Yet another Durga Puja.....

One more Durga Puja passing down my life just like the 20 previous ones which passed away leaving no mark or memory. One more lonely , solitary brooding festival. Although I am not a religious person or follow any religion in particular , but still that doesn't stop me from enjoying the artistic beauty of the pandals and the lighting and the sculptures. I have always believed that art forms are meant for and are best appreciated in company with a group of people who will share your point of view rather than in solitude. I sometimes really wonder as to what in this world is meant for enjoying in isolation. I really don't think any. The beautiful equations of Gauge Theory or the Einstein's Equations are also best understood and appreciated when discussed instead of ruminated in isolation.

These festivals over these 20 years have grown to become objects of tremendous hatred and frustration and irritation. They only remind me of all the joys in life that the rest of the world enjoys and I have been missing out on for all my life. Given that over the recent years my personal life has gone from bad to worse and I have realized some of my fundamental inabilities , I don't think there is any chance that these festivals like the Durga Puja will mean the amount of joy and celebration it means to the rest of the world.

All I know is that , I hate these festivals to the bottom of my core since they act glaring reminders of all things in my life that I have tried to get but have brutally failed.A reminder of all my failures and deepest of frustrations.

But then its a perennial conflict within me which I have never been able to resolve. Should science in particular be pursued in isolation and only interacted when one gets stuck or is it best followed in company. I have generally tried adopted following a middle path in this respect. When I am learning a new concept then I keep discussing with the more experienced on a regular basis and then I confine myself to total isolation when I am trying to individualize the subject. The process when I am trying to analyse some subtle aspect and might get an insight. But after I have got an insight of mine then I again go back to the discussion mode to test my analysis on others.

It is the conflict of the individualism with the macrocosm that becomes the fountain head of creativity.Its in the attempts to emerge from isolation to the public that the inchoate ideas get ossified into new insights.

But then somewhere down the lane in my life I lost my social life and personal life. I was left alone in my pursuits , interests and passions. Perhaps all this went a long way into motivating me into research and poetry and fine arts. Things that start coming naturally when one spends evenings alone by the window year after year. Abject loneliness has come to settle as the fundamental fabric of my life.

I used to watch my friends go out in the evenings to play , but somehow no one ever felt like calling me. I wonder what was wrong or so different about me when I was very young that my peer group had already deserted me! {Now things are more or less understandable....but then? } But then I did try to venture out on my own and try to mingle with the others and start playing cricket or football with them. But somehow I always felt like an alien and I couldn't continue playing in a particular group for long. I had to soon come back home into my own world where I was the reason of all that happened and I was the thing on which everything showed its effects.

This lack of play group in childhood aggravated a big "problem" in my life as I grew up. Contrary to what I had expected I got more and more alienated and sequestered into my own world. It pushed my interests in science further since somehow I felt "undisturbed" but then I was unknowingly feeding a snake in my life that has blandished its fangs over the last 2.5 years. I was slowly developing a clear demarcation between "Academic" and "Non-Academic" aspects of life.

As I grew up and especially when I came to college I realized that no one had in his/her life such a strong demarcation between what is "Academic" and "Non-Academic" as I had. But this demarcation never showed its brutal face till I seriously fell in love. Till I fell in love , this demarcation was always acting in my favour except that social alienation was something that I have anyway gotten used to since my early childhood.

Only when I seriously fell in love that I realized a whole lot of ugly things about myself and also about the tremendous introvert that I had already grown to me. My mother { who is a doctor } believes that if I were to be taken to a psychologist then I would surely pass the tests to be labelled psychologically ill and an introvert.

Its only when I fell in love that I realized how much in great conflict was the concept of love with my natural introverted-ness. To add to this I already had the "problem" of tremendous conflict between my "individual" and the "world outside" and the strong demarcation that I have developed since my childhood about what is "Academic" and what is "Non-Academic".

It goes without saying that the relationship failed and it crashed brutally.

I am not sure what would happen if I ever I fall in love with a lady like me but then since till now my attempts to build relationships have always been with people who are not very much like me , all have failed. I have somehow been trying to convince myself that building relationships is somehow a very special talent that I haven't been born with.....some how I have to find ways at every step of my life to somehow circumvent the pressing problem of loneliness and isolation. Its a tremendous psychological stress at times and it takes a lot of effort to be able to recover out of these bouts of depression caused by loneliness.

Of course these are psychological states and problems that neither can be shared nor can be told to anyone nor will anyone understand if I tell this to someone.I have given up hopes to meet a person who will be able to penetrate into my life and provide a permanent resolution of the abject loneliness.

Given that somehow I seem to repel everyone with whom I try to have the slightest amount of non-academic interactions , I am sure that the probability of finding such a person is infinitesimal.


