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.

"..and oh, The difference to me !"

There is a blogger in my mind. She has been a part of many of my dreams and in each one I come to know her a little better - through her blog, a common friend, a news flash or an internet message board. Ive never interacted with her personally but I seem to have grown quite fond of her. In my last dream however, she died. And turned what was otherwise a slightly strange but intriguing and pleasant dream into a nightmare that woke me up - not with fear (which is common) but with mind numbing sadness (which is not). This is about her. In trying to capture her in words I will try and put down only what I seem to remember and not embellish or do violence to the delicate impression of her I hold in my mind. But putting her in words is necessary, lest I forget.

I seem to think - but Im not sure - that she was from Chennai. English speaking and sophisticated without being less South Indian because of it. I always imagined her in embroidered long kurtas and jeans, unremarkable but pleasant. She must have been 26-27 perhaps, single and living apart from her parents and family. At least, the impression I got was of a comfortable urban loneliness born out of an interesting but independent life. Im not sure what her occupation was, or even what her interests were. I did know however, that she was HIV positive. And her story seemed to start there.

It appeared that she was involved with activism of some kind a few years ago, and that led to some sort of enmity with the local police. Or was it some form moral policing that got her into trouble with the authorities ? It seems possible but Im not sure. But something dark and traumatic happened and in her blogs it always seems to have remained nebulous. In other sources many different stories were talked about, but my mind never seems to have settled on one. Seeing the darkness of her past that seemed to hang over her always, I was more melancholy than curious. The upshot of it was that she ended up HIV positive and the police were somehow, unprovably, murkily - perhaps indirectly - to blame for it.

Her blogs were about her day to day life which was quite pleasant and independent it seems. I associate no bitterness and anger with her, so she must have spoken about her battle with HIV and other daemons without any angst. Nor is it pity that comes to mind when I think of her so she must have come across as an independent self sufficient person. I respect her immensely for these things. There is little else, save that I felt very tender towards her and wanted her to be happy.

In my last dream, I was walking around with a motley cast from various phases of my life in a dark and cold hill station, looking for something but Im not sure what. I was offered roasted corn at a lonely stall by an acquaintance from college (who was in rough outdoor clothes, he had apparently joined some kind of communist insurgency) who said the tattered 5 rupee note he held came from a stash that a recently departed acquaintance of ours had been giving to him for years, to "finance the next revolution". But he did not really care, "Lets have butta" he said. I politely refused. Later, we were having ice cream which I did not like at a open air restaurant which was full but still eerily quiet while a pretty girl I had known years ago at school was flirting across me with some half drunk friend of a friend who had just joined us. Thats when I received a call from a person who I did not really know. He was some gay student I had never met, and he was crying on the phone. He told me that she had died.

I hung up the call, sank to my knees feeling intense sadness, numb, heavy and dark.
And then I woke up.
Disturbed and lonely at 4.54 in the morning.

All very strange and vivid . . .

Who is she ? Is she inspired by some real person ? Why is she in my mind ? but most of all, Why did she die ?

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

- William Wordsworth

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
--Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

A Story in Snapshots

Chandigarh, India. January 2002

Two boys sixteen - seventeen years of age are walking down a deserted tree lined boulevard in the twilight on a cold north Indian winter evening. To a casual onlooker they might seem like any two jaunty and excessively happy boys incongruously loud on that mute road, thick with the absence of people the way only an Indian street can be. A more interested observer would have noticed an ecstatic glow on their faces, joy and wonder in their voices and a strange awed exultation in their manner. If the observer had sidled in to within earshot, he might have heard them searching for adjectives to follow "brilliant", "beautiful", "superb", "amazing".....and they seemed to be interspersed with a smattering of topics in general physics and math along with the recurring phrase "N**** Sir".

