tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65512590776534948612023-12-20T01:33:16.874+05:30.::Song Of The Little Road::.Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-45747996716116295732012-06-28T13:32:00.000+05:302012-06-28T13:32:11.705+05:30On the JEE Brouhaha<br />
I shared nanopolitan's parody piece <a href="http://nanopolitan.blogspot.in/2012/06/bombshell-from-iit-k-faculty.html" target="_blank">Bombshell from IIT-K: Faculty Recruitment through JEE</a> on Facebook, which led to the following response:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Q. How do you decrease the number of people below poverty line?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A. Simple, decrease the amount below which we call somebody poor.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Q. How do make everyone get into IIT?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A. Simple, ...</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Its a clear political agenda where they found a completely wrong solution to a problem. An institute taking a stance in what it believes to be right is nothing to be parodied about and why would you? Are we really all that bored of the poverty line jokes on the government?</blockquote>
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I just want to jot down some of my more serious thoughts on this.<br />
<br />
1. I have a problem with the idea of a single exam and its numerical results playing so much part in the aspirations of a student. The notion, that the JEE is sacrosanct and that its results can actually tell if a person is intelligent enough or not, is ridiculous. I know many people will cry otherwise. (I have no biases for or against the JEE. I never gave the exam, nor am I greatly familiar with its format.) This is the reason why SAT and GRE are not factored in unilaterally in the admissions process of US universities.<br />
<br />
2. The results of a single exam cannot be a better indicator than a result that factors in a student's efforts over a two-year pre-college program. If the method of incorporating grade 12 results is incorrect, biased or political, it should be corrected. But, the idea is correct in principle.<br />
<br />
3. With the kind of competition, the winners are not very different from the people who almost made it. If you were to administer the JEE twice to the same bunch of students, there would be major shuffle at the top ranks. It would be better to bring in some more factors to have a holistic admissions procedure similar to US universities.<br />
<br />
4. Years of preparation lead to freshmen being burnt-out when they enter the IITs. A question on Quora comparing students from MIT and IITs had answers which basically said that there isn't much difference intellectually; it's just that MIT students are more driven and passionate. See answers to <a href="http://www.quora.com/Indian-Institutes-of-Technology/Are-IIT-students-smarter-than-MIT-students" target="_blank">Are IIT students smarter than MIT students?</a> Success and happiness in the real world depends on personal qualities including but certainly not limited to <i>intellect</i>.<br />
<br />
5. The fact that it is a decision based on numbers makes people believe that it has to be correct. This leads to disasters. See answers to the question <a href="http://www.quora.com/India/How-does-it-feel-like-to-fail-IIT-JEE" target="_blank">How does it feel like to fail IIT JEE?</a>.<br />
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6. It seems to me that the reason for such a furore over the exam is that people know that IITs are good only because they have an intensive admissions procedure and admit the very best students. This reduces the burden of education on the professors considerably. With the due disclaimer before generalizing and apologies to the few fabulous professors I have known at IIT Bombay, professors here do not seem to do as great a job as they are capable of. I suspect this is because it is an easier task to teach a class whose selectivity surpasses that of even the best universities in the developed world, and therefore the effort that makes great teachers is not put in. I am not sure if this is true at other IITs as well.<br />
<br />
7. Simply put, out of the two aspects of <i>rigor</i> and <i>possibility</i> that education should impart, IITs focus only on the the former. This perspective spills over into the JEE as well.<br />Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-89093749338875636392012-04-16T12:15:00.000+05:302012-05-08T23:21:27.521+05:30IIT Bombay MTech (CSE) Alumni in Advanced AcademiaA list of MTech (CSE) alumni from IIT Bombay who have pursued a PhD <i>elsewhere</i>. (There are many alumni of the programme who have liked the research atmosphere at IIT Bombay and continued with a PhD here.) This list is far from exhaustive, and has been written for incoming graduate students to have an idea of academic career prospects after IIT Bombay.<br />
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<br />
<div>
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Avinava Kumar Dubey https://sites.google.com/site/<wbr></wbr>kumaravinavadubey/</li>
<li>Bhavana Dalvi http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bbd/</li>
<li>Kriti Puniyani http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~<wbr></wbr>kpuniyan/</li>
<li>Meghana Kshirsagar http://people.cs.cmu.edu/Person/1374</li>
<li>Abhay Harpale http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aharpale/</li>
</ul>
<br />
University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign (UIUC)<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Manish Gupta http://www.cs.illinois.edu/homes/gupta58/</li>
<li>V G Vinod Vydiswaran http://sifaka.cs.uiuc.edu/~vgvinodv/</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Dartmouth College</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Umang Bhaskar http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~umang/</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
University of California - Irvine (UCI)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Vinayak Borkar http://isg.ics.uci.edu/people.html</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
University of Maryland - College Park (UMCP)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>K Subramani http://www.csee.wvu.edu/~ksmani/</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;">Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;">Medha Atre </span>http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~atrem/ (Post-doc at UPenn)</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;">Pennsylvania State University (PSU)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;">Neela Sawant </span>http://www.personal.psu.edu/nks125/</li>
</ul>
</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;">Rutgers</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;">Shirish Phatak </span>http://www.research.rutgers.edu/~phatak/</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;">Indian Institute of Science (IISc)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;">Rupesh Nasre http://users.ices.utexas.edu/~nasre/ (Post-doc at UT Austin)</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;">The Machine Learning : Pattern Recognition : Information Retrieval : Artificial Intelligence : Natural Language Processing research group at IIT Bombay consists of the following faculty members:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~soumen/" target="_blank">Soumen Chakrabarti</a></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~sunita/" target="_blank">Sunita Sarawagi</a></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~saketh/" target="_blank">Saketha Nath J.</a></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~ganesh/" target="_blank">Ganesh Ramakrishnan</a></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~pb" target="_blank">Pushpak Bhattacharyya</a></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~damani/" target="_blank">Om Damani</a></span></li>
</ul>
Find research interests of all faculty members <a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/page14" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<ul>
</ul>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span></div>
</div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-14273271628817056482012-04-12T09:51:00.000+05:302012-04-12T09:51:24.140+05:30The Best Nurturers in Computer Science ResearchRecently I came across a paper quantifying success in the intangible process of mentorship in computer science research. The work was done around 2004 at IISc by Bharath Kumar M. and Y. N. Srikant and published in Proceedings of the Fifth SIAM International Conference on Data Mining. [<a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~christos/IN-THE-NEWS/NURTURERS_CSA-TR-2004-10.pdf" target="_blank">Technical Report</a>] [<a href="http://www.siam.org/proceedings/datamining/2005/dm05_62kumarm.pdf" target="_blank">ICDM Paper</a>]<br />
<br />
Not surprisingly, the paper states that "there is a recognizable deviation between the rankings of the most successful researchers and the best nurturers, which although is obvious from a social perspective has not been statistically demonstrated."<br />
<br />
Interestingly, though the work mentions quite a few Indian nurturers, almost none of them have consistently resided and researched in India.Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-81169965666597036812012-04-03T23:07:00.001+05:302012-04-03T23:14:14.365+05:30helo sir<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Every couple of months, I must suffer the (somewhat amusing) trauma of an email like this one in my inbox:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">hello sir,<br /> hope u r fine....i m also....my name is Aaa bbb<br />and I m doing my m.tech from computer science from aaaa kkkkk<br />engineering college, its my 2nd sem.....i m not able to decide my<br />project,actually i have no interest in coding and so i dont want such<br />project in which coding is required...so please can u suggest me any<br />project.....need ur help please</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Though I generally try hard not to judge people, there are any number of reasons why an email like the one above is wrong. A masters student in CS with no interest in coding?! Further, since the person is doing a masters and has no interest in coding, (s)he may end up teaching in one of our many "educational" institutions, which depresses me no end.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I cannot even begin to imagine the pain (multiplied many times over) that faculty at IITs must suffer handling such emails almost everyday. See <a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/soumen/APKGKAH/illiterate/Applications.html">this</a> to know what I am talking about.</span>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-65779826781375467092011-08-11T22:19:00.000+05:302011-08-11T22:19:03.297+05:30Sudden Debt: A Blast From The Past<a href="http://suddendebt.blogspot.com/2011/05/blast-from-past.html?spref=bl">Sudden Debt: A Blast From The Past</a>: "I have been re-reading Gustave LeBon's The Crowd , the 1895 classic on the psychology of herd ('crowd') behavior. The French social psycho..."Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-31630932263770433162011-07-05T23:50:00.021+05:302011-08-03T01:41:43.176+05:30On Music, GRE-TOEFL, And Other Sundry ThingsI find that I am increasingly obsessed with Indian (Semi-)Classical and spend hours listening to beautiful, brilliant songs. Perhaps, my only true wish currently is to learn some of this amazing musical legacy. And in a hypothetical exchange of fortunes, I would readily trade everything I have for mastery of this most beautiful of artistic forms. Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan once said, "If, in every home, one child was taught Hindustani classical music, this country would never have been partitioned." Of all generalizations in the world, I believe this to be most likely true.<div><br /></div><div>On June 29, I gave the GRE - an exceptionally inane test that claims to gauge preparation for graduate studies. Quantitative was a cakewalk as expected. I lost a few points in verbal to some boring RCs. Finally ended up with Q:800 and V:680 Enjoyed writing essays after a really long time. I have planned to give this exam for some time now. Glad to have finally finished it off. Don't tell me new year's resolutions don't work!<div><br /></div><div>I had a research section in the end in which I wrote an argument essay. Perhaps, the ETS wants to move the essays to the end of the test eventually, and wants to obtain statistical estimates of whether the scores in essays change if the section is moved to the end of the exam. Though the GRE is a fairly mundane test, the assiduity in maintaining the score norms of the standardized test is commendable, unlike in India where it is quite difficult to find policy decisions backed by hard statistics, especially in education.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have recently shifted residence to the highest floor of Hostel 14, IIT Bombay, along with eight of my friends. My new accommodation has a nice view of the Powai Lake and the Hiranandani skyline. It's a nice place to spend the next one year.</div><!--<div>A few days back, I was wondering about the people whom I have known in academia whose conversations/talks have stayed/will stay with me for a long time. I came up with the following:</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://smorgasbord-amogh.blogspot.com/">Amogh Bhole</a> (VJTI)</div><div><a href="http://thecinephiliablog.blogspot.com/">Hemanshu Vadehra</a> (IIT Bombay)</div><div><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~sunita/">Sunita Sarawagi</a> (IIT Bombay)</div><div><br /></div><div>It's sad that this is such a small list. And with increasing age and prejudice, it's difficult to find such people.</div>--><br /><span>Adiós!</span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><div><span>Update (03/08/2011): Gave the TOEFL on 23 July. Scores came in today, almost a week before they were expected. With a decent score of 114, I can now tick off another of my new year's resolutions! Finally at the beginning of the end of apping...</span></div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-84305912973470393312011-03-29T21:06:00.015+05:302012-05-30T19:39:46.509+05:30Advice For People Considering CSE, IIT Bombay<div>
</div>
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Update (28 September 2011):</span></b></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">From recent personal experience, some of my statements about placements in this blog are not true. Some of the consulting/finance/other-rubbish profiles are off-limits for graduate students even before any elimination rounds are conducted. Hence, if you are an ambitious careerist interested in being in the industry after your graduate studies and have admits from IIMs or good US/European universities, you might want to give IIT Bombay a miss for greener pastures. After almost a year and a half at IIT Bombay, I have realized that the institution is good only for academic rigor and some of the amazing professors that teach here (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~soumen/">my</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~sunita/">favorites</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~br/">here</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">). Such professors are exceptions to the norm but the situation might be better than anywhere else in the country.</span></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">The administration is thoroughly Indian; it sucks as usual. One of the amazing professors I mentioned in the earlier paragraph (Prof. Soumen Chakrabarti whose work has been cited in the PageRank/Google paper </span></span></b><a href="http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html">http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html</a><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">) put up the following description of his 'Web Search and Mining' course on IIT Bombay's Course Management System: 'Main building still knows this course by the mouthful "Information Retrieval and Mining for Hypertext and the Web" in spite of requesting them to change the title over five times.'</span></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><s>Recently, there was a <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/600-IITians-laid-low-by-food-poisoning/articleshow/10150776.cms">major case of food poisoning</a> in three of the hostels affecting more than 1000 people in all, and nobody has taken up even moral responsibility for the fiasco!</s> The concerned caterer has been fired and a new caterer will take his place this semester.</span></span></b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></b><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">----x--x--x----</span></span></b></div>
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A query I received recently about studying at CSE, IIT Bombay:-</span></b><br />
<div>
<br />
Dear Abhinav,<br />
<br />
My name is Axxxx and I just got an AIR of 44 in GATE 2011 which means that I will probably get into the MTech CSE at IIT Bombay. I got your contact off the IIT website and I was wondering if you could help me out by sharing some of your experience. Your profile seemed interesting and I know I can trust somebody who gets XKCD.<br />