In retrospect I see a total blur..I really don't know why or when this problem of introverted-ness and the severe conflict with individualism started and exactly when and why I started doing a strong demarcation between the academic and the non-academic.....I really don't understand as to what led to the what...Was it my gradual interest into research and science that pulled me out of the world and isolated me and begot me this terrible loneliness or is it the other way round ? Has my continuous search for academic success led me to be subjected to total isolation ? Perhaps it has to do with my low intelligence level . Given the meagre levels my intelligence , perhaps the only way one can optimize the path to professional success is by getting into a state of total isolation.

Perhaps now that all possible damage has been done its best that I no more try to understand the roots of the current situation.

And its a long time I have stopped relying on my blood relations and family for any kind of psychological support or support during emotional stresses.I don't feel that they either understand the depth of the situation nor do they seem to understand that as one grows up it becomes very tough to keep academic work segregated from emotional disbalances and loneliness in personal life.

The current situation is very simple...As the academic and professional pressures are mounting up exponentially , the bouts of depression induced from abject loneliness is become more and more frequent and more and more painful. Quite a few times over the last week I have felt like going to over to someone and vent out all my troubles and cry aloud. The tremendous need to find a shoulder on which I can rest my head for sometime and perhaps find a new inspiration or encouragement to get on with the huge amount of work at hand. But of course it takes only a split second before that the simple and cruel realization dawns on me ::



There is no such "someone" and I am totally alone.



The only source of energy and encouragement and inspiration is me and myself. I have to find all the energy I need from within my ownself unlike other people who have company to hang around with and relax or may be a stable romantic relationship to fall back upon when things get dark. I have only one world to rely on for everything....the inner world where I am the Creator , the Destroyer and the Preserver...where I am the Ghost , the Father and the Son.

In these times of total isolation when the realization dawn that the world has totally deserted me and in times of non-technical trouble I start feeling the total absence of a shoulder and someone.....in such times perhaps I understand the meaning of the Sanskrit phrase

"Ahan Brahmasmi" { I am Bramha }

History tells that the sage who first proclaimed this was stoned to death for blasphemy.Hundreds of years later , I a mere mortal being when subjected to hopeless frustration and utter loneliness and total isolation , feel the truth of what that sage said.

Motives

Understanding the motive for any action is always very difficult. Physics and Mathematics perhaps try to completely avoid such questions since here we are mostly happy at the stage of answering the "How?" and everytime we go near to answering "Why?" we console ourselfves by trying to give a general structure which will give the current question as a special case and hence we have morphed the question of "Why?" into searching for a larger structure.

But then unfortunately life is not simple. Here to survive we have to understand 2 different kinds of motives and there is no way we can avoid either of the questions for long ::

Q1. What is my motive for doing what I am doing ?
Q2. What is the other person's motive in doing what he/she is doing ?

Somehow I am a little fortunate since I can understand my motives for doing things very clearly. May be at times the motives are things which the rest of the worl will not agree to being a "good" motive. But then mostly my motives can be classified into the following types ::

a) Search for beauty either in the mortal sense or in the sense of an aesthetic theory.
b) Search for professional succcess and recognition.
c) Search for love or a deep relationship with someone.

Ofcourse its a different question as to how able I am in succeeding in these motives. I feel that inspite of my most sincere and hardest efforts even at the cost of my professional motives I have some fundamental inability or some kind of a blockade in succeding in my last motive. May be the answer lies in my genetic sequence or in my fate.

Similarly though I am more able in pursuing the first 2 motives but still my achievemnts have been far far below the critical value which would give me satisfaction. But then somehow most people believe that I am never going to attain that critical value. If they are true then ofcourse I have been written off by my life and I have been dumped by my fate.

I am consciously trying to avoid this terribly demotivating influence of these people.


Anyway at any rate what is most complex is the fact that I also need to understand the motives of other people's actions and the following issues confront me here ::

a) Most people are a bit too undecided about things and they themselves arent sure of their own motives and hence interacting with them gets really tough.

b) If the other person's motives are simply to harm me then the motive is easiest to detect.

c) If the other person is sincerely trying to help me then what becomes crucial to understand is the mental frame in which this other person is trying to help me which can be of the following types ::
1. That person feels that I am inferior to him/her and hence is lending me a favour.
2. That person is in some sort of a compulsion to help me.
3. That person is seekig some favour from me and hence is helping me.
4. That person is helping me as an equal with a collaborative attitude.

Unfortunately as we as human beings are evolving and becoming more sophisticated we have acquired greater and greater skills in hiding or disguising our motives. Especially people are becoming more and more capable in disguising the difference between the motives of the kind 1. , 2. and 3.

I feel that a critical analysis of human evolution and development will tell us that the stage of evolution human species are essentially characterized by one and only one factor ::
"our ability to disguise our emotions and motives"

People are scared to accept their faults and weaknesses and shirk from the possibility of being pointed out about them. Mostly people are scared to face the fact they need help and even more scared to face the fact that they might be under some compulsion. People seem to want to believe that they are living in a free world and that they are all doing what they want to do and enjoy. They seem to take the fact that they have lots of bindings and restrictions on them as an insult.