Surathkal, India. January 2005

A young chap in a loose t shirt and jeans with longish hair and some stubble walks along a beach lined with palms and thick tropical shrubbery. The sun is setting behind the restive waves and he is vaguely aware of the beauty of the scene that surrounds him, the long evening, the tropical breeze tempered by winter, the lighthouse on the hill some distance ahead of him, the people who all seem impossibly distant - their voices carried to him intermittently by the winds. His mind is far away, his spirit is defiant but cracked - though he does not know it yet. He thinks back to the last semester - the ragging and the pressure, his marks, electronics, the stress and his lab partner who went home and never came back. He wonders at his friends who burst into tears in class and others who stood around the campus staring into nothingness.

His mind wanders further back, to the stunning failure that brought him to this place, the indescribable year that went before it and the original failure before that. And finally, with a touch of bitterness he thinks of the two boys walking down that street in Chandigarh - excited and happy in the knowledge that a master had assured them that they had exceptional talent. He remembers the advice the master had given him - do physics, you'll do well at it. He does not regret having ignored those words, (this is India, he could not do a BSc ! and besides, engineering secured his economic future) but he marvels at how quickly his dreams have disintegrated and how quickly "talent" seems to vanish.

Gent, Belgium. January 2008

A young guy in a big black climbing jacket hurries through a cold drizzle on a dark chilly winters' evening. He does not notice the cobbled streets or the lovely medieval buildings. He is mentally kicking himself for not studying when he could have, and getting himself into a tight situation just before his exams. He does not know the hard labour that nanotechnology entails and he is enamored by the power of the concepts he should have absorbed. He is desperate to impress the brilliant professors who taught him so much in the preceding 4 months, and he thinks happily of all the classes he sat through excited and thrilled. "Almost as good as N**** Sir" he thinks to himself. Almost. Deeply grateful for the scholarship and the brilliant teaching, he really wants to do well. He splashes through a puddle and promises to do a good job.

St. Andrews, Scotland. March 2009

A slightly tired looking man in a long black overcoat enters his comfortable room late at night. He has had a good Saturday, though his masters thesis is not going too well. He has interesting friends and plenty of good conversation. He also knows what he is going to do with the next 5 years of his life - an engineering phd with the general aim of someday starting his own company. It seems a little dull and he is vaguely uncomfortable, but he knows he is good at it, his most likely chance of applying his skills to an exotic field has not worked out, and there is nothing that good company and good food along with a spot of cricket cannot cure. He is teeteering on the edge of settling down in life.

He slips into more comfortable clothes and switches on his computer, his mind peacefully sifting through images and snatches of conversations from a day out with friends. He opens his mail box and clicks on the only mail among dozens whose subject line is different from the ones that he sees everyday. His mind does not register the words, but suddenly it hits him. He has been admitted to a elite, intense, 10 month masters course in theoretical physics that pays for all the expenses and needs of the students. He cannot believe it. He is an engineer. He comes from an Indian business family. He will have a masters degree in a few months. He wants and needs to make money. Theoretical physics means completely flying off the rails ! A jump into the unknown ! All these things flash through his mind in a second, and he smiles and knows he will go for it.

He tells his parents (and is relieved at their obvious delight upon hearing the news) and friends. Once the initial euphoria has died down, he takes a deep breath and thinks of N**** sir, childhood dreams, engineering, all the trials and tribulations along the way....and he knows that soon, he will write the most proud and satisfying mail he has ever written.

Dear N**** Sir......

Contemplation and Cricket

Life can get very boggy and slow at times, lonely and low and stuffy. When everyday work seems like a drag and things dont seem to be going anywhere, when there seem to be no friends and no fun, when nothing seems interesting and the mind withers before a flickering screen and the body atrophies into despairing weakness. And then, onto the flickering screen appears a notice, a message offering not just hope and solace, but rebirth. The Staff and Postgraduate Cricket Club is hosting indoor nets. All are welcome for a fee of 2 pounds.

