This I Believe

I'm now at my Aunt's place for the Thanksgiving break. Feels good to be at home, and spend time with family watching movies and such. Today I discovered a small treasure, as I was trying to help my cousin write her law school application letter. A cursory glance at some example write-ups online was enough to let me know that these letters are meant to be deeply personal (and pretty darn stupid) -- something that is always a challenge to write. Then I remembered, I had already something like this before, when I first joined Harvard and had to go through a month-long course to show my proficiency in the English language. And in this I discovered a small treasure that I want to keep on this blog so that I may never lose it. This was meant to be a "This I Believe" essay that all the students in the language course wrote at the end. I don't think I have changed. This I certainly still believe.


Dated : 17th August, 2010.
This I Believe
Kartiek Agarwal.

Sometimes, one is asked to talk about oneself and to explain the core values that describe them. On such occasions, a great contingent of our fellow bipedal hominids, tend to amass a plethora of words and sentences, very commonly positive and self-glorifying, to describe themselves. Some simpletons do so brutishly and blatantly while some engage in a more subtle form of reverence to themselves, by presenting themselves as devoid of those qualities cherished by their very soul and spirit of the audience and themselves, as if, inviting the audience to point out to them how humble they really are and that they are indeed the perfect embodiment of the aforementioned values they have so harshly adjudged themselves to be of acute want. A small contingent comprising a few men and women tends to struggle however, with such a writing because, it is inherent in its values to be austere but the essential nature of the autobiographical account, or an exposition of one's deepest, most cherished values presents these men and women with the dilemma of how they must go about presenting a statement of their values, yet refraining from using the very personal pronoun `I'.

I of course, am at a nascent stage of my life and standing on the brink of bidding farewell to nascency, not in any position to lead the aspirations of a massive audience let alone this little group of very interesting individuals who may end up reading this statement. I would like to announce myself, then, as a product of some fundamental experiences of my life, and as an ideal never realized through the passages that follow. I do not intend to ever realize these ideals either, for I believe in the constant process of learning and improving, and don't think that this one life can present anyone with the requisite wealth of experiences to achieve perfection in any ascribed attribute to oneself.

So here it begins. I was born on the 27th of March in 1989 in New Delhi, India, into a working middle class family. My father was then an engineer serving at PEC Ltd., a governmental organization dealing with the export of railway equipment worldwide. When I was about a year old, my father came to know of an employment opportunity at the Indian Embassy in Moscow. Since Russia had always served as a source of much fascination for my father, he grasped the opportunity to work there with alacrity. Consequently, I spent much of my childhood, nearly 7 years of it, in Moscow, and those were some of the best years of my life. This trend of traveling to different countries would then continue, and I  would subsequently get to live in the UAE and Singapore, before eventually returning to India. I am not very sure of what sort of impact this constant traveling to new countries and exposure to different cultures has had on me, or if I would be much different had I always remained in India. I was back in India when I was 12, and I doubt that I was filled with any deep sense of understanding the cultural frailties and differences, at least not as much as age has taught me. Perhaps this constant traveling has just served as a backdrop to put into perspective my more recent meanderings into unchartered territories. But before I digress further, let me get back to the things I understand the most, and the people that account the most for who I am today - my parents.

 I enjoyed a childhood any child could hope for, and deserves. I did not have a very affluent upbringing, or all the comforts in the world, but definitely the love of two very sincere, loving and honest parents. My parents shared a vision for me - to see me grow up to become a morally sensitive and humble human being, ethical in decision-making, and to make me intellectually motivated throughout my life. My father himself, had an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Kanpur, the same illustrious institution I would find myself attending to obtain my own undergraduate degree. While he wished to study further, the lack of good institutions then in India for graduate studies, along with his parents' inability to afford the mere expenses of registering him for examinations like the TOEFL, eventually deterred him. I believe my father chose to vest his interests in helping me pursue a life he always yearned for, and I thank him for that. Thus, I got to spend much of my childhood playing with Legos and other such toys to motivate my desire to learn. It was stressed that I should be disciplined and punctual. While I don't see myself as having completely grown up into a perfectionist like my dad, his enthusiasm for science and engineering rubbed off on me very early on and has guided my life ever since.

