Whats Important ?

1. Health
2. Human Contact
3. Fun
4. Constraints

baaki,

ever since I was a little kid, Ive wanted to build a model aircraft (one that actually flies under its own power) and I still do, more than ever.
and not just from a kit....I want to come up with my own designs. how hard can it be :-)

I want to do something really cool with my iTouch and the iPad I know I will one day own. Heck....Id like to control my model plane using my iPad :D

I want to make money by doing something 'useful' in society. Make pans, provide advice(!!), build spaceships, whatever.

Im not sure I want to do a Phd any more....but I need to find a good substitute for a Phd. something I can spend a couple of years doing, thats ridiculous, unlikely, high risk, high return and high impact. before I go home, get married and start trying to not be boring and irrelevant.

Im irrelevant now too of course....but I dont feel it. Im in a place where people are moving, its 'the place to be' in theoretical physics. If a great discovery is made - in any of a staggeringly large number of fields - chances are it'll be by someone associated with PI or someone known to people associated with PI. and then the discoverer will soon be associated with PI :P

Perhaps the reason Im scared of going back home is that I feel I need to be in the 'right place' in order to feel useful and competent. Im scared once I let go of all this, the phd offers, the scholarships and the world in which these things matter, Ill be a nonentity, with no intrinsic value or interest. Maybe I rely too much on where I am in order to feel good about myself.

Maybe this would not be the case if I had some nice round meaty piece of original research in my kitty. Of any sort....something I had built, anything, anything that had come to fruition. other than scholarships I have got based on impressions I have made upon people. I keep telling myself...these are great people (and they are) both as human beings and as scientists, and if they think Im good enough....maybe I am.

Once I go home, whats to certify Im good enough for anything ? Its a family business....I would be much less concerned about taking up a random job. there, the fact that someone was paying me good money would tell me that I was worth something to them.

Nope.....I cant go back unless I resolve this. I need to go home after Ive convinced myself that my worth is something I carry around with me, not something that is bestowed upon me by the institute I am in, or the scholarship I get.
which brings me back to "doing something thats ridiculous, unlikely, high risk, high return and high impact." :D

Apology to Leo Kadanoff

I have been fortunate enough to be taught by one of the great physicists of the last century (the century - I do not need to remind anyone - of Einstein, Schrodinger, Dirac, Feynman and others..) : Prof. Leo Kadanoff. Here is a man who laid the groundwork behind some of the most profound ideas (Renormalization Group) that are a crucial part of the underpinnings of the powerful field theories that are the epitome of human attempts to understand the universe.

He taught me - in fact he is teaching me this very moment - a course on Statistical Mechanics much of which is actually material created in part by him. Many crucial ideas in the field theory course Im doing concurrently originate from him and David Tong from Cambridge who is teaching that excellent course mentioned once how sleepish he felt talking about some of these ideas with Leo Kadanoff sitting at the back of the class listening attentively.

He always comes 40 minutes before his class starts and he likes to listen to whats happening in the field theory course, and he loves to then begin his lecture by giving stat mech analogues of the field theory concepts we had been looking at. He is one of the leading proponents of 'Universality' in physics - the idea that phenomena (like critical phenomena, phase transitions) look identical across branches of physics. He likes to say, and show, how we do the same physics over and over again, the same equations reappear in completely different contexts.

He is perhaps one of the most humble most polite people Ive met. And so it is with deep - almost bitter - regret that I admit that I have not learnt much from him at all. It is my fault entirely, I simply did not make the effort necessary to appreciate and assimilate the deep concepts he was good enough to put forth enthusiastically before us, everyday, even at the age of 82. Between field theory and my indolence and laziness, I just did not do what was needed.

I am ashamed. But - if for no other reason than respect for Prof. Kadanoff - I will study and become good at Statistical Mechanics and understand renormalization before Im done with this business of theoretical physics.

I have made many similar mistakes....sleeping in PSB sir's class while he poured his heart into imparting knowledge springs immediately to mind, and perhaps I will never understand DSP and Control Systems as well as I should, but this time, I wont let it pass.

__________________________

ख्वाब तो मैंने बहुत देखे है, लेकिन दिल लगा कर खेले हुए बरसों बीत गए. शब्द बड़ी आसानी से निकलते है मुह से, मन मे महल बड़ी आसानी से बनते है, लेकिन डाव लगता नही है मुझसे, ज़ंग लड़ी नही जाती, मंजिल तै नही कर पता हूँ मैं - लाब्जों की दीवारों के पीछे छुपकर मुकर जाता हूँ मैं. हारना तो मैं जानता ही नही हूँ - मैंने खेलना ही कहाँ सीखा है ! ख़यालों मे खोया, फ़र्ज़ निभाना भूल चूका हूँ मै. बडे दिन हुए सिर उठाके चले हुए - हर मोड़ पे गलत रास्तों पर बिखर जाता हूँ मैं.

