Burnout is the result of extended exposure to stressors, it’s not a physiological condition, but rather an emotional one. One experiences a profound and deep sense of loss of motivation, determination, and ambition, the key drivers of the spirit of one’s soul amongst other things. One will say if you take those away what does one have to live for. It’s true, one does not have anything to live for, but interestingly and paradoxically one does not necessarily experience the lack of will to live or depression during burnout. That is more likely to happen with certain other factors. But most certainly burnout can lead to depression.

I first saw the signs of burnout when I initiated the final study of my doctoral work, which was the animal study, the in-vivo. I could almost say it was the monotony of the simplest of studies or procedures that got to me. The one that had the least brain work. Frankly, not all that surprised, I have usually found things that others find difficult to be relatively easy, be it some procedures, questions in an exam, topics etc, and what others find easy I usually find difficult. My animal study required me on a monthly basis for 6 months to make a special kind of feed termed a high-fat diet for the lab rats. Simultaneously, I had to on a daily basis administer drugs to these lab rats and change their cages. This is menial labour work. In any other institution, from what I know of, generally, designated staff would be changing the cages. Do this for six months and surely some form of fatigue will set it. Add to it the lack of vacation over the last 3 years and I guess it’s a recipe for some sort of disaster.

Somehow it is curious that the monotony of performing the same procedures and experiments of in-vitro work did not cause any sort of issues. Most bizarre. Some would say perhaps the lack of grey cell stimulation in this situation would have caused it. It reminds me of how Sherlock Holmes would complain that he didn’t have a case and his mind needed something to constantly work on, or else he would resort to the dulling of his brain with substances, to put in the breaks, and remain in suspended animation.

There were a series of events which led to this burnout, I knew where I was pushing the experimental limits and with it my own limits, I knew I would get the upper hand, at a cost, but I made sure to never slip off the razor’s edge I was walking on. For example, I never liked how long one of my experiments would take, which was western blotting. To save costs we had to use time consuming tactics. But I found certain strategies used by other labs elsewhere on various forums and via social media connection with other researchers that helped me here change a few procedures. But most importantly I would be up at 4 am in the mornings, finish my meditation and be at the lab just before 6 am. I would start the experiment and by 7:30am half the experiment would be done, also the mess would open as I had breakfast half my day was already over! By 11am my lab work would be done, and I would be off.  The rest of the day I had all to myself. By 8pm I would hit the sack to ensure no loss of sleep and my physiology would be intact. Everything had to be well planned and single-handedly, it was a one-man show. A PhD pushes you to the limits of hyper-independence in many aspects of your life.

One can imagine how clearly it was pushing me to the limits, and all because I didn’t like the fact that this experiment took too long. Sounds quite funny in retrospect to me. Over-efficiency is an expensive asset. It’s like the engine of a hypersonic Brahmos cruise missile, it’s designed to work for a short burst. After that, it needs a cool-off period. The cool-off period can also be short, but it can’t be avoided before it’s used again. If used for a longer burst, it won’t survive its own force and heat generated. It will burst into flames mid-flight and be destroyed. That’s why our Brahmos missile, the fastest cruise missile in the world, is just a cruise missile and not an ICBM because the engine can’t sustain its own stress for a long-distance flight. But at the end of the day, it’s the smaller cruise missile that’s the most useful in the war, larger nuclear warheads carrying ICBMs are useless and only for show, to create a false sense of fear.

The burnout, the lack of vacation and added to it my frustration because I have been unable to travel, meet any new people, and repeated lockdowns, combined with a sense of growth stagnation put my nerves on the edge, and my frustration was at an all-time high. Never in my life can I say had I experienced frustration ever before. Desperation for change and escape, I knew hung right around the corner. The fact that I had only 2 more months left in Manipal (guide permitting) held no meaning or sense of relief to me. I wanted to get out and leave right away. If I could, I would. The frustration was to such a degree of quantification that at that moment I did not even care about the degree for which I worked for 3 years with such patience, dedication and hard work; I couldn’t care less about it. I was willing to let go of that damn degree and leave Manipal permanently, I just wanted to leave, even a day there was too much. And even now that it’s all done, I don’t ever wish to step foot on that campus. Those who would have said, “Just two months more” would not know what the hell they were asking for.

