356th Post…

As this year rolls on and this post gets published, I have written a year worth of posts on this blog! In less than 20 years! That is quite an achievement! Worthy of a grand celebration, indeed!

And that is why I will share here the following poem by Dr. Prabha Thakur on Life – ज़िंदगी – Zindagi (about which this blog is, if you’d forgotten!), celebrating all its aspects – from the negative to the positive, from the mundane to the extraordinary, from the first to the last, and the most important, the uniqueness of it all! Please enjoy this poem and have a cake on my behalf!🍰

ज़िंदगी

ये ज़िंदगी ग़म ही सही, ये ज़िंदगी कम ही सही
पर ज़िंदगी भाती तो है, ये सब का दिल लुभाती तो है
ये ज़िंदगी ग़म ही सही, ये ज़िंदगी कम ही सही ॥

आबादियाँ वीरानियाँ, खुशहालियाँ रुसवाइयाँ
सब ज़िंदगी के नाम हैं, ये ज़िंदगी के ईनाम हैं
खट्टी सही मीठी सही, ये ज़िंदगी कड़वी सही
है ज़िंदगी तो हर बात है, तो सब ज़िंदगी की सौगात है
ये ज़िंदगी ग़म ही सही, ये ज़िंदगी कम ही सही ॥

सूरज गगन धरती हवा, सुख-दुख हंसी सरगम पिया
इसने हमें क्या-क्या दिया, इस ज़िंदगी का शुक्रिया
ये दो घड़ी का सपना सही, ये चार दिन का नगमा सही
पर ज़िंदगी गाती तो है, ग़म में भी ये मुसकुराती तो है
ये ज़िंदगी ग़म ही सही, ये ज़िंदगी कम ही सही ॥

हारो न तुम बढ़ते रहो, इस ज़िंदगी से लड़ते रहो
खो जाए गर तो फिर ढूंढ लो, टूटे अगर तो फिर से गढ़ो
ये मूर्ति कच्ची नहीं, इससे जफ़ा अच्छी नहीं
ये जीत है ये प्रीत है, गाओ अगर तो ये गीत है
ये ज़िंदगी ग़म ही सही, ये ज़िंदगी कम ही सही ॥

थोड़ा बुरा थोड़ा भला, तक़दीर का है सिलसिला
जो भी दिया वो ही मिला, फिर ज़िंदगी से कैसा गीला
अमृत यही मदिरा यही, विष मान लो तो विष ही सही
ये जाम तो पीना ही है, तो हँस के जियो तो जीना भी है
ये ज़िंदगी ग़म ही सही, ये ज़िंदगी कम ही सही ॥

क्यों मौत की माँगे दुआ, जाना तो है फिर फ़िक्र क्या
कुछ ज़िंदगी में करके चलो, ये क़र्ज़ है भर के चलो
सच्ची सही झूठी सही, गर ये नहीं तो कुछ भी नहीं
इस दास्तान को उनवान दो, इस ज़िंदगी को पहचान दो
ये ज़िंदगी ग़म ही सही, ये ज़िंदगी कम ही सही ॥

– प्रभा ठाकुर

Of course, there is a live recitation of this poem by her and it follows.

'Zindagi' by Dr. Prabha Thakur

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

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!

Untranslatable Shayari – II

This post is the second installment of a collection of untranslatable Shers that I talked about earlier. Let me share a very famous Ghazal of Dr. Nawaaz Deobandi from the times when he looked like a young Anji (from Rurouni Kenshin).

वो रुला कर हँस न पाया देर तक
जब मैं रो कर मुस्कुराया देर तक

भूलना चाहा कभी उसको अगर
और भी वो याद आया देर तक

भूके बच्चों की तसल्ली के लिए
माँ ने फिर पानी पकाया देर तक

गुनगुनाता फिर रहा था एक फ़क़ीर
धूप रहती है न साया देर तक

कल अँधेरी रात में मेरी तरह
एक जुगनू जगमगाया देर तक

–नवाज़ देवबंदी

Nawaaz Deobandi, Anjum Rehbar and Waseem Barelvi, Bulandshahar, 1990.

