Trek to Sinhagad

Srinivasan, my friend from the CC lab, is attending a workshop in Bhaskarachrya Pratishthan, Pune. Last week I had to go to Pune for a family function called kelvan. So while I was in Pune we decided to go to Sinhagad, a great fort near Pune. I used to go to Sinhagad every Sunday when I was staying in Pune. There are many people who go there for trekking once every week to get fresh air and and escape from the hectic city life. There was a group of regulars called as Sinhagad Warakari Sangh also. I don't know if it exists today.

So on the Sunday morning, Srini and I started from my place for Sinhagad on my splender. We started at 6 o'clock in the morning and reached the payatha, the base, at 7 o'clock after one hour's ride. On the way one can see the Khadakwasala dam on Mutha river which satisfies the thirst of the city. At the base of the fort, there is a villege called as Donaje. Since Sinhagad is a tourist place now, many people in the villege have started small businesses like a small shop providing snacks, tea, camera batteries etc. Some people have converted the open space in front of their homes, called aangan into the parking area. Such things are definitely helping them monetarily however I observed that the peace in the village is disappearing. It was not the same village that I saw some five years ago.

We started climbing at around 7 o'clock. I had estimated that it will take an hour for us to reach the top. Since it was a Sunday, along with the regulars, there were many tourists also who were climbing. There are two ways you can climb to the fort. One is called Rajmarg, a fairly easy way to climb and the other is thruogh the water streams that flow in the rainy season, commonly known as the shortcuts. The rajmarg is like a ghat with many turns and steep slopes. Almost at every turn there is a small shop where curd, buttermilk, lemon juice, fresh cucumber, raw mango, kali maina, tamarind are served. The shopkeepers, mostly females, come from different villages as far as 10 kilometers with two cans of water and all the other things that they sell. They start at 5 o'clock in the morning, climb the hill to their shops, set the shop and then greet the people with "Oye poreho ghya tak, dahi, limbupani..." While having a cucumber and lime juice at one of such shops, we were having a little chat with the shop owner. She had travelled almost 8 kilometers from her home to the shop with the water cans and all the other eatables. She told us that, the shop is the only sourse of income for their family. I was gasping when I had reached the shop and ordered a lime juice. When I heard her story, I was ashamed of myself and salutated her in my mind.

When we reached the top, we decided to take a walk to explore the fort. The typical places you see are the horse stable, ammunition store room, devtake the water resource on the fort, samadhee of Tanaji Malusare, Kalyan darawaja, Udaybhanu's thadage. After seeing all these places we ordered meals on the fort. Pithale, Bhakari and Lal Mirachicha thecha and a lot of curd with it as well. We started back our descend at around 11 o'clock and reached the base at 12.

While I was going back to home, I noticed a lot of changes in the villages and could easily see the effects of Pune on them. In one way they were losing their own identities to get assimilated in the city. However the identity was sacrificed for the growth. This was a trek I will not forget!!!

Airport

Last month, with Shanmuganathan and Ramprakash, I went to the bookshop in HN to see some books. There I came across books by Arthur Hailey. I bought three books Airport, Hotel and Wheel. I finished the book Airport and I was really amazed by the way the author has written the book. The book is based on the events that take place in the span of six hours on a stromy, cold night on the Abraham Lincoln Airport, Illinoi. This 460 page book reveals how airport works, the people involved in the smooth operations of the airport and their tensions, professional as well as personal. The smallest details of the characters in the book make it easy for you to visualize them and after a while you actually are on the airport witnessing all the things that are happening. And eveything happens in those six hours, a runway block, a protest march by the people living nearby, terrorist attack on a plane, divorse of the airport manager, a sucide attempt by an air traffic control officer. The most facinating part in the book in my opinion was the description of the job of an air traffic control officer, the tensions that they face every day in the job. Though well paid, they are responsible for the planes that are flying in their zones. The demands of this job and the mental toll that is taken on any officer and in particular here in this case, Keith an officer who attempts to commite sucide. It is a must read in my opinion. One must go aboard the Golden Ergossy!!

मराठी लिहिण्याची सोपी पद्धत

ॐकार जोशी यांनी तयार केलेली "गमभन" ही साईट फारच सोपी आहे वापरायला.
त्यामुळे मला मराठी लिहिता येत आहे सुलभतेने. ॐकार जोशींना धन्यवाद!! तुम्हीसुद्धा प्रयत्न करुन बघा. देवनागरी बरोबरच बंगाली, पंजाबी, कानडी, गुजरती, मल्याळम इत्यादी लिप्या उपलब्ध आहेत. आता मी मराठीमधून लिहिण्याचा आनंद मिळवणार. तुम्हीसुद्धा तुमच्या मातॄभाषेमधून लिहिण्याचा आनंद मिळवा!!!
आणि चिन्मयला विशेष धन्यवाद, त्याने मला या साईट विषयी माहिती दिली.

