On letting go

This is one more of a eternally unanswered questions to which I attribute the title of this blog. I have read at many places and heard from many people, that we should not hold on to insult / bad things done by others to us. We should just move on. Life is short and we have to do things that we planned in our life and not get carried away to set something wrong done by others to right. Also it hurts you the most and all that. But I can't really digest this. Should I really let go ? and what does it mean to let go ?

Some good reasons to do so which I can recall -

1. While reading the book "Two states" by Chetan bhagat I came across a paragraph where he had been to aurobindo ashram in Pondicherry and met a spiritual master there. He too had held on to something which he was just unable to give up .This created a strife inside him. The master explained, you forgive the person who has been bad to you. Chetan asked forgive ? why , he had been so unfair to me then, and even today it is me who should forgive? The master said - " You don't forgive people for their good you forgive them for your own good.". The blockage of the grudge will get removed and life will flow like a unobstructed river." Yes , the words are remarkable, it is proved as I remember that incident in the book to this date. It is your happiness which gets blocked by holding on, and you do care about it.

2. Famous cardiac surgeon Dr Devi Shetty says let go of things because if you don't it's your heart which has to bear the burden.

3. Celebrity nutritionist and fitness trainer Rujuta Divekar in her book "Women and the weight loss tamasha" says not letting go is a major reason behind digestive disorders.

4. I had also read a article here which said your gut has a brain. we often say it's my gut feeling. There is evidence that indeed our gut (intestine) has plenty of nerve cells. So our brain is linked to our digestive system if we stress ourselves mentally physical ailments follow.

So not letting go is indeed costly.

No we come to the other part of the story "Not letting go". Why do I never let go ?

I have a very strong sense of just and unjust.

I cannot tolerate injustice . It just sends me in to hyper mode. If it's done to me I like to set it right taking whatever steps are possible. I can take losses, any other compromise is acceptable, but no compromise on injustice. Some people look at me in disbelief as the losses I talk about here are just not acceptable to most people, and they think impractical to trade those things for justice. But maybe this is where I think from my heart and not brain.

Just like myself, I cannot see injustice being done to someone else (you would say this is too much)

I cannot stand bullies. At many instances where I have come across genuine bullies, I have confronted with them sometimes even bullied them if they refuse to go back to normal. They are in shock and disbelief, that THIS girl ? SHE confronted me ? She never opens her mouth in public.

Sometimes it happens that bullies think it's okay to bully me as I am polite. Politeness is many times taken as cowardice, which is such a shame. But I am polite as I want to be polite, not because I am a meek person. And this is where the bullies get baffled.

If I had the power I would like the world to fair and unbiased. But I don't have it, and I can't change the world, this is what I really need to understand.

So in all of the above cases I don't let go, by trying to find a path in life in which the above situations are avoided. Instead I confront those situations .

One of my friend whom I only meet through chat (we stay in the same city and locality ,still :-) ) had given me a new and fresh point of view of looking at these things. It was really a pleasant surprise. Once when a unjust thing happened I chatted with her furiously about state of things. That I don't behave like that with XYZ people how can they be like this to me? She said ok , you don't behave like this because it's your choice to behave in a particular way. But you cannot assume that it's their way of life too. They have their own brain which has made some another choice for them. So the expectation that everyone will behave similar to what you behave with them is unreal. Cool isn't it ?

In engineering we had a very good principle which I remember even today. Ideal machine produces work equivalent to power consumed no loss at all. And then it says Ideal machine doesn't exist, a real machine always has losses it never produces work equal to power consumed. So analogy to real life is that such an ideal world where there is no injustice doesn't exist, even if we like the ideal. Unjust things are like wastage , losses they are not useful and they degrade quality of life but they do exist.