<br />
So, how do you find the course compared to your BE at VJTI? (I'm from TSEC and really need a change in the level of teaching standards). What about life at IIT campus? And do you know anything about the placements scenario for MTech students? Is it on par with the BTech placements or is it not that good? I have an offer from Oxford University but I'm probably declining it as the UK visa rules are getting extremely annoying for anybody who wishes to gain work experience after their degree there (plus its bloody expensive!).<br />
<br />
Anything that you can tell me will really help me in making this decision (IIT vs Oxford) better for me...<br />
<br />
Regards,A B<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My response to the query:-</span></b><br />
<br />
I think I will set out the reasons for my decision to come to IIT Bombay. You must evaluate your situation, opportunities, and inclinations to come to your own decision.</div>
<div>
<br />
I am fairly certain that I will end up either in academia, an R&D lab, or doing a startup. I joined IIT Bombay because I needed a stronger background to pursue a PhD, both in terms of my technical soundness and the reputation of the institution I was going to study at. I had admits from Uppsala for technical masters, and IIM Lucknow and Kozhikode for MBA, besides the IIT admits. I chose IIT Bombay because I was sure I would eventually get bored with standard management stuff (is that really work?), and (surprise, surprise!) I still liked CSE after I graduated from VJTI. I haven't really regretted my decision so far. IIT Bombay provides fabulous facilities and a beautiful campus, and is about an hour from my home.</div>
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VJTI, the institution where I spent my undergrad days didn't have a research culture to speak of. I don't really remember any worthwhile professors or well-taught subjects. In short, my undergrad education would amount to zilch for a person looking for rigorous foundations. Consequently, the difference between the UG/PG quality of education has been immense for me. At IIT Bombay, I have been taught and guided by some really great professors; some of them are forerunners in their particular areas of research. <a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/silmaril/br/doku.php">Prof. Bhaskar Raman</a> (Systems and Networks) and <a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~sunita">Prof. Sunita Sarawagi</a> (Machine Learning and Data Mining) are my personal favorites. <a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~soumen">Prof. Soumen Chakrabarti</a> is also highly regarded and really knowledgeable, <s>but he did not click with me</s>.</div>
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The graduate intake at CSE, IIT Bombay is much larger compared to other IITs. This is a good thing, because it leads to bigger research groups and you almost always have people who share similar research interests. It's a bad thing, because the class sizes increase beyond the desirable graduate class size (maximum ~20-30), leading to lesser attention of professors to each individual student. For better or for worse, the competition for getting into research groups and working under good guides also increases.</div>
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Also, IIT Bombay has a much more vibrant social life than other places like IISc and other IITs. It has great placements and a good reputation in case one wants to pursue research further. As far as I know, IIT Bombay has had good placements, but individual preparation and commitment are better indicators of the quality of placements one lands up with rather than past statistics. <s>From hearsay, the placement opportunities for MTech guys are at par with those for BTech guys except for some selective I-banks.</s><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Correspondent's subsequent reply:-</span></b></div>
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Dear Abhinav,<br />
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Thanks for all that information. The one big factor for me wanting to choose IIT over Oxford was that there is very less research activity on distributed systems and machine learning at Oxford (they focus more on theoretical issues of computer science) but I found quite a few active projects at IIT. The only doubt in my mind was whether the MTech degree was good enough or not.<br />
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I have seriously been encouraged to go for IIT after hearing your story (and that of a couple of others). For some reason, I had an ill-formed view that MTech at IIT was inferior to the BTech degree (probably wrong feedback from some IIT undergrads).<br />
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I had read Prof. Raman's web pages before, and some faculty in my college were telling me about one Prof. Kavi Arya as well. Knowing that professors like these will be teaching us is really exciting.<br />
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I'll hope to meet you in a few months then (assuming of course that I get direct admission)... Good luck with your exams and stuff!<br />
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Thanks again.<br />
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Regards,<br />
A B<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">My subsequent response:-</span></b></div>
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Hi Axxxx,</div>
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Due to lower competition, the quality of MTech batches in most departments at IITs is lower than BTech batches. That does lead to the currently prevalent perceptions.</div>
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However, for CSE, the keen competition does lead to a pretty decent batch, at least at IIT Bombay. I know of seniors who have been placed in Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Credit Suisse, etc. or have gone to decent universities like CMU, UMD, etc. for their PhD. It really depends on the individual caliber of the student.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"></span></div>
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There is a difference between the BTech and MTech batches, because the BTechs receive rigorous training in fundamentals for four years. More importantly, BTechs have healthier attitudes toward learning and often ask a lot of questions in a class making it interactive and worthwhile. These are differences that cannot be wished away, but which many MTechs overcome through their first semester.</div>
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Regarding admissions, you most certainly will get a direct admit to IIT Bombay with AIR 44. Apply to two other IITs of your choice as a backup. I applied to all of them and never had to bother with admits from the other IITs.</div>
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Regards,<br />
Abhinav Maurya</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Advice for new matriculants:-</span></b></div>
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Hi All,</div>
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I hope you have settled well @ IIT Bombay. To those of you who contacted me earlier, my apologies for not having met you until now due to some other commitments.</div>
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The first semester at our department is a very hectic and important one. In most of the cases, performance in subjects of the first semester determines your seminar in the second semester, which usually leads to an MTP in the second year. The topic of your seminar and MTP need not be the same. So, the plan usually is exploration of CSE research areas and groups in the first semester, and consolidation/taking advanced courses in the second semester, finishing with the grand MTP later. In conclusion, your choice of courses now decides much of what you will be doing at IIT Bombay. So, please consider your choice carefully by attending as many lectures as possible until the registration closes.</div>
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Though there is the possibility of taking up seminar in the first semester, it is conventionally taken up by students in the second semester. This gives you a semester to familiarize yourself with the flavor of CSE research carried out at IIT Bombay.</div>
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Each research group often has introductory graduate courses whose grades are often used by professors in choosing a student for seminar/MTP. These should be clear in the fundae session to be organized soon.</div>
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There are certain "load-balancing" courses in the department. If you are really interested in CS and your reasons for coming here extend beyond the placements and the IIT tag, I suggest you to take courses that interest you and which are moderately difficult as per your current preparation. Your MTP is worth 90 credits and far outweighs the 60 credits of the courses you will take. Besides, liking a course makes it far easier to do better in the course.</div>
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For people interested in studies beyond the conventional CSE stuff offered in the department, you may want to explore Mathematics, Applied Statistics and Informatics, EE, and IEOR courses in later semesters. These departments often offer courses in niche areas that are closely related to CSE.</div>
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On deciding courses, you can take two courses offered by two research groups that interest you. For example, Foundations of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for AI-ML-Data-Mining people, Advanced Computer Networks and Network Security for Networks people, Program Analysis and Functional Programming for Systems and Compilers, etc. If you are completely undecided, you may wish to explore four different areas by taking one introductory graduate level course in each area. The final mix of courses is for you to decide. Kindly discuss with facad/any professor/me/any senior if you feel you need to talk about your choice of courses.</div>
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I hope to talk to you all at least once before the registration closes. On Monday, I will be in Circular Hall from 10:30 to 12:30 and then again from 15:30 to 17:30. If you are at KReSIT, please drop by. Please feel free to bug me at any point during the semester for any reason at all.</div>
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Have a great time at IIT Bombay. I am sure you will! :-)</div>
</div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-16979583798976917812011-03-22T14:40:00.003+05:302011-03-22T14:57:14.289+05:30What is it with the unknown?<div style="text-align: justify;">Why does one find oneself greatly fascinated by something that one does not even understand?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My joy and fascination with Indian/Western classical music remains incomprehensible to me, given my scant knowledge of the subject. Yet, I find myself listening to (semi-)classical music all the time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">My fascination with literature has waned the more I have known about the "tricks of the craft". Now I find it tedious to read simpler "story" books and expect something as good as Kafka every time I pick up a book.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div></div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-44204865446847166662010-08-27T19:32:00.007+05:302011-03-27T16:21:38.220+05:30IIT Bombay: CS 699: Software LaboratoryThis is a blog about the Fall 2010 offering of CS 699, the Software Laboratory course @ IIT Bombay.<div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~cs699/">Course Homepage</a></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~siva/"><br /></a></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~siva/">Professor Homepage</a></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">Update 27/08/2010: This course is a course which makes little sense to me. It aims to teach us LaTeX/Beamer, Python, Shell Scripting, and Web Design (HTML/CSS/Javascript). It is not understandable how an institution comparable in quality and reputation to some of the best institutions around the globe can place such a ridiculous course at the graduate level, and worse still, assign it credits more than any other course in the department (our normal courses carry 6 credits). The course carries 8 credits which is a high number by our credit structure. I do not understand why the course cannot have lesser credits or be split across the two semesters allowing more time for the assimilation of the skills that it attempts to inculcate in us. The course can also be structured as a month long audit primer that graduate students take prior to beginning their first year CSE electives. In a more general sense, it is a manifestation of the rigidity which is often found in Indian educational institutions. The blanket assumption that these skills are necessary and must be shoved down our throats in a single highly loaded semester is beyond my comprehension. Here's a past student's <a href="http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~anuj.agrawal/#courses">view</a> on the subject.<br /></div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-88905082292412753622010-08-27T15:06:00.006+05:302011-03-27T16:22:36.896+05:30IIT Bombay: CS 725: Foundations of Machine Learning<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 19px; font-family: Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,serif; font-size: 12px;">This is a blog about the Fall 2010 offering of CS 725, the Foundations of Machine Learning course @ IIT Bombay.<div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~cs725/">Course Homepage</a></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~ganesh/">Professor Homepage</a></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">Update 27/08/2010: The course is taught by Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan who is offering this course for the first time. Last year, it was offered by Prof. Sunita Sarawagi. Though the professor knows a lot about the subject, the lectures could do with some more organization. In particular, the planning of the course over the semester is still sketchy and motivations are vague most of the time. Do not let the word 'foundations' deceive you; it's a particularly heavy course and needs you to know probability, linear algebra, calculus, and statistics at a fairly high level to appreciate the points that Ganesh makes in the class. This is a prerequisite for some advanced courses in Machine Learning offered by the department. The CSE department @ IIT Bombay is known for its Machine Learning research group, and this is the course that teaches you to make sense of the basics of the field.<br /></div></span>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-81253884144368281172010-08-27T14:45:00.005+05:302011-03-27T16:23:16.484+05:30IIT Bombay: CS 684: Embedded Systems<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 19px;font-family:Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,serif;font-size:12px;">This is a blog about the Fall 2010 offering of CS 684, the Embedded Systems course @ IIT Bombay.<div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~cs684/">Course Homepage</a></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~kavi/">Professor Homepage</a></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">Update 27/08/2010: The course is taught by Prof. Kavi Arya (an Imperial College/Oxford University alumnus) who has honed the course to make it an immensely enjoyable introduction to programming of embedded systems. The course has a very hands-on approach (obvious from the course evaluation which places project at the top), involving the programming of an in-house robot named Firebird V. The lectures are centered around learning skills that will help in programming the robot. The labs began with a two-day worshop (14 and 15 August - yeah we work on national holidays too!) on programming the bot in C. We have now moved to an abstracted modeling language called Esterel which has made life much simpler and which has an elegance to it. Other modeling languages and the real-time aspects of embedded systems shall also be covered in due course of time. The course has a project that we shall soon begin with. One of the things you observe about the teachers here at IIT Bombay is how responsive they are to the needs of the students. The course has been fine-tuned over the years which is why we are finding it much easier and streamlined than our seniors. This course is especially enjoyable for CSE guys who are averse to the nitty-gritty and unpredictableness of hardware but would like to program a bot at a much more abstract level.<br /></div></span>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-85143764963677384722010-08-21T12:25:00.007+05:302011-03-27T16:23:56.125+05:30IIT Bombay: CS 641: Advanced Computer Networks<span>This is a blog about the Fall 2010 offering of CS 641, the Advanced Computer Networks course @ IIT Bombay.