Betel Nut and the Stars!

As a child growing up in a semi-urban, small town, where there used to be lot of betel nut plants, I was surprized to find some of the betel nut cultivation to consist completely of symmetrical arrangements of the trees. It was a worker in one of these fields, who for the first time showed me that that was done by tying rope as shown below, and then planting the samplings where the straight lines made by the intersection of the ropes create!

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It was my first lesson in symmetry. Later during my studies, I had to study molecular symmetry and often I remembered my first encounter with symmetry.

Then I noticed another kind of symmetrical arrangement recently. This was during a long car ride from the Grand Canyon to San Diego, where there was a sticker of the U.S. flag on one of the car windows, and I keenly noticed the 50 stars there. Somehow, it appeared to me that there was something wring with the arrangement of the stars. I watched it keenly and then found out that the stars were arranged the following way.

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(Please view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States)

It was just that my eyes wanted to see a completely symmetrical pattern and thought that there was something wrong with the arrangement in the flag.

To be written more....

Note: To see how the arrangement of the stars in the U.S. flag has often been kept symmetrical, with changes brought in with changing number of states, one may view the following link:

http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagpics.html

You'll Be in Jane's (If not Tarzan's) Heart*

One of my friends sent me a song entitled, "You'll be in my heart" by Phil Collins, the other day. It was a nice song; but I didn't pay much attention to its lyrics. At least, not until she told me that it was from the Disney movie, Tarzan, and that the song was picturized on a Chimp momma and her baby boy.

After her telling that, I listened to the lyrics carefully. Yeah, it's a sweet song, suitable for a mom to sing to her kid as a lullaby.

"Come stop your crying, it will be all right
Just take my hand, hold it tight
I will protect you from all around you
I will be here don't you cry

For one so small,you seem so strong
My arms will hold you keep you safe and warm
This bond between us can't be broken
I will be here don't you cry

cuz you'll be in my heart
Yes, you'll be in my heart
From this day on
Now and forever more
You'll be in my heart
No matter what they say
You'll be here in my heart
Always

Why can't they understand the way we feel
They just don't trust what they can't explain
I know we're different but deep inside us
We're not that different at all

cuz you'll be in my heart
Yes, you'll be in my heart
From this day on
Now and forever more

Don't listen to them, cause what do they know
We need each other, to have and to hold
They'll see in time, I know

When destiny calls you, you must be strong
I may not be with you, but you gotta hold on
They'll see in time, I know

We'll show them together cuz...

You'll be in my heart
I believe, you'll be in my heart
I'll be there from this day on
Now and forever more

You'll be in my heart
no matter what they say
you'll be here in my heart always

Always...
I'll be with you
I'll be there for you always
Always and always
Just look over your shoulder
Just look over your shoulder
Just look over your shoulder
I'll be there always"

But what touched me more was the realization that in addition to his mom, the baby would also be in another heart: the heart of Jane.

And no, I'm not talking about the Jane, who is Tarzan's mate; but the Jane, who made tremendous contribution to the study of the Chimps over a period of 40 years! Yes, I'm talking about Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall, better known simply as Jane Goodall!

I've been fascinated with her work ever since I watched a documentary by her on her Chimps. It made me feel that one needs a certain kind of dedication (and more so for a young woman in the 1950's) to pursue relentlessly the behavioural pattern of the Chimps for over four decades, that too in a foreign country, and a different continent! Perhaps her contribution towards our understanding of the Chimps and their behaviour is comparable to that of that crazy old Frenchman (which Frenchman is not crazy anyway?), Jacques-Yves Cousteau's study of the sea-life!

Goddall's name was so much associated with the Chimps that a cartoon by Gary Larson showing two Chimps grooming had a comment, "Doing a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?" when one of them finds a human hair on the other. This led to a major hue and cry from the Goodall Institute, whose lawyers drafted a letter to Larson and his distribution syndicate, describing the cartoon as "atrocity". Goodall herself however found the cartoon amusing. This proved to be beneficial to the baby Chimps and their mothers, because all profits from sales of a shirt featuring this cartoon go to the Goodall Institute ever since. Goodall also wrote a preface to The Far Side Gallery, in which she praised it for Larson's creative ideas.

Epilogue: Now as I write this, I regret the fact that Jane Goddall presented a 2-hour seminar/slide show 3 stories below where I sit 5 days a week, and yet I failed to attend her show, because (due my ignorance) I came to know about it only after it was over!

Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Goodall

The Bastard, The Homosexual, THE GENIUS!!!*

Let's talk about an illigetimate kid, a convicted homosexual.

This was also the same man who was jailed for sodomy, and who would be released after 2 months, because no witness would come forward to testify. Apparently, he was a paedophile too. He kept his private life secret, and never was involved with women. He had male compnaions/lovers of age 10 and 15.

