Perfect

-
In the midst of din, the perfect silence;
in the midst of cacaphony, the perfect song;
in the midst of friends, the perfect isolation;
in the midst of wisdom, the perfect ignorance;
in the midst of certainty, the perfect confusion;
in the midst of mirth, the perfect solitude;
in the midst of inebriation, the perfect sobriety;
in the midst of vigour, the perfect lassitude;
in the midst of failure, the perfect success;
in the midst of sleep, the perfect awakening;
in the midst of ruin, the perfect beginning;
in the midst of life, the perfect death.
--

Cooking

-
Cooking often gives me a lesson in the way in which "real" science must be done...some basic theory, some experience, some experimentation, some intuition...
How much of each to use no one really knows... Yet with time each cook discovers for himself a sort of mix that works for him...

An Unequal Game

-
What is me,
I ponder, ponder...fail to grasp...

A summation of faculties and senses..?
A package of genes battling to survive..?
A set of values, principles and ideals..?
Or maybe just a combination of circumstances and conditions...

My own self, its mysteries and depths,
Its enigmas, novelties and vicissitudes,
I know not, I fully comprehend not...

Yet in this lifetime...in this universe,
This obscure, perpetually-rebelling rag-tag army of me is all I possess,
It is all I have on my side in the game;
This game of pleading, coaxing, bullying or tricking Reality, whatever works,
Into revealing the “meaning of it all”...

Its like riding a bicycle

-
If you ride too slow you lose balance; if you ride too fast you lose control.

Notes to myself

-
If you see any proof in fundamental maths, you'll see a portion of it is argued and the remaining gap is supposed to flow out without ambiguity from fundamental truths or axioms (mathematicians use the terms trivial or obvious for these steps).
Now most mathematicians have undergone similar training, so what flows from axioms and what needs to be proved is fairly uniformly understood in the tribe. But it is a result of their traning...because remember, there is no way of proving/disproving axioms.
Many of these same theorems are proved in other areas like physics or finance or computer science and people in those areas often prove what is taken to be axioms in maths (and take as axioms what mathematicians prove)!

So what I assume to be true and what I argue to create higher truths is often just dependent on how I have been indoctrinated!

Sorry, there must be a better way of proving things.

As of this stage, I find the physical way of proving stuff (like in physics or finance) much more appealing because what these physical scientists take as axioms can atleast be verified experimentally. But it is very haphazard and area dependent... (what physicists take as axioms is often different from what people in finance take as axioms even if they are referring to the same basic phenomenon like stochasticity).

But there must be some way of regularizing this physical approach to mathematics..

Misc.

-
Bad math problems are "notation play" problems. Stress on the form rather than content. (Bad)^complement = (Good)
I'm bad at solving bad problems. Get me good ones.

Note to myself

-
Must never use the eraser. It is as important for people to know my mistakes and wrong turns as it is to know the final successes..
Thats the only way they can build on it..

Moi quotes :)

-
Do not let your surroundings tell you your worth. Stick to what you think is your own worth (be honest about that assessment) through everything, and you'll see gradually your surroundings will begin to agree with your assessment.

Sense your love

-
Can’t you sense a problem?
Sense her inner workings, inner beauty,
Her secrets, mysteries and riddles..

Like you sense your lady love,
Without the formality of words..

Why then these etiquettes, these jargons,
this choking formalism in your Science?!
Language as a tool to manufacture more language!
Labyrinths with pigeon-holes of increasing insignificance..

Just try sensing her like you sense the lady love in your life,
And in turn, she will bestow you with a sense of joy that no lady ever could..

Moi quotes :)

-
The true test of understanding is not really whether you can convince others about it. It is whether you can use it to build something more. :)

You will be there, won't you?

-
When lost in life's tenuous maze,
Alone, forelorn and defeated,
Gagged and blinded, confused in haze,
You will be there for me, won't you?

When subsumed in ignominy of failure,
Ostracized by men of the world,
Beyond all balm, beyond all cure,
You will be there for me, won't you?

When drained hollow by aspirations of life,
Enervated, enfeebled and effete,
Barren and infecund, only dissipation rife,
You will be there for me, won't you?

You will be there for me, won't you...
--
originally written on March 25, 2005

Maintenance

-
How much time in our day goes off for just "maintenance" !

You sleep, you exercise, you eat, you study the same thing that you've studied earlier (coz you've forgotten), you talk to friends periodically, you watch movies or go for outings regularly...so many other things which are just maintenance! By "maintenance" I mean the effort to ensure that your life does not become worse than what it is currently...status-quo.

You or I am probably lucky because maybe our work itself involves some attempt (usually unsuccessful :) ) to push some limits of understanding. But if you look around you, most professions are "pure maintenance jobs"...ensuring that the world remains status-quo!!

But mind you, it is not easy to maintain status-quo...the laws of thermodynamics require that you have to put in "an effort" to stay even "the same"!!! But thats all the effort that most humans put all their lives!

Yet mankind would not have come this far, if we had been pure "status-quo-creatures".
A majority might like the comfort of "sameness", yet there is that slim minority of "crazy people" always trying to play at the frontiers...pushing the limits...ready to get a bloody nose 9 times so that in the 10th attempt they can figure it out...its a different world altogether at these fringes... Would we have survived as a race without this "crazy bunch"...??

Lets try to formulate all this abstraction through a simple mathematical analogy :)
If we assume human lives to be one-dimensional lines on a plane, the attempt to maintain status-quo would correspond to keeping the first derivative (i.e. slope) constant.
Most humans are born into a slope (in real world terms "social standing"), or early in career rise into a social standing with a certain slope function. Most of the rest of life is spent in keeping up that slope function. If you are able to see visually what I'm trying to explain, you'd intuitively understand that it takes an effort to keep the slope of a line "positive" under these assumptions!

The "crazy bunch" on the other hand is working for the second derivative (or acceleration).
The only issue is this...if you manage to generate a high acceleration without getting the direction of velocity (first derivative) right, it might just be a magnum-opus disaster! :)

Well, its damn funny if you begin to look at the human race at various levels of abstraction. Just like the landscape view keeps changing as you take-off in an aircraft (its breathtaking, right!)...and patterns which you never noticed when on earth become clearer and clearer as you start looking at it from the sky...the human puzzle too shows its hidden clues if one can cultivate the habit of looking from different heights...heights of abstraction :)

Nomad

-
The lure of love was not lure enough,
The threat of hatred not threat enough;

The ambition of power was not ambition enough,
The risk of ignominy not risk enough;

The security of the familiar was not security enough,
The scare of the unknown not scare enough;

He was a restless nomad at heart,
Had to get back on the road;
The road to the meaning of it all…

The World is Not Enough

-
Familiar problems, familiar solutions,
Familiar grudges, familiar revolutions;
Familiar miseries, familiar joys,
Familiar games, familiar toys;

Familiar contentment, familiar ambitions,
Familiar failings, familiar resolutions;
Familiar silences and the familiar articulation,
Manifesting in it all, the same pattern of the same creation...

Living each day,
Day after day for a lifetime,
The joy each day of understanding the pattern better,
The tedium each day on understanding the pattern better...

This world is not enough,
Lets explore new patterns, find a new universe...

Conversations with the Big Magician-1

-

Tired of my pitiable ignoramus human plight,
To the Big Magician I went up one night,
Mustering all my courage, demanded with all my might,
C’mon Mr. Magician, into your divine creation spell, gimme some insight.

Listen mortal, he snapped, do I have a board which says free invite?!
Mr. Christ had to slug it over the cross for years, a’rite,
And that guy Einstein had to ditch his wife night after night,
And you know what, I still gave them hogwash, all that despite!

But such tactics weren’t putting me off that night,
C’mon Mr. Magician I said, have mercy on this mortal blight,
One can’t be such a dunce all life, I’ll be very forthright,
I’ll jump off the cliff right now if you don’t gimme that heavenly creation byte.

Some chord struck somewhere I guess, for Mr. Magician suddenly turned pretty contrite,
Go away he pleaded; I can’t stand this unforgiving spotlight,
These regular interrogations from you mortals; I beg you all, give me some respite,
And in between sobs, his sad tale he began to recite...

I was way too drunk, that fateful creation night,
It was some inebriated, unquotable abuse in between a drunken fight...
And you know what the real sad part is...I know so many abuses...I’m still trying to figure out which one I used that night!!!

Prisoner

-
Prisoner of my mind,
Prisoner of this flesh and blood...

Prisoner of my ignorance,
Prisoner of my knowledge,
Prisoner of my strengths,
Prisoner of my failings...

Prisoner of birth,
Prisoner of an unknown death,
Prisoner of my past,
Prisoner of present circumstances,
Prisoner of an uncertain future...

Prisoner of logic,
Prisoner of emotion,
Prisoner of the spoken word,
Prisoner of unspoken words...

Yet uniquely free...
Free cause I’m aware of my prisons.
I try to understand...

Intuiting

-
Try picking up any new art, hmm lets say cooking. At first you are struggling with everything; sometimes you've put too much spice while at other times you've forgotten it completely! Some other time the salt has gone wrong...or god knows what else. Struggle for a while though, and the struggle becomes progressively lesser even without you making a conscious effort. It is as if your body has sub-consciously figured the thing out! Or if you've ever tried to woo a member of the opposite sex you'd know what I'm saying. At first (s)he is one big package of mystery. Yet gradually you manage to recognize the sublime clues (s)he is throwing around...and then somewhere down the line, the clues even begin to make sense!

Though not that apparent, the process of discovering new stuff in science is in fact quite similar to the examples above. Whether you are doing maths or physics or any of the newer exotic specialisations, the first stage is usually feeding yourself the basic stuff in a form that you understand. The "form you understand" differs from person to person and it is important that you figure out the drink that suits you best. For someone it might be mathematical symbolism, for someone else it might be practical examples, while for a third person it might be some other hybrid. As they warn: if marriages are made in heaven, you'd better search hard for your special someone on earth!

Give yourself the right drink for a while and you'll find that you've reached a state where you're able to sense pictures in jigsaw fragments and melodies in the notes. Thats "intuiting". The ability to make jumps in reasoning and see the story linking disconnected episodes... It is a very sublime thing; if you try to immediately logically reason it, the thing just goes away! But allow it to play itself out without willful tinkering and you'll begin to witness the effortless "falling into place" phenomenon. Try the rigorous checks later on; 9 out of 10 times you'll find the jigsaw pieces fell in place just right!

Intuiting is an amazing faculty and doesn't seem to be limited to any particular field of activity. Talk to any good football coach and (s)he'll emphasize the development of "legs in your brains"; thats just another form of intuiting.

Step back and think for a while... What makes us human... Can't machines today do almost everything we humans do... Well everything except "intuiting". Have you ever seen a machine drunk?? :)

The Process of "figuring out"

-

Many of us engaged in research are so busy with “figuring out” stuff that we rarely have time to step back and figure out the process of figuring out itself. In this brief article I’ll try to turn the lens onto itself by using an analogy with learning to drive a car.

a) Logical Rigor: Some people need to know all the traffic rules to learn to drive. Whenever faced with a tricky situation, they’ll refer to the rigorous rules to show them the way. Suppose such a driver has learnt driving in the U.S. and is asked to drive in India, he will first try to understand how many of the U.S. traffic rules apply in India. Then he will try to map the differences, if any, in terms of the U.S. rules that he already knows.

In the world of “figuring out”, these are the disciples of rigorous logic. It is indeed quite amazing that the fabric of nature can be expressed through the rigour of mathematics and that mathematical rules discovered in one branch of human knowledge apply with minor changes to other unrelated branches (much like traffic rules in India and the US); well, but that is how reality is!

b) Experimentation: Some people need to drive on the road before they learn how to drive correctly. They will violate speed rules to discover speed limits, drive on wrong lanes to understand the correct direction of traffic and so on. They need to check whether what happens on the real road matches with what is mentioned in the traffic rulebook.

In the real world, these are the experimentalists. They are the ones on the fields and in the labs, verifying hypotheses against the realities of nature.

c) Intuition: This is the third technique to learn driving and frankly, is the least understood of the three. Students of this school may fiddle a little at the steering wheel, they may read a few traffic rules here and there, or might play around with the car on the road for a while; and somehow in the process of doing such apparently quirky things they get a hang of how to drive.

These are the intuitionists of science. They are the ones fiddling around with stuff according to no prescribed rules and possess the remarkable ability to divine the picture of the whole from random jumbled fragments.

In a certain sense, it is as if the intuitionists are the adventurers discovering new habitable territory; the disciples of rigour are the manufacturers of the equipment required for discovery, and the experimentalists are the final arbitrageurs of habitability.

In the world of science, the above three are not watertight categories really, and most researchers possess a combination. The intuitionist often keeps experimenting to build his intuition; the experimenter requires mathematical knowledge to decide what rules to check against the realities of nature, and the logical theoretician tries to stay updated on empirical results.

Yet despite all the skill set mix-ups, I’m ready to take a wager for any amount that if you talk to a genuine researcher, you’ll notice one of the three streaks dominating.
Of course, me and me alone decides who is genuine enough for our bet! :)

Pursuit of Science

-
The strive for a meaning deeper,
Quest for a beauty profound,
Hunt for the subconscious whole
Buried somewhere in apparent fragments,
The pursuit of science...

The joy of fearless intuition,
The delightful subtleties of logic,
The exultation on the path of 'figuring out'
And the euphoria of comprehension,
The pursuit of science...

Maybe lost I am on an insignificant speck of dust,
Wandering in a universe I do not yet fathom,
Struggling every step to make sense of it all...
Yet overjoyed I am,
Beyond words, beyond expression, beyond all imagination,
That I chose the pursuit of science...

Thoughts for the day

-
1. Mathematics is just "consistency rules"
2. Empiricism in Physics is "laboratory experiments". Empiricism in Social Science is "observations".

Words of Wisdom

-
1. Degrees are the means, not the end...don't ever get confused about that.
2. The only way to the goal of perfection is through improving approximations.

Yep, both mine :P

A Theatre Unparalleled

-
Such an amazing theatre this…
Such astonishing performances, such a fabulous stage,
I gaze in awe…

What ingenuity and improvisation,
What brilliance with determination,
How can I not be moved…

Thrilled I am…beyond words, beyond descriptions…
To find myself in this marvellous troupe,
Unravelling the script even as we perform…
Perform the human play…

-

-
"He never grew up; but he never stopped growing."

