Immediately Available for Jobs in Pune, India…

My current employment contract with CSC World (India) gets over on December 31, 2011. Thus, I am now immediately available for, (and needless to add, am actively on the lookout for) suitable jobs in Pune.

(1) Main Job:

Employment mode: Both permanent jobs, as well as contracts of 6+ months durations, are OK.

Domain: Only CAE. Preferably: CFD. Preferably, in C++ development. Related areas like HPC, the CAE-like 3D graphics etc. are fine too. If the company environment and the job profile is right, also the jobs from application engineering side and with the original CAE software product companies themselves (like MSC Software, Ansys Fluent, Comsol, etc.) would be OK, too.

Availability: Immediate (January 2012).

Location: Only in Pune, India.

Expected package: Industry-standard.

[And, needless to add] References (now also from the CAE field): Can be made available on request.

(2) Part-Time Teaching:

Available for teaching the final year BE Mech. CFD course prescribed by the University of Pune, at engineering colleges in and near Pune (within 25 km radius), for the immediately upcoming semester. Highly desirable: (actually) talented students. Money is not a consideration. References (from students as well as professors) regarding an undergraduate (III year BTech) FEM course which I taught on a part-time basis at COEP during the Spring 2009 semester, can be made available on request.

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A Song I Like:
TBD [This section shall remain suspended until I actually land the desired kind of a job.]

[E&OE]

 

An Important Comment I Just Made at iMechanica—And, (Much) More!

0. The title says it all!

Go, check out this comment I just made at iMechanica: [^].

1. Now, on to the “more” part of the title. Noted below are a few more things about my research.

2. My Researches on QM:

2.1 Since the publication of my QM-related results, I have moved on considerably further. As mentioned earlier on this blog, I have since then realized that my approach—the way I thought about it, as in contrast to what I (happened to have) published—always could handle the vector field equations of electromagnetism, including those for light. That is, including the angular momentum part of the EM fields. (Paddy, Suku, are you listening?) … However, I decided against publishing something in more detail to cover this aspect. A good decision, now it seems in retrospect.

(Yes, Jayant, you may now try your best to prod me towards publishing, including emphasizing how unpublished research is non-existent research. Just try it! Any which way you wish. … Precisely just the way I don’t give a damn to wannabe physicists turning JPBTIs turning entrepreneurs, I also don’t give a damn to the Statism-entrenching advices coming off the Statism-entrenching scientists, esp so if they also are the State-revered ones. So, just try it!! Also others, like, say, Sunil!!!)

2.2 I had also resolved the entanglement issue, and have chosen not to publish about it. As I stated earlier here [^], Louisa Guilder reports that Bell’s inequality paper has garnered the highest number of citations in physics literature so far, an astounding 2,500. The paper # 2,501 (or greater, as of today) must have concluded that the entanglement issue cannot be resolved—possibly out of the position/conviction that there was nothing to be resolved.

So, basically, I have resolved what an enormous number of misguided (and, possibly outright stupid) people could cite but not resolve.

Aside: Of the hundreds of papers on this topic I have come across, I know of Dr. Joy Christian’s position to be most reasonable—and in my knowledge, only his. Now, there are some minor differences between what he says and what I have always known and never published. But these differences are, in a sense, minor. The important part—and aren’t we concerned only with the important things here?—is that I knew about it, and have deliberately chosen not to publish about it. (If holding this position makes it possible to tick me off via certain lists such those maintained by a John Baez or a Scott Aaronson, I couldn’t care less about it—and both (and all) of them, I suppose, should know/could get to know, how (I care so less about those lists).)

BTW, as a matter of progression in time, I had thought that the issue would have to be first resolved in the context of photons, not of electrons. I am not very sure about it, though. In any case, that was the sequence in which I did it. First, photons; then, electrons.

