In a Beautiful World - Germany
A man
is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes
-
(M.K.Gandhi).
My chemistry professor calls me 'Muthukumaran' and my friends prefer to call me either 'Muthu' or ‘Mk’. A little more than a year ago, I boarded a plane to the land of Mercedes. I still remember seeing a woman synchronizing her watch with the ICE train arrival timings. “Punctuality” I mumbled. I was in cologne for my 2nd session of German course. The house owner who lent her lively, well maintained and beautiful apartment, treated me more like her own grandson. One day, to my surprise, she was washing the cooking utensils of mine. "You would have gotten bored doing this same task for atleast 40 years now. So let me do it"- I said. In return, there was a warm smile and the reply was- "It’s not 40". “Was that 50 then?”-was my next question. "Should be 60+", she said with a huge laughter. I later came to know that she was 81 old, but still energetic and vibrant to keep the apartment immaculate and things organised. It was a heart breaking farewell with chocalates, hugs and best wishes when I left Cologne.
Unfortunately, when I arrived at Dortmund, it was so dark and I was lost. I asked an old couple ambling along the street- "Hallo, Entschuldigung, Konnten sie mir bitte hilfen? Ich mochte zu carl duisberg strasse gehen". They had a talk among themselves and were happy to help. Instead of pointing the directions, they took me to the exact location, carrying some of my luggage. On the way, I initiated a short chat in German and I was not sure whether they understood what I meant. After some time, she gave replies slowly for all my questions in German and English :) It took 15-20 minutes for us to reach the place, and I came to know that there were scientists in pathology lab. They were happy to know that I was even a science student. At the entrance, the pair called the house master to open the hostel door as he was not able to understand my German in phone. When it was time to depart, the old pair hugged me. We were total strangers but the hospitality and affection they showed was remarkable. "Lucky me"- I said myself and entered the hostel.
The next day, I was inside the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology with people around me working meticulously for their experiments. "Wind is what he walks like", my colleague commented about my mentor's fast steps while he was running around for performing an experiment. "Enthusiasm", I replied. The second day was the lab cleaning day, (which comes once in a year) and to my surprise, my mentor cleaned his work bench himself and never spoke a word and left the lab for a meeting. I was standing in the middle of the lab with astonishment. The word "Simplicity" got defined.
Last Friday evening my mentor and I sat down to design the primers, which may hardly take a week to design and less than a month to arrive at my former institutes. It took hardly an hour for him to design and order them all. Guess what, the chemicals showed up this Monday and I did my experiment the same day and reported the results. In Germany, the student - mentor interaction was like covalent bond which will help growing aspirants to mould themselves. My mentor was so curious and passionate about the research and was always open to listen my queries whenever I had them. Though my mentor was friendly, he was also an epitome of professionalism. "Punctuality, Precision and Perfection" are his characteristic features. In my opinion, advanced scientific equipments around experienced and motivated researchers to work was one technical "heaven". I always had the freedom of speech to share my ideas with my group. My mentor is training me to think in more than one dimension and making the concepts more comprehensible and also helping me to have a clear clarity in expressing my thoughts.
Last year, around the same time I had my first encounter with snow in Berlin. I came out of my hostel one fine morning, and it was snowing! It seemed like a shower of little white feathers. I tried to catch them, but they got melted away almost instantly--so light, so soft, and so white. I walked around the campus and it was hardly cold. Everything seemed quieter and softer. If I ever go to heaven and have a chance to have a window with a view, this would probably be one of the scenes I would like to see. I have got loads to say about the international friends I have, H-Bahn (rope car) that is inside the institute, our group’s visit to Christmas market and upcoming Bavarian castle trip, “Jingle Bells” song we sang last time inside the department for christmas.. May be in the upcoming posts :)
