Chapter 5: My first encounter with Shankar.........

By the time we shifted to Kothacheruvu or somewhere nearby, Shankar travelled into deep meditative state with occasional distorted versions of Omkars, not to mention it was 9 in the morning. Sometimes, I never know how to react to a situation. Let’s just take this situation itself. Should I be pissed off for him being so disinterested, or pity his situation because he is bearing all the torture I am putting him into or go beyond all these worldly thoughts and just reach a state of equanimity and feel nothing? In any case, I had mixed feelings and so picked up a book, stood in front of the mirror, adjusted my hairdo and was on my way to morning class.

The first hour was Physics. I was late by ten minutes. The growling look on the face of the lecturer never bothered me. I mean, that was normal to me. Just like people who feel normal when they are treated with a beautiful smile every time somebody meets them, I feel the growl normal. I think my physical construction comes with an inbuilt delay of around eight minutes to respond to any situation. Adding another two to four minutes of laziness, gives an agreeable solution and elucidates my unpunctuality. As I always say, I am generally perfect. There is an error with my fabrication bringing in certain default flaws. As I was listening to his class, I remembered Shankar. I felt sorry for letting him miss the lecture which he generally loved the most. I sat there reminiscing that first day I met him……or more precisely took notice of his existence. 

It was the first session with Prof Parthasarathy, faculty in-charge of Quantum Mechanics, a PhD from Georgia Tech University.  With a reputed journal on Quantum entanglements and an extreme dramatist known for his excellent pedagogical practices, Parthasarathy was more of a performer in Physics than a lecturer. “Good morning physicists. Sorry for running late today. I was caught wondering on how to convey this to you, but the truth needs to be shared. The whole of scientific community shall mourn this day, a major disaster on the intellectual front. With enormous pain, I bring this news to you. The greatest physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian of our previous generation, a man known for his diverse interest, the author of celebrated monograph Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Sir Isaac Newton’s theories have failed to work at the atomic and the sub atomic level. Beginning with his laws of motion governing all macroscopic objects to the kind of forces that come into play, everything has hit a dead end. None of those laws are valid at the sub atomic level. Thus, we have to come up with something more fundamental, something more generic to account for mechanics of sub atomic particles. Having laid the foundation today, we will go on to discover or reinvent a whole new mechanics which would quench our thirst and answer our questions. We will also identify reasons for the failure of classical mechanical principles in the quantum context. Wishing you all the best in your search for knowledge in the coming days, I am Parthasarthy, your assistant for the next fifty two brainstorming sessions. I don’t believe in this mechanism of education, where we learn but not discover, where we memorize but not theorize. But the world cannot take too many intellectuals at the same time and so all this defence mechanisms (meaning engineers). I don’t have a course plan, since no scientist will ever know that he will hit a breakthrough in ten or twenty sessions. However, our line of attack will be somewhat close to the hand-outs that each one of you has. We will see what happens when two electrons collide; more precisely when two sub atomic particles collide, try and establish principles governing their motion and see how different they are from classical principles.  So before I proceed any further, let me know if there are any uncertainties. And I don’t expect this class to be silent at all. Either talk to me or to your friends and demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics. Disorder is the very nature of this universe. I simply don’t understand the reason behind the enormous effort the lesser mortals put in, to bring in order and lead a so called ‘disciplined’ life.  I am physicist by practice and not word.  Hoping the message is clear, I invite queries from your end.”  At the end of this small presentation, the entire class was filled with raptures and uproar. Everybody was more or less riveted by his charismatic approach.

Amidst all this celebration, there seemed a distinct hand raised above the rest signalling a conventional doubt asking mechanism. Professor immediately acknowledged and asked the person to proceed. Silence invaded the class for a moment to see what was happening around. Everyone looked at the student who stood up, threw confused looks at each other. “Sir, this is something that’s bothering me for a year now and I haven’t found a convincing answer yet. Hope you throw light on it. When we talk about bodies, we distinguish between two such entities by the physical boundaries they exhibit.  As we go into the building elements of each of these bodies, we encounter different organs again distinguished by their physical boundaries. Further down, we have tissues, then cells and then sub cellular entities. Beyond this we enter into the domain of molecules and then atoms and then into electrons, protons and neutrons, quarks and bosons and so on. When we talk of atoms, we say atoms have several electrons revolving around the nucleus in several shells. Similarly, within the nucleus, same is the situation with the protons but a little more vague and complex. Now, it is very clearly known fact that atoms have no physical boundaries but they are distinguished by the range of influence the nucleus has on the electrons revolving around. The nucleus also has no physical boundary and it’s an imaginary surface close to spherical (strictly not) in nature. When the fact that no physical boundaries exist for electrons, protons , atoms etc, what we do mean when we say when atoms collide or electrons collide? I mean atoms cannot collide since there are no physical boundaries. Neither can electrons, or the nucleus or the protons or neutrons collide for the same reason. If it’s the field we are discussing about then why don’t we stick to the terminology ‘interaction of fields’? In essence, we have theories built upon such collisions resulting in heat dissipations, and energy losses and a whole variety of efficiency improving programs. If it’s the field of influence of nucleus, the observing point, where is the nucleus? Can we actually localize a particle’s existence or not? And my problem magnifies when people claim to have seen or observed atomic collisions on microscopes. What did they actually see? Atoms colliding? “

I certainly didn’t know what was happening. I found comfort in the fact that a lot of students shared the same mind fucked expression on their faces. I mean what was he trying to establish? The whole world on a fucked up journey? Should I be ashamed, because of my mindless pursuit in these subjects for years now, without asking this question or simply dismiss it as something overly dramatized but very silly or grow above all this and believe in the ancient saying, “The mind cannot simply comprehend the universe in its entirety. Science is a journey to identify this very fact, the ability to understand that we cannot understand.”  All this reached a climax when the bell rang and the Professor walked out of the class without a word into the corridor of chaos thinking all the while. A true physicist!!!! The guy who created all this furore was Shankar.

Confused I was, amidst the frenzy,

To distinguish between truth and falsehood,

The right and the wrong,

As the wise say, you are born to realize to never be born again,

Learn to unlearn, struggle to survive,

                    Comprehend the incomprehensible……..