So I know all the theory behind letting go. But in practice whenever my ideals (however simple they are) are violated I hits me deeply. The prospect of simply tolerating wrong things as they are as you are not in power to change that makes me cringe. if not changing the things I at least like to make them go away from my path such that they are not in capacity to bother me. There are many times when one can't even do that. You can' t just remove a unjust person out of your way by your will. More often than not such people hold positions of power. If someone acquired position or authority through their knowledge , hard work I respect that but I don't have much of a regard for authority just obtained due to a position. But in spite of that you cannot just be reckless and do something when you know you have no defence. So in this situation I just keep quiet. But I haven't let go. These are the times when I hold grudges unknowingly and I just don't get rid of them. This affects me, as everyone else, it produces mental stress. This situation is more common where you can't do much about unfairness.

If I look around people close to me, how do they handle it is like this -

My husband A has great power of ignorance. He can ignore anything and everything if he doesn't like it. Also he can readily accept that there are some things we can't change then ok , ignore them.

But that being said he is extremely rigid if it comes to what he wants to do in his life, nobody can influence him to do what they want. No amount of emotional blackmail, peer pressure any other pressure has ANY effect on him.

My sister P is the one who can really let go. She has a genial, happy and charming nature which can lighten up any situation. She does feel bad , yes but she comes out of it in no time to her usual cheerful self.

She can be good to people who were bad to her at some point in time. She forgets such things and works at the spur of the moment. That explains why she is spontaneous as compared to me. She lives in the present and not the past.

My mother has many similarities with my nature. However with age she has acquired the maturity and wisdom which I am yet to acquire. So she is the pillar of support for me in my moments of distress and it is she who puts some wisdom in to me in all these times. Her wisdom can be attributed to solid foundation of spirituality in her life. I think I need to seek a similar solution.

Greedy algorithm : An analogy with real life

Blogging after quite a long time. I had thought of plenty of topics to write about but could not get myself to sit down and write.This blog post is titled  'The greedy algorithm' and is sure to make itself look like a geeky post. Some computer science jargon it would seem. But no, its just that analogy of the way this algorithm operates and the way some people behave appealed to me.

So to get started, lets first quickly understand what greedy algorithm is. Greedy algorithm is one of the strategies used to solve combinatorial optimization problems in computer science.Combinatorial optimization is broadly finding an optimal object from a finite set of objects

e.g.
Map Coloring: Colour different regions of a map such that no two adjacent regions have same colour and you use the fewest number of colors. Here greedy algorithm can often give you good results by choosing one color, and coloring as many regions as possible with that color before going on to another color. You proceed with the next color in the same way, not going to a third color until there are no regions that can be colored with the second color

Travelling salesman problem - Given a list of cities and their pairwise distances, the task is to find the shortest possible route that visits each city exactly once and returns to the origin city.

The greedy strategy is to make the best possible locally available choices at each stage and go to the next stage.Locally available best means that a particular choice 'a' made by this algorithm is best when we are at X stage of the problem,at this stage the entire structure of the problem is not visible to us. So making that choice 'a' we go to X+5. We come to know that 'a' was not actually the best choice 'b' which was not best at stage X would have been actually better but there is no way the mistake can be corrected. So greedy algorithm in such situation do not give you the optimal solution [ read optimal = best]


All this while you must have got a feeling that you are sitting in a computer science class and wondering why the hell you are supposed to know all this.I many times hear computer engineers saying this is 'theoretical knowledge' not of any practical value.Now from where does all this 'practical knowledge' come? It comes from theory, and how is theory formed from varied practical studies done by different people at different points in time. So I think dividing knowledge in to theoretical and practical is pure bullshit but I will not digress.

So now I come to the point- I have observed some humans are committed to employ greedy algorithm to the decisions of their life. How ? I will explain.

I will give three real life examples of decisions which are in increasing order of importance

Example 1:

Problem statement : Get the best possible dress from a shop for yourself

You go to a shop to buy clothes the shopkeeper shows you some dresses you notice that lady next to you has got a better dress in front of her. [Why do I take example of a lady, as ladies have the core quality of jelaousy packed in them which is needed to get in to the situation I am going to explain]. So you with all your smartness apply some tactics make sure she doesnt buy that dress and you without much thinking buy it.But just when you have paid your bill and are about to leave the shop you see that that lady ( the same one whom you outsmarted!) has got a better dress than what you smartly have bought.Since you have fixed budget you cannot buy that dress now. So you inspite of all your percieved smartness you are left with a suboptimal [ read: mediocre] choice.

