Defiance against our insignificance
Reading this article today in The Guardian took me back to days in university when I was majoring in Astrophysics (AP) and shuttling between classes in the Uni, The Indian Institute of Astrophysics and Raman Research Institute in Bangalore. Little did I know that a year down the road, I would be married and living in a far-off place, trying my best to continue working in the field of Physics, failing, and then taking up teaching of the subject. That was when my romance with the subject began.
All those days of poring over textbooks and preparing for exams didn’t do anything for me. Here I was teaching A level students Physics and discovering the subject’s applications, while re-reading and listening to Sir Richard Feynman’s views and classes. Transported to a new world, and taking my students along with me, I began to understand the way the physical world works. (Something I should have understood eons ago.)
The stints at the two illustrious institutes in Bangalore and the interactions with the hallowed scientists there came back to me as times when I should have paid more attention to what they were saying. Supremely passionate about their subjects, the scientists working there enjoyed conversing with us bunch of kids and sitting with us along the tree-lined walkways, holding forth on theoretical physics and the lives of physicists long gone.
The lab/practical classes were held at the Vainu Bapu Institute of Astrophysics in Kavalur and the radio telescope in Gauribidanur, all short hops from Bangalore city. All these institutes looked their part — places to worship and immerse oneself in the beauty of academia and discovery. Their verdant surroundings and the chirping of birds amidst stone washed buildings, the silence of their libraries, the students and research associates walking around in kurta pajamas slinging a cloth jhola type of bag, soda glasses perched crookedly over dreamy eyes.
The canteens at all these institutes served tasty local food, and we spent many afternoons and evenings listening to the professors talk of their experiences and how the world began. Romanticizing a dying star, we brandished the AP lexicon like we would the newest from Karl Lagerfeld on the runway — supernova, red star, blue stars and so also the blasé blackholes. Discovering how a red giant became a dwarf, incidents taking place millions of years back, silenced us completely. (not to mention the many formulae one had to solve as an assignment as part of this activity).
The dedication and love for science that our profs displayed proved contagious — one of them taught us by drawing with his fingers on his empty plate after the lunch meal — using discarded curry leaves and bits of tomato to illustrate his points. Another instance, when the Vainu Bapu observatory gave us the 15-inch optic telescope to play around with at night and watch the members of the Milky way, Saturn’s oh-so-beautiful rings, and our insignificant place in the galaxy, we sat around chatting and pointing at various points in the sky, mesmerized by its inky black velvet look (without any ambient light). At one point when this telescope was moving around, I felt a tug in my head and turned around to discover that my long braid had curled around and rotated with the telescope and was slowly dragging my body along with it. It took a few attempts by the gallant boys to remove the braid. I was ready to chop it off, but they were having none of it and promised to deliver my hair back to its home intact. Now I look back nostalgically at those days, more so at the thick, dark tresses that sat atop my head back then.
The millions of stars that put up a show in those quiet hills a short distance from Vanyambadi and Katpadi, were experiences one cannot forget.
I moved from teaching Physics to marketing a few years after and took up marketing communication as a career for many reasons, but the subject still holds its hallowed place of glory. I cannot forget the first time we saw the Magellanic clouds and the shape-shifting Andromeda galaxy mass, ghostly and surreal even to the naked eye, probably setting the stage for Potteresque dreams.
PS: Please excuse any mistakes i may have made when mentioning the stars and related theory as i have jotted down from memory.
