Guest Column - GPS, Chaos, And All That - Shamik Gupta

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It was in the summer of 2001 while at the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, attending the Visiting Students Research Programme that I first heard of GPS.  

I was then a Masters student at Calcutta University. I was sharing my room in the Guest House with a very nice guy from IITKgp. Eventually, we became very good friends. Despite being very nice, he was quite a lazy chap. I remember he would hardly attend the lectures, and would always look forward to the lectures getting over when we all would hang out. He was to work on a project with a professor, but neither of the two would turn up at discussions. Then, one day, my friend came home with a print out....that was his Project Report!!! He was too lazy to type it out himself, so got it done by paying someone at IISc.

On the other hand, I must say I was quite serious about studies then, having just passed from Presidency College with a first rank. This guy had a friend attending a similar summer camp at IISc. Both of them would often discuss about their future. It seemed they had just one wish, namely, to get into a good university in the US....and then they would often remark that if GPS could be impressed somehow or the other (they would say it is tough though) and they get a good Reco, no one can stop them from fulfilling their dreams....one can get into the best of the US universities.

The guy, who was my roommate, was so nice... I vividly remember one evening I was studying in my room when he barged in with a garma garam fish fry. He knew that I have a soft corner for fish, which I was sorely missing in that part of Bangalore. He had gone out with his friends and somewhere he came across this fish-fry-wallah. I really appreciated that he cared to bring home not just one, but two fish fries for me. I would often be teased that you guys from Presi, CU...you are just too serious, all the time consulting text books and making notes for yourself...that I used to do in those days (In fact, reading GPS's recent post, I could recognize all the text books he has mentioned), while for them, it’s just one simple thing....impress GPS, get a Reco and then the sky is the limit. Anyways, one day I got curious and Googled for GPS. I think it did come up with a photo...I am not very sure.

Years went by, and I got into TIFR, and eventually became Aniket's friend. Only rarely would he talk about IITKgp, and I was too busy with my own things to ask him about GPS. I remember much later, when I had joined the Weizmann institute, that one day I got an e-mail with a link to one of GPS's blog posts.....and that's how it all began. 

That IITKgp friend of mine did rather well in research. He had come once to our home in Kolkata, but gradually we lost touch with each other. Then, last year, around this time, I was browsing the TIFR website and found his name in the list of upcoming seminar speakers. While in Bangalore, he used to hum a particular line of a popular Hindi film song written by the poet Gulzar. The song was "Do deewane shaher mein". Somewhere in the song the boy says "Jab tarein zameen par jalte ho", and the girl wonders, "tarein? aur zameen par", when the boy remarks, "yes, of course!!".  He used to hum just these lines almost all the time. So, having come across his name on the TIFR site, I asked our Departmental Secretary, who is also a very good friend of mine, to print these two lines from the song and give the printout to him before his seminar, saying that one of his bong friends remembers him. In a day or two, I got an e-mail from him....after a gap of at least 9 years !!! Apparently, he had no clue who this bong friend could be who would remind him of "tarein? aur zameen par?' before his seminar, and had to ask our secretary who could it be. He wondered if I was planning to come to Princeton soon, and then he would be more than happy to meet me. It so turned out that I was about to go to Rutgers to attend a conference in a few days. So then we met...at his home. He came to receive me at the train station at New Jersey. Of course he now looks much more serious, but has not lost the simplicity I was fond of. It was quite an unexpected meeting...we were meeting after 9 years!!!

When I recounted this incident to my Weizmann Boss, he said with a smile, "Shamik, never predict the future!! You don't know what is there in store for you." My Italian Boss in Lyon, a very good friend of mine (although being at least 20 yrs older to me), remarked that this is what happens in many dynamical systems....two very close initial points eventually drift apart because of chaos....nevertheless, they do get to being very close to one another again ....and Poincare residence time is just the upper bound. 

Life is a dynamical system, and chaotic too, but nevertheless, there is a lot of order out of disorder, which unfortunately we learn to appreciate only in retrospect...

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