My Dad

Today is the first Father's day I'm spending without wishing my father, Mr. Rabindra Narayan Sarkar, a "Happy Father's Day". I lost him last November. We all knew this was coming; a chronic COPD had been decaying his lungs slowly. But when the call came it felt surreal. In spite of living continents apart, I was lucky enough to be able to be at his bedside, and let him know that I was there. It had always been difficult for him to accept the idea that he might not see me when the time came. At the end of my last several trips to India he reminded me that he might not see us again. But despite his worries, I was able to meet him several times in last few years, talked to him from time to time and wished him happy father’s day once a year. So this morning when Raka, my daughter wished me “happy father’s day”, it dawned on me that I won’t be calling home this morning. Instead this will be my tribute.

My father, Rabindra Narayan Sarkar or Rabi (should be pronounced as Robi – the sun) was quite an ordinary man. Born 1938, in a village in West Bengal, India grew up and spent his whole life in Salkia – a suburb of Calcutta. Having lost his mother at seven, he and my uncle, who was five at that time, were primarily raised by their father in a joint family with their uncle and aunt of very modest means. He was a good student, finished college with a bachelor degree in biological sciences and went to become a homeopath doctor. Although he was not able to finish his degree due to financial hardships, he informally practiced homeopathy among family and neighbors, and was quite popular at that. Following his marriage to my mom at his early thirties, he essentially spent the rest of his life running our family business, attending to the needs of our extended joint family and raising me. Never travelled anywhere outside WB, not really had a lot of hobbies except occasional singing, till we got a TV. He really enjoyed watching TV sitcoms and could not finish the day till he solved the Bengali crossword puzzle in the newspaper. For last several years our family subscribed to two daily newspapers to keep his passion for crossword puzzle going. He was quite sharp and intelligent; I remember my amazement at his remarkable ability to quickly perform arithmetic calculations. He was always a very nice man, never had any misgivings with anybody, always respected for his good manners, and never even had a single fight with my mom. I was reminded of this remarkable nature of him during his funeral where so many people came and told me how he had touched their life at some point.

My greatest debt to my father has been that he had never forced me to do anything. Except for forcing me to study every evening during my primary and middle school days, he never prompted me to go on a particular career path. His words had always been ‘do whatever you think is right’. It was him with support from my uncle and my cousin brother I was able to escape responsibilities of our family business and pursued my interest in science and went away to do PhD. He missed me terribly, but it made him very proud – asked me about my new publications every time I talked to him. It seemed silly at times, but now I know why he kept asking for it. He fought the emptiness of my glairing absence with some news of my accomplishments. So that he did not feel abandoned, I’m doing something big which is worthwhile of his sacrifices. Otherwise he had to conclude that his only son is being selfish, which he could not tolerate from his beloved son.

“Happy Father’s day Bapi, I’ll be eternally grateful to you for the rest of my life.”

-Bapi.

Puerto Rico Trip

Evolution and Our Behavioral Bias

This morning did not start perfect, had been suffering from some throat issues, did not get good parking spot at work, but turned out to be very thought provoking since I read the Following article: Can Animals Be Gay? in NYT. This article discusses and challenges some of our biases on thinking about animal as well as our own behaviors and underlying assumptions. For my impatient and sound-bite consuming FB friends (who do not have time to read the original article) I’ll summarize some thoughts here.
1. Striking observation: In a Laysan albatross (Big Birds) colony in Hawaii, which are famously monogamous for life, one third of the couples have been found to be two-female pair. Why didn’t we found this before? Because male and female birds look same and nobody actually used genetic experiments to sex the pairs!!
2. This brings the second point about our behavior: We assumed that the bird-couples are male and female couples. Because, there is moral bias among common people, and in the scientific community, there is no discernable evolutionary advantage of spending efforts in a non-off-spring producing behavior; therefore, genes for these traits will be removed from the population. Any same-sex mating behavior that has been reported has been always considered as an aberration. In fact, the scientist who reported these results was asked many times if she was gay!!
3. Therefore, a fundamental concept of biology that evolutionary process removes any genes are not helpful for survival in the particular environment is being questioned.
4. The other question is why we, humans, are so biased? We cannot tolerate imperfections; we always cringe for order; everything has to fit to our grand-all-explaining theory; why do we have such moral superiority?