This is Quintessentially Dr. Nawaaz Deobandi's Shayari. It is recognizable instantly and remains with you देर तक. It is so emotionally charged that it does not just pull at your heart strings that your eyes flood, but it wrenches your guts so viciously that you lose your appetite देर तक. This रदीफ़ (refrain) of देर तक (till late) is so commonplace a phrase, yet in this Ghazal it weaves a magic carpet that lifts you up, flies you at breakneck speed through a desolate scenery and flings you right at the edge of a poignant precipice that leaves you gasping for breath देर तक. The five Shers seem to paint five different scenarios but for me the common thread easily jumps out: hardship; be it hardship involving interactions, feelings, responsibility, livelihood, or just finding one’s place in this world. Among them, the third Sher is the pinnacle of showcasing the author’s command over his craft.

I can hardly keep my watering eyes open while I’m typing this (also the reason why I never “translated” this Ghazal even though I wrote about Dr. Nawaaz Deobandi as early as 2009!), but I do want to highlight the one word that punches my stomach so hard every time I read the third Sher: फिर (again). This Sher paints a very grim picture of a mother “cooking” water to “pacify” her hungry kids. Again! Those who haven’t understood this Sher yet or those who simply don’t understand Hindi, picture this: as the Sher is being read, the scene is being populated with characters (kids & a mother) and you hear – in the second line – the word “फिर” first (without much effect, as expected) and then the whole scene comes to life with the ultimate phrase comprising of four words “पानी पकाया देर तक” (cooked water till late) and Boom!, the aftershock of that single word “फिर” hits you so hard, you can hardly control your body’s reaction. That single word multiplies many-fold the effects of the rest of the words that have forced you to conjure up a world that should not exist, yet you know somewhere deep down, is part of the grim reality we live in!

Well, this is more than enough of taking apart a Sher and explaining its meaning and/or the author’s feelings. This seems like it should be a question (involving भावार्थ or something similar) for Hindi exam in Class X. And I don’t think I would do a good job even then. So, I leave you to tackle another video of

Nawaaz Deobandi from 1994

Figuring Me Out!

People have tried figuring me out for ages, with varying degrees of success. The latest addition in such a pursuit is my daughter. For those who keep track of my posts, this post is basically the post hinted near the end of my previous post. So let’s get to it then.

On the father’s day of this year (I don’t feel like searching for the exact date, but it feels like it was a month or so ago), Sakura made a colourful postcard / greeting card for me. It had the expected “HAPPY FATHER'S DAY” written at the top:

Then a paragraph followed which was “dedicated” to her father, i.e., me. Once again, this was her own creation; her mother did not help with it (as stressed in the previous post linked above). It started with my name… well, let me not ruin it by “explaining” it. Here it is for your own reading pleasure (with a few corrections, as usual):

My father’s name is Dharmesh Jain.

I call him Dμ. Dμ is a physicist.

He solves a lot of maths and physics problems.

He knows how to cook milk and junk food.

He does not like kids that much.

But he has one. And I am writing it.

Well, what a twist there at the end! This paragraph was followed by some doodles, dedicated to various things I “like”:

I think she swapped Maths & Physics there and I do not understand what Logic has got to do with an icecream! Maybe it is a puzzle she set for me and I am supposed to match the subjects with their correct doodles (then my answer is in the previous sentence!) because she knows I like puzzles and keep showing her videos from this channel. Anyway, if you have started thinking this postcard borders on being a poster instead, you may be right. Because there was one more thing after the doodles; and that was to indicate the end of it all:

I guess I will get back to my usual style of posts, by which I mean

Showcasing Shayari

Story from an Unexpected Source…

Since ideas for a post are hard to come by in this day and age, I instead want to share a story. An unusual story written by my daughter last week for her weekly “3H activity” class on Friday. On Thursday, my wife got an expected message detailing what the 3H activity class this week was about. The unexpected thing was this activity was first of its kind. The kids were supposed to write a story given the following picture prompt:

They were to draw and colour this picture and write a story about it in class but they could prepare at home, that’s why the advance “warning”. As soon as she saw this picture, my daughter got thinking and wrote some sort of a draft story in her rough notebook. She did not show that to me but next day after school, she showed me a colourful page with her drawing and her story.

The story had the “usual” typographical and grammatical errors expected of a class 3 kid but the story made sense and incorporated all the elements of the picture. At first, I thought her mother had helped her with it, but NO!, it turned out to be her own idea, her own creation. It was a good story with a setup, some action, and a funny ending. I was quite impressed so I share it here with those trivial errors fixed for your reading pleasure.

