something that i had written shortly before a biolchem midterm in the first semester.
the timing, was just before Durga Pujo
thou shalt not fear
the evil testmakers,
thou shalt not shed a tear
at the wisdom of other test takers,
thou shalt be martyred
on thine vicous alter of biolchem,
and thy cenotaph shalt read
''twas not my cuppa, i told 'em'
in a better life, my ears would still be ringing with the musics of mahalaya, i would be ironing my best 'panjabis' for shoptomi, ashtami and nabami,
the natok group would be running around like a bunch of crazies looking for last minute props, and my dreams would involve many many fish cutlets and
lots of biriyani.
instead, here i am, shuttling between class, lab, teaching and dreading a test at 7 pm today.
my life sucks with the force of a thousand vaccuum cleaners.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
cynicism saves from disillusionment?
A friend who has long maintained that I am unnecessarily cynical just told me that cynicism saved from disillusionment. I wonder how much merit there is in such an argument. A cynic is necessarily an observer, he is never a participant. Participants in the rough and tumble are liable to get hurt. A cynic who stands apart and observes never gets hurt. But then, he never knows what it is like, does he? And here is the dilemma that we are all presented with. Does the dysfunctionality of others present a problem that must be corrected by direct action, or does it merely remain as a conversation topic and something that people write blogs about? And who am I to judge and find others lacking when I am merely human? So is the cynical observer just a coward? Or is there a measure of intellectual detachment which must be maintained?
Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux is a cynic who commits hideous crimes with spectacular aplomb. All that he does is justified because there can be no sympathy for people, nay, a people which has lost its innocence and come so far that it does not even recognise that loss. Yet, when Verdoux experiences personal anguish in its most brutal form, the detachment, the veneer of sophistication, all of that is lost.
To each his own. As for me, I am a gedankenexperimentalist.
Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux is a cynic who commits hideous crimes with spectacular aplomb. All that he does is justified because there can be no sympathy for people, nay, a people which has lost its innocence and come so far that it does not even recognise that loss. Yet, when Verdoux experiences personal anguish in its most brutal form, the detachment, the veneer of sophistication, all of that is lost.
To each his own. As for me, I am a gedankenexperimentalist.
working here and there
We set up a series of experiments which will crunch for five days last night. Working on a V800 is quite fun. The machine is pretty nice and well behaved. It was also a lot of fun, cos I got to drive a bit. Always appreciate that. We were done by around 11 pm. At the institute this would when we would pop into the lab and gather forces to go down to the tea board. This would also be the time at which we would run out of cigarettes, and would raid labs nearby. And then gather more people from the condensed matter, EPR and noise labs downstairs, we would make our leisurely way down past the Faculty Hall to the tea board. But this place not being the institute, I went home.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
barbecue
This Saturday was quite fun. I started out with my usual trip to the library, except that this time, it was on my newly acquired cycle. For some reason, markin people seem to call a 'cycle' a 'bike'. That makes no sense, since to my meager understanding, a bike is a petrol guzzling chick-wagon.
Whatever. Library trip done, I went down to the lab. No, to make matters perfectly clear, I am not one of those unhappy souls who itch and go into withdrawal symptoms when away from the lab at weekends. I used to be, though. But pray do not be deluded into believing that hours put in translates into productivity. It might, if we were all call centre employees. But then, that, I believe is the fundamental problem. However, again, I digress.
My friend J is graduating, and she had asked me to a barbecue at her place. In attendance was her whole lab (that is a lot of people + families). So this was the markin barbecue that I have attended. I must say, its an excellent way of spending a lazy Saturday afty. We played frisbee for a bit, the kids had loads of fun, the food was smashing. All said, a great afternoon.
Whatever. Library trip done, I went down to the lab. No, to make matters perfectly clear, I am not one of those unhappy souls who itch and go into withdrawal symptoms when away from the lab at weekends. I used to be, though. But pray do not be deluded into believing that hours put in translates into productivity. It might, if we were all call centre employees. But then, that, I believe is the fundamental problem. However, again, I digress.
My friend J is graduating, and she had asked me to a barbecue at her place. In attendance was her whole lab (that is a lot of people + families). So this was the markin barbecue that I have attended. I must say, its an excellent way of spending a lazy Saturday afty. We played frisbee for a bit, the kids had loads of fun, the food was smashing. All said, a great afternoon.
Monday, June 12, 2006
unfurnished rooms and samurai
Betrayal, murder and revenge in the Scotland of the early 17th century. I saw a stage production of Macbeth last semester at the League. Some pretty good acting, some really good action and crisp delivery kept the audience riveted. The lighting was somewhat spotty, though; I would have used two spots to track the leads, and maybe a single focused light for Lady Macbeth's soliloquy 'all the perfumes...'. But I digress.
The point of this is to ask some basic questions about the was some movies are made. Let me, by way of a disclaimer say that I am a longterm Kurosawa fan. He was definitely one of the best things to happen to movies. Seven Samurai is movie that towers above its more recent ripoffs in sheer style and scope. Yojimbo takes one man (the great Toshiro Mifune, for whom there is one and only one comparison: Eastwood. No, on second thoughts make that NO comparison) and throws him at the wolves. The wolves,in question being the dastardly (I have always wanted to use that in a sentence) honchos of the two rival ganglords in a remote town. In a different century, Mifune would come out guns blazing. Here, the pyrotechnics are replaced with some fast swordplay. But scene for scene Sergio Leone would have appreciated the face-off between Mifune and his enemies down to the last detail. But the dialogue delivery! Ye Gods! Do the Japs really speak that way. Every line is delivered in the same guttural, yet staccato style. Nothing changes, from line to line; every sentence seems to come from inside the stomach and bellowed across a street.
I have another bone to pick with Kurosawa, and indeed all Japanese movies of that generation. Why are all the rooms so bare? Is furniture considered to be passe in Japan? The only furniture in one of the 'royal chambers' in Throne of Blood was a blinking samurai sword. I mean, you cannot sit on it for sure!
Somehow, that makes the movie a tad less enjoyable.
The point of this is to ask some basic questions about the was some movies are made. Let me, by way of a disclaimer say that I am a longterm Kurosawa fan. He was definitely one of the best things to happen to movies. Seven Samurai is movie that towers above its more recent ripoffs in sheer style and scope. Yojimbo takes one man (the great Toshiro Mifune, for whom there is one and only one comparison: Eastwood. No, on second thoughts make that NO comparison) and throws him at the wolves. The wolves,in question being the dastardly (I have always wanted to use that in a sentence) honchos of the two rival ganglords in a remote town. In a different century, Mifune would come out guns blazing. Here, the pyrotechnics are replaced with some fast swordplay. But scene for scene Sergio Leone would have appreciated the face-off between Mifune and his enemies down to the last detail. But the dialogue delivery! Ye Gods! Do the Japs really speak that way. Every line is delivered in the same guttural, yet staccato style. Nothing changes, from line to line; every sentence seems to come from inside the stomach and bellowed across a street.
I have another bone to pick with Kurosawa, and indeed all Japanese movies of that generation. Why are all the rooms so bare? Is furniture considered to be passe in Japan? The only furniture in one of the 'royal chambers' in Throne of Blood was a blinking samurai sword. I mean, you cannot sit on it for sure!
Somehow, that makes the movie a tad less enjoyable.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
bricks
Bricks.
Brown bricks.
Many brown bricks.
Infinitely many brown bricks.
All around me.
Rising up to the ceiling.
And becoming the ceiling.
Not infinitely many brown bricks.
For a cell 3m by 3m by 2m.
And a window 10 cm by 10 cm.
There should be eight thousand three hundred and ninety eight bricks.
There are eight thousand, three hundred and ninety nine bricks.
I can reach four thousand, two hundred and one bricks.
As could those before me.
And I can read what they wrote on those bricks.
Brown bricks.
Many brown bricks.
Infinitely many brown bricks.
All around me.
Rising up to the ceiling.
And becoming the ceiling.
Not infinitely many brown bricks.
For a cell 3m by 3m by 2m.
And a window 10 cm by 10 cm.
There should be eight thousand three hundred and ninety eight bricks.
There are eight thousand, three hundred and ninety nine bricks.
I can reach four thousand, two hundred and one bricks.
As could those before me.
And I can read what they wrote on those bricks.
restraining orders for physicists
Restraining orders for physicists.
Someone was telling me about restraining orders yesterday. Specifically, the fact that this bird had a restraining order imposed on this bloke who worked in the same building as her. Which made it a tad difficult for the bloke to get about his daily life.
This got me thinking. When they say that one cannot approach within 100 mts (ok, yards, in this unmetricised backwater called the US of A), do they mean scalar distance or vector displacement. I mean, X may have a restraining order against Y. Its fine when they are on level ground, but what if X happens to occupy offices or an apartment which are one floor above that of Y. what then? Do we measure straight vectorial displacement through the roof/floor, or do we measure scalar distance measured by walking through the corridor and through the stairwell? Do judges think about that? This appears to be a serious loophole in the law.
There are several other cases which must be considered. What if X and Y have cabins on the opposite ends of a spaceship 110 mts long. Fine, the 100 mts restraining order is not being violated. But when the spaceship is moving at a speed 'v' wrt any inertial frame (say, the Earth), then following the Lorentz length contraction formula, the apparent distance seen between X and Y is 110/(sqrt[1-v^2/c^2]), where 'c', of course is the speed of light in vacuum. The speed at which the restraining order will be violated ACCORDING TO EARTHBOUND OBSERVERS can be easily calculated as 1.35146 times c. Thus, common civil law will have to subject to substantial correction as and when (if) hyperluminal flight is achieved. A brief caveat: X and Y will not observe the length contraction in their own reference, i.e, that of the spaceship.
There could be other situations where 'straight line distances' simply do not apply. What if X and Y were in the immediate vicinity of a huge gravitational sink (such as any ordinary, or garden variety black hole)? There are no straight lines left!!
I am not sure that the law will take cognizance of such obvious lacunae, but any self respecting physicist will think about all of these if ever subject to a restraining order.
Someone was telling me about restraining orders yesterday. Specifically, the fact that this bird had a restraining order imposed on this bloke who worked in the same building as her. Which made it a tad difficult for the bloke to get about his daily life.
This got me thinking. When they say that one cannot approach within 100 mts (ok, yards, in this unmetricised backwater called the US of A), do they mean scalar distance or vector displacement. I mean, X may have a restraining order against Y. Its fine when they are on level ground, but what if X happens to occupy offices or an apartment which are one floor above that of Y. what then? Do we measure straight vectorial displacement through the roof/floor, or do we measure scalar distance measured by walking through the corridor and through the stairwell? Do judges think about that? This appears to be a serious loophole in the law.
There are several other cases which must be considered. What if X and Y have cabins on the opposite ends of a spaceship 110 mts long. Fine, the 100 mts restraining order is not being violated. But when the spaceship is moving at a speed 'v' wrt any inertial frame (say, the Earth), then following the Lorentz length contraction formula, the apparent distance seen between X and Y is 110/(sqrt[1-v^2/c^2]), where 'c', of course is the speed of light in vacuum. The speed at which the restraining order will be violated ACCORDING TO EARTHBOUND OBSERVERS can be easily calculated as 1.35146 times c. Thus, common civil law will have to subject to substantial correction as and when (if) hyperluminal flight is achieved. A brief caveat: X and Y will not observe the length contraction in their own reference, i.e, that of the spaceship.
There could be other situations where 'straight line distances' simply do not apply. What if X and Y were in the immediate vicinity of a huge gravitational sink (such as any ordinary, or garden variety black hole)? There are no straight lines left!!
I am not sure that the law will take cognizance of such obvious lacunae, but any self respecting physicist will think about all of these if ever subject to a restraining order.
Friday, June 09, 2006
desk
Things on my desk:
Two note pads, both half full.
Five papers/reviews. Three read. Two unread. None understood.
Coffee mug. Full. As always.
One pen.
One temperamental computer.
One ink eraser.
A box of paper clips (some genius in the past had taken the trouble to link all the paper clips together in one long chain).
Three paper clips.
Paper napkins from a sandwich joint.
Two random pieces of metal of completely unknown provenance.
I refrain from drawing conclusions. The reader is free to.
one fienne morning
Imagine getting up one fine morning and forgetting how to switch the alarumm clock off. And then realising you don't really know what those flashing red digits on the clock mean. Imagine that your roomie switches on the radio and you don't understand what the announcer is saying. In a moment, you realise that your roomie is speaking to you, but all you hear is just gibberish. Somehow you get through the morning, and by a succession of benevolent miracles you make it to the office. At which point, of course, you are totally stumped, flabbergasted and at a complete loss.
