Blank verse. Written November, 2004.
The spring-ridden sunshine
Does depart.
Dying footfalls lose themselves
In the Fall of the rising winds...
As are lost the leaves
In windfall.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
On the gradual advent of a UIUC summer
Blank verse. Written April, 2004.
Summer is upon us
Again
Barren branches bursting buds
And leaves and flowers
need hide no more.
Yellow stars peep out
of a grass-grounded sky
stretched out on Beckman Quad
Was this that Van Gogh saw
and painted Starry Night? *
White and pink blossoms clothe the trees
And winter dies...
Blessed to have a shroud
So exquisite...
* Note: This reference is not to the more famous Van Gogh painting Starry Nights, rather it is to Starry Night over the Rhone
Summer is upon us
Again
Barren branches bursting buds
And leaves and flowers
need hide no more.
Yellow stars peep out
of a grass-grounded sky
stretched out on Beckman Quad
Was this that Van Gogh saw
and painted Starry Night? *
White and pink blossoms clothe the trees
And winter dies...
Blessed to have a shroud
So exquisite...
* Note: This reference is not to the more famous Van Gogh painting Starry Nights, rather it is to Starry Night over the Rhone
Musings on a New Year
An attempt at (pseudo) scientific humor...written in the aftermath of my first new year in Urbana-Champaign.
Musings on a New Year
(Some thoughts at the dawn of 2004)
Musings on a New Year
(Some thoughts at the dawn of 2004)
As the calendar turned another leaf to 2004, I was asked by two different friends on two different occasions whether I had done something special on New Year's Eve. I hadn't. Not being inclined to give such a plain and simple response, I sought refuge in a poem by the Hindi poet Agyeya which runs: 'Ek din, aur dinon sa, Aayu ka ek baras le chala gaya' (A day, like any other, took away a year of life in its wake). Though the poet had originally intended these lines for birthdays, they are equally relevant for New Year's Day or any other anniversarial occasion.
I have always liked these particular lines. However this time I somehow got about analyzing them. How can a day take away a year? At least within a single relativistic frame of reference, that is not possible. (Of course, if that day were spent in Brahma-Lok (*see footnote), or in a space-ship approaching the speed of light, countless years might pass by on Earth...but that is beyond the point.)
But let us ignore this argument. We assume that the day by itself does not take away a year. It is a placeholder for the year. But why? Time is essentially a continuum. New Year's Day, or any other anniversary, is an attempt at discretizing it. According to Nyquist's sampling theorem, if a periodic signal has frequency f, then one need only sample it at a frequency 2f to completely re-construct it. Now we are sampling with time period 1 year, but what actually is the frequency of Time?
Well, if one believes in the Oscillating Universe theory, one might say that the frequency of Time is 1/(time_period_of oscillation), as Time must begin anew after each oscillation (must it?). If so, aren't we sampling it a bit too often? But I happened to grow up believing the Big Bang Theory. In that case, Time began with the Big Bang. But is it periodic? (Alas...I regret my ignorance of Cosmology!).
I believe there is a view in the field of thermodynamics that the progress of Time is synonymous with the increase in the entropy of the universe. Thus Time will reach its maximum when the entropy of the universe reaches its maximum. Once that state is reached, Time will become meaningless as there would be nothing to mark its passage (This argument is derived from an essay by Isaac Asimov). Ah...physicists should have taken into account that we could always keep up the New Year tradition even in an absolutely disordered and chaotic universe, and thereby mark the passage of Time! Of course that can only happen if not everyone is like me.
But once again, things are getting intractable, so let us change track. The immediate question is: why do we want to discretize Time? The reason is the same as the reason why we digitize an essentially analog world! Analog information can take any of an infinite number of values from a continuum. Digitization reduces that to a finite set of discrete values, and makes things much more convenient. So we talk of years, months, days, hours, seconds in daily life, as this granularity is enough for normal purposes. But truly, what we call one year is actually an infinite number of infinitesimal units of Time. But by an argument similar to that of Zeno of Elea (**see footnote), how can we live through an infinite number of time units in a finite time (1 year)? So that means that the passage of Time is an illusion. And in that case, any celebration of the passage of Time contributes to the perpetuation of the illusion.