The Economist, Mar-Apr 08 issue, pg 92

Paradox

To transcend humanity while continuing to stay human,
To rise above shortcomings while preserving failings that make a human,
To patiently persevere...persevere as only a human can,
To wonder...wonder as only an insignificant awestruck human can...

To stay a bumbling human yet dare to understand the meaning of it all...

Purpose

-
I, an inconsequential human,
Wobbling in a universe I don't yet understand...

Fighting my ignorances,
Battling my limitations,
The follies, the momentary delusions...

Diligently paying my labour of existence,
The price of every breath...

To what end...what be the purpose of this life,
The meaning of it all...

Courting a Problem

-
At first it’s just a foggy blur,
You’re neither sure nor clear,
Yet somewhere…somewhere deep down within you,
That insatiable bug named “curiosity” has raised its head,
And you know you’re on the roller-coaster again…

You court that fuzzy blur,
Play with it, fight with it, dream of it…
And then one day all of a sudden,
Sudden as if by magic, you start seeing indistinct patterns,
Patterns in the haze, sequences in the blur,
Gradually getting unambiguous, lucid and clear…
You know she’s agreed to your serenade,
The “it” has morphed into a “she”,
And your joy knows no bounds…

Quote

-
If you can't solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it

- George Polya

I hate "knowledge-middlemen"

-
Make all knowledge easily available...and most people have the intelligence to figure the thing out for themselves.
Most professions thrive through maintaining information asymmetry...and that's disgusting.

Plus as an individual, it your own responsibility to develop your faculties, so that given access to the knowledge, you can figure the thing out yourself...otherwise you are doomed to being exploited forever...

Clarity

-
It's damn simple...and loads of fun!
:-)

...i'm sure i didn't make any sense, did i... :-D

Have fun

-
It's damn important to do things just bcoz they are fun...
[without always thinking if doing the thing fits in with your larger "saving-and-uplifting-the-world-agenda" :-)]

Having fun is vital oxygen for breakthrough research :-)

Fooling around

-
I'm sorry; but with all due respects, my purpose in life is to fool around :-)

Humour

-
Do you realise the meaning of humour?
The immense depth required for that genuine mischievous twinkle...for genuine humour...
It's not that easy to have pure unencumbered fun.

Paths to Enlightenment (in Mathematical Finance)...courstesy Wilmott

-

0.0 First steps -- General:

A. Black Scholes and Beyond: Option Pricing Models, N A Chriss
B. Derivative Securities, R Jarrow, S Turnbull
C. Introduction to Mathematical Finance: Discrete Time Models, S R Pliska

0.1 First steps -- Interest rates:
A. Fixed Income Analytics, K Garbade

0.2 First steps -- Stochastic Calculus:
A. An Introduction to the Mathematics of Financial Deivatives, S N Neftci.

0.3 First steps -- Honourable mention:
A. Option Market Making: Trading and Risk Analysis for the Financial and Commodity Option Markets, A J Baird

-------------------

1.0. Introductory -- General:

A. Options Markets, J C Cox, M Rubinstein
B. Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, J C Hull
C. An Introduction to Mathematical Finance: Options and Other Topics, S M Ross
D. Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance, P Wilmott.
E. The Mathematics of Financial Derivatives: A Student Introduction, P Wilmott, S Howison, J Dewynne

1.1 Introductory -- Interest rates:
A. Modelling Fixed Income Securities and Interest Rate Options, R A Jarrow

1.2 Introductory -- Exotics:
A. Structured Equity Derivatives: The Definitive Guide to Exotic Options and Structured Notes, H M Kat

1.3 Introductory -- Stochastic Calculus:
A. Elementary Stochastic Calculus With Finance in View, T Mikosch.

1.4 Introductory -- Computational:
A. Pricing Derivative Securities: An Interactive, Dynamic Environment with Maple V and Matlab, E Z Prisman

1.5 Introductory -- Honourable mention:
A. Investment Under Uncertainty, A K Dixit, R S Pindyck
B. The Complete Guide to Option Pricing Formulas, E G Haug
C. Real Options: Managerial Flexibility and Strategy in Resource Allocation, L Trigeorgis

---------------------------

2.0 Halfway technical -- General:

A. Quantitative Modeling of Derivative Securities From Theory To Practice, M Avellaneda, P Laurence
B. Financial Calculus : An Introduction to Derivative Pricing, M Baxter, A Rennie
C. Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time, T Bjork
D. Theory of Financial Decision Making, J E Ingersoll
E. Risk-Neutral Valuation: Pricing and Hedging of Financial Derivatives, R Kiesel, N H Bingham F. Mathematical Models of Financial Derivatives, Y K Kwok
G. Continuous-Time Finance, R C Merton H. Paul Wilmott on Quantitative Finance, 2 Volume Set, P Wilmott.

2.1. Halfway technical -- Stochastic Calculus:
A. Introduction to Stochastic Calculus with Applications, F C Klebaner

2.2. Halfway technical -- Computational:
A. Implementing Derivatives Models, L Clewlow, Chr Strickland
B. Pricing Financial Instruments: The Finite Difference Method, D Tavella, C Randall

2.3. Halfway technical -- Honourable mention:
A. The Treasury Bond Basis, G D Burghardt, T M Belton, M Lane, J Papa.
B. Dynamic Hedging, N Taleb.

-------------------------

3.0 Technical -- General:

A. Options, Futures and Exotic Derivatives, E Briys, M Bellalah, H M Mai, F de Varenne
B. Modelling And Hedging Equity Derivatives, O Brockhaus, A Ferraris, Ch Gallus, D Long, R Martin, M Overhaus
C. Dynamic Asset Pricing Theory, D Duffie
D. Derivatives in Financial Markets With Stochastic Volatility, J-P Fouque, G Papanicolaou, K R Sircar
E. Mathematics of Financial Markets, P E Kopp, R J Elliott
F. Option Pricing and Portfolio Optimization: Modern Methods of Financial Mathematics, R Korn, E Korn
G. Introduction to Stochastic Calculus Applied to Finance, D Lamberton, B Lapeyre, N Rabeau
H. Martingale Methods in Financial Modelling, M Musiela, M Rutkowski
I. Pricing and Hedging of Derivative Securities, L T Nielsen
J. Essentials of Stochastic Finance: Facts, Models, Theory, A N Shiryaev

3.1 Technical -- Interest rates:
A. Interest Rate Models Theory and Practice: Theory and Practice, D Brigo, Fabio Mercurio
B. Efficient Methods for Valuing Interest Rate Derivatives, A Pelsser
C. Interest-Rate Option Models: Understanding, Analyzing and Using Models for Exotic Interest-Rate Options, R Rebonato
D. Interest Rate Modelling: Financial Engineering, N Webber, J James

3.2 Technical -- Stochastic Calculus:
A. Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus, I Karatzas, S E Shreve
B. Stochastic Differential Equations, B Oksendal
C. Stochastic Calculus and Financial Applications, J M Steele

3.3 Technical -- Honourable mention:
A. Optimal Portfolios, R Korn
B. Option Valuation under Stochastic Volatility, A L Lewis

-----------------------

4.0 Hard core -- General:

A. Security Markets: Stochastic Models, D Duffie
B. Financial Derivatives in Theory and Practice, P J Hunt, J Kennedy
C. Introduction to Option Pricing Theory, R L Karandikar, G Kallianpur
D. Methods of Mathematical Finance, I Karatzas, S E Shreve

4.1 Hard core -- Stochastic Calculus:
A. Continuous Martingales and Brownian Motion, D Revuz, M Yor
B. Diffusions, Markov Processes, and Martingales (two vol), Rogers, Williams

All that I want to do

-
All that I want to do is understand,
Understand…not through the lens of hocus-pocus that’s been used since long,
But through the method of science,
Understand the world of mass-interacting humans…

Free me from other bondages…cares,
Free me from the need to appear in-sync with the world;
I am not like all around me,
I can’t live not knowing…or atleast without trying to know…

Few moments of bliss when I’m getting to know,
Come with so many moments of mundane living,
Which I don’t understand, can’t make sense of…
Guard me from that so-called usual...I just can’t figure that out…

All that I want to do is understand…

Timeless Wisdom... from Feynman

-
What should we teach people about science?
"I think we should teach them wonders and that the purpose of knowledge is to appreciate wonders even more."

What is understanding?
"Test it this way: You say, 'Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language.' [If] you cannot [then] you learned nothing except the definition.... To learn a mystic formula for answering questions is very bad."

What is the first principle that must guide a scientist?
"You must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.... I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong.... One example of the principle is this: If you've made up your mind to test a theory ... you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make [any] argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results."

What is unique about science?
"Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation.... As a matter of fact I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

"I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong."

Mess... in absence of agreement on equilibriums

-
Life becomes messy when counterparties can't agree on an equilibrium.

Somebody's terrorist becomes somebody else's freedom fighter...somebody's love becomes abuse for somebody else... You'll find endless instances of these kinds all around you.

Extreme view

-
Most people work so that they can lead a good life outside of work.
It it were in my power, I'd ensure that such people remained unemployed forever.

If your work doesn't obsess you, don't work..starve and die and decrease the burden on this planet.

Living Masks

-
What’s the point of tears,
If there’s no remorse in the heart;

What’s the point of a smile,
If there’s no joy in the heart;

What’s the use of a thanks,
If there’s no gratitude in the heart;

Just what is the use of bravado,
If there’s no real courage in the heart...

Such hollow masks people adopt to live in this world…

What’s the point of living,
If you are dead in the heart…

Life as an instrument of defiance

-
Have you ever felt the urge of using life as an instrument of defiance…instrument to defy god, defy inevitability.

Whenever in the dumps, conventional wisdom dictates that we blame ourselves, learn from mistakes, adapt and move on…that’s what clever people tell you to do, right?
But what if you are sure you are right?

An arbitrage bet might fail under two scenarios:
Scenario 1: You bet it wrong, i.e. you just did not understand the arbitrage opportunity right.
Scenario 2: You figured it out perfectly, yet ran out of liquidity before the arbitrage bet could work out.

Very often, like in real financial markets, in life too you are dependent on external sources for liquidity…that’s the nature of living, right?

It is in scenario 2 that the urge arises…urge to use life as an instrument of defiance.

We, in our submissive meekness, rarely recognize Scenario 2…the tragedy of being human I guess…

What Can I Do?

-
You shield me from hurt and pain,
By taking it all on yourself;
How, just how can I stay oblivious…

You suffer today,
So that I might not suffer tomorrow;
How, just how can I stay oblivious…

Just how can I walk on unmindful…
Just how can I walk on unconcerned…

Yet what can I do except entreat…
To allow me a share of your woes,
Use of my shoulders to lessen your burden…

As your friend, as somebody who truly cares,
As your fellow-traveller.

Quote

-
In physics, you're playing against God; in finance, you're playing against God's creatures.

(In "Calculus of Risk", Scientific American, May 1998, Emmanuel Derman uses "people" instead of "God's creatures")

Indifference

-
She had trained herself to be indifferent,

To negotiate through valleys of suffering,
Without shedding a single tear…

Oblivious to love,
Oblivious to misery;

To sit patiently silent through chicanery,
Without raising a single question…

Oblivious to integrity,
Oblivious to duplicity;

To bury her real emotions,
In an omnipresent smile,
In honey-covered words…

She thought her cultivated indifference to be a boon…

I thought it was the worst kind of curse,
She was no longer human…
And ironically, she had trained herself into it!

The first drizzle

-
The first drizzle of the season here in Mumbai today.
Got drenched while coming to office.
It's wonderful :-)

Useful Quantitative Finance Sites

-
1. Wilmott forum: http://www.wilmott.com/

2. Nuclear Finance forum: http://www.nuclearphynance.com/

3. Repository of papers: http://www.finance-and-physics.org/Library/articleh.html

4. Another QuantFin articles d'base: http://www.finance-and-physics.org/Library/articles.html

5. Online Exotics Calculator+Formula Database: http://www.sitmo.com/live/OptionVanilla.html

Twisted Reasoning

-
A curious incident happened today morning.

At the Mahalaxmi station, noticed a well-dressed (should be well-educated, middle class) person urinating on the railway tracks. As usual, couldn't stop myself and ended up accosting him...appealing to his education/value-system/sense of hygiene.

Generally have found that in such cases that if the person is from a decent background, he realises his mistake and the sense of shame ensures no further repitition.

But today's guy shot back with a curious reasoning. His explanation was this. Anyways at a railway station you have all these trains...and if a person were in a train and using a latrinal, it would amount to the same thing though then nobody would say anything.
By this time my train had arrived and I had to leave...hope I left him feeling sufficiently humiliated so that he wouldn't easily repeat the exploit.

Well the flaw in his reasoning was simple.
At any point in time, a system is designed such that the best case scenario can happen from among available alternatives.
On a moving train, given the alternatives possible, making a latrinal the way it is, is probably the best case scenario for the Railways.
For our guy at the station, with a public bathroom available nearby, urinating on the tracks isn't.

I wish I get to meet him again to explain the logic.

-

It sometimes requires more courage to live in hope than to live on-the-edge.

Teaching

-
If you become a teacher do just the following:
1. Give him/her your value system. (toolset)
2. Teach him/her to think independently.

Then set him/her free and see the magic s/he creates.

In the Ring

-
You’re in the boxing ring,
Punching, ducking, jabbing,
Getting hit…hitting back…

He is your opponent,
You want to overpower him…

You want him down,
Down on his knees,
Flat on the floor…

You want to win…

You are trading blows,
The pain, the hurt…
The smell of blood and the drama;

You fall countless times...

Many run away when you fall,
They have valid reasons to run away;

A few help you rise,
And they have no reason…

You’re getting better with every round,
Sharper punches, better footwork…

But the more you fight, the more confused you get...

You are no longer fighting him!
You hardly care about him;

The realization dawns…
You are your opponent,
And you know you have won…whatever the outcome.

Shantiniketan etc.

-
Visited the abode of poet-laureate Tagore, Shantiniketan, during this trip back home.

Brief notes for myself now...will elaborate when I have time.
-Stayed at Prantik
-Visited:
1. Konkalitola mondir: One of the 51 Kali Peeths
2. Amar Kutir: Cottage industries emporium
3. Kopai nodi
4. Khowai: Gully eroded landscape
5. Vishwa Bharati University:
a) Gour Prangan: Morning assembly
b) Kala Niketan: Ramkinkar Baij exhibition was on
c) Sri-niketan: Leather and handicraft workshops
d) Upashona Griha: Meditation complex
e) Uttarayan complex: Five buildings inhabited by the Tagore family...Udayan, Konark, Shyamalee, Punashcha and Udichi buildings plus the Motor car used by Gurudeb and display gallery (with duplicate Nobel medallion) in Bichitra bhabon.