Well, thank heavens that does not happen too often. But it did to my computer a while back. I am one of those people for whom the 'journey has more meaning than the destination'. To make the point clearer, I am not a linux sys-admin. I am, but a lowly user. There are three 'dot' files native to any user. The .login and the .profile files compile when you log in. The .cshrc compiles every time a terminal is opened. Mine didn't. It is pretty much like complete insanity. Turns out that it was just a minor 'script error', whatever that means! But ours not to reason why, ours but to compile and cry.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
roomie and shopping cart
My roomie is normally a silent individual. now note that silent can come with a bunch of other adjectives, some of which are pejorative, some praising. A few examples are: 'strong and silent', or 'silent, saturnine', or 'silently vengeful'.. well, you get the drift. Anyway. The esteemed roomie (hereafter referred to as ER) is none of these things. He is simply, silent. (sorry, I could not resist the alliteration). Sometimes, however, the pent up silence expresses itself in rather interesting aphorisms, and sometimes, even more interesting actions. At which point, I am usually happy at being a spectator, for such experiences broaden ones horizons, and one walks away a better man. Sometime during a work break in the coffee room, we all happened to be discussing the possibility of a road trip to UP (not Uttar Pradesh, Upper Peninsula), and someone mentioned that we do not have any free time apart from weekends. And ER came up with 'the problem with weekends is that they come only once a week'. Get the picture? A very fresh perspective on life, this kid has.
The other evening, we were at the bus stop seeing off a senior after an afternoon of cricket. There was a supermarket shopping cart nearby. On impulse, ER climbed into the cart and asked to be pushed around. I was still busy assimilating the fact that this bloke, was, in fact, in-side the shopping cart. Well, pushed around he was. To the accompaniment of the sound 'whee'!! It was nice to see. I wish I could show you pictures of this, but maybe next time.
the blog
Once upon a time there was a man who decided to create a blog. He did. He wrote things there regularly. He was more faithful to the blog than to his wife. He cared for it more than he cared for his dog Spot. He visited it more often than he visited the pub where his friends hung out after work. The blog thrived on such care and attention. It grew with each post. At first the posts were weekly, then daily, then hourly. After a while, the man found himself uploading his work related files into the blog. Who would care to read tax spreadsheets for five counties? Well, the blog didn't object. It just accepted everything the man could upload with the same satisfaction and posted it. The blog grew and grew with each post. And the more it grew, the hungrier it became. The man grew tired of posting entries into the blog, but he could not stop. And when the man ran out of ideas, journalnotes, spreadsheets, even high resolution pictures of supermodels, he tried to sign out. The blog snarled at him. The man started in surprise. And the blog ate him.
phone company
Screwed by the phone company.
This is a rant. If one had sense, brains and even the slightest conscience, one would be a farmer. If one had creativity, one would be a poet. Sometimes, if one had courage, one would be a mountaineer. I fail to understand the combination of qualities which constitutes the mentality of those sodding sons-of-romulans who make up the so called 'executives' in any private company. The specific company i was dealing with (may they rot in hell) sells phone cards for Germany on the net. Well, I needed one, looked at the choices and made what I had assumed was an intelligent decision. So after selecting my card, reading the fine print (or so I thought), I checked out and paid by credit card. At which point my web browser died. It has a habit of doing this. If I were slightly, even slightly paranoid, I would imagine that there was a bloke hidden away inside the CPU who knows just what to do to make me scream, rant, stomp and pull my hair out. The last is a little difficult at this point, as I have about the same amount of hair as a Jawan in the second week of boot camp. And to put things in perspective, I work in a one person office. Hence, the ranting and stomping. But, this is not a blog about my computer. That particular entity deserves its own periodic homage. Yes, after getting Firefox up and about again.. (seriously, any more of this nonsense and I will start using Windows), I find that I am set up to make the payment. I do. At which point, they say that someone wil call me up and then and only then do I get my PIN. Which makes not much sense to me. Speaking to customer care people to me has the same appeal as walking barefoot through a desert and finding out that the only oasis which has water is surrounded by a moat of camel crap. Well, I did talk. Got my PIN. Tried to call my sis. Failed. Called customer support (crikey, people do this for a living??), and was told that I have to dial some code for international access. I did. FINALLY got through to the sis. And before the call starts, the system told me that I had 25 minutes to call. Which didn't make too much sense. I mean, do the math: 5$ card. 2.5c/min= 400 minutes. Ok? But I went ahead with the call anyway, and got promptly cut off at 25 minutes. At which point I call customer support and the conversation went like this:
Me: Hello, I have a problem.
Random Lady at the other end: How may I help you today?
Me: Well, I would like to know what is the calling rate per minute on my card.
RL: Could I have your name and address please?
Me: Could you just tell me the calling rate?
RL: Could I have your name and address please?
Me: Fine .......
RL: And your phone no is?
Me: ........
RL: And the last four digits on your social security no are?
Me: ........
RL: and your listed email ID is?
Me: ..... and before you ask, other identifiers: I have a duck tattooed on my arse.
RL: Thank you. And how may I help you today.
Me: By telling me the calling rate on my card.
RL: That is 2.5 c/min.
Me(with the prickling of my scalp telling me that I am close to something climactic): So why did my card cut me off after just 25 minutes of calling?
RL: Were you calling a landline or a cellphone?
Me: A cellphone.
RL: Well, Sir, the call rate for a cellphone is 20c/min.
Stunned silence.
So to sum it up, tricked, swindled, bamboozled, hoodwinked, ripped off, duped, fooled, misguided, misinformed, bilked, deceived, defrauded by the phone company.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
chef's log
chef's log: stardate 1655589.
the enterprise passed through a teeny wormhole the other day. i keep telling these people that they should give me some advance notice before pulling a stunt like that. the livestock simply shits all over the pens. give me time to sedate them!! naah... sons-of-klingons!
the enterprise passed through a teeny wormhole the other day. i keep telling these people that they should give me some advance notice before pulling a stunt like that. the livestock simply shits all over the pens. give me time to sedate them!! naah... sons-of-klingons!
Friday, June 02, 2006
confessions of a former beedikhor
Me, smoker. Apun suttebaaz. Aami beedikhor. Was. Tha. Chhilaam.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the Bengali genetic makeup. Bengalis tend to be lousy at sports, awful at managing their own businesses, pretty much amount to nothing at national level politics and are slowly degenerating to a second rate race. I don't quite know what holds the race together except for the deep rooted conviction that we have got it right, and everyone else is messing up. That, and the fact that 6.7 out of 10 Bengali men smoke. (Ok, I just made that statistic up, but there is some truth to it.) There has to be a reason why India's largest tobacco company is based in Calcutta. Yes, so we smoke. Like bloody chimneys, I may add.
I stayed away from this great habit until university. Sometime around the third question in some gawd-awful Qmech homework set, (that time when a cup of tea from the late night cafe by the gym is the only chance u have of making it till 4 am) I found Anirban puffing way to glory outside. Well, that was my first pull on a cigarette, any cigarette, in fact. And that happened to be a Charms. Now this is not something for the uninitiated. People who smoke Charms are pretty much skating on the edge. This is the point where a sutta becomes something above and beyond a social thing; you smoke because you must. Because, without the fix of nicotine, you can't function and start calculating eigenfunctions which are not orthonormal.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
teaching
We were sharing teaching experiences. J had an interesting story to tell. She once taught a semester of Pre General Chemistry at a community college. A community college is halfway between high school and college in the US, comparable to a diploma college back home. And Pre Genchem is a course that is taken by people who want to go into things like nursing. J's class was full of mostly middle aged people. She walked in and said that she was the instructor. So all these people were amused at the sight of a girl, probably as old as their daughter claiming to be their teacher. Riddikulus! At first there was laughter all around. Then, when she walked to the podium and started pulling out the text, the laughter changed note and became somewhat nervous. And by the time she started, the class was deathly silent. As she told us, that first lecture was rather uncomfortable.
At the end of the course, she asked the students to give her some feedback. A forty something gentleman came up and said that he had THE suggestion to improve her teaching. Apparently, when she turned to the board to write, her shirt would ride up and show a leetil bit of skin which he found profoundly distracting. And his brilliant suggestion was 'Longer shirts!'
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
memorial day weekend
Ummmm.. memorial day weekend. Not quite so boring ever since we started playing cricket...
i saw batman begins on friday night... liam neeson put up a pretty good show.,. But I missed the point of destroying Gotham City. This is what happens when scriptwriters are underpaid and all the money goes to the special effects people. Saturday was spent playing cricket down at the Fuller Park and then watching 'The Sting'. Now the game was pretty sad, but then, we all need practice, lots of it.. and its not like I am in great shape to run all over the place either. The movie was awesome. This is what movies must be like, and regretfully are not, these days. Sunday, again, was cricket, and a movie. The cricket was ok, the movie, was just passable.. 'The Spiral Staircase'', rather melodramatic and with a weak plot.
Friday, May 26, 2006
the evil computer again
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The only way to learn is by experimenting.
Do NOT press the red button.
Aphorisms which have become part of our lives. A suitable combination of them applies when you take an enthusiastic bloke and let him tinker with the .cshrc on a linux. One of the things not to do is to put an alias in the .cshrc which will change a basic command, such as >cd. Well, i did just that, and after compiling the .cshrc, i couldn't figure out for the life of me why >cd didn't work. Silly.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
more on my evil computer
my computer does not generate sound. as in, i dont even know if it has a sound card. don't get me wrong here, i am a linux user,, not an admin. to be an admin requires knowledge, and more than that, courage. i lack the first for sure, and i make up for the second in sheer foolhardiness at times. why can my computer not generate sound? it behaves like an obstinate child who won't talk. i mean, are you really autistic, or do you just like giving me a hard time? in the meantime, i do have an ancient SGI (i mean ancient.. look SGIs are really cool and all that, but these days any decent PC or a mac can generate the same level of graphics at much less the cost. so these hulking brutes just stand around with a footprint like Godzilla and the performance of Stuart Little. as far as i am concerned. this contraption exists only to play me sound. now there snazzy things like iTunes and Winamp out there. you have 10 band equalisers, shuffle, crossfade and the rest. SGIs play SOME formats, do not recognise may respectable mp3s, and play stuff in single queue. they suck!!!!!!!!)
my evil computer
computers can be intuitive. my boss indicated to me yesterday that we may be getting new computers. it was as if my linux somehow sensed it and decided to be extra nasty for whatever time it has left to be nasty. its favourite trick is to kill firefox without warning. silently and deadly. somewhat like a commando strike, in fact. and the best time to do it is when i have written a LONG and IMPORTANT mail and am just about to send it. or a blog. that is why i have picked up this strange habit of copying the text every two lines or so. could i BE more paranoid?
its other favourite trick is to make 'open office' a misnomer.. as in, i open 'open office', i write something, i turn away for a moment, i turn back, and it's 'closed office'. as in died without a beep.
its other favourite trick is to make 'open office' a misnomer.. as in, i open 'open office', i write something, i turn away for a moment, i turn back, and it's 'closed office'. as in died without a beep.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Detroit
The capital of the auto industry. This city traces its history back to 1701 as a fort established by a French officer called Cadillac. Rings a bell?
- History of Detroit
- http://www.historydetroit.com/>Another History of Detroit
Well, the graduate school had set up a day trip to Detroit and decided to go. It is something like an hour's drive to downtown Detroit near the waterfront. We were given little maps and told to not stray awya from the paths marked. So we legged it down to the waterfront. A pretty nice view of Canada on the other bank, with the Windsor Casino as the biggest landmark. There was a memorial dedicated to the brave men and women who operated the Underground Railroad which helped African American people escape slavery. Detroit was one of the jumping off points to Canada and freedom. The thing about this leetil walk downtown is something that still gets me here. The lack of people. On any given Saturday morning, any Indian city the size of Detroit will be, quite literally, teeming with people. Call it an anthill complex, call it what you will but here it is.
Anyway, we came to the 'eastern market' for brunch. Brunch was an omlette, a large one with corned beef, veggies, hash browns and a side of toast with marmalade. Heavy! The restaurant was crowded something awful and I guess I know why. The eastern market was like a somewhat posh Gariahat/Yesvantpur. But wholesale markets cannot be that much different, and this one brought back memories of home.
There was a shop which sold nuts. All kinds of nuts. It was full of nuts of every description. A Kabuliwalla would have walked away with a happy soul. Another shop advertised itself as 'Spices of the world', and it came pretty close. I picked up some Italian pasta seasoning. Yet another shop advertised sausages of all kinds. It beggars description. A meatlover's paradise.
After spending sometime there, we hopped into the bus for the trip to the Arts Institute. Now there are museums and then there are museums. Science museums, I like. History is also good. One loves looking at broadswords, tapestries and mummies. Art befuddles me. Show me a nice painting and I will say that it is great. Show me daubs and streaks and ask me to find meaning and I am flummoxed. I know it is old fashioned, but I believe that art should speak for itself and not necessarily need an explanation. The kind of painting that needs a note attached to tell you what you are supposed to be seeing appears to me as slightly silly. And the fact that people spend good money on that kind of stuff, well, it is better than spending it on nukes, so why not?
That was Detroit. Later, with a smaller group and no time restrictions, another sightseeing trip perhaps...
Theorists
really silly questions
The other day we were at a restaurant. Now I realise that sometimes people wait for other members of their team to turn up, and it does make sense in that context. but not here. At this point, we means the two of us. And the bloke comes up asks, "table for how many, Sir?".. Yes, thats a smart question. I should have come back with, "just one, I plan to stand and watch", or something to that effect. But then, my new year's resolution of 1999 was to be a nicer and more polite person. Part of that resolution was to not verbalise all that I think. I am still working on it.
