RIFLE RANGE BOY

Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra - - from Rig Veda 7.59.12 (1500-1200 BCE) https://greenmesg.org/stotras/shiva/mahamrityunjaya_mantra.php Om Try-Ambakam Yajaamahe Sugandhim Pusstti-Vardhanam Urvaarukam-Iva Bandhanaan Mrtyor-Mukssiiya Maa- [A] mrtaat || Meaning: 1:  Om,  We Worship  the  Tryambaka  (the  Three-Eyed  One), 2:  Who is  Fragrant  (as the Spiritual Essence),  Increasing  the  Nourishment  (of our Spiritual Core); 3:   From  these many  Bondages  (of Samsara)  similar to Cucumbers  (tied to their Creepers), 4:   May I be Liberated from Death  (Attachment to Perishable Things), So that I am  not  separated  from  the perception of  Immortality  (Immortal Essence pervading everywhere). http://mk.skycoded.com/watch/DIrvM1gcnPU# Squirting of cucumber seeds Ecballium elaterium We have been reciting this mantra since young without ac...

Shakuntala Devi (Hindi; 2020) A joke that my friend once told me comes to mind. A child, aged 5, will think that his father is some kind of a superman. He is strong and invincible. At 10, he is still looked up upon. In the teenage years, the relationship sours. By 20, son and father do not see eye-to-eye. Father tries to pave the path with his wisdom, but the son thinks his ways are passé. He soon refers to his father as 'your husband' when talking to his mother about him. He only communicates with his mother and does not engage in any form of conversation with his father. Things just happen in a ritualistic manner. Son gets married, has a child, slowly enjoys parenthood. He soon realises the intricacies of parenting. By 45, he is impressed by his father's ability to juggle work, family life and skill to educate his siblings with his meagre income. By 50 or 55, the son tries to make up for lost times. When the son is 60, the father has passed on, and the son starts prais...

The Man who Knew Infinity (2015) We all know about Ramanujan's story, his inability to secure a good score and a good job due to his fixation with Mathematics and neglect on other learning subjects. We all know how, he, a lowly shipping clerk wrote his theories to a Trinity College professor and also was not given a second look. We are aware of how he was made a Fellow of Royal Society. In his short life, he discovered formulae that would be used to understand black holes a century later! What struck me most about this film is the clash between the two men of different faith and are quite confident and comfortable with their conviction. Ramanujan (played by Dev Patel) is cocksure that the mind-boggling revelation that came to him are mere expressions of the Divine Forces. They just oozed out from him from his deity, Namagiri, during prayers. Ramanujan believed that that is the truth, the end-result that determines the truth. There was no need to painstakingly proving it. Some...

Running on the treadmill can be a daunting task, but it had to be done. Unpredictable working hours and inclement weather make it imperative for one to rely on this monotonous method of training. To ease the task of repetition risking premature retirement, many have devised their own means to beat boredom. I depend on the cable TV. That too sometimes lets me down. Thanks to the tropical weather and highly negatively charged weather clouds, transmission ceases more frequently than it should. I devised my own method to cut my runs into halves and a further half it. Say, I plan to 7kms (~4.2miles) that day. First, I aim to reach half the distance (~2.1miles). Then, I aim for half that distance, another ~1.05miles, then another ~0.5, then ~0.25, then ~0.125 and so on. Before I know it, I am drenched in perspiration and joy for reaching my target. Never in my wildest dream did I think that what I was essentially doing was what Zeno of Elia was trying to tell people around...

Ramanujam (2014) Some 2 years ago, my son asked me about the Indian subcontinent's contribution to the sciences in modern times. He told me about accolades conferred to Indians, but scientific discoveries were far too few to enumerate, he said. Besides telling the usual adage that ‘everything comes from India’, pizza (crusted masala thosai) to noodles/spaghetti (idiyapam) to philosophy to NASA scientists and silicon valley geeks, he was surprised to hear about India’s Nobel prize winner and the Quantum Indians of the early 20th century. These three forgotten Indian scientists of Satyendra Nath Bose, CV Raman and Meghnad Saha revolutionised Physics and Indian Science in the early part of the 20th century by giving the world Bosons, the Raman Effect, the Saha Equation and India's first and only Nobel for Science. Unlike these highly educated scholars, in Madras, there lived a timid Brahmin boy who thought of nothing else by Mathematics. He slept, drank, ate and even dreamt M...

Pi ( π; 1998) In school, we were thought about the Pythagoras theorem to calculate the length of a hypotenuse. In actual fact, he was more than a mere mathematician. He was a philosopher who studied mathematics in Egypt, started a school and the Pythagorean movement. The Pythagoreans believe that everything that exists in the universe follow a particular pattern and can be explained rationally using mathematic calculations. Some Pythagoreans have a strict code of conduct, were vegetarians and avoided certain nuts. Numbers formed the basis of this black & white psychological drama. It tells of a socially awkward man who has a fascination with numbers. He lives alone in an apartment in Chinatown, trying as much as possible to avoid contact with other people including his neighbours. He is troubled by a recurrent debilitating headache for which he needs to consume myriad of drugs and administer a subcutaneous injection. He has his computer which he uses to predict the outcome o...

Anand Kumar and his students My brother from a different father and mother sent me a mail recently about a certain Mathematics tutor from Patna, Bihar, who would tutor students pro bono for them to pass the coveted Indian Institute of Technology entrance examinations. He hand picks a group of 30, motivates them, arranges hostel facilities, cooks healthy meals and literally drills them day and night to achieve 100% pass rate. The students swarms in from remote and impoverished regions of the land to slog it out for about 7 months with the sole intention of passing the test. A pass, to them, is the panacea of their woes. A rewarding career and perhaps a post in a multinational company or even an overseas posting is a sure way to uplift their living conditions and their immediate loved ones.  The spill over effect can be seen even to the relatives whose background and caste is irrelevant anymore. I can relate to the hopeful eyes of the illiterate parents who put all their ...