Forty Two...The Right Answer

After a long time... There was no activity here for long... just too long I thought. Many people (read Shanmuga) have written many (read shvana series, Munich travel) blogs in between. I could not catch up with them. I am not here to compete with these guys here anyway. All time that I was missing here, I was on a tour though. A tour of galaxy!!! Yes you guessed it right. I am talking about the book Hitchhiker's Giude to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It is a wonderful book I read recently. If one enjoys sarcasm with the tadka of science fiction, this book is a must read. I finished reading the second book also, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The next one in the series is 'The Life, Universe and Everything'.
This book is a story of a lone earthman who survives with some help from his friend from other planet, I will not use the word alien here, when the earth is demolished for making a galactic bypass!!! Then the two start roaming in the universe seeing wonderful things on their way, with the help of a tour book, The Guide.

I loved this book very much and I will definitely recommend this book for reading. One should have a copy of The Guide. Who knows someone is building an intergalactic bypass...

From finitude to infinity

After the dinner today I went out for a walk with Priyadarshan. We went to Bhavani Juice Shop for having our favourite ganne ka ras. While coming back we took a tour on the gymkhana ground.

It was a no moon night and we could see many stars which are not visible otherwise because of moonlight. Looking at the stars it occurred to us that what we were seeing in the sky is not present. It is, or rather was, the past!!! Whatever we were seeing had already happened. At this very instant there was something else that was happening there. And we had no clue of what is happening there at this very instant. A weird thought came to mind. If I see someone waving to me from one of the stars, he had waved some time back!!! I do not know what he is doing now. Before this day, I had never thought of this relation of past and future with the speed of light. The beauty is that all those stars are a huge distance away from us. However these distances are still finite!!

We were overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe. At that instant, while looking into the sky I realised that how tiny we are!! When we are taught of counting numbers or natural numbers in the class 9 or 10, they say there are countably many infinite numbers. At that point I doubt anybody appreciates the concept of infinity. I think this was my first encounter with the infinity and I never appreciated it at that time. It is a very important and deep concept in mathematics. The transition from finiteness to infinity is not a smooth one!! More so this is not the only type of infinity that we have. This infinity is called countable infinity, one can count the numbers 1,2,3,.... for ever. Important thing is you can count!!! The other type of infinity is of uncountable in nature. You can not even count. The real numbers are uncountable!! This infinity is bigger than that of infinity of countable numbers. A small digression: Both these types of infinities are responsible for the development of a subject called as floating point arithmetic!!

Now all the fun with the infinity starts. It is an entity that has everything in it. So add anything to infinity, you are still left with infinity. Even if you added infinity to infinity! Mind you this is not true with subtraction!! Another startling fact is that number of all odd numbers is same as that of even numbers and this number is same as the number of all natural numbers!! This is what infinity is!!

Similarly another very important concept in mathematics is that of zero. This concept is even more difficult to understand than infinity I would say. Thinking there are zero mangos rather than there are no mangos is indeed difficult for the fisrt time. I think we take it granted that these two statements are equivalent. We never understand zero. There is a good samskrut shloka to explain what is zero:

Om poorna madah, poorna midaam
poornaat poornam udachyate|
Poornasya Poorna maday
Poornam eva avashishyate||

This means that you add poornam to poornam or subtract poornam from poornam, what you get is poornam. This is a perfect description for zero. In this shloka, poornam is zero and in general it is an identity element of a group, an algebraic structure in mathematics. However this shloka is often misinterpreted for the explanation of infinity!! There is a philosophical meaning to this shloka which I do not understand.

Zero and infinity played a significant role in the development of mathematics and human being in general. Indeed these concepts are more than just mathematical...

A small thought exercise for you before signing off:
1. What is infinity - infinity?
2. What is zero divided by zero?

A trip to Mani's lunch home!!

For many days, infact many months, we were planning to go for lunch in Mani's lunch home. It is situated in Matunga east near the flower market. This is one of the great place for south Indian food in Mumbai. Obviously many of the south Indian eateries are placed in Matunga. Today finally we found the muhurtam to go for lunch in Mani's lunch home.