There is trepidation and hesitation, painful memories of awkward and clumsy performances with old comrades who are forced to be polite out of respect for old triumphs shared, humoring the team mate who cant play anymore but has not realized it yet. Painful memories accentuated by the mind shrunk over many cooped up harried and stressful years, needless needless, a youth needlessly thrown away for an adulthood improperly received. Can the old chap play again ? Can the cobwebs of the mind be cleared away by the winds of graceful freshness and sage history that blow and watch over every cricketing green ? They give 22 minds in pure white the chance to test themselves, their subtlety, character, health and peace, and they imbue them with those qualities. Can it happen again ?

Oh the joy to be had from the satisfying sound of ball hitting the sweet spot of the bat and flying away with no perceptible effort, the ease of instinctive movement to play a good shot as if this was what the hands were born to do, feet getting into position, head still, the bat a graceful arc, batting more akin to kenjutsu than baseball, more to do with meditation than with hitting.

There is hesitation, yes, but there is also for some reason the knowledge that this is an idea, a dream, whose time has come. And so the nets come to pass. He marks his run up. Shoulders aching, feet stiff, there is not much pace in the deliveries but the run up seems rhythmic and the action smooth, and the balls land on a good length again and again and again. He can play. And thus the ice is broken, players introduce themselves without cause, the ball seems to snuggle in the hand, there is suddenly an extra nip off the matting wicket. A few balls are dispatched to the boundary and a few beat the bat and then it is time to pad up. This is the real test...this is where things can go wrong, but the mind is surprisingly calm and focused. The bat seems perfect, the first ball comes in and rattles the stumps. The possibility of panicking is considered and discarded. Know where your off stump is, take guard, go through the rituals, look at the ball and cleanse the mind.

A tall fast man races in with a newish red cherry in his hand, it pitches at a goodlength outside off holding its line, but suddenly its path through to the keeper is interrupted by the smooth swing of the bat close beside a front foot that is already in position to hit the ball on the up and through the line and the sweetest sound in the world sends a red blur careening towards the covers before the net stops it. Time stands still, clarity. The bowler at the end of his follow through nods and claps "Good shot sir !"

Rebirth.
There is no going back.

The Next Small Step

Exams done, and one last semester to to before the grand title of 'Master of Science' is conferred upon me, and the inevitable question that has been bouncing around in my head with many strange effects : "What next ?" is decisively answered. As I outlined in a previous post, I have already made up my mind about that : I will do a phd, and increasingly I feel that it will be in Belgium that I will do it. It will be a four year thing, and for the first time really, I'm looking forward to it. But thats not what this post is about. This post is about the next six months - the six months I have to do my thesis and enjoy myself here in Scotland.

Even so, I am plagued by indecision about some of the most important things in my life. When should I go back to India ? Whome should I marry and when ? What am I looking for in life ? To be honest, now that I've given up on pure physics as well as astronomical instrumentation, anything seems okay as long as it provides decent opportunity and a good quality of life. I gave up my dream in 2008 and in 2009 I am beginning to realize that everything else is just that - it's everything else. Phd in photonics is great, I seem to be good at this stuff, and if I play my cards well now and stay awake and perky for four years, I'll probably have something along the lines of what I want to show for it - the beginnings of a hi-tech startup. I'll then move it or a part of it to India or I'll sell it and go home. I want papa to retire early and relax, but I don't see how I can make that happen short of flying home and helping with the business and slowly easing the burden from his shoulders to mine. That is what dutiful sons from business families are expected to do. But I feel I owe it to mummy and papa who educated me and introduced me to books and showed me the world and encouraged me to dream, I owe it to them to make something of my life in these faraway and lonely places where I have been brought by all that is good in me and all that they taught me to be. I know papa agrees and mummy too, even though these days she wants me to come back.