But apparently, he was also a man of high integrity, who was very sensitive to moral issues. He respected all forms of life, thus turning vegetarian (at least for part of his life), and he often bought birds just to release them.

He also successfully tested a flying machine for the first time, and made designs of innumerable instruments.He keenly studied human anatomy.

And after his death, in accordance with his wish, 60 beggars followed his cascet.

He was an eccentric man, who liked to rub the establishment the wrong sides many a time; but he was also a Genius in the true sense of the word. He was Leonardo da Vinci.

Acknowledgments: wikipedia.org

*Remembering The Invincible Da Vinci.

Ananova!

For the past one year or so, whenever I felt blue and need to feel a little warmth in my heart, I go to Ananova. And no, she's not my mistress, but rather a very cute website.

You don't believe me? Ok, go to http://www.ananova.com and try their quirkies.

The Maverick Who Made an Error

Let's think about flipping two identical coins. If we denote the head by H and the tail by T, then there are four possible outcomes: HH, HT, TH and TT. so one would get two heads 1/4 of the total times one flips two coins.

So far so good! But this is not at what a young Physics Professor at Dacca University arrived. He claimed that the HH combination will happen 1/3 times. ( Of course, he was not flipping coins, but was working on something much more important: namely, Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta, Photoelectric Effect and Ultraviolet Catastrophe. But that's beside the point).

Obviously, he made a mistake. But the surprising thing was that his theory gave a prediction that agreed with observations, and that was a contradiction. And our professor realized that it might not be a mistake at all. As expected, Physics journals refused to publish his paper, and in desperation, he wrote a very well-known physicist, who agreed with the results, and even wrote a paper as a follow-up.

This work gave rise to a totally new statistic in Physics, known as the Bose-Einstein Statistics, his name being Satyendra Nath Bose. Physicists later named a group of particles inclinf photons, the particles that carry light energy, as Bosons in Bose's honor. In spite of his not having a doctorate then, he was made a professor in 1926 with Einstein's recommendations.

Bose was arguably the best theoretical physicist India ever produced. The most interesting aspect of his personality was his simplicity and down-to-earth nature. He loved to chat for hours with friends and students and everybody had free access to his desk. Thus many people believe that he never fully utilized his capabilities. He also realized the importance of popularization of science and actively urged the writing of science articles in Indian languages.

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http://www.4to40.com/legends/index.asp?article=legends_snbose
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Bose.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose
http://www.calcuttaweb.com/people/snbose.shtml

Chanakya, Rakhshasha, and .. (In Praise of Keyser Soze)

Think of the following situation:

A poor teacher goes to the king's court and challenges his judgement. The king makes sure that the headstrong teacher is thrashed and then kicked out of the palace. What would the teacher do?

Obviously, he would curse and fume and sulk and would vow to destroy the king! Usual; every loser, who's freshly thrashed, does it. So what?

But one would not say "So what?" if one had known that the person in question was named Vishnugupta, a supposedly physically ugly man with a disgusting complexion and whose limbs were deformed! Because this is the same person, who would manage to get the ruling dynasty destroyed, get the Greeks kicked out of India and help establish a unified India to be ruled by Chandragupta Maurya, his disciple, within the next few years.

But when one is talking about Chanakya, all these are possible, becauase this is the person who has been described as a saint, a ruthless administrator, the king maker, a devoted nationalist, a selfless ascetic and a person devoid of all morals.

Now I don't know the details; but it seems that it was Shaktar, the insulted minister of the Nanda Dynasty/Kingdom, who prompted Chanakya to go visit the king with an intention that this revengeful priest and teacher was the man most fit to confront Dhananand, the king blinded by his power. It's also said that it was Shaktar who told Chanakya about Chandragupta, the guy to later rule India for a quarter of a century.

If there was one guy, who could match Chanakya as a strategist, it was Rakhshas, the incorruptible minister of the (by then) Late Dhananand. He tried many plans to get Chandragupta killed, only to be foiled by Chanakya. However, Chanakya wanted to get Rakhshasa serve Chandragupta. The only hitch was that Rakhshasa was devoted to Dhanand, and he vowed destruction of Chadragupta.

But finally Chakanya managed to get Rakhshasa come out of hiding through staging a drama, in which he ordered all the family members of a friend of Rakhshasa executed, for giving shelter to him. It was too much for principled Rakhshasa, and he came to Chanakya asking for his friend and family be let free, and himself be executed instead. Chanakya immediately offered him the prime ministership under Chadragupta. Rakhshasa was tricked into being subjugated without any bloodshed.

