Reflections

Only if you were in heaven would the clouds come to wish you Good morning as soon as you open the windows to your room. Or, if you are too lazy to go to heaven, you could take the 14 hour train journey from Delhi to The Misty Mountains Retreat in Jhaltola, Uttarakhand, with a stoppage at Kathgodam. Talking from experience, you get the same felling! I visited this retreat with a huge group of friends and was taken aback by the warmth of the staff, in complete contrast to the cool ambience of the place! This retreat is a quintessence of tranquility. The Misty Mountains Retreat offers you a perfect view of the mighty Himalayas on one side and the forests on the other. On days when you are very lucky, you can spot a leopard on the rocks near the retreat. An offbeat location, the retreat is a perfect getaway from the hustle bustle of the daily life. As you walk through the dining hall from your cottage, towards the innovatively designed auditoriu

“Sometimes, I wish going through life was as easy as reading a book. You moved from one chapter of your life to the other by just a flip of the page and were welcomed by a bold, italicized heading proclaiming “New Chapter”.’ Aanya yawned at this last thought of the day as she went to bed after trying to call her (ex) boyfriend for hours in vain. Like everything else she was not sure about why she wanted to talk. No particular reason, as usual. You don’t need a reason to talk to your “friends”, do you? And that’s what they were now, friends. It isn’t supposed to bother her that he did not answer her call, or that he was almost never there when she really needed a friend, even though that evening he had told her with eyes filled with tears that he would “always be there” for her “whether she wanted it or not”. And now that she wanted the presence of just someone who would listen to her, he was not there. Oh, but then she has other friends, oth

B EHOLD  her, single in the field,   Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself;   Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain,           And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the Vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. No Nightingale did ever chaunt   More welcome notes to weary bands    Of travellers in some shady haunt,   Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas    Among the farthest Hebrides. Will no one tell me what she sings?—   Perhaps the plaintive nu

Today, with deep admiration for myself and a few others who helped me in my discovery, I present before my readers a not-so-new genre of males: The MIC males, short for The Messed up, In Denial, Crying males! At the risk of sounding sexist and fearing unwelcomed remarks, the usual disclaimer is as follows: The category of humans being described here is just from personal experience or/and experiences of others that I happen to witness quite closely and observed acutely. Before really describing this genre, it makes sense to tell you their importance in the world. Well, to say the least, they help in bringing variety to our otherwise boring lives! If you are finally tired of staring at the ceiling of your house, it’s time for you to go out there looking for these men! Where will you find them? Now that’s a tricky one! Generally, their physical characteristics can be quite deceptive and they do not hang out in clusters like the geese. You really have to be lucky enough to be able

So here is a mathematical answer to a question that I have quite often asked myself and seldom troubled my friends with: “Does life move in Spirals or Circles?” The course that life takes is often described as a maze by some and a road with lots of twists and turns by others. A complicated web of events, people, emotions and thoughts, caught between these is you, the spider. A lot of our religious books refer to the course of life as “the cycle of life”, which essentially means “the circle of life”. It is perhaps the phrase used most often during those innumerable philosophical discussions that boring people like us have over drinks with friends. Yes, I have been ranting for quite a while, without really bringing in what I promised: the mathematics! In laymen terms, a circle is a two dimensional figure which is a collection of all points that are at equal distances from a given point. Essentially, a circle starts and ends at the same point. A spiral, is a three dimensional figur

It has been a long time since “The Fountainhead” that I came across a novel so satisfying as “A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel” by Gaurav Suri and Harosh Singh. Certainly not two of the known strata of intellectual authors that I have tried to read over the past year, kudos to them for the book! Now the book does not boast about a great vocabulary or the use of satirical statements that make you smirk at the wit of the author. Neither does it transport you to a fairy land. It talks about two things: Mathematics and Philosophy. Or rather one, Mathematical Philosophy. The book has two subplots, one being the narrator’s story and the other being the story of the narrator’s grandfather’s arrest when he came to America as a mathematics student. Both the stories run parallel and get interspersed with each other by the end. Each one complimenting the other. The story is simple, without any romantic drama that often accompanies a novel. A grandchild follows into the footsteps of hi

While looking for “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky in the college library, I chanced upon a collection of poetry and prose by Christina Rossetti, a Victorian poetess born to Gabrielle Rossetti.   An occasional poet myself, I couldn’t resist the growing feeling of reading the book. Besides, the nine days of navratri vacations needed to be spent doing something worthwhile! What better way than indulge in some poetry and mathematics: both of them being things that I take keen interest in! Christina Rossetti, sister of Dante Rossetti writes about death very poignantly. Or perhaps I just happened to chance upon a lot of poems dedicated to that theme as I adopted the technique of randomizing the selection of poems to read! One such poem is: After Death The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept   And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may   Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,   Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept.   He leaned above me, thinking that I slept   And c