All Are Mathematics..!

"Ooooh God... You made me a widow, now who is there to take care of me and children?...Akaaash, Anu... Your father left us...! " The loud wailing of Seethamma accompanied the sound made by the pooja vessel dropped from her hands. She had just returned from the routine morning visit to temple when she noticed the awkward pause in which Rajagopal master, her husband, was lying on an easy chair, head backward, motionless and eyes closed. The newspaper that he was reading lied on the floor and the cup of tea that Seethamma gave him before she left home was still on the teapoy, cold and probably a graveyard for some unfortunate flies and gave her the notion that she has indeed become a widow.

Aakash and Anu, the former wrapped in a towel, with shaving cream on one half of the face and numerous cuts and scratches on the other and latter with a piece of bread toast inside the mouth and rest on her hands, came rushing to the scene accompanying the chorus. Chaos prevailed for some moment. Then Aakash noticed a slight movement on the dead man's body. "He is alive!" 

Ten minutes and many embarrasing scenes later, Master sat with a hot cup of tea on his easy chair. Seethamma was faning him  with a magazine although the ceiling fan was revolving full speed on the cool December morning. Master was a retired mathematics teacher from a government school, whose fame had spread throughout the neighbourhood and even in nearby villages. He was considered a pious person, dedicated to his work. His students regarded him more as an artist. Artist of numbers! Because he was a mathemtical wizard. No puzzle was unsolvable to him. In quiz programs, he used to give puzzles designed himselves! He was a winner of several national and state awards that are usually given to dedicated teachers of the country.

"I feel tired Seetha. I feel numbers are leaving me, and instead a vacuum is developing inside. I don't think I will ever have the power to do a calculation rest of my life."

"What happened to you? Are you unwell? We will go to hospital immediately, Aakash call a taxi." 

Maths was the life for Master. He sees, interprets and analyse world through numbers and calculations. If he feels tired of numbers, it was something really bad. That thought made a void inside Seethamma's mind. She had given up hope. 

"But what happened?"

Master slowly picked up the paper, and said in a tired voice, "8 thousand crore rupees was devoured by Kalmadi and team during  Commonwealth Games, bribes by truckers was 25 thousand crores, bribes for housing loans was 11 thousand crores and 2G spectrum scam amounts to 2 lakh crore. I am even unable to imagine these numbers, I, who could solve riddles in seconds and calculate the most complex puzzles in minutes cannot even count how many zeroes precede the first digit if all these and other minor scams uncovered last year are totalled. And I feel more humbled by the enourmity of  the grant total of all those scams that is left unfound. I feel bogged down by zeroes all around me."

He descended into a deep slumber, dejected....

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*"All are mathematics" title is literally translated from Malayalam phrase "Ellam kanakaa.." a desperate curse when all hope is lost. 

**Special gratitude to Rediff.com for the statistics.  

Being Proactive aka Prevention IS Cure..

"Mr X has ideas, see how he always find a way out in situations!" The voice of security guy whispered in my ear.

A bit of background info. Mr X is the senior manager of the understaffed maintanence department in the place I work. Right then he was standing in the middle of shop floor, giving instructions by sound and actions to some 15 odd workers and engineers, who stood surrounding him. He gave the appearence of the conductor of an orchestra, trying to put his musical thoughts into vocal notes from musicians around him. Tomorrow we have to despatch an important consignment and one crucial machine in the line broke down. His effort was to start the production line by combining some other machines of an adjacent line. He connected the machines by conveyours and made workers to stand in junctions to relay the work from one conveyour end to next. Mindboggling!

I replied to the security guy in whisper, " Mr X has got some really cool ideas. But if atleast some six months back, he had recruited competitive personnel, enforced regular preventive maintenance schedules and ensured the availability of machine spares in case of emergencies, we would never had faced this situation in first case."

Enough of rambling... enjoy these great songs from Amar Prem. (the kind of movie that they can never dream of making these days.) When compared to the acting calibre of Khanna and Tagore, all Khans and Roshans are nowhere in the picture..

Amazing Live theater

Watched a play on a live theater. An amazing experiance! Better than movies if the handling is good. The language was a bit incomprehensible, but the acting made up for that. The way the stage is treated, according to situation, the speed in which props appear and disappear and the way actors move on the stage without goofing up... Just awesome to watch. Add some apt lighting and live music, it was an evening well spent.

The play was a comedy of misunderstandings between two couples, a pair of lovers and a pair of married couples. The lover gives his photo to  his girl. She faints on the way home and a doctor helps her. Doctor's wife sees them and misunderstands. The photo gets into her hands. What follows is a comedy of errors. The slapstick is just awesome, two servents were the best and they got a great deal of claps.  Although the story was a bit stale, the situations and the reactions from actors was what made the play special... Great effort...

