Art, science, and a muddled mind of mine

Yet another of those weekends, spent in the metallography lab, where I was polishing another of those stubborn samples. I had been working on the sample for an hour now. The lab was pleasantly cool compared to the summer heat outside. This, coupled with the hypnotic droning sound of the polishing wheel, set my mind wandering, rather incoherently.

I could hear my professor from undergrad school drilling into my ear “polishing sample is as much an art as it is science”. Damn! That should have been good for me. I am a fairly decent artist. But this was one form of “art” I had absolutely no knack for. I cursed the sample for the umpteenth time and drifted into thoughts of the other forms of art that I was reasonably adept at, namely, pencil sketching.

Animals were my favorite subjects. I remembered the little fawn I had sketched as a 13 year old, which my art teacher had said was good enough to be put up for an exhibition. And that brought a silly smile on my face – thinking of babies, whether human or animal, always brings on those silly smiles on my face, dunno why. “Yes”, I told myself, “my animal sketching skills aren’t that bad”. And then I thought of the (attempted) self portrait – my latest artistic creation, a week ago. That was horrible. I had showed it to my labmate and asked him to identify it, and after a long hard look he had said, “You know, he sort of resembles our prime-minister” (our = chinese in this case, since my labmate happens to be from China). I winced in chagrin as I thought of this. The sample wobbled apologetically between my fingers. There was a slight “plop” and all of a sudden, my fingertips started feeling warmer and warmer.

Again I indulged in soliloquy – “I am not going to give up on sketching portraits”, I said. And I resolved to sketch one of my idols, Richard Feynman, once I was done polishing the sample. Feynman was a genius. He was a fantastic physicist, and it is said that three of his works – quantum electrodynamics (QED), super-fluidity of helium, and studies on friction at atomic scales – were good enough for a Nobel, although he got the Nobel only once for QED. But Feynman, apart from being a scientist was a superb artist too. As I thought of sketching Feynman, I thought of one of his anecdotes. Those days he was learning to sketch from a friend called Jerry. They struck a deal. Jerry was to teach Feynman how to sketch. In return, Feynman would teach physics to Jerry. Here is an excerpt on this from Feynman’s biography:

"I practiced drawing all the time, and became very interested in it. If I was at a meeting that wasn’t getting anywhere–like the one where Carl Rogers came to Caltech to discuss with us whether Caltech should develop a psychology department–I would draw the other people. I had a little pad of paper I kept with me and I practiced drawing wherever I went. So, as Jerry taught me, I worked very hard.

Jerry, on the other hand, didn’t learn much physics. His mind wandered too easily. I tried to teach him something about electricity and magnetism, but as soon as I mentioned electricity,” he’d tell me about some motor he had that didn’t work, and how might he fix it. When I tried to show him how an electromagnet works by making a little coil of wire and hanging a nail on a piece of string, I put the voltage on, the nail swung into the coil, and Jerry said, “Ooh! It’s just like fucking!” So that was the end of that."

As I thought of this anecdote, I started laughing like a jackass. I felt a slight tap on my shoulder. And my labmate’s voice floated “Pratik!! What are you doing?” Good question. What was I doing indeed. Reverie broken, I saw that the sample had popped out from my finger, and was lying on the table. And there I was, polishing my finger nails against the polishing wheel. It was easy to understand the plopping sound, and the warmth at my fingertips. :-)

I realized why I wasn’t such a good experimentalist. Like Jerry, my mind wandered too easily. I pretend to be a scientist, and actually manage to do some science too, but deep down perhaps the core is made of a different clay.

The sum of small things.

A dreary day drew to a close. It was almost midnight, and I was planning to hit the hay fairly soon, although, normally midnight isn’t all that late an hour for me. A nice numbing sleepiness was slowly beginning to cloud my mind. The last vestiges of the first draft of a pending research proposal remained; and the raging debate in my drowsy mind was whether to plough on for another half an hour, or shut shop and go home.

And that’s when the phone rang. Someone was speaking to me in Oriya. The voice sounded familiar, although I couldn’t recognize it immediately. And then all of a sudden, everything fell in place. It was a childhood friend of mine, who had recently moved to Milwaukee. It was a pleasant surprise indeed. We had a nice chat about the world at large, about our lives in US and about the halcyon days of our childhood that seemed increasingly getting tinted with sepia and chrome.

The one refrain that crept in was the increasingly hectic pace at which life was moving, nay, hurtling along. A poem, which we read about 14 years ago during school days flashed through my mind. It’s a lovely poem called “Leisure”, by William Davies. The sum and substance of the poem was how men missed out on the simple pleasures of life in an increasingly hectic world. Somehow, that struck a tender chord somewhere within – and got me thinking about the small details which made life so fascinating.

Those were days, when a few innocent blokes would head off into the countryside, riding their rickety bicycles. And we would stumble on a decrepit building. For the next few days, that would be our fortress; many a sunsets were enjoyed together from atop the “fortress”. Today though, leave aside countrysides, I hardly ever step out of the main university campus. And when I do, it is with a chip on my shoulders – that I have to travel around. Have to. Why “have to”? Somewhere down the line, the free wheeling spirit started ebbing away to such an extent that enjoying the simple beauties of life has become more of a conscious effort. These days, we discuss nature and all its beauty. Hidden in these discussions is a stifling sophistication – a sophistication whose origins lie as much in hearsay from “sources” including colleagues, travelogues and media, a conciousness for the need to unwind, as much as from our own experience. How starkly this contrasts with the naiveté of days gone by, when the cooing of a pigeon would result in us imitating it unconsciously, even as we indulged in other tasks; when the sound of flowing water would draw us towards the stream automatically, like a magnet drawing an iron. We were nature’s naturals then, without being a Touchstone.

Adrift from nature, even the behavior patterns have changed. The small niceties of life remain unacknowledged. Today, birthday wishes often get acknowledged only through a single bulk mail; flash back to late 80s and early 90s, such a behavior would have been a cardinal sin. Birthdays were what we kids waited for all year round, and to treat a birthday so lightly was something sacrilegious. Something as simple as sharing books or music cassettes was fun. These days though, share a musical with someone, and it is often days before he or she cares to listen to it; and another few days before he/she thinks of acknowledging it, by which time it becomes hazy as to who shared it in the first place.

In a world powered on more by money and "success", we keep losing out on something which is much more priceless – namely, the simple pleasures of small things in life. The sum of small things keeps piling up. And just as the integral of an infinitesimal quantity dx equals a big finite x, the sum of small things equal a huge chunk of joy, a lifetime of joy in fact; pity, that this is exactly what we lose out on today. Oh! for the innocence of yore and Auld Lang Syne.

The easy going gambler

It was my early days in Ames. It had been a hectic morning - any paper work always is hectic - with all the check in procedures, although, to be fair, the folks handling the entire thing were very very helpful. Having finished my lunch, I headed off to the department, eager to meet my PhD research advisors and labmates for the first time.

Our research group was small and nice - 5 graduate students and a post doc. "Hi, I am Pratik." An innocuous enough introduction on my part. Others introduced themselves too. When asked my full name, I replied "Pratik Kumar Ray". An eyebrow was raised; a slight smile flickered on a face. And I, the ever observant (??) fella, raised an enquiring eyebrow as well.

Pat came the answer from my Turkish labmate - You know, "Pratik", in Turkish, means "easy going", and "Kumar", in Turkish, means "gambler". And thus, the easy going gambler was born.