People learn from life’s experiences and apply them to the stock markets and to their investments. I have all the time learnt from the stock markets and applied the experiences to life itself.
I still remember the last general elections quite vividly. The NDA seemed to be in an unassailable position. Not because of its own strengths but by default because of others’ weaknesses. There were those opinion polls carried out by experienced psephologists. There was the “Shining India” campaign. There was the economy doing rather well for itself and cheery balloons everywhere in the stock markets. There was the charisma of Atal Behari Vajpayee which in itself was quite significant. All opinion polls predicted reduced number of seats for the NDA but still gave it a comfortable lead to emerge as the party of governance. Even the exit polls predicted more or less the same. And there were my friends in the stock markets and outside it thinking the same conclusion and putting their money by their conclusion. And all the while I was thinking……
“So, Papa, what do you think? How many seats for NDA?” my daughter asks, knowing fully well my interest in politics. At that stage even she must have become interested owing to the heat and dust the Indian election always generates.
We are sitting in an out-of-town, open-air dining place and I am in a pleasant mood having imbibed 60 ml of the cardioprotective brownish liquid that I call rum. There is more pleasantness in the thought that in a short while I will be protecting my heart even more.
“120,” I say, raising the glass and enjoying myself at the splash I have made in her mind.
“120? 120? But even the opinion polls are giving almost double. You are joking, right?”
With my son it is different. If Papa has spoken, it must be the truth! He gives up more easily. My daughter is a kitten, she would fight.
“But why do you think 120?” whines my son not liking the prospect. He likes Vajpayee and would not want to see him lose.
“It’s not like that,” my daughter looks at her brother. “He is pulling our leg. Don’t you remember how he gets when he drinks?”
“I am not pulling your leg. I am serious. I think it will be 120, if that.”
I am serious. I remember all previous stock market crashes and all previous beginnings of the bull markets. I remember the suddenness of the busts and the hesitant beginnings of the upsurge. But I remember something else. I remember a phrase that is oft repeated in the stock markets (which nobody pays attention to) and which must have been crafted by a person with a gift of language. I also remember a more crudely put observation by my own stockbroker who does not have the gift of the language.
“All bear phases are prophesied in exultation and all bull markets live off pessimism,” is the phrase.
“When everyone thinks that this will happen, that will happen,” is how my stockbroker puts it.
“When everyone (or almost everyone) shares the same opinion, the opposite will happen,” is how this all translates in my brain.
Or, to put it mathematically, the load of an opinion increases in inverse proportion to the likelihood of it becoming a reality.
My entire estimate of the seats for NDA was based on the fact that practically everyone thought that they were coming back. So, I thought that would not happen.
I have applied that rule to almost everything in life and have found it to come true almost every time.
____________________________________________
My stockbroker is a bit philosophical. He goes even further and then he sounds absurd. However, I really do not know whether what he says is so absurd.
When there is a crash, people find reasons for the crash because everything must have a reason. The political situation is rotten and the stink has spread to the stock markets. The GDP is coming down and that is the reason for the crash. The major companies have come out with results below expectations and their weight has crushed the markets. The tap of reasons keeps spouting…..
My broker says, “There are no reasons at all for the markets to fall. They fall, that’s it. Reasons are excuses, justifications that people find after the fall. Ditto for the rise – justifications for something that would have happened anyway.”
We like to think of the reasons for the fall or rise as the causes of the action that follows. But if you believe my broker, the action or the effect is all that is there. The causes are secondary, the causes are excuses, and the causes come after the effect!
Absurd?
I thought so when he ventilated his thoughts for the first time. Having grown more grey hair on my scalp since then, I am not so sure. And my broker? Well, he has a head full of just grey.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
LINCOLN MEMORIAL
When you go sightseeing, you go sightseeing. I mean you do not think that you may become a sight yourself! But believe me it happens sometimes. As it happened to me when I went to see the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. It sure will count in my mind as one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. The only good thing about it is that only one person was there to embarrass me when it happened.
