Sunday, May 13, 2007

My friend in a marathon…

Sun is setting. It was a long run. Suffocating, exhausting and lactic acid had built up to maximum. Whole body is aching. Now there is a distinct feeling of “mind is out of body” and legs are running as if they belong to some one else. Mind has stopped responding to the pain. What lays inside which is making him to run and reach the goal. Long back his fellow marathon runners have reached the stadium and even they may be taking rest in Olympics village. He is more than 6 hours behind the leaders. Only difference is he is running with a broken leg. He is running with a physical disadvantage but not the mental one. Now he is near the stadium. It is almost dark. Except his team and his girl friend none are left on roads. Lonely figure enters the stadium. His long evening shadow reflects his limping movement. Huge stadium. As he expected, none were there in stadium; but not empty. There were few waiting for him. Claps followed him as he finished each lap in the stadium, as he collapsed near the finishing line, there was a standing ovation with claps echoing the giant stadium reflecting the will to win over adversity. This is a story or a similar one I had read long back in some magazine (may be Readers’ Digest) .
Recently my friend finished her PhD. When she finished her viva and called us I remembered the above story. That was a long run for her. “Six and half years” is a long run. She collapsed many a times. She got up and ran again. She reached at last. But what she gained? Similarly, that marathon runner what he gained, there was neither gold medal waiting for him nor any newsagents. Then, why they have to finish? They would have left it somewhere in between?………This quality sets them apart from ordinary crowd.
She took a problem, which was very difficult to solve in her lab conditions and setup. There were many more troubles. She has to find out protocols, she has to look into results, which were of worth or not. One experiment led to another with some exciting results but ended up in several dead ends. Again she has to find her way out of maze with new set of experiments. The problem she had chosen involved laborious and toxic procedures. She had to handle lot of solvents, which were allergic to her. Now this allergy made her research (running) much more difficult. Often she wore a mask; and a lab coat. Lab coat had many holes because of acid spillage; she washed and kept even that coat as bright as possible. She worked in cold room, lot of moisture deposited on her spectacles, she cleaned it in-between and continued working. At the end of the day many times we had lot of discussions on her work. Each one of us suggested one or other methods. Poor girl, which method will she do? For us, it was easy to suggest but she has to do it! At the end of the day she has to travel back home more than an hour in Mumbai traffic, she always took last bus available (8.30pm) and she took earliest bus available from home (7.15am) to come back to lab, even in weekends!!!!. I remember the day of Great Mumbai flood. The water was entering into the lab. All of us are running here and there. She was busy in protecting her lab books. When we were back in home she was worried that, if water level increases, she may loose all the data of five years. She was anxious; called the security people to make sure that water level has not increased. They were safe. She fiercely guarded her chemicals and instrument, not because she is selfish, but because some one may misuse it, and her work will be delayed further. (These are only glimpse of her hard work and dedication.). Her delayed work and frustrating times easily would have led her to manipulation data but she never compromised with scientific integrity.
There were so many moments, just like last lap of marathon, compiling the data and writing the thesis. She had to bother about writing, printer, paper and binder. All of us made her more anxious by asking her, how many chapters got corrected. She answered us patiently, but she was restless. Many sleepless nights were put into thesis writing. Finally it was over. But referees took long time to give their opinion. One day her viva was over and was awarded PhD
That was the day we waited for her, it was very late. In our stadium, her PhD batch mates, her class mates were not there they were gone long back She is the lone runner, but we were there to congratulate. It was more than an hour we waited, after that she turned up, but none of us showed any irritation instead all of us were congratulating as she crossed the winning rope.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
( Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken (1915))