Semester ends, leaving me with just about enough energy to write in bits and pieces. Also it is raining, which is stupid, because I find it hard to make sense of winter rain. I mean, of course parts of South India have winter rains, but winter in South India is no colder than summer in California (which is saying a lot, because summer in Berkeley was pretty warm), but rain in winter makes it all the more dismal, if it wasn't already. The days are way shorter, and my sleep cycle more or less attempts to follow the sun, which means these days I end up feeling sleepy sometime around 8 (the sun goes down before 5) and on days when it is cloudy and rainy(like today) I find it hard to justify to myself the need for wake-fulness.
Its winter in Delhi, and I guess that means fog and caps and gloves and sweaters and jackets (I haven't really looked at the weather reports, mind!) And there's just so many things I want to do this winter, apart from fulfiling the quite impossible promise of meeting each and every one of my friends that winter this year is going to be a blur. There's also a certain amount of "research" to be carried out, and the fact that I should be "self-motivated" means, as usual, that I will pretend that my ass is on fire.
Which it is not, to say the truth, because this semester has been pretty chill as far as courses and all are concerned. True, I have witnessed, alternatively, moments of crushing self-doubt and moments of inspiration, but I guess that is par for the course. Especially since my usually active emotional life has been flattened out, because of which my out-of-commission amygdala has decided to have some fun with my academic life.
I guess the intensity of my emotional life is pretty much proportional to the number of girls I have around me. I am tempted to qualify the statement to "the number of undergraduate girls I have around me", which becomes kind of like a tautology till the point I actually end up messing around with a graduate girl. However it is kind of true: there's a lot more "life, the universe and everything" quality about undergraduate life, mainly I guess because people around you are of a much greater variety. I mean, it's kind of hard to discuss the usefulness of a "conditional random field" to a physics student, but it is even harder to keep "average precision" out of a talk with a lab mate. Plus, instead of a coffee shop we have a coffee machine at the pantry, which cleverly translates into no more than a few minutes of conversation per coffee break, as opposed to hours of philosophy at the Nescafe stall. Also, they somehow managed to create a lab which has an awesome view of the whole California bay, and of the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, and in doing so completely removed the incentive to go out for a walk. (Why do you want to go out when you can see the Golden Gate bridge from your office floor?) Not that I am complaining of course; the sight of the orange sun falling behind the far away bridge and letting off crimson streaks into the clouds will make me sigh any time of the year.
And finally Berkeley is beautiful. It's an amazing campus, and it's one of the few places that seems as amazing when the clouds are low and the rain is incessant as when the sun is out and the dew glistens on the blades of the grass......
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
A-patriotic
Suddenly for some reason I am seized with doubts about my own country. Is it because I never read the news very thoroughly back when I was in India? Has my sudden separation from India suddenly and Bollywood-ishtyle-ly inspired in me a desire to stay up-to-date? Or is it merely the fact that events in recent times have taken a turn for the worse?
Of course, that India is not utopia is obvious. Nor are all bureaucrats, politicians and the like benign. Nor is the general public sensible, or even sympathetic. This is not to say that I am willing to ignore all the glaring inequities that exist in the country, and that seem to grow with development, or the fact that in human development India ranks far far below. Yet, somehow the image in my mind was of a country, and a government, trying to take care of the people, in spite of its flaws. I always kind of assumed that we might be dumb, stupid and selfish, but nevertheless we were somehow in the same boat.
Two things have contributed to my growing doubts. The first was Arundhati Roy's comments about Kashmir, and the second was a talk I recently attended about human rights violations in Kashmir. Probably human rights abuses happen in almost every part of the country, in some form of the other; what shocked me was the constant reference to India as a "State", sometimes even as an "occupying power" that was systematically perpetrating these violations. It was weird to hear about the "Government of India" in the same vein that we used to hear about the "British Empire" in our school history classes. Are we suddenly an imperial power come to rule all the innocent Kashmiris, tribals and poor people, as Roy seems to make it out to be?
But who is "We"? What is the identity of this country that I call India? Am I not as much a part of it as a farmer in Andhra Pradesh, or Manipur, or Kashmir? Do I not share the identity of being an Indian with all these people? Why these doubts and questions and the injustices being perpetrated by "the Government of India"? Why is the problem suddenly external? Why do these walls suddenly crop up between the "have's" and the "have nots"? Or rather, why do these walls suddenly take the form of national, race or caste boundaries, as if somehow independence from "the ruler" automatically implies upliftment for "the ruled"?
I am not taking the side of the "Government of India", or the big "Corporations" or all those people upon whom we have agreed to place the blame. Nor am I attempting to take a stand on Roy's, or anybody else's, opinions about whether Kashmir should be independent or not. All I am asking is that, when every human being in the world needs the same basic rights to well-being and life, why are always battle lines drawn? How come that there is always that ruler who is a tyrant and the people who are exploited, and how come that no matter how many revolutions and freedom struggles come and go, the exploited always remain the exploited? Is it ever possible that there is "good governance", that the society is just and equitable, and that development reaches the lowest rung of the ladder as much as(and hopefully more than) it reaches the highest rung?
Did we not, when we became independent as a nation, found ourselves on principles of equality and liberty? Where then do such questions come from? Why are we not one nation on the arduous path of development; why are we a million nations fighting ourselves?
Of course, that India is not utopia is obvious. Nor are all bureaucrats, politicians and the like benign. Nor is the general public sensible, or even sympathetic. This is not to say that I am willing to ignore all the glaring inequities that exist in the country, and that seem to grow with development, or the fact that in human development India ranks far far below. Yet, somehow the image in my mind was of a country, and a government, trying to take care of the people, in spite of its flaws. I always kind of assumed that we might be dumb, stupid and selfish, but nevertheless we were somehow in the same boat.
Two things have contributed to my growing doubts. The first was Arundhati Roy's comments about Kashmir, and the second was a talk I recently attended about human rights violations in Kashmir. Probably human rights abuses happen in almost every part of the country, in some form of the other; what shocked me was the constant reference to India as a "State", sometimes even as an "occupying power" that was systematically perpetrating these violations. It was weird to hear about the "Government of India" in the same vein that we used to hear about the "British Empire" in our school history classes. Are we suddenly an imperial power come to rule all the innocent Kashmiris, tribals and poor people, as Roy seems to make it out to be?
