21 Years In The 21st Century

First of all, I am sorry. Because I am posting a blog on my website after an unforgivably long time. I shared some lessons at the end of 2022 and 2023. This blog is partly about some important lessons I learned in 2024 and 2025 (yes, I am running late!), and also partly about all the stuff that has happened in these two years, because yes, a lot has happened! I am now officially a B.Sc. in physics, and since September 2025 I am a Masters student (physics) at Montpellier University. I will talk more about all that, share some lessons plus updates and through all that, reflect on the life I have lived so far, because I turned 21 in 2025, so I have lived 21 years in the 21st century (I am not saying something fundamental fell into place because of that, but it does sound good on the blog title!).

Where to start? 2024? Sure... 2024 was yet another... well, what should I say... eventful year for me. I made some progress in my research and academics, and I also learned some lessons about life and people the hard way. I made some great new friends, and I also added quite a few known names in my discarded list. Filled with the good (that everyone can see), the bad (that only a few people close to me know) and the ugly (that only I know), 2024 has definitely toughened me up for the future, yet left me questioning the point of it all. I tried to vent out a lot of my feelings in my song Goodbye World (which I released in May 2024), and I also released another song at the end of the year: Letter To The Simulator. This song planted the seeds of what would finally become my second album by the end of 2025: Anti-Simulation.

First, let's talk about academics. In 2024 I was halfway through my undergraduate course in physics at St. Xavier's College, Kolkata. When I scored poorly in exams and failed to secure an internship in my first year of undergraduate (2022-2023), I came close to questioning whether physics was for me. In 2024, not only did my scores improve significantly, I also received a research fellowship from the Indian Academy of Sciences. As part of the fellowship, I studied the modular group and modular symmetries. More specifically, I investigated the fundamental domain of the modular group, and possible applications of the same in the Standard Model and other areas of theoretical high energy physics. (If you are interested, you can read my project report here.) This was my first serious internship, and in a different institution. Apart from the academic experience, it was also a learning experience for me in how to live and manage everything by myself far away from home (I found it more difficult to convince myself to get up from my desk and cook a decent meal than to read papers that are considered nightmares even by some PhD students!). But yeah, since this was my first serious exposure to what academic research is really like, I also learned some really important lessons about research that I can't help but share (I have shared this on LinkedIn, but not in any of my blog posts, so here we go again!):

First lesson: Choose your question wisely. Assuming you are a beginner, don't choose a question that is too fundamental, even if the sound of it interests you. Choose a well-defined question that aligns with your interest and expertise and that you are likely to make significant progress on.

Second lesson: Learn to live with frustration. The transition from undergraduate education to research is difficult. In research, if you are stuck at some point, it's unlikely that you will find the answer easily in a textbook or on the Internet. Maybe even your supervisor hasn't got a clue. It might get really frustrating, but the sooner you learn to live with this and keep going, the better. For beginners, the best you can do is randomly choose an approach and see where that takes you. If you end up at some solution, great. If not, you still learn a lot on the way and at least you can rule out that approach once and for all. As you become more and more experienced, you can intuitively choose an approach that is very likely to be the correct one.

Third lesson: Start as early as possible and try to explore a wide range of topics. Starting early gives you more time, and you can afford to make more mistakes. And initially, it's a good idea to keep your options open. You may feel like you want to do research on some particular topic and nothing else, but unless you have explored everything at a sufficiently deep level, you are not in a position to make an unbiased choice. Plus, if your fascination with a particular topic comes from watching documentaries and sci-fi movies, or reading popular science books, then it is possible that after learning the topic in some depth, you lose interest in it because it turns out to be much more challenging and much less exciting than you thought. At this point, if you have previously explored other alternatives, you at least have a plan B.

Fourth (and final) lesson: Talk to researchers in your field. Reach out to them and exchange ideas with them. Often you are stuck in your approach, and a good chat with someone working on a similar problem might reveal a unique perspective. And since most modern scientific research projects involve scientists from various fields, a collaborative mindset is extremely important for a successful career in research.

Okay, enough lessons. Let me stop speaking like an experienced researcher (because I am not), and focus on some other highlights of my 2024. In 2024, I presented on the topic of complexity and assembly theory at Spectrum 2024, the annual fest of my college's physics department. My presentation was awarded the second place in the paper presentation competition. Next, I was also interviewed by the Young Scientists Journal (YSJ) podcast team about my journey and science popularization, among other things. Many people ask me why I am so passionate about science popularization. For me, the reason is simple. If you really want to solve a problem for the sake of knowing the answer (and not for the sake of getting recognized), you should not only work hard on the problem yourself, but also try to get more people interested in the problem; the more the number of people working on the problem from different perspectives, the more the chances of it getting solved increases. That’s why I think science popularization is extremely important, in addition to individual learning and research. Anyway, if you want you can listen to the full podcast episode here. This was special to me, because for me, it all started with the YSJ. I discovered the YSJ when I was looking for a journal that would publish my research (this was back in 2020, I was a high school student back then). Then two of my articles were published by the YSJ, and I decided to apply to be a part of the student team. I initially joined as an outreach member and soon shifted to the editorial department as a junior editor. Then I was appointed senior physics editor and have been in this position to date. As I look back down the memory lane, I can't believe how much I've learned in these years. From all the technical physics stuff I had to learn while editing articles and getting to know how scientific articles are written and how a peer-reviewed STEM journal works to meeting passionate young STEM aspirants from all over the world, creating an impact - however small - on the YSJ physics department and finally getting featured in a YSJ podcast.

