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I couldn't believe how well it came out. I had to hang it somewhere important. So obviously it's in the Mashgin Board Room overlooking all the important activities that take place there.
Saturday, March 16, 2024
An artist made this for me.
I couldn't believe how well it came out. I had to hang it somewhere important. So obviously it's in the Mashgin Board Room overlooking all the important activities that take place there.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Why are UFOs round?
I do not believe in UFOs. I do not know what to make of all the sightings but mostly I do not care. This post is about analyzing what a super-fast spacecraft would look like.
Rockets use momentum-based propulsion. Throw something at a high speed in opposite direction and the principle of conservation of momentum will propel you forward.
The faster we can throw something in opposite direction, the faster we will go.
Rockets use controlled explosion to send matter at ultra-fast speeds. If we use Cyclotrons and Synchrotrons, we should be able to do much better than that.
Synchrotrons are currently the best way to accelerate matter particles to nearly the speed of light. Large Hadron Collider is based on similar design.
The larger the circle above, the more we can accelerate particles with same amount of energy. (LHC is 8.5 kms in diameter). The spaceship carrying such a device will have to be a large round disk.
Idea is simple. Take some expendable matter, ionize it into a plasma, accelerate it to nearly the speed of light then throw it out. Pretty much like today's rockets.
So once we can build semi-portable fusion reactors that can supply us large amounts of energy to run the Synchrotron aboard a spaceship, we would be ready for some intra-galactic travel. The resulting spaceships should look like this:
Assuming our spaceship weighs 100 tons and we have 10 tons of expendable matter. We should be able to achieve 10 x 270,000 / 100 = 27,000 km/s = 16,777 miles / s.
Rockets use momentum-based propulsion. Throw something at a high speed in opposite direction and the principle of conservation of momentum will propel you forward.
The faster we can throw something in opposite direction, the faster we will go.
Rockets use controlled explosion to send matter at ultra-fast speeds. If we use Cyclotrons and Synchrotrons, we should be able to do much better than that.
Synchrotrons are currently the best way to accelerate matter particles to nearly the speed of light. Large Hadron Collider is based on similar design.
The larger the circle above, the more we can accelerate particles with same amount of energy. (LHC is 8.5 kms in diameter). The spaceship carrying such a device will have to be a large round disk.
Idea is simple. Take some expendable matter, ionize it into a plasma, accelerate it to nearly the speed of light then throw it out. Pretty much like today's rockets.
So once we can build semi-portable fusion reactors that can supply us large amounts of energy to run the Synchrotron aboard a spaceship, we would be ready for some intra-galactic travel. The resulting spaceships should look like this:
Speed Calculations
Assuming our spaceship weighs 100 tons and we have 10 tons of expendable matter. We should be able to achieve 10 x 270,000 / 100 = 27,000 km/s = 16,777 miles / s.
The journey to Jupiter will now take about 6 hours and we should be out of the solar system in about 2.5 days. Not exactly fast but better. :)
[Disclaimer: Sample non-relativistic calculations. Real numbers could be very different.]
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Sharing and the dawn of modern civilization
What caused modern civilization to start taking shape all of a sudden around middle of last millennium? Things had barely changed for several thousands of years until then and civilization was in a kind of steady state. New discoveries have been made throughout human history but the rate of change had been extremely slow until about 1400s.
A related question is why these changes happened in Europe but nowhere else. Africa, middle-east, india and china were much older civilizations that do not seem to have come out of their steady states until very recently and even now it can be debated as to whether these places are really pushing the state of human knowledge.
I grew up in India and have experienced the culture when it comes to knowledge. In ancient times, reading and writing were exclusive privileges of a select few who had this right by birth. Knowledge was zealously guarded by families as a kind of secret and passed down the generations as memorized poetry.
