I was more looking to relax and soak it all in. I did that, made some friends and had a great time. The truth is that it isn’t very different from a lot of other college cultural fests, only that the scale and scope is much bigger. Also given the huge corporate support they get(attract) makes it a lot simpler for them to throw around money. They have top level performers perform all 4 evenings, that’s something that is impossible to match by any other college in India and that were the major attractions of the day.

I REALLY REALLY loved their Battle of the Bands and their Singing Talent competition. The bands gave a phenomenal performance and all of them were focused on original creations rather than singing someone else’s songs. That was the greatest attraction. Some of the creations really blew me away, and kept me singing them, a long time after the High of the event had died down. The singing competition saw wonderfully energetic and talented singers and I can open criticize myself for underestimating them at first.

If anything else I would go to Mood Indigo to witness these competitions. But I shouldn’t berate the plays that were on offer at the festival. I got to catch only one of the three but it was BRILLIANT. I watched a brilliantly acted play of “Dinner with Friends” by Donald Margulies, enjoyed Rock concerts by Agnee, Shilpa Rao, Raghu Dixit and KK.

It was great but I do feel that Mood Indigo can become a drag at times and it would have been better to have 3 days instead of 4, as it felt as if sometimes the tempo was nothing short of dead. In the end I could enjoy much more and was never bored but that was only because I had a lot of friends around me, so that’s what I would suggest everyone else to do too – bring a lot of friends and make sure to leave your inhibitions at home.

Its amazing what some people get the time and desire to think about when they have nothing better to do. At one point of time the passengers in my side section were talking about Bengal. There were a Bengali family and a non-Bengali family. (I’ll refer to them as B and nB for ease of reference). One nB woman remarked that nBs don’t care about carrying umbrellas but a B will always have an umbrella ready in his/her bag/purse for rains. Now being a B myself, I might be driven to defend this apparent idea by saying it is a particular problem in Bengal that we may get rain in any season, something people from certain other parts of India may not be able to relate to. However I was much more interested as to why does someone have to make such an observation, why should they even bother to do so. So I started to intently listen to them. I realized from their talk that the woman did not even go out of her relative’s house even for a single day, and yet, here she was making remarks (seemingly very knowledgeable ones). I was further amazed by the B family’s reaction. They thoroughly agreed to her and said that all Bs are fools and always overcompensate in life. I wanted to scream WTF!!!

But I realized something, they were only talking all the rubbish in the world because they had nothing better to do. The nB woman made the remark simply because she had heard it from her relative and was intent on passing it as her own observation and in the process establish herself as a very wise person, she had not gone out of the house even once and had not seen Bengal at all. The B family wanted to look understanding and seem beyond such trivial foolishness, so they agreed and went on to state that none of them do such a thing. The funny part came at this point when the child of the B family remarked that the dad did carry an umbrella all the time, as did the mother and as did the sister (she’s young – school age girl – apparently her mother makes her carry it)!!! I so madly wanted to laugh.

Another laughable event occurred in my own section. I was sharing the section with two nB families – one based in Kolkata and another had come to visit Kolkata and was now returning. The visiting family had a senior woman who at one point was talking about her experience at Kalighat. (Those who don’t know Kalighat can google it up – its basically the primary worship temple in Kolkata, a very very ancient and revered temple.) She showed a particular injury on her arm and claimed that it occurred SPONTANEOUSLY when she was watching the deity idol. She claimed that it did not hurt and she had no idea when it had occurred but was absolutely certain that it occurred when the priest blessed her using the copper ladle to distribute holy water. She claimed that it was clearly like a tiger claw mark (there was no doubt it was a tiger claw mark – she remarked), the other woman also agreed that it was INDEED a tiger claw mark. I wanted to laugh because I could have showed an exactly similar injury on my leg, that didn’t happen anywhere near a temple but in my home when I brushed against a sharp nail jutting out of a furniture.

Strange how faith can twist reality and how easily people come to depend on faith and religion to explain little things in life. The woman claimed to have been blessed by the Goddess, no doubt that’s what she wanted to happen. I suppose I have been blessed many a times in my life then, cause going by the number of “Tiger claw marks” I have endured, I MUST BE SOME KIND OF SAINT.

I have become largely cautious in my expectations from movies trying to recreate the magic of some of my most beloved characters, either from earlier movies or comics or story books, or cartoons. I have seen just too many fail and fail quite miserably. How many remember the the House of the Dead film. It completely killed off my love for the games. Ever since then I have never expected any thing great from such movies.

