kalyan-gullapalli
This journey called Life!
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Amante De Trajes Y Calcetines
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*How well do we know our "Bharat"?*
The underlying myths that most of us Indians have grown up with is that India was born in 1947! Before that, for centuries, we were a conquered land. And the period before that doesn't matter, because it is prehistory.
Nothing is farther from the truth.
It matters!
*Rediscovering Bharat* is an attempt to initiate the reader into a personal journey of rediscovering his/her own Bharat!
#bharat#india#mathematics#ancient india#ancient wisdom#Rediscovering Bharat#hindu#hinduism#youtube#books and reading#books
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The Virus
I know not what the world will look like, when the virus is gone
I know not what the world will look like, once the lock is finally down.
Even experts cannot say, how the economy will move
Neither bulls nor bears can predict, how the street will groove.
Some say, the jobs market will flake,
Some say, the way we work will shake.
Some say, we will go to work differently,
Some say, we will work forever remotely.
The scars of emotions will still be abound,
In the ones who tested positive, and in the many around.
“Life is fragile” will be true, for the ones who lost their dear
As also for the ones who were near.
I woke up one morning, my heart thudding, my pulse tense,
Wondering how all of this made sense.
I wiped my perspiration,
And listened through the silence, searching for inspiration.
I heard a small voice say,
Calmly, as if giving the time of the day.
Take good care of “Your world”,
And “The world” around will make hay.
Till I asked, what is “My world”
And what is “The world”, pray?
The small voice spoke with conviction,
“Your world” is your body, mind and emotion!
Listen to a secret, long it’s been around,
“Your world” shapes “The world” and not the other way around!
Many the virus will touch,
Some will endure, some will flinch.
But the virus and its papa cannot foul,
The one who holds together – one’s body, mind and soul.
Hmm, I told the voice, you make a lot of a sense,
But tell me, how do I keep in shape, through all this nonsense?
Eat good food, do something new, mind your attitude,
Switch on the radio and tune in to the frequency of Gratitude!
One day, the virus will be gone,
For sure, the lock will be down.
We may or not live differently,
Life will get back to a new normal, gradually.
Some will still crib, cry or complain,
And some will bear the trough and pain.
Some will be crushed, some will ride the wave,
You, my child, mind “Your world” and “The world” will behave.
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November 26 = National Milk Day
Post # 056
India's milkman!
Revolution: A drastic, dramatic change...
A newly independent, milk-deficient nation, becoming the largest producer of milk in the world, in 30 years.
A group of rural dairy farmers, coming together as a cooperative, hiring professionals to manage it and creating India's largest food brand.
A third-world country inventing a process of making skim milk powder from buffalo milk, when dairy experts from the most advanced nations thought that was possible only from cow milk.
A Hindu man, a woman and a Harijan standing in the same queue, knowing their milk will go into the same container, because no where else will they get 70% of the price paid by the consumer.
Previously submissive women, in 18700 villages in rural Gujarat, mustering the courage to stand up to abusive, drunken husbands, because they are now part-owners of a USD 5 billion conglomerate, and can very well take care of their children's health, education and well-being, thank you very much!
A state-level, social initiative becoming so immensely successful, that a National board is created, mega-voltage dreams are dreamt, like Operation Flood and The billion-litre idea, and these dreams come true! Karnataka's Nandini, Rajasthan's Saras and Bihar's Sudha, becoming dominant regional brands!
Other countries like Russia, China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, seeking advice from an Indian, to replicate a successful socio-preunial program.
A group of 5 lakh villagers contributing INR 2 each, to create the first ever crowd-funded, farmer-produced bollywood movie - Manthan - about their own success story. (Check it out. It is an award-winning Shyam Benegal movie).
Revolutionary: One who is responsible for a revolution
Accidental revolutionary: One who didn't plan on a revolution, accidentally stumbled onto it, and committed oneself to it till death do them apart.
Varghese Kurien reluctantly took up the government job in a run-down, experimental creamery in Anand, to serve out his bond period against the scholarship the government gave him for his master's degree in US.