Apart from that, I also started working on my undergraduate dissertation project in 2024. I decided to formally study the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics in my dissertation. I remember reading about Feynman's path integrals in a popular science book a long time ago, when I was still in high school. Although at that time I wasn't mathematically trained enough to formally understand path integrals, the idea struck me as very appealing in general (not just from a physics perspective). It's really awesome to see how the initially messy mathematical techniques build quantum mechanics in a way that I find way more elegant than the canonical formulation. (If you are interested, you can read my dissertation report here.)

Now, enough of academics. I also I travelled a lot in 2024, and explored different places, cultures and through all that, explored myself. I visited Dooars, a beautiful place in North Bengal, with my parents. It was a very refreshing trip, and I recorded lots of physics explainers during the trip; I was sure my YouTube audience would appreciate the natural backdrop! Then I visited Pokhara, Nepal during the Christmas holidays (it was my first solo trip, although I met my friend Gerard there!). You can check out some beautiful photos I captured during these trips here.

So yeah, 2024 was indeed an eventful year ("hold my beer," says 2025!). But if I try to filter out the signal from the noise, there are some deep lessons I learned and realizations I had in the midst of all that. Of course, these are personal and subjective, and I am not preaching. If you're reading this, however, I do want you to think. Think for yourself. I don't care if you agree or disagree with what I say, I just want you to think. So what are these realizations? First, I think prevention is not always better than cure (I am not speaking about diseases or medical ailments of course); sometimes we should allow ourselves to be broken down and build back a stronger version from there. For me, 2024 felt more alive than 2025, but here's the thing: Feeling alive is not just feeling high, it is also pushing through the lows. In 2024, I experienced the full range of the emotional spectrum. I put my faith in the wrong person, wasted my time on trying to solve problems when the only solution was to wait (or maybe in some cases, there was no solution) and questioned everything up in my life. Also, there were small moments of triumph and satisfaction. Basically, I felt like a messy rookie in 2024, sometimes I pull off an unusual feat, sometimes I mess up real bad, overall I manage to remain standing at the end of the game - not the best, not the worst, but definitely a player who got people talking. In contrast, in 2025 I felt like a strategic player. No longer the player who either dazzles the others with occasional bursts of brilliance, or makes them laugh by doing something really stupid. Now, I felt more like a player that everyone is slightly afraid of, slightly jealous of, slightly resentful of. Okay, there were a few who genuinely were inspired by this player too, who looked up to this player and learned from him. He was that player who is experienced and strategic, but not in the usual way; he is not here just to win the game, but to do something to the rules of the game themselves! So what I am saying is, maybe being the rookie in 2024 was necessary to be able to become the unusual strategist in 2025. I won't deny, being this player is tiring and lonely as compared to the exciting rookie, but this is also the player who produces real output, real impact.

The next lesson I would like to share is extremely controversial. But here we go. Friends are like oxygen - the higher you rise, the lower the oxygen levels. It's not surprising that the rookie had more friends than the strategist. I mean, I have a name for not fitting in the crowd. Well, I don't wanna play victim, but trust me, it wasn't like this from the beginning. I tried to fit in, but couldn't. I am not saying it's just their fault, maybe it is my fault too. I won't say I like to play with fire just because the world was too cold to keep me warm; maybe I demanded a temperature that was too high for them. As I keep saying, I don't find meaning in daily pursuits like hanging out with friends, going to the movies, etc. Of course, most people love these activities because they need something to fill the void. If you seek meaning, you'll find it. But if you seek truth, you will see that there is no meaning. And once you see that, I think you can't "unsee" it. It’s like zooming in on reality and forgetting how to zoom out again; while other people see beautiful pictures, you just see pixels. Just to clarify, yes I know we try to fit in the crowd because we need validation (it could be somewhat of a survival instinct, although I am no expert on this). But that validation is not evidence that we are great or different from the rest. The contrary, actually. If people complement you over trivial things, maybe you have a little achievement like millions others (you attend a good university, you are popular among your friends, etc.), but you're basically a transient showpiece. People look at you, stop for a second, and move on; because you're not the only one, there are millions of such showpieces who all trick themselves into thinking they are the best. That's classic bamboozlement. If you really have transcended that, you'll keep doing your own thing even if nobody appreciates you. I've been doing that, sometimes getting depressed because nobody cared, nobody understood. But now as I look back, I see real impact and yes, a few (very few) genuine friends and collaborators I met along the way. So yeah, just keep going, you may not end up where you initially wanted, but you'll surely end up somewhere better than the herd!

