wanderings of a curious mind

2008-01-13T09:24:00.000-08:00

I am inserting a piece by a very gifted writer, with a talent for humor. This is an essay written by my brother.

ON RUNNING AFTER ONES HAT
I love G.K.Chesterton. Not that I am an authority on him. Not that I have read all his works. I just love him for the one essay (the above), that gave me a reason, to not have a reason to laugh. Hope you are with me till now. I am sorry if I am scaring you. Because it is not my fault that it is difficult to express my feelings towards G.K.Chesterton. Well coming to the point, this particular essay essays the whole chapter on human emotions….

ON TAKING A BUS RIDE
Before you read on, (hope you do read on) there are a few things you ought to know and digest completely. One, I am an Indian, from TamilNadu to be specific. Two, the following essay is absolutely true. Three, if you are not from India whatever image of the Indian bus you have is completely wrong. Now having established these points I shall now proceed to explain the great Indian bus ride.

Well, it’s like this. I go every where by bus. Not that I am like this eco-friendly bus rider, I can not afford (as a humble student) to travel any other way.. I usually find somebody to take me through a moronic bus ride, but this particular evening was different. Different in that, I had to travel alone and it was anything but moronic.

So with trepidation I got into the bus. Getting into the bus was a process in itself, involving treading on toes, saying sorry every second (sorry, sorry…) and as the bus starts while you are doing this, it also involves hanging on for dear life. At last I was in the bus and thankfully I could get into it (meaning out of the foot board).

Since there was nobody around to keep me occupied, my heightened senses, heightened because of my near death experience, made me take in the whole atmosphere. It was a literal ocean of human bodies. I was bounded in on all sides by a rigid yet moving wall that talked, sneezed, shouted and occasionally even screamed. I do not know why, but at that moment, I felt an enormous compassion for the Indian citizen. You must be an extremely tolerant, polite and awfully nice person to be able to suffer through a bus ride. Ouch!! You nincompoop, nitwit, ******, cant you look where you are going?? Sorry where was I? Ah! Compassion! Well its hard to feel that particular emotion when its your foot under attack. But thankfully I was in Coimbatore and not in Chennai, where instead of the flat male sandal, a high heel might have attacked my poor feet. (In Chennai there is no separate entrance/exit for women).

I slowly got back into the groove of being compassionate. I even struck up a conversation with a fellow passenger to this effect, I said, “Why cant those guys get into the next bus? He replies, “What next bus? There is no such thing.” Suitably enlightened I turned the other way towards an argument on who should be in the cricket team. Every body had something to say on that issue. I put in my two pence. Suddenly there was a scuffle near the exit. A poor guy could not get off and had to miss his stop because of the crowd. He was not very happy....

The atmosphere was literally bristling and a fight could have ensued. Just then a loud mouth speaking on the phone saved the day. “De, I am in the damn bus. The show is only at 6.30 dude”. Some sort of ill tempered shouting at the other end by an equally loud mouthed friend and then, the life saver,” I am coming in the bus, not a flight.” And the whole bus broke out into laughter at this feeble joke. Anything to break the tension I guess.

Fortunately by the collusion of my stars I got down successfully. And then, I was rewarded for my ordeal with an image that I will not forget very soon.-A woman hanging on for dear life in the same bus. Equality of sexes or what?? Way to go India.

Profession???

2007-07-26T21:36:00.000-07:00

Its been a really long time since I posted. Writer's block? Maybe...

Its astonishing how we can let our brains rot, do meaningless stuff for extended periods of time. I have come to believe that laziness is ingrained in our system. In the notion of survival, we work for want of food, shelter and mate. If these things are within reach, the lessons learned by our cells for millions of years ask us to shut off. Procrastination is simply explained with this hypothesis, for survival is ensured by submitting on the last day, and getting work done of quality thats passable.

The really intriguing thing that comes to the mind then is why do performers excel? There is no pressure of survival, and while the mass of the race is happy to just sit down and waste away, a small minority chooses to work night and day.

Nature and nurture have a role to play in this I suppose. If it is ingrained in your head that you have to work hard day in and day out, from your childhood, and if u have the right genes to be able to take in those as principles set in stone, you become a performer. And of course there are others who are even more genetically endowed that things come easily to them, that the lightness of effort makes achievements far easier on their system.

Of course, people can critisize that this just gives underperformers an excuse: "I am genetically normal human being" The greater achievement then is to undermine society's influence and emphasis on performance, and be at peace with oneself, for being a lazy bum.

Who Is Biology's Feynman?

2007-02-03T22:03:00.000-08:00

I just had a sort of summation of a long introspection that I have been having for some months now. Though the answer seems even farther now, I at least understand the problem better.

What am I doing? I am trying to understand a biological phenomenon with various tools that can be used for observing the phenomenon that technology/time/availability/money can afford. I am in a field that is expanding rapidly and already has many major milestones. The opportunities in such a diversified field are many, but is that what I want? Lots of questions on which I can potentially work for years? Anyone doing the work I do will arrive at the same results, he just needs intuition and common sense above a certain cut off (Usually this cut-off determines if science is the field for him/her).