Then cut to today morning. Me at the bus stop. Bus not there, perhaps a little late. Note that this stop has only one bus coming by. Its not Gariahat. Its not Jadavpur. It has one bus coming by every twenty minutes or so. Young lady I vaguely know (which means we have been introduced and I have mentally classified her into that big tray marked "Boye gyachhe") comes up asks, "Has the bus come by?". Now in which plane will that make any sense. If the bus has, indeed come by, I would be on it. The relevent question, of course, would be "How long have you been standing here?". And again, I wanted to say, that yes, the bus has come by, and I decided to wait for her. But that would lead to a world of trouble
Then cut to today morning. Me at the bus stop. Bus not there, perhaps a little late. Note that this stop has only one bus coming by. Its not Gariahat. Its not Jadavpur. It has one bus coming by every twenty minutes or so. Young lady I vaguely know (which means we have been introduced and I have mentally classified her into that big tray marked "Boye gyachhe") comes up asks, "Has the bus come by?". Now in which plane will that make any sense. If the bus has, indeed come by, I would be on it. The relevent question, of course, would be "How long have you been standing here?". And again, I wanted to say, that yes, the bus has come by, and I decided to wait for her. But that would lead to a world of trouble
stupid computer
towards the end of a rather long blog on the detroit trip, firefox died completely. with the blog. unsaved.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
two weeks ago
i spent the most boring week i have lived through in recent times... now during semester, i typically have two homeworks, labwork, about forty odd prelab reports to grade, experiments to teach, presentations to complete and the like. and somehow, things fall together in place, and it all works out. the last week of april was the transition between labs. this was the most boring week in a long time. semester work was over and done with. there is a limit to how many times one can check mail/orkut/yahoo etc etc. now that i am back and with a clearly defined set of things to read, yes, life has meaning once more!!
there seems to be a rather large number of adaptations of comic book tales to the big screen. the most famous among this would perhaps include the lara croft franchise. now, a scantily clad jolie pouting while the baddies empty magazine after magazine and do not hit her has its adherants, but i am not one of them. i saw sin city last night. i was quite impressed with rodrigues' work. the fringe is breaking into the mainstream with a vengeance. once upon a time, people like tarantino and rodrigues would be relegated to the back shelves and the more off beat artsy theatres. times have a-changed now... and one has such wunnerful movies like sin city hitting the screens and making it big.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
back
back. semester closed, prelim done. got to earn my bread and butter now. well, bread and stale margarine, at the very least.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
all for the want of a horseshoe nail
The electron moved down the wire. Moved is not quite the word here, it jumped from one potential well to another. Rather, it existed at one potential well, then ceased to exist and simultaneously was born at another potential well. We can work on this a little more. It existed at two potential wells at the same time, teetered between them in some mind twisting way, which we will not go into (because it is mind twisting) and decided to go forward instead of stay back. This, it did because of something called the Uncertainty Principle, something built into the very fabric of the Universe. The next electron did exactly the same. So did the one after it. And the next ten million. But the one which came along after those ten million, teetered .. and fell backwards. The tiny current in the transistor stopped flowing. The transistor which amplified a much larger current; stopped working. The larger current stopped. A switch turned itself quietly on. A microchip embedded in the heart of the satellite fried itself in the voltage surge that followed. The transmitter unit of the satellite died. The satellite(and since we are spending so much time talking about it, it seems fitting to use its given name: Solar Dynamics Relay-1, or as its designers had affectionately nicknamed it, the Sod) itself was fine. All its observation units, the analysis computers, the navigation was perfectly fine. The transmitter simply copped it. As a result, it was unable to relay the data which it accumulated back to the relay satellites which peopled the utterly vast space between Earth and the satellite(ok, fine, the Sod). The billion dollar project was written off because Mama couldn’t hear a chirp from her baby and Farside observations near the solar atmosphere without knowing where to look is somewhat more complicated than looking for a needle in a haystack.
Most ancient civilizations revere, love and fear the Sun. And quite rightly so, for one never knows what that big ball is cooking in its belly. This time, it happened to be a rather intense burst of high energy particles and radiation. So intense, in fact that it would toast everything this side of Mars. Sure, an early warning would help, one could build bunkers and live inside the ground; at least for the few days that the solar storm would last. But such an early warning could only come from, yes, the Sod; who was screaming his electronic heart out to his makers. Who couldn’t hear a darn thing. Right on schedule the gazillion tonnes of fusing hydrogen bubbled to the surface of the Sun, and the astronomers had a field day, collecting all the data they would need for ten years of analysis and a couple of hundred PhDs. With the data came the radiation. People in the tropics started dropping in a few hours. Those at higher latitudes lived a few days. Nightside was protected, but the disease spread without end. And in a month life disappeared.
He looked up from his tea, and saw in an instant what had happened. It was too late to change anything, and anyway, His own rules wouldn’t let him. He would just have to start all over again. “And this time, no Uncertainty Principle!”
taxes
i do not object to taxes. let me make that clear right at the outset... i like taxes.. i mean, without taxes, no clean water, no roads, no universities, no space stations, but i digress. what i strenuously dislike(again, not object to) is the presence of such a complicated tax system.. something has been mentioned on this, that is the necessity of a complicated tax structure as the government grows ever so bigger and more amorphous. sure, sure, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s , but would caesar be happy with one third of the rice from my fields? so much nicer than filling out form 1040, attaching schedule NR, W and 1, and calculating the adjusted gross income...
frankly, this is too much trouble for what little they pay me, and what they take away from it.
frankly, this is too much trouble for what little they pay me, and what they take away from it.
Friday, March 24, 2006
the 9.30 from tollygunge
The Tollygunge terminus of the
Ankita lived in Golf Green. She was beautiful in the soft toned way that most Bengalis chose to define beauty. She was also somewhat well off, at least by the standards of those who make do in a matchbox sized flat in south Calcutta with four other family members. She studied sociology, had all the right friends, most of them from the same posh school that she came from. For these, and other reasons that Biplab was perhaps afraid to admit, even to himself, she was unattainable. She took the same train as him, but she didn’t have to. Her classes started at ten, and the first hour was spent over cha and adda at the canteen. Nevertheless, Biplab waited for her each morning. The only time he had ever come close to even talking to her was when her season ticket died in the machine and she had to buy a day ticket. After rummaging in her handbag for a bit, she turned to him, standing patiently in line behind her and said, ‘can you lend me a rupee?’ This was the opportunity he had been waiting for, mentally rehearsing for. And instead of chatting her up the way he should have, he mutely handed her the change and said all of nothing.
Avinash suffered from juvenile diabetes. No sweets; none of the delicacies that only Bengali cuisine excels in. That also meant daily injections of insulin. Avinash was the only one of the three Ganguly boys who had stayed at home. Borda was an engineer at
The ‘Up’ platform at Tollygunge. 9.25 am. Passengers line up at picked spots. Commuters know which doors on which compartments will open closest to the escalators at their respective stations. The little morning gossip that one had time for competes with some silly advert for chewing gum on the overhead TVs and the soft Rabindrasangeet from the PA speakers. Studies have shown that Rabindrasangeet ‘calms’ people down, whatever that means. This and the white line which one is NOT supposed to cross until the train has come to a halt and the doors have opened are the steps that the authorities have taken after some hapless person jumped to his death just as the train was pulling in a few months ago.
9.28 am. The train is pulling in. the conversations have been temporarily paused as passengers jostle for space on the crowded platform. Ankita is standing a few feet further down from Biplab, just in line for her favourite spot, standing near the vestibule. The driver’s cabin passed Biplab and he heard a girl scream. He turned just in time to see someone jump straight into the path of the incoming train. And in that moment of incredulity, all that registered was that the jumper was still holding on to his lunch bag. And then all hell broke loose as people trying to get away collided with people trying to get a closer look. He saw Ankita stumble and then get knocked down. It wasn’t easy, pushing through the crowd, but he got to her, put an arm around her and led her out. The turnstiles had been opened, no one was checking tickets. She was shaking slightly, he saw. “Can I get you a cup of tea or something?” he asked. “Tea would be good”. There was already a crowd growing outside the station as they walked to the cha-wallah. “Jhontu duto doodh cha.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
then and now
professional behaviour:
a long time ago, ,almost a lifetime, i might say, i used to be routinely amazed by the ease with which my seniors, say R, R, A and A used to work out math which i found mind bogglingly difficult. they said that it was just a matter of perspective.. i disagreed and was inevitably depressed. at the point when i realised that my days of turning around and screaming for HEEEEELP!!!! are forever gone, i found myself in a wetlab. me. the bloke who can hardly make a decent cup of tea without mishap. and again find myself screaming for HEEEEEEELP!!!!! this time somewhat louder.. cos with math, the worst that can happen is you get it wrong. in a wetlab, the worst that can happen, no lets not go there. and so i look at Q, my senior who setup a gel inn what looked like 30 seconds. it takes me half and hour to do the same. and wonder whether professionalism is ever going to be something i achieve?
a long time ago, ,almost a lifetime, i might say, i used to be routinely amazed by the ease with which my seniors, say R, R, A and A used to work out math which i found mind bogglingly difficult. they said that it was just a matter of perspective.. i disagreed and was inevitably depressed. at the point when i realised that my days of turning around and screaming for HEEEEELP!!!! are forever gone, i found myself in a wetlab. me. the bloke who can hardly make a decent cup of tea without mishap. and again find myself screaming for HEEEEEEELP!!!!! this time somewhat louder.. cos with math, the worst that can happen is you get it wrong. in a wetlab, the worst that can happen, no lets not go there. and so i look at Q, my senior who setup a gel inn what looked like 30 seconds. it takes me half and hour to do the same. and wonder whether professionalism is ever going to be something i achieve?
cats again, and morning walks
my father finds some exquisite pleasure in dragging me out for morning walks. ever since i left home, i have been prone to wake up at sensible hours like 7.30 in the morning. i dislike nightouts, but somehow, can't seem to avoid them. so my father drags me,, kicking and screaming for morning walks. actually it is not as much kicking and screaming as it is simply this vague out of body experience which involves exchanging early morning small talk with friendly neighbours. sometimes the morning walk ends with a small detour to the market where we end up chatting to the machhwalla, whatzisname Sushanta? anyway, thats mostly it. watching southpointers picking fights at their bus stops while their moms copy their homework. always fun to realise that i will never go through that again. this once, while looping around the high school maath, this beral came walking by. of all things, it was wearing a liberal daub of laal shindoor on its head. for some reason, it reminded me irresistably of a barir bou out to get flowers for the morning pujo. and as if to keep that impression intact, it stopped and very politely meowed a good morning to us and then went on its way.
Friday, March 17, 2006
idocy and thereafter
Sping break came and went, without much sign of spring. The snow was still making its presence felt, by making the “path of the desis” slippery and difficult to navigate. In better and warmer climes grad students went out and had fun. Me, I hunkered down with a few new novels and movies. And of course, break doesn’t mean “break”. One still comes to lab and all that. Anyway, this offensive period was soon over and things are back to normal. Or almost. One exam down. One prelim to go.
A couple of days back, I decided it was time to hake of the ennui and get back to work. Hence, I tried to run a DNA gel. Now this setup is almost idiot proof. It takes a certain amount of intellect to actually mess up. There are notches where we put in the different components, so there is no way one can start out trying to assemble a gel setup, and end up with, say a machine gun. I went through all the steps without mishap, and although my mentor winced when she saw the way I had loaded the DNA, she said that it will probably worked. Then, I went and plugged in the positive to the negative and vice versa. And the gel ran for half and hour. Sending the entire DNA into the buffer. The only comment that the boss made was that I am finally beginning to behave like a ham-handed physicist. Which, is of course, true.
Monday, March 13, 2006
disappointment
The doors opened to let in a swarm of twenty-somethings. With them came an overpowering smell of stale deodorant and breath freshener. All the would be’s hanging on to their luckier friends. For a few short hours, trying to forget the existence of a world not lit up in garish party lights. Enter the Friday night.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
historical documents 7- after the comprehensive
After the comprehensive. There are few experiences in life which burn
their way into your memory and hard code themselves for all eternity. I
thought I had seen the absolutely worst way back in third semester. But
this is so much more interesting that, well, you should hear the whole
story. Third semester. This theme keeps cropping up where it is not
needed. I remember a singularly horrible book by Ludlum called 'the Bourne
identity' where the hero, one Jason Bourne remembers the jungles of Tam
Quan or something similar sounding every now and then. Third semester
again. A horrible four months which gave me three Cs, and an F. Kind of
bad for an experimentalist. Whispers in the corridors. Consternation in
the cloisters. Hurried glances quickly averted. I could go on like this,
but you get the drift. Then the MS project began, I joined the FTNMR lab
and life made sense. So standing outside the committee room and feeling
much the same as I did three years back, when they had grilled me in that
same room along with some fifty odd hopefuls, it all comes back full
circle. The last sentence was way too long and ungrammatical as well. My
boss called me in and then proceeded to talk at some length about my
course work and grades (me staring intently at my shoes; barefaced
shamelessness is an art that I should have perfected by now..). Then
begins the presentation with the admonition that I have thirty minutes.