Go, try your best to prod me towards publishing something on it! Just try it!! … BTW, my resolution had happened years before I had publicly offered an Indian PhD physicist on a “LinkedIn” group that I could explain my results if she (or anyone else) could meet me in person at Pune. This public offer of mine has just ended, right now!…. So, go ahead! Just try it!!!

3. My Researches on Other Topics

3.1 I have had some definite ideas for research on other topics from computational science and engineering and allied fields (including a numerics). I have kept these aside for the time being, because many of these are well-suited for guiding PhDs. Which brings me to the last couple of points for today (or at least, as of now, in the first version of this post).

3.2 As to student projects, I have decided not to accept anyone unless he is remarkably bright, and hard-working. (For those who seek to do truly independent PhD research, I cannot make myself available as a guide, as of now. Also see the point 3.3 below.) Roughly speaking, this means that rough level as would be understood by one or more of the following: GRE (V+Q) scores of at least 1350; GATE score of 95+P; throughout distinction class (or in at least 5 semesters out of 8) in BE of University of Pune (or equivalent).

3.3 The University of Pune has a stupid requirement for becoming a PhD guide: you (i.e. a fresh PhD graduate) must wait for at least 3 years after his own (successful) defense before he can become a PhD guide himself. The three years, in my case, end on September 20, 2012. (They—the Indian government(s)—probably arranged the date to numerically coincide with the date on which I first entered USA: 2nd September, 1990. Yes, the same government that whispered the UK government to give Rahul Gandhi’s brother-in-law all security clearance at UK airports, on par with the President and Prime Minister of India.)

Recently, someone reminded me a further requirement that I had forgotten. You also need to have two publications in those three years, before you can become a guide. Since I have mentioned the Gandhi’s and the defence-date here, I am sure that they would now interpret the sufficiently vague rules to imply that those two must be journal articles—peer-reviewed conference proceedings won’t do.

I, therefore, have decided to try to publish two journal articles in the near future of a few months. (Hey Elsevier, take notice!)

At least one, and probably both of these two articles would be on CFD.

Those of you who know me, would know that once I get going, I get going. I don’t disappoint (these of) you, not this time around at least: I have already installed Ubuntu 11.10 (natty) inside Oracle’s VirtualBox running on top of Windows (32 bit XP and 64-bit 7), and have already installed OpenFOAM v. 2.0.1 in that Ubuntu (32-bit, as of now). I also have installed other software. I have shortlisted the niche problems I could work on. I have contacted a couple of IIT Bombay professors, not for collaboration, but merely for sounding out. I knew that being employed by the IIT Bombay, there would be no collaboration, though a collaboration could have been perfectly OK by me. I also knew that once I wrote an email to them, it would get trapped (as all my emails are), and then, even the sounding things out over a 30 minute session would soon become impossible. And, that the impossibility would never be communicated explicitly via any means, esp. via an email. This  supposition of mine has indeed come to pass. (Congratulate me for being a good judge of the IIT Bombay, of the Indian government(s)—all of them, today’s and those of the past under the BJP regime as well, of Indians, and of humanity in general.) I knew all that, right in advance, and had prepared myself mentally for it. And, thought of plans B and C as well. I am executing on these.

And, no, I couldn’t care a hoot for how many freaking citations those two journal papers generate. As far as I am concerned, these two papers would allow me to fulfill the stupid requirements whereby I can become a PhD guide. And whereby, a slim chance does exist that I might get some good guy (gals included) for PhD supervision. (Chances are, it could be someone I already knew as a friend—numerically speaking, most of my friends are without PhDs.)

So, there. For the next few months, that’s the sort of research I am going to do—in my spare time, of course. Hey Elsevier, take notice (once again!!). As to others: If you consider yourself my friend, help me publish it in an easy and timely manner, ASAP.

That’s all for today. For this first version, anyway. As always, I might come back and correct or add a few things. …. Might as well add a few political comments right here.