<div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/synerg/doku.php?id=public:courses:cs641-autumn10:start">Course Homepage</a></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/silmaril/br/doku.php?id=start">Professor Homepage</a></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">Update 21/08/2010: The course is taught by Prof. Bhaskar Raman (a University of California, Berkeley alumnus) who uses <a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/silmaril/br/doku.php?id=teaching:students-vs-examtakers">innovative</a> <a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/silmaril/br/doku.php?id=teaching:houses">ways</a> to motivate the class. The course covers advanced topics in computer networks like congestion control, queueing algorithms, inter-AS routing, etc. It does not include wireless sensor networks. The course is centered around readings of important papers in the field of computer networks, a very interesting and illuminating task if done with enthusiasm. You are required to submit a summary of designated paper readings. The course also has assignments on NS-2 and a final project. Prof. Bhaskar Raman is an absolutely fabulous teacher! If you come to CSE@IIT Bombay to study, you should definitely consider taking one of his courses. It is a good idea to revise Network and Transport Layer chapters from Tannenbaum before starting this course.<br /><br />Update 03/09/2010: From some time, there was something about the prof that rankled me. I have now realized the reason. In almost all idealistic people I have known, there is also a certain sense of despondency and cynicism over the world not being the just place that it should be. Often, only children do not suffer from such vain notions. Prof. Raman is perhaps the only person I know who is idealistic yet non-Chekhovian in his own way. You need to know this guy to understand what I mean!<br /></div></span>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-67444821684700457722010-08-21T12:12:00.004+05:302011-03-27T16:24:33.271+05:30IIT Bombay: CS 621: Artificial IntelligenceThis is a blog about the Fall 2010 offering of CS 621, the Artificial Intelligence course @ IIT Bombay.<div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~cs621-2010/">Course Homepage</a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~pb/">Professor Homepage</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Update 21/08/2010: The course is an introduction to artificial intelligence. The lectures by Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya are really good and interactive. He has also fine-tuned the course and its evaluation components to suit the audience background and expectations. It includes a paper reading, a seminar, and quizzes besides the MST and EST. The professor thought of giving out projects but ultimately dropped it. That was a good thing because in an introductory course to a broad field like AI, small sustained assignments can do much better than a single big project in clearing out the fundae of the subject/topics.</div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-61155278585698160202010-05-21T19:56:00.012+05:302011-01-01T18:10:00.318+05:30Indian Education: The Essential Questions and Problems<div align="justify">This blog is written in response to the turmoil and choices I have faced over the last year and over the last couple of weeks in particular. It serves to analyze the notions and meaning of education and the sheer difficulty of realizing it in the Indian context. Sometimes, the discussion here may be so generic, simplistic and undeserving of the people I quote that it may seem little thought has gone into shaping the arguments. Yet, in the consciousness of the average Indian, questions of this nature are very rudimentary and the preconceptions very rigid. I have come to believe that the arguments below are essential to how I understand certain things that I increasingly regard to be very important in life. Also, since I have written this piece primarily as an identification of various factors that affect Indian education, I realize that the treatment here is very informal and can do with a great deal of systematic elaboration.<br /><br />I remember an American movie where there is this dialogue: <blockquote>The purpose of college is to make one think.</blockquote>I came across this line years ago, and have yet to find any other definition of education so comprehensive as to capture the essential theme of the process of education so succinctly. No matter what form education may take - from the informal brainstorming, workshops, seminars and apprenticeships that go by various names to the formal lecture series, theses and dissertations - the very crux of it all is to impart to the learner the ability to think. There is very little success in education unless all the effort is singularly directed at developing this ability for independent thought. A <a href="http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/2008/09/pan-iits-disgraceful-view-of-women-some.html?showComment=1222592952225#c3576946495970914572">quote</a> may serve to clarify the difficulty of realizing this ideal in the Indian context: "Education to the Indian middle class is largely a job ticket carried in a wallet, or a designer shirt flaunted at a party. Education is acquired and owned, it does not permeate and transform people."<br /><br />In much of our educational process, the background or the reasons are often eclipsed by the actual topic of study. There is little realization that the purpose of studying the former may not just be plain curiosity, but also so that we can better anticipate and live through the changes in our times. The result is a highly misplaced emphasis on the statement of facts, without having to deal with the accompanying motivations. For example, a science textbook may talk at great length about a discovery or invention without adequately considering the background of necessity and the reasons that led to the said discovery or invention. Or a history textbook may talk about events like wars, peace treaties, etc. without happening to put forth and analyze any motivations that propelled the events. Or a work of fiction might place great emphasis on the plot and its twists and turns without having much of the turmoil that a character faces or the philosophical musings that characterize and capture for the reader a bygone time and place and that lend it the greatness that story-telling alone cannot. Though the past may seem very obvious to us, its changes were lived as a novelty by the people of those times. History shows how ill-prepared we always are for change, fumbling through our inventions and revolutions. Education that turns its back on the future while satiating its preoccupation with the past does not fulfill its purpose. We cannot view the future through the prism of the past, but it would be foolish to know the history of one's existence without knowing the reasons and the path of our greatness, the mistakes committed and the lessons learned therefrom. Yet this closed-door-closed-mind policy seems to be increasingly a problem with our nations, religions, and 'civilizations'.<br /><br />Much greater is the problem when even the actual topic of study is not considered as important enough to be discussed as the fame and the aura surrounding it. An example of this inanity can be found <a href="http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Swaminomics/entry/raman-effect-fingerprinting-the-universe">here</a>. The common man must rely on the media for understanding the many events that befall our little, crazy world. Unfortunately, the mediapersons are themselves so uninformed and quite often so full of mediocrity and the accompanying arrogance that little light is shed upon the essential aspects and the peripheral (mis)information is all that one can get. So, one could have watched a prominent journalist talk patronizingly to lawyer-minister Mr. Kapil Sibal, without having done his homework on the nuclear liability bill or the foreign universities' legislation or the right to education act. Or you could have seen the failure behind the coverage of the parliament proceedings in consideration of the finance bill (including the communist and other parties staging protests outside the parliament, the destruction of public property, the 'reform' of the Jharkhand government, and the murkiness of CBI waters) without the media taking a moment to put forth what exact change is proposed by the legislation and how is it supposed to make things better or worse for the aam aadmi.<br /><br />Education is singularly about recognizing the questions as being equally important as the answers, if not more. When it is reduced to its basic form, instruction, it becomes a one-way street. Slowly, the teacher-student relationship is transformed into a pedagogue-follower one, and the interaction is poisoned with a lack of questions, atleast the 'whys'. At this point, there is very little to be had from further pursuit of such study except familiarity with the subject being studied. It is perhaps the worst form of education one can receive even when it is delivered in a highly refined manner. In India, we seem to be largely familiar with this and only this form, completely disregarding the two other pillars of education viz. research and facilitation/mentorship. The fact that we are saddled with shoddy instructors only makes matters worse. We do not seem to be alarmed at the complete lack in our educational system of the ability to ask essential questions, while we are concerned with exasperating and often unimportant details like saffronization of history textbooks and reservations. And then we wonder why we don't have internationally acclaimed institutions (commensurate with our populace) that produce world-class thinkers and innovators.<br /><br />Another thing that we never seem to consider is how functional the entire educational system of our country is. We have a great heritage of arts, literature, mathematics, natural and social sciences from which we might claim whole new schools of thought, extremely rich, robust and comparable alternatives to the current lines of thought as existing in the West. Yet, the achievements of our educational institutions lie merely in understanding, replicating and propagating systems of thought and conduct of affairs borrowed from the West, and amongst these only those that have any immediate practical value. I am not in favour of lambasting the West and its educational heritage; my whole education (as that of most Indians who are considered literate/educated) has been in the pedagogic traditions laid down by the British. However, a generally widespread ignorance of the existence of Indian pre-colonial traditions of thought and an unwillingness to develop and incorporate these side by side with the Western legacy of education in the hallowed portals of even the best of our educational institutions is proof of how little we understand of our past. This functional approach to education is crippling and takes away from it many of the ideals that education tries to inculcate. In the essay 'Indian Traditions and the Western Imagination' from 'The Argumentative Indian', <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen">Amartya</a> <a href="http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/sen">Sen</a> argues: <blockquote>While it is true that any useful knowledge gives its possessor some power in one form or another, this may not be the most remarkable aspect of that knowledge, nor the primary reason for which this knowledge is sought. Indeed, the process of learning can accommodate considerable motivational variations without becoming a functionalist enterprise of some grosser kind. An epistemic methodology that sees the pursuit of knowledge as entirely congruent with the search for power is a great deal more cunning than wise. It can needlessly undermine the value of knowledge in satisfying curiosity and interest; it significantly weakens one of the profound characteristics of human beings.<br /></blockquote><br />Our best institutions have sprung from the need for imparting professional education. So we have the IITs to deal with technology, IIMs to deal with management, and a recently strengthening string of national schools of law to deal with imparting legal education. These institutions lay claim to arguably the best minds in the country as far as 'talent' is concerned, as also the biggest share of state patronage in the form of funds allotted by the government to further the cause of education. Also, due to the tendency of good researchers to cluster at the best institutions, these schools have arguably the best faculty. However, all these institutions mainly impart education in the professional (read functional) spheres! We have yet to see comparable institutions that serve as centers of higher learning in liberal arts, performing arts, music, cinema (yes there is the overarching FTII, but what else), literature, philosophy (Every once in a while, one hears eminent colleges in Bombay shutting down this department due to a lack of students wanting to study philosophy.), political strategy and ethics, change in favour of social equity, etc. There are institutions that serve to understand these causes but they are fragmented islands of thought, often afflicted with dogma, corruption in ideals and practical affairs, and without the ability to connect to other schools of thought around the country and to bring about a constructive change in the society. Quite often, they might simply be 'educating' people with neither the academic rigor nor the inclination to question, change or innovate in their various streams of study, because a 'sharp' mind becomes accustomed in its very impressionable stage to the exclusive idea of the necessity of attending a professional school. Nothing can be sadder than this extremely functional approach to education, leading to the very slow but nevertheless persistent process of decay in many important areas of study and research.<br /><br />The chemist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Wilhelm_von_Hofmann">Hofmann</a> (who taught <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Perkin">Perkins</a>, father of the dyestuff industry and inventor of aniline mauve and mordants) in one of his addresses said, <blockquote>Whenever one of your chemical friends, full of enthusiasm, exhibits and explains to you his newly discovered compound, you will not cool his noble ardour by asking him that most terrible of all questions: 'What is its use? Will your compound bleach or dye? Will it shave? May it be used as a substitute for leather?' Let him quietly go on with his work. The dye, the leather, will make their appearance in due time. Let him, I repeat, perform his task. Let him indulge in the pursuit of truth - of truth pure and simple - of truth not for the sake of Mauve - let him pursue truth for the sake of truth.</blockquote>What Hofmann is speaking against is an overt emphasis on the functionalist approach to education.<br /><br />More recently, in response to a question on why India is unable to produce a global management school, <a href="http://www.goizueta.emory.edu/faculty/JagdishSheth/">Jagdish N Sheth</a> associated with the <a href="http://www.goizueta.emory.edu/">Goizueta Business School</a> <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/articlelist/articleshow/5938204.cms">opined</a>, <blockquote>The main issue with Indian institutes is that they only concentrate on teaching and not research. We still have a system of knowledge dissemination and not knowledge creation. Our excellence lies in our admission process...</blockquote>He may as well have been speaking for the educational structure that mars the entire country.<br /><br />The problem of a functionalist approach is something the West deals with very well, by not merely responding to the need of the industry and by recognizing that the unconditioned consciousness does not recognize the divisions between the various streams of study that we have created for the convenience of organization and specialization. So the universities in the West have schools that study political thought and change, classics (including their mythological heritage in Greek and Latin), socio-economic change and its repercussions, etc. in addition to the professional streams. These schools are highly vibrant and respected centers of learning, have splendid infrastructure and generous funding, and are vied for by students. This competitive excellence in streams of non-professional study must come from a deep recognition of the fact that political philosophy and economic ingenuity play as important a role in the vision of a nation or civilization as technological progress. Indeed, studies that have immediate tangible value cannot be advanced without progress in the underlying 'pure' fields such as physics, economics, linguistics, etc. A healthy stance towards learning in all spheres is important if we are to protect the wholistic nature of education from decay.