When I watched the movie, The Usual Suspects, it reminded me of Rakhshasa. Keyser Soze, the central chacter of this movie, who is an underworld kingpin, is an enigmatic character. One day, rival smugglers invades his house, rapes his wife and holds his children hostage. When Soze arrives, they kill one of his children, and then they threaten to kill his wife and remaining child if he does not surrender his business to them. Instead of giving up, Soze kills his wife and child, along with all the smugglers (except one, whom he let escape to inform his bosses what happened), saying that he - would rather see his family dead than live another day after this. However, Soze does not stop there. He then goes after the Mob with a vengeance, killing dozens of people, including the mobsters' families, friends, and debtors, and then goes underground.

It amuses me to think what would have happened if Rakhshasa had the power to confront Chakanya tha way Keyser soze did his enemies! Rakhshas was an equally ruthless person in his own way (only that his ruthless was born out of his loyalty to his King and the throne!), and he tried every possible trick to assassinate Chandragupta. Perhaps Rakhshas with power to strike back at this point would have changed the course of events!

Note (6th March, 2006): A reader of this blogpost added a comment here demanding to know my source about the Chanakya-Rakshasa episode. My answer is: Mudra Rakshas as directed by Habib Tanvir was my primary source. I watched that play in 1999 or 2000.

I thought that this was a well-known episode and, so, did not include any reference; but it seems that is not the case. So, here is a reference below that discusses that episode.

http://www.freeindia.org/biographies/greatpersonalities/chanakya/page15.htm

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References:

http://www.shishubharati.org/culture3.htm
http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305911

The Man from the Backward Place!

I was first exposed to the poem entitled, "Night of the Scorpion" when I was in the so-called intermediate stage of schooling. It was a part of our English course, and I was 16 then.

The poem was about a child's observations after his/her mom was stung by a scorpion. I could identify with the poem because I was from a hot, humid area, where small-sized scorpions used to be in abundance during the rain season, and my mother was stung by them many times. She of course, did not make much fuss about it, except for utting some herbal medicine she had known from someone on the wound, and being touchy and irritable for the next couple of hours!

I perhaps also liked the poem because the teacher made the most sofisticted and beautiful girl in the class recite it for us! I say perhaps, because though I remember her reading it loud, I cannot exactly decide if I liked the poem because of her, but what I feel more likely is that I remember because of the poem.

The poet of this peom was Nissim Ezekiel, arguably one of the best poets of India, writing in English. I was pretty ignorant then, and all non-Sanrkit non-Arabic/Persian names sounded Chrsitian to me. It took me another 5-6 years to realize that our poet was a Jewish person!

It was much later that I learnt that India was one of the countries, where the Jewish people were never persucted by the society or the rulers.

However, Nissim Ezekiel, as a kid, had to face bullying from his clasmates. But I can see that it was not anti-semitism; even if he belonged to another community, he would have bullied, because he was like many of us: a studious, shy, weak kid.

And interesingly, even Ezekiel himself realized this fact once he went abroad. The follwing poet by him exactly portrays his changing understanding of the issue with growing maturity.

And thus India continued to have a great poet in English, and Bombay University a Professor. Nissim Ezekiel never emigrated to Israel.

Background, Casually

1
A poet-rascal-clown was born,
The frightened child who would not eat
Or sleep, a boy of meager bone.
He never learned to fly a kite,
His borrowed top refused to spin.

I went to Roman Catholic school,
A mugging Jew among the wolves.
They told me I had killed the Christ,
That year I won the scripture prize.
A Muslim sportsman boxed my ears.

I grew in terror of the strong
But undernourished Hindu lads,
Their prepositions always wrong,
Repelled me by passivity.
One noisy day I used a knife.

At home on Friday nights the prayers
Were said. My morals had declined.
I heard of Yoga and of Zen.
Could I, perhaps, be rabbisaint?
The more I searched, the less I found.

Twentytwo: time to go abroad.
First, the decision, then a friend
To pay the fare. Philosophy,
Poverty and Poetry, three
Companions shared my basement room.


2
The London seasons passed me by.
I lay in bed two years alone,
And then a Woman came to tell
My willing ears I was the Son
Of Man. I knew that I had failed

In everything, a bitter thought.
So, in an English cargoship
Taking French guns and mortar shells
To IndoChina, scrubbed the decks,
And learned to laugh again at home.

How to feel it home, was the point.
Some reading had been done, but what
Had I observed, except my own
Exasperation? All Hindus are
Like that, my father used to say,

When someone talked too loudly, or
Knocked at the door like the Devil.
They hawked and spat. They sprawled around.
I prepared for the worst. Married,
Changed jobs, and saw myself a fool.

The song of my experience sung,
I knew that all was yet to sing.
My ancestors, among the castes,
Were aliens crushing seed for bread
(The hooded bullock made his rounds).


