Work, Tension And All That Physics

Trrinngg....the vibrating alarm sent a wave of pressure fluctuations through the atmosphere. Though the reasonably high sound waves entered my ear canal and caused my eardrums to vibrate, my brain was totally incapable of changing its state of rest. A complete inertia.

Nudge, nudge...my husband's elbow prodded my arm. God, how I hate these external forces acting on my body.

Some how I managed to drag my lethargic body to my daughter's room. She had been suffering from nausea, high fever,cold and cough for the last 2 days. My magnitude of thoughts had become totally vector quantities. They ran 100km per hour into one single direction. What if it was swine flu? I kept my palm on her hot forehead thinking the heat energy will flow into my cooler body. Let her heat loss be equal to my heat gain. Let the Fahrenheit thermometer show less than 102 degrees. But hard luck people, no such thing happened. And not just that, since my bare feet were touching the ground, all the negligible heat that might have flowed into my body flowed back into the earth, contributing to global warming. Disgusting.

It was 6.30 am. The kitchen duty called. Had to make breakfast for the younger one. Then send her to school. So much work and pressure. Phhuut..the hard shell of the egg hit the granite counter. The enormous upward force on the egg made it lose its downward velocity. The egg shattered and broke apart. What a mess. And what a waste of energy.

Breakfast done and one child sent to school, I pushed 2 slices of bread into the toaster and waited for the toasts. I guess I could tell you how the coils grew red, producing infrared radiation. How the electrical energy changed into heat energy and dried up my bread slices. Or perhaps I could tell you how the microwave oven generated electromagnetic waves which made some water move. And how this friction built up the heat that ultimately boiled that water for my tea. Or perhaps you would like to hear about how my knife, the simplest mechanism present in my kitchen, transformed my energy to do some gruesome work against an innocent apple...but nah, I think I will spare you all that details.

I would rather tell you what happened after I switched on my computer.. The machine, based on integrated circuits, that always came alive at my set of instructions. I could not wait to see how my readers had reacted to my latest post. THUDD. Incase you are wondering friends, that was the force of gravity that acted on me, bringing me rather mercilessly on terra firma. How pathetic! The comments had dwindled. Less than half of what I had expected. My last post was that bad? The less I say about Newton's third law, the better. Action and reaction were equal and opposite. Garbage in, was garbage out. Or was that input and output?

I was thoroughly depressed... I really could measure my tension in pounds-force. Translated in English, it meant my tension gave me a pounding and forceful headache. I could go on about how my day went after that, but I really have some work and I do not have the time. So may be some other day, when my universe is not so chaotic. Till then, bye.

I have been itching to this post ever since ZB said women are stupid when it comes to physics. What can I say ZB, you are spot on.I never understood physics and I never will. But I am wondering what my next door neighbour Deepika will say about this. She is a student of Delhi College of Engineering and is teaching physics and maths in a premier institute in Mumbai. Or my other neighbour Preeti, who after completing her B.Tech from IIT Madras, went to MIT to add a number of letters after her name. She is currently in Mumbai as a faculty in IIT.

Oh, and about the black hole, we women not only know what it is, we live it. It is that space in our lives that completely infiltrate us, sucking us down and majorly overwhelming us. No ray of light seems to guide us and we are left to navigate this all consuming blackness entirely alone. The body thermostat malfunctions, our sense of humour does the vanishing trick and a load of depression settles down on our shoulders for what seems like forever.

We call it menopause.

Destiny's child

Ishita Gupta. Age 13. Hates physics.Loves the water. Hates fish. Loves to argue.

Whenever I look at my first born, I often wonder at the miracle that is life. How two totally different people create a child with traits that are so familiar yet so unknown.

Her "hates physics" trait is inherited from me. As a child I always felt overwhelmed whenever I studied physics. My brain would stop, sputter and then completely stall. I often entertained the thought of suing my school authorities for inflicting such mental trauma on a budding mind. Why was that hateful subject compulsory? My husband on the other hand can perhaps solve some complex and inexplicable numerical in his sleep. It is another matter that when it comes to communication his mind goes blank.

"Loves the water" is inherited from her dad. Both father and daughter can spend the whole day in water. I on the contrary have a panic attack whenever my toes get wet in the pool.

So who is Ishita Gupta, age 13? She is not me, or else she would have loved fish. She is not her dad as instead of arguing continuously, she would have perfected the art of hiding her emotions.

The twisted ladder shaped structure she has inherited from both of us have made her distinct. Like an expert trapeze artist she has learned to swing from both these ladders and maintain her own individuality and her balance. Her chromosomes, 23 from mine and 23 from her dad, have made her a blend of us but have also made her a unique person.

As parents we would love to see our own reflections on our children. Every time I confront a part of Ishita that I do not like, I accusingly point a finger at my husband. He returns the look whenever she does badly in her science or math test. But this unique girl, who hates physics and loves to swim with equal fervour denies it vehemently that she remotely resembles any of her parent. Can anything be more horrific than inheriting your personality from your parents at age 13?

So Ishita Gupta, age 13, has decided to call herself destiny's child. She has realized that any success that she achieves is hers. Not her father's, not her mother's. She is the scriptwriter of her own life.

And swinging from ladders is purely for fun.