Dorothy returns to Oz

                                                Dorothy had never seen so many cars. And these were all strange cars, totally unfamiliar to  Dorothy . She couldn’t make out whether the cars were old or new, for although they seemed to have this rich shiny coat of paint,  at the same time they made this squeaky creaking noise. It seemed to Dorothy that these were rookie machines continuously pretending to be wise and experienced by squeaking. Come to think of it as Dorothy strained her ears it seemed that all the cars were making the same squeak. So much so that the entire highway as far as she could see was ringing with the same synchronized hymn. Presently a most grumpy looking policeman came up to Dorothy , most of the cars on seeing the  patrol car seemed to shrink , while a few tried to wish the policeman  a “good morning”. The policeman took no notice of this and promptly pulled up in front of Dorothy. “But you are not a car ”, he said gruffly. To this Dorothy had no answer and she said simply, “I am Dorothy sir”.The policeman stood for a while staring at Dorothy before much to her astonishment he whistled sharply. And out of the blue a yellow taxi pulled up in front of them. The policeman shouted something in a brisk music-like language and disappeared. The yellow cab blinked blankly at Dorothy before asking her “Where do u want to go?” .  Dorothy replied , “To Kansas if you please”. The car scratched its hood with its left front wheel and said  “ I could take u to Emerald city .Maybe someone there knows about Kansas”. Dorothy decided anywhere would be better than the middle of this strange highway and hopped on. The taxi was much older than the smooth shiny cars around them and rustily trudged along. “ Where is this place ”, inquired Dorothy . “ Why don’t u know this is Education Highway ” ,came the prompt reply. Seeing that this didn’t seem to impress Dorothy the wheezy taxi added , “ Well all the finest and most elegant young cars of the land come to this place and are  trained  to be fine machines of transport by em officers here. For four months they travel up this long and testing highway so that they can get their competence certificate at the end”.To Dorothy this seemed such a waste of all the enormous activity and energy around her. “ But if all they do is move forward when are these cars taught ?”. The old taxi shrugged and said ,“ I am an old hand . Things have changed around here , there are too many cars these days to be taught . Once the great  makers would send their best and most ingeniously designed machines . Today hand – made custom cars are hard to find .Most here are un-innovative trivial machines mass – produced in some village up west ”. “ Are you a student too??”. “Well I got my competence certificate from a much humbler highway than this. I came here to get further training . But training on this crowded highway is very rare. So they made me into a taxi.” Dorothy felt sorry for this dear old car and said , “You are a most nice car I find” .The taxi blushed  .

                                                  Presently the car reached the top of a hill and a most breathtaking scene awaited them. Below in the valley there stretched miles and miles of untamed  soft green paddy fields pierced only by the snakelike outline of Education Highway with a multitude of colored cars plying on her. The paddy plants seemed so jovial and carefree to Dorothy in sharp contrast to the machine-like single minded ambition of the cars around her. Dorothy  poked her head out of the cab’s window to smell the green fields and feel their freedom . Realizing this the cab accelerated a bit  to allow Dorothy to enjoy the playful breeze in her long hair. For the first time since she had landed in Oz  Dorothy stopped worrying about getting back home and smiled like a sweet young girl of her age should. No one but the taxi seemed to notice Dorothy’s joy. The other cars were unobvious to the frolic of the wind or the dance of the paddy .All they seemed to care about was the dull thud of their rolling wheels on the cold grey asphalt. Another queer   thing that struck Dorothy was that all these cars had  this  odd box in front of their gear-boxes. Dorothy inquired about this. “ Oh those are radios old girl. Our Education Highway provides the best spread of frequencies in the whole of the land. Everyone’s always tuned in”.. “Why are u not  tuned in then??” , asked Dorothy . “Oh I am an old cabby . I don’t get so much culture”. This whole radio business fascinated Dorothy. Anyway the car moved on through the beautiful country-side. Dorothy enjoyed the ride as the taxi struggled up every new hill she felt an excitement about what lay  beyond it. The other cars didn’t appear to have any trace of this curiosity or inquisitiveness; they were too engrossed with their little radios. In fact Dorothy had the distinct impression that they were not even listening to the broadcast, just flickering through the great array of channels available to them.