When he came to Anand, no one would give a non-vegetarian, Christian bachelor a room for rent. So, he converted an old garage as a living room, while he petitioned the government to transfer him elsewhere.
One frustrating day, he met Tribhuvandas Patel, the father of the cooperatives movement in India, who requested him to repair a machine belonging to the Kaira cooperative society.
Tribhuvandas Patel persuaded Varghese Kurien to stay back. He paid VK's salary. In the meantime, VK was undergoing a change of heart. Inspired by Tribhuvandas and the trust placed by the farmers in him, he established the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers Union, later to be called Amul Dairy.
VK inturn persuaded his friend from US, a dairy engineer, H.M.Dalaya to join him. Together the pioneered the process of making skimmed milk powder from buffalo milk, allowing them to compete against bigger brands like Nestle and Glaxo.
In 1965, Prime minister Lal Bahadur Shashtri tasked him with replicating the success of Amul at a pan-India level. Thus were born the National Dairy Development Board, Operation Flood and The billion-litre idea, and many dominant regional brands like Karnataka's Nandini, Rajasthan's Saras and Bihar's Sudha!
In 1979, he founded the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), because professionals from IIMs wouldn't come to dirty their hands in rural areas.
He is Ramon Magsaysay awardee, Padma awardee and a Krishi Ratna from the Govt. of India.
In 2013, ACK released a comic titled Varghese Kurien: The man with the billion litre idea.
This post salutes this accidental revolutionary!
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Post # 152
"Stop telling God what to do!"
The years 1900 to 1930 were called The thirty years that shook Physics. Because, with the dawn of the new century (1900), a new stream of physics emerged that threatened to shake the very foundations of science. It was called Quantum Physics.
Till the early 1900s, the most accepted theories of mechanics were called Classical Physics or Classical Mechanics. These theories, very clearly, explained the laws governing everyday objects - objects that we see and deal with in our daily lives, like cars, trains, balls etc, as well as large objects, like the Sun, Moon, planets, galaxies etc.
Sir Issac Newton, the father of Classical Physics, explained gravity, inertia, motion, momentum, speed etc. Einstein proposed the General and the Special Theories of Relativity that explained concepts like space-time for very distant objects. That won him a Nobel Prize and made him the first ever science-rockstar.
So far so good. Classical Mechanics was doing a great job. It was precise and deterministic - means, we could predict the position of Jupiter on its orbit around the Sun, 20 years from today, using the mathematics of Classical Mechanics.
Of course, there were still many unanswered questions. And a whole host of physicists were working on them. But it was Business As Usual (BAU).
Towards the start of the 20th century, a few Europeans - Max Plank, Niels Bohr, Shrodinger, Heisenberg and many others - observed that the laws governing everyday or large objects do not explain the behaviour of sub-atomic particles (particles within an atom). The discovery of the electrons, protons and neutrons led to a spate of experiments, debates and theories, which together were called Quantum Physics or Quantum Mechanics.
Truth be told, Scientists found Quantum Mechanics bizzare! Even till date, scientists still find the theories of Quantum Mechanics hard to grasp. But none of them could or can, dispute the results of Quantum Mechanics. In fact, Quantum Mechanics is universally considered to be the most successful theory propounded by science. It ushered in the Information Age. Lasers, Semiconductors, Computers, Telecommunications, Televisions, Electronics etc, all owe their existence to the application of the concepts of Quantum Mechanics.
Quantum Mechanics works. Its math works. No problem. The only problem is - no one knows how it works or why it works that way! That's why many scientists believe Quantum Mechanics is more a branch of philosophy than of science.
Quantum Mechanics spooked the greatest mind ever believed to have walked this earth - Albert Einstein. He famously said - God doesn't play dice! You will see what he meant as you read on.
Niels Bohr, the Great Dane (he was Danish), worked to defend the theories of Quantum Mechanics. Exasperated by Einstein’s repeated attacks on the Quantum model, he is supposed to have retorted - Einstein, Don't tell God what to do!
This tension between Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics went on for a long time and was also called The thirty years war.