But as a result of all this one thing is surely becoming complex and that is interactions. One nevre knows whether one is seeing the real person or a guise. I feel scared to interprete and I am never sure whether the other person means what he/she is saying and whether I should belive or not. I feel that this world and the experiences of living in it have deeply impregnated in me a dictum of doubt :: "Doubt everything that you see around you"

It takes so much effort nowadays to even believe that the other person is happy when I see the other person smiling at me. Today there are so many different malicious reasons for a person to smile!

A world where even a smile cant be belived and I must exist in it.

A stand-alone machine

At times it becomes essential that one learns to live like a solitary machine which takes as input all the knowledge that has been produced by the human race and processes them and gives as output a new contribution to that reservoir.

A machine which works day and night and which works disjoint from everything else as if it is the only thing that exists in the universe and the only other thing that exists is that reservoir of concepts.

A machine which needs nothing more than the basic fuel to sustain itself and which understands nothing else but the purpose for which it exist..to produce more concepts. A single , solitary aim of the machine. A complete dedication to the purpose of its creation , a level of dedication which no human being can ever hope to attain since human beings need emotions to survive along with the fuel.Its capabilities are limited by only the program written onto its chip and nothing else.

A machine which by definition doesnt feel or respond to any undulation in this universe except fluctuations in the concept reservoir to which it is connected.

The machine is in a state of solitude and disconnection that it is close to that state of dedication where it becomes oblivious of even its own existence and is aware of only the reservoir and the purpose.

The machine doesn't respond to anything expect fluctuations in the concept reservoir.

This machine is the goal of existence. This machine-state is the purpose of life.

But I am yet to give an output.


The reservoir...The machine...The purpose.

60th year of Independence in a land of more than 1000 female foeticides a day.

We are of course in a self congratulatory mood on the the 60th year of Independence of India.

Yes India the land which has revealed to the world most fundamental principles of nature like Bose statistics of integral spin particles and black holes. Yes India where more than 1300 female foetuses are killed a day. A land where 6000 women are killed each year over dowry issue. A land where 5000-7000 girls in the age group of 10-40 are subjected into the world of prostitution.

10 million female foetues being killed in India over the last 2 decades far exceeds the total number of people killed in both the world wars. A figure which has far surpassed the estimates of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen about the "missing women" of India.

Foetuses being dumped in polythene bags in the vats or new Born girl babies being wrapped in wet cloth so that they catch pneumonia and then after a lot of hue and cry they can be declared dead by causing a delay. Girl newborns being killed by selective ultrasonography.Or simply the poorest of the poor sections of the society starving the new born girl bay to death.

Many times the hand that kills the baby is the mother's.But as an expert in this field had commented "The hand is hers and not the will"

This is India which revels in its achievements of having a half daughter of hers to be selected to be sent to the space on a foreign vehicle. Of course we have enough achievements to be proud of but then everything is perhaps too ephemeral to cause a difference at the grass roots and the deep seated ideas of sexual discrimination. Our most realistic achievements have been in the process of increasing the efficiency and number of wealth generating machines also known as industrialization.But all this has perhaps resulted in greater disproportion in wealth concentration. One can always say that the the bottom of the economic scale has shifted up by quite a lot compared to where we were 60 years ago but then unfortunately this scale has an amazing elasticity constant. The upper ends have moved up by exponential amounts than what the lower ends have moved up.

But then a little bit of thought perhaps shows that India is not suffering from any large scale economic crisis and it perhaps never will. The issue that confronts India is the issue of discrimination. Discrimination on all sorts of grounds starting from race , caste , creed , religion etc. But most importantly on the basis of sex.

A good question to ask on this 60th year of independence is "What is the fraction of people of India who are contributing to the nation's progress?"

I had earlier written a few articles on the issue of the plight of typical housewives. In the same strain let me ask the following question "Is the housewife's ability to contribute to the nation's progress being fully used by letting her do the household chores?"

A nation progresses can be effected only when everyone's potential is utilized maximally. By subjugating a huge section of the society to an almost non-contributing state , a nation is bound to doom. If a huge section of the population is to believe that its only the men who are capable of being the earning member of the family then one must ask a simple question "Why did nature choose to create the two sexes and not just one?"

I am sure that the reason goes just beyond the need to procreate for the continuation of the species other than the fact that nature chooses to shift from asexual to sexual reproduction as the species becomes more complex and developed. The reasons for this must lie somewhere deep down.

But one thing is surely convincing , that nature did not create the opposite sex just as tools of procreation! Even after 59 celebration of Independence a huge section of the Indian population doesn't realize that both the sexes have equal and complementary roles to play in the progress.

Now we must also realize the other end of the problem. How deep and complex is the trouble into which the parents of a girl child are dumped into if the family happens to be down the socio-economic scale ? Hasn't the problem got recursive ? We need a huge work force of women to stand up hands in hands with their male counterparts and the large sections of them who are born down the economic scale must die because they are a burden to their families ?

What is the way out of this vicious circle ?

