Warrior's guide in the battlefield...

Disclaimer: This is my views based on my understanding of things I read.


Warrior's guide in the battlefield might be a possible title if the Bhagavad Gita is written today instead of it being writen in 3000 BC. The Gita (Bhagavad Gita), one of the most coveted religious texts in Hinduism is the counsel that Krishna offers to Arjuna (the archer) in the battlefield of Kurukshetra.

Arjuna has to fight this enemies, but faces a great distress before fighting because the enemies consists of his teacher, other persons whom he has greatest respects for. Arjuna faces a lot of conflicts thinking about fighting his Guru who has taught him archery. Arjuna wants to drop his weapons and run away from the battlefield because of the same. The Gita is about how krishna counsels arjuna to fight and helping him overcome his internal conflicts.

Why is it important to me? I am not an warrior and I am not gonna fight any battle in my life time. So why should I care about somebody's counsel to a warrior in a battlefield.

I think that the battlefield is a metaphor (or a simili dont know which is correct), and we are the warriors. To give examples, to a basketball player the court he plays is the battlefield, to a student his school is the battlefield, this could be extended in every possible walks and dimensions. The whole idea of Gita (as i understand) is to do our duties in the battlefield with discipline and not quitting the battlefield at any time because of our inner conflicts. So if I were a student (warrior) I must perform the duties in my school (battlefield) so on and soforth for all walks of life.

(Often) We stumble upon conflicts and problems in performing duties in our battlefield, there are times that we face so much stress that we opt to quit the battlefield as we have some problem or the other in performing duties. This spirtual text is for Arjuna in us not to quit the battlefield but to stay in it and perform our duties with discipline.

On a relevant note, I happened to read what Vivek Paul has said in reply for being asked what is the secret of success (i have paraphrased the question )...Paul replies that having large goals and having the strictest discipline in working towards it is the secret of sucess...

The Gita ends with this words...

"Where Krishna is the lord of discipline,
and Arjuna is the archer,
there do fortune, victory, abundance,
and mortality exist, so I think"

I see a lot of same thing being said in Vivek Paul's reply and in the last few lines of the gita and I think it is totally cool way to end the awesome book.

This is what I think how the Gita does touch upon Existentialism, here is a previous post for the context and background.

The Gita speaks all the time that in a battlefield a man must perform his duties with discipline, but it never explains what the duties of the man in the battlefield is...which may hint subtly that man is free to choose his duties but must perform the duty he chose with utmost discipline which correlates well with the ideologies of existentialism...

The God of abstract things...

Just a (wierd) thought...what would be the god of abstract things... with due apologies to Arundhathi Roy ! ;)

	C++ class		an abstract base class
	a COM object		IUnkown
If I were	Linux	God to me is	init process
	A CPU		Transistor
	Mathematics		Equation
	A bug		the developer

His day...

He is supposed to be one the most valuble asset to the company, but is never thanked enough for his duties. People know his worth only if things dont go on well, though he may work day and night to keep things runnning smoothly..Today (07/29) is system administrator's day....Atlast the guy who truly deserves a day for himself gets a day.

After Thoughts:
I think Feb 15th is a good day for ex-girlfriend /ex-boyfriend's day ...Because you may have a chance to pair up with your ex's if your Feb 14th plan did not work...It is a nice chance to rekindle lost romance right? ;-) What say folks?

The Stranger

This post was triggered because of this article by Lazygeek

I have enjoyed reading some books and even after years after reading find it absolutely wonderful recalling some aspects of the book. Some books were wonderful just reading it and I donot have special liking afterwards. But there is one and only book which I HATED while reading, felt pathetic after reading but after a few months I find that book absolutely wonderful.

The Stranger (L'etranger) by Albert Camus is that book which i detested while reading but enjoy every aspect of it afterwards...I did not read the French version which is the original by Camus, but a translated one. Moi francias est ne pas tres bon, ok you know why I read the le translation ;)

The book was suggested to me by my friend who believes in existentialism...He did not tell me what existentialism was but handed me this book and told me to read.

The story revolves around a man called Mersault. Mersault is dull, dispassionate and has a no ambition in him, that is the kinda character that is portrayed. He describes his mom's death with a least bit of passion and remorse...The book starts off with Mersault's description of his mom's death, "Mom died today or may be the yesterday I dont know" clearly showing a lack of attachment. He has a girlfriend but does not feel anything for her. He shoots a guy for no apparent reason and does not even feel a slightest bit of remorse for the person whom he killed. The entire story revolves around Mersault and what happens to him.