I actually liked the Final Fantasy Advent Children but then any non-initiated to the games will not understand the story much. I have experienced this first hand with my friends calling it nothing more than a CG south-indian flick. I had loved it, but then the first film although was a great film, made no sense to name it Final Fantasy when it had no connection to the games at all. They should have named that one Final Retribution or something.

So may be you can guess what I should have been expecting when I first heard a Tintin movie is going to be made. I wanted to CRY, and not of joy, but out of fear – abject fear. Tintin was one of the fundamental comics I grew up reading. I still remember, I cried for a day and didn’t eat anything for the whole day when my copy of “Tintin in America” was eaten up by termites while we were shifting homes. I tried to protect the comics with such fervor that my mom thought I will go mad if anything happened to the comics. So she took very special care for the tintin comics since then. I LOVE TINTIN.

But even I could not feel a great sense of expectation when I heard who would be directing the films. I never expected the stories to be maintained true to the comics but atleast I expected the film to be gripping and innovative. But then I heard who else are going to be associated with the movie and again I wanted to cry, this time out of JOY. Now not even if they tried they could mess it up.
Some of my most admired in the entertainment industry are associated with this film. Steven Spielberg don’t need no introduction from me. Neither should it be needed for Peter Jackson and his oscar winning effects studio – Weta Digital. Nor perhaps Daniel Craig. Perhaps I should introduce Simon Pegg – Benji Dunn of MI, Scotty of Star Trek, or perhaps his best work in “The three flavours cornetto trilogy”, Nick Frost in the same, Andy Serkis as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films. I then learned who would be writing the script and i knew the film would be epic – Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright are like best of the best of the best.

I had to see the movie and I could not wait. Today I saw the movie and what do you think my reaction was? IT IS EPIC, AWESOME, BRILLIANT. Its far far more than I could expect. The graphics are stunning, the cinematography is exquisite, the voice acting is perfect, the story is second to none, the gags are inimitable, the thrills are heart-stopping and I LOVED IT. If you are going to see it in 3D, then let me give you a warning, its not as good as avatar, but better than all others that have come since. The 3D hasn’t been used throughout, but the most of panning shots are all in breathtaking 3D and it has been beautifully performed. Some of the moments leave you laughing out extremely loud, some that will have you holding on to your seats and some that are sure to make you go WOW!!!

IAS requires administrative understanding and skill. I asked them why do they ask questions about history and geography in the exam then? why not ask questions that test decision taking skills, such as case studies? My point was that if you are looking to design an exam ( lets say analogous to a filter ), intended to filter out the ones most able for administrative services, then why not test the skills that are going to be required in the job? I asked a simple question, Can a successful administrator of lets say a successful company, if he so desires, clear the exam? The answer was a resounding NO!!! They said that unless he specifically prepared for the exam there’s no way he can clear the exam. In India “preparation” for an exam is no less than a highly respected skill. But why does a man who has proven his abilities in administration need to learn all other subjects, when he is a master of the very skill that is required. They said that he needs to know a place’s history to make a sound decisions about that place. That’s true in a diverse country like India. But learning about the history of a specific place doesn’t take much effort and he is surely not going to be administering entire India ( that’s part of politics, not administrative services ), then why learn about all history? Its like saying you need to learn physics if you want to learn biology. Its true that physical laws govern all events, including those covered by biology, but you don’t really need to be a MASTER of physics to learn biology. But you do need to be more or less a master of history, civics, geography, GK, and others if you want to clear the IAS exam. That’s pure wastage of time, energy and abilities.

I was told why this was so. They said that there are so many able students, the ONLY way was to make the exam so tough that only a few could clear. Then they could be asked about administrative skills in the interview. But that way aren’t you removing a considerable portion of people who deserve to prove their administrative skills? Sadly in India its about “Jack of all trades, Master of none”. There are no specialists in India. Everybody can do something else. (Can you say why? read my previous post on Indian education, the answer is BACK-UP s) Its as if the exam is not about selecting the best administrator, but more about removing as many as possible in order to have a sizable group to select from. That’s not a bad idea, but the selection criteria should be about selecting the ones with the BEST skills not the ones with MOST skills.

No doubt, the ones that do get selected are very intelligent students, but it leaves me wondering that may be, just may be, the ones that do not make it ( atleast some of them ) are more capable then the ones that do make it. As an exam then I believe the IAS exams are a failure. If your filter cannot filter out all of the best then its not a good filter ( not necessarily completely bad, but not very good either ). But I know Indians are very happy with the format, they will say, we are getting some right ones, so its alright. Sure, that’s acceptable for some time, but we should be constantly looking for better options. But as far as I know no one is considering about a change, either now or even the far off future, and THAT IS WRONG. Like I have said previously, Indians are happy with mediocrity, they lack the very imagination that can make the country GREAT.

