Whats the next step?

         Ignorance is characterised by a feeling of invincibility. But then ignorance is probably what lets you step into the unknown because no one ever told you “It can’t be done”. I narrate my first brush with research; an event that changed my life in more profound ways than I realised at that point of time.

         It was the year 2007, we had just joined MD Aerospace medicine, a leap in the dark because during the counselling at the hallowed halls of the DGAFMS, after the Common Entrance Test, this was the only subject about which I had no clue at all. The first few days of MD were even stranger, no patients to see, no OPD, no case sheets; just endless classroom lectures (I heard the term didactic the first time there). Physiology, the depths of which left me gasping for breath, and then physics and Bio Medical Engineering which roused sleeping parts of the brain, long dormant since the Plus-2 days. Fascinating equations and formulae which had me craving for more while rest of my class was struggling to keep awake. I give this background to enable a glimpse into the mental state in which the future course of events unfolded.

         In keeping with the time honored traditions of IAM, the first-year trainees were the experimental subjects for almost every single research going on at IAM. The experiences in the old human centrifuge, the dry flotation chamber and others are stories for another time. At that time, a lot of research projects were going on in the Spatial Disorientation simulator. AK was doing his dissertation experiments and Maj ON was his subject, sitting inside the simulator. I walked in and was waiting for my turn as the next guinea pig. ON was supposed to move his head down to experience Coriolis which was an important event in the experiment. ON had two issues, first he had a short neck and a short stature so the head movement was not very apparent on the monitoring screen outside, moreover, voluntarily moving the head to initiate a tumbling vertiginous feeling needed a far stronger stomach than ON was willing to furnish at that point in time. I walked in to see the instructor verbally flaying AK for not ensuring proper head movement.

“Can’t you see he isn’t moving his head down fully”

And here I displayed my ignorance and stepped into the unknown. I asked “Sir is there no way of knowing how much is he moving his head?”

The reply was that of a seasoned instructor to a first-year ignoramus “You can make out with experience”

The conversation ended there but the seed had been sown. Little did I know that this question would consume me for the next one year. But that’s digressing.

I mulled over the question for a week and one day walked up to the instructor and said I may have a solution. Of course, he had forgotten about the whole episode but being hard pressed for time told me to prepare a write up about my plan and leave it on his desk. I did that …and it lay on his desk undisturbed of a week (I used to sneak in to his office to see if the so called write up had been touched). And then providence struck and he went on leave. So, I quietly picked up the paper and went to meet the Chief Research Officer (CRO). Same answer, leave it and we shall see. Two days later I went in again, and this time he said “I haven’t read it, but I am going to meet the Commandant, you can walk with me and explain on the way” And so came the 100 metres that affected everything thereafter. We walked and he listened. At the Commandant’s office, he told me to wait outside. He came out and he said, “Tell me once more”. We walked and he listened again. When we reached his office, he asked me that question which changed my life forever

“What’s the next step?”

I had no answer. I had a theoretical idea which could probably be used to make out head movements of a person sitting inside the DISO simulator. That’s it. Whats next?? What sort of a question was that? How do I know what’s next? After the silence stretched beyond the limits of tolerance of a busy CRO, he said “Go ahead and do it”

What ensued next was a flurry of instructions to all concerned people to facilitate the “next step”.

And there my life changed forever.

We all get ideas, we all in that flash of insight see a solution staring us in the face or at times see a faint light at the end of a tunnel, but seldom do we take that first step.

That day, because someone listened and cared enough to make it possible to take that first step, I spent the next month of my life designing an experiment, doing it on ground, encountering the numerous failures that real life inconsiderately imposes on our grandiose plans. But the template was ready and I could predict from outside, how much is the head being moved inside the DISO. 

From there I was obsessed for the next one year to formulate a universal equation for any simulator with an off centered monitoring camera. Read up volumes on trigonometry, worked equations, dived into 3D space and its mathematical descriptors and published my first scientific paper.

All because Wg Cdr Sanjiv Sharma asked me that day in 2007 

“What’s the next step?”

There are teachers and then there are educators.