I felt really pathetic after reading half of the story and wanted to drop the book, but I kept on going to see what happens to Mersault...Ok, i am not a moron to give away the ending..But I felt really pathetic after reading the book and wondered why my friend gave me that book to read....I did not look into to see what existentialism was either....

After a few months I casually came across this term (existentialism) and to my found the concept absolutely wonderful. That is the philosophy I always believed in not knowing any concept that such a concept already existed.

Existentialism has varied meanings these days and various people have various interpretations of the same...But I like this interpretation the best...Man is responsible for his own actions and behaviours, he is free to choose what he wants to be.Another popular phrase which I like is existence preceeds essence, which is "meant to mean" that there is no predefined essence to humanity but the one he (a human) creates by his existence.

After I read this thing about existentialism my whole view of The Stranger changed like I was having a breath of fresh air...I think it is one of the classics I have ever read...The beauty of the book is that it is Camus view of existentialism as is..There is no interpretation attached to it. So if one were to read that book he will hate that book to the core, but if you know the philosophy after or before reading the book the entire experience is amazing.

Existentialism is not new chapter to Indian philosophy, it is has been already said in The Bhavagad Gita but in a very very subtle way...(will talk of it in the future as this post is getting longer...)

Polynomiography

If you find mathematics dull, hard to imagine; there is a breath of fresh air for you called Polynomiography which could make things look interesting for you. If you love math then there is more to explore in polynomiography....

Polynomiography is a new field of math, which deals with visualizing polynomials....





The above figure is not created by an artist but it is a polynomial visualization of roots of a polynomial. Cool aint it? ;)

Polynomiography a new field discovered by Dr. Bahman Kalantari at Rutgers is a confluence of math, art and comp science. One of the important applications of this field is to make Math even more interesting from a education point of view (to school kids), other application could be to create new design cards, animations and visualization... If you are interested you can check more info here, here is a SIGGRAPH paper whichis worth reading !!

There is software in this site which is fun to play with.

The Species ( Part I )

Thought I would come up with some definitions for the species called Grad Student ! (based on personal experiences may not be applicable to all ...)
Here goes,

#1 Grad student is a nocturnal species that haunts around the lab at unearthly hours....

Is a species that,

#2 Starts its research when it is reprimanded by its advisor in its dreams

#3 Starts working on a report at 6 AM for a meeting at 10 AM

#4 Starts assignments a few hours before deadline

#5 Hunts the campus for free food

#6 Worries about its thesis atleast once a day

#7 "At times" not sure why it is in grad school

#8 Doesnt enroll for classes scheduled before 11 Am or classes scheduled on Friday

#9 Feels liberated on Thursday evenings (refer #8)

#10 Hates Monday mornings

#11 that is either a 'TA which hates grading and wants to be an RA' or an 'RA that wants to teach'

#12 Is addicted to Caffine

#13 Writes such useless blogs when it has lots of work to do ....

*Gotta fix that bug !!*

Why?

Two posts in a day...Excuse moi but I can't "not post" this one today!

I checked out Raaga today and there was a movie called Ponniyin Selvan, the immediate thing that came to my mind was the rich tamil literature by Kalki and Manirathnam's stalled project. I thought maybe he is going to make the movie, then I checked out the songs to note that it is just yet another 'love' Tamil movie...

I was quite surprised that this title did not trigger any major controversy (or it did and I did not know of).... I remember all of last three Kamal's movie had controversy because of title, there were a group from a caste protesting for Chandiyar Virumandi; doctors protesting for "Vasool" Raja (proving an old tamil adage Kutram ulle nenju kurukum) and Ramdoss protesting for Mumbai Express (for no particular reason). So going by that trend and even otherwise they have all "Legitimate" reason to protest for using one of the rich text in Tamil literature to produce a yet-another-kollywood-classic with no relevance to the literature....

Why is that people dont protest when it comes to Tamil literature?
(if they had a major protest let me know I will admit my ignorance and remove this post...)

Maybe people will protest if they produce a Matinee-scene-movie with 'Silapathigaaram' as a title? (maybe not I dont think anybody cares) !

*This post is my way of protesting against Kollywood for besmirching Kalki's works*

Silicon Egg

Lytton Plaza, Palo Alto now has a new attraction, a silicon Egg...a monument to honour the birth place of silicon valley.Designed by Adrina Varella (a multi media desginer), this 7 m ft Silicon egg is made from styrofoam and printed circuit boards.

