Getting over Mathophobia. :)

http://www.stonehill.edu/compsci/History_Math/math-read.htm



Alrite people..for a change this is NOT about ME. =)
One of my mathematician friends wanted me to go through this..
Funny and informative, I guess all of you should read it too!

We need to talk!!

I like that line very much when it comes out of characters in my favorite sitcom.
“We need to talk!” is such a beautiful line. It comes with the premonition of change. Not just any change, but the kinds that come with an inherent seed of groundbreaking revolution. I love the tension and the drama that goes with it.
Not so much when I am at the receiving end though. This happens pretty frequently in my household. It comes out of my MOM and more often than not it has a lot to do with me getting married.

I have been shying away from this topic for a long time because I constantly live under the invisible gaze of the Bin Laden in our house. My mom knows like one million and one ways to ruin her daughter’s Saturday morning and I must say this is one of the most effective one of them. She doesn’t even need the other million!
Well, it all started when I was in the pre-final semester of my engineering course. She was suddenly struck by the fact that on her own 21st birthday, she already knew my dad and things were going pretty well between them. While on my 21st birthday, I was sitting around in my favorite track pants reading a comic with my feet thrown up on my easy chair. Since then it has never stopped. It is her favorite way to torment me by painting thick black clouds all over my future.

So it begins somewhat like this. On the solitary Saturday morning, when I don’t actually wake up in the gym but the bed she is impalpably making tea in the kitchen. As I wake up and come out rubbing my eyes, she is sitting at the table looking all regal and grand. She motions her tiny palm to indicate that I should sit down in front of her, which I have to do. Then she goes “ We need to talk” and I know all the sentences that follow this one by heart. “ All your friends are engaged!!” , “Look at you! Who do you think you are! Aishwarya Rai??!!” and when I say “ Oh common aai, don’t compare me to Aishwarya Rai after what she’s done to Salman and Vivek!” she bangs her fist on the table till the crockery rattles and narrows her eyes in that specific manner that only angry moms can do. She stalls like an inch away from my nose and says in a really unwomanly hoarse voice, “I want a clear answer. Right Now! Do you or do you not want to get married??”
How can you have a clear answer to a totally simulated situation?
I mean, if getting married were like organizing your socks I would have done it when I was 12! I try to cooperate too! Like when she writes my resume (which has sections like “skin tone” and the answer to that is “wheatish” which is not even like a REAL word!!) I carefully correct the spelling mistakes and even the attitude mistakes in there. I mean what kind of mom tells people her daughter looks like wheat!!

Then she suddenly goes into that mawkish mode! Which is harder to take than the Bin Laden mode. She asks me totally stupefying questions like, “ Are you not worried about your own future?!!”, “ What if you never get married!!” , “ Who will take over the company after you!!?” , “ I will never get a break from work if you never get married!”
(Yeah some of these sentences are completely illogical and out of context but then 50-year-old moms have a lot of other issues too)

Then I tell her all that I plan to do if I don’t get married at all.
I will write a book! I will work for UNICEF. Write stories for kids!
I will streamline the entire business and make an obscene amount of money and I will also donate chunks of it to cancer research. I will take up a French language course and also teach creative writing to schoolchildren! Since I wont be having kids of my own, I would be the cool “Aunt Saee” to my friends’ kids. Who will teach them a hundred different ways to use Soap. Who will have dogs they could play with and who will also teach them the value of workouts! There are so many things to do!! Wake up mom! People are dying in Sudan. To which she curtly replies, “ No one is dying there, I just came back and I had a land cruiser all to myself all the while I was in Sudan!”
I guess one of the principal drawbacks of having a globetrotting mom is that you get to know that the BBC chooses to highlight Africa in a very sad way.
She is not a philistine but when organizations like the UNICEF and the WHO start getting in the way to her daughter’s wedding she tends to get a little edgy. I can understand.
But then I quickly put her at ease by saying, “ Oh! And I will do all of that even if I do get married you know. I mean I will have a little less time, but I will definitely do all of that” and she sighs in relief.
Sometimes her paranoia makes her imagine that I might be secretly going around with a mystery guy and keeping it all under cover. So she inquires with my super-best friend and both of them cross their hearts to keep it a secret. Well needless to say that the next call my friend makes is to me and even mom blurts it out in one of her sentimental fits of worry. I find that incredibly cute. More importantly because at least my mom thinks that I could go around with someone and that I am capable of all the womanly feelings of love and companionship! =)

