Friday, October 23, 2009

Recidivist

In my last post I'd said that I couldn't write anymore; I couldn't have been more wrong. Of course I had slumped enough that I needed an extraneous push and decent bit of guidance. What was generated in the end was an article for an online newspaper which was well received by readers and embellished with comments that made me "HAPPY".

Here's the link http://www.heraldofindia.com/article.php?month=10&year=2009 the article is titled "Nobel for Venky in layman's language"

A friend of mine told me write this article on 2009 Chemistry Nobel winner Venky Ramakrishnan. He emphasized "it need to be for a layman". I started with reading about Venky's post Nobel interviews but I soon realized that for someone who doesn't know the basics of cell biology and biochemistry it would be rather greek to say "Venky's group deciphered the structure of the small subunit of the ribosome and it's association with various antibiotics" Another question that would baffle the reader would be "why is a guy who worked in Biology all his research life, receive a Nobel in Chemistry"? So I wrote down as best as I could to put it all together as ABC for the layman. I also included an analogy of a tape-recorder (to protein biosynthesis) that I had once orally given to one of my friends who is from a non-scientific background. When I hurriedly prepared the first draft and mailed it to my friend suggested the relevant changes. Only then did my eyes open up as an "editor" of the text; much of it was jumbled, parts of it to an extent of being garbled. I saw the errors and heaved a sigh of relief; "thank God there's just another person apart from me that has seen this draft" I thought to myself. I was resonably excited when I submitted the article but it rose when I actually saw it published. It rose further with the first two comments. It shot out of this planet with the comments that followed. Here I am, planning ny next article. I was wrong...I can write...at least for now.