The point is, now - stripped of idealism - apart from the fact that I have done two years of photonics, there is nothing to hold me to the subject - I like it but it is certainly not my passion, - I might as well have done an MBA or something in software or electronics. So, in the medium term my goals have very little to do with the pursuit of knowledge and beauty in academics, and a lot more to do with getting me a interesting and comfortable life. And in the near term - these six months before I graduate - I'm going to concentrate on keeping fit and healthy and happy :) Ive bought Lonely Planet's Walking In Scotland and I mean to work through as many of the relaxed and scenic walks as I can by the end of June and Ill certainly spend the whole of June relaxing and walking in Scotland, and anyone wanting to join is welcome ! I would also like to learn some application development for the iTouch and most of all I want to remain emotionally stable and physically fit.

And the word marriage is beginning to crop up too many times in too many private reveries as well as conversations. That'll have to be kept at bay I think, right now the priorities have to be to handle the immediate technicalities of life well enough to ensure stability and comfort along with leisure and travel. How happy and healthy and interesting my life is depends purely on how well I handle mundane things like thesis work, cooking, cleaning the room and keeping in touch with friends and thus free up time and resources for interesting activities. It's strange that I have to reaffirm these basics of life, but I as well as the one or two friends I have with me here on this exceptionally challenging 2 year roller coaster through western Europe, have had to discover and rediscover ourselves in order to make sense of the myriad possibilities and choices that lie before us. Most of all, we have had to accept our personal weaknesses, the responsibilities we have or will have and the finite nature of lives, our own and those of the people closest to us. This is adulthood. But again I have digressed - the next small step is to manage the little things in life well, have fun, be comfortable and choose an interesting phd topic. And sorry for the slightly solemn post, but I think I have most issues sorted now, and now for the next four or five years things should be calm, stable and lighthearted and interesting :)

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Where I have been

1> Watching UFOs :) no kidding.

2> Visiting family :) lovely lovely break that was ! Thank you so much ?&4U:). I don't think anyone will decipher that :)

3> Exploring my new iPod touch and marvelling at the amazingess of it. I absolutely adoooore it. I want to write code for it ! 'nuff said.

4> Dreaming of traveling. The wilds of Scotland in June, and then later in the year, India ! Ladakh and the north east perhaps. the islands maybe, perhaps some really random place finances permitting.

I wrote that on my iPod touch sitting in my favourite coffee shop which has finally reopened post the holidays. Each of the above deserve nice long posts themselves and I did document the ufo sighting quite well, so maybe I'll write it up sometime. And I'll definitely be writing more about my itouch in the coming days. There is so much I can think of doing with it ! First and foremost, I want to get a gps of some inexpensive variety attached to it and accessible reliably enough to venture out with. But these are subjects for another post, perhaps even a different blog :)

Philosophical Catharsis

As a child I yearned to know everything. I read everything I found, I remembered as much as I could, I asked every question I could think of and argued every point that did not satisfy me. I was always filled with questions and wonder, and only constant reading and asking and learning could hope to quench my thirst. Over time, I lost the obsession, but the wonder stayed, I grew more entangled in the world, and over time, decided that Science was the only discipline capable of answering questions about the world. By definition. I considered the humanities and economics as fraudulent and misleading studies, I dismissed god in a deluge of convincing and impenetrable arguments, and I enjoyed it. I rejected religion, I laughed at spirituality, I mocked the arts. I tried my very best to find in science the right attitudes to life, the universe and everything, I tried to find in science the key to happiness and fulfillment.

And this is the answer I got - there is no meaning. There is no greater purpose. We are marvelously complex self replicating, persistent structures. When we die, the structure dissolves. What we do is immaterial. The universe is too vast for us to comprehend, if we had an appreciation for its vastness and beauty, we would never have been foolish enough to think we were special. And this disturbed me not in the least, for I was young and knew that I could never die, and I delighted in the weakness of my fellows as they clung to their crutches and tried to be happy in the face of the immense insignificance and pointlessness of our existence.