The Pet

It was a sunny day. A girl was walking through a garden. She saw a caterpillar in the grass. She followed it. Then it disappeared. But it had left her in a place where a snake was sleeping. When the girl went near it, it woke up. It hissed loudly and angrily. The girl found a rattle and picked it up, then she made some sound with it. The snake calmed down. She took the snake and kept it on a bench. And she said, ‘stay here’ and the snake understood. She left it and bought a collar. She put it around the snake’s neck but not tightly so it would not get choked. She had the rattle with her, she put the rattle in his tail and the snake held it! The girl had a pet now. (She didn’t have any pet before.) The caterpillar came back again. This time the girl picked it up, the snake watching closely. The girl said, ‘You got me a pet!’. ‘I don’t have to pay for it, right?’, she giggled.

The End

Hope you had a good read. Enjoy the week and till next time when I share what she really thinks of me!

Snakes as Pets

Another Year Ends…

…as usual. This time the number was 2024.

Let us recap my “predictions” for 2024 from last year’s post and see what all came true!

• January: For the first time in a decade, my Superpartner and I did not go to a new city to celebrate our wedding anniversary. TRUE

• February: Sino-Taiwan war started finally! FALSE

• March: Our grand tour of Rajasthan started. FALSE

• April: The grand tour continued since the war had jeopardized our plans to visit Taiwan. FALSE

• May: Back to Bengaluru for a new academic session. TRUE

• June: Puerto Rico became 51^st state of USA. FALSE

• July: I finally published a paper that I’d been working on for the last two years! FALSE

• August: Rishi Sunak attacked. FALSE

• September: John Oliver dies. FALSE

• October: Nobel Prizes announced. TRUE

• November: World population decimated due to Rovid-24. FALSE

• December: This blog ends due to obvious reasons. FALSE

So almost nothing came true! But Ian Hislop was involved in a couple of incidents this year…

Anyway, let us make this list a tradition and I review 2025 on a pro-rata basis:

• January: D. Trump did something sensible which made America great again.

• February: Coldest temperatures ever recorded in Rajasthan.

• March: My daughter for the first time found an exam hard and scored bad.

• April: I spent the entire month enjoying winter in Rajasthan instead of visiting Taiwan.

• May: Back to Bengaluru for a new academic session in the hottest month of the year.

• June: UK’s economy collapsed despite K. Starmer’s best efforts.

• July: I finally published a paper that I’d been working on for the last three years!

• August: Paul Merton attacked and WW III started in earnest.

• September: John Oliver died and WW III at its peak.

• October: Nobel Prizes not announced due to WW III.

• November: World population decimated due to WW III.

• December: This blog ends due to obvious reasons.

Proper 2024 Review

Algorithms, Algorithms, Everywhere…

One of my sisters/cousins sent a book to me this year during Dusshera, which is titled “Algorithms to Live by” by Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths. Its subtitle is “The Computer Science of Human Decisions”. I have now finished reading it, which made me think this can be another post for my blog and that’s why we are here.

You might be asking yourself what is this book about and should I get one too. I will answer both of your questions. The answer to the first question is what you might expect. This book discusses algorithms that may be useful during certain events in one’s life. The events can be anything from something special like going to a casino, to something mundane like sorting your book collection, to something regular like parking your vehicle, to something exciting like planning guest seating at your wedding, to something dumb like finding a life partner (or a secretary), to something as practical as scheduling your everyday tasks. The answer to the second question is why not! Here’s a quote from the book that recommends this decision:

We can hope to be fortunate – but we should strive to be wise.

What this seems to mean to me is that we may be fortunate in enjoying certain outcomes once in a while but being wise is something that will guide our approach that will (more or less) guarantee favourable outcomes regularly. This book will make you worldly-wise about which approach to take in various situations to maximize favourable outcomes. Fortune can come and go but wisdom, once acquired, is always there to guide. Through life and death. So it is time for

Your Wise Decision

Art & Craft

Apparently, my daughter’s English teacher has asked all her students to bring a mini dictionary to school. So, as any sensible father would do, I gave my daughter a dictionary from my own childhood. I had used it during my schooldays and is most definitely (at least) 25 years old. Its plastic cover has suffered a lot of wear and tear but its pages feel almost new. So nothing really hinders its usage.

