Brief Bio:
Nithya grew up in India and was raised as a Hindu Brahmin. After her PhD in Biochemistry, she joined the U.S. National Institutes of Health as a post-doctoral fellow and worked on the molecular biology of infectious diseases. She also enjoyed teaching and organizing scientific meetings for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. With her Irish Catholic husband, she shares a love of Golden Retriever dogs, and inherited her passion for plants and gardening from her mother.
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I was born in Madras, now renamed as Chennai, which was also the home of my mother’s ancestry. My father’s job with the Indian Railway system meant that we moved about every two years, living in various cities and states all over India. While my mother was a botany and education major, she did not work after she got married.
I don’t have many recollections of my early childhood till I was about four except for one trip when I was just two. I vividly remember traveling to the UK with my grandmother to visit my uncle. He must have been quite young at the time, but he was highly spoken of in the family for being a doctor in the UK. My sister, father and mother stayed behind in India. My grandmother and I travelled to Bombay, now renamed Mumbai, and got on the P&O ocean liner. What captured my young imagination were the fish flying across the deck – silvery in color and so many of them. I would watch for what seemed like hours. We visited my uncle in Wales, and I remember going for long walks and looking at sheep in the fields. I remember having a green plastic cup that I loved drinking ginger ale from and eating fresh strawberries.
Tamil was my first language. Interestingly, it was my paternal grandmother, the one who took me on the UK trip, who guided me with my language skills. She herself hadn’t studied beyond 6th grade but she taught me the alphabet by writing on the stone floor with a piece of chalk. We would also gather tamarind seeds which are about the size of a dime, and she would make it a game and ask me to outline each letter of the alphabet with the seeds. That’s how I learned my early Tamil and English alphabet. She couldn’t speak much English but would have me repeat “A, B, C, till Z” and I think that’s also how she taught herself to read a bit. She would pick up the Indian Express newspaper in the morning and try to decipher the headlines and say “Nithya, come and tell me what it says because I see something here about the Prime Minister or the congress.”
My maternal grandparents would visit us frequently and took me to the zoo and beach and they opened my eyes to the natural world around me. My maternal grandmother was also a great storyteller and would regale me with both western fairy tales and Hindu mythology.
Every time my father had a new posting and had to move us, he would first check out the new place and always made it sound like we were going on another great adventure. I was home schooled during those early years because we moved so much. I remember one tutor who was an Anglo-Indian who taught me math and science.
We were back in Madras when I was about 8. After taking some sort of placement test, I was admitted to the 3rd grade. I was younger than everybody else and was bullied a little. School was a different environment from the kids that I played with around home.
I remember one science class because the teacher used an apple cut in half to demonstrate the different parts of a fruit. She also had cut more fruit and if you could correctly name the part that she pointed at, she would give you a slice. With 25-30 kids in class, it was so exciting to get a piece to eat. That’s also when I realized that all the fruits I ate at home every day, were more exciting than just being food. Like animals and humans having eyes, ears and a nose, fruits had their own distinct parts too. That stuck with me and ignited my love for biology.
We moved then to a state called Kerala in the south-west of India which is stunning with its wildlife and nature. I was in the sixth grade then. While my school in Madras was part of the Railway system school, only some cities had these railway schools which were also open to all students. They were run under the auspices of the Indian Railway system and no railway employee’s child would be denied admission. In Kerala, however, I had to go to a Catholic school, the St. Thomas Convent.
Early on my parents had instilled in me a love and reverence for all religions. They told me that the type of God and place of worship were all just different roads to the same ultimate destination. All worked on the principles of goodness, kindness and caring. So, going to the Convent school and attending Catechism classes or going to the chapel and saying Christian prayers, with my whole heart in it, was okay.
My memories in Kerala were also about our beautiful garden and of course, there were gardeners. One of them was Kasu. Malayalam is the major language in Kerala and in the beginning, we got by with sign language. He would bring little packages of seeds and seedlings in old newspaper wrapping and teach me how to sow, plant and transplant. I would bother him and he would say, “Let me finish planting these,” and then give me 2-3 seedlings to plant on my own. Then, he would caution me to not run over those sections of the garden. It was so exciting to see the little shoots slowly popping out of the ground and learn the names of the plants like jasmine and balsam.