Memorization of knowledge had its roots in time before writing or paper existed but even when writing became feasible the knowledge elites seemed to spend their lifetimes memorizing texts and look down upon those memorized less. While knowledge was being accumulated as centuries passed, this kind of elitism seems to have thwarted open sharing of knowledge and ideas to a wider section of population.
Intellect and curiosity know no birth, family or religious bounds. As a result knowledge did not always reach those who could have used and added to it. Those who found new things were not always able to pass the information widely. Sometimes there was a deliberate attempt at secrecy.
Even in modern times, India lacks a strong culture of sharing ideas. Book industry is non-existent, except for text books and cheap fiction (there are exceptions but exceptions is what they are.). Public libraries are in the same state as British left them. Writing is looked down upon as a profession. Most people do not write unless they have to.
Ancient Rome was probably better placed to make technological and cultural breakthroughs than Europe in middle ages. They had a diverse population which came from far regions of the world and mixing of ideas such as the world had not seen before. Indeed, they made great strides in engineering and arts. So why did the world have to wait 1500 years? One can only imagine what the world would look like today with sciences 1500 years into the future.
Could it have been the printing revolution? Let us look at the timeline of scientific revolution and Renaissance.
For sake of simplicity in the above diagram I have assumed that dates for people are birth year + 25 years.
When i started plotting the above diagram, I was not sure what to expect. We were all probably taught in school that invention of printing press was great, allowed publishing of books blah blah blah. I really did not know just how important this invention was and how it may have been the one force that single-handedly led to creation of the modern civilization.
It makes sense. Mass production of publications made it possible for people to convey their ideas to masses in no time. Newspapers enabled societies to know of events as they happened. Journals allowed scientists and intellectuals to share ideas and build on each other's work. Published text led to standardization of languages and spellings. Standardized languages led to harder national boundaries and the rise of nationalism. Increasing availability of books, newspapers and journals led to higher literacy rates. Increasing awareness in people led to revolutions and democracies.
In effect by facilitating the flow of information between minds, printing press may have created the first global mega-brain. A giant neural network whose components are individual human brains and whose synapses are books. That was a revolution in human evolution. The mother of all developments. Against this mega-brain, individuals and disconnected societies stand no chance. And that is exactly what happened. There are no indications that publishing industry or culture of sharing information at a wide scale caught on in other parts of the world until much later. Enter colonial era.
Internet has taken the speed of sharing and communication to a whole new level. It has greased up the synapses of the global "mega-brain" and made it more powerful than ever before. We only have to look at the past to understand what future has in hold for us. What French Revolution was to printing press, Egyptian and British revolutions may be to Internet. I am expecting to see new forms of governments, democracy and society emerge in my lifetime.
A related question is why these changes happened in Europe but nowhere else. Africa, middle-east, india and china were much older civilizations that do not seem to have come out of their steady states until very recently and even now it can be debated as to whether these places are really pushing the state of human knowledge.
I grew up in India and have experienced the culture when it comes to knowledge. In ancient times, reading and writing were exclusive privileges of a select few who had this right by birth. Knowledge was zealously guarded by families as a kind of secret and passed down the generations as memorized poetry.
Memorization of knowledge had its roots in time before writing or paper existed but even when writing became feasible the knowledge elites seemed to spend their lifetimes memorizing texts and look down upon those memorized less. While knowledge was being accumulated as centuries passed, this kind of elitism seems to have thwarted open sharing of knowledge and ideas to a wider section of population.
Intellect and curiosity know no birth, family or religious bounds. As a result knowledge did not always reach those who could have used and added to it. Those who found new things were not always able to pass the information widely. Sometimes there was a deliberate attempt at secrecy.
Even in modern times, India lacks a strong culture of sharing ideas. Book industry is non-existent, except for text books and cheap fiction (there are exceptions but exceptions is what they are.). Public libraries are in the same state as British left them. Writing is looked down upon as a profession. Most people do not write unless they have to.