Anyone who has flipped back and forth between product operators, density
matrices and population diagrams fifty times a minute knows what I am
talking about. One of the profs disappeared for a bit. When he came back,
he appeared surprised to see me still talking. Then he noticed the
footnote : 23/93, and flipped. 'you have NINETY THREE SLIDES?????'.
Anyway, the presentation was over at last. Then they got out the heavy
artillery. Coursework. After a year and half of pure NMR, do you really
expect me to remember any cond mat? Apparently yes. And mark my words,
mathphys is one of those topics no one, yes, no one should every have put
on his courselist. My courselist was not suggested by me. My boss put it
together; so I had classical mech, quant phys, mathphys, condmat, quantum
computing and of course spectroscopy. A simple 'all of physics' would have
done as well. Anyway, to cut it short, I proved to the distinguished panel
that I have forgotten all the physics that many teachers have taught over
the last six years. Including how to FT functions and the linewidth of a
Lorentzian. But I passed. The Heavens be praised!
The evening. Passed uneventfully. After dinner, a friend suggested coffee.
I suggested a brief detour to get an umbrella, at which she assured me
with full confidence that it will not rain. And then, of course it poured.
At a quarter past ten, we left the coffee shop and hopped into an auto.
Which proceeded to break down halfway over Sankey bridge. This ws one of
those newfangled LPG autos. So the driver changed the cylinder, then
pushed for a while. Then I pushed for a while. I should have mentioned
that I had been standing and hopping around for close to three hours for
the exam. And here I was, pushing an auto. In the rain. About the rain. I
have seen a lot of rain. Five years in Shillong makes one an intimate
acquaintance of rain. I have seen the heavy fast downpour that turns a dry
nullah into a roaring mini river in less than an hour. (Tust me on this
one, I was once caught on a dry nullah bed and it began to rain, it can
get quite scary). Then there is the holiday rain which starts on Friday
afternoon and goes on till Tuesday morning. A must mention is the Calcutta
special. This one makes you sweat in the heat, while you are also getting
drenched. Effects are best achieved after a long days work, standing at
the Gurusaday road bus stop waiting for the No. 45 which will be full of
other wet people who just louvv standing on your toes. (I just have to
tell you about a strange phenomenon we have in Cal called water logging.
Its like this, the furniture has to be dragged to the second floor, and
you can give up on the scooter in its garage. Schools are off: no
teachers, no students. The 'para' guys are out having fun. The periodic
shriek is that of some poor unfortunate falling down an open manhole. All
those Ganga crocodiles are planning an invasion of the city. Its totally
awesome. For those living in South Calcutta, it is not as much fun as
those in the North. I know places near Fulbagan where you could have
respectable sized boats on the streets. Dogs swim side by side with
disaffected communists and University students necking in the water.)
There are those who feel romantic in the rain, others paint, some write poetry. I wait for it to get over. Rain holds no romance for me, only a
bad case of the sniffles. But lets get back to the bridge and the auto.
After pushing for a while, I gave up and with the blessings of the auto
wallah began walking it home. This involved, at the behest of my friend,
crossing the road. Normally such an operation is not fraught with too much
danger, even in this lawless neck of the woods. However, rain either makes
owners of big cars incredibly brave and willing to test their machines to
the limits, or incredibly romantic (read horny) and desperately wanting to
get home. Whatever be the case, it sums up to them driving at almost
relativistic speeds on slick, wet roads. Crazy buggers. And my specs. Aah,
got to tell you about my specs. Remember Harry Potter and how Hermionie
put an 'impervious' charm on his specs during Quidditch which made them
repel rain? Well, someone has sneaked my specs and put an 'suoivrepmi'
charm on mine. When it rains, raindrops deflect from an otherwise
Newtonian trajectory and splatter themselves on my specs. Rendering me, to
all intents and purposes, temporarily blind. Then there is this huge
shadow with monstrous headlight bearing down on us. Hop, skip, jump, three
heart attacks, and we are out of danger. My pulse slowly climbs down from
the kilohertz rate it has suddenly acquired. Then we walk back. Halfway
through, another big car (There should be a study of car shapes and the
effects they have on people's psyches. Why is it that an SUV driver
suddenly feels like he is Rambo? Why aren't all cars shaped like Morris
Minors? Life on the roads would be mildly easier if you don't allow every
random idiot with ten lakhs a hundred and fifty horsepower.) This next big
car goes straight through a huge puddle and before I know it, I am all wet
from toe (canvas shoes) to head in ditchwater. And my friend found it
funny. Women are like that.
their way into your memory and hard code themselves for all eternity. I
thought I had seen the absolutely worst way back in third semester. But
this is so much more interesting that, well, you should hear the whole
story. Third semester. This theme keeps cropping up where it is not
needed. I remember a singularly horrible book by Ludlum called 'the Bourne
identity' where the hero, one Jason Bourne remembers the jungles of Tam
Quan or something similar sounding every now and then. Third semester
again. A horrible four months which gave me three Cs, and an F. Kind of
bad for an experimentalist. Whispers in the corridors. Consternation in
the cloisters. Hurried glances quickly averted. I could go on like this,
but you get the drift. Then the MS project began, I joined the FTNMR lab
and life made sense. So standing outside the committee room and feeling
much the same as I did three years back, when they had grilled me in that
same room along with some fifty odd hopefuls, it all comes back full
circle. The last sentence was way too long and ungrammatical as well. My
boss called me in and then proceeded to talk at some length about my
course work and grades (me staring intently at my shoes; barefaced
shamelessness is an art that I should have perfected by now..). Then
begins the presentation with the admonition that I have thirty minutes.
Anyone who has flipped back and forth between product operators, density
matrices and population diagrams fifty times a minute knows what I am
talking about. One of the profs disappeared for a bit. When he came back,
he appeared surprised to see me still talking. Then he noticed the
footnote : 23/93, and flipped. 'you have NINETY THREE SLIDES?????'.
Anyway, the presentation was over at last. Then they got out the heavy
artillery. Coursework. After a year and half of pure NMR, do you really
expect me to remember any cond mat? Apparently yes. And mark my words,
mathphys is one of those topics no one, yes, no one should every have put
on his courselist. My courselist was not suggested by me. My boss put it
together; so I had classical mech, quant phys, mathphys, condmat, quantum
computing and of course spectroscopy. A simple 'all of physics' would have
done as well. Anyway, to cut it short, I proved to the distinguished panel
that I have forgotten all the physics that many teachers have taught over
the last six years. Including how to FT functions and the linewidth of a
Lorentzian. But I passed. The Heavens be praised!
The evening. Passed uneventfully. After dinner, a friend suggested coffee.
I suggested a brief detour to get an umbrella, at which she assured me
with full confidence that it will not rain. And then, of course it poured.
At a quarter past ten, we left the coffee shop and hopped into an auto.
Which proceeded to break down halfway over Sankey bridge. This ws one of
those newfangled LPG autos. So the driver changed the cylinder, then
pushed for a while. Then I pushed for a while. I should have mentioned
that I had been standing and hopping around for close to three hours for
the exam. And here I was, pushing an auto. In the rain. About the rain. I
have seen a lot of rain. Five years in Shillong makes one an intimate
acquaintance of rain. I have seen the heavy fast downpour that turns a dry
nullah into a roaring mini river in less than an hour. (Tust me on this
one, I was once caught on a dry nullah bed and it began to rain, it can
get quite scary). Then there is the holiday rain which starts on Friday
afternoon and goes on till Tuesday morning. A must mention is the Calcutta
special. This one makes you sweat in the heat, while you are also getting
drenched. Effects are best achieved after a long days work, standing at
the Gurusaday road bus stop waiting for the No. 45 which will be full of
other wet people who just louvv standing on your toes. (I just have to
tell you about a strange phenomenon we have in Cal called water logging.
Its like this, the furniture has to be dragged to the second floor, and
you can give up on the scooter in its garage. Schools are off: no
teachers, no students. The 'para' guys are out having fun. The periodic
shriek is that of some poor unfortunate falling down an open manhole. All
those Ganga crocodiles are planning an invasion of the city. Its totally
awesome. For those living in South Calcutta, it is not as much fun as
those in the North. I know places near Fulbagan where you could have
respectable sized boats on the streets. Dogs swim side by side with
disaffected communists and University students necking in the water.)
There are those who feel romantic in the rain, others paint, some write poetry. I wait for it to get over. Rain holds no romance for me, only a
bad case of the sniffles. But lets get back to the bridge and the auto.
After pushing for a while, I gave up and with the blessings of the auto
wallah began walking it home. This involved, at the behest of my friend,
crossing the road. Normally such an operation is not fraught with too much
danger, even in this lawless neck of the woods. However, rain either makes
owners of big cars incredibly brave and willing to test their machines to
the limits, or incredibly romantic (read horny) and desperately wanting to
get home. Whatever be the case, it sums up to them driving at almost
relativistic speeds on slick, wet roads. Crazy buggers. And my specs. Aah,
got to tell you about my specs. Remember Harry Potter and how Hermionie
put an 'impervious' charm on his specs during Quidditch which made them
repel rain? Well, someone has sneaked my specs and put an 'suoivrepmi'
charm on mine. When it rains, raindrops deflect from an otherwise
Newtonian trajectory and splatter themselves on my specs. Rendering me, to
all intents and purposes, temporarily blind. Then there is this huge
shadow with monstrous headlight bearing down on us. Hop, skip, jump, three
heart attacks, and we are out of danger. My pulse slowly climbs down from
the kilohertz rate it has suddenly acquired. Then we walk back. Halfway
through, another big car (There should be a study of car shapes and the
effects they have on people's psyches. Why is it that an SUV driver
suddenly feels like he is Rambo? Why aren't all cars shaped like Morris
Minors? Life on the roads would be mildly easier if you don't allow every
random idiot with ten lakhs a hundred and fifty horsepower.) This next big
car goes straight through a huge puddle and before I know it, I am all wet
from toe (canvas shoes) to head in ditchwater. And my friend found it
funny. Women are like that.
historical documents 6- random demented thoughts
ok so maybe i am, going crazy, but look at the facts:
1. the keyboard that belongs to the computer i was just using has an
interesting problem- the key 'x' does not work. i didnt realise it until i
tried to send a message by ctrl-x. and it didnt go.
2. the movie they are showing at the gymkhana tonight is called kismat.
that must be fate!
3. i fell asleep after lunch. tired. that is the explanation.
incidentally, after the reports of iisc getting 100 crores, people are
sayingthings like the onus being on us to prove that we are worthy and all
that..... so i was asleep. my plane then crashed. ok, i dont have memories
of my plane crashing, but i did wake up in this rainforest place with
trees and animals. and i was convinced that it was all a tv reality show
and that i would be paid real big money for getting my face on axn. turned
out the plane had actually crashed. all this was a dream, so this is like
double dose of imagination at work.
nevertheless, who wants to see kismat. and who the hell is some movie
director to tell people whether they should kiss or not?
1. the keyboard that belongs to the computer i was just using has an
interesting problem- the key 'x' does not work. i didnt realise it until i
tried to send a message by ctrl-x. and it didnt go.
2. the movie they are showing at the gymkhana tonight is called kismat.
that must be fate!