But who is "We"? What is the identity of this country that I call India? Am I not as much a part of it as a farmer in Andhra Pradesh, or Manipur, or Kashmir? Do I not share the identity of being an Indian with all these people? Why these doubts and questions and the injustices being perpetrated by "the Government of India"? Why is the problem suddenly external? Why do these walls suddenly crop up between the "have's" and the "have nots"? Or rather, why do these walls suddenly take the form of national, race or caste boundaries, as if somehow independence from "the ruler" automatically implies upliftment for "the ruled"?
I am not taking the side of the "Government of India", or the big "Corporations" or all those people upon whom we have agreed to place the blame. Nor am I attempting to take a stand on Roy's, or anybody else's, opinions about whether Kashmir should be independent or not. All I am asking is that, when every human being in the world needs the same basic rights to well-being and life, why are always battle lines drawn? How come that there is always that ruler who is a tyrant and the people who are exploited, and how come that no matter how many revolutions and freedom struggles come and go, the exploited always remain the exploited? Is it ever possible that there is "good governance", that the society is just and equitable, and that development reaches the lowest rung of the ladder as much as(and hopefully more than) it reaches the highest rung?
Did we not, when we became independent as a nation, found ourselves on principles of equality and liberty? Where then do such questions come from? Why are we not one nation on the arduous path of development; why are we a million nations fighting ourselves?
Friday, October 1, 2010
Naked
Not through the walls of nations, or through the barbed wire that runs like thorns through the hearts of lands, tearing apart the world like a painting torn to shreds. Nor through the words of language, sounds spoken meant to mean something as if the beats of your hearts and mine followed a grammar and an alphabet..
Not through the glass of wealth, either looking down from palatial balconies or up from the footpath, not through the contempt for a class too ordinary, nor through the envy for a wealth ill deserved, neither with covetous eyes, nor with patronizing ones, neither with an intent to give, nor with an intent to take...
Nor with a critique of my knowledge, marveling at intellect or laughing away ignorance, searching for the genius or scorning the foolishness, neither to learn, nor to teach, neither to scoff, nor to stand in awe...
Not through the filters of morality either, not through the idiosyncracies of my beliefs, my opinions, my inclinations and orientations, moralities either true or imagined, principles either arbitrary or justified, not through politics and ideologies and calculations and ratinalizations, as if right and wrong were counters in a bank..
See me not through flesh, or cloth, or action, or habit...
See me as I am, naked. Place your hand against my chest and feel the beats of my heart. Hear my voice thickening with emotion or going shrill with joy, feel my hands clasp and my fists clenched in emotion. Stare into my eyes and feel me through these walls we have erected between ourselves; stare deep into my heart, know me for who I am...
And walk with me, like one human with another, like two living beings who share a universe, this planet, this sunshine, and above all, this moment....
Not through the glass of wealth, either looking down from palatial balconies or up from the footpath, not through the contempt for a class too ordinary, nor through the envy for a wealth ill deserved, neither with covetous eyes, nor with patronizing ones, neither with an intent to give, nor with an intent to take...
Nor with a critique of my knowledge, marveling at intellect or laughing away ignorance, searching for the genius or scorning the foolishness, neither to learn, nor to teach, neither to scoff, nor to stand in awe...
Not through the filters of morality either, not through the idiosyncracies of my beliefs, my opinions, my inclinations and orientations, moralities either true or imagined, principles either arbitrary or justified, not through politics and ideologies and calculations and ratinalizations, as if right and wrong were counters in a bank..
See me not through flesh, or cloth, or action, or habit...
See me as I am, naked. Place your hand against my chest and feel the beats of my heart. Hear my voice thickening with emotion or going shrill with joy, feel my hands clasp and my fists clenched in emotion. Stare into my eyes and feel me through these walls we have erected between ourselves; stare deep into my heart, know me for who I am...
And walk with me, like one human with another, like two living beings who share a universe, this planet, this sunshine, and above all, this moment....
Thursday, September 16, 2010
On Gaia
Disclaimer: I am no authority on the subject. I am not responsible for any loss of life, property or sanity that results from this post.
When sometime ago I was doing this course (rather notorious in IIT) on "Technology, Development and Society" (don't ask me why), the professor took upon herself to explain to us the Gaia hypothesis. This hypothesis, immensely controversial, to say the least, states, very loosely speaking, that the whole of earth is a single organism, and like all other organisms it seeks to preserve itself. That sounds so intelligent-design-y right? I thought so too..
Then at the end of the course one of my classmates made a presentation on the Gaia hypothesis, and one slide really stuck in my head. It drew a distinction between Gaia and Darwin's natural selection, and I remember my classmate's words: she said that Natural selection was about adaptation; the Gaia hypothesis was about adaptation and change. The idea was simple: we have a tendency to view natural selection as individuals competing in a static environment. That however can at best be an approximation to the true situation: we don't just compete and adapt to the environment, we also change the environment itself.
How does that change things? Weirdly, when you endow living organisms with the power to change their own environment, what you often get is a remarkable stasis in the environment. There is this mathematical model called Daisyworld. It is a planet in which the only living organisms are two species of daisies: white daisies and black daisies. The white daisies can survive in warm climes and by reflecting the sunlight they reduce the temperature around them. The black daisies can live in the cold and by absorbing the sunlight they increase the temperature around them. Now consider a situation in which the sun is constantly coming closer to the planet. When the sun is far away, the black daisies dominate, and they make the planet warmer. As the sun comes closer, temperatures tend to rise, making it possible, then favourable for white daisies to grow; the white daisies dominate, bringing temperatures down. The result is that temperatures remain steady for most of the time, rising steeply towards the end.
Natural selection, and most of our scientific thought, tends to view the environment as separate from the living organisms. It is assumed to be like an infinite source or sink of resources, passively playing its part, merely providing the stimulus for life to evolve. The truth however is that the environment is inseparable from the organisms that it supports. All the daisies in the daisyworld example are linked with the environment, and with each other. The heat that one black daisy absorbs makes life harder for another black daisy sharing the environment, and easier for the white daisy. Although this simple, rather local effect is easy to grasp, it leads to rather counterintuitive global effects: the temperature of the world remains constant, as if there was an intelligent entity trying to control the environment, as if the planet was truly alive, trying to survive.
