End of an Era in Urdu Shayari

About a week after the death of MATLAB’s Cleve Moler, another death rattled me and the world became that much more sadder. It was the death of the legendary poet Bashir Badr. He was a towering figure in the world of Urdu Shayari and mushaira (recitals), both literally and figuratively. His usage of (mostly) simple language, mastery of words & expressions was so exceptional that his recitals went deep within one’s self and raised emotions that one did not know one had!

Since he realized the seriousness of the onset of dementia in his later years, he voluntarily stopped attending poetry recitals. As his condition worsened, he even forgot his mushaira days. It was a saddening end of sorts but he will always be remembered for his showmanship and unique Shayari as he desired. Many obituaries and eulogies have appeared online since then. Let me share one from BBC Hindi.

One anecdote about his graduate days (that I had heard during my graduate days) has stayed with me even today because it seemed apocryphal but I wanted it to be so true. The article above more or less confirms it, so let me re-iterate it again here: During his M.A. studies, some of his Ghazals were part of the college syllabus (something he was proud of). During one viva exam, one examiner did not agree with his interpretation of a Sher; that Sher which was his own! 🤣

After the sad news of his demise, I decided to buy one more of his books (I already have one) and I got this one:

Let me share some Shers from this book (whose title means “Hope”) as an homage to this great personality and pure soul. First a Sher about Gods: [Do pardon my sketchy translations or read the relevant tab above.]

सब लोग अपने अपने खु़दाओं को लाये थे
इक हम ही ऐसे थे के हमारा खु़दा न था

Sab log apne apne Khudaaon ko laaye the
Ik ham hi aise the ke hamaara Khuda na tha

Everyone brought the Gods of their own
I was the only one with no God of my own

Next a few Shers from a Ghazal about passage & stillness of time, likes & dislikes, happiness & sadness:

उस का भी कुछ हक़ है आख़िर
उस ने मुझ से नफ़रत की है

Us ka bhi kuch haq hai aaKhir
Us ne mujh se naFarat ki hai

They also have some right after all
They do have pure hatred for me

जैसे सदियाँ बीत चुकी हों
फिर भी आधी रात अभी है

Jaise sadiyaan beet chuki hon
Phir bhi aadhi raat abhi hai

It’s like eons have passed
Still the mid-night is here

हम दोनों की खू़ब निभेगी
मैं भी दुखी हूँ वो भी दुखी है

Ham donon ki Khoob nibhegi
Main bhi dukhi hun wo bhi dukhi hai

Both of us will get along very well
I am also sad and you are sad too

अब ग़म से क्या नाता तोड़ें
ज़ालिम बचपन का साथी है

Ab Gham se kya naata toDein
Zaalim bachpan ka saathi hai

How do I break my ties with grief
That cruel one is a childhood friend

– बशीर बद्र (Bashir Badr)

Before my tears start streaming down and short-circuit my computer, let me leave you with a

45 minutes recital by Bashir Badr

Supergravity @ 50

This post should have appeared a month or so ago. But the last month was a bit hectic: first with a trip to Stony Brook, second with jetlag upon return to Bengaluru and then with seasonal allergy infliction shutting down my brain for a good 4 days.

I will focus mostly on the first bit of information mentioned above. I visited Stony Brook last month from 1-7 June to attend the conference celebrating 50 years of the discovery of Supergravity by the well-known triumvirate: Sergio Ferrara, Daniel Z. Freedman, and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen.

This was a third conference of this type at Stony Brook with the first one held in 1979 (@ 3 years) and second one in 2001 (@ 25 years). I was glad to be a part of this historic event and being at my alma mater after nearly a decade. Though, it was sad that neither Ferrara nor Freedman could attend this conference due to health issues.

The three days of the conference were jam-packed with 7 talks each. You can find them on the conference page (linked via the poster above) along with the dinner speeches (worth a listen too, even for non-physicists!). Some of the talks were review/overview talks, some were expository talks, some were who-knows-what talks. I liked Moore’s and Kallosh’s talks from the first day, and Van Proeyen’s talk and Martin’s “homage” to Warren on the second day. The third day was quite interesting and I liked (and “understood”) Maldacena’s, Roiban’s and Gauntlett’s talks.

Another highlight of the conference was a beach trip to West Meadow Beach. I walked for about an hour along the shore. I collected photographed some stones, shells & seaweeds and birds like seagulls, egrets, ospreys, plovers & terns. I also saw horseshoe crabs for the first time and they look like toy tanks with tails!

More photos from this trip are shared in the following album. Till next time!

Stony Brook Album

End of an Era in Technical Computing

Cleve Moler, Inventor of MATLAB, Cofounder of MathWorks, is no more. I was quite stunned because I follow his blog and it felt like just a couple of weeks ago, he had published a post about oscillators!

