We all aspire to be somebody, somebody we have respect for, somebody we love, and somebody we cannot be without. This is how we progress from our childhood to adulthood. That being said, I want to share a few thoughts about biographies.
Well, these days, almost all legends, be it musicians, be it scientists or Steve Jobs, have biographies apart from their awesome work, as their legacy. I, myself did read a few biographies, like that of Paul Erdos, Richard P. Feynman and Hitler, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading those. I mean they were all awesome people, some genius and some really bad-ass and if nothing, I like knowing what kind of friends they had.
Then again, one of my friend prefers to meet people rather than reading about people, he thinks that it is not worth his time. He also raises a fair issue, why to peek into others life, when we have our life to make. It may seem as kind of conservative statement, but it also has a sense of freedom which tells us to be a man like none before.
Sometimes, when I'm reading about some famous guy, and I find that few of his habits matches few of mine, and here I began thinking, I can also be that guy. And based on the proposition that, I can be that guy, I began to build a new world based on that. Later, of course, I realize that such world is not real and I come back to being Ronak Kogta. I know most of time, imagining such worlds are futile, but there might be a world, that can raise adrenaline in your blood, and you feel so exhilarated, that make you feel like DON!! I'm not kidding, this happened to me, in summer of 2010, I was bored by the research perspective of IIIT-H, and I went home and read about Paul Erdos, "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers", and again this heat of research began building up in me. I then decided that I want to become a researcher like Paul Erdos. I wanted to have his attitude, and luckily I got a chance to volunteer at ICM 2010 (International Congress Of Mathematicians), which was luckily happening in India for first time at Hyderabad. I originally volunteered because money and incentives were good, but what I didn't know was the scale of this conference. In this conference, I talked to many professors, and I shared my ambition with some of them, and I made one professor my uncle. I got a tiny role in documentary, in which I was discussing about Gauss with Cédric Villani, the Fields Medallist. And I got an interview in E-Nadu, a telugu newspaper. But these were flashy parts, really when I attended talks, I couldn't understand a thing they were saying, I tried to understand but it was beyond my limits. I was happy, but I also realized that this was not like Paul Erdos's life.
I think, the thing I got after reading the book, was that Mathematics is cool, but really it takes something else from "cool" to understand what really mathematics is. After this, I stopped reading biographies, because they really make a little sense in our lives. We can read about person, but I think we can never really understand what a person is like, what kind of friends he had from reading biographies.
Although reading those was not futile, as I finally decided to hang up on research, though it is not at all like Paul Erdos's method of research, it lead me to a certain way of thinking, and that is what I look for when I read.
Different people have different opinions, and different way of doing things, some may seem to touch you, while others will lame you out. And that is what interesting, and I think every man's biography can be interesting, it is just that we prefer to read only about people that influence us.
P.S: Sorry, for being so philosophical, but I love being philosophical :D