Can the persons who will save the nation out of this vicious circle be those rare and appreciable cases of women in the upper strata that we see to be walking into the professional as well as the fundamental science departments of the best institutes in India ? Or are those rare ladies from the so called "backward classes" of the society the light of hope out of this trouble ?

Or does it need a tremendous coordination of efforts from both ends of the social spectrum ?

The situations is really terrifying as to what lies in the future of a father of a girl child is born in a family lower down the economic scale. If we start assuming that he has no chauvinistic views even then he wont have the nerve to break across the social customs and rules and his so called "obligations". He wont be able to resist the society around him which will convince him that the girl child is a sinking stone around the neck of the family and that she is nothing but a financial burden. He wont be able to resist the social pressure which will convince him that the girl will never be able to be a self-earning person and he will be forced to believe that the girl needs to be married off so as to "unload" himself of this economic burden.

All the above things are sure to sound mundane to anyone who has done even the slightest reading in this issue or has cared to make first-hand observations about such families. Its true that the nation is tired of listening to these problems and finds such things as soporific as the issue of public-private partnership issues in entrepreneurship.

But then one cant ignore that even after 60 years of independence our problems haven't changed! It has either changed forms or has just been uniformly scaled up. Most of our developments have perhaps resulted in the concentration of wealth to get more disproportionate or has lead to administration and effective powers to be getting more and more shifted to the already affluent class of the society.

But then the question that I find most fearsome is that in pre-independence era we could have slighted off all such issues by saying that its the British's fault or that the person at the receiving end is afraid of the oppressive foreign power , but then now whom are we to blame ?


In today's scenario one must ask as to "Who" form that section of the society of whom that poor parents of a girl child are afraid of , that he cant give voice to their innermost wishes to see their daughter prosper as a progressive individual ? Who form the section of the society of whom the parents are afraid ? What are the factors that the parents choose to give more importance than the most natural instincts of a parent to see their child prosper ?

Are they afraid of that section of the society which still blindly believes scriptures written by Manu which supposedly contain statements like 'Let a girl-child be born somewhere else and let a boy be born here"

Are they the section of the society who have risen to become local creators of destiny by virtue of their birth in a "higher class" ? Is it the fear to be ostracized by the society and to be secluded and to lose their means of income due to isolation what forces the family to not let their natural wishes bloom ?

What prevents the parents of the girl-child from standing up and revolting against the forces that pressurize them to do away with the child and to assert their rights ? What prevents them from turning around and slapping the person and killing him/her who ill advises them about the girl child?

If we as a nation are to resolve to provide financial support to each such family then will the possibility of economic rehabilitation instill the basic minimum courage in such families to rise against the social forces that press them towards doing injustice towards their girl child ?

The other more subtle factor is that of education. The government officials and the policies seem to have been believing that education will eradicate all social troubles. I really find it tough to accept this logic. Its the finest of educated minds that have created the most sophisticated of techniques to do the evilest of medical crimes. I have seen a relative of mine , who was a teacher to have been crying incessantly when her son's wife gave birth to a girl child. I am not at all convinced that education will make a difference.

I believe the problem shows up in different colours at the two ends of the economic spectrum. At the lower end the issue is economic and at the upper end it is stinking chauvinism. We still seem to carry somewhere deep within our subconscious the millennium old idea of society and of what it must be. Its time we searched within ourselves and cleared the last vestiges of such ideas that may be lurking within.

But within our peer group I think we again need a different perspective. When are we going to stop thinking like in typical romantic literature where the guy feels elated being defeated by her in a duel !!? Its time we looked upon them not as "needy" sections of the society but as a section of the society who if given the right platform to duel will perform to their best and a section of the society who have been given unnecessary amounts of concessions.

I think its more of an insult rather than a help when a person's motives are facilitated by lowering the bar for them. Train them to jump higher rather than pushing the bar selectively lower.


Its time we made attempts to understand the meaning of love and marriage to see the real meaning of such interactions. Aren't these emotions , that nature has gifted us with to feel the need to coordinate between the sexes to recognize the mutual complementarity of abilities. Isn't the essential purpose to enhance the feeling of comradeship between the two sexes ?

We need to look at such interactions as means of rejuvenating the society through the feeling of camaraderie instead of a way of one supporting the other. Perhaps nothing surges a nation forward at a faster speed than the intricate healthy bonds between the 2 sexes starting from a the simplest of emotions of passionate love between couples. Nothing pushes a nation backward at a faster rate than its society getting preferential between the sexes.


Let us dedicate this 60th year of independence to the cause of stopping the silent mass holocaust of girl child in India and to ensure that the future Independence Day's are celebrated by an India where the women and men from every section of the society ,stand hand in hand for the national cause.

Appendix

A reference for the people who arent convinced of the facts ::

1. http://www.unicef.org/sowc07/report/report.php

2. http://www.unicef.org/sowc07/docs/sowc07.pdf

Though many of the figures I have quoted refer to the data of year 2000. 2007 report ofcourse shows some positive trends in certain areas but all that is too insignificant when we have 1300 female foeticides a day.

