A few days back a small ‘iron’ particle decided that my eye would make a nice cozy home and landed straight on it. Since I had the feeling that something was there on my eye for more than 2 days, I decided to go to the doctor and get it examined. It so happened that this particle was embedded in my cornea. So the doctor had to administer a local anesthesia and take the particle out using a needle. While this part of it was not painful. I was not ready for what was in store. The doctor told me that she will have to patch my eye for 24 hours! The next 24 hours I was blinded! well in a single eye. I was not able to do carry out any of my normal chores [which is ofcourse involves sitting in front of a computer 
] I realised how difficult it would be for people who did not have this blessing called vision. I thank God for having kept this “suffering” to a period of 24 hours.
24 Hours!
The question “Why?”
I am sure most of us would have faced this question and quite a number of times too. However at some points in time ( and space) this question has a larger impact on the one who is at the receiving end. Below is one such incident which changed the way I look at things. This was quite some time back, some time in mid February 2008, while I was attending the course “Physics of Information” at IMSc. This course was being taught by Dr. Sitabhra Sinha and Dr. Sibashish Gosh and yours truly, like any other sophomore, was looking for something to do over the summer holidays. Given that I did not know much about Quantum mechanics I approached Dr. Sitabhra who works on Complex Systems. This was the conversation that changed the way I looked at things. I was telling him that I was familiar with Ising models, ( A way of modelling spin systems in statistical physics.) He casually popped up this question “Why?”. I thought for some time and since no other answer came to my mind, I said something like “just for the fun of it”. He went onto explain why he has looked at Ising models and where and how they were used. He explained how one can use them in fields like economics of markets, study of societies and in materials called spin glasses. That was the day I understood that any theory will have a good reason to exist and it could be applied in a whole lot of places. So starting that day, although I believed (and still do) in “A scientist studies nature not because it is useful but because it is beautiful”, I have been trying to find out where everything I learn will be used.
Weblogger.el – Blogging from within Emacs
This is my first post from within Emacs. Thanks to Akarsh for
informing me about this wonderful mode. Guess the frequency of posts
will increase from now. Lets wait and watch. Btw, it is so peaceful to
be able to blog without the interface that wordpress provides.
