Again, I am here in my place 😊 It is one of the worst practices to trip sleep at 1.30 AM but sometimes it happens. This Root canal treatment for my tooth makes me feel so drowsy and sleepy all the time with those pain killers. I hate taking them and so I skipped yesterday which eventually woke me up in the middle of the night. When neurons get noisy it is just not possible to calm them down and put them to sleep mode. So, I thought instead of fighting with them, its better to give them the work they like, and I am here 😊
It’s becoming a practice with me
landing here without having some topic in my mind. Even if I am prepared with a
theme, I would only translate my neuron’s language to English while typing any
post. Oh yeah, what is the language of my
neurons ? Is it my mother tongue, Tamil or English? This question was raised by
our gurus Dr.T.V.Geetha mam and Dr.Ranjani Parthasarathi long long ago when I
was working as Junior Research Fellow in
Tamil Computing Lab, Anna University. They asked us while thinking of a research
problem, in which language do we think? Valid question right? I forgot what I answered
but now listening to what my neurons are telling me. It looks like, mostly it
is Tamil and rarely it is English!
It is time to talk, sorry its
time write on something 😊 Yeah, I have the content about my yesterday’s
experience of being the panelist in discussing about “Women Researchers in
India: Their roles and Future Directions”. I got this invite from our Electronics and
Communication Department,SRM and this panel discussion was part of some Faculty
Development Program. I got this invite
for one single reason. It was on a Sunday and nobody said ok and one of the Professors
of our department suggested my name it seems 😊. I sometime can’t say no to people. This is
one of the greatest inability with me and as an optimist, I get convinced, compromise
and later somehow I will like it 😊 . People who are reading this and who are my
friends, please don’t confuse my Okays as compromises. It does not happen
always with me 😊 (A word of caution!)
Coming back to the panel
discussion, I first doubted why only women researches, Everywhere this talk on
women upliftment sometime gets boring. It should be for humans and not for a single
gender and both genders have their own struggles. Then later after the
discussion, I was somehow convinced about the theme (I am an optimist right 😊)
. It seems in the whole IITs only 10 percent are only female faculties. I
accept this fact strongly. A woman’s career path will never ever have a linearly
raising curve. It will be a bell-shaped curve having many ups and downs. It can’t
be avoided as this life is multi -dimensional forcing all of us including men
to be multi-faceted to balance their career, family and friends. As far as
research is concerned, why most women don’t opt to pursue PhD is that it is so
life demanding. Every time, I think how I struggled to strike a balance my Phd,
marriage and my first baby, feels like surviving a natural disaster. Of course,
It also gives a satisfactory feeling of having done with it once for all!
May be many women opt to go-ahead
with a composed family life than opting to travel on a jumpy-bumpy road. I
would not say they are wrong, and it is absolutely, an individual’s choice to live
their life the way they would want to! The panel discussion was also about many
Phds who don’t opt any career for family reasons. Again, it is an individual’s
choice to make that decision but what I felt was they could contribute
something to the society and Government
does have many women scientist schemes mainly for the PhDs who have breaks in
their career. Many Women Phds get exhausted especially when they opt to do their
PhD in their 20s (like I did 😊)
and want to enjoy life at least in their 30s . I have a friend of mine who did
B.E with me. She also finished her M.E and PhD along my timeline but now
happily taking care of her two children 😊 You can’t say she is wrong.
What I felt so good after the
panel discussion is that every men who took part in the discussion was talking
about the day-to -day struggles a woman has to undergo when she opts both
career and family, right from getting up early, cooking, looking after kids, doing
households and also struggles they face at the work place. It is just awesome
to hear that from men. I felt satisfied coz I am used to all these daily chores,
I don’t call them struggles anymore . Ofcourse, Selva takes care of getting my daughter ready
in the morning and yeah also, at workplace too, I have friends+co-faculties providing a lot of positive vibes . And yes,
students, who feed you the current generation’s
way of thing and that gives the ability to empathize their
needs in a different dimension!
Feel, the post is getting lengthier
so, will conclude. What I felt was, if a woman who feels she can strike a
balance between family and her PhD or Career after PhD should try that. She
needs to get convinced first, may be self-motivation and developing a passion helps!
Otherwise, its purely an individual choice 😊
I like these two photos so posting them :)
Thanks for your time :)
Subalalitha
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