Ancient Rome was probably better placed to make technological and cultural breakthroughs than Europe in middle ages. They had a diverse population which came from far regions of the world and mixing of ideas such as the world had not seen before. Indeed, they made great strides in engineering and arts. So why did the world have to wait 1500 years? One can only imagine what the world would look like today with sciences 1500 years into the future.
Could it have been the printing revolution? Let us look at the timeline of scientific revolution and Renaissance.
For sake of simplicity in the above diagram I have assumed that dates for people are birth year + 25 years.
When i started plotting the above diagram, I was not sure what to expect. We were all probably taught in school that invention of printing press was great, allowed publishing of books blah blah blah. I really did not know just how important this invention was and how it may have been the one force that single-handedly led to creation of the modern civilization.
It makes sense. Mass production of publications made it possible for people to convey their ideas to masses in no time. Newspapers enabled societies to know of events as they happened. Journals allowed scientists and intellectuals to share ideas and build on each other's work. Published text led to standardization of languages and spellings. Standardized languages led to harder national boundaries and the rise of nationalism. Increasing availability of books, newspapers and journals led to higher literacy rates. Increasing awareness in people led to revolutions and democracies.
In effect by facilitating the flow of information between minds, printing press may have created the first global mega-brain. A giant neural network whose components are individual human brains and whose synapses are books. That was a revolution in human evolution. The mother of all developments. Against this mega-brain, individuals and disconnected societies stand no chance. And that is exactly what happened. There are no indications that publishing industry or culture of sharing information at a wide scale caught on in other parts of the world until much later. Enter colonial era.
Internet has taken the speed of sharing and communication to a whole new level. It has greased up the synapses of the global "mega-brain" and made it more powerful than ever before. We only have to look at the past to understand what future has in hold for us. What French Revolution was to printing press, Egyptian and British revolutions may be to Internet. I am expecting to see new forms of governments, democracy and society emerge in my lifetime.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Linearity of Consciousness
Human brain is an intelligent machine. One aspect of intelligence is to take examples of some event, understand the patterns in those examples and finally use this knowledge to predict nature of this event in future. An understanding of several events and their natures finally culminates in "experience" of a human being.
For example, lightning is accompanied by thunders. We all know this and expect a thunder when we see lightning. Why? Who told us? Most of us know this from experience. We saw lightning and we heard thunder first several times, after which we "understood" that there is a causal relation between the two. Many such daily experiences result in a set of "rules" we know. When something happens, we know from our experience of what the following events will be. That is easy.
Many such rules are relatively straight-forward with cause-effect kind of relationships. We understand complicated events with a combination of such simple rules. For example, if it is cloudy there is a chance that it might rain. However, if it is cloudy and the wind is strong, there is a lower chance that it might rain. Simple to understand and to explain.
I am not going to talk about first-order logic here because while it was developed to capture similar scenarios, it is technical and may not be appropriate to capture the probabilities that seem inherent to our experiences. What I can say with some confidence is that in some logic space, individual rules like these can be expressed as a straight-line. That is what i mean by linearity.
Example diagrams are in order here.
Here the lines represent a rule describing a certain condition that, if met, separates 'Yes' and 'No' regions. A 'Yes' region is all events where this rule holds and 'No' region is where the rule does not hold. For example, for the rule that lightning implies thunder, if there is a lightning, the answer for whether there will be thunder can be found in region above the line in first diagram and there are no other conditions to check.
Without getting into too much technical discussion, the main thing i want to convey here is that a set of rules can help us predict answers to several questions and that the more complicated the problem, the more rules we are going to need.
Food for thought here is, why are legal documents so lengthy? Why do courts need hundreds and hundreds of pages to outline resolution of cases, which humans can understand in 5 minutes but need hours to read and explain logically? How many rules/lines would it take to represent a simple circle in above diagrams? A circle is non-linear and would take infinite number of rules to describe. But we humans can understand it easily.
