Personal
Pallab, a variant of Pallav, means "budding
leaf" in Sanskrit. I was born and raised in
Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) but have since
lived in many cities around the world before coming to
Minneapolis, which has been my
home for the past ten years. Apart from traveling, I enjoy reading non-fiction
and listening to music,
and have never ever used the words "enough" and "sports" in
the same sentence (ok, until now). My mother tongue is
Bengali, which is the "fourth most
widely spoken language of the world", after Mandarin, Hindi/Spanish (by
different estimates), and English. Although Minnesota is known as the "Land of
10,000 Lakes", it in fact has
11,842 lakes
that are at least 10 acres in size. Besides the quantity of lakes, Minnesota is
the northernmost stop of the Mississippi River. All these water bodies make
Minnesota's total shoreline (of more than 90,000 miles) exceed that of
California, Hawaii and Florida combined.
The University of Minnesota is a member
of the Big Ten Conference, which is the
oldest NCAA Division 1 college
athletic conference in the USA. Despite its name, the Big Ten Conference actually has 11 member institutions
(one can easily spot the "11", which was later added, on the
conference logo) since Penn State's induction in 1990. // end of
random, useless trivia
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I play quite a few sports and follow many more.
Cricket is by far the most popular sports in India while in soccer India only
hovers around 125-130 in
FIFA ranking. However, soccer is immensely popular in a few pockets in the country,
including Kolkata. So, I grew up playing lots of soccer and it is still the
sports I enjoy playing or watching the most. Given the limited fan following of
soccer in US, I think the performance of team-USA has been phenomenal over the
last few years. It is ironic that Cricket is almost unknown to Americans because
the first official
international cricket match was played between Canada and USA, in 1844.
This, by some
accounts, is the oldest international sporting event, predating even the
modern Olympics, which only began in 1896.
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I enjoy reading non-fiction related
to social and cognitive psychology, social intelligence, decision-making and
problem solving etc. Of course I have very little formal training in these
areas, so the books that I find most interesting are those that synthesize
academic research in these areas for the novice reader. I try but mostly fail to
keep up with my growing wish list of books. (If you are thinking about sending
me a gift,
look no further). The book I enjoyed reading the most in 2007 was
"Stumbling on Happiness" by the Harvard psychologist Prof. Dan Gilbert. This
book went on to win the
Royal Society prize for Science Books for 2007. Gilbert is also a
captivating speaker; if you have never heard him speak, here's a
short video of
Gilbert presenting his research on why we are so bad in predicting what might
make us happy.
Photographs: Minneapolis
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