the Important Things in life

Thursday, October 23, 2008

My first entry...

It was on the 19th of October that, for the first time, I realised something very important. Having watched many tv series and movies, most of them pertaining to the romantic comedy genre, I had started to feel very lonely and sad, and had begun to think about such things as relationships and sex. The thought itself made me feel miserable, since I had no mate, or as you might say, girlfriend. But then, I began thinking about the causes of such emotions, and the brilliancy of the directors to arouse such emotions in their audience, to make them feel as he/she wants.

And it was then that I realised, such things are, what we can call, only experiences. They are but virtual, and can't be understood properly. And fretting over them is definitely useless. The next day was then about to become a turning point in my life.

Since I was small, I had curiosity about the different things; how they work, what are they made of, and other such questions. I wasn't so much interested in the topics related to economy, or for that matter, history and what mistakes our fathers did; whatever battles they fought and why, I wasn't interested in these matters. But still, I had to study these subjects for my school, and I knew I would go into the Science stream once I left school.

It was only after my 10th class that I came to know about the various branches of science that I could opt for later on, and I decided engineering almost immediately, medical being rejected just as fast. But I never thought about pure science and research, since it seemed a lowly choice compared to engineering, atleast to my mind during that time. So it was, that I chose to get into IITs, the best in engineering in India. Even then, I never thought of opting for the pure science courses, like BSc or MSc, I always wanted to get into a BTech course, and I got into one at IIT Guwahati, one year late. I got admission into the BTech Mechanical Engineering course, that too only on merit, just because it was the best course I could get and not because I wanted that exact course. Like every child i was deeply addicted to computing and wanted to get into the computers stream, but I wasn't meritorious enough. Anyways, I never paid much attention to studies, and continued my fascination about computers and internet, in particular. My reading had reached quite a low, and I was not doing what I had dreamt of, that is searching for answers; as I had ceased to ask questions completely. The computers had numbed me for a while, but that spark I had about science still existed, and showed a few times now and then.

It was on that day, the spark was ignited again. A friend of mine had given me the book 'A Brief History of Time' by Stephen Hawking; and since my attendance at lectures was low, I decided to read the book in the class (because I could never really pay attention to the professors!). The book almost instantaneously had my entire attention, and I began reading it with the curiosity of a small child. The book explains the basic theories that scientists have formed over the years about our universe, and the concept of space and time. I am still in the middle of the book, but it has fascinated me so much, that I am actually taking notes (which I never do for my actual subjects). It was only then that I realised, there was nothing else that fascinated me more than science (not even sex!).

And only now have I started to think that maybe getting into engineering was not what I exactly wanted, since I seem more interested in research; about things like the universe, space, time, matter and its composition, antimatter too, the different kinds of forces & such other things.

But even realising what I want seems to have given me a definite purpose, and even though I can't start pondering on these topics extensively right away, I know exactly what I want to do.