Disillusioned

Sister Joy walked into the classroom during the second period post lunch with a bundle of report cards and a cane. Third round test results were to be announced this day. All the students of Class IX 'B' waited with bated breath for Sister to announce who got the third rank this time. Shrishti and Reena owned  the top two ranks anyway. Suhas got the third rank. After Sister gave away the report cards, cane did the talking with the flunked students, naughty guys and the bullies of the class.


"If you had got two more marks, you would have secured the first place" Reena said. "That's ok. We have both been there, missing out on the first rank by a small margin since Class VI when I joined this school", said Shrishti. Reena smiled as the two friends were walking back home that evening.


After a few days Reena suddenly stopped talking to Shrishti. Well, it was not something new that Reena went on a stint of silence. It happened once in a while. She would initiate conversation after a couple of days.

Three weeks passed. Reena was still in no mood to talk to Shrishti.  It was strange to see them sit beside each other on the same bench in the classroom and not talk to each other for so long! After much prodding from Shrishti, Reena finally gave the reason for cutting-off friendship.

"You told Lekha about your badminton tournament first! And I get to know of your selection from her? You always told me everything first. I.. I'm your best friend!"
"You are upset over that small issue, Reena?"
"You've been selected for the National Badminton Championship and I get to know that from somebody else. Is this a small issue?"
"Oh yaar, she was there while PT Sir informed me of tournament... All right, I'm sorry. Let's get over this."
Reena shook her head in dissent.


It was the National Badminton Championship final. Shrishti had to face fierce competition to reach here. Keerthi from Bhopal was the other finalist. The final match was a tough one. The audience had their eyes fixed on the shuttlecock flying between the halves of the court, waiting to see who would make the first mistake. After a long battle Shrishti won the match. Everyone was cheering. But Reena was not there.

On the way back home, clutching her tropy, and leaning against her father's arm, with her voice choking Shrishti said "I thought she would come, daddy".

Calculus with Analytic Geometry by Joe Repka

Legend says that an ancient king was so pleased with the new game of chess that he offered a huge reward to its inventor. The wise man asked the king to put one grain of wheat on the first square of the chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, and so on, doubling each time. 

Calculate the amount of wheat on the sixty-fourth square, assuming a grain of wheat weighs 50mg and bearing in mind that the annual worldwide wheat harvest is about 500 metric tonnes. 
Incidentally, the phrase "check mate" is apparently a corruption of 'shah matt" which in old Persian means "the king is dead".
(Take this problem as an exercise. You'll be astonished by the results. Btw, don't forget to use common units of measure)

This was an introduction to the chapter Logarithms and Exponential Functions in the book Calculus with Analytic Geometry by Joe Repka. This is an awesome book for Engineering Mathematics with detailed explanations. Numerical examples are used to illustrate concepts (unlike the books engineering students are made to study from in which the sole aim is to arrive at a solution without any concrete foundation). If you are interested in studying calculus this is a great book to start off with.

Some of the interesting intros I found in the book are as follows :

Limits and Continuity

Aristotle declared that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, in proportion to their weight, and for centuries the world believed him.
Finally Galileo showed otherwise, reputedly by dropping a cannonball and a musket ball from the tower of Pisa. He is often regarded as the father of experimental science (Aristotle purported to have conducted similar experiments, but presumably never did). 
Galileo's work lead to Newton's study of gravitation, which in turn led to the development of calculus.

Derivatives

Newton studied gravity, reputedly after watching an apple fall from a tree. Combining this work with his recently developed techniques of calculus, he was able to show how the laws of gravity explained the motions of the planets. This had been a great mystery, and his solution established both Newton's reputation and the importance of calculus.

Integration

To find the area of a circle, we tried approximating by a number of triangles and adding up their areas. Then we took a limit as the number of triangles goes to infinity.
To find the area of a region enclosed by a curve, we approximate the region by a number of rectangles and add up their areas. If we use narrower rectangles, the approximation should be more accurate. The exact area is found by taking  a limit as the rectangles get narrower and narrower.