I was once asked what’s something important that I've realized about myself and my endeavors in life. I have not thought much about that before that question, but a little thought revealed something interesting that might be worth sharing here. I remember when I was a naïve 15-year-old boy wondering about parapsychology, life and death after I survived a road accident, and then why and how I started exploring physics. The journey from that frightened 9th grader who spent his evenings on the roof trying to come up with better solutions to the EPR-paradox instead of studying what was in the curriculum, to this physics undergraduate and science enthusiast who has published a book and founded a physics journal… this journey hasn't been easy (although now when I look back down the memory lane, I acknowledge it could have been even more difficult). An important thing about myself that I’ve realized is that when doing science, I always put special emphasis on the quest to gain an understanding of the ultimate nature of reality; I mean, I try to always keep the big picture in mind and not get bogged down too much in the details. This would be evident from most of my early writings. I don’t know whether this is a good strategy for success in academia - most likely it’s not - but that’s the way I am anyway. I am where I am today because I have always challenged the convention, at each and every step. I’ve faced many consequences due to this, of course, but I think on the whole, things have mostly worked out the way I wanted. So I decided I will always be true to myself, so that I can look my younger self in the eye and tell him: “See, I am still working on what you started six years back. I am no longer a high schooler, and even though things are more serious now that people are finally taking notice and raising their expectations, I still refuse to bow down to the system. I have not let you down. And I never will.” And I’ve come too far down this road that I’ve carved out for myself anyway. I don’t regret it in the slightest, but it’s true that there’s no going back. At this point, I’m not even competing with the system. I see myself as my only competitor in the true sense. But yeah, above all, the best thing about this journey is that it has given a sense of purpose to my otherwise meaningless life, as well as moments of awe and wonder. And the worst part is the realization that my personal goal (exploring physics my own way) doesn't align with what society expects of me (becoming a conventional physicist). This just means my journey will be more difficult, but that doesn’t freak me out. I only feel bad about it because it means I'll have to work extra hard on the artificial problems created by society and as a result, I’ll have less time to devote to the actual learning, thinking, exploring and researching.

By the way, technically we have stepped into 2025 territory now, but before I list my 2025 highlights, let's maintain the flow and discuss the lessons and realizations first. Of course, standing out from the crowd is not easy, and should not be glamorized; it's not the right choice for everyone. Most people are content watching the sky through a window. They want a roof above their heads, and people around them, and just just enough light to feel alive without getting burnt. And that’s fine. But some of us want something else. We want to fly freely high up in the sky - even if it means flying alone, even if the sunlight burns, even if the rain soaks through. Because freedom was never meant to be safe, and truth was never meant to be comfortable. But yeah, it's also true that chasing freedom and truth is not what most people are built for. This is not about being superior or inferior to the rest, it's the truth. Personally, I feel everything is data; every reaction, every silence, every choice. If we step back far enough and drop the main-character lens, what feels personal suddenly dissolves into patterns. Well, personally sometimes I feel we’re not just lost, but we’re moving with conviction in the wrong direction. Further from truth. Further from ourselves. But realistically, if we look at history and the lifetime of a single human, none of us are in a position to make a claim like this. I won't pretend otherwise, sometimes it does feel like somewhere along the way, we forgot how to think. We learned how to play the game, how to optimize, how to repeat. In short, how to do what’s easy, but not what’s right. I mean, this could again be an attempt on our part (unconsciously, instinctively) to hide how much we are not in control. People drive through their days like they’re holding the steering wheel, trying so hard to look in control. They live their lives loudly, flooding their socials with posts and stories to prove that they exist, and that they exist meaningfully. They fight their battles. Win. Lose. Repeat. But among the many lessons 2025 taught me, perhaps the most important one is that not every battle is worth fighting, even if you end up winning. Most people are players... in a pointless game we call life. And players do not notice the patterns of the game. For that, you need to stop being the player sometimes and switch to referee mode. You need to step back, watch, analyze the game and if needed, play with the players instead of playing like the players! Because brilliance is in breaking the rules, not mastering the rules. Mastering the rules will definitely help you become successful in the conventional way, and if that's all you want, fine. However it's also true that paradigm changes come from those who dare to go exploring deep in the forest far away from the comfortable palace of convention. And yes, it's also true that not everyone who choose the unconventional path end up doing something significant (in fact, most don't). In the end, it's not about which is the better or more meaningful choice, it's about who you are. And of course, there's no right or wrong choice, we need people in both camps for the world to function.

Now, I will share some lessons that are less "philosophical big-talk" and more implementable in real life (I think). First, just like we can't understand the inner structure and properties of things just by looking at them, we can't understand the true intentions of the people around us just by superficially interacting with them. We need to subject the object of interest to specific and special conditions, only then we can gather information about the object from its reaction to these external conditions. For instance, to study the internal structure of solids using the method of X-ray diffraction, we pass light of specific wavelengths through the crystal at specific angles, and obtain a diffraction pattern, from which a lot of information about the structure of the crystal can be inferred. For another instance, the presence or absence of certain chemicals can be guessed by subjecting the sample to different reactions and/or processes, like heating, cooling etc. This same approach works for humans. To understand someone's true nature, you need to subject that person to unusual situations and register their reactions. You could, say, behave strangely with them on purpose. The point is that you can accurately guess someone's true nature only by studying their responses to a variety of different situations, especially the unusual situations. Of course, humans are not crystals sitting on the table of your laboratory. And you cannot do whatever you feel like with humans. A very important skill in life is diplomacy. I'm not saying this is a ground-breaking realization I had in 2025 (because this is obvious), but I still mention this because diplomacy is often misunderstood. Diplomacy, in my view, is not about being on friendly terms with everyone. In fact, I like to think about diplomacy from a quantum mechanics perspective! Sounds crazy, I know, but the main thing is: diplomacy is not about working toward a fixed goal. Since we cannot predict the moves of the other players in the game, in diplomacy all we can do is talk about the different possible outcomes corresponding to the different possible moves of the other players, and the probability of each outcome. This is exactly what we do in quantum mechanics: we talk about the possibilities and probabilities of each possibility, corresponding to a particular measurement performed on a quantum system. In general, diplomacy is about building a strategy that leaves you in a relatively better position regardless of what moves your opponents make. Of course, this is not at all an easy or straightforward task, and I'm not asking you practice diagonalizing matrices to get better at dealing with other humans. But analyzing your relationships from this lens, and running imaginary scenarios in your mind involving different people and relationships, is a good way to train your mind to see beyond the obvious, and exercise diplomacy more effectively.