My language skills improved and Kasu and I were inseparable in our gardening endeavors. My father was also a great nature lover and with the spectacular rainstorms in Kerala, he would explain about static electricity and atmospheric cycles. It was only when I was a little older that I found out that my mother had majored in botany as she too would point out plants and show me how interesting flowers were. I also picked blooms for my grandmother and helped to make flower garlands for her prayer sessions.
Growing up as a Hindu and of the Brahmin caste, my parents and grandparents were all people of great faith. They were not concerned only with going to temple and doing rites and rituals. We did visit the important shrines and were taught the reasoning and stories that sparked these various aspects of faith. These were as important as believing and trusting in God. I grew up with taboos about not doing certain things like God being upset with you for being rude or lying or stealing. There were also fun times with celebrating festivals, special foods and new clothes.
There were other rituals which I didn’t understand, like once a year, when a priest would come to our house and perform various ceremonial rites. I later learned that they were for the departed soul of my grandfather and these were performed so that his place in heaven was secure and that his soul was happy. The term “soul” did not mean much to me when I was young. Today my definition of a “soul” is more extensive and expansive. I believe that once the physical presence of a being is not there, there is an unseen part of that person or being that lingers around all their loved ones. I feel that I can share my thoughts with them whether they are the human soul or the four-legged kind and derive great comfort in that process. The soul can be in multiple places at the same time, like the rays of a sun. There is only one Sun, but the entire world can enjoy its warmth and light every day. Having lost my father, my grandparents, several friends and beloved pets, I mourned their loss, wallowed in grief but eventually felt comforted that I was in the presence of their loving souls. Everything in life doesn’t have to be tangible and physical.
Also, from my youth, I remember when we were driving some place and seeing dead bodies carried on a gurney going to the crematorium. I remember my father saying, “The person is dead. In his afterlife, if he was a good person, he would be taken care of. If he was bad, he would have to atone for that.” I asked, “Then what happens?” He said, “Once you have done your penance in purgatory, you would get to where you need to be.” There was nothing scary. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me there was a hell as such. I always thought that if I did the right thing in life, I would be taken care of. You didn’t question all this, you just accepted it as such.
The first time I realized something of all their teachings, I was maybe in 4th or 5th grade when we had a huge cyclone. A tree fell in a big crash on our house. All the lights went off! In all our homes, there was always an altar in the kitchen. I remember running to it and praying hard. My mother and grandmother had been running around looking and yelling for me. I later told them that I was praying and couldn’t reply. That was my first awareness of faith, of believing in something for myself. I became keenly aware that there was some being higher than all of us humans who was going to protect me and this was more powerful than running to find my mother or father or grandmother.
Then, there was the Sino-India war in 1962 and that was another incident where I was worried and prayed every night for there not to be a war. That’s the time when part of the Kashmir region became part of China. All these major events were happening around the same time when we were in Madras. My grandmother had taught me a few prayers and asked me to recite them every night, so I wouldn’t have any bad dreams. I would wish everyone good night and pray for them too before I went to sleep. Until I was a young adult, I didn’t realize that religion and faith were two different things for me.
When I was 11, we moved again, this time from Kerala to New Delhi, the capital city. Each state in India pretty much has a different language which was also used in their schools. Even the alphabet is sometimes different, and I was expected to play catch up and learn up to the grade in which I was placed. It took an enormous amount of my free time to learn the Hindi language used in Delhi. I was placed in mid-8th grade at the prestigious DTEA school which stood for the Delhi Tamil Education Association senior secondary school. These were government aided minority schools that were first set up during the British colonial period by Tamil government officials who wanted their children to learn core Tamil values particular to the southern part of the country. Anyway, being in Delhi in the north now, I had to get my ability in the Hindi language up to 8th grade level. You had to pass the language class to move on to the next grade. I also had to learn Sanskrit. Moving around, while an adventure, was not much fun with respect to schooling and losing friends along the way. What I loved however was the sciences and English. I excelled in them and that helped me in coping with yet another new school and city.