Darkness and the fire.

I fondly member those romanticisms when I was in class 3 or 4 when I used to deliberately get up at times before the crack of dawn to paint the rising sun and to take a walk in the small colony of Sector-2 of Rourkela ( Orissa ) . The small city of intense intellectual activity which formed the roots of my hopes , imaginations and thinkings and aspirations in life. The roads of the city where I first fell in love. It used to be densely foggy during the winter and nothing beyond a few meters would be visible and my height made things more romantic since I couldnt see more than a few meters infront of me.

There was a certain sense of thrill in the act of walking through the fog not knowing what lay ahead and the unpredictability made things more interesting. I used to revel at the joy of being able to walk through the fog confidently despite the handicap of sight.

Many of my friends in that age used to play the popular game of hide and seek or the game in which a guy or a girl would have his/her eyes blindfolded and he/she would have to touch some pre-assigned person.

I never found those games interesting but I did find something similar interesting . At evening when at times both my parents would come home late , I used to shut off all the lights in the flat and would try to go about doing my usual work in total darkness. It gave me immense joy when I slowly realized that unlike many of my other friends etc I was pretty much proficient in my activities in the dark as under normal lighting conditions. I used to do this when I used to visit my late grandfater's house in West Bengal. Ofcourse such activities got more risky as well as thrilling since my late grandfather's house is 2 storeyed.

In those young ages it seemed to be a real challenge to me be able to go about navigating through that pretty large house up and down the stairs without any need of light. I had developed a pretty nice sense of direction and sense of objects in the darkness. But there were times when I failed and on one such occassion I cut my chin when I missed a step and there were near misses of fatal accidents. But then the joy was overwhelming enough to make me try again.

Ofcourse as I grew up I could do these navigational activities in the dark at a much faster speed. I can now a days run up and down the stairs in a house at pretty much the normal speed even in total darkness.

Expectedly , my mother always gets scared to see me do these things , more because I at times do them deliberately by shutting off the lights of the rooms. It gives me great pleasure to be able to navigate in a place without the aid of light.

Given 21 years of experience my mother has gotten used to my eccentricities and she has probably gotten used to being always afraid that my desperate behaviours can invite any kind of trouble in my life.

Other than these navigational games in the darkness another thing that really attacted me was fire. I had great joy in observing various things burn in fire. How the wax softens , melts and then becomes glassy and then smokes. How a leaf gives off a hissing sound at times before burning and how various types of plastics crumple and twist in myriad ways before burning.

But what really fascinated me was to time for how long I could hold my index finger in the tip of the candle flame. Initially it was very low , but as I grew up the time increased by quite a lot. As I grew up this activity of mine became symbolic of various different things at various different stages of my life. During the high school , I used to test my patience and endurance ability and my determination by timing for how long I could hold my finger in the flame. When in deep sorrow I used to do it to feel convinced that I still have the strength to rise and fight back.

It goes without saying that my mother feels scared and frightened to see me do this. I still do it whenever a candle is lit at home , be it for the pujas that my mother or grandmother does.

But then this game of mine with the candle flame initially started off with very different emotions and feelings. I have heard from my friends of both the sexes , especially from some of my female friends , that there is a threshold age after which they have felt the emotion of being "passionately in love". But somehow I think I have felt this emotion of passionate love at a far far younger age than everyone else. I had felt within me the sense of passionate romance and love for a lady of my age ever since I have definitive memories. I was responsive to the emotions of love , romance and passion even when I was very young. Since then I had imagined myself to be deeply , passionately and devotedly in love with a lady. It was then that I started feeling attracted to the candle flame. To test my love.

When I was in classes 2 to 4 , the ability to hold my finger in the candle flame seemed to symbolize to me my ability of how much pain and sufferring I can endure for the sake of my love. I used to feel a deep sense of joy , that my love could be strong enough to hold me through any perils and that I could have the tenacity to fight any pain for the sake of my lady.

I really dont know from when and exactly what or is it the totality of my life over the last 5-6 years that my faith and belief in all these emotions has been waning. Its decaying fast and perhaps very soon the person that I was during the age of 10 would start looking like someone else.

Now the unpredictability of the darkness scares me. I no more feel convident that I can navigate through it and I am scared to fall again. I feel frightened to be burnt by the fire whereas in younger days fire was a plaything for me. But still darkness looks a little more mangeable thing than fire.

I have lost some of my own essential things in life. I know not when . I know not how. I knwo not to whom. Is it the continual crash over the last 6 years , of all my beliefs which I tied to my ability of holding the finger in the candle flame ?

Some questions...

Why does a man want to jump into something totally unpredictable and into something whose success chance is too too too thin and lose everything again , when he has only his life left to lose ?

Why does a man want to take the risk of shatterring his mental balance from pieces to dust when he knows that he is dangerously on the edge of losing his sanity ?