I grew older, and forgot about such matters in a few years filled with the excitement and tribulations of any young adult, but the attitudes I had developed in my impetuous youth remained with me. I took random turns on the road to life and ended up doing this very interesting course bordering both science and engineering on the beautiful and lonely continent of Europe. Thus separated from my country and my friends and all else that was familiar I was forced to live with myself again, and to think and examine life. I naturally slipped into the intellectual framework I had already developed, and with further reading and thought I made it harsher and more brittle. As loneliness set in, the first signs of uneasyness began to appear. I began to wonder what I wanted to do and why, and what, if anything made sense. I grew disenchanted with politics, literature and people (since I hardly ever saw any).

Divorced from common small pleasures that make the day livable, my own life seemed meaningful only to the extent that I understood the beauty and immensity and mystery of the universe through science, and I gravitated toward that all absorbing task like a moth toward a lamp. My work - which had seemed so exciting a few months ago - began so seem impossibly dull. Every day I strained against the ties and responsibilities that bound me, I despised the mere engineering research I was constrained to do. I yearned to gaze at the stars and contemplate the worlds and realms of truth and reality beyond our experience, I yearned to delve into the secrets of space and time and chance, to contribute my little bit to my poor species' understanding, and thus spend my life doing the only thing that had any value in my scheme of things - deciphering all that surrounds us.

In effect, I had given mankind and myself a purpose and a meaning - Understanding Everything. What more worthy goal could we possibly set before ourselves ? What more could we possibly aspire to ? Nothing.

As the strain inside me grew, between the role I was blindly walking into (an engineer and a man of the world) and who I wanted to be (an observer and student of all that is) I grew more unhappy and uneasy. I hated the fact that I would die and cease to part of things, I hated the thought of leaving without understanding. I thought about loss, and about suffering, and I grew ever more strained and uncomfortable. I saw no point in the immediate and the transient, and I saw no hope of the eternal and true. I struggled to find a way to reconcile what I considered the only worthy pursuit (lofty science) and the aspirations and worldly matters I was loath to abandon.

I had (and still have) avenues leading both ways, but yesterday, I made my choice. I will be an engineer and a man of this world. I will do everything I intended to do in the confines of the society I come from and I will enjoy myself, learn and life a healthy life with enough time left over for study and contemplation. I will be happy and cease to be bothered by mortality and the pointlessness of humanity in the larger scheme of things. An appreciation of beauty (science), inward contemplation (peace) and the pursuit of worldly happiness seem to be excellent things with which to fill up the time that is given to me.

Intertwined with this immensely relieving reconciliation among the powerful forces that once threatened to pull me asunder, is a new appreciation for the value of individual contemplation. I am willing to grant the possibility that philosophical insight gained through non scientific meditation may have value, though the vast majority of "spiritual seekers" ingest and spout nonsense of the worst kind. I am not talking about insights into the universe, but insight into human life, and what one should make of it. The universe has overwhelmed me enough for me to believe that the vagrant sadhu with an honest and clear mind is just as close to the mysteries that surround us as the brilliant physicist, though they would never agree, and the scientist is far more useful and accessible to me. Beyond a certain point, science ceases to give answers, but illustrates questions with more power and beauty than anything else.

"Why does the universe bother to exist ?" I will probably never know, but on the whole, I'm glad it took the trouble, and last night, I slept peacefully after a long, long time.

A Prayer (of sorts)

I find myself often idle, vagrant, stupid and hollow. This is somewhat appalling and, if I do not discipline myself with diligent care, I shall suffer severely from remorse and the sense of inferiority hereafter. All around me are industrious and would be great, I am indolent and would be insignificant. Avert it, Heaven ! avert it, virtue ! I need excitement.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pride

India launched the Chandrayaan aboard the PSLV-C11 rocket on 22nd October, and even as the craft was nudged carefully into a lunar orbit by controlled firing of its thrusters watched over by the bureaucratic, modest but surprisingly effective scientists at the ISTRAC down in Bangalore, an old gentleman wearing a tweed coat and well into his eighties poured me a liberal portion of liquid nitrogen from a large pressurized gourd shaped container.