It is not the ABILITY that makes things happen, but its the DESIRE to make them happen, that has the power to change all. We all should desire, that we all can gain that ability someday.

            I am presently applying for graduate studies in US universities and one thing that I was told by many, was not to include Richard Feynman in my SOP. They say it makes my application look like normal. Maybe that true, but removing Feynman from my life would take away one of the fundamental reasons why I love physics so much. I love its intricacies and yet the beauty that lies in simple laws take my breadth away. I have always liked Physics but I learned to love physics from Feynman. I once read this on a website . The author said that you need to have a better reason to go to graduate school than Feynman. I think he’s wrong. What are teachers for? why are the documentary films made on science and scientists? I think it is to inspire people to follow something. No common child begins by magical attraction to something, he is not born loving physics, or any other subject for that matter. Even Feynman was inducted into physics and questioning physical events by his father. His father served as his inspiration to love physics.

            What does this person want me to do? to love physics or some subject right out of my mother’s womb? What should serve ideally as an inspiration for graduate studies? some research experience? I have that and yes I was inspired in learning Radar and RF and photonics and remote sensing by my experience at Bose Institute, but I was inspired to continue learning by Feynman. Without Feynman’s drive I probably would not have been able to keep searching and finding an internship in the first place. Yes, experiences mold our lives, but inspirations keep us going. And I dare anyone to come up and say Feynman was not inspiring.

            I have not, I could not keep Feynman out of my SOP. I could not have lived with myself knowing that I had to invent new ideas to why I want to study and not take a job and settle down like most of my friends. That would have been dishonest and plain wrong on my part. I can take the easy way out, if all I want is to go to US. Does that mean I don’t want to go to US? NO! I want to go but because I want to have an adventure, meet new people and experience new things. That’s why I want to go to US for, not why I want to go to graduate school for. If I wanted to go to US then I can take a holiday trip. Why do I want to go to US for graduate studies? the answer is no, I don’t want to go to US for graduate studies, if Madagascar or Chile had the best education system then I would have wanted to go there for graduate studies. I want to go to *US* for graduate studies simply because they have the best system of education, if while learning new things I get to see a foreign land, make a few friends, eat new food then that’s the way I want to do it. If I get to see US while my graduate studies then that’s the way I want it to be.

            I have been told by US return people that the mindset of US universities is changing. They are coming away from the adage “research for the sake of research”, and concentrating more on whats going to contribute to the society. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. The species strives to better itself through generations and knowledge. We should all look for ways to contribute to the society. Feynman at one point during his experience of the Challenger investigation wanted to give up. Luckily his sister inspired him not to, at that point he wanted to make a contribution, and not because he was still loving the adventure, he was clearly frustrated by the red-tape by then. He too looked to make a contribution. That he like many of his generation went to study physics simply because they loved physics is perhaps true, and I also believe in his creedo that we should not pre-determine what we want to find. Don’t you feel the tinge of excitement when you have a breakthrough in a puzzle, Feynman did too. He lived for that excitement, never giving up on problems, but that means he wanted to solve the problem and that’s why he was still trying. What he really means by “not pre-determining the preferred outcome” is simply to accept if the answer comes to 88 and not 100, even though 100 would have meant a great discovery. I still believe in “research for the sake of research”, but I also want to contribute to the society.

             Living in India, I do understand why people want honors. I understand why the noble prize must be so important. I do understand why people want to be famous. But as you might expect I must have been influenced by Feynman’s distaste for honors, as I don’t see why the Noble Prize should be some people’s life target. I have been told this, whenever I tell them I want to be a scientist, “OH! so you will bring the noble prize to India?”. NO! I won’t, I want to contribute not win prizes. Being human it would be nice if everyone appreciated my work, but if they don’t, or if I don’t gain International fame, then I won’t be disappointed. Fame is something you can’t expect, you can want it all you want, but you can’t expect it. I don’t think that if somehow you go back in time and ask a younger Feynman or Einstein, as to whether they think they would one day be famous, I think they will laugh on your face. I don’t think Einstein could have expected himself to become the image of Einstein we have come to associate him with, I don’t think Einstein could have expected to become Einstein.

