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Although my current interest is neurology, my love affair with science dates back to my boyhood in Chennai, India. I was perpetually fascinated by natural phenomena, and my first passion was chemistry. I was enchanted by the idea that the whole universe is based on simple interactions between elements in a finite list. Later I found myself drawn to biology, with all its frustrating yet fascinating complexities. When I was twelve, I remember reading about axolotls, which are basically a species of salamander that has evolved to remain permanently in the aquatic larval stage. They manage to keep their gills (rather than trading them in for lungs, like salamanders or frogs) by shutting down metamorphosis and becoming sexually mature in the water. I was completely flabbergasted when I read that by simply giving these creatures the “metamorphosis hormone” (thyroid extract) you could make the axolotl revert back into the extinct, land-dwelling, gill-less adult ancestor that it had evolved from. You could go back in time, resurrecting a prehistoric animal that no longer exists anywhere on Earth.

I found mysteries and possibilities everywhere. When I was eighteen, I read a footnote in some obscure medical tome that when a person with a sarcoma, a malignant cancer that affects soft tissues, develops high fever from an infection, the cancer sometimes goes into complete remission. Cancer shrinking as a result of fever? Why? What could explain it, and might it just possibly lead to a practical cancer therapy? I was enthralled by the possibility of such odd, unexpected connections, and I learned an important lesson: Never take the obvious for granted.

I also owe an intellectual debt to my brother V. S. Ravi, whose vast knowledge of English and Telugu literature (especially Shakespeare and Thyagaraja) is unsurpassed. When I had just entered medical school (premed), he would often read me passages from Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, which had a deep impact on my mental development.

There are two kinds of love that we search for throughout our lives: Romantic love, and love from the world

- Alain de button

آمِنٌ من كل خيباتِ الأمل
خيرُ الجمالِ هو الجمالُ المُحتَمَل
والنَقصُ أشبَهُ بالكمالِ من الكمال
ورُبَّ قولٍ عندما نَقَصَ... اكتمل

- تميم البرغوثي

On strangers, and love-of-the-first-sight

This is why things like 'love of the first sight' exist. Because strangers thrill us with an air of mystery. By definition, we don't know anything about them, and this is exactly why we fall in love with them. They represent hope and mystery. they can be potentially anyone we can imagine; a new dear friend, a lover, or just some beautiful mind we'll share a conversation with. They are pure potential, regardless of who they really are.

It follows that the opposite of Love is not Hate, but Disappointment.

There's an emptiness at the very core of our souls. A fundamental incompleteness that has haunted all beings since the very first thought. On a primal level, man has always been aware of the darkness that resides at the core of his mind. We have seeked to escape from this void and the fear it causes. And all man's accomplishments were made in the hope of filling it.

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Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

— The Catcher in the Rye