Egg is nerdy aint it? This is an ideal location for a desi snap :)


Lyton Plaza, Palo Alto  

Oscar Pistorius

Oscar Pistorius, an 18 year old South African school kid set a record in 2004 Athens meet for 200m. What z the big deal you may ask, only that he doesnt have two legs (it was in 2004 Athens Paralympic meet) and he did 200m in 21.97 secs. He improved his previous timing of 24.8 secodns in March 2004 to 21.97 secs in September. He is the "fastest athelete with no legs" !! Pretty impressive uh?

Dont let Speilberg or Tom Cruise read this post 'cause they will be tempted to make an "emotional drama" out of it (yes you guessed it right I hate War of the Worlds).

It was not all that emotional in the article I read, it did not speak of the battles that Oscar had to go through in claiming this spot. It was oriented towards material science aspect of it, IEEE Spectrum guys gotta write that way ;) !



So much for his disabilities people have started questioning if he should be allowed to run in races? The prostheses he uses are made of carbon composites have amazing properties of variable stifness and strength which seem to be disadvantegous to other atheletes. Though the protheses returns only 95% of the energy exerted compared to 200% by our muscles authorities have already started questioning about the calculation of the energy and questioning if he should be allowed to compete with normal people.

To qualify in Olympics the lower range for an athelete in 200m category is 20.75 secs...The world record for the same is 19.32 secs. Will Oscar be able to improve his time from 21.97 to qualify, win or set a new world record? Time will answer that question.

But the bigger questions are
- Will he allowed to compete even if he wins?
- Is his disability an advantage? (Ironical? or rather oxymoronic..."advantageous disability" ;) )..


What do you guys think? Should he be allowed to compete with normal atheletes?

I pause to appreciate ...

This post is about a song Bhavayami Gopalabalam by MS Subbulakshmi which completely owns me everytime I listen to it. It is as if someone has hit a PAUSE button on me that I completely stop everything I do to listen to it.

I heard the song countless times and i find a deep sense of involvement appreciating the rythm, the gamgams(subtle variations while signing...). I did not know what the lyrics meant because it is in Sanskrit..I was very curious to know the meaning of the song so got the help of my friend Shencottah to get the translation. When I heard the song after knowing the meaning my appreciation now is at a new level...

I am not going to give the translations here but paint a little picture of what the lyrics mean. The song is composed in Yamuna Kalyani one of the soothing and melliflous raagams. The song "Yamunai aatrile" - Dalapathi is composed in the same raagam.

This song is composed by a saint Annamacharya, who is an ardent devotee of Krishna. He has written a lot of songs in praise of Krishna.

Bhavayami Goplabalam is about the grace of a young radiant toddler who is learning to walk. The toddler is none other than infant Krishna. He is wearing jewellery which has a lot of tiny bells which produces jingling sounds each time he takes a step. The kid takes unsteady steps each and every time and which inturn produces pleasant sounds from his ornaments. His unsteady steps is full of grace and reminds one of gentle dance moves. It is divine to watch the young radiant kid doing this act.

When I hear the song with this picture painted in my mind my invovlement in other things I do while listening to this song approaches "zero" and i totally stop to appreciate this song..

I think the beauty of "more than usual" gamagams in this song actually symbolizes the unsteady walk that kid might take. The part where MS extends the gamgams in this particular line "caTula naTanA................... " is mind blowing.

Is the divinity in the song due to the Kalyani (base) in the song or is it the voice of MS or the lyrics? It is hard to answer !

Here is the link from music india online incase you want to listen.

Deep Impact

Deep Impact is the latest mission from NASA, NASA fired an impactor (satellite) at the comet Tempel 1 as a part of a scientific mission.

Is it some for some costly fireworks and some
cool pictures?. I don't hope so...The claim is that this probe could help scientists understand our universe better.

Well, whether we understand our universe better or not somebody is worried about her horoscope changing because of the comet's damage.

Whatever it is, I think that trying to understand the universe through some scientific experiments is like looking into room through a keyhole and trying to extrapolate what is inside. This link (slower because of applet) gives an idea of how big universe could be... this is what a simulation of a spec of the universe looks like. I cannot imagine how big it actually is.

Will be able to ever understand how universe began? Are the scientists trying to do something futile? Especially with respect to trying to understand universe and stuff, science has been a sequence of fallacies. If I were born ages back I would have believed that earth is flat and that earth is the centre of the solar system. Now I know it is not true anymore. So maybe
whatever we discover today might not hold good after several generations to come [.][!][?]