VigNaattru

A common question that most people- friends, family and acquaintances - shoot at PhD students is   “ How long would you keep studying?” How one responds back depends on how quick-witted and thick-skinned one is. One could reply “ Well, technically I am not studying- I am a scholar and I just do research which is no way different from a regular job” . Of course, one would be laughing within   oneself, though keeping a straight face, while saying this! Else, one could earn some bits of sympathy by lamenting back how PhD seems to be an endless journey, how you uncertain or clueless he/she is as to when it will, eventually, end. Worse, one might even confess that you are more uncertain on the job prospects once it ends, than about getting PhD itself! A PhD looks tantalizingly promising for many aspirants- at least for the fact that they would get a cool new prefix to their names and get public rights to brag their (presumed) expertise in their field. Other way aroun...

If you have 'passion' for something, it means you haven't really pushed yourself hard enough to see its dark side. You haven't tasted failure. You think you're good at something, so you really like it. You like the feeling of being good at something. That's 'passion'. Doing a PhD makes you taste failure. A lot of it. You realize that you aren't actually good at said area. You realize that you are actually really, really bad at it. No matter how much 'passion' you thought you had, one day you are going to clutch at your hair and (with genuine passion this time) cry out "I HATE THIS." The 'passion' that you thought you had now reveals itself to be the biggest lie you were ever told (by yourself). 'Passion' is not an indicator of whether you should do a PhD. It is an indicator of how much you are wallowed in your comfort zone. It is an indicator of how flat you are about to fall on your face. You sho...

Analogies and comparisons are always interesting, even if not useful! From declaring poetically that life is a bed of roses to calling Rajnikanths and Bachchans 'superstars'- analogies are omnipresent. So when I read somewhere about scientists who 'played' with machines in their childhood and sportspersons who get 'scientifically' trained, the analogy between the two instantaneously pops up in my mind. Sportspersons vie for cups and medals just like scientists who strive to grab a Nobel or a Fields medal. Sports and science both have had prodigies come up. Both have had the stories of some prodigies end up as tragedies. In sports, among the prodigies some fulfill their promise and dazzle others with their flamboyance and are revered as geniuses. And there are others, less prodigal but industrious, who methodically come up the ladder and stand up to the prodigies as equals. And there are champions of   a third kind, ...

1.23 grams.  That's all it weighed! A crumpled mass years before- as watery as a melon , grey here and white there just like a middle aged man's beard- scattered in labs and museums across the world today, attracting handful of scientists poring into its secrets and countless awestruck visitors jostling to get a glimpse of genius- this was once the private property of a German immigrant in America, long deceased. One Mr. Albert Einstein. Humans, by design or by accident, are highly curious creatures. We are ever eager to know stuffs like how Swarzneggers build their beefy torsos, how Beckhams could bend it so well, or how gallons of milk that Dhoni drank in his adolescence contributed to his helicopter shot and what not! It is the same curiosity that made an Archimedes storm out of his bath and run into the town, which induced a Newton to churn formulae reportedly out of an rendezvous with an apple- which also led an Einstein turn physics world on its head...

            A common question which bogs the mind of kids (and grown-ups) wanting to pursue a research career is - Am I capable of doing research? Answer to this rests on two other questions- 1) What do we mean by research? 2) What do we mean by success in research? Research, to most of us, means developing a path-breaking idea that can stun the world and be remembered for posterity.  For us to be impressed, it must be an other-worldy idea- a rocket launch to the moon or a new theory to explain the origin of the universe. We think that researchers, like leaders, are only born and not made. How else could you explain the genius of Einstein or an Edison? Can such a great feat be accomplished by mortals like us who hardly know anything beyond our books? How could one conceive new idea and tackle such complex intangible problems as, say, the motion of electrons and planets.  Also, when so many stalwarts hav...