Why does a man want to fall in love when he knows that he will be extremely possesive about his lady ? { Although it remains debatable to me whether it is morally and ethically correct to ask one's lady to spend time with you if she doesnt naturally want to. Even this much is not clear whether asking anything from one's lady is ethically correct or should one always wait to be given. }

Why is it so tough to kill oneself ? Why are one's body's mechanisms built so that the person will be naturally inhibited from committing suicide ? At what level of psychological strain are those defence mechanisms of the system conquered ?

Ofcourse one aspect of this question is clear. Those who commit suicide because they were rejected by their lady love are not only stupid but just dont have enough logical reasoning ability to carve out a niche for themselves in this world. Hence the lady was intelligent enough to dump that man.

Is a person's failure in professional life and failure in private life comparable ? Are they proportional ? Are they self affecting ? Is it posible to keep them disjoint ?

Even if a man recovers thrice from being rejected in love can he do the same in professional life ? Isnt professional failure more deep and grave than failures in private life ? Can a man rise from continuous professional failures at a strech for over 6 years ?

Is an ability to master complex and advanced theories in a very short time indicative of research potential or ability to innovate ?

Why must a man pay at every step with his total career for all his weaknesses and flaws in the past ? Why must a person be penalized at every step of his life for all his faults in the past even if he has convincingly overcome them today ?

Why does the system not take into account the self-correcting actions of a man by which a man identifies his own weaknesses and works on them and conquers them and goes on to attain new heights ? Why must a man be penalized for what was once his weakness and now he has gone far beyond those initial bad starts ?

Didnt someone tell me once that "life is a marathon and not a 100m dash" ? Then why must a man suffer as badly for a bad start long back in his history ?

If one must suffer for flaws in the beginning ,then why should a man ever try to correct himself ? Why should a man try if the system is never going to take into account the fact that the man can surpass his own initial limits to set new standards ?

Will a person's ex-lovers feel sad if that person dies today ?

How many people will feel sad if I kill myself ? Other than my mother will there be anyone else ?

How many times can a man sit and watch his maximum efforts being rejected as being ordinary ? After some threshold value does it make sense for that man to try again or shouldnt he quit for the better ?

Learning to be alone.

Let me do some stock taking of my life. Some aspects of this terrific life that I have been living so far. Most of these will be considered to be trivial or irrelevant by the people of my community whether professional or personal ( Wow! I am surprised that I still have the courage to use this term...I wonder whether I really have one..ah! The ever optimist in me that refuses to perish though there is no dearth of reasons for it do so. ). Let me look at some of the statistics of my existence ( I will refrain from calling it a life! )

Friends : Lets first get this clear. Who is a friend ? I think its high time we get out of the illusion of the cliche "A friend in need is a friend in deed". I have been fortunate enough to have met some people who have helped me in times of need ( mostly in qualitative terms and mostly making no difference that can be officially documented ). But almost none of these people are of the kind with whom I can have a conversation when not in need of them. They are professionals who have executed some of their "duties" for me and I most probably become as irrelevant to them after the hour of need as the buried man becomes to the undertaker. The undertaker had a duty to perform for which he is being paid. Here the payment at times for them might just be emotional. I dont know and neither am I interested to know unless they are interested to have a conversation with me when its not the hour of need.

The World :: " Hey! You idiot anirbit! What the hell do you think of yourself? What great thing have you done for any of these people that they should be interested to talk with you outside the time of purpose? Why should they waste their time when they have nothing to gain from you? Anyway you dont have much to give to them and whatever little you can given can be given by others too. You are no one special! "

Okay. I have no answer to this. I just was perhaps under some wrong impressios that people would want to spend time with me. Okay. Sorry. I was wrong. My fault. I am useless. I accept.
I accept I am naive. I dont object to being called a naive if I still live expecting people to spend time wth me ouside the hour of need. I dont object to being called naive if my fault is that I define a friend to be a person who would "want" to spend time talking with me at any time of the day and with whom I can talk about anything and everything under the sun wthout either fear or restrain and that person will reciprocate.Perhaps the the kind of friendship that I understand can be separated from a true love by only a fine line.The line is perhaps vague and consists of the shades of uniqueness and sexuality.

The World : " We always knew that you are stupid and perfectly imbecile. This above definition of yours confirms it. How do you even expect people to behave this way for you? Why should a person even if wishing to waste his time want to waste it like this with you..you of all people! "
I dont have an answer even to this. I dont know why I expected all that I have been expecting out of life.I have implicitly made some choices and I dont know why I have made them. I even dont remember when I made them.Sine the earliest age of which I have memories , I have implicitly known these within me and have searched for realizations of what exists in my mind. May be my search is futile but then I cant believe anything else to be true. I dont regret if I am called a fanatic for these reasons.

Okay let me see how my staistics stand in this regard at the 4 cities in India where I have inhabited.
Friends at Rourkela ( Orissa ) { Time lived -> 12 years } : None

Friends at Howrah ( West Bengal ) { Time lived -> 6 years } : None.