I have been reading up on Quantum Mechanics for some time now. Like layers of an onion, I keep getting clarity on one aspect after another, all in due course. I am still a long way from getting it all, but I find it all so fascinating that I want to share it with you. And I think a good way to understand all of this is by understanding what was called The Double Slit Experiment. Here goes!
Consider a bunch of marble balls, shot through a double-slit barrier (a barrier with two holes on it) onto a board placed behind it. They will create a distinct pattern on the board, hitting it straight where they were allowed to pass through. The remaining part of background board will be untouched. Why? Because particles travel in a straight line. That's their fundamental nature. That's Classical Mechanics. Simple so far?
What if a bunch of electrons were to be shot through the same double-slit arrangement onto the same background board? How would they behave? What pattern would they create on the background board? Since all matter consists of atoms, and electrons are a part of atoms, so electrons should behave like particles, right? But they behaved very strangely. They created the below pattern on the background board.
There were stripes of alternately bright and dark patterns on the background board. Some electrons even hit the board straight behind the opaque parts of the double-slit barrier. How's that possible? The background board looked something like this.
The scientists conducting the experiments knew what this pattern meant. This pattern could only be made by a wave, not by a particle. The below 4-second video explains how a wave creates this pattern. By the way, this pattern is called an Interference pattern.
How's this possible? Was it possible that electrons were waves? But that is absurd. They were particles - sub-atomic particles.
So, scientists reluctantly came to a bizzare conclusion - Electrons were both particles and waves!
Further experiments were even more bizzare. Scientists now decided, not to observe only the pattern on the background board, but to observe the electrons also. What they found made them think they had gone crazy!
The moment their observation apparatus was switched on, electrons reverted to their particle behavior. But when the observation apparatus was switched off, the electrons took on their wave character. Look at the interference pattern on the background board.
Spooky, right? Someone articulated these observations as below.
Observation changed the nature of electrons! An unobserved electron has a wave function. An observed electron has a particle function.
From here on, it gets even more bizzare, if that is possible.
One quantum physicist suggested that the wave function of an electron suggests the probability of finding it at any particular point. If that point is a crest (a wave's highest point), the probability of finding it there is maximum. If the point is a trough (a wave's lowest point), the probability of finding it there is the lowest. But to find it, you have to observe it. And the moment you observe it, the electron takes a particle nature. With particles, life is simple. The electron is either there or not there. No probability. Absolute certainty.
When Einstein heard this, he blew his top. Probability, my foot! This is not Science, he must have thought. "God doesn't play dice!", he asserted out loud. He said this once too often, without offering an alternative explanation.
Niels Bohr, who was also struggling to reconcile with the bizzare conclusions of Quantum theories, but convinced that the consistency of the results of the experiments was proof enough that the theory was right, retorted, "Einstein, Stop telling God what to do and what not to do."
Niels Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1922 for his work in understanding the theories of Quantum Mechanics.
Almost a century has passed between then and now. In the intervening times, Quantum Mechanics has proposed many more bizzare theories like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Quantum Entanglement, Quantum Teleportation etc. Unanswered questions about a Unified theory of everything led modern science to propose strange and stranger theories like String theory, Multiverses (multiple universes) and Cosmic holograms.
I have just begun my journey of understanding the frontiers of modern science. And I cannot help but observe the stark parallels between what modern science is dabbling with today and the timeless tenets of Sanatana Dharma. More on it later!
#quantum physics#Classical Physics#quantum Mechanics#Classical Mechanics#einstein#niels Bohr#sir isaac newton#gravity#relativity#space-time#nobel prize#double slit experiment#particle#wave#interference pattern#particle-wave duality#probability#god doesn't play dice#sanatana dharma
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And allow Grace to act on us!!!
Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is relax.🦋
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David Suchet recieves his knighthood and becomes Sir David Suchet!!!
Post # 037
Happy birthday, David Suchet!
Happy birth centenary, Hercule Poirot!
Enough of death and obituaries. Let's celebrate a birth for a change!
Year 2020 is exactly 100 years since Hercule Poirot was born, in 1920, in the novel "The mysterious affair at Styles" by Agatha Christie.
On 2nd May, 2020, British actor David Suchet, who is synonymous with Poirot on screen, turned 74.