I was lucky that at this point my thesis in fact had already been written and ready almost a year in advance before the completion of my bench work. All that was left to do was take a few photographs of some slides insert them into the thesis and submit it. When I wrote this very section of this post originally, I had already submitted that one-year-old thesis, and hopefully, I will have resigned and quietly left Manipal as quietly as I had joined. (And yes, I have.)

The day I was informed about my defence I knew it was all finally over. It was only then, that I felt the entire burden had been lifted. I remember very vividly this day and a wave of emotion took me over. There were still a few weeks left for the defence but yet I knew it was over. I didn’t feel it even after I had left my institute following submission, nor truly after getting a job. I was happy of the positive luck that followed the submission of the thesis. But only at the point of the defence announcement did true satisfaction and closure set in. My true mental recovery began at this point. I aced the defence presentation; I delivered it with joy and confidence. And finally, it was all over. Three and a half years of hard work presented in just over three hours, through a presentation that unfortunately only focused on my findings but alas! Not about my journey that brought me to that point. That story I felt was much more important than the findings. But no one asked about it, no one talked about it, no one bothered about it. That’s just sad. Even now no one does. Curious minds come along now and then and ask about what my thesis topic was, but even now no one asks or realises anything about the journey. They all know its challenging, but they fail to grasp the depth of the word challenging in the context of doctoral research. Warnings about it fall on deaf ears of misguided souls who stray onto this path seeking an escape only to want an escape from this path itself.

I realised of course at this point that science is perhaps a tad bit too objective in a way that can make even its best lovers a bit too uncomfortable. But I still believe that this objective way is the way to go about it. The alternative does not work. My idol, Marie Curie would not have discovered radioactivity, radium, polonium and led to the creation of mobile x-ray vans if she complained “Oh no one cares about how many tons of pitch blend I have to shovel on a daily basis for my experiments.” Just another harsh reality of life, I guess.

At this point where this life journey of mine closes it is apt that I quickly mention an incident that occurred during the time of my doctoral registration. Just as I was about to deliver my presentation for registration of my doctoral project, another colleague, Mrs. Aarthi Shah, a recipient of the prestigious woman scientist fellowship was about to deliver her own doctoral defence. The doctoral defence at Manipal University is held in a hall known as the Senate Hall, the word senate referring to the pool of doctoral topic experts, this is where the journey of the doctoral fellow ends in this hall with their defence. Just next to that room is the Annex Hall, which is a much smaller room, and that’s where every doctoral fellow begins his journey with his first presentation in the annex hall. Mrs Shah as she was just about to enter the Senate Hall said to me as she passed me by while I waited my turn for the annex hall, “The distance between these two halls is very small, but the journey between them is very long.” and with a smile she walked on towards her defence. Like I said in my first PhD post, I knew exactly what this journey required, I knew the depth of the well before I jumped into it. I have no regrets of this long journey. But that does not mean I have to be comfortable about the price one had to pay for it. I hate the price I had to pay; I hate the toll it took on me. It is only now as 9 months have passed since the submission that I am able to see the benefits of it and final accept truly that it was worth it.

Will I ever return to academia? Never say never. My heart says hopefully but the bigger ambitious part of me says I hope not. There is always a ton of fun to be had in training young minds in unconventional ways. By going beyond the dry and tasteless syllabus as I always have with my lectures, especially when you firmly know and believe in your skills and the need to inculcate real life skills in your students as a professor and even more so when you had a guide/s like no one else had to look up to and firmly had the same beliefs as you.