And another relevant point to discuss here would be the question of collaboration and competition. Although it is often said collaboration is more important than competition, I think both are necessary to keep a check on the other and ensure steady progress. Competition is essential to a certain extent to prove your individual strengths. Strength does not oppose the idea of peace; strength is necessary to ensure peace. As for collaboration, a collaboration can be successful only if all the parties involved take the collaboration seriously. If one party is not serious, then working individually is much more effective, and saves you time and complications. Then for instance, if one party is committed to a lot of things outside the collaboration, or not as capable as the others of contributing, it is not a fair collaboration. Such "collaborations" sow the seeds of dissatisfaction. Enmity cannot always be kept at bay if we are together, often staying alone is the answer. (Yes, it is said that united we stand, divided we fall. But unite with the wrong kind of people, and you fall sooner than you could have possibly imagined!) In short, you should know where to draw the line, when to say no, bringing us back to the realization that not every battle is worth fighting. Another important lesson I can share: never trust people who have different "friends" to turn to for different purposes (for example, person A for academics, person B for trauma dumping etc.), they are using you. Simply select their names from the file of your life and press "Delete."

Now, some general but deep 2025 thoughts (not claiming them to be absolute truths, of course). First, I feel that the blind pursuit of individual freedom and rights has only made us lose sight of the long-term freedom of our civilization as a whole. The escaping nature of today's generation is evident from their habit of creating big issues out of small things, and finding excuses to avoid facing life. If today's generation was really free, they wouldn't want to escape from reality. Sometimes, we need to disregard our ego; that does not show our weakness, rather the breadth of our perspective and our ability to adapt to different situations. Life is not quantum physics, we don't have a deterministic and universal equation (like Schrödinger's equation) that always works, and in life we don't really have an analogue of quantum superposition. Outside physics, superposition could be a dangerous notion. We often try to escape the responsibility of what is right and what is wrong by pushing it into the grey area. Objectively nothing is right or wrong, but at our level every action and decision is effectively objective in the sense that they have consequences that cannot be ignored. And most of these actions are clearly either right or wrong. Our cowardice to accept that and pick a side, coupled with our ego (something we often call "self-respect") makes matters worse for us as a whole.

Now, allow me to make some comments on success and hard work. First, I think it is important to normalize the fact that every success is built on hundreds of failures. Unfortunately, these failures are not publicized. I think it's very important to acknowledge the role played by the failures, and at times maybe even take pride in failing (failing gives you the opportunity for a comeback!). Successful people are not successful just because of their talent or hard work. Rather, it's because they handled their failures well. It's more important to teach children how to handle failures rather than how to become successful. And when it comes to hard work/smart work, talent, passion and all that, well first of all, if you want to contribute really significantly to your field - beyond routine stuff - then I believe simply loving your field is not enough. You also need to actively hate other activities (without projecting your views on anyone of course)! Great people don’t become great because of a single choice; behind that choice is a conscious and complete rejection of all other possible choices. And also, you should not wait for permission or external validation to do what you feel is right - even if you may not have enough knowledge, experience or qualification initially. Waiting for permission is just an excuse to not step out of your comfort zone. Nobody gave me permission to create a platform for young students to publish their physics articles (The Journal of Young Physicists) when I was only sixteen and still in high school, but I did it anyway. It was not perfect, and the initial performance was very discouraging. But today, we have over 90 published articles (from reviews on complex physics topic to original research projects) and a team of editors and contributors. I did not create this platform to add another line to my CV, trust me had that been my intention, the concept would not have survived this long. I created the JYP because having interacted with many young students from around the world (as part of my responsibilities at the Young Scientists Journal), I realized it would be a good idea to create a platform specifically devoted to physics, for young students to publish their works. I genuinely believed this could be a good way to not only popularize physics, but also foster the growth of young physicists. At JYP, we don't just accept or reject articles that are submitted to us; even for articles that can't be published, we always try to provide detailed feedback to the author and encourage them to modify their work and resubmit.

Anyway, now coming back to the question of hard work and smart work, well another one of my most important 2025 realizations (and I have lived this one, not just learned) is that instead of trying to be the magician (or pretending only the magicians can do it), we should choose to be the dumb machine that burns the midnight oil. There is absolutely no way around hard work, no shortcut, no "smart work," no excuse like "I was not made for this" or "They were born with talent." And the best thing about hard work is that anyone can choose to work hard (well yes, circumstances play a non-negligible role, but still it's the best we can do). And by the way, I am not saying smart work is not important sometimes, and I am also not literally asking you to turn into a machine that grinds mindlessly. But to become the magician, you need to put in a lot of effort initially. You need a lot of practice, you need to mess things up, learn from your mistakes, try again and basically keep making mistakes until you are wrong in all the right ways!

Now, some quick 2025 updates! First, I completed my B.Sc. in physics from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata in 2025. I finished with a CGPA of 8.02/10, and this is something I’m quietly proud of, not because that number defines me, but because the journey behind it wasn’t easy. I actually failed a mathematics course in my first semester, went through a lot of personal chaos, stumbled more often than I like to admit, but still kept going. I don’t put much faith in marks or academic labels, but this one was personal: proof to myself that when I decide to stand up, I really can. I was known among my peers for being the one who is very interested and involved in research and writing (my popular science book Our Physics So Far was already published when I entered college), but after my poor academic performance and failure to secure an internship in my first year, there were many who ridiculed me (either directly or behind my back), and that did affect my self-confidence greatly. But then I decided to play their game, not only to show them that I can beat them at their game, but also to show myself that I could do it. And yeah, things started going uphill since the second year: my scores began to improve significantly (and my sleep hours began to decrease dramatically, yes), I received the summer research fellowship from the Indian Academy of Sciences in my second year and I was selected for the summer research internship at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai during my third year.