I started using MATLAB in the second year of my undergrads (2008-09) and have not stopped since then. I didn’t know it had an inventor (like C or C++ had) for a long time, maybe I got to know about him after I started my graduate studies! When I first saw Cleve Moler’s Photo, I thought, “Sure, he looks like someone who could do numerical computing for a living!”. After that, at some point, I started following his posts (and those of other MathWorkers, too) and learning the “secrets” of MATLAB.

Even if MATLAB does not play a significant part in my research, it is still there prominently on my laptop, powering an “accounting” program, a (two) SuDoKu solver(s), a couple of image manipulators, a few games, and long forgotten GUIs that had once made me “famous” at IIT KGP! Whenever I get stuck in some research problem, I start up MATLAB and tinker with my existing programs learning new ways to do old things efficiently or make new programs after having learnt new things to try. It plays a crucial role in refreshing my grey cells and prepares me mentally to go back to my research problems with greater enthusiasm to solve them “this time”. Because it has never happened that a problem has remained unsolved in MATLAB, at least the programming part!

So, Thank You Cleve Moler for MATLAB. Your impact will be remembered for eons to come. Rest in peace.

Numerical Computing

Relativity of Coffee…

I came across a café in Bengaluru called Coffee Chemistry stylized and shortened as “C²” read as “C Square”.

My eyes then fell upon a cup-shaped prop (more like an outline of a prop) outside the said shop, which gloriously displayed (arguably) the most famous equation E=MC² and postulated it to mean “Energy = Milk × Coffee²”! What a cheap way to invite physicists (and chemists too I guess).

As a physicist, I have an issue with this “incomplete” equation because in modern notation the “full” equation reads “E=γmc²” (γ is read “gamma”). I am not going to talk about the physics and/or the rationale behind it… maybe another day! I guess the café owner could not get the artisans to fit something like “Energy = glass × milk × coffee²” on the prop!

As a high energy physicist, I have even more pressing concerns because in natural units “c = 1” and the equation just reads “E=γm” with no coffee in sight anymore! Will I be satisfied with just a glass of milk in a café?

Anyway, I leave you with some Physics behind the formula and you will know exactly what “γ” stands for.

For γ

Sketchbook is Truly Over!

Yes, this sad announcement is all there is for this post…

Sketchbook’s official end was more than 6 years ago, bookmarked by this post.

Its scanlation ended just yesterday. For those interested, here’s a sneak peak (the picture below is clickable!):

Finally, I hope something similar happens for

Scorebook

Feeble February

The weather has been all over the place this month. Mornings and Evenings are quite chilly but the rest of the day is quite warm. I seem to turn on the fan for 10 minutes every hour or so. There were again a few weddings this month but I didn’t attend any as I did in November because Sakura had a few Olympiad exams this month and her final exams for class 3 start next week. You may wonder why I did not go alone as I did in November! Well, I wanted to help her “revise” regularly this time. Anyway, it seems she did as good/bad as last time so my “help” may not have helped that much. Or, maybe it “helped” to maintain that level of consistency!😆 We did take a weekend trip to Kochi before the exams, so there’s that too. And remember Fort Kochi is not a Fort!🤯

I have also been programming the past few couple of weeks and the result of that is here. The actual code and stuff is accessible directly on GitHub. It is basically a card game that became well-known as a nontrivial programming problem in a contest organized by MathWorks last year.

Out of the blue, 5 chapters of Sketchbook dropped this year after a gap of nearly 3 years! And these did not disappoint. Two sample strips about cooking food are perfect:

Lastly, I listened to a “new” poet this month. I was amazed at his choice of simple words which packed a brilliant punch to where it mattered! This is again one of those untranslatable Ghazals so I won’t even transcribe it in English. But I will try to explain it below, though I don’t think I will do it justice.