The first video “The Frontier is Everywhere” talks of the frontier of challenges facing humans and that has faced us in the many generation we have passed. When we used to be hunters and foragers it was very easy to discover new things, the frontier was everywhere. Today we seem to be asking the question whether we should venture into space and question whether we are capable enough. “We who cannot even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatred, are we to venture into space” begs a moment of thought, indeed we have a lot of troubles on earth, why should we go looking for more outside, why spend so much on space when so many are dying of hunger and dying in the hands of terrorists. We are an adaptable species and we will change, we are changing now. “By the time we are ready to settle the nearest planetary systems we would have changed. Time would have changed us, our necessities and even our hatred of each other would have changed us. It will not be we who go to the stars, it will be a species very much like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses, more confident, far-seeing, capable and prudent. Despite our failings, despite our fallibilities we humans are capable of greatness.” – This is my favorite line in the entire video. It gives you hope and courage to do what’s necessary knowing that in the end, the fate is not for us to decide. We are great and need not question our abilities, we only need to sort out our priorities.

The videos are must see. I will be writing about the emotions that the videos instill in me in the future but for now, you should go see the videos.

They say that, because they can’t really see anything other than that. Young people, gifted people in India only want to become engineers/doctors/cricketers. Anything else and you are pushing it too far with your parents. I am sure the world must wonder where are the athletes, painters, scientists when we in India have a supply market of over 1 BILLION individuals. China are producing them, why can’t we? The answer is very simple. The people are short-sighted and NO! I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense. They just are. They lack the knowledge of the possibility that people can earn substantial amount of money playing computer games (COMPUTER GAMES!!! Total waste of time – as will be heard by EVERY child in India), playing professional football (do you want to earn enough to feed your family or not?), honors in sciences has become a sort of stigma (only those students do honors who can’t do engineering). These are just some replies students in India get when deciding on THEIR!!! careers (because our parents and relatives know better).

This is the sad situation, but thankfully due to the economic slowdown students are being interested in other branches and career paths as well. The slowdown has been a boon for Indian education. The next generation of Indians will have considerably more percentage of science students (not engineering or medical). Maybe Indian education IS changing. At the core of it are some highly educated Indians who are returning to India after many years in the education systems of abroad. The future of India is brighter than it was before. Soon it will make more sense – INCREDIBLE INDIA!

Richard Feynman was a genius. No, not in my words but in the words of Hans Bethe, himself a Nobel laureate in Physics. He called Feynman a magician. He said “There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Feynman was a magician.” Richard P. Feynman can easily be counted among the most influential scientists, most important personalities of the 21st century, and indeed one of the best teachers ever to have graced the human race. Maybe the reader can already ascertain my fascination with Feynman. (Which in no small part also extends to the fact that I was born the very same year he died)

I used to be apprehensive about a science career and so very easily conformed to my parents wishes to become an engineer. (I only kind of had two choices – doctor or engineer). Thankfully during my second year in undergraduate school, one night I was bored (which used to happen a lot during the initial years) and decided to trawl through the vast collection of e-books that I had collected previously. By pure chance I settled on a curiously titled book called “Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman: Adventures of a curious character”. The title seemed odd and the name Feynman stood out, I had heard it before although I had no recollection as to where. I was just looking to kill time, but as I read on about radios and resorts, of MIT and Princeton, I was hooked. I didn’t stop reading till next afternoon ( I did go to the bathroom and had the meals), I even dropped class. It was incredible, how a person could have so much fun in his life and yet find enough time to significantly alter how a subject is perceived.

The first thing that hits you as you read Feynman is that he had a lot of fun in his life. He loved to make pranks and loved to laugh. As you read on you come across his ability to analyze and understand the problems to the very fundamentals, a nature inculcated into him by his father. The vision helped him solve many problems in life and also to understand physics to an impossible depth. Feynman succeeds where most physicists fail miserably – to look cool, something he points out in the book. He never had any qualms about asking a question, something that endeared him to Neils Bohr later in life. Although his claims about his feelings about the Manhattan Project may be suspect, one thing no one can argue against is that he loved to do what he loved, and he did it better than most, perhaps better than anybody else. Be it working on the bomb or teaching a class at Cornell, he was dedicated and loved physics. He also loved to teach Physics. He can easily be considered to be one of the most important physics teacher that there ever was. His lectures on physics have inspired thousands and millions to delve into physics (including me), and will do so for many generations to come. Even if his theories are all proved to be incorrect sometime in future what will not change is the pure brilliance in the way he went about discovering and teaching physics. The core value of his style lies in the wit, ability to make people interested, and the insight that he offered into physics. Physics by nature is not strictly mathematical, even if its language is. Physics can be intuitively visualized if you have the proper imagination. That Richard Feynman had this imagination is evident in his creative abilities in arts. His passion for the bongo drums and the fascination with painting is well documented. Feynman could look at the small details while not losing track of the bigger picture. The adventurist in him made him question every thing he learned and learn everything well. He learned trigonometry and calculus by himself, that is no mean feat.