It seems we think of human brain as having two distinct parts. A conscious part which we understand and think and a sub-conscious part that we do not directly understand but which gives rise to intuition, feelings and eureka moments. There may not be a real division inside the brain. It is entirely likely that we express this division to explain that there are something that we can think and explain but others where we know the answer but fail to explain why.
If you look at the last diagram above, you can see that it will take a large number of rules to explain it, never fully but we as humans can quickly and easily comprehend the situation and answer 'Yes'/'No' without knowing why (Assuming each assertion of why is linear).
Therein lies the main argument i am trying to make here. Human beings are inherently non-linear. Our feelings, our senses, our intelligence, our intuitions pretty much everything about us is non-linear. We take this non-linearity with ease and comprehend the world around us without a problem. Sure thing that it takes us a long time of adjusting our mental curves to arrive at a good understanding of the world and humans around us but once done, we can get a good grasp of things….. until, we start writing a book or laws or trying to explain our feelings to others. All of a sudden we find ourselves filling pages after pages trying to convey simple information and ideas and even then we do not always succeed. Why?
Is it that language is a linear tool which we cannot use to express 'complicated' feelings and ideas? Is it that the part of our brain that we use to explain is linear and cannot find words to describe? Why is it that we find it hard to explain intuition?
Why do our societies have rules which occupy 100 pages but amount to saying 'use your common sense' ? If we had a society that had rules like 'use your sense', why do we feel it would be hard to enforce 'common sense'? What is so hard about explaining what is 'common sense' and 'sound judgement'?
I am not sure whether i made my point to the reader or not. Honestly, i am struggling to put the message across though in that struggle lies the success of my argument here. I had a thought which took no longer than 5 seconds to pass through my brain but which has taken no less than 2 hours to explain here and even then i am struggling.
For example, lightning is accompanied by thunders. We all know this and expect a thunder when we see lightning. Why? Who told us? Most of us know this from experience. We saw lightning and we heard thunder first several times, after which we "understood" that there is a causal relation between the two. Many such daily experiences result in a set of "rules" we know. When something happens, we know from our experience of what the following events will be. That is easy.
Many such rules are relatively straight-forward with cause-effect kind of relationships. We understand complicated events with a combination of such simple rules. For example, if it is cloudy there is a chance that it might rain. However, if it is cloudy and the wind is strong, there is a lower chance that it might rain. Simple to understand and to explain.
I am not going to talk about first-order logic here because while it was developed to capture similar scenarios, it is technical and may not be appropriate to capture the probabilities that seem inherent to our experiences. What I can say with some confidence is that in some logic space, individual rules like these can be expressed as a straight-line. That is what i mean by linearity.
Example diagrams are in order here.
Here the lines represent a rule describing a certain condition that, if met, separates 'Yes' and 'No' regions. A 'Yes' region is all events where this rule holds and 'No' region is where the rule does not hold. For example, for the rule that lightning implies thunder, if there is a lightning, the answer for whether there will be thunder can be found in region above the line in first diagram and there are no other conditions to check.
Without getting into too much technical discussion, the main thing i want to convey here is that a set of rules can help us predict answers to several questions and that the more complicated the problem, the more rules we are going to need.
Food for thought here is, why are legal documents so lengthy? Why do courts need hundreds and hundreds of pages to outline resolution of cases, which humans can understand in 5 minutes but need hours to read and explain logically? How many rules/lines would it take to represent a simple circle in above diagrams? A circle is non-linear and would take infinite number of rules to describe. But we humans can understand it easily.
It seems we think of human brain as having two distinct parts. A conscious part which we understand and think and a sub-conscious part that we do not directly understand but which gives rise to intuition, feelings and eureka moments. There may not be a real division inside the brain. It is entirely likely that we express this division to explain that there are something that we can think and explain but others where we know the answer but fail to explain why.
If you look at the last diagram above, you can see that it will take a large number of rules to explain it, never fully but we as humans can quickly and easily comprehend the situation and answer 'Yes'/'No' without knowing why (Assuming each assertion of why is linear).