4. A Few Comments on Politics and All:

Just noting down a few comments on politics (i.e. that politics which is “larger” than the one in S&T fields) in passing (and I will take liberties to pass comments on people without alerting them):

To ObjectivistMantra and Others:

Tavleen Singh’s article on the slap to Mr. Pawar was the best. However, it fell short on the count of completeness. On this count of completeness, she does far, far better (actually excellent) with her next article in the Indian Express’ Fifth Column. Why I say she fell short. In an entrenched mixed economy such as ours (i.e. India’s as in the past and as of today, and of USA’s in near future), the whole system has already become so statist, so mangling of individual rights, that it is impossible to systematically assign blame on any one systemic part of it. In my twenties and early thirty’s (i.e. 15–25 years ago), having known this, I used to argue that it would be impossible for the Indian army (i.e. defence services in general) or the Indian courts to be singled out as being clean. Time proved me right. Indeed, it’s at least since my X standard (i.e. for ~35 years now) that I have argued that you can’t blame politicians—indeed that far too many politicians, from the village through the national level enjoyed much more of esteem in my opinion than what salaried class (say, my “Brahmin” friends) would allow them. Sometime while I was in SF Bay Area, I further realized that the trend to say: “It’s all polltishuns; common people and businessmen are clean” had originated not in India, but in the middle-east and Pakistan etc., and that our Punjabi’s, Gujarathi’s etc. settled in the USA and UK (e.g. Kanwal Rehi, Vinod Khosla and their friends there and here) had been simply rubbing the characterization (actually applicable in the middle-east and Pakistan etc.), expectedly witlessly, on to India’s scene. Since Shobha Dey makes many frequent visits to Dubai, she was expected to have picked it up, too. And, she has shown over the years  that she has. Her latest column springs from that faulty position as regards India. Tavleen Singh is better. (That’s one basic reason why a link to her columns features in the my blogroll here.) Singh did stop short of stretching on that line. However, she did get overwhelmed by the dominant presence of that erroneous idea in our present culture. That’s why, she couldn’t think of a single example on the following lines: Taking a symmetrical case, should I be allowed to put a slap on the face of a Kanwal Rekhi or a Vinod Khosla, for not giving me a job in SF Bay Area in late 2000/early 2001, so that my green-card processing could have been completed? Should I be permitted—morally, even if not legally—to land a (Marathi) “saNsaNit thappaD” (nearest English: a resounding slap) on the face of a Ratan Tata, not just for never giving a job in his company (in Ratan’s case, Tatas) but even allowing my harassment (e.g. as stated on a LinkedIn thread re. VSNL/Tata Indicom Broadband)? Would it be morally justifiable? Why, Ms Tavleen, speak of the emotions of common man but refuse to discuss the issue on more clearly and more on specifically moral terms? So, you see, even if Ms. Singh is far better—and here I thankfully recall all her wonderful articles in the recent past, esp. the courage she has shown in taking on the urban twittering “middle” classes in the “Gandhian” Anna Hazaare “movement”—it is obvious that she overlooked something. Mind you, it’s just plain omission (and as far as I am concerned, it seems to be a very honest one). But still, an error is an error. On omission is an omission. Since I enjoy and admire her columns as much as you do, I hope that she addresses the moral aspects of the emotional issues rather than emotions. In any case, what she wrote was otherwise far better, far superior to what I could have written. This is exactly like Swapan Dasgupta’s recent article. Except for that one error, the rest of the article is excellent! But, hey, you don’t design or manufacture 99 components of an engine well, and leave 1 component out of either good design process or actual testing. As to Ms. Dey, I think I am going to stop reading her now. Some time ago, she was wondering when certain people had kissed last, in the context of—and who else: Indian “poltishun”s. (In case someone finds it intriguing, realize that she is a daughter of an Indian central bureucrat, and as far as I can make it out, has had no explicit rational philosophy to guide her writings, though she is a lady of enormous culture and composure in her own right too. Oh well, even explicit rational ideas do make a difference—think what a whole rational philosophy can do!)