____________________________________________
After the conference at Raleigh got over, I had a few days of leave remaining. So I went over to Kamlesh Patel, a friend from my college days who had married and settled in the United States. I thought a few days of rest and home cooked food at his place would work miracles for my upset tummy. But I have never been wise.
The moment I set foot in his house, there was a twinkle in Kamlesh’s eyes. I could see I was more than welcome and was glad for it. He introduced me to his wife. She proved to be so talkative that I felt completely at home within a few minutes of setting luggage in the guest room.
After a small visit to the toilet as I emerged out of my room, Kamlesh asked, “You have not stopped drinking, have you?”
“No. Why should I?” I shot back.
“No, no. Just thought I should buy a six-pack for the evening,” he said by way of explanation.
I remembered my upset tummy and began saying, “No. Kamlesh, in fact it is not necessary and besides, I have this upset……” At this point of time I heard footsteps of his wife approaching. Kamlesh immediately cut me of and in an inordinately loud voice started, “Yeah…… yeah …. I remember….. How can I forget that…? You were so upset that evening … it was a dry day back in India … and you did not have any liquor at home…..there aren’t any dry days in USA. So let’s go and fetch a six-pack.”
I could see that the whole speech was for his wife’s benefit especially because the incident where I became upset because of a dry day had never happened. The whole talk was actually a camouflage for the word ‘upset’ that I had uttered.
“Devika, we will go out and fetch a six-pack,” Kamlesh announced. It actually came out like a question, and simultaneously a request.
Devika nodded. She looked at me and gave me a smile.
Once out of the house, Kamlesh slapped me on my back and carped, “Ssalle, eik chance mila hai, who bhi khatam kar dena chahta hai kya?” (I get this one chance of drinking in a while and you want to put paid even to that?)
Gradually it came out that his wife did not approve of drinking and so the poor fellow never got to drink. The only exceptions were when his friends (only old ones, from India) came calling. That explained the twinkle in his eyes. I mean, I may have been really welcome, but the chance to drink was the reason for the twinkle!
In the store, the guy selected some Irish brew. The bottle was ominously dark, but the liquid inside seemed even more ominous, actually evil. Well, to be fair to Kamlesh, he did ask me about the choice. But when you are a guest at somebody’s place and you see how eagerly his hand moves to this particular concoction, you would be cruel to disregard what his heart desires. And that too a person’s whose wife does not allow him to drink and who just may be getting his elixir, god knows, after a year .. 2 years … he did not have many close friends back in India.
I had the liquid poured into a glass before I drank it. My suspicions were right – it was not the bottle that was dark, it was the beer that imparted the threatening color. It was dense and tasted strictly ruthlessly harsh. Instantly I was reminded of chiraita. When I was a child, my mother sometimes used to make me drink water that had sat on chiraita sticks overnight. That water also used to be equally dark in the morning. And the taste? Ugh! My taste buds used to be dead to everything for hours after and I positively hated my mother, her mother, her mother’s mother and the entire lineage till it reached whatever chimpanzee gave birth to that line. The way this concoction tasted, Kamlesh’s ancestors could stretch back to macaques and langurs. And to think that I had to consume three bottles of this positively malevolent stuff. The only positive in the whole setup was the pizza that kamlesh had ordered. I tried to drown, not with much success, the bitter taste of the sinister liquid in the sting of the pizza toppings.
Kamlesh went to sleep happily humming under his breath an old Hindi song I couldn’t decipher. In words that wobbled in his mouth before coming out, he reminded me that tomorrow morning we were going sightseeing to Washington D.C.
I tried to sleep. But the remarks that my stomach made about the ordeal it had to suffer were positively acerbic. When did sleep drown the acidity I do not know, but I did sleep for sometime. As I woke up, there was just a bit of dis-ease in my stomach and when I belched, a bitter liquid reminder of last night came out with the rumbling nothingness of gas. I brushed, gargled, shaved, bathed and made myself a gentleman and felt far better for the effort.