Therein lies the main argument i am trying to make here. Human beings are inherently non-linear. Our feelings, our senses, our intelligence, our intuitions pretty much everything about us is non-linear. We take this non-linearity with ease and comprehend the world around us without a problem. Sure thing that it takes us a long time of adjusting our mental curves to arrive at a good understanding of the world and humans around us but once done, we can get a good grasp of things….. until, we start writing a book or laws or trying to explain our feelings to others. All of a sudden we find ourselves filling pages after pages trying to convey simple information and ideas and even then we do not always succeed. Why?
Is it that language is a linear tool which we cannot use to express 'complicated' feelings and ideas? Is it that the part of our brain that we use to explain is linear and cannot find words to describe? Why is it that we find it hard to explain intuition?
Why do our societies have rules which occupy 100 pages but amount to saying 'use your common sense' ? If we had a society that had rules like 'use your sense', why do we feel it would be hard to enforce 'common sense'? What is so hard about explaining what is 'common sense' and 'sound judgement'?
I am not sure whether i made my point to the reader or not. Honestly, i am struggling to put the message across though in that struggle lies the success of my argument here. I had a thought which took no longer than 5 seconds to pass through my brain but which has taken no less than 2 hours to explain here and even then i am struggling.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Revival
So i finally decided to revive this blog. For entirely different reasons than I first started it for. I have been meaning to start writing. Writing about almost anything without paying attention to grammar, spellings or any such nuances and this dormant blog felt like the right place to do it. So why am i doing this?
Eloquence is a gift. Not everyone has it and those who do, may have had to work hard to get to a place where they could use it effectively. I for one do not have it. Or maybe i do, at least it does not come naturally to me. Left unworked, the eloquence muscles in my brain tend to go limp and I stop being able to communicate well. If you have tried to write a paper after a long vacation, many of you will know what i am talking about. The first few pages are hard to write and after that words start flowing.
I do not have to write any paper in near future. However, need for communicating arises many times and unexpectedly and finds me in a place where right words are hard to come by. So i thought i will get in a habit of writing something every few days. There is no target audience. In fact I hope nobody ever reads this blog because i do not mean to say anything. I am going to say what flows through my mind and that may not be worth reading.
So continue at your own peril. You have been warned.
Eloquence is a gift. Not everyone has it and those who do, may have had to work hard to get to a place where they could use it effectively. I for one do not have it. Or maybe i do, at least it does not come naturally to me. Left unworked, the eloquence muscles in my brain tend to go limp and I stop being able to communicate well. If you have tried to write a paper after a long vacation, many of you will know what i am talking about. The first few pages are hard to write and after that words start flowing.
I do not have to write any paper in near future. However, need for communicating arises many times and unexpectedly and finds me in a place where right words are hard to come by. So i thought i will get in a habit of writing something every few days. There is no target audience. In fact I hope nobody ever reads this blog because i do not mean to say anything. I am going to say what flows through my mind and that may not be worth reading.
So continue at your own peril. You have been warned.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Memories from forgotten times
When i started writing this blog, the idea was to start at a certain time in my life and go forward. However, with each successive post, i seem to go backward. The more i try to remember my life, the more i remember stuff which happenned before it, to an extent that it becomes hard to ignore and i feel compelled to write about it. Taking this lesson, i have now decided to start from my earliest memories and work forward. Offcourse there might still be some randomness but that should be minimal.
I was born in 1979. From 1982 onwards, i remember things clearly in whatever memories i have. Whatever i remember between 1979 and 1982 however almost feels like remembering a dream. I am not sure what is real and what isnt. The earliet memory i have is sometime in 1980/81 about running around in the frontyard of our house in Dewa. Dad's white jeep and my sister sitting in it somehow feels like a dream. I am not sure if it was real or a dream. I also remember driving to a far away place and being in a courtyard with rather high stairs. (i always thought that was a dream until about 10 years ago when i happenned to visit the same place, which was my dad's old friend's house, and being extremely shocked).