Alas, we poor mortals are caught in the grip of Maya (***see footnote)! Hence the New Year's Day tradition shall continue, despite being all wrong! In the same vein, mischievous people like me will continue to mix fact and fallacy to arrive at conclusions like this one!
*In Hindu Mythology it is said that even one second in Brahma-Lok (the abode of the God Brahma) is equivalent to many Mahamanavantras(aeons) on Earth. There is a story of a King who visited Brahma for a day, and returned back to find that generations had passed by and a new Yug (age) had begun on Earth.
**Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher who belonged to the Eleatic school. He argued that all motion was an illusion and that the universe was essentially static. His argument was: "Suppose you want to shut a door. Before you fully shut it, you will have to half shut it. Before you half-shut it, you will have to shut it a quarter, and before that an eighth, and so on, ad infinitum. But how can you move through an infinite number of distances in finite time? Hence all motion must be an illusion."
***Maya essentially means illusion.
Almost...but not quite...
This was written during the summer of 2004, which I spent in Schaumburg, IL as an intern at Motorola.
Almost...but not quite...
(Musings from Schaumburg)
From the window of my lab in Motorola-Schaumburg, I can see the clouds suspended from a child's crayon sky. I never cease to remark to myself that here in the U.S. the clouds seem much lower...closer...than they did in India. Latitude perhaps...or an illusion caused by some atmospheric effect? But it makes the sky seem so much more accessible...I could almost reach out and touch some of those grey-streaked bales...almost...but not quite...
Ah...there is so much in life that one could almost do...but never quite manages to. The thin line between almost and quite masks the great divide between imagination and reality...between seeking and acquiring...between reaching the last step and taking the plunge.
And thus it is...when I see the tranquil drift of the clouds...or when on a day of fine weather, I walk through trees under a cheerful sky, hearing the birds, and feeling the breeze...I could almost let go of every other wish for the beauty of that moment. And thus it is...when working on my machine, headphones on, I hear the soulful strain of music and feel an acute, almost painful consciousness of something wanting to find utterance...my fingers could almost work themselves into a rhythm less mundane than that of working the keyboard...ah, I could almost create music myself. And daily, in a thousand such ways I could almost step beyond daily existence...almost...but not quite...
Vartika Bhandari
June 27, 2004
January 10, 2007: Today I happened to read Yann Martel's short story: The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton. The story resonated with me, and with the sense of "almost...but not quite". I shall repeat here a line from Joseph Conrad's Almayer's Folly that Martel initially quotes as an instance of perfect punctuation, and later ends the story with: "Do you hear? I had it all there; so; within reach of my hand."
Almost...but not quite...
(Musings from Schaumburg)
From the window of my lab in Motorola-Schaumburg, I can see the clouds suspended from a child's crayon sky. I never cease to remark to myself that here in the U.S. the clouds seem much lower...closer...than they did in India. Latitude perhaps...or an illusion caused by some atmospheric effect? But it makes the sky seem so much more accessible...I could almost reach out and touch some of those grey-streaked bales...almost...but not quite...
Ah...there is so much in life that one could almost do...but never quite manages to. The thin line between almost and quite masks the great divide between imagination and reality...between seeking and acquiring...between reaching the last step and taking the plunge.
And thus it is...when I see the tranquil drift of the clouds...or when on a day of fine weather, I walk through trees under a cheerful sky, hearing the birds, and feeling the breeze...I could almost let go of every other wish for the beauty of that moment. And thus it is...when working on my machine, headphones on, I hear the soulful strain of music and feel an acute, almost painful consciousness of something wanting to find utterance...my fingers could almost work themselves into a rhythm less mundane than that of working the keyboard...ah, I could almost create music myself. And daily, in a thousand such ways I could almost step beyond daily existence...almost...but not quite...
Vartika Bhandari
June 27, 2004
January 10, 2007: Today I happened to read Yann Martel's short story: The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton. The story resonated with me, and with the sense of "almost...but not quite". I shall repeat here a line from Joseph Conrad's Almayer's Folly that Martel initially quotes as an instance of perfect punctuation, and later ends the story with: "Do you hear? I had it all there; so; within reach of my hand."
Circles of Technology
This attempt at humorous writing drawing on my undergraduate days at IIT Kanpur was made while studying for exams during my first semester at UIUC.
