Me Returns !!

Well, back to a bit of writing after a long break of 1 year. Can't say that the words have started to flow out again, there was never a flow in the first place.

Lot has passed in this year and probably its been a year with the most amount of learning on a personal and professional front but let me recount just the personal bits.

It seems surprising to read what I had written a year ago on my blog cuz I've travelled such a long way from where I started. Some of my questions have been answered, for a few I have accepted that I may never know the answers (probably its better that way too) and many new ones have cropped up. However, one thing which has happened for sure is that I have rediscovered myself and have realised that I'm not so weak after all, that I can really achieve a lot by applying myself. This realisation is the biggest change the "I" who wrote the last year's entry and the "I" today.

Just too many experiences flooding my mind...will write about each of them some time

Fear of Sanity

Sanity represents the state of mind where one is concious of one's actions. One evaluates every situation and based on the various factors prevailing one takes an action which in one's view would yield the highest payoff. This Ayn Rand person who is the ideal subject for behavioural Game Theorists behaves just like a robot, conciously evaluating his expected payoffs and adopting a strategy that maximises them Ref. Nash Theorem.
I was reading Isaac Asimov' Robot series sometime back. There robots are governed by 3 laws which I'm in no mood to write down as they are besides the point. The point being that whenever the robot is confronted with a decision there are varying potentials generated within its brain. Each laws generates its own potential and the highest potential always directs the robots actions. But ever so often there comes a situation where almost equivalent potentials are generated by conflicting aspects and there the robot's decision making capacity breaks down - the robot goes insane.Read I, Robot if u have interest in Sci Fi
Similar to the robot but obviously far more complex is the human's sane mind.
Insanity is something that we feel naturally uncomfortable with and is a condition which is actively looked down upon by society. But is it that bad????
There have been many geniuses throughout documented history and nearly all of them have had their moments of insanity, or genius. Issac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, S. Ramanujan, John Nash...etc.
In physics, in class 11 or 12 we study the concept of degrees of freedom. We do extend this concept further in Mechanical Engg, but since i'm not a mech guy my knowledge is very intuitive. what i find interesting is that as u decrease the degrees of freedom of a system, its stability increases but its flexibility or manoeuverability decreases. Taking a very simple example of a motorcycle & a car. A motorcycle has 4 degrees of freedom (forward, backwards and falling left and falling right) whereas a car has only 2 (forward & backward). Mech enggs are welcome to correct me on the number of d.o.f..
Sanity of the mind also represents the number of concepts that the mind is anchored to. The more the number of fundamentals that we have, the lesser the degree of freedoms that our minds have and the more stable and thus sane we become. Each time someone breaks the fundamental that is anchored in the mind of society, he is termed as insane or genius, depending on the proof of his conjecture. This is easily exemplified by the histories of a lot of scientific discoveries. The evolution of man from a 4 legged creature to a 2 legged one drastically increased the degrees of freedom of the human body. This also led to the availability of two limbs for grasping. Looking at the hand itself we find that the most used digit the thumb also has the maximum insanity. However, a point which has infinite degrees of freedom, has no stability. Human life needs stability to survive and perhaps thats why we stopped at being bipeds and didnt take to the skies, but at the same time it needs insanity to progress.
My point is essentially naught. I had gone off to sleep, was tossing and turning and thinking about various events in my life when all of a sudden I remembered that someone had told me that I had become too sane and too rational. I hadnt realised the full impact of those words and probably do not do so even now but in this moment of insanity I decided to get up at 5:30 am, not having slept a wink the whole night, and write this down for thinking over it later.
It also happens to be my Birthday.
How Insane !!! I'm progressing :-)

