On Teacher's Day

 On Teacher's Day, a lifelong student remembers:

1. 

Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, our first Vice President, Second President and eminent academician who amongst other positions of prominence in World Academia including stints at Calcutta University, Andhra University, Oxford, Benares Hindu University, before his political career culminated in the office of the President of India, but his greatest accomplishment was a near universal love for him and  his role as a Teacher!

It is in honour and memory of this eminent and universally popular Teacher that we celebrate his Birth date as Teacher's Day in India.

2. My first Teachers: My Mother , my Father , my Sister, my grandparents, my Uncles and Aunts, Cousins and my extended Family.

3. My Friends with whom many a lesson was learnt together.

4. All the books I had the great fortune of having easy and unfettered access to because there was hardly any family member who wasn't also a bibliophile and all the authors who have enriched the fabric of my mind with tales and stories real and unreal, with arguments simple and complicated, with theses alien and familiar...

5. All my teachers,, Seniors, Peers, and Juniors  at the various schools and institutions I studied in:

Fatima High School, Vidyavihar, Mumbai ;  Hindu School , Indiranagar, Chennai; Air India Modern School, Kalina, Mumbai; The College of Engineering , Pune(COEP); The Indian Institute of Foreign Trade(IIFT), Delhi.

6. All my Bosses and Colleagues, Mentors and mentees at all the places I've Worked at:

ESAB India Limited, T.I.M.E pvt. Ltd., Olam International, Vanguard Business School, MIT Group of Institutions/ MIT-WPU, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon, GITAM University

7.  One Mr. Freddie Mercury, who was born this day in Tanzania in 1946, who is arguably the greatest entertainer that ever walked this planet. And one who fiercely

And also, last, but not the least:

8. All my students over the years, who have always taught me more than they have learnt from me.  

If we are as a nation to rise and march to our appointer tryst with destiny, the encounter will never be one that we can claim satisfaction to unless this precious breed of teachers in India is encouraged, feted, respected and revered.

Wishing all teachers everywhere in India and the world a very happy Teachers Day!!

On Escaping Technology

 There's no escaping it.

You can't escape technology. Just like you cannot escape gravity...

But wait, technology can help you escape or at least ignore gravity..so you CAN escape Gavity.

But does that mean you escape Technology??

On the Kardashev Scale where potentially we have hypothesised till stage 7 , which is interesting but purely academic bragging because anything beyond stage 3 is not even worth remotely speculating about unless we have plans that span trillions of years.

No Chance...is what I feel....

your thoughts??

On the "Best" Government Ever....

The "BEST" Government Ever?!!

In a little over seven years of Modi's government, the grand narrative of the "best government ever" lies in absolute tatters doesn't it??? 

On any measurable metric this government's track record is dismal. And that's me being kind. 

When I read the built up narratives released by this government, many of which are so tactical, fluid and fast changing as reactions to their failed policies shift from reduced trust, to dissappointed acceptance, to muted murmurings of dissension to outright protest, the one constant that strikes me is a total inability of this set  to do a serious cost benefit analysis.

On issue after issue reading the government's stated cost benefit analysis draws a unsuppressable gasp of disbelief. And often, unrestrained laughter, because I confess my humour stems also from very dark places of late... 

It's as if they don't even care to hide the fact that the costs will be borne by the poor, the migrant labourer, the farmer, the soldier, the student, the teacher, the average taxpayer, the minority, the oppressed castes, the tribals , the doctors, the artists, the journalists( an almost extinct species in India today - something I'll again blame this govt. for!), the lawyers, etc. and of course any dissidents foolhardy enough to oppose them, while the benefits will be suborned almost entirely by the government, its cronies and those with whom its playing a flirting game of footsie in order to expand the space occupied by government.

Their tag lines when they arrived were "Acche Din Aane Wale Hai", "Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas" and "Minimum Government, Maximum Governance", three truisms that this government used so cleverly to come to power but abandoned so totally once in power in a volte face so brazenly overt that my mind is sincerely impressed by those who (pretend to?) miss this hypocrisy.

Of course, one must concede that they are themselves alive to this reality, notice how the refrain nowadays has become "Desh Khatre me Hai, Hindu khatre me Hai?, Modiji( And most recently the slip showed when it became Ambani ji) khatre me hai?". Honestly, not noticed it yet??

The real question is, if that's their current claim then let them answer from whom, and the answer to that my friends is this government 

If you as government are so fragile skinned that dissent of any measure or manner is anathema to you, it essentially is clear that you fear those who you promised to protect and act on behalf of.

If you as a government are therefore afraid of being exposed for the lying fraud that you clearly are, then so be it..