Example 2:

Problem statement : Get your kid the best possible education.
You want to get admission to a school for your kid.You go to the best percieved school in the town pay them a hefty bribe [ Read building fund, charitable donation, whatever pleases you] Now this school imposes too much of its rules on how kids should study and put in place lot of unnecessary crap [ X day,Y day, cooking session, gardening session etc etc] which is actually not imparting required knowledge to your child. Your kids reaches 4th standard and cannot multiply / divide two numbers reliably. You see that your neighbors kid who goes to a very ordinary school can easily do this.
You scratch your head - What went wrong ?

Example 3 :

Problem statement: You want to marry the best guy in the world.

You 'search' for a best guy- i.e.
 Best education,
Best salary,
Best looks,
No in-laws for you to live with.

This best guy too wants to marry you, and thus you get married. But in some time you come to know you two dont get along well.Because you two are polar
opposites. when you want piping hot coffee, he craves for a ice-cream and so on. So to spend time with each other is kind of a formality which of course you don't enjoy. You wonder what went wrong ? my choice was best ..

Answer to examples 1 2 & 3 : Locally optimal choice is not guaranteed to be globally optimal. In a non geeky language, you need to rise higher and view the problem in its entirety. From there you can see which is the ultimate best choice at a particular stage that will give overall best solution to the entire problem in the end.

Note: Above views expressed should be solely attributed to me, If you think otherwise, I dont want to challenge you.

On Introversion.. Update

Update : Found this somewhere..its interesting and a practical take on introverts..

http://www.carlkingcreative.com/10-myths-about-introverts?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

On Introversion..

One of my cousin who is one of the very few readers of this blog, had reminded me since eternity to update the blog, finally I have made that wish of his come true :-)

Today, our team had gone out for lunch at some nearby place. The discussions we had there while waiting (eagerly) for food to arrive gave me a topic to blog about

They were saying that sending kids to pre-school/ playgroups will make the kids extrovert, make them socially smart,give them better ability to deal with people.

Yes, sending kids to playgroups is a good thing, they get to quench their overflowing curiosity and express their abundant energy.

But I am sceptical about the second part, making them extrovert part.

I remember myself as being an introvert since the time I know myself. I too went to a nursery/ playgroup kind of a school, but looks like it did not help :-)

I am still an introvert and not as socially smart (don't know what that means)

So Obviously, I couldn't agree with "making someone an extrovert". Being an extrovert/ introvert is part of person's nature isn't it ?

That is why they make us answer those funny questions in a personality test and finally conclude you are introvert/ extrovert etc.-

Check your personality type - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_Briggs_Type_Indicator

I will try to express (even though I am not an extrovert) here why I appear to be talking less (This is the most popular observation people have made about me)

In the process I will bore you with speaking about myself (as I consider people speaking about themselves all the time highly boring!)

Coming back to original point of making someone an extrovert, I think even if my parents had sent me to any number of schools, I certainly wouldn't have become an extrovert.

I believe you don't make anyone anything, you just guide him/her in their journey. (Another controversial opinion of mine!)

You would find me talking less because most of the times I don't want to share my thoughts with every next person I meet.

Also, I don't agree with many of the conventional ways of thinking, then if I start talking and making my point there will certainly be an argument, as I am an argumentative person

and don't like to quit my point. Once while debating on a nth topic with one of my friends, we kept on debating and had not slept till 2am in the night! :)

Some people you meet with are not really friends, they are acquaintances, and you cannot afford to get in to an debate with them. At those time I prefer not speaking much.

Now all these people start thinking that you are (probably) dumb! Doesn't speak much, doesn't participate in discussion etc etc.

Then again I am not an extremely well-read person, so if I don't know about the topic being discussed I just keep silent as I don't like to sound stupid. As I am not an extrovert I don't get affected by the fact that I am silent.I don't find silence uncomfortable,which is a weird thing for most extroverts.

I had a friend once who was also of the same opinion - If two people meet,and they don't have anything to say to each other, they just keep quiet.There is nothing abnormal in that.

