I distinctly recall the moment when I felt that if I needed to understand the world, I wouldn't get very far by asking the adults around me, who gave vague, evasive, contradictory, and incomplete answers or eluded to magic, myths, and established hearsay. Why these questions didn't bring on an existential crisis posed quite a bit of consternation to my nerves as a rather thick-skulled child, nervous about and unsure of the world I inhabited. I failed to understand how you could have a working reality when nobody seemed to know how it worked.
The quandary that led me down the rabbit hole was about how a puddle of water disappeared without a trace. The sultry summer heat had something to do with it, but I didn't see the water boil away, even when I looked at it closely. Calcutta in the eighties (which hadn't been renamed yet) had an ostentatious daily crisis with power (which is still a struggle), and I sat there in the dim light of the flickering kerosene lamp, wondering why.
At that age, subjects taught in class were undifferentiated and often taught by one teacher. The science bits were in one book. This was 1987 specifically, a prehistoric age before the internet, making it quite difficult for the present generation to conceive. And in that science book, I saw an illustration showing how water in a container changes into water vapor all the time at the surface with air. Little black circles were densely packed in the section where it said it was water and far apart, with arrows attached to them, where it said it was vapor.
I had an "aha!" moment. I realized that not only was this explanation the best attempt at the question, but if I studied the right subjects, I would get a less contradictory universe to ponder, and an even less contradictory one after that, and so on. And I fell in love. I knew I had made friends with someone who'd always have an answer because something told me I'd always have a lot of questions. It was one of the most memorable moments of my life. Science is the only true friend I have.
I'm almost half a century old, and frittered my life in a country that doesn't value people for their merit. Right now, if India manages to get a group of sane people to lead who can throw out this garbage political bullshit and focus on the issues of the people, the country might have a fighting chance. Otherwise, with the existing politicians and their sycophants who live in their curated parallel universe of make-believe India, there's only dystopia for the laity.
Frankly I haven't seen mass psychosis like this, their hope hinging on some sort of a concocted holy hindu halcyon; I'm sure I'll be lynched by the mob as an atheist, when that's completed. Truth and honesty is anathema to most. The people can't choose if the choice is always looking back at some dramatized pristine myth. We need to look towards the future if any of our aspirations are to take off. It's only science that can save India or the world.