  

She was all right with her new possession and started taking it to school after her Diwali holidays. She must have introduced it as her father’s and her “friends” must have made fun of that. Anyway, after a couple of days, I asked her if she was using it much during her classes and she said yes. But she also revealed that she found a small piece of paper with a sketch on it. She claimed it must be my work and her “friends” must have made fun of that too! I asked her to show it to me and here it is:

I don’t really remember drawing this sketch of a character from Dragon Ball Z. If I’m not mistaken, it’s a Namekian named Dende. But the background problem of Physics / Maths suggests it must be my handiwork! I am not known to have doodled in my classes but then there must have been some specially dull ones or free ones. Nice one, if I say so myself.

Happy Diwali

Half-Year-End is Upon Us

Since the last post, a few interesting things have happened. And you guessed it: I will list them here and call it a post for the day month.

I have been constantly refining my program AcBook 9.0 over the last couple of months and the code has become more polished, less buggy, a little faster and most importantly, the program behaves as expected most of the times. Also, two more rows of the Widgets setting table are now properly working (which means the work on file data structure is more or less complete for that purpose). The last row still requires a bit more work and will (probably) be activated in the next proper version upgrade. For now the version number stays the same but the release number gets an extra letter, so something like “24B”. [Update(1/7/24): All rows of the Widgets settings table properly work in Release 24C without any proper version upgrade!] Listing out all the minor bugs & improvements & enhancements is not at all worthy of anyone’s time so let me stop here with this topic. Just one more thing: A demo video is now live on YouTube and you can view it in full glory on this webpage.

I saw for the first time a double rainbow in the sky with my own eyes! Well, not really… I noticed the secondary rainbow in the photo I took of the primary rainbow that I was delighted to see in the evening a few days ago. Here is the proof:

I visited the website Anubhuti after a long time! It publishes Hindi poems monthly now (back in the old days, they published weekly!) and the latest collection of poems is on the topic of “Summer”. I mostly read Ghazals which can be found under the section “अंजुमन (Anjuman)” and they didn’t disappoint, especially the last one by Vinita Tiwari. It felt nice… Enjoy!

I wrote a blog post on my ‘Physics blog’ last month about disappointments and failures. If you are interested in that sort of thing…

Here you go

It Started, and It Will End!

That’s how years work. And this year won’t be an exception.

So what could this post be about is what I imagine you wondering at this point! And to answer that I just give a shrug because who knows where this post is headed, or for that matter this whole blog in the near future. If we’re getting that ahead of ourselves, why not worry about the whole world heating up nicely and turning crisp & golden brown for some interstellar being’s planet tikka starter. I should probably write up a story like that for Nature Futures in the new year.

So what else could I talk about here in the last post of this year? I could talk about what I did / accomplish in the last 12 months like I did in some past years. But I don’t think that’s a good idea because I didn’t do much or accomplish much this year. I could review 2023 month-wise like I did last year. But that’s definitely not a good idea as this year is much more depressing than the last year. I could review 2024 on a pro-rata basis (whatever the hell that means!). Yes, that’s more like it. That is a good idea as there is a lot of fake news out there and nobody can complain if I add some more to that ever-increasing nonsensical body of internet content!

• January: For the first time in a decade, my Superpartner and I did not go to a new city to celebrate our wedding anniversary.
• February: Sino-Taiwan war started finally!
• March: Our grand tour of Rajasthan started.
• April: The grand tour continued since the war had jeopardized our plans to visit Taiwan.
• May: Back to Bengaluru for a new academic session.
• June: Puerto Rico became 51^st state of USA.
• July: I finally published a paper that I’d been working on for the last two years!
• August: Rishi Sunak attacked.
• September: John Oliver dies.
• October: Nobel Prizes announced.
• November: World population decimated due to Rovid-24.
• December: This blog ends due to obvious reasons.

Happy New Year

Fujitsu & Shayari

Fujitsu

After ages (~5 years), I have finally bought a new laptop. Why is that a big deal one might ask? Here’s the back-story then: I already own 2 laptops.

