Oh so confused!!

I am going through a very confusing time and I noticed that writing down my feelings sometime make me feel better. So this is going to be a very personal post and quite irrelevant to anybody other than my closest friends.

Well, some six years back I left my country and came here for graduate studies. I was very happy to join an Ivy league university and I was confused to leave my country and my boyfriend. But I did make the move because I did not want to compromise and my priorities were different and at the back of my mind I had the belief that this was temporary and I could go back anytime. The move was not smooth. I was unhappy in a strange land with no friends. But, I made amazing friends who stood by me through thick and thin for the only reason that they are amazing human beings. I adjusted slowly, very slowly. I finished my PhD, moved to do a postdoc for the only reason that I could stay with my husband. At that time, I was quite upset with the academic profession and was tired of it, but I decided to give it a last try. And it is then that I saw that I was not incompetent, that the profession could be better than what I thought. And I do know that I love research.

Now I am standing in the juncture where I have to decide whether to stay here or go back to my country. What to expect from my life and I wish I had two lives. It is a much more difficult decision than coming here because this decision is going to be permanent, or almost. There will be no getting out of it, whichever way I decide. So what has changed in this. Well for one thing, I am older and my priorities have changed. I am not as single-mindedly career oriented as I used to be. I have a family and I would like to be able to continue having one. I have also gotten used to the ways of the academics here and do not have too much idea about back home. I am reasonably confident of the support I will receive over here and am not sure about back home.

So why am I thinking of back home? Because it is home. No other place will ever be that. And the weird thing is I am not too attached to home. It is just the country. I cannot quite imagine staying back in a different country. How can I not try to go back to the country where I went to college at the ridiculously subsidized tuition of $2 per year!!! Some tax payer money taught me throughout my higher education. How can I forget that? How?

Also I do realize the very small number of female academicians in my country and I want to change it, if only by trying to be successful there. But, what if I cannot make it there and just go on to re-inforce the existing stereotype. And what reason do I have that I will even get a job there? I do not even remember the way academics work there! What if this reasoning is just an empty dream and I am just not that capable?

What makes this decision more confusing is that if I decide to go back (and that is what I have been favoring till now), I will have to find a job in a place close to my husband and what if my career completely takes a back seat, since that is what EVERYBODY will be forcing me to do. I have been a renegade and a rebel, but how much longer can I rebel, especially when I see that it makes everybody around me so very unhappy. I guess, my staying or going back is becoming more than just a career move or a place to stay. It carries with it the weight of my principles and the happiness of my loved ones and that is where it is terrifying. And the worst part is it is not clear which route will actually be favoring my principles. As high sounding and ridiculous it might sound, I want to make a difference and I want to make it a bit easier for the next generation women in my country, I do not want them to hear things like "Why will a woman have to travel for career?", "Why will a woman be 'wasting' a seat at a premier institute?", "educated/careerist women cannot have a family" and so on. And if I look closer into which of these questions I refute by making either decision. Well, for one thing if I am successful anywhere, I have stopped the question of 'wasting' a seat. But, there is that "if"! I am not aware of the academic scenerio back home. What if I am totally brushed aside as my husbands "better half". He is quite capable and a good researcher, but I do not want my career to be tied to his name because in that case whatever I achieve will be thought of as due to him! I believe that my career, however good bad or ugly, can stand up on its own. Will I be able to establish that if I go back? On the other hand, if I don't go back, I am just another hypocrite. I am not making any change, however tiny. Of course, the other myth of educated women making lousy wives is even harder to break. I have tried and tried and tried and I think I need super human strength and 48 hours a day to make it happen. And I do go away for conferences. I have a life outside home and I know that if and when I decide to have a family (in a more strict sense), I will have to compromise and whatever compromise I make, I will feel guilty towards my family and my work. There is this notion ingrained in my mind (however liberal I might try to proclaim myself) that the household duties are mine and it is difficult to act otherwise. It is also impossible to do all the household work and then be competent at work. Which till now I am managing but at the cost of being completely tired, spent and burnt out on a regular basis. Well, I am kind of straying from the main issue which is I am not sure which route will be true to my principles. And if at all my principles make sense in this world. Sometimes I feel so bitter and lost. I believe I have been one of the luckiest in everything and still at times I feel completely defeated by the struggle between my principles and my ingrained notions.

After all this there is the issue of my real love for work, for science. This I still believe can be fulfilled in both places although everybody around me are convinced it is not so. Well, they have a point. If one has better exposure, funding and peer-pressure, it does make one work better. But, I believe that I can make up for the lack of it, by my own passion for science and will to succeed. Succeed, not in the traditional sense of having prestige, money and awards (although I have to agree they make one feel much better and positive), but in my sense of achieving and discovering new things. The reason why I started this painstaking and bitter journey in the first place.

Notice, I am not mentioning money, standard of life and recognition. They are the things I can live without and is not even playing a part in this confusion. The battle between the idealist and the realist is raging on and sometimes they are confused which side they are on! Am I a mess, or what? :)

Power of social networking

While Anna Hazare the 72 year campaigner continues with his fast against corruption in Indian government, we kept seeing facebook posts supporting him. We had the option of "like"ing and "comment"ing on such posts. And then came a few facebook posts pointing out the irony of the situation! Yes, it is a bit ironic that while this dedicated campaigner did something real, we only had the option to go viral in the internet and do something as insignificant as "like" other such posts.

But, surpassing this irony I really felt the power of social network and thought about it for the first time. Here I should mention that I am not terribly active in the network. I do check my facebook page once or twice a day but do not post trivial comments about the insignificant and irrelevant details about what I am doing at every single moment of my life. And I have been rather skeptical of the real consequence and benefits of interactions over the internet.
These posts about "Anti-corruption fast" as well as the previous posts on "Dandi march" and "Dr. Binayak Sen release" changed my views quite completely.

These "ironic" and "insignificant" posts are not all that insignificant after all. How else would I, not living in India at the moment and not very politically aware, have known about "Anna Hazare" or "Jan Lokpal bill"? I would have read about the corruption scandals and just been saddened by it for the next 10 seconds and maybe discussed it over coffee with some other folks and that would be the end of it. How else would so many people have known about the Dandi march that happened here in California and joined it?

I am completely awestruck by the power of social network. While it has the rather unnecessary effect that I will get to know about the boring facts of somebody else's day to day life, it does have the power to motivate a lot of people from all over the world for a just cause. It does make us aware of the many very important news and also people's reaction to it. Many of these movements would have gone un-noticed not just by non-resident folks but been drowned in the n-th page of a newspaper or 2 lines of a newscast for those back home. Without social networking, we would have known about the scandals and we would feel helpless and not even try to change a thing. However, now thanks to social networking we do feel empowered. We do see how "we" can make a difference. Maybe by as small a response as clicking "like" or posting a news. But, this action however trivial does move the news forward and build support. People might find this action ironic and hypocritical but at the end of the day if one more person comes to know about a movement for a just cause, we have increased the support by one person and the chain reaction goes on. And little as it may seem this increases the pressure on the people and the government to do the right thing. Most importantly it makes a common citizen feel empowered and makes us feel that democracy is not just a hypothesis. We as citizens matter. And we as citizens can make a difference. It gives us the optimism that I saw was lacking even a few years back!

I don't have too much more to express. Except that I am liking this change. And it is filling me up with optimism and the despair to not be able to make a difference might soon be a thing of past. Social networking is truly making us global citizens. No matter where our home is, no matter where we live, we can support just causes and do our little bit to change the world.