3. i fell asleep after lunch. tired. that is the explanation.
incidentally, after the reports of iisc getting 100 crores, people are
sayingthings like the onus being on us to prove that we are worthy and all
that..... so i was asleep. my plane then crashed. ok, i dont have memories
of my plane crashing, but i did wake up in this rainforest place with
trees and animals. and i was convinced that it was all a tv reality show
and that i would be paid real big money for getting my face on axn. turned
out the plane had actually crashed. all this was a dream, so this is like
double dose of imagination at work.
nevertheless, who wants to see kismat. and who the hell is some movie
director to tell people whether they should kiss or not?
historical documents 5- before submission
something i wrote i believe in the last week before submitting my ms thesis..
thesis writing is a bore
it eats the soul to the core
your fingers ache and your head spins
but in the end your supervisor wins
the spirit screams for rest,
but to no avail.
for without a thesis,
the senate will give you a fail.
others have run the gauntlet, they say,
and so must you.
but in the face of such reckless terror,
what can a mere iphd do?
pretty soon it will all be over,
they say with a smile.
having no idea of course,
how hard is the last mile.
till at last doomsday arrives
taking off a few of your nine lives,
i dont know how to finish this so i will send you the rest after my
submission.
thesis writing is a bore
it eats the soul to the core
your fingers ache and your head spins
but in the end your supervisor wins
the spirit screams for rest,
but to no avail.
for without a thesis,
the senate will give you a fail.
others have run the gauntlet, they say,
and so must you.
but in the face of such reckless terror,
what can a mere iphd do?
pretty soon it will all be over,
they say with a smile.
having no idea of course,
how hard is the last mile.
till at last doomsday arrives
taking off a few of your nine lives,
i dont know how to finish this so i will send you the rest after my
submission.
historical documents 4- searching for manasi
while reading this i wonder what i was on while writing this... obviously not somehting potent, i appear to have been in lab.. so my only conclusion is that a combination of sleep deprivation and trying to implement some hideously complicated quantum error detection code could have made me write this....
this mail is about mansi.
who is mansi? wrong question. which mansi is the real question. yesterday
at the atm, i had an interesting experience. graffiti turns up on walls,
calcutta, my ol' town has some of the most intelligent political graffiti,
poems and stuff gracing its walls. residents complain, but who cares, when
the print media is expensive, and the net is just not exclusive enough,
the walls will have to do. graffiti is actually art of a very high
standard. but the topic of the day is not really graffiti, atleast, not
in the form u imagine. nope, this is more like the random scribbles u see
in toilets run by sulabh and at railway stations. in this genre, one of
the greatest i saw was at vidyasagar college. way back in the hot summer
of 2002, our part 2 bsc exams closing, the pracs was at vidyasagar. two
adjacent toilet cubicles had a whole conversation centred around the
dubious parentage of the physics head honcho and what the students would
happily do to him, given half a chance.
this is the kinda graffiti we are talking about. so, back to the atm. the
first message was: 'mansi was here'. the second was 'mansi was not here'.
strange. mystifying. me stuitably impressed. now comes the killer. 'look
inside the f-in atm machine'. wow! mansi was here or not. kinda like
shrodinger's cat. and then she entered the atm machine. obvious
comparisons are with alice jumping down the rabbit hole. a less obvious
comparision would be with the bloke in 'the long dark teatime of the soul'
who jumps out from behind a molecule and slays people. wouldnt want to
meet mansi alone in a darn alley. or in an atm for that matter. make that
atm first. or maybe she is just some guardian and ganashakti reading
diehard cpi(m) babe out to redress the economic disparity by direct means.
but who is mansi?
there are only a few other mansis that i know of. the first is the manashi
(bong) who appears in the song 'dekho manashi' by fossils. pretty good
song that. usual stuff about being dumped by the babe and asking her is it
was right of her to dump the bloke. i wonder is so much creativity would
ever have been unleashed unless most girls were such heartless creatures.
but with all due respect to womankind, thanks for the inspiration.
the second manashi is the manashi who is indrajit's flame in the landmark
badal sarkar play 'ebong indrajit'. its a different matter that she is
also his cousin, the incestuous bastard, but whatever, if u louvv ur
cousin, then society, or genetic fallback should not stop u.
the last manashi who will grace this mail is the mansi (hindi) who was
akshay khanna's flame in the supercrap subhash ghai movie 'taal'
(yeuckkkk!)
incidentally, i saw colalteral yesterday. people told me that it was crap
and boring, but i realised one thing, that the american accent is bloody
difficult to follow, this movie had english subtitles. which iis pretty
good, cos it had a lot of dialogue. not a great piece like, sat fight
club, but ok in its own way, cruise does an interesting role as a contract
assassin.
i especially like thw way the spelling goes haywire and then some.
this mail is about mansi.
who is mansi? wrong question. which mansi is the real question. yesterday
at the atm, i had an interesting experience. graffiti turns up on walls,
calcutta, my ol' town has some of the most intelligent political graffiti,
poems and stuff gracing its walls. residents complain, but who cares, when
the print media is expensive, and the net is just not exclusive enough,
the walls will have to do. graffiti is actually art of a very high
standard. but the topic of the day is not really graffiti, atleast, not
in the form u imagine. nope, this is more like the random scribbles u see
in toilets run by sulabh and at railway stations. in this genre, one of
the greatest i saw was at vidyasagar college. way back in the hot summer
of 2002, our part 2 bsc exams closing, the pracs was at vidyasagar. two
adjacent toilet cubicles had a whole conversation centred around the
dubious parentage of the physics head honcho and what the students would
happily do to him, given half a chance.
this is the kinda graffiti we are talking about. so, back to the atm. the
first message was: 'mansi was here'. the second was 'mansi was not here'.
strange. mystifying. me stuitably impressed. now comes the killer. 'look
inside the f-in atm machine'. wow! mansi was here or not. kinda like
shrodinger's cat. and then she entered the atm machine. obvious
comparisons are with alice jumping down the rabbit hole. a less obvious
comparision would be with the bloke in 'the long dark teatime of the soul'
who jumps out from behind a molecule and slays people. wouldnt want to
meet mansi alone in a darn alley. or in an atm for that matter. make that
atm first. or maybe she is just some guardian and ganashakti reading
diehard cpi(m) babe out to redress the economic disparity by direct means.
but who is mansi?
there are only a few other mansis that i know of. the first is the manashi
(bong) who appears in the song 'dekho manashi' by fossils. pretty good
song that. usual stuff about being dumped by the babe and asking her is it
was right of her to dump the bloke. i wonder is so much creativity would
ever have been unleashed unless most girls were such heartless creatures.
but with all due respect to womankind, thanks for the inspiration.
the second manashi is the manashi who is indrajit's flame in the landmark
badal sarkar play 'ebong indrajit'. its a different matter that she is
also his cousin, the incestuous bastard, but whatever, if u louvv ur
cousin, then society, or genetic fallback should not stop u.
the last manashi who will grace this mail is the mansi (hindi) who was
akshay khanna's flame in the supercrap subhash ghai movie 'taal'
(yeuckkkk!)
incidentally, i saw colalteral yesterday. people told me that it was crap
and boring, but i realised one thing, that the american accent is bloody
difficult to follow, this movie had english subtitles. which iis pretty
good, cos it had a lot of dialogue. not a great piece like, sat fight
club, but ok in its own way, cruise does an interesting role as a contract
assassin.
i especially like thw way the spelling goes haywire and then some.
historical documents 3- garlic at dinner
the third in the series... this was when murali had come ovr to hobnobb with us lesser humans...
here begins the sad tale of yesterday's dinner. starts out some time late
in the afternoon when a bunch of disaffected nmrists are sitting sround
and cribbing about not having statphys bags. not that it occurred to any
one of us to enlist as volunteers for the event: when people from other
depts are pitching in.... no, it suffices to sit in our lab and crib. so
murali wants to go out for dinner, manu and i want beer, and bds is open
to any idea. the atrium is suggested, and we all promise to meet at 8.30.
come 8.30, me twiddling my thumbs at the rendezvous, no sign of the
others. some fifteen minutes later, i see bds walking down. so now its the
two of us twiddling thumbs. respective thumbs.then, just to make things
really perfect its starts raining. you know, that kind of rain u hate..
starts out in a very inoccuous 'let me get ur hair wet' way and finishes
up with a 'drown! drown! u SOB drown!'. so we decide to go to viking. why?
time, pockets, everything. anyway, a brief digression on the etymology of
the name. the owners family god is ganesha.. that is vinayak or vi-nayak
and nayak is king so vi king or viking. yes, viking: they've started out a
pseudo continental joint there. we make it in. just too many happy
families there, sunday eveing and all.. giggling away insanely like they
are all part of some air conditioner or fridge ad. a place in the
corner... where it is naturally difficult to attract the attention of the
waiter... so after feeling suitably ostracised, and having tried to draw
his attention by all possible means.. polite 'ahems', coughs and all that,
i am forced to stand up and pretend to be a semaphore. it works. the
orders are a little adventurous. the soup is chinese, or whatever passes
for chinese in this backwater.. the starter is a paneer dish.. passes for
northie in rasamland..and the main is a sizzler. then murali and manu call
and the inevitable where are u ensues.. so they turn up.. and murali is
furious cos he hates his dinners going the wrong way. anyway, so he is
kind of muttering into his soup.. and threatening to kill the waiter... so
ultimately, the main arrives.. and of course my sizzler fogs up my glasses
is nothing flat and is busy depositing a thinfilm layer of meat sauce
residue on the (formerly) white ceiling. after having attracted the
attention of the entire clientele.. all of whom have been wiser in
choosing simple paneeers and koftas.. we dig in. eventually something is
lacking. garlic bread. i mention this in passing to our waiter. he pops
away and is back with toast. toast! TOAST! i explain very clearly what
garlic bread is. he gives me an old fashioned look. u know, the kind which
tells me that 'sorry, i didn't know u were buffy the vampire slayer'. the
after a looooooooong time he is back with toast. liberal;ly laced with
grated garlic. murali is snorting into his dal.
was not the best of possible evenings out.
here begins the sad tale of yesterday's dinner. starts out some time late
in the afternoon when a bunch of disaffected nmrists are sitting sround
and cribbing about not having statphys bags. not that it occurred to any
one of us to enlist as volunteers for the event: when people from other
depts are pitching in.... no, it suffices to sit in our lab and crib. so
murali wants to go out for dinner, manu and i want beer, and bds is open
to any idea. the atrium is suggested, and we all promise to meet at 8.30.
come 8.30, me twiddling my thumbs at the rendezvous, no sign of the
others. some fifteen minutes later, i see bds walking down. so now its the
two of us twiddling thumbs. respective thumbs.then, just to make things
really perfect its starts raining. you know, that kind of rain u hate..
starts out in a very inoccuous 'let me get ur hair wet' way and finishes
up with a 'drown! drown! u SOB drown!'. so we decide to go to viking. why?
time, pockets, everything. anyway, a brief digression on the etymology of
the name. the owners family god is ganesha.. that is vinayak or vi-nayak
and nayak is king so vi king or viking. yes, viking: they've started out a
pseudo continental joint there. we make it in. just too many happy
families there, sunday eveing and all.. giggling away insanely like they
are all part of some air conditioner or fridge ad. a place in the
corner... where it is naturally difficult to attract the attention of the
waiter... so after feeling suitably ostracised, and having tried to draw
his attention by all possible means.. polite 'ahems', coughs and all that,
i am forced to stand up and pretend to be a semaphore. it works. the
orders are a little adventurous. the soup is chinese, or whatever passes
for chinese in this backwater.. the starter is a paneer dish.. passes for
northie in rasamland..and the main is a sizzler. then murali and manu call
and the inevitable where are u ensues.. so they turn up.. and murali is
furious cos he hates his dinners going the wrong way. anyway, so he is
kind of muttering into his soup.. and threatening to kill the waiter... so
ultimately, the main arrives.. and of course my sizzler fogs up my glasses
is nothing flat and is busy depositing a thinfilm layer of meat sauce
residue on the (formerly) white ceiling. after having attracted the
attention of the entire clientele.. all of whom have been wiser in
choosing simple paneeers and koftas.. we dig in. eventually something is
lacking. garlic bread. i mention this in passing to our waiter. he pops
away and is back with toast. toast! TOAST! i explain very clearly what
garlic bread is. he gives me an old fashioned look. u know, the kind which
tells me that 'sorry, i didn't know u were buffy the vampire slayer'. the
after a looooooooong time he is back with toast. liberal;ly laced with
grated garlic. murali is snorting into his dal.
was not the best of possible evenings out.
historical documents 2-nandi hills
another one of them historical documents. this one was written around july 2004, when statphys was in progress and all of calcutta was hanging around the institute. this included my sis and her research group.
\documentclass[12pt,a4,epic]
\maketitle{so i went to nandi hills. }
\begin{document}
statphys happened... went to the banquet on wednes night. not impressed.
correction, badly let down by the food. thence to drama practice. then at
some point my sis suggested that we all go to nandi hills on the morrow.
chump that i am, i agreed. so on thuirsday morn, we hopped into the
triwhhelers and heigh ho for majestic, where it took us a little while to
find out that the last bus for nandi hills has left. finito, i thought.
nyet, they said. so we grabbed a bus for dodeballapur, halphway there. the
conductor yelling something which sounded like 'goromjol' as the bus
filled up. hot water, the babelfish sez. my feelings exactly. now i will
wax lyrical: the gathering thunderclouds slowly climbing up the horizon
filled me with a sense of foreboding. so off we went, witha merry song on
our lips and joy in our hearts. well, not quite, we were actually fighting
over the last pack of biscuits, and no merry song made its presence felt
(i won the fight).an hor and two and a halphe dreams later, the conductor
told us that we better get off now.
\section{dodebbalapur}
is not even a one horse town.. more like half a tired donkey... just a
waystation for tired truck drivers. and some kinda grand central station
of kanthals. more than i have ever seen at one go in a life. something
like psmith in billingsgate....'anything that has nothing to do with
fish'. more kanthals. still more. piled up in huge heaps by the road. a
walk to the next busstop. a conversation with a panwalla. mostly
handgestures and repetitions of the words 'nandi hills'. ok, this is the
deal, twenty od kays to nandi cross. then what? we ask.. he
replies...'climb mari'. silence. wait for the next bus to nandi cross.
this sucidal puppy crossing the road, nope actually out for a walk on the
divider, completely oblivious to the cacophony of a hundred truck horns.
there must be a god who watches over sucidal puppies. working hard. then
the bus turns up.