But is it really so counterintuitive? Consciousness itself arises in our heads from neurons that have no idea what we are thinking about. This queerly magical notion of control, this "I" whom we call intelligent is emergent from the behavior of innocent neurons, in the same way that the temperature of Daisyworld is emergent from the behavior of innocent daisies. In each case, each individual component is prohibitively simple, yet the system of interacting agents is prohibitively complex.
The fun part is that this interaction acts at so many different levels. The daisies interact with the environment to generate Daisyworld, cells interact with each other and the environment to give rise to the entity called a daisy, molecules interact with themselves and the environment to give cells their meaning, and so on and so forth. There is a whole web of interactions, and it doesn't go wide as much as it goes deep. I would think that this interaction is critical to explaining the complexity of the world we live in, but science has always striven to simplify, to reduce the complexity, and we have always abstracted away the rest of the world when dealing with any system of particles, considering it as constant. My feeling is that in doing so, in our quest to simplify, we might have approximated away the very basis of nature.
When sometime ago I was doing this course (rather notorious in IIT) on "Technology, Development and Society" (don't ask me why), the professor took upon herself to explain to us the Gaia hypothesis. This hypothesis, immensely controversial, to say the least, states, very loosely speaking, that the whole of earth is a single organism, and like all other organisms it seeks to preserve itself. That sounds so intelligent-design-y right? I thought so too..
Then at the end of the course one of my classmates made a presentation on the Gaia hypothesis, and one slide really stuck in my head. It drew a distinction between Gaia and Darwin's natural selection, and I remember my classmate's words: she said that Natural selection was about adaptation; the Gaia hypothesis was about adaptation and change. The idea was simple: we have a tendency to view natural selection as individuals competing in a static environment. That however can at best be an approximation to the true situation: we don't just compete and adapt to the environment, we also change the environment itself.
How does that change things? Weirdly, when you endow living organisms with the power to change their own environment, what you often get is a remarkable stasis in the environment. There is this mathematical model called Daisyworld. It is a planet in which the only living organisms are two species of daisies: white daisies and black daisies. The white daisies can survive in warm climes and by reflecting the sunlight they reduce the temperature around them. The black daisies can live in the cold and by absorbing the sunlight they increase the temperature around them. Now consider a situation in which the sun is constantly coming closer to the planet. When the sun is far away, the black daisies dominate, and they make the planet warmer. As the sun comes closer, temperatures tend to rise, making it possible, then favourable for white daisies to grow; the white daisies dominate, bringing temperatures down. The result is that temperatures remain steady for most of the time, rising steeply towards the end.
Natural selection, and most of our scientific thought, tends to view the environment as separate from the living organisms. It is assumed to be like an infinite source or sink of resources, passively playing its part, merely providing the stimulus for life to evolve. The truth however is that the environment is inseparable from the organisms that it supports. All the daisies in the daisyworld example are linked with the environment, and with each other. The heat that one black daisy absorbs makes life harder for another black daisy sharing the environment, and easier for the white daisy. Although this simple, rather local effect is easy to grasp, it leads to rather counterintuitive global effects: the temperature of the world remains constant, as if there was an intelligent entity trying to control the environment, as if the planet was truly alive, trying to survive.
But is it really so counterintuitive? Consciousness itself arises in our heads from neurons that have no idea what we are thinking about. This queerly magical notion of control, this "I" whom we call intelligent is emergent from the behavior of innocent neurons, in the same way that the temperature of Daisyworld is emergent from the behavior of innocent daisies. In each case, each individual component is prohibitively simple, yet the system of interacting agents is prohibitively complex.
The fun part is that this interaction acts at so many different levels. The daisies interact with the environment to generate Daisyworld, cells interact with each other and the environment to give rise to the entity called a daisy, molecules interact with themselves and the environment to give cells their meaning, and so on and so forth. There is a whole web of interactions, and it doesn't go wide as much as it goes deep. I would think that this interaction is critical to explaining the complexity of the world we live in, but science has always striven to simplify, to reduce the complexity, and we have always abstracted away the rest of the world when dealing with any system of particles, considering it as constant. My feeling is that in doing so, in our quest to simplify, we might have approximated away the very basis of nature.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Change
Change.
Little by little, I bring myself to look at the mirror. See the man there without averting my eyes. Yes, not a boy anymore, but a man, at least physically. The stubble that the razor has a hard time removing is testimony to that.
I wash my face with cold water and think of the days gone by. For the umpteenth time perhaps, but it's different now. See, the future has caught up with the past. The circle is complete. It's time for change.
I get dressed, think absentmindedly of whether I should put a jacket on. I walk out of the door, find a cold but pleasant wind shake me out of my sleep. Pull me out of my dreams. Things have changed, no, go back, rewrite. I have changed. I hold the steering of my life. There is no denying that I always did.
Yes, I hurt you, you there, if you're reading this. I said I loved you and I hurt you. I have done that so many times now it doesn't even make sense to apologise any more. The only person I should apologise to is probably myself. Yes, dude, you're not a saint. You have a little bit of the devil in you, just like everybody else.
Yes, I lied. I lied so many times and when I said I will say the truth, I lied. I lied to myself and to everyone else who mattered. I am not the great guy you imagined me to be. Look at me, I stand naked in front of you, in flesh and blood, mortal and far from invincible. I hold no power other than the power I hold over myself. There are no great deeds I boast of, no overwhelming goodness inside of me, no superhuman ability in need of respect. Just me, with all the pimples on my face and my nails dirty and my clothes in need of washing.
And yes, I hold the baton for change. I hold the key to my own future, the same as everybody else. The tiny key made of gold that will unlock the pandora's box of possibilities, only I need to have the strength to face them. I stand at the helm of my own ship, the captain of my own soul and that thought is as terrifying as it is liberating. I can make anything I want to. I can create the world I want to live in, and I have done this all this while, without knowing it. I m holding my pen writing my own destiny and I've just realised the fact, I've just realised that I'm the only person turning the inexorable wheels of my fate. Not the system, not God, not you, just me.
I'm not perfect, I'm not ideal, I'm not perfect. I'm just here. At the forefront of my destiny.
And I'm here, holding the flag for change.
Little by little, I bring myself to look at the mirror. See the man there without averting my eyes. Yes, not a boy anymore, but a man, at least physically. The stubble that the razor has a hard time removing is testimony to that.