I also remember the water flood in the house and our bed being above a foot of water. Then dad went to england and we stayed with mom's parents in lucknow. Living with cousins of around same age was good. I got to play all day. Here on, the memories are clearer but not that clear. The few things i remember are a servant named Dal Singh, my cousin's bedroom, playing on the stairs, cleaning the visitors room with cousins etc. This was 1981.
Once dad came back, we moved to barabanki. It must have been 1981 or 1982. By the time we arrived in our new home, it was night and i very clearly remember being in mom's lap when the truck pulled into the street. It was a 3 bedroom house with lot of open space. The visitor's room was on a corner, the kitchen in opposite corner, bedroom and box room together in third corner and everything open in between. If it rained, we pretty much had to run between the rooms. Life was good however. I first started going to school here. I do remember principal taking rounds but not much more. What i do remember is the ride to school. I and my sis used to take this rickshaw to school along with other kids. One of the kids was this girl who always had a running nose and i hated having to sit next to her. Sometimes i would try to push her away.
Part of the open space at home was mud. My parents planted vegetables there. Carrots, radish etc. It was a good area to play once back from school. Sometimes we would also visit a teen-aged girl next doors who would play with me and my sis. I remember that she was scared of a particular rubber lizard that i had (or maybe she faked it given i was so young) so i tried to scare her and chased her all over the house with lizard in my had.
It was around now that my cousin was born. My grandmother and aunt came to live with us. Mom would sometimes go to the hospital and we would stay with aunt. I clearly remember one of these instances where we were all sitting outside around 8pm and aunt was cooking in the open. Somehow this memory has stuck over all these years.
Then came the fire. Mom was cooking in the kitchen one day when the stove tripped, spilled all the kerosene on wet floor and entire place caught fire. Dad tried to save mom and himself slipped on water/kerosene combination on the floor. They all slipped again and again while trying to come out of the kitchen door. I witnessed everything standing a small distance away from the kitchen door. What i do not remember however is, who held me or stopped me from going in and looking. Luckily everyone escaped alive. Mom had significant burns in her hands while dad on his feet. Awadhraj, our servant, who was earlier trapped on the blocked end of the kitchen inhaled a lot of smoke in the process but was otherwise unhurt.
One funny incident, that i vaguely remember, happenned one day when the servant was washing dishes in the open. For some reasons a crow came up, took a little metal bowl in his beak and flew away. Mom was alarmed and she sent the servant running behind the crow to recover the bowl. Everyone who heard this story laughed because there wasnt anything in the bowl that the crow could have eaten so it was pretty much an incident of outright theft!
In the monsoon season, the road (brick road) in front of our house would be flooded with water. All night long we would hear the frogs making sound and all day long i would try to float my paper boats. When the water receded, it would still make a pond on the empty plots on other side of the road and that was enough for me continue my boating activities.
I was born in 1979. From 1982 onwards, i remember things clearly in whatever memories i have. Whatever i remember between 1979 and 1982 however almost feels like remembering a dream. I am not sure what is real and what isnt. The earliet memory i have is sometime in 1980/81 about running around in the frontyard of our house in Dewa. Dad's white jeep and my sister sitting in it somehow feels like a dream. I am not sure if it was real or a dream. I also remember driving to a far away place and being in a courtyard with rather high stairs. (i always thought that was a dream until about 10 years ago when i happenned to visit the same place, which was my dad's old friend's house, and being extremely shocked).
I also remember the water flood in the house and our bed being above a foot of water. Then dad went to england and we stayed with mom's parents in lucknow. Living with cousins of around same age was good. I got to play all day. Here on, the memories are clearer but not that clear. The few things i remember are a servant named Dal Singh, my cousin's bedroom, playing on the stairs, cleaning the visitors room with cousins etc. This was 1981.