This is a chronicle of the Circles of Technology. I sometimes wonder at the human pre-occupation with circles. Borges wrote of the circular ruins consumed by fire, and I, on a much more humble note, write of the circles of technology. What is more, so many of us end up going round in circles all our life. Perhaps it is because the circle does not have a beginning or an end that you can pinpoint in space. The endpoints are indeterminate and so you are always in the middle -- a notion both consoling and disquieting at the same time...but I am digressing here. My true intent in making this effort is to tell the tale of the great circles of technology.
I graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (good old IITK for me) in 2002, and spent another year there dabbling in research. The four years I spent there as a student were fairly linear. Well, maybe a crest here, and a trough there, but still...The circles appeared in my last year there, when I had shed off the mantle of student. My tryst with them began in January 2003 when my friend Nupur and I travelled to IIT Madras for the National Conference on Communications. IITM has a fairly big campus, and much of it looks like a jungle. Deer roam around like cattle on a town street, even foraging for food in garbage-bins (I missed out on a potential photograph of this nature and regret it to this day). As IITK has its peacocks and monkeys (and at one time Neelgai too), IITM has its deer. Of course, to be fair, IITB too has its leopard, or at least stories of it!
The centre of the IITM campus is the Gajendra Circle, so named because of the elephantine statues that stand there in dignified guardianship (or so I imagine) of IITM. In common parlance, no one calls it Gajendra Circle. It is always GC. When we first heard "GC", we thought it stood for Great Circle (its dimensions lend strength to this belief), and recalled our middle school geography with some fondness. We soon discovered our folly though. In any case, the GC was well laid-out and had an aesthetically pleasing appearance. And if there was anything (apart from the deer) we regretted not having in IITK, it was a central nodal point of this kind. Our own "SAC Chauraha" is rather unimposing to look at. For the rest, we returned to IITK with a smug "our campus is better" notion!
I think that around this time, the IITK authorities also managed to figure out that we indeed lacked something IITM had -- a circle. And how could we be left bereft of a circle -- that mystical device of philosophical musing. And so they decided to get one.
The choice of location had to be the "SAC Chauraha". But the poor chauraha had not been conceived for such grandiose designs. So a "great circle" was out of question. Instead one fine day, a small structure appeared plum in the middle of the intersection. It was a cylindrical shell, made of brick, and painted white on the outside, while the interior was filled with sand. The ostensible reason for the circle was given as traffic regulation, and an SIS guard with a "danda" (stick) was deputed to man it. I need not regale the reader with the aesthetics of this "circle". I shall merely quote Coleridge's (supposedly rather crude) lines from 'Christabel': "A sight to dream of, not to tell!"
What the circle still lacked was a name. The authorities had forgotten about it, or so it seemed to us. But soon the name, or rather names, began to reveal themselves. During the day, the guard on duty used to relieve his hands by planting his "danda" in the sand of the circle. At night, a stray dog or two would find a place to sleep on the sand. And the significance of these two phenomena could not be lost on the fertile imaginations of Nupur and myself. Why of course...the name had to be DC -- Danda Circle by day, and Dog Circle by night...what else!
And then, the clever inventiveness of the authorities became clear to us. Hey...they had meant it all along...the danda and the dog...so that IITK could boast of DC. IITM had GC, but IITK had DC! After all, IITK couldn't do with just any other *C. The institute was established with the assistance of a consortium of the top ten US universities. So we had to follow their tradition. The US has a DC as its capital. We would have our own DC as heart of the campus.
Ah, such exquisite attention to detail! My heart brimmed over with admiration for the imaginativeness of the IITK authorities. What a boon for IITK! A circle...a circle of technology (the "Technology Circle", the IIT Kharagpur people would suggest, but I prefer the more general terminology)...a circle to match that already existent at IITM! And instead of the elephant, we have the dog, the most faithful companion of humans amongst animals, and that too live!!!
And the circle has proved its worth, by managing to arouse a spark of creativity in me. It has inspired me enough to write down my circular thoughts at a time when I (now a student again) ought to be studying for my final exams.