Series

A hare trying to pass a tortoise must first catch up half the distance between them. Then he must catch up half the remaining distance. Then he must catch up half the remaining distance, and so  on.
The argument known as Zeno's paradox, suggests that the hare can never overtake the tortoise.

Vector Calculus

The Mobius strip challenges our intuitive ideas about surfaces. Take a strip of paper, make a single twist in it and tape it into a loop. With a pencil draw a line down the center of the strip without crossing the edge of the paper. You will find that the pencil has returned to the back of the paper. For this reason people say that the Mobius strip has only one side. 


If you have performed this experiment, you might like to try another by taking a pair of scissors and cutting along the line down the middle of the strip of paper...


Current Song:
Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

Muktha Muktha

Mr. T N Seetharam (TNS) is a popular personality in the Kannada TV industry. His serials revolve around tender emotions, valuing relationships and addressing social issues; everyday life that you and I can relate to is  brought out beautifully. The language in his work is pristine and pronunciation is impeccable.

Of all the serials he has written and directed I could catch only Mayamruga, Muktha and Muktha Muktha, not the entire thing though. There are a certain  characters common in all his serials. Here, I'm writing mainly about Muktha Muktha with a few roles from the other series. 

There is no mother-in-law or daughter-in-law or anyone contriving to wreck some poor soul's life, unlike in many other soap operas on Indian television;

there is an irresponsible and extremely lazy head-of-the-family, who, if just keeps quiet, will save the members of the family from a lot of trouble;

a mischievous kid who reminds you of your own childhood;

a young scientist who makes path breaking discovery;

a nagging wife;

a young man who is proficient in Indian classical music and takes up floriculture as his profession rather than sell off his suburban land to real estate sharks;

a young man who is in search of God; becomes a sanyasi; later falls in love with a woman. Then thinks he need not abstain from nuptial vows and responsibilities to seek God;

a highly qualified young woman who returns to her motherland from London after her father's demise to fight for the rights of farmers; to protest against the exploitation of farmers by the industrialists.

a nutty lawyer (played by TNS himself) who leaves no stone unturned to get justice done to the weak of the society. To express his distress, frustration and even happiness, he recites corresponding verses from poems;

and a foolish and foolishly religious, superstitious typist to the eccentric lawyer.

There is a heartborken girl who focuses all her disappointment toward preparing  for Civil Services exams and does become an IAS officer. Being an upright officer, she invites the ministers' wrath and faces them with confidence that frustrates the nefarious politicians.

There is a suave but wily politician who humiliates people in an acceptable language.

There is this highly educated, audacious and stylish son of the Chief Minister who deals with illegal money in the figures of crores; his elder brother works in the field of media; earns 17K per month and is content with it.


The riveting part of the serial is the court room battles, especially the murder cases. The IPC sections quoted, legal procedures, Supportive and Discrediting Cross Examination and forensic report explanation are all technically perfect. There is simply no nonsense.

The Love Stories

1. Girl falls in love with this guy for his ideals  and principles. They get married. When the guy starts living in the present world of practicality, she walks out of the marriage with dignity.

2. There is a young IPS officer who remonstrates in Gandhi style to get his mother to agree to his marriage with the woman he is love with. The mother disapproves of their relationship and reasons that the girl is no match to her son; she reckons the problems they might have to face in the future due to the girl's  social status. If you are the kind who believe love must triumph, chahe duniya bhaad me jaaye, you might get angry at her being the thorn in the flesh, but you will not hate her. By the way, the mother actually respects and admires the girl for her straight-forwardness and very high self respect!

3. Childhood friends fall in love. Get engaged. There is tender romance between our love birds even while the members of the family are looking. But the girl gets the guy married to her best friend due to various reasons. The three still remain best of friends. The way this is portrayed makes you think this was pragmatic even though you might get a heartache.


4. Girl is hopelessly in love with this guy. She gets married to him against her father's advice. It turns out the guy is a loser. He physically and verbally abuses her. When she cannot tolerate the torture anymore, she returns to her parents'. After some days the guy comes to his disillusioned wife. A few loving words and a bit of pleading is enough for her to go back to the husband. Then the abuse continues...


