I wonder how....I wonder why

Sometimes, when I sit back and wonder about what each one of us is doing for a living, I see a pattern – woven around each one of our lives- somehow, leading us to do what we are best at and enjoy the most. I know few people who had clear cut vision that this is what they wanted to be and most who didn’t know what they want to do. Somehow, now all are doing (barring a few!!) what they are good at. Is it not true??I know many will point to people who are out of sorts in their work. I would say they have not had the calling yet or they are just plain lazy, useless people who anyway would not have done justice to any work they did.

I don’t know if I am doing science for a living but, surely, I am doing it for living! I think sometimes what I would have been if not in science and I shudder at such thoughts. I need new things to keep happening around me, the excitement that comes with science- the thoughts, the questions, the experiments and most importantly, the simple (rather not so simple) sane logic of why things are happening. If someone told me today that the world has banned science and I can’t do experiments anymore, I think I would open up one secret underground lab! I think I can understand why Archimedes rushed out of his bath naked, shouting “eureka” or why Galileo was ready to die but, not agree to earth being flat or why Newton even forgot he had a wife (costly mistake though!) or why Ramanujan would be oblivious to his own poverty and just do maths! Sheer love of the subject is enough to drive you to these things. I hope I would be able to translate my love for science into something fruitful, maybe not to the levels of these immortals but, surely what is the harm in trying.

Fruitful, I don’t necessarily mean useful to any human, though. There are other people to do that. I would be just happy to answer like a mystique yet with reasoning and proof about things which just interest me. Science, more than anything else, is an intellectual pursuit and I am not ashamed at all that my contribution to science probably will not be anything directly useful to anyone.