In fact its very tiring to keep having uninteresting discussions on sports and weather , just for the lack of anything to say.Of course this is the opinion of an introvert.

Yes of course being an extrovert makes you popular in the society. When you are known to people you "might" progress faster. But there are lot of people, who are successful and are introverts which is the case for any given personality type, so success is an altogether different paradigm which doesn't only depend your nature.

Many times people who are close to me especially my mom makes me talk to people, as she knows I am not going to talk on my own! I get irritated as I don't have anything to talk to..

Its not because I don't like those people but I don't have anything on top of mind to share with them, so I just keep quiet. But people get offended by silence, which is surprising for me..

With people whom I know well AND get along well, its a different story altogether, I can keep chatting all the time.That's the reason I have very limited number of friends. I consider a friend as person you enjoy talking to, spending time with etc. I don't consider mere acquaintances as friends, as a result of this filter, my "number of actual friends" is again less

The extroverts don't like to see people alone, so out of concern they get someone for you to talk to, which can be unnecessary according to introverts! :)

I googgled and found this wikipedia article on introversion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion

Introversion is defined here as - "the state of or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one's own mental life"

This aptly describes my nature.

What type are you ? Introvert / Extrovert ?? :-)

Book Review :- Tao of Physics

It has been sooooo long since I have posted anything here. In fact I thought I would simply stop this blogging activity. But here I am back with one more post!
I of course had a special reason for not being regular on my blog ;-) but will leave it that. Well, this is something I wanted to write months back but have been putting it off for one or the other reason.

One sunny Sunday afternoon strolling on JM Rd I stumbled upon a book which I had always longed to read. So, I grabbed it without any bargaining. :-) It was - The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. I was apprehensive initially about not being able to understand much of these physicists language.
But as pored over it this belief of mine was broken. In spite of being a book on parallels between Modern physics eastern mysticism nowhere you can find it to be cryptic or throwing some undecipherable jargon at you. It simply takes you to some other world by breaking your fundamental beliefs about nature formed over years while learning science and hence about physics. Given below are some points made in the book which intrigued me the most.

We all know that science is for reason, logic etc. But have we ever thought of what could be a limitation of this analytical/reasoning ability of ours? It is interesting to do so. It starts out with a chapter on knowing and seeing by saying that Words, mathematical symbols, theorems are our ways of describing the reality, just like a map describes territory. And as we don’t have ability to see the reality directly we tend to confuse the map with territory.
Early scientists in Europe put too much emphasis on rational thinking. They imposed a geometric restriction on everything in nature saying planets revolve around sun in elliptical orbits, they are spherical in shape etc they went to an extent of saying that “God is a Geometer” -Plato.
But the same laws of geometry are not applicable everywhere. Consider a square drawn on a plane. We start by drawing equal length lines in 90 degrees to each other they will meet to form a square. But if we try to do the same on a sphere they will never meet.

Newton's classical mechanics which we will all swear by is the ultimate truth. But, they have a limited range of application. It is applicable to solid moving bodies at speed less than that of light.

Thus for all mathematical models theories are formed by isolating some natural phenomena and taking in to consideration only a few important things. But no model can ever describe natural phenomena completely as they are approximations of reality. Hence Einstein says "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality".

As scientific development progressed we came to know about more and more things about nature which invalidated some of our old theories.
for e.g. :-

The belief that we earlier had that time is absolute is not valid today. It may applicable for us most of the times as we don’t see objects travelling by light of speed everyday :-)

Time is relative to every observer. The impact of this statement is very huge on our concepts but it’s hard to imagine and think about it. If time is realtive, what are past future and present? Are these just concepts in our mind ?

Similar to time space is also relative. (This very queer to imagine)
Also earlier scientist thought everything in universe is made of some basic building block i.e. Atoms protons neutrons, electrons (Yes I remember I learned this) which is also not true as we know mass and energy are interconvertible.

Then we have wave particle duality. So the electron in an atom show tendencies to exist at certain places with a probability but we can t be sure of it. So the solids which we think are full of some material are actually having atoms with large gaps of space in them and all mass in the centre with the electrons showing tendencies to exist somewhere in their orbits.(How does this sound?)

