Hello NL team,

This is regarding my letter which you guys were sweet enough to read last week in Hafta 137. Wish to thank Madhu (for her classy act of honouring my angst and playing the beautiful piece of poetry) and Anand Vardhan for responding to my letter with his dignified silence. A high-five to Manisha (for always having a girl’s back) and Abhinandan for wearing his jungli-ness on his sleeves (of course, you can call me ‘Pallo’- all Punjabi men I know call me Pallo. For this, can I call you Nandu?!)

From here on, the letter is addressed to Anand Ranganathan for whom I took all this pain. This letter was long, long, overdue, Anand. Brace yourself. Last week, no sooner did Abhinandan begin reading my letter than you said that I was a Tamil because my name was Pallavi. Not only that you said because my English was good this PROVED that I was a Tamilian. Boy Oh Boy, the blunder that you committed here! First of all, “My name is Pallavi and I am not a Tamilian”. Second of all, “Tu jaanta haii mera baap koun haii’ (this sounds Tamil to you?).

Let me reveal certain details of my identity (treat them as DATA) .

I am a young woman who weighs 53 kilograms. I have eaten at least thrice this weight of paneer parathas, gajar halwa and jalebis until now. If I was given two options of which the first option was to eat Mysore Paak, I would choose Option 2 even without knowing what it was! Not only is my English good, I speak Hindi, French and Italian with equal ease and flair ( poetry and ‘gaalis’, et al). Words invigorate me like nothing else. So whether it is a PB Shelly, or a Mir Taki Meer, a ‘Jila taap lagelu’, a Krebs cycle description in Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, or a few Delhi men on the road spewing the choicest of abuses at each other, all of these take me to the same heightened mental orgasm! Growing up amidst, and responding to – the loud, adrenaline-pumped, aggressive, shrewd, hockey-wielding Delhi and UP men massively enriched my ‘gaali’ vocabulary and made me understand the difference between men and minnows – both of the acumen I would never trade in for all the intellect in the world. I have systematically forgone/crushed every single of my parents’ dream about my academics, career, and anything that would make me a great offspring they would be proud of. I am painfully shy, stubborn as hell and pain-in-all-wrong-places-kind of a girl. Now sir, from all this DATA do you DEDUCE that I am a Tamilian?

Because I do not fake, you cannot fool me. Because I am seeped in Reality (and float just above it with gay abandon) it doesn’t scare me. Because I practice ‘science’ outside the lab, your ‘scientific knowledge’ doesn’t overwhelm me. My encounter with a girl who did not get a chance to say, education,  doesn’t make me feel I am blessed, independent or lucky, it only makes me want to beg some raw courage and resilience from her.

What is my point you must wonder? My only point sir is that you of all people in Hafta have consistently painted everything with your frivolous brush of information, data, and facts – and all this in the name of the superior scientific way of thinking. Every time UP comes up, you use adjectives and high moral ground to criticise it based on your data (I forgave you every time for your ignorance);  in the Delhi vs Mumbai debate, you always chose Mumbai (that too for wrong reasons. People are free to make shitty choices, I thought). Ourr iss baar to aapne mere astitva ko he jhakjhor diya – I had to stop you. Before I rest my case, a piece of advice to you from an ex-Biochemist (who happily left the métier 10 months into the profession and has never looked back since): kindly use your scientific arguments only when they enlighten, enrich,  strengthen, enhance the topic you guys are discussing. I feel sick and bored to death when you use them to prove your superior intellect. Life is too f%&king short and we are all mere f&#king particles.

Only love,

Pallavi