What are the threads that connect star gazing, birding and people-watching? Besides curiosity of course.
Last weekend I spent some time trailing an astronomer and a bird watcher as these two different people went about their work. Some fascinating connections emerged between their domain of work and mine.
But the truth does not come with a label
To the uninitiated a statement like ‘Let's go star gazing or bird watching’, creates a mental image, an expectation that whatever one is out to see would be ‘out there’ right in front of your eyes, magnified, labelled and perhaps within enough range to be able to take a praiseworthy picture. If there are interconnections the trajectory for those would also be chalked out. The expectation then is to experience space as one would in a planetarium or a forest bird as one would in a documentary.
The reality is quite the opposite. One can spend hours and not find anything noteworthy. Worse still, one could be amidst a group of people some of whom point to rare sightings of birds and constellations, while others feel frustrated or foolish since they are not able to see what the others have been able to.
What I gathered is, whether it is a behavioural insight or a constellation or a rare bird, while it is ‘out there’, it could be distant, could be very well camouflaged amidst the noise, and will definitely not come with a neat little label or a spotlight shining on its head. Hence while it is there, it is seldom visible to an untrained eye - even on a clear night sky or in the middle of a forest with birds aplenty
One has to seek out the truth.
And technology (whether it was a telescope or a sophisticated lens or a data-churning tool) does not make the process of discovery any easier. In fact quite the contrary - it is the human, the expert whose senses (eyes, ears, brain) have got attuned to the nuances of that search will spot it first. It is the human expert who makes the interconnections between the call of the bird, the direction it comes from, and correlates it with the subtle movements around the trees and hypothesizes something is there. Technology only does the job of amplifying it.
Like a forest or the star-filled sky, a new subject of research feels overwhelming at first. One does not know where to start, or how big, wide or deep the problem is. But there are always markers - like the twin stars that signal the constellation of Gemini is somewhere close or the three in a row to signal one has landed on Orian. In a social problem too, the Polaris will make its presence felt by something that one hears repeatedly at different points of time in a discussion or from different individuals. That is when one has landed on the first marker which has the potential to unravel the rest.
The truth which is not definitive
Everyone looked at the same sky or forest but everyone saw different things. Often a single question that someone asked would trigger off an animated discussion on subjects ranging from culture, and history to philosophy. We spotted the twin stars - Arundhati and Vashishta through the telescope, not visible to the naked eye. As part of a ritual, these two stars were shown to newlyweds as an auspicious symbol of a supportive marriage. This triggered the discussion about - whether there would have had telescopes in marriage halls. The fact that they could spot these stars in earlier times without any equipment meant they had perfect vision and clearer skies which we do not have today due to light pollution apart from air pollution. How electricity has altered our bio-rhythms and maybe distant gazing also kept their vision healthy in earlier days.
If we would have spotted another constellation that day and not the Big Dipper that the twin stars were a part of, our discussions would have turned in a different direction.
When we study a subject in research, at any point we unearth only a part of the overwhelming complex truth about it. And what we end up understanding depends so much on the questions we chose to ask. At a different time, the same phenomenon being studied would reveal a new dimension or facet of the truth. Nothing is constant in nature and in life too people think differently about the same subject depending on the filters they use. Like it is with the universe, so it is with the human mind, it is only over time can we start piecing the puzzle together.
If we do not know what we are looking for, we don't end up finding anything.
The last lesson from the trip was to define the success criteria at the outset.
While trailing the birder who was deftly spotting and photographing birds, if we had defined our success criteria as being able to spot as many birds as he does or as quickly as him, we would not have accomplished anything since the landscape is so dynamic - a bird sits on a tree for not more than a few seconds.
Hence very quickly, we reframed our success criteria - we were there to learn now what he spots but how he spots them. My focus shifted from watching the birds to watching him and his reflexes and later questioning him about how he recognizes bird calls or differentiates one type of eagle from another from a distance.
At the end of the research, very often there is a sense of overwhelm with all that one has heard and read. The overdose of information can almost create a sense of inertia in decision-making. At such times, the success criteria defined before one can start the journey act as beacons of light to help a weary traveller navigate one's way back home.
Hope the next time you are out there people-watching or culture gazing some of these thoughts return to your mind and add to your meaning-making experience.
Until next time, when I stumbled upon some more random dots that connect and unravel a constellation of thoughts.
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