We got into the car – Kamlesh, Devika, Devika’s brother and sister-in-law, and I. In the boot were kept a 24 pack of coke and a pack of what I heard called “Theplas”. After we were out of the city, Devika offered me a thepla and a coke. I started eating. My god, my mouth was positively on fire which I quickly doused with the cold coke. But I loved the feeling and even the taste! I have already said before that I am not wise. I asked for another thepla which really pleased Devika – that told me who had cooked those spiky-spicy things. Barely had I finished the second thepla when I was offered another and yet another. The drive lasted 4 hours. In those 4 hours I must have downed about 10 theplas and about 4 cans of coke.
Kamlesh stopped the car on a flat grassy ground and about half a kilometer away rose the Lincoln memorial. Everyone got down. When I did, I found that I had a nail boring its way into the region where my esophagus ended and my stomach began. The pain was excruciating and pointed at that region. But worse, I had a tummy that would put to shame a full-term pregnant woman and walking around was rather difficult with my tummy wanting to go everywhere before the rest of the body reached there. I fell behind the group and stealthily stole away.
Once a safe distance from the rest, I tried spotting a toilet (restroom in American lingo). I couldn’t. By then it had become obligatory that I find one and find rather quickly. I spotted something in the distance that was a circular building and I thought had a chance of being a restroom. I walked there and, to my utter relief, found that it indeed was one.
Once inside I looked around. This part of the building described a semicircle. On one side were the commodes behind half doors that you could latch from inside but which were such that you could see the occupants’ legs from beneath. On the other side were wash basins in equal numbers.
This presented a problem. Having till then lived in India and having been practically born and brought up on the Indian style latrines, I just could not sit western style on western style seats. So, in the year that I had spent there, I had mastered the fine art of sitting Indian style on western commodes! But with these half-open doors, it was a bad pose to adopt. Outsiders did not see legs touching base besides the pot and took the stall to be vacant. Soon they found out that it was, contrary to their logical deductions, occupied. This made other logical deductions and foreboding cloud their minds. However, I was in luck – there was absolutely nobody inside the restroom at that time. I quickly mounted one of the pots that were shaped like a magnified version of the lamp that you light in the temples.
No sooner had I so ascended the pot, than a storm got unleashed. A succession of short bursts, like the staccato from a machine gun were let lose from the muzzle. It was just unsubstantiated sounds and they lasted for – may be a full minute or more. At the end of it, delivered of the onus, I rose, zipped my pants and came out. Mightily relieved and having regained the flatness of my stomach, I must say.
As I came out, I saw that there was a man in front of one of the wash basins washing his face. As he heard the door of the stall close, he turned towards me, looked me in the eye, and gave me a smile that I will not forget in a hurry.
____________________________________________
After the conference at Raleigh got over, I had a few days of leave remaining. So I went over to Kamlesh Patel, a friend from my college days who had married and settled in the United States. I thought a few days of rest and home cooked food at his place would work miracles for my upset tummy. But I have never been wise.
The moment I set foot in his house, there was a twinkle in Kamlesh’s eyes. I could see I was more than welcome and was glad for it. He introduced me to his wife. She proved to be so talkative that I felt completely at home within a few minutes of setting luggage in the guest room.
After a small visit to the toilet as I emerged out of my room, Kamlesh asked, “You have not stopped drinking, have you?”
“No. Why should I?” I shot back.
“No, no. Just thought I should buy a six-pack for the evening,” he said by way of explanation.
I remembered my upset tummy and began saying, “No. Kamlesh, in fact it is not necessary and besides, I have this upset……” At this point of time I heard footsteps of his wife approaching. Kamlesh immediately cut me of and in an inordinately loud voice started, “Yeah…… yeah …. I remember….. How can I forget that…? You were so upset that evening … it was a dry day back in India … and you did not have any liquor at home…..there aren’t any dry days in USA. So let’s go and fetch a six-pack.”
I could see that the whole speech was for his wife’s benefit especially because the incident where I became upset because of a dry day had never happened. The whole talk was actually a camouflage for the word ‘upset’ that I had uttered.