I wash my face with cold water and think of the days gone by. For the umpteenth time perhaps, but it's different now. See, the future has caught up with the past. The circle is complete. It's time for change.
I get dressed, think absentmindedly of whether I should put a jacket on. I walk out of the door, find a cold but pleasant wind shake me out of my sleep. Pull me out of my dreams. Things have changed, no, go back, rewrite. I have changed. I hold the steering of my life. There is no denying that I always did.
Yes, I hurt you, you there, if you're reading this. I said I loved you and I hurt you. I have done that so many times now it doesn't even make sense to apologise any more. The only person I should apologise to is probably myself. Yes, dude, you're not a saint. You have a little bit of the devil in you, just like everybody else.
Yes, I lied. I lied so many times and when I said I will say the truth, I lied. I lied to myself and to everyone else who mattered. I am not the great guy you imagined me to be. Look at me, I stand naked in front of you, in flesh and blood, mortal and far from invincible. I hold no power other than the power I hold over myself. There are no great deeds I boast of, no overwhelming goodness inside of me, no superhuman ability in need of respect. Just me, with all the pimples on my face and my nails dirty and my clothes in need of washing.
And yes, I hold the baton for change. I hold the key to my own future, the same as everybody else. The tiny key made of gold that will unlock the pandora's box of possibilities, only I need to have the strength to face them. I stand at the helm of my own ship, the captain of my own soul and that thought is as terrifying as it is liberating. I can make anything I want to. I can create the world I want to live in, and I have done this all this while, without knowing it. I m holding my pen writing my own destiny and I've just realised the fact, I've just realised that I'm the only person turning the inexorable wheels of my fate. Not the system, not God, not you, just me.
I'm not perfect, I'm not ideal, I'm not perfect. I'm just here. At the forefront of my destiny.
And I'm here, holding the flag for change.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Blame
She was born a bud, a single child of a long stem laden with thorns. Amongst the other flowers in the nursery she lay in wait, opening very slowly, layer by layer, to the gardener who tended to her and to the other flowers that bowed in respect. Her crimson petals glimmered in the morning dew, and around her her fragrance was carried away borne on the cool summer breeze.
As she grew she grew fond of her own beauty, of the tales they told her about her powers. She listened with astonishment of how her very existence had always been a symbol of love, of how the Gods were bathed in her petals always, and of how her nectar was the sweetest possible. She swelled with pride at the power she held, and she grew up believing that she was destined to spread good luck and love and beauty in the world.
They took her to the florist then, and then she lay in wait for her golden moment. She saw in her florist's eyes joy whenever he tended to her, and she responded to his love with love, smiling and shining, a Godess descended upon the world. She was thrilled when one summer evening she was chosen by her florist, her long stalk picked up in his careful hands, and as she crossed hands she looked into the face of the man holding her, and saw joy and hope and radiance. She swelled with pride again, and she shook her petals so the dew dropped from them, as an ode to her own beauty and to the joy she provided.
The man walked her through the street, his hand holding the rose behind the back, as if whatever was to come was a surprise for her. She waited patiently, and soon she found herself being presented before another smiling face, the man kneeling down, she herself in his hands, held up. But the smiling face in front of her stopped smiling, and lost colour.. The eyebrows knit together and the lips moved rapidly, . Then she looked back at the face of the man who was holding her and he wasn't smiling too, and suddenly she saw big drops of water, salty, fall down on her petals. She felt the man's grip on her tightening, stiffening, then letting go, so she fell helpless down on the street, amidst sounds of footpaths where there were no smiling faces. She felt scared, because she had always given joy and never any sorrow; no one had denied being overjoyed at the sight of her beauty, no one had failed to respond to her fragrance, and yet here she was soaked to death in the salty tears of a sorrow she had not known. What did I do wrong she asked, but there was no one to answer; there was no one to answer before shoes fell on her and sucked away her fragrance and pressed out her beauty, that all she had done wrong was to be born a rose.
As she grew she grew fond of her own beauty, of the tales they told her about her powers. She listened with astonishment of how her very existence had always been a symbol of love, of how the Gods were bathed in her petals always, and of how her nectar was the sweetest possible. She swelled with pride at the power she held, and she grew up believing that she was destined to spread good luck and love and beauty in the world.
They took her to the florist then, and then she lay in wait for her golden moment. She saw in her florist's eyes joy whenever he tended to her, and she responded to his love with love, smiling and shining, a Godess descended upon the world. She was thrilled when one summer evening she was chosen by her florist, her long stalk picked up in his careful hands, and as she crossed hands she looked into the face of the man holding her, and saw joy and hope and radiance. She swelled with pride again, and she shook her petals so the dew dropped from them, as an ode to her own beauty and to the joy she provided.
The man walked her through the street, his hand holding the rose behind the back, as if whatever was to come was a surprise for her. She waited patiently, and soon she found herself being presented before another smiling face, the man kneeling down, she herself in his hands, held up. But the smiling face in front of her stopped smiling, and lost colour.. The eyebrows knit together and the lips moved rapidly, . Then she looked back at the face of the man who was holding her and he wasn't smiling too, and suddenly she saw big drops of water, salty, fall down on her petals. She felt the man's grip on her tightening, stiffening, then letting go, so she fell helpless down on the street, amidst sounds of footpaths where there were no smiling faces. She felt scared, because she had always given joy and never any sorrow; no one had denied being overjoyed at the sight of her beauty, no one had failed to respond to her fragrance, and yet here she was soaked to death in the salty tears of a sorrow she had not known. What did I do wrong she asked, but there was no one to answer; there was no one to answer before shoes fell on her and sucked away her fragrance and pressed out her beauty, that all she had done wrong was to be born a rose.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
4
Author's note: I found this post buried amongst several drafts that I had left untouched, deteriorating in the drawers of my blog. It's more of a diary entry of the 4 years of life in IIT looked at in retrospect, but it's...slightly weirdly written.
Four years. Full circle.
Starting with studying following a long bout of even more studying and preparedness for God knows what. Before a blink and before your mouth can whisper the words "Physics" swept into the general mayhem of Computer Science oh my God Computer Science the El Nino of this day and age. Then induction and recursion and the world becoming clear to you no wait its gone again because here come AVL trees and that weird rotation and poof you're gone. Then back again through algorithms and languages and numerical computing and image processing till I close my ears and say no no no more trying to make the little numbers move faster and yet do that same thing looking at a computer screen full of numbers to make them behave they should behave. While I wait for the rest of my life to take off and let go.