Also visited Netaji Bhabon in Kolkata besides a speed boat trip down Ganga :)

Birbhoom...

-
Travelled extensively in the Birbhoom area of Bengal in the last two days.
Saw Shantiniketan, Tagore's abode among other things.

A longer post on this later.

from Feynman archives...

-
We want [knowledge] so we can love Nature more. Would you not turn a beautiful flower around in your hand to see it from other directions as well?

Of course, men want knowledge for many other purposes also, to make war, to make a commercial success, to help the sick or the poor, etc., motives of various values. These obvious motives and their consequences the poets do understand and do write about. But the emotions of awe, wonder, delight and love which are evoked upon learning Nature's ways in the animate and inanimate world, together (for they are one), is rarely expressed in modern poetry where the aspect of Nature being appreciated is one which could have been known to men in the Renaissance.

And the crassness of our time, so much lamented, is a crassness that can be alleviated only by art, and surely not by science without art. Art and poetry can remind the mind of beauty and gradually make life more beautiful.

My lament was that a kind of intense beauty that I see given to me by science, is seen by so few others; by few poets and, therefore, by even fewer ordinary people.

The same thrill, the same awe and mystery, come again and again when we look at any problem deeply enough. With more knowledge comes deeper, more wonderful mystery, luring one on to penetrate deeper still ...It is true that few unscientific people have this particular kind of religious experience. Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don't know why. Is nobody inspired by our present picture of the universe?

The value of science remains unsung by singers, so you are reduced to hearing about it -- not a song or a poem, but an evening lecture about it....Perhaps one of the reasons is that you have to know how to read the music.

For instance, the scientific analysis says, perhaps, something like this: "The radioactive phosphorus content of the cerebrum of the rat decreases to one-half in a period of two weeks." Now, what does that mean?It means that the phosphorus that is in the brain of a rat (and also in mine, and yours) is not the same phosphorus as it was two weeks ago, but that all of the atoms that are in the brain are being replaced, and the ones that were there before have gone away.

So what is this mind, what are these atoms with consciousness? Last week's potatoes! That is what now can remember what was going on in my mind a year ago -- a mind that has long ago been replaced.That is what it means when one discovers how long it takes for the atoms of the brain to be replaced by other atoms, to note that the thing that I call my individuality is only a pattern or dance. The atoms come into my brain, dance a dance, then go out; always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday....

find your DREAM

-
What are you beyond...beyond being your parents' wonderful child...your siblings' wonderful brother/sister...your friends' best friend...your employer's star employee...your spouse's wonderful husband/wife...your kids' wonderful dad/mom...what are you BEYOND all this, that's your CRAZY DREAM.

You might choose to fulfill your dream through these identities but first find it...find it beyond these identities...find it IN YOURSELF.

A rhymer for all people who think they're not lucky

-
A strange thing happened last night,
I woke up in a fright,
It was suddenly so very bright,
Oh my! What a dazzling sight!

A fairy emerged from nowhere,
Oh! It was such a strange affair,
I didn’t know for what to prepare,
There I was, under her affectionate glare!

In her mellifluous voice she chanted,
If there was anything that I wanted,
A swish of her magic wand was all that was needed,
And that’s it! Whatever wish, it'd be granted!

Guess what I asked…

I told her to make you the luckiest person in the world,
And what’s more, to make you believe that you are the luckiest person in the world;
So never again think of yourself as not lucky,
For my wish has been granted…granted by the fairy…and however hard you try, you can never ever again be unlucky!

Look at things AFRESH

-
When your body aches even after sleep,
The mind dizzy, dazed and confused;

And simple things start looking complex,
Pedestrian dilemmas rendering you imbecile;

When you are moving; Moving
more because of the flow than your own will;

And no longer thrilled about every moment you're alive...

It's time...time to either give up or look at things AFRESH.

Converting a .ps document into pdf

-
http://www.ps2pdf.com/convert/convert.htm

Watch Guru

-
I liked it. I think you'd like it too :)

Honest Answers

-
To answer the some questions HONESTLY it takes very long.
So don't ask me those questions or if you do, please bear with me as I evolve my honest answer.
I can't give those "media-friendly" one liners and I don't know how to be dishonest.

Sometimes even life-time isn't enough time to figure out the perfect answer...

Games traders play!

-
Let's lighten the mood on this blog a little! Let's play a game :-)

1. There are 44 chips.
2. The first player may remove as many chips as desired, at least one chip, but the not the whole pile.
3. Thereafter, the players alternate removing, each player not being allowed to remove more chips than his opponent took on the previous move.
4. The player that removes the last chip(s) wins.

Hint: This is a simple example of a class of Impartial Combinatorial Games called “Dynamic Subtraction Games”…so you can crack it to win every time!

Happy playing :-)

Judgement at Nuremberg

-
It's been a long time since a movie really stirred me.
This one did...
Watch it if you get hold of the dvd.

Raincoat

-
Watched the movie Raincoat yesterday.
Fine performances...I liked it.

Human dilemmas fascinate me...maybe because I struggle with them daily :)

Math problem treasure-trove (olympiads, putnam etc.)

-
http://www.kalva.demon.co.uk/index.html

Kanheri caves

-
Visited Kanheri caves on 31st December. Situated deep within the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, these are buddhist rock cut caves with representations from both the Hinayana and Mahayana sect. Constructions started from the 1st century BC onwards till about 6th century AD.

If you are in Mumbai and have some time at hand, make sure you visit this place.

Science: Breakthrough of the Year and the Runners-Up

-
Breakthrough of the Year: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/314/5807/1848

Runners Up: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;314/5807/1850a

Nothingness of Modern Urban Lives...

-
Wake up at day-break,
Scramble through morning routines,
Rush to station...just in time for the train,
And rewarded with two inches of space,
You cling to it in the sea of humanity;

Meetings and discussions at office,
Phone calls and deals so many,
The PC your soulmate as you negotiate;
Lost in the flow...wherever it flows...

Friends in the evenings,
Movies on weekends,
A restaurant, a pub, another outing;
Killing time coz you have time to kill...

How long, how long can I shield myself from all this I wonder...

Yes, I deliberately choose to stay away from this hollowness;
The "nothingness" of modern urban lives...

Interesting articles in finance

-
http://www.risklatte.com/

A life lost...?

-
The more and more I get to know,
The more I realize I don’t know;
The more I realize I don’t know,
The more I want to know what I still don’t know…

In pursuit of the known unknown,
I struggle from shore to shore;
A life lost to the bottomless well of knowledge,
I often wonder, could this life be worth more…

Push me

-
Challenge me, confront me,
Hurt me, try to knock me off;

Please push me to the fringe,
The middle-path is too boring for comfort...

Harangue me, abuse me,
Make me the target of your diatribe;

Contradict me, stymie me;

Or I'll waste away in the succor of routine...

Let me earn each breath of fresh air;

Help me explore my limits,
Then I'll know you are my true friend...

Decency vs Dignity

-
Being decent to another human is not the same as giving the human his/her dignity.
I, as a human, prefer dignity to decency if the choice comes to that.

-
The best way to bring a sustainable change in the world around me is by bringing the change in myself.

Meaning of "Ayan"

-
1. Hindu/Tamil: Brahma, the God of Creation
2. Sanskrit: Soaked in the Divine (as in Satyanarayan)
3. Biblical: Motion, To Arrive (related to Noah); Iian, which is pronounced like Ayan, is the Scottish variation of John
4. Hebrew: Nothingness, Peace
5. Persian: Notable
6. Islam/Arabic: God’s Gift
7. Several African Languages: Center Part of the Soul.


Detailed explanations:

The path through which the sun travels in the daytime is called 'Ayan'

'Ayan' also means character as in Rama"ayan"

In Tamil: 'Ayan' is the name of Brahma, the Creator.

'Ayan' also means Shepherd

'Ayan' is also a form of African drumming.

'Ayan' in Turkish, means "obviously" or "clearly"

'Ayan' [Urdu/Persian.] with the last 'n' not pronounced fully... but half i.e. nasal tone sound..)... means something that is open and clear /something like : "something vividly clear on the face of it" or prima-facie.

In Somalia 'Ayan' means "the lucky one". However, in Somali, 'Ayan' is the female form of the name, and 'Ayanle' is the male form.

AYAN: Somali female name meaning "bright."

In Sanskrit this also means "Speed" in English or "Gati" in Hindi.

Sirr & Rooh form “Rooh-e-Insani (Human soul) or Ayan. This part of the soul is inscribed with commands characterizing the life. It is also termed as Ayan. When a human being gets acquainted with it, he can witness the record & scheme of “all that exists”, written on loh-e-mahfooz.

Narayan - the Sanskrit word, is explained as Nara + Ayan = Narayan. ie.,Nara meaning human being and Ayan meaning the mirror. In essence it is the reflection of self - the soul.

Egyptian MythologyPtah was also a miracle worker. It was believed that Ptah saved the town of Pelusium from Assyrian invaders with an army of rats. Ptah ordered the rats to sneak into the camp of the Assyrians and gnaw through the bowstrings and shield handles of the enemy. Without weaponry or defense, the Assyrian army fled. It was also said that he stopped a fight between Horus and Set: He judged between Heru and Set; he ended their quarrel. He made Set the king of Upper Egypt in the land of Upper Egypt, up to the place in which he was born, which is Su. And Geb made Horus King of Lower Egypt in the land of Lower Egypt, up to the place in which his father was drowned which is "Division-of-the-Two-Lands." Thus Horus stood over one region, and Set stood over one region.
They made peace over the Two Lands at "Ayan".
That was the division of the Two Lands.
http://www.crystalinks.com/ptah.html

In Nigeria and Benin, the spirit in the drum is called Ayan.

Ayan is also the name of a type of tree (African Satinwood), the one Shango is said to have hung himself on, and wood used for bata in Nigeria. Some people from long lines of drumming families have Ayan as part of their last name, such as Master Rabiu Ayandokun from the town of Erin Oshun, Nigeria.

"Àyàn or Àyòn is the òrìsà of drums. In Cuba it is spelled Aña yet is pronounced exactly as it would be in Yorùbáland. It is also the name of the African Satinwood tree, Distemonanthus, used to construct drums, Sàngó dance clubs, houseposts, and sometimes canoes.

The following oríkì (praise poem) tells us something of Àyàn:
Chief of trees that talksThe one that makes me eat with the chief of the market
The one that makes me know the road one has not seen before
The slender tree that grows money
"The one who finds brass and carries it" "Talks deeply"
Àyàn support me
We never follow you and go hungry
http://www.batadrums.com/background/ana.htm

Message board on: http://www.behindthename.com/bb_gen/arcview.php?id=52823
Out of the meanings given, the Sanskrit origin ones are basically correct.
Derived from the root i with cognates all over the Indoeuropean languages e.g. ειμι, iter, иду, signifying motion, one gets aYan, the act of going, or the path, and is used both literally and figuratively.
A peculiar development also led to it meaning a house or place of refuge.But all that is about ayana, not aayana; i.e. the first vowel is as in cut or cot, not as in car. That can happen in Sanskrit if one uses the prefix A to the above word, in which case the meaning changes from going to coming, and Ayana usually means approaching, though it can mean income as well.

Alternatively, since ayana has celestial significance, Ayana can mean belonging to the solistice. I do not think that either of these two aayan is used as a name.

AYAna (or aayaan if you prefer) is a very famous character n mythology: AYAna ghoSa was the husband of rAdhA, the heartthrob and lover of kRSNa, the playful pastoral God, an incarnation of viSNu, the protector amongst the Hindu trinity.

AYAna can mean arrival, and natural temperament, but I do not know if the name is anyway connected to the word.

source: http://www.sarbadhikari.com/ayan/ayanmng.htm

Stop It

-
It's easy to weave magic with words,
It's easier to inspire people with dreams,
Live the life that you promise everyday,
And then you won't require words or dreams...

It's easy to induce mortals with heavens,
It's easier to threaten them with hells unknown,
Show us the path on this earth my friend,
And then we won't require the heavens or hells...

STOP preaching from your perch above,
STOP sermonizing about utopias I can't see,
Let me stumble, falter, flounder, fail,
I'll struggle but I'll find my way...
And that is what you are scared of.

knock knock

-
My brain is open.

PS: Don't bother if you don't know the context or alternatively read up the life of Paul Erdos :-)

Einstein quotes

-
"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

-Albert Einstein

back to the Fringe

-
back to that favourite perch...the fringe.
It'd be interesting to see which side of the fence beckons this time :-)

Meaning in a day

-
Did your today have a meaning?

Maybe a tear wiped,
A smile lighted,
An unselfish act of love,
Or a mind ignited…

Maybe a puff of your dream pipe,
Another patient brick into that castle in air…

Or maybe a weed uprooted
From the garden of life…

Maybe…

Making meaning in a day…day after day…
As another naughty day just tends to slip away…

The aim of life...

-
What if I were to say that at the broadest level of generalisation the aim of human existence is just "Reduction of Uncertainty".
That's what each one is doing, right...in our chosen areas...


Well, better brush up your probability :-)

Learn to love

-
Don't get me wrong...I'm not talking about boy-girl love here. That is a special familiar case of what I'm trying to say, familiar to most more because of the hormones he/she is born with, than due to any other reason...and I really dunno how true such love is in most cases ;-)

But have you ever truly loved? It could be love for anything.
Love for a subject (most familiar to me :-)), love for an object, love for another human, love for your own self...anything...true unconstrained love...love without any reason...expecting nothing in return...just thrilled that you're in the journey whatever be the outcome...

If you manage to feel it in any one aspect, you'll be capable of seeing it in other aspects too...

Well, then your life becomes much more difficult - I can assure you that - as you find it difficult to really connect to people or things floating/living/dying on the surface...the hollowness of it all...and you get hurt more often...

But it's a different kind of thrill...intense love is probably the first step to figuring out "the meaning of it all"...

Honestly I guess Einstein felt the same intensity for his equations as did the Buddha for his quest...their paths were different but I guess the two guys would've connected really well...

Get me in touch with more mortals who have this intensity...it gets very lonely sometimes...

Learn to love :-)

That's so dumb!