                                              Dorothy was having too much fun to worry about   this much . She basked in the last glow of the late afternoon sun as the day slowly gave away to a starry night. It was a few hours since the sun had set . The taxi pulled into a multi –storied car park just off the high-way. At one time this had been a most romantic little building looking out over the vast plains like a solemn guardian. But over the years many ill-designed floors had been hastily added to it to meet demands .So Dorothy found herself looking at a sad, forlorn and grim building. A couple of the "other cars " came out all sleek and shiny sneering at Dorothy’s cab. “What are u doing here?” , they said “ This is our car-park .Clear off”. Dorothy rolled down the window and screamed at them, “What a beastly thing to say , You are very rude!!”. The cars looked at Dorothy with interest. “Why are u riding that piece of crap. Come ride with us”. Before Dorothy could retort the taxi briskly turned away , they drove for a couple of miles before pulling up beside the high-way.  “Don’t worry ”, assured the cab “ It wont rain tonight we can stay here. Those car parks are very stuffy anyway. You can switch to one of those cars tomorrow if  you like .They have ac’s and leather seats. All girls round here prefer them” . Dorothy snorted “Those arrogant beasts!! Wow girls round here must  be really ugly to have to go about  in glamorous cars just for image”. With that she rested her head on the seat, they might not be leather but they were cozy. What more could a girl want?

THE VSRP EXPERIENCE

                                    Melancholy is a very deep feeling; at least it feels deep right now. It’s different from sadness. One feels sad when one’s dealt a heavy blow in life. While sadness is circumstantial, one could say melancholy is more a child of reflection. It’s a mood thing .It’s 12:30 am on the 9^th of July and am all packed, sitting alone in a south Bombay apartment. Waiting for the cab I ordered to arrive (I hope it arrives, god only knows how I’ll get to the airport in this rain if it doesn’t).I am the last one to check out , all my flat mates have already left, the whole apartment is bare. In an hours time after I leave no-one would guess looking round this place that just 24 hours ago 3 people called this their home. I felt so helpless today as the day slipped by and I had to say goodbye to so many things that I had for the last two months taken for granted. These two months have been wonderful. I can honestly say looking back that I do not regret a single thing I did this summer.

                                         Many people want to be mathematicians. But undergrads like me have very little idea about how researchers in the field work. Mathematics is both a simple and complex subject. Simple in the sense most of the questions mathematicians strive to answer are simple, but the methods to solve them are very technical and require a lotta knowledge. Seduced by the simplicity of a question  many a novice mathematician often tries to tackle them. Edison attributed his remarkable success as a scientist to “99% perspiration and 1% inspiration”. To a young mathematician trying to do ‘research’ this statement feels most flawed .He almost always finds himself needing new inspiration to get himself out of the hole his last idea led him into. That’s why the interaction with my guide over the last two months has been such an eye opener. She has taught me to squeeze more out of one stroke of inspiration as opposed to keep searching for new ones. The 99% perspiration part in mathematics is reading stuff. It’s far more fun just to think bout a problem but you are unlikely to get very far by yourself alone. Newton once said ‘If I have seen further than most it’s because I have stood on the shoulders of giants’. I guess no one, no matter how tall can keep jumping on his own two feet and expect to see new horizons.

                            Anyway all that is history,  my guide told me “best of luck and have a good life “ and walked away yesterday.  Today was a day of many partings. Two months once seemed such a long time and now its down to the last hour. But then again it was long enough for me to get horribly attached to this place. I really badly want to get out of this flat now, its emptiness just makes me feel even more empty inside . I know it’s stupid to think life is empty because of all these people I am leaving behind. For most of my acquaintances here have been made over the past two months itself.  How remarkable that bonds created over such a small time can be so strong and yet how ironic that those bonds so strong can be severed so easily.

                                                    I must be a super optimist for almost all the people I have met in my life I have found to be very nice.  So it amazes me  to learn of all the malicious and evil things people do in this country everyday, maybe I have just not seen the big mean world out there yet. It’s raining like hell outside. This is really typical of my entire Bombay trip. Whenever I need  to go out it always pours  in contrast to the bright sunny skies marking days when I stay indoors. Looking back I’ll have good memories of Tifr. People my age are mostly the same no matter where they’ve grown up. Hell I evn met this German chick who was remarkably like any normal shy girl you might happen to meet at a bus- stand in any part of this country. Before this I always used to imagine European chicks to be wild hippy types, again maybe have just not  met enough of em to comment. Seems strange that tomorrow ill be back home instead of  on that blue bus as usual .The bad-ass driver(mad-ass is more like it but have really grown fond of the bloke) swearing at everything from lorry to rickshaw, Ashish ji busy with his hair, Tanaji Pal sitting eyes closed but always insisting he aint sleeping . Ever since I have joined college home never seems like home. Whenever I stay for more than a few days at our Kolkata apartment I feel trapped and restless. It’s in places like Tifr  where am around people my age does it feel natural. Indeed over eight weeks the whole place has become so familiar. Walking down the corridors, meeting and chatting with vsrps or phds on the lift or in front of the library, watching the waves on the shore, glimpses of that girl I had a crush on from the first week, Ashish ji who hated his guide, Komal who hated dogs and of course Moumonti who hated me, Ved Prakash Roy, Aditya , Apoorv , Abhash , AC , tanaji and many more. It’s all come to such an abrupt ending  ( to illustrate exactly how abrupt the last thing I said to one Arundhati Krishnan was , ‘Wow you are wearing half pants’ .She replied ‘I call em shorts but half pants will do’ and that was it). Outside down in the street the night is wet , dark and lonely .But a new dawn will break soon and Bombay will wake up busy as ever. I wont be here, nor will the blue bus, the boring vsrp seminars and many more of the things that were part of my daily routine this summer. I close my eyes to let the feeling wash over me; Mumbai the liveliest city in India seems so lonely up here in this flat. This moment of my life is like that last episode of Friends where they wrap it all up like I have packed all my stuff up right now. All that remains to complete that analogy is for me to run to the airport and get together with  my crush at the last moment.