<br /><br />Another issue that is related to the functional aspect of Indian education is the positive versus normative divide (terms of perspectives used mainly in economic study). A nation that has left the reins of rule and thought to outsiders for centuries cannot wake up all of a sudden and start asking stirring questions. So, as far as it concerns positive studies, the study of true and false, we are good at it. This might perhaps be the reason why Indians do so well in the sphere of sciences and why the IITs (despite their lack of extravagant infrastructure) are recognized the world over for their contribution in sciences and technology. However, when it comes to the normative questions, the questions of good versus bad and right versus wrong, we seem to get uncomfortable and squeamish and prefer to keep it beneath veneers. In a land which not only has rampant corruption, prejudice, and a general lack of awareness or questioning about ethics but also recognizes these as a part of life to be given no greater attention than the very act of breathing, it can be very difficult for a common next-door conditioned mind to comprehend the fallacy of acts such as propagating venality, not being passionate about one's work, paying "donations for a seat in an educational institute", prejudice against sexual minorities, etc. Such an attitude transforms itself into an educational failure in social sciences which rely heavily on the normative line of thought, because prejudice cripples the mind of any ability for independent, constructive thought.<br /><br />The question of divisions between the various streams of study brings us to another important issue that is hardly ever considered in the Indian milieu. I have become aware of this flaw after having read of it in an unlikely but appropriate place, and have become increasingly observant to it cropping up in everyday questions pertinent to my education and of those around me. While it focuses much on literature, it is equally applicable to understanding the pitfalls of education in general. In the preface to <a href="http://www.dorislessing.org/thegolden.html">The Golden Notebook</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Lessing">Doris</a> <a href="http://www.dorislessing.org/">Lessing</a> says:<br /><br /><blockquote>It starts when the child is as young as five or six, when he arrives at school. It starts with marks, rewards, 'places', 'streams', stars - and still in many places, stripes. This horse-race mentality, the victor and loser way of thinking, leads to 'Writer X is, is not, a few paces ahead of Writer Y. Writer Y has fallen behind. In his last book, Writer Z has shown himself as better then Writer A.' From the very beginning, the child is trained to think in this way: always in terms of comparison, of success, and of failure. It is a weeding-out system: the weaker get discouraged and fall out; a system designed to produce a few winners who are always in competition with each other. It is my belief - though this is not the place to develop this - that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'IQ', could stay with him through life, to enrich him and everybody else, if these talents were not regarded as commodities with a value in the success-stakes.<br /><br />The other thing taught from the start is to distrust one's own judgement. Children are taught submission to authority, how to search for other people's opinions and decisions, and how to quote and comply.<br /><br />As in the political sphere, the child is always taught that he is free, a democrat, with a free will and a free mind, lives in a free country, makes his own decisions. At the same time, he is a prisoner of the assumptions and dogmas of his time, which he does not question, because he has never been told they exist. By the time a young person has reached the age when he has to choose (we still take for granted that a choice is inevitable) between the arts and science, he often chooses the arts because he feels that here is humanity, freedom, choice. He does not know that he is already moulded by a system: he does not know that the choice itself is the result of a false dichotomy rooted in the heart of our culture. Those who do sense this, and who don't wish to subject themselves to further moulding by a system, tend to leave, in a half unconscious, instinctive attempt to find work where they won't be divided against themselves. With all our institutions, from the police force to academia, from medicine to politics, we give little attention to people who leave - that process of elimination that goes on all the time and which excludes, very early, those likely to be original and reforming, leaving those attracted to a thing because that is what they are already like. A young policeman leaves the Force saying he doesn't like what he has to do. A young teacher leaves teaching, her idealism snubbed. This social mechanism goes almost unnoticed - yet it is as powerful as any in keeping our institution rigid and oppressive.<br /><br />These children who have spent years inside the training system become critics and reviewers, and cannot give what the author, the artist, so foolishly asks for - imaginative and original judgement. What they can do, and what they do very well, is to tell the writer how the book or play accords with current patterns of feeling and thinking - the climate of opinion. They are like litmus paper. They are wind guages - invaluable. They are the most sensitive of barometers of public opinion. You can see changes of mood and opinion here sooner than anywhere except in the political field - it is because these are people whose whole education has been just that - to look outside themselves for their opinions, to adapt themselves to authority figures, to 'received opinion' - a marvelously revealing phrase.<br /><br />It may be that there is no other way of educating people. Possibly, but I don't believe that. In the meantime, it would be a help at least to describe things properly, to call things by their right names. Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of doctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show you how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself - educating your own judgement. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.'</blockquote><br />Lessing talks about the imaginary division between arts and science. In India, we seem to have kept the division but altered its banks. We have an unwritten but nevertheless quite rigid and oppressive hierarchy: science, commerce, arts. Mental ability (often construed as talent) dictates what one pursues, often with little or no justification in terms of talent, temperament, or inclination. However, most Indians concerned with science have some liking for the Arts and do dabble (sometimes quite successfully) in artistic activities they like. The same cannot be said for the people in arts dabbling in the Sciences, not because of lack of inclination or ability but because it is difficult to succeed in science without sustained training inputs. The bottomline is that the divisions between arts and science have been a lot more fuzzy than the ones between unseemly commerce and science/arts. Indeed, arts and sciences share topics such as logic and certain esoteric parts of philosophy; and attitudes are often found on the wrong sides of the divide - it is not uncommon to find scientists and technologists having a highly emotional, attached attitude to work, something identified easily in artists; likewise, it is not hard to find people associated with literature and philosophy utilize scientific methods and detached attitudes in analyzing the connections and repercussions of work in their domain. On the other hand, commerce is considered to be separate from science/arts. It is rare to find a person with a good degree of knowledge in both commerce and science/arts, unless the person belongs or has belonged to both sides.<br /><br />In order to clearly understand the nature of graduate studies in CSE and management and the sort of career to be expected later, I recently met a few of my friends who have already handled such studies before. I was surprised (though I shouldn't have been) to learn that people invariably thought a dichotomy was staring me in the face, that a choice was inevitable. Now, quite a few areas of study in economics and finance can be understood easily by engineers who are usually trained in optimization; broadly speaking, economics and finance are essentially studies in optimization themselves. Surprisingly, a huge share of the managers you find in Indian B-schools are engineers who don't want to be engineers anymore, and seem to see management as a kind of escape route and not as an applicatory augmentation of their already acquired analytical skills. It surprised me to find that even people with a CSE background who had chosen to study management were consciously clueless that a lot of topics studied in management intersected with CSE, viz. financial engineering, decision sciences, operations and logistics, etc. Indeed, they believed that they had made a complete 'switch'. Also, there is very little inclination in an MBA student to do academic research, though I must blame this on the utilitarian nature of the curricula followed. On the other hand, the people who were pursuing graduate degrees in CSE and were involved in heavy-duty research seemed to think of the MBA as a completely different way of life (which it is) and were again clueless that any academic research happened in the sphere of management. I believe that CSE is perhaps the only engineering stream that generally intersects almost all other spheres of scientific study, and that it shares more than just a few subjects of interest with management. And yet, graduates of this stream with immense possibility, whether they pursued CSE or management, came to believe that they had made a choice between the two which Lessing calls "the result of a false dichotomy rooted in the heart of our culture."<br /><br />The Lessing identified division between arts and science has been transformed in the Indian context into a commerce versus arts/science divide. And both are equally convenient, imaginary and ridiculous. For example, consider a painting, obviously a work of art. Yet its valuation and its tenability as an investment option is a question in commerce and its trends. Likewise, its preservation is a question that chemical scientists and practitioners must answer. Also, with a flower, you may write a poem about it, dissect it for its various morphological parts, or go sell it in the market. The various streams simply serve as perspectives to look at a single thing. In everyday life, it is extremely easy to observe, if one is aware and alert, as to how these seemingly different principal streams of study run into each other, feed off each other, and are dependent on each other. And how a perspective allows us to think of a thing without creating conflict, and is best used for this purpose alone and not to limit the horizons of thought. In my belief, a truly educated mind can change perspectives, can wear various hats, and in this must never be constrained by its wish or its dexterity in accommodating these perspectives, although ability may be a straitjacket, easily gotten rid of with some effort.<br /><br />Since this is just a blogpost and not a formal essay, here's more from the highly interesting and educative preface to The Golden Notebook:<br /><br /><blockquote>Meanwhile there is a country where...<br /><br />Thirty or forty years ago, a critic made a private list of writers and poets which he, personally, considered made up what was invaluable in literature, dismissing all others. This list he defended lengthily in print, for The List instantly became a subject of much debate. Millions of words were written for and against - schools and sects, for and against, came into being. The argument, all these years later, still continues... no one finds this state of affairs sad or ridiculous...<br /><br />Where there are critical books of immense complexity and learning, dealing, but often at second or third hand, with original work - novels, plays, stories. The people who write these books form a stratum in universities across the world - they are an international phenomenon, the top layer of literary academia. Their lives are spent in criticizing, and in criticizing each other's criticism. They at least regard this activity as more important than the original work. It is possible for literary students to spend more time reading criticism and criticism of criticism than they spend reading poetry, novels, biography, stories. A great many people regard this state of affairs as quite normal, and not sad and ridiculous...<br /><br />When I recently read an essay about Antony and Cleopatra by a boy shortly to take A levels. It was full of originality and excitement about the play, the feeling that any real teaching about literature aims to produce. The essay was returned by the teacher like this: I cannot mark this essay, you haven't quoted from the authorities. Few teachers would regard this as sad and ridiculous...<br /><br />Where people who consider themselves educated, and indeed as superior to and more refined than ordinary non-reading people, will come up to a writer and congratulate him or her on getting a good review somewhere - but will not consider it necessary to read the book in question, or ever to think that what they are interested in is success...<br /><br />Where when a book comes out on a certain subject, let's say star-gazing, instantly a dozen colleges, societies, television programmes write to the author asking him to come and speak about star-gazing. The last thing it occurs to them to do is to read the book. This behaviour is considered quite normal, and not ridiculous at all...<br /><br />Where a young man or woman, reviewer or critic, who has not read more of a writer's work than the book in front of him, will write patronizingly, or as if rather bored with the whole business, or as if considering how many marks to give an essay, about the writer in question - who might have written fifteen books, and have been writing for twenty or thirty years - giving the said writer instruction on what to write next, and how. No one thinks this is absurd, certainly not the young person, critic or reviewer, who has been taught to patronize and itemize everyone for years, from Shakespeare downwards.<br /><br />Where a Professor of Archaeology can write of a South American tribe which has advanced knowledge of plants, and of medicine and of psychological methods: 'The astonishing thing is that these people have no written language...' And no one thinks him absurd.<br /><br />Where, on the occasion of a centenary of Shelley, in the same week and in three different literary periodicals, three young men, of identical education, from our identical universities, can write critical pieces about Shelley, damning him with the faintest possible praise, and in identically the same tone, as if they were doing Shelley a great favour to mention him at all - and no one seems to think that such a thing can indicate that there is something seriously wrong with our literary system.</blockquote></div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-2468319048618601862009-05-17T20:20:00.003+05:302009-05-17T20:29:26.366+05:30A Post About Plots And Stuff<center><span style="font-family:Courier New;"></span></center><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.tennscreen.com/">TSA</a> Writing Tips - Twenty Basic Plots - Copyright 2002 TSA<br /><br /> IDEAS, PLOTS & USING THE PREMISE SHEETS<br /></div><br />After you come up with your own system for generating ideas, the next step is to put them in some recognizable story form (the basic plot idea), build your central conflict (the story premise sheet), then build your character and underlying themes (the thematic premise sheet). <br /><br />#1 QUEST - the plot involves the Protagonist's search for a person, place or thing, tangible or intangible (but must be quantifiable, so think of this as a noun; i.e., immortality).<br /><br />#2 ADVENTURE - this plot involves the Protagonist going in search of their fortune, and since fortune is never found at home, the Protagonist goes to search for it somewhere over the rainbow.<br /><br />#3 PURSUIT - this plot literally involves hide-and-seek, one person chasing another.<br /><br />#4 RESCUE - this plot involves the Protagonist searching for someone or something, usually consisting of three main characters - the Protagonist, the Victim & the Antagonist.<br /><br />#5 ESCAPE - plot involves a Protagonist confined against their will who wants to escape (does not include some one trying to escape their personal demons). <br /><br />#6 REVENGE - retaliation by Protagonist or Antagonist against the other for real or imagined injury.<br /><br />#7 THE RIDDLE - plot involves the Protagonist's search for clues to find the hidden meaning of something in question that is deliberately enigmatic or ambiguous.<br /><br />#8 RIVALRY - plot involves Protagonist competing for same object or goal as another person (their rival).<br /><br />#9 UNDERDOG - plot involves a Protagonist competing for an object or goal that is at a great disadvantage and is faced with overwhelming odds.<br /><br />#10 TEMPTATION - plot involves a Protagonist that for one reason or another is induced or persuaded to do something that is unwise, wrong or immoral.<br /><br />#11 METAMORPHOSIS - this plot involves the physical characteristics of the Protagonist actually changing from one form to another (reflecting their inner psychological identity).<br /><br />#12 TRANSFORMATION - plot involves the process of change in the Protagonist as they journey through a stage of life that moves them from one significant character state to another.<br /><br />#13 MATURATION - plot involves the Protagonist facing a problem that is part of growing up, and from dealing with it, emerging into a state of adulthood (going from innocence to experience). <br /><br />#14 LOVE - plot involves the Protagonist overcoming the obstacles to love that keeps them from consummating (engaging in) true love.