 When I was around 8 years old, I saw a movie that showed a girl bending a spoon with her telekinetic powers. My mom told me then, that if I prayed to God everyday, and tried to be a good kid, I could develop those mental powers as well. As a result, I would find myself spending time in front of our miniature temple (a common sight in most hindu households in India) every day trying desperately to convince the gods of how I truly deserved those powers for my good behavior. As farcical as my introduction to religion was, and even though I never really learnt about my own religion properly, because my parents weren't well versed in Hinduism themselves, what that did for me was that it made me a better human being (as I would think) because I learned to be forever cautious of my own actions and their effect on other people. Time goes by, we grow up, philosophies change, but some things remain, and for me, it was to always look to expand my horizon to accommodate the sentiments and sensibilities of the people around me and act accordingly. From a more religious point of view, by the age of 12, I had started doubting the existence of god (Hinduism indeed also has a branch of philosophy that is atheistic in its view) and started trying to analyze the whole concept of religion and ethics rationally. I have since then, poured deeply into obscure philosophical essays, spent time analyzing nihilist and existential philosophical texts, and reading literature by the great logicians of our yesteryears, but at this point of time in my life, I look back upon those times of introspection as perhaps, amusing. My philosophy is merely based on humility and moral self-accountability.

 At the age of around 10, my father bought me the book, "The Fundamentals of Physics" by Resnick, Halliday and Walker. Its the mainstay for most advanced high school physics courses and introductory expositions on most things physics at all levels. I primarily read up on topics of heat, energy, gas laws, elementary mechanics and optics from the book. The most interesting idea that I encountered, was that of wave-particle duality. I believe that I always had an intrinsic understanding of calculus that just allowed me to understand the essential physics that was presented in so many popular science books. But the idea of wave-particle duality instantly captured my imagination. I used to go to bed, every night thinking about what should be true, and what shouldn't. I, of course, didn't know that people had really worked on so much more in physics and what I was wracking my brains on, was a part of the fundamental axioms in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics developed in the 1920s. I am thankful that I was oblivious of these details, for it would have demotivated me. I had a desire to learn about the universe, but I also wanted to be the first one to unravel its mysteries. This desire of course, still persists in me and brings me to where I am today, conducting my graduate studies in physics at Harvard. If it was my father who lent to me the desire to study science, it was my mother who shaped my dreams and taught me to fight for goals I have set. Her never ending enthusiasm to excel in whatever she did, comes from her background of being a sportsperson at the national level. I am glad I inherited her values.

 Continuing, as I had mentioned earlier, after our stay in Moscow, I lived in the UAE, and then in Singapore. All through those years, I had the opportunity to learn the local languages. I became most proficient in Russian, though now I've nearly forgotten it. In the UAE, I learnt some Arabic. Then, I also learned French in Singapore for a year. My parents always did worry about how I would respond to the frequent changing of schools, curricula, and people, but I believe I never really had any such issues, and in fact find myself much thankful to the wealth of experiences I have gained studying in so many different countries, and learning from different people. I look back fondly on those times of nomadic existence. And while I've been fortunate to have lived in many countries, there is obviously no place like home. There is a basic element of simplicity in the lives of people in India, maybe its the toil they go through to earn simple pleasures in life that so many people in many other developed countries take for granted, that is most endearing to me. This desire to lead a simple but worthwhile life, in the pursuit of knowledge, is therefore what has motivated me the most in my aspirations to contribute to a nobel profession like physics.

I hope that I've been able to tell you a little about myself, the values I hold in esteemed regard and aspire to acquire as much of as I can in this short lifetime. If I would like to leave you with anything, it would be this message, paraphrasing the words of my mom giving one of her very typical lectures after I erred in my behaviour around other people - `` I'd rather see you grow up to become a mature, kind and considerate human being, with a sense of compassion for anyone and everyone, with a sense of understanding of how they behave and what compels them to behave in the way they do, than the very typical arrogant and self-centered person of science. " I know, of course, that she wants me to be a wonderful scientist, but I understand her completely when she says what she wants me to be a proper human being first. There is a sense of humanity that must, in my opinion, pervade through the being of every man and woman, if this place called earth is ours to be cherished for many more generations to come. As I now find myself in one of the best departments in the world to pursue my professional aims in theoretical physics, and specifically condensed matter physics, I am most excited about the future and what it holds for me. I am looking forward to 5 years of industrious labour, exciting research, fascinating people and fascinating ideas. Here's hoping for the best!