With all our moves, I never made close friends because I had to catch up on new school material and the different languages. I also loved music and had lessons on the veena. In my family and culture, it was important for a woman be well versed in the fine arts too. Together with my sister, we did a lot of fabric painting and embroidery. I remember that my mother and grandmother used to make handbags out of nylon wire, and we helped with that, weaving different colors and patterns together.
School was for a total of 11 years and in the 9th grade, you had to decide if you were going to be in science, economics or commerce. The arts track was not a choice at the time; we did art, poetry and drawing only up till the 8th grade. I opted for the science track and had the requisite grade point average to get that placement. We had Mrs. Matthews for Chemistry. She was tall with a soft voice and what she explained seemed to make so much sense that it just stayed with me. Mrs. Kaur taught biology; she was drop-dead gorgeous, more beautiful than anyone I had ever seen in my youth. Since it was a co-ed school, boys and girls sat on their own sides of the classroom. I remember that the boys were always snickering during biology class partly because she was so attractive. These teachers and their love of teaching touched me immensely.
Each year, we had a comprehensive final exam and at the end of the 11th grade, we took the Higher Secondary Exam (HSE) which was cumulative for 9-11th grades. With biology, we had to do botany, zoology and physiology. In physics, we had all the branches from mechanics to electricity, and in chemistry, we had organic, inorganic and physical chemistry. In math, we had all the subspecialties in trigonometry, algebra, and calculus to statistics. There was no free time outside of these classes to take any other subjects. The HSE exam was run by the Indian central board of secondary education and even to this day, there are schools all over India offering this All India board exam which is considered more selective than the British Senior Cambridge exam.
Now in Kerala while in 11th grade, my father asked me if I wanted to take the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) science talent exam. If you got through the various levels and succeeded in your research project, the NCERT provided a scholarship all the way from undergrad to master’s to PhD. At the time in India, you couldn’t do your PhD without the masters. My father said, “You’re so interested in science, why don’t you try for this exam?” I was 16 at the time and all excited for the challenge and to please my father and test my knowledge.
It required knowing what I was already doing in school plus a bit more reading and a project. My father was an avid reader himself and I too would love reading everything from world war stories to the National Geographic magazine. But I didn’t know how to go about defining a science project since my schoolteachers wouldn’t have the time to help me. My father found a professor at a local college who was working on ecology. One of the environmental problems in Kerala were the weeds choking the waterways which prevented boats from crossing easily. The water hyacinth would get entangled in the propellers and caused problems for these boats that were used for moving goods and people. This professor asked if I would like to study how quickly these weeds multiplied. So that’s when I learned about setting up an experiment and the appropriate controls and how to use a net to collect these plants, set up an aquarium and design different tanks under different conditions. I remember that I had to measure the water levels in the tanks at the same time every day and not when I pleased. Everyone in the family got involved, we had 3 big aquarium tanks filled with water. We couldn’t use tap water because of the chlorine so we collected water from a nearby pond, filtered it through cloth to get rid of the particulates, let it sit and stabilize for a week and then put the plants at equal numbers in each tank. Each tank was labeled and calibrated with plants of similar size. For 3 months, I measured how much water evaporated and transpired, how many offshoots and new plants came up with no nutrients being added. I took photos, all in black and white, and had them developed the old-fashioned way. My report was handwritten and probably about 10 pages long.
In addition, I had to take the NCERT exam which ran over two days. The first day’s exam were multiple choice and critical thinking questions. The next day you were given 10 essay questions and you chose and wrote your answers to three of them. I only remember the one about “Science in Ancient India.” I picked that one because both my grandmothers had told me stories that seemed to have a lot of science in them. I remembered the Pushpaka vimanam, vimanam meaning a self-moving chariot or vehicle, and Pushpakam is a mythological term about an ancient UFO-like vehicle with wings that the gods used as transport in the sky, almost like a chariot without horses but with wings like a flying carpet or flying saucer. For the entire essay, I remember bringing in aspects of this example of how there were visions of flight in ancient India before man had invented aeroplanes or other kinds of modern machines. Also, I wrote about the Hindu god Vishnu with his 10 different incarnations, Dasavadharam, with Das for 10 and avatar meaning incarnation. In each of these forms, he comes as a different creature, sometimes a pig, turtle, tortoise or lion, sometimes dark blue, and I wrote that I thought all these ancient stories were a way of teaching us to accept all creatures, to care for them and the environment. I wrote that Hindu mythology and ancient India taught us to respect and worship plants and the sun; how with the yoga routine of surya namaskaram (sun salutation), it was also about worshiping the sun and that people back then got the benefit of Vitamin D with 30-40 minutes of sun exposure before it got too hot and harmful. I vividly remember answering this question as part of the NCERT exam.