I think I will stop here, and add possibly add other points via other blog posts. For the time being, as far as politics goes, I am enjoying (“loving it”) watching the BJP more than anyone else in the opposition/government, as far as the issue of retail FDI goes.  However, I am not going to support Walmart for the simple reasons that (i) their country has unreasonably failed me in the PhD and unreasonably denied me green-card/citizenship, (ii) they are too big to need my support anyway, and (iii) supporting a big company against government—Microsoft, in the DoJ case—was one among many things that got me a heart condition, I know. (How do I know? Well, it’s the same guy who has known how to resolve the QM wave-particle duality in the context of light, and about angular momentum in EM, and then, a resolution of the riddles of quantum entanglement, as well as many other unpublished, even un-discussed topics.)

One final point, again going back towards research. For the past several years I could not fathom the reason why people might be so unenthusiastic about my approach—I mean, honest people (apart from all the dirty things and “political” issues I have mentioned/indicated above.) Well, it was while reading Sean Carroll’s blog at Discovery magazine that I happened to realize one important (technical) reason why this might be (or must be) so! Hmmm…. Nice to know. It’s always great to know. Though, I am not going to divulge here what that thing was—or how it not only doesn’t contradict my approach but rather helps me be even more confident about my approach (if I ever needed such help, in this context!) And, as you know, I am not going to discuss it or publish about it either. Try to get me to do otherwise. … Just try!
Ok. Enough is enough. As usual, to be edited/streamlined later—perhaps!

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A Song I Like:
[RIP, Dev Anand!]
(Hindi) “gaataa rahe, meraa dil…”
Music: S. D. Burman (perhaps with R.D. looking after the orchestra (??) if not also the tune. (I have read somewhere that he was involved in “Aaraadhanaa,” but have no such idea when it comes to “Guide”)
Singers: Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar
Lyrics: Shailendra

[E&OE]

Where the Mind Stops—Not!

The way people use language, changes.

In the mid- and late-1990s, when the Internet was new, when blogs had yet to become widespread, when people would often use their own Web sites (or the feedback forms and “guestbooks” at others’ Web sites) to express their own personal thoughts, opinions and feelings—in short, when it still was Web 1.0—one would often run into expressions of the title sort. For example: XYZ is a very great course—NOT! XYZ university has a very great student housing—NOT! XYZ is a very cute product—NOT! … You get the idea—you really do! (NO not!!)… That’s the sense in which the title of this post is to be taken.

For quite some time, I had been thinking of a problem, a deceptively simple problem, from engineering sciences and mechanics. Actually, it’s not a problem, but a way of modeling problems.

Consider a body or a physical object, say a piece of chalk. Break it into two pieces. Easy to do so physically? … Fine. Now, consider how you would represent this scenario mathematically. That is the problem under consideration. … Let me explain further.

The problem would be a mere idle curiosity but for the fact that it has huge economic consequences. I shall illustrate it with just two examples.

Example 1: Consider hot molten metal being poured in sand molds, during casting. Though “thick,” the liquid metal does not necessarily flow very smoothly as it runs everywhere inside the mold cavity. It brushes against mold-walls, splashes, and forms droplets. These flying droplets are more effective than the main body of the molten metal in abrading (“scrubbing”) the mold-walls, and thereby dislodging sand particles off the mold walls. Further, the droplets themselves both oxidize fast, and cool down fast. Both the oxidized and solidified droplets, and the sand particles abraded or dislodged by the droplets, fall into the cooling liquid metal. Due to oxidized layer the solidified droplets (or due to the high melting point of silicates, the sand particles) do not easily remelt once they fall into the main molten metal. The particles remain separate, and thus get embedded into the casting, leading to defective castings. (Second-phase particles like oxidized droplets and sand particles adversely affect the mechanical load-carrying capacity of the casting, and also lead to easier corrosion.) We need the flow here to be smooth, not so much because laminar flow by itself is a wonderful to have (and mathematically easier to handle). We need it to remain smooth mainly in order to prevent splashing and to reduce wall-abrasion. The splashing part involves separation of a contiguous volume of liquid into several bodies (the main body of liquid, and all the splashed droplets). If we can accurately, i.e. mathematically, model how droplets separate out from a liquid, we would be better equipped to handle the task of designing the flow inside a mold cavity.