Be afraid, be very afraid indeed, because the truth always eventually outs! 

And though YOU never respected this land, and its many diverse ethoses and values, YOU should at least remember the most powerful motif of the symbols of power you wield, the motto of our nation, which is " Satyameva Jayate!" ( Truth alone Triumphs!) and be reminded that  in your constant lies and prevarications, YOU represent the worst Anti-national influence this country has seen in long decades...

Is this really the government we want to entrust further crucial years of our  nation, our polity, and our social trust to?

On Chaos and Order

The Fascinating Mandelbrot /Julia Sets:

Anyone who's been following my blog knows I have this unending fascination with the Mandelbrot Set...

Watch the video below, as one steps into the world of the Mandelbrot and Julia Sets. If Spock were around I'm sure you would hear him say, "Fascinating!"

WATCH THIS VIDEO FIRST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfteiiTfE0c&t=163s

The process by which the Mandelbrot evolves is sublime, magical, mathematical and above all mystical. Arresting. Mind Expanding. Mind Creating even. Truly Powerful. And exceptionally, exceptionally beautiful. And so , so simple. Who would have thought all it took was to plot an equation as basic as z= z^2 + c. Mandelbrot would have, of course!

And as he best put it himself in his inimitable french accented english and mischievous imp like smile, " I can see things that  nobody else suspects, until I point out to them, "Well, Of course! Of Course!" but they haven't seen before! "

DO WATCH THIS AMAZING PBS NOVA DOCUMENTARY  =>> : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbK92bRW2lQ&feature=youtu.be

On Order and Chaos:

The play between Order (Cosmos) and Randomness (Chaos) is ages and aeons old. Time and Space are thus but partitioners - partitioning infinitesimal segments of infinitesimal segments within this play. Wheels within wheels.Layers within Layers. Levels upon Levels. Like Warp and Woof. From the smallest point the mind posits to the largest Universe the Mind can conjure and all in between. Are they all connected ultimately?

The process where boundary fluctuation and turbulences give an illusion of interplay locally. But the interplay isn't local it's everywhere for every ordered system a boundary. At every boundary turbulence, at every turbulence , chance, randomness and Chaos.

Chaos or Cosmos? Randomness or Order? In effect the Mandelbrot is a very structured arrangement of geometric points (because as anyone who has played with Mandelbrot/Julia Animators will know, each and every point on the mandelbrot set corresponds exactly to corresponding points on any given Julia set), but, there are fascinating caveats to this order, like for instance, the unbelievably detailed and deep self symmetry, the profusion of details that proceeds when you zoom at any given point of the graph, or the fact that the boundary of the set is infinitely detailed / long / slipping into and out of the Mandelbrot set itself in a bizarre and unpredictable manner!

So What is it all about Ultimately?

And so, making leaps elsewhere from there, as Mandelbrot would I suspect, no doubt approve:

Does the Mandelbrot Set tell us something about the very nature and structure of the very fabric of our Space-Time Continuum? Is it a set that brilliantly illustrates the Transition from Chaos to Cosmos and its complicated transition from one to the other and vice versa? Is the set merely a tool to examine self similarity? Or does it say something about our Universe? Predict a Grander Order? Explain a Small Chaos?

This universe. Our grand mystery. Is really quite simple a story perhaps? And does the Mandelbrot have interesting multiple takes on this story?

This universe. Our grand mystery. Is really quite simple a story perhaps? And does the Mandelbrot have interesting multiple takes on this story?

I really don't know about late old Benoit..but I would really like to think so!

On Twenty Years Ago, again...

We're less than 48 hours away from our school reunion, and this one's special!

8th of December marks the 20th year reunion of the Hindu Senior Secondary School's class of 98 ( If you passed your XIIth from there, as I did) and at first approximations it looks like the quorum is going to be well past the 50 mark. That's a lot of folks making the pilgrimage back to our alma mater given that there's a really huge percentage of folks stationed overseas.

A huge huge vote of thanks is in order for those who've devoted a huge amount of time and effort to make this happen. It will be a crazy party and an awesome get together, I'll get to meet a lot of peeps after twenty years, some even longer given that there's folks coming who were classmates till Xth, VIIIth, etc..

But the true icing on the cake will be the chance to meet some of the most dedicated teachers I've ever had the privilege of learning under ( I can say this with some basis having studied at 3 different schools across Mumbai and Chennai - with two stints at HSSS, Indiranagar, Adyar)

Will update this blog later sometime this week with pics from what promises to be a hugely rewarding and rejuvenating journey down memory lane...