Breaking down barriers

Proffessor K Sridhar likes to call himself a maverick. Despite being a hard-core physicist for over 30 years, he refuses to claim monopoly over the title. "I am not territorial," says the professor of Theoretical Physics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, about his job. "I like to experiment and enjoy doing different things," he adds.

At the upcoming Mumbai Local event, the 55-year-old physicist will speak about why he started dabbling with literature at the peak of his professional career, while exploring the parallels between the two fields.

Prof K Sridhar says that though practised differently, arts and science are articulated in a similar fashion

"I began doing a lot of creative writing because there were things that I needed to talk about, which physics didn't allow me to express. I wanted to have another outlet," says the author of the novel Twice Written. "But neither my poetry, nor my first novel was in anyway related to science. In fact, science fiction is not a genre that attracts me at all," the 55-year-old insists. "But, because I am a physicist, my work often tends to slip into my writing. Also, I find the process of doing science and writing literature, very similar," he adds.

For those in the science world, such a statement could sound flippant and almost outrageous, but Sridhar is quick to clarify. "Yes, they are different in the way they are practised and solidified. But, for someone who does a bit of both, it is important to articulate the coming together of the two."

Sridhar explains, "In both cases, you start with something formless or amorphous, and you really don't know what you are dealing with. Yet, you keep engaging with it and start digging deeper, until you come up with something solid that you can share with the world. In science, it is your research paper, and in literature, it is your stories."

The physicist will share more such interesting facets related to arts and science that will leave you with some food for thought.