How the cucumber connects with cosmos?

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 actually knowing its meaning. We were told it is dedicated to Lord Siva and is recited during anxiety or ill health. It was a kind of a shield to be used in precarious and life-threatening situations. No one actually taught us what the whole Sanskrit recital actually meant, what more its deeper meanings. 

Now there is guy, Praveen Mohan who has delved into the secrets of lost temples and many of the forgotten pearls of wisdom in Hinduism. He is quite prolific in making videos. Some of his claims are quite outlandish and got chaffed by content providers. Youtube and Facebook, at one time, even temporarily suspended his account. Nevertheless, they are food for thought and totally worth considering. He brings out mostly the marvel of ancient Indian builders, their building techniques which were way ahead of their times and how these technologies predate modern Western knowhow but somehow got forgotten in the annals of time.

In one of his presentation, he ventures into the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra. It is one of the oldest mantras, taken from the Rigveda which was composed as way back as between 1500-1200 BCE. Of course, it is paying homage to Lord Siva but it does not request to save us from death or danger. The way I look at it, it is making us realise that life and death is a continuum, an essence of the soul. Now, what is the 'cucumber' (Urvaarukam) doing in all these, of life and preservation of life?

Here is where it becomes profound. Uruvarukkam is a poisonous variety of cucumber that explodes when ripe to extrude its seeds of life. This, in a way, can be viewed as immortality as one transmits his elixir of life, the DNA, to the next generation. His body dies but his legacy lives on forever.

There are other things related to this mantra. The pattern of seed distribution and the placing of the seeds in the fruit suggests that the ancient Hindu scholar knew about Fibonacci numbers (which was actually thought of by a 2nd century Sanskrit scholar, Pingala). Fibonacci sequencing in nature ensures the best placement of leaves of the trees for sunlight and seeds on a flower for best dispersion.

Fig 1
ratio of the length of the longer 
segment to the shorter one is φ

Another intriguing thing about the recital of this mantra is that, on special occasions, it is recited 108 times. Why 108 times one may enquire? Besides having 108 beads on prayer beads, it has much more significance than that.

The diameter of the Sun is 108 times the diameter of Earth. The distance from the Sun to Earth is 108 times the diameter of the Sun. The distance from the Earth to Moon is 108 times the diameter of the moon. In ayurvedic practice, it is said that there are 108 vital points in our body.

Fig 2

In certain prayers involving Lord Shiva, elements of nature are invoked and are represented in the form of a pentagram. Even though the Western world dismisses this as invoking of satanic worship, there is much involved in it. Again, the outer angle of the pointed star is 108.

As seen in the diagram in Fig 1 and Fig 2, the ratio between intersections of shorter and longer lines corresponds to the golden ratio, φ, of 1.618. The golden ratio, in turn, is seen everywhere in Nature. The ratio between subsequent numbers in the Fibonacci sequence is also φ. The pentagram, hence, is the visual representation of life much like how Fibonacci numbers represent the pattern of sustaining life.

So, in short, the take-home message, at least me, in all these prayers is not to change the course of Nature but instead endeavour to use our intelligence to fight the offending agents whilst appreciating that death is not the be end. Life continues with or without us.

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We become what we do not want

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 praising his father again, putting him up on a pedestal. He would say, "my father was a great man. No one can do all the things he did." He once again becomes a Superman, an Ubermensch.

At the spring of youth, wanting to explore newer frontiers, learning new things, looking at things from a different, with the possession of new knowledge, we see our parents as fossilised dinosaurs. We think they are not in sync with reality and are not keeping up with the demands of the changing times. We abhor our parents, are embarrassed and vow never to be like them. After all, with the benefit of education and modern knowledge, we think we can do much better. At the end of the day, we realise how wrong we were!

We go through the mill, traversing the joys and aches that life has to offer and soon realise that at the end of the day, we become the very person(s) that we despise.

Anupama Banerjee, daughter of Shakuntala Devi.

If one were to think that this movie all about the achievements of Ms Shakuntala Devi, a simple girl from Karnataka, who later came to be known as the human-computer, an astrologist, a writer, an activist for the gay community and even as the politician who stood against Mrs Indira Gandhi, one will be disappointed. There are many facets of this interesting lady. The storytellers decide to concentrate on her dilemmas being a woman, a wife and a mother in a world that is not really ready for her outlook of the world.

The story is told from the point of view of her daughter Anupama Banerjee. Many, even those in India are not aware of Shakuntala Devi, the mathematics genius. She has the incredible ability to do swift mental calculations. With ease, she would rattle off roots, square roots of multiple orders in record times, faster than the early late 70s' calculators and computers. She also has the ability to tell the days in a calendar. Give her a particular date any year, and she could tell the day it was. She did all these without any formal education. Her father, a circus man, upon discovering her talent at a young age, decided to bring her around showcasing her abilities like a freakshow for money. He brought her to the UK, and she started her shows there, even in Imperial College. Her fame soon brought to all the four corners of the world. Her skills even find a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The search for perfection is paved with errors!

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 things were obvious.

For Professor G.H. Harold (Jeremy Irons), a self-professed atheist, that was just not enough. Every effect must be proven step by step. Simply short-cutting, deducing and assuming would not do.

Herein, lies the dichotomy in the belief system of a theist and an atheist. For a believer, life is easier. Certain assumptions need not be questioned. They like to tell themselves to look at the bigger picture. Going from point A to D does not matter how one reaches point B and C before reaching D. For an agnostic, it is the lynchpin of the discussion. He would not accept it until and unless he knows in precise detail the journey from A through B, C and finally D. Like Sisyphus, the joy is rolling the boulder up the hill. It does not matter if rolls back down again, begging for another question to answer. The pride is in working out the problem. Solving is secondary.


