalyptic world?) Then how is it acceptable that parents base their "honor" on stupid ideologies which discriminate against humans and kill their children? (This is the reality we are living in.) 

PPPS : What are the legal and justice system going to ensure the safety of people at risk from these scenarios? How are these systems going to protect vulnerable people?

     In short there is no honor in "honor" killings. And as humans we should just live and let live.

One month 3 movies - Episode 1 "Dune 2"

     Do I write about these movies when they are still fresh in my mind or do I contemplate even more and write later? May be I should write now, because I want to write how these three movies made me feel. So I watched 3 movies within in a month in 2024, "Dune 2" on the last day of February, "Oppenheimer" last week and "Aadujeevitham" yesterday. "Oppenheimer" was from last year, but I got to watch it this year only. These movies were "heavy", dark and/or depressing, but they all belong to the category of "must watch in a theatre". Here I am with a not so light heart sitting and going to write about how these three brilliant movies may be connected to each other at some level and why everyone must watch them. Let us start from Episode 1 "Dune 2". Shall we? 

 

/*------------------------------------ Episode 1 - DUNE part 2 ----------------------------------------*/

Disclaimer - Have some spoilers read only after watching. 

      My introduction to DUNE was quite unexpected. In 2021 my then supervisor and we went to a multiplex in Geneva to watch DUNE part 1. And my goodness I was blown away! At that time I was unaware of the fact that Dune was based on a book series and had been made into series prior to that.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise) ) Dune definitely had a Star Wars like quality (i.e like Episodes 4, 5, 6) and was visually stunning with a complicated and excellent background score. While watching some scenes I was thinking "this scene looks like a painting!", especially the death of Duke Leto Atreides. Then there was the near closing scene where Paul smiles at Chani... 

       The most remarkable thing about Dune is that the Fremen wear the "stillsuit"
(https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Stillsuit) so that they recycle their own body water and can survive the harsh desert conditions. I will not describe too much, because I have not read the books yet so I feel a bit under-qualified to talk on this topic.

Another aspect of "Dune" is that it is an extremely "good-looking" movie (with very famous cast members). Ofcourse the protagonist of this movie is extremely handsome (Timothée Chalamet). Then ofcourse Zendaya. Then Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem (you can't help remembering "Skyfall"), Josh Brolin (who doesn't look like Thanos anymore), Dave Bautista (who also doesn't look like Drax the Destroyer) and many other famous actors and actresses. The good looks are not limited to the cast though, each frame of Dune was stunning. If you are someone who loves photography you will understand why. Plus the logo of  this new "DUNE" series by Denis Villeneuve (yes, that Denis Villeneuve who directed "Arrival") is brilliant - an almost palindorome.

     So when a friend asked me the next day how Dune was, my response was "Timothée Chalamet is so handsome and this is a cult movie to be viewed in a theatre." Apart from all these, "DUNE" is interesting to neutrino physicists because there is actually an experiment which abbreviates to "DUNE". People were saying that "oh look they have a movie named after their experiment". Ofcourse "dune" can mean anything from sand dunes to the name of a book. :) 

I have still not read this book series, but now, I understand to a small extend why this story is important and significant. I got to know about this from a TED-ED video https://youtu.be/yhYU4ZbLmmk?si=lr-xbm8--3krTAxR. You will partly realise this analogy while watching the movie also, i.e, spice is like oil and the story of Dune is not far from what has happened in the name of oil. You will figure out that there are serious themes like exploitation of natural resources, colonization, how charisma and religion can create narratives to control people and so on. To understand these themes we may have to read the books carefully and understand more history and think carefully. But even a viewer who has not read the books and gone down that rabbit hole, you still can identify the similarities of the story with the world we live in.This brings me to Dune part 2. 

      How I watched Dune 2 in a theater is a bit funny. After a week of torturing myself in the name of teaching and not going anywhere, I badly needed a break. So I knew that I had to go somewhere and decided to go shopping. But I also knew that Dune was releasing on the same day and had been contemplating watching this movie. There was no ticket in IMAX, where ideally one should have watched it. Then there was the question "do I want to wait till Saturday and watch it"? But then fomo got the better of me and I booked a ticket to one of the immediately available shows and went to watch it on the release day itself! 

       And I loved Dune 2. Infact it was better than Dune 1. No wonder Christopher Nolan compared it to "The Empire Strikes Back"! It is so visually stunning that there is one scene where a small object like a breathing straw is shown in a frame. If something as small and seemingly insignificant in that movie looks so good, you can imagine how the rest of the movie looks.

   There are some more good looking people like Florence Pugh (who doesn't look like her MCU character), Ausitn Butler and Lea Seydoux (yup one more person from James Bond franchise) but it is the visual aspect of Dune 2 which stands out above all. One can read about how the black and white portions of the movie were shot with an infrared technology! That is simply mind blowing! https://variety.com/2024/artisans/news/dune-2-shooting-arena-fight-scene-infrared-1235927682/.
Hence DUNE 2 as a visual feast, deserves to be viewed on a big screen, IMAX or otherwise. Yes it is a sci-fi with visual effects. But at the same time the desert is an integral part of the story and looks so beautiful.