3
One among them fought and taught,
A Major bearing British arms.
He told my father sad stories
Of the Boer War. I dreamed that
Fierce men had bound my feet and hands.

The later dreams were all of words.
I did not know that words betray
But let the poems come, and lost
That grip on things the worldly prize.
I would not suffer that again.

I look about me now, and try
To formulate a plainer view:
The wise survive and serve--to play
The fool, to cash in on
The inner and the outer storms.

The Indian landscape sears my eyes.
I have become a part of it
To be observed by foreigners.
They say that I am singular,
Their letters overstate the case.

I have made my commitments now.
This is one: to stay where I am,
As others choose to give themselves
In some remote and backward place.
My backward place is where I am.
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Acknowledgements:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,12559,1165150,00.html
http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2004-April/003638.html
http://english.sem40.ru/cultural_heritage/8535/
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/579.html
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/516.html
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/714.html
http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2004/nissim.html

The Richard Corey of Quantum Mechanics

When reading about great deeds by people who died young, many of us feel fascinated by the idea of doing something great and then dying young so that the whole world would continue to worship us for the next millenium or so. Most of us perhaps won't even realise that it's just an awkward culmination of the desire for attention by an emotional and sentimentalist mind, someone who lacks confidence and thinks that he/she has not got her due from the society. The reality is, of course, that in our colored vision we think of ourselves as someone unrealistically great! It happened to me too! But that was when I was in my early teens.

Then as years passed by, though my wishful thought of killing myself reamined, the justification for it changed. Because by then reality slowly started dawning upon me,by then I wanted to kill myself because I was sure that I was not going to make any meaningful contribution to anybody by my existence, and my life or death was not going to change/impact anything or anybody. In those days, the poem entitled "Richard Corey" fascinated me.

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"Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head."

By that time though I started doing science and perhaps subconsciously I started looking for a scientist, who killed himself, to justify my death-wish. And then I happened to stumble upon the life of Paul Ehrenfest because, like Richard Corey, he too shot himself.

Unlike me, however, his problem was different. He made many significant contributions to physics, and yet always suffered from low esteem and the feeling that he was no longer able to keep up with the modern developments in physics. " All through his life Ehrenfest had suffered from low self esteem, which was in marked contrast to the high esteem in which he was held by his fellow scientists. He was also greatly saddened by his son Wassik being a mongol and having severe problems both physically and mentally."

Incidentally, his teacher and a great physicist, Ludwig Boltzmann, too committed suicide. But it was an even sadder episode because, " Attacks on his work continued and he began to feel that his life's work was about to collapse despite his defence of his theories. Depressed and in bad health, Boltzmann committed suicide just before experiment verified his work."

Epilogue: I had even decided a date for my suicide. But long before that day, I realised that I was not going to kill myself, and would rather continue living, however pathetic my life could be! And not because I was going to change the world, or make some pathbreaking invention or any major contributuion to the society; but simply because I had all along been a timid man, and I never had the courage to execute my wish!

And so I go on living!
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Note: Anyone who wants to read about Paul Ehrenfest, may look at the following:

Sources:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Ehrenfest.html
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Boltzmann.html
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk
http://www.bartleby.com/104/45.html

Coincidences and Conclusions

Some of my friends (of the few that I have!) recently told me that my Blog looks more like an obituary column and less an intellectual discourse. This saddens me gravely, because my main aim in writing this blog is to sound intellectual.

However, I do not write obituaries and birthday notes in my blog by design; they just happen. And they happen by sheer coincidence.

What do I mean by that?

For example, one fine morning I think of, say, Harry Chopin, and then when I search for him in www.IMDB.com, I find that it's his birthday.

It happened to me quite a number of times over the last few months; even just now, I found out that it's Toshiro Mifune's Birth anniversary today.

What does it mean?

It simply means that my life sucks, that I spend too much time on the internet, and that I've no life outside the computer!

Part Samurai, Part Ronin*

I've always been fascinated by clowns.

Perhaps the Hindi movie,"Mera Naam Joker", planted into my heart my fascination for clowns. I was never sure why I liked them; but when a self-proclaimed clown won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, I felt that my fascination was somehow justified.

And then in 2004, I learned about another clown, who was sometimes a Samurai, and a Ronin at other times. When I first saw him, he was a loser Samurai. But within a few minutes of his appearance, one could guess that though a loser, he was not to be taken lightly. He proved my guess to be correct within the next hour or so. Thereafter, I saw him as both Samurai and Ronin at different times. And each time, my fascination for the clown grew!

I'm sure, I'm not the only one to feel so; he probably fascinated millions of others who saw him in action.

*In memorium: Toshiro Mifune (1st April, 1920-1997)