School ended with 11th Grade. I did well with the Central Board exam and got accepted into college. That summer, just before I was to start college, I got a telegram saying I had passed the NCERT exam and was scheduled for an interview. I was quite anxious the morning of my interview.
My father was reading the newspaper and he said, “Come here and look at this article in the opinion section.” It was about the waterways of Kerala, the weeds that were choking the waterways and the different approaches being considered to control the problem. I was impatient with my Dad because I was getting ready for my interview, but he insisted that I read it. Since he had helped me with my project and had been very involved, he was excited to see this news article. Also, he always felt that you keep yourself appraised in an area that you’ve gotten into and he insisted that I see this article for that reason.
I made it in time for my interview. The interviewers had looked at my project which I had submitted months ago and asked why I had picked this topic. One of them then asked, “Do you read the newspapers?” I said “Yes.” He then said, “Did you read something interesting today in the paper about this issue?” I just perked up and was so happy as that half hour interview became a wonderful discussion.
I remember my father’s reaction when I got home. He looked like he had won the Nobel prize himself. Two weeks later, I got the phone call that I had won the scholarship. I had to inform them which college I was going to and additionally, was awarded 150 Rupees a month for personal use. For someone who didn’t get more than 5 rupees as occasional pocket money, this was a big deal!
As I was finishing my schooling, I was torn between considering a PhD for research or becoming a medical doctor. As a Hindu Brahmin woman, there weren’t too many places that would accept me for medical studies because of the quota system that limited “forward” castes (castes whose members are perceived as being economically and socially ahead of other Indians) and because of the huge “cash donations” that the medical colleges demanded.
I took the entrance exams for the Christian Medical College in Tamil Nadu and the JIPMER Medical college in Pondicherry; they were more merit based even though they also had a quota system.
As I was doing this, a third pathway presented itself. Students with the NCERT scholarship get targeted by the IIT university system which is the Indian Institute of Technology considered in India as the MIT of technology institutes. Some IIT institutions around the country were considered better than others but all were and still are highly regarded for science and engineering. I was offered an IIT slot in Kanpur, in the northern part of India. But my father was very concerned because I was only 16. Even back then, he was worried about drugs and my being in an unusual environment away from home. He didn’t feel it was something he could let me do. With both of the medical school applications which were highly competitive, I unfortunately didn’t get in. It also would have been too much to let go of the science scholarship. I was a little sad but not heartbroken that I would take the PhD path.
After my undergraduate degree in Botany, I wanted to do something different towards my master’s degree. At the Madurai Kamaraj University, I enrolled in the Integrated Biology program. Madurai is also known for its famous Hindu temple for the goddess Meenakshi. I loved the idea of going away from home, being independent, living in a dorm with my own scholarship funds, figuring out what I wanted to be and living near a great temple for a goddess. “Go woman power” – was a powerful motivating force for me and my dad was all for it. I found my wings at Madurai specializing in Biochemistry and went on to do my PhD in the same field on “mitochondriogenesis in yeast.”
We had wonderful teachers but a noteworthy one was Dr. Hansen who came on a sabbatical from the University of Maryland and taught a semester of Genetics. His teaching technique was nothing like we had ever known. The entire class failed the first exam and that was a moment of reckoning. He sat us down and told us that science was not textbook learning of facts but something to analyze, think through and come up individually with the logic of it. It was an eye opener from then on.
After my PhD, I worked for a short stint as a product specialist for scientific equipment and later as a Research Associate with Dr. Jayaraman who had been my master’s advisor. I was working on the tropical disease Filariasis which is quite prevalent in many parts of India. During that period, my advisor arranged for me to work for 3 months in the US to learn some cutting edge techniques in Molecular Biology. I learned recombinant DNA techniques and made many friends and connections. One of them was a scientist who worked on the immunology of filariasis at the NIH. After the lecture he mentioned that he was looking for a post-doctoral fellow with experience in the molecular aspects of filariasis. I was very interested, both excited and nervous about this position since it would require moving continents. I was not sure how it would work with my family as I was a single woman.