\section{to nandi cross}
the bus. a ramshackle arrangement that moved more by willpower than
internal combustion. it is one of the irrefutable laws of nature that such
buses which ply the vilage roads will invariable be packed full of honest
son of the soil folk, who will ensure that some of the soil rubs off on u.
and such crowded buses will, occasionally carry skawking chickens. this
one, thankfully didnt. but it did carry this homo who tried ummmm...
getting too close to me for comfort. i panicked. then the music. such
buses will also play, at sound levels high enough to violate local
strategic arms limitations treaties music which has never been heard
inside any metropolitan district. this one played a song where the bloke
periodacally breaks out into a series of 'excuse me's before relapsing
into his, thankfully incomprehensible default lingo. the other song had,
possible the first bloke's best freind telling his dame that he was sorry.
this much i got. the rest was, again, sorry to say, beyond me. oh, he did
tell her that he was sorry some 378 times during the song. hey, we are at
nandi cross.
\section{the long climb}
nandi cross. the howl of the wind sweeping across the desperately bleak
landscape chilled us to the bone. presentiments. ok, back to normal mode.
it was cold. it was windy. and there were no buses. and the signpost said
nandi hills. 8 km. get the idea? but there was kanthal. what doez a man do
when he is being controlled by forces so vastly beyond his comprehension
that he scarcely understands that he is being controlled? some one wanted
us to have kanthal. we did. then we negotiated with a cattle van driver to
take us to the top. a leetle while later, we are whizzing up. the driver
must have been in f1 in a previous life. or his normal passengers do not
register too much protests when the side wheels skid across the gravel on
a hairpin turn, and ur whole life flashes in front of ur eyes. then its
started raining. big fat droplets that actually hurt when they hit.
incidentally, remember the bus? it also carried kanthal. ok, after some
time, we are at the top. not quite. the vanwalla tells us that for twenty
rupees more, he will take us to the summit. this is where the state buses
stop. pecuniary absolution having held away, we are forced to decline.
nyet, my genius sister tells him to go take a hike. interesting, in the
light of later events.... uphill now. ok, this is a strenge hill, u gotta
get tickets to climb. climb we do. it rains. once we are firmly on the
road, backpacks secured, umbrellas at the ready, the clouds growl sotto
voce. then roar. then the great deluge begins. noah had no clue. having
lived for five years in shillong, and having made the necessary
pilgrimage, i thought that i have seen the worst that rain could do. heh
heh. the rain soaked us down to the skin, and then some. soon, i was
walking in my own two personal puddles. my shoes. a few monkeys huddled in
the trees saw us. and burst out laughing. they really did. the raindrops
drum a staccato beat on ur head. trust me, i have had nightmares of rain
since. we climed two hundred steps after a kays hike along the road.
\section{at the top}
THE top. the summit. a paragliding centre. closed. the mist closes in. we
cant see beyond our noses. we have lunch at the hotel 'ranjitha fine top'.
ok, so ranjitha, bless her soul, has a fine top. big deal, the current
goes the moment we enter. lunch by candlelight. wow. rather, meals by
candlelight. ok, at this point, i can certify that the worst southie meals
ever arte to be found here. go and despair. eat and regret. we ate. the
papad had the consistency of a roti, soft. and the roti needed pliers to
tear it. or shears. the badam milK saved us. twas still raining. meal
over, out we went. and discovered that there was a much better hotel a few
hundred feet away. that was for tourists, this was for the drivers.
hmmmmm.. and through the mists, the dreary cliffs did send a distant
sheen. nor shapes of men, nor beasts we ken, the fog was all between.
(sorry coleridge). then after wandering around aimlessly for a while
longer, we came down. waited for the bus. wrung out the socks, smoked,
looked for booze, unsuccessfully. u want booze on the hilltop, you better
bring it urself. waited while the rain suddenly decided to change tack and
come through the open sides of the shelter almost horizontally. i found
out that u can never be so wet that u wont get a little more wet. a cow
walked by, gave us a glance of kindred feeling, and walked off to its
destiny.
\section{back home}
the bus came. we clambered on. fell promptly asleep. got home. boring huh?
but there is a lesson. thou shalt not bunk thy labmeeting to go
sightseeing. or thou shalt get soaked.
Ps- the kanthal was quite good.
\documentclass[12pt,a4,epic]
\maketitle{so i went to nandi hills. }
\begin{document}
statphys happened... went to the banquet on wednes night. not impressed.
correction, badly let down by the food. thence to drama practice. then at
some point my sis suggested that we all go to nandi hills on the morrow.
chump that i am, i agreed. so on thuirsday morn, we hopped into the
triwhhelers and heigh ho for majestic, where it took us a little while to
find out that the last bus for nandi hills has left. finito, i thought.
nyet, they said. so we grabbed a bus for dodeballapur, halphway there. the
conductor yelling something which sounded like 'goromjol' as the bus
filled up. hot water, the babelfish sez. my feelings exactly. now i will
wax lyrical: the gathering thunderclouds slowly climbing up the horizon
filled me with a sense of foreboding. so off we went, witha merry song on
our lips and joy in our hearts. well, not quite, we were actually fighting
over the last pack of biscuits, and no merry song made its presence felt
(i won the fight).an hor and two and a halphe dreams later, the conductor
told us that we better get off now.
\section{dodebbalapur}
is not even a one horse town.. more like half a tired donkey... just a
waystation for tired truck drivers. and some kinda grand central station
of kanthals. more than i have ever seen at one go in a life. something
like psmith in billingsgate....'anything that has nothing to do with
fish'. more kanthals. still more. piled up in huge heaps by the road. a
walk to the next busstop. a conversation with a panwalla. mostly
handgestures and repetitions of the words 'nandi hills'. ok, this is the
deal, twenty od kays to nandi cross. then what? we ask.. he
replies...'climb mari'. silence. wait for the next bus to nandi cross.
this sucidal puppy crossing the road, nope actually out for a walk on the
divider, completely oblivious to the cacophony of a hundred truck horns.
there must be a god who watches over sucidal puppies. working hard. then
the bus turns up.
\section{to nandi cross}
the bus. a ramshackle arrangement that moved more by willpower than
internal combustion. it is one of the irrefutable laws of nature that such
buses which ply the vilage roads will invariable be packed full of honest
son of the soil folk, who will ensure that some of the soil rubs off on u.
and such crowded buses will, occasionally carry skawking chickens. this
one, thankfully didnt. but it did carry this homo who tried ummmm...
getting too close to me for comfort. i panicked. then the music. such
buses will also play, at sound levels high enough to violate local
strategic arms limitations treaties music which has never been heard
inside any metropolitan district. this one played a song where the bloke
periodacally breaks out into a series of 'excuse me's before relapsing
into his, thankfully incomprehensible default lingo. the other song had,
possible the first bloke's best freind telling his dame that he was sorry.
this much i got. the rest was, again, sorry to say, beyond me. oh, he did
tell her that he was sorry some 378 times during the song. hey, we are at
nandi cross.
\section{the long climb}
nandi cross. the howl of the wind sweeping across the desperately bleak
landscape chilled us to the bone. presentiments. ok, back to normal mode.
it was cold. it was windy. and there were no buses. and the signpost said
nandi hills. 8 km. get the idea? but there was kanthal. what doez a man do
when he is being controlled by forces so vastly beyond his comprehension
that he scarcely understands that he is being controlled? some one wanted
us to have kanthal. we did. then we negotiated with a cattle van driver to
take us to the top. a leetle while later, we are whizzing up. the driver
must have been in f1 in a previous life. or his normal passengers do not
register too much protests when the side wheels skid across the gravel on
a hairpin turn, and ur whole life flashes in front of ur eyes. then its
started raining. big fat droplets that actually hurt when they hit.
incidentally, remember the bus? it also carried kanthal. ok, after some
time, we are at the top. not quite. the vanwalla tells us that for twenty
rupees more, he will take us to the summit. this is where the state buses
stop. pecuniary absolution having held away, we are forced to decline.
nyet, my genius sister tells him to go take a hike. interesting, in the
light of later events.... uphill now. ok, this is a strenge hill, u gotta
get tickets to climb. climb we do. it rains. once we are firmly on the
road, backpacks secured, umbrellas at the ready, the clouds growl sotto
voce. then roar. then the great deluge begins. noah had no clue. having
lived for five years in shillong, and having made the necessary
pilgrimage, i thought that i have seen the worst that rain could do. heh
heh. the rain soaked us down to the skin, and then some. soon, i was
walking in my own two personal puddles. my shoes. a few monkeys huddled in
the trees saw us. and burst out laughing. they really did. the raindrops
drum a staccato beat on ur head. trust me, i have had nightmares of rain
since. we climed two hundred steps after a kays hike along the road.
\section{at the top}
THE top. the summit. a paragliding centre. closed. the mist closes in. we
cant see beyond our noses. we have lunch at the hotel 'ranjitha fine top'.
ok, so ranjitha, bless her soul, has a fine top. big deal, the current
goes the moment we enter. lunch by candlelight. wow. rather, meals by
candlelight. ok, at this point, i can certify that the worst southie meals
ever arte to be found here. go and despair. eat and regret. we ate. the
papad had the consistency of a roti, soft. and the roti needed pliers to
tear it. or shears. the badam milK saved us. twas still raining. meal
over, out we went. and discovered that there was a much better hotel a few
hundred feet away. that was for tourists, this was for the drivers.
hmmmmm.. and through the mists, the dreary cliffs did send a distant
sheen. nor shapes of men, nor beasts we ken, the fog was all between.
(sorry coleridge). then after wandering around aimlessly for a while
longer, we came down. waited for the bus. wrung out the socks, smoked,
looked for booze, unsuccessfully. u want booze on the hilltop, you better
bring it urself. waited while the rain suddenly decided to change tack and
come through the open sides of the shelter almost horizontally. i found
out that u can never be so wet that u wont get a little more wet. a cow
walked by, gave us a glance of kindred feeling, and walked off to its
destiny.
\section{back home}
the bus came. we clambered on. fell promptly asleep. got home. boring huh?
but there is a lesson. thou shalt not bunk thy labmeeting to go
sightseeing. or thou shalt get soaked.
Ps- the kanthal was quite good.
historical documents-madras diary
i came across this list of stuff i had written while at the institute. historical documents of no poccible interest to anyone except, of course for me. so i decided to plug them into the blog. here's the first of them- madras diary. this was written shortly after a trip to matscience with roghu.
madras diary.
I'm back. not that it makes an iota of difference to the universe at
large,but for what little it is worth, in the words of arnie, I'm back. an
early morning visit to the feeding trough also known as c mess, someone
told me that he had a long and detailed conversation with me over the
weekend. which naturally leads to either one of, or more than one of the
following conclusions:a. he has been hallucinating. b. my phantasm has
been doing the rounds here, while i have been in madras, not unlike the
case of pizpot gargavarr on frogstar b; the body liked fishing, the mind
liked sex, hence an attempt to mix the two lead to untold disasters, thus
the two went their own ways. and the last explanation is that of the long
lost brother, apropos innumerable amitabh movies and kumbh melas.
anyway, madras.
roghu started the trip by telling me that tickets were for an insane 375.
after getting my heartbeat down from the radiofrequency rate which this
amount had sent it to, i asked if they were providing a portkey. no.
turned out to be a peculiarly disgusting bus which had no springs, and the
seats, while reclining had a tendency to spring back, thus sending u
hurtling into the seat opposite. face first. we got there. incidentally,
the joy of travelling with a couple of smartypants nonsmokers cannot be
overemphasised. we got there. back creaking, red eyed.,but we got there.
now what? tally ho for matscience. now, on my last trip, two years back, a
trembling interview candidate then, they were building this huge monorail
track. thats what vijay told me. well.... no monorail. plain old suburban
trains. which dont run on a weekend. (at this point, i should say
something like 'my cup overfloweth', but as we go on, u will see why i
have opted to stay silent. this calls for a bloody swimming pool).
autos in madras.
they dont run by meter, as in blore. nor do they run routes, like cal.
here, the delicate and subtle art of negotiation has been perfected. (no
wonder there are soo many tams in the union govt.) whatever price the
autowallah mentions, point ur finger at him and laugh. after a while, he
reduces to a more manageable fare. then the bargaining starts in earnest.
only when u have threatened to walk away thrice and he has invoked the
names of ur 14 forefathers can the business be considered concluded and we
are on our way.
at matscience.
aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!! the joy of waking up old pals, who had been whiling
away the night hours engaged in earthshattering research activities
involving the comp and some unmentionable sites...... imsc pongal is
better than the c mess version, they actually have cashew nuts in it. but
it's still pongal. this is one of those small cosy places where everyone
knows everyone, and its impossible to sit grouchily in one corner of the
mess and mutter into ur tea without any interference. life forms at matsc
come in four varieties: faculties, jrfs, postdocs and dogs. the dogs, i
was delighted to learn share the same hostel privileges as do the
students, and most of them have sat through enough classes to fulfill the
credit requirements for an msc.
the toilets.
must devote a couple of lines to them. on the whole, good. ample water,
unlike f block back here. shower door doesnt bolt. bu there have been no
recorded cases of intrusions, so.....
the beach.