I guess one day her worry will end. Or at least I hope that she will overcome worry! =)
Till then I will devise more creative ways to return her “ We need to talk” ace service.
She is even better than Federer!!
Oh and it would be a good idea not to tell my mom that I wrote this. If you know what I mean! ;)

Worry

Worry can be a dot
Sometimes it turns into a Line
And then the crinkle between my eyebrows
Painful although really fine
Sometimes it turns into a whole page
With supplements written for Tomorrow
And then later into a Movie
Unedited and full of Sorrow
If I am to praise her at all; she is faithful
I always find her to my Right
Reminding me of what’s due and what’s not
Waking me up in the middle of the Night
She is unreasonable at times
At times she is a just consequence
Comically irrational at times
Sometimes just a consequence
When people don’t come home
We sit together on a bench outside
Imagining the terrorists who might have taken them
A torpedo, perhaps an unfortunate Landslide
But all of them always come Home
And then Worry leaves me
But I don’t hate her so vehemently
For sometimes, She is good company!

When Radio Meets Cell Phone. :)

The Radio and the Cell Phone service providers are now married to each other.
One of the most exasperating things about the Radio is the preposterous SMS contests they come up with.
Like one day the peppy Radio Jockey started a contest that made people choose which planet Pune resembled to out of the three options
1.Moon
2.Saturn
3.Mars
(Yes, and he said “planets” and included Moon in it!)
And supposedly the popular (and predictable) choice was Moon because of the potholes on Pune’s roads.
Then there is this “Home-maker special” at around 11 AM that is called “khoobsurat”
Where the chirpy RJ asks listeners to take part in contests related to beauty IQ
Like “ What from these three options makes your hair shinier”
1.Potato
2.Kerosene
3.Egg White
And then they keep repeating the question throughout the program in their fake chirpy voice. Imagine pouring a can of kerosene on your scalp!
I always wonder who responds to such questions and when I realize that someone always does I choose to believe that they prefer being pathetic than not being the fiftieth desperate person competing for two couple tickets to an equally low budget movie.
I mean what is so honorable about answering such questions and winning a ticket?
Besides even if you do win it, the radio people make you travel to their faraway office to collect it and then you drive to the cinema which is like the other end of the city from the radio office. I guess it would be easier to just go to the cinema and book two tickets with all your self-respect intact than showing the world that you are aware about the conditioning characteristics of egg whites.

They even host polls!
By what year do you think Salman Khan will go completely bald?
A.2012
B.2020
C.2200
D.Cannot Decide
I mean, give me a break! People should be more concerned about the hair on their own respective heads. They pay thrice the amount required for a normal SMS to answer such pointless polls. What is with the “cannot decide” option? What do they do with the database of people who are in two minds about the exact prediction of Salman Khan’s baldness?

When they are not making up contests that always seem to defy logic, they play Himesh Reshammiya every thirty minutes. If you try to switch the channel you get Himesh bhai at every alternate station.
You have the option of making every new song your dialer tone (This is a novel concept where instead of the usual ring-ring people get to listen to a song when they call you. With due respect to Sai baba bhajans sung by Anoop Jalota, Sanskrit Couplets in Lata Mangeshkar’s voice, Mind Numbing Rock songs and all the omnipresent nasal Nusrat Fateh Ali khan sound-alikes, ring-ring sounds much more melodious sometimes.:P)

It is like the Radio no longer plays for the common man.
It plays for the film producers who get us close to nausea playing their mediocre albums over and over two weeks before the movie starts showing.
It plays for Supermarkets with surreptitious discount schemes
It plays for the cell phone companies that make idiots out of innocent customers
It plays for wannabe RJs who dream of sitting inside the cool studio wearing donut shaped headphones
Sometimes when you think of a song and like telepathy, the radio plays it out the next moment! I used to savor such moments but with this new generation of avaricious and exceedingly daft radio stations I don’t find an intuitive connection with the Radio anymore. =(

Perennial Light

Darkness is just the absence of Light
It cannot come on its own
It has to wait for the Sun to climb down the Horizon
And then it gets to Rule
At the mercy of the Sun
A little longer in the cold Winters
And a little less in the warmer Summers
It can overwhelm, mislead and paralyze
But only until Light returns.