I went back to India and worked for 6 more months to transfer the technology and training I had received and to slowly get the okay from my family. Technology transfer was the easy part but getting the green signal from my family was not. However, in the end it all worked out and I arrived in the US in 1987. Now it has become my home of which I became a proud citizen in 1999.
While at the NIH, I met my future husband who was also a biochemist by training. Our wedding was special, since it brought together two cultures, Indian and Irish; two religions, Hinduism and Catholicism, and everything in between. I remember the surprise on Peter’s face when I recited the Lord’s Prayer without a mistake. I accompany him to church, and he goes to the temple with me and sometimes we discuss genomics while enroute to our places of worship.
After over 30 or more years of loving and living science, I decided that the time had come to take care of Peter’s mother and my mother who were not in their prime anymore. Life became different but equally meaningful. I volunteer in my neighborhood community, aiding other elderly people, and taking walks with my husband and golden retriever. In Hinduism, “seva” or service is said to have its own rewards.
There’s a lot about organized religions that I love, that I don’t like, and many things that I feel are plain wrong. I love the fact that there is a superior being or beings that I can l look up to in good times and in bad. I love the stories and mythology, and the festivals and feasts that bring people together. I love the belief that good always conquers evil and that good comes from following the principles of religion. I do not love the claims that there is only one type of God for you and that one cannot be a true believer of your faith if you have other beliefs. I cannot condone the violence that is perpetrated in the name of God; or marginalization of people based on caste or creed; or crimes against humanity especially women and children that are committed in the name of God; or superstitions or taboos that hold back or paralyze people from doing good. I view religion as a guiding light to do good in the world and to have faith in the kindness and fair play of a fellow being. We are always more comfortable in what we know and seeing what is familiar or similar. So, whether it is Shiva or Vishnu, Allah or Christ, Judaism or Sikhism, all paths lead us to the same destination but the force guiding us there may have different faces. Faith is a feeling that you’re a small part of something big and it’s always there for you, it’s beyond human comprehension, you can’t put words to it.
My faith and my science? In science, you always have proof of principle. In faith, how do you prove something you can’t see? The way I reconcile this is perhaps along the lines of saying “I love my husband. But, how do you define love, is it a feeling, an emotion, a way you express yourself?” I don’t need proof that God exists, it’s enough that I believe. I believe God exists the same way that I know love exists. I experience it every day in many ways. You can only perceive, you can’t point to it, you can’t put it in words. These are two separate things for me, I don’t see a conflict in being a scientist and being a person of faith. When everything else might fail in my life, if I didn’t have faith, I couldn’t survive. If I didn’t have science, I would miss it, but I would survive.
My favorite God is Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu God who is the remover of obstacles. When I go to church, close my eyes and pray to God, I don’t envision Christ or Ganesh, I just feel something more powerful – a sense of inner peace. There are natural places that are so beautiful, you just sit and take a deep breath and say, “This is where I can find God.” At that moment, I don’t think of a particular God, I just thank something greater than everything I know and this awesome beauty before my eyes is not to be taken simply. My faith is my moral compass and I have an awe of something greater – no judgements, no superior feeling, only a sense of humble acceptance of what I cannot see or comprehend.
I’ve been brought up in the Hindu faith and I have an altar in my kitchen. I’m married to a Christian and I feel the presence of God in church as well. Am I a practicing Hindu? Yes, as much as I believe in God and in conducting my life with kindness and caring of my fellow beings but not as a person who performs all the rites and rituals. As a Hindu Brahmin, I do not eat meat of any kind. But, do I cook meat? Yes, I do cook for my husband and this still makes me a Hindu because I’m doing the best possible thing I can to take care of my family. It’s a fine line that you come to terms with and in finding resolution with conflicting views or negative thoughts.
I try to live my life by two quotes that have had a profound influence on me and that I use as a guiding principle in my daily existence. One is from the Dalai Lama, “Be kind whenever possible, it is always possible,” and the other from Mother Teresa, “Do small things with great love.”
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