Words on a black board, words on a white board. Words on a white board in Bangalore, sitting in Microsoft feeling all free and unreal and finding "Computationalism" a word that means nothing and yet so much because it is at the end of four years of that very word gnawing at your mind. And then a blur and a whiteboard again and matrices and classmates and photographs and thoughts amiss and heartbeats racing. Then back again through time and those thoughts you must not speak now because what's buried is buried but it wasn't at that time because everyone knew it except me and because it was me they were talking about behind closed doors into innocent ears. Then race ahead because memories have a habit of erasing everything just when you want those memories back because if memories weren't erased we would all be Turing machines with infinite tapes, not feeling anything because it hurts too much to feel. And memories that want to erase those parts too, the good ones that you want to hold on to because obviously good things can't survive without the bad. Errors go and so do mistakes, we converge to a solution we don't even care about because what we found has been erased. Little waves with soft white hands.
And down and down and further down where those hidden demons of guilt and self pity coil into each other like mating snakes. And the mistakes you did and the words you said because they were not spoken but typed and I couldn't look into your eyes when I said them and you were so far away you wouldn't have heard if I had shouted. So like words on a computer screen, commands that have no meaning but will go drive the little read write heads that will erase everything. rm -rf *. And then you can go on and put new stuff in there while I am left grapling with a connection gone bad which funnily is how everything else around is, the numbers dont add up, I'm not converging to a solution and the errors are not going down fast enough and what the heck am I doing the right thing?
Right thing, right thing, right thing, right thing and suddenly who are you kidding you've been a criminal all along. Tick tick tick tick then oh my god you've been Cross all your life.
Then four years later you realise we are all wrong, and the only task now to be done is to learn to forgive yourself.
Four years. Full circle.
Starting with studying following a long bout of even more studying and preparedness for God knows what. Before a blink and before your mouth can whisper the words "Physics" swept into the general mayhem of Computer Science oh my God Computer Science the El Nino of this day and age. Then induction and recursion and the world becoming clear to you no wait its gone again because here come AVL trees and that weird rotation and poof you're gone. Then back again through algorithms and languages and numerical computing and image processing till I close my ears and say no no no more trying to make the little numbers move faster and yet do that same thing looking at a computer screen full of numbers to make them behave they should behave. While I wait for the rest of my life to take off and let go.
Words on a black board, words on a white board. Words on a white board in Bangalore, sitting in Microsoft feeling all free and unreal and finding "Computationalism" a word that means nothing and yet so much because it is at the end of four years of that very word gnawing at your mind. And then a blur and a whiteboard again and matrices and classmates and photographs and thoughts amiss and heartbeats racing. Then back again through time and those thoughts you must not speak now because what's buried is buried but it wasn't at that time because everyone knew it except me and because it was me they were talking about behind closed doors into innocent ears. Then race ahead because memories have a habit of erasing everything just when you want those memories back because if memories weren't erased we would all be Turing machines with infinite tapes, not feeling anything because it hurts too much to feel. And memories that want to erase those parts too, the good ones that you want to hold on to because obviously good things can't survive without the bad. Errors go and so do mistakes, we converge to a solution we don't even care about because what we found has been erased. Little waves with soft white hands.
And down and down and further down where those hidden demons of guilt and self pity coil into each other like mating snakes. And the mistakes you did and the words you said because they were not spoken but typed and I couldn't look into your eyes when I said them and you were so far away you wouldn't have heard if I had shouted. So like words on a computer screen, commands that have no meaning but will go drive the little read write heads that will erase everything. rm -rf *. And then you can go on and put new stuff in there while I am left grapling with a connection gone bad which funnily is how everything else around is, the numbers dont add up, I'm not converging to a solution and the errors are not going down fast enough and what the heck am I doing the right thing?
Right thing, right thing, right thing, right thing and suddenly who are you kidding you've been a criminal all along. Tick tick tick tick then oh my god you've been Cross all your life.
Then four years later you realise we are all wrong, and the only task now to be done is to learn to forgive yourself.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Will you teach me to dream this once?
Will you teach me to dream this once?
I knew how to, long ago
Sitting often, by the window
I wondered and thought and wished so
I never knew then that sometimes the night
Must go without its moonlight
Or sometimes the sun would come to the day
But leave it all a starving gray
I didn’t know then that roses too
Wither away like the others do
I didn’t know then that I would too
When so many dreams didn’t come true
Will you stay with me a little while?
Will you be there on those nights
When it’s all darkness and no moonlight?
Will you listen to me when I have stories to tell
Or when there’s nothing to say and its silent as hell?
Will, when it gets too real
When things start coming, crashing, down,
Will you help me put the bricks back
Will you help me once again off the ground?
These wings you give are all very well
The skies are blue and there’s lots to tell
But will you be there if the garden’s no more
And dreams have turned into nightmares sore?
I knew how to, long ago
Sitting often, by the window
I wondered and thought and wished so
I never knew then that sometimes the night
Must go without its moonlight
Or sometimes the sun would come to the day
But leave it all a starving gray
I didn’t know then that roses too
Wither away like the others do
I didn’t know then that I would too
When so many dreams didn’t come true
Will you stay with me a little while?
Will you be there on those nights
When it’s all darkness and no moonlight?
Will you listen to me when I have stories to tell
Or when there’s nothing to say and its silent as hell?
Will, when it gets too real
When things start coming, crashing, down,
Will you help me put the bricks back
Will you help me once again off the ground?
These wings you give are all very well
The skies are blue and there’s lots to tell
But will you be there if the garden’s no more
And dreams have turned into nightmares sore?
Writing again!
Just wrote a story. You can get it here: The Gift. Its my first foray into fantasy, so I hope you'll be a little lenient with criticism :P. Will blog again soon....
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Life is beautiful
Phew...what a journey it has been.
When I look back at the past two or three years of my life, and especially at the last few months, life has been a whirlwind. I have been working almost non-stop for the past year, and in the meanwhile my fascination with my work has deteriorated into disappointment, sometimes even disillusionment. In the backdrop of all this I have made the decision of going for a Ph.D, and at the same time been assailed by doubts as to whether this was the right choice. And somewhere down the line I have had a remarkably bittersweet experience with relationships.