-
Whether you are deemed "crazy" or "normal" depends on how much people around you understand you...

That's so dumb!

Reinventing the Mahatma

-
Outside this posh theatre at Churchgate a makeshift bookstall has been set up and there are many curious people buying...

The hall is playing Lagey Raho Munnabhai and the books are about Gandhiji and his message...reinventing the mahatma...

Neat Paradox!

-
Holmes had his cocaine...Einstein had his violin...

I need to figure out what I want to "have" soon...keeping the mind free when you're taking a break isn't easy :-)
But it's necessary to optimise performance when not taking a break :-)

Neat paradox!

In my mind

-
It’s all in my mind…
Not only the hells I suffer,
The interjecting heavens as well…

All in my mind…
The angst, those fears, the nightmares,
My dreams, joys, unfettered rapture-
All in this mind;

In its cradle arise my questions,
And in its crevices are hidden the answers I seek…

The creator, the upholder, the destroyer,
All in my mind…

The universe, just a creation of this mind-
Set the mind free…

The Uncertain Game of Patience

-
All preparations done,
Matters taken care of,
All possibilities carefully thought through,
All simulations tested and run...

Then the uncertain game of patience...

The ability to just sit and wait,
That rare faculty of doing nothing,
Cutting yourself off...as intensely as you were jointed,
To not undo the doings in moments of mindless impulse...

This uncertain game of patience...

Grigory Perelman

-
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact2

Asserting my Humanity

-
Every time there comes an opportunity to become a god, I assert my humanity...
After all, god is only a subset of the human...so what's the point being a god :-)

Play of words

-
I don't respect you but fear you.
I respect you but don't fear you.

Play of words eh :-)

Aise hi :-)

-
Dham dham dharam dharaiya re,
Sabse bade laraiya re,
Omkara.

Should I, shouldn't I

-
I think I don't know him enough,
I'm sure I don't understand him enough,

Yet sometimes that feeling of unfamiliar familiarity…
Should I, shouldn't I…

What if it's a wrong choice?
What if it all fails?
What if it's a joke that's happening,

Yet if earnestly serious he really is…
Should I, shouldn't I...

Why not wait for a minute?
Why not hold back for a while?
Why not give it some more time,

But suppose it gets too late by then…
Should I, shouldn't I...

How far should I go?
How long should this flow?
When would I know?
Should I, shouldn't I...

An uncertain world we live in,
Yet certain choices we have to make,
Certainty in this uncertain world...
Beauty of our human predicament.

Bumbling Along

-
Bumbling, mumbling, tumbling along,
Blabbering, rambling, gambling,
Ambling through the maze of life…

Wandering, exploring, stumbling…
Wondering as I wander,
Can these myriad hues be fathomed…

Buttressing and contradicting,
With full earnestness, mind you Sir,

Rationalizing then irratiotionalizing,
With full sincerity, mind you Madam,

And then just laughing it all out :-D

As I bumble through the maze of life…

A Smile :-)

-
(written on July 11, 2006)

Beyond babble, beyond cacophony,
Beyond chatter and idle noise,
Beyond the confine of words,
A smile, your smile...

More than speech can ever voice,
More than reams of poetry can ever express,
Beyond the confine of words,
A smile, your smile...

Refreshing, liberating, exhilarating,
That smile, your smile...

Go ahead, Dream!

-
Life takes its toll,
Yet you walk on,
Chasing a dream...

A blazing flame,
Scorching yourself...others...

Moments evaporate in a trance,
Who's running...you or the moments...

Yet that dream,
Hallucinations of an ideal,
Fantasies about it...

Fulfillment of the dream
May/may-not happen,
A bonus if it happens...

Yet infinitely enriched,
Enriched every moment of living by that dreaming tension...

For what's life worth without a crazy dream...

Blog-break

-
Neck-deep in work.
No time to blog.
Sorry :-)

The nomad moves on...

-
Time to move on, move on again…

Another halt in the nomad's journey ends,
That road beckons again,
Into the unknown, uncharted…

Two months of reminisces, the baggage,
Recollections of a new city, the city of joy,
New surroundings, new songs…

Some old friends, many re-discovered friends,
Certain new friendships…

A few goals achieved, so many remain…

A sprinkling of tears, a bagful of smiles,
Many everlasting memories…

As the road beckons,
And it's time to move on, move on again…

And words are all I have...

-
It’s only words,
And words are all I have…

To create a smile,
Radiance of a face,
Illuminating the void…

To articulate a voice,
Mellifluousness of a song,
Breaking the silence…

To conjure a presence,
Cavort of an apparition,
Shattering the desolation…

To paint a dream,
Draped in poetic finery,
Adorning the walls of nothingness…

It’s only words,
And words are all I have…

Faith

-
Faith…when circumstances test your mettle,
And onlookers questioning glances nettle;

When the preposterousness of situations compel,
Undertaking the onerous role of a rebel;

Despite the hurricane hitting you in the face,
Sticking on obdurately to the race;

When the world assumes you’re down and out,
To come back unyielding for the next bout…

Faith in yourself, in your abilities, in your goal,
Faith to disregard the whole world and take control,
Faith in the faith of others who still trust you;
Trust this faith to safely carry you through…

Seeking Conflict!

-
The intense desire for that flight of fantasy,
Yet an unflinching faith in precision for the flight;

Fanatical search for fetterless freedom,
Yet contraption of discipline, chief weapon in that hunt;

The natural love for wild, unordered random,
Yet grasp of the random only by methods in chaos;

Abstracted wonder at the mysteries of creation,
Yet clarity of comprehension a must to create…

Strange at times is the plight of the seeker,
Struggling in conflict between path and goal,
Yet with outstretched arms he invites such conflicts,
For conflict, the engine of seeking…very often its heart and soul!

Chakravyuh

-
Inveigled into being born;
Chased into school, college, university;
Ambushed into the humdrums of society;
Coerced into growing up;
Wheedled into marriage;
Cajoled into parenthood;
Beguiled by the mirage of livelihood;
Constrained into responsibility;
Deception of moving ahead;
Vulnerability of age;
Despondency of forsakenness;
And then inveigled again…inveigled into the arms of death.

Life's Chakravyuh, break it if you really care to live!

This Angst

-
This angst...

At being ignorant,
Thrust into a flight over which I have no control,
Forced to accept the imposition of a will not my own,
At being unable, unable to break out…

At having to accede,
Since the order comes couched in veneration,
Show of respect where deserved is none,
At being unable, unable to say no…

At being a mute spectator,
As weeds proliferate in the gardens,
And the stream of logic is deliberately drowned,
At being unable, unable to shout out…

This angst,
At being maimed, gagged, persecuted and incapacitated,
At my own numbness,
At being unable…

This fire shall light my pyre certainly,
But will it, will it ignite even a single beacon somewhere?

Suppose

-
Suppose she never faltered in her stride,
Never equivocated, never went adrift,
Before finding her way;

Suppose she were never vain,
Never petulant, never moody,
Before being her affable self;

Suppose she were never silly,
Never imprecise, never inane,
Before assuming the pedestal of intelligence;

Suppose she were always in control,
Never ruffled, never rattled,
Before recovering her familiar composure;

Suppose she were the “ideal” god,
The perfect embodiment of everything perfect,
Never a fault, never a failing…

In this world of bungling humans,
She surely would have many more worshippers,
More disciples, more devotees...

But not me, not me for sure.
For what god is she in this world of mortals,
If she can’t, can’t for a while be a bungling mortal herself!

Great short stories

-
http://www.bnl.com/shorts/

My Freedom

-
In every flitter of the butterfly,
Every song of the soaring bird,
In every mother’s caring lullaby,
I sing my song of joy,
My freedom song…

Through every act of selfless love,
Every deed of devoted service,
Through that exuberant smile on the child’s face,
I express myself,
My song of freedom…

Every speck of dust,
Every shard of light…

Every feel of inspiration,
Inkling of creation…

Every throb of the heart,
Every trace of love…

Is just me, my song,
My unbridled freedom song…

Van Gogh's epistles

-
Unabridged and annotated, Vincent Van Gogh's letters: http://webexhibits.org/vangogh/

Eat, drink, talk, work, sleep

-
The earth whirls, days rush on,
Another spring arrives, a winter disappears…
I eat, drink, talk, work, sleep.

Wars imposed, fights for civil rights, millions ravaged,
He commits suicide, she is murdered…
I eat, drink, talk, work, sleep.

Men fulfill their ambitions, ladies, their dreams,
Men and women struggle for their existence…
I just eat, drink, talk, work, sleep.

There’s a man in space, a computer in his pocket,
Liver, pancreas, kidney, intestines, even heart now gets transplanted!
Yet I, I only eat, drink, talk, work, sleep.

This numb routine of existence that I have,
In a universe of inconceivable possibilities…
What confines me, holds me back in my quagmire…

My blinkers firmly lodged to shield me from the universe,
My only ritual till inevitable death,
Eat, drink, talk, work, sleep.

Pirouette of a Restless Mind

-
Why can’t I fly,
In the endless open sky,
Without a drink,
Get a high,
Move on in life,
Without a sigh,
If I don’t like it,
Just defy,
And attend formal interviews,
Without a tie;
Just to irritate people,
Raise a hue and cry,
And when they cast angry glances,
Turn a blind eye;
Only dream day and night,
But yet fly high,
Give dumb advice,
And still be the wise guy,

How do I get an answer,
To all these endless whys,
Since even you don’t have the solution,
Thank you, bye-bye. :-D

Anonymous Quotations

-
"Important truths begin as outrageous, or at least uncomfortable, attacks upon the accepted wisdom of the time."

"We owe almost all our knowledge not to people who have agreed, but to people who have disagreed."

"In any field of inquiry, the beginner is more likely than the expert to make important discoveries."

"People who pursue their own intellectual interests for purely personal reasons are more likely to benefit the rest of the world than are people who try to act for the public good."

Maiden called Life

-
The more I embrace her, the more she slips away,
The more I appease her, the more incensed she is,
The more I steer her, the more evasive she becomes,
Enigmatic, evanescent, teasing…

The farther I try to run away, the closer she comes,
The higher my abuse, the greater is her forgiving love;
And when I set her free, let go…completely,
There she stands smiling her undying smile…

Deeper and deeper I delve into her and further lost, adrift I feel,
More and more I unravel her and more mysterious her mysteries become…

This maiden called Life,
And the trifle of a lifetime to fathom her…

Contradicting expressions of that same emotion...

-
She wanted to submit…lose herself in him,
Surrender her rudder to his valiant will…

Mould herself to his desires,
Confine herself to tendering for him.

For was it not in his happiness that her joys lay…

Yet he was not happy…

He wanted her by his side,
Complementing partners hand-in-hand,
Together, fighting the world, changing it…

In her independence, her freedom;
In her assertion of her own free will,
He found his love, his affection, his joy…

And I silently wondered from a distance,
At the contradicting expressions of that same emotion…

For a pint of that unfamiliar failure...

-
He walked on, further and further,
A trail, it didn’t even exist; he didn’t care…

Friends trudged along him for a while,
A while…before they gave up…one by one.

The bond of friendship, too tenuous for this journey…

His foes, pursued for a distance,
Till no further they would go.

Abhorrence wasn’t enough…

Yet he trekked on as if in a reverie,
Unmindful and unaware…
Willingly bequeathing prosperity of the familiar,
To friends, foes, whoever desired…

For his quest was for the periphery, the fringe,
The unexplored, uncharted, unanswered…

That joy of uncovering knowledge unknown,
Living on the very edge, making every moment count,
That thrill, that ecstasy, that bliss…

Fail in his quest even if he may...

A hundred familiar triumphs were no match,
For a pint of that unfamiliar failure…

If you want to learn Game Theory

-
http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~rahul/cs905/

Reservation: The actual issues

-
The reservation issue is again hogging the limelight thanks to Mandal-!!.

Just posted this comment on Jaya's blog. It's cryptic but captures the essence of the problem of reservation.
-------

What's the objective:
Equal opportunities for all at stage n.

How does the government intend to attain this objective:
Support those who do not receive equal opportunities till stage (n-1) so that they get equal opportunities at stage n.

Points of contention:

1. Who all do not receive equal opportunities: SC/STs, OBCs, women (there is reservation for women in AP's entrance exams), economically backward etc. etc. ... in a vote bank democracy common identities are waiting to be discovered.

2. What is "support": Reservation is just a form of support. Support could also take the form of special schools, grants, concessions, tax rebates etc. etc.

3. What's stage "n" : If one defines "n" to be the final opportunities-for-living, then support in employment maybe justified. If "n" be the employment-entry stage, then support in the higher educational institutes maybe justified...and so on....

These are problems most nations have been grappling with in some form or the other for quite sometime.

Did I lose you?

-
In finding my way through these tortuous lanes of life,
Grappling with the ever-changing immediate,
Confronting, wrestling with that overpowering future,
Running, running all the while to get ahead…
Did I lose you; lose you somewhere my friend…

In shedding that extra load to rise higher,
Dressing up to look better,
Talking smooth to sound sweeter…
In giving to the world what the world wants of me…
Somewhere…somewhere did I lose you my friend…

That carefree soul, innocent spirit,
Fiery idealism, stupefied wonder…
Those silly jokes, that mindless babble…
That naïveté…

Tell me, tell me I didn’t lose you my dear friend…

Her dance

-
Floating unshackled in space,
Weightless on the waves…
Free flying in the heavenly clouds,
She dances unmindful in her limitless joy…

The gods stupefied, awestruck at the spectacle,
The universes stand still,
Her intensity, her allure…
The climax of all creation?
Her dance of life…

As I stand silently wondering,
Lost in her beauty, in her dance,
Feeling blessed…

My beloved mirage

-
My mirage, dear fleeting mirage…

Running after you since aeons;
Through heaven and hell,
Through life…
So close, yet so far…

My mirage, dear fleeting mirage…

For your feel, your touch, your refuge,
In the hope that you’ll perceive the words unsaid,
In the hope that you’ll look back…just once,
In the hope that you’re real...

My beloved mirage, dear fleeting mirage…

Guncha koi

-
(Song Title: 'Guncha koi' from the movie 'Main, meri patni aur woh'
Singer: Mohit Chauhan)

Guncha koi mere naam kar diya.....
Guncha koi mere naam kar diya.....
Saki ne phir se mera jaam bhar diya...
Saki ne phir se mera jaam bhar diya...
Guncha koi.....

