Friday, October 16, 2009

Sorry haan, Venky

Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has expressed disenchantment with people from India "bothering" him "clogging" up his email box and dubbed as "strange" their sudden urge to reach out to him.
What is so strange about the "sudden" urge to reach out to him? Has he not suddenly won the Nobel Prize? It is not like nothing happened and it was just another day and all these kaalu Indians are sending him emails from all the corners of the country. That would be strange....and sudden!!
And it appears, he wants nothing to do with being Indian. He may have spent all his professsional life abroad but with a name like Ventraman Ramakrishnan, he will have to work reeealllly hard to get himself disconnected with the country:)

Venky: "Do these people have no consideration? It is OK to take pride in the event, but why bother me?"
How to take pride without letting anyone know!?! And what does he mean by "why bother 'me' "...who else to bother? Clearly, we can't be sending random mails to random people in India or elswhere who have not won any prize

Venky: "All sorts of people from India have been writing to me, clogging up my email box. It takes me an hour or two to just remove their mails"
Poor guy, i can actually imagine him being harrowed with the deluge of emails. It not easy to sift through the pile. But what is all "sorts' of people? How can all the people be of one sort? And even if they were of one sort, how does it matter to him? He would still spend an hour or two to remove their mails.

Venky: "There are also people who have never bothered to be in touch with me for decades who suddenly feel the urge to connect. I find this strange"

Again, what is this "suddenly" business? For God's sake he just won the Nobel Prize! I can't help imagining that one sunny day people got this internal urge to reach out to a particular Venkatraman Ramakrishnan!!!

For someone who has won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, clearly scientist Venkatraman is sorely lacking chemistry - the chemistry between him and the people of a country who are plain simple happy at his victory.

Sorry haan, Venky...but we Indians are like that only!

PS: Personally, I do understand his agony. In his profession, people tend to be reclusive. Besides he is no media celebrity who is used to handle this kind of attention. Only, he could have been careful in his choice of words. It would have saved him a lot of distress.