Alpathrupthi - the key to sustained research?

original post: 05/20, edits in 04/21

Almost over half a decade ago, I was still in college/university and busy training my future scientist-self in the art of collaboration through evenings filled with multi-player games.

Despite the fact that I really liked playing these games, it turned out I really ....sucked. My hand-eye coordination was too bad for fast paced first-person shooter games, and my sense of strategy for real-time strategy games was inadequate, to say the least. The problem was that we'd often play in teams, and so the people in my team would suffer quite a bit thanks to my incompetence :P. The main issue: my thresholds for satisfaction were low, and I was extremely happy whenever the most basic things worked out. In a first person shooter, this meant not dying and my ultimate strategy was to indiscrimately spray everything with bullets. In the strategy games, this meant not being invaded, or succeeding in a minor takeover of a neighbouring village. On top of that, I was in many ways like the proverbial frog in boiling water. Many real-time strategy games require you to keep check of your kingdom's finances, labour power etc. I could never notice my kingdom failing, and would ask for a loan from my team-mates after it was too late. Also, I never got better through the two years that we played :p. No matter how badly we lost, I'd still be happy with something insignificant that had happened in the game.

On one of these evenings, a friend of mine finally expressed his frustration and amusement by by calling me an 'alpathruptha', and that phrase has somehow remained with me for a long time. Alpathruptha, is a sanskrit word (also used in Kannada) that describes someone who is easily satisfied, or with low ambition ¹. My dear friend was of course strongly focussing on my utter lack of drive and ambition. While I may be an alpathruptha in certain parts of life, I constantly struggle with being dissatisfied with the progress in a project or where it is at right now.

The origin of this flashback to the word now fail me, but it somehow lead me to think about how in some ways the more of an alpathrutha one is, the better it might be while doing research. Especially while handling a new topic or technical method, perhaps less is better? In some ways being thrilled at having survived the day, is a great incentive for coming back the next day.

Considering how a lot of research in the initial phases is two steps front, ten steps back, a sense of alpathrupthi is only appropriate perhaps. Perhaps it's also important to celebrate the realisation of failure. When you realise something is wrong with the code/equipment/results, maybe it should be considered an achievement in itself. Of course some might argue, this is nothing but alpathrupthi embodified, you decide.