Shanmuganathan, Ramprakash and Priyadarshan told me in the morning today that we were going to lunch outside. It was a great honour to Shanmuga, Ram and me that PD agreed to come outside for lunch. We did not waste this rare opprunity. We reached the place at 12:45 pm. There are two branches of Mani's lunch home and as expected, under the guidence of Shanmuga, we reached the one where they serve snacks. After waiting for 10 minutes outside this shop we got the address of the lunch home and proceeded in that way. By then everyone except me were dying of hunger.

The atmosphere in the place was great. They serve two kind of lunches: Limited and special. We ofcourse opted for the special lunch and grabbed a table for four. Then the real fun started. Till this point we were constantly chatting among ourselves. However as we got the place and Keli Patta, we were silent. This was as if we were complete strangers. Though this is a tamil mess, they do cook chapatis which was a great surprise to me. I ate two chapatis before rice. However Shanmuga and PD enjoyed great rice with sambhar and rasam. This was a great four course meal for me after a long time. Chapatis, pineapple subji and avial subji was the first course. Sambar sadum was second and rasam rice was third. I concluded my lunch with taira sadum. Payasam was great!! After the lunch Ramprakash, Shanmuga and I were barely able to walk, PD however was pretty normal even if he had eaten more than any of us!!

We caught thane bound local on the way back home. I cycled from the main gate to my hostel which I consider was quite an achievement. Rest traveled by the tumtum. After enjoying the great food and a great afternoon sleep (I am afraid to call it an afternoon nap!!) I thought I should write about it!!!

Doctor of Philosophy

"There are very few original ideas!! As soon as you realize this, you understand everything. One has to apply these finite ideas repeatedly and intelligently to generate many more ideas which are derived from the basic set of ideas." We were deeply involved in a discussion as usual over a cup of tea at Shankar's in IDC. This was one of the meetings with my Ph.D. supervisor where we were not discussing any technical things. "Why are you doing Ph.D. anyway?" He asked. Then I started thinking back in time searching for a reason to do Ph.D. The first time I heard of Ph.D. was when I was in the 12th standard. There was some guest lecture in our college. The lecturer was introduced as Dr. Sane. After the lecture I asked him if he was an Aurvedic doctor or an MBBS. Everyone started laughing and then one of the teachers told me about Ph.D. I was told that Ph.D. means doctor of philosophy. Now what is this all about. I did not understand what does this mean at that time. I stilled believed that these Ph.D. guys cure someone. That is why they are Dr. XYZ.

After 12th standard, I decided to pursue pure sciences by opting to do B.Sc. At this point I did not know why I did not want to do B.E. and do a B.Sc. course instead. However I did B.Sc. and subsequently M.Sc. in mathematics. At that point I thought I knew what is Ph.D. Towards the end of the first year of my M.Sc. course I decided that I will do a Ph.D. I wanted to see how maths is applied in different engineering fields. So chose to do Ph.D. in control and computing group in Electrical Engineering Department. I did several courses to gain relevant background. Then came time to do original research.

I was doing research for the first time in my life. Till then I was solving assignment problems and examination problems. Theses problems were already formulated. Now I was the one to set a question which I was going to solve. This is completely different from solving exams and assignments. Also I had to make sure that no one else has already solved the problem. It took me almost 2 years to come up with a proper problem statement. I was very happy at that time that I have a problem to solve and my supervisor is ready to work with me on this problem. However the job was half done at that stage. I had not yet solved the problem. To solve the problem, you never know what technique one will use. You should be ready and open to explore all possibilities. Here openness of mind is required. We are required to think about the problem all the time to get the solution. This process of thinking about the problem all the time is indeed difficult. This is the point in my Ph.D. where I am struggling. Unless I am "into it", I will not get the solution. I have experienced this phenomenon of "being into something" when I was learning music. So I am trying to do the same with my Ph.D. problem. After solving the problem, I will report the problem statement and the solution in some paper and publish. This will be the last stage of Ph.D.

The general path of any Ph.D. student, called as research scholar, is similar to one that I narrated above. According to me in Ph.D. one is in search of the truth. And to find the truth one should be "into it". So after 3 years of experience in Ph.D., now I know why I am doing Ph.D.
First reason being I wanted to do it!!! Second reason is that I will be acquiring many skills over this period of time like formulating a problem statement, judging the research value of the problem statement, being open about the methods that I will apply to solve the problem. This skill set will be useful for me throughout my life even if my research will not be used anywhere in the near future. I think for this reason the degree is called Doctor of Philosophy.

One last observation: The skill set that will be developed after Ph.D. can be developed without doing Ph.D. and it is not necessary that every Ph.D. scholar has this skill set!!!
We record this important observation in the following

THEOREM: It is not necessary as well as sufficient to have a Ph.D. degree for having the skill set in the last observation.