My last hour is almost up. Time just doesn’t hold still  as I have found out all a day today. She is relentless always pushing forward and sweeping everybody along with her. You shouldn’t be like her never looking back. Yes there are always new roads ahead but once in a while you must stop and take a deep breadth, remember the good times that bring a smile to your face. And these past two months here i'll certainly remember as good times. 

a girl with kaleidoscope eyes

As a believer in god i must comment that the big guy upstairs has a definite sense of irony which is evident in almost every crook and nook of this little world of his and particularly  so here and now today. Well excuse me if  i am seeming vague here lemme give u a short background so that u may understand why i am feeling this way and which will also explain the seemingly lack of correlation between the title and my opening lines. It all begins with my absolute love for pretty chicks , what as the  frustrated and wise "junta" of kgp would describe most elegantly and tastefully as "despo-apa”. About a week ago on my first day here at tifr I saw this really pretty girl(people who know me will be going "OH BOY" right now ,as for everyone else well am most flattered if u don’t know me and are still reading my blog), I mean she has these lovely brown eyes, long black hair and the most charming of smiles, just picture that absolute prototype Indian girl that the department of tourism  puts in it’s "Incredible India" posters. Somehow back in the day when i read 5 point someone i used to picture Neha exactly like this .So let’s call her Neha cuz i still as of yet don’t know her name(Again people who know me won’t be surprised ).So naturally as any boy would do after first seeing the lovely miss Neha i started to outline a plot to try and woo her(which you judging by the fact i still haven't got to know her name can guess is not going too well),am not really obsessed with the idea of possessing every pretty chick i see. This might  (i)come as a shock to those who see me  as an exemplary example of the typical frust kgpian or (ii) directly contradict my statement that i was devising a plan to woo Neha. About the later of these two i should explain that deep down inside  i almost always know that these little plans are doomed  and i mostly devise them because it is an awfully enjoyable pass time. But one must at the onset of an endeavour define what shall be graded as passable success at the end. Well as with all my previous crushes with Neha(doesn’t it sound so wonderfully personal when i call her Neha)too, if i am able to develop a reasonable friendship with her i should call it a success. Sure id curse any boyfriend shell turn up with later , but this wouldn’t eat away at me like a poisonous parasite that theologists  call envy. I would be most happy and satisfied to be acquainted and friends with someone so startlingly and delicately beautiful. Ishan Nag and Soumen Koley might call this "lack of balls " but fuck u both. I am far better with gals than either of u.
                                                  Well maybe a team like Ghana would be satisfied to reach the quarter finals of the world cup but that doesn’t mean that they don’t dream of winning the whole god dam tournament. So today as i by this incredible stroke of luck find myself sitting beside Neha i can’t help but be gripped by this great sense of optimism(This paper too is borrowed from her, first time i spoke to her smiles my plan is progressing).Hell even that pesky guy she always seems to hang around with is sitting in the front, I hate that boy. Let me explain yesterday motivated by the old saying "keep your friends close and enemies closer " i struck up a conversation with that boy. I quite liked the chap  he is quite knowledgeable, enthusiastic about his subject physics, polite and all , most likable .I felt  to be honest kinda like karna when after years of blindly hating Arjun he comes to know that arjun is his brother. But the worst thing is he’s the farthest thing from a despo that one can imagine and if there’s one thing i can’t do is stop being a despo!!  Anyways today he’s not my problem so to hell with him. Now as i sat excitedly awaiting the usual boring physics lecture during which i could have my moment in the sun with Neha, disaster strikes. The bloody lecture in which i am in now is quite interesting .Hell, instead of looking around bored she’s sitting absorbed by the speaker, i don’t think she’s even noticed i am here!!! "Be careful what u wish for" is what they say and not without reason, yesterday id kill for a variation from these monotonous talks and sitting here right now i yarn for those mindless and endless stream of jargon. It was about ten minutes through the lecture that i borrowed the paper and started writing about fate and this unfortunate turn of events. Now what , what this needs is an ending  ,in those chick flicks invariably the girl falls for the geek in the end but  experience somehow makes me sceptical about  that fairy-tale ending materializing. There she is stroking her hair, such deep brows she has now. She’s smiling at some joke the speaker made. What I’d give to be on stage and telling that funny physics joke  to be the centre of her  attention.... What was i telling you guys ah yes  maybe this aint my day in the sun with her but its progress, lemme enjoy this and then its back to scheming and plotting...... .