“Devika, we will go out and fetch a six-pack,” Kamlesh announced. It actually came out like a question, and simultaneously a request.
Devika nodded. She looked at me and gave me a smile.
Once out of the house, Kamlesh slapped me on my back and carped, “Ssalle, eik chance mila hai, who bhi khatam kar dena chahta hai kya?” (I get this one chance of drinking in a while and you want to put paid even to that?)
Gradually it came out that his wife did not approve of drinking and so the poor fellow never got to drink. The only exceptions were when his friends (only old ones, from India) came calling. That explained the twinkle in his eyes. I mean, I may have been really welcome, but the chance to drink was the reason for the twinkle!
In the store, the guy selected some Irish brew. The bottle was ominously dark, but the liquid inside seemed even more ominous, actually evil. Well, to be fair to Kamlesh, he did ask me about the choice. But when you are a guest at somebody’s place and you see how eagerly his hand moves to this particular concoction, you would be cruel to disregard what his heart desires. And that too a person’s whose wife does not allow him to drink and who just may be getting his elixir, god knows, after a year .. 2 years … he did not have many close friends back in India.
I had the liquid poured into a glass before I drank it. My suspicions were right – it was not the bottle that was dark, it was the beer that imparted the threatening color. It was dense and tasted strictly ruthlessly harsh. Instantly I was reminded of chiraita. When I was a child, my mother sometimes used to make me drink water that had sat on chiraita sticks overnight. That water also used to be equally dark in the morning. And the taste? Ugh! My taste buds used to be dead to everything for hours after and I positively hated my mother, her mother, her mother’s mother and the entire lineage till it reached whatever chimpanzee gave birth to that line. The way this concoction tasted, Kamlesh’s ancestors could stretch back to macaques and langurs. And to think that I had to consume three bottles of this positively malevolent stuff. The only positive in the whole setup was the pizza that kamlesh had ordered. I tried to drown, not with much success, the bitter taste of the sinister liquid in the sting of the pizza toppings.
Kamlesh went to sleep happily humming under his breath an old Hindi song I couldn’t decipher. In words that wobbled in his mouth before coming out, he reminded me that tomorrow morning we were going sightseeing to Washington D.C.
I tried to sleep. But the remarks that my stomach made about the ordeal it had to suffer were positively acerbic. When did sleep drown the acidity I do not know, but I did sleep for sometime. As I woke up, there was just a bit of dis-ease in my stomach and when I belched, a bitter liquid reminder of last night came out with the rumbling nothingness of gas. I brushed, gargled, shaved, bathed and made myself a gentleman and felt far better for the effort.
We got into the car – Kamlesh, Devika, Devika’s brother and sister-in-law, and I. In the boot were kept a 24 pack of coke and a pack of what I heard called “Theplas”. After we were out of the city, Devika offered me a thepla and a coke. I started eating. My god, my mouth was positively on fire which I quickly doused with the cold coke. But I loved the feeling and even the taste! I have already said before that I am not wise. I asked for another thepla which really pleased Devika – that told me who had cooked those spiky-spicy things. Barely had I finished the second thepla when I was offered another and yet another. The drive lasted 4 hours. In those 4 hours I must have downed about 10 theplas and about 4 cans of coke.
Kamlesh stopped the car on a flat grassy ground and about half a kilometer away rose the Lincoln memorial. Everyone got down. When I did, I found that I had a nail boring its way into the region where my esophagus ended and my stomach began. The pain was excruciating and pointed at that region. But worse, I had a tummy that would put to shame a full-term pregnant woman and walking around was rather difficult with my tummy wanting to go everywhere before the rest of the body reached there. I fell behind the group and stealthily stole away.
Once a safe distance from the rest, I tried spotting a toilet (restroom in American lingo). I couldn’t. By then it had become obligatory that I find one and find rather quickly. I spotted something in the distance that was a circular building and I thought had a chance of being a restroom. I walked there and, to my utter relief, found that it indeed was one.
