Once my secondary school math teacher – a man with limp, damaged hair, but nevertheless a fireball – called me by my name and said in his peculiar prissy voice: "Unless you are a total dud, you should never give up on science." The word 'science' lolled on his tongue, took on tripping. The word slung across my mind, breaking the calmness within. I was 16, naïve and easily brainwashed. I did what I was supposed to do, or what everybody thought I should do: I took lying down.
My math teacher was a man of infinite numbers and endless calculations. An MSc in Mathematics, he always believed in differential equations and logarithmic spirals; and hated all the non-science subjects. "Why learn something you already know?" He used to say in utter contempt. And everybody thought he was right.Around that time, I accidently happened to watch Neil deGrasse Tyson speak on American education and how things were going awful there just because the Americans weren't scientifically literate. According to him, the crisis in their public education system and the risk in America's financial matter were because the students there couldn't excel in math and science. Undergraduates at that time were choosing to leave science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs even before the end of their first semester. Which was why America was lagging behind, Tyson asserted.
This subservient event tore apart my thoughts.
I had two options before me: sink or swim. If I sank, there's nothing I could change. If I swam, I might as well like the water splashing against my body. Like people said, sometimes you just got to spew over the side and keep roving. Into a nut brown sunset. In a land of multiple idiocies, where thousands were trodden on before you woke up for your breakfast.
Following the great instructions from my math teacher and deGrasse Tyson, I swam. When I look back, everything revolves in flame and keeps the heart afire, reflecting the burns and ruined desires. Back then all I did was swimming. A jerky, incoherent ride. The water splashing against my body seemed unpleasant and sluggish and I felt terribly, deeply bored. What was I doing here? Why was I always sitting in the front row and staring at the wall? Why was I taken so oddly? I felt my passion was dead. Before that deGrasse Tyson thing, it had rolled over and submerged me; but I was empty.
So I tried. I tried taking things scientifically. Tried quantifying emotions, measuring the voids. Not the worst of tries. But, before me, posed a voluminous, bland idea. With a sort of laziness. It was blurry at first, but it sickened me nonetheless. I tried pulling myself together; the muscles in my face convulsed as in a spasm. I wanted to turn away from this, but that was an indolent idea. I tried fighting against it. Succeeded somewhat.
It's been five years already and I am about to graduate with a degree in civil engineering; and not to forget, with eyes that see mathematically. Also, a year ago, my math teacher quit his job and went to Canada (with his mathematical mind) to cash his "American Dream" by working as a security guard in a supermarket. Sadly, his degree still hangs in the solitary nook of his room in Butwal. With thick, greasy dust all over it. The ink is already fading; so is his belief on 'science.' Not to forget, deGrasse Tyson is pretty much old, and no one pays any heed to him. His illustrious dream of a country jam-packed with doctors, engineers, mathematicians and scientists still remains a mere dream. His soul wrenching words are left in limbo in purgatory. And here I am, in my cheap furnished rented room, living with cockroaches, eating in cheap dirty restaurants that are also infested with cockroaches.
All because of my scientific brain. All because I never gave up on 'science.'
Bibek studies at IOE, TU.