This is me!

[Monday: 16th June, 2008]

I finally succeeded in getting up after snooze-ing my mobile alarm six times. "O Shit! It’s already 9:45 AM. It’s likely that I am going to miss 10:15 AM bus that goes directly to BARC and now will have to hop from bus-stop to bus and vice-versa to reach my destination." I festinated and fortunately caught the desired bus.

Again after a non-productive day, I was sipping tea in the central complex canteen and was contemplating about the coming post-day meeting with my guide. I went to meet him at the sixth floor expecting him busy like always and that he would suggest that I carry on the research work in my own way. But, exactly reverse happened. He was completely free and so he asked me to sit with him.

- "So, how is your work going?"

- "Sir... fine sir."

- "Okay. That's impressive. Please summarize me your work before me."

As usual, I was totally unprepared. First I became nervous, then I calmed myself and recalled of my work at BARC till date. I got double nervousness as I had done nothing except reading some journals downloaded from science direct and getting acquainted with the software on which I was supposed to work. What should I explain? What could be the appropriate excuse? I wished I could evaporate! I vowed that I will be serious from then onwards.

Before starting, I took a couple of minutes in taking my notebook and journal print-outs out of my bag and in the meantime I formulated the first sentence of my reply in English to ensure that I deliver it correctly and fluently.

"Sir, these are some papers which you had suggested me to go through....."

I finished my redundant speech in a few minutes.

"Well, I think that we need to expedite our work as I am afraid you have enough time to finish it off. I have requested Prof. Sharma and Prof. Kumar to help in the work you are carrying out here and they have very kindly agreed to give their valuable contributions. So I guess we are meeting tomorrow and will work on the problem together."

Tomorrow never comes. I felt relieved. But that's a saying. His tomorrow is 17th June, 2008 and that would definitely come unless He interferes.

"...and will work on the problem together." was consistently echoing in my mind while I was returning.

- "We will work together; what will we work on?"

- "Are u trying to alliterate?"

- "I am worried."

- "That's an incorrect answer."

- "I am no more in a frivolous mood. I am seriously worried."

- "Oh come on dude, just take a look around, you are so special, you are an IITian - an extraordinary brain!"

- "Really?"

- "Of course!"

- "So, am I really prepared to face the extended technical meeting with some veteran professors?"

- "Don't be silly. Of course you are!"

- "Oh...okay. Tell me - Do I know what Reynolds number is? I should also be able to explain the physical significance of it! Can I?"

- "Of course you can. You know Reynolds number. What's in it?"

- "Ok tell me now."

- "It’s exasperating! You are suspecting a 4th year mechanical undergrad. Ok fine. Here I go. Reynolds number is a number...actually a dimensionless number, it equals...ok give me a paper, I will derive it, it’s no big deal."

- "It's a bloody big deal man. Your project is on Computational Fluid Dynamics and dammit you are hesitating in explaining something as simple and basic as Reynolds number."

- "I said I know it! If you don’t believe, you better be off."

- ...

The long return journey looked so short because of some tensed conversations between my inner voices. I really needed to do some preparations to avoid ignominious exposure of my technical knowledge in the tomorrow’s meeting. I had brought some books on CFD which I had borrowed from the Central Library of IIT-KGP and which were used as pillow till then. I immediately kept those books on the desk. The distance between putting those books on the desk and start reading were unsurprisingly pretty long. Finally, amidst roar of a Euro Cup match and complains of my altruist friend/roomy Manish, I started. I finished some two-three relevant chapters running through some hundreds of pages in around two hours just for the sake of doing it.

[Tuesday, 17^th June, 2008]

I was sitting in my guide’s study on a circular luxurious sofa, elegantly dressed and bearing pretentious smile to boost my confidence. In a few minutes, my guide entered and introduced me to Prof Sharma and Prof Kumar. It was 9:30 AM, the time at which I was supposed to be in bed if that meeting had not been convened.

The meeting started and I managed to sustain the first ten minutes by nodding vigorously with intermittent ‘yes sir’ till I was suddenly bombarded with a series of questions.

"So what do you feel…here the value of Rayleigh number should be greater than or less than the critical value? Please look into this equation."

I moistened my desiccated lips, twisted my eyebrows and peeped into the book to see a creepy equation. Total attention was on me and hence my total attention went to ensure that my physiognomy satisfactorily conveys that I was cogitating hard to find the correct answer.

"I guess it should be higher than the critical value!"

"Yes Sir, you are right. It should be."

I immediately nodded although I didn’t have any logic to support my answer. But fortunately the logic was not asked because unfortunately I was interrupted by my magnanimous guide.

"So Kisalay, you have enough experience in the field of CFD, as I remember from your mail. According to you, what should be the convergence criteria for the given material properties in this computational domain?"

The question to me was like a Bret Lee’s bouncer to a kid. I felt extreme anger at Mr. Sharma, one of my friends, who, while writing the reply to my guide played with his words and eventually with me by describing me as an innate CFD lover and that augmenting my knowledge in CFD by reading papers is my favorite pastime. I could really feel the most unwanted repercussion of his grandiloquent reply.

I somehow managed to answer the question and sustained the rest of the meeting which ended in around forty-five minutes. I came out with a long breath and a sense of gumption to rock the world. I knew that it’s enough and now I needed to do my work seriously; prodigiously. There were a lot of tasks to be accomplished by the end of the day. I had to solve a particular problem and had to come up with a satisfactory result at any cost. I went to the library, then to the computer lab and started working on the problem. I didn’t remember a day on which I worked so hard and with such high concentration.

At the end of the day, I went to meet my guide to show him the results.

"Oh great! This is unbelievable. This is the result which we were expecting and you did it in a single day. Now you can proceed in this research with much confidence and I am sure you will succeed. Congratulations!!"

"Thank you sir! Thank you very much."

The day was definitely a different one. I was deliriously elated and jubilant. I was walking across the street with broadened-chest and head held high. I could feel the aroma of success while breathing and my heart was filled with tranquility. The remark echoed. I could hear, "...you can proceed in this research work with much confidence...". Gradually, I could see a blot in the cloud of ecstasy. I tried my best to keep my attention away from it but lastly I could not refrain myself. I focused. Suddenly, I was disquieted. I felt trapped. The remark was superfluous for me. Yes it was more than sufficient. "Do I love research works?, Am I going to enjoy the rest of work to the fullest?" I felt weariness. Weariness was not due to the hard mental work which I did but it was because I could not bear the superfluity in the remark. Whatever be the type of superfluity, more than sufficient, it causes weariness.