PostScript : Muktha means Freedom
**
Just to let you know, this is the only serial I watch on Indian entertainment channels.

*****

Current Song:
Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down

I watched the world float to the
Dark side of the moon...

...If I go crazy then will you still
Call me Superman...

What's 'not' wrong with Sri - A reminiscience

"No! I'm not in love. Neither have I a crush on anyone! Please! I'm not going mad either. Very much sane " That's what I told Mom yesterday when she asked me what the matter was, after noticing that I'm smiling to myself quite often since the time I came home from Mysore.

Why was I all happy and smiling? I was just reminiscing our college days and those good times spent with friends. We were there in college just last year. Four years flew by and we didn't realise. I wished we had one more semester!

I have got a bunch of super-cool friends. We were a group of six girls always seen in a cluster. We were called the gang of girls (GoG). Outside this group too I had a few close friends.

Different sets of my friends : GoG of course, a close friend in a different college  with whom I shared all that is going on in my life; a blogger friend who, until he started blogging, I did not know much about other than that that he was a nerd; a witty and genius friend who is very quick with brilliant answers; a live-wire friend who is on a high all the time; a quotation group - sharing thought provoking quotes; and a Nat Geo/Discovery/History friend with whom I talked about the programmes on those channels with just about twenty minutes to go before the semester exam paper started! (have almost lost contact with him now...)

College days are the best days of a person's life. Bisi-bele-bath from our college canteen, a view of the Indian Air Force Base from my classroom and the Dorniers hovering over our campus made it even more special for me.

*****

This particular incident was hilarious. College reopens for our eighth semester. Our lecturer asks a guy in class if he met with his project guide. He says he did. She says " I am your guide". !!

*****

Current Song :
Kitni der tak from the movie Delhi Heights

Resplendence

We are traveling by a bus. I'm sitting on a window-seat; dad is seated two rows ahead. I don't know why we are travelling. I do not ask dad either. I'm looking out the window.

The rift in the cloud is slowly growing wider, making way for the sun rays to reach us. I see only hills by the roadside; trees with green, yellow, saffron and red leaves on the hills. What a splendour! It has just stopped raining this evening here; I feel the moisture in the air. I put my head out of the window to feel the cool breeze and the mild sunlight caress my face. It's sheer joy! Can I ask the driver to pull over so I could savour the surroundings in entirety?

Then, someone rings the doorbell and I wake up from my afternoon slumber. Oh man, it was such a nice dream. The rankle-r is a guy from the bank. He came for ID verification to issue a Titanium credit card. Why today? Couldn't he have come at least after a while??

Even about ten days ago this bank spoilt my perfect evening (of staying-home
+ playing-music + watching-the-rains + and-sipping-coffee) when the bank representative came down to our place for signatures. I don't know how the frequencies of my idea of a good time and their timing of contacting me synchronise!

*****

The Credit Card Saga

The frequency of phone calls from this bank increased since three months informing me of the Titanium card I can avail. They called from different branches; so I could not identify the numbers to ignore the calls. I had been politely declining their offer till the manager, who had helped me with my account, called up. He had taught me, the new kid on the block, the fundamentals of banking. Upon learning that I was about to embark on my first job, he had advised me about investment too. Then I heard myself say "OK, Sir".

Then the application and verification process started. I informed them that I quit my job, and I'm currently unemployed. One person from the bank updated my employment status to 'self-employed'!!

I have received five verification phone calls asking the same questions - Date of birth ? Own house/rented? Do you own a vehicle? Job title? (to which my answer has been "I do not work with XYZ anymore. I will not work anywhere else for some more time since I have not been relieved yet".) And, they are happy that I'm still XYZ's employee on paper and say they'll process the application quickly. (before I'm officially unemployed? ;)  )

Next time I get a call from this bank, when they start the conversation with "you had applied for a credit card..." I'll say "I did not apply. You were hell bent on giving me one!". To the job title question my answer will be " Whatever they have in No Man's Land!"

*****

Current Song

Secrets in Mirrors by Spitalfield


Lets take our time
We'll make it worth the while
(How long? How long?)
Speed up and then slow down
but never out of style...