To my surprise, he knelt down with me and also started looking for frogs. He was just as weird as I was! We admired the creatures together before introducing ourselves. I was happy to discover that both of us lived in the same hostel on the NCBS campus. Ah, at last, I made a friend!
My new friend, Harsha (pronounced Har-shah), opened the door for me to the rest of the Indian NCBS community. Later that day, he introduced me to other graduate students living in our hostel, and we all had dinner together. In the following weeks, I made a point to say yes to every social opportunity that I was invited to, from birthday parties to strolls through the garden to coffee breaks. Although I am not extremely extroverted, these social interactions with people at NCBS brought me into a truly wonderful circle of friends. I had never before encountered such a group of people so passionate about science. I often found myself on the rooftop terrace of the NCBS hostel late at night, talking to my friends about the evolution of parasites or the origins of life. What a group! We had grown up on different continents with a host of diverse national customs, but we bonded on a fundamental level over our love for nature.
I also connected to people through music. Sometimes I practiced my violin at night in my room and the sounds traveled through the paper thin walls of the hostel to all of the adjacent rooms. Before long, my friends and fellow hostel-dwellers were knocking on my door and congregating in my tiny room to hear me play! Several of them were unfamiliar with Western classical music, the genre of music that I play, so they were excited to listen to something new. I even organized a rooftop Christmas concert in December.