Example 2: Way back in mid-1980s, when I was doing my MTech at IIT Madras, I had already run into some report which had said that the economic losses due to unintended catastrophic fractures occurring in the US alone were estimated to be some $5 billion annually. … I quote the figure purely from my not-so-reliable memory. However, even today, I do think that the quoted figure seems reasonable. Just consider just one category of fractures: the loss of buildings and human life due to fractures occurring during earthquakes. Fracture mechanics has been an important field of research for more than half a century by now. The process of fracture, if allowed to continue unchecked, results in a component or an object fragmenting into many pieces.

It might surprise many of you (in fact, almost anyone who has not studied fluid mechanics or fracture mechanics) that there simply does not exist any good way to mathematically represent this crucial aspect of droplets formation or fracture: namely, the fact of one body becoming several bodies. More accurately, no one so far (at least to my knowledge) has ever proposed a neat mathematical way to represent such a simple physical fact. Not in any way that could even potentially prove useful in building a better mechanics of fluids or fracture.

Not very surprising. After all, right since Newton’s time, the ruling paradigm of building mathematical models has been: differential equations. Differential equations necessarily assume the existence of a continuum. The region over which a given differential equation is to be integrated, may itself contain holes. Now, sometimes, the existence of holes in a region of space by itself leads to some troubles in some areas of mechanics; e.g., consider how the compatibility criteria of elasticity lose simplicity once you let a body carry holes. Yet, these difficulties are nothing once you theoretically allow the original single body to split apart into two or more fragments. The main difficulty is the following:

A differential equation is nothing but an equation defined in terms of differentials. (That is some insight!) In the sense of its usage in physics/engineering, a differential equation is an equation defined over a differential element. A differential element (or an infinitesimal) is a mathematical abstraction. It begins with a mathematically demarcated finite piece of a continuum, and systematically takes its size towards zero. A “demarcated finite piece” here essentially means that it has boundaries. For example, for a 1D continuum, there would be two separate points serving as the end-points of the finite piece. Such a piece is, then, subjected to the mathematical limiting process, so as to yield a differential element. To be useful, the differential equation has to be integrated over the entire region, taking into consideration the boundary and initial values. (The region must be primarily finite, and it usually is so. However, sometimes, through certain secondary mathematical considerations and tricks involving certain specific kinds of boundary conditions, we can let the region to be indefinitely large in extent as well.)

Since the basic definition of the differential element itself refers to a continuum, i.e. to a continuous region of space, this entire paradigm requires that cuts or holes not existing initially in the region cannot at all be later introduced. A hole is, as I said above, mostly acceptable in mathematical physics. However, the hole cannot grow so as to actually severe a single contiguous region of space into two (or more) separate regions. A cut cannot be allowed to run all the way through. The reason is: (i) either the differential element spanning the two sides of the cut must be taken out of the model—which cannot be done under the differential equations paradigm, (ii) or the entire model must be rejected as being invalid.

Thus, no cut—no boundary—can be introduced within a differential element. A differential element may be taken to end on a boundary, in a sense. However, it can never be cut apart. (This, incidentally, is the reason why people fall silent when you ask them the question of one of my previous posts: can an infinitesimal carry parts?)