He is almost completely bald and spends most of his time reading sheets of results and other arcane papers in a nice airy sunlit corner of the lab. Its a pleasant lab too, one entire side of the large hall is all windows and it reveals a wide vista, encompassing parking lots, the sea, the beach and the famous Old Course. He looks very dignified as he hobbles around the lab - looking at each of our setups in turn making sure things are on track - always with a cheerful expression and a twinkle in his watery blue-green eyes with which he peers at the world. In our first session he gave us an introduction to semiconductor physics (the experiment is to determine the band gap energy of Germanium) and he obviously knew and liked what he was talking about. Along with the typed out instruction sheet he gave us photocopies of a page of handwritten notes which he said "Happened to be lying around". Notes neatly written long ago by an old scientist for his students, he enjoyed giving them to us and explaining from them.

He can barely walk, but he handled the experiment impeccably, he got us the deionized water from a machine all the way across the hall, he poured us liquid Nitrogen, it must have been heavy in the large insulated container and he walked slowly across to each one of us and poured us our portions from a smaller jar. He never once showed discomfort or expected us to help, there was just that about his demeanor that let us know that offers of help would be unwelcome. I don't know his name and I don't know his background. I hope he has had a distinguished career and many peaceful and healthy years. I cannot be sure of any of those things but I do know this - in the evening of his life he is a happy and proud man. In his wavering but cheery voice, in his slow but purposeful walk and in his wrinkled but innocent smile there was something that warmed my heart and makes me proud to have been taught by him.

He did not tell me anything I had not been told before by other teachers - people and books - but the manner in which he ensured we went over all the basics - punctuated by self effacing "as you probably already know.."s, his small voice shaking but never hesitant, his words measured but never dull - made a deep impression on me. He told us about semiconductors as if he were introducing us to old friends, he pried the equations open to reveal elegant and pleasant pictures full of cheerful electrons and fussy bonds, he told us how when an acceptor impurity is introduced into the semiconductor, an electron is trapped by it to complete the lattice and "plays no further part in the proceedings" while a hole is left in the valence band "and conducts merrily away..". He made things interesting and ensured we listened and he wanted us to learn. I admire him for it. I admire him for not giving up, for insisting on teaching and teaching well. Even as his body was tired and worn, his mind seemed to carry with ease the weight of the years and the memories of three quarters of a century.

Pride. It can mean so many things, it can mean having discovered a comet, it can mean having married the boss's daughter, it can mean having reached the moon, but at its most elevating and touching it means doing one's job with dignity and enjoyment in the face of weakness and vulnerability, to think about the mundane nuts and bolts of a lifetime - the remnants of one's karma and dharma - with love and humor and cheer everyday even when facing the last abyss.

Off to Oxford and pondering diffraction

The OxiMUN starts tomorrow and I'm hoping to have a bit of fun and meet some interesting people. Besides that, I have some interesting diffraction phenomena to investigate and explain. When linearly polarised light is incident on a reflective diffraction grating, it does not go onto all orders of diffraction in the same proportions as does unpolarised light. When the linear polarization incident upon the grating is rotated, one can visibly see some orders losing intensity and others gaining intensity. Generally, negative orders go one way (all increase or decrease to various extents) and the positive orders go the other way (again, variable). Its not immediately obvious to me why this should happen, and it'll be interesting to see if I can figure it out Buddha ishtyle. He would appreciate a challenge like this, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, I'm to debate a New Space Treaty at Oxford. I have the vaguest of ideas about what has gone before this, and strong opinions on the subject, which generally makes for an entertaining combination :D lets see how much I can bluff among the best in the country. Well, more or less the best, I think I must be the only person geeky enough to voluntarily opt for the Space Commission !

