Juvenilia

On the night of 14 December 2018, between 00:005 and 00:15, I was rummaging through my teenage memorabilia —  mostly books and notes. I stumbled upon an old envelope with perfect creases. It probably had remained unopened for ten years.

When I opened the envelope, I found newspaper clippings and a few printouts on the history of physics. The printouts were from 2005 and I couldn't remember anything about the clippings. The United Nations had declared 2005, The International Year of Physics, and I was being forced, by my class teacher, to participate in some in inter-school competition on the same theme. As I was extremely shy during my school days, I managed to excuse myself from the event. I still dislike occasions where strangers behold me. This has slowly changed over time. With acting in a few plays and skits during my undergraduate days and hosting quizzes regularly during my master's, I feel much more confident on the stage now.

The clippings and printouts threw me back in a time about which I had almost no recollection. Nevertheless, these little pieces of paper did their job. A mirror which has accumulated dust over the years, still shows us our own reflection when it is cleaned.

I am in the dark about the date !

This must be from 2005 as that year was the 100th anniversary of the birth of 'Special Theory of Relativity'.

Certainly from 2005.

28 September 2005

2005 was a very important year in my life. It cemented my interest in physics.  That was the first time I read about Special Theory of Relativity in a magazine called Vigyan Pragati. It had that famous definition of STR form the man himself - " Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity". I bought the  biography of Einstein from the World Book Fair of 2006. Sadly, that remains the only book about him I have read till date. 

I don't want to annotate any further on 'my past'. My words won't do any justice. Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem — The Past, captures the extent of my desiderium.

The debt is paid,

The verdict said,

The Furies laid,

The plague is stayed,

All fortunes made;

Turn the key and bolt the door,

Sweet is death forevermore.

Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin,

Nor murdering hate, can enter in.

All is now secure and fast;

Not the gods can shake the Past;

Flies-to the adamantine door

Bolted down forevermore.

None can reenter there, -

No thief so politic,

No Satan with a royal trick

Steal in by window, chink or hole,

To bind or unbind, add what lacked

Insert a leaf, or forge a name,

New-face or finish what is packed,

Alter or mend eternal Fact.

ज़िंदगी रोक के अक्सर यही कहती है मुझे 

तुझ को जाना था किधर और किधर आ गया है 

— ज़िया ज़मीर

PS: Happy 140th Birthday Herr Einstein !

Correction: New map pins down 'dark matter' is from 9 January 2007. The Old Man And The E is from 24 June 2007. Google helped me !