Then suddenly, this other day, in the midst of all this chaos, I decided to take a day off. Off, not as in run off to a movie, or catch a hasty train to a hill station. Off, as in the idle, time-is-eternal off: grab a novel, sit down where the only company you have is yourself, and watch time fly slowly by.
It was afternoon, and the sun was out, strong, but not scorching. In front of our hostel is a small garden of sorts (a herbal garden supposedly), and strewn about are a couple of benches and swings. I sat on a swing, behind which towered a tree. The sun shone through the leaves, and made beautiful patterns of light and shadow on the book I was reading. Every now and then a cool gust of wind blew, brushing through the leaves and the blades of grass so that they rustled. In front of me a small ladybird toiled its way through the grass.
But it was the pace of time then that struck me most. Time did not exist here. Time was a concept unknown to this world. Here the wind did not care whether it was 1 pm or 1:05 pm. The grass did not care whether I managed to stick to a deadline or not. The ladybird had no assignments to make, no papers to publish, no goals to follow. They were just there, in the present, eternally in the present. Looking at that scene you felt that this here could never change; that this moment would go on forever, and that sometime after eternity you would look up from your tranquil reverie and find that ages have passed, that you are old now, and it doesn't matter that you spent your life looking at the blade of grass fluttering in the wind, for that was somehow what you were born to do in the first place.
How different this was from the world in which we lived! How different from numbers running down a computer screen: 27 seconds to run through 30, 000 data points! How different from assignments, projects, applications, forms, mails, letters and phone calls! How different from the constant second hand chasing you through the day, reminding you that hey, you have a life to take care of. Life? What life? Can life be spent chasing life?
Let us pause for a minute here. Let us not rush through life, let us not aim at accomplishing a million things in life. Let us just learn to watch instead of look, absorb instead of witness. Let us not, as Wordsworth said, lay waste our powers, getting and spending, late and soon. For life is not a trial, life is not a mission we have to accomplish. Life is beautiful, and it is meant to be lived.
When I look back at the past two or three years of my life, and especially at the last few months, life has been a whirlwind. I have been working almost non-stop for the past year, and in the meanwhile my fascination with my work has deteriorated into disappointment, sometimes even disillusionment. In the backdrop of all this I have made the decision of going for a Ph.D, and at the same time been assailed by doubts as to whether this was the right choice. And somewhere down the line I have had a remarkably bittersweet experience with relationships.
Then suddenly, this other day, in the midst of all this chaos, I decided to take a day off. Off, not as in run off to a movie, or catch a hasty train to a hill station. Off, as in the idle, time-is-eternal off: grab a novel, sit down where the only company you have is yourself, and watch time fly slowly by.
It was afternoon, and the sun was out, strong, but not scorching. In front of our hostel is a small garden of sorts (a herbal garden supposedly), and strewn about are a couple of benches and swings. I sat on a swing, behind which towered a tree. The sun shone through the leaves, and made beautiful patterns of light and shadow on the book I was reading. Every now and then a cool gust of wind blew, brushing through the leaves and the blades of grass so that they rustled. In front of me a small ladybird toiled its way through the grass.
But it was the pace of time then that struck me most. Time did not exist here. Time was a concept unknown to this world. Here the wind did not care whether it was 1 pm or 1:05 pm. The grass did not care whether I managed to stick to a deadline or not. The ladybird had no assignments to make, no papers to publish, no goals to follow. They were just there, in the present, eternally in the present. Looking at that scene you felt that this here could never change; that this moment would go on forever, and that sometime after eternity you would look up from your tranquil reverie and find that ages have passed, that you are old now, and it doesn't matter that you spent your life looking at the blade of grass fluttering in the wind, for that was somehow what you were born to do in the first place.
How different this was from the world in which we lived! How different from numbers running down a computer screen: 27 seconds to run through 30, 000 data points! How different from assignments, projects, applications, forms, mails, letters and phone calls! How different from the constant second hand chasing you through the day, reminding you that hey, you have a life to take care of. Life? What life? Can life be spent chasing life?
Let us pause for a minute here. Let us not rush through life, let us not aim at accomplishing a million things in life. Let us just learn to watch instead of look, absorb instead of witness. Let us not, as Wordsworth said, lay waste our powers, getting and spending, late and soon. For life is not a trial, life is not a mission we have to accomplish. Life is beautiful, and it is meant to be lived.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Against Rationality-Part I
I guess four years is a wee bit too late to vent my anger at life, the universe and everything in general and the engineering world in particular, but hell, better late than never. Plus, four years of harrowing experiences in the midst of scientists and engineers does things to you, and I have to say some things before I go a little balmy in the head.
So this post (and a few more to come) is about "rationality", "logic", "reason", "science", "intellect", "intelligence" and so on and so forth. It is about the standard dogma that is indoctrinated into so many Indians, most of whom land in such grotesque places as the IITs. It is about the belief, reiterated till it becomes fact, that yes, life is logical, that reason, cause and effect are things of infallible accuracy and unfailing integrity. More particularly, it is about the high status we accord to science, logic and reason, and the farthings we throw at everything else.
So let me start. Being, unfortunately, a science student myself, I will let this first post follow "logic" through science.
Science itself is logical, and so is mathematics, so what use would it be to look at logic within the framework of science? Actually a lot, and for that precise reason. Science is something we always regard as being logical, in other words, being derived from fixed, though maybe unknown, rules. Rules, of deduction, inference and reasoning. We science people like so much to lay down rules, to lay down formulae, and to exclaim with unabashed pride that, hey, this sequence of symbols on paper explains everything!
Towards the end of the 19th century, this was the general mood prevalant among mathematicians. Mathematical proofs were getting more and more formal, with fixed rules of inference, and mathematical logic had firmly taken ground. Mathematical proofs were becoming more and more "mechanical". Hilbert, as part of his 20 problems, asked the obvious question (Entscheidungsproblem): How mechanical are mathematical proofs? Does there exist a set of axioms and a set of inference rules that will lead, "logically", and hence "mechanically", to every known theorem in the book?
If Hilbert's proposition was true, all that you needed for mathematics was a set of symbols, and a set of axioms and inference rules operating on those symbols. Nothing more. What those symbols meant, or if they had any meaning at all, would be insignificant. Meaning would essentially a matter of book-keeping
Then came Kurt Godel, and his Incompleteness theorem: For any formal logical system that was consistent, there was always a statement that would be true if your axioms were true, but that you could never prove by the rules of logic. In other words, logic, the simple rules of inference, would not suffice to determine or prove this statement, and yet this statement would be true. The way you could prove this statement was to talk about the meaning of the statement, something that logic was incapable of doing.