And I find that my mental abilities have degraded alarmingly in many respects ! I am not as agile as I used to be, and simple calculations and integrals etc which I would not have had to think about at all once upon a time now seem to vex me. This obviously cannot be allowed to continue and so I have already spent lots of money and no time (typical !) on a possible solution - The Art and Craft of Problem Solving by Paul Zeitz. I intend to work through the book and see if my brain can pick up the ropes and go the old Indian rope trick again :P lame.

And on top of all this, I'm supposed to be looking into control systems for a lunar lander and lunar bus even. (Go Frednet !) I have the books, I just need to spend some time and learn some stuff ! and that's what I mean when I say Ive lost the spark and the sheen a bit, the zest for a long tough problem solving and concept crunching session has more or less been evicted from my personality by the mind numbing influence of the Internet, and instead of doing the wonderful stuff I could be doing, I spend time refreshing the same 3-4 pages over and over again for hours.

My thesis is beginning to look up too, I have some nice mask design to do now, and then some modeling and fabrication side by side. The modeling is for some innovative new devices and the fabrication is for an old device I had tried over the summer but it dint really reach a full and satisfactory conclusion. Apart from that there is all the totally fascinating slow-light stuff which I just adoore, and I intend to get into that majorly. Plus there are the awesomely exotic essays I have to do for the Lab course and the "Experimental Quantum Physics at the Limits" course (dont you just love the "At the Limits" part of it ! thats what made me take the course :D )

So all in all, life looks good :)

Run !

There was a time when I could run. I could run and not care, I could run and not feel my legs, not feel my body at all, I could run and imagine I was flying. I ran through the countryside simply to remind myself I was alive, I ran in races to feel my heart thumping within me, to taste victory and defeat, to run faster and harder and further, I woke up every morning when I did not need to and ran by myself, I missed parties and trips and movies just so that I did not miss out on running. It was purifying, elevating and liberating.

Years passed and I became careworn and tired, I had faced disappointment and become cynical, I had become unhealthy and unhappy. I worried about victory and was afraid of defeat, I no longer relished the race (any race, for I no longer ran) and its uncertainty and its drama. I was scared of life. I became indolent and fat and bald, I became unfeeling, unthinking and long winded. Gone was the direct and carefree demeanor, I was now timid and obscurantist, needing mindless sophistry and convoluted words to have an identity beyond the obvious lazy heap that I had become. I quizzed and I relished the power of knowing intricate trivia and pitting my wits against fellow obscurantists, I wrote and enjoyed exercising the imaginary power of impotent words. With time on my hands and a world to explore, I became more and more involved with vague fears and complexes and more dependent on verbosity and trivia for my self respect. I had long ago forgotten what freedom meant.

Then - due to what little honesty and steel remained in me - I got a scholarship and came to Europe, I did well, very well. I clenched my teeth and dived into the deep end. I wasted time, I buried myself in TV shows and movies and Causes, but I did enough to do well and hence Im still afloat. I scrambled to keep myself above the dark and corrosive waters of fear and weakness that I have let accumulate around me. I was still enslaved and worse, I was beginning to think this was life. And then St. Andrews with its broad playing fields and open spaces, the vast beach and the North Sea reminded me of freedom.

I must Run and be free. Run despite the wind and the rain and the fear, I must run to tear from my mind the suffocating cobwebs of vague mistrust and cynicism that have enveloped and weakened and stunted it ! I must remember what it was like to walk erect, stride confidently and think boldly, and for that I must run with freedom in my heart and wings on my heels ! :)

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.

Who am I ?

Im a twenty three and a half year old electronics engineer studying photonics and trying hard to maintain the wonder and excitement I felt as a child looking at the stars. I dont know how this blog will develop, but I dont think it will be a place for gloomy rants and long self referencing meta blog posts. It will, I hope, be informative and interesting and will acquaint the reader with some of the stories I have seen and heard - about people, places, science and life.

I look forward to writing !