You can look at it as a simple logical consistency requirement. If you model anything with differential elements (i.e. using the differential equations paradigm), then, by the logic of the way this kind of mathematics has been built and works, you are not allowed to introduce a cut into a continuum and make fragments out of it, later on.  In case you are wondering about a logically symmetrical scenario: no, you can also not join two continua into one—the differential equation paradigm does not allow you to do that either. And, no, topology does not lead to any actual progress with this problem either. Topology only helps define some aspects of the problem in mathematically precise terms. But it does not even address the problem I am mentioning here.

Such a nature of continuum modeling is indeed was what I had once hinted at, in one of my comments at iMechanica [^]. I had said (and none contradicted me at that forum for it) that:

As an aside, I think in classical mathematics there is no solution to this issue, and there cannot be—you simply cannot model a situation like “one thing becomes two things” or “two infinitesimally close points become separated by a finite distance” within any continuum theory at all…

In other words, this is a situation where, if one wishes to think about it in mathematical terms, one’s mind stops.

Or does it?

Today, I happened to idly go over these thoughts once again. And then, a dim possibility of appending a NOT appeared.

The reason I say it’s a dim possibility is because: (i) I haven’t yet carefully thought it through; (ii) and so, I am not sure if it really does not carry philosophic inconsistencies (philosophy, here, is to be rather taken in the sense of philosophy of science, of physics and mathematics); (iii) I already know enough to know that this possibility would not in any way help at least that basic fracture mechanical problem which I have mentioned above; and (iv) I think an application simpler than the basic problem of fracture mechanics, should be possible—with some careful provisos in place. May be, just may be. (The reason I am being so tentative is that the idea struck me only this afternoon.)

I still need to go over the matter, and so, I will not provide any more details about that dim possibility, right here, right today. However, I think I have already provided a sufficiently detailed description of the problem (and the supposed difficulty about it) that, probably, anyone else (trained in basic engineering/physics and mathematics) could easily get it.

So, in the meanwhile, if you can think of any solution—or even a solution approach—that could take care of this problem, drop me a line or add a comment.  … If you are looking for a succinct statement of the problem out of this (as usual) verbose blog-post, then take the above-mentioned quote from my iMechanica comment, as the problem statement. … For years (two+ decades) I thought no solution/approach to that problem was possible, and even at iMechanica, it didn’t elicit any response indicating otherwise. … But, now, I think there could perhaps be a way out—if I am consistent by basic philosophic considerations, that is. It’s a simple thing, really speaking, a very obvious one too, and not at all a big deal… However, the point is, now the (or my) mind no longer comes to a complete halt when it comes to that problem…

Enough for the time being. I will consider posting about this issue at iMechanica after a little while. … And, BTW, if you are in a mode to think very deeply about it, also see something somewhat related to this problem, viz., the 2011 FQXi Essay Contest (and what its winners had to say about that problem): [^]. Though related, the two questions are a bit different. For the purpose of this post, the main problem is the one I mentioned above. Think about it, and have fun! And if you have something to say about it, do drop me a line! Bye for now!!

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A Song I Like
(Hindi) “nahin nahin koee tumasaa hanseen…”
Singers: Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhosale
Music: Rajesh Roshan
Lyrics: Anand Bakshi

[PS: Perhaps, a revision to fix simple errors, and possibly to add a bit of content here and there, is still due.]
[E&OE]

Visual Something, Part 1

The mood not to do anything in particular still continues, though I did take a couple of road trips in the nearby Sahyadri and Konkan region in the recent past. Still, since I don’t feel like writing on anything in particular, I will just share a few pics, that’s all. … On second thoughts, I could write something of a rant about those slick “intelligent” digital cameras they have on market these days. Like a fool, I ended up buying one, last year. It’s an average digital camera: 12 MPx, 4X optical zoom. (The manufacturer hardly matters for the things I am concerned about, but if you must ask, it’s a Sony camera.) I don’t particularly like the results. They could have been much better.

The trouble is with the camera. They pack in so much “intelligence” in a digital camera these days that you end up taking only average-quality photographs all the time—you never quite fail, but you also never quite succeed taking the precise kind of snaps that you wanted.