Friends at Chennai ( Tamil Nadu ) { Time lived -> 2 years } : Negative!

Friends at Wardha ( Maharashtra ) { Time lived -> 2 weeks } : None

{ I wish I could have been a little more optimistic and have said "faintly one" with regard to Rourkela but then its a bit too faint.

The World : " Ha! Ha! So Mr.Anirbit you thought that we would be surprised at the above statistics!? Of course not! Who in this world is either so dumb or so hopeless to have befriended a creature like you and that too given the stupid definition of a "friend" that you have got! "

I have already said earlier that I dont remember making the choices consciously. Perhaps the choices a person amkes comes encoded with his/her genes.I perhaps just dont have the correct sequence of genes necessaary to survive in this world and hence I live most of the time in "my world" that exists perhaps only in my mind. Hence my communications with others go haywire since its so difficult to cut off the expectations out of an interaction that exists in "my world". Perhas this too is an encoded choice in me that I never choose to break out of my world into this so called "real world". I continue to live at the cross-roads.Mathematics and Physics seem to be the only 2 things that can be communicated most efficiently between these 2 worlds.How I wish some thing more could also be ferried across this dark abyss of hopes and expectations that separates them...or better find another person with the same world.

The World : " See..you can keep lamenting and whinning as much as you want. No one cares and no one is bothered. You die or you live..its irrelevant. All that matters is whether you are doing your part of the duty.Till you keep doing your work in this "real world" you will not be heckled. How you do it is not for us to know.Its your responsibility "

I have long stopped expecting The World to know such things.My rights end with just the freedom to write these on a blog and I am well aware that I have to return to "my work" after this.I have l;ong stopped expecting The World to know how I would do "my work". All I know is that I have the gallows and the guillotine wating for me if I dont do "my work".

The World : " Hey! Give us one good reason why we should bother about you if we have nothing to gain from you?"

Okay..let me see what is the statistics of my life outside "my work".Its irrelevant to The World and hence it must be written on such a trivial thing like a blog page and it cant be written on any official document.

1. Movies watched alone :: About 6 in the last 2 months. The first time I did such a thing was about 2 years ago. The movie was "Vertical Limit". { 4 years ago , I remember 2 of my class-mates arranging to go to see it in the hall when it relased in Kolkata. Ofcourse they didnt invite me. Even if they did I wouldnt most probably be allowed to go.} After the horrible experince of watching "Vertical Limit" alone on the computer in a huge apartment (in which I was the only person then), I had pledged not to do such a thing again.
But driven to ultimate levels of frustraton recently , I realized that it is atleast better to watch a movie alone than to never watch a movie in anticipation of finding someone to watch it with.

2. Movies watched with others :: 1 with my mother.Not at all a great experience given the number of interruptions due to all possible reasons.

3. Accompaniment refused for a movie :: Too many to count!

4. Last movie watched in a hall :: About 3 months ago at Chennai INOX with my parents and sister.."Namesake".Before that in December 2006 with my mother.."Corporate"

5. Movies watched in a hall :: atmost 6 in the last 20 years.

6. Movies watched in a hall with people I would love to watch a movie with (other than my mother) :: None in 20 years.

7. Movies watched in the last 4 years :: Atmost 15

8. Meals had with people I would like to befriend but have failed :: Too many!

9. Meals had alone :: Too Many. { Somehow I think having meals alone have helped my scintific thinking!}

10. Hours spent on the internet :: Has been exponentiating over the last 5 years..esp. over the last 1 year.

11. Time spent alone :: Huge { Perhaps this has also helped my technical thinking! }

12. Time spent talking to myself or to the walls :: Has been rapidly exponentiating over the last 2 years.Its tremendusly huge now a days. My mother says that she has heard me talking a lot of "weird" things in my sleep.

But at the end I must document something very truthfully..Its the worst thing that can happen to a person when he/she has no other choice in life but to have meals or watch movies alone.But somehow this seems to be the most consistent thing in my life.Hence I should say that if I counted the number of movies that have really enjoyed in the last say about 10 years. It would be none. Either I was alone watching it or it was a sub-optimal company or a wrong enviroment or a wrong timing.I am still waiting for that perfect movie experience. I have no idea when I am ever going to accomplish this one deeep wish of mine.May be never ,if am to extrapolate my graph.

The World :: " Get this one thing clear in your dumb head..Mr.Mukherjee.One has to make choices in this life.You had made a choice long long ago .. to excel in academics and to enter the research world.Now that you have made this choice , you better be true to this or quit. You cant ask for such orthogonal forms of joys in life , once that you have entered this world. You simply cant keep shouting that you are missing out on these joys in life. You cant expect to have the best of both worlds! Neither can you have the cake and eat it too!Either you learn to live in this research world this way or get out of this and enoy it as the others do.Its completely stupid to be inside it and to wish to get into its thick and yet keep shouting for such transient and trivial joys in life. Either you need to grow up or you need to quit. Its ofcourse not our botherartion to find out what you need."