I used to hear stories of Einstein and how he was an “old crack”, a brilliant old crack, no question about that but clearly a bit mad and quite strongly opinionated – he never changed his stance that quantum theory was wrong and that “God does not play dice with the universe”. People seem to condemn Einstein for that stance, but after reading Feynman I think Einstein was correct in trying to defend his views and that his madness must have helped him quite some bit in discovering relativity. Go back in time to 1905, everyone absolutely certain of physics, and Einstein was daring to think of physical laws in a very different “Light”, i.e. in light itself lay the clues to the universe. Can you imagine such a thought at that time? He MUST have been mad to even consider it, but consider it he did, and so we found ourselves in another age of science. Only mad and crazy people can bring about a change, people who dare to believe in something no one else will. They are the people who bring about changes. Feynman was such a person, and his drawings of quantum electrodynamic states changed how we understand quantum physics today, but he considered his contributions to physics is more in his teaching rather than his work. He loved to teach and no one taught quite like him. He makes physics beautiful, he shows how a physicist must think, he is the quintessential magician of the world of Physics.

I wish I could have learned from the great man himself, but alas! he passed away before I was born. I have tried to touch his spirit of physics through his books and audio recordings of his famous lectures, but now finally there is a platform that can bring the magic back. The Microsoft lead research project at recreating the magic of Feynman is according to me one of the best things Bill Gates has done in his entire life (the first thing was to steal the Mac from Steve Jobs). The Microsoft Tuva project aims to showcase the lesser known Messenger lectures given at Cornell. They are extractions from his own lectures and describes how fundamentals work in every physical law from Law of Gravity to the quantum theories. If you are interested in Feynman or just interested in Physics then please see the videos, they will open a new world of thought to you.

I will leave the reader in no doubt that I am a thorough idol worshiper of Richard Feynman. He is my idol and my image of a scientist. That’s who I want to be. Maybe that impossible but I will try and try my best in becoming what I believe is possible. I will urge everyone to read his books and learn more about him, more than physics it will show you what a person should look to live his life like. Enjoy it while striving to give back.

This battle has been going on forever. From the open trials of scientists in the hands of the church to the present day battles between the Intelligent Creationists and Evolutionists, this battle has been fought on every front and on every terms. It has claimed countless careers and lives – mostly of the scientists, unfortunately. But somehow the battle continues, and today most people say that science is winning. Why is that? I think the core reason lies in the general human nature. We are by nature inquisitive. We keep on asking questions until satisfied. It is for this reason that people keep asking the basis of religion and thus must have started the first questions going into the realms of blasphemy. They had probably asked some simple question – Who is God? Where is God? Why can’t I see Him? The general use of the male gender for God subjected the female kind of our species to millennia of suppression. That probably compounded the questioning nature in the female kind – perhaps resulting in the account of Eve, in bible. God is by essence abstract, we can hardly expect to “see” God, but we can all feel the presence of a greater power. Some call it science, some may call it nature and many call Him God.

I don’t really understand why people cannot see the beautiful elegance in evolution and choose to call it blasphemy. I see something beautiful in evolution, its coherence and utter ruthlessness is quite similar to God- who refused to forgive Adam and Eve for forgetting the rules of heaven, even though it was Satan who tricked Eve into taking the apple. (Satan is a creation of God if we believe that everything is from God. Then Satan must be an agent of God too. Why do some human try to mark Satan as evil and ungodly when God Himself must have created him, then he too must have some purpose intended by God.) Evolution chooses the best of an age, it constantly crafts new species and keeps changing the formula. Is it not beautiful to find out the simplicity of the smallest of formulas that drive evolution – anything that works survives, anything else fails to do so. It is simple as is an atom – the smallest of sub-atomic particles be it quarks or perhaps the yet to be confirmed strings – are in essence simple. It is when simple units club together that we have something majestic. Evolution is majestic but you need to take it apart to realize the simplicity.

I do not think evolution is infallible.  Maybe someday we WILL find something that contradicts evolution and scientists will have to find another theory. But then that is how science works. For now I believe in evolution but I also know that many infallible theories have fallen and today we have new theories. I just think that its unfair on the part of religion to judge science. Our science is only a few millennia old while religion has been around for as long as human civilization. Give science time and perhaps science CAN explain everything.