Tum jaisa koi nahi is jahaan mein,
Tum jaisa koi nahi is jahaan mein,
Subah ko teri zulf ne shaam kar diya,
Subah ko teri zulf ne shaam kar diya,

Saki ne phir se mera jaam bhar diya...
Guncha koi.....

Mehfil mein baar baar idhar dekha kiye,
Mehfil mein baar baar idhar dekha kiye,
Aankhon ke zazeeron ko mere naam kar diya,
Ankhon ke zazeeron ko mere naam kar diya,

Saki ne phir se mera jaam bhar diya...
Guncha koi.....

Hosh bekhabar se huye unke bagair,
Hosh bekhabar se huye unke bagair,
Woh jo humse keh na sake dil ne kah diya,
Woh jo humse keh na sake dil ne kah diya,

Saki ne phir se mera jaam bhar diya...
Guncha koi.....
Guncha koi mere naam kar diya.....
Saki ne phir se mera jaam bhar diya...

War and Peace: A Perspective

-
(Was rummaging through old documents.
Found this article published by me at the height of the second Gulf/Iraq War in 2003)

As the war on Iraq rages relentlessy, it is apparent that this affair shall be a long drawn one, a bloody battle where each side shall use all means in its possession to finish its enemies off. And thus, the spectre of war has shifted from open attacks to suicide attacks, and from targetting 'only' military establishments to politics with humanitarian aid. And accompanying this duel has been the other battle, the propoganda war where each channel tries to potray itself as the most neutral and objective reporter while at the same time taking care not to displease their political bosses on who they depend on their very survival......a very difficult ask indeed.

But the issue or the perspective on which I would like to dwell, though related would sound or appear to have little connection, atleast initially to those whose focus is exclusively the theatre of conflict. Today, we have a surfeit of commentators and intellectuals, in fact in addition to the supposedly well-informed analysts on television, every person on the street round the world has a point of view; and very rightly so, each person is entitled to his independent and personal perspective. And they range from extremes at both ends to moderate viewpoints. Whether indicting the coalition or the dictator in Iraq or the Arabs and Islamists according to one's loyalties, there is a common strand in the viewpoint of every informed citizen of the world. That there is a vice, there is something naturally or deliberately but atrociously wrong, something which goes against our accepted sensibilities and values and the side I support, whether it is the coalition of the willing or the Iraqis and Arabs is trying to correct this or fighting to uphold this right.This in a nutshell summarises the arguments on both sides of the fence.

This brings me to a more basic argument. What is wrong on the scale of the society must be wrong on the individual scale as well. What we, as concerned global citizens, consider wrong and evil, when applied on large masses of humanity, must be equally wrong and reprehensible when applied to individuals and small groups of people, And this represents to me, the greatest dichotomy of the war. Every individual, irrespective of his stand with regard to this conflict, engages with elan everyday in his personal theatre, in the same atrocities, which he opposes on the global scale. How many of those so-called peace activists do not employ the very same tactics which the Americans are employing in the battlefield, for a rise in their own organisations. How many of those opposing Saddams's brutal tactics and favouring his oust do not use the same tactics to dominate in their personal lives. How many commentators and reviewers decrying the biased coverage and propoganda of the channels, the moment they step out of the hallowed pretincts of the studios do not engage in shameless prevarication for personal gain. And how many of those men on the street with such a strong sense of justice that they march out in millions for or against the war, use the same scale of justice to measure their personal behaviours. As the old adage goes, it is easier to preach than to practice. It is easier to demonstrate, to fight, to even sacrifice one's life for principles and values than to implement it in one's life. And principles or values - democracy or freedom or self-respect etc- have the same yardsticks irrespective of whether they are applied to societies or individuals.

And this leads to the fundamental question, how do we expect to be applied to societies or armies or nations, the values which we loathe to implement personally. What is the society, who composes the Ameriacn or Iraqi army, it is men like us. My power might be limited, so my vices and tricks are limited to my family or friends, my friend might head an organisation, correspondingly his theatre of deceit is larger while for Bush or Saddam it is the entire world. But the basic idea is the same. And while we, the common citizens of the world, oppose those means when applied to large groups of citizens, we are happy employers of the same techniques, albeit on a smaller scale and within the law, in the humdrum of our commonplace existence.

We have to realise that we are the society, it is men like us who command armies and Bush or Saddam or other so called leaders are just our manifestations. Most of us engage in the same deceit within our limits, deceits we are opposing on the streets today. Our theatre is limited, the law doesn't recognize these petty issues, so we continue to engage in these deceits while we take moral stands on global issues. The whole thing smacks of hypocrisy of the worst kind.

So what is the solution? The narration of a minor incident in the life of Mahatma Gandhi will make this clear. A gentleman suffering from acute diabetes once came to Gandhiji, an occasional practitioner of traditional medicine, for treatment. Gandhiji sent him back on the first day without advice requesting him to return the next day and this routine was replayed for many days. At last, after many long days, Gandhiji gave the man his medicine which was to forsake all sweets.
The man, perplexed and stupefied, asked in all humility why Gandhiji had delayed this advice for so long. Gandhiji replied saying that he himself had been a diabetic for a long time and yet had not given up eating sweets though he knew it would cure him of the ollness. How could he advise something which he did not follow. In the intervening days since their first encounter, Gandhiji had given up sweets completely before proffering the advice.

Many might argue that this discussion has only an academic relevance and impossible to implement in the real world. The Indian freedom struggle led by Gandhiji disproves this; it was a resistance where entire struggles were called off when even a single participant flouted the principles in their public or private lives. Few realise the significance of this. But this is the only practical and permanent solution, since every individual has control over only himself, not over Saddam or Bush's policies. A change in the individual's personal theatre will be reflected on his society and gradually this will be reflected in the ways of the world.

Until every one of those demonstrators and analysts starts implementing in his personal theatre what he advocates publicly, nothing will change or even if there is a change it will be temporary. We are tackling the manifestations, not the root of the problem. The process of personal reformation and discardment of this hypocrisy is long and arduous, but it must begin, and this war must serve as a clarion call for that reformation because who knows, tomorrow you or I might be in Bush or Saddam's shoes and then our theatre of action will not be our homes or office but the entire world.

Feeling Life...

-
That whiff of fresh air,
When tedium is the steady wind…

Smell of the eccentric,
When convention is the accepted fragrance;

Free falls into the abyss,
Even as mobs ceaselessly rush to the top;

Giving it all up,
Just like that…just because you no longer believe in it…

The sparkle of the doomed genius,
Even as prim bulls charge ahead;

Feeling Life, when everybody is busy living it…

I know me

-
(written on 25 Mar, 2006)

Tied by so many chains,
I am free...
I have no wings,
Yet I fly...
In the midst of the cacophony of people,
I feel perfect solitude...
Love, hatred, bigotry all round me,
Yet free of prejudices...
Weights of innumerable expectations,
Yet feel so light…

For I know me,
I feel me,
I realize me…

All else is inconsequential…

I know the universe,
I feel the universe,
I realize the universe…

Coming back to "virtual" life…

-
Managed to get a dial-up connection here at home today evening after many days of trying…
Can hardly explain to people around what getting back on the internet really means to me...

The alleys and streets of the "virtual" have become such familiar territory, inextricably linked to the continuum of life, that without it at times living seems almost seems incomplete…at other times it's that familiar backdrop while discrete incoherent "realities" form, evolve, then dissolve into an uninterrupted flow…that emancipated space, in large measure still unfettered by so many afflictions harassing "reality"…

Okay, am getting too prosaic. Basically, am back online and am happy about that…so expect an avalanche of posts in days to come. :-)

Sing On

-
Sing on, ye carefree lark,
Fill the meadows with thy harmony;
Gaiety, delight, careless indulgence,
Ignited young minds, your company.

Sing the tunes of the sunny future,
Beckoning us with open arms,
As we young minds embrace the world,
Embrace the meadows, embrace your farms.

Sing to us the tales of yore,
So forget we may not the days gone by,
As we march on spreading our songs,
Bidding this place farewell goodbye...

Have you?

-
Found this old cut-paste while sorting my stuff yesterday. Cut-outs from Wills' newspaper ads which I had pasted at one place about 3 years back. Many memories associated with it... The message in it goes like this:
---

HAVE YOU?

Have you lived life the way you want to?
Or the way you're supposed to?

Have you the courage to say no?
To people. To responsibilities. To the world.

Have you forgotten what it's like not to think of consequences?
Have you? Really lived?

Banaras-Sarnath trip

-
Managed to undertake a short trip to Banaras and Sarnath. Will write about it later. Two pics for now [Thanks Shravan :-) ]

For Once

-
For once let fate be defied,
For once let not the inevitable happen,
For once let logic fail,
For once let there be an abrupt surprise,
For once let my flawless inference fail;

Such things happen not in real life, I know,
Yet for once, just this once...

A being like any else

-
Treat me as any other human,
A being like any else.

No privileges if I'm underprivileged,
No special conduct to make me equal,
No concessions, no reservations...

I am one of you,
Zany in my way,
Like you are...

Struggling with myself, with the world,
Like you are...

Looking for my goal,
Like you are...

Love me for what I've made of myself,
Or hate me for that,

But no love or hate I shall accept for what is beyond my control...

Tat Twam Asi

-
Whirlpools without, tumult of the mighty gods,
Meancing tornadoes - I stick to my pole -
Swirling waves, hurricanes...mother nature's fury...

Peace within...silence, quietude;
For nature is but a part of me,
The waves, whirlpools, gods and others,
All exist cause I exist...

For I Am It,
Tat Twam Asi.

A new phase begins...

-
Slot-1 placements are over.
Rejected offers from some of the best consulting firms to get into a career which I look forward to. Will be joining the research and fund management team of one of the country's most reputed investment houses.

A new phase of life begins...

Emotion

-
He could give up his "unnecessary" emotions,
And scale higher and higher...
Dispassionate, mechanical engine of success...
The stratosphere was his for asking.

No feeling, anger, hurt or despair,
No emotion...that oft-despised "excess" baggage.
That's all that had to be cast away,
For the heady glory...he'd always dreamed of it.

Yet he did not, would not, could not.
He loved them...her, him, them...

Success without feeling, without love or despair!

Nah, he'd stay human and struggle...
Like her, like him, like them all.

Why do they give in?

-
When that road winds ahead; twists and turns,
Lanslides happen; heavens falling apart,
When infinite powers of a rational mind numbed by finite fears...
Destitute - desolated, discarded;

They give in, give in to you...

Why, why do they do that?

For if your love for them were real,
You'd have sacrificed yourself to obviate such perils,
Inconsequential - whether an appeal arose or not;

True love requires no appeal...

Cracked it! (Chat in Gmail) :-D

-
Well Gtalk is now enabled from my primary Gmail account. :-D
The problem was that I had enabled UK-English interface for Gmail, while Gtalk within Gmail as of now, works only for US-English interface.

Other common reasons for Gtalk not working from Gmail could be:
1. Using a browser other than IE or Firefox
2. Using a version older that Firefox 1.0 or IE 6.0

Wokay, problem solved, now I move on to more pressing matters :-D

[Did I hear somebody say I'm brilliant ;-)...wallowing in self-praise...tata :-D]

I still don't have it - chat in Gmail :-((

-
The whole wide world has it. All my secondary mail accounts have it.
But GTalk is still not enabled from my primary Gmail id.

Aaaaaaahhhhh...are the google guys listening???
One of your loyal customers is very, very enraged grrrrrr...

Ghumakkad

-
(Ghumakkad in Hindi means Nomad)

The nomad wanders on,
From oasis to oasis,
Desert to desert.
From winter to winter,
Spring to spring.

An act of benevolence here,
A trace of love there,
A beguiling joy somewhere...
All lost in the dreariness of travel,
In his fascination for the unknown.

A tear as he moves on,
In his eyes, in her eyes, in their eyes...

Would he did find a home in his travels,
Or the road his true love, his open home, forever and ever...

Lovin it :-P

-
I'm loving this phase.

Exams (rather academics here) are over. Placement is still some distance away. Library is open, I have access to the internet. There is nobody telling me study this or study that and there is no constraint of any routine exam.

And I'm reading. Reading and reading...all that I want to read, love to read

There is a mess which ensures that I don't starve. I have a small room of my own to bury my body. I have access to messengers, mails and a mobile to get in touch with people when I want to or stay isolated in my own world if that's what I want.

No compulsions (or rather there are many... it's placement season after all, but I'm acquescing only to the ones which I want to).

Occasional PPTs and company forms disturb my "dhun", but I'll give the world around that much concession :-).

This phase'll get over soon I know, but I'm enjoying it as long as it lasts. :-)

Respect the Opposite Sex

-

Many of the companies which come to campus for these Pre-placement talks have lady presenters (HR or otherwise) who hold the centrestage while other presenters (might/might not) pop in and out according to the profiles being offered.

And invariably, there would be some guy around me passing a lewd comment. Infuriates me no end and there is little I am able to do to immediately express it given the setting.

The typical justification is that it's "normal" and you're not "man enough" if such thoughts don't arise spontaneously in you and it's just natural to express it. And mind you, this is coming not from illiterate fools but the creme-de-lemme of our system.

Utterly, completely ridiculous.
She is on that stage for a purpose, and that purpose is not even remotely related to being the object of those comments. Get that basic fact right.

A key feature of human evolution has been our ability of understanding the fellow human being, and the respect arising out of that understanding. That's how we've thrived in collective units - as social beings. True, we've struggled both at the individual level and the societal level to develop this sort of understanding, and given the diversity of human nature, this struggle is natural. Yet the key has been to try and evolve the understanding before disengagement might happen. And once the understanding is in place. respect flows out naturally; by respect I do not mean an agreement or becoming the best of pals etc., it is just an equilibrium state decision where all involved defer to the freedom of the other naturally without violating their own freedom and without the impostion of an external will.

By passing that lewd comment, you're showing a complete lack of (plus desire for) understanding, and infringing on her freedom. By disrespecting her, you're disrespecting yourself and the civilisation which has given rise to you.

Individual choice, you've said to justify it. That means you don't understand the meaning of individual choice. At the cost of repeating myself, a necessary pre-requisite for free exercise of individual choice is understanding. Otherwise all the rapists and murderers in the world would be happily justified!

And this extends to all scenarios. By pointing out the folly of gender-based commenting I'm trying to highlight a rampant example of a larger malaise.