Once inside I looked around. This part of the building described a semicircle. On one side were the commodes behind half doors that you could latch from inside but which were such that you could see the occupants’ legs from beneath. On the other side were wash basins in equal numbers.
This presented a problem. Having till then lived in India and having been practically born and brought up on the Indian style latrines, I just could not sit western style on western style seats. So, in the year that I had spent there, I had mastered the fine art of sitting Indian style on western commodes! But with these half-open doors, it was a bad pose to adopt. Outsiders did not see legs touching base besides the pot and took the stall to be vacant. Soon they found out that it was, contrary to their logical deductions, occupied. This made other logical deductions and foreboding cloud their minds. However, I was in luck – there was absolutely nobody inside the restroom at that time. I quickly mounted one of the pots that were shaped like a magnified version of the lamp that you light in the temples.
No sooner had I so ascended the pot, than a storm got unleashed. A succession of short bursts, like the staccato from a machine gun were let lose from the muzzle. It was just unsubstantiated sounds and they lasted for – may be a full minute or more. At the end of it, delivered of the onus, I rose, zipped my pants and came out. Mightily relieved and having regained the flatness of my stomach, I must say.
As I came out, I saw that there was a man in front of one of the wash basins washing his face. As he heard the door of the stall close, he turned towards me, looked me in the eye, and gave me a smile that I will not forget in a hurry.
ASHA BHONSLE LIVE AND DEAD RATS
I do not like what Maneka Gandhi has done to science labs in the name of animal rights. I do not see eye to eye with animal rights activists who think that in the name of science, scientists torture animals. I believe that these people have just no idea how much of their own health is indebted to past research on animal systems – most medicines that each one of us takes have been developed primarily in animal labs. Much of our knowledge about the way our physiology works is derived from research on animals. Without this research on animals the life expectancy of human beings would not have been what it is today.
Be that as it may, I have once been guilty of a crime in the animal lab that I could have avoided entirely.
The Salk Institute for Biological Research in La Jolla, California, has a vast animal facility in the basement. I was involved in breast cancer research in this institute. I had to first of all produce cancer in the rodents and then see which genes were mutated in the cancer tissue. This also involved removing ovaries of female rats so that their bodies did not produce estrogen, a hormone that can promote breast cancer.
Initially ovariectomy (removal of ovaries) appeared to be a difficult task to me. The rats had to properly anesthetized and precise incisions were to be made for pulling the ovaries out. I was taught the art by a lab technician called Barbara. She always carried a severe expression on her face whether she was teaching me or drinking beer. It did not help at all. I soon started having all kinds of accidents. Once an improperly anesthetized rat started walking all over the place with its innards hanging out! I was so shocked at the sight that I did not even pick it up to be re-anesthetized. Barbara picked it up for me and made it smell ether. It should have been the rat with an expression of severe reproach on its face. But in this case it was Barbara who displayed that expression.
However, practice made it easy and eventually I became very adept at it. So much so that I could have done the whole thing blindfolded. The drill went something like this:
Put some cotton at the base of a broad mouthed tube and pour some ether into it. Ether is a good anesthetizing agent. Put this tube inside a sterile hood which has a table too for you to work. Pick up a female rat from the cage and make it breathe the ether fumes. Once it is unconscious, pick it up, put it squarely on the table and with a scissor give a cut on both sides of the backbone between the backbone and the hind legs. Poke a scalpel into the opening thus created and pull out the innards. The ovary will look like a flower. Hold it properly at the base and cut it off. With the help of a hot coil cauterizer, cauterize the area so that the blood flow stops. Stuff the innards back into the opening and then clip the opening closed. Do the same procedure on both the sides and cut off both ovaries. Put the animal back in its cage which is maintained at 37 C temperature. Take another rat and repeat the procedure. It got so that I normally had one rat exposed to ether while I was operating on the other. Also, when I pulled out the innards, the ovary would be the one organ I would be holding between my scalpels and not any other part of the anatomy. I worked very fast and everybody knew that if someone could take out an ovary faster than it could make estrogen, it was I. I must admit that I was also quite complacent about the fact.