1. Surface Pro 7 (SP7): A refurbished device directly got from Microsoft in exchange for a problematic SP4 in Jul 2021 (which was itself a refurbished device got as a replacement for the screen-flickering original SP4 (of Dec 2016) in Nov 2018). It runs (Win11) well and I have no complaints whatsoever with its hardware yet.
2. Surface Book 2 (SB2): An original device from 2018 which has started to fall apart since the last year and a half or so. First, its charger got worn down, then its charging port so now it has to be charged via 3rd party USB-C adapter & cable. No complaints there since this setup works well. Second, the mechanical attach-detach mechanism goes hay-wire once in a while where the screen is believed to be detached even when it is attached and working well with the keyboard! It is annoying at times but I can just do a real detach and attach exercise in no time and it is set to work at least for the next 24 hours. So no big deal… Third, the Mg body is starting to show ‘erosion’. Yes, ‘erosion’, not wear & tear but full-fledged loss of metal. Still, the body feels sturdy and doesn’t hamper any real workings of the laptop. Fourth, its Intel processor is 7th Gen and since Win11 needs at least an 8th Gen Intel processor, this SB2 is unable to upgrade to Win11, which is a bummer because there will be no new feature updates to Win10 anymore, though it will be supported till Oct 2025. But then there are people you don’t view Win11 so favourably either. Lastly & Fifthly, the IR camera has started to not recognize me since the last few weeks. And That’s Just Not Done. One of the ‘coolest’ features of Windows is the Hello Face recognition system (i.e., login with your face! No password, no PIN, no touching anything, no nothing; just glance at your screen even in pitch black darkness and you’re in for some good times!) and if that system doesn’t work and that too on a Surface device, what’s the point?

So I wanted a proper shiny new device with Hello Face built-in. Well, my daughter Sakura also wished to have a device someday that can login with her face. That gave me another excuse to buy a shiny new device which was that Sakura also needs a laptop now (her Amazon Fire tablet no longer cutting it for an obvious reason).

Of course, there are opposing forces (like my superpartner, or rather, especially her) with heretic views like a 5-year-old-kid doesn’t need a shiny new computer whether or not it has Hello Face. That resulted in a month-long standoff in our household, not because she (my superpartner) was going to pay for our (me & my daughter’s) new laptop but because there was no goo-d-dam-n touchscreen device available within my budget that had an IR camera, essential for Hello Face! Finally, as May rolled in, Fujitsu UH-X 2-in-1 with 12th Gen Intel i7 processor and all sorts of high-end bells & whistles but weighing less than 1 Kg showed up on Amazon.in. The rest as they say is her story because now Sakura thinks it is totally her laptop.

Of course, that’s not true. I will be converting it to my secondary device as I phase out working on SB2 starting from next month. And setting up family safety for her account. If you, the reader, can suggest how best to retire / reuse / recycle the SB2, do chime in below in the comments or contact me on any other mediums accessible / available to you. (In addition, if you yourself are not so fussy about the 5 ‘issues’ with SB2 outlined above, do let me know and you can own an excellent SB2 at fifth the original price! Hurry while the stock / deal lasts.) For now, here’s our unboxing experience of the Fujitsu 2-in-1 laptop for you to enjoy:

Shayari

Before I forget to write another post this month or a post next month, let me share some more Shers by one of the greatest Shayars of all time.

जब्र का ज़हर कुछ भी हो पीता नहीं
मैं ज़माने की शर्तों पे जीता नहीं

Jabr ka zahar kuch bhi ho peeta nahin
Main zamaane ki sharton pe jeeta nahin

Never consumed any poison of crimes
I do not live by set terms of the times

देखे जाते नहीं मुझसे हारे हुए
इसलिए मैं कोई जंग जीता नहीं

Dekhe jaate nahin mujhse haare huye
Isliye main koi jang jeeta nahin

I can not bear watching any losers
That’s why I never win any battles

अपनी सुबहों के सूरज उगाता हूँ खुद
मैं चरागों की साँसों से जीता नहीं

Apni subahon ke sooraj ugaata hun khud
Main charaagon ki saanson se jeeta nahin

I grow the morning suns on my own
I do not live by the breaths of lamps

–डॉ वसीम बरेलवी (Dr. Waseem Barelvi)

So divine. So grounded. So ecstatically inspiring. So emotionally draining. So I will leave you with the

Recital Video

Futures Once Again…

This is the end of April 2023. One more birthmonth came and went. Not to dismiss the idea of a birthday but when you’re nearing 40 years of pure life, caring about a single day seems counterproductive at best and irrelevant at worst. So I have started celebrating a whole birthmonth with cakes, sweets, long naps and occasional research into why nobody has yet done something which I have been thinking about for the last two years! Whether I will do that thing this year is again another research problem to think about altogether. More on that at the end of this year.