All of these are enough to make the ground below us break.
He used a very nice analogy to relieve us from the concept of opposites to show that they are different sides of same coin as below

If we have a pendulum moving in a circular path and we project this on a line we get its image to be moving from extreme to another. Whereas if we see the same thing with respect to a circle, there is no extreme as such.

Or If we cut a circular disk (3-Dimensional) by a plane (2 Dimensional) we get two pieces on extreme ends where in reality they were the parts of the same disk.



If this is true what are good/ bad, sorrow/ joy poverty/richness etc? They must be the same things, right?

And just like projecting a 3-dimensional thing on 2 dimensions makes it look entirely different , what we see are projections of reality in time-space (and god knows how many dimensions) in to our 3 dimensional world which don’t give us exact picture of reality.

And then he says in the book that while doing any scientific experiment we as observer participate in the experiment and have an effect on the results. It is impossible to isolate any experiment. And hence universe is a complicated web of interconnected things where we can’t cannot separate and analyze things. That way we only form maps of territory and later on may confuse it for the real territory.

The Indian mystics had already realized this and hence they did not put too much emphasis on analytical / rational thinking like in the west. They also considered the intuitive knowledge.
Even scientists know the value of intuitive knowledge that comes to us in flash of a second and not after careful and analytical thinking.
For e.g
Watson and Crick’s DNA helix model- They were not able to find this structure even after hours of thinking and got it when they left it there and went out for a stroll.
OR Archimedes who got his famous law while taking a dip in his bath-tub.

Although Indian mystics did not over emphasize rational thinking they did not neglect it either. They had achieved great heights in these sciences too. (Like chemistry,pharmacy,architecture etc)

But whenever they spoke of this ultimate reality they use lots of paradoxes use myths or many times frankly pronounce that reality is simple indescribable in any language and one has to experience it personally.

In the words of the Upanishads,
“What is soundless, touchless, formless, imperishable, likewise tasteless, constant, odourless, without beginning, without end, higher than the great, stable- By discerning That, one is liberated from the mouth of death. “
Knowledge which comes from such an experience is called ‘absolute knowledge’

Well, now I will stop here. More on this in a later post may be. Hope you enjoy reading just as I did writing it:-)

Note :- All images are taken from the book

And thus I cooked...

I admit this came to me late.And that was owing to my (lack of) proclivity towards cooking as well as pure lethargy.One fine day, my mother declared her plan of visiting granny.This meant she would be out for a week's time. I had no inkling as to what this would amount to. as usually I experience a considerable "delay" in really understanding things happening around me :-) The day she started off passed normally as she had already taken care of the evening meals. The next day dawned and posed a daunting task of preparing the PoLi , associated with a deadline. ( Task reminds me of the tasks in Big Boss.. ;-)). I had a small experience with the PoLi and that was a relief. Nobody complained so I take it was a fair job.There was a glitch in the task though, as my estimate went wrong.Next day was a holiday but as I had to attend my friends engagement ceremony so the deadline was still there. With the fresh experience gained from day before, I did better. I do understand that the story isn't getting interesting, however the real excitement is not until the next day. That day mom called me up to enlighten us that tomorrow is the kartiki ekadashi. She of course did not suggest that we should fast or anything. (at times, She is quite nice, you know !)But that was sunday and it was possible to experiment with cooking. So I, with all the bravado decided that we will fast as we usually fast on this ekadashi.It would be useful to note that we don't interpret fast as the day when we don't eat but the one when we have food of a different type. My father wasn't exactly cheerful about this one and was all set to boycott the ekadashi upwas idea of mine. I ignored him and decided to go ahead with my idea,unsure of how I would cook the upwas stuff ( Had NO experience in this ! ). Because of lot of dawdling and dilly-dallying over the decision of whether to-fast-or-not we had completely forgotten about soaking the sabudana (The essential ingredient of 80% of the upwas recipes). The sunday morning started off lazily as usual and I had not shown any awareness that I had to do some cooking (within time for lunch) which I wasn't familiar with. Then I was again debating with myself whether to prepare the thalipeeth or khichadi.

