1. The Master of Science

Much has happened since I last posted anything here. I finished my thesis, I left St. Andrews, I went to Belgium, I had a great time, I left Belgium and I came to India. Along the way I picked up my degree and became a certified 'Master of Science' while drifting as far away from being able to weave the various threads of my life into one harmonoius 'shimmering tapestry' as I have ever been. I - for once - feel reasonably competent at what I do while I have become more aware than ever of the utterly incomprehensible vastness of the abyss that remains beyond all knowledge.

Someone once told me that science is an ever expanding frontier of ignorance. At the Perimeter Institute this coming year I will be transported from one edge of that frontier of ignorance to another, from technology and engineering research to theories and speculations of the most fundamental nature - powerful, far removed and abstruse. In all this esoteric knowledge seeking and continent hopping I have conveniently ignored what I consider my fundamental duties - to have an income, a family and generally make my parent's lives more pleasant in ways more immediate and real than the abstract achievements of research and academia.

I would have loved to write about the absolutely brilliant time I had at the EMMP Summer School in Gent, the fantastic people I met, old friends, old haunts in a city I have come to love and the goodbyes, the firm handshakes and the promises to meet again. A beautiful place, good people and healthy emotion resting comfortably on a bedrock of learning and competence - i.e. all the things that make life worth living were present in generous quantities at that summer school but I can no longer write about any of it. I have spent barely 3 days in India and it has overwhelmed me. The delicate and pleasing emotions that are so natural in the genteel environs of Gent have been swept away by a violent and painfully enjoyable barrage of crowds, memories, relations, conventions, smells, foods, stories and lives.

One must follow one's dreams - that I cannot bring myself to doubt but where does the pursuit of knowledge fit in this mad milieu of noise, money, passion, tragedy and history ? Is this not the first fight I must fight ? To create a bubble of happiness and maintain it till my children take over the job ? Has my father not done this all his adult life, and done it brilliantly without a word, is this not where I still return for guidance and solace and comfort ? I give advice while doing precious little to lend a hand, should I not be helping to strenghten our lovely bubble, expanding it and decorating it, so that my family can rest secure, and my dad can walk without the weight of responsibility on his shoulders for the first time in 30 years ? Is this not my first duty ?

It is. And I have no clue how what I am doing is going to help me discharge it. Im running on faith and hope. India is a wonderful place - painfully, violently, enjoyable. Much more naked and up front than the west ever is. There is more passion and drama on any road in Mumbai than all the couples in all the squares of Paris. India is like a raging river, invitingly mad, cruel and sad, fey and boisterous, shiny and old, silly and wise, it is everything to everyone and I want to jump in and experience it again but I cant. Im in the river but I dont get wet, the water flows over and around me without touching me. I dont look, sound or feel like I can handle the torrents that flow through the veins of India and so I am spared and excluded.

Mumbai speaks to me no longer, it seems I can but watch from afar - I no longer see myself in the people on the roads, I see strangers and I wish I was them, with them, sharing their city, listening to their stories which form the story of the city and the country, my country. Master of Science with 'Great Distinction' is nothing. In my homeland, at home, I have not done my bit, my character hardly has a role while everyone waits for the main protagonist to step up and play his part.

Here, I am no one, I barely exist.

And thats all that matters.

Gentsefeesten.....Revelry before a lonely summer in '08

ichi go ichi e

Ive been in back in Gent for my summer-internship-leading-up-to-masters-thesis for 3 weeks or so now, and its been one of those extremely rare times in my life defined more by friends and social activities than anything else. That it was so was helped by the fact that the Gentsefeesten - an annual 10 day extravaganza of free music, all night food and drink that all the locals look forward to for months - just wound to a close, and provided everyone with a reason to hang around in Gent all this while.

O, A, Mi and Mu were the people I spent a lot of time with, especially O and A. The first five days I was here I spent working and meeting O every evening. The work, thats been very interesting as well. New software, new concepts, things I have always wanted to do. Its just so terrific when childhood dreams come true, and now that I think back I realize that most of my most cherished childhood dreams were geeky in the extreme. More accurately, the path to most of my most cherished childhood dreams led through dedicated geekism, and after my 4 year diversion in NITK (of my own making, it was a splendid place to be a geek) Im slowly diffusing towards it, with plenty of random walks and back tracking and looking around all wide eyed and lazy. I will one day understand cosmology, quantum physics, causality, Information theory and black holes. I know that however random my actions might seem, somehow, slowly they lead me to where I want to go. Its a comforting thought :)

I love the universe we live in. I love the little bit of it I understand and work on, the tiny fraction thats my domain, and I find it thrilling that deep and wonderful concepts lay waiting to be pondered upon. I like walking in a familiar but foreign city with people I dont relate to but feel a connection with. I like spending time sitting around while nice people chat inanely, and adding my bit of unpopular gyan once in a while. I like feeling accepted and unnoticed. Its been a strange year - full of solitude and yet not really bereft of people and occassional sparks of genuine friendship. Science, excitement, pressure, and my ever present flaws its all added up to a wonderfully complex and interesting set of memories.

I have learnt a lot from people around me - Peru being the chief contributor. He was just what I needed when I came to Belgium after those cynical and dark, yet brilliantly enriching 4 years in NITK. He is sincere in a hard hitting idealistic sort of way. He is enthusiastic about academics in a agressive passionate manner. It was an eye opener. It freed me from my baggage, and it set the standards for good attitude in the class. I was vulnerable to change, and because of him, I changed for the better. Then there is Abhi of the pleasant and popular disposition, good cook and with the remarkable gift of causing everyone to like him. Olga ! well. the sharp, the enthusiastic, the clear and decided, Ukranian and blonde, smiling and quite charming. Mingyee, Mukesh, Raj.....and Aditya, the person I probably spent the most time with in the first sem. Relaxed and (by his own admission) firmly unambitious yet stimulatingly intelligent and hence always happy. Made good coffee, and his room had free fast wireless :D and then of course there were Roel and Irina. It was a pleasure and a priviledge to attend their lectures. He is the straight talking gentlemanly buddha of the highest integrity, the man who knows everything and she is the Lady, caring and brilliant. A grandmother and a scientist, comforting with her presence and exhilerating with her ideas.

I feel wonder more easily than I feel affection and I feel indifference much more easily than I feel loss, but this course with its frequent shifting and transient student populations has taught me something. The importance of the here and now and the people in it. One never comes back, there is never a second time.

ichi go, ichi e - One time, One meeting.
this moment, this thought, this action, is all that exists, and might be all that ever exsists - give it everything.

Almost everyone leaves in the next few days, leaving me here for one more month to roam the all too familiar streets, alone.