One of my earliest memories of anything to with physics is the introduction of Stephan Hawking’s show “Into the Universe”. Through his computer voice while sitting in a majestic and empty hall which seems to be somewhere in Cambridge he says, “Hello, My name is Stephan Hawking, physicist, cosmologist and something of a dreamer. Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free…”.1 Now that is what I call a banger intro enough to excite any 12 year old 2, isn’t it?3 Anyway the point is, this show was a major canon event in my life.

I usually only got to watch the Discovery channel when I got hand on the TV remote when my grandfater was out on the fields and my siblings were sleeping or playing with their friends. The TV was is in the corner of a small room which was in striking contrast to the beautiful hall in which Hawking hosts the show from. This is what makes technology absolutely beautiful. Two strikingly different worlds connected by a thread of EM waves, through a series of marvels of human engineering. All in all I don’t think I have watched this show more that two or three times but all of this was enough to make me wanting to introduce myself as a physicist as well.

Now to think that I am at the same place that used to be Hawking’s academic home is somewhat of an unblievable thing for me. To reach here consisted of multiple rounds of overcoming mediocrity to again be mediocre in the next one. So, now I am mediocre at one of the most brilliant places on this planet. I believe most of the people with whom I share this romantic journey in the pursuit of scientific knowledge have similar experiences. After all we all we not born geniuses and we all will not reach the final round where we are just mediocre among a handful of genius thinkers. But that’s okay because no one other than myself cares about if I ever do reach there.

The journey in itself is nothing like something a child would ever dream of. It doesn’t consist of a devoted study of natural world, through pure passion and lack of worries. The world is a harsh place full of suffering no matter what we do or where we are. Life is not all fun just because we are pursuing our passion, it is just as difficult while making faliures a lot more frightening. Realising this is one of the first signs of what they call growing up, in my opinion.

Today was a classic Sunday for me when I try to weigh the burden of my responsibilities and expectations from myself and feel bad about the distance from my ideal self. In midst of all this I let my mind wonder and fantasize about a life of just studying physics for the sake of it. In this meaningless detour from my usual line of thought I romatisised the vedic Rishis devoid of any other responsibility than the pursuit of knowledge and the mythical achievements of Taansen who through utter devotion to his music is said to have controlled the elements.

Although I am fully aware that these fantasies can never materialise in my lifetime.4 Still in the end I realised what I think is the true nature of a physicist’s life. It is just a normal life with all of the usual bullshit but scattered with random events leading to discoveries and fame. In the end it just comes down to luck and preparation to make use of the gifts of randomness. We can’t control the former but the latter is in our hands and is the reason behind all the thing we have to go thorough which seem meaningless at first.

I think after this I can try to make peace with that all of the uninteresting coursework, difficult exams, useless research, unfinished projects and the brutal competetion for maintaining the right to keep doing all of these things. In the end, if all of this helps me catch a discovery in the wild I think it is worth it. Because in the end I love the thought of going to sleep while being the only one knowing the answer to one of nature’s infinitely many puzzles and to wake up to announce it to the whole world.5 I wonder, “what is sunrise like at the pinnacle of human knowledge?” 6 I really want to know! If you know what it’s like please tell me and if not then I will surely let you know if I ever see it for myself.

Footnotes

  1. I did see this show in Hindi which was thankfully translated without sabotaging the original english sentence. But one weird thing was the translation was so pure, completely devoid of Urdu that it was a bit dense for me at that time. ↩

  2. I am not completely sure of my age at that time, could be more or less but the deviation is small I think. ↩

  3. I think this won’t do it for the 12 yo’s today, for which I am very thankful that we didn’t have fortnite, minecraft and the weird horror games that I have seen kids play. Yes I do sound like an uncle but I honestly don’t mind at this point, which can be taken as another reason to call me an uncle 7. Go on I dare you. ↩

  4. Honestly, I don’t even think I want such a life for myself. I am the kind of person who can’t give up eating delicious food and sleeping half dead with my ass saluting the heavens. ↩

  5. As an example I have always ended up thinking about the discovery of the structure of DNA and Circk announcing it to the world in the Eagle pub whenever I have passed by it. ↩

  6. I use “human knowledge” and not just knowledge because who knows maybe aliens… Haha. Anyway I used to watch this show Ancient Aliens a lot with my brother, the show was utter bullshit which I was aware of but for some reason it was very entertaining at that time. Now I just can’t even watch its clips without cringing to my bones. ↩

  7. For someone reading while unaware of the Indian salutation system: I mean uncle as in the term used to refer to someone in your previous generation who may not actually be your uncle. ↩