---

As another example of what I 'm trying to say (in a different context), just check this inane locust-commenting on Jaya's blog ( IV III II I ), a perfect case of stubborn insistence on not understanding despite repeatedly being shown the light of logic. Her patience must be praised.

Apurva's post explains the context, and just check the comment spamming that post has been subjected to!

Top 50 blogs they say...check out

-
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/media/15972/

Thanks Shravan for the link.

A Killer

-
He killed for the first time,
And then couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't talk,
He vomited,
For days, for weeks, for months.

And then he killed again,
This time it was more professional,
It was less painful for him,
He vomited less.

And then again and again and again he killed,
(He was running up the ladder two steps at a time)
Till the vomiting stopped completely,
He had vomited all his conscience out.

The Withering Flower's Cry

-
The flower is withering again,
Petals blighting,
Stalk gone dry,
Bees kissing it, dwindlng by the hour.

There's a lot of light,
But it's open sunshine that she requires,
There's watering everyday,
But it's the untrammelled rain that she craves for.

She's a wild flower, in freedom is her life,
And she's being confined to a beautiful death,
She's calling out through her silent cries,
Save her, throw her away into the wild...to her home...to her life.

Thank god we feel hungry!

-
Was wondering [as usual :-)] at breakfast today.

Yeah, what if we never felt hungry? Suppose there were a source of renewable energy in the human body. Would humankind have progressed to where it is today.
Isn't hunger the most promordial of drivers of human progress?

So the next time you feel hungry, thank god that you do feel hungry, and not for the food you get.
[Ok don't bombard me with hate mails for this blasphelmous suggestion :-D]

Company forms...summers and now :)

-
As anybody in a decent B-school'd tell you, the forms you have to fill to apply to certain companies are a pain. They end up asking you stuff which is so nebulous and hazy that, if you're the kind of guy/girl who loves direct stuff, it's bound to put you off.

I filled a few of these forms for my summers as well and am filling a few now for the finals. But there's a whole lot of difference.

It is hardly taking time to fill up the forms this time while in summers it was a struggle. :-)

I was actually copying answers from one form to another to save myself the pain in summers, but now I write the answers immediately, thinking is spontaneous. :-)

In summers, it was like I need to give the top-notch firms atleast a little of what they're looking for in the answers, so a lot of confusion about they're looking for was a necessary concomitant. Now it's like, boss this is what I am and this is what I like doing, if this is what you want fine otherwise, nice to know you, tata :-).

In summers it was like there wasn't enough space for most essay answers, now hardly any answer goes beyond a handful of words:-)

Well, one ensuing year has had some effect eh ;-)

Blogroll...at last :)

-
A Blogroll...at last :). After aeons of postponing, finally found the resolve and time yesterday to make the blogroll...blogs of people I have known closely in real life at some point in time or the other. Some of these blogs I check almost daily, some more occasionally (they write less frequently :-)), nevertheless I keep track.

There are so many other friends with whom I'm in almost daily contact, but till they start writing blogs...well they don't get the privilege of joining this privileged list ;-). Somebody listening... :D.

Done

-
Wrote my last paper as an MBA student yesterday afternoon.
It's over...40 courses, a Course of Independent Study and a summer internship...36.5 credits...20 months.

So what was it like, these almost two years spent in this pursuit...

Difficult to describe. Not picture-perfect ofcourse, not the worst of my life either...no way.

Well, I couldn't identfy with many aspects of this system...but I loved many, many of the indivduals who make up this system. Most of them, I'll stay in touch throughout life...or even if we do lose touch, it'll take just a moment to rekindle the spontaneity.

I made some wonderful new friends, friends for whom I'd put everything at stake. These friends aren't perfect people; in many cases the friendship started out with heated arguments as one tried to force a viewpoint on the other...that gradually gave way to understanding, then respect for differences, finally friendships which stand on much stronger foundations...friendships we'll cherish for life.

I did change. The Ayan who'll graduate out of these portals is not the same as the Ayan who walked in...but I chose the changes which I wanted in me. I did not allow the system to coerce it's imprints on me, I exercised my choice at every stage. This to me is my most important achievement as I graduate out of this place.

In search of truth...

_

-the Mandelbrot Set

Creating content to top searches...same story again

-
It's the same story but this time in case of web pages. The story goes as follows...

Initially websites created content which they thought was really good.
Then came search engines to help navigation of all this content.
And thenthe reverse cycle started, the content of web-pages suited to top the page ranks, the implicit assumption...the tables had turned.

Just like it was initially reading for knowledge. Then came the exam system to judge the actual knowledge gained.
And then the twisted cycle of the education system bending backwards to allow for topping of the exams.

In both cases the purpose has been surrendered and an implicit assumption has been made. The implicit assumption is rarely true.

Famous Five!

-



-
Yeah, that's what Sugu's named this pic. :D
It's a pic of an older outing, well we were out yesterday again but Divyansh couldn't join and since I have a roll-camera (and keep losing my rolls every once in a while), don't know when I'll have the recent pics uploadable. Till then...

Ecstacy!

_



The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

- Richard P. Feynman, from speech "What is and What Should be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society", given at the Galileo Symposium in Italy, 1964.

I Have a Dream

Delivered on 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C., USA

Speaking of troubles

-
"If all the troubles in the world could be laid down in one big heap, and everyone was allowed to choose one trouble, we should end up by picking up our old trouble again."

-from the story, Some Teachings of the Bent-Double Beggar,
in Our Trees Sill Grow in Dehra
by Ruskin Bond

Finance data on India

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Sources:

1. RBI's database: Comprehensive but lacks G-sec yield data
https://reservebank.org.in/cdbmsi/servlet/login/

2. G-sec data:
http://www.debtonnet.com/

3. Historical international stock index and other useful data, Yahoo Finance India
http://in.finance.yahoo.com/

will be updated...

Through your 'lens'

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You know me today, tomorrow I am a stranger.
You love me today, tomorrow you don't know if I may be trusted.

Today you'd give up everything to be with me,
Tomorrow you'd give up the same things to be away.

Today only I comprise your world,
Tomorrow your world has all but me.

Will you change in a day?
Will I change in a day?

How much do you understand me...

I am yours through your 'lens',
It has to come off some day...

If you're interested in Game Theory

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A good link with a lot of downloadable e-books to pick up Game Theory.

http://www.virtualperfection.com/gametheory/index.html

Thanks Snehit :)

My Quote

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"Any appeal to authority - even of the Almighty - indicates a fallacy in the underlying logic."

-Ayan Bhattacharya

Wow, now I've started minting my own quotations :))

Feynman MP3s

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Got a password protected link which has the entire set of Feynman lectures at Caltech recorded in his own voice.
Wow is an understatement. :))

If you've already found your heaven then somebody's sad for you :)

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There was a presentation recently on campus. A group of 3 had flied down for the purpose. A top-notch honcho and his two subordinates. I just wasn't comfortable throughout the session, it felt like the honcho had taken a flight from heaven to our campus...all the condescending remarks he was making about all and sundry. In fact, I didn't last the full session :).

Yet some of the points he made are points that I completely agree with (not the style in which he made it though).
One of the points he emphasised was the fact that if you believe you've found your heaven, well, it's time to commit suicide. Very, very true. If the best is behind you, why burden yourself with living at all.

There are so many circles of which an individual has to become a part as he/she grows up. Some are eternal joys, some are pure disasters. But I find so many people happy to believe that "Those were the best days of my life" :), and so many futile artificial attempts to recreate the settings of that by-gone heaven in the changed present. They're just closed to the opportunities of the present, closetted in the beauty of the past...which will never happen again.

I sometimes sincerely feel sad for them.

Understanding

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Well most old-time friends who get in touch after a long interval, have that familiar question:

*How come you're not yet in the IAS?
*What happened, when did you move away from conflict resolution?
*You're supposed to be working for the society right, so what's this you're doing now?
... and so on.

Right since childhood, when that innocous question, "Son, what do you want to do?" was popped, my answer was almost always IAS. And yes IAS it was going to be till school and even in college (though by then the resolve was weakening).

And then of course conflict resolution. At 19, I was on the Steering Committee of the apex body for conflict resolution in the Asia-Pacific, member of so many other bodies in the field. It could be just-about a perfect launch pad...and maybe it even fitted perfectly with IAS...

But by then a personal realisation had started taking form, something that has gradually taken the shape of a conviction.

The most important change required is in Understanding. Implementation and the other things of course are very important too...without them, how will the world ever feel the change? Yet, understanding the unknown or the imperfectly known...that's the first step. It's almost always the new understanding that sets in motion the revolution...creates the maximum long term impact...and of course is so much fun. :-)

As Einstein famously remarked when rejecting the offer to be president of Israel,
"Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."
Opinions would differ on this and it's impossible to make a judgement (who's lived to eternity ;-)), yet on the whole, I'd tend to agree with that wise old man's wise saying. :)

I, Robot

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Had read this Asimov classic long, long back.
Watched a movie by the same name yesterday. It's no way even close to that classic collection in Asimov's slim volume. Yet a notch above the banter that passes nowadays as sci-fi movies.
Anyway, the movie got me thinking about that old problem again...

Those of you who aren't aware, Asimov in his classic had created the three laws of robotics which all robots in the world have to obey:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

As robots evolve they begin to realise that there is a conflict of interests between protecting individual human beings and the entire human species. For preserving the human species, individuals might need to be sacrificed, individual aspirations might need to be crushed and so on ... basically sacrifice of the individual in collective interests (reminds me of Ayn Rand...the complete contary view).

Well, isn't this the conflict we're witnessing everywhere around us...this conflict between the the individual and the collective which while it has no existence without him, assumes an independent presence when it comes into being.

Well in a way it boils down to how much of my wierdness I have to sacrifice to be accepted as a part of the "sane" society? ;-)
And I have a very bised opinion on that.
:-))

Identity

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That's all I am right...

A sack of jangling flesh,
A frame of mis-shaped bones,
A nameless, faceless identity,
Humped, beaten, bent and confused,
Struggling in this ocean of inconspicuous...

Yet relentless...

To redeem my identity, in search of it...

Don't I feel your anguish, my friend,
Your pain, your love...
Your struggle is mine, every moment of it,
For in your truth lies my truth; my identity.
By giving you your lost identity, I shall find mine,
My identity, my truth, my face in this ocean...

Greatness in a lost battle

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It was a lost battle from the very start,
Lost before the battle had started,
Lost before he had entered the field,
Lost even before he was aware it was a battle.

Yet the the thought of deserting the field,
Never crossed his naive mind;
He gave in his best, aware of failure,
Aware of ignominy, aware of the fringe,
This battlefield would consign him to.

Yet he achieved what nobody else did:
Respect of the enemy, admiration of friends;
And above all, they realised the reason for his struggle...

And despite all, he remained blissfully naive,
Therein lied his superlative greatness.

Heart rending helotry

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This endless placement hullabaloo on campus (of which I am a part too!) brings forth these thoughts once again...

Isn’t it sometimes heart-rending: these macabre convolutions of a system so completely enslaved to an imperfect end-result…and the tragedy of free human spirit wasted in mindless helotry, in so many cases without even the realisation having set in…

PPTs in Placement Season...grrr :)

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This PPT (Pre-placement talk) business, atleast the way it's handled in Indian B-schools, is funny. The purpose of PPT is fine, the company gets a chance to display its wares and the interested candidates get a chance to know more about the profiles on offer and there's a chance for a two-way interaction.

But what if there are only a handful on campus interested in attending a PPT (maybe you already know about the profile, or you know that the HR guy coming to talk anyway won't know much to be of any use, or maybe you're just not interested since it doesn't match your profile etc. etc.). But the room can't be empty, can it...so starts the system of compulsory attendance of students in PPT norm, and all the concomitant rules. And it's always like, can't you do this for your institute type (backed by other inducements...or threats let's say ;-)), so nobody is willing to risk crossing the line.

I understand the compulsions on both sides...but would the companies really mind if there were a handful of really interested people rather than the artificial hordes shepherded for the purpose. In the end it's only those really interested guys that they'll look forward to anyway.

A system working under compulsion or coercion can only be sub-optimal...freedom (whatever the cost) is a pre-requisite for it to reach its full potential.

The immediate context of this post: I had to get up early in the morning for a PPT in which I wasn't interested and a PPT in which I was interested got cancelled...so my schedule for the entire day is all bungled up grrrrr :).

Just different

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When face to face with an entity with a difference, why do most people adopt one of the following attitudes:
a) reverence (or)
b) attempt to find a fraud in it so as to discount the difference ?

Everybody is wierd in his own way.
The trick is to figure out if your wierdness matches with the other guy's wierdness and if not the points of divergence. If both involved can respect those differences, you have the basis for a long term sustained relationship. Imposition rarely works in friendships struck after reaching maturity, especially if the individuals are headstrong and independent.

Wow, I'm preaching...I can start writing a best-seller on relationships, can't I? :-D... a jazzy title for the book is all I need ;-).

Lucknow Darshan

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Finally managed to go on a "Lucknow darshan" yesterday (yeah, after one and a half years in this place :-)) .

Well, Pooja, Shruti and I took the 10:30 hrs bus from campus and we returned only by 18:30 hrs, so it was about 8 hrs of feasting on Lucknow of the Nawabs and British...would've wandered for longer if Pooja didn't have her audition.

Given my current mood of impatience, can't write too much, just a few anecdotes :)

Places visited:
1. Bara Imambara (bhoolbhulaiya, bouli and the rest of the monuments in the complex)
For an hour, we weren't getting lost in the bhoolbhulaiya and I lost my patience and started calling localites to ask them how to get lost (network was bad) ... and then finally we got lost while descending and guess what, we were stuck for about 2 hrs till we asked a guide.
Had a gala time singing "Gumnaam hai koi..." but I guess it didn't scare the ladies, they're so brave nowadays :-(.

Issues we couldn't resolve: The technical efficacy of the sloping design of the ventilators!
Ahh, and too many suicide points :D.
And am still not sure about the need for a hamam or bouli (common bathing complexes) in an imambara.

Overall, a must see if you're in Lucknow.

2. The Clock Tower

3. Chhota Imambra and all the complexes within
Well the half-kilometre walk from the bara to the chhota imambara I guess hasn't changed much in the 300 or so years except that the hoardings of a hundred "useless" politicians. What do they do anyway...no development, probably the best way to "maintain" places of historical importance, eh?
The monument: delicate and exquisite, worth visiting.