In 2025, I also served as a mentor for the Xaverian Astronomical Society (XAS) of my college. During the time I was involved with the XAS, I have mentored a junior on a project exploring the interplay between entropy, information, quantum information and potential applications in understanding the black hole information paradox. Also, after serving as an editorial board member of Pebbles - the annual magazine of my college's Science Association - in 2024, it was an honor to serve as the associate student editor-in-chief for Pebbles in 2025. I am really proud of all the editorial board members and the entire team for their dedication, passion and unity, despite tight deadlines. This was a great learning experience for me, and it is indeed great how students from so many different departments can come together and work wonders! We introduced a lot of new steps in the editorial process - like checking for AI-generated content - in 2025. This might have made the process confusing, but I loved the team's urge to learn more and grow. And in the end, those sleepless nights reviewing articles, interviewing scientists and putting things together paid off! In 2025, I was also part of the student committee of Horizon, the annual magazine of the physics department of my college. (You can take a look at Pebbles 2025 here, and Horizon 2025 here.) I also had a good experience presenting on modular symmetry and its applications in theoretical physics at Spectrum 2025, the annual fest of the physics department of my college. (Click here to see my slides.) Overall, undoubtedly 2025 is the year I involved myself the most in various college teams and events. In fact, here would be a good place to reflect briefly on my college experience. First, the role played by the professors can't be overstated. If you are willing to reach out to your professors beyond class and discuss topics beyond curriculum, they're more than willing to help. I'm really thankful to my professors at St. Xavier's for their constant support, guidance and for nurturing my interest in physics. Next, well if I am honest I have mixed feelings about the curriculum. While it is true that you've to put in a lot of effort in order to get a good score (even if not all of this knowledge will be useful to you), the good thing about this is the broad range of topics you are exposed to. And while the compromises on my health can't be ignored, the all-nighters before exams, finishing computation assignments and reviewing articles for the college's science magazine the night before the deadline, etc. have prepared my mind and body to adjust to extreme stress without feeling overwhelmed! As I like to put it: "All of this will either make you or break you." In my case, I think it made me! And lastly, it might not sound nice, but I must say that in my experience, the student community was nowhere near as good and supportive as the faculty. I don't put this forward as a general claim, I'm just sharing my personal experience. On one hand, there were students who were overly obsessed with exam scores and seemed to have a very narrow-minded approach to research. On the other hand, there were students who put their ego before physics and pretended to be the only ones doing something for the department, while in reality all they needed is an excuse to escape the real work. In short, they do science to show, not to know. And if there is one thing I can't stand, even more than convention, it is unnecessary drama. However I must thank all my "friends" - they've together provided an excellent sample space for the observations of my "social experiment"! Indeed, friends are like oxygen; the higher you rise, the lower the oxygen concentration! And I would gladly choose to stand out from this crowd and strive to rise higher, rather than put up with them in order to fit in. And overall, these experiences have taught me to dampen my emotional oscillations and reach a mental state where I can keep progressing in physics without setting much store by emotions (positive or negative).

After the completion of the final exams at college, I realized something else about myself: I work best under pressure. The fact that I had little to do for the next few months felt unnerving, and I realized that while freedom is certainly crucial for a life in research, a little bit of pressure from formal institutions is also needed at times. I utilized the time, first and foremost, to spend time with my parents. I also decided to pen down some speculative ideas of mine at the intersection of quantum mechanics (uncertainty), statistical mechanics (entropy) and cosmology (cosmological arrow of time), and ended up with a write-up of 86 pages (you can read it here). Then I went on a solo trip (this was my second solo trip after my Nepal trip in 2024!) and worked a little more on my to-do list, until I realized that my summer research internship was about to begin in a few days' time.

Writing that long essay was not a compulsion for me, and even I was a little surprised how easily I could pull consecutive all-nighters and put so much effort into it even when I was on holidays. That's when I realized (I may be wrong) that simply loving physics cannot explain this intensity. I feel it's more a desperate attempt on my part to keep myself busy with physics, and use that as an excuse to limit my interactions with humans. Except my parents (and a few others), I don't feel comfortable interacting with humans unless it is absolutely necessary for my work. Physics... well, I feel much safer with physics. Not just because becoming a physicist is my primary goal. In fact I would not say I am goal oriented, because I often do things that take me far away from my primary goal. I just want to explore and keep exploring, even if it does not leave me with specific results. During an interview, I was asked why I tend to work on broad questions spanning different areas of physics. The professor did indeed study my CV very carefully to realize this, and he pointed out that my independent as well as supervised projects (up to that point) mostly address broad topics in a novel way, are heavy on mathematics but often lack specific results. The reason is simple: I believe now is the time to explore the connection between different branches of physics and also between physics and the other sciences. A fundamentally new insight, even if it is somewhat broad and speculative, is valuable to me. During my PhD, I won't have the chance to explore as freely as now; I'd probably have to focus on a very narrow and conventional area of research then. For me, it's less about becoming a physicist, and more about exploring physics my own way. Physics has a way of asserting the coherence of the universe and the logical continuity of our experiences, observations and theories across different scales. Physics, of course, just provides a general framework to study a wide class of phenomena. The universe doesn't "follow" the laws of physics. The apple doesn't fall due to Newton's law; the apple falls because this behavior is in sync with the way our universe evolves. That's the way our universe is. Newton's law just does a good job of describing this behavior. Much of physics, in fact, is in a way made up to make the math work out, but physics still is probably the only path that can not only be meaningful but can also take us as close to objective truth as possible. I find this even more surprising, since meaning and truth are often at odds with each other!

