Refluxing life--Sunday Scribblings

In any field, experiments play a major role, more so in the science subjects. For someone who did post graduation in Chemistry, those stinky experiments became the norm of student life. A moment comes when you don't feel the stink. You just get used to it. In my graduation and post graduation studies, our friends from other departments shunned us soon after our practical periods. We were desensitized but they were not. Can anyone forget the pippetes, burettes, many shaped flasks? Burners? Test-tubes?

And the 3-4 hours refluxes, which gave us plenty of time to play hooky. We used to set our apparatus for refluxing whatever was needed to be done and go out for three to four hours. We had such fun visiting canteens, or just walking around the campus, even movies, secure in the knowledge that we have plenty of time to get back to the laboratory. The best part of studying Chemistry, I think!

In Delhi University, the Chemistry faculty is adjacent to the Physics faculty. Everyone knows by the stink where one ends and the other starts. One can always find Hydrogen Sulfide gas being prepared outside the lab. This gas stinks of rotten eggs. Mention H2S, I can still smell it. Our hands were variedly hued by handling all the chemicals. Most of us shunned gloves unless it was something very dangerous. Even now I like doing Chemistry lab work. I prefer it to Physics and Biology ones. You see, along with Maths, I teach sciences too.

Reason and logic

cold reason-
why do you accuse me
of meagre strategy, your eyes
staring pitifully at me?

i squirm, deeply hurt
by your psychoanalysis;
willing and hoping
for you to be kinder-

considerate of my loyalty
to humanity at the expense
of sciences which are
destroying this world.

cold reason-
how you mock me so.
finally I look back at you,
uncaring of what you think.

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This has not come up the way I intended it too. I posted it here becos I know I will never get around editing it and posting it if I don't do it now. All my poet (and non-poet!) friends are welcome to critique it. I will appreciate it very much.