That is not the reason the title of this post starts with the word “Future”. Long time readers of this post will recognize that the plural form of that word is a series of short sci-fi stories in the scientific journal Nature. And once again, there has been a good and interesting story.

This story (did you click the above picture?) is about tackling climate destruction in an innovative way. Don’t want to go into any more details but it is an interesting read. What I want to talk about instead is what it made me think of. This story reminded me of the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov, which I gave myself as a birthmonth present after reading it mentioned on 4Gravitons blog. I had finished the trilogy just last week so the memory was ‘fresh’ and recollection was ‘instant’. Anyway, getting to the point, the first book involves characters who deal with “crisis” in similar subtle and innovative ways. One of those characters named “Salvor Hardin” has been assigned ‘memorable’ quotes (I guess deliberately). Here are two of the most repeated ones:

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

I feel both of these quotes are in some sense demonstrated in the Futures story; also the cliché phrase “an offer one can’t refuse”, and many other things. I guess I felt this story resonated with me because it led to many such resonances. And as is well-known, people do tend to like familiar things more than something entirely new. Even if the new idea or thing is revolutionary. Or maybe, especially, if it is revolutionary and life-changing, people tend to regard it with suspicion. For a recent example, think about the rise of Bing AI, ChatGPT, fear of job loss, dip in creativity, etc.

I don’t have much to say about those things or anything else for that matter in this post. So let me end it by instead pointing you to the

Foundation heptology

In Memoriam, 2022!

So, farewell then, year 2022. I guess no one will remember you in a rush but everyone would like to forget you in a flash. Before that happens, I try to recap some of your major world-wide events.

January: Spent a couple of days in Jaipur.

February: Russo-Ukrainian War begins / escalates.

March: Last day at SNBose Centre.

April: Last day in Salt Lake, Kolkata.

May: Rented a new place in Bangalore.

June: Turkey became Türkiye.

July: Fields Medals announced. (I haven’t yet written the post titled “June Huh is my kind of mathematician”.)

August: Salman Rushdie attacked.

September: Queen Elizabeth II dies.

October: Nobel Prizes announced.

November: World population crosses 8 billion mark!

December: Took a one day trip around Bangalore – MOS temples.

For a much more serious recap of 2022, I leave you with the Private Eye Magazine’s

Year in Review 2022

A Few Nice Things…

As we wrap this year, I recollect a few nice things. Frist one has to be the resurrection of Sketchbook scanlations. One of the notes in this manga mentions the four fundamental forces like this:

Being a theoretical high-energy physicist, I couldn’t stop chuckling at the truth of the last sentence. It’s quite an accurate statement, indeed. But then if you want to know about them, that’s nice too and am glad that Totan Kobako does!

Second one has to be the (Medu) Vada, a south Indian delicacy. It goes well with sambar, coconut chutney, and/or even just like that as a snack. I like a well-prepared crispy vada as much as the next person. So when iD advertises that anyone can make it using their special packaging and magic nozzle, I had to give it a try myself:

These turned out to be quite good, taste-wise. Shape-wise, we struggled a bit in the beginning but after a few trials, we realized three things which helped in making a good torus shape:

1. Let enough batter gather at the nozzle before trying to drop it in the oil.

2. Don’t hesitate with the cutter when you decide to drop the batter in the oil.

3. Keep the nozzle oiled up so the batter does not stick to the nozzle.

Regarding the last point, it is instructed on the packaging (and the following video) to clean the nozzle with tissue paper every once in a while. But we figured out that oiling the nozzle after cleaning helps the batter drop much more easily while retaining the torus shape and minimizing spiky protrusions.

iD’s instructional video

There you have it. Two nice things that happened to me this year. Let us leave the rest few such things to the last post of this year which should, by my grace, come out in a week or so. Till then, I leave you with

Shakeel Azmi