<br /><br />#15 FORBIDDEN LOVE - plot involves Protagonist(s) overcoming obstacles created by social mores and taboos to consummate their relationship (and sometimes finding it at too high a price to live with).<br /><br />#16 SACRIFICE - plot involves the Protagonist taking action(s) that is motivated by a higher purpose (concept) such as love, honor, charity or for the sake of humanity. <br /><br />#17 DISCOVERY - plot that is the most character-centered of all, involves the Protagonist having to overcome an upheavel(s) in their life, and thereby discovering something important (and buried) within them a better understanding of life (i.e., better appreciation of their life, a clearer purpose in their life, etc.)<br /><br />#18 WRETCHED EXCESS - plot involves a Protagonist who, either by choice or by accident, pushes the limits of acceptable behavior to the extreme and is forced to deal with the consequences (generally deals with the psychological decline of the character).<br /><br />#19 ASCENSION - rags-to-riches plot deals with the rise (success) of Protagonist due to a dominating character trait that helps them to succeed.<br /><br />#20 DECISION - riches-to-rags plot deals with the fall (destruction) of Protagonist due to dominating character trait that eventually destroys their success.<br /><br />(Note: Sometimes #19 & #20 are combined into rags-to-riches-to-rags (or vice versa) of a Protagonist who does (or doesn't) learn to deal with their dominating character trait.)</div><blockquote><span style="font-family:Courier New;"><span style=""> </span></span></blockquote> <span style="font-family:Courier New;"><center> </center> </span>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-82016646159829422942009-05-08T20:59:00.007+05:302009-05-08T21:59:26.057+05:30Of Tagore, Kafka, Lessing, Dasgupta, Wodehouse, Ray and Iyer<div style="text-align: justify;">Another year has passed by... Today is Tagore's birthday. Cheers to a blessed day!<br /><br />In the past few months, cut off for most part from the Internet, I've been reading voraciously, devouring all sorts of books that I could lay my hands on. I'm in the habit of reading many books simultaneously. During this period, the thought of this humble blog crossed my mind only sporadically and fleetingly, as did the thought of reviewing all the books I was reading. Time to make amends...<br /><br />I've in my possession <span style="font-style: italic;">The Complete Novels - Kafka</span>, which I'm currently reading. If we all live in a Kafka book, then my world is quite complete. ;-) The most surreal turn of events populate this man's writing, and though he seems fatalistic, I feel there's much more to it than that. He seems to write naturally, more naturally than even Chekhov (though comparisons are uncalled for). And he should be required reading...<br /><br />I'm currently also wading through Lessing's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Golden Notebook</span>, a book that might take me my longest time to finish a book. Her scholarship, instinct and almost insistent prose peels away many layers to expose the truth of the narrative. The structure of the novel is unique amongst all that I've read, and she has so many themes that it is quite a task reading the intensely analytical narrative. I was at one time thinking of giving up finishing the book. However, the vignettes the book conjures and passes to the reader are so unique that I stayed the course. Given the highly analytical treatment, I was surprised to have myself thinking of T<span style="font-style: italic;">he Golden Notebook</span> as a intensely visual novel. But I think that readers who've known the book for sometime will agree with me. To sum it up, a book one can turn to again and again and come away with something different each time.<br /><br />I'm whizzing past Dasgupta's <span style="font-style: italic;">Tokyo Cancelled</span>, and perhaps the best thing I can say about the book is that at one point, I almost forgot that it was Dasgupta and blessed Rushdie for turning out such a fine book. However, I must say that Indian literature (what little I know of it) seems to be full with story-telling. The cult of magical realism has become so hackneyed that I was quick to place <span style="font-style: italic;">Tokyo Cancelled</span> in that realm. In spite of all the innovation, the works make one think of a practiced flair. There is hardly any trespassing of boundaries, any major flouting of rules, ruffling of feathers that may be remebered in the long run - something that one almost expects of say Lessing or Murakami. And the philosophical streak of novel writing is hardly to be seen in Indian English literature, the quality that makes one set down a book to do some clear thinking to make meaning out of what the writer is trying to say and to identify the various themes laid out in the matter of a fictional narrative. Our literature seems to be made more for downright consumption rather than any philosophical rumination.<br /><br />I've read two Wodehouses in the recent past - <span style="font-style: italic;">Big Money</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Ring For Jeeves</span>. And what can I say, that man blows me over! Capital!!!<br /><br />I also have in my possession <span style="font-style: italic;">The Complete Feluda Stories</span> of Satyajit Ray, arranged in two volumes in chronological order. The mysteries make for wonderful light reading, and I wonder why Feluda is not as popular in India as Sherlo9ck Holmes...<br /><br />Finally, I must highly recommend Pallavi Iyer's <span style="font-style: italic;">Smoke and Mirrors</span>, non-fiction writings from her stay in China. Naipaul is my ultimate man for non-fiction, and though Iyer is not as passionately inquisitive as Naipaul, she writes naturally and truthfully and throws up many gems. The book taught me many things about China, but most importantly the extent of my ignorance and prejudice about China. I respect China much more now!<br /><br />That's it for the time being. Au Revoir!<br /></div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-36743481469218301542008-12-11T14:56:00.006+05:302008-12-11T15:13:44.952+05:30The Abyssinian Boy - Onyeka NwelueMy friend <a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Onyeka_Nwelue/622260936">Onyeka Nwelue</a> has had a wonderful thing happen to him. Read the following press release to find out:-<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_tNxIlkdB5AY/SUDgDIMnyTI/AAAAAAAAAB4/SSJ5WxWv73k/s1600-h/onyeka1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 227px; height: 299px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_tNxIlkdB5AY/SUDgDIMnyTI/AAAAAAAAAB4/SSJ5WxWv73k/s400/onyeka1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278465107622873394" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Onyeka Nwelue</span><br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>DADA Books</b>, an imprint of Design and Dream Arts Agency, have signed a book deal with 20 year-old University of Nigeria sophomore, Onyeka Nwelue, to publish his novel, <b><i>The Abyssinian Boy</i></b> by December.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span>Onyeka Nwelue was born in Nigeria in 1988. After graduating from High School at 17, he travelled to South Asia, particularly to India, where he wrote the first draft of his novel in three months. He has been published in the <b><i>Guardian, The Sun, Eclectica, Nigeria Village Square, Kafla InterContinental</i></b> and <b><i>Wild Goose Poetry Review</i></b>. He has received a grant from the <b>Institute for Research on African Women, Children and Culture</b> (IRAWCC) and is currently working on his second novel.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span>Set in India and Nigeria (and scattered locations of the world), <b><i>The Abyssinian Boy</i></b> is about a family whose nine year-old child gets haunted by an albino dwarf ghost. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span>Ayodele Arigbabu, publisher of <b>DADA Books</b>, refusing to comment on the terms of the deal, rather said: ‘<b><i>The Abyssinian Boy</i></b> lays bare the many paradoxes of culture clash with thought provoking and often amusing ironies’. Chika Unigwe, Nigerian-Belgian author of <b><i>The Phoenix</i></b> describes it as ‘an ambitious novel’.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span>DADA Books was established earlier this year and has already published Jumoke Verissimo’s <b><i>I am Memory</i></b>.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span>Sources close to the publishers say the author has been paid an advance of N 2.5 million.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span>For enquiries, contact: <b>DADA Books, 1<sup>st</sup> Floor, 95 Bode Thomas Street, Surulere, Lagos; Tel: +234-01-7451990. E.mail: <a href="mailto:dreamarts.designagency@gmail.com" target="_blank">dreamarts.designagency@gmail.<wbr>com</a></b></p>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-25711304309415320632008-12-07T16:52:00.008+05:302008-12-07T19:45:32.333+05:30Eureka! '08 Mentors' Meet - SJMSOM, IIT Bombay - Anand Lunia<div style="text-align: justify;">As finalists in <a href="http://www.eureka.ecell.in/">Eureka!'08</a>, the biggest business plan competition in Asia, me and my friend got to attend two immensely outstanding workshops on the business of business. Both of them were conducted at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shailesh_J._Mehta_School_of_Management">Shailesh J. Mehta School Of Management</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IIT_Bombay">IIT Bombay</a>.<br /><br />The first was by <a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Anand_Lunia/609928297">Mr. Anand Lunia</a>, Executive Director and CFO of <a href="http://www.seedfund.in/">Seedfund</a>. A lanky guy, he became a VC after growing and selling many businesses of his own. One of his businesses was sold at 60 million dollars and I'm sure many of the participants hoped (prayed?) that they may have such luck with their startup.<br /><br />Anand explained the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital">Venture Capital</a> business building up the idea of VC funding, its hows and whys from scratch. Right from Premoney, Postmoney to the intricacies of valuation and dealing with a VC, he covered it all.<br /><br />Here are some notes from his lecture that might interest a person working on a business plan/startup:-<br /></div><ul style="text-align: justify;"><li>The VC fund is usually expected to give 3x returns. So pervasive is the 80-20 rule that it finds its way here too. Out of every ten ventures funded with VC capital, only two succeed. Since these successes must compensate for the failures of the remaining part of the investment, they are expected to have an ROI of 10x. Since all ideas/teams invested in seem exceptionally great (that is why the investment gets done), here is no way of knowing at the time of investment which of the lot is going to succeed. Hence the VC's have to maintain exceptionally high hopes from every venture, pray for the success of each, and plan for preventing the failure of any of the investments.</li><li>The three main criteria for assessing a business plan are team, market and product in that order.</li><li>Any business plan needs to be backed up by a strong team. The various factors that are used while judging a team are academic background, professional track record and its relevance to the plan at hand, the motivation of the team as demonstrated by the groundwork already done for the success of the plan, etc. Often the team factor outweighs the other considerations when VC's are considering a plan. Anand said that at Seedfund, a business plan is evaluated by five independent VC's. Even if the plan is rated B by some VC, the team must get a rating of A by all the VC's. This is because a good team can make more out of a good plan than a mediocre team out of a great plan.</li><li>The market for your idea has to be big. It should be usually atleast around a hundred crores or more for a VC to look into it. Less than that, it is better to go in for angel investors, loand from banks, relatives, etc.</li><li>If the product rests on confidentiality of the idea, then the claims to IPR better be good. But it is not necessary that you need to have a great idea to make a difference. It is the execution of the idea that makes an idea a million-dollar proposition. So take a good idea (you can pick somebody's brains; there is no copyright on ideas!) and get down to making it work better than your competitors.<br /></li><li>Often a business plan will state that the team is working on so niche a project that it does not have competition at all. This spells bad news for the plan as the VC's figure out that a niche with no competitors will mostly have a very small market size. This can greatly dissuade VC's from investing in the plan.</li><li>Every once in a while, an idea will come along that will bank upon its niche as its USP. For example, Google which was turned down by more than 10 investors when it applied for seeding. But more often than not, VC's expect their investments to have a predictable way of capitalizing on an untapped market. While this spells problems for plans which seek to actualize niche ideas, it can actually help the planners by pitting them against critical VC's whose advice can help in polishing the plan so that the market traction is better once the idea is put into practice.</li><li>It is important to <span style="font-style: italic;">actually</span> collect feedback on your customer sales presentation and/or conduct market surveys in order to test if there exists a need for the product/service you're trying to sell. This can often help in determining other factors that may be of importance and may even change the USP of what you are trying to sell.</li><li>The valuation of a company is directly proportional to the size of the market it is trying to capture.</li><li>It is the relevance of your academic/professional knowledge and experience that counts while your plan is being considered for valuation by a VC. There is nothing as deluding as self-valuation on the basis of academic/professional pedigree.</li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;">That's more or less the gist of the lecture. There was also a minor session on the documentation involved while raising money for a venture and negotiating with a VC. It involved the term sheet, VC rights, entrepreneur rights, shareholders' agreements, share purchase agreements, due diligence, and questions of the governing board and vetoes.<br /><br />Though I've yet to grasp a lot about the details of valuation and negotiation, Anand's lecture was immensely helpful to me and the other participants as an introduction to valuing our ideas, polishing our business plans, and avoiding common pitfalls while pitching to a VC.<br /></div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-12389297198527836972008-11-30T22:37:00.013+05:302008-12-02T00:42:09.428+05:30Let's Talk Haiku!<div style="text-align: justify;">There's good news for me. And haiku for you. Actually, there was good news... A couple of months ago, I submitted some haiku to <a href="http://www.worldhaikureview.org/">World Haiku Review</a>. I got a good feedback from them - a nice mail which explained what I was doing wrong and where I could improve. If you've been around for some time in this business of sending off things on spec, you know how difficult it is to come by a thing like that. Then I all but forgot about it and hence had the pleasant surprise of finding my haiku in that magazine a few days ago. It's been over a month since they've out. Without further ado...<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://worldhaikureview.googlepages.com/editorialissue4">World Haiku Review, Volume 6, Issue 4, October 2008</a><br /><a href="http://worldhaikureview.googlepages.com/shintaihaiku,issue4">Shintai (New Style) Haiku</a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;">THE BEST TEN</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>FIRST PLACE</i> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b style="font-family: georgia;">in shadow</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> the moth stills its wings</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> leaving dreams to fly</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Marie Shimane</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>SECOND PLACE</i> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>watercolour–<span> </span></b></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> after lunch he adds<span> </span></span></span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> the stork</span></span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;">John Bird</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>THIRD PLACE</i> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b> A fallen gulmohur bud:</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> An incomplete story but</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> A complete poem.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Abhinav Maurya</span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><br /></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">SEVEN HONOURABLE MENTIONS</b><span><b style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"> </b> </span> </span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">(In no particular order)</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>night alleyway...