What would the post 2020 world look like? One might wonder at this point in time… But who knows? I mean, who really knows? Really, who at all?
Anyway, that’s not what the title of this post refers to. It refers to the fact that I crossed the 20 papers mark this month, last month, this year depending on how you count. But let’s keep it simple and count the entries on InspireHEP (20), subtract my thesis (-1) and add two papers from IITKGP that are not there (2) so we get a total of 21. And that’s definitely crossing the just-made-up-number-for-this-post of 20 last month.
Now one may be wondering: Am I proud of this “achievement”? Not really, but I am “proud” of the last few papers I’ve written. That sentence may sound like I’m suggesting am not proud of some papers written before those. Precisely, that’s what it rightly suggests as I’m indeed not proud of a couple of those papers. But that’s a story for another day, when I don’t have much better things to do than to reminisce about things that didn’t exceed my expectations.
Of course, no scientific activity is done in vacuum (in a metaphorical sense, I guess), it is a result of collaboration, knowingly or unknowingly. And talking of collaborations, I seem to have had only two long-time collaborators: Warren Siegel and Marcos Crichigno. Former for obvious reason and latter also for obvious reasons. On last count, I have 6 papers with both (no overlap). With every other collaborator (of whom there are many, which surprises me!) I have only a single paper (tons of overlap). That may change in near future but I like the numerology as of now.
Another interesting fact, one of my last year’s paper’s list of authors abbreviates to AB²J²M! For the unfamiliar ones, ABJM is another well-known (to those who know-it-well) abbreviation for authors of this paper: O. Aharony, O. Bergman, D. L. Jafferis, J. Maldacena. The ABJM theory is like a harmonic oscillator for 3d supersymmetric theories, just like N=4 super Yang-Mills is for 4d ones.
Talking about my papers, how can I not talk about my parody papers from yesteryears? These are the two: 2010 and 2014. You might find that the latter has some overlap with my newest paper, which is purely coincidental. (Ya, right!) I guess I’ll leave it at that for now with the interesting facts about my publication record.
Oh, you might have noticed that my site has got a new coat of paint. That’s because Google is transitioning people from the old Sites to new Sites so I had to do the transformation sooner or later. I think it looks all right and it displays nicely on all sorts of devices. But gone are the days when one could edit the HTML code directly. That’s why the font colour is just black and blue on the pages on this new site!
To finish this post, I will leave you with one Sher from the last Ghazal of Rahat Indori who passed away on 11 August:
वबा ने काश हमें भी बुला लिया होता
तो हम पे मौत का एहसान भी नहीं होता
Waba ne kaash hamein bhi bula liya hota
To ham pe maut ka ehsaan bhi nahin hota
How I wish the epidemic had claimed me
Death would not have then indebted me
– राहत इंदौरी (Rahat Indori)