    But it is not without a message or some emotions. If you expect too much emotion out of a sci-fi you may be disappointed. I think the point of this movie is to entertain us first and foremost and then to give us fodder for thought because we thoroughly enjoyed it. I was entertained for the 2 hour 46 minutes duration I watched it (without a bathroom break). This is the shortest of the three movies I am writing about. The other thing is also that, once you get into that world and set your mind towards the story, you will find this duration necessary. 

Also we have grown up watching three hour movies so. When I hear people complaining "oh this movie is too long", I think, "It is not! Sholay was 3 hours 24 minutes! Titanic was 3h 14m! Each of the Lord of Rings movie is 3 hours +- 20 mins!"  We are the binge generation who is ready to sit 8 hours to finish a series in one night; we are the generation who would go to university film festival and binge world movies from morning till night!. :D So don't complain that some movie is  2 hours 46 mins long! It is also remarkable that even in the ott generation people are willing to sit though long movies without a bathroom break.  

By the way there were double shows of Dune somewhere here, i.e Part 1 and 2 together. May be if there is a Dune 3 I will binge them in theater! :D 

  Now I have to mention why I loved this movie more than its prequel. The first and foremost reason is Zendaya as Chani. Zendaya is a brilliant actress who should win all the awards one day. And her portrayal of Chani acts as the emotional and moral anchor of this story. Had there been no Chani, you would never have understood how Paul Atreides is a shady character. Chani of this movie is the one who constantly reminds us of the consequences of herd mentality and believing in charismatic leaders. Some of her most remarkable lines are :

"Want to control people? Tell them a Messiah will come and they’ll wait." "This prophecy is how they enslave us." 

(You can read this article too: https://www.vulture.com/article/dune-part-two-review-this-is-zendayas-movie.html)

 And she gets betrayed at the end. Though Paul says "I will love you as long as I breathe" to her, the moment he saw the Princess Irulan he asked her to marry him. So much for star crossed lovers. And that is a wake up call too. The pretty face you love may not be as pretty inside. That one scene also reminds you of the themes you might have been familiar as an Indian audience. The guy always goes for the upper caste or upper glass woman even though he claims he is in love with a lower caste/class woman. Here is it Chani a Fremen being abandoned by Paul an aristocrat for Irulan the emperor's daughter.

 Though Paul says "I’d very much like to be equal to you" that was only a tactics he uses to impress others and make them help him achieve his ultimate goal - i.e power. The Fremen were genuinely worried for him when he was riding his first sand worm. But he rides it like a pro. This makes you feel that he was actually crafting an image of himself as a powerless gentle person where as he was always well trained and all he needed was a group of people who will ultimately do his bidding.  

    He broke both Chani's heart and her trust and also did a huge disrespect to Irulan. She is asked to marry him as a political tradeoff. That one scene when he becomes the emperor and everybody except Chani and Irulan bow to him is remarkable. It is upto the viewer's interpretation - how I interpret is that both women are unimpressed by this man. Chani's heartbreak will leave you in tears. And when Chani was riding away at the end of the movie it feels that free will is...

 Here I have to mention how you will start despising Lady Jessica for making vulnerable people to follow her and revere her and how she fans the fire to make people believe in the "prophecy" which would aid her son ascend power. 

What the movie brilliantly depicts via its casting is that the is the race factor. You must watch the it carefully to appreciate who are cast as vulnerable and who is manipulating them. Take this race factor, put it in a caste or class context, it is similar. 

    Why, apart from all the visual glory and exceptional making, DUNE 2 must be watched is because of the statements it makes. Beware of charismatic people. Beware of the unholy combination of religion/superstition and power. It is a cautionary tale against charismatic leaders and hero worship.

(https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2024/03/07/dune-part-2-is-paul-atreides-a-hero/?sh=1f75409c12e0)   

That's precisely a reminder we need to have in a world where people are following populist ideas (it stands true for the entire world) and being swayed by the so called "charismatic leaders".  I don't know what happens in the books after Paul Atreides' ascension to power. But we can make a guess from what we have seen in our own world. So the question is, are you going to be mindful of your hero worship, mindless following of charisma and oblivion to what can happen to free will as a consequence?  

PS : My most favourite scene in Dune 2 is when Chani teaches Paul how to walk on the sand with the peaceful score "A Time of Quiet Between the Storms" plays. It looked like they were dancing. <3

Don't forget...

When nostalgia drowns you,

Remember to read old emails

So that you are brought back 

To the reality you live.

When nostalgia rains on you,

Remember the disparities

So that you reconsider 

The longing to reconstruct the past.

When nostalgia fills your heart, remember, 

Like the song from the singer's vault said,

That no confessions of anything 

Is going to come your way.

When the present makes you wish,

Remember that he scarred you

And left you alone a decade ago

'Cause you weren't "beautiful enough".

When your heart still beats for him,

Remember how he has kept you blocked

All these years, as if you are impure

And would contaminate his pristine life.

When you start falling for him blindly,

Remember, that he left you for another

Got himself rejected only to find

Someone else who resembles you.

 

When you crave his friendship,

Don't forget the decade he was absent

Even when you could've 

Done with a friend's love.

So tell me heart, are you still waiting

For him to reappear and pretend,

That everything was fine and,

The past ten years didn't happen in your life?