Another thing that hit me from the interaction of two mathematicians is the class consciousness. Unlike his contemporaries, John Littlewood and Bertrand Russell, Hardy was a self-made man. He rose from the working class, much like Srinivas Ramanujan, to prove himself through mathematics. Like it or not, poverty and deprivation are strong enough motivators to scale higher levels in life. 1729.

Never thought running could spur philosophy!

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 him. In his philosophical treatise which was finally termed Zeno's paradox, he advocated that by halving the distance your destination, you will never reach your intended endpoint as there will always be a void between you and the target.

Just like a moving arrow is actually static at every moment of time but in relation to space and time is seen to move from point A to B.

If Achilles set his target to reach the point where the tortoise is, he will never be able 

to overtake the animal as the tortoise would always one step ahead no matter what!

He lived by numbers...

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 Mathematics. He loved it so much that he never studied other subjects and to be contended with life without obtaining a degree.

Growing under the shadow of his dominant maternal shield, Ramanujam, grew up as a stickler for rules and Brahminic traditions. Probably these age-old rituals may have been the very reason why he developed such an astute arithmetic aptitude. In school, when told by the teacher that '0' had no value, he argued that by simply placing a zero behind a number, its value increases 10 folds. Hence, '0' cannot be valueless. In another scenario at a temple, he commented that the offerings that the priests were to the well-wishers would be enough after assessing the crowd number and the availability of food. He was not-so-politely told to mind his own business and not to tell the veteran priests to do their job. Sure enough, his calculation came out true much to the amazement of everyone.

As an adult, Ramanujam realised that India does not what outstanding people. What they want are mediocre simpletons who do not think out the box. The parents thought that his fate would change with a marriage but life continued its dull path.

Ramanujan (centre) with other scientists at Trinity College

Things have hardly changed. Be it 1900s or be it 2015, Asians have to be appreciated by the kwailos and gringos. After a series of dead ends, a letter to a Mathematics Professor Hardy in Cambridge proved to be the turning point. An acceptance to work with the Mathematician eventually led him to greater heights, a degree and acceptance as a Fellow of the Royal Society and Trinity College.

I was particularly impressed with the ritualistic practices that were shown in the film. The devoutly orthodox Brahmin that he is proved to be a scourge throughout his life. First, there was the dilemma of leaving the comfort of the shores of India to go to England. The classical belief is that one who lose his caste and be treated as an outcast by his people. This eventually proved true. After his untimely demise in his early 30s due to tuberculosis, none of his clansmen wanted to attend his funeral. They looked at his death as a sign of wrath of the Gods for crossing the black seas! His particular eating habits, strict vegetarianism, proved self-depreciating. He had to be treated for nutritional deficiencies.

This independent production stars Abinhay Vaddi (the grandson of Gemini Ganesan and Savithri), Suhasini Maniratnam and many famous Tamil movie actors (Sarath Babu, Delhi Ganesh and Radha Ravi among others) appear in cameo roles.

The number 1729 is known as the Hardy–Ramanujan number after a famous anecdote of the British mathematician G. H. Hardy regarding a visit to the hospital to see Ramanujan. In Hardy's words: 

I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. 'No', he replied, 'it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. Wikipedia 

An equation for me has no meaning unless it represents a thought of God.       Ramanujam Srinivasa

Bose, Raman, Saha

Of conformity and unpredictability

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 of the stock market. He correctly predicts the pattern but, unfortunately, loses it during his bout of headache. He attributes his aliment to his attempt to stare at the sun at six years of age.

There are patterns everywhere in nature.

In the meantime, he is harassed by two group of people, a Kabbalah cult who wants to decode a 216 word from the Torah and some Federal Agents who wish to manipulate the stock market.
According to the Kabbalah spiritual Jewish practitioners, the Torah is a series of code that could decipher the 216 word of the name of God, which could be used by the Messiah.

After many harrowing experiences, the protagonist, Max does a burr hole on himself to receive his pain. His headaches disappear and for once he can see the world without trying to analyse it.

The number 216 is important in the Abrahamic (mainly Judaism and Christianity) traditions. 216 the cube of 6; 6.6.6 denoting Satan). In ancient times, in the pagan traditions, burr holes (trepanning) were performed to release evil spirits. Surprisingly patients recovered and infection was minimal, it seems! Π fascinates mathematicians as its decimal representation never ends and does not follow any particular rational pattern. Unlike nature which follows a particular pattern which may be explained by calculations, human behaviour is entirely irrational just like π- a smorgasbord of a bizarre random pattern. But that is exactly what makes the world go round.

Then what?

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 hope, putting aside their difficulties and poverty, to educate their offspring. In the year that the documentary was shot, 29 of the 30 students passed their exams.

Audience with President Kallam

A little melodrama occurs after that. You can watch it below if you have the time.

So what happens afterwards? The teenagers go on to IIT, get a comfortable job, parents continue their  tortuous job albeit at a less strenuous pace. Then what? They get married, perhaps stay in a big mansion or migrate to a developed country and enjoy the fruit of their labour. They themselves would have offsprings who after growing up guarded against poverty and shielded from harsh reality of needing to acquire street-smartness and survival skills, would think that it is their birthright to demand for luxuries that their parents tried to offer to the kids. Whatever they missed, they did not want their children not to have.

On the part of the children, hard work and motivation would be alien vocabularies. They would talk about enjoying life. having a complete life, not to miss out on finer things of life and the now well renowned phrase of that it is their life and they can live any which way that they please!

In the immortal words of Confucius, wealth in a family would only last 3 generations. And the cycle of life would go back to square one!