I mean, I am not a photographer, not even an amateur one. So, I wouldn’t have an issue if they had limited themselves to automatically adjusting, say, the exposure time. But when they begin messing with focus, and that too by automatically selecting and providing you with multiple focus areas (none of which can be selected or eliminated), it really grates on my nerves. When you want to focus on a particular single object (e.g, a flower), everything else (e.g. the nearby leaves) ends up getting the sharpest focus—but not the object you wanted to single out. At other times, there is no such a thing as the thing to focus at, at all. And, sometimes, the camera just ends up losing the sharp contrast of bright light and dark shadows. It’s a freaking egalitarian approach.

… And, finally, a word for the optical viewfinder. I would like to see it return. I am old enough that my sense of photo-composition has got developed entirely with the optical viewfinder lense, and I have trouble using the LCD screen—even though it is perfectly WYSIWYG. (Actually not quite—once you click, the snap you actually get has a lot of contrast and color values altered.) The trouble with the LCD screen is when the ambient light is bright—you can’t make out anything well enough. (Making the LCD bright is not an option: apart from making the batteries run down quickly, it also gives you a misleading picture regarding color values, brightness, saturation, contrast, etc.) Another trouble. I just tend to miss “the moment” of the snap. The LCD screen doesn’t quite let me have the feel of being able to take all of the view in, in one shot—my line of sight keeps slipping over the LCD screen from here to there, and I am never quite sure what the right moment to click is. One more point. Using the view lens means holding the camera next to your face, which helps a lot in steadying the shot, too.

All in all, I don’t particularly like the results, and I will see if I can save enough money to buy another camera, a non-LCD screen, optical viewfinder camera (even if a digital one). My solution in the meanwhile is to take as good pics as possible with my camera and then do a bit of GIMPing for changing color values so that the pics become as presentable as possible. However, apart from changing the color values a bit (and scaling), I have not touched (“photo-shopped”) the pics in any other way. The results appear below. “Enjoy” the pics, for whatever worth they are:

For this post, I think I can (and anyway will) skip the usual “A Song I Like” section.

[E&OE]

What’s up? … Nothing in particular

Have been away from the Internet for a while. No blogging, no emails, no SMSs. Not even much of browsing.

The experience has been reminiscent of those pre-Internet times. And more. The thing is: I can’t say anything particular about it.

I had started out by saying that it does feel like that grayish patch of plain land that you sometimes hit on a long journey after an exciting passage through the greenery in  mountains. Yet, this analogy is not at all perfect. You see, there is that boredom implied when you use that imagery of a grayish patch of a road. Yet, even boredom is not a part of the state here. What this overall mood is, can be described very simply, directly, and accurately—but without getting across much anything meaningful very successfully—as: “nothing in particular.”

Nothing in particular. Not even boredom. And, this part is important. I had come to believe that being away from the ‘net would spell boredom for me. Or not doing anything particular. But it’s not quite so. Sometimes, doing almost nothing can also be a welcome an acceptable change.

Of course, it’s not that I have not been doing anything at all. Actually, I was doing a bit of running around too, as there was some medical condition in the family and all, in the recent past. And, yet, I also feel somewhat sure that this is not the reason behind my current overall mood. In fact, this mood of “nothing in particular” had been setting in for quite some time. May be, it’s the prolonged rainy season that does the trick. May be. Just, may be.

Actually, I had enthusiastically begun reading a few things on certain topics of my interests—general interests as well as research interests. But then, regardless of anything, any events, a mood would get set in whereby I would not feel like taking any thing to completion, not even plain reading. And, I am sure, I have energy enough to do so. It’s just that I am not in a mood to do anything specific in a great hurry.