The point I want to drive home is this: logic is not how theorems are proven. Logic is not how science happens. Science and Mathematics, though they seem driven by logic, are not driven by logic, or at least not logic in the sense of a set of axioms and inference rules. What it is that drives them, and what kind of "logic" is involved, well, I'll harp on that on my next post.
So this post (and a few more to come) is about "rationality", "logic", "reason", "science", "intellect", "intelligence" and so on and so forth. It is about the standard dogma that is indoctrinated into so many Indians, most of whom land in such grotesque places as the IITs. It is about the belief, reiterated till it becomes fact, that yes, life is logical, that reason, cause and effect are things of infallible accuracy and unfailing integrity. More particularly, it is about the high status we accord to science, logic and reason, and the farthings we throw at everything else.
So let me start. Being, unfortunately, a science student myself, I will let this first post follow "logic" through science.
Science itself is logical, and so is mathematics, so what use would it be to look at logic within the framework of science? Actually a lot, and for that precise reason. Science is something we always regard as being logical, in other words, being derived from fixed, though maybe unknown, rules. Rules, of deduction, inference and reasoning. We science people like so much to lay down rules, to lay down formulae, and to exclaim with unabashed pride that, hey, this sequence of symbols on paper explains everything!
Towards the end of the 19th century, this was the general mood prevalant among mathematicians. Mathematical proofs were getting more and more formal, with fixed rules of inference, and mathematical logic had firmly taken ground. Mathematical proofs were becoming more and more "mechanical". Hilbert, as part of his 20 problems, asked the obvious question (Entscheidungsproblem): How mechanical are mathematical proofs? Does there exist a set of axioms and a set of inference rules that will lead, "logically", and hence "mechanically", to every known theorem in the book?
If Hilbert's proposition was true, all that you needed for mathematics was a set of symbols, and a set of axioms and inference rules operating on those symbols. Nothing more. What those symbols meant, or if they had any meaning at all, would be insignificant. Meaning would essentially a matter of book-keeping
Then came Kurt Godel, and his Incompleteness theorem: For any formal logical system that was consistent, there was always a statement that would be true if your axioms were true, but that you could never prove by the rules of logic. In other words, logic, the simple rules of inference, would not suffice to determine or prove this statement, and yet this statement would be true. The way you could prove this statement was to talk about the meaning of the statement, something that logic was incapable of doing.
The point I want to drive home is this: logic is not how theorems are proven. Logic is not how science happens. Science and Mathematics, though they seem driven by logic, are not driven by logic, or at least not logic in the sense of a set of axioms and inference rules. What it is that drives them, and what kind of "logic" is involved, well, I'll harp on that on my next post.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Questions
What is the meaning of life? What is the purpose? Why the big deal about being born, crying and laughing, loving and hating, living and dying? Why are there relationships? Why are they so important? What is so unfathomable about solitude? Why must I need someone else?
What exactly is meaning, if I am searching for the meaning of life? How do I define meaning? Understanding? Truth? What is truth? What is reality? Is it confined to what we perceive? Or is it something other, our understanding of which is necessarily imperfect? Is meaning abstract? Is it tangible? Is it a mathematical equation that will crop up on running a MATLAB code? Can it be encapsulated in an equation?
What is my reality? Who am I? Am I just defined by how I act towards others? Is my identity dfefined only by my actions? What about thought? Am I defined only by my thoughts? Do I exist only because I think?
What does it mean to think? Who is thinking? Is the neuron in my head firing at so many times a second thinking? Does it know it is making me happy or sad? Does it have an inkling of the questions I am asking? Does the brain have an idea? Can I exist outside of my thoughts? Can I exist without my brain? I don't think during sleep; don't I exist in sleep?
Who is this I? Why do I keep saying I? What does this mass of cellls and tissues have to do with me? What prevents me from taking a scapel and dissecting myself to see what I look like? Why is this I so important? Why do we never hurt our 'I', but somehow always manage to hurt our 'we'? What is it that makes you different from me? Why are your thoughts your own, and why are my thoughts my own? If this I is embodied in a physical form why can't I take it out and keep it in a glass jar forever?
Is I abstract? What about thought? What about meaning? How much of it is captured in the alphas and betas of science? What prevents me from writing the Schrodinger equation for everything? Can this everything reside in an equation? Can this be a computer program, with an input and an output, and we merely players, chips in the Turing machine? Is there a tape running somewhere with a pattern of 0s and 1s that tells me everything about everything? If not, why am I studying science? Why am I looking at alphas and betas and trying to decipher meaning, if meaning doesn't reside in them? What does meaning, truth, reality, consciousness, life reside in? What are these words, and why are we so obsessed with them we write blog posts about them?
Signing off...
What exactly is meaning, if I am searching for the meaning of life? How do I define meaning? Understanding? Truth? What is truth? What is reality? Is it confined to what we perceive? Or is it something other, our understanding of which is necessarily imperfect? Is meaning abstract? Is it tangible? Is it a mathematical equation that will crop up on running a MATLAB code? Can it be encapsulated in an equation?
What is my reality? Who am I? Am I just defined by how I act towards others? Is my identity dfefined only by my actions? What about thought? Am I defined only by my thoughts? Do I exist only because I think?
What does it mean to think? Who is thinking? Is the neuron in my head firing at so many times a second thinking? Does it know it is making me happy or sad? Does it have an inkling of the questions I am asking? Does the brain have an idea? Can I exist outside of my thoughts? Can I exist without my brain? I don't think during sleep; don't I exist in sleep?
Who is this I? Why do I keep saying I? What does this mass of cellls and tissues have to do with me? What prevents me from taking a scapel and dissecting myself to see what I look like? Why is this I so important? Why do we never hurt our 'I', but somehow always manage to hurt our 'we'? What is it that makes you different from me? Why are your thoughts your own, and why are my thoughts my own? If this I is embodied in a physical form why can't I take it out and keep it in a glass jar forever?