Hmm by the way, we got guavas outside the bara imambara for 8 rs (half kilo) and well the same guavas were selling for Rs 4 a hal-kilo outside the chhota imambara...well even the prices had contracted, huh :).

Ahh, and the pursual by guides, well that's part of the experience.

4. Picture-gallery
Again ill-maintained, some good potraits though...don't believe the glib guides ;-) (we pursued a guided group at a safe-distance, so we know the guided stories :D)

4. Shahid Minar
Nice view of the Gomati (or whatever remains of its once-pristine beauty) from this point.

5. Residency
A funny feeling when visiting that 33-acre complex where the British lived in the time of the Nawabs of Avadh...the Britishers have erected memorial to celebrate acts of valour of their fellow men killed during the 1857 war of independence while "Indian" additions celebrate the mutineers who tried killing those Britishers.

Same act, completely different views depending on which side of the fence you look from!

Something we couldn't figure out: Why no structure in the Residency has a roof remaining.
Ahh, and that "spacious" banquet hall (according to the board outside) is smaller than our badminton court, how did couples dance!

Well, the trip back wasn't eventless either, "aapki jo marzi de dena" of the rickshaw driver being the bone of contention. He wasn't happy with our marzi, but what the hell, he had agreed to agree to our marzi!

And in case I forget to tell you...I was the only one with a working camera, and so all the pics are with me...so I have a sustainable competitive advantage, hu hu ha ha ha :-D

Am I getting over my impatience? ;-)

A Year

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Tic-toc, tic-toc, tic-toc ... a year gone by, a year awaited,
A year closer to death, a year closer to fulfillment of the purpose of life.

A free fall into wilderness,
A focussed march to goals;

Of two steps taken on the road of pursuit,
Road to where...Do you know the way?

A year of friends and friendships,
So many that far-removed isolation in midst of friends;

A year of change, metamorphosis,
So tremendous...Am I lost?

Yet a thrill in environs unknown,
A joy at being adrift,
Freedom to start yet again,

Turmoil within, turmoil without,
Turmoil, the seed of creation...

A year gone by, a year awaited,
As I embrace this life, as life slips away,

And this curious mind wonders as it wanders...

Not only HNY ;-)

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Hmm, one thing that stands out is that off late is there has hardly been "prose-aic" posts on the blog. My older blogs were filled with monographs on all issues under the sun.

The reasons:
1. Once I've gotten the idea that's it, the fun is over. Thinking it again to write a blog entry is boring.
2. Total lack of patience to carve out well formed, structured logical arguments and sentences which'll make understandable the ideas to readers...that's again damn, damn boring.
(Reminds me of the article I had written in college about the shortcomings in human language and communication :-)).
Even talking to some people to make them understand becomes a test of patience...so it's best to behave like a buffoon and use the anchor of humour to save the intellect...hu ha ha ha :-D.

So, it's not that I've become "just" a starry-eyed poet now... issues continue to bother and are regularly contemplated in the crevices of this mind, issues under the sun and beyond, and there are many, many remarkable things that are happening all around about which I would've deliberated a thousand words but just that Mr. Patience plays his tricks on me (and I like it ;-)).

And of course, poetry, if you understand it, can be great tool of expression.

Chalo, people HAPPY NEW YEAR.

And for those who have trouble with their new year resolutions, as Dhody scrapped:
May ur troubles last as long as your new year resolution ;-)

hu hu ha ha ha :-D

Of what use

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Of what use is knowledge,
If you have to submit your curiosity for it;
Of what use is the acme, the peak,
If you can't be yourself on it...

Of what use is respect from others,
If you have to surrender self-respect for it;
Of what use is not violating yourself,
When you violate everybody else for it...

Of what use is victory,
If you have to lose everything for it;
Of what what use is freedom,
If you have to surrender your soul for it...

Of what use is that heaven you seek, my friend,
If you have to surrender your life for it...

I want

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Yeah, one thing I really want is some such accomplishment that I never have to write a CV.

The final placement season is about to start here and now is the time for CV making ... torture period for me.
Hate trying to sell myself. I am the best judge of how good I am and that's it.
To hell with the people and companies who can't see my worth.
I'm not "selling" myself to them.

Do I sound like a narcissist? :-)

That Idea

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That idea which makes me oblivious of the world,
Disregard what surrounds me...

Enraptured by its beauty,
Voluntary submission to hypnosis...

Intoxicated without a drink...

Is that my manna to heaven,
Or scourge to hell?

Don't forget these days, don't forget them...

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Written on 18th Dec. while packing bags for what might be the last trip to this campus from home as student (this is the last term here).
-

Don't forget these days, don't forget them...

When we move away; far, far away,
In body and in spirit,
Chasing lofty dreams, separate paths...

Think of these days, days gone by...

When under the weight of friendships, newer and older,
The friendship of these days begins to look trivial;
Under the burden of inflated ego or will,
Camaraderie of these days feel like immature mistakes,

Think of these days, days gone by...

These days of folly, days of perfection,
Necessary comradeship and unnecessary confession,
Of garrulous misunderstanding, silent understanding...

Remember these days, days gone by...

Places visited in Kolkata

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Places visited during Kolkata stay:
1. Jorashanko Thakurbari - Rabindranath Tagore's ancestral home
2. Vivekananda's ancestral home
3. Presidency College old building (almost every bengali of repute had walked up those stairs and attended those classes)
4. Coffee House - Intellectual adda (for non-bengalis: adda=idle chatter) khana :-)
5. Town Hall - the museum there
6. Accompanied baba as we tried changing the car's AP registration no. to West Bengal...an experience to write about (...whither have you changed bengal, not in this department atleast).
7. Many other interesting places :-).

Will write about the stuff in detail when I have time...wanted to jot down the heads fast, otherwise laziness and other stuff begin to catch up. Same thing happened with the China trip...wanted to write about so many interesting experiences...well, but the days just piled up :-).

Plunge

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Written yesterday evening(18th Dec) during the boring Rajdhani travel from Howrah to Kanpur.
-

They speculated that she plunged for she was fed up with life;
They speculated that she plunged for she had been betrayed;
They speculated that she plunged for her ideals had been violated;
They speculated that she plunged for she had failed;
They speculated that she plunged for she had lost the sanity of her mind and soul;

She plunged for she wanted to enjoy the free fall.

-
Life is a little hectic nowadays with end-terms around and hundreds of routine and pathetically boring project submissions...am dead bored...have nothing much to talk about...hence this silence.

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Found the link on Jaya's blog.

The orginal presentation which Sergey Brin and Larry Page made on Google at Stanford:

http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8091/diglib/pub/
slides/berkeleydlijan98/berkeleygoogle2/sld001.htm

El dorado

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What if I never reach El Dorado...
What if there be no gold at El Dorado...
What if there be no El Dorado at all...

The eternal search for that elusive El Dorado,
A reason for existence beyond the today,
Meaning to life, its upliftment, hope...

And somewhere the realisation that I'm making my own El Dorado,
Carving El Dorado with my own hands while looking for it,
My El Dorado...

Manjunath: Justice?

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On Saturday (19th Nov 2005) night, our alumnus (IIM-L, 2003 batch) Manjunath Shanmugham was shot dead in Lakhimpur Khiri district, U.P. He was working in IOCL and was shot dead after he blacklisted a petrol pump for stocking adulterated oil.

I did not know him personally, does that matter?
Justice?

From the Press Infomation Bureau, Govt. of India site:

“The Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas condemns the dastardly heinous murder of Shri S. Manjunath, a Sales Officer of Indian Oil Corporation posted at Lakhimpur Kheri. Shir Manjunath was a bright young officer who showed great promise and potential. Apparently he was put to death for doing his work sincerely in bringing to book some dealers indulging in malpractices. The Committee recommends to the Central and State Governments to give full support to the officers of IOC and other PSUs engaged in curbing malpractices in distribution of petroleum products to consumers and calls upon the officers of IOC and the PSUs to carry out their work with full sense of responsibility”.

All relevant information on this issue:

http://manjunathshanmugam.blogspot.com/

Changed myself

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I topped their exams,
Changed myself so that I would top their exams;

I was the peak performer at work,
Changed myself so that I would succeed in their measures;

I was everybody's best friend,
Changed myself so that everybody loved me;

I was the universal role-model,
Changed myself so that I would be emulate worthy;

Changed myself so that I won in every one of their 'games',
Failed in 'my' life.

Project Syndicate

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Check the Project Syndicate site, it has regular articles by the who's who of the world on diverse issues

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentaries

The Meaning of It All, Feynman

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The Meaning of It All
by Richard P. Feynman

An intellectually-honest, outstandingly-brilliant mind in science grapples with questions that have confounded generations.

This compendium contains a set of 3 public lectures Feynman had given in 1963 on
1. The Uncertainty of Values
2. The Uncertainty of Science
3. This Unscientific Age

A few years back, I had spent about Rs. 500 at the Chennai airport to get a copy of this slim book (it was priced in dollars).
And now some noble soul has put this book online for free download...bless him!

Check the link (and download it before some sane guy decides to remove it!)

http://opal.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~streicher/physics/the%20meaning%20of%20it%20all.pdf

A scientists' conception of beauty

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"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars— mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere'. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination— stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern— of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent. "

Footnote in The Feynman Lectures on Physics
-Richard P. Feynman

Freedom of thought

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Written while suffering a suffocating class yesterday.
-

Freedom to think wild, think crazy,
Freedom to think in straitjacketed constraints,
Freedom to think the obvious, beyond the obvious,
Freedom to think the genius, the dolt;

Freedom to think that which will never be,
Freedom to think that which never can be,
Freedom to think nothing, nothing at all,
Freedom to think about thought, thought itself;

Freedom to think free...

Violation

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He would not violate his own self,
His weapons: created-lack-of-dependence and the threat to walk away,
And he had his multitudes of caring admirers,
None dare be their true-self with him, ah! fear those weapons coming into play,

Loved him so much that they talked what he wanted to hear,
His make-believe world of ideal expanding every passing day,
Noble causes professed, brilliant arguments of reason,
Reason for admirers; with him, mere stripped skeletons in sway.

In not violating himself, he violated all others,
Rarely spared a second thought, inviolable principles obey,
Peaks of unscalable success, fast scaled by him,
Unviolated martyr he was, soaring display.

I pitied his world, his "principled" success,
He was another mere god in human portray;

Cry with the suffering humans my friend, violate yourself for these fallible humans and they will offer their all for you...
Their unselfish true love, you've never undersood it's true worth...

Pity your inviolable heights, mere stacks of rising inflamable hay.

Record brilliant lectures->Eliminate useless professors

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I'm not suggesting something revolutionary, that gem "Feynman Lectures in Physics" were a result of this (transcription of notes while "the Master" :-) lectured undergrads at Caltech). Yet it is not very common in good institutes in India [atleast not at IIM-L :-( ].

You have to realise when you have one-of-a-kind brilliant professor who gives one-of-a-kind brilliant lectures. Of course, ideally you must ensure a live performance every time for students to feast on. But this might not be practically possible due to various constraints. So what's the next best thing to do in this age of technology: Record the lectures and make it available to interested posterity.

Brilliant lectures which I listen to from time to time (and availbale on the net for free!) :

1. http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8
A series of 4 lectures Feynman gave in Auckland about QED, audio+video. If you've not seen a Feynman performance, you're missing something in life :-).

2. http://delta.ulib.org/html/ (Go to the "Multimedia & Lectures" under "Contents", can't give you the exact link coz the page doesn't open from the CC)
Some great lectures at this link including one audio lecture by Knuth (the father of genetic algorithms) and an audio+video by Wolfram which I don't like too much!

McKinsey Quarterly on India

-
This time's McKinsey Quarterly is titled "Fulfilling India's promise". It's a speical edition on India.
Am reading it currently.
Interesting perspectives, read it if you have access to the journal!

100 questions in Science

-
Snehit sent me the link to this article:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/78b

The 100 major questions facing science...haven't read the list in detail but a cursory look and I did not find too many questions in finance/economics/social sciences.

The magazine Science is available at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol309/issue5731/

Yahoo Mindset

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http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/ - A new gimmick??? ;-)

Links for Chaos (and other useful sites)

-
Have been making a mess of this....
Have been trying to study chaos in financial data and this requires searching many, many documents both in the library and online. Problem is, since I don't have my own computer, I've ended up saving links/papers in many different CDs and have lost track where is what now [some company's created a CD-pack searcher device, right...wish I had one :-(...] .
From now on atleast the links, I'll update on this post.

1. http://www.orlingrabbe.com/chaos1.htm- Chaos in Financial Markets, J. Orlin Grabbe
2. http://swan.econ.ohio-state.edu/econ840/note1.pdf - Ohio University Notes on Time Series Analysis (a series of 8 Notes: Garch, Arima, Spectral Analysis etc.)
3. http://www.nbi.dk/ChaosBook/ -An 800 page online book on Classical and Quantum Chaos by Cvitanovic et al.
4. http://www.bseindia.com/histdata/hindices.asp - BSE returns 1991 onwards
5. http://www.duke.edu/~dah7/jf1991.pdf - Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics:Application to Financial Markets-Hsieh

Metamorphosis

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A new spring in her sedate steps,
Blossoming smile on that austere lip,
Intense gaze in those hazy eyes,
Jolt of freshness wrecking that solemn ship!

Whether they thought it right, it did not matter,
He, or they, or the capricious herd,
She would go ahead, irrespective of them,
Freedom at last, ah! another soaring bird.

I felt so happy to see chains broken,
Chains so real, chains in the mind,
Chains we create throughout our life,
Chains if not there, we're grappling to find!

"Live"

-
Well, Windows-Live and Office-Live "officially" announced by Gates, looks like the Web-based ecosystem is here to stay (thrive!).
And the Redmond giant has realised it (late!).
But as they say, "Microsoft has built its reputation on starting late, but winning in the end",
Let's see...interesting fireworks ahead :-).

All over again

-
When promises become chains to flight,
Promises to yourself, promises to others...

When resolve transforms to obstinacy,
Clarity begins to retard creativity;
When perfection descends to nitpicking,
Blemishes hit you before the beauty,

When you start thinking before talking to friends,
And hesitate in giving concessions to follies of friendship...

It's time to start all over again.

Emotions in other animals

-
There is a crow lying dead in one corner of the football field and there are droves of crows hovering around it's dead body and one crow perched beside it, wildly "kawing". (The field comes on way to the Mess from Hostel-12).

