Nature...

Many of you must have performed the iron fillings and bar magnet experiment in your high school days. It is an enjoyable activity in which we take some iron fillings, spread them on a piece of paper and then place a strong bar magnet below the paper. A few taps on the sheet of paper and your eyes behold the sight of one of the finest and oldest patterns in existence.

Why do these randomly spread iron fillings suddenly arrange themselves in a strange pattern? What is the beauty behind this simple yet peculiar phenomenon? Would you get these intrinsic patterns without the magnet? If you removed the bar, would the fillings still remain in the same way? If you rotated the magnet, would the pattern change? If you try to change the pattern by disturbing the fillings, will the pattern really change?

Eternal questions; some, perhaps more important than others. However, there is more to it than pure science. Nature. The complex qualities or attributes by which an entity is uniquely recognized. The next time you see a pattern like this, you can blindly claim that a bar magnet is lying somewhere nearby, responsible for it. Isn’t it true? You wouldn’t even take the pains to search for one, you know it is there. You have identified its footprints.

Such is the beauty of nature. It is what identifies us. Over the years as humans have evolved, we have invented status and positions in our society. A person whose work encompasses machines and computers is an engineer, someone who deals with paintings is an artist, prescriptions and tablets identify a doctor. But how many engineers exist today in our society? Ever taken a walk in a gallery to see the variety and competition in art? It's hard to miss the familiar white board with a red cross in almost every by-lane in a metropolitan.

What then, is our true identification? Is it the nameplate outside our house, is it the responsibilities we shoulder in our workplace, is it the signature below our emails, or is it the fame we achieve from our work?

Or is it the hidden magnet…?