Twinkle Twinkle Little Star(s)

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

This was the first poem that I learnt during my childhood. Me and my sister were chanting this line whole day when we learnt it, but only and only the first line because we didn't know the rest of the poem. I could never imagine these little stars would have a deep impact in my life ahead and my whole work would circulate around exploring these little yet important stars.

It didn't take that longer recognizing the importance of stars in my life. As soon as I began with the "most practical thing" of my life by getting enrolled into a school, I realized there was a whole game of stars going on there. Don't confuse it by assuming that we were taught by the celebrity stars in the class room. No, but the stars were something everybody was striving for. You wear a neat uniform-you get a star, your shoes are polished-star, your homework is intelligible-star, you are not talking in the classroom-star. So all good works were acknowledged and rewarded by these stars yet the definition of "good work" was itself very subjective. But I missed one critical point that it was not only star itself that matters, but the color is also important. This reality broke many "tiny" hearts even before they had blossomed. This was about my life before I struck a double figure into my age thingie. When I grew older, I heard about this phenomena once again from some big Lollywood hit where a woman misses her lover so much so that she developed "Insomnia" and she had to count the star all night to get some sleep. My eld. sis. was so much overwhelmed by this idea that she recommended the same technique whenever anyone of had a sleeping disorder.

Things went on and on, until I discovered there is a world for socially accepted (but not admitted) human species in the world. It took a 7 hours flight from home to Tilburg in heading towards this world of research. One friday, when I was heading to a masjid for Prayers, a colleague of mine asked me to say hi to God (he might be too shy or busy to visit God himself). As I nodded, he came up with another request. "Would you also ask God to give me some significance". This was something I understood spontaneously but I wanted more clarifications so I asked him precisely would he wanted. Ask God to give me more three stars on the variables I want. Clear enough? he said sarcastically. Thats where I went into my past without a time machine like in "Back to the future". Aaah, three stars. Eventually I noticed he ended up in something where he might have started the journey of education. This would be partially true about him but completely true about me. My search for three stars reached the apex when I started my own research work. My thesis all went into looking for these stars day and night. Now I came to realize the value of those three stars and in the wink of an eye, I went two decades back. Now I pray about those three stars because I do really care about the variables that takes weeks and months to be created yet without having a single star on them.

For those friends who don't know what these stars are all about, I would like to explain in Laymen's term. Usually the economists shows the importance of their defined variables by putting stars on their coefficient. Three stars if your variable is really important and playing a significant role in the stated problem, two stars if its important and one star if its little important. A "No significance" signal is delivered decently by putting nothing at all on the coefficient. This decency has been developed because there is no black star phenomena in here. Had there been the similar "KG Black Star" playing a role here, the economists would surely have shown their anger by putting this black monster over their variable particularly if they had worked really hard creating it yet the variable was of no significance.

Dear All, don't just forget to pray for significance in my case also. I pray that May Almighty gives this significance to all members of research community. Amen. :)