On a particular day, as I was setting an electrophoretic gel, Saraswati came and sat besides me. Saraswati was the head of the lab and a highly accomplished scientist. She was also one of the best human beings I have ever encountered in my entire life.
“I don’t know how I am going to do all the things slated for today,” was how she began the conversation.
“Why? What happened?” I asked, still working on my gel.
“I have to write this report and get it done today itself. That itself will take me to 11 AM. I then have to make this presentation, that cannot be put off at all. That should take me to lunch. Post lunch, I have to be at the President’s office and answer his queries about future plans. God knows how long that will take. Then I have to ovariectomize 120 rats. I cannot put this off either. I don’t think I will be able to reach home till well past midnight if I start now.”
“Shall I make some coffee for you?” was my response to that.
“What? What has coffee got to do with this?”
“Coffee will get your mind off this for some time. Besides, over coffee I can tell you that I will do the ovariectomy for you.”
“Why will you do that for me? You have your own work to think of. Besides, these are 120 rats. No, no. I will see what I can do about this.”
I eventually persuaded her. Later I asked Ingo, my German friend to look after my gels while I went down to the animal lab.
My calculations were that at 5 minutes per rat, I would require about 10 hours to ovariectomize 120 rats. That would take me up to 5 in the evening.
I began in right earnest. Each cage contained 10 rats. I timed myself that each cage should take just about 55 minutes and no more.
At 3 in the afternoon, the phone rang. I picked it up. It was Vineet. This guy worked at Genentech and was a music and liquor buff.
“Hey, Avinash. You coming to the programme?” he asked without any preamble.
“Which programme?” I asked still working. I hooked the thing between my shoulder and ear and continued to handle the rats.
“Don’t tell me you have not heard about Asha Bhonsle performing live today evening at LA?”
“Oh, is she? Well, I can’t come. There is a bit of work and I won’t be free before 5.”
“That’s not a problem. I can’t be free either before 4.30. But tell you what, I will wait outside the gates just about 5. You show up and we will go together. Otherwise I will push off alone. Too good to miss.”
“Alright. That’s fine by me. If I don’t show up, you push off.” I told him and hung up.
I worked faster now. Who wants to miss Asha? I looked at the state of things. There were two cages remaining and I was onto the last rat in the cage that I was presently handling. The next hour was a blur. I strained at it and took less time than usual. When I got the last cage down, it was just past 4. Just time enough for me to complete the job, go upstairs, wash my face, have a quick coffee and run for the gates.
I put the first rat down onto the table. It was breathing nicely and had gone to sleep from ether. I gave it two quick cuts on the back. Poked my scalpel inside and pulled the innards out and was going to give a quick cut when I noticed that between my scalpels was not the ovary but a piece of the intestine. Shit! I searched for the ovary. There wasn’t one to be found. I pulled more material out and looked. No ovary! Then I found it. It still did not look like an ovary but I thought that it was one. I gave a cut. I poked on the other side and came up with the same predicament – no ovary. I repeated the same thing here too.
On to the next rat and to the same predicament. What’s wrong? I thought. This never happens. Ovaries love me. The moment they know that it is Avinash holding the scalpel, the jump squarely into the scalpel! And now when I am rushed for time, the gland is playing a trick. One after the other, to all the 10 rats I gave the same treatment. I cut what seemed most like an ovary. I pushed the cage back into its place, dashed upstairs, washed myself, got a cup of coffee, ran out while still drinking it. I was just in the nick of the time.
Asha regaled us till well past midnight. We came back almost by 4 in the morning. I lay down on the cot without sleep, just to get my back straight.
At 7 I was back in the lab. When Saraswati arrived I told her that her rats waited for her downstairs. She thanked me and said she would go down around noon.