PS: This is the result of a very long association with Osho books written on the principles of an ancient Indian erudite, mystic and philosopher Patanjali.
Oh yeah, and for all those who think I cannot keep it short, “=P” this is for you.
And with that, I have managed to completely ruin my “spiritual aura” :)

How I read A Painting.

This is a painting by one of my very good friends Neha. I believe that paintings are like books. This is an Abstract so I have made an effort to read it using my pitiful knowledge of Art and my profound perception :P
I congratulate her for getting out masterpieces one after the other.=)

This Painting is aptly called Rhythm.
It uses vibrant colors together to create a symphony.
It is warm, happy and upbeat and when she painted it she must have been in a very happy state of mind ( I know this from before =P She had just fallen in love)
It reflects natural balance,music and happiness.
We find similar association of distinct yet different elements coming together and making something better and beautiful around us.

This made me think of a really strong woman. With many different states of mind coming together to make her irresistible.
There is this arch in the center that made me think of Hobbes. As it looks like a tiger's tail. =) So I found it a little eccentric as well.
Like a brown paper bag full of candies and chocolates. When you reach for one inside you never know what might come out. Dark chocolate,tangy candy or a snicker bar!
Unpredictable and irresistible just like a continuous quartet!

Hats off to you Nuts! =)

Boredom! :)

Why do we get bored?
I guess every second someone across this lopsided world must be saying “Jeez! I am bored!”
It is such a common feeling happening to every race and every age group with the same frustrating intensity. Like Love, Boredom triggers off the same chemicals inside every human brain and even when they say it in a hundred different languages, they mean the same thing. I am bored.

Like when you call those call centers because your broadband doesn’t work and they ask you to press everything from one to nine. Then they put you on an automated “Your call is important to us. Please wait, you will be attended shortly” and promote their other (inefficient) services while you draw doodles on a scrapbook. It is so boring. It sets my heart rate to the lowest ever. Even meditation fails to have that kind of effect on me.
What is the point in telling someone that their call is important to you while you make them hold the line for half an hour?
It is like an unfaithful husband telling his wife that he loves her while he is getting sun tanned in Hawaii with his secretary.

Or sometimes when you watch Jennifer Aniston or Kareena Kapoor with long, streaked tresses and you suddenly make up your mind about having that kind of hair on your shoulders. You imagine how you would accessorize it, wear invisible plastic clips or just mess it up sometimes for that out-of-bed-look. The moment it reaches my shoulders I get bored. I don’t know the reason but it never goes beyond that! All my fantasies are always chopped off as my talkative hairdresser talks about Indian Classical Music.

Then we have those 24X7 news channels. All their frenzy has the exact opposite effect on me. I get bored. They are so desperate for news; sometimes I think they create news by paying people who want to make a few easy bucks. They would have a correspondent covering a dying dog on a crossroad and the whole country would know about it. They would zoom in on it’s emaciated body and ribcage and the channel will observe a minute of silence for the dog’s well being but no one will pick it up and take it to a veterinarian or even leave it alone to die on its own. I guess they should not commit 24 hours of news. How can you expect something interesting to happen all the time? Then no one would ever get bored. =)

Going to the bank is boring. Waiting outside public toilets in cinemas is boring. Waiting for people who show up late and are not guilty about it is boring. Women in their fifties talking about osteoporosis is boring. Men’s talking about the share market over a glass of whiskey is boring. Adamant French restaurants serving people who cannot understand a word of French is boring.
I am just glad I wrote all this down. =)
It puts my life in a better perspective!