the sight of pure blue from horizon to horizon for someone whose
visibility is limited to 40 feet on campus is awesome. i could go on for a
while about the crashing waves and all that, but I'm sure u guys get the
drift. so, we braved the (i would like to say towering waves, but i must
be honest) little surf there was and bathed. hunger, crept up unsuspected
like a mugger--- and wham! turbasu suggested a buffet at 120 per head at
planet yum (now, this took some time to register, i thought this was the
tam way of pronouncing planet m). yum. i think not. this place was
splashed with violently clashing orange and yellow colours. i digression
abt places to eat. having been fed at at all ends of the spectrum, one can
appreciate the grandeur of those places where the chandelier has crystal
pieces and not plastic. or where slightly frayed cushions join teak and
pinewood to create the right kinda atmosphere for pipe tobacco and
whiskey. but planet yum. one of those great places patronised by the kind
who wear their cultural bastardy on their sleeves. the kind who think kfc
and macdonalds is the best form of cultural emancipation. so we ate.
started with panipuri/phuchka, called the best this side of the vindhyans.
the water was jal-bloody-jeera. then a chat which tasted of rasam. then
the main course: nans and some nonveg preparation, which left my fingers
red. after a liberal dose of soap and water. 160 per head. not that i am
complaining. yet. but when roghu started practically singing and dancing
around in circles howling how great the foods was that i gnashed my teeth.
let it be noted that it was only the code of the bhattacharyas which
stopped me from terminating the mazumders. (roghu is aprotim mazumder).
then roghu insisted on stopping to photograph, of all things, a small and
rather smelly dog. he stopped, it stopped, there was a passage of some
signal between them, the shutter snapped, and the little canine sauntered
on, its life undoubtedly enriched thus. probably a kindred feeling between
two smelly creatures.
back to matscience.
came the eveing, came kinjal, via the coromandel. brought grass. we went
out, ate. closest approximation to north indian nonveg possible, good
actually. came back, visited their workplace. good comps, good net. me had
begun to show withdrawal symptoms, not having played tetris for a day.
back t the hostel. then smoked grass. in a kolke. roghu, him of the three
hour lectures on the evils of booze, smoke, grass, grabbed the kolke with
both hands and puffed like it was his last act on this earth. sleep. their
hostels are cool. i dossed in this room whose occupant was off on some
school. huge pencil sketch of feynman on the wall. turbasu wandered into
some lady's room (the lady being absent). apparently she came in at six
thirty and kicked him out.
sunday morning.
was bright. coffee on the roof. then a lie in. then more coffee. then
lunch. another lie in. finished a pg wodeh in the meantime. then afternoon
coffee. then, before we knew it, was time to go back. so bid goodbye the
humans, the dogs and the institute, got a couple of snaps of kinjal and
turbasu, and heigh ho. fast traffic. long wait at stn. stn has
flatscreens. wow. new train. fundu loos. hand shower and everything. back
in blore. now in lab.
now the persistent obsesion with clean loos has a meaning. which will be explained at a more opportune moment.
madras diary.
I'm back. not that it makes an iota of difference to the universe at
large,but for what little it is worth, in the words of arnie, I'm back. an
early morning visit to the feeding trough also known as c mess, someone
told me that he had a long and detailed conversation with me over the
weekend. which naturally leads to either one of, or more than one of the
following conclusions:a. he has been hallucinating. b. my phantasm has
been doing the rounds here, while i have been in madras, not unlike the
case of pizpot gargavarr on frogstar b; the body liked fishing, the mind
liked sex, hence an attempt to mix the two lead to untold disasters, thus
the two went their own ways. and the last explanation is that of the long
lost brother, apropos innumerable amitabh movies and kumbh melas.
anyway, madras.
roghu started the trip by telling me that tickets were for an insane 375.
after getting my heartbeat down from the radiofrequency rate which this
amount had sent it to, i asked if they were providing a portkey. no.
turned out to be a peculiarly disgusting bus which had no springs, and the
seats, while reclining had a tendency to spring back, thus sending u
hurtling into the seat opposite. face first. we got there. incidentally,
the joy of travelling with a couple of smartypants nonsmokers cannot be
overemphasised. we got there. back creaking, red eyed.,but we got there.
now what? tally ho for matscience. now, on my last trip, two years back, a
trembling interview candidate then, they were building this huge monorail
track. thats what vijay told me. well.... no monorail. plain old suburban
trains. which dont run on a weekend. (at this point, i should say
something like 'my cup overfloweth', but as we go on, u will see why i
have opted to stay silent. this calls for a bloody swimming pool).
autos in madras.
they dont run by meter, as in blore. nor do they run routes, like cal.
here, the delicate and subtle art of negotiation has been perfected. (no
wonder there are soo many tams in the union govt.) whatever price the
autowallah mentions, point ur finger at him and laugh. after a while, he
reduces to a more manageable fare. then the bargaining starts in earnest.
only when u have threatened to walk away thrice and he has invoked the
names of ur 14 forefathers can the business be considered concluded and we
are on our way.
at matscience.
aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!! the joy of waking up old pals, who had been whiling
away the night hours engaged in earthshattering research activities
involving the comp and some unmentionable sites...... imsc pongal is
better than the c mess version, they actually have cashew nuts in it. but
it's still pongal. this is one of those small cosy places where everyone
knows everyone, and its impossible to sit grouchily in one corner of the
mess and mutter into ur tea without any interference. life forms at matsc
come in four varieties: faculties, jrfs, postdocs and dogs. the dogs, i
was delighted to learn share the same hostel privileges as do the
students, and most of them have sat through enough classes to fulfill the
credit requirements for an msc.
the toilets.
must devote a couple of lines to them. on the whole, good. ample water,
unlike f block back here. shower door doesnt bolt. bu there have been no
recorded cases of intrusions, so.....
the beach.
the sight of pure blue from horizon to horizon for someone whose
visibility is limited to 40 feet on campus is awesome. i could go on for a
while about the crashing waves and all that, but I'm sure u guys get the
drift. so, we braved the (i would like to say towering waves, but i must
be honest) little surf there was and bathed. hunger, crept up unsuspected
like a mugger--- and wham! turbasu suggested a buffet at 120 per head at
planet yum (now, this took some time to register, i thought this was the
tam way of pronouncing planet m). yum. i think not. this place was
splashed with violently clashing orange and yellow colours. i digression
abt places to eat. having been fed at at all ends of the spectrum, one can
appreciate the grandeur of those places where the chandelier has crystal
pieces and not plastic. or where slightly frayed cushions join teak and
pinewood to create the right kinda atmosphere for pipe tobacco and
whiskey. but planet yum. one of those great places patronised by the kind
who wear their cultural bastardy on their sleeves. the kind who think kfc
and macdonalds is the best form of cultural emancipation. so we ate.
started with panipuri/phuchka, called the best this side of the vindhyans.
the water was jal-bloody-jeera. then a chat which tasted of rasam. then
the main course: nans and some nonveg preparation, which left my fingers
red. after a liberal dose of soap and water. 160 per head. not that i am
complaining. yet. but when roghu started practically singing and dancing
around in circles howling how great the foods was that i gnashed my teeth.
let it be noted that it was only the code of the bhattacharyas which
stopped me from terminating the mazumders. (roghu is aprotim mazumder).
then roghu insisted on stopping to photograph, of all things, a small and
rather smelly dog. he stopped, it stopped, there was a passage of some
signal between them, the shutter snapped, and the little canine sauntered
on, its life undoubtedly enriched thus. probably a kindred feeling between
two smelly creatures.
back to matscience.
came the eveing, came kinjal, via the coromandel. brought grass. we went
out, ate. closest approximation to north indian nonveg possible, good
actually. came back, visited their workplace. good comps, good net. me had
begun to show withdrawal symptoms, not having played tetris for a day.
back t the hostel. then smoked grass. in a kolke. roghu, him of the three
hour lectures on the evils of booze, smoke, grass, grabbed the kolke with
both hands and puffed like it was his last act on this earth. sleep. their
hostels are cool. i dossed in this room whose occupant was off on some
school. huge pencil sketch of feynman on the wall. turbasu wandered into
some lady's room (the lady being absent). apparently she came in at six
thirty and kicked him out.
sunday morning.
was bright. coffee on the roof. then a lie in. then more coffee. then
lunch. another lie in. finished a pg wodeh in the meantime. then afternoon
coffee. then, before we knew it, was time to go back. so bid goodbye the
humans, the dogs and the institute, got a couple of snaps of kinjal and
turbasu, and heigh ho. fast traffic. long wait at stn. stn has
flatscreens. wow. new train. fundu loos. hand shower and everything. back
in blore. now in lab.
now the persistent obsesion with clean loos has a meaning. which will be explained at a more opportune moment.
Monday, March 06, 2006
louvv letters
the first and last time i had ever tried my hand at writing a louvv letter was in... ummm.. class 11. no, sorry, class 12. that would be way back in 1999. fully seven years. the lady in question was this person called K.(now lets not get carried away and be all kafkaesque) nice lady, in fact. one year my junior, and rather pretty in a somewhat .. robust way. as in, the kind of fair damsel you might want by your side whilst wandering through caverns which may be inhabited by dread monsters. as, the kind of fair damsel who would rip the aforementioned dread monster from limb to limb. while yours truly, would tremble behind the nearest pillar. but, before we get ahead of ourselves, let me also tell you that this letter was written on behalf of my esteemed comrade V. in this noble task, i had the help of I, I and S. one of the Is also had a computer(back in those days when we hardly knew what computers were). so i wrote the letter. as well as i could. put in as much "substance" as possible. tried to put myself in V's shoes, as a matter of fact(no, that i didn't..).. well, yes, i wrote a whopping good louvv letter. I's computer was then used to get this letter printed out. V then arranged for someone to deliver it. i should mention at this point that V already had some history with this gurle. exactly how complicated this history was he had never let me know. in fact, it was only three years later, while at university that he did. if i had known that he had pulled the stunts that he had, i would have dissuaded him from trying to get there with mere letters. but, yes, the letter was either never read, or never understood. the first option is less painful to me. if in fact, the delivery system failed then it is not my fault that the payload misfired(something, which i believe happens routinely with antiaircraft missiles). if, on the other hand, the girl read the letter and then proceeded to give V the boot the way she did(yes), then, that does cast some aspersions on my skills as a letter writer. i will grant you that i am no romatic poet, but i do remember not having put a single equation in it. gaah! some people just do not understand three syllable words.
Friday, March 03, 2006
A's birthday
A is my labmate. So are Q,C,M,Al,L,Y and M. As it was A's birthday yesterday, Y made plans for a surprise lunch. this also involved an ice cream cake, which, as i found out is not cake after all, but just an ice cream shaped like a cake. oh well, new things. so around noonish, we made our way downtown to a little italian place. (which turned out to be closed). A had been hijacked by her friend D, who was supposed to bring her to the restaurant without her knowing that the whole lab was waiting to yell "surprise". anyway, she got there, the place was closed and so we went to the Mongolian barbeque. i expected to see hairy little men on horses carrying spears and trying to destroy everything of that side of the Hind Kush. but, to my surprise there were regular american people sitting around and regular american people serving them and regular american people cooking stuff. so this is how it worked: we each grabbed a bowl, filled it up with veggies, and meats from aself service line. we then filled up a tiny little cup with random sauces. then we waited in line to get to a huge tawa. there, the cooks standing around took our bowls and cooked them on the tawa with the sauces we had chosen. comes together really well. after the plates were cleared away, the icecream cake was brought out. apparently the lab tradition requires one to cut the cake with the handle of the knife and scream while doing so. don't ask me, i just work here. well, this cake turned out to be more than mildly recalcitrant. as in refused to be cut. like Jarasandha, in fact. but, we finally got it done, or well, she did. and everyone lived happily ever after.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
andy, galois, anika
ok, lets first talk about galois. G is a cat, somewhat fluffy and these days bad tempered. he belongs to, or rather(as he would put it) shares his lebensraum with L, a mathematician and M, his wife, an engineer. G is called G after a french mathematician. These days G is bad tempered because of the existance of Anika. Anika is a sweet, much smaller and less fluffy cat who has recently moved from the humane society to the residence of L and M. G perceives A to be a threat to his autonomy in the four legged domain of that particular house. As a matter of fact, G hisses in a rather pointed way whenever A violates his personal space, which, given the fact that A is a somewhat boisterous cat happens quite frequently. G, on the other hand, has the temperament of a french film star(i dont know that much about french mathematicians, ok i dont know much about french film stars either, but isn't "temperamental as a film star" something of a standard phrase? and the french are supposed to be highly strung, or was it the italians?) relations between the two cats are somewhat strained at the moment, with L and M having to play the role of overworked UN peacekepers.
Andy belongs to two people I don't know, S and J. but i do know their friend C(crikey, we are eating up the alphabet aren't we?) so C does catsitting for S and J when they are out of town. The last time she was catsitting, she took me along. Andy is a short fat cat who aappears to be wrapped in a black rug. he jumps when a soft toy is thrown at him. he runs rounf and rounf in circles chasing the light spot from a laser pointer. C gets chocolate for catsitting A. I got some chocolate too.