During this time (the break after my B.Sc.), I also began to come more in terms with my own philosophy of standing out rather than fitting in. The quest for objective truth is much like grappling in the dark, with only occasional flashes of light. However, the glimpse of the deep and underlying pattern that even these rare flashes reveal make the quest worth it. Obviously, this is a quest that is never-ending, often frustrating and might alienate you from most people. But the reward is in the feeling that instead of other humans, you are in dialogue with the universe. The way I see it, staying alone is the best way to know yourself as you are, and not turn into what others want you to become. Staying alone is the only way to protect your originality.

In 2025, I also presented on path integrals, quantum uncertainty, entropy and information in the Quantum Foundations summer school organized by CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), Patna and Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata. My presentation drew from both my undergraduate dissertation on path integrals, and my essay on uncertainty and entropy I mentioned above. (You can take a look at my slides here.) In the summer school, I was also fortunate enough to interact with many great physicists working at the frontiers of physics. Overall it was an extremely enriching experience, and apart from the technical aspects, there were also sessions on the philosophical aspects of quantum mechanics and the link between quantum mechanics and consciousness.

The very next day after the summer school concluded, I few to Chennai for my summer research internship at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences. During the internship, I explored synchronization in coupled oscillators with nonlinear feedback. (You can take a look at my slides here.) But for me, the real fun has always been in working on my ideas independently. It has happened many times, I get a sudden idea that is unique, work on it and write a report, which often turns out to be more satisfactory and enriching than an official internship project. And in the same spirit of curiosity (and stubbornness) that has kind of defined my journey, in June 2025 I decided to ask a question that most sensible people would probably dismiss as ridiculous: Can I model emotions and feelings between two individuals using coupled nonlinear differential equations? Instead of spending months worrying about whether literature existed or whether I was "supposed" to do it, I simply went ahead and built a complete mathematical framework from scratch: four coupled nonlinear differential equations (with stochastic noise) to describe emotional states and directed relationship dynamics, asymmetry, decay, reciprocity, random external factors… basically the whole messy human package. (You can read my report on emotional dynamics here and you can take a look at my presentation on the same here) And honestly, it felt like a strange poetic continuation of my very first attempt at research when I was 15, when I tried to understand isotopes not through neutrons and protons, but through the number of up and down quarks in them. (You can take a look at the quark-isotope report here.) I classified isotopes, created categories, found patterns, derived relations and even found a general formula that works for all categories. Sure, that work had no practical application, but it trained my brain to see hidden structure in chaos. This time, I kind of did the same thing - except I did not have real data, and of course, instead of elements and quarks I was dealing with humans and emotions, trying to hunt for general patterns in something deeply abstract and painfully personal (more precisely, trying to figure out a mathematical framework that would model those patterns as best as possible). When I was working on isotopes, I basically asked: What if I switch from the proton-neutron lens to the quark lens when looking at isotopes? When I was working on emotional modeling I was asking: What if I switch from the superficial psychological lens to a mathematical/nonlinear dynamics lens when looking at emotions and relationships?

You might wonder if the origin of this project was purely scientific curiosity. Well, it wasn’t. It was intensely personal. Most classical “rational” models of humans assume we are perfect decision-making agents driven by logic and optimization. My life, and my experience of being human, strongly disagrees. And I am sure almost everyone reading this can relate. We are emotional messes walking around pretending to be in control of our lives. Instead of collapsing under emotions I couldn’t handle, I chose to build something general out of them - because mathematics is a language that doesn’t betray me, and work is something that outlives the person who wrote it. A few hundred years from now, nobody will remember my relationships or my emotional chaos, but if I have done something meaningful, maybe the work will remain. And if that sounds a little tragic, maybe it is… but it’s also honest.

By then, I was close to starting my Masters. For a long time, I was torn between exploring quantum mechanics and complex systems in my Masters. Eventually, I chose complex systems, but quantum mechanics will always remain my first crush in physics! And 2025 marks a hundred years of quantum mechanics… a century of questioning the nature of reality, turning uncertainty into law and matter into possibility. So before starting my Masters, I decided to write something like a farewell love letter to my crush in the form of a long essay where I revisit some of the foundational (and often misunderstood) ideas in quantum mechanics, and then wander into more speculative territories like new approaches to quantum gravity. (You can read it here.)

Now, let me share another great thing that happened in 2025. My YouTube channel crossed 1000 subscribers! It all began more than six years ago when I casually uploaded an unboxing video of an airplane model to YouTube. Then eventually, I started posting serious videos about physics, philosophy, travel etc. And of course, growth was painfully slow. At one point in the early days, the number of videos on my channel was more than the number of subscribers! But yeah, today we are a family of 1000, and I would like to thank each of my subscribers and viewers for this.