I went to the basements to look at the rats. That was standard procedure. Part of post-operative care. You look at the rats. See whether they are behaving properly, whether there is any bleeding, is the wound healing nicely etc. etc.
One look at the last cage and I found out what had happened last evening. These were male rats! In my hurry I had picked up the wrong cage and tried to find ovaries in the males. God knows what I had removed in the name of the ovaries.
This presented a dire problem. Saraswati would come down in a few hours. If she found out that I had ovariectomized male rats, she would be suspicious of every single thing I had done thus far. What to do? I decided on the only course of action that seemed to drive away all problems.
I killed all the male rats by suffocating them on carbon dioxide. Deposited them in the cold storage for dead bodies. Picked up another cage and made sure these were female rats. Ovariectomized these rats. Put them at 37 degrees for an extended time so that the healing would be quicker. Then deposited them back where they belonged and dashed upstairs.
Saraswati did not notice any wrong doing on my part. I do know though that those 10 male rats lost there lives entirely due to my desire to hear Asha Bhonsle live.
Be that as it may, I have once been guilty of a crime in the animal lab that I could have avoided entirely.
The Salk Institute for Biological Research in La Jolla, California, has a vast animal facility in the basement. I was involved in breast cancer research in this institute. I had to first of all produce cancer in the rodents and then see which genes were mutated in the cancer tissue. This also involved removing ovaries of female rats so that their bodies did not produce estrogen, a hormone that can promote breast cancer.
Initially ovariectomy (removal of ovaries) appeared to be a difficult task to me. The rats had to properly anesthetized and precise incisions were to be made for pulling the ovaries out. I was taught the art by a lab technician called Barbara. She always carried a severe expression on her face whether she was teaching me or drinking beer. It did not help at all. I soon started having all kinds of accidents. Once an improperly anesthetized rat started walking all over the place with its innards hanging out! I was so shocked at the sight that I did not even pick it up to be re-anesthetized. Barbara picked it up for me and made it smell ether. It should have been the rat with an expression of severe reproach on its face. But in this case it was Barbara who displayed that expression.
However, practice made it easy and eventually I became very adept at it. So much so that I could have done the whole thing blindfolded. The drill went something like this:
Put some cotton at the base of a broad mouthed tube and pour some ether into it. Ether is a good anesthetizing agent. Put this tube inside a sterile hood which has a table too for you to work. Pick up a female rat from the cage and make it breathe the ether fumes. Once it is unconscious, pick it up, put it squarely on the table and with a scissor give a cut on both sides of the backbone between the backbone and the hind legs. Poke a scalpel into the opening thus created and pull out the innards. The ovary will look like a flower. Hold it properly at the base and cut it off. With the help of a hot coil cauterizer, cauterize the area so that the blood flow stops. Stuff the innards back into the opening and then clip the opening closed. Do the same procedure on both the sides and cut off both ovaries. Put the animal back in its cage which is maintained at 37 C temperature. Take another rat and repeat the procedure. It got so that I normally had one rat exposed to ether while I was operating on the other. Also, when I pulled out the innards, the ovary would be the one organ I would be holding between my scalpels and not any other part of the anatomy. I worked very fast and everybody knew that if someone could take out an ovary faster than it could make estrogen, it was I. I must admit that I was also quite complacent about the fact.
On a particular day, as I was setting an electrophoretic gel, Saraswati came and sat besides me. Saraswati was the head of the lab and a highly accomplished scientist. She was also one of the best human beings I have ever encountered in my entire life.
“I don’t know how I am going to do all the things slated for today,” was how she began the conversation.
“Why? What happened?” I asked, still working on my gel.
“I have to write this report and get it done today itself. That itself will take me to 11 AM. I then have to make this presentation, that cannot be put off at all. That should take me to lunch. Post lunch, I have to be at the President’s office and answer his queries about future plans. God knows how long that will take. Then I have to ovariectomize 120 rats. I cannot put this off either. I don’t think I will be able to reach home till well past midnight if I start now.”
“Shall I make some coffee for you?” was my response to that.