Andy belongs to two people I don't know, S and J. but i do know their friend C(crikey, we are eating up the alphabet aren't we?) so C does catsitting for S and J when they are out of town. The last time she was catsitting, she took me along. Andy is a short fat cat who aappears to be wrapped in a black rug. he jumps when a soft toy is thrown at him. he runs rounf and rounf in circles chasing the light spot from a laser pointer. C gets chocolate for catsitting A. I got some chocolate too.
Friday, February 24, 2006
statesman house vs. shivajinagar
it has long been maintained by authorities more knowledgeable than me that the only two gharanas of biriyani are the lucknowi and the hyderabadi. and that if all the rest of indian civilisation went to pot, we would still have justified our existance by having invented biriyani. there has to be a little aside at this point, were i make my personal claim that the only people who know how to make a perfect roganjosh are kashmiri muslims. just the way an ilishmachher jhol attempted by anyone who is not a Sen, Ghosh, Ganguly, Bhattacharya, Mukherjee, etc is doomed to failure, the perfect biriyani is best left to the people who have had centuries of institutional experience making it. a digression into the rather innovative calcutta biriyani which somehow transcends mere biriyanis, but then, its not a classic biriyani. in fact, if the pun involved were not so ridiculous, i would have said that the calcutta biriyani is not kosher!!
statesman house: this building near chouringhee you can walk to either from the esplanade, or in our case, on a bunk from college from presidency. kinjal, my esteemed friend is the bloke who knows the ins and outs of calcutta in a way that i do not know. yet. so we walked to the statesman house. where we, impoverished and hungry(this was during my second year in college, when most people experience of leftist revival) stumbled into a roadside dokan which smelled like heaven. beef biriyani in its best form, with a dash of achar(pickle). rubbing shoulders with wannabe journalists dreaming about copy which will sell(statesman house), random dalals("take, take, take, no take to no take, one time to see!") and people employed by random dalals(still trying to equate the city to their mental idea of the chhapra zila, "chhapra zila mein gharwa, to kaun cheez ka darwa?"). the best biriyani i ever had in the holy city. aminia and sabir didnt come close. forget bedwin, bawarchi and the johnny come latelys hich are springing up near colleges in south calcutta. ok,, so my grandma used to make some awesome biriyani, but it wasnt kosher!!!!!
bangalore: three years later. me and debuda hunting shivajinagar for plastic wine glasses. why? cos when jonathan brewster is about to drink elderberry wine from the wine glass, someone comes in and he drops it. or something to that effect. noone had ever seen or heard of elderberry wine before, but we assumed that at thirty feet, the audience wouldnt know the difference between elderberry wine and grape juice from the chowdeswari juice centre. and buri(inspector rathod) had threatened to do nasty things to debuda and me if plastic wine glasses were not forthcoming. so here we were, hunting through the shivajinagar market where on a thursday afternoon, you are likely to hear english, kannada, hindi, tamil, malayalam and the two of us speaking bangla. its fun, everyone curses everyone, and no one seems to mind. until then, i had dismissed bangalore as a hopeless land of vegetarians where rasam was the best substitute for food. till we smelled something, from this somewhat hidden alley. almost like it was an entrance into the magical world. the gazes of the folk walking back and forth seemed to just slide off it. with a cry of "fire burn and cauldron bubble!!!!!" we leapt into the alley.(ok, i just made that up). halfway through, we were stopped by a bunch of rather huge, ill tempered goats. a quick correlation analysis said: livestock-smells-ahaha! we edged our way by the goats and walked down. we eventually reached this shop where for the minor sum of 10 Rs, we could have a whole plate of sheekh kabab or masala kabab or biriyani. negotiations with the stallowners involved us talking in bangla and hindi and him replying in kannada and ultimately hand gestures won the day. we sat down to kabab of the kind which is not served in random expensive places. you have to go there, forget about hygene and all that. and take your own water bottle. and then finish with a up of sweet tea at the stall at the corner of the market, near the bus stop, with a classic mild shared between us.
statesman house: this building near chouringhee you can walk to either from the esplanade, or in our case, on a bunk from college from presidency. kinjal, my esteemed friend is the bloke who knows the ins and outs of calcutta in a way that i do not know. yet. so we walked to the statesman house. where we, impoverished and hungry(this was during my second year in college, when most people experience of leftist revival) stumbled into a roadside dokan which smelled like heaven. beef biriyani in its best form, with a dash of achar(pickle). rubbing shoulders with wannabe journalists dreaming about copy which will sell(statesman house), random dalals("take, take, take, no take to no take, one time to see!") and people employed by random dalals(still trying to equate the city to their mental idea of the chhapra zila, "chhapra zila mein gharwa, to kaun cheez ka darwa?"). the best biriyani i ever had in the holy city. aminia and sabir didnt come close. forget bedwin, bawarchi and the johnny come latelys hich are springing up near colleges in south calcutta. ok,, so my grandma used to make some awesome biriyani, but it wasnt kosher!!!!!
bangalore: three years later. me and debuda hunting shivajinagar for plastic wine glasses. why? cos when jonathan brewster is about to drink elderberry wine from the wine glass, someone comes in and he drops it. or something to that effect. noone had ever seen or heard of elderberry wine before, but we assumed that at thirty feet, the audience wouldnt know the difference between elderberry wine and grape juice from the chowdeswari juice centre. and buri(inspector rathod) had threatened to do nasty things to debuda and me if plastic wine glasses were not forthcoming. so here we were, hunting through the shivajinagar market where on a thursday afternoon, you are likely to hear english, kannada, hindi, tamil, malayalam and the two of us speaking bangla. its fun, everyone curses everyone, and no one seems to mind. until then, i had dismissed bangalore as a hopeless land of vegetarians where rasam was the best substitute for food. till we smelled something, from this somewhat hidden alley. almost like it was an entrance into the magical world. the gazes of the folk walking back and forth seemed to just slide off it. with a cry of "fire burn and cauldron bubble!!!!!" we leapt into the alley.(ok, i just made that up). halfway through, we were stopped by a bunch of rather huge, ill tempered goats. a quick correlation analysis said: livestock-smells-ahaha! we edged our way by the goats and walked down. we eventually reached this shop where for the minor sum of 10 Rs, we could have a whole plate of sheekh kabab or masala kabab or biriyani. negotiations with the stallowners involved us talking in bangla and hindi and him replying in kannada and ultimately hand gestures won the day. we sat down to kabab of the kind which is not served in random expensive places. you have to go there, forget about hygene and all that. and take your own water bottle. and then finish with a up of sweet tea at the stall at the corner of the market, near the bus stop, with a classic mild shared between us.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
attack of the insane idli
who sez that we are the only sentient beings on this planet? i mean, fine everyone from unnamed hindu philosophers to doug adams have pondered about this, but has anyone thought about idlis? the life cycle of a typical southie revolves around the worship of the idli, and its equally inscrutable brethren, the dosa. there are minor deities like sambhar, chutney and rasam which are equally inescapable. so if you have had the fortune to actually observe a genuine tam-brahm dip his(or her) idli into the little bowl of sambhar at approximately that hour when we are struggling with our last dream, you have seen a miracle happen. that is their weakest moment. the ideal time to ask them to cough up a couple of hundred rupees, lend you their scooties and perhaps to pop the question is right when they are contemplating the essential unity of idly and sambhar, the earth and the skies, the soul and the universe.... so the question would be phrased as.. "care to have idlis with me for every morning after this?"... a question, which, i am sure, will bring eternal happiness. and if it doesn't, what the heck, you can go back to chhole bature!!
Monday, February 20, 2006
maths and me
most physicists have a love and hate attitude towards maths. we love it when we get it right, and we hate it when we dont. the anecdotes regarding us and maths and mathematicians are endless and entirely unfunny, except, of course to we of the befuddled thought processes.
once upon a time, back home, in the land of the true believers, one prasad sengupta, a truly talented faculty in our dept was perspiring over the solution of laplace's equation in some hideous geometry. after about two boardfuls, all of us sweating(summer in calcutta) and some of us rendered somnolent tends to comatose by the scratch of chalk and the regular click click click of the rather inadequate fan, he turned to us and proclaimed "lost in a jungle of algebra". words that i remember with laughter and some tears(laplace's equation, is, under thebest of circumstances, a beast).
so, here i am, trying to put together product operators for the last answer to a hw. and product operators have an alarming habit of inflating under each pulse or time evolution. if one keeps track of the signs and the sines and the cosines faithfully,, one will not go wrong, but then one does. and then retracing the path followed by half a page of math is approximatly as tricky as negotiating your way out of a south american temple while the wals are begining to crumble around you.
another thing that only the foolish, the masochistic and the supremely confident attempt is to solve problems for the general case, and then plug in values and get answers. i leave it to your imagination as to what i am. but the sheer joy of seeing all the terms collapse into the one ypou expect is the highest level of happiness that a mathematically challenged individual like me can ever hope to achieve. its like seeing the beast collapse; maybe it was a lucky shot, but who cares!!!!!!
once upon a time, back home, in the land of the true believers, one prasad sengupta, a truly talented faculty in our dept was perspiring over the solution of laplace's equation in some hideous geometry. after about two boardfuls, all of us sweating(summer in calcutta) and some of us rendered somnolent tends to comatose by the scratch of chalk and the regular click click click of the rather inadequate fan, he turned to us and proclaimed "lost in a jungle of algebra". words that i remember with laughter and some tears(laplace's equation, is, under thebest of circumstances, a beast).
so, here i am, trying to put together product operators for the last answer to a hw. and product operators have an alarming habit of inflating under each pulse or time evolution. if one keeps track of the signs and the sines and the cosines faithfully,, one will not go wrong, but then one does. and then retracing the path followed by half a page of math is approximatly as tricky as negotiating your way out of a south american temple while the wals are begining to crumble around you.
another thing that only the foolish, the masochistic and the supremely confident attempt is to solve problems for the general case, and then plug in values and get answers. i leave it to your imagination as to what i am. but the sheer joy of seeing all the terms collapse into the one ypou expect is the highest level of happiness that a mathematically challenged individual like me can ever hope to achieve. its like seeing the beast collapse; maybe it was a lucky shot, but who cares!!!!!!
Sunday, February 12, 2006
the width of the internet
there are moments in life when i feel mathematically challenged. which is a rather common state for a person who puports to be a physics student. but i am not talking about being mathematically challenged while trying to balance my expenses at the end of the month(that is a hopeless task, somewhat on the scale of enforcing peace in certain parts of the world where people try to enforce peace, or like explaining the concept of "work culture" to certain members of that class of parasites known as "homo politicianus" back home), but while thinking about random problem which crop up in life. take this statement made by a friend of mine(name avik). sorry statements: "you can navigate from anysite on the internet to any other by just twelve clicks and you can navigate from any site to a porn site in six clicks". now how do i check the veracity of these statements. one must, you do realise, i hope. there are quite a few interesting phds in network theory here, if one is interested. and if one is willing to risk the possibility of total insanity as a result of trying to check these statements, the experiments themselves should be interesting indeed. and when one got bored, one could write a simple code to start at a designated website and automatically click at random points and then trace the navigation history. should be good work. i have copyright. any filially challenged individuals(read bastards) who steal my idea will suffer the consequences of being eternally cursed.
much obliged
the last time i was badly clautrophobic was about a hundred years ago when i had locked myself in the cupboard. so this is what happened today morning. Y and i were dragging a cart with some stuff upstairs and chose, entirely by happenstance the oldest lift in the building. and halfway up, it stopped moving, the door came slightly open and there were strange creaking noises. we were slightly unsettled. so i called the emergency services, and they said that someone will be over. then the lift started moving down in small jerky steps. we were more than slightly unsettled at this point. i mean, being stuck in a lift is not terrible. there are things you can do, like count all the prime numbers slowly, stare at your fingernails, write that louvv letter which you should have sent, compose your own cenotaph, if you have pen and paper to write on it "I have just proved the Riemann Hypothesis but there isnt enough space to write it down". or something. i might stick with or something.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
insert finger here
from the crashes the system shall be woken
a light from the shadows shall spring
renewed shall be keyboard that was broken
the crownless again shall be king
a light from the shadows shall spring
renewed shall be keyboard that was broken
the crownless again shall be king
Friday, February 03, 2006
public speaking
there is something about standing up and speaking to people with a powerpoint or something which fills me with unease. a feeling of total dread would be better. that way you know where to look. this vague, undefined feeling of messing up is not too good. anyway, so i had to give a talk this thursday. and as expected, i realised that i had to on tuesday. thats me, brilliantly organised and all in place. but i got the powerpoint in time, hating myself for not using prosper like i should. but prosper is like biriyani, takes a lot of time, and usually gives great results. and it is based on tex. and i ended up more or less enunciating clearly, but not quite speaking like i usually do. and i have to thank the audience for not tearing into me. i know that people at iisc would not have been so nice. after unprepared talks, the speaker's friends are usually called in for the last rites. so i lived and walked through somewhat chastened. the next one will be better.
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