राह बदलूँ के क़ाफ़िला बदलूँ
इससे बेहतर है रहनुमा बदलूँ

दर्द जाता नहीं ए चारागर
रोग बदलूँ के मैं दवा बदलूँ

फिर वही खुद से रोज़ का झगड़ा
खुद को बदलूँ के आईना बदलूँ

अब कोई प्रार्थना नहीं फलती
शब्द बदलूँ के देवता बदलूँ

ज़िंदगी की रदीफ़ रूठ गई
बहर बदलूँ के क़ाफ़िया बदलूँ

–दीक्षित दनकौरी

The whole Ghazal is about dilemmas in various situations, where one has to choose one option or the other. This Ghazal is so structured that the first and last Sher themselves open up dilemmas in similar situations but with contradictory options! That’s what makes this a great Ghazal. So the first Sher asks in its first line whether to change one’s path or one’s company (caravan); only to wonder in the second line if it’s better to change the leader. The second Sher complains to the doctor that the pain does not subside; and wonders whether to change the disease or the medicines. The third one is upset about fighting with oneself; and wonders whether to change oneself or the mirror! The fourth one is so profound as to notice that no prayer is being answered; and wonders whether to change the words or the gods! The last Sher contains quite a few technical terms related to Ghazals (refer to this post for their technical meanings) but they all have “normal” meanings too, so in essence, this Sher is full of श्लेष अलंकार (Puns) raising it to the highest level of poetical beauty I’ve ever witnessed! Here is what I think are its dual meanings: 1. My life’s refrain (रदीफ़) is “upset”. Should I change the meter (बहर) or the “rhyme” (क़ाफ़िया)? 2. My life’s co-travellers (रदीफ़) are upset. Should I change my ways (बहर) or the followers (क़ाफ़िया)? What a reversal of viewpoint compared to the first Sher: there, the leader seemed to be the problem and here, the followers! To appreciate the beauty of this Ghazal fully, here is Dixit Dankauri reciting it in full (starts around half-time):

Dixit Dankauri, Jashn-e-Adab, 2025

His previous recitals are also worth listening to: 2019, 2021 & 2023. One more on the occasion of

Gopaldas “Neeraj” Birth Centenary 2025

Happy New Year!

The first month of the new year is about to end so I might as well put up the first post before it is too late.

Let me start with the last month of the last year, first. We went to Taipei after nearly 8 years and met with my “old” colleagues who seemed to have aged not even 8 months! But in that period of time, I have an 8-year-old kid tagging along with me and I may as well have aged 18 years with my balding face, rotund shape and aching skeleton. Literally! Apart from that, it was a great trip. We (re)visited some of my old haunts like NTU (of course), Kapok Vegetarian Bakery, Da’An Park, Maokong Gondola, etc. These places have changed quite a bit. One example of an extreme change (which was disorientating at first) was the 4-way square flyover bridge over the Da’An park intersection was nowhere to be found! Anyway, Sakura seemed to like these places. In other news, we almost lost Sakura’s ear-warmers on one trip (THSR to Taichung) and almost lost her on another (National Palace Museum)… These are stories for some other time! And so a weeklong trip came to an end with a visit to the Taipei Zoo where we witnessed South American animals in flesh for the first time. We refrained from doing the “tourist-y” thing and climb Taipei 101 again this time. But somebody doesn’t care about that!

 

Let me end with the first month of this new year. Not much noteworthy has happened, though. We watched the Republic Day parade live for ~3 hours today. Sakura enjoyed the floats and stunts by the CRPF officers & military jet pilots. Though, she missed the coloured jets those jets didn’t spray! Anyway, Happy New Year once again to all the readers of this Blog. Hope you learn and grow beyond your expectations this year…

Happy 2026

A UIEO

That is not a new way of enumerating vowels. It stands for an exam called Unified International English Olympiad, conducted by Unified Council (UC). My daughter’s school makes it mandatory for its students to participate in a few of such Olympiads. The school also provides preparation material so she has to study a bit more than just her class textbooks. Of course, these Olympiads cover a bit more than the “usual” school syllabus. This phrase “a bit more” is the shady bit in all this Olympiad business because it seems the question-setters don’t know “how much more” should be “a bit more”!

Consider, for example, the UIEO exam for Class 3 held on 21 Nov this year. The first question reads:

1. Which option can be a v₁/bare infinitive?
  (A) Yard, (B) Foot, (C) Furlong, (D) Meter

It’s quite a timid looking fun question but what irritates me is the preparation material has nothing on “classification” of verbs.

[Similar thing happened in the Computer Science Olympiad conducted by SOF where “classification” of printers based on mechanism was expected of class 3 students! But that’s a story for another day.]

Talking about stuff NOT in the preparation material, consider this question:

3. Which option completes the (binomial) irreversible word pair ‘hills and ____’ correctly?
  (A) plains, (B) mounds, (C) heights, (D) valleys

Who the hell knows the phrase “binomial irreversible word pair” apart from language professors in esteemed humanities departments of even-higher-esteemed universities? Definitely not class 3 students who don’t even know the difference between parts of speech and figures of speech!

Similarly, another instance of rarely discussed grammar in class 3 features in this question:

6. Which option is not a gerund?
  (A) Earning, (B) Enjoying, (C) Outgoing, (D) Spending

But I won’t complain about this too much because I think past papers have asked about gerunds.

