drishTi srishTi

Some glimpses from the last few months

glimpses are various,
and there are many,
some I captured...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/srikarpadiyar/sets/72157594159936765/

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Came across this somewhere on the net:
- A piece of paper found posted outside a physics lab, "Theory is when you know how it works but it still doesn't. Practice is when it works but you dont know why. In Dept. of Physics, theory and practice are joined together: nothing works and no one knows why! "

Found a video clip where Feynman is sharing his thoughts on 'knowing' beauty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGcJIihe3G8&eurl=
Physicists are some of the most intelligent people around. They know so much, and about so many things. But unlike others (artists for instance, who do not comment on rocket science), physicists send out their opinions on every sphere of life.
For instance, Feynman here goes out claiming that he sees so much more than an artist sees in a flower. A flower is beautiful, he says, as a whole, and is as beautiful or more, when you get into the details. The cell structure, the complicated actions in it... the mechanism.. and it goes on deeper. No, that isn't exactly beautiful Sir. Its wonderful cause it surprises us, it amazes us. We are curious, we have questions, and every answer we find pleases us, giving a feeling similar to that beauty does. But, it is self-gratification what works behind this feeling and not the inherent beauty of the object. The purpose of colour in a flower is to attract insects for pollination indeed. That raises questions in your mind, Mr Feynman, about the ability of an insect to see colours, while a lesser mortal would instead think, yes perhaps they see colours, but why does a colour attract an insect? Thats beauty Sir. Its in the instincts. You can explain the effects of instincts, the mechanism but perhaps not the reason. So do not dissect 'Beauty'. Let it alone, and relish it. Your pragmatic mind disintegrates it, and it becomes science, not beauty any more.

On a second thought, I perhaps did not get your joke Mr Feynman!


DVG writes in his Kagga (in kannada though, and I would not take up an (mis)adventure of translating it in part or whole)
' summanobbamTiyemtihudu? bEsaravahudu
hommuvenu kOTi roopadali naanemdu
bommaneLasidanamte, aa yeLasikeye maaye
nammiravu maayeyali mamkutimma '
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Verbose...

"Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood" --Oscar Wilde

He understood them very well indeed, goes without saying.


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A few months in France communicating to the French, has put all my team members' geography knowledge to test . For everytime I have to tell somebody my name, I start with 'S for Sweden, R for Russia, I for India...' till... 'R for Russia once again' . The longer your name, more countries you know.
But my dear friend (LoL :-) ), the only lady in the group had her own way.
On a weekend plan to the mediterranean coast, my friend (also the most enthusiastic among all of us) was booking hotel rooms for a bunch of us, over telephone. First few minutes just go out in trying to make the french person speak in English. Later, when nothing worked (as it happens in most of occasions here), she had to go down to spelling alphabets in her name. Voila, '.... for... ...' ...'H for heart... ... ... L for Love...' . Reaction of the person at the other end, would've been a sight to watch. The choice of words, just says so much, doesn't it?

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Choice of words, reminds me of another incident that occurred years ago during my Chemical Engg days at college. At his Mass Transfer lab viva-voce, my good friend was asked to 'define' Vacuum. Huh, now what’s that to define! “Pressure less than 760 mm of Mercury” he promptly replied. But the Professor questioning had some plans. “That’s a technical measurement. that doesn't explain the term. Explain it like you would do, to help a layman understand, …but briefly!!" the Professor made it clear, flaunting a little mocking smile. Though a little shaken, but not stirred, my friend had a befitting and a crisp reply - "Sir.... it sucks!"

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beholding beauty

some snaps taken during last few months.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/srikarpadiyar/sets/72057594127895535/

a wish to be forever young

Lost as always I am, in a whirlpool of thoughts, some coherent, others eddy, discrete and diverse. Don’t know why these random thoughts even occur. However, this phenomenon, the triviality has been along forever. How can I forget those numerous trivial topics I used to discuss with my friends? We used to stand on opposite sides of the gate in front of my house, every evening after the day’s cricket session during my school days. We spent hours at tea shacks late in the nights during examination time in college days. While I recollect those days, I am still able to see my friend standing across the gate at dusk, or sitting on wooden bench under the gas lamp at tea shop. I recollect how much involved we got into such topics during those discussions. But the topics somehow may seem very unimportant to me now, in my present. I rekindle some of those topics now, when alone, and the maelstroms of thoughts take over, often leading not any further.

My manager had an interesting way of explaining this deadlock of thoughts, in a kind of technical approach. He said, thought processing progressed like a flow chart, branching to different 'YES' and 'NO's. However, different people traverse in this flowchart differently. Some prefer to mostly traverse along the YES branches. Few others encounter mostly the NOs. But in my case like a many others, he says, we tend to move either ways and at some point down in the flow, get into a indefinite loop of YES and NOs into some complex algorithms ending up with a ‘Not responding’ message from our limited ability processors.

Tracing back two nodes above in this flow of thoughts, to the trivial thoughts; thoughts about people we see, some whom we remember in our cherished memories, some whom we may forget due in time, a few who inspired us, thoughts about events unanticipated, decisions we had taken etc, all these thoughts perhaps are not really trivial and unwarranted.

I try to get into a new pool of thoughts, and try to evaluate the former in a new perspective. I try to understand and reason some patterns in my thoughts. Some thoughts seem be directly coming from my memories or stimulated by them. Some seem to be related to my aspirations, ambitions. But there are so many of them, I am unable to classify so clearly. I place them into a third category which I assume is what we call the Present. A Present, that must help appreciate and evaluate the past, and bridge past to the future which is shaping up in my aspirations. But these thoughts of the third category rarely stay long. Some of them are so exciting, interesting and apparently important, but hardly last. Why don’t these interestingly important thoughts last longer? Or, are only the ones that last, actually important?

This uncertainty reminds me of a few lines about a lonesome young man, by Forester, in his ‘A Passage to India’ – “…his belief in life to come would pale to a hope, vanish, reappear, all in a single sentence or a dozen heart-beats, so that the corpuscles of his blood rather than he seemed to decide which opinion he should hold, and for how long. It was so with all his opinions. Nothing stayed, nothing passed that did not return; the circulation was ceaseless and kept him young…” That can be so relieving!! It is normal. It’s a symptom of youth. A part of growing up (or a signal to those like me, who are yet to grow up :o) )