Once dad came back, we moved to barabanki. It must have been 1981 or 1982. By the time we arrived in our new home, it was night and i very clearly remember being in mom's lap when the truck pulled into the street. It was a 3 bedroom house with lot of open space. The visitor's room was on a corner, the kitchen in opposite corner, bedroom and box room together in third corner and everything open in between. If it rained, we pretty much had to run between the rooms. Life was good however. I first started going to school here. I do remember principal taking rounds but not much more. What i do remember is the ride to school. I and my sis used to take this rickshaw to school along with other kids. One of the kids was this girl who always had a running nose and i hated having to sit next to her. Sometimes i would try to push her away.
Part of the open space at home was mud. My parents planted vegetables there. Carrots, radish etc. It was a good area to play once back from school. Sometimes we would also visit a teen-aged girl next doors who would play with me and my sis. I remember that she was scared of a particular rubber lizard that i had (or maybe she faked it given i was so young) so i tried to scare her and chased her all over the house with lizard in my had.
It was around now that my cousin was born. My grandmother and aunt came to live with us. Mom would sometimes go to the hospital and we would stay with aunt. I clearly remember one of these instances where we were all sitting outside around 8pm and aunt was cooking in the open. Somehow this memory has stuck over all these years.
Then came the fire. Mom was cooking in the kitchen one day when the stove tripped, spilled all the kerosene on wet floor and entire place caught fire. Dad tried to save mom and himself slipped on water/kerosene combination on the floor. They all slipped again and again while trying to come out of the kitchen door. I witnessed everything standing a small distance away from the kitchen door. What i do not remember however is, who held me or stopped me from going in and looking. Luckily everyone escaped alive. Mom had significant burns in her hands while dad on his feet. Awadhraj, our servant, who was earlier trapped on the blocked end of the kitchen inhaled a lot of smoke in the process but was otherwise unhurt.
One funny incident, that i vaguely remember, happenned one day when the servant was washing dishes in the open. For some reasons a crow came up, took a little metal bowl in his beak and flew away. Mom was alarmed and she sent the servant running behind the crow to recover the bowl. Everyone who heard this story laughed because there wasnt anything in the bowl that the crow could have eaten so it was pretty much an incident of outright theft!
In the monsoon season, the road (brick road) in front of our house would be flooded with water. All night long we would hear the frogs making sound and all day long i would try to float my paper boats. When the water receded, it would still make a pond on the empty plots on other side of the road and that was enough for me continue my boating activities.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
First summer in Barabanki
The new friends i had made were more than what i could have asked for. As we settled down into the place, i personally settled down into a new routine. Wake up early in the morning (which had somehow never happenned before), go for a jog with friends, come back take a shower and breakfast, study, watch tv, more study till afternoon, cricket in evening, dinner, more tv and finally sleep.
I found myself waiting, either for the next morning or the coming evening. I had never hated studies but my dad (who was giving me lessons in math and science) was less than an ideal teacher and for the first time in life, i found myself hating those subjects. In fact i hated studying all together.
On a positive note, my morning jogs were something of a charm. We lived on the edge of an otherwise small town so within about first five minutes of starting we were already on country roads. The cool and fresh morning breeze had an amazing effect on me. To this day, i clearly remember the fresh fruit market, the haunted hut and the dry canal that we passed on our way. On some days, we would skip jogging to play cricket in the morning. I loved that too. However, my heart always wanted to go out again and explore more of the country side at a time when it is most beautiful in hot indian summers. I suspect that my tendency to go on unannounced long walks started at this time and stayed all through my teen years.
During the day time, if i was allowed to take a break from studying, i almost always ended up in one of my friend's place. We would typically go to his room on the first floor and read 'chandamama' or pretend to be in one of the stories we just read. He had a stash of wood swords, bows and arrows which came in handy in these situations. Best of all, he knew how to use them and i was only too happy to learn.
Incidentally, this was also the first time i started sleeping away from my parents. I was put in the other room with my sister and i must admit i wasnt too sad. Me and my sister never got along well but a fight with her was always good.