If you are about my age and if you are a Poirot fan, I bet you cannot imagine anybody other than David Suchet as Poirot.
A few interesting bullets while you fondly reminisce both of them.
I used to pronounce Suchet as it is spelt. Only today, I got to know that it is pronounced Soo-shay, like you would pronounce 'sachet'. Sorry, if that was not interesting. :-)
In 1985, Poirot used to be played by Peter Ustinov. In a movie, Thirteen at dinner, an adaptation of Agatha Christie's book Lord Edgeware dies, David Suchet played Inspector Japp, whereas Peter Ustinov played Poirot! Can you believe that? The below photo is a still from that movie. To the right is Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot.
Apparently, Peter Ustinov suggested to David Suchet that he should play Poirot, and that he would be pretty good at it. At first, David was sceptical. He shared his thoughts with Brian Eastman of ITV, who went on to produce Agatha Christie's Poirot, the long-running TV series from 1989 to 2013, with David as Poirot.
In 2013, in the final episode of that series, called Curtain, when Porot dies, David Suchet becomes emotional, as if losing the "dearest of his friends".
In 1991, David Suchet was nominated for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award in 1991 for this series. I wonder why he didn't win it.
Though we know him mainly as Poirot, he was a versatile actor in Theatre, Radio, TV and films. In 2008, he won an International Emmy Award for Best Actor for a movie - Maxwell - made for TV.
In 2011, he was awarded the title - Commander of British Empire - CBE, as a recognition for a long and illustrious career.
His autobiography is called Poirot and me.
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Post 151
The "Penthouse" wager :-)
Who doesn't know Stephen Hawking, the most eminent scientist to have walked this planet, after Einstein, the 25th greatest Briton of all time, as per a BBC poll, the author of A brief history of time - a book on science that became a cult of its own and sold more than 10 million copies, and finally a man who at the age of 20 was told by his doctors that he had a degenerative motor neurone disorder (he would sequentially lose his ability to walk, stand or speak) and had only two more years to live, but lived on till he was 76.
Meet Kip Thorne, an American theoretical physicist, a professor of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), a Nobel prize winner in 2017 and a long time friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking.
In 1974, Stephen Hawking made a bet with Kip Thorne. The wager was - If Hawking won, Kip Thorne would buy him a four-year subscription of the gossip magazine - Private Eye. But if Kip Thorne won, then Stephen Hawking would buy him a one-year subscription of the soft porn magazine - Penthouse.
I mean, for Christ's sake, men will be men! Even theoretical physicists, even Nobel laureates!
And what was the bet about? It was about Black Holes - the cutting edge concept of science at that time. ROFL!
Therein lies a tale.
The tale begins in 1964 with the discovery of Cygnus X1, a strong (very strong) source of X-rays from a cluster of stars (constellation) called Cygus. This source has since then been identified as a Black Hole and has become one of the most studied astronomical objects. Naturally, both Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne were interested.
Before we go ahead, lets briefly understand what a Black Hole is.
A star is a gigantic ball of hot gasses, predominantly hydrogen. The hydrogen molecules in a star keep colliding with each other, pulled by their own gravity. Such collisions generate intense heat and pressure. Under these conditions, hydrogen molecules fuse and get chemically converted to helium molecules. This is called a nuclear fusion reaction and releases tons of heat and light. That's why a star glows. The best example is our very own Sun.
This continuous thermonuclear reaction inside a star means that its fuel - hydrogen - is exhausted over time. So eventually (after billions of years), a star dies, just like people do. Our Sun will die too - in a hundred billions years.
Before a star dies, it expands because of all the explosions happening within itself, but after a point, contracts, because the reactions get weaker (fuel is getting exhausted) and inter-molecular gravity becomes stronger.
Not all stars die alike. Relatively smaller stars first expand into Red Giants, then contract into White Dwarfs. However, stars larger than a threshold limit, called Chandrashekhar limit, expand into Red Supergiants, but contract to become Black Holes. This threshold size was determined by an Indian-American, Nobel prize winning scientist called Subhramanyam Chandrashekar.