Vartika Bhandari
Dec. 12, 2003
Urbana-Champaign
This is a chronicle of the Circles of Technology. I sometimes wonder at the human pre-occupation with circles. Borges wrote of the circular ruins consumed by fire, and I, on a much more humble note, write of the circles of technology. What is more, so many of us end up going round in circles all our life. Perhaps it is because the circle does not have a beginning or an end that you can pinpoint in space. The endpoints are indeterminate and so you are always in the middle -- a notion both consoling and disquieting at the same time...but I am digressing here. My true intent in making this effort is to tell the tale of the great circles of technology.
I graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (good old IITK for me) in 2002, and spent another year there dabbling in research. The four years I spent there as a student were fairly linear. Well, maybe a crest here, and a trough there, but still...The circles appeared in my last year there, when I had shed off the mantle of student. My tryst with them began in January 2003 when my friend Nupur and I travelled to IIT Madras for the National Conference on Communications. IITM has a fairly big campus, and much of it looks like a jungle. Deer roam around like cattle on a town street, even foraging for food in garbage-bins (I missed out on a potential photograph of this nature and regret it to this day). As IITK has its peacocks and monkeys (and at one time Neelgai too), IITM has its deer. Of course, to be fair, IITB too has its leopard, or at least stories of it!
The centre of the IITM campus is the Gajendra Circle, so named because of the elephantine statues that stand there in dignified guardianship (or so I imagine) of IITM. In common parlance, no one calls it Gajendra Circle. It is always GC. When we first heard "GC", we thought it stood for Great Circle (its dimensions lend strength to this belief), and recalled our middle school geography with some fondness. We soon discovered our folly though. In any case, the GC was well laid-out and had an aesthetically pleasing appearance. And if there was anything (apart from the deer) we regretted not having in IITK, it was a central nodal point of this kind. Our own "SAC Chauraha" is rather unimposing to look at. For the rest, we returned to IITK with a smug "our campus is better" notion!
I think that around this time, the IITK authorities also managed to figure out that we indeed lacked something IITM had -- a circle. And how could we be left bereft of a circle -- that mystical device of philosophical musing. And so they decided to get one.
The choice of location had to be the "SAC Chauraha". But the poor chauraha had not been conceived for such grandiose designs. So a "great circle" was out of question. Instead one fine day, a small structure appeared plum in the middle of the intersection. It was a cylindrical shell, made of brick, and painted white on the outside, while the interior was filled with sand. The ostensible reason for the circle was given as traffic regulation, and an SIS guard with a "danda" (stick) was deputed to man it. I need not regale the reader with the aesthetics of this "circle". I shall merely quote Coleridge's (supposedly rather crude) lines from 'Christabel': "A sight to dream of, not to tell!"
What the circle still lacked was a name. The authorities had forgotten about it, or so it seemed to us. But soon the name, or rather names, began to reveal themselves. During the day, the guard on duty used to relieve his hands by planting his "danda" in the sand of the circle. At night, a stray dog or two would find a place to sleep on the sand. And the significance of these two phenomena could not be lost on the fertile imaginations of Nupur and myself. Why of course...the name had to be DC -- Danda Circle by day, and Dog Circle by night...what else!
And then, the clever inventiveness of the authorities became clear to us. Hey...they had meant it all along...the danda and the dog...so that IITK could boast of DC. IITM had GC, but IITK had DC! After all, IITK couldn't do with just any other *C. The institute was established with the assistance of a consortium of the top ten US universities. So we had to follow their tradition. The US has a DC as its capital. We would have our own DC as heart of the campus.
Ah, such exquisite attention to detail! My heart brimmed over with admiration for the imaginativeness of the IITK authorities. What a boon for IITK! A circle...a circle of technology (the "Technology Circle", the IIT Kharagpur people would suggest, but I prefer the more general terminology)...a circle to match that already existent at IITM! And instead of the elephant, we have the dog, the most faithful companion of humans amongst animals, and that too live!!!
And the circle has proved its worth, by managing to arouse a spark of creativity in me. It has inspired me enough to write down my circular thoughts at a time when I (now a student again) ought to be studying for my final exams.
Vartika Bhandari
Dec. 12, 2003
Urbana-Champaign
First Post
I created this blog primarily to move the web-location of some random self-written stuff that I had earlier made available on my grad school webpage. Possibly some new stuff might get added to it as well.
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