Beauty and the Beast

                            Nothing in this world is more important than beauty, any science no matter how useful will always be judged on its beauty. Something ugly no matter how useful is uninspiring for instance Columbus’s discovery of America is not a beautiful thing but a simple tune from a blind beggar maybe so .Beauty may be anything a girl, an idea , a dream,a vision ,an inspiration something that is amazing ,raw in it’s creativity that makes the creator feel incredible, unstoppable like sunny Deol in the last scene of Border! That feeling is the greatest addiction on earth and is what drives a creator to create, try if u can to imagine how Isaac Newton felt when he saw an apple fall and then saw everything! If you see a Van Gough painting you will see technique and skill in which he brings to life the curvatures and brightness of a scene, but I bet any arts student will easily be able to master those techniques. Technique in art is what knowledge is in science, beauty requires something more than knowledge, the beauty of a Van Gough painting is in that glow of a lantern in a dark room just by looking at which u can feel the heat of it’s surface or  that feeling of a calm European village beneath a clear starry night  or the loneliness of a prisoner in a dark dreary dungeon, there is something Van Gough does that makes his paintings  alive ,and that no trick or technique can teach.

                                 Mathematics is called the queen of sciences, truly if man were a chess player and the different disciplines of sciences were his pieces mathematics would be the queen. Well for one the queen is a symbol of beauty and perfection like Helen was to the Greeks , also the queen is a  one of a kind unique and quite  powerful  but beyond all this when as a boy I used to play chess the most  interesting thing was how it’s  loss would thoroughly demoralize me, often I used to loose sight of the whole game and obsess solely on protecting the queen. It is this kind of dangerous obsession that one associates with mathematics. A mathematical proof is an extremely creative exercise and often a very frustrating one yet that feeling one gets when through an idea , a simple idea borne from curiosity ,imagination and reasoning one can create something perfectly beautiful is worth it all. Many people  often talk about something called god complex, god is and is  only a creator, a creator of among many things beauty and I see nothing wrong or arrogant of any other creator of  something beautiful to fancy himself as god.

                  Today as I sit in a lecture of solid state chemistry by people of tifr who are quite knowledgeable about the subject I just feel it’s all ugly. The questions these researchers ask ( which is the curiosity the main driving force of any science) are not very unobvious as in they do not require amazing vision, and then they conduct experiments to decide these questions. I am not saying it does not take intelligence to conduct these experiments nor can I deny that these works benefit mankind hugely but these are more like mundane results of hard work and diligence rather than glorious fruits of human intellect. Erdos himself talked about certain mathematical proofs which he thought were so artistic that they were fit to be included in god’s own book , later a most remarkable book titled ‘ Proofs From The Book’ was written regarding these. An intelligent person need not be creative(However I believe all creative people are intelligent based on which I once argued to Anish Nag  that Van Gough would have been an excellent mathematician)I guess you could say  an intelligent person  as the cliché goes in management these days  sees the bigger picture while a dreamer(as john Lenon called them) sees a different picture. And now as this endless stream of power point presentation laden with sheet after sheet of meticulously organized experimental data comes to an end , I feel glad that outside in the world beauty still lives and in my heart I raise a toast to the creations and creators of all things beautiful  mathematical or otherwise.

