I was alive once. Now, I just do Real Analysis.

A yellow Butterfly passed me by. A second, and a third. Butterflies in a decidedly Un-Butterflyly city. Like three pages from One Hundred Years of Solitude carefully preserved in a yellowed textbook. I glanced at my watch – math lecture would start in five minutes. One of my favourite lectures, yes. But the Butterflies were too beautiful.

In the end, I chose Real Analysis over three quivering drops of joy.
In the same way that I often choose bluegrayblue over purplegreenyellow, smug assumptions over doubt, and human company over solitude.
Almost bewitched by beauty. Almost, but not entirely.

In the hour-long lecture, I was counting Butterflies in my head. Onetwothree. Three yellow Butterflies inside my head. Butterfly-lover in a decidedly Un-Butterflyly city.
Like a lost cloud hovering over No Land.
Like a pair of sneakers belonging to a man with No Legs.
Almost bewitched by Butterflies. Almost, but not entirely.

Halfway through the lecture, it started raining. Happy crystals of infinite beauty fell down toward the earth, colliding violently with a Sea-less city. Puddles of shattered crystals accumulated on the ground. Nature’s apology for absence of the Sea.

I thought about my three yellow Butterflies. They must’ve been out there somewhere, fluttering yellow Butterfly wings in a charming Butterflyly manner.

I, on the other hand, was trapped in an hour-long Butterfly-less world.

It stopped raining when the lecture ended. I rushed downstairs to a noisy crowd and No Butterflies. Raucous people in a decidedly Un-Butterflyly city. Acquaintances, not quivering drops of joy.

Real Analysis could’ve waited. Next time, I’ll choose to be bewitched. Entirely.

Of methyls and rings

It was raining outside. I strolled up to the shelf where chloroform was kept and looked out of the window behind it. Clouds. Rain. Clouds. Droplets dangling from the leaves of the nearby tree. Clouds. Rain. Slam! You are in the chemistry laboratory, I told myself. Return to your place. Caffeine extraction, remember? Under normal circumstances, the word caffeine would have been enough to grab the attention of the coffee-lover in me. (Anyways, why would anyone try to extract caffeine from tea leaves? I’m still trying to figure that out.) But I was in the chemistry lab, and the thing I was supposed to extract caffeine from was making horrible gurgling noises from inside the conical flask. Half an hour ago, I had immersed tea leaves in water and had mounted the happy party on a flame. It had now transformed into thick chocolate-coloured goo that was giving out a very unpleasant odour.
“I’ll never drink tea again!” T whispered into my ear.
I stared at the flask in front of my eyes. “Look, T, my flask is doing a funny dance. Or maybe it’s just scared of old me, poor trembling mess.”
“Turn the burner off, you idiot. It’s done.” T hissed back at me, angrily.
What a freak, old T! Can’t a person even joke in this place, I thought. Anyways, I had to add lead acetate, sulphuric acid, chloroform and other stuff to the thing in the flask, and I had to heat it, like, a million times during the whole procedure.

One last time, sugar. There’s your water bath. In you go. (Don’t smile, perverts. That was my flask I was talking to. Now it might sound all relaxing and indulgent, but the water bath in question was a stupid little container which you are supposed to fill with water. A beaker, whose contents are to be heated, is then placed inside the water bath.) Ten minutes later, I had labelled my flask and placed it on a shelf. See you next week, jerk. Ciao!

Silence had fallen upon the class. Very unusual. Dr. B cleared her throat. The message was clear: she’d give instructions about what we’d be doing in the next practical period. She stood up, strolled over to the board and wrote “caffeine” upon it. Very clever, lady! Impressive! All this time, I thought we were making coal tar. She looked at the blank faces in front of her.
“What’s the structure of caffeine like?” She asked.
Silence.
“Chemical name, anyone?”
Silence again.
I tried to recall the name, but how much can you expect from a dysfunctional brain pooped by smelling foul things in the laboratory for three hours?
“Vasudha, what is caffeine’s chemical name?”
Great, I thought. Why me? God, are you listening? No, of course He wasn’t. He was probably just staying out of earshot of any unfortunate soul stuck in the chemistry lab that might ask him a question about caffeine. Wouldn’t that, like, ruin his image? Smart guy!
“Vasudha!” Dr. B’s voice brought my thoughts back to the lab.
“Er… ma’am, it’s trimethyl something. Sort of two rings, joined together, and three methyl groups.”
She looked at me in a demeaning manner. Gulp!
“1,3,7-trimethyl xanthine” she wrote on the board, and then she drew the structure.
“Hey, it does have 2 rings and three methyl groups.” M murmured.
T turned around to look at him. “A student in the eighth grade knows more chemistry than both of you put together.” She hissed at us.

“Maybe you should write something about it and post it on your blog.” M suggested when we came out of the lab.
“But, what’s the point? Nobody would read that.”
“Look, nobody reads anything else that you write, too. Vacations mein likh lena. Besides, you must write about how they torture us here with chemistry. I mean, this is a physics course. What’s the use of studying chemistry?”
“You’re right, dude. How can chemistry be of any use to us later? We’ve learned enough chemistry crap in school already. We don’t need more of this trimethyl stuff.”
“It’s 1,3,7-trimethyl xanthine, Vasudha.” T interrupted.
Grrr!