Sup! I’m Himadri Mandal (quirtt on Discord), 20. I am a third year student of Bachelors in Statistics at the ISI Kolkata, India. I will soon be joining École Normale Supérieure-PSL, Paris for a 3 years Masters in Mathematics as an elève normalien.
I am an extremely curious, highly opinionated - to the dismay of many - individual, who is nicer than it appears from a distance. I am an unapologetic Math and CS nerd, but you will find me talking about anything and everything under the sun - from Philosophy, History, Politics to Quantum Physics and Religion. I love Music, and I am a decent singer (or so I tell myself) and love having a go at it every now and then. I love having deep, long conversations with people where I dissect their thoughts and beliefs and get mine dissected in return.
I’ve had an interesting intellectual journey at ISI Kolkata. I started with absolutely loving the Math courses. But then came the Statistics courses and that bored the life out of me. I was not sure whether I wanted to get into Pure Maths (or, for that matter, research at all). I figured, instead of deliberating endlessly, I should just try out everything that interests me in that moment. I knew I liked theory. I wondered, could I make good money while doing theory? With the AI buzz, I decided I should learn about it. And so I learnt a whole lot of stuff in that space. It was interesting. I continued working on theory in Applied Maths, Theory ML and Theory CS. With Prof. Sandeep Juneja, et. al. (Ashoka) I worked on paper-1, paper-2, and with Sushant Vijayan (TIFR) I worked on paper-3,. With Arikith (a close friend) on the Sparsity Conjecture in the Deterministic Factoring of Multivariate Polynomials, with Aritra (a close friend) et. al. on paper-4 (Ashoka), with Ayan (another close friend) on Generalizing Hypercontractivity for Mixing Measures with Uncountable Spin States.
Through these experiences I rediscovered how addictive intellectual satisfaction truly was. It reminded me why I was so captivated by the Olympiads. It reminded me what I had come to ISI Kolkata for, and how disappointing ISI has been. I had to exit. I had to go somewhere better. A place that valued theory over everything else. Ayan introduced me to the ENS, Paris. He showed me how insane it truly is - and inspired me to apply to it. After a long process, I got in.
Now it remains to see how the story of my life unfolds. Will I be able to make full use of this opportunity? Or would this be the biggest mistake of my life? Only time will tell. As Siddhartha (another close friend) would put it,
“To live is to risk it all. Otherwise, you are just an inert chunk of randomly assembled molecules drifting wherever the universe blows you.”
If you find me interesting - feel free to shoot me a mail at mandalhimadri06@gmail.com or send me a “Hi!” on my Discord. If you are a Junior at ISI, and want to talk to me about life, academics, or anything in general, you can find my number from Sansani.