the boy who lived

I am writing this in the early hours of the 14 th of may,2011. Setting out to describe the extradinary events of yesterday  the biggest challenge i face is to reflect the feeling felt by the 90 million(almost 91 million is the actual population  but i guess nearly 1 million did vote for the left) people living in west bengal. Hence i select the heading , the boy who lived is the title of the very first chapter of the very first harry potter book .It's about a dull, grey Tuesday when unknown to the dursleys the strangest of things are about to take place for news is spreading of how a one year old boy has vanquished lord Voldermolt. What I want to do is potray that feeling of excitement and anticipation of a secret community standing  on the threshhold of a new dawn that Rowling steadily and neatly potrays in that famous opening chapter. I guess much will be written about today by pens much worthier than mine but this is not a new dawn of optimism ,i feel it"s more like no one knows what we are heading for but surely it has to be better than what we are leaving behind.It is not the light of dawn that lightens our hearts but the surity that the  night is gone that makes our hearts leap.Today on this second friday of May when west bengal and her peole bore witness to this great triumph of democracy over tyranny what strikes me most is how frail the cpm look.If uve grown up in west bengal uve always felt that aura of invincibility about that sthaniyo cpm counsilor and the cadres who surround him.Its as if u know here is a man that no law justice or jury can ever touch , that inefficient , arrogant  government officer who looks at you with spite if you expect him to do his job .Where is that all conqering cpm party that once beleived that they could actually burn a young girl alive and nothing would touch them , or those pary thugs against whom no fir could ever be lodged at any police station in bengal.I think everyone saw this result  coming but now that it is here i cannot beleive after thirty four years of tyranny how vulnerable the cpm detached from their police protection and huge army of civil servents have become overnight.In one day that era of mass rigging and booth jamming is over the only way for them to come back is through the people"s love and somehow i cannot see this band of promoters with their pockets lined with black money and hands  tainted with innocent blood led by failing old men ever getting there.Its almost 3:30 am a new day is about to break ,tomorrow people will wait for that newspaper to reach the tables, gk books will be reprinted about who the chiesminister of west bengal is and up and down the state people will raise a toast to "the woman who lived".

chariots of fire

Chariots of Fire for those unfortunate enough not to know(and your also unfortunate enough to be so bored that ur reading my blog woah double whammy) is a 1981 British movie that one four Oscars including best picture,best screenplay and best original music score .The movie keeps popping up in any best sport movie list u might see on the net and i mean good lists not ones with Chak De India and Lagaan at the top.And today after wasting 100 bucks and three hours watching source code(well it wasnt a total waste but heh am not so bored that ill be discussing those stuff in a blog!!!)i came back home craving for cinema magic( regarding magic of other sorts i had enough of that today ,sorry cant help but brag) and settled down to watch this lil gem from 1981 .I love sports movies sure its the same sentu of the underdog beating the big bully but this one"s a little more than that.For one it does the whole thing with class and authenticity, secondly the music man where do English movies come up with these tunes from Titanic to Casablanca ,Sound of music to Lion King and this one believe me is  as good as the rest in the list above.Thirdly it truly captures the spirit of the Olympic games  in all its glory .Let me explain the movie depicts the simultaneous lives of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams two of the stars of the 1924 Paris Olympics though many of u may not be familiar with the names (though u are familiar with the idiot who scored 15 runs of 5 balls and played some ugly shot which he calls the nut cracker or something to get an unexpected boundary in the ipl last night !!!common india whats wrong with you ,the biggest ratings this summers been Ekta Kapoor  and the ipl  ).Its about (back to the movie)the heart of the middle distant runner and the nerve of the sprinter as Harold says one may push guts,bully em but u can hold nerves.Harold is a Jewish Cambridge law undergraduate who is determined to respond to anti-semantic feelings towards him by "running em off their feet" .The other main protagonist is one Eric Liddell who is a Scottish protestant missionary with a gift for running .And thus the movie flows and comes to  life around the methods and dreams of these two extraordinary  gentlemen finally terminating  in the twin endings of their respective events.The two standout scenes of the movie were one when Harold"s coach who was too nervous to go to the stadium  is standing in his hotel  balcony staring at the distant Olympic stadium and finally sees the union jack rising to the top in the distance. A  look of amazement in his face as he whispers choking  with emotion "by jove harold u did it " .The second scene is of course Erics 400 m final . A flier as the american coach puts it to describe eric is one who sprints out of the blocks with fury but has no energy left to finish.Most great films have their moment of magic like the  scene of escape in  Shaw-shank Redemption , or the ghetto scene in Schindler"s list or the the final light saber battle in Revenge of the Sith  moments in cinema which in a natural , mesmorising , spontaneous way capture the very essence of the movie whether it be the taste of freedom of a prisoner or the color of hope of a little girl in red or the despair,and acceptance of tragedy , this was one such moment .As Eric pushes forward  its that moment in which whether it be because of the music , or because of the way he says in that Scottish ascent  "he also made me faast" or the look of pride in the eye of his brother u realize tonight will be the night when the flier wont stop flying and he runs like the wind.