Unknown

We all have an instinctive fear of the unknown and thats why we have come up with so many names for the it - Luck, Karma, Destiny, Stars and what not. In our endeavor to get a glimpse of the unknown we have started by making a basic classification of it - the good unknown and the bad unknown. The good one being represented by God, and the bad being represented by the Devil.
Since we dont know our own selves fully we have extended this classification of our unknown part to ourselves so we keep hearing ever so often "Theres both God & Devil within us".
An example of the manifestation of the unknown is the stock market. To an average person with no inside info, it represents a purely random variable. The stock ticker's movement follows a random walk, or does it? Remarkably good predictions can be made by applying many different mathematical models to it. Since I havent done a course on Stochastic Calculus in Finance, I will stop here but a lot of my friends who have done such a curse would recognise some merit in the statement. While in the stock market we have two major variables - risk and return, and a host of other measures that define the nature of these variables, we do not have any such variables in life. There is no "measure of goodness" versus the net income a person earns over his lifetime. There are not ethics vs. returns graphs. There are no theories that exist tht say that for a person to be alive his life must be a solution of such and such differential equations.
This is the reason why we dont have any mathematical theories yet on how to predict life, in spite of the Hindu Astrology really coming quite close to being called as the Arithmetic of Destiny. What everyone is looking at is the algebra of life, a set of formulas that can be applied and modified to predict the outcome of different events ranging from the mundane to the earth shattering. In fact theres a pretty interesting movie called Pi which shows a number theorist finally getting to a huge number that is supposedly God's number and how he fares. Its a kind of dark movie but definitely worth a watch.
Come to think of it, its good that there is no theory as such, otherwise the astrologers will become the next Investment Bankers, or maybe vice versa, but the end result would be that our lives will be managed by professional life managers and probably will become a tradable commodity on a Life Exchange. Now wouldn't that be fun!!!
Maybe I'll write more abt this life exchange later...seems to be a good idea :-)

The Criminal

I was thinking just the other day why are there so many love songs that depict the suffering of only the persons who are wronged.There have been umpteen number of songs that i have heard that have songs of love about how ppls heart was broken by someone else, songs abt how their love had been ultra pure and yet they were wronged, songs abt how they had to face deceit in their relationships.
What about the pain of those who know that they have hurt someone and cant do anything abt it. how abt the ppl who had knowingly or unknowingly caused pain and are repenting it. why doesnt anyone care to write something abt them, something for them. does anyone who has caused pain automatically become a figure to be despised? does that person cease to care for the person to whom he has caused the pain? does he lose the right to think well of the sufferer because the present suffering has been due to him? does he alwyas have to help the sufferer out? what if the wrong has been done unknowingly and now the perpetrator's hands are tied? what if he cant do anything to help out without inflicting suffering to someone else instead?
i dont know if there are any souls amongst us, at least in this "ghor kalyug" who haven't done such a mistake ever in life. imho, the suffering and the pain is much worse for the person who has inflicted it upon a loved one rather than for the loved one who bears it.

The Zero

Just came back from a musical performance by my peers. It was a kinda farewell function of our batch with ppl being given awards for various stupid categories. Although I enjoyed it a lot - the performance being stupendous and the awards ceremony being very amusing, deep down i felt an craving for some attention for myself. Looking at the performers I longed to be on the other side of the stage - me, a person who has such an immense stage fright really longing to go onto the stage was something very bizzare to myself. Then I thought to myself what would I do if went on the stage, i have no voice for singing, i cannot emote to save my life, and with regard to any musical instrument I'm the proverbial "bhains"! Compereing isn't my cup of tea cuz my wit matches that of a mosquito hovering around the ear. What about dance, i always ask myself and the immediate answer is - Dance !!! Oh my god, its already a miracle that i can walk in a straight line, to move my legs to the music and somehow flail my arms in such a manner that its pleasing and not poking to the eye would be overworking the Almighty. You could always write something, my friends have told me, but somehow i bang into the writer's wall (block is too small an obstruction) every time i try to lift a pen to jot down something original.
I keep wondering to myself whether i will be able to do something worthwhile in life when I cant do a simple creative thing not even something that i have seen 5 yr old kids do well.
Maybe its attention deficit disorder or maybe i truly a loser, God only knows.

P.S. : I forgot to write about my lousy sketching ability, but u must have guessed it by now how it works.