A Black Hole is nothing but a super dense, super small (almost a dot in space), super hot, super old, star, where gravity is so high that even light cannot escape it. So it is practically invisible. More importantly, all laws of physics, Newtonian or Einsteinian, fail at a Black hole. So, a Black hole became the ultimate enigma of theoretical physicists.
Coming back to Cygnus X1, the X ray radiation seemed to be coming from the vicinity of a identifyable star, named HDE 226868. But apparently, HDE 226868 was a supergiant star, incapable of emitting such high quanities of X rays. So, it was surmised that this star must have an invisible companion that could heat gasses to the millions of degrees needed to produce the radiation source for Cygnus X1. This surmise was very likely, but not conclusive.
In this backdrop, Stephen Hawking met his buddy Kip Thorne, probably over a beer. They discussed Cygnus X1 and decided to have a bet. The bet was recorded in a handwritten note scrawled on a piece of card. It read:
Whereas Stephen Hawking has a large investment in general relativity and black holes and desires an insurance policy, and whereas Kip Thorne likes to live dangerously without an insurance policy, therefore be it resolved that Stephen Hawking bets 1 year's subscription to 'Penthouse' as against Kip Thorne's wager of a 4-year subscription to 'Private Eye,' that Cygnus X-1 does not contain a black hole of mass above the Chandrasekhar limit.
How cool was that!
Interestingly, Stephen Hawking was a pioneering brain in the study of Black Holes. But he bet against the source of Cygnus X1 being a Black Hole. The insurance logic was crazy!
Did you also wonder about the difference in the subscription periods of the two magazines? No, Penthouse is not four times as expensive as The Private Eye. Infact, in their estimate, the chances of the source of Cygnus X1 being a Black Hole was higher (probably four times higher). So the differential subscription periods! Whatever! These two buddies sure must have a great time that evening.
A couple of decades later, by the early 1990s, it was becoming very clear that Cygnus X1 was infact a Black Hole. Stephen Hawking gave Kip Thorne a one-year subscription to the Penthouse, "much to the disgust of Kip's wife", says a naughty Hawking later.
Actually, man has been wondering about the sky, stars and the universe, ever since he learned to think. Many thousand years ago, in this part of the world, some scientists, who were called Rishis, also asked similar and more questions. Their methodology, though, was different. They retreated to the forest or to a cave, closed their eyes, and found all answers within, not without! They didn't have billion dollar budgets, nor hi-fi instruments. They just put in time. And they knew the techniques to touch those dimensions of intelligence within themselves which could download all the secrets of the cosmos. They knew that the human body is a microcosm of the entire universe!
Yatha pinde, Tatha Brahmande!
A lot of their answers are lost today. The remaining ones are encoded as unintelligible mythology. Take just a couple of examples.
It is said that just before it dies, as well as, just as soon as it takes birth, a star takes the form of an ellipsoid. An ellipsoid is a three dimensional ellipse. This ellipsoidal form is also the form of a Linga.
In many books I have read but not understood well, a Shiva Linga is considered to be the equivalent of the concept of Black Hole. Shiva literally means "that which is not physical". A Linga is the first physical manifestation of the universe post-creation, as well as the last physical form just before dissolution. Accessing the energies of the Linga supposedly give the Sadhaka (the practitioner) access to the non-physical dimensions of the universe. See the uncanny similarity with modern concepts of warpholes and multiverses (parallel universes).
Another example - One of Shiva's forms is Rudra - One who roars. This concept has a parallel in the Big Bang theory of creation of the universe. The Bang is supposed to be a roar. I have read or heard somewhere that Rudra has roared 84 times so far. Meaning, the ancient Rishis had deciphered 84 creation-dissolution cycles of the universe. Modern science is struggling to grapple with one.
I am convinced these Rishis knew more than we know today. And they have left clues. And like with the Grail quest in Da Vinci Code, only the worthy can find them!
#stephen hawking#einstein#kip thorne#penthouse#black holes#cygnus#star#sun#Chandrashekhar limit#rishi#shiva#shiva linga#rudra#big bang#da vinci code
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Fear...
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