Now, yet another great thing: The Journal of Young Physicists turned five on 1 July, 2025! On the same date in 2020 (five years ago), I created the JYP, an online platform for young students to submit their physics articles for review and publication for free. In our initial days, we used to receive only a handful of review articles, and some hate mail! Today however, along with a lot of review articles, we also receive many original research article submissions. With over 90 published articles, and a team of over 30 young students from over 7 countries around the world, the JYP is really set on its path to popularize physics and foster the growth of young physicists. And let me say this clearly: none of this would have been possible without the support of our contributors, editors and readers. And for this kind of thing, a simple "thank you" would be a disgrace, so I won't say thanks. In fact, this is not a personal achievement of mine. The JYP is not personal to me. It is a collective effort. And all I ask from you: keep supporting us and help us do our part for young physicists. Of course, when I say "keep supporting us", I don't mean monetary support (we do not accept donations, do not charge our authors for submission or publication, and do not sell merchandise). But you can still support us in many ways. If you are a student willing to write or edit physics articles, you can consider joining us as a contributor or editor. You can also choose to submit your work to us for review without officially joining us. And if you are a reader, well, you guys are the ones we publish articles for. So keep reading and sharing our posts, and of course, we always welcome and appreciate feedback (you can email us at journalofyoungphysicists@gmail.com).

Coming back to my personal story, if there's any "lesson" from this, it's that if you have a dream that is meaningful to you - even if it might not seem feasible - you should work on it. You may decide to push your ideas and dreams to the back of your mind and focus on establishing yourself first, so that you can come back to your dream sometime in the future. However, ideas and dreams fade away if they are not seriously nurtured. This would be my justification for publishing a popular science book on physics and founding an organization where students from all over the world can submit their physics articles for review and publication, when I was still a high school student.

Now, the most important (and most recent) update: I've officially started my Master's in physics at the University of Montpellier under the IDIL Graduate Program (Modeling Biological and Environmental Systems - Fundamental Physics and Applications track). As part of the program, I am exploring statistical physics, stochastic processes, biological physics, nonlinear dynamics etc., through courses and internships. I feel the program perfectly aligns with my central curiosity: how complexity emerges from simple rules and how physics connects to living systems. And further, the interdisciplinary nature of the program allows me to get some exposure to many other fields beyond traditional physics - like ecology, medicine and AI. For me, the most appealing thing about the program was its relatively lower emphasis on traditional coursework and dedicated research internships from the very beginning; this resonated with me even as I weighed offers from other prestigious, but traditional programs from Edinburgh, Lund, Strasbourg, Geneva etc. So yeah, before moving further, I wanna take a moment to express my sincere thanks to my teachers, friends and well-wishers who have supported me throughout this journey. And of course, thanks to the IDIL team and the professors in our track for their constant encouragement and support since the first day of the application process to now, and to the University of Montpellier for the financial and institutional support that makes the journey so much easier and less stressful for international students like me. And above all, I thank my parents - not because I have to, but because this is the least I can do right now; everything I achieve (and have achieved) is built on their love and the sacrifices they made.

So the first four months in Montpellier have been... great. New city, new streets, trams, cafés, Christmas lights… and me, mostly locked in my room running simulations and scribbling on paper like my life depends on it (maybe it does, in a way!). For the first time, I properly dove into statistical physics and complex systems. I started by playing with the Ising model and Metropolis Monte Carlo algorithm to get a feel for how spins flip, equilibrate and organize. (You can read my report on the Ising model and Metropolis algorithm here.) From there I moved to polymers: lattice Monte Carlo simulations of the Rouse model, where monomers hop on a 2D grid under distance-preserving constraints. Writing and debugging the code was frustrating, but watching the chains wiggle was weirdly satisfying - it felt like physics has come alive! Then I broke the nice equilibrium picture on purpose - building toy nonequilibrium polymer models with heterogeneous update rules. (You can read my report on polymers here.) In parallel, I kept nurturing my emotional dynamics project: tweaking parameters, running new simulations, occasionally discussing with one of my colleagues and convincing myself that even heartbreak can be turned into phase portraits!

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I also fell down the AI rabbit hole. As part of a non-core IDIL unit on the impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) across various disciplines, I did a short, fun side quest: systematically testing how a large language model (ChatGPT-5.1, more specifically) handles Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs). I gave it the same ODEs in text and as plots, poked at its reasoning, watched where it was brilliant, where it hallucinated and where it completely messed up. (You can take a look at the presentation here.) In the meantime, I also built something a little strange: The Last Responder - an AI chatbot on my website that isn’t a "help assistant," or a friendly conversational companion. It’s deliberately, uncomfortably honest. Instead of trying to comfort you, entertain you or give life advice, it replies to any prompt with physics- and philosophy-driven reflections and analogies. The Last Responder is not about engagement; it is the last responder to your deep questions. And it responds not with comforting noise, but with harsh clarity that remains when all other responses fall apart. If you’re curious, click here (no login required). Of course, it will not help you with medical, legal, professional or crisis matters and must absolutely never be relied upon for anything of that kind (disclaimer).

Lately, I’ve also been thinking a lot about what all the recent progress in AI means for our quest for meaning. In a strange way, it feels like AI is dragging us back to the beginning. Let me be more clear. If a statistical machine with no consciousness, no lived experience and no existential longing can write poetry and solve complex problems we once considered “human achievements,” then maybe AI isn’t just advancing technology... maybe it’s exposing how hollow the "problems" we solve using science and the "meaning" we seek through art really are - we invented all those "problems" so that we can be busy solving them and pretend that life is not meaningless and humans are special. But if a statistical machine with no real understanding of art or science can still create outputs of such high quality, maybe the meaning we find in these "human" quests is an illusion. Of course, one could counterargue that AI only exists because humans first figured out these structures, trained the models, curated the knowledge and built the very frameworks it operates in. Yet even acknowledging that doesn’t fully rescue the pedestal we place ourselves on. So we are left with two options: either we accept that life is inherently meaningless and these problems are not fundamentally meaningful in the first place (since they don't seem to require human consciousness to be solved), or we accept that AI is (in some sense) conscious too. Either way, we must remove human life from the pedestal of meaning. This isn’t a conclusion - just a speculative reflection… but it lingers.