My creativity/imagination is just used in identifying a particular piece of puzzle that hasn't been solved by anyone else. Again, in such a diversified field, such identification is just random, hit or miss or usually brought by a patron who has been in a particular sub-field for so many years that he knows whats been done and whats not.

The pursuit of research now is then "What" and "How" rather than "Why". I have been pushing around my mind this lack of "Why". I agree that it takes a good deal of intelligence to solve a complex biological problem like functioning of an ion channel or the signaling mechanisms of biological systems. And of course its fascinating to know the consequences, like homeostasis or fast responses to external stimuli.

But is there an underlying law which governs Biology? There are so many indications of one. The genetic material of all organisms, be it a bug or a human is made up of DNA. All proteins on this earth have been shown to have only a limited number of distinct "folds" or shapes, though there are millions of possibilities.

"Survival of the fittest" Evolution can be thought of as the answer. But I would discard it as the "trivial solution".

Then what is the unifying law governing Biology??

Creativity

2006-10-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

Random Examples reitirate the need for creativity. Two of the best that struck me were Google and Apple. First of all Google search itself was amazing with its page rank idea, rapid crawling all over the web, then rapid retrieval! Its truly amazing. I was first not drawn to Apple mainly because of its "Hype" (?) But when I started using a Mac, I just realised that the people who designed this thing were really intelligent.

Before anyone starts thinking I am endorsing Apple or google, let me clarify that the point is that "creativity is COOL". As I thought about it for quite sometime, I realised creativity can be multifaceted. One of its facets is simply observation. Just observing the shortcomings of present situation and trying to rectify it can cause revolution! (Pun unintended.) Yes, as life drags on, we tend to just go with the tide, and stop noticing things around us. People tend to get preoccupied with things like money and their position that everything outside office work is a blur.

When there is a template for everything, life becomes very simple. Just follow the template and work hard enough and you will succeed. There are very few people who stop to think why should they follow the template. One easy way to do this is just to think "Y am I doing this??" and follow the question to its root. One more way to do this is what I am learning now: Well we know Newton's law of gravity. But given the same evidences that Newton had, can I logically solve the problem to get the law?? I agree that this is a foolish exercise, which some call "reinventing the wheel" but this has enormously helped me be more creative, and convince me of all I believe.

Once in a while, we should just stop and ask ourselves what we are upto, or life will just pass us by. As such we are born and we are gonna die, passing through all the phases of a normal being. When you think of the purpose, I dont think anyone can define one. But if I solve a problem today, I am more satisfied, compared to a nondescript day. So being more creative adds meaning to life!

So go out there and make your idea on how to solve the energy crisis :)

Mind of a scientist

2006-06-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

Ever since I started thinking sensibly, science has been my real passion. I used to get thrilled dreaming about the great labs I would work in and the great discoveries I would make. When I was quite young and had nothing better to think, this was all I did - dream. ( Something similar to what Maugham said, He fell in love with love itself.) I am very fond of one word, why.

When I was a bit older, I started getting so many ideas which I would excitedly go and tell my granddad. He would be so happy with my ideas, but would smilingly say that someone had already done that. Slow realisation came that I had to know first what everyone had done before getting ideas. So I switched off the idea generating part of my brain.

Well not for long. Then came B.Tech and the famous "Srini's Diary" It was the imaginary diary into which went all my brilliant ideas. But the common refrain was that it was not enough to get an idea but one has to execute it!

But not to meander further from my intended discussion. For me, science and discovery is associated with two thought processes, one to extend what we already know by an inch or so and second is to generate a completely new, out of the box idea (like relativity for example). When I see science as a career, I (and many like me) set out in the quest of something similar to the "out of the box". Something that will be pure genius. Not do everyday science of getting the spectra of something no one has got before or characterising one more unknown protein....

But what is this genius about? Some are born with it and it keeps flowing out all their lives like Newton, who made inroads in everything from heat to light and gravity! Others it strikes just once like for watson and crick when they decided to steal the poor woman's x-ray picture(just joking, i meant when they proposed the DNA structure. Did they do anything significant after that?)

Well sometimes I think of the hundreds of second grade painters who leave everything they have and head for Paris thinking they have great talent. After years of poverty do they realise that they do not have that "genius" that sets apart the masters. That realisation tears them apart. I think the same experience is had by thousands of scientists in so many research labs across the Universities and Research institutions. Most of them would have topped their class during their times and would have had great job offers with fantastic salaries which they would have spurned to pursue their ideal.

To be truthful, the work of these majority of mediocre scientists (judged so only by their lack of that brilliant discovery) has helped the progress of science over the years. It is considered the spadework necessary before the genius comes along and creates the Bang.

What sets apart the Genius? I always thought about it because I always used to wonder why I was not one. My approach to life has been that of recipe book. There has been a formula for everything from learning physics to being in the college I wanted. But there is no formula for genius. No amount of hardwork will make you one. Then I start wondering about luck and again the whole purpose.. why do I have to work in a fancy lab to publish in a fancy journal a paper that doesn't have a single seminal idea.

Or should I just to coast through science, taking the opportunity to revel in its unsolved mysteries (though I may not solve them) and just enjoy its company without bothering whether I would ever make a great discovery or not?