Throughout my school life I tried to stay away from biology studies. I specifically chose studying physics and maths instead of biology in higher secondary school. Even during secondary school, science 1 generally had physics and chemistry whereas science 2 contained protozoans and all other wiggling beasts. Guess who barely got over line in science 2.

The logic for a high school students in India was simple. You chose biology if you wanted to be a doctor (or do a research in microbiology) which meant spending many years studying and daddy needs to have lot of money to get you into medical school. Studying physics and maths meant joining engineering, the shortest path to start earning money doing a white-caller job.

While in engineering, I convinced myself that the choice was correct. I loved studying machines, be it a micro-controller or an oscilloscope. First brush with computers and operating systems (hardware-software interface) was fascinating. Operating systems and hardware is a vast topic, so there’s always enough nothing that you can keep studying about.

Past couple of years have changed me profoundly though. A series of personal circumstances (some good, some tragic) forced me to get upclose with human biology and physiology. Little by little, I realized that if I love studying machines, then human body is probably the greatest, most mysterious, quirky and useful machine ever built (or evolved depending upon how strong your faith is). In contrast, computers are predictable and too put it mildly, boring. I am gettinng sucked deeper into the hole day-by-day and my interest keeps going up.

The overall theme of my study is evolutionary biology of human body applied to diseases and human behaviour. The books I read or that are on my radar are covered in this goodreads list. At this point I don’t know if this is a passing interest because computers are probably not challenging enough as compared to body. But I’m happy and learning.