Anyway in hindsight, these first months in Montpellier feel like the beginning of a new phase: polymers on the screen, emotions hiding in the differential equations in my notebook and AI occasionally opening up entirely new directions to play with… and me, somewhere in between, trying to figure it all out.

Well, that was a pretty long read. I don't know if this means I am forgiven for posting a blog after so long, or am I in even more trouble for the length of this blog?! Anyway, one last bit of my 2025 I wanted to share with you: music. Yes, I talked about the songs I released in 2024. Now let's shift the musical lens to 2025. I released four songs in 2025: Forever Alone, In A Parallel World, Text My Younger Self and Untitled Song. Forever Alone is a song about my struggle to fit in, and gradually coming to terms with myself and finding peace and power in staying forever alone. In A Parallel World is a song about breaking free from life’s "suffocating" algorithm, and holding onto the hope that somewhere, in another universe, broken connections realign and lost souls meet again. The song Text My Younger Self is really close to my heart, and is a nod to my journey - the good, the bad, the parts I am proud of and the parts I might have done differently if I had another chance. Untitled Song is a song for those who never fit the system, and chose to diverge on their own terms rather than converge with the norm.

Having released all these songs, I decided to craft a second album building on all this. And so I did! When I released my debut album Unsettled Bliss, it came from a very personal place: anxiety, depression, feeling out of step with the world and what it means to accept suffering while still moving forward. My second album Anti-Simulation continues that same thread - the sense of not fitting in, disregarding the search for meaning and choosing truth over meaning. Anti-Simulation is about looking at the world with sharper eyes, questioning reality, identity and all the other illusions we have been told are true. The album asks what it truly means to live authentically in a world that often feels like a programmed game. In short, this album is about refusing to autopilot through existence, and daring to break the simulation.

I also finally updated the Research page on my website, and it is no longer a boring list of articles and presentations. Instead, I turned it into something much more alive - an evolving map of my works (scientific articles, presentations, essays) so far, and also what I’m curious about right now: ongoing projects, broad open questions that keep me up at night (basically, stuff that excite me more than they "impress" anyone). There's also a little throwback section to where it all started: my messy, exploratory high-school works that shaped how I think today. (These are not publishable work, but I didn't want to erase the roots, so I listed them in a separate section.) And if you’re curious about the person behind the works, you might also enjoy the FAQ page; there I answered some personal questions people have asked me over the years.

When I look back and put 2024 and 2025 side-by-side, the contrast is honestly wild. 2024 feels like the warm-up year - a few good scientific articles, one deep essay, one presentation, two songs. And then 2025 looks like someone hit overdrive: multiple scientific works across quantum foundations, emotional dynamics, Kuramoto oscillators, polymers… plus multiple essays, talks and songs. It’s not just "more output"; it feels like I was simultaneously existing in different universes - physics, philosophy, music. And I am not bragging. On the contrary, I have a different explanation of this. 2025 was a transition year for me - finishing my B.Sc., dealing with final year pressure, uncertainty, fear, self-doubt, moving abroad, starting a new life… it was beautiful, but also terrifying and overwhelming at times. So I did what I've always done when things feel overwhelming: I buried myself in projects, ideas, equations, writing and creation. Not because it was a compulsory component of my coursework or internship, but because for me, it is an effective (at least on the short run) coping mechanism disguised as productivity. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s how I kept my mind from spiraling. Robert Frost wondered whether the world would end in fire or in ice. Of course, both can be destructive, but personally I relate a little more with fire than with ice. The world may at times be too cold to keep you warm, so you should protect and nurture your fire. Only a strong fire can deal with ice. And as long as you remember why you started, it's okay to mess up, feel overwhelmed or restless at times. A fire is never calm. But at the same time, keep producing real results, real output, things ice can only dream of.

In the end, let me once again thank everyone who has been part of the journey so far. I am really grateful to be part of a beautiful ensemble, and I'm also curious to see which states life's partition function will weigh most strongly next! So here's to life's drift toward lower free energy - while embracing the phase transitions and fluctuations along the way that make the journey anything but predictable! And also, here's to myself... let me also thank myself. Don't mistake this as arrogance or pride, this is a quiet celebration of myself just as I am - messy, imperfect, stubborn, but still me... Yes, in Newtonian mechanics a particle cannot exert a force on itself, but life is not Newtonian mechanics, and let me be real: there is a person who changed my life, and that person is myself.

So after my first 21 years in this life I never signed up for (but am enjoying anyway!), this is where I stand. Standing here, somewhere between uncertainty and courage, curiosity and exhaustion, fear and wonder… I’m just one insignificant configuration in a vast cosmic ensemble. But at least in my local environment, I am trying my best not to simply react to forces, but shape some of them myself.

And as we collectively look into the future, standing at an unprecedented time in human history, there’s no denying that darker phases may lie ahead. History reminds us that before a system changes state, it often passes through turbulence - fluctuations grow, responses slow and the world feels heavy, fragile, uncertain. In statistical physics, we call it critical slowing down: the system struggles, hesitates, resists... right before a phase transition. Maybe humanity is somewhere near such a threshold. Or maybe not. All we can do is have faith - either things reconfigure into something better, or we learn to adapt and survive even in unfavorable conditions. Even if the clouds don't pass, the Sun will eventually shine brighter.