As usual , I still dont have an answer to this. I dont have an idea of what is right and wrong about the "wishes" that the The World is trying to imply. I am only stating things here and I am completely scared to face the question about whether I am fit or not to be doing research. No one ever took a test of my emotional potencies before letting me take up Physics. I have always been trying to do what I like doing. I am still afraid to face to the question of elligibility that The World is trying to imply. I am ofcourse afraid lest the answer turns out to be converse. Let me enjoy what I am doing till the day comes when answering the question will become inevitable. But somehow I have a gut feeling that such a day is drawing nearer. Till then the thoughts about the "transient and the trivial joys in life" have become quotidian events of my existence (I am scared to call it a life!).Hence let me contnue documenting some more things.

The last rebuke from the The World reminds me that I have an academic life as well. This is atleast a little more of a lie than an existenc but then its heavily endangered.Its on the brink of facing extinction and before all my nightmares come true let me try to get the courage to write a few things in reply to the last lecture frm The World.

1. New concepts of Physics grasped in the last 6 months :: Not much ( more of the application kind of things)

2. New concepts of Physics grasped in the last 4 months :: A little bit.

3. New concepts in Mathematics grasped in the last 6 months :: Enormous..I think its larger than the total of all that has been grasped during the rest of my life.

4. New concepts in Mathematics grasped in the last 4 months :: Developed lots of analysis on my own.Hence a realization of quite a few new concepts in a more personal way.

5. Physics books that I have started reading in the last 6 months :: very few

6. Mathematics books that I have started reading in the last 6 months :: Huge

Let me get some ground realities clear before me ::

1. I need to have algebraic geometry and non-commutative geometry upto its most recent resarch papers on my finger tips in the next 10 years.And practically I know nothing of it till now.I have no idea as to how am going to pick this up.I have a gut feeling that unlike most other topics I might not be able to pick these up on my own from books.

2. By the next 10 years I need to have the mathematical works of the likes of Witten, Atiyah ,Mumford ,Seshadri and Ramanan and Connes on my finger tips.Like above I still dont have an idea as to how I am going to accomplish this and by when will I be able to do tis. I am simply in the dark as to how am going to achieve this.

3. By the next 10 years I must have the physics works of the likes of Ashoke Sen ,Witten , Shiraz ,Atiyah ,Polchinsky on my finger tips. As above here too I still dont have a defnitive time frame infront of me as to how long it will take me to grasp their works and more importantly how I am going to get throgh all this.I am completely in the dark as to how I am going to achieve this.

There is academic loneliness too. The last time I had a serious and dynamic physics discussion with someone was about 5 years ago with Akash Basu. But ofcourse the last serious mathematics discussion with someone isnt more a month ago.Mathematics seems to be the only thing taht is hapenning consistently and regularly in my life.

For all the above perhaps "10 years" is a very optimistic estimate.More frighteningly I should perhaps set the target as "5 years" and that should make all the places where the word "dark" is used .. go "darker".

Aha..one more thing about my "Statistics about friends" that I forgot to document then.My contacts with my acquaintances at Kolkata have also dwindled rapidly.Over the last 1 year the phons have practically stopped ringing and the smses have also stopped coming except when I try to force a contact by sendng an sms from Chennai.Contacts have practically got reduced to at most a 30 minute phone call once a year when I am in Kolkata.Ofcoure I am the one who made the call.

The World :: " Ha! Ha! You should be grateful that atleast they agreed to waste 30 minutes of their life by talking to you. I wonder how you could be so stupid to expect someone to call you up! Anyway when not saying technical things you will repeat everything of what you have to say.Why should anyone want to talk to you? What on earth are you capable of giving to the listener over a conversation!? "

I dont know. never have answers to what the The World has to say.

Ofcourse its not so clear to me or very obvious as to what is the connection between my analysis of friends and movie watching with the analysis of my pursuits in physics and mathematics. But somewhere deep within I see a connection. A connecton which I dont understand very clearly but the connection exists and it affects all my endevours. A connection which permeates all that I do but eludes me when I try to understand it. An implicit search is always underway to find the connecting threads before it gets activated again .. either for better for worse. I dont know.

From tomorrow I will start writing my SOP (Statement Of Purpose) for my international applications to the graduate schools...of which I am almost sure that I wont get through either of them! But then hope is a man/woman's greatest strength and as well as his/her greatest weakness. I know I will be writng a lot of things about what I have studied in physics and mathematics and what I want to do.But then I also know that it wont be as true to my heart or mind as this blog.I have to be true somewhere and somewhere I must accept that there are connections in this life that neither do I understand nor I can forgo.

I just keep searcing.

Hence this blog article. To document some of the true reasons and statements of the purpose of my existence , things that I cant write on my SOP.

Unfortunately this is neither the "Diary of Bridget Jones" nor the "Diary of Anne Frank". So of the 2 most beautiful things on earth , a romantic marriage and death , none is hapenning at the end.

But everything that starts must end someday. Most importantly..till something ends one desn't know how it will end.