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.