</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> my floodlight shadow</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> breaks into two</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">zinovy Vayman</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>even his trees</b></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> stay inside the fence</span></span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> unseen neighbour</span></span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Ann K. Schwader</span></p>(A favorite!!!)<br /><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>working lunch</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> haiku scribbled</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> on my napkin</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Carmel Lively Westerman</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>each day continues</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> a journey of loneliness</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> crows screech overhead</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Marie Shimane</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> dawn childbirth </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> when the door opens</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> a cock crows</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Elizabeth Howard</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>a week of rain</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> new appreciation for</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> the nuance of gray</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Claudia Coutu Radmore</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>reprinting the thesis</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> leaving the mistakes</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> in</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Owen Bullock</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;">OTHER HAIKU OF MERIT<span> </span></span></b></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span> </span>(Zatsu-ei in no particular order)</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>year's end . . .</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> the bedding piled up</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> in the motel</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Bruce Ross</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>vinegar bath</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> mother's diamond ring</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> regains its sparkle</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Peggy Heinrich</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>noon church bell ...</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> how her dress</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> traces her</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Tyrone McDonald</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b> on grass she shone </b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> under the vast sky- </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> bare and alone</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Aju Mukhopadhyay</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:red;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>morn breeze</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> the trees filter light</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> and bird songs</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">john tiong chunghoo</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>posh café</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> the first bite of the plum cake</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> sends me back home</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Rafal Zabratynski</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>a lady's voice</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;">"your poor mother's grave," she says </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;">needs your attention</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Howard Lee Kilby</span></p><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://worldhaikureview.googlepages.com/editorialissue4">World Haiku Review, Volume 6, Issue 4, October 2008</a><br /><a href="http://worldhaikureview.googlepages.com/vangaurdhaiku">Vanguard Haiku</a></div><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">THE BEST TEN</span></span></b></div><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"> </p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: left; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span><b><i><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >FIRST PLACE</span></i></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> sunny day -</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> why not get</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> the divorce papers?</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Owen Bullock</span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">(Ahhh!!!)<br /></span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><b><i><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >SECOND PLACE</span></i></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> cabinetmaker</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> the mortice joints</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> on his coffin</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;">John Bird</span></span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;"><b><i><span style="font-size:100%;">THIRD PLACE</span></i></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> adoption center</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> she colors her mom black</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> her dad no face</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Victor P. Gendrano</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b><i style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">SEVEN HONOURABLE MENTIONS</i></b><span style="color:black;"><b><span><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"> </span> </span></b> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color:black;">(In no particular order)</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br /></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>In the morning,</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> The suit, the tie, the watch…</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> At night, only you!</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Abhinav Maurya</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>Season of mellow</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;">Yellow fruit; ripeness is all</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Too tired to die</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Frank<span> </span>Corcoran<span> </span></span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <b>Gathering firewood</b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> One life giving up their soul</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> For another's warmth</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Kristin Reynolds</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> relationship's end:</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> he calls the baby</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> his fuck trophy</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Richard Stevenson</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> Swords to bombs:</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> At war with one another,</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> At war with ourselves</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Abhinav Maurya</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> a tiny twig trembles</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> in the blast of wind</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> first marital quarrel</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Victor P. Gendrano</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> I told him, "Good boy."</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> His curled tail wagged one last time.</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> The vet said, "He's gone."</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Elizabeth Ewing</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"> </i></span></b></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"> </i></span></b></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">OTHER HAIKU OF MERIT</i><span> </span></span></b></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"><span> </span>(Zatsu-ei)</span></b></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> depression; </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> winds thrash the trees, </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;font-family:georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> no rains- whatever it is!</span></b></p> <p face="georgia" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></b></p> <p face="georgia" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Aju Mukhopadhyay</span></p><br /><p face="georgia" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p face="georgia" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p face="georgia" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> Trepidation spills</span></b></p> <p face="georgia" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> From your every orifice</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="font-size:100%;"> Revelation lost</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Kristin Reynolds</span></p><br /><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">All haiku are under copyrights of their original authors.</span></span><br /></span></p></div></div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-34858326424246066422008-11-30T11:25:00.007+05:302008-11-30T12:53:20.825+05:30Now That There's Time To Read And Introspect<div style="text-align: left;">Received via email from <a href="http://zigzackly.blogspot.com/">Peter Griffin</a>:-<br /><br />Suketu Mehta in NYT - <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/opinion/29mehta.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/<wbr>11/29/opinion/29mehta.html</a><br /><br />Dilip D'souza in the Washinton Post - <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802247.html" target="_blank">http://www.washingtonpost.com/<wbr>wp-dyn/content/article/2008/<wbr>11/28/AR2008112802247.html</a><br /><br />Naresh Fernandes in The New Republic - <a href="http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=4ef869a4-0c91-4a83-8d3e-2b7ca1501996" target="_blank">http://www.tnr.com/politics/<wbr>story.html?id=4ef869a4-0c91-<wbr>4a83-8d3e-2b7ca1501996</a> See also <a href="http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=8e4fc4e9-5298-4f0c-bf66-980c253c43e0" target="_blank">http://www.tnr.com/politics/<wbr>story.html?id=8e4fc4e9-5298-<wbr>4f0c-bf66-980c253c43e0</a> - his piece on Jews in Bombay.<br /><br />And these pieces, on their blogs, by <a href="http://indiauncut.com/iublog/article/a-night-out-in-mumbai/" target="_blank">Amit Varma</a>, <a href="http://soniafaleiro.blogspot.com/2008/11/children-of-bombay.html" target="_blank">Sonia Faleiro</a> and <a href="http://grch.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/nightmares/" target="_blank">Rahul Bhatia</a>.<br /><br />And these by Prem Panicker: <a href="http://www.prempanicker.com/index.php?/site/respiro_ergo_sum/" target="_blank">http://www.prempanicker.com/<wbr>index.php?/site/respiro_ergo_<wbr>sum/</a> & <a href="http://www.prempanicker.com/index.php?/site/an_officer_and_gentleman_and_a_moron/" target="_blank">http://www.prempanicker.com/<wbr>index.php?/site/an_officer_<wbr>and_gentleman_and_a_moron/</a> & <a href="http://www.prempanicker.com/index.php?/site/end_game/" target="_blank">http://www.prempanicker.com/<wbr>index.php?/site/end_game/</a> (the latter two link to some excellent stuff as well)<br /><br />And this, by Ingrid Srinath - <a href="http://citizensforpeace.in/blog/2008/11/29/this-is-not-indias-911" target="_blank">http://citizensforpeace.in/<wbr>blog/2008/11/29/this-is-not-<wbr>indias-911</a> (Read also Priyanka Joseph's comment to that post)</div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-57287446388744997552008-11-24T23:45:00.003+05:302008-11-24T23:57:01.853+05:30Winner Of The First Australia-Asia Literary Award<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>"There's a huge change coming very fast and this prize is giving a glimpse of that future."</em> <strong>Nury Vittachi, judge and founding board member of the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership.</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">DAVID MALOUF has won the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award for his short story collection The Complete Stories.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">The AU$110,000 award, which was created by the former Labor government in Western Australia, is worth AU$10,000 more than the next richest, the Prime Minister's Literary Award, and is given for fiction by writers resident in, or outside Australia, writing primarily about Australia or Asia.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Malouf was "very pleased to be the first recipient". He welcomed the award, and praised it as unique among state literary prizes.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">"There is certainly no other literary prize where Australia is the initiator which takes in Asia like this does, so it's a very good thing that we're looking outwards rather than inwards as we tend to do" he said.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">The Complete Stories won from a very strong shortlist, including The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize), The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser (longlisted for the Booker), Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey, and Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">The longlist, culled from 111 entries, also had plenty of dazzle, including the Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee (Diary Of A Bad Year), Haruki Murakami (After Dark), Rodney Hall (Love Without Hope) and Alex Miller (Landscape Of Farewell).</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">"It's a wonderful piece of writing, a combination of decades of work, and it captures the human condition in such a deep and intense way," said Nury Vittachi, a member of the judging panel, along with the Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie, and the Australian critic Peter Craven. Vittachi is also a founding board member of the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">"His characters are very ordinary people and he captures the intense joys and sadness of ordinary life."</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Vittachi agreed the decision to award the prize to a book of short stories was unusual.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">"It might usually go to a novel. But there's an ancient story form called a bracelet, where you have a sequence of stand-alone stories which when read together have as much power as a single, united novel. We thought this book worked as just such a bracelet."</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Vittachi sees the award as a means to divine the region's literary future.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">"This award is special as it has a focus on a particular region, a region where there are 4 billion people," Vittachi said.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">"The future of our cultural entertainment will be here. We're looking for a new Asia-Pacific flavour, as that is a good pointer to what the new literature will be. There's a huge change coming very fast and this prize is giving a glimpse of that future."</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Malouf said he hoped "booksellers, publishers and the media get behind the prize in the way they do for the Miles Franklin Award".