“What? What has coffee got to do with this?”
“Coffee will get your mind off this for some time. Besides, over coffee I can tell you that I will do the ovariectomy for you.”
“Why will you do that for me? You have your own work to think of. Besides, these are 120 rats. No, no. I will see what I can do about this.”
I eventually persuaded her. Later I asked Ingo, my German friend to look after my gels while I went down to the animal lab.
My calculations were that at 5 minutes per rat, I would require about 10 hours to ovariectomize 120 rats. That would take me up to 5 in the evening.
I began in right earnest. Each cage contained 10 rats. I timed myself that each cage should take just about 55 minutes and no more.
At 3 in the afternoon, the phone rang. I picked it up. It was Vineet. This guy worked at Genentech and was a music and liquor buff.
“Hey, Avinash. You coming to the programme?” he asked without any preamble.
“Which programme?” I asked still working. I hooked the thing between my shoulder and ear and continued to handle the rats.
“Don’t tell me you have not heard about Asha Bhonsle performing live today evening at LA?”
“Oh, is she? Well, I can’t come. There is a bit of work and I won’t be free before 5.”
“That’s not a problem. I can’t be free either before 4.30. But tell you what, I will wait outside the gates just about 5. You show up and we will go together. Otherwise I will push off alone. Too good to miss.”
“Alright. That’s fine by me. If I don’t show up, you push off.” I told him and hung up.
I worked faster now. Who wants to miss Asha? I looked at the state of things. There were two cages remaining and I was onto the last rat in the cage that I was presently handling. The next hour was a blur. I strained at it and took less time than usual. When I got the last cage down, it was just past 4. Just time enough for me to complete the job, go upstairs, wash my face, have a quick coffee and run for the gates.
I put the first rat down onto the table. It was breathing nicely and had gone to sleep from ether. I gave it two quick cuts on the back. Poked my scalpel inside and pulled the innards out and was going to give a quick cut when I noticed that between my scalpels was not the ovary but a piece of the intestine. Shit! I searched for the ovary. There wasn’t one to be found. I pulled more material out and looked. No ovary! Then I found it. It still did not look like an ovary but I thought that it was one. I gave a cut. I poked on the other side and came up with the same predicament – no ovary. I repeated the same thing here too.
On to the next rat and to the same predicament. What’s wrong? I thought. This never happens. Ovaries love me. The moment they know that it is Avinash holding the scalpel, the jump squarely into the scalpel! And now when I am rushed for time, the gland is playing a trick. One after the other, to all the 10 rats I gave the same treatment. I cut what seemed most like an ovary. I pushed the cage back into its place, dashed upstairs, washed myself, got a cup of coffee, ran out while still drinking it. I was just in the nick of the time.
Asha regaled us till well past midnight. We came back almost by 4 in the morning. I lay down on the cot without sleep, just to get my back straight.
At 7 I was back in the lab. When Saraswati arrived I told her that her rats waited for her downstairs. She thanked me and said she would go down around noon.
I went to the basements to look at the rats. That was standard procedure. Part of post-operative care. You look at the rats. See whether they are behaving properly, whether there is any bleeding, is the wound healing nicely etc. etc.
One look at the last cage and I found out what had happened last evening. These were male rats! In my hurry I had picked up the wrong cage and tried to find ovaries in the males. God knows what I had removed in the name of the ovaries.
This presented a dire problem. Saraswati would come down in a few hours. If she found out that I had ovariectomized male rats, she would be suspicious of every single thing I had done thus far. What to do? I decided on the only course of action that seemed to drive away all problems.
I killed all the male rats by suffocating them on carbon dioxide. Deposited them in the cold storage for dead bodies. Picked up another cage and made sure these were female rats. Ovariectomized these rats. Put them at 37 degrees for an extended time so that the healing would be quicker. Then deposited them back where they belonged and dashed upstairs.
Saraswati did not notice any wrong doing on my part. I do know though that those 10 male rats lost there lives entirely due to my desire to hear Asha Bhonsle live.
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