I found myself waiting, either for the next morning or the coming evening. I had never hated studies but my dad (who was giving me lessons in math and science) was less than an ideal teacher and for the first time in life, i found myself hating those subjects. In fact i hated studying all together.
On a positive note, my morning jogs were something of a charm. We lived on the edge of an otherwise small town so within about first five minutes of starting we were already on country roads. The cool and fresh morning breeze had an amazing effect on me. To this day, i clearly remember the fresh fruit market, the haunted hut and the dry canal that we passed on our way. On some days, we would skip jogging to play cricket in the morning. I loved that too. However, my heart always wanted to go out again and explore more of the country side at a time when it is most beautiful in hot indian summers. I suspect that my tendency to go on unannounced long walks started at this time and stayed all through my teen years.
During the day time, if i was allowed to take a break from studying, i almost always ended up in one of my friend's place. We would typically go to his room on the first floor and read 'chandamama' or pretend to be in one of the stories we just read. He had a stash of wood swords, bows and arrows which came in handy in these situations. Best of all, he knew how to use them and i was only too happy to learn.
Incidentally, this was also the first time i started sleeping away from my parents. I was put in the other room with my sister and i must admit i wasnt too sad. Me and my sister never got along well but a fight with her was always good.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Move to Barabanki
On the day i turned eight, my parents moved from Lucknow to a city some 30 kms south called Barabanki. This place was not unknown to me since we had lived there before when i was a toddler and i had faint memories (and some clear) of the place. However, what was to come was definitely going to be a very new experience for me.
Back in late eighties, Lucknow was a city of moderate size while Barabanki was a little known, really small town. Its proximity to the historically important city of lucknow had done little to merge the cultures of both places. Unlike today, when many people shuttle between the twin cities of work, back then they were two closely situated but independently-developed islands.
When we moved to barabanki, i had no friends in town. However, this was to change soon enough when two kids about my age randomly visited our house, introduced themselves and inquired about me. I was surprised at this gesture, all to common for barabanki but not so for lucknow. At ten, i could not rationalize these differences so lets just say this came as a pleasant surprise. Next few months, which also happenned to be summer school holidays, went by pretty good. I settled down into a new place with new friends. This was a welcome change since back in HomeGuards campus in lucknow, i did not have many people of my age group to play with. Every evening we would have cricket matches in the vacant plots or somebody's roof. I also started running errands for my mother for the first time in life.
During this time, my mother had aimed for me to jump a class in school. I had finished 3rd grade in Christ church school in lucknow and now my parents wanted me to take the entrance test for 5th grade in july. Due to this, i ended up studying 4th grade level maths, sciences and english through the summer. Come july, and i was in 5th grade.
Back in late eighties, Lucknow was a city of moderate size while Barabanki was a little known, really small town. Its proximity to the historically important city of lucknow had done little to merge the cultures of both places. Unlike today, when many people shuttle between the twin cities of work, back then they were two closely situated but independently-developed islands.
When we moved to barabanki, i had no friends in town. However, this was to change soon enough when two kids about my age randomly visited our house, introduced themselves and inquired about me. I was surprised at this gesture, all to common for barabanki but not so for lucknow. At ten, i could not rationalize these differences so lets just say this came as a pleasant surprise. Next few months, which also happenned to be summer school holidays, went by pretty good. I settled down into a new place with new friends. This was a welcome change since back in HomeGuards campus in lucknow, i did not have many people of my age group to play with. Every evening we would have cricket matches in the vacant plots or somebody's roof. I also started running errands for my mother for the first time in life.
During this time, my mother had aimed for me to jump a class in school. I had finished 3rd grade in Christ church school in lucknow and now my parents wanted me to take the entrance test for 5th grade in july. Due to this, i ended up studying 4th grade level maths, sciences and english through the summer. Come july, and i was in 5th grade.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
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