Disclaimer

All the writings here are only my views and do not represent the views of Caltech or Princeton or any other site which hosts it.
Also, I no longer maintain this link actively. Please visit my blog site at carvakamusings.blogspot.com/ to read some of the recent stuff.

Grisha Perelman: The man who made Poincare Conjecture a Theorem

Free Speech in India

A review of Amartya Sen's Argumentative Indian
Ancient Indian Mathematics
MF Husain Controversy
Is the political left really different from the right ? (coming soon!)
Swades Review
The Dosa Case for Diversity!

Swades Review

I can't remember the last time a Bollywood movie has left such an impression on me. Probably it has never. Yes, I am talking about Swades, a recently released movie starring SRK as Mohan Bhargava along with Gayathri Joshi's (as Gita) debut.

The story is about a young Indian engineer working in NASA as the project manager of Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM). Flowing along the typical Bollywood traditions, he is a very successful eligible batchelor. One also sees Mohan getting a bit lost once in a while. Something is tormenting him. This becomes all the more clear when he learns that he has been offered a citizenship from the USA. Mohan suddenly remembers the person who brought him up, Kaveriamma. (Note: This scene reminds one of a typical desi man without a girlfriend :) The story really starts from here when Mohan decides to pay a visit and to persuade her to join him in America.

As Mohan makes his journey to a village called Charanpur and its subsequent incidents, Ashutosh brings to us the dual sides of life. On the one hand we have the romantic images of rural village life, the green fields, people greeting each other, women carrying water containers to large distances, philosophies of saints (an excellent role played by Makrand Deshpande), family values, culture & traditions. On the other hand we also have acute poverty, burden on women (note how the expression on Mohan's face changes when he greets women walking with mud pots to collect water), caste peoblems, lack of "freedom", child education problems etc. Ashutosh does an excellent job of keeping a very good balance on both sides as opposed to many other Bollywood movies where only the romantic rosy side is presented. The scenes where Mohan meets Haridasji (the poor farmer) and the kid selling water in railway stations are just hard hitting. Mohan is initialized into the "real" world when he meets Haridasji and the water he buys for 25 paise and drinks in many way symbolises his Baptism. Almost looks like Kaveriamma made the smart step and send Mohan to Haridasji to collect an overdue rent to bring about a change in him. After his trip, Mohan has already made his mind to come back after taking care of the GPM project he has already committed himself to. I have only heard from my friends from here who have made visits to rural places in India about the plight of many people there. But in Swades, you can really feel it.

Another great thing about the movie is that at no point is there any value judgement and unwanted criticizm made . Mohan decides to go back to India because he is happy there. Mohan's NASA friend stays in USA because he is happy there. Period. Ashutosh really did a good job of not potraying Mohan's NASA friend as an ignorant idiot. In the end, when Mohan says "I know what I'm going to gain" and "I am going places", it doesnt have any arrogant tone at all, rather a calm, happy, confident statement. Ashutosh never really tries to make the case that every NRI should go back to India and try to make a revolution.

The music, its great. Yet another magical beat from ARR. Especially "Yeh Jo Desh Hai Tera". Just stirs the Desi feeling in you. Please note the song subtitles. Its just amazing with a very Shakespearean touch.

To summarize, the message of the movie is quite clear: Go, light the bulb. Whatever that means. To Mohan, it meant going back to India and do something for the masses. The movie also tells you to do what your heart tells you to do. If it lies in your birthland, better be there. Have your heart at the right place.

Notes: The movie is inspired by a micryhydel project in Bilgaon. Check out http://www.aidindia.org/projects/illus/bilgaon/bilgaon.htm

The Dosa Case for Diversity!

Here is an incident which happened quite recently in my life and strengthened my belief that diversity may at many times lead to very creative solutions. It all happened on Nov 21st, 2004 at my apartment in Princeton after the documentary screening and talk by Sri Prakash organized by the Princeton chapter of AID.

It was decided that a couple of us will get together at my place for idlis and I had made the batter the previous night. As it turned out, I had used the wrong rice to urad dal ratio. Unexpectedly, the first batch of idlis looked like !@#$%^&*^%$#@@!. To redeem the situation, we then tried making a dosa out of it, but that too didnt look promising at all. The conclusion reached by all of us was that the mix was lacking a good binder. Had I been handling this all alone, things would have taken a different course all together. This is where diversity really helped us out. Anirban, one of our friends, suggested that we set aside some batter and experiment with adding eggs in it. Being someone who doesnt particularly like eggs and hence never buys eggs, this was something I would never have thought of myself. We follow his suggestion and hurray, we have a nice tasty dosa pancake. But then Bala doesnt eat eggs. And now time for another solution to the same problem. He does a google search and figures out the wheat flour can also be used as a binder. And so, thanks to diversity we have two different interesting solutions to the same problem. Had I not dared to experiment with making idlis from scratch and had there not been different kinds of people, this would never have been possible.

Conclusions: Dare to experiment, diversity is great.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Sri Prakash for visiting Princeton, without which all of these wouldn't take place at all. Thanks to Satyen and Yogesh for making the chutney, (thanks also to their dirt devil :) and to Bala for making most of the dosas!

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