Hayavadana: A Fable on Identity Crisis

Hayavadana (The man with face of a horse) is offspring of a princess and a white horse and he craves for completion, which is in his view, being a man. But Hayavadana and his quest for an identity is not the main story of Girish Karnad's epic play by the same name. It is just a backdrop or a subplot to tell a more bizarre story of three persons, a woman and two men, who is entangled in a web of desire, passion and identity crisis. Hayavadana is a story derived from Kathasarithsagara, retold by Thomas Mann and readapted for stage by Girish Karnad. So the story is a fusion of Eastern philosophy and Western sensibility. Thomas Mann goes beyond the riddle posed in Kathasarithsagara and gives it a practical answer. When it comes through Karnad, the story reaches a full circle, becoming a moral story or parable for Indian minds were a dispute of Eastern and Western identity is battled continuously.    

Suthradhara or Bhaagavata is about to tell the story of two friends who are in no way identical, when a man with a horse face, Hayavadana, asks him for help. He is tired of his dual identity and want to become a complete man. Bhaagavata advises him to go to Goddess Kaali and ask help. When Hayavadana goes off to a distant Kaali temple, the story starts. Devadatta and Kapila are very close friends, former a handsome but physically weak, Brahmin poet and latter a dark, but solidly built Kshatriya athlete. Devadatta falls in love with Padmini and Kapila goes to ask her hand for his friend. After meeting Padmini, Kapila is convinced that he is a better match for her than Devadatta, and falls in love, but the love for his friend takes upper hand. 

The marriage happens, but later Padmini becomes more attracted to well built Kapila, which burns Devadutta's jealous heart. While on a journey Padmini, humiliates Devadutta for his physical weakness, in-front of Kapila, and a grief stricken Devadutta chops off his own head going to a nearby Kaali temple. Kapila feels he is responsible and he too follows suit. Padmini when sees this cannot stop her grief and she too decides to commit suicide. Kaali appears and offers to give life back to the friends. She tells her to keep their respective heads on their bodies and gives life to them. 

Now due to confusion (or may be wantedly) , Padmini goofs up and exchanges the heads. When they are alive a fight starts between friends for Padmini. Both claim to be Devadatta. Finally a saint declares that head is the master of the body and allows the athletic body with Devadatta's head to take her. A dejected Kapila decides to spent the rest of his life in jungle. Kathasarithsagara stops here. But in the play, the story moves on. Within some time, to the horror of Padmini, again the bodies attains their former respective selves due to the lifestyle and marriage is in shambles. She dreams of Kapila and one day goes to meet him in jungle and claims her right to his now athletic body. A fight ensues and both friends kills each other. They are not even sure they killed each other or was it a suicide, because while striking other, they are killing their own body. Padmini makes a pyre for both and does Sati in it.

Whle Bhaagavatha concludes the play, Hayavadana comes again. Kaali gave much desired perfection to his body, but instead of making him a proper human, he is turned to a full horse! Bhaagavatha advises him to enjoy the completeness and don't fret, which Hayavadana obeys and gets off the stage with a loud neigh. 

Man tries to attain perfection, but never reaches it. It is the basis of all troubles. The play shows the importance of living the life, perfectly aware of ones defects and making the most of what one have to lead a happy life. In the starting there is a prayer to Lord Ganesha, and here Karnad question the answer given in Kathasarithsagara, that head is the master. Ganesha who is told to be the master of all knowledge, is having the head of an elephant. So, the answer given in the fable is incomplete and this play is an attempt to complete it. In this period of multiple identities, the play gives a strong message to confused souls.

The Confession:Typical Grisham

Just finished reading John Grisham's latest novel, The Confession. A legal thriller, like any of the typical Grisham novel, it also strongly endorses a political viewpoint. Actually this can be seen as the fictionalization of his first and the only non-fiction till date, The Innocent man, about death penalty and the necessity to abolish it. When you are writing a novel on a social injustice and at the same time want it to be a best seller, you have to tread a very conflicting path, and Grisham almost succeeds here. He does it by pacing the story adequately that the readers never complains of stagnancy and at the same time bringing the emotional conflicts of those involved to the fore front. Another good thing that I noticed is that, all blame is not put on a single shoulder. Each of the characters have their own reasons to behave the way they are and the responsibility is collective. 

A young man, accused of rape and murder of a cheerleader is facing death row and just a few days before execution, the real culprit, dying from cancer, comes out to save him. What follows is a race against time to convince lawyers, judges and politicians that a life is at stake and justice is to be violated. The title works in two levels. The only evidence against Drumm, the wrongfully accused black football star, is a confession that was beaten out of him. And even the true confession from Travis, the rapist, is not enough to acquit him of the crime he never done. 

My only complaint is about the racial angle given to the story. Was that required? It makes the setting too similar to Grisham's first novel A Time to Kill. But again by not making a happy ending story Grisham defies the frame of a commercial pulp novel and gives this one a realistic touch. And the real skill is in making the reader not feel any disappointment in the process.