I have always wondered how a person gets an ‘interest’ in any profession. In most cases, it is peer pressure, and in other cases, it could be personal trauma which is the catalyst. I don’t think I can answer the question even if I have access to all the thoughts of any one person (as a matter of fact, I do have access to all of one person’s thoughts). The curious thing is, we don’t live in isolation. We are constantly interacting with other people, reacting to them, reacting to the non-people things, so it’s complicated.
Now, as far as I am concerned, I have always wanted to be a scientist. I cannot recall any time when I did not want to be a scientist. So even when I did not know what exactly being a scientist means, I have wanted to be a scientist. I find that very weird. It is not what an intelligent person would do. It smacks of the byproducts of the backmasking circuits of the mind. So, anyway when I was in sixth or seventh class, I desperately wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. I mainly wanted to design futuristic flying machines (read UFO’s). I got the idea of making an actual UFO after I read that a fake UFO made some dolt, famous somewhere. So, I thought, “wow, cool…. my own UFO. Nobody can catch me, nobody can fire a bomb at me, I can do whatever I want. Woweeeee”. Then my brother burst my happy bubble by telling me that B.Tech in aeronautical engineering would only get me as far as repairing damaged aeroplanes. Dang! that was a dampener to my spirits. Of course, I knew it had to be really tough to make a UFO, otherwise the world would have been full of them.
So, I slowly began to drift away from my UFO dreams. After that came the glory days of eleventh at school. I began to understand things a bit better after we began to learn the fundamental forces of nature and such things. I came to realize, that most of my childhood dreams of zipping through space at 5 light years per second, would have to be put on the back burner for a long time to come (if it ever came). Of course, my real life was also developing; please do not get the impression that I was only living in dreams (although that was mostly true at that time). So, I had enough knowledge to stop wondering about my fantasies, but not enough to make me wonder about real life. A few months later (yes sir, development used to be fast back then), I argued with my brother that if the universe is expanding, it must expand into something. That might mean that there can be other universes, which would be contained in a super-universe, which blah blah blah…… ad nauseum. That ladies and gentlemen, was my first brush with infinity. Till then, I only knew it to be concept. Suddenly, life started to have the fun element again. Real life was not bad, there was enough to wonder about. There were enough ungettable concepts, leave alone ungettable machines.
Alas, I never had a good appreciation of physics. Back then, I thought physics is too easy, it’s just juggling numbers in theorems, and since there did not seem to be any dearth of them in physics, I thought it would be quite boring to use theorems all my life. So, I thought a physicist’s life would be boring. Nobody gave me a good perspective on physics back then, which I now regret. And by that time, I had been down with a mysterious fever for a month, and I saw my elder sister almost dying after a bout of double typhoid, and I saw my mother go into depression. Lasting impressions these. I began to wonder about biology. And I saw an infinitely greater source of wonder and fun in biology than in physics. That changed my perspective completely. Also, I was fortunate enough to have two admirable teachers in school and college, Raji ma’am and Meera ma’am respectively. Both have played crucial roles in cementing my turn towards biology. I never felt that what I was asking was wrong, absurd or anything like that. I had endless discussion with Raji ma’am about almost everything under the sun I chose to discuss, be it the existence of god, the nature of science, ghosts, why we cough, why, how, what, when …blah blah blah. Those were some days. Meera ma’am did likewise in college when my confidence was at the lowest due to several personal reasons(OK, it had to do with the first failure of my life, my crush did not respond favorably). What they did was provide the support that I so badly needed to carry on with my goal of becoming a scientist. I would say that I am what I am mostly because of these two admirable ladies who did more for the cause of science than anybody else I know (by bringing 'me the scientist' into existence, that is).
So, from childhood fantasies to adult thinking, the how and what of the journey is somewhat clear. But the origins are still shrouded in mystery. I knew from my childhood that there is something special about me (that was the only rational explanation for why most people hated me when I was a child). And somehow, I was convinced that I had to make a mark by my mental abilities. I was physically very strong, and absolutely aggressive (I broke somebody’s forehead with a stone in seventh class for example), but it never occurred to me to go into sports. I always disliked the notion of sports. I felt I was above such menial things, for me sports was fun, not something you do all your life. So, even from a very early age, my attitudes had set quite firmly. The only reason I can think of to explain my current profession is, I always wanted to prove myself superior to my contemporaries. I wanted to be the Newton of my age, I did not care if a future Einstein came and modified my theories, in my lifetime, I wanted to be the person who could not do anything wrong. Most of my ‘realistic fantasies’ today are based on this theme of temporary infallibility. So I guess, that is the reason why I am a scientist, I want to prove what I instinctively knew since a long time ago, that I am capable of more thought than anybody I know (whatever the heck that means). But then, what makes me want to prove that ? Aha, universe in a super-universe all over again. Hmmmm, I guess I should sit and work on that first, maybe all my doubts will somehow be cleared if I find an answer to that question. I also keep wondering if this is what leads people to believe in fate ? Am I fated to answer that question ? Is this what the goal of my life is ? Hmmmm, I guess that question has to wait….
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