Do other animals feel the same range of emotions as we do, do they feel it at the same scale, what do they exactly feel?

Why other animals, I don't even understand properly what other humans feel and why they feel it...even those who I suppose I know well...
Saving grace: I think I'm a little clear about my own emotions and its whys, though not always :-)

Chaos calculators

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For people interested in analyzing the chaotic behaviour of time series data, three freely available softwares at:

1. TISEAN : http://www.mpipks-dresden.mpg.de/~tisean/TISEAN_2.1/

2. Visual Recurrence Analysis : http://home.netcom.com/~eugenek/download.html

3. MATLAB add ons : http://kalman.iau.dtu.dk/research/control/nnsysid.html

Free floating Sun...

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A free floating sun, in starry space,
Weightless, bereft of a care,

Tranquility, wonder, silence,
All worlds at a caring distance,

Free floating, free of friction,
Effortless gliding, harmony,

Light to the worlds, to the heavens and hells,
By inner glow, the inner peace,

Unselfish love to the world,
I, a free-floating Sun in starry space...

I AM...

-
I am hell, I am heaven,
I am a lie, I am the ultimate truth,
I am hatred, I am love-supreme,
I am the chained prisoner, I am the free- flying bird,

I am the setting sun, I am the eternal sunrise,
I am doomed death, I am the perennial spring of life,
I am powerless, all power flows from me,
I am insignificant, I am the centre of the universe,

I am the Devil, I am God,
I AM YOU.

Is an Egalitarian society possible??

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A comment which I wrote on Jaya's blog. It was spontaneous (ok, such ideas are always cooking in my head) and is as below (the non-relevant parts are edited):

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Is egalitarianism possible in the real world?

If no two individuals are "inherently" the same, is creating conditions where they enjoy similar quality-of-life a sustainble equilibrium?
Of course, the "inherent" difference creates - in subsequent iterations - the "not inherent" or imposed differences which appear unfair (and many social/political/economic attempts have been made to address the distortions).

A way out...since every individual is "inherently" different, he/she would be satisfied in different slots. Thus an equilibrium wherein everyone is happy might be actually possible.

One way to ensure that would be be a superstructure (call it Govt., call it politburo, call it whatever) that would do the "best-fit" match.

A second way: Assume humans to be rational, provide them the "complete set/freedom of choices" and they will find their own slot. Actually, in this model, the "complete set/freedom of choices" need not be "provided" by a superstructure. If humans are rational, they would (possibly after sufficient hitting their heads against each other and the wall) realise this, and the free-flow and access of information (we see the rudiments, our good old Internet :-)) would hasten realisation.

And one line of argument could be that "the set of choices" available too should depend on the "inherent" stuff. That'd complicate the situation, necessiate the role of an arbiter...very, very risky.

Are humans "inherently" different, are they "rational"...I don't know!

Well it might not be how it appears

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Well, for any reader of this blog who's read the latest posts, it might appear like a litany of pain, struggle or "living-on-the-edge" sort of narration, whether in my poetry or (in some of) the posts.
I write the blog at only certain times and it is only a very miniscule fraction of what I want to let out through my writings.
So please don't come to any opinion on the writer of this blog on the basis of the posts alone. To understand him, you need to know him in person :-).

Mistakes...you have to live with them

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The context for this post is an overlooking of a framework which I knew very well and could have advantageously applied in a paper which I had yesterday, but somehow conveniently forgot in the two hours. That got me back to thinking on a topic which has time and again occupied my thoughts.

Certain types of mistakes scare me.
Especially those wherein despite complete understanding, the mistake occurs. And post-occurence there is no rational reason that can be attributed to the mistake. This leads to two common reactions among people:

1. Atrribution of the mistake to fate/chance, or the assumption of a random statistical error.
Both imply that there are things over which I have no control and must accept as given.

I can't do that, as it goes against my inherent belief of comprehensibility of everything.

2. Attribution of wrong reasons for the mistake.
This is a common human shortcoming, we tend to attribute causal relationships where none exist (and we are aware of it). This is, in fact, the root cause of so many superstitions that we harbour for life.

An approach that I've found useful is just accepting "I don't know" under these circumstances without any attribution or fallacious reasoning. It's only when the "I don't know" is accepted that the possibility of "correct" knowing arises. And if you are not judging yourself by the judgement of others, no external failure/success should matter too much unless you yourself think that there's something wrong.

And this brings me to the next point...how does one correct a mistake assuming one realises the
right reasons. No, there is no way a mistake can be corrected, since one can't travel back in time. You might try to make up for it, you might correct course-correct yourself and so on...but the mistake remains...you have to live with it.

And even if you could travel back in time, would you really want to change those mistakes?
Atleast I wouldn't want to...you wouldn't be what "you" without those mistakes.

Shall NOT conform

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Push me to the wall,
Snuff me out,
Misunderstand me,
Or humiliate me...

Yet shall NOT conform to your norms.

Paint me crazy,
Slam me for my wild ideas,
Bemoan my lack of conventional sensibilities,
Excruciate me for not talking your talk...

Yet shall NOT conform to your norms...

For I know the meaning of my talk, I know it's different,
And I know that I don't yet know to speak it in your language,
And I know I have to survive till I figure out your language, or find an interpreter,
So that you see what I see...

Survive, I WILL; Conform, I WILL NOT.

The official Google-blog

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Check http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Well, no comments :-).

Daybreak

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It's about 5:00 am in the morning and it will be day-break in another half-hour to 45 minutes.
This eve of day-break always arouses a something deep-within, can't explain it precisely...hmm somewhere between expectation, veneration, harmony, joy, hope...

The relentless cycle is on, and I have the opportunity to understand it...

Bihar: another chance

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Elections (4 phase, October 18 to November 19) are happening in Bihar again.
Can the allegiance to caste, religion and fear be greater than the allegiance to humanity and development? It's sad that such a comparison can even be imagined.
But again, are the alternatives any better?
In a democracy in such situations, what's the way out?

When everything is meant to be broken

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Why everything is meant to be broken,
I just don't understand.
When everything is meant to be broken,
I just don't get who I am.
When everything is meant to be broken,
I just don't know who I am.
When everything is meant to be broken,
I just don't care who I am...

Can one ever be understood?

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Somebody I know intimately called up yesterday and was crying that nobody ever understood her.

Well, is it possible for a second person to understand you? Forget a second person, do you understand yourself fully?
Then why all these tears about not being understood?

Shubho Bijoya

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And Bijoyar pranam to the elders!

It's Pujo time folks!

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Well it's Pujo time and I'm trying to figure out which Pujo offers bhog ...the search has narrowed down ;-).

Enjoy the Pujo.

For these years gone by

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What do I have for these years gone by,
Memories...memories...fresh-fading memories, all that remain.

A joke hopelessly told by him, her brave-hearted folly,
A prank wide-wide off target, aimless verbal volley,
Roaming roads awake at midnight, those unearthly hours,
Scrambling after the holi drench, queues for waterless showers.

Night-outs before exams so many, blaring songs in his room,
Discussions about changing the world, elation, pointless gloom,
Hours of watching coding magic, brilliant minds challenging the limit,
Same minds foxed by simplest of puzzles, ah! humour veiled crazy wit!

And these memories are all that I have now,
For years so many gone by,
Fresh-fading memories...fresh despite fading.
Memories are all, as years fly.

When confronted with a mind immense

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When confronted with a mind immense,
Some submit meekly,
And thus get formed intellectual hirearchies.

Some are scared, petrified,
"Save the order, jail that mind!"
Thus, happens intellectual isolation.

Some ensconced in processes their own,
Ignore, avoid, escape that mind immense,
Thus are born conflicting schools of intellect.

While some confront, challenge, get challenged,
Victory in loss, loss in vistory,
The victory of understanding in victory and loss,
The true spirit of intellecual respect,
Camaraderie indescibable in words mortal,
Intellectual bonding beyond vistory and loss,
Seeds of a friendship beyond words or acts,
And intellectual progress for man and his kind.

Supreme Existence

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Asleep while awake, awake while asleep,
Groping for that moment of truth,
In reality, in my dreams...

The thin glass separating reality from dream,
Transforms from opaque to translucent to transparent,
When reality flows into dreams and dreams into reality...

The perfect clarity, understanding absolute,
Beyond reality, beyond dreams,
A realm unknown, the moment of truth,
When time stands still,
And heaven and hell merge,
To reveal the reality of my Supreme Existence.

Start blogging, Google asks you to!

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A single line on www.google.co.in (arguably the site with the most hits in the world), don't know when it came up but noticed just now (copy-pasted below):

Start your blog with Blogger: it's easy, customisable and free.

Another step, fascinating strategy Google has :-).
The other big story on Google front, the Google-Sun alliance, all the speculation about it might still be primitive, check:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6c81f14e-368d-11da-bedc-00000e2511c8.html

And Apple's speculated to be coming out with an ipod-video, there has been one of those "famed commonplace" invites from Jobs, let's wait and watch.
Surprisingly at the Bangkok duty-free, while they had all the latest crazy electronic gizmos, they did not stock i-pods!

This Uncouth waits

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I took a bath, cleaned myself,
For I was to meet you;

Dressed myself up, saw the mirror after ages,
For I was to meet you;

What did you like hearing, what did you like eating,
That was all that kept me occupied,
For I was to meet you;

And then, something struck.

It was not I that was meeting you.
It was the I, "you wanted", "made for you"... not me.

For I am an uclean, undressed, uncouth who does not require a mirror.
I talk my mind, have never bothered to touch pans.
Yet I am waiting to meet you.

Can you like the "real" me, not the one "decked for you"?

Opposing while governing!

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Don't have the time or patience to put down a long, logically structured post at present. But just some quick observations and inferences.

The Left is effectively muscling out BJP from the opposition space.
And it is part of the Government.
The Congress is trying to outplay Left at this game by elevating Sonia Gandhi to a pedestal, and from there she publicly admonishes "her" government to implement so-called populist or left-leaning measures...muscling the Congress into the common man/left wing-space. So the Congress serves two constituencies, the reformist and the left wing, simultaneously.
The BJP hasn't been able to get its act together.

It's funny when in a democracy, part of the Government plays the role of Opposition.
How different is it practically from a one-party system as currently practised in modern China (not the traditional communist party system). In a limited sense even they allow differences in ideology within a broad framework, similar to our ruling combines' diverse agendas under a common minimum progamme. Am not sure if local party functionaries in China are elected, if yes, the contrast becomes even less distinct.

And finally to a pet theme, the role of marketing and spin in politics. Thank the spin-gods that the Left can do in West Bengal what it opposes at the centre! Thank the spin gods that Mrs. Gandhi seems to correct "her" government and help the common man, while "her" government carries on reforms! Thank the spin gods that when in power in Tamil Nadu, you're a god/goddess and when out of it you are the vilest of demons!

Am most of the time apprehensive about the role of spin even in the business-space despite all those well meaning definitions in marketing. But in politics and governance, it is unbearable.

The common man...the businesses try to fool him and so do his representatives and leaders, while all the time promising to serve his interests. When will He wake up???

Clarity!

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The dense fogs give way,
The veil reveals the beauty behind,
The real oasis after endless mirages,
Ah, that sense of clarity!

The eye of the bird of prey,
The heart of the matter at hand,
The vibrant soul of a wasted human,
Ah, that sense of clarity!

Ah Clarity, dear Clarity,
Why do you emerge from confusion immense?
The difficult pain in realising your beauty...

Thus a world with you mispalced, or without,
So much shallower, so less enriching...

Good Sites

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Will continue updating this post regularly and also integrate similar posts from my previous blogs:

1. Center for Advanced Modeling and Optimisation - (Good modeling and optimisation links, software etc.) - http://www.ici.ro/camo/camo.htm

2. Country Specific Information Reports at Investment Promotion Networks - http://www.ipanet.net/

Run

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Run, run...run all my life,
Am I running or is the world running?
Have I moved even an inch...?
Yet life has moved on by miles.

The world I know is a speck of my memory,
The world that I see I do not comprehend,

Yet I run, run...run...

Run because the hordes run,
Run because I might get left behind.
I get left behind anyway.

Does the horde know where it is running,
Why it is running?
Or is the horde just images of me,
Still like me, while the world runs,

I don't know, I don't understand,
Yet I run, run...run...

Mahalaya

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The 10 most important days in a Bengali's yearly social calender starts today.
Today's Mahalaya.
If at home, baba (if in town) would put on Mahishashura Mardini at break of dawn...was sleeping soundly today morning.

(We have the record player disc of Mahishashura Mardini which was played on as long as the record player worked...we later got the casettes and I plan to burn the CDs but somehow the ambience of that old Philips record player is unreplicable!)

Pujo for a probashi bangali is quite different from how a Kolkatan would experience the pujo, atleast that's what I think.
And somehow for me, Pujo in Hyderabad with all the associated memories of so many years gone by, would forever hold a special place.

Well, we grew from Pujo to Pujo at Keyes High School, didn't we...?
Too many memories..."Jamer" role, can't even remember the name of the drama, baba took us despite the rain :-) and those rehearsals in the quadrangle for "bachhader" drama which baba would direct...too many, too many memories, let's leave it here.

Join me my friend, join me...

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Join me my friend, join me...
In this journey to the infinite horizon,
On the wings of fire,
Across the seven seas,
Through the heavens,
Through your hell, through my hell,
Beyond the gods,
Beyond your devils, beyond my devils,
Beyond lie, beyond truth, beyond life,
Beyond your death, beyond my death...

That infinite horizon beckons us,
Join me my friend, join me...

The Street

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The world runs by at its steaming pace,
I, a bystander, watch stunned.
The hustle, the bustle, the constant ticking clock,
Who took away my watch?
How long have I been watching?
Why have I been watching?

They have lives to live, appointments to meet, commitments to keep,
Empires to create, conspiracies to make,
Money to earn, ambitions to fulfill, inflated dreams to run after.

I stand on the footpath amazed at this street of humanity,
Every now and then a few strides down that street to feel their world,
And then back to my stunned gazing, attempts to make sense.

Does the footpath end in the street?

Why my Lord, why

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O! Lord,

Why did you perfection create,
When in this imperfect world I have to live...

Why did you create clarity,
When in this world of confusion I have to struggle...

Why did you music create,
When in this world of noise I have to travel...

Why did you create feeling,
When living stones are all that I meet...

Why did you love create,
When hatred from the world is all I have...

Why did you create life,
When death is all you had to offer me.