Next is the most dumbest question of the 35 questions in this exam paper:

13. Which option doesn’t rhyme with ‘Foul’.
   (A) Owl, (B) Rout, (C) Tout, (D) Soul

What?!? Except (A), nothing rhymes with ‘Foul’. So is there a typo in the question, as in “doesn’t” → “does”? Apparently not! The “official” answer key says the answer is (D). Is the question-setter and proof-reader smoking something foul or what? [Who am I kidding? UC doesn’t have proof readers! Just look at the quality of answer key for NSTSE exam… Even in the first reading, I could edit / fix a few things and figure out one answer is completely wrong!] If the question-setter wanted (D) to be the answer, the word “option” should have been replaced with “vowel-sound” in the question, at the very least! And since this is an “English” exam, maybe they should look deep in their souls and decide: Should they be touting their knowledge with ill-phrased questions or routing their knowledge to something more wholesome? Be a wise owl (as depicted in some cultures) or just be an ulloo [उल्लू] (an idiot in Indian culture)! Another task the question-setter should be set is this: Write a poem where ‘foul’ rhymes with ‘rout’ and ‘tout’!

This question really upset me so I tried to fill in their discrepancy feedback form. But then just like they don’t have proof-readers for exams; their website-coders also don’t have quality-checkers! The web-form kept giving me server error because of badly formatted string or something in their code, so I asked my Superpartner to try submitting the form instead. She also received the same error so she just sent the screenshot of the form to the only email available on the website, stating:

Dear Team,
As I'm unable to submit the discrepancy online (server error), I'm pasting the screenshot below.

After two days, a reply was received from UC. A really funny reply:

Dear Sir,
Please share your query in detail to this email id.

Yes, their email is literally just that with the inline signature photo! And so my Superpartner sends an email back confirming that she had sent her original email to that exact same email:

Dear ××××××,
That's exactly the email that I have sent my query to.

And nobody ever replied! What a sham (or scam) of asking for feedback when they can’t be bothered to even accept it, forget about acknowledging it.

That turned out to be quite a long rant. Anyway, let’s move on to another question:

31. Shyam: Raj and Arun both stayed at Anil’s party throughout, but neither could break the ice.
   Raghu: __________
   (A) Was there no spike available around?
   (B) But Raj could have broken the ice, he is well built.
   (C) Was the ice slab that thick?
   (D) If you stick to ego, friends can’t stick to you.

What kind of moral high ground is this? (Of course, I’m talking about the correct answer D.) Is the question-setter watching too many soap operas? Who the hell talks like that in real life, esp. in the context of class 3 students? At this stage of life, maybe students should be taught to be less judgmental and more understanding! The correct answer shows a judgmental, preachy tone; instead one could have chosen a neutral, understanding tone with something like: “Well, they both have strong personalities. Hope they understand soon that sticking together is better than being alone!”. But then, nuance is not the forte of most people in the current state of the world.

Finally, last but not the least (irritating) of them all:

35. Which option can ‘not be an exclamation’?
   (A) Yes, (B) Great, (C) No, (D) Come

I believe the answer is D, but the answer key says it’s B! [I wanted to submit feedback for this too, but as you all know by now, their feedback form error-ed out!] This is ridiculous, of course. “Great!” is an exclamation in situations of joy and appreciation and the like. For example, if my nephew says, “I scored 100% in my exams.”, I’d reply with “Great! Congrats!” and so on. “Come” is definitely not an exclamation on its own. I can think of using it only as “Come on! That’s stupid.”

Indeed, All Of It Is!

Wedding Season

It is that time of the year where a lot of weddings take place in India. Because there are many auspicious days around this time according to priests who solemnize such events I guess. Anyway, even in my (extended) family, half a dozen or so weddings are planned. I attended one recently near my native town.

The wedding took place for 2 days at a resort aptly named “Dharti Dhora Ri” (Land of Sand-dunes).

It is spread across a huge swath of desert land with an imposing building right at the edge of a national highway. Preparations underway for the wedding I was attending:

The interiors are similarly shimmering with grandeur. The ceiling of the reception area:

There are different areas for different events and the entrance to one such area on the first night was decorated in dark mode / night theme:

 

The area for the second night was much more grandiose where the main reception was held but sadly I did not capture that so you can just let your imagination run wild (include fireworks too).

Apart from all these events and decorations, the most important aspect of a wedding is the FOOD. And boy oh boy, did this place curate some of the most ‘perfect’ sweets I have ever eaten! Every meal had at least 4 different sweets. I tasted only two in every meal and whatever I tasted was great. All sorts of sweets (made of chhena or mawa or dry fruits) were second to none. Even the traditional breakfast items had the home-made vibe & taste, especially the bajri ka daliya. Of course, there were plenty of “main course” items too for lunch and dinner, which means I had to make a conscious decision of what not to taste. The curries were good and fresh tandoori naan I had here was among the best. But I left out many things that I would have eaten if there was less to choose at every meal! That was the saddest part of attending this wedding I think.😉

Anyway, all’s well that ends well! I got back to Bengaluru on time. Just before the ridiculous

Indigo Fiasco