Has there been a reader’s/writer’s block? Nope. Not quite that either! … BTW, I do know what a writer’s block is like. You have a writer’s block when you know that you do wish/want to write, and still, somehow, cannot bring yourself to writing anything. Or, whatever you write in your attempt to force yourself to write, ends up being bad or unacceptable to you even as a preliminary version. That’s what a writer’s block is supposed to mean. I guess, a reader’s block is when you feel like lying down while reading, and then you easily fall asleep, regardless of your supposed interest in reading. (What do you think?)

But the current scene is nothing of that sort. The point is: I don’t even feel like I should be writing, or even reading, in the first place. That “should” part itself is missing. I am not in a great hurry to do anything.

In a way, I am enjoying the “nothing” that I am doing!

Perhaps, what I’ve been doing is reminiscing. Sometimes, yes. But then, even not enough of it that I can say that’s what I’ve been doing!

Anyway, let me try not to bore you any further about my current mood of doing “nothing in particular.” And thusly, let me try to be a bit “dutiful” and so write down a few things that I did notice happen around me from that peripheral sort of awareness that I seem to be carrying around me these days:

1. There was a 15th August in between, and also a 9/11 anniversary.  And, another terrorist strike in Delhi.
2. Anna Hazaare broke his fast, yet again. L. K. Advani announced a “rath yaatraa,” yet again. None asked Hazaare his opinion as to how best to tackle terrorism.
3. I did not even feel like reading others’ blogs. Or, even plain logging into my account here. Or, in my accounts elsewhere.
4. I did manage to read a couple of chapters in a book on history of mathematics. Realized that I have been carrying a somewhat wrong impression concerning the chronological precedence in between Lagrange and Laplace, esp. as regards (the then fledgling) the beginnings of the potential theory. I used to “think” (but anyway also knew for sure that I was not sure about it) that Laplace’s work came a decade or two before Lagrange’s, and then, on the basis of this tentative and erroneous assumption, used to wonder how come that it was Lagrange and not Laplace who began the calculus of variations. (After all, even in its most elementary “avatar,” CoV would involve a potential function.) Now, I have things better straightened out as far the energy approach in mechanics goes. First, it was Leibniz; then, Bernoulli. (d’Alembert comes somewhere in there.) Then, Euler, and Lagrange. Then, Laplace and Poisson.
5. There weren’t many walls of loudspeakers during the (Marathi) “gaNapati” festival this time round in Pune. Loudspeaker walls are obviously not necessary to keep mindlessly dancing for 24+ hours. (If the goal of yoga is to go mindless, a very direct illustration of the same is available for all to see during the “gaNapati visarjan” procession.)
6. A wonderful Marathi music director, Shrinivas KhaLe, passed away.
7. We have had a prolonged rainy season this year. It still continues.
8. A few of my favorite columnists continued providing some good commentary on the political happenings in the country.
9. I bought a few books, some related to my research, and have yet to begin reading most of them.

I am sure this mood, too, shall pass. I am sure I will get back to my activities and interests, esp. my research, once again with a better level of enthusiasm. The point is, so long as one knows that such a phase is temporary, doing nothing in particular can also be, in a way, so nice! fine! …

This post, just to let you all know that that’s the phase I am currently in. … Sort of like, taking it easy, for the time being… I will return to blogging after a month or two, may be three. May be, more. Or, may be, some time earlier, if I feel like doing so. But, still, overall, I think that I am anyway losing interest in blogging. At least, in blogging a lot. Or, at least, doing so very regularly/frequently. (I had indicated the same some time ago.) … I am sure I will resume my activities long before I resume blogging. … So, there.

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A Song I Like:
(Marathi) “shukra taaraa, manda waaraa…”
Music: Shrinivas Khale
Singer: Arun Date, Sudha Malhotra
Lyrics: Mangesh Padgaonkar
[PS: In case I've mentioned this song before, I'll  come back and replace it with some other wonderful song composed again by Shrinivas Khale, within a day or two. Else, as you know, it's a temporary bye-bye to blogging for the time being.]