Is I abstract? What about thought? What about meaning? How much of it is captured in the alphas and betas of science? What prevents me from writing the Schrodinger equation for everything? Can this everything reside in an equation? Can this be a computer program, with an input and an output, and we merely players, chips in the Turing machine? Is there a tape running somewhere with a pattern of 0s and 1s that tells me everything about everything? If not, why am I studying science? Why am I looking at alphas and betas and trying to decipher meaning, if meaning doesn't reside in them? What does meaning, truth, reality, consciousness, life reside in? What are these words, and why are we so obsessed with them we write blog posts about them?
Signing off...
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Brave new world
This is kind of a response to a friends post in his own blog (see here). I guess another blog post on the same thing is not going to mean much as far as the general creative content of the web is concerned. But if some day blog posts were to count as votes, I would want this voice to be loud enough for the rest of the world (or at least the rest of the country) to sit up and listen.
The world is full of people who work for money, fame, power, or more generally for the carrot or the stick. IIT is especially bloated with such people. It is frustrating, stifling and depressing. I am more comfortable if no one worked at all. If no one studied, and all the IITs and every engineering college in the country ran empty. I am more comfortable with a half-wit who is enraptured by science than by a super-intelligent genius who has his eyes set on the 20-something lakh package at the end of his student life. Frankly, the latter kind of people scare me. Yes, I agree everyone has a reason for wanting fame, money, or whatever, but by that measure Pakistan wants Kashmir, US wants oil and Osama wants the whole world. I don't think I am exactly comfortable with the idea.
I hope you get what I am driving at. A genius working for money is more dangerous than the entire Taliban put together. He might work on a nuclear bomb and sell it off to the highest bidder. Okay, that was scary. On a smaller scale he will simply apply his brains where the money is, working for a corporate giant while the vast damned world waits for someone intelligent enough to solve its problems. Or perhaps he will churn out papers at an alarming rate on how to make epsilon differences to little-known algorithms that matter not except to settle arm-chair disputes over expensive luncheons.
Money, power, fame, papers, accolades. It is all the same. Work not for the motive, the Bhagvad Gita tells us. Work for work's sake, work for the joy inherent in the work itself. Learn for the joy of knowledge. Study for the sake of the joy inherent in discovery. Anything else you do is a sin. A crime. It is murder, of the subject of your study, and of yourself. Getting an A on the course does not mean you learnt something in the course. The grades count for nothing. Zero. Zilch. Anything you do, any work you do, must be done for the task's own sake. Nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise it counts for nothing. Otherwise you could be replaced by a computer churning numbers.
The thing that I want to raise my voise against is not just that. It is something deeper, although I hate to call it this: the system. The system, meaning all of you, me, the professors, everybody, we encourage this attitude. You get projects based on your CGPA. Why? Take it from me, I have gotten A's in courses I never learnt anything from. Why must a low CGPA mean a lack of passion? You get into IIT based on an entrance exam. Why? What does the entrance exam measure? Does it measure passion, a desire to know more? Will it reveal an interest in science? How? When did a pen and paper test ever measure interest and passion?
The professors look at CGPAs when they judge students. The students look at CGPA when they take up courses. In this shithole, someone who is genuinely interested is kicked out of the picture. To do anything he wants to do he has to put forward his gradesheet, and to make his gradesheet look good he has to take up courses he has no interest in. Slowly he lets go of science and looks at the little numbers that add up, like the speedometer in a car race. So many kilometers left, so many covered. Slowly he becomes one of them, one of those who work for the grades. He will pick up a job that will pay him well, bide his life like a fucking machine working for peanuts, even as the child within him, once open-mouthed in awe at the world around him, is stifled, smothered and killed.
Great world, this, the one we live in.
The world is full of people who work for money, fame, power, or more generally for the carrot or the stick. IIT is especially bloated with such people. It is frustrating, stifling and depressing. I am more comfortable if no one worked at all. If no one studied, and all the IITs and every engineering college in the country ran empty. I am more comfortable with a half-wit who is enraptured by science than by a super-intelligent genius who has his eyes set on the 20-something lakh package at the end of his student life. Frankly, the latter kind of people scare me. Yes, I agree everyone has a reason for wanting fame, money, or whatever, but by that measure Pakistan wants Kashmir, US wants oil and Osama wants the whole world. I don't think I am exactly comfortable with the idea.
I hope you get what I am driving at. A genius working for money is more dangerous than the entire Taliban put together. He might work on a nuclear bomb and sell it off to the highest bidder. Okay, that was scary. On a smaller scale he will simply apply his brains where the money is, working for a corporate giant while the vast damned world waits for someone intelligent enough to solve its problems. Or perhaps he will churn out papers at an alarming rate on how to make epsilon differences to little-known algorithms that matter not except to settle arm-chair disputes over expensive luncheons.
Money, power, fame, papers, accolades. It is all the same. Work not for the motive, the Bhagvad Gita tells us. Work for work's sake, work for the joy inherent in the work itself. Learn for the joy of knowledge. Study for the sake of the joy inherent in discovery. Anything else you do is a sin. A crime. It is murder, of the subject of your study, and of yourself. Getting an A on the course does not mean you learnt something in the course. The grades count for nothing. Zero. Zilch. Anything you do, any work you do, must be done for the task's own sake. Nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise it counts for nothing. Otherwise you could be replaced by a computer churning numbers.
The thing that I want to raise my voise against is not just that. It is something deeper, although I hate to call it this: the system. The system, meaning all of you, me, the professors, everybody, we encourage this attitude. You get projects based on your CGPA. Why? Take it from me, I have gotten A's in courses I never learnt anything from. Why must a low CGPA mean a lack of passion? You get into IIT based on an entrance exam. Why? What does the entrance exam measure? Does it measure passion, a desire to know more? Will it reveal an interest in science? How? When did a pen and paper test ever measure interest and passion?
The professors look at CGPAs when they judge students. The students look at CGPA when they take up courses. In this shithole, someone who is genuinely interested is kicked out of the picture. To do anything he wants to do he has to put forward his gradesheet, and to make his gradesheet look good he has to take up courses he has no interest in. Slowly he lets go of science and looks at the little numbers that add up, like the speedometer in a car race. So many kilometers left, so many covered. Slowly he becomes one of them, one of those who work for the grades. He will pick up a job that will pay him well, bide his life like a fucking machine working for peanuts, even as the child within him, once open-mouthed in awe at the world around him, is stifled, smothered and killed.
Great world, this, the one we live in.
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