<br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">Australia-Asia Literary Award Shortlist</h3><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <ul><li>Michelle DE KRETSER <strong>The Lost Dog </strong>Publisher: Allen & Unwin </li><li>Mohsin HAMID <strong>The Reluctant Fundamentalist </strong>Publisher: Penguin </li><li>David MALOUF <strong>The Complete Stories </strong>Publisher: Random House </li><li>Ceridwen DOVEY <strong>Blood Kin</strong> Publisher: Atlantic Books </li><li>Janette TURNER HOSPITAL <strong>Orpheus Lost </strong>Publisher: HarperCollins </li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">Australia-Asia Literary Award Longlist</h3><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><ul style="text-align: justify;"><li>J.M. COETZEE <strong>Diary of a Bad Year </strong>Publisher: Random House Group Ltd </li><li>Matthew CONDON <strong>The Trout Opera </strong>Publisher: Random House (Vintage) </li><li>Michelle DE KRETSER <strong>The Lost Dog </strong>Publisher: Allen & Unwin </li><li>Ceridwen DOVEY <strong>Blood Kin</strong> Publisher: Atlantic Books </li><li>Rodney HALL <strong>Love without Hope </strong>Publisher: Pan Macmillan </li><li>Mohsin HAMID <strong>The Reluctant Fundamentalist </strong>Publisher: Penguin </li><li>Mireille JUCHAU <strong>Burning In </strong>Giramondo Publishing </li><li>David MALOUF <strong>The Complete Stories </strong>Publisher: Random House </li><li>Alex MILLER <strong>Landscape of Farewell </strong>Publisher: Allen & Unwin </li><li>Haruki MURAKAMI <strong>After Dark </strong>Translator: Jay Rubin Publisher: Random House Group </li><li>Indra SINHA <strong>Animal’s People </strong>Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd </li><li>Janette TURNER HOSPITAL <strong>Orpheus Lost </strong>Publisher: HarperCollins</li></ul><div style="text-align: right;">-from The Sydney Morning Herald, November 22, 2008.</div><span style="font-size: 10px; font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-7850257682788611602008-11-06T21:40:00.006+05:302008-11-06T21:59:04.080+05:30Nadine Gordimer's Coming To Bombay!!!<div style="text-align: justify;">We've a chance to witness a book reading by Nadine Gordimer in Bombay. Nadine Gordimer has won the Nobel for literature, the Booker, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the best book from Africa. The details are reproduced below. Thanks to <a href="http://zigzackly.blogspot.com/">Peter Griffin</a> of <a href="http://www.caferati.com/">Caferati</a> for the tip.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Ministry of External Affairs (Public Diplomacy Division),<br />Sahitya Akademi & The Asiatic Society of Mumbai<br /><br />cordially invite you to a book reading<br /> by<br /> Dr. Nadine Gordimer distinguished South African writer and Nobel laureate<br /> on<br /> Sunday, 9 November 2008<br />At 10.30 a.m.<br /><br />Venue: The Durbar Hall, The Asiatic Society of Mumbai Town Hall,<br />Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg, Fort, Mumbai - 400 023.<br /><br /></div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-59607683390883756612008-11-02T23:22:00.007+05:302008-11-02T23:51:00.994+05:30Judith Hall Presents A Poem By Reetika Vazirani<div style="text-align: justify;" class="entry-body"> <p>Ghalib Speaks of His Poet Friends:-</p> <p>All my life I’ve been amending their verses.<br />Now that I’m ill they write,<br />“You have not replied to my letter.” As if I<br />could make their couplets rhyme,<br /> or rhyme slightly better.<br />Do they think I should live only<br /> to correct their verses!<br />Shah Alam Sahib and Tufta, they’re peevish<br />to the end: they think my ill health<br /> is a poetic exaggeration. </p> <p>Without me they can versify or not versify;<br />it’s not for me to prod grown men<br /> at the eleventh hour.<br />If I’ve lost my tact, I’ll offend them,<br />but all my life glad comments on loose verse<br />offended me. Now in pleasing myself,<br />I’ve lost the pleasure. But hell with these grudges<br /> of the day, these small sentiments.<br />Let the newspapers print that I’m near death.<br />I’m not up to correcting the ghazals of a Tufta.</p> <p>– Reetika Vazirani (1962-2003)<br />from <em>The Antioch Review</em>, Winter 1996, v. 54, no. 1</p> <p>Note by Judith Hall </p> <p> </p><blockquote><p>In 1995, I entered service as poetry editor of <em>The Antioch Review</em>. Much to my relief, my predecessor, David St. John, had already accepted poems for issues well into 1996. Vazirani’s is one of his I claim.</p> <p> Her “Ghalib” is surely the 19th century poet who wrote in Urdu under that name. “Ghazal”, an intricate Arabic form, is probably familiar to BAP readers; the word also means, according to Agha Shahid Ali, “the cry of the gazelle when it is cornered in a hunt and knows it will die.” Form follows word here, and while a romantic editor would link this image to this poet. I will not. The complaints and witty tittle-tattle of Vazirani's Ghalib charm and need no justification.</p> <p> For the next several weeks, I will be your Sunday editor, succeeding the estimable Bruce Covey in this role. I hope you will enjoy the <em>Antioch </em>poems coming your way.</p></blockquote><p></p> </div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-67780412510692163272008-11-01T14:38:00.010+05:302008-11-01T15:57:19.319+05:30Song Of The Little Road<div style="text-align: justify;">A blogpost after a very long time. All things, one at a time.<br /><br />I recently fished out page 11 of DNA Sunday dated August 10, 2008 that I'd preserved for the purpose of reference. Here's quoting from the article <span style="font-style: italic;">Mostly Pointless, Incessant Barking</span> by G Sampath:<br /><blockquote>There is a famous <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/">New Yorker</a> cartoon on blogging. It shows two dogs in conversation. One of them is telling the other, "I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking." It would appear that a sizeable number of the world's bloggers are following the lead of this New Yorker dog. According to a Gartner estimate, by mid-2007, about 200 million people were 'ex-bloggers'. Make no mistake, the landscape of the World Wide Web is littered with the corpses of dead blogs. [..]<br /><br />Before you can make a transition from pointless, incessant barking to a level of communication that gets you some returns in terms of either attention or money. But until that happens, you can't help wondering at some point if you aren't barking up the wrong tree. And that, by the way, is all it takes to kill a blog.</blockquote>I do not agree with the above opinion for the most part. I believe that blogs have immense use, potential, and capacity for change. In the small time for which I've been acquainted with blogosphere (as compared to stalwarts like <a href="http://zigzackly.blogspot.com/">Peter Griffin</a>), I've seen blogs defy all set limits of expression - most of these were blogs on writing, but there were also blogs on current affairs, technology, medecine, cinema, music, prostitution, sex and sexual deviousness, drug addiction, travel, cuisine, politics, blogs in remembrance of someone, blogs acting as public dairies, as professional journals, blogs with sponsored content, etcetera. I think blogs are a great thing to have happened to us and for these reasons, I would not want my blog to be 'dead'.<br /><br />However, it's very restricting for me to keep this blog thematic and yet blog regularly. Writing is such an intensive and time-consuming activity (what with all the planning and research and plotting and dishing it out); blogs on the other hand need not be planned, need not have their grammar right (though it helps). All that a blogger needs to do is wear his heart on his sleeve. I'm not a professional blogger and I blog for the fun and joy of blogging. Hence, I've decided to nor restrict myself to reviews and literature but to blog about anything I care about. That way, I would have a lot more fun blogging and the blog would not 'die' out.<br /><br />If I'm going to change the focus of the blog altogether, the earlier name .::The Reluctant Writer::. doesn't stick. So I have thought of renaming it to .::Song Of The Little Road::. 'Why?' you say. Because I'm in love with punctuation marks, but more importantly because Song Of The Little Road is the English name of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048473/">Pather Panchali</a> (a legendary movie by <a href="http://satyajitray.org/">Satyajit Ray</a>, the granddaddy of Indian cinema), the one movie that has singularly defined and redefined my notions of art in general and cinema in particular. Immensely delicate, poignant and humanistic, to the point of being Tagoresque. BTW, I also thought of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Life And Times Of A</span> (A for Abhinav, just in case) and <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight's Child</span> (because I was born on the brink of midnight) but I think that Song Of The Little Road means much more to me than the others. So there you go... this blog is <span style="font-style: italic;">my</span> Song Of The Little Road.<br /><br />I've decided to take the plunge and go for <a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org/">NaNoWriMo</a> (National Novel Writing Month). Actually, it should be InNoWriMo (International Novel Writing Month), and the organizers agree. But InNoWriMo is simply not as much pronouncing as NaNoWriMo, so there you go. It seems very unlikely that a person of my temperament should even think of attempting the herculean feat, let alone of finishing it. And mind you, I'm under no illusions about my inability to go all the way. But as Chandler from Friends puts it, you never know! And besides, I could do with some discipline to get started on a novel, the module of my creative writing course that I've putting on the backburner for months. So if you participating in NaNoWriMo, let me know and perhaps we can egg each other on towards that distant finish line as writing buddies.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a> seems to gel well with me for SN (even though apparently it doesn't for many people I know). I've been on it for about a year and unless Zuckerberg thinks of screwing up the design and layout in a irredeemably unlikeable manner (of which he showed us a rather unpopular trailer recently), I think I'm going to stick to Facebook for a long time. It's extremely user-friendly, sleek, and intuitive - no frills - SN at its best. In short, it's <span style="font-style: italic;">cool</span>. I hate that amorphous, imprecise word and I must love Facebook a great deal to use it.<br /></div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6551259077653494861.post-23446180441987074772008-10-29T00:46:00.004+05:302008-10-29T01:29:17.121+05:30Godel's Theorem<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">An absolutely fantastic essay found <a href="http://www.everything2.org/e2node/Godel%2527s%2520theorem">here</a>:</p><p style="text-align: justify;">John von Neumann, the legendary mathematician who mastered calculus by the age of eight, who devised the familiar set-theoretic definition of the ordinal numbers at twenty, whose powers of calculation surpassed those of at least one early electronic <span class="populated">computer,</span> and who was described by Polya as "the only student I was ever afraid of", had the following to say regarding a certain episode in mathematical history: </p><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>This happened in our lifetime, and I know myself how humiliatingly easily my own values regarding the absolute mathematical <span class="populated">truth</span> changed during this episode, and how they changed three times in succession!</blockquote>The cause of such awe was a short paper published in 1931 by the 25-year-old logician Kurt <span class="populated">Godel</span>, entitled <em>Uber formal unentscheidbare Satze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme</em> ("On Formally Undecidable Propositions of <span class="populated">Principia Mathematica</span> and Related Systems"). The revolutionary (and, to <span class="populated">von Neumann</span> and many others, disturbing) implication of the results therein was that any logical system comprehensive enough to describe elementary <span class="populated">arithmetic</span> necessarily contains propositions which can neither be proven nor disproven. Moreover, Godel proved that the internal consistency of such a system can never be proven except by employing <span class="populated">reasoning</span> which is not expressible within the system itself. </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b><br />Background</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> To better understand the impact which Godel's findings must have had on his peers, we should first describe the mathematical <span class="populated">climate</span> of the time. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> In the nineteenth century it had been discovered, through the work of <span class="populated">Riemann</span>, Lobachevsky and others, that coherent models of <span class="populated">geometry</span> could be constructed in which <span class="populated">Euclid</span>'s parallel postulate (that, given a <span class="populated">line</span> L and a <span class="populated">point</span> P in the plane, exactly one line exists which contains P and is <span class="populated">parallel</span> to L) did not hold. This, in itself, was a <span class="populated">shock</span> to many mathematicians: for millenia it had been assumed that Euclid's description of geometry, founded as it was on a "self-evident" and minimal set of <span class="populated">axiom</span>s, was one of the firmest, most <span class="populated">trustworthy</span> branches of mathematical knowledge. The existence of non-Euclidean geometries not only challenged mathematicians' geometrical <span class="populated">intuition</span>, but also the Platonist view that mathematics consisted of discoveries about eternal, <span class="populated">pure</span> forms whose existence was <span class="populated">objective</span> and unquestionable. More "monstrosities" such as <span class="populated">continuous</span> functions which were nowhere <span class="populated">differentiable</span> soon appeared, further fueling the general loss of <span class="populated">faith</span> in geometry. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Attempts to re-establish the comfortable certainty of the past, by turning from geometry to <span class="populated">set theory</span> as the new foundation of mathematics, also ran aground. Set theory, when pushed too hard, soon yielded such abominations as Russell's "set of all sets which do not include themselves". It proved <span class="populated">difficult</span> to construct a <span class="populated">theory</span> of sets which outruled such objects without sacrificing one's <span class="populated">principle</span>s in the process. Logicism, as espoused by <span class="populated">Frege</span>, <span class="populated">Dedekind</span> and <span class="populated">Russell</span>, gave birth to structures so complicated and unwieldy that the stated intention to formalize the intuitive laws of reasoning was obscured. <span class="populated">Constructivism</span>, which rejected even the <span class="populated">law of trichotomy</span> (that every real number is either greater than, equal to, or less than zero) was deservedly perceived as fanatical. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> To sidestep the <span class="populated">embarrassing</span> possibility that multiple, equally defensible versions of mathematical <span class="populated">truth</span> might exist, mathematicians soon claimed to have never been searching for truth in the first place. The formalists, led by <span class="populated">Hilbert</span>, redefined mathematics as consisting of allegedly <span class="populated">meaningless</span> symbols which were not "about" anything in particular. The mathematician was recast as a practitioner who merely manipulated these <span class="populated">empty</span> signs, attempting to derive <span class="populated">theorem</span>s (sentences consisting of the aforementioned meaning-free symbols) from axioms without concerning himself with the "truth" of his findings. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Hilbert hoped thus to outmanoeuvre intuition, and, more importantly, to make possible a <span class="populated">proof</span> of the <span class="populated">consistency</span> of mathematics. The logicists before him had already laid the <span class="populated">foundation</span> by developing a formal language in which mathematical statements could be expressed, along with symbolic transformation rules representing steps which could legally be followed in the progression from the beginning to the end of a valid proof. (The climactic, exhaustive chronicle of this endeavour is Russell and Whitehead's <em><span class="populated">Principia Mathematica</span></em>, page 362 of which finally yields the demonstration that 1 + 1 = 2.) With this framework in place, it should (Hilbert thought) be possible to study the combinatorial properties of the <span class="populated">set</span> of all sentences which could legally be derived from the system's axioms, and to prove that no two of them were <span class="populated">logical</span> opposites. This would obviously be an assurance that mathematics (or at least the portion modelled by this formal system) was free from internal contradiction: that is, that the axioms could not be used to prove both a theorem and its negation. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> As well as proving the impossibility of internal contradiction, it was hoped that the set of "<span class="populated">true</span>" sentences (those which could be constructed by applying legal transformations to the axioms) could be proved <span class="populated">complete</span> in the sense that, given a sentence, one could be assured that either this sentence or its negation was a member of the set of true sentences. A <span class="populated">formal</span> system with this property is said to exhibit "<span class="populated">decidability</span>", since one need never be <span class="populated">unsure</span> of the truth of a given sentence. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><b><br />Godel's theorem</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Hilbert's dreams of reformulating <span class="populated">classical</span> mathematics as a formal axiomatic system equipped with absolute proofs of consistency and completeness were dealt a <span class="populated">cruel</span> blow by Godel's findings in 1931. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> In his famous paper, Godel proved that it was <span class="populated">impossible</span> to find a metamathematical proof of such a system's consistency without employing rules of <span class="populated">inference</span> inexpressible within the formal system under consideration. (More precisely, Godel proved his results of any axiomatic system comprehensive enough to contain the whole of arithmetic. Henceforth, when the term "formal system" is used, it should be assumed that we are speaking of a system satisfying the aforementioned requirement. Less powerful systems, such as arithmetic equipped with <span class="populated">addition</span> alone or <span class="populated">multiplication</span> alone, can in fact be proved decidable and complete, as was shown by <span class="populated">Presburger</span> and <span class="populated">Skolem</span> in 1930.) </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Godel's other main conclusion was that any such formal system is <span class="populated">incomplete</span>, and hence that "truth" within the system is undecidable. Specifically, he showed that it possible to <span class="populated">construct</span> a sentence such that neither the constructed sentence nor its negation is provable within the system. What is more, even if one were to arbitrarily <span class="populated">decide</span> that such a sentence was true and should therefore be added to the system's axioms, there would still exist other equally undecidable sentences within this new system; and no matter how far this process of augmentation is taken, there will always be <span class="populated">further</span> truths which elude proof. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><b><br />Godel Numbering</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> The proofs of Godel's results hinge on the fact that the set of formulas expressible within a symbolic system is countable, and hence each formula may be mapped to a <span class="populated">natural number</span>. Therefore, metamathematical statements about these sentences may be construed as statements about natural numbers: meaning that these metamathematical statements are <em>expressible in the system itself</em>. As we will see, this <span class="populated">power</span> of the system to codify statements about itself turns out to be an <span class="populated">Achille's heel</span> of sorts, allowing Godel's ingenious construction of an undecidable sentence. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Godel considered a formal system containing only seven constant symbols: the left and right parentheses, as well as signs representing "not", "or", "for all", "<span class="populated">zero</span>", and "the successor of" (an operator which adds one to an integer, and can therefore be used to express all <span class="populated">natural numbers</span> via its repeated application to "zero"). Recall that <span class="populated">Godel</span>'s aim was to assign a <span class="populated">unique</span> integer (usually called the "Godel number") to each sentence expressible within this system; to begin with, the constant symbols described above were allocated distinct natural numbers. Similarly, other primitive signs (such as letters representing sentential variables) are each assigned integers. Since the number of variables which might be needed in a sentence is potentially <span class="populated">infinite</span>, Godel was compelled to employ some simple <span class="populated">number theory</span> to avoid overlap between the integers associated with different types of variables. As such, a certain class of variables was assigned <span class="populated">prime</span> Godel numbers, while another class was allocated from the set of <span class="populated">square</span>s of primes, and so on. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> A similar <span class="populated">trick</span> was used by Godel to calculate a unique integer associated with each sentence. A sentence is just a <span class="populated">string</span> of primitive symbols, each of which already has a natural number assigned to it. Obviously, a simple <span class="populated">addition</span> of the Godel numbers of symbols in the sentence is inadequate, since it does not guarantee <span class="populated">unique</span>ness over the set of all sentences. Similarly, a <span class="populated">weighted sum</span> is out of the question since we do not have an <span class="populated">upper bound</span> on the Godel numbers of primitive symbols. (If such a bound existed, say N, then we could simply multiply successive symbols by 1, N+1, (N+1)<sup>2</sup>, etc., to obtain a unique Godel number for the sentence.) Instead, the Godel number of a sentence containing <em>n</em> symbols with respective Godel numbers G<sub>1</sub>,...,G<sub>n</sub> is defined as the product p<sub>1</sub><sup>G<sub>1</sub></sup>*<sup> ... </sup>*p<sub>n</sub><sup>G<sub>n</sub></sup> where p<sub>i</sub> denotes the <em>i</em>th <span class="populated">prime</span> number. This representation allows us to unambiguously (as guaranteed by the <span class="populated">fundamental theorem of arithmetic</span>) retrieve a sentence from its Godel number via <span class="populated">factorisation</span>. Similarly, a <span class="populated">sequence</span> of sentences may be assigned a single Godel number by multiplying successive prime powers, the <span class="populated">exponent</span>s being the Godel numbers of successive sentences in the sequence.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>Outline Of Godel's Proof</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Since every symbol, sentence, and sequence of sentences in the formal system has now been assigned a Godel number, and since the system under discussion is capable of expressing statements about natural numbers, we now have a way of expressing <span class="populated">metamathematical</span> statements in the language of the system. For example, the claim that one sentence implies another can be interpreted as asserting a certain numeric <span class="populated">relation</span> between the Godel numbers of the two sentences. This relation will obviously be very <span class="populated">complex</span>, since it will need to express, in the domain of Godel numbers, all possible legal transformations which may be applied to a sentence in the system. However, since in the end it is merely a statement about integers, it is certainly expressible in the <span class="populated">language</span> of the system itself. Similarly, a yet more complex relation between natural numbers <em>m</em> and <em>n</em> exists which expresses the claim "The sequence of sentences with Godel number <em>m</em> is a proof for the sentence with Godel number <em>n</em>". </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> To prove that an undecidable sentence existed, Godel needed to find a formula <em>G</em> which, somewhat like <span class="populated">Epimenides</span> (the Cretan who claimed "All Cretans are liars"), expressed the assertion that no proof of <em>G</em> exists. More precisely, this claim could be expressed in the language of the system as</p><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote> There does not exist a natural number <em>m</em> such that <em>m</em> is the Godel number of a sequence of sentences forming a proof for the sentence with Godel number <em>g</em>. </blockquote> where <em>g</em> is actually the Godel number of the sentence just quoted. The sentence can therefore be construed as making a claim about <em> itself</em>, namely that it is unprovable. </div><p style="text-align: justify;"> A little <span class="populated">thought</span> should show that constructing such a sentence is somewhat difficult. To calculate the Godel number of the above sentence, one follows the process described above of splitting it into <span class="populated">primitive</span> symbols, whose Godel numbers are encoded as exponents of successive primes. However, the result of this calculation, <em>g</em>, appears in the sentence itself, and therefore affects the calculation! It would appear at first that we need to be "<span class="populated">lucky</span>" by stumbling upon a number <em>g</em> with the property that, when substituted literally into this sentence, brings about the <span class="populated">coincidence</span> that the Godel number of the resultant sentence is also <em>g</em>. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Luck, of course, plays no part. Godel conceived of a complex but <span class="populated">elegant</span> construction which, through a process of <span class="populated">iteration</span>, shows how to find such a number in a <span class="populated">finite</span> number of steps. The details of this process, while readily understandable, are somewhat <span class="populated">tedious</span> and will not be described here. The end result is the important point: for a very <span class="populated">general</span> class of formal sysems, we have an explicit method for constructing a sentence, <em>G</em>, which asserts its own unprovability. Further, Godel showed that if the axioms of the system are consistent (meaning that it is impossible to derive two contradictory sentences from them) then <em>G</em> is indeed unprovable: since if a proof for <em>G</em> existed, then it would also be possible to prove its <span class="populated">negation</span>, making the system inconsistent. The converse also holds: discovery of a proof for <em>G</em>'s negation would <span class="populated">imply</span> the existence of a proof for <em>G</em>. In other words, if the axioms are <span class="populated">consistent</span>, then <em>G</em> is formally undecidable. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Godel further noted that, although unprovable within the formal system itself, the sentence <em>G</em> can in fact be proved true via <span class="populated">metamathematical</span> reasoning. In fact, the immediately preceding discussion shows this: since we have established that no proof for <em>G</em> can exist, and since this is exactly the assertion made by <em>G</em> about itself, <em>G</em> is a <span class="populated">true</span> statement. Thus the system not only contains an undecidable sentence, but: since it contains a true, unprovable sentence: the system is also <span class="populated">incomplete</span>. (The term "completeness", applied to a formal system, implies that all true statements in the system are derivable from its axioms.) What is more, simply adding <em>G</em> to the axioms would not suffice to make the system complete, since exactly the same process could be applied to this augmented system to obtain another, similarly undecidable, sentence. Godel thus <span class="populated">shatter</span>ed all hope of ever constructing a consistent, complete formal system.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"> The final <span class="populated">blow</span> landed by Godel's paper was a demonstration of the impossibility of proving a formal system's consistency via a proof expressible within the system itself. A brief description of how he obtained this result follows. Above we saw how, from the assumption that the system's <span class="populated">axiom</span>s were consistent, Godel proved that it contained a true, undecidable <span class="populated">sentence</span> and was thus incomplete. It turns out that the proof of this fact: </p><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote> If this system is consistent, then it is incomplete. </blockquote> is achievable within the system itself. To see how, note that the sentence <em>G</em>, which asserts its own unprovability, is equivalent to the statement "This system is incomplete", since it gives an <span class="populated">explicit</span> example of a true, undecidable sentence. Thus the statement above is equivalent to: <blockquote> (This system is consistent) implies that <em>G</em> is true. </blockquote> Next, let <em>A</em> be the statement "There exists a sentence which is unprovable". This claim is in fact <span class="populated">equivalent</span> to asserting the system's consistency, since if the system were inconsistent, then <em>every</em> sentence would be provable. (This is closely related to the fact that, if we have a <span class="populated">false</span> statement <em>p</em> in any logical system, then the sentence "<em>p</em> implies <em>q</em>" is true for any sentence <em>q</em>.) Hence the above statement may be expressed within the formal system as simply "<em>A</em> implies <em>G</em>". Godel showed that this latter sentence was formally provable within the system. Now, assume that a proof for <em>A</em>, i.e., a proof of the system's consistency, also existed. Then since we have proofs for both <em>A</em> and "<em>A</em> implies <em>G</em>", we have a proof of <em>G</em>. But <em>G</em> was previously proven unprovable. Therefore no proof of <em>A</em> can exist: the system cannot prove its own consistency.<br /><br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><b>Consequences of Godel's proof</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Godel's findings were the <span class="populated">catalyst</span> for many philosophical controversies which continue even to the present day. The Oxford philosopher J.R. Lucas has made the claim that Godel's theorem precludes the existence of <span class="populated">artificial intelligence</span>, since any calculating <span class="populated">machine</span> is <span class="populated">isomorphic</span> to a formal system to which Godel's theorem applies. Others, notably <span class="populated">Douglas Hofstadter</span>, dismiss this view as "a transient moment of anthropocentric <span class="populated">glory</span>" and claim that Godel's proof may even offer insights about the workings of human <span class="populated">intelligence</span> which will be useful in the creation of AI. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Whilst the dream of establishing secure foundations for mathematics has never recovered from Godel's attack, his findings have not been construed as a reason to <span class="populated">abandon all hope</span> of extracting meaning from mathematical inquiry. Godel himself seemed to hold the view that Platonic realism provided the clearest definition of mathematical truth: of mathematical concepts, he said "It seems to me that the assumption of such objects is quite as legitimate as the assumption of <span class="populated">physical</span> bodies and there is quite as much reason to believe in their existence". According to Davis and Hersh, most modern mathematicians also secretly subscribe to Platonism: "like an underground <span class="populated">religion</span>, it is observed in private and rarely mentioned in public". </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> Godel's methods also sparked various fruitful lines of investigation which had far-reaching consequences. Since the publication of his paper, the first naturally-arising example of an undecidable set-theoretic statement has been found. Known as the <span class="populated">continuum hypothesis</span>, it is the statement that no set has a cardinality greater than that of the natural numbers but less than that of the reals. Godel himself showed in 1937 that this hypothesis cannot be proved from the axioms of set theory; Paul J. <span class="populated">Cohen</span> demonstrated in 1964 that neither can it be disproved. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> A fascinating variant of Godel's theorem was discovered in 1970, when it was proved that no general algorithm for solving all <span class="populated">Diophantine equation</span>s (polynomial equations with integer coefficients and roots) can be formulated. Loosely, it can be shown that in any formal number theory, a Diophantine equation exists which is in some sense equivalent to Godel's self-denying sentence <em>G</em>. Such an <span class="populated">equation</span> can be interpreted as stating of itself that it has no solutions; in fact, if a solution were found, one could construct from it the Godel number of a proof that the equation had no solutions. It seems unlikely that we have come close to exhausting the list of <span class="populated">surprise</span>s derived from Godel's work. Perhaps von Neumann may be allowed the last word on Godel's significance: </p><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote> Kurt Godel's achievement in modern logic is singular and monumental: indeed it is more than a monument, it is a <span class="populated">landmark</span> which will remain visible far in space and time... The subject of logic has certainly completely changed its nature and possibilities with Godel's achievement. </blockquote></div>Abhinav Mauryahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02244238556311290748noreply@blogger.com0