Thalipeeth - Didn't know how to make,but is tasty,and doesnt need any pre-requisite
unlike sabudana khichadi.

Sabudana khichadi - Knew how to make. May not sound very interesting as its seen
often. But needs the soaked sabudana.

After taking up too much time then again taking my cousins help I finally decided to
soak sabudana as this presented less efforts. Then again some time passed away lazying around. At 11.00 it dawned upon me that I was getting hungry as was everyone else.so I slowly proceeded and roasted peanuts and grinded them.My speed is approximately 1/4th of my mom so I wished time would stop for me but alas ! it didn't have any mercy. Then as a emergency relief I prepared one instant item, the batatyachi bhaji. Then I prepared the sabudana khichadi and salad.
It was 12.30 already.I thought this was all about lunch.But I realized my estimate has again gone awry and the amount the preparation was less than my expectations. So I had to look at thalipeeth option (scary!) So I called up mom and asked her the recipe and made the dough according to her instructions.By this time I had lost patience. My poor(?) sister had to bear the brunt of this as I yelled at her for no reason,this blew some sparks between us. But then she came to my rescue and offered me help. I flattened out small pieces of dough in to thalipeeth and she roasted them by adding oil.Then my cousin came to help and she prepared shikaran. So finally we were ready with the grand upwas lunch (according to us)

Menu was:
Batatychi bhaji (Jeera aloo)
Sabudana khichadi
Salad
Thalipeeth
Shikaran

Then we all ate our lunch heartliy. It gave me some satisfaction that I had prepared it. I felt proud of myself as I thought I wouldn't be able to do it. I pondered, my mother cooks food everyday without fail.She never loses patience never yells at anyone. She is simply amazing..! It is true that to realize value of anything we need to have experienced lack of it.

All and all this sunday turned out to be interesting in more ways than one. :-)

Anyone can code ..

Haven't blogged for quite sometime now.It can be only attributed to lethargy.So now, I won't give any sweet sounding explanation for the long hiatus and start without much ado ;-)
Just somedays back while chatting with a friend of mine, a irksome topic came up in our talk. It revived old memories but the best thing that it did was , it gave me a topic to blog about :-)
I don't want to go in to details of her story , but the summary is that she had an interview at some company. An interviewer by rule has a moral duty to show some scorn towards you and they are
generally quite efficient at that. But this time he raised a question which we both had accustomed to hear when we had just enrolled ourselves for computer engineering.He said come on, any one can
code but tell me what else can you do ? Engineers from other branches have some core knowledge about their branches . what do you know ? (He meant you can just code and nothing else).
In those days we had repeatedly heard people's scornful remarks about how computer engineering is not a "basic" branch and it was getting "saturated" :D :D . Also, they said that we can always
join a "IT" company even if we do engineering from any branch. So even there we guys don't make any difference.I am never able to understand these people's mentality. They want to ride on the wave
that the software Industry might generate. Still they want to look at that knowledge derisively. What do we get by just being hypocritic? If you are so proud about your branch's core knowledge just
stay in it. No..but you won't do that..you will mock at computer engineering and aspire to do the same work that they do. This is outright ridiculous.
In my opinion ,this is not the intended way how things should be. All branches of technology are interdependent. And combinedly they are supposed to make lives of human beings better. Isn't this
correct? Everywhere computers are being used to automate manual processes so at all these places there will be a need of core knowledge of that particular field , which a computer engineer doesn't
have by default.But at the same time he does have a deep understanding about how programs work, the theory behind writing good and robust code,impact of badly written code,not just code but a lot more of other things. This knowledge certainly everyone else doesn't have by default. I know they can learn it ,but so can we..All human beings can learn new things, whats the big fuss about it ?
(I know I am going in to needless details, but just trying to prove my point you see :-) )
What is the problem with accepting the facts ? And when are people going to start behave more sensibly?

Disclaimer : These views expressesed here only belong to me and they are completely biased towards Computer engineering. Any such occurrence is purely intended. ;-)