"हजारों ख्वाहिशें ऐसी
की हर ख्वाहिश पे दम निकले,
बहुत निकले मेरे अरमान
लेकिन फिर भी काम निकले . . "

On Solitude

I have had unparalleled opportunity to be alone with myself and meditate, both upon my life and upon my subjects, and (I regret to say) after making a very promising start 3 months ago I rather tired of my quiet isolation and yearned for the company of old friends and the comfort of old haunts, the warmth of home and the careless lethargy of an unambitious life. The splendid solitude of the earnest savant that I so relished at the outset of this journey became a burden and slowly I wandered from the path of learning, maintaining enough of a hold to keep track but not enough to delight in it. As I have so many times before, I saw the light and somehow, I forgot. I have been competent all this semester, but there was the opportunity to be exceptional, to be inspired, and I squandered it in my indolence, my mind clouded by false concerns and intellectual diversions just engaging enough to hide the damage being done.

Just this afternoon while I mused upon life, I identified "a willingness to be alone" as the factor that separates the definitively ordinary from the potentially great. I then realized that in this semester, that was exactly where I was found wanting. I could, after a point, no longer sustain the mental focus that forms the basis of productive meditative solitude, and it became all too easy to find ways to be entertained and thus not have to think. Being alone induces a state of honesty and introspection that many people find abhorrent, and I - having conquered the daemons of self deceit - threw away for no reason the purity of mind earned over weeks of silent work and thought. I reached the very edge of genius and turned back, unable to maintain order and peace when they were most important.

Genius is a state of mind, and it is earned through sustained meditative work. If I dont get there in the next year or two, I will never get there. There is a definite window of opportunity, I know the path, I have but to walk it, my mind at peace and my voices silent.

I'm still around - struggling, thinking, searching, happy, miserable, ill, worried, looking for peace, for reassurance form a world that's built to disappoint, getting things done, keeping it afloat, excited sometimes, bored mostly, appalled that the universe is unkind enough to exploit every weakness, every anomaly, every mistake one ever made and extract the market price. That is the only universal law I've experienced. No one gets away with anything. You been a bad boy ? Whether you knew it or not, whether you accept it or not, you will suffer. So will I.

We pay for the things we defile and degrade - including ourselves - and we pay for believing too much and we pay for believing too little. A price is extracted for every happy moment experienced, every good day, every piece of fortune, every favour taken, every minute spent wallowing in self pity, every dark thought, every task postponed and every promise broken.

To appreciate beauty in peace and languor without losing vigour and valour, to feel free without having to rebel, to be happy without self deceit, to face a just universe and see oneself reflected in it with a steady, unflinching, critical and honest gaze . . . . . . . .

Take yourself away

Disappear, fight, conquer, observe, smile, live and don't give a damn.

What sort of a person am I ?

I genuinely do not know.

I have deliberately forgotten.

Because then I would not have anything to be melodramatic about.

Tear away the cobwebs !

The years of inaction and directionless meandering come back to me and attach their long sticky filaments to my person. The minutes, hours, days, weeks wasted in pointless dallying and sordid wallowing all shoot fine and persistent threads that effectively imprison my mind and consign it to an existence of shallowness and fear. They weave a stifling cocoon around my heart, deadening it, unable to feel, to be inspired, to fly. The cobwebs I've neglected too long, they hang in thick bundles and clinging curtains all around me, making movement impossible, turning every effort into further entanglement, completely shutting off the world, smothering me, burying me alive.

And Suddenly, I do not want to write anymore. When its all one can do to keep from imploding into the vaccum within, its difficult to throw anything out. Its difficult to speak when a brooding silence fills the void, engulfs the heart and subdues the mind. Faint and vague ripples over the texture of conciousness - silent but disturbing - give subtle but sanguine indications of a struggle - slow and quiet - taking place in dark, profound and misty reccesses, where immense forces are mustered from nowhere, exert themselves mightily against nothing, and thus having expended themselves for no reason, mutely disappear whence they came - the obscurity of faliure.

Outside, one sees only a manner that is sometimes energetic and suddenly blank, eyes that can flash with spirit before looking timidly at the ground, and sometimes, a faraway smile or a doubtful laugh.

Thats all there is to it.