As a little girl, I remember spending hours in our backyard garden looking at flowers, chasing butterflies and following ant trails. I used to be extremely fascinated when my grandma used her cherished garden tools to transplant tulip bulbs from one pot to another. She would tell me how crucial it was to carefully cut the root out so that the plant could survive at another spot. It would be safe to say that my first-ever scientific lessons were in ‘garden science’.
Growing up appreciating the beauty of nature around me, it was not surprising that I loved biology and developed a keen interest in the subject. While my friends were busy solving math problems, I was lost in the colorful pictures of my biology textbook, wondering what cells looked like under a microscope, fascinated at how a lizard could re-generate its tail and how my best friend’s eye color differed from mine because of the genes that we carried.
“...I was lost in the colorful pictures of my biology textbook, wondering what cells looked like under a microscope, fascinated at how a lizard could re-generate its tail and how my best friend’s eye color differed from mine because of the genes that we carried. ”
As I grew up, biology became a passion and inspired my sense of wonder. A shiny oyster shell turning an entrapped grain of sand into a glistening pearl; a colorful butterfly camouflaging with the dry autumn leaves; a mid-wife toad with cautiously placed eggs on its back – these specimens in the biology laboratory meant more to me than just inanimate objects kept on the shelves. They were my introduction to the wonder of ‘life’. Increasing knowledge brought the realization that zoology is not just the ‘study of animals’ but also the study of ‘life processes.’ From non-chordates and chordates to chromosomes and genes, the magnetic world of biology drew me in and I decided to pursue zoology at undergraduate level.
My physiology professor in my senior year, Dr. P.K Sinha, was the most enthusiastic teacher I had ever met and the most influential teacher of my student years. He had been teaching the subject for over twenty years and the kind of excitement and passion he brought to every single lecture was infectious! With him around, there was never a dull moment in the class. I remember his own special way of welcoming the incoming class, which was to organize the screening of the film ‘Lorenzo’s Oil’. Augusto and Michaela Odone’s relentless search to find a cure for their son Lorenzo’s ALD was at once moving and inspiring. My take home message from the film was that you don’t need to ‘know’ everything in order to be a scientist - it is the ‘curiosity to know’ that makes one a scientist. I think it was at this point that my attitude towards science changed and I started my quest with biology.
"...you don’t need to ‘know’ everything in order to be a scientist. It is about the ‘curiosity to know’ that makes one a scientist."
That same year I was selected to participate in a summer internship program at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore (JNCASR). It was here that I learned my second important scientific lesson. I still remember one particular conversation with my mentor, Prof. Uday Kumar Ranga, when I was telling him how I had tried every possible control to standardize an ELISA reaction but nothing seemed to work. He ran a quick check through all the reaction ingredients and then asked me if I had remembered to add ‘an iota of my heart in the experiment’. His words have stayed with me ever since.
I moved to New York in September 2008 to start a biotechnology graduate program at Columbia University. This program has been an incredible learning experience for more reasons than one. Most importantly, it has presented me an opportunity to explore the various dynamic aspects of the subject and strengthened my conviction to pursue it further.
Outside of the coursework itself, I have been very fortunate to have met a great new friend, Latt. I won’t be exaggerating if I said that Latt is the most happy-go-lucky guy I’ve ever met. I literally ‘bumped’ into him on the first day of 
school at Columbia as he was leading a group of students around. As luck would have it, I was completely lost and headed in the wrong direction, though very relieved when I saw on his name tag that he was a classmate-to-be. I asked Latt if I could join the group for a drink. I still remember Latt’s trademark, “Sure, come along!”
As time went by, we became good friends and bonded over homework assignments, work-outs at the gym and banana puddings from Magnolia! It’s always a pleasure to talk to Latt and he is great at lightening things up. Thank you Latt! This experience wouldn’t have been the same without you.
Apart from my scientific interests, I am passionate about dancing. I feel I can express myself in dance much more than I can do in words. Agnes de Mille’s sentiments “The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie.”